 recorded to the lab. This meeting is being recorded. So let me give everybody a quick update before Dave shows up. So first of all, if you haven't been there lately, the fencing is all up with a padlock on the front gate. The grassy area has been sprayed with the grass seed composites. Ted says it's starting to grow already. So everything inside the fence is there. The shade structures are there. The benches are in place. The water fountains are in place. There's not yet, I can't remember if I saw a trash can or not. I went yesterday so I saw everything. So we know the kiosk has been ordered and the kiosk company is actually going to be installing it. That goes outside the gate. I don't know the timing of that. That's a question I have for Dave once he shows up. Dave and Ted and I took a walk there just last week maybe and talked about what we hope to see happen in the near future. And working backwards, we hope to have a grand opening for the piece stone area with the grassy area blocked off. So we don't know exactly. We're going to talk tonight. Today, it's not tonight. It's really morning still. We're going to talk today about timeline. But the concept was the town is going to be ordering hopefully already did, but that's another question for Dave. They're going to be ordering hurricane fencing, storm fencing, whatever you call it, and the metal posts to put it up to block off the grass area. So we can have an opening this summer, maybe even late spring. Hang on. Dave shows up here. Hi, Dave. Good morning, everybody. I'm just giving everybody a rough background of what we talked about at our meeting, new me and Ted when we walked the site. So again, talking about having a grand opening that we're going to try and schedule. And before that, we're going to have a workday where we're going to invite people to come. And we're going to try and publicize this in lots of different ways of anybody who's interested in the dog park, particularly people who might be interested in being on the friends group to have a workday where we all meet at the dog park and install the fencing. And Dave is going to be coordinating with DPW or somebody to order the supplies we need and figure out what tools we need. And everybody's going to work together to put this fencing in place. So this will be a kind of a work party and introduction to the dog park where people can't bring their dogs because there won't be any fencing yet. And the whole point is to not have dogs prancing around on the seeded area. So that's got to happen before the grand opening, but it can happen very close to the grand opening because the main thing the grand opening will need is this fencing in place. And there's a bunch of other little things we'll need, like at least some of the signage up because the point of the grand opening is we'll leave it open after that. So we need to have the rules up and some of the signage up. I think I'll stop talking now and we'll go into our agenda in order and we'll get back to all this stuff as we go. So Dave, I already officially started the meeting. We actually still we don't have a quorum because although with Ellen here we have four and if Nina's no longer a voting member, so we four out of the eight voting members might mean that we do have a quorum. So we can vote on things if we want to vote on things, but I don't know that we'll need to vote on anything so it might not be an issue anyway. So any rate the meeting is being recorded to the cloud and we officially called the meeting to order and hang on eight participants. Who's the eighth participant? It might just be Angela who's gone now. Okay, you know if anybody else shows up we'll invite them in to join the meeting. Okay, so getting back to our agenda. I already gave a brief construction status. Dave, one question I had is, do you know the timeline for the kiosk delivery and installation? Yeah, I missed the construction update. I just cut off the phone with Jason Skeels. Do you want me to talk a little bit in more depth about that? Yes, please. Yeah, so and I'll end remind me on the kiosk. By the way, just interrupt a second. I'll take notes and send out minutes for this. I don't know if people have been Nina, Jack, Ellen, I know Ted and Jim and I have been out there and Ted lives nearby, but I don't know if you've been by, but things are looking really pretty good. Fencing is all done. Hydro seating went in I think last week. Parking has been striped. Things are looking pretty good. The park is locked now because we did have people kind of exploring on their own and now that the hydro seating is in and some of the other elements are and the park is not officially open, we really didn't want people kind of nosing around in there. We're at the point where we're working with the contractor on kind of punch list items. Things like the wetland buffer area to the south needs reseeding. We had some erosion there in these last couple of storms. We're getting them to trim and weed whack around the trees to the north closest to Route 9. Bike loops have yet to go in, but benches are in, the shade structures are in. Let's see. We still have things to do. So the plans that went before the planning board had to be changed in the field. So that was an on-the-fly change that the town engineer Jason Skeels made. So we have to go back before the planning board on June 29th. This is part of our site plan review and it's a requirement basically because we changed the parking. We changed some of the ADA access ways, if you will, and a few other things. We need the building commissioner to sign off on the project, particularly things like the clasps on the fencing. I believe have to be ADA. So we're getting down to these kind of punch list items and then the planning board. I don't expect any major issues with the planning board, but I think they will want to know what changed in the plan because it did go through site plan review. So that's why in a recent email to Jim and Ted, I was suggesting this soft opening after June 29th. What are the punch list items? So then getting on to kiosks. I'm in touch with Vermont Timber Framing. I can't remember the name of the company. It's Vermont Timber something. And they're ready to deliver the main kiosk at any point. We paid for them to install it out on the concrete walkways. So DPW will coordinate with them and we'll try to get that in next week or the week after, depending on this company's schedule from Vermont. What else? Kiosk. We're working on finalizing all the signs. I think those went out to Jim and Ted via Angela last week. And I think in general, we're ready to send those off to be produced. Those are the, we can, I don't know if Jim, you have them, but we could review them briefly here today or you could send them out. Those are rules and regulations, etiquette, all those signs we did up before. Yeah. I'm just interrupting. I, as a separate agenda item, when we get to the signage review, I'll share my screen so people can see. Okay. I'm also working to make sure I don't have the final budget numbers, but I'm confident that we will have some breathing room on the budget. So we are going to cost out and order a sign that is probably not quite as nice, but in a similar style to the sign at the Kendrick Park playground. If you've seen that one or, you know, when your travels go by that one, it won't be granite there. It's on granite posts. We're going to not use granite, but the sign will be similar. It's, you know, it'll be a couple of thousand bucks. We're also going to order a lawnmower and weed whackers and things like that. Alan Snow from DPW will handle that. The outbuilding, the shed, if you will, is going to be delivered next week. That'll be on the south end outside of the fence. That's where we'll keep equipment that the Friends Group and DPW can use to maintain the park. I'm sure there's other things and you may have questions, but those are the kind of issues we're working on right now in the next two weeks. So a couple of comments. Before you got here, Angela was here and I asked her what the status is of the rules and etiquette signs and she says she hasn't actually ordered them yet and she needs some sort of budget line item code or something from you to do that. So she's waiting on that. Yeah, I think if you all are good with the signs, we'll hit send and produce them. So maybe by the end of this meeting, we should say, yeah, etiquette and rules and regs done. Let's get them produced. She did say it might be two and a half weeks for some reason to get the signs made and so we need to be mindful of that in terms of the end of the month as far as an opening because we may not have the signs by then. Although if we ordered, she can get the order in today. Yeah, I think we're still fine on that. And I visited yesterday the day before and I asked Dave and Angela, I think I copied Ted and this also, if we could just have a little temporary sign saying coming soon with an email address that people can send to if they want more information or if they want to be involved in the Friends Group and Angela was going to send a prototype of that today and we'll stick that up on the front gate. So when people go there, before the real signs are in place, they can say, hey, I want to know more, send something to this email and get more. And I did also figure out, I managed to find the password to our Amherst Dog Park Gmail account which Anna had set up and I found the password and I made that forward to me for now. So instead of to Anna, because she's officially off the committee now that she's a counselor. So that email address does work now. So that's just kind of a smattering of the kind of things we're trying to wrap up. The contractor is actually on the hook and has site control until I believe they do one mowing of the grass. So we have to kind of dance around that a little bit and I'll talk to Jason's skills about that. I did not talk to him about it moments ago when I was on the phone because I frankly forgot but the one question I'll put to Jason is if they do their mowing, let's say they do their mowing in the third week of June or the last week of June, are they then done done? And we pay them and they're gone. The one thing, yeah, it's a fine line between our soft opening and them being, they're going to want to be paid and off the site before our soft opening because they don't want to have to come back if, let's say the, I don't know, some big dog gets out there and ruins the grass or whatever. They don't want to be on the hook for that. Contractually they want to be done. And so they have site control. So when do we release them from site control? And I'll talk to Jason about that. Okay, by the way, as Dave was talking, I got a text message with a picture from my brother-in-law who lives in Amherst Woods saying grass is growing with pictures of the grass. How long will the grass need to be fenced off until we can allow dogs onto that? Well, to be perfectly honest, you know, and Jason and I talked about this, I mean, it's not our recommendation to do a soft opening. It's not, it's not the way we would typically do it because, you know, I'm hopeful that people will be respectful of the fencing, but I have a feeling dogs will get under over through the fencing. And so there likely will be some damage. Ideally, you would wait until even October 1st to open the park and really let the grass grow. So we're going to have to oversee. We're going to have to, you know, this is typically what happens is, you know, and we had this at Kendrick Park. It's a great example. We opened Kendrick Park because there was a lot of pressure to open it. And what's happened is in some areas where there was seed, but it really didn't take, we have bare ground. So it's going to be a little bit challenging, but we'll be hopeful that people will be respectful of the fencing and not try to explore further. So they'll have access to all the piece stone areas. Dave, does the town have to keep off the grass signs that we could put on the hurricane fencing just to emphasize? Yeah, we'll have to order some. We don't have them, but we'll order some. Yeah. And what about the hurricane fencing and the posts themselves? We'll get that, Jim. No problem. I think we have some already. Dave, does the hurricane fencing come in different heights? Is there a possibility of a three foot four? Is there a four foot height, you know, which would be certainly a bigger barrier than a three foot height? Yeah, we're definitely not going three. It'll be four plus four or four plus. Yeah. I think if it's put in properly, I don't think too many dogs are going to go through there. And if it's obvious, even if they go through, if the owner goes and retrieves them, I don't know how much damage they're going to do as long as it doesn't become a play area, because the ground is pretty firm. I was walking out there today and it's not mushy ground where you're going to have footprints. You know, it's pretty firm, the surface. So I'm hoping. Yeah, we'll be hopeful. So again, we were, we haven't locked in on a date, but I had put out to Jim and Ted, I believe I had put out Friday, July one as a potential soft opening day right before the fourth of July holiday. I put that out there for two reasons. One, we need to get through the planning board hearing on the 29th, make sure everything's cool. Two, we want to grow some grass and give a couple of weeks here to get prepared. And three, I'm out for two weeks. My son is getting married on the 9th of July. And so I'm out the week of the fourth and the week of the 11th. So I'd really liked, you know, if we don't do it on the first or Saturday the second, which is a little weird because it's the holiday weekend, then yeah, I just want to do it. I'd want to do it either before I go away or after I go away. So I have to take off. I'm not going to be here the last week of June or the first week of July either. But I have an appointment. So I got to skip out and we'll talk. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah. I hope you're in good health. It's good to see you. Thank you. Thank you. I actually had my six month post op scan and it's good. No recurrence. So thank you for asking. Yeah. Thank you. Good to see you. Alrighty. Hi, everyone. So I wonder, aside from the things that need to take place at the park in terms of publicizing the friends group, the workday and all of that, will we have time between now and July 1st to get the word out sufficiently when we kind of have to wait for all the pieces and parts to be answered before we publicize the date? You know what I mean? So we might not be able to get publicity going for another week or two until we have what we know when the signs are coming. We know when the kiosk is coming. I'm just wondering if we'd be better off delaying it to the middle of July or when you're back. It's just the thought the grass is more mature at that point as well. Less chance of damage. Well, the other piece is we haven't even talked about the populating the kiosk, which in and of itself is some work for all of us because we want that acknowledgement for that soft opening. You want all that kiosk to be looking super sharp. I mean, I'm fine. I'm fine with a middle of July, frankly. I'd feel more comfortable doing that, but I wanted to put out an earlier date to see how you all felt. But I've got my punch list, but a lot of that donor stuff is going to fall to you all. Right. The thing is that we haven't discussed making those signs for the board yet. We had some titles. We had some sketches and what was going to go on each plaque, but we didn't really talk about what size, what font. I'm guessing we wanted to mimic the other signs. Yeah, thematically and style wise. We also haven't until the benches and shade structures and doggie pots got put in. We haven't talked about making the little brass clacks to go on those structures or how they're going to get there. Yeah. I think that stuff really should, if people paid significant money, yeah, I think that needs to be there for the opening. I agree. So Dave, tell me again, Dave, your timeframe of when you'll be back. So I will be back. I will be back in the office on July 18th. So I'm gone the week of the fourth and the week of the 11th. And I'm actually gone that week of the 18th. Do we go for early August? It's going to be September. Yes. It will end up in October and we won't even need the fencing. I forget there's no fencing. I'm away the first week in August. Nina, when are you away? The second week in August? I'm moving away August 1st. So one possibility is the last week in July and I haven't totally given up on the earlier timeframe. I mean, we'd want to get the signage in place and that's sort of the big next category to talk about is signage review. And we have a pretty decent list of the signs that we need and we have a pretty decent outline of what's going in the kiosk and which panel it's going on. We did all that stuff in the fall and actually have and can share those documents as well. So it's a question of putting in the time and the effort to order the signs we need and figure out how they get mounted on things. And it's a lot to do in a four-week period or a three-week period. I'm happy to help with getting some of the plaques made or the signs for the kiosk. I have a few weeks. I'm going away at the end of June, but I'm around for the next few weeks. And now that the structures are there, we can actually go out there with a ruler and say, okay, where do we want to put this and how big is it going to be? And if you send what we have for the, we've already designed for the kiosk, then maybe Angela, when she's putting in the sign order, can just order, if we know exactly the measurements and what we wanted to say, she can just order that all at the same time so that when the kiosk gets here, we can have it mounted right away. It might be two different orders. I think we want to try and get in the two big metal signs ordered like today. Those are the ones with the button turned around. So I mean, I'm insanely busy for two more weeks. And then I'll have a little gap that last week in June where I'd be available to do a bunch of stuff also. Well, it seems real realistically with vacations and with all the work we have to do. Why don't we target, let's say, right now our tentative week is the week of July 25th. I think we need to put that in our heads to say, that's what we're shooting for. Let's see how we can move these sign, the suite of signs I call it for the dog park forward as much as we can during June, get everything ordered. Things will come in, piecemeal a little bit, sign one, we'll have one, the etiquette and the rule signs will get out the door, get those back. We'll order the big sign, the welcome sign that goes out there somewhere. And then we'll work on the panels during June, get all of that ordered, all the plaques ordered. And as these things come back in, we'll hone our week. Is it the week of the 25th? But let's shoot for that week. Okay. Yeah, that's fine with me. I think we gotta have a goal. We gotta have a goal. You know? Yeah. So we're gonna say July, week of July 25th is our goal. Goal opening, you know, soft opening, whatever. Probably still assuming fencing, that's fine. Yeah. A workday would be best on the weekend, obviously, before that, I think. Don't you think, Jim? Yeah. Yeah. On Sunday, the 24th, say? Is that sound reasonable? That sounds good. I'm coming back for my vacation that Saturday, so I'm around that Sunday. I'll be around the 24th. And we'd have a workday on the 24th. And again, we're gonna pick whatever day of the week during the week of the 25th. Okay. Right. We might be able to open up the 25th if everything's in place, you know, of all the signs that are there and everything's done and the fencing goes up, then we might be able to open up whatever is good for the town. And the thing I'll have to do is, as we go through the month of June and get signed, you know, orders out, we do need to lock in, we've got plenty of time now, but I need to give all the people, the CPA committee and particularly the town council, a couple of weeks advanced notice to say, we selected July 25th, 6th, 7th, 8th, whatever date it is that week, because, you know, people are on vacation, we want to get as many people from the council and the CPA committee and the community as possible to come to this. So can we, which day would be like of that Monday through Friday? Anybody have any, you know, there's no reason to not pick a day now. Is there? Um, no, I mean, we could, I'm not a big fan of that Monday, just in case we need, we've discovered things on the 24th, we need DPW's help. It's hard for me to mobilize Monday morning for a grand opening at 10 a.m. So I'm more inclined to do Wednesday the 27th, something like that. Would it be a morning thing or would it be an after work? You know, I don't know what's best in terms of getting the public or do we want the public or you know what I mean? I have a two o'clock Dennis appointment that day. It should be a morning thing. It could be the morning of the 27th. Okay. 10 a.m. Yeah, I think this might be more of like all the official government people ribbon cutting type thing. And then maybe that Saturday the 30th, the friends group, if we pull it together and time does like a big public welcome and we have, I don't know, lemonade and iced tea or something. Let's say our date right now is July 27th, 10 a.m. I'll look at the town calendar and see if there's any conflicts, anything like that. And if it has to move a day or two, fine, but let's, we need a target. Good. And the work day, the 24th, Sunday, the 24th. Yeah. And that'll be, I'd say, you know, 9 a.m. Okay. And so, Dave, we'd probably need at least Jason or somebody from DPW there kind of helping to direct traffic and explain what needs to be done and. Yeah. If I'm just going to put this out there, I'm not making a promise, but would feelings be hurt if I'm able to get the snow fence in before the 24th? Is that going to hurt anybody's feelings? It probably be done better. It probably be done, you know, professional. Yeah. So let me, let me play around with that with Jason. Okay. I think the more we can get done before the better. Yeah. We can still have a organizational meeting at the park without, you know, to show like a preview or early access or whatever you want to call it for people who are interested. Yeah. So let me, let me, let me just work on that. Yeah. And if, if it would be helpful to have a couple volunteers to help with that, we could still get some volunteer labor to help them if they feel that would be useful. You know, that's always a mixed bag. If you get volunteer labor, who knows what they're doing, it can really make things go well. If you get volunteer labor who's clueless, it could make it take longer. So. Okay. All right. Good. So should we switch topics over to signage? Yes. And I'm going to share my screen and show you the two signs that Angela has already got sort of mock-ups up that are ready to go if I know how to share screen. Well, he's doing that Dave. Is the sprinkler running, you know, function, functional mass of grass? Okay. What's the, what's, what's the schedule? Do you know? I do not. I pride myself on not getting into that level of detail. Ted, if I did my head, my head would explode. So I leave that up to Jason Skeels and he's trying to grow grass out there. The contractor actually is trying to grow grass. So it's, you know, they're on the hook. They're on the hook for that first mowing. So they want to go grass. So they set the irrigation. So can everybody see the dog park rule sign? Yes. That's exciting. You say no or yes. Yes. So this is it. And Ted and Dave and I have already reviewed it and it's based on stuff that was agreed upon and voted on it. One of our fall meetings, but everyone should take a close look to see if there's anything there. Now, does this one, I have to see the other one. Is this one on for the inner fence and the other ones for the outer fence? I can't remember. What we said is both of them at main entrance, dog park rules at main entrance and dog park etiquette also at main entrance. So we can interpret that to be, you know, my feeling is outside the gate is where this is read in the little vestibule area, whatever you call it. People are too busy with their dogs to read signs that we don't want people lingering there reading things. Sure. So I would think, you know, one on each side of the gate, probably. Right. And I think there was going to be a smaller version of the same thing to put in the kiosk. Yes. Both of them. Yep. Can I ask one small thing? And I don't know if this is really that important, but does it make sense to move the kind of no glass food or breakable containers up a little bit? I don't know. It just seems like I remember there was quite a bit of discussion about you're not supposed to have food at a dog park, right? Because I think the chances of somebody having alcohol there are pretty low. I don't know. It's not a big deal. Yeah, I don't know. We'd have to also talk about, you know, which, you know, possibly something way at the bottom list catches people's eyes more than something in the middle of the list. Because it's the last bullet, maybe it catches people's eyes. That's fine. Yeah. You know, 98% of the people are going to play by the rules. 2% are going to be idiots no matter how many signs we post. I'm sure you know Dave from other places. My percentage is a little different. I have the 80-20 rule. I don't have 98. 80-20 is maybe 90-10. At Puffer's Bond, it's 80% of the people will stay off the cliffs, but 20% of the people want to jump off the cliffs. Yeah. Okay, so I'm going to switch this and show the etiquette rules now. Yeah, I think that all looks good. I wish it weren't so negative, but I don't know that there's ways to change that. You know, there's so many no's, no's, no's. I wish there was like a more positive. Well, rules are negative by nature, aren't they? Don't do this, don't do that, you know. Yeah. It's interesting. Let's look at the etiquette and see if that's as negative or not. So I'm going to stop, share, and now I'm going to go share again this one. Hang on a second. I took a picture at the dog park of the rules. These PDFs are killing my computer. Okay, can you guys, oh, here we go. Yeah. Now can you see it? Yeah. Good. Yeah, still a lot of no's. Yeah, well, I hear what you're saying, Ellen. We struggle with the same thing on conservation signs and we're going through that, you know, I already had two or three discussions this week about new kiosk signs for our conservation areas. And I think what we're trying to do is, you know, the rules and regs may be a little kind of negative, but the rest of the signage is welcoming and, you know, I don't know. No, it is what it is. We deal with this at the museum, too. You know, it's just trying to always be welcoming and positive and it's hard when you have. The good news is dogs can't read. I don't think. Only dogs and humans in the park. That's a funny one. I like that. Do not bring your gerbil or your cat. Yeah, or your cat. Or your goat. I've seen a goat. I've seen a goat at the beach before, a goat. I have, too. I've seen a lamb, I think, at the beach, too. A pet lamb or something like that. Well, we have neighbors with a donkey and they take him on a walk in the woods. So I'll be in the woods behind my house and bump into a donkey now. That's my dream. The lamb could have been a Kerry blue terrier. So these are the two signs that, hopefully, Dave will get in touch with Angela and she can order right away. And I'm going to unshare my screen. You have the kiosk signs easily. Yeah, maybe I'll share this document from, that's the kiosk content sign. Let's see if I can find that. These two PDFs that Angela sent me are humongous. So opening, closing, moving them around is painful. There we go. Close you, close you. Let's find this other document. By the way, I continue, I just wrote a note to myself, I continue to update the Stanton Foundation monthly. I send them a once a month email with some photos. The grants administrator there who was so terrific who we started with left. And it's been a little spotty, I have to admit, that the previous grant administrator was just fantastic and always checking in with me and the person who replaced them is just, you send emails, you don't get, I don't know if they're going to cyberspace or not. So I'm just trying to keep adhering to their rules and regs because I think we're going to want to go back to them for more money because I can't remember the sequence, but I think in year two, four, or something like that, you can go back for more money if we need to upgrade the park or want to add something or fix something. So for what it's worth, I send in these monthly, you know, it's a quick email with some photos. So I'll send this one for kind of a June 1 update to them with some nice photos of the park. Great. Okay, I'm going to share my screen again. Hey, there's Carol. Carol has joined us. She's been lurking the whole time, I think. I don't have, if you can hear me, I don't have video on my computer at work. We do hear you. Hi, Carol. It's nice to have you lurking, Carol. I was working with you the other day at the dog park. That's right. Okay, so here's this document from October 27th, and the first two pages are the signs that we just looked at, the actual rendering of the signs. So here's kiosk content, panels one and two, community notices, and then the small versions of the dog park worlds and dog park etiquette. Panels three and four, founders of Amherst Dog Park, recognition heading, permanent name plaques, and we, I'll actually have another document that I'll show you who we currently have as founders and as donors who are going to get different recognition. Then annual dog park supporters with recognition heading and one-year signs. Panels five and six, friends of Amherst Dog Park info and sponsorship info. Not exactly sure what that means, but hopefully Ted can remind us if he or he can make something up. I don't know. Panel seven and eight, about the Amherst landfills, the big picture, grasshopper sparrow perimeter trail, and then about the dog park funding sources and the history of the project. So name plates will be attaching name plates to sponsored items. And the only, we have, I believe, four bench donations that are, so we have four name plates that we need for benches. And I think there's a total of eight benches. Is that right, Dave? Two in each shape, is there one or two in each shade structure? Two in each shade structure. And then two more on each loop. Yes. So there's eight in all, and we currently have four recognition plates we need. I don't think we have anything for fountains or waste stations, and we have one of the shade structures that needs recognition. Then we're going to do the temporary fencing, you're going to take care of that. We talked about a wayfaring sign out on a loop nine. So how does that, how do we make that happen? That's something I've got to make happen. And can you send this to all of us at the end just so it's on the top of our inboxes? Because this is a great reminder I had not looked at this in a while. But yeah, Angel and I will make some sort of wayfinding sign. It'll be thematic with the maroon and white, Amherst dog park arrow or something like that from route nine. And let me show you another thing that I put together. Can I just, on panel seven and eight, we can pull some of that together. I think we already have that information. The other panels, I would look to all of you on, because I don't have all the names, well, I guess I do have all the names of the donors, but I would need help on the other panels from you all. Just so you know, the perimeter fence that meets the dog park fence is going up as we speak. I would say it's one sixth or one eighth done. We are wrapping the old landfill, what I call the South landfill in a perimeter fence to protect the cap as well as the grass upper sparrow. We definitely ran into a little bit of buzz saw less so on the fence and more so on the perimeter trail. Not all of the people who abut the landfill to the West were aware of or thrilled with the idea of a perimeter trail through their big backyard. It's actually on our property. It's on the town's property, which is the landfill, the cap landfill. We're working through that. Stephanie Ciccarello and I have been out there multiple, multiple days meeting with the abutters to the landfill. That perimeter trail, the fence is going in. The fence will be in by the end of June. The perimeter trail will likely be a longer conversation and would not, if we're able to achieve it, would go in in 23, not 22. As you can imagine, some people's yards are bigger and more private than others. Having a perimeter trail there was a little bit of a surprise to some of those abutters. What you have in front of you now is everything that I know of for acknowledgement signs. We've got four different bench acknowledgement signs. People specifically donated what we are required amount minimum for benches. We've got Barry Roberts as a kiosk acknowledgement. We've got two founders, Ellen and Ted. We've got Ted also in the small dog shade structure. Then we have three other people who just gave donations, but not with a specified acknowledgement. I don't know where we want to put those. It depends on the amount. They were very different amounts. Stephanie and Jonathan gave $1,000. I think we need to see the amounts at some point because otherwise, if they give $25, they're not going to go in the kiosk. I think the minimum was $500 to be listed as an annual sponsor. I believe, I don't have that in front of me. Kate Atkinson and the Spencer's were small amounts, but Stephanie and Jonathan was $1,000. They should go somewhere special. We could put them on an object. I don't remember if there were $1,000 objects. We could look. I could get in touch with them and ask them if they want to be on an object. I think we're going to have to have another meeting to actually talk more in depth about all these labels. I think so. With Angela, who's going to be involved in producing some of the signs. Maybe Ted, I'll send this to you also. Ted, if you want to do the research and come up with a recommendation of what all these signs should look like and stuff. Remember, Angela has all the records of all the totals of what people gave. Right. I do too. I can send it to everybody. I guess maybe I should talk to Angela about where she would like to have these made. She has all the fonts and stuff. I don't want to spend time designing the actual signs when she has the format already in place. It's more or less just what's it going to say and where is it going to go? Dave, are there other town parks that have benches and things like that with plaques for donations? There are. Sorry, I have a little coughing problem here. There are, Jim, but there's no consistency. I wish there was. We're with the Kendrick Park and with the dog park. We're trying to really establish this brand with the maroon and white and the town seal. I think we're breaking new ground here. As far as I know, there's not another park that has so many private donations. I think we can break a little new ground here. Ted's right. I think as long as Angela knows what categories people should be in, she's very good and creative about coming up with a draft of these. I will say that Barry Roberts ended up not contributing as much as I had hoped he would for the kiosk. We could acknowledge his gift toward the kiosk, but it did not cover the entire cost of the kiosk. Was it over $5,000? It was not in the end. What happened? He decided that he... He doesn't want to be in the kiosk. I don't think Barry cares. I don't think Barry cares whether he's acknowledged or not, but it was $2,500 instead of $10,000. I think we just need a couple categories like founders, sponsors, friends, and then we can divide it. We don't have to say what the amount is, but do it in a descending order, so you understand that. Right. What we had from two years ago or three years ago, we had set up all those different categories and maybe those need to be revised into something different. I think it might be nice too when we work on this to reach out to especially the people who gave money for the benches. They might have specific dedications to a dog or something or in memory of, and we can also let them know about the opening date and it's just a good stewardship thing. I'm fine taking charge of the communication with people and checking if they just want their name on the bench plaque or if they want something else. The bench threshold was $1,000, so I'll ask Stephanie and Jonathan if they want the bench. Sure. Right. Will people who gave money for the bench also go in the kiosk? Yeah. We probably have to figure that out. What is the threshold to be a quote-unquote founding donor or whatever they're called versus just people or we have different categories of founders or we just lump anybody over $1,000 in one category. It was up there. I think we had said founders were $5,000. I think it was, but since this is where we're at, we have all these people who gave $1,000 or $1,500. Where are we going to put them? They go underneath. When you see an annual report, founders and then sponsors, friends, associates. We didn't do that. We only made the one category and then we were going to have an annual board for people who just business at $500 to be up there for a year. But we need another category like sponsors might be in. There's something under founders for people in that $1,000 to $5,000. Yeah, let's set up a separate meeting for this. I think we need to really think this through carefully and make sure we're acknowledging everyone correctly. Send these documents around, Jim, and then we'll all give it some thought before the next meeting. Okay, and I'll also do a doodle poll and baiting a meeting really focused on signage and acknowledge. Yeah, right. Sorry. Let's also remember, Ellen mentioned kind of, I don't know if it was descending order or whatever, but we want to acknowledge the Stanton Foundation, but also the town, CPA, committee, the town council. We've got to figure all of that out too. Yeah, right. And I've got them, they're listed here. Beautiful. Right. But I think we need their full, yeah. Right. I've got the numbers. Should be in a separate category than Stanton, you know what I mean? We'll be in a separate spot. Yeah. But I'll send out my spreadsheet, which I believe matches Angela's of the numbers. Yeah. But is it like Amherst Rotary Club or Rotary Club of Amherst? Like we need to be very specific that we're not, that we're acknowledging everybody correctly. Stanton Foundation, LLC, whatever it is, not just Stanton. And we would list the original committee member names as well. Oh, right, right. Yeah. That's a good thing to remember too. Yeah. Maybe add that on their gym too. Yeah. Good. I just wanted to go back to the two first signs that we looked at, dog park rules and dog park etiquette. One said Amherst, dog park etiquette, and the other one just said dog park rules. I think we should be consistent and have the town. Well, the one that said dog park rules above it, it had town of Amherst, Massachusetts with the logo. Oh, and the other one did not. And the other one didn't. Okay. The other one has the logo, but kind of down in the corner. You're right. Yeah. So I'm going to add to this just the, I won't add it here, but I'll add dog park task force. So the other, so there's actually two big topics to discuss at our next meeting. And the second one is publicity around and, you know, all the different things we do need to do. And I have, actually, if we scroll down here, I had just made an outline here of, you know, direct email. I actually have a list of 75 names of people who at some point in the process over the last five years have expressed an interest in the happenings at the dog park, including the, you know, a scattering of people who sent something to the Gmail address and stuff like that. So there's this direct email. And then, you know, we're going to want a good Gazette article sometime middle of July. Amherst Indy, the Amherst Bulletin and Phyllis Lair is a great person to talk to to get things in there. I assume the town would do a posting on its newsflash site. But we can go into details of this, you know, I envision our next meeting, you know, the end of hanging on my calendar here still says may that's, that's all wrong. So maybe sometime the week of June 20th, try and have our next meeting where we can finalize all the signage that we're going to need and placement of it. That sound reasonable? Yeah. So I'll do a doodle poll for that week. Okay. And I'm gonna unshare my screen. I think that covers what we needed to talk about today. It's exciting. It's really exciting. I mean, it looks great. It looks really great. You know, tell Jason that I said nice job because it really, really looks very, everything's well done. That's huge day. At this event, Jason has got to be, you know, in front of the center because he has been out there so much the amount of time, you know, and and our contractor, you know, this week, this goes not to go back in time, but low bidders. That's what municipalities have to do. And, you know, we struggled through COVID and, you know, and luckily we got a sub who really, who really cared about this project and they did some kind of extra special things for us. So that's great. Nina, are you going far or would you still be around for any of these events or? I'm moving to Pittsburgh. Oh, Pittsburgh. Going to Duquesne Law School. It's wonderful. Congratulations. That's awesome. Thanks. I'll be like around. I'll probably be visiting during breaks and stuff, but yeah, for the next three years, I'll be over there. Wow, that is super exciting. Do you have a sense, any sense of like what kind of law you want to focus on? Yeah, I want to go into children's advocacy. I want to start out like doing like abuse and neglect cases because that's kind of what I was doing in my previous social work job in that sphere of things. But it's like my absolute dream to do education policy one day. So we'll see where law school kind of point me and I'll decide where I want to go from there. But you're here till the end of July? Yeah. Good. So you can be there at the grand opening? Yeah, I'm really excited. I was kind of doubtful that I'd be able to get to it. Well, that's awesome. Congratulations. That is super exciting. Thanks. Okay. So I actually just added a third agenda item for the next meeting. So we've got working on all the signage and acknowledgments. We've got publicity and who's going to do what and how are we going to do it. And then an outline plan for the grand opening event and what we're going to do with that. So those three items. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Should we add something about the friends group? Like is it time to get that going? Now that this group is going to disband, I assume, as soon as we open? That's the plan. I thought the organizational meeting is where the friends group would kind of kick off and all the advertising. We would say we need people to help take care of this beautiful park. Please come and take a list. And like that would be the beginning. Yeah, that was part of the other piece of the workday before the grand opening was to have it be a vehicle for luring people in to form the friends group. And it might be only that if Dave does the fence, the whole meeting might be to just come and show your interest and take the name. Well, maybe one of us or a couple of us should be there on that Saturday and Sunday asking people who come, you know, if they want to join the friends group and taking their information. Yeah, I think we should have a little bit more formulation of what it's to talk about, you know, talking points, what will be involved, what their time commitment is. Good. So that's that's a fourth item on the agenda. Okay, great. And we actually, we do also have a nice document that I don't know who put it together. But we have a document talking about the friends group with a pointing authority mission statement, responsibilities, membership governing body. Awesome. I think I'll send that out as well. I'm pretty sure Brenda did that. You know, it's timeline says, you know, finalized working mission in July of 2020 officially turned over governance in September 2021. So who knew pandemic was coming our way. But there has been thought put into that. So I'll send that out to everybody as well. So they have the latest of that document at the next meeting. If Angela could be there, at least for the sign part, that would be very helpful. Yeah, maybe just make note of that if you could in your doodle poll or whatever we're going to do for that meeting. I like the word you use there lure people into the French group. Yeah, lurking and luring. So our concept is kind of that weekend before the grand opening, even if we don't have a workday, invite people to come without their dogs for a tour of the park and early and early look. Although if the storm fencing is in, we could invite people with their dogs for a tour of the park and unlock it just while we're there and let people bring their dogs. Yeah. Yeah, let's see. We'll see where we're at. Certainly all the donors, all the donors should be invited, of course, for like a sneak peek or preview. Sneak peek for donors. That could be very cool. Yeah, I like this. Yeah, I know for all of us it's been a long road, but it's something I said to somebody the other day about the spray park at Groff Park. People waited a while for that. People, not as many people like you were involved in kind of the behind the scenes and in the trenches, if you will. But when I go to Groff Park and I interact with people, I've never heard anybody say, this took so long to build. Everyone is like, wow, we love this. What a great design. So that's what we're going to hear. We all know the behind the scenes story, how much work, how much effort, how many meetings, but the average person who's going to go to this dog park, they are just going to go, this is great. Hopefully, how can I get more involved and be a friend? So these projects do take a long time, but in the end, this is going to be here for the next 50 years or more. Okay. So I think we'll adjourn this meeting and thank you so much, everybody, for coming and for everything. And you'll be hearing from me with notes and documents and a doodle call for the next meeting. Thank you. I'm really excited. Me too. Thank you. Okay. Have a good weekend. Have a nice weekend. Bye. Bye, everybody.