 We'll call them select board meeting of Monday, July 9th, 2018 to order at 6.32 p.m. We'll start with announcements agenda review and opening remarks. I'll start with the fact that Mr. Wald will not be joining us this evening. He is not available. Are there any announcements or agenda items that my colleagues want to mention regarding the things on tonight's list? I believe we have a person here for for an application. So we may take that up a little bit earlier than we would normally relative to licensing for sale of wines at the farmers market. So we may take that up first since that person is here. I believe is that correct? So wait for a second. Is there anyone else here for public comment? Other than items on the agenda, I'm guessing that the other folks are here for that. All right. Is there any other agenda items or anything that anyone needs to mention? Okay. So given that we don't have anyone here for other public agenda things. We will start under section seven of our agenda, which is licenses public way and meter parking reservations, and we'll start with the application of a farmer winery to sell at the farmers market. And so I believe we have materials in our packet relative to that. So hang on a second. We'll get our materials pulled out. And so if you'd be so kind as to introduce yourself. Good evening. I'm Lori Perkins from Home Fruit Wine in Orange. And we were approached this year by Mr. Hamilton to work at the setup at the Amos Farmers Market. It's been quite a process in getting here. So I thank you for hearing me tonight. We can go from there. So why don't you tell us a little bit about your business and a little bit more about your working with our farmers market and tell us a little bit about what your expectations are of that. And then we may have some questions for you about some other things. And so I want to sort of paint the picture. This gives you an opportunity to tell the viewing audience. Not that there are that many, but a few of them just about what you have and when you'll be assuming approval of the license and all of that when you'd be available and a little bit about your products. Okay. So we started making wine in 2014. We got our Binded Federal License done. We opened our retail store in Orange. We turned our garage into a retail store to sell our product. And we make fruit wine. Some of the fruit we get right from our own orchid on our property. We have raspberries, blueberries, rhubarb. And we make only fruit wine. So it's just the fermented fruit. It's not a great blend of anything. So it's a true, full flavor of the fruits. And what we don't produce in our own orchid we buy from local farmers. In our area and friends and family. We've opened our retail store in 2015. So we've been in business for three years now. We are currently in 10 retail stores and right now we currently at our store we have a farmers winery license, which only allows us to do tastings. We're hoping to go to the town and get our pouring license in the near future to expand. That's our goal, but we thought we would try the farmers market and see how it went. I can only commit to every other way because we do have other commitments. So this year our season probably cut a little short, but our biggest selling season is the fall. So we're hoping we'll do pretty good and we want to get our products out here to the area here. We do have an Atkins farm here in Amherst. That's the only one I have in the area here. Okay, great. Thank you for that. Do my colleagues have questions? Mr. Simon. Hi Ms. Perkins. So I had a couple questions. Now the only, as I understand what you just said, and I repeat it back for confirmation, that your direct sales where you are yourself the seller of your product as opposed to having other store seller that's limited to what you're doing at your farm store in Orange. Correct. We produce it there and then we have a store there. I've obtained my transportation license and my salesman permit to be able to go out into the package stores and farmers to sell the products. Those are included in the packet that you have. So we don't have a distributor. I'm the distributor myself. So you're the, this would be the second location at which you are the seller yourself as opposed to having. Yes. Could you tell us a little bit about the procedures you use to make sure that you're not selling to any underage purchasers? We require a legal ID. And for anyone over 21. Have you gone through any course from either police or ABCC or private enterprise regarding the procedures for appropriately carding and enforcing that law? Well, we are regulated by the ABCC. That's on them to regulate people. We weren't required as a farmer's winery to go to that licensing part. I believe once we go for the pouring permit, then we would be required to take that, like a serving or bartenders type, but we'll only be serving our own wine. So that's another avenue that we would have to look. But the state law is you can only serve one ounce servings and you can only give free samples and you can only allow one, one ounce free serving. And will you be doing that at the farmer's market? If it's allowed by the town. Mr. No, go ahead, Mr. So I'm starting to get really confused. I totally understand that you have a separate place at your winery where you sell alcohol. I would, even though you're doing that there, it's obviously not just on ABCC to determine if you're selling to underage drinkers. Oh, I know that's not not. Right, it's obviously on you. I know that's not what was really intended to be said. But what I'm trying to understand is, and I got nervous when I heard the concept of pouring license. Are you referring to a pouring license here or a license there? No, in orange. Right, so that you can do more. Right, that's our expectation to experience. I understand. And so here you're saying that you're limited at the farmer's market to one one ounce free serving per customer over 21. Correct. Per day, basically, because I'm finding that a little surprising based on our previous experience with discussion at what's happening at the farmer's market. But perhaps they're doing less than one ounce tastes. I'm a little, but that's not your problem. That's our discussion problem because there was more than one taste being provided by the previous or current winery that was existing at the farmer's market to customers that were there. So if that is, in fact, the rule that definitely makes it clear or that there wouldn't possibly be any over serving if there's only under under this day law. You are allowed up to five separate one ounce tasting and you can charge for them. But when I looked into the laws of the farmer's market. They is I interpret it as one one ounce serving per customer. May I ask a question? So and to confirm, I believe you'd already indicated this. But again, to be sure I'm clear, you will be the person you said you can only really do your company can really only do every other week because of other commitments. But you yourself will be the person as opposed to someone else you've trained. It will be you automatically. Okay, great. Thank you. Other questions? Do you want to follow up? Guess my only follow up is just an observation and I've shared with you, but it's not going to necessarily affect my vote. When we get to the emotion being offered. Licenses can be counterfeited, can be difficult to follow, particularly if you're confronted with out of state licenses that then you're not as familiar with his Massachusetts licenses and since you've said nothing and I didn't have an expectation that you would use the kind of electronic checking systems that restaurants so large amounts of alcohol have that familiarity with, and this is implicit in what I was asking your mom a minute ago, familiarity with both how Massachusetts licenses should be scrutinized to make sure that they're authentic. And what to look for if you're going to accept out of state licenses, which is always a separate question, are very important questions. So I just wanted to, you know, those are concerns that I always have because in a college town, we become very vigilant on the subject. There's something I had never actually thought of because there is such a variety of out of state licenses probably in this area. That is something I wasn't aware of. I am familiar with a lot of different states because I actually work at Valley Medical Group here in Amherst and we now have to ask people for their licenses so I see a lot of different licenses. I'm beginning to familiarize where the dates are and all that with that so, but that is an area that I will be honest, I hadn't really thought about that. So I think I will be more aware of that and check into that if there is rules to do that or if someone knows, please inform me. I don't know if there's anyone in the police department that could consult with just so that she's more comfortable. Sure, we could connect someone with you from our police department. Okay, yeah, that would be great. We deal with that a lot, yeah. I have nothing further. Ms. Krueger? I wanted to make the motion and then I had a comment so I could do it after we have the motion. It moved to approve the application for a special farmer winery license for home fruit wine, farmer winery to sell alcohol at the Amherst farmers market for the duration of the outdoor market, which would be from the present time to November 17, 2018. I'll second that in a second. Okay, you had an additional comment. So I'm just looking at this and usually with these requests, we have the owner or manager's name, which we do not have on this. So if I could amend it to say Laurie Perkins, owner or manager, just to be consistent. I think it's signed that way. It's just my motion didn't have it. Just to be consistent with what we enter into the minutes for our motion. So my comment, did I have a second? Yes, I did not. So my comment is just I really appreciate that we're doing the same kind of due diligence we do for a new liquor license for a package store, asking similar questions. Because I think that's only fair. But I would say I'm balanced the risk of alcohol abuse from the one ounce serving per person for fruit wine at the farmers market is probably in the very far side of the spectrum. So with that, and I feel very confident that the risk factors are pretty negligible for, you know, I'm not saying it would never happen. But some of the ID and age appropriate things that we usually ask about, I think this is just the very low risk category of wine, wine use. I would agree with that. I also think though that that if if we just want to make you aware of what environment you're entering into because as we found in other places, if if a more relaxed attitude is taken around. Ideas and that sort of thing, those of the younger variety tend to find those places and seek them out. So you you might run into a circumstance you didn't intend to or anticipate. So we're just trying to make you aware as much as we want to be diligent in our work. But is there further comment or suggestion? Yes, Miss Brewer. Since there is in fact another winery that's currently set up to be at the farmers market, one of the things I would like to just ask that somebody somehow. Some part of the process clarify is around the one ounce issue and around the charging issue because I don't know that it would have made a difference. But I am saying that previously when we we've approved a couple of years in a row the existing Mount Warner vineyards there and we worked under the assumption that they were going to be very small samples. I don't think we specified what size, but that they were going to be free samples not, you know, selling a beverage of that size, which is really pouring at that point. So if Mr. Bachman has more information on that. I talked to the farmers market manager on Saturday and he said that those people retired. And that's why he was eager to have a new new winery come into the market. This will be the only winery in the market. So that answers one question in terms of consistency between the two of them. Competition has never been our concern, but consistency is our concern. And so therefore I am questioning whether or not we would feel the same way about this. If there was a sale of a sample, which is to me a different situation than a free sample. And if that's true, then I would like our motion to include that information. But if that's not true, then we just let it hang the way it is. I just don't remember this coming up before as being something that we had heard was a possibility of something to do. And if we have feelings about that, this would be the time to express those. It's new information as far as I'm concerned. My feeling about it is maybe that's something we explore in more detail when we get to our alcohol policy document. But again, I think that with one, my understanding that the samples of people can select if they want to buy a bottle of the fruit wine or whatever it is that's the product. And I don't feel well-versed enough on the different state versus farmers market regs. Again, pretty confident that this will be used in a responsible manner. I would agree. I would also suggest that perhaps what we should do is the research on that to find out what those differences are. What limitations we might or might not be able to place, because that may change or we may want to be more specific with renewal for next year. But I think in the short term, given the current explanation of what they're going to do, I'm not too worried about it. But I do agree that we should have clarity about what is or is not allowed under the license and whether or not that is more problematic for us moving ahead. Yes. I don't have any confidence that we're going to have any time to work on alcohol policy prior to December 3rd. Therefore, what I would like to suggest at this point is that we encourage the applicant as well as anyone else. The Amherst Farmers Market might be working with that were they to continue doing this because it's been a great success this year. Next year that when they come before us again, because it's my understanding this is an annual license still, is that they provide, not on us, but that they provide the information as to what they are allowed legally to do and what they are choosing to do. Those being the two pieces of information. Could I just comment on that? Sure. When I researched this prior, I was told it was up to the town and the town's alcohol regulations. And that's as far as pouring permits to. Which as you may have gathered, we may or may not have limitations, we're just not immediately aware. Not everyone is aware of it too. I mean, I try to do as much research as I can ahead of time. So when I restarted last year because I was thinking of doing it in orange and it was totally up to the town. So that's my point. We don't have the regulation. That doesn't mean there's no regulation. So it's not entirely only up to the town. What kind of samples can be provided by a farm winery license at a farmer's market? There are surely some rule associated with that. I'm trying not to look at any of the attorneys who are in the room right now who might answer that. Because that's not what they're here for. But there is surely a rule about this. And so while we might have additional rules about it, I don't believe the entire burden is on us. I believe next year when the renewal license comes up, it should be described what the farmer's market regulations are in Amherst, what the farmer's regulations are statewide, and what the current plan is. Because it may be that after doing it this year, there's a thought of doing it slightly differently next year, which would be totally acceptable as long as we just understood what the parameters were. So is there further discussion on the motion that we have? Hearing none. All those in favor, please say hi. Hi. Opposed? So that's unanimous with one member absent. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for having me tonight. Good luck. And we're looking for you at the market. Thank you so much and have a great evening. If I just- Yes, please. You did change the date to be today rather than April 21st, even though that's the normal season. I said duration until November 7th. Okay. I fudged the beginning. Okay. All right. So we'll go back into our regular action discussion items, which is what we normally take up with first. And I'll start with our easement for 75 East Pleasant Street, which I believe is a fairly historic street forward item. And there was a memo, I believe, in our materials from Mr. Moreing regarding this. I believe that requires our signature, but it also requires action. But Mr. Bachman, if you want to- Yeah, I just wanted to- Mr. Moreing's memo, it should reference Article 23 of the 2016 annual town meeting. And that reference is correct on the order of taking. Any questions relative to this? I don't- There's no cost to us, I believe. There is a cost. If you look at exhibit B, there's a damages award of $3,136.89. That is literally damages because when they were doing work in the area, they damaged the underground sprinkler system. And that was the cost of repairing it. Okay. So the easement was in problem. It was the work. Right. Broke stuff. Right. Okay. So I would take a motion on this unless there are other questions. I'd be happy to read this one. I move to accept the easement for 75 East Pleasant Street, Bank of America, Perenn's at Triangle Street, and to execute an order of taking by imminent domain per Article 32. Nope. 23. It's 23 at the 216 annual town meeting. Yeah. Thank you. You told me that. Yes. Yes. Article 23 of the 2016 annual town meeting, which authorized the taking of 1671 square feet of property from Bank of America for the installation of sidewalks at the Triangle Street, East Pleasant Street, Intersection Improvement Project. Is there a second? Second. Yes. I'm fine with the motion saying this as long as our minutes reflect what was just stated previously in that there was no charge for the easement. There was no cost to the easement because that's one of the things we always talk about was their cost for the easement. There was no cost for an easement, but there was cost for damages. And that's why that's listed in case anybody goes looking for it. Right. Just as we said, it wasn't the cost of the easement. It was the cost of damages. We can say that's the sprinkler in our minutes. And then anybody trying to sort this out later can figure out that, nope, easement still didn't cost us money even though some do. But this just has a separate issue. Yes. As I read it, it sounded a little funny grammatically. I think it's either at the Triangle Street, East Pleasant Street, Intersection, or for the Triangle Street, East Pleasant Street, Intersection Improvement Project. I think four would be better. Yes. Thank you. So if the seconder would accept that slight grammatical. Yes. Any further comment? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? And that's unanimous with one member absent. So next on our agenda under marijuana update, although update may be exactly all of what's there. The first order of business we have there is a letter of support and non-opposition relative to the herbology group. And so we have a memo from Mr. Kravitz, I believe. And so Mr. Kravitz first, or should we have him? I think we're going to talk initially about the letter of support and non-opposition, then we'll talk about the broader issue of local licensing. Great. So good evening. So if you'll introduce yourselves a little bit for us, and I know we've kind of done this all before, but we'll play it again as it were. But if you want to take us through a little bit about your place and your request, but again, start with introductions of who each of you is so that people don't know who's who and why you're here. And if you take us through that, that would be great. Sure. Frank Perulo representing Herbology Group. Jane Haman, CEO of Herbology Group. And hi, I'm Phil Silverman. I'm a lawyer with the Sente Cedarburg Law Firm, National Law Firm specializing in cannabis that also represents Herbology Group. And if I may just to start it off, I wanted to correct something that I had said previous time I was before this board about the setting profile of Happy Valley. I had missed the name change to HVV and was unaware that they had had a PCR and thought the setting profile, which expires in a year from being invited to sighting. So they do have a PCR. It is current. But again, we do have a signed purchase and sale agreement on the property and the special permit I think is the local barrier for entry for other applicants. So the fact that you have a letter out on the property is I don't think a problem. But having said that, and I apologize for that, I wanted to turn it over to Jane Haman, CEO of Herbology Group. Hello, thank you for having me this evening. I sent in a letter to you and I had a revised floor plan. I'm going to read my letter and we can review that next. My name is Jane Haman. I am the CEO and president of Herbology Group, Inc. Herbology is a women-known, minority-owned and veteran- known nonprofit corporation that seeks to provide compassionate, high quality cannabis to patients and consumers in a wellness-inspired setting. Herbology has appreciated the opportunity to engage collaboratively with the town of Amherst throughout our efforts to operate a medical marijuana treatment center and marijuana retail establishment at 422 Amity Street in Amherst. Since we first secured our Amherst location in fall 2017, we have also moved forward quickly in Greenfield and East Hampton through the receipt of letters of non-opposition and execution of host community agreements. Following our presentation before the board of April 9th, on April 9th we have revised and refined our plan to incorporate the feedback offered by the board members and the concerns were a revised floor plan. I'm enclosed in the packet we see a revised floor plan. It has been altered to enhance the flow of patients and customers throughout the dispensary to ensure that patients enrolled in the medical use of marijuana program have an expedited confidential experience and to address previous loading concerns. There is a confidential patient consult area and the patients will receive secluded check-in and point-of-sale transactions evidenced in the floor plan. The next concern was our security. Above all else, Herbology prioritizes the enhancing the safety and security of its patients, customers, staff, neighbors, and surrounded community. Herbology's security measures will exceed the requirements set forth by the state. Herbology has retained FTG securities, one of the Commonwealth's leading security consultants to develop security policies, provide engineering and logistics support, and conduct system testing. Herbology is willing to submit our security manual to the Amherst Police Department for review and approval prior to an assurance of a special permit. And lastly, our medical product line. At the core of our values is a desire to help patients and customers that are suffering from chronic, often debilitating conditions through the use of quality Canvas products. We are committed to the production of medically focused product lines that provide high cannabinoid and low THC that provide benefits of the plan without the associated euphoria. These strains will be available in a variety of manners to ensure that patients are able to consume their medicine via a method that is most effective to their medical needs, such as bombs, pills, solves, transdermal patches, oils, tinctures, and edible products. Sean Harrison of Herbology, cultivation team, has an extensive background in the development of non-euphoric medically focused products for the medical marijuana industry. Prior to moving to Massachusetts, Sean was a director of Operations at Evo Labs, a national leader that creates pharmaceutical grade CO2 cannabis oil extracts. I myself also have education in medical marijuana trade school in Michigan. And a little bit about my background, I know we spoke before, but what rose my curiosity to start this kind of business was originally I was in the Air Force and during that time my daughter fell ill and she became a medical patient. I was living in Colorado at the time. So I helped treat her illness and helped with her chronic pain and I truly believe that this is a life-saving medicine. You know, it helped me personally. And on top of that, I also ran a alternative healthcare practice as an acupuncturist and alternative facility that provided many different treatment options and many of the patients were seeking medical marijuana as a last resort or option, you know, besides traditional pain medicine. And we look forward to continue working with Anders. That's a relationship. Thank you. So, Miss Krueger. I have a question about the floor plan. Maybe more for staff. Is this the size of the floor plan when you submitted it? Or did this get reduced down? It's probably, I think it's reduced. It was bigger, the printout. I mean, we can get you a bigger one. Well, I just, so, we've talked about this before. When we get larger plans, I know it's a real pain when you're doing the packet, but I can't read this. It's absolutely, whether we could, you know, at some point in the future, when we do these kinds of things, we could project it on the screen, but 11 by 17. I mean, I literally can't figure out where the medical. It's not much better. This may be for us. We may need a better standard. The planning department certainly does when applicants come in for subdivision permits or whatever, where we have some uniformity consistency of plan submission, just so if we're going to look at them, it has to be uniform. I believe that you've segregated the medical from there a bit, but you can see when I don't know. I'm having trouble myself. And frankly, I didn't want to do the whole presentation. I wanted this to be a conversation. That's okay, except that without either backup visuals or you can't, and just for any applicant, you can't always submit it. But do you approximately know the score footage of the medical section compared to the recreation, just so I have a sense of what I am looking at. Maybe I can help with that. The, I don't know that you can say that one, it's one or the other. In other words, the way the state has set this up, what they want is to have a general sales area where you can get information about the medical aspects. What they, what is essential to the state is that you have a checkout area that is dedicated to medical. They don't want medical patients having to deal with the recreational side. So that's the key here. There's really two keys. One is a separate patient consultation room, which they have so that a person can go in private and receive their consultation. And the other is that you have a separate, dedicated point of sale station for just the medical. And those are the two things that they have here. That's only when you sort of say split the square footage. The rest of the sales floor is actually dedicated to both. So it's not specifically sort of split up between the two. Yes, and we have the consultation room in three POS stations and there will be a glass screen, a wall built so they still have privacy. Okay. Within the area. I can follow up. Again, that's not visually clear in any way. Either from a rendering or I think I'll just say for myself. We talked about this with other applicants and possibly as well as yourselves to have the medical privacy. You know, the state just says you can have a separate extension in a line and we don't feel like that's really a high enough standard for serious medical use for all kinds of reasons. So it's something I'm going to be looking at when we're getting these. So we need to have a way to see that or know it because in the rendering here we have when you first walk in you check in and then there's two entrances. You can either the patient still has privacy. They can enter the consultation room separate from the recreational room, which feels nice for the privacy. I think your point is actually well taken. I know from having been before I think it's is it the planning board could be their planning or ZBA. ZBA I can't remember. We will have to deal with that issue. So this may not be the exact floor plan that actually goes before that authority that's going to ultimately issue the special permit. But I think we need to obviously deal with that issue that you're raising. Just from conversations I've had with friends people there's still some amount of where this might be medically beneficial. There's a sense of embarrassment or shame for using this product because of the social stigma that we've carried as a society. So maybe in ten years it's not such an issue as you go to CVS and you can get all kinds of things and you're standing in the same line with everyone else. So people hear what you're asking for. I get that, but I think for introducing this as a new line that offers a sense of having that set of confidentiality and privacy is really important. I'll explain. I know you can't see it, but we have a consultation room and you just said the same line. We have separate lines, one for medical and one for recreational. And then there's a wall that separates that from the rec side and the medical side. So they still have their privacy all the way up until the exit. We feel that we can give these patients the privacy they need. So I'm going to ask a question just speaking of the floor plan. And I'm starting to make out the extra small print. But is this the existing building that you're using? Because HVV had suggested a whole different sort of, they were going to knock down the existing and move it and rebuild it. But your plan is to utilize the existing and remodel it essentially to accommodate your business and set it up. Is that correct? Yes. Questions from my colleagues? At this point? Yes. So again, using my wonderful reading glasses still not sorting out some of this print is that I'm seeing you come in the vestibule, you turn right, there's a consultation room, then there's a waiting area for medical and a waiting area for recreational and there's nothing separating them except air. Right above it says glass wall. We'll just extend that out. The plan is to make that go further. It obviously can't go all the way or you're not going to be able to get into the recreational section. There will be another door so we're just separating that because they're still using the same exit. They might see each other on the exit. And we also feel a lot of people in adult use could possibly they're for medical reasons as well. So I guess that as I said in our last meeting that I had reservations and ended up not voting for but actually abstaining on the motion. I'm happy Valley after having voted for the other three that were granted in town. And a lot of the reason are really you know 95 percent of the reason was because I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of three businesses in a relatively short stretch in one road which is what is again being proposed. And as I thought about that some more I realized that there's somebody who's representing the citizens of the town of Amherst who may have that concern because I've heard stories about some sections in Colorado where there are tremendous concentrations relative to the size of the communities in some streets. And how it has impacted the neighborhoods and the appearance of the street and the thought process about it. But it also seemed that it's a business owner that you must have given some consideration to the question of proposing a location that's proximate to so much other competition. So I still am struggling with this question and I didn't know if you had any thoughts or comments on the subject from your perspective which is not the same as my perspective. But you must have thought about it too. Can I help you a little? The microphone. It's for the recording. Thank you. And we this is something we hear this question and what we try to explain to people is this is not like having a CVS here and a Rite Aid here and another pharmacy that basically all sell the same products. That's not how this industry works for various reasons. Just about every dispensary medical dispensary have will cater to a slightly different crowd. They especially the medical have to grow their own and they have to process their own and so they're going to process and grow different products. There are thousands of different strains of the plant and then you can extract the cannabinoids. There are numerous THC, CBD and a whole host of others. And then you can recombine them and have a different impact for different types of sicknesses. So I happen to know for example that Jane is a veteran and has a real sensitivity towards veterans and post-traumatic stress disorder. What I can tell you is that there are certain strains that you would not want to have somebody suffering from that be the one that you sell to them. So I suspect that she's going to have a product line that caters to these particular patients and there will be competition because it's not everybody selling the exact same things. They will find different markets for the various patients in the community and that's why in the medical before Colorado is a little difficult to sort of study now because recreational has come in but before that you could see different dispensaries in the same area but they actually all did just fine because they each carried products that were catering towards different people in different environments. To extend what you just said and I appreciate which you've commented on about medical marijuana and the different strains and different purposes and of course I understand that that's part of what the role of good medical marijuana establishment is is to make sure that they're advising the patient to get to the right product and assisting the patient in that regard and that counseling is all about but to the extent that the current state law and GCC regulations have essentially given a special status for medical marijuana establishments coming into the recreational sales and of the operation has the effect potentially of creating a concentration of recreational sales points all proximate to each other too which also creates a appearance question because it's actually on a major gateway to the University of Massachusetts flagship campus also and so there's a little bit of both that was in my concern. I assume that's something that's going to sort of be fleshed out at the special permit stage when you get to the recreational side. There may I think theoretically be somebody that gets a medical license but is not allowed to necessarily sell recreationally. That's one possibility I don't know how it'll play out but I assume that would be part of that process. My other question is entirely different. I just am very conscious of the fact that would exist in that property right now is a long-standing restaurant that has been by somebody who's been owned by somebody who's been in business for a very long time and they employ a lot of people and they have a good following and I recognize that if all falls into place as you wish at some point in time that is the owner of the property that you would have an arrangement to terminate their lease and essentially end that business and I was just curious as to how that's being approached and whether efforts will be made to stay in business and what they are as long as possible convenient to your own needs if they proceed as you wish. So absolutely and we actually already made some arrangement. Their lease is either up or again not holding the lease, Happy Valley holds the lease. They were supposed to be out in May or June. We told them that as long as we are permitting and as long as we areไป this process we would allow them to stay. So we extended their lease or we asked Happy Valley extended their lease until November which is when we would foreseeably be through any permitting processes we go through it. Having said that we have been doing this for quite a while it could be even longer but having said that we asked Happy Valley to do that they asked for our permission we said sure of course that is something we have done and we will be holding If we proceed, we would be holding a job fair on the site and hoping that we would actually receive some of the employees to stay with us, if they so wished. At our last, I think it was our last meeting and I think you were present. We talked about some of the qualitative aspects that we would be looking for before we signed host agreements, which is another sort of gatekeeping function. Some of the ideas and some of them are in the memo have to do with prioritizing local employment hires, the quality of the building design, other commitments to contribute to the community. And as we go forward, I don't think we really have that set up for the issuance of the letters of support or nonopposition, but we're looking forward ahead to how we might use those kind of qualitative criteria. And I know you listened to that conversation, so I'm wondering if you could share some of your thinking about that. And before that, Mr. Steinberg brought up the issue of concentration, which is different than my concern because I'd rather have, there's only so many places because of our own zoning. So that happens to be one of the places where it is allowed. So we created the conditions for concentration in some sense. I'm more concerned about how it looks in the design because I think the Green Mile idea from Colorado is sort of the sleazy kind of place. And if there's real quality design and high-end sort of business practices, I doubt if we're going to have much more concentration. And I think it's as much what it looks like and how it presents coming into that gateway. So for me, that's an issue rather than just the fact of three on University Drive. But maybe you could speak to both of those things. Well, our facility will definitely have high-end aesthetics. It will not look like shop out of Colorado with green lights and painted green, anything like that. We want to fit into the local area and be known to be quality, quality shop, quality products, quality services. And we have a rendering here of what the outside will look like. We'll pass it around if you have something to show us. I think we saw a version of this last time. You did. And on the previous page, it's the current conditions as well. If you'd like to take a look. Oh, I know what there. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, just as a matter of clarity, you know, to deal with sort of the concern of the concentration. Massachusetts regulations are a little bit different than Colorado. Colorado lets those companies have a little bit more, shall we say, atmosphere around them. You can't do that in Massachusetts. What you're going to see is an attractive building that if you drove by, you wouldn't know what it's being used for. There will be a little sign that says, herbology group, but you won't have any kind of a marijuana symbol or anything on it. And so other than knowing if you happen to live here and you know what goes on there, you wouldn't know what's going on there. And that's deliberate. You really, it's just not something you don't want to cater to any kind of an element that's unwanted in the area. You want people to understand that this is a serious business and this is not a place to hang around for illicit activity. So it's important that the building just sort of fit into the area, which I think as you can see from the rendering is the idea here. And of course, I should mention having done a lot of host agreements with towns. There will be local hiring preferences, preferences for local vendors, so that this really does become an active part of the community. I know there would be the standard sort of community host fees that would be applicable. And I think also for Jane, she's interested in becoming a viable member of the community, so I think there will be other charitable giving and things of that nature. But you'll, as I said, the host agreement will lay out a lot of these issues very clearly to show all of the benefits. Salman, did you want to add to that? About the interior? No. About the some of these qualitative aspects that were, I'm sure you had that discussion already following our last one. Yes, we'll hold more community outreach public education for patients. Also, we will have classes within the community to bring the community in and educate them. We feel it's very important for safety. And also, we feel there needs to be more education within the community too, between adult use and medical for both of them. And also inside our facility would be a luxury spa slash medical look and feel to it. It's not going to be just a plain counter. We're catering to everyone's needs depending on what kind of product they need. We want to educate and guide them for the most, the best safe practices in use. And I think the conversation we had at the last community meeting included someone about funding for public education. Yes. Which we have spoke of and that's something that we're interested in funding as well. And also, we're looking to help support any veteran programs, women minority programs within the community. I missed your April 9th presentation here because I was ill with the flu but I showed up with a mask at your April 11th community outreach meeting just so I could contaminate even more of the public. Because that was basically our first community outreach meeting in Amherst. And so the community outreach meeting of course has nothing to do with what we're talking about tonight except that it does because everything is connected. So if you could give us a sense of timing associated with, you know, as you mentioned earlier, not everyone, even though the state gives medical leg up for recreational, that doesn't mean that you'll get through the special permitting process for both medical and recreational. It doesn't mean that you'll get host community agreements for both medical and recreational. It just puts you to the head of the line in terms of the CCC's process. At this point, I think we made it clear at our last select board meeting that it's not something we're considering an automatic leg up here in Amherst. So just given that and given that some community members did in fact come to your outreach meeting, which yay for you, is what's the expectation in terms of timing in terms of the application process with the recreational in terms of what, you know, I realize things always change because we certainly knew with medical many places wanted to be open long already, etc. But the reality is this isn't two years ago where you're talking about medical well before recreational was even legal. Recreational applications are being processed now. So what's the current philosophy behind that since you've already jumped through that hoop of the community outreach meeting? So the good thing is that they did jump through the hoop of the community outreach meeting. The more difficult thing is that the state process is very muddled right now. You know, there was the hope that this would be open on July 1st, July 1st passed. There's nothing open. And the other thing that you need to understand is, you know, there are a lot of applications out there. I believe this group has a priority right of review for theirs because they were previously given a provisional certificate of registration for a medical license. And so they will get a leg up. But you know, to think that there is any likelihood on the recreational side, and again, we're really talking about medical here, but on the recreational side, I cannot imagine anything even within six months. And I think if I had to guess, a year is more likely. I think the medical would be up and running a lot more quickly. I think, you know, knowing the special permit process here a little bit, I think you could be looking at something like four to six months conceivably here on the medical side. So I think that's, you know, and there's some build out that has to go on in architectural, even that's a bit optimistic, quite frankly. I think eight months is probably about as soon as you might see that. So, but the recreational is further down the line. There's just too much, too much uncertainty in the state process. I wish I could give you a better answer to that question, but I'd be lying to you if I thought I could be that definitive. And I think it's our strategy to have a complete application before we go to the state. And that means we would need a host community agreement from you and Phil, unless that's changed, right? And we were talking about that today. It's better to send a complete application because they don't really review it until they certify that it's complete. And that requires the affirmation of zoning and the host agreement from Amherst. So, Mr. Steinberg. Just one other different topic. And we principally direct this to Ms. Hammond is appreciate the fact that you have the experience in the military because the whole question of training and oversight of multiple locations and making sure that things are done appropriately across multiple locations, something that I'm suspecting that you're used to from your military career. But I was wondering if you've given thought to the administrative structure that you would want to see in place for three different locations within Western Massachusetts and how you as the chief administrative officer intend to assure uniformity and quality in everything that you would expect across all locations. We hired, we feel, a great management team that provides services for us. We feel that they have the best experience. They've hired some of the top leading, they brought together this team from leading companies that were already in Colorado and brought them here to Massachusetts. We feel that they're very educated and can put the right team in place to help manage all three locations. And also, I will be here myself in Massachusetts, probably hopefully Amherst looking for a place. So, to help oversee that and make sure everything's smoothly and that our management team is holding the standards that we expect. I also have experience running a few different medical practices, alternative care practices. So, I have overseen, me and my family, we started chiropractors. I'm an acupuncturist, physical therapist. We had an office in Connecticut and two in New York state. And my sister is a CEO of her biology group. She's back there and she also helped manage those practices. So, both of us together have managed more than one business. Mr. Chair, I'm wondering because we do have a memo in the beginning part of it from Mr. Kravitz. It gives us a recommendation on this issue and I don't know if you want to invite him to speak to that. I would like to hear from him. I just have to find where I put him. Yeah, it looks like all the other memos. It's kind of like this. Mr. Kravitz, do you want to offer some comment to us relative to that portion of your memory? We'll get a full comment on the rest of it later. So, the recommendation was to issue a letter of support or non-opposition conditional on Happy Valley withdrawing its application. Since drafting the memo, I had a follow-up phone call with the Department of Public Health and they informed me that, in fact, they would not accept two applications for the same location. So, I guess I would amend the recommendation to say it doesn't need to be conditional, but that would be the only comment unless you have questions. Right. I guess what I would ask you is just to summarize your thinking in making that recommendation to us. I think that previously it was deemed as an acceptable location for a medical marijuana dispensary. I understand that that was prior to recreational marijuana being established. Despite the assertions here, I don't see for medical marijuana establishments being successful in the long term in Amherst. I don't think that there is the market there, especially as it expands and recreational expands in the region. So, I think that having, allowing the market to compete to see which of the operators are the best and able to survive, I don't, sort of, a free market argument. So, that was sort of the thinking behind the recommendation. There aren't other questions. We could take a motion too, but go ahead. We don't have those. I have comments for discussion amongst ourselves rather than questions for any of the lovely people who have kind of spoken to us. That's fine. You can still hang out because it may involve you still. Go ahead, please. So, in addition to all the issues we've already discussed in terms of the long-standing community owners of the business that's running at this location now and their contributions to the community, et cetera, that we have heard about over the last period of time since we've talked about this location previously and the acknowledgement that of course this was all before we knew for sure medical was happening and we certainly didn't know that a head start was going to be provided by the state on recreational, that's what I meant to say recreational adult use. However, as this continues to evolve, I think one of the rationales I'm looking at is, and this is why I'm talking to you guys, not asking them to weigh in, is a reason to not issue a letter of support slash non-opposition would be because we absolutely for certain don't want another medical facility and I don't think, although we've had some comments about why we're concerned about numbers, I don't think that's true. I don't think that we want to say we absolutely don't want to have a fourth because we don't really know that all four are going to work out even though others have gotten somewhat through the permitting process for medical. Another reason to say no to a letter of support or non-opposition would be to prevent the town manager from signing another host community agreement and that to me has some validity as a concern because host community agreements were signed with all the other medicals without substantial discussion by the select board on what might be included in those host community agreements. However, it is also true that there's a separate special permit for recreational. There's a separate host community agreement for recreational slash adult use. So I'm feeling less concerned about using blunt tools to do things that we can do with finer grain tools later on in the process. It's clear that the town manager has come to us and said he wants to talk to us about host community agreements associated with recreational slash adult use. He's also asking for insight associated with this one because we're at this weird cusp of timing. And so given that I'm was hesitant months ago for a variety of reasons including those I just stated, but now that everything is much clearer in terms of the process, in terms of the various input points people can have, even though the town manager can in fact just go ahead and sign whatever host community agreements he wants, he's made it clear that he's interested in talking to us about that. Special permit still has to take place for the separate and it has been mentioned previously as well as tonight that in fact not all those locations all lined up on University Drive or even the other location that's located on Meadow Street may in fact get a special permit because parking considerations are different for a retail operation than for a medical by appointment operation. So I'm no longer seeing a reason to oppose a letter of support or non opposition. I am in agreement and I'm wondering if you had an inclination towards support or non opposition because I'm thinking of making a motion and I since it's at least six months since we did one of these I'm older so I'm more conservative I was thinking of maybe going for non opposition this time instead of support but it would be maybe inconsistent with our previous position but I was going to make a motion and we could talk about this more after the motion was made but I was wondering if you had a preference if any of the members here had a preference before I put it on the table. I do not yet have a preference and it would be interested in people's rationale for the difference between the two. The thing that we grappled with relative to that issue in the past was what distinction does it make relative to the state and we have yet to understand how the state sees them which it doesn't really. I think it may be a bit of a political out for select boards across the Commonwealth to say oh it's a non opposition which is softer than a support but as far as effective you know not a scintilla of difference so I don't know that it has a lot of meaning for me either as far as the difference between those two but I will say just to piggyback almost the spurs said I'm thinking about this you know granted the circumstances we're operating in with adult use being more clearly painted out I think that the there are a number of of rather significant hurdles both state and local relative to adult use and for that matter relative to medical use that that give us some assurance that there's some um additional you know public input opportunities and and and feedback opportunities for folks to to give you relative to that so that gives me a certain level of comfort relative to supporting a a letter of support and non opposition but um and and I don't see again I don't see a real strong reason to not allow it um I think the one particular reason is that uh you know it is displacing a business that's currently active viable and functioning within our town the other locations didn't have that but that's a pretty subtle you know sort of thing I'm sensitive to that and so you know it's difficult but I don't know that again that that's a sufficient reason to not offer the letter of uh from the from the select board I was I was going to make a motion but I don't want to so I'm going to make a motion sure and then we can I have a few other things to perhaps say I moved to provide a select board letter of non opposition to herbology group inks notice of intent to operate in off-site medical marijuana dispensary at 422 Amity street Amherst within a zoning district that allows such use by right or pursuant to local permitting and further to authorize Doug Slaughter select board chair to provide notice of the vote taken July 9th 2018 on behalf of the select board is there a second okay there is is there further discussion well just two things one um I I know in this sort of um points we talked about for for kind of extra qualitative points um using an you know a vacant or abandoned property this would not be and I as much as I would like that uh existing restaurant business to stay in town and do well um that property's in play right now so we can't because they're not the owner we really can't guarantee their longevity in that site regardless so right um they just you know in terms of host agreements host community agreements there wouldn't be points for using a vacant property also I'm thinking with special permits we've done this for other issues including affordable housing we've forwarded our concerns as recommendations to the zoning board of appeals and where this is a pretty new kind of thing if we had concerns about appearance or conditions around offering things in addition to the money um I think we have an opportunity to voice that in a you know it's their jurisdiction but it's not unprecedented for us to send our concerns along to the zoning board of appeals and I think um we didn't do that with the special permits already issued but now we've plunged more deeply into this issue I think it would be appropriate to think about doing that is it for the discussion it's the only thing that as I disclosed earlier and as everybody knows I abstained when similar both took place for happy valley um and it was not a comment on their business and it was certainly not a comment either on the need for medical marijuana the desire for recreational marijuana to be available in our community but had to do with the concentration of businesses in one spot as I said in the major gateway into the university so I will be inclined to abstain again any further discussion hearing none all those in favor please say aye one person absent abstain one abstention so we have one abstention one absent and three in favor so thank you all very much we appreciate your patience with us thank you so next on our agenda um yes we can why don't we take a short recess for about five minutes or so and then we'll come back and take up our second half of this topic for tonight so we're all back so let's uh we'll re uh restart our meeting we're going to continue with the topic of of um marijuana in particular to talk about some of the other tools we have at our disposal and Mr. Kravitz has written us a memo and so if you'd like to take us through a little bit of that um that would be helpful thank you Jeff Kravitz economic development director um two weeks ago we had some discussion of potential options um regarding host community agreements and um local licensing for recreational marijuana establishments and so last week um I put together the memo dated July 6th um and essentially it lays out what I would describe in general is sort of a holistic approach um I know points were mentioned earlier I don't necessarily see assigning points to any of these but some of the things that uh the town manager in consultation with appropriate staff would consider um in order to evaluate whether or not to assign a host community agreement um things that would include what what's in the host community agreement um the percentage uh for impact community impacts uh we as I mentioned at the last meeting um other communities have signed things including community benefits that are different as well as charitable contributions and then some of the other things the economic benefit of the town regarding jobs tax revenue um the use of vacant or underutilized properties the appropriateness of the location um the quality and distribution of educational material to patients and um recreational users the experience of the operators in Massachusetts um or elsewhere doing marijuana establishments or other similar type establishments um the commitment to sustainability um which would probably be more for cultivation organizations but um power usage electricity usage water sewer those types of things um and then so I added a catch all if anybody wanted to try to blow us away with um something unique and we hadn't seen before that seemed like a really good idea figured that was um worth including as well um and then it sort of goes through some of the material the host community agreement um the location of the business blueprints um and tried to strike a balance understanding that this is the very initial step that most of these businesses would be going through and to require you know full engineering reports and site plans when they don't even know whether or not they're going to be able to move forward in the process seemed onerous but having something to base it on would would help that decision making process um and then sort of a summary of who might help advise the time manager on various aspects of an application so one question I want to start with take the chair's prerogative to answer that's the first question so did you have something else you want to offer just one one brief comment so the host community this is a policy discussion that started last at your last meeting and this is a more developed and I appreciate the economic development director's memo which really I think comprehensively lays out three three different things the medical marijuana the host community agreement and then the licensing things those are the three things that we're talking about the host community agreement under recreational marijuana is a really important document now because the latch key that allows the applicant to go to the state it's a major public policy discussion to be had and that's why I think it's really valuable to have it in this format because it is the one piece that they really need beyond all the site plan review it's and things like that um but as a policy issue not as a citing issue that's why I think it's really important to have this sort of conversation about the content and the decision making process for a host community agreement so the the first thing I'll ask about just speaking to that is that I was thinking you know sort of order of events because I think as it stands now the host community agreement and the process for special permit are going to potentially be on parallel tracks simultaneously potentially happening and this is sort of an open question and I'm not saying I have an answer or preference one way the other but it could could it be or is there anything that prevents setting a particular order do we want to set a host community agreement first then have them go through special permit process have them do a special permit process then do host community agreement they're going to need both of those to go to the state I presume or do we want to keep them in a in a in a parallel track or do they not need both to go forward with this with the state they only need the host community agreement and a community outreach meeting in order to submit a complete application to the state um they would need a special permit before they received a final license um and also our zoning bylaw and correct me if I'm wrong um requires applicants to be at a an appropriate I forget the exact term but in a certain stage in the state process which we would interpret to at least be have submitted an application um in in the medical process they had to get to the provisional certificate of registration before the zoning board of appeals would accept an application um this is a different process so we're not sure but at least they would have to have submitted an application so we've essentially set the order of events just have host community agreement first what the state in order yeah yeah well if our zoning was different though we could have not made it a requirement to have been in at a certain stage I mean I'm not saying we could have couldn't I'm the reason I ask that question is because you brought up the point of you know how for a host community agreement what level of of like building design and that sort of thing location etc etc is needed and if you have done the zoning was the permit first you've sort of answered that level of question first but again it it I'm not saying it's right to do it one way or the other it was just one experience on on on when things can and should sort of matriculate through yeah so and I think it is the correct order because again the requirements for submitting an application for a special permit are much more onerous than what this memo envisions and would be more costly to applicants right okay no it's good I just want to hear that clearly so I wasn't mistaken in how I approach that the one thing I'll bring up just talking about host community agreements one of the things I've been thinking about a lot lately relative to sort of the educational pieces I think about you know potentially eight different you know we're going to ask for a certain thing from from you know potentially eight different vendors relative to educational outreach and that sort of thing and I got to thinking about it would probably be and and we you know one of the concerns we had is the fact that there's you know a quarter of the population in in the two colleges and university turns over every year and so we have a rather large influx of new residents every year by virtue of the natural progression of those institutions so educational outreach is a huge piece and certainly for me as far as how that plays out and and so I was thinking about you know the idea that we need a sort of coordinated approach to that educational process and so either their support of our our our defined educational outreach plan in and I would think that would have to be in concert with the university and colleges but also potentially creating them as partners in that and so that it it allows them to participate and potentially foster and promote new ideas of how to do educational outreach so that we're not trying to you know sort of build it perfectly on our own but make them a partner in that process but I do think it's something where I wouldn't want to put the onus entirely on them to create the whole thing because then we'll have eight different messaging potentially as many as eight different organizations messaging eight different ways and that could potentially put messages in conflict or confusing and that sort of thing so I was just wanting to sort of promote that idea of a coordinated approach on our part I don't want to police a lot of burden on us as a community to do that but I just wanted to think about that idea of it and and what you thought about that what managers thought about that and my colleagues have thought about that this group well specifically about education I think part of the money that we're getting we're going to be asked to use some of that for education and I think there does need to be independent education on this that's separate from a provider approach so I've always assumed that some of that outreach and education would be done by a non-licensed you know by somebody that we choose or we fund or maybe different groups whether it's through the schools or through Spiffy or through the other branch of the town so I think I see it a purpose in having an independent educator in addition to the groups showing their they're giving abundant information on you know the different medical aspects and other responsible use things but in looking at this I like the criteria and I was the one who said points earlier and I shouldn't it's too too literal and I just meant like qualitative considerations and will be a different mix probably for each applicant the thing I noticed the internal review team helps the manager and then the manager signs the agreement no dispersions on these positions listed but I don't see any public officials on the review team and I know the board of health has interest in these matters um elected official probably won't be this board but it's successor board I would like to see some public officials in the mix I think it brings a different perspective in looking at a value you know an evaluation process and a qualitative process so um it doesn't preempt these people from having the information but I like to see a role for some public officials as well in terms of providing recommendations or guidance to the manager this just looks really staff heavy just to respond to the comment about educational material I've met with the board of health and and they are also very concerned about education and have had discussions about whether it is better for the town to produce it and I don't think this rules out both this that you if the town says here is the material that we are producing that you have to give to medical patients or recreational consumers and you can go beyond that and say that you are going to also do um as as the herbology group said you know have classes have community stuff that that we would that the town may not actually require I would say okay that in in my mind if I were advising the town manager into this policy I would say that that's a check mark or a plus on on that type of application because they're going above and beyond but yes if there was a minimum that the town wanted to require I think that that's certainly worth discussing and the conversation with the with the board of health on what type what that material should be in the contents of it right and I think for me the concern is you know and and you see this with alcohol advertising when they loosen the laws around alcohol advertising so now you can have you know all manner of alcohol advertising and they all have to you know it's required to have this sort of drink responsibly sort of thing some of them do it in a very sort of straightforward simple way with it just sort of as a tagline on the you know television ads some of it take a more tongue in cheek approach which I think is a bit disingenuous personally but I think that that's where I'm I'm having a little concern about potentially conflicted or mixed messages that come out of out of that piece of it I think having you know sort of a baseline thing that we're doing and that they're participating in to to create and and promote and pay for and that's worth it but I think if we're going to ask for additional beyond that that that you know we may want to have you know not a lot of constraint necessarily but you know some some understanding of intention behind that so that we're again not wanting messages to be in conflict with one another so one group of of or one particular retailer is is from providing it in one way and another is providing in a different way that those don't end up with conflict messages if they're if we're asking for an additional sort of piece of public outreach in that regard so that's really concerned there yes so among the tens of concerns I have about this memo and the details in the memo so buckle in for a while I would like to talk about specifically about the education piece because I do think that's actually not as complex as it could be I think that we should talk about whether or not it makes sense and again as Mr. Kravitz indicated and board of health members have indicated to us through Ms. Fetterman and directly that during our internal working group that they would certainly spiffy may come into it at some point we could say for example we could say you'll put in what the town tells you to put in and we'd love to see what else you think is important to put in because then they could be part of informing a better town document moving forward and they could even work with the people who are working on that town document and while I realize we don't have suddenly excess capacity among staff to do things like this we don't we never had excess capacity to do any of this marijuana work despite hiring economic development director who was not told this was going to be his job when we hired him so it feels like rather than expecting each of them to come up with a separate piece that we think would suit us then maybe we just go ahead and come up with our piece because as Ms. Krueger says and as we'll attach to one of my other many comments later in the evening is we get this money for a reason we are not supposed to just be asking them for all the money we can have because they want to open sooner that's been a criticism about many municipalities across Massachusetts and I don't think we're in that position but we do think we can justify three percent and at this point there's not a lot of legal guidance as to exactly that will be but it has to be defensible and it feels very obvious to me that educational material that's developed in concert with the universities and colleges even though it may start out you know more quickly in terms of a smaller group but it will develop over time and it will change over time just as ccc materials have changed over time as to what seems effective in reaching people and as we learn more from other states that we could require we could say in the host community agreement for example you will provide what we tell you to provide and and that doesn't mean they can't tell us oh by the way we're already putting something in there that has five out of those six things on it then that's okay too but we could make it clear that they have that I'm not sure how we pay for it in terms of not only the staff time to develop it but in terms of like actual literal handouts and how that works certainly doesn't go in plastic bags we know that but that's obviously something that can be worked out I don't need to know that level of detail it feels to me to be able to say that I would expect the host community agreement to have in town provided material until the town decides some other material because some amazing group somewhere is doing this tradition terrific piece of material that we just send them a they just send us a bill every time they send us another 500 of them kind of thing the thing I was thinking about is is making you know these were these establishments be a partner in the process and so if they have experience in other states or other locations we want to strongly encourage them to bring those ideas to us because how we do and what we do will need to change over time is always the case with that sort of thing but they may also have experience and and expertise to bring and so it's encouraging them to be partners with us in that regard so we can be you know as we've said before sort of you know responsible stewards as a as a town around this particular topic because we've got a lot of a lot of young people in town you know and we have a certain responsibility to those to those folks and and it's you know sort of how we go about that other things people want to mention or or would like to bring up in in regard to this and I've been thinking along similar lines as far as the education piece which is that the Board of Health really is the appropriate body to establish a minimum standard and even a platform to use an educational platform to use either as baseline or as the as the actual product I think that's a matter that they probably will have the expertise to determine one of the things that ties back to then the host community agreement is to make sure that the host community agreement can and does include a provision that requires is that the provider the vendor is going to comply with all present and future as regulations of the Board of Health regarding the operation and including education in the sale of marijuana recreational marijuana if I could follow up on that a bit and I don't know if at some point well Miss Peterman is actually not with us tonight because we didn't expect that but we had indicated Mr. Moore was going to be available tonight because it couldn't be before but in terms of I do I do just want to caution us that I want to make sure that even if the Board of Health doesn't have a quorum and can't meet to set their regulations which you know better than the rest of us but we all know can don't have to go through town meeting or anything they just but there's still a process for regulations that is different a little different and more formal than what we do here when we establish a policy or even a local licensing process so I would just caution that we go ahead and make it clear somehow that the town managers it sounds like our expectation is that the Board of Health would either as you indicate provide a baseline or provide the actual material based in concert and working with whoever they want to work with as to what this stuff is but to say eventually they're going to have a regulation that says they require educational materials I don't know what the timing is going to be like on that and so just to avoid any snafus where somebody's caught up in well they don't have to do anything because there isn't a regulation yet I actually want it to be in there but it could well be that eventually it becomes whatever the regulation says not only and then there are other things they're concerned about operationally associated with sanitation and that sort of thing that I know they're going to be working on at some point but that is separate then this so on the educational piece my intention would be to seek funds from the operators to create the ability for us to offer the educational programs that we need these programs would be based out of the Board of Health and out of the school department because they have interest in educating students of their of the school district as well and they've already expressed that interest so I don't think deciding what that educational process is I think the goal here is to establish an adequate source of funding so it's a recurring source of funding for us to do this at both levels both for the new people who come to town on an annual basis but also at the school department for rising students as they rise through the grades but I'm confused why wouldn't isn't that part of the reason and we're not going to show them at the excise tax I'm talking about then traditional if anything's traditional in this new world 3% payment that we'd be looking for are you talking about in addition to the 3% payment you'd be looking for a revenue stream for educational material potentially because what are we going to spend the other 3% on I guess is what I'm asking because we talked about that we haven't if we just want to recover our costs that we've invested so far in this whole marijuana process it would take us about three years of 3% to get to there this would in addition to the 3% which is just the ongoing maintenance cost basically we'd be see I think most of the providers who've come before us have been interested in providing really good quality educational material for us and I think that's that would be something that would resonate with all the providers so to follow up you're looking for a separate revenue stream from the provider in the host community agreement which would fall under community benefit payment I presume as opposed to community impact fee which is the traditional 3% and then but when you say of course I'm I don't want to misstate what you said we've all heard indications that they're interested in providing high quality materials but wait are they providing them or are we saying what they should include now I'm lost because I understood the part about board of health and schools they want to provide materials but what we want from them at this point is money and then them to actually provide the materials that we give them I'm confused okay what I said is we want money so our board of health and school department can put together the educational materials that they feel is appropriate for our community not that we're going to get a branded thing from a right provider exactly but each of them is from my experience has been that they were totally open and supportive of education as being a key component of their mission as we heard by the biology group and so in theory as you work with the board of health and the schools you could ask them hey you told me that you were interested in this what do you think of this but like you say it won't be their branded material it'll be our material right right other comments on education because I and just I think because we're unique not unique to the world but because we have an influx of thousands of students every year that makes the demands on education significantly higher than almost any other community I think that part of why it's been raised at the level it has for us I think in particular but since Mr. Kravitz raised the question of sustainability given the potential use of resources to run these establishments depending on what kinds of things of course what crossed my mind is that we revised we passed and the revised the town bylaw relative to net zero do we want to and I'm posing this as a question I don't have an answer for this I don't you know I can think about I can arguably decide of this about whether or not we want to put some sort of stipulation relative to sort of energy use and sustainability into an agreement not just articulating what what they have or their commitment you know commitment to it's one thing sort of having particulars benchmarks that they're trying to achieve or need to achieve or trying to achieve you know are we has anyone thought about that and whether or not we want to pursue that or does that start to become too difficult a burden to place on on an organization early on just sort of you know like so for example one of the struggles we had with a net zero building is whether or not you can even do that for certain kinds of buildings that we were talking about so do we do we think that putting that level of of criteria is too high a criteria do we want to what what and how would we frame a conversation about sustainability if we were going to have one relative to this and guidance to our manager I like the idea of considering that as one of the contributions to the community if they want to put in solar panels or whatever and they can take credit or our special water recycling plan would have I would really object to seeing that as requirement we don't require pharmacies to come up with a solar plan this is a new industry and I think that could be crippling and we don't even know how it would work and we don't even know if and how it will work for town buildings but it was asked so therefore we'll figure it out but I would not I would I don't mind considering that as bone you know hey you're going to you you have a big site and you're going to put some solar in so that you're you know sending energy back to the grid but I think it would be a big mistake to create a criteria that required it my opinion I didn't know how anyone else thought about it but I just I want to raise it as a question no I thought about similar question as to why we would single out one type of retail industry for energy as opposed to all of the other kinds of retail industries that exist already in the community and will exist in the future and so I was I'm hesitant for that reason which is I think similar to what Ms. Krueger was saying if we had however somebody coming to us which I don't foresee wanting to establish a grow operation that used a tremendous amount of utilities relative to other kinds of businesses in the community then I would be very much wanting to have that conversation more deeply I mean part of why I raise this is one of the points that was made to me as we've had the conversations about net zero energy buildings for the town sort of imposing that on ourselves as a town as we build new buildings and renovate buildings one of the things that suggests is whether we start to move in a direction where all new buildings whether they which is a really difficult thing because that would include all homes and all businesses and all any you know sort of construction there are some that would suggest that you know moving to a townwide net zero sort of direction is a direction some people would want to pursue I'm not saying we should could would or or any of those but but there are folks that will promote that idea so that while this would be a singling out because it's but because it's new it's it's an opportunity to sort of see that that's part of why I raised that I don't I agree I think that it's it currently given that it's such a new industry it's hard to to sort of place that criteria and I think having that other conversation about a broader approach to sustainability and what constraints we would as a community put on our community members whether they'd be residential or or commercial is we're not there yet I think as far as the that's such a complex and deep and expensive at this point process so the the major policy quandary that I am in at this point is given our zoning there are areas where once a marijuana recreational marijuana facility goes in another one can't be located in the same area and so for instance in the downtown area there's only one location one area multiple properties where a marijuana recreational marijuana facility couldn't be located and there are and the question is suppose there are multiple people interested in developing these multiple sites how do we decide which one gets a host community agreement because only one is going to come come to fruition is it do we sign multiple host community agreements and let them is it is it the first to market is it the one that provides the greatest economic benefit to the town what criteria do you think are valuable in terms of and do we do an RFP process to say hey we're we have one to give out come to come to market right now or do we wait for applicants to come to us those are the things that we've really been struggling with because we don't have there's no clear answer to that it because it's a tangible question now because because the town has adopted zoning that creates this challenge in the downtown area which is which from all intents and purposes seems to be a very desirable location to be in as opposed to other locations and I know that Jeff Kravitz has thought about this a fair amount I'm not sure if you want to weigh in on what what the what the considerations the board should have on how to approach that I think you summarize them well you know one of the interesting things that I read today is forget if it's Cambridge or Somerville and obviously we couldn't do this right now I think pretty sure it would require changing to our zoning but they're considering waiving the 300 foot buffer requirement for minority or women owned businesses and to sort of help in that in the congested areas and allow those businesses provide them with some sort of advantage again that that doesn't help us today but it's just food for thought going forward but I think you hit the nail on the head it's how do we determine you know who's just saying hey this is a new industry I heard it's a gold mine in Colorado I'm gonna I want to start a business and Amherst seems to be supportive of it and there seems like a young population that would my business could do well there so I have some money I'm gonna throw it at a lease and and try and get a license versus someone who may have experience running a business in another state and really understand the industry and and be able to have a successful and long running business in Amherst and become a good community partner that's good well I wanted to ask mr. Bachman doesn't this I know it's not all finalized but doesn't this array of qualitative issues to evaluate give you some tools to and having the advisory group doesn't that give you some tools to differentiate I mean you're you're never going to get because you're going to get them over a couple of years and you can't compare the one that's going to come in to your some now to the one that's right in front of you now but if you had a few in the next six months this gives you some tools to differentiate no I think I think all the issues have been identified I think that this is a sort of a unique industry because it's it's it's fast moving and it's not it's it's it's maturing it's not matured yet if we don't know what it's going to look like and there's a scarcity of geography because of the the rules that we have to follow so when you have scarcity of resources you say well you know how do we allocate that that public this is a public benefit that the host community agreement in essence is a public something that we're going to give to somebody and how do we do that and as a public policy matter and that's whether we say here's here's an area we want it we want a residential marijuana come to us with your best proposals here's our criteria we're going to evaluate on you do the best that you can do and or is it we're just going to sit here and wait for people to walk in the door and whoever's first in you know but I took a lesson from your last meeting where you said just because you have medical marijuana does not give you precedence over any other recreational marijuana so that was really good direction from the board to say that's not a you don't get a leg up because of that in fact that's weird we disagree with that in some ways so that was helpful for us to have that clarity so that's the type of clarity I think we're seeking or just I don't think you're going to make a decision tonight but but I think you know the urgency that was expressed in Mr. Kravitz's letter that people are anxious and and and we and it's helpful for us to have more guidance for people who are interested in this because Jeff gets calls pretty much every day from somebody so maybe it's the time to start throwing all my remaining concerns at the wall which one of which I want to make sure as we move forward in writing with with items like this and this is so helpful to have this level of detail is that I see a very huge difference between the types of businesses and so while yes host community agreements are required and we even have here this great list for Mr. Kravitz of retail businesses cultivators product manufacturers independent type of lab in a micro business we are not talking about an independent testing lab or a cultivator or a product manufacturer locating in downtown in the limited space for time out we're talking about a retail outlet that is a whole different situation in my opinion and so I would not want to make it seem as though we are applying the same set we might be applying a subset of the criteria to those issues just like we are not going to be looking for and it's been my understanding up to this point of for the kinds of money contributions from those things because we expect them to have a much smaller impact on our resources as opposed to a retail store as opposed to a medical by appointment place and so I think it's really important that we not think of host community agreements even though we they do apply to all the things that they're not the same kind of host community agreement for all the things and then I think another issue that I'm really wondering about and I'm glad that Mr. Morris here even though he's not going to like it that I'm going to potentially ask Mr. Bachman to put him on the spot is that there's a whole section here starting on page two going on to page three talking about the process shall include what materials shall supply so the town manager can adequately evaluate whether to sign a host community agreement I don't think 70 percent of this belongs in that application process to the town manager the blueprints the security plan the odor control plan the business plan traffic I don't see how any of that has anything to do with the host community agreement I see that as being all issues and I could be wrong and happy to be corrected by staff I see those as all issues that are one absolutely mandated by the state you you have a certain level of security if to use certain level of odor control you're going to have to do you're going to have to address those things with the state and we're certainly not better at evaluating those things than the state is if people want to do extra then that may be as a bonus situation but all those things have to be done for the state and so asking people to come up with all those plans in parallel with their when they can't actually turn it into the state yet it is similar to me to the idea we don't make them get the special permit first before they go to the state we just have to verify that yes it's within the zoning doesn't mean they're going to get the permit but it's within the right zoning zone so I can see a host community agreement I'm really interested in going back and talking a little bit more about this RFP process because I've always been uneasy about it from the standpoint that we don't own the properties so like how does that work right but assuming there is a way because it was done seemed to have been done elsewhere to say this is the general zoning for the area there theoretically properties in there that we could have one of these retail things and send us your best information does feel a lot more like we're only going to get one downtown and so to say you can it's just first in is who gets it doesn't really feel all that great and so an RFP process that sounds like the way to do that and then but to not have all this stuff because all this stuff is going to be handled eventually by in most cases so an board of appeals and so any concerns people have that they feel like they should be doing more than the state requires them to do can be handled as miss grigger not only our board but I mean the general population can say given that location I think the state standards are too low you should do more and then that could be part of the condition for their permit I I don't see why they would need to submit all that in order to get a host community agreement so I appreciate that was all laid out but I'm thinking maybe we can shift it so as I mentioned the host community agreement is the latch key that opens the door and if someone comes in and they and offers a lot of money whatever the criteria are I don't know how you can evaluate a plan of action without looking at what the plan is you know if they don't if they don't say what kind of materials are going to use to build a facility or what kind of economic impact they're going to have other than sort of words I think that we're going to want to know what's this if before we issue it if we have competing plans out there we're going to want them to compete and actually show what they're intending to build you know security plan and odor control maybe that's a different issue but in terms of what they they're going to do to the building I think that's critical in terms of it's just like in terms of what the value is to the town because we're looking at if we're saying economic development is one of the criteria we're going to want to know how much are you investing in the building what are you doing to the building those types of things Mr. Stammer I guess I would add to that I concern that we find a way of make of doing some pre-screening because we don't want to negotiate and execute a host community agreement with a business that we know or believe is going to be incapable of completing the process and getting the authorization out of the cannabis control commission and so a lot of what I saw Mr. Bochum and Mr. Kravitz suggesting a screening criteria really things that would give us a comfort level that we have a proposal from a business that is showing that it is going to be able to get through the process to an end result so that we don't end up wasting more their resources but more importantly what could be our opportunity because we lose the opportunity then and all the businesses go to a neighboring town we could not have anything in downtown in the future if the one that we say the first in the door doesn't get through and never becomes an operating business that we want to see totally confused and maybe plan might have been too strong a word in the memo but what I was thinking is for example if somebody wanted to buy the Antonio's building recognizing that there's a tiny alleyway is there going to be even if they're not required to have security cameras on that alleyway will they provide it you know making sure that they understand where their location is within the greater scheme of the community similar to odor plans an establishment could be in a mixed use building I would want to know that their odor mitigation is different than for example not to pick on anyone but for example in in an agriculturally surrounded area where the neighbors are a quarter a mile away just again sort of more recognizing where the location is in proximity to other surrounding uses and that that they had they knew that they had to address those moving forward a couple things I think we do need enough submissions to be able to make a good decision but and maybe it's just the you know the language like you know some of this is going to come up with the zba or the site plan reviewer special permit and to have it be a mini special permit to that level and maybe part of it's just the language is suggesting that but it could you know a copy of blueprints or this or that maybe we just come up with what level of drawing is required in order to know or a narrative about the improvements to the bill I mean it's just to make people go through the hoops that they are going to have to do when they get to the special permit before they even know if they're going to get the host agreement I would just you know what are the unique criteria unique features of this site the alley how are you going to you know identify any unique criteria and say how you're going to address them that that might make sense but some of this and I think it's just because it's the first draft can be massage so you're not duplicating like front loading a special permit type of review and then doing all this and then having them come back and again as I mentioned we can ask the zba to have certain conditions that we think are important either their stock conditions or they're specific to a particular site where a concern has been identified so can I just get to the sort of another matter are you liking the idea of an rfp process for geographical areas that could only accommodate one recreational and I appreciate the differentiation between recreational retail sales versus all the other things I think that's a really good point to differentiate is that a process you think or or is it whoever shows up and and makes the pitch whoever's ready gets gets to move forward since you're looking at me I like an rfp like process but I'm worried we could get really stuck in the details and it could take us six months so there's a way to maybe be rfp light where we say this is what we're looking for and we're looking to give out one host agreement in the next six months but not something that could actually get out the door in a month or two forever so part of the host community agreement process with an rfp I'm not a hundred percent convinced and maybe other people have stronger feelings about this that you wouldn't sign more than one that you would ask for proposals and you might find two that are perfectly reasonable proposals for that site you sign both and you see then which one of them figures it out I don't think we're doing an rfp process in order to guarantee someone a spot we're doing an rfp process in order to prevent ourselves from just being stuck with whoever shows up first and so I would argue that we don't need it I'm just kind of flabbergasted by the idea that this same memo says oh it's going to be a significant undertaking to develop a local licensing process and yet you're talking about doing a zba process with people who aren't the zba prior to unhost community agreement being signed that just makes no sense to me we don't have you are not the arbiters as to whether or not it's the right material for a building we don't ask cvs that we don't ask restaurants that and keep picking on cvs because they sell opioids I'm really confused by that I understand people saying I would do these things like I would make it amazing for these reasons they might say more than they actually end up doing once they get further through the process I can't believe that the ccc wouldn't look at the alley by antonios and say that you had to put a camera there or that chief living stone would have done so at some point too and so this idea that they have to figure all that out before they even get into the process and that we're going to leave all that to staff time that we say we don't have because we can't put it on a local licensing process is just like amazing to me and so I would really like to hear that we're talking about something that's much more like this rfp light concept that talks about all the important values we've talked about let them talk to us about job create you I should say not us about job creation and other things and consider signing more than one if you have a good input from people because maybe you have two very different ideas but they both seem like good ideas and it's not up to you to decide it's up to the c2c if they do the ccc it's up to the zba I don't think the while I think it's a lynch pin because we know it's part of the process you have to do it in order to get your application complete and there are people who have pieces of applications and it makes a lot more sense for them to just do it this way I'm really uneasy about setting up a whole secondary process for an hca that is an awful lot like the ccc's process and an awful lot like the zba's process when what we're really trying to get at are other things things that the zba isn't going to do like how many jobs are you creating and why is this spot why how you know are you going to have three employees there the other places says they're only going to have two and the other place says they're going to have six explain that to us and maybe we'd like that so I think of so back to the original question about a an RFP process I think in this initial stage it has the advantage of creating a coherent way for you guys to approach it because you can say all right we need to have by august 15th everybody's in for this first location or for for a location in the downtown because that sounds like the ones you've gotten queries about but that but then do you do an RFP process for the other places in town that have a lot more flexibility around the zoning so I think that's that's one question but I I do think having that allows a certain coherency in an economy of your time and and staff time around the issue so I think that there's some advantage to that I worry about does it advantage or disadvantage certain folks by doing that and that's really what I would be when I'm thinking about it something like that how do we construct it in a way that doesn't overly advantage or disadvantage any particular group just to to because if you know there might be somebody really great that comes along a week later that you know we don't necessarily want to disadvantage because they didn't find out in time or that sort of thing but the people who have the advantage are people who have site control because they own the land that and they can and they have in its zone appropriately they're the ones who have the advantage and have the opportunity if they so choose to move this industry in the in their location forward what happens when you have two or three or four property owners who all are saying that we want to have this thing which is a lucrative tenant to have and we only get to pick one literally we get to pick one we can say we want the ccc to decide but that's not what the ccc decide and they're deciding can you function as a medical as a recreational marijuana facility in that location they're backing off on what if it's the right location or the right developer or whoever so it's really is and I know the zba will look at the building designs and stuff and that's you know but that's not they're not looking at who is the developer owner which developer has the greatest economic capacity to when we say yes we wanted someone who has the economic strength to bring it to market and who's going to have the biggest economic impact on the town and I don't think we're just talking about the number of jobs created we're talking about what are some externalities that could come out of this that might benefit the town I'll make I'll make up something up because it's not real suppose someone says we're going to come in and put in a medical marijuana facility and we're going to build you a garage would that be pretty attractive to us probably but that's not what anybody said and that's not I'm just throwing that out because it's so outlandish but you know that would be something that would be a something that we would say wow that's really valuable to us as a community it benefits lots of people not just this one developer not this one property owner so how we value all these things is really important I think because because it is a limited resource that we have that we can allocate I would say just to the point and I'll get to you guys in a second but to the point of of site control because that conversation comes up when we talk about development of affordable housing that sort of thing you know are there other things we want to leverage so the you know the point that was made earlier tonight from from hermology it's like women owned minority business does that have or carry greater weight relative to this in other words so there may be a greater economic viability of a different person with site control exactly someplace else you know do we value that in a way that we advantage them differently or evaluate them differently um there's another thing I was going to think about our kind of site control um I can't remember I'll hopefully remember in a minute anyway it's just time bird I think you were ready to offer comment yeah no I agree with the site control and the ability to have a place to do a business and my my guess is that the companies are going to come in we're interested in the downtown location and try and work with the landlord fairly early to lock that in if from the business owner's point of view and so we may not be having the flexibility that we think we have but I think it's important that we have the process and that we make sure that we are being as fair as possible and considering as many of these different criteria one additional criteria that then comes up is what is the economic viability of the proposed company um not every company is going to come in with the financing capacity and um sort of the the capital to sustain the startup of a company and where does that fit into this discussion and should that be a criteria that was exactly the point I wanted to talk about because both Mr. Bachman and yourself mentioned this earlier I am really concerned that if we're going to look and dive into the financial viability and the idea that we're going to decide who can get the permit and the license that we are definitely weighting this towards big business and fat cats and I don't think we want to do that we don't do that with any of our other businesses we don't do that with housing the state when they're lending does look at the ability to you know for the financing and that background and the leverage and all this complex financial stuff the lenders do that we don't do that so I don't know how we're going to all of a sudden be the the deciders of who can get all the way through the process and I think we maybe want to look at some of that based on background and experience but I I'm worried about that as a slippery slope and I something is uh troubles me about that and I really think we need to treat this business the same way we permit other businesses um you know when we we've had restaurants here that have since gone out of business and I heard their plan and I was like well that's six months and they're gone we don't decide common vic on whether we think they're going to be successful or not it's just I don't know where else we decide who has the financial wherewithal and how we would even determine that right I think the other thing I would add just I remember my other point but but it does well piggybacks a little bit on both of what they they said and we talk about sort of other community benefits so you know another thing you know sort of another hook would be to say oh well then would you like to support affordable housing by donating to our affordable housing trust but does that then again advantage a particular deeper pocketed organization um or do we weigh that against say you've recruited a minority owned you know you as the landlord perhaps have recruited uh you know a minority women veteran owned business to start start up and you're going to sort of bankroll them you know do we do we value both those in a way and those are both equally valuable it doesn't necessarily predispose to to a a deeper cash reserve necessarily but I do I do think we want to potentially think about um those kinds of qualitative other pieces and I don't know there's a single set or a single thing or a single list of things that might you know be able to be articulated necessarily so a reason to do the RFP process which does not have to result in my opinion in only signing one HCA but the reason to do it is because otherwise what we are going to get is likely an out-of-state developer big pockets who's going to be coming in and will be first in line so this is eminently clear it's also true and I'm really hesitant to be careful about the way I say this because I know the press is present I am in no way implying anything against your biology I'm totally trusting their scenario however we all know that in other parts of life where people have said oh it's a minority owned business so it's a woman owned business it's just a checkbox for a huge investment company what we are talking about in addition to that which I'm very happy with their biology it's great what we are talking about in addition to that is we're missing the whole social equity focus that was supposed to be happening here and if we don't do an RFP process I guarantee you we won't get anybody that will meet the social equity process now it may still be because financially the burden is going to be tough when you only got one place to retail you know people have talked about the fact that other types of entry into the entire marijuana adult use recreational business is probably going to be more accessible to people who have traditionally been underserved by banks and large capital investment firms at the same time if we do this RFP we will have at least tried to accommodate that theoretically the CCC is writing some guidance on how to do this I believe commissioner titles especially interested in doing trying to do this and help me miss the palities figure this out and I know Mr. Kravitz is familiar with that work but I do want to just again emphasize that the CCC has told us don't expect these applicants to look like other applicants they're not going to have a very smooth presentation they're not likely to look like they have as much financing behind them etc but that was part of the point of this whole thing was to try even though I'm arguing on one hand I don't want to treat it different than other businesses this business part of the reason this passed at the ballot was a were social justice and equity reasons and the CCC has tried really hard although I haven't yet written the guidance for municipalities to figure out how to benefit disproportionately impacted communities of which we are one we in fact are one of those communities so we can put that in the RFP and the CCC will take that into account and so we don't have to just wait for that person to show up we can try and find that person by doing the RFP process and I'm a lot more interested in what they're trying to accomplish associated with this first section of benefits that I am that they're going to tell me about their odor control plan because they're going to have to figure that out later if they're going to be able to make it through the process Mr. Kramitz sorry um two things one on the RFP process especially if it's not going to be narrow down to a single person then we're really not avoiding the the issue that we're trying to avoid which is then it becomes a race if only one can exist and we issue if sign two or more host community agreements it's still a race whoever gets there first so I just wanted to clarify that the second is um we talked about deep pockets versus not deep pockets you know and then there was a discussion an hour ago about the interior of herbologies building in the exterior of their building and what it was going to look like and whether or not they were going to do redevelopment and so I think to the town manager's point about we're looking for direction at least I'm getting mixed messages about well is it okay if they're you know a social equity applicant that they are you know in an office with just a counter but if they have deeper pockets we expect them to have a higher standard of the building so I mean are we looking at these things or are we not looking at them so Mr. Sandberg did you want to go first because you were yeah you've said less than me um yeah I mean as uh as far as the question of analogizing it to the common Vic thing where an infinite number of restaurants can open and choose to succeed or fail I don't think we're there I don't think that's analogous to the situation where we have because of our zoning limitations a limited number of spaces that can qualify under our own zoning rules and that creates a shortage a shortage creates a whole different set of competitive criteria and I think that's what was behind the site control comment from Mr. Bachmann a little bit earlier and so we do have to think about this differently from just saying gee let's let everybody in the door and who succeeds succeeds and this is a capitalist system and that's how it should work I ideally would like to believe that that's true but I think that our zoning has now precludes that I just want to I think the kind of clarity you're looking for is different than a comment I very much care about co-located medical and adult use having really paying attention to the medical and this is a first stop so when we put when we say things like that it's a message to an applicant to go in that direction they still have to go through many many more hoops so it's just like mr. Steinberg always does the thing about the liquor license it's part of the education process and clarifying what our values are if you think I was looking at that plan I couldn't see any of it well I was not looking at the facade I mean I've seen their rendering and it's going to change this was messages about this is this is something I care about and it's going to come up again and maybe that's a comment I would pass on to those unimportant appeals or whatever so it's a little bit of steering but it's not the whole pie it's not the kind of fine tuning that you would see later with these different stages of reviews just to be clear so don't be mixed message about that because that is just an opportunity here to have a conversation with an applicant to say this has come up before this is something I think I care about and I said it was for me but maybe this board doesn't to give direction early on in the process sort of like dropping little crumbs along the path but that was not and somebody else said about you know the investment or how much are you going to put in as a different issue whether it's appropriate at this stage or not I don't know but we're really wrestling with how to get the best some of it is going to be a race and I sort of agree with Ms. Brewer that there could be more than one that they may be this gives us this but this gives us often and when you're deciding between two consultants you want to combine them it's like oh I like this and I like that you have to make a decision so it might be you've passed the bar of our minimum requirements or you maybe have reached this even higher bar and so there may be more than one of you and you're different that meet that higher bar I don't know that we're going to have exact clarity in it is new so I guess one of the things I would like maybe you could probably figure out where we are on this and and for the way this is set up is host community agreements is taking priority over licensing and because that's where the need is from the applicants because licensing is optional host community agreements is mandatory now we could say we need to take a step back and many communities are doing this and just saying we're not doing and communicate out to the industry we're not doing anything until we get our house in order in terms of the host community agreement and the licensing so we're going to take a step back come back and visit us in January or some other time when we get things squared away but that's not the read I got from at least the internal working group or somebody I forget who but the editorial the editorial had I read it I would agree with you but the but the essence of the was that we want to this is an industry that is an opportunity for the community that it's something the community supported that we should be pursuing not pursuing we should accept be accepting the interest in it and in order to sequence that level of work host community agreement takes priority over licensing if the board feels like we need both before we can move forward we should say that'd be helpful to know right now because that would change our schematic in terms of our timeframe on these things so a lot from my opinion about that I think that the the host community agreement is not admitting a delay in that I think that we need to move that ahead and that is a process that everybody has to do so I think we need to get that framed up for people I think we also need to give our our intent about licensing I think as as as Mr. Kravitz outlined here I think it's a trickier bit of business to do I think we haven't done as much on it so there's we've got to sort of work through that and it's going to take longer and I think it's more difficult to make an argument for that relative to the charter transition I think it's going to be something where I think we have an opportunity to select board to sort of tee that up for next but I think we what I would suggest in my own thinking about this is that you know give good guidance relative to host community agreement move ahead on that let people start in their process and keep moving but with the understanding we were likely to do a licensing I would suggest we are going to do one because I think there's an enforcement component that we need to have relative to you know if someone's a bad actor we want to be able to pull the plug and host community agreement's not going to let you do that probably CBA is not going to be able to do that I mean there's some ways in which they can but not very many so you know if so I think that that it would be hard to put some of that into a host community agreement maybe not appropriate but licensing is the right place so I think there are some things around licensing we can do I don't think we're going to get there with this group because I just don't think a we're going to have the capacity to do that and b I think it's more appropriate given the transition to sort of prepare as much as we can and then and then deliver that to them for for action as soon as possible once they they take office but I think host community agreement we do want to keep things moving along in that regard and I think that that my suggestion and it may be my colleagues may think differently around the license that I think we should have it I just don't think we're going to have it before December 4th but they should expect I think the likelihood of that to be a piece of the puzzle as they go through Mr. Steinberg. Yeah none to immediately follow up on that I think there's a question that I've been pondering and that is if a host community agreement is entered into and then it goes through the entire process before we create licensing can licensing be applied retroactively to the businesses that are already established and running can you have in a host community agreement a provision that makes the any future licensing which is containing unknown conditions applicable and I don't know the answer to that I don't think that we can discuss that tonight without getting our own independent legal counsel on that subject unless we already have done so and so I don't I keep his lawyer sometimes do raise issues but don't always provide answers and that's one of them and the other then tangential thing I've mentioned it before is that I do think that one of the questions about licensing is that in the end what we are after is to make sure that if our enforcement mechanisms most likely through our police department find violations what avenues do we have to take action immediately without going through a separate state process do we have the authority to come in and provoke a right to do business and can that in some manner be incorporated in the host community agreement as opposed to an unknown future licensing process that we all agree isn't going to happen between now and December when the council replaces the select board so it isn't up to the council whether or not to have a local licensing process that's actually going to be up to the licensing commissioners whether or not to have a local licensing process although they will surely want to talk to the council about that so it's not like we're just passing it off to the council because it's not the council's area it's somebody else's since it's no longer the same body that's the local licensing authority as we are currently I have asked about this at least twice before as to whether or not we could legally compel someone who signed a host community agreement to follow new licensing requirements I don't know that we've gotten an answer from KP law but that has been brought up in public session before and in private conversation so I agree we need an answer to that we have needed an answer to that we also need to know the difference between what is legally possible to do and what is preferable to do which of course as I believe I made the analogy of the town manager contract which is that town managers prefer not to sign contracts of one year in length they prefer to sign longer contracts which is totally reasonable on their part even though you have community members who are like just give them a year similarly host community agreements can be up for five years they don't have to be for five years but that's part of the negotiation right is how long is it for so if we legally can't say you will future in future have to follow a local licensing process then I'd say their HCA is only good for a year but if we can say it then even though they may not prefer to sign one that says that I'm hoping that that is not enough of something to say well then we'll just go to Hadley so that's certainly one of the concerns and that does definitely need to be defined and I do see it's here on page three of the memo app acknowledgement that it may be subject to local license requirements in the future your point about enforcement which I know is a particular concern of Mr. Slaughter's as well as he said is tricky because they only hired their first enforcement person in charge of enforcement at the CCC like six weeks ago and so they have a lot of ramping up to do to figure out although they've assured me they're not going to be underfunded the same way ABCC has traditionally been so what will be we be able to do right versus what they do just like now with ABCC so that is definitely yet another portion of that that may even need to be called out separately then local licensing because local licensing can be anything in fact I had to work pretty hard to get some people to remember that local licensing is not zoning local licensing is in addition to things like zoning so I think I think including both that and the local licensing I think is a really worthwhile thing to consider doing another thing I would like us to consider including in the host community agreement is since some places have already started having community outreach meetings even while in advance of doing anything further I think any feed it would I think it would be good if they said when they came to you to sign the HCA this is the feedback we got at our community outreach meeting this is how we're addressing it otherwise the community outreach meeting which is purely a dog and pony show at this point having been to two of them if not there's anything wrong with dogs and ponies but is that I think it would be a valuable thing for the person signing those community agreements say what did you hear did you hear did anybody come I mean you know were there three people there and were they really concerned about odor about a security camera about something like that and it may not be it may just be something completely off in the field but it may well be something because otherwise I don't see absolutely any connection between the community outreach meeting and the entire rest of the process except check we did the process so I think that would be a valuable thing and it would also show the community there's a point in showing up to these community outreach meetings because it would get back to the town manager manager should not have to send staff to every single one of those to see what they're saying I think some of that burden should be on the person running the meeting and if I could make one other statement associated with the bottom part of this memo that talks about whether or not this is allowed by the transition provisions in terms of local licensing so I'm just going to go ahead and say since I'm not an attorney like mr. Kravitz is no I totally disagree with the assumption here that this could of course anything could be argued I would similarly argue that we shouldn't have done the zoning for for marijuana then because hey we could have just gone ahead and let the building commissioner decide where to put everything but we chose not to do that because we thought it was not something that would frustrate the purpose because of the timing of this new industry so I would argue that a local licensing process does not frustrate the charter at all because of the timing of the situation however hearing that everybody's taking a really long time to get done with their process gives us more time so hey yay we win anyway but I I just can't agree that that's a justification for not doing the local licensing process the fact that we don't have time and we don't have bodies to do it is is a justification but similarly coming back to something mr. Baca mentioned and I want to make really clear especially people who write editorials is this town is not dragging its feet on hca's we have never drug our feet on hca's we are just trying to figure it out there are other municipalities who are specifically misusing the process they didn't get a moratorium established and they're just dragging their feet on hca's we are not doing that we are just trying to figure out safe and deliberate implementation and so I'm really offended when people say that we're doing that because we are working really hard to figure this out to make it work for everybody right just the way and I think it is desirable to have a local licensing process but I agree that we want to work on getting the host community agreement piece set I totally disagree with what this memo tries to allege about not appropriate during the transition and it could make the arguments the other way so I think we don't really need that to be addressed here because my understanding that is the sole purview of the slack board to decide so it's kind of went over and you know it's great take initiative and kind of give an opinion but I I think I could make the argument for why it's necessary and essential not as necessary and essential is dealing with the host community agreement I expect that we'll get something partly teed up that will then be taken over by the council but that it's really more about resources and staff time and that's a manager's decision about how do we deal with licensing it's quite desirable to have it for the enforcement reasons mentioned it's a whole other thing again to figure out and work with council on so the timing by itself is going to take a while and that's a reason to wait but I think it's absolutely in our purview to go ahead if we had those resources say we had give us a million dollar grant we could just hire someone who just works on licensing and then we'd have it in two months or whatever I think it is appropriate during the transition because to me necessary and essential means better government and making sure that we're doing things properly and I think that the licensing is part of doing this properly and so I think it's our obligation to proceed but there's some practical reasons why it's going to have to be backburnered a little bit but I don't just disagree with that to clarifying questions it sounds like there was a policy recommendation to have a community outreach meeting before coming to talk to the town manager about a host community agreement that's not required by the state regulations no if I could answer yeah if they've done it which at least one place says two places have done before they've come and asked for the hca then if they do it in that order then it makes sense which is something that's easy for them to schedule in comparison to all the other pieces of the application process so in that case but no absolutely we couldn't mandate that happen in that order for whatever reason they choose not to do it in that order but then the town manager could still say so you're going to tell me about the what you're doing with the host and then a second question for mr. sunberg about the police enforcement specifically is that you know allowing underage you you want local police officers to be able to enforce if there's underage people who are being um sold to or if they're violating the their odor plan or um i'm just trying to think of examples of of police enforcement or or the violation of a host community agreement or a special permit condition or i think you've given the most obvious examples in underage sales or inappropriate screening in any event would be the kinds of violations that we would want to have a assurance that we have some ability to enforce and i'm not sure that i want to try tonight and when it's becoming too too long a discussion probably already to have that discussion i do appreciate however us having this because there are some businesses including the medical marijuana establishments that have an interest in talking about the host community agreements and i don't know that it's helpful to the community in any way to unduly delay that process and so i which is why i don't want to push the licensing thing too fast don't lose it but i don't want to put it before letting businesses go forward and get to the ccc and get in line and get moving so i think um what i would suggest at this point because we've spent about an hour on this which is fine i think it's appropriate for us to do that and i think we're doing it properly by doing it in public session so it requires us to sort of think about things and discuss them and rethink about things on the fly which is as our last meeting had the same sort of process we're going to probably do this another time in some ways but my takeaways from tonight relative to this is that there are a number of things that you've articulated relative to host community agreements and things that should be included that we've you know i think been affirmative about i think there's some the the idea of a you know request for proposal is is got some traction whether it's one or more than one that you would potentially sign out of that i think we probably have some more thinking about and some and and it may depend on what what you get it may be that uh there's only one that rises or there may be three that rise to a particular location uh that's allowable by zoning so we may have to visit that when we get to that point i'm not sure um but i think you've gotten some feedback from us on on you know uh things that we value in the community values around the social justice issue and and other things of that sort that that want to be factors as well as you know you know some business viability questions that we want to at least on some surface level have an understanding of um but not completely have that be the only factor and it gets we don't ask some of those questions like uh has been brought up for other kinds of business we don't ask some of those viability questions um when we do it around affordable housing it often has to do with you know the complexity of the financing that goes into those kind of things so we do ask those questions but i think in this case it's harder to do that but but um but there are things we do want to try to encourage uh that may not have in the in the list here of of economic development or location or uh those kind of things that that that could be part and parcel of that um are there other things we've mentioned that we should sort of articulate as some up points that yes well i mean following up on both the enforcement piece and the local licensing piece in terms of whether or not those can reasonably you know we're charting new ground but um be included in the hca and if and if so or if not that might influence the length of the hca given that um and to be clear when we're talking about the economic viability i mean this is a really gray area and there are clearly differences of opinion between us i was frustrated previously when one of us was concerned about whether or not someone was legally a non-profit which i felt was really not our purview i can see restaurantiers come before us who clearly are just as we say going to be closed in six months and in fact although there's not the kind of limitation that there is on this one spot for a retail location there are a limited number of places you can open a restaurant in amherst and yeah so if we waste a common vic and waste the permitting process on someone who clearly doesn't know what they're doing that's too bad but you know it's sorts i appreciate though on the other hand if we're trying really hard to be sensitive to the social equity issues particularly if we get some guidance i mean hopefully they say they're gonna do it soon to municipalities about how they think we might include it um i think that would be really helpful rather than necessarily expecting it to look like some of the really well put together packages that we've seen from people who are much more experienced in this area because i think we have made clear that we are not just interested in who's going to give us the most money we are interested in the social equity provision as well and i believe that's part of our community value associated with that and i would also just want to make sure before we end this conversation that we give some direction to the town manager associated with all the things that aren't retail in terms of really moving forward on that as well because if we have one of the few testing lab applications in the pipeline in amherst versus the entire rest of the state i'd love us to be early on in that that'd be something that would be a great thing for us to be or there's uh some i don't think the co-ops are ready yet but something else like that i think that we we'd be doing a service to the entire commonwealth if we could suggest making progress on the non-retail right and my opinion about that is that you know given the area in which those businesses operate you know they're not direct to the public at large they're a business to business business um re-businesses that's right um i think there are some things about benefits and economic development and location and a little bit of public education but since they aren't dealing with the public at large i think there's there's somebody because they may want to articulate well this you know we're bringing this near your neighborhood by the way this is what's going to happen and here's what's going on the public education aspect of that's a much different animal but i do think we should move forward on on those things um if if you know available and so that might come to us first because there may be something there that we can really move ahead with on that but but i i think the retail is such a delicate one to to continue with i think it's why we spent so much time on it i'm aware that we have some senior staff here who sat through our meanderings of this conversation and i wouldn't want to miss an opportunity to hear their wisdom i think they're they were here as part of this issue so since they are here he's this restaurant would you like to share some thoughts with us about this as well good evening chris breast strip planning director i just have a few technical things i wanted to point out one is that the map that was included with the planning board report to town meeting is not a surveyed map this is a map of the downtown area where we in the planning department made an effort to show some of the buffer zones around various uses particularly residential uses but also the high school but we didn't survey anything this is based on the gis map plan that we have online and it's based on very rough calculations as to what the distances are so there may in fact be places in the downtown area aside from the place the specific location that you've been discussing tonight that could actually house a retail facility so i just that was not the first thing i wanted to point out the second thing i wanted to point out is that i think that the reference to blueprints and you know site plans and things like that in the suggested host community agreement requirements is not really as onerous as you might think it is we're not talking about having engineering drawings we're talking about you know perhaps having a gis map and showing you know where is the building located and where the entrances and exits and what exact portion of the building are you thinking of using and is there um access to have people drop things off their deliver things etc so it's really more of a conceptual plan to show that the location that the particular person or business is trying to achieve is doable it's not it's it's kind of a reality check and i think that the town manager would probably want to see some sort of plan to show there is a building there or there isn't is there parking there is it possible to access the site from a roadway just those very practical things and i think those could be done in a conceptual manner so i don't think you should think of this as a requirement for a whole set of engineering drawings perhaps the word blueprints might have thrown you off but at this can possibly be described by 11 i'm exactly it should be large large enough to read but it doesn't have to be done by an engineer so those are the only things i wanted to share with you thank you for that i appreciate that i appreciate you bringing up the the point of the maps that we're at town meeting because i think people use those as a reference and we don't want people to lean too heavily on those because they were uh to give a an idea of not a specific here's the border period kind of thing um mr. moore did you have anything you wanted to offer to us at all about this um yes um i'm reminded by what miss brushup said that i i wanted to make one other thing clear and it reflects something miss creeper brought up a whole hours ago on page three when we were talking about the internal review team i just want to be clear that while yes as always i am saying very clearly as i always have that it's entirely within the town managers purview to do the hca it is entirely within his purview to decide who he's gonna talk to and we're very grateful that he has worked with the select board up to this point i will also say that with this process as it's established you are letting staff decide not appointed officials not elected officials if somebody meets the bar to get in that i find unacceptable and we've had planning staff who did that decades ago that i do not think it's appropriate for staff to tell people whether or not they are going to be able to go through our process i think it's good to give them realistic expectations and i think that's why these guidelines are really helpful whatever format they end up in but i absolutely object to the idea that staff would be able to say no to a business that was considering coming here with out some appointed or elected officials associated with that which is like for example the cba so i just don't want anybody to think that they're gonna get even though we have amazing staff that they're gonna get held up at that point in the process completely separate of that i also just want to make sure that i'm clear i don't believe we're getting anything back about an hca for an independent testing lab or cultivator or product manufacturers at this point i'm believing that we're directing the town manager to move forward with whatever he needs to do that given all the things we've talked about tonight i and he's got this whole separate process with retail that we're talking about but for that i'm not seeing that it's coming back to us except to say yay it happened when it happens that's my sense of the board the consensus of the board is that for those establishments i think we've articulated enough guidance for you hopefully that you can move ahead on that i certainly see that and actually that segways nicely to my next point which is as we move ahead how do we want to from an agenda standpoint and thinking about host me agreements do we want to uh approach this topic do we want uh manager to go and do some work which some length of time it's appropriate and come back to us with something or do we want to uh just go with tonight's guidance and send him off to swim or on his own or you know in the deep end um or do we want to or do we want to come back with sort of one more kind of write a memo with all right so given the conversations we've had the last two meetings here's the sort of bullet points of what i'm looking at and how i'm judging these things i mean it's obviously not going to be a pointed plan and i and i don't want to create work for you in that regard but i also i want to send to the board as far as their comfort level at this point with do we need to discuss this another time or do we want to let the manager move ahead on host me agreements for retail with what we've discussed so far i'm thinking of a sort of hybrid because i don't mean just i'm getting we we're going to rehash and rehash and we're not going we only have so many meetings this summer i'm willing to let the manager and the staff um who participated tonight go ahead and try something and give us updates on how that's going rather than coming back and saying like you know here's my plan what do you think of it implement sort of mush together everything that we've said do your best and then give us updates about where you are in the process which is a little different than us having to have this conversation again i'm perfectly fine with that personally as well and and if there are particular points that come up as you start to sort of make your personal list of to-dos with regard to any host community agreement you know if there's questions for us then obviously we can come back and discuss those if something new arises in the conversations if something you know if something one of the potential uh business this brings up you're like oh wow hadn't thought of that maybe you know if you want our feedback certainly that's the possible to be added to our agenda as well but i would like us to in terms of agenda setting and i know sometimes we just talk about things under town managers report which is totally fine but again not something to bring back to us to say take another cut at this which think which hyphen can you change in at this time is broken um no that's not what i'm looking for but i do think given the urgency of the independent testing lab and given the urgency of the retail location locations possibly downtown i think we'll want to have an update simply that we're being that we're able to make some kind of progress within the next four weeks or so just to say this is how far we got like we're still waiting on town council to tell us this that the other thing or it turns out rfps are complicated for this reason or whatever and the independent testing lab wasn't actually ready or it is ready or but some sort of update i would think within a month would be reasonable but that doesn't mean it has to be in writing it's just telling us what's going on do you have anything to offer it no i um agree that uh town managers should move forward and consult us he feels appropriate i agree with the guidance that's been offered is it not okay time frame given that you know i think i'd give you an update every meeting to see her know where we are okay yeah we'll take more information yeah you know that about us all right so i think fortunately we've kind of gotten ourselves to a place where i think we've got some understanding of each other's point of view and and tried to articulate some things for the manager and so hopefully that'll be helpful to him he's not further flummoxed by our wandering all right so we'll move on to our next agenda item which is intermunicipal agreements and renewals and we also have we have memo from you on that so if you want to yeah so uh it's a requirement that the select board approve intermunicipal agreements by far that most of these are things are agreements that are held between the town and neighboring communities um for instance mutual aid we have mutual aid agreements with practically every community in hampshire county um if you just so i'd like to thank the staff that have come jeff and and rottmora and chris i'm sorry you guys are out the door but thank you for coming and staying and being patient with us sorry it's fine so um we provide ambulance services to the towns of leverett pelham and shootsberry we have intercept paramedic intercept services agreements with the city of north hampton a new one would be a paramedic intercept service with the town of hadley that would mirror what we already have with the town of north hampton because they've gone off on their own paramedic intercept service means that we have an agreement that if a basic life support ambulance is moving and we need to transfer over to paramedics we can have a paramedic get on board things like that there is we as you know we serve our veteran services with multiple communities we utilize services for sealer weights and measures with city of north hampton there's one on there we don't do anymore with just the municipal hearing officer with city of north hampton there's some that we gathered that i found out after the fact that we don't have those agreements anymore we provide our dog kennel services to the city of north hampton on an overflow basis there's a new one that we are just beginning to have conversations with um in the south dearfield water district about our professional staff providing support on a contracted basis to their um water district you might have read some things in the paper that's there's nothing in writing nothing but i just want to give you a heads up on that so then that's a renewal of all of the um uh municipal uh intermunicipal agreements except for the paramedic intercept service with the town of hadley in the mutual aid agreement with the town of hadley so i move to authorize the town manager to enter into the intermunicipal agreements is outlined on the memorandum from the town manager to the select board as amended by his report for the authorization of intermunicipal agreements dated in july actually put that additional after at the end for the authorization of intermunicipal agreement stated in july 6 2018 so that um the one change you did note gets picked up into the motion is there a second i i will second but i want to ask to amend so i know we'll follow our rules so however um so a couple of things i want to include the mass general law reference that i don't care where it is but it needs to be in there it's as shown very helpfully on the memio it's chapter 40 section 4a this is not a nice to do this is a required to do and it's an authorization not an approval and that word is in their authorization but to to authorize town manager under or whatever wherever you want to put it my other concern is i want it to be perfectly clear in the minutes it doesn't have to be part of the motion that i think should be part of the motion does not be perfect the minutes need to reflect the fact that we are authorizing something we haven't seen i do not believe that's what mass general law is asking us to do i am willing to do that but i don't believe mass general laws asking us to authorize agreements we haven't seen i don't believe that's a plain english reading of the authorization i also am not saying i want to read all of these and i know that some of them are rollovers and they're just like da da da da we do it over and over again it's authorized to sign but why would i authorize someone to sign something i mean okay let's be practical why would i authorize someone to sign something if i didn't want to sign here's your blank check thank you um no that's so i want to make sure that the minutes reflect that we are authorizing documents we have not reviewed so you can think of a clever way to put that but i don't want anybody to think we know what those things say i don't want to read them but would it be adequate to say they were publicly available for review or we we could i don't know but wouldn't they be under yeah and you know transfer but what is up we're should they're they're available and i hear your point and i'm not disagreeing with it but as part of that to just say they having the minister that these are available on the town website for review by us and by the public i know we're already authorizing them to do it so what's the point but um so to follow up to be clear normally the list of documents includes documents we've seen it does the list of documents isn't going to include this they're not all in one place on the website so they're all something that people would have to go and request and i really hope that for staff's sake they don't go and request them all but um i just want to be clear that we're authorizing documents we have not read we are assuming that it they're entirely appropriate to sign and yes public please go read them at your leisure um but i would normally not vote to authorize an agreement that i haven't read if it was the strategic partnership agreement would we feel the same way i don't think so so that's still an authorization as well so let's just have the minutes say something helpful is it for the discussion is inter municipal hyphenated or not because it is on the agenda but not in the motion and i believe it's inter municipal agreement capital a so we just to be consistent right motion in the minute in the in the agenda don't match i don't think it's hyphenated in the law i don't think it is either but it is on our is on four c so we know and i think it would be i another just yes are we talking about authorizing the signing of inter municipal agreements that are renewals where if something is new that we has never come to us before we're also authorizing that or is this just the ones we've always done and allowing you to renew them without having to bring each one in i think as i report when you're out of the room these are all renewals except for the inter municipal agreement for paramedic intercept services with the town of Hadley and the mutual aid agreement with the town of Hadley so Hadley's new but that type of agreement we potentially could have seen before because so i'm comfortable with this because they're renewals or adding another town to agreements we've had previously with different municipalities this is not a carte blanche go enter into any municipal inter municipal agreement you want it's those that we've already had plus adding Hadley to the same form we've used for the other communities if we're gonna say just because the renewals doesn't mean the renewals on the same terms the terms could be completely different that may be true but i'm but i'm just saying that's different than saying any inter municipal agreement you want don't show it to us fine we're talking about once we have and yes it could change but there's sort of in a defined universe of things that we usually do so is there for the discussion hearing none all those in favor please say aye aye opposed opposed and we have one absent as well so that's three to one with one absent next is a charter transition update topics for future council consideration do we have anything that area of so as you know that governor has signed the legislation that allows for the um election to go forward on september fourth and november sixth that's the last action that needed to be taken for the transition to complete itself and for the election to be held accordingly so everything's in place for that the i think that's that's the major thing that that has happened the you have later in your agenda the by-law review committee one other thing i did want to mention is that i've invited all council candidates to a information session on wednesday night to to meet with department heads and we would make the department has will be making a presentation to all the council candidates in an effort to make everybody make sure everyone who's a council candidate has a base level of information about the town and also to open the door for for some communication between me and the council candidates but also to sort of set some expectations for what council candidates should expect from town staff we've already had some council candidates reaching out directly to town staff coming to meetings or inviting them to meetings in town staff are asking what should i do i want to sort of communicate what our expectations are that we want to communicate we want to be um willing to um work with anybody who is a council candidate but if our dpw director has spent an hour with every council candidate that's a 35 for 34 hours of work a week then we lose a week of his time so we want to sort of manage that and share information in as efficient a way as possible on that it also is it gives us an opportunity to talk to the council candidates about what the campaign finance and reporting requirements are so the town clerk and our future town clerk will be here as well will be able to convey some key points to them and also just i know it's been an issue for us in the past we're starting to see a proliferation of signs in the public way communicate to all the council candidates at the same time about what the expectations are so there are no surprises to the council candidates as they start to put their signs out um but otherwise it's kind of like the town hall road show which we've done in the past um but and probably it's nothing you would probably not learn anything but i also i felt it was important for the council candidates to put a name with a face for some of our department heads so that was the the goal of it it's a time limited um evening uh but also just a an attempt to say you are out of this 34 there's going to be 13 people who are going to be the leaders of the town in terms of the council so we want to sort of recognize that up front that this is a very important election for the town if i just follow up on that i was hoping you were going to bring that under charter transition because that totally qualifies under that topic but i also want to emphasize to the public that select board members don't get an hour of the dpw's time have not gotten an hour of the dpw director's time except when he's sitting out there in the audience for everyone to see ever so it is entirely inappropriate for candidates or previously town meeting members to expect that from staff so i really appreciate that you've been able to figure out a roadshow approach to it that should work for people and then if people do want to ask then i'm sure you'll tell them that they can go to you and they can say can i please please talk to the assessor for 50 minutes about some other thing and then you can deal with that but our staff is so generous with their time that i feel like they're sometimes taken advantage of and so i appreciate that that you're going to set the ground rules for that and yet at the same time give everybody a really good introduction that they may have never had especially if they've not been town meeting members so that sounds great are there any other updates topics that you know of or that my colleagues know of or need to inform us of relative to charter transition with the nomination papers closed last well on the june 29th june 29th that all went yes all went went really well there's a list that's the other thing you should say you made a list staff made a list that's readily available right there you can just find it in the banner so that anybody can go and look they don't have to worry about how people's names are spelled or whatever figure it out write it down they made their name a nice list for everybody right so just the staff is working on a lot of different things for instance you know we're having conversations about how to archive the town meeting that stuff still that the actions of town meeting are still legitimate we have to have a place where the people can find the information but we also have to reflect that the new form of government is the council that won't flip over until december 3rd but we are working on that kind of material so it's ready to go on the date of the switch over to the council in the meantime we will keep the town meeting but we have a plan for archiving that information on the website so as people can still I mean we still are looking up actions from town meeting on different on a daily basis so it's it's a really valuable place to have that and there's you know the other thing is you know we're talking about things to do in this room in terms of how to accommodate a 13 member council and other things in town hall so it's a ongoing process many staff members are involved and you know we'll be talking with other folks as well as we move forward on this and if there aren't any others on that item then I think we'll move down to our section under committee boards appointments and reappointments we have some things there so we have the agents of the select board I was thinking about that we they're not secret agents because they're listed here or special agents necessarily they're just agents of the select board and this is a routine item that we do and we have a memo I believe to you from the from the chief relative to this did you want to introduce that at all before we do the motion then you just did okay so it's a list of folks the purpose in chapter 138 section 63 of them being agents of select board is to carry out your function I see I put you on the spot because I didn't look it up either I think it's just that they can execute their their tasks and and we have this every year we should know it right exactly it's probably it's because we only go once a year so I would entertain a motion I move to a point the police officers as recommended by chief of police Scott Livingstone in a memo dated June 29 2018 and approved by the town manager as agents of the select board in accordance with mass general law chapter 138 section 63 for an effective term of July 1 2018 through June 30 2019 is there a second second okay now I know that it goes past the term of the select board and I assume but don't know that the council replaces the select board in this capacity and that they become agents but since we've it that's the only thing that's caused about the wording they wonder if they want to modify it to say or or sooner if law requires because we don't know if under that section of mass general law what what it means if there's a council instead of a select board it may have to be reauthorized because it may be a cause no but that's the exact reason not to do this we need to not do this with every single thing that happens we need to not say oh we're approving a common vic but you know halfway through it actually belongs to the licensing commissioners like we just have to go ahead and do things and these things will sort themselves certainly will be okay to wait out to the bylaw committee though this isn't still kind of so this this is a they enforce as you as the licensing authority they enforce actions under you that's why you have to appoint them to act on your behalf agents because you're the licensing authority they're your agents when things when there's a liquor license violation or something so we'd be wrong to put council because they'll probably be agents of the new licensing commission so that's why we just shouldn't touch it you should just leave it go i'm not disagreeing with you listen but i think it's worth at least considering we don't need agents after we dissolve in december somebody else needs agents and so i don't know if this action going all the way to june 30th makes sense because if there are agents and we don't exist what does that what's the point yes they're agents of the licensing authority they're not agents of the select board you are the you happen to be the licensing authority at this moment in time there will be a new licensing authority come december some point so they're agents of that of the thought well whoever the authority is for that license yeah all right carry over is there further discussion hearing none all those in favor please say aye opposed so that's unanimously one absent next is uh status of extended committee boards terms do you have any update there as far as though the one personally is the bylaw review committee okay that's the only one so in that regard why don't we take that one up as well so if you would like to make a motion relative to that yeah i'm going to move to a point ken hargreeves to the bylaw review committee second and i think that's sufficient because he's going to serve until the committee dissolves if we agree so let me explain what had happened because we've gone through of course quite a process is i think the entire board knows since miss maran indicated that she could not continue to serve and submit it to resignation and mr hargreeves is a former member in the nature of he's still a current member but i know he's been a member a long time member of town meeting from precinct two and the current member of the board of assessors was recommended to us for consideration by our principal assessor and i've had several conversations with mr hargreeves and he then attended last week a meeting of the committee and i've spoken with mr richie who's the chair of the committee both before and after the meeting with the committee and the second of those conversations the report was that we think that he would be an excellent contributor to finish out what we're doing and they actually have taken steps already to adjust their work schedule and meeting schedule to coincide with his vacation plans and if you follow the meeting notices and saw that they canceled some meetings and added some meetings that was as a result of the follow-up to this meeting and the last thing that i wanted to just remind you all of us that in november of 17 we appointed mr hargreeves to the board of assessors after reviewing his citizens activity form he did not night we did not request in this CAF because the information is basically the same as was provided on the prior CAF so that's the background that i wanted to report to you in support of the motion that i've already made i just want to follow up to say that i know a number of us did specifically recruit women to this seat and we appreciate mr hargreeves serving as well as the other two gentlemen who are already serving but we did attempt very very hard to make it not be all men of a relatively similar age but that is just the way it turned out because they need to move forward and make progress and that committee may well go through a transition after the council comes into play they may make it larger they may be bored with it it's just there's future opportunities but right now we just need to move so i'm really glad he was able to attend the meeting and see that it was something he was interested in i just add i really appreciate my colleagues efforts to recruit this was hard as a very kind of particular job and i think we found an excellent person and especially just as mr steinberg explained the number of phone calls and the effort to kind of bring the forces together to make this happen i'm really appreciating this is a very important group in terms of our responsibility and the transition so i just did a great job is there further discussion hearing none all those in favor please say aye so that's unanimous with one member absent and then we move on to our licenses public way and meter parking reservations in section seven and so the first one of those is the first day celebration road closure and parking reservation we have a memo from mr morris to mr bachmann and ourselves regarding this particular event so the one problem that i have with motion on motion sheet and i'm going to therefore make some amendment to it is that it does not specify the parking spaces um which are actually listed in the letter from uh the superintendent morris to mr bachmann and the select board dated july 2 so um and the time i would uh move to um approve the road closures and parking reservations for the first day celebration hosted by the amherst regional public schools in the town common august 28 2018 as follows the spring street parking lot adjacent to the amherst town common and boltwood avenue from spring street root nine from four p.m to seven p.m is there a second yes now that we've added that information we have a second is there further comment or yes we should also add a contact person we should go ahead and put debbie westmoreland down as contact we should always have a contact person we don't always have a manager you know like for a license but we should contact person in the motion yeah at the end of the motion it's like who was in charge of that so go dig in for a memo so it was more assistant to the superintendent so i will uh comment that this well probably not controversial does involve schools and so i will abstain in my vote um it is under their purview and so is there further further discussion if not all those in favor please say aye all right and mr wall is absent and i am abstaining and so that's three to zero three two three zero one one three zero one one so so now we have two items on our consent calendar remaining yes so i would move to approve items b1 and b2 from the consent calendar for july 9 2018 agenda as presented second is there further discussion is for you look like you have a comment oh i'm just making sure that the consent calendar doesn't include the thing we already did so it stops no he took it out he was very careful and he took it out yes all those in favor please say aye and one absent mr wall so now i believe we're to that how matters report thank you mr chair first um alert you that you will start to be inundated with minutes and the coming meetings because we're trying to get them all sequentially through the poor clerk who has to read them all uh and now we have uh miss mills who's keeping us up to date um and this purple who's catching us up so um in the coming your future meetings will always have most likely have minutes on the agenda so i apologize for that but it's be good to get it done when i mentioned that there is another cup of joe happening on friday uh july 13th at kelly's restaurant and i'll be joined by principal sister david burgess and just as a note this is the 15th cup of joe that we've had so far and they've all been really good uh along the same lines i've been continuing to have uh meetups with town employees so far we've had i've had 11 meetups which have met for an hour with 54 different employees in small groups and those have all been really productive and i think they go a long way in terms of building camaraderie among the staff as well uh a major um july 1 was a really major day in that it was the end of our fiscal year beginning of our new fiscal year but most importantly it marked the termination of our um participation in the in the self-insured health trust we are now in a fully insured product through maya um as you all know the claims from prior months will still be filtered through the trust uh there is a surcharge that's placed on employees pay checks to pay for those claims um but as of july 1 um the uh everybody has a new card it's through blue cross uh through through the maya health benefits trust and the just a tremendous number of people did a great amount of work um to make this transition because it was it's not just the current employees it's also retirees and a lot of education went into it and just uh really um and and with very few complaints honestly um people don't like it but they understand what why we had to do it and i just i think people uh that's a real um um credit to the staff who spent all the time with everybody and one-on-one conversations um because the staff sort of got it and then they were able to uh disseminate that information out on a one-to-one basis without fellow staff members and with retirees so a major step forward on that and that gives us predictability for the coming year controlling our costs for health insurance for the coming to three years um and i think it it puts us in a good shape in good shape for a very for a few years going forward i think i mentioned last time that the uh representatives from Penn State had come in the Penn State jet uh to visit UMass and they had their our borough manager and we and um we had uh in their public safety officials and we had our um municipal officials as well so this is an interesting conversation that we had with them the um way finding signs by time we meet next they should be installed they're trying to have them in um hopefully within well maybe it won't be before we meet next but by mid august is their goal to have the signs the sign signs are physically in town i have not seen them yet to make sure that it's what we expected to see we are scheduled to go see them at some point uh this week and so those signs will be installed at the um roundabout at triangle in east pleasant street uh you probably have seen the uh sculptures that are in kentrick park there's four of them in there the official opening was on july 5th last thursday um they didn't have a ceremony they said were open for business and there were six other on UMass property and uh we've had one complaint when they first went in there's a chimes on um what is that that's not triangle street at that point that's north pleasant street whatever it is there and on the corner of kentrick park it's on the north and so a person across the way emailed me and said this is not so good because there are people playing at all times like a little wind chime right but uh the sponsors of it got right on it met with the property owner made some adjustments they had a backup plan for if those adjustments didn't work they were they had some other plans in place and so that worked out really really nicely so i was happy that they were on it right away um um oh we talked about uh previously about uh the problem of having um a polling station at crocker farm especially for the preliminary election the prime the state primary on september fourth which happens to be the first day of pre-k i think it is um as bills used to be at crocker farm she's well aware of this um so we looked at alternate sites and uh with the now retired town clerk and we're hesitant to relocate a polling location for this election for two reasons one we couldn't find a suitable location that was near um the crocker farm school and the only suitable location would have been uh the months in library and that's not on a bus route and it just seemed like it would not be equitable to relocate something on that date we have had conversations with the principal and the police department will have additional no we will have a police officer on site but we will also um the concern of the principal was traffic enforcement so we will dedicate a police officer there for as long as the principal would like to help manage the traffic flow in and out at that busy time in the morning especially so we're going to sort of manage that through as best we can and the principal and the superintendent have been very cooperative on this um another momentous day was at the end of the fiscal year is when our contract with um with hadley for ambulance services expired that happened on june 30th they switched over on june 29th at nine oh five um so that has actually made it's quite a significant difference in that they account for 20 percent of our ambulance runs and 20 percent of the calls into our dispatch center both have been pretty you know as you found out from the fire staffing study report and has been evidenced to me from the dispatch center been have created uh the level of calls have been pretty high and creating concern with our staff hopefully this will relieve some of that pressure um and well it's got to relieve us 20 percent fewer so that's that's a good thing um the um water supply you may have read in the paper about um east hampton north hampton south hampton all issuing water restrictions um these restrictions are consistent with their water management permit it's not necessarily to the scarcity in their water supply they have in their permits when a the mill river in north hampton gets to a certain point if it's below a certain point they have to issue mandatory water restrictions it doesn't even look at the fact how much water they have we are in a different we have a different permit and we are in much better conditions so our average condition for cumulative rainfall is 22.1 inches during that 2016 drought year at the same moment in time on july 1 we had 15.1 inches today on july 1 we had 24 inches of rain so we have higher than average rainfall the daily water demand is an average about 2.5 million gallons per day uh in that 2016 drought conditions is 3.4 million gallons per day and in today on july 1 we were still we went we're back to 2.5 million gallons per day so there was a giant uptick in water usage during that 2016 drought conditions and as we look at Atkins reservoir its average condition is 1.1 feet below its maximum level during the drought conditions it was 3.4 feet below its maximum level and today it's overflowing it's at 0.0 we're not even pulling water from Atkins reservoir at this point so we have plenty of water at this point we'll continue to monitor it the driving force is always rain and water usage and as if we see any change in water usage we note it one way we've identified that is is is water being drawn down at UMass that they notice there's a water break in one of their dormitories that somebody had had installed something that in the water line burst and our tank started going down it didn't get to dangerous levels but it didn't so it's in set off alarm so people noticed that sudden drop in the tank so it was really people or the staff are paying close attention to those things you should be expecting to see a lot of paving coming forward the Amherst Woods work continues the major roads that will be paved this year are East Pleasant Street between Clark Hill Road in Eastman Lane Southeast Street between Colonial Village and Middle Street Main Street between Boltwood Avenue in Dickinson Street North Pleasant Street between North Village Drive and Fisher Street West Bay Road between Goldway and Spencer Drive Webster Street between Main Street and Spring Street Churchill Street between Main Street and Spring Street those are two little streets Colt Coles Lane which is the one downtown between North Pleasant Street and North Prospect Street and then South Prospect Street between Amity Street and Gaylord Street so those are the major road projects that we're funding through our pavement money that we have this year those are all being contracted out when they get paved they'd also include sidewalk work and affiliated sidewalk work along as as the engineers have designed it so we're already into July it's a big list and are we going to are we going to get them I mean I'm a little concerned because none of them have really started yet so we've got a real backlog and what always happens is we go right into school starts and we're scrambling before the asphalt plants close and it sounds like we're going to be right up against right we couldn't sign any contracts till July 1 this is all f y 19 money but we're probably going to be on the same boat because there's a lot of paving demand out there and there aren't and many companies out there who do it at the level that we want it to be done so whatever you want I do want to notify you that we received a notice of non-compliance for violation of our air quality permit for the landfill uh apparently the landfill gas had been rooted to the gas flare um and but the flare didn't ignite and so uh when that came to and we had to report that to DEP they have penalized us in the sense that they I will be signing a administrative consent order there is not a penalty of financial penalty involved we do we're going to make an improvements to the flare and the flare can't be operated without someone there watching it our system is not is one that we're the gas builds up relatively slowly so we can do it on a manual basis um so there if there were to be fines if we fail to comply with the new system then we'll be subject to fines managers out there with one of those barbecue layers um just an interesting note uh when we were talking at one point we um economic development director sort of counted up how many residential development units we have been permanent minutes since 2015 and the town has built 500 residential dwelling units these include Olympia Place, One East Pleasant Street, Spring Street which is going forward North Square at the mill district if you count in a university drive that's coming forward presidential apartments in Kendrick Place and then there's 162 that are still in the permitting stage which includes a relatively new proposal on southeast street and at the Amherst Motel site one other thing I went to alert you to is that there is a proposal coming forward to the design review board I think it's a design review board this month probably for the Bertucci site which would encompass a new construction the way I understand it I haven't seen anything but a building of significant similar height to what its neighboring buildings are and then it'd be a two-stage thing one for the Bertucci site and one for the where the spoke is so there'll be some development down at that area where people are looking to uh leverage the um low density of that property and so we will see more about that when they come to design review in a couple weeks um we had tagged this Berkshire gas rate change as something to pay attention to and last time I thought it was June 11th but it wasn't July 11th and Greenfield is their public hearing we have written to some people about this um wondering why they're getting a rate increase hike when they're not providing more gas and we it's the lack of gas is the moratorium on gas is really hurting our businesses um let's see I'm not sure we had a debrief meeting with Craig's Doors um interesting that uh we've instituted a meeting with the staff and the trustees of Craig's Doors which has been really beneficial I think um staff has been pretty stable over the last two years which has really helped according to our public safety officials they had 172 guests stay at the shelter 131 were men and 41 women uh 18% were under 25 years of age and 47% were older than 50 and 22% were reported to be of Latino descent and this is information that they typically gather on their guests um the issue for them is always funding and going forward they're looking at securing more stable funding and also next year they will need to renew their permit through the state building commission um I'm not sure I know some board members went to the Independence Day fireworks um held at McGurk's outside McGurk Stadium tremendous organizational effort and it's it's gotten bigger over over time by our LSSC staff they put a lot of effort in and we really want to thank the University of Massachusetts um for being so cooperative they provide all kinds of physical plant support and public safety support um it's one of those things that they do for the town and for the whole region that doesn't get recognized very often but we always recognize it um ourselves but um it is a nice gesture on their part um for our communities because people really like the fireworks we have to get lots of people there even if you wind up coughing your way out of it as some people did um the uh the chair spoke at two valley bike launches on June 29th uh one in Northampton and one here we had one in here which was really incredible because uh Ms. Brewer and Mr. Slaughter met with some middle school students who had come up with the idea of having a bike share and then not a month later they were cutting the ribbon to announce the the valley bike share it was really a terrific event um we are in terms of the dog park where we are expecting positive news on a grant application to the Stanton Foundation for design money and if we get that design money uh then once we get the design completed which we sort of have a rendering of it already we will be seeking additional funds uh for construction so that's all going according to the we the plan we had hoped and so that's it's really um a really good thing and I'd really do have to give you tribute to Dave Zomek our assistant town manager who um when they read the proposal and reviewed it said it was one of the best proposals they'd ever seen come in for in most developed most thought out most comprehensive most community involvement very impressed by the whole process so Mr. Pistrang and Mr. Zomek does deserve a lot of credit for that let's see I would want to mention that uh credit to the finance department for we and they closed out they're closing out the FY 18 fiscal year and launching FY 19 where that's where in that one period where you have to decide where you're going to pay your bills which is coming still with the FY 18 bill or FY 19 bill uh they're moving forward the finance committee had its final meeting last Thursday I think it was um they voted for the FY 18 budget they voted to transfer funds out to cover the snow and ice deficit which is typically what happens we they hold on to it until they know they don't use it they also transferred funds um to cover any kind of expenses we're going to have without fitting this room they saw that they understood purposely that we did not budget for that this year because not knowing what the outcome of the election was going to be uh so they've transferred funds uh into the town hall budget in order for us to take the steps necessary to create a space for the council to meet and they were comfortable with that um and so and then the last thing is just we on June 20th we had our employee town employee picnic um and it was the biggest turnout we've ever had and at least that's what people tell me I only gone twice but um but it was really a terrific event we had our new wellness people from Maya there giving back massages and chair massages um and there is a um so the people it's all organized by employees it's funds donated by employees to put it on it's one one day where everybody comes together we had a great turnout from DPW and from uh we had good representation from fire and police and all town hall and LSSE and even in library employees all are able to come together and sort of circulate with each other um Carol Hepburn is the master chef um cooking up the the things in the uh the grill and this year um next year the DPW they figured out that they have enough people who played musical instruments where they can have a band coming out of DPW so they're gonna practice so they can perform next next year's picnic and they quickly came up with their their name of their band it's going to be called municipal waste so it was a really terrific thing um on your desks are some of the cross town contemporary art thing so this is their their handout that they're they're putting together with that and um that's all I have to report tonight any questions for the manager any additional questions yes yes so way back on page four um as you had mentioned to us before the building commissioner issued a notice of dangerous structure to the owner of 159 north pleasant street which instructed the owner to demolish the structure the owner has blah blah blah I know you know what you wrote I'm just reading it for everyone else's benefit is that so many pages um has been in touch it's been in communication building commissioner secured saying is actively seeking options for the site I just want to put it out there that he the owner didn't put up the fence as quickly as the building commissioner asked and the owner hasn't done the demolition yet which was requested to be done months ago and I'm trying to understand how this sets a precedent for other property owners in town when it was really difficult to get in touch with this person in the first place and now they're not following the rules and there could be fine $1,000 a day for this and I appreciate that our building I do appreciate their building commissioners working with them but it gets to a point where it's like everybody else says so why do I follow the rules um I just I'm trying to understand so I can check into that that'd be great other questions for the manager if not then we'll go to select board member reports does anyone have a report anyone been in any meetings I have housing trust meeting later this week but not yet I wasn't at any meetings last week because it was out of town so that rules out me anyone else have any other user notes to share I'm gonna I'll put it on hold to see if you talk about during your report it's about the town manager evaluation oh yes thank you for reminding me um so the uh town manager town manager evaluation is uh currently in the phase where we're soliciting comment from the public town meeting words committees as well as town staff town staff have until I want to say this six to the 13th 13th I think says the six six for staff and 13th for the public at large I believe is what it is and then right and then on the 13th I will then make sure that all of the hard copy of those gets you guys by before Monday so so this is the timeout we so as you can see we really don't talk to each other outside of meetings so yeah this timeline doesn't work because we don't meet on the 16th the trade I will have to get it to you without me and so it's talking about the packet for the 16th it's talking about self-evaluation for the town manager they're they're they're they're stuff so you're gonna want to revise that yes and and basically just push the things that needed to happen to the 23rd and I think it got screwed up because we didn't have this night select board meeting listed and it says very clearly Monday July 16th select board meeting even though we confirmed last week that there isn't one so um it's when that happened that things just kind came apart so as you indicated already staff questioners were already do so that's taken care of and then public comments are due by four o'clock this week on Friday and since we don't have a meeting on the 16th my question at that point is um I can see that the bottom two bullet points here the self-evaluation for the town manager presentation and questions is gonna it's gonna wait till the 23rd and the packet will include the self-evaluation the form and the goals that's for the 23rd so in terms of getting stuff have we been getting much in the way of stuff other than forms from staff and because we back in the day we used to get more paper letters hardly anybody does that anymore I didn't check today so there was nothing to get to us much down to other than the staff items and the staff items could be mailed to us maybe what's easiest way to do that are they did people do it online this year or on paper I've not seen any online but I'm not saying that that hasn't happened but it may have what my plan was was to get those materials collected this Friday and then get them to you on Monday if not before regardless of whether we have a meeting or not you can drive to our house on Monday like how does that even make sense it's not that big a town yeah I would no I would um because I don't want to delay it a week and I think the other thing that's we were going to get from the manager on the 13th which is that Friday his self-evaluation so that in combination with those would all go to you as if it were a packet but not a packet because they're not public so we're so good with that timeline still even even though we're not so we won't have a presentation and questions obviously on the 16th because we're not meeting but you're comfortable doing yourself evaluation in the packet still you're still on schedule for this week more he's like sure yeah okay well the reality is if it's not I mean I don't want to mess up your weekend either anymore than we normally do but the reality is it's not a Friday packet for Monday because like there isn't a meeting no it's so I will be but I know people are like coming and going in terms of vacations and that's why to get them to us right so that we have because we are still on the plan with the forms are due back to you on the 6th of August that's still just speaking of my own self-interest because I'm going to be away from the 19th to the 24th I appreciate that you are going to go through the effort of delivering them or making sure we get them or you know sending them priority so that's yeah so and I won't and I won't be at the meeting of the 23rd is the chair knows right right so that's that was why I think we kept that but we didn't right clean up the the draft so I will perhaps include a revised no longer draft version of that with that might be an idea so yeah take the draft off take the draft off a couple of those orders but we were also going to still talk about those dates in August did we come up with any solution on the Friday August 24th thing or Wednesday September 5th thing this is the part where you say I didn't think about it again that's totally reasonable but that is what we discussed the last time deciding what to do I think we'll may have to as part of the 23rd's conversation we may need to be more kind of over here right that's the problem so we were talking about would we meet on Friday potentially meeting Monday the 20th and then again on Friday August 24th at 8 in the morning because that was theoretically going to work for people otherwise we were going to have to push it off until Wednesday the 5th which was our next select board meeting which would have plenty of other select board things to do on the 24th which is fine yeah so we have that on hold and if you say we're going to do it and I'm away then just tell me it's in my calendar because we know for sure that Mr. Steinberg is going to wait be away on the 27th and possibly you were also going to be away yes we're on the 27th so I'm not even clear if we're meeting at all that day much less doing the town manager evaluation all sorts of stuff we can do all kinds of stuff with that yeah the cheer you're going to do marijuana licensing that night no you have to wait for me to be absent for that sorry I think you'll go back and figure it out yeah I will I will sort through that and sort through my notes from last time but well that's what we said Friday the 24 30 o'clock yeah because that would work for you so that's instead of at this point Monday the 27th in terms of town manager evaluation we may still have a meeting if we have to do a bunch of non-marijuana licenses or something else but we wouldn't we're not gonna do the equivalent of the Monday the 27th meeting would actually take place on Friday the 24th at 8 a.m. well otherwise we're going to be missing two people well I mean maybe in that versus Wednesday the 5th maybe because we we scheduled it but we're waiting to get the final final right which is magically going to change because well because he hasn't taken because he's the chair and he can decide he hasn't taken a draft he hasn't taken a draft let me draft until about the 10th of September uh-huh but yes I will tidy that up more importantly in the short term is that as of Friday afternoon I'll collect a bunch of things you will see them hopefully on Monday I'll photocopy them any hard copy stuff the electronic most of any electronic stuff we've received already you already have but we will there's only been a couple I don't ever get any the the reason the reason I was yeah the reason I was asking about electronic for staff is I don't think those would have come to us I think they would have gone they may have gone directly to me I have I think one or two that I can recall the equivalent of those forms and so because we've gone through different iterations of paper versus electronic it's a new timeline and the 27th then being questionable altogether these are sneaking up on me all right are there any other select board member reports it's just to follow up on something that came up a moment ago in this brewers report um the select board shared calendar I plead guilty to the error and was based upon the fact that I pulled um that from this memo and um then it created confusion um I wonder um if uh we want to see if miss mills would be willing to take over maintenance of the select board shared calendar recognizing that may segue to another elected body at some point in the future no because it's not reliable so we gave up on it and then it'll go in if it were reliable would you use it well yeah in two respects one if our meetings were just uploaded to it because it's that same old argument about open meeting law open meeting law is so great except for the fact that we don't have any of our meetings posted because you know we don't have the list of topics ready yet so we have the list on select board page so if we could preload all those in here accurately that'd be helpful in and of itself but that's like every time we vote every six months or whatever to do that that's just a one-time deal what it was supposed to also be helping us with was things like oh you're going to give this speech at valley bike okay so that'll be slaughter and steinberg and whoever at that particular speech oh nobody can go to the habitat thing or whatever we can't really expect the spells so that we cannot and that that we have not effective but if she would be willing to just accurately we do not we do not exercise that part of it that was the intent was a theory so just have the board meetings on it we either have the board meetings or not but it would be lovely if somebody sat down and loaded in the board meetings but then it would just be done because there's things like four boards right all the dates you already have dates we have that's not hard to do when dates change go in and clean clean up the as long as we know how to get into the calendar if not i can and then i think the other thing that is often there is other events weren't invited to select the valley bike share right is often listed there those are those are really easy to add things that we get invited to as a right like the umass events going there right opening day whatever the breakfast that kind of stuff because it helps remind us that we forgot to put it in the calendar right so i think really we're asking mr bachman to put him in the calendar that's what it comes down to because he knows what kind of things we go to right but it's yeah it would be helpful from his mills to see be able to track that well just for educational part yeah because it should pull our meeting together is there any other member reports hearing none i would take a motion to adjourn unless there's just one other thing and that is i'll just read this to be real quick and that is um i would um we've gone through a long period of time without rotating the vice chair because this group has been kind enough oh mr wall did it for this meeting he did it he came back he came back just long enough to do left again i take that back then i was just inspiring i moved to adjourn is there a second all right thank you for looking out for me but yes he came back just to do that all those in favor please say aye all right and we're adjourned at 10 24