 My name is Angela Mills. I'm the executive assistant to Paul Backelman. I'm also one of the three community participation officers for the Town of Amherst. I'm honored to be here tonight. Thank you for allowing me to staff this meeting. I will be sharing my screen to review the agenda, but before that I would like to alert all panelists and members of the public that this meeting is being recorded to the cloud and will be uploaded in the coming days to the Town of Amherst YouTube channel and then linked to the African Heritage Reparations Assembly webpage. Pursuant to Chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021, this meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to access this meeting may do so in the following manner. I would direct you to our town website at www.amherstma.gov to the calendar at the bottom of the face page or the welcoming page. And the link can be found on the September 28th calendar day via Zoom. Or you can join us by phone. By dialing 253-215-8782. And the web ID for this meeting is 891-3421-8638. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted and public participation at public comment time will be conducted by remote means only. Specific information on the general guidelines for remote participation by members of the public can be found on our town website. We will now conduct a sound check and a video check of all panelists. I will call on each panelist as they appear for me on the screen. And I ask that you please introduce yourself. I will then acknowledge that you can be heard and seen. And we will use this sound check as an attendance roll call and then proceed on to the agenda. So my first visual on my screen is Dr. Shabazz. Shabazz, present. So I can see you and you can be heard. Thank you. Next we have Dr. Jemison. Present. Thank you. I can see you and I can also hear you. Next we have Alexis Reed. Present. Thank you. I can see you and I can also hear you. Next we have Irv Rhodes. Present. Thank you. I can see you and I can also hear you. Next we have Heather Hallalord. I am present. Thank you. I can see you and I can hear you. And town manager Paul Blackelman. Thank you. I can see you and I can hear you. So the next point of order on your agenda. Is our announcements. Do we have any announcements? No announcements. I will now share my screen and we will review the agenda. I see a raised hand from Dr. Shabazz. Go ahead please. Just at some point. Some of us have been discussing. The possibilities of just talking about what is taking place. Over at the University of Massachusetts. And I guess that can come up under under other topics, but just wanted to note that there are some things of concern that we might want to address at that point. Excellent. I'm making note of that. Thank you so much. So as I share my screen, we are looking at the packet materials, which have been updated. And this is your agenda for this evening. We have the call to order. The agenda review and our next point of order will be the approval of the minutes from your 922 meeting, which we will do by a roll call vote. Then we'll move on to reports and comments. We have public comment. And member reports. Under action discussion items, we have a moving forward B, election of officers, which will be run by town manager, Paul Bachman. We have see the visioning process exercise. D the October report to the town council with the next discussion of the extension of deadlines and next expectations from the town council. And then we'll move on to the next meeting. And then we'll move on to the next meeting. E outreach to community and stakeholders. B A M. First repair. F financials, building financial instruments to support recommendations. Developing funding mechanisms, tax revenue from cannabis sales. Upcoming events. Determining the next meeting date. And then we'll move on to the next meeting. Okay. So if we can please. Do a roll call vote to approve the minutes from your 922, 2021 meeting. Do I have any. Recommended changes to those minutes. Or can we accept them as they are? I think someone should make a motion if they approve them. If you've read them to make a motion and then a second and then we'll move on to the next meeting. And then we'll move on to the next meeting. And then we'll move on to the next meeting. So we approve them and it's from 922 as they stand. Second. And can we please roll call vote. Let's begin with. Heather, hello, Lord. Lord, I. Thank you. And Michelle Miller. Yes. And. Dr. Jensen. Yes. And. Dr. Yes. Yes. And. Yes. And Dr. Shabazz. Shabazz. Yes. Thank you. Have I missed anyone? Excellent. So. Moving on. Our next order of business is. Public comment. I am opening up the attendees. If you would please raise your hand. I will promote you to the panelists room. Please. Identify yourself by your first and last name. And where you live in the town of Amherst. And we ask that you keep. Your comments to a brief three minutes. Do we have anyone who would like to speak at public comment? Looks like not. Okay. Moving on. Do we have a HRA member reports? So I think of a member of one, something to just raise her hand and Angela can call on them. Michelle Miller. Yes. I have a report. With respect to a conversation we had at our last meeting about speaking with first repair. To see what availability they may have to work with us. And I did speak with Robin and first repair is very willing and ready to work with us. They're willing to work with us within this committee or any subcommittees we may break out into. Robin stated that we were the first priority. Behind Evan. Understandably. And equal to Tulsa. So first repair is working with Evanston, Amherst and Tulsa. And so, however, this body decides. That they would be of support to us. They're ready to work with us. And then I also wanted to come back to something we touched on briefly last week about offering public comment at the beginning and the end of the meeting. To allow for more participation and also to give people the opportunity to comment after they've heard. Our meeting. So I'm not sure if we need to have a motion in order to make that. Happen or what other folks think about that, but I wanted to bring that up again. Thank you. All I see your hand raised. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Michelle. Many people know what first repair is, but many people in the audience may not do you want to just summarize what that organization is and what they do and why the town is interested in connecting with them. Yeah, thank you. That's great. So first repair is led by former older woman, Robin, Ruth Simmons, who led the reparations effort in Evanston, which is the first municipality in the country to put together this organization. So we've been working with Robin for quite a while throughout the entire process. And now she has, she has moved away from her position as older woman and is leading this organization. And it's fully funded to do so. So services that first repair provides are at no cost to the municipalities that they are providing services to. So it's a great opportunity for us to engage with Robin and the resources that first repair has put together and to, to be supported in our work. Are there others who have reports. Dr. Shabazz, I see your hand. I have a report. And, but we have it under action and discussion items. So I'm prepared to offer it there. And if that's okay with you, I think I may be permitted the time to do so. Absolutely. Michelle, is it okay if I refer to you as Michelle during this meeting? Yes. Okay. So your suggestion or your. You were reiterating about offering public comment twice during the meeting. I think we can also move that to action and discussion items. can insert it after F, does that sound okay to you? Absolutely, yes. Excellent, okay. Not seeing any other hands. Is it okay for me to assume that we don't have any other AHRA member reports this evening? Okay, moving on to number three, action and discussion items. Moving forward is letter A. So I believe that there's a document either was in the packet or you can show it on the screen from Dr. Rhodes. Excellent. Your email. Sure. Did you want to leave this, Irv? This is the document. I don't believe it's in the packet. I think we received it via an email from Jennifer. Okay. No, which one are we talking about anyway? Angela, I could email it to you right now. Would that be helpful? Sure, that'd be great. It's milzay at amherstma.gov. It just doesn't seem to be in the redacted packet. So let me know what document, because that's in a number of them. Which one are we talking about? I believe it's moving forward. I'm looking to see if maybe Jennifer sent it to me separately. Here we go. Oh, here it is. Okay. I just sent it to you as well. Thank you. I believe this is what we're looking at. Yes. So this was sent by Irv Rhodes on Friday, September 24th. And is it okay for me to stop right here? Right, that's fine. Okay. I think there's a point of order that's necessary here. These are proposals, and it seems to me that they may be more appropriately fit under actions, because these are things that we will have to act on. For instance, electing co-chairs rather than a chair. The chair, when that comes up, when we talk about electing a chair, then I would make a motion at that particular point in time to elect co-chairs, and that could then be voted on. The rest of those are informational and action items that we need to consider very seriously this evening, especially the ones where the presentations by the town council president and also the town legal council. More importantly, I would like to explore whether there are ways that we can use the upcoming elections, to further our charge to do a black census. What I meant by that is that in the past, the town clerk sent out information packets. I do not know whether they continue to do that to all registered voters. But if there is any kind of communication that goes to all registered voters, we may want to tag along with that and ask the questions related to that. The questions related to the black census. And then have the chair of the finance committee, Andy, Steinberg come before us to do a presentation. And then that would be important obviously in terms of the kinds of things we're talking about. And lastly, a point in non-voting liaison from the black assembly of Amherst to the committee. So that's it. Thank you. Is there a discussion about these items? Paul, I see your hand. Yeah, thank you. So I just want to note that at its meeting on Monday night, this sort of fits in with this, but maybe not the town council elected two members of its two councilors to be the liaisons to the committee. And that's Pat D'Angelis and Alyssa Brewer and they're both in the audience for you tonight. Dr. Jemison. And what is the functional difference between having co-chairs and having a chair and a vice chair? Just curious about how that matters. So I can figure out once we start voting. It's only a matter of language, a vice chair and a co-chair. You could, some people see a vice chair like a vice president. However, I'm not referring to that. I am referring to a co-chair. I'm not a vice chair. Thank you. Other questions for discussion? Just would add on to that, Dr. Jemison. In my experience, in a case where I was vice chair of the regional school committee, it can be very, it can be unclear what precisely that means. Just as it can be unclear what precisely co-chair means. Presumably, or as it came up down the line, it might have meant that the vice chair would be included in agenda formulation, particularly in the case of the regional school committee where we interacted with the superintendent in formulating the agenda. It would have been very useful to have been a real part of that as a vice chair, such that if in the case of the co-chair becoming unable to act as the chair, being able to act as chair, that the vice chair could step in, it's helpful if they've already been a part of that. But when the person in the chair role doesn't invite you to do anything and leaves you to the side, then effectively the vice chair is just a title and it means nothing. That could be the same case in a co-chair relationship if it's left vague, if it's left unclear as to what are, what are the ways in which those elected in a co-chair relationship are to relate to things like agenda formulation, to things like being the public face of the public body. These are some of the things typically reserved to a chair or chair and vice chair or co-chairs but you have to articulate at some point what the terms mean otherwise, it's just vague language with no real clarity. Can I, I'd like to interject here, Dr. Bazz is correct in one sense if it's not defined. So let me try to define it. We have a number of tasks that need to be done. We have a very short schedule in terms of the time that we need to get this done. The workload on the chair is going to be tremendous. And what I was thinking about was that this, the co-chairs could share that workload. I would see this as the co-chair and the co-chair, the chair, the co-chair is being co-equal. All right, and by that I mean that we would share the duties that would be traditionally that of the chair. And we would do that on a going forward basis and doing it on a collaborative and cooperative basis. We would obviously given what I'm saying, if we are going to vote for co-chairs, we would have to define that more definitively to the satisfaction of the members. Thank you. That is both of those were helpful. So do we go on now to talk further about that or to go ahead and move to vote? And then we have to decide if it's co-chairs or chairs? Are we in the process of doing a vote on chairs? Or are we going to just stick with a voting rather to have co-chairs and then move to the nomination of co-chairs? So I see Paul's hand, Paul. Right, so it's typical what would happen in a situation in this when you're electing officers is that a neutral party, i.e. that's me in this situation would conduct an election for the chair. And I think the first question for the committee is going to be, do you want chair, vice chair or co-chairs? And that has not been determined yet. Just so you know how we will conduct the election is that I will ask for nominations and you can self-nominate if you'd like to be a chair. There does not need to be a second. I will ask the person who's been nominated if they accept the nomination, then there's no argument, there's no sort of nomination speech or anything like that. It's just putting a name forward. I will go and we will keep the nominations open until there are no further nominations. Then whoever's been nominated, I will ask them to make a brief statement in elected to the chair why they would like to do that up to three minutes. And then we call a roll call vote, in which case we will go around the room and people will say the person that they want to serve as chair or whatever office that we're trying to fill at that time. If no nominee receives a majority votes, we'll repeat the process. So if everybody, if all six people are nominated, you all nominate yourselves and you all vote for yourselves and there's not a clear winner, then we go through the process again. So that's how the process works. And then whoever is elected to that position assumes the leadership of the meeting from that point on. Thank you, Paul. I think given that input, and if we're moving on to item B in our agenda, it would be right out the gate necessary to see if there is a motion to go with a co-chair arrangement. And then from there, we could then proceed to call for those denominations. And then if we have, if we say two co-chairs, then it would be those, the highest vote-getters of the two. Does that sound right? Yes, it does, Dr. Schmutz. So in that situation, I guess, is there a motion on the normal courses to have chair and vice chair? So if someone would like to make a motion, Mr. Rhodes, you had offered the co-chair model. Is that a motion you'd like to make? I'd like to make a motion for co-chairs and co-chair of this assembly. Is there a second to that motion? I second it. Okay, seconded by Dr. Schmutz. Any discussion on the motion? And this is a time for you to make a comment or ask a question or ask for clarification from the sponsor. I would like to make a comment. When I thought about co-chair, it was in relationship to, A, the workload that is going to be forthcoming and B, the skill sets that are available within the membership. There are members who have skills and skills that are related to finance and budget and relationships with the town council and with the finance committee. And then there are members who have extraordinary experience in relationship to outside groups, such as the ones that were brought up by Michelle and also by Dr. Schmutz last week. And those are the kinds of things that we're gonna need moving forward as we go forward with this process. So, and the other thing was that it would be, the co-chairs would be able to share those duties as well as be co-spokespersons for the committee. There are other comments people want to make. Now, I think we can call the question. Okay, so ready for the vote. So because we're meeting virtually, all votes have to be done by roll call. So I'll just go through in terms of who's on my screen. And so the question, the vote yes, means you would like to have co-chairs vote no, means that you would have a traditional chair, vice chair format. So I'll just start with my screen, Michelle Miller. No. Okay, Heather Lord. Lord of Stain. Okay, Alexis Reed. Yes. Okay, Dr. Chemison. Chemison, yes. Dr. Chavaz. Yes. Mr. Rhodes. Yes. So the motion passes by vote of three to one with one abstention, is that right? No, four to one with one abstention. Thank you. So the committee has decided that it would like to have co-chairs in its leadership role. So the next order of business will be to choose the co-chairs that you'd like to serve, have serve in that function. So now the floor is open for nominations. Remember that we have to elect, I was assuming two co-chairs. So the floor is open for nominations. Mr. Rhodes. I nominate myself for one of the co-chair positions. Okay, thank you. Other nominations, Michelle Miller. I nominate myself as one of the co-chair positions. Okay. Other nominations, Alexis, do you have your hand up? Is it, do we nominate somebody else or can we only nominate ourselves? You can nominate someone else or nominate yourself, either way. Okay, I'm gonna think about it. Okay. No, thank you. Michelle Miller, you still have your hand up or is that an intentional? Okay. So the floor is still open for nominations and you can nominate someone else, you can nominate yourself or Alexis Reid. Thank you. I, if, so I, how do I say this? I think that it's important if we have two co-chairs that are equal, I find it important that they hold different experiences and that sort of don't fall under the same categories. So I would love for a black femme to also be a part of our lead people, but I also don't want to do, I don't want to live in that room. Well, you can nominate someone and they can just choose if they want to accept the nomination or not. So why don't you nominate someone? Okay. I nominate Dr. Jemisin if you would so like it. Dr. Jemisin do accept the nomination. I will accept the nomination. Thank you. So the floor is still open for nominations. Are there other nominations? Anyone else seeing none? I'll close nominations. And now the process. So we have three nominees. We have Irv Rhodes, Michelle Miller and Jamila Jemisin. So the way we'll do this is we'll go, well, I'll call in your name and ask you to name the two co-chairs that you would like to see. Let's see, how would that, is that the best way to do it? We can do it one of two ways. One is I can ask everyone to name, I think that's the best ways. Any other suggestions you have on how best to do this for co-chairs? Michelle Miller, do you have an idea? Do we each as nominees have an opportunity to make this statement? Oh yes, my bad. You're absolutely right. Absolutely right. I should have read. So, okay. So Mr. Rhodes, if you'd like to make a comment of up to three minutes, thank you for that, Michelle. Well, the reason that I want to be a co-chair is that there are a number of reasons. The main ones being that a lot of our decisions are going to be around, what are we going to use the funds for and where are the funds going to come from? How are we going to be to determine those funds? Me, I have an enormous amount of experience with the town and relationship to the finance committee and budgets. I've been on the finance committee as a member and also on the budget coordinating group. The other part of that is you need, this position will need someone who will be able to work very closely not only with the finance committee, but also with members of the town council. I have very good relationships with various members of the town council having worked with them on a number of different occasions. And I believe that that will be valuable. The other thing is that I have a particular focus with this particular committee in terms of moving forward in an expeditious manner because as I had pointed out before, we have only one budget season to get these proposals through. And when you look at what our schedule is and then when you look at what we have to do relationship to the town council and their meeting schedule, it even shrinks that further. I believe that can have the expertise to be able to move these things forward for the committee. Thank you, Mr. Rhodes. Michelle Miller, do you have three minutes? I'm reading from a statement just because it's a little easier for me to get my thoughts together before. I'd like to offer a slightly different perspective on the role of chair. I come to this committee with a deep conviction that white people are responsible for ensuring that reparations are made for people of African descent. I do not intend to a certain opinion on substantive matters related to how reparations should be made unless I am asked. I do intend to work hard to support this group in any way I am needed. In my experience watching dozens of town council and committee meetings, the role entails holding space for members and making sure participation is equitable. My sole intention is to free up the members of African descent on the committee to engage in discussion without the added burden of facilitation. I nominate myself in the spirit of service and commitment to reparations for people of African heritage. Thank you. Dr. Jemison. Hi. So I am interested and willing to serve in a co-chair role because my main purpose for being on this committee is to maybe not drive but steer. I'm here for the doing. I think this issue is important, but I'm well aware that I'm not the expert on it. So my goal was to take in all the information that was available and always be trying to be attentive to where we're heading and how we're focusing and then helping us move forward as quickly as possible there simply because it is clear from our charter that we have not quite enough time to handle a very complex topic. So I think that's why I'm here. I'm here to ask for the sort of two halves of this, which are the community side and the budget side. I have much more experience on the budget side. That's what I do for work. I'm a director of a team. We have large budgets to manage for all of our projects going on through the year. So I'm usually the person who plans and views those budgets as we go forward. So I think that's why I'm here. I'm very happy to help us get this done on the town level. I'm very happy with this spreadsheet in front of me and figuring out all the ways we can get the dollars and cents to come together for the two bits of this reparations that we're trying to bring forward and go on this journey. Thank you. Now, this is the time for discussion amongst the council members. Are there council members? Sorry, council committee members who would like to have a comment about that? And Dr. Shabazz, you have your hand up. Yes. So I have one concern with our present slate and with someone within that present slate that I would like to vote for. However, I would like to present a concern that I have. See what people think. And one possible answer I think to the concern might be that if we could take a vote to have a, to revisit the chair role at our point in January. And so in other words, we're not electing the co-chairs to serve for the duration of our existence as a committee, but we would be reserving it. We would be able to revisit who are in the co-chair roles in January. And so here's the concern. Michelle Miller is presently a candidate for a district level position on the town council. In fact, that race is uncontested. And so, as she will be a co-chair, she will be a co-chair. So, barring something on for seeing, she will be a counselor and will be sworn into that role as I understand some time in January. I feel that the, at that point while I would love to see her in this, this role and appreciate the way that she presented how she would look like of it as co-chair, I would want to be able to revisit that at the point that she becomes a counselor. The, in my humble opinion, as a counselor for a specific district, her first and foremost priority or loyalty will be to her district. And so to then be poised on this committee as a co-chair, and then at the same time having to represent her district, I wouldn't want to complicate that in relation to the role that she would be playing. And so, depending on how others felt, it's something I might want to revisit in January at the point that she would take on that counselor role. I think that she would in that position be able to represent and work with her other counselors on whatever recommendations we'll make at the completion of our work. And along the way, of course, keeping them all abreast to our work. But in my view, that would be something I would just like us to be able to revisit at the point that she would be sworn in. I don't know if anyone else have any concerns about that. Thank you, Dr. Shabazz. Are there other comments that we'd like to have? If you can raise your hand. Mr. Rhodes. Yes, I really appreciate what you just stated, Dr. Shabazz, because that's a really important point. And obviously, when we come January, having to sort of switch gears would be somewhat problematic. However, given the schedule that we're on and given the schedule of the town council and our schedule in terms of going through the budget process, which is really important is something that I really want us to focus on. And I would like to lead us through that budget process as we identify the sources of funding and then take that onward. That is the majority of our work. And I would advise people to go back and look at the budget schedule and timeline. That if Michelle were elected co-chair tonight, that the majority of that work would already have been done because January would be at the, almost at the end of some of the presentations and voting that would have already have taken place. So yes, the majority, I agree with you, Dr. Shabazz, that that would be a consideration that we would revisit it in January. And I also see that having Michelle as co-chair starting tonight and going through until January would not be detrimental to the progress of this committee. Thank you, Mr. Rhodes. Are there other comments on the nominees or how people think it may want to vote or anything like that? This is a comment where you get three minutes if you want to comment to address raise your hand. Seeing no further comments, then we will move on to the vote. And this is a vote to elect two co-chairs to lead the committee. And so I will ask you a call on your name and ask you to name two names of the people you think you would like to serve as your co-chairs. So I'll start with Dr. Shabazz. Thank you. With that, with the proviso I've raised the vote. Thank you. Mr. Rhodes. Myself and Miller. Okay. Ms. Lord. Dr. Jemisin and Michelle Miller. Thank you. Ms. Miller. Dr. Jemisin and myself. Thank you. Dr. Jemisin. Ms. Miller and Mr. Rhodes. And Ms. Reed. Dr. Jemisin and Michelle Miller. Okay. So did anybody help count? So I've got one, two, three, four, five, six votes for Michelle Miller. I've got one, two, three, four for Dr. Jemisin. Is this right? For everybody counting and two for Mr. Rhodes. Does that line up with everybody's count? Okay. So our co-chairs are Dr. Jemisin and Ms. Miller. And so I turn it over to you as your co-chairs and you can decide how you want to run the rest of the meeting. Thank you so much everyone for participating. Dr. Jemisin, do you have a preference? Would you like to facilitate us through the next to the next agenda item? Actually, can I, can I lean on you? Your expertise in this. This one is a pleasant surprise, but I don't know if it's appropriate. Take a minute to get adjusted. Of course. Yeah. And I don't have a ton of expertise either. So I'll, I'll do the best that I can here. So we just completed election of officers and it looks like we'll be moving to visioning process exercise that. Dr. Jemisin provided to us and is in the packet. I don't know if that can be brought up. I don't know if that can be brought up. I don't know if that can be brought up. I don't know if that can be brought up. Thank you. It's Angela again. I'm happy to share my screen. If that's what you'd like. Maybe we can take just a moment to look it over again. And then. Move into discussion. And I would also say, Dr. Jemisin, this was something that you put together. So if you. Want to speak specifically to what your process was in coming up with this. I think that would be great too. Certainly. And I can do that while you're looking. Yeah. We're right here. Scroll. There we go. So I believe it was actually Dr. Shabazz who said the word visioning. And so, and I thought, gosh, that's always such a wonderful thing to do. And then I think I have a certain amount of her roads sitting on one shoulder because I also am very concerned about. And feel the urgency here. So what I wanted to try to capture. Or rather these three questions were my attempt to have a very. Goal outcome sort of definition focused way to ask about. The, the two things that I'm taking out of. What are sort of actual call to action is. Which is that. I think that the reparations is a holistic thing. And what we seem to have been asked to plan is. Something that is both around kind of the healing of. Of the emotional and societal wounds. And the repairing financially. And so I just started with these, these very simple questions and they're sort of parallel. And the first one is, you know, what would that look like to you? And I'm hoping people had a chance to at least, you know, have a few thoughts on that. And then similarly, do you believe that there's a need for these sort of non-compensation based reparations and what would those look like to you. And then brass tacks in the third question. Both of these reparations types of reparations will take funding. However, we decided to pay people and however we decide to pay for the types of activities that will be on the more healing side, we're going to need some money for that. And so is that. When I say one stream of funding or two, what I'm thinking of is would we be asking for separate accounts basically for the, the two and to go from there. So I see that you have a question. Yes. I think that this is actually problematic. At this point in time to do these specific things. These are actual action items. That will be coming up for a vote at some point. And we haven't even gotten to that point. So to go through this and. And ask the kinds of questions you're asking is, is, is I think. On the one hand, it's a, it's a good thing, but on the other hand, I believe that this, we would be taking, almost taking votes or offering opinions on a vote that are going to be coming up on these very topics. Thank you for, for saying that. And I'm, I'm interested to hear if other people had interpreted that way or had other questions or thoughts about these. Dr. Shabazz. Thank you. What I might, I think this is a, a great start for, for our own thinking, our own development of what I'd like to call a, a set of FAQs. I don't think we're voting on that or going to develop those this evening. But when I use the term visioning, it really had to do with how do we begin to, how do we envision this whole process? And what are we, what are we looking toward? We can, we can get very much into, no pun intended into the weeds of, of this work and, and trying to, develop funding mechanisms and whatnot. But if we don't have an assert some leadership about, you know, why this is the case, what we're looking for. And that could really come in the form of FAQ. So I think it's just important enough tonight to me to, to, to, to look at, to kind of sit with these questions for us to, to take them and think about them. And, and maybe as we proceed, it's something that we might think about or, or voting for, or to approve a certain, certain, a set of FAQs, something that we might think about or, to articulate and educate our position on some of these things. And, and where what, what we're recommending the community itself might want to think about and read and know about regarding some of these questions. So I'm certainly comfortable with these being for reflection and the sort of beginning of personal percolation. As someone who's always concerned about time. I, I know that going into sort of a round table around this might, when it's, when it's not intended for a vote, I did not put these questions out with intention of a vote, just merely as a way to start people's thinking. So I'm, I'm comfortable with the, these have been seen by the members and, and read and hopefully they'll, they'll, they'll be able to, they'll be able to, they'll be able to, they'll be able to, you know, they'll be able to, they'll be able to do that. So we're, we're, you know, going through this with those questions and, and read, and hopefully they'll lodge in your brain and kick, kickstart your thinking. Michelle. How do you feel about. What we proceed to next. Yeah, are there any other comments. With respect to this. And, and to the comments that have been made. I think that we could move forward to the next topic. Which would be the October report to town council. Is there any objection to doing that? Sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry. I don't have that button right now to raise my hand. So I'm just doing that. I guess I'm wondering. Knowing that we are on a time crunch, but I'm not sure if we're going to be able to do that. But I'm not sure if we're going to be able to do that. But I'm not sure if we're going to be able to do that. But I'm not sure if we are as to when we are supposed to report in order to be able to fund these potential things. I'm wondering at what point. Are, are we expecting to sort of be on the same page in. In channeling. Because I, I, I'm already. You know, hearing based off of past conversations that maybe we would be able to do that. I guess I'm wondering, you know, are we extending the point by which we are determining how many funds and all of the funds and where they're coming from. Simply because we don't. Or, you know, To the point of which we will. You know, decide and agree. On these things. I guess I'm wondering like the timeline. And, and, and what. I agree that we should, you know, these are heavy questions and that we should weigh, but I'm also wondering how long we are supposed to like sort of weigh and ruminate on, on these things. Yeah, I'll leave it at that. Dr. Shabazz. Yes, Alexis. I think that segues into our next item. Yeah. Okay. So if there aren't any more points of discussion, let's move into the next item on our agenda, October report to town council, which includes extension of deadline and expectation from town council. And perhaps Dr. Shabazz, you want to provide an update based on any discussions you may have had with town council members. Okay. Thank you. I'm sharing a screen right now that just highlights some notes for what I have to say on this and, and, and beyond. And so let me just move right away to say that. I had the occasion on the question of the extension of the deadline question. That's in our, that's in our charge that's in our enabling what creates this assembly. I had the occasion to check in with one of our counselors who attended our last meeting. In fact, immediately after our meeting we talked. This is counselor Alyssa Brewer. And she expressed quite frankly from her standpoint of it as well as from the context of a prior discussions on the town council that an extension of the deadline is absolutely unnecessary from the town council standpoint that what is envisioned by this. This report at the end of October is, is more of a check-in, not a policy product per se. They're not for stalling that if we have a specific policy recommendation to make by the end of October, but that was not necessarily what was envisioned in establishing that date. It is merely to check in to say where we are. And what we're doing and where we're headed. So, of course, counselor, she in that discussion, she getting into the expectations of town council. Councillor Brewer mentioned that she intended to continue attending that the council had discussed liaisons attending or watching the recordings if they couldn't be present at all of our meetings as they occurred. They could then follow up and watch the recordings. And in order to stay abreast of our deliberations and to keep the council informed about our work. And again, the question of the report should be that it is an opportunity that we can speak to the entire council about how we're approaching the fulfillment of our charge and identify any action items we may need from them through the town manager or actions that we need the council to take itself. And the final report is where it is envisioned that we will overall fulfill our charge and offer a policy plan structural recommendations. Again, that doesn't for stall relative to the budget cycle or relative to recommendations we might want to make before them, but that overall the expectation from the council side is that the overall fulfillment of our charge is going to be more in the final report, not in this October report. Next, I going a little bit beyond the scope of that of those meetings, I was triggered into some thinking that I'd like to present here and it's toward the actual design of a reparative justice plan. And it's clear to, we ought to be clear that reparations at the local municipal level is not an event. It is not a one time pay out or pay off. It is a process of reparative justice work that we should see as an ongoing process. The Retarative Justice Plan, RJP as I referred to it, is something that should aim to address harms, but also should be addressed with and prepare our town, prepare the town of Amherst for true reparations, which is what will happen at a federal level. The federal legislation is Senate bill 40, house resolution 40, and it is there that true reparations will occur. Okay, in terms of a, of something that could close the wealth gap. What the town is, there is not enough wealth here to fundamentally close the wealth gap. That is the fund, one of the fundamental harms of, that we're trying to address. Finally, I would say that key points in our work that we want to be able to check in on by the end of October. And look to fulfill in our overall report is one, the key points in our work that we're trying to address. And the key points in our work that we're trying to address are one, a continuing instrument. Two, a continuing African American people led committee charged with assessing the needs of the town in those areas identified by the Retarative Justice Plan. And recommending relevant expenditures to town council. That would be an ongoing committee. That is, we're term limited. That would be an ongoing committee. That would be an ongoing committee. But I think what we're trying to create is the infrastructure that continuing committee within the town that would work to assess the needs. Identified by a reparative justice plan and make the recommendations of relevant expenditures to town council. This is my view. I don't think we're aiming to do that in this cycle by considering the time that we have been slated to go out of existence. Finally, our work should involve a visioning of options as to how Reparative Justice Plan funds are to be spent. And it should be an expansive view of this eligibility criteria that has sometime been floated around. And when I say an expansive view, it is one that we should not be the fundamental informants on. That we need to seek guidance from the black community. And that is the role in which the black assembly of Amherst, Massachusetts was created to serve. So those are just the reflection. I'd like to present. I welcome the, any questions and consideration of those items. Are there any comments about Dr. Shabazz's presentation? The only question is how, how, where do we place them in terms of this meeting? And in terms of the meeting and also in terms of the agenda. And also those, some of those items seem to be action items again, which would require a vote. So I think the co-chairs need to take that document and look at it and put it into some kind of form for future meetings. And I think that that is something that we should be voting on tonight because it wasn't a part of the agenda. And being to go into discussion of it would take more time. And I think we want to spend this evening. Dr. Shabazz. Yes, thank you. Just to be clear, I'm not offering any of that as an action item. The first part of it is just the report that from the standpoint of my investigation with the town counselor, that the town counselor does not expect us to have a, to expect us to have a check-in in this October report, not a, not, not necessarily a complete set of recommendations about our work, but just where we are. And if there are action items that's, that's welcomed in that October, but that's not their expectation of us. So that's point of information just to perhaps put to rest the idea of an action item about, you know, voting to, to request an extension of our deadline. I don't think it's necessary from what I'm, from what I learned from, from my investigation. So I just present that to the body. The, as far as the second part, that's also not meant for any action item. However, I, if not this meeting, perhaps on the next, I would like us to consider the idea of subcommittees, subcommittees that aren't subject to open meeting law where we can really, you know, in, in two or three of us can get together with whomever else we need to get together, to bring back to this body to then deliberate and, and develop policy on or developed action items on. The number one subcommittee I see is the, is the fund subcommittee, the funding subcommittee. And I see it and consistent with what, or what you presented Dr. Rose, you presented in your moving forward item earlier in the meeting. I think this is an area where we can address some of the questions you raised in that, in that moving forward piece that it is here that we could proceed to, in that subcommittee, that we could proceed to get with legal counsel, that we could proceed to get with the finance committee or, or whomever or the chief financial finance officer and get all of the information that we need about being able to make recommendations within this current cycle of the, of the town council to, so that we don't miss the boat on getting the council to act on any funding recommendations we might, we might make. I am prepared to, to raise the question of at least one subcommittee. We ought to be moving to create and that's a funding subcommittee. And we will have a chance to talk about that under the financials portion of the meeting. So thank you. Hello. I wanted to thank Dr. Shabazz for the, the document that you shared. I'm a slower learner or a processor, so I will need a little time to review it, let it sink in and also thank you, Dr. Jemisin for your, what you forwarded and, and our roads. Thank you all. I'm grateful to be on this committee with you all. And then sorry, just to take up time and speak, but I want us to also check if we can about open meeting law. I don't know if it's different if you're elected versus appointed, but our current council at the district told us if there's more than one of us present and it's a subcommittee, then we have to adhere to open meeting laws. So I don't know if we want to really double check the fine line around that to see whether we can meet without doing this thing or not. And that's all for now. Thank you. That's, by the way, just sorry, or could we just have time manager Backelman speak with respect to that? That's, that's a, that's a really important piece that Hala has raised. I just did the research one. Thank you, Michelle. So the, so the, the committee that you're on as a public body and any committees that you create are public bodies as a result of that. So if you delegate something out other than one individual, which can't be a body, but if you delegate a subset of your group, that is a body that also has to be posted. And the conversation has to be a public conversation. So it's the 48 hour rule about posting a meeting in advance. And for people who have not served on public bodies before, it's incredibly, I don't know if three of you have already, but it's incredibly cumbersome. We understand that. But that's the idea of transparency and local government to try to let people see how you are deliberating the work that you're doing. Can I say something? Yes, go ahead. Yes. The research that I did under frequently asked questions about the open meeting law on 32 B dash 19. Subcommittees are not public bodies, public bodies subject to the open meeting law. For example, a school committee with seven members may create a subcommittee. So I would invite you to look that up under. I had sent the link to that to all the members. And it was mainly one was looking at communication between members. But then when, when I was, when I proposed the subcommittees, I went further and looked up subcommittees and because that was the first question. Can you have subcommittees and not be subject to. Open meeting laws. And, and, and Paul, you can look this up. But what I came up with and what was a part of that, that was put out by. By distinct. Said that. That subcommittees are not public bodies. And they're not subject to open meeting laws. And Dr. Shabazz. Thank you. And I will also in, in. What I guess I really want to do is to invite, you know, Paul to give us his take on how, how do we. If. If Alex. And, and, and Dr. Jemison wanted to break off and be able to do some research on certain parts of our charge. Is there any. Is there any way to do that? In my experience. Whether maybe you don't even call it a subcommittee, but like a working group. If it's even advised to read to you. And something not necessarily created out of this public body, but if it's just. You is there a way that we can be more nimble and more efficient and not have to go through postings and open meeting law restrictions. If a non quorum of us, say two members of us wanted to work together to break off to together. To get some of this work done. Can you give us any, any guidance or help or idea about that? So it's a difference. So you are a public body. So if, if. If there is something to differentiate. So if the town manager as an independent authority or the superintendent of schools has the strict authority that can act on their own. I can, I can ask people to, to confer to me as long as it comes to me and I make the decision. That's not the case in this. For you, because you're a bot, you're a body, a public body, you're going to vote on something and make a recommendation or make a decision about things. So anybody who anything that you do as a subset of you becomes subject to the open meeting law. I mean, the things are exempt. There are certain things that are exempt from the open meeting law, such as, you know, working on logistics and that's what the co-chairs typically will do. What's the agenda that's coming up, you know, when or what's our meeting schedule, all those types of things. Who do we need to bring to the meetings? That's what the co-chairs typically would do. But in turn, and I, you know, I'll get some research done on is just us trying to do that in real time for us. But typically, if you're creating a committee, individuals can obviously go off and do whatever they need. But. So. And I just want to, I just want to, I just want to say that. So. And I just, I do, we do happen to have a open meeting law expert. Not outside. That's what I was going to say. So I'll step aside. And can we bring Alyssa into the meeting for a moment to speak to this? Cause I think that she has a great deal of knowledge about this particular subject. And I'd be glad to, to, to allow that. Great. Okay. So Angela, if we can bring Alyssa in, that would be wonderful. Thank you, Angela. And to be clear, the question is what is a working way, say on the funding piece, if two of us could be scheduled meetings, go and talk to, and it'd not be a violation. Alyssa, you're muted. Thank you so much for asking. And as the material that I sent along about liaisons is we don't normally talk, right? We normally watch and then we're asked questions as needed. So thank you so much for asking. I feel a little bad for Paul cause he knew I was watching him really carefully to see what words he said about open meeting law. I'm sorry, Irv, but your reference is factually incorrect. Your research is wrong. That is something that's either out of date or out of context. It is absolutely true that back when you were serving on school committee and I had been on school committee before you, there were times that we would have these subgroups like two or three, right? Cause it was subquorum. And we thought that was cool. It wasn't, it was illegal then, and it's been made very clear in subsequent rulings by the division of open government that it is in fact illegal. Is it crazy difficult to manage? Absolutely. I mean, right? Just two people want to get together. You have to post a meeting like that's nuts. Unfortunately, it's also the, the case. What you can do to, you know, to try and deal with it is you can separate like here at the meeting, you can say, okay, well, you said you're going to work on this. Like when Shabazz called me, you're going to work on this and you're going to work on that. And then we'll all bring our pieces back to the meeting. And certainly two of you can get together for coffee because you just come up with some brand new idea on your own. That's not, that's okay. But you cannot be assigned by the committee. To do something. And not have a posted meeting unless there's just one of you. It's really unfortunate and it makes work so much harder and it takes so much longer. That's also why you have to be super careful about the emails you send ahead of time. Because those emails also express opinions about the work or what you think needs to be done next, or you're just trying to prepare people, which is all like totally reasonable stuff that any other body that wasn't subject to open meeting law would do, right? I want to be efficient between meetings. I'm going to give people the reading material. I'm going to tell them my opinion. Totally reasonable. Unfortunately, not at all out under open meeting law. So emails that are being sent should only be sent to either, should be sent to the chair. And then they have to figure out if it's something that would violate open meeting law, or if it's just a matter of, Hey, I need to change the meeting date because something came up. You can occasionally just say something like, I want to add an agenda item, but you can't give the argument for why you want to give the agenda item. So again, that just comes back to like every single thing. Paul put it really well and I'm using way too many words, but Paul put it really well about the transparency issue. It's so the community knows what's going on because they know that if two people have been assigned to work on something, they need to be able to be a part of that. So one thing that some people do to make it a little bit more easy, practically speaking, is they kind of pick a date and time and say, every Thursday, this subcommittee is going to meet at 10 o'clock. And then they just post a bunch of those saying what they're going to be and we will work with staff to figure out posting. And then if you have to cancel, you cancel, but then like it's already done and it's not quite as much trauma, but unfortunately there is no such thing as subcommittees that aren't subject to open meaning law. Now, if just one of you wants to get together with five other people that aren't on your committee to do something, then that's fine, but not two of you. Thanks so much for asking. Thank you. Thank you. And I apologize for all these points of clarification. I just want to make sure. We're tight and doing the letter of the law. So we only have six right now. So a quorum. I'm still confused. I don't know if it's three or four. So I would recommend that if we're going to email the chair, something that could be a violation. If it's forwarded to more than. If we email both chairs, it's three of us. So we might be in violation. So I just recommend clearing that up. Say which chair do we, I don't know. There might be some clarity we need around that if we'll violate the quorum by. Emailing both chairs. Thank you. Paul, I thought I saw you shake your head. Not to put you on the spot. So the committee is a quorum is for people. Yeah. Great. Okay. So that was a good clarification. Thank you. And so coming back to this item of the October report. Based on Dr. Shabazz's outreach to counselor brewer. It sounds like we are okay to provide an update. About where we are in October. And. I think what I heard is that we don't need an extension of the deadline. But I'm curious if that's what other people understood. With respect to Dr. Shabazz's input on that. Was that report due on the fourth. Can you say that one more time? Yeah, I was wondering. I didn't think it was due on the fourth. I thought it was at the 30th. Of October. Is that correct? Or am I wrong? When was that first report due? That's a good question. I think it was October 30th. But did somebody mention the fourth? It says on the website a proposed municipal reparations plan. To the town council. I October 31. 2020. And a final report at the completion of the assembly's work. Great. Thank you. I also understood that we do not need to request an extension. For the actor report. I think that's a good question. Excellent. And do we feel like we need any further clarification from town council members about their expectations with respect to this report? I am wondering if. Do we just need one or more of us to go to town council? I guess I'm wondering in lieu of something written. Or maybe we're still providing something written, like, yes, what, what should happen? I don't know. Paul, do you want to speak to that? So it's the liaison's role to watch your meetings after the meeting, watch in real time. Both liaisons are here watching your meeting in real time right now. It's their job to listen, pay attention to what you do, and then report that to the full council. So there's not a need for you to proactively report to the council unless the committee chooses to do so. I think you should be planning to do something, you know, to do something for the community. And I think that's a good thing. I'm thinking of doing, or for certainly in writing to the council by the end of October though. Yeah. That, that will be a good practice to do that. And also for the public. For folks who may not be following along the whole way through. It's good to have a written report. So that. That sounds great. And if there aren't any other discussion points on this piece of information, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Shabazz. I'm going to turn it over to the community and stakeholders. BAM and first repair. And I gave my, I guess I jumped, jumped a little ahead in my members report and talked about first repair. So I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Shabazz if he's available. I think he was. Going to do the outreach in terms of BAM to discuss that point. Um, I'm not sure that I was able to do the outreach here. But it was a great tool. And, uh, as with other public bodies, it's not. Um, Impile. You know, it's empowered through that, that actual gathering. Uh, there is a subset that, um, I have yet to, uh, talk to. But I think that some of them are at least following along with these conversations. a certain subset of folks. I am keeping them abreast of what the assembly is doing, this assembly is doing and seeing how they see fit to interact. And so certainly in terms of, as we get to that question of visioning of options of what are the ways in which reparative justice can, should unfold, they could certainly be a group that can help inform, give some information from where they're soliciting from Amherst residents of African descent. Irv, I know in the email that we looked at in the beginning, you had talked about the possibility of a non-voting BAM stakeholder. And I'm not sure if you wanna get into that at this moment, but it might be a good time to, again, talk about that. If that's something that the committee would be. I just thought that it would be a good idea if we were able to have a liaison from BAM to this committee. And having said that, I also know that's something that we would possibly have to vote on. So is everybody clear about what and who BAM is as a body? I don't know, Hala, potentially, or possibly maybe wanna just speak to that if there are any of the, no, okay. The three members here, Dr. Shabazz, Dr. Rhodes and Hala are all members of BAM, but I'm not sure if Dr. Jemisin and Alexis are familiar with BAM. So yeah, okay. Dr. Jemisin, are you? I'm the newbie, but I can take a guess, but if somebody has a couple sentences on it, I'd love to hear it. Yeah, that would be great. And you, thank you, Hala. You're welcome. I hesitate to raise my hand because I'm still working on forming the words when I speak publicly. So that's just my growing edge. Let's go. What I understand BAM to be is a group of Amherst and non-Amherst residents right now working to do a black sentence around, oh wait, I better pause my school camera. A black census around the black residents or African heritage residents and Amherst, which I think set the census report, said 2000 or 4,000. The number escapes me in this moment. We wanna get as much input from the adults, 18 over stakeholders and constituents about what would you like to see? What would be helpful? Is reparations even a good idea? Just trying to gather as much information from every single person we can find or know about in this town. And some, when we say, we're talking with some people outside, some people lived here for 30 years and now they just couldn't buy the house here though. So they're five miles away. So they're just like an advisory. This is way longer than it needed to be. And we've been meeting to figure out how to bring reparations or reparative justice requests and stronger than requests to the town to start to repair some of the harm and educate and undo. I think that's what I understand it to be. And we have a couple other people who will have a deeper or different understanding. Thank you. Thank you, Halla. Dr. Shabazz, did you have your hand up Dr. Shabazz or maybe you're frozen? How is my reception now? I'll turn off video. Can I be heard? Am I heard? Yes. Okay, then I'll share this with you to supplement what Halla presented. This is the sort of approved mission statement of the Black Assembly of Amherst, Massachusetts. Its purpose is to serve as a coordinating body for the reparative justice effort in the town of Amherst. As it says here, the ultimate goal is to win full reparations for black African descendants residing in the United States. The title as a formal name of the organization is Black Assembly of Amherst, Massachusetts. Some of the guidelines that we said it made up of all black persons of African descent who are residents of the town of Amherst to be able to vote and participate in the consensus-building process that results in decisions about reparative justice priorities, residency will be defined as living in the boundaries of the town in a home apartment or other dwelling. US citizenship, however, is not a requirement of membership in BAM. The email where folks can communicate is blackamherst at gmail.com. And again, so this is where we are. There's been a, our desire to, we've been attacking the question of building the black census that Halla mentioned in different ways. One of the things is we are getting more information now through the 2020 census information that's come out. Thanks to the election season going on, I've been privy to getting my hands on the voter role and with all the names and whatnot. And it's really just a matter of some staff, some logistical support, some help to then go through things like the voter role and try to identify persons of African descent, go through every possible means collecting people who hear this program, for example, to send to blackamherst at gmail.com, their name, their email address, any other contact information, affirmation that their resident, that their residency is in Amherst to then be included on the list, kept abreast of the monthly meetings and then involved as we get to that point, get a certain critical number, a critical mass that we're hoping to get, involved in the process of discussing what kinds of priorities, what kinds of actions would really be meaningful in bringing about repair here in Amherst. So that's just a little bit more and I can make the document that BAM approved available to this assembly through the town manager's office and you can study it more and ask me or Hala or Irv any additional questions about it. Thank you for those explanations. And perhaps we can add that to the packet for our packet as it's growing, that would be great to add. And so Irv, just to check back in with you, would you like to add adding a BAM liaison as a non-voting member of this body to next meetings agenda? Yes, if we can't do it tonight then definitely yes. Okay, great. Hala, do you have your hand up? Yeah. Pardon me if I missed this. Right now I think I see about three members who are pretty consistent at BAM. So we're talking about adding a different liaison just to share the information between the two groups to keep the labor off the three of us that do attend. I'm just a little confused why we'd be adding a person and I might have missed it and I apologize about that. I think that's right, Hala, from my standpoint, it would be that so we can be in more in our role here as members of the African Heritage Reparations Assembly and not necessarily addressing questions or answering questions on behalf of BAM, but that someone could be a liaison from BAM that could be, that would come and do that. Are we? It occurs to me that we may wanna ask town manager Balkerman if that is even a possibility to add a non-voting liaison and what process we would need to go through if that's something that this committee would like to consider. So it doesn't change the committee charge. It's just as the council has a liaison, they can sit in the audience and be available and watching your meetings and can have comment at public comment or if you invite them into the room. So it's not like you're adding a committee member, the council created this committee, so they would be the ones who would have to adjust the committee's charge, but having someone present and available and you could have a section for reporting on your agenda. The co-chairs agree to that. Eric, did you have a follow-up comment? Yes, the idea that I had was I wanted a liaison from BAM to be someone who did not and was not a part of this committee. It was a way of including others in the community and the BAM community as a part of this process. Okay, thank you. Michelle, I'd like to suggestion that this perhaps needs some thinking so that we could discuss it at the next meeting and then have a vote on it as needed. That sounds great. I've added it to a list here that I had to run in. Awesome. So I knew that we had originally said 630 to eight and as we're at the top of the hour, I just wanted to sort of check in on people's time since we do have one more item in our main action discussion section. Can we get through financials and set a next meeting date without anybody losing their mind tonight or? Halla, was your hand raised or were you just maybe stretching? Okay. I think that's a great question, Dr. Jemisin. What do other people think? Do we want to keep going or do we want to move this to our next meeting which is October 4th, beginning at 630? What are we talking about moving? So we would be moving financials which is the last piece here on our agenda. I will also note that Dr. Shabazz had brought up something that is occurring at UMass that I do think is important for us to address tonight. We were going to address it under the 48 hour other topic section of the meeting. I think it's time sensitive and I would like to address it tonight and have Dr. Shabazz speak to it tonight. But the other matter would be whether financials is going to happen tonight or be moved to the next meeting. I would like to propose and make a motion that we move them to the next meeting because I had looked at that item and thought that particular two items are really broad and they needed to be narrowed down so that we could handle them in a proper way. And also it wasn't clear to me whether they were just going to be for discussion of purposes, informational purposes or what have you. But they need to be talked about and they need to be clarified as to how we're going to talk about them and bring them up for discussion and then act on. Any other comments? I can't pull up my agenda right now. What was, how was that item described? I don't know if it's easy to pull up, Angela. I can share screen. Okay, great. So it's item F here, financials. Thank you. Yep. Thank you. So yeah, I don't think we can, I think what I'd like to say that we look at committing to really doing an understanding now having learned tonight on the limitations of any group of us to move, to begin to develop information or whatnot without running into open meeting law. I think we do need to think about because it's going to involve a calendar. It's going to involve if we're talking about wanting to talk to the right people about how do we, if this body wants to, how do we make a recommendation to the council to discuss earmarking tax revenue from cannabis sales. Then we need to know, we need to get on that calendar. We need to get it on the calendar. If we keep kind of moving it from week to week without taking action at least to figure out how to have this discussion, how to get the information before us to make a decision about making such a recommendation. I do worry that we may miss the window of what could be a very time sensitive matter. So that would be in the same goes with getting on the calendar or thinking about how do we get the legal information about what a funding, what a fund can do, how a fund should be set up to have the kind of target that we want to have. Some have said, looking at the Community Preservation Act and CPAC as a kind of model, how do we engage in that process of self-education to make certain decisions about that in terms of what we want to recommend in our October report or in our final report. I am concerned that we might miss important time window if we don't begin to think about if that's a direction we wanna go, number one. And then number two, how do we ask of the town administration or of town council the information we need to educate ourselves about making such an ask. Yeah, something that comes to mind as you're speaking, Dr. Shabazz is thinking about what we can do between now and the next meeting. And what we can do is have individual members assigned to a particular administrator or counselor that they can call up and chat with and get some information from. So for example, if we think about Andy Steinberg as the chair of the finance committee, if we think about Sean Monjano, hope I didn't get that wrong, as our finance director. And we think about perhaps Alyssa Brewer who has a wealth of information about processes. Maybe there are like, Irv has a great relationship I know with Andy. So maybe between now and then, and this is just a suggestion, but maybe there are three of us that are willing to reach out to these people in the interim between now and Monday and then be able to report those back next week. And that will at least get us moving a little bit between now and next time we meet. Oh, wow. Irv? Well, given the lateness of the hour, I think that my first inclination is to say, is to think, all right, we know that we are going to be looking at funds to fund certain programs or projects. That is going to be for certain. However, we haven't decided for, talked about or discussed what those programs or projects are that we would want to fund. And that seems to me to be something that we need to do. Thank you. So I think these are really, I think you do need to have this as an agenda item for next time you meet. I think there are legal considerations and I'm expecting to get a letter from our town attorney about reparations that will help guide it. I think understanding the calendar that Mr. Mangano had talked about a little bit, but clarifying that, like when are your decision points? The council will be making some financial guidelines in end of November, December. So you want to be there, you want to be on in front of them early so that they know what your concerns are and your goals are. So I think we can help pull together some documents for you to look at prior to your next meeting. Thank you. Dr. Chavaz? Yes, and thank you indeed for that. So yes, so if we can as a agenda item for next week, really talk, try to see if we do have consensus not on what we're funding, but how we're funding. That's my stress, my stress point. We need to talk about how we see building a fund. Right now the direction I think that has been, where things have been established from the free cash or by the end of October, Sean Mangano talked about this free cash deposit into a fund that has been named for reparative justice. So if that, so it's then to say, are we looking to recommend how, certain kinds of, how do we think about the recommendation we wanna make about that? Are we building that fund up to $10 million and then it starts to pay out from there? Are we not talking about building up a fund of some amount that would be invested to then fund projects out of that? If we're not and we're looking at a kind of a one time thing, I think we've gotta look at these options, talk about these options. This is quite a part from figuring out where it goes. I think the community needs to inform that. We've talked about BAM as part of a process of the community coming out to inform that, the black community coming out to inform that, decision-making, but the mechanism, the mechanism, what the structure of it's going to look like, how much we're investing or if we're talking about something more limited, one-time payout, one and done, which I hope we aren't, but we've gotta discuss it and make decisions about it to be part of the report we make, to get before the council, as has been mentioned, before they go into November and the possibilities of earmarking certain revenues or whatever will pass us by. That's my comment, thank you. Dr. Shabazz, I guess what my thinking is that at the end of the day, that money is going to have to be spent on something, either a project or a program, or what have you. And if it's going to, for example, if we decided that, hey, look, we wanted to fund, Youth Empowerment Center or a center for youth, for entrepreneurship and financial literacy, et cetera. That project could be funded in any number of ways, but it could be funded in such a way where, for instance, the cannabis fund that is there that comes in on a yearly basis and it is consistent, it is a consistent stream of money that could be tapped into, perhaps, to do a bonding for. And also, there are other consistent funding streams that could be tapped into to fund projects over a period of time. And so therefore, knowing what a project is going to be makes a lot of sense to me because it really would be specific in relationship to how the project was going to be paid for. Additionally, the same thing for a program. Thank you for that. If I may jump in here for a minute, what I'm hearing is that there's a thought that we just need to know where funds can come from and think about whether or not, since that is a known universe, which of them do we want to use? And then there's another standpoint of it's nice to know what we're actually trying to fund so that we can know exactly how much money we need and sort of go towards getting that amount of money. Those are the two viewpoints that I've heard. And I think there's room for doing a little bit of both of that, but since where we can get the money from is sort of a known universe, I'm suggesting that we get the additional information that we need, which was finding out what we need to know about what it would take for us to request tax revenue from cannabis sales if we want to do that and continue this discussion next week. Any objections to that? No objections, but I would make one clarification of what I'm kind of sensing here, because it also came up in the report we had in the last meeting. And I think I'm kind of hearing it from Dr. Rhodes. And that is that it's the idea that this assembly, this body might also be poised to recommend or support reparative justice efforts that might be, that are being discussed or that might be poised to come before the council in its budget cycle that is not necessarily then coming out of the funding mechanism we're trying to create for a long-term process, but could come out of projects like other funding sources such as the Community Preservation Act. So for example, with Anika Lopes and her mother Deborah Bridges, we've been discussing the possibilities for the Civil War tablets long-term. But again, that's not something we have to look at and creating educational materials around it, particularly highlighting the African-American presence in the Civil War. But that's not something we have to then wait on the creation of this funding mechanism justice plan. That's something that we can endorse as a body for coming out of CPAC, coming out of Community Pres... And I get that if that's what we're raising, we as a body may look to do other than the question of the funding mechanism and how do we create that for a long-term process, at least, and I'm speaking out loud to kind of clarify what I think I'm understanding is happening in this meeting. Okay, I think we could probably go on much longer and I would elect for us to move this as a priority and the first item on our agenda for our next meeting. Is there any... I see, Irv, that your hand is up. Is there... Is this something that we could move to our next meeting or... I guess there would... I don't think there would be, if I would like to be corrected, that I as a member of a committee could have, say, in a formal meeting with Sean to go over some things that I was thinking about to see how realistic they were and then bring that back on Monday. Because what I'm thinking is totally unrealistic, then there's no reason to go forward or, on the other hand, to find out how to go forward with it, how to propose it, how to bring it before the town, how to bring it before the council. So I guess in my mind, given how my mind is working, is to say, all right, we're gonna need some financial instruments or we're gonna need some financial ways of doing this, what are some possible ways of doing it? And to get that done shortly rather than in the long term. In other words, what are the possibilities? Is what I'm thinking or what other people thinking totally insane or whatever? And then by doing that, at least we get one thing done and then the opposite, other part of that would then come in with the legal parameters, which I think we need to get done like ASAP. I mean, really ASAP. So anyway, that's what I would like to do and I don't think there's anything that would prevent me from doing that as a member of this committee. Is there Paul? The only thing that might prevent you is if Mr. Manganos became a new father a couple of days ago. Oh, my God. So, Is he a general lead? Well, he's trying to, but I know he's very dedicated. So I will work with, we can work with him. He's coming, has some truncated time, but I think you're right. This is a high priority and I can work with him to make sure we get answers to your questions. All right, so I will be in contact with you tomorrow morning Paul. Okay. Great. So then with that all said, we could move to, are there any upcoming events that anybody would like to announce? Angela, I don't know if there's anything on your end or town manager Bachmann or any of the members of the committee have an upcoming event to announce. Dr. Shabazz. Thank you. I can send to the town manager's office for distribution. Can you hear me? Yes. I can send to the town manager's office for distribution, the link and information about an upcoming statewide reparations conversation. It is scheduled for Thursday in two days. And at five PM and there is a link to register. It is a statewide conversation that involves participation and collaboration of a group out of Boston called King Boston. In addition with in Cobra, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, New England region. And so important because one of the things I was observing and looking at the Community Preservation Act is realizing that that structure came from a statewide act and then local municipalities responded to that statewide act by setting up ordinances and processes in place to tax themselves and with matching support from the state. So it's possible that this statewide conversation might be headed in some similar direction to create structure and form and support from the general court from our state legislature. And that could be very important to work like ours and other municipalities in the Commonwealth going forward. So look for that information on Thursday for the meeting on Thursday. Okay, and so our next meeting date we've already established, it's Monday, October 4th at 6.30. Does the group wanna make another meeting date now or wait until the next meeting? My suggestion is we try to get one now if we can just because schedules are gonna get so busy. And I think we talked about alternating with the town council meetings. So town manager Buckleman is there a town council meeting on the 11th? Angela is shaking her head. Oh, sorry, Angela. Yes or no? I'm looking at the calendar. I'm showing October 4th, October 18th, November 8th, November 15th. October 11th is Indigenous Peoples Day. Yeah. Okay, okay, so there is a meeting on October 4th and we're meeting that night. So would the 12th be an option at 6.30 for people, Tuesday the 12th? I'm going to request that we not actually, I'm sorry, I was mistaken thinking I could do both and regional school committees every other week and we're school committees every other week. So I have a school committee meeting every Tuesday and I apologize for my misunderstanding. So I would request, did I not be on two public meetings at the same time if we can avoid it? Thanks. Please and thank you. Okay. So that's a no for the 12th for me. Yeah, so that's every other Monday or I know Wednesday is also starting to cause trouble. So. Yes, and Jennifer can't meet on Thursdays until November. So let's see here. Michelle, since this is something that you and I can do. Yeah. Can we table, can we do this and take this pain away from everyone else? Or are you compassionate? Yes. We'll take on that misery. And I know that you'd still want it to possibly speak to the UMass incidents. I would appreciate it if we'd maybe keep a time limit on that as we're close to 30 minutes over already, but I agree it needs to be addressed. Yes. And if Dr. Shabazz, if you could address it briefly and then most importantly, we are seeking consensus from this group to ask our town council president to take action based on the events that Dr. Shabazz is going to speak about briefly. Yes, I'll be very brief. We simply have very hateful, the campus can get students, particularly those in the membership and leadership of speaks to everything we don't want in Amherst. And I think a consistent with the 2020 statements of the resolutions of the council, I think it would be appropriate to speak out. I know there's been concern in trying to tell like a private corporation, even though a state nonprofit, how to conduct itself, but this isn't to tell them to do anything, but just encouraging support for the students on the campus. Yes, and in speaking with Robin today from first repair, she had suggested that our committee make a statement with respect to these events that have occurred at UMass. And it seems to make more sense to ask the town council to make a statement sort of as the chancellor of UMass has done and the chancellor of diversity, equity and inclusion at UMass has also done just to acknowledge these events and refer to our resolution. So the question to this body would be, is there an agreement that we can that myself and Dr. Jemisin can reach out to our town council president and let her know what has occurred, provide her the chancellor's statements and then ask for that action to be taken. If there's no issue with it, we do, I think Dr. Shabazz has prepared a motion getting consensus of the group, but I'm not sure that we necessarily need it if there's no objection to having us reach out and do that. Alexis, do you, I see you shaking your head. Did you wanna say something? Okay, you're good with it, okay. Yeah, I'm in agreement, yeah. Okay, is anybody not in agreement, I guess, is the question, okay, good. So we'll go ahead and we will reach out to councilor Grissmer and we'll include town manager Backelman on that as well. And yeah, that's it. I'm sorry, can I just add one thing for next time? We didn't discuss a secretary or elect a secretary and I guess I don't need to talk about it now, but maybe that's something we should talk about next time. Yeah, how does that usually work, Paul? Does the staff liaison provide that sort of help or? So if there's a member who wants to take minutes, that's always welcome, but if not, we will have someone who can support you through doing minutes. And I think that's what Angela is here for tonight to help not just facilitate the meeting, but is taking notes to do your minutes for you. But if there's someone there who says, well, I really missed, I would love to do minutes. We'd welcome that too. So, but we got it. Thank you, Alexis. Yeah, that's a great question. And if there are any agenda items other than the one that we already spoke about, or the two, which is the financial conversation and the BAM liaison or the two items that I have noted, if there are any other items, they could be mentioned now or just emailed to Dr. Jemisin and myself. And if you don't have our emails, we'll find a way to get them to you between now and the next meeting. And otherwise, we are ready to adjourn the meeting if everybody, if there's nothing else. I move to adjourn. Second. Wonderful. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you, Angela. Yes, thank you, Angela.