 Well, good morning everybody. Nice to see you. A very belated happy new year since this is their right of 2022. It's also our first meeting with our newest member, Tamsa Neely from the library board of trustees. So for her benefit at least, I think we should go around the horn as it were and just introduce ourselves so she gets to know a wee bit more about us than just our names. So, since I'm Gavin away here already, my name is Tony Butterfield. I'm currently the chair of the personnel board. I'm also a semi retired professor from UMass in the Eisenberg School of Management. And I do want to point out, Tamsa, that our meetings are much less formal. Oh, that's good. And you can call me Tammy. That's my nickname. It's easier. I'll just say one word about myself. I've been on the board since 2012. And I was a logical person. We actually call each other by a person. Yeah, Tammy. So I just wanted to say just a few words. I've been on the board since 2012. And I was a logical person to take over Chris's long standing job here. I am also a retired librarian. I was a library director for many years. So that's a little bit about myself. Welcome. We're glad to have you. Thank you. Glad to be here. I'm Charlie Sherpa. I represent the non union employees. And I've been affiliated with the town for the past 40 years. Right. Well, I'm Catherine Porter. I'm retired from UMass. And I've been on several different boards here in Amherst, but I don't even know how long I've been on the personnel board. I don't know that they've really been checking longevity. But this is a wonderful experience because we get to see the workings of the town in this very limited but important way. And that's about personnel who comes, who goes, and of course, concerns about salaries. So it's a good place. So welcome. Thank you. Hi, Tammy. I'm Rebecca. Tammy, do you spell your name? MMY or? MMY. That's my nickname. But officially I'm Tamsen. But it's easier for people to use Tammy. Yeah. Yeah. Well, my cousin is is Tammy. So I just I've only known one other Tammy in my life. So I think it's great. Yeah. So I'm Rebecca Woodland. I'm professor of education, leadership, and policy at UMass currently not not in the semi retired or retired realm, but I but I love my colleagues, Catherine and Tony from UMass. And yeah. And I'll just say like Catherine, I love being on this board. You're great people and really thoughtful conversations and dialogue and really thank Joanne for keeping us all organized and feeling good. Charlie's my neighbor. So you're going to see some interesting dynamics between Charlie and I. And I'm glad you're here. Thank you. Yep. And hi, Tammy. I'm Joanne. I'm the staff liaison to the personnel board. Also the HR manager here with the town have been here for five years now. Good. So welcome. Only five years. Yeah. I feel like maybe that's how long I've been on the board. I think you came on soon after I started. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. We do have a looks like a visitor with us this morning. Ben Breger from Amherst College. You want to say a little something about yourself, Ben? Oh, sure. Yeah. Hi, everyone. My name is Ben Breger. I'm in the planning department actually with the town. I don't know. I just I saw this on the calendar and was curious to learn more about the personnel board and see what kind of how decisions are made. So I'm just here to listen. Thank you. All right. Well, nice to have you. And I do want to say something else about Catherine, which she doesn't often mention, but I think it's it says to do with her experience at UMass. She spent quite a number of years in the position that I think is pretty relevant to what the personnel board does at least now and then she was the ombuds person. And so from time to time, we get in the middle of the issues regarding, you know, maybe some differences and stuff that needs to get resolved. So Catherine is a wonderful person to be able to bring a sort of a good perspective, a good sort of neutral perspective to understand how folks are viewing things differently. So she's our ace in the hole when it comes to my best if you will. So following the agenda, which has been so nicely prepared for us, we've sort of gone through the call to order and the opening remarks and announcements. So officially, we're now in in the public comment period. Is there any public who want to comment right now? All right. Next item is reports and comments. And I want to call everyone's attention to a report that I think is quite relevant actually to the next bullet point on our agenda, namely update on employee retention. And I hope you've all seen it. I think it is, as I said, very relevant to that particular issue. It's the study that was done in the school system regarding supporting and retaining school leaders. If you haven't seen that, I think you should. I don't know, have you have you all seen that? It was actually in the paper, I think. But yeah, did we send it to the personnel board members? If it's not, we should. I don't believe I did. I can. You know, we're going to see where the town is on that issue. But I just see it as a hugely relevant issue. And it's a very thorough study. And I think there are some things for us to learn in that. Oh, I think the parallels with the issues facing new principals are similar to those facing new directors who come on board working for the town. And so personally, I don't know that there was a whole lot new in there. But it's a tough issue. And it's an issue I'm happy to say. I think the town is working on very hard. And the personnel board is very interested in that. It would be good to hear if Donna Ray has any sort of follow up or matching comments on some of the school issues that were raised. Do you know, Joanne, if Donna Ray has... I have an update too. She prepared that I will share with you whenever you guys want me to. Oh, I think we're already at item four, new business update on employee retention. So let's do it right along here. All right. So in our last personnel board, we discussed employee retention as a concern, particularly related to the turnover of reasonably newer department heads, health department, senior services, HR prior to Donna Ray. You know, the town is not alone in noticing higher rates of turnover. More and more workers are changing jobs, even careers as opportunities present themselves in the current market. The demand of talent is high nationwide. And there are many opportunities. That being said, the town of Amherst strives to be an employer of choice in Western Mass and to follow the best practices in terms of recruitment and retention processes. HR has added state interviews and more formalized mentoring as an approach to address the turnover concerns. Donna Ray did the state interviews. And during that process, one concern that seemed to repeat is related to the tendency for the public to critique people personally as individuals and not the ideas or policies. A method that we are considering to address this issue is to add some form of community agreement to our public meeting agendas. So for an example, language that Somerville uses is that the community agreement would state one, take space, make space so everyone can share their opinions and ask questions. Two, critique ideas, not people. Always be objective as possible and three, be polite. Additionally, that we're finding that the mentoring program for the new department has has been quite helpful and well received. Each new department head has been signed some form of mentoring. Each person is different as the mentoring needed depends on a particular person, their knowledge, skills, abilities and experience. In some cases, the department head has been provided with either an internal mentor or an external mentor or both. We have also realized that and utilized recent retirees and good standing to help out such as Barb Bills at the rec department helping Ray Harp. He calls his meetings with Barb Bills Jedi training. Angela Mills, our executive assistant to the town manager has offered her time and talents to this endeavor as well. Angela has formally helped two of our newest department heads to gain solid footing when they arrive. She's also helped Donna Ray informally. She combines professionalism and kindness in a way that is welcoming and so valuable as people start their new chapter in their lives. The feedback Donna Ray received related to the individualized mentoring approach is very positive and helps to set new employees up for success through an onboarding and mentoring process. The objectives of the mentoring program include increasing and improving employee engagement and reducing turnover, creating an in-house culture of communication, knowledge sharing and skill building. We've also, HR has also lined advice to department heads to ensure that they're aware of the mentoring initiatives. We've created a new hire checklist and put it on our website. It helps to ensure a smooth onboarding process from the IT needs to reminding department heads to sign a mentor, explaining that this mentor might be a manager or a supervisor or in some cases another department head. So now Donna also wants to address the school study. They did the qualitative study of principals. Their experiences as school leaders in the schools due to concerns about principal turnover in the district in hopes to support and retain their school leaders. The studies recommendations include similar efforts for a more formalized onboarding and mentoring support system. HR is closely reviewing this report for additional ideas to support efforts of finding and keeping the best leaders and employees in the town. And we will keep the personnel board updated on our mentoring and onboarding improvements. So that was what she had prepared on the update for retention. Great. Now I know this has been recorded, but it sounds like she's she gave you something in writing. I'm wondering if you could want me to share that as well. Yeah. Of course. I'll send it in an email. We don't, but comments from my colleagues? Yeah. Yeah. I forgot to say. I was a little stunned when I heard the school report that we have not there has not been intensive mentoring all along. This should have been happening years ago. It's embarrassing to think that one of the reasons that people may be unhappy in their position is that they could have used better mentoring should have been there. We should have been doing it here in this town. So at least now we are. But how do you control the comments? That seems to be the insidious part of this whole situation with the town and with the schools. It's very good to say be nice, say nice things, be polite. But we've got a town that's almost out of control when it comes to feeling that people can say the most hurtful, ugly things both in public and in private. And because it seems like a lot of what happens is essentially word to word behind closed doors, so to speak. So I think we're doing the right thing. And I hope the town continues to and I'm just stunned that we hadn't been doing it in a better way. So that's my reaction to both the school and the town. Yeah, my thoughts overlap with your somewhat, Catherine. One thing I was thinking is when the school district and Mike Morris hired a consultant to do the study, I wondered why the town and the school district wouldn't kind of think about this at the same time. I'm not saying we the town should have hired an external consultant, but it seems like almost all of our data gathering has been by anecdotal evidence by our Human Resource Director, who I adore, by the way. I'm just saying that, but on the town side, we seem to be doing things kind of anecdotally or not as systematically. And so I really appreciate the town hiring somebody. And then I just also think about, and this is Catherine, where I think it overlaps with what you're saying, is that we are in a culture in Amherst and then nested within the larger system and our society as a whole of really lack of civility and just unbelievably intense meanness. And I just think if we over focus on mentoring, let's see, I don't want to only focus on mentoring. Mentoring is for the person who's essentially being bullied or having is experiencing it. So it's like, oh, let's help the victim cope with. And I know I'm exaggerating a little bit to make my point, but so much in that report from the school district was about all these leaders, particularly women leaders, reporting that they are feeling that their gender is contributing to this lack of respect, getting comments about their age, their appearance, their eating habits. Like, oh, it's like, what kind of mentoring is, or what are we mentoring them to do? Take it? Accept it? So I just think we need to be thinking about what are we doing or saying to make sure that we are not bystanders to the bad stuff and that we are teaching all of our employees about civility and appropriate ways to disagree and so forth and so on, that doesn't put it all on the person in the position. Right. Okay. Thank you. Charlie, you got anything to add? Not really. I've lived it for 40 years. You're just finding out about it, but I think I mentioned it the last time, some of the problems we had in this community, but now I have nothing to add. All right. Well, I want to add to both Rebecca's and Catherine's comments. There was a little bit of sort of discussion about when it became clear that the number of women leaving these high-level positions was more than one or two. There was a little bit of a question is, should we do an outside study? And my reaction to that was, well, no, let's look into things a little more deeply. And we did do a second round of interviewing to those people who had left. You know, there's the traditional exit interviewing and I didn't do any of those exit interviews. I have in the past, but in some sense, they're kind of pro forma. Okay, this person is leaving. Now we need to try to figure out why. And so Donna Ray and I did some extra interviews. Everybody had already been interviewed. And then we went back to them to sort of probe a little more deeply. And I actually thought maybe since I don't work for the town, I might be in a sort of a more neutral position to learn what folks had to say. But I felt I didn't learn anything more or more concerning than we already knew about some of these departures. So at the time we felt, okay, well, we sort of know what the problems are. We just need to work harder at solving them. And one of them did see this mentoring issue. And I agree entirely that you're not going to solve all these problems with mentoring, although you should do mentoring way more deliberately than we had been. Mentoring is sort of speaking from personal experience and also some of the research I do. It's sort of, unless the organization makes a really big deal of it, it's kind of the last thing the manager, well, if I got time, I'll go spend with some time with my mentee. But first I got to do this, that and the other thing. And it looks like I'm going to have to cancel our session, you know, that we usually have it a couple of weeks because something more urgent has come around. I'd like to believe that we're now taking this way more seriously and that it will be helpful. I'm glad to hear that at least in one case we're bringing back some wonderful expertise of a retiree to help the new person in that position. There's one thing that Donna Ray didn't mention that I thought at the time and Paul, you're with us now because you seem to react to this pretty positively. Rebecca had described something I forget the label. I think it had the word consulting in it, but it had a way, it had to do with when the managers are getting together, is spending some time, I don't know, sharing problems with each other, talking how to help each other out. And it wasn't, okay, we got three minutes left for this weekly meeting. Let's talk about that stuff. It was a way more deliberate, we're going to spend some time talking about this stuff. And I think you might even have sent us some citations or some sources to learn more about this approach. And so, Mr. Paul, good morning to you. My first question is, did anything ever come of that? Have you been able to find enough time? Because the usual excuses were too damn busy solving, putting on fires, and dealing with a budget. Oh my God, how are we going to deal with this? So the other thing, and now we got to deal with this darn mentoring stuff. So where are you on that, my friend? Yes, so thank you. I think there's two things. One is on the mentoring thing, I think it's taking different shapes. I'm not sure how much Joanne has shared with you, but sometimes we look for external support for some people. We've contracted with people who are in the profession but outside the town who provide support. Sometimes it'll be someone who's been in the position before that we contract with and provide support. But also, I think very importantly, we've developed teams to support incoming department heads. I think that was the best, biggest lesson learned. And just, I think Angela in my office has taken a real leadership role on that and has proven to be the person with the time and the social skills to pull people together. And they feel really comfortable asking her questions. So that's been a really positive thing. For instance, she just took the new senior director and the new recreation director out to lunch. And they were sharing stories about how hard it is to hire people when you're brand new because they both had a lot of vacancies and there's still harbors when they got there. And they're like, we don't know how it really works in this town. And they were able to sort of share experiences at that, you know, both within the first six months of their employment stories. That was, that's an example of something. And they've appreciated, they've also written to Donna Ray saying how much they have appreciated that. In terms of the other piece of it, which is the sort of internal consulting group, we have not done anything on that. I have found that really, we have not been meeting in person. And I'm hoping that that will change. And I've just not broached that with the leadership team. So we have a leadership team, which is about eight or nine people that meets monthly. And then we have a department heads group, which is about 25 people and then meet quarterly. And those are the, those are the two sort of functional ways that we provide. And then I have one-on-one meetings with all the department heads obviously on either weekly or bi-weekly basis, depending on the department. So, but, you know, to be honest, Tony, we just, I have not, I really like the idea. But you're right. It's sort of like everybody, I've got an hour for this meeting. Let's get through what we have to get through and to usually about the budget or something or ARPA or something like that. So, and also the, in the leadership team, it tends to be super experienced people, people, and that's the, I've really not puzzled through how receptive folks will be to say, yeah, I'm going to participate in, in this full bore. We have younger staff who've taken on different roles like in the core equity team and things like that, where they're very interested and willing to, to try new things. But it's really on me for not saying, this is our agenda, here's what we're going to do. And I just haven't put the time into thinking like, how is this really going to work to benefit everybody? Well, I think I suggested last time, and I'll repeat it for, for Cammie's benefit. I think one of the rather easy solutions was for Paul to change from a 24-hour-a-day workday to a 30-hour a day workday. And because he's a pretty busy man and, you know, structurally in, you know, stepping back a little bit, he's probably got too many people reporting to him. Too many people wanting some of his time. The new hires especially want some of his time because they want some guidance. They want to learn, you know, how do you get things done around here and so on. And so it's a, it's a heck of a challenge. And I do say Donna Ray has taken on a big chunk of that. She really has made that a priority for her and, and she's really reaching out to people and intervening in certain situations as well. So that's been a huge help. Well, I'm glad to hear that because I don't think we specified this. And in some ways, if the mentoring effort really is happening the way we want it to happen, but I'm, and I think somewhere in the procedures manual, there's something about 90 days or 60 days or, but I think some interviewing from somebody like Donna, you know, like a week after being hired or two weeks after being hired to just touch base, how's this going? Going in the direction you're hoping new hire. And if it isn't, what can we do to make it go that way? Sort of intervening way early on before it's clear there's a problem or there's going to be a problem. So I just want to interject, Tony, when you said, in terms of mentoring, if what's happening, what we want to have happening, do we, the personnel board have anything written down about what we want to have happening? What I'm interested in is not doing things by default or off the cuff, but doing them by design, purposefully doing things by design and ensuring equitable access to whatever these great mentoring processes are. And maybe this is all written down somewhere, but maybe this is something that needs to go into the personnel procedures manual that this group has worked on before. That's there's a section on mentoring or there's a section on, I don't know what it might be called, but it might sort of prompt or force the articulation in explicit ways about what we mean by mentoring. I love that Angela is taking people to lunch. Does everybody get to go to lunch? Is it all based on Angela's personality? I'm not saying that shouldn't be, but how do we ensure that that's something that would happen even if Angela wasn't there? Or you know what I mean? I want things by design, not because, oh, it just happens in this moment because of these people, it works, you know? Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. And it has been done intuitively instead of by design. And it's sort of like to say, starting to skate a little bit, are we able to stand up on our skates by doing it this way? And that's like, okay, now we have a sense of what is needed. And honestly, I have focused on the department head level, but we don't really, you know, there's a lot of new employees that we're getting a million new employees, and they're all feeling the same thing probably. And I know HR spends the first day of every person's, you know, they spend a lot of time with them in their first or second day to say, here's how things work. But that's more about, I mean, Joanne, you do most of them. So just a cool stuff. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think something like this, I'm going back to Rebecca's suggestion of holding those discussions. It takes a lot of training, skill for perhaps a department manager to even know how to ask a question that will elicit people's opinions. And there has to be a lot of trust that when Joe says to his supervisor, you know, I've got this issue that Joe can trust and assume that comment will be taken, but there'll be no retaliation, et cetera, et cetera. So I love the idea that Rebecca has put forth and I can see that for Paul it's just a challenge to find the time to do that. But it isn't just a matter of throwing people around the table, the person who's conducting that dialogue really has to know how to ask the question and people have to trust that when they give a response that it won't face retaliation or discrimination. So it's a big picture of a big package to deal with. So throw that out. Are there comments, questions? I don't think, Rebecca, it's the personnel board's job to say this is how you should do mentoring. I think it's the town's job to say this is what we are doing about mentoring. And then we can look at that and say, yeah, great, but don't forget about this, don't forget about that. And to a certain extent, maybe it exists, maybe bits and pieces of it exist in different places and what needs to be done is pull it all together. Perhaps the report that Donna Ray prepared for us today is a good start on consolidating what actions are being taken and then maybe add some more specifics about mentoring in particular. So it might be nice to just have somewhere, we talk about mentoring exactly what it is and what are we doing about it where we can see and remind ourselves what we're supposed to be doing and check off whether we're actually doing that or not. I wanted to add an additional answer. Wait, Paul, I went here. Paul has a response, Tony. Yeah, I think you're right, Tony. I think what the agenda item for us would be, let's put together a mentoring, a designed mentoring program that we bring back to you at your next meeting. I'm volunteering Donna Ray to take this on, but also talked with the people who participated, some participated more than others. Like for the recreation director, we had the assistant town manager and the fire chief and Angela, I think as the mentoring team, but I think they had different roles. They took different paths and I think we were going to say, well, what path did you take? Why did you take that path? And then come up with a plan because I think it would be helpful both to the mentors, but also the mentee when we're recruiting to say, when you come here, here's what we provide for you because so many people show up and they get a desk in the phone and they say, here's how your phone works. And see you later. And they struggle. And I know that that has happened with our employees recently. And because we're like, thank God, someone's in that seat now, I don't have to do the support anymore. But I think let's take that on as a task and then deliver to you and for critical feedback. Okay. Good. Now, on behalf of my colleagues, let me offer our help in this regard. And that was the idea I mentioned a couple of minutes ago, not my idea, but this is sort of doing interviewing sooner than whenever it occurs, you know, as soon as a couple of weeks after somebody's on board. I'm ready to do any of that. If it would be helpful and I hope my colleagues on the board would be ready to do any of that, you know, we're just interested in how you do it. You know, is it working out for you? And, and how can we or the town be more helpful to to ease your adjustment into this new, into this new position. So I'm happy on your behalf colleagues on the personnel board to make work for us if we can be helpful. And of course, we'll put in our time and expect to be paid double time to do that task for us. And I would want a king size snickers and not a regular size snickers. Right. Oh, you don't want the fun size. You want the fun size, which is not fun. Hey, I have a t-shirt that says I'm not sure and I'm just fun size. The other thing is another observation thought I had. And this gets into sort of a well, not really a deeper issue. But it's sort of twofold. The first is, in my opinion, not all of this turnover has necessarily been bad. Yeah. I don't think all of these hires, well, if they were sort of bad decisions being made, it was to hire this person in the first place. You know, it was a bad fit from the get go. And when they left, it actually was good. This problem has been resolved because the person is leaving. Now, that suggests two things. We need to do maybe a better selection job than we've been. But there are always going to be mistakes. And the town has been working very hard to increase the diversity among its managers, and in particular, ad women. Where am I going with this thought? Oh, but I think all of these problems, all of these cases, represent bringing somebody in from the outside, somebody who wasn't already working in the town. And maybe we need to do a little better job, figuring out how to develop people to move into these higher level positions. It's sort of promote from within wisdom. In general, you're better off if you can promote from within, because at least the person is familiar with the system. And we know that person's strengths and weaknesses better maybe than somebody from the outside. So that I guess where I'm heading here is a topic we've talked about on and off before. And that is development of managers and future managers to move up in the organization. So I have no idea whether it was clear in all of these recent hires, and I'm defining recentism the last couple years, that it was clear there was no talent to move up to that position. And so we had to go outside. Or maybe we really wanted to make a hire to add some diversity into this department, or onto the, under the ranks of Amherstown employees. But I dare say some, well, actually, Mike, what I know about the reasons people leave, and this was evident in the, in the school report. And we know this is the town of Amherst is a is a tough town to work in. And so with people already on board, at least in theory, they know what they're getting in for, because they've been working here already, I think Charlie from time to time has sort of said, hey, why can't we promote from within? Why don't you know, we've got people, we're supposed to be developing them. You know, can we do a better job on that score? And I hope we can. I think we should, if we're not doing enough already, I don't know, Paul, whether you want to add anything to that, like you're off your guard, Tony, we're already doing this, or, yeah, maybe we should, you know, they in large organizations, and we're not that large, we may feel pretty large, but there are staffing charts and there are succession charts. You know, and if this director leaves tomorrow, who do we have that could step in? Not just, you know, for an interim but could fill that job permanently. And I'm happy to add another task to the HR folks, if we don't have that already, maybe we should. And if we're looking at at the folks sort of below that director's position, and don't see anybody who could do that, then why not? So if I can respond to that, Tony, so when I came here, I knew I'd prefer taking a job, I knew the department heads were really strong. But once I got here, what I realized was the seconds and commands were super strong too, they could be department heads in their own right in many other communities. And that's actually like for the police department, that's proven to be true. We have a lot of people from our force who become chiefs in other communities. So succession planning is a hot topic for us from the department's point of view. What happens typically is that the departments are very loyal to their staff. And so they that's where they want the succession to go. That is usually almost 100% of the time does not promote diversity in our community. And so that's why we always, every job has to be posted, that's under the town charter. So we always say it's an open process. But it is one of these things where there is some conflict in terms of diversifying the workforce, but and also promoting from within and we try to balance that as best we can. And the most recent example of that, for instance, is the police, the fire chief, there's a mandatory retirement age of 65 for the fire chief. He turned 65 in April, it's public information. I have asked him to stay on, we need special state legislation for him to stay on. But we've done a lot of consideration to what that looks like internally for the department and there's been some ranker from some staff members who are looking for change. But at this point in time, having Chief Nelson there as we build our out the crest program, I think is vitally important to have him participate in the development of that new department. But, you know, but we have had in the fire department at the leadership levels, the two assistant chiefs and the chiefs real clear conversations about what what's their leadership plan look like. For instance, you know, and the police and fire tend to have a much more rigid sort of hierarchy. Everybody knows how many years you've been on the force and what you've done and stuff like that. Yeah. All right. I'd like to jump in, Tony, you brought up a couple of things and I wanted to have an opportunity to respond or chime in on them. One is you, you lovingly offered our services to do interviews. If that were a thing and I just want to agree with that and with the caveat that that has to be by design as well. We need, we would need conversation about what questions we're asking. How are we asking them? Why are we asking them? This sort of goes to Catherine's point about you can't just get together with a person and I'm going to have a very different response as an employee if a senior semi-retired white man asks me questions versus Joanne is asking me questions. I'm just putting it out there for real. And unless it's, unless we're very mindful and by design how we're doing it, we're going to be comparing apples to oranges and not having any information that could be sort of generalized or inform our work going forward. So I just want to say, I don't want to be off the cuff about that. If we are going to do interviews, we need to have conversations about what those interviews are and how they're being conducted and where they're asked and so forth. The other thing I wanted to bring up was this issue of mentoring obviously is not new. It's not unique to Amherst. I mean, I just did a quick Google search. Various towns have mentoring plans. We could look at them. There's a statewide mentoring plan for schools, teachers and districts that I'm sure Amherst is referring to. So the idea that we would start from scratch and write down what we're doing to me is like, oh boy, you know, there's some lifting that's been done on this. Let's use some of the lifting. Yep. Yep. No need to start from scratch. Yep. And I agree that we shouldn't just willy-nilly start doing interviews, those of us on the personnel board without having some deliberate, focused questions and plan of attack if you will. So are we okay on this agenda item? I guess so, yeah. I'm ready to move on because Paul just said a magic word a few moments ago on the second bullet point under new business, which is status of new departments, DEI and Cress. So do we have something from Donna on that? Something from Paul? What's happening on these new departments? Did Donna give anything to you, Joanne? Yeah, I do. I do have an update. Again, it's a written prepared document. I can share it with you too, but I'll just read from it. So the community safety working group, also known as the CSWG, has been meeting weekly since it formed in 2020. Hold on. CSWG. Now we got C-R-E-S-S. That's on the quiz. What the C-R-E-S-S stands for? Cress. That's a good question, Donna. That's okay. Community responders for equity, safety, and service. Just to clarify, CSWG is demised. It does not meet anymore. It does not meet anymore. Okay. But they were created to make recommendations on alternative methods for providing public safety to the community and making reforms to the current organizational and oversight structure of the APD. The group spent their time studying the complex issue of delivering community safety services to ensure racial equity and examining existing town funding priorities to deliver those services. They made several recommendations on alternative ways of providing public safety services to the community and reforms to the structure. Out of these recommendations, the town council has approved a reorganization plan which included the creation of two new departments. The first is the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion within the town structure. Elevating the role of diversity, equity, and inclusion into the hierarchical structure of the town management prioritizes these issues and has had some success in building more equitable and inclusive corporations and communities. The second is the Department of Community Responders for Equity, Safety, and Safety Service, excuse me, Cress, which is a civilian unarmed alternative to the police department providing community safety services in situations that don't involve violence or serious crime. The date the reorganizations, to date the reorganizations were approved by the town council in December. So the status of the DEI department is that it will be housed on the mezzanine close to the town manager. The town has developed a DOB description for the DEI director. It's been posted and the interview team is near completion. We will start the process of hiring in the near term. The assistant director of DEI is filled by Jennifer Moyston and the status of the Cress department is the Cress implementation project manager has been hired and he just started on Monday, actually. So that is the current status of those two departments. I don't know if Paul has any other. Yeah, I do. So for the DEI, yeah, I think that's moving forward. Jen Moyston is the assistant director of DEI. She's been doing a lot of this work anyway, along the way. So it takes a fair amount of work. Her job description includes other things, including some of the things that she does as a community participation officer, and such as organizing events like all the, you know, tonight is a Chinese New Year sort of celebration, connecting with communities that live in our town. The Cress program has, there's an implementation team that has been meeting weekly, and that includes the police chief, the fire chief, Jen Moyston, and the former co-chairs of the community safety working group, Alicia Walker and Brianna Owen. And Russ Fern and Jones has been going to these on a regular basis as well. He was on the community safety working group as well. And it's just a really big, hard topic. We're doing things that no other community is really looking at. We're not looking at a co-responder model, where a social service type person goes with the police. We're looking at a totally standalone model. The details are enormous. Everything from liability to what calls get directed. We quickly came to the conclusion that the initial request was for a standalone dispatch center for this group, but it just, the economics said that we're just in tall, unavailable to us. So now we're going through our normal dispatch. And so Mike Curtin from dispatch is saying, okay, I need to know exactly what calls and we're not going to give a call to somebody who's not, you know, there's just every detail you have to look at every, every call. So that's a, that's an onerous process, but just really appreciate the people who are involved in that moving it forward. The implementation manager is actually a grant funded position. That's just really a grant manager as much as anything. It's, it's not a leadership position the Crest director. And that's where we have our interview team getting ready to the reviewing interview at resumes and going to do interviews in relatively near future. When that person gets on board, then things will start to move forward. They'll be able to start to hire Crest workers. Lots of questions about this, whether there is a, are people out there, whether we can get the people, the types of people we want. They want social service workers, people with lived experience, you know, the diverse workforce, all these things. They've modified the idea from being a 24 seven operation to being more like an eight to midnight operation. And just because of the likelihood of getting people who want to work overnight in a number of calls that we get overnight anyway. We're participating, we've been asked to participate with the Harvard County School. They have a group of cities and towns that are doing the same kind of work. And so they have a community of practice that we've been involved with as well. We weren't, we applied to be one of their, their five cohort groups that we did not get accepted because it was more like Harris County, which is where Houston is and Albuquerque and big communities that were chosen for these things. So, you know, we're, we're committed, the council has voted to develop the Crest program, the department, we're moving forward on that. There's a lot of unknowns and making sure that it works as best as they can with police and fire is the highest priority because they are going to be a public safety team. So that's where we are in that. So you have for both positions, you have in hand resumes for people who might be directors of these operations and expect it soon to begin the interviewing process to make a decision. So are you thinking about, when would either of these directors, if that's the right term, be on board? Is that, you know, in two weeks or at the end of March or, I think Crest, we think it's the end of February. Joanne, I'm not sure what to schedule why is what that team is doing. I think realistically, DEI is probably end of March that that team hasn't even started looking at resumes yet, but we have a, but we've determined that the pool of applicants is sufficient to start the process. Okay. Now, pertinent to one of our observations about the turnover among some of these high level positions, are there any internal candidates for these jobs or were we explicitly looking for people? We can't comment on that. Okay. All right. All right. And then I do have a question because I always wondered, and you sort of touched on this and this is just for my own information. I'm assuming that the Crest people as the police and fire are now action would be started as the result of a 911 call. Who makes the decision to route this to the police or to Crest? That's been the subject of multiple meetings and actually looking at through call logs for the last three years, because the last two years were a little bit aberrant. So there will be a dedicated line for people who don't want to call the police to call the Crest team directly. They can call the business line for the police department or they can call 911. The 911 dispatchers will all be trained to with protocols in place on who gets what. And that's where we care a lot about liability. We don't want to put someone, we don't want anybody that we send to a situation to be hurt. And it's just noise complaints. So the common thing people say, we'll send them to noise complaints that cops don't need to go to those things, but we all know that many domestic violence situations present as noise complaints because I hear pounding in the house next door. They don't want to say that it's a domestic violence situation. So we don't and those are for police officers. I understand some of the most volatile situations that they walk into. So we want to, you know, our dispatch team is spectacular. They know their business. Mike Curtin is just top of the shelf top shelf. And so he's thinking very critically about he and he wants he wants he wants his workers to know what to do. They don't want to leave. And they have a lot of real experience in handling a multitude of calls. Yep. Okay. Are there questions? But just like I listen to the scanner a lot, just yeah, no life. And I'm always thinking like who what's called what would I where would this call go to where, you know, I wanted to say because I put more or less learned about this program, watching the town council meetings. And it left me thinking, man, I do not know what's going on in Amherst. I'm a white woman who lives in North Amherst. And the impression I got is we have a huge problem. Or do we do we not have a big problem with police responding to calls? I was left with the impression that Amherst has a serious issue. And maybe I'm the only one who didn't know this. But if I am, then, you know, I'm learning as I go. But on the other hand, if I'm if I'm not alone in this, I don't know how how much information has been given to the residents of Amherst as to whether or not how serious our issue is that we have to establish actually two two new departments. And I know we're caught up in the the whole country being in such a state of affairs. But I didn't know, I real and I asked a few other friends, they didn't know. And again, I don't know, maybe you can explain to me, Paul, how bad is it? Or are we just trying to be proactive? Maybe that's the bottom line question. Yeah, I can take that two different ways. So for the DEI department, I think it's really important at the university pretty much every school has a DEI director of some sort. We need that kind of participation at a high level to bring that we have two lenses that we look at everything through social racial justice and climate climate change. And we try to think about everything we do, whether it's capital projects or operations through those two lenses, it's hard, we're still learning how to do that. But I think the need for the DEI director is just participation, you know, presence matters, being present in conversations, it matters. And so I think that that's a really key thing for us to have as a town. We're doing more than most towns do. We have two positions. It's a two position department. Many towns have a DEI officer of some sort. But I think, you know, it's a pretty high priority for the town, at least to stay as established by the council. In terms of the Crest program, the testimony, there was a lot of testimony that came in. We don't know how many calls are really going to be generated specifically for the Crest program and how many people are not calling the police but would call the Crest program. Because we just don't know the answer to that question. And we're going to learn, you know, as we roll out the program, and it's not going to, we're not going to know in a year, it's going to take multiple years to give the program a time, a chance to get its footing. Our police department has really advanced and for years has been proactive on, you know, our officers have been getting implicit bias training for, I don't know, probably for years, I'm not sure how long, but they've always been at the forefront and getting training and you know, de-escalation techniques and things like that. So we have a super great police department. And so it, but they are all, we've also asked them to respond to everything, you know, you know, a paranoid woman at home came in this morning who's like, feels that there's somebody in her house and they're not, but they police have to respond with their tools, right? They show their tools, their trade. They show up with a, with their vest on and their gun and stuff. And it's like, maybe that wasn't necessary for that. Maybe there's someone else, a social worker could have gone to that situation. And police would say, everything winds up in the police's lap. You call, everybody calls 911. I've got ice at the bottom of my driveway or I've got a kitten in a tree or there's a guy walking down Amethyst Brook with a gun that I don't know what that he's all about. So they have to handle everything. So I think there's, I think this is a new, we're really plowing new terrain here. We, not many cities or towns are doing what we're doing. Most have done, have gotten social workers on board. Like we have a domestic violence worker, a civilian DV worker that we get, we have our honors that comes to us and to the police department. So it's we're relatively small town and how, you know, we don't know how it's going to work, but we're going to try it. Okay. That's enough. I would just like to add that I saw the town council meeting where that working group, which has now been dissolved. And I would say dissolved by declaring victory because of what has happened as a result of their report. And it was an amazingly thorough job. And I think they, I hope they all feel pretty good about what they did because things are happening as a result of that report. Now, Mr. town manager, I have to ask you as a magician, where have you been able to find money to fund these new positions? I think the town council said just do it and find the money somewhere. Yeah. So for the DEI, we took a person who had been half time in the manager's office, half time in personnel. And we took we eliminated the manager's assistant and and added a half position. So she's full time in DEI. So that was a half position we had to fund and that came initially from ARPA funds. For the DEI director, I did not fill the economic development director. I substituted the DEI director for the economic development director for Cress. Those funds, we put some funds in the budget for that. Out of our increase, we have ARPA money to help bridge that gap. Also, we got a $450,000 grant from the state to support some of these more social service and social counseling services that we will be providing through the program. So that's a three year grant that we're pretty proud to have received. There's only five in the state that went out. So we're always a smallest community to get one of those things. But be honest, the Cress program, especially if it grows to the level that is intended, will absorb every spare dollar the town has going into the future. We projected that out in a time when a lot of the public coffers, state and local are doing pretty well because of ARPA funds primarily. We're not going to be expanding anything else. This is where we've made our commitment. And it sounds like a couple of years down the pike, then the town is going to have to figure out where else to get some money because the outcome is relatively short term. Well, it's three years. So that's our bridge. And by then, we will have carved out money in our budget by saying no to lots of other things to make sure that there's enough ongoing support. So Shamangano does a great job at projecting out. So he's our finance director. Okay, questions, comments from my colleagues on the board about DEI and CRESS update. Next item on the agenda I'm looking at under new business says set the annual non-union staff meeting, which Tammy, if you don't know, we basically every year try to meet with the town employees. Our specific domain is non-union town employees, but I don't think people are refused entry who are members of a union to join that meeting. And typically it's been in March. And although I think last year it was bucked back at least till April, maybe even May, I think Paul, there were some budgetary uncertainties that you wanted to be less uncertain when we had this meeting because one of the things that happens during the meeting and the town manager is basically the star attraction for that meeting, the personnel board basically is a listening board at that time. What's on your minds, folks? But traditionally that's been the time when Paul will announce what the cost of living increase is and any other sort of issues directly affecting the town employees, including things like benefits and insurance and stuff like that. So are we ready for doing this in March again, Paul? Yeah, I think we are. Okay. It could be April too, but I think everything, any financial things we know, we know what then those numbers are for health insurance and for COLA. Okay. So and the other thing we've done is we've scheduled this meeting sort of back to back with a personnel board meeting. And since as the agenda shows, we currently expect for the PB to meet on March 9th at 9 a.m., is that a good time to schedule the town-wide employees meeting, do you think? You mean at 9 or at 10? Well, you're talking about the date. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I think we usually do the town meeting, employees meeting first, right? And then immediately because once in a while there are issues that we can act immediately on based on what we've learned in that town meeting. So would you consider the 16th as a possible alternate date? Would I consider that? Yeah. I can make the 9th work, but I would just need to move some. Well, fortunately, we got all of the PB members here. The 16th works for me. Does it work for the rest of you, dear colleagues? We're talking March. 16th, yes. Right. Now, the issue there is that's right in the middle of spring break and I'm not retired. And that is when I would be doing something not work. But I don't want to be the party pooper, but I am actually on that schedule. So we can keep the 9th then. Party pooper. Well, can't you just zoom in from Fort Lauderdale? That's right. She goes to Fort Lauderdale. Oh, that's me. I'm actually a Daytona person. Oh, okay. All right. Well, okay. Said me never. All right. So what do we want? 16 or 9? The 16th is a Jones Library Board trustee meeting at 9 o'clock in the morning. So I would be unable to attend on the 16th. Let's keep the 9th then. Let's do the 9th. Looks very definite. So, okay, that's what we'll do. And we'll do the town employees meeting first, roughly 9 to 10. And then we'll meet immediately after to do whatever business we need to be doing immediately after. And okay. We also need formally to approve the minutes of our November the 10th meeting. Joanne sent them out. I assume you've read them carefully and did your best to make sure everything is accurately reported. And does anybody have any questions, comments, corrections to want to make officially to those minutes? If not, I would just say Catherine's name sometimes is up in there with an E and sometimes with an A and she's a double A. She's a double A gal. That's never happened before. I just want to honor the name thing. Oh God, I don't care. I know you don't care. I care. Okay, A R I N E. Oh, I did it wrong. I did it right at the top, but I did it wrong. I apologize Catherine. But on my email, it's E R I N E, which is a long story and a mistake I made a year ago with Comcast. So I'm almost going back with Comcast. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Comcast tells me it's E R. I'll take it. Yeah. That's what just changed your name at the clerk's office. I'm almost thinking about it. I mean, just go all the way back to the beginning. Yeah, I'm almost thinking I should change my name. Any other sharp eyed tweaking needs to be made to the minutes. If not, can we have a motion to approve as tweaked? I so move. All right. Second. Okay. Any other discussion? Tweaking? All of A is A I. Hi. Hi. Opposed? Abstentions? Okay. The minutes are hereby approved. And topics the chair did not reasonably anticipate 48 hours in advance of this meeting. I don't have any new topics to put before us. Don't we have the staffing report? Oh, pardon me. I skipped right over that. Yes. Thank you for noticing. Yeah. All right. So Joanne, you want to lead us through the staffing report? Sure. Anything of particular interest? Well, we've had a little bit of movement. We lost our assistant land manager. We're in current recruitment for that. I think we have two finalists. Hopefully we can make an offer by the end of the week. We lost a firefighter and a DPW worker and our senior center admin assistant, Jennifer Reynolds. Interestingly enough, she took on our new senior center director's former position in Bernadestine. So that is that. We rehired one of our former DPW employees as our labor truck driver. We hired on a bilingual customer assistant to work in our front office for central services with the tax collector, tax collections, excise tax, all of that, parking tickets, and rehired a former dispatcher as well. We've promoted a couple of internal part-time people into some permanent positions, one at the senior, excuse me, at the health department and another at the recreation. We hired on a new librarian at the library. And of course, we have Haley as our new senior services director. We also brought back a second employee, former employee from the DPW who came back. So I guess the grass isn't always greener on the other side there for a couple of those guys. And we've promoted a nice, a very smart person who's working for us as an intern in our waste water treatment plan as a mechanic apprentice, basically. Very good at welding, went to a trade school. So we're promoting him. He's actually in a training program right now with our current mechanic who's planning to retire at the end of March. So there's a little bit of some transition training, mentoring there going on, which is going to be really helpful for him. So that's, that's what I have. I have, I have one question. Sure. Jennifer Reynolds, was she a candidate for the administrative job or we had the senior center? We can't really comment on that, Charlie. Okay. How long did she work for the senior center? For the senior center. I think it was 2018 that she moved over to the senior center. Yeah. She's our parking enforcement officer. She is spectacular at that role. And then she, then she basically went to get off the street and worked at the senior center did a great job there. Well, I'm just looking at it. I don't know the lady, but I'm just looking at it said assistant. And obviously the head job was open. Oh, it's an administrative assistant. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Yeah. And so the current candidate had been the directors of council on aging in Bernardsden. And then now Jen made the, really, she did the next step, which is to become a director of a, of a council on aging out of smaller town. And so she's well positioned after she does that for a couple of years to come back of this, you know, for her to go to another, a bigger town as this moves forward. Yep. Thank you. Other questions? Observations. Thank you very much. Anything else to come before this body, my dear colleagues? Thanks. Thank you, Tony for leading us, facilitating us. You always do such an awesome job. I love it. Very much. Good to see you all. Okay. And for my colleagues on personnel board, even you, Rebecca, take the rest of the day off. Okay. Oh, no, next zoom, 14 minutes. Here we go. All right. Yeah. All right. Well, with that, I'll leave it there to you, everybody. I'll leave it there to you. Thank you. Thank you. Nice to meet you, Tammy. Thank you. I was listening. I won't be quiet for long though. All right. Oh, well, I thought folks from the library were always fine. All right. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you. Bye-bye.