 this pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 this meeting will be conducted by a remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so in the following manner by emailing steve mccarthy at mccarthy s at amherstma.gov that's m-c-c-a-r-t-h-y-s at amherstma.gov no in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real-time biotechnological means in the event that we are unable to do so for reasons of economic hardship and despite best efforts we will post on the town website an audio or video recording transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting and with that done we'll do a roll call of the attendance uh hallie here cast on here Doug here dylan here and i am here so we're all here um and we'll call the meeting to order at 6 o 2 p.m um public comment if anyone here no we have no attendees okay well um so i know it's been a while so why don't we just launch into our discussion items and steve said we don't have any new licenses this time but perhaps next time yeah we did get a couple applications from umass for one days for uh later in the year i think early april um so those are still going through the review process so those should be ready next time okay great we will look forward to that on the 21st um so the first item for discussion on the agenda is meeting time and we all made this meeting and i think i just wanted to reconfirm that it was mondays from six to eight the second was it the second and first and third first and third monday um until doug doug's tuesday's free up is that correct is that what everyone has that's what i wrote down so we have um the seventh and then the 21st of march and then the fourth and the 18th of april is that correct is the 18th of school holiday it is it is so doug when are you think that the tuesdays are going to be better for you well that 19th would probably be free i don't know what's everyone let me look at my calendar real quick and actually what i should do is look at the school committee calendar so that's what i'm going to do first have you been doing i've been good all things all things considered okay all right good anyone see the uh the black bears are back in town they were like up near our house maybe like three weeks ago i just saw um uh just some on cottage street a little earlier today the cups are almost full size now i really want to see them sometime but is one of them still injured i didn't even i didn't notice um i wasn't looking for it but they all seem to be walking normal but if i was looking a little harder i might have noticed i think it's pretty noticeable so maybe they maybe it healed well on a different note i think that um so school committees meet in april the uh don't always meet on wednesday so that's not an issue um it versus meeting on the fifth and reaches meeting on the 12th and the 26th i would suggest that the uh by the 26th so that would be i don't know if that's the third because if we have to shift off the vacation week because the 18th is a is a um monday's the holiday patrice day i think and then uh so if we want to avoid that week or if that tuesday doesn't work for people then that following tuesday the 26th i think it is i i can do i think okay so we could just do the fourth and then the 26th maybe i mean i'm okay with monday the 25th i i mean monday the 18th what we have now i don't i don't i i mean i don't have to i mean i don't i'm gone i don't have to be at the meeting if everyone else is here and there's a forum for i am here on the 18th but not on the 19th i will be at harry potter world for you fun yeah we're just ripping that fan date off where's harry potter world universal florida okay so fun really you think you can do a meeting the day before you fly yeah i'm only taking two kids okay all right i um i can do tuesdays in general um but if we were to switch to them to consistently because right now i'm doing tuesday nights i'm actually bartending in northampton um and i could do mondays instead but it would just need to be a consistent switch we were to switch to tuesdays i can kind of do one or the other consistently but uh so it's monday the 18th the holiday so is that steve today you don't technically work so maybe we should move to the 26th that then yeah that's fine let me double check that i'm not sure if we actually have that day off or not i don't you mass is closed so i assume that we'd go i would be surprised if you didn't steve yeah as a taxpayer in the town of amherst you're welcome to come in and do extra work for no fat the 26th is fine for me um dylan what bar are you at i'm over at fitz willies right now fitz willies okay no tuesday nights are they uh is it getting getting busy tuesday nights uh no tuesday nights is uh fairly quiet i'm just doing uh just doing some training over there with them but the uh it is getting busy at fitz willies now uh it's quiet for for the pandemic but it's uh looks like it's picking back up to normal so okay pandemic keeps easing so did you say done with the 26th is not good for you but tuesday uh correct yeah tuesdays uh tuesdays aren't good for me um in general unless we wanted to all shift to tuesday then i would change it to do mondays and then could do tuesdays here okay so i think for me that just to speak to that point about the tuesdays you know once we get to that that point in april i think i can go to tuesdays from that point on so if you want to do it you know on that 26th are you going to wait till we go into may i'm open to either or so i think it's just a question of giving filling that up lead time to switch the schedule to tuesdays to mondays so following so just to clarify following that the 26th and following you're fine on tuesdays you're open okay and everyone else is okay with tuesdays except for dylan what i mean is this enough notice for you to make the switch yeah yeah i can make that that that switch so then at that point we'll be tuesdays consistently correct that's the idea yes first and third yes the first and third tuesdays except for the 26th which we're making up from the week before and so then we will do two weeks in a row if if we need or since there's five tuesdays in may does it makes sense to do second and fourth in may i don't know the answer to that question steve you have an opinion do you think steve yeah i think that makes sense to keep alternating um i mean really i can make whatever work it's no it's no no problem for me i do think we will have some applications coming in for the outdoor dining so having just something i can i can count on in the schedule will be helpful but in terms of days it's you know really whatever works for you guys i can accommodate how about we just go to second and fourth starting on the on april 26 second and fourth tuesdays second and fourth tuesdays so instead of the fifth we do the 12th and the 26th oh so i was i was assuming we're going to start this oh you mean what you mean may because you well right so switching the 18th for the 26th and then may forward second and fourth for okay for 10th and then the 24th and then and then we stick with that the 14th and the 28th of june is that all right with everybody that's great okay all right did you get all that steve so we're looking at 326 is the next meeting 320 no the next one is 321 is the monday 321 okay i guess i got a little mix up okay sorry so the next one is march 21st 321 at 6 and then we go to 4th 4th the 4th april 4th at 6 as well at 6 and then we skip to then we move to tuesdays and we go to april 26th 426 at 6 and then then uh second and fourth tuesdays from then on out yes and then perfect and may 24th yeah forgive my loud type and try to uh take minutes on a different computer here so sounds good i've got that down okay perfect thank you so meeting time discussion item b adult use marijuana regulations don't yeah i don't really have any updates for anybody on this i'm sorry i think what i need to do is is give it one more read through make sure it's all set and then i think the second piece is to uh look at the creation of a bylaw which would be a actually that may have to happen first with the council before we adopted the policy and the and the regulations about how to get the license it has to be something that exists so i'll do the review you know sort of final review of those rags if anybody has anything that they thought of or or if they go back through them and have any comments please forward those along um but that would be the i think the next steps on that um thank you does anyone have any questions for dud okay um lunch cart regulations so um i was in touch with many johannaki uh town council and of the tso committee about um where they were at with the um changing the regulating the bylaws granting the port of license commissioners authority to license lunch carts on the sidewalk and on the street and in december the town council passed part of that half of the legislation so it's half done and we now have the authority to grant licenses on sidewalk lunch carts and she's going to bring it up with the town council meeting tonight she couldn't make the meeting because she has another meeting and um see when they will be discussing and granting us authority to license lunch carts on the street so as soon as she lets me know i will pass it on and um send another draft of the lunch cart regulations so that's what that's at that's all okay great um guidelines regulations for liquor license decisions i have it printed and ready to do one final proofread with a pen before i mail it off because i always miss stuff on the computer okay super thank you heli any questions nope all right um license fee comparison jar guest on i'm uh i i haven't made progress since we spoke last um so i need to uh i need to schedule some time for that um thank you all right thanks guest on if i'm we go ahead Doug i was just going to say you know this this begs a question a little bit um thinking about that and our comparison of the towns because what you had gathered today was it was interesting the the breadth of choices towns have made relative to their rates i think that begs a question about what we would think would be an appropriate license fee for adult use and and i think the the other thing to keep in mind regarding adult use i mean there's the the sort of retail sales that we have now and that's what's covered under the regulation but i think what's coming that we want to be thinking about getting cared for is is if the state allows social consumption in you know facilities you know cafes or whatever um sort of i mean i think there's a lot of wrinkles still to go on that but i think thinking in terms of what's the right level of of license fee for all of those is is something that kind of meshes with with what you're looking at on those those rates so i just want to put that in people's minds to think about thank you and um how can we get feedback from from the town about i mean i know that we're not fundamentally a revenue generating commission um but any decisions we have you know would have a uh more or less impact on the town budget and i'm wondering how we can kind of get feedback to inform our judgments about that well guys don't i could certainly much like we did with the um the reductions in rate for liquor licenses last year i can run that up to um the finance director and the town manager and ask for their feedback okay and um i know they've been taking a look at a lot of things recently so i'm sure they'd be able to slot that right in and okay you consider some things i mean it might be be good for us to kind of you know set a um i don't know about you know concrete you know we could we could look at concrete proposals for particular free changes or we say you know we think this should be lower we think this should be higher right you know whatever you feel like um would be appropriate based on the review yeah i was also going to mention earlier i'm actually going to be working on a little project to take a look at some of the point operated device prices around the state too so um you know we could maybe we could we could try to have a little meeting at some point phone meeting and kind of just go over what you found so far and and i'll you know probably find anything else when i'm doing that i can send along to you as well i'm smiling remembering in high school how i i reached out to a coin up guy who'd like just put some machines in the school and i was collecting half for a while okay yeah so do we uh steve the money we do generate through um the licenses does that just go into some general fund or what is um do we know how much we are generating through fees? Doug's nodding so um my impression is yes and he would certainly know better than i would um and we would have um yeah i mean i did have to just do a report for the state on the total liquor license or revenue i don't have that available with me but um i could send that along and everything else i mean i think it would just be um you know multiplication you'd probably probably calculate that figure yeah i i will say this regarding the regular budget you know it is part of a broader group of things if you were to look at the budget look at the revenue sources it's lumped in with all the other sort of miscellaneous income um but you know every little bit helps um and it's you know the thing is if you think about our license i mean it's like 3500 for i mean our liquor licenses generate a fair amount of revenue i'm not sure our you know live entertainment licenses is five bucks a popper really you know generating much but nonetheless uh you know it's it's some money it's not a ton it's part of the general support so it is general fund revenue but it's it's a factor i mean you know if it went to zero or if we decide to slash the rates on a bunch of these things to 100 bucks or something for all of them it would be a significantly and you know significant hit to the to the to the revenue and would be noticed um so we want to be you know we don't want to gouge people at the same time want to kind of factor in what that's helpful in support because it does you know for example you know police are our sort of agents in the town and so you know passively it sort of funds some of the police department and so the fact that they cruise by and do certain things or do ID checks or do some undercover stuff you know that's part of why we charge you know as much as we do for some of those licenses because they kind of pop in and do that work and it's not an explicit sort of one for one but it's just part of how that whole budget gets supported so that's part of i think the thing we want to go through and we're evaluating our revenues on on these and is what are what are the ways in which those funds are supporting you know our our town budgets yeah okay yeah i mean when you know i think we we we were struck by some of the discrepancies on the on the big ticket items on the liquor licenses and so it would be useful when we're actually talking about it to have a simple spreadsheet so we could enter numbers and and you know have a reality check at the budget level okay anything else on license fees if not um oh topics not reasonably anticipated 48 hours prior to the meeting is there anything i have nothing no steve no nobody all right review of minutes we do not have review of minutes this time so we move on if there's nothing else to adjournment is that a quick question for steve any uh any update on if we're going back in person anytime soon are we still doing remote i have heard nothing on that front um as of now we're still full masks in town hall and everything so i don't know if the town's making any any kind of moves on that anytime soon i have a small bit of info on that so the board of health meets on thursday this week the 10th uh and then they'll you know and they'll review the current you know um indoor public spaces mask mandate um so they'll probably my guess is like everybody else they'll make some decision about ending it changing it that sort of thing but um until they do anything we're kind of if we wanted to meet in person we'd have to be masked so and and we're still allowed by this by the state to to meet remotely until did that get extended through the summer or is that it was an april deadline for that but i think they've extended that haven't they steve i believe so yeah till so we have i think we may have the option but i think the board of health meets thursday and i think that'll be helpful as far as understanding what the direction is that that they're going that'll be good to hear my my understanding i think from reading the news is that the the town council itself is divided on the on the question i guess we'll find out right i mean if the board of health says we're going to continue with the mask mandate doesn't matter what the council because it's sorry i mean i mean the on the on whether the council wants to meet in person or not oh oh oh i would understand that yeah yeah on that question i'll see all right okay um anything else at all is there a motion to adjourn second second thanks dylan um i guess with no further discussion we'll take a roll call out of here uh doug hi dylan hi kelly hi cast on hi that i vote i um were adjourned at six six twenty two p.m. thanks everybody let us see you all thank you very much look with your more tremendous brackets thank you so much all right i'll see you on the 23rd