 We have a number of folks here for public comment, who would like to offer comment this evening? Anyone? Mr. Kelly? Larry Kelly, 596 South Pleasant Street. So, again, if any of you had need of an ambulance for yourselves or a loved ones, on Thursday night, this past Thursday night, from roughly 8 p.m. to midnight, actually more like 8 p.m. to 1 in the morning, early Friday morning, you would have been out of luck. Because once again, we had all AFD ambulances tied up at the Mullen Center, and I believe we had four mutual aid ambulances before the night was over coming to the Mullen Center to cart drunks to the Cooley Dickinson Hospital. So that was really almost a five-hour period, where as far as I'm concerned, we were somewhat unprotected. In other words, when I pick up that phone and I call 911 for my house, for my family, for my little girls, I want AFD to respond ASAP. I don't want to wait for Northampton, Belcher Town, South Hadley, or Holy Oak, or something like that. So I came before you almost exactly a year ago, and it was the exact same scenario. It was even a Thursday night, a year ago in April, when I believe it was Fantasia, who played at the Mullen Center, and they too are a techno strobe light, that kind of an affair. And I think we had, again, all AFD ambulances tied up, but I think the final box score was 15 people transported. This past Thursday, it was 19, and not only all ETOHs, some of them were like head injuries and other serious things, which I'm sure alcohol played a role in it as well. And then it gets better. The weekend, just this past weekend, what's today, Monday, this past weekend, we had, normally we have five or six transports ETOH from UMass to Cooley Deck. This past weekend, nine of the 11 EMS responses to UMass. Nine of the 11 were for ETOH. So again, a year ago, I came before you with this exact same scenario, and I said, you got to do something, and I know you are. I know you're doing things behind the scene. I know, John, you're doing things with the family neighborhoods, safe and healthy neighborhoods, and all of that. But I'm just here to tell you tonight that whatever you've been doing for the last year, it's not working. And they have another one of those concerts scheduled in April. So I don't know, make a statement, do something. You know, someone's going to die. Thank you. Thank you very much. Anyone else like to make public comments this evening? Okay, then we will take care of a couple of untimed items before we get to our first time items. Oh, I'm sorry. Hello, I'm Anne Lowell, and I live at 22 Lessie Street. And when I got my handicap parking permit about a year ago, I read the instructions very carefully that you can park somewhere like at a meter and not pay. But if there's a sign that says reserve for the town manager, reserve for the chief of police, reserve for the rector of Grace Church, then you obviously wouldn't park there with a parking permit. Well, last week when we were expecting two feet of snow on top of our cars, I put my car in the underground parking garage thinking to save myself having to clean it off. And I have to say I'm not as handicapped as a lot of my friends. I only broke three bones on my ankle when I fell, so I'm recovering. But I'm just concerned that people are not going to feel comfortable parking there because I got a parking ticket. In the underground parking garage, and my handicap permit was hanging very clearly on the mirror. So, you know, I think I've said everything that needs to be said, and I don't know if you have any questions. So, but I'm just concerned about other people that might hesitate to park there as a big storm coming. Okay. So, thank you. Thank you. Ms. Stein. You have my sympathy. It has happened to me as well with my, but all you should do is go to the downstairs with your handicap permit and show that to them and appeal the ticket. Thank you very much. Anyone else here to make public comment this evening? Okay. So, we will start with some untimed items. Mr. Hayden, I know is going to be late this evening. I'm not sure when he'll get here, if he'll get here before the end of the meeting. We'll take care of some things that we don't necessarily need to have him here for. Let's see. How about the request to raise the Tibetan flag? This is something that Select Board had last year, I believe we declared March 10th to be Tibetan Day in Amherst every year, but we didn't attach the flag request to that. So, they have a flag request. Ms. Stein, would you like to make that motion? I move that Select Board recognize March 10th, 2013, as Tibet Day in the town of Amherst, as proclaimed by the Select Board on February 27th, 2012, and to permit the Tibetan national flag to fly under the United Nations flag on the North Common on March 10th, 2013. Mr. Hayden is not here in a second. Thank you for the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. That is unanimous. One absent. Okay. We have parking and street closure requests for Henry Street, Ms. Stein. This is called the Cushman Village May Day Celebration. Okay. I move that the Select Board approve the blocking off of Henry Street in Cushman Village for their annual May Day celebration on Saturday, May 4th, 2013, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. One absent. How about taxi licenses? I move that the Select Board approve a new 2013 taxi slash chauffeur license for Kim B. Bergeron on behalf of Celebrity Cab Company. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. I move that the Select Board approve a new 2013 taxi slash chauffeur license for Ephraim Maldonado, Jr. on behalf of Aaron's Paradise Taxi Company. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. That's unanimous. One absent. Okay. We have special liquor licenses. I move that the Select Board approve a special wine and malt license for a reception to be held at the Guinness Engineering Center in Marcus Hall, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, on March 14th, 2013, from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m., Judy Bardwell-Clark, top of the campus, incorporated. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. One absent. One more. I move that the Select Board approve a special wine and malt license for the 5th Annual Full Belly Benefit Dance Party in the JCA Social Hall, 742 Main Street, on Saturday, March 23rd, 2013, from 7 p.m. to 12 a.m., Andrea Stanley, owner slash manager. Second. For the discussion. Ms. Brewer. I know it isn't on the application, so obviously the staff in the office can't make up things that aren't on the application, but I think it would be appropriate to mention for the record that this is for, as I understand it, field farms, annual fundraiser. And so I think it's just worth throwing in here. That's what it's for. And just so people are clear, right? Fundraiser for Brookfield Field Farm. It's for the Survival Center and a couple of other things. Brookfield Farm is hosting it. I believe they're hosting it. Yep. They are the organizers. Thank you. And we should probably say who it's benefiting to, but yeah, that's getting wicked complicated. Right. Since we don't have that information. People to say Full Belly Benefit Dance Party may not be in a lot of people. Okay. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. unanimous. One absent. Okay. So some of us I'd like to put off until Mr. Hayden is here. Let's see. What else can we possibly do before he gets here? All right. We could discuss the calendar. All right. So we can't start the 645 item before 645. But let's see. We sign that separately. We don't have votes for those. Those are just technicalities, right? So we have two warrants to sign, but one of which I think we'd need to put off until after our 730 discussion anyway because one might need to change the warrant depending on how that discussion goes. So yeah, I'll just note that two actions that the select board needs to take as noted on the agenda are the signing warrants of upcoming elections. One of them is the April 9th annual town election and the other one is the April 30th primary election for the Senate seat. And so there are not votes that are associated with that, but select board will be doing that during this meeting or as soon as it's over. Okay. Let's see. We still have five minutes. So I will do what we do sometimes when we do this, which is start at the end of the agenda and work our way backwards. So the chairs report. I just note that a couple of things that have happened lately that I do representing the select board and you should be aware of are that I was part of the forum as many folks here attended the forum at the chamber breakfast a couple of weeks ago about the campus and community coalition and its work on behalf of the town and the community to deal with underage drinking and its continuing challenges. I also was part, I helped welcome the, there was a regional clerks association meeting, all the town clerks in the northeast gathered at the Lord Jeff. They chose Amherst for this meeting and they gathered at the Lord Jeff last Thursday and Friday and they did a walking tour of Amherst and our historical sites, et cetera. And because Amherst was the host community, I got to welcome them and that was a nice occasion because I was thinking about this, this gathering of town clerks and thinking, here's a group of people who really don't get nearly enough credit for what they do. These are the folks who in so many ways are the keepers of our democracy and the gateways of so much local participation from whether it's getting on the ballot, whether it's registering to vote, whether it's arranging our elections, whether it's managing our laws after we've made changes to them, our archives, our vital records. So it was really, it was an honor to address those folks and it was so nice that they chose to come to Amherst. So I hope that they enjoyed themselves here. Also the town manager and I were part of a meeting at UMass the other day with Senator Rosenberg, Representative Story, the chancellor, a number of folks from UMass administration to talk about continuing challenges with neighborhood issues, the public safety issues that Mr. Kelly raised earlier and the various ways we can just keep working to move all of this forward. Mr. Kelly noted that efforts are being made on all of these fronts and that is absolutely the truth. The fire chief and police chief were there. We talked about these kinds of stresses and challenges and what we can do both in the short term and the long term. So it might not always feel like progress is being made, but progress really is being made and certainly efforts are continuing constantly. The conversations are always happening. People are always looking for new ways to try and address these issues and solve these problems. So that was just another example of that. So I think that takes care of the chair's report, Ms. Stein. I just wanted to make a comment, if I could, about the ambulance. If I understood the story and the visit, the students that tied up the ambulances or the people who tied up the ambulances on Thursday were not UMass students. They were people who had gone to the concert and abused drugs or drink or both that led to the ambulances, which I thought was just interesting. Didn't stop them from creating havoc on Saturday, but nonetheless, I thought that was an interesting point that was in the article. Thank you, yes, for pointing that out. It's true, it doesn't change the fact that this was basically a UMass Mullen Center sponsored event that brought this enormous stress on our public safety system that day. But, yes, it's nice to not blame UMass students for everything, especially things that aren't actually their fault. Ms. Brewer. Along those lines, and you probably have already discussed this as part of your ongoing discussion, but I was trying to reframe it in my mind, too, for the same reason that, you know, while it's not just students, I mean, it's people who are, you know, 18 to 26 were this demographic who want to go to this concert. But what does another bit, what does a larger city, a more regional area that we don't, you know, we don't, we think of the Mullen Center as being part of UMass, but in some ways it's really more like an expo center or, you know, a fleet center or whatever those various things are. Don't go to many concerts. But, and so how those communities deal with that, given that it's not just a UMass audience, it's not just, oh, they're moving the students from one part of campus to another. We're bringing people in from all over, so can they up the ticket prices to help, you know, deal with our ambulance, et cetera, while still accommodating UMass students, perhaps, you know, at a different level of things, just like fine arts center events cost one thing for students and another thing for the general public. So, I think that sometimes we forget that very thing, that it's a regional, it's a regional entertainment hub, not just a UMass moving kids from one place to another on campus. Thank you. Okay, so if you don't mind, then we will move on to our 645 item, which is formalizing appointments to the Mount Holyoke Range Advisory Committee, and we have Ms. Campbell here to talk to us about this. So, like we will recall that we dealt with this a while back. Ms. Campbell had brought to our attention that this is a kind of a regional committee to which Amherst is allowed by this committee's formation to members, and it had sort of fallen under the radar, so Ms. Campbell had been continuing to go and represent Amherst, which was wonderful, but she wanted a way to kind of formalize that to have other folks in town know that this opportunity is available, and so she worked with the committee to come up with some descriptions for the town that we could put on our website about the committee so that folks who might be interested in serving would know about it, so now I'll turn it over to you. Right, we're a different kind of regional recreational and entertainment facility, I think. There is a Mount Holyoke Range Advisory Committee. It has room for two people from each town that the Holyoke Range touches Amherst, Belcher Town, Grandby, Hadley, South Hadley, and we're having a hard time in general getting members. I mean, we haven't had anybody from Belcher Town for a long time, but I have been going for Amherst. I think that I was told it was since 2003. I'm not sure. It's been a long time, but we're entitled to two, and so it did seem like a good idea to formalize it. This committee evolved when John Olver was a state senator and they were trying to get the state park there, and so it's got a long noble history. I even suggested to him that now that he's retired, he could join, but I don't think he wants to, but he could apply. Anyway, the meetings are Thursdays of, excuse me, third Thursdays of each month, usually in the spring and fall. We rarely meet in the winter. We occasionally meet in the summer, and they're usually at the Notch Visitor Center, although sometimes due to budget constraints or whatever, that building isn't open and that presents a problem. We don't have an office. We don't have any funds. Most of the people on the committee are older than me and relatively few of them use computers for anything. So one of the members has been sending out agendas to town clerks so they can be posted in honor of the Open Meeting Law. We don't have a collection of minutes, although I'm going to try to get some and I've been told they could be scanned here and put on the website, so there could be a collection of at least recent minutes. It's basically a bunch of volunteers with no real framework for doing any of those kinds of things. I also wanted to mention while I'm here, it's coincidentally very timely that their state is developing a resource management plan for the Mount Holyoke Range Planning Unit, which includes not only the Mount Holyoke Range State Park, but also Mount Tom Reservation and the Holyoke Heritage Park and Holyoke and a couple of smaller things, and that plan is currently on their website ready for people to comment, and the deadline is March 24th. So I brought a whole bunch of little pieces of paper with the website on it, so maybe that could be put on the town's website to get people. Anyway, are there more questions about the committee? So Ms. Campbell is supplied, it's not exactly a charge because it's not a town committee, so it's just a description of their work to put on the website so that folks who are looking for opportunities can know that this is among them. So do folks have any questions about the details of that or the process of our handling this? Ms. Brewer. I think that's a great way of approaching it, because we've got to fit it in some kind of box somewhere. So one of the things that it just reminds us is that we have to work on the concept of type committee. Well, yeah, everything's a committee, but what we were trying to approach that with in a previous life was whether or not it was a time-limited committee, like there are some things that we say you'll do this project and then you'll be done, and others are ongoing, although I don't know what the word we want to use, but just committee is not really a great word, but I want to be staffed and come up with some brilliant plan on that because they're really the ones that in many cases help people sort out what are their various opportunities and what's new and what's old, and so we can come up with something like that in terms of the length of appointment. Do you guys feel like you have a time? Well, to be honest, given the relative lack of interest in all the towns and people being on it, we've been happy to have people stay on as long as they're willing because it's not as if there seems to be much competition. Yeah, I mean it's not a powerful committee or anything and in theory it gives advice to DCR, but with the DCR budget situations such as it is, we can advise till we turn blue, but if there's no money to do things. So we try to be helpful and knowledgeable and formative and collegial about it, but I think we did have someone get on from another town who hoped to really change things and then found out the budget wasn't going to allow for much change, so. Ms. Burr. I wonder if, and again referencing the fact that this is another type of committee that's not Amherst based, but you're not the only one like this. There are a couple of these very unusual things. We have the Hampshire Emergency Regional, whatever order those words are in, that we also send people to, that again we don't create the charge, we just are allowed representatives, but we want to make sure people know that the opportunity is available. The only thing I'm concerned about if we do the length of term is I wonder how that then plays out with the town clerk worrying about whether or not people have taken the ethics training and how often they have to do that. So I don't know about how some of those details play out now that we have so many more rules associated with those things, which is probably why it's easier to just not put it on our website in the first place, and I prefer trying to fit it in to this format as long as it doesn't have unforeseen consequences that cause other problems. When the open meeting law was first going into effect, the state did, you know, set up some open meeting law training things, encourage people from all kinds of things around here to go, but whether that will continue, you know, into the future for new board members. So I think all that we need to do is say, yes, okay, this is a good way to proceed. This is, as you said, sort of a different class of committee, a different type of committee of which we have a couple of. So maybe you folks as our committee people could consider what a good option is for dealing with the other ones, if you want to try to make those more parallel to this one, have a description of their work or whatever and whatever other kind of questions come up, maybe talk with the town clerk about how she wants to deal with it. Well, I have no idea. Not everything actually comes under the open meeting law. So before you, you know, tie yourself in knots. This one does. Okay, so there you go. At least we've been told it does. By our town clerk who wants the agenda at least 48 hours before, you know, wants to be able to post it. So there are some questions here. I think all that we need to do is say, okay, yes, this is a good way to start with this one and we can fine tune it as we go forward. So you guys can let us know if we need to do anything. I think we have to have us work with Deborah and Sandra on this. Okay. All right, so we have a motion here, but I'm not sure we actually need to vote on anything because it's not really official town thing. We're just saying thank you for your service and we hope that we can get other folks to join you. And thank you for doing this extra work. Okay. Very good. So any other questions or comments on that or we're pretty clear on that? Very good. All right. So then our next item is right now a 655 is food truck regulations update. I'll note that Mr. Hayden has joined us. I wasn't sure what time you were going to get here, so we tried to. Okay. Food truck regulations. In your packets, you have a draft concept of some details of potential food truck regulations. That they might include as the sort of intro paragraphs in there that talk about a process that you folks are all aware of because I've been telling you about it in various meetings that Mr. Krograve from the bid and Mr. Merulis from the Chamber of Commerce and I have met several times to talk about these issues to talk about the fact that there is kind of this new commercial sector and business owners have some thoughts about it. We have had a fair amount of public comment just to the select board because this has been in the newspaper about really a very strong public support for the food truck concept. So Mr. Merulis, Mr. Krograve and I tried to kind of bring all the concerns, all the all the sensibilities together on this and talk about, okay, what would be a way we might proceed with this? I think what we determined is that the current situation while it could benefit from some tweaks is really not a problem and so we don't want to over-regulate what is a very small food truck situation but we do want to be ready for the future in case we get more and more growth in this area. As the select board well knows we went from having zero taxi companies to having about 100 taxi companies in just a few weeks and we didn't really have regulations and a process to keep up with that growth. So we didn't want to find ourselves behind similarly with the food truck situation. So what you have there is a draft of the concepts. I will see if Mr. Krograve would like to comment on this in just a moment but the idea is basically for you to think about them, for you to see what you think, what you think of the people. I will be circulating them to folks in town hall regulatory folks who we would want to weigh in on this, the code enforcement folks, the park enforcement folks, people like that. Town council Mr. Morales and Mr. Krograve will be circulating them to the business community. I will make sure that the current food truck licensees of which we have two trucks in one cart receive them and the public comment that we would be ready to have more formal regulatory language approved in the middle of March if that's too soon, then it would be early April just as soon as reasonable. So what I would like to do is have this on the agenda again next week which would be a time for select board to have thought about it in the meantime and if people want to comment at that time. Basically that's kind of where we would want to put the food trucks so that they minimize the concerns that are raised for businesses and also really promote the best kind of vitality downtown. So we looked at putting them in kind of green spaces and places that we're looking to have more activity and that is by the Kendrick Park, the Common and Sweetser Park with a couple of other sites that could be available. With a couple of other sidewalk areas that could be available for smaller on sidewalk food cart type things. One of the things that I learned through this process is as select board knows we were basically starting with nothing. We had no ability to kind of regulate or fine tune this. We didn't have any metric to use for framework for determining any things. This experience taught me that there's a lot more we can be asking about when we get such license applications so that we can be determining more specifically what good spots are for folks. So I think I'll stop talking now and see if Mr. Krograbbe wants to offer any comment and then see if select board has questions about this. Welcome. Hi Alex Krograbbe from the Amherst Board of Trustees. Thank you for the excellent job summarizing the discussions that she and Mr. Morales and I had both in this document and that brief summary just then. Tony and I have received a variety of feedback on this issue. And it's complicated trying to balance all the different perspectives but I think there's some good draft ideas. Thank you very much. It's really been very productive conversations about this. Really recognizing that there are a lot of interests here and it's the interest of the downtown kind of vitality in general. It's the interest of the public who is supportive of this and of course it is the interest of the downtown business community who are kind of varying minds about this. So to try and take a responsible plan full approach is the way to proceed. Any thoughts off the top of your head? Some specific things and she said you'll be circulating this and it's really just some tweaking of specific questions particularly within our enforcement people because I know one of the things we talked about as a select board before when we started to see these is okay well we can put the hours down but who's going to go check on that. I assume somebody's enforcing it and it's not and it's unfair or perceived as unfair. So that will be good to get that feedback from our enforcement people who where do they think the responsibilities for various pieces of this lie. I don't know if hours would be separate from location on sidewalk for example or if the question about the use of restrooms by the actual vendor as opposed to the customers who are supposed to do as was brought up in a particular e-mail that we received today and will be added to our packet I would think the health director would have something to say about that I mean just like there has to be a place for the vendor to wash their hands there must be a place they're supposed to be using restrooms but I don't know what that place is and does that then fall into this as well or do we say that's over in her preview and we're sure it's being taken care of that's associated with that the parking discussion of course that we'll be having anyway is like the big broad parking discussion about all kinds of detailed things and so I guess the timing is pretty good from that standpoint because we've been wondering about that too do we let people feed meters is it like a book buyback you know what's this like so I think that will be helpful and in just in terms of understanding you know we have these taxi regulations right now we have bylaws about some things because we used to write bylaws more about stuff in the old days and maybe other towns have ordinances because they're cities but I just I need a better understanding of where this fits and so if it's like our taxi rags which seems like maybe that's kind of the format that we're looking for it's not something that we're going to town meeting with but that doesn't mean that it's not something that's enforceable and that isn't something and obviously but I'm wondering if there's any legal difference between us making these regulations and saying okay so-and-so I'll go enforce the hours and so-and-so I'll go check on the bathrooms or whatever versus if you have a town bylaw that says X Y or Z that's somehow better for some reason I would think that regulations would be more nimble but I just don't know Other questions or comments thoughts about food rags? Miss Snanky I just want to say that Miss Brewer is right the Board of Health does have a role it's up to them to make sure that the temperature of food outside is appropriate and particularly for raw food that could spoil quickly so I know that this has come up in terms of the farmers markets both on the Wednesday market during the summer and in Spring Street there's a lot for foods that are sold and just to be clear all food truck vendors do have to have a permit through the health department and it does deal with exactly those things and a bunch of other things including according to the permit thing you've got to attach a list of the bathroom facilities that you have that agreement to use or whatever but I'll get more information about that my assumption is that that is related to the vendor the food truck person not their customer base which I think the email we got today was alluding partially to the customer base but if there are problems with enforcement you want to be clear whose jurisdiction that's under so yes absolutely we'll get that clarified other questions or comments? Mr. Hayden I'm going to request more time to consider this but just a couple of notes that I would make as I think about it one is that how it relates to our job as minders of the public way well that's obvious so clearly there's a number of regulations that are likely to need to implement parking not molesting traffic pedestrian or automobile and otherwise so I'm kind of thinking maybe that's the right way to go but also when the rules are promulgated I think we may also need to note the planning issues that might come up with this okay you can't park them on the street overnight I think that's obvious can you park them at your house is it an accessory use and not so much to form a regulation or bylaw on it as to have an opinion as to how that would be considered and there are signs and other things that would be that would be a good answer okay thank you Mr. Wilde just a minor one because I notice in the case of the recommendations for the current you know one says no concerns and one suggests a change of location and the other one is basically telling the vendor to enforce other people's policies you know don't let people tell you people not to park on the street and so forth is that is there a better solution than that so that's related specifically to one of the vendors who's on the sidewalk right now and there have been issues with customers using the outdoor seating at Barts and apparently also the bathrooms and stuff so oh and also the cars on the street kind of live parking and whatever right I don't know that that's the vendor's responsibility to enforce it but that person would certainly have a role in helping to discourage it and so if we could get some signage or we could make that vendor aware that to kind of spread the message you know please don't be using these tables and you know you absolutely can't be served from behind the truck in parking there or whatever so just kind of more education and communication on it certainly if you have other ideas no I just wondered why there wasn't a change of location suggested if that location is so problematic yeah just asking that would be suggested for sure okay other questions or comments about this issue now? I just was going to recommend to the public that if they haven't already looked at the map and you know I looked at the map a couple of different times to tell myself whether or not this made sense to me and I think it looks really good obviously you guys spend a lot of time thinking about this and so people should think about and drive past those places and see what makes sense to them I mean obviously to some extent the business is seasonal and so we're not expecting to look at this time of year I'm thinking who's going to be down by Kendrick Park but as soon as the weather turns nice so it makes sense okay yeah so so those materials and draft form are all in the web packet for the select board meeting they will be again in the web packet for next week's meeting we'll see if folks have more comment and see if anyone attends to give comment and we'll sort of have kind of try to take the pulse of where we are with it at that point to see if we need formal and extensive ways of collecting comment about this or whether we're kind of good to proceed so till next week thank you and also in the meantime if folks read these documents from the select board packet by all means send comment you know they can email the select board address with any comments about that in the meantime so good thank you Ms. Brewer I'm sorry so you're planning to circulate what we have now within town hall like now before our next meeting okay moving on 705 item FY14 budget discussion town manager's budget recommendations we are supposed to be emailing questions to the town manager ahead of time I don't know if any of us have done that or not anyone have emailed questions to Mr. Roussanti that looks like a no okay are there any other kind of general questions or comments that we either want to prepare him for for next time or just want to discuss right now Mr. not something to prepare him for next time but as I've been going through it my questions I hope aren't a package making their way from the west coast to me now but I want to appreciate again the quality of the mission statements the little synopsis about the big changes that we're looking at this year and the little bullet descriptions about you know goals and challenges that's all very helpful in fact most of my questions I'm finding are ending up there I just want to be appreciative for that thank you and I'll just throw in appreciation for the org charts which I think really are a good way of illustrating to folks just what's going on in each department and who's doing it it really kind of makes more concrete a lot of the written summary that you're talking about in terms of just more of a global question this sort of thing tends to come up through our BCG meetings or our JCPC meetings perhaps but I certainly at this point have no intention of going to finance committee meetings or reading their minutes so if they run into something that they find questionable I'd love for us to know about it too just so you know even if it's just oh they had this question this was the answer just so that we're all kind of on the same page without having to go to more meetings that would be really great thank you Mr. Beesant are you aware of any issues that have come up of substance that you're concerned about and need to deal with through finance committee or other venues no but I will give that helpful reminder to Sandy who's been very good about alerting any subject matter if not issues that come up with FNCOM but happy to do that and I'll note this gets a little bit into the town manager's report but Mr. Hayden had suggested early on that we have a discussion as part of the budget discussion about the paving plan for next year so we're going to do that next week's meeting as part of our talking about parking and various street related issues so because the DPW budget involves paving and recommendations we've had all kinds of comments from members of the public about how those things might proceed there's going to be a big discussion about that with Mr. Moreing next week so and so if folks have other issues that they would like to kind of delve into more detail on like that let me know when we can get that scheduled alright anything else about the budget that we want to discuss now okay then we have a couple minutes before the town manager's report and I don't like to start things early so let's note a untimed item the select board meeting date schedule now that Mr. Hayden is here we can talk about this two things one is because of the way the holidays fall this year we have a really big gap between meetings in mid-March to mid-April so it is going to be very difficult to fit in all of our warrant article stuff in those three meetings in April so I'm wondering if the select board would be interested in breaking with its usual tradition of not meeting the night before the annual town election we never do that and the reasoning behind that is it's kind of awkward especially you know if people are busy campaigning and you've got all these things going but we have another year of uncontested select board elections so there's not a really big risk of Mr. Brewer and Mr. Wald losing their re-election but of course you never know but I'm throwing that out there as something for us to consider whether we would be willing to add that date and if so that would mean we could get rid of the Friday April 5th morning meeting when we would otherwise have a quickie meeting just to sign the warrant because we need to sign the warrant four weeks before town meeting begins so I want to throw that out there and see what folks think of that and I'll just throw out the other concept now also which is we always meet the Wednesday of the the school vacation week there that starts with Patriots Day in the middle of April we always meet at the police station on Wednesday last year suddenly it occurred to me how come we don't maybe meet Tuesday in which case we could meet here because that way the meeting could be broadcast live as opposed to it's only rebroadcast when we meet at the police station so there might well be scheduling reasons that prevent us from doing that but so I'm proposing meeting Monday April 8th as opposed to not meeting that week and instead of meeting Wednesday the 17th of April meeting Tuesday the 16th thoughts about these Ms. Brewer I want to go you on better I want to not meet the fifth which was already part of this I want to go ahead and meet on the 8th because according to our friends at the newspapers there are no contested elections townwide I I'm not entirely comfortable with doing it select board only but since there appear to be no contested elections townwide is the current update I'm more comfortable with going with the 8th but I don't want to meet on the 17th yes there's no school committee race that's right so Wednesday the 17th I would actually rather not meet I always find that week incredibly awkward with being break week and if we're meeting the 8th then I'm not we weren't actually going to do anything on the 5th except sign the warrant right so I'm not clear why we need 17th if we can have a real meeting on the 8th because typically we would have more meetings than that prior to town meeting so we often start dealing with warrant articles the meeting before we sign the warrant but the meeting before we sign the warrant is this time March 18th I think is that the right date which is so far before we sign the warrant that it might not be possible to do any warrant articles at that time the following week is the beginning of Passover and the week after that is the end of Passover so we're really just our schedule is much more challenged this time than usual for that time of year when we really need to fit in a lot of stuff what if we what if we try not to meet the 17th soon enough we'll know we'll have a much better idea what the warrant looks like and if it looks like we can fit things into if other slack board members are able to meet that night of the 8th and then the other two meetings in April then that could work and we could hold the 17th as a maybe once we have a better picture how does that which could be the 16th which would be fine I appreciate what you said earlier it confuses people when we're in the police station confuses us it's nice to have the live broadcast if we could have it in here on the 16th so I'm perfectly fine with moving to the 16th but I would love to have it be only if needed because that's just the nature of town meeting articles but if there's a way that we can avoid it so much the better but definitely meeting on the 8th okay other people concerns about meeting on the 8th inability to meet on the 8th okay and so meeting on the 16th rather than the 17th and only if necessary everyone can do that okay good then we'll see how that goes okay so we will meet the 8th we will not meet the 5th and we will hold the 16th we'll cancel the 17th forget that we'll hold the 16th as a maybe meeting thank you okay other schedule issues just before we go on I want to say again that in accepting the concept of meeting on Monday before election it's very important that we're not taking that sort of as a flip easy thing that there really is not other business going on that night that might be better attended to than having us gather right and so that this has been this has been the select board's practice for a while and so I think that we are making an exception yeah we're making an exception due to necessity but if people aren't comfortable with that then we don't need to do it I just wanted to put that out there as a possibility okay so because we do vote on our schedule we might as well vote on that so if I'm not sure if we have a motion I think I'll just you just made it so how about I move that we cancel the scheduled meetings on April 5th and April 17th instead meet Monday April 8th and Tuesday April 16th if necessary second further discussion all in favor say aye thank you okay next we have town managers report thank you very much first very brief update safe and healthy neighborhoods they are a working group 18 of them meeting regularly weekly at this point including a double header on March 5th which will be an afternoon business meeting and an evening public forum number two I think it's fair to say that a lot of progress has been made and we're getting into the home stretch for the work group to develop specific recommendations to me on related to best practices and potential bylaw changes related to rental properties in town so there's another meeting scheduled for tomorrow the 26th from 3 to 5 p.m. in this room it's really this kind of iterative process with the committee and staff on draft regulations on registration requirements themselves parking plans site management plans etc. contacts development of a complaint based system lots of good questions being asked throughout the process including questions that require some feedback from town council which is happening in a fairly substantial way and that tomorrow's meeting will be another opportunity for the group to hear some of that feedback and then on the following week the 5th so I think it looks promising for the group to try to be really focusing on finalizing some recommendations if not the 5th itself but the following Tuesday the 12th I would just note that all of our packet materials are online if you go to the living tab on the town website choose safe and healthy and then scroll down you'll find it that always has the draft regulations in the current form lots of interesting packet materials so far we've been talking mostly about what it would take to comply tomorrow will be an interesting discussion when we talk about what the penalties would be for non-compliance and things get really interesting so that's tomorrow's meeting and stay tuned and my objective throughout this that's been articulated in the charge to the group and then fleshed out in much more detail in a very constructive way by the group is coming up with recommendations that make a difference that are meaningful, that affect the quality of the rental experience at Amherst which is a fundamental part of our local housing stock and our local economy and having some good candid discussions about how that can work better than it does presently so moving on from that parking update a couple quick things just a reminder next week March 4th we have a public hearing scheduled to consider select board consideration of parking regulations updates I've talked about those at some previous meetings things related to loading zones, taxi stands metered in permit parking on Spring Street boltwood garage reserve spaces, things like that so there'll be a series of specific recommendations in your packet for your consideration next Monday night next you should have on your desk an update of a parking system issues worksheet that you've seen before with our rollout in 2011 of our new parking machines, multi-space meter machines in the parking lots we've had a number of issues related to their implementation and effectiveness the vast majority of which have been addressed but there are a handful of important ones that remain that I wanted to give you a status on and they really summarized in items B through G of our alphabetized list of issues related to the speed of the machine transaction to be processed particularly when using a credit card lighting issues and just basic signage and instruction issues starting with B B and G this response time issue which is really a relation to the software installed in these machines from the company Duncan Solutions it's a 2G network we are very aggressively working with Duncan to become their first client to have a 3G network installed in each of these machines we have a commitment from Duncan that that will be done no later than May for all 11 of our machines that will we believe and I hope I'm being conservatively slow on this in terms of the performance speed we think that will reduce the transaction processing time by more than half possibly substantially more than half and so you make a transaction or you think you've entered a transaction into the machine you're not seeing anything happen in a what you consider to be a reasonable amount of time so you think there's something wrong with the machine you start pushing all the buttons and worse things happen when that occurs so we think this 2G to 3G issue will substantially improve that and eliminate or at least reduce those issues and will also help the communication between machines where you're trying to figure out the status of your parking time remaining etc. at a particular numbered space and you want to do it at a different machine their ability to communicate with each other should be improved the next issue is related to lighting not an issue that has been a big issue in other installations in other communities but we don't have and I'm not suggesting we change that in any major way macro way some of our lots are not as well lit as some lots you might find in a more urban environment what we have come up with is a lighting solution that involves the installation of a light pole at 8 of our machines in the town hall boltwood the CVS town portion lot and the spring street parking lots that should be installed no later than May we have three machines in the main street lot in front of town hall and the amity street lot that do not have electrical power to the base of the unit there we're looking at solar powered lights for those three locations pending a longer term solution that may bring electrical power to those spaces if and when we do future parking lot upgrades there and then we have other monies in our capital budget item E directional signage banners etc there is money set aside for that purpose there's been a detailed plan and those should be installed by May as well the we'll also have a more visible and legible set of instruction signs the same set of instructions that you see on the meter on the machine itself about what the steps are to complete a transaction that will have a freestanding sign no later than April 1st at the machines as well and then we'll have a base into where these lights are going to go so you'll have a more a larger sign at eye level that just says the basic steps one two three four to do that so that'll be in so we think the combination of those things addresses the remaining issues question or comments Ms. Brewer have the signs under I guess I think we should see them simply because we keep kind of having the same problem and maybe a fresh set of eyes would help not that we don't have experts who know how to do these things but one of the things for example that I found helpful when I helped somebody in a lot which I think all of us has done recently here's how you use the machine is that they aren't perceiving it the same way they do with a meter where you always check first to see if there's money in your meter before you start sticking coins in it people don't think that way about these machines they're so worried about getting money into it that it gets confused so I just wonder if we could take another quick look at those before they go out I'm happy to send you we have the template happy to show you we were going to have the signs made immediately after next Monday's finalization of the regulations in case any of the wording we might want to use would be changed okay great so it'll be in our packet it could be could be now you so desire to look at what the sign might look like actually could you send it to us by email ahead of time so we can go out in the parking lot because I ran into this just this past weekend with someone and I would like to be sure that it's extraordinarily clear I won't say any proof but that's what I have in mind we keep trying all right and you feel pretty confident that the lighting can get in by May yes because that was something we talked about a year ago and then in the fall we were saying if there's a way to prioritize that so that it could be in before it was getting dark so much earlier as things turned to fall and winter the original pursuit was lighting somehow housed in the machine itself but that has proven not to be doable other questions and comments about the parking machines next I wanted to quickly summarize we are in receipt of a couple of grants from the community innovation challenge grant program Governor Patrick and Lieutenant Governor Murray they announced a week before last there were 27 grants distributed statewide Amherst is involved with two of them one is related to the regionalization of assessing services 35,000 was awarded to the town of Amherst we are as you know providing property assessment services to our neighbors in Pelham through an inter-municipal agreement that you've previously approved and the state grant funds primarily some of the hardware software to provide Pelham with that level of service and not have it be a financial hit on the town of Amherst there'll be some equipment and residents of Pelham will also have access to our online database as Amherst residents do to look up personal specific information also veteran services we've had a very successful veteran services district that we've been a member of now for a number of years working primarily with the city of Northampton but a number of the other area communities have been awarded a 35,083 sounds like a Steve Conner proposal that last $83 was critical this is an expansion of this effort the towns of Hadley and Middlefield are joining our veteran services district and so this provides high quality support for veterans surviving spouses etc along with referrals to local federal and state agencies and this allows that expansion to occur and makes it easier for the member communities to take that on and reduce the out-of-pocket so that's been a real success story and this is an expansion of that effort let's see next and also as a preview of next week's select board meeting we've scheduled we're going to the bond market as a town selling bonds for a number of capital projects previously approved and this past week we've had our bond reaffirmed our AA long-term rating with a stable outlook we're very very pleased to have that rating reaffirmed again citing our strong and stable economic base including the fact that our local economy is anchored with higher ed institutions including UMass Amherst Hampshire College good income and wealth indicators, good financial management good reserves, low overall debt burden they noted our progress in funding some of our longer-term unfunded liabilities such as other post-employment benefit costs and they note the progress we're making but they note that it's a big liability which is not news to us but so they note the progress that hasn't triggered along with other issues an upgrade but we're very very pleased with having our AA with a stable outlook reaffirmed next just as a follow-up item to I believe your February 11th meeting there was question that night about legal legal opinion related to filling vacancies on elected boards and question about the applicability of state law chapter 41 section 11 and what does the word shall mean statutory sense as opposed to Webster's dictionary and we did pursue additional feedback from town council and the basic feedback was that town council's opinion that select board is not obligated to make an appointment to fill the vacancy or to call a special election and you do have some discretion in that judgment call despite the use of the word shall and that the word shall is in this statute is not considered it's considered directory as opposed to mandatory so there's a whole longer treatise on that that went back and forth but we did get some feedback and affirmed the approach that was taken in that regard. Ms. Burr? Quickly on that item my intention we shall see my intentions come true but my intention is to take what Ms. O'Keefe has so kindly written down for us in the past and just add a couple of sentences based on that particular question. I think it's a little bit of a discussion, just so it's more crystal clear for everyone, not only on our board but on others to follow for, again, picking apart that one particular sentence that said but if the library trustee is asking it's like, no, still we don't have to do it and also removing the concept of special election from the discussion at all because that was never an issue and so I think that's one of the issues that we have to take into account. Ms. Burr? Thank you very much for the information about the grants and for the staff applying for the grants. That's a great way to augment town funding for things and it's a great recognition by the state of what innovative programs those are and that it's kind of a seal approval to have those be worthy programs on the bond rating. We kind of take for granted how well managed we are financially but we certainly should not. And so going to the bond market is the opportunity to get that reaffirmed because they are pretty thorough in their investigation of the practices and the financial management so that is also just kind of a marker of good management of the town. They are good and that report is posted up on to the website. Great. Thank you. It's a good independent third party critique of how we are doing. So it's welcome. Thank you. So folks we all remember what it's like for these bond things. We have to sign about 800 pieces of paper next week. Get ready. Okay. Anything else? No you mentioned our meeting with the chancellor last Friday . Good discussion again. They focus on actions that we can take working collaboratively to make things better. There's a lot of good things happening. There's more we can do. Questions or comments? All right. Moving along. Okay. Our 730 item which we're a little bit late for is a request for the select board question on the April 9th ballot regarding flags on September 11th. Just a note about the scheduling of this. Typically we do all things like this like prior to the town managers report and then we get into town managers report, members reports and stuff come at the end of the meeting. We had a pretty thin agenda for this week and I knew that Mr. Hayden was going to be late. So I was trying to put it at a place where we could guarantee that the whole select board would be present. So that's that. Mr. Kelly take it away. I think and she said that if you approve of this it takes 35 days for it to the lead time to get it on the ballot. So that puts us all around a March 4th deadline I believe. So thank you for that. Second of all I would just remind the folks at home or underscore for the folks listening in tonight, watching tonight that we're not talking like we've been talking for the last 12 years about whether the pros and cons of flying the 29 commemorative flags on 9-11 as opposed to the once every five year plan that's currently in place. What we're talking about here tonight is the select board by a majority of vote can put it on the ballot, take the pulse of the people so to speak as a non-binding advisory question as to whether the flags should fly annually. And as far as I'm concerned you don't get any more pure democracy than one person in one vote. And to me if I had to choose what the flag represents I think all of us can agree. I mean I'd be hard pressed to decide between my First Amendment rights and the rights of the people to vote to me it's a toss up but essentially I think we all agree that one of the things the flag represents is the right to vote and that's what separates us from, God forbid say North Korea or something like that. So I don't understand you haven't voted for the flags over the past few years I don't understand why you wouldn't want to have this go before the people because they could reaffirm you and then you're you're all set because as I said five months ago on the night of September 10th 2012 when I came here and asked last shot to get them up for this past 9-11 I said to you that if you put it on the ballot I will live with that and I'm saying it again here tonight just a very brief history I'm going to ramble a tiny bit but in the year 2000 I came before that select board during the 6-15 question period and I said to them you can put any question on the ballot this spring why don't you put the question change our form of government on there take a poll of the people and see if they're considering getting rid of town meeting and strangely enough they did they listened to me and strangely enough they passed not by a lot just barely passed but that was the year 2000 and then as you know we had this whole charter committee was formed very acrimonious in 2003 I think we had a 30% turnout for a local election which is really good and it lost by 14 votes came back in 2005 once again had a 30% turnout it lost by a little more 200 votes but that's still 1% so yes we had this town meeting vote two years later on the flag issue but who was spearheading that who was the architect of that who was standing up in front of town meeting in 2007 Larry Kelly who was the one who was out there leading the charge about trying to terminate town meeting and change our form of government to mayor council in 2003 2005 Larry Kelly so I have a feeling that that town meeting vote in 2007 astonishingly advanced flying the flags annually that too was an advisory vote as you well know the town meeting doesn't have the rule over it my resolution that night was please advise the select board to allow the flags to fly annually on 9-11 and that lost by a two-thirds vote but again I'm here to tell you that I think some of that was residual let us say left over bad feelings from me trying to terminate town meeting issue of the decade from 2000 to 2005 or whatever so again all I'm asking for you tonight is you know town meeting yes it's democracy it's all of that but it's superseded by one person one vote and as you know town meeting can pass over rides but it still has to be approved by the people and I you know I haven't checked exactly but off the top of my head about half the over rides that have been approved by town meeting have been disapproved by the voters at the ballot box so again all I'm asking for you is to let the people decide you know what is wrong with that it won't cost any more money won't cost any more time and in a historical catholic sort of sense it allows you to wash your hands of this issue and again I reaffirm tonight that whatever the vote is on April what is it the ninth I will abide by I'll stop coming before you thank you very much so Mass General law chapter 53 section 18 a gives three paths to the ballot for non-binding referendum one of them is the citizen root one of them is the select board route and one of them is the town meeting route almost exactly a year ago we had another citizen request to put something on the ballot at this time it was our last meeting in February also at that time it was a citizen request to put on a non-binding referendum about the citizens united question and that raised all kinds of issues for us and we said okay you know what the select board doesn't have a practice of putting stuff on the on a ballot to take the pulse of it and it would certainly be peculiar for the select board to put on the ballot something that we weren't the Mass General law already outlines a process for doing that so I just want to remind us of that history our own history with us with a similar question a year ago and the other options before I get comment and question from the select board Mr. Kelly could you tell us why you didn't go ahead and put this on yourself on what on the ballot because there is a citizen just occurred to me on Thursday and that's when I have no idea what the process is involves a lot of signatures I would imagine it does yeah much time in advance okay so I'll open it up to select board for comments not having the heart to go back and review what I said during the citizens united discussion I wanted to put that up because I am not big on advisory questions on ballots I have a general bias of anything against them I was extremely disappointed in the prior select board that put on an advisory question associated with an override than an actual override question for example I like votes to be meaningful keeping that in mind that particular type of question with that override and also the citizens united I think would argue that this has been enough of a polarizing issue within our community and it is something that's under the select board's purview to decide that having this information provided to us on the ballot is not a bad thing it's not it's I feel like I can separate it as being a different thing then are you thinking about an override should we consider putting an override before people it's certainly broader than a town meeting vote in terms of potential participation and I just feel like we've been dealing with this long enough in the press outside the press that even were the vote to go away that a particular seat that select board didn't like they would not be bound by it but I think that they could use it as another piece of information in their decision making just as we at one point had a every three year plan then we went to an every five year plan things can change future select boards may decide something else but just as we have referred to a piece of information in the discussion I don't have a problem with us putting this on the ballot as an advisory question for the select board I have a question in the comments Miss Stein I am very happy with the policy the select board came up with and I really did not I am not happy about the idea about putting it on the ballot I think if Mr. Kelly wants it on the ballot he should have gone the route of getting a citizen's petition to put it on the ballot I don't think it has to fall on our shoulders to make that decision so that's my take on it on the side Mr. Aiden I agree with Miss Stein for so many reasons that I'm not going to go back over I'm just inclined to to put this on the ballot but I would also like to point out that words count the words that you offer us when you speak to us and if we were to put this on the ballot then you would have to waive your first amendment right to come here and never speak with us again and I'm just not comfortable with that among a lot of the other words that have been spoken what would be about that issue Erin like I say the words count Mr. Wong someone makes things about this I'm trying to recall unfortunately I didn't recheck my notes but as a recall when Mr. Kelly came before us last fall there was some other public comment including that of Mr. Winslow who was the chair of the Human Rights Commission at the time and I recall him saying that there are a few greater violations of human rights than the mass murder of civilians and that he thought this would be appropriate to bring to the town in some form or fashion so I guess the question I have is number one and then number two by what means we get there that is whether it's by us putting something on the ballot or through a citizen initiative and so forth so that's the issue I'm trying to figure out I see nothing wrong with us as Mr. Brewer said too taking up an issue that has come before us every year anyway and seeking the advice of the public on that thank you so my thought would be what would we learn from the reports of this we would learn that many people in town feel one way about it and many people in town feel another way about it which we already know and so at this point we are using a compromise solution to deal with the fact that people feel very different ways about it if we were going to now say the majority rules we're going to do with the majority in town once then that's really that's about as opposite of a compromise as you could do so I would kind of want us to be much clearer before we would put a question out there about what we would intend to do with the results and I would want to think a lot about the precedent that we're setting of kind of making decisions based on on a referendum vote I feel like as a body we're essentially comfortable we don't all 100% love our compromise but we're essentially comfortable with it and if we're not then we have the opportunity to repursuate each other every year thanks to Mr. Kelly so if we're essentially comfortable with the fact that we have a compromise then we would be saying what by getting the referendum information I think we would have to have a whole another complicated conversation that would say okay so if this is a split vote from the town what are we going to do with that and so I just don't think we're in the place to have that conversation and make that decision people would need to know what this ballot question meant and if we had no idea what the ballot question meant then that doesn't seem that doesn't seem like good planning it doesn't seem like a responsible way to put a question to the voters to me so I would not be inclined to do this other thoughts Mr. Wildman and Mr. Hayden not sure how comfortable we all are with that compromise because as I recall the compromise with the self-split vote it wasn't a 5-0 vote for the compromise there was a 3-2 or 4-1 whatever depending on the issues that's just mirrors within mirrors is what I'm concerned so my concern has to do with your point about hastily crafting a ballot initiative but as far as the compromise I didn't make much sense to me to begin with so that carries no weight okay Mr. Hayden my intellect is still moving through three time zones west east so I may speak uncounseled but I'll be as careful as I can actually I appreciate your point Stephanie and I would add to it that not only would there be a question about what to do with it but the question as to what it is itself that we're doing is not clear by the information that I have so the notion of being a hastily crafted article is I think may be important as well because what we have does not address most of the issues that swirl around this either either as a way of solving them resolving them or even acknowledging them and so I appreciate that any thoughts over here but a prop to an article I haven't recognized you yet just to Mr. Wells point I certainly didn't mean to suggest that we were unanimous in the compromise so I appreciate you clarifying that that we sort of accept as a board that we have this compromise if we are looking to change each other's mind to change that vote we always have the opportunity to do that if any of us think that putting the question to the voters is the way to change the minds of the others then certainly that would be a valid way to think about this but I didn't want to I apologize I didn't want you to think I was misrepresenting this like before but if I did it was unintentional that is why I actually I don't know obviously we can use what pieces we want of this I feel like it is something that is part of that compromise conversation that we have every year because we definitely talk about that town meeting vote every year and I found that town meeting vote to not be particularly meaningful in comparison to a townwide vote perhaps for reasons that were stated tonight perhaps for other reasons and every vote of course is a moment in time there are certainly many many issues that I'm not willing to put before the voters because there are matters of basic human rights that I would not want to put before any set of voters no matter how much I embrace the values of a particular voting group but this feels separate to me and it feels like such a polarizing issue that I still feel like because it's advisory it doesn't mandate what we do it's yet another piece of as repeating myself it's yet another piece of information I think there is a question as to whether or not we would want to have the ballot question say the flags fly on these five days or these seven days or whatever versus leaving everything else out of it and just talking about September 11 and leaving it there we may all have multiple feelings about what needs to be done to recognize September 11 anniversary every year but this is one piece of it that I think people are able to and some people choose to keep very separate from all their other remembrances of September 11 because of their particular relationship with the flag so it feels like something that doesn't have to be overly complicated and yet it's something that does not become a mandate but simply another piece of information I hope I didn't imply that I thought you were not portraying the full situation all I meant to say was that it was a compromise and there again there was a split vote and there are winners and losers and we all agreed to abide by the outcome so that's we're back at the divided opinion thing I guess the question I would have then also is what would we be doing I mean we'd be voting for what we're voting here in principle for the idea of something that might be crafted somehow by us by Mr. Kelly later because we don't have specific language here we think I have the idea of a general sounding of public opinion if there was a majority vote by the select board to put a question on the ballot then language would need to be created and approved at our next meeting in order to get on the ballot for next Tuesday gives me pause but so I think that stepping away from the issue and the issue is one that is very emotional people have very strong feelings about it and the select board has dealt with this a lot going back to the process part of it I think that the ballot is a fairly sacred instrument and we need to exercise our responsibility of access to the ballot very carefully and very thoughtfully and so anything that happens at the last moment I think is kind of the opposite of that so this wasn't some burning issue such that we've been working on it all of this time it's something that just occurred to Mr. Kelly so he's brought it to us and we're saying yeah maybe and I'm saying there are a whole bunch of unresolved issues policy wise specifically as relates to this issue what we would think we would do with that information and precedent wise never mind the language part which would have to go from zero to exactly done and approvable next Monday night so there are too many things waiting against doing this at this time I would note that Mr. Kelly still has the option of a warrant article for town meeting which would be another path to the ballot and you'd have the last time that would be a different question you would you could ask town meeting to put it on the ballot if you wanted to do that then that would get you know fuller consideration or whatever I don't know but you could do your homework on that your avenues aren't entirely closed but as far as what the select board's role and responsibility is with our access to the ballot this just does not seem to me to be a responsible way to approach that at the last minute within the 35 days so it's not last minute I mean again to me direct democracy is one person one vote and it's 50% plus one wins I mean again a proposition two-and-a-half override can come out of town meeting by it more than a two-thirds vote and then be defeated at the ballot box I'll give you an example in the mid 90s the four million doge I might even remember this the four million dollar town hall renovation override it came through town meeting 156 to two I remember it very well because I was one of the two that voted no the other one was Hill Boss and then he changed his mind and sent the letter to the Amherst bulletin saying I've changed my mind and I want everybody to support this thing so we're now at 157 to one and it failed at the ballot box in fact it failed twice twice that override failed and then town meeting took out alone and did it that way and that's why we sit here today in this building but again it was overwhelmingly overwhelmingly 156 to two passed by town meeting and failed at the ballot box I'm not sure what your point is I'm saying that if you can ask town meeting if you get a no vote from the select board about putting this on a ballot you can also try to get town meeting to put it on a ballot or of course you could try yourself that that's my only well then it would be on for next year I mean town meeting doesn't start until a month from now it's this has to be decided by March 4th in order to get out for this coming 9 11 that's what I'm concerned about you could do your homework like I said I'm not doing my own work on this to figure out how you would do it but if possible you could get on I don't know if you could maybe the April 30th or the June whatever the June Senate election is I'm not sure again you'd need to do your homework on this but otherwise then yeah maybe it would be on the next election so Ms. Brewer I am relatively despite the fact that I've in some ways hoped for some time that we would have this on a ballot simply so we would have that additional piece of information I am also rather persuaded by the fact that although previous select boards used what I thought were not appropriate advisory questions on the ballot we have been very careful that way and if this select board's policy and these particular five people at this particular moment in time is to be incredibly cautious and conservative about what we put on the ballot and strongly encourage people to go through their other avenues which as you say do exist both through a downtown meeting and through the simple but perhaps cumbersome signature process that I can live with as a policy decision as long as we don't decide something strange next week and then I'll say well what about we wouldn't do the flag and obviously we deal with things as they come up I'm not persuaded by the fact that we have to do that this year for this ballot either from the standpoint that we have known for a decade that people would like to potentially have this on the ballot there were plenty of opportunities for people to go ahead and gather signatures just like there were opportunities for changing the form of government so associated with gathering signatures so it's not like we are the only gatekeepers of the democracy here there are other options to be followed whether the timing can be met this particular time is frankly not our problem so I understand I think that the need to set a very high bar for the ballot I just wanted to make sure that this was something we didn't want to keep as an exception to that particular thing because of the various reasons we've already stated this evening as we move to a close which I imagine we are now I just wanted to make one more comment about the great deal of gratitude that I have to my colleagues for their their comportment in dealing with this there have been some very difficult things that this has brought to us and I appreciate working with people who are so careful at being careful thank you does anybody want to make a motion or we simply are taking the pulse of the body and not seeing action in our future anyone like to make a motion I see no purpose thank you for coming in see you in September all right member reports JCPC update JCPC met on February 14th we had a presentation by the town clerk who would like a machine to tabulate the votes of the district because at the moment since the machine that they were using broke down six years ago they have been hand tabulating the results from the districts so that was one request that came before JCPC then LSSE requested some materials for or some capital made some capital requests for Mill River one is for lifeguard chairs the other is for two shade canopies because as we all know the incidence of skin cancer is going up and there is virtually no shade at the Mill River pools and also there were two requests for mowers that are shared by the public of course and by LSSE for the fields and both of those are over 20 years old and have breakdowns and are impossible to repair so did I do okay and you guys are continuing to meet until oh yes our next meeting is this week just to clarify for the public something I don't know anything about but the voting machines I mean we have these wonderful voting machines with our ballots and we don't do the crank thing we don't count things all that works great at individual precincts so what's the thing that's broken that's central tabulation of the 10 districts of all those separate districts so it's kind of the combined effort so you're precinct works it's not like you're adding one I mean you know that would be easy but you have people in 10 precincts running for town meeting you have for the other elections you have you know so all of our individual machines that we're all voting and are working just fine and providing their little printouts that we see at town but all of that needs to be compiled on a laptop for which which is broken down in the software so they can use this having 10 separate strips of paper really doesn't get you all the way to be out got it other questions or comments about JCPC other member reports I actually have two non-reports first I'd like to well they're reports but they're not my sleaze on reports that's what I meant one is that March 22nd the senior center has a benefit called the senior follies that's at 2 p.m. and I can't tell you more of the details except that accomplished performers in many fields perform and this is a benefit for the senior center and the other is that there is this community read program that the library is running which is you go to the library and you can check out the book about the wondrous short life of Oscar well by Junot Diaz and this is a Pulitzer Prize winning book and the author is actually going to be speaking in town at date I cannot give you but I thought if this appeals to you you can find out all that information at the library and my only Diaz on report is from the personnel board which met on February 13th and we discussed the proposed 3% increase in the budget and what would be the increase in non-union wages as part of that overall budget we discussed the fact that there would be health insurance holidays as sort of bonuses in a way and we discussed the supervisory leadership program of which 14 of the town staff are participating and also that there will be an annual the annual meeting of the non-union town employees is March 20th at 9 o'clock in this very room did I leave anything now? that meeting is with me and with members of the personnel board questions or comments from Ms. Stein other liaison representative reports Mr. Aden very briefly the Recycling and Refuge Management Committee will be to their final draft on the recommendation for transfer station and pretty close to the final draft on a proclamation demanding a zero waste committee so we have that to look forward to I also wanted to report that there are three Amherst College students who are now working mostly with Alan Snow but a little bit with the public trade committee as well to work through trade policy trade, tree policy issues speaking of students I'm hopeful to have one for the summer to do translation probably for Amherst media to help get some of the the shows that they're about town government into a second language thank you questions for Ms. Stein I just wanted to add to Mr. Aden's report that we again had a donation from the Hadley Garden Center of a large number of trees to help us in our tree goals for this community thank you other liaison reports bye Mr. Wilde if I can begin with a non-report to echo what Ms. Stein's about the library I think I've been very impressed by the extent to which the library has really been generating a lot of public outreach programs I think it's just wonderful so I'm glad Ms. Stein paid attention to that and acknowledged it here publicly the historical commission met on February 5th this is the last part of their part of the unending story about the barn on Lincoln Avenue as you recall they declined to issue a demolition delay the developer went and demolished it even though neighbors were appealing the demolition permit kind of a catch 22 thing too about when that all takes place and so because the zoning by-law lives the demolition delay by-law lives within a zoning by-law the appeal went to the zoning board of appeals which asked the historical commission to reconsider it which did over the course of two meetings continued finally till February 5th where they took up the issue again at great length and once again found that the structure did not have then of course take any action the building already been demolished anyway so it was you know it's again it's an illustration of the difficult choices we face where sometimes the law doesn't quite capture the the problem so there was a concern about the structure itself but about larger questions of neighborhood character and development and so forth so that whatever happens in this case that issue is not going away but zoning board of appeals will take it up again later to hear formally the commission finding and discuss among themselves Thank you Questions or comments from Mr. Walton? Ms. Brewer? Having fortunately only attended a small portion of those sections of meetings I would just ask that I hope that eventually it becomes clear whether or not there is something else that might be done in terms of process or structure to make people feel like that everything really is being heard in a timely fashion indicates the process works yet there might be ways of improving the process in a way that makes it more intelligible to people from the outside so that there isn't quite the frustration level even if disagreement is going to continue to occur but at least agreement about the process Mr. Walden, Ms. Brewer? I think the process works fine I mean part of the problem of course is that sometimes on a tight timeline because we found this with the historic district ordinance too it's like with our open meeting law you have to post things a certain amount of time in advance in case of a demolition permit you've got to act with an X number of days and so then you've got to get the material and forward with the commission and post the meeting and decide to hold a hearing so where someone is caught between those competing goals too you want to act quickly for the property owner whoever it is so that there's not a delay in whatever is going on in terms of the public time to react but as far as the meetings were conducted in my opinion in the normal fashion and with the appropriate information so I don't think the process is the issue here I think despite if you're a person who was not in agreement with the judgment that was rendered twice I think objectively you can say the process as it's currently devised worked quote unquote I've encouraged staff and town council and encouraged through them to the historical commission to spend some time in the post mortem here talking about okay what things worked really well with the current process and how might we make the process better for the next time because there will be a next time on something related to demolition delay and you know so I'm encouraging them to offer recommendations and we might improve upon the process Mr. Heaton and Ms. Huld at the risk of taking too much time on this one one report I want to appreciate the post mortem is being done but as I understand or I'm hopeful from what little I know I'm hopeful that the post mortem includes the fact that it seems that demolition delay was trying to be used as a tool an inappropriate tool to combat a very real problem of neighborhood invasion by developers who are just taking neighborhoods and turning them into neighborhoods. Demolition delay is not a good tool for that and you know the process as far as I know and again I don't know everything was well founded and executed correctly and sort of in a way it's been done for a while successfully which is all to say I appreciate that there are efforts at creating the tools that we do need to control the real problem but it's not probably the demolition delay process. Just very briefly I think Mr. Hayden put it well the problem is in some sense the standards are very technical in some sense they're common sense but very subjective so that's what always comes down to as far as what Mr. Muzanti said one of the things we might want to do and I believe town council would be in favor of this probably too just in the base of general practice would be to take the demolition delay the zoning bylaw because that brings about all sorts of other procedural issues and the commission itself I think wants to talk about what happens you know what does it mean to impose the delay what can be done the interim to try to save a structure if someone one party wants to take it down others are opposed and so forth and again the question of appropriateness and Ms. Brewer has raised this too and Ms. Fey on the commission brought up the issue last time because we often say a local historic district ordinance might would actually apply to cases such as this Ms. Fey warned and Ms. Brewer has said we don't want to dilute ourselves into thinking or encourage others to think that a local historic district is a panacea much less means of blocking development because development is going to happen and it has to happen but it has to be appropriate and in the right places so again really important question about tools and and tasks. Thank you. Other questions or comments about that? Alright other liaison reports Ms. Brewer a little acronym is going do I even remember what these things mean? Okay so community development block grant advisory committee CDBG we of course just talked about that at our last meeting and we know that the application was submitted and we know that we won't hear for a long time so that's kind of irritating but that's just the way these things work and so I'm very pleased that we were able to make all the effort of getting that application in for the additional funds and hoping that we will be able to get more than the application funds we were sort of promised everyone to bear in mind the reason I bring this up is that the CDBG advisory committee's group's work is not completed simply because that application is done what they are going to be doing next and you can follow on the town website and look at the town website calendar is they will be looking at reviewing the utilization of the current grants because obviously were we to continue to be able to fund these various agencies we want to ensure that the things that they applied for are the things that they turned out to be the right things that they wanted to fund and that people showed up for them and all that kind of good stuff so the block grant advisory committee has been doing a really good job of kind of connecting those pieces on the year round basis so something I'll look forward to our next BCG meeting is as I understand it still planned to be on Thursday March 7th at 8.30 in the morning is that correct are we going to change that maybe so that's something to watch out for it's not as exciting as joint capital planning talking about individual fun things to buy or not that we need desperately but it is a good feel for how everybody's budget process is going because for example we had a relatively quiet discussion about the budget tonight the schools are not having very quiet discussions right now so it's good to be able to check in on a coordinated basis with them so that's lovely moving on housing and sheltering committee is having forum about the housing production plan that has been put together by the consultants that town meeting funded and that is going to be at the same time as the safe and healthy neighborhoods so that'll be lovely so people have plenty of places to go plus ignite Amherst is that time so I'm going to that so yeah we'll all be split many different directions but lots of fun things to do next Tuesday and of course materials also available on the website for people who can't go to the meeting or don't want to go to the meeting housing production plan should be up there now my big thing of course is the regionalization of the elementary schools what's happening associated with that we had a little bit of a break with school break week in there Leverett and Shootsbury are having forums this Wednesday and Thursday night to follow up on the meeting that many of you were able to attend on Saturday this coming Saturday the 2nd at 10 a.m. this coming Saturday the 2nd at 2 p.m. in a different school building is the four towns meeting as well so there goes your Saturday you're going to be at the same time so I'm going to go to the meeting housing production plan and I'm going to be at the same time so I'm going to go to the meeting housing production plan and I'm going to be at the same time so there goes your Saturday welcome to public service and then after the Amherst Leverett Pell and Shootsbury individual towns have their forums in response to what we learned on February 2nd then the four towns that are on the regional school district planning board the one with the B at the end instead of the C at the end will meet on Saturday March 9th at 9 a.m. to talk about whether or not to have a vote as to whether or not to continue to move forward to look at regionalization some people have misunderstood what's going to happen on that day we're obviously not making any sort of final decision about anything that day because all of this eventually needs to be presented to the voters but we at that's kind of a take at the pulse of where we are situation that's an opportunity because this regulation has to apply and it might not have the wonderful working relationship like we already do from 7 to 12 it gives them the opportunity to walk away I have no reason to believe anyone will be wanting to do that on the night but that is one of those check-in points where we have this discussion where we decide as a four town body not to be confused with the four towns mean as a four town body to continue to move forward on regionalization again we're looking at a schedule for we have to put a little asterisk next to it because we didn't get a CIC grant for our regionalization effort and if you look at the education things that were funded there just wasn't a lot of money to go around and there was not any it isn't like some other group that was going to regionalize their schools got the money and we didn't it was for some very specific projects so we're having to relook at our timeline based on the grant funding we do have already to see okay if we decide to move forward on the night what does that mean in terms of can we keep with our timeline do we have to push some pieces various places but there's tons of information on the website which is regionalschoolplanning.com and there is also being posted the answers to sort of a frequently asked question thing based on questions that have come up so far in the process and those will be continued to be updated so if you can't come to that meeting that morning because we plan to go to the four towns in the afternoon and have things to do with your family in the morning those you can again look at all that material that's online and continue to send questions to the email that's also available on the website thank you so again the 10 a.m. meeting for Amherst is where? in the high school library and then the four towns meeting is in the middle school library in the afternoon okay high school library at 10 o'clock on Saturday the 2nd is the Amherst meeting so this is going to be more of a direct question and answer thing so the thing that many of us and much of the community went to a couple of weeks ago was more kind of a presentation it was kind of one way more of a hearing from people right do you have an answer to this question yet do you have an answer to that question yet yes we have answers to this no we don't know about this and this is when this will come up in the process but it's the opportunity for the individual towns to talk more about their individual concerns right so that's a really important question that we should whether we can attend or not ourselves we should be encouraging the community to attend because this is their big opportunity to get a lot of questions answered and concerns raised to help you guys decide what you're going to do moving forward so a very important meeting for the community thank you and it is based just with the three Amherst representatives myself Catherine Abbey from the school committee and Andy Steinberg from the finance committee who will be fresh back from a vacation we can ask all kinds of hard questions but again we won't have answers to all the questions because there's a lot of work to be done before it gets presented to town meetings and to the to the general population okay more to come thank you and the funding issue talking about what might change your timeline that's the ability to afford an election or there's other things that were related to them because we need legal assistance to help us craft an actual regional agreement to get to the point of the various component pieces to be looking at help with collective bargaining in the different groups so we laid kind of everything out if we get the one grant we'll do it this time period and the other grant because you know they always have time limitations on when you can use them and we'll do it this period and it's like oh now that period's not funded anymore so now what can we do to try and make up for that so we will be reviewing those details because again trying to get rid of these forums and figure that part out oops now we don't have money we will talk about at the meeting on the night as well okay very interesting thank you that's very unfortunate to have missed the grant just for the ways that ties your hand behind your back okay questions or comments from Ms. Brewer other reports or Mr. Hayden actually I have a question for my colleagues as to what they're doing on March 11th March 11th this is by way of announcing the empty bowls empty bowls serving that's what I'm doing I'm there I'll be eating soup so I can serve soup on the second shift alright so the thing that I do most these days is safe and healthy neighborhoods we've already talked about that so that's good enough for my ladies on report she is so done with that we did talk about the warrants so we all need to have the warrants before we leave here these are the warrants for the April 9th annual time election and then the April 30th special election we don't have any other minutes or anything to deal with is that correct alright then I will make the executive session motion so I move that the select board go into executive session per Massachusetts general law chapter 30a section 21 part a subset 3 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining because discussion in open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining position of the public body the select board will not return to public section at the conclusion of executive session the roll call vote thank you Brewer aye Aiden aye and then this open meeting adjourns at 826 and we will see you again next Monday night we meet next Monday on March 4th see you then, thank you very much