 Okay, so hello and welcome to all our Amherst community members to our chat for Thursday, April 30th. Thank you all for joining us today. My name is Brianna. I'm the communications manager for the town. We'll be holding short live chats like this on Tuesdays and Thursdays at noon for the next couple of weeks. As a reminder, this webinar is being recorded, so please refrain from asking any personally identifying health questions. In this webinar, to ask us a question from the Zoom application, click the Q&A button and type your question into the box. If you'd like to speak, please use the Zoom raise hand button or press star nine if you're joining us from the telephone. We ask that you introduce yourself before speaking and to maintain a civil discourse. So today we have town manager Paul Bachman and health director Julie Fetterman. Welcome to you both. Hi. Happy Thursday. Yes, it's rainy Thursday. Yes, not as nice as Tuesday where we had some sunshine. So before we go into Q&As, I wonder if there's any updates from you, Paul, in terms of town happenings? Sure. Thanks, Brianna. And thanks for organizing this again. So this week, Governor Baker extended his orders for stay at home and essential services from May 4th to May 18th. And the town has extended the same orders and just coincide with the state. So the next target date is May 18th. And that's the earliest possible time we would see any kind of relief on the stay at home order or the requirement that only essential services be delivered. So they, as we anticipated, we talked about previously, they are looking at this in sort of small chunks of time and seeing how things work. They want to see that the curve is starting to flatten and then go down a certain number of days of reduced hospital admissions, I think, is the real benchmark that they're using. And they're not seeing it go down at this point. It's kind of flattened. It's plateaued and it's sort of staying there. So that's why I think the governor felt it was important to extend it. So that's the only thing. I'm not sure if, Julie, you want to add anything at the beginning? Sure. Good afternoon. I have a couple of items I want to address. First of all, some of you are readers of the Hampshire Gazette and readers of our town website and the Department of Public Health website. And if so, you may have noticed that yesterday and today there's a reporting of 83 cases of COVID-19 for the town of Amherst. In reality, yesterday the number of cases was 33 and today the number of cases is 35. This error that has appeared is an accounting error that has happened at the Department of Public Health level. Because testing is done in many places through many different labs, there was an entity whose test results went through inaccurately and generated one address in Amherst for many, many people who do not live in our community and are actually nowhere near our community. So the Department of Public Health is working to go through each one of those cases and determine where they actually do live and assign them to those towns. Meanwhile, this incorrect number is out there electronically. So we wanted to reassure folks that we have not seen a giant jump in numbers in the town of Amherst. So today we have 35 cases in Amherst and that number, you'll be seeing that 83 number go down and that will be accurate. It will go back to what it should be. Now in the course of today we may get a couple more cases. So you will be seeing over the next few days and the next week or so that we have a few more cases likely each day. Part of this is because what we're seeing in Massachusetts is that the number went up steeply in eastern Mass and now we're sort of seeing western Mass begin to follow that pattern. So we won't be surprised to see an increase in cases. So just wanted to clarify that for everyone. You know, Julie, if the website, the state website will be fixed or do they just do that once a week? Like every Wednesday they update it? Will they do it in between now or will they just wait till next Wednesday? No, they're working really hard on it. They tried to get it accomplished for this, for our town by four o'clock yesterday and they weren't able to. So they're continuing to work on it all day today. We're hoping that they'll be able to correct it by the end of the day. Again, they have so much data that they're working with at the state level that we can't be sure. But no, they won't wait until next Wednesday. They'll get it corrected earlier than that. But that's a good question. The other topic we wanted to update people about was we were able through a collaboration with Cooley Dickinson Hospital Lab, Healthcare Services for the Homeless and Craig Stores to test our Craig Stores community and we're happy to report that the result of that is that no one needed quarantine or isolation, which is terrific news. Craig Stores has done an incredibly good job of screening folks who come into the shelter every night, providing them with masks, cleaning surfaces, educating people about how to keep themselves safe, and creating social distance within the shelter. So we're really pleased about that and happy that Hampshire College was there, ready to welcome people if we did need quarantine. So we feel very pleased about this. I just want to mention that I really accredit to our team, you know, DPW and Superintendent Gufford Moreing and Assistant Town Manager Dave Zomac and our police chief, Scott Livingstone. Everybody was on in the fire chief, of course, Tim Nelson. We're working hard to prepare Hampshire College. Again, you know, shout out to Hampshire first opening the doors and then our team for getting those doors ready. We had it all set up and thankfully it's not going to be required. And so we've informed Hampshire College of that and they are very interesting. The President's first response was so good for those people and it was a really nice response, initial response. So that's a really good news story for our town. And I also think just to echo something Julie said about thanking, you know, recognizing the efforts of Craig Stores and the staff for being proactive early on, on educating people, identifying folks, reorganizing the shelter so people were the best they could be socially distanced at night. So they do important work and so thank them for all their work all year round. Great. Great. Thank you for those updates. So we have a question that just came in from Sarah here and shoot. This is probably for Paul. Will the special town council meeting on May 11 include any update or discussion of the major capital projects? Thanks Sarah. It's a good question. So on May 11th, we will be the interim finance director Sonia Aldridge and I will be presenting to the town council, to the school committee and to the Board of Library Trustees with economic information on where we think the town is in terms of revenues going for the rest of fiscal 20 and looking into FY21. People may know that the town council has adjusted the budget deadlines. They said we want to see a one month budget for the month of July and then given us additional time to create a budget for the rest of the fiscal year and I think that's a reason to approach to looking at this. We don't have much new information about the capital projects. We have been in touch with the Board of Library Commissioners and the Mass School Building Authority. They are still actively moving on all these projects so but we will probably identify them but not have any new information to share come May 11th. Great, thank you. We've got another question here asking what are the plans for Amherst restaurants and businesses reopening? Julie and I look at each other. So the restaurants are open in the sense that they're doing curbside pickup. We have also some restaurants are also offering additional things like offering groceries. You can buy groceries at certain restaurants. They're able to offer that. The inspections department has helped them to facilitate that. I know that Amherst coffee you can go get a whole meal from them and take it home and restaurants are able to offer bottles of wine and things like that. They've been really creative in how they've responded to it and I think this is going to be the new normal for a while. I think restaurants are very social and that will be one of the they're going to be operating in a reduced capacity for quite some time and we're talking months not just a matter of weeks but in that time we'll be working with them to figure out new ways that they can be delivering their goods, their meals in ways that are they're meeting the the social protocols that we they're going to be instituted because COVID-19 is going to be with us for quite some time. So you know they were open to all kinds of creative ideas in the business improvement district and the chamber have been scouring the country to look at models that we can follow here. Julie anything you want to add to that? I'll just add to that when we were approached with the idea that restaurants could sell groceries it felt like such a great idea because many of our restaurants are quite well prepared to have the cold storage that's necessary for groceries and then the dry storage and what we learned is that restaurants often have different suppliers than your grocery stores so this will kind of maximize the places where people can get food and the availability of food because we're all seeing at different times whether it's eggs or or toilet paper not a food but still a dry good that they're in short supply and so this will help to open up more supply streams to come into town and make it easier for folks to be able to get what they need and then also give restaurants a revenue stream while we go through this period of time when we're trying to figure out as a state how these very social entities can can open in a way that's safe. We're really hoping that this will help to provide them with a revenue stream. And what's interesting is outside my office you can see Lime Red the bubble tea shop and when the weather warms up they have a little counter outside or that they put the drink you order in advance they put the drinks on the counter and then you come up and you pick them up with your name on it and they're monitoring that so you see more and more people stopping by to get their bubble tea they don't enter the store they don't have to enter the store and so I think there'll be more creative ways for businesses to meet the needs of the customers and allowing people to safely travel into town and be able to get those things and a note that there is no charge for parking and there's no enforcement of parking unless you park in a handicapped or loading zone or something like that. Great, the next question we have has been asked and answered a few times so I'll ask it again just because it does keep coming up. Why are we not requiring masks at this time? Thank you for the question that is definitely something that people are continuing to ask about to talk about so I'm going to sort of address the whole mask issue broadly and they get more specific so there are basically three different types of things we're calling masks so there's N95s those are the ones you've heard about that are rather expensive in short supply and those are specifically for healthcare workers and even within the healthcare setting there's such a shortage of them that they're being really targeted towards certain types of procedures where the healthcare staff really need that kind of protection. The next type of mask is called a simple mask or a surgical mask that's a you know you've often see them they're often blue sometimes they're light yellow they're made of paper they open up and they slip over the ears sometimes they're called a procedure mask so these types of masks again are prioritized for those who are working in some type of healthcare or high risk setting it's also hard for hospitals long-term care facilities and other entities to get those types of masks so they're really prioritized for those entities and that leaves us with the cloth face covering which is sometimes being referred to as a mask also so what that refers to is anything that made of cloth that someone can put over their mouth and nose a bandana a tightly tightly knit cotton scarf as opposed to wool or any type of yarn the reason I'm emphasizing that is anything that's stretchy like wool or yarn that's been knitted together really is too porous to give any type of protection to anyone so what you're seeing a lot of people wear are homemade masks which first of all should be made out of a very tightly woven cotton and or layered with a tight flannel both of those types of fabrics have been found to be the least porous there's also some recent research out of I believe it's the University of Chicago that shows if you layer two different types of fabric like the tightly woven cotton and the tight flannel that you're also creating a type of electrostatic static between the two fabrics and so that not only are you getting two layers of protection that can trap possibly microbes there's also some static action that's happening between the two layers of fabric that may also contribute to trapping the tiny microns of virus that being said there is really no data yet to support the effectiveness of this type of face covering so that is why we are not requiring them in the town of Amherst if people want to wear this type of covering when they can't or they may not be able to social distance six feet or more then it's possible that this type of face covering may provide a little bit of protection but what we really want to emphasize in Amherst is the importance of that six feet of social distancing we're still asking that you stay home that you only go out if necessary to places where you may come in contact with other people and when you do to be six feet apart now that doesn't mean that you can't go outside this really is referencing going to a place that might be crowded like a park or going into a store if you want to be outside and exercise absolutely there's no reason to not be outside breathing the fresh air as long as folks are six feet apart great thank you for addressing that again Julie I appreciate that yeah but I think it's interesting because you had some new information I hadn't heard before about the electrostatic information and but I think that that speaks to how you continue to scour the research and educate yourself and and talk to your colleagues in public health about what is the best practice so if there is evidence again we've been trying to align all of our policies along with the best scientific evidence along with the State Department of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control and so as we align those things and keep our best practices following those those principles I think will be we're in the best shape so but it doesn't it means that we're always thinking about this and reviewing it and on a daily basis saying what we may change this or any of our decisions going forward based on new new evidence so just put that caveat in there today this is and this is we said this early on when we started meeting like we'd make a decision and then make a different decision the next day and it was like you know we made this decision yesterday and we made it differently today it doesn't mean that yesterday's decision was wrong it was like it was based on the best information we had and the decision we make today might be different based on the new information we have so I think people should you know it's an evolving situation and you know we continue to scour and look around for new evidence that might support a different position if that's what's required. Great I'm just going to take a quick chance to remind our attendees who are on the call live use Q&A button to put your question to us or raise your hand in the Zoom application to ask your question live so the next question we have I think a lot of people are think projecting to the warmer weather will pools be allowed to open as the weather gets warmer and what will that look like? Thank you for the question I think one of the things that's very interesting about the about swimming pools is that they are chlorinated and so I think a lot of folks are asking about well we know that chlorine affects the virus neutralizes the virus I think unfortunately the real issue around pools is the fact that it will mean lots of people will gather together so again we're looking at the social distancing what would it mean to gather people around a public swimming pool so the state is getting many questions about this also and so we're following the state's lead and at this time there isn't a plan for swimming pools opening and when there is we will be right on top of that information because we know while it's cool and rainy today that that wonderful warm weather is right around the corner in the town of Amherst our pools don't usually open until the end of June so and I guess the new England in general it certainly takes a while to heat up so but this is a a topic that's being closely watched because we know how important it is to people. Great thank you and kind of along that same vein another question is can we use puffers pond are we going to be able to swim there again or at least use the beach? Well I'll talk about the beach part so we have closed the beach to people for static or stationary sitting and things like that you're fine to walk through puffers pond we want to keep that open we want to encourage people to exercise it's okay for solitary fishing things like that but we don't want it to become a gathering place and we'll be monitoring that with police officers on a regular basis to make sure that we don't start we don't see groups starting to gather there it's still cold but as we all know that as soon as that first you know 75 80 degree day pops that puffers becomes a very attractive place for people to attend from all over the region not just Amherst obviously we have not restricted parking there at this point in time we again that's one of those things that we will continue to monitor and review and and see how we can best achieve the public health benefits of keeping crowds keeping people from gathering together especially people who don't aren't used to seeing each other family households are one thing but it's people gathering from multiple family households uh uh together um but in terms of swimming Julie I mean usually puffers isn't ready to swim there's some hearty souls that get out there early though aren't there there are yes and um so I think Paul um explain that well it's it's tight quarters at puffers so if you've got people gathering there they're going to be too close together um I think it's also worth putting out there that at this time of year even when it's really hot the water is very cold and it's really never a good idea to go boating too early or to swim too early because um frankly your risk of drowning in cold weather cold water is much higher than when the water warms up so we wouldn't want to see people swimming yet anyway um and uh because of just the way puffers is set up it's it people are just going to be too close together so I think we'll be a ways from allowing people to be able to swim at puffers great thank you one of the last questions I have here is um how do both of you see us coming out of this what's the next phase it's a nobody knows for sure the way has a crystal ball but I do think that uh we are all looking at ways that we can move our our exit our exit strategy in a sense I think that what we will recognize is that this is a new reality that we will have we don't know if the university and colleges will be open or if they are open what they will look like uh coming forward after in September um it will come in phases I think that hopefully the state will you know as they talk about turning the dial open things up a little bit I you don't want to open up too much and then have to retract and retrench things that you had previously achieved so we want to do it in a step by step with the um it's kind of been amazing to me to see how creative people are especially the business community because they've been hard hit and you know teachers who are teaching at home or teaching students remotely students who have been figuring out ways to new ways to learn and new ways to explore the world um I think there's lots of new things happening and those might become part of the norm going forward so but I think in for in terms of town of Amherst we're really heavily dependent on restaurants and um and you know bars and things like that things that are by definition social and I think you're going to see that uh and it really um open up very slowly uh the town who is working with the business community to say is there a way we can have people sit outside properly socially social distance so there can be more of a sense of community can we um grab back more some of the street to create more areas that we can have for dining or um but again all these things it all depends on being properly distanced from other people um and because there's so so much that we don't know about the disease and how it spreads we know a lot but we don't know everything we want to be conservative and how we approach it because we we've done really well in Amherst and I think Julie has said this before that we really want to thank everybody for how well they have done but we want don't want to lose our path we want to stay on this really good path that we're on and Julie you want to talk about how this is yeah I I think you explained that really well and I think one of the things that I'm really excited about is the fact that several states are working together because um in New England you know all these small states were also close together New Hampshire Vermont Connecticut even New York are all Rhode Island are very close to us so the fact that we're all working together on how to open means um that let alone all the towns around us all working together all following the same sort of gradual opening up I think we'll really pave the way for um keeping ahead of this virus and it's just this delicate balance between trying to bring our economy back trying to get folks back to work um get our kids back to what they're usually doing and at the same time making sure that we don't slip back in some way as we control the spread of the virus so it's really a delicate balance there and I'm I'm so happy about the way folks are working together in Massachusetts and then in the surrounding states I think it's really a recipe for things moving forward in a safe and effective way so I was on a call um earlier this week with other mayors and managers and one of things that we talked about was sort about sectors and you know like um restaurant sectors and things like that but also geographical regions that what might be happening in eastern Massachusetts might be slightly different than western Massachusetts or on Cape Cod and then there might be some variation so you might read something is happening in this section of of the state it's not happening here or vice versa so um you know so I think that there'll be some variation um but it has to be thoughtful has to be based on your the best assessment of our communities and that's why I think the governor's office has been doing a more aggressive job of reaching out to municipal officials to say how would this work in your town how would it work in someone else's town uh the only other thing I want to add beyond I know we're at the end of our time is that the our inspections department and health director have been working with the farmers market as well in the hope of getting the farmers market open and reviewed by the town council we anticipate that they will be there to the town council on May 18th for that for the review of their plans hopefully that will all come together so they're anxious to get started they're looking at a virtual farmers market where you can pick up you can order groceries in advance pick them up on farmers market on a totally touchless system and the farmers market will look different it will not be a social setting it will be about getting groceries in an outdoor setting um properly distance and things so the farmers market folks have been really good at saying how can we make this happen and they've been working really well together with our inspection services to lay out a plan that's going to look different but be really robust I think oh that's great um before I before I wrap I just want to say um Steve sent us a message saying thanks Julie Brianna and Paul very useful and interesting thank you Steve thanks for joining us and everybody who's on the call I just want to say that next Tuesday May 5th at noon we're going to be chatting with assistant town manager and conservation and development director David Zomac so please tune in same link same phone number all of our recordings are posted to our youtube channel on our playlist um and we have one last comment coming in from library director Sharon Sherry we think you rock too thanks for tuning in stay safe everybody we'll talk to you soon