 We are now. Recording. And, um, Kath, if you, do you want me to pull up the agenda or just read it? I think, I think since it's a pretty simple agenda, just just read it. And I see that Earl has joined us. So maybe introduce, introduce Earl and then we can reintroduce him. Hi Nancy. Welcome Earl. I'm so happy that you are able to be here with us tonight. Thank you. All right. So I think we did good time to get started and then we can, Lynn is could keep an eye on the attendees for us and. Make an announcement. So people want to be brought in. Okay. Well, welcome everyone to our district one meeting. And we are really excited to be here. Our last meeting was in person and we're doing this one obviously via zoom. Tonight, um, we are going to, um, have an excellent presentation by Kathy on the elementary school building project. And then I'll talk a little bit about the reparations work. And then we will be welcoming Earl Miller, our incredible crest director and Earl will be sharing information about crests and what crests has been up to. And then we will open it up for discussion. So we'll leave plenty of time for questions and open discussion at the end. And we made an announcement for earlier, but if anyone is out in the audience that has joined us who would like to be in the room the way we seem, just raise your hand and Lin is, Lin is here both to help us out, but also she is great on the elementary school building. We've been doing tag team presentations. So you think it should, should I start? I think you should start. Yeah. Okay. So share my screen. And just quickly while Kath is doing that, um, this meeting is being recorded and we will not be using the chat during the meeting. So I, the charts I'm talking off of. Update on reparations as well as primarily. The charts I'm talking off of tonight, um, some of you, if you've come to forums, you may have seen, but I've really pulled them together from several different talks. As we, um, start to make sure people know what, what we're talking about when we say the elementary school and. Um, you know, you know, as chair of the building committee and also as town counselor, I've really been privileged to be with this from the beginning. And I totally see this as building for our future. And when I say our future, it's our kids future and also our town's future. You know, very simply, I'm going to do an overview of the school and the design. And then get to the May 2nd vote. We'll be talking on behalf of a very large, a very active, hardworking building committee. Team. And the key date that's coming up is May 2nd. If that we get a positive vote, a majority vote construction will start in 2024. And we hope the school will then open in 2026. This is a brand new elementary school that will replace Fort River and Wildwood with one school serving 575 students, which is a three-story design with two grades per floor. And I'll talk a little bit more about what that provides as a way of collaboration and exciting opportunities. For the teachers and the kids throughout, particularly through the influence of several active participants from North Amherst, including Bruce Caldwell. It's in a daylight filled, there's a real men's stress on daylight throughout the design and indoor and outdoor learning capacity. By locating it at the Fort River site, the school can be built while the current school stays open with there's ample space. And the project is restoring the fields for the community. As well as providing a new home for children. And last, but not at all least, is it's going to be the town's first net zero public building. It's an all electric, highly efficient, energy efficient building with ground source heat pumps, often known as geothermal and solar panels on site for renewable. The big take homes. I think about what make this project particularly exciting is its design. Education drove the design. It's student centered. The teachers informed the layout of the classrooms and the content and the learning and the curriculum. As I mentioned, just went briefly and I'll show you later that three for a layout, the way the classrooms sit across the aisle from each other allows cross age and small project learning that can be across grade, cross age and teams. The sustainable energy design. I think it's going to be a model of what we're going to be doing in the future. I think it's going to be a model of what we're going to be doing in the future. The sustainable energy design. I think it's going to be a model for our kids. It's not just an exciting thing for climate, but the kids are going to be going to be living in there and we can be teaching the future leaders of Amherst of our country about environment and about what it means to be sustainable. There's a real focus on cost on cost savings. Choosing Fort River for the ease of building while the current school stays open means we're less likely to have construction delays. We can really facilitate a faster rollout of the plan. The materials have been selected with emphasis on long lasting but lower cost materials and the three floor design is very energy efficient as well as has a smaller footprint. We're expecting a facility grant from the Massachusetts school building authority and the estimate of exactly what that is is still a bit in flux and I'll talk about that later. It will be a community resource. This is a school but we also have designed it so it can be used by the community after hours. The upgraded community fields are broadly used for recreation for adults as well as students and it will be a resiliency hub. This is the current site of the Fort River site and there's this little darted dark line that may be hard to see but that's where the existing school is. The new school here is going to be built more than a hundred feet away and the site really allows a fence around it that protects the kids but also the kids can watch it as it's going up. It's going to be a pretty exciting project and all this area out here are various playgrounds but also learning areas and I'll show you this with a virtual tour. The site is big enough to allow the buses to come in and go out at one place and the cars to come in and go out in the north side so they don't have to cross over and there's plenty of room for parking but also for buses and vans and handicap access so the site has really facilitated a whole lot of things that would have been difficult otherwise. I'm showing you just the first floor design to give you a sense of what I've been talking about with layout. The first floor has the cafeteria and the gymnasium with an entrance, a secure entrance here that will best appeal where people will have to be checked in. They can't just walk into the school and then this whole back area where the purple is is where the classrooms are. This can be shut off from the community space and this is true upstairs as well where the library and the art room and the music rooms are down here. And each floor, so here you see the kindergarten and the first graders on this floor, the little kids, they're going to be across the aisle from each other with project areas so this is what I was meaning about the potential for collaboration that you can have small teams be involved in this area and this is repeated up to the upper floors. Now thanks to this amazing design team we've had is they've given us a way to get an experience of the school by a virtual tour of what's going on and this is that entrance I showed you at the beginning and as we roll around, if I can control this video, this is where people will be entering and be greeted, then as you come around, this is the north side of the building, so this facing away from the sun is the cafeteria on the bottom floor and the library on the top, the cafeteria kids will be able to come outside and eat at tables. This has been a highly valued experience during COVID and we're hoping to continue it. When you get back to the classrooms, they're going to be looking out on this side, the outdoor fields and the swirling around the area, it's just a platform right now. We're going to be hopefully as we move forward, have a site team, a group that says exactly what these play areas should look like. What are the learning areas look like? We haven't picked equipment yet. As you come around to this other side, the teachers emphasize that they wanted outdoor learning but it shouldn't be right next to a playground. So this is one of the areas where there will be a lot of learning. There will be a lot of learning. And they can be growing things and doing environmental work and this is where that bus loop that I talked about earlier comes in. This building is the gym and if I can move this film just a little bit faster, what you're going to see is the slanted roof allows for the solar up at top. So we've got on top of the roof and also out on the parking lot. We've got a lot of people wanting to go to the gym. We've got a lot of people wanting her office right where she can greet the kids. And you're going to see blank walls here, color schemes that are still, we can be choosing them where there can be potential murals by the kids. We can have public art as we swirl around the gymnasium is on this side. And one of the things about the emphasis on daylight, and I observed in a gymnasium like this is the cafeteria which will has a stage and it's attached in the back. There's going to be a back entrance to the music rooms. The musicians can come out and use the stage as another part of their classroom. So there's been an emphasis on flexibility of the building. This is the upstairs and this could be the upstairs of the second floor or the third floor because the way these project areas set up are similar which also allows for flexibility. There's lockers for the kids here and all of this brown area storage area for the teachers for papers, for extra supplies. And these, the furniture has not been picked but this is where the small group can be gathered and they can come in and out of the classroom and they can go across the hallway. This is what a classroom will look like. Each of the teachers will have an opportunity to say exactly where do they want their white board? They're required to have sinks in every room. So the rooms themselves can be project areas. And this is how it would look where the opposing on the other side of a grade, so if you can imagine fourth grade and fifth grade on the top floor where they get to be the big kids looking out, they can be working together and the principal said she's so excited because the opportunities for collaboration that haven't been there before are in this building. So this is the library. And one of the things about the library, the way it's been designed, I probably use the word flexible too often, but all of those bookcases move the ones that aren't attached to the wall. So you can reconfigure like you want to have a small learning space, bring some kids in. And I was in a library that had this and I could, I'm not very big, I could move the bookcases. So it wasn't that you had to call for help. It was just a quick tour around. The building. And this can be made available to anyone who wants to see it again, because I want to get to any questions and also a discussion. I've listed here, we said, what, what's the benefit for our kids? And this is just a laundry list of why we think this is so exciting. And this thing about natural daylight, it says test scores, but it also mental health, the way kids feel about the space they're in, if they have daylight, they're connected to the out of doors when they can see outside. And several of the building committee members said, don't make the windows start too high. Remember these kids are short. We want to have them able to look out of the window, not just know that there's a window up there. The design and the layout is supporting a dual language program. That's quite innovative in the way it's teaching, special education, English language, learner, the specialties are distributed across the layout in a way that integrates them, but also gives them one on one space. And I've mentioned the outdoor learning space is quite expansive. There's trail systems out there that they can really be doing plants. And the one thing I can say about, and trying to learn about net zero schools, I saw a film from Virginia office school where the kids were so excited about the school. And this was elementary. They went home and we're talking to their parents about it. And the parents told this story. If you've heard me say it that parents were saying, they go around the house and they're unplugging things all the time and turning off lights because they're used to energy consumption. And then they talk about what the sun did today. So it really is, it's, it's, it's living climate action. We're going to own these photovoltaic. So we expect that we will not get much of a utility bill at all. It will either be zero or near zero. And that's estimated to save at least $250,000 a year in utility and a gas oil electricity compared to the two schools. We're now operating. It's also reducing emissions and ecac, our energy climate action group is doing an estimate on that. It's going to be a significant drop in emissions in town by moving away from these two schools. Because we're using geothermal, the utility company ever source is giving us an incentive, a rebate of 1.6 million, which brings this whole system very near what it would have cost if we built a conventional heating system off of fossil fuels. So it's been pretty exciting that this has come. And now they're new federal tax credits, both for solar and geothermal. Because of COVID, and what's been happening to the construction industry, it's a lot more expensive to build, to build pretty much anything these days. As we know from our North Amherst library, whose costs went from, I think 800,000 to 2 million over a few years of an estimate in terms of what it would have cost. The MSBA's facility grant is estimated to give us about 40% leaving us with a share of around 58 million, a little less than 58 million. We are planning on financing most of that with a debt exclusion. We have done a lot of work on bringing that total cost down before we get to what already looks like a high cost by both advocating at our legislative level and also our level. For MSBA to increase the reimbursement and also being cost conscience. But we need, because of the cost of it, to go out to the taxpayers to do a debt exclusion, which is an increase in tax just for this project. It's not a general increase. It's not an override. We, the council will need to act to authorize the debt from the project on, and that's scheduled for May 3rd. And then, it's going out for the debt exclusion vote. And Lynn can remind me after I roll through this, there will be mail ballots. There will be early voting in addition to that day. Happy. Isn't it May 2nd? May 2nd. Did I, yeah. May 2nd is the day of the vote. Sorry. May 2nd is the vote, but early voting is going to come the week before that. And the mail ballots are going to go out the first week in April. Lynn, is that correct? Yeah. So April 3rd is the date that the council will be voting on. Authorizing the piece. We've begun those discussions. If anyone listened to the council last night and then they, the vote, and that's a majority vote of, we need a two thirds vote at the council, but it's a majority vote of residents. To bring the debt exclusion and the impact down. We will be counting on the utility rebates and through Tony and two other people, citizens, residents. Work. We secured $700,000 to partially pay for the restoration of the community fields. There has been a lot of, just out of the finance committee so far to appropriate allocate $5 million of capitalization stabilization funds. So funded out of our cash capital. Meaning that we'll have about 50 million to fund through the debt exclusion. This calculator that I'm showing you right now does not include that five million. From the stabilization fund, Sean is waiting our finance director until there's a final decision on that right now. It's been recommended by finance, but it's still under discussion. The average increase with this calculator. We'll be a little under $500 for the median home, but we're putting up and that Sean has been putting up on that. We'll be a little under $500 for the median home, but we're putting up and that Sean has been actively working inability for everyone to plug in their own address and say, what does it mean for me? And so once we get how we're financing this up, we're going to be able to have everyone do this. I've been whirling through these dates, but the big date to remember right now is May 2nd. We get the official word from MSBA at the end of April, but we're not going to be able to do that. We're not going to be able to do that. We're not going to be going unofficially from them exactly where they're going and they have totally approved our square footage. They've totally approved the layout of classrooms that was that word just came in today. So we are good to go as far as they're concerned. And if all goes well, the school will open in August. And I'm going to close there. Just with these, it's education first. And then we're going to have the community resource. And there, the focus on costs is replacing these two buildings. We estimate. That we're going to get an operating budget savings of utility plus more. And avoiding. As much as $40 million for each of the schools in terms of their needing repairs and upgrades. And, and more so, because they, they have hazardous waste that has to be evaded in them. They are, they are needing a lot of money put in them. So we're avoiding costs by moving forward. And I'm going to end there, but I wanted to tell everybody, if you don't know it, there are two places you can go right now. The airmers dash school dash project.com website has a vastly expanded frequently asked questions with answers. And we collected them along the way as people were asking us questions. So if any time in these meetings, we've heard something we've tried to respond to, why did we choose Fort River? You know, explain to me more about the energy and the efficiency of the building. And the town staff has just put up this debt exclusion calculator. That Sean will need to be revising once we make a decision about the amount of the $5 million or other amount, because that will change the calculation. But right now there is a calculator up on the website. And I am open for questions. And just before that, I'm going to ask if you've just come in and you'd like to be brought into the room, just use the raise hand function. And we'll bring you into the room and also feel free to stay as an attendee if you'd like. And I think if everyone, I want to leave this up for maybe a minute more, if people want to write those, because I will win through this. I will also be putting this chart pack up now that we've done community reservation. And the issue with the chart pack is I cannot put the video up because the file is way too big. So it will be, you'll have to imagine the video if you want to download these charts to see them again. So I think I'm going to stop sharing at this point unless, and I can always go back to a point if you need to. So returning to the room. Yeah, so this is Meg is Meg is like how fast can Kathy talk without trying to talk too fast. So hopefully I didn't, I didn't. I didn't feel like a freight train just went through, just went through you all. But really any kind of questions between. Lynn who's been through several of these. And if we don't know the answer, we, I promise we'll say we don't know and we'll get back to you. So you can raise your hand. And you can raise your hand like this, you can raise your hand hitting the emotional button any way you want to indicate that you would like to participate. There's a funny new function. If you raise your hand, sometimes it recognizes that you're raising your hand. And. Very good. So, so Lou Miller's hand went up. And I think. I'm very quickly. When I was listening, I just didn't hear quite what was the term of the debt. So if we're going to accept. Vote for the increase, annual increase in taxes. How long will it take for us to pay off the debt? But I think right now. I think we need to spread it out over time because it's less of an impact in each year. So we're in the 20 to 30 year. Terms. So. When I say the word temporary. People go, yeah, that's my lifetime. But, but it's because of the way it will be structured to the extent we got. Hey, if the project came in under budget and we have a lot of contingencies meant to us, we wouldn't need to take on as much. So we'll know that when we go out to bid in 2024. If we get money along the way, we'll have an ability to do early payoff of the debt. It's going to be structured in a way that we can pay down the principal. So we, we can be adjusting it along the way if other resources. But yes, it's, it's long-term debt. It's not, it's not. Yeah. One other point is you can always restructure debt. If interest rates go down. Yeah, no, good. I was listening to the presentation with my husband and he of course said. We could have done this. How many years ago. It's just really hard to watch this wonderful presentation, which I really support. And I will support the school. But because I will vote yes on the elementary school, because I think it's absolutely necessary. We have waited far too long. Thank you. And, you know, it does feel like we're on the brink of a big opportunity. And so we need to seize it. You know, when you said we've been waiting. Yeah. Yeah. Not, not to speak of, you know, changes and cost growth and maybe you could speak a little bit to the benefits to the, by the educational program that can be met here in the new school. So one of the, you know, Tamara, who is the principal of Fort River says this better than I do, but one of the things they've looked at is because of the configuration of the spaces with these small breakout spaces and places to be able to do individual one on one. And it will be quiet. They did a date. We took several teachers on tours of two or three schools that have been built in the last few years. And what they came away, the first impression was it wasn't noisy that they're, they're used to being in midst of noise. And then they were seeing where if you needed to take a few kids and work just with those kids that the opportunities to do that both indoors and outdoors are huge. The way Tony probably knows the coming on taste program better than I do, or though I don't think you have a child in it, but coming on taste is that our dual language program where people are partially in English, partially in Spanish, but you can choose to be English only. There it's, it's, it's a team effort and those classrooms can be clustered near each other and across the fourth graders across from the fifth graders. So it's supportive of that idea of language immersion but also being part of the whole school. The special needs classrooms are distributed around the floors, but also the classrooms so that they can be integrated, but also if they need help with reading or help with English as a second language, there's a plate, there's a breakout space to go for it. And, and I, I guess the other, the really big one is the daylight in the classrooms. I mean really trying to think of what that does for mental health for the way kids learn and work with each other. So the teachers have emphasized that they see all these opportunities for collaboration that they have not had because of the way this, the spaces, but has been much more rigid. I see Nancy's hand is raised. I also wanted to, again, because we have some new folks in the audience, if you'd like to be brought in, please go ahead and raise your hand and we'll move you over. And I saw that Nancy's hand was raised. I just, yeah, but about the noise. It looked to me like the dividers between the project areas and the classrooms were open, you know, above the above a certain barrier level. Wouldn't that allow noise to sort of travel into all of those areas? They're, they're pretty small in the two schools. I hadn't seen this kind of design before Nancy and the two schools I went, there were only a few kids out there and there's acoustical tiles all over. So that they're usually out there working on a project. They're not out there. You know, they're out there building something with their hands or they're out there reading. So it's one of the things the learning experience for teachers will be how to use these spaces well. So the, the one school that this designer built when we went to visit. And I saw a teacher and I said, how is this working? And she said, it's fabulous. We just wish we had more of those small spaces. So she said as many as we have, we wish we had more. So I think they've found ways to incorporate them into their curriculum. I think that's a good point. I'm not muted. Oh, I wonder if I. I think I wanted to say the obvious, which is to thank Kathy for extraordinary leadership. In a hard time. With a lot of different opinions. And having created this amazing project. So I don't have, it's obvious to say, but still important to say, thank you. Dear leader. And that's all except that I think Nancy's question was a little bit, not quite. Nancy was talking about the project areas, but aren't the classrooms. Separate from the. The classrooms aren't. You know, Nancy, I thought I understood you on the outside areas. The classrooms have a door. And though they're not. You know, except when you open your door. You're not. Yeah. So the projects are when you're out in that space between the classrooms. But they're barriers, but the actual classrooms are quiet. The classrooms, the walls of the classrooms go all the way up to the ceiling. Yeah. The light you saw up there, those were. Those were windows. It wasn't that you had just a half of a wall. You have a wall all the way up to the top. So I'm sorry. If I didn't understand it. Yeah. It was so quick that I sort of heard what Nancy was asking and remembered that. Thank you. But. Kathy. You know, I have to say, you know, I mean, no, you're great to give me credit, but we've had a design team that's been so responsive when people would, would. You know, the outdoor learning was an example. They were clustering it near the playgrounds and to the teachers said, you can't do that. We can't do, we can't bring a classroom outside and be teaching something and having kids jump up and down on a, on a swing at the same time, you know, we need to keep them a bit separate. And so they said, oh, okay. Well, we'll move. You know, we'll think of where we locate it. And then a lot of work with teachers on the layout of the classroom. You know, where do you want this? Where do you want that? Including administrative staff where they said, no, no, no, no, no, we need, we need to be able to see each other. We work as a team, you know, so. That, that moving around on, I was very impressed. And that was not me. I, I don't design things. I moved into an old house and we kept it just the way it is. But you know how to bring people, you bring the right people together. Yeah. Let's sit back. So Steve. Thanks. I really liked the looks of that plan a lot. Thank you. And my question, it may be a deep detail at this stage, but Kathy, you said that we, the town owns the photovoltaics. I just wondered, is there any sense of what their lifespan is? The answer is, I should know that question. Answer to that question because we have it on multiple charts. But. So I know with my own, it's, it's 20 years, but I have to come back to Steve, you know, and the, the panels themselves. The way they'll be attached. Ludmila. Some others may know the answer, but they're easy to replace. You know, it's not a redoing the whole system. The geothermal system has is, is longer than the lifespan of the building. The actual wells that go in. But clearly, you know, it's, it's not, they're not being there forever. The importance of owning them is that we get. Every kilowatt hour. Energy credit goes on to us rather than just sharing, sharing it with it. And that will mean that we are. We're paying back this investment, particularly with these new federal tax credits really fast. While saving money every year. So it's a nice combination. I can just chime in to say that most of them are 20 to 30 and 40 years plus 20 years ago, I saw some panels that were installed in the fifties and sixties, and there was still functioning. So even though the warranty might be only for the first 20 years, they can go quite long as long as we don't, as long as we keep them clean. Thank you. Steve, does that answer your question? Yeah. Nancy. I just want to echo everyone of this is just an amazing piece of work that and the attention to education and whatever it's the kind of thing that makes me really proud to be living Amherst. But I'm also feeling just a tad bit of a disconnect when. I know I have three teachers who are, I have three neighbors who are teachers. And I know that the people who are going to be occupying this beautiful building and really performing for us are not happy campers in town. And I would just like to just remind us that it also takes people power to do this. And, you know, it's, I'm 100% behind this, I'm just saying it, but there's a little, I hope that we can continue to do, to continue to value education at this level. And thank you, Kathy and the team and whatever this is just, and it's, and the transparency and whatever. I just, it's, it's a real pleasure to be in district one, and have you guys as our representatives. Thank you. Thanks Nancy. Thank you Nancy. So I'll give Meila and then Marcus. Oh, I won't go long. I just wanted to echo all the other words about how hard it is to be on a building committee, how many difficult decisions the committee probably has made to get this far. I think the sooner we make this investment and get our students and our teachers in a building that is healthy, the better. And then the rest will follow up in some ways. I mean, we've waited a very long time for this. There should be absolutely no indecision to support it now. And I think it will definitely improve the condition of the teachers and we'll be able to focus on operational issues. What do we do with the existing buildings? How do we improve the quality of education from elementary through the high school? What do we do with the middle school? I mean, do you have any information about the use of existing buildings and what the future will bring in terms of those assets then coming back to us so that we can offset some of the investment made in the new building? Just a quick response in that the answer is no, there's not an immediate plan, but if this goes, if the May 2nd vote happens and we know it's a two step, the school district would have to say we don't want Wildwood anymore. We're giving you, it's a surplus building as far as we're concerned. But then we have quite a bit of time where we could start saying, what could it be? Including a return in value to us. So there's no pre-judgment right now. We have more than one of those. We still have the South Amherst School. And I think for me, the lesson, the South Amherst School is we lock the door and haven't used it other than storage. And when we tried to open the door, we decided, uh-oh, it's not good to leave it sitting there that long in terms of being able to use it. So we will be turning pretty quickly to that discussion once we know that we face this opportunity. It's turning what might be a liability into an asset is I think what we're gonna be talking about. Lynn, do you wanna add? Thank you, no, good luck. And thank you so much for doing the work, volunteering. Marcus. And then I think Janet's hand is up also, yeah. Hi, actually, this is Laura Drucker listening in with Marcus. Thank you, Kathy, for the presentation and everything you've done. And yeah, fully support the school and really hoping that we have a successful vote on the second. I just wanna say that I think all of us also really support our educators and I think this school building will support them in many ways. I also think that the best way for us to support our educators is to continue to ask and pressure our state to give us the funding we deserve for our public education, to continue to press for federal funding to support public education, and to continue to press our higher ed institutions to pay their fair share into our town. We can sit and fight each other over the little bit of money we have or we can try to expand the pot. And so I just wanna, I know that Kathy and Lynn and Michelle can't say that. So I wanted to come on and say that I think that's where we need to be focusing our effort and getting this new school will be a step in the right direction. So thank you all. And Laura, we totally agree with it. So we can say that and Lynn has been testifying to that effect, but yes. Yes. Janet Keller has her hand up. Janet, can you hear us? I can. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. So good to be here with you on this occasion when we're nearing the finish line on this wonderful project and I support all that others have said and I won't repeat all the thanks. And I will say I greatly appreciate hearing about and experiencing the inclusiveness of this project and the collaboration among all the parties. I am especially impressed by that. And I want to say that I fully support this school and we'll pass the word and make sure that my friends know that and hopefully motivate them to make their feelings known. And I do like the expand the pot suggestion for supporting our educators and I know you do too. So thanks again for that. Thanks Janet. Kath, if it's okay with you. I think we can, if I'm not seeing any other hand, so I think we can move to the next, Michelle. And again, if anyone, I think all of you know my email, if anyone wants the set of charts or for the large co-housing group, if you wanna do have a presentation there, Lynn and I are going out to the extent we can. We wanna make sure that people know what the project is rather than just read about it in the newspaper. So we're willing to travel and we are traveling. So it's all yours, Michelle. Well, I'm actually first just wanna also publicly acknowledge Lynn for being at all of these meetings and everything that you do, Lynn. So thank you. You really hold a lot for the council and the community. But I would like to go out of order because we have our wonderful Crest Director, Earl Miller here and he's here at 7.45 on a Tuesday night, which just says the world about him. I actually could use like five minutes. You have a thing to do. I have my kid with me, so it seems like she needs me. So if you've got time to burn, I'm okay with it. Thank you. All right, fair enough then. I will move in to just a little bit about the reparations work and then whenever Earl is ready, we'll move to Earl. So reparations, wow, we are the African Heritage Reparation Assembly is nearing completion of our work. Our charge is completed in June. So we are right now in a consultative process with the community. And so we are hosting listening sessions. Some of you have attended those. And we are also developing a big piece of our work in the moment is to develop a survey with the Dunnehu Institute. The survey will be set for release at the end of March and it will be made available to all community members and stakeholders. So really encourage you all when that comes out where we're trying to make it. I know there's a lot of surveys that go out in our community. So we're certainly trying to make it accessible and to not take too long, but we would love for you to take it and to pass it on to folks in the community who may be interested in providing input. All of these things, the listening sessions, the surveys, all of the input that we're receiving is really going to inform how we design the plan that we will recommend to the town council. So every voice matters and we really want to hear from everybody. And I wanted to announce an exciting event that's coming up and this is where I'm gonna share screen, Kath, if I think I should have the ability to do that. It doesn't seem to be restricted, Michelle. All right, let me try. Can you all see my screen? Yes. All right, hold on. Let me see, I got weird stuff in the background. So is the, when you share your screen, you gotta remember I've got like 20 windows open, but here we go. So we are hosting a town hall event, building and sustaining a local reparations movement. This is happening next Thursday, March 30th at the powerhouse at Amherst College. We are hosting this in partnership with the Association of Amherst Students, which is essentially the Amherst College Student Senate. And former Alderwoman, Robyns Ruth Simmons, who led the country's first ever reparations effort is joining us for this really special event. So we'll begin the event with some opening remarks from folks at the college, and then we will be watching a screening of the big payback, which is a documentary that follows Robyn's journey as she began working on reparations in Evanston and all the way through into more just this past year. Dr. Amakar Shabazz and I have a small part in the film, so that very, very small part, you might even miss it, but that's exciting. And after that, we'll be having a discussion with Robyn and the assembly, as well as Mike Jericou is the Racial History of Amherst College Research Fellow. So this is open to the public. Doors open at 545. It is free. And if you can't attend in person, we will be live streaming and recording the opening remarks as well as the discussion. We unfortunately can't live stream the actual film, but we'll have instructions for how you could pop over to PBS and watch it for free from your own device. So, but we really welcome you to come and join us for this special event. We're really excited to have Robyn join us. Let me just see here. Oh, wait a second. I didn't mean to do that. I meant to stop my share. Okay, here we go. So the plan is to provide recommendations in a full report to the town council in June. And as many of you may know, the town council committed to $2 million over 10 years that we are just, it's just been a wonderful commitment by the town. And we do hope to increase that fund in other ways that the assembly is exploring. So that's, I'll stop there and see if there are any questions or comments. Meg, are you raising your hand? Yeah. Could you say a little more about how you're developing a plan for spending the funding? Yeah, that's what we're really in the process of figuring out right now, Meg. So based on what we receive back in the survey, based on the listening sessions, based on the legal advice, kind of everything, I think there will be sort of a multifaceted approach. We've heard a lot so far, but certain themes like education continue to arise. And we're even hearing that just in the context of this discussion. So that hasn't been fully fleshed out yet, but that's what we're in the process of working on. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. And when that survey comes out, in fact, Meg, I'll be emailing you tomorrow about something related to the survey. We're looking for one or two people to beta test it for us. So thought of you. You don't have to, no pressure. Any other questions or comments? How does the, I know the survey, does the serve, how does the public contribute thoughts about how the funding might be spent? The survey is an excellent way to do that. And you can provide responses. It's in a qual tracks. You'll be able to provide responses anonymously. You could also of course send an email to myself as the chair and all of that will be incorporated. But I would say coming to the meetings, depending on whether you want to voice yourself publicly or privately, you could do so in either way. Thanks. Absolutely. Well, I think most of you know how to reach me and please feel free to reach out anytime. If you have questions or concerns or comments. And I'm going to turn it over to you now, Earl, if you're ready. I am ready. Thank you for that. All right. So actually, I'm Earl Miller. I'm the director of the community responders for equity, safety and service. Your new, I don't know if new, it's been about a year. So I don't know if it's still new, but it feels new. So I'll say it. Public safety department today is actually my one year anniversary with the town. So I'm really excited to spend it with you all. And kind of my hope was just to kind of walk you through what the year has been like. So you can, I think last time I spoke with this group, it was all still very hypothetical. We were in the middle of hiring folks that I really hope we were going to get eight. I wasn't sure there for a minute. We did. So last year I started and really thanks to the counselors, we, this thing even happened, right? You know, just reminding folks that this comes out of that post George Floyd conversation and a lot of community started the conversation about something different from existing public safety and almost all of them gave up. And if you ever get the chance, you're looking for riveting viewing, I encourage folks to watch the CSWG meetings and the town council meetings from around that time. It took a lot of eagle swallowing. It took a lot of ability to hear hard, hard things about a place that folks feel a real fondness for. And sometimes it got really personal and it would have been very easy for anybody at any point to put the brakes down and stopped it. And I wouldn't be here. We wouldn't be talking about this thing. And that was the easiest, the easiest end of this thing is for the conversation to start and die out. We're one of only 40 communities in the country that has anything like this. So I hope this is another thing folks can feel proud about. So I came in kind of with a very, very aspirational mission statement thanks to the town council, enough resources to get it done. And then I had to figure it out. So we started doing engagement events in the community of the eight responders and we did get all eight responders. Six of them were recruited from public events. Meg, actually one of my favorite responders, Kevon Lord came from the legal women voters event that we did over the summer on that 110 degree day. I wasn't sure I was going to make it. I wasn't sure any of us were going to make it. The water park broke down. Yep, the water park broke. But we got Kevon and he was worth it all. Really, really wonderful, wonderful get for the town. So I started on March 21st. By July 5th, we had identified all of the responders. We had hired them, onboarded them. I just want to note how big of a deal that is. So Northampton has joined us in this effort and it is hard. They have made very good faith efforts to hire folks. And their second director started today and will start the work of hiring a team. These things air towards failure at that point. Hiring the team is a really hard part, but it actually wasn't that hard in Amherst. Of the 10 people who work on our team, eight of them had already been in Amherst before I got there. They had gone to school there, they lived there. They had some contact with the town. They had worked there. So these were folks who had already been incubated in our community. So we hired these folks who were very brave. They applied to a job that didn't exist before them. That was very much a kind of gut feeling on my part and a gut feeling on the council and some commitments from some folks who could have really thrown down some speed bumps. So I just want to applaud their bravery. I did it myself, but I had a little bit more of a cushy thing. I had a feeling that if things didn't work out, I'd be all right. I could probably go back to the state, but these were brave young folks who joined us. We did nine weeks of training and I'm not going to talk too much about the training because this summer we're aiming to run kind of a mini Crest Academy for folks in town. So I hope to give you all a chance to experience a little bit of that training. The core modality was motivational interviewing, which is a mental health framework really based in asking open-ended questions, not just to de-escalate conflicts, but actually to help get to the root of the issue. We had a police officer from the police academy come and teach us situational awareness. We had firefighters teach us how to do first aid and defibrillators and all of that. We had faculty from every college in town come and teach us things on restorative justice and kind of social justice practices. Some of you might have seen us in your community. We had Bill Laramie drive us around in the fire van. Bill Laramie, the community safety officer from the police department, drive us around and show us the neighborhoods and what were the particular issues. Responders walked the trails. They did everything they could to get a touch. We went with conservation. We looked for where unhoused folks might be so we could plan on how to meet them. Those were really not intensive nine weeks. I have to be honest, I made it stressful on purpose because that was my job, but they all came through it. That's another really impressive point for the town. Eight people went into training, seven people came out. That is a really, really impressive number. You have other, when I talk to folks in Denver, they cared about 40% of their folks out of training. The training is hard. You're talking about dealing with people on the worst day of their lives without a weapon or a fire truck, which can be scary. We went live on September 6th, which makes us the fastest department in the country from the council declaring that we should start to us going live, it was nine months. These things average about three to four years. The fastest other than us we can find is about two years and two months. We moved as quickly as we could. Part of the reason we were able to move quickly is because you all had such hard conversations, we didn't have to really deal with the philosophical stuff. We knew that Emerson demanded that we would be bold. They demanded that we would be a public safety department, which meant we needed to go wherever the trouble was. We needed to not be afraid of that. And the really great part is you put our expectation right in the name, equity, safety and service. So you didn't hide it from us, which was really nice of you. Our team is seven of our 10 responders or folks of color. We recognize that this was a diversity initiative and there are lots of ways we could have achieved that. One way we tried to achieve that was by looking at what public safety used to look like and kind of how you identified police before everything got so formalized. And what you looked for was the type of person. You look for the type of person you wouldn't mind looking across your own kitchen table at. Every responder we have, I think you wouldn't mind looking across your own kitchen table at them. They are kind folks. I'm the old man of the department. I just turned 37, so we are a little bit of a younger department. We have a Rome Cabrera who's a Spanish speaker, families from Ecuador. We have Kevon Lord, who I think you all probably know Heather Lord, his aunt who represents a big figure in town, Kenneth Michael Q, who is kind of a magician. I don't exactly know how he does it, but is one of the most friendly people you'll ever meet and has a real ability to get people in challenging moments to open up a little bit. You will often find him if you drive by the bank senator in the day, kind of holding court with unhoused folks outside, trying to help them connect with things that might make sense. We have Vanessa Phillips, a mother in this town, who has kids at Crocker Farm and Fort River, wild wood I mean, and we have Brittany Haughton who was a college who worked at Western New England and Residence Life, which was in Port Id. We have Tim DeRosier who is, I promised you, this is a good thing, a current UMass student. It has really brought a lot to bear with us understanding what happens on that campus and how it works. We have Chalo, who is a young man who grew up in this town. He kicked for the football team about 10 years ago, grew up in Kenya, still goes back there. We'll be leaving in 18 days and boy will I miss him until he comes back. Speak Swahili is actually running a series of events at Crocker Farm. Right now they're doing drum circles, an African dance. They'll be doing a coding workshop after that. And next year we hope to make that a full year experience for the community, which we're excited for. Trying to make sure I'm not missing anyone. Oh, and one of my favorite, Tia, well, who is our youngest responder. She will turn 21 here soon. Got sworn in, was our first responder to get sworn in alongside police officers and firefighters, which was a big deal for us. A young woman who has more energy than I could imagine ever having. But if you will often find her, today she took several seniors in our town grocery shopping. She's pretty good at that. I guess she's got a keen eye for couponing, which is not something I do, but is important these days. And then Kat Newman, who is really my right hand in things, ran the COVID ambassador program out of the police department before Crest. And just you won't find a person who cares more about doing it the right way than her. And then me, I got lucky. I got lucky with these folks. I'm lucky. I'm really glad to be here. So we've been operating since September. We've had the number I looked at last week was about 5,500 engagements with our neighbors. We run, if you get food from the senior center, we are often doing those routes as a way to meet seniors in a kind of non-pressured situation. We work with the survival center for some folks who struggle with some behavior issues that might make delivering groceries hard. We take those on to make sure that they can still get their resources. And we get to meet them before things are too hard. We get calls from folks all around the community, largely businesses or folks who identify someone in their neighborhood they're worried about. We do a fair amount of wellness checks. We're probably closing it on about 1,000 wellness checks since we started. And those are really just, it doesn't look like what I think folks traditionally have seen wellness checks look like. And we're not cops, which is good and bad. If you want a cop and we show up, you're gonna be disappointed. But if you don't, then you might not. But really it's to just see how someone's doing. Really is just how are you doing and is there a need we can help you to meet? And sometimes that need is just a person to listen. Particularly for the seniors in this town, I'm acutely aware of the loneliness that COVID brought on and that that has not been addressed for folks. There are a lot of folks in our town who are still very concerned, rightly so about COVID and are struggling to get out of their homes. So we engage with those folks. We've talked to folks who screen doors if that made them feel safer. And we talked to some folks on the phone just about every day. We care a whole lot about folks. And I know that that is not necessarily a thing that you expect from government. But I think the gap we really fill in is that behavioral health. We do a meeting with other human service agencies in the area every other month. We collaborate with anybody who will collaborate with us. Similarly to my policy, if I'm invited to a place I'll show up. I was invited here, I showed up. So I'll check that off the list. The responders, if we're called to a place we will do our best to go. I want to think of some, oh, so I'll give you my three biggest success stories of the moment. And if you ask me next week, it may be a different list. But these are the things that feel most important for me today. One is the MOU with the schools. For us to do the work that we intend to do, the work around kind of reducing the impact of trauma in our community, it is vitally important that we're able to provide resources to families in our town who are struggling not just to make ends meet, but to socialize. I'm a parent of a young kid. I have a 12-year-old running around here somewhere, hopefully not making too big of a mess. And the pandemic taught me one thing. I'm no good as a teacher. It's not my thing. And so our work with the schools often actually looks like supporting the parents. The schools do a wonderful job of supporting the students. But as we hear from principals like Derek Shea, the issue is when the bus drops the kid off, then life keeps happening. And so sometimes families don't have anybody to respond to. Currently, we have a young Afghani family who has separated the fathers in Pakistan currently, the mothers in our community, and we're struggling to get our kid to school. And so we provide out of the five days the kid goes to school, we provide nine of the rides back and forth to school. And it allows us to engage with the family. It allows us to address a core need. But most importantly, I think it shows that Amherst cares about the person. We are town employees who are willing to, you know, our responders really look forward to it now. We like the young man a great deal. But it also shows the family that town cares. Second, I would say is when the recent cold snap, I know we had like all of winter in about 30 days. But if you remember at the beginning of it, there were some really cold days. We were able to get nine people in the shelters, including three folks who had been unsheltered for two-plus years. And the way we did it was a very slow process. The one I'm most proud of is a young man who was sleeping in front of some businesses. It took us 10 attempts to get him to engage with us. And I'm glad we made all 10 of them because it was the relationship building that happened along the way that got us there. And someone who, when we first met him, was uninterested in housing ever, we are now working on permanent housing with this person because they have a trust for us that matters to me. And third, I would say is our work is constables. If folks voted back in the last election, you might not have noticed because we were sitting in the background, but at most precincts, there wasn't a police officer there. That's because every responder and Cat Newman all served as constables on that day. And I'll tell you, the police department was actually pretty grateful. If you're working constable stuff, means you got to get up at about four o'clock in the morning. You got to report to the town clerk at 5.30. You got to start moving stuff around. So those folks didn't have to come in extra early. I know Gabe King particularly appreciated it. But it also meant for our folks that they got to be kind of with folks on an important day. And on the next election, you will find us in the same spaces. We continue to work with the town clerk on those things. Yeah, so I really do hope ultimately that Crest is something everybody here gets to feel really proud of. This doesn't happen if we don't have residents who are interested in things being different, not just for different sake, but because different as possible. This wouldn't be possible if we didn't have elected officials who were committed to doing the things they said they were gonna do. This was a big promise made. Lots of people made these promises and did not hold them. The folks you're looking at sometimes, certainly great risk to their ability to get to sleep before midnight. But on other days, there were some really hard things that, and obviously the town manager and every town employee who has been generous with their time, who have been gracious to us. And frankly, the most kind group of people I've ever worked with, there isn't anybody who works in town that I couldn't call right now if I needed them and they wouldn't respond to me. And that's been consistent from the moment I got here. This is a good place to work. And that's because it's Amherst, right? That's who we are. So glad to answer any questions. And not just now, that is an open invitation as long as you need it. But I'll tell you, a year, and this is the best job I ever had. I work just about every day and because I want to. Because I can't, I haven't found anything quite as fun as what I'm doing here right now. And I imagine someday maybe I'll get into golf and I'll take some days off. But right now, I get to do the best work in the world with the least amount of restrictions. I am privileged. So glad to answer any questions or talk about anything folks want to hear. Thank you so much, Earl. I'm just going to again invite, there are some new folks in the attendees. We are nearing toward the end of our meeting, but if you'd like to be brought in, please raise your hand and we'll bring you in. So I see Earl, a chat room question came on, if someone wanted your help, how do they reach you? Is there a helpline do they call 911? What's the process of finding you if you don't find them? So I will say, I know 911 is the big, it's our next big hill to climb. It's going to be here sooner than folks think. My hope is that at some point this summer, you'll be able to call us through 911 in the same way you call anyone else. Currently, you can either email me, my email is Miller E at AmherstMA.gov or you can call us at 413-259-3370. And you don't have to remember that if you go to the town website, you can type in Crescent, you can find all that there. The other thing is for lots of folks, these are really deeply personal issues that folks are reaching out to us about. Come into the office. If you're not sure if we can help you, just show up anyway. And if we can't, we will help you to find where you can go. We are at the top of the bank center. It says second floor, but I've walked the building a few times and I can't help but thinking there's four floors there. So we are the top floor of the bank center. And actually, even if you just go in an elevator now, if they're labeled, you'll find us. Our hours are 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, and then 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturdays. And that, for 10 people, that's probably as far as I can discuss right now without cloning someone. But particularly if folks have special events, we tend to not turn down invitations to things. A good example of that is that we worked Blarney, we worked kind of, we've been to some town council meetings when there's been a need for some extra support. If folks have a particular event where it would make sense to have a cross responder, just reach out to me and if we can make it work, we will. We haven't said no yet. I'm sure we will someday. Was that a good enough answer? I want to make sure, okay. You will get some probably unsatisfying government answers, but I'll try not to. And the numbers advertised on the town website, we have given out probably about 2,000 of our engagement chops, which usually have a positive saying on one side and our phone number now just on the other. If you go to any town event, you will find one of those. And all of our folks have cards, which are now kind of floating around town in a bunch of different ways. Part of it is we don't want to overwhelm folks, right? Our goal isn't to be the most known folks, it's to be the most helpful for the folks who need us. So I would say folks also here from us, we've done a lot of work to make sure if you show up at a therapist's office, you'll hear about us. If you show up at the police department and they can't help you, they'll send you our way. And I think one of our core values is that we don't ask people to trust us. We are trustworthy and if you watch us, you'll see that. And I just wanted to read, we have a comment in the chat. Many thanks, I'm so proud of this program and Earl is a wonderful addition to our town. And Earl, I was just gonna clarify that you're of the three things that you said you were most proud of, the MOU with the school, just in case folks didn't know what that was. It's a memory, do you wanna just say quickly what that is? So that- It's a memorandum of understanding, which sounds like a very flowery thing, but it's a real contract that took real time and real lawyers to figure out. But the goal is that we wanted to make sure that our support at the school was support, that we weren't assuming what the school needed, that we weren't usurping their power, same way we're not trying to replace police, we're not trying to replace teachers. Like I said, I'm not that good at it. So this was really hard work. I wanna thank Mike Morris and the school board for asking really, really hard questions and demanding a lot of us, but also being fair. They could have been, I'm surprised when I talk to other folks in my position across the country, they talk about how much obstruction they faced and not gonna have faced a whole bunch. Most folks who are uncertain about what we do have a really good reason to be uncertain. And you can find it on the website. If you go through the school board's website, you can actually find the MOU in a November meeting. And if anybody wants a copy of it, you can email me and I'll send it out. It really does describe that we are not trying to usurp police roles, we're not school resource officers. Our job there is not to provide discipline. Our job is to be a resource to the folks who need us. Sometimes that means when a teacher's navigating something, they might wanna reach out just to get some advice, just to consult with someone. And frankly, sometimes just to be mad. Sometimes when you're in one of those schools, things get really complicated and you need somebody to vent who isn't in charge. We serve that role for folks when they reach out to just an open ear and another adult. We also have had responders at basketball games at the high school, some of our responders coach youth basketball for the rec department. So it just allows us to be a resource. I will acknowledge Ray Harp did convince me to go to the Amherst versus Holyoke football game. I am a native Holyoker and we won. Amherst won, it was a tough one, but yeah. So that was my first game here. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Earl. And again, thanks for coming on a Tuesday night. We just really, really appreciate it and look forward to continuing to speak with you as we go on. I would be remiss if I didn't mention we have a listening session this weekend, Saturday from two to four, you can join us in person in the town room at town hall or you can join by Zoom. You can find that link on the CSSJC section of the town website. But also if you have questions, you don't have to wait. If you can't make it, we'll send you the PowerPoint. We'll do the PowerPoint just for you if you need it. Small enough talent that if you wanna know the thing and you can't get there, we'll make sure you hear it. Earl, are you doing that? So you're doing that with the CSSJC? Is it a collaborative listening session? Yeah, it's sponsored by the CSSJC and it's really our first effort. I think that the thing I can commit to you all is that there will be a lot of those next year as we really do kind of stand up. We wanna make sure that what we're doing continues to support the needs of folks. I'll point to Blarney. I heard from folks on Faring Street the entire year that they wanted us to have a presence there and we had four responders walking up and down that street most of the day. So I do wanna say it's not just to listen to you, we will be responsive to what we can be. Thank you. And if you all want a really exciting day in the town room on Saturday, there is a town council retreat that begins at 8.30 and goes to 1.30. You'll have a short break and then you can go to the listening session. All available on Zoom. So I think at this point we're sort of open for any other questions and any other discussion. Would you say, Kath, is that? Yeah, and one of the things we wanted to make sure, we don't have a huge group here so we can repeat this out in the Donal newsletter or by email. We pick these topics because they're so topical. We're really, May 2nd vote is coming up, the reparations is active. But if there are issues that deserve a longer conversation, we're happy to host a meeting. I mean, we are trying not to be meeting intensive if it doesn't seem there's a need for a meeting. But we would, and we'd be happy to do it in person. I think we're all looking forward to this gorgeous North Amherst Library which is emerging before our eyes having that community room. But we can try to do a meeting in person if that would work better. So Michelle and I would like to be available and not have us drive the agenda but also be responsive with agenda. So just to give you an example when I went to Lynn's district two meeting, we talked mainly about the school and then we quickly went into roads and people were talking, people volunteered, my road is worse than your road. Oh, no, no, no, you have to come on my road. And there was a clamor for like, where's our tax dialers going? You know, the roads are a mess. So I think as far as I can see, everybody in town feels their local roads are the worst in Amherst because as they drive around, their tires discovered. But that just cropped up and Lynn, I think it's been a repeating theme with you all. But I will tell you, I think Heather Stone wins the prize. Oh, Heather Stone is awful. You need to be really careful when you drive on it. I even suggested at the hearing me other day that I was going to give them a map so that they could see just how bad the roads were and they were going to be routed through Heather Stone. And hopefully their car would survive. Yeah, right. So, but, you know, to the extent we can convey that this is a concern not of one or two people but of a larger group, it's extremely useful. You know, we're happy to take individual issues as well. And my favorite, you know, I see we're running to the end but, you know, what makes it worth being a counselor? You know, sometimes I wake up in the morning and I say, what does make it work? But I got word that one of our farmers had gotten a bill for $5,000 for an estimated water bill that went back five years where they had paid every time the water bill came in. They paid the full amount and who would know it was estimated and I got it reduced to zero. So that was a very, and it wasn't so much I got it but I got a meeting and they said sometimes if you plead the case, I said, how can you not read the water meter for five years? I mean, I could maybe a year goes by by five. And so that was like, it was so tangible. My kids said, yay, mom. But it just felt real. So little issues that are big issues for people, we were happy to see what we can do to help. Boy. And I'll just ask you Meg or anyone from Dona actually would you like to provide any updates with respect to Dona before we close? Just really briefly, we finished the master plan study group where a group of 15 led by Michelle went through the town. The idea is to take the town's excellent planning that they've already done, particularly the master plan, the transportation plan and the environment sustainability plan and figure out how to help the town implement those in North Amherst. So we're now setting up a North Amherst Village Improvement Committee to go over those recommendations and figure out which and how best to implement them. Again, aligned with what the town's already said it wants to do. A lot of focus on transportation, streets, intersections, pedestrian safety and bicycle safety, but also on sustainable business development, conservation and protecting farms. Meg, where could somebody see the report if, if? It's on our website. If anybody wants it, they can find it on our website or I could send it to anyone who wants it. And if anyone wants to be on the neighborhood North Amherst Village Improvement, it's sort of a little village improvement, but anyway, we like words that you can say. So the acronym is NAVIC, North Amherst Village Improvement Committee. We're looking for, we were going to finalize the committee charge Monday afternoon and we will be looking for people who want to be on that. I don't think it's, it's not a, we think it'll be an ongoing committee, but with changing memberships and nobody has to serve for the rest of their life, but we're working closely with the mill district to collaborate. There's a whole lot of other stuff, but that's enough for now. The other things are kind of percolating still. The North Amherst Village Improvement, we consider North Amherst all the way to Cushman and we really are a village center in North Amherst. We have a post office and a library that's kind of makes wonderful shops. And I just want to encourage everyone to go to Cisco's for breakfast or lunch over on Cole's Road. It's a wonderful place to eat. And it's run by Francisco, can't remember his last name, who owns and runs Amherst Pizza. And it's a lovely, lovely place to have breakfast or lunch Tuesday through Sunday. Awesome, thank you, Meg. Okay, well it's 8.25, I think we promised, what did we promise 8.25? We said be over by 8.30, so I think we're going to overachieve by ending. We can end five minutes. Lynn's been doing so remarkable, ending the meetings, getting the meetings done faster. We got done at 9.31 last night. But we did add an extra meeting, but that's good. That was... We did, but we added an important extra meeting. On Monday the 27th, where we will have all kinds of discussions about how we are going to bond and afford the school. So it's an extra meeting on Monday, yep. And if we haven't said it already, thanks to all of you for being here and being engaged and just showing up for us. I think I speak for myself and Kathy and probably Lynn that we really appreciate it. Absolutely. Value it. It was great to hear all the support for the school. Thank you. All right. Thank you everyone and have a great rest of your Tuesday. See you next time, whenever that might be. Good night. I'll set the recording, Kath, I'll get that all set.