 Okay. Good evening. This is a special meeting of the town council school committee, the library trustees and the non voting members of the finance committee. Sometimes referred to in the charter at the budget coordinating group of which there are representatives from all three groups. This is a meeting that will be held based on Governor Baker's March 12 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, which allows us to hold this virtual meeting. I will call each counselor by name at that time please let me know that you can hear me and I can hear you. And then make sure you mute mute your mic again. So let's begin with I'm not here yet. Okay. Alyssa Brewer present. Happy Angeles. Present. R.C. DeMont. Here. In Greece Merce here. Mind you Joe Hanneke isn't Dorothy Pam. Present. Ross. Present. George Ryan. Present. Kathy Shane. Present. Steve Schreiber. Andy Steinberg. Present. And Sarah Schwartz has informed me she will not be here. So somebody keep an eye out for Steve and. I'm calling this October 9th, excuse me, this November 9th meeting to order at 534 I'm now going to turn this over to Allison McDonald to call the school committee to order. Thank you. I'm going to call the school committee to order at 534 I'm now going to turn this over to Allison McDonald. Seeing a presence of a quorum of the Amherst school committee, I'm going to call to order our meeting. And I will start also with a roll call attendance. Mr. Demling. Mr. Harrington. Harrington present. Ms. Lord. Lord present. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer present. And McDonald present. Thank you. I'm going to ask for your name for the Jones library trustees. Happy to thanks. Thanks, Lynn. So I'm going to ask the trustees to identify that they are present. A Bob Pam. Here. Alex LeFave. Present. Chris Hoffman. Thank you. Thank you. And Lee Edwards. Austin Sarat is present. Tampson Eley is not able to be here tonight, so we have a quorum and I'm calling this meeting of the Library Board of Trustees to order. Andy Steinberg for the Finance Committee, non-voting members. Yes. Just for the record, this has been posted as a meeting of the Finance Committee, but since we've had the council members of the Finance Committee already indicate that they are present at the meeting, I will not call on them, but Bernie Kubiak is present and Bob Hegner is here. Sharon Povinelli is present. I call the meeting of the Finance Committee to order at 537. Thank you. This meeting includes audio video and is available live on Amherst Media. It is also being recorded. There is no chat room. If you have technical issues, please let Athena know immediately, and we will see what we can do about it. This meeting marks the beginning of the discussions about the FY22 budget. While there is no public comment during this special meeting, we encourage public comment on November 19th at 6.30 PM, when we will hold the public form on the budget, according to Charter Section 5.3. With that, I'm turning it over to Paul Bacheman and the Finance Team. Thank you, Lynn. Tonight is the beginning of our budget process. The development of the presentation we're making tonight is a real team effort. Can we start showing the slides? Let's do that. Yeah, I'll pull it up right now. I want to recognize our team, which includes Sean Mangano, our Finance Director, Sonia Aldridge, a Comptroller, Holly Bowser, the Assistant Comptroller, a General Founding, our Collector, and Sherry Boucher, our Treasurer. I also want to recognize that in the room tonight are Mike Morris, Superintendent of Schools, Doug Slaughter, the Finance Director, and Sharon Sherry, the Director of the Library. It's a real team effort by everyone. This is the presentation as the Finance Team for the town, and it's being shared here with everybody, all the elected officials and the appointed officials. It's a lot of information we have for you tonight. We don't expect you to digest everything. As you can see on the slide, there's 39 slides. We have about 45 minutes, so we're going to be talking fast. There will be available for follow-up questions and clarifications. If you have things, just feel free to email any of us. If you feel like, wow, there's too much information, it can be intimidating, but don't feel swayed from asking your questions. I think the key thing here is that we want you to walk away is that you should have confidence in the town's working officials, the appointed officials, that you're in strong, capable hands. Let me go to the next slide. What we're going to talk about tonight is the 10-year trend. We always show a 10-year trend of data. You don't really necessarily care what happened 10 years ago, but you would like to see what has happened over the last 10 years, and that gives you some evidence, some information on where we're going. We focus our attention on the current situation, where we are, the current year, FY21, and then what we're looking at for FY22, which is what the budget is that we're going to be working on coming forward. We want to look at the big picture for the town. That's the role of the elected officials, to look at the really big picture on where are we going as a community? That's why the people elect you all. We'll look at revenues and expenditure projections, which is for next year, and we want to reveal to you or reveal, show what are, be transparent about what our working assumptions are, and then we want to talk about the budget calendar, so everybody knows where they can plug in. Tonight, we want to recognize that we have some major challenges, and this is an unusual year. We're meeting in Zoom instead of in person, like we have in prior years. There are definite economic impacts of COVID-19, both on state aid, on our local receipts, and in our enterprise funds. We have set aside some capital investments that we've done in the past, but they haven't disappeared. They're still there. And our taxpayers, many of whom have experienced job loss or job reductions, are under pressure. I do want to take a minute to recognize how much we've gotten done in this fiscal year. The town council working with your finance officials have adopted and implemented an FY21 budget. That was an accomplishment in this year. I think we want to just look back and say, yeah, that was a good thing. And the way we approached it turned out to be very accurate, so we're really pleased about that. We do have an agreement with UMass to support K to 12 education. We are continuing our focus on growing reserves and reducing debt, and we have stabilized our health insurance, which is the vestige of several years of transition in our health insurance. So that's a really good thing. I think that we feel like we've handled one of the big unknowns that has driven the increases in our municipal budgets over the last few decades. Again, I think we work from a very strong financial base. We have good fiscal management and we look forward and this meeting that we do here doesn't happen in most other cities and towns. It just, you know, people tend to be more siloed. We aren't, and this is an unusual system that we have in place. I think it really shows the health of our communication among the elected officials in the town. We have strong financial systems when we are audited or when we have our bond rating, they come back with glowing remarks due to the people who work in our finance officers at the schools and at the town levels. And we have strong working relationships. You know, Sharon, Sherry from the library, Mike Morris and I are talking constantly and sharing information. There's a free flow of information and sharing what the challenges are that we're having, that we are experiencing. When we have an issue, we get together and we start talking what the challenges are. And we'd like to talk about, you know, the slow steady growth. And just, you know, for everybody in this room, I just wanna recognize that many people here have been doing basically two jobs. You're doing your operations jobs and you're doing the COVID management jobs. So kudos to our town staff and I always feel it's important to say that. So the next thing we're gonna start with our financial trend monitoring and we're gonna be presenting this as a team. And so you'll, people will just step in and introduce themselves and move forward. And so, Sean, you're up next. Hello everyone, Sean Mandano, the finance director. So this first chart just sort of sets the baseline understanding where our major revenue sources are. It looks at four major sources, property taxes, local receipts, state aid and other. And it's comparing a 10-year span, FY12 to FY21. So usually this doesn't change very much, but FY21 was an unusual year. And so the big change is that our property tax percentage supporting the budget went from about 66, 67% up to 70%. And that's because we took a big reduction in local receipts. People remember the FY21 budget process, that's the area where we saw the biggest reduction in revenues. So that pushed a greater reliance onto the property tax. We do anticipate that this will be temporary. And that as we work our way past the pandemic, we'll see that property tax percentage come back down and local receipts go back up. The next slide is sort of the same thing, but instead of where our money comes from, where does it go? It's broken down into the major categories, schools, both the region and the elementary schools, town spending, the library, capital. Miscellaneous is explained to the right. The biggest thing in there is the pension and then unappropriated uses are explained down below. And again, the biggest thing that's changed here over the 10-year span is you'll see that miscellaneous category has grown quite a bit. And that's primarily because of pensions. The pension is in that section of the pie chart and that has grown at a pretty large rate every single year for many years now. And in terms of FY21, another thing that's changed pretty significantly is the capital spending, you'll see at 4%. That was about 6% in FY20. So on the spending side for the FY21 budget, we reduced capital spending by about half. And so you see that reflected here that the portion of our spending that goes to capital went down quite a bit. And I'm gonna turn it over to Jen, but real quick, I'll just do a quick introductory to these little boxes in the lower corners. Actually, that might be all over the slide, but there's these Amherst trend boxes for those of you that are new that they basically give management's perspective as to what way the trend is going. There's no exact science to it, but essentially it's a favorable trend, sort of a iffy trend, unfavorable. And sometimes we'll check that in a certain box if we don't know where the trend is going. So again, it's not exact science, but it's to give you a little bit more understanding of whether we think it's a good thing, a bad thing, not really anything to know. And with that, I'll turn it over to Jen. Hi, I'm Jen LaFountain. Can you hear me okay? Okay. Property tax revenue is the primary source of both operating and capital spending. This includes new growth that's been averaging 650,000 annually over the last 10 years. Annual increases are limited by proposition two and a half unless the town passes an operating override, which we did in FY 11. With the blue line being actual dollars and the red line being constant dollars, this analysis shows that the only significant increases in constant dollars from year to year occurred when the community passed an override. This is adjusted for inflation. Now the next slide shows uncollected property taxes at 10 year history. FY 20 was slightly higher due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The town adopted an extended due date for the fourth quarter property taxes, pushing the due date from May 1 to June 30th without any penalty. This also pushed our demand bills into July into the next fiscal year. The percentage of uncollected taxes at the end of July was back under 2%, which is more in line with what we expect to see. Overall, this slide shows our collection rates to be very favorable to the bond rating agencies as we have remained well below the 5% or above warning indicator. Thank you, Jen. So it's back to me for a few charts on state aid. So this chart compares state aid, actual dollars versus inflation, adjusted dollars or constant dollars over the last 10 years. The actual dollars, it looks pretty positive. However, again, when you adjust for inflation, we're really staying about flat when it comes to the spending power that we have. So that's why we've given it sort of a marginal trend. And we're still not quite where we were back in 2007-2008. We were up at about 17 million for state aid in terms of actual dollars. So we're still kind of fighting our way out of the hole that we didn't put ourselves in that we found ourselves in after the recession of 2009. This next comparison is looking at state aid as a percentage of total operating revenues. So we put as unfavorable, it could be neutral, but it's essentially a relatively steady decline, very small percentages, but definitely a downward trend, which is consistent with what we see with state aid that we're getting very small increases in state aid as we see larger increases in our expenses. Pension, health insurance, those expenses go up much greater each year than what we're seeing in increases in state aid. So this we did mark as unfavorable. We also marked it as uncertain and that's the sort of a theme that started last year and unfortunately we'll probably carry over to this year is there's just a lot of uncertainty around where state aid is going. We've been told we'll be level funded for FY21, but that doesn't, there couldn't be some sort of mid-year cuts and we don't know exactly what FY22 will look like in terms of state aid. So uncertainty around state aid will persist for a little while. In this comparison, the red bars, sort of the money that comes into the town, the revenues that come in, the green bars are the assessments that we pay through the state charter tuition, PBTA. And sort of the most important part of this is the purple line, which is sort of the net of those two. And that's supposed to reflect how much state aid we have after we pay all of our state assessments, how much do we have left over to pay, pay for other things in town. And so that's stayed relatively level the last few years. So we've put that as marginal and again, we've marked it as uncertain. It's sort of a good thing that's leveled off because we have seen some increases in charter tuition over the years. And so the fact that we're leveling off is a good thing and that we're not seeing any decreases there. However, ultimately we would like to see that continue to grow in the future. And then the last one for right now is a pretty important one. It's around economic growth. So these sort of like the chart before that was looking at state aid, this is what we define as economic growth revenues as a percentage of operating revenues. And so those are motor vehicle excise tax, our new growth portion of our property tax and our licenses and our building permit fees. These are things that are looked at as sort of generating economic development or economic growth in town. And so we've seen that increase over the last 10 years to a high of about 5.7, 5.6%. It flattened out and then it did drop off in FY 20. And as I mentioned before, these are part of the local receipts or some of this is part of our local receipt, part of our revenue budget that we cut pretty significantly. It dropped off a lot for FY 20. So this is an unfavorable trend, it's uncertain. We are optimistic that when the pandemic passes and the university and colleges return to normal, we'll see some of these things snap back pretty quickly. But we did reduce it pretty significantly for FY 21. Okay, so the next one is me. This chart compares our major general fund revenue sources by showing each adjusted for inflation which are the dashed lines as well as an actual dollars. The red and blue lines at the top are our property taxes which is our biggest source of revenue. It does increase annually, but only by the allowable limitations of proposition two and a half. This graph again shows that while property taxes have increased, they're not keeping up with inflation. That line is flatter. In the middle is state aid. The green and the orange lines are second biggest revenue source. Although this was very slowly increasing, it is keeping better pace with inflation and we are still below our peak level in 2008. When adjusted for inflation, state aid per capita is almost exactly the same as it was 10 years ago at the beginning of this chart. The last revenue shown here are our local receipts, the purple and the brown lines. Local receipts have again remained relatively flat and they're keeping pace, better pace with inflation, but they again are still below our peak which was in 2009 for local receipts. And when adjusted for inflation, again the per capita is actually lower than it was 10 years ago. So the operating expenditures on the other side per capita, again, although actual expenditures per capita are going up when they are adjusted for inflation, they remain relatively flat. When adjusted for inflation, the per capita expenditures in 2019 are only higher than they were in 2011 by about 5%. The next slide will show our expenditures per capita are fairly low and we've been able to manage this through effective financial policies, conservative budgeting and good management. So this shows that Amherst is below all of our peer communities and we are well below the state average according to the DOR numbers. Our spending per capita is at just about half of the statewide average. This chart shows comparables to peer communities. We began comparing Amherst to communities with similar demographics that were picked out years ago. And since most of these communities were out East, several years back we added some local communities to our comparison. And that's what this next chart shows. The, it shows that compared to our local communities, again, you can see we are still well below of many of our similar communities. Calculating the data per capita and comparing ourselves to other communities makes it easier to interpret it, the data in these presentations. And I'll just note for everyone, the color coding here relates to the bond rating of the individual community. It's noted later in the presentation, but blue is double A, purple is triple A, tan is single A. Single A. And then the statewide averages are the red ones, those are, so the next chart here is about our municipal staffing levels. And this chart is for the town's general fund only. This does not include enterprise funds or schools. Information on the school staffing levels can be found on their websites. The chart only shows the past 10 years and it shows we've added approximately 15 FTEs or full-time equivalents. In this case though, it's important to mention and look back at a slightly bigger picture. Back in 2007, we peaked with almost 213 FTEs between the years of 2007 and 2010 during our last recession. We lost 21.46 FTEs, which was a 10% reduction in our workforce. Although we are slowly growing our workforce, we are very careful and thoughtful about when and where we will add new positions. And I just wanted to note that the increase of approximately two positions between FY19 and FY20 was the addition of the clerk of the council position and then the effects of shifting positions from our health claims trust fund back to the general fund. And this chart shows salary and benefits as a percentage of budgets and wages. The red bar shows in 2013, our total salaries and benefits began to slowly rise again and that's consistent with the chart on the prior slide, which shows our increases in staffing levels. As expected, when staffing levels increase, so do our benefits. Benefits include things like colas, our cost of living adjustments, step increases, retirement costs and insurance, unemployment insurance, life insurance, health insurance, et cetera. The blue line shows salary and benefits as a percentage of the total overall budget. And it has fluctuated a bit over the years, but it has remained relatively flat for a long period of time. This was due to several years of no health insurance increases. This is still at almost the same exact percentage of the total budget that it was 10 years ago. The green line shows the percentage of benefits to just the salary and wages portion of the budget. And this has again remained fairly level with small fluctuations. The change from self-insured to a fully-insured group plan with Maya for our health insurance has allowed this to drop by about 1.5% from last year. We hope this will continue to have a positive impact on our benefits costs. And once again, I get to do this one. The health claims trust fund has been mostly inactive during FY20. We do continue to see a small increase in this balance from 19 to 20 as revenues continue to trickle in and old claims are being settled and some credits being issued back to the town. We expect this will last, this will be the last time you'll see this one and that the balances should be closed out and money's returned to our employees and the town and the other entities that had contributed to this fund. Okay, so we remain, we still remain a AA plus community last updated in 2014. This is our annual debt expense as a percent of our operating net revenue. These are our annual principal and interest payments on existing debt. This chart shows we've been consistently low. The 2013 increase is due to refunding, which inflated that year. However, it's lowered in subsequent years because of our debt expense. Because our debt expense is low currently at 2.9% we have greater flexibility to issue new debt and debt surface is part of our capital budget. So this slide shows us compared to other communities throughout Massachusetts above and compares us to neighboring communities below for debt service as a percentage of the operating budget. Our credit rating is strong due to a low percentage of debt relative to the general fund revenue and also to good fiscal management. Outstanding debt Amherst long-term debt load has remained relatively low and has actually decreased in recent years as shown in this slide. And this slide shows a comparison again to other communities in Massachusetts above and a comparison to our neighboring communities below showing what our outstanding debt is as a percentage of assessed value for FY 19. Again, we maintain a strong AA plus credit reading as a result of this low percentage of debt relative to our general fund revenue. And I'll just note quickly for the new members when we put these charts together that compares us to our neighbors. We always have to do one year back because the information is we pull it from the department of revenue. And so the data lags with how it gets reported there. So this is FY 19 and for all these comparisons FY 19. That's me, I thought everybody forgot about me. No, no, we would not forget about you, Sonia. No, of course you wouldn't. So this is a new slide. This is showing our unfunded liabilities the amount that we have funded so far on the percentages that we funded so far on it. This is our retirement and our OPEB other post-employment benefits that we have. And it shows two years separate. Our pension liability is funded right now at 62.4%. And we expect to have that fully funded in 2033. Our OPEB is currently funded at 10.4%, 10.8%. And we're working on redoing our funding plan for OPEB. And we hope to in 2033, our plan is to use our pension funding towards OPEB, which would help us get it funded quickly. And I'll just note real quick that this was a revaluation year for OPEB. We have to have an actuary come and do an analysis every two years and then do sort of an update in the off year. And so we are pretty much done with that for 2020. We'll have that information to report out pretty soon. It's almost finalized. But we were able to get the number for this chart ahead of time. Yeah. And thanks, Sean, because I wanted to mention that this fluctuates every time we do a new actuary, different numbers come into play. Just to let everyone know that. This is the story of our reserves and I made Sean give this one to me because for once I want to give good news to the committees. She gave me state aid when she took reserves. I did. So our reserves reached 21.5% effective July 1 of 2020, which is fiscal year 21. Couple of things we need to note here though is this is due to returning 1.7 million net back to the fund balance. And also our FY21 budget was reduced significantly over $2 million. So that plays into the 21.5%. Our current financial policies say that we want our reserves between 5% and 15%. I think we should look at that shortly and maybe switch that to 15% to 25%. And that's the green line and the red line that you see here. We reached our 15% back in 2017. However, we intentionally increased our, kept our reserves increasing in preparation for all the large capital projects that are coming. Our intent was to use the extra reserve to offset some of the spikes in debt service as the debt came on. And this is a comparison between local communities and other communities that have the same graphics that Amherst has to say anything more about that. And this is, again, is another new slide. And Sean put this in because he wanted to give everybody a sense of where we're at at the first quarter with some of our revenues. This shows this is comparing actuals to actuals, and fiscal year 20 in the first quarter and 21 in the first quarter. And we're pretty close on a lot of these. This doesn't show the budget, but we're right in line with budget in a note that you mass occupancy fees are not going to be any more than this. They've shut down the hotel for the rest of the year. So that's as far as it will go. We also, and we also include a transportation fund, even though it's not part of the general fund in here, just to show that this transportation fund is struggling to meet even what we projected after we adjusted. So we just wanted to note that. And it's here in the general fund because if it's a general fund that might be needed, some of the reserves might be needed to offset the transportation fund, or we need to make some changes in the expenditure side. And for those who don't know, the transportation fund is funded by parking revenues. And so parking revenues obviously dipped when the university left and the pandemic and some of the closures and things of that nature. And it hasn't really spounced back a little bit, but not anywhere near where it was. And this shows water consumption. And it's showing that our consumption for water, I have notes here, I should probably read them, that our water consumption is catching up. We've adjusted, we reduced our consumption projections quite a bit as the trend was going down for the last couple of years. And then we reduced them again for COVID. So we're in line. Yeah, and there's a little bit of a lag here too. So this doesn't look as bad as we might have anticipated, but we still wanna see October and November because some of the meters are billed quarterly and some of them are billed monthly. And so there is a lag that's somewhat reflected in these numbers that we might not see sort of the full impact of having less people in town for another month or two. So, but we're mainly just to show that we're watching this very closely and we'll continue to update you on these numbers. We didn't include sewer because sewer is a percentage of water consumption. So that's the thing that's in line with what's happening in the water fund. Back to Mr. Bachmann. Thank you, Sean. Thank you, Sonja, Holly and Jen, great job. So these are sort of almost like summary slides, but we have more information to give you. Jen talked about our strong bond rating. What does that really mean? Bond rating influences how much we pay to borrow money. And some of the things that they look at is how much money do you have in the bank in essence? How much do you owe and how good are you in terms of your financial management? Those are the three sort of metrics that they really focus on. They give you the metrics that they will evaluate you on and we're confident that when it's time for us to go back into the bond market, we will be very good, again, be evaluated in a very positive way. I mean, a lot of how we get evaluated on the bond market is also tied to the overall strength of the state economy and the region's economy. What we can control is very limited compared to what the economy is doing in a general sense. And so the bond rating agencies look at nationwide and actually an international view of risk that they're evaluating. And then they place us somewhere on the matrix in terms of how risky is it to invest in the town of Amherst? We are doing everything we can to say we're doing really good when they come look at us. And then in terms of our reserves, Sonya talked about the strengths of our reserves, which is very purposeful. The town of the select board and the town council and the finance committee have been pointing in this direction and we've been following it successfully. Again, this is anticipation. We recognize that there are major capital investments coming up and this gives us the flexibility to manage those capital investments. So some of the things that I don't wanna be repetitive here again, strong collaboration. Again, I talked a little bit about this night is an unusual thing. We've been able to adapt our resources pretty successfully during COVID. We last year, we had level operating budgets. We reduced capital spending and we reduced our OPEC contributions. Those were the things, those were the tools we used to make to have a budget this year that was going to be able to meet the revenue sources coming in. What do we have facing us coming forward? We still don't know what's going to happen with COVID-19. There are public health and public safety challenges. We have been, and we just don't know what, we have a sense of what the university and the colleges are doing for the spring semester. But as I've said, the decision we made today, we might look back in February and say, wow, how did you ever make that decision? We make the decision today on what's going to happen in February and January and February with the university and the sense that this is the best information we have that we're moving forward on. I think we're going to be looking for providing additional support for our residents. As COVID continues to blister through our community, people are going to have health needs, housing needs, food needs and all kinds of other support needs, transportation, things like that. And we need to have resources available to go to that. Looking to support our local business community, we've given some flexibility on permitting and on licensing. And we're hoping that it's going to be a hard winter. And so we're thinking of new things to do to keep the businesses active during the winter. And so we can come out in the spring as robustly as possible. A lot of the investment you saw us make on the street with heat lamps and changing, putting dining in the streets, we will be able to, we will take that back a certain point once it's not warm. And then for the winter, when the snow is on the ground, we will not be offering that, but we want to be ready to go in the spring when it comes back to help our businesses, especially our restaurants move forward. We anticipate there'll be a decline in local revenues which Sean identified and that's been budgeted for. The biggest concern we have is the ends of end of cares funding. The funds that came through the state from the federal government was crucial for us to get to where we are. Those funds end and we can't spend another dime after the end of this calendar year. And that's a big challenge for us. We have the revenues, the revenues were adequate, but the timing needs to give us, we would like the federal government to give us an extension of the time to spend the funds. The schools are looking at all kinds of things on their plate and the challenges that the school department faces are enormous. And in terms of whether it's going to in-person instruction or not, and then providing remote services to residents as we, as many people don't want to leave their homes, they want to be able to interact with their kind of government remotely. So we're working on all of those items. Paul, and I'll just give a quick update that tomorrow finance committee, one of the items I believe is we're gonna do an update on the CARES Act. I know there's been some requests for the CARES Act funds, some of the things we've been spending it on and just an overall update on those expenditures. And so that's ready to go for tomorrow. Good, thanks. So next is FY22 assumptions. So what are we thinking for next year's budget? So on the revenue side, right now we're working off of a 2.5% increase to the property tax levy on the new growth front. So what are the new things coming online in town that will add to our property tax base? We're projecting 500,000. That's a little bit higher than FY21. We projected 450,000 for FY21, but it is pretty well below our normal level. We usually look at about 600,000, 650,000. So we're still being conservative in what we're projecting on new growth. State aid, unrestricted government aid, but just state aid in general, we're projecting as level funded. And the strategy we use for FY21 of considering reserves, if there are any reductions to state aid work pretty well. It's easy to say because there were no reductions to state aid, but we are considering using that strategy again for FY22, at least until we get more information and then we can decide if that'll work. Local receipts, we're projecting modest growth after we had a very large reduction in FY21. We're hoping the reduction we made in FY21 was sort of the worst of it when it comes to local receipts and that we'll start to climb our way out of that reduction. We're not counting on any federal stimulus, although we are still asking for it. We're not gonna count on it at this point. No override for operating expenses and those large capital projects, we're gonna be full steam ahead working to incorporate those into our plans and make those a reality as fast as we can. However fast they happen, we don't anticipate that they will have any impact on the FY22 budget. Even if they're approved as fast as possible, the timing of the debt, they probably won't impact FY22. On the expenditure side, we're going with a conservative estimate of 5% for health insurance. We're pretty optimistic it'll come in under that, but with health insurance, you never know, but our experience is doing pretty well and we know for retirees, we know at least half the year for FY22 because it's a calendar year thing. We know our rates for half of FY22 for retirees and it was about a 0% increase. On the collective bargaining side, the schools have six CBAs to be negotiated. So there's a little uncertainty there around the increases that may result from that. On the town side, there is a firefighter CBA to be negotiated and then we all have all the non-union employees. And then for retirement assessments, which for us is the Hampshire County Retirement System, we always include a 7% increase and that's been pretty steady. And then for capital, one of the major components of this year's of our working assumptions at this point is we're turning to a higher investment in capital. We reduced capital significantly for FY21 down to 5% of the levy and we didn't actually fund any specific projects other than roads, we deferred them because of all the uncertainty. And so going back to 8%, we can start to get through that backlog that we pushed off a year and get back on track with capital. And we're gonna need to do that as we look to these four major building projects. We're gonna need to get our levy for capital back up so that we can plan for those large building projects. So in terms of operating budgets, right now for the town, the elementary school, the region, the library, we're assuming level funding, we're being conservative, we really don't wanna put a number out there, have to come back and say that it got worse. So, and because there is so many things that still haven't been determined yet, we're starting with 0% there's a few things over the next couple months around new growth, tuition, state aid. There's some things that once we get more information, it might allow us to come back and revise this. But we wanna start planning with level funding and hopefully things will get better from here. Capital, as I mentioned, 8% of the levy retirement, 7% increase and OPEB level funded. And personally that's another area where if things come in better, I would like to see us restore some of what we reduced because we do need to as you'll see when the actuary report is out there, we have quite a large liability and we wanna keep our contribution towards that liability moving in the right direction. And Paul, it's back to you. Thank you. So I think we're running short on time. So I'm just at the library schools in town, we can all articulate our needs. But the one thing that this slide tells you is that we all have facility needs, which is capital. We all have concerns about COVID-19 expenses. Those are things that are in common throughout through all three organizations. We each have some kind of unknown that's part of it. So these are major challenges that we're all going to face. And that's why I think it's important for us to be all on the same page now. So this is a big picture thing. We talked a little bit about economic uncertainty and economic uncertainty is the first bullet but all those other bullets are subservient to economic uncertainty. If we had a growing economy, those other things would be less of a concern. An economic uncertainty actually drives the thing that we're most worried about other than the state aid is the economic revenues that come to the town. You know, the state, when we look at state aid, they have, the state has budget challenges too. They're struggling. They don't have an FY 21 budget yet. They are struggling with their revenues falling off the cliff. So until we know more what they're doing and they're trying to balance their budgets just like we are, you know, the tax base, we're hoping that there'll be steady growth in it. And, you know, we have just a lot of needs in the town that keep, continue to be identified as we move forward services that people want and that we actually need to produce. When we look at what our tools are to hit this, you know, again, managing our resources carefully, you know, prudent use of our reserves when we need to seek additional sources of funds. And, you know, looking at debt exclusions just as part of a larger strategy. And the only way I think debt exclusions pass is that people say, yes, you've managed my money well. I'm willing to look at your requests now. So again, big picture, new initiatives, again, we've been very strict about adding bodies to the payroll. That's the thing that costs the most for at least on the town side. So we're very strict about if we need a body added. Federal funds are the key to us. The stimulus money is really important in terms of getting us through this. We, as Sean mentioned, we believe that we are in a very strong position economically, unlike other towns. You know, we have a university in two colleges. There's concrete in the ground. Those organizations have to fill up those bedrooms. And we think that that is a major driving force for the development in town. If the university and the colleges are able to come back in the spring as they're starting to project and that we get more normal into the fall, I think our local businesses will be able to step back. Not all of them will survive, but if those who don't survive, there'll be other businesses that come in. And there might be some re-jiggering and realigning of the retail market downtown. We find that municipal budgets are often lagging indicators. They come a little bit later, but then they last for a longer period of time. You know, we're noticing there are fewer housing starts going on. I think the COVID, there's a headline today, COVID-19 crushes construction starts. We have two developments that have not moved forward since COVID hit. That in general, around the country, it's about an 18% reduction in September. And then we worry about our enterprise funds, which is water and sewer and transportation and solid waste. Those revenants are also dropping, but our costs aren't. And so there's more and more pressure on those. All right, so I'm gonna do a really brief overview of the revenues. We're almost done. We've got I think two or three more slides. So this top section, this is all revenues on this slide spreadsheet. This is our projection FY20 actual FY21 budget and our working projections for FY22. So the FY22 column is changing. The top section is property taxes. And so that's where you'll see the new growth number that I mentioned earlier, 500,000 on the 2.5% increase. And so you can see the overall increase in revenue from property taxes. Down below that is local receipts. And you'll see, if you look from FY20 to FY21, that's where we took the big hit in terms of our budget in general, reduction in local receipts. We are projecting to start coming back for FY22. You'll see a 12% increase, which seems like a lot, but following a 40% reduction, it's sort of modest. A few areas in there, I'll just notes. You'll see departmental revenue going up 66% over 200,000. That's because for FY21, for a lot of our recreation programs and revenues, we basically assumed no revenue there because there was so much uncertainty at the time, we weren't sure how they were gonna do their programming. Well, it turns out Jerry Hill had one of its better years. That's had a long time because people just wanted a golf, the outside, and that's one of the few things you could kind of socially distance and do. And so we are returning to projecting some revenues for recreation programs. You'll see licenses and permits we have starting to grow, but again, for most of these, you look at what we've had for FY20, we're not projecting them getting all the way back to where they were pre-pandemic. And then one other one on note and local receipts, you'll see a pretty large reduction in the pilot area. That's because we had a 40-year pilot agreement that ended in FY21, and that property has now moved over to new growth, and it's part of our regular tax rolls. So it actually was a net increase, but it's in the new growth numbers up above. So it's a reduction to our existing pilot revenues. State aid is the next section. I mentioned that's level funded. We do think it'll be level for FY21, but there's a lot of moving pieces there that for now until we get more information, we're keeping it level. And then other financing sources, there's a couple areas there. So ambulance revenues, some of the billing revenues we get from ambulance calls dipped a little bit. Fewer people in town, people weren't wanting to call the ambulance as much, just from fear of the pandemic. And so that did dip a little bit, and we're projecting that coming back partially. The CPA is the next one, that's really just an offset number, it nets out with something below. And then enterprise funds, we're level funding that, enterprise fund reimbursements. It's actually an overall reduction from where it was budgeted for FY20, because we saw that there was some stress on the enterprise fund. So it is still lower than normal levels. And as the enterprise funds rebound in the future, that's an area that could improve. The next slide are all expenses. So you'll see at the top are the operating budgets. I don't think I mentioned this before, but we said level funding for the operating budgets for the elementary schools, that turns out to be a 0.27% decrease or 64,000. The way that works is again, is it's a retroactive looking backwards adjustment where you take that, you adjust year over year for the net change in charter tuition, and the net change in choice tuition. So for FY21, you may remember that helped the schools, it actually increased what they got more than everybody else. And unfortunately for FY22, it's the reverse. And a lot of that is due charter reimbursements going down for the schools. It's not necessarily that their charter enrollment went up. It's that the reimbursements we get from the state actually dropped pretty by quite a bit. The next area is capital. And so again, that's where we're getting back up to around 8% of the levy. One noteworthy item there is if you look at our current debts, you'll see for FY22, we're having a pretty big reduction in our current debt. It's going down about 460,000. That's because we're paying off an existing obligation for roads. And that's a really good thing because now that can be put back into the pot for capital projects and used for current capital. So that's a positive thing. Pensions we talked about, OPEB we talked about, and state aid assessments. We're also keeping level until we get more information. One general thing I'll just note because I know at least one member has brought up a couple of times and is interested in it, PBTA and the impact of the pandemic on the PBTA. So we haven't gotten our letter yet for this year. So we haven't been able to plug in actuals to kind of inform what we project for FY22. But I did have a conversation with their finance director. And it looks like we will not have a significant impact for FY22 or a negative significant impact for FY22. It's possible it might be sort of neutral or benefit us a little bit, but I just wanted you to know that for now we've level funded PBTA in here and we'll adjust it once we get that letter. And then the last slide is the calendar. And I'll just note that tonight is the financial indicators report and it's a BCG meeting. Important to note the deadline for resident capital requests is Friday. And there's a link on the website to submit those resident capital requests. If anybody wants me to forward on that link, feel free to email me. And then as mentioned earlier in the presentation on the 19th is the public forum and that's really the opportunity for anybody to come out and give their thoughts on the direction of the budget moving forward. And then sometime hopefully in November, December this is sort of an unusual year there will be budget guidelines issued and adopted that will really inform the budget development going forward. And I think I will move on beyond that. And that's it. Would you please take the screen down? Thank you. I have pushed back the beginning of our council meeting by 15 minutes. So if there are questions but I just wanted to say a couple of things we all entered this discussion with different years of experience in different levels of knowledge. And again, this is just the beginning of a conversation. It is not the final conversation but just the beginning. The finance committee actually will begin its discussion tomorrow at two o'clock. That's a public meeting posted on the town website. So with that, are there questions from any of the boards or committees? Peter Demling, I see your hand up please unmute and briefly state your comments. Yeah, thanks. Sean, could you just clarify for the public the difference between what level funding is versus level services? So you proposed level funding. So just briefly disclose the difference between those two things. Yeah, so level funding means the exact the same amount of money that you received the prior year. So if you received the million dollars the prior year to support your budget level funding would be you get a million dollars to support this year. That often means a reduction in services because our services grow each year generally because of health insurance, pensions, a number of other things. Level services is what amount of money does it take to provide the level of services you had this year next year. So you have to account for increases in wages, increases in health insurance. And so often we strive for level services although we don't always get there. We strive for level services when we can. Thank you. Dorothy Pam, you have your hand up. Yes, I want to make the question. So town manager Backelman, to my understanding, you have been very creative in using your existing staff, retraining, repositioning, putting them in charge of other jobs. And I'm assuming that there's been a minimal loss of staff or furloughing this year. And just wondering if that can continue into the next year. I hope so. We don't want to be laying off staff. I think that's a negative thing for everyone involved, obviously. And we have new needs. As you noted that redeploying people into working on Zoom, we're redeploying people to working with childcare facilities. We've had people with puffers pond this summer. The bulk of the town's employees their jobs haven't changed. We still need public works. We don't need fire. We still need police. And we still need the finance office to be processing things. So by and large, the bulk of the employees are still required to do the jobs that they've always done. Kathy, just a reminder, finance committee has tomorrow, but you have your hand up now. Okay, I'm just going to do it for the public record here, Lynn. The budget that we're looking at next year, as you pointed out, we potentially lose CARES money at the end of the year, even if we, unless we can carry it over. Ken, my recollection is it was drawn on substantially for operating budgets. So the flat budgets that people could live under in the year we're under were partly possible because of CARES. Is that true? Can I weigh it on up? So for the most part, CARES is really for things that were not budgeted. There are only a few exceptions where we were able to repurpose people. If people were repurposed from their existing position or something substantially different, then we could use CARES money to pay for them. But any costs that were budgeted this year, we are not able to use CARES money for. So it really has been focused on the additional expenses that have arisen from COVID-19. So, you know, PP&E cleaning, everything we've had to do around cleaning and HVAC work, all those things are additional things that really were created by the pandemic. And have those all been done to an extent that we don't need to do them again a year from now? We hope, so in terms of like PP&E and things like that, you're only allowed to buy so much of a stockpile. So we can't, you know, stockpile for multiple years. There are some things we've been able to do that we hope will provide long-term benefits. You know, a lot of the HVAC work, we've been hearing about air quality and air ventilation for a long time. We've been able to do some things there that will have long lasting effects. So there are some long-term benefits from the way we've spent the CARES money. Thank you. Alyssa, you have your hand up. Alyssa Brewer. Yes, I do. Thank you. Flipping screens does that all the time. Thank you. And I know that the finance committee is going to be talking about this. And one thing I want to just ask that the finance committee guidelines, finance guidelines that Sean mentioned that we do every year, do pay some attention to the concept of collective bargaining at the school's level. I know we only have the one collective bargaining agreement in the town that's up for the firefighters. This was illustrated on the slide, plus of course, non-union employees, but just given everything this year, given CARES funding and not given layoffs and furloughs that we have avoided thus far, but then looking at all those collective bargaining agreements with, shall we say, a rather fraught school situation this year. And we're talking about region not increasing at all and elementary actually going down. I don't know how that magically works. And so I would just like us to make sure that the financial guidelines do pay some attention to that to help bring the community along in terms of although we aren't all doing the collective bargaining that they understand the kinds of challenges that's going to present. Austin Serrat, you have your hand up. Thank you. And thanks to the town of finance staff for a tremendous amount of work and a really fabulous presentation. I think this question is for Sean. I'm attracted as I always am to the pride that we take in things like low debt service. I wonder if there's a way of thinking about debt service that doesn't just take pride in the fact that there's not much of it, but that would help us understand what the optimal kind of level of debt service would be in relationship to the budget. So if I, for example, think that the roads in Amherst are in terrible shape or that the schools and the library and public facilities are in terrible shape, I might think that we haven't been taking on enough debt to maintain those facilities at a better level. But I just wonder, is there another way to think about debt service? I mean, obviously we don't want any more than we need, but is there another way to think about debt service other than that it's great that it's low? Like if there's some optimal percentage of a budget or something else like that. Yeah, so I don't have a great answer for you, but I'll just say two things. I think when I look at the debt service number, I'm excited about it because it means that we're in a position to do some of these things we've been talking about with building projects. If we had a high debt number, it would be much more difficult, but because it is low, we have a lot of flexibility around capital. And the other thing I'll just mention is, we can think about that a little bit more. We are reviewing our financial policies and looking at those and seeing if they're still, if they need updates or if there's new sections that we want to put in and one section that definitely makes sense to look at is sort of our debt management approach and do we want to look at what our existing levels are, when it makes sense to take on debt. When interest rates are high, you obviously don't want to have a very high debt percentage, but when interest rates are low like they are now, it's not so bad a thing. So it's the right question, but I don't have a perfect answer for you. And I'm really happy to hear what you were saying because I just worried that the town would not get into what I would describe as an elevator approach to debt and debt service that we keep it low and then we need to go up because we have all these capital needs. So that's really helpful. Thank you so much. Okay, Darcy, you have your hand up. Sorry, two things. One is, will these slides be available to us and to the public? Yes. So it's on the website now. I think it's in the packet, but it's also on our website under the budget and the FY22 budget tab and we'll try to make it a little easier to get to, but it is posted online right now. Okay, great. Yeah, I couldn't find it in the packet. So that's why I'm asking. And secondly, I guess I would just say that I hope that the Finance Committee guidelines are going to be kind of like a new look considering that we're, there's a lot of discussion about how we're all moving toward a new normal and the possibility of shifting things around and shifting priorities in the area of operating budgets or just looking, assuming that we're gonna be looking at policing in a different way. We're going to be having a new climate action plan. There's gonna be a lot of new priorities that are gonna be coming up over the next year. And part of it is because of COVID, just having this opportunity to look at things in a new way. So I'm just throwing that out there that I would like us to be open to a new way of looking at our finance guidelines. Thank you. Mandy Jo, I'm gonna take yours as the last question and then we'll move to adjourn this part of the meeting. Thank you. I hesitate to bring this up because as Alyssa said, it kind of piggybacks on Alyssa's question or comment which is the schools are in a front situation right now that are very difficult and there's a lot of pressure on the schools for a lot of reasons for all sorts of things. But we've seen a substantial decrease in enrollment in the schools. And I'm curious how that is factored into this forecast, whether it is factored into the forecast. We've got children not in buildings. And so I assume that means there's gonna be a lower amount of budget use because of lower utility costs and all because of the buildings not being open. But I guess my comment is similar to Darcy's also, should we be looking at budgets in a new way given that we've got lower enrollment in schools, we've got different uses in town for things like the recreation department, many different uses at the library right now and how are we going to, I think we need to figure out how we can project that into a budget next year, depending, assuming we're not going to be back to normal and all of that. And I don't know how you do that and how things like that affected. I am very concerned that the decrease in enrollment, whether or not it affects our projecting of budgets that the schools will affect the local receipts. The cherry sheet numbers we get state aid from that because of that substantial decrease in enrollment. And I don't know how to take that into account, but I think we need to be considering that. Dr. Morris, Superintendent of Schools has offered to answer the question. Mike, are you there? I'm looking for Mike Morris and to make sure he's here and on mute. And he's saying that he can't get into answer. I guess he's having technical difficulties. I don't know if Dr. Slaughter, if you're able to respond about the chapter 70. Thank you, Allison. I'll be brief. Certainly it's a concern of ours relative to, as was mentioned, when the enrollment's changed, that is a significant factor in how the chapter 70 aid formula for schools is figured. But I think a lot of districts are experiencing a drop in enrollment this year in particular. So that's something that we've reached out, our legislators have reached out to those folks in the legislature that are working on the budget for fiscal 22. And so they're aware that there are a lot of districts that might take a huge change in chapter 70 based on enrollment alone. There's a lot of folks choosing to do things, either homeschooling or opting for non-public school options that have changed enrollments pretty significantly across the state. So I think that a lot of other districts are like us in that regard. I think the difficulty for us is we have to plan for multiple contingencies. We may have a bunch of students come back next year, but the chapter 70 formula is gonna be based on enrollment as of this October. But we have to consider whether we will or will not be in the same model that we are in now or we'll be changing to. So there's a lot of variables there. We're gonna keep a close eye on all of them and try to be as careful as we can in the short term and be thoughtful in our planning for the future relative to that. But it's definitely going to create a circumstance where we have to be fairly creative in how we think about our budgets and how we structure our work. There are some things we can't avoid. There are things that we are both morally but legally obligated to do. And so that's also a factor that drives us in our budgets. There are certain things and actions you have to take relative to kids' needs. And we'll put that first and foremost in our thinking, but that'll require us to be diligent in how we investigate and restructure our finances to meet those challenges. Thank you. Can I just add? Sorry. Alison please. So the school committees are meeting tomorrow evening and Dr. Morris and the school committees will be discussing exactly this topic further tomorrow evening. And he's also reminded me that our survey to families that have left the district went out today, so we'll be getting more information about how many of those, that reduction is actually temporary versus long term. So Mike, you have your hand up again. Are you able to connect? Can you hear me now? Yes. Okay, sorry. I don't know why, but Zoom wasn't my friend a couple of minutes ago, but I think I worked it out. I heard most of what Doug and Alison said, I don't have much to add, but I think the thing worth noting are threefold. And maybe it's just summarizing their statements. One is that our local legislators have been in touch, including with the chair of the House Education Committee. Well, we're feeling it here. It's an acute issue in many, many communities in Massachusetts. We are not alone. And I did get some communication that the Education Commission is aware of these challenges and is trying to figure out how to resolve them in the FY22 budget, knowing that enrollments are wildly different in many, many, I would say the majority of communities. There's been some media reporting because my professional organization did a survey of districts on that. The second piece, and I appreciate our local reps for being on it. The second is that as Chair McDonnell just said, we're surveyed families. We're trying to understand best families who have left the district, where they are, why they left, and whether they plan to be back for fall. And I think third, as Hanuki noted, I think it's really important for us to be planning on multiple contingencies on enrollments as we look forward, particularly as we're starting off the building project that includes an enrollment projection. So that's a whole nother can. So it's good. This is the last question, I think, Chair Griezmer, but I think that question hit the nail on the head and it's something we're actively working on as we plan, begin the FY22 planning process, which is already in motion for the schools. Thank you, Mike and Doug and Allison for that. So let me just tell you how this next five minutes are gonna proceed. All of the town counselors are going to stay on this Zoom as well as the town staff. Anybody who wants to continue to be on Zoom, but is not part of the town council meeting as a regular member can do that and we will exit you through the attendees or the audience. You can also pick up by watching it on Amherst Media if you will, would. But at this point, I'd like to ask the school committee, Allison, you just need to adjourn your committee. We don't require a vote unless you really feel you need to. I will follow the norms of our hosting body here. So I will now adjourn this meeting of the Amherst School Committee at 6.45 p.m. Okay, Austin Serrette. Library Board of Trustees meeting is adjourned. Thank you. Andy Steinberg, finance. Finance committee is adjourned. Okay, and the town's, the special town meeting, special meeting of the town council is also adjourned and we will move immediately to our regular town council meeting. We're gonna take a few, a minute or so to bring some people in and other people leave. I also wanna take this opportunity while we're doing that to thank Paul, Sean, Asanya and all of the rest of the finance staff for your outstanding work in putting together this presentation. It certainly is even more thorough than we've ever seen in the past and gives us a good sound basis by which we can start to think about the coming fiscal year. So thank you very much for that. Okay, we are now continuing with the regular town council meeting. We are doing this again under Governor Baker's March 12th order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. I'm going to call on each counselor and make sure that they can hear us and we can hear them. And then we are going to proceed very rapidly to a presentation provided by UMass. Shalini Balmille. Present. Alyssa Brewer. Present. Pat DeAngeles. Pat DeAngeles. And let's assume she will reconnect. Darcy DeMonte. Here. Lynn Griezmer is here. Raina Johannike. Present. Dorothy Pam. Thank you. Evan Ross. Present. George Ryan. Present. Kathy Shane. Here. Steve Schreiber. I'm here. Andy Steinberg. Present. Okay, I'm going to go back to Pat DeAngeles and Dorothy Pam. Okay, I see Dorothy. Can you hear us, Dorothy? Yeah. Thank you. All right, let me just start by saying welcome. I'm officially calling the meeting to order of the regular meeting of the Amherstown Council to order at 6.48. We are going to show you the announcements and I just want to mention while you're looking at the announcements, the town council extends our most sincere and heartfelt thanks to all of the many people who worked during the presidential election period to ensure that our voting was accessible, safe, and met the highest standards of integrity. Thank you. I want to mention also that we are not going to do closed caption tonight. We're still working out some more bugs, but we'll be back to it. And meantime, we are then going to go on to a presentation by the University of Massachusetts and for the purpose of that, and before I start that, I also want to thank you, Mass, for your significant effort in keeping our community as safe as you can. It's not an easy job and providing regular testing to the town's first responders and inspection staff. I want to remind the audience that this session is being recorded as part of our regular meeting and can be revisited at any time. So with that, I'm going to introduce John Kennedy, Vice Chancellor for University Relations, and he's brought with him the A team of a total of eight people and I'll let him take care of all of those introductions as we go forward. John. Thank you, Chairman Griezner. Thanks very much for giving us the opportunity to share our spring planning in our COVID mitigation efforts. I'm John Kennedy, Vice Chancellor for University Relations. We're going to have a cast of folks here to share various aspects of the plan. I'm going to give you a little bit of an overview. The invitation to come and share the plan is grown out of our weekly town-gown COVID working group meetings that we've held since July and they've been a great opportunity for us to collaborate with the town and share information and to figure out ways to tackle some of the challenges that we share. And those actually grew out of weekly meetings that Tony Morulis and Nancy Buffon, our town-gown specialist at the University, have with Paul and Dave Zomek every week. And then of course we have a weekly on-call meeting on Monday. So there's a lot of opportunities for the University and the town to communicate and to share information and to figure out ways to problem-solve together. If we could throw up, I think Athena had slides to share. If we could throw up the first slide. John, do you actually have those slides? Thank you. Oh, great. Thank you. So we can move on to the next slide. And okay, we'll start here. So I'm gonna be joined by Brandy Hepner-Lobank, who's our Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and Campus Life. Evelyn Ashley, our Dean of Students and Becker, our Public Health Director, Nancy Buffon, our Associate Vice Chancellor for University Relations. Jeff Hescock, Executive Director Environmental Health and Safety and Emergency Management. Sally Lodowski, Associate Dean of Students of Campus Student Life and Community Engagement and Tony Morales, our Executive Director of External Relations and University Events. Each of them are gonna give more detail on various aspects of the plan as we go forward. If we could go to the next slide, please. Next slide. So the plan we're gonna share with you is born out of some of the lessons that we've learned throughout the fall and some of the successes that we've had in the work that we've done to mitigate COVID on campus with a limited population that we've had. We've got a massive asymptomatic testing operation on campus. It's the fourth largest in the state behind only Boston, Cambridge, and Worcester, an extensive contact tracing operation that really is built on trust, built on trust with students and others who may be tested and may be tested positive to share and be forthcoming about the contacts that they've had. That work has kept our positivity rates among our community extremely low or well below the state of cumulative rate, well below the positivity rates at comparable institutions. And later on, you'll be hearing more about that testing success and operation that we're gonna build upon for the spring. We've got extensive quarantine and isolation protocols, strict policies on social distancing, and face coverings, limitations on guests and residence halls, limitations on travel off campus for on-campus students, and a public health messaging campaign that you'll hear about as well that attempts to educate and bring folks along to do the right thing from a public health perspective. The planning process on campus was developed with a series of campus working groups, everything from teaching and learning to residence life, both on-campus and off, public health and safety, facilities and financial implications, research and libraries, athletics, communications, and then finally the town gone working group was a great forum for us to talk about some of these issues as well. The next slide please. So we're committed to the health and safety of everybody in the community, not just on our campus, but more broadly because we're part of this community. Most of us lived either in Amherst or in the surrounding area. Our kids are in the schools and we're engaged in the community as our students. So we're trying to develop a plan for the spring that is from a public health and safety perspective, the best way to go and also helps us fulfill our mission to educate our students and to conduct the work that we need to do on the university. So we focused on student cohorts for whom living on campus is closely linked to academic success. And when we looked at these cohorts, we said, okay, how many could we bring back in a facilities where we had, for instance, what might be the ideal ratio of plumbing facilities to a number of students? What's the ideal ratio of living space to a number of students? And we worked our way to these following cohorts that you see up on the screen. First year students, transfer students, international students, all students who face-to-face is a critically important part of the educational experience for them. Students in mandatory face-to-face classes, students dependent on UMass for housing and dining as well as students requiring specific academic accommodations. And student athletes is a very rigorous protocol for student athletes that's been very successful as well. Some of the key elements of this, well, let me put this, what you end up with when you put these cohorts together and you look at all the planning, we have come up with it, you end up with an invitation about 60% of our on-campus population invited back. And that translates roughly to 8,700 students. So we have, I think, 1,069 students on for the fall. We're gonna increase that by about 7,700 students, at least invite that many back. We don't have any indication that this is gonna affect the off-campus population and we've been reaching out to students and sort of testing the waters there. We're gonna require off-campus students to provide a local address. For the fall plan, we weren't able to do that because the plan shifted after students had already signed up for their classes. And so the opportunity we had to implement that requirement had sort of passed. The timing of the announcement for the spring plan is gonna allow us to require that address is part of the SPIRE process when students sign up for classes. The re-election campaign set on. Pardon me. I'm sorry, I heard a voice. We're gonna require on-campus and off-campus students to be tested twice a week. This is a change from the fall. So the requirement for twice week testing will be for on-campus and off-campus students. So we are, you can go to the next slide. We are, before I get to the next piece of the presentation, which will be delivered by Brandy Hepburn Bank, we are committed to the health public safety of the community while fulfilling our mission. And we really think that this plan will in fact achieve both of those objectives for us. But ongoing, we're also committed to continue to work with the town, work with the town gown COVID working group to address any challenges that we have together and to approach this spring plan in partnership with the town. And so with Adam at a hand, the program over to Brandy Hepburner LeBank, who's our vice chancellor for student affairs and campus life. John, I appreciate it. Good evening, everyone. You can go ahead and advance the slide. And I'm gonna share plays a little bit more in depth with a lot of what John just discussed. And first of all, I wanna talk a little bit about a change in our approach, which is gonna be about shifting the UMass community agreement to a university wide policy. So we really did witness a high level of acceptance and adherence to the community agreement. We really were impressed with how the vast majority of our students embrace those public health initiatives. And so at this point, and since we have the time to get this accomplished, it makes sense to codify this. And that gives us the ability to manage it a bit differently. And so our aim is to really look at a pandemic policy that will include public health behaviors, these testing requirements that John just talked about and local address requirements. So that's essentially how we plan to implement some of those things. Lack of compliance with that will result in interventions, behavioral and conduct both. And so again, we will have the ability of the policy to just be able to step in more quickly, versus kind of being the agreement and directive, it will now be becoming a university wide policy. And then to talk a little bit about increasing the residential community, what I wanna do is kind of share a little bit more about how we plan to do that very safely and how we have strategically tried to arrive at at a reasonable de-densification or redensification. And so John kind of alluded to this, but we did. We started with the number of plumbing fixtures on each floor, each corridor in a suite or apartment on campus. And then we determined for every one of those, we could assign up to four students. But then once we had kind of that occupancy number, we also then looked at the layout of students and tried to create the right occupancy for each room on the floor corridor and suite apartment so that students were had appropriate separation and there would be less of an opportunity for the crossing of students in their paths. So in the spring, we also are making a shift where our floors will be primarily single sex designation, which is a difference from how we typically operate. That will eliminate travel to other floors or corridors for use of bathrooms. And we know that there is a demand for known roommates to be together, sometimes family members, sometimes close family friends, that sort of things. So we have factored in about 20% double occupancy as an option, but most rooms, the vast majority will be singles designated here in the spring. And the students will use an online room selection that they will be able to select their own room. So we won't force anyone to live with a roommate that they don't want to. We also plan to do what we're calling kind of some social or some social contact management. So we want to promote social bubbles or teams that will give students a safe social outlet. And what we wanna do is we're not going to require that of students because we know that a lot of students coming here haven't engaged here before. So what we wanna do is get them here and get them to see the benefits of finding their social group to be a part of and to be able to select a group that they're comfortable with. But then that way they'll be able to interact with that group and have that engagement and hopefully bring down the resistance to go out and do other things. And so we think that that, and that has been a highly successful approach on many other campuses that we've learned from, again, taking a lot of cues from other campuses. We'll also do limited but highly managed on campus events and campus recreation. So there will be less of it because we have to kind of distance those things and the approach and putting it all together will take a different bandwidth from staff. But ultimately we will have those on campus events and campus recreation opportunities for students. Let's see, I also think it's important to mention that students' mental health and their wellbeing has been really top of mind. We just recently got back some feedback from students about how their semester has gone thus far. 46% of our undergraduate students indicated that they are feeling isolated or lonely over half of the days or most days. 60% are reporting nervousness, anxiety or on edge over half of the days or most of their days. And 40%, I'm sorry, 44% are feeling depressed or hopeless over half the days or most days. So again, all of this indicates a need to bring students together in a safe way but to enhance that engagement which would be important to their mental health and wellbeing. And then the last thing I just wanna reinforce, honestly, what John also said, which is we will continue to lead with education and use data informed effective public health strategies but we're gonna continue to partner with our students because they've really been big influencers in all of this and they've been very helpful and we'll continue to partner and work with the town of Amherst. I think really proud of the work and I've said this before, I'm fairly new to the institution and I really am impressed with the way in which the university and the town work together to address the issues, to communicate constantly about what the trends we're seeing and how to be responsive and best address those together. So looking forward to those continued partnerships. And now I think I will turn things over to Jeff Hescock and Ann Becker. Thanks Brandy. You wanna switch over to the next side please and then the next side. So good evening everyone. My name is Jeff Hescock, Executive Director of Environmental Health and Safety and Emergency Management. And I'll co-present with Ann Becker. The one thing I first and foremost wanna say is we have a great working partnership with the town of Amherst from Amherst Fire Department, Emergency Management, Police Department and the Public Health Department. You know what I mean? And it's that strength of collaboration has been tremendous from pre-COVID to now how we're working with COVID and it's these daily calls and daily phone calls that Ann can talk to with the Public Health Director there in Amherst that makes that partnership extremely strong. As John mentioned, you know, we are one of the largest asymptomatic testing centers here in the state conducting more than 120,000 over 130,000 now since we put together this presentation. That's about average of 12,500 weekly. And the vast majority of those students are ones that are living in the town of Amherst in our local areas. So as part of that, the students have been coming in regularly since the start of the semester. The operation could not be possible if it wasn't with the great support from our students. Every day it takes about 60 students to support our operations there at the Public Health Promotion Center down at the Mullen Center. And that has really served as our central coordinating spot for our public health response here during the fall semester. I'm doing COVID tests, having a flu vaccine clinic there. It has really served as, like I saying, as somebody comes in and gets one test, then they're getting their shot and they're on their way. And again, 50 plus students from the School of Public Health that focus on our contact tracing element, which Ann will speak to, and then the 300 plus students from the College of Nursing from doing registration to doing your observed testing. Again, 80% of our staff every day is from our students in our own backyard that are coming together to help support this. If you go to the next slide, please. So here's just a quick overview, just a little picture as part of it. But for everybody who's been in the Mullen Center before, we have really transformed that concourse into our testing operations on the concourse. And then the upstairs location in the Massachusetts, one we've really commandeered kind of all the office spaces there. So we are one team every day working together because if it's testing, contact tracing and isolation and quarantine, it's three legs of the stool and each leg needs to be working collaboratively together. And that's what happens every day in that one location. If you can just go to the next slide, please. So the next thing is testing transparency. From day one, one of the big aspects that we do is we're doing the testing, but we wanna share our results with the public, similar to what the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is doing where their daily reports, what they do, we do a similar fashion by developing this testing dashboard. From looking at our cumulative tests to our cumulative positive cases, to the rate, to our new positive cases, to the seven day cumulative positivity rate, you can see from a transparent perspective of kind of where we are as a Commonwealth, excuse me, where we are as the Commonwealth's flagship campus at UMass Amherst and what we're able to do. We also provide as part of that a detailed case analysis that UMass students on campus, so the faculty that live off campus, staff that live off campus, and that's on the right side of the slide to be able to give more information. The other thing which we're including on the dashboard, as you can see is the total number of tests each day, if you wanted to look at, the total number of positive cases and then our testing turnaround time. Contact tracing and isolation and quarantine are so key, but how quickly we can get the test results to be able to get these individuals to reach out to them and you'll hear from Anne of how quickly we are reaching out to them. We have a turnaround time of 24 hours of getting those test results. You can see that on that page which is extremely beneficial from a public health perspective, like I was saying, as soon as we get those test results in, our contact tracing team work seven days a week as well as our isolation and quarantine team to reach out to those folks and get the appropriate people into isolation or into quarantine. If you could go to the next slide, please. So as part of this, I was saying as we've conducted over 126,000 tests, just shy of 100,000 of those tests are our students living in the Amherst area. Approximately a little bit more than 8,000 of those have been undergraduate students have been tested. So we have seen tremendous support from our off-campus students that have been coming in and you'll see this in the next slide when I compare ourselves to other universities. Next slide, please. So one of the next things we always do is we always benchmarks ourselves against other universities that are out there, right? We look at our big flagship campuses similar to us across the country to gather any lessons learned to see what we're doing now or what we can do from the spring. As you can see on this slide, UMass Damhurst has the lowest positivity rate amongst these universities but that's not the most important thing that's there. If you can look at the number of tests that we've done, if we compare ourselves to some of the states, UConn, Penn State, Maryland, Rutgers, they brought back many more people on campus and are not testing to the level of the off-campus students that we are. I can't understate that enough or overstate that enough. We are testing our off-campus students more than any of these universities are and they brought back more students on campus. And additionally, if you look at Ohio State or Indiana University, they brought back more people on their campus as well and their primary focus has been the students that have lived on campus and only a few that live off campus. From our public health measures and strategy that we've put in place now and what we're complaining to do on the spring is for the entire UMass Amherst community, not just the campus. And our numbers demonstrate that as we're continuing to try to do what's in the best public interest of not only our campus, but the Amherst community to protect the citizens around. The other thing I mentioned, as we continue to evaluate, the Commonwealth's, there's been a little bit of an uptick in the Commonwealth in terms of positive cases over the last couple of weeks. We've also seen, if you looked at our dashboard recently, we've seen an uptick in cases that includes both students that live off campus as well as staff members as well. And one of the things that is very interesting that the Commonwealth produces now in their weekly report or daily reports is the positivity rate with higher education tests and then without higher education tests. So if you're looking at the Commonwealth's update from today, the positivity rate is 2.35%. And that takes into account both higher education tests and then all other tests. In their report now they also eliminate if higher education was not doing tests and the positivity rate would be over 4%, 4.02. So the likes of us and other large universities doing the amount of testing that we're doing is not only protecting and helping our UMass, our campus, but our campus community. And like I said before, is we're proud to work closely with the town and all that we're doing and nothing more than to pass it over to Ann now because she is really the one that is collaborating extensively with the town of Amherst each day as we do our contact tracing and isolation and quarantine. Ann, I'll pass it over to you. Thank you. Hi everybody. My name is Ann Becker. I'm the Public Health Director and I'm also faculty in the College of Nursing working with our students here at the Public Health Promotion Center. And I also work with the contact tracers and we have a team that works seven days a week on campus. We're in the Mullins five days a week and then we have remote contact tracing and case management every Saturday and Sunday. So we really just don't take a break from this. We want to support our students all the time and we're responding to any positive tests that may come our way either through the Mullins asymptomatic testing program or also we're testing students on campus who may have symptoms or contacts at university health services as well. And we're testing faculty and staff as well. And so whenever we get a positive test we get to work incredibly quickly. Our median response time from the time that we get notice of a positive test to when we've contacted these cases and done our case investigation is 2.1 hours. It's generally much faster than what the state average is and we're able to do that for multiple reasons. We get very quick lab results even before the state system would do that. And so we get direct notification from our laboratory on campus and or from the Broad Institute who does our asymptomatic testing. And so that allows us really rapid response that makes it as ideal a situation in a bad situation really but it's as good as it can get in a bad setting. So we support students on who live and reside on campus and those who are also residents in Amherst or Pelham or Sunderland or Hadley or wherever they may be we are supporting all of our students wherever they take up their residence and we work with them closely. We work, I've been working in public health on the university for over 18 years and I have worked closely in that time with the town of Amherst Health Department throughout all of those years. And so we have a lot of depth in terms of our relationship and that's really been incredibly helpful in being able to respond and to work and to address issues that because there's always students or maybe they have family members or it's faculty who live in town and we're constantly communicating with each other on and coordinating our response and the best way to approach any kind of case that we come across. So next slide, please. I almost tried to advance it myself. So we conduct, when we get a positive case we conduct a really thorough case investigation. We have registered nurses who do this who work with us as well as public health students graduate and undergraduate and faculty who help support this program. So a case investigation really involves finding out everything we can. We look forward, we look backward where the exposure was and how we can be proactive in reaching out to contacts who might have been involved in the initial exposure and who may have been exposed as a result of this positive case. We learn about their living situation if they're on campus or if they're off campus we ask about their ability to be safe and have food and all the needed health and medical and mental health support that we can try to provide. And we have an amazing team of isolation coordinator quarantine coordinators and public health students who do daily wellness calls and anything that is of concern we bump it up into professional staff and nurses and to the health staff at university health services to follow up on anything that may be concerning. It is not easy to be 18 or 20 years old and to be asked to spend two weeks alone in a room. There's nothing easy about that. And if we don't take it lightly we really want to make sure that students are successful to protect the community but also for them. It's very, very hard to be, like I said, that age and to be asked to not leave your room for two weeks. And so what the students we've found incredible support they understand even if so many of them and I feel so thankful that so far most have done really well have had mild illnesses or been asymptomatic. So from their point of view it's even harder for them to grasp how to stay in a room for two weeks but they do it. They do it because we have peer support and education and we build relationships with them to help them be successful. We work with the Dean of Students Office and with the counseling center whatever they may need we try to provide it for them plus four great meals a day from our dining commons when they stay on our campus facilities. And so with all this and we give them written instructions, verbal instructions and we reinforce it with all this we really do our best to make this as best a possible scenario in a bad situation. And our students I just have been so amazed how understanding they are when they get that call and they do it for us and it's been challenging for them. So thank you. I think next person is public health messaging. So I'll take it from there. Thank you, Ann. Yeah. I'm Nancy Buffon associate vice chancellor of university relations and I think Brandy and Ann have both touched on this. Actually everybody has so far just to how important our students are to this entire endeavor. And that was especially true with the public health messaging campaign. We knew that we needed their feedback and their input to make sure that the overall message and how we were talking to students was the right direction. And the feedback that we got from our initial efforts was really that the students did not wanna be told what to do. They didn't want an order from the administration. They wanted to be seen and they feel like they are a part of the solution. And so that's really what drove how we approached the public health messaging campaign. So if we can go to the next slide we leaned into a campaign that was all about education and compliance. And we came up with these two taglines that we use one of them whenever it's appropriate. So it's either it's hard, but it helps or it's weird, but it works. And so we went to where students are. And so looking on campus, we were focused on the residence halls, dining commons, classrooms, off campus. We worked with local landlords and property managers to get posters into the apartment complexes. We use the outreach welcome bags that Tony and Sally will touch on in a little bit. We even had a banner on the town common for a couple of weeks. Let me go to the next slide. So I'm just gonna show you a really small slice of what we've done with the campaign. These are the messages to the students who are living off campus. And it was really about it's okay to stay home. If you're, you know, keep your gathering small if you're having any gatherings. And if we can go to the next slide, we focused on wearing masks. And you can see that we actually just updated the mask messaging late last week to reflect the governor's latest orders. So that's really how, you know, the messages that we were focusing to our students who are living off campus. So this was all through posters and flyers and other printed materials signage across the campus. And like I said, off campus. We also utilize social media if we can go to the next slide. Thank you. So again, this is a really small slice of what we have done across all of our platforms. I didn't include LinkedIn, but we utilize that as well. We've posted videos, we've done Instagram stories, trying to really talk to the students everywhere that they are. And that was a really critical part of this campaign. We can go to the next slide. So this is some of our social media metrics as of the end of October. I'm sorry, I didn't put a date on here. But really having quite a reach, 233,000 views on social media, over 10,000 engagements, that's people liking it, commenting. So really people were reacting very positively to what we put out. We can go to the next slide. We also looked at how his behavior perhaps changing due to some of the messaging. And so we look at all of the work as a whole. So the work that Jeff and Anne are doing and all of their students that are working in the Public Health Motion Center, the work coming out of Student Affairs and Campus Life, all of it together, we've really seen, along with the messaging, strong compliance around testing and contact tracing. We've also looked at what student behavior is like off campus. And so this is as of last week. Noise complaints are down. For those police reports that indicate the size of the gathering when police do need to respond, we're seeing on average that there's around nine students who are at a gathering. And the largest parties have really been around 30 people, which is really quite a difference from in the past. Same thing with our ambulance transports, those numbers are significantly down. So as we look now to what the winter break in the spring semester, we were already gearing up for messaging as we will have more students on campus thinking about new ways that we can utilize. It's weird, but it's work and it works and it's hard, but it helps. So at that, I think I'll pause there and I will let Tony and Sally talk about the outreach efforts that have been going on since August. Great, and I'll start us off and then I'll be co-presenting with Tony Maroulas, my colleague in University Relations. And to start out with, I think that I'd say that my background, I was an Associate Director at University Health Services when H1N1 went down. So I have experience there and I also have two degrees in public health. So as an Associate Dean working in the off-campus venue, this is right up my alley, thinking about prevention, intervention, communication and working together with this team in terms of the intersection of our students and the community. So I'll tell you a little bit about some of the outreach and education that we've been doing, if we can get to the next slide. Thank you. So I'd start out by saying not much of this is new. It is work that we have done on an ongoing basis looking at quality of life issues and students living in the local community. What we have done is take everything that we do and turn the volume up on it. So we have a number of student groups that are doing outreach and education, that being team positive presence. They're a group of undergraduates who do a lot of the outreach, the positivity messages, the direct communication over social media. And we added a new group this fall called the Peer Health Ambassador Network. So we invited other students who are doing peer education around health initiatives to come together to take that work further. And that's been tremendously successful. I get the opportunity, not many of my student affairs colleagues do, but I get the opportunity to send broadcast emails to all students living off campus. That includes graduate and undergraduates. And in those emails, I will highlight local public health updates, resources, timely tips. A lot of it focuses on living off campus in the time of COVID. This is new for all of us. Those of us that are adults, it's created some adjustments. But imagine a student coming to live off campus for the first time and going to the grocery store and not realizing from eight to nine is the senior citizen hour, right? Like, why can't I go in? So all those sorts of things that have to be an adjustment for them and that. So we educate on that. My emails are timely, they're poignant and they pull together a lot of information. And I'm really happy that I have really good open rates. So students are reading them. So that's been super critical. We send those to all the landlords as well as the Greek house directors and the on-call group. So we copy folks so that they can see what is being sent and then they can cut and paste and copy the message to their audiences as well. We do every Monday at one o'clock, we have what we call the on-call meeting. And so that is our first responders, the Dean of Students staff, Greek affairs, university relations. We talk about what happened over the weekend, what are some trends, what are we planning for? That's where police reports are shared, where follow-up conversations are planned and who will do that follow-up. That group has been meeting for years and continues to meet on a regular basis. We met throughout the summer so that we could plan and be mindful. We'll also share all the outreach that's happening there as well. Every Wednesday at the Mullen Center, Team Positive Presence and the Peer Health Ambassador Network has been having a presence, talking with students, sharing the messages, the health communications, any updates. So for example, this week we know that last week the governor came out with new mandates for the size of social gatherings, a mass mandate throughout the state, as well as the curfew hours. We wanna make sure that all of our students are aware of that. The university sent a broadcast email to the entire university community. Thanks, Jeff, for that. But we'll be down there this week, three days a week interacting with students, reminding them of that and also asking them what they're thankful for as we think about the Thanksgiving break coming up and preparing for that. We meet biweekly with the Greek house directors. We do have 11 chapter houses, zone chapter houses in the town of Amherst. Not all of them are occupied, but we meet with them every two weeks to talk about how things are going, to update them on the university plans. They've been tremendously helpful to us during this time in helping to bring recommendations and to help minimize problems there. We also do tenant neighbor landlord Zoom and in-person problem solving meetings. Those are usually based on a concern that is raised, whether through the COVID concern line or through a complaint, through a neighbor or sometimes through a student saying, our neighbors hate us. We've tried to talk to them and they won't talk to us. We need some help. So those have been really proactive and have been beneficial. And we also do knock and talks, which I'll talk about those next. What you'll see on the slide are just some of the examples of the materials we put in welcome bags. We gave welcome bags starting in August to all of the apartment complexes in Amherst and Sunderland for distribution to tenants and we gave them out door to door. So those were critical part of our knock and talk efforts. So those are some of the materials that are in there. Next slide please. So what is a knock and talk? A knock and talk is actually, I think the language is stolen from the police department. Bill Laramie, officer Laramie uses it a lot. And the idea is that you knock on the door and then you talk to people. So we like it, we like rhyming things. Really our knock and talks are based on a culture of compliance. We're all in this together and compliance helps all of us. We emphasize appropriate behavior in a pandemic. This is new for everybody. Every single one of us is making adjustments in our behavior. And we're having to continually make adjustments. Now we're moving indoors. It's colder, we're in indoor spaces more. So those are the sorts of messages that we communicate with students. Big focus has been information on safe gatherings, having 10 people or fewer, the physical distancing, masks, staying within your pod or your social bubble, helping them navigate those conversations with housemates. What about guests? What if people want to have guests? What's the cleaning going to be like? Are you going to wear masks when you're in the house together? Those sorts of conversations, they need help with. Our walk and talks are educational in nature. When the university started really strongly encouraging students to come in for off-camp, come in for testing twice a week, we were out there saying, have you been in there yet? Did you know where you go? Do you know how to do it? And now every door we go to, they're like, yep, we're getting tested. Yep, we got it. Thank you. So reinforcing those messages. Our team is diverse and has a lot of different partners involved. So I'm going to turn it over to Tony, who's going to tell you a little bit about what the team looks like. All right, next slide please. Okay, thank you. And so I'm Tony Morales, Executive Director of External Relations and University Events. And just gonna let you, two quick slides from me. Our knock and talk team is diverse. And I think it's kind of like, our town-gown relations have always been really robust and oftentimes, it's a very strong relationship that we have, but I think our knock and talk team is where we really, really shine. And so our group is a mix of police, inspection services, university relations, student affairs. Now, which knew this year are COVID ambassadors, the team positive presence. And of course, the newest member of it all, Winston, the Amherst Police Comfort Dog. I was out last week, so there is no picture of me and Winston alone. Nancy has taken that out, which is a shame because it's great. But I do want to throw out one big thing out of all of these names up here. And John Thompson will call us a well-functioning team. And I really think we are, but this year, I think particular notice has to go out to Kat Newman, who is both with UMass off-campus student life and also the town of Amherst's COVID ambassador. And she has just been amazing in keeping us together and really strategizing and coordinating a lot of what we do. So between her and Bill Laramie, I think we want to give a big, big shout out. If we can go to the next slide please. So we've been all over town, which is not unusual. But this year, as Sally said, we've really turned the volume up. And so we have been everywhere where there are student housing throughout the community. Here is just a sample of what we've done. This is pretty comprehensive. I think we might be missing just a few spots. As many of you on the town council know, four of you joined us during our Halloween outreach along with Representative Dom and our COVID ambassadors. We were able to go to over 300 houses in town. I think we had something like 200 student interactions, 119 interactions with community members because we weren't discriminating between the houses we were going to meet everyone. And it was really a wonderful, wonderful day that everyone got to see. But in kind of just, I think in a microcosm, one of the things that we have seen throughout all of these knock and talks, particularly this year, has been there's receptivity by our students when we see them that both to our public health messaging, we're always surprised, in fact, just how on top of it they are, we're asking them about testing and they're doing even more than what we're asking for often. So it's a really great experience. And I'm glad a lot of you were able to share it with us. And so with that, I'll pass it along. I think it's Evelyn's turn next. Good evening, everyone. My name is Evelyn Ashley and I am the dean of students. Next slide, please. So as we discussed, the community agreement was not a policy, but an agreement that was connected to the student code of conduct in that the code of conduct is established to make sure students understand what it means to live in community and how to be responsible as they are part of our community. And so going forward, that will be codified, which will make it easier for the office of student conduct and community standards to track violations of that particular policy. Next slide, please. So when it comes to the enforcement of the code of student conduct, when a possible violation is reported to the office of student conduct and community standards, staff in that office follow up with students to make sure they understand what policy may have been violated and if it is appropriate, they are given sanctions that will help them to understand how to make sure that they are not making the same violation again. Many of the violations related to the community agreement fall into the disruptive behavior category, and I can talk a little bit about how many we've had this semester a little bit later on. Our goal is always to educate students in a manner that allows them to reflect on their behavior. What we have seen is that most students who really do want to get it right. And so when staff is having conversations, students are asking questions about what is it that I did wrong? How did I misinterpret this so that they don't have the same violation in the future? Next slide, please. So some of the violations of the code of student conduct are reckless behavior, harassment, the disruptive behavior. That's our noise disturbances or disorderly conduct, and then also our underage alcohol misconduct. So those are the examples of violations. The next slide, please. So when we talk about sanctions under our code of student conduct, those are listed. We have two types of sanctions that are assigned. We always assigned a status to our students so that they understand where they stand with the university. And then we also assign educational options for students to complete. So that might be having a student complete a module related to their behavior. So the good being a good neighbor module is one that has been assigned to our students along with there's an alcohol violation assigning an educational sanction that speaks to that particular behavior is also what might be assigned. I know folks are interested in numbers, so that's what I will share in relation to, I wanna make sure that folks understand that this is behavior as a whole. So our violations related to the community agreement have not necessarily been pulled out of the numbers that I'm going to share, so I wanna make sure that that's very clear. From August 1st to October 30th, we've had 124 referrals to the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards involving 290 students. 76 of those incidents involved off-campus students and 48 of those incidents involve students who live on campus. The most common violations are the disruptive behavior. Like I said, the noise disturbances. 67 of the referrals that we've had have come from the Amherst Police Department. So we are definitely working very closely with the police when students are referred to our office to make sure that we are following up with them, that they know that we are taking their behavior seriously and that we want them to be here, we want them to behave appropriately. And then we're trying to make sure that they have the tools and the information to do just what it is that we expect of them. Next slide. And with that, that's really, that's it. So thank you everyone. That concludes the formal part of the presentation. We're gonna take some questions, but to be clear, there's even more we could have gone into on the academic side of the house on the COVID medication measures that are taking place physically on campus. It's extensive, but again, the invitation to these cohorts of students is just that, an invitation. We don't know how many will take us up on the invitation so we don't have hard and fast numbers for what the spring will look like. Just for a point of reference for the fall, we had about 2,300 off-campus students enrolled in essential face-to-face classes and about 600 on-campus students. We're in the process of the course enrollment period right now which concludes towards the end of November and then we'll have a much better sense of what the spring looks like in the face of numbers. And just the final thing I would say before we go to questions is, we're adaptable, we're gonna modify what we're doing based on what the public health situation is both locally and statewide and nationally. And so we'll see how things evolve but this is the plan as it stands now. So with that, if we still have time, I know we've taken a fair amount of your time we're happy to take questions. Oh, I'd like people from the council, if you have questions, please raise your hand. Mindy Johannake, you have your hand up. Yes, thank you. First I wanna thank everyone at UMass that came tonight for the presentation and I wanna thank you for testing both on-campus and off-campus students and making that a requirement next semester. I really do think that's an essential part of keeping our town and the students healthy and safe. I believe the UMass agreement for this past semester was that if you lived on campus, you couldn't leave campus. And so my question relates to that, whether that, if I'm correct with that, whether that will remain the same for those that are on campus because bringing students back to campus even with that testing obviously helps you guys but it doesn't necessarily help our town's businesses that are struggling to survive right now if the students can't leave campus. So we know Amherst College had that rule and then they set up ways for students on campus to be able to accept deliveries from town businesses and they actually also did things where town businesses will come in to cater events. And so I'm wondering what the university is doing to allow students who live on campus to patronize local businesses, especially if that agreement remains the same and the policy remains the same that they can actually leave campus. So I could just start with that. I mean, we don't have I think the intention or even the capability of restricting students from moving on and off campus. We wanna encourage students to remain on campus unless they have very specific reasons to leave campus. But of course, a lot of our students have jobs. A lot of our students are engaged in engagement and other activities in the community. So that's a difficult thing for us. But from our perspective to the extent at which students can be contained in their social pods is gonna ensure their sort of safety and well-being for everybody. Brandy, do you wanna add anything there? No, I think you did a good job. We are part of the reason why we're going to enhance some of the engagement opportunities is so students have more to do on campus as well. So again, we're gonna be encouraging them to stay close but certainly we can't guarantee though they won't go into the communities. So. There was a second part of that question which was really around engaging with Amherst businesses and particularly food businesses. And I wondered if you wanted to comment on that. Well, the students who were gonna be living on campus are going to have meal plans. And that's pretty standard for on-campus students. So I don't know honestly what sort of history we have with on-campus students engaging with students with businesses from a food perspective. I assume off-campus students will frequent town businesses. Tony, my colleague might have some more perspective on that. Yeah, thanks, John. I do actually. I know that all of this is weather dependent and unfortunately with restrictions and with safety protocols put into place, indoor dining is going to be difficult during the winter. But certainly when students did come back when the semester was in full bloom and in the outdoor dining in downtown was put into place it's my understanding that through Gabrielle at the bid and Claudia at the chamber that businesses did see the student traffic. So, I mean, I can point out the first weekend and I don't have those numbers in front of me and I apologize because this was something that was at the top of my mind before just a couple of weeks ago but the percentages were actually rather heartening for those early weeks in the semester. Again, I think our students have long been consumers of our downtown businesses and all the businesses within the area. I think they appreciate the local economy and our participants in there. So, I think that they are back and participating in the local economy is a good thing. Alyssa, you have your hand up. Yes, thank you. I have a comment on that. Yeah, we appreciate that things are as bad as they are in downtown Amherst, except they're great, right? Cause we're doing great things but they are as difficult as they are with no restriction on students going downtown. So, bear that in mind, right? And so, there hasn't been a restriction like there has been for Amherst College. So, thank you very much for clarifying that for that question. We did submit some questions ahead of time which I realized you may not have seen prior to your presentation and so I'm hoping Lynn will share those with you again later and we can get some answers. But one in particular that concerns me and you won't be surprised to hear this based on previous governor's orders and the level of detail that we're in them. You guys recently sent out an email that said based on the governor's restriction that says that private residences, gatherings must end by and dispersed by 930. Yes, absolutely. Indoor gatherings are 10 or fewer, outdoor are 25. We recommend that all social gatherings should be in groups of 10 or fewer and all in attendance should wear face coverings and maintain physical distance when possible. That's not actually what the governor's order says. The governor's order actually says if you can't maintain six feet apart inside, you can't have 10 people. So, I'm not clear why that's not being explained to people. It says a gathering shall violate this provision when no matter the number of participants present, conditions or activities are such that it is not reasonably possible for our participants to maintain this degree of separation. Unless it's a fraternity or sorority, only four students are living together. So, that means that leaves six people that need to be six feet apart and preferably with face coverings, but definitely six feet apart. So, I'm not sure why that's not being explained. And so, I appreciate all the amazing work you're doing going out and talking to people. But it feels like once again, part of the governor's order is being soft-pedaled as a recommendation when in fact it's a fact. And so, maybe you could elaborate a bit on that. Jeff, do you wanna touch on that? Yeah, so I think as part of it, there's no, you know, our intent was to distribute what the governor's message was as part of copying from quite honestly, the press announcement that received and then Sally and Tony and their team, as they've been saying, kind of breaking it down even further for the off-campus students. So, it was an all broadcast email, right? So, we wanted to make sure all faculty, staff and students got the information and then kind of targeted messages came down to the students and their gatherings because it was like the 25, we don't want the 25 off-campus. You know what I mean? We've always said 10 or fewer and that's due to the party's smart registration. So, as part of it, you know, it's that broadcast email like I was saying and then the targeted messages to the group. So, it wasn't, there's no intent to, just other than just sharing the information and then the student affairs and the UR team working closely with the off-campus students. Yeah, and I would just say, we wanna be clear. We have no intention of soft peddling any of the orders of the governor. And in fact, you know, some of our recommendations and requirements have been more stringent. So, if we, you know, maybe we need some more smithing on that. So, thanks for pointing that out. We'll look at it and if we can clarify it more down the road, we will. Thank you. Just to clarify the questions we're sent and received, there's additional questions that need to be answered after tonight. I'm sure that the university will be glad to do that. Shalini, you have your hand up. Yeah, I was wondering if you looked into research that shows that people are motivated to take precautions when it's benefiting others. And I believe there's some recent studies that have been done to show, especially in the pandemic, that people were more willing to take action when you tell them that this is how it's gonna affect other people. Like, for example, the kids in our schools. And I know that little kids, they made flyers or posters and they were in the common and said, students, please be careful because it affects us. And so messaging like that, I mean, to me was very powerful, but then I went to look up and there is research to show that messaging that in that way would be more powerful. And I was wondering if you considered incorporating that in some of your messaging, which is very cool, by the way. Well, that's part of the theme of the hard but it helps campaign that it might be challenging for you to undertake this, but it does help people. Tony, did you wanna touch on that? Yeah, I think that's a big part of our knock and talk discussion when we're seeing students is about keeping the community safe, telling them that we've done a good job so far and we wanna keep doing a good job. And our students have been responding to it. I think it's born out in the numbers. Nancy brought up before that the average party side has been nine and this is prior to this new spiking cases in the governor's new order. We have advised that students stay under 10. They've listened to that and they have listened to it because we have talked about a message of care and compassion for the community. So I think it's there in everything we do and this is something that has gone through with the COVID ambassadors as well. One more thing if I can, because our cracker jack cat Newman just sent me a text to remind me about some of the other business stuff that we're doing in our welcome bags, the bid and chamber worked with us to create a little magnet with a QR code. So we have been collaborating with the bid and chamber to get the messages out about local businesses. And I'm sorry, I forgot about that before because I've been on furlough for a week. So I just kind of forgotten a lot of things. So yes, Darcy of your end up. Yeah, I just wanted to comment that I find that your efforts have just been phenomenal and the testing and especially completing contact tracing in two hours is unbelievably wonderful. I mean, I just really appreciate the effort that has been put out. And the fact that as an institution you've adapted to this pandemic and really risen to the occasion, I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Are there any other comments or questions from the town council at this time? So let me just summarize by saying thank you for an enormously slow presentation in answering questions that even go beyond the ones we often hear. Again, this will be available. We can actually segment it and have it be available just as the UMass presentation and put it on our website that way and also provide it to you. A great deal of work has gone into the presentation. But much more importantly, a great deal of work has gone into UMass getting to where we are today. And they have met weekly with myself, with Paul, the police chief, the fire chief and other people from town as needed public health and so forth. Sometimes those meetings have not always been pleasant and sometimes there's been some tough conversations but UMass has really risen to the occasion and we want to thank you for joining us in helping to keep Amherst as safe as possible during this time. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for having us. We'll move on to public comment. And if those of you that would like to stay would who have been part of this one to stay we can move you over to the audience side as well or you can join us on Amherst Media. And I want to point out that I guess on Amherst Media live streaming you can actually see the names of the other people who are in attendance. This is a new feature. Did I get that right, Athena and Paul? Yep, we're working on it while we have a shared screen up you should be able to see the list of attendees. Okay, great. So I'm looking at public comment. Please raise your hand. We have significant public comment and we are already running late. So I'm going to ask you if at all possible to keep your public comment to two minutes. And I'm going to start with Greg Briggs, please. Please enter the room, state your name, where you live and share your comments. You need to unmute Greg. Greg can, we can't hear you. I want to just point out that if you are in the conference, the Zoom conference then you need to raise your hand obviously if you're calling by phone you press nine on a star nine on your telephone. You can take the screen down now, Sean. Thank you. Okay, Greg, can you hear us? Okay, we're having trouble with that. So let me move to Esalda Ortega. Please state your name and where you live. Esalda Ortega Bustamante, Amherst resident. Please proceed. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Good evening. I applaud the work of the Pioneer Valley Worker Center on behalf of immigrant and migrant workers and essential industries and urge you to please support the wage and tip theft bylaw and the responsible employer public construction contracts and agreements for tax relief bylaw. The majority of Amherst residents are unaware of the precarious living conditions of many of our local essential workers. In April, several of us volunteers along with Cooley Dickinson Hospital shared with the town manager and other elected officials the crisis conditions faced by these residents in the pandemic. These emergency needs included loss of income, food access, housing rental bills piling up transportation barriers, healthcare issues, childcare, parents of young children still working who didn't have childcare, technology, connectivity issues and language barriers. Compounding these largely unanswered needs, COVID-19 afflicted some of these local essential workers and their families in August. And they did not have access to COVID testing and to transportation. And again, we reached out to the town and to elected officials. While some progress was made, much more remains to be done to support these workers who make our economy run and whose children are US citizens get largely marginalized from town life. Professor Tom Jurovich from the Labor Studies and Sociology departments at UMass has documented the need for the bylaws before you tonight. I quote Dr. Professor Jurovich. Quote, Amherst needs to pass a wage left ordinance because what happened in Amherst last year should never have happened and should never happen again. Nine undocumented and driven workers worked in Amherst 10 hours a day, six days a week for five weeks in a row. Collectively they were owed 50,173 for their labor but they did not receive one penny in wages. These were not workers in the agricultural fields of the valley or in one of the local restaurants where wage theft routinely takes place. These were construction workers hanging drywall at the North Square apartments. The Marquis project and North Amherst built by the socially conscious beacon properties with over $2.5 million in tax breaks provided by the town of Amherst. Workers had to wait for 10 months to receive less than 50% of their wages. Beacon communities was never held responsible for this illegal and immoral activity. It shouldn't take bad publicity to shame a developer to do the right thing. It should be part of the bylaws that govern what happens in our community which is why we need to support the proposed anti-wage theft ordinance in Amherst. We must ensure that no workers toiling in our community will ever again have to face what the workers at North Square had to experience. End quote. Many on this council support most local development projects. Any such development should include a percentage of local hires and higher people of color as detailed in the second bylaw being proposed. If for profit companies are benefiting from tax credits and now from reduced regulations for your recent decisions the least you can require from them is not to steal from workers, to hire local workers and to help support a backbone of this economy. Thank you, good evening. Thank you for your comments. Cedric de Leon, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Good evening. My name is Cedric de Leon. My wife, Emily, our son Ellis and I live in a house in the corner of Cottage and Chestnut streets just behind the high school here in Amherst. I've come today to speak in support of the wage and tip theft bylaw and the responsible employer bylaw. Each of these measures is personal to me. I was born and raised in an immigrant working class community of color. Many of my family members have worked in the lower rungs of the hospitality industry for decades. Through hard work and sacrifice, my parents were able to send my sister and me to college and then to graduate school. I stand before you now, a professor of sociology and director of the labor center at UMass Amherst. Many of the victims of wage theft and job discrimination in Amherst are people who look like my mom and dad. For 10 hours a day, six days a week and five weeks straight in 2019, nine immigrant workers from Honduras hung drywall in what became the North square apartments and yet were paid not a single penny of the $50,000 they were owed. We need laws to deter contractors from ever doing this to people in our town again. Wage theft is immoral, offensive and unworthy of a democratic society. Now, while people of color are hired all the time to work for starvation wages, we are systematically shut out of more lucrative employment such as public sector construction work. I can tell you from personal experience how humiliating it was for me to be excluded from better paying working class jobs when I was a young adult because I didn't have the right last name. My parents especially struggled to get good jobs only to be turned away. They still live in the same public housing project I grew up in. I remember when my mom called to tell me that she had earned $800 before taxes for 100 hours of work. It was she said the most she had earned in a pay period her entire life. Passing the diverse workforce provision will incentivize contractors and developers to hire women and people of color like my mom for better blue collar jobs. For all these reasons, I ask that you please pass these bylaws. Join North Hampton, East Hampton, Springfield, Worcester, Boston, and so many other cities and towns throughout Massachusetts that have passed similar measures. I thank Pat DeAngelis, Mandi Joe Hanneke and Kathy Shone for their sponsorship of these bylaws and Lisa Clausen and the Regional Council of Carpenters for their leadership in fighting wage theft and diversifying the trades. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Thomas Corcoran, please state your name and where you live. Can you hear me? Yes. Can you hear me? Yes, hello, my name is Thomas Corcoran. I live at 950 North Pleasant Street in Amherst. I'm speaking in support of the passage for the two wage theft bylaws presented before the city council. Tonight I address the council not only as a resident of the town but as a former building trades worker. Prior to arriving in Amherst, I worked as an electrician in New York City. While I enjoyed the benefits of union membership, wage theft occurred regularly on many of the worksites where I was employed. Cheating workers out of state mandated wages robs them not only of what they deserve, it robs them of their dignity. By passing these bylaws, we can ensure that workers in our community receive just and timely compensation for their labor. I ask you to please vote yes on the two wage theft bylaws in order to protect workers in Amherst. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Jyoti Yair. I am sorry about mispronouncing your name. Please state your name and where you live. Thank you so much. My name is Jyoti Yair. I live in East Hampton now. I am a graduate student at UMass Amherst and I'm speaking in my capacity as such. I've been a graduate student for eight years now and lived in the area. I am also a union representative for the graduate employee organization. So I'm going to switch gears a little bit and draw your attention to the part of this meeting that I was most interested in, although I'm very happy to hear perspectives in support of the wage theft bill and I support that as well. However, I am here to express my astonishment, frankly, and concern about the acceptance and welcoming, apparently, of the UMass reopening plan. There is widespread concern and fear among graduate student workers who are people like me who teach the undergrads who are going to come back on campus. We have a lot of residential positions as well where people are in residential life. They have positions like ARDs and others. And I don't think that any one of us is satisfied that we will be safe with 60% of the undergraduate population coming back in the spring. And the main reason for this is that we have evidence now that COVID-19 spreads in an airborne fashion. And I have been part of some of the discussions that are occurring among departments at UMass and we're still talking about sanitizing surfaces and how often rooms have to be cleaned. But I think the fact of the matter is, and if we're honest with ourselves, I think we all know this. If we have too many people in a building and if we have exposure of instructors and students to each other for anything longer than 15 minutes at a time, I don't think it's possible at all to prevent a super spreading event or a series of super spreading events. I'm amazed that the town of Amherst is okay with this. And I don't think that's, I don't think that's not the opinion of the workers among us who have to come back. And I want to stress here that the graduate student workers are a very small part of a very large workforce. And a lot of us who have jobs that can't be done remotely, who have custodial jobs, who have lab jobs, various kinds of jobs that simply can't be done remotely, have to come back to campus. And I think for those of us who have a choice and who have jobs that can be done remotely, I think that we should have that option. And I don't think that bringing 60% of the undergrads back is going to leave that as a viable option for us. And I wanted that to be heard. And I thank you for giving me the opportunity to say that. Thank you for your comment. Zoe, you have your hand up. Please enter the room and state your name. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Lovely. Thank you so much. I am among several voices you have heard tonight already urging you to support the two wage theft bylaws. I've had colleagues even in like an office job have wages not be appropriately meted out to them for various reasons. And that's something that shouldn't happen to anyone regardless of what position they have. And especially not if they are being contracted by our town. So I would really strongly urge you to pass both of those bylaws. Thank you. Thank you very much for your comments. There's a Pioneer Valley Worker Center hand up. Your name and where you live. Hi, my name is Rose Bookbinder. Sorry, my kids just walked into the room. So I'm going to try to do my best here. I had planned on trying to speak a little earlier, but clearly that didn't happen. Okay, great, there you are. So my name is Rose Bookbinder. And I'm one of the co-directors and organizers at the Pioneer Valley Worker Center and also sit on the Hampshire Franklin Central Labor Council and the Western Mass Area Labor Federation. And we have large memberships from across the valley and in Amherst, but I personally reside in Haydenville, Massachusetts. And I first just want to thank the Amherst city counselors and all of you who have been leading this work to pass the wage theft bylaws. And I'm speaking in favor of those tonight. This law is needed more than ever as many workers are even more vulnerable as we are facing this global pandemic. And it's exciting to think that the town of Amherst will join dozens of other cities in town, sorry, a dozen other cities and towns across Massachusetts who have passed similar legislation. And I also just wanted to thank the Carpenters Union and the Western Mass Area Labor Federation for the great collaboration we've been able to do with all of you here at the city council. Each year, $700 million are stolen from Massachusetts, hold on a minute, $700 million are stolen from Massachusetts workers each year and workers win back less than 1% of that money on average. That means $280 million lost in GDP across the state and $13.5 million lost in taxes each year in Massachusetts. But I'd like to just take a moment to talk about what this looks like for a working family. I've sat down dozens of times over the last few years with restaurant workers and Amherst and other places across the Western Mass who tell me that they receive a flat rate of $500 a week for cooking in local restaurants. I then asked them how many hours they work a week and they tell me that they're working 65 hours a week. This means they're being paid $6.69 an hour. That means they're having $5.06 stolen each hour because our state minimum wage is $12.75. That means $328.90 a week, which if you do the math for 52 weeks, that's over $17,000 that's stolen from workers who sit down with us on a regular basis who work in back of the house. And many of those workers are immigrant workers, many of them are women and many of whom are providers for their family. And this wage theft by-law that we're speaking about tonight is so important for helping to create a level playing field for businesses and contractors in our town that are cheating and getting a competitive edge over those who are playing by the rules. We speak also to many restaurant owners and who talk about how this has just made the norm and while they wanna price their meals at a rate that will allow them to pay their workers a living wage, they are put at a competitive disadvantage to those who have normalized wage theft on a day-to-day basis. And passing these by-laws will give the town more tools to address problems that should they occur. And it's unfortunate that we're just talking about basic laws that have been won, but we clearly need cities and towns to be pushing for these by-laws in order to make sure that basic wage and hours laws are followed. And I really appreciate all of you who have stood up and are working to do this with us. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Again, I'd like to ask people with possible please keep your comments for two minutes and under. Terry Mullen, you have your hand up. Hi, can you hear me? My name is Terry Mullen, I'm at 58 Northeast Street. I am here today to also support the passing of the wage theft by-law as I was trying to learn about the financial indicator presentation to listen to y'all. One thing that I came across was really interesting article that explained that actually income and per capita income is a much better predictor of the bond rating. And so if we have emersed residents who aren't getting paid what they deserve, you could see that really precious debt rating go even lower maybe if we actually get that to happen. And this is like the big thing, right? Wealth is important in our society as much as we don't want to admit it. So I think it's really important to protect these workers and please pass this law. Thank you. Thank you for your comment, Terry. Karen Baker, please state your name and where you live. Hi, I am Karen Baker. I'm a Northampton resident and I was just eating a bite of cookie but Terry was quick, so I wasn't quite ready. Okay, swallowing that cookie. I live in Northampton. I've been a teacher in Amherst Regional School District since 2008 though. During that time I've been active in the union there and at the moment I'm part of the leadership of the Amherst Pelham Education Association, specifically the vice president. As is probably true for many here, I was shocked when I discovered a few years ago now that wage theft exists, let alone that it's so prevalent. How outrageous is that, that it's possible for an employer to get away with not paying someone and how awful to be that worker who has put in the work and discovered that you haven't been compensated for it. Businesses that behave this way should certainly not receive public money and we need to make sure of that. Frankly, businesses like that don't belong in Amherst. I understand that there are state laws against this but a local law that reinforces a state law and local oversight can be more meaningful and effective. Also businesses, companies and contractors that play by the rules pay employees properly, pay taxes, pay workers comp, should not have to compete against companies that violate wage and our rules. The town needs bylaws that give it tools to deploy if wage theft is found to have occurred. As has already been mentioned, my town of Northampton has passed such a measure covering business licenses, contracts and tax relief. It has experienced no legal challenges. This is also true for Eastampton, Springfield, Worcester, Lynn, Cambridge, Somerville, Boston, Chelsea, Medford and New Bedford. Please pass wage theft bylaws with a strong enforcement mechanism for all of our sakes and especially for the sakes of the workers who have the least financial and institutional power. Thank you for your leadership on this. For your comment, Kristina's Gerenj, I'm sorry to misstate your name, please correct me. That's fine, can you hear me? Yes. Great, thank you. Good evening with thanks to the council, Kristina's Gerenj for Animal Defenders International and our many Massachusetts supporters, friends and colleagues, including Western Mass Animal Rights Advocates in support of Agenda Item 8D, a bylaw to ban wild and exotic animals and traveling shows and circuses. ADI has worked on this issue for years around the world, including the proposed state measure for Massachusetts. We've provided you extensive data and written testimony and we stand ready to answer any questions. Preventing science makes clear these animals are inherently unsuited for this business model. One comprehensive study that we sent you considered the latest science in the industry worldwide to conclude that for circus animals, this is quote, no life worth living and that any education or conservation role would likely be marginal and outweighed by the negative impression generated by using wild animals for entertainment. Raising concerns that we know little or nothing about how or how many animals are source bread traded, how they die or what happens when they're no longer used. As this global pandemic rages on, wild animal trade must rightly face new scrutiny. Federal oversight is complex and costly and by the agency's own admission, it's just not working. States too often rely upon the mere existence of federal licensure, despite longstanding repeated OID criticisms of agency oversight failures. The National Association of Public Health Veterinarians warns that no federal laws address pathogen transmission risk at venues where the public has contact with animals, advising that certain exotic and wild animals should be banned altogether from these settings. Federal oversight does not consider public safety, that's left to you and your local first responders. Yet local authorities often lack the funding, familiarity or facilities to deal with these species. Local law enforcement isn't expecting or trained to handle wild animal escapes. Too often they are surprised to learn that there is no backup plan. Using animals this way teaches us nothing about what it means to be wild. Rather the science shows these acts perpetuates misconceptions that fuel trade and trafficking and endanger humans, the individual animal and wild populations. True conservation demands that we teach future generations what a wild animal really is. And that is not a plaything or a prop for entertainment or selfie clickbait. They are wild and will seek to be free and to follow their natural instincts. Please protect animals and Amherst families from these cruel and dangerous acts. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. I am gonna encourage people to submit comment in writing to town council at AmherstMA.gov, considering that we still have a long number of people that would like to comment tonight. So if you are willing to do that, you can take your hand down. Otherwise, Brooke Ballinger again, please keep your comments to two minutes and under. Okay, thank you. Brooke Ballinger, I live on Potwine Lane in Amherst. I am a retired UAW organizer. And so I just wanted to speak again in support of the wage theft ordinances. I can tell you that there are several other agencies that are tasked with enforcing wage laws. And I'm extremely unlikely that a worker, even with a union, would ever have success in gaining all the wages that have been stolen from them. I've represented lots of people and sometimes I've been successful. Sometimes I have not. It's sort of at the whim of the attorney general has a wage in our division. There's the Department of Labor, but it's extremely cumbersome process. And if you don't have a union at all, which unfortunately is often the case for the most disenfranchised workers, it's just totally impossible to imagine that they would even approach one of these agencies. So that's why it's so important that towns like Amherst have their own ordinance. And it still won't always work, but it's another avenue and it's a reminder to employers, which is the most important thing that we're watching you and we expect you to treat your employees properly and pay them for every hour that they work. So I hope that you will endorse these laws and make this happen in Amherst. Thank you. Brooks, thank you for your comments. Lydia Wood, please state your name and where you live. Lydia, no, we can't hear you. Unmute, can you try out your microphone? Okay, given that we're having difficulty, I'm gonna move on to Jennifer Page. My name is Jennifer Page and I live in Amherst. I'd like to urge you to vote in favor of the wage theft and responsible employer bylaws. Employers should not be able to get away with withholding pay from workers. When this happens, the people who suffer the most are more likely to be already marginalized, such as undocumented immigrants and lacking in resources to pursue remedy. You might be considering why the town council should pass this bylaw, given that there are already state and federal laws in place. What I would say to that is that as elected officials and people in a position of power, it's your responsibility to support marginalized and vulnerable people. It's your responsibility to side with those who are harmed when laws are broken, not decide with employers who don't want more regulation. I'd also like to express my belief that UMass Amherst should not be exempted from this bylaw. Of course, they should not be exempted. As a UMass employee, I believe that my employer should follow the law just like every other employer. I mean, really, how would it look if you passed this bylaw but exempted UMass Amherst from complying with it? I hope that you will show your support for everyday workers and vote to approve these two bylaws. Thank you. Thank you for your comments, Jennifer. Ruthie Weinbaum, please enter the room. State your name. Hi, my name is Ruthie and I live on McClellan Street in Amherst. I am a senior at Amherst Regional High School. I'm speaking in support of the wage theft bylaws. So I think that a lot of people, especially people in my generation that live in Amherst care a lot about things like equality and justice and we want to work against exploitation or oppression. But I also think that we think of that as something that happens in other places other than Amherst. Like maybe it happens on tomato farms in California or in sweatshops or factories and other places. But in fact, it can and has happened in places just like Amherst. And the people who are most likely to be victims of wage theft are our own community members. A lot of them have kids who go to school with me. And just like my parents know that when they go to work and do their jobs, they'll come home making the wages that they were promised and that they've earned. So should every single person in our community, especially the parents of my peers. And also as a resident of Amherst, I wanna know that the businesses that I'm patronizing are treating their workers fairly because I'm giving my money to restaurants or stores. I wanna know that the workers are earning the wages that they deserve. And it's also very unfair to the majority, the vast majority of businesses who do treat their workers well if we don't have these preventative measures in place to deal with the occasional employer who is not treating their workers fairly. And so I really hope that you plan on supporting the wage theft bylaws. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Shao Yi Dora Singh. Yes, hi. Can you guys hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you for being here. My name is Dora and I live in North Amherst. I'm the Co-Chair of the Graduate Employee Organization at UMass Amherst. Today I'm here to present my testimony on the wage theft bylaw and why Amherst should stand firm on protecting workers whether documented or undocumented. A couple of years ago, I was working undocumented at Amherst Chinese restaurant. I did not have my green card at the time and agreed to work for $2 an hour. I worked 12 hours a day from 10 to 10 and will bring home about $80 a day depending on the day. Every night before the restaurant closed, we were gathered in front of the cashier so the boss could give us our share. What I didn't understand was that when we shared the tips, the owner would take a cut for themselves. They say we all work together while handing me over my meager share of the tips. It took me a while to be able to say these things briefly in the public. Now as a culture of a graduate employee union, I am astonished by how many rights a worker has and how a strong union can make sure workers are treated fairly, which was not the case for me when I was working under the table in the restaurant. What was more interesting to me is regardless of what the paper said about me, I'm still me doing the work and trying to sustain myself in this foreign country. I certainly did not want to see that any other restaurant workers or construction workers were treated unfairly just because of their status. We are all working diligently and trying to support our loved ones just like any other restaurant here in Amherst. If Amherst truly hold herself high as a liberal town and stands firmly on the issues around social justice, this is the time. Only if we can hold those business owners, contractors and developers accountable for paying the visual families rather than their own greed, can Amherst own her name. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Michael Ash. Hi, good evening. Michael Ash, I live in Amherst at 47 Mount Pleasant. I'm a professor of economics and public policy at UMass, Amherst. Wage theft is an enormous national state and unfortunately local problem. There are many forms, paying a wage below the minimum wage, failing to pay overtime, misclassifying workers, illegal paycheck deductions, stolen tips, time clock and snack breaks and anagons and blatant theft. Minimum wage theft alone is estimated at $15 billion per year. Wage theft by public contractors and there are subcontractors in projects receiving public subsidies. For example, through affordable housing tax credit or other tax abatements, often for construction projects is especially disturbing because these wage thefts additionally violate the public trust. Wage theft can happen to any working person. Wage theft takes advantage however of vulnerability. Victimizing people who have limited capacity to complain and seek redress. Racial, gender and parental discrimination, immigration status and youth and inexperience are often sources of vulnerability. Frequent form of attempted wage theft is delaying payments to workers. We're offering a smaller sum now assuming people won't pursue the hassle of seeking full payment. Workers can't afford to wait. About 40% of American households cannot meet a $400 expense of available funds. For the many households living hand to mouth even a short delay in payment let alone complete theft causes missed payments, missed healthcare, missed taxes and bills, additional fees, credit score impacts, even eviction. The MIT living wage calculator shows that a single parent with one child needs a wage of $27.71 an hour to make ends meet in Hamptree County. The state minimum is $12.75 an hour with the minimum wage already inadequate for safe subsistence. The last thing workers need is to have their wages stolen. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts lacks adequate state laws addressing wage theft. Best practice is well known. It protects workers against theft in the first place and gives safe protected recourse for workers who are affected. The National Employment Law Project classifies Massachusetts only as a tier three state where tier one is best and the fourth tier is worst and concludes, while Massachusetts offers some compensation beyond actual wages owed it may leave some workers with only a small amount or no award of compensatory damages and without any punitive damages. The state's protections therefore fail to capture the full extent of the financial and emotional costs and risks that workers experience. Amherst can take action like many of our sibling communities and providing protection against wage theft with timely and thorough protection against this abuse. I urge you to pass the two wage theft bylaws. Thank you very much for your consideration. Thank you for your comment. Ashwin Wabakumar. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Great. My name is Ashwin Wabakumar and I live in Amherst on Pleasant Street. And I am speaking in favor of the wage theft bylaws by looking at the materials that have been provided. It looks like a lot of other municipalities have at least this strong of bylaws in place. So this seems like a really important tool to allow the municipal government to help people and to show up for people that live here that are in situations where all too commonly employers are not paying them what they deserve. So please do pass this and thank you. Thank you for your comment. Nadine Mazard. Hi, my name is Nadine Mazard. I'm a resident of Amherst, East Pleasant Street. And I'm also calling in in order to say that I'm in favor with passing this bylaws that allow for not having this wage and theft. And in addition, I'm in agreement with what has been said before. So that I can keep it short and sweet. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Emory Powell. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. My name is Emory Powell and I live in South Amherst. And I am just in support of the wage theft protection bylaws. I have recently become a first year apprentice carpenter with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners. And so this issue will soon directly affect me as a resident of Amherst who will be qualified to work the construction jobs planned under UMass Amherst in the spring. I also want to express my agreement with Geotier Iyer who spoke earlier and I second their thoughts. I'm a Hampshire College alumnus who graduated this May during the pandemic. And many of my roommates are current Hampshire students who are already expressing on a daily basis similar concerns regarding UMass reopening in this way. I yield my time. Thank you. Thank you. Kathleen, please state your full name and where you live. Hi, I'm Kathleen Trapegan. I live on Southeast Street in Amherst. Thanks for your service, Town Council. Just a couple of things. I'm also speaking in support of the wage theft bylaws. I wondered the story of what happened in the North Village is extremely disturbing, I'm sure to all of us. And it doesn't seem to have anywhere near a satisfactory ending. And I don't know if there's anything that can be done but I urge you to research that. I appreciate one of the commenters bringing up the idea that UMass might be exempt from this law. If and when you pass it, that seems completely ridiculous. I hope that does not happen. I wanna thank the Pioneer Valley's Worker Center for all the work that they do and the Racial Equity Task Force for all the work they do. And then lastly on a different subject, I really urge the Town Council to figure out a way to switch how we are appearing in these meetings. Every person is like, can you hear me? You can't see me. I can't see the other people. I don't know who else is here. We've been in this pandemic for a while now. We're gonna be in it for a long while. So can we figure this out so that I can be on camera with you, the other commenters can be on camera with you when they comment and we can see who else is here? I'm sure there is technology that will allow us to do that. Thanks so much for your time. Thank you for your comments, Lydia Irons. Hi there, can you hear me? Yes. Hi, my name is Lydia Irons. I live on Jeffrey Lane in Amherst and I'm calling to also support the wage theft bylaw. I agree with everyone who's spoken here but I also would like to point out that wage theft is a neglected public health problem. I think it's really important to see wage theft as something that can contribute to someone having a poor public health outcome or having a poor outcome for health in general. Receiving less than minimum wage is one of the things that can result in people not being able to have overtime pay, have paid deductions when they're sick. And right now in this pandemic especially we want people to know that they are safe to stay home when they are sick. And wage theft happens a lot of times when people ask to stay home on sick days and not get paid for their sick time. Almost two thirds of restaurants lack the minimum requirement for wage theft signage. And I think it's really important that we protect those workers so that they can stay healthy and they can stay safe and they can keep us healthy and safe. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. We are going to conclude public comment at this time. You're going to take a five minute break and reconvene at eight. Thank you. When you return, please put your video back on so I know you're back. Okay, let me just remind you that if you need to, if you have a technical difficulty to please let Athena know, I'm just gonna quickly check and make sure that you can hear me and I can hear you. Shalini Balmille, not returned yet. I'm here, I'm here. I'm just in transit. Thank you. Elizabeth Brewer. Pat DeAngelis. Yep. Elsie DeMont. Yes. Thank you, Darcy. Lynn Griesmer is here. Amanda Johannity. Present. Dorothy Pam. Present. Ken Ross. Present. George Ryan. Present. Matthew Shane. Yes, here. And Steve Schreiber. Here. And Andy Steinberg. Present. All right, we're moving on to the consent agenda. The filing items were selected because they were considered to be routine and it was reasonable to expect they would pass with no controversy to remove an item from the consent agenda for the discussion later in the meeting, ask that if they removed as I list the consent agenda items, the request to remove an item from the consent agenda does not require a second. The motion is to move the following items and printed motions they're under and approve those items as a single unit. 6A, Small Business Saturday Proclamation. 6C, Adoption of the Master Plan. 8G, Suspension of Town Council Rules or Procedure. 8.4 for Item 8G. Okay, something. Seeing slide. Yeah, we need a different slide up. Thank you. 8G is. I'll fix that. Amend Council Order FY20-68 in order appropriating and approving borrowing for a portion of the Town of Amherst FY20 Capital Program Elementary School Feasibility Study. 9A, 1-4, Approval of Town Manager Appointments to the following multiple member bodies, Community Safety Working Group, Council on Aging, Design Review Board, Munson Memorial Library, Building Trustees. And I believe that should also include, no, that's it. And then 9A, 4 is Designation of Special Municipal Employee Status for the Community Safety Working Group and 11A, Approval of Minutes October 19th, 2020 Town Council Meeting Minutes. Are there any items people would like to have removed? I see a couple hands. Darcy. Yeah, 8C, Adoption of the Master Plan and 9A, 1, just not all the appointments but the Community Safety. Okay. Darcy Dumont, I've already called Darcy Pam. Yes, the approval of the Master Plan. I'd like to take that off the Consent Agenda. That's already been removed. So the items that still remain on the Consent Agenda are 6A, Small Business, Saturday, Proclamation, 8G, Suspension of Town Council Rules of Procedure, Rule 8.4 for Agenda Item 8G. 8G, A Men Council Order FY20-68 in Order of Procreating and Approving of the Account of Amount FY20 and Capital Program Elements for School Feasibility Study. 9A, the following multiple member bodies remain on Consent Agenda. Are you found long enough? Could you please mute? Thank you. Council on Aging Design Review Board, Munson Memorial Library Building Trustees, 9A4, Designation of Special Municipal Employees, Status for the Community Safety Working Group and 11A Approval of the Menace. Is there a second? Second, DeAngelis. Thank you, Pat. All right, any further discussion or questions? Darcy, please, is your hand up? Oh, no. No, it's not up. All right, no questions at this point then we'll move to roll call. I'll start with Alyssa Brewer. Aye. Pat DeAngelis. Aye. Darcy DeMont. Yes. Lynn Griesmerzy, yes. Mandy Johannike. Yes. Dorothy Pam. Aye. Evan Ross. Aye. George Ryan. All right, technical difficulties. Aye. Matthew Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Aye. Andy Steinberg. Aye. Anne Chaloney-Ball-Milm. Yes. The pass is 12-4, no opposition, no abstentions in one absence. We're moving on to, let me adjust my things so I have everything right. C, we're keeping, we're going to move on to the items eight. Action items A is the appropriation outside the annual budget. I just want to mention this is a first discussion. It's a brief introduction to an item that will come before the council on November 16th at 6.30. And it will also come before the finance committee tomorrow at two o'clock, Paul. So this is for the ambulance. You have a memo in your packet that will be discussed with the police, the fire chief and the finance director at tomorrow's finance committee meeting, the town's ambulance, one of our ambulances has fallen ill and needs about $30,000 worth of repairs. This is one we normally would have repaired by now. So we think this is an appropriation request to the council to actually request a new ambulance. It takes about six months for us to move forward on this request. I mean, for the vehicle to be assembled. Are there any questions from the council at this time? Garcia, you have your hand up. I know I'm talking a lot, but I am with all vehicles. I'm always interested in whether or not they can be electric. So I was interested to see that it has this proposed ambulance has the zero RPM feature, which seems to have something to do with minimizing the emissions during idling, which is ambulances and police cars do a lot of idling. So do you know any more about that? Paul? The fire chief does. I mean, but we did get the grant through Stephanie Chikarello got this grant to help fund it's an add-on, but you're right that when a naked shows up at a scene, it has to keep running because there's so much electronics on an ambulance now. So it's just idling there. And so this will allow a significant battery pack to be on the ambulance and then be running all of these electronics instead of having the vehicle idling. Thank you. Are there any other questions with this one? Great. Again, this was the back on our agenda on the 16th of April. We're moving on to amendments to zoning article 14, temporary zoning. And that is first of all, first of all, Christine Brestrup, planning director and building commissioner Rob Mora will be making a presentation. Paul, did you have anything you wanted to introduce with this? Oh, I think Chris, Chris was gonna take the leader. Actually, Rob is the expert on this matter. So Rob is going to give a presentation and then I'm here to answer any questions. Good evening, Rob Mora, building commissioner. We are proposing amendments to article 14. Article 14 was adopted approximately five months ago to offer administrative approval for certain types of uses in certain zoning districts. What's in front of you tonight is amendment to that article, first extending its timeframe to allow it to be effective through the end of 2021. And it's also expanding its scope. So we are proposing that the affected uses also include medical uses, specifically medical uses in the office park and PRP zoning districts. We have proposed a addition for temporary uses and we defined that as a use that would be one that would when it goes away and ends that it would be returned back to its original condition, whether that's a change to the building, the site or the user activity itself. Those uses that we included specifically for the temporary possibility includes class one and class two farm stands, nonprofit educational uses, churches, libraries, medical residential institutions and government type activities. There's one additional change that we're proposing in the application process. This was an addition that was put into the document recently at the joint public hearing with the CRC and the planning board. And it's to provide a notice to a butter's people in the area of whatever, wherever the activity might be occurring. It's expected to be a very simple type of notice that the applicant would take care of. They would post either on the building or the front of the property, a document that states the scope description of the scope of work that would be taking place and some contact information for our office in case somebody interested would like to view the documents or provide comment. This notice is specifically for no less than 10 days and we will include in our application process some guidance on providing that notice. The rest of the document remains the same. This has been reviewed by our town attorney and Kristine Brownstrap and I are here for any questions. Thank you. Are there questions at this time? Alyssa. It's a really simple question about that notice and I know a lot of it is just based on what do we normally do and what do other communities do? And I really appreciate that this idea of the notice was brought up several years ago. I noticed in Northampton that they actually use a form of lawn sign on some properties that say, hey, did you know this was subject to a public hearing coming up on such and such date? And you'd walk right past and be like, oh, that's the place they were talking about. So I think this is going to be very valuable for people but the part that I'm finding a little strange is that the bylaw addition does not say that we will provide the template because obviously there's a way that somebody can just put up a post-it note that says contact Rob Moore if you have questions. You indicated you'd give them a template. It doesn't say that in the bylaw. So is that something that's covered in a regulation somewhere or how does that work? Why wouldn't we just put it in the bylaw that they need to provide the information in the format that we provide? Yeah, this was added during the public hearing process and I think there was a lot of discussion about keeping it simple, not getting into too many details and I assured both the CRC and the planning board that the application of the process itself could include a template that we would draft and put into the application and asked during the application process for the date the notice was posted and that we would be able to handle and I'm sure then we would handle that through the application process. Are there any other questions? Let me move on and ask planning board chair, Jack Jemsic to tell us how the planning board ruled. Can you unmute? Yeah, so as Rob said, the main discussion was, you know, we definitely approve this, a lot of additional facilities that were added, no real problems, but the notification was a subject of discussion and I think we came up with something fairly simple with regard to posting on the project sites, you know, existing building that this would happen, I think what 10 days in advance of the implementation of the structure and with that simple change, it was, you know, unanimous vote to approve article 14 amended. Okay, and Mandy, Joe, would you please report out on CRC, which was part of the joint hearing and then a separate vote? Yeah, so we were part of the joint hearing, Rob and Jack and Christine have covered everything we talked about, after the joint hearing and after the planning board amended to add the notice provision, CRC voted 4-0 with one absent to recommend adoption of the revisions. And George Ryan, GOL. Yes, GOL met on November 7th and voted the amendment to be clear, consistent and actionable pending attorney review. The vote was 4-0 with one absent. Okay, are there any questions at this point? This is the first reading. We'll come back before the council next week. Okay, seeing no questions, we're going to move on to the master plan which we removed from the consent agenda. And let me just as a preference to this say, we did hold a public hearing on the master plan and that was on October 19th and the first reading was done at that time. We also did the required annual public forum on September 29th, 2020. And today, we are actually before the council for the second reading and consistent with the charter adoption of the master plan or any amendments there too, shall be approved by the planning board and then be submitted by the town manager to the town council which shall hold at least one public hearing near on. The town council shall adopt the master plan with or without amendments. So let me ask for there are two motions. The first motion is to request that the planning board amend the February 3rd, 2010 master plan to reference any climate action plan and any housing plan adopted by this or any future town council. Is there a second? Second, the Angeles. Thank you. Are there is there any? Yes, Darcy Dumont. I would like to amend the language of that motion. Is this the time to do that? Yes, it is. Would you please tell me how you'd like to amend it? I just want to make it to clarify it. I would like it to say to request that the planning board amend the February 3rd, 2020 master plan to integrate climate action goals and plans, housing plans and other townwide plans or parts thereof adopted by this or any future council. Okay, Athena, I believe you have a slide of that motion or Sean, you have a slide of that motion. Yeah, I'm pulling that up now. It was going to be a slide specifically of the changes requested. Just give me a second. Read that to me again, Darcy. To request that the planning board amend the February 3rd, 2010 master plan. Oh, 2010 master plan to integrate climate action goals and plans, housing plans and other townwide plans or parts thereof adopted by this or any future council. Okay, is there a second to that motion? To that amendment. I'm not seeing the second. I would second that. Would you like to speak to your amendment? Yeah, I just wanted to make it a little stronger that we want our plans that are adopted by the council to be integrated into the master plan. And just makes it a little stronger, that's all. And to include other plans that might come down the road because we might have a transportation plan. So the motion that we just made it and it's been seconded is shown on your screen for the bottom. And it says to request the planning board amend the February 3rd, 2020 master plan to integrate any climate action goals and plan, housing plan or other townwide plan or parts thereof adopted by this or any future council. So at this point, I'd like to know if there are questions or comments. Mandy Jo. Yeah, so first technical one, it's not the February 3rd, 2020 master plan. It's the 2010 master plan. So that's just a Scrivener issue. But yeah, integrate is a lot different than referencing. And we actually are here voting on a master plan now because in some sense, the planning board and the planning staff and even CRC when it looked when we heard from the planning staff about their attempts and how much time it would take in a way to integrate things like climate action into the current master plan would take a ton of time. And so we're here voting on a master plan now because the CRC and the planning board thought our staff time was better used not to do that and instead to work on actual zoning. So I'm not sure I can support a motion that would essentially say you need to do this and it's gonna take a lot of time. Melissa. Same and also referencing the odd wording of saying plant townwide plans and parts thereof. There are too many different kinds of things. And this is a master plan that's owned by the planning board that we the town council based on our charter, except it is not the compendium of all plans the town council has ever thought of in any given moment. That's not what a master plan is. So I was willing to go with the reference but I'm not willing to go with for the reasons Mandy Jo just stated and what I just stated the integrate part. Matthew Shane. I think I'm echoing these because I am not comfortable with major rewrites at this point, which I would say is the word integrate. You know, I think the other thing is that it's a living document. And if as we pass a housing plan or a climate action goal, we would do well to reference it strongly and drop it in so that we can go over to the other piece. And that's to me, the best way of keeping it current rather than constantly rewriting whole sections. So I think there is a way of doing that referencing that say, say in the master plan, shall the seed the following and having a hot link that brings you right over to the document we're talking about. Steve Schreiber. Excuse me. Yeah, so agree with everything that's been said earlier. The concerns I were earlier, but also we're referencing things that haven't been written yet or haven't been, we don't know what they are yet. So I have a, I can't see committing the planning board to adopt something that hasn't necessarily even been considered yet. Okay, does that any further comments? I'm going to go ahead and follow the question. The question is on the amendment, the original motion, okay? Which would be to integrate. And I'm going to start in this case with the angels. If you vote to support, then you're voting to the motion that integrates these plans. And if you're voting again, we will go back to the original motion. Pat DeAngelis. No. Darcy. Yes. Rhysmer, is a no. Anakini. No. Bethy Pamm. Yes. Evan Ross. No. George Ryan. No. Kathy Shane. No. Steve Schreiber. No. Randy Steinberg. No. Shalini Balmille. No. Annalisa Brewer. No. The vote is 10 in favor, I mean 10 again, I'm sorry. Two in favor, 10 against, no abstentions, one absence. We go back to the original motion. The original motion, which has been made and seconded is to request that the planning board amend the February 3rd, 2010 master plan to reference any climate action plan and any housing plan adopted by this or any future town council. Is there any further discussion or question at this time? Evan. Yeah, I guess I don't quite understand the purpose of this, specifically why it calls out climate action and housing as the only two types of plans we're requesting they reference when there might be other plans, open space and recreation, transportation. I mean, lots of plans that would be relevant to the master plan. So I'm not clear why we pulled out these two as the plans that might be adopted by this or any future that need to be referenced. And I also don't know what it means to amend the master plan to reference any future plans. I mean, these plans come out, they exist, they're on the website, they're easily accessible, but I don't understand what this is actually asking the planning board to do and why these two types and not others. This is a motion originally requested or something like it was originally requested by Darcy when we met back in the middle of October. And Mandy Jo and Alyssa, you both worked specifically on this motion. Either one of you wanna speak to it, particularly Mandy Jo, since you've been working with the planning board. I'm not sure I can speak much to it. I reviewed a draft of the motion sheet and it was requested that this type of motion be on there and I tried to draft something that reflected the desire of Councillor DuMont. Alyssa? Agreed, it had some clunkier language about recommending a request and I just tried to clean it up but was trying to reflect the spirit of those two plans that I know were previously mentioned. Christine Brestrup, I know you're in the audience and it would be useful at this point. It's actually, we can take the motion sheet down. And would you please speak to me with your quote. Requesting that the planning board amend the February 3rd, 2010 master plan through reference. Could you speak to that concept? What the planning board has always said is that it would incorporate by reference various plans and the only one that it actually incorporated by reference on June 10th, 2015 was the transportation plan. However, the planning board did have the intention to go back and incorporate by reference the housing production plan, the housing market study and the open space and recreation plan but they just never got around to it for whatever reason. So I think incorporating by reference is a better term and we have certain plans that have already been listed which I listed in my memo to you of what date is this? Actually, it's not my memo. It's Paul Buckleman's memo to you dated October 16th but the plans that were listed were the sewer extension master plan, the housing production plan, the housing market study, the transportation plan which has already been incorporated by reference, the open space and recreation plan, the bicycle and pedestrian network plan and the community field master plan. And those are all plans that have been finished. And so I think it would have been the planning board's intention to incorporate those by reference but then we started talking about the master plan as a whole. So I guess if you were to do any of those things I would suggest that you use that language incorporate by reference those plans that are listed in that memo with the exception of the climate action plan because as I think it was Mr. Schreiber said that one hasn't been written yet. So it's hard to incorporate it by reference when it hasn't been written. I actually believe the housing plan hasn't been written yet either. Well, the housing production plan was written in 2013 and then the housing market study was written in 2015. I think we're due to have an updated housing production plan, but we haven't done that yet. There's also a housing plan that was being discussed was discussed by the council referred to CRC and remains in the CRC agendas list of agenda items which is what I believe this one refers to. I think that was a housing policy plan. Is that what it was? Or maybe I'm misunderstanding because I think that was what Mr. Hornick was trying to get through was a housing policy plan. That is exactly what we're referring to. Darcy, you have your hand up. Yeah, I just want to address the issue of including the climate action planning because we have adopted our climate goals and we do have an order ordering the ECAC to produce a climate action plan which they have come to us and told us about their timeline and they're actively producing it right now. So it's not like we don't, that it isn't a thing. We know that it is coming and that it's legislated. So it seems to me that the time to adopt a motion like this is once the council adopts a plan. So that once we adopt a plan like the climate action plan we would then also want to have a motion that asks the planning board to amend the February 3rd, 2010 master plan to incorporate by reference whatever that more recent plan that we just adopted. So in other words, having a motion that suggests we amend something where the item does not exist as an action of the council is premature is what I'm hearing. Is there any other interpretation or comment, Steve Schreiber? Yeah, so this is a tricky one because really our goal here is to adopt the master plan. That's what the charter requires us to do. At some point we are supposed to adopt the master plan. It's silent on all other plans on these sort of attachments, these other kinds of plans. Really that's the planning board's responsibility. They're the keepers of the master plan. It's their responsibility in my opinion to incorporate by reference or whatever. So the charter has determined that we should adopt the master plan as a chassis. But then I think that it's the planning board's responsibility to consider the amendments. There's no description of what we do regarding amendments to these kinds of amendments to the chassis in my opinion. Evan, go ahead. I'm gonna actually, as the person that made the motion, I'm going to withdraw my motion and ask that the person that seconded do the same. Athena, who seconded the motion? I did. Go ahead, let me agree with withdrawing your motion. Yes. Yes. Okay. Are there, I see two hands up, but I don't know if they were just left up. Steve, yours is one. Darcy, yours is also one. Doris? Yeah, I just, the reason that we're considering it is just because at our last meeting, I said that I, you know, continue to not want to adopt the master plan from 2010 because it's not current. And that if we were, you know, the only way I would be able to do that would be to amend it, to assure that it's going to be amended to update it with these new plans. So that's, that's why we're talking about it now. And I continue to have that opinion is, you know, why would we be adopting an outdated 2010 plan? That seems dumb. Dorothy? My top, my comments are not on this particular issue. They're on the master plan, but perhaps you need to finish this issue before I speak. Okay. Christine Brestrup, you have your hand up. I'm afraid that I have forgotten what I had my hand up for. I'm sorry. So the motion's been withdrawn and the person that seconded it has also withdrawn it. So I think at this point, we go to the next motion, which is to adopt in accordance with charter section 9.8B, the master plan that was adopted and approved by the planning board on February 3rd, 2010, as presented. Is there a second? And a key seconds. Okay. Dorothy Pan. Oh, I will also mention for the record that it was not approved by the town meeting, which was the body at that time. But my problem is, I do not think that we should adopt the master plan. We spent, when I was on CRC, we spent, I think a year talking about making changes that were necessary. I agree with Darcy, the plan is outdated, but my biggest problem is a great confusion about some of the main words. And those words are densification and infill development. So if you read the master plan, you get some really nice language. For example, in this little piece you've given us here, new infill and development in existing historic neighborhoods, village centers and established neighborhoods will have to abide by rigorous and sensitive design and density controls intended to preserve and enhance existing character. And we're told that this is all to control traditional New England settlement pattern. Yet I have been to, I believe, every forum or hearing that has discussed this and I have not seen any support from the public for what is being passed off now as density and infill development in our downtown center. So if those words density mean large rental buildings in the center of downtown, mixed use buildings with unattractive in the sense of not drawing you in, not being attractive businesses on the first floor, then I think that that moment was, that's what people thought when this was written that's 10 years ago. I think that that's not what we're talking about now. And when you've talked to people about housing in this town, besides the need for more affordable apartments and for some affordable rental property, what people are talking about is family homes. And this is not just rental units, this includes a mixture and it could be a more dense one, not suburban sprawl. It could use many of these really wonderful inventive plans which many places exhibit around the country where rental and home ownership are mixed. Because the bulk of the town, if you wanna keep strong schools and keep a town that's gonna keep young people coming up that are not just through the university. So we don't wanna have just young people leave from the university and then the rest of us are old people. You've gotta have young families and for young families and mature families to prosper in this country, we need to have more affordable houses that people can buy. And I understand that cannot be done just through market forces. I mean, this is clear. So that we would have to like give land, give land for some kind of structure that could do this to create affordable opportunities for home ownership and family living in this town. I know the plan was adopted when the fear was suburban sprawl. And I lived many years in Long Island and yes, I do know Suffolk County. There's a lot of suburban sprawl out there. Yet you know what, those are homes. Families live in them, strong communities, very strong communities. So we have to think about home ownership opportunities mixed in with rental properties for families. And that's not what's been going on. So from me, until the words densification in downtown centers is clarified, I think that we have to do what we started to do in CRC two years ago. We have to do some revisions to update the master plan. So I just think Dorothy and I would just argue for hours about a literal handful of people who've attended a handful of recent meetings over the last two years versus hundreds of people devoting thousands of hours to a nearly 10 year process that resulted in the 2010 master plan. Yes, some things have changed. Yes, some people have changed. But the reality is I am really resentful of the fact that people sometimes like to bring up that representative town meeting did not accept the master plan. Representative town meeting had nothing to do with accepting the master plan. We all know this, whether it makes individuals unhappy that they were never offered the opportunity to do that is not relevant. State law, local law at the time is it was simply the planning board's legal responsibility. It is now, according to the Charter, something the town council has to do. We've talked about this at length. We're going to accept it. We're going to move on and we're going to work on the things we actually wanna work on rather than arguing about what a plan written 10 years ago has to do with what we're doing today. We're going to actually make the changes. So I'm ready for us to move on. Evan Roth. Yeah, so I wanna speak in support of approving the master plan, even as we all might have our own individual gripes with different pieces of it. And even as we might agree that it's not perfect but the guiding vision of it and specifically the vision of directing development needed development to our village centers so that we can preserve our natural areas and outlying land is important. And I think we can understand that there are certainly parts of the master plan that can be interpreted in a number of different ways. And those are the parts that we need to think about as we're implementing the plan, what do they mean? Dorothy brought up one term that concerns her. I wanted to bring up one that does concern me. And I say this not to argue against the master plan but so as we're implementing it and as we're thinking towards our next master plan, we think about the ways that perhaps our culture has shifted in words mean things that could be interpreted in different ways now. And the one I really wanna point out is community character and neighborhood character. And I wanna point this out because in the public hearing that I attended about the master plan that I believe many of us were there, we heard these terms community character and neighborhood character thrown around quite a bit. And it brought me, it reminded me of an article I read over the summer and I went back and I reread it called how discussions of neighborhood character reinforce structural racism. And I think that's important because we've been having a moment in our town and in our country where we're really talking about structural racism and racial equity. And so if I can, I wanna just read two brief parts of this because I think it's important. The first one is what counts as neighborhood character and who kept to define it? In many cities, it's wealthy white homeowners who have lived there for decades. So when we're hearing about the people who are at these public forums who are talking about neighborhood character, I think we need to think about that part there. And the second one is this, people who use coded language like neighborhood character and historic preservation are participating in structural white supremacy that has historically and presently most valued white character and white history at the expense of everyone else. We don't need to discard maintaining historic significance or physical structures in our city, but we do need to discard blocking any and all positive change in the name of one narrow segment of the population's definition of history and character. Our current master plan uses the term community character 10 times, neighborhood character three times. I don't think that that's a reason that we shouldn't approve it, but I do think that 10 years ago, we weren't thinking in the same way. We didn't have maybe the racial equity lens that we do now. And I think that we have to recognize that even as we implement this, even as we look forward to our next master plan, these are things that we have to think about. And so I wanted to bring that to our attention. I'm supporting, approving the master plan. That doesn't mean that I think it's flawless. That doesn't mean I don't have issues with it. But I think that these are the issues that we grapple with as we're implementing what is otherwise a very strong master plan. Christine, you have your hand up, Christine Brestrup. Yes, I remembered what I wanted to say before. And I also wanted to say one other thing. So one of our new planning board members, Doug Marshall, and I have been going through the implementation matrix. He's been very patient with me. We've been going through it item by item, line by line and making statements about what has and hasn't been achieved and what kinds of things would we not care about anymore and what kinds of things we phrase differently. And it's been very revealing to me the fact that almost everything in that implementation matrix is still relevant. There are very few things that we are saying, oh no, we don't care about that anymore. And it's amazing to me how many things we have accomplished in the last 10 years. And I think it's probably worth presenting this to you to the town council at some point when we finish our run through of it. So I wanted to say that in support of the master plan as being a present living document, it's not outdated. It's really lively and very relevant for today. And the other thing I wanted to say is a master plan is different from zoning. And when you look at the downtown, you may differ in your opinion about whether we should allow five story buildings in the downtown or not. But I don't think that you would really differ in your opinion that development should be focused in areas that are already developed. And the beautiful countryside that we have along Southeast Street and Northeast Street and Bay Road, we don't wanna develop out there. We think that's beautiful. It's something that everybody values. Everybody loves it when they drive through there. We wanna keep our open spaces open. And we wanna take the places that are already developed and redevelop them so that they can be suitable as we move forward and need more housing. And that may mean redeveloping Orchard Valley. It may mean redeveloping parts of Echo Hill. It could mean a lot of different things, but I don't think we want to have suburban sprawl and sprawl out into our beautiful preserved, some of it isn't preserved farmland and forestland. We wanna keep our development close to us. So you can differ on whether you want five story buildings or not, but that's zoning, that's not the master plan. So that's all I wanted to say. But Christine, two things. First of all, thank you for emphasizing the distinction between the master plan and zoning. Since we're very actively in a conversation on zoning. Second of all, we welcome having you and Doug bring forward or whomever else from the planning board. Cause it sounds to me like the planning board is now actually in the process of having that quote committee that kind of keeps track of the master plan and how we're doing. So I'm forward to that. Dorothy, you have your hand up. So I really do appreciate Christine's remarks. They're very helpful. And Evan, I do know what you're saying. And I just thought that I should share with you. Perhaps you do know this, that the Lincoln Sunset historical preservation neighborhood, one of the reasons it got the ranking is that it was an integrated community and that there are many streets of small, not fancy houses that were lived in by black and immigrant workers in the town. So it's, I do know what you mean. You don't want to have, I am not talking about preserving the wonderful homes of the rich that you've drive tours through. I'm not talking about that. But neighborhood character and town character includes such things as these neighborhoods. Now, I know we've discussed that many of them could not be built under present zoning because they have small lot sizes. And that's something that we've talked about that we could be thinking about. The kind of housing I'm thinking of does have smaller lot sizes but represents a broad cross-section of the community and of Amherst past, present and future. So I don't take your words amiss. I do agree with the concept that we don't want to preserve patterns of inequality in our neighborhood planning. But that is not what I was talking about. There's no other comments. I'm gonna move to the vote. The motion that is on the table is to adopt an accordance with Charter Section 9.8B, the master plan that was adopted and approved by the planning board on February 3rd, 2010 as presented. Darcy Dumont? No. Reese Merz, yes. Anarchy? Yes. Darcy Pam? No. Evan Ross? Yes. George Ryan? Yes. Kathy Shane? I'm abstaining. Steve Schreiber? Yes. Andy Steinberg? Yes. Shalini Balmille? Yes. Alyssa Brewer? Yes. Batti Angelis? Yes. Nine in favor to oppose one abstention, one absence. Moving on. We are now at the point where we're going to introduce the prohibiting the use of wild and exotic animals in traveling shows and circuses as a proposed bylaw. The sponsors will make a presentation. The counselor sponsor is Shalini Balmille. The two other people that will be speaking, one is Rebecca Schwartz and the other is Laura Hagen who is from the Humane Society. So could we have the slide presentation please? And Shalini, you'll introduce this. Yes, I just want to first of all thank Rebecca Schwartz for bringing this bylaw to our attention and all the hard work she's put in for over a year and I don't know how many years, gathering information why this is important and reaching out to organizations. And today we also have Laura Hagen with us who's the Massachusetts State Director of the Human Society of the United States. Thank you so much for joining us. And we also heard from Christina Scarrange earlier. She's from ADI and then also thanking all the residents that have written to us about passing this bylaw. To my counselors, thank you so much for your time today to review this and vote for it in the future. And I can imagine that everyone's thinking we have huge challenges right now in our town, in this country and why are we talking about this at all. And hopefully this brief presentation will answer why we're addressing this and why now. And before that, I just wanted to share something that I read from our state rep Mindy Dome. It's not related to this, but she tweeted this today and I thought it really spoke to what we are doing here. She said, we need to codify norms so that they are the law. Never assume someone will follow what seems appropriate, common sense or decent, make it the law. So that's kind of what we're here to go through. Next slide. Can I pass it? Okay, yeah. So the purposes really of this bylaw, two broad purposes. One is to protect the public against the hazards that and secondly to protect wild animals. And I'm gonna go a little more detail into this in a couple of slides for the next one. So the prohibition is very simple straightforward that any person who is exhibiting, walking, conducting a traveling show or circus that includes a wild or exotic animal on any public or private land within the town of Amos, it's prohibited. And everyone was given a memo. So you have all the details. Everything is defined in that along with the exceptions. Mandy Jo as chair of the CRC, she went out and reached out to the colleges and made sure. So we got feedback from colleges that this is not affecting and we changed and adapted it to make sure that no one is getting affected in our town. Next slide, which is really the most important slide. Why are we considering this? And we know that especially now with the pandemic more than ever how interconnected we are, some bats in China ended up creating a pandemic that's affected so many people. And there's a lot of data from PETA, how do you pronounce that? P-E-T-A, PETA, PETA, PETA, PETA organization that talks to the hazards that elephants and a lot of animals can create because they carry TB and other bacteria that can affect vulnerable populations even if they don't touch them. So it is something that we need to be concerned about. And of course, it is to stop inhuman treatment of animals just for entertainment and especially when so many species are becoming extinct. And then I just think it's the right thing to do. So next slide. And we would be the 13th municipality in Massachusetts. If we adopted many municipalities around, in our country are adopting this and we need to do it at the local level because things are not happening at the state level. So I wanna just end with the next slide. And it's a quote from Mahatma Gandhi which I think is really irrelevant. The greatness of nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated and given what we've seen in our country and just the sheer lack of empathy, understanding for people and different. I just think that with animals who cannot speak up for themselves it really shows the character of our town and just a very simple thing we can do by creating a bylaw like this sends a very powerful message to not only a town but our neighboring towns about what our values are which is of empathy and creating a compassionate human town for all beings. And I'd like to invite Rebecca to say a few words or to add to this. Can we take the slide down? I'm sorry, take the slide down please and Rebecca please go ahead. Very good. All right, I wanted to thank Shalini for sponsoring this bylaw. And I know animal protection issues often get sidelined especially during like these crazy times with the election and the pandemic. And I really appreciate the town like continuing to work on this despite all these other crazy things happening. 18 months ago I started working on this initiative. First, I met with the Amherst Animal Control Officer. She has dealt with revelant novel situations such as removing tiger cubs from house parties and felt this bylaw would help support her enforcement. I then talked to many town residents and everyone I talked to supported this effort. In fact, most residents assume the town did not allow this form of entertainment which it currently does. These wildlife shows do occur in our area and I can remind everybody about the sad play, the fuel of the elephant who died a painful undignified death at the big E a year ago. Though Amherst has not hosted an event recently, more and more towns region are prohibiting these shows forcing vendors to look for new venues. So I asked the town is proactive in this measure. There's minimal cultural and economic impact on town and this would ensure that we'll never be able to host any entertainment like this. So I'm just asking you to pass this bylaw and thank you all for your time. And because I know it's really late, I'm not gonna say anymore. Laura, did you wanna say a word? No, you're good, all right. No, I don't need to duplicate, like you said it's late, but thank you all for your time and your efforts and thank you, Councillor Balmine for filing this. This is the first reading. I'd like to go on and to have the Community Resources Committee provide their report. Yes, so we considered this over the summer I believe and maybe started in the spring and we had some conversations. There was concern about the definition of what wild and exotic animal, how that was defined. And then there was also concern about how it might affect the operations of the colleges and universities in town, including the animal research and other, we have a agricultural university here and other types of animals that they might house on campus for whatever reason. And so we modified with the sponsors to support the definition of wild and exotic animals, specifically we added to the exceptions, llamas and alpacas, knowing that there are some of those on UMass's campus through their animal husbandry type situation and that other farmers potentially in town keep them for their, it's not fur, but their wool essentially. And then I reached out as chair to each of the three institutions of higher education to ask them for their thoughts on how this bylaws worded might affect them. I heard from at least two of them and I got some language, some requested language from one of them. And so we took that language into consideration and we added an exception to non-mobile permanent institutions and demonstrations or exhibitions at a college or university just to ensure that any research or frankly, one of the concerns was if UMass is keeping of those llamas or whatever and they wanna take them onto campus to in some sense show them off for the students to show what they do with the animals that that would not be prohibited by this bylaw. And so after all of that, we voted four to zero with one absent to recommend that the council adopt this bylaw. Earthie Pam. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm, that was out of order. I now need to hear from George Ryan for GOL. Thank you, Lynn. GOL voted on October 7th, five to zero to declare this bylaw clear, consistent, actionable. It was sent out for legal review. KP law did review it and found that there was no conflict with an existing state law. Yeah, thank you. Comments, Dorothy, Pam. Just a quick clarification. Sometimes I've seen a school or a say a library have the, a man come with a bird of prey in a cage but sometimes out of a cage as an educational sometimes interactive lesson for with children. Would that be, and of course, I know a bird's not an animal, but would that be allowed or not allowed into this law? It is allowed, but Laura, can you answer that just in detail? Sure. If you look at the definition of wild or exotic animals, there is an enumerated list of what are covered. The bill does cover, the ordinance does cover all species, it's covered based on the taxonomy schedule. And so I don't know exactly what that animal is, but it does impact bird type animals such as ostriches and emus. So if it's not one of those animals, then it would not be covered under this bylaw. It would not be impacted, I should say. And it's not. Alyssa, you have your hand up. Yeah, and I'm shaking my head because I'm having some real frustration with this. When I wish we had gotten more information sooner, I really appreciate the extra work CRC did. I think the CRC went well above and beyond in terms of doing the research with the university and the colleges. I think that should have been the responsibility of the residents bringing this to us rather than the town council's responsibility. But I appreciate that the work was done and if that's how it had to be done, great. But it's not something I plan to insist that other town council committees do rather than sponsors. But I'm frustrated that the bylaw says quite clearly, I mean, it's a bylaw in the town of Amherst is that the list is not exhaustive. So that leaves an out as to whether or not a licensed rehabilitation person associated with Birds of Prey. And I'm sure that Dorothy's grandchildren and my children have seen the same presentation that we have had downtown and throughout the community as well as in schools is quite possibly subject to this bylaw because the list is not exhaustive. Also, I wanna just clarify along those lines because that says it's not exhaustive. And I understand, I do the purpose of not saying, well, it's the species, but not that species except. I do just wanna clarify as well that although of course we have not had situations like the three county fair that Northampton Springfield has the equivalent of, we have had these very small scale things like licensed rehabilitation associated with the raptor. And also the lupus zoo has brought animals to various activities on the common like the taste of Amherst. And it sounds to me like they're not gonna be allowed to do that anymore. And I just wanna be clear that that's what's true as opposed to that we're just talking about lions and tigers and bears that we are actually talking about everything. And I'm not saying I have a problem with that. I'm just saying we need to be super clear on the fact that just because we haven't had an elephant helping put up a circus tent doesn't mean we haven't had lupus zoo bringing a monkey to the town common. And it doesn't seem like that's something that's going to be allowed anymore. Is there any comments from the sponsors? I was just gonna say that the language that cautions as you note that the examples are not intended to be exhaustive. What comes after that is that it says they're not the examples that come after the generality of each group of animals. So if we're looking at a bird of prey, like let's say it's a hawk. Again, I don't know what this particular animal was. The group of the family, I guess, of hawks are not listed on this list at all. So it would not impact that animal. So that's what we would look for is the family of that animal. And again, I don't know what particular one it was, but if it were, let's say a hawk, that family group is not listed here. So hawks would not be impacted. But yes, as you know, a monkey would indeed be impacted. Thank you for the clarification, Andy. Yeah, I mean, I appreciate coming after Alyssa because she's clarified a little bit of what my hesitation about this is. I haven't made up my mind yet. I very much appreciate the purpose of that is being put forward in the concern for animals. I horrified by the kind of activity that goes on at things like what happened at the Big E in other places. But until Alyssa spoke, I could not think of a single incident where there had been anything that had happened in the past or was likely to happen in the future that is along the lines of those kinds of events, nor do we have a venue where it is likely to occur even if the university was willing to rent the Mullen Center. It's an Adley, it's not an Amherst. So it wouldn't be affected. I think that what I'm particularly concerned about is adding to the bylaws something that unless we absolutely are convinced that it is an activity that there is a reason to regulate within the town of Amherst that we shouldn't be considering that. We already have 95 pages of bylaws. We don't need to add more to our bylaws. And also feeling that when things come up every time a bylaw is proposed, it takes a tremendous amount of staff time. It takes a tremendous amount of council time. It takes time of our town attorneys. And I don't particularly like to encourage bylaws that don't actually in the end regulate something that is really gonna happen, that bylaw is not intended for symbolic purposes. But so I have great hesitations about it and have been thinking very strongly about those kinds of issues that we should be more concerned about when we want to invest the time and looking at bylaw changes, what the guidelines ought to be for that and whether there's a significant threat to the welfare of animals that would be eliminated by our passing the bylaw unless I was convinced of that on a real practical level. I just don't think it's where this council ought to be going. So thanks. George. George. George. You have to unmute. Sorry. I just wanted to say, I agree with a lot of what Andy has expressed. And I was struck by the mentioning of the animal welfare officer and I would love to hear from her. It sounds like there have been incidents where she's had to deal with animal cruelty. I looked into our bylaws. We have one bylaw, which is the regulations relating to animals. It's 3.21 and it's fairly narrow. So I'd be curious to hear from her as to how this would help her in her work. But I too, like Andy thought, I can't think of an example in my 30 plus years of living in Amherst where these kinds of incidents have occurred. So it would be helpful to me in making a decision on this to get a sense that this is really something that would make a difference other than simply sending a message. It seems to me this is not something that's likely to happen in our community. And it's not clear to me it's ever happened in our community, which again is why I'd like to hear from the animal welfare officer because I may very well be an ignorance of things that do happen. Okay. Thank you. Andy, Jeff. I just wanted to address to Alyssa. One of the exceptions is institutions accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the AZA. And so if Lupa Zoo is accredited by that, then they would not be subject to this bylaw. And Shalini. Yeah, I would, I think it's a great idea to get that information from an animal welfare officer. But I think it's important to have the bylaw in place and not wait for it to happen. And then say, oh, but now we don't have, and that makes it more awkward. And then we're saying no to a current business and that's more complicated. It's much simpler if we have it right now. And the second thing I feel is what we're teaching our children, what we are, it is symbolic, but it is also a culture that we're creating. And when we look at the culture right now in the country, we definitely need to be talking about empathy and not going with this attitude of just kind of because we don't have time. We've already spent a lot of time figuring this out, working together for, and Rebecca has been working on it for a year and that council has already done a lot of the work. And we've already got the information from the attorney general or whoever. And so I just think it's really important as a town that we work at every level where we can have bylaws that ensure the safety of our most vulnerable beings and inhabitants and that includes animals. Are there any other comments at this time? Again, this is the first reading. It'll come back before the council next week. And I'm sure that working with the town manager, we can figure out a way to hear from or some testimony by the animal welfare officer. Is there any other? Can I, no, I'm sorry. I don't know if I'm supposed to do something. Can I talk? Okay. Yeah. So I just want to say that, you know, the intent is not to stop, you know, people who are rehabilitators or educational people bringing, you know, predator birds to teach children. I mean, that's not the intent. And they're also covered in here that sanctuaries and non-mobile people can come. It's really to, I mean, honestly, if the Lupa Zoo, I'm not sure what their accreditation is, but if they're bringing monkeys to like display on the comments, like maybe they just shouldn't be able to do that anymore. I don't know what all their animals are, but the intent is to stop, you know, these exotic animals from being exhibited for and exploited for profit, basically. So, you know, that's like a different scenario than a rehabilitator bringing birds to teach children. And also, you know, the times are changing, towns are limiting where these vendors can go. And they are looking for new, we have circuses that live, that are nearby and they're looking for places to bring their animals. This is how they make their living. So they're always looking for new venues. And also, what was I gonna say? You know, we have done a lot of work on this and really hopefully covered all of that. I forgot what I was gonna say. I'm sorry, it's late, but that's it for now. Rebecca and Laura, thank you for joining us. This will come back up for a further discussion and second reading before the council next week. With that, we're going to move on to the wage and tip theft bylaw and the responsible employer public construction contracts and agreements for tax relief bylaw. So, I'm going to actually call upon Patty Angelis to make the motion and she doesn't need to read the entire thing. This is the second reading of this. And so, Pat, would you please start? There are actually two motions. Should I do them one at a time or at separate times? I'm sorry, what? One at a time, please. I move to adopt the wage and tip theft bylaw as a general bylaw of the town. Is there a second, Mandy, Joe or Kathy? I second it, Kathy seconds it. And further discussion on this bylaw. Andy. At the last meeting, I asked a question about one very specific issue and that was whether there were costs involved with having the penalty portion of the bylaw that's included in whether there's something to be added. And I want to thank Lisa Klossin who took the lead on trying to do some research and apparently was helped by Rose Bookbinder who spoke earlier today during public comment. The response that came back from them in was that Northampton does not have a bylaw that, it is a bylaw and a very strong bylaw but not one that provides for fines which was the issue that I was raising about. Mary Narquitz apparently had indicated to Rose that they penalized three restaurants who had state wage and labor violations and they penalized them during the annual relicensing process. The one of those restaurants is subsequently closed and all three had been required to buy what we referred to and I think that they referred to also as wage bond which is a form of insurance to keep that from happening again so that they were enforcing it without having the fines there. The other things that they were pointing out is that most of the bylaws do not in Massachusetts do not have fines attached to them and the one example that was thrown out during the discussion apparently here was a community of a lot larger size in that Seattle. So for all of those reasons, I still feel somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of including the fines portion in the bylaw. If it remains in there, I'm still gonna vote for it because I think that this is a very important bylaw to pass. I'm not gonna make a motion, I've spoken now and I will second the motion if somebody makes it to remove the block that refers to that penalty and removes I think it's section I two which is just to clarify some of the language about it. But if nobody else feels strongly about the issue to raise it, then there's not two of us to even get it on the table. So there'll be no, if there's a motion, I'll second it if there's not a motion, then we go forward. Let's see how that goes, George. We have, as all of you are aware, we have been struggling to get answers to certain questions from KP law and we finally did get a response today at the last minute and I don't know if the sponsors have had a chance to see it and they can tell us. There was one of the three questions dealt with some specific language that the sponsors had asked KP law to advise them upon related to successors in interest. And that language has finally at the last minute been sent to us. I don't, so first question is to the sponsors where they've had even a chance to look at this. I think they should, they may want to incorporate it into both this bylaw and the other bylaw. Second thing is we'd asked Paul to consult staff and we got that memo also today about I think four o'clock and it has a number of, I think nine specific comments from staff. Only one is relevant to wage and tip theft. The other eight are relevant to responsible employer bylaw and it seems some of them are things that should be considered. So the timing is terrible, but I can't, it's just that's the way it is. So a question to the sponsors, have they even seen the KP law memo and secondly, have they seen the memo from Paul and do they wish to take into advisement any of these comments or suggestions and some of the legal language? Kathy, you have your hand up. Yeah, I'll take the one on the successor language. It more specifically applies to the responsible employer, but it's language that could be added to what we already have with a long list, but it doesn't, the language we have should still stand so it could add another sentence. And as you said, George just came in really late, but Mandy in particular took a look at it and it doesn't quite capture what we already had theirs despite the fact that it's two lines long of other definitions. So it's fine to just drop it in after that. And what the other part of the memo said is that what we had done in two other parts works fine. So those were questions that were resolved. You know, on the staffing issue and I'll let Mandy weigh in more on the successor on the staffing issues, you know, we had a long discussion with staff and went through some of the same issues that just came up in this memo, you know, and things like what's the payroll format and pointed out that we have models of it, UMass are using them. They're other that the town doesn't have to invent the wheel here or reinvent the wheel. There are some off the shelf kinds of things that can be done to do this differently. And so some of the enforcement issues, I think have come up in other towns because they've never done this. And then it turns out it's not a lot of extra work. It's just you adopt a different set of formats and then those become the format. So, you know, it didn't feel like it was new information and we rather than it was codified in a memo from Paul. So I think we address particularly some of the other issues that had come up with the human resource director on, you know, what the responsibilities would be, but on procurement, on what kinds of forms and formats that these, some things would be new, but they don't have to be, they're not new in that Amherst has to go and invent them that they can look at and particularly the big constructors, construction contractors are already responding to towns that have these on their books. So it's not like they've never seen them before and can't adjust. So I'll let both Mandy, it looks like Mandy's hand is up too. Mandy, Joe. Yeah, I think Kathy covered it mostly. The purpose of our requirements for successors and interest section in both this by-law and in the responsible employer was because there are many times a contractor or even a business is a doing business as, you know, so it's a one-named person doing business as random corporation and they get into trouble with the AG because they didn't pay their workers and so they stop doing business as that company and start doing business as something else, totally quote unrelated company. And so the language that was provided by KP law doesn't actually address that particular issue because they would be quote two separate companies, it's not a successor company and the language that's in the by-laws right now addresses that issue, which is an issue we actually really do want to address. To go to the comment from George about the memo from Paul, I'll just address wage in tip theft because that's the motion that's on the table right now and just remind the council that the human rights director position originally was created through a by-law, the human rights by-law. And so it was created from nothing essentially by the legislative body. And so we have, I would argue that we as a council, the legislative body have every right to add duties to a job that was created by by-law. Okay, are there any other questions or comments? And I'm just hand raised. Yeah, I can't raise my hand through the thing, Lynn. Oh, really? Yeah. So in response to George, so the sponsors had met with all town staff, these points that were that I was asked to document in a memo were raised with the sponsors. So this isn't new information to the sponsors. But I think at one of the previous council meetings, and I totally forgotten to thank you Athena for saying this is still on my outstanding list. They asked to sort of summarize what those points were. So that's what the purpose of that memo was. Thank you. Are you a co-host? Is that why you're here? Yeah, I don't know. It just says me next to me. Thank you. Okay, just wave it more. Oh, yeah. Thank you. So I just wanna make sure from the sponsors point of view that you're prepared to move forward given the memos and so forth. I'm hearing that that is yes. Yes. Are there any other comments on wage theft? Okay. Then hearing none or seeing none, we're going to move to a vote. And we start with Griezmer and I vote yes. Hannake. Yes. Pam. Yes. Ross. Yes. Ryan. Yes. Jane. Yes. Driver. Yes. Steinberg. Yes. Schelling Balmium. Yes. Brewer. Yes. The Angeles. Yes. And Dumont. Yes. Passes 12, 0, 0, and one absent. So it's like unanimous. Okay. We're moving on to responsible employer. Pat, I believe you're gonna make the motion. I move to rescind in its entirety general bylaw 3.4, responsible employer for public construction projects and adopt the responsible employer public construction contracts and agreements for tax relief as a general bylaw of the town. Very second. And that's Mindy Joe. 20 seconds. Mindy Joe gets to second. Okay. Are there comments and questions at this time? George. Again, just for my sake, and it's my terrible memory, but from what I'm hearing from the sponsors, what I've heard from Paul is that all the items that are listed here under responsible employer bylaw that are staff concerns have been met with by the sponsors and answers have been provided to the council. Yes, that's accurate, George. And that memo actually is reflecting a meeting that happened many months ago. And so some of the answers have been made and given to us. And it's going in this year and out that year, but that's my problem. Okay, thank you. It's been a long time. It's a long time beluded process to get here. Evan, Ross. Yeah, definitely a long process speaking as someone who's on TSO and who asked for this exact memo. I think we're going on six months now, since I asked for it. So I'm glad we finally got it right as we were about to take the second reading. But it was useful. And the memo shows a few different concerns, many of which I don't necessarily share, but one, I would like the sponsors to respond to, which is the first bullet under responsible employer, the bid stage versus contract stage. From my reading, you kept it at bid stage in that C1. And so that seemed to be the one that I was like, oh, that sounds like a somewhat legitimate concern. And so I'm just curious to hear from the sponsors about their thoughts around that. We would like to respond. So I think that's me. So yeah, that was a concern of staff and the sponsors chose to keep it at bid stage. We've talked to, and Lisa Klossin and Rose Bookbinder have talked to a number of other cities that have adopted these that include the bid stage language. And they have not seen a decrease in bidders based on that language there. Basically, the reason we wanted to keep it in is because we want to ensure that even someone bidding on a project before we get to offering a contract to that person or that company has affirmed that they are not debarred or have not violated it and will continue to abide by wage and tip theft laws, all the laws of the state. Because we fear that if you don't do that on a converse level to what's written here, if you allow anyone to bid and then you get to contract stage and you've provided the language beforehand, but that doesn't, I'm cynical as an attorney, that doesn't mean everyone's read it. We know how many things we agree to on apps that we don't actually read, user agreements and all. And so you get to the opening of the bids and the lowest bidders there and then they go to sign the contract and they're like, oh wait, I can't sign this because I've done this. I can't affirm that or I can't do that. So I think there's problems either way. And we wanted to ensure that everyone who's submitting the bid has affirmed and signed under oath that they have not violated these in the past so many years and that they intend to and will only hire subcontractors or contractors on the case of a tiff person that will abide by these laws. And so that's that. I wanted to, there was something else I wanted to address. Oh, so I'm gonna take all the time I've got here. And the motion sheet forgot to put in the rescission of 3.4 responsible employer. This is essentially replacing that language. I just wanted to note that we caught that in the middle of this meeting. So we missed it in the motion sheet initially but we're rescinding that one because this bylaw deals with the same stuff. Thank you for that explanation. And actually when Pat made the motion she made it fully and appropriately. Alyssa. There's a joke and there's somewhere about the fact that my computer kept saying do you want to use intelligence services? Maybe it was warning me before I spoke. I have two things. One is a question just to be answered at the end of my statement which is whether or not UMass is subject to this as that had always been my understanding that they were not but since that came up repeatedly in public comment tonight I think it's good that we clarify that again. And then the other item is sharing the concern expressed by a fellow TSO member that we asked for this memo months ago so that we'd have time to digest it. And so while the people who met with staff know what the answers were, we didn't know that. And now we've had almost no time to do so. And we're at the point, yes, I know we have a pandemic but we have to figure out a way to do these things better because it's really frustrating to try and just absorb it all in the last couple of hours before the meeting starts. The other, if I'd had more time to do that maybe I could have followed up with a better question associated with bullet point three in the general procurement concerns. Because I'm just, I'm going to use the word surprised that the statement here is that staff were not clear as to what benefit the town of Amherst would gain by giving preference to hiring residents in Hampshire, Franklin and Hampton counties. I just, I don't understand that. We have a TIF with Atkins over 10 years ago that asked for preference of location. And yes, I do understand that KP law says that laws like this have been found to be illegal. But we have existing TIF that says this preference is important to us. I think a bylaw is an expression of our values to the point that we can do it practically speaking. And I am willing to take that risk that KP law has perhaps advised us not to do. But the idea that we don't know why that's important actually I'm pretty sure we all do know why it's important to talk about hiring local employees. So again, if we had more time to process something like this, we maybe could have asked a couple of questions back and forth in a different venue. But more important at the end of this, my only, the only thing I actually need an answer to is whether or not, because I think the community needs the answer is whether or not this has any effect on UMass. Nitya? So this particular bylaw, unless UMass bid to build a project that the town was contracting for and building or bid to or wanted to sponsor some sort of TIF agreement that we were going to interact, this responsible employer bylaw doesn't really apply to UMass simply because they're unlikely to do that. So that part. So I want to go back to Wage and TIF theft. And I was trying to remember and I was just looking at the bylaw that we passed moments ago. At one point we had as a part of the definition of employer, we had exceptions for state and federal government and even I think town employees. It appears, and I'm looking at the definition now that we have removed those exceptions, but I will caution that we are unsure because we never asked town attorney whether a bylaw in town can actually bind the federal government or the state government. We know in zoning that it tends not to do that. So while they are not specifically exempt from this bylaw that we just passed on Wage and TIF theft under the definition of employer, they would presumably be subject to it now or in 14 days when it goes into effect. I do not guess and opine on whether in actuality they would be based on some random law that says that they can't be, if there is such one that says they can't be subject to town and city laws and ordinances. Okay, any other questions or points at this time? And I'm assuming again that the sponsors having received information somewhat late are still prepared to move forward. Great. All right, we have a motion. It's been made and seconded. I see no other hands. So I'm going to call the question and I start with Mandy Jo Hanneke. Yes. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Heather Ross. Yes. George Ryan. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Hugh Schreiber. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Yes. Helen Falmium. Yes. Alyssa Brower. Yes. Matthew Angelis. I see. You were muted when you did that, Pat. Yes. There's a demand. Yes. And Lynn Gries-Mercy, yes. And it passes 12, zero, zero and one absent. Moving on to appointments. And all the appointments were approved except for community safety working group. And I've asked that if we need, we can look at that memo, but maybe we don't need to and we can just go to the agenda item and Dorothy, since it comes out of TSO, would you please make the motion? Yes. I can find it, I will. I can make it and you can second it. Um, okay. To approve the following 10 manager appointments to the community safety working group effective immediately as filed with the town clerk on November 5th, 2020 and recommended by the town services and outreach committee report of November 5th, 2020 for a term to last the length of the working groups efforts. Tashina Bowman, Deborah Ferrara, Pat Onabaku, Brianna Owen, Alicia Walker and Paul Wiley. Is there a second? Brian, second. Thank you. Any further discussion or comment? Yes, Dorothy. Sorry, I can't do too many things at one time here. I just wanted to clarify that I took this off the consent agenda because of the high public interest in the creation of this group. And I just wanted to make sure that counselors had the opportunity to ask more questions of the town manager and I also just wanted to mention once again that I'm concerned with the lack of transparency in the process of town appointments and that we don't know who applied or how many people applied. So it's pretty much impossible to judge these recommendations because we don't have any way to compare them to anything. So, and of course, I also, I think there was publicity about the fact that the racial equity task force withdrew from participating in the interview process. I thought people might want to either discuss that or have questions about it. I did end up voting for this list of applicants and I will vote for them again because I didn't hear from anyone that they had any problem with the people that were recommended. So, and like I said, I didn't have any frame of reference. So, and as noted in the TSO report, there will be more recommendations for additional members and that the TSO will be looking at this Thursday at 5 p.m. at our Zoom meeting. So I just wanted to make sure that the public knew all of that and that the counselors had a chance to ask questions if they wanted to. Are there any questions or comments at this time? Okay. I do wanna just recognize that this has been quite an expanded into people that have been doing these interviews that makes it even all that more demanding to try to pull that kind of group together. So as much as not see all the caps we've had an outstanding group of citizens who have and I wanna appreciate their efforts in doing some challenging. Yeah, I'm very impressed with the group of people who have been appointed. I just wanted to hear from Paul since we can't get into the specifics as Darcy mentioned but just hear from Paul what the process was like. Did he feel that you were able to get people interested in this and what the outreach looked like and just, yeah. Sure, so yeah, so a lot of the interest I do, I agree with Lynn that the interview team was very strong and because they're all so strong and they were hard to get everybody together but they devoted the time to make it happen. Interviewed all the, anybody who put through a CAF will have been interviewed and these are all moving forward with unanimous support from the interview team. And yeah. Any other questions at this time? Right then we're gonna move to the boat and that starts with Darcy Pam. Yes. Anyone else? Hi. George Ryan. Yes. Matthew Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Yes. Shalani Balmoun. Yes. Melissa Brewer. Yes. Pat DeAngeles. Yes. Darcy Dumont. Yes. Lynn Griezmerzy. Yes. And Amanda Johannike. Yes. The people are appoint, these six people are now appointed and it's well for one against, no abstentions in one absent. I wanna also note that we have already by consent agenda voted them SME status. So we have a few minutes and so we now move on to committee leaves and leaves on my first. Mandy Jo, CRC. Nothing new. You heard a lot of reports from CRC tonight. So we'll have something more on zoning later. Thank you. Andy. So, you know, from the meeting we had at 530 that the finance committee is meeting tomorrow. I did submit a written report. I apologize for having failed to do something that Alyssa and I have been very conscious of, which is you always data report and somehow that got left off in the should have born today's date. But the purpose of the report was to explain the process. There were several of you during the prior conversation that we had at 530 who were raising concerns about making sure that there was special attention given to how we develop the guidelines. And they are council guidelines. They are not finance committee guidelines. We recommend them to you. So the process that is proposed this year as indicated in the report is a little bit different because it actually shows the possibility of it coming before the council two times instead of one time. So that if there is discussion that would then motivate the council to want to refer it back to the committee, we have built in that capacity to do so. But, you know, I think that's basically all there is to report right now. George? Q&A? The reports, I'm sorry, the reports in the packet. There's one error in the text. Just I'd like to know quickly. The vote is for zero, but it was an absence, not an abstention. Now I'll make that correction and send it to Athena. But if you did read the report, the vote, the one member was absent. Okay. Thank you. JCPC, we know it's not meeting at this point. Darcy TSL? Yeah. It's all in the report. We are meeting on this Thursday on the community safety additional members. And then our next meeting after that is on the 19th, we moved it so that it's before the budget forum so that it's at 430 on the 19th. Any liaison reports? Kathy, CPA? Just briefly, so people, if people want to know what CPA is looking at in terms of the slated proposals, the public hearing on the full slate is this Thursday at 6 p.m. And the number of proposals have come in, including from specifically from town, far exceed the budget that's available. So the community will also begin a discussion on prioritizing. Alyssa, I failed to see your hand. I apologize. Not at all. I just wanted to know, and perhaps you're really the best person to ask this of it. I was asked again today by a resident, where are we with the facial recognition by-law that like TSO has already said, yes. Where is it? And when do we think it's coming back to us? George? Send out to KP law for review. And that's about all I can say at the moment. I haven't heard anything back. I don't think Paul's heard anything yet, but if he has, he'll tell us. So it's just GOL review at this time? Yeah, GOL review is the last review. Thank you. Okay. Anything else? Any other committees? Ayes on reports? Darcy? Tack, the Transportation Advisory Committee has met about three times now and they're in the process of looking at their charge and seeing if they want to make some revisions. They've been working with the town manager and Wilford Moring about that. And so just that's in process. Thank you. Alyssa, you have your hand up from before. George, you have your hand up. From before, I apologize. Thank you. Okay. All right, we're going on to the town manager's report. Paul? Thank you. So a few things. One is the election. Just again, I've written on my memo and we'll get a more thorough report next week from the town clerk, the town clerk office just did a spectacular job on the election. Just Roy went off without a hitch and huge turnout, unusual situation because of the COVID and all the early voting and Roy just got everything and they have additional things that they're doing and just sort of another piece of background information. Every year the secretary of state chooses 3% of the precincts to be audited. And last time there was a statewide election we were chosen and we had to do a recount of that particular precinct. And but this year we did not get chosen. All the town clerks, they do a sort of a lottery online at the secretary of state's office and they're all hoping not to have to do it. But it's just in terms of voter trust in the process this is a standard operating procedure that the secretary of state has that 3% of all the precincts get audited every year and it's random which ones get chosen. And so that's an interesting process, I think. So next week we'll be having an opportunity to talk to the council more about we'll have a COVID-19 health update with our new health director who this is her sixth day on the job. So she'll have at least another four days under her belt before she comes to you but she's working out really well and only happy with that happening here. And so she'll also be as part of our community chat on Thursday, Emma Dragon is her name. We are the health department has been very busy. They're also offering flu shots. They were at the community breakfast on Wednesday at the universal Unitarian Church. They're at the survival center on Friday offering flu shots. And so they're out there in the community offering flu shots to folks. Veterans Day is on this Wednesday. So the town offices will be closed. There is a small event but it's by sort of like invitation only like they're respecting social distance but the BFW and Legion want to do something to recognize the day. And then town employees are getting together and we're gonna be distributing gift bags to the veterans who we have names of on Wednesday. So there'll be a bunch of town employees just walking around and visiting whoever's a veteran and giving them a nice little gift bag and saying thank you for your service. You know our new HR human resources director started and our health director has started. The crate stores again, I wanna give them a ton of credit for the work. Kevin Noonan, Jerry Weiss in particular have done to secure a congregate housing space in the Unitarian Universalist facility on North Pleasant Street. And I was in there the other day and it was just beautiful inside. It's a beautiful room to begin with. The kitchen is there. Councilor Ryan is there helping to clean and cook and do all the things that he does every time. And then also the crate stores is able to contract with the University Motor Lodge for I think 20 rooms that they're utilizing for individual housing, mostly for women, but it can be anybody. And Mary Beth was up there on Sunday and some of the residents were collecting leaves because they felt they were so honored to have felt so good about being offered a place to live in the cold weather that they went to trying to spruce up the place. And so a little piece of gratitude for the things at the towns. But again, still work to be done, still looking at shower facilities, working, walking down two paths for that. But again, I just can't tell you that how much crate stores has done to get these two facilities. Other cities and towns were on a region wide conference call every week. They're struggling with getting locations that can secure both social distance and meet the needs of the population. And North Hampton, I don't think they have any shelters open yet. So it's a big need out there. And I think that really speaks to the need of a regional solution at finance by the state. I think that's pretty much the big things I want to hit on. I know it's late, you've been here since 5.30. So if there are any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. George. It is late, Paul, but we're all aware that governor has issued much stricter set of regulations. I'm just wondering what you and your staff and the police department are thinking about enforcement. Pretty much we're going to keep to the same program we've been keeping to. You don't feel this has changed the ballgame at all. How do the police department feel about a 9.30 PM? Parties must cease, that sort of thing. Essentially a culture of compliance is what we're aiming at and we're not, it's not really changing the way we're approaching this. Right, I mean, I think the university sent out the message that things need to stop at 9.30 or restaurants are getting that message as well. We're seeking clarification because the police executive office of public safety had come down saying, having a slightly different interpretation than was coming out of the governor's office. So we're trying to get clarification on what the police role is. But I think we're starting with the culture of compliance continuing with that. I don't want our cops going around on Thanksgiving, knocking on people's doors, saying you've got 12 people in here. That's not our business. And I think, but again, we are, the communication is pretty strong if we are called to a place and they are in violation of the time or the number of people or the spacing, they will take action at that point in time. Garcy? I remember at the beginning of the internet that you spearheaded an effort to secure isolation and quarantining space at Hampshire College. We figured out we didn't need it, but did I, I think I just read today that the state now has a place in Everett? So are we, would we in fact send if some of our residents at Craig's Doors or the motel is our plan to use that state facility to transport them there or do you have other plans? So that's the solution the state has come up with. We find that's incredibly inappropriate for Western masks. People aren't going to go. So they may not want to get tested in fear of cause they don't want to be transported to Everett. Last year we had the quality in, we had the Hampshire, we had Hampshire College for Amherst and we had the quality in in North Hampton and there was also a hotel in Pittsfield. Even going to Pittsfield was a challenge for many people. They still, you know, they're taking them out of their community. The state has been pretty strong about saying we only need one statewide. The quality in did not, the Hampshire unit facility they got did not get utilized last year. Quality in didn't get really utilized at all. Either and so the state through MIMO was feeling like why are we buying these facilities and spending all this money is they're not going to be used. We feel like we have a little bit of leeway in the sense that we have a university motor launch that if we need to use an isolation quarantine we could utilize one of those rooms as a suitable place for someone to isolate. But again, the state has not come up with a very good solution. And I think we've tried to address that through Secretary Sutter's and for, you know, so it, but it's not much of a response yet. At the Angeles. Yes, thank you. I've been asking Paul over a series of meetings about the composition of the ambassadors. And I want to thank you, Paul for getting me in touch with Kat Newman. And I want to reassure other counselors and the community that members of the BIPOC community and people, people with a variety of abilities have been hired as ambassadors. So I'm really glad about the composition of the people who are doing that for our town. Thank you, Paul. I appreciate you taking the time to meet with Kat. Now, Alyssa, you have your hand up. So hopefully this is quick and Paul might have had two seconds to think about it today, although perhaps not. I'd send him an email earlier today. People that are currently being appointed to committees, as you know, we just appointed several members to various multiple member bodies tonight. We confirmed those is that people are being told they have to come to the parking lot behind town hall to get sworn in, which sounds ridiculous on the face of it, given that they're not even coming to meetings at town hall. So is there some way we can do that remotely? Do we need to advocate with the governor's office what's happening with that? Because it's not accessible to people to assume that they will be able to just drive to town hall to do that. I did talk with the town clerk about that. And thanks for giving me the heads up on the question, Alyssa. And they do things a certain way. They have their books that people sign, and it's their record of everything. And so they felt it was a good solution. But I have not, I don't have an answer to whether we can legally do something different. I assume what we can, but I haven't had time to look into that. But the initial reaction from the clerk's office was we haven't had any complaints and blah, blah, blah. So, but we'll look into that if there are other options available. And again, I think it was more of a record keeping thing because they have hundreds of years of signed books that people said I served on this committee. And not looking to, so, but we'll look more into that. Thank you, because we did say to people, hey, Zoom meetings are more accessible to people with little kids or elder care responsibilities or job responsibilities. And then we said, but you got to drive to town hall to literally sign a book. So, because not like you want to take the bus these days. Thank you. That's what EcoSign was meant for. Mandy Jo. Yeah, the talk about ambassadors and the new regulations. With the new regulations, particularly the mask order that is now mask everywhere in public, no matter whether you can social distance or not, are we going to expand where the ambassadors are handing out masks instead of just in our mandatory mask portion of downtown? Are we gonna look at the rail trails, the hiking places, or even just the other village centers where people might be walking North, you know, North Amherst or Cushman or something. So the ambassadors aren't relegated to the downtown area. They do go throughout the town as you know, because you were with them when they went out on the weekend before Halloween. We don't patrol the rail trail. That's not town of Amherst property. That is, you know, DCR property. But yes, they will be expanding their footprint in now that it's everywhere. We're gonna keep the signs up saying mask required area because that's a Board of Health regulation or order. And if the governor rescends his, that order stays in a place until the Board of Health changes. The school committee or school department is asking the Board of Health to also include school facilities as mask required areas that we would then designate that. The Board of Health has taken that into consideration this week, not Thursday, I think. But yeah, ambassadors can go wherever we want them to go. No other questions at this time? Okay. Then on the town council comments, I wanna communicate to you that I have automatically referred to CRC, the small business Saturday resolution, which we adopted tonight and the human rights day proclamation, which will come before the council in December. Is it the CLL? I'm sorry, GLL. You can give it to CRC, it's okay by me. It went to GLL. Thank you so much for the correction. And then the other thing is that I will be posting the agenda for the retreat tomorrow and that is it from one to four on Saturday. Pat DeAngelis, you have your hand up. Yes, I just wanted to let the council members know that on December 1st, from 630 to 830, there is a symposium planned on reparations and it's gonna be featuring Alderman, Robin Ray, Simmons of Evanston, Illinois, where they've passed reparations ordinance and Cam Howard of EnCobra. And I'm very excited about that. Chalene and Alyssa and I have been working with to create a proclamation, but this symposium would be wonderful if the council members could attend and I will update people as it's confirmed. And would you please send it out as an email of information? Yes. Thank you, Pat. Are there any other comments at this time? Any future agenda items? Pat, you still have your hand up. I assume it's just because they got left up. Seeing none, then I'm going to adjourn the meeting and it is 1047. Thank you.