 We have a short agenda, but actually the beginning of the agenda is going to be a little bit weird because all kinds of things got kind of shoved in on Thursday afternoon and Friday, so you're just going to have to bear with me until, I don't know, 7 o'clock or something. First of all, we don't have any folks here for public comment, so we will get into other issues. Assuming this gentleman, you don't want to make public comment, right? You want to wait for taxi stuff. Okay. So let's see. We might as well start with, because we don't have anyone here from Sodec, so we will start with new taxi driver and chauffeur licenses. I move that the select board approve a new taxi driver chauffeur license for Jim Johnson of Leeds Mass on behalf of Goddago taxi company. Second. Further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. I move that the select board approve a new taxi driver chauffeur license for Jasper Lepinsky of Northampton, M.A. on behalf of Tisnet Valley cab company. Second. Further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. I move that the select board approve a new taxi driver slash chauffeur license for Irina I Blasenko of Amherst, M.A. on behalf of Celebrity Cab company. Second. Further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. I move that the select board approve a new taxi driver chauffeur license for Damon Reeves Hadley Mass for Zee Quie taxi company. Second. Further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Okay. Let's see. We might as well also then do the annual licenses, renewal annual licenses, and these are all for taxi business. I move that the select board renew the list of renewals for taxi business and drivers licenses presented dated December 12, 2011, subject to the receipt of documentation of items noted as outstanding for the calendar year beginning January 1, 2012 through January 31, 2012. And I really don't like renew the list, so renew the list slash out of renewals, okay? So we do it to renew the list for taxi business and drivers licenses presented. I think we approve the list of renewals. Well, that's fine. But whatever. We approve the list of renewals for fine. Second. Further discussion, Ms. Burr? My only comment was going to be that for those who are following along at home is that we did get an updated version of this list, so the most current version is revised today, December 12th at 1.40 p.m. So if you're following that at home, you can go look online, and I'm sure it'll be there if not tonight, tomorrow morning. And if you're following along at home, you really need to turn the channel because if you're paying that much attention to our taxi list, it's worse than us. Okay. All in favor say, aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Okay. And this gentleman, here we go with my choking again. Did you have questions about the taxi license renewal that you want to talk about, or you just wanted to be here for our taxi discussion that's going to be a little later on? Okay. Terrific. Very good. All right. Then other things we can do. Mr. Mooring is here, and he actually has an untimed item that we can deal with. So this is a Department of Transportation request for sign placement for regional bike trail. What does this mean? Tell us about it. We actually, our bike system kind of fits into that bike trail. So they want to put signs on some bike paths and on some roads to actually show the bike trail as it goes along. So in your packet is the locations for the sign. They're on North Pleasant Street from Eastman Lane north to 63, and then the trail picks up on 63 and runs on state property. And then it's also on the Swiftway bike connector is where the other signs will go. And they need your permission to put the signs on the town's public way, and that's what they're asking for. Thank you. Any questions about this for Mr. Mooring? Mr. Aiden? How does a road or a route get chosen to be on the greenway? We have no clue how this, I have no clue how this came about. It just showed up about three weeks ago and our mail saying they wanted to put these signs up. They had made this decision. We liked it. We thought it was a good idea. We brought it forward. We have no clue how it was put together. So I can't answer that question. Yeah, I mean there's a second part to that question which can't be answered either then I guess. And that is when the new bicycle route basically through the northern part of campus up to Meadow Street is established, if it ever is established, does this get moved on to it? The same way it's moved on to the Swiftway where it happens to coincide with that. It could be, but I think it'll probably stay on North Pleasant Street until we actually can do something with the intersection of Meadow, North Pleasant and Pine Street. So it'll probably stay on the simpler route which is straight through the intersection not making a left turn off of Meadow Street back onto 63. All right. Thank you. Other questions or comments about this for Mr. Moore? You didn't have any concerns about the placements or anything about it? No, not at all. And do you have any idea when they'll go up potentially? Before the 30th of this month. I do have another question. Mr. Hayden. I think it's pretty cool that we are getting a bikeway, sort of a recognized bikeway in Amherst. And it looks like the intention of this is to connect with the Neurological Rail Trail. Will they be putting out a map? There was discussion about a map. There is a bike map actually that goes out every day and every couple of years that PVPC does. And there was also a discussion about this being put on that as well as its own separate map. Anything else? Ms. Stein, would you like to make the motion? Sure. The collaborative motion that Lissa and I have amended. Excellent. So I move that the select board approve the placement of signs to mark a regional bike path in the townway as requested by the collaborative William Schwartz VP on behalf of the Mass Department of Transportation in a letter dated December 8th, 2011, period. Second. Further discussion. Mr. Hayden. Do we want to maintain some control over exactly where they go? I mean, I see the spots on the map and they look fine to me, but I'm here 20,000 feet away. And the actual spots where these are going, specifically the ones around the intersection of University Drive Northampton Road, we might want to make sure the sign gets put into place where we want it, where it's a little bit better for visibility and there's not distracting for the other vehicles that are around that intersection beside the bicycles. Well, for that intersection, the only area we actually have control over is the swift way. So the signs that are actually on the swift way are the ones that you're authorizing to be placed there, not the ones at University and Route 9 because they're actually on Route 9, which is the mass layout, mass DOT layout. It's less of an issue on North Pleasant Street, of course, because there's just less going on up there. Okay. Thank you. Further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Also, we got here. Mr. Musanti, do you have any idea if the folks from Sodexo were going to come in or not? That's my understanding. They were not planning to. Oh, they were not planning to. Okay. Well, then we can do that one. So this was added to the agenda. I can't remember if it was Thursday afternoon or Friday morning. This is a liquor license change of manager for the Hampshire College liquor license. This is the one for the red barn that we did a couple of years ago. This does not require a public hearing. And regardless of when in the process we vote on this, the chief of police is going to do a background check on this person and as is the state ABCC. So this request came in at some point and somehow didn't get to the chief of police. I don't know what happened there. But anyway, it's so it's on our agenda now and we can't wait until January to vote on it. But ABCC did assure the office that this doesn't require a public hearing or being advertised in the newspaper. And while sometimes for something like this, we say pending approval of the chief of police, I would actually rather that we didn't do that this time just in case we mess up the motion as it goes to the state ABCC. So I will note that our expectation is and Mr. Musanti knows because he's the one who assured me ahead of time that this happens, that our expectation is before it gets sent to ABCC, we will have a background check and recommendation from the chief of police anyway. So let's see. Questions or comments about this particular issue, Mr. Wald? Just close it. This is my employer for whatever it's worth. Thank you very much. But I guess at last time we still vote, right? Yes. All right. So and again for folks following along at home, because the select board does have to approve, liquor licenses are of course extremely regulated and every detail of them, anything that changes needs to come before the select board. So whether it's the space that the license is covering, the actual square footage, whether it's a manager's name, whether it's a shareholder or whatever, that all has to come before us. So some of these things are more technicalities than others. And so the change of manager apparently is more of technicality since it doesn't require hearing. So, Ms. Stein would you like to make the motion? I move that the select board approve a change of manager from Douglas Sudnick to John R. Davis on behalf of Sodexo Management Hampshire College, license number 002400104. Second. Further discussion, Ms. Brewer. We just need to include ABCC before license. Since I can't remember off the top of my head which license type it is, we can at least just say ABCC. Very good. Other discussion? And all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. And that was unanimous. Thank you. All right, what time is it? Do the special liquor license quickly? Yes, that'd be great. I move that the select board approve a special wine and malt license for Meredith Schmidt on behalf of UMass Amherst for a reception to be held at the Eisenberg School of Business from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. December 15, 2011. Second. Further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. And that was unanimous. Okay. I think the Eagle Crest folks aren't going to come in either, right? Okay. So we can do that one also. And this is a parking reservation request. Eagle Crest property management which is on Main Street is moving to a location on North Pleasant Street and they have asked for three metered spaces in front of their old location and then in front of their new location to facilitate that move. And we have the request in the map in our packets. Ms. Stein, would you like to make that motion? I move that the select board approve the request of ideal movers on behalf of Eagle Crest property management for reservation of three meters in front of 73 Main Street and three meters in front of 55 North Pleasant Street on January 10, 2012 with a fee of $5 for each meter for the day. Second. Further discussion? Ms. Burr. I just want to say how impressed I am by this man. Yeah. We're just getting so good at this. It's so obvious what we're trying to do. Thank you. And further discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. That was unanimous. Thank you. All right. Perfect timing. 645. So our 645 item is we have a couple of land acceptances and the first one is Mr. Zomek and this is for the Stoats parcel on Market Hill Road. Again, we have a bunch of information maps, et cetera, in our packets. And what can you tell us about this, Mr. Zomek? I'll be very brief. I believe you have everything you need in your packet. I'm here tonight to ask the select board to accept the deed. This is part of our standard process. The select board and the conservation commission accept the deed for every conservation parcel that we accept either if we're buying it or if we're accepting it as a gift. And I believe Mr. Morring will have a similar document for you. You have a copy of the deed. This is a purchase that we're making using CPA funds. This was approved by town meeting, the CPA committee, et cetera. This is actually the second stage of a two-phase process we've done with the Stoats is so the name sounds familiar. We bought some land of theirs off of East Leveret Road and this is land that the address is technically off of Market Hill Road. You'll notice in the deed that is a little bit more complicated deed than normal. We are actually entering into an agreement with the Stoats is for some reserved rights. They have been wonderful stewards of the land for many years and that was always part of the deal that they would like to reserve some modest rights on that land for the remainder of their lifetime or until they separate from the house that is abutting the property. So it's a wonderful arrangement, 18.5 acres, a frontage along the Cushman Brook. This is a parcel that's been on our radar screen and identified in the open space and recreation plan for many, many years and we'd love to have it be in public domain in perpetuity. Excellent. Any questions for Mr. Zomek about this property? Mr. Stein would like to make a motion. I move that the select board accept the deed from John and Susan Stoats to property located on Market Hill Road, Amherst as shown on a plan prepared by Harold L. Eaton and Associates, Incorporated, dated November 29, 2011, which property is to be administered by the Amherst Conservation Commission pursuant to vote taken under Article 20C of the May 2, 2011 annual town meeting. Second. Further discussion? Ms. Brewer. I do have a question. I'm sorry. I neglected to check the original language of the article at town meeting. We refer to it a couple of times as 234 Market Hill. Is there a reason not to include that address? I don't think there's any compelling reason not to include it. You're welcome to include it. 234 references the house itself, and we're not buying the house as you can see from the map, we're buying access on the, I guess that would be the east and the west of the house. So in the original lead up to town meeting, it was identified as that address, and all along we were interested in preserving the land behind the house. So that's why the deed is slightly different. Ms. Brewer. If I could just ask that we put in minutes just a statement that's not part of the motion, but just something like the house is at 234 Market Hill Road, just for that sort of loop back effect. Sure. Other questions or comments on this parcel? Then let's see. We've already moved and taken in. So all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. And that is unanimous. We'll lose track here sometimes. Would you like us to sign this now and give it to you, or do you want to get it from Mr. Moore? It would be wonderful if possible. We're a little short on time here as December ticks away. So we don't forget. We'll have to come back. Can I do that again? Sure. We'll sign the right lead here. Thank you very much. Thanks for coming in. All right. Mr. Morring has something similar for us. And so this is watershed land in Helm owned by the Hastings family. And this is a donation to the town. This doesn't involve any CPAC money or anything like that. It is. The Hastings actually called us up and offered to donate the land. She did have one requirement, which we didn't think we were going to meet, which was they wanted to do it by the end of the year. So we actually will meet the requirement because you'll vote tonight. And DEP is having a hearing on the property shortly. Actually it's Thursday. And that's actually a required DEP wants to make sure we're acquiring watershed land that's actually in the watershed. That's the only reason for the hearing. So the land is in Pellum. It does a but our watershed. It's in the watershed and a but several of the streams that feed into the Pellum watershed. And it's a great price. Can't beat it. And is this similarly land that we've had on our radar for a while wanting to acquire or? If you look at the map, it's land we've had in our air, in our, in our sites. When we look at the watershed, we look at the streams and then we look for the, what's called the zone A around the streams, which is 200 feet. So any land that incorporates that zone A is on our radar and when it pops up, we'll try to get it. Perfect. Mr. Zomek, anything you want to tell us about this land? Questions for Mr. Mooring about the Hastings parcel in Pellum? Mr. Hayden. Not a question, but just a sort of an observation to continue. There's, we're there for the folks at home. We're looking at a map with red sections of parcels that are already within the watershed preserved within the watershed. And this is just a white spot kind of in the middle of lots of red. So it looks like we're beginning to fill in where there was a gap tooth. Yes. We are one of the three largest landholders in Pellum. Is that right? And so have you or the town been in conversations with Ms. Hastings about this land for a while or did this take by surprise? It just, it actually came very quickly. How about that? Very quickly. Terrific. Well, that's very kind, very generous. Thanks very much to her. Ms. Stein, would you like to make the motion? I move that the select board acting as the water commissioners accept the deed from Angie Hastings to 18 acres of property located in Pellum, Massachusetts for water supply protection purposes under the provisions of Massachusetts General Laws chapter 40, sections 39B and 41. Second. For the discussion, Mr. Aden. I had to do a water analysis for the coffee makers at the Lord Jeffrey Inn. It turns out when you, I don't know what the process is when they're making steams is very important. We actually have very, very good water. And I think the number of the reds quadrangles on that map show why. Excellent. Good to know. Any other questions or comments from Mr. Morey? And all in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you. And that's unanimous. And would you like to take the signed deed also or? Yes, I can wait. I was going to wait for the trees discussion too. To the what? Tree debris. Oh, good. Oh. Feel free. Lazy again. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. Now it is 654, which is the same as 655. So our 655 item is 655. Taxi business requirements expected in 2013. So we wanted to put this on an agenda so that folks in the taxi world know that the town has been looking at issues of taxi regulation and compliance and consumer protections for a while now. And this is an issue that's at least as old as my time on the select board. And it's been something that's been discussed within the select board, town manager's office, and with the police chief for a couple of years. And the recommendation that we expect to make for 2013, and so we're putting this out there now so that people are aware that there's going to be some opportunity for comment, et cetera. But to get ready for this is we expect to change the taxi regulations in town to require that all cabs be metered. Currently, metering is not a requirement. Zone fares, which would be a zone map that indicates different fare information, is a requirement, although there are a couple of companies that do some cab meters currently. But we expect to recommend that this would be in effect for a year from now. So we're trying to give people plenty of time to prepare because this would take some financial investment on the part of the taxi companies. We believe that by requiring meters in cabs, it will solve and really clarify a number of the regulatory and consumer protection issues that the town has faced. So as I said, it's not a done deal yet, but this is just to kind of get the information out there that the expectation is for January of 2013 that that will be the new requirement. So there you go. Mr. Musanti, anything you wanted to comment on regarding that? Just reinforce that we've had a pretty rapid increase in the number of taxi cab businesses operating in town over the past couple of years. And in your role as the licensing authority for taxi businesses, we're working with our police chief town manager's office and the taxi cab companies themselves to work on making sure the vehicles that are in service are properly inspected and the drivers are properly reviewed by the chief. Management plans are on file and are being monitored in terms of complying with those management plans. And we also want to take steps to pursue customer satisfaction consumer protection. So that's one of the reasons behind the concept of replacing the zone system with a metered fare system. But we give all of the players in the field a full year to give us their feedback on that. And so we can come up with regulations that would be effective for 2013. Thank you. Questions or comments from anyone? Mr. Hayden? Just a quick question. I imagine that we're going to be hearing a lot more about this details as we go along. So maybe there's not an answer tonight. But I'm curious as to what information we would be getting to town would be getting from those meters at all, if any at all. Or is that something that needs to be decided? I don't know the answer to that. One of the things that the meters do is they're built into the cabs themselves. So it helps protect the consumer for having a regular and regulated fee structure. But also it ensures which vehicles can actually be operating as taxi cabs. So it's to help create a level playing field for all the companies that are competing in the business. It's to help protect consumers so that they are being driven around in safe and compliant and regulated vehicles. And it's to help the town really to be able to manage and enforce the taxi fleets doing business here. So there will be more feedback, but we're just putting it out there. Mr. Hayden? Do we get medallions too? No, I'm sorry. Whole different pocket. Ms. Purer? I also mentioned that word at the agenda setting. And again, so that is an expense that the companies would have to go to is to install these things. And that's quite purposeful for the exact reasons that Ms. O'Keeffe just outlined, including the fact that you can't take one out of one van, mini van, and stick it in another mini van. Because that's exactly the sort of concerns we've been running into. So one of the things I think will be useful for us to have as we go through this is I know that there have been these ongoing conversations with the police. I think having a better understanding of just sort of won't say checklist. But the list of people who do what in terms of who follows up on the business address, that inspection side of it, and who follows up and how often they get the actual vehicles that are being treated as cabs. How do they get inspected or looked at by the police department as being the thing? Or at least what has been our experience and what do we intend might or might not change associated with that? I mean, certainly if there are fewer cabs on the road, then obviously that's fewer things that need to be looked at. But just to give us a sense of just all the different people that have been involved in this, because I think a lot of times people just see it as, oh, the office processes this paperwork, the police chief, and they sign off that there's not like felony conviction or something, and then it's just over. But actually there is a lot of ongoing which Mr. Bessendi also alluded to in his earlier remarks. So I think outlining what those things are I think gives people a better idea that this is a little more of a big complex issue than they might originally realize. Thank you. So a lot of it is, as you said, it's follow-up on the town's end, but then a lot of it is also self-reporting requirements by the companies, and whether that's not being understood or whether it's not being followed kind of to the T, the formalization, the formality of the meter system will help to kind of ensure that compliance. Any other questions or comments about this? Sir, anything you wanna add to this since you've been here? Okay. See, you're all set. Okay, all right. So that is the end of that issue then. So our 705 item, we still have four minutes for it. Do we have anything we can talk about for four minutes? Ms. Brewer. Well, probably Ms. Stein would like to do a liaison report, but I'll go ahead and ask another question about the taxi thing just to give us a rough sense for, again, those listeners who are just desperate to know what we're gonna do next with this. When we might look at this again, given obviously it's budget season and all the other wonderful things we do all year round, what kind of the intent is so that we stay with our timeline of people having plenty of notice? We don't have a process outlined for this right now. Certainly people are gonna read about it and they're gonna give us feedback. It's really the chief of police, the building inspector and the office that deal most intimately with this and they will be really studying this and making the recommendation to us. This has been sort of the informal recommendation all along that really we gotta look to metering. And so in talking about this again, we decided, okay, how do we get from here to there? Well, part of it is giving plenty of notice. So let's help us to get our ducks in a row to figure out what the process is gonna be to see how the regulations need to change in order to make this happen for 2013. So the taxi companies will have notice as we sort of figure this out, but also they should feel free to let us know. Any thoughts or feedback that they have on the subject already? Okay. Anything else? Ms. Stein, is there anything? Any announcements or comments you wanted to make? Don't just do my liaison report. You don't have to do a liaison report yet. We can. Okay. No. But thank you. Just filling in time for you. And I appreciate that. All right, so yeah, I think we can just go ahead then with the 705 item because now it's 704. So the 705 item is the budget preview and Mr. Musanti is by regulation of the town government act required to present his proposed budget for the following fiscal year to the select board and the finance committee by January 16th. He will be doing that on January 13th, Friday the 13th this year at four o'clock in a joint meeting of those two bodies in this room. And we only have one more select board meeting between now and then. So this is an opportunity for him to give us kind of some big picture thoughts on where it looks like the budget is going. Get some feedback from us and whatever follow-up we might have at our next select board meeting, which is going to be Tuesday, January 3rd. So Mr. Musanti. Great, thank you. So this is a budget preview, sneak preview of our FY 13 municipal budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2012. And I think what's important is to do a very quick refresh of the last three or four years about how we got to this point in time because it's relevant in terms of how we think about next year's budget. We have a current year budget of just under 19 million, which was an increase of 1.8% that was voted by town meeting. That represented the fourth, and we hope final consecutive year of state aid cuts. We've had cuts of state aid that was supporting about 28% of our budget. We're down to about 20% of our budget supported by state aid, including a 32% drop in what's called unrestricted general government aid as the state was attempting to deal with its own fiscal problems. So that had a tremendous impact on us, on the town portion of the budget, which is not including schools and library. We've reduced the municipal workforce by about 10%, 25 positions over the last four years. And then with the support of the select board and the finance committee and ultimately town meeting, we under, and the voters in Amherst on one piece of this, we came up with a number of gap closing strategies over the last four years to manage our way through this fiscal crisis relatively well so far. Given that we had a multi-year gap, the strategy that we coalesced around required about two thirds of the gap to be covered by budget cutbacks. And I mentioned the workforce. We also looked at property tax override, 1.68 million that was phased in over two years last year in this fiscal year that helped close the gap. And we, with town meetings, I believe unanimous vote adopted local option meals tax of 0.75% and increase the hotel motel tax. And that's generating about half a million dollars in recurring new revenue. And that's prior to the Lord Jeffrey in reopening. So that will go up, that will go up some more, we believe next year. So that's a very short, and we had a few twists and turns along the way, but we coalesced around a plan and we've been able to implement successfully so far. You'll recall back in October, Sandy Pooler, our finance director, presented preliminary financial projections for next year. And he made a point of saying that, based on those early projections that we really felt this could be a substantially less drama and less drama around the budget is actually a good thing because it's by its nature then more stable than it has been certainly the last couple of years. Having said that though, we are entering what state leaders have called new fiscal reality, where even as we slowly come out of this very deep recession, the rate of growth, job growth, and state revenue and then local state aid is going to be lower than historical averages. The recession has also affected some of our other local revenues, particularly new growth from new construction. We're estimating about 450,000 being added to the tax levy next year, which is comparable to the current year new growth based on the tax rate that was just approved. But it's about 25% below our 10 years or average of new growth, which is about 600,000. And then we're projecting a modest increase in state aid of 2%, which is Sherpeets projecting a 12.5% cut, which is what I was doing last year at this time. So based on all of that and the projections and the finance committee's review of those projections, a preliminary guideline was promulgated by the finance committee suggesting budget growth of about 2.8% and for the municipal portion of the budget, that's a little over half a million dollars in budget growth from our $19 million base budget. It's my intention to present to you a budget that meets that target. And it'll be, we think, at or near level services pretty close. There'll be some tweaks embedded in that, but we think with our projections on wage growth and utilities and some of the other fixed costs in the budget that we can come in with a budget that is essentially intact at about 2.8%. I am going to be included and we talked about this when you and I talked about budget guidelines, select board guidelines and select board performance goals for myself this year about long-term planning and prioritization about what are the longer-term staffing needs. So we intend in the budget document as appropriate by department reference what if any staffing needs there are out in the future and be able to begin really putting that out in a more organized way for reaction and discussion. So 2.8% is a very, a very modest increase, very tight budget. One of the biggest drivers of the budget going back 10 years now has been healthcare and this budget is no exception. Based on our most recent projections from this month, I am planning at this point to recommend no premium increases to our health plans in the next fiscal year. That'll be our second consecutive year of being able to do that and that's based on our claims experience over the past 24 months and some projections going forward. With the cooperation of our employees, both through the insurance advisory committee and through our collective bargaining process, a number of plan design changes have been implemented. Co-pays have been increased and relatively we believe we've saved well over $3 million since 2006 by implementing those changes and so we are optimistic heading into next year that we can hold the line on the working premium for health insurance and that helps us tremendously in terms of coming in with an overall budget that we hope we think we can keep at 2.8%. Elsewhere in the budget, a couple of highlights for you. As I've said, as far back as last spring, a town meeting and then at the discussion at the November town meeting about War Memorial Pool, it is, and it's also included in your preliminary budget guidelines to me. It's my intention to submit a budget that includes funding to operate the War Memorial Pool and open it next summer beginning the last week of July. We are still waiting on the state, on the grant announcement as I said to you last Monday night, it's any day now, but we have a project timeline as such that we're optimistic we can get the work completed between now and around June 1st so we can get the pool open on time. So there will be funding in the LSSC outdoor pools budget that includes that within the 2.8% target. In addition to that, we have some other items. For many years now, the town has funded one crew within DPW workforce, the highway division from projects whether it's chapter 90 road improvement grant monies or other capital projects and those crews have been allocated for that work. I'm working with the DPW superintendent, Mr. Mooring and Sandy Pooler to transition some of those costs back onto the town budget and that's a cost item. I'm still working up a final figure of what I want to do there. The primary benefit of that will be to allow the town and the DPW to have more flexibility in assigning work related to basic maintenance whether it's potholes or other maintenance needs that are out there and a way to do that is to have more of that crew funded out of the regular budget. We have other insurance costs that are going up. We've been fortunate through our bid process and through some competitive pricing to hold the line on building vehicle and liability insurance but we are expecting some small increases next year in the general services budget. I'll have to build those in. We're also, we'll be having the town clerk will be conducting three elections next year because of the state primary, the November election and then the regular town election. So we have to budget another 10,000 or so for that. That will be funded about 50% in a reimbursement by the Commonwealth and we will budget that revenue. Revenue as well. At this point I'm not envisioning adding personnel to the budget. There are some job duties that are shifting as we transition and there's that natural employee turnover but I'm not envisioning presenting a staffing increase for fiscal 13 particularly with the money as tight as it is. With that I'm going to stop and see what questions you may have at this point. Thank you very much. So this is partly to give us a sense of what are programmatic or staffing changes either plus or minus that we can expect from the budget in particular so that if there were to be anything dramatic we don't then say to him after he's gone through all of this effort say no you shouldn't have done that. So at this point you're not expecting significant programmatic or staffing changes. Things that are not, you're not expecting things that make a difference to the customers essentially the citizens of town as far as what they expect except the addition of war memorial pool. So that's the kind of thing that we're kind of on the lookout for and trying to anticipate. So that's excellent news. I mean the difference between a state increase and a state aid cut like there's nobody here I think who has dealt with a state aid increase yet. So this is really just enormous even though it is a very small increase the difference between a cut is just huge. So this is a very different place that we're in than we have been in in the last several years and it feels good. Let's hope it continues. Questions or comments from Mr. Musanti about that budget preview? Nothing. We also have the finance committee chair here who is welcome to comment if he wishes. Could you tell us a little bit more about the project money in DPW kind of translate a little bit that in a little bit more detail for us. What does that mean that they're funded with project money now and what are these projects and how does that tie your hands? They're basically funded with either capital or grant dollars. So for example, the biggest capital project from which staff have been paid has been our downtown sidewalk work but that project is nearing an end and then there are some funds in our chapter 90 road grant where there's work related in support of paving projects that the DPW undertakes in a support role and will pay staff out of a capital account. And so that's good on one level but it does reduce the flexibility that the superintendent has to reassign work and still stay within budget. That's great. Other questions or comments? So just thinking about our budget guidelines, one of the things that we talked about was specifically level services. That was our expectation for this year because the increase as we've talked about is really very small and even though it feels dramatically different and it is dramatically different than a cut, that's not the time to start adding a bunch of new exciting things both because you can't afford it and because as Mr. Musnanti said, we're in a period of a new normal here. So building back up to a structural deficit is not the goal after we've worked so hard to eliminate that. So I appreciate very much the coming in in accordance to the guidelines there. I meant to actually read the guidelines before I came to the meeting tonight but I did not get a chance to do that. Is there anything else critical in there that we wanted to reference in regards to the budget so far? I would just reinforce your opening sentence and your guideline talks about fiscal sustainability and that's in this new fiscal reality that we're operating under. And the budget would not be balanced using reserves which was another plank in there. And we still are hard at work on our capital budget. I don't have those recommendations ready for you but there'll be a, the JCPC will be busy beginning in January reviewing capital requests. We did make progress in the current year capital budget based on the budget plan to increase the allocation to capital so that it's up to about 6.5% of the property tax. It was as low as 6% the year before. We have a policy goal of trying to get upwards of 10% of the tax levy allocated to capital so we're still well below that but because we're able to up it in the current year that's one primary reason we were able to take on the road improvement bond, the four and a half million dollar bond that town meeting approved. And we're in the midst of finishing up 10 miles of road work in town this season. So you'll be hearing more about capital as well on the 13th of January. And are you hearing anything new from the state at this point? Obviously they're very early in their process. We'll hear from the governor his first expectation about budget information especially local aid when we're at the Massachusetts Municipal Association Conference January 20th. And then of course they have their whole process after that but among the things we've been warned about so far and that people should keep in mind kind of as this goes forward is we're still in a very uncertain place with federal funding and what our legislators have told us is that there's a great deal of concern at the state level about the degree to which the state would need to backfill the kinds of programs that federal government might cut and thus having less money available to go to municipalities. Are you hearing any particular rumblings from your colleagues in the state at all? The most recent news is that every year in December there's a revenue forecast hearing convened by the legislature and so the state's chief financial officer which is the secretary for administration and finance, Jay Gonzalez and then a number of economists from academia as well as the Mass Taxpayers Foundation offer their own economic forecasts of revenue that the state might expect in the coming year. The estimates range anywhere from about 2.8% to about 4%. And so the goal at the state level is to arrive at a consensus on a figure and have that be the basis for the legislative process and the governor's budget so we don't have that number yet. I know that at the Mass Municipal Association level our statewide lobbying organization for cities and towns we are pushing to have the what was called one-time state aid this year from the state surplus that was distributed this fall which is about 514,000 to the town of Amherst, about 65 million statewide. Have that be incorporated back into the base of state aid for next year. That would be a roughly 4% increase which if you look at the Mass Taxpayers Foundation forecast for example that's roughly the amount of state aid growth. So having state aid grow to back the cities and towns by the rough size of the growth in the state budget is one avenue we're exploring. That would help us 4% would certainly be better than 2%. It's another 250,000 or thereabouts to help solve all of our budget needs above and beyond what we're forecasting. Thank you. Other questions or comments? Okay so we will hear from you again about new wrinkles January 3rd. At that point you will be expecting to know the water and sewer rates on which those funds are based on at that time and so we expect to announce the water and sewer rates at that meeting and then we'll vote on them our last meeting in January which is January 23rd. So folks can just get ready to learn the water and sewer rates in the next couple of weeks. Anything else then before we move on from this subject? Ms. Brewer. One thing I'm wondering if it will be part of the work on the FY13 budget is the variously named survey of town properties and the condition that they're in and the work that they might need, et cetera that Mr. Rehanowitz was gonna work on on our behalf because I would think that that would play into based on my years ago experience at JCPC that would play in some of their decision making looking at kind of the big picture on the building and then the immediate needs that it might have. So do we have any timeframe associated with that? Don't say it. It's a work in progress. I'm working on it. I don't expect that to be part of the budget. That report is part of the budget specifically but there will be some requests in the capital requests that are building and facilities related. The good news being that given the investments we've made over the last five or six years in particular in town hall, the police station, bang center, middle school windows and things like that Wildwood School Roof, we're not expecting big ticket capital requests coming forward at least in the near term for buildings because we've made those substantial investments already. Any other questions or comments? And we will talk about this again in January and then we'll talk about it for every meeting up until town meeting and then all through town meeting. That's just the beginning. Okay, thank you very much. So then moving on to the town manager's report. My town manager's report, I've got a couple of items and Mr. Mooring is here actually for the first item but let me summarize briefly and then you can fill in all the gory details. This is a follow up status and action plan related to tree debris cleanup following our October nor'easter where we had tremendous damage to trees both on public property and private property and has been a gargantuan effort on the part of the town to perform cleanup. We engaged a local contractor Wagner Wood in the immediate aftermath of the storm in a very intensive way helping with the initial tree debris removal along the public way and as part of that, having that became clear to us and we asked more than once to our colleagues at the state emergency management agency and the federal emergency management agency about possible reimbursement for debris removal and it was made clear to us that it's for debris removal related along the public way and in the public right of way that tree damage on private property is not subject to reimbursement. We've made a lot of progress since then in our debris removal over 6,000 cubic yards of tree debris has been removed from the public ways, just in the public ways. Mr. Moreing in your packet, which was a handout actually on your desk tonight in a memo dated today, we have some more work remaining to be done Alan Snow, our division director for Parks and Grounds has done a street-by-street inventory of what's left to be done. We've got about 1,500 cubic yards of tree debris remaining along the public right of way, which is another seven to 10 days worth of work in a comparable amount along the edges of the road that are private debris that has been hauled there. Mr. Snow has done a street-by-street inventory and we have a finite list of those locations. I am proceeding with recommendation from Mr. Moreing to engage in a new contract with Wagner Wood to complete the town tree debris cleanup. For the public property. And that, as I said, it will take about seven to 10 days and that will be beginning this week and then weather permitting, et cetera, et cetera. I'll get that done over the next 10 days or so. At the same time, it is our plan to contact property owners on which there is a, from our list, where there is debris piled up that is not from public, not from public trees and make an offer to property owners to also have Wagner Wood pick that up, but for a price that we think is very, very competitive, $30 per cubic yard plus a $10 pickup fee, which we think is very competitive in the marketplace. And also we think compares favorably to the $50 per ton disposal fee we're charging those who bring their debris to our transfer station for disposal. So I just wanted to summarize that for you and if there are questions, one of us can answer them. I hope. Ms. Brewer. I appreciate this level of detail. This is really helpful and gives us a real sense of the scope of just how much more work there is to be done. One of the things I'm wondering is, I have, we are always trying to put more stuff on the website and I do really appreciate the updates we've been doing. We've been doing a great job with that saying this is where the crews are gonna be next. These are coming through regularly. It's really good to see. One of the things I'm wondering with this new option, just so that people don't think this is like some sort of semi-shady deal where hey, if you give us some more money, we'll take care of that for you. That there's some sort of sheet of paper that's gonna get handed out to people whether and if they're not home, like exactly how is that process gonna work? So something on letterhead that says these are your options, contact zone, so to do whatever, since so many people won't actually be home. I wanted to show you crew. I'm gonna have Mr. Mooring explain that more fully. We have a list that's been developed that Mr. Snow has compiled based on his own visual survey street by street, but Guilford might wanna add some of the details. You're explaining it very well. That's exactly what we were thinking of doing is we're gonna have to prepare a letter for each property. We have the properties listed that have been visited to and that we've actually said, most of this is not our debris, it's not a shade tree. So we'll give them a letter. It'll say these are your options, it needs to be cleaned up. The only thing we haven't really talked about is setting a deadline, which I don't know if we really need to do yet or not. So there won't be a deadline in the letter. There'll be a contact us if you wish to do this. We've been told by the finance department downstairs that it needs to be paid for in advance. That'll be in the letter. And then if they question or wish to appeal to the ruling on the public or not, there'll be a contact information from the do that as well and we'll have a talk with individual homeowners about that as well. So we're gonna send out a letter and it'll probably be hand delivered to each house. Ms. Pru. That sounds great and I appreciate that. That's a lot of extra work. I mean that's not something we hired somebody extra to have you guys do. So thank you. And I would also just encourage in that letter that you do include the idea that people sometimes don't realize, by the way, this might be in the way of the snow plow. That's why we really want you to do it soon. You said, you know, maybe not set a deadline but kind of put that in people's minds that it's gotta get out of the way. Be great. I have a question. Why would we charge less per cubic yard for material that we're picking up than what we've charged for people who have brought it to the landfill already? It seems to me that then that's kind of a discouragement or kind of a, it will feel like a penalty to folks who have already brought their $50 per ton stuff to the landfill, plus you're giving the benefit of picking up. So I would think it would be $50 per ton plus a convenience charge for the fact that not everybody has a truck that they can haul their stuff to the landfill. We started with the same philosophy that we would charge $50 a ton and then we started thinking, well if you have a small pile of wood and we throw it in the truck, how do you differentiate this homeowner's pile from another homeowner's pile? Estimating weight is harder than estimating volume. So $30 a cubic yard is roughly, it does equate to $50 a ton if you actually had the actual weight. So we chose the easier way of estimating which is by going, it's four by four by four high and it's a semi rectangle. Estimate the volume easier you can estimating the weight. You know how that doesn't always work so well at the fair either, but. That's why we went with a cubic yardage and the cubic yardage price equates to what basically the wood tonnage price would, the weight price would be as well. That's why we went that way. Excellent answer and a very good explanation. Thank you. Other questions or comments? So people's expectations should be that first of all you're continuing for another seven to 10 days of doing the public stuff and that will just disappear the stuff you've determined is public and if there's a question whether it's public or private they will know when they get the letter from you whenever that happens. Correct. And we're gonna start, I mean we're starting tomorrow. So as soon as they clear those streets people on those streets will actually, if they still have a pile they'll be getting a letter and that's how we plan to do it. We're not gonna, we're keeping everything as separate as we can. So we can demonstrate to the federal government and the state government, private, public, this is how we did it. So they'll be, we'll go through and do the public wood and shortly after the public woods picked up there'll be a letter showing up on their door saying, we think this is a private pile of wood, this is what you need to do and if you wanna appeal it, this is where you appeal it. Okay. And if people have questions they can be calling the DPW to see if they're on that list or whatever in the meantime. Actually, I wouldn't call the DPW if you're on the list. Just if the truck comes by and you don't get a letter in a few days then give us a call. Okay. Okay, so the streets that you've already hit. We're, well we're starting all over again. We're starting all over again tomorrow going for the second round to get all the other debris. There's actually been a lot of debris that's fallen out of the trees because of the wind that's come up. So we have, we do have public debris from areas we've already picked up because of that, the hangers falling out. So we'll start all over again and we'll start the whole process working off this list and going to the streets one more time. And then there will be a list that shows up on the website of streets that we've cleared that we were saying are done. And then if you still have a pile of brush in your front yard, if you show up on the done list then you should give us a call and say, hey, hey, I still have some wood debris in my front yard that I think is yours or mine or so forth. Okay, excellent. Thank you, Ms. Stein. So have you made a first pass at every street? We've, yes, Friday we completed going through the whole town. Really? So. Because of the local street of mine, which has lots of debris that looks like it's street trees. Some of the first. Not my house, I can say that because I had mine cleared, but there was, for example, the corner of Hills and Reggate Lane, which looks like it's definitely street related trees is huge. Some of the, when we went through the first time we hit streets and some of the streets we hit were for the initial response. So we pushed off a side and grabbed a couple of things and walked away to another street. So those streets are still out there to be done completely. So that's why I say we've been to every street and we've actually done some work on every street. Some we've completed, some we haven't. Okay, that's what I wanted to know. Other questions or comments? All right, so then the takeaways here are pay attention to the website to see if your street shows up as done and you still have debris then you wanna, and you haven't gotten a letter, then you wanna follow up. Yes. And basically to wait what you're saying, a week or two weeks or something before folks really know whether their street and their property has. If you've seen us on the streets and some piles have disappeared and give it a day or so, then give us a call. You don't get a letter. Okay, and that's day or two. 3050, is that right? 259-3050 and push extension zero. Excellent. Or else you go into the phone. Sometimes you get lost in the phone thing. 259-3050 extension zero after you've checked the website and after you've assessed whether your street has been served or not and within a day or two you haven't gotten a letter. Excellent, that's great. Thank you very much. And I think that'll be a huge convenience for folks because really it isn't, for a lot of folks it isn't a question of the money per se, it's a question of how the heck do I get this stuff to the landfill? I mean not all of us have big trucks. It doesn't fit in your Prius very well. Exactly, yeah. Exactly, thank you. So yes, thank you very much. I just wanted to thank the community for their cooperation and their ongoing patience on this effort. This was a tall order. I also want to thank Gilford and all of his people for their ongoing work to make the streets safe and clean up this debris from this very damaging storm. Thank you and I'll just mention something I've mentioned to Mr. Mooring privately but my mailman lives in Ludlow and so he travels all around between Ludlow and here and he travels all around the town and he said the Amherst storm response was the best that he saw. The clearing of the roads, he said that DPW just did a tremendous job, so make sure you get the public credit. Okay, thank you very much. Great. Mr. Hussain. Next, just briefly mention, Ms. O'Keefe and I had the pleasure of meeting with Jim Sheehan who is the interim vice chancellor for administration and finance at the university. As a meet and greet session, he comes to the campus from Towson State University. We had a good discussion about the lay of the land and upcoming action items over the next calendar year with the university and the town, town-gown relations. We have the strategic partnership agreement between the town and the university that expires next year and there'll be a discussion about a successor agreement that I'll be working on actively. We talked about the chancellor's search a little bit, economic development projects on and off campus and it was a good discussion. I'll just add to that a little bit if I may. It really was an excellent discussion and this gentleman is very into town-gown issues. It is nice to get the perspective of somebody else. We have these conversations constantly with all these different folks and we're undergoing a transition at the university right now at the chancellor's search and we've had an excellent relationship with the folks there currently in the chancellor's office, folks he's appointed. So it's nice to know that there is somebody else coming in whether this person is interim or ends up being permanent who shares a very strong sense of the university in the town needing to work together to address the various tensions that do in fact come up that are inevitable in a college town situation like this and we had very frank discussions about those things. We also had very frank discussions about the need on the town's side as well as of course the campus's side for some stability in the leadership at the university that it's not good for anybody to have this kind of turnover constantly and so they were very candid, very honest discussions and really appreciated him reaching out coming to town hall to talk to us about that stuff and conversations continue. Next I'd like to give the board an update on the community development block grant application you know at a recent meeting upon receipt of recommendations to me from the CDBG advisory committee I presented to you my draft list of what I was intending to submit that grant application is being finalized and we will be submitting it by the end of this week. There is one change that I wanna bring to your attention in the non-social service part of the budget in the capital part of the CDBG program. There was a recommendation for $228,000 to be used as seed money to purchase property for affordable housing purposes. There are, there is property in mind however there is substantial additional due diligence that remains to be done in order for the town to satisfy requirements under the grant for control of the property, et cetera, et cetera. So it's basically not ready yet. As a result what I intend to do is submit those dollars 228,000 and apply them toward another project that is phase two of our main street road work and barrier removal project. You know in last year's CDBG we allocated money for sidewalks, crosswalks, handicapped curb cuts on lower main street down by Northeast Street and Fort River School. This second phase would fund work from North and South Whitney Street up the hill to about Churchill Street. And that'll be put out to bid later in the winter. We expect work to occur in the 2012 season. The current estimate for that phase two of main street is upwards of 375,000 but the real price will be what we obtain in a bid process. And we'll know that deeper into the winter we will explore funding alternatives in addition to the block grant. If the bids come in in excess of 228,000 and the obvious one that comes to mind is chapter 90. Next year's allocation of chapter 90 state grants so that we can really proceed in a major way with work on main street. Questions or comments about that? Ms. Brewer. CDBG advisory, know about this? They're gonna be meeting on the 20th anyway but have they been advised in the meantime of the need to make the change? They know that this was possible, yes. It's a backup plan. And a question I had associated with that, I certainly know that main street, it's an important project and that was also on the list. One of the other items that got some attention in terms of, well, there just doesn't enough money to go around was updating the accessibility plan. And so we still feel at this point comfortable that we'll find another way to fund it or that it doesn't need to be done this year. Which kind of way are we going with that? That needs more work and more discussion with the school side as well. So we're not ready to commit funding to that effort yet but there's more discussion that will be occurring. So it's an ongoing process to work with the schools. And then if I might, another comment. The, one of the things associated with the affordable housing purchase, I'm sure I don't have to remind anyone sitting at this table is that this is going to obviously result in some public criticism because this has happened before and that we have tried to set aside money for purchase. When we don't know maybe we might get a property, maybe we won't and we haven't been able to and that's the reality of land purchases. And so it is very frustrating for all concerned. One of the things that you mentioned is associated with control of the property and due diligence. I wanna just make sure that it's somewhat clear with all these regulations that it's not, it's that and I'm sure it must also be, not having had this conversation with you, associated with the timeline because that's one of the rules, right? Associated with the grant is that you have to be able to get so many ducks in a row and be able to do something within a certain timeline. You can't just say, we know we're gonna need this money so let us just put it aside and let it just sit there. Like you can for some other types of grants or projects but you can't do that with this, right? That's exactly right. And so that's why even though we know we wanna do it, it doesn't always work out with the deadlines and then we end up sometimes having to have additional hearings to repurpose money later on so it's actually kind of good that we know now so we don't have to quick swamble around to do that right before a deadline. That's exactly right. And can you tell us, is the due diligence then continuing on the property? Yes, it is and in the unlikely scenario where there is sufficient progress on that within this timeline for this grant, it's not beyond the realm for us to reconsider again going back the other way. We'll also have the benefit of the main street bids in hand for the road work at the time any of that might play out. So that due diligence is ongoing. Right. So this is really the best way of keeping all our options open on both of those projects at this point. Yes. Okay, good, thank you. Other questions or comments about the CDBG application? Moving right along. Next, as you know, I'm the town's representative to the PVTA advisory board and PVTA back in October was awarded $6.2 million to purchase 10 diesel electric hybrid buses, a number of which are now in service in the five college area. And there was an event last week, December 8th at UMass by the Fine Arts Center where they were showing off the new buses and it was a nice event. And the buses are beautiful. They use about 50% less fuel than their traditional buses and the PVTA and UMass transit are very, very excited about them. They're in service and we're excited about it also as a community. You'll notice the new color scheme on the PVTA buses that incorporates the school colors from the university, Baron, is incorporated into the bus design. But we're excited to have these hybrid buses in service to provide a critical service in a much more efficient way. Thank you. Questions or comments about that? Ms. Brewer. An anecdote does not data make, but we saw one going around the roundabout near my house went, whoa, those are taller. Wonder how those handle, but glad to hear that it's going well and that 50% less fuel is a huge, huge deal. Right. Next, just as FYI, the university is continuing work on their master plan and have invited members of the Amherst community to an event this Thursday night, the 15th of December from six to eight PM at the community room in the UMass police department on East Pleasant Street. Officials from the university will be providing an overview of the draft campus master plan. It's an opportunity to find out a lot more about that in detail and be able to ask some questions formally and informally. So I encourage community members who are interested to attend. And that's all I have. Thank you. About the master plan, I think that this is something that the slide board might well interact with certainly in various town. People will be interacting with it as time goes on. So it's something we might very well be interested in attending sort of officially. And I was wondering if people thought they would be attending it, in which case I will get the meeting posted for us. Show of hands, anybody? I'm sorry. I can't go for the whole meeting because I have a CPAC meeting, but I did reply that I would try to come for the first 45 minutes anyway. Just raise your hand if you think you can. VVDC meeting. It seems like at least three of us may be there for at least part of it. So I'll just post it. It's very simple. Yeah, Ms. Brewer. Thank you. And I would just add to that that I did want to give them credit for attempting to involve us earlier in the process. Several of us who live in the North Amherst sort of end of things were invited to a version of the meeting. And of course it was during this meeting, last week's select board meeting, one of our meetings. And I say, yeah, none of us will be there, but it would be really good if one of us could attend at some point. So I was very pleased that they put this out to us as quickly as they did, and they added the select board to their mailing list for just that purpose so that we would have that ability to interact because that was obviously a constant theme when we were working on the master plan for Amherst to make sure that there was interaction between the two plans. So I don't think I can go, but I really, if you post it, that would be great just in case. Excellent. Thank you. All right. Any other questions from Ms. Musanti? Then moving right along, member reports. Mr. Hayden has something interesting you wanted to tell us about before we start our liaison reports. Yeah, I do one of those. Well, this is, I guess, a liaison report for all of my committees to which I'm liaison. It's one of those wonderfully unique things that can only happen in a place like Amherst. Professor at Amherst College will be teaching a course next semester on community building and how governance relates to that. And her 20 students each will be required to do a project. And after some discussion with Professor Sanchez-Eppler, turns out that those projects might be done on behalf of various committees. That work for the town. Amherst is unique in that it has colleges and committees. So I have sent emails to the nine committees that I have some relationship with. And I've received word back, I think, from all of them except one, that they're delighted to be looking forward. They're looking forward to taking advantage of the students. So in February, when this class first meets, I will be presenting, somehow or other, I don't know exactly how, the various projects that the committees come up with for these students. And there's two, there's a couple of interesting parts. The students are likely, we don't know who they are yet. They haven't signed up. Enrollment doesn't start for another couple of weeks. Are likely to bring to the table a skill set, that, a diverse skill set. I'm expecting there to be several different languages that'll be available to us. Certainly there'll be what you'd expect from a college student for analytical, ability to do analytical work and research, as well as synthesis. So these are all the kind of projects. These are all the elements that various committees probably could take advantage of to help their work. So I'm very excited. I'm looking forward to getting those projects back from the various committees so that I can begin to think how to sell them to the students. What the students are receiving in turn, which is as important, is that in the process of doing the work, I'm hopeful that they're going to see how valuable the work is that our committees do. People who work on those, hundreds of volunteers. They are kind of unsung in many ways. They show up at the town meeting every once in a while with a report, but they do a lot of work that we get to see on the select board, probably more than anybody. And so I'm delighted to be able to have students learn about what that is and maybe bring that forward in their lives when they go out into the real world. And of course, it'll be the benefit to us of having their talents at our disposal for a number of weeks. So I've had a couple of project suggestions back. I'm looking forward to those being taken to the full committees. And I'm expecting by the end of January that everybody who's got a bright idea will have let me know, let me know that I'll know. And I can begin to figure out how to sell that to the students and to Professor Sanchez-Eppler. Great, sounds like a great opportunity. Is this something that other committees that you are not liaison to have the opportunity to participate in also or is it limited by practicality? There will only be 20 students. As I was thinking about talking to my colleagues here about this tonight, I realized that Jesus, there's 30, 43 other committees that probably could use the help. Yes, I'm going to say sure. The reason that I felt most comfortable with sending to the committees that I do the work with is I do the work with them and I know they are, they know what I am. I know what the work is that they're doing and students are very interested in things like planning and working with the homeless and working with the poor as witnessed by how many of them are already doing that work in a voluntary capacity. So this is, it seemed like a good fit, particularly good fit with my little group of committees. But yes, I would think that if you want to speak with the committees to which you liaise or our liaisons, yeah, I'll pitch any project I think is worth it. So do you have something written up that you sent to your committees that maybe we could send to our committees that, so that way you get sort of a big pot of what all the possible options are? You will get that letter tomorrow. Okay, so then we could all send that out, do whatever we need to with it and then all the information could go to Mr. Hayden and then who knows what the students might end up doing. Fortunately, our committees are not the only groups that are involved in building community in town that might be taking or getting the services of these students but I'm delighted to get in there and pitch for us. Terrific, thank you. Questions or comments, Ms. Brewer? Mr. Hayden had already discussed this with me in particular, associated with the new housing committee and homeless resource. So we'll definitely be looking at some finite, that's the thing is trying to come up with tasks and I actually think it's a really good exercise without putting huge amounts of effort into it for all our committees to be looking at anyway because this is something we've talked about on an ongoing basis, like, well, people say they'd rather do something that's just a finite thing. Well, what might that look like? And then there's really been no way of keeping track of it or whatever but if we do get this huge list now, then we might figure out something else to do with the list like talk to John Rafe over at UMass about the different service learning opportunities and stuff like that once we really have a sense of what it is that committees might be able to find useful. The other thing, so I don't think it's too mean to give Aaron a really long list of things that could be done. And then the other thing I was going to just mention if it hadn't already occurred just because it's so new but because it's also a kind of interesting mix of town and business is anything associated with the bid. And so I guess I'm gonna look at the town manager for that rather than one of us as being like a liaison to the new business improvement district but that might be a place too where they're looking since it's so early on still in those stages they might have an interesting process associated with that too. And I wouldn't know how to write that down but maybe the town manager could ask the chamber to do that or something. Other questions? I mean, Mr. Ian. Just to revise and extend my remarks, the students will probably work in pairs. So there'll be only 10 assignments that can be made. And it is an experiment and you're absolutely right. The suggestions that I've received so far were along the lines of, hey, you know, we've always needed fill in the blank to be done for us. We don't know this or that and often don't have the time to pursue that given that committees members have other lives. So that's very exciting. And I'm hopeful that this course will continue, you know, that this will be a success, that the students discover that there is an important pedagogical process that this could be part of. And so, and that's, in one sense, I'm going to, I'm likely to present everything. I intend to present everything to both the Professor Sanchez Epler and the Director of the Center for Community Engagement, which is also involved in this course, so we can sort of vet what's most likely to satisfy all of the goals of this project. But it will be interesting to get this list for me as somebody in town service as well. Thank you. Other questions or comments from Ms. Hayden? All right, then we is on reports. Ms. Stein. The personnel board had a meeting and they discussed the manual again and the place, the places in the manual that should have modifications towards either the library trustees or the director. And that letter has gone off to the town layer to render a decision. And he promised to do it by the end of December. Someone received a bump up in their position, which was very nice. Somebody who's been very hardworking and devoted to the town for a long period of time. And the other meeting that I went to was, we signed the proclamation for the International Human Rights Day a while back and we had it on Saturday. In this very room, there was a gathering from about 10 to two. The focus for the meeting was both to celebrate the proclamation and the day. And there was a very interesting talk about that by a man who has a lot of connection with, had a lot of connection with the UN over the years. And he was able to pinpoint ways in which the U.S. does actually do things that are related to the proclamation and certain areas where we're still deficient. And I thought that was extremely interesting. I'm sorry, I didn't write the names down and there wasn't a program, so I couldn't walk away with it and I'd had hope to find it online, but I just can't find the names of the people. The rest of the program was devoted to Haiti and some of the problems that have gone on on that island. And it was very interesting. One man gave an overview of the kinds of issues associated with poverty and so on in Haiti. And two students came who had run an arts camp for two weeks, one from Amherst College, as a matter of fact, and one I don't recall what college it was from and they presented slides. And actually, one of the things that was very surprising to me was how beautiful the village they were living in was. And we decorate our buses. You should see the artwork on their buses. It was mind-boggling. So I thought it was a very interesting program and I was very delighted that I was able to attend it. Thank you for being able to go to that. Questions or comments for Ms. Stein? Okay, other liaison reports? Anyone? Ms. Brewer? I'll look at Mr. Wilde, but I'm gonna talk anyway. Okay, Disability Access Advisory Committee met last week. I didn't go. We all got an email from Jerry Weiss. It was very ably. I believe now chair of that committee, which is great. So, and that's various issues, many of which involve coordination with the schools and so it's actually in the town manager's lap, not ours. Leisure Services Commission is meeting this Wednesday night, the 14th, for anyone interested. And the Community Development Block Grant Advisory Committee is meeting next Tuesday, the 20th, I believe, just so that they don't sort of lose the thread of where, as I mentioned at our last meeting, so they can talk about exactly what's in the charge that we finally approved earlier this year, recently. And also the data they wanna look at in the spring. Also wanted to mention that the, I believe, Regional School District Planning Committee, the thing we just agreed to do at town meeting, Catherine Oppie from the Amherst School Committee, Andy Steinberg from the Finance Committee, and myself as your select board liaison, are meeting for the first time Thursday morning, the 15th at nine o'clock on the first floor meeting room. Of course, it's been posted under Open Meeting Law, et cetera, but as far as I know, it's just gonna be the three of us trying to figure out what the steps are that we need to do to follow what the attorney had laid out, et cetera. The four towns, as opposed to our four town meeting, the four towns are also trying to get together associated with this because they all each came up with this Regional School District Planning Committee at their town meetings as well. And I don't believe that theirs has the little added complication language that ours did in terms of our topics of discussion, but apparently there's a grant that has a deadline that's coming up, and so if anybody hears that we attend that meeting, it doesn't mean that we're short circuiting the process or anything, it's just that we're trying to find out what it is they need to be able to say that this is from all four towns, but in terms of just getting access to planning grants as opposed to saying we're doing something, because we're obviously way far away from actually doing something, but we are actually gonna meet before the holidays, so that's kind of exciting. And I did just wanna mention briefly that I did suck it up and go to the Hampshire County Selectman's Association meeting last week at the Blue Bonnet. There are 20 municipalities in Hampshire County for those of you who couldn't remember that off the top of your head. Two of them are cities, although East Hampton calls itself a town, it's actually a city, North Hampton, of course, being the other. Three of the communities don't actually belong to the Hampshire Council of Governments in terms of dues paying, although they may be buying various services from them, one of which, of course, is Amherst and the others are Wehran, Worthington. Of the, you know, so 18 out of 20 communities, possibly you could consider it a smaller pool if you didn't count the people who don't pay into the HCOG, about less than half of the communities were represented at the meeting, and as is true, probably everywhere anyone goes to any sort of professional organization or any kind anymore, people were wondering how to increase interest and it was talked about without going into a long discussion. One of the things that I found most interesting about it was that, of course, the majority of people there, and since most of them can't see this on their cable TV, I'll go ahead and say, the majority of people there were at least 70 years old and no offense to my many friends who are over 70 years old, and they would say things like, this group was always really active. Do you remember? Don't you remember in Amherst when Nancy Eddy was really active? I'm like, 25 years ago? And they said, yeah, and I'm like, 25 years ago, okay. Some stuff's changed since then and yet there's still this thread of how can we get it back to how it used to be? And I said, you know, everybody that's on my select board right now doesn't know from county government. They didn't deal with it. It wasn't part of their reality. So they don't have anything they wanna go back to. So it was interesting. Very dedicated leadership team there, really trying hard. Ed Lesko from Hatfield Blessing, he goes to like 8,000 meetings and he's on the group that is one of the advisory boards to the MMA. He's like our county representative to the Mass Selectments Association kind of thing. And so he goes out to Boston and all different kinds of things. He does all this regional stuff for us. And you'll probably appreciate that when it comes to process, they had written up a charter and of course I found numerous inconsistencies in it. And it turned out that they'd been begging for someone to help them write this thing and eventually they just had to cut and paste it together and some things ended up confusing because you know that's what happens when everybody's a volunteer and only two people have to do all the work. So they're gonna fix that and bring it back to the next meeting. I frankly don't recall when the next meeting is, but it's in March, I'll let you know. There was a lot of discussion as to what dues might look like. Somebody said, we're not paying dues. It was an interesting meeting. And I'm especially excited that I'm actually gonna, we'll be seeing the, not in perhaps any official capacity, but I did mention to both the president and to the vice president that we would be at MMA and we would see them there and hopefully kind of have a continuing discussion because there are clearly different, breaks between the different communities. And in fact, one of the gentlemen who turned out to be from Chesterfield, but wasn't David Kielsen, who we always think of as being the Chesterfield person, made some remark about, well maybe Amherst can absorb these budget cuts when Steve Kokat was talking and the rest of us can't. And I said, and I made some remark back just to the air and later he realized that Amherst really was present. But it's very different. I mean, if you have a three member select board and no professional administrator, it's a different reality altogether. So I did mention to them that one of the things, they said, well, what would it take for Amherst to be more involved? I said, well, certainly, we continue to look at what services you offer. And they did a great survey a while back that's on their website that shows what things different communities might be willing to share. And we've talked about health issues, for example, you know, associated with inspections and board of health type stuff. And I said, so obviously we can continue to work on stuff like that together and we do the electricity thing with them. But I said, you know, overall, we don't need you for that but we would be happy to help serve as a voice for promoting Western Massachusetts interest because we know that Western Massachusetts, no matter what form of government it has, is so easily forgotten about by Eastern Massachusetts. So they're still trying to figure out kind of, you know, what they're trying to do because they're in such just like HCOG is in a different space than Franklin COG because Franklin COGs existed just forever. And even when they stopped being a county didn't really stop providing services in that way. Their selection association kept going. It never had quite as much of a disband that Hampshire County did. And so they're trying to learn some things from them but also trying to see as their way we all mix together. So it's kind of all up in the air right now because it's just one of those great organizations where you'd love to get a chance to chat to people just like, you know, as the female members select word find you can get a lot done in the restroom lines at MMA. You know, you don't always get those opportunities. So we're trying to figure out maybe what would be a good worthwhile chance to meet. And one of the people mentioned that, you know, as close as it was for me to go over to Northampton, somebody from Chesterfield, that other gentleman said he didn't want to cross the bridge to come to Amherst for a meeting. And somebody else said that they had been having to drive two hours to go to meetings that weren't in Northampton. So I mean, who's gonna drive two hours on a weeknight to go someplace? That just doesn't make a lot of sense when you're already doing a bazillion other committees. So it's something that's out there. And like I said, hopefully we'll chat with them informally in January and the next meeting actually is in March. Thank you very much for attending that. And we'll look forward to your attending in March as well. And really thank you that that's a great thing for Amherst to have been represented at and we really appreciate that. Other liaison reports? Mr. Wald. I'm not a member or liaison of or liaison to the Human Rights Commission, but I did attend the vigil on Friday night where we had a candlelight ceremony and read the declaration of rights on the town common corner here, which is very nice. Mr. Winslow was there, of course, representing the committee, very committee members, Ms. Torres from the town manager's office. And just wanted to mention too, there are a number of people from different places there from Egypt, from Sudan and so forth. And some of the Sudanese members were very proud to say that one of their colleagues had been arrested in Sudan just this past week in a protest, but thanks to social media and the internet, they were able to get the word out and bring attention to the cause and get the person released very quickly, which had not been the case some years back. So it's nice to know that the human rights actually do score some very small triumphs even as they're being violated. And as Mr. Winslow said, one of the lessons is that freedom isn't free. So it was a very nice small ceremony, cold evening, but warm group. It was a great place. Brief reports on the rest since we don't have to go into any great detail. Ms. Stein mentioned the flag contest last time, Historical Commission and Design Review began to take it up. They're trying to set up a joint meeting for January to move ahead with that. And other historical business, the local Historic District Committee, Study Committee, which is part of the state mandated process for this potential regulation had been sort of in hiatus since the summer, busy schedules, complications and so forth, and decided they wanted to push ahead and try to bring something to town meeting. So a subcommittee is gonna start meeting this coming week, this week I should say, to begin working on a draft report which has to go to the state and come back and forth. And then we'll be in a position to say whether we're actually ready for town meeting and at least a placeholder on the warrant. And I'll leave it at that. Thank you. Any questions or comments from Mr. Wald? All right. Mr. Hayden and Ely is on reports? Nope, most of that, thank you. Okay, the Council on Aging met last Thursday. They did a big review with Julie Federman, the health director of the emergency procedures from the storm. She talked about a lot of what happened and the review of what happened and also got comment from that group. And additionally, there's a board of health member named Nancy Gilbert who is going to be doing a class at UMass that the students will be dealing specifically with emergency preparedness issues for special populations. And so she's going to be looking at the frail old as among those special populations. So she was getting a lot of feedback from the group about the kinds of needs that they recognize among those folks. So she's going to send students out to kind of interview and research with them to help come up with kind of a greater plan to add to the towns and other bodies emergency preparedness for the future. This was just one giant learning opportunity from this particular storm, really opened people's eyes about needs and potential. Also the council is looking into soliciting money for the friends group through the town's census letter that goes out after the first of the year. This is something that Northampton recommended to the council as a very successful fundraiser for them because our friends group is a separate nonprofit that as town meeting form did a couple years ago. They're talking with the town manager and town council and whomever about whether you can still do that the same way as Northampton was able to do but that is a possibility there could be that they could end up with a fundraising letter in that census letter. And I think that's all about the council. Any other liaison reports? Open meeting law update. All right, chairs report. All right, this is our last meeting of 2011 and that had me kind of looking over stuff that we had done this year. And in looking back on this year, I was really thinking about how extraordinary a year it was. We had a lot of new really big stuff that we dealt with this year, including the solar landfill project, the sewer extension master plan and the business improvement district which were all things that required a whole lot of education and preparation and homework on our parts. We had other stuff that we don't as a select board deal with very often. For example, we did the, we appointed the Districting Advisory Board that created recommendations on new precincts that followed the census information from this year. We also had a joint meeting with the library trustees to fill a vacancy on that board. We did a whole bunch of public way stuff. We did the new parking machines. We approved the new parking machines and rates. We did a trial parking program for the senior center. We did, we've broached now the concept and really kind of embraced and are working with this complete streets concept and how that will move forward. We supported the paving bond and also approved the new for us concept of traffic humps on a few streets for speed reduction, something that no doubt we'll see more of in the future. We also did a ton of committee stuff. We did an extraordinary number of charge revisions and updating and we also did a comprehensive revision of the appointed committee handbook. We also did, this was all on top of our usual stuff. We do a very comprehensive town manager evaluation process, goal setting and establishing the budget policy guidelines. We do extensive preparation for town meeting. We did a really large number of liquor license hearings this year. Very interesting, I'm not sure what that says about the economy, about new licenses or changes in licenses. And again, this is all on top of our individual committee, liaison and representative work that we do in all different areas. This was not the easiest year. Looking back over the records, we had some curve balls. We got sued, that's exciting, for the solar land health project. We had, of course, Mr. Musanti's accident in the fall. That was exciting. Could have done without that. Could have done without that. We also had a massive power outage. This was kind of a weird year. So I just wanted to kind of take a moment to reflect on that, to congratulate us on the work that we did in those circumstances and really to say how incredibly proud I am of the work that we've done and how well we work together. This is an incredibly efficient and productive group and we work together with great collegiality and with great respect for each other. And it's just an honor to serve with all of you. So I wanted to thank you very much for that. As part of those thanks, I also wanted to express appreciation for the great support that we get from Debra Roussell and Debbie Gordon in the Select Board Town Manager's Office. They literally enable us to do what we do. There's a great deal of work that happens before and after meetings to enable us to do the things that we do and they have been terrific. It's almost exactly a year now that Debra Roussell has been on board and she's been wonderful. And Debbie Gordon has been kind of our constant, our link from the past to now and we couldn't be doing what we're doing without them. Ms. Stein? I just would like to thank our chair for taking so much work off our shoulders. And I think there's a reason why none of us ever seemed to want to run to be chair because you do a bang of job and it's really nice for us not to have to do it. Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. And I just want to add a little bit more appreciation for Dave Zomek who served as acting town manager during those very dramatic weeks of the early fall. After Mr. Musanti's accident, he did really incredible work for the town. He did incredible work for the select board. That will always be the great bonding experience that he and I shared. Talk about unfortunate experience but those, especially the early days were pretty amazing and Dave really, Mr. Zomek, excuse me, I really stepped up to take on tremendous responsibility and he did a great job with it. And of course, I also want to express appreciation for Mr. Musanti's excellent work on behalf of the town and in particular how excellently he works with us. We have a tremendous partnership going on here. We have tremendous communication and this has really, despite all those curve balls and dramas, this has really been an excellent year so I wanted to thank him and thank you all. That is all. The only other thing we have to do is to go into executive session. Is there anything else that anybody needs to talk about before we do that? Then the select board will have its next regular meeting on Tuesday. It is a Tuesday night, January 3rd because Monday, January 2nd is a holiday. So we will then meet on Tuesday the 3rd here in this room and at this point I move that the select board go into executive session for two purposes both under Massachusetts General Law, chapter 30A, section 21, part A, subset three. To conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining regarding the police union, AFSCME and SEIU because an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the negotiating position of this public body. And to discuss strategy with respect to litigation regarding the landfill solar project lawsuit because an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the litigation position of this public body. Open session will not reconvene at the conclusion of the executive session. Second. Thank you, and we need a roll call vote. Ruer, aye. Stein, aye. O'Keefe, aye. Walde, aye. Hayden, happy new year. Happy new year. And we adjourn to executive session at 826. Happy holidays to all. Thank you.