 Let me see here agenda for tonight. Okay. So today is December 20th, 2023. It is 634 p.m. and I am calling to order the meeting for the time of Amherst Human Rights Commission. Can you give us the time? Did you say it's 633? Yes. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021, this meeting will be conducted by remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so by Zoom or by telephone. You can see the instructions below. They are posted on our website and also on this agenda. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time by technological means. We have called to order. Does anybody have any opening remarks? Before you go to opening remarks, can you do the roll call to make sure everybody can be heard? Right now, we have Liz Heygood as co-chair, present. Ronnie Parker, co-chair. You're muted. I'm muted. Thank you, Rizwanakhan. Yes, I'm here. Thank you, Deborah Kaladni. Oops, present. Joy Eiffel. Present. We are not in presence of, okay, I'm blanking on names now, Tyler. And... Just in time, our Ann Laverne Brown is also absent from this meeting. We also have our intern, Asa Stanley, the EI intern. Hello. Thank you. Our director of equity and inclusion, Pamela Young. Hello. Hello. An assistant director of diversity is Jennifer Moyston. Good evening. Ann Rizwanakhan, did I miss somebody? I saw your hand go... Ann Laverne Kelly is here. She was raising her hand. Oh, Laverne Kelly. Just moved her hand. Okay. We also have Laverne Kelly, if you would mark yourself present, please. Present. Thank you. So we do have a quorum, so anything we need to vote on, it can happen tonight. Thank you, everybody, for your attendance at this meeting. Announcements and agenda reviewed. Does anybody have any broad announcements that are not part of the discussion for tonight? Okay. Our agenda, we will first have public comments and then member reports. Then we will have discussions on supporting organization statements, events, the DEI and HRC, or both, updates on CRES and DEI, that the chief of police and CRES directors search updates, the budget request, affordable housing trust, town manager update. Also, any things that we need to mention that have been recently put on our HRC website or into our Facebook page and upcoming events. Then we will have another round of public comments if needed. We will set our next meeting date and then go into other topics that were not anticipated 48 hours prior to this meeting before we adjourn. So the first thing I... Well, Pamela has her hand raised. Okay, Pamela, I can't see. Hi, I'm sorry, before we got started going through the remainder of the agenda, I had one question or maybe related to some of the topics that are listed. So with the police chief and the CRES director search, are you expecting those to be member reports since there are members on both of those searches? Or are you looking from input or information from the DEI office? I have a member report for the police chief search. I also know that unfortunately, Ronnie had to be away for the first few discussions for the CRES director, but she will be jumping on board. So she may be able to give a little bit of update. So they're actually member reports. Right. So they're not going to be addressed under DEI and CRES? No. I put it on the agenda. I felt that well, since some of us are part of these searches, that we should be reporting to the commission about progress and taking any commission questions into consideration. That's perfect. I just wanted to clarify that it wasn't an expectation of us. No. So one announcement that I have is I was just perusing the, I don't know if you all know that Mindy Dom does an update on her website about things that are going on in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as they relate to her district. And it just came out yesterday. What did I just do with it? So I was just perusing and it has a lot of, if anybody gets that, you should really take a look at it. And if not, it has updates on improving nursing home care, supplemental cost of the closeout budget, the housing bond, gender inclusive bathrooms, postpartum depression as it relates to women and my Black women specifically. And that's from the Ellen Story Commission. Governor Healy's Economic Plan, Free State College for Low-Income Students and Dula Services being covered by Mass Health. So also for our district, state grant awards in the district funding for farmers and support for early childhood care. So if anybody's interested in those things, you should go on her website and get updates on those things. Some of the things that are there that are fascinating and have a lot to do with some of the work that we're doing here. Any questions or comments about that? Okay. So I am going to go into public comment. During the public comment period, the chair will recognize members of the public. When called on, please identify yourself by stating your full name, preferred pronouns, and residential address. Residents are welcome to express their views, your views for up to three minutes at the direction of the chair based upon the number of people who wish to speak. No speaker can see their time to another speaker. The Human Rights Commission will not engage in a dialogue or comment on a matter raised during public comment. At this time, do we have any members of the public that would wish to make a comment? I do not see any. If someone else sees one, can you please inform me? Okay. Well, thank you. For those of you who are in our kit, thank you for being there and thank you for paying attention to the work that we're doing. Any member reports other than what's already on our agenda? Well, interesting. Just a quick meeting. All right. So we're going to go down to our supporting organization statements. I'm not exactly sure what that means because it says before a meeting. I think it's something where if an issue comes up and we want to make some kind of statement as a commission, but we're not meeting for a month, what are the procedures we would use to get consent, consensus, and not sure what is needed from the group in order to issue a statement? I think that was the issue and we probably need to hear from everyone for that. So right now, as it is, if an issue comes up and we would like to make a statement and put it on our website and or our Facebook page, and we don't have a meeting and we can't have a meeting because if we have a meeting, we have to post the meeting. What is any steps that any of you all think about that we could do in order to make sure that those statements happen, especially those that we feel strongly about? I see Deb's hand up, Deborah, please. Yeah, it seems to me that there is a protocol in place for a chair or the co-chairs or a chair and some co-chair and someone else to jointly write something and then share it around for other purposes. So I think we can use that same protocol that we get a request, the deadline is before our next meeting. One of the chairs takes it on, either writes it, the two chairs together or one chair asks somebody else who they think is knowledgeable about the topic and sends the draft around and gives a deadline. So this was put on the agenda, I think because there was a concern that it was only the co-chairs and so I think we had some sort of discussion about this. I remember having a discussion about this, either at our last full meeting or at our retreat and I know that this came up and also it came up regarding who and when we were informed of any human rights requests or complaints that came in. So if I'm not mistaken. So Pamela, do you have any thoughts about this? So Rizwana has unmuted so I think she might have, I don't know whether she has something that she wants to say. Oh, she muted herself again. Right, so you're right, the commission has had the discussion I think twice now, the first time following the draft of the statement that went onto the commission website about the conflict in the Middle East and then subsequent to that a more detailed conversation. I think that the protocol that Rabbi Deb has suggested would work but we have to be mindful that you're not, that the statement is written, it's shared with Jennifer and I, we send it out to folks and then people are responding back to us because you can't engage with each other because that would be considered deliberation. So we have to be mindful of the of the open meeting laws. So if you followed that protocol, which was followed in the past by this commission last year, Philip and Ben would often write a statement, share it with Jennifer and I, we would send it out and people would send their comments to me so that there was a prompt response. So I think that that could work if you chose to do so. I'm in support of that process. I think that the only thing I would add is that if there's a member of the commission who feels there's a need for a statement about something and they're not a co-chair, they ought to be able to approach the co-chairs and through you, if that's more in line with the rules, I don't really care, but a member of the commission, anybody on the commission ought to be able to approach the co-chairs and say such and such issue, I think we need to do a statement on this. So then the co-chairs can say, okay, you go ahead and draft it or do it themselves and then send it around through the regular procedures so that it's not only the co-chairs who can initiate a statement when something's going on. But I would concur with a dead suggestion that and what has been the practice so far that the co-chairs, one or both the co-chairs can either draft it or assign someone who has the expertise to draft it and then it can get sent around by email through Jennifer and Pam. Pamela. So I saw Jennifer's hand up and then Viswana. No, I was just wondering how you were going to determine and Ronnie just answered that for me. Thank you, Viswana. Yeah, okay. I was actually thinking there should be some kind of a procedure and that should be put in the, I'm sure bylaws are being done because in Human Rights Commission these statements are very important and they have to be delivered because that's our duty also to show empathy and now in the situation we have to be neutral also but we have to show empathy for the pain and that is suffered by the human rights concerning all these issues. So I think if, I don't know whether if it can be entered into bylaws that the statement has to be done or there might be templates that we create so that we can utilize them for whatever whenever the reason whenever some kind of event or episode arises that needs to be you know addressed. So I'm just thinking that the procedure has to be there step by step or the protocols are just protocols but procedure is step by step implementations of the statements. So it's more so that everybody's aware of that but the co-chair and the chair person they can go for it but we can also have some kind of input I think wording wise and so on. So the question I have is or the statement I have is this has already been practice of ours so I'm not quite sure about it having to be specifically in our bylaws because it's already part of what we do and there is a procedure a past procedure that we have done so I don't think we need to have a vote on that because we're not changing anything so I'm not mistaken but Pamela you had your hand up. Yeah so I'm going to agree I think that it's probably best to have it as a practice rather than to have a written procedure and to try to amend it into the bylaws because then you are really I think yeah well not only that but I think you are you would document that you're circumventing the open meeting law and so it's more it's a better practice to have this as a practice that you're utilizing and while you might want to informally think about standard language that you might use I don't I think each situation is going to be different and so having a template you know might not be as easy as you know as one might think about because every situation is likely to to be very different very fact specific. Okay the one thing that I will ask though is if something goes out I'm requesting that our members check your emails frequently because we never know when something's coming in and so if we need a response and even if you have no response if you acknowledge to Pamela and or Jennifer that you received it and you have no response then we know that everybody is at least aware of what is going on if you don't mind I see dip shaking her head yes okay so with that said we can then move on to events. Joy did you have oh no you're scratching your ear okay never mind I saw your hand go up um events from DEI um I think we can hold off on Cress no go back I'm on A3B which is events from DEI or HRC or both. So this has moved from agenda to agenda for quite a while now and so now I didn't include the different the list of events. Okay so I do know because it's been carried on so yes so coming up on the 26th at 530 at the Banks Community Center we are holding our annual Kwanzaa celebration Jennifer and I have been working behind the scenes on that celebration it'll be at 530 we have had a lot of changing and moving part and we pray that everybody here can come and be a part of it please be aware that right now we do not have seven readers so we might ask you to read one of our principles and light one of our unity candles and if that is to happen there will be a script so don't panic okay so that's on uh the uh 26th of this month which is Tuesday yeah um we also are working on a presentation for the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King celebration and we're also working on our flag raising celebration for Black History Month which will happen on February 1st those are the things that I know about Deb you had a question or comment about one or all three yeah the Kwanzaa celebration you I think you said at the bank center did you see what time it was on the 26th I'm sorry 530 thank you and I also just wanted to add um this is officially a DEI office event there's going to be three forums coming up that I sent flyers around to to gather information um about experiences with the Amherst police department and since you have the flyers you have the dates there's two evenings there's one Sunday and the the first event has both Spanish and Chinese interpretation so if you know folks who are who have had experiences with the police that they would like to report um they can either fill out a survey um and that information is on the flyer how to do that or they can come to one of the forums it would be really helpful to get the word out thanks um I see two hands up Pamela has her hand up and think Deb's taken her hand down yes you have muted Pamela I'm exhausted all the time now so I'm like I'm running on fumes um but uh another event that we will host at the bank center um following the Martin Luther King Jr event is the National Day of Racial Healing that um follows on the the Tuesday afterwards um the DEI office will facilitate those conversations with assistance from uh press responders and other municipal staff members which we've done in the past last year we had two events one that was open to the public and a second event that was for staff only we will again host two events um on the National Day of Racial Healing we will have an event that is open to the to the public and we will seek um facilitators from both staff members and members of the public it's our intention to reach out to the members of the public who participated in the liberatory visioning sessions to put those skills to work um you know we've not been able to engage that group um in a way that um I really had envisioned so we that announcement will go out and it's open to anyone so on January 11 I think it's when we hope to have a um a small training session for members of the public who would like to facilitate National Day of Racial Healing um conversations and those conversations again will happen on the uh 16th and I think that that was the only addition I had for events or DEI um any other questions or comments about um upcoming events in the next few months okay we're going to move on to updates and the first one is from DEI um I'm assuming that unless so the Cress Director update will come from Ronnie any other DEI uh Cress updates will come from Pamela okay so um I will many of the DEI updates we've already talked about um which are the upcoming events for DEI and the HRC the other things that I would just like to fat lack for DEI is that um we held our last staff workshop of the year last Friday so on the third Friday of the month there's a staff DEI workshop that's held the topic for last Friday was supposed to be uh Diversity Cafe where folks it's a self-guided staff members come they can grab a cup of coffee they can engage on a number of different topics and um you know it's a fairly easy lift for the DEI department and I need like lifts at this point but we were we actually pivoted we did not stick to topic um there were initially like maybe just a handful of folks who showed up and in the conversation that we had um the interim police chief Gabe Ting said oh what I'd really love to hear about is origin stories um from folks and so we started a conversation which was very very rich where our folks in the room and and by the end of the of the two-hour session I would think there was probably maybe like 15 of us if not more um shared their origin stories and um it was just a wonderful wonderful experience which we will um you know we'll replicate and and do again but lots of great connections um things people found out things about their colleagues that really uh reinforced um the similarities that we have interesting facts and um just it was just a wonderful wonderful um uh event so I think I do want to really highlight that and we will continue with our programming on the third Friday um into the coming year also I think the one thing that we forgot to do was a celebration of the festival of lights which was a wonderful wonderful event and I can't take credit for any of it because I've been overwhelmed wearing my crest hat but that event was very well attended and um really went off without a hitch and was just a very good good time um other crest updates we received two HRC complaints one about wage and hour violations a second one about public access and um we um one of the complaints um the complainant has not followed through to pursue it and the other one we are working on um and and pursuing pursuing that pursuing the completion and investigation of that complaint um our youth empowerment um we have created a survey uh the survey was reviewed by the Community Safety and Social Justice Committee they made some suggestions for um additional information that we uh should inquire of the youth and that survey is ready to go out publicly to um middle and high school students and Jennifer and Asa planned to meet with high school students in person after the new year to start gathering information about what the youth would like to do for their youth empowerment so it's been slow going but um it is moving forward um Jennifer if I've missed other uh DEI events or updates please jump in uh can I also add that on December 10th uh Jennifer Pamela myself and some uh town counselors and others um read our town's declaration on human rights day um it's long you should read it it's it's fascinating it had some very interesting statements in there that I'm not sure that this nation is adhering to so we had a little bit of a discussion about that um one for instance is uh equal pay for equal work yeah so anyway um that happened on December 10th thank you uh I'll switch over to Cress now unless Jennifer unless I've missed anything else that's DEI related so um as you know Cress had uh three vacant responder positions that position those positions were um advertised there were 13 applicants um six uh individuals were well all of the applicants except for the last one which came in yesterday all the first 12 applicants were all interviewed in first round interviews following that there were uh six applicants who went on to second round interviews um we made um we meaning the press interim leadership team made decisions about um offering positions those positions were offered to three applicants yesterday who uh all responded yes and um the HR office is proceeding so assuming that that goes well and we don't lose anyone in the meantime um we should have uh fully staffed um under the current staffing um parameters department by January 16th which were we've targeted as the start date for the for the responder so that process has um has sort of come to a conclusion from the interim leadership um point of view and is in the hands of HR to complete um the really significant uh uh announcement around Cress is that you might have heard if you were listening to NPR that Cress went live on dispatch on Monday I was like unbelievable um and so that is proceeding we are starting out small with with six call types but we've already identified um just in the last couple of days another call type that we need to um to add and so we will we will continue to add um call types um as we proceed um and so you you are all are hearing for the first time I have not even shared this with the town manager yet but the interim leadership team has been successful and receiving a secondary uh grant from the department of public health to support learning opportunities for the Cress director Cress responders and dispatchers to learn about from other um communities which are already uh live on dispatch and who have been doing that work for for some time so we'll have some learning opportunities for for them uh I I can't recall if um at the time of the last meeting uh Kat Newman and Vanessa Phillips had gone to uh to Texas to present at a conference with Sharon Sherry about the work that the Crest art man is doing with the Jones library um but that they had a very successful trip and really enjoyable and got a chance to talk about the good work that the department is doing with Jones library most recently at Kat Newman and Brittany Houghton um have um come back from the Equal Justice Initiative which is in Montgomery, Alabama. It is the brain child and um of Brian Stevenson who is the author of Just Mercy so the department is a member of the council of state government that's looking at alternative response units and received financial support to send two folks down to that conference so they were actually able Kat and Brittany were able to visit um Martin Luther King's home and go into the Legacy Museum which honors the deaths of those individuals who were lynched throughout U.S. history and just had a wonderful experience. I had asked Kat to purchase materials for the department which he did so if you're interested in learning more about the Legacy Museum and this is an open invitation to um to the public and obviously anyone on this call we have a lot of materials that we purchased um that are available for folks to learn more about the the work of the Equal Justice Initiative. The four responders and a couple of members of the leadership team participated in a the Harvard government performance lab monthly cohort meeting today. The department is a member of this cohort so for the next year or so they'll be meeting with researchers at at Harvard who are trying to assist municipalities and government agencies in having the best possible you know municipal work around the area of alternative response and um I think that is it for Cress uh um like I if I might be missing something but I I think those are the the high points for for the for the Crest Department. Thank you for your report I am going to move on and ask Ronnie oh somebody has a hand up Deb. I just wanted to say I'm not going to wish this on you but for someone who's doing two jobs the fact that you just made several hires and you received a grant and on top of everything else is amazing and miraculous and I just want to say mad respect to you. Well thank you what you're not hearing is all the stuff that have fallen off of the plate and onto Jennifer's shoulders as you know there's lots of things that not that are not happening but you know just trying to work as hard as we possibly can. Well thank you both um Ronnie would you like to give a brief update on our Crest Director search and then I will follow up with the police chief search. Just so you all know there has been one meeting that I was not able to attend but I have received materials basically what they did there was to vet the candidates and decide which ones would be interviewed and they did check with me on that and my I said fine just go ahead I did suggest asking if somebody else on the commission would like to actually just take that over because it seemed like there was nobody there and I felt like we shouldn't not be there so I jumped in and I'm happy to continue but because I haven't been to a meeting yet I'd like to make it clear that if somebody is interested you know speak up now or once I delve into it it'll be hard for somebody else to get into it. So there are adult look-lifes and quite a few applicants and there are 12 or 14 who are about to be interviewed in the first they were actually aiming for a lot of plot in the first two weeks of January so what I see is that there is an effort to really do this quickly and efficiently and also in a comprehensive way to have all these 14. I have a lot of procedural questions and some of them maybe Jennifer could answer I've asked the HR director to speak with her about this but as I said the purpose of doing this update is really to keep the commission informed not to reveal any confidentialities obviously but to keep the commission informed because when somebody is representing you I think you need to know what's going on to the best of what you're able to know and keeping people's confidentiality. So I think I have the impression that it's moving along really fast and at the next meeting I'll have more to tell you I'm sure and I wanted to ask Jen because she's also on that committee does anything you want to add to what I have to say? No we there's a lot of really qualified candidates is what I would say so it's going to be tough to to narrow it down and so to make sure that we're thorough we're kind of as fast as we can trying to get it done in a very thorough way and we just met I think we met twice but we haven't started the interviews or the interview questions yet so that'll start happening this week or next week. I also want to give a shout out to Ronnie and we had a different member of our commission who was interested but could not find the time to commit fully and Ronnie all the way from India was keeping abreast of some of the goings on and though she doesn't have a complete update because she wasn't able to be right in the meetings because of family obligations she was as updated as she possibly could she updated me on a few things sent some emails back and forth to Jennifer and Pamela and I so I thank you Ronnie for being willing to jump in there and be our voice in this most important work so thank you. As far as Chief of Police update search update so the members of the committee are a director of human resources which is Melissa L. Walker, Emerald Henry who is a lawyer, Lev Ben Ezra she is the director of the survival center, Derek Shea who was the principal of Crocker Farm Elementary School of every on Jennifer and Tim Nelson Fire Chief Nelson, Mr. Butterfield who is a retired professor from the school of Eisenberg School of Management at UMass. David Williams who was another retired professor from UMass myself and Chief of Police, the Chief of UMass Police Tyrone Parham. Paul Bachman was at our first meeting we've only had one but he was there just as a listen in for our first meeting. One of the things that we did do we only had six applicants and we felt that that wasn't enough so we have sent letters to other organizations that were put forward by members of the committee, the National Association of Women and Law Enforcement Executives, the National Alliance National Order of Black Law Enforcement Agents, the Government Alliance on Race and Equity we put stuff on each of their websites, the National Black State Troopers Coalition and the Mass Chief of Police Association looking for more applicants and our next meeting will be on January 10th so that is the only update that I have because we push things back we're trying to get more interest in the position if we don't I don't know what the next steps will be and if we do I don't know what the next steps will be but we're going to keep moving forward. Any questions Jennifer anything else you want to add cool all right let me go back to my agenda our agenda um budget I did attend and I'm not sure if anybody was there online but I did attend the November 20th meeting um town council meeting I read the opening statement opening part of our statement for those of you who didn't know um we did not have our meeting last month because we didn't have a quorum so um but I did up our request from to 10 to 15,000 and I felt like I got that feedback from a number of people that we should increase our ask so I did um one of the things and me personally that was a little uh daunting was I was there and there was um a conversation afterwards um about increasing or adding or a request for 8.3 million dollars for the library project and here and everybody was talking about it and I felt myself getting a little fatimid annoyed or something because you're going to put 8.3 in the library project and we're asking for a measly 10 15 thousand dollars you know what I'm saying so um for me as a person and then I as one of your co-chairs um felt a little slighted if that goes through and our request doesn't and I don't have an update on whether it went through or not so I can't give you an update but it was interesting to hear that made me a little annoyed any questions or comments about that all righty um on to the affordable housing trust there is not really another update based um but they're continuing to work not only with the town but with the state because the um affordable housing bills are statewide right now um we are then not the only community that is struggling with affordable housing and it is on Governor Haley's agenda and budget um to try to get affordable housing for everyone so that's the only update I have on that um questions comments jennifer so um cssjc member everald tenry who just mentioned on the police chief search is also on the affordable housing trust no he's on the zba he's on the zoning board of appeals and over the next course of I believe there are Thursday evening meetings the zba will be determining how people are eligible for the project that's happening on ball lane and so he's asked for folks to come and attend those meetings as they you know go through the process of determining eligibility and the lottery system that they'll use and so forth so just wanted to add that because that's a wonderful project it's for home ownership um I think there's two and three bedroom homes and can I go back one step back to everald Henry for the chief of police search committee we did name him our chair so everett everald Henry is our chair of that search I forgot to mention that so thank you for bringing up his name it jogged my memory um says town manager update and our time manager is not here so does he have an update so I think um oh Ronnie was go ahead I was going to say I have a question that I was going to pose that I was hoping the town manager would update on but perhaps Pamela can do that which is about our bylaws and where things stand so I was I when I saw this on the agenda which I did not look at until today I thought oh that is meant to be an update on the bylaws I have not received any communication from the town council generally I try to um to send an email to inquire before the before the meeting just to see if there's been any activity but I did not do that I haven't heard from them directly and I have not um I did not send them an email to inquire so I will do that as a follow-up to this meeting and if I learn of learn of anything right away I will send it out to the commission if not I will um ask them to to provide some additional information for your uh January meeting so I have one other thing I want to bring up in relation to this if you'll remember when we were discussing the bylaws there was a question of who there was something about somebody on the town council one of the counselors being a representative to us and a liaison to us and we had some exchanges with Lynn Grismar because we were asking who that is and it turns out there isn't anyone and I'm sure I don't have I could probably find the female I'm sure she said I will be the representative for you so I think it might be time to remind her and ask her to join our meetings if but she could right so I um I will follow up on that as well so generally when we're sending setting up the meeting um and you all receive your zoom invite we send a zoom invite to the town counselor as well my guess is that we probably did not do that for this meeting so we'll need to get her into the into the onto the list of individuals who received the zoom meeting and are regularly asked to attend I think that her initial response was to be the person until the first uh until the new council is sworn in and then they'll make some decisions so hopefully we'll get we'll get that smoothed out we thought that but she didn't say that in her email she just said I'll be it obviously if she had not been elected she yeah wasn't but I think it may help in addition to sending her the email to just remind her of the concept she's not just getting it because she's the head of the town council she's getting it because she's our representative and if she doesn't want to she can come or she can designate someone I just want to ensure that that connection to the town council is something that we that we have because it's safe in our bylaws that we're supposed to have that right one of our role is to be an advisory body to the town council yeah I totally agree and I will say that for the disability access committee and for the CSSJC there generally has been a town counciler who attends those those meetings under regular so well we'll definitely follow up with that but I'm just taking responsibility for I don't think that we sent her an invitation for tonight's meeting and so that that may be why she's she's not here yeah thank you any other updates we any we have anything that we've recently put on our website of Facebook page who can I ask who manages that because I don't have I don't have access to it yeah so Jennifer you manage it okay so I think I'm going to put the quons that you run on the Facebook page tomorrow but um there was a rule from it that they didn't really want members to have the access because you know members uh their terms end and then it's kind of like they still have the access so um I've been doing it I just and I try to put the statements on there when they come out what I would say is we just kind of need to reshape all of it right like I feel like we could sit down and meeting and kind of go through and change so there's a lot of information on the front part of the page where you don't really get so the stuff that you probably want to see because it's small on the right hand side um there's the outdated statements on there that somebody had mentioned so we can also create ways to um have those be links on and you know on a subset of the page so that when you open it up we should probably also I was thinking is there a Massachusetts Human Rights Commission I I guess I could pull that I don't know I know that each town has one I'm not sure if there isn't I can't imagine that we don't yeah at the state level I think there's probably a lot of several different agencies that you could could we could mass commission on discrimination you keep muting yourself for some reason I don't know how that's happening yeah I'm tired that's so I was just saying on the state on the state level there are probably several different um agencies that we could link to including the mass commission against discrimination as well as the attorney general's office and a number of different agencies that would provide redress to acts of discrimination so we could perhaps work on putting together a list that could be added to the page um yeah and I you know I don't know if you guys want your pictures on it it would be nice so that if people look on the website that they know who the individuals are other than a name which could be as simple as I can take your photo well maybe when we have Jacinta and Tyler here but I think it's a great way people can associate a face to someone for them to recognize you know maybe in the grocery store or something and say hey I've been meaning to come talk to you um about a b and c right it just makes a connection a little bit more without having to have such a formal connection if that makes sense and so um maybe one day when we're full the full board is here I'll take a photo so we can put that on the website or we could meet in person and put it on the website um but I just think we could update and do some question is time right um and uh change the look of the website and so I know Jacinta had talked about possibly being a part of doing some of that as well while she was on break so I'll reach out to her it doesn't need to take a long time you know it's just the photo no not the photo but the whole revamp of the page well and that doesn't necessarily take a long time but it does take some time right and the list of priorities right so I have to go back to my agenda I keep clicking on different things my links um upcoming events we already did that so any other upcoming events that are not HR DEI specific that we know about um I know we just celebrated Hanukkah and I know it was a difficult time for some given what's going on over in the Middle East so there's been a lot of prayer um starting October 7th but especially in the last um eight days um well eight days from the 7th to the 15th but um continue prayers for peaceful resolutions um not only in the Middle East but also in um oh my god I'm blanking Russia and um Ukraine Ukraine that's the place um as well as just you know this is supposed to be the season of giving in love and we are still faced with a lot of angst and hatred and um I just I personally I don't understand I don't understand um I know that we can get angry or annoyed with one another but to have such deep-seated hatred is something I don't personally understand um which is part of the reason why I'm on this commission and I love doing some of the work that we're doing because it gives us the opportunity to bring people together um that are different and learn from each other about our differences and our likes likenesses so is that a word likeness likenesses likeness whatever anyway um so let's keep moving forward everybody um no other comments about upcoming events I need to update um I did also attend the school committee meeting last week it was a little annoyed I wasn't going to attend and then something happened I was watching it on tv I got up out of my bed got dressed and went to the meeting and offered a public comment I don't know if anybody was listening but I had to tamper myself because there's a few things Joi's over here laughing so she must have been listening um there was a few things that kind of set my teeth on edge um mainly that there was a vote from the school committee to overhaul our athletic fields um I have been part of that process for 20 something years when we went from a cinder track to an all-weather track I was part of that push and it's um our fields are not conducive for school pride I'm going to put it that way um where and one of the statements I made is that one of the poorest communities in western massachusetts have better facilities for our student and student athletes and community members than we have and I'm not sure how that is but what prompted that was there was a vote to overhaul in the school committee approved for the overhaul to take place and the current interim school committee wanted to rescind that vote so that's what prompted the discussions that you've heard recently about that and for me personally as someone who worked in the school starting in 1981 retiring in 2021 was that um anytime that there is um money or a change or a change to the detriment of the education of our students the most um delicate of our students are the ones that suffer the most um because they have taken away some of the things that get our children to school like culinary arts and um clothing and textiles and one of the teachers even said in the past that one of the most prideful moments of our students is wearing the dress that they made to the prom you know um they've taken away woodshop and and auto mechanics and some of the um interests that our non highly academic individuals run to that get us into get the kids into the building and once they're in the building we can work with them so they too get their complete education and some of those fields for the athletics is part of that whole process and now they're you know i'm a track athlete i mean a track official all over the country i have seen beautiful facilities and i know that some of the we're not going to get some of the most state-of-the-art facilities but we need to do better than we are doing and i had to condemn what i feel is my own track i was me i'm the one who said it was unsafe and it is um so i was at that school committee meeting um this is not the first time maybe i think this is the third time i've spoken up um in the past year and a half um school committee meetings they also um have a subcommittee right now that are looking into how they are going um to proceed with the um superintendent search so that's another update um that is going to affect all of us in the town and our children and our children's children i have two grandchildren in the high school currently and i know that jerry's daughter is a senior at the high school right now um so i'm not sure oh and jennifer's son oh my god how can i forget is there as well so um those are some other updates i'm going to again if we have no more comments reach back to our public i know there was three members and now there are two members of the public so i'm going to read our statement once again during the public comment period the chair will recognize members of the public when called upon please identify yourself by stating your full name preferred pronouns and residential address residents are welcome to express your views for up to three minutes at the discretion of the chair based upon the number of people who wish to speak no speaker can see their time to another speaker the hrc will not engage in a dialogue or comment on a matter raised during public comment so if you are in the public comment and you would like to have a public speak please raise your hand so that we can bring you in and again i see none so on to our last any other topics that the chair do not reasonably anticipate 48 hours in advance to have the meeting i do have two things for us to be conscious of um as members of the committee we have our meetings once a month but that is not the only thing that we do we have um at least one every six weeks or so but right now more than one a month activities events that we're putting on and um i'm asking that members of the committee make every effort into attending those things that we are sponsoring that was the first thing and the second thing is we have at least an empty space for a high school student on this board and i know that we have at least tyler if i'm not mistaken will be done at the end of this school term so we need to start thinking about um filling those spaces if we can okay so those are the only two other things that i thought of as we were talking does anybody has anything else okay well with that i will um say that i pray that i'm seeing everybody on the 26th um i pray that your next weeks and days are filled with wonderful community and wonderful family i know sometimes when we get all our families together it can be a great time and you know isn't it time for you to go home now times like that as well um i pray nothing but peace for all of us and this nation and all nations and i mean that from the bottom of my heart and with nothing else said i am calling this uh i will uh take a motion to adjourn the meeting anybody i so move up and so did ronnie so i second so i have a okay so ronnie moved that we adjourn the meeting second by debra all in favor hi yes okay have a good night any opposed it is so we will see you on the 18th of january i want to say but first the 26th huh but first the 26th yes our next meeting should be on the 18th 17th the 18th Wednesday in january the third Wednesday in january i think is the 18th okay everybody stay safe out there holiday take care okay take care bye bye good night everyone okay good night