 All right, Lynn's going to host for you. We've begun recording and I'm going to step out. Have a good meeting, everyone. Thank you, Athena. Lynn. Hi. Seen as we have a quorum of the council who is attending the TSO meeting today, I'm calling the council to order at 9.33. Good morning. I'm calling the June 1st, 2020 meeting of the town service and outreach committee to order at 9.33. So Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law allows us to hold this virtual meeting of the town services and outreach committee and meeting of the whole. I'll call on each committee member by name. At that time, I'll confirm that you can hear me and we can hear you. Remember to mute your mic after saying present. Alyssa Brewer is not present yet, but she is on her way. Darcy Dumont, present. Dorothy Pam. Present. Evan Ross. Present. George Ryan. Present. Committee members, if you have technical issues, please let staff know. To make a comment or ask a question, please click the raise hand button, although I'll also acknowledge you if I see your hand waving. Discussion may be suspended if we need to address technical issues and the minutes will note if a disconnection occurred. We're getting better at running our Zoom meetings and requests that everyone be patient with the process. If you're attending as a member of the public, you are an attendee in the webinar and can participate through public comment. So now is the time for public comment. Just one second. Do we have? I don't see any public comment or hands raised at this time. Okay. All right, so we will just skip that. I'll read the directions just in case people don't know what they are. Okay. The public may provide public comment at this time on matters within the jurisdiction of the Town Services and Outreach Committee. Residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes. Counselors will not respond to questions or engage in a dialogue during public comment because this is the public's time to speak. To participate in public comment, see the instructions at the bottom of the agenda. If you join the council meeting via Zoom teleconferencing to indicate you wish to make a comment, click on participants and then on Ray's hand. If you join the council meeting via telephone to indicate you wish to make a comment, press star nine on your telephone. Still no hands? Not that I can see, but I want to make sure others are looking to, and Alyssa is joining us. Okay, great. Hi, Alyssa. Still, there she is. Let's make sure we can hear Alyssa. Yes, apparently it was actually working the first three times I reinstalled it. It just told me I had to reinstall it for no apparent reason. Can I? We will blame you, Alyssa. Darcy, since it's a meeting of the council as well, I just need to make sure that Nandy Johanicki can hear us. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Andy Steinberg, can you hear us? Shallony Balmilln, can you hear us? Yes. Okay, and Alyssa, you've come on. Thank you. Did we hear from Andy? We didn't. Andy, can you hear us? You need to. Maybe he's left the room or something. Maybe he's left the room. Yes. Okay, so. I finally got back to where I should be. I'm only going to be listening. I'm not going to be participating, but I am here. Okay, great. Thank you. All right, moving on to action items. We have, at this time, we're going to take up town manager appointments today. We, and if you, Lynn could bring up the memo, the town manager's memo on the reappointments, that would be great. We are considering a number of reappointments that are set to expire in June. They are mostly for members of boards and committees that have only served one term or who have served no more than about three years. We'll be looking at reappointment of members to the Agricultural Commission, the Affordable Housing Trust, Board of Assessors, Council on Aging, Design Review Board, Historical Commission, Leisure Services, Munson Memorial, Building Trustees, Public Art Commission, the Resident Advisors Committee, and the Water Supply Protection Committee. So I just want to mention that I pulled the members of this committee as to whether they had any objection to dealing with these reappointments in this manner that is as a bulk request of reappointments that are coming due at the end of the year, that end of the fiscal year, and none had objections. As chair, I asked the town manager to provide at least some information about each person reappointed and how long they had served on the committee, which she did. It's possible that if anyone has objections to any of these that we could separate the motion out, but that would be up to counselors. So does any, do any counselors have questions about any of these reappointments? Guess not, huh? Okay, so in that case, I did have one question of the town manager, and that is, I looked through to see if there were any people who were exceeding six years by receiving this appointment, and it looked like there might only be one Jan Marquardt. And I just wondered about whether the town manager thought about that or what his thinking was on it, Paul. So, yeah, so there is no limit on reappointments. So that's, I don't, you know, I look at that and I do believe in turnover, but I don't have a hard and fast rule. So Jan Marquardt has served a partial term in one term. So I'm looking to reappoint her for a regular full term. Everybody else has only served one term in their appointments. All right, so if there are no other questions or comments, I move to recommend that the town council approve the town managers' recommendations to appoint the following residents to the following boards and committees. To the Agriculture Commission, Massoud Hashemi for a term to, and David Makowski for terms to expire on June 30th, 2023, to the Affordable Housing Trust, Sidonia Ferreira with a term to expire June 30th, 2023, to the Board of Assessors, Richard Morris with a term to expire June 30th, 2023, to the Council on Aging, Greg Vascom and Tim Neal with terms to expire June 30th, 2023, to the Design Review Board, Erica Zekos with a term to expire June 30th, 2023, to the Historical Commission, Jan Marquardt and Hetty Startup with terms to expire June 30th, 2023, to Leisure Services and Supplemental Education Commission, Yusef Fadal with a term to expire June 30th, 2023, to Munson Memorial Building Trustees, Claudia O'Brien with a term to expire June 30th, 2023, to the Public Art Commission, William Cazan with a term to expire June 30th, 2023, to the Residence Advisory Committee, Keisha Dennis, Constance Krueger and Jim Pastrang with terms to expire on June 30th, 2021, and to the Water Supply Protection Committee, Christina Sifriani and Jack Jemsik with terms to expire June 30th, 2023. Do I have a second? I second. It's George. Any further discussion or comments? You know, Alyssa Brewer has raised her hand. Oh, Alyssa. Yes, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, this was a lot of work and material to get to us in a short time, given all the other priorities we have. So I appreciate that we are getting these done in a relatively timely fashion, which is a hard struggle in a normal year, much less this year. The one thing I do want to point out is for those people who have been carefully following what was originally the OCA process and is now moving out into various other town council committees, is to remind people that the two processes are entirely different in terms of reappointments and the town manager did a good job of, as always, of explaining what his process was, but it is completely different than the town council's process, both in terms of how reappointments are made, who's at the table, what level of conversation takes place, and term length. That is entirely within his purview under the charter. I just know that there's been a lot of angst around the way the town council does appointments. And so I always say, and you could also look at the way the town manager does appointments because that's in fact most of the appointments in the community. So I appreciate this, I appreciate that he's provided us a good deal of information here, and I understood what he said about term limit. The one thing I would like us as a council to try and move away from, and we've started to do this at OCA, is to stop talking about how many terms somebody has had because some people get a one-year term, some people get a two-year term, and just talk about how long they've served because we have so many volunteers who served great numbers of times, and it doesn't really matter how many terms they've had, it matters how many years they've served, and we appreciate all their service. So it's just kind of a different way of looking at it. I appreciate that. Thank you. Hey, thanks. Thank you, Alyssa. Okay, so we're going, unless there are other comments, we're gonna move to a roll call vote. Alyssa Rower. Hi. Darcy Dumont. Hi. Doracy Pam. Hi. Evan Ross. Hi. George Ryan. Hi. Okay, that's unanimous, and the next step will be that I will report this recommendation on reappointments to town boards and committees to the town council. Okay, next up. We have an action item, and do we have Christine here this morning, Rostro? Well, She isn't, but I could see if I could get her. She probably... Oh, Rob Mora is... You can probably answer whatever. But Rob Mora, our building commissioner, is here. If you'd like him to be part of the discussion. Okay, great. So our second action item today pertains to the public way request within the temporary zoning moratorium proposal that was put forward at our last town council meeting, which is up on the screen now, or is going to be. The town services and outreach committee, as we know, has as its charge to review and make recommendations to the town council on measures related to the public ways. The town manager's memo, his original memo on the topic explains that the overall proposal is to temporarily relax planning and zoning requirements for restaurants and businesses to facilitate reopening of retail business and Amherst. The goal is to temporarily allow restaurants and other retail businesses to create and or expand sidewalk cafe seating areas and display areas on either private or public property, including public rights of ways subject to administrative review by town staff to ensure public safety, public health and public access are all maintained. So we receive the policy went to the GOC and the GOL and we received it from them. So before us, we have a referral to look at the amendments made by the GOL to the public way policy. So I think now would be a good time for George who is a member of this committee, he's also chair of the governance, organization and legislation committee to explain what GOL did with the public way policy proposal that is now before us. George, would you be able to explain that? I can certainly try. Also, we have Mandy present who was basically the instrument of the change. So she may want to speak up more directly but essentially what, and Mandy can correct me here but what we did was to take what originally had been part of a larger item, a continuation was taken out and made a separate item in the bylaw. So I'm sorry, in the public ways policy. So Mandy, do you want to speak specifically to the change that you made? Sure, the main reason for doing it was the proposal had only put it under, I think temporary sidewalk requests. And if you page up that it put it under, I think 3A short-term closures or 3B, yeah, 3B, it put it under 3B short-term closures for sidewalks, which is a very specific type of closure and only is for 14 days or less. And in reading the rest of the policy, it came to mind that given the knowing what we, the purpose of this exemption was for, sort of more of a long-term use of potentially sidewalks for the whole summer for restaurants and all, that that might not be the only place this would fall under. It could fall under parking requests for maybe use of sort of the sidewalk, the along street parking, or it would be longer than 14 days. And so instead of adding phrases into every single one of the options that it might fall under, the thought was that adding a new section to apply to all of those sections was probably cleaner and more clear in what we're giving the manager authority to do. Do we have any comments from counselors to questions of the town manager? I have one question and that is, we haven't really gotten input from the, any one in the disability community. This came up at the district five meeting that someone who was wheelchair Brown asked the question, is there, are there any concerns here for disabled people as far as access to the sidewalk area or to the restaurants that might be putting tables, might be starting outdoor cafes and what Paul. So that's a great question and a really good concern. I want to recognize that our building commissioner, Rob Mora is here, is something that he'll take into consideration. So Rob, do you want to address how you would look how the ADA laws would come into play when someone was requesting to place tables outside and the impact on the sidewalks, if you're here? I see Rob, you just have to unmute Rob if you're here. Maybe he's not. So anyway, I'll address it. When an application comes in, the consideration for the establishment, they have to comply with the ADA rules. And that's been a concern for a lot of these things at the state level as well to make sure that ADA access is not inhibited in any way. And if we look at relocating the sidewalk or utilizing the sidewalk in a different way, we would have to maintain ADA compliance with that too because it's a public structure that we're making a change to. We always have to comply with the ADA rules and regulations. Yeah, it occurs to me that restaurants that want to initiate outdoor cafes, I mean, a lot of them have already done that. But it seems like they probably wouldn't be able to have more than one row of tables. Well, it depends how much of the sidewalk and how much into the street you go. So. Into the street. Right, so if we take parking spaces, for instance, and what a lot of communities are doing are they'll extend, they won't just take the sidewalk, they will take the parking spaces and make that the new sidewalk with a ramp down and ramp up or build a ramp over the parking spaces. And then they have utilized the space right in front of the restaurant for the seating area. So there's a lot of different ways to go about this. We always want to maintain adequate passage for people to go up and down and while trying to accommodate the businesses and having tables outside, that's sort of the mission that we're on. Sounds good. You have three hands up. Ross. Yeah, thank you. And yeah, I had a similar question in Darcy's before, so thank you for that clarification. And I'm glad to hear that we're considering not just the sidewalk, but also utilizing some of the actual street space. My question actually is likely more for GOL and Mandy. I guess I'm curious why this has to be written into the policy as like a temporary addition that will then be deleted later on and can't just be part of the motion to pass the zoning, the temporary zoning bylaw that says and suspend, you know, suspend sections 2A, 2B, 3B, 3C from council approval. The wording could be worked, but I guess is there a feeling like this needs to be part of a official policy and not can't just be part of the motion to pass the zoning bylaw? Mandy, Joe. I can try to respond. I mean, we didn't talk about whether we could fold it into the passage of the bylaw. You know, this new section in the policy, yes, it would sort of, you know, go out of its sunset in 180 days after the zoning bylaws passed. But it putting it into the motion might be somewhat complicated because we're not suspending 2A, 2B, 3B and 3C for everything, just for anything related to connected with that article 14. We're not allowing the town manager by putting it in here to do, you know, long-term parking closures that don't relate to article 14. So it could be, and I think it's best anyway to have it set somewhere so that people can refer back to it a little more easily. But we as a GOL didn't really discuss those two options. George. My question is more about, is more general about the whole effect or intent of this change, not just for the policy issue, but also for the zoning issue. My understanding is that this would allow the town manager to provide spaces, as he just said, that could go out into the street, could even include street closures as a possibility. Would it also include public parking areas? Would that also be covered by this and also green space like parks or the common? I asked this in part because my understanding is at least in phase two of Baker's proposed phased reopening, restaurants will only be allowed to provide service out of doors. That's my understanding, maybe that's mistaken. And that when phase three puts in maybe three or four weeks later, if things go up to plan, it will probably still be only a certain percentage of the indoor space that be available. So I guess I want some assurance or at least some sense of whether we're providing maximal access to as much space as possible because I think a sidewalk by itself, I just walk around town and I look at a lot of restaurants. The sidewalk is not going to be sufficient. They're just not going to reopen. It doesn't make financial sense. So I guess the question is, does this both the bylaw and this public policy allow maximal freedom to the town manager to basically make use of just about any possible public space, including the ones that I mentioned. Paul, can you answer that? Sure. Well, I believe that the policy does, we would be looking at every available space, be it public way, which is what this address, but also non-public ways, which is not needed to be addressed in this situation. We would be looking at parking lots. We've looked at, we have private property owners coming forward, suggesting space. So we want everything on the table. We think this is, for this year, this is really important for us to be as flexible and supportive of our restaurant businesses as we possibly can. And I think I can't tell you exactly what will happen because we're going to have to do it based on who comes to us with an interest and where we can be proactive in saying, we're going to create a space for you to operate. So I think it's going to be a little bit of both when we might have one business that says, here's, I want to do this and we'll work that through. And we might come up with some ideas and say, hey, we want to take this section and we're going to create a larger area for people to share meals together. So I do also want to mention that Rob Mora is online and Chris Breastrup has joined us as well. If there are questions along these lines. Rob, I think for you, there was a question about ADA compliance. I think I answered it, but in case there's anything I missed on that, what are the ADA rules when it comes into restaurants and they're seating outdoors? Rob, you need to unmute yourself. I cannot do that as host. Well, maybe we'll keep moving. Yeah, I think that the ADA compliance you know, would be good to go further than ADA compliance by contacting our disability advisory committee and just, you know, reaching, I actually did reach out to them for this committee and I, but I reached out pretty late. So I'm sure that's why I didn't hear from them, but to just make sure that they have the opportunity to weigh in on, you know, any suggestions they have. Chris Breastrup has her hand up and may have a comment on this issue. Christine. Hello, I just wanted to say that yes, ADA would need to be complied with, but we haven't really looked all around the town, the downtown and the village centers determine where these areas would be. So I think it would be kind of on a case by case basis that we would evaluate each one. And we in the planning department had an idea that we might try to come up with a kind of generic map of areas that might be suitable. We haven't really started that yet, but I think it might be a good idea to give us just a general sense of where these places might be, but we would have to work with the town manager and the building commissioner to determine exactly where these places would be. Thank you. Rob, do you have something to add now that you seem to be available? Yeah, I'm available, but I missed the question. I apologize. So the question was about ADA access and if a business wanted to go into the sidewalk, what would the building department do to ensure that access was available to everybody? Yes, so absolutely ADA accessibility along with all the other requirements as far as safe egress and maneuverability at the doorways to the establishments will all be looked at as part of our review of any proposed location, whether on private property where Article 14 will be applying for in the public ways as well, sidewalks or in public parking areas. Thank you. Melissa. Thank you. A couple, I guess they're mostly comments this being Amherst, not questions, but I wanted to just follow up and that I do in fact appreciate that we're updating our actual policy because as we've learned, we should actually be looking at our policy regularly rather than looking at our policy and then remembering, oh yeah, except we did that temporary thing that's for 180 days. So I appreciate GOL working to make that work and then we'll suck it back out again at some point in the future. In terms of the parking lot conversation, our press in our area has been less than clear because if I think about downtown, just like Chris said, they haven't worked through all these scenarios yet. When I think about downtown, I don't think any downtown restaurants have their own parking lots. I mean, Mission has a parking lot in South Amherst but downtown restaurants don't have their own parking lots. So any talk of expanding into parking lots downtown is always in the public way. And I think people sometimes forget that because that's not necessarily true in other communities. The other part is that associated with how we're trying, even before this happened, right? The bid was talking to us about increasing the availability of responsible alcohol sales downtown and how downtown might look on pre-pandemic and now we're trying to adjust to all these other things. And I'm reminded, having formerly been a licensed commissioner, that there's an ABCC patio memo about how alcohol service needs to be separated from passers-by. The premises must be enclosed by a fence, rope, or other means to prevent access from a public walkway. That is what the memo says. Now, we'd like to think that ABCC is gonna be more flexible during this whole time than they have been in the past as well, but that just like having to take into account ADA compliance rights so we can't fill up the whole sidewalk with tables. We also have to bear in mind that if this is a place that either currently is licensed to sell alcohol outside or is planning to become a place that's licensed to serve alcohol outside, that we need to be complying with that as well unless ABCC suspended that. So it's just one more piece of the mix that I appreciate that staff is trying to figure out what all these different components are and what might expand where. But that is an important thing to recognize and in fact may not have been entirely true in Amherst in the past. Thank you, Alyssa. Doris. Well, I will add some of Alyssa's comment to mine. Thinking about trying to walk in public ways in New York City and finding an extremely difficult with the encroachment onto the sidewalk all the time. I had noticed that there were many borders fences, rope fences, whatever, and Alyssa has explained why obviously, which make it more difficult. But I wanted to ask Paul, I'm not sure all the details of ADA, but I mean, whatever they are, I wanted space big enough for two adults side by side to walk so that somebody can walk holding the arm of another person. Too many times in New York, it's like single file weaving through and that is not safe for a lot of people. A lot of people want to walk holding the arm of somebody else. And I know that sidewalks have become very precious in this time. So I want to know how what Paul's ideas are on, whether that much space would be allowed for the public to pass through. So I think we don't want to, I think there, I don't know exactly what the requirements are. Maybe Rob or Chris know the width of a sidewalk that's required. That would be, we would go by the standard width that's required for any kind of sidewalk like that, whether it's four feet or six feet. I don't know exactly what the number is off the top of my head. Chris or Rob, do you aware of that? Yeah, generally we, yeah, generally want to have four feet clearance. There are, you can reduce down to three feet around obstructions or light poles or things like that. So that would be ideal for one traveler, one way traffic basically. Well, I wasn't talking two way. I was talking to adults side by side, so that somebody could be lending an arm to the other person. And that's not three feet, I guess. I mean, yeah, it just could get tricky or it could make people with any mobility problems decide they're not going to go downtown. So that's just something to think about. Thank you, Dorsey. I don't see any other, do the other members of the council that are, you know, in the meeting, do you have any comments or questions? Okay, well, unless we have any further questions, I think that the council referred this to us with a request that we get back for the recommendation by today for the council meeting tonight. So I have a motion here and I'm sure that if it's not correct, someone will tell me. So I, this is the motion that I am suggesting. I move to recommend that the town council approve the changes to the town council policy regarding the control and regulation of the public ways as proposed in the 515, 2020 town managers memo to the town council as amended by the GOL on 527, 2020. Any corrections? I actually didn't, George, this is a question for you, is with the memo that you sent from the KP law, should that be the, should we say as amended by, is it covered just to say as amended by GOL on 527, or should we say a different date? The KP law, that different document. This is the public ways. We're just looking at the public ways policy that's given to us. We're just looking at the public ways policy that GOL is amended. And we did that. Sorry. We should just keep with 527 recommendation from GOL. Yes. Okay. So if there's no one suggesting that I should change that language, is there a second? Actually the date 527, I'm calling through my calendar and my own memory. GOL met on 520. 527 was a date that came from the KP law memo. So I believe the date should be 520, according to my calendars when we last met. So instead of 527, it should read 520. Otherwise, I think the motion is fine. So you met two days after the council meeting. That is correct. Okay. All right. So we'll amend it to say 520, 2020. Do I have a second? I second. Any further discussion? Okay. All those in favor, starting with Alyssa Brewer. Roll call. Aye. Darcy Duma, aye. Dorothy Pan. Aye. Evan Ross. Aye. Lord Ryan. Aye. Okay. So that's unanimous approval. And I will report that as promised to the council for tonight's meeting. Okay. Moving on. So next item, we're moving to presentations and discussion. We're going to hear from Mandy Joe about the technology surveillance technology bylaw. Pat DeAngelis was going to come. She's another councilor sponsor of this bylaw proposal, but she is working on a resolution for the council for tonight. So I hope that counselors have come with some questions, some of which counselors can answer today and some others that are, well, Mandy Joe, not counselors, that Mandy Joe can answer today and others that Mandy Joe and Pat can provide answers before our next meeting. I did speak briefly to the town manager about this agenda item and he said he would provide staff at an upcoming meeting possibly June 15th to respond to counselor questions about town implementation of this. And I think probably all of you have seen that Northampton has recently dealt with a bylaw proposal along these lines. So Mandy Joe, do you know which item you want? Well, we have an item up on the screen now. Okay. Lynn should be putting a bylaw itself up, which is very wordy. I didn't prepare any additional slides or anything, but- Is this the one you want, Mandy Joe? Yes, that is. I do encourage it, Lynn, a little bit for those of us whose side is not that good. So the impetus for this, from my point of view, was actually when I read an article in, I'm not sure which magazine it was or a newspaper, that face recognition technology is biased and it's biased in the fact that it does not generally accurately identify faces of minorities, women, and including women. It's most accurate for white men and it gets less accurate going to white women and then to minority men and minority women. It's probably getting better, but when I read that article, I thought maybe we should, and it was talking about other towns that were looking at banning facial recognition technology and I thought, if it's biased like that, I'm not sure I want that operating in my town because I don't want something like that. So then I started looking at stuff. I talked to Pat and Pat and I started getting together and this whole bylaw is based on a bylaw that Cambridge, Massachusetts has passed. It is very similar to that bylaw. There are very few differences. So, and that bylaw was supported and worked on with the ACLU of Massachusetts, but this bylaw does a couple of things. Number one, it bans the use of facial recognition technology in the town. That's the one thing it absolutely bans. Then for all other surveillance type technology, it requires a couple of things before that technology can be put in use if it's not already in use. It requires an impact report. It requires an impact sort of a use intention. So you have to submit an impact report and a use policy before you're acquiring this technology. And so it lists what you would have to identify in those reports and in that use policy. And then you have to follow that. And then the one other thing, it does exempt on a temporary basis the use of surveillance technology in accident circumstances. So that does give the police department if something comes up, the ability to implement something more quickly and then come back to the council for approval. And it requires the council to approve the use of this technology. The reason for this from my point of view is I want our town and our residents to know what type of surveillance technology is being used on them by the town. I don't want it hidden. I don't want it sort of bought by a department and put up in town with us as counselors and our residents not knowing what it's used for or that it's even there. And then in terms of the use, I wanna know who can get access to that information, who has access to it, who in a lawsuit could have access to it, how long it is kept. So from my point of view, the purpose of this beyond the banning of facial recognition technology is really transparency so that our residents and our counselors know exactly what our towns departments are using and keeping in terms of surveillance data and how it's being used. In this day and age when we've seen a lot of stuff get used without a lot of daylight. And I think it's important for us to say, no, we need to know what's being used on our residents. I talked briefly a long time ago with the manager about this and without him having have read the proposed bylaw, he had one concern and he did mention at one point that he didn't believe any surveillance technology was actually in use in this town at this point. I can't guarantee whether it is or not, but I think even if it's not, I'd wanna know before it does go in use. So this could be even if it wouldn't apply now something that I think we should do. The one thing he had a concern with was the requirement to submit an annual report on the use. So that is the section that differs the most from the Cambridge bylaw that passed. We tried to accommodate both our own interests, patronized interests in making sure that some information is reported yearly on uses but not to burden the manager and the departments in reporting every year on certain things. So we required if the police department is using something to report every year and then for any other department that might be using surveillance technology, the report has to be at the request of the town council. You will see in here a comment about is this easy to do for multiple years? And that is statistics on public records because we recognize that the council may not ask for, if say LSSE just to pull out a random department is using surveillance technology, the council may not ask for a report every year. They might ask for one for five or six years. And we don't want to, if that happens, we don't wanna burden that department if they can't come up with that information easily for five or six years for some of this. So we attempted to thread a needle between having to report on every use every year and only having to report when the council really wants a report. We're not sure that given what's required to be in the report that this might be feasible for that sort of long-term if the council only asks every five or six years if it's not asking every year. You will see there's exemptions, there's a big definition of what surveillance technology and all is that's the important, one of the most important parts I think of the bylaw is how surveillance technology is defined because that determines when the manager would have to seek council approval for use. So that's all at this point I wanna say. I'm happy to try to answer questions. Dorothy, you have to unmute Dorothy. I do have some questions because although I have the copy in front of me, it's kind of unreadable in terms of the type. So I do appreciate everything that you did explain. I was glad to hear that the town manager said he didn't, to his knowledge, we weren't using any. I am really don't want any. I did see that in your law if the every year or five years or six years that's not of most importance to me. What's important to me is that if some department wants to use it, it comes to the town council. And I believe that's in this. I think I saw it briefly on section C somewhere. Let's see, there's no page numbers. I do like page numbers on all documents, by the way. All out of page numbers, sorry about that. In the definition of surveillance, which our phones linked because the reason facial recognition technology is so scary is that it's linked with phones and then they can track you down exactly where you are with the phone and you can be arrested before you've had a chance to think. So it's the phone link that I'm really concerned about. Is our phones being able to track people by their phones? Is that here in this law? So this bylaw applies only to use by the town. So the town, it's technology the town would be purchasing to use on its own. So in that sense, I guess the phone link is not there I would say because they don't own our phones. This would not stop the town from going to, you know, Comcast or Sprint or Verizon, you know, name a phone company or someone that you've got a phone plan with and asking for a subpoena to provide records that way. This bylaw would not stop that. Well, I'm really, listen, I've just come off of finishing the handmade's tale. So I'm really, my mind is on fascism and I see what's going on around me, just terrifyingly feeding into my worst fears. And it's not subpoenaing their phone records so much which we know that's going on all the time, but it's using it as a surveillance and capture. I mean, it's now, I'm glad I didn't do facial recognition as a way of opening up my iPhone because they're also tied in together right now. It's kind of scary. So for example, it is possible that I'd have to read the definitions again that, you know, there's been during the pandemic, some countries that have required people to put apps on their phones that then go to the public, to the, you know, to the government. It is possible that that type of app requirement or the use of the data from that app, if the app was produced by say the town of Amherst that this bylaw would require council approval before that app is put into place. What we'd have to check closely on the definition. So I can certainly look into that. Thank you very much. Alyssa. Thank you. I'm more than happy to support this in general. I mean, I'm the person people mocked when I said I didn't like the idea of having to put our license numbers in and the parking machines because I figured we were being tracked enough as a reality, but people mocked me and it didn't matter. So I'm referring more to our process here and I had a brief exchange with Darcy about this originally. Perhaps I'm just taking this whole process thing a little too seriously, but I'm concerned about how we get to various points of this. And so today's presentation was scheduled without any discussion with other TSO members as to whether or not this was our priority of the next thing we wanted to work on. And just like with wage theft, we're getting presentations that haven't been vetted by the town attorney, haven't been vetted by all the stakeholders in this case, one would include, as was mentioned, APD, the Human Rights Commission. It's not actually been run by the ACLU for our variation. And so I'm just trying to understand like was the idea that it comes to us for a 10 minute presentation and then we say, cool, go find out some more information and come back because it feels like we could have done that. We can do that in a short period of time, but I noticed with the wage theft, we kept doing it over and over and over and then we thought we finally had it done and it turned out, of course, it wasn't ready. And so I know that we're gonna talk about process as a separate thing, but I don't want people when they come to us to feel like they're not getting fast enough action, but at the same time, I'm not sure why things are hitting our agenda when they're coming to us before they've been reviewed. I'm not sure how much more time I wanna put into this until I know our police chiefs looked at it and sees what's workable and what's not. I worked heavily on the sanctuary by-law and we worked really clearly with the police department to make sure that it was gonna be something that worked for them and that worked for the advocates and that happened before it went into all these public meetings. So I'm just trying to understand what people's expectations are as to when something shows up on the TSO agenda, how many times it shows up on the TSO agenda and what level of preparation goes into it before it comes to us the first time. Because I'm sure this isn't the kind of thing where we say, you did some preliminary work, but we're turning you down, right? Obviously people are going to keep working on this. So why are we hearing about it at this point rather than at a later point? Does that address to me, Alyssa? I can respond to some of that. I can't respond to all of it, obviously. From a sponsor point of view, I look at this first presentation to TSO as a very first brief presentation that would allow TSO to figure out what stakeholders they absolutely need to talk to, whether that be they wanna run it by the ACLU or not. We have not actually worked with the ACLU. We did this on our own. I fully expect TSO to say, we need to talk to the police chief on this, we need to talk to the town manager and to bring Pat and I back when they're talking to the police chief and town manager in case they have concerns so that maybe we can address them if we're willing to modify the bylaw to address those concerns or not. That from my point of view as a sponsor, that all happens, you get the brief presentation of what this is, then TSO determines who they need to talk to, they bring the sponsors back while they're talking to them and that sort of nuts and bolts happens within the TSO meeting. That's my feeling as a sponsor. I would agree. If I could follow up to that? Yes, Alyssa. I disagree with that process. I don't think it's TSO's responsibility to ask the police chief what he thinks of it. I think it's the sponsor's responsibility. And so perhaps that's the process conversation we need to have at a different point in this, not to mess up your presentation, Mandy Jo, but just for future reference because we may have to disagree on that at TSO but TSO is going to have to decide that at some point and I don't understand why it's assumed that the default is it's TSO's responsibility to do all that outreach to stakeholders as opposed to the sponsors of the article having done at least some portion of that work. So that's probably just a process thing we need to figure out where those lines are. Yes, I agree. We need to figure that out. Thank you, Alyssa. George. Yes, I'm just trying to wrap my head around actual scenarios, real world situations. This strikes me as, well, I'm thinking of things like cameras installed to track parking. This I think actually has been done or is envisioned to be done. So you install a camera and to see how often spaces are used. Is that what people are worried about? Say the chief wants to is worried about speeding and wants to make use of some kind of technology that exists in certain cities that can help you stop, you know, capture scoff laws or people who, you know, whatever. I mean, so license reading technology or license plate technology. These seem like not necessarily 1984-ish uses of technology for public safety or for trying to figure out how you want to deal with a parking problem. Beyond that, I'm really struggling to see how LSSE or, you know, any other department is going to go out. And first of all, they have to, I assume that's going to cost money and I assume it won't be cheap. So it would have to go through a budgeting process at the very least. So it's hard for me to imagine that something like this would be acquired without the council not being aware of it. So I guess I'm just struggling with the underlying principle behind this. So if someone could help me understand a concrete example of our town departments, police department, whatever, crossing the line into 1984, I would appreciate it. So I struggle with whether any other departments would actually acquire technology on this issue. That doesn't mean they can't. So yes, under the definition license plate technology, reading technology that like that, that was proposed by the consultants to the downtown parking working group would fall under this technology use policy. So would, you know, if you look at the definition that starts on, I think it's actually page one at the very bottom, surveillance technology includes automatic license plate readers, electronic toll readers, you know, social media monitoring software is one. Bluetooth and other wireless scanning devices. You know, it includes a large range of things, electronic toll readers, which since we don't have a highway, probably wouldn't apply in this town. But face recognition technologies, closed circuit television cameras, except for an exception and all. And so the purpose of this is not necessarily to stop, say the parking enforcement division from obtaining a license plate reader technology. The purpose is for that department to, it's set forth explicit uses of that technology. Because once we have it, as Alyssa alluded to for the actual kiosks, once we have it, there can be a lot of uses which we may or may not want as a town for that technology. It can be used for all sorts of reasons, including to determine whether a car was in a specific location at a specific time or driving by at a specific time. It could be used to monitor not just who's parked on our public streets, but maybe as they go through the school parking lots and who's there then. And so the point of this bylaw is to say to the town manager and to the police department and any other department that wants to do this, if you want to acquire this technology, you need to come to the council and you need to tell us what the purpose of the use of that technology is, who can use it, what the authorized uses are. It's for say parking license plate readers that the authorized use is to only determine whether there's been a parking violation at a metered or permitted park. It can't be used for these other things. Who has access to all of that information that is swept up as the police car drives down the street reading license plates. Who, how that data is going to be protected from hacking, so to say, unauthorized access. How long that data is going to stay there? You know, imagine it stays there for 10 years, 20 years, two months, one month. How long are we keeping that data? How long are we going to keep it? Does the public have access to it? How is it used and who oversees it? So to give you another example that we don't have yet, as far as I know, body cams on police officers. There have been a lot of disputes as to whether number one, they're useful or not. But once they're used, that video, how is it going to be used? How is it going to be disseminated? Who is going to use it? That video can include some individuals' worst days of their lives. Think about someone calling 911 because the person they're living with has just collapsed from a heart attack. And the police show up and they institute their body cam and they watch as the EMTs at a big motor vehicle accident or in the house of someone are providing life-saving care or not life-saving because maybe the person happens to pass away despite the care. And now it is all on video and we don't have a policy as to who can access that video or when it gets distributed or how long it is kept. But no crime was committed at all despite that video. This bylaw would require the town to have a policy and set forth in writing how that video would be accessed, how long it would be kept and who could access it and how someone from the public could actually access it. Can it be accessed from a public records request or is it exempt from public records? All of those things. So while we might not have the technology now, this bylaw is attempting to ensure that if that technology is obtained, we know not only how it will be used, but also who can use it and how long it's kept. Thank you, Randy Joe. Dorothy. Okay. So question, are there any penalties in this bylaw? There are, if you go all the way down to the second to last page, so it would be page nine, I guess. Section I is the enforcement section. The violations are really only injunctive relief. So if the town violates this, someone could sue the town, but all they get is no monetary damages. All they get is the town stopping the use of that technology. So that's what it is. It's more of if we don't follow this, someone could sue to stop the use of the technology until it is followed. Because I think there have to be penalties. I'm glad to hear there are some. And the fact that we vote on budget items does not mean that we necessarily would see it. People know how to hide things in budget lines and have been doing so, I'm sure, for many, many years. I think this is very important. And I think it's important because this technology is increasing. And it leads me to ask about, there's a lot of private surveillance that goes on. We don't happen to have a camera, but I know lots of people do and for various reasons to see what wildlife is coming around or whatever. If there's cameras and many businesses have them, what relationship is there between the town of Amherst and the police departments and the ability for them to use or to look at or to check the private surveillance or is that private surveillance completely unregulated? So this bylaw would not regulate the private surveillance at all or they use by a business or an individual in town of those cameras. So speculating the police would have the right like they do right now to subpoena those records type thing under the legal process. Or they could just ask, police do a lot by just asking, right? A lot of people do a lot by just asking, hey, you have this, we're looking for this, can you let us view your video from your surveillance? They don't always need the subpoena to do that if someone just allows them to, but this bylaw would not regulate any of that. It does make me wonder, does anybody regulate it? I mean, your questions of who can see it, how long does it last, what uses can it go? Those are important questions because if you're walking in a public place or you're going to a public building or something, you are being surveilled a good deal of the time. And I just think that we also, somebody should look into that. Thank you, Dorsey. Yeah, I would just add also that in response to George's comment about how the town council would be looking at these budget items anyway, I think that we're all aware of the different companies that market various services to municipalities and I can imagine a situation where we'd be, there would be a marketing campaign around a software package that might include a number of different things and we would want to know, we would want to not accept certain parts of it that would allow this kind of surveillance. So I think that like Dorsey said, a lot of times this is hidden within what the town could potentially do, not in any malicious way, but because it was offered, these things are offered within software packages. So I also wanted to mention that I was Googling this this morning and I found a Hampshire Gazette article about, it was during, because North Hampton recently went through a process of discussing this within their town government and they mentioned Amherst and just mentioned that we had surveillance cameras at the police department and that we had surveillance cameras downtown on the fire department overseeing the bars. So that's just a piece of what we are already doing that could add that component to it. That's something you can add to surveillance, facial recognition and something that we probably do not want to do in Amherst. So anyway, are there any other comments or questions? We are right on schedule again. Well, Evan. So I guess I don't have, I don't have any questions for Mandy Jo and I have to admit that I have not carefully read this yet, because I put it off and then it was longer than I thought. So I look forward to reading it more thoroughly. I guess my question is more about for this committee and our process with this moving forward. We moved forward with the wage theft bylaw very quickly and I think perhaps a little bit prematurely, but we did so recognizing that that was going to be an important piece of sort of protecting low wage workers as we enter this recovery. I don't feel the same sense of urgency with this. And so I'm hoping that we can use this bylaw as a test case of our review process, which of course would require coming up with the review process first. So I guess I'm just curious to hear from the committee, but also Darcy from US chair, what you envision as what we should do with this going forward. I guess I'm seeing that we have room on our agenda. So that was basically the reason that I put it on our agenda today because we had such success at our last meeting, clearing our agenda of a number of issues that we actually had space today and we didn't have other issues that were teed up. So that was basically the reason and I'm assuming that we're going to deal with every issue on our agenda. So I don't think it's a question of, I think it's just a question of when. And so if we find that there are other issues that are higher priority, I think, you know, and I was gonna talk about today, you know, getting the Lincoln Avenue issue set to go because, you know, all of the issues on our agenda are not extremely time sensitive. So to me, that means we still deal with them. We still want to get them off our plate. There's no reason to not deal with them. So I don't have any devious motive for putting this on the agenda today. My question was not why is it on the agenda today? It's, so what would you envision as the next steps? I'm not questioning you. I'm sorry, the next step, as I mentioned, was that I had talked to the town manager about getting his input at the next meeting. And he said that would be a good idea. So we also obviously need to look to see if there are other stakeholders that want to weigh in on this. So, and I agree that we need to look at our review process, but I don't agree that we need to have it down before we have anything else on our agenda. So I think that we, it may be going forward parallel and maybe we can try out some things that we'd like to have in our review process, like making sure that we get all the various stakeholders on record, so yeah, I think that, does that answer your question, Evan? Yes. Okay, Alyssa. I appreciate that, but it doesn't answer my question. I still think it should be up to this body, not purely up to the chair to decide what our priorities are on our agenda, because saying we have room on the agenda, as was said before, associated with wage theft, just means that that's one person's opinion that we have room on the agenda. Another person's opinion might be, we don't need to meet as often if we don't have time-sensitive things that we haven't all agreed or things we need to do. So rather than the chair just looking at a particular list of upcoming agenda items and deciding where they fit, without any discussion with the rest of the committee, doesn't seem like a great idea to me, and I'm not picking on you, Darcy. I do the same thing with the town council president. Why are we doing this now, as opposed to something else now? This should be a group decision. It is not just our determination to react to things. The other part is I can't really believe that it was just suggested that we do continue reviewing actual bylaws without a process. When we did committee appointments, we were time pressured to get those appointments done. We received significant pressure from the public, from committee members, from other counselors to get appointments done. And we insisted on having a well-thought-out process to do that before we made the appointments. I have no idea why we would establish town bylaws without a process to do it. I just don't get it. I was willing to put that aside for wage theft because of the particular interest associated with the pandemic. We saw that that didn't work out quite as smoothly as we'd like, and hopefully it can be fixed really soon. But I don't want to lose sight of this. I do think it's important. I just don't understand why the town managers coming next week to our next meeting when we haven't decided our process yet. I don't think anybody else should be coming about this item until we decide what the process is for that to happen. We decide. George. I agree with Alyssa that if we don't know what we're doing with these, what is the point of inviting Paul or anyone just to have more chit chat about a bylaw that this makes no sense to me? I think we need to, rather than spending time on a bylaw that has no particular time stamp on it, we'd probably be more fruitful discussing, as Alyssa suggested, what our actual process is and what our expectations are when we're dealing with these sorts of things. And this would be an excellent test case. And I think we've also discovered that with the wage theft bylaw, that too has created some issues and perhaps came a little quicker than it should have. Though I know for the sponsors, they feel like it's been out there forever. But there's the issue of stakeholders. There's the issue of what we want a formal presentation, who should be present. I think we need to settle on the process before we start inviting people to more conversation. I've raised questions. We've raised questions about what does the police chief think? What actual technologies are being used? So we have questions about this particular bylaw. But first, I think we just need to be clear on what our process is. So I think more fruitful for the next meeting would be hammering that out rather than inviting people in to talk some more about some potential bylaw that may or not eventually become real. So. Thank you. Dorothy, unmute. I have a couple of suggestions. I don't really relish discovering, discussing, and creating the process as a committee of the whole. I would prefer there to be a subcommittee that would come up with a process. And then we would then discuss what they have come up with in our meeting. That's number one. Number two, I think the question of what's on the agenda is an interesting question and someone that we've talked about in terms of our town council meetings. Again, I don't know if we want to spend all of our time as a committee discussing what should be on the agenda. But I do think that the vice chair should be part of the discussion with the chair. And then if the two of them think they need to consult with some other people before putting something on the agenda, then that can be done in or outside of a meeting. Because then we do come to what Alyssa has raised is how often do we need to meet. So that's my suggestion for how to deal with some of these issues. A small subcommittee putting together a presentation, which we will then thrash out, I'm surely, very detailed way, and that the chair and the vice chair consult on agenda items and the order of agenda, and that we then consider how often we meet. Right. We do have, if you see on the agenda, the next agenda item was a discussion of whether we should have a retreat or a special meeting to discuss our review process. So I guess I would like to wrap up this part of the meeting where we're talking about the surveillance technology. I guess I would say for me, a retreat by Zoom does not feel like a retreat. So it's not going to accomplish the same thing that our physical retreats did. So I'm not sure it's any different than just a meeting, since it's going to be distance. Well, is there a proposal for, I mean, we do have other things coming up at our meetings. So our regular meetings, we are always going to have to deal with our other agenda items. And we may have other things that drop in our laps that, I didn't see anybody complaining about the fact that we were asked to act on this temporary moratorium thing immediately in one day without having input from any stakeholders whatsoever. So that we rushed through. No complaints from anybody. So I am inclined to, well, as Kate had heard from everybody here, I guess, that you definitely want to work on the review process. That's fine with me. I mean, we can talk about it right now. I mean, we're holding up Mandy's show, I think. She's probably wondering what we're going to do with this. We were scheduled, we were scheduled next on June 15. And then we didn't schedule a meeting for June 29, which is the following Monday, because we were transitioning to the Thursday nights, July 2. That's on our calendar, that this is the last month that we were going to have the Monday morning meetings, and then we're going to transition starting July 2 to Thursday evenings. We could conceivably say, we want to come on that July 29 date and have an extra meeting that is to vote for this issue. June, I mean, June, June 29. So because right now we don't have a meeting scheduled for that. So that's a possibility that we could add a meeting on June 29 and have it be a special meeting. We could conceivably put the wage or put the surveillance technology issue on the following agenda after that meeting. I hesitate to do anything with the June 15 meeting, because things just drop in our laps at town council meetings. And we don't know that we could do it on June 15. You're muted, Evan. I was sure I was being recognized. Oh, you were just exclaiming. I guess I said why. I mean, I don't understand. Right now, we don't have anything that I know that's on our plate that's pressing. We might get something at the council for June 15. But I'm not sure why we're talking about adding a June 29 meeting, as opposed to just saying let's use our June 15 meeting and make the focus of it our process. What's on the June 15 right now that needs to get done, that we can't just say let's make June 15 our process meeting instead of adding an additional meeting? Yeah, we could do that. I had talked to the town manager about starting in with Lincoln Ave and Spring Street. And he was willing to get started with teeing that up. Although Spring Street is, and I'm sorry, Mandy Jo, that we're going through all this discussion with you here. The Spring Street, Arca Pelago is still there. They're not back at work yet. But Lincoln Ave is something that we could take up. We don't need to take it up on the 15. No, we don't take it up. We don't need to take it up. But I was going to ask George and Dorothy if they would be willing to get started with an introduction. But if the whole committee wants to do the review process at our June 15 meeting, then it's fine with me to do it. It may be something that will take more than one meeting. And I'm just thinking through what it will take for additional input. I feel like it's worth the whole discussion of this. So as far as wrapping up the surveillance technology issue, why don't we just assume that it will be on the agenda after we've had our discussion about the review process, which might be three meetings away or so. So I can talk to the town manager about putting it off. So it's not at the next meeting, but either July 2nd. We actually have to talk about that too, or switch to an evening. So we won't even mention dates sometime in July. So that seems very reasonable. I am just I am worried that we're going to get one offs put on that agenda because there are some potentially that are going to come to us as a result of the meeting tonight, but we'll see. If we can't devote the whole meeting or the major part of the meeting, then I would want to put it off to a later time. But hopefully, we will be able to devote at least an hour of the meeting to it. So Mandy Jo, we'll see you in July. Thank you very much. That was a really, really well thought out detailed presentation. And we have more comments from Alyssa and George. Alyssa? Well, I was trying to answer the question you'd been asking several times, which was, what would we tell Mandy Jo? And I agree with how you answered it. It won't be until at least July, and we won't talk about a specific meeting date. Since we've answered that for her, then my other comments were along the lines of, I'm hearing this language about how things are dropped in our laps and things have to be teed up, and none of that's actually accurate. When the town council refers something to us, they give us a certain amount of time, and we need to agree when it is we need to work on something. We had no reason to believe that either Spring Street or Lincoln was going to be on our next agenda, because we don't have a process for dealing with them. So things aren't dropping into our laps. Things are either referred to us, or you're working with the town manager to decide when it's convenient for town staff to come talk to us about something that we're not ready to do until we have a process. So as soon as we get through the process, then I think it makes total sense that together we're prioritizing which things are most important, okay, which staff is available, and you do the detailed conversations with the town manager, and we appreciate you doing that on our behalf. But we're treating everything as a one-off up to this point, so if we just go ahead and get our process ready, then we'll be much better able to figure out, okay, who's doing what when for the rest of the summer, and how quickly we can bring back the surveillance technology versus say something that's not under construction yet. So I think that will just really, that's the kind of thing that will tee us up for success. And I also want to make sure that because I heard a statement that said, no one complained about not hearing from stakeholders associated with the town by, sorry, the public way, that's completely false. Nobody complained because all the work was already done. The town manager worked with stakeholders before he made his proposal. The town manager worked with his staff before he made his proposal. The town attorney looked at the proposal, GOL looked at the proposal. So actually that was done right. What we've been doing isn't that. So to say that that was rushed through, that's absolutely not true. That had the things done to it that I hope we will reflect in our process. So let's be clear, that was well vetted before it got to us. That's why we didn't have to say, oh, did you talk to the chamber? Oh, did you talk to your own staff to find out if this was enforceable? That we already knew the answer to. So that's why we didn't have to question it. It wasn't that it wasn't rushed. It isn't that we didn't question it. It's that it was ready when it was sent to us. That's the difference. I would like to respond to that because my opinion of when something is well vetted isn't necessarily that it's well vetted by staff which is very important, obviously. I'm talking about getting stakeholder input from the community, like part of our review process that we're going to talk about. That, I mean, I'm not complaining about this particular issue because it is urgent to do this temporary moratorium proposal. I'm just saying that it is being rushed through and that's just a fact and it's being rushed through because of COVID-19. So anyway, any other comments? So we will, like I said, refer it to probably sometime in July and look forward to hearing from staff about the issue. So the next thing on the agenda, we kind of mushed a bunch of things together. We were going to talk about the review process as our next issue. And like I said, I've been thinking about how it's really part of our charge to do outreach. Four of us are also on the Outreach Communications and Appointments Committee. And that committee had been charged with doing outreach on behalf of the town council, which we didn't really take on as a priority mission for that committee. And that committee is about to be dissolved at the end of this month. So now this committee has that, I guess I'm interested when we do talk about it at our next meeting to kind of see if that piece is somehow integrated in our need to do stakeholder outreach during our review process or whether one of the things that we're trying to do is make a stakeholder outreach during our review process or whether one could compliment the other. Just a thought. And so we are set with at least starting that at our next meeting. And one issue that I would like us to think about is what came up at this meeting, which was a new concept to me, the idea of actually not, whether the issues that are on our plate now that are on our bike rack are issues that we're intending to deal with eventually. Because in my mind, if they are on our list, we're going to deal with them. So if that is, that's something that we need to discuss in that meeting about the review processes is one issue is the prioritization. In other words, prioritization could include that it's such a low priority that we're never going to deal with it. Versus our review process is different. That's a different issue is once we have something that we're dealing with, what the process is going to be for stakeholder engagement and so on. So please think about those things before June 15th because I think we're going to be dealing with the memo that we got from CRC and the concept of outreach in general, that's in our charge and how those two things interrelate. So any comments about that before we move on? Okay, so we're down to minutes. Angela is doing a fantastic job at our minutes, FYI. I don't know if any of you noticed but really she does a great job. So I made a couple of little amendments to the minutes. I think both sets, so I can't see them and I don't remember what they were but if anyone have any comments or suggestions before I move to accept them, shall we look at them? Lynn, could you scroll down to, those are the first sets. See if it shows the amendments there in the end. Oh, what's that? There's something actually that needs to be cut and pasted. It's not been cut and pasted. I don't know what that's about. So just to hop in, it's Angela. Sorry. I couldn't find that motion language in the packet for this meeting, but it was very specific motion language. Yeah, so we should amend that. I don't think the actual language is even in my report. Well, can we just assume that we're gonna amend that to add the actual language? And I think there's something down at the bottom, but maybe not. These don't seem to have the amendments that I requested in them. So I don't know what happened there. So well, maybe we should put this off until the, and those are the five, four minutes, right? Yes. The document I'm looking at is 518. Oh, okay. I don't see the five, four minutes in the packet. Maybe I'm missing it, but I see 518, I don't see five, four. Oh, that's a problem. Okay, so I think it's the five, four that I amended. So why don't we, I move to approve the 2020, May 18th, 2020 minutes. As they are going to be amended to add the motion. Second? I'll second. All those in favor, Alyssa Brewer? Abstain. Darcy Dumont, aye. Dorothy Pien. Aye. Evan Ross. Aye. George Ryan. No. No, okay. So that is 311 and I guess we won't vote on the others, the other because it's not in the packet. My fault, sorry. We'll get it in there for the next meeting. So moving on to announcements, the TSO calendar. So like I said before, I'm going to be, I think that it doesn't make sense for us to really hash this out in the meeting. It makes, I think that we can just discuss by email, our schedule, since that's pretty much housekeeping. But I would say that, like I said, we're just scheduled for one more meeting in this time slot Monday morning at 9.30 on June 15th. And then we have no meeting on Monday, June 29th. But we, on our current calendar, we're scheduled to start Thursday meetings on July 2nd at 6.30 in the evening. So we made that change because we were thinking that we might be meeting in person by then, but it does appear that we're going to be meeting by Zoom for the indefinite future. We kept our meeting during the day, during June to convenience staff, basically. And since our meetings are recorded and are more available than in the past, having meetings in the evening, as far as being convenient for residents to attend is a little less important, although I'm not totally convinced about that. So the question is that I want you to think about and respond to by email is, do we want to stay with Monday mornings by Zoom? They would be switched to the opposite Mondays where OCA is now meeting. So that they wouldn't be on the same meeting day as the time council meeting. Or do we want to have them on Thursday evenings as we had planned? So I'd like people to think about that and email me their preference. And I'll ask you in an email too. But so we'll just go with what the majority wants. And I'm hoping that you will also take into account what you think the public would want or will be able to how the public will be able to participate. George? This is not related to that. So why don't you finish this discussion and I'll come back to it later. Okay. All right, so any comments about that? I'll just email you all. And Dorothy, you have a comment? Yes. On your calendar, you have the last meeting January 2nd. If the pattern holds, that would be January 7th. The number's wrong. Okay. All right. That's a Saturday night. Okay. Okay. All right. Now, I guess I really appreciate long running schedules. I need them in my life. And I'll send you a message saying that I do like the Thursday night. But I appreciate having set what the meetings are going to be. Yeah. No, I think that part of the reason that we set them early was to make sure that to accommodate counselors so that you would be able to plan throughout for the summer and fall. And so if you've already made plans based on this, please let us know because that should be a part of our decision-making. So that's important if you've already made plans based on it. So that's that. I'm going to send an email about that. So, George, you have a comment? Just briefly, Darcy, I know very well from personal experience the challenge of minutes, Evan's dealt with this. Mandy, everyone's dealt with it at some level, probably. But I really feel it's important that motion language be in the minutes. That's why I can't approve them. So in the future, if you could at least ensure that the motion language that we actually voted on is in the minutes so that as a record of what we actually did, it's probably the most important thing we do in terms of the record is what we actually moved and voted on. So just a request that of all things that we make sure that that is there. Otherwise, I don't see how I can approve minutes without that being in there. Yeah, I, that's all I wanted to say. I respect that. And Lynn, I have a question for you on that and that is that you had the language on that motion and it never came back to me. So if somehow or other we can dig up that motion language, it was taken from the town council motion language. So it should be pretty easy to reconstruct or find. We should also be able to look at the tape. Yeah, Darcy, I was going to suggest that unfortunately I've had to do that a number of times. You just have to go back to the tape and track it down. It's... Yeah, I didn't read the motion. I didn't read them. I didn't read the motion. Oh, it's on the tape. Yes, on the tape on the screen. Yes, okay. Okay, so nevermind, Lynn. Well, you know, get back to me and I'll see what I can do. But if you can look at the tape, that would be helpful. Okay. And just to comment, our Zoom meetings are now being put up for the public pretty fast. If you go to, if you Google town of YouTube, you get all the Zoom meetings, including for this committee. So I was very excited to see that our May 18th meeting is up for the public to see. So that's a lot more access that the public has than they did previously. So that's wonderful. So moving on, next meeting agenda. We are going to do our review process. And whatever else, I will not say drops in our labs, but whatever we get that might be a surprise. And any other comments or, I don't have any items not anticipated by the chair. Any additional comments before we adjourn? All right. We are, wait a minute, Dorothy. We have two comments, Dorothy. Are you muted, Dorothy? Dorothy, you need to unmute. All right, okay. I wanted to ask a question about yesterday's demonstration, which I didn't have a chance to get to. And there was a little fear in my mind that given the craziness that's going on around the country, that there might be some, I don't know, critical or antagonistic attitude towards the Amherst police department. And I don't really know everything the police department does, but I would say what little I've heard, they keep saying they wanna talk to people, they wanna educate. In fact, they're really not using force in any way that I've heard of. I just wanted to make sure that our police department wasn't feeling threatened. And I don't know whether some dialogue with them of a very peaceful type might be going on with some people, I don't know. So I guess this question is really to Paul as to what's happening in terms of the police departments response to this kind of generally the atmosphere of what's going on nationally, which is very chaotic. Cause that is a town service. So that's why I felt like I'd bring it up. Are you still there, Paul? Yeah, please. There we go. Yeah, I don't know if I should address that at this meeting. I don't think it's an agenda item. If I can imagine something under the town manager's report tonight that would come up. I think it wouldn't be appropriate for this meeting. Okay. Just wanted to express my interest and concern. That's all. Alyssa. I'm just trying to understand our homework assignment for June 15th. Having been through the OCA process, we did a lot of work outside of meetings, not in groups because that would be breaking open meeting law. Though if we assign a subcommittee, that's a different conversation. But in terms of being prepared, is somebody preparing something for us to have read prior to showing up on June 15th? Or is June 15th just a chat session about the CRC process that they never actually used? Or what's our direction to be prepared in all our copious free time between now and our next meeting? I assume it's the CRC process, looking at our charge with regard to outreach. And that's, yes, that's where we're gonna start. George, do you have your hand up? I don't know if this is what Alyssa has in mind or if it even would address her concern, which I understand is a real concern, that we just spend an hour and a half just chatting. It would help to have some kind of focus. The CRC process certainly gives us that, and that's the document that I think would be at the heart of it. I'd be willing to put something together or in concert with the chair if that would help or do people feel that the CRC document by itself will give us enough structure. In other words, just a list of, I would run it by the chair or we could ask the chair to do it. But some kind of suggested process, something to work from based on the CRC process rather than just a general discussion of the CRC process. If we're gonna be effective, it would be helpful to have something concrete to look at and maybe tear apart. And that's fine, I don't mind, but just something. So I'm willing to offer my services if that's appropriate, but otherwise, yes, the CRC process would be the central document of that discussion. I'd be glad to do that. Okay, good. I'll take that on your own. You'll take that on your own or do you want, right? I'll talk to you about it, George. Right, good. Dorothy? I wanted to say that a small subcommittee should be working on it before we have our meeting. So thank you, George, for volunteering. I think that would be good. That's all. All right, anything else? Okay. I just wanna say for the record, if George would like to work on that and invite somebody to look at something, that's fine, but if you call it a subcommittee, you have to have a regular meeting that's pre-posted 48 hours in advance. So I think what you are saying is that George will work on this and he may contact some other people for some thoughts. I think what we said was that I'm going to work on it and that I'm going to discuss it with George. No, then what we're saying is you're going to work on it and you may decide to consult with some other people here and there, get their thoughts. Yes. So, okay, so any other comments? I moved to adjourn at 11.25. Pretty good, huh? And I moved to adjourn the town council meeting at 11.25. All right, thank you.