 I know it's ridiculous. Okay. We're recording. Yes, we're recording. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good evening. It is December 11th, 2023, and this is a very special meeting of the town council because we're welcoming our new counselors here for orientation. The open meeting law has been extended. This allows us to continue holding meetings remotely without a forum of the council physically present. But I do want to point out at this point, we have a pretty full house. This meeting is accessible in real time by Zoom, by phone, and as a live broadcast on Amherst Media Channel 9, and through their live stream. Given that we have a quorum of the council present, the seated council. I'm calling the December 11th, 2023 special town council meeting to order at 631. I'll call upon each counselor by name. At that time, please unmute and say present. This indicates that we can hear you and you can hear us. There are some people who will be joining us later, and I believe Shelley Ball-Miller is one of those. Pat DeAngelis. Present. Anna Devlin-Gother is on her way. Lynn Griesmer is present. Mandy Johanna. Present. Anika Lopes. Present. Michelle Miller is not here yet. Dorothy Pam is not here yet. Pam Rooney. Here. Kathy Sheen is not here yet. Andy Steinberg. Present. Jennifer Taub. Present. And Alicia Walker is not here yet. I would also like to make sure that the incoming counselors can be heard and they can hear us. Freke. Atta. Yes. Bob Hegner. Present. Robert Hegner. Hollow Lord. Present. George Ryan. Present. Thank you. There is no chat room for this meeting. If you have technical issues, please let Athena and me know. And to make a comment, please use the raised hand button. If technical difficulties arise as a result of using remote participation, we'll address it at the time. There is no public comment tonight. I'll be reiterating that when we go into the rest of the meeting. The agenda does include our orientation and then various other action items as well as an executive session of the town council. So with Alicia, can you hear us? Yes, I can. Thank you, Lynn. Thank you. And thank you, Pat. You keep monitoring. That's great. OK, with that, I'm turning this over to Athena O'Keefe, who is our very capable and wonderful clerk of the town council. And she is going to conduct the orientation. Thank you, Lynn. Nope, that's just me all for counselors. Thanks. Welcome, everybody. So like Lynn said, we're doing the orientation tonight. I'm really excited to be meeting. More into your mic. OK, I'm excited to be meeting with all of you and meet some of you face to face for the first time. So let's get right into it because we have a little bit less time than I had originally anticipated. Like Lynn mentioned, there's no public comment at this meeting, but public comments can be submitted online. Written comments online are received by all counselors, and we publish them on the website. And if there were anyone in person, they could use this QR code to submit their comments. So quickly, I want to do some introductions. My name is Athena. I'm your council clerk. You all know Paul Bachmann, the town manager. That's about as much as he's going to do for this orientation. But I want to say, and I'll reiterate this again and again, Paul and I are going to be available to meet with you individually if you have follow-up questions. I'm going to go through everything fairly quickly tonight, just kind of getting a lay of the land. And then if you have questions for me and Paul, like I said, you can set up a meeting. There was an option to set up a meeting in that form that I sent, but an email works too, and we'll find a time to meet with you. So quickly, I want to say the very first thing is the button on your mic you need to push. So the green light is on if you want to use your microphone. So make sure the green light is on if you have a question. We have a lot to cover tonight, but please stop me. Just raise your hand or speak up if you have a question. Like I said, I want to give a good overview of everything, but I think it's really helpful if you have a question, then I may have gone too fast for other people too. So I think it's a good idea to stop and address questions as they come up rather than wait until the end. So please stop me. The first thing we're going to do is announcements. We have the swearing in ceremony for new counselors at the Bangs Community Center on Tuesday, January 2nd. We'll have a photographer available so that counselors can take their portraits. So if you want to wear something fancy, please go ahead or not. Then we have the first regular council meeting will be January 8th. The Massachusetts Municipal Conference is January 1920. Paul sent you information about that. If you have questions, please reach out. It's a really great opportunity to meet some colleagues, get some information. There's some really informative and useful breakout sessions and it's a time for networking. It's a really great opportunity for us. If you have questions, like I said, email me or Paul and get in touch with me or Angela if you'd like to register. So we're going to do a really quick 30-second exercise. I'm setting a timer so we know. So we did a little bit of appreciative inquiry in the last council retreat. I think it's really nice to kind of set the tone, especially because you're all sitting here together and in the same room for the first time. So we're just going to do this little quick appreciative inquiry exercise and all that means is we're going to reflect on the times that we felt really effective and engaged and how we can bring the circumstances around that into our future work. So for 30 seconds, just think about when you felt engaged and valued, when you felt like you were doing really well, everything was working, all those aha moments were happening. And I'm going to set a timer for 30 seconds. Think about what factors supported those moments and how can we bring that into this next two years together? All right, so let's go around the room very quickly and everyone, the first, just one word to summarize what came up for you that you're going to bring into this next council term. Fricka? No judgment. Anna? Taking action. All right, those were two words, you guys. Recorded two words, I'm taking the action to expand it to two words. This is two words, but hurricane recovery. Commitment. I would say discussion. But I would recommend what came to me was curiosity. Information. Listening. Focused. Assumption. Excuse me, assumptions. Better listening. Collaboration. Wonderful. Just think about what you're all bringing into the room tonight and I feel like this is so powerful to hear all this from each other. I feel like this is a great foot to start our time together tonight. Oh, I'm so sorry, Alicia, please share with us. What word came up for you? Yeah, no problem. Mine was also going to be collaboration, but maybe sharing. Fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing and thank you, Lynn, for reminding me that Alicia's online. Alicia, I'll try not to forget about you. Okay, we're going to get right into it with laws, rules, and policies. So just quickly, like I said, I'm going to go rather quickly through these slides, but jump in if you have questions. So we have federal laws that govern the whole United States. We have state laws that govern Massachusetts. Our local charter governs us here in Amherst and the council rules tell us how we're going to run our meetings and so on. We can't have a council rule that contradicts with a federal rule. So this is the order of precedence. Our charter couldn't conflict with state law. A state law couldn't conflict with federal law. So sometimes there are state laws that aren't specifically listed in the charter, but we need to follow the state law. One thing that comes up right away is that there's a certain procedure for adopting zoning changes. We have to follow that state law. It's not laid out in the charter, but just so that you're aware that there are laws that take precedence over the charter that aren't specifically laid out in the charter. I have a stack of printed copies of our charter. If you'd like a printed copy, they're right here. I highly recommend you read it, especially article two and article five. Article two is about your role as legislators and article five is financial procedures. I come back to those sections again and again. I refer to the charter all the time. I usually have a tab on my computer open all the time with council's rules and another one of the charter. That's just, they're great references. They talk about your powers and duties. Talk about his powers and duties. There are even some duties in there for me. I don't get any powers, but I do have duties in there. So some state laws that govern us, I'm gonna talk about and you'll get more information on all of these from the town clerk's office when you're sworn in. And some of them you'll need to file a certificate or a receipt of these, the open meeting law. You need to sign a receipt saying that you've received it. You understand the open meeting law. The guide that you'll receive from the town clerk's office looks a little wordy, but it's another one that we come back to again and again and again and there are questions. And I encourage you to read it before you sign that receipt saying that you understand it and bring any questions you have to me and Paul. Both the all three, the open meeting law, the public records law and the conflict of interest law, they're all intended to make the public, to make the legislative process accessible to the public. So the open meeting law guarantees that the decisions and the discussion that happened at town council are held in a public way, that meetings are conducted with the public access and the decisions happen in view of the public. So people are aware of the decision-making process that requires that we post meetings 48 hours in advance. The meeting rooms are in an accessible location, that there's a quorum present when meetings are held. There are, right now the open meeting law is a little bit different than exactly what's laid out in the guide because we have this virtual meeting access option that's still available to us. And my understanding is that the state legislature is working on making some of those provisions permanent. But right now we're allowed to hold meetings virtually so everyone can be remote. Normally we have to have a quorum in the room because of these virtual meeting procedures, we have to take all votes by roll call. So if you've been listening in at council meetings, Lynn's been saying everybody's name again and again in the past, all you had to do was raise your hand. And then like we did at the beginning of this meeting, Lynn went through and made sure that everyone can hear and be heard. We don't have to do that when we are having fully in-person meetings. The public records law means that in as few words as I can, when you write anything down that has to do with council business, it's a public record. If you're keeping notes to yourself, that's not, if it's not part of the public process, but if you're writing emails to constituents, if you're writing emails to each other, if you're writing emails to me or Paul or anybody else that has to do with council business, that's a public record. Your text messages regarding council business are a public record. So anytime you're writing something, it's a public record and there could be a records request for those documents. So it's good to be aware of what part of the open meeting law restricts those kinds of communications that you wanna be aware of because if there were a public records request that revealed that you were having deliberation outside of a meeting, then we could be held in violation of the open meeting law. So again, I encourage you to read that open meeting law guide and come and ask if you have questions. Did someone join that you had to check? I'm just looking real quick. Let's see anyone else. Yeah, go ahead. Do you know if somebody has texted, is every text on my phone discoverable with the public record or just the one between the town councilor or constituent tonight? So your private messages wouldn't be unless you were talking about town business, unless you were conducting councilor business in your text messages. Lynn, do we need to hold on so we can, we're okay, okay. So the conflict of interest law, there will be a training that you'll receive information from the town clerk's office. It's an online training. You'll have to provide the town clerk's office with a certificate that you've completed the training that you can print out at the end or save an email. It's the duty of each council member to know the conflict of interest law. And if you think you have a conflict or there could be a perception that you have a conflict, you need to make sure that you file a disclosure with the town clerk's office and make that disclosure at a meeting. If you have a legitimate conflict of interest, then what you would want to do is recuse yourself from the meeting, which means you're actually leaving the meeting, you're not participating in the council discussion and you're not participating in a vote. And that would only happen if you had a financial interest in something the council were to vote on or if you had a family member with a financial interest. It's a little bit more nuanced than that, but in as few words again as I can manage, that's what it's about and you'll receive more information from the clerk's office. If you have questions about the conflict of interest law, the state ethics commission is really, really helpful. You can call them and they'll advise you and let you know if you have a true conflict of interest and what the best course of action is. Like I said, I have paper copies of the charter. I encourage you to read them. I encourage you to read the rules. There's a long list of town policies that have already been adopted. The council, aside from the council rules, there's a public ways policy, flags policy, comprehensive housing, surveillance use policy regarding recommendations for how council committees make appointments to the council for multiple member bodies. If you don't know, I think we have an impending vacancy as a non-voting finance committee member coming up. There are also going to be appointments to the charter review committee and the zoning board of appeals coming up in the beginning of the year. So it might be handy to take a look at that policy on recommendations for council appointments so you understand the process. The finance committee and charter review committee appointments will be recommended by the governance, organization and legislation committee. The zoning board appointments will be coming from community resources committee, but those are all voted by the full council. There's also a policy on electioneering and early voting, a policy on publication of candidate statements and an FAQ on resolutions, proclamations, citations and commemorations. The charter and the rules lay out the powers and duties of the president, the vice president, the town manager and other elected officials. So it also talks about the rules also talk about how the council is organized, how meetings are conducted, how the agendas are organized, what goes on the agenda, how the public participates in meetings, the council code of conduct, how to make motions, the legislative process, voting requirements, the council committees and statement of values. So again, read your rules and reach out if you have questions. I'm gonna talk a little bit more about meeting procedures and making motions in a moment. And if you have questions, this is a much shorter version of what we did at the council retreat this past year. And I have that longer presentation on motions and order of precedence and so on. So if you'd like to see that, I can share it with you. The town manager rules and financial guidelines, I thought we were gonna have ready by tonight, but the council hasn't voted them yet. So those will both be discussed later in the evening and council there's elect, you're welcome to stay and listen in as part of the audience in that conversation. And then we'll have them available to you once they're finalized. The drafts are in the packet for the meeting tonight. So generally a motion is made to begin discussion on an action item. That's what kicks off the discussion. The discussion focuses on the motion that's in front of you. A secondary motion, if there is one, would then, the conversation would then focus on the secondary motion and the vote on the secondary motion would take place before that original motion. So I'm gonna explain a little bit more of this in a moment. So for example, if there were a motion to adopt a resolution concerning overconsumption of chocolate by town counselors, all of these are secondary motions, but only these ones, if a secondary motion, if a counselor decided that this really needs to be referred to the snacks committee before the council takes any action on this resolution, the motion to refer is down here. So the motions that would be in order while a motion to refer on the floor are above it. That makes sense. If for example, the secondary motion were to amend the resolution, then a motion to refer would take precedence over that motion to amend. The motions, the secondary motions that have asterisks, those are not debatable. So there's no conversation. If someone makes a motion to adjourn the meeting and there's a second, you move directly to a vote, there's no conversation about it. This with two asterisks, the previous question, that's asking the council to end the discussion and move directly to a vote. A motion to call the previous question does require a second and it's not debatable and it requires a two thirds vote. Are there questions about this before we move on? So a couple of things that are in the rules that aren't very clearly defined are point of order and a question of privilege. So points of order are how the council holds itself and the president accountable for following the rules. So a counselor could call a point of order when there's a breach of the rules. You can call a point of order without being recognized by the president. You can interrupt a call point of order. Say for example, there were a point of order about bearing off topic. There's a motion on the floor to adopt that resolution about over consumption of chocolate by counselors and now someone's talking about potato chips and that's not the issue here. So someone could call a point of order saying this is off topic and the president might say, your point is well heard, please stay on topic. The motion on the floor is to adopt this resolution about eating too much chocolate. Question of privilege is generally, I don't know that anyone has ever called a question of privilege, but it's generally when something is happening in the room that's interfering with the proceedings. We've got a piece of equipment in the room that's making a really loud noise and people can't hear. Somebody's audio isn't working. Someone is having some other problem. It's a hundred degrees in here and we need to take care of that before the meeting can proceed. Most times a point of order and a question of privilege are addressed informally without a vote if there were a disagreement about the president's decision on a point of order or question of privilege then it could be made as a motion and then the council would vote on those. So I wanted to just briefly describe what it means to abstain. So as you'll see in the rules in the charter some votes of the council require a majority and some require a majority of the full council. So a majority and a majority of the full council, a majority of the council present or majority of the council present and voting mean different things. So I wanna make it really clear what abstentions mean. An abstention is not voting. So if you're a present then you're counted as a councilor present. If you're present and you abstain then you're not counted as a councilor present and voting. So for example, it takes seven votes, seven ye votes to adopt a by-law or to amend a by-law regardless of how many counselors are in the room regardless of how many counselors are voting you need seven yes votes to adopt or amend a by-law. To adopt a proclamation you need a majority of counselors present. So if seven counselors are in the room a proclamation could be adopted by a vote of four counselors. A vote to refer that proclamation to a committee requires a majority present and voting. So if there were seven counselors in the room and five counselors chose to abstain that could pass with two counselors voting yes. I do include on the motion sheet which you'll see in the council packets. And if you're not familiar with the motion sheet or how the packet works or anything like that please reach out. And I meant to say at the beginning if any of these rules or policies or the charter or anything is hard to find for you on the council on the town website please reach out and I can give you a quick tour. I think we've done a very good job with our website but sometimes things can be a little bit difficult to find and I'm happy to point you in the right direction. So in your council packet every night every meeting night there is a list of motions those motions aren't required they're just the proposed motions that I put together with the help of the town manager at the council president and usually committee chairs include motions or they're supposed to according to the rules include when they make a recommendation the motion that they'd like the council to adopt. So in the motion sheet I include the quantum of a vote how many votes are required to pass each motion. Like I said if there were a true conflict of interest and a counselor needed to abstain from a vote because there were a conflict of interest you wouldn't actually abstain you would remove yourself from the discussion you would be absent for the vote. Communication protocols generally we use email for housekeeping only not having discussions you're not expressing your thoughts feelings opinions to each other via email. You'll see a lot of emails from me and Paul and Lynn with do not reply all in all capital letters and in bold because that's an open meeting law violation if you respond to an email with the full council copied expressing your thoughts feeling opinion and opinions about something that's in front of the council. So keep it to housekeeping we're scheduling a meeting we need to know if you're available things like that if you have a question about what is or isn't appropriate to put in an email please reach out and I'm happy to help. In terms of communication the charter expressly prohibits counselors and the full council from directing any staff not appointed by the council. So the two people that you can boss around are sitting right here. Any other any other staff you need to contact the town manager if you need to get in touch with staff you have a question for staff you need some more information that goes through the town manager which leads us to this organization chart if you're not familiar with it this is who appoints who who elects who this is also in the printed charter booklet that's available here if you'd like it. The president the vice president council committees and liaisons. Like I mentioned the charter and the rules lay out the powers and duties of the president and vice president. It also talks about the committees what they do the committee charges which is essentially what the committee is there for how many members it has and so on those are all available online it's a good idea to review those before the new year because after you elect a president and vice president in January you'll have an opportunity to tell the president which committees you'd like to be a part of if you'd like to be a liaison to any town committees. So the president sets council agendas the president appoints counselors to council committees the president will preside at meetings there are some ceremonial duties the president acts as the council spokesperson does the state of a town address which the president and the manager will do later this evening and they facilitate communication between committees and the council I often help with that as well because I attend a lot of committee meetings so if there's something that is voted on in committee someone needs to know in order to put that on the agenda and the president and I work together to do that. Aside from those things and the other powers and duties outlined in the charter and the rules the council's vote is the same as any other counselors and the vice president serves in the president's absence to do all of those things. There are some specific rules about referrals to committees and committee reports it's wise to look at those to know how the process works if there's an automatic referral for an item so you know that it has been referred to committee there's requirements that the president let you know if something has been automatically referred to committee and so on. Council liaisons to town committees are a link between the council and the committee the liaison just does just that it lets the council know what's going on in those committees it doesn't the liaison wouldn't participate in a conversation with the committee they don't sit in the panel with the committee they sit in the audience they don't participate in the meeting unless there is a question directed to them about the council process so liaisons not there to express opinions or commit the council to any course of action. So my hope is to take care of your technology needs help you complete your paperwork for human resources and file all the paperwork you need with the town clerk's office before December 22nd that's on two Fridays and with this few trips to town hall as possible so after this meeting I'll send you an email with all the information you need to schedule a time with IT to pick up a town computer if you'd like a laptop to use how to set up your town email the paperwork that you'll need for HR to set you up as a town employee so that you can receive your compensation and then like I said those conflict of interest open meeting law and public records law documents from the town clerk's office so I don't expect everyone like I urged you over and over again to read the rules and read the charter but I absolutely don't expect you to remember everything I have some other guidance documents and cheat sheets that I can share with you I'm always available, my door's open if you have questions about the charter or the rules if there's something that I don't know I won't tell you an answer until I'm absolutely sure that my answer is correct and if I'm not sure even if I double check then I'll check with someone else to make sure that the information that I'm giving you is right my role is totally unbiased so even if I think what you're suggesting is a really bad idea I'm still gonna give you the best advice I can to achieve what you wanna do I didn't get into the legislative process at all because I wanted to leave time for questions and I know we have other things on the agenda so I'm trying to keep it really brief the rules speak to the legislative process but if you have something that you would like to propose to the council for action a new bylaw, a change in a bylaw or a resolution or a proclamation or anything else I strongly encourage you to get in touch so that I can help you figure out what you need to do and what kind of documents you need and how to format the thing that you're trying to do into the format that council wants to see and so on and I think that's all I think I actually got through all my notes if there's something that I didn't cover that you'd like me to cover more in depth if you have questions about anything that I covered right now like I said, please get in touch if there's something you want me to go back to nobody raised their hands even though I blazed through that Hala did, questions? Yes, can you please use your mic? The conflict of interest training if we took it before do we have to take it to the beginning of every council session? It's on a two year cycle so I can check with the town clerk's office and see who is due or overdue to update their conflict of interest training thank you for that question because we do it every two years and I don't remember if it's on the same cycle as councilors new councilors we'll have to complete the conflict of interest law training, we need to have that on file any other questions? Okay, and we're done No, no So one of the in addition to the conflict of interest training cyber security is really a core element of the work that we do and we work really hard and so we encourage you we'll be getting invitations to participate in some cyber security training that we are doing for all of our staff and encourage you to do that they're getting way more sophisticated and you will have access to our town servers and things like that or at least through email and so we just ask you to participate and that'd be super careful. New councilors will be given a device if you request one our IT department will reach out to you and offer that up to you and help train you on it Please, Hala Would it be recommended to take said device for the security might be up to what the town needs? I strongly urge you to take the town device like I mentioned with the public records law all the documents that you produce all your emails that have to do with town business are public records and I find it so much easier to keep all of my town business on my town computer and not my personal computer so that I don't have to go through my personal emails I don't have to go through my personal files if there's a request for something that's on my computer that keeps it all in one place and separate from your personal stuff your campaign stuff it's very clear what belongs with what it also makes it easier for IT to help you if you're having technical issues IT can remote into your town device and troubleshoot a lot of things that if you're having a problem on your personal device unfortunately our IT department can't support everybody's personal computers so I do recommend doing that yeah, Mandy So you talked about the charter restriction of we can only basically talk to Paul and you but I wanted Paul to elaborate on that especially as it relates to council committees because each committee is assigned a liaison and so I know what I've been doing especially as chair but I'd like Paul to elaborate especially as it relates to the council committee liaisons who are staff members that are not only not always you, the two of you I'm glad you brought that up as well So yeah, so every council committee every committee has a staff liaison of one person or another so for instance the finance committee has the comptroller or finance director this CRC committee has the assistant town manager or planning director TSO has the town manager but there will always be a staff liaison who's the primary purpose when in addition to Athena will help get means posted and things like that so those conversations are just much more efficient to be had directly with that staff person especially when they're figuring out what's coming up on the agenda I do not need to be involved in those questions And I'm the staff liaison for GOL and then I'll Paul didn't mention it and the liaisons don't do things like post meetings or take minutes or post packets and things like that I'll help with all of those things but the liaisons are really helpful to liais with stout staff Thumbs staff There are other questions? Alicia, I didn't see your hand go up if you have questions please go ahead and raise your hand and if not, Lynn, I'm gonna hand it back to you I don't have any questions, thank you Athena Thanks I was gonna suggest that the seated councillors that are with us tonight might share one pit bit of some advice and learning from our first year or our last five years or our last two years, whatever and so without, so I want you to think about what that piece of advice might be and let's start with Jennifer You want some time to think about it? Okay, I would like the seated councillors that are here to share a piece of advice to the incoming councillors Pearl of Wisdom Pearls of Wisdom, yes, there you go Well, I think getting to know other councillors and I do think the MMA conference so the first year I was on we were still in COVID so we didn't have the conference and so the first one I went was the second year and I could see if I had gone the first year really just three weeks into the council it's a really great opportunity to get to know people and again, we started during COVID so we were remote so it took us a while to get to know each other and I think the next council have the opportunity to do that right away Pam? Thank you, my suggestion is as you find out what committees you're on to sort of think through what kind of files and organization you want of your computer, you know, some people carry it from work and have sort of a basic structure of how they may sort things out but it never hurts to ask other people if they have some ideas about organization of information a lot of information comes in both as emails and as files and dealing with those efficiently is a good use of time hat. I have a little thing taped to my computer and it says be calm like a giant tree in a storm. So in order to be calm, I feel like I have to center myself that means really reading the material in the packets whether it's for committee or for the council and you know, trying to understand what your initial reactions and assumptions are and have those but be ready to listen. I think you guys are gonna do a great job. George, you're in a unique position. Do you have something you'd like to offer? Have you ever told the truth? I was hoping I would be passed over since I've spent so long I can barely remember. I definitely talk to each other and get to know each other. I think that's good advice. Okay, Andy. The one thing that I would add is that a lot of things that we do in the council have annual cycles to them and the annual cycles frequently have to do with state law requirements and what has to be done at what period of time. Some are created by the council itself or by our procedures. And so it's important to get to understand that cycle and also to recognize that at this point in time, you're not the first ones if you're a new councilor who's gone through those cycles and the share point, which hasn't really been talked about yet, is a resource to find out what was done with a particular item in that cycle previously. Don't worry. Well, I know that. I'll come back. What I'm doing, you get to go last right now. You have to go now. I'll go. Can I go twice? No. Okay. I'm going to talk about district meetings. Okay. If you're a district councillor and all of you that were elected are district councillors. The general practice, although it's not required, is that the councillors for that district hold the meeting together and periodically and to the extent that it's possible, they invite the at-large councillors to also come. Those meetings have been in a variety of in-person and then obviously on Zoom and different councillors have chosen to post those meetings in different ways, sometimes using their own Zoom links and sometime using the town's Zoom links. It's also very common if there's a hot issue that a general presentation, for instance, might be prepared and then made at those district meetings. For example, when we were doing the elementary school and getting ready for that, Cathy, I think you went to every district meeting. Where are you? She's not here yet. Okay. Oh, hi, Cathy. And so, Cathy went to every district meeting and did a presentation so that people could ask questions specifically in that district meeting. I know, Paul, you've been to many district meetings and we've had other people depending on the issue. And sometimes issues will arise specifically for your district and sometimes that means some staff would be more relevant to be at your district or not district meeting. So that's all I'm gonna say about district meetings. Oh, you have to have two a year. That's required by the charter and- Read the charter. Huh? Read the charter. Read the charter, right. And that's all I'm gonna say about district meetings for the moment. Anika. Okay, so I will second read the charter and take, use a town device. Other than that, I would recommend, I'll stay with my curiosity. Remain curious. I believe one of the best pieces of advice, I think I received as a young person and tried to think about that all the time is experts are curious. And if you, or if someone could tell me something that I learned more, it makes me a better person, by all means bring it on. You'll be with 12 other very dynamic personalities. And that's a great thing. And so I think it's really important to remember that there's no headline or paper or blog that would ever tell you what makes someone tick if you've never had a conversation with them. So I think it's just really important to have individual conversations, get to know everyone and yeah, collaborate and remain curious. Okay, Mandy Jones. Taking up that theme, I was gonna say ask questions and don't be afraid to ask questions. You know, some of us that have been on the council five years with that annual cycle of things that come up, start knowing what come up and we hear the same presentation over and over. So we may not have questions because we've heard it five times or by the end of this term, six or seven times, but it's your first time. Don't be afraid to ask those questions even if they seem basic, even if they seem, you know, not, you know, that you should know the answer or you think you should but you don't just ask the question because that's how you're going to learn. Okay, Anna. You'll be more effective if you learn the process or processes and work within them to make change, including making changes to the processes themselves. Trying to make change without seeking to understand the process often gums up the works and doesn't lead to anything. Athena is an incredible resource in understanding those processes after you've tried the charter and the rules. Try those first. And with that, just because something is how we've always done it does not mean that it is the best way to do it for the future of our town and you'll make those changes best when you're informed on how those gears turn and how to move things through the system. Kathy, I wanna make sure you can hear us and we can hear you and that we know you've joined the meeting and then why don't you go ahead? Thank you, Lynn. And I apologize for not being there. When I realized how late it was, I decided to do it from here rather than adding 15 more minutes and not being there. Building on what Mandy and others have said, I think the other resource you have is the rest of your counselors. Most of us are perfectly willing to answer an email, answer a text. So would you spend some time with me? I'd like to know more about what's going on or can you give me old documents? I love to do that with people. So to the extent people want to reaching out, I think most of us are very responsive and willing to share that time and insight. Okay, Alicia. Thank you, Lynn. So I think I agree generally with pretty much what everyone has said, but to add, I think for me at least because I am so busy and I think a lot of us are, setting aside specific time for council stuff has been really helpful for me in terms of organizing life because we get lots of emails, lots of communications, lots of documents to read and trying to just fit them in when they come in sometimes can be really overwhelming. So setting aside specific time during my day to start digesting council stuff has been really helpful for me in terms of organization. And another thing that I would suggest is that if there's an initiative at the council level that you're particularly interested or invested in, trying to follow it as much as possible because what I've learned is that when there's a motion that I am particularly interested in and it gets referred to another committee and then I miss the committee meeting about that resolution then it comes back to the council and then I'm missing information and it gets really repetitive. And so I know we're not always available for those things but all the meetings are recorded and so I think if you're particularly interested in something I would suggest trying to follow it to the best of your ability because that was something that I think I've learned over the past two years makes advocating for and making informed decisions a little bit more challenging. Anika, you said you had something else. I just wanted to have that Athena as one of the best assets that we have. Yes. So are there questions from the people that have just been? Yes, Bob. I'd like to add something. For those of you who don't know I've been on the finance committee for more than four years now, learn the budget. It's very important that you understand the budget and pick up the FY24 budget and look at it and read it and understand it because we'll be doing the budget again in over the next six months or so. So it's important to know where we're spending our money and how we're spending our money. Okay. Lynn, can I add a couple of things before we move on? I'd like to second what Anna said about this being new and learning the process but that we can change it. There was a counselor. I'm forgetting his name, but he used to say it's like building the plane while you're flying it. We're only five years into this and we're still figuring things out. It's George. It was Steve Pryber, yeah. But there is a lot that can be improved upon and it is a process and it's gonna keep going on after we're all gone. So I think being good stewards is a great way of framing that. And then Andy brought up SharePoint. I didn't wanna get too much into the weeds in terms of how all these things work before you're actually seated. Once you have your town emails and your town devices and you're all set up with those then we can start talking more about how you get information from us before meetings and so on. You're going to get sick of my emails very quickly but I will provide as much information as I can before your first meeting so that you're well set up for that. Thank you. Okay. Other pieces of sage advice. I'll add one more. Don't put anything in writing you're not willing to see in the press because your emails are public, your text messages are public and whatever else people wanna ask for. So just remember it's all public. You are now in the public eye and that makes a difference in how you might wanna express yourself. At the same time, I also strongly urge people to respond to emails particularly from your constituents. One of the things that I think I've noticed with the change in government and Amherst is people actually value the fact that they have a counselor, that they have two counselors they can go to and ask for assistance with some kind of issue. Other comments. Dorothy just joined. Dorothy, can you hear us? Dorothy, can you hear us? Yes, I can. Thank you. Are there other questions? I didn't hear you. Dorothy, we are using this time to offer oh and Shalini has just joined us as well to offer the new counselors a piece of sage advice, lessons we've learned. And so would either one of you like to offer something up? Dorothy. Well, I would say turn off your overhead light which I didn't have a chance to do yet. Listen to your constituents. That's my advice. And if you do something you think they want you to do, check back and find out if that really worked, if that was it. So just keep an open mind on that. That's it. Shalini? Sage advice. Yeah, I would agree with Dorothy about listening to constituents but also making an effort to listen to people who don't necessarily reach out to us and don't have means to reach out to us. I found that expanding my circle of people that I listen to always gets me new insights. So expanding your network's connections to hear from our people. And I'm just gonna anticipate offering the legislative process guide which I wrote because it helped me to think through how to initiate new bylaws and how to create new bylaws, what to put into it and how to engage people. And so hopefully it will make its way to your in your hands at some point. And I can't think of anything more right now but I'm so excited for you all and it's a Trid Town Council and I think you're gonna be so much better than we were. Andy? So I was thinking about the question that has been raised about responding to constituents and every constituent you hear from is very difficult. And I just want to reflect for a moment because I've probably been at town government longer than anyone else now who's in the room because I was on the select board before and on the old finance committee and in town meeting. And just my experience has been that the reason that I feel the Charter has been successful is that in all of those prior roles I have never received the volume of direct feedback from constituents as I have as a counselor. And I value hearing from so many people in such varied opinions and concerns but a lot of them come as communications to town council that go to the entire council and making a decision as to whether to respond to one is a very difficult thing to get through. So I would just give a couple pieces of advice and as a counselor at large because in representing the entire town I think it's even more difficult because I don't have district specific things and I see it and I know what's going on within all of the districts. I don't, if I respond to a general comment I always start out by I am responding as a single counselor not on behalf of the council so that that is clearly understood. And I usually do so to provide very specific information that I have that is relevant to the person's inquiry. But I don't make an effort and I don't know if my colleagues have the same view of it but to respond to every comment we receive you'd be at it that'd be your entire lifetime. And I will just add actually one of the responsibilities that the council in our first term decided that the president would respond to emails and if you ever read any of the responses that I have sent they're pretty generic and they basically thank people for the email they tell them how they could post their comments so that they are made public because they are public documents. And that's pretty much it. I'm once in a while if I know a certain meeting is coming up I might include that. And my personal experience with having that response sent out is that constituents, I mean our residents really like it. They like to know that somebody has read their email and they like to know that they've been heard. Jennifer. Yeah, I just went because Andy did add that he's an at-large counselor and it would be impossible to I think the at-large counselors to respond to all the emails but for district counselors you'll get a lot of emails from your district constituents and like Dorothy said and everyone said I always answer those and even if it takes a couple of days people understand and then when an email comes to the whole council if it's from someone in my district I will respond. So I think if everybody gets a response from one of at least one of their district counselors you know then they'll hear back in addition to hearing from Lynn and Lynn responds right away. So they know it's been received. So that would just be I would say even if it takes a few days to respond and also since we don't get email lists from the town we have to put our own mailing list together. So when we send out a notice of a district meeting so I also you know if you look out for when emails come to the council as a whole to take down the email address of those that are constituents writing in your district and anyway you can get email addresses. So when you're sending out notices of your district meetings you're you know to try and be sure you get them to as many people as possible and even asking when you send out the notices if people will send it to their friends and neighbors and then when they come to the meetings you can get their email addresses because I was concerned that you don't want to just invite the same 20 or 30 people to your district meetings but really be able to get the notices out to as many people that live in your district as possible. Heather. I mean how long? It's all good. Thank you. Is this instance where if a constituent has emailed all of us we do not hit reply all? If you, the president has been asked in the past and I have done that to reply and I reply all because I am not expressing an opinion. If you are going to get into opinion you need to be careful about replying all. It doesn't mean you can't share information but it can become a slippery slope. Pat, we're gonna take this last one and then we're gonna see if there's any more questions. Go ahead. I've been thinking about something that was said and I sort of realized I envy the at-large counselors because all people in town are, they represent all people in town. I'm a district counselor. I represent my district and I try to listen to the residents of my district but I try to listen to the people in my district not relying on my assumptions or my preferences or my prejudices but to really listen and try to understand what's best for Amherst, what's best for all of the people not just the residents in your district. If you care about affordable housing and your district is for whatever reason opposed to affordable housing, of course nobody is. So we don't have to have that debate but speak your mind even if the residents in your district are asking you to stop something. Take the risks but live your values, not your assumptions and prejudices but your values. So please know what they are and center yourself in them. Paul or Athena, did you have any closing comments for this? I'd like to thank you all very much for coming this evening. It's wonderful to see you in person. I really appreciate you being here and taking time out of your busy lives to be with us. Like I said, I'll be in touch with more information about getting your devices, doing your HR paperwork, getting all your certificates and signatures in for everything but even in the meantime, if you have questions, if something came up tonight or not tonight that you have a question about, please don't hesitate to reach out and those of you who asked to have meetings with me and or Paul, I'll try and schedule those with you as soon as we can make time to do that. Thank you all again, really appreciate you being here. Okay, Paul? Yeah, so I want to build on that and thank you all for running and being elected. It's really an important job. It's a hard job though. And I think one of the hard things about it is that people think you have a lot of power but your power comes from your vote and the power of the vote comes when you have six other people who or sometimes eight other people who agree with you and then that's what drives the town. You are the chief elected officials of the town of Amherst but that only works in this room when there's a publicly posted meeting and you have a majority of your people of your colleagues who vote with you. So learning to count to seven is important. Okay, with that, we're going to take a break. This was purposely scheduled for with 15 minutes and then at 7.45, we will convene back as a council and do the state of the town address and then some action items that we have on the agenda. So if you're on camera, please turn your camera off. Please turn your voice off or your video, your audio off as well because you'd never know who's listening. Thank you. Please consider reassembling so we can get started. This is like a two-minute warning. Take care, Hala. Because you've got your, it's not activated. Hala, as you return, please turn on your video. You're spreading out. As you return, please turn on your video but not your mic. Oh, this is your jacket. Okay. Okay, Banna, you're here. Alicia, are you here? Yes, I am, thank you, Lynn. Thanks. Kathy, I'm sorry, not Kathy, you're here. Michelle will be joining us, but she has something else that was going to come right up to 7.30 or a little bit later. So, Paul and I have committed to brief state-of-the-town addresses. And with that, I'm going to reconvene and we'll ask, we're going to start actually with mine unless you put them together, you know, while we're queuing this up. This is the state-of-the-town address for 2023. Both Paul and I are speaking tonight, and while you are not going to hear from the schools and the library as we have done in the past, their annual reports are in your packet, along with the annual report for the Board of Licensing Commissioners. We are still waiting to receive the annual reports from the Housing Authority and the Oliver Will elector. So, we're going to go, just you can go two more slides. Thank you. Okay, first of all, we want to acknowledge the town council. This is not a one-person job. This is a 13-person job. And all of us have worked hard and contributed in many, many different ways. The counselors are listed up here in our wonderful portrait for this year, which actually is hanging in the lobby. Just to point that out, Mandy Jo. And our at-large counselors, Mandy Jo, Andy, and Alicia. And then District 1, Michelle Miller, Kathy Shane. District 2, Pat D'Angelo's, Myself Lynn Griezmer. 3, Dorothy Pam and Jennifer Tub. And then 4 is Anika Lopes and Pam Rooney. And 5, Anna Devlin-Gothier and Shalini Balmilton. Next slide. One of the things we have to do every year is make sure that we fulfill the requirements of the charter. So I'd like to throw a few numbers in. One is that we had 29 council meetings at some point during this last year, where we convened the council. That includes the four town meetings and so forth, but 29, no small change. We have four council committees. We have Joint Capital Planning Committee. We have the Budget Coordinating Group. Each counselor that is a district counselor has participated in two district meetings so that we've had at least 10 district meetings. And I know we've had more. And we've had any number of public forums, some of them attached to different committees. For instance, CRC has had listening sessions and so forth. And then we have eight committees to which our council is a liaison. And we should always point out and make sure that people are looking for and recruiting for people to serve on the planning board, the zoning board of appeals, and the non-evolving residents on the finance committee. Those are the three committees that we actually appoint people to. Next page. In addition, three people have served on two building committees. The Jones Library Building Committee and the Elementary School Building Committee. In addition to that, as we discussed just earlier during orientation, there's lots of communication with residents. Then I took the 21 proclamations and resolutions we did this year and did one of those little scramble things. I'd never done one before, so I thought it was kind of fun. But really important is we do a lot to ensure people's voting rights. We've made sure that we've ordered new machines so that we're ready when we finally can do rank choice voting. We have approved early voting for all of our elections, local elections, and mail-in balance as well. Next slide. This year we've had a couple of things out of the ordinary. For instance, we've held a debt exclusion ballot question for the new elementary school. We appointed three school committee members to finish out the terms, and we increased stipends for the next term. Next slide. We always work with an eye toward the town manager's goals because in fact they reflect our goals. Next slide. During this year, we've also done a fair amount on bylaws where we've adopted and are revised. For the first time, the town has water and sewer bylaws and regulations. It took a long time to get there. I want to thank Anna for one of her particular efforts in that way. We did flood maps. That was also a very long process, and that in fact informs or causes us to update bylaws. We did obstruction of public ways of snow and ice removal, specialized energy code, and affirming reproductive and gender affirming healthcare. And finally, after five years, the governance organization and legislation committee made sure that we finished up our bylaw review. We sent a few to the town manager. They're still there, but Pat, thank you for your GOL leadership in making sure that happened. Next slide, please. Our policies that we adopted, one is a flag raising policy. Another is a public way policy revision. In this case, we've had a public way policy for a long time. We did actually do a surveillance use policy that allows for in-cruiser video and audio. And we accepted the general mass general bylaw, chapter 98 paragraph 18B, establishing of designated safety zones for ways of cities and towns. And you'll be hearing more about that as we go into this next year. There are still bylaws in process. Residential renter, waste hauler, solar, nuisance, street lights, traffic calming, real property disposition. Next slide. And we have major capital projects. We have moved in significant speed toward the elementary school. We'll discuss the Jones library renovation and expansion request for the bond limit next week again. Meantime, the North Amherst library due to the generous gift of an anonymous donor has had a beautiful addition added. And we've done two things that deal with our wastewater and water plants. And that's the Centennial Water Plant and Gravity Belt Thickner. But you notice on the side over here, there's a to-do list. And that to-do list is some place where we really need to focus our energies in the coming term. That's the DPW Fire and EMS and our roads and sidewalks. Next slide. We have done some things to improve our public ways. Pomeray intersection. The North Common is underway. The town hall front steps are about to be completed. And we've done a lot of approval of things like utility poles and underground conduits, et cetera. I could not without, I couldn't go further without saying one of our serious challenges remains the North Amherst intersection. If I didn't say that, at least two counselors would say you forgot something. So next slide, please. In affordable housing, one of our most exciting events and rewarding in this year was to be at the ribbon cutting for the East Gables Studio Apartments at 132 North Hampton Road. That's something that, though the council inherited per se, it became one of our landmark projects very early on. In addition to that progress is being made on the Belcher Town Road East Street School property. And with great excitement, the Ball Lane deed restricted home ownership property. We have purchased a site for the homeless housing, but what remains is how much is it gonna cost and where will we find the money? Next slide. One of the things that we discussed tonight is the budget. And we all really take it seriously to be good stewards of our fiscal health. And in doing so, that means that we look at our budgets, we look at our reserves, we look at our capital reserves and expenditures. And we have been very blessed in the last five years actually to have excellent audits as well. Next slide. Under racial equity and social justice, we have had some serious achievements. We've had a few blips and we still have things to work on. So the DEI department is up and running. Cress is kind of being rejuvenated with hiring going on as we speak. And the African Heritage Reparations Assembly has delivered their final report to us. Recommendations from that remain within our committees. However, we're still looking at issues like the resident oversight board and particularly how does that work with the new state laws as well? The Youth Empowerment Center and future AHRA recommendations. Next slide. We have filed some special acts with the state legislature. One of them is waiting for action for two terms now and we're going into our third. It is ranked choice voting. A fee on transfer of property is another one and extending voting rights to lawful permanent residents for municipal elections. Next slide. And there's significant legislation that we're watching closely and have testified on. One is the act of creating a municipal and public safety building authority. This we hope would help us build DPW and the FIRE EMS station. Another is two different types of pilot legislation. One is for nonprofits that includes some of your private higher ed institutions. And the other one is reform in the state owned pilot program in lieu of taxes for state owned land such as the University of Massachusetts. And then also as we mentioned earlier fees on transfer properties. Next slide. Our challenges remain significant. Our six goals are one of the things that the council will look to do in the next term is hopefully classify those goals and the sub goals as either short term, long term or ongoing. We also have to deal with the ongoing development of responsible capital and operating budgets. One special feature this coming year is the charter review committee. We have to appoint the people to that and they will provide recommendations to us. And then counselors in the public we always are looking for ways to continue to make our jobs more manageable to mentor for the future both within the council as well as recruiting people to committees and then look to those people as potential and future counselors, transparency and residential engagement. Next slide. So as we conclude, I know all counselors join me in thanking our town manager and the staff. And particularly the clerk of the town council. We really want to thank all of the many, many people who serve on our town committees. That is a significant commitment. And we are blessed to have some really, really outstanding committees and people serving on them. Amherst media has been there to help to show our meetings and provide tapes, et cetera. And we want to thank our residents. We hear you. We're hearing you every day. We ask you to submit your public comments and we pay attention to those public comments. We like when you come and make comments and visit us in the town room. So with that, I'd like to say just a big thank you. Paul, your turn. Thank you, Lynn. And one of the challenges on these two things is that we sort of go through this to the same well. But so when I was working on this, I was thinking, looking at last Saturday, we took a break from shopping downtown because it was card day and there's 20% everything downtown. Thank you, business improvement district and downtown businesses. We're getting a little boost at Amherst coffee and a friend was there with his very lively three year old daughter. And he grew up in town, went to Amherst schools, went away to college and is now back in the area raising his family. Our conversation range from daycare to speed limits and speed humps to Friday nights, merry maple lighting to the many resources the town offers to families like his. The Eric Carl Museum, Groff Park in the summer, block party, recreation activities, Kendrick Park, Kendrick Park playground was a fan favorite with them. And of course the library. And after we talked with him, it made me think about the work that we do and why we do it. I believe our mission is to create a place where children can grow up with a true feeling of community, including being safe and engaged, where each is launched into an adulthood where they find a satisfying path in life, where values of equity and sustainability matter. It's important that our community commits to this vision we hold for all of our children, not just those born to advantage. We need to be purposeful about our actions. So as town officials, we hope the legacy we leave to those who follow us will be more resilient and sustainability community, a place striving to be a more welcoming place, a community that embraces equity for all, and a place that has a new elementary school and library. Next slide. And next slide. So the state of the town gives me the opportunity to reflect back over the past few years to recognize all that we have actually accomplished. And I think it's important for us to think about the major work and we have to talk about it because we have to remind ourselves of the good things that we actually have done. We need to celebrate some of these achievements to bolster our resiliency because these things can take a long time. So let's look at a few of the things in which we can rightly be proud. We should go do that. No, we're too hard. Go back a little. The Spray Park at Groth Park, Kendrick Park Playground, the Dog Park. These are all things that happened under the Council's watch. The North Amherst Library Edition, thank you to the anonymous donor, the Pomeroy Village Roundabout, a newly repaved North Hampton Road, the Centennial Water Treatment Facility. And what's notable about each one of these projects is that each was funded or is being funded in large part by grants, gifts, or a combination of both. And of course, our two major new projects, the school and the library, are being funded in large measure by grants from the state. Along with significant funds being raised by the library trustees and others, the message here is we're making our town better and we're stretching the town's tax dollars at every opportunity. But beyond building things that we can look at, we're creating new town services that reflect our values. Our Cres and DEI departments and the commitment to sustainability are just two of the examples. More symbolic, these departments are changing the way we conduct ourselves and how we treat each other and align our services with our values. Last month I provided the council with 35-page report on the progress we, the town staff, and others have made on the 65 goals the council set last year. It's long because it shows the true breadth and depth of work that we do every day. I hope you're proud of that as I am. Next slide. And yeah, so managing a complex, nearly $100 million organization has not come without its challenges. In a tumultuous labor market, we are managing the inevitable turnover of employees and staff changes at every level of our organization. Change is always hard. This year has been especially difficult due to the people who we lost, but we'll continue to move forward with all of our initiatives. We have solid systems in place that are resilient in the face of change. Our finances are strong because we have superb people doing the work, but it's also because we have excellent systems. I really wanna thank the people in the finance department who are muscling through this time period and they are very disciplined in professional managing their budgets. Next slide. All the initiatives I mentioned, new parks, buildings, departments are predicated on strong financial foundation, strict budget management and strategic building of reserves, smart debt management, and credible financial policies. These are the tools of success. Next slide. We plan for challenges, of course, and it's inevitable that we will have to make hard choices as we go. Next slide. As I've mentioned many times, our work is a team sport. We as a town have many partners in our efforts, our staff clearly, but also our partners at the schools and libraries. And I just have to say the commitment by our staff to the town is remarkable. Next slide. For the forest park, the town council established broad goals for the town manager, which I make sure to migrate to the entire team. We have organized our work to meet the council's objectives. You will see that reflected in the budget I submit and the work we do during the year. I really appreciate that the council took the time to set these goals. It really sets the tone for the entire community. Lynn already mentioned them, so I'm just gonna click through what they are, which we, this is where we get a little redundant, but we'll jump through them. So next slide. So in climate action, beyond the steps outlined in the CARP, our DPW and conservation departments are busy getting grants to address resiliency issues. Next slide. I want to highlight my commitment to the Crest department and seeing it to its full service level, which we're continued to make progress on even without strong leadership at the top right. We have strong leadership, but it's a different type of leadership right now. We have learned so much just in this last year. A new department takes years to establish itself and its role in the community. I am committed to this initiative. Next slide. And I must recognize the energy and tireless creativity of the leaders of the Business Improvement District and the Chamber. Working with town staff, their vision and energy have truly changed the game in Amherst. I know some of you are at the Mary Maple. Some people say it's the biggest and best in my estimation. So I want to also, while we have a minute, thank the UMass Band for being there. It's an amazing tradition that we bring up every year. And if you remember that three-year-old I mentioned earlier, she liked the horses. And I want to thank the university for working to finalize the new strategic partnership agreement. And I want to acknowledge the contribution Amherst College has made to the library and so many other ways they have supported our community. These institutions truly are part of our community's cultural richness and vitality. I'd say our relationships with these three institutions are all under relatively new leadership has never been better. Next slide. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention our nonprofit partners who we work so closely with, like Craig's Doors, the Survival Center, Family Outreach, Wayfinders, Valley CDC, the Housing Trust, who are all involved in advancing the mission of meeting the housing and social service goals of the town. And that little map you see on that, that's the Ball Lane Development. That is really a groundbreaking project that's coming forward. Next slide. We are really fortunate to have a highly experienced DEI director to lead our racial equity and social justice challenges. She is wise, knowledgeable, and has a plan that will lead to change and success. And the work being done by Councillor Miller and the African Heritage Reparations Assembly, which was just recognized at the conference that she attended is really groundbreaking. It's exciting to be part of this work. Next slide. As one of my colleagues in local government reminded me, it's the frustrations and setbacks that we typically remember. We focus on the delays, diversions, and recriminations. It's important to remind ourselves of the many accomplishments of which we can still be rightly proud. For those in the community who say we aren't going far enough or fast enough, I challenge you to point to another community that is doing more, another community that is having these dynamic discussions and actually enacting change about race and climate, another group that has engaged in deep reflection about public engagement, another municipal staff who see their work for the town as their mission, not just a job, another police department that serves the town as well as ours does, another public school system where the students are fully engaged and making us proud, and one that you would rather, another community where we'd rather send your children. We aren't perfect, I recognize that, but we're doing the work to make our community better. Next slide. So I appreciate the opportunity to serve you and the people of Amherst. I am privileged to work with our incredible staff. I ask you to remember our staff during the holiday season and just say thanks if you see somebody. We are a 24-7, 365 day a year operation. We're always on and ready to serve. Police, fire, EMS, dispatch are all on duty at all times, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year. We provide services around the clock with public works ensuring our water is clean and drinkable, our wastewater is treated and removed, our roads are clear and navigable, and our parks are clean and available. IT inspections, public works, staff are on call at all times to address any needs that might arise. Town staff, excuse me, work every day for the community providing needed services. And I appreciate the progressive, next slide please. Yeah, and I appreciate the progressive intelligent direction provided by the council and most directly the leadership and guidance provided by town council president, Lynn Griezmer. You know, Amherst is an extraordinary community with farmers living next to artists, groups like ancestral bridges and Emily Dickinson museum preserving our cultural history. And down the block you'll find a cutting edge scientist creating new paths for the future. It's a good town and I thank you for the opportunity to serve. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Paul. Thank you. And with that we actually get to move on to evaluating his work. So I'm going to place a motion on the floor and then ask for a second and then I would like to explain one of the interesting insights that Mandy, Joe and I came to today about this evaluation. First of all, the motion is to adopt the 2023 town manager performance evaluation as I'm going to say amended because has presented in version five, there you go. Is there a second? Okay. And Shane a second and several other people have. So Mandy, Joe and I kept going back and forth about the opening paragraphs. And finally, we realized while both of us were going about it mathematically we were doing different math. I was doing weighted averages and Mandy, Joe was doing modes. In other words, how often? And so finally during a phone conversation today we agreed to go with modes and that is why you've got a version five in your version. And it means that in fact for the town councilor's evaluation he has been exceeded or met our expectations in 11 of the 13 goals. It was really interesting. Mandy, Joe kept looking at it going what map is she using? I'm going what map is she using? So we got it. Okay. Are there questions or comments or additional? Andy, you sent me something and I didn't know whether we caught it in the last version or not. Dorothy? I just want to say that the evaluation is a very technical document but the overall feeling that certainly that I have is that I've been very proud to have Paul Backelman as our town manager and that I think that Amherst has been very, very lucky to have his intelligence, dedication and service. And because we're asked to evaluate, we do but we don't spend all our time saying oh, he should have done more here he should have done more there but we did that because we were asked to do it and I think that most people are or all people are very exceptionally happy with the work that you've done. We look forward to you serving many more years. Thank you, Dorothy. Are there other comments, corrections, changes? Andy? What's in the substantive view is mathematical. An extra word. I did catch a couple of those. So if I'm seeing no additional comments at this time, remembering that we are going to be going into executive session and then coming back out. I'm going to move to a vote. Okay, Shalini Balmille. Yes. Patty Angelis? Aye. Anna Devlin-Gothier? Aye. Lynn Griespers and I? Mandy Johannity? Aye. Anika Lopes? Aye. Michelle Miller is not here yet. Dorothy Pam? Yes. Pam Rooney? Yes. Kathy Shane? Yes. Andy Steinberg? Yes. Jennifer Tav? Yes. Alicia Walker? Yes. It is unanimous with one councilor absent. We are now going to move on to the town manager polls. And let's hold off on, well, I'm going to make the motion but we may actually then take it back because we may have changes. To adopt the 2024 town manager goals as presented or as amended. Is there a second? Steinberg second. Okay, Pat DeAngelis, you have been chairing GOL and GOL went about this. So I'm going to turn it over to you. Okay, I don't have a lot to say. We took councilor comments. We took comments from residents, et cetera, and we reviewed the goals. We had several items going on or ideas going on about aligning town manager evaluation and therefore goal setting, et cetera, with the budget cycle. That will be something that we take up next term. We made very specific changes but there were also changes presented to us by counselors where they were actually addressing policy and wanting policy changes that hadn't been voted on by the council. So those are not in there. Our job as GOLs to make sure things are clear and they're consistent and they're actionable and if the council hasn't voted on something, it's not actionable. So there are some counselors who will see their changes referenced in the document and other counselors that will not, if you sent your work in late beyond the deadline that I had set, particularly by more than a day, your comments are not in there but you certainly can bring them up now. Jennifer, do you want to add anything? No, I think you covered it. Again, we were at GOL really trying to be mindful of not introducing policy for the first time into the town manager goals and we can take that up when we, and then account for when we discuss process. And also simplifying what the goals are, just the checklist. Right. Mandy Jo, you're also on GOL. Do you have any other comments? And Michelle is not here and I don't either but the floor is now open for questions and comments. Kathy. Can everyone hear me if I talk at this level? Yeah. Yes. I don't have the mic so I'm not. So I think you did Yeoman's work, GOL in improving and simplifying the document. So I'm just gonna mention a couple places. I still think it's too many items but I'm not gonna win that debate. One of the problems I had, the challenges I had in evaluating Paul's performance was I was also evaluating the councils to-do list given the staff and resources we had and said you can only do so much in one year. So my comments are just on a couple of items. I marked it up but some are just wordsmithing. On the housing affordability still seems to me to have many big vision pieces that can't possibly be done in a year. And in some cases are beyond the scope of what the town alone can do unless we bring in a lot of resources. So if we wanna leave it this way, I think the last paragraph was the sentence was ensure the town uses state and federal funds to bring in housing and affordability. That's where our strength has always been. So if we need to keep all of this, I think that's okay but I worry about it. And then one is again in housing ensure the operation of a permanent seasonal year-round shelter. We have purchased a piece of land and a building but it's a big ticket item that we don't know the full course. So I would rather than ensure which implies in the next year we'll get it all done is make progress on planning for. I'd rather change that word because it looks like we may even have waste cleanup. We've got demolition, we've got construction and we've got operating costs. There's a lot involved before we get to a shelter. So it's more than one year. So that's my comment there. And then my other in two more in major capital investments I don't think it was meant this way but because it says bring the council requests to settle location for the replacement of central fire station and begin schematic design. We don't say that for DPW. So it implies we want the fire station to go ahead of DPW and from my visits to DPW it's at risk of falling down not just in dilapidated condition. So I want to make it more even and just bring we need a place for both of them. And if we want to say schematic design I'd say DPW first but I would leave that term out. Then my last is more a placement. If you go to the relationship of the town council way down at the bottom, the very last part of it, number six, is advocate for and assist the council and it's a very long sentence but it's basically saying bring more money and brings more support into the town. I think that should be moved up to economic vitality. It's not a relationship with the town council. It's strengthening the financing of the town and the ability for us to provide services. So I would just kind of move the whole thing up and you could put it just at the end of economic vitality as a because of what it is. I thought of moving it into finance but I think it's a stronger statement if we just move it up to vitality because Paul just pointed out how much of big things we've done were with getting outside money and there's more to be done. So I think those are everything else I have was I think more in the minor. I still think we could under management goals collapse number one and two administration leadership and personnel management. I found it very difficult to separate them but I don't have any specifics on this. And that's it. I mean, I rifled through it but I just tried to pick the things that I thought were more substantive rather than just could say it more simply because I think you did a good job of simplifying. Thank you. And Pat, you're at this point taking notes. We also had the record of the meeting and we can try to do amendments tonight or we can also bring this back to GOL and make changes in GOL and bring it back next week. Okay? I just wanted to point that out. Lisha, you have your hand up. Yes, thank you. So I just have a couple of quick comments and they're all on the section for community health and safety. And so some of just my feedback would be I would like to see, I think number four says undertake a review of public safety protocols consistent with the council's November 14th goal but I would like to see like them and I don't know if necessarily this is referring to exactly the same thing but I would like to see like specific language on working with the APD to create a proactively anti-racist environment which was one of the specific motions that was passed. And so I think that that also deserves to be directly put into the goals in that section. And then I just am wondering if I can get an explanation as to why developing programming for seniors was taken out. Like, is there a specific reason that we're not gonna include that in that section? Pat, either. Mandy, Joe? Yeah. So when Paul asked us exactly what we were referencing with developing programming for seniors it was more about the space for seniors to house programming then the programming itself is sort of what we had described to him. And so then the recommendation was to keep it within the capital investments of the senior center. So you see it in number five in major capital investments under seven. Okay. And then I wanna go back to and I just wanna make sure we understand going back to the previous goal that you were on. The November 14th, 2022 vote had about six or seven items in it. And so rather than list them again in the interest of trying to simplify we just left it as that. I think though that there were a number of, like there was your motion that had a number of things but there was also motions that I proposed that were separate from your motions. And so I'm not sure if we're including all of those things here. So again, I think I would just like a little bit more specificity because it's not clear to me that the motion that I referenced is being referred to here. The question I guess is whether the motion you referenced was passed. It was, yes. Okay. Yeah, Alicia. Would you send me via email? Yeah. Because we need this Wednesday that would be really helpful. Yes, thank you, Pat. I will do that. Thank you. Thanks, Alicia. Was there anything else? Okay, Anna. Three quick comments. I appreciate Kathy's suggestion. I would argue that it should go under finance instead of economic development because the broad range of the potential grant funding and where that could be applied, I think it would be a better fit in finance because it's not necessarily only supporting economic vitality. It also might, they also might support other elements that everything is interconnected. And so likely would support economic vitality but that isn't the focus of it. So I would agree with that but I would suggest moving it to finance. The second thing, I appreciate that the work that GOL did and I'm trying to figure out how to navigate this. One of the things that came up a lot in my evaluation and we've thought about it in a little bit with the budget guidelines is the idea of a staffing study and really examining our staffing levels. It's something that I think for me was reflected in the feedback that we got from town staff this year. And it's something that I'd really like to see the town engage in. I know that that's a serious study done on the heels of a compensation study. And so I'm trying to figure out, I don't know that it necessarily makes sense to put it in here directly but especially since there isn't necessarily a past motion on it and we're trying to stay out of specificity if we haven't passed a motion on it, I get that rationale. I'm naming it because I'm not sure when the appropriate time to bring it up as a motion is if it's not as part of the goals. So I'm placing that out there. And if anyone has guidance from me, I appreciate it. And then the second one was to Alicia's point. I think I was just reading under, yeah, actually can you scroll down just a scotch more for me? Thanks. I don't know if you read my mind. Right, there's great. So under personnel management, this is where we have the number five, foster proactive anti-racist culture throughout all town departments. I don't know, Alicia. I do think that it makes sense to keep it in two. I don't know if you had suggestions for adjustments to the wording that you wanted to see but I just wanted to note that that, I think we'd started getting at this. I remember having this conversation last year and this is where we landed on placing that item. I'll be at a little bit more broadly than as you just framed it. Thanks. Okay. Mandy Jo. Just two comments. I'll start with the staffing study. I think that could be potentially included in our discussion for financial guidelines later today as staffing relates to finances and budget. And then to Kathy's comment about number six under the relationship to the council. So the state legislative action, a lot of that does go to finances and might belong in finances, but the special acts that we have asked our legislatures to file are not really always related to anything financial right choice voting is not the voting rights of green card holders and so this number includes both. And so what GOL was thinking was trying to sort of consolidate all of that state level advocacy that the council sometimes needs help with into one spot instead of listing it in, I think when we were reviewing this we found it in three or four different places. And so we were trying to move it into one spot and that's, we settled with there because the council's the one sort of seeking the help with that advocacy. So along those lines, let me stay on that one and then go back to another one. Perhaps we could take the one that's on the screen right now and say something like relationship and advocacy with the town council. It's relationship with and advocacy with the town council. So I'm just, we all wanna make sure that that piece stays. It's the question now of where does it go? So that's just one thought. And then I wanna go back up to the affordable housing. Under affordable housing, when I read ensure the operation of a permanent seasonal and year round or year round shelter. I think we do need to work on that in a way that preserves are wanting to make sure that we have a year round shelter that we have a shelter like we do, but also keep in mind that in fact we have a very large goal ahead of us to put together a year round shelter. That's all. Pat. Sorry. Yeah. Sure the operation of a seasonal or year round shelter. If we take up the word permanent, we know that we're working on that. We purchased the land, et cetera. So then we're talking about a seasonal or year round shelter and we are engaged with credit stores and other organizations to maintain our unhoused population in the best way that we can. So if that were removed, would that address Kathy's concern then? Yes, it would address my concern because there's a big project pad. I totally want to keep Craig's door going, but it was what I'm seeing as a multimillion dollar effort and can't be done in a year. Does that help Pat? Pat, does that help? Yes. Thank you. Kathy, you have your hand up. Can you go back to the sentence that I wanted to move that's in the context of the council? And let me just... Yeah. So here's one of what I was... It's relationship to council. To me, this is also a public document and the council saying in a clear way, this is a relationship with the town council as opposed to the relationship manager and the town council with the town that the council thinks it's important to bring money into the town. And if I had to continue my thinking it would be to ease the burden on the property tax. That's where I'd be going. It's buried here is why I wanted to move it out of here. And Mandy, I understand what you're saying. It's not all about money, but a lot of what's in that sentence is talking about within influx of resources. We could meet a lot of the aspirations more easily. We're forced into choices, whether it's infrastructure, building new buildings, repairing our roads, moving faster. So I think it's buried because it's as if the main thing the manager has to do is work with us to advocate. I wanted to move it up that we want to work together to bring these resources in. And I'm okay with it in finance, but the rest of finance is, and I'm on finance is a little bit boring for the regular public. It's a solid budget, meet guidelines, do the budget every year. It's very process-oriented. So I wanted to elevate it. So that was my only, one of my reasons to move it. It's not just out of a business as usual. And we talk about it all the time and we talk about it in guidelines. So that, and I'm not gonna belabor the point because it says everything I'm saying. It's just buried in a relationship with the town council rather than a relationship. It's the financial health of the town. And the financial, and it's the economic vitality of the town that I'm talking about. It's directly related to vitality requires a financial health. So, but you look at all these things that we want to do what we could do. A lot of the things we want to do better if we could bring in these kinds of resources. Okay, thank you. Are there any other comments? Pat, I wanna ask the question about whether it was appropriate to bring up a policy change that would then get voted on at this meeting. When you were talking about saying it exactly the way you meant it, I apologize. Are you talking about the staffing study idea? Yeah. That wouldn't be a policy. Well, or an action that we wanted to pull. Which I think is why we were kind of going back and forth in my head. And when I've brought this up before, does it make sense to be in the financial guidelines or in the goals? And it's kind of just the stutter start of where to go with that. Actually, Paul, I don't know if you have ideas on where that sort of thing might start. I think the compensation study came from you. And so I don't know. Pat, does that answer your question? Because it's not a policy that the, oh, okay. Okay, Paul, did you wanna comment? So I think what you're referencing was do we have enough staffing for the services that we're trying to provide? And the answer you've heard and you will continue to hear is that no, there's always a need for additional staffing. The challenge we have is that there isn't additional money to support additional staffing. So we may find that there's a need for additional staffing given that the goals that we're setting for ourselves. But there's, we have sort of a zero sum game on staffing, adding additional staff at this point. Or near zero sum game, I'll say. I hear that. I think when I reference a staffing study, I think about it every time we get the financial indicators report and we see our operating budget. And what I mean in a staffing study is really a comparison to in terms of department size, like who's in what position in each department, that sort of thing compared to other towns with similar populations or similar budgets or however that might be. For me, I think that's, it's, we would always happily use more staff, but for me, it's more of that kind of where are we in terms of our peers in that way. If that clarifies it. I think the way to approach that then is to choose a department that you, and maybe do a department by department or choose a couple of departments that we'd focus on rather than the entire town. Okay. I'd like to first of all make sure that Michelle Miller who's joined us can hear us. I can hear you. Thanks, Lynn. Welcome, Michelle. We're on the town manager's goals. We're getting a feedback to the GOL committee. And I'm going to call on Dorothy Pam. Well, in terms of staffing, there's an interesting conundrum, which was someone suggested to me that the town needed to have more staff in climate change resource recovery because there's so many grants that are coming now that you need staff in order to find them, locate them and apply for them. And that if the staff isn't increased, lots of money which we could use very desperately will not come to us. So it would be spending money in order to get more. And that was in the climate area. And it was presented to me a very interesting problem because I know that we have people working as hard as they can covering so many bases that it's just impossible to see all the grants and to get all those grants and then to apply to all the grants because that's how we're going to be, I think meeting the future. I want to just go back on it because you keep pursuing the question. Is the time to bring that up in the goals or is it in the financial guidelines? And the two really are iterative documents that go back and forth. And so at some point, probably at the point in time where we look at the goals and we prioritize short-term, long-term, ongoing, if we see things in financial guidelines that need now to be integrated into the goals, that would be a good time to do that. Because so that we actually look for a time to reconcile them. Does that make sense? It does. I mean, I think I could kind of argue it the other way too. I don't know that it necessarily makes a difference. It's kind of chicken or the egg here. As long as for me, it's more of, I'd like to see it reflected or on folks' minds as we go forward. Got it. Kathy? Yeah, and when Anna talked more about it, it almost sounded to me like she wanted it to be an indicator. You know, when we do the comparisons with other things and we don't usually do that. So that might be something else to think about. I'm not suggesting, because I think it would be tough to do it, but to try to figure out a couple metrics that would say, you know, DPWs, we couldn't do the little departments. It would have to be the big, but it sounded like compared to other towns, you know, how many people do we have working on certain things? And that's an indicator more than a staffing study. It's, I think most towns feel like they're short-staffed in multiple departments, so it's just a thought for whenever we come back to these types of issues around staff. I'm gonna go back to Pat and other people who are on GOL and ask whether you feel like you've gotten the feedback you need. Yes, I feel, anybody else? I just, Athena, I was gonna send you an email and I apologize for taking the council time for this, but the town manager goals are not on the agenda for GOL on the 13th. They have to be. They, well, can they fit in the 48-hour rule? I just revised the agenda. Okay. Okay. So we do have a motion on the table. It was made in seconded, but we're going to come back to this on the 18th. It sounds like you wanna withdraw your motion. I withdraw the motion. And somebody seconded it and will you withdraw it? Yes. Yeah, thank you. Okay, with that, we're going to go under the draft financial guidelines and this is a discussion only. We're not putting a motion on the table. I will, in a moment, turn to Andy and just again point out that we have not had this discussion at all because of the jammed agendas. So with that, Andy, financial guidelines. Yeah, I'm not gonna try and go through the guidelines because they're a long document and I assume that our hope that everybody has had a chance to read them and think about what issues that they wanna raise and ask about and then call it. I've asked members of the committee to join me. There are a couple of things that I wanted to note though to begin with. One is that there was a piece in there about property tax. And we spent a lot of time actually at the very end of the process talking about property tax and it has several different elements to it because on the one hand, we realized that property tax in Amherst is very high and continues to grow and that when those of us who were out listening to a lot of voters prior to November election, hearing a lot from our constituents about their concerns about it. And so the question, I think that we need to grapple with a little bit and haven't really satisfactorily is our goal to decrease or control the rate of increase of property tax, which we're doing by the 2.5% per year or is it to the goal to do more to augment property tax so that we can expand resources. And as you look at the questions of additional funding to think about that and one of the things that Kathy pointed out to me when we were looking at it is by looking at the financial that one chart in the financial trend report from November, we were looking at a 10 year span but Kathy did a lot of good work on trying to research the longer span of what has been happening. And so it wasn't just fiscal year 04 to fiscal year 15, but it's really, if you go back in a greater period of time, it's even more pronounced than that. So that if you go back or, I mean, actually I went, let me restate that. In fiscal year, well, I think you got the point that the trend when you look over a longer period of time is more pronounced. And I think those trend charts are very important. This is the second thing I wanted to comment on which was that we received several comments from the public through the email that went to all counselors about ARPA. And the idea came up in when we were talking about this as a committee that we haven't done what is much of what other communities have done around the state and it's actually very consistent with the ARPA guidelines. And that is to think about one of our problems is that we really have not been able to keep up with our capital funding needs. And particularly we get keep coming back to streets and sidewalks because that's yet another thing that all of us heard about who were hearing a lot from constituents over the fall. And the ARPA is recognizing that construction costs inflated tremendously because of COVID. And as a result, the legislation from the national level looked at capital expenditures as being very much a permissible part and an encouraged part of spending for ARPA. And when I have heard from other communities around the state through my service on the MMA fiscal policy committee, I found that most communities that reported back through that committee discussion process were reporting very significant focus on capital. So this is not something that is pulled out of the air inconsistent with the legislation, but it is a difficult choice because anytime you're spending funds, it's a choice. The last thing that I wanted to point out just as an introductory piece and then I really more interested in hearing from the council about what was written talking and that is Michelle asked me to check on a number for her. And that is what is the current balance in the reparation stabilization fund? And I checked with Holly Drake, who's our comptroller. And she said that after we added the money recently with the recent order, the amount in the fund is now 453,221 dollars, which is about a quarter getting close to a quarter of the $2 million goal. So with that, I think I'll turn it back over to the president. Okay, are there comments or questions? This is again, we're not going to try to finish this document tonight. This is to get issues out. And some of what you may wanna do is be sending those to Andy prior to the finance committee meeting, which is tomorrow. Mandy Joe. So yeah, unfortunately Andy's gonna have to be able to read my writing because we didn't have a word document to type our revisions in. So it's gonna be handwritten comments, but I will send them to you, Andy. I'll try to go through some of the bigger ones quickly. The, starting on page two. Do you wanna, excuse me, do you wanna put the document up on the screen, please? The sort of paragraph that carries over to page two that specifically identifies Cress and DEI as part of essential ongoing services after a sentence that identified schools, libraries, public safety, maintenance of roads and sidewalks and investments and buildings and equipment as essential services. It worries me that we then identified Cress, which is part of public safety, and DEI with a, it's a question for the council or for the interpretation of that, which doesn't mean that any of the departments not mentioned are not considered essential services and things. And in some sense, public health is a small department, but I believe we're required to have a public health department as part of state law, but I don't know. And so I worry about listing some out and not others. Just a thought of, just thinking about that as a finance committee. I was gonna add in the next paragraph something about the staffing for securing, full securing of the IRA grants and seeking of them on the third, oh wait, nope, on the fourth page is some of my next bigger ones. The third paragraph about increase, no increase in state aid, I think we should make a recommendation for what to do in the budget if state aid is increased from the November financial projections. We never talk about it in the financial guidelines. And I think we should talk about what our recommendation is, especially if that increase more than covers the projected deficit. In the last paragraph before sections three, it would be good to know, and this is just a question I have, good to know what our contracts essentially mean for what our contractual sort of, what part of this 3.3 million dollar increase in budget will be taken up by contractual salary increases? On the next page of page five. All right, hold on. Andy, are you able to take the notes? I'm gonna send him my document. Okay, thank you. Oh wait, nope. Sorry, page six is my next big one. On the second paragraph, the maintaining services and all. Again, I thought that was a good spot to add ensuring that the budget has enough resources to secure grant funds. We talk about the grant funds there. On page seven, a question about whether we wanna talk about school committee compensation in the budget as well as the counselor compensation and a specific request that the budget funds be included in the FY 25 budget. We talk about it, but we don't necessarily make the specific request there. When the manager did his self-evaluation, this is sort of the next paragraph. He talked about how the departments are reaping the benefits of the solar landfill project, the solar on the landfill project in terms of budgets, but we haven't really received any information as to how they are or where that benefit is. So I'd like something in this document to ask about a detail for how the departments are sort of reaping those benefits, what the description of the utility decreases are and where those decreases are now being spent. Something about that. And in this expenses for capital, again, and the managers, I think this was in the financial indicators or actually it's been prior votes, the 5 million that we removed from stabilization, the ever source rebates expected for the school project, the IRA rebates expected for the school project. I think these financial guidelines should put in where we expect those dollars to go to be deposited. So that we're clear on where money rebates like that for big capital projects should be deposited or if they have to go into free cash, if they come where transfers should be made to to account for that money. Then on page eight also has a paragraph about staff resources for grants. And then if we're getting those grants again, where they should be deposited and those are the biggest ones I had. I'll send you my whole document. If you can't read it, Andy, give me a call. Thank you. Dorothy. Just a small comment. When a midst all of Mandy Joe's great points, she wondered why it included increasing funding for Cress and DEI, but that has certainly been brought up at meeting after meeting and many, many hearings. It wasn't listing what this person should get. Other agencies, it was just that this was an area where it has been identified needs increased funding. And that's why I believe why it's in there. Happy. Mandy, thank you for your excellent comments. I just have a question because I agree with them. So if we say, number one, you said if state aid comes in higher and we actually close the deficit, do we want to recommend what the town manager should do or we could say he comes back to the council with a recommendation? Just in terms of, I think that's cleaner last year as what I remember happening, Paul, we just got it almost fatal. It was done before we could talk about it. And so everyone started counting their new money. So I think it would be good to come back. And I just wanna see if there's agreement on that. And then the deposit, if we get rebates on major capital projects, I had always thought they would go into the capital stabilization fund, but we never explicitly said that. So if you were thinking that's where they should go, that's what we should word it. And then the question is, what we do with, it's not quite clear to me yet whether the North Amherst Library conversion to electric qualifies for anything, but it might, depending it's because many splits air source don't, do we want this as a general policy or do we want it just for the biggies? In other words, if the town succeeds in bringing in some ever source money or some incentive payment, does it always go in the capital or should we just make it this, for this year, we know the school is on the list for some fairly substantial money. So it's a question rather than a, because I always thought the school related, I always thought always going back into the capital fund as part of the thing that made the school work. So those were my two, I think, I think, I know you're sending them to us. I agree. I think what you were asking on the wage and benefit increases, how much of the increase in the total budget gets absorbed by the fact that just, the fact that wages and benefits meaning pension and health. And I think that would be a very good number to put in because we've only getting, when I say only, the millions we're getting more each year are not that big. And most of them are going for labor. And it would be just good to make, bring that fact into this document. It's not as much money as people think each year in terms of doing something brand new with it unless we don't bring in resources. So thank you. And that requires the finance department doing it for us Paul, computing kind of across the board of if the total increases this, how much, what is the total increase in wages and benefits in dollars so we can figure out how to write that sentence. So thank you. Jennifer. Yes, let's see. We actually got an inquiry from the public but it's something that had struck me in reading it also. And that was, I think when you were talking about applying for grants, it was like, I'm not sure if it was a cautionary note or discouraging perhaps, but to about applying for grants if it was going to, if they were for ongoing personnel or program, which many grants are, because I would think we would want to pursue grant opportunities that support our programs, even if they would be, well, we wouldn't want to out of hand discourage it. I know it's part of the consideration. Sometimes when you apply for grants, it's to start up a new program. But what's lost sight of is who's going to pay for that program when the grant runs out. But again, that was cautionary. It wasn't stating a policy that we would not want to pursue it. Yeah. Andy. Yeah, and I appreciate the comments so far and I'm not going to respond to all of them, but I thought there were a few that were worth bringing up. I think that Kathy's already talked about the scope, the question of what happens with any grants we receive for energy savings, for example. And we had a very explicit discussion about that with the school, because part of the recommendation from the finance committee that was acted on upon the time, and I think it was with discussion at the council level was that the first amount that was taken from the stabilization fund, the capital stabilization fund to reduce the amount that would be asking for debt exclusion. There was an explicit understanding in that discussion that the goal and the reason to do it was because we felt that that money was likely to be available and if it was available that it would be able to replace the fund. In fact, we would be able to reduce the amount that we were asking the voters to approve a debt exclusion by that amount of money because we felt that it was likely that it would not ultimately affect the capital stabilization fund that would be available for the two projects that remain to be done yet. As far as Northamers Library, I think it is gonna be important to apply for funds but there is a issue that will have to be considered by the town manager, if not by the council and that is that since there was a private donor who very generously gave the funds to sufficient funds to do the work on the Northamers Library, does the donor does it reduce what the donor was asked to give or is it useful to the town for some other purpose? I think that's an actual very difficult policy question and I think the town manager would need to give guidance if that money came in. The last thing that I wanna talk about because it is an important budget issue and that is the school committee compensation and the same would be true for the library trustees. The problem that we had was when you go back to the charter, as Athena reminded us earlier this evening, always look at the charter first and the provision in there about compensation for other boards and committees, not the council because the council has a special provision says that the increase has to be provided for in the annual budget. So if there is going to be a increase for total compensation for any other elected board that does have to be included in the budget when it's recommended. And therefore I think becomes an issue that may go beyond just saying that we need to think about it. I'm not sure if the suggestion is that the council actually wants to recommend that that amount be included and how that amount is to be determined. So that actually is a good point to raise because it's very timely. And if you don't raise it now, you're a year away from being able to raise it again. So I just wanna at least point to that is the significance of the discussion that may need to take place. Let's see, Kathy. Yeah, I have just a quick, and I know Mandy raised this and Andy just talked about it. I think we're facing a very tough year, the FY25 year. So I am very leery of proposing something that would be an added to the budget if we, so I'm talking about raising compensation for two other elected bodies. I think if the council wants to have a discussion about that we should and we should think of it hitting not the FY25 budget, but the FY26 budget where once we get a little bit of a sense of maybe in our dreams of dreams, the state, all that income tax money the state is collecting will start to come back to us rather than just big surpluses and we'll have a less tight budget. But I'm really worried about the FY25 budget. So I just wanted to say that we're losing the extra funds and schools where we've incorporated the four firefighters into the budget with some strategic agreement money from UMass, but we have a big department we've added. So I think we need to, and we've still got some unsettled contracts, but all that contract, those contract settlements are now in gonna be in that year. So unless there's a strong feeling, that's one of the reasons it's not there, Mandy. We talked about it real quickly, just the council piece was in there and we need to make sure it's worded right, but we didn't go toward all the other boards because it has, it's literally asking for an ad in what I think is gonna be a tough budget. So that's a comment rather than a strong opinion about it. Mandy Jo. Because of what Andy said about the charter, which is why I mentioned it here, if the council, I think as said, it would come back to that discussion. And so finance is supposed to be having that discussion as to whether to recommend to the council to increase the stipends of the school committee. But if we were to recommend that, if the finance committee were to recommend it and the council were to vote it, it needs to be in a budget to actually happen. And so my recommendation is to sort of put in the budget that if the council recommends XYZ, that the guideline is that it should be included in the budget. That's not to say we are going to recommend it, but sort of that preemptively, if we vote that in April, well our guidelines are now and if the manager doesn't then put it in the May proposal budget, well then they have to wait another year because we can't get it in the budget. And so my request is to put some sort of language in there that's sort of preemptive if the council makes that recommendation, the manager should include that in the budget. That's not to say we will make that recommendation. Okay, I didn't understand that, Mandy. I think that wording it that way makes sense. I'd like to support that wording. I also would like to point out that at this point, the library trustees do not receive any compensation. Andy, Alicia, you had your hand up. I was essentially going to say something along the lines of what Mandy Joe said, and I think she probably said it even better. So just second what Mandy Joe just said. Great, Andy, you had your hand up. Yeah, and now I was just going to point out that we really ought to not postpone this discussion because the purpose of the guidelines is to assist the town manager. The construction of the budget is a complex process that involves meetings with all of the department heads and looking at all of the information that he can put together. And then making very difficult choices. So while it seems like it's four months away, those are very pressured four months. And for us to wait until far into the process to ask that something be added is really not what the purpose of having the guidelines as early as they are because we're really trying to give guidance that is helpful for the entire development of the budget not in not late in the process. Okay. Jennifer? Do we usually have a public forum or hearing on the budget guidelines? I mean, there are a chance for the public to, so they can offer comment. We don't do a special one. We do have our budget forum that was back in November, but we don't have one of the guidelines. So could the public comment on? They certainly can comment on anything. But in writing, they won't. Absolutely. Absolutely. And some have. Are there any other questions or comments? Okay, Andy, do you have what you need and do other members of the finance committee feel they have what they need? And again, the finance committee is meeting tomorrow at three o'clock. No, when are we meeting? I think it's one. It's a one o'clock tomorrow. And I have what we said this evening and that was very helpful. And I will report it back to the committee and the committee will try and work with it to develop the next round of guidelines. When it comes back to the council again on the 18th, at that point, I really think we're at a stage where the council ought to just be saying, going through the process that we do with everything else that it is moved to adopt something and then amendments are proposed to the item that's being adopted and we vote on the amendments as a council because it needs to be a council guidelines and the 18th is when that is really hits the road, as I say. Okay. All right. Let me just mention a couple of things before we go into executive session. In your packet is a draft agenda for the 18th. I personally look at this agenda and shutter because of what's on it and the length. So I specifically want counselors to look at it and understand what will be expected of you to come to the council meeting this next time. For example, on it is a huge piece of work that was done by GOL over the last year regarding rules of procedure. And most of those, I think most counselors just say, that's fine, but some of you may want to discuss and so they'll need to get pulled off of consent. The other things that are on that agenda include the possibility of the rental registration bylaw coming back if it gets through CRC this week. And the other is, we're not sure about RV yet so don't even look at that. It's the Jones library authorization and the financial guidelines, which we just discussed, the goals which we just discussed, the rules of procedure. And then the legislative guide, which in that case would be a referral to GOL. So it's not a vote to accept at this point. So I just want to point that out, yes. I am going to want to pull the rules of procedure off the consent agenda. I don't think it belongs there. So I think that we have to assume it. I will pull it off that night. So we might as well just get it off. Thank you. Okay, Kathy. I would really like it if we could agree that rental won't be next Monday to give us time. I know, Mandy, you're meeting on it tomorrow but I think it's the same issue that I raised when I asked to try to postpone it to another council meeting. I think it needs to have time for a longer discussion, and the 18th we're not going to have time for it. So if we could agree, I don't mind it coming back but maybe it can come back to the first meeting of the council in January, which would give us time to discuss it. And I also saw a note that the work on the nuisance bylaw, if there are changes in that it might require amendments to the rental permit bylaw. So I'd like to not have this keep coming back next year. So I just would like a fuller picture. So I'm suggesting that it not be on the agenda, particularly so that the people who want to come and talk to us about it won't all be there in the room if it's potentially a second reading or a revise. So it's a suggestion to move it. Okay, thank you. Andy. Yeah, I just wanted to ask Athena if she has any notes that indicate whether the motion had a date specific on the postponement at the last meeting of rental registration. We referred it to CRC, Andy, instead of postponing it. There was a discussion about not taking it up until January 8th, but that was superseded then by a referral back to CRC. Thank you. Mandy, Joe, did you want to discuss this please? Thanks. So as chair, I requested that Lynn put it on the agenda in case CRC finishes with its referral this coming Thursday. I do not know whether CRC will but the council agenda needs posted basically before CRC finishes its meeting. So I would request that it remain on the agenda pending CRC's outcome because I cannot guess what CRC will do with it on Thursday. It may finish its work. It may not finish its work. If it finishes its work, it may request that the second reading happen but it may also recommend that a second reading not happen on the 18th. I don't know, but the agenda for the council meeting needs posted before CRC's meeting finishes. Okay. That's what I needed to hear. Shalini. Yeah, I think you can Daphne send it to send the legislative process guide to GOL but according to what Athena informed me that it's not a bylaw or a policy. So it can be just voted by the town council and it's a living document that's gonna be, you know it's open to be used in orientation for new councillors and for the town council and the committees to use as they please. So it does not need to be sent to the GOL. In a previous discussion at GOL at least two of us felt it should be looked at by GOL as it relates to anything that might change in the rules but I mean, I understand it's not a document of you must do, it's a document of guidance. Anna. But to that point, if someone wanted to make a rule change based on something they read in the process guide they'd have to bring that specific proposed rule change to GOL so I don't understand why the process guide would need to go to GOL because it in and of itself is not a rule change. Exactly. This conversation should be at the next meeting. I think we're getting more away from scheduling and more. I agree. Okay. Thank you. Okay. All right. With that, I'm going to make the following motion and just to, Athena, I just wanna check. We're going to move it to a different zoom, right? And then we're gonna come back to this zoom when we reconvene unless the council. If you wanna reconvene tonight then we'll use this same one that we're on. If you wanna wait and vote on the 18th then we can do that on the 18th and open session. But if you'd like to reconvene tonight then we'll use this. I'm gonna ask, is there anybody who feels passionate that we need to reconvene tonight? It'll save us time. It'll be one vote. Let's just knock it off the calendar. Now the agenda for next. Let's not add anything else to the agenda. Okay. We're going to reconvene. So the motion is as follows. To convene, so let me just explain before I make this motion. You're going to go off this zoom. Athena meantime will be sending counselors only a new zoom. That is Enix and Paul will be leaving the room. Okay. Paul's gonna send a zoom link for us because I need to stay on this one for the public. Got it. Thank you. And for the first part of the meeting that we're going to have, Paul will not be with us in the second part of the meeting. Paul will be with us. Then we are going to come back into open session and we are going to log back on to the zoom that we are on now. Okay. All right. With that, I'm going to make, yes. Absolutely. As we get out of executive session if maybe Athena can resend the resend Veean link because I don't know where mine is. Thank you. Okay. We will ask Athena to resend to counselors the public link for getting back on. Thank you. Can we, Lynn, may I ask that we take like a five minute recess after you vote before we convene an executive session because it'll just take us a minute to read. That would be fine. Are there any other things that people want to make sure we understand or are going to do? Okay. All right. To convene, I'm making a motion. I'm looking for a second. To convene an executive session for the following purposes in accordance with mass general law, chapter 30A paragraph 21 imprints A2, A imprints two to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with non-union personnel town manager Paul Bachmann in accordance with mass general law, chapter 30A paragraph 21A2 to conduct contract negotiations with non-union personnel town manager Paul Bachmann, the town council will reconvene an open session following executive session. Is there a second? Second. I'm going to go out there. Thank you. Okay. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, we do have to vote. Okay. Are there any other questions before we vote? Okay. Pat D'Angelo. Aye. Anna Dowling-Gothier. Aye. I'm Andy Johanneke. Aye. Annika Lopes. Aye. Michelle Miller. Aye. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Rooney. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Aye. Jennifer Taub. Yes. Alicia Walker. Yes. Chalene Balmille. Yes. Okay. Before you log off, I want to remind people that when you are in executive session and you are in your home, there cannot be any other people who are listening in on the meeting. Okay. Any questions? It was unanimous. We're going to go into executive session. Thank you. We're leaving this one. I'm sorry. We're just taking a short break so we can switch over. So we are now reconvened in regular session. I am going to ask the clerk to read a motion, which I will make and then look for a second. Sorry, did you want me to read the motion from executive session? Please. That was to grant a two-year extension and if non-union employees receive higher than a 2% increase, match the increase above 2%. That motion is now made. Is there a second? Second, Rooney. Okay. I'll just explain to the audience so that we have met, we have just met in public, I mean, in executive session, we have now returned having discussed among just counselors with the clerk present and clerk of the town council present. And now, and then we've talked with town manager, Paul Blockerman. And the motion that is now on the table, would extend his contract by two years. That would extend it to August 31st, 2027. Mr. Blockerman already receives an automatic 2% cost of living raise because that is what non-union people received this year. And there is a pending discussion about a potential additional raise for non-union members. Right now, that discussion is around 1.5%. And we have also moved that if that is granted to non-union employees, the town manager would automatically also receive that additional 1.5% or whatever percentage that is. And so with that, I'm going to ask counselors if they have any questions or comments. Okay. Pam. Yes, I don't know if this is the opportunity to say so, but I really appreciate Paul's leadership and guidance and want to say thank you. This is the opportunity to say that. Are there other people who would like to comment? Yes. Kathy. Yes. If we could keep you for even longer than two more years, we would at this point, Paul. We appreciate your steady hand on multiple complicated issues and your enthusiasm. So thank you very much. Dorothy. Well, I appreciate your leadership, your intelligence and your energy. And the fact that you really love to get up in the middle of the night for any kind of big fire call. But he does it. So we really count on you. Thank you. Jennifer. Well, Dorothy said what I was going to say because it happened in our district, but I think it was a Sunday morning. I got an email as I think Dorothy and Lynn did. It was about six in the morning and Paul providing an update, unfortunately on a tragic, could be a tragic situation. But when I read it again, I realized he had been on site at 3.30 in the morning. So over time doesn't even begin to describe the hours that Paul works, but thank you for your dedication and all the hours that you give to the town. Pat. When I was younger, I had a theater teacher come in to work with my dance company. And she became a lifelong mentor. And one of the things that she said after every session in the studio, she would say thank you to each one of us as we left. Thank you for your work. And I've said that to you. I've said it to some other people too, but I want you to know how deeply, how deeply I feel that, both because of the work you do, but because of what that phrase means to me in terms of that relationship. So thank you for your work. Shalini. Yes. I also want to echo all the statements that have been made and Paul, you've been here with us since our very first town council. And so I just feel, even though I'm not gonna be a councilor anymore, I'm gonna continue to thank you as a resident. And it is so clear how much you care for a town, for the people. And you've just brought such a balanced perspective, guidance, leadership. And I really admire you for that. And thank you for that. See from on the other side. Well, no, wait a minute. Well, that was quite a statement, Shalini, the other side. Are there any other comments from counselors? Paul, I think we just really want to say thank you. We hope that this is a vote of confidence. It's a vote of saying, hang in with us. The best is yet to come as we keep building new buildings. And accomplishing all the many other goals that we are here to work with you on. So, and for those of you that have often been in Paul's office and you all have, you know, he has a speaker on. So he's following those calls that come in on 911, which is just astounding. Anyway, with that, I'm going to bring this to a vote. And I'm going to start with Mandy Johannigan. And Ecolopes. I, Michelle Miller. I, Dorothy Pam. Yes, Pam Rooney. Yes, Kathy Shane. Yes, Andy Steinberg. I, Jennifer Taub. Yes, Alicia Walker. Yes, Charlie Balmone. Yes, Patty Angelis. I, Anna Devlin, got here. I, Lynn Griezmer is an I. And it is unanimous. Thank you, Paul. I'd just like to thank the council, your kind comments tonight, but also the crucial comments that you've given me during the performance review, which is really important as we move forward. But I mean, I love working for the town. It's a fun town. It's, you know, I talked to my colleagues and it's nobody has the stuff going on that we have going on. It just makes it really interesting. So I appreciate everything that you do, but also that everybody in the town does too. So thank you. I will be finishing up our press release that we put out tomorrow and also working with them with the town attorney to make sure that the amendment to his contract is done. And with that, unless there's any other comments, the meeting is adjourned. And it is 1027, not 1227. Thank you.