 Okay, go ahead. Good evening. It is October 16th, 2023. This is a regular meeting of the town council. The open meeting law has been extended allowing us to continue holding meetings without a quorum of the council physically in the room. However, I want to call to your attention that there are nine of us in the room at this time. At the same time, we provide public access. This meeting is successful in real time by Zoom, by phone, and as a live broadcast on Amherst Media Channel 9 and live streamed. Given that we have a quorum of the council present, I am calling the October 16th, 2023 town council meeting to order at 6.32. I will call on each councilor by name. At that time, you should unmute your mic and say present. This will indicate that we can hear you and you can hear us. Please remember to mute your mic after saying present. Shalini Balmilne was informed me she will be absent this evening. Pat DeAngelis, we're not hearing you, Pat. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can. I'm present. Thank you. Anna Devlin-Gothier. Present. Lynn Griesmer is present. Mandy Jo Hanneke. Present. Anika Lopes. Present. Michelle Miller. Present. Dorothy Pam. Whoops. Here. Thank you. Pam Rooney. Here. Kathy Shane. Here. Andy Steinberg. Present. And Kathy, did you answer? Yes. I sit here. Thank you. Jennifer Taub. Present. Alicia Walker. See Alicia on the screen. Here. Alicia, can you hear us? Yes. Can you hear me? Yes. Now we can. Okay. Thank you. It was faint initially. Thank you. There is no chat room for this meeting. If you have technical issues, please let Athena and me know. To make a comment or ask a question, please click the raised hand button. If technical difficulties arise, we'll decide what to do at that point and whether or not we have to pause the meeting. There is a, there are some changes to the order of the agenda. After completing items one through six, and I'll repeat what those items are in a moment, we will then move to item eight a the final report of the African heritage reparations assembly. That item will include a presentation, a special public comment period, and council discussion and motions. After completion of the action items, we will return to item seven a, a discussion of the Crest program with the town manager. And then we will proceed with the rest of the agenda. So items one through six, just to make sure the public is aware, are first of all calling the meeting to order. Number two is announcements. Number three is hearing, which we don't have tonight. Four is general public comment. But we will ask those that want to make special public comment about the AHRA report and the work of the committee that they do so when we have that special public comment. Item five is the consent agenda and six is resolutions and proclamations. Are there any questions regarding the order of the agenda? I just want to note that in the audience, in the town room, we have eight people and on Zoom, we have 20. So on the screen, we'll show the announcements. The next time the town council meets is November 16th, 13th, and then again on November 20th. We have various upcoming council meetings, however, that are posted on the agenda and on the screen. As I mentioned earlier, we have no hearing, so we will move to general public comment. If you are in the room and you want to make general public comment, not about the AHRA report, please make sure you have signed in. Second of all, if you're in the audience and you would like to make general public comment, not about the AHRA report, please raise your hand at this time. And I just want to mention we will have one general public comment period and one specific public comment period. If you are physically in the audience and you've signed in, we'll be calling on you in a moment. And Athena, how many of those, how many people have signed in? Five, okay? And I'm seeing no raised hands in the audience. And so we will proceed with five people on public comment. Residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes and based on the number of people who wish to speak. The council will not engage in a dialogue or comment on a matter during public general public comment. Public comments are not reflective of the opinions of the council. So Athena, would you please tell me the first name? Amy Zuckerman, please come up to the mic. State your name and address before you begin. And please note the clock up on the screen. You'll have three minutes. Okay. Good evening, Amy Zuckerman. Nowadays I've been priced out of Amherst. I live in Turner's Falls, 23 Marshall Street. And one day I may have enough money to return home. What happened is that I started to see the headlines about the issues with CREPS and management and all these issues. And the interesting thing I came today and I sent all of you in the council information and proposals to deal with this because I actually had dealt with the director before all this blew up. And I had actually been working on an important manual about landlords and tenants resolving disputes peaceably. And I can thank you that because of Officer Bill Laramie who connected me to Earl Miller, then director of CREPS, I was able to go to the wild flyer, wild flyer, oh Jesus, wild flyer clients. And you get a little bit of money to finish this very important manual on how people cannot kill each other. And let me tell you something, all those subject, I'm talking to Pam about it. The stuff that goes on this town, I call it the hit grade of slumlords and scumbag tenants. And I have a lot of ugly sad examples of what's happened. So anyway, I just want to talk about CREPS briefly. What I noticed working with them, this was just simply as a member of the public getting advice with ideas is first of all, I 100% agree that CREPS should still stay here, should be funded properly and managed properly. My experience was there were not enough management. I mean, Earl was very kind to me, he listened to me, he was supportive. But then I couldn't find him, there was no way to reach him, there's no staff. And I'd go in person, like a few weeks ago I saw Officer Griffin who's great. The idea is I think very important that we take the police out of their respondents, the first responders, particularly domestic violence. I started covering the Amherst Police Department as a young journalist in 1974. 49 years ago and I know all about police departments as I covered the news for many decades and many police departments. We got a lot of good people down here. On the other hand, they're stressed. So when does an issue become criminal versus civil? An example in the winter, I had a rassing landlord who was just horrendous, he was drunk and I called up the officer and they know me. I said, listen, can you help me? He said, well, it's not criminal yet, Amy. I said, well, when does it become criminal? When this guy kills me? So when I talk about responders, this is so urgently needed. But why young people? Why not tap this vast amazing population to have a hotline? As far as this hotline, I've been on them. A lot of people are retired. Boomers have nothing to do but help people. You have 30 seconds. So I'm here to help whatever you want. Came down from New Hampshire for three hours today to drive and say that I want to be here, save people's lives and whatever, wherever you can use me. I am here. I'm always going to be here. I'm the ghost. Thank you for your public comment. Who's next? Jeffrey Gold, okay. Michael Hutton, please come up and state your name and address before you speak. Good evening. My name is Dr. Michael Hutton Woodland. I live at 67 Hall Stroad in South Amherst. I'm here this evening as a representative from the abortion truth campaign in Massachusetts. And I'm also here to encourage yes vote on the bylaw to ensure safe access to legally protected, reproductive and gender affirming healthcare services action item 8c. I did speak at the first hearing, so I'm not going to repeat those comments. Just want to say once again that I really encourage a yes vote. I also want to thank at this time, especially Anna Devlin-Gautier and Mandy Johannike, the two council members who brought, who worked very hard to write this and bring it forward to the whole council. A couple of things I just want to underscore, one of which is the bylaw further solidifies and extends protections that are available in the state of Massachusetts in our town of Amherst. And one of the things that it will do specifically is to help encourage town representatives, which might include those at the health department or at the police department, to follow the law in protecting the identity and health information of people seeking reproductive care and gender affirming care. And especially the bylaw will help them resist any pressure that may come from outside of the town to release that information. And as I think maybe many of us are aware, that pressure is coming and it's coming from outside of our state. And so I think Amherst is really potentially going to do a great thing by setting up some protections for folks seeking this care. So again, it's a great step for the town and I really encourage you all to give a yes vote tonight. So thank you. Thank you for joining us. The next person please, Athena. Ross Vernon Jones. Okay, thank you. Ross Vernon Jones, 17 Gaylar Street. When I spoke to you two weeks ago, I was concerned about the Caress program. And I appreciate that you took time to discuss it. Tonight I'm beyond concerned. I think the Caress program is being destroyed. I'm told that most of the responders are planning to resign. I don't know all the reasons, but here's my understanding. First, they have never been able to do the job they were hired for because the town never worked it out for them to get 911 calls. Second, a great deal of the good work that they were doing up until the day Earl Miller was put on leave came to a halt and they have not been supported or perhaps even allowed to continue much of it. Third, Caress has been turned or is being turned into a subsidiary of the police department. This is not what the responders signed on for. It is not what the community was promised. And it was not what you voted for. The town manager has written that working out 911 calls is complex and being worked on. The truth is that that work began on these issues early in 2022. The town manager was alerted then that his intervention was needed to give clear directions to dispatch, to get needed legal opinions, and to begin impact bargaining started. Why that didn't happen a year and a half ago, I don't know. The current leadership team is not similar to the Caress implementation team of 2022. It lacks the three members who had spent a year researching and studying community responder programs around the country, consulting with national experts, listening to our earnest community, including the BIPOC community, and carefully evaluating options. The current team lacks that experience and expertise. On a related but separate issue, when Mr. Miller had been on administrative leave for almost a month, I learned in a meeting with some town hall staff that he had not been given a copy of the allegations against him or been fully informed about that, nor had he had an opportunity to tell his side of the story, present evidence, and refute allegations. That seems incredible to me, and I don't know if he's yet been given that opportunity. The details of what Mr. Miller has alleged to have done or not done are understandably personnel matters requiring confidentiality. The question of whether town employees being forced onto administrative leave are entitled to know what the complaints against them are and have an opportunity to defend themselves is a matter of policy, administration, and basic human decency and should not be avoided by being labeled a personnel issue. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. We have one more. There's two hands in the Zoom. Do you want it to take either of those or do you want to take the person and who signed up here? Yes, let me go ahead and bring Allegra Clark in. Please come into the audience, unmute, state your name and where you live. Hi, my name is Allegra Clark. I am a resident of District 2 in Amherst and I just wanted to reiterate my concern around the Crest Program. I'm speaking as a member of the community tonight, not as a co-chair of the Community Safety and Social Justice Committee, but I am very grateful for what Mr. Vernon Jones just laid out. I appreciate all the hard work he and the rest of the CSWG had done towards putting Crest together and working on the implementation team. I share the concerns that this interim leadership does not have the same structure as the implementation team and that there are neither members of the CSWG nor the CSSJC as part of the team. And I do have additional concerns based on some information that was shared in the CSSJC meeting last week that as of January 2nd of 2024, Ms. Young will no longer be a member of the implementation team. And I wonder if that means that there is a shift coming on January 2nd that we are unaware of or if there's an end date in sight for this interim leadership team altogether. So that would be my question and concern regarding the interim leadership of Crest. I again am fully supportive of their mission as it was laid out by the CSWG. I think there was a lot of community engagement done and that should not be ignored in moving forward. I hope that we will be able to keep the program forward, moving forward, and that it will serve the purpose that was intended to upon its creation. But I do think that that will require more participation, whether it's from CSWG or CSSJC. And I believe that there are members of both committees that would be willing to serve in whatever role is needed going forward. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Is there anybody else from the town room? Devorah Jacobson. Okay, thank you. And does that conclude the people from the room? Okay. Pat, Ms. Pat, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Good evening. Can people hear me? We can. Okay, Pat Onanibako from District 2. I want to echo what Mr. Ross Venon Jones and Ali Graja said. In addition, I'm actually not surprised though frustrated because Chris was set up to fail. The police did not support it. The dispatcher did not support it. The fire department, our town government, most of you in this room did not support Chris because you did not fully fund Chris. Okay. And secondly, our town government, our town do not support people of color in position of power. See what is happening to Mr. Miller. And then another black woman, Ms. Young, is set up to do the daily job for our town government. When we have white administrators misbehave, you sitting there come to their rescue and defense. Last year, July 22nd, our former police chief refused to apologize. Rather, some of you had private meetings with the police officers and then re-victimize the youth that were harassed by the police. I have been pushing for a year about upper funds and also hazel black owned business. That went out of business because of your action. You approved $300,000 for Drake, white owned. Did not even need the funding. And the same, you did not approve enough funding for the rest of business community. BBAA, existing businesses, has still not gotten any funding. And we still have $4.7 million. And when I called on the building commissioner to resign, Mr. Paul tried to silence me last month. I have news for you. I'm not afraid of anybody in this town. I will keep speaking up for injustice in our town. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. We are concluding public comment. And we will go on to the consent agenda. We're going to put the consent agenda on the screen. The following items were selected because they were considered to be routine. And it was reasonable to expect they would pass with no controversy to remove an item from the consent agenda for discussion later in the meeting. Ask that it be removed as I go through the list. The request to remove an item from the consent agenda does not require a second. So the motion is as follows, to move the following items and the printed motions they're under and approve those items as a single unit. One waiver waiver of town council rules or procedure rule 8.6 for agenda item 9.8.1. Second one is 6A. Lynn, I have my hand raised on that one. Okay, I'll make I will finish and then call on the people who have their hands raised. Okay. Sorry. Adoption of resolution in the wake of the, I'm sorry, I have to adjust my screen. In the wake of the Hamas tax on Israel. 8B adoption of amendments to bylaw 3.48 stretch energy code. 8C adoption of bylaw to insuring safe access to legally protected, reproductive and gender affirming health care. And 9A1 a approval of the town manager appointment to the elementary school building committee. Pat, you have your hand up. I'd like to remove 6A, please. Okay. We will come to 6A later in the meeting. Dorothy. I do not know what the wording of that resolution is at this time. It has been placed in your packet. It wasn't there when I looked earlier tonight. I don't spend the whole night looking. Thank you. Andy Steinberg. Is there a swear word? We are, but I was wanting to remove 6A. Okay. We will take up 6A later in the meeting after we finish the action items and the discussion item. I know that's a little unusual, but I want to make sure that because of various groups that have joined us, we get to meet with them as well. Are there any other items that people want to remove? Is there a second to the motion? Second. Thank you. We'll move to a vote. The motion has been made in second. Shall any of those move? Is absent. Pat DeAngelis. Aye. Anna Devlin-Gothier. Aye. Lynn Grismersen. Aye. Mandy Johanke. Aye. Annika Lopes. Aye. Michelle Miller. Aye. Pam Rooney. I'm sorry, Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Rooney. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Aye. Jennifer Tob. Yes. Alicia Walker. Yes. It's unanimous except for one councilor being absent. As in the past, if an item has been approved on the consent agenda, there can still be comments when we get to that item on the regular agenda. Okay. We will be skipping item six and come back to both six and seven later. Action items. At this point, we are going to ask the members who are in the town room that are with the AHRA committee to come up and sit at the table up here. And at the same time, those of you that are in the audience that are members of AHRA, hololord, Herb Rhodes, we're going to bring you into the room. Alexis Reed. I'm sorry, Alexa. Alexis Reed. And I believe their hand is up. If I missed anybody else. I'm quickly looking. No, I think that's good. Okay. Alexis, we're bringing you in. This meeting has been posted as a meeting of the AHRA. And with that, I'm going to ask the chair to call the AHRA meeting to order. Welcome calling to order the October 16th meeting of the African Heritage Reparation Assembly at 6.56 p.m. And I will briefly make sure that members can be heard. And I will start with Ms. Bridges. Yes, in order to. Hello, I am Deborah Bridges. I was happy. So right now we're just doing a sound check, but we're going to circle back. Yeah. Dr. Shabazz. Shabazz present. Paula. Lord present. Excellent. Dr. Rhodes. Her present. Alexis and baby. Excellent. All right. Wonderful. So, Nina, if you would be able to pull the slides up for us. While we do that, right? But I just mentioned. Yeah, of course. So beginning this portion of the meeting by thank, I want to begin the portion of the meeting by thanking the members of the AHRA for their tireless and important work that culminates with the presentation of your final report tonight. Specifically, we want to thank councillor chair and councillor Miller, who actually began chairing before she became a councillor. And we also want to thank the other members of the committee who are here with us tonight. Including in the in the room, we have Dr. Amakar Shabazz and Heather Halla-Lord. And then in the audience on Zoom, I'm sorry, we have Deborah Bridges in the room. And in the audience, we have Heather Halla-Lord, Dr. Rhodes, Alexis, and the new addition to the family. And I believe that's it. Am I correct? Yes. And we should acknowledge Eva Mendez, who is unable to be here. Right. Thank you. So with that, we're going to go have a presentation. Then other members of the assembly who would like to make comments will have time to do that. And then we'll have a special public comment. And then move to discussion of the council. Okay. Thank you, Lynn. Yeah. So as soon as we have our slides up, we'll begin the presentation. And I'll be doing my best to manage. I have a script and I also have to hold this button down here. So if you can hear me at any point, let me know. Thank you. Okay. We have Mandy holding the button. That's going to make things easier. Teamwork. All right. Wonderful. So this is a significant night for the African Heritage Reparation Assembly. And we are grateful to the town council, town manager and staff, and to those in the public who have joined us tonight. Our final report and presentation tonight is a culmination of two years of work together as an assembly and with the community to understand what reparative justice means in Amherst. Our report and its recommendations should not be seen as an end to our reparative work as a community, rather as a roadmap for us to follow as we continue our journey. We have taken a bold step as a community to pursue this critical work, and we all have a role to play to ensure it is carried forward. While the AHRA as a body will no longer exist, we welcome your feedback and we thank you for your support. I'm going to go through some highlights from our report and then turn it over to assembly members to briefly speak about their experience serving on the committee. Athena, could you move to the next slide please? Our report is dedicated to Dr. Demetrius Shabazz, beloved wife of assembly member Dr. Amilkar Shabazz and deeply dedicated social justice warrior. We are grateful for her service to our community and to the world. And we will miss her very much. Next slide. And this is the group. So some of us are here tonight and some of us are on Zoom, as Lynn mentioned, and Yvonne is unable to be with us tonight. Next slide please. There are many folks to thank and hopefully we've listed most of them, if not all of them in this acknowledgments page of the report. I do want to give special recognition to Matia Kramer and to Adelaine Izakashansky for their contributions in writing and in designing the report. Next slide please. Part one of our report focuses on anti-black racism in Amherst, past and present. I will not spend too much time on this tonight, but I encourage you to read the two reports published by Reparations for Amherst in the appendix. By the way, the report is 161 pages with the appendix. So if that's overwhelming, the report itself is only 37, it might be 38 pages now. These reports are one point of reference to understand our history and the current day disparities that persist in our community. I also encourage you to engage with the work of Ancestral Bridges and other folks who hold the key to our community's lesser known history. Next slide please. Part two of our report focuses on reparative justice in Amherst, specifically the charge of the AHRA and the steps we took as a body to learn what the community envisioned. Our charge was to develop and recommend to the Town Council a municipal reparations plan that includes both a reparations fund and a community-wide process of reconciliation and repair for harms against Black people. Next slide please. A significant piece of our work was to consult with the community, which we did in a number of ways, including the development of a Black census and a community survey, both with the support of the UMass Dunahue Institute and a number of large and small listening sessions. Our report includes the full results of our survey and the findings from our listening sessions. Next slide please. Part three of our report and the place I'd like to spend a little more time tonight concerns the funding plan. You can see in this slide I've highlighted two items, both of which the Town Council will have the opportunity to discuss and vote on tonight. Please note, the votes will be motions to refer to the Finance Committee in the case of the fund and to the Governance, Organization, and Legislation Committee in the case of the successor body. So I'll begin by talking about the recommendation to accelerate the development of the fund. And this recommendation generally says that we recommend the Town Council approve operationalizing a $2 million reparations endowment fund within four years. And just as a reminder, when the $2 million was committed to buy the Town Council, the idea was we were going to model the annual tax revenue from Cannabis on an annual basis and move money from our certified free cash into the dedicated reparations fund. This would at the rate when we made that commitment would take about 10 years to fully develop. It's also important to recognize that we expect this fund to operate as an endowment. So the principal will remain steady and an investment income off of that will be used to pursue initiatives. With the sort of downturn that we're expecting with cannabis tax revenue as well as the desire both from the committee and from the community to begin pursuing initiatives now, we're asking that the Town Council consider three options for accelerating the fund. And I'll just briefly review these options because this is what the Council will have the opportunity to vote on tonight in terms of referring these options and potentially other options. But these are the options that we've identified to the Finance Committee for review. So the first is to fully fund the stabilization fund at $2 million immediately by borrowing from reserves. And in this option, the Town subsequently pays back the reserves through the annual flow of certified free cash. The second option is the Town devotes $100,000 annually from cannabis tax revenue to fund reparative justice initiatives immediately. And any remaining cannabis tax revenue over and above $100,000 are deposited into the dedicated account. It's important to note that we have determined that $100,000 annually is needed to pursue meaningful reparations initiatives. And the report really fleshes this out a lot more. It talks about other sources of funding that are or could be available to the AHRA. So I recommend digging into the report a little bit more for that. Option three is to meet this $2 million commitment over the next four years by moving a quarter of the necessary funding from reserves into the Reparation Stabilization Fund each year annually through FY 2028. And so this again will be something that the Council will come back to after the presentation and public comment. The second piece that I wanted to focus on here is also going to be voted on tonight. And this will be a referral to the Governance Organization and Legislation Committee. And it's a charge for a successor body for this work. And we really want to express how important we believe the successor body is. I think there's a lot of flexibility in terms of how many people, how often this body meets, those kinds of things we certainly understand the demands on town staff and also in staffing these committees. So, but we do feel that in order to carry forward the work a successor body is needed. Okay, next slide. Part four of our work, excuse me, of our report is focused on priorities and eligibility. We have concluded that youth programming, affordable housing, and business grants are the three priority areas for use of reparations funds. We expect the successor body, if formed, will focus on these three priorities as they begin their work. Next slide, please. Our recommendations embrace the broadest notion of eligibility. Even as this report regards all African heritage residents of Amherst as eligible for reparations, it is important to distinguish between these three groups as the differences between them will become important to any successor committee charged with evaluating applications or selecting specific reparative justice initiatives. And the three groups here are listed on this slide. Next slide, please. Part five of our of our report focuses on truth and reconciliation initiatives that we hope the town and other community members and organizations will pursue. This is a list of them here and we want to recognize the important work that the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Department has already begun. We also want to recognize the important work that other organizations in our community have begun long before we started our work. So we hope that the town will, in partnership with community, pursue these initiatives. Next slide, please. Sorry, Athena. Next slide, please. Is there not a next slide? Oh, okay. You know what? You're right. There's not a next slide. I apologize. So we do have some additional recommendations that were to the superintendent of schools to Amherst College as well as to the University of Massachusetts. I did not create a slide because we will not be talking about those in any detail tonight. And then I did not create a slide for the appendix. Although I recommend that folks do take a look at what's in the appendix. There's some really interesting information there. We have some legal opinions from KP law that are very interesting. There's a draft legislation for special legislation if we are to pursue that and the results of our various surveys and other reports. So thank you, Mandy. Big of a mirror, yeah. So I am now going to turn it over to any members of the assembly who would like to speak and speak to the town council about their experience, to the public about their experience, or anything else they would like to have heard. And so if you would like to do that, I'm looking at you. We'll take councilor comments later. Okay. Yes. Right? Yes. That's how we're okay. This is a time for the assembly members to make comment. Perfect. Okay. So I'm going to start with Ms. Bridges. Hello. I am Deborah Bridges. I was happy to accept the invitation to join the HRA committee after realizing that generations of Black Amherst residents were not included in the first report. Coming from these first generations of Black families, it was imperative to me that the roots of Black history and Amherst be acknowledged. So I'm happy to be on this committee with people who have Amherst's best interest of equity at heart and to be a part of this final 2023 final report. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Bridges. And I know you have another and we'll get to that when, how about we'll do that during the public comment. I'll just quickly explain to Lynn. Okay. All right. Dr. Shabazz. Well, it's been a wonderful journey with all of my colleagues on the AHRA. And yesterday I was at a common read of a book called Repentance and Repair. And the this was over at the Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst. It's a good group of people reading this work. A lot of it predicated on a 12th century Jewish theologian scholar Rambam. I think they call him Rabbi Mammananis. Anyway, it's so wonderful to see members of the town congregations like that, like the Jewish Congregation of Amherst, like students on our three campuses, college and university campuses, in our high schools all across the town, really beginning to engage in real study of these issues, reading our report, getting feedback from folks. This is really everything I personally hoped would come about. We may not see all of the ramifications and all of the magnitude of this report and of this work that the town is engaged in right now in our minds. We may not see it even this year or next year, however you act on the question of the endowed fun and how quickly it comes about. There's a real long term matter here. It's how this plays out for Alicia Walker's great, great grandchildren. It's how this plays out seven generations from now, how they look back on what we're doing here in 2023. That's where my mind goes towards. That's where Demetrius Shabazz guides me to think about it seven generations from now. What is the impact of what we're doing tonight? So with that, I just say again, thank you to the council and thank you to my colleagues on the assembly assembly. Thank you, Dr. Shabazz. I'm going to go to Alexis. Thank you. Thank you. Well, so first I want to say thank you to my colleagues as well. I felt very honored to be made to feel like I even belong on the assembly. So thank you very much for accepting me. And I've also been honored to be able to help with something that has the potential to do so much good for our people and Amherst. So I'll keep it short, but thank you very much to my colleagues as well as to the council for giving this thing a shot. And I'll just leave it at that. Thank you. Thank you, Alexis. And how about Hala? Yes, thank you. First, I wanted to definitely say thank you to all my colleagues. I love you dearly. I appreciate the people in the town and the different colleges that have reached out to help be a part of this really historic, I would say long overdue, but let me not bash us. We're here now. We're doing it, collecting the data, things that we in our living rooms talk about or in the aisles of stop and shop or at church in the Black community, the harms that happen every day that might not, that aren't noticed by people that don't experience it. So I'm grateful that this report will bring some of that to light. I still feel a strong sense of urgency. There's a lot of harm being happening. I love my language skills. In the past couple months, I've lost a few friends and three Black women, Black, two Black, one Brown. I definitely attribute the medical industrial complex for being complicit in their deaths. Not Black women, we're not believed about our pain. We're not given treatment or seriousness stuff that could either early diagnose and prevent certain things or prevent immediate death. So I just want to tell all of us that there is a sense of urgency still in this work, in believing Black people's stories when we interact with the police or with the clerk, not the town clerk, you're amazing, but like a clerk at a store, I can't remember the name of it, what you call it, but I just, I not plead, but I really pray open my heart that this will continue to grow into action that heals harm and it prevents future harm. And I thank you for letting me speak. Thank you, Hala. Dr. Rhodes. Good evening. I really have appreciated being on this committee. The journey has been a really great journey and as any journey has a beginning and an end, this particular ending is somewhat bittersweet because we are leaving into the hands of people who we don't know who will be there to carry on our work. My hope is that the council will see the benefit of our work, give it value and ensure that it goes on into the future. This has not been a very easy task to complete in terms of this report and the work that went into it over the past two years. It is very difficult for any person, group, race to look at and identify those harms that have been done to others who were not of a majority. It's a very difficult process, a painful process, but yet those issues need to be confronted, action taken, forgiveness given, and then moving on to a future in which everyone feels included and that those harms that have been done have been addressed in some equitable way. This particular time, I guess one of the things that has been most beneficial being on this committee has been Deborah Bridges and by extension Anika in terms of looking at and looking back on the history of Amherst. When I'm saying what I mean by the history of Amherst, that is the black forgotten history of Amherst. It is extraordinary how far back this family goes and how extraordinary it is that they've brought forward their story, which is Amherst's story and is one that we need to be able to embrace, look at, examine. It's very difficult sometimes to look in the mirror and see yourself like I'm looking at myself on here right now. Sometimes it's very difficult, but that what you see is you and not to object to it, but to look at it and say yes, this is me, this is the truth and now that I have examined the truth, how do I reconcile the truth with the reality? So my hope in my hope and my desire is that this report not be put on the shelf somewhere, gather dust and be forgotten in a year and I would like to see and hear a commitment from this council that that will not happen. Thank you. Thanks Dr. Rhodes and before we go to councilor comments, I just wanted to share my deepest appreciation to all of the members. This journey has been along with having my children, one of the greatest honors and privileges and to work with you all. I'm deeply grateful that I had this opportunity and thank you for all of the work that you have done to bring us to this point. So thank you and I'm going to turn it I think back over to you Lynn for, okay, thank you. Thanks. Again, thank you for all of the hard work. We can do this in two ways. We can either go to council discussion or we can go to general public comment. Is there a wish of the council at this point on it? General public comment. Yep. Okay. Thank you. This is not general. This is special public comment. Okay. So let me just again ask for those people who I'm sorry. I think thank you for asking. I got a question. I think that it would be wonderful if the folks who are here could speak and then if we could go to councilor comments and then of course if they want to stay for that portion they could ensure. Right. So we're going to do that work. We're going to do the special public comment at this time. Thank you. So first of all, if you're in the room and you would like to make special public comment, if you haven't signed up yet, please do so with Athena. Okay. And if you are in the Zoom audience and would like to make special public comment reminding you that you can also come in by phone and that shows up on Zoom, please raise your hand. Athena, how many people do we have signed up for special public comment? Four. Okay. And we have seven people who have raised their hands during the Zoom audience. So I'd like to start with those people who are in the room. Athena? Jeffrey Gold. You want to come up together? Okay. Jeffrey Gold and it's Devorah Jacobson. Okay. And if you would both please say your names and where you live before you begin your comments. Thank you. Sure. Thank you very much. This is the green light on. The green light is on. Thank you. I'm Devorah Jacobson. I actually used to live in Amherst. I now live in Hadley. And Jeff and I are here represent, we are the co-chairs of the reparations committee of the Jewish community of Amherst, 742 Main Street. The final report of the AHRA to you, the town, the Amherst town council, and thereby to each and every member of this community took my breath away. In my view, it is both an incredibly significant milestone for this town, indeed a model in both its content and in its process for communities throughout this nation. I am in awe of its comprehensive scope, its attention to great detail, and its well-crafted writing. I am deeply inspired by its commitment to truth telling. I applaud its focus on documenting past harms, as well as capturing through numerous methods, contemporary and multi-generational voices that remind us that the past is not at all past. I appreciate the articulation of the three areas of funding priorities, as well as its additional recommendations for truth and reconciliation and other remedies outside the fund. Finally, and probably most importantly, I am most grateful for its focus on not only quote what is necessary and possible within the scope of town government, but on the choice to seize the opportunity finally in 2023 to put forward a more expansive vision. It is a vision that would invite not only municipal government to be involved, but local, public, and private institutions and individuals as well. I believe this report tells each one of us quite emphatically and with so much clarity that the work of racial healing and repair of apology and restitution when initiated locally can help galvanize, strengthen, and push forward the national conversation to create federal reparations. And as we do it locally, as we center the experience of African Americans in telling the unique and truthful history of Amherst, we must begin to face that past. And because of it, engage in meaningful and concrete acts of repair as detailed in this comprehensive report. Only then can we transform our community into one that is more just and more humane for all of its citizens. Thank you. Thank you. We're going to give each of you three minutes. So please go ahead. My name is my name is Jeff Gold. And with D'Vora, I am co-chair of the reparations committee, the Jewish community of Amherst. I live on Harkness Road. However, I live on the Pelham side. So I walk across the street on the Amherst. The presentation of the AHRA's final report to the town council should be received with deep respect and a profound sense of gratitude. This is an impressive document that gathers both historical and current data and identifies a concrete set of strategies and goals that taken together is groundbreaking. Amherst is only the second town in the entire country to have a reparative plan. We are indebted to the AHRA and offer them a profound thanks for the work they did over the past two years on the town's behalf. The question that lies before this governing body is how are you going to respond to this report? It is in many respects a daunting question with far-reaching consequences, seven generations. Our town is facing so many crises that the very fabric of civic engagement has been challenged. On one level, our civic engagement has suffered a polarization which is far worse in other parts of the country. That, however, does little to rectify our own problems with listening to each other and genuinely recognizing in a non-defensive manner when harms have occurred. In particular, we have to not only listen to those who have been harmed but decide a way forward, and that involves leadership and vision. This report identifies some of the extensive farms both past and present done to members of the African-American community. It also insists on informing and expanding our public memory. What is the town's responsibility here? A few years ago, the town made a commitment to end forms of structural racism throughout the town. You have now been provided with a holistic blueprint. The AHRA final report represents a path forward in acknowledging the harms done, designing and implementing strategies and programs which concretize restitution in very real, impactful terms and making a commitment to not repeat or continue those harms. No one should think this will be easy. The report offers the town government an opportunity to implement real change towards the goal of a more genuine democracy and equity. Herein lies the question, will you exercise the historical understanding and resultant political vision to take that risk and fully embrace the task and commit to the explicit and collaborative steps necessary for its implementation? That's the question for you to answer. Thank you. Thank you. We'll move to begin with the audience and there are in fact now, put on my glasses, excuse me, nine attendees in the audience that have their hands raised. Maura Keane, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Hi, this is Maura Keane and I live on Dennis Drive in Amherst and I wanted to say that I've gone to a lot of the meetings of the AHRA over the past couple years and I've been so impressed with the care and consideration they've given to obtaining their data to use in the report and to think about how they were going to deal with a lot of the sticky issues that came up and I really hope that everybody will read this report carefully. I do want to call attention to the part three about the funding plan because the council's plan to fund this endowment over 10 years is inadequate. I don't think the town or the country can wait 10 years to start programs to repair the injustices done. It should be started immediately and I hope that one of these plans, I hope the immediate one of taking the $2 million out of the free cash and repaying it will be the one that's accepted, but one of the plans, I hope the finance committee will recommend and I do want to say that Amherst got a lot of great publicity for being the second municipality in the country for supporting, creating a reparations program just as we got a lot of publicity, good publicity for creating the Crest department. That has not gone well and I hope that we do a better job with the reparations than we have done with the Crest programs. So I hope everybody takes this report seriously. It's really a masterpiece. Thank you for joining us, Maura. We're going to go back to the audience that's in the room. Lauren Mills, come on up and please state your name and address before your comment. Thank you. Hello, my name is Lauren Mills, 12 Long Metal Drive. I did speak on reparations at the last town council meeting, I believe the 12th, but I did want to come in person today because I feel that our life experience and the things that have been going on in the town really require all of us to be part of a solution as to bringing equity and repair to the town. I agree with Dr. Irvrose when he says that we need to look at ourselves because when we see the whole picture of what is going on with people in the black community, which you can further detail as African Americans, as I said before in my public comment last week, there are other ethnic groups that make up the black community of Amherst and if we don't look at each other, we can't see the full picture. If African Americans and people of color don't look at themselves, they can't see what's really going on in their communities. So I just also wanted to say I didn't have anything prepared, but I do come from an urban city, urban city of Boston and there are other reparations task force that I've followed. There's one in Boston, there's one in New Jersey, there was the one in California and this just would not fly as reparations solution. I know that there was a lot of work that was put into the report, but this way of glossing over things just would not fly in the black community. If we're going to speak truth to power, we have to realize that we have to let people know that there is a lot of injustice going on and it's not just a day to day thing and reparations bring up the issue of how do you prepare for long term, not just for the immediate and the other thing that I would just say is that the way that the town has handled, the Crest Department has handled DEI and also certain comments that have been made about youth empowerment and and bringing forth a youth community center, that is a direct reflection on how the the town council feels about the issues that are in the report and so I must say that I am disappointed, but I hope that the follow-up body that does continue this work will include more voices of African Americans and people of color. Thank you. Thank you for joining us, Lauren. We're going to go back to the audience on Zoom. Allegra Clark, please enter the room, state your name again and where you live. Hi, Allegra Clark, still a resident of District 2. I just wanted to thank the assembly members for the hard work and time that they put into the again community engagement that went into this report and these recommendations. I again am speaking as a person, not as a representative of the community safety and social justice committee, but I do think that there's a lot of overlap in the priorities that have been identified by the assembly and in some of the work that the CSSJC is doing to further the work of the community safety working group and so I do see a number of parallels between the process that CSWG and the assembly have gone through and I hope that when the idea of a successor committee is referred to GOL that it will be implemented I think it's really important that we have a standing committee working on these issues as it has been with the CSWG turning into the CSSJC. There's been a lot of hiccups in our work and I would foresee that without adequate funding and prioritization that again like Dr. Rhodes said we don't want to see just another report put up onto a shelf we want to see this living in our community. So again thank you to all the assembly members for their hard work. Thank you for joining us Allegra in the town room Athena. I'm Ocar Shabazz. Please come on up. I'm Ocar Shabazz. I live at Mucher which district Chapel Road in Emerson, District 5 and I guess what I wanted to say is that this work is very important. I don't think we can console ourselves that just because this subject and the work isn't being done across America is really an indicator that you know this is so unique or should be so unique a task you know there should there should really be more voices contributing to this and I think you know also if any place were for this work to get done I think Amherst would be a great place for it. I think you know we have a certain amount of sensitivity and I hope that sensitivity is something that we all use and try to listen to every person with a story about their racial experience. I guess I would like to say that you know every age of a Black person is an expert on what it's like to live in a racial world and they're all worth listening to. I think we can definitely you know make a better document or continue to do this work because not everyone is spoken yet and until we really are able to you know have an environment that every story can be listened to you know there's still some work to be done so I definitely need to read this document but I also feel like I'm already an expert in what the the need and the the the the experience that I have to share and I feel like there's other people out there that feel the same way. Thank you. Thank you for joining us on our car. We're going to go to the audience again and Sierra Cosby I apologize if I've mispronounced your name please enter the room state your name and where you live. Good evening. My name is Kiara Cosby former Amherst resident. I commend Amherst and the AHRA for taking steps toward reparations for Black Americans and I hope that you'll proceed with those efforts. Although it would be a great byproduct the burden of ending racism shouldn't fall on Black American reparations just as that of Jewish Holocaust survivors does not end anti-Semitism and that of Japanese Americans did not end anti-Asian hate. The goal of reparations should be to provide just restitution to the Black American ethnic group not racial group that continues to experience genocide and multi-generational harms due to the cumulative effects of slavery in the U.S. and its badges. To divert attention in already limited resources away from this unique group by including other demographics is ethnic erasure is misappropriation and it exacerbates harm and prior exploitation. Although the plan says that descendants of U.S. slavery are prioritized in the first two eligible cohorts there's no proposed timeline that demonstrates when the priority window closes and when those designated of African heritage become eligible nor is there any set aside percentage of resources designated for the formerly enslaved population. There's no clear definition of African heritage people and no objective measure to determine who falls within that third cohort and its broadest interpretation anyone with brown skin or a percentage of so-called African DNA could qualify with genealogical resources and support those in cohorts one and two will be able to document their lineal ancestors and many of the quantifiable harms those ancestors suffered. This model of eligibility is not a favorable precedent for state and federal program. There's also no indication that citizenship would be a requirement for eligibility. One of the multi-generational harms to Black Americans for which reparations is owed has been the diversion and denial of 40th Amendment citizenship rights and government resources that were initially secured for the freedmen and freed people while the government simultaneously created pools of resources for newer arrivals that Black Americans did not have access to. I hope Amherst will consider these concerns and also prioritize the work of organizations such as Ancestral Bridges moving forward in the reparative justice process and I hope that you will move forward with urgency. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us here. Other people from the room okay then we're going to go on. Ash Hartwell please enter the room state your name and where you live. Thank you very much. I have recently moved from Amherst to South Hadley. My heart is still in Amherst and I consider myself an extended citizen of Amherst and I'm deeply concerned and involved with the issues that we've discussed today. First a great tribute to the work of this group. I think that they started the they have continued but also started work on doing the kind of research that's really going to be necessary to develop a holistic approach to addressing equity and justice for the Black members of our community. I think although it's taken two years it's also just the beginning. There's so much work to be done and for that reason it is very important that the work continue not not have a gap not have a two month three month longer but to get on with it. I also think that that whatever policy and programs and verbal work is done there also has to be done oh out of work from the heart. A lot of work of changing people's relationships and their understandings and their love frankly and for that reason I I wanted to call attention to the emphasis that the report makes on on continuing townwide programming and truth and reconciliation of racial healing and visioning along with the policy changes and the by the way I'm totally in agreement with Maura King on the need to have a fund that is continuing that supports this work going forward and not wait for 10 years before an endowment is large enough to do it. It really is important that financing. The the need for townwide programming really is essential to deepen the knowledge understanding and acknowledgement of the deep racial harm inflicted by long and great systems and relationships as has been noted. That is an understanding that can only come with study and learning and knowledge and and lots of folks in the town don't get get it yet and it's important that you get it. In fact I would actually advocate that the the town council might really consider doing the stolen beam as one way into this but I I think it's really important that that be recognized as an essential part of of going forward. I also agree with Amakar Shabazz this is a long-term project it's not going to happen overnight. You know as um Barbara Love once said very beautifully that the socialization process in society works to ensure that each person learns what they need to know to behave in ways that contribute to the maintenance and perpetuating of the existing system independent of their belief in its fairness or efficacy. That's a very important statement because it suggests the need to um address that in our learning process. Thank you I'm sorry I went over time. Ash thank you for joining us and um we're going to go on to Antonia Edwards. Please enter the room state your name and where you live. Hi I'm Antonia Edwards I'm with Solidarity Community Engagement Group. I am in the city of Boston however I have had friends and um family who have attended UMass Amherst and also lived there. I've also participated in many of the um Zoom calls um the initial planning. I'm just going to say that this was an extensive report that was done in a record time. We have task force have taken over two years like the California task force to have an interim report and then a final report. I don't feel as though this um report that does any justice especially to our ancestors. I find it very disrespectful. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Nowhere in the report does it mention our ancestors as being the American Freemen which are the four million formerly emancipated slaves. There's no other reparation package whether it be the Jewish Holocaust Japanese or any other parts that don't mention the original Han party. I think it's egregious. I think it's very disrespectful. It just talks about black enslavement or African slaves and I also see the eligibility references on black indigenous or BIPOC. You can't have reparations without addressing or even paying homage to the original Han parties. We have a lot of family members who have migrated through the great migration up north to run from racial terror. They ended up in north only two faiths racial terror. So these people that are migrated are the American Freemen. So to have a report about reparations and not mention them is totally disrespectful and it's never been done in any other reparation package. If you plan to go forward with this out of respect for our ancestors please at least reference them and that's what I like to see in this report. I can't have you change the report your mindset or whatever but at least respect my ancestors or our ancestors. We're not BIPOC. We weren't BIPOC in 1865. Indigenous has absolutely nothing to do with the formerly emancipated slaves. Stop merging all these other groups into our ancestralism and stop disrespecting us. We wouldn't do that with the Jewish Holocaust. We wouldn't do that with the Japanese. We are very distinct and specific with the people. We're American Freemen. We have the American Freemen after 1865. The emancipated us. We are American Freemen. We're not African American. We're not black. We're not BIPOC. We are American Freemen and I'd like to see that somewhere in the document referenced somewhere. There would never be a reparations package to didn't include the initial armed party and I'd like to see that. I've asked this four times and even if you don't reference it throughout your document pay homage to your ancestors at least. Be respectful. So it is a good report. It's very long. It doesn't satisfy me but again the only thing I have a bone to pick with is the fact that you don't even pay respect to my ancestors. Thank you. Have a wonderful evening. Thank you for joining us. Ms. Pat please enter the room. State your name and where you live. Good evening again. Pat Anani Baku from District 2. My heart is full of joy tonight. I want to first thank the ARHA that did excellent work. I have read the document. I'm so appreciative of you all and also to the Town Council. Thank you so much. I have respect for you for allowing the committee to exist and to do this report tonight. One thing that has not been mentioned tonight is as an African immigrant in Amherst. When this group was formed I was really happy that the group meaning ARHA was inclusive. As we all know Black people were also diverse group and so I really really liked the report. The group actually did extensive outreach to the Black community several times. There was a separate group that met, that was meeting as well and so I appreciate the hard work of the group and the team. I know it wasn't easy to put out but for my great-great-grandkids in the future for them to read that their family was also included in this report. As an African Nigerian actually we also suffered from slavery. Our people, the best of the best, were taken away from us. It's a huge loss in African continent so we should remember that when we talk about reparation. Any Black person on the planet was impacted by slavery and I thank ARHA. You made history. I'm so proud to be experiencing this tonight. Thank you so much and I want to urge you, the TAN Council, don't put it in the shelf. Do something. Act on it. Let's not have crests. Situation repeat itself. Fully fund everything. Take all the recommendations and I challenge you to act like Councilor Michelle. Go out of your comfort zone for the first time and do the right thing. Yes, you may lose some friends. Don't worry about election. Do the right thing. This is a huge opportunity for you to have, you know, to make history. Help the powerless in our town. This is your time. You have the power to approve everything and please try to support a successor group. That has to happen to make sure everything is implemented. I went out of my time. Thank you so much. Thank you, Pat. Mary Pacino. Porcino. Please enter the room. State your name and where you live. Thank you. Hi. My name is Mary Porcino. I'm from District One, Culpit Hill Road, specifically from the social justice circle of the Cherry Hill co-housing community. I have, as a white resident of Amherst, participated behind the scenes in the work of AHRA and specifically have been independently working on educating other white residents in the history of racism in our country. And I followed very closely the work of AHRA past year. And just briefly, I want to say that I am pleased with their work and with the report. I like its scope and its concrete recommendations and its vision. And I'm very much looking forward to participating with my Amherst neighbors in making their recommendations actually come to life in our town. We have a lot of work yet to do and I'm excited to be a part of that. And I'd just like to say that on this day, I'm proud to be an Amherst resident. And I'm proud for the genuine efforts that I feel like our town is making to address local racism and to put into effect repair and reparations. So thank you everyone for your work. Mary, thank you for joining us. Diana, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. You need to unmute, please. You need to unmute, please. There you go. Can you hear me now? Okay. I'm Diana Stein. I'm from District 4 in Amherst. I want to thank the AHRA for the excellent report. I participated in the Stolen Beam series and it led me to appreciate this report. Specifically, it's the fact that it deals specifically with recommendations. I like the concreteness very much. I hope that the council will follow these key suggestions specifically. I think there needs to be a follow-up committee to carry on the work. And I think we need to have a specific financial mechanism so that it's a committee with teeth. So thank you very much for listening to me. Thank you for joining us, Diana. Anita Sarrow, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Thank you. Anita Sarrow, I'm in District 5. While it may not be perfect and to some people's eyes to mind, the final report of AHRA is exceptionally well-reasoned, thoughtful, and informative. Every historical and contemporary fact that reports is important and verifiable. And I believe that every recommendation is achievable if there is the will to do them. Acting on these recommendations does not require town council to ignore other priorities you have set. It does not propose a zero sum. But it brings another important lens from which you can consider all of the actions that you take as you go forward. It provides a roadway towards ensuring that those who have been and continue to be harmed by the legacy of slavery are treated equitably. We want Amherst to be a healthy thriving community, but that requires that all of its residents are able to live their lives fully. It means that all aspects of a community living are accessible to all. This report provides remedies that can bring the lived experience of people of African heritage into alignment with those of us who benefit from white privilege and it will improve the lives of all of us who live in Amherst regardless of ethnic or racial origin. Please do not let this report get buried or ignored after tonight. I implore you to read it carefully to consider and fully appreciate all that it teaches and most importantly to act upon each of its recommendations in the words written in Brown v. Board of Education too many years ago to act on them with all deliberate speed. Thank you. Thank you for joining us, Anita. That concludes the special. There's there's one more comment. Deborah Bridges had a comment that you wanted to read. All right. Thank you, Deborah. I have a comment from Dr. Carly Tartacau. She has a statement. The African Heritage Reparation Assembly is offering us a priceless gift as a black woman, a retired public school teacher, a university professor and resident of Amherst since 1968. I applaud you for using your beautiful minds and hearts to help us acknowledge, heal and thrive as we continue to move forward in our search for equity and truth. And that is from Carly Tartacau. Thank you and okay. That concludes our public comment. We're going to now go to council discussion and in the council discussion, I just want to make note there are two motions on the motion sheet. The one is the referral with regard to the funding to the finance committee. And the second is the referral to GOL with regard to a successor committee. Okay. With that, I'm looking for council comments or discussion. Dorothy? And just very briefly, I support the report. And I don't like what happens after many things get referred to the finance committee. They get cut down, reduced and sometimes they die. I think there's always going to be something else that we should do with our money. That's just the way it is. But I'm still very upset about Cress and that is influencing some of my feelings. We do something, people get together, they get very smart, they write something, wonderful, great report. We get attention and we get publicity. And then the thing dies. I just don't want to see that. That's how you kill hope in people. So there are asks in here. There are financial asks that most people who've presented them makes it sound rather reasonable that we should speed up the funding. And that means that money will have to be spent. And I think we should not just say, oh, we love it, we love it, and then pass it off to finance and let finance decide we can't afford to do it. And then we've all done our bit. I just don't like that anymore. My hand was erased originally in that I wanted Michelle to include the shortened slide packet so that we could get that too. I love your report, but it's very long. They will it will be added to the packet. Thank you. Thank you. So that's what I have to say that I think that we should put this into action and knowing that it will hurt, it will hurt to do so. If it has to hurt, if it doesn't hurt, then we're not doing we're not doing it. That's it. Are there other comments from counselors? Andy? Yeah, I'll try and be quick. But first of all, I want to thank the HRA individual members and as a collective group. We gave you quite an assignment when we created the charge for your committee. And it was one that it was hard to know how it would come out. I think you really grabbed hold of it. You decided what it meant and you developed a report accordingly. And so we all owe you a lot of gratitude for your hard work and thank you. Just have a couple things. One is in response to the prior comment from another counselor. Just want to remind everybody that the finance committee does not make decisions. The finance committee studies issues as to all of our committees and may make recommendations, but the decisions belong to the council. And so that at no time is a decision made by the finance committee to do anything. It is up to the body as a whole. And so we will, if referred, do that. Do what is required, which is to study the request and comment on the consequences possibly. I can't speak for the committee, so I don't know. But the decision ultimately belongs to the council, not the committee. And the one thing about the referral to the committee is that you referred the funding. It's a funding plan, but the specific referral is the recommendation to operationalize $2.2 million reparations and diamond fund within four years. And we certainly will be looking at that and do so expeditiously. As possible, but there are other recommendations that have financial consequences. And I was wondering why they were not referred for comment to the committee, because I don't really feel like I want to comment on them tonight. But the whole questions about what the rules are for Community Preservation Act and CDBG funding are complex issues involving law and process that limits actually what the council can do. And I think that that really needs some more comment than I have time to give tonight. But it could be solved by trying to just broaden a little bit what the referral is to the finance committee. The last thing that I Andy, time's up almost. Okay, there is one other issue. And I might raise my hand again. It's an entirely different topic. Thank you. Anika. Okay. First, I want to thank all of you. Michelle, I think we first met having a conversation about this where I told you about my ancestors who were enslaved here and came here from other plantations. And, you know, how going up that had been something that I at times had been made fun of and you really committed to bringing forward the strength and what they had to endure for me to even be here talking today. So I thank you for that and for also calling attention to cultural appropriation. I have specific questions really for all of you that has to do with housing. You really called out a local national historic and current issue with housing. And I remember another time, you know, we talked and when we first talked, I told you about Blue Hills Road, you know, how we had, we had been the first families to live below Blue Hills Road. And basically everywhere that was bordered and redlined for us to live. And many have just learned and just seen and are amazed by the deeds that were shown at Blue Hills, basically, which banned Black people, Jewish people, poor people from living in the neighborhood. I'm a downtown baby of Amity Street before Amity Place. And so I've seen, you know, the neighborhood change and how it is, it's not affordable. And so I know that these, this was brought up in the report, but I was wondering if any of you had any specific ideas or recommendations in terms of housing practices to ensure that we are not continuing this disgrace and discrimination going forward. And today, I think that that was it. I did also just want to give a separate shout out, which was also brought up here to Dr. Kama Ennis, who was, I believe, as we speak, showing her film, which really phases of medicine, which calls attention to inequities in healthcare for people of color. And I know that that's on your agenda. That that is part of the report as well. So I think that is that is my comment of thanks and question. And I may have another. Mandy Jo Harnacky. Yeah, thank you. I have a couple, but I'm going to start with one in particular. It's been mentioned by a couple of commenters. And that's the eligibility criteria in the Black Reparations Project book that you referenced in your report. And that has been available. I read that and it was enlightening. Garrity in that book clearly stated that reparations should be restricted to those who have self-identified as Black for at least 12 years and who have ancestors who were enslaved in the United States. Now, they're talking about national reparations, but we can take some learning from that. Evanston's program restricted their eligibility to Black persons who lived in Evanston between 1919 to 1969 or were a descendant of such a person. And that the family must have also been a victim of discrimination in housing because of policies or practices in the city at that time. But in reading your report, I've seen no restrictions on any eligibility. All Black residents, whether they've had ancestors who were enslaved or not, whether they already live in Amherst or in fact moved to Amherst five years from now, appear to be eligible. So can you please help me understand how that lack of criteria and lack of definition of the range of history that is subject to the reparations program repairs harm done to residents of Amherst in the past because of Amherst's history with enslavement, exclusion from hotels, restaurants, barbershops, housing, deed covenants and things like that. Michelle, did you want to address that? Do you? I was going to ask you, do you want us to address? Because Anika also had a question, so I just want to make sure we take both those questions and then move on. Okay. And also I will happily turn it over to any one of my colleagues who would like to answer the question. Ms. Bridges, Dr. Schbaas, anyone on zoom? Thank you. I can come back to the one from counselor Lopes in a moment, but on the one round eligibility, it's certainly one we wrestled with quite a bit and opted for an inclusive model rather than a more restrictive guidance. In the inclusive model, we recognize the American Friedman as it were, as at the center of concern of a Black Reparatory Justice Project. We simply do not exclude, however, in terms of the guidance we would give the successor body and the council going forward. We do not exclude it purely to that. We think that the kind of criterion that's talked about of identifying and being able to having to prove that you identified as Black for 12 years from the start of the reparations program that you are also have an ancestor who was enslaved. We feel that is those criteria are very much relevant to the debate around a federal direct cash kind of payout to on the basis of reparations for slavery. We think that is entirely appropriate at that level. At our town level, looking at the Black census, looking at the analysis that we made of who the Black population is here, if we get too restrictive, then we feel we won't be touching the question of structural racism as it exists in this town and how do we address it throughout. We would just say for the successor body around specific initiatives that might come in a given year if you have one that's addressing a very discreet issue of harm that happened in Amherst to a specific group and the eligibility criterion would meet those kinds of eligibility criteria. Maybe that would be stronger in that year, that initiative for funding over one that might address Black students who have just arrived and are reporting a certain harm. Maybe you'd get to the Black student one the next year, but we simply felt that it's not for us to provide a guidance that says right at this moment only consider these issues and don't consider any others. Okay. Anything else on that one? I would just add that I think it's a great question and I'm really glad that it's been brought up. I think when we talk about direct benefits, which will only occur really through the special legislation process versus the more programmatic initiatives that we've recommended, that may also change the balance on that. If I'm speaking out of turn, please let me know, but that's my sense of that as well. I wanted to also answer Anika's question to the best of my ability. I think the question was whether there were specific recommendations about housing and how to solve that. I think we know that the housing problem is deep and real and it's impacting people significantly all over the country and I think that a number of us are working on issues in the town both as counselors and also within the community to address the housing issue. So my hope would be that if a successor body is formed that that body would be able to link arms with both town folks and organizational folks within town to continue to try to solve those problems. Does that answer a bit? Yes. Yes, it does and I was wondering your thoughts just also as a counselor, personally your views and housing practices also through the council and really I've been thinking a lot about that from Blue Hills at Blue Hills and Amity was my bus stop as a kid you know and I grew up knowing the realities of those bands you know and you know just looking we've got well she's gone but Baby Kimmy was on the screen you know we've got eyes watching. Okay, Alicia. Thank you Lynn. I just wanted to take a quick minute to thank all of the HRA for their incredible work and dedication and for this really comprehensive report that I believe will or has the potential to support generations of residents in Amherst and so I'm really excited to be a council member at this time and to have this proposal come in front of us as something that I can personally support and so I'm really thankful and excited for this opportunity. I just I also wanted to appreciate Mandy Jo's question because it is a really complex situation and so I did also want to thank the HRA for leaving out that specific criteria because I do know that determining eligibility is quite complicated and given you know the circumstances and the lack of documentation and the burden of proof which doesn't always exist I think it's incredibly important that we're starting off this way and I also do you know think that that speaks volumes to the importance and really how incredible it is to have you know the Civil War tablets and to have those things that do exist to be here and to be referenced I really think that this is an incredible culmination of all of the things happening and so I just wanted to say thank you all and that I'm excited to be supporting sending this to the finance committee and to GOL for for the recommendation and I would also support the implementation of a successor committee to see this through. Thank you. Thanks Alicia. Anna? Okay. Ditto all the thanks I think this is a really comprehensive report I learned a lot and I always appreciate learning a lot. I have a couple questions and I want to note something that when I'm asking these questions I think often we forget that the things that go unsaid are often the things that we like and appreciate so I want to create a blanket of appreciation for the work that has been done and the report itself and name that my questions are not at all minimizing that appreciation and the fact that I think that there's a lot so much in here that I'm really excited about getting going on and I you know I think that there are some things that I know you're seeking the successor body but I was like why can't we just move right now to refer the policy on renaming streets to TSO like that but we could do that today you know um sorry Annika I know that we've got a plan for TSO for the rest of the time but still um you know so I think that there are a lot of things that I'm I'm very excited to do I have a couple quick questions if it's okay so the first question is about the the timing of the opera operationalization of the of the two million fund so you know when we first were presented with this idea I think a lot of folks were uh we I think well one of the things that I'm remembering we talked about a lot was the fact that we would vote on it every year and that if other things came up in the town that were dire needs if the economy tanks again if something else like if there were a need for that funding that it's it was a possibility that the council wouldn't vote the full amount in any in a given year um and so I think one of the things that am I correct in that that would essentially eliminate that that choice from the council each year um in in doing that initial plan and then the question my other question is is the estimate of that payback time 10 years just kind of flipping it um I think that's that's my first question and then if I can lump the second one in if that's okay because I know you're noting it so I appreciate it so when I look at option three I think Andy referenced this are you seeking to uh seeking to put in enabling legislation or seek to petition the state to change CPA and CDBG funding because as of right now that's not something the town controls those like we don't set those percentage limits and so I think I was wondering if there was an anticipated pre-step in that of trying to ask them to change the law so that we could even do what you're asking so there's a they're kind of wetted in because they're the first two I have 20 seconds I'm gonna keep going so the other question was if you I'm really excited about number nine um the I know there's tons of number nine's and I just wrote excited about number nine so I apologize but I'm excited about it and um I'm curious if you haven't thought on how to best advocate along other municipalities uh is that the work of the successor bodies that's something you want the council to to support in in what way um and then lastly is a very specific question are there specific ways that you see the town supporting the tablets you had talked you had referenced that you wanted to see those supported and I was curious as to how I'm sorry I thought I could do it in 24 seconds and I needed 30 okay I think I got you right all those down yeah okay I'm gonna oh yes I think that's right um let me start with the tablets uh so I'm gonna go backwards from my list um I the tablets thank you to Ms. Bridges to my right um that is uh something that of course I hope and we hope when we've written this report that the town will continue to support um and it's something that uh we believe that the folks who are already working on should really be guiding and leading and so um I'll leave that one at that so that includes Ms. Bridges and others um who are already working um to really and that doesn't mean we don't all have a role to play we certainly do but in terms of leading those efforts um in terms of best advocating I think the question was advocating um with like coalitions in the state yeah were you envisioning basically the successor body as being a regional in in some way not obviously entirely regional but in some way regional or was that something that you expected that you would hope the council would be creating and crafting in some way yeah I know yeah and that's okay too well I think it's a beautiful vision and I think that uh it would be wonderful if our successor body was uh working with other regional or statewide I think there's a lot of um interest in understanding how this works and we as a council and as a town and our our legal folks have done an extraordinary amount of work to understand what the possible limitations are and to understand uh what the opportunities are so I hope we can be a model in that respect um as far as CPA and the block grant it was uh I think the suggestion is um in particular to CPA and we met with Sean on this so Sean is not here to speak for himself but what I believe I understood is that CPA within the municipality creates its own guidelines so while there are state let me just finish what I was going to say so there are state guidelines um I believe that we need to follow but then I believe the municipality creates their own set of goals let's say for how they're going to approach so I think what we're recommending here is absolutely not to change uh any state guidelines or to pursue that necessarily um but rather to say okay you have these categories of affordable housing historic preservation some of these things that overlap with the work that we're doing in the initiatives that we would pursue so let's work together to sort of leverage our funds um and be able to pursue initiatives in partnership as far as the block grant it was my understanding that that is entirely in the town manager's purview to determine how the block grant would be of course with community input would be would be awarded on an annual basis so I would imagine that the successor body would would advocate to the town manager to include some funding for the reparations initiatives and I oh okay the opera opera opera okay I'm just not saying of the two million dollar fund so in the three options and I I really want to lift up what Andy said as well that we thought about three options we talked to some staff and and and they aren't the only options to consider we would hope that the the finance committee would take up the request to accelerate and then look at the three potential options and there may be others to consider um and just sort of coming back to what the original vision was over 10 years is uh we really do feel like in order to keep the momentum and to keep this report from sitting on a shelf we need to begin pursuing these initiatives uh before 10 years and so we would hope that with one of those options or another uh wonderful option we'll be able to do that within that four-year timeframe thank you um Jennifer can I come Kathy respond and then come back to me if you look like you really want to respond to Kathy just it was just on the question of CPAC and CDBG um in terms of how much is set by legislation and how much flexibility we have I said I don't think we're going to be able to answer that question sitting here tonight but we do know that they are both uh state and in fact federal programs for CDBG uh and uh look those do have restrictions in them and so the request needs to be balanced against what the restrictions are which I think is where Andy was going when he suggested that perhaps some of the other recommendations also might be forwarded to the finance committee to get greater clarity on that okay if you want to dispense with talking more about it now we can talk about it in finance we I'm just saying that the the categories Michelle referred to the categories there are categories and within them uh there are different types of housing but there's not permissiveness right now to designate something on the base of color or race so to the extent something specific would come in there it's higher level legislation and when you go to CDBG there are federal guidelines for that and their categories of things that are ineligible so it's not completely at the town discretion what is at the town discretion is relative emphasis each year and you can see that a lot in CPAC on spend a lot more here or a lot less here um but that can be a separate one those were the two I were going to question on how much flexibility we really have there um without hire and Kathy has been the liaison to CPAC committee for a number of years and it's just been watching things you thought would fit get tossed aside because they just didn't fit yeah well and I remember very recently there was that whole effort to can we include solar and the reality is that would be a whole new category and would have to go through the state legislature um I all I'm suggesting is I don't think we're going to resolve all of that detail around that this evening but I think that is part of what we would expand this first motion to include in its referral to finance Jennifer yeah so initially I did have questions about um CPAC and the block grant funds but so I just want to say you know quickly to thank um the African heritage reparation assembly you know really so um in awe of this very thoroughly researched informative report and also really appreciate that it has such a detailed roadmap and we a successor committee is absolutely needed and I think the programmatic areas that you suggest of affordable housing youth programming and business grants how could anyone argue with that so I just um I think you've given us a report that we can move forward with hopefully quickly and I do hope that the finance committee you know can really look for a way to accelerate you know the implementation and the funding you know I hope that will be possible and when Rabbi Jacobson was when you were reading your remarks I was just shaking my head and I agree with everything you said so thank you Pam thank you I will acknowledge and appreciate the work that was done by the committee thank you very much it's an enormous enormous task to grapple with a question I had was um has the current assembly actually helped pave the way by for a successor committee by creating a draft charge for that committee so that the this process can roll out and the second part of the question is who actually takes on the responsibility to formulate and form up the successor body thank you because I because I support doing it excellent so thank you Pam um there is a draft in the appendix that I believe would be referred page one love it Manny says page 110 um and that is uh what I would imagine will be referred uh to the GOL committee um and then the GOL committee will have the opportunity um I think with some feedback uh to to sort of work with that initial draft uh before bringing their recommendation back to the town council right yes um thank you and thanks to the committee for everything but for handing us something to start with it's always a good place to go um Pat D'Angelo's thank you and like everyone else I want to thank the committee the AHRA for the work you've done I also want to count um thank all of the people who've done the research behind these reports and the people in the community who have participated in surveys and sharing experience um but there are many questions I could ask um or have been asked that what what I want to do is make a commitment I want the council to make a commitment to really implementing a reparations fund and I think that commitment is there but I think we need to honestly not put it on a shelf and I don't think we're going to the drive is too strong but the other thing uh and this is important uh I forget now who suggested that the council participate in the stolen beams stolen beam um work I think we should be making a commitment to do that individually and as a full council we need to address this within ourselves and within our community and our history and I am asking the council tonight to make a commitment to that um and to commitment and a real commitment to implement the uh suggestions of this committee thank you uh Dorothy I'm gonna skip to get to Kathy who really has not had an opportunity to make a comment yet and then come back to you go ahead Kathy thank you and thank you for the report um I actually wanted to thank you at first I thought oh no I'm rereading some information that we got earlier when we first decided to do a reparation fund but I think you did it quite artfully bringing in parts of that so you had a whole report um I found the survey quite interesting um and I have one question about the survey so I just want to re um focus in a few things that we've been talking about on the funding options option two talked about in a way talked about don't think of it as an endowment fund and actually I never thought of it as an endowment fund until you suggested it would be one at a meeting Michelle because I quickly did the calculation and said that's not going to provide very much in the initial years so um that's doable within the framework we've already set is one of the things I wanted to mention to people when it goes to finance because it's within the cannabis award each year and it would build up a fund more slowly but it would release money every year so it's just uh there is a at first I thought there wasn't a feasible way of doing this but there is if we don't think of it as an endowment fund and just live off of its earnings um so you come up with a number 100 000 I think that's worth discussing um on whether it needs to be that every year and priorities so just on the funding side then on the what is eligible side you the report talks about on an individual basis we're likely to need special legislation but I think for some of the other subsets we may need it as well so I don't know how much you talked about it for example um training people on entrepreneurism if we restricted it to only subsets of young people by african-american heritage we would run into a similar issue as opposed to um I don't know a broader a broader youth category so it's on some of the others I think you run into a similar not exactly the same so it's not individual so I I think that needs a little bit more thinking um then my question one question I've had for a while on the youth center versus pre-k um preschool where I think a healthy start on life um especially for lower income working families with kids giving them a place that their children can thrive um it's not in the report as a potential area to think about so I don't know whether you discussed it or not but it was always a place I thought might be worth considering and again we would run into something that's just for african-american but as opposed to saying it's for low income it's a sliding scale and a preponderance of that will be people of color so that's my question on a missing item and my last is just a request I would love to be able to get my hands a little bit more on the survey on the actual data just in the summary so if there is a way to get that at some point it would be great thank you yeah I think the full survey data that I received from the Dunahue Institute I don't think I know that it's been included in the appendix um it's I talked at length with Kerry and with the Dunahue Institute about uh you know this is an anonymous survey and so when you start getting into like really specific data you could inadvertently identify people and so and I see Lynn who has a lot of background on this shaking her head so we can certainly go back to the Dunahue Institute and ask and maybe even you could specifically if you have something that you'd like to see but I think there was a purpose for I don't have any more detail than what I have provided in the what we have provided in the appendix so we could we but we can see if we can get more without sort of having that I understand the issue and so I'll think a little bit more on how to tease out a few pieces that's good yeah and then just to answer a couple of your other questions Kathy so your question about for example the training business training so one way to think about it I think you're absolutely right that there's a possibility that with certain benefits the special legislation will be required but if you think about for example having stated goals right so you can say that like the folks that are developing ball lane they say essentially that they are working to help folks who have been historically locked out of the housing market to in order to pursue home ownership opportunities so they're not specifying a race they're just saying they have stated goals that sort of encompass and in that case I don't think that it would be necessary to have special legislation so I just I wanted to kind of differentiate that and then in terms of the 100,000 absolutely something that the finance committee could review with the rest of what they what they will be reviewing we spoke at length about this this was a number that we felt would on an annual basis allow us to make some meaningful things happen and I wanted to kind of pick up what you're saying with Anna's question that I didn't answer actually which was well we when we made this commitment thought we had the ability on an annual basis to decide whether it fit into the rest of the goals that we have and I think that still is the case in terms of the council will have to approve by some vote any initiatives that we that we pursue so that that control is still in place there Kath I tried to get them all if I missed something oh the question on pre-k you said yeah that's not something that we as an assembly discussed it wasn't something that came up in our consultative process and it doesn't mean that it's not a fantastic thing to consider and if anyone else wants to add to that I would turn it over on the car you have your hand up as well so please okay oh okay so Dorothy we're back to you I just wanted to comment on one aspect that the whole question of eligibility where you have to have records is very very problematic and one of the things that I thank the committee for is that I just know that they have thoughtfully considered the ins and outs of those issues because people of trauma often do not have pedigree charts carefully preserved I know my husband's family can cannot go back very far at all I mean if you've been a subject of a program or forced relocation or your house has been burnt down you don't have the records and you know so we have to we have to understand that people will have many people who are very eligible will have difficulty providing certain kind of proof and part of that is culturally based I mean we do have an example of a black family with great records okay so I'm not saying that that people don't have them but who has stacks of genealogies okay it's the dominant cast people who've had money stability whatever are more apt to have them and the other thing is when when a young black man is in a difficult position and is confronted by the police nobody asks him who his ancestors were I mean people who are black are subject to certain prejudices by people who don't know them or may know them or whatever so you we can't really get the kind of precise eligibility that some people might like so I think the committee really dealt with that very well and that's why the answer is not bureaucratic that's my comment so thank you committee Mandy Joe okay yeah so I before I ask my next couple of questions because they kind of all relate to each other I just want to state that I'm trying to in reading the report these questions kind of go to what I had originally envisioned is meant by reparations and what I've read in the report and trying to sort of get my head then around what the report is sort of defining as reparations so that's sort of the the idea of where these questions are coming from so again going back to the black reparations project one of the chapters indicated that a program of reparations must both define the range of history subject to reparations and provide closure for grievous injustice and so one of the things that I didn't see stated absolutely I guess and obviously I could have missed it was how the plan defines the range of history subject to what you're proposing we do and then also how it would provide closure for the history of discrimination in in similar vein the the programs that you have proposed youth programming affordable housing business grants as as Jennifer said are are who would argue against them right but I I'm trying to understand how they qualify as sort of reparations from my original understanding of reparations which is why I'm asking this if eligibility isn't tied to having experienced past harms because of specific town of Amherst policies and a funding proposal that appears to be as you've said an endowment ongoing never ending when tied together with the programs that are proposed it I I read the report as more like proposing in some sense social services programs that should be brought into maybe our operational budget and so I guess I'm asking how how do we how would you respond to those because I'm just trying to get more ideas of what's going on here and and and then someone else brought up the special act so I guess the other question I would have is how did you why did you choose the two items that we're going to be having a motion on now instead of asking us to pursue the special act I'm going to answer the special act and then I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Shabazz and if she would like to to follow up on your first question the special act so in considering sort of the enormity of this and that there is a lot there's a lot to consider in this report and in talking to some community members who read the report prior to it being published more broadly it was the overall sense that I got was that we needed as a community an opportunity to sort of digest the report and to digest the recommendations and to consider the possible consequences is not the word I'm looking for but of pursuing the special act and so these two items that we chose in speaking to our council president felt like the most sort of accessible at the moment while we consider and digest the rest of the report Dr. Shabazz thank you so this is very rich discussion and I'll try to be very specific and very brief in addressing some things you know I am a descendant of Black American free people I even have on my father's side I know the exact ancestors that came over in a slave ship in the 1700s and were enslaved in Louisiana that genealogical work was actually done for me it's in a book called The Forgotten People by Gary Mills so who was a colleague of mine when I was at the University of Alabama not everybody has that level of work done and as has been pointed out for some people it's very difficult because of a lot of things for them to even begin to know but I do so when we talk about Black American free people I'm one of them okay and when we specifically talk about the range of history Amherst this town benefited from the institution not only as practiced here which went out by the by the early 1800s with Wealthy Wheeler in the Coles family family of Cinda Jones's ancestors that she has shown to me Wealthy Wheeler being the last one that was bought and enslaved here in Amherst in the oldest building that's still there the Sturbridge House on the UMass campus but it doesn't end there the harms continued when you have a Amherst College trustee like Israel Trask has people enslaved in the south where I'm from where my ancestors are from in places like Alabama and Louisiana had people enslaved there that he directly benefited from that wealth brought that wealth to Amherst and built up this town and built up Amherst College on that same wealth of Black people even after slavery was no longer legal in the state of Massachusetts so the impact is beyond just whether you trace ancestors here in Amherst who were enslaved it's that you trace the ancestors who were enslaved period and that's where my family then can qualify even though our ancestors weren't enslaved in Amherst I think we qualify with that historical fact that we're talking about here let me say as well we really have to work to just put the race color aspect out of our minds this isn't affirmative action rename reparations when you talk about reparations you are talking about addressing a specific harm against a specific people that is what you are working to repair so you're not working to repair the the structural racism against a color you're so I like in it and I really believe we need to pursue the special purpose it's not on the docket for tonight but I do encourage you to put it in the queue behind proportional rank choice voting and whatever else you have in the queue and as I've talked to Rep Dom and Senator Cumberford you know the question is raised well why just Amherst if it's going to be important for all of Massachusetts well I say let Amherst leave and then if other municipalities Northampton Boston Cambridge whatever else says well we want special purpose too then we go ahead and do it like CPAC and do it on a statewide level but somebody's got to lead this conversation to declare reparations for black American freed people a special purpose in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that it is a valid special purpose to do that not because of race or color that was an incidental fact of what was done but because we are trying to address and repair a damage against a specific group of people that continues to affect their lives the descendants of those people right now 2023 finally I would just so say as well and it may not be as stated strongly in the report as we want to make we ought to have a genealogical project through our Jones library through our universities and colleges where we are helping every resident of this town black American freed people descendant in this town that wants to do their genealogical work and find out their ancestry precisely to where they had enslaved ancestors and possibly even precisely where they came over on the boat on the slave ship that that work ought to be assisted ought to be funded ought to be all of these companies that do the DNA research they ought to be donating that and we ought to to lead again in Amherst in making that possible that every resident here can get that kind of help that wants it can get that kind of help to trace directly their ancestry back into that ignoble institution of slavery that harm this country that harm their families so we can get it but a lot of this we could only do so much in this round but we do think these things can continue to be taken up and and specified and clarified in the in the future work of that we go on to do thank you thank you very much that's was very very useful or if you have your hand up and I assume you wanted to address this one as we when I hear people talking about well we might have to have special purpose legislation to deal with some of the three areas that we have outlined youth in housing affordable housing and business grants I think what we're talking about here is weaving a thread into the fabric of that which is already here we're not talking about setting up something separate or or equal we're talking about using money and collaboration with money that's already being spent and and that's overall generalization has to be there money's been will be set aside for reparations reparations has one of its goals or objectives affordable housing well affordable housing is also a goal and an objective of several other programs within amherst rather than rather than duplicating those programs we only want to weave our thread into that fabric of other affordable housing programs and thereby utilize funds in a more efficient and effective way amherst has done this all the time in other areas you can't you know you you don't have to say for for african americans of heritage but you can set you can deal with the population in the same way that we deal with dei those possibilities remain there it's only the will and creativity of those who are in those programs is it if we get into the the weeds of saying well you can't do this because it's specifically specific only to blacks or african americans then we should stop and sell that issue first before we go any further but that will take some time i don't think we need to do that there are ways in which we can address these issues and address the goals and objectives without going through the whole special legislation thing yes if the town wishes to put special legislation together for that that's fine but that's that should not prevent us from going down the road with these issues and there's enough creativity and smarts in this group in the town council etc to be able to make this a reality thank you anika thank you uh so i usually do not respond to such comments but i need to because mrs. pam you just made a very careless comment about some of my ancestors we know our history not because of cast but because we are of cultures who are not meant to know our histories and what happens amongst us is oral history and this is passed down and it is it is passed down through inheritance and it is passed down through specific people and and the work that i have done is to share um this experience not to be experimented with um these are people who have we have no idea of the majority of our history we are linked to those who experience genocide in the land that you call your neighborhood today land that we were banned from living around okay this is who we are i'm very fortunate that some of us and some of my ancestors lived to be about 106 so i lived in this history and we heard it and it's oral and we have done genealogy my cousins that have gone back to the 1400s was like dr shabazz just shared track us of the ships that we came here there are many stories on those civil war tablets that amherst hasn't heard yet um but one thing that i wanted to also lift which i hadn't done is i wanted to um acknowledge demetri shabazz who this report was um dedicated to um one of the first ways my first contact with paul balkam and our town manager was through a very some very persistent emails about the civil war tablets and when i first um put out a call which was on on facebook because this was my grandfather's project you know and i also want to add that from his passing in 2004 until my return to amherst in 2019 there was crickets nothing was done to uplift these folks in this history of amherst and so the first person to respond to that facebook call that alert was demetri shabazz okay and we got together and we formed a civil war tablet committee in honor of the of the holiday of juneteenth that was coming up paul balkam and made sure those tablets got out and were on view by that holiday and i also want to acknowledge um you know uh deba bridges who for all transparency is my mother in the soul curator of the civil war tablet exhibit okay so i would really just encourage us all to be supportive but again be supportive but again please stop talking and stop speaking for people of color when it is not your place we need to be supported and uplifted please do not encourage these divides that are going on we are not a cast we were poor thank you um i'm going to divide my comments in two one is first as an individual and then to try to move uh and have us think about the motions okay uh this is a rich conversation that could not have happened without the work of this committee and i've looked at this report i've read this report and as i read it i'm going well how about this how about that and every time i'm engaged in another discussion about this report like the one we have here tonight i see it yet differently and so now i'm going to move to the state the position of trying to get to the motions lynn before you do that may i just add one more comment yeah is that okay it may be one and a half one is i really just quickly you want to hold up mandy joe's comments um i think that her question of trying to understand what reparations is is a living question and it's a question that we should all be holding in our hearts and our minds and so i very much value that you brought that up and that you've asked that question and um i think it's it's clear that there are uh there's a whole spectrum so i wanted to say that i also just wanted to briefly um thank town manager bachelman um i think uh he's been quite quiet over there tonight listening um but uh you know for a variety of reasons but mostly because i have been able to come to him in the last two years through this entire process with whether it be a question or a request just to get some guidance to hear from him and i feel we've developed a lot of rapport and trust throughout that process um and when town manager bachelman uh came to um the town hall that we had at amherst college where we did the screening of the big payback uh with his partner it was really meaningful to me and the committee and i just wanted to share that so thanks thank you so as michelle mentioned when we first decided it was time to finally bring the report forward and we had a little bit of delay because we were working on school committee appointments um we came up with two motions and i i certainly think those motions can um um be talked about and maybe amended tonight before we pass them but the the real goal was to make a statement that we're not going to just say thank you for this report we're actually going to make motions that do two things look at the funding the goal of which is to get some things going faster than 10 years okay the second is to look at how are we going to continue to look at this as a town and that's the idea of a successor committee and i will say that as the gel looks at the successor committee and a charge for a successor committee what it should be looking at is obvious the recommendations in the report so that part of the charge maybe to explore further whether or not we should file special legislation and same way with the finance committee it's maybe not just look at how can and if we can accelerate but are there ways in which within existing funding streams some priorities can be made so these are not perfect motions show me the perfect motion and i'll be glad to have it but they are the motions that recognize that tonight we've been given an incredible gift from a group that has worked very hard and they're the motions that say we're not going to let it sit on the shelf we're going to move forward so with that i know andy you wanted to amend if you will the first one which is to refer the half african heritage reparations assembly recommendations to operationalize a two million dollar reparation endowment fund within four years to the finance committee and a report and recommendation to the town council by november 20th 2023 i wondered if we wanted to say something like to refer the african heritage recommendations assembly report and recommendations to review the financial rec the financial recommendations including operationalizing it's kind of opening up you know talking about cdbg and what is possible or not talking about um the um cpa that's the other one i want and is it doable so if there is there a way you want to phrase that andy in a way that you think opens it for the finance committee to look at more than just what my thought had been to just say um part three of the report funding plan okay so and leah and i would add to that so one two and three in part three uh deal with these matters when we get to four and five we're talking about private charities and things so it could be just as simple as saying um referring numbers one two and three of section three of the report to the finance committee andy does that work for you i that that would work um but the one thing i thought about with the uh question of the grants is uh that if we if the goal is to also have staff assistance in developing the grants then there's staff time involved and uh whether that um is something that we need to also at least put on the table for discussion by the full council um so that's why i kind of left it a little broader but i'm okay with uh narrowing it i leave it up to the group so let's try the following to refer the african heritage assembly report specifically section three and leave it open to review the financial recommendations with report i can't read when it's moving but with a report and recommendation to the town council by november 20th 2023 does that work i'm making the motion is there a second second i don't know okay i'll second i don't know but to be consistent with the report it should be roman roman numerals to get the three yeah if you yeah if you want to for consistency that would be good thank you uh okay so the motion has been made in second it now's time for discussion of the motion i'm going to lower my hand and irv you still have your hand up okay then i'm going to go to mandy joe um my my question is about the timeline on this and november 20th um is like four weeks away number one sounds really quick um but i was i was more specifically curious about it we have had ecac had a report that brought a lot of requests for new funding in um other other recommendations have we've heard from crest maybe some more funding and more staffing for that we're moving into the point of the year where we're looking at our financial guidelines for next budget year i think we're still waiting on the quarter the fourth quarter reports to know where our free cash and all is um and so i i i want to make sure that the date is late enough that we've got our fourth quarter reports so that finance can consider that while they're talking about these things but also so that it brings in the financial guidelines that we're going to be potentially bringing to the council because i think we need to talk about everything in um not siloed uh so i i don't know whether i i don't i don't know the the deadlines enough for when the financial guidelines are coming to the council but i'd kind of like this date maybe to match that one so the plan it's at present okay is on November 10th it will be a night of finance finance and finance uh basically looking at uh free cash looking at specific orders related to free cash and any number of other things that are financial so this allows it i'm i i have to honestly say i think November 20th is close to impossible but at least it allows the council the finance committee to have something in sequence that they could then bring back and it maybe they don't bring it back until December but it's and then the guidelines are discussed by finance committee starting with the bcg meeting budget coordinating group meeting and presentation of the financial indicators and that is also on November 10th the 13th when 13th thank you 13 i had the date wrong but so in other words we're trying to line things up so that on November 13th we will have the fourth quarter report it'll come to the finance committee we will also have free cash and various other financial things that we have to look at and then that is the date when we also do the financial indicators i'm not saying that the timing is perfect i'm just saying it's it's trying to get everything in line Kathy you have your hand up i'm going to let randy joe con to play this for a while Kathy my comment was entirely around November 20th whether it was feasible or not um my understanding is the 10th is veterans day so we're not meeting that day finance is meeting on fridays these days so if the council meets on the 13th when we're first seeing the budget projections and starting to think about what the guidelines are the next finance committee move would be that friday which is the 17th um so it there there's a it's this this can be completely severed this discussion that we're we would need to have for the the financing of it doesn't have to be attached to this year's financing it's it's more conceptual so andy you're the one who knows what's what else is on our agenda we just bump two things um because they weren't ready yet street lights and residential permits so there's only so much that can be done in each meeting so that's the only reason i'm because i think this deserves more than a quick conversation we need to think through options and talk about it a little bit and you know i expressed my all i like the option two one of of taking some of the cannabis money each year and thinking about spending it but even that is do we start that in 2025 you know i mean what when would that start um because then we would have to have what we're spending it on decided so so lin it was just a question on the 20th not looking like uh we automatically are going to need an extension okay andy give your hand up yeah my suggestion is that the more traditional referrals that we make from the council um don't necessarily specify a complete report but they say report back okay and so that modification in language to be more consistent with other referrals might be helpful and because i think it is to address it i don't really want to get into the weeds of talking about the deadline the dates for the finance committee because it's a whole different subject and complicated but i will go as far as saying that i have been working with patina and we have developed a draft plan for meetings and and figured out how they correlate to council meetings so that in the work that needs to be done in deadlines and one of the things that i want to do is finance committee is have the finance committee have an opportunity to look at that document and discuss it um and the last thing that i guess i mentioned is that we do and i'm previewing my committee report for later but uh we are planning to schedule a meeting for this friday and the third quarter report and year end report will be presented that no they're not that's for the 27th i believe okay well we'll talk about that later thank you all right uh so uh tina would you put the motion up on the screen again please so one of the possibilities is to say with a report back to the town council by november 20th it may just be a progress report and maybe it'll be some recommendations um this might be a point of order but it in the review revisions we lost who it's getting referred to in that motion ah it's not a point of order it's a serious clerical issue um thank you okay so this the motion is to refer the african heritage reparations assembly report section three to the finance committee to review the final recommendations with a report back to the town council by november 2020 23 uh michelle you have your hand yeah just quickly um i have really learned to trust the process um and i feel really good about this i will however say that um i have concerns about if this were to go into the next council um that it could be challenging for a brand new council um so if we could just keep that in mind and probably everyone is i think that's a very good point uh this is not a way of saying oh and by the way finance committee you don't don't have to act okay or you don't have to recommend okay the motion has been made was that friendly amendment accepted by the seconder thank you okay thank you the motion's been made it's been amended it's on your screen are there any further comments okay then we're going to move to a vote pat de angeles i on a devlin goth here i lind greece merrison i mandy joe hannacky i anika lopes i michelle miller i dorthy pamm yes pamm rooney yes cathy shane yes andy steinberg hi jennifer tov yes alisha walker yes and shelly ball miller is absent it is unanimous with one person absent we're going to move to the second motion and it's to refer the draft amherst black reparations committee a vrc charge recommended by the african heritage reparations assembly to the governance organization and legislation committee with a report i'm going to say back to the town council by november 20th second thank you uh i'm sorry i didn't even ask but second thank you um is there any further question here mandy joe yeah um i have a question about one of the wordings in in the charge right now and and michelle i know you're on gl but i thought i'd get it out there now there's some other things that i'll ask later but um it's one of the bullet points says oversee reparations funds um what what can you describe what was intended by that wording just so i know to be honest this was sort of the last thing that came together so um it might not be the best uh document in the report um and i fully expect it will be modified uh but i think what it meant is that it would sort of um be responsible for whatever initiatives are coming through to be recommend it would be the body that would then recommend those to the town council in terms of how the fund should be allocated but i don't think it's the best choice supports yeah it i think what you wanted was to recognize that it has to come to the council is that correct okay all right any other questions or comments anika so um so we can move on would we just submit if we had any any questions or suggestions will we just submit those and by what day to hear well i for i would like to suggest that if counselors have additional questions or recommendations or things they'd like to make sure are discussed that they submit those to the respective chairs of those committees both finance and gol by the end of this week okay who'd you like to know what else is on my calendar we're gonna talk so so lina you saying end of this by friday we send to gol if we have any comments to the chair of gol and to end copy athena please pat okay and chair of finance could gol tell us which date they're most likely to discuss it in case we want to hear the discussion we can make sure you know that but i don't think it's been asking for it now i would just it's a request yeah yes absolutely okay are there any other questions then we're moving to a vote on a deblin goth here i then greece mersen i mandy joe hannity i anika lopes i michelle miller i dorthy pamm yes you didn't hear me no i didn't dorthy i'm sorry yes thank you i would hammer any yes kathy shane yes andy steinberg jennifer tov yes alicia walker yes uh shallownay is absent and pat de enchis i it is unanimous with one counselor absent uh michelle i know we need to move on and i thank you for all the time we've spent on this i just want to point out these posters that are in the back pat talked about the stolen beam these are visual representations of the stolen beam that were created by a community member and if you have more questions uh devora and jeff would be able to answer those for you so thank you okay uh before we take a break i'm going to ask michelle to officially adjourn the ahra yes officially adjourning the ahra at 9 22 p.m thank you thank you we are going to take uh we are going to take a 10 minute break we will be back well okay 12 minutes we'll be back at 25 minutes of 10 oh god yes thank you why we've happened to do with them so we were wasn't on the motion no i know i know but i'll i'll i realize sometime i'll i'll go double you yeah We were like, oh my God. And I was like, you see, I've just been through a lot. I feel safe. I've got a bag. It's like, this is my head. It's like, oh, my God. And then I was like, you see, and I was just like, oh, my God. I feel safe. But I'm going to bring my head up. It's like, it's really good. I'd love to see that. I was there. I was just on my own. I mean, I'm not sure what's going on. I was there. I was there. I was there. I was there. I was there. Thank you for giving us more We need to start reassembling gang. As you return please turn your videos on so I know you're back. We're going to be reassembling. We, we need to reassemble so that we can continue our meeting. She's joining us at home. You need to get home for her kids. I'm a car. You might want to. Take your screen off. Wow. Okay. I know. Honest here. I know Anika's here. Alicia, are you back? Yes, I am. Thank you. Thank you. All right. We're going to continue our next agenda item. We actually did. The. Did pass on the consent agenda. The next two items, however, I have promised the sponsors. That if they wanted to say anything about them, we could. So the first one is bylaw. Three, three point four eight stretch energy code. Proposed adoption. And we already voted, but Anna, did you have anything you wanted to say? Have I ever turned down that opportunity in my entire life? Okay. So, yes, I do. I'd like to thank my colleagues for voting to adopt the specialized opt in building code this evening on consent. In doing so, we are adopting a code which ensures that new buildings and Amherst would be resilient in the face of heat waves, deep freezes and other major changes to the world in which we live as a result of a changing climate. It does so as you all know, by requiring more efficient measures in new buildings and significant remodels. This code builds on the existing stretch code standards for standards for energy efficiency, such as higher levels of insulation, high performance windows and doors and increased air tightness. It is in many ways a sister bylaw to our zero energy bylaw creating pathways to full electrification. It's been over 10 years since Amherst adopted the energy stretch code. That was laudable at the time and I'm grateful to those who championed it then. And now, in 2023, we can and must bring it further. This is one of many changes that are necessary. I would like to thank sustainability director Stephanie Ciccarello and the energy and climate action committee specifically Jesse Selman for bringing this forward and supporting me as the council sponsor. I also want to thank Mandy Johanaki who, while not a sponsor, supported me in ensuring I was bringing forward something that was written in a way that fit within our policy and that I didn't accidentally erase all the sustainability building code measures for several months while we waited to enact this. She caught that and thank you for doing that. Policy speaks to values and I thought these were going the opposite order so I was going to say I already said that but I'm going to say it for the first time now. Policy speaks to values and we are moving tonight on another value that we have expressed which is resiliency and determination and action in the face of climate change. Building codes offer a powerful opportunity in our fight against a changing climate and ensuring that all the buildings we build are not contributing to that warming climate and will stand in Amherst for decades to come. Climate action work is work of love and care for those who are here but even more for those who are coming later. I think the council and our community for readily taking the step and showing that care today. Thank you. Are there any other comments on the proposed bylaw process? I think it's time to move on. I think it's time to bring safe access to legally protected, reproductive and gender affirming health care. Me again. Tonight the Amherst town council has affirmed our support for access to safe and legal abortion and gender affirming care. We have done this tonight but we have done this before. We have expressed our belief through resolutions that we have made. We have expressed our belief through resolutions that we have set and that safety that we valued shrank. In that time and since then, many of us have felt helpless and simultaneously grateful that we live in a state which has protected access to this type of care. Sometimes that gratitude can lead to even more feelings of helplessness. Last year Councillor Mandejo-Hannocky approached us and said, I think it's time to bring safe access to safe and legal abortion and gender affirming protections. But as per usual, Mandejo's ability to find details which are potentially harmful in policies and write new policy to minimize that harm and support our community came through. This bylaw means that no town staff will assist outside organizations who may be seeking information on those who are seeking gender rights. We have expressed and hold dear. We have so many individuals and amours who travel here especially for school. The likelihood that we have people who seek this care is known. It's high. We owe it to our community to protect them and this bylaw goes beyond words and into actions that do that. I'm grateful to Mandejo-Hannocky once again for her work on this as a co-sponsor. I also want to thank Dr. Hutton and other community members for supporting us and holding us accountable to getting this done. There's incredible power in feeling supported in this work by these folks and I know that Mandejo and I are both grateful. Sometimes and this goes for both of the bylaws that we passed tonight. Sometimes it doesn't feel like there are levers that we can pull in the face of injustices that are so huge like stripping people of their rights to access medical care but being diligent and searching to make sure we have done every single thing that we can do to protect people is part of our job. I'm grateful to the council for helping us pull this particular lever and support this work. I'm grateful to live in Amherst where we turn our values and our care into policies like this. Thank you. Thanks. We're going to now go on to the section seven which is presentations and discussions. This is specifically set aside to discuss and for the council to ask questions if they would like regarding the community responder for equity safety and service crest. Paul would you like to start with any comments to begin with? Sure. Thank you and I'm sorry I wasn't here when these questions came up last week so I was out of town obviously. So there's no denying that this is a difficult time for the crest department as we go through some transitions and leadership. There is a everyone who is involved in the crest department is 100% committed to the success of the crest department. We are we're taking time taking additional steps to make sure that it stays comfortable. We are taking this opportunity to make sure that crest is here for the long call. I've been out on the road talking with crest about crest with my colleagues in the municipal management field and international city management association talking about how this is going to be the future for every city in town to have a department like this. So committed to its success built it from the ground up to ensure that the staff members who are employed by crest we're going to have the means to be successful and for that reason that's why we had the crest responders automatically be part of our union so the union was aligned with the mission of crest as well. We will we are down in our staffing. We will be recruiting new staff members for crests. We will have a change in leadership as well. So if there are questions from the counselors I'm happy to answer them. Dorothy you have your hand up. It's a long meeting and I don't remember who said it but is it true that Earl Miller has not been presented with whatever the charges are against him and it has not been given an opportunity to defend him or to defend himself in the court. I'm sorry. I can't talk about personnel issues in this meeting. A statement I've shared with the council on what we have said is going to be our statement so I can't go further than that. This does not sound like a democratic country. I would not make that. I think it would be helpful if we had a better understanding of what the issues are that cause the slow down in getting some dispatch referrals so that we could actually have a better understanding of what the issues are that cause the slow down in getting some dispatch referrals so that we could actually have the press department working in the active way that we had envisioned because there's been some reference from various people that I've heard that there were issues but I just don't understand what they were. The second thing is did that slow down in getting referrals in the active way that would not affect the decision of any of our responders who left to leave? I don't think it was a slow down. We were up and running very quickly as you recall once you funded the program we hired a director and started hiring responders. Other communities like Durham where I was last time the council met they had spent two years in the planning stage before they started hiring responders and I think looking back we were anxious to get the program up and running. They had already spent some time. The other situation there that was different than ours is that most of their employees are not unionized. We have collective bargaining responsibilities that we have to abide by when we start talking about these things. Those negotiations successfully and we are able to start moving forward on that. You may recall that the dispatchers are part of the SAI union as well and they had great concerns about some of the things we were moving forward on. That is all behind us and we are able to start moving forward on this and moving into the 9-1-1 dispatch. We have learned a lot over the years what was originally envisioned to get into the ground. Dispatch is a very complicated thing. That is why we are in the Harvard Kennedy School's performance lab and this cohort is focused strictly on 9-1-1 dispatch because it is a complicated thing for a lot of our cities and towns. Some communities get up and running and do it very quickly. We are a smaller community with fewer resources than others. I think we will get there. There is commitment from our dispatch leadership and police leadership and fire leadership to make sure we move in that direction. We need to do training of our dispatchers. We need to listen to our responders as well which is an important piece of what we are doing right now. Hearing what their experience has been over the past year, what we can learn from them. They all have lots of opinions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .