 This program is brought to you by Cable Franchise Vs and generous donations from viewers like you. Good evening. We have three different meetings tonight or basically one meeting with three different. So we're going to start with a capital improvement program presentation. Before we do that, I just want to make a couple statements about our meeting, which is virtual. This is allowed because of Governor Baker's order. And I'm going to call upon each of the counselors who are present at this time and make sure that they can hear me and I can hear them. So we'll start with George Ryan. President. Pat D'Angeles. President. Andy Steinberg. President. Darcy DeMonte. President. Sarah Schwartz. President. Steve Schreiber. President. Evan Ross. President. So by my count, we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight counselors present and others may be joining us. So given that we have a form of the council present, I'm calling this meeting to order at 531. There is no chat room. If there is a disruption in the service, please let a FEMA know as fast as possible or let me know. And we will either pause the meeting until we can get everyone back or we will just make sure that there's a record of that in the minutes. And I just saw another counselor come on and it's Alyssa Brewer. Alyssa, can you hear me? Thank you. All right. So our presentation tonight is on the capital improvement program, the recommended capital improvement program. It will be presented by the town manager, the director of finance and Sonya the controller, and it is preceding the public forum so there won't be any public comment during this period although if we have time counselors might want to ask some questions. The public comment will occur in the next part of the meeting, which is actually the public forum which officially begins at 6 o'clock. So with that, I'm going to turn the presentation over to all Sean and Sonya. And I believe that Sonya, you are going, I mean, Sean, you're going to be doing the slides. So I'll do a little introduction and Sean's going to be sharing slides with you and then doing the bulk of the presentation. So we had such high hopes at one point earlier this year. We were doing really well on all of our capital planning, our operating budgets, all that was going forward and then COVID-19 hit. So tonight what we want to do is sort of lead you through the process for our capital improvement program. Talk about a little bit about what the impact of COVID-19 did to us and to our budget to our capital improvement program. And you'll see that clearly in the presentation tonight. We're going to talk about the program itself, what we're proposing and talk about the five-year plan and really talk about the role of JCPC, the Joint Capital Planning Committee. They did a tremendous work, recognized the situation, and I want to thank all the members of the JCPC, which includes members of the council, members of the school committee, and members of the Board of Library Trustees, who all contributed time to this. And I note that my plan program is slightly different than what they had recommended and you'll see the slight difference and we'll explain what that is. It's not a gigantic thing. One of the things I wanted to mention was that JCPC's work is not finished. The plan of action at this moment in time is to bring them back in the fall and have them go in more detailed department by department through our capital budget. So, one of the things I just want to recognize is, you know, Sonya had taken this on so all the way to near conclusion and then everything blew up and then Sean has come on and help to move this forward. So I'm going to turn it over to Sean and Gano, our finance director, and thank them for the work that they did to pull this together and I hope you'll enjoy the presentation. A lot of people say that they're going to enjoy the presentation. All right, I'm going to share my screen now. Hello everybody. So a couple of things we're going to go through tonight or this evening, we're going to talk about what the charter says about the capital improvement program, the role of JCPC, the process that we sort of the overall capital process and how it flows throughout the year. On the specific impact of COVID-19, the FY 21 recommended projects and the five year plan that's related to that briefly about the impact on maintenance and operating costs and then turn it over for any questions. So this is the quote from the charter that talks about the capital improvement program. I'll read it quickly. The town manager with advice of JCPC, composed of at a minimum representatives from town council, school committee and library trustees, shall create an improvement program which shall include a clear summary of contents, a list of all the capital improvements proposed to be undertaken during the next five fiscal years with supporting data and rationale, cost estimates, including method of financing and recommended time schedules, and an estimated annual cost of operating and maintaining the facilities and equipment included. So we're going to talk about primarily the first bullet point tonight, but we are working on all of those bullet points and have systems in place to share all of those. So JCPC plays a very important role in the process as they make the recommendation to the town manager. The committee itself is sort of evolved over the last 30 years, almost 30 years, 1992 is when it was created. So sort of the role it played this year for us a couple times the first go around and then very briefly the second time is to help review departmental capital requests and their five year plans to review the available funding sources and the changes that are proposed to those funding sources. They hear presentations from department heads and they get have an opportunity to ask questions about various projects and future projects coming up. They get to hear the capital requests of which we had one this year, and a resident capital request of which we had one this year, and they ultimately make the recommendation to the town manager, and the little balancing picture on the right is really what JCPC does which is try to balance usually a much larger request from departments and from residents with a smaller amount of funding that's available and try to achieve a overall program that meets the needs of the town. So this is just a quick snapshot of what the capital process looks like are some of the highlights of the capital process throughout the year. In July and August is typically when department heads are starting to spend the money that was a capital money that was approved the prior fiscal year and accounting and finance are getting the new capital project set up from the prior fiscal year. September through December is really when a lot of the heavy planning and preparation work happens department heads work on the requests for the for the upcoming capital cycle. The town manager and finance department will meet with department heads to review their five year capital plans. And it's when we make a lot of the updates to the capital improvement program. Then January through March or sometime around there depending on how things evolve throughout the year is when the JCPC process will start, and it usually begins with sort of a rough draft of the capital improvement program that's presented to JCPC with presentations. JCPC will begin its vetting process. And at the end JCPC will make a recommendation to the town manager sometime around April 1. And then the town manager has the month of April to finalize the capital improvement program and delivered to the town council by May 1. And then the council and finance committee have May and June to review the capital improvement program hold a public forum, and ultimately vote on the capital program capital improvement program by June 30. So some of the specific impacts this year from COVID-19 really shaped the capital improvement program. So I think it was about March when JCPC was sort of halted and all the work to that point sort of stalled and we really had to start over. When JCPC reconvened, it did so with about half of the funding that it was previously looking at. And you'll see a snapshot of how much funding was allocated in a few slides. The process where JCPC was condensed pretty significantly. So normally they've got a few months to do their work and we sort of start over in late April and had the month of May and try to get it done before the end of May. And one of the commitments that we, or one of the points that we discussed with JCPC this year, which is the same as with the operating budget is that we do plan on having to revisit the capital budget in the fall. And you'll see why in a few slides and see how things are going, what funding is available at that point, if things have gotten worse or gotten better, and work with JCPC to develop a plan moving forward that can be brought back to the council. There was a few elements of the capital program that we were hoping to have ready for for this meeting tonight that have been delayed a little bit are the townwide asset listing and the updated five year plan. You will see it up a five year plan tonight, but it's the five year plan, as it was back in March. And we were redoing the capital improvement program that we sacrificed in order to spend more time on the current year was reviewing the out years FY 22 and beyond. So that's something we'll be working on with department heads. Once we get more, a better idea of what our funding looks like going forward is to redo that those out years FY 22 and beyond to bring that back in the fall. One of the highlights of the capital improvement program. This year that's a little bit new is you'll see that we've allocated funds to a capital reserve account. And the point of that account is to reflect the uncertainty of town operations next year we, we thought about prioritizing funds to individual projects, but not knowing what schools are going to look like what the local economy is going to look like. So we decided to pick certain projects over others and say this was going to be a priority. So we set aside funds in a capital reserve. So if there's any emergencies that come up between now in the fall, we have funds available to address those concerns. And then in the fall, we can make a decision whether we should allocate funds from this capital reserve to specific projects at that point, or maintain the reserve going forward but it'll be something that will review based on the economic conditions in the fall. And then the projects that have been recommended for FY 21. So, from cash capital, we have recommended to specific projects, and then the capital reserve so the first specific project our roads. This originally was in the capital improvement program budget for about a million dollars and through the JCPC process and the town managers work on the capital improvement program, it was paired down to about 530,000. And then sidewalks was originally in the budget at 200,000 and that was reduced down to 170,000. And these two projects are specifically targeted to address the concerns we've heard from residents and counselors about the high costs and addressing the backlog of road projects in the town. So those two specific projects total about half of the available cash capital. The total cash capital you can see at the bottom is 1.4 million. And so that's roughly half. And the remaining half will be put into this capital reserve that would be dedicated to address any urgent projects that arise between now or July 1 and the fall. And then at that point we would reevaluate what funds are available for capital and little pie chart just shows roughly half and half. Outside of cash capital, there are a couple other funding sources for potential projects so state aid chapter 90 funds, typically around $840,000. It's not approved yet so that's why we put the asterisk. And I got more about whether that funding will be available when the state approves it's approved as the chapter 90 allotment. And then the other funding source that's new is, I think it's from a tax on Uber, it's something that's been our ride sharing services, and it's a new revenue source that we can use for downtown improvements. And so we are allocating $62,000 for that purpose. So this is a snapshot of the full five year plan and I'll go through it kind of slowly because it's a little numbery. So the, the top half of this table are the funding sources, and the bottom half of this table are the expenditures. And the shaded gray column is FY 21. So, at the top you'll see the calculation to levy and we do that because typically our cash capital is based on a percentage of the levy. FY 21 was 10% and we were there up until COVID-19 interfered and so now we're proposing roughly 5%. And then the other two funding sources 62,000 for is that the ride sharing money and state aid. 841,000 so the total funding for capital available for FY 21 is the 3,687,934. Now those out years again we haven't updated those so if you look to the right FY 22 and beyond those have not been updated when we come back in the fall will have a better projection of what funds might be available for capital and FY 22. Depending how things go that number could be smaller than where it is now. And at the bottom you'll see the expenditure side and it breaks down sort of how the capital project is going to be financed. So where it says funded by cash capital the first thing we have to take off the top of our cash capital is any actual debt that has been obligated in prior years. And so that number in FY 21 is 1377,400. Again that's projects that have already been approved in the past they were approved to be bar from a borrowing. And so this is the debt payment on those projects. And then whatever slept over after that and a projected debt can be allocated towards new projects. And so that number for this year was the 1406,651. And then below that are the other funding sources again and projects that are funded by those different sources and so you can see for FY 21, we've allocated the full $3.7 million figure. And again a lot of our work, and from now until the fall will be looking at those out years and trying to come back with a more realistic projection of what those look like. One thing you'll note when you look at the out years is that there's a pretty big gap between the project requests and how much funding is available. And so I did identify a few of the strategies that we're going to be implementing or at least considering to try to get this plan and balance will review different financing sources. Whether you know something that might want to consider borrowing for lease options, some of the projects potentially could be CPA eligible so we'll look at that and also if there's any grants available. We need to look in general at our vehicle replacement schedule because one of the biggest sort of buckets in FY 22 for projects that are backlogged is vehicles so we need to definitely look at that again. And then we just also have to potentially remove or delay projects that are the lowest priorities for the town. This is just another look at the capital plan from sort of a department view. So again you'll see the capital reserve at the top of the 706,000. And then the rest of the money that's budgeted for this year's in the public works highway, and it's the combination of the cash capital for roads and sidewalks. And also the chapter 90 funds and the downtown improvements. And lastly impact on maintenance operating costs so try to focus this on the FY 21 projects. We should see lower maintenance operating costs from any of the roads that do get replaced or improved and ultimately those costs will probably be shifted to other roads that deteriorate more and need more work. And that should reduce at least for the specific roads that are replaced those costs should go down. And before I turn it over for questions and feedback one thing I'll just know that came up a lot at the JCP C level are about potential expenditures next year for COVID-19. So we have been working with departments pretty closely to get a sense of what their needs are, or what they're projecting their needs are, you may have seen an article for the schools and the purchase they've done. We just recently submitted a request to the state for CARES Act money on Friday. And it was roughly a $600,000 request and it covered schools and fire and public safety and a bunch of departments in town and that's our initial request for what departments know right now there's going to be another window where we can request additional funds coming up. And then on top of the CARES Act money we also have to request funds from FEMA in the near future as well. Most of the capital expenditures or even operating expenditures associated with COVID-19 are going to be funded through either FEMA or the CARES Act. And with that, I will turn it back for questions. Okay. As always, if you would like to ask questions and your counselor, please raise your hand. Mandy Joe, I see your hand up. Thank you. I, you know, as a person who served on JCPC, I know that this is not the same as the recommendation that JCPC made to the town manager. But I am curious when we saw this recommendation at JCPC prior to, you know, the plan was originally a 50-50 split the second week of JCPC. And then the recommendation that the JCPC made back to the manager was actually a different split 45-55, I believe. But the 50-50 split had a different allocation of roads to sidewalks. That different allocation had a 600,000 into roads and 100,000 into sidewalks. And what we are seeing tonight has 170 in sidewalks and 530 in roads. I would like to know what the reason for that change was, because that's different from the, what was presented to JCPC three weeks ago. So I'll start, Paul, and you can add. So the part of it was, and this was just sort of a weird development of the way JCPC spoke about the projects is that roads and sidewalks sort of got lumped together throughout the process when they're sort of, you know, they sort of got lumped together. So in some ways that the allocation between the two got a little blurred in terms of how much gets allocated to each of them. When I talked to Paul about it, we decided that more money was needed for sidewalks based on some of the things that he's been hearing. And Paul, I don't know if you want to elaborate on that piece. Yeah, I think we've noticed a lot. Great, great progress. DPW has made great progress on a lot of road work, but we need a lot more sidewalk work and we have pending projects that we need to move forward on. And so I felt like it was important to allocate additional funds into sidewalks to prioritize that and to make it clear to the residents that that was something that was a high priority for lots of different reasons. One is a lot more people are going to be walking. They are walking a lot more people are out and about. And it was just a, it felt like that was a higher priority. Kathy, you have your hand up. Yes, it's Mandy asked the question I was going to ask. I just wanted to bring more one more point that came out during JCPC and have you confirm because we didn't have an opportunity. The staff had not had an opportunity to revise the out years of 22 through 25 or look carefully at the delayed projects. There was a recommendation that JCPC continued to meet in the fall starting in September with that focus and also looking at the reserve fund on, you know, what are we starting to see with things that we felt we were taking a bet on that we had a high probability being able to last a whole year on some critical systems and how are we doing, you know, sort of a mid year check. But I just wanted to confirm that we're on for having that focus on the out years, as well as the, it's not even a mid year check it's the first three months in or the first two months into the new year when we know the end of last year, more completely Yeah, absolutely. That's something that we Paul and I spoke about and Paul, you know, gave the green light that we definitely should do another reason why we have to meet as there may be other funding sources that are available at that time and potentially more money available for capital. So, you know, in addition to looking at those out years, we just need to look at even FY 21 funding and see what's available because there might be a federal program or state program that helps address some of the revenue loss by that point. The only we do have a deadline and I'll look to Sonya to to reaffirm this but we do have a deadline where we have to do that process before October when she does the recap Sony do you want to just confirm that. I figured out how to unmute again for the capital. Yeah, because we're budgeted a reserve. The recap doesn't matter because the reserve is what we'll get to the right but we but if we appropriate more funds for capital would we would have to do that before October before the recap is done if we were to go beyond the reserve. If we thought we were getting more revenues coming in. Yeah. Yes. Okay. Yeah, Kathy that the preparing that memo is on the town manager's list. We just decided that we had so many things on this week's agenda, not to bring it forward but there's every intention to do so. The question I think now that I'm hearing this deadline is whether or not we should bring that forward and you might also try meeting before September. Okay, and thank you for that because I just thought we should probably probably try to schedule that meeting and have a clear agenda for it and just in in the context, Sean when you gave the list of things will be looking at over the four years you brought up vehicles. We also at JCPC this time around didn't get sort of a vehicle inventory of what do we have and how older they are. So I think having some semblance of that going into that meeting would be good to. Yeah, that's actually something we're working on right now and we'll make sure it's ready for when we come back together. Okay. Thank you, Kathy for bringing all that back up. Dorothy Pam you have your hand up. Yes. Thank you Paul and JCPC for putting an emphasis on roads and sidewalks. I do have a question about sidewalks I know that the emphasis this year has been on creating some new ones that had needed to be done for a long time. Is there anybody in this sidewalk budget for repairing of existing sidewalks. Yes. Yep. Ultimately, you know it's a combination of the DPW superintendent who decides working with his constituents in terms of what projects get done but yes it can be used for sidewalk replacement or new sidewalks. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. And Darcy you have your hand up. Please unmute Darcy. Early on the energy and climate action committee submitted a budget request. And I, you know and then COVID-19 happened so it's, you know, very understandable that that was not something that could happen in this fiscal year. And I'm just hoping that, you know, when I looked at the fact that we have a five year capital plan now, and we also have a goal that we're supposed to reduce our, our emissions by 25% by 2025 and five years. And I'm hoping that there will be a piece that we're going to need to look at and I'm hoping that we can, we can get the council updated sooner than later on what that, you know, the direction that the committee is going in with the municipal vulnerability preparedness grant. And I'm hoping that the committee that was reported, ECAC was the resident capital request. And just wondered what the conversation was about that, and whether it's going to carry over to the next fiscal year or how, how that's going to be dealt with. Anybody else can jump in, but the way I interpret it is that the request hasn't been approved or rejected. It's that we'll consider it again in the fall when we come back together. I didn't, I don't think the committee made any decision in terms of whether to recommend it or not recommend it at this point. That's totally correct. And it's Darcy, it's potentially on the list to be dip into the reserve pool. And one of the things that we had asked for when it came up was to make sure they talked to the school committee and that the school committee supported that. So my understanding is that has happened, but it was just to, to do the full circle of its solar canomies, particularly over this, the parking lots is a study so it's not gone as Sean said it was not gone like voted no or even rated in it's just literally everything. There's no line item now except for roads and sidewalks. It's everything else. All the other capital spending is in this thing we call the capital reserve. Thank you. Are there any other comments at this time. Okay, we're about two minutes before the end of this session. And we're going to be moving right on to the public forum. Any other last comments. Just for clarification, no one has to log off. They just stay where we are. And we just start. Thank you. Right. You have your hand up. It's not a different number than Paul. No. I was going to clarify too that we're going to technically adjourn this and then recall to order at six, right? Correct. Okay. So seeing that there are no hands and we're going to be doing public comment on the next meeting. I'm going to adjourn this. And in one minute, we will reconvene and I will go back and take roll again. Let me just check and make sure that everybody can hear. That is here from the council. Everybody probably walks away. I'll move, I'll move on to Kathy Shane. Okay. Yes. Present and can hear. Thank you. Alyssa. Present and can hear. Andy Steinberg. Pat D'Angelo's. I can also hear. Mandy Joe. I'm here. Steve Schreiber. Here and can hear. Darcy Dumont. Here. George Ryan. Sarah Schwartz. Okay. Good evening. Ross. Okay. Dorothy Pam. Did I miss anybody? Please. Okay. Again, this is a virtual meeting allowed by a governor Baker's order of March 12th. And we have already confirmed that all of the counselors are better here than in the public forum. So we have a public forum to order at 601. On June 15th, 2020. The purpose of a public forum is to hear from the public. And we have not tried this with the zoom. Aspect or zoom possibilities. And so let me just explain that in addition to. We're going to have just a brief recap in case somebody hasn't joined us. Of the information session, but 50% of the time has to be for the public. And we are going to try something that if a person from the public would like to speak. Ask a question. Make a comment. You raise your hand and we're actually going to invite you in temporarily as a panelist. As to whether or not you would like to be seen. Through video or whether you're just going to have your name up there. We want to make sure before you bring you in that you unmute and you tell us your name and where you live. So before we get started on the actual public comment period. I just want to ask Sean. I just want to make sure that you make a very brief presentation. That just summarizes what we just looked at. And you're doing your own screens, right, Sean? Yeah, I'll bring it up right now. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Thank you. So again, we're talking about the capital improvement program for FY 21. For FY 21. There are sort of three buckets of. Capital funding that we. The capital reserve account. And that is based on the tax levy. And for this year, we are proposing 530,000 from roads, 170,000, 170,000 for sidewalks for a total of $700,000 between the two. And then the rest of the cash capital funds would be used. We'll go into a capital reserve account and that capital reserve account. Would be used to address any urgent needs that arise between July one and the fall. And that would be the case between the falls because we plan to reconvene JCPC in the fall and reevaluate the capital plan at that point based on whatever the economic situation is at the time. The other two funding sources for capital this year are potentially state aid. Chapter 90 money that we budget $184,841,883. But that is dependent on whether the state actually approves an allocation and how much they approve. And then the remainder is from Uber money for downtown improvements and that's $62,000. All of these projects are these funding sources are summarized into this chart. The top half of this chart is the funding side of capital improvement plan. And the bottom half of this chart is the expenditure side. So for FY 21, the total that we're proposing or total funds available is $3,687,934, which is comprised of the cash capital, the other and the state aid. And down below you'll see how those funds that are available are being allocated. So cash capital in addition to those projects that were just mentioned on the previous slides, it's also used to pay whatever debt has been approved in prior years. And so cash capital goes towards the actual debt projected debt and then all those projects that were just identified. And then below that we use the other is the Uber money, which is going for downtown improvements. And then below that is the state aid, the chapter 90 funds that are going for roads and sidewalks. So all the funds that are available for FY 21 are being allocated. And then FY 22 and beyond. That's how the plan was left back in March. It hasn't been updated to reflect the new reality of what's happened after COVID-19. And that's something that will be updated for the fall as well. And that's it. I will turn it back for questions. Thank you, Sean. So actually at this point, Serge, who is helping us this evening, Sean, I'm going to have you take down the things so that we can all see each other. And I'm going to ask among the attendees. First of all, let me restate. If you would like to connect to this meeting by zoom, you can do so using the. The zoom connect on the town website for this meeting. It also appears at the bottom of this agenda. If you are joining by phone, then you need to do a. Asterix nine. In order to be able to ask a question. If you are joining by zoom, you just need to raise your hand. So is there anybody among the attendees who at this time would like to ask a question or make a comment? I see some one person. Could you please identify yourself? It's EA. Oh, Athena, we need to unmute the person. Hi, my name is Evan O'Neill. And I live at six Smith street in Amherst. Thank you. Thank you. Would you like to be seen? In, in the video or just stay as E. Whatever works. Either way is fine. Well, you have to make yourself. If you want to, or if not, just go ahead. And make your statement. I think I'll just make my statements easier that way. I just wanted to. I think earlier in June requesting. Sidewalk funding. And I just wanted to, to say I attended the, the special town council meeting that a half an hour ago. And I was just happy to hear that there's really sounds to be sounds like there's an emphasis on sidewalk funding. And I just wanted to give a specific shout out that in my letter, we live right in downtown and we're on a very small street, but a very heavily trafficked street, both by cars and pedestrian traffic. And I think it's really important that this street has a sidewalk. And there's also part of Kellogg avenue that doesn't have a sidewalk. And it's actually, I think the most dangerous part of the, of the street that's kind of the windy part. And I specifically asked the council in the town to look at this and see if you could provide, you know, funding for a new sidewalk in these, on these streets. So that was my specific shout out for new, new sidewalks. I just wanted to say thank you for making sidewalks a priority. I think it's really important despite the problems. I know the town's going to face in the future with funding, but I think for pedestrian safety, it's just very important. And thank you for that. Okay. Is there anything else that anybody that wants to respond to that comment? I don't know that there was a specific question, but we thank you for your comment. We're now going to put you back into the attendee area, but if you'd like to ask a question or make another statement, you can raise your hand again. Tony Cunningham, we're going to bring you in as a temporary panelist. You'd like to be seen, please make your video available. So Serge, you need to bring her in. Hope we haven't lost her. Yep. I added her as a panelist, so she should be joining us. It doesn't take a little while. It could take a few seconds. Okay. We're trying something new because several people have expressed interest in seeing our speakers and seeing who is attending. We're not seeing Tony. There she is. Tony, if you'd like to unmute and also. Be seen, you can also show your video or just make your statement. I'm sorry. This is Tony Cunningham. I got cut off there. Is it my turn? Yes, it is. Great. Thank you. We're now showing as a panelist on a temporary basis. And if you'd like to show your video, you may and be live with us or you can just leave it the way it is. Okay. There you are, Tony. Okay. Thank you. I just wanted to thank the finance committee and the JCPC that have been pushing lately for the reports of unspent capital. And I think that's a vital piece of information when you try to determine how to allocate limited resources. And so I just wanted to thank the members of JCPC and finance committee for asking for them information and Sonya and Sean for providing it and Doug Slaughter also. And I'm glad to see that will be part of the process going forward. Any other comments at this time, Tony? That's it for now. Thank you. Well, thank you. We're going to have you go back in this and attendee. We hope we don't lose you in the process. And you may come back at some other time. Are there other comments or questions from our statements from the attendees? We have plenty of time. Yes. We have a large number of comments. We have one of them. We have a lot of comments. We have Neil. Have lova. You'll have him. And you can tell me I pronounced it incorrectly later. Please come into the. Comment area. And you can. Both unmute and also. Make sure we can see you. There is a bit of a time lag. I didn't realize there would be this much time lag. Okay, and you track the progress of that search. Let me take a look and see what I can tell on my end here. Because as we can all see the attendees, they disappear when they're like in this transition limbo. So, yeah, so what happens is the person essentially the system exits the person out as an attendee and then they are rejoined as a panelist. In our experience, it worked pretty quickly, but it seems like there's a delay when there's a lot of attendees or in this situation. We'll keep waiting for her and make sure that when she comes into the panelist area that we let her know it's her turn. Meantime will there be other people who would like to make public comment. We still wait on her we have no other public comment at this time. This is just texted by Tony that when we transferred her, she was cut off and then she had to re log in with the zoom number again to get back into the meeting. Oh boy. Okay, thank you, Tony for letting us know how that happened. So, if you can hear us please log back in. That's that's very helpful. I think I think before we transition folks we, I think it'd be good for them to know that that's the normal process of re-entering as a panelist. Okay, we have, we're going to continue the meeting anyway so hopefully that Milo will hear us if anybody knows how to contact her please go ahead. So Lynn, is this a different process from what we used at the TSO meeting today because we're actually trying out a new process which allows us to at least have those people who are attendees who would like to speak to actually be shown come in as a panelist and therefore they can be shown by video, as well as speak. This is because several of you have asked that we try to come up with a way to be more, if you will, a neighborhood if you will, or a meeting. And so, Milo has come back into the room. Oh, here we go. We'd like to see if we can successfully transfer her surge. Hi. I apologize. I don't know whether I did something over there. You did it doesn't really matter. I wanted to ask what is our borrowing capacity, and how far are we along the process I'm sorry if it's out of sync with some of the other things you may have been discussing. No, I think under capital that's perfectly decent question. Sean or Paul. I don't know the exact number offhand we can get you that number it's pretty high. I think last time I looked at it was in 100 million dollar range. But we'll have to come back with the exact number it's a certain percentage of the, I think of the taxable property in town. They have more of a detail on that if you'd like. So it's about last I looked it was about 113 million. And I guess my question is actually in concert with some of the other capital projects that we are looking at in terms of planning. I have not, I'm not very astute in terms of being able to look up meeting information and follow the conversation in town really so I'm sorry if I'm asking these questions out of place almost but I was thinking that we do have a number of projects that are in planning stages. And I was wondering if you had thought about how we might orchestrate being able to actually borrow in order to complete them, the ones that I'm particularly interested is the Jones library and the elementary and how we might be able to permit ourselves to actually engage in those projects whole all the way through. Lou Miller let me start and then I'm going to ask Paul and Sonia and Sean or other counselors to chime in. We did begin very serious process of listening back in December for all four of the major capital projects, which are in fact the library. An elementary school, a fire station and EMS station combined, and also the Department of Public Works. We were proceeding along those lines and then as with so many other things COVID is interrupted. However, in December we were accepted by the mass school of business authority in school, school building authority excuse me, into their process for planning for a new elementary school. And that process is beginning as we speak. We'll take about a year and a half to two years come up with the curriculum plan, as well as begin to get started on the building plans, and then in the process. If those are all acceptable to the MSBA, then they will proceed with giving us some amount of money that will match what we will put in locally. That is subject to the approval of the town council, and should we choose, I said should, I didn't say we will, should we choose to go out and under override we would. So that one is grant dependent. The second one that you mentioned is the Jones library which is also grant dependent. And frankly we don't know where things are with that one at this point and the reason we don't know where things are with that one is because we don't know whether or not the library commission, state level library commission will have the money to get any capital grants this year for capital improvement. And if they do whether they will extend the timeline for that one. And again, unlike the fire station DPW those two are grant dependent, but the fire station and the DPW or not. The best location is best location is still considered to be where DPW is, but we have still not found a suitable location to move DPW to. And so those two projects are further down on the list. And the issue is not just borrowing capacity, but making sure that we're in sync with what the residents of Amherst are thinking about, as well as our ability to pay back all of the loans. So with that, therefore the council, by the way, has not really returned to this discussion. I do want to ask others if they'd like to add to this conversation at this time. Kathy, you have your hand up. Yeah, I just wanted to add to what Lynn just said LaMille that the debt capacity is one number the other one we're looking at or we will have to look at or some numbers Sean put up on how much money can we allocate each year to capital to pay back loans. So we have some past that and going forward if we have enough of an economic recovery to go back anywhere near to 10% of our general property and we'll have more for capital in general and that means more. So the timing of these matters for not just borrowing the money, but then being able to pay the annual amount back each year so it's, it's all intermingled with what he said about fiscal year 22 through 25, and those are the years that particularly went back to the school and the library in terms of their grant cycles. So we're going to have to be looking at both of those not just the ability to borrow it, but the ability to pay it back. Paul or Sean or Sonia, any additional? I nailed it. Lynn and Kathy, I appreciate you're mentioning that I think it's something that's we've clearly been focused on one of the challenges has been the financing of all four projects, both on the ability for us to take on the debt but also for the taxpayers to take on the payments that are required to do all four projects. And, you know, the metrics we're dealing with is the length of time that we do them. We are driven by the grant cycle. And so we are any the two programs that library and schools have the ability to obtain grants the other two projects aren't do not have that capacity to get grants. I think that we give people who are in the audience and it an opportunity to ask questions or make statements before I go back to our counselors. Are there other people who would like to make comment. Okay, Dorothy, you have your hand up, please unmute. Yes, I would like to ask something that so many people have asked me. Let's assume that we do the MS that the school grant is going forward. Should we be able to also go forward with the Jones library should that money be there. I mean, everyone this is what they asked me all the time. And I can't answer it it's it's way above my pay grade so I'd like to know from Sean whether how that looks given our temporary budget. You know Dorothy, I'd love to get out my crystal ball. This is a council decision. It's not an issue. It is an issue of what we have in terms of debt ability to borrow and ability to pay back, but the decision to move forward on either of those projects is a council decision or a decision that the council can decide to take to the public. That's correct, but I don't have any that if it's if we're told, it depends upon our ability to pay back. You know, do we have any knowledge of that. Sean or Paul are Sonia would like to jump into that one. I'll just, I mean, so when we looked at things before COVID. There was some ability to do all four projects it's just it's all about allocating resources and how many resources you want to allocate to different projects and if you do that then you have to make decisions on other priorities so post COVID it's a little bit of a different story and at least in the short term, the amount of money that we have for capital is, you know, half of what it was last year at this time. So over the next couple of years and we're doing the economic recovery. Some of those models that we looked at before COVID happened or are not going to be the same picture. So something that we're going to have to look at again with our new reality at least while we're recovering economically. And Dorothy, you know from our conversations and finance that know our hotel and food and restaurant revenues are down. Our parking revenues are down and so a lot's going to depend on the economic recovery and how long it is and how fast it happens. Okay, thank you. Are there other questions from our attendees. First of all, we're glad to see so many of you, but and we appreciate the questions and comments that people have made. We certainly would like to hear from more of you and we are going to end this at 630 unless there's more comments and go on to our regular council meeting. But I do want to urge you that at any time should you care to share with us various comments. You can write us at town council at Amherst MA dot gov. Okay. Any other comments from the audience. And I also want to thank those people who joined us tonight for their patience and being brought in as panelists so we can be seen and so you could be seen and we could hear from you directly. So that I'm going to adjourn this portion of our meeting. We will re adjourn and we will come back to call to order in at 630 so don't go far gang and we'll begin our regular council meeting at that time. Lynn, is this also same zoom so we just same zoom do not do not disconnect. It is same zoom. Thank you. This is our third meeting. It's our third meeting tonight using the same zoom. And let me just begin by saying under Governor Baker's March 12 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law general law see chapter 30 a paragraph 20 allows us to hold this virtual town council meeting. We're going to call on each of the counselors and make sure again that you can hear me or still hear me, and we can still hear you. And then we're going to call the meeting to order and review the order of the agenda. Okay, so we're going to start with. Chalene Balmille. President. On this brewer. Present. I'm having a little trouble with my internet connection so I keep turning off my camera. Okay. Patty Angeles. Yeah, present. Darcy DuMont. Present. In Greece Merse present Mandy Joe Hanna key. Dorothy Pam. Present. Evan Ross. Present. George Ryan. Present. Kathy Shane. Present. Steve Schreiber. Present. Andy Steinberg. Present. And Sarah Schwartz. Present. All 13 of us are here and can be heard and we can hear you. So we will begin. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So with. The announcements and surge, you're just going to show them on the screen. I'm not going to go through them. Except to add. Two small items. One is to congratulate Jack gem sick, who is a member of the planning board. He has been elected to the executive committee. Of the Pioneer Valley planning commission. And this is the first time we've had somebody on that executive committee. So we're going to move that on. We also want to urge you. To check the town website. For the Juneteenth celebration, which is this Friday, July 19th. And we're going to move on then and see if we have any public comment at this time. So if you would like to make a public comment. Please raise your hand. I'm not going to bring you into the room and again, but we have a little difficulty doing this in the last. Part of this meeting. Is there any public comment at this time? Okay. Seeing none. Then let me just review the order of the agenda, because what we've tried to do. Is have those items that require outside. Our staff to be with us. In the beginning of the meeting. So we don't tie up their entire meeting. So the first presentation is actually going to be seven C, which is the water and sewer rates. This then appears on the consent agenda where we will just vote to refer it to the finance committee. But rather than just refer, we wanted to make sure there was a brief presentation. And I know that. We have the superintendent of public works and. The assistant superintendent of public works with us tonight. So we're going to do that. We're going to do that. We're going to do that. And then we get done with that. We are going to onto the consent agenda. And then after that, the proclamations. And then rather than do the rest of the presentations now, because they are all really internal. The council, although certainly the public is more than welcome to watch. We are going to do the action items and literally just go straight down the list. Then we'll come back to the presentations, and then we'll come back to the meeting. And then we'll come back to the meeting. And then we'll come back to the. The policing discussion in Amherst. And then appointments and the rest of the agenda. So. If we can begin by having. Guilford mooring and Amy Roussak. And the town manager. And also the slides that pertain to the. Water and sewer rates. Then there's a hand up in the audience. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't hold on. Yes. Could you please identify your. One. Yeah. This is Amy's. They'll come in. The page went. Right. So I just want to talk briefly about, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Amy. Again. Here's what happens. This, you know, the place was like, I could see you. I got something pretty exciting. Of having this town. Which I'm working with a number of businesses. I'm going to town, town, so we'll have your inbox about. Promoting many authors. And our books and businesses to the actual royal family. These include Emily Dickerson. Ever, Carl. My books. J. Except right because right now the royal children on the ring. All about literature and everybody also foreign languages. And I think it's about time that this time. Town joins them and have our books in this town promoted. As they're on zoom all the time. Also. I'm sorry. Oh, equity. I sent you this information. My email. And the town council today. So something. And we want something positive. Literary figures, including the weekly categories. And skateboarding. We could. And we did. Your email. Okay. One more very positive thing. Is that I'm working with developers on what's called the art. I don't need one of the issues. But one thing. You're very, you're creating a very serious echo. I know what's happening. If you're. You're now in the room. If you'd like to unmute. You have about another minute, please. I don't know what the connection problem is, but Amy, what we're going to do is encourage that you. We know we had, we did receive several emails from you today. And they did go to all the council. Are there any other attendees that would like to make comment at this time? Okay. Then I'm going to go back to our presentation. And this is on the water and sewer rates. So Serge, we're going to go ahead. Can you make the picture bigger? No. Now you can see me. I appear to be talking and I shut this off. There was a problem with technical problems. We'll discuss later. Yes. So Amy, we need. We did. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I had a problem with technical. I'm turning you off. Good night. We'll talk later. Okay. Thank you. Yes. Yeah. Is this, is this better Lynn or do you want me to try to zoom? What we're seeing on the screen is. All of rounding things around the presentation. Okay. Let me see if I can hide that. This is just all the documents that will be coming up. So I'm just going to see if I can open this separately. Okay. Is that better? That's better. Yes. Perfect. So. Paul, would you like to introduce this? Yeah. So thank you. Thank you, Lynn. Every year we do. Meeting to talk about water and sewer rates. The council is the board of water commissioners and board of sewer commissioners. And it's your responsibility to set the water and sewer rates. And this is what we're doing today. And this is your first look at it basically. I think typically what happens is this will get referred to the finance committee and then come back to you in two weeks. So people have a chance to digest it. These are water and sewer rates that will be implemented on July 1st. And I just want to note. The way we'll work this is that Sean will go through a few slides and then. All right. So we have a second slide. And we are going to go through two slides. I'm going to get through those slides. And then I'll go through the slide. So go for more and who is the superintendent and public works and Amy, who's the assistant superintendent and public works are both here to ask, answer any kinds of questions that you may have. Just, but before we start this year, we'll be seeing a significant percentage increase in water and sewer rates. water and sewer rates and we'll go through what but they will need to be increased this year for a number of reasons. So with that I'm going to turn it over to Sean if you're ready for that. Yep can everyone hear me? Yes. So and the other thing I'll just note is that the water and sewer rate conversation is heavily entwined with the enterprise funds as we look at those going forward so there'll be a lot more conversation on enterprise funds as we dig into the budget. Sean before you start I do want to confirm that there will be a vote later as part of the consent agenda to refer this to the finance committee. Yep. Thank you. So can you go to the next slide please? So yeah that's perfect. So the proposed FY 21 rates so for FY 21 the water is being proposed to go to 420 per 100 cubic feet which is an increase of 30 cents from FY 20 or 7.7 percent and the sewer rate is proposed to be 460 per 100 cubic feet and that's an increase of 60 cents from FY 20 or 15 percent. And as Paul noted their size will increases but we're gonna go through the financials of the enterprise funds in a second and you'll see a couple of the reasons why. This chart just shows the history of our water and sewer rates. The solid lines are actual or what was budget for FY 20 and the dotted is sort of the trend going forward of what's needed at the at the pace of the of what's needed for the enterprise funds going forward. Next slide Serge. So there's really three maybe a couple other ones but there's three main causes for why the rate is going up. In general we've seen water consumption decreasing approximately two percent per year over the past several years. We have really good data on consumption that we can look back quite a ways and look at trends and so over the last four or five years we've seen it going down about two percent a year. And in general that's not a bad thing as we use less water but it does mean that the enterprise fund can't bill as much and so there's lower revenues going into the enterprise fund and one thing about enterprise funds is they have a lot of fixed costs infrastructure costs and things of that nature and so they can't flex as easily as the as you might want them to. The second piece is both of the enterprise funds the water and sewer fund. They both have significant capital improvements coming up which in order to meet the debt payments the rates will have to go up to maintain the current level of services and meet those debt payments in the future. Water has a centennial plant which is FY 22 estimated at about 11 million dollars and that's factored into the future rates and sewer has the gravity belt thickener and the reuse water and FY 22 which the sum of those two projects is 7.3 million. And then the third one that really caused sort of a second look at our rates and really was unpredictable is the COVID-19 and the closure of the colleges and university. We've seen a pretty steep drop off in our consumption not so much in the rest of town but particularly at the college college university meters and so that's caused our consumption coming a lot lower for FY 20 which means we're going to most likely see a revenue gap in FY 20 that we're going to have to make up and then depending on what happens in FY 21 in the fall with the colleges that issue could roll over into the fall. And as I mentioned the enterprise funds we'll discuss those in more detail when we talk about the FY 21 budget. Next slide Serge. So this is a comparison of our rates to our neighbors and to the state average so it's based on 120 I think 100 cubic feet per year usage and so it's taking the new rate multiplied by 120 and so for water it's $504 per year and for sewer it's $552 per year from total of $1,056 and you can see how that compares to the state median the state average and then many of our neighbors nearby. And I think that says that Serge can you go to the left side? Yeah. And then we're happy to answer any questions that you may have. You're muted Lynn. This is an opportunity for counselors to ask questions remembering that this will be coming to the finance committee actually starting tomorrow. Kathy Shane you have your hand up. Hi and I am on finance so I know I get to ask more questions tomorrow so I just when I'm assuming when you come to finance you'll be able to talk to us about what actually are the operating costs personnel and I have last year's budget and the extent to which those are fixed when water consumption goes down as opposed to we can say looking forward if we're going to have much lower use is it less people time you know I realize the machines may still or do we turn off a machine so it's a question of how fixed are the overhead costs and we had a so that's just a comment but also a question for tomorrow the second is how much of the rate increase that's being proposed is looking forward to the centennial plant because we were told a year ago that you start to build in some of the anticipated costs the debt service costs so that we don't get rate shock has any of that been built into it is my question and then my third I know it isn't for the coming year we had a briefing on particularly on water rates but that we have an option as a town to talk about setting two tiered water rates one for really large consumers you know the big colleges or universities versus the residential rate and we could think about doing that when would be the time we should have that discussion if we wanted to do it not this coming year but a year from now because I think we said the council will get you some ideas and then Guilford could give us estimates on what that does to the rate structure so those are the three on how much is fixed how much of centennial is built if anything is built in and I'm just focused on water right now so the the how much is fixed yeah tomorrow when we meet we'll get into much more detail about the expenditures both the operating expenditures the capital expenditures that are proposed and then also the debt payments so we will dive into the spreadsheets that support the overall enterprise fund and in terms of the rates so what I could tell and Guilford can weigh in on this as well it did appear as even before COVID-19 happened the rates were starting to ramp up to where they need to be for when that debt does come online so it did appear that we were making incremental steps starting this coming year FY 21 to get to where they need to be but Guilford you may want to add to the the nature of some of your costs in the in the water fund I'm going to suggest at this time unless people need the charts that we take the charts down search so we can see each other thank you I believe we were going to ask whether you had other comments on the water and sewer so on the on the water and sewer the rates we were building in some we were building in additional costs for both the projects and wastewater and the projects in the water department which is centennial the bigger increases are pretty much based on trying to account for the 2% loss of water we've been seeing over the last three years and just the fact that we had this problem with the COVID and the shutdown of the universities so the bigger changes bigger increases is kind of a response to those those issues and trying to keep the the enterprise systems profitable you will see if you look in the in the charts of the what we're spending we actually did do the budgets have been reduced by about 2 to 4% 2 in water about 4% I think in wastewater I might I might have it a little backwards and those are numbers we took out because even though we we have many requirements which many requirements right now aren't very much affected by the changes in the water production or the wastewater treatment um what is being affected though is because we have one plant offline um we've been taken we took out some of the electricity costs for that plant some of the operating costs for that plant because we aren't going to need it so we reduce some of that cost or reduce a couple other costs that are basically based on how much water you produce not how much staffing or how much regulatory compliance you have to meet right now Alyssa you have your hand up yes thank you Guilford can probably predict what I'm going to say so there's a slide in there that talks about capital improvements coming up with centennial and gravity belt thickener and reuse water but we keep hearing about our neighboring communities in particular Northampton having stormwater management investments that they're having to make and I wonder if we can find out where we are with that and why that's not listed as one of the upcoming capital expenses on that slide so the reason we're not listed is we've just joined the stormwater program we're in our second second year right now Northampton's already been through one cycle the permit we're starting just starting out in the permit cycle we have a lot more leeway to get our house in order and make some decisions about what projects we want to do and about how we want to fund it so when you hear other communities talk about what they're doing for stormwater we're five to six years behind them because our permit wasn't given to us until two years ago so that's why those aren't listed in the budget right now they are coming Mandy Joe thank you Mandy Joe Hanneke I think this has been answered but I just want to make sure I'm clear on this the rates that are being proposed have accounted for the decrease in use that we expect because of the densification of the higher ed institutions that's correct the the rates are actually pretty conservative for that if the university's come back stronger university and colleges all come back stronger we it would be very we'd be better off but the rates do take an account that they're not coming back 100% thank you are there other questions from the council at this time yes Dorothy okay I just want to backtrack a little bit and so we have not been part of a stormwater management but I'm sure we've had stormwater and you've managed it but so there's some new group or some new grant system I don't really think I know anything about this I sounds interesting but what did we do before why did we join a new group and how's it going to be different um in the past we helped we took care of stormwater issues as they came up and basically it was just fixing pipes um what what's happened is the federal government says you now must look at water quality in your pipes not just your pipes okay so the federal government has decided we should join this because the federal government thought it'd be a great thing for us to come do it's a nice party we should come to um so that's what's going on so the bigger issue that's going to come up is not just fixing infrastructure or pipes it's going to be how to improve water quality and make things better for the animals and for the people who use and have live in the water are there any other questions from the council at this time okay I just want to remind you that this will be on the consent agenda um and we will not have another presentation later so Darcy Darcy you need to unmute yes sorry um sorry I'm sorry um I just wanted to mention that the municipal vulnerability preparedness grant is uh presumably going to be providing funding for stormwater system improvements at some point um after they're identified as needs do you see that as in the plans gilford the goal is is once we get a definitive plan on what we're going to need to do and where we want to go first with our stormwater plan we will be applying for just about every grant that we can find uh there's several the culvert replacement grant is also another very good grant we can use to improve stormwater quality and some other there's some other ones in that same realm that we would use as well so there's actually several grants out there that can be used for this as well are there any other questions of the council I just want to remind attendees that we aren't having public comment on each of these but if you would like to make public comment the council the finance committee of the council is meeting tomorrow at 2 30 and the council itself will be taking this back up again on June 29th at our regular meeting are there any other questions from the council okay then we are going to um go on to the consent agenda I want to just take a little time going through the consent agenda and making sure that if there are counselors who would like items to remove remove they let me know but let me go through it completely to begin with so the following items were selected because they were considered to be routine and it was reasonable to expect they would pass with no controversy to remove an item from the consent agenda for discussion later in the meeting ask that it be removed when the president lists the consent agenda items the request to remove an item from the consent agenda does not require a second so the motion for the consent agenda is to move the following items and the printed motions there under and approve these items as a single unit the first one is the adoption of the pollinator protection resolution the second is the suspension of town council rules and procedures rule 8.4 for the following agenda items 8c and all this does is allow us to act on them tonight it does not mean we've approved them okay 8e is the approval of community preservation act committee recommendations 8f is the extension of the deadline to adopt f y 21 budget in accordance with charter section 5.9 and 8g is to authorize the president to sign a letter to the zoning board of appeals regarding valley cdc's project at 132 north hampton road um 8b is referral of the water and sewer rates to the finance committee 8c is referral of capital improvement program to the finance committee 8e is approval of community preservation act committee recommendations 8f is the extension of deadline to adopt f y 21 budgets in accordance with chapter section charter section 5.9 8g is the authorization of the president to actually sign the letter in that case that would be the approval of the letter and um then there is 11 a to d which is the approval of minutes i see three hands mandy joe please tell me which item you are speaking to i would like to remove item 8g the authorization of the president to sign the letter to the zba okay i'm not to be clear i'm not asking to remove the suspension of the rules for that authorization but the actual authorization thank you um is there anything else not what i'm asking to remove no yeah darcy i'm asking to remove the two references to 8e the suspension of the town rules of procedure um rule 8.4 and the later approval of community preservation act recommendation so there's two of them asking that we remove the one where we suspend the rules under 8.4 and also the approval of the actual recommendations 8e yes record okay pat de angeles pat you've taken your yes yes pat you're yeah i think i finally unmuted yes you did um both of those things i um one of them i wanted to have removed and mandy joe took care of that i have a question on the capital of the cpa committee recommendations does it include the money for the library no it does not okay then i okay fine thank you but it's being removed anyway from the consent agenda yes yeah but i just still wanted the answer to that question thank you certainly all right so i'm going to make a motion and then look for a second i move to to move the following items and the printed motions they're under and approve those items as a single unit 6a the adoption of the pollinator protection resolution the next item is the suspension of town council rules of procedure rule 8.4 for the following agenda items please note we are skipping 8e we are going to 8f the extension of deadline to adopt f y 21 budget in accordance with charter section 5.9 and 8g is the authorization of the president to sign a letter to zoning board of appeals um regarding valley cdc project at 132 america hampton road again that only allows you to act tonight um it does not approve the letter 8b is referral of water and sewer rates to the finance committee 8c improvement program to find this committee 8e is approval of community preservation oh i'm sorry we're taking 8b off 8f is the extension of deadlines to adopt f y 21 budget in accordance with charter section 5.9 and 11a to d is the approval of minutes and the meetings particularly that those referred to are may 4 may 18 may 1 and june 8th is there a second second nandy nandy joe seconds that is there any further question or discussion hearing none then we will move to roll call vote and i will begin with elissa broer hi pat de angeles hi varsity demont hi respirers i hannity hi ham hi evan ross hi uh george ryan hi hathie shane yes steve schreiber hi andy steinberg hi sarah schwarz hi shallony ball now yes okay then thank you for that um so we are going on to um we actually have done the resolution and we want to thank john root for bringing this to us we want to thank the uh co-sponsor who's darcy and i do want to mention i should have said this earlier that crc did review it and stated that it was ready for our review okay we're going to skip over the other presentations and we're moving to the action items first one is the temporary zoning amendment article 14 and we um this was this is the article that has was brought to us by the town manager and his staff um it has been reviewed by a number of different bodies um tso reviewed it for the purposes of looking at the public way and then crc reviewed it and also reviewed it in a joint hearing with the planning board and then it has coming is coming back to us as a council and um there are several items related to this um and i'm going to be calling on mandy joe and george as we go through and eventually um hopefully a motion so the first is the emergency preamble charter section 210 b do you want me to start with that lin please do okay so there's a preamble that if we want to adopt a measure under the emergency procedures and this generally an under charter section 2.10 b relates to bylaw amendments because bylaws under the charter are required to be read twice and charter section 210 b says if you want to adopt it as an emergency measure you can forego two readings of a bylaw and do so and adopt it and have it also effective immediately or in less than 14 days um if you adopt a preamble stating the emergency and it needs to declare and define the emergency and it has to be separately voted on by seven members with a passage of seven counselors so there is that that motion i i will read at some point when when we're ready to read it but i took the language pretty much from the preamble of the temporary zoning bylaw itself um and also then added the the charter sections and and what it why we need it as an emergency because delaying this action would not serve the purpose of what we're trying to do with the zoning bylaw okay are there questions regarding the first part of this and let me just mention the first part of this which is um as Mandy Joe explained the exception with the charter requires a majority vote of council are there questions okay then um Mandy Joe do you want to please make the motion i'm sorry Darcy has her hand up oh Darcy i'm sorry go ahead i guess i'm i'm just sort of surprised to see this emergency preamble show up at this point in the process and although i do see the major part of this as an emergency i don't see the part of it about opening new businesses as an emergency so i'll probably vote against it because of that it just because it doesn't strike me that we should use emergency as a cover for opening new businesses Kathy Shane you have your hand up it it's more of a comment because i asked a clarifying question earlier today that voting this is just to be able to declare this under emergency rules when we turn to voting on the actual proposed zoning bylaw change we will be back to the regular two-thirds vote so we're it's a separate consideration so um i had asked that and Mandy had confirmed that because i was trying to read it to understand what the implications were so that i'm correct yeah yes sure are there other questions or comments from the council shallownay thank you i just wanted to address the concern why this opening of new businesses is concerned is considered an emergency and we had a robust discussion about this several times and what we're hearing from the local businesses from the business improvement district the chamber is that many businesses are not going to be able to reopen and they're going to be a lot of empty places downtown so what we want to do is make it easy for maybe other businesses pop-up stores other opportunities for people to fill in those spaces or we're going to be left with a lot of empty spaces and the other thing is that the neighboring towns are making similar providing similar provisions to businesses so we will be then losing some of the new businesses that might want to open in Amherst and go off to the other towns because we're not providing the same eased in opening and of course we've already vetted the who this is going to apply to and what how it's going to be vetted by the local town staff and how the experience is going to be used in making sure that the businesses are still are still i don't know how to say this they're still complying with what is necessary so even though we're expediting it it doesn't mean we're letting them do whatever they want it's just that we are not going to take 70 days to do it and we're going to rely on the staff and the experience which they have confirmed they have enough of and we know to make sure that they're doing this in an expeditious manner. Marcy you have your hand up. Yes I understand the arguments for doing it but I also feel that it's giving away too much of the oversight that we normally have done to use an emergency to bring in new people new business perhaps not known you could have an occurrence as we did with um I forget the name of the the bar the bar that went crazy you know Port Porto um and I think we discussed this before and we said could there be some review or analysis after the fact I mean I can understand wanting to get things going and opening but when we several of us asked for um the ability to examine and re-examine maybe change some conditions I don't think that was accepted so um I know generally it's not good to buy a pig in a poke so that's kind of why I'm having a little problem with this. Are there any other comments from the council? All right then uh I'm looking for a motion. Mandy Jo? I'll make the emergency preamble motion so motion whereas the requirements of charter section 210a regarding bylaws including 14-day publication on the town bulletin board readings at two separate meetings and an effective date no earlier than 14 days after adoption would tend to defeat the purpose of the zoning bylaw article 14 temporary zoning which is to encourage and facilitate the reopening of existing businesses and the opening of new businesses and to stimulate economic activity in the aftermath of the COVID-19 emergency therefore zoning bylaw article 14 temporary zoning is hereby declared to be an emergency measure under charter section 210b. Is there a second? I want to know who's seconded. Me? Second. Okay. Thana do you have that? Yes I'm Sarah thank you. Thank you okay um is there any other conversation? Then we go to a roll call vote and uh we begin this one with Pat D'Angelo's. Yes. Dorothy DuMont? No. Rhysmer is a yes. Hannake? Yes. Dorothy Pam? Abstain. Evan Ross? George Ryan? Yes. Kathy Shane? Yes. Steve Schreiber? Yes. Andy Steinberg? Yes. Sarah Schwartz? Yes. Melanie Ball-Milm? Yes. Alyssa Brewer? Yes. The vote is 1111 114 one opposed one abstention no one absent. We're going to move on then to um the fact that this is this is a I need to explain this that this is the first reading for zoning bylaw 14 we we will do a second reading in two weeks the first reading is what allows us to keep moving forward but we need to do the second one because normally the zoning bylaw would only take us out for 61 days and the second reading will allow us to go to the 480 days as recommended. Mandy Jo did I get that correct? Pretty much yeah so if we adopt this under the emergency measures under 210B it stands repealed on the 61st day no matter what it could repeat be repealed earlier and so we have to also go through adopting this under the normal process so it is already posted on the bulletin board for the 14 days it will come back for second reading um on the 29th and and so that and then it would become effective under the permanence sort of basis that then has that sunsetting clause of 180 days it would become effective 14 days after the 29th if we pass it on the 29th it's just sort of the bootstrapping of the emergency and continuing it on to make sure it it stays effective for the 480 days as Lynn said. Okay okay with that I'm going to then ask for Mandy Jo the community resources community committee report. Yes so the CRC and to go on it's the first reading under 210A but this is also allows us the motion we just passed allows us to vote under 210B to make it effective um the the motion would have it effective tomorrow so on May 19th CRC discussed this proposal before it went to a hearing and on June 10th CRC and the planning board held a joint public hearing as required under MGL chapter 40A for this zoning body law proposal both members of both committees were allowed to ask questions the public was allowed to ask questions and make comments at the end of that meeting the planning board voted seven to zero unanimously to support to recommend the passage of this zoning bylaw that report was added to your packet today and after the planning board voted unanimously then the town the CRC members voted unanimously to recommend the council enact zoning article 14 um both as an emergency measure and as a regular measure to go through that two-step process the things that were expressed the most about this were um there were concerns as Dorothy had indicated um about the the actual um granting of a land use permit um that that could be permanent um without having an opportunity for individuals and neighbors and debutters to actually comment on the application uh the building inspector Rob Mora was able to answer questions about what would happen um if say a land use permit was granted for outdoor dining and noise became a problem uh there is a review process for that and he was able to explain what that is and and the the main concern and that was the main concern about the bylaw as proposed um the the members indicated the need for this to help economic development in this time of need to shorten that time frame for land use permits from that 70 days down to 10 and we have a very short summer window for businesses to be able to operate as the governor lifts some of the restrictions and 70 days would take us through that summer window and so that was recognized by committee members of both committees during the hearing and and I think that that takes care of my report from CRC on this matter what was the vote at CRC CRC was unanimous as well as the planning board being unanimous in support well in recommending adoption okay thank you uh GL George GL met on June 3 and uh voted unanimously to declare the bylaw to be clear consistent and actionable okay are there any further questions or discussion if not we're then going to move to the actual vote and this requires a two-thirds majority which is nine counts or I'm sorry Kathy Shane you have your hand up sorry it um the raise my hand button was not raising my hand so I waved it okay sorry I now see it but go ahead please um I I just have a question on what happens after the 180 days so someone zips through new or old and um does everything come back for review on what we just approved you know I I don't want to treat new versus old differently I want them you know not to say new gets forever and old has to go through so is there um a way of collecting information over those 180 days did we move too fast on saying yes to certain things and so at the end of 180 days we review some specifics or does this group that came under the 180 days they just keep going um whatever happened and then we go back to normal so I just want to know what happens at the end of 180 because I listened to the planning board discussion and one member has suggested putting in wording that says the permissions will expire in 180 days and there was a discussion of not wanting to put that into the actual change you know not an automatic expiration so I'm do we have um even if it's informal it's a verbal assurance a way of it worked pretty well and and I guess part of my it worked pretty well maybe we should revisit why it normally takes 170 days you know can we be looking at some processes to say could the new normal be a little shorter you know on what what used to take so long so I don't mean just should we pull away from what we agree but I just I'm totally for this idea and I just want to um have some way to the town to go back at the end of those 180 days and say what did we do and how did we like it and were there any concerns or there anything we can learn from it okay Mr. Bachman I'm going to ask you and I know we have Rob Morrow and Chris Brestrup in the room and I know that Dave Zomac is in the attendees so thank you thank you Lynn so yeah first I want to credit our building commissioner Rob Morrow and planning director Chris Brestrup for coming up with this idea and moving it forward to the specific of your question Kathy I think Rob is probably in the best position to answer that Rob please go ahead Rob yep Rob Morrow um so couple things um first of all uh two things could happen with these approvals as administrative approvals some of them could expire some of them could run out seasonally or at the end of the year or at the end of this 180 days however some of them could be more permanent uh an example that uh you know in the conversations that I'm having over the past we can have two weeks helping to get some of these restaurants open with some outdoor dining uh following the governor's order is what is temporary uh uh a temporary measure of putting out some chairs and tables on an existing surface and what about expanding that surface creating a little bit larger concrete or paver patio section and making it more permanent so in that type of situation uh you know we would be looking at that that being permitted to continue on and not expire and give the the business owner confidence that the the bylaw won't uh or the approval won't expire so both could happen over the period of time now in any case I just want to remind everybody that the standards and criteria of the bylaw apply it's just that in this case in this during this time staff will be reviewing the bylaw conditions and criteria to make sure that the proposal is appropriate and in in line with the bylaw requirements I would be one and I think Ms. Breskrup would probably join me in uh looking forward to the opportunity to come back to the council as we get closer to the hundred expiration of 180 days to talk about what has worked well and what hasn't and start to frame the conversation of what could be more uh what could be looked at as a longer term more permanent changes to the bylaws we're moving to hopefully that discussion pretty soon uh Chris did you have anything you wanted to add to that um I not really but I think that our um I guess I do so our criteria and standards are pretty strict um there's a set of criteria for the zoning board and a set of criteria for the planning board and we always go through those when we're um reviewing a permit application and I think that Rob and I would um review those criteria and standards you know each time that we review an application and so you know it's really Rob and me who are standing in the place of the zoning board and the planning board but we're using the same um criteria for the decision thank you Mandy Jo you have your hand up yeah I was just going to try and explain it maybe in a little bit more of a layman's terms because it can get confusing and it took me a little bit to figure it out so what we would be in doing was is enacting a law but that law has a sunset clause and so this law if we pass this with nine votes article 14 will be in effect for 180 days which means who approves the land use permits changes for 180 days right now it's planning board and some zba that would switch over to the administrative approvals that this bylaw has at the end of 180 days the approval method switches back to where it was today actually um but the approved the the permits that might be granted during those 180 days will stay in effect for however long that permit has a grant for and that's what Rob was talking about some of those land use permits might themselves have a sunset clause other land use permits might not have a sunset clause but that that that is dependent on what the permit says who is issuing the permit is in effect for 180 days if this bylaw passes and that would move to administrative approval away from the planning board just for those 180 days and at the end of 180 days it flips automatically back to planning board and zba in meantime whatever lessons we have learned and I'm sure there will be many will be brought back to the council in a discussion about are there some changes we feel could be permanently made to help businesses move through the process better that's what I've heard so thank you for that and additional comment Dorothy give your hand up thank you so I keep hearing things but and I would like to vote for this but I heard several meetings ago I mean I've been to every meeting I think where this has been discussed that a new place may put a lot of money in it and because they put a lot of money in it we can't say oh this doesn't really fit here this doesn't you're causing problems with buildings next door or whatever it is so I follow to a certain point but then I say okay when 180 days is over if the town who I trust building inspector and planning I trust them but if they think oh you know we let somebody in and it is not really working out for the for that area that neighborhood or whatever is there some way that you can say no you had the permit that 180 days are over and that's it because I thought I heard at some meetings that you can't say that because you could they could say I spent all this money setting up this store and I and what do you mean I have to close it down so that's where I'm having my problem do you have will you exercise the authority that to say this isn't working out or do can they say no we're here we're here forever all or Rob moral let's go with you Rob so I would say to your question probably not you know what what happens with a land use permit now is that it's issued based on a management plan so at the time of the application it's found to be meeting and satisfying the requirements of the bylaw and the way they're drafted now or crafted now is so to ensure that the management plan is effective so we would do the same thing we would we would establish a series of conditions ensuring that the application meets the intent of the bylaw and the opportunity there in the future if there is an issue is to have the business owner react by improving or adjusting their management plan not removing or suspending the permit which we do not do now as a matter of practice anyone with either the planning board or the zoning board appeals are see demand yeah um this this conversation has been clarifying for me um I was all ready to vote for it um but I was completely unaware that um there is an intent to that this just be the first step toward um doing something like this permanently and and that is I mean this is being done supposedly because of COVID-19 and the emergency and um I guess that is a big surprise to me um that go ahead was I on mute no please go ahead no I that's that's really all I had to say I was just I am now confused because I had no uh I was I felt sure that this would be over in 180 days and that there wouldn't be any further um you know slippery slope so Darcy Darcy I I'm going to step out of my role as president just say in every emergency there's opportunity and this is an emergency that is providing us with an opportunity to learn whether or not there are more efficient ways to do our zoning in Amherst so that we are no longer continued to be seen as a town that is not business friendly it doesn't mean we have agreed to any changes it just means that we're going into this with our eyes open for the possibility of learning and maybe making some changes Kathy just um since I raised this show I meant it as a learning opportunity and I meant it in both ways um some things could be have gone wrong because we uh what used to take more time had more voices coming in um because of a butters coming in people talking and they raised some issues that people hadn't thought about but what I'm wondering with Rob saying with the planning and zoning board there's one more piece if it was a restaurant or something that required a license and the management plan or what we thought it was going to be we have one restaurant in downtown that we all know which one it is that's empty right now because it was closed back down after getting a license and they spent at least some money on paint because the colors change in a pretty dramatic way um but if if it were a marijuana shop if it was a restaurant if it was a bar bistro that had to get a license would any of those the licensure would still be have to be be in compliant am I correct on that you know so I mean they would have that getting a license to run but you could be saying something's not working well here or come back fix this up address these concerns I'm going to ask chris press rip who has her hand up to go ahead and respond to that press you need to unmute I wanted to say that there's no possibility of a marijuana shop sneaking in here um it's not one of the uses that is um considered we have three uses of food and drink establishment personal care establishment and retail stores and marijuana has a whole section of the biola that's all devoted to marijuana and it's not contained in any of those three uses that I mentioned second thing I wanted to say is that the ability to grant these permits under this 180 day window will stop at the end of the 180 days and rob will no longer be able to grant administrative approvals for these types of uses however some of the uses will continue because some of the uses will fit exactly what the bylaw had envisioned and it could be a restaurant that has you know pretty strict conditions on it like most class two restaurants do but that could conceivably continue but the ability to grant permits will not continue unless town council decides at some future date that it wants these the ability to grant these permits to continue so I think Ms. Dumont's um fear of having this go on for longer than 180 days it's all in the hands of the town council it's not um it's not anything to do with article 14 so I just wanted to say those things I just want to say on marijuana I only use that word because someone asked me so thank you very much Chris uh Alyssa you have your hand up thank you and so I think I might have said this the last time we talked about it which is what's the worst that can happen and and I and I mean that really genuinely I really despise the color port it is and at the risk of offending town staff I think actually port up could have been forced early days to paint it back over again because they didn't have permission to change it to that color and that's a missed opportunity because now it's a really ugly color which I quite like actually just not on a building but is that isn't that the worst that could happen in a situation like this and that happened before this right because they just went ahead and did something and then we just didn't worry about it and we revoked their license their license really had nothing to do with the fact that they were idiots and painted too soon and then they had their license revoked because they were bad actors and so if maybe somebody who's really scared about this could give an example to Rob of something they're really scared about and then he could explain how he would apply the management plan so that the issue would be dealt with I don't know if somebody's worried about live music or what they're concerned about but I'm not understanding what would be so bad to be able to not continue after the end of the 180 days aside from that purple color were there any other questions or comments from the council then we're going to go ahead Mandy Jo I believe you're going to make the motion I will um I just noticed as I was reading it through again for Athena's benefit that the first reference to the charter section has the wrong letter so that one should be 210b so I will read it correctly but I wanted to note that for Athena so the motion is to adopt zoning bylaw article 14 temporary zoning as an emergency measure in accordance with charter section 210b as I believe it's amended to be effective on June 16th 2020 and to stand repealed on the effective date of the future adoption of said identical bylaw as a measure under charter section 210a just a minute okay is there a second second okay any other discussion at this time Lynn if I could explain why I used as amended yes um if you look at today there was a new version put in the preamble section before effective uses didn't have a heading and so I added the heading to include that it was the emergency measure preamble and it also just had a generic date the word date and so that changed to June 16th 2020 okay that and that has been in your packet since last week it no it was added today that those I'm sorry okay are there any other questions at this time okay then the motion's been made and seconded we'll move to a roll call vote um and we start with Darcy Dumont I'm steam recenter is yes anarchy yes Dorothy Pam yes Evan Ross yes George Ryan yes Kathy Shane yes Steve Schreiber yes Andy Steinberg yes Sarah Schwartz yes Shalini Balmone yes Alyssa Brewer yes Pat DeAngelis yes the motion passes and the bylaw passes 12 to 0 to 1 12 4 none against one abstention no absence okay we are going to move on to the next item in our agenda we've already done water and sewer rates we've already done the capital improvements the one month budget and the reason this could not be on the consent agenda is because of it's a financial matter so Andy I'm going to call on you to give the finance committee report and if there are any questions about the one month budget Paul and Sean and Sonia are with us okay um the one month budget has really been presented to the council and we had a hearing that was a joint meeting of the finance committee and the council and there was plenty of opportunity to address questions and get explanations so I'm hesitant to go very deeply into it because I think that we've actually had plenty of discussion already and if there are many questions that can come forward as questions and probably be responded to the finance committee um reviewed it after the hearing that I referred to and voted unanimously to recommend the order that establishes this to you and I I think the one thing that I asked to be put onto the screen was the order itself which is part of the finance committee report and I don't know if that's still possible as we go forward surges ready no that is not to get down to the bottom of the document where the orders are yes so it's the next one I see this is the community preservation act so we need to keep going here we go so stop so the one thing that I would stop but right here it's perfect um what I wanted to do is to just point out to council that the appropriations are that are referenced in here are set forth in the table and the actual appropriations are in the left hand column for amount appropriated and so that you'll see for example at the town operating budget is a appropriation of one million six hundred and twenty thousand dollars on the right hand side after that big black bar is the source of the funds and the source of the funds um has to do with the enterprise funds uh it shows that those come from enterprise funds and but the other items that are listed in here have to be our funds that are being raised and appropriated which is the term that we always use in appropriations it was used in our former former government and it's used now to indicate that it is going to be raised normally by taxation or other means and appropriated and so that this is an act of appropriation for the one month and I guess the last thing that I'll just point out and then see um ask the president if she wants to ask for questions is that um as has been previously explained um this is a one month measure and uh when we adopt an FY 21 budget this amount will fold into that budget and become a part of the FY 21 budget the purpose of this um one month budget is to allow the town to operate during the month of July while we take a little bit more time to develop the budget see what the legislature is doing and review the actual FY 21 budget so with that I will pause and turn it back to the president um thank you Andy are there any questions as I think Andy observed we've had several conversations of this and an opportunity to ask questions so seeing none then I'm going to ask Andy to go ahead and make the motion okay I just have to uh find it on my motion sheet um it's item D um I thought um so I move to adopt appropriation and transfer order FY 21-04A in order appropriating the town of Amherst FY 21 operating budget for the month of July 2020 as recommended by the finance committee and shown on pages five and six of the finance committee report titled town finance committee June 15 2020 is there a second I second it thank you Kathy any further questions or discussion okay seeing none we're moving to a roll call vote um we start with Griezmer and I support this yes Aniki yes Pam yes Ross yeah Brian yes Shane yes Schreiber Steve Schreiber maybe I'll come back to that uh Andy Steinberg yes Sarah Schwartz yes Belle Milne yes uh Lyssa Brewer yes Pat DeAngels yes Darcy DuMont yes and Steve Schreiber have you returned you may have taken a break Steve oh he's come on twice I'm wondering if he's having connection problems I'm having sound problems can you hear me okay yes we can maybe it's not and did you vote yes for this or what was your this is the vote yes okay all right so the votes uh 13-0-0 no absences thank you Steve um we're going to move on then to the community preservation act this item was pulled consent agenda and I think at this point um Serge we want to put the same finance committee report back up again and show the 12 projects that were recommended by the finance committee it was in the previous part there we go right okay all right um this came before the finance committee um I think that at this point uh hearing a finance committee report would be appropriate um and that would be Andy so um I'm sorry it also came to community resources and so Mandy Joe will also be asking you to speak to your report okay yes um the finance committee uh unanimously recommended this motion but I need to make an explanation it sort of came up in an earlier question um and I just want to clarify and it gets to why this is on the agenda at this point in time and why the next motion will be to suspend the council relate point four um what um we ended up doing with both the community resources and finance committee is to decide that we would ask the community preservation act committee to present its recommendations that were related to expenditures from the current year for the current year and that we would not um ask for a presentation at that uh joint meeting that uh was referred to in both reports on the one um item that involved borrowing and uh was a um item that uh was not going to require expenditures to be made in July and um so that um the one that was obviously I'm referencing is the jones library request that is not a part of this um appropriation and transfer order what the community preservation act does um is that it has a special um piece of taxation that gets paired with some money from the legislature and provides the ability to make appropriations for very specific purposes community housing historic preservation open space and recreation and uh those items are reviewed by a community preservation act committee according to state statute once the community preservation act committee makes a recommendation of expenditures it then belongs to the council and the council then votes um up or down on the slated program that are recommended or on each one but it the one thing that it can't do is it cannot add another proposal so somebody came along with either a proposal to increase an amount or um to um add a whole new program that could not be done without going back to the community preservation act committee so it's before us is what was recommended by the committee the reason we wanted to do this now and not delay um which is of course different from the one that was removed is that these are um projects that begin in july they were requests were made by various sources of various applicants for funding for um projects that they would like to see happen during fy 21 which begins july 1st and in order to allow those entities that it asked for the funds if to have the opportunity to spend the entire 12 months of the fiscal year doing whatever it is that they had asked to do we needed to move that forward and that's why we created the process that had the joint hearing before the two committees action of two committees to decide whether to make recommendation on these projects and then presented uh to the council which is what is proposed for tonight and the reason that i will later be making a motion to suspend town council rule 8.4 for this purpose is because that allows us to make the appropriations and allows the projects that are before you as you look at the screen if they're supported by the council to begin their work each all of them and i asked the committee this question and was assured and they did some tracking and they assure me that all of these are ready to move forward um the committee had the finance committee had some other comments about that um these proposals they're incorporated into the report and i can come to that later so um i guess i'll stop there and see if uh community resources committee has anything to say bandit job thank you um as and summarized much of it very well i just want to go into the discussions the community resources committee had and then its vote um we in our discussions recognized that nearly all of these projects um if not all of them have um an impact or have have a greater importance due to co vid um it might not seem it immediately but when you start thinking about it um all of the housing projects um for affordable housing that one i think is obvious for many people why that one would be so important as we pull out of co vid but also trails they are in high use right now um and the the project at the high school for the track again something that is in very high use right now um so even though they might not appear as important due to co vid they are recognized by the crc as important due to co vid um and in relation to that we also recognize though that um there is a reserve and we don't know what the future is going to behold come this fall and so it we wanted to point out that um there is a possibility for supplemental appropriation with that reserve to be able to better tailor and address um issues that might come up that can be funded through the cpa that also might relate to needs because of the co vid pandemic um after that discussion um and again we did not discuss the recommended library funding um that one was for reasons that andy indicated put off um even though it was mentioned in the cpa presentation so after all the discussions crc voted unanimously to recommend the council approve this appropriation and transfer order and andy what was the vote on this finance committee um if you have a look that i believe it was four to zero fund number absent okay are there questions from the council so i'm not seeing any questions um so the slate of projects is before you uh as mentioned earlier we need a vote uh to suspend rule 8.4 and then we're going to go on and vote for the projects andy andy would you please offer the motion i move to suspend town council rules of procedure 8.4 for the current agenda item second is there a second okay mandy jose the second is there any further discussion on that all right then we begin with mandy joe yes Dorothy pamm Dorothy pamm yes yes thank you Evan ross yes george ryan yes kathy shane yes see schreiber yes andy steinberg yes sarah schwartz yes chalony ballman yes elissa brewer yes pat de angeles yes darsie du mont yes andlyn greece mersey yes passes 13 zero zero nobody absent and we'll move on to the main motion at this point which is our to the motion and that's the uh andy would you please proceed this is the motion on the transfer order yes um i move to adopt appropriation and transfer order fy 21-07 in order appropriating the fy 21 community preservation act budget as recommended by the finance committee and the community resources committee and shown on page four of the finance committee report titled town council finance committee june 15 2020 the second second de angeles okay um any further discussion or questions okay then we begin with Dorothy pamm yes Evan ross yes george ryan yes kathy shane yes see schreiber yes andy steinberg yes sarah schwartz yes chalony ballman yes elissa brewer yes pat de angeles yes darsie du mont yes and greece mersey yes and mandy johannity yes passes 13 zero zero and we now move on to the letter to the zoning board of appeals uh regarding 132 northampton road i just want to make sure i'm correct yes yes no yes this was done by consent okay we're on to the letter to the zoning board of appeals and um let me just say that um this was my two week assignment to try to try to come up with something um we have an opportunity the zoning board of appeals is getting ready to begin the hearing process for 132 northampton road in the process of doing that it was brought to my attention that normally a body such as ours or any other boards in town may wish to file a letter and so i drafted this letter using examples of previous select forward letters as well as the letter we sent to the um um department of housing and community development in support of the project earlier this year um the um if we proceed with this we do need to suspend rules 8.4 and then we need to authorize with changes the president to sign the letter so one of the options that i pointed out was that we could actually take a vote which we've never done that actually says we support the project or we can just authorize the letter um we did take one vote when we uh put out the cpa money which was five hundred thousand dollars on that was last july 1 and we took another vote when we sent the letter you authorized the president to send the letter to the housing and community development and so this is a draft obviously subject to all kinds of changes and we'll start with me indy job thank you um i i asked for removal for a couple reasons i have some requested changes on the draft but i'm going to bring up the same thing i brought up the last time we had this in front of us for a dhcd letter um which is when we were dealing with this with all of the residents um back last year regarding the cpa money we kept telling them and then for months afterward that it we were just our only involvement was to grant cpa money that then they had to go other places and yet here we are again actually contemplating taking a vote in support of it which i think um belies i it's not that i don't support that vote it's that i don't think we should have been so adamant to the residents that opposed this project um and wanted a say in front of us that we didn't have another say and then we get a letter like this in a potential motion and it comes out on the weekend without barely any notice to the residents although it appears at least one resident noticed it i'm given some emails that have passed today but i i think that is bad practice and so that's one of the reasons i wanted to remove it because i don't think i can vote for it i think i will what i did with dhcd is the same which is a stain because i don't think we should say one thing and three months later do something else um the changes i am requesting despite all of that is in the revised letter the sentence that was added in the very first paragraph should be residents ents not ences just in terms of just a grammatical thing and then there are two items the first one is on page two in the paragraph that starts on january 6 2020 valley cdc provided an update to the town council um right after the change were that removed the line but making a number of requests for improvements there is a sentence that says this letter was written after an extensive public comment process during the 30-day comment period i think that sentence is misleading we did write that letter in the middle of the 30-day comment period not after because we actually had to as a council comment during the 30-day comment period we did not actually review any of the public comments prior to writing our letter yet this sentence i think implies that our letter was written after review of all those comments and so i would ask that it get deleted because i think it misinforms and implies something that didn't actually happen and then my i want to clarify so you want to delete the sentence this letter was written after an extensive public comment process during the 30-day comment period correct um and then the next request is to the bullet points it's the very first bullet point i believe on the next page the second bullet point of the primary reasons for support and it starts the need for additional market rate housing has been well documented um this building project doesn't have market rate housing i believe this is a holdover bullet point from a previous letter i would recommend deleting the whole bullet point okay all right anything else bandit jump that was it okay steve schreiber so i don't oppose the project but i do i'm not in favor of a letter and the reason is very simple that we are the appointing officers for the zoning board of appeals and i don't think it's appropriate for us to try to be influencing on any other matters including something that we clearly have supported in the past you know also the letter says pretty much everything that is public record anyway but i don't think that we should be trying to influence a quasi judicial board that we appoint so we're very different from the select board that way okay george ryan just wanted to point out that i think what we're seeing on the screen is not um the current amended letter is that correct i think we're looking at the first version um so i think there's a second version that should be on the screen go to the top sarge for me to see what which letter we're looking at you are correct this is not the amended one the change on the amended one the sentence that was removed or asked to be removed by mandy joe i'm sorry it was amended is in the first sentence uh when conducting the lottery for those who will will be housed we also ask that preference be given to amherst residents and that would be the second sentence of the first paragraph and then the other change that was made was the removal on the second page in the paragraph that begins on january 6 2020 is to remove after the word development the phrase but making a number request for improvement through the plan and then the request that's now been made is the next sentence be removed and that the paragraph that are the bullet that begins the need for additional market rate be removed i don't know whether sarge is able to find the other letter at this point but let me go ahead and display it i think i have the right one in front of me right now okay uh so evan you have your hand up yeah so i was actually curious about the sentence in the first paragraph that was added um so i and i and i also read through the email a change that occurred um with a resident earlier um i don't personally remember the council taking any position on exercising our local option to to give a local preference i don't remember ever voting on that on that it was something that's all and so that sentence to me is it is a decision that we actually haven't discussed as a council and it's actually one that i don't support i think that there are a lot of great people who currently currently afford to live in amherst who live in other communities who would love the opportunity to move in here and i think that we would really benefit from them coming here um and so i don't want to exclude anyone just because they can't currently afford to live in amherst or it didn't happen to end up in an amherst shelter an amherst hotel so i certainly first wouldn't want to include that sentence without having a discussion in this body and two would actually like to see that sentence removed okay elissa i was hoping to go later um i just want to point out that so i have a difference of opinion with steve as to um his rationale because i'd like to tease that out a little bit further because if steve had been a member of the select board back in the day then perhaps he would have told the select board not to write such a letter because the select board appointed the zba just like the town council appoints the zba so i don't understand the difference there in terms of that rationale unless one argues that our policy leadership role which is very big in the charter it is not an executive authority it is a policy leadership role but it also appoints the zba which let's face it means that our opinions of what should happen come through in our appointments to the zba and the planning board that's simply a fact it's not some generic neutral position we have when we make those appointments so is the question whether or not you're wondering whether or not our policy leadership extends to this and i totally understand as i did before when mandy joe said that since i was one of the people that was so adamant that said we don't have any further decision points i cut this a little differently than she does in terms of deciding to send a letter to the zba based on all the things that we heard at meetings that we held and that we continue to hear to me is not the kind of decision i need to ask the public whether or not again they agree with a particular letter that we're going to send just like i'm not going to ask the public if they agree with a letter i'm going to send to promote the student opportunity act or a whole bunch of other things that we're going to do legislatively and have done in the past so yes it's out there in the public but i'm not going to ask them to edit it or tell us not to sign it because i base it on what we've already discussed prior to the letter being discussed so i appreciate the changes that have been made obviously things are different it's not exactly the same but i don't agree with the argument that it's because we appoint the zba that in fact is exactly false in my opinion but i understand the concern that we've not talked about it at length and i appreciate what evan just said about the local preference in that we really didn't have the right setting to have a voted conversation about how that would work in a different world we might have referred that to somebody but this was our first go round at this rodeo as a town council and it didn't happen um so at this point the of additional deletion is the sentence that was added in in red on your screen darthie pam okay um i just want to ask a question and to make a statement um the local option i i'm not expert in this though i thought i heard that the town had to apply for it um and i do agree that we should discuss this as a um council before we put it in the letter i do want to speak for the local option um we need to many many need to talk to many many people of this project i think we've come to an understanding now and valley cdc has made a number of of changes and responded to a lot of questions and issues so i think that we have something that will be okay however in the discussion in the selling of this the words that were used again and again was that it was going to help with the problem of people who live in amherst or who work in amherst or also maybe who shelter in amherst that it wasn't a general thing we were doing for the public i mean i do even made a good point but in terms of when we talked about this at meeting after meeting and valley cdc did too though perhaps carefully it was the idea that it was going to deal with a problem of that existed that some people who worked here couldn't afford to live here and some people who lived here couldn't afford their rent at all and some people who didn't even have a home but came through amherst or sheltered we're going to try to have supportive housing so i think that still is our strongest point so i would like to um suggest that the whatever the process is for asking for the local option and uh and i think maybe the town applies where i think that we should you know i guess vote to do that um and to apply for it and then to if we do send a letter which again that's more discussion on that that it should be there but we had not discussed that as a council so that that's really part of the issue that people are bringing up so although i agree with the the impulse behind the addition i do think that we need to go a little slower here um i'm also going to ask uh paul bachman to speak to that issue a little bit but in fact paul why don't you go ahead and speak to the issue of the local option since you investigated that with um your staff earlier today uh thank you lin so yes that question did come up and i asked our staff and what they basically said is that typically is incorporated during the zba um comprehensive permit process that that's where that decision decision is made although uh we're i'm just looking at documents now and it's not entirely clear um because it's just all came out this afternoon i think it's very possible that at this point we need to take that out of the letter because it's not been thoroughly discussed we don't have time to discuss it tonight we could return to it but we could also find out more about how that happens okay pat you have your hand up thank you um i am totally opposed to the local preference so i'm glad you're saying let's get it out but i if um it comes back i will vote no um ebbins shared some good reasons um but i want to talk about two things one is we had extensive public comment with this process and it might not have been in a 30-day window but we had massive public comment and public input on this project and i think that should be reflected in the letter but the other thing is during that process of listening to public comment i began to understand the racism and classism that was driving some of the opponents of the project and normally i wouldn't bring that up but given what the times are i feel very strongly that i need to bring it up quotes that i have in my notes um if we open it up to people from outside amherst they will come that's one quote um i don't want a homeless person using my street as a shortcut to walk to amity street to get the bus another comment and i have more of them i think those two are enough it's coded language but it's classist and it's racist and we should not be supporting that in any way shape or form thank you garcy yeah i um i guess i i just wanted to say that i um agree with um mandy joe's initial comments that if we have earlier taken a position that we are not going to take a position that it it seems like we should not be doing this and i'm and i'm i i appreciate that you put all of the work into it lin but i'm wondering um i guess i wasn't aware that you were doing that and that didn't first come to the council to get our okay before you put all the work into it um let me just say that whether i put the work in or not i think it's important that the council knows where the process is and that it's moving forward i would suspect that some counselors may decide to attend the zba hearings as they begin of course when they speak they need to speak as counselors i mean as individuals not for the council and so whether or not we did all this work which uh there is a difference of opinion i would say across the um council as to whether or not the letter is appropriate but whether or not we did it or not it is important that we as a council recognize where this is in process alissa you have your hand up alissa thank you just to follow up on on what you said about that is that this this is um i'll take fault on this on a couple of areas one is again a difference of opinion as to what it means to say we aren't an approval process i didn't say i i know i never said to the public that very full room in the bank center and elsewhere i will never have an opinion on this again because that's not true i knew i would have an opinion in the future on this um one of the reasons we didn't get to it sooner is of course pandemic and we didn't know when the letter what when the actual comprehensive permit was going to get filed for right so you don't write to the zba prospectively knowing that months from now they might get it something because something could have changed so i think i understand the differences of opinion on that and that's fine that we can disagree on that but one of the major concerns i have based on my actual service in town is that i know that some of you are going to go to the zba hearings and if you're going to talk even if you say i'm not speaking as a town counselor you're going to sound like you're speaking for the town council and so i would feel much more comfortable when you do that if there was a letter from the town council that said here's our basic deal here's the things we we heard about over time here's what we said and understanding for example the local preference needs to come out because we didn't talk about that um to the extent that we could vote on it but if we write nothing and individual counselors show up the zba how on earth is the zba supposed to interpret that and how is the public supposed to interpret that so while i understand that some people have a discomfort level with writing a town council letter on the other hand if we don't have a base document it is literally the wild west in terms of what individual counselors say and what that implies about the town position so careful what you wish for George Ryan the only um formal vote that we've taken that i'm aware of was taken in regards to the cpa funding where this body did in fact express its strong support for this project um everything else that's been mentioned um are things that individuals may or may not have said at a public meeting about what may or may not happen in the future but the only thing that we've done formally as a body in a vote was to express our strong support for this project and this letter it seems to me appropriately asks us to reaffirm that strong support before it goes to the zba and so i think elissa makes a number of good points that i would support and i think this is something that we should do we've already done and i think that it would be appropriate for us to do one more time um before this goes to the zba okay so we have the question of whether we should send the letter at all then we have the question of if we're going to send the letter what should the letter say and once on and once we do that then there's the authorization of uh the president to sign the letter on behalf of the council so before we go on and edit the letter i would like to make a hear a i would like to make a motion that the council in fact send a letter to the zba in support of 132 north ampton road is there a second i seconded okay so now we're going to bring that question to a vote okay and the first one up is lin yes i could i clarify what this motion is i mean our motion sheet has an authorize you to sign a letter um your motion was to send a letter and is that motion to send the letter that we've seen or just a generic send a letter it is a generic send a letter because the question that's been raised by you and at least two other counselors is whether or not we should even be sending a letter so rather than spending more time um editing a letter i let i'd like to know whether or not we believe we should send one further question manager nope thank you for that clarification okay all right we start with i believe darthie pan yes seven ross yes lord ryan yes tassie shane staying staying okay uh steve schreiber no and steinberg yes there are schwarz yes felony ball noon yes elissa brewer yes pat de angeles yes garcy demont no researchers yes panicky no okay so the vote is nine in favor one against i'm sorry three against and one extension so it passes that we should send the letter this is interesting all right so let's go to the actual letter and the question is whether or not these are the changes i've seen i've seen okay um the first one is to remove the sentence in red completely on the next page all the way down at the bottom in the paragraph on january 6 2020 it is to remove the phrase but making a number of requests for improvements to the plan and also the next sentence this letter was written after an extensive public comment process during the 30 day comment period okay and then the third request was to remove the bullet on the beginning of the next page which is the need for additional market rate housing etc etc ending with the library is there any other changes to the letter at this time we point out that the letters suggested there would be a vote to support this do you want to include that so are there any i see pat de angeles please yes um let me see this i would like to have this letter was written after extensive public comment um you know because that happened before we just made any decisions about the cpa money or anything else and so not to have that we've had an extensive process um i think weakens that section so i don't think i i don't know if mandy joe is right about the 30 day comment period but our public comment process was intense i think including visits by counselors to the abutters and them taking us on a tour of their neighborhoods etc and that so can i suggest that the set the part of the sentence that people felt most uncomfortable with is process during the 30 day comment period so that what you're suggesting pat is the letter would include this letter was written after extensive public comment period and it doesn't quite work as a sentence yet but the town council submitted the letter to blah blah blah demonstrating support of the development after an extensive public comment process how's that yes all right andy i just wanted to say i would support that as the person that recommended deletion of the full sentence that pats pats revision i support so the sentence would now read i just want to make sure is the town council submitted a letter to dhcd demonstrating support of the development after an extensive public process yes mandy joe i think it's after an extensive public comment comment process yeah after extensive public comment yes extensive public comment process got it thank you so the sentence reads the town council submitted a letter dhcd demonstrating support of the development after an extensive public comment process period okay andy steinberg yes um i guess that i wanted to understand what the proposal was regarding the bullet at the top of page three that begins the need for additional market rate housing was the proposal to take out the first sentence only or the entire bullet the proposal was to take out the entire bullet okay then i want to just point out that i would suggest not taking out the last two sentences because they they deal with a different subject matter the first has to do with reference to the housing market study and market rate housing and that this is not housing that fits into that category the second two sentences have to do with the location of this um its consistency with the master plan and its proximity to public transportation retail services in the library if they are different subject matter um i think the objection to the first sentence made sense but i would suggest not removing the rest of the bullet um mandy joe you were the one that's fine with me i think i was really focusing on the first sentence and didn't catch the other two are there any other changes to the letter okay so we come to the very first sentence and the first sentence says that we would voted today would people i i really need to get a sense of the council whether or not you want to vote today in support of this project or you want me to modify this and just send the letter can you tell me what the alternative wording would be would it be the council authorized you to send a letter or what does it say i mean it would be very similar to the letter that's attached which is the letter that we sent to the um the letter we sent to chd and it says thank you for the opportunity to provide comments on the application for project eligibility blah blah blah the project is seeking a comprehensive permit some of the words have become basically a statement of what we're why we're sending the letter it's on the second it's the attached letter to the other one sure um i think it's later yes keep going keep going right here so it would be more like that openings uh sentence and then i blended it in does that answer your question kathy it does answer my question because somehow it feels very odd for me to vote on a letter um as you know as a statement um it's a clear way for me to to me just to say why we're sending this um okay although i guess we're not thanking zba for the opportunity to provide public comment but whatever whatever that is garthy you have your hand up i want to say that i am very disappointed at the idea of taking out the request for a local option when you put forward something which is a good and something which is needed the people in the area in the town say maybe that could be me now this is not going to be where the people are going to be judged as by need it's a lottery people will be vetted to be included in this lottery but it's not going to be ranked by this is the most needy we got to put this one they have to get through some kind of basic screening and they get put in the lottery when you do local option all the names in the bag are not people who either live or work or have been sheltered in amherst there's a that's there only i think maybe there's 70 percent of the people in the bag but still then or their names are drawn out of a bag or else there are two bags i i did read the description and it is in detail but i don't have it i just know that when they do housing like this say in new york city where so many people have been waiting for affordable housing being somebody who who lives in the town has been gone on the list or whatever it it matters so i just feel that you know i theoretical principles are great but i i i'm a town council member for amherst and i'm thinking of there aren't even that many apartments and they talked about so many people who actually work in in the universities or in the town or in businesses or whatever and can't afford to live here and then they're going to find out that it can be anybody i i just feel it would be intensely disappointing to people who might have been looking forward to this and supporting it darthi i'm going to suggest that we put inside the issue of local option if we decide as a council that we want to have a further discussion about it when we can find out what that really means and how it's really done that we might add an addendum to this letter at a later date but to try to resolve that without the advice of people who understand local option i think would be a useless circuitous discussion tonight so i i i agree with you okay haven so so now that i think i'm understanding your question about whether we want to say that we voted because there's what are we actually voting on and kathy brought that up um i don't like how the dhcd letter actually started now that i'm looking at it because i always think that you need to lead with what your message is in case they only read the first sentence so i'm suggesting you know maybe we just say uh the amherstown council recommends approval of open with that and then we're voting to authorize you to send this letter so we're de facto voting to recommend but it's it's not separating i think it's good so the first sentence would be the amherstown council recommends approval of that's my suggestion yes kathy shane i very much like the idea of bringing the local option back for discussion item um lin no not doing it tonight um because i heard a lot about this so i just i don't want to extend the but not just some time in the next distant future but if you can squeeze it in um while this process is going on okay is there any other comment so let me we can't we're not going to add local option tonight no we aren't we are not adding it tonight we will bring it back at a near and future agenda could we go back to the very beginning of the very letter and let me just one more time state where we have made the changes okay the first change is the first sentence will read the amherstown council recommends approval of okay the next is to remove the line in red which is around the local option the other changes that people have made are all the way on the bottom of the second page and in that case the second sentence will read the town council submitted a letter to dhcd demonstrating support of the development after an extensive public comment process period and will eliminate all of the other words around that including but making a number of requests for improvement and this letter was written and process and during the 30 day comment period all of that will be eliminated and then on the next page under the second what would be the second bullet in that paragraph we're eliminating the first sentence only and then we are leaving in this increased housing production and its location blah blah blah okay are there any other changes requested at this time okay then i would like to make a motion first of all we need to um consent consent covered suspending the rules lin i'm sorry the consent already suspended the rule thank you uh so then we need to authorize um president greysmer always sends a little strange um to sign the letter of support to the zoning board of appeals uh recommended permit zoning zba f y 2020 30 dash 39 belly mainly development corporation 132 north hampton road is there a second second okay then we're going to go to a roll call vote and we begin with evan ross yes yes george ryan yes patrick shane abstain steve schreiber no andy steinberg does sarah schwartz yes shallony balm noam yes elissa bruer yes pat de angeles yes darcy domont no lin greysmer's a yes mandy johannity yes and darcy pam yes so the vote is is ten in favor two against and one abstention thank you i will share the final letter with you in your packet um so we are going to go on to a memo that we began discussing last week and this is the memo regarding what to do with public permanent public way requests and we did have some conversation and i just want to reintroduce that the memos has two different suggestions and then it suggests that it be sent off to tso for discussion and eventually then to go well depending on what tso comes up with so the and the issue as i presented last time is that we've been inconsistent with how we handle permanent requests in the public way and that has led to sometimes people showing um coming to council meeting expecting to give a presentation and then finding out after they do it there they also have to do it again for tso so before this we move to recommend to move to refer this what other things would people like to say at this point i'm not seeing that anybody wants to add anything further to what we've already said and so um um this is there's a motion and it's to refer president greece merse 535 3120 memo options for council review of long term permanent changes public way to the town services and outreach committee and to the governance organization and legislative committee for court and recommendation to the town council in 90 days is there a second second ryan thank you george any further discussion and we'll do a real call vote we begin with george ryan yes yes kathy shane yes biefer schreiber yes andy steinberg yes garish wartz yes gallanty ball mill yes elissa blower yes patty angeles yes darsie gemont yes lynn greece merse yes and mandy johannicky yes berthie pam yes ebb and ross yes it's referred with the 12 with a 13 00 vote okay we're moving on to appointments let me just get myself reassembled lynn yes is there what is the time frame is that 90 days or what 90 okay your schedule had us going back to presentations thank you so it's been my night um so in i sent out about two weeks ago a timeline for the town manager's evaluation i have since taken that timeline and revised it uh based on comments i received actually from only two counselors but they were substantial and useful and the one question that did get raised is at this point as a council we are scheduled not to meet on july 20th 27th 3rd and 10th that makes this a jam but we've done it in the past and so as we look at this schedule we need to keep that in mind elissa broer have your hand up i'm so sorry i was hoping to catch you before so for all of us who've been here since 5 30 could we plan on a recess pretty soon yes five minute break okay let's just do that now thank you we'll reconvene in five minutes that is at 845 just take yourself on the video and then i'll know your back right we're going to continue with uh presentation and discussion town manager evaluation calendar and just reminder the process so uh mandy joe you have your hand up yes thank you um the schedule for finance and all of our budget stuff includes a finance committee hearing the required budget hearing on the full year budget on monday july 13th um and it also then has a vote on the budget in the full town council on july 20th um that is a schedule that we adopt or at least i believe the finance committee adopted even though i know our original year long schedule did not have a meeting on the 20th given i think it was moved from the 13th to the 20th given the um covid issues and all and the need for pushing the budget into july so if the finance committee is not holding their budget hearing until july 13th we absolutely must have a council meeting either july 20th or july 27th because we have to vote that budget by july 31st or july 30th um i think is what it was in the motion we passed today and so i would i would recommend i think we also need a couple of you know there's so much built up and pandemic and things take longer um i would recommend we move the items on july 13th to july 20th um and on the 13th hold the budget hearing and we vote the budget on july 20th as all of the including all the rest of the stuff that in this memo was listed on july 13th but i also recommend we hold a meeting on july 3rd for regular business so that the july 17th meeting can be less than regular business um i'm not sure how reading stuff and the distribution will work electronically um i'm not sure because we used to get it all in paper at once um so i'm you know arrangements haven't been worked out but it will probably take longer for people to read if it's sitting on a computer than in a paper form with running back and forth and all so it could take longer than we had before and so so i would advocate adding a meeting on august 3rd for regular business in august 17th and then my only other concern on all of this was that the schedule right now has the draft manager goals being delivered on july 13th or with my proposal july 20th but not being discussed until august 17th um that is a really long time in my opinion to have the goals out there without them actually being talked about by the council um so if we're not going to discuss them till august 17th maybe we could just have them delivered as part of the packet for the august 17th meeting 48 hours in advance or something so that they're not out there for a full month without us being able to talk about them so i mean dry one understand you're suggesting we we meet as a council on july 13th for the purpose of the hearing of the budget well that's the finance committee budget hearing schedule right now and i think it's normally called as a council meeting but i would recommend that's all that happens that day okay and then uh but on monday july 20th which we had also need to have to adopt the budget uh we would move everything that was listed for the 13th to the 20th yes then i'd need to make an adjustment on the 16th but i can do that and that we also then meet on august 3rd is that what i heard yeah for regular business so that we can remove regular business from august 17th okay and that we uh and that the goals uh might be distributed on the 3rd but discussed on the 17th or distributed in time for the packet for the 17th yeah i would like to see a closer time frame between when the goals are out in the public and when we actually get to discuss them okay are there other suggestions darcy i was on the the previous goals ad hoc committee and um i think that um it worked very well and i'm just i i'm missing whether we had a discussion about how how we should do it this time around and it seems to me like both the evaluation and the goals should be um it makes more sense to do them with an ad hoc committee um so i'm interested in knowing what other people on the council think of that i i don't have any problems with this time frame i know that if we appointed an ad hoc committee that would throw it off a little bit um but i personally think it makes sense to make sure that we are as objective as we can be um and um not putting it all on on our president who you know has needs to be interacting with the town manager on a daily basis it's a little you know it feels like it's a little we could put a little more distance in there by having an ad hoc committee look at um the evaluation and the goals and like i said the goals committee worked together really well i thought we you know were very efficient in and getting the goals together although very late of course um so just wondering what other people think about the possibility of having an ad hoc committee do this rather than putting it all on lin no suggestions been made are there other comments believe that what we did last time was we brought the goals to the council and then when it was apparent there were a lot more discussion needed we formed the ad hoc committee for the goals um and people want to have an ad hoc committee for the goals we can but we need to get started a lot sooner and we need to get it done a lot faster elissa so time passes and we see what worked well and i understood what darcy was in favor of doing the same thing we did last year um i still don't understand why and and that something i don't understand hasn't changed over the past year which is that i don't understand why an existing tent an existing standing committee doesn't have this as part of their responsibility because existing committees are not going away during this time period so again it's one more workload for a group of people to work on something and um i appreciate what lin said about you know previously it was drafted then i said okay here's a committee that can take a look at what was drafted and figure that out um i would be a big proponent this year of doing things as easily as what works for people as possible because our workload has been literally insane and so to ask people to have a whole another set of committee meetings that might go on for several weeks i think is asking a lot i also think that we have some pent up desire to change some of the evaluation process right we talked about that last year but yet we can't do that this year because we simply don't have the bandwidth to do it this year so i'm in favor of whatever seems simplest and then work on a start earlier next year even though who knows what our pandemic situation will be in the spring next year are there other comments at this time Dorothy yeah i'm remembering the process now i was on that committee and i remember as we sat as a full-time council reading all the little steps i thought we should just have those steps as things we think about but we shouldn't answer yes no whatever for each one of them and the the process could be so much simpler i mean i think we we did a good job of laying out all the things we can think of we might want to add a few more but the the nitty gritty of of going over each one was i think redundant really redundant um but within categories we could discuss them in our discussion we could bring up the different items that are in that category but not necessarily have to you put an evaluation of all of them additional comments all right so what yes kathy yeah i had separately um earlier today said linda note i just want to build on what dorythe was referencing to we we talked about having a much simpler evaluation form format that would have the big category with some kind of rating easy and then a common thing that you could make say why you thought all of this but not having to go over every line so it would be short we wouldn't go through everything we put um and and make it easier and then have some space toward the end of it that would give you give you more free reign to talk about any issues that had come up and other things we don't have such a form i would be perfectly willing to to draft it and make it short and sweet if we if that would be helpful because i wasn't sure with this process as proposed if we get the performance goals as we set them up i i wasn't sure what we were supposed to do if we right now if we got the performance goals as we set them up and then my memory is we tried to keep it to three pages and it kept being four pages five pages are we supposed to write something on every line so i think we just need some guidance that's really simple that's not very rigid on on what would be what should we do so is it just yeah so that's just the major a major area right so let me just mention that um kathy i think you were on also on that committee and we discussed changing the form which i have not messed with yet uh so that people could do individual comments under each but they and they could and they could do an overall rating for each of the broad six or seven categories and a broad set of comments so that they would not be put in a situation we all found ourselves in last year which was my god when was this uh so it's like i totally agree with our that that was a that was a discussion of the goals committee last year uh this past fall and into the end of december uh and i think that that guidance is still absolutely true um i want to i want to separate these we're having two conversations one is about the evaluation yes another one is about setting the goals it was for the setting the goals that we had the committee in terms of formats for the evaluation i will be more than happy to um take comments and come up with a format that is much much more user friendly um and be glad to do that sarah you have your hand up so i just wanted to bring up that it is a job evaluation and however you look at it it's it's it's to help guide paul because you don't know if you're doing a good job or if you're hitting the marks that the people who are hiring you want you to hit unless they're actually written out so i would rather that we weren't vague that we were more specific and i'm okay with however we decide to try to do this with ease this year but we're gonna who knows how many of us are going to be gone after another year and not quite a half and i would like to actually maybe take up what elissa said and maybe we do give this entire like evaluation process how we're going to do it and also think about how we all set goals for paul together and start that now with a committee so that we actually leave something permanent for the next council that comes in that's it so you're suggesting a committee that tackles this or we just give it like elissa said maybe it's part of a committee's charge and i'm not saying for sure let's do this but it seems like if we already have committees formed then it might make sense for one committee to just start working on it obviously the whole town council would have to you know then look at something and reflect on it it's all of our decisions but at least we'd have the when the because look how fast this year went right and we're all still now looking at this whole situation saying oh yeah i remember how hard that was last year so i just think that maybe even if we you know wrote it into one committee they could just start working on it now and maybe we just set a timeline but that's me spitballing this late darsie yeah i just wanted to remind people that originally uh the evaluation was in the in okah and then then it was removed so um and all the different appointment functions got farmed out to different committees and so i mean it's possible that part of it could be in one committee and part of it you know the evaluation could be in one committee and the goals could be in another committee and once we have a format of how we're doing it generally it you know year after year it won't be as hard you know we won't be reinventing the wheel um and um yeah i would be for doing that this year but i don't know what kind of support i have for that elissa just super briefly so part of why it was so hard this year of course as it was different for all of you who weren't previously on the select board right so for andy and i the idea of the evaluation wasn't that complicated although andy's never been a big fan of the form we used the form we used isn't the form we used meaning the select board used this clunky old table slash excel spreadsheet but it meant you could flip back and forth between it the google doc the google form was a disaster that was part of the problem and so we have not only the how do we rate things and are we kind of grouping it in a general sense or are we going point by point by point or is our problem with the execution of the form we used that had never been done that way before and there was a reason for that and it didn't work well for us so part of what the that's part of what has to be dealt with too and so and that was not discussed with the council at all as to whether or not we think that that execution of the actual filling it out would work so i don't have an easy answer which is why i'd like to see a group work on it longer term to kind of figure out and then talk about all the town um employee evaluation right we've always talked about how that doesn't work out quite the way we planned for it either but to do anything this year i'm willing to cut corners so to speak in terms of making it go faster but i think we have to recognize that we have a number of different issues here and it's not just the form itself it's evaluation goals have to be translated into the form you can't just have a set of goals and then have the form say something else and you can't have the form be that weirdo google doc that we had last year so we learned from that but we need to make it easier for ourselves to fill out and that made it much much harder for me to fill out um it i think was actually a survey but i will look into other ways of doing the survey um yes uh george i like the idea of using existing bodies um if the council wants to have someone's look over both the look over both elements of the evaluation and the goals um we can simply refer it to a body or two two separate bodies that are already exist um if that will help i agree with the idea of trying to make it as simple as possible it sounds like we do want someone or someone's to look at it um and give some sort of input back to the council um before we move forward we could leave that with lin um that's certainly an option the other it seems to me is simply to refer one or both of these to a specific body and asking them to get back um as obviously quickly the only thing that we're now faced with is that and i know this is an unusual summer but some people are still planning to either stay at home vacations or whatever is we try to do the staff and the committee chairs and the committees and the public starting this coming week the form for the council is not that fast so i just want to point out that one of the reasons why this comes up at this point is because of always wanting to do it earlier in the summer if you will uh dorthy i like george's idea um of having a committee do it but i'd be a lot happier if it was go l than tso he has so much they have to do right now and we're still figuring out how we're doing it so i i don't think we could probably handle this responsibility at this time otherwise an ad hoc committee okay um i'm i'm open whatever you want to do sarah so yeah i i for some reason i guess i just blocked out oka in general after last week but so it did belong in that charge so maybe we do want to think about where it would fit in the current standing committees because i would think that this is something that any town council would want to have a committee either refining or at least making sure that forms and everything were going out on a timeline so i guess maybe we think about where it makes the most sense and and do it i don't know if we want to add something else on because it's still more like separate time for all of us and as somebody who's on a committee and is a liaison and is now an ecac you know i'd rather have it in a committee even if it was my own than another subcommittee or a subcommittee oh and i just want to say too that the goals you can't really separate them that's what elissa said and i think it's true i don't think you could separate those two out i i would probably want to have one committee be working on both i think it would make more sense so george are you willing to put this under the 48 hour rule and gll george give your hand up sorry um yes i would be willing to put it under the 48 hour rule but um my colleagues and gl may wish to speak on this as well but um if there is a committee that the council wants it to send this to it would seem to me speaking personally that gl would probably be that committee but um others may have other thoughts are there other thoughts mendic joe yes i would want clarity on what the committee is supposed to do are we drafting goals or are we not drafting goals are we um um coming up with the evaluation form or not like i i'm i'm at this point i think the referral if the referral is fine in that sense but i would want definite clarity on what if it's goes to gl or tso or wherever it's going what that committee is supposed to do and when they're supposed to return a product it's an outstanding set of questions dorothy i think the answers have been given in this discussion start with the work that was done with the goals committee take that take the form elissa's right you've got to work the goals must match the form start with that and look at it and then go over some of the different alternatives we discussed and see how to refine it i would say starting from scratch would be really silly in a waste of time um we've got the you've got the raw material and then the tricky part uh is that somebody has to technically figure out how we're going to you know how the form works um but i would just say part of what we've got is in common sense okay because i could i suggest that this be referred to gl who will provide guidance um on the evaluation process including the development of the counselor's feedback form and develop a set of goals to be brought to the council for the proposed goals to be brought to the council and so basically what i'm suggesting is that the gl will um work on using this calendar and i actually i'm going to not i'm going to suggest we not do very much to change anything with regard in collecting community input um and staff input and that we focus on the counselor evaluation and the actual form and that the uh and that they also work on the goals darsie i i actually think the most important piece is the the um the the letter combining all of the counselor comments and so if that could be done in some kind of group process and gl um i think that would be good and you know if it ends up that everything just gets farmed out to you anyway lin because you're on gl you know i i'm you know my the goal is to you know have more voices involved um and to have it done in a group process so um i would say make sure that that is included these you know there's a number of things that just are going to be done by the town staff anyway right all these things in the first week anything that we don't ask them to do right but i can't see the bottom of this could could you scroll down possibly so that we can see the bottom maybe joe you have your hand up i would not support um assigning the compilation of the letter to a group because once you do that um as as darsie sort of indicated it would be done in a group so it would be done in open meeting but that means that all of the evaluations must come out before that open meeting and we generally don't send those evaluations out until on this schedule it would be the 17th distributed exactly at five so once you say the letter is going to be compiled in gl the newspaper and everyone has every councilor's evaluation prior to that gl meeting when that letter starts being drafted and that would be required to be well early um wherever that is probably before tuesday august fourth um in order to be done at one or two gl meetings or more um so i would not support sending the actual compilation of the letter to a committee kathy one of the things mandy asked for which i think is right she asked for being as explicit as possible what they're supposed to do and i'm just looking at this um it includes a draft of the f by 21 goals by x date we've got some very specific short pieces so i agree with what mandy just said i don't think a group right of composite letters a good idea um but it's it's already uh we have to get something out to the council all of us that we respond to in some way that's task number one and it needs to have uh a due date on it so it can go out to all of us and then the other big task is an initial draft of what are the goals for the coming year so that we don't hand over performance goals for 12 month period with only five months left in the year i mean we're we're trying to catch up so there are some there there's some explicit dates here that if we send it to jol there's a fair amount of work that needs to be done two different pieces with with with dates set on them or anything okay i i think that i have two different points first we have to use common sense i'm remembering now what lin did last year that's not it's it's ridiculous we cannot keep piling on work on top of people we are working too hard as it is and uh the time is short so i think that you have to say this is what we did here's the papers and documents how can we simplify this within the time because we don't have unlimited time and our schedule seems to be throwing things really on top of each other the other part that we're not talking about and that was the part that was poorly done last time was the getting comments from the community and from the staff and there's you know we don't quite know why but we just really didn't get many comments that's something that perhaps tso could look into because outreach is part of their title i'll try to think about if are there any things that aren't too complex any ways of increasing participation in the non-council members is part of the evaluation because that was just very very skimpy last time but for the for us it's got to be simpler than it was last time it cannot be some burden that has people staying up and not sleeping for two weeks it's just we're getting crazy so i'm just urging us to simplify mercy yeah i guess i i would just say since i i personally think the most important piece is the um the cover memo is that i think that there would be a way to deal with the problems um the open meeting law problems by either you know assigning it to two people to to write the draft and and executive committee yes no there is no such thing no any once you have more than one counselor you've got a meeting not it's a one-time deal right that's not true not if it's not an official subcommittee it would be an official subcommittee because you just said that well it's not a non-official subcommittee there's no such thing no such thing alissa any further comments so i just want i mean beyond the fact that i will fight anyone who says that we did uh we did anything poorly we didn't do anything poorly we didn't get a great response rate that doesn't mean that there was anything wrong with our process in terms of the actual forms for example but they need to be looked at and they need to be looked at by a committee that has time to do this more than oh my god we have to send them out next week which is literally with position work so they're good enough to go out this week in terms of the email that goes out to the committee chairs it's good enough to put out the staff evaluation we wish we would have done it differently this year but guess what we didn't so we're going to send the same form out which was fine and at least as comparable to last year and unfortunately probably won't get a lot of response and we need to be clear on who's doing the goals which is going to go to a committee the format does not need to come back to the town council to be reviewed it certainly didn't last year and ended up with the mess that I didn't like but the form is just the goals turned into something and given the short period of time we have we don't need to believe that the goals need to be drafted by somebody that's a committee the form needs to be created by somebody that will just be the form because it's the form that's based on the goals that already exist it's not new and then we need to have the future conversation which maybe gol can also have about oh well when you consider the email that has to go out this piece this piece this piece this is who should work on it over the course of the next year and just make it simple for ourselves now all right i'd like to make a motion i move that the evaluation and the the evaluation be referred to gol for the purpose of guiding the process through this year including the development of a format that is counselor friendly for our responses and to draft the goals to be brought back to the council um on in time for our meeting on august 17th is there a second second there any further discussion sorry to be a pain can i just ask that the motion be reread Athena can you reread the motion sure that the evaluation be referred to gol for the purpose of guiding the process for the year including the development of a format that is counselor friendly and draft goals to be brought to the council in time for the august 17th meeting the motion's been made been seconded any further comment then i'm so confused i don't get it darcy you have your hand up uh yeah i just wanted to make a quick comment that i felt like the um the goals the ad hoc goals committee that existed um for f y 20 was successful because it combined a number of people that had different interests and expertise um sholony was on it and had her interest in economic development and i was on it and i had interest in sustainability and so on anyway um i obviously whatever gol does is going to come back to the full committee for for comments i just you know want to make sure that the committee takes into consideration all those different interest areas i just got lost one on the dates because i'm sorry i know athena just read it and i totally got lost so i get the fact that it's fine if we don't have draft goals until the middle of august it's fine if we don't do goals until november it's not ideal but it's fine what we need is we need a form we can't get a form on august 17 we're supposed to have completed it before august 17 really lost about where we are on just elissa we already have for this year well right so why are we talking about a form we're talking about a form for this year which is not going to be the same as the form last year so therefore it is not existing yet because the thing we had that was the user friendly part but like we have to fill it out so we have to get it before august 17 we're not waiting till august 17 to fill it out and the motion is that go well we'll guide that process and look at and make sure we have a friendly form but when are we filling out the form that like when are we right so we don't have the okay somebody want to tell me the date again that they're going to get us a form by because it's not going to be august it's in your calendar then why did we specify a date for the goals but not a date for the form we can update to the form um let's see i'm just trying to find the date for the form counselor evaluation form would be sent out by july 8 according to the calendar and the counselors have to fill it out by august 4th right so somebody's got to create it right and we'll have it in our hands by august 8 by july it the calendar initially says that the email is sent to the town counselors with individual counselor evaluation form is somewhere between june 16th and june 29th the initial one i'm just trying to see when go l's supposed to have the form done by i guess i don't care if they don't care so it's fine maybe even three times for the discussion darcy oh no i meant to lower my hand there's a motion may be seconded is there any further discussion darah okay so i'm sorry i just want to make sure so i know that we're trying to make sure that we take care of this year but i also wanted to just make sure that we are putting this in if it's going to be go well that it's going to become part of their charge so that we're not put in this situation again next year that somebody's slowly working on making doing the deadlines and getting things ready starting now for next year that's just that we're thinking about doing that because i that's i think more important to me that's not part of this motion but it does sound to me like you go well needs to look at its charge and bring it back to the council okay thanks all right motion's been made in seconded any for the discussions okay then um we're going to begin with shane yes yes driver yes signberg yes warts yes fawn melm yes brewer yes the angeles yes umant yes grease mercy yes hannity yes ham yes and ross yes and ryan yes zero zero on the referral all right we're moving on to zoning bylaw amendment process mandy joe do we need to do this now or do we want to mix up you do not need to do it tonight okay we'll move it to the 22nd 29th and then the next thing is um this is a discussion regarding policing and um i've asked paul shallony and pat several of us were including in the audience at the recent discussion with the police chief's staff the town manager and residents but shallony and pat were actually in the uh panelist group as was paul so um shallony and pat shallony is going to share our reflection okay sure so um i just want to start off by saying i i personally found it very hopeful to see the the honesty that and discussions that we had the commitment uh shared by the chief of police by a town manager um to continue to listen and to do better so i don't know i mean there were nine of us counselors there so i don't know in how much detail i want to go paul has already shared a video that people can see if they want to listen into the dialogue because i think it was a really good first conversation to be had there were 50 residents there were nine counselors the chief of police captain thing was there and and maybe i can just highlight some of the things that we learned just you know a couple of really good points that emerged uh like for example the first thing we though that um that the chief of police shared was about the extensive role they're playing and handling many more situations than they used to and so you know there was uh an agreement that maybe we can look at our budgets and how we can align our local budgets to address some of these needs um the other thing that was really interesting is that none of the even though there are a lot of trainings and implicit bias that everyone goes through and that was really great that we have a lot of policies in place for de-escalation the use of force but um there is no training that provides a history of policing and even the chief of police uh was interested in having more training from non-police staff so there were a lot of like really good ideas that came up like that or needs that were expressed and shared so like i said that was just the first of the meetings uh Ghazid Khaya Kousi who initiated this um meeting along with Dr. Shabazz and Dr. Shabazz um these uh they sent a little feedback i mean just after the meeting so um they kind of reflected that this is the first and they'd like to continue this conversation they specifically requested for having a town hall to give opportunity for the 59 attendees to share the concern so that's one of the things that Lynn Pat and I sort of did a little debrief afterwards and we came up with some ideas including having a facilitated meeting with the residents and the chief of police and our town staff and we talked about maybe having a task force that with the with the diverse group of people including some residents town staff and town counselors to look at the systemic issues because this goes beyond policing issues this is uh looking at you know all our domain maybe using this as an opportunity to look at the different sectors in our community that where racism and inequities exist like the schools uh the development areas or housing i mean so these are really like it's an opportunity to study all of these different issues to look at the data in hand but also listen into the lived experiences of people and so as of now what we are what we are proposing is um maybe having a special town council meeting to discuss this on maybe June 22nd or July 6th and uh really would like to hear from everyone else right now what ideas you might have and if Pat wants to add on something to that well a couple of the other things that came up and one of them was some kind of citizens review today which um you know there is no civilian oversight of our department and I did not get a feeling that that the department would be resistant to that um which was a really good thing to hear um and so I just want to add that but I'd love to hear from other people who were virtually there that's what I meant didn't do there's no conversation raise your hand if you'd like to speak I lost the raising the hand thing oh okay all right I can't find the I want to click participants it doesn't come up now um yes I want to second what Pat said um the chief made it very very clear that uh he his department did not have opposition to uh some kind of civilian review and I was thinking of it as kind of like it like an audit I mean just looking at seeing have there been uses of force have there been any discipline problems are there areas that um you know they think that they want to improve on uh I felt it could be done in a friendly manner because I don't think doing it in an unfriendly manner is going to get us very far but I wanted to add another thing that I think would be useful um when I lived in sunny side we had the 108th police precinct community meeting every month and we went to it and the police would open it kind of like town council with what things they were looking at what problems that were in the community sometimes warning us of local frauds or whatever and then residents could just stand up and ask their question or make a statement and um it was a very friendly productive and it was part of of what you did in that neighborhood and I felt it kept a good climate and it kept things from building up and boiling up I also think that I think Pat alluded to this um that in terms of really reaching out the community maybe some of these meetings should travel and go to different parts of the community of the town because um you after a while you get used to who comes to town hall you know and it's it's not that big a group of people um but to have a good I mean it seemed to me that the chief and uh captain Ting were making it very clear they valued and wanted um open and free conversation with the people of Amherst and did not feel um in opposition and welcomed the idea of working together with the community in a little more detail so I thought it was a very positive meeting Tara so I know that Pat talks a lot about coded language and I think that it's important for all of us to sort of think about things that we say and when we're talking about having people of color talk to white people about racism racism isn't very friendly and so I'm not saying that I'm just saying that when you say I want to keep it friendly it's I feel like it's in some ways saying to people of color make sure you stay in your lane so I know that's not what Dorothy was saying but I'm just saying that we need to be careful about how we phrase things that's right right on are there other comments so the hand up function is not working Kathy it's working no it is working I just couldn't make the participant thing go up because I've got everybody's face on the screen so I couldn't find it um I just I was a listener and one of the things I wanted to exchange is I thought um was to build on Sarah's point was uh the barriers people face when they want to register a concern and a person who was uh leading the discussion listed a whole bunch of different ways that you might feel uncomfortable or including a language barrier but also a fear of authority and the response was we've never heard such a fantastic list that was really important for you to list that out and then the other was the types of training on how do we um work on things in different ways that the trainers we find are former police officers um we would and and we reached out at different times to UMass or Amherst College for suggestions of other people because we're totally open to thinking about different types of modules so it was a very it was a very open discussion of welcoming ideas welcoming suggestions welcoming concrete things rather than and the concrete list of barriers was stunning that was given and everyone was nodding their head no yes um and then you think of personal stories so I thought it was a healthy beginning it was clearly just a beginning Narci yeah I I attended and I I really appreciate the fact that Shalini and Ghazid Haya um uh organized it I Ghazid Haya is actually um doing outreach for the energy and climate action committee through the municipal vulnerability preparedness grant and she has brought that same kind of energy to ACAC in in the outreach that we're doing there bringing community leaders into our task groups that are people of color that um she has brought in and she's doing individual um one-on-one consciousness raising with members of the committee and leading a caucus of the of the people of color community leaders that are going to be in our task group so it's a whole it's a whole new world of um making the white members more aware of of um of just what's happening you know how how how thinking is changing George I uh what struck me in listening to this I listened to it on the uh later um was how increasingly we are asking the police to deal with issues for which they really aren't trained and probably could never be trained but they are in a sense the ones who are the first responders I'm thinking particularly of issues around homelessness and mental health so I hope that whatever conversation goes forward that people from that community um those in the mental health community those who work with the homeless um will be involved that this won't be focused simply on the issue of race as important as that is because what I heard at least what I heard from this discussion was a real willingness on the part of the police department to engage in dialogue with the community and also request for help um in a sense that in that in many cases they find themselves uh tasked with things that really they're not um suited for and yet they they're the ones who have to deal with it so I guess what I'm saying is I hope this I did definitely heard a willingness for for a lot more discussion and I'm I'm glad to hear it's going to go forward I hope that um this will also include members of the mental health community and those who work with the homeless as part of this discussion because I heard I thought very clearly that police department would would like some assistance there okay so Evan I'm going to take your question then I'm going to ask if we shape we shape the conversation a certain way but go ahead Evan so so actually George sort of beat me too but I just wanted to say that um the thing that I left um at the forefront of my mind when I left that conversation was what they said about how increasingly their calls are responding to uh non-criminal calls especially things around mental health and homelessness um and and I don't want to read too much into tone or try to interpret him but it it seemed like something that the chief was uncomfortable with that that wasn't something that they had envisioned originally envisioned their role as being and was an area where he was certainly open to perhaps reimagining their role and then I saw as I'm sure many of you did the announcement from the mayor of San Francisco yesterday that they would be replacing police officers with trained professionals who would be unarmed to respond to non-criminal um complaints around mental health homelessness uh neighborhood disputes uh and and I hope that becomes a part of the discussion going forward is who responds and also um a big piece of this that I'm going to be pretty vocal about is when does a response require the responder to have a firearm um because I think that's going to be a big piece of this when we are responding to noise complaints when we are responding to traffic violations does whoever's responding need a firearm on their hip and so who's responding what their training is and are they carrying I think need to be important parts of the conversation so what I want the council to answer at this point is all right let me shape the question there's responsibility that the town manager has to make sure that our police um department and other first responders because this also happens frankly with ambulance people it could even happen with somebody from DPW when somebody doesn't like how they snow plowed um and I'm not being facetious I mean we get complaints about that all the time so there's the responsibility of the town manager but the real question before the council is what do we want our role to be and one of the suggestions that was thrown out was the idea of having a council meeting that would be more like a public forum if you will another suggestion would be that there be some kind of task force formed or some kind of um civilian review audit and there you know any number of these things for instance particularly a task force might be something that's jointly done between the council and the town manager as a committee that we jointly appoint people to and have a jointly agreed to charge or whatever the case may be but it's not a one-sided thing it's not either the council is going to do this or the staff are going to do this it's something that we have to do in a way that we're doing this together out of it may come some policies or budgets things that we want to see change but we're not at that point yet so my question is what is our next step Dorothy you have your hand up okay so the thing I've been thinking about is the question that has been brought up at a number of times which is um when we when we asked the or when I was I was a silent observer when the chief was asked about going on mental health calls or whatever he said he went with a trained member at EMT so my first question is does the police officer need to go at all um and I because I sometimes are saying okay let's take the remove some responsibilities from the police department and put them on more social service trained people but then I thought well okay but the police have us coverage such thing and they're available in a way that that many other people aren't available I mean they're available they have 24 hour job schedules so this question which is really one that we can have some input in but it's also one that is really experts in policing and mental health need to be giving guidance on and I'm Paul probably has some thoughts on this is is there a way to restructure some of the responsibilities of what the police do with people who would be adequately trained and available to come when needed I mean I read the police broader uh every week it's um interesting and quite amusing reading um and you know some people from some other big cities would say oh wow you have such little problems but their problems are people they're going out for somebody who's yelling at somebody in the sidewalk somebody somebody was piling leaves in the street for some reason um people are having an argument in their house uh most of the stuff that they do the the result is they told them to go on their way all right so they are keeping order of some sort um maybe some of those cases they didn't need to go on um half the time they say that they were something was reported in a neighborhood and it turned out just to be two people walking home or that in fact the suspicious person wasn't suspicious all right so isn't that really the use for our police is there a way of rescheduling reorganizing uh first responders that would be better suited I mean I I agree Levin no one with a gun should be going on all kinds of issues if I have I mean almost the all the recent uh murders that have taken place that are in the news right now are places where there was no need of anyone with a gun you know why do you need a gun to go tell a man wake up and move your car or something um not that I accuse our police of behaving that way but Paul are you are you doing some rethinking of how to structure the policemen's job or is someone doing it Paul I I'd like to hear from you but I really want this group to get to the issue of what we're going to do yeah we can't solve these problems sitting here tonight we can all raise our thoughts but what is our next step Kathy I just wanted Lynn you you said is it a task for what's a place to start um when we were looking at what some towns had put into their ability of their counselors to do one thing was something called a dialogue where it wasn't the council making a decision but it was bringing in bringing in people and Evans just mentioned San Francisco is going a route of trying to change the composition of a police force and think so we could start with something as simple as a dialogue where people are bringing in ideas and it's a roundtable it's not decision making and then figure out if we actually want need a task force or something because I think we need we need buy-in we need some thoughtful ideas we need some everybody is rethinking this right we're we're we're in a community you know this question of um when do you need a trained police officer who has a certain kind of training and when do you need a different kind of person should one of them be in a pair with somebody else you know so that you don't know what the event right we can't we can't answer those questions but we could begin to have a discussion with some information and then um say uh we we want then the town manager and the police to come back with a recommendation of what what we might think of doing you know because you can't turn on a dime either I mean we have some 50 FTEs working in our police department which includes overtime you know I mean we have to be thinking what do we want a year from now what do we want where we can make changes so dialogue might be a place to start if we didn't want to make a formal task force but task force usually are supposed to go out do some studying and come back with a report so that gives you a more of a timeline of getting in gathering information when the people who are starting it don't have a lot of information themselves Darcy I think that's a really good idea to have a community dialogue my only worry would be that it would somehow undercut the um the organizers the community organizers and leaders who might want to do something on their own um but I think we could probably do both I I I just would want to respect their wanting to have some kind of leadership role in organizing what happens next Shalini yes I think I really want to emphasize that we really need to listen listen listen right now and create opportunities for for people to be heard and I just heard from Gazikaya too and she also mentioned that there is such a desire to be heard right now and I imagine that anything you can do to create opportunities to listen will be appreciated and of course when we are creating these opportunities we're going to be working with the organizers initially and seeing how we can come together and work on that um the other thing I just wanted to also say was it feels like through these listening opportunities we can also identify what's already in place and then part of our work as counselors is to communicate that because most people don't know what you know what's what we're doing right so let's share that with the community and then I'm thinking in terms of short term and long term actions and so there are some out of these listening sessions we may be able to identify some actions we can take right away you know like some things that are out there like the eight-con weight or just kind of see like what are some good best practices that we can put in place right away but then also have a task force to look at things in a more systemic way and bring longer term and that's going to take a longer time I think Pat um a building a little bit on a couple of different things one of the most important things I think we can do and I learned this from the DPW community outreach that we started was going to speak and speak to people directly from the community and virtually that's a little tricky right now but I think that there are ways that could figure out how to do that as members of the council to move out but I think that and so I do really want to see us develop some kind of task force I'm not sure I like that comfortable with those words but the piece for me is as a white person my starting point has to be the ways in which systemic racism has impacted my life in the sense of the reactions I have to people of color the fears I have about people of color the limitations I place on people of color until each one of us on the council begins to do that individually but I'm not going to get anywhere or we'll get somewhere that won't be very far it really seems to me that one of the things that this council would benefit from and I don't know how to make it happen in terms of meeting law but we need to get together and we're in and in a dialogue between ourselves about these issues as well as asking the community to participate in a dialogue otherwise we're just collecting stories and that's not enough um so I want to end with us to be in a facilitated situation where we're talking about systemic racism what was that anything else Pat not right now no okay Alyssa you have your hand up yes thank you to try and not repeat things other people said um so collecting stories is surely very valuable but definitely not enough and having been just to part of that meeting I'm eager for us to continue to express that we as a town council want to hear more from what different parts of the community want us to do so absolutely the people who organized that meeting definitely but also to hear from HRC who are they hearing from and to hear from other groups that we've heard from in the past but are maybe not hearing from right now because there obviously is no monolith group that is responsible so what can we do to be responsible to reach out and say tell us more things about what you would like us to do I would like us to I know that feels soft in comparison to doing something like setting up a task force but I really think the last thing we need right now is a task force that doesn't have a clear goal and there might be a task force that is having a conversation about the different types of policing we were just talking about but that's a future thing so I wonder if what we could also look to is have the town manager come back with some suggestions obviously he's been talking with staff he's been talking with APD and I know that Mel Rose is for example doing a thing where you know they were supposedly and their report should come out soon where they were looking within town hall at the procedures and policies and public interactions they had and saying what could we do to promote racial equality and equity I am sure that our employees have some great ideas they've all been to various kinds of trainings they've all had various interactions with the public I'll bet they have plenty of pent up ideas it's just this crazy pandemic time and so I would love to hear more from people who are doing the work and people who are experiencing the experiences to tell us what they want from us so it's clear that we but that we want to do something because it's kind of shocking I'm sure just like the rest of you even though we're not seeing our friends because of the pandemic when we do touch people people are saying what are you guys doing and it's like well I don't know what are we doing and so being able to not just say well we're I really appreciate that this got added to the agenda because we need to do something but I think we sometimes jump right to oh well let's have some speaker come in oh well let's have this task force I want to find a way to like continue to reach out and the relationships that shallony and pat have already been building that we're able to make that meeting to say what do you think we should be doing what would be helpful to our community because we are in this wonderful place where we have town councils never dealt with this as a town council well you have your hand up and it's long long overdue to let you talk I know I hate to prolong this but I think you guys I mean the energy from the council is palpable so I appreciate everybody's engagement I look at this I mean I think this is a unique opportunity and unique time for us and I think that the council plays a really critical role because people I feel are looking they need a venue to speak and they want to speak truth to power you and I are power you know we may not we may think we're oh we're part of the community but you are the biggest power in the town of Amherst right now people need that place to be able to speak to you and to our police chiefs and leadership that way I think we are a way I think we're in a unique position it's a conversation we've had multiple times every day we're in a unique position because we have enlightened leadership with our police department progressive policies that we're very proud of but the real experience of people is different from how we say how great we're what doing so I think we need to hear more we need to do what Pat said we have to educate ourselves and take that responsibility as well but when I think about what does the council do you have a unique role in that you are you can convene people and if you say we're going to be someplace to listen people will come and I think there were 50 people at a moment's notice showing up at something that one counselor and an organizer put together and it was spectacular and important so that's that's where I think I think all those other things down the road like you know we're looking at Eugene Oregon that they're they have a different kind of model as well because the university town there's lots of different places out there who are doing things differently so I think all those conversations but I think that first thing where we are in space right now is that people need to say what they what they feel and they experience so is one of the thoughts has been that we would hold some kind of council listening I don't even want to say dialogue but listening and I mean we I just have to use the parallel that we went through this with 132 Northampton Road I was you know lining up a facilitator and so forth and then the citizen said no that's not what they wanted they wanted to just you know come and talk and present and so forth so the really is the issue is what do we want to do what format and what time Dorothy I have an idea of one thing we could do we could go to a black church in town I don't remember the name of the one that I said Jackie Wallace but I went to a number of events there and just ask them if they want to have a meeting and we would come to listen as Paul says well none of us are going anywhere at this point because we're still I know but you know what I'm getting on this topic I'm getting ready to say let's do it with social distance I really I mean I I really feel people have to see you and they have to feel heard and it's awfully hard to do that on a zoom I agree Mandy job our goal is to listen I bring back the charter commission we just called them listening sessions they were a meeting of the charter commission they were held whether or not a full a quorum was present and the agenda most of the time was frankly to listen there was almost never an actual presentation made by anyone on the commission there was an opening statement by the chair who said we're here to listen and then we sat there for however long it was until people were done talking if we had a quorum we had minutes if we didn't have a quorum we still took minutes we just didn't call the meeting to order you know because we weren't going to be transacting any business we didn't actually have to technically have even if we had a quorum our the town attorney had said we didn't technically have to call it as a meeting but we chose to to make sure it had that import that Paul was talking about so maybe we don't have to find a specific thing in our rules or a specific thing in the charter maybe we can just say we're having a listening session we could call it a public forum under the charter or we could call it a working dialogue or whatever or we could just say it's a listening session and my my concern with putting it on the 22nd and and maybe I'm too concerned about this is that it's too soon to ensure that everyone knows it's happening and to get schedules cleared to come and so I would definitely want to listen to you know Kazikaya and the doctors Shavas to see if they believe that that is sufficient notice to for people to come and talk and if not would July 6th be better but I I don't want to schedule something to a time period where people believe we rushed it and they don't have the ability to be able to get free to attend so what I'm hearing is the suggestion that we uh reconnoiter back with the people that Shalini and Pat were meeting with we try to select a date for listening and um that's that is appropriately far enough down the road that people get noticing and clear their calendars but not so far that we're you know just pushing this off that Darcy Darcy you have your hand up um I I just would recommend that that any meeting would be um a format that was similar to well actually no not similar to the meeting that was already had um but an open public meeting where all attendees are visible on the screen because that would be much more welcoming and people friendly and egalitarian um for that type of meeting I think we just have to have it wide open would we do registration I think you could do registration um but just you know allowing everybody in so that they're all in the room got that yeah Pat basically I was going to say something similar to that I've been in several uh recently several seminars uh dialogues where there have been over 250 people all visible um and but the people running the meeting are controlling when someone is to meet them um and I think it's it would be quickly for for us to speak. So and I also wanted to just highlight that there is an HRC uh meeting this Thursday on 8th uh 18 June at 6 p.m um that if counselors want to attend that so there are other avenues that we could be attending also. So in order for us to continue on with our agenda which we still have some things to do I'm going to suggest that I will get back with Pat and Shalini we will talk with the people that originally pulled this last meeting together see if we can find a time and a date and the council will use its power to convene but in this case it's power to listen okay all right Dorothy I would suggest two dates and council members do not feel should not be made to feel they have to all go to both of them but when there's two dates you're going to get maybe different people and it would be could be good I like that okay all right um can we move on all right we're on to the um town councilor town manager appointments but uh I'm going to ask uh this actually went to TSO so um at this point uh Darcy let's pick back up with you um are we talking about the list of reappointments yes the ones that you did two weeks ago it's the agriculture commission etc okay so yes we have a we have a list of a number of different appointments to boards and committees that were done um the reappointments that were to expire on June 30th so um put that memo up oh I just lost mine there we go so um yeah there this we had little discussion about it um we voted unanimously for the appointments at for the recommendation of the town council to approve them and I would be glad to read the motion if we're ready um so it is a motion to approve the following town manager reappointments under charter section 211b for terms expiring on June 30th 2023 the to the agricultural commission Masoud and David Matrowsky to the affordable housing trust Sidonia Ferrara to the board of assessors Richard Morse to the council on aging Gregory Bascom and Tim Neal to the design review board Erica Zikos to the historical commission Janet Mark Hart and Hedy Startup to leisure services and supplemental education commission Yusef Vidal to the Munson Memorial building trustees Claudia O'Brien to the public art commission William Cason to the water supply protection committee Christina Keon free and Jack Jemsik and for terms terms expiring on June 30th 2021 uh to the resident residents advisory committee Keisha Dennis Constance Krueger and James Pestray is there a second Mindy Joe you have your hand up but is it to make a second it is not to make a second is there a second this is Andy I'll second okay now Mindy Joe it's late I was going to ask to split out the historical commission instead of splitting it out I'm just going to state my statements now so that we can just take one vote because it's late my vote will be an abstain from the whole set so the historical commission has money much more power than some of us may think it does or may realize it does it has the power to institute a demolition delay for 12 months on a property if it determines that that property is a significant structure and that this demolition of that structure would be a detriment to the historical or architectural assets in town and that sounds all well and good until you actually read the bylaw and in reading the bylaw I realized that nearly any structure no matter how old or how young could be deemed a significant structure because of how the bylaw is written a structure that is five years old that is placed on a main highway can be deemed to have geographic significance because it is a landmark or a visual landmark in the neighborhood the wording might not be exactly that way but but I am concerned about the makeup of the committee as a whole and some of the votes the committee as a whole has made I am concerned about the bylaw itself and I thank the town manager for suggesting a meeting and I had a productive meeting with a number of staff members today about the bylaw itself about potential revisions to it but I am concerned in some of the meetings I watched and some of the minutes I've read that some members may be using the bylaw improperly in that because you can as I told staff today essentially drive a truck through it and deem nearly anything significant structure and that if you don't like that I fear that some members of the commission have been coloring their desire to institute a demo delay or not by what might go up there and what the proposal to go up there is and why the demolition is occurring and so I'm using my time here as we have to deal with appointments and approval of appointments to not agree with the historical commission appointments not to make it about any one person on the historical commission but I think the commission as a whole might be broken partly because of the bylaw itself but partly because of training there are no definitions in the bylaw and anyone can interpret them any way they are and because of that I'm using this to bring that to the attention of the manager and to the members of our council to see if there is something we can do because instituting a demolition delay can really serve the purpose of harming economic development in town and so if we're going to leave the bylaw the way it is I think we need to look much more closely at who the appointments are to see whether those appointees espouse the same desires that we do in a way that we look at planning border ZBA as as Alyssa Brewer said earlier today about certain appointments when we were talking about the letter to the ZBA so that's it I will instead of asking to separate out historical commission I will abstain from all of the votes because of that but I wanted to bring that to the attention of everyone and particularly the town manager Kathy I wouldn't have thought of this at all Mandy if you hadn't just mentioned demolition delay but I I don't know about the composition of the committee per se or their training but in district one I know of at least one family and this was not an issue about postponing development but for whatever reason a barn that was falling apart hit this delay and because of it they couldn't they insured the property no one would write insurance and if a child walked into this barn there were at risk of having something fall on them so there is also I think a training or a need thinking about the consequences for property owner of using this so it sounds to me I don't know exactly anything about the people but it sounds to me we need to revisit what what this clause should mean could mean and how it gets interpreted because this was it cost them a lot of money because what they wanted to do is tear tear it down because it was unsafe and it wasn't that old you know this this was a as someone said well anything that is earlier than 1960 is historical or whatever it was but boy this this is a eyesore not an emblem but so I think you you brought a different issue to our attention so thank you for it are there any other comments at this time shallowness yeah I also want to acknowledge Mandy Joe's work in bringing this to our attention and does this mean we can remove this particular word are we going ahead with leaving the historical commission appointment today one of the options is to separate out this historical appointment separately Mandy Joe I believe that was your initially your intent that was in my initial plan but instead I am not going to request that instead I'm just going to abstain from the entire boat is there any other so the motion's been made and seconded Pat please get your hand up I was just gonna say I would like to um I have not um thank you Mandy Joe for I would like to remove the historical commission appointment commission appointments and move ahead with the other recommendations so I'm going to treat this as a consent agenda and that is that if one counselor asks to separate out one of the committees we will do so and proceed with the others as the motion has been read I am asking we remove the historical commission appointments so we're going to separate them off from this at this time okay Darcy it doesn't seem like I mean these are two separate appointments to the historical commission it seems like only whoever is being objected to should be I mean why should we prevent the other person from being appointed I that that point we can also move this off to another meeting and find out and when we have more time so we just take that committee people continue to serve and we'll bring it back on a future near agenda so that we don't have to try to resolve that issue tonight that's what I'm suggesting uh George well the initial sponsor withdrew um and I also feel that we're it's somehow singling out to individuals where the issue seems to be more with the bylaw and its vagueness and issues of lack of definition and clarity it seems the issue is more with the bylaw than it is with the individuals who are tasked with carrying it out I share Mandy's concern of how I feel at times this might have been misused or even abused but I think singling out these individuals seems inappropriate unless someone has some concrete argument they want to make that these individuals have been egregious and not fulfilling their responsibilities otherwise I think we should let this just go as it is and instead pursue the larger and I think more important question of the bylaw itself and whether it really says what we wanted to say okay so I'm going to just state the following we've already had one council who is asked to separate out a committee we can actually delay the vote on that committee to a future meeting but proceed with the rest of these votes without getting into individuals or the bylaw and bring that bring the bylaw back as a separate discussion and bring the committee back as a separate discussion so the issue of it being separated out has already happened we can bring that back to a vote tonight for the that commission or not Steve yeah so well first I object to breaking out that particular group I think we should vote for this as a block the the historical commission is a political body they're not working with science they're working with basically the information that they have before them and so I I am certainly aware of controversial decisions that they've made but they're doing their job they're doing due diligence we may not like that I don't think I but I've never seen anything egregious that any member of the historical commission has done including the incumbents so I would object to not taking this vote tonight I'm sorry was that me yes um I understand the sentiment behind splitting it out I appreciate what Mandy Joe did to save us time and now of course we're not saving time anymore is that I agree with everything George said and understanding as Lynn also stated that these people are going to keep serving anyway so if we're trying to punish them which is literally the only way to read that then that's what we do if you're going to pull them out and then vote on them separately and then that way I have several abstentions because that's fine but it doesn't make any sense to postpone them to another night whether it's a big postponement nuclear option or not because they're going to continue serving whether you do anything or not so I would not do I would not separate them out or if you have separated them out already and can't take that back then I would go ahead and vote on them tonight as well as the vote total may just be different the way we treated this was consent agenda if one counselor asked to be separated out we do so we did that so we are back to the original slate that is here minus the historic commission historical commission Dorothy I agree that it would be not very unfortunate to set to single out this committee or any members of it and I know that at least one of them is very new I have been paying attention to these demolition delays for a number of years because I didn't know what they meant it's a clearly it's been established practice in this commission so I think that the issue is the charge of the commission and looking at that which many people have mentioned so I would support voting the whole slate or none but the idea of stripping out one committee is very punitive and I think very misguided this this thing of demolition delay with different barns and whatever it's been going on for 10 years at least since I've been here I've been paying attention to it so I didn't know what it was so so I thought it was interesting so I would say we should vote the slate in and then deal very seriously with the commission's bylaw here's the dilemma you've placed me in one counselor has asked to separate out and as on a consent agenda it then gets separated out and is not debatable more than a second we can still vote on it tonight but it would be voted separately that I withdraw that idea so we're back to the full slate all right we're back to the original motion is there any other discussion all right the motion is the complete slate as you see it on the screen and we begin with Kathy Shane yes Steve Schreiber yes Andy Steinberg yes Sarah Schwartz Sarah yes thank you yep Shalini Balmain yes Alyssa Brewer yes Pat D'Angeloz yes Garcy Dumont yes Moon Griezmer isn't abstain Mandy Jo Hanneke abstain Barthi Pam yes Evan Ross yes George Ryan yes votes 11 for not against and to abstentions and it passes okay we now have to move to the elementary school building committee I sent out an email many people responded I sent you a I in your I'm finding my own memo in your packet was a memo and it listed eight counselors okay we need to get to the point that we have recommended two counselors I'm going to make your lives easy I'm taking my name off the list it's not because I wouldn't like to do that this it's not because I don't feel unqualified it's just that I enjoy being president of the council and can't take this on right now too and there's many other qualified people Pat D'Angeloz do you have your hand yes I do I'd like to remove myself I was hoping that my educational background would be valuable to the committee but I have a feeling that people more versed in finance would be helpful on it so I'm going to withdraw my name are there any other people whose name I missed when I came up with the list are there any other people who would like to add their name to this Lynn can you just have him scroll to the name list so we can see it right now it's um thank you that's the charge we're actually moving to the memo which is dated June 14th 2020 yes that one and move down to the list please here we go thank you so the list has been narrowed to six um they are Alyssa Brewer Darcy Demont Mandy Jo Hanneke Kathy Shane Steve Schreiber and Andy Steinberg the way the charge reads there should be one person from finance and then one person at from the council at large that does not exclude that that person can also be from finance it just means that one of the people has to be from finance so I'm going to suggest the following process um we're going to have first of all discuss the desired qualities for this choosing this person what we are looking for uh what do we think is important uh to have represented what was supposed to happen with the select school committee but really didn't uh given that eight people were vying for this may be easier to accomplish so that was just a side comment then you're going to make statements the six of you and then we're going to have a poll where um or who you think should be on from finance and then we're going to have a second one after that where we basically say who else would you like to vote for and when we go down we just do state the names okay so what are what are some of the characteristics people feel should be included in counselors we select for this purpose I will start out by saying I first of all I think finance is important I think procurement is important I think that um being able to listen to different voices and represent them back to the council is important Dorothy can't hear you Dorothy thank you at some meeting recently there was a clear statement which I cannot reproduce that said the school committee feasibility this committee building committee will not be working on this it'll be working on that and that statement I'd love to have it repeated exactly what so before we talk about qualities that we know what is doing and what it's not doing this this committee does not work on the program the school committee is in charge of deciding the program this committee is about the building that will fit the program that the school committee size in essence that was the state all do you have a better way you'd like to state that Matthew um in addition to what you listed Lynn I I think listening and working well with people is is going to be critical from different points of view um my understanding of this is both you've got to be willing to get up early in the morning to get to the meetings um but it's uh there's a volume of work to this um that will be ranging from trying under to understand all the nuances of the options that are being discussed uh to when it gets nearer to some initial decisions being made being willing to look at um complex documents read them think about them and ask questions so it's both finance skills but uh stick toitiveness around um a lot of work so it's got to be eyes wide open that this is not i'm going to be a quick read on some of this before you get to the meeting okay other characteristics do you shrivel okay so unmute so i think probably the most and one of the most important qualities is to not for the committee members to themselves not be the experts but basically be able to listen to experts listen to the community synthesize those to know what they don't know and to basically humility to not know everything but to understand what they what they don't know to be invested in the public schools um through your own actions i think is important okay mandy jeff i think we need someone who's well versed in finance um because but but what i mean by that is someone who questions and is willing to question expenditures and keeps this the building itself in mind as to how much things might cost and starts asking those questions um whether that's digging into the guidelines about how big room should be and stuff like that and sizes and stuff like that but but is is willing to ask all those questions and push back at some answers because our job is a council is going to figure out how to fund it um when it finally comes to us and so we need people in there who are always cognizant of what that cost is going to be and brings that regularly to the table and doesn't ignore costs until the very end um i you know this is a five to seven year team and we already know it's going to be a lot of work from day one i think it's going to be really hard for people to jump in and out um and while we as counselors may not know at all how long we're going to serve on the council or whether we're going to run um i i do it unfortunately i don't think it can be answered now but i do think consistency of the counselors is going to be important um how we answer that now i'm not sure but we i don't think we as a council want people trading out every year and because that harms the council's knowledge of the committee's progress going forward if every year someone has to re figure out and get back up to speed about everything that's gone on the year before or two years or five years um so i think that's important too yeah it does seem to me however that in order to remain on the committee after the next election you have to be on the council or we have to relook at the requirements because the possibility that somebody's going to serve for all seven years is slim to none um so all right any other comments shallony i just have a question uh how important is institutional memory for this work i think count i think uh people can be prepared to speak to that in their comments if they feel it's important okay all right oh and i don't know this this is a little it's late and whatever but this is on my mind so i'm just going to say it that i you know we've been working great as a council but i think there's a certain um perception in the residents few residents anyway the emails that we're getting about um the earlier uh whatever it's called and so it might be i'm just putting it out there that might be good to uh have vote for counselors who were from different perspectives i don't even know if i'm making sense but i'm hoping you understand what i'm saying are there any other comments okay then i did ask to be prepared to make state no more than two minutes why do you think you should be elected by the council to this position and we're just going to go straight down the list councilor brewer so as you notice when you read the charge the sbc doesn't do the educational program because the school committee does that they're elected to do that what is the importance of institutional memory that of course is a good question i was on the school committee for five years so i have a really good sense of what's school committee's job and what is the school building committee's job i was on the select board when the select board in fact took a leadership role associated with the last school building project one of the things that i think is critically important here is that we have the two town counselors one i think should definitely as and i agree with the charge that says it should be from the finance committee i do not believe that both need very strong finance from the standpoint of being on the finance committee i think it's important to bring another perspective in the second counselor and i believe that i do that in that i have had those experiences and i have seen what happened during the last process and i think one of the things that fell apart during the last process which i will point out only failed at the town meeting vote it did pass through the through a tax override is that there was not enough communication to the community about what the school building committee was doing versus what the school committee was doing it was very unclear to people and so people felt really left behind people who were huge supporters of the schools from the league of women voters to the pgo's just didn't feel like they knew what was going on throughout the process and so that's what i bring to this is the focus on ensuring that everybody whether it's the town council or anyone else in the community knows what's going on and we have a tendency when we have committees that are heavily staff based which this has to be because of the technical skills that are required associated with evaluating all the work of the vendors is that we need the dedication to ensure that the information will get sent out to the public in a whole bunch of different ways and not at the last minute meaning like every month like every meeting like every newsletter so people know exactly where we're at and i think that's incredibly helpful i also want to point out that both of my kids went to marx meadow and so i am very understanding of financial constraints and close that school for a financial constraint and i think it's important that we have a counselor who has had kids in the school and has those connections to the different parent groups as well as the wider community groups so i skipped my written speech because i was trying to address some of the things people brought up thank you rc you're next okay um so uh i'm really interested in this position and i i think that the person who gets it should really um you know be familiar with the fort river school uh building plan and the wildwood plan and the crocker farm plan and the grade six um study um both of my kids went through the amherst public schools they went to crocker farm the middle school and both graduated from the high school um we moved here because of the school uh the school systems um so i have worked uh the first year i was here i substituted and so i got a chance to actually work in all the different amherst public schools so i have an idea about the floor plans and um and actually all the different schools in the region i worked at then i got a job in holy oak and i actually found a found a school that had a worse floor plan than out than our fort river and wildwood floor plans uh which was actually a circle i i worked on the uh the inner row of the circle that were all rooms that were pie shaped that had no uh no circulation and um so um i taught elementary school for 20 years eight of those were teaching art and 12 teaching in the classroom um and um as an art teacher i taught a class for autistic students and one for multiply disabled children um as a classroom teacher i of course participated in IEPs for um kids that were receiving special ed services and um in holy oak um i was working at downtown schools all three of the schools that i worked at were downtown schools and they 90 percent of the student population were um from families that were below the poverty line and a majority were of Puerto Rican ancestry and many of those of course spoke Spanish so um also i worked with the uh the zero energy task force while they were preparing to get our building bylaw passed uh that was a great experience and um i think that is about it um lots of experience in education Mandy gohanity thank you um so i'm gonna start with that i have a child who's finishing up sixth grade so i believe on this council the most recent experience navigating elementary schools classrooms and all of that as a parent um that experience i will admit is not at the Amherst public schools it is at the pioneer valley chinese immersion charter school um but that gives me a unique perspective that is very new to this area on space needs as it relates to dual language programs because i've seen it for seven years now um and that is something that i believe any new building will have to deal with and there are not many examples in this um area dealing with the unique needs of a dual language program as it relates to a building um so i think i bring that experience and perspective and all um i also as you guys i don't think i have to say this with you all um you've seen of the last 18 months that i do my research that i listen to people i listen to people of various perspectives and i am not unwilling to i'm not shy about asking questions regarding the choices that are being made that would impact the town's ability to pay or the cost of the building um that i believe it's very important to keep that front and center as we're looking at a new building and since the school building committee will be dealing with decisions that directly relate and go to the costs the ultimate projected cost of the building um i think it's important to have that up front and i am one that will always keep that there um and and i do work well with all opinions and i'm willing to always listen to all opinions and i do think a committee is better suited when we as members bring an open mind to anyone contacting the committee members about their thoughts thanks Kathy Shane um i'm a i'm a trained economist and uh have worked most of my life on finance issues albeit more focused on in the healthcare world but i had a number of years where i worked with a labor union where i was a research and policy person which meant that any budget that needed to be looked at i was the one who looked at it um it was a nice uh for me it was something i just loved doing and trying to think through complex problems as where the school will be with multiple issues on which site should it be and is the sixth grade moving up or not how can it be configured in a way that it will make it feel small and intimate but but be the larger school as we're envisioning it to be is something i would love to be working on um because i'd like the complexity i like to read complicated documents but also to listen um one of the labor union experiences i had was always being um in a potential controversy controversy were two sides and my role was to bring everybody together by finding um where there was enough commonality but also to listen to nuances but i i think what Mandy said at the beginning on what qualities is um those of you who have been with me on the finance committee or recently jcpc i like to ask tough questions and i would like to be able to be in a position to ask for more information that we need to make decisions about how expensive does this building need to be but also if we spend a large amount of money are we getting extremely high value for the design so that we can be proud and the town can be proud and celebrate a building when we bring it home as something that will bring lasting benefits to the kids who are in it to the people who are teaching units and then last i think not least is i like to work hard um and i'm willing to do put in the extra hours and i am particularly a morning person so i was thrilled with 7 30 in the morning starting time so um i work best when i'm fresh in the morning and then can go back and read so i don't think i'll say anymore um you know the training i had as an economist didn't completely prepare me for the world of federal state and local tough decisions but it meant that we always were dealing with complexity and trying to think through issues and then the public finance side had to deal with documents all the time so it's one of the reasons i ran for the council actually and that's it Steve Schreiber so when lin was when the president greece mayor was leading us us through the exercise of what we thought the ideal qualities are it's really hard to answer that because we don't know who who else will be on the team so it's like asking what the ideal qualities of a baseball team are when you only have two players named so i feel very strongly that there needs to be an architect on this building committee and i'm the only person on the council that has that experience and furthermore i'm the only person on the council that worked for the architect that did the floor river school feasibility study but then furthermore i'm the only person on the council whose students designed the floor river school as a student project last semester but i say that kind of tongue-in-cheek but obviously my experiences as an architect will give me the ability to or really help me work with the committee to ask hopefully to ask the right questions i certainly don't know a lot but i know how to i know what i don't know and i know how to find out things that i don't know but i also know how to help the other members of the school committee and my fellow counselors who are not on the school committee i'm sorry the building committee to um basically lead them through the discussion on things like site selection the development of the building program the um the architectural characteristics of this the my daughter we have one child of my daughter she's a alumna of wildwood and also the Amherst regional middle school and also the Amherst regional high school we live halfway between fort river and wildwood i love 7 30 in the morning i'll work hard for you and i i look look forward to this opportunity if you grant it to me annie steinberg okay i'll be very brief but uh start out with something that steve had mentioned in his too which is that i had two children who went to port river school when it was a fairly new school and went through the entire Amherst school system then gave me the unique experience of observing what was then a fairly new fort river school and seeing how problematic it was in the design of the mistakes that had been made in choosing what was built and how it was built and where it was built given the time that was going on i think that we need to be very vigilant and learn from our past experience and do it right this time i was very involved in as a member of the select board in the prior process but i was not on the school building committee i did speak at town meeting on behalf of the select board in support of the proposal every time it came up when it came up before the town meeting and so i became fairly involved with the project then my observation about the prior project was that there were problems and we do have to be very vigilant that the school building committee is not the school committee and decisions about where sixth grade goes are not school building committee's decisions they are the school committee's decisions but that there has to be a way to have a dialogue between the two committees because of the consequence consequences and the ability to pay for the decisions that are made and to recognize that in that last round that some of the community dissatisfaction was in the educational plan and part of it was in the building and that they really do go together so that there has to be a good dialogue but a respectful dialogue and respect of each other's appropriate elected or selected roles just a couple other things is that the fact that i've had all of this institutional memory was something we talked about and the last one is that i do think the energy factors in the building are important as mentioned by one other counselor councilor demont i was in the group that worked together between people who were representing the town manager and people who were original advocates of the first net zero energy to derive the net zero energy bylaw as then it was ultimately passed and is now in place and if given the opportunity i hope that this becomes the first building where we really can achieve goals of that particular bylaw and prove that it works so i guess that's i can say thank you hey now we know why you're all in the council so we're going to do a roll call vote and when your name is called the first round of roll call is going to be to vote for someone who represents the finance committee at this point the only two councillors on the slate that represent the finance committee are councillor shane and councillor steinberg so in the first round that's what you will be voting for one or the other and i begin with uh steve schreiber councillor shane and steinberg we're going to extend short steinberg all-milk Kathy shane steinberg de angeles shane gemant Kathy shane respir is abstaining uh hannity shane ham gain ross Brian steinberg and shane i guess i'm going to do what andy did all abstain so at this point i have six votes for uh shane and four votes for steinberg and three abstentions we can do the round andy your hand is up um i think that at this point that we've had a vote i congratulate uh chastler shane we're sure well and that's going to be a very hard process and i asked to withdraw then because i do think that it should not be two people from the finance committee okay all right um then i will move to the next one which includes councillor uh lissa brewer darcy demont mandy joe hannity and steve schreiber lin yes um i would like to withdraw okay so it includes brewer hannity and schreiber and we begin with steinberg um schreiber shorts all-milk schreiber uh brewer de angeles brewer demont respir is abstaining uh hannity i'm gonna vote for myself hannity ham schreiber ross chane schreiber did i already call on steinberg and yes i did okay you didn't call steve i'm sorry i don't think you called me i'm sorry um yeah schreiber i'll abstain okay so in this case schreiber has seven votes which is a majority uh and brewer has three so um i would like to make a motion that we do these elementary school building authority councillor schane and councillor schreiber is there a second yes i think we need a way of we need a way of 8.6 8.6 oh i'm sorry thank you all right um and let me move to the way of council rules procedure rule 8.6 for councilor appointments to the elementary school building committee is there that's a motion is there a second i don't know what it means second yes this means we can do this tonight we don't have to bring it back a second time it's been made and seconded is there any further discussion okay then um we start with schwarz stein this is to waive the rule i'm sorry yes all for it thank you shallony ball moon yes brewer yes de angeles yes yes damont yes reesmer yes anarchy yeah ham yes bros ryan yes schane yes schreiber yes einberg yes okay so we that allows us to then move forward and in this case the motion that i would like to make is that we appoint councillors when yes we have to recommend the town manager a point oh thank you i would like to recommend that the town manager a point councillor schane and councillor schreiber to this elementary school building committee is there a second second okay wait wait wait wait oh you just mean we had a motion and shouldn't we specify that ones ones from the finance committee i'm sorry you're right i would i couldn't see the motion thank you all right this is my motion to recommend the town manager a point under charter section 3.3c councillors um that'd be schane from the finance committee and councillor steve schreiber to the elementary school building committee is there a second second thank you evin you have your hand up yeah i i felt a little uncomfortable with this um and so i'm going to abstain but i'm also someone who believes you should explain when you're abstaining so i want to just state very briefly this whole thing feels weird to me because the town manager is the appointing authority and he is the one who is responsible for taking a holistic view of the committee looking at everyone else who's on it the residents and putting together what he thinks is the most effective committee um we we did a little roll call of who we think should be on it um and i think that he has that information i think he's heard the statements from everyone um but i actually don't feel comfortable recommending to the town manager who he should appoint um and i think that if he disagrees with either of the two people who got majority votes he should feel free to appoint someone else so i am going to abstain which is nothing against either of the two people um but i want to just make that clear okay any further discussion at this time all right then we're going to start with shall we ball melm elissa broor yes pat d angeles yes darsie du mont yes reese mercy yes hanna key yes ham yes uh evan ross stein ryan yes chain yes driver yes sineberg yes and schwarz stein so it passes 11 for none against and two abstentions okay we're moving on to the town council appointments and this is where i'm going to call on evan because it's regarding the planning board yes um i'll keep this brief because you have the report uh oka met to discuss planning board appointments we had been laying the ground work to deal with the three expiring terms uh on the report oka felt that the pool was insufficient at this time to move forward with appointments um and so decided that we were not in a position to actually move forward to interviews and make a recommendation for appointment uh technically if we do nothing members can continue to serve beyond their term but we felt that it would provide um the the body and us a little more feeling of security um if we extended the terms throughout the summer we've confirmed with um all three members that they're willing to serve at least for a little bit longer after their term um expiring 30th even if uh some of them are not seeking reappointment uh and so this buys the council and now the crc sometime to recruit and to do some active recruitment so that we can uh do a longer term appointment to the planning board uh sometime this summer okay so uh any questions at this time okay so the motion is uh go ahead evan if you would please um the motion is to so i moved to extend the appointments of planning board members michael burt whistle christine gray mullen and david levin seen from june 30th 2020 to august 31st 2020 is there a second second thank you any further discussion okay then i'm going to do a roll call vote brewer yes the angeles yes damont recenters yes hannity yes ma'am bros yes ryan george yes shane yes schreiber yes dindard yes warts yes bameon yes okay and that is unanimous i would like to take this opportunity to thank opa this was your last task that you needed to do your first chair with sarah and succeeded then by evan and i want to thank the entire committee um you blaze trails you took your heart knocks um you dealt with the issue of process and then passed it on to other committees and i really want to just thank you all for serving on this committee your continued service up until this very point when now the appointment of the planning board becomes the responsibility of of crc okay so thank you um we're going to move on to um committee reports very quickly mandy joe is there any other report i just want to use the opportunity to announce that this wednesday there is a public hearing joint with the planning board at 6 30 on the zoning bylaw amendment for zoning bylaw 11.250 voting quantums as it relates to cycline review thank you andy finance there's no real additional report beyond what is already in the written report just want to remind everybody to check the dates on when we have hearings on various departments and if they're uh hearings that you're interested in you should be sure to black them out on your schedule those are actually not official hearings so they're just meetings with the they're they are you are correct they're meetings with department heads to hear from them about their particular sections of the department uh budget right but it's an opportune time for counselors to learn more in depth about each of the issues related to the budget george gl just point out to my colleagues that we have come up with a process for making recommendations to the town council for finance appointments and that's in the packet we are very much indebted to okah and we follow their processes fairly closely but with one difference regarding interviews but that's in the packet for people to consult if they have any questions we happy to answer them but at this hour i'm hoping they don't i'm sorry kathy jcpc we have nothing new to report you you got our report which was very long that you could read it and we hope to do in the future um outreach okah anything else haven't yeah i i know it's late but since this is the last okah committee report uh i wrote this in the report but i did want to say it publicly that i owe a deep amount of gratitude to all the members of okah this committee has worked for 17 18 months and i put in the report some of our accomplishments um because i want to make sure that i recognize the members for the work that we put in um because it's really been an incredible amount of work and some of it has been difficult and grueling and sometimes so painful um and a lot of it has been around process and i said this to the committee in our last meeting that processes and often the the sexy stuff that makes headlines that people get excited about um and so often i felt like we didn't get necessarily our due for the hard work not not from y'all but more broadly um and so uh think i want to thank them because they worked really hard and i especially want to thank sarah um because she she was a really great chair during what were definitely the most difficult months as we were getting our footing and and dealing with um getting that first complicated process set up and spending week at literally every week in meetings and sitting on the phone with a town attorney and it's stuff i never want to do again um but i want to thank everyone for putting in the time and it was really a pleasure um and my only sadness at this point is that we weren't able to spend our final meeting together uh in person um or able to go get a drink after it so um i think thank you to to honestly to all members of oca um for all of your work because it was a tremendous amount of work and this entire council owes this committee um a debt of gratitude we have produced for you a 30 page document outlining our process and all of the different steps it was put in your packet today i wanted to get it to you earlier but adobe acrobat was fighting me on it um i don't expect you read it for today i don't expect that many of you will read it ever um but it is there as your gift from oca um on how its council can bring together can bring forward recommendations for appointments to multiple member bodies appointed by the council balancing privacy transparency and working within the incredibly annoying but important constraints of open meeting so thank you and i would like to ask kathina to strike from the record that they don't start drinking at 11 30 in the morning uh darcy duMont you have a you are doing town services uh yes um i don't have anything to report other than that we had another group of free appointments today and the school building the basic appointments to the school building committee which are coming to the next town council meeting and we started at our review process but i also did want to say that i that i did that modification that gol made to the interview process that allows people to each of the members to ask interview questions and to ask follow-up questions we did the approval of minutes on the consent agenda town managers report paul you have my written report if you have any questions i'm here to answer them are there questions of paul yes mandy joe apologize i have a lot of questions um so and i know it's late so i'm going to run through them all you don't have to answer them all tonight um um some of them are just basics um but the library i watched the library meeting gosh thursday friday i don't even remember when it was when i was about reopening um and one of the things the library director said was that you were saying that the buildings wouldn't open to the public until like september um and i am very concerned about the library not being able to open and stating that right now not being able to open till september to the public um i know in phase one which was four weeks ago they could have been allowed to open curbside um were four weeks out from that first being able to and they're still not doing curbside rentals or loans phase two started a week ago and that was allowed for under that for libraries circulation desk pickup inside desk pickup i don't know what phase three will bring for a library but phase two started a week ago phase three might start two weeks from now and we still don't have curbside pickup at our library um but curbside pickup in library books are not what i see is the most dire need for libraries um at this point we've set it from the time these buildings closed we don't have public bathrooms with the buildings closed we don't have now it's summer a cooling station with these buildings closed we don't have for our most neediest internet access and computer access none of that can be transferred to an outside curbside pickup and so i would really urge us to think about which buildings need to be opened sooner rather than later for things to serve um our needy residents and cooling and this goes to one of my other ones homeless it's not just the homeless that need an indoor cooling space it's our elderly that don't have air conditioning in their buildings when we hit 90 degrees four days in a row this week or whatever it's calling for we don't have a place to send people to get out of the heat right now and i think we need to start prioritizing that and a library is a fantastic place to do that um so that's my point on library and homeless uh i was curious when meters will start to begin to be enforced again um as we are you know we know it has a significant strain on the budget and as things start opening the demand for parking will increase and the economist in me says when demand goes up um you know supply will go down and then you need to start charging to even those out so i was curious when the thinking on charging will be um elections uh you mentioned in your report that location options are being considered i'm curious what some of them are and i'm wondering if outside in a parking lot is an option for september um even if we have to do tents to allow for social distancing and all and then playgrounds um yay i can i say yay that they are open my daughter and i went to one this weekend in mill river and it was fantastic to allow her to actually play on a playground um it was easy to social distance in general um but i was wondering about the school playgrounds because when i drove by procker the other day i think the snow fencing was still up around the playground and without the school playgrounds and with broth park closed there is pretty much one playground in town and that will make it harder as school gets out to social distance so i i want to wonder about how we can get more playgrounds open if the school ones aren't open and i wanted to mention that the closed sign was still on the bench at mill river potentially creating confusion it might be better if we create a new sign that indicates some rules and expectations about the use of the playground including mask wearing and all and and then it sounds strange but when grof opens are we going to have a ribbon cutting because i think it would be really good to have fun even if they're socially distanced so sorry for the long a number of questions thanks like it then i can run through those if you'd like ribbon cutting yes we've been talking about to go to the reverse order ribbon cutting yes we've been talking about that uh how to do that successfully we don't want to draw a crowd we're you know one of our intentions that we have is that we don't want to create things that draw people together but on the same on the same token we um we also are trying to we're establishing places where people can come into town and eat because we want to support the businesses so if there's a balance to be had we we choose we will do it there'll be some kind of ribbon cutting of some sort but it might be very small number of people and it might be some televised or something like that uh signs on the bench we can get that fixed thanks for pointing that out uh school um we when we open the playgrounds we're in communication with the schools they have chosen not to unlock their their playgrounds but i can check back with them if they've thought anything differently about that elections we're thinking a lot about that we've looked at we're looking at outside tents these are we're talking with the schools right now we'll probably have one right what we're thinking about one location um that has a minimal impact on the schools and not because the schools are going to be open because they are scheduled not to be open on the two days but for the sort of the cleaning of the building afterwards and things like that so we have some options that the town clerk is leading the team that has the fire chief the dpw superintendent and the facilities manager working with the school district um we also have talked about closing a road down and just taking taking over a road for for permit for um voting on that day and also encouraging people to vote in advance if at all possible so lots of different options available they have to come to you at some point um charging for parking uh we we sort of have a metric in our minds of about july 1 evaluate that again depending on you know paying attention to the number of parking spaces that are in demand knowing that we're going to be taking away parking spaces as we start to move uh restaurants onto the streets um so monitoring that um right now we're utilizing our parking enforcement officers at different utilizing other things so we would reprogram them back uh into town um and uh so there's some other things about that um opening the the library um opening buildings to the public is a it's a pretty um it's a challenging thing very few places are open to the public and making sure that we have protocols in place are the is the real key um and just even opening this building that where I am now the town hall and where it looks like you're virtually there um is is it just for our employees has been a big challenge because we have to maintain every we have to maintain the names of everybody who come in they we have multiple sanitized stations as you walk into the building um so when we start to open to the public that's a bit different things the cooling centers we've talked about that looking at different options for that as well recognizing the need for that at the same time um and don't have ready solutions to announce right now but it is something that our team has been talking about for a bit now um and there are different um options for that as well it's not just the library there are other options that we can put together for that so but on our list yes Alyssa I was just going to reiterate again because I always like to say it that I really appreciate how hard you're working to try and figure out how to keep staff safe right keep staff safe first and then bring in the public one thing I just wanted to check in on is given the different phasing when offices were first open in theory it was for 25 capacity but it sounds like in the report that you're bringing everybody back so how how do we thread that needle is it now just everybody's allowed to go back to work as long as you put plexiglass in or what's our approach to that so we have installed plexiglass but we've also distanced people utilizing meeting room space to put people in so we are social distancing people um we're uh the 25 capacity is is in a you know we're working on that as a sort of the metric but there's also you can have someone in a office next to someone in another office they're not considered in the 25 percent there's still people who are working remotely um if they can do that successfully that's that's we leave that to the department but we have had our team which is the HR director the facilities manager and the assistant town manager sort of going through department by department person by person as to who is eligible to come back and who isn't so we've accommodated as many as we possibly can at this point but not everybody can be accommodated in the building please unmute Dorothy Dorothy you need to unmute working okay a comment to the question I think the library starts curbside pick up this Thursday and I know that seems to be a little too late but I think that they're starting it then my question is why is graph park we were told it would open in in May I know we've had COVID but construction was allowed to go on and then I heard yesterday it was going to be a water slide which I wasn't aware of I have gone by and peeked in through the locked gates and I see a lot of really interesting looking things in there so when is it opening and is there really a water slide there's no water slide we don't have a date for it to be open there are a lot of punch list items that our contractor is working on and some of the things that our DPW is going to have to do to get it open the end is in sight but is there before we can remove the fencing and open it up we have a meeting out there tomorrow morning at 7 30 a.m. to sort of go through what the punch list items are and review that with its superintendent public works any assistant town manager I look forward to it yeah it looks awesome I have to say I've seen a picture of it any other questions at this point okay then um on the town councilor comments um I basically will be doing follow-up from this agenda and setting the agenda for the following week we have a bunch of financials things coming up on the 29th and also then on the 13th and the 20th of July but given the hour I'm not going to go into any more than that I will be letting you know as we get the agenda set um future agenda items questions comments okay and then any other councilor comments okay we dealt with topics not reasonably anticipated by dealing with the policing discussion earlier there's no executive session and so I call the meeting adjourned thank you