 Seeing as we have a quorum of the Town Council present on January 27, 2020, I am calling the meeting to order at 6.30 p.m. A couple quick announcements. Several of the Councillors and the staff were able to attend the annual Mass Municipal Association this past Friday and Saturday. On the February 1st we have two events you might be interested in. The first is the Fortowns meeting which is the regional schools and it is at 9 o'clock a.m. and the Amherst Regional Middle School Library. Later in the day at 1 o'clock we will do the flag raising for Black History Month on the steps of and on the common North Common and the steps of Town Hall. On February 10th we will have a hearing regarding a Verizon request to install conduit locations on Spring Street. This is based on us being the Peackeepers of the public way and on that same evening we will also have a public way request to install a ramp at the Amherst Visitor Information Center at 35 South Pleasant Street. This is for those people particularly interested in 132 North Hampton Road. Valley CDC has submitted their project eligibility letter for 132 North Hampton Road. However, I want to be very clear, the State has not sent an acknowledgement and is not until the State sends an acknowledgement that the 30-day comment period begins. We will have broad notification of that 30-day comment period and after that we will summarize all of the comments and send them off to the State. And finally, we do have a change in the order of the agenda tonight. It's up on the screen. We're basically going to go through one through five as we normally would including general public comment. We would then go on to a presentation and discussion of the proposed downtown investments. And at 7.45 we will move to action items B and C, general bylaws and then authorizing a discussion of authorization for a public hearing regarding Lincoln Avenue. We will then return to item B, I'm sorry, 6A. And at that point Doug Slaughter will be able to join us and that is regarding his report to us as chair of the license commission and also amendments to the open container law. And then we will continue with the rest of the agenda as planned. Okay, so with that in mind, there are no there's no hearing tonight. We will proceed to general public comment and let me just say the following. It's on matters other than those that are under the agenda listed as having public comment. That includes items 6B and 8A. Public comment on those agenda items will be taken up at the relevant time during the agenda. Residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes unless we have so many people I have to restrict it. Counselors are not expected to comment or will they comment on matter raised during the issues of general public comment. May I see a hand of those people who would like to speak during general public comment. Let's start back on the far back, far back general public comment. Okay, I'm sorry. Vince, please come forward. Please state your name and where you live. Vince O'Connor, Summer Street, Amherst. So we are on the basis the cusp of some momentous change in the United States which may drastically alter the traditional role of local and police, local and state police departments as enforcers of the codes of political and social order demanded by the 1 to 10 percent of the 90 to 99 percent. Economic inequality is under attack front and center. Cannabis and perhaps other drugs are headed for decriminalization if not legalization as was done so successfully by Portugal which diverted its drug related enforcement criminal justice and incarceration expenditures into treatment and reduced its addict population by one half. There is the Black Lives Matter movement. Gambling has become the province of state, local and tribal governments rather than of the mob and so forth. I don't think any of us expect to read of a stonewall type situation. So therefore the the present city council may thus become the municipality's first legislative body to confront the requirement to develop a radically different policing posture for Amherst. It is your good fortune that no terrible incident has occurred which might distort clear thinking about this goal. To avoid such a tragic and destructive event the city must begin the transformation of its policing policies while it has the time and space to do so. I would have preferred to bring this proposal to a smaller number of city counselors on a public safety committee which many cities have where I could also address other related issues. The city council is not seen fit to establish such a committee so here I am. My proposal is quite simple and direct backed up by the article before you the neuroscience of prejudice and stereotyping. From the October 2014 volume 15 issue of Nature Reviews Neuroscience 10 pages, two and a half pages and footnotes. In evaluating future candidates for the police department you ought to to make use of the most up-to-date brain research techniques to disqualify candidates who might be more likely than others to employ deep-seated biases unconsciously in policing and the use of deadly force without good cause. How to how to tease out these deep-seated biases please read the article. There are good reasons to employ such research techniques because as the article points out not only does brain testing expose deep-seated candidate biases it can also reveal which candidates are making a conscious effort to combat their biases. We need you to ramp up. Yeah finally um as you consider this article and my suggestion please consider that Massachusetts already has a form of stand your ground which applies only to police officers. To be black or Latino the resident of a wrong address police raid or fail to obey an order from a police officer because you are mentally ill do not understand English. Have PTSD related panic reaction and you could be shot dead by an officer whose deep-seated biases were not fully explored during candidate selection. The City Council can prevent such a tragedy from happening in Amherst if it begins now to implement science-based police officer selection. Thank you for your comments. Excuse me I what you need to be called upon. Thank you. Are there other public comments? I did see a hand in the back earlier. Okay. Are there other public comments? Please come forward. You have three minutes maximum. State your name and address. Amy Zuckerman 117 Brittany Manager Drive. I'm here to invite everyone on the Town Council. Town managers and others in the room to come tour my building as Ed Smith did this afternoon. He's both a health inspector building inspector in terms of a former firefighter. I raised the issue of fire prevention very serious matter for lodgings particularly complexes. I walk with Ed now that he says this is not his territory but we did analyze the issue of fire prevention or training that does not exist in the boldest which has at least 500 residents if not more. I wish there's maybe two maintenance people at any given time or three. There are no diagrams on any floor that show you the layout of the floors to where the where the exits. Most of the people in my building are not don't speak English or well. Do they going to get out of fire when English speakers can't get out of fire? They panic how are these people going to get out? There's no training. I've talked to the fire department many times. I'm not sure if they had to be invited in by the management at the boulders but they have not. Jeff Olmstead network these are great people but they got to come in. I said let's create a training program. Let's put a manual together. Let's have some diagrams. There are 500 or more people and those in that place there's no fire escape. There's a difference between having meeting code for the fire marshal and surviving a fire. Big difference. There was a fire last spring. Thank god people didn't die. It's amazing. I've seen 35 people die on one night in a fire in Worcester when I photo edited the cassette. What are we going to do? How about meeting me and take a tour and see why will you not get out of that place if a fire engulfs the hallway? You won't unless you want to jump from the second third building story. We could fix it. There's not one lodging in this town that is required to have fire ladders just put them over the window climb out not required. If I want to deal with that to lend to do some of the bylaws I'm going to harp on this forever because if you've ever seen someone dead on the street people jump out of a building well you'd wake up this is fire time and the boulders is not safe. Thank you for your comment. Are there any other people with public comment at this time? Okay then we're going to proceed we have two resolutions our proclamations this evening. The first one is a resolution in support of house 2810 an act to promote green infrastructure and reduced carbon emissions. It's in your packet and the governance organization and legislation committee has reviewed it. Mr. Ryan? Yes we the committee met on January 8th and voted unanimously to declare the proclamation on house built to a 10 to be clear consistent and actionable. Okay and this is sponsored by chris riddle and sponsored as necessary by a counselor and that is pat de Angelis. Is there any other comment pat? I have a sign here that says mic because I never remember to use my mic so if all of you would make m's whenever you go see me speak. Anyway this is very important legislation that's coming forward to do carbon pricing and it does have guidelines so that people of low income who may be most impacted would have recourse and things like that. So this came before the council a month ago several weeks ago and it needs to be passed as quickly as possible and I'm hoping it will be unanimous. Thank you. Are there any counselor comments at this time? Then could I have a motion? The motion that I need is to adopt the resolution in support of house 2810 enact to promote green infrastructure and reduce carbon emissions as presented. So moved. Second. I second it. Okay Darcy uses second. Any further discussion? All those in favor raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain. So it's three thirteen zero zero. The second proclamation is regarding Black History Month and I understand that Pituah Mukimba is in the room. Is that correct? Maybe she wasn't able to get here by now. The co-sponsor on this is the Human Rights Commission and Pat DeAngelis as the counselor. Is there any report from GOL? Again GOL met on January 8th and voted four zero with one absent to declare the Black History Month proclamation to be clear consistent and actionable. Okay the motion that I need is to proclaim February 2020 Black History Month and adopt the Black History Month proclamation as amended by replacing the word noon with the word one o'clock p.m. Is there a subject of motion? Pat? So moved. Second. Dorothy? I second. Okay. Any further discussion? All those in favor raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain. Thirteen zero zero. Okay we will now move on to our first presentation and I'm calling on Mr. Backelman and I think you are going to introduce the rest of the team. Is that correct? Yes ma'am. Along with Mr. Zomac. Thank you for having us. This is going to be a little bit of a carousel. We have a number of people who are will be presenting and we're trying a new format for presenting so let's see if that works. There we are. So tonight we want to talk about downtown Amherst. It's the heart of our community, the place we come to meet. It's like here tonight in Town Hall to engage with others. It's our Civic Center with the Town Hall, Jones Library, Public Safety, Buildings, and Senior Center. It's our commercial center with our extensive array of retail offices and businesses. It's the home to many of our religious institutions. Where we go for entertainment and movies, an extensive array of restaurants with cuisine from across the globe, and our transportation nexus where many of the roads and many of the bus lines all either wind up here or go through here. So and increasingly it's becoming the the residential home of hundreds of people who live here on year round. Something we hope will develop into a true vibrant residential community in the years ahead. It's the place where residents come to come on Saturdays to shop at the farmer's market, grab supplies at Hastings, enjoy the wonderful chaos of the town fair, or meet a friend for a quiet cup of tea or coffee or a fun night at a bar. It's also a destination for visitors, both those who are looking at colleges and tourists visiting our many cultural attractions. It's a dynamic place with the opportunity to do much more. But our downtown needs attention. We have done some, but we need to do more. Tonight is a first look for the town council, an opportunity for us to place some projects, ideas really, before the council for your consideration. We're not asking you for to decide anything tonight. It's the opportunity for us to preview what we will be presenting in the next few months and for the public to see what's coming up so they can engage with you as well. We call this destination Amherst and we want to provide a roadmap for investments both public and private in our downtown that will cultivate and enhance and celebrate the cultural richness of our community and make all those amenities more accessible to all who live in and visit the town. Tonight we'll identify the things we're already doing, note the projects that are in the pipeline, and present to the town council as a first look some exciting new opportunities that will be presented to you in the coming months. These include a new performing arts shell on the town common, a total rehabilitation of the tired and worn out North Common, including reclaiming one of the most important parcels of town from being dedicated solely to parking, and an impressive idea to construct a parking structure that will address many of the needs identified by the public and business community at no cost to the town. I have one more thing. These projects are all connected and that's one reason you see us using this new Prezi format so that you can see that we're moving around. Some people get sick by it because it's like it's movement but bear with us. So I'm going to speak for a few minutes on Kendrick Park. I know that the council is very familiar with Kendrick. We recently came before you with the exciting news that the town was successful in getting a $400,000 park grant. That is the largest grant that is awarded through the park grant program and we're very excited to bring that to you. As you know that this proposal to bring a new playground to Kendrick Park builds on a master plan that was done and participated in by dozens and dozens of citizens, residents and staff and committee members back in 2011. It calls for a playground and new walkways at Kendrick Park and again it's a combination of park grant funding and CPA funding and we're very grateful to the council for supporting the CPA funds that you have authorized. So without going into great detail this is a conceptual design. I want to make that very clear. I know you know it and hopefully the folks behind me do and those folks on TV. This was a conceptual design that we put forth as you have to do for the park grant program. It is not the design for the park. We are now engaging our community in coming up with designs for the playground and walkways. On either side of the conceptual design you'll see kind of a range of different playground structures, some more traditional, some you might see in a playground like we're doing down at Groff Park and then on the other side what we call more of a naturalized playground. We had a meeting on January 9th that was well attended, about a two hour meeting led by the planning department with LSSE commission support and participation and right now we're gathering all of this community input to put into a design that will be developed with the planning department and DPW and through the LSSE commission. Next steps are that as I said we'll be developing that plan. We'll hold some community feedback meetings in the spring. We're under a very aggressive timeline for this grant and that is really determined by the park grant folks in Boston. We need to finish the design this spring probably around June 1st and we need to put it out to bid in early summer for a beginning construction in the fall of 2020 and completing the park by June 30th of 2021. So that's a very exciting project to activate the north part of our downtown. So next I'm going to invite Gabrielle Gold who's the Executive Director of the Business Improvement District and Jeff Kravitz who is our Economic Development Director and as you well know this is Jeff's probably last presentation to the town council and we're very fortunate that he's here tonight and thank you for being here Jeff. I'm going to say a couple words to embarrass him because we will have another event later this week for town staff and say goodbye to Jeff but Jeff as you all have worked with him know that he brings the highest caliber of work to the town. He's dedicated himself to the mission of economic development and the town has done a tremendous amount of work. He's going off to do some really good things. He'll be a colleague in the town of Sunderland as the town administrator there. He's smart and most importantly he's really fun to work with. He's going to leave a big hole in the mezzanine for us. Hello Gabrielle Gold, the Executive Director of the Downtown Amherst Bid. Good evening. The bid is here tonight to start the conversation for the Performing Arts Show. We have created a standalone 501c3 foundation. The Downtown Amherst Foundation was created to raise the funds to build and help program a public art and performance space on the south common. While we have not put any designs out to bid for costs the foundation intends to launch a capital campaign with the goal of raising one million dollars. This will cover the design and building of the structure, secure a maintenance and endowment fund, as well as a fund for programming for the first two years. I think I got this. All right. The south common is where we see the structure having the greatest impact. The bid sees the location being where our temporary stage resided last summer. This location agrees with the Olmsted's with Olmsted's original drawings of Amherst's green spaces from 1874. Based on the brief history of the town common that we are happy to share as well as our summer concert series we feel this is where the benefit will be greatest to the Downtown, the businesses, and the economic development of our area. We have spoken with many businesses on the common including the Inn on Boltwood and each one has welcomed the idea and has asked when. Actually for over a hundred years the desire for performance space on the common has been noted and as recently as 1991 a narrow loss of 72 in favor and 76 opposed at town meeting precluded this opportunity for the generous offer from the Rotarians to donate and build this stage. There is a palpable and outspoken desire for our downtown landlords, business owners, and community that Amherst needs more and that the arts and culture are a great way to increase traffic of both our community and tourism to our downtown. Amherst needs to be a destination not a drive-by. Acoustically we have spoken to several sound and stage engineers the proposed location based on sorry everybody based on the natural topography is ideal something we feel as imperative is that the common be reactivated a performing art shell that is visible coming into town from all directions instead of hidden away as part of that reactivation seeing life and art happening in the heart of a downtown can only have a great impact on invigorating our community. It is our understanding that usage of the common is in downtown Amherst continues to decline and has dropped over 50 percent in recent years. We need to bring the heart of our community back online. We are working with the architects who won the contest through a public voting charrette hosted by the bid. The contest was a great entry to design but had very little structure as to what was needed in terms of acoustic size performance ability a la dance theater music art lighting weather engineering for northeast climate and more. It did however bring us a winning team to work with on design of what could be Naomi Darling and Ray Mann are very excited to create a design with the bid to present to the design review board planning board and council when the time is right. We will also be working with an acoustic engineer out of Boston who has worked on many performance spaces and an engineer to ensure that the shell is sound in terms of weather and building code. The design will focus on functionality with the inherent knowledge that this would be often a piece of sculpture or art on our common and therefore needs to be attractive and pleasing to the eye. We are planning on meeting with town offices regularly to ensure that our design is compliant. The use of the stage will be hugely multifaceted. We envision local talents utilizing this the high school performing arts bringing programming such as theater band performances poetry slams and open mic nights little kid programming as simple as mommy and me yoga or music classes local dance and music recitals local non-profit and organizations who host events will be able to utilize this space as well as be able as allow us the ability to bring in talent. Some of our goals and ideas range from Shakespeare and co traveling dance troops like Pilabalus modern dance company and all types of music from classical to jazz to rock and roll. Summer viewing of films festivals and art shows as well the main programming would be in the summer with shoulder season looking at but not limited to parent weekends graduations and events from both our own public regional high schools and our university and colleges. In short how do we encourage the campuses and visiting parents to come into downtown and enjoy Amherst. The bid and the downtown Amherst foundation look forward to working with the council and we see great opportunity in working together. We introduce this to the council tonight with a desire to present a more in-depth presentation in late february or early march and then move forward with design. Once design is approved by the powers that be we intend to get bids on building costs and begin our fundraising endeavors. These are very broad strokes and we know that there's a lot to discuss. I look forward to speaking more about this and to working with the council and the town on this and many great initiatives to ensure that Amherst thrives. This council holds the key to bringing more art and culture to downtown. We are ready to do the legwork and create a space for all to enjoy. The energy and vision with new leadership across the board is sitting in this room. Thank you. So very quickly building on the Gabrielle's presentation on the main part of the common. We're going to move toward the north common and I think as Gabrielle said we look forward in the coming months to presenting a more in-depth proposal to you but right now what I'd like to do is cover some of the main aspects of our proposal which came before the select board actually back in the fall of 2008 and the select board graciously reviewed our proposal and decided that they would really work with staff work with the town manager to to put a pause button a little bit on our plans and here we are a year later coming back to you and hoping to reinvigorate this project and review it with you in the months ahead. So this is really a 10-year plan for improvements to the north common. The effort was led by the historical and LSSE commissions with staff support. We were able to hire a well respected architectural firm out of Boston, Weston and Samson. They worked with us to come up with a number of proposals for the north common. Well over a hundred people were involved in the effort. We held multiple meetings right here in this room and throughout town and gathered input on a range of topics from accessibility to the parking situation in the main street lot, trees, access, lighting and the list goes on and on. At that time we were able to secure a partial funding package from town meeting and that's really where we hit the pause button and fast forward to today. So here's a look very quickly at our town common from the air. It is an area of town that I think most of us would not be terribly proud of. It has severe erosion issues. Many of the trees are dying or later in their lives and suffering from disease and other ailments. We have worked closely with Alan Snow, our tree warden, to assess all of the trees on the north common. So the tree warden as well as the public shade tree committee have been involved in our efforts and we've looked at everything from electrical service, trees, access, the topography of the area prevents very unique challenges. If any of you have been out there in the rainstorm and seen the water movement and soil movement from the northwest corner to the southeast corner there are some days I think you could put a kayak out there and maybe have a good run of it. So we did all of this assessment looking at infrastructure and we came up with a number of plans that were vetted right here in this room as I said and let me just move quickly to what we collectively called the preferred plan and this was the plan that was presented to the select board as I said I believe it was in December of 2018 and what it did was it provided people with a plan that really looked at some fundamental things like dealing with the erosion on the site and the challenging topography. It created a plan that allowed people to move from one side of the common to the other. It increased the width of sidewalks particularly on the Hastings side if you will of the common and it came up with compromises to creating better parking around the common on boltwood. It did present some food for thought on direction of traffic on boltwood but again these were all concepts that were put out there. One of the central features of this plan is really celebrating the town hall and you can see in the upper right hand corner of the the north common this area that would double as both a parking area most of the time but also an area that we could better present large gatherings. Think Mary Mabel, think extended farmers market, think any other gatherings that the town might want to do or nonprofits might want to have on our north common. It also presented spaces for just informal gathering throughout the throughout the common and let me go through a couple of those. So these were some of the concepts that we came up with in our in our various public meetings again with a focus on activating the space, creating areas for sitting, for picnicking, many people throughout the process referenced Pulaski Park in Northampton and the incredible job that Northampton did to transform that space and I think if any of you have been there you know what that can be eight or nine months of the year. We're looking for something like that in in the heart of our downtown. This was a final image that was created by Weston in Samson really giving a sense of what kind of a meeting space, a lingering space, how we could activate the central part of the common while still retaining a great tree canopy as well as spaces just private spaces for quiet reflection for having a picnic or reading a book and I think the preferred plan accomplished all of that. So next steps really we hope to work with you to review the design that was presented back in the fall of 2018 to gather more community input to really blow the dust off this plan a little bit and then ultimately present all of those plans to you in a more formal way when we have a little bit more time but all of this would be part of this package for downtown improvements. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you Paul for the kind words. I'm now going to make you regret them. I brought a visual aid and it's a parking structure because I don't have a lot of pretty pictures and I'm not nearly as charming as the next speaker. So it probably will not have a car lift or anything like that but parking is actually it's a really serious issue it's not nearly as much fun as parks or playgrounds or performing arts shells but I think it's vitally important to our downtown. At peak times parking is near at capacity. The recent study showed that I think it's 7 p.m. on Saturday nights it's at 86 percent capacity which really feels like it's at 100 capacity. The future demand study also showed that over the next few years parking demand is going to likely increase by up to 12 percent. And the basic idea behind this proposal is that it's going to increase parking spots available to the public without an investment of private dollars and the the ideal location I think that staff has looked at and downtown property owners and stakeholders is sort of the lot behind Miss Saigon between Pleasant Street and North Prospect Street. So I think that you know one of the strategies in the report itself was to look at a public-private partnership. This is a public parking lot right now owned by the town it has 70 spaces. You know there's been some preliminary work done looking at the size of the lot and what could potentially be built and the topography of it and you know there's a because of the hill and the structure I think that there's a floor that can go in into the hill and be unseen and then potentially stories above it. Point out just the rendering up there is not anything about this. I think that's a Smith College lot that that's in Northampton but it's just an idea of parking structures don't have to be monolithic things that are eyesores that can be done nicely. So going back we think that potentially there could be up to around 200 spots total. Right now there are less than 700 metered public spots in downtown so we're talking about a fairly significant increase around 15 percent parking spots. And again at this point I think that what we're talking about is just exploring the opportunity and saying this is a piece of town owned property we think it's underutilized. We don't think that public funds should necessarily be used in order to create a parking structure there but can we put out an RFP for a public private partnership and see if the private sector thinks that it's worthwhile to do something and I think that in such an arrangement the town would have a lot of control over what the RFP looks like and could determine things like height and what it looks like how many spots public availability things like that and then see if there are interested parties who would come back and say yes we think we can make money and we think it could help the town and it could be a real win-win. You know one of the things I've heard since day one and I think as people who have campaigned and been counselors for over a year you've heard as well is that parking is a challenge in Amherst. So next steps the parcel is currently zoned in a way that does not allow parking structures so we would have to look at you know either creating an individual overlay zone or something else that that would allow a parking structure there and then obviously a public procurement process draft the RFP tell the industry what we want and then allow them to respond and come back to us with a potential solution and I can pass this around I brought some cars if people want to play while we finish up I did not bring one for everyone so I'm sorry. So I just want to mention some things this is just sort of an add-on to note that we are doing things downtown we have been doing things downtown for a number of years and we will continue to do things for downtown so while I think your attention should rightly be on the projects that we just discussed I do want to note that you know we received a significant multi-million dollar mass works grant where we were able to build help build the roundabout make the put the utilities underground and install crosswalks and new lighting we had we got a cdbg grant we use some of our cdbg money to do the walkway where next to the Unitarian Church the amity street with the crosswalk and the parking lot has been done the main street from basically town hall down to the Emily Dickinson house with new crosswalks sidewalks road repairs that that's been done what's coming up is we received a grant to replace the pleasant walkway which is the Starbucks walkway that has the deterioration and that along with some crosswalks downtown will be done with grant funding the you will see a request coming before the council to have a privately funded handicap access on in the public way for the visitor information center and we'll be working on other improvements to sewer lighting crosswalks and sidewalks downtown all that is to emphasize that we aren't looking just at public funds to make these changes that the town has been looking for and has secured significant grants to make improvements downtown we have we are looking through the garage a public private partnership where we utilize an asset that the town has i.e. the land and secure funding and the investment by the private sector to build a parking structure that will address the parking need but also more importantly address the perception of the need for parking downtown which is what has been identified over and over and I think many of us feel it that I'm not sure I'm going to find a place to park so I don't want to go downtown and the and then the private commitment by the business improvement district which started a non-profit to raise a million dollars to put a structure on the on the common is a significant step forward and they are set and ready to go but and then for the north common the jewel of the town downtown you know activating that space which is where we all walk through a different times and we we have the reading of the human rights week there is the weekly vigil that takes place there it's used all the time and it's an embarrassment quite honestly to to what we have there it should be the shining gem of our entire town but we it it just looks shabby and we use the most important parcel to dedicate it to cars and I think it's time to rethink how we do how we think about that that change with the addition of a parking garage should help a lee lay some of the fears that people have about removing parking downtown so it's there's a lot here it's it's ambitious I'm not asking you to say yes or no to any of these we understand that you're going to want time we also know that the public one of the reasons for doing this tonight is so that the public can start to hear about these ideas start to pay attention to them start to weigh in so that public has some time to digest what this all means what they how this what this means for the future of the downtown and I appreciate that the president has allowed time for the public who are here who would like to weigh in so um so that that's pretty much all I have to say and we are here to answer your questions oh did we get it maybe I didn't do everything so here's here's where we are Kendrick Park already approved downtown improvements will be doing that during the summer in the fall here's our schedule rough schedule hasn't been confirmed by the president yet but conceptually here's where we think we can be in terms of when we when the when we will be ready to present is the performing art shell in the February March time frame the north common and parking structure in the April May time frame so that's the time frame we would like this to come back to the council for you to go through your process I know it'll have to go through a committee structure and you'll have a lot of discussions and decisions to make on these things but we're we feel that we're ready to start acting and this is the year to make it happen so that concludes our report. Thanks to all of you who have made your presentations we have both an opportunity for council discussion and comments and questions and then we also have an opportunity with this agenda item for public comment so let's begin with the council Kathy. Thank you very much as you know we didn't get a chance to see this or at least I don't think we got a chance to see this before it came but what we did have at least a list of what might be on it what I I think my overarching question is I'd like to see it as a package with some price tags on it because we're also facing as you know some very tough decisions as we move ahead and one time I saw the North Commons I may be lagged on this but we had about a million dollars but the design was calling for two million dollar projects so I don't know whether something can be brought in at a million dollars you know within a budget you know trying to think of how this works together and so I I don't know how you're thinking of getting sets of questions so the garage we built many years ago boltwood was built so it could have upper stories put on it and it was very expensive with the underground so I I just think a series of questions on a the location of it the total cost and if a private entity was running it what kinds of parking fees might we be expecting is what Northampton's been really successful of starting on the higher side and but running it themselves and pulling down on the debt till now it gets less and less expensive so just thinking of what that model so for me it's much easier to think of things together the way you've presented them one by one so I'm hoping we're going to have that opportunity together um and and I would include the playground up in Kendrick Park too I mean what what else are we thinking of Kendrick Park um because we could activate we heard some very interesting ideas from other towns recently in Boston that were very low priced so thinking of what we can do within our budget limits short term versus long term those are all excellent questions and when we get to the time to talk about them you know the price instructor for the garage all those things are not worked out it's something we want to have the the conversation with the council about okay additional comments from the council Shalini so I feel very energized by the proposal here in terms of not just a single project but bringing these this collection of projects that can activate and re-energize our downtown and I specifically want to speak to one idea picked up at the MMA the municipal conference that we were at which was about diversity inclusion and it invited us to look at all our fact all the issues through the lens of diversity inclusion and just like we were starting to do for climate change and one of the things that comes up for me for having a performance shell right in the heart of downtown is that it makes it accessible it makes art and culture accessible to so many more people who can't afford to go to Broadway or fancy places and it also invites people who are artists new artists who can maybe pay you know expensive fees to rent locations they could find a space to showcase their art and therefore have an opportunity so I think this is really a remarkable idea I'm excited additional comments Alyssa a couple of things not entirely related one is I'm a little chagrined to hear the concept that most of us are not proud of the North Common of course we're not proud of it but it's not like any elected officials ever told town staff ignore it this isn't about what happened in select board in 2018 this is decades of not managing the mulch decades of watching the trees get older decades of watching the different enclosures that the kids love to play on around the trees deteriorating and so those were not active decisions on any elected officials apart to say just ignore that we'll let that go so one of the things we really need to hear about and this has been a theme I think of this town council so far as we're moving forward and I know at least one of the projects mentions a maintenance fund for the band shell we're bad at that we have a lot of really good people with really good intentions who don't have enough time to do everything and that fell apart because choices were made not by elected officials to not keep that up so we're going to really I think want to hear a lot about how that's going to be different moving forward every time we build something new because we really want to keep these things up so that we all can be proud of them and then on a separate note in terms of managing our expectations as to what we can expect to see I do understand that we were told the general topics for tonight as Kathy mentioned we had no idea if we were going to be receiving detailed proposals or a really beautiful somewhat uneasy making but very beautiful slide presentation or if we were going to get two page proposals on each of the reports we knew nothing until we walked in the door tonight so I appreciate what it turned out to be that we didn't need to try and absorb the information I'll also point out that all the town council part-time elected officials turned in all our reports before we went to MMA so everybody had a chance to look at those before they left so let's please continue with our focus on getting materials ahead of time for the next set of things that we get so for February we have stuff well in advance of that Monday meeting so we have more time to ask you questions before we get here etc because I think this was great as a wonderful introduction for everybody but we we had no idea what to expect coming in what level of introduction was going to be and so if we can just get that managed better like you can say oh you're only going to get this much information and then we'll know how to budget our time and so we can tell the public because we had people asking us what's the proposal going to be we're like I don't know if there's going to be one or if it's just going to be a really great intro so that helps us help the public additional comments yes Steve so I want to thank you for calling the North Common Project the North Common Project and not the North Common Main Street Parking Lot Project because it's really the North Common with parking on it that in my opinion should never have been put on it so I'm also glad to see part of the package a multi-story parking garage very close proximity which will address a lot of the concerns that people have expressed about the parking on our North Common so that's I think those two points and then my third point is exciting to see the two is the other common called the South Common or Regular Common or South Common Middle Common the South it's exciting to see the two and so in some ways the performing art space on the Regular Common South Common might mean that the North Common might have to be less ambitious because that one of the plans I saw also had a ban shell on the North Common or had a not a ban shell but a performing space on it so some of the big ideas for the North Common can be taken up by the South Common and maybe that will help with budget and other issues okay Sarah so again I do think a lot of these things are absolutely beautiful um I think for someone who does go downtown a lot and whose kids like to go downtown a lot and often it's so um I feel like the hardest part to get to Amherst especially on the weekends is this North Area if you want to go just even pick something up at like Buena Huesano I know that my family cannot find a place to park and so what ends up happening is is that one person runs to go get it and the other person has to go you know we're talking about like maybe on boltwood like that behind part being one way there's no way because you have to make a circle in order to come pick somebody up again that extends all of the downtown going past the one boltwood and it's that's the hard place to park and if you've got young children or you've got your mom there who's in a wheelchair trying to get to that Common and park or even get to that side of town which is very busy there just isn't anything and I know maybe it's only a few parking spaces that will lose but do people have such a hard time getting anywhere in there it's it does really hit on people that we it sort of seems like we're being told two different things one is we need complete streets we want to be you know a walking community and at the same time you know then we're building the the parking garage and I just from a common sense point of view I look forward to somebody like just showing me Sarah like this is a way traffic is going to flow or don't worry about that part in front of Town Hall because there's going to be parking somewhere close by there thank you additional comments yes Dorothy I'm excited to buy some of the ideas but I am agreeing with Sarah that parking is a major major problem and certainly for handicapped accessible we have merchants complaining that people can't find a place to park we have Amherst Cinema saying that people come from out of town and can't find a place to park and I do agree that we do want to get rid of some of those parking places in front of Town Hall but my my vision is restoring historic green as much I think that it's going to take a lot of money I mean if I listen from what I've heard about restoring an athletic field to restore an eroded area with grass and trees that are young and living and to put benches benches and I love the idea of the passive places to meet, walk, sit, read I think that's really appropriate but and I am a devotee of the performing arts and like to do them myself but I would prefer to see the band shell or not band shell the performing art space on Kendrick Park I went to the meetings and there seems to be space for that to happen that is an active park there will be bushes and trees and rocks and places that are nature and when I was there we were all putting our dots on the plans that used boulders and logs and looked not metal the whole way but keeping the greens the north and the south green as simple and quiet as possible so that we and then thinking about more parking also I read a letter today from grace church there was it's I had never thought about the fact of what you need to have in front of a church in terms of herces that you have to have a certain kind of parking that you have to have quiet that you may have your programs that would be going on the same time as other concerts there was a great concern I just wish we hadn't lost the spring street parking lot so if somebody has an idea of how to create a small parking lot downtown that would be great I'm I do think that the parking lot that you're describing is going to be very welcome I just wanted to shift the entertainment a little bit uptown to Kendrick Park and to work at keeping a very quiet and green piece of nature and we do remember of course that many big activities come in and put up temporary structures on the parks and we always go to them but I'm glad when they're going to additional comments Pat I really admire the transformation bid has done around the band stand which it was originally and moved it to a performing arts a permanent performing arts stage I think it will add to the life of the town and continue counter to what Dorothy is saying continue the engagement of citizens and performances in festivals and taste of Amherst and the things like that I too am concerned because I must have been at a select board meeting when the North Common Plan was presented and I remember very much the Episcopal Church talking about the direction that they needed for herces etc so I'm glad Dorothy brought that up I think that the new parking possibility of really creating a public-private partnership will do a lot to alleviate and and we're talking I think they we're going to lose 11 to parking spots with the North Common Change and if we were able to keep as many of the spaces as possible handicapped accessible that are there it would be important Bandy Joe so I like the comprehensive plan in a way but I do have some concerns particularly about the shell so I'm going to focus on that one it is proposed to be on the town common which is a public way that is under our control and with a proposal to be built by a private entity so potentially a public private partnership but without any at this point and I I'm saying this so that hopefully we can get more specifics later on on who owns it in the end and who the intended controlling entity on granting the reservation rights is and because right now that would be us under our public ways policy depending on how often it would fall to you as manager too but but things like that because if it is looked at as the bid built it so the bid gets priority I've got concerns about that you know and so getting more information about what the operations of that would look like before any vote on design or anything comes to the council I think for me is going to be vitally important and and I would personally like more information about I know the Kendrick Park plan in that plan from the 2010s or earlier had a potential shell and band space included in it and so you know I'm kind of with Dorothy and all about what's the plan there if that was the plan there are we aiming for both ends what are we aiming for comprehensively is the common the best spot in town our bid director said that when the businesses around the common are pulled they say yes but what about the businesses up by Kendrick Park I'm sure they would rather have it at Kendrick Park so I'm looking for more information as to what the best location for a shell is not well Olmsted you know planned it that way so that's what we have to do well that's been 100 plus years so maybe given the development of our downtown that might not be the most logical spot so I would be looking for more information on that route too as we move forward on this additional comments Evan so I want to echo much of what was said about appreciating the comprehensive nature of this connecting the dots between a number of different projects and especially pairing them especially since one project would involve removing parking and another would involve adding a significant amount of parking so my my two comments one has to do with the parking facility so that's something that I would like a little bit more information on how we move forward with that from a zoning perspective there was a conversation if it has to be rezoned versus an overlay I know you're already intending to bring us that information but getting that information in advance and knowing what the options are so instead of just saying we want to do an overlay it'd be nice to know if we don't do that you could also rezone it or perhaps there's you know other options too so understanding what our options are to move that forward because I think it's really exciting of a project and I think as we're approaching these major capital investments the idea that we could get something a big infrastructure project done as part of a public-private partnership is exciting and perhaps a model for how we can do some of the other major investments that we have in front of us that we haven't even considered using public-private partnership model for the second thing would be the new with common project I think there's been a lot of work done on this which is great I align I think a little bit more with where Steve is and then I'd like to see there be no parking on that common I think that it's always been an embarrassment to me that we have paved over sections of our historic common and that public space I am always troubled by how much public space we reserve for the temporary storage of private vehicles accessible to some and so I would like to see us reclaim some of that public space for the community and see if there are options perhaps on on boltwood to increase parking we were just all in Boston and I noticed the how common it was for diagonal parking on streets if that's something that's an option to perhaps maintain the number of spaces but take them completely off of the common and so viewing this not just as the common but also as boltwood and options there thank you additional comments from the council George just briefly one of the least for me personally the most moving things that that I've done and we'll be doing again soon celebrate black history month is the reading of proclamations and the gathering of citizens and it works fine we stand on the steps of town hall police keep traffic for running people over but it seems that we might consider this space in the north common as a place for that to take place a gathering place for those kinds of events so that's something I'd like us to keep in mind the performance part perhaps in the south common but and the quiet space in the north is fine but I'd like to think that we could somehow in the planning create a space where when we do these kinds of proclamations and people gather there would be a designated space where we don't have to be worried worry about being run over or things like that additional comments from the council shall any I'm sorry Darcy you have not spoken yet I just have a few comments one is I would like to see how this whole plan that's together with our other capital requests you know ideally I'd love to see a spreadsheet of all of our potential capital requests and how much each costs and so that we could rank them so that we could prioritize them against each other I'd also like to know how sustainability generally and climate action will be integrated into whatever it is that we're proposing here because we're going to be having a climate action plan completed sometime in the next few months and hopefully everything is going to be integrated into that and lastly I'd kind of like since this is clearly it's going to you know if some of these things were done they'd benefit the town they'd benefit the residents but they would especially benefit the downtown businesses it would be nice to include in a package like this you know something the businesses together could offer such as a plan to compost all of the restaurant's food waste in a program where it would go to be used in local farms or something like that or using compostable containers or you know something that the local business community could offer in exchange for time counsel not in exchange but to sweeten the pot so yes those are my comments additional comments shallowness I agree with my councillor co-councillor whatever colleague however you say that it's trying to be all formal but anyway I agree you need more information about the ownership and so forth of the performance shall regarding the reservations I think we as a council need to have a conversation about do we want to be the ones who are making reservations like artists emailing us and or coming here and it seems like that's going to be too cumbersome and time-consuming for us as a council to be doing the reservations so I would be very happy to pass that on to the bid or whoever is willing to do that however as a council we could come up with criteria that we can provide to them that guides them and what sort of programming and so forth but that's something I think that as a council we need to have a discussion on and then provide the guidelines to to the bid okay additional comments I'd like to make one or two first of all I really want to appreciate express my appreciation to both the town manager your staff and the business community for coming forward together I think that sets a tone that allows us to look at this from the very beginning as a partnership and it is not to be seen as something minor this is the beginning of a very very important discussion for us when the town council met in its retreat back about almost a year ago now we actually identified downtown as one of our three top priorities and it continues to be a priority that many counselors have extraordinary interest in some people themselves have businesses downtown and clearly all of us have spent a whole lot more time downtown since we've been elected to office and we get to see it in its many many different forms so while I'm not going to get into whether or not the parking fee should be here we do have to look at this in light of our many many demands on our capital and on our land and but at the same time I really hope that we can find a way to weave forward as we often have been doing and come to an acceptable solution that will enhance our downtown so that it brings both businesses and our residents down here so with that let's go to public comment who would like to speak let's start over here and please come forward we are going to limit you to three minutes unless it gets to be a lot and please state your name and where you live David Mazer 27 Woodlott Road in Amherst I'm also a property owner uptown at 37 39 South Pleasant Street I know there's a lot of talk about the North Common building Guillaume is right across from the North Common the Main Street parking lot is just about the most heavily used parking lot in Amherst it's in line of sight of many many businesses that rely on that parking lot I have gone around I've talked to 24 businesses they are all appalled at the idea that the town would even consider removing those parking spaces because parking is their number one concern not all parking is exchangeable if you're going to go get to the barbershop you're not necessarily going to park way behind CVS you can't look at these things as just interchangeable a lot of the businesses Russell's liquors or a lot of the restaurants they rely on people being able to just park come in go to Glaze Donut go to Russell's liquor that's how people use that parking lot our building the building next to our building and the building next to that have not a single private parking space there's two restaurants one of which just expanded and doubled in size if you go all the way down Main Street it's lined with restaurants these are very high traffic businesses and they as we know lunch times on weekends that lot is full you know this this holiday season I was shopping at Amherst books and I actually just by coincidence was at the register at the same time as one of the town councillors and I mentioned you know the idea like you know I hope we're not going to be losing any parking and I am for beautifying the North Common I mean that's a worthy goal what somehow has gotten involved here is the idea that you know removing parking that is needed in our central business district so I'm standing there with with this town's councillor and I turn to the people at Amherst books and I say are you guys in favor of removing some of these parking spaces they're like shocked now I've gone around and talked to their reaction was take it away we need more parking more parking where people can just come right in the door if you talk to Glaze they will tell you a lot of their customers are older they're not going to walk from far away if they do not see a space they drive on so you know this parking to go to Black sheep to go to Lone Wolf to go to Amherst barbers it is critical to them if you're going to have a farmers market on the Spring Street lot and you're going to take away half the spaces where people park to go shopping at that you're just adding to the pressure so I asked you to consider that the beautification is a worthy project but I think it needs to be confined to its current footprint and then you can think about ways maybe you can beautify a little bit to that space it may not be the most beautiful but is essential for our downtown businesses thank you thank you for your comment either I'm going to ask that at this point we continue on the theme of the parking Sharon this is on Sharon Povinelli 45 oh no uh 493 Montague road um at first I'd like to say I have the most respect for my fellow downtown business owners um it's hard out there I'd just like to throw that out we all have our own unique set of challenges and complexities um but I we obviously intersect around people and parking and how that translates into a lasting business and a vibrant downtown having said that as in a butter to the north common I would like to voice my support for the decrease and or relocation of the Main Street lot this is the epicenter of the downtown and should be allowed to be imagined as a safe space that attracts families visitors and students to enjoy the downtown and showcase what we as a community have to offer let's hide the parking and promote the parks thank you okay additional comment Carol please hello I'm Carol Johnson I'm the executive director of the Amherst Cinema and I'm here to make a couple of points um one is and we already have a very vibrant artistic community in our midst and that is with with uh some humility the Amherst Cinema we screen over 275 programs a year that's 5,000 different screenings in more than 25 languages and we attract people from all over I'm going to pass around the map which has red dots that represent our members we have over 6,700 members who come from all over Massachusetts thank you um parking is the number one concern of the Amherst Cinema and of our patrons so my main request for to you is as you're thinking about what to propose going forward please keep the vision that we've got something already that we should value and it depends upon parking and it one parking space taken away actually affects maybe three programs a day because people come for two or three hours and if that parking space is removed then it's um that parking space times three that's not available to people um just one final point and that is we attract about 110,000 people a year to Amherst Cinema that's 2,000 people a week that's uh it's a lot of people who come downtown and spend their dollars and want to park so as you're thinking about what to do going forward please think about the long term and what what we already have and how we can preserve what we do have thank you for your comments additional comments on parking let's go way back here um Leslie Eric I my my parents live in Amherst I no longer but we have a business a family business at 37 South Pleasant Street is the mic on or yeah okay okay um I I have a couple comments one is that the to remove parking spaces from the parking lot in the center of town seems like an outlandish idea if you have not already put more parking spaces in so so I would hope that if if you decide to go forward with these plans that you would absolutely add before you subtract because to take parking spaces away is extremely frustrating um we pay for um the downtown parking permits for our employees and uh I guess there's no limit on the downtown parking permits for people who live and work in the center of town because even though we pay for those uh every year uh our employees uh including me we end up having to park at meter spaces anyway because there aren't enough spaces so like to remove more of those in the center of town seems foolish um and also there already is a parking garage behind Judy's um and I remember when it was built and I remember that the intention was to have it be multi-storied and I wonder if anybody knows why that didn't happen um please don't go there okay well that's just like a half finished idea that like now didn't work out and I just feel like there might be other half finished ideas that aren't gonna work out and are gonna you know like maybe don't take stuff away until you have like a real clear plan and and something else there to replace the things that you're trying to take away and also um are they gonna cut down the nice big old beautiful trees on the north common in order to reclaim that green space because by I would strongly object to cutting those trees down those are those are sort of like the nicest part of that area and you know if you're going to build something new I mean can you guarantee that it's going to be maintained since the things that are there now are not being maintained what would be the difference you know who's going to be in charge of maintaining new structures new buildings new ban shells um is there no is it the the parking garage that already was started that's not something that can ever be uh expanded we're not going to comment at this time okay that's because that's our rule with public comment okay okay well just you know I would hope that you would add before you begin subtracting thank you thank you for your comment the gentleman back here please state your name and your address it's uh Jeremy Austin and 75 northeast street um I just wanted to comment on the parking I am all in favor of I have a business at 31 South Pleasant Street right on the common um and uh have looked at the north common for quite a long time and it's uh it's decrepit state but anyway uh I think we're getting to an argument where uh you know might have you might have had in north Hampton 30 years ago you know of course we you know uh how are we going to survive with you know a parking lot and everybody using a parking lot well everybody uses the parking lot there it's it's a place where you can always find parking and it frees up more of the street parking um if we are to put uh parking in the cbs lot the natural spot in town it's actually very close uh to the theater I would add hundreds of spots and the 15 or so spots that will be lost on the north common would be inconsequential which is a decent walk from there to the cinema and it's not appreciably further behind the Jones Library straight shot uh the other thing about it is that if we were having this argument and there was no parking there it would be absolutely absurd there's no way we could ever get it passed where somebody said let's dig up a part of the common but put 15 spots on it I mean I why are we having the conversation that just would not happen so let's reverse the past and and do the right thing and put grass there and make it a beautiful place and I will take all day long a beautiful town center with lots of programming on the common and I'll take the 25 people who want to come through this town and are excited to be in this town to the one person who's bitter about not finding a parking place when they drive through thank you for your comment Vince please come forward that's all connor summer street um yeah so we did a parking garage x number of years ago net gain of 30 to 40 spaces for six million dollars hopefully uh a new garage will do a little better on the per space thing um the shell on the on the middle common this is south common is really an emmer's college um if you really want to make it functional you're going to have to end parking enforcement at six o'clock if you're going to have programs at night um and with regard to the the parking permit situation the council can find out for itself I could make a public records request but my my belief is that the last time I looked there were somewhere between two and a half to three times as many permits that were granted as there are permit spaces and of course the situation with creating five-story buildings with no parking spaces as is about to happen on spring street like literally not a single parking space not even an hp space on on the property or a zip car space um is it may work during the the the weekdays but on the weekends when those um when those spaces are open to everybody and people park their cars you are inviting you have invited a serious problem the only good thing about those buildings is they're basically luxury apartments that are occupied by most people if you can drive by during the summer and during the winter term for seven months of the year so you may luck out but my concern when i'm listening to all this and seeing all these proposals is that i ran for school committee starting twice starting more than 10 years ago who's and my first priority was to deal with uh renovating our schools and if i'm a citizen who's paying really enormous taxes and i live in an apartment so my taxes aren't that enormous or my share of the rent that goes to taxes aren't that enormous but if i'm listening to and looking at all this discussion and i have kids in schools and i'm wondering when the town says well you can't build a new school to have an override or until we get state funding and yet all our nineties projects are out of the capital budget now there is money available we could have renovated the school or rebuilt or replaced at least one of our elementary schools and we haven't done it and quite frankly i think that that's going to be a problem for these proposals to fund things when we're also doing all of this thank you for your comment are there any other public comments regarding the presentation yes i'm sorry could you just ask people remind people to please sign in thank you make sure that you have signed in back there be if particularly or up here particularly if you have been a public speaker um please come forward claudia posman executive director of the amherst area chamber and also resident 47 emily lane so as representative of the of the chamber i submit the following remarks um our 2020 vision was unveiled this week and it included activation of downtown supporting the survival of businesses downtown creating experiences and playing a larger role in our creative and culture economy all contributing and supporting to this destination amherst that was described in detail firstly the performing art shell proposal made by the bid offers a private option to have a public space made available and it comes at a time when our small businesses downtown and similarly across the country are facing their toughest challenges the diversion to online shopping coupled with the loss of handing down business from generation to get to generation we start we need to get creative and this is not news to anyone but this is an opportunity to reimagine our downtown we know that our rising generation responds to experiences created we need to be innovative while holding true to an old tradition of gathering in our common space for all in addition the creative the creative culture economy represents 2.3 billion impact dollar impact on our state according to the mass cultural council culture embraces everyone as shallony pointed out it enriches community drives growth and opportunity and empowers a new creative generation and based on all the diverse groups mentioned in Gabrielle's comments it would be open for all and there are even studies who suggest that those who experience arts and culture steadily are healthier and live longer so imagine a tanglewood style concert to student performances from jazz to poetry film to concerts and like she says mommy to be to local to local school venues this is the only way we can activate our downtown or together in combination with these efforts to to create destination amourst the parking garage proposal made by the bid offers again a private public option made available at a time we were at peak crisis with a number of capital improvements needing to be made and it could alleviate some of that pressure though the nelson night nigard parking studies demonstrate that we are nearly at capacity we hear from our downtown business owners when are you going to fix downtown parking and i've heard from individuals from across the region when are you going to address downtown parking so i can come back downtown and i've heard it from residents alike who work elsewhere and don't come downtown to eat so this is this is lost revenue and a partial answer to the why of empty storefronts both the amour cinema and jones library may have plans for expansion the proposed site of the parking garage would directly support any vision for that for both of these two amourst cultural beacons alone in addition there's an increase of new development already we saw the 12 increase that jeff mentioned so more reasons to support a parking garage proposed by the downtown bid okay i'm just going to close up and just in closing with the parking garage option and a performing art shell a north common rehab is in perfect alignment with these upgrades and again as a compelling fit to the total project and and in completing the vision for amourst as a destination we have maturing and aging trees little space to truly gather and welcome over 500 000 guests who come to our museums alone so it may seem a hard balance when looking at each proposal but looking at the big picture these are wins for downtown amourst businesses and will serve as a true economic driver for the future thank you for your time thank you for your comments tony tony merullus to break court 01002 i'm a member of the bid board and i just wanted to make four quick points as you think about these projects first parking and the activation or the loss of parking on the north common one thing to note the busiest restaurant night of the year happens to be mary maple year in and year out that is the time that we take parking away from the north common we activate that that space it is not to say necessarily that you know the proposal in front of you takes away some of the parking space but activating that streetscape has actually been very beneficial to the town additionally i'm thinking about the ban shell on the common activation of the common and regular programming on the common does not necessarily preclude additional programming in kendrick park or in suites of park as you might know suites of park twice a year has the amourst community band that plays there kendrick park has been the site of at least one concert and other art events and with a playground there that would be active as well so as we think about our green space in town we're blessed to have four spaces that can be used and when they're used and used vitally it brings me to my fourth point so i'm going to skip my third one for sec the quick trips into while quick trips into town are difficult one of the thing that the one of the things that the business community has always struggled with is stickiness we lose people very quickly people come to their destination and they go one of the things that's made places like north hampton successful over the years is that ability to lounge and to be in town for a while to do some window shopping we will encourage that by activating our spaces so it's just one thing to think about as we look at all of these these plans and how they work well together and then finally to councillor hanneke's question about the structures on the common and who owns them there is precedent and i just wanted to point this out it's not to say that this would be how the comp the ban shell would work but there is precedent for other structures on the town common that were owned by other entities so when i was executive director of the chamber we owned the electricity on the common we gave that to the town because we we didn't have the money to upgrade what the town did do under i'm going to give kilford mooring a big shout out there because he did a great job with that but we own that we own that electricity we rented out that electricity for a nominal fee just so that we pay the bills on it on a regular basis i mean i think that you know whoever does run that that ban shell will need to have some revenue only to for the maintenance of and that that's one thing the the other piece to remember is that there was that additional info shack that was on the common for many many years and and it served as our visitor information center if you will before it was taken down because it was in disrepair but there so you know some of your thoughts about having a fund to maintain that will be certainly important but there is precedent for structures to be owned and to work cooperatively with the town thank you yeah thank you for your comments are there any other comment at this time please come forward my name is bob lowery i live at 1739 south east street and i have a business next to the north end of the common and um my experience uh well it's it's a restaurant bueno isano which was mentioned thank you and i and i appreciate your chiming in there um and uh however in unintuitive this may seem i think that um i agree with the idea that uh activating the space um quote unquote would probably bring additional business um to our restaurant um my my perception it's only that but is that the parking is is difficult at um peak times uh only i drive in and out of town every day park um not as much in the evening i have to say but uh my perception uh at least in the daytime and uh most of the time is that we're really talking about friday nights thursday nights maybe you know saturdays um in the evenings when everybody wants to be out for dinner or something like that and i and i uh i just think that's interesting is that we i cannot i can find a space anytime except for peak times um and the you know congress does stuff with bills and you put stuff in there and you get what you want maybe um i i like the idea that uh that was you know brought up that if if we were able to add a significant place for parking i think that would alleviate some of the pressure in the surrounding areas um and that if that could be um if that could be put into place uh maybe not you know or at least uh in the budget and going to happen then i think that uh this idea of um eliminating a few spaces downtown right where we are would be much more palatable um and more well received and i think that perceived parking is uh um just as much an issue as actual parking and i think if there were an additional large space um that went together with this other proposal to activate the common area i i would i would like to see that so thank you thank you for your comment so anybody else who would like to speak to the issue of the proposed set of plans that we have been introduced to tonight um then i'm going to turn back to the council but quickly say we have yet i have yet and with you i will work on this to figure out how to couple and decouple this so that we look at the issues we need to look at and then also look at the whole and i'll spend some time with the town manager on that and also welcome the council's comments on how they would like us to consider that um this package and yet the individual pieces of it are there any other comments from the council at this time elissa two quick things toward the future presentations whenever they come up because you'll be getting lots of individual questions from people etc so i believe there was a mention and so that can just be followed up on when we were discussing the ban shell that there's currently less usage of the common than in the past and if that's true then what is it that we're missing is there are fewer kid events because there are fewer kids in town are there fewer events than there used to be with bans but now bans want electricity i mean if if we're going to make a statement like that i'd like to know what that represents and if it's made purely on reservations etc and then the other thing is that just a whole like uh question about parking which is that yes someday i'm sure we'll be talking about the six o'clock or eight o'clock enforcement again but i would like us to reevaluate what it is that makes it special that when people want to go to downtown town hall during the day or they want to go to the common for a free event on a Saturday or the farmers market they have to pay to park but after six o'clock hey if you want to patronize the business it's free i have no understanding of why the u.s thinks this is a sensible way to manage things there are businesses that are only open until five p.m you have to pay to park to go see them there is no such thing as free parking for them so i would just hope that when we have those kinds of conversations we're thinking about what kinds of businesses we're trying to reinforce some have their own parking lots like Hastings others do not and to try maybe that's a regional thing within our little town but to be thinking about what is it that makes it great to charge people to park during the day but not at night okay are there any other comments from counselors at this time Dorothy well i would just suggest a common sense thing that we try to do an immediate zoning change and get rid of this idea that we don't that people can build apartments and don't need to provide parking for their tenants because we have a bus system i mean that has helped exacerbate the parking system in town and i you know i just think it's a common sense thing since we're talking about common sense thank you any other comments at this time shall we Lynn i'm not clear what what what are the next steps for with respect to this are we waiting for more information and then i mean i think it would be helpful for everyone involved to know you know yeah what are the next steps i think that the best thing that i can answer at this time is to come back with you with a way to lay that out because there are different pieces that we have to bring forward for example rezoning of the lot behind CVS and that's a separate issue so that's part of the couple and decouple and put it into some kind of timeline i don't have a magic answer for you okay just to add to that conversation i mean i don't expect an answer on this um thinking about the council's role for the performing arts venue is to authorize the use of the public way um i think in my mind there's a question of which comes first because i think to some extent there might be some reticence on the council to authorize the use of a public way for say a performing arts venue that is not fully funded or that we haven't seen a design for the other side of it is i know that if i was being asked to donate money to a performing arts venue and i was told that it would all be dependent on a council that i may or may not know authorizing use of the property i may be hesitant to vote and so i think there needs to be some conversation that if we're relying on private fundraising for any of these um that in the same way that we sort of pre-authorize the town manager to act um on the community choice aggregation stuff so that we could have good faith with our partners we may want to consider something similar in that um so that we can we show up front we're ready to do this if you can raise the money and as opposed to waiting to doing at the back end okay all right steve yeah so i see the proposed parking concentration the same way i see the water tanks up on the high parts of amherst that the reasons that the water tanks are there is to provide municipal water in certain parts of amherst so that development can happen more sensibly so that's how i see the proposal for the multi-story garage behind cbs is so that we can have other sensible development frankly without parking um more walkable communities so that's why i am in generally in support of this sort of back you know back lot i mean it's front lot if you live on north pleasant that's to be discussed but um back lot at least to whichever pleasant whichever pleasant that is so it's a municipal resource it's a concentration of a resource to enable the nearby entities to not provide parking okay are there additional comments from counselors at this time seeing none that i'm going to suggest we take a break even though i had not intended to do that late 30 and when we come back we will take up action item seven b and maybe even c before we move on to the board of license commissions please make the break no more than about five minutes if possible thank you um as some of you may know that on january 6th we had a little connection problem for the second half of the meeting and amherst media worked very hard and did restore the tape but it took a little while so we're trying to make sure we're still connected all right jeff why don't you come forward since we're going to do bylaws and this is our opportunity to you know say whatever else we might want to say to you i did not bring props for this if you did it would have been reams of paper at this point and lawn mowers plastic bags etc waiting for two people but okay so as i mentioned let's get through the bylaw stuff and then we'll spend just a little bit of time um saying whatever we might like to say to jeff about his future but um meantime uh i i just love dangling it out there you know um we've had a number of conversations about the general bylaws and the approach we're proposing to use tonight in fact we're planning to use tonight is instead of sitting here and debating each of the bylaws that people have asked for changes to is to in fact refer it to go well and this would allow us to meet our timeline of replace and repeal or repeal and replace and also meet our timeline of dissolving the bylaw review committee we need to do this because just leaving town um there you go okay um so in the process there are a couple of motions in fact there are four motions specifically about the bylaws and then i also just want to um our four or five motions i think actually six motions thank you uh but i also want to point out that there are other items that were already being referred and that this those are already automatically referred this is we need to have a motion on those two that's okay got it all right so let's just begin with the first motion is to repeal and replace the general bylaws with the document recommended general bylaws of the town of amherst dated 1206 19 is there a motion so moved is there a second conversation discussion questions dorthy it wasn't you okay dharsi i'm sorry how how would this motion affect the the later motions that are um referring different sections to the gol committee so what this first motion allows us to do is to take the recommendations as made by the committee accept those so that we have in place an ongoing set of general bylaws with the changes that they recommended okay and at the same time refer to gol the four particular areas of the bylaws that that counselors have asked that there be changes on and in addition the additional pieces that have been asked already to be automatically referred so all it what it does is it gives us a set of general bylaws that have been in fact revised but still leaves open for future revision in the near future possibly why don't we do it with the exception of those sections because you need the bylaw if there is a bylaw in there you need it in there otherwise you would remove the bylaw and completely and i don't think you want to do that so in other words you would remove the plastic bylaw completely i don't think you want to do that i also have my hand up just i want to clarify lin um in terms of i've got a couple on others but it seems to me one could leave the existing wording as is in the new revised um rather than leave it blank and remove it all together i mean that is an option i mean it might not be an option that we want to consider you know that we're gonna that that some wording was cleaned up and it reads cleaner and we are but there's a placeholder so i as i understood Darcy had given us a rewrite for the the single use plastics as an amendment to the revisions that have been made so it's just not clear to me that we have to literally delete it and be silent on it as opposed to keep the unrevised version of it mean did you while we don't have to the motion language could get very complicated very quickly because the new bylaws have a different numbering system than the old bylaws and they did not track over accurately so to make a motion to replace all but certain ones and then keep other ones from that and then add in a new number it would get very complicated that doesn't mean it's not possible but it would probably take us lots of minutes tonight to figure out how to actually word that um but the from my point of view the benefit of this and i have i have one of the the requested changes that is being affected by this in fact it's going into effect if we do this and i want it to be repealed so i'm it is actually almost opposite what you guys are talking about with some of yours um is that we as counselors if we do it this way we have some counselors that have identified certain things that we're not happy with in a huge rewrite of it and are saying let's do the huge rewrite but let's use our committee process that we have in place to really delve deeply into those portions of that rewrite that we still have concerns about without holding up the adoption of pretty much everything um and to and that to me makes logical sense so you know i you know mine was the noise bylaw where i don't like the fact that the bylaw review committee added in new restrictions to noise bylaws and new places you can violate it um this this plan tonight would adopt that new restriction before the council has really had a good discussion on whether that's wise or not and would move that initial first discussion into a committee which kind of follows what any other bylaw revision that we do from now on that's how it would happen um going to a committee having that discussion coming back with a recommendation with appropriate wording in my motions and all of that and so this is kind of trying to follow that process Darcy it seems to me that it wouldn't take us that long to um um come up with a recommendation from the gel on the four different um sections that are that have requests for changes and i don't really understand why we would need to um replace the bylaw pending that it makes you know it's similar to our issue around uh updating the master plan are you know are we going to vote to adopt the master plan even though we know it has many many issues that need to be updated well we we are not going to do that um we're we're waiting for the update so i just don't understand why we wouldn't do that here why we wouldn't just wait for a month or six weeks or whatever to replace the bylaw pending just updating making whatever changes that we're going to make as a result of these motions these other motions with regard to elissa issues so two things one is in regards to that i guess i just repeat what mandy joe said which is that this is the cleaner way to do it i understand the words you're saying about the master plan but if you accept a new bylaw and then you send the sections off to gol you want done then they fix them as quickly as they can and get them back to us and in the meantime you have a clean bylaw instead of this old messy bylaw along those lines though i believe i heard in your introduction and maybe i didn't hear it correctly you said something about automatic referral nothing in this isn't maybe so we're missing a motion from last time we talked about this on today's motion sheet we had a motion that said motion didn't mention that we were going to have all these other things of course but the motion said to refer the document bylaws identified for future consideration to gol that doesn't seem to have made today's motion it's the third motion on the list that includes adding the condo and cooperative blah blah blah the one with the bullet points it's it combined motions instead of oh was that motion then intended to cover all these things because we seem to have some separate motions and some combined emotions so i'm very confused by that evan so i certainly have some comments on some of the other motions and some questions about what gols purposes in this but i think before we branch off into that it makes sense for us to deal with the motion that's on the table and then talk about these motions separately i don't think we ever put the motion on the table we did okay who was the second okay all right could we have the motion sheet up here so that we can see them thank you okay so the motion on the table is to repeal and replace the general bylaws with the document recommended general bylaws of the town of amherst dated 12-06-19 further comment kathy okay i i just want to um respond to the notion that this is cleaner um if these if i weren't wearing a federal legislator hat and someone gave me major changes into multiple sections of the medicare law and said don't worry i've taken some language out and i've added some language in just accept all the changes now and we can come back and look at each of those later i would be really worried um so i i don't think i think it's easier for the reasons mandy said because the previous language had a different wording you know it had a different style so um i think um my sense and i actually am going to agree with the one on noise i would just take the sentence out so i think we're trying to avoid a long discussion now which i appreciate that but we flagged four things so is there some certainty that each of those four things will be reported back sooner rather than later because in one case we're eliminating a bylaw altogether and another we're adding words we've taken words out of one and we've taken words out of another so if the concerns are shared by other counselors i just would want rapid action rather than leave a bylaw in place in the town that's missing some things that we might want or added some things we might not want because normally you'd be voting on each of the bylaws i mean that's how they were all enacted law by law by law that's it's a set of laws so i i just don't you know how do we have assurance that this happens when we pass the other motions we can put dates certain on them voting on this motion first suppose the other motions don't pass okay we can hold this motion in advance and go on to the others that's what i'm not liking it's on the table with somebody like withdraw the motion i'm just saying that okay it's uh i i got it kathy okay would you withdraw the motion so it wasn't my motion to withdraw i only seconded it but if we don't do the repeal and replace first then the motions that follow don't actually make sense because they are referring then to the current bylaws not the revised one so it really has to go repeal and replace first thank you i i kept thinking to myself there's got to be a reason we have to do this one first is there any further discussion darsie i just would like to ask the question what's the urgency why do we need to do this we have a charter requirement that within one year of appointing the bylaw review committee which was at the end of january 2019 that we adopt the revised bylaws we are at the end of january 2020 i'd like to talk about another urgency there are many councilors working on potential bylaw revisions to bylaws being proposed but also additions to bylaws with whole new groups of bylaws to propose and without a rescindent replace in place now those all that work is on hold because you're not going to put them into an old set of bylaws that then needs to modify this whole document and so there's been councilors waiting for this rescindent replace to happen so that they can propose new bylaws to be enacted by this council and for discussion and so if we do not do that and we hold it off till all these potential issues are discussed at and figured out by gol and brought back and that's decision that's another two three months of our three year term that's already one year plus two months gone that we cannot really actually deal with legislative matters that councilors want to bring to this council is there any further discussion then i'm going to call the question all those in favor of the motion to repeal and replace the general bylaws with the document recommended general bylaws of the town of amber stated 12 dash 06 dash 19 please raise your hand and say aye opposed abstain so it's three zero i'm sorry 11 0 2 okay and the motion passes the second motion is to dissolve the bylaw review committee because now that we have taking their recommendations they are finished with their job is there a motion george i move to dissolve the bylaw review committee is there a second second okay is there any further discussion all those in faith i'm going to call the question all those in favor of dissolving the bylaw review committee please raise your hand and say aye opposed abstain first of all that motion passed 13 0 0 and i do want to take the opportunity to publicly thank bob ritchie and also bernie kubiak who not only served us for this year but for a about nine or ten months prior to that and then in addition to that the three counselors who worked on this and they are pat evan and alissa the whole time that the committee was operating and to jeff for being an enormous clerk of the works yes ten hardgraves who is on the original bylaw thank you and k moran who is also and k moran is also yes she left town she couldn't stand it anymore and now jeff is leaving town she's enjoying portland though no just working elsewhere not leaving town okay so now in keeping with the confidence that other counselors have placed in us let's quickly move through the rest of these and let me know if there are amendments because you want to put dates certain on or maybe you want to split a motion okay so the first one is to add condominium and cooperative conversion a general bylaw recommended for deletion to the document bylaws identified for future consideration last edited 12-05-19 and proposed general bylaw 3.34 regulation of signs to the document bylaw identification for for future consideration last edited 12-05-19 and to refer the document to the town council governance organization and legislation committee to report a recommended timeline for development developing a work plan to the town council on march 9th 2020 is there a motion is there a second second is there a discussion um yes george gl meets twice before that so i guess we can meet this request um could somebody just enlighten me as to why and i'm sure there's a very good and simple reason why there is a date certain this march 9th elissa since i wrote that yes i can tell you because it we don't we want people to know that we are going to be developing a plan of what to work on so march 9th your plan could be aside from if there's a separate conversation about the condominium part but in regards to the sign bylaw and the other items that were all that already are on that list the idea was we knew you couldn't do it and this was when we thought we might do it at the last meeting we knew you probably couldn't get it done in february and the way that 30 days and 45 days and the usual periods that we tried to you know compare use our usual precedence and it came out to march for the next meeting and that idea being then that that's the plan at that point that's not you have them all written although some people might have specific ones they weren't written by then but there that's the plan of okay that means sign we're going to do this in time period we're going to do the others in this time period it's as we've done with many other town council reports it's your report out on your plan not that you've necessarily accomplished everything unless you get a motion tonight that tells you a thing has to be done by then okay any further questions on this garcy so this list of um uh bylaws identified for future consideration is different from other bylaws that we're going to be considering yes these were the ones that were forwarded by the committee it was in our original packet when we first started looking at this but we've added to it we've added the additional ones that we are referring directly but this was a list provided that recommended that we refer these to gol okay and they're going to be treated separately from other things that are being right because the other things were added as a separate item okay i'm sorry ever so i just i think elissa clarified it but i want to just make sure i know what i'm voting on so this is to report a recommended timeline for developing a work plan for the council so you kept saying you're reporting your plan on march 9th but this sounds like it's reporting a timeline to develop a plan so we would say we so the report could literally be on march 9th our timeline is to have a plan to you by june 6th and that would comply because it's a timeline for developing a work plan i'm what what's the product that we're looking for from this elissa my standpoint it was maximum flexibility because i thought there might be ones that the council said but we really need you to work on this one first and we would give that direction to gol and therefore they would come up with we're going to work on sign we're going to work on condos in february and march but we're not going to be able to start looking at the signed by-law until sometime in june so our timeline for that looks about like this so it both tried to address specific ones and then didn't lose sight of any of them but some of them probably going to get pushed kind of far out thank you any further questions okay then i'm going to call the question the motion is up there and in this case it specifically deals with the by-law is identified for future consideration late last edited 12-0519 are there any other questions if not call the question all those in favor please raise your hand and say aye opposed abstain 13-0-0 okay now we're going to move on to the ones that are specific to ones that individual counselors have added during our discussion the first one is to refer section in fact kathy i'm just going to ask you to read it i'll read it maybe i i'll add a word or two of explanation it's so section 3.4 is the responsible employer for public construction projects that's what it is in the current by-law and so this is referring it to gol to make a recommendation whether the wording that has been deleted from the existing bylaw in three instances should be lab added back to avoid the risk of weakening the bylaw specifically should the following be added back the requirement that bidders quote agree in writing that they shall comply to the reference labor laws number two the requirement that contractors slash subcontract shall quote certify under oath and in writing on a weekly basis that they're in compliance with such obligations end quote and the third is a penalty of liquid dated damages payable to the town amount of five percent of the dollar value of the contract end quote that was one of the possible actions if someone was out of compliance the reason i let's start with the motion please okay so the motions on the floor and has been seconded now kathy speak to the motion okay the um when i went back and compared the revision to the existing these were words that were taken out that i think could potentially weaken it because there are a couple different points where the contractors had to attest in writing that they were going to comply and it gave you leverage to see and and we have one additional penalty so i asked a couple people um whether there'd been any discussion on did this weaken our ability to control or hold people accountable was there a discussion and this came from legal counsel this didn't come directly out of the committee so my hope is that go well would look closely at this because these words are not in the massachusetts general law the ones i've referenced most of the others it was simplified to say take a look at the law and this is what they're supposed to do so these are wording that i'm seeing many towns put in their responsible employer this do it in writing so that you know that they they've acknowledged that they have these obligations so i'd like the consideration of at least for the time being if that should be put back in in the whatever places they best fit and i don't know about the penalty but it we had we had four possible penalties under the current file and we're down to three for not being in compliance so there wasn't any rationale given on why delete the fourth that there's a good one fine but that's why i think this should be referred okay are there any questions at this time remember we're not getting into a debate about this it's merely a referral Evan so i guess i'm curious uh as a member of gol and a now former member of the viola review committee with the expectation of gols for this and the reason i ask that is because so the in if my memory is correct and i am gonna ask alissa or pat or jeff to correct me if my memory is incorrect was that the revision to the responsible employer for public construction project bylaw came from our town attorney we sent them and they sent back fairly detailed edits and that's how we have what we have here if went to gol i don't think that i i don't believe that anyone on gol has the personal content knowledge to be able to evaluate this statement and so to me gol would just say oh well we don't really know we have to get town attorney opinion but this came from town attorney and so i'm curious what the expectation that gol will do is given that we probably don't have the ability to really assess these questions without legal counsel who is the one who recommended these changes jeff do you have anything to say to this particular issue i would just agree with evan that these recommendations came from the town attorney and with detailed revisions to this and several other bylaws and so yes i think that you know the bylaw review committee was under the auspices of the of the town attorney so we felt that that was important to incorporate so what i'm hearing from kathy just let me clarify this is that in comparing our bylaw to other towns she feels that these pieces have been taken out of our bylaw but exist in other towns and do not appear in mass general law and i think kathy what you're looking for is why would we eliminate these or should we not and it may it may require gol to go back and have an additional conversation and come back with with town attorney and understand why they would have taken them out right and my recollection was the general answer was that the state law was sufficient to cover the town in case there was issues with the public contract but i think that if the council feels that they need more of an explanation or whether or not adding this back in would present any legal problems and that's you know more of a policy consideration versus a legal consideration i think that that's a legitimate question pat yes as a member of the bylaw review committee and also a counselor working on wage theft bylaw i initially accepted that explanation that we didn't need it but after consultation with lisa clausen from the carpenters union and rosebook binder from pioneer valley workers center and reviewing bylaws from summerville cambridge brookland several several towns this language was there and what lisa clausen said is what we needed there because it gives strength um to even if it is listed in the mass general law and i've come to the agreement with that position and i would like to see this come back okay so we're again we're not going to get into the debate i think what the petitioner in this case is kathy is asking for is greater understanding or perhaps the restoration of these if they feel it's strengthened and those kinds of debates exact or exactly what will happen in g ol is there any further discussion okay all those in favor of the motion yes raise your hand and say i i i opposed abstain 13-0-0 moving on to the next one um darsie why don't you read this one uh to refer section 3.28 of the general bylaw of the single-use plastic bag prohibition and the document titled single-use plastic bag bylaw d3 etc to the governance organization and legislation committee to make a recommendation on changes to the bylaw with a report back to the town council on blank date let's put march ninth in there all right um is there a second second any further discussion yes darsie i just wanted to mention that i that the document titled single-use plastic bag bylaw d3 is an amended version of the of the of the bylaw it's different from the one that was it in the packet in the last meeting and i actually in response to what jeff had said about some of the language being out of date i took that out and and now the purpose is just one sentence and that one sentence is sort of the crux of why i'm asking to keep the definitions definitions in because the purpose really underlines that the primary purpose of the bylaw is to reduce the negative effects of single-use plastic bags on the environment reduce contamination of plastic bags and residential recycling strains and most importantly to encourage consumers to bring reusable bags while shopping eliminating the environmental impacts of any single-use bags so that really puts that one sentence in the purpose and gives a different context to the definition this is being referred with all of those documents to go out okay by having it in here it's referred okay is there any further discussion all those in favor raise your hand and say aye opposed abstain 13-0-0 okay the next one uh mandi joe to refer to the governance organization and legislation committee section 3.2 for unlawful noise of the general bylaws to make a recommendation on whether to remove lawnmowers leafblowers snowblowers and other similar mechanical devices to the items included as quote loud disturbing injurious or unnecessary noise and quote with a report back to the town council on march 9th 2020 second second okay here's this motion has been made in a second is there further discussion seeing none all those in favor raise your hand and say aye aye opposed abstain okay thank you now jeff thanks for all your great work we know you're only i'm sorry do we have one more which one is one oh wait a minute it's not an rc okay so jeff we know you're only going to town away and we know you're going to still live in amherst or at least we think you are for now thank you for all your work with the town over the last four years thank you we wish you well in your future um growth opportunity because it certainly is that one and um we look forward to hearing about your success thank you very much it's been a pleasure and an honor to work with you thank you that was against our bylaws but that's okay i mean our rules are procedure but it's okay if we want to break them we will the audience can't but we can clap all right uh mr slaughter dr slaughter assistant coach slaughter finance director slaughter good evening hi so now we're going back to um six a and asked of specifically if there are any highlights he would make like to make first i realized so yeah we're because i shoveled the agenda so that we could put you i had actually put c seven c before you oh do you need to do seven c first well there's another person in the audience waiting and he's been here since the beginning do you mind i'm sorry that's all right thank you okay we're gonna do seven c and let me just frame seven c as oh boy um the issue of linkin avenue has been before the council in the past in fact five years ago at which point there were numerous doctor documents produced by the town and by the council i mean by this select board at the time and uh there were um various recommended changes made at that time however it's five years later and the residents of the linkin avenue have come forward again i think it's a different group probably and they have placed a petition before the town uh that deals with further changes regarding parking and the public way and the only thing tonight is to um this was originally on an agenda as if we were going to go ahead with the hearing and there was some objection to that and so before i schedule a hearing um i was looking to the council regarding that issue um and so there is a motion which is to schedule a public hearing regarding changes to the public way on linkin avenue on a date to be determined by the council president and i just before we go on to discuss it is there a second okay now discussion elissa so as i said at the previous meeting the problem here is that what one does is one puts in a public hearing notice for a particular plan one does not put in a public hearing notice for do something different on linkin so once we decide what the plan is that we put up for a public hearing then we publish the notice for the public hearing and then we have the public hearing normally that works in as you saw with the materials provided from 15 is that staff and as staff has indicated in this case staff has been working on putting together different parts of the puzzle and would be presenting something to us and we would then unlike the time in 2015 we would decide if that was what we were putting or if we wanted to add something to it or maybe make the area larger maybe make the area smaller um giving ourselves flexibility obviously because it's always a pain to schedule public hearings but we don't know what we're scheduling the public hearing for yet okay so mr balkerman is the staff prepared to come forward with a plan recommended plan yes okay and that's what i'm trying to get across once we see that plan that's when we decide if we're going to have a public hearing at all okay Evan so i want to second that and i plan to vote against this motion and the reason for that is when i opened up my packet to see what we are authorizing a public hearing about i found some old plans from 2015 i found a letter written to the council with no attribution no date i don't know who it came from it quoted or it didn't quote but it cited staff opinion in the letter but i didn't have anything from staff and i can't possibly imagine voting to authorize a public hearing unless i have in front of me a proposal of what that is that's updated with maps and input from staff so that i know whether or not i feel like this is something we should move forward on but to schedule public hearing on the plan that apparently exists that we haven't seen i'm not going to vote for that so the idea would be that at our next meeting we would receive the plan so if i may so the genesis of this is came from the neighbors neighbors came and said we would like to make a change and they've talked with the staff and i if you recall back in december we presented the idea to the council and the council didn't have a process in place and said we should think this through and that's where we are today um so the the proposal is from the neighbors and you know the staff would have its own recommendation on this so it depends which one you want to have advertised the one that the neighbors asked the council to consider or the one that you that the staff is going to be recommending evan so perhaps it would be useful to get a presentation of both and then the council could have a discussion about which one we want to move forward with and authorize a public hearing for mandate job so i i was going to say something similar but um mine went to a committee you know we got some notice today that there are public hearings for public ways coming because staff has a plan and the president has said yes we're going to put that on as a public hearing as required on the agenda because the president has the agenda setting authority and so i think where we've gotten stuck is when the proposal comes from the residents who says it's ready for the public hearing the council as a whole or the president and i i think i tend to just still go towards the president does but when you've got competing potential potentially competing plans and it sounds like there may be or at least staff may have a recommendation different from what the residents desire i i don't know though because i haven't seen it um my thoughts are maybe that needs to head to a committee for a recommendation from a committee on if a public hearing is held this is what the committee recommends the plan the hearing be held on or something i again i don't know but yeah and this is well it may not be new just people who were on the select board it's new to the council poll so you could treat this like a town meeting warrant article where there's a request to change the parking on link and av that would include something like this and you make it broad enough in your public hearing notice that it could encompass a any decision that the council would want to make and you can narrow that down or do whatever you want with it so that's one way to meet the public hearing notice requirement in terms of moving forward steve i guess i see this more like or more like a public planning board public hearing where the only people that can request a public hearing and basically the are the major parties are the owners of the land so the town is the owner of the land it should be the town's proposal that we're considering and at a public hearing for planning board butters and others can present alternate plans but they it's not the alternate plans that we should be considering it should be the owner of the lands proposals that we're considering so to me this is analogous to me proposing a project for my neighbor's land and asking for there to be a public hearing on that okay additional comment george i guess i'm still struggling with this um we have a proposal it seems from the town and um we want to see that before we decide whether we want a public hearing on that proposal is that correct i think the idea was that we would see both what the town is recommending and also what the neighbors are asking before we decide whether we want to set a date for a public hearing that correct is one of the one of the options on the table and i'm having trouble with that because it seems that that is the whole purpose of a public hearing is to have these plans presented for us to consider and i agree that we need to see these before the public hearing but to wait until we have all these materials to decide whether we want to have a public hearing or not i have trouble understanding that um according to the bylaw public hearing is required for these sorts of requests so um eventually there has to be a public hearing of some kind and my understanding was that um if you've got a proposal that's ready to be presented um it's presented at the public hearing and then we listen and then we decide we can do anything we want with it we could just ignore it we could send it to a committee we could we could you know fix it on the spot or we could accept it as it is or whatever but it seems the first and most important step is to actually have the public hearing to have the town and perhaps the the residents make their case and then we decide what we want to do next but now it sounds like we're going to wait until all these materials are assembled and sent to us and then we'll meet again in two weeks and decide whether they want to hold a public hearing or not i don't get it the other option is the one that paul proposed which is you basically have a broader public hearing and all parties present their proposals elissa if you go too broad then people don't know why they should show up they don't know what the specifics are are you going to say lincoln from any possible change to any type of parking restriction running from route not from college street all the way to umass and therefore everyone in town should literally come to the hearing because that may very well feel like that affects them based on their commute that's why you normally have something a bit more specific than that in terms of why you do this i didn't make us wait since december george i'm sitting here waiting i don't know why we didn't get this specific proposal long before now but now's when now's we're hearing still that it's available to us but we haven't had it presented to us yet the reason why is if you look back at the minutes from 2015 of what happened at select board you will find that we found staff's plan which they put together to be insufficient and we would not have called that hearing had they given us that plan ahead of time before we had a chance to actually schedule the hearing this is based purely on experience the plan your i believe you're indicating that because staff came up with the plan it must be a viable plan the select board did not believe that it was a viable plan therefore we had no need to call that public hearing we would have asked for a different public hearing based on the information we had so rather than getting to the hearing for the first time seeing the plan at the hearing and saying man i don't know why we're doing this this isn't the plan i was was thinking we were going to be doing i want us to say yep that's absolutely the plan we want to look at this is the area we'll make it kind of broad and kind of specific at the same time and this is when it'll be garcy Dorothy well i think i would like to us to see the town plan before we have a public hearing i would like us to have a public hearing in which the town plan and the plan from the residents are presented and we can discuss it i'd also like to say that the plan that we're saying the plan of the residents it really is beyond that it's really people who use people who live on Lincoln Avenue and people who drive on Lincoln Avenue and i do believe that the plan that has been put together by the people who live on Lincoln Avenue has very distinct limits it would be from amity street to um uh fearing no block beyond fearing what what's yeah mess up but it's but it's all it is it is written out um the there are many people who've been waiting a long time for this i i'm very pleased and interested to hear what elissa is saying because it's useful it's really useful to hear that we have to really know what we're doing when we go into it and not to be surprised um also that everybody should have a chance to see that plan first but i'd like to do it proceed in a quick matter so i leave that to you lin to find out how we can okay get the materials and have a hearing quickly sarah so i think to make it easier if you're gonna say we're having a hearing about if you put if we're voting on emotions as we're hearing we're having a hearing about changes to link and af like when i'm reading all this information tonight i was like what what are the exact changes how are we as a legislative body supposed to walk into a meeting absolutely that's been advertised as changes to Lincoln Avenue not coming from anybody because town council hasn't talked about it i haven't seen the residents proposal and wow i'm really shocked sitting here to find out and i'm not placing blame i'm just saying like as we work on process it then it kind of shocked me to say oh well the town has a plan i didn't even know it i think probably a lot of us didn't and we hadn't seen it so i'm not pointing any fingers but i i just think that as we're doing things a certain process is important you can't hold a hearing on we're gonna sit down about link and af and not know what it is and how can the legislative body that's supposed to make some kind of decision walk into a meeting without having the town's proposal and we get it at the same time as everyone else i and i'm not i'm not trying i'm not being blaming i'm just trying to i think that maybe and no george is just looking to people who are immersed in this right i think you're like what are you talking about because we all know but some of us don't because we haven't been given it that's that's all i'm saying and it's no blame or anything i'm just saying i think we need that information and how can you hold the hearing without saying what it's about andy so uh there's one other aspect of it and that is that we have orders of transportation advisory committee fit into this and because we did get a memo from tac and um when we have a planning board hearing and suppose that the planning board comes to us with a revision on accessory dwellings i'm just pulling out of the air by the time it gets to a hearing the planning board is said to us through their report and recommendation this is the change that i would like to make an accessory dwellings and then a hearing is held about the very specific proposals and if there are people who have an interest in the neighbors or other residents people who would be affected by it in some manner they come in and are able to react to the specific proposal and that makes for a logical hearing to take place so i guess that what i would like to see is a proposal that has some vetting with possibly tac and leave that process needing to be fleshed out because it also could go back to a council committee and then when we have a specific proposal we bring that proposal to the council say to the council do you want to have a hearing on it since this isn't the planning board this is council would be having the hearing let us make the decision and then we notice the public at large in a very broad sense what it is that is being proposed and if people who live or drive on Lincoln Avenue find it adequate they will tell us and if they find it inadequate and would like something else they will tell us that too and that will give us a chance to have a meaningful hearing in which we can take the information gathered and use it other other comments Dorothy Sarah what you're seeing is is continued growing pains this has come before CRC the people from Lincoln Avenue have come and spoken at a council meeting they have met small group designated people have met with the president and with the town manager but and they've gone to tac all right the problem is that we didn't seem to know what was the procedure okay so that's what we're talking about right now so we may we may create and come up with a procedure because we haven't had one but this has been people have been working on this meeting with the police chief meeting with different department heads for a long time but you're right we can't go we should not go into a hearing not knowing exactly what that plan from the residents is and without knowing the plan that he said the town has which I haven't seen Kathy okay I'm I'm I'm gonna be in agreement that we don't have a plan in front of us but we did on 1216 and we have it in our attachments it's not proposed in the format of a plan but they the residents came to us with a specific proposal so what I'm not sure of what in what it's just been described we've been sending them around to various places and I don't understand why one of those committees including our see it just didn't take hold and say okay here's the kernel of an idea they wanted no parking on either side between eight and five p.m. that was the proposal very specific um why didn't we say here's a piece of one what's the town saying and come to us with an amalgam that said here are three ways of addressing the Lincoln it seems to me it's similar to not completely like when we were kicking percent for art around everyone saying the bylaw is not quite right and it went to finance and it went to CRC but we had to put a small group together just a few people so maybe we could do that here just come up with what what are the options with a little bit of discussion on it so we don't keep moving the ball to another court that's thank you Darcy I just have a question in the December 16th letter from the group they said that almost every house has signed a petition supporting this request did we see the petition and was it sort of in the form of pre petition under the charter um it was not in the form under petition under the charter it was a written statement with signatures and yes you did so we're we're just treating it as um that at our own discretion we can provide a public hearing on this issue I'm sorry oh okay we can get existed but we didn't see it officially as a council all right I thought you did no okay in other words you saw the letter but you didn't see the petition okay at the total the the it was added again in our current packet at 7c as an item so that document was that we saw in the middle of December you know the last meeting was we added here I mean that's the last time we saw what they were proposing to have done okay Sarah so all I'm trying to say is usually when we have a hearing it will even just describe a document so you could have said you know we could have said changes to Lincoln Ave per document yada yada yada we didn't even I don't believe in maybe it's just me but I have never been sent as a counselor a one page of proposed changes yada yada yada which you I maybe it's just me because everybody else is looking at me sort of blankly but when I read the information that we had tonight when I read information that had been given to me I didn't feel like I actually knew exactly what we were there was no package there was no one document that gave us information about this and that's that's all I'm that's all I'm saying okay so yes bandage I was just going to suggest it sounds like we're stuck and to me there's two options we either agree to hold a hearing on that kernel of an idea without having talked about whether this council even likes that idea or not or we send that kernel of an idea off to a committee to discuss determine whether that's the right idea to have a hearing on or whether a modified idea would be more appropriate to have a hearing on and then bring that recommendation back to this council as the recommendation for what to hold a hearing on and in the consideration of that it has gone to crc it's gone to tack it goes to to you well it's it's well no oh I thought somebody said it had gone to crc I'm sorry thank you I was taking the consort there were all right then I think we should refer the whole thing to crc and they can sort out attack I mean I personally would just as soon go ahead with hearing I'm going to just say that but I'm hearing other people not feeling prepared for that so if that's the case then let's send it to a committee and they'll get all the preparation that needs to be done with with the town plan with the town plan the the neighbor's plan and other the other option is we have a hearing and it's on the town plan we look at the town plan next time we have the hearing with 14 days notice why can't we have why can't we have the hearing with the town plan and the neighbor plan the neighbor would present their plan as part of that part of it but you're but what somebody's saying is somebody's been very clear you have to have a plan to start with and that's what you start with and the and we either start with the neighbor's plan which is not presented as a full plan or the town plan and the then the neighbor's comment and then we may also not finish the hearing that night we may refer it or ask for more information or whatever I mean if you look at the record of the last time that's exactly what happened right Alyssa and there were many upset neighbors way the way the process works so in terms of the various levels of preparation of the people who are making decisions and how many times they needed to come back and of the way the whole process work I guess I don't see a problem with referring it to CRC with the understanding that what we're getting back as a council prior to the friday before our monday council meeting is an extensive report that says here's what tac thought or if they're not ready to be part of it here's what the neighbors proposed here's what staff says is the way to go given the context of what we did there five years ago and what they want done now we understand what they're saying but this is what we think is the thing to do and then CRC comes to tell us yes this is what we think is the right thing and towns and council has had chance to read it before we get here and says yep that sounds like it covers all the bases of what people want it we would never have a hearing almost never never say never on a hearing on a plan that was just a petition that somebody gave us that didn't meet the concept of free petition we want staff to tell us what is the thing to do to address these folks problem because they have a lot more context than the neighbors could ever have whether they've met with them two or three times or not we have everybody public safety public works has significant opinions on how things should work there and how they can maybe come to a compromise George and my understanding is staff is ready to do that and my understanding is the neighbors are ready to do it so again I still do not understand it sounds like we're having a hearing before the hearing we have a hearing in order to decide whether we should have a hearing that we have proposals in front of us and I don't see I agree with you Lynn we should go ahead and have the public hearing I think the problem is that the whole council does not have they will have I mean I never imagined that there would be a public hearing in which the council did not have the relevant materials before the hearing right was assumed that you would have these in your in some packet form well before I don't know two days three days you tell me but we have council meetings and we get our packet what three days before how many days do you want in advance but it was assumed that you obviously would have to have these materials before you have the hearing but the idea that we're going to decide beforehand with all the materials whether we even want to have a hearing sounds like we're having a hearing about having a hearing we're ready to have a hearing the materials will be in your possession before the hearing and we have the hearing in which both the town and the neighbors will make the presentation and then you all have to make up your minds but it sounds like you want to make up your minds ahead of time about the issue before you have the hearing to hear what people want to propose and I just don't understand that so help me understand this Andy I have a great degree of respect for many people who I know personally who live on Lincoln Avenue and I know that they are struggling with something and have thought about it a lot but I also recognize from the experience that this town has had before and I'm going to give an example that well-meaning people are not traffic engineers and don't have the experience of traffic engineers and the example that I will give is town meeting voting on the floor to say hey we don't think that there should be a traffic circle at the north end of downtown and we vote to refer this to the select board to have a make a decision regarding whether we can look at a traffic light resolution to the problem in fact it had been considered before and was explained why it was not feasible but in any event the reality was that the majority of town meeting reacted on something that was done because of an emotional response to a change without really understanding a very complex set of problems that go with what it takes to manage traffic appropriately and what is the best resolution to do that and so what I'm hoping is to take the information which and it should have been done a long time ago I think that's the real problem is is that we got behind on the scheduling of getting to this but the proper step is to have a process that allows us to look at a proposal from our staff who have that professional expertise let them bring it forward if the neighbors then once they see it or others who are interested are happy with it they will tell us and if they're unhappy with it they will tell us too but it forms a public hearing around something specific. Shalini, you wanted to speak? Yeah I think I just want to hear from the staff before we have the public hearing to get a sense of what what they think is the solution and then I also wanted to understand from people who are getting affected which is obviously the neighbors so we already know what the neighbors want and if there's anybody else who's being affected maybe get a sense but mainly I wanted to hear from the staff what what do they see I mean and who in the staff would be the person to tell us how this affects the traffic flow or safety and other aspects. Paul. So according to the council's policy you asked for the town engineer the fire chief and the police chief and the town manager. Right so the two here are the options I am hearing okay one is we have the staff appear before us with their document at our next meeting and decide whether we're going to hold a public hearing and at that point we can also have all of the material from the petitioners as well and anything the TAC has said that's one option another option is we refer to CRC and they come back with a recommendation as to whether or not we have a hearing those of the two yeah Evan. Well there's also currently a motion on the table that's neither of those two options. We can withdraw that. Okay you were the motion maker right. You were the motion maker. Can I just ask an option one to Paul by February 10th which is the next meeting could we get a document where the staff came together and said this is what we think can or should be done. Yes we will be prepared to do that but I make comment the question is did you want us to take that to TAC first or to just present to the council first? Well that's it. I mean Steve wants to say something too so Steve go ahead I don't want to take your time. Yeah I don't know the answer but I do think taking no proper reading that three days in advance is risky business so we don't allow that with bylaws changes right so there have to be two readings of bylaw changes so going straight to a hearing where who knows what we'll decide. That's not what I was suggesting. No I know I know but I'm just yeah so I think that the council should hear it. Yes I think there should be in this particular case I think there should be a pre hearing before the hearing. No it's not it's information before the hearing. I mean I think it just is and then quite frankly that happened on planning board for issues that were possibly contentious that there would be an information session with in which interested parties could be invited and then there would be a public hearing after that. Paul my understanding is that this group has already met with TAC. They went to TAC and TAC I was there when they came the first time and TAC said don't talk to us talk to. I'm sorry Kathy Paul what what did happen? So there was a resident there it was on the TAC agenda and then it was sort of taken off the agenda because it wasn't clear if the council wanted advice from the from the TAC at that moment in time and so I think this is where we sort of pulled back and said well what is the process we want to follow for this type of thing and I think that's what's being worked through with GOL or whoever is doing that and then but this one sort of was a we wanted to get this one going through the process so let's get it moving. Through a process that we really haven't defined which is the whole problem right and I so with all due respect to TAC okay I'm going to suggest that at our next meeting we see both the town's recommendation and the citizen's request and that we make a decision whether or not to have a hearing and the TAC can be there or not be there Alyssa. I think we have a couple of issues here one is there's there's literally no reason why TAC can't meet to discuss this and it makes no sense to me that if we are going to have it in their charge that they talk about any of this kind of stuff that we're just going to ignore them in this case because it's not timely so they should be getting this and they should be required to have a meeting and make a decision and come to us with that and in terms of the framing of the material that we get at a meeting it would need to be which is why I thought it was going to CRC but the material would be the town's proposal is that we have a hearing the town council hold a hearing on XYZ the reason for that is see attached from TAC see attached from the residents it's not a resident proposal and a town proposal it's the town's reaction to the residents proposal and the TAC proposal it's not Tim Nelson thinks this but so-and-so who lives on linkin thinks something else it's not that it's incorporating. So we're back to the two options and the second option is to refer to CRC and have them come forward with a recommendation and in the process TAC also reviews material Randy Joe. So I'm with George in trying to understand why this one for holding a public hearing is any different from the public hearing that has already been scheduled on the bid slash chamber request to permanently put in a handicap accessible ramp on the public way that we have seen absolutely no information for but the hearing was scheduled so why is this request so much different that we have to have so much information before we decide to hold the public hearing what makes this one different than that or the ever source petitions or another public hearing on some other permanent public way we held public hearing you know what makes this one so much different that we can't decide to hold the hearing without seeing massive amounts of information before deciding to hold the hearing I get that we want to see it when we go into the public hearing but we should be able to say and trust our president to not schedule that public hearing until that information will be available. Steve because this has to do with the movement of people and goods on a really critical road in Amherst so does the bid chamber request for a ramp on the main sidewalk in downtown Alyssa because the president doesn't know when she has sufficient information to make a decision on this hearing I'm not sure she knew on the ramp either for that matter but we didn't get a choice to weigh in on that we didn't know that was coming and we couldn't put a stick in the spoke so to speak on this I know I have had experience with staff telling me something that was not sufficient for me to act on that night why am I wasting everyone's time and scheduling a hearing for something that is a waste of our time if we see the information and we like it this isn't about Lincoln this is about process I agree we probably should have had a different conversation about the ramp horizon I'm going to put on a whole different level and ever source but when it comes to this let's remember people can come up with an idea to say I want no parking on my street I'm going to go to every single committee in town and I'm going to say no parking on my street and it's not going to be Lincoln it's going to be some crazy cul-de-sac that none of you have even heard of that doesn't mean they get to have a hearing okay that means staff's going to have to weigh in and say oh you know what we could do this other thing to help these people out and we might not even need a hearing right we are looking for staff to tell us this is what they want this is what we think makes sense and when we look at that we're going to say yes you're right or we're going to be like 2015 and say that isn't what they said they wanted that isn't what we think is right and we're not going to we're not going to make that decision I'd like a motion I'm withdrawing the motion could you repeat the motion please now the motion was to schedule a public hearing regarding changes to the public way on Lincoln Avenue on a date to be determined by the council president okay Dorothy I make a motion that we have a meeting a regular council meeting at which we have the materials from the town and from the residents and that the whole council has a chance to talk about this because Lincoln Avenue is a major thoroughfare and it does affect many many things in the town and that after we have that discussion we call a hearing let me stop with the motion stop with them just repeat the motion repeat the motion not why but just the motion I move that the town present its plan and that the residents present their plan at and that we have this material ahead of time for our next meeting and we have a discussion I decide to have a public hearing that's a public I'm sorry what you describe as a public hearing that is a public hearing is there a second to the motion okay that okay this I'm you know what um let's just I'm sorry George I know we're back to a hearing for a hearing Evan do we use the word present the town presents and the residents present if we can interpret the word present to literally just mean give us documents that show what those are I would right so you're not talking about a formal power you're just saying they will the town and the residents we will have their documents in front of us and then we will decide based on those documents whether or not those proposals merit a public hearing I support this so the motion's been made and seconded any other comment I just want to point out that there is a proposal a specific proposal in writing from the residents so I'm not sure if we're asking them to resubmit it we could just title it proposal but we did get one yeah that's oh it's all the material provided by the residents Darcy I I think it's actually really important to hear from TAC too from TAC that they present or give us a report also the real issue is going to be whether TAC would be able to meet before then but George imagine that the manager because town staff has brought it to him brings us a public ways request that requires our action it's not from neighbors it's something that's come from someone in you know say DPW whatever and he presents it to us so what you're suggesting is then we're going to have what a we're going to have a discussion about that decide whether we want to have a public hearing about it or not seems to me that that he has and can perfectly bring proposals to us that require us to make a decision that we would then set a public hearing for and we would hear that we'd have the proposal and we'd discuss it I don't understand the difference it seems the only difference here is this is becoming from a group of neighbors and for some reason that's requiring all these extra hoops that they have to go through just to get a public hearing they have a proposal it's been brought to town staff has looked at it they've made their proposal they are not the same they're going to be some differences and a public hearing seems to me to be exactly the right circumstance for which this is designed to be presented and for us to then make our minds up and we could very well decide then to refer to a committee we could decide to send it back to staff we could do any number of things but this idea of doing all this stuff in advance of just deciding to have a public hearing I mean the bylaw makes it explicit that these kinds of parking changes require a public hearing so if there is a request for a change for parking in a particular area we can't say well we're not going to have a public hearing about it you seem to want to have to decide ahead of time the merits of the case before you've heard the case so the town has a case to make the neighbors have a case to make why don't we simply have a public hearing let them make their case and then we will decide what we want to do which could be anything I have no idea what we'll decide but it seems we want to decide beforehand and so that's my problem listen it's clear we don't share the same definition of public hearing you're seeing public hearing as they present their case that's not how it works a public hearing is a specific plan that anybody can then weigh in on it is not competing plans it is not presenting competing plans it is a plan it is the plan from staff that is written in this case in response to a neighbor's request a neighbor can ask anytime anytime to do a change in parking and we are never required to have a hearing unless they follow rules for something like for your petition we are not required just because they came up with it as an idea if you mentioned the idea of staff just coming up with it on their own with absolutely no input I mean obviously I've heard something but it's not because neighbors have written a petition it's not because neighbors have felt like they've been trotted through a billion different committees staff just comes up with something cool I still believe the town council gets to decide whether or not that thing's cool enough to warrant a hearing or not we do not just automatically defer because our staff wrote it that's why we control the public hearing aspect of our rules Evan right I think that's the thing we're not having a public hearing to decide our position on it we're having a public hearing to decide whether it's something we're having a meeting to decide whether or not it's even something we want to pursue I mean you just give the example what if the town manager had a proposal does he have to bring it here before we decide whether we want to have a public hearing yeah because you know if the town manager decided he wanted to put a 60 foot tall statue of Paul Backelman in the middle of the the common I'm not just going to say I'm not just in the north common as part of the renovation it's going to make it much more expensive if he decides that I'm not just gonna say well I guess we're gonna have a public hearing on that I want to know that there's a motion on the floor the motion on the floor is that at the next town council meeting the plans that the proposal from the residents and the recommendation from the staff will be made available and we will discuss whether or not we're proceeding with a public hearing that's the motion right is that the motion could we have a friendly amendment to include please all right and I will just say that that may delay whether it gets on this next agenda but okay all right okay and anything that and a report from tack a report from tack at this point tack evidently did not hear it it evidently was on the agenda then went off the agenda so tack is not weighed in but we do have that memo from Aaron Hayden about how they want I'm sorry please one of you at a time speak yes Darcy we have a memo in the packet from Aaron Hayden about his tax willingness and interest in being involved in setting this right so in order for them however to write a memo that includes any kind of recommendation then they have to go through a process where they meet with the residents and possibly the town and the town so in other words we have to wait till we get a memo from tack in order to get that memo tack has to have a meeting well so maybe we need to just include them in our process we're not they they they act as a separate body but if we're having if we're having a meeting where the staff and the neighbors and everyone is going to be discussing the issues obviously we would like tack but before tack could present any comment to us they would need to meet here and form an opinion or a recommendation or just decide we don't want to say anything but they'd have to meet they're not just going to show up and speak individually they have to speak as a body just the way the residents have spoken quote as a body and our town has spoken as a body so all I'm saying is we we can include tack but then I will not promise that this will be on the agenda two weeks from now because tack may not have had time to meet to form a feedback and give it to us that's all but the friendly amendment is tack is there a second to the friendly amendment okay fine so can we say that the friendly amendment assuming it's considered friendly is that we make it clear to tack that we are going to have a document in our packet for the February 10th this is only January 27th tack doesn't live in Beijing okay it's this is not hard they tomorrow they just they doodle poll themselves and figure out when they can meet between now and ideally and are you deadline but that you inform them that we want to include them but this is our timeline okay Dorsey I have not been to tack but I have heard that some residents spoke of the issue to tack however I have not heard the tack has seen a plan from the town which I have not seen either so if you are you suggesting that instead of having two proposals which we were going to discuss that we have tack just coming and present the residents proposal no because tack has not been brought in on the town proposal the only way the tack is going to have a conversation with us is if tack meets and make makes some kind of decision they're not coming in separately or individually they're coming in as a body so that you would have the town the residents and tack Pat we've taken longer with this I would take to have a public hearing thank you so she said you haven't been to one yet but that's yeah go ahead all right pat continue I'm I I think I'm gonna side with George um and no in the different I think that we have a plan from the town and the public here no well wait that we they have one that they can give us that can become tangible so we should set a public hearing date to look at the town's plan I mean it's sort of what the original resolution okay there's a motion on the floor the motion on the floor is that at the next meeting we will have material from tack we will have material from the town and we will have the residents proposal and at that point we will decide if we're going to proceed with the hearing that's the motion on the floor is there any further comment I don't like the motion fine okay is there any other comment so I'd like to withdraw it hold on hold on we're going to do a yes or no we're great oh my god okay Steve so it's not our job to decide which of the three right I wish I knew what we're talking about maybe we were talking about doing nothing maybe the town plan is no we're not but okay so um but it's not our job to say which one's our favorite a b or c really that's the hope that's why we have staff basically is to reconcile these um you know what may be the same plan or what may be different plans the way that I see a public hearing is going back to what Alyssa was saying is there's one plan and if people think they have a better plan that's the time to present that these are our comments on this better plan but we should not be treating these as equals and I again I'm going to say I'm very wary to go straight into a public hearing on something that has taken us I don't know how it's time tonight because we all feel that this is an important issue I'm sure Mr. Slaughter could tell us um okay the question before the council at this point is we bring forward at our meeting next time which is February 10th a report from tac a resident petition and a report from the town and at that point we decide whether we will proceed with the hearing is there any further comment Alyssa because the town report says this is what you should be doing the hearing on here's our proposal this is what the hearing should be given what tac said given what the resident said given the tac didn't have time to do it whatever the report from the town will not just be generic it would be a proposal from the town for which we would hold the hearing okay is there any for the discussion we're going to vote on that motion just the motion is can you repeat the motion that the town present its proposal and residents present their plan and a report from the transportation advisory committee at the next council meeting for council discussion and to schedule a public hearing it the word I think present is for creating a problem okay so the the motion and the only thing that was added to that is and tac that was a friendly emotion and it was accepted provide materials provide material but you use okay the motion is to present and the the question is whether present is interpreted in this case as talk to us or provide us in writing or both and I would a minimum require it in writing and at that point decide whether or not we're going to have it as a discussion okay present can be any number of things okay any so it's to present in other words have in your packet a town proposal a citizens proposal and materials from tac a town proposal the citizens petition the citizens request to get across it is not competing proposals it's the town's proposal does the town proposal incorporate the citizens proposal I'm asking Paul that we can do that okay all right and then would it incorporate tax information if we can get it in time okay so the town's proposal would be there it would have with it or refer and attach with it the citizens proposal and the referral from tax or the rip in you from tac and then I'll work with the president to decide if you want staff here for that meeting or if you just want if this is enough information for the council to make its decision whether to hold the public hearing understood okay that's the motion any further discussion all those in favor of that motion please raise your hand and say I when I keep your hands up opposed did you get that I'm sorry opposed abstain so the motion passes the nose eight to five and zero okay mr slaughter I am so sorry good evening hi so I'm calling you for consultation in the future okay thank you so back in December I produced an annual report from the Board of License Commissioners which I believe was in your packet I hope it is and so it hit the highlights of what the Board of License Commissioners were able to do over the course of the year we actually started in about February and you know there are a number of more routine things like our short-term liquor licenses we do a number of those but we were able to take up a few policy issues and and and get some particular things on the books as it were and and hopefully help frame and shape our alcohol policy in particular in a way that the select board wasn't able to get to to be to be perfectly honest we did have to do some enforcement which was unfortunate but nonetheless necessary and that got our as myself was the only one who had served in this kind of role before I was the only one that had any sort of experience with this and nothing quite like what we experienced so it was a bit of a trial by fire for my colleagues on the on the board but nonetheless I think we had a fairly productive year and are continuing to to work on some some new areas which are listed toward the the end of that memo to all regarding some refinement of things around private clubs and and some short-term housing rentals and then of course taking up the idea around local licensing of marijuana sales so I think I'll start stop there and answer any questions you all have relative to our work in the last year and and see if I can be clear on what those things are. Okay are there any questions with regard to um the report from the committee then we'll move on to the next items oh I'm sorry no okay yeah don't leave yet okay okay so then in addition to the report there is a set of issues that the licensing commission has been using as regulations and you have brought to the council for approval is that correct Mandy Joe I'll ask that question that's like it wasn't directly related to the report but I um I am planning on proposing stuff to the council so the board of licensed commissioners took it upon themselves to enact some regulations that included potential non-criminal disposition penalties but it's my understanding that you cannot actually enforce those non-criminal disposition penalties unless this body here the town council adopts or proves them under our general bylaws and and so I'd like you to talk a little bit about um a potential process for that I the packet today includes two potential motions um and and my reason in for it because I intend to bring those motions later but if you could talk about you know why you enact regulations why you might want to enforce them non-crimnally and how you see the potential process of working with us to get those adopted so you can enforce them with non-criminal penalties that would be great right so uh the idea of the the non-criminal action by us is as a tool within our enforcement toolkit and to serve in some ways by having that it's a service as a deterrent you know we don't really have a strong expectation of needing those tools but nonetheless that's why they were put in place many communities have those and actually when we were working on on the various regulations this last year we were leaning heavily on what other communities have done and how they structured their enforcement policies to to sort of shape ours as well and again I think the the key thing is that the the hope is to not ever need them but obviously if we do then we have an ability to to do that I think there's anything else I want to comment on relative to that I don't think so again I think there's a discretionary aspect to it so even though it says you know this amount for the first offense this amount for the second those are all still within the discretion of the Board of License Commissioners you know so it's up to but not exceeding is sort of the the the intent of the language would you speak like to speak more specifically to the two regulations I mean they they're included in my motions because they are the two regulations that the Board of License Commissioners has adopted as of the date I wrote that memo I haven't come back to see if you've adopted anymore and so you know I there is no proposal from me to modify those regulations in fact I would guess that the Board of License Commissioners would probably be unhappy if we attempted to dig delve into the actual language of the regulations I was taking the language of the bylaws we just adopted tonight that requires Town Council approval of the regulations and trying to just craft a motion that says we approve these so that the Board can use all of those tools in the toolbox are there questions if I may add one thing we do have similarly crafted private club regulations we're waiting on some feedback from some of the private clubs relative to those but they're the sort of enforcement pieces parallels the ones in the other two that we have passed this is a question about licensing marijuana establishments a university drive I wrote down a little made a little list rafters and then is it 85 or then there's two in a row one a former restaurant and then one that we've had a hearing of and then you just go across the street go a little jog and you've got heirloom and I'm just wondering do we need all of this and what happens when people say well gee I can't make a living here it just seems kind of like a wasteful thing going on that may very well be the case you know it was and has been I think a difficult process for the state to sort of take on the the legalization of marijuana and so I think a lot of communities including us have struggled with how to go through that process in a good way I think in some ways though the you know the select board previously in the Board of License Commissioners you know trying to operate under the best information it's got and and at the time that the select board listened to four different proposals three of which were on University Drive very close to one another but still within the zoning regulations of of the of the town you know we we understood that was an awkward circumstance but at the same time that is something I would say argues for the need to have a license because I think you can you know sort of quality of life type questions or neighborhood aesthetic or neighborhood look and feel that are less quantitative in nature that are I think of sort of zoning regulations tend to be more quantitative and and you know it's this far from the you know one business to the you know a residence and it has more specific requirements in that regard and I think that a a local licensing option would allow for more qualitative evaluation of proposals before they get and and a public process before it goes to the town manager for for a local host agreement once the local host agreement gets in place you know then it's a matter of satisfying things for the state and then once that's done we're kind of without any options as far as leverage at that point you know to a large degree and so this that's the idea behind exploring that option and seeing what our what our ability is and of course for establishments that exist before we get it in place then we have to figure out how to grandfather them in a way that makes sense for everybody. Are there other comments or questions? Yes listen. Doug is going to talk to me and to Jeff Kravitz before he moves forward with much of the licensing part on marijuana because it's not anywhere near as simple as what you've just described Dorothy we don't decide we have too many Chinese restaurants in town we have zoning that allows for restaurants and when they need special permits to do it they get them. Every marijuana business that we have needs a special permit and we they also need a host community agreement and if we refuse to give them a host a community agreement because we just think we there are too many they will probably sue us so that is a consideration we made but there is some room that we left in the state law because we kept lobbying for it for a local licensing that could perhaps produce better community outreach before it gets to the point a host community agreement we talked some about that at MMA this weekend so that's like a whole nother future topic. I did actually have a question about what it is we're doing tonight on the BLC stuff because I'm hearing about the report I'm sorry I just flipped pages that you had written before Mandy Joe about the regulations and about the ability to enforce that's not on our agenda tonight that's not posted I assume that's going to GOL on the other hand we don't have anything in here about open container there's nothing in our packet about open container that I could find so I'm confused there so what's there and what is that there is a proposed amendment to the Amherst open container bylaw in your packet so in your packet were three items the food rags the bring your own booze okay and what Mandy Joe would you please explain your intention with this is a first reading on this this is why we don't have a motion but the reason we don't have a motion on the rags thing is just because we just didn't think of it but we think we can do Lynn Lynn had requested that it be put on a different agenda than tonight's agenda that it just be sort of talked about in general terms tonight so we need to refer it is that what we're trying to do is this a first reading no it's not technically a first reading because it's not on the agenda right oh you when I asked for it to be on the agenda you had decided it wouldn't show up as a first reading until February 10th at the earliest so wait so the open container this is the first this is the first reason but for the regulations those that actually is a bylaw change right so why do we have to have a first reading again first discussion under the rules of our rules of procedure just a first discussion discussion and that first discussion will be on February 10th not tonight when okay here okay so if we want we can either is there any further discussion about the two items that will come up on February 10th given that that will be a first reading okay then those are the rags okay then the second item or the third item is in fact a first reading of and this is 7a and this is a first reading of the amendment to the Amherst open container bylaw so are there questions regarding this this is something I believe Doug that has also been discussed with you yeah we have we haven't taken a formal position I mean we're waiting for you know essentially action by you all once that happens then the Board of License Commissioners would would you know be available to create you know to to offer a short term license in those areas that aren't covered now and we would probably then go through a process of trying to draft regulations to create a process that's formal and predictable and acceptable you know to the community as a whole but we'd be able to issue licenses essentially immediately once the bylaw passed and we you know we just wouldn't have a framework we like to have but we can still operate within that okay Alyssa I'm sorry I've confused matters but so is someone going to read this as a first reading are we just going to point at it or like what's the story are we doing we're doing that now we're moving on to that on a different agenda while he's here 7a while he's here and he's going to have to be responsible for this let's do this whole six and seven thing is very confusing so I'm so I'm going to introduce this then officially thank you council and talk about why we're doing this and I wrote it down because I'm so tired that I'm not sure I'd remember if I didn't sort of preface this discussion a little bit so I think we know that every June on the Hadleytown Common is the WGBY Asparagus Festival which is a family-friendly festival that attracts people from all over the valley with music and activities and food vendors and of course appreciated by many of the attendees the beers and spears area which allows attendees to enjoy local craft beers from local brewers in the past summer we saw in the Hadleytown Common a new community event the Hadley Common beer and wine garden and I just want I was looking reading an article earlier today thinking about this from the Gazette that I want to just read a brief excerpt from to you an effort to nurture new community activities now includes the creation of the Hadley Common beer and wine garden a family friendly event which starts at 3 30 p.m. Friday I love this area and thought why don't we use it more says Nicole Bloom of Cara Ciderhouse who's organizing the Hadley Common Fridays with Andrea Stanley of Valley Malt while beer will be prominently featured Bloom said the event will promote both food and drink that are made from crops that grow in Hadley soil the idea is to celebrate Hadley agriculture so both of these events activate the Hadleytown Common they bring in residents and visitors alike and they help build community and neither of these events could ever happen in Amherst and the reason for that is because our open containers bylaw prohibits the possession of alcoholic beverages on public property without exception and so tonight I'm introducing to the council a very modest proposal to amend our current open containers bylaw to allow for the regulated and permitted sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages on our town commons and parks and so I first want to say what this won't do and then I want to say what I think this will do so what this won't do is it will not allow the unregulated consumption of alcohol on our common I don't want anyone thinking that we are modifying our open containers bylaw and quickly becoming New Orleans this will in no way remove the general prohibition on public consumption but what it will do as Doug just mentioned is provide the board of licensed commissioners with the flexibility to issue permits for events to allow the sale of alcoholic beverages subject to their rules and regulations I think that in my personal opinion we've seen that in their first year of operation the board of licensed commissioners has acted deliberately and thoughtfully and rationally in drafting new sensible regulations applying those regulations and being incredibly responsive when problems arise so this bylaw would give them the discretion to draft regulations around the sale or provision of alcoholic beverages and the discretion is to when to issue permits so it takes it creates an opportunity for the board of licensed commissioners that they can use at their discretion however they see fit for regulations and permits and I have faith in their ability to do so responsibly this also brings our bylaw online without of our neighbor and communities the change is very closely mirrored on Hadley's bylaw if you read Hadley's bylaw and read what I'm proposing they're almost the same it also makes it more similar to Northampton which allows special permits to be given for alcoholic beverages for certain parks for certain events and the last thing I think that it'll do which builds upon a conversation we had earlier tonight seven or eight hours ago I think is that it will better it'll help to better activate our public spaces just like the asparagus festival or the Hadley Common beer and wine garden it will bring in more visitors and residents to our public spaces or festivals concert celebrations and this brings more people into our downtown and enhances our downtown vibrancy and that's the core reason below behind this bylaw and so I'm happy to feel any questions as I'm sure Doug is since the Board of License Commission will play a pivotal role in this. Questions. Dorothy. I want to speak in favor of this because one of the growing industries in the area are local brews in fact the there was some magazine probably New York magazine that said a town is not really a town until it has its local beer and my daughter runs the Chili Fest in Sunderland and they're every year lately there are more and more stalls for the local beers and it's a total family event and it's very decorum is observed even though everybody's having a good time so I am in favor of this proposal. Okay we won't be voting tonight but is there any other comment at this time Alyssa? Yes next time we get an amendment if you could please have someone's name on it and a date I'd really like that. Thank you. I'm pretty sure that would be helpful. I have no idea where it came from I didn't know if it came from the Board of License Commissioners or the Town Council. My other comment is I am not going to be voting in favor of this and it's not because I haven't been to almost every head lay asparagus festival. It's because I'm just throwing all the discretion to a Board of License Commissioners that has one person that's ever dealt with licenses before and that has no at this time no proposal for how they're going to pick and choose between the taste of Amherst the Amherst lacrosse teams Tag Sale and the Hartford Road Race coming in from out of town and whether or not they get a license. So for some of you that might be just fine and you'd like all of that but I would like some indication of where they're planning to slice and dice before I pass the bylaw. I think it could be a really good thing for Amherst. I'm just not comfortable with throwing entire discretion to them when they are not appointed by us elected or experienced in this area. Other other comments or questions at this time. Kathy. It's more of a comment. Seeing Doug's the long annual report that I found very interesting and the regulations you promulgated to carry out various activities. If this went forward I would think that the Board of License Commissioners would have to put out a set of regulations on under what conditions. So would the bylaw have to be rewritten to add that under regulations that they first promulgate. You know so that I'm just you know so I see with BYOB you set out you know how do you do it and whatever you know so under what conditions so that I don't quite understand on otherwise how you would decide among permits. So I think it would require those kinds of steps. So it's a comment question on how would this work. Doug. So if I may. So if you were to make the change to the bylaws that exist now that would you know grant the authority to us to grant licenses in those public spaces. How we would do that is again granted to us and so what we have done to date in what I propose we would do as well is to create a set of regulations which would articulate what kinds of expectations constraints etc that we would want in place in order to grant that license. You know I certainly have opinions about what that would be at this moment in time but you know we need to go through our usual process and have all of us think about it and select and see what other communities have done around that and you know because a number of communities throughout the Commonwealth that have allowed this type of you know exception to their open container laws. So you know we do our due diligence in that regard and I think that what the regulations allow us to do is have a consistent and fair process but also make clear to anyone who's interested what our expectations are and what our frame of references as far as how we grant these licenses or not and so we try to do that with our other short-term licenses and and you know the BYOB etc to try to create that framework that you know protects everyone involved as well as gives a clear and concise pathway for people to follow them to apply for a license. I guess the question the way I'm hearing it is just as Mandy Jo will be coming back with the BYOB regulations and then also the BLC regulations no I'm yeah the BLC food service regulations will this come back to the council as well? Yes I believe so if it's a regulation that we adopt that we as a border license visitors adopt that would need approval of the only if the regulation has non-criminal penalties included if it does not include non-criminal dispossession penalties it would not come back to the council. So does that satisfy your question Kathy? It sounded like we wouldn't have to say the border license commissioners would promulgate regulations because that's the way you are proceeding on each of these so that was my question do we need to add that? So when we when we actually have the emotion? Give permits out yeah. Okay um Andy? Yeah just the board of license commissioners and select board before it granted one-day liquor licenses all the time. I can not remember very many select board meetings where the university or Amherst College for an event or a wedding or something wasn't coming before the licensing authority asking for a one-day license. It's a process that worked well under the select board it is working as well under the board of license commissioners and I think that we just have to recognize that those things are getting granted all the time and that this is analogous and when we come to our second reading just do it. The only thing that makes it different here is that it's in public property. Right Andy? You want to add I understand exactly what you're saying I just want to make sure that people understand the difference between a one-day license for a wedding and my backyard and this is that my backyard is not public property this is for public property. I think that the bigger issue is probably the control issue of making sure that minors do not be placed in a position where they can easily or in any other manner circumvent the rule on underage drinking which was actually an issue that has come before license commissioners whether they'd be select board or the current board previously because when you give a one-day license and it's for an outdoor location you have to make sure that the one-day license E is prepared to deal with that issue. Okay any further comment yes. So I'm in favor of this because I think it's important for the vibrancy of our town and my question is that we trust the the board of license commissioners on other aspects so why are we doubting their their judgment on this issue? I'm not clear that you have universal doubt I just think that there's some concern expressed by at least one person Alyssa. It's not doubt I mean a restaurant has a liquor license a new restaurant has a liquor license whatever that's completely different than deciding if a road race on the con that from out of Hartford on the common has beer or deciding if we we threw extravaganza out but now we're going to have alcohol even though we literally have problems every single weekend with alcohol and students which has nothing to do with the board of license commissioners most of the time so right we have alcohol problems every week so what I'm saying is if I had been presented with some information that indicated how they might be slicing and dicing their decision making I already know what their decision making is because the ABCC controls that they have to work under for restaurants I don't know what regulations they're thinking of for this they didn't feel the need to tell me before asking me to pass the bylaw that would have given me comfort that they had addressed all of these things because we've not done it before that's why because it's different okay are there further comments this is a first reading unless I hear differently we would do a second reading at our meeting on February 10th and we may have something in it that requires that the board of license commission come back with us with the regulations as they relate to us if they're non-criminal there's an automatic referral to GLL because it's a bylaw change there's no guarantee it comes back on February 10th because it's whenever GLL finishes its review so it's not coming back on February 10th unless GLL finishes its review thank you that's true that's what our rules say our rules require for bylaw changes that GLL have a report out before we vote I just have I'm sorry I still have a question about what Kathy asked about and what we just said associated with regulations I thought that what we said was because they would not be writing regulations I mean they will eventually write regulations for this because they're smart people they're not going to just take carte blanche they assured us of that I heard that someone wanted to add to the eventual thing that GLL would report out on that they will write regulations rather than just saying if you get around to it you'll write them and if you don't you don't they won't ever come back to us because they don't have anything to do with non-criminal disposition but it's saying please write some is that what I was hearing earlier tonight to be clear that we're expecting some to be written down whether we agree with them or not is not the issue yeah we don't have to say anything about them because they aren't non-criminal disposition we're just saying to be fair go ahead and write something down right so the path of this at this point is it goes to GLL GL may come back and say yes please write some regulations uh they won't come back to us unless they have criminal aspects to them and meantime it may or may not make it back to us for its second reading by February 10th but not until after GLL has seen it right any further questions okay all right thank you Doug thank you sorry to have kept you so late we're moving on to the town manager goals you've been provided three different documents in your packet the first is a set of the goals with all kinds of changes and track changes and then on the right in little bubbles are what each person said to us and what the committee decided those exact kinds of things have been repeated in the committee report which is the second of the items and then you also have a clean copy of the goals and while I coordinated this committee I have to say the committee has worked very hard on this and Kathy Shane particularly has worked hard on this so there's a motion Kathy would you like me to read the motion please I move to adopt the document titled town manager's goals FY 2020 as of 1 22 2020 as the FY 21 town manager goals as presented and amended it says the FY 20 that's what I'm thinking that it should be the FY because FY 21 would be next year yes it's the FY 20 okay is there a second okay discussion questions Evan so last time we had this before us I expressed some frustration and so I want to thank the committee for being responsive to that frustration and thank Amherst media for losing video of that and so I really appreciate the detailed report that we were provided and I especially appreciate the revised economic development section which I think better reflects some of the intent that I had and so I wanted to just thank the committee for their work and I am prepared to vote for this my one comment would be under economic development so that would be 6 f work with the bid and others on efforts to enliven downtown I would have like to say see on that and village centers to show that we're looking for economic development beyond just downtown in all parts of Amherst and so I would perhaps offer that as an amendment the only problem is the bid is really not focused on anything but down so I yeah yes it says and others okay so the amendment there's a friendly amendment of making the sentence for six no for yes for six f work with the bid and others on efforts to enliven downtown and village centers period are there other discussion questions comments Dorothy it's adding just a few words on number one b3 negotiate contracts including collective bargaining contracts that take into account the overall fiscal health of the town and I would like to add and the needs of the workers that's a little yes Paul I guess the question I have posed every time was how would you measure that and how would I be accountable for that how would you what would I give you as evidence well you're well I guess your wellness program the retention of workers happiness of workers I don't know maybe we were we talked about getting more of a feedback from the employees than we got this last time or comparison with other towns benefits and salaries you know it just seemed a little exploitive to just to be the overall fiscal health of the town saying oh we're having a hard time I'm going to cut your health insurance or not that people don't do that but I would hate to have our town do it I understand what you're saying I just don't know how I what I would provide to you are you asking me to do a survey of communities or conducting a survey of some sort I don't know what evidence I'd provide to the council to meet that goal and if you tell me what would be satisfactory to you I can do that well I guess if you had a union they would know but you don't have a union all right okay there's a motion but it's not been seconded is there a second to this okay let me mention that the word negotiation implies that you've got two sides and and the and therefore all of those issues are on the table so are you interested in withdrawing the motion yes I think that does that does answer it okay and Andy you're fine okay are there any further comments or questions okay then we really have actually two motions that we need here the first is the one that Kathy made and it's been seconded and that's to adopt the document titled town manager goals FY 2020 as of 1 22 2020 as the FY 20 town manager goals is presented or as amended actually now is there any further discussion yes Alyssa for the thousandth time can we include performance goals this is part of a performance evaluation the town manager performance goals is there any further discussion is that a friendly amendment yes okay any other further discussion shall any regarding adding the valet centers I'm obviously very interested in developing the South Amherst valet centers but given the short span of time that we have I would I would like to see us focusing on a single goal of really on the projects that we have for downtown and getting that done but that being said maybe I just want to ask Paul how what he feels about adding like what you know that's a discussion we've always had what can you show us to show that you did something maybe it's the I don't know is this specifically to the friendly amendment that was made earlier the one at 6f Paul yeah so so we have five months at this point to accomplish these 50 goals or whatever they are um so it's okay to have a goal in there and it's okay for me to say I wasn't able to do anything on it and then you would judge whether I had time and should have done something on it I think that would be the answer to that if you thought it was important to include it's okay to include it I might not have a positive response to you okay Kathy I I just want to add to what Chalene if I I think if you're trying to enliven downtown and North Amherst over the next five months it's you're you're gonna fail if you try to do all of it so I think maybe think of keeping that in for next year you know that expansion because it's asking for two tasks in one piece seems a lot you know I don't really care because he can say I didn't do anything with village centers but it it was made as a friendly that's gonna be the response why would we add so I'm gonna ask Evan make it as an amendment please or withdraw it 6f yes either withdraw your friendly amendment or make an amendment or make a motion okay I'm gonna I'm gonna make the amendment which is to amend 6f to add and village centers after downtown these are second any further discussion and I just want to say I appreciated Paul response Paul's response but I do think this is for us to evaluate the town manager but this is also a public facing document and I I do hear from people sometimes who say there's so much focus on the downtown what about East Amherst and and that's part of the reason behind this even if I don't reasonably expect Paul to make huge progress in East Amherst over the next five months is there any further discussion on this then we're going to vote on the amendment the amendment is to amend 6f to read work with the bid and others on efforts to enliven downtown and village centers all those in favor raise your hand and say I I opposed abstain did we get everybody okay the motion passes and it was what was the 1012 thank you all right and the performance goals unless there's an objection to that I'm not going to call for an amendment all right we're back to the original motion the original motion is to adopt the document titled the town town manager's performance goals FY 2020 as of 122 2020 as the FY 20 town manager goals as amended is all those in favor raise your hand and say I I opposed abstain okay the next thing is this committee has morphed in a couple of different ways and so I think it's time to clean it up and get rid of it and the so I'd like a motion to dissolve the town manager and town council goals ad hoc committee second is there any further discussion all those in favor raise your hand and say I opposed abstain and while we're at it there's this other group out there and it's called the town council goals ad hoc committee which we never dissolved before either so I'm going to suggest that we have a motion do I hear a motion to dissolve the town council ad hoc goals ad hoc committee so move is there a second discussion Darcy okay it is floating around but it hasn't met in a many a month okay any further discussion all those in favor say I and raise your hand I I opposed abstain all right we're moving right along we're now moving on to the reorganization standing committees this is a GOL and it's all only about the finance committee George yes GOL and its last meeting took this up we felt there was a fairly strong a sense from the council that at least this area we could act and so we did vote unanimously to dissolve the audit committee and assign all its duties that are listed under the charge in the audit committee charge adopted by the council so what we're suggesting we were asking is that you put the audit committee out of existence and move its duties to finance okay sir discussion now let's have the motion so the motion is to dissolve the audit committee I'm sorry I move that we dissolve the audit committee and assign all duties listed under section charge in the audit committee charge adopted by the council on March 18th 2019 to the finance committee I'd like an amendment effective immediately I think they're always effective immediately as long as if we don't put a different effective date on and bylaws effective 14 days later but okay okay yeah all right so is there there's a motion's been made in a second is there any further discussion then all those in favor raise your hand and say aye aye opposed abstain all right and then we need one more motion and that is a motion no we don't this did it thank you okay committee liaisons Evan yes so you caught me a little bit by surprise in this moment right now so Oka discussed let me back up in our September retreat there was a conversation that was had about liaisons and because liaisons are appointed by the town council they fell within the realm of Oka and so it was referred to Oka Oka sat on that responsibility for some time as we had a couple other things on our plate but we did meet on December 20th to start the process of appointing liaisons and what we saw is the very first step to do that was not to recommend any particular appointments but merely to come up with a list of committees that we feel it would be appropriate to have liaisons and so this was in your packet for the January 6th meeting because that's when it was originally on the agenda it does not look like it was moved over into tonight's meeting packet so I I don't know if people had an opportunity to reread or remember and so I can go through the document if we feel like that's what we want to do but I might also suggest that since this isn't pressing and since this is maybe not fresh on people's mind it might also be something that we hold we would bring it back up on February 10th and move the document itself into the agenda okay I'm sorry that the document didn't get carried over so this is now going to February 10th okay we're up to appointments and that is also Evan okay so we have had a vacancy on the planning board since early October and a vacancy announcement posted on the website since October 21st as everyone on this council is perfectly well aware. Oka spent almost all of its efforts over the fall developing a process to recommend appointments by the town council to multiple member bodies we adopted that process on December 9th and then we have spent the month of January working to implement it I Oka met this morning and I thanked my committee members but I want to do so again here in front of you all to say that Oka had five meetings over the month of January some of them fairly lengthy to make sure that we could have this planning board appointment to you here tonight given that the planning board has been experiencing a fairly significant burden with having a vacancy on the planning board the biggest part of this process were the public interviews which were conducted last Wednesday some of you here were in attendance all of not all of you many of you who were in attendance have given me some feedback on those Oka started those discussions today having sort of a debrief and reflection so I'm going to ask that our conversation tonight focus solely on our recommended appointment and the candidate and not on the process though we will continue offline to take your feedback on that process and continue those conversations we had three candidates up who we interviewed Jacob Hirsch Douglas Slaughter and Bob Greeny Douglas Marshall sorry sorry Douglas Slaughter did not interview is getting late y'all so after we met shortly after the interviews to have about an hour of deliberation around the candidates I'm going under the assumption that y'all have read the report and so I don't need to detail all the aspects of the deliberation what we did come out of that is the majority of the committee felt as though the strongest candidate to emerge from those interviews was Douglas Marshall and the three overarching things that we felt made him the strongest candidate one was his professional experience we've heard from the chair of the planning board that they're in need of someone coming in with professional experience it's a fairly young board the longest serving member currently has been on there for four years and what we've heard is that there's a significant learning curve and there's really a desire to have someone who comes in with some planning background which Doug brings from UMass we also felt as though his sustainability credentials were really strong Doug Marshall chaired the building committee of the Hitchcock Center which is a living building a net zero building and we felt that as we're approaching our climate action goals as we're looking at a master plan update that will likely incorporate aspects of sustainability having someone with that commitment to sustain sustainability but also that experience and sustainability from a planning and architecture perspective was really useful and the last thing which at first we went back and forth on and whether this was a strength there were concern but landed on strength was Doug's connection to UMass there were there were some questions about whether that was a good thing or a bad thing but what we came down on is that we have our master plan and UMass has their master plan and often those two are siloed and we see that having someone who works for UMass campus planning allows for potential better communication coordination and collaboration when it comes to planning between the university and the town and so those three things are really what we felt put Doug at the top of our list and so we bring him to we're not physically bring him we bring to you tonight a recommendation which would be to appoint Douglas Douglas Marshall to the planning board effective immediately for a term expiring June 30th 2021 I believe as recommended by the as recommended by the outreach communications environments okay since that's a motion is there a second okay um we moved to council discussion at this time is there comment Dorothy I did attend the interviews and it did go smoother than I thought it might and I you know I think it was good that it was public for the partly also for the other candidates so they could see what the other people said and feel you know the rightness or wrongness of the decision one small thing that one of the candidates did not mention on his CAF or in his speech what he did for a living and I guess part of me still wants the ability of the committee to ask them follow-up questions because that would I would have asked him that okay so we're actually speaking to the motion for this candidate if you have additional comments and you have they've gone to Evan in regard to the committee as they consider the efforts so I agree with their decision okay are there other comments at this time oh I'm sorry main teacher kind of a hybrid I I support the recommendation and I feel very comfortable supporting at this time partly because we had much more information and I felt a lot more comfortable with the process that brought that recommendation to us and I you know that's not necessarily comment on how that worked but but the comfort level compared to our last planning board appointments and how that process ended up bringing stuff to us this this seems like a much better way to get to a recommendation so I can support it wholeheartedly okay are there other comments with regard to the candidate or the motion on the candidate Darcy I I just wanted to say that I was the lone member of the committee that didn't vote for the candidate and I abstained and the reason that I abstained was which I hadn't really gelled and in the evening when we were deliberating but it's pretty much because I felt like I didn't have adequate information and part of the reason why I felt like I didn't have it was because I had earlier wanted to add a question in the selection criteria that would include whether a candidate brings perspectives that otherwise isn't represented on the planning board and so that wasn't one of the questions or one of the selection criteria but it was something that I wanted to know and I also wanted to be able to ask follow-up questions as Dorothy said you know I felt like after hearing what they had to say in response to our very specific questions um that I I didn't have enough information okay is there any other comment at this time Alyssa I would love us to have a conversation at some point perhaps at a retreat about how to talk about things at a committee and then how to do your report at the full town council we specifically asked for the reason for abstaining because we thought we all needed to take a position one way or the other we always include in detail what the various positions are as you saw we had mixed votes on certain parts of the process the fact that the process was decided for someone to say now but I didn't get what I wanted for the process it is just really frustrating to me when we had this conversation at OCA so I think it might be good if the council reviews what we feel our culture is for when you have a discussion and you attempt to cover it in writing and the person does not choose to do it that way and then gets to talk at length at a town council meeting about how their position is different that's just very uncomfortable to me if we haven't had a more of a group discussion on what our group norms are associated with that are there other comments Dorsey I would just like to respond that um what I just said was not my definition of speaking at length and I I think that I don't really take up that much of the council time in comparison to some other counselors so I I think that if I'm a minority opinion and uh I want to say something about why I voted the way I did I think I have every right to do that okay other other comments at this time there's a motion on the floor the motion's been made and seconded the I will get to it in a moment the motion is to appoint Douglas Marshall to the planning board effective immediately for a term expiring June 30th 2021 as recommended by the outreach communication appointments committee all those in favor raise your hand and say I I opposed abstain we're moving on to committee reports and the audit committee has been dissolved so Pat all right I will say as the final report for the audit committee that I have to cancel this week's meeting thank you and the agenda item that was going to be on the audit committee meeting is actually now on the finance committee meeting all right the bylaw review committee has also been dissolved so there's no report there um can you CRC Mandy Joe I think my report pretty much consists of read the report no um we we CRC reported out this week as per our referral on the downtown parking working group priority recommendations the CRC's report essentially recommended that the council incorporate those priority recommendations the three of them into the town council performance goal the town manager performance goals they have pretty much been incorporated into that so they worked the goals ad hoc committee that's now been dissolved had that report and enough time to be able to work them into the goals that we just adopted okay and we appreciated that the town manager and council goals has been dissolved finance committee given the hour are we going to be real brief we will have a more substantial report in the next council meeting we have a committee meeting tomorrow which we hope to bring conclusion to the discussions on our recommendation on the housing policy and the ad hoc percent for our bylaw recommendation and we will we have as um Lynn noted the first substantive discussion about audit responsibilities uh going forward and appreciate the work of the prior audit committee and thank them um and we'll do our best to take take their place and uh do at least as well as they did we that is a hard call but we will try the other things that are on there include several things one is to review where the budget is now in that we have the governor's budget out and see if we can get some comparisons a big issue will be there are a number of as I reported at the last meeting financial orders that we will need to bring to you that are just things that are needed to keep us moving forward making transfers and other things that have to happen and I think that the other thing the reason I want to and I'll end with it is we're going to have a brief discussion about Saturday's four towns meeting and just want to remind all of you that there is a four towns meeting and uh we have no sense of how contentious or non contentious it might be about the regional school budget to be proposed and the assessment methodology so that's um just want to remind you about Saturday's meeting we have posted that meeting so that if there is a quorum we will call a meeting to order Alyssa will we just continue to assume that mr steinberg will largely take the lead for us on that like we voted that in um I'll back in November or something like that yes right thank you for however many of those meetings yes for planning purposes how long is that meeting scheduled for an hour and a half two hours to two okay yeah it's about two okay um and it is at the middle middle school library okay geowell anything else george uh well if you had a chance to look at the report the two things we've been working on um one item was just accomplished a few moments ago which was dissolving audit and moving its duties to finance we're going to continue to look at um what uh and make a recommendation to you at some point soon about breaking up CRC and uh potentially moving okay so appointments uh somebody excuse me moving appointments to some other body I've heard from four counselors to date on this and I appreciate that um there are still four that I haven't heard from and if you have any thoughts um they would be valuable but we want to bring some kind of recommendation to you on this as soon as we can we meet on wednesday the second item is there is due the issue of a process for public ways requests which require town consulaction um this is probably new to all of you um but uh I really do would appreciate comments from you as to what it's you're looking for I thought I had an idea of what uh you were looking for and it seems I don't so um we're working on this there's a brief description of our initial discussion and so any input you can send to me directly and only to me would be appreciated okay present for it Kathy I'm sorry okay I'm sorry I skipped over one okay three quick things one is as I mentioned we have been we started this morning sort of debriefing the process so if anyone has feedback who uh based on that you feel free to send to me two we did vote this morning to recommend approval of the three sets of town manager appointments that were received cultural council council on aging participatory budgeting so you can expect to see those I believe on the february 10th town council agenda and the third thing is that okah is positioning itself to move forward on zba we have one vacancy on zba we'll have a second vacancy on the zba in march um and so okah is beginning to put together the beginning stages of filling those vacancies could you just remind me on planning board and zba do we have any terms expiring at the end of june uh off the top of my head I I'm do we do for both I don't know how many for zba we do have three for planning board so you're going to be starting that process momentarily okay um anything else yes the openings on zba is that because of retirements that are forced by time limits or people um quitting uh both are resignations there's there's two openings right now on zba both are resignations okay um percent for our bylaw Kathy um I think we're almost done I tomorrow finance will look at a somewhat revised bylaw that was revised when CRC raised some questions and we thought there were good questions since the committee we believe we addressed them so a revised revised version has gone back to CRC which I think is meeting on it this week and the finance report that you will get on this as a request from one of the members the resident members was a few numbers on what the recommended bylaw would do over time to in terms of financial impacts so it will enable people to say what did we do if we go ahead and adopt this to bylaw and finance wise okay all right um moving on minutes we have two sets of minutes both for for January 6th one was for the special council meeting which was swearing in the second was for our regular meeting um the motion is to approve the minutes of the January 6th special council meeting swearing in ceremony and January 6th 2020 town council meeting as presented is there a motion a second a second thank you any further discussion questions corrections and Mandy Joe so I didn't really want to move it because I got a question that I might want I kind of want some thoughts on at the last at the January 6th meeting during um item number 5b which was the studio apartment supportive housing during the public comment period there was a member of the public that chose not to give that member's name um a number of us know that member's name and our council rules generally require that a member of the public give their name this was really one of the first times we were presented with someone saying I'm not going to and you know I I understand how the president may not have not may not have known what to do when that happens in the moment because you hadn't really thought about that happening and so my question is right now the minutes do not identify that person by name um is it appropriate to go back to the minutes and identify that person is it not um and if not I would like someone or at least the president or council ideas to whether the president should come up with a process for when that happens how to deal with it in the moment so if it happens the next time she hasn't she's got a plan um or whether the council itself should have a plan or revisit its rules to deal with such a situation let's deal with this to the issues right now we just have a motion on the table to accept the minutes for these two events do you want to try to amend those that motion I I don't know I I have less experience with this particular issue than others on this council so I would love to hear some others thoughts on whether it would be appropriate to make a motion to put that person's name in the minutes or not Melissa so I'm not aware of any case law on this it has not come up from that standpoint as in per x y z you have to do this it has however come up that we do need to protect people's privacy if they ask for it we cannot put their name in just because we know it if they chose not to identify themselves then we need to leave it at that now they were on camera so I'm not sure how it's really protecting them much privacy wise but it was their choice and I don't think we can demand it of them I also don't think we can be put in a position where we say if you refuse to tell us who you are you're not allowed to speak in public I'm fairly certain that would result in a lawsuit so I people have different reasons for different levels of privacy consideration I would just say a person who chose who who asked not to be identified a person who asked not to be identified or however else you do it but I think it would be a terrible mistake to go in and add the name in or to try and demand that the person tell us who they are given the lack of a policy I feel like we should pass the minutes the way they've been presented and then come back to the issue if we feel we need one let's just stick to the minutes as presented are there any other questions or comments on this all right then we're going to move to approve the minutes and that's both sets of minutes all those in favor raise your hand and say I opposed abstain okay you've got the abstentions okay so it's 10-0-3 on your other bigger question it is another rules of procedure that people must identify themselves and I'm I'm inclined that if somebody does not want to state their name they have good reason without I mean the option would be that I would have to call a recess go talk with them find out why they weren't going to give me give their name at that point we've it's all been on tv and whatever exposure they were trying to avoid we have just forced it so I'm kind of of the opinion that if somebody feels so strongly that they cannot state their name we need to just respect that but yeah and we have it in our values that we want to make it comfortable for people to speak up and and so I think that value of participation also right shallowness I mean Kathy that's okay we're we're similar that's okay I usually sits there I agree with that and I want to point out that we did have another incident of it last June when we were doing the public forum around 132 Northampton road someone said you know they they didn't want to it was put them at risk to even come forward at all and that's why I think we need to respect that someone's willing to come and talk to us as you said and put themselves out there whatever the certain different circumstances will lead to different reasons the other piece that goes with that is what what somebody views as being at risk may not be something I view as being at risk and that puts me as you know as the presider over the meeting or whoever's presiding in a position of making judgment and I I mean unless we define what the reasons can be I would find that most uncomfortable Mandy job it everything people have said in theory I agree with the attorney and me says this is a very slippery slope to ending up that not a single person that talks to us in public identifies themselves and I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that if you're going to come to a meeting the standard should be you state your name so we know who is talking to us and you know it's it if I don't know how to solve that problem but I have large concerns that if a person can just say well I don't want to identify myself will never have anyone identify themselves because that will become the norm and that creates its own transparency problem right I agree with that the only thing is a lot of people want to be on public record they're coming here to you know the same way they're writing to us with you that they have a point of view and they want us to acknowledge it okay I don't want to spend a lot of time at this meeting on this issue I guess what I would like to suggest is that at some point should GOL have room on their agenda yeah they can discuss this but otherwise I would ask that you just respect my judgment okay thank you I'm moving on town managers report you say that every every time council meeting and he gets shortchanged so the first thing is just remind you that on Saturday you have the four towns meeting and then at one o'clock is the reading of the proclamation for black history month in front of town hall also for black history month February 8th from 11 to 3 there is a celebration in the banks community center on January 29th Wednesday I believe there'll be a effort to count the homeless for the complete count committee so the the three county continuum of care will be organizing the count in Hampshire Franklin Berkshire counties and they'll be reaching out with the research outreach teams from the Elliott home services and service net to go and find everybody who's homeless on that night and then that that will be counted towards the census oh at the four towns meeting at the MMA annual meeting I believe we I've not received numbers yet but I think our health insurance the change to Maya will have been paid off the health insurance increases will be pretty competitive so that will solve a lot of the problems that might have been brought up at the four towns meeting because it'll reduce the impact of the budget on the other towns as well so I haven't seen the numbers on that but Mike and I are looking at that winter fest is coming up starts February 1st Saturday with luminaria and the bid and the chamber have been very helpful in doing that and if you haven't been go to the common on on Saturday night it's really kind of cool the way they set it up it's a neat really neat thing they have ice sculptures and all kinds of stuff and they have lanterns throughout the common valley CDC has submitted its request for a project eligibility letter for 132 North Hampton road to the state we have not heard from the state yet as to when we have not received their project the letter from the state and that's what triggers the 30-day comment period and we will treat this just the way we did for the north north square at the mill district beacon project we will have a project page on the planning department website where all the comments will be gathered there there will be a press conference a week from Friday February 7th at 9 a.m. in the town in here to further promote the efforts to encourage members of the community to participate in the census if any counselors would like to be here be part of that you're welcome to that the if many of you were there at the Maya luncheon where our staff received a most innovation in wellness award at the 400 person luncheon and was very proud of our staff for making that happen that our wellness ambassadors are Joanne busy at me as a busy as a yak bring on a sun red and ls stalker to get that right no i never return the right the east street school we have reviewed the one response that had come to the east street school you know that we rejected that bid we have met with a bidder to understand what the challenge was in the rfp we have considered some of the work that we would need to do to make the rfp a more attractive rfp we will be investigating what for instance one of the things was the bidder didn't know what the situation was with asbestos in the existing east street school so we're going to spend a little bit of money to assess what kind of asbestos liabilities are in the east street school that will give the bidders more information to decide if they can respond or not the north amherst library i think i've reported this before there's an anonymous donor who's interested in moving the project forward and we i'm hoping that we will have a proposal to you at your next meeting in february the way we would set it up is that the funds would be set aside for conducting the plans and then before any work is completed the funds to actually do the construction would be set aside so that's the that's the goal and now we can have more detail about how that what that would look and whether the the council would like to accept these gifts or not and do the work and that's my report other than what's already written are there any questions at this time yes mandate you um health insurance rates many of us were at the mile luncheon where they talked about what the average rate increase will be and all what was built into the budgets that we initially saw six percent okay but we don't have our percentage yet they'll were pretty i'm confident we don't have no we did not have the percentage yet but i'm confident they will be much better than that okay because we've had excellent experience okay other questions of the of the manager okay um i don't have a question i just want to commend you and your staff for what you did for martin luther king day on the steps but then over jones library john moisten uh the videos that were put together the clips of the jobs and and justice march 1963 were amazing and the discussion was fabulous and i know a lot of extra work went into that so i uh i think it goes over and beyond and i want to thank whoever else was part of that but yeah but jennifer you're right you identified the correct person she was a lead on that and did a really terrific job thank you for noticing right any other comments or questions okay then we're moving on to towns town council comments i provided you a memo in which i've um reviewed and rec and stated what my plan would be for standing committee appointments and and ad hoc or though there are no ad hoc at this time and then the procedure that i would propose to use for multiple member bodies um and then i also wanted to make sure you had a full account of the committees um this is the ongoing spreadsheet that i've used all year if you have any feedback on this please provide it to me but i don't think we have the energy at this point to discuss it the biggest dilemma i have right now is that we're if we are going to change our committees then how do i do reappointments and at the same time the clock is ticking um i mean i have to be honest and say particularly for the finance committee it's either change now or don't uh because we're going to enter into the finance committee year so um i might set up a trial balloon and see what people say on that uh jcpc as well um which are the really two kind of time sensitive and then come back with that but just keep in mind as you respond and i'll put this in the email that um you know we have the other committees to consider as well um if that's acceptable then i'll just keep moving on uh five counselors have expressed interest in attending agenda setting meetings and i have already done invitations to them for a certain date specific those meetings are always at two o'clock on tuesdays and when excuse me two o'clock on wednesdays in the town manager's office um based on the poll of town counselors and looking at and looking at the topics and so forth we're still working on uh scheduling some informal information sessions uh based on the expressed interest there was no one solid kind of individual interest in topics but we will look to schedule those probably on friday mornings be early and ending before 10 30 um the um we did receive the report from the consultants on the listening sessions it's on the website and as i mentioned when i sent it out to you i'm looking for any volunteers who would like to help with content analysis i've gotten two volunteers and i'm willing to do that myself but more is always helpful um in terms of future agenda items i really haven't made progress on this and part of it is trying to figure out how to present it in such a way that it is because it's a dynamic document it it changes literally by the day and so it's it's trying to figure out how to do that so if you'll just be patient with me i'll continue to try to come up with a way to forecast future meetings um and then the retreat is now scheduled for march 21st and i've asked you for other topics for that as well any other questions yes pat i don't think that you have to forecast which meeting it's coming to for me it's knowing what is in the pool of things that we need to look at all right thank you or begin to look at okay just a rolling set of issues okay all right i mean literally an example this last meeting i went in thinking one we threw off one we added another we should have thrown off two others you know it's just it it's it's a dynamic process okay um future agenda items anything anybody wants to bring up particularly at this point yes elissa yes i want to prevent george's agenda item i'm gonna be clear on that so he mentioned in his report that gol wants to talk about dumping oka soon oka just met this morning and it never came up that that was going to happen soon and so therefore we didn't add it to our list of agenda items which for our meeting is the 10th which is the same night as the town council meeting so let's not talk about dumping oka at the february 10 the town council meeting because oka needs time to discuss that before we hear again why it needs to happen to us okay syrup yes i would just like to um second that because this morning when we had an oka meeting there was a certain contentious subject that came up and i said that i would rather not waste time on that if oka was going to be dissolved soon which was which is what i assumed and then i heard from other people who have more of a deciding factor on it than what happens just assume you'll keep going so i just i don't i welcome any any discussion either way it's just more helpful to me if i actually know where we're going that that's all thank you thank you any further comments on future agendas yes shall we maybe this is for the retreat but i was struggling with the harassment issue of town employees and committee members by residents and again i learned a lot at the mma conference because i attended the civility forum and one of the things i learned from the town town councilor is there who was presenting is that the town council has a code of conduct in which we set the example for the residents of how we speak to each other and so maybe we could come up with a code of conduct of you know kindness and curiosity and it doesn't mean we don't ask questions but it's how we ask questions and so we could come up with something and i think they even said there's a visual that they provide at town council meetings for the residents to see that this is our code of conduct so it's kind of it's starts here as a leadership and then it's and we can find other ways of course brainstorm but then it spreads into the community how we create a culture of kindness and caring and so forth okay additional comments at this time kathy um i'll i i do want to pat shellony on the back because we have a value statement at the back of rules and we might want to move it to the front of rules and take another look at that at the retreat but on a separate topic on the exciting package that we got for downtown sits there along with the four buildings we've talked about and then i just read through the facilities report for the community fields that range for the plans range from four million to six and a half million of town dollars and then there are so i would like maybe at the retreat to put the big big picture up um of what we have flowing at us so that we don't do each in its own silo um we have some really hard choices to make um especially on timing when we can be seriously talking about something versus wishfully talking about it okay yes darcy uh i understand the interest in a civility code and i'm not an ultimately opposed to it but i find it possible to survive these long meetings because the individual voices of the counselors are still theirs i would just hate to have us all sound the same talk the same introduce things in the same way and i enjoy being involved in a group of different people so that's my comment that will save the rest of that conversation for the retreat for their comments at this time um councilor comments any further reports or anything okay there are no topics reasonably no topics not reasonably anticipated and there's no executive session do i hear a motion to adjourn there's a motion to adjourn is there a second i second all those in favor i opposed abstain i guess it was unanimous