 You are the only member of the CSSJC that's here right now. We'll check to see if there are folks in the attendees. I don't know if it's my internet or yours. Well, I'm pretty sure it's mine. That was very distorted. So, I'll repeat what I was saying that the other members of the CSSJC are just logging on. At first, you were the only member. Can you hear me clearly now? Yes, I can. Thank you. Great. And I did see Lissette in the attendees, so we'll need to move her over. Okay. Hello, everyone. Can you hear me? Yes. Hi, Debra. No, everyone else. No. Allegor hasn't joined yet. She has not. Let me text her. If not, then. And what do you have the script that I'm supposed to read in terms of the fact that we can do a mobile and blah, blah, blah and all that stuff. I do have it. Do you have a quorum? Oh, here she is. Here's a lot. There we go. Well, yeah, no, I would wait until we have a quorum, but I'm just saying I was just going to plan B if we needed to. Right. Sure. I wasn't sure if you were going to get on. So I was just wanting to make sure we had the script just in case if I had to. Yes. Sorry, I was having some technical difficulties. Do you want to open? No, you can go ahead. I like it. You go ahead, but I'm just saying, you know, probably for the future, probably good for me to have this crib just in case if ever, I need to kind of also do it, you know, that's why we have to. But I like the way we've been handling it so far that you kind of, you know, do all the, all the formal techie stuff. Right. Well, my apologies for being late. I'm having a little difficulty with technology, but it looks like we have a quorum. So it is 635. This is a meeting of the Community Safety and Social Justice Committee. With the extension of chapter 20 of the acts of 2021, this meeting will be conducted via remote means members of the public who wish to attend the meeting may do so via zoom or by telephones. See instructions below no in person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. We are recording. We are recording. And I'm, I'm not, I did not see a response to my earlier message that Jennifer's not here to do the tech so I asked if you could have a member take notes. Yes. Would anybody like to take notes or I can do it if the only thing I would ask is that maybe somebody right when I'm speaking. Make any comments because I forget to do that when I'm talking myself. But we also have the video for a backup so I can, I can write notes and my own comments might not be included in it. And a lever you're freezing where you're now back with us, but you were frozen for a minute. So, okay. I can take notes. And we have the recording as a backup. Just because sometimes I forget to write when I speak. If I remember, I'll, I'll write when you're speaking. Perfect teamwork makes the dream work. So just to make sure we can hear everyone and I know is Isabella is studying abroad right now so she is trying to join us, but she's not sure if her internet connection is stable right now. So just, we can hear Deb and Deb can hear us. Everold, can you hear us? I can, yes. Perfect. Thank you. And Lisette, can you hear us? Hi. Yes, I can. I'm going to go over the business part of it. So just to go over the agenda for tonight. We'll have announcements, public comment, member reports, then on to the action and discussion items which include the Crest DEI youth empowerment updates, the resident oversight oversight board update. The forums that we held back in November and December. The police chief and Crest director search updates. Clinical support options in the budget letter. And then an additional public comment and future meeting setting. So, let's see. Does anybody have any announcements? I just have the announcement in terms of events. Is this the appropriate time for that? Yeah. Okay, so let me just look over here. I know that with the Judy Brooks series Wednesday, February 21, 2024. Maybe at 7pm, there's going to be a talk by a panel discussion with members of the black business association of Amherst area. So hopefully lots of folks will support and make it to that. Also, I have a, another one just with me one second is getting the information because I don't want to get it wrong. There's also going to be an HBC you and sort of clean black college universities college tour panel and info session. Panelists include alumni from the universities of Hampton Howard Morehouse Pellman and more, and that's going to be Friday, February 9. So tomorrow 630 to 830 banks community center 70 boat would walk Amherst mad 01002. And register you need to register for the event. And then also I forgot to say with the with the Judy Brooks series that's by zoom so you need to register for that too. So just go on the legal women voters website. It's the racial justice committee that's putting that on so please register for that. Thank you. Just to piggyback off of the HBC you announcement. I believe the website is for club. Oh, it's CLU be a CLU be OH, and I think there's a registration for that as well on their website. My understanding is it's also an info session for the tour that they do over April vacation week to go down to visit some of the HBC us. So there will be some info about that scholarship and stuff like that. So just to add to what you were saying Allegra with the HBC you info session. Even though for the tours for high school students that they're targeting. However, for the information program, you can bring kids any age that will be interested so for instance my son who's in eighth grade, I'm thinking of bringing him, because obviously when he's in high school that would be a great opportunity for him. So you don't have that high school age students in order to go to the info and get them into learning about HBC use early. Any announcements only formed announcement. 80 acres is an organization run out of Amherst and they have started a free store of like clothing and goods on North Pleasant Street, it has limited hours of operation right now. But I believe that they have some info on their website. Can you explain further about that. So it is a experience I can just read what it says on the website it's in a living experiment in black liberation they have a school they have a law center and they have community wellness events and activities. So what they are part of what they're trying to do is have things available for community members who might not have access to them otherwise so like clothing household goods that sort of thing so they are both looking for people who might be able to volunteer to help with both donating and distributing things from their free store. I believe it is on North Pleasant Street near where their law firm is and that they have a few hours during the week that they're open and I think one Sunday a month that they'll be operating right now. So that's 80acres.org is the website announcements from committee members just give a rundown of any of the upcoming DEI events now so that they don't get lost in the shuffle you know sometimes they come after the Cress update which can I'm not sure and I was actually going to suggest that I maybe do the DEI update first. Okay, the entire Cress leadership team. So, so I could just do that all at once if that's okay. Perfect. Yeah. So, for DEI updates the black history month proclamation was read on the first, and there are panels which we've titled the African American experience in Amherst which is a local history that's on display in town hall and the space that would normally be used for the public arts display and those panels will be on display throughout the entire month. So, on the 16th which is the date that we hold our staff DEI events the third Friday of the month. Staff in town are encouraged to do what we're calling like excursions. So, there are four locations in town that we're highlighting for black history month. They're in town hall, the Civil War tablets here in the bangs ancestral bridges at Amherst college and Jones library so staff will meet here on the 16th. And then depending on the size of the group will travel as one group or two and we'll visit two of those locations, which are likely to be the Civil War tablets here in the banks and ancestral bridges as our monthly staff DEI event. The DEI department had to cancel the national day of racial healing because that was the day of the storm. That event has been rescheduled for the final event for black history month and will occur on the 29 at Crocker farms from six until 8pm. And we'll have the spring festival or Lunar New Year event on on the 17th and the middle school. So those are the events that are happening within the month. The youth environment survey was distributed. I it has had a few responses but there is a real need to push that out again. Unfortunately, we have not continued our relationship with AmeriCorps so aces no longer working with DEI or the cross department. We have received some support from faculty at the middle and high school to assist with the youth environment survey and Jennifer and I just need to find a time to meet at the school sites to encourage people to take the survey and get their feedback. So the survey was released. It's had a few responses but there's a need to really to push that out again. The resident oversight board had event those public forums. The last one was on the 24th or the 21st. I'm sorry of January. There have been 72 responses to the survey. The consultant is preparing a report and we anticipate that that report will come, you know, sometime in March, right? It's just to have obviously take some time to review all the responses and draft her draft her report. And other news the department is sort of just I would say as a whole is sort of keeping its head above water but it's obviously a challenge because we no longer have ASA and Jennifer is carrying a lot of the weight of planning these events and activities. We have had some support from Cress, which was a huge support as far as assisting with the black history experience panels, both their production and when getting those panels on display in the town hall. So, I think that's sort of like DEI in a nutshell. If you have some questions, I'll do my best to try to answer them. Yeah, I have some questions. So I guess with the youth empowerment. So right now we're still at the point of, you know, the survey. Is there any other kind of parallel activities happening there, which what I mean is, are we still looking for a space? Are we still advocating for budget for the youth empowerment center? Because I get getting a survey to figure out programming and so on and so forth. But, you know, we've already gone on several years since the recommendation from the CSWG around finding a space for the youth empowerment center. Right. And also budget. So yeah, if you can respond to that and then I have a couple more questions. Sure. That's the town manager made a decision that he would lead the efforts to acquire a location and I think I reported that in the fall. So that's his initiative. So, okay, so do you have any updates on his initiative? I do not. Okay, is that something that you could get for the next meeting? Sure. Update in terms of where that's at. And so he's also handling budget. Well, the two would go hand in hand as far as acquiring the building and providing a budget for whatever programming there would be. Okay, and I'll also send him an email to ask him these questions then since he's the one that's now leading that effort. Yeah, I believe that that I reported that information earlier in the fall that he had decided that he was going to spearhead that with the right department. Okay, maybe I missed it. I didn't, I didn't hear that. Okay, that sounds. I'll follow up with him but also if you could talk with them that, you know, we'd want an update on how things are going for the next meeting, but I'll also send him an email myself. And then my other question is around the resident oversight board. I understand that there were these sessions going on, but again, you know, and I'll continue to be the broken record in regards to it, which is, you know, CSWG, we have made recommendations in terms of putting those that the resident oversight were in place like eons ago, and we're still at the stage of, you know, again, listening and, and get gathering information that had already been gathered information that was already there. So what is the next step. So March is a report. So March is the actual board going to be established. That's my interest. And, and I think a lot of the community, especially BIPOC folks interest in terms of a place for them to go and complain about what I'm happy with. So, yeah, I mean, you know, so as you stated the CSWG made recommendations and those recommendations have been under review by the town and the town has made some efforts as you know, the, there were efforts to get a consultant to, to move this forward. And those efforts fail. So then there was a regroup and another effort to move the consultant. So we have the current conversations that report will be followed by an RFP to have a consultant with the expertise to establish and train a board. I think that we're still in good shape to have a board established before the end of the fiscal year. The RFP is already been drafted and is ready to go but it is waiting the report because the RFP does make mention of the prior work that's been done and that and by prior work I mean the work of both the current consultant and the RFPs for not in the acronym community. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So both of those are made, are referenced in the RFP and it will be released once we have the other, the most recent report to move that forward. I still think that there is a very good possibility that there could be a board established before the end of this fiscal year. That's certainly the hope. So, yeah, I mean, I hear what you're saying Pamela but as you know, I disagreed and a lot of others disagreed with the way that you all went about things which was, it was basically kind of trying to do things that were already done in terms of work and that CSWG had hired previously and established the fact that there should have been a resident oversight board. So basically this whole phase A was I think a huge waste of time, and then we should have been already in phase B. I'm just restating what has been stated. I get what you're saying, but I'm just restating what what it is and in terms of the fact that with all of this time wasted, then the people who are the ones that need this don't have it in place. And so I'm happy to hear though that you're saying that by the end of this fiscal year, which is let me just make sure and fiscal year that's June, June, what is it? The fiscal year would be June 30th and I think it's still the very strong likelihood that an RFP would go out and that a consultant would be hired and that consultant could could raise up a board by the end of the fiscal year. Okay, so I'm going to continue to make sure that this continues to progress and I'm going to continue the pressure in terms of making this happen sooner rather than later. And then lastly, I know they had been Barbara Love had been acquired at some point to do like the visioning session. Yeah, so she did three full sessions in the fall. And the participants included both members of the community and members of the staff. We have been working with that group to have them continue their work by acting as facilitators for some of the other DEI initiatives, and the members who went through that process are scheduled to be facilitators for the National Day of Racial Healing. Okay, so is this going to so the National Day of Racial Healing is what is going to be the kind of the place where we're going to stop building I thought you know in terms of again CSWG recommendations this was supposed to be a, you know, kind of, you know, impactful, you know, process to really get, you know, the town and people involved in going through this this this healing process right so that they could be more trust within the town and to get people involved right and not just the same voices to have translators in different ways to have people who English is a second language, people who are marginalized to be able to take part in this in this visioning. So I want to know more about what is the, you know, the more detailed plan in regards to this. So the National Day of Racial Healing is was designed to be the kickoff for those conversations and the work that Dr. Love that was the preliminary work to have facilitators would guide us through the conversations and through our training, she has left us a blueprint to follow that envisions a series of conversations with different members or community aspects of the community that would guide us through. I think it's a four part process. I'm, you know, I don't have the information right in front of me. So, but I believe it envisions like four stages of having conversations with various members of the community and then additional conversations until you end up with a final product which would be the recommendations of community members about how they could enter into racial healing and racial reconciliation, how the town could address some of their concerns. And Dr. Love has stated that she would be willing. It's been, as you know, it was quite difficult to have our schedules aligned initially that would took us quite a while to even a schedule the initial sessions with her but she has stated in the past that she would be willing to work with Jennifer and myself and with the facilitators that she trained to guide us through the process. So the thinking is that the National Day of Racial Healing will be the kickoff of what we hope will probably be bi-monthly sessions that will allow us to work our way through the process. Okay. Yeah, I think with that, you know, if I could get more of a kind of detailed plan of, you know, in regards to what all of that will entail who you all are outreaching to and whether you are getting these other voices as opposed to the same group of people. We went through that visioning process with Dr. Love and developed a list based on her input and the people who participated as well as Jennifer's input. So I know that the idea is to have a very broad call, but of course, you know, who will respond that I do not know. Okay. I'll continue to inquire about these things. On DEI updates and announcements before we move on to public comment. Yes. I don't have anything more or less anyone has any additional questions. And right now, so I'm going to do the public comment thing. During the public comment period, the chair will recognize members of the public when called on, please identify yourself by stating your full name. My goodness, preferred pronouns and residential address residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes of this discretion of the chair based upon the number of people who wish to speak. No speaker can see their time to another speaker. The CSS JC will not engage in a dialogue or comment on a matter raised during the public comment. I do see eight attendees. If you would like to make a public comment, please raise your hand. We will also have an additional public comment period at the end of our meeting if nothing moves you right now but something moves you later. Okay, I'm going to have us move on. Do we have any member reports. I think the only one that I want to kind of share is around the Judy Brook series that that myself on a leg were when invited by the racial justice committee with illegal women voters to present. It was in January right. Things just flow one into the other. But yeah in January, and we presented working towards racial equity and social justice in Amherst, and really giving everyone kind of a briefing on the CSWG recommendations and the status of where they're at as of today. And also talking about just the CSS JC and our charge and, and what we're doing and also talking about crests and giving some information around where crest is at. It was very well received. We got a variety of questions. And, you know, want to thank the legal women voters for the opportunity for us to talk about these pressing issues. Since again, like I said, the community is watching their listening knowledge is power. And we want to make sure that they have the knowledge so that they're able to continue to, you know, participate and have the voices heard. So very thankful for that opportunity. Anything to add to that. The only other thing I realized I forgot to announce it's kind of a moot point because it's happening right now. But there is a meeting of the school equity action committee. So they are trying to get conversations of equity back up and running around the schools. And so they'll be kind of recreating their charge and committee composition and structure. So that's happening. Who's, who's like, who's leading that? So I believe that I think Bridget Heinz from the Amherst school committee and William share from the Pellum school committee are going to be the two representatives of the school committee that will be involved with the, to attend to the meetings. So, when you kind of go, you back away, sometimes we lose some of what you're saying. Um, but yeah, if you can share more information on the, on that, that would be great. Because I'm interested in finding out more about that. I mean, I think, right, I think today was their first meeting since the new school committee has been seated. So I think they're really just trying to figure out what they're doing. So, hopefully there will be more concrete information after tonight and that will be that should be available. I believe on the school. School committee website on the school website ARPS.org. I don't know what that is, especially as we're interested in youth empowerment. We can't forget that our schools play a big part in the lives of our youth. So we want to make sure things are going well in the schools and people are being included. Things are equitable. Let's see, should we move on to Cress. Do you want to start with the hiring chief? Sure. So, we decided that we would each sort of specialize in specific areas of process. So, Chief Nelson's going to give the update on the hiring process. Yeah, so with the hiring and hiring three response to the spotters new response spotters. It's a unique group. They will be offering a little bit of something something that you come to the table. We brought brought him in on the 16th of last last month there was still in, you know, a train to train train is that going to be at least seven weeks. We were sort of very trained. So, no, we brought them brought brought them out to us are far, far, far, far and a couple weeks, a couple weeks, weeks because meet the meet the meet that particular shift. Anyway, it was a good, good meeting, good kind of mixing. But getting a known, know, know, know we're just together and take care of all the abilities. But these are going to be good. And as I said, they, they are mixing well with the five to five we all we are ready have some. I'm I'm excited. I think we're all so excited that that's essential. And, you know, what I like to say about our part of the burden, and I think it fits here, too, we hire good people first, you know, and that's, and that's, and that's, and that's huge, you know, the overall way they're really good people. So I have a question. So you said that is you hired three, three responders or two I wasn't I couldn't read three, three, three responders. Yeah. And they're assuming bringing, you know, wealth of experience. Do you know if they speak other languages, those sort of things. Can you get it? No. No, only a English speaking one is just just finishing up her degree in social, social work. And another one's working on a map map map, that matters as well 30s has a lot of live with with it could live the experiment is from from town so she's from those and those know, with with both of us here. It's a good mix. It's a good mix of experience and education and training that they all bring. And again, as I said, it mixes well with the vibe that are here for Friar to demo right away. Okay, good. Thank you. I appreciate it. I'm happy to hear that you all were able to have three more. Obviously, that's very good news. I know when the first set of responders was hired, there were like profiles on them in the town website or whatever. Is that something that will happen with these new responders so that people will see their face and get used to it? Yeah, we tend to do that. We do that in my hate and my part of part of well, as well, shows show the showcasing case of folks. Yeah, another way way way for folks and folks in around around town, they get to know those who will be working for them. It's about the hiring. This is this is not about the responders. So I don't know if it would be you, Chief Pamela that could talk more about this. But again, just to kind of put it on on you all scope and then of course, it'll be something that I'll be asking of the new director of Cress to make sure that an assistant director, someone that would be a number two to take over if anything were to happen to the director, you know, that that is the position after the director is hired that that's the next position to be, you know, filled. So I just wanted to know whether that's on people's lists or who's listed is it is it the town manager or whomever because that's something that I'm going to be monitoring very closely because, you know, what transpired shouldn't transpire again where there's no number two within within Cress. So can anyone speak to that? Sure. So the interim leadership team is preparing for the transition with the hiring of the new director and part of that preparation is to prepare a very comprehensive report about what we've been doing for the last, which will probably soon be six months before the director arrives as well as a list of recommendations and included in that list of recommendations a recommendation that the department organizational structure be changed to include an assistant but that will be a decision of the town manager. I think that the prior organizational structure attempted to have someone in the position that you're referring to, but they used a different title. So the title program assistant was designed to be a combination of an of an assistant director and an administrative assistant position, which I think really encompassed too many responsibilities under one job title. That job title was also part of the collective bargaining unit and I think an assistant director position would be outside of the union. So part of the negotiation would be to create a different structure and to negotiate with the unit for the loss of a position because the current position is part of the union and if the change is made that change the new assistant director position will be out of the union. So all of those are things that we have thought about and are considering and will be among the I think vast list of recommendations that we're preparing for the town manager and as a handoff to the new director. So I'm happy to hear that you all including that and recommendations to the town manager but yeah and equivocally you know this crests that the department can't continue on in a healthy and powerful and strong way if they do not have a clear person who would take over if something were to happen. As we all know none of us are irreplaceable and things like that so we always have to have someone that would be able to take over and obviously that was in the case when when everything happened in terms of crests. So this is going to be something that you know I'm glad you all have the recommendations but obviously it's going to be something that we're going to be monitoring very closely. Assistant director too so you're not tapped for this again. I will not be tasked with this again I can assure you. I think following the hiring it would probably be a good place for Kat to step in and talk about the training both for the new responders and the existing responders and so perhaps everyone has a question prior to the training these. I do thank you is there a requirement that crests be the entire crest staff be in the union? So all of the responders are part of the SEIU union so they they all have unionized position their collective bargaining agreement was finalized just this fall and I think that at the creation of the department you know I would say to the credit of the town they decided to make the positions unionized positions. They're in the same union as the dispatchers so the dispatchers are also in the SEIU union. Their current contract will be up for renewal I think in 2026. I think it's 23 years. Three years okay. Yeah so yeah but I think it yeah so I think it will so maybe 2026 or 2027 the collective bargaining agreement will be up for renewal. But the but the director position is at non-union. The director position is non-union and I think what and I you know I don't know the history behind it but if you were to look at what was the program assistant position description which was a unionized position it reads with some duties of a administrative assistant and some duties that were that were really I would classify as non-union as an assistant director and there was someone in that position that individual actually left before the former director left. So I you know I think that the the department was left with their responders and with with Kat who was in the position of the grant implementation manager. So you know it's an unfortunate situation. I do think that there is a strong argument to make that there should be a new organizational structure for the department. And if I may suggest just just thinking out loud given that its leadership position it may make sense that that is not a union position. Yeah yeah definitely it would be would be non-union. I think the the conversation with the with the union is why we're taking a position away from the union right and placing it in a non-union. But if you look at the job if you look at the current if you look at the responsibilities they would obviously be outside of the union right it's it's an it's an assistant director position should be a non-union position. I agree thank you. I have a follow-up question which was good April that you asked some of these questions because it kind of you know I started thinking about it Pamela when you had talked about the fact that there would be a loss of a position I mean you know given what Cress is doing and the urgent and necessary work that Cress is doing I don't know why there would be a need to lose a position. Like you said that position had also administrative assistant duties you know Cress is is you know if you look at the CSWG original staffing positions that we had recommended which was you know a lot more with an assistant director with different shift supervisors and things like that. I don't believe you need to lose a position that position could be you know someone in terms of that right in terms of the need whether it be a shift supervisor or someone like that with administrative kind of support needs and things there is need there you know there is a place to make an argument to keep that position and add the assistant director position and so I don't know why there would be a need to lose given the fact that we're trying to stabilize Cress grow Cress and make sure that it's it's staffed fully because it still to this point is not staffed fully even with an assistant director it won't be staffed fully so I just want to make that point that I don't believe that there is a need to lose a position to recraft it and and make sure and since you all are there and you've been doing the job you know I would think that you would agree with the fact that there's actually a need to keep that position and add the assistant director. Well my recommendation actually is to change the position I think that there is my recommendation for restructure would be a director an assistant director and an administrative assistant I think these are all decisions that the town manager will have to make but certainly that would be my recommendation and one of the things as a leadership team you know we have tried to to work obviously collaboratively but we each have individual opinions about various aspects and we've agreed as a leadership team that we will each submit recommendations so where there are points of disagreement all of the recommendations will be presented to the town manager for him to make a decision. My personal opinion is that the structure should include an assistant director an administrative assistant and because of the DPH grant I would also argue that there should be a clinical social worker because the grant really envisioned that there would be by a racial teams with clinical social worker and a member of the community with lived experience but you know not not everyone has to follow my opinion but I think that the the team will the leadership team as a whole will all submit recommendations and on a number of different points and then it will be up to the town manager to make those decisions. I'm sorry am I understanding correctly that the recommendation is not collectively from the leadership team it's individual recommendation. The leadership team is going to create you know a formal report that will come from us as a team but we also agreed that there are points where we are in you know that we don't all see exactly eye to eye that all of the recommendations would go forward so that you know the town manager has all of the good thinking of the team on the issues where we agree or on issues where we might think that there might be a better approach all of the various thoughts would go forward so we'll we'll go forth with all of the of the ideas it's not we're not trying to necessarily reach consensus on each point and only put that point forward all of the ideas will be submit. You know the other piece of this is that we all have different skills skill sets so that that that we brought the bear bear bear here so because of that and you know again we all have our little our our our areas of expertise so based on that the smart smart thing going to do is and if it is effective and efficient thing to do is is is to bring bring forth those those things we're we're that that they're in it you know we'll we'll have sort of for for say so that we put all all our options out there. So while I understand that what do you guys have consensus on is there a consensus on an assistant director what do you have consensus on as a group? So I think we are still in the process of finalizing the report like we've we've we sat down as a group and decided what are the topics that we would need to cover in our final report and have divided some of those responsibilities up so not one person is writing me this massive document and and so we envision that we will divide the work and then gather again to review the comments that are made by each of us and so we're still in the process of that. I think I would safely say that we all agree that we should have an an assistant director position but we haven't gone through the laundry list of everything that we think should be in the final report and the recommendations we just started to think about that work this week. Okay that's fair thank you. Pamela quickly just a quick question around the clinical social work you know be interested in in hearing more about your recommendation in regards to that. Obviously again it would be you know exciting to hear more about it especially if it is in terms of social worker that you know has you know lived experience or has experience you know working with the community in a way that is you know you know nurturing and holistic and you know as opposed to you know sometimes how some clinical social workers the route that they can go if they're very traditional in in terms of their training so I think it would have to be kind of like you know kind of dissected more in terms of when we're talking about making that type of of recommendation. So that recommendation comes from the current brand our funders actually thought that that was the model that they were funding and so there is a disconnect between the Department of Public Health grant as it was written and the current structure of the department. So my recommendation is that we lean more to our what the funders thought that they were actually providing financial support for so that we can retain the financial support and while it's unlikely that we would be able to because the grant specifically says responders and pairs of two with a clinical social worker and a member of the community that is not the model that was hired it is not likely that that would be the model that we could stand up so I'm trying to think proactively how can we lean into what the grant said that we were going to do and one way to lean into that is to have a clinical social worker on staff I also the current grant also addressed providing for the provision of services in the community and that grant that aspect of the grant has been fulfilled by a contract with the wildflower alliance having someone in-house who might be able to perform some of those functions gives the department a little bit more flexibility about the types of services that it provides in the community. Can I just ask a follow-up because I thought I heard Chief Nelson say that two of the new responders one has a degree in social work and one is working towards a clinical degree is that one has a degree who's one is completing a degree in social work okay so would one of those people at least count as worst partway to that meeting exactly what one of one of the individuals helps us meet the current requirements of the grant right our leans is at least towards the grant requirements yeah I mean you know obviously you know nothing against grants and of course we need we need funding and things like that but we just want to make sure that it's also staying true to the vision of you know crests and the needs that the community has as opposed to trying to meet the grants needs you see what I'm saying so I think we want to you know focus on what it is that the community needs and what are some of the issues that crests is handling and and some of the visioning that you know that we had see as if we had when we were creating crests so do we think we can move on to hearing a little bit more about training and then if more questions pop up we can have like a final question about training and also dispatch and numbers and data and all of those good things. So in terms of training as Chief Nelson said folks started on the 16th of January they're going to be undergoing seven weeks of training so it'll conclude on March 1st they're four weeks in and so far it's been a variety of sort of different pieces I don't know if there's questions I'll sort of leave it at that for now but are they following some of the same trainings that the original responders got? So our main sort of onboarding for our original responders included motivational interviewing and then training from the wildflower alliance we are continuing to do that and then we're also replicating many of the same and also adding some additional pieces in and now that we've done this once before we're also sort of you know changing the order of how we're onboarding them and things like that and then also by the nature of the department now existing for a year some of those trainings are different because some of those practices have been established that when our original responders went through those didn't exist at the time. What training is being given to respond to low-level emergency calls so to speak? Yeah so so far we've had all of our folks participate in mental health for first aid responders we've had the wildflower alliance covers that and then we've also had an autism and law enforcement coalition come in we've done a variety of sort of online trainings some of the DPH trainings that public health trainings that cover some of that but they've done things on opioid use and things like that we're also leaning and heavily on some of our community providers and members and so for example we've had the Amherst neighbors come in they've also gone over and partnered with the family bridge resource center they'll be meeting also with Craig's door so also looking at some of those folks that are navigating that sort of on the ground and working with those folks to talk about sort of best practices and approaches around that that's a couple of them. So I know that safety is always a big concern so I purpose out by asking this question is there any part of the training where there's an option to write it up write write it on with an officer just to observe? So it's something that we're exploring that was something that wasn't done the first time around due to collective bargaining agreements and then we've also reached out with Amherst college to do some of their ride along their model is very similar to ours in some ways to their csa's that are there the community safety assistance and so that's something that we'll also do and yeah. Thank you. In terms of those trainings that that they're receiving you know of course one of the heavy emphasis the Crest responders is around de-escalation and mediation and obviously yeah when you're doing de-escalation of course you know in terms of communication compassion and obviously with a anti-racist focus and anti-racist lens so are they getting that type of training? Yeah so I think that right so there's de-escalation training that is specific de-escalation training we do that in a sort of two different ways and then I think Debra I think I appreciate you talking about the way around you know communication and compassion and pieces are always a part of de-escalation right and so that's really infused throughout our training so a couple of things for example their motivational interviewing touches on that the wildflower alliance touches on that we had all of our new folks participate in the national day of racial healing that we did as a staff hosted events our original responders are all trained as facilitators in that we also have started their first week off with restorative justice circles particularly around work ethics professionalism trust integrity some of these other pieces and how that kind of translates we've also had conversations around the mission and initial call types and so that also brings in some of those pieces specifically around the anti-racist lens even you know I would say even in some of our report writing and trainings and things like that how we refer and how we write our reports and things like that they've also done we've had folks visit the Amherst survival center and talk about pieces around that it's we've done a second autism I mean a second RJ circle this is part of the autism training we also have them read and review both the leap report and the DPH grant and so that's heavily that lens is heavily obviously in that language and all of that kind of that information we've also done some new training specifically through the massachusetts office of victim assistance with human traffic awareness we've had them connect so far with veteran folks so all of this I think is to say that all of those de-escalation really translates and looks different depending on who you're working with right so the conversation with our veterans outreach person is going to look really different than potentially with our our motivational interviewing person and things like that so those are a couple of them and also sorry the other thing I want to ask that specifically is we're also having them do microaggressions racial equity 101 and race and racism 101 trainings as well so that's always covered and those will be repeat for some of our other folks but those they all participate in that okay that's good because again you know and I think everyone already touched upon it and I think last meeting in December that we had there's always the question of safety you know for the responders and obviously since one of their you know I'm assuming essential functions is de-escalation you know that would be an important part of them to receive that training you know with that anti-racist lens and you know inclusive lens put into it so doing that well obviously will help in terms of them being able to stay safe when they go out to responding to a variety of different calls and especially as we were wanting you know them to be dispatched to more calls and you know and again being able to service like you said right there's a variety of different populations you know veterans you know population based on race different different abilities sexual orientations genders and you know all of that so we want to make sure that you know the responders are getting that that type of specific training I know beforehand you know with the previous director that was one of the the focuses that he had this may not necessarily be a training question but what collaboration if any have you guys had with the northwestern district attorney's office so we've we've had some collaboration with them uh back in September so prior to our new folks coming on um and we also see them at some of our um some of the other meetings that were in um but we may reach out to them there's a series of different trainings that we may reach out to about them as well so I think that would make sense um and because I think um if anyone knows Dave Sullivan and the office um this would be something that they would support um Cress so I think it does make sense to actually um if not have someone come in and speak with the people that are in training talk about best practices um things that the DA's office do with no liver crimes because again um spending as much time in court they would support anything that keeps people um from being arrested at a court if if they can they they're that supportive of those kinds of um diversion programs yeah we've really enjoyed our overlap with Dave Sullivan and every time our responders have met with him they we're we would echo that exact same sentiment so I appreciate your comment okay so um unless anybody has another question about training we'll move on to dispatch and operations okay so um as we were um as previously stated dispatch or request responders went live on dispatch back in December 18th and they started with um six call types which I think was above kind of what the national standard was in terms of how many you start at initiation but I think in terms of timeframe for when we went live was probably right on par since then we have added an additional call type of um presence walks so uh slowly but surely as we start getting used to operations and protocols and things like that we are the whole best to continue to add um calls and specifically identifying what types of calls responders are going to go to and again how to kind of label that call type to capture the work that they're doing so um since they went live in December as of today they have 70 computer aided dispatches entered into the system um off the top of my head I don't have the breakdown in terms of what specific calls that they were but 70 is a pretty hefty number in the last month and a half or so um can you remind us again what are the other uh um calls that they're that they're getting and also can you talk a little bit more about presence walks what does that mean and then I have a couple more questions sure so uh they started with cress admin um cress assist citizen cress assist business uh well-being checks cress mental health cress follow-up and the most recent one is the cress presence walk and so what that presence walk is is just the responders getting out into the community for being able to document those engagements and interactions so they get a call to do the presence walk so they get dispatched to do that I guess no so so being so being on dispatch isn't simply being dispatched so to speak so it's not always that someone from the dispatch center is going to send them out somewhere responders depending on uh what they have going on on their day can self initiate but when they do self initiate we still want that work captured so they would call into dispatch to identify where they are so that if dispatch does get a call they'll know where they are and they'll know who they have available to send on whatever call they have so that's how the the walk is incorporated okay so it's basically something that they were already doing but now it's just capturing that through dispatch correct okay so um so then really the the the ones that they're that's new but kind of like that was initiated back in in December 18th is the admin assist citizen assist business well-being and follow-up so so those were all the ones that were already in place in December yeah the newest one that was added was presence walk yes yeah no that's what I'm saying so okay so yeah um yeah so presence walks it's it's new but not new I guess is what I'm saying is being captured by dispatch so yes great wonderful but it's not necessarily new in terms of what I would envision as new calls like that they're getting new calls like I said I mean last time when I was at you know at our last meeting and you know the chief and I got into a nice healthy discussion um was around the fact that I felt like other calls should they should be getting dispatched to just like noise complaints and any other calls that that don't include violence that can even be disorderly uh and and those types of calls and so that's what I'm more interested in finding out why on those calls um being you know why and they've been dispatched to those calls and I know I've been given the the um you know explanation of safety and so on so forth and that's why I'm just kind of like they've received you know the five that were there received a lot of training around the escalation keeping themselves safe and so that's why I wanted to ask more questions around what the training is for the three new responders because again doing that and so I don't I don't see where there's this um emphasis in terms of this protective almost paternalistic um sense of protection um when you know the the the focus of of Cress is to do all things um nonviolent that you know that they should you know that they can do so um so yeah I want to hear more about when uh when are the other calls going to be rolled out so I don't have an answer for when the other calls are going to roll out I think that is dependent on responder training and other things that we're currently evaluating in terms of standardizing some sort of policies and procedures um and I also think that there needs to be a look at what additional calls we can add and again keeping the responder safety in mind because although you mentioned uh nonviolent calls like a noise complaint as an officer in this town for 25 years I can tell you that noise complaints do have the potential to escalate very quickly um and so then it's identifying you know is this one of those potentials or is it not one of those potentials so again I think we need to start small and continue to work to that I'm not saying it can't happen but I think that that's just not where we are in the department yet yeah but that's where I disagree and I think that a lot of reasons where the noise complaints have escalated is because the police have gone to those noise complaints and I I spoke about this at the last meeting because I was one of the ones that had been at a noise complaint where it was just adults black professionals who are at this event at someone's home and and the police wanted to just escalate with us when we were just trying to de-escalate so that's why I feel very strongly about the fact that I think a lot of times it's the police that escalate and so that's why it would be important for the um press responders to be there when we envision press responders and it is in the leap report and I and I went and looked at the leap report you know and looked at some of the other um you know programs that we study like a hoots and the one in Denver and everything that basically and they big cities they have a gazillion issues and things like that and and they didn't have those those types of um when their responders went out they weren't accosted they weren't assaulted they weren't you know if you looked at those statistics that we relied on back then I mean I've looked at the more recent ones but the those that we relied on on before and in our leap report that that that leap created for us and then it was only in like 0.2 percent out of all of the calls that they went out that they actually contacted the police for the police to come in to assist them and these are big cities and so we're talking about Amherst so I'm just like you know you know like this was two months ago I had had this conversation with chief and we're two months later and there's still no plan in terms of adding other calls the one that you added like I said is something that they're already doing so great that now it's going to be documented through this dispatch wonderful however when uh some of these other calls going to be added again I don't have an answer for you I think that that's a continued conversation that we're having not saying that it can't happen I'm just saying that's not what we're at as a department yet and when are you all going to be at we as as as as I took the last the last time we're going to crawl two months ago two months ago two months is too much and one one the things I said this is going to take as long as it takes we're going to gig get it right but we're going to crawl walk run we're going to learn learn learn learn from all the whole all the these calls we debrief we debrief the calls we learned again it's going to take as long as as long as long as it takes uh and one of the one and one of the big things is response small response fun to save save save save you know so sorry sorry sorry Griffin said she's been here for 225 five years I've been in this this business for for for a while while also we both had to make decisions where we're sent sending folks hit the harm harm harm harm's way that's not any easy this is a decision to to to make and we're not going to take and um and in order in order to risk with these responses responses save save save save I take you the issue with the with the with the being described as paternal paternal and holistic one of our our biggest job is to protect our people take care of our people and that's what we do every day and that's what we're doing with with the responses and that's what we're doing in in as as as as we build build this we are going to get to the point where we're going to do do more for for calls we got to get more I guess I guess you say miles under under our tires here to get it just to make sure we can get it right right and that and that really is the bottom bottom bottom bottom bottom line starting to starting to Griffin Griffin Griffin Griffin said it's not that we're not going to get get get there we just can't tell tell tell tell you right here and now when that will be it's not it's not it's not it's not it's not going to be tomorrow it's not going to be next next next week I doubt that that is and and that's not to say that it won't won't be five five five five years years from now but it's going to be a it's a working progress here by one yeah I get that Chief Nestlin I mean you can take issue with whatever I say but I'll also take issue with what you all are saying because I'm speaking for the community here right I hear from the community that they want these things yesterday right because they're the ones that are suffering on the other end of this this conversation me being part of it too because I just told you that the experience that I had you know what I'm saying so I'm including the community in terms of the experiences that I've had with the police here in Amherst so I'm included in that right so I'm just kind of like I get I get it you all want to crawl right but as the community we do not want you all to crawl you know what I'm saying we want we want this we wanted this up and running from before it's been over a year in regards to this situation and so it's been a battle every point has been a battle with just you know getting to this point of this patch and now it's more a battle to get it to the point of of getting the calls that could be dispatched to Crest and then there's this part that you all continue to say without backing it up with data in terms of this the safety concern where I you know I don't know I mean you're not bringing me facts for me to for me to actually work with here in terms of why you have this the safety concern without bringing me facts and so that's where then I get concerned and I ask questions right and so you know you can take issue with whatever I say but I'm still going to say it and so I'm going to continue to to to make my point I both I see you had your hand up for a little while I do thank you so I understand both arguments I understand crawl walk run but I also understand Debs frustration with the length of time that this is taken and and so my my my comments before my question is I get that you're training an entire new department and that will take some time so yes we agree we give you that that's going to take some time but the calls that we're talking about where we consider a low level and yes from where you're sitting it may not it may be low level to start with but to your point can escalate into something so understanding that not everyone is going to be able to go out and take those calls right away um is there anything that you guys are doing to say okay we have crests as a large department and not everyone is ready to take those calls but maybe into chief Nelson's point all walk run here's a small subset that we can start with crawling and then get into a place of walking is that part of the training to say we're not going to train everyone to go out start with but maybe one or two people can start with these what we called low level calls well we wouldn't if I'm understanding your your question correctly identifying certain responders who can do the call but not others that what you're okay to start with to start with yes right so the the reason why we wouldn't do that is because we want to field them in pairs of two right for their safety and as written in the grants and if we identify particular individuals who are trained more so than other individuals then what happens is then we run into if somebody takes a day off or if somebody is in a training or if they're just not here that day and we get that call and now we can't go because the people who are trained in that particular subject or area is not here so ideally we want everybody trained together so that we're we have that ability to switch up the teams and send whoever is available versus just certain people and we want to create equity too amongst who's getting sent to what right if there's certain responders that have sort of training you know the ones who always get sent to something when certain responders aren't getting sent to anything we want to try to keep that that there too I understand that I'll table that for now my initial question though you mentioned since they've been taking dispatch calls they've been about 70 can you tell us if from those 70 any of those had the police been dispatched would have led to anyone being arrested was there any deterrence crest responding was there any deterrence in arrests I I wouldn't know that without reading through each individual one of those calls and the narrative and what the call type was so I I can't answer that with okay understood listen right so I um I oh did you have an answer to the question Pamela well I have a bit of information that I think goes not goes to every specific question about whether someone has whether it has to whether there's been a diversion from arrests but to Deborah's question about a plan for stepping up the other types of dispatch calls so I think that we've shared a couple of times that the town has received a non-fiscal grant from the harvard kennedy school their governance performance lab and the gpl the harvard gpl is planning on embedding a fellow in the department person's not going to physically be here but will do the work that's called upon from from the department and we have delayed the start of that fellow so that it would coincide as closely as possible with the start of the new director because we want the new director to have the benefit of that fellow and the expertise that's coming naturally so we've been in some preliminary conversations with the gpl about the start of the fellow and have identified as the primary um work for this fellow um work around increasing the number of uh types of calls for dispatch and drafting protocol and those things so there there are steps in place to further us down the line um the um and we've also asked the because the harvard the grant is scheduled to end on june 30th and we have asked if there's a possibility for a year's extension so that the new director would have the benefit of that so I think that you know while we can't speak specifically to this is the timeline that these things will occur we are definitely trying to put in place the supports that would get the new director and this department in a position to continue to add and grow the call types with the support of the harvard gpl fellow thank you for that update panel lisa hi thank you um so miss young actually just answered a little bit of where I was leaning into um but I had a question but I'm going to ask it still even though um I believe um sorry I'm I'm so sorry don't recall your name the femo with the black hoodie from dispatch um but pretty much my question was out of all the call types that were listed on the december 19th um list how many of those calls actually received the highest volume which I believe you said you don't have an answer for that so as you do you not have an answer because you just don't have that information on your person or is there no specific established way of how data is being collected from all these incoming calls I don't have an answer I'm guessing you were talking to me correct yes all right because we both have black and I just wanted to throw this back right so um yeah sorry thank you so yes of the 70 calls there is a way to be able to identify specifically what call type each of those were I just don't have it in front of me right now okay um is that something that you can provide for the next meeting okay um I just think that it would be um very helpful especially since you know one of the um things and I'm looking at the 1219 um list with the crest mental health I think if we had if more calls went to the mental health section um I think it could shed some light on what Ms Young had mentioned in regards to a clinical social worker um my following question is out of those 70 calls were they sorry I have it written here how many of them were actually properly dispatched so did any of them require any police presence so that that sounds like like two questions there right um properly dispatched means to me that the dispatch center called to the crest department and said we have this call for you at this address um that's different than the dispatch center reaching out to the police direct and telling them we have this call for you at this address okay so you can answer both so in terms of calls into the crest department of that 70 again without looking at each of those individual calls I don't know which was from dispatch and which was self initiated by a responder okay okay that's it for now have rolled and then I'll jump in I just had um I think was it asked my question for Sergeant Lopez I was going to ask if we can get um those dispatch logs for those calls um rather than have you go through all of them if you can just share them with us I'm happy to just look through them for our next meeting as well before our next meeting so you can do a public records request and we can um identify specifically what it is that you're looking for and then have for you we've already as a department received a couple of those okay um so I guess just to follow up and again there might not be an answer to this question but do you have any idea if of the 70 calls that have been directed from dispatch to crests whether they cover a range of the things that are on the yes list so far like do you know there've been at least one of each call type or they've again I don't want to say yes and be inaccurate so I would have to look again at each of the 70 calls um when I looked last yes there was a range um I'm trying to think of I think so but I please don't quote me on that because I'm not certain without looking at all of them and then have there still been additional calls coming in just through the regular crest number yes yes there's still people that will call the crest department direct and um in the banks community center people are still welcome to to walk up to the window and ask for whatever assistance it is that they need and then um so in if something is happening outside of crests current operational hours but it's something that crests could potentially respond to would there ever be cross departmental communication from the police to say hey we did this wellness check last night we really think it's something that you could handle like maybe you could do a follow-up with them is that something that's a possibility yes and it's already happened where the various shift supervisors over at the PD have dealt with a particular call and identified that that that crest might be able to do some additional follow-up as well as as dispatch taking calls outside of crest hours and calling up again say hey this is something that we took and um you might be able to better support this person yes and fire as well and it's as well in the fire department as well yes but we're a little more more uh stress stress stress stress we can't we can't right now we can't refer we couldn't refer for for for someone that where we're treated to treat treat treat and and we're trying to end it because there's no there's no wall if if it's if it's uh if it's identified who that person is to some some someone there's not uh there's not there's not treat treat treat them or not in in the chain of uh treat treat and then then medically we can't just say here you can't we can't we can't say oh you know we'll call for for something then there's all all kind of work there's all kind of kind of restrictions about that we're trying to figure out a way to do to do do do that of that now that that's that that again there's a lot a lot of state regulation that keeps keeps us from doing that and it's to protect people from from from um with the new responders on boarding is there a target date for re-expansion of hours so i don't think that we have decided that we would um expand the hours at this point i um my thinking around that and the leadership team um hasn't come to i would say a definitive answer but i anticipate that there will be a new director in place late mid-march and the new responders will be finishing up their training on march 1st or 2nd i think having them work with the current group of responders for some additional time until that new director is on is probably a good thing um and then the new director can make a decision about expansion of hours knowing that um the new responders have been fully trained and have had some some uh opportunities to work for some period of time so i think that that will be a decision for um for the new director but the timing should um align with the new director and the um being appointed and the conclusion of the training of the new harry's that was very convoluted but i yeah but you i think you understand what i'm trying to say like yeah the new director will reassess once everyone is up to speed um i guess and this is maybe just an idea to throw out there that could be talked about with the new director but i think it would be really helpful to get a more clear understanding of like when a cit trained officer might respond to something versus the seat the co-responder from cso versus now chris coming in especially with some clinical staff on um so maybe that's like for down the road a conversation that could incorporate all of those people to talk about kind of the different approaches that each right and one of the things that we have been doing is to have um our i guess three responders have gone through cit training at this point so we're trying to provide them with that intense professional development and i think where the harvard gpl fellow will be really helpful is in helping to guide some of those conversations and provide us and provide us with the support around that like one of the things that harvard has been very clear about is that they're not placing a fellow in the department to study us right but the person is really here to to produce deliverables so if we say you know we want your help in creating a triage protocol for dispatch that would answer your question of like when does it go to crest when does it go to cso when does it go to a cit that's the product that we will get so we're we're thinking about those about those questions and trying to plan for the development i mean and i will take full responsibility for saying that i felt very strongly that um that that work should be done with the new director and not with the internal leadership team so that the new director will get the benefit of of that work and of that expertise rather having it shared among us and the person not you know getting a second hand and are getting our getting our opinion on things i think having the new director have the ability to work with the harvard fellow very closely will be the best thing for the director and for the department long term i think that's all my questions yes so for me just to kind of wrap this up it's just to again say that you know i want to see a some type of plan in terms of how these dispatch calls are going to be added by when whether it'll be with this with this team or with the director even though you know i'm i'm still concerned and cautious in terms of the new director coming in and having the power to do some of these things because as you all know in terms of cswg recommendations it was for you know crest take on and to assist like in some of the other programs crests were were were doing you know 15 20 of calls or what have you which then at the end of the day ends up being that there doesn't have to be more hiring of police right as opposed to you know continuing to have crests respond to those to those calls so part of why i am talking about that and the community is talking about that because i have people coming to talk to me about these things is because that's what they want to see in the long term right is crests doing more of those calls that can can be focused on de-escalation as opposed to having the police do those calls so again i want to see is what's the timeline how are these things going to take place from you all and or the new director when that that new director comes in so my my my questions are going to be continued so am i to understand that you've completed your questions for the leadership team on this topic i believe so jinx jinx shocking right so i'm um so i'm wondering uh so we obviously tried to all be here together together so that we could be yeah i don't want them yet um to respond i'm wondering whether it would be possible a lever for me to make you co-host and turn over the meeting to you or do you need a me to read to stay for the remainder of the meeting um i think you can make me host okay and i mean this is recorded so there's other things because i you know you might want to hear about our feedback about the forums and things like that but it's recorded so you can listen to it well i i think um i don't know if i've shared with this group before um that i'm unable to drive at night because of issues with my vision and so um i would need to get um uh my ride is sitting at the stable and if you guys i assume that we would take more time but if we're finishing early rather than um then have someone wait for me i think if that would be okay that would yeah make sense absolutely well we appreciate all your time tonight and hopefully next week next month we won't have to meet with you because there will be a new director um but they probably will be on like day one so yeah we hope that maybe last you know this is our last or second to last meeting with you all and that we'd love to also get a copy of your recommendations to the town manager just so that we have an understanding of you know what your time has encompassed more so than what you've been able to tell us in these meetings and to understand kind of the vision for moving forward maybe maybe what could be helpful to the town managers for us to provide CSSJC to provide some recommendations um that could be helpful to the director that could be a good idea i think but i want to thank you all though for for showing up today and being willing to um share information and interact with us and respond to our questions appreciate it yes thank you thank you so however i've made you host all right and there you you did have a participant raise their hand um so i don't know if the hand is still raised but okay um usually we wait for people to comment till the end of the meeting um so i will come back around at the end of the meeting for the public comment um doesn't make sense to just do a public comment since the group is leaving maybe the group wants to say something for their bed okay yeah that that it seems like the person wants to do that i think that might be a good idea all right we will do one quick one first one and then we will have our full public comment at the end all right all right thank you it's it's Martha Hanner i live in a Lism Drive in South Amherst and thank you very much i did have a couple of questions thank you very much to the Cres team for for coming and all your explanations i also attended the Cup of Joe in January and learned a little more about Cres and so my my first main question is that the budget for the next fiscal year is being worked on right now in January although it doesn't take effect until June and so the question is you know how many Cres positions are in the budget and if your report is not going to be completed for a few months will your report have any impact then on the decisions about the budget or will it be too late to impact anything that the town manager or town council decides so the budgeting process for the town has just gotten underway like i believe maybe the beginning of of january and so it was a little delayed and the initial round for the process was for the finance department to send us the report from last year and to look at what the requests were from last year's budget and for us to update the budget narrative that's the first part and the way that it worked last year which as you know martha was my first year going through it it was a three-part process with first a budget narrative then a one-on-one with the finance director to discuss each the department's budget and then a final submission or request so we've completed the first part which was to submit the budget well to submit the narrative and in that narrative we did include some information for what we thought would be the proposed structure so talking about the creation of an assistant director position because we are anticipating hopefully that that position will be part of the new budget so we've completed the first stage we haven't yet gotten to the second stage of reviewing the finances to to submit or to have that one-on-one conversation that we haven't I haven't received an appointment with the finance department to have that conversation so i'm doing that process on behalf of cress and anticipate that when the new director is hired i will walk hand in hand with that person through the process so that you know they're not going into the process blind but we'll have some suggestions so we are we are aware that you know this transition is going to occur mid-process and i think you had a second question but i'm not sure if i answered it yeah so the that you answered partly that the position of assistant director hopefully will make it into that the budget for the next year so we wouldn't have to wait a whole right year for that yes and the other question was about the hours when i was at the cup of joe it was stated that violent incidents tended to occur after 10 p.m and so then i wonder whether it's possible fairly soon in the process to extend cress's hours into that second shift from 4 to 10 p.m so that then cress would be covering at least the evening hours still while concerns about safety you know later have to be worked out right so as you heard me say earlier i i think that the extension in so the the way in which the ships ran before was from 8 to 8 so it was from 8 a.m until 8 to 8 p.m so it would require an adjustment to you know have someone perhaps do tend to come in i can't do the math right now but anyway to extend to 10 to 10 p.m and i think that the the structure of the extended hours should be a decision for the new director i also think that having our current new hires on for a little bit of time so they've just gone through the training they'll have a really a month under their belt when the new director comes in having that person be able to make the decision about what the ship looks like i think is in my opinion sort of the best way to move forward it is certainly has been the intention that will go back to extended hours one of the other concerns about extended hours is that the extended hours were here in the bang center and the bang center has typically closes at 4 p.m and so we have to think not only about extending hours but where should those responders be located physically so that they're accessible to the public and to people who need them and so that it's not so there's there's a couple questions there that we've been thinking about as a leadership team and i think we'll try to have some recommendations in place for the new director but i think it will be the new director who will ultimately make that decision okay thank you um dina pat also has her hand up i'm just going to ask if she has question for the leadership team actually no is this a public comment time we will have an additional public comment at the very end sorry oh no that's okay let's miss pat unless you had something to say for for the um the temporary leadership leadership team if you do you can make it yeah if that's okay yeah yeah okay so first of all i want to thank the leadership team for taking on extra role but very quickly what i've heard tonight to me is not only frustrating depressing and discouraging but this is all about racist practice and policies by a time government and what i meant by that is a time council who refuse to fully fund crests and you guys meet month after month discussing crests i just want to issue a warning that crests will fail again if it's not fully funded there has to be three shift supervisors in order for this to work i want to thank uh miss pamela for adding assistant director but just to be clear when cswg uh when we made our recommendation the program assistant to do administrative duties and the shift supervisors are supposed to be administrators so in situation where mr all left one of the shift supervisors would have been appointed to be temporary director but it did not happen because the time council refused to fully fund crests because the police machine is pushing back on having the existence of crests this is all about racism in our town and it's not it's nothing like you know against the leadership temporary leadership team it's about the time council that make decision it's about the the finance committee that refused to fully fund crests we're still talking about resident resident oversight after several years although seven gen and leap already made all this why i why are we wasting time in time in this town racial healing uh anti uh bias lens this and that this is all just talk crests will benefit marginalized group in our town and our town time council doesn't feel that they need to do the right thing that's all i want to say for now thank you miss baton we'll have another public comment at the end but everyone that had his hand raised i don't know if he has a question final question for us i i i don't want to ask during public comment okay it's all i think councilwoman elicia walker and arani have their hands up this is ronnie parker i just got unmuted but you called on elicia so should i go or wait no go ahead ronnie go ahead then we'll bring in elicia okay thank you i really found the report of the leadership council and your questions to be extremely interesting informative thank you i would like to reiterate something that was already said that i've heard a lot in this town which is that i know that a snail's pace is what's planned with care because then i understand all the reasons why but i honestly believe that it has really been too small a slow pace and i'm troubled by the discussion that you need to have you must have 24 hours coverage i feel like it's pretty clear when the priorities are and they're in the evening and at night so i would say we don't need i'm not sure why we would need a crest team to be available during the nine to five shift i'm not sure how the shifts are switched i'm just wondering if there's been any consideration to just moving crests work to different time periods when there is more of a need without feeling like we have to have this nine to five thing because i don't know what really happens then obviously things happen because the crest team has been responding and i also was very um i'll be quick i've also was very taken with the 0.2 percent of denver's experience in terms of where's the escalation coming from and i wonder if we couldn't there's some place where we couldn't do more we couldn't pull up that research again and look at what's happening in massachusetts um and other new england or closer to us towns to see um how they studied that and if we couldn't look into that ourselves i know we're not able to access the police logs i feel like they should be open actually to the public myself but um there must be some way if this group cannot have access to it for crest itself to study that because i think it would be important for you to know where does the risk where where's the risk and where's the danger for yourself so that's my comment thank you thank you ronnie oh hello um hi everyone um my name is alicia walker i wanted to just take a moment to thank you all for um continuing with this incredibly important but also complicated and challenging work um i just had a couple of things i wanted i wanted to say just to hope that the team will keep these things in mind as they're finishing up their report um and one of the things is just keeping in mind the original goal and purpose of the crest department and why it was created and so again just remembering the emphasis on assuring that bIPOC residents are feeling safe in this town and are not falling through the cracks and this department was really created with the intention of serving residents who may not feel comfortable calling the pd but may still need a response um and so i just really feel like sometimes that gets lost in the conversation and i want to you know sort of shift the focus and emphasis to that um some of the things that were discussed tonight that i hope that you all will look more into um one i think ronnie just elaborated really well on the timing i think it's very clear that a lot of um crisis situations occur during hours where crest is not open and i think thinking about that is going to be critically important to the success and the actual uh effects that crest can have on the community and the other thing is that this notion of crest responders being unsafe or having some type of liability when responding and i understand those concerns but i think we need to move past the concerns and start thinking about what solutions can we put in place so that we do feel comfortable sending uh these responders to these calls that we actually need them to be responding to instead of just continuing to say that it's not safe at this time so like what would make us feel safe like do they just need additional training and if we're thinking about the trainings right now what trainings can be added to the onboarding schedule so that we feel safe adding uh sending the crest responders to these calls um because i think for me i'm just a little bit lacking understanding of what is the huge difference between having a new person assigned to the pd who has training and then response response to calls um and so why can't we just make the training or provide whatever information or tools we think the responders need and then send them to the calls um i don't think we need to continue delay delay delay we're not safe i think to this point we could have had those trainings in place and so i i hope that you all will be looking at how can we reach these goals rather than why we don't feel safe trying to do these things at this time i think it would be incredibly important and and strong for you to make those recommendations um so those were just a couple of things that i had in mind again i want to thank you all so much for your time continuing to work on this that i may have additional public comments later thank you thank you councilwoman alicia walker thank you everybody and again thank you leadership team for listening to the public um so i still have a question everl do you have a question oh i i do but i'm trying to follow the rules where i don't think we're allowed to to to respond to public comments oh no no i know but i'm oh we haven't officially closed the public comments okay that's officially okay we are back to the committee i don't know how to send everybody back into the audience though um it says remove permission to talk so i hope that just okay hopefully that means you're still in the audience so you should have a library the option to um to move them from panelists to attendee in the participants list adjacent to their name there should be three buttons and there will be uh we can't do it because we made you host but as as host you should have that ability i think i moved everyone back into attendees okay you did okay all right and i hope that you didn't think i was trying to silence you by using the button that said remove permission i don't like that wording but um all right everl no so um my question was and this came up with one of our comments um understanding what the hours are now and i think miss young said that the director when he or she's on board will decide the hours with with the current staff were they hired with a specific set of hours or is their extension in consideration because that could be problematic no so the the current staff were all hired knowing that they might have the possibility of working nights and weekends and that's included in the collective bargaining agreement so we i mean there are a limited staff here on saturdays and um you know per the collective bargaining agreement so part of the mechanism is there for this to happen i just think that it's a decision you know the director should have an opportunity to decide how they're going to feel those roles and who's going to um you know going to make those decisions i think you know do i have ideas about what i would do if i were in that position but um i do think that that that's best for the department long term if that's a director's call and thinking about how to structure that going forward i agree with you that makes perfect sense um they're the person who will be lead at the department so i think they should get the prerogative all right well thank you all very much and thank you for allowing me to uh dismiss myself a little bit thoroughly yes thank you again for joining us at the night thank you everyone thank you um okay so i'm looking at our agenda so um i was gonna say yeah if we could kind of move up the police chief and press direct the search update yep let's move that up and the budget letter and then debrief and i'm gonna suggest we table clinical and support options for tonight because i think it's 8 30 and you know you know so everl do you have any updates about the police chief search i do and to the best that i can give um information without compromising the police chief search so um we met our last meeting was um last wednesday and we started with um 11 applicants um and in our last meeting what we did as a committee was we narrowed down that's 11 to about five so we are now inviting those five to first round interviews they'll be conducted on zoom we're in the process of working um we propose some times and dates for those interviews and so the town staff um has been very gracious and helpful in organizing those um those interviews what we're doing now as a committee is we are working on questions that we want to ask or prospective police chief so um i'm happy to take back questions from um cssjc if there are any particular questions that um you'd like to be asked on your behalf i'm happy to do so in terms of um i think we have very um qualified candidates um there are some people that were very um wrote very um sensible smart um cover letters um that address diversity equity inclusion there are some that spoke spoke specifically about um healing you know creating racial harmony given what the country has been through over the last few years so that gave us in a window into our prospective candidates um and so i think um i i i think we have um i i do have some concerns as to whether or not um the pool is large enough but we left the application open and we've gone back and reviewed um prospective interests and since we met in december we haven't had um anyone else applied we've expanded the search to different um social networks so to speak where you find um police chief um applicants and we haven't had um that many we actually lost one person who actually accepted um chief police search in a different state and so they withdrew because they accepted another job um almost right away so um we did reach out to the remaining ones to engage that they're still interested in and should be considered and they did say yes so that is why we're moving forward with interviews as quickly as we can um not necessarily trying to hire somebody as a placeholder but making sure that we at least have qualified candidates that we know will address the needs of the town can can i ask some questions yes um we know obviously i understand it's a search and obviously there's certain confidentiality aspects to it but i guess for me like you said i mean this is a very important um hire um of course we want to get someone in there as soon as possible because you know that's what the the community deserves however we need to make sure that yeah that we have a good healthy pool with you know diverse um you know applicants and everything so i mean without you going into specifics um do these five kind of presents you know some type of diversity in terms of everything not just diversity in terms of the the the the root sense of it but in terms of ideas and and so on and so forth like for me when you say about asking questions it would be you know and i've i've always been clear like do you have an anti-racist philosophy and what does that mean you know so that would be a question so would these five be able to you know be strong in regards to to that type so that's what i mean by a healthy pool i i would say yes i think there are some that are stronger than others um having been on this committee and understanding the needs of a town i would say that there are some that are stronger than others and one of the things that the committee has done we've been very open and vocal about it we actually had a two hour meeting where we literally walked through every single person's cover letter resume and had those kind of very point in conversations to say is this person right for the town and do they carry what we are looking for um as a committee and as a town so um yes there is diversity um some people i think have more than others um i can say though um one of the things and and this is through no fault of the town was that we had no female applicants i was a little bit disappointed about that yeah yes but but you did say though that the application is still open hopefully there's still outreach and hopefully you know that they could still be kind of um you know recruiting you know to to some organizations or institutions or places that could have you know candidates that that would be more diverse including females that could possibly apply for this position yeah so it is going to stay open until we actually say quote unquote fill the position yeah and then the other thing do you know like what the process is going to be so you do these first round interviews then do you know what the next step is and so on so forth or yes so we interview um the five and if we like any of the five we schedule a second interview for those and then we recommend three to um town manager and then those three after the second round interview would be invited to in person interview with the town manager okay and so and and the town and the town manager has not opened it up to have kind of public forums with the three finalists with the community i don't think that's going to happen i think that is the intent of this committee and i can tell you that the town manager is not part of the committee at all so he's not involved in any stage of this um he's removed himself from it um there are quite a few people from diverse backgrounds on this panel um that is making this decision and i think he's trust in that collectively i think there is either eight or nine of us um and he's not even um he's only been to the first meeting to introduce the panel to each other but other than that he hasn't been involved in the process he's removed himself until we actually decided collectively and send him those names for his consideration yeah so that so he's doing you know kind of really traditional kind of search process as opposed to you know what the community has been saying which is involve us in in the process right and make sure that we're also asking um these questions of these candidates so all right thank you you're welcome lissette do you have anything to add or ask not at this time okay um so i guess briefly about the crest director search um so let's see in december because we didn't meet last month in december we had a similar process of the seven or so of us who are involved in the search committee we met with human resources in the town manager first um and then we met without the town manager to discuss the applicant pool and we had i want to say at least 19 come in and we had first round interviews with eight people um of those eight we suggested four to the town manager it was my understanding that there was going to be a second smaller team that was going to meet with the town manager with the four applicants um and then that there would be meet and greet opportunities for the candidates with the crest responders um i read today on i believe it was the amherst current website that those interviews have happened and there was meet and greets with the leadership team but it didn't mention whether there were leaders or meet and greets with the crest responders i did send an email um and i mistakenly had sent it and not included the human resources director on the list so it was everybody on the search team but the person who had the answer to the question so i don't have an answer to whether the crest responders met with the candidates or not um but it was my understanding that was supposed to be part of the process and so it sounds like from what Pamela is saying that they intend to have somebody hired to start by mid to late march um so and from from your understanding the four that that you all are sent to i guess the next smaller group um washrong candidates um in terms of the same question i asked uh everill yes i think that there was definitely diversity of experience lived experience professional experience um diversity of thought yeah there were both female and male candidates in the pool am i allowed to say that and that's not giving out any yeah um so i think i think that hopefully there will be people who are able to carry this work forward whoever it ends up being um and um for me also what i'm interested in especially with crest given what happened with earl is someone that um is able to feel that they're empowered to you know to to push through the vision of crest as envisioned by cswg so someone that's going to be able to be um you know feel strong to to do that um given some of the town's resistance you know the feedback that they've been getting do you think like those four there would be people there that could that could do that i do okay well that's good that gives me some hope hope is the last thing to die right okay yeah so that's that did you if i may ask one question um did you get a sense that um and i know they're potentially all good candidates um but did you get a sense that um if there needs to be pushback against the town they would be comfortable doing so like in terms of being stark defenders off um crest's original core mission i think that certainly there are some that would be stronger at that than others and i think that um i think that there were some who had a better understanding of the town itself um and the other you know the history of crest as opposed to coming in kind of with less of the history um and understanding of the town's culture well it makes sense thank you say um all right let's let me i'm gonna share my screen and put up the budget letter i think in light of some of the conversations some of the questions that were asked by the public i'd like to look over this and if we agree to send it send it ASAP so that at least the town has on record that we've made some recommendations about what we would like to see with the budget for a crest um and everybody see that yes i can see and so this is the letter that we had started to look at back in december so obviously i would change that um but worry how do you do you want me to read this out loud how do you guys want me to do this well are we ready it wasn't yeah can i can i on the very first um paragraph can that be regret to say the the community safety and social justice committee reaffirms its support as opposed to would like to yes i think i started is it in the packet where did i see it but i'm just looking at part of this and looking at um and thinking about what we talked about i think right here talking about css jc is advocating for reworking the program assistant position i think it needs to be into an assistant director position and an administrative assistant position does that yeah that's a minimum like i said i think you know and and miss pat said it too in terms of like shift supervisors so that then we have it be staffed like 24 7 but in in light of today's conversations um does it make sense because um doesn't make sense to say rather than advocating for a rework in the program assistant we just flat out ask for an assistant director because i could see a position from the union to say to devra's early point you're taken away a union position so in an effort to like mitigate so to speak that kind of pushback um rather than you know quote unquote taken away position we just say um from what we've seen the department is best served with an assistant director position being created for continuity um in the event like something like this happens again and i think they also said that we lost americore oh yeah i wanted to ask about that and i we yeah as we know the dea is is severely under under staffed and underfunded it was not a sustainable solution um um i'm sorry i'm just going to take that sometimes out changes questions comments concerns i think there was i think those are my um my my only um concerns i think in public comments um i think it was miss pat um i think she mentioned something to the effect of um um racial healing i would suggest adding something to the multicultural center paragraph to say you know that is a step towards um i know it says unifying cultural resources um but i'll also go further and add that this is this is a step towards racial healing and to show that the town of amherst is committed to racial healing those are my comments do we want to use the word commit in fair commit to what i guess well i'm struggling with the wording language paragraph commitment you're saying yes would i mean demons is i would demonstrate amherst commitment to yeah thank you racial equity i don't know racial so we changed the wording to be more straightforward in the first paragraph to just say reaffirms its support advocating for an assistant director position and an administrative assistant position needing more money for dea without talking about americor which no longer is operating in d i impress and drawing together multicultural center and racial healing so those are the changes that have been made it's good to me do we have to take an official vote on that on this i think so okay so if somebody moves that this letter be sent to the town council somebody could then second it and then we could vote so moved thank you have rolled is there a second can we take it because we're chairs right we can't so so let's say i second that motion all right so we will take a vote and the vote is to send this document to the town council and town manager everald i lisette i debora yes and i am a yes it passes send budget leather i'm gonna make sure i'm saving it i'm gonna stop screen sharing all right so the last item on our agenda for now is the debrief from the forums and there are three things noted communications feedback civil rights violation feedback and community outreach efforts the forums feel like a really long time ago right now um i want to say that the communications feedback was mostly around um actually communicating the physical location of cress and what the hours were and that kind of stuff we heard some confusion from community members um around that so that should be more clear i'm also wondering if that and an outreach plan really need to be discussed with members of the crest leadership team now that i'm thinking about it well i think i think we can discuss it with them next time but i think it's not a bad thing for us to talk amongst ourselves we can order kind of like what's the priority to bring up to them because it's kind of like we need to be very you know focused with them and stuff so i think it's not a bad idea to have this conversation but yeah as i remember it too in terms of the communications feedback it was around kind of like the hours sometimes the kind of the office especially around crests not feeling like it's you know open to the public and things like that kind of having you know that type of not necessarily a barrier but in you know in you know in that kind of way like not feeling like it's open for them to be able to access the responders right and then some people still saying banks community center is not as accessible because of like you know closed doors and different things so i think you know i remember getting a lot of that feedback around you know communication and then also like i had heard too just you know more information about crests right about the responders about what the responders do you know how you can access them because now there's two ways right in terms of dispatch and a phone number and that had been something that CSWG had also kind of you know when the first rollout was coming out it was to say yes you need to really advertise you know about the responders and how people can have access to them so i think we heard a lot of that in the feedback so i think in terms of advertising have we done any like mailers to like every home in Amherst like can we can we look into doing that just like because i'm pretty sure i got a an application to register to vote by mail and i think it was postage paid so i think the town has the capacity to for us to create some kind of flyer that introduces the entire town to crests and we can just drop in everyone's mailbox utilize the postal service yeah i think that's a good idea and i think um that i think you're frozen like okay i couldn't tell if you were frozen so it must have been me um i think that's a good idea and i think that there's also times like and i think it just passed where they sent out the census but i think that they've done things like coupled up a townwide flyer in like the census or in your water bill or in you know and obviously that wouldn't necessarily reach like renters household so i think looking at doing just like an every door direct type mailing or even that newspaper that comes out yeah the reminder yeah yeah i think like one of the things and i think someone had brought that up and i had at one of our community forums that when there was a gap right so so remember because cswg even though we had asked the town managers to keep us in place until our recommendations were put into place he disbanded us and then you know and then you know of course we created the charge for cssjc but then there was that that point in the middle when there was no one there was an implementation team but there wasn't any kind of group monitoring things and so during that gap we were not communicated about a lot of things and part of it was around the advertisement and things like that so a lot of things fell through the cracks during that time and i think advertising for crest so what i remember Earl doing a lot of was out you know going to places and stuff and but in terms of actually advertisement putting it out there which was one of the things that i was always you know talking about when i was cssjc at wg and i know i would have been kind of you know pressuring for those things to happen that didn't happen and of course all had to pick his battles right it's not he was new and stuff like that so it's not like it could be like hey i want this you know money to be spent this way and that went together but that could have been something that if there was a group in place we could have kind of you know talked about so so i think that that's something that we need to kind of bring up again because community feedback from our forums brought that up i would also suggest that we are in an election year and a lot of people will be doing the early voting so maybe have like large size enough placards in every polling voting place with crests visible because a lot of the older people will do their go in early and vote so that's another way we can get the message out as well um and again this is a this is a town department so put it in every town space yeah that people voted and i also don't think it would be um farfetched when people voted or walked out they're handed a flyer about crests and i think this year as or 2023 and previous in 2022 they were serving as constables in the voting locations so rather than having a police officer there they the crests responders were actually there at the at some of the locations at least i know i saw one at mine i think during the school vote but terms of community outreach efforts because i want to say in at the in-person meeting there was some talk about doing some outreach in specific apartment complexes um and i think lucette you had talked about doing some outreach in one of them or or helping at least connect somebody to do the outreach in in the complex yes so it was actually harder than i thought it would be but we do have local bus stops um and actually some flyers were put in for the oversight board but that was actually a little bit difficult considering that there was three different flyers for english spanish and i believe mandarin or chinese um i believe well i placed some in laundromats because i think that those are areas where a lot of people i don't know go to so bus stops and laundromats um so i can do the same for any crests advertising yeah and then i think the other one too was just for us to to hold uh forums in some of the apartment complexes um next time to kind of go to where the community's at so i think the next time we plan forums maybe if we plan some for the spring time um we should think about that the oaks has like a community room and then the university village apartments has a community room um one other apartment complex that i was thinking of but now i can't remember what it was but some of them have like spaces for gathering and then there's you know i know roland green i think has a pretty active person there that will send out like an email to the community to say you know these are some things happening or here's information about this or that so um yeah i'm thinking like um you know when we think about doing our next um community forums we can just work with jennifer i think she'll still have a good idea yeah you know like but you're right you know it would be for us to go and meet at and their different like community rooms and you know be able to hold forums there and maybe we can add that to the agenda Allegra like when when we think we want to do our next town forum when it makes sense and these would be in the community so we'd be going there because you know the feedback we got is that yeah some people don't feel safe going through like we had it at the town hall there's a lot of people that don't feel safe going into that building you know so if you want to get different voices we want to go to the community well yeah definitely food and some coffee and tea and juice and things like that i mean obviously the other thing too and this is just between us like when we do our next town forums is just make sure we have kind of a plan a note taker because i think that that was a little bit discombobulated you know like when we should arrive you know all of those things because i felt like the first one we were scrambling a bit and then well are we done talking about the community outreach efforts because then there was the other the civil rights violation feedback i wonder if it would be worth reaching out to the human rights commission and seeing if that's something we'd want to have like a joint meeting about because i do feel like it's bigger than us and bigger than and did everyone see the comment i don't know if we share that with everyone a leg around about the civil rights we could also add it to our next meeting yeah that's a bigger discussion discussion i mean i think it's really important and i think that do do we this is a question for pamela i think did we have a sense of when the report about rob was going to be due she said march march slide into the other word um or if it would be a separate committee yeah i think it would be it was a separate board um because um but but the the person was saying like like um you know like um rob it would be an oversight board but now a civil rights oversight board to really look at you know like the like the july 5th incident or you know some of you know the incidents that happened in the middle school you know that that board would capture some of those because right now even the human rights commission they're not able to really they're not empowered to make kind of recommendations so that this board would have like investigatory and recommendation power so that's why you know maybe it does make sense for us to kind of maybe share what the community person shared right yeah with the rest of our group and then we could put it on to for us to kind of talks among ourselves first and then maybe invite human rights commission okay one of our meetings to kind of discuss it and they wouldn't have to like attend a whole meeting maybe we could just have them you know just um be part of our meeting in the beginning just to discuss that portion or whatever other portion we wanted to discuss you right i think that's a good idea um and i am just flagging it in my email so that i will include that comment in the packet for our next meeting because i think i think having some time to kind of adjust what was said and think about how that can come to fruition what you know whether it would be us recommending you know again recommending to the town council that this become a thing and coming up with a charge for it and everything and um is that is the police union contracts um public document it is okay because um where where could we find that yeah i believe on the town website there is all of it has a section with all the why can't i talk all of the finalized contracts for any bargaining units i can search i'm just thinking out loud yeah talk about um subpoena powers just to see what the agreement is when an officer quote-unquote maybe brought before an oversight committee because that could be the town's big hesitation and argument for why there's no subpoena powers because i do think that if there are no subpoena powers the oversight board is not going to be as powerful as it should be because then it's just um essentially an advisory committee with no actual authority yeah that's always been like the the sticky point especially around resident oversight board but again i mean i think we need to get to the point where the to even kind of really discuss it and like you said look at the the bargaining you know look when they're going to be bargaining again you know those sort of things but we're not even there right because they're still at point a gathering information around the resident you know the the necessity of a resident oversight board which was things that CSWG did but like you said yeah we need to to discuss that and and see how we can get over that hurdle feeling like it would be a good idea to put the civil rights violation oversight board on the next agenda okay yeah and then we'll share the comment with with our you know group yeah and then we'll discuss it and then maybe at the next one then we'll we'll invite the HRC yeah one of the just the other thing that i mentioned when the temporary crest team was presenting because remember they're doing their recommendations we might want to think about whether we want to do some recommendations too um as a group to the town manager and town council idea i think that if i guess i'm just thinking about how limiting it is to have this we can't communicate all together you know outside of meetings that are posted and whatnot and i wonder if each of us came with a list for next time of stuff to put together and i think i think it was actually helpful tonight to have each of the team members of the leadership team present about like staffing training and actual operational stuff so i don't know if we want to kind of mimic that in our our recommendations our recommendations so that we're thinking like okay well i think we're all on the same page with it having more structured leadership and having the assistant director be a position and but there might be some things that one of us thinks of that the other doesn't and again that was interesting that they they had their consent items but and they were all kind of putting in their own recommendations and i would like to see how that pans out in terms of like how are you structuring that like is there a pamela page and a chief nelson page or is it like a topic and the different ways that each topic could go i am i am concerned about that because if you know as a as a group if there cannot be uniform consensus everything else problematic because then it leaves it leaves too many variations or options to adopt so i was concerned about that that they could not uniformly submit one recommendation they felt it was necessary to submit a general recommendation but at the same time include their own individual recommendations i think that's problematic yeah yeah and it loo it looses a lot of its strength right when you when you do recommendations like that and also it could it creates a lot of room for doubt um in terms of why there's only certain people that agree with this one or that one so the weakens it that loots it that loots the recommendations so i think you know i think that's why it'll be important for us to send in our recommendations since usually we can find consensus and we can send one powerful message but yeah so we can well why don't we Allegra what do you think what are the areas so why don't people just come up with a list of recommendations that they would like and then for the next meeting and then what are the what was all the the categories that they presented on so was staffing training and dispatch right and dispatch i guess they said dispatch and operations but okay dispatch operation well we can put like maybe we can say staffing training dispatch and an operation which kind of leaves it more kind of open-ended yeah you know if people want to bring up other things but yeah for the next meeting why don't we like folks that want to you know make you know some recommendations why don't we just come up with like everybody comes up with their list and then we can share it at our meeting in terms of staffing training dispatch and operations press and then we can just put it put it together do you want to have everybody send them in to one of us like a few days before so we compile it for the packet or we could or they can send it to jennifer and then she compiles it you know because would jennifer be safer in terms of the whole public meeting stuff march is march 13th that would be our next meeting yeah okay so if we have things to jennifer by march 8th that's like the friday before and i think that gives her enough time to actually have it posted that i forgot to do during member reports so i'm revisiting agenda item and i guess rather than each committee just automatically having a liaison they are asking us if we still want somebody from the town council to be appointed as our committee liaison with the understanding that there might not be someone who volunteers for the job so the person would come to our meetings or watch a video of the meetings and be the one who gives a update to the town council during their meetings if they are in attendance at our meetings they are not supposed to actually participate in any discussion um they are just there to observe maybe we can ask freaky given he was on this committee yeah i mean i don't know if we can choose i think yeah i think it's a good idea for us to have one yeah because we're about transparency right i i think it's it wouldn't hurt you know i don't see a downside to it i think um i think the only downside would be if we get someone that just goes back and and reports things that then we actually didn't say that would be a downside but hopefully somebody who is volunteering to be a liaison is doing so because they have an interest in what this committee is doing and they want to give an accurate representation of of what's happening um so a council person has to volunteer i believe so i think i think they the the request to me was do we want somebody to be appointed or do are we interested in having somebody serve as a liaison should there be someone interested in being the liaison so maybe we can ask freaky to volunteer i i agree i i think we should have someone that reminds a council that there is a css jc right okay so i will email lin back and say we would be interested should somebody be interested in us yeah because the way they put it i just found is so the purpose of this email is to clarify the role of non-voting council liaisons and to ask if you would like to request a liaison this year please note that upon request by town committee and advised by the governance organization and legislation committee the town council will decide which committees will have liaisons and if a councilor is available and willing to be a liaison i guess we are interested and then yeah and then someone could outreach to freaky if he's interested or alisha oh yeah that's true no no no yeah yeah no we want alisha to talk so i take that back sorry alisha um all right i don't i think we are done with our regularly scheduled agenda and if there is there that wasn't thought of before 24 hours we can open up for the last public comment yes all right um if and okay we have a hand up hello yes i'm still hanging in here martha hanner and uh south amherst here and i had a couple of things first when you were brainstorming about publicity one source that i don't know if you've used in the past is sending an announcement as part of the principles or superintendents weekly newsletter that goes out to all parents of students that would be a good way to advertise some forum that you thought was relevant uh and i and i like the sets uh you know putting putting notices and laundromats and other such places too i know we have that challenge with our judy book series of trying to publicize it notices in the in the library and its two branches is a good good uh too you know that the jones library has that one room if you come in the side entrance where they have posters and then places where there's piles of brochures you can take okay and then on the other subject i have questions for everold about the police chief of interviews and so on ever old still listening erick don't see your picture but i mean we had hoped that there would be some way for uh the public to interact with candidates or something if that's just not working out as being practical my question would be whether there's a way to sort of have the your committee publicly solicit people to submit their questions that they would like to have you folks ask the candidates is that something that would would be a way of getting you know public input i am not being rude but i don't think i'm about to answer you but during public comment master uh us as a as a committee we're not allowed well yes you're not allowed that's sorry sorry sorry but we're definitely listening and you know we'll take it okay well that that was uh just uh one one thought there and one question i think in particular that i would love to see the your committee discussing is their their thoughts about crests because it seems to me here we are selecting a new director of crests and a new police chief about the same time and it seems to me it's absolutely crucial that the two need to work together to to make crests successful it really needs to have a police chief that feels open about crests thinks it's a good idea doesn't feel threatened is willing to work with his staff to to make it them think that crests is something reasonable and willing to work with crests on you know cooperative uh ride alongs or however it takes to uh you know integrate crests better so i feel that that's one of the more important things for your committee to be asking the candidates so uh understand that you won't answer for now but anyway thank you thank you lots of very good points yeah i don't know if anybody else has public comment i will give a few minutes no a minute oh there we go miss pat okay i'll be real quick um i want to thank css jc again um so this time regarding upper funds advocacy and support for my group black business association for amist area last year so and also special thanks to alicia walker who kept reminding the town manager when upper funds will come onto the agenda it seems like from listening to thang council meeting on monday he looks like uh upper funds will be on the agenda on on um monday the last monday of this month so please spread the word we want residents to come out and push for um upper funds look you know located to marginalize group in our town including business groups we have there is 4.9 million dollars left and i feel that at least half of that money should go to people who are really really impacted during covid meaning low income resident in this town who are still you know struggling you know uh by pork businesses uh you know who needs the money um i listened to finance committee several weeks ago where they were talking i believe it's last year where they were talking about using the upper funds for road repair road repair when residents are still suffering i have a couple announcements to make um so my group um black business black business association of amist area we're going to be celebrating black history month uh the flyers will be out sometime this weekend it's going to be on friday february 23rd from 5 30 to 8 p.m at white lion so come out support black owned business white lion um white lion is also a member of bbaa so come out and hear what we have to offer please come 5 30 to 8 p.m february 23rd um thank you debra for announcing the judy brooks conversation series which um three young bba members will be speaking so i hope this will be a zoom uh gathering um debbie already shared that at the beginning thank you for doing that and by the way i enjoyed listening to both of you co-chairs uh last month when you did your presentation that was excellent and the last thing is as i was listening to the civil rights violation committee uh discussion to me i think the issue is not creating another committee i think strengthening the ones that already exist i honestly feel that this year is an opportunity to push for css jc to be included in the chatter chatter review so that it will have more power to investigate complaints and you know um actually act on um whatever the decision is i think see that our town should be very very lucky that we have a committee like yours and it has not been it has been underutilized i think the focus should be getting it into chatter we have and we have already some committee in our town that make their own decision they don't have to go through anyone i think css jc should be one of them thank you and good night keep up the good work thank you public comments martha and pat both have their hands up still but i don't know if that's because they have not lowered them um seeing nobody else raising their hand for public comment i am going to so it is 9 33 in this meeting of the css jc is adjourned i have to do something to pause the recording bye hi everybody always a pleasure