 You're all set. Go ahead, Andy. Okay. With great apologies for the delay in starting the meeting because of conflicting meeting that ran over. I want to call the meeting of the finance committee to order on May 13, 2021. And it is now one 25pm. And so with that, this is a meeting that pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 orders to spend certain provisions of the open meeting a lot of general law chapter 30, I section 18. This meeting with finance committee is being conducted by a remote participation. So I need to quickly ask each member of the committee to indicate that they can hear me and that we can hear them. So that we can confirm that we're in compliance with all of the requirements. So let me start with Bob Hegner. I'm here. Lynn Guzmer. Present. Kathy Shane. I'm here. Kathy Angelis. Present. Dorothy Pam. Present. Bernie Kubiak. Present. And Jane Schaeffler. I'm here. Okay, great. So we have a full complement of the committee. As noted, this is a busy agenda. We're going to try and get through as best we can. The. Finance director has requested a specific order for consideration. And of course we always. I want to move a line of that request. So I don't know if you have any introductory comments on recreation you want to make Sean. Or rather. I'll quickly introduce Barb and Donna who are here from the recreation department. I don't believe we received any questions in advance. So I think Barb is just going to give sort of a brief overview of the recreation department. And then turn it over for questions. Thank you, Barb. Sure. Thank you, Sean. So just a quick overview of sort of the three different areas that have, you know, that we'll be presenting at the budget. We'll start with the overall recreation budget and talk a little bit about our accomplishments this year. Much of that was dictated by the pandemic. However, we did do our best to follow our strategic plan and we're able to accomplish some of the goals that we had set out for the first hour. I think all of the goals actually that we had set out for the first year. Of that strategic plan. Great. Great. Thanks. Thanks to my staff as well as the commission. And community members who helped us achieve that. So that's been very. Very, very successful. And it's an excellent tool to have to guide the department as we move forward. Let's see. We have certainly increased our, our presence on social media. And we've created, I think we've been very creative in sort of meeting the needs of the community in terms of virtual, as well as in person recreational programming. So we were able to do that. And then helping in other departments, which I, you know, have to give my compliments to my staff. They just really stepped up and we're instrumental in, in working with various departments to help the community where folks really needed it. So that was great. We've also worked to also strengthen our relationships with organizations like the bid, the chamber, the survival center, local businesses and other departments within the town. So that has also helped us be successful. As we sort of pivoted to different types of special events and other activities that we've done. For the town over the past year. So the challenges, of course, we're mostly related to the pandemic. I've talked a little bit about that. And then, you know, just basically trying to increase our accessibility both. Are in a physical accessible way, as well as making sure that our programs are accessible to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay. So that has been a challenge, but I believe we were working to meet those needs. And then expanding as I talked to before about the different relationships with other organizations in, within the town. Private as well as public. Let's see. So in terms of status, you know, I think some of the status to a prior year objectives. Looks like we accomplished pretty much everything we set out to do. Groth Park is now, you know, an incredible, viable. It's been an enthusiastic place for kids to be. It's just fun. Fun, fun, fun. It's just been great. If you get a chance, it's, it's worked really coming along. It looks like we might be able to open that early this year. Possibly as early as Memorial Day. So fingers crossed on that. And then I'm sure you've seen the developments happening at Kendrick Park, which is also exciting to see that there'll be other changes at Mill River, the basketball carts, the DPW has been doing a great job. And I'm sure we'll be able to open those and when contractor will will be in shortly. So from that standpoint, from a capital standpoint, again, lots happening. Let's see. And of course we rebranded ourselves. We're now the Amherst, we're Amherst recreation or the Amherst recreation apartment, if you will, as part of the town and no longer leisure services and supplemental education. So we've been working really hard on that. And we've been really on their top in terms of priorities for sort of identifying who we are. And it's been a great. A great transition. So now we're on to the year two objective objectives that will be outlined, which are outlined in the strategic plan. So we'll be working on those in this coming year. We are working on them now. So are there any questions? If anybody finds LSEC anywhere in the budget document document, let me know because we scoured that thing high and low. And we still were finding them like the day before. But the other thing I just want to note is. Barb's department was sort of the hero this year in a lot of ways. I'm sure Paul will talk about it more later. Whenever something needed to be done during COVID, when there was sort of a new responsibility that came up, it was often Barb's department that stepped up and did it. And made a lot of things work. And it's been a great time. And it's been a great time. And I'm sure for the town this year, so. Barb's department was very busy, busy during the, during the pandemic. So I actually do have a bunch of questions to. Ask. But. I want to acknowledge that. Barb is with us for the. Her last round. The director of the recreation department. We will sorely miss you. This has been a challenging year. And I really do want to congratulate the department for its great success under extremely challenging circumstances, but we are here today to look at the budget for the year ahead. And so I'm going to be focusing on the, on the coming year. A little bit more than. Actually all. Instead of looking on the prior year. And. So the questions that I have is. How you project the, as we're getting hopefully to the end of the COVID crisis, but we're still working through it. How that transition is going to affect the operations of the department and your bill in the ability to manage. The department along the budget lines that we have. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work presented to us. And in particular. Ability to get part-time staff, which is always an important summer piece. Ability to reach out to the community and. Let them know about the programs and get them. Get people to sign up. So both for participation. We have a lot of work with revolving funds and we need. Participation to get revenue. So. Sort of like what you're projecting as the challenges. And. What steps you're taking. To get us there for the year ahead. Okay. Thanks. And I'll start with the challenges related to part-time staff that, that certainly as we know, I'm sure you've read. That's been a challenge for everyone right now. Trying to get. You know, basically. Minimum wage. Entry level. Physicians filled this summer. We've been fortunate though, I must say, we started early. And we did a lot of outreach to UMass. To our former employees and so forth that we've had. You know, I'm working for us part-time with the camps and at the pools. And so far we're a little bit ahead of where we were last year. So we've been able to fill those positions in terms of. Being able to fill those positions. So that's been a positive. So. Fingers crossed that trend continues. As far as, you know, reaching out to the community in terms of getting the word out about our programs. Certainly we've had to change. Kind of as kind of roll with the punches, if you will. In terms of the numbers of kids that we can serve. We can, we can bring in, but we are, you know, we're just, we're checking those numbers and we may end up moving some of the minimums up so that we can serve more children. We also don't hire and we would have to hire more staff. Though we're hoping that would be a, you know, that we'll be able to do that. But we're just going to be have to be flexible in our approach to providing programs. You know, we're, we're going to be able to serve the needs of the community and the kids that need to be in these programs. We're sort of at a certain point right now, but maybe a month or two from now that might be very different. So. We're just going to have to evolve and. Give it and make sure that. We're able to serve the needs of the community and the kids that need to be in these programs. So, you're going to move on to the summer camps. I think that's the answer to the summer camp programs in there. Yeah, summer camps has been the biggest challenge in terms of the limitations they put on the numbers of children who can participate right now. Whether hesitations you're finding from families participating or finding that families are eager to have participation, get those kids out of the house finally. Seems to be the latter. Actually. It seems to be many of our programs. We have a number of programs. We have a number of programs. We have a number of programs. We have a number of programs. We have strict, you know, protocols from DPH. And a lot of what we're doing is outdoors a lot. Probably almost what at Don is with me. She's our operations director. But probably about. 80 and 90% of what we'll be doing. We'll be outdoors this year. Okay. And then I have one more question. I'm going to ask Sean or. Paul. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Any of the programs that we're looking at that we would like to have. Amherst recreation do that might also coincide with. Where there's. Money available from the recovery act. Or other similar sources. That's a good question. Andy. I'm not. I can't think of anything off the top of my head. Related to that. But I'll, you know, we just got more information on, on the new programming. A couple of day or two ago. And so we're still kind of waiting for different state agencies to kind of. Articulate what exactly that means for us. But nothing jumps out to me, at least from the newest grant that would. You know, I don't know if that would affect FY 22 budget, but that's not to say that there isn't something. So. We'll take that question and take another look at it and see if anything comes up. Andy, are you, are you suggest, are you just to confirm the question is, is there any programming. Recreation programming that might be able to be funded from the. American rescue plan act. Does that. What the question was. Yeah, I mean there's several different elements to it. You'll know where the. Revenue gaps are going to. Come from some of the. Programs that we traditionally run. I think that the hard thing is for any. Enterprise. You know, this has just been an unpredictable time and will continue to be an unpredictable time. Yeah, one thing you will see in the, in the budget proposal. Is some proposed funding from the American rescue plan for recreation programming specifically for Cherry Hill. You know, we'll talk about that more as more information comes out, but that's more related to the, the, the loss of revenue. Eligible use related to that grant. Which again, we'll get into more detail, but we'll look at that and we'll let you know if we find anything else. Thank you. Thank you. Dorothy, did you have a question? Yes, I did. It's a statement and a question. I'm. I like the change of name. I'm reminded of something that. When I was an adolescent in the 50s, I met many people who are older who'd majored in the 1920s and games and games and recreation. And it'd be, I was kind of surprised by that, just to be clear, but it's not true. Perhaps related to the flu epidemic. I don't know what the realization of the importance of play. And I have just been feeling finding that out in terms of my own grandchildren this year. And I was wanted to say to you to think big and think bigger. With limitations of space. I know how it's challenging, but I think every child and Amherst, somehow we should find a way to make that possible. Are there other questions from the committee as we start with as we go review the different sections of the budget? Kathy? It's, Barb may have already summarized some of this, but your overall staffing, if I look back a few years is down when I took all of recreation and you said if you can open up camps, if there's an ability to do that revenue comes in, do you have an ability then to augment staff that there are more revenues you hire somewhere interns or you hire supplemental? So just how you staff it. One of, when Andy was saying thank you for all you've done, I watched what you did in the last year as short staffing Barb just appeared over at the golf course then Barb was over at another place. So she was staffing services and I think some of it was supplemented by other town staff for helping out or you, we redeployed because they weren't needed. So just as you in reopening is there flexibility if more revenues are coming in to augment as Dorothy was saying programs with staff, the staffing of them? Good question, Kathy. I would say absolutely because with those programs for the most part come out of the revolving fund, the camps are summer sports programs and so forth and we could absolutely hire more part-time staff to augment those programs. The pools is a little bit different but we have room in that budget to also hire additional staff if at some point we are allowed for instance to teach lessons, swim lessons but right now we can't. Thank you. I need to unmute myself here. Yeah, Barbara, just let me offer my thanks for you making my grandkids very happy and giving me something to do with them. The question I have is just a simple one. The fee subsidy numbers that you've presented are those individuals or are those duplicate counts? Let's see, Donna maybe you can help me on that but I believe they're each individual. Is that correct Donna? Yes, so there's usually, there's a listing for families and for individuals. Okay, but these are our duplicated counts. That's, I just wanna get some notion of how many kids we're helping out here and again, thanks. So, do we wanna take a moment to go through some of the other programs and just get the touch on each one and see if there are any financial issues that we need to be concerned about or we're confident that the budget will run through and I think we've talked a little bit about the summer camp programs. Do you just sign up usually farther along at this point in the year, in the normal year? We generally would start a little bit earlier than this but we got a little bit of late start. Basically we were waiting for the regulations from the state. So, although we were planning and starting to develop curriculum and so forth we really didn't have our guidelines from the state in place until a few weeks ago. But yeah, we're a little bit late but not really and I believe enrollment is what about over half right now. So, it's pretty close to where it would be normally at this time, we're still in mid-May. And my other summer camp program, I'm just curious as to what are you gonna do in rainy days if you have all of your programs you're trying to gear towards being outdoors? Well, we have spaces in the cafeteria and in the gymnasium at the middle school for the day camps and then at the high school for the sports programs, the gymnasium and a few other spots. So, we'll be able to continue where we have adequate spacing between individuals. Does anybody else have questions that they'd like to ask about summer camp programs? Because you know, they go to sports programs, youth sports and other programs. Is there any questions people have on those? Swimming, get to the pools. Get to the pools? Do you want to swim when you do that? Go ahead. Yeah, go ahead if you have any general statement or general comments about the pool operations. Sure, we are projecting that the pools were run very similar to how they ran last year. We had designated swim lap times for adults and we had open swim. We weren't able to provide swimming lessons. Again, as I stated earlier, I'm hopeful that maybe for the end of the summer that might be a possibility, but we just don't know at this point. There is also a possibility that we'll be able to increase the number of swimmers per lane. Last year we were, for lap swimmers, to two instead of one. Last year we were restricted to just one per lane. Our revenues actually last year were pretty good considering everything that happened. The Tritons used the pool at Mill River in the early morning hours, so that helped our revenue and then our membership. I think we're up and daily fee we're up as well, so that was good. So basically the same sort of structure that we did last year for the pools will happen again this summer. Are Tritons coming back again this year? I haven't heard from them. They'll probably make that decision at the end of the month. Yeah, I was just curious because it looked like you had cut out morning lap swim time. Last year we cut out the early morning lap swim, correct? And that's when the Tritons were at Mill River, right? In my last comment on swimming, and I'll see if there's anybody else who has anything to say on that and we'll go to golf. As far as being somebody who swims at Hampshire Athletic, they are now at Two Per Lane and informed me that virtually all public pools are now Two Per Lane, the Hawaii's, and others that they consult with. They've gone back to Two Per Lane, which would have a capacity and an income benefit. Anything else on pools? I don't want to get into the minutiae too much in delay. In the other, then it's the golf course. You seem to go well last year because it was a sport that people could participate in comfortably. Yeah, golf revenues were up, rounds were up. It was an interesting kind of dynamic that happened at golf courses across the country where for many years, golf participation rates have been down. And this year, they really spiked up. And again, it was largely due to the fact that it was an outdoor activity that was safe to participate in during the pandemic. And I think it kind of sparked people's interest, if you will, back in golf. And we've got a lot of new golfers. I know at Cherry Hill, and we have a lot of golfers who have come back who may have golfed 10 years ago, put away the clubs and thought, hey, I need to get outside now or I need to get away from the rest of the family or whatever. But we have youth, we have women, and as well as men, just a good cross-section of individuals coming out to play golf now, which is exciting. So that's been good. So let me see if there are any other follow-up questions. And I don't see any hands going up from the committee. I wish that I had more time to, this last couple of weeks had been really sort of over the top and I would have spent a little bit more time going through the budget in detail as I had in prior years to not get the chance. If I think of other things that are just small information pieces that I need to plug in, as I work on the report, I'll certainly pose questions to Sean if that's okay and see what we can get as answers. I see two other hands up both. So go back to Dorothy again and then to Lynn. I have a question about the waiting pool. Is it open and under what circumstances? Because I understand why you're not giving swim lessons, but it's a great loss. I first came to Amherst from coming out of town to do baby swim lessons with my granddaughter. And I love to swim the pool and I love the waiting pool. Is the waiting pool gonna be open or is it limited? Well, we have just one waiting pool now and it's at Mill River and it will be open. It was open last year. So yes, definitely it will be open. I move, please. There's been a problem for me today. I'm actually not going to ask any questions, but it seems like coming to the end and I specifically asked since this not only was Barbara's last day on Wednesday and therefore she came back just today, especially for us and then we delayed her for 20 minutes, but we wanna offer some thanks on behalf of the town council for your amazing work with us over the years. Barbara is from San Diego. She started out doing recreation activities in the Army and Navy. And in 1986 to 89 in Korea and Japan as a civilian employee. And then she moved on to the Pioneer Valley Girl Scouts, which finally for me solves the question of where have I seen Barbara before? And that was it. She then worked at Tapestry Health in Northampton and then came to us to work at LSSE now obviously Amherst Recreation. She became department head and recreation director over four years ago. And as mentioned here, based on a strategic plan that they're now in the second year of, LSSE has changed its name. She's done a lot to respond to the COVID situation in our town and make it a much more optimal situation for many, many people, including working at Cherry Hill and managing and making sure our pools were open or swimming and our parks and so forth. She lives in Amherst. And I also would occasionally see Barbara when I was at various Saturday activity events mostly around Halloween. And she and other people would drive up with all kinds of things where they could help kids make scarecrows and other kinds of Halloween items and also have a snack and, you know, this is Saturday, not a regular work day. And so I really think what it does is capitalizes for me what many residents would say about Barbara and that is she always has gone above and beyond to ensure that children from low income households were able to participate in all activities throughout LSSE now Amherst Recreation. So Barbara, we wanna thank you for your many years of service with us and for leaving Amherst Recreation in better shape than when you arrived. Thank you so much, Lynn, very much appreciated. And it's just been a great opportunity and I just feel very fortunate and blessed to have been able to serve this community and live here. I mean, it's a rare combination and it's just been a great run. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Barbara. So we wish you well. We hope that you feel like Dave Zomek know what he's really in for for the summer. Oh, I have. Okay, well, thank you. Best wishes for whatever you're doing next. You bet. Thank you again. Okay, thank you. So with that, I think that where we wanted to go next was to the library, correct? And we had, I hope that everybody had received the library budget and had a chance to look at it and has it available, maybe, but I'll ask Sharon if she has any introductory comments that you'd like to make. Yeah, hi, everybody. I have a presentation and so I thought I would share my screen to show you some pretty pictures and give you a brief presentation. Okay, thank you for having me. So we are proposing the library trustees are proposing a $2,722,673 operating budget for FY22 with $2,086,211 coming from the town's appropriation. The town appropriation is only used for staff salaries and benefits and the Munson library rent that we pay to the town. The appropriation doesn't fund any other part of the library's operations. We have budgeted for a state aid award of $88,272, but I do believe that cherry sheet figure is low. The legislature is in the process of approving an increase to that line. And 8.5% of our operating budget, our FY22 income will come from fundraising and fees, which I'll talk about a bit more in a bit. Our endowment, let me move you all over here. So our endowment continues to climb quite rapidly. As of April 30th, the value was $9,659,447 and that's the highest it's been since at least FY05. That being said, the draws that we take annually are based on a 12 quarter average of the value. So this way extreme highs and extreme lows in the market don't adversely affect our draws. Also on this slide on the bottom is a chart showing our draw rates going back to FY11. And for FY22, we're looking at a 4% draw rate, which will make up 11.7% of our budget. The endowment is used for the expenses such as our maintenance for both the Jones and the North Amherst Library building, utilities at both the Jones and the North Amherst Library, insurance at both the Jones and the North Amherst Library, our CWMAR's annual fee and annual software agreement licenses that we have to pay for. Our Woodbury fund is also doing very well as of April 1st. Its value was $780,430. Again, that's the highest it's ever been. Woodbury funds are also drawn at a 4% draw rate every year, equaling about $26,000. And these funds are used for programming and circulating materials. I'm also very excited to report that our fundraising efforts are the most successful they have ever been. As of April 30th, we had raised $138,712 towards our $150,000 goal. And we have a, what is this, this is May. So we have a month and a half left in another letter that will be going out. All of our fundraising monies are used for the fun stuff. So programming for all ages, whether it's youth, teens or adults, it's for the branches, it's for ESL, it's for the Burnett Gallery and special collections. But it's also used for circulating materials, books and all of our digital collections and magazines, databases, things like that. And I want to take this minute to thank all of our donors, every single dollar matters and it truly affects the quality of life here in Amherst. Looking at our FY22 expenses, 79% of our operating budget is allocated towards personnel and benefits. Because the town doesn't appropriate an amount equal to 100% of all of our wages, we use our state aid award to fill the gap. We'll talk more about salaries in a minute. The next big ticket item is circulating materials over here in the circle on the right. For FY22, in order to remain certified, we'll have to spend a minimum of $227,000 on circulating materials, again, such as books, DVDs, things like that. So here is a snapshot of our summary page, just so you can see at a glance, our FY22 expenses up top and our FY22 revenue sources. So expense highlights include us budgeting for a 6.6%, where's 6.1? No, a 6% increase in operations. That's right there. A 6.7% increase in maintenance and a 5% increase in utilities. And then we are level funding programming at $30,000. Under revenue sources, we're showing this in yellow highlighted is the 2.1% increase to the town's appropriation. A 9.6% reduction to the endowment draw and a 50% cut to the amount of money we expect to take in in fees. And that's only because we're not sure when we're gonna be able to reopen our meeting rooms for use by the public. We are also budgeting for an increased reliance on fundraising. That's my little cursor. That's these two lines right here, whether it's through private donations to the friends or through special events like the Sammys, we'll be able to bring those back next year. And the Friends mini golf event, the Friends have also scheduled for, I think it's August 28th, an actual golf tournament at the Amherst Golf Club. Stay tuned for more details. Okay, staffing, I wanna talk a little bit about staffing now. For FY22, we are budgeting for a 4.8% increase in salaries. And the reason for that, the reason it's so high is because the town has adopted a new really great wage chart for hourly part-time staff. So even though the proposal and the result is pretty expensive, I did advocate for its passage quite extensively. And so I created this really small chart here to give you a quick visual on how the new wage chart will affect the library as part-time staff. So here we have four library shelvers that are now at level three. We have one maintenance assistant that's at level three right now. We have 19 library technicians that are now at level four and two reference librarians that are at level six. But starting on July 1st are shelvers. In the new scheme, they're now gonna be considered level ones. They'll be making a minimum of $13.50 an hour. And then in January, they will go up to $14.25 an hour. So that's a 75% increase in six months. Our maintenance assistant will be a level three in July and we'll go from $13.66 to $16.61 cents per hour. And then in January, they'll be bumped up to $17.11 cents. And that is a $3.45 an hour increase over six months. Our 19 library technicians. So on July 1st, they're still gonna be a level four. This person in particular is going to go from $13.72 an hour up to $16.72 an hour. And then in January, they'll be bumped up again to $17.22. And that's a $3.50 per hour increase in six months. And then our reference librarians, they're gonna be at a level seven starting in July. And they'll go from $19.87 per hour to $26.19 per hour. And then in January, they'll be bumped up to $26.98. And that's a $7 per hour increase. So just a quick shout out to the personnel board of Amherst HR director, Donna Rae Kinnealy, and of course, time manager, Paul Bachman for adopting this chart. I think it's really gonna make a big difference to people's lives. And that's the end of my overview. And I'll stop screen sharing. So you can see each other again. Hi. Hey. So I actually should have said something at the beginning of the discussion. I'm gonna catch up to it now because I think today just has got not a hand totally for me in some respects, but I did wanna remind people that my wife works part time at the North Amherst library, small number of hours per week. And that I have consulted with the ethics commission about this and found notice of the town clerk, advising them after my consultation so that it's available as a matter of public record because the decisions made about the library budget are not made by the council and we are only voting a bottom line on a budget. It actually leaves me in a position where I can continue to participate. If there come any votes at any time where a decision of the council would affect the compensation that my wife receives, then I would have to step away from the process and not participate. And I'm very vigilant to that when select board did a discussion about the minimum wage discussion is an example of when I made myself absent and excused myself from participation in select board at that time and actually left the meeting entirely is an example, but I just wanted to make sure that all of you were aware that that conflict, that the potential conflict exists and that I am being very vigilant. So that, let me recognize one. Cindy, was there someone specifically assigned to this that has questions before me? The one that I've been watching hands was Dorothy, I believe who is assigned to this. Okay. Good. Well, I would say that we've just had a very good overview from Sharon, which kind of put all the facts out there. I think it's of interest to know that the, how the staff is funded and that the, without the fundraising, without the endowments and the Woodbury fund, the library would have a very difficult time. Those funds are in good shape now. And given the situation we're in, I think that we could say that the budget looks pretty firm. The one thing that we, that's not clear, of course, at this time is the whole question of receiving the money for the capital project. And probably we'll receive only one payment this year of, I guess it's 2.7 million or something. And so that could cause some kind of a problem, but it sounds, the budget in some way sounds very similar to that of the council of aging that meeting that I spent the morning at, which is that the town pays most of the staff, not all, the state's money comes in to supplement that money to pay for staff and that other activities and programs are done by private fundraising. But the library is very lucky to have an endowment, which is in good shape. So that's really basically my report on this. So thank you. So maybe I just wasn't paying attention and that is possible. But could you talk a little bit more about the personnel board decisions, what they were based on and Paul might even elaborate on what other departments of those reviews will and have effected, okay? Thank you. Yeah, I'm not even sure that, you know, I went to the meetings, I have not, I only compared it to my budget. I don't know how it's affecting others. You could quit, call Barb back. I think Amra Strech is the other department that it affects. But I think that this question is really more for Paul. Sorry, Paul. So I'll jump in here. So yeah, for a couple, several years now, we've been trying to get the lowest level employees up to the $15 an hour. And it sounds simple, but it's not because there's the triple effect because it impacts everybody above them. So the personnel board has been working on this had actually engaged a consultant to help look through it. So we have a process in place to get these are lowest paid employees up to a more reasonable wage. And that's been a high priority. I think I mentioned this in last year's budget as well. We're actually, I think this is a really good plan we have moving forward. The biggest impacts are on the library and on recreation. They're the ones who utilize the most part-time employees. It doesn't impact the other employees as much. And so that's why it's impactful on Sharon's budget. But the overall mission has been in working, again, closely with the personnel board has been to get these lowest paid employees up and then hold people up the line harmless in essence. So previously what we were doing is we were just taking it as we made progress on the minimum wage in the state. We were just taking off the lowest rating. And then, but we wanted to get a program in place that really impacted, addressed everyone's schedule, the entire schedule. So with the chair's permission, I'd like to continue on that particular issue. So I'm assuming that when the personnel board and their consultant looked at this, they looked at comparable. I am very pleased to see these changes. It's a very serious challenge to many organizations to get to the high point of the minimum wage, but a very necessary one. And so, but I'm assuming they, if you had a consultant, they were dealing with comparables and so forth. So I just wanna say, I support this. I was just very interested to know more about it. But that brings me to my other question, which is really about the issue of part-timers unbenefit and whether we're making any progress in that area. Is that a question for me too? Let me see. I have to go back to my slide to find out. Let's see. Yeah, so slowly I'm chipping away as the more full-timers I can have and the more, I call them over-20s and under-20s. So they're part-timers that are over-20s. The more of them that I can turn into full-timers, the less I need to rely on the part-timers. So yeah, so this year, I was able to boost another person up. I've got four of those over-20s left and my goal will be to make all of those complete full-timers and that will reduce my reliance on the part-time hourlies. But I'll never, I will always need them. The library will always need them. It's a seven-day per week operation, 64 hours, open hours under normal circumstances. And it's a complicated scheduling beast. And having part-timers is just really necessary. People get sick, go on vacation. I need to be able to call somebody in at the last minute, that kind of a thing. So yeah. Lou, anything else? Nope, that's it. Thanks. Kathy? First I'll follow up on Lynn's, how many under-20s do you have? Cause that's the group that gets nothing except for a sickly. So the part-time hour over-20 gets pro-rated benefits. Am I correct? Right. And the under-20s, I think Paul can explain more. So it's, they have sick and personal time as well. And so yeah, so for next year we'll have 26 of them. So in, I'm just looking at your trend chart. That's one person lower. So one person lower than current and then a couple lower than earlier. So that's the expense, at least in my mind, that's the more expensive conversion. And then for the people, it may be more meaningful cause that's when it triggers health insurance, correct? Can you explain your, yeah. So under-20, the town doesn't have to give them health insurance, it's for the over-20s, correct? When I said it's the more expensive, it's the per hour work goes up when you add those other benefits in. So it's coming out of different buckets. So it seems to me that when I'm in buckets, like one is a wage line and one is a pension line, what you're contributing for pension, what you're contributing for health insurance. You don't contribute, you're not contributing toward a pension accumulation either when they're under 20, am I correct? Correct. Okay. So that to me is the bigger, I mean, I understand the over-20 going to full, but converting the under-20 to even be 20 plus is a big boost for people over time. And do you expect to have an ability to convert some of those to the 20 plus? That would require a larger town appropriation. Okay. Then looking at, you mentioned it quickly when you went through the budget numbers that you're anticipating or you're projecting a pretty big increase in the friend's Woodbury contribution and Sammy's and other fundraising. One was like an 86% increase and the other was 11. What happens if you don't get those increases? You know, where is, what do you do within your budget? So that's one question. And then the other is, do you expect, are you expecting to be fully open for all of FY 22? So is this starting in July, you think the library will be back to the doors are open? So the first question, what if we don't reach the fundraised amount, then we, you know, it depends on what point in the year we're at, you know, we have constant conversations with the board of trustees and we figure out where to get additional funds from or what kind of cuts to make. And then whether or not we're fully open tomorrow, the board of trustees will be looking at a proposal to reopen starting June 14th and it will be, it will be slow, we won't be going right back to 64 hours a week open. And so I don't know when we'll be fully reopened again, but at least we're starting in that path. Thank you. Dorothy, Kathy's done. Okay. This is a question really towards Paul. Again, I'm applying at New York City question to a very small town Amherst comparatively, but when I got ready to retire from New York City, I was able to buy back time from a lot of jobs, anything I had done for the city or the state, part time, subbing, whatever, I was able to, with a cash payment, buy back that time. Is that something that's possible for say, a library part timer who put in many years and then gets a full-time job and is in part of the pension system? Are they allowed to buy back time to improve their pension benefits? Only if they were eligible for those years of service, if they didn't contribute to the retirement system, they would have to make their contributions at that point. But that's controlled by the state pension system that were in the county pension, so that's nothing the town controls. So if someone were in that situation, they were right to the Hampshire County Retirement Board. Okay, but theoretically, it could be possible with some kind of payment that they could, if that's under the rules of the county pension system. Right, so the county pension system does not cover part-time employees, though. So they could not buy back part-time. Right, I don't think that qualifies for service. Okay, thank you. Okay, other questions from the committee? I wanted to say to the public that I'm gonna do some public comments in several different segments today. I know that we have some members of the council who are in public attendance, too. So if there are members of the public who would like to ask questions or make comments regarding the library, they should please raise their hands. If I, and I will keep an eye on that, open it up to the public comment for that segment. Kathy, you have your hand up, though. Just a quick question. I should know the answer to this, but are all of our town employees or all the library employees covered under social security, do we contribute an employer share? So there, when you're under 20, I just wanted to stress that to people, when you're under 20, you're under a state pension system and you're not, so unless you've worked your required 40 quarters at some other job, you're not getting social security either. Where that's not true of all public sector, but it is true of Amherst is what I'm hearing. Are you under, are we contributing for Medicare? Yeah, yes, and if you're under 20 or if you're doing temporary work, you still pay into what we call an OBRA plan, which is an alternative type of retirement plan, but it's completely employee contributions. I had one of those when I was the under at UMass and it returned at a point interest rates were quite high. It returned so little money that I thought of it as a taking of mine. I got it all back when I left. Yeah, yeah, it's more of a temporary to roll over into something else at a later date is how I've seen it used. Okay, anything else from the committee or anybody from who's watching the public and would like to be recognized regarding the library online. So I think I don't see anything further sir, the concluding comments. Otherwise, I very much appreciate presentation of the budget and it was very helpful for us to understand that the written budget and what you presented on the screen was very helpful. Thank you all so much. Thank you. Be well. So at this point, I think that we're now going on to the police department under the listing that you had given Sean at the beginning. And I just want to make one statement just for everybody in the public to recognize. And that is that this finance committee meeting is a part of a routine procedure that we have every year with the budget process. It has us meeting with each department head as you've just observed for recreation and the library. And we're now going to be the police chief will be with us now. This is not about the community safety working group proposal with $130,000 that is being proposed in social services for the next steps there. That has been postponed until after the town council meeting on May 24th at which the community service working group presentation will be made to the town council. So we will have a follow-up meeting of the finance committee to take that issue of the community services and social services segment of the community services budget is now scheduled for May 27th at 5.30. And this is about the police department budget as it has been specified in proposed by the town manager with that I first of all ask either Sean or Paul if they have any further things that they want to say. And on that. Yeah, I was going to say Scott is going to give probably a brief overview of the department. And then we did receive a number of questions that I was going to once Chief Livingstone is done with the overview. I was going to just go through those questions and the responses to those questions. If that's okay. Okay, that's so Chief. Thank you Andy and good to see everybody. Just one question maybe to Sean and Andy. Would you prefer I go communication center, animal welfare and then police third? And as I'm typically responsible for giving overviews of all three of those, would that be easier? Knock out the smaller ones first. So that's fine with me unless there's objection from anybody else. Okay, I mean I'm fine with that too. Sure, and I've also invited Mike Curtin who is our communication supervisor on board to answer any specific questions that I might not be able to answer specific to the communication center. Mike's a wealth of information and probably the best communication supervisor in the state. So if I don't have the answer, I'm sure he will. So with that, I'll start with the communication center manpower so they are funded we are employing 12 full-time emergency dispatchers of which Mike is one of them. So even though he's a communication supervisor, he still has dispatch responsibilities and we this year added a lead dispatcher position so that individual overseas things when either I'm on vacation or Mike is on vacation or not available. So both those persons are included in the full-time 12 member allotment of the communication center. Part of the accomplishments is the annual grants we receive for the communication center. So there's a training, excuse me, a training grant of 17,000 that's provided from the state for mandatory training of the dispatchers. And then we receive an additional incentive and support grant and that is something we get every year. The amounts of those fluctuate a little bit from time to time, but not a great deal. And the department support and incentive grant this year is $109,000 in some change. What we use some of that money from is to fund one of the full-time positions of the dispatch center. So, and then additional money is used for overtime and that sort of thing from both of those grants. We continue to serve and Mike, you might have to correct me on this because I know things are changing, but as one of the two statewide hazardous materials dispatch centers, is that correct? That's correct chief. They are looking at for FY 22, moving the hazmat dispatch over to the MIMA. Chief Nelson could speak more on that, but my understanding is that it's gonna move over to MIMA. So we would lose the, I think it's about 10,000 in the revolving fund from the hazmat dispatch for FY 22, which we use to buy chairs and miscellaneous equipment. Thank you. Other accomplishments from the dispatch and communication center. So we continue to staff at the mandated 12 numbers, do their annual trainings. We've had a couple of personnel changeovers at the communication center. It's always a challenge to try and find somebody when we're replacing those positions. It really is not an easy job to do. It's stressful at times and you're working at overnights for the most part beginning and you're working weekends and holidays and that sort of thing. So it's a tough job. So not everybody is cut out for it. So when we do have openings, sometimes it's relatively difficult to fill those positions. I can't think of a dispatch center, at least in this area hiring at one time or another. So that continues to be a great accomplishment yet something that we need to be concerned about in the years in the future. We took over responsibilities to assist Hampshire College as they transitioned out of a security agency. So we are basically handling calls for Hampshire College as well. Long change, key challenges, long range objectives. Again, making sure that we have it staff 24, 7, 365 with the properly trained people. Part of that is training new individuals when they do come on board. And again, it's not unusual to train somebody, get them completely accustomed to what their responsibilities are. They come in and dispatch for a month or two months and then they've realized maybe this isn't for them. So that's happened on occasion and that makes it for a little bit more challenging for Mike and his staff. Annually we put in there about looking for regional dispatch communication center regional attempts. There are a few here and there across the state, not many of them, but it's been difficult for us to try and find partners who are interested in regionalizing with us. So there may be questions about that I'm sure we can answer those. Objectives from the previous year, we were able to feel that lead dispatch position with one of our in-house dispatchers who was very knowledgeable. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this, somebody who can feel in for Mike when Mike's away for trainings and or vacations and that sort of thing. So that was something that we had been trying to do for a couple of years and we accomplished that this year. Again, meeting the state requirements for training is ongoing. And we are in the process and I believe it was one of the town managers mandates that we started investigating and looking into a site for a backup communication center which we have been working on since, oh, last fall, I believe. And we are in the process of getting that up and running and that's gonna be located at the North Amherst fire station. So in the case of something catastrophic happening in this facility, dispatch centers on the third floor of the police station if something really crazy happened here, then we would be able to move all of our dispatch, both police, fire and EMS right to that location without any interruption in services and concerns. So those are some of the things we're doing. I think that's about it for now for communication center. Mike, did I miss anything or is there anything you wanted to add? I'll just add that the backup center is pretty much operational right now. I'm waiting for a couple pieces of equipment. One being the new phone system that town's gonna install and once the fiber loop is all set up, we'll have even greater capability up there redundancy. The only thing that we won't ever have up there are 911 phones. So if we did have to vacate this location, our 911 calls are bringing through to the North Hampton State Police and they would be forwarded back to us up at the North Fire Station. But we're in tenfold better shape than we were six months ago with that set up. So pretty happy about that. Great, thank you. And there were a few questions. You mind, Andy, if I go ahead and... I think I was gonna ask. Okay. So there were a couple of questions related to dispatch. The first one was how much additional training would dispatchers need to differentiate calls requiring police for social services or EMTs or other types of responders? Mike, do you wanna respond to that one? Sure, it would be minimal. I mean, that's what our job is. We're triaging calls all the time, sending them different resources, whether it be animal welfare, DPW, some calls we refer directly over to crisis. We have the luxury of having the station officer available to bounce questions off of or send calls directly to. Usually we have, well, hopefully we have the fire department if we have any medical issues, if we don't have to meet with dispatch. As far as a new social service aspect of it, with policies and procedures in place, it would be a minimal transition. And as far as training, again, that's what we do. Okay. And then there was another question about the change in personnel costs for the dispatchers. The question was noting that the change was 1.8% for FY22. Mike, if you wanna respond to that or I can read what you wrote, if that's easier. I depends what response you got. The first one I misinterpreted what I thought it was something about the FY21 while we were running a little under budget. For the 1.8, that's pretty standard, but you can read my response if you have it there. Yeah, so Mike provided the last several years of increases and I can send this out to the group after FY21 was a little bit larger than normal, but that was due to sort of a wider adjustment. But Mike noted that 1.8% is about average and that it's maybe a little bit lower because of staff turnover. And conversely, the more we retain staff, the higher that percentage will be because they'll be getting steps and colas and things of that nature. So it's a little bit of an opposite effect. And then the last question, which we probably don't wanna get into today, this might be one of the ones that we wanna wait until we come back to talk more about the community responder program was plans for future collaboration with the community responder, the Crests program. And so unless I'll defer to Andy or Lynn if they wanna talk about that today or wait until the end of May to talk about that more. I think that would be appropriate. To wait until, okay. Yes. I agree. Okay. And that's it for dispatch questions. Okay. I did have one dispatch question, but I see there's several others that are there. Pat? Yeah. I wanna go back to the Crests thing because I think it is appropriate to bring up issues in this meeting even if they're hypothetical at this point, there's going to be an impact from the community safety working groups work. And it looks like they want us to move to a Crests program. So not to include it as some questions seems to me to limit what we're really talking about in a way that makes me uncomfortable. We're waiting till the very end of May to then to discuss something that may have a real and direct impact on the communication center on the police department. So I'm uncomfortable with your decision, Andy and your decision, Lynn. I just wanted on the record. That's fine. I think you should state your question, Pat but we're trying to first of all provide an evening meeting for the community safety working group. We certainly hope that representatives from our other first responders might be there as well. And I also just again remind you, we don't pass or even make resolutions now for recommendation until the end of hearing everybody which will include the meeting with the community safety working group. And I'm not thinking about making recommendations. I'm just saying that there are some potential impact on some questions that counselors might have about and impact on communications and training budgets and things like that. So I must say that I'm uncomfortable with not being allowed to ask them. I don't have a specific question now beyond what do you see as potential impact or increase in calls if there's collaboration between a program like press and the current communication center. You don't wanna answer that, that's fine. Andy, I think we should go ahead with that question. Yeah, I think that question is fine because actually there was actually a response to that already, a little bit of a brief response and it was made. And I think what you're asking is for just a little bit more detail and follow-up. So yeah. So is the question, oh, I'm sorry, Andy. Is the question, Pat, do we anticipate there being more calls for service? Yes, whether more calls for service or additional training needs for dispatchers. I know that Mr. Curtin said that, oh, well, we can distinguish those kinds of calls, but it's not even, you know, so I'm interested in if there were more people from the BIPOC community who would be willing to contact a communication center because there was a need that they for whatever reason right now feel unable to do. And I can't speak specifically to their reasons, but from listening, you can hear the kinds of limits that BIPOC people feel they have in engaging the police. So I think that potentially there could be impact on the communication center. And I wanna know if there's even been any thought to that. Does that make sense, Scott? Yeah, I mean, Mike and I have certainly spoken about some of the questions we've been receiving specific to whether or not we'll see increases, we might see a slight intake and request or services of that, but, you know, one of the responsibilities and they do train for this is to kind of filter out what those calls would be. So, and I know I brought this up in a meeting with the community safety working group and probably other groups, you know, when we get requests for police responses to calls that end up being medical mental calls, they rarely come in as that. So we don't know how we find out as police officers even if what we respond to ends up being a medical mental call because sometimes it'll come in as a disturbance or a shoplifting call or, you know, even domestic violence calls will come in and then we'll realize, well, it wasn't really that, but it was more of a mental crisis type call. So, you know, I think the dispatchers and Mike, correct me if I'm wrong, but they do receive some training to that. They may be getting additional training in that. And that part of that's gonna come from the mass state police reform bill as well because it's not just impacting Amherst, it's impacting the entire state. So, Mike, if you wanna jump in. Sure, Chief. So we do receive specialized training in mental health issues or the crisis, people dealing with PTSD, things like that. One of the things that we run into is a lot of times we'll get called, not really for a police response, but the community doesn't know where else to go with things and they're having some type of crisis. So 911 is what they've been taught and what they fall back on. So then it comes down to, you know, triaging where should we go with this call. Many times it ends up just with an officer going to rehab, we don't have a lot of other resources and for an evaluation. Sometimes they end up going, the ambulance gets called. Sometimes we just start with the ambulance and we can tell what's going on. And again, there's people that when they're at the end of their line, they don't know who else to call. They reach out to 911. We provide the best service we can at that point. Did that help, Pat? I'm rude, Pat. Yes, that helped somewhat. Thank you both. You're welcome. Kathy? Just building on Pat's question, but also for the discussion we're going to have on the 27th, I think what her question was opening up is at the current staffing level, if there's a volume increase, can it be handled? Would be one question. And secondly, if we're seeing we have a new workforce that we're aiming for and we're going to be building up. So we were having enough training protocols and I think Michael Curtin was talking about it. We might have to new regs or new, when I think of this call goes here, this call goes there, what kinds of additional questions you need to ask as a dispatcher to get more to what the story is. Thinking through the amount of time and resources we would need to do from your experience to build up that capacity. So when we have the other discussion on a, can this current workforce handle most of that with some manuals, training, rethinking? Is something I'd like to hear discussed when we have the other discussion in the context of it. It's another work, it will be a new workforce. It's trying to think of what that and sort of timed legs to build up some of these protocols, manuals, whatever they're. I don't know enough about what you now do, but be thinking about answers to that kind of question for the 27th. Understood, and again, I don't want to get into it too much or overstep my balance here. But one of the things that we utilize, we have an emergency medical dispatch protocol, which is basically a step-by-step flow chart of where to go with certain calls. The experience has a lot to do with it. We have a lot of frequent callers that have some mental health issues that there's times that they're just looking for someone to talk to. And we've had dispatchers spend when possible, 15 minutes just talking to somebody. And at the end, there's really no need for any service. And that happens frequently. Thank you. Anything else? Okay, Bob Hegner. I have a small question and that's related to Hampshire College. Have we, has the town seen any significant increase in costs associated with the Hampshire College situation? And if so, are we getting any payments from Hampshire College to cover those costs? And then the other thing is I have a comment which is part of my work before I retired was managing large-scale hurricane recovery programs. And I had the misfortune to have to manage a call center for some of that time. So I do empathize with you on staffing issues related to your communication center. I appreciate that. I mean, staffing for communication centers nationwide has always been very difficult. As far as Hampshire College, we've worked out most of the bugs and those were basically some phone issues and some routing in 911 calls and things like that that started up there. The impact of the communication center has been pretty minimal. We treat the calls that come to us and they have their procedures in place for when they call us as anybody from the Southamers calling us and we dispatch the appropriate resources. Fire Department and EMS have been going out there since I've been here 22 years ago. So nothing's changed there with us. And the population is, the student population is down there. So the call volume has gone down appropriately. Yeah. Okay, thank you. I would just add, Robert, Bob, I would just add the police calls are minimal. They still do have a small security force, I think the numbers 12. So they still respond to their own calls like stolen bicycles and lockouts and their own minimal noise disturbances pretty much the only time we get involved is if it's something where somebody would need to be permanently summoned for a charge or something of that nature. Their transition's been pretty easy. Okay, thank you. Yeah, how do we relate to UMass with regard to their emergency calls and 911? So the 911 calls that placed on campus and are coming to us, if the people are using cell phones, there's still some on campus phones and some emergency phones that are ringing to their communication center and then they call us. So it's a little bit of a delay there. But the majority of calls come to us. We need to determine whether it's fire, EMS related. And then we handle it and call UMass and tell them we're doing it. If it's police related, we gather a certain pertinent information, weapons, names, phone numbers, and then we transfer those calls over to UMass because they have a full fledged PD over there. They handle their own accidents and things that happen on campus. But I'd say all in all, we have a great work in relationship. Things are pretty seamless. They have a pretty senior staff over there that are versed in what information we need when they call us and we try to reciprocate that when we're calling them. If that answers it. So I wanna push further on the relationship with UMass because I frankly never thought about this until we had the blizzard of October, where that was, the October blizzard. And that is that, they have their own electric plant. So basically while everything surrounding the campus was without power, they weren't. And so when I think about an emergency backup location, I think about the Amherst campus as being prime for that. Even though I know the Amherst campus has their own emergency backup location for other stuff off campus. But as you explored the backup and took it to North station, was there any conversation about having our backup system somewhere on the UMass Amherst campus? So a couple of sites were looked at. Originally the DPW, cause they have, they'll have the infrastructure, they already had the infrastructure set up with the phones and things like that. Moving the stuff onto campus, the phone lines, radios, things like that was something that was discussed. But Amherst fire, Amherst North station, they have the backup generator. They actually have a radio tower directly at the station that was easy enough to tie into to provide for some redundancy there. We do are like our main radio tower without getting too specific. We have a microwave and if this station, if we couldn't be here, reaching that tower might be difficult if certain systems were shut down. The, the bunks that are set up, the shower facilities, the kitchen facilities that are all up in North station, being far enough away from the center town in case something was happening in the center town, were all things that we took into consideration. And again, the one C fiber is in place. The North station besides 911 phones will be pretty self sufficient. We've already had to use it once. We had some UPSs go unexpectedly. We had to use it very short notice and it took about 10 minutes to get it up and running. Thank you. You're welcome. I'm trying to think of a, Bob asked my question about Hampshire college and I'm assuming that when we've listing other communities on page 121 where the statistics are given for service provided in other towns are listed that those are ambulance calls and that it's therefore going to be built through the mechanisms we have for billing those costs for ambulance responses. Is that correct assumption, Sean? Yeah, I believe those are ambulance calls. So whether it's our agreements we have or through insurance billing, yeah, that's how we would recoup money from those. Okay. Thank you. So we should go on to facilities and what I'm going to do on public comment again is when we get to completed all sections of the department budget, I will then look to the attendee list to see if there are any requests for public comment or public in that way, I'll get to any counselors who are in that group. So I just want to remind people of my intentions on that. So Chief, I guess anything on the building or the facility? I don't typically do the facilities aspect of it. I can fill you in general comments about what was replaced and I think you've got the information about the chiller and stuff. Scott, Chief Livingstone and Andy, if you're okay with waiting on doing police facilities till we do general government, I'm just thinking of the time and thinking about fire as well. Jeremiah is really the person we'll want to be here when we talk about the police facility. So we were going to just go, if it's okay with you just go to animal welfare. That's fine with me. If there's anybody who's on the committee who has a different view on it, whether I think that that suggestion makes sense and based on experience with JCPC, that's Jeremiah was the one who provided all of the information at that point for JCPC. Thank you. So animal welfare, by the way, I'd like to picture our animal welfare officer there and the budget book. Yeah, Carol. Carol's got quite the array of photos that it was difficult picking just one because she's got a lot of them. In any case, yeah, I'll try and be quick with animal welfare. Carol is the go-to person and continues to be for anything animal related. Her accomplishments probably could fill a page, but she continues to do all inspections, not just for, well, for all farms. So she actually goes to farms and does all the inspections there. She's required by the state, helps them out with anything that they need and make sure that people are taking care of their animals the way they're supposed to, which is something I don't think a lot of people realize that's part of her responsibility and job. But additionally, she's licensed over 1,300 dogs, which is 85%. I think it's down from where she's been in the past and she wanted me to make sure that I pointed out it wasn't her fault, it was COVID's fault. So people weren't able to get to the licensing, proper licensing persons to get that accomplished. So she continues to want to get at 100% compliance and dog licensing. She's, most of her calls, it seems like recently have all involved things about because so many people were either working from home this fast year, they're out and about with their dog. She responded to a, probably many that aren't even listed in her call sheets because she wouldn't always tell us what she was doing. But enforcing the leash laws has really become, I don't know if I'd say it was an issue in this town, but it was stressful for her. But she did a great job with it and she would keep me informed on very specific parts of town. Amethyst, Brook, being part, and of course some of our other recreational areas where there'd been some difficulties enforcing those laws. So we are having communications myself, her, Dave Zomak about how to make her job easier and maybe who else can assist her in that type of enforcement. So that is something we're working on. I know we were gonna be looking at building an intern program from people from the university of Mass or Hampshire college and that's something that's still gonna be in the works as soon as COVID allows us to do that. So she's got friends in other parts of the state who have had successful internship programs and we're looking to do that as well. You know, we do have two current and I'll move on to prior year objectives. We do have two regional members of the dog facility that we have out on the university property out by the wastewater treatment plant with both Hadley and Northampton utilizing our facility as well and she oversees all of that. You know, Carol does an outstanding job when we do have animals that need placement in new homes for whatever reason. She's got a glowing record, 100% placement for animals that need homes. She does it for other towns as well whether it be leveraged shoots very, people will bring dogs to our facility just to find new homes and Carol handles all of that. You know, again, she's working hard to get the 100% dog licensing fee accomplished. She did a great job working with the dog park task force group or Amherst's first dog park and I know she was pretty excited about getting that completed. I guess that's about it. I'll stop there if there's any questions specific. She's probably in the building listening if I know Carol but I'll answer any questions to the best of my ability if it's specific to animal complaints or animal welfare. Jackie. I too love the picture with the owl. You know, giving you a sense that it's not just dogs and art thing. So I have a question on the complaints about off leash and it's not so much the Carol side but I had a couple of people contact me on what is our leash law and was this or that a violation and this was in a children's playground. So it was a kind of an easy one to answer but I'm wondering if there would be a better way to post some of those than have people have to look up a bylaw or find out what's the leash law. So to have it, I don't know what even when I'm suggesting or maybe there is one already because I said this is the law and I think called the police department. I wasn't quite sure how to respond but I realized that I was just copying a bylaw around leashes rather than a Q and A. Where can I walk my dog? Where can I walk up my dog? We don't have it posted. I live up in North Amherst and we've got Robert Cross trail. We've got some cross trails. It's not posted and most people are pretty good. The dog is off leash and they see you coming and they put it quickly back on leash and it's but everyone wants the kind of dog that the minute they see you it's all over you before. So it's just, so it's more how do we help it not be a one person operation to inform people on what the rules are but either have all of us know about it or have the dog owners know about it was my question. Right, so those are some of the things we've been discussing Kathy and Paul and I and Dave Zomek and Carol met two weeks ago to discuss that very specific topic because you're right, they're very, there are different rules that say Mill River rec one and they post it, you know, you're not supposed to have your dog in size the fence area where the literally ballpark is and people violate that. So Carol patrols that area as best she can and she reports that it's typically the same people violating it and she has issued citations when she's had to she's very reluctant to do that. Amethyst Brook is well Amethyst Brook quite frankly is our biggest problem, you know, people, a lot of people think the voice command is the same thing as leash law and it's not and so she spends a lot of time educating people about that, you know, we're looking at posting more of those locations with actual signage. Sometimes we have posted them in the past and the signs get stolen or removed, you know, Kendrick Park, we get a lot of complaints now about dogs off leash. So all of that we're looking at and we're going to be meeting again next month. Further, those discussions are right, more signage, how we can help Carol, we've had discussions about maybe we can incorporate our parking facility people transitioning a little bit about off-leash licensing that sort of thing. So those are in the conservation guys that work up at Puppers the same thing, having them give them a little bit more leeway if they needed to write a citation that sort of thing. And I'm just wondering, you know, even on the call I had or the email, our website gets better and better Paul when I do a query of it, but, you know, frequently asked question site where, you know, where can I walk my dog or leash, what are the rules? Cause if you do dogs, leashes, it takes you a really long time to find out what the rules might be and you don't want to know for each thing. So I'm just thinking these are, there are other questions that come in like this if there's something we could post. So I could say, if you go here, here's the rule. So you as the resident could say excuse me, but you're really not supposed to do this. You know, so we would be nicely saying something where we, we are the person felt on firm ground. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. I'm sure that would be pretty easy to do, Kathy to get something very specific to bullet points about here's where you can go, what you can do and what you need to do and we can work with Brianna on getting that accomplished. You know, there are questions on animal welfare being done. Since you guys asked all of my leash lock questions, so I don't have to ask any. Go into the police budget itself. Oh, good. Our mission statement has not changed over the last few years and that's something that we'll be working on for an upgrade this summer. So I'll transition right into recent accomplishments and challenges on page 111 and moving with recent accomplishments. So I think everybody's probably by now aware of the COVID ambassador program and way back at the beginning of COVID when we were having discussions with Julie Federman in the health department about how best to respond to citizens' concerns and to our complaints. I think we all felt it would be best that uniform police officers weren't. What would the task of doing that if it just advised educating people about wearing masks and the infancy of the COVID, I think there were a lot of different things going on and we didn't know what was gonna happen with that. So the COVID ambassador program was born and we found a great person to run that and Kat Newman. And I worked with her, but mostly it was Bill Laramie, who our neighborhood liaison officer and they got that program up and running and it's been nothing but a complete success. And they've really kind of morphed into a bigger, vaccine facilitator helping at the banks, helping at the high school. I know we're talking about having them available to assist with opening up public town buildings when that happens. So it's really turned into a wonderful program and I couldn't be happier with where that's really transitioned. We recently with our IT department improved us for our accreditation and our scheduling so that all our policies online and we can review those much, much easier than we used to be able to and make changes to them and all of our policies were recently reviewed. We've got an accreditation renewal coming up next year so we're working on that. And the scheduling part of it allows us now to reach out to officers when overtime shifts need to be filled and that sort of thing and it's all done electronically now. So it used to involve having a supervisor calling people and now that's all transitioning over into electronic format. So that's really helped with that specific scheduling software item. This past year we became one of six communities now that participate in the restorative justice program with our Northwest district attorney's office. And I think probably most of you are aware of what it is but the purpose of it is to really keep people out of the criminal justice system and get them into whatever the specific needs are they might have. So if it was somebody who committed a crime because of drug or alcohol problems we will direct them to a specific area with the district attorney's office and our crisis intervention team. And if it was somebody who may have been charged because of shoplifting for another reason. So the purpose of it is to keep people from ending up just in a criminal process that really gets them nowhere. And it's relatively new, but it's been very successful. I know that we've sent at least six people through that process now and you're hearing nothing about positive things about that. Excuse me, you see that we've expanded our outreach unit with Officer Bill Laramie who's our neighborhood liaison officer through donations we were able to get a comfort dog Winston. I'm sure everybody's probably met Winston by now that was fully funded privately. Bill's been doing a lot of work both on a university campus and the elementary schools pretty much anywhere he's been asked to. I know he went down as far as way as the Bay State Medical Center to work with some really tough times back during COVID and spent some time with them. So he goes all over the place. We continue to do all of our work with the Craig's door homeless shelter when it transitioned over from First Baptist to the UU facility and also the University Motor Lodge. That's something that group that we work with on a weekly basis with our crisis intervention team and our DART officers pretty much working with them wherever they may need us resources for people who are in crisis and that sort of thing. So something that we've been very, very happy with and proud of this past year. We completed one more segment of our implicit bias training with Romney Associates that was department-wide. We worked with Amherst College police officers on that as well. They were interested in working with us for the times that we may need to assist them or they need to assist us. So that was training that the officers really got a lot of and they really enjoyed and it was something that I wanted to do personally to find a non-police entity to do that kind of training for us. Typically the majority of the police training in implicit bias and restorative justice and that sort of thing is sometimes retired police officers or that sort of thing. And I wanted a perspective from a different point of view and I know the officers really enjoyed that training and got a lot out of it. So those are our recent accomplishments, key challenges and long range objectives. Part of what we learned in our training was expanding and what direction do we need to go in now to facilitate department-wide embracement of diversity and the training that went along with that. So there's been a lot of discussion internally in the building with all the cops about how best to get out in the community. And I'm sure there's gonna be a lot more discussion probably coming up on the 24th about that. So I won't get too far into the weeds with that. Recruitment, diversifying and retaining high quality recruits is becoming, it's challenging. Where we are in policing in the country right now it's challenging all over and recruitment is taking a hit with that. I was at a memorial service yesterday down in Springfield I was chatting with the Springfield Police Chief. They had just had a recent jobs fair and they had two people come to it. Typically they'd have two to 300. So it's not just in Amherst, it's nationwide where people just aren't interested in the policing profession right now. So finding the right person for this job is gonna be a challenge in the years to come. And I don't know of a police chief that doesn't wanna diversify their agency. And so that's gonna continue to become something that we're gonna need to work very, very hard on from our perspective about navigating that. Again, a watch we did this past year was COVID related whether it involved helping out our ambassadors or working in with the bank center and with our health department. Even though we weren't the main responders to citizens complaints to issues of COVID whether it'd be too many people gathering people not wearing masks we did an awful lot of follow-up with that. So if the ambassadors responded and didn't get quite the response that they had hoped from the people that they were speaking to then we would certainly do follow-up. And it usually involved Bill Laramie and the sector officers. Sometimes it would be the day after a couple of days after to try and speak with the people about why it was important to be following the CDC guidelines and that sort of thing. So we did a lot of that this past year and that's represented in our challenges as well. Status of our prior year objectives looking to implement and expand our SEPTEP team which was award-winning and it really involved Bill Laramie and the sector officers and the people that we worked with at the University of Massachusetts including Sally Lenowski and her group in the health department and then the Dean of Students Office. So there was a pretty big group of people who consistently work on neighborhood issues, quality of life responses and quality of life issues. And that's, I know that's not new to most of you on the finance committee or on the town council but it's something that is continuous and ongoing and it's always moving to different parts of town incorporating the UMass athletic teams and our every woman center at the university. We have an in-house civilian diversity. I mean, excuse me, domestic violence person who works right in our building that we work closely with and she's part of that as well. So, part of the things we're currently working on now and there's a lot of information coming not just from what's going on at the local level but the governor and the state legislators passed a police reform bill this past December 31st and there are going to be a lot of changes specific to police oversight and training and there's certification of police officers, decertification, I think most of you know I sit on the mass training committee and so a lot of work is going into where we are going moving forward with police training and facilitating police training but that's something that's very local as well as statewide. So we continue to work on that as well. We did a complete review of our policies and now we're going to be moving into our rules and regulations over the summertime. You know, I mentioned that we are an accredited police agency so we get oversight from the state in addition to our own oversight. That is reviewed every three years and we have a new review coming up in 2022 and Captain Ting oversees that with other officers in the agency as long as Captain Brown Young as well. We continue to, although it's taken a little bit of a backseat training all of our schools and most of our town departments and Alice training so alert lockdown and provide them with safety plans and assist them at facilitating safety plans for all of our town employees, all of our school employees. We've worked with most of the churches in facilitating safety plans with them as well. So that's something that we continue to do. It's accomplished, but it's also ongoing. And then again, continuing to move forward with President Obama's task force on 21st century policing, adhering to the six pillars of the 21st century policing. A lot of what is in that we've accomplished and a lot of it we need to transition and do more with, you know, specifically about, you know, improving the trust and legitimacy of the agency and working with the, you know, potential future community oversight committee that we're having discussions about and where exactly that's going to go. Having community members review our policies, make recommendations or suggestions to that is something that we'll be working on this summer as well. So I'll take a breather here, Ron or Gabe, anything you want to add that I may have missed? If not, I will continue to move on just about where we're with our budget, but anything Ron or Gabe you wanted to add on that I missed? I have nothing to add chief, it's only good to me. Okay. Likewise, chief. Thank you. Excuse me, as far as budgeting, you know, not much has changed. We've been like most departments level funded except for the areas of colas and the two positions that have been frozen and I think everybody's familiar with that. So, you know, we were budgeted at 48, we're now budgeted at 46, you know, to the monies that are going to go to the Crest Group and we'll be working closely with them if they wish us to. So other than that, our budget is pretty much 95% of it being personnel. So, you know, when there are cuts to our budget, it's definitely going to come from personnel. So I guess I'll stop there, Andy. If there's more information people want, I'm more than happy to generate it, but I'm guessing there's questions. Sean, you had done... Yeah, there's a number of questions that some of them, the chief has already touched on. So I'll probably, in the sake of time, skip over those ones. The first one was how much time has been devoted to COVID and I know the chief talked about the ambassador program. The next one, maybe the chief wants to expand a little bit more, which is about the CPTED team. Yeah, so, you know, it's been so successful and it's been in existence now for, correct me, Gabe, if I'm wrong, but maybe eight or nine years we've had this CPTED team now. Community policing through environmental design is what it is. And it originated from a lot of the call volume we were receiving for large parties and gatherings, mostly in the North Amherst neighborhood. So we incorporated a neighborhood liaison officer, Bill Laramie, whose very specific job was to work on those critical issues and deal specifically with the officers who were assigned to those neighborhoods, with University of Massachusetts Office Health Department and other groups to really just see a reductions in those calls that we call quality of life issues. So what we wanted to do was expand on that group so that we had more than just one officer dedicated to that, one full-time officer who was Bill Laramie, so that, you know, hey, we took a little bit of the workload off of Bill, but also that we could start moving into other areas of town, South Amherst, and quite frankly, anybody who was looking for us to work on very specific needs or concerns in their neighborhood. So we are looking to expand that group. Bill typically works out of uniform, and I think that's been beneficial as well. So that's kind of what that program is all about. Okay, Chief, if you don't mind me jumping in real quick, just to give you folks an example to kind of highlight what the SEPTED program is all about. You know, it's a mechanism for problem-oriented policing. What I mean by that is, so for example, on Hobart Lane, that's a particularly, it's a hotspot for large-scale college parties. And, you know, in the past years, our way of trying to deal with that is, you know, making arrests and just monitoring the parties to make sure it doesn't get out of hand. However, we were trying to figure out solutions of how to try and eliminate that as a hotspot. So our department, our sector officers, along with our outreach got together with the landlords in that area to try and brainstorm through the concepts of SEPTED, and they decided to grow natural barriers in the specific common areas where the college kids like to gather. And once all of that growth came in, it kind of eliminated that particular area as an attraction. And since then, Hobart Lane has really not been all that attractive for college kids to gather anymore. So, you know, that's just one example. Another example is trying to figure out areas that are more dangerous for traffic and pedestrians in where there might be benefits of more lighting. So a lot of times we'll get the DPW involved in other agencies to try and figure out, you know, through environmental design, how can we improve whatever the problem is? Thank you. So the next question was about how many positions are on staff. And I think the chief noted that there were four vacancies currently of which two are the ones that have been shifted to the social services community responder program. The next question was, so the question relates to the personnel budget. And it was taking the FY21 budget and dividing it by 50 positions, the personnel budget. And then taking the FY22 budget and dividing it by 48 positions to get a sense of sort of what the cost per position change was. And so it was about 4.8%. So that personnel line includes a number of sort of sub-accounts. So there's a regular wage account, there's a educational incentives, longevity, overtime, there's a number of sub-accounts. So when we were unpacking the change, we actually did uncover a mistake in how the educational incentive piece was calculated. It's gonna reduce the budget by about 40,000. And it's something that I have to talk to the town manager about in a little bit cause we actually just found it the other day. But we'll report back to the committee about that later on when we decide where it's gonna go. But it's gonna actually reduce the police department's budget by another 40,000. And so that's one benefit of this review process and these detailed questions is that it's another check on our numbers. But it was not in the wages section, it was in this educational benefit and some of these other types of wages. There was a question also related to overtime whether there was any change in the overtime account. And so overtime did not change the budget from FY 21 to FY 22. And then there was another question about whether the rate of increase per person is expected to continue. So again, once we fix that mistake and we take that out, the rate of increase is actually much lower. It's closer to between three and 4%. And sort of like dispatch in other areas, it really depends on how many staff are getting steps and how many staff are getting colas as to what percentage increase it is. And there's other changes like educational incentives and longevity that can also affect that year-to-year increase. The next section, Kathy, do you have a, I guess, Kathy has a question. If you have a question on that specific group of questions maybe we should stop now and then we can go to the next set. I just, Sean, thank you for going back in and unpacking it. So I had a general question and I know you've got it internally. When I'm looking at the total amount, how much percentage-wise is overtime? And does that fluctuate a lot year-to-year? It's partly linked to what this last year has been like. You've been doing some policing that was not what you would normally do. So it's evolved with COVID. But then when I look at the calls, motor vehicle violations, there were some that were way down from the past. Some of that is things were way down because there were fewer cars on the road. So I didn't know how much, I had, I have no sense because the budget doesn't say is when I look at the total, is 10% of it over time, is more of it over time? Does that vary year-to-year and do you anticipate more of it next year? So if you're at a smaller staff size, does that mean the budget stays up because overtime has to go up more people? So it's my question of overtime. I can't see it in the budget book. Yeah, so if you're just looking at general fund, it's less than 10%, but I think what I want to do is unpack that question more with Sonya after and we can get that information back to the committee because there's some stuff that's paid outside of the general fund, which we would want to factor in as well to sort of the overall numbers, but within the general fund, it's under 10% and we can get you more details on that. Okay. And are you, when you project next year with a slimmer staff, does that do you include that that you think the people who are currently in, assuming you fill the vacancies are going to be working more overtime or do you, that's my question. Yeah, so we didn't change it. I think there's a little bit of uncertainty about what next year is going to look like on that front. So we did not change, we didn't change the overtime at all. It stayed flat from FY21's budget to FY22. And there's overtime sort of regular overtime, there's overtime for training, there's court time, none of those accounts were changed for next year. Again, just in terms of the budgeting, this will show a little bit of ignorance. If you turn out to be wrong, is that the manager then making it all work so money flows over and so you see that you were under-budgeted because of this or flip size that you were over-budgeted because you needed less. How does that work in the town manager description to move across to different departments? Right, so we can shift money within the budget. If we found out we needed more money, that happens, that's not uncommon, we sort of work with the departments to figure out where their savings. In a situation like this where we're still, the budget has been voted, we're still going through this review process, I think we'll probably wanna come back to you with more information about where we think that money would shift to. In this year's budget, we did have sort of a one-time savings related to the premium holiday. So we know that that was built into our employee benefits budget. And so we took that reduction because our revenues are not where they normally would be right now, but that's sort of a one-time savings that in future years we'll have to address. But that being said, again, I wanna talk with the town manager more and we'll come back to finance committee and let you know thoughts on where that would go. Okay, thank you. Are there other questions on that? We have some more questions on service levels and other things, but if there's more personnel related questions, we can take those. I'm not gonna ask Dorothy and Bernie and Pat all have their hands up. And pause and let's see what they have to say and then see if you can eliminate questions if they're duplicated or respond. Dorothy? My question is not asked as well as Kathy's, but it's related. In some police departments, overtime gets out of control. And so this past year, you did not fill two positions, but overtime perhaps did not get out of control because of the craziness of the situation and there was less things going on, fewer car situations. But when life gets back to normal, will the loss of those two positions increase overtime? Thanks, Dorothy. It might, but I can tell you this, Ron, Gabe and I, we look at the budget almost on a weekly basis, we would bother Kim Lippman consistently because I was just taught when I became chief that you have to follow the budget and you can't go over and that's the rules. So we try and abide by that. And if we have to run short at certain times and not build shifts, then that's what we've done in the past when our overtime budget has been getting close. Now, I can tell you, Ron, Gabe and I are pretty concerned about the fall because we know UMass is coming back in its entirety, at least that's what we're being told. What we anticipate is we're gonna have to move two bodies with the two that we've lost. So we had an officer assigned to the district attorney's office who would assist with issues of drug and alcohol abuse and those sort of things. He's being moved back to patrol and we're really sure we're not gonna be able to fund the what we call the community outreach officer in the downtown center district. So we have an officer who was specifically designed to downtown and he's gonna have to go back to a regular patrol and shift. So those are the two moves we're gonna have to make to kind of fill in those two slots that we've missed. But yes, we anticipate the fall is gonna be pretty busy. Just everybody coming back out of the COVID. I think the students are gonna be excited to be out and about again, so we're a little concerned. Thank you very much. Yeah, my question is pretty much along the lines of Dorothy's because my experience with police budgets are trying to calculate over time. It's always a best guess situation because you can't predict when something horrible is gonna happen. So I would ask and maybe we can take this up in a future discussion. You're looking at those service levels and the numbers of calls and officers involved. Where would the chief expect that with a community resource person or community, the Cresc program in place, at least in the small part, where would those service levels likely drop and would that drop in service levels offset some of the loss of personnel and the need for overtime? Thanks, Bernie. You know, I don't know yet. We know in the discussions I've had with the community safety working group and the town manager and the team that we're kind of putting together, there's a whole lot of work about what's the responses are gonna, responsibilities for that group is going to be as far as calls and there's gonna be a lot of discussions about it. We're looking at other entities that have already established civilian response teams, that sort of thing, whether it's the CAHOOTS program in Oregon or the STARS program in Denver. If we follow those trends, they can eat up about 10% of calls in a very specific category. So not necessarily 10% of calls overall, but we have somewhere in the vicinity of 370 medical mental calls. So if they could get 20% of those, that would be a good thing. You know, and again, these are discussions we're just really started to have about what potentially those press members might be able to respond to. You're looking at the medical mental calls and tell me if I'm getting too far off-facing. That's only about 2% of your total workload. If you look at the service levels chart that you're provided, you know, so it would be a concern of mine. I mean, the other thing looking at this was the, roughly a third of your calls require two officers or more to respond to them. And then the other challenge that gets mixed into this is training. And you can't necessarily have, you have to replace people that you have off the training most of the time, I would say. So it's a complicated situation. It is. The good thing is we typically know ahead of time about the mandates that come from the state about, okay, here's the 40 hours of mandated training that every police officer has to go to. So we kind of know what that is ahead of time. We can calculate relatively accurately how much that's going to cost us. So that's kind of easy to do, but then we have additional trainings that we need to do. For instance, our crisis intervention team members will need to be going to the very specific trainings related to that. And our drug alcohol response team guys and need to have their very specific trainings and that sort of thing. So it's something we have a pretty good grasp on, but it does fluctuate from time to time. There's no question about it. Thank you. So the rest of the questions, I think some of them are just sort of individual details about how much we collected in a certain fine or so those I can just send out to the group after. And then there's one that's probably another one that we'd want to wait until that the community responder program is discussed. So I think that's pretty much it for the questions that were submitted. But again, I'll send these out with the responses after the meeting. Anything else? Bernie, do you have anything else? And I see Bob's hand just went up. Bernie, your hand was maybe up for earlier. Okay, Bob. Yeah, I just have a comment and regarding Alice training, I think, you know, if and when the committee and other town committees get back into meeting in person, I think we all should go through Alice training because situations can happen, you know, town hall isn't locked. So I think we just put that as a future thing. The town council is an art to do list for that when we return to relatively normalcy our interested in that. Excellent. Elaine? Yeah, two things. I actually would like to know the nature of the question was delayed because of Pat's comment. And I also would like to add that we post the answers to the additional questions, not just send them to the committee. Yeah, so I can read. So one question was future training needs for social services work with non, non, I think police community safety. So I think it's about the collaboration between police and the community responder program. And then there was another one that's sort of related that was sort of touched upon with the medical mental, which was what percentage of calls do not need police presence. I don't have specific answers to that only because we're not there yet. So I don't know the entire number of calls that we'll be able to facilitate over to the Crest Group. I'm sorry, Sean and Kathy and Elaine, I don't have those yet. I mean, I know I've made a number of statements about where we would like it to be from the police department side. We're welcome, we welcome the potential to not have to respond to some of those calls. We know they're not all gonna go away from our police responsibility, but I guess we'll find out. And I also think it's probably gonna be one of those situations where it'll change from year to year. They're gonna find out certain calls they maybe thought they could respond to, they couldn't respond to them. Maybe there's other calls that we can direct in their direction as well, put in their direction as well. So I think it's gonna be kind of a like living document type thing in the beginning at least. Thank you, thanks. Mike, can I? Sorry, can I just put it in for one second regarding the medical mental calls? This kind of goes back to the, when people have nobody else to call, they call 911. And oftentimes some of our population, they just wanna talk to somebody in person and those will be type of calls and we might be able to triage out and not have to sit in an officer. They're not requesting an ambulance, they're not actually requesting an officer, but they wanna speak to somebody in person. And oftentimes the officers are the only option we have. So I don't want an answer to this question today. I'm just gonna say what it is, what's been on my mind. But I really think it should wait until later in such a good meeting. And that is of the calls that are likely to stay with the police department are those likely to be calls that require two officer responses and what does that gonna spin out to and staffing needs? But I don't wanna get into that today, but it is a subject that I would like to get into in the future time. So I'm gonna recognize Kathy and then what I'm gonna do is make her start recognizing people from the attendee list who they have comments, questions. So Kathy. Okay, you know, Lynn's request to get the questions posted. These are things I submitted because I was doing police. And I have the same, I know Lynn you might have had some that we did on elementary school that got answered, but I think Sean, last year you posted questions asked with some answers underneath it, which was a good use of time to not do it. And so I'm overlapping in some of what Andy is asking and some of it is moving over to Crest, but at least all of us, because our instructions were not to send them to the whole committee, but to send them through Sean. So those of you who didn't see it, I'm not sure maybe next year we could think of there's no particular reason not to share those questions in advance. So as other people are looking at the budget, they can think of what else they might have. Last year, Bob and I did the enterprise funds and DPW together, but we looked at each other. So we weren't sending over, we were differentiating, but I think it's really useful that you think someone has looked at it. So just on to the one other piece when we're moving to the 27th conversation and I know some of these are not answerable. So he just asked which require now to police officers. My thought is if we think into the future with these unanswerable questions, would there ever be a point whether there is a police officer there for some potential risk, but the person, the primary person would be the community, the crest person, so that it's a team response in an unmarked car or whatever, but trying to think of what are some creative if we have a much more robust and differentiated way of safety? How can we handle those? And I don't expect an answer. It's me thinking of what might be possible when we're thinking creatively about a different future. So just again for the 27th more. Sure, and I would just add, Cathy, I agree with you. I think there's gonna be a need for us to be intertwined us in the crest group because there certainly are gonna be times where they may get to something and be like, hey, this isn't part of what we do. And I think there'll be times when the police officer responds and says, hey, the crest people should be here. So I think you'll see that, yes, happen frequently. Thank you. So with that, I'm gonna switch over and anyone who's in the attendee group who wants to be recognized, please raise your hand. I'm right now seeing only one hand up. And so I ask Athena to bring in Russ Vernon Jones. Russ? Yes, as you probably know, I'm a member of the community safety working group. And I've been listening to your discussions today and I don't wanna jump the gun or try to start the discussion early. But I did wanna correct one misim, what might have been a misimpression. But first I wanna say that Chief Livingstone has been very generous with his time in sharing information with our group and very open as you just heard to the idea of collaboration between the Crest Program and the Amherst Police Department. We've not had as much time to share with him our vision of what the Crest Program will be. But I just wanted to say that across the country, the most of these programs are handling between 20% and 35% of calls that police have had. And Cahoots is at least twice what was quoted, it's at least 20%. So I just didn't want people to spend the two weeks with that misimpression. And but we'll talk more in a couple of weeks when the working group comes to discuss this with you. Thanks. Okay, well, thank you Russ. So, let's see Breonna and can we bring Breonna in? Hi everyone, thank you for having me. I just wanted to clarify one thing that kind of seemed to be misunderstood at the beginning of the meeting. Crest was specifically designed to be an alternative public safety service. The implementation of this program will not serve its intended purpose if it is not an alternative to policing. And I just wanted to make that clear. Thank you. And I'm looking forward to a complete presentation on the 27th, so the council has an opportunity to get a complete understanding of what is being proposed and what the vision of the discussion of the community services working group is. So thank you for bringing that to us. And seeing nobody else from the attendee list who's asked to be recognized, I'll come back to the committee. See is there any final follow up questions or comments from the committee itself? Kathy, you. Yeah, Andy, I have one, not about today's focus, but one more generally when we would be meeting to discuss it and it may be when we, the capital budget has assumptions about the large building project. So not the library, but the others. Do we have a specific day when we will be talking about all of that? Cause that originally came from a proposed way of staff of being able to finance all these, but we've never had a discussion and JCPC specifically did not talk about that at all. We just looked at those line items and it goes with issuing debt and then debt service in the future. So it has an impact on operating budgets or on impact on what else we can do. So I'm just looking for when that discussion will happen. That's question number one. And I think Sean asked me, answered my other question, but we heard with schools that they've got, once we council votes on a budget, the schools have some flexibility to move money around to the extent they need more in one error. So they've got a cap. Does the town manager within the departments that he is overseeing, we're setting budgets or we're talking about budgets. Is there that same flexibility more or less and you most what I heard, I think you say chief living in stone is that you live with the budget that you were given. So yes, you can come back. So everyone kind of looks at it. So those are my two questions just on how does the second part work, but also do we have a specific day? And if we do, I want to, I think we should post it as a full council meeting, Lynn. So it's the capital budget, but also these other pieces because we're in effect endorsing a particular approach if we're endorsing that the five year budget and the next year budget with fire and police, fire and DBW in it. So that was my question on the first part. Yeah, Sean, why don't you respond to that quickly? I wanted to try and stick with public safety and get back to the logistics of the committee more at the conclusion because otherwise it's up to our fire department staff who are also waiting. Yeah, I can answer those really quick. The capital improvement program. So we already did sort of discuss it the first, I think their first meeting in May we did a budget overview and then we did the capital improvement program. However, I imagine it can be discussed more before the finance committee does its report. And also I think there's a forum scheduled in June where can we just discuss more that obviously if the finance committee wants to schedule additional time to get into more detail into the capital improvement program we can. And then the second piece, yeah, yes, the time measure can shift between departments although I'll say almost none of that happened since I've been here. Very little shifting between departments. Departments stick to their budgets. It's all the departments are very good at what their budget is that's voted for the year operating within that budget. And truly if there's an emergency or something along those lines where it might happen. Thank you. Yeah, in our old form of government just to remind everybody we were budgeting to functional areas so that public safety would be one functional area and of public safety. If the money needed to be moved around within those segments, time manager did not have to come back to the finance committee in town meeting. But if there was, and I think that under our new form of government there's even a greater degree of flexibility to that. But we can talk about that another time. So I think that's it then unless anybody has any last questions I'm looking around. I know you've been had your hand up for a while and then took it down. My question was covered by Bernie when I had it up. Okay, great. So Chief Livingstone and everybody else from the police department and I kept in Mr. Curtin, thank you very much for your time this afternoon. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you. I really appreciate that this has been a very difficult year in many different respects and we really thank you for what you've done to our community through this very tough year. So thank you Andy and thank you to everybody, appreciate it. And I see that we have Chief Nelson here. And I think it's... Good afternoon. Yep. It's a half, it's an afternoon. Good afternoon. So I'll leave it to you and then say hi to Lindsay too. I think Assistant Chief Olmsted should be here as well, correct? When Lindsay, is he here? It doesn't appear to me. I'll give him a buzz on the phone. I thought he was trying to sign on but you can start it off. Okay, all right, good, thanks. All right, well, good afternoon. Do you want to say hi? I'm on vacation too by the way. But it's nice, it's nice. It's a little bit nicer where I am, so. Anyway, so, you know, nothing, no great, great over the nearest feature or whatever. You know, this has been an exceptional year, I think for everyone and we're no exception. We've been trying, still trying to deliver, you know, top-notch service in spite of the conditions we've been in for the last year and a half now. It seems, you know, with the pandemic, it's brought some perplexures upon us. I think we've been able to, you know, meet those challenge, challenge, challenge, rise above the menu as we go along. But again, it's been a challenge for us. We've, you know, you've heard about our staffing issues. Again, but we've had, you know, for a little bit, but now we've had some issues with folks that are out long-term. And we've had a little bit of a baby boom again, you know. So you combine those with, you know, and it makes, it makes, it makes for a challenge, a challenging process for us. But again, I think we've done a lot to meet that and rise above that, as I said, to perform our core duty, which is to perform, which is to give, give, give good public safety for the, for the, for the down. So with that, I think, I think I just owe it up to the panel. I know, I know there, there, there are a few questions. I think there's, there's, there's a good R-SYS system. But yeah, so feel free to. You want me just to run through the questions, Chief Nelson? Yeah, sure, that's fine though. The first, the first couple are actually more Sonia and myself questions and Pat submitted these about, so the first one's the ambulance fund and the increase from the, the amount of ambulance funds to support the budget and FY 21 to FY 22. It's an increase, I think of about 7.4%. So that number was in, it was decreased quite a bit in FY 21 because of COVID. And I think it was also because of the Hadley contract. So it was sort of a double whammy for FY 21 that reduced that number. As we look forward to FY 22, we anticipate that to start to recover with the colleges and colleges and universities coming back in full. We think the lull and call volume will start to come back. And the other thing is that fees were increased, the ambulance fees were increased. And so we'll start to see what that actually looks like. That number is gonna be a little bit of a moving target for the next couple of years as we see how the fee increases play out. And then also, again, as the students come back, how that number sort of stabilizes. So that's why that increased so much for FY 22 and it could continue to increase. Sonia will correct me if I'm wrong as she always does on the ambulance fund, which is a receipt reserve for appropriation fund. And so the way that works is we can only budget the amount of money that we actually have at the time when the budget is voted. And so Sonia, we've made the $2 million as of right now for FY 22's budget, right? Correct. Okay. And so in addition to the amount of money that supports the general fund budget, we also try to build up a balance in that fund to pay for some capital expenditures as well. So the last ambulance that we purchased earlier in this fiscal year, that was purchased out of the ambulance fund. And I don't know if Chief Nelson has an update on when that ambulance is supposed to arrive. Great, great, great. Right now we're looking at mid to late July for the new week. Okay, great. So that's the question on the ambulance fund. And then there was just a question just following up on that specific one about how the ambulance funds are used. So they generally support the FIRE EMS staffing. In the budget, there is some that goes to support, there's some software related to the insurance billing that it also supports, but we can provide a breakdown more detailed breakdown of that. I can do that right now if you want. Yeah, go ahead Sonia. So there's about 57,000 that we go to the general fund to for our collection. We're a third party collection now. So we have Comstar do the collections on that. And that's about, we budget an estimated amount of what the fee is gonna be for that collection in the $10,000 for the ESO software. And that's all that comes out of there now towards the general fund. It used to be a person, a part of a person in the collector's office when the billing was in house, but it's no longer in house. And so the rest is for the FIRE EMS staff in or the FIRE EMS department. It's like 1.9 something million that's for FIRE staffing. Right. So then the next question that's also sort of us is about the CARES money that funded for temporary positions. So if funded, so those four temporary positions were funded through the end of December and then they stopped. And the reason why they stopped us at that time we thought CARES was gonna end at the end of December and we got received really late notice in the last week or two of December that the CARES program was gonna be extended. And so Chief Nelson correct me from around on this. I believe those positions have been brought back mostly to fill in for leaves and things of that nature. And then we're anticipating keeping them on from CARES funding as the colleges and university return. But those, because they're funded from CARES, if the funding comes from CARES, it has to be related to CARES. So we're gonna have to do an evaluation in the fall to see what we're anticipating. There could be a bump and there could be a need for additional EMS staffing when all the college students come back but we'll have to do an evaluation in the fall to see what that looks like. You're right. We're using, we've brought back temps right now. We're kind of doing kind of a few pros and cons that are out long term on the interest list. And then the, so the next question I'll pass off to probably Chief Stromgren about the equipment and the vehicles. So the first question is about the 32 year old ladder truck and the pressures of maintenance and serviceability and reliability. Sure. Yeah, the ladder truck is at this point, 33 years old. It's a 1988. And I just learned yesterday actually that it's the second oldest ladder truck in the state of Massachusetts. And after researching, if that's true, I found that the Wareham is the fire department that has the oldest and they just voted to replace it. So pretty soon here, we'll have the oldest in the state, but theirs is actually what we call a straight stick. It's a much smaller truck. We are looking to replace our ladder platform which is really a different piece of equipment, much heavier duty, usable versatile piece of equipment. So we actually already have the oldest ladder platform in the state, which is not a distinction we like to have. The issue with its age is a multi-fold, any vehicle obviously the older it gets, the more maintenance intensive it's gonna be that applies to both the ladder truck, the ambulances, the fire trucks. The one thing that the upside on a ladder truck is we're not running it every day the way we are ambulances and fire trucks. So it's very low mileage, but when you start to get 30 years plus obviously that doesn't, isn't particularly relevant anymore either. You know, it's body corrosion and just dated equipment. So when a truck gets that old, what we find is an increase in repairs and then doing those repairs both take much longer to accomplish and are much more expensive because parts become much harder to obtain. So there's weeks delays at the vendor to get the reports and then to get them in. So what that translates into is downtime, you know, the cost of a repair and this really carries over Sean, I think into what's the next question which is just the overall ambulance, you know, eight not replacing ambulances on schedule, any vehicle, there's, you know, a number of different costs when you talk about a breakdown, there's the actual cost to fix it, the parts and labor, but then there's the cost potentially to tow it. You know, we pay about $400 a tow to move a vehicle 20 miles, that's the going rate or we have to pay individuals over time to drive it somewhere if it's drivable. Then there's the cost, you know, certainly of the admin time to arrange for all those repairs, purchase orders, et cetera. And then the cost of loss of use, you know, that's a very real cost is not having in the case our one ladder truck or in the case of an ambulance, one or two ambulances not available. So you have to look at that. So when you look at the ladder truck back to that topic, you know, last year rough off the top of my head, that was at a service about three months, three or four months that it was not here available. And in fact, right now it is not here available, it's at the repair shop. So when you get to a truck that old, we're talking, you know, months that it's not available 25% or more of the year. So that's a very real concern as well is the actual cost of fixing it. And right now in that particular truck, the two components of it, the generator, the onboard generator to provide lighting and other things is out of service and unreparable. They can't get the parts for it. And likewise with the breathing air system that's out of service and not cost effective to repair. So it's already operating below its full capacity even when it is here in service. The last part of those questions were, wouldn't it be cheaper and over this range of costs to replace it with a new truck? What, and why hasn't something like that been budgeted? I mean, I can only speak to half of that, which is, you know, yes, we've had it on our five year plan now for about five years. We've put it in the budget capital requests the last three years because we do feel that both for cost and reliability and usefulness that is time to replace it in terms of why it hasn't been funded, I'll defer that to Sean or one of the others. Yeah, I know it's on the radar for the Joint Capital Planning Committee and for us in terms of thinking about capital. I know Chief Stromgren, you did some research into sort of the history of the ladder truck and how the town came to get it in the first place. I didn't know if you wanted to share some of that because I think it's interesting. It might be something we have to consider going forward. Yeah, I mean, I think unfortunately what I found in my research is what I was sort of was afraid was an urban myth was that Amherst College had paid for part or all of it the last time in 1988 in picking the brains of people that were here back then former chiefs and assistant chiefs. What I found is that was not the case. I guess that was discussed but that didn't actually occur. The town actually did buy that truck outright. I guess if you go back to the previous ladder truck which was a 1953, there was some kind of funding obtained I think from the university at the time but that's so far back now that I really can't give you any details. So unfortunately, even though a lot of us had in our head that there had been some collaboration 33 years ago, it would appear that that was discussed as a potential, but that never came to be. So then the next grouping of questions is on community paramedicine. And the first one is what would be some of the staffing and financial impacts in an EMS transition to community paramedicine be? I'm gonna have the assistant chief on the left. So the community paramedicine would not take away necessarily a lot from the current 911 emergency ambulance system we have. It would add to it. It wouldn't be a point where we would take people from shift because we don't have enough people that are covering the ambulances that we have now. We would be looking to have a standalone person or a person's work doing community paramedicine. And the umbrella for community paramedicine is pretty broad based on your area. So for example, a community paramedicine in Alaska can do stitches and that's not necessarily a very well used skill in Western Massachusetts. But the areas that we really look to concentrate on would be more along the lines of anything from working with folks with homelessness, mental health, chronic disease and working with primary care doctors to try to do things to help really send less people to the hospital and that decreases costs for not only the community, the patient, insurance and can make a big difference in the big picture. The hard part about community paramedicine is the financing and then getting paid for the services that we might provide. So if we help folks with home safety, take care of somebody who has just received a surgery and then we do some follow up. So they don't have to go back to the emergency department. The limitations on that right now is we would be basically billing probably a Medicare rate which is a lower level rate in the insurance world to get reimbursed for the services we provide. So it would be something we would be adding to the system to try to make the overall health of the community better. But we're short staffed on the emergency side. It wouldn't, we wouldn't see a change out from that group. And then the last question we have is what if any financial impact would compliance with the new OSHA regulations, would there be from the new OSHA regulations or are we already living it? Well, I wonder one of the good things about these new regs is that the state is a little, state of course is a little bit more of a compliance. But at the same time, I'm gonna have to come through with the bat and hit both of them out of the head giving them the compliance. They don't want to work with the municipality. So for us, it's a case of just making and making our work area safe. We're in a good place through a good part of town. But for instance, central head headquarters, there's a lot that would need to be done, need to be done with that. That would have half to be done to bring it into compliance. The best way to bring the building into compliance would be to replace it with a new building. But there are, there will be a tenant cost but not costs that would be in overall and in the end, I guess you have half to ask at what prices and employees say safety. But that being said again, I don't believe that the cost would be of then in order to bring us into compliance. Thank you, Sean. Yes, Sean. Can I add one other thing about the community paramedic and I kind of pause whether or not anybody was gonna ask any questions. Our first really big dip into community paramedics that we've started with is really been the COVID vaccination program. So we've been heavily involved with the vaccination clinics since they started, whether it's working with them and Jen, sort of managing and running those or the number of medics that have worked of the clinics to help give shots and the impact we've had doing the homebound program. And really it's been a really good collaborative effort with public health and the volunteers and the nurses from the school. So the vaccination clinic was kind of our one big jump into this, but we did it other than myself with folks that were off duty. So just to sort of transition back to that question like how would that impact? It would probably be something that would be outside the normal staffing of the shift. Thank you for doing it and also for that information. Yeah, I too wanna thank you for doing that participation and all that you did to make those vaccination clinics so successful. Sean, was there anything else? The only thing I'll add just building off what Chief Nelson mentioned is it's sort of on the capital side of things, but there is a borrowing authorization to advance the design work for a new fire station. That's part of the FY22 request. So it's just something to keep in mind as sort of the whole fire package that there's a as a request for funding to move that project forward. Well, I have a couple of questions. There was one more question and it was about what's led to 125, what changes in practice have led to 125% increase in fire calls? Oh yeah, that one got cut off, sorry. That's all right. All right. Well, first of all, the 125% in increase is in our, what we call our rescue type calls. And what that did, that made an increase in total calls of about 10%. What we've been doing up for the last year now, I believe. March 30th of last year, yep. Okay, all right. What we've done is we got a practice where for a certain type of calls, either the EMS calls, we will send a fire truck in in addition to that. We're sending more personnel. And that's for hard, hard attack strokes, the probably breathing calls where in general, you're gonna need more, more hands. So that's where those additional runs come from. And it's, we did, actually Jeff did a lot of research on it and it turns out it means that we end up with better outcomes for our patients and our personnel. You're sending more help, more hands, more eyes, more expertise to the scene to address calls. And one of the other great pieces of this is times, our folks tend to say, okay, look, I've got to be concerned about the next call. So I'm not gonna call for help. You know, I may need help to move if they have patients, let's say. And then, but they're thinking about, well, we may have to go somewhere else and that type of thing. And we've pushed, at the most important call you're on is the call you're on. So, which means that if you need help, call for help. If you need help to move, you're gonna pay for your patient. You don't need to blow out your back to move the patient. We will get, you know, there's help out. And the other piece of this too, on those high acuity calls, most of our personnel are medical. Once they, you know, you get more of that expertise on scene. You have, again, you're gonna go, you're gonna move towards a better outcome for your patient because you've got more folks, more high-drained folks, they're part of this incident. So that's, you know, yes, you're running more calls because of that. But in the end, it's about bringing about a better outcome for a patient. I'm gonna step away for a minute, but I'm gonna turn it over to the committee vice chair, Kathy, because she has her hand up and it's gonna use the time to ask her questions anyway. So I'll be right back. You're muted, Kathy. I'm temporarily vice chair, promoted to chairness NLS. I had two questions. I'll stay with the capital side. I noticed under upcoming objectives, repair and maintenance plan for the North Station. And I sit on the capital planning side and in my memory, there weren't any big requests for the North Station. So is most of what you foresee for the North Station immediate needs over the next year or several years within just a maintenance or repair budget? Or are there big ticket items that we don't know about? That's question one. Okay, I'll leave a little windy in the info about that. Sure, I'll say there's no immediate needs in terms of a critical infrastructure like a boiler or air conditioning system, something like that, those have been repaired in the last five years or so, mostly unfortunately due to emergency procurements, but they are new at this point. We definitely had some exterior envelope needs that I've discussed with Jeremiah from the facilities department. The outside of North Station is looking a little rough if you've seen it. We have rotten flaking on all the wooden parts of the building. So he's come to look at that. So I'm just throwing out rough numbers here, that's something in the $30 to $50,000 range, probably at this point that needs to get done. Those are one of the big ones we're aware of. He tells me that the roof is nearing end of life. It's hard to believe it seems like we just replaced it, but it's over 20 years ago. So he's concerned about that based on the type of roof. He's naturally his area of expertise more than ours. So we are looking to him more and more to assess those parts of the building where he has the knowledge beyond us. Certainly inside there will be things like carpeting and other interior renovations that are gonna need to be done in the upcoming years, but there's not a singular item that we're aware of that's gonna have to be replaced. And Cathy, can I add to that real quick? One of the changes we made this year, in addition to what was just said about Jeremiah, our facilities manager taking more an active role in maintaining the fire stations. We also included, you know, remember that interior exterior repair ongoing amount. Historically that has not included the fire stations that those buildings were maintained sort of separate from that. This year we intentionally added the fire stations to the bucket of, or the group of facilities that will be covered by that money. So I imagine that money will help with these projects in the future that were just mentioned. So roof is one potential that I don't remember seeing. So I'm just, you know, noting that. But so let me just switch to staffing then. In the past you've talked about staffing as an issue. And what I can see from the overall service calls is one thing COVID did was fewer EMS calls. You know, not dramatic, but lower in the last year. So as you look forward, I think we had asked that the town manager work with maybe with staff to update the staffing analysis for fire since Hadley left us, you know, just on your sense of how well staffed you are for next year or for the next couple of years because you have been in fact flat in terms of FTEs. So I just had a basic question on staffing and the need for, Lynn and Pat will remember, we asked for sort of an assessment and an update analysis of that. Not saying we're sure you're short staff, but just an update and reassessment. So any thoughts on staffing? Sure. You know, even with a lot loss of Hadley, we're still behind the A to A call. It's like, you know, with Hadley, the water was up to our nose. Now without them, it's up to our chin now. We're still in deep, deep water here. And yes, COVID reduced our calls, but that's not another way. It's going to be forever. We projected that when Hadley left, our first projection was that it would take about five years to get back where we were when we had Hadley. After about the first year, it looked like that projection was going to be about three, three, three years. Now COVID, having shown, shown, shown up, it's, you know, it's quick push, it's quick push that out a bit. Right now, rough guess is two to three, three, three years. But again, we're all ready behind the curve, no matter what, you know, we should, I mean, we've been at this staffing level level. Jeez, I'm saying, I'm thinking for at least 20 years. Lindsay, you can find fine tune that for me, but I think it's been at least 20 to 25 years that we've been at this level. And that's in the end, we serve a, we don't serve a small town, we serve a small city, all right. And all the studies have shown, the latest one being 2017, have shown that what we've done is we've used a rural model for urban set, and that's the, and in the end, that can't be sustained in terms of service, service of the public and the effect on per personnel, the stress, burnout, that type of thing. So yeah, it's something that needs to be addressed, the town town, Andrew and I have talked about this extensively, but I mean, for me, it's been, in a case where I've said at some point, there were some instances that are gonna have to be denied funds in order to have this high type type of public safety for a presence that this town needs and deserves. Yeah, and I just to answer your question, Chief, it's one thing that's always important to keep in mind that differentiation of staffing versus minimum staffing. Right. You know, if you talk about staffing, we have had a small increase. Staffing is the actual number of FTEs that work for the fire department. There was a small staffing increase when Chief Hoyle was here, so we're talking about 15 to 20 years ago, where they got a safer grant, which covered the costs of those firefighters for a few years, and then the town ultimately picks up the costs of them, but minimum staffing, which is a number of firefighters that report to work each day that we require to be here in the building to serve the town. That is currently at seven during the non-academic year, eight during the academic year. You know, it was, I think, five in the 70s, early 80s, went up to six in the 80s, and now we're at seven. So, you know, the actual minimum staffing, which really is the number we should care about the most, really has not gone up. That's the number that we want to go up, then the question becomes how many FTEs do you need to maintain that particular minimum staffing, because you have to take into account the occasion, time training, sickness, et cetera. Obviously you need more FTEs assigned to each shift in order to maintain that minimum staffing, otherwise your overtime becomes crazy and you just can't maintain it because you can't get people to work enough overtime. Yeah, I want to just kind of throw in the idea that that minimum staffing today at eight, and what it gets you essentially is three ambulances that are across staff, they have a spot and an engine and they're assigned to an ambulance and that leaves two firefighters left to be the only firefighters left in town when we use all three of those ambulances, which we frequently do. And we're honestly a four ambulance community. Like every day, we should probably have four ambulances available to the community and on Friday nights, five. It's predictable, it's preventable, it happens routinely, especially when the students come back in the fall, this is not, we see this in mutual aid, we see this the number of times we draw Northampton Ambulance or Belch County Ambulance to our community, especially on those times. That's the service load we are. We are desiring to have at least one engine of three and probably four ambulances all the time. That's what our service need is and it pushes you out towards 11 as a minimum staffing instead of eight. And ideally, when we were at 13, we did those extra money that we got from UMass and we're at 13, we can pretty much cover all of our needs and not have to ask for help from outside communities on a regular basis. And we're able to kind of be all the places we're supposed to be. And as a captain, I had spent time on a Friday night driving my fire truck by myself from one call to another cause all my ambulance was gone. And that was just the buffer between the next ambulance coming back into town. And that was not an unusual event in those days. I'm looking for other hands, but just following up, it sounds like UMass needs to ante up for some of this if the surge is predictable and the prediction of where the surge is coming from is also predictable. Well, that is true. But in our studies, we found that the growth or either the AMS growth has been in the town of Amherst. That's where most of our growth is coming from. And yes, we need to make sure that all three schools pay their fair share. But at the same time, most of our growth is in town. And at some point we need to do something about this. We've talked about this. I've been here 11 years. We've talked about it every year. And for the 10 to 15 years before that, I knew about this problem when I was a captain in a well-known route throughout the fire service service in this state. If you describe the part of the department that runs its personnel the way we did. We cross staff, we're running all over the place in that type of thing with the number of folks that we have on duty. Invariably folks say, oh, you must be from Amherst. It's well-known throughout the state. But we have not taken the steps yet to address it. I know it pretty much comes down the money. I know it doesn't grow on trees. But at some point we have to take an affirmative step saying, okay, this is what we're gonna do to address it or say we're just not going to address it. But we can't just keep talking about this. We have to do something about it one way or the other. Thank you very much. I see Andy is back. And Andy, I opened up a question about staffing needs. And that's what you were hearing. I'm turning chair back to you. Okay. I just see that there's one member of the public who wishes to come. We're going to do one more round of public comment in a few minutes. So I just want to acknowledge that somebody does have their hand up on the public side, the attendee side. I had two questions. Chief, and then the first assistant to Stromgram that I'll pose them to you and you obviously one is back to the ladder truck question that was addressed earlier. And that is how many communities of in our vicinity have similar ladder trucks and is this something that, you know, what's the cost of it? And is this something that in other parts of the state or country can be shared by communities or is there really a substantial need right here that we have, that we should be having our, our own operational ladder truck. Okay. Okay. Let me take that. Yeah. You can start yet. So, I mean, the cost is the current cost, which is based on based on state bid is 1.4 million. So that's the cost of a new ladder truck today. In terms of the, what's available in the area. The closest one. And just to clarify, this is what we call a ladder platform. It's a relatively large truck. It's a very large truck. It's a very large truck. It's a relatively large truck. It's a relatively large truck. It's a relatively large truck. It has less in the air capability with a platform on the end for firefighters. You don't have to climb it up and down with two up in the air or civilians that you're rescuing. There are some smaller ladders out there with no platform on the end. North Hampton has one East Hampton has one. Those of course are on the other side of the river. This side of the river. We have one in South gear field and where those are the closest. To the other side of the river. And that's where they're at. So that's what we call the ladder system. In that, obviously communities like Pelham. You know, smaller towns, even Hadley Hadley has a ladder stick, but not a ladder platform. Larger communities such as ours typically have them smaller communities can't afford them or staff them and make, we'll call for them when necessary. When ours is out of service as it is right now. We would be calling North Hampton. As our first in ladder platform. And that's where we're at right now. And the utility is, yes, our, our community definitely without a doubt. Has built, you would, you could actually use it at a house, a two story house. It's a very useful tool. But in particular, it gets useful for sort of your downtown businesses. The misconception that we needed because of high rises that you mass is just that it's a misconception. You would not use a ladder truck of any kind. At a high rise that you mass or anywhere. We fight those fires from the inside. And that's where we're at right now. And that's where we talk about the utility of quite frankly, the type of construction that we're seeing in town now, as well as some of the older construction downtown is exactly what you would use this type of truck for. So I'll go ahead and start then. So if you look at the downtown and how it's changed, you know, Kendrick place, when he's pleasant street. The entire downtown as it presently existed. We're not getting to those roof access points. We're not getting to those roof access points. We're not getting to those roof access points. We're not getting a ladder platform or a large ladder to get up there. That's just, you can't get there from ground. It was very easily. The buildings are too big. And then the downtown construction instead of building with block masonry concrete, we're actually building these buildings. They're wood frame. They're, they're made of wood. Trust is engineered wood. They do have sprinkler systems, but they can still burn. They still have places and we still have rescue needs. So if you go to North Amherst and you look at the beacon project, you look how large those apartments are, and there's construction, you know, requests to make more big buildings in Amherst. That's not going to go away. There are more dormitories that are going to be built over at UMass because that's on a short list to start. And then your year or two. There's not a lot of space left in Amherst. So the only place really to go is to go up. And to do that, we need to have the protection to do fire and rescue. And this affects services to make things nicer. Sometimes affect services. And this is one of those examples where it does have an effect on one of the services in town by making other parts of the community, you know, a better place to live, a nicer place to live, nicer apartments, nicer downtown skylines. If you like that, those kinds of things. We need to have the ability to provide the services that were expected to provide. And the tool to do that in this case is the Slatter platform. Thank you. Well, thank you. Well, oh, you, you and men. And you mentioned the possibility of shares sharing. Well, I would like to check it all. You know, when you need, when you need, you need that a lot of truck you need. You need it right then and then in there. You need to have a share of sharing. So there's something like that. I mean that some, some, some, someone is, someone else is going to have to have to bring, bring, bring it to your. Or you're going to have to have to take your preferred personality. Take it to someone else's. And that's just not, that's not a, not a, not an effective way in, in this, in this, in this world to, you know, to get, to get the job, job, job, job, job done. It's just that, that, that just, just wouldn't, wouldn't, wouldn't work. And, you know, folks, folks all at times wonder about, we'll see, you know, we don't, we need, we need to allow a lot of truck, truck, truck forward things. Everything, everything, spring, spring route and that type of thing. Yeah. Around, you know, in, in our, in our town. We have, you know, sure. We have, we, we, we have a lot of things, things that we singling to family, family homes, that type type type of thing. One of the things you use a lot, a lot of truck for our electricity and the wall Plat Syrian platform is, is the reach. A lot of our homes are set back from, from, from, from, from the street you need, you still need access to, to, to a roof to ventilate that type, type type of thing. And you may, you know, you don't use the height, height, but you need to get that reach from the street to reach the structure. That's one of the other utilities of the Laos. I'm trying to find a residential community. Okay, thank you. That was very helpful. The other question I had was an entirely different subject, but just was curious as to whether there were challenges this year to our reliance on the student firefighter force because of the university being shut down so much of the year, what the effect was, how it played out, and what the projection is for the next months ahead until the university is back up and going. I'll start with the Chief's strong strong strong strong and especially the student forces within his area of responsibility. It wasn't a challenge, it was a student step, step, step, step up. We had exceptional people that joined our student force and they made it work. It was tough, it was difficult, but we took steps to protect them, to protect the part and still end a lot, a lot of them to remain part of the other part of the department. I like to say that our student force, the folks that make up our student force aren't sure it's difficult or sterile to step those students. They're really exceptional and they've sort of stepped up. They may change changes of just and anything of that nature to make sure that they could still be in service to the town. So I've got nothing but good good things to say about how they went about their business this year and the future looks positive to them, but again I can't say enough about how proud I was of what they did this year. Just to give you a quick synopsis, I agree with the Chief, like everybody on the department, our full-time people have been here since day one of the pandemic on the front line just doing a phenomenal job in a very stressful situation, especially during the early months and we didn't know where this was going or what was going on and our call force and student force, everybody hung in there and did what they had to do. The student force, just to give you a quick recap, a year ago in the spring when the pandemic hit and UMass shut down, the student force did shut down for the rest of the spring, but quite a number of them, a dozen plus, we transferred over to the call force because they were staying here both to do schooling and wanted to continue on the fire department. So although the actual engine company didn't run last spring, a dozen of their members did serve with our call force. We were frankly worried for fall 20, whether it would be able to have enough, we need a certain minimum number to make it run, but they pulled it together and they were in service with some somewhat reduced hours for the entire fall semester and again for this entire spring semester. So they've been here doing their job and have just successfully recruited another 12 people for fall this year because we do have four people graduating and we need to get their numbers back up so they're slated to be back in service in September, back up at full capacity. So they've really done a phenomenal job and an offshoot of that is we talked earlier in this meeting about temporary firefighters, which was paid for by the CARES money. We needed that a year ago because we had a lot of vacancies, some due to retirements, some due to long-term injuries. So five of them were able to step in and be temporary full-time firefighters. So that was a great resource for us and helped take some of the pressure off the full-time. And now deja vu a year later, we're in the same boat as the chief said. We've got two people that have just retired from the department and two long-term injuries. So we just this week started four new different people, full-time temporary firefighters and those three of those four from our student force, one is from the call force. And I'd be remiss if I just didn't give a shout out to show you what a great group of people they are. The two individuals running the student force this year are both women. It's the first time we've had a woman deputy. So our deputy Alana Skardino and her number two, her captain Anne Marie Marquis, are graduating tomorrow. And not one, but both of them are again in the UMass Presidential Award for Achievement. That's not quite the right title, but they will actually be up on the podium tomorrow receiving those awards, which are very prestigious awards for commencement. So just a really great group of people we attract to that force. So we're proud of them. Great. So I don't see any other hands from the committee at this point. And what I was would therefore like to do is go back to public comment for one last time. There's only one person who has a hand up with just named Maddie. And what I'm going to ask is just off the back after identifying, then to let us know if it's a question that pertains to the fire department. And if not, we'll be able to thank our three experts from the fire department. And the thing that I guess we could bring. So hi. I don't know if you're last name or could you introduce yourself and then let us know if this is directed at a question that needs to go to the fire department. Hi, this is actually Matthew Spasito. I apologize for my June title here. I wasn't intending on speaking. I'm actually on the side of the road on a bike ride. This is pertaining to the fire department. I'm also the local 1764 Union president. There were comments made about the overall staffing of the department and the ladder truck. And I felt like it was important to ensure that the gravity of this situation is fully addressed. Chief Nelson said that with the departure of Hadley, we were up to our eyeballs with Hadley. And now we're at our chin. I would absolutely disagree. We are completely underwater as far as staffing goes. We haven't had a notable increase in staff for about 20 years, as indicated by Assistant Chief Strongren. And I believe the Assistant Chief Olmsted highlighted the strain that it places on the providers, as well as the untoward effects to the community. The increase in that 125% of fire engine responses to ensure that providers get to you and your loved ones side to provide emergency care. We are unable to routinely and consistently maintain that level at current funding and staffing levels. This absolutely needs to be addressed. We worked with the town to implement contract language to allow the town to hire four individuals back in 2018 at its discretion. No plan has been made thus far. The fire department needs to be addressed, and it can't be neglected any longer. The community is suffering, and those great people that all of the chiefs are commenting on are suffering along with their family. The global pandemic did not reduce the strain on the personnel that remain at the fire department. The finance committee needs to appropriate more funds to the fire department so that we can address these needs appropriately. The ladder truck is out for repairs 25% of the year, and oftentimes has to be used as a transport vehicle only. The department is in disrepair, and it needs to be addressed. Town Manager Bachman has not addressed them. He hasn't even shown up to the table to speak about it. I'm sorry that that's not a question, but I feel as though it is my position that that needs to be voiced. Thank you. I appreciate your comments. Athena, do you need any more information for the minutes to identify the speaker? No, we're good. Thank you. Okay, so I see one other hand up from the public now. Again, just a first name, and I assume it's Linnie, but maybe if I'm wrong, please correct me. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Okay, thank you for taking my call. I basically was going to say a lot of the things that Maddie just spoke about earlier. My name is Lynn Penza, and many of you may know my dad used to work for the town of Amherst as a Director of Inspection Services and Building Commissioner, and my dad was very active when he retired with underwriter laboratories in dealing with firecoats, and I have followed their Facebook page and the request. I've lived here all my life, and it's made me extremely sad to see how understaffed the fire department is and how long that they have waited for things to be fixed. When I see the photos posted of the conditions that the station is in, the center of town, or whether that's the North Station, I'm not 100% sure, it just breaks my heart that we are living in a town where taxes are so high, this has turned into basically a small city. We don't have the amount of equipment that is needed between taking care of students. We now have marijuana dispensaries coming in that are going to even put extra stress on the police and the fire department as the marijuana of today is not like it was many, many years ago. I'm someone that'll be celebrating their 35th anniversary of sobriety in October, and I see that there's going to be a problem with that as well as in a town as prestigious as Amherst. I believe that there's no more time to waste, that the staffing of the fire department must be increased immediately as fast as you can. It needs to be funded, and they definitely, for the amount of people between elderly students with three colleges have got to have the equipment that they need and that they deserve. I don't know if I formatted that properly because I've never really done this before, but I know that my dad kind of came to me and said, speak up about it if that's how you feel. And in his honor, I sort of am doing that because I know what it was like having a dad as a building commissioner who if he saw the conditions that the stations were in, I mean, I literally can't believe that this town has let it get this bad. There's no way my dad would have allowed that, you know, to go on to the point where they look like they could almost be condemned. And maybe that isn't fair to say, but I'm only basing it on photos that I've seen. And just like we needed a new police station, we need to staff the fire department. I would love to see the one in the center of town stay there. It's an iconic historic place that many of us love walking by, you know, when we grew up here, we're younger. And you need it. It's close to like, you know, the restaurants. The changes in this town are unbelievable with the high rises falling up. And I don't think that our fire department deserves to have to wait any longer to have the needs met that they deserve to protect the safety of the residents, students, and even visitors who come to this town. So basically, I wanted to say I'm fully in support of please getting them the equipment they need. If I hit the mega millions on Friday, I'd be happy to do it. But I don't know if my chance was better, but good. But you know, I hope you understand where I'm coming from that I am that concerned. I know that anytime if I've had to go to the hospital, they've been super wonderful to me. And just to see this, I'm basically in shock. I also lived in New York City, you know, one of the best fire departments around. Amherst deserves not to have to lie on other towns to help them. So I really hope that they take seriously. And you know, very nice to meet you all. Thank you for listening. And if there's anything I could do, I'd be happy to try to help as much as I possibly can. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. And again, I hope you have what you need for the minutes. Lenny, I'm afraid we didn't catch your last name, would you like to give your last name? And if my last name is Penza, my dad is Chet Penza, building commissioner, director of inspection services for the town of Amherst. Terrific. And you're an Amherst resident? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. I grew up on Gray Street, right near the high school. And you know, with everything going on in the world, we all know it's been a very difficult year with COVID. Things have changed so much. I don't think you can face what's going to happen when the students come back in the fall. You know, you know, they've been away from each other, they're going to want to party, it's going to put extra stress. The staffing has got to be there. You know, I don't want to have to wait to see a tragedy happen for something is finally done. And the equipment that they need and the staffing that they need is not available. So, you know, with our taxes going up, I can't understand why this is not at the top of the list. And not to take away from funding for a new library. But ask yourselves, what's more important? Public safety or getting a new library? You really need to put priorities at the top. And public safety, getting your loved ones to hospital, accidents. If you don't have the staff, who's going to help? You can't always rely on student, you know, students that are learning or volunteers. It really, to me, as I've seen the changes, you know, from a little girl to where we are now, it does break my heart to see the conditions that the station is in. And I know if my dad was still here, that wouldn't be the case. So I'm holding you praying that you take, you know, all the lovely comments that were made by everyone. And really, they've waited 10, 11, how many years? 20 years? We've got to have new fire trucks. And definitely, I agree. They've got to have at least four ambulances and possibly five. And we have to find a way to fund it. Okay, well, Lenny, thank you very much. Thank you. I appreciate all of you. I appreciate your comments. And the perspective is very helpful. So, I appreciate comments from the public. And I want to thank Chief Nelson, the assistant. She's a strong grown Olmsted for staying with us. We appreciate the information you provided and the perspective you provided and we'll be subjective for the discussion and committees we work towards. Our recommendation, of course, we are bound in what we can do in this round of the budget year by what the charter and state law provides that is the process for budgets and communities that are in the city category. But it is helpful for the finance committee and those of us who are counselors to hear from you. So thank you very much for being with us this afternoon. Thanks, actually, and I really appreciate your time. And don't let this be the only powerful form where you reach out to us. Feel free and at any time to reach out to one, two, or all three of us for anything you feel you need to know. Thank you. Thank you very much. So just to have a couple of minutes left, I think, and I don't know if Sean has other things he wants to talk about, but I wanted to just get a little bit on the process in the literature to what I've been working on and we'll send out for comments to any of you who have time to look at it. I hope tonight to have pretty much of a lock on what's getting close to the end on the report that I have to give to the council for the meeting next week. And I have done some modifications this morning after getting some comments back from Sean and Lynn. And so I will get it to you if you have any thoughts. I wanted to make sure that I had the president of the council in her perspective. The sections that I have written is a fairly complete description of the water and sewer rate discussion that we had somewhat of a discussion on where we are with the hot under selection process and particularly focusing on the issue that we dealt with last time, which was the committee. And then the last section when I started to work on pieces of the budget and what I was doing is, as I had said, is that when I have the submissions of the capability to do it on my own, which is really the sections that I was assigned to do sort of brief sections on each segment that we could then incorporate in the report so that the council doesn't have to read all of it at one time. They can read it as we go along. And it also helps us to get our writing done when it's fresher on our mind. So when you see it, it might prompt you to the kind of things that you might think about. I don't think we necessarily belong in terms of the nature of the information that we've been provided. And the last thing that I just said is a question for you. And then I see if there's anything else that any members of the committee have, the topics that they hadn't, you know, that have come up in the last 48 hours and see if Sean has any or has anything final. Or Sonia. Last time we were scheduled to do veterans and we did a very brief discussion of veteran services. But Steve Connor, who's the one who provides veteran services, you know, oversees veteran services for us and other communities, was not able to join us in the end. And so I guess it's whether anybody feels that we need to ask him to come back. Otherwise, I'm just going to write up based upon our discussion of last week, try and get that included in what I sent to you tonight. Nobody is seeming to indicate that they feel that we need to bring him, ask him to come to a meeting. Sean, is there anything else we need to do or Sonia? Not today. I just recap. I'm going to send out the questions as many of them as I have and I'll try to incorporate some of what we heard and get that out to the group tomorrow. I'll send out this full group and then we can post it in the packet so that it's there going forward. Kathy. Just I sent Sean a note but I noticed when I went to look for library today I had it in attached file but it wasn't in the posted packet so if we could just there are only going to be a few of those. It was library and elementary school and the elementary school the larger budget wasn't there just the presentation was. So if we could get the library presentation posted also Sean. Yeah, I'll work with Athena to get those both posted. Some of those have more information than we had before we went to the meeting so it's useful to be able to reference them. Yep, absolutely. Okay, anything else from any members of the committee? If not then I think we'll declare ourselves adjourned. It's been a long afternoon for counselors and for the rest of you who are waiting for us to get off of the council meeting that we were on so thank you very much and thank you. We're adjourned at whatever time it is 457.