 Is trying to get in and she can't seem to get in if she's trying to join as an attendee. She should be able to join now because I just began the broadcast. Okay. And that's where Margaret. Yep. They're there. They're there now. Yeah. Lots of lots of attendees today. Are we ready. Yes. Okay, I'm seeing as we have a quorum of the council. I am calling the special town council meeting and of the joint towns council and town services and outreach committee meeting on May 4, 2020 at 930 am to order. And I am Darcy Dumont and I'm calling the May 4, 2020 meeting of the town Amherst town service and outreach committee to order at 933 Governor Baker's March 12 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law allows us to hold this virtual meeting of the TSO committee. I'll call upon each committee member by name. At this time, I'll confirm that you can hear me and we can hear you. Please remember to mute your mic after saying present Alyssa Brewer. Alyssa. Yeah, I'm here. These windows on this machine are just lovely. Aren't they present Okay, I'm here. Dorothy Pam Here. Kevin Ross. Here. George Ryan I'm present. I'll do the three counselors. The other counselors that are present myself. Mandy. Joe Hanneke is here. Kathy Shane. Present and Pat D'Angelo's present. Okay, so committee members, there's no chat room for this meeting. If you have technical issues, please let staff know To make a comment or ask a question, please click the raise hand button. If technical difficulties arise will address the situation. Discussion may be suspended while we address technical issues and then minutes will note if the disconnection occurred. Those assisting the meeting will be monitoring committee member connections and if necessary will cause the meeting until you're reconnected. This is all just to let the viewing public know that we're still working out the bugs of meeting in the era of zoom and to request that everyone be patient with the process. So we're moving on to public comment. The public may provide public comment at this time on matters within the jurisdiction of the town services and outreach committee. Residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes. Counselors will not respond to questions or engage in a dialogue during the public comment. This is the public's time to speak. To participate in public comment. See instructions at the bottom of the agenda. If you joined the council meeting via zoom teleconferencing to indicate you wish to make a comment, click on participants and then click on raise hand. Click on raise hand. If you joined the council meeting via telephone to indicate you wish to make a comment press star nine on your telephone. The chair will recognize members of the public at this time who wish to speak and when called on please identify yourself by stating your full name and address. So I will look at who is here. attendees. Okay, I have one person raising his hand. I'll start with Rick last. Can we hear Rick unmute myself. Am I unmuted as there we go. Yes, there we go. Good. I just saw that like Matt was here and not here. And that same thing happened to me. I just wanted to, you know, let the public comment people know that you kind of disappear. Because you do something with that. Is that correct. Um, so I can answer that Darcy, you we put you on the attendee side instead of the panelists side. But this is the appropriate time for the public comments for wage theft. Yeah, no, I was just worrying that people were here and then they disappeared and feel like they are still attending. Okay, good. Hi everybody. Thanks for inviting me here. My name is Rick last 590 Middle Street Amherst. I've been a resident of Amherst for 25 years and a former teacher and district mentor teacher in the Amherst schools. I also volunteer with the Pioneer Valley Workers Center fighting for the rights of low wage and immigrant workers. Some may think it's a strange time to look at wage theft issue and over a million people in the US are infected with COVID-19. Nearly 70,000 have died 22 million people are unemployed and our most vulnerable population is facing devastating food housing and economic insecurities. Many workers are faced with no choice but to risk their health and lives to go to work. So there actually is no better time to think about a world that protects vulnerable workers. So many have faced exploitation of their jobs. We must have structures in place to protect them. The low wage workers especially if their wages are stolen, it means their families may struggle to pay the rent, put food on the table by school supplies or pay for medication. Wage theft is a growing issue. It affects many industries, but is especially prevalent in construction and service industries and happens in many ways. Workers in construction may be misclassified as independent contractors. Some workers are paid in cash, denied overtime and paid in lump sums regardless of how many hours they've worked. This has an effect not only on workers, but also on honest businesses that can't compete with those who are not playing by the rules. It actually robs the community of significant tax revenues. In the construction industry companies that break the law get an unfair economic advantage and undercut law abiding businesses. We need to consider as a community how we hold businesses accountable when they break the law. How will we make it clear that when they, that when you run a business or do construction and amours, fairness is not negotiable. A study of nearly 4500 low wage workers by the National Employment Law Project found that over two thirds of them have experienced wage theft and employers stole more than $56 million in workers' wages every week. Research published by the University of Massachusetts Amherst asserts that, quote, the illegal theft of workers' wages, especially those of undocumented immigrant laborers, have reached epidemic levels in the construction industry in Massachusetts. Our town needs bylaws and ordinances that give Amherst officials oversight to assure that labor laws are being followed and workers are being paid the wages they earn. Let's follow in the footsteps of Northampton, Eastampton Springfield, who guarantee such rights. I support the bylaws that not only have consequences for those who do not comply, but also include vetting of all new businesses and constructions to assure past compliance. We should not be using public funds or granting business licenses to companies with a history of wage theft abuse. Thank you. Thank you, Rick. Okay, we also have Max Page. Go ahead, Max. Can you hear me? Yes, can you hear me? Yes. Good. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. My name is Max Page. I live in 84 McClellan Street. I teach at UMass, and I'm the Vice President of the Mass Teachers Association, which is the union of 117,000 educators across the state. I'm glad to speak to you this morning about the wage theft bylaw proposal. So just very few points I'd like to make to on this issue. This on one very simple level, this bylaw matches our town's values, making sure working people are paid fairly is a part of a course that I think we all share in this community. And this bylaw gives working people underpaid, usually without a union, many of whom have come to our community from somewhere else, another level of power to protect themselves and their coworkers from exploitation. And the bylaw simply supports the spirit and the letter of state wage laws and helps the promise of wage justice real. The attorney general's office has been quite clear they cannot do it alone. And they've asked cities and towns to let them to join them in this effort. And as Rick said, our neighbors Northampton East Hampton Springfield, not to mention Boston and New Bedford and Cambridge so on, have all done this we are not in reinventing the wheel bylaw proposal is not asking you to reinvent the wheel but rather to simply the join join the march for for wage justice. And I just want to say something really clear the bylaw is good for business, the vast majority of Amherst business owners follow the law and our good employers. Why should they have to compete against those who skirt or outright violate the state's wage laws this is really again not an attack on Amherst business rather. It's a protector of those who do right by their employees. And then finally, the question I know many are asking is why now I mean here we are conducting the town's business by zoom I grew up here and certainly never imagine that I would be participating in a public comment over my computer when I'm about, you know, a few hundred yards from from town hall. So I can't we push this down the road isn't this something for another day, not so important. I want to really emphasize first is, we all I think have a greater appreciation of the role of regular hourly working people, and the role they play in the society. There are three store workers gas station that attendance sanitation workers restaurant workers warehouse workers nurses AIDS walked away. Everything would truly collapse. So this bylaw, which helps to guarantee that even though these wages are probably not as high as we would like them to be, that at least they get paid what they are owed and it's just one another way to honor their service in really holding the society together. Finally, I just want you to think about it this way also this is the way we've been talking in the mass teachers Association as well. We shouldn't see this moment this crisis as just a time where we stop the disease and quote unquote get back to normal, but rather where we have taken a new look at our values and realign our towns bylaws toward greater justice. Look forward, not backward like let's just get back to where we were but rather let's take the terrible moment and make the changes we need so that we are stronger and a more just community after we are done so I urge you to pass this way stuff bylaw and make our town even stronger. Thanks so much. Thank you. We have one more person who has a hand up who is a phone number. So, if you could identify yourself and give your address and you can make your statement. Great, thanks. Can you hear me. Yes. Perfect. Good morning, everyone. My name is Jasmine courtesy and I live at 81 Harlow Drive. I work at UMass, and I'm a faculty member there in the sociology department and the labor center. And I wanted to speak with you today because I'd like to share some of our recent research on work in this time of coronavirus. And I think our work. We showed how important it is to protect workers right now, especially low wage workers who are most vulnerable to wage theft. So from April 17 to April 24, my colleague Claire Hammons and I conducted a survey of essential workers here in Western Massachusetts. The survey sought to understand safety measures and the food housing and childcare security for essential workers during this pandemic. And we had potential respondents through Facebook advertisements targeted to residents of Western mass and invited them to take a survey and we've got 1600 responses. And they were across a wide range of industries, including food, surface grocery, logistics and health. And the findings show just how dire the situation is for so many low wage workers right now during coronavirus. So the first important finding is that low wage workers were two to three times more likely than high wage workers to lack access to basic safety measures, including masks, hand sanitizers, hand washing and training on COVID-19 transmission. The second is that large numbers of low wage workers reported that just in the last week, they were unable to meet their family's food needs, 34% housing needs, 9% and childcare needs, 16%. And third, the qualitative component of the survey indicated that these workers were fairly scared. Yes, they were concerned about their exposure to coronavirus, of course. But they were also scared about losing their jobs. And several pleaded that we not tell their employers that they answered the survey worried that speaking about their very basic basic safety issues would cost them their jobs. They're already on the financial edge and they were worried that speaking up would push them over. So as a labor scholar, I'm concerned that the pandemic will further silence the voices of workers, including around issues of wage theft. And so I think that Amherst one step towards supporting these low wage workers is to pass these bylaws and ordinances that give Amherst officials oversight to ensure that labor laws are being followed and workers are being paid. And this is really the right time to do that. So the research that I've been doing really shows that the coronavirus has exacerbated the desperate situation that low wage workers already face. And I hope that we can be proactive in making sure that we do what we can to prevent wage theft during this difficult time. Thanks. Thank you. I would just like to say that if people who gave public comment today have their comments in writing, they can forward them to the clerk to add to the record. So, okay, thank you. We're going to move on now. We have one action item before we get into the wage theft presentation and discussion. We're going to be just taking out briefly one town manager appointment. So we're considering the town manager's recommendation for appointment of Sarah sports to AC AC. So this requires a little tiny bit of explanation. The charge for the energy and climate action committee calls for committees to have the committee to have nine voting members to current town counselors and seven residents. That is a big conceit due to the resignation of a town counselor and thus town counselor has to fill that seat. So as per the council rules, the president of the council pulled the council to see who would like to serve on that AC AC and Sarah sports responded. So we're at its meeting on April 27, 2020, the town council voted unanimously to recommend to the town manager that he appoint counselor Sarah sports to the energy and climate action committee. And that's what we have in front of us today. And thus, I move to recommend that the town council approve the town manager's recommendation to appoint Sarah sports to AC AC for a term expiring on January 3 2022. Do I have a second second. I think this has to come from this committee. Yeah, I do. I'll second. Okay. And then I want to also give a comment. Okay, go ahead, Evan. I raised my hand. I want to know the etiquette. Do we raise hands, the members of the committee, or do we act in a more normal way? I had raised my hand, but I realize you might not even be able to see my raised hand. Right. I am now looking at the raised hands, which I think this works better, but I'm fine with either way. But anyway, Evan seconded it and comments. Yeah, so this is the town manager's second somewhat recent appointment to AC AC. After there was a vacancy that was filled a few months ago and that vacancy was to replace Nikki Robb, who was a resident member who had resigned. And she was a farmer and had a lot of experience with agriculture and the committee felt that was really useful. And when she stepped off of the committee and when in our former role as OCO was reviewing the recent town manager appointment, I had sort of pressed the town manager on the fact that his appointment to fill that vacancy didn't necessarily fill the vacancy left by someone who had an understanding of agriculture and how that ties into the mission of AC AC. And so I had obviously supported his last appointment but but sort of pushed back on the idea that we weren't necessarily filling those skills. I'm actually really excited that Sarah stepped up, because I had previously pressed on the idea that agriculture was not represented on this committee, even though I had been and so even though this was more someone stepping up than the town manager going out I am really excited to see that Sarah stepping into this role because it fits that something that we have that OCA had discussions with the town manager before something that was missing on this community so I'm really excited and thank Sarah. Other comments. I would, I would also second Evan's excitement about having Sarah on the Energy and Climate Action Committee. I'm the other counselor on the Energy and Climate Action Committee and I'm, and we do have a scarcity of experts with regard to to agricultural carbon emissions so we're really happy. We're going to hopefully be happy to have Sarah on board. And I did look at the expiration date I wondered about that for a minute but I, the expiration date is clearly in line with the end of our first term as counselors. And assuming that's why the term ends on January 3 2022. So, all those and any other comments. All those in favor. Roll call, Alyssa Brewer. Hi. Is it not registering. No, it is. And I vote yes. Dorothy. Yes. Evan Ross. Yes. George Ryan. Yes. Okay. It's unanimous. So we'll be sending that to the town council and the acting on it tonight. Moving on to the presentation and discussion items. The first item on the agenda is the wage theft presentation and discussion. At our last meeting, we had an initial presentation and discussion of the wage theft by law issue. I put it on the agenda as our first item because one of our colleagues suggested that it had a strong connection to COVID-19 and protecting low wage earners and Amherst. And our presenters heard the comments made by the counselors last week and will be presenting an update and further clarification of their proposal. And the co-sponsors with our with us again today are Pat D'Angelis, Mandy Johanna key and Kathy Shane, and three advocates who are going to be participants, I believe. And we're going to start with a presentation by councilor Kathy Shane. And after the presentation, we'll again open up to discussions and questions. Oh, what would you like to have? What document would you like to have up first, Kathy? Darcy, I see that Alyssa is raising her hand. Oh, okay. Alyssa. I'm you. And I was actually doing it the way we've been taught. Dorothy, which is that we're supposed to do the raise hand button. So at any rate, just to add a little more clarity to this. I appreciate what you what you've already gone over Darcy about where we are. We had our first presentation on this on April 21. None of the rest of the TSO members or at least certainly I didn't knew that the presentation was coming to that meeting. We didn't know that three counselors were coming. We didn't know that the advocates were coming. So we couldn't ask questions ahead of time. And then we asked questions on the 21st, which didn't get answered until Saturday night as in like 48 hours ago, less than. So we may not be as fully cognizant of the details as perhaps even some of the public is on some of these details, because we haven't had that information. So I'm sure this will be very informative to us. And we're all doing the best we can under the circumstances, but this is not the case. So I appreciate everyone being here today and watching us stumble through it. Go ahead. Kathy. Okay. Okay. Alyssa, I completely agree with you that we were not as timely as we should have been. And that was actually just probably more on my shoulders than anybody else, because I got the drafts done and then we didn't get them forward. But what we'd like to do today is respond to some excellent comments and questions that we got last week, two weeks ago. And I didn't, we didn't see this as a final conversation as Mandy will say, Mandy's going to talk after I talk on some additional thoughts we have on potential revisions. So we're responding with four documents. That we sent you in particular, the first one that Mandy has just put up on the screen does a comparison of what is currently on our books for responsible employers for construction contract construction projects where there's public money involved. But I want to remind everyone as we go through this, this is a set of three. That would basically strengthen Amherst's ability to ensure that any public funds, whether they're going out to a contractor or going out with tax relief or going out with a grant or any licensure, go to employers that comply with the law. And if there are violations and allows the town to use its power as a contractor, as a licensure and other authority to penalize employers that do not comply with the law. So this is about wage justice and protecting the workers who are working on projects that have public money, whether it's tax relief or direct construction or receive a license. So you just, I'm you, you've got the four documents and we're going to be happy to take any questions on them. And I'm just going to start with this first one because we have a responsible employer by law on the books. So I'm going to highlight only places that I think it's important to focus on what this, and this would be a complete replacement of that. So not, not just rewording. So I've indicated on this side by side where the wording is the same. And where it adds words as Mandy noted a couple of weeks ago when we first discussed this, one of the key areas on responsible employers that right at the beginning of any contract, we are asking for contractors who are bidders on a construction project to certify and writing that they are not in violation of state laws. And then we would also put that certification into any contract language that if they violate laws, they're subject to penalties, including loss of the contract. So this certify and writing that they have not been in violation of the law in the past. And then putting it into contract language that going forward, they will not be in violation or key. Additions in this bylaw. Mandy, you can go to the next page on it. The penalties for failing to comply. Three of them are exactly the same as we have currently on the books. And a fourth has a variation in the currently on the books. The fourth is any other remedy available by law or inequity. And we've added a fourth that used to be before we revised this law, liquidated damages. We, and reviewing this, we could certainly live with the current law language or we could have a fifth because the current law language is broader. This fourth allowed a specific on assessment of damages. And again, all of these potential penalties are an option. The town could do one or some of these. So it allows enforcement. The additional wording that was added in other places is. Adds definition of what a contractor is a subcontractor. Is requires a focus on success, successor contractors. So same people. Change the name of the firm, but are the new owners of the firm. They still carry with them any history of violations on from the past. So we, we've added definitions. Mandy next. Side by side. And we've been more specific on, in what, what kind of past history we want to be looking at in the past. So this is again, what they're agreeing in writing, but what kind of past history we want to look back at. So we added specifics. And this was drawn from several other municipalities and towns that have this kind of. Violation that what we consider a violation. So there's a long list of these that are been putting in. And as you can see, these are all in addition that there's not something similar in the current law. Okay. I think you can go to the next slide on here. The other, the other main. Addition on it is that we've added demographics. That to the extent possible, an employer should be trying to hire. Vulnerable populations that are often not in the construction industry. Minorities and women. So we've added this demographics. And when you, when we look at the tax incentive by law and what we've done to that, this same language on demographics is in that. So this is a, an attempt to use our contracting ability. And our tax compliant tax incentives to get more diversity in the construction industry that people, particularly for people that have often been barred in the past. So it has specifics on what laws we're trying to enforce, as well as these demographics. So I think that's all I'm going to say on the side by side. And again, all of us are available for questions. And I don't know, Dorsey, if you want me to go through each of these. And take questions at the end or whether we should do the set of three and then take questions about the group. Well, I've set aside just until. About 10 30 for this whole discussion. So whatever you can fit in, as long as we have time for, we're, well, hoping to end 10, 15 or so, so that we can have time for questions. So I can go quickly through the other two, if you want to. And then just, if you want to, recognizing Alyssa's plea that they've, you've only had 48 hours to look at these documents. So, so the second by law, and this is again, a set of three is the tax relief by law. And you'll see when you do the comparison with a responsible employer and construction contract, that the same language of definitions is in there. The same, um, wording around demographics. So in this case, the enforcement is around the tax increment financing where we've given an incentive to a private developer. So this is not a public construction project, but we've given it to a developer for affordable housing or other reasons. We use the tax. Increase. And this, in this case, the remedies, if there are past violations or current violations, again, it would be in writing that they would have to certify that they haven't been in violation in the past. If they, we encounter violations, the tax relief money that they've had on the books, the tax relief, the tax relief, the tax relief, the tax relief, the tax relief, the tax relief, the tax relief, the tax relief money that they've had on the books would be at risk. And this could be either entirely clawed back or partially clawed back. And it would also hold the main contractor, the main developer and project manager accountable for any subcontracts or any successor contracts. So this is taking the public construction contract. So, this is the third step. So we're starting with wording in terms of definitions. And now saying we're also in plot. And adding enforcement around a private project that got a tax incentive. Okay. Going to the next. Set. On the wage and tip. Tip. Proposed by law. This is the third of the set of three. industry or the tax incentive to also go to entities that get licensed, particularly restaurants, service industries, where there are often a lot of violations around tips, around wages, around pay days, and how people are paid. So as a companion, it's spreading to a broader set of industries because we're also invoking the power of our licensure to be an enforcement incentive to comply with the law. The target industries are not specified in this because it would apply more broadly, but it would be specifically spreading to the service and hospitality, restaurants, bars, hotels, anyplace employees get tips. The specific additions that it's put in, we don't have anything like this on our books is the first thing I want to say. So the specific provisions that have been put in are that, first of all, people would be told what the rights are and they would be told it in writing and it would be posted in a prominent place. It would ask people who are getting a license to look backwards had they been in violation, so they might not even get a license in the town if they've been violation. They would potentially put their license at risk, but they would also potentially have to put a wage bond that would protect against future violations and put up money. The other addition in this specific bylaw that received a lot of questions last time by the committee, and I'm going to have Mandy talk about this after I finish in one minute, is the wage that advisory committee, this bylaw would set up a formation of a committee that would be an adjunct to the town where the town would actually be the enforcer in all of this, investigate and explore and everything would be done through the attorney general, which would be the entity that finds a violation. The wage that advisory committee would collect over time what has happened and do annual reports and serve as a potential route for people first to complain or to cite a violation to get to the procurement officer in Amherst if it's on a public contract or on a tax relief or to the licensure board that there may be a violation. So I'm going to stop there in terms of enforcement at the ending here because the addition that this bylaw brings is you potentially lose your license or have to put up a wage bond. So again the set of three is an effort to allow Amherst to enforce state laws through our own authority. Mandy you want to pick up? Yes, so a couple of things we're not quite ready to present a modified bylaw but we heard your comments from last meeting and we're working on modifying the enforcement violations and penalties section of the wage and tip theft bylaw to specifically remove the wage theft advisory committee from sort of the enforcement part of that and make it more clear that that advisory committee is really a reporting committee and sort of a a committee that will receive complaints wherever they might have been received in town that that there'll be a sort of central processing simply for the point of if you know the procurement officer receives a complaint but it's on something that might relate to the board of license it comes to the wage theft advisory committee for the purpose of being able to report out numbers of complaints in their annual reporting but also then the wage theft advisory committee would be required to tell the board of license commission about and the attorney general's office about that complaint and but they're not going to be doing any investigation we don't have language for that yet and so we're we're working on that but we wanted to let you guys know that we're we're cognizant of the concerns and we're going to try and respond to that with some modified language and and the other item I think that we were going to talk about or discuss is that as as Kathy said the tax incentive bylaw and the responsible employer bylaw have a number of duplicate provisions because they're very similar and so we wanted some advice on many towns have them in the same bylaw we proposed them in two different bylaws that then required a lot of duplication and we'd like the committee's thoughts on whether to combine them back into one so that this would be a set of two separate bylaws instead of three separate bylaws and then the only other thing I wanted to say about wage and tip theft is while this bylaw technically applies to all employers in town it is it is sort of geared towards the hospitality and retail industry but all employers in town the way this is written would have to do the posting requirements and I just wanted to make that clear so construction employers and any other employers would have those posting requirements most state and federal laws require some sort of posting requirements for other things so this would just be added to all those posting requirements okay is that um is that it as far as the presentation yes um okay well I want to thank the this group of counselors and advocates for the amount of work that you've put into this and I'm going to open this up now to counselors for questions and discussion Evan yeah so first of all I want to echo Darcy's thank you the amount of time it has taken me to read and reread the bylaws to try to understand what's happening since things out of my wheelhouse only has given me great respect for those of you who actually worked on writing these bylaws because reading them is taking so long I can't imagine the months of work it's writing them um so I had a couple questions um in some places I just need clarifications in some cases there's there's a couple things that made me a little uncomfortable that I'm just sort of curious about and I don't know if you want me to just run through all of them most of them are on the the third bylaw the wage and tip theft one um so I don't know if you want to treat me separately but um so the responsible employer I just want to so um and Pat knows this and Alyssa knows this because we were on bylaw review one of the reasons we did what we did for the responsible employer if I remember correctly was a lot of it was just listing follow this state law follow this state law follow this state law and we're kind of like our bylaws just saying follow state law do we really need that it my sense was it looked like you added that all back in because you added another layer that they have to do it in writing which isn't otherwise required and so I just want to clarify that that was the intent of adding that back in was that that written acknowledgement absolutely Evan and it's because they have to acknowledge it in writing it's a good exercise to have them know what they're acknowledging that the employer themselves may not know oh that these are required in the state law so it brings the attention back to the content of the state law rather than listed as mgl blank blank blank it says look this is what's in that law okay great and then the second question I had on responsible employer and I think that's also is that the tipping to um was that you had certain threshold percentages for different demographics and I just wasn't sure where those numbers if you came up with those or if those are sort of standard practice if those are law in some case I just wasn't sure where those numbers were from so I think I can answer that one um they we actually took the state law numbers there's a state law with construction contract demographics and and we did not increase those numbers at all we just accepted those state law numbers instead of attempting to come up with our own okay that was an exact question um could I just add I'm sorry I don't seem to find the hand raised thing for my piece but just to add on that it's not a law a state law with the diversity requirements it's an executive order that got passed by um Deval Patrick and is still in effect that has those as um uh goals for any um state funding that goes into projects and so just as an example all of the UMass projects um as a result are have those numbers and are meeting them um that's for women and people of color um the veterans piece is not a part of the state executive order but it's just been a practice that different other cities and towns that have started addressing this issue have added um to um the casinos first did it um through the gaming commission and then other cities and towns as they've taken up this issue have also added it in thank you um and then just in response to cafe or maybe it was Mandy sorry um the duplication thing is I was also wondering if there was some way to write into the responsible employer by law these provisions also affect by law so and so but I I don't know I hadn't thought that through that much but it did it did strike me as like oh this is very similar I wonder if there's a way not to combine the two but maybe just cross-reference or something um on the wage tip the wage uh and tip that uh advisory one so a couple things um that having thought about these sort of stood out to me so one was with regard to the committee itself um so every member of the committee is a representative from another organization um and in some ways I think that's a good thing in some ways I was also sort of thinking there's always some risk in involving um in mandating in the bylaw that it has to be an organization because in theory if an organization folds hopefully it doesn't but let's say the chamber folds um then all of a sudden you have to revise the bylaw I know Darcy and I dealt with this when we were doing ecac there was some conversation of should we put like one member from others out front and we kind of said yeah you know it might not make sense to mandate certain organization representation as opposed to just saying you know residents who have a legal expertise or or work or you know something like that and so just sort of curious about that um I still remain a little bit uncomfortable with the idea that the committee itself can receive complaints I was told last time that most of the things would go to the AG and then down to the committee but the committee could also receive complaints and I do have some concerns about you know go go smell on this committee is able to have any worker sort of give that person the complaint and then they bring it to the committee and so just sort of um curious how that works those are my only two and then my third thing in the committee as a whole then I'll shut up on the committee though I have a couple other things um is just you know this town loves to form committees um and so I guess if the committee's sole purpose is just reporting is it is there a benefit to having the committee if it seems like it's sort of whole purpose is just to report numbers is there a way to do that so I'll step aside for now Rose has her hand up go ahead Rose hi thank you um I'm not sure you know Evan or other folks if you've you know worked in low wage jobs um and just yeah great so I think you probably know like the alienation that occurs when you um are living in the shadows or not feeling comfortable to um you know talk or approach very bureaucratic systems like the attorney general's office but part of the reason why we we brainstormed and modeled after other advisory boards was pulling in people to local government who have relationships with these communities and will be a space where workers um can feel like they can come and these processes are very you know bureaucratic and scary and so if there's a place where they can come and have a group of community members and organizations to say okay this is the process that you would go through um we're here for you if you have questions um I don't think it's just like for the sake of creating a committee but it's to make sure that this law doesn't just sit on the books and isn't actually doing what it's supposed to because the reality is is the unfortunate thing is really is that we are having to even create these laws because the laws already exist the reason we're creating them is because they're not enforced and workers are afraid to speak up to share the fact that they're having these laws um not followed so the point of the committee is not just to have you know a lawyer or these folks that are are disconnected from the base but to have organizations that have real community and real um and and you know a sense of safety for these workers to to come um and I think that you know another really valuable aspect of it is that um it creates like a vision in the moment but also in the future for like monitoring monitoring all these things otherwise it's just like you know whoever processes the form we'll see that um you know restaurant a violated the law now we have to tell them to get a wage bond and like we just keep going on about our business and it becomes a band-aid approach whereas if this committee is able to kind of look at where the problems are happening they might be able to advise the the city council I'm sorry your town council or other folks on other systemic ways that we can make changes to continue to you know boost economic development and also boost workers rights in in the city of Amherst I think everybody benefits from that so I think there's you know a very a very large amount of benefits that can come from this this group um and I think also just to speak to naming again that these are laws I think it's just important to keep reminding people that this isn't some radical thing that we're creating we're just saying the basic laws that already exist on the books need to be enforced so thank you um uh Dorothy okay so I have a couple of questions too um one if a um worker reports to this committee will they be will be confidential because um when I worked as a waitress when I complained in which I did that meant you had to quit um and in the world right now if you complain um most of the time you get fired um certainly by um the the government today I was startled somebody who complained about lack of appropriate PPE did not get fired mostly if you complain you get fired would somebody who came to you um with a problem would you be able to report that problem not without revealing the name of the person who can answer that whoever knows about these committees because I gather they these committees exist in other places why don't we collect up all our questions in a row I'm not even sure Evan was done with his questions uh yes we can go back to Evan um uh okay we'll we'll save that question um and hopefully get an answer at the next meeting um Alyssa I didn't want to take the opportunity away from Evan and Dorothy if they had more questions to list which either could be answered at the end of our questions today or at a future time I just thought getting all the questions out was better than three of us asking in a different way um I don't agree um I think it gets very lost and confusing but okay I have a lot more questions when you talk about fair wage with the contractors construction people do you mean union wages or uh not um because I've been a little troubled by statements that um when the town that there's there's like a dual standard let's just put it that way I won't go into detail um also I do like the idea of people certifying and writing that they haven't done things but then I thought okay you check in their past history what if somebody did in fact do things the old shoddy way and now they are reformed and enlightened and want to do it right will the past history prevent them from new contracts is there some understanding of that also I just am so used to how whenever we want to make somebody uh follow a rule or a law we find out they have 25 different names and every time you come after them in one name they have another name so I guess I'm having I'm not sure that this will actually make people who break the law or shade the law behave so I'd love response from people who know how this is worked in other towns because you're saying this is not new this is how it works in many other towns so I'd love to hear about that is that all your questions Dorothy um well the last one is I don't understand what you mean by the tax incentive but I'm sure it will reveal to me in time okay okay well um we have allotted just about 10 more minutes to this but um do we have other questions that we want to put on the list Evan yeah I did have a few more although I was getting tired listening to myself talk um so and I did appreciate Rose's answer about um why this committee should take complaints I guess I'm still trying to figure out what what it means for the committee to take a complaint and if it's just they receive it and you said they don't investigate so they receive it and then they send it to the AG um it is my understanding where they receive it and they send it to the town so part of this is I'm this is complicated and I'm just not completely understanding what happens when they get a complaint and what that looks like and it also made me think back to some a lot of the training I have through the University of if a student has complaints about certain things you don't take the complaint you just help direct them to the appropriate place and wondering if that's a more appropriate thing instead of they say we don't take complaints but we are here as a resource to help you get your complaint um and in where that differentiation is beyond that um I was a little curious about I think it's section I'm just going to list the sections because I think that'll be easier for you all when you're looking at these D2D on the the um that they have to do a new notice of employment when there's a it says change due to employees availability um and I'm just sort of curious what that means if that just if that means hey over the next three weeks I'm watching my niece so I have to work less hours do they have to do a whole new change or is it sort of dramatic changes to availability um like going from a seasonal summer job to the fall schedule or something like that um E2 um there's something that that sounded a little bit like someone is guilty until proven innocent which made me a little uncomfortable is if they don't do this they we presume that they are violating the bylaw um and I was sort of it kind of struck me as just well that why would be immediately assume they're violating the bylaw if they didn't report something it felt again sort of this you're guilty until you prove your innocent thing um I think at some point what would be useful to me to understand this and again this is just a comprehension is sort of just walking me through if if an employee has a complaint they feel like this bylaw is being violated what that employee does and what the steps are actually to get from employee complaint to potential licensure revocation not that that would ever be written into the bylaw necessarily but just um to help me understand what this actually looks like once actualized because this is honestly so far out of my wheel house that it's hard for me to actually envision what some of this looks like in practice um G2 um there was something about the the um committee can establish regulations and I was a little bit curious about that I know we have certain bodies that under mass general law can establish regulations like concom or the BLC but what it means for this if the committee's regulations they're establishing apply only to the operation of that committee or if they're actually regulations for the town um because I think those are two very different things if it's their own body or actually regulations in the same way that are legally enforceable that we think of board of licensed commissioners um that was it and I will shut up for the rest of this discussion okay um I I think that it does make sense not to answer these questions right now because it looks like we have even more and um that seems like it would be on the agenda for the next presentation I think that was a good idea Alyssa and sorry Dorothy um but I do have another comment from Alyssa if that stand is if that hand is still a valid one I can't hear you go ahead can you hear me now yes great um yeah I do have questions and maybe George does too and so if we could finish getting all those questions together then I'm sure I'm sure they're working on an FAQ because they're so organized that I'm sure an FAQ is going to come out of this at some point um so despite getting these documents in fact less than 48 hours ahead of time because we didn't get them till 9 25 Saturday night I don't want to slow this down and I also don't want us to just pat ourselves on the back for saying the right thing I want us to be doing the right thing so along the lines of what Evan was talking about how is this actually going to work execution wise understanding that of course you don't write all those kinds of details into the bylaw but just so I can see how you know it's really actually going to help people not just be something we have on our books that sounds good one of the things that I think is pretty easy actually is when it comes to the TIF rather than the TIF that the TIF bylaw which as you know right now is a couple like basically a sentence long which is how it's always been just variation because of the change in the charter is that I would say that just like it references the MGL having it reference the other wage that bylaw I think is the way to go I want the TIF to stand by itself but yeah don't have to repeat all that just reference the other bylaw because after all there are bylaws we can write them how we want Bob Ritchie has opinions about that and they're still not all one way even all the work we did revising them in terms of the bylaw itself I also just want to say that while it was mentioned in the chart that it didn't have a purpose we specifically said in our revised bylaws that bylaw preambles and statements of purpose are only retained if they're necessary to interpret the bylaw so I'm not real eager to start going down the road of putting purposes at the beginning but that's a minor the other thing is in terms of not slowing this down I would love to see us go ahead and get this ready for town council now without the TIF part per se except it could just be the TIF bylaw could reference the other bylaw and then that'd be fine with me and except I can't see including the wage theft advisory committee in any format I'm still skeptical that the chamber wasn't asked about its participation before our first presentation to say that workers are concerned about very bureaucratic I totally get that been there done that and town meet town committee meetings are very bureaucratic to pretend that they are not is not an accurate reflection of how this works we've talked about the constraints of open meeting law in a couple of different ways like Dorothy said how do you not get fired if you bring something up so I'm wondering if the way to address that is two parts one is to dump it out of this version of the bylaw and get going on making sure we have the other part because we are going to start signing contracts with people and so that would be good not TIFs we won't be doing those for a while but contracts and the other part is maybe looking at it as more of a model of a regional basis so that there's a committee with much with the same people but it's more like a quarterly thing or it can be every two months whatever like various human service agencies already do and say we're seeing these issues in Amherst we're seeing these issues in Northampton these issues in Hadley and having that insight across all those groups is really valuable and they could report out to each of the individual towns what they're seeing but we can't it's it's just that simple as I said two weeks ago we can't take complaints from workers at a committee that's written into the town bylaw the town bylaw committee is going to have to be subject to open meeting law we can't have an employee coming in and say my employer did x y z thing to me that that's just not going to work so I'm saying look at a model that would still capture the reporting and capture the the focus on remaining organized and not losing sight of oh well we put it on the books and now we guess it all just works out I understand not wanting to just depend on the contracting authority you know the actual person who does the contracting who might get a complaint and making sure it gets to the board of licensed commissioners I understand wanting to have a larger organizing presence around and I think that's a terrific idea I just think it's not a town committee so it doesn't belong in this bylaw because having it be a town committee subjects the token meeting law which is going to prevent it from being of any use to any regular human who wants to actually complain about their situation okay um well this committee has a lot of is your hand still up yeah I had written my notes uh g1 and g3 but not written what that meant so I wasn't prepared to to say the comment so um and I promise this is the last one so g1 and g not g3 gc g5c um basically said that we can revoke licenses if they violate a part of this bylaw and one one thing that was a little confused about is and this may be my naive reading of it or ignorant reading of it was it to me the requirements of the bylaw really the thing that the bylaw isn't posing on employers are the posting and notification requirements like the bylaw doesn't actually say you have to pay wages and you have to get tits right I mean that's all in state law so the requirements of the bylaw are just posting stuff and so when you were talking about all employers must follow the requirements and then you were talking about the wage bond and you were talking about the Board of License Commissioners my reading of it was all if they violate the bylaw but the bylaw itself is about posting stuff and so I'm just curious if the intent was to say the Board of License Commissioners can revoke something if they don't post this notice or or there can be a wage bond if they don't post these proper posters or if the intent of it was if they are found in violation of wage and tip law then they have then they can have their license revoked because it wasn't clear to me it kept saying the requirements of this bylaw but the requirements of the bylaw are mostly notification right it's and whereas the state law governs the other stuff and so I was wondering if you intended it for that or if I'm misreading it or if it should have said something along the lines of violation of this bylaw or state law regarding wage and tips can result in these things and so that was that was the last thing and I don't know if that's my reading or something and now I'm actually done okay George do you have any questions or comments no they've been touched on and a number that I hadn't even thought of so I'm fine okay great well I I think that when you come back the next time which will either be May 18th or the following meeting depending on how much we have to do on May 18th hopefully we'll look forward to getting some answers and some a flowchart of how it works and we will have heard from the chamber and be set to move forward is my hope so thank you very much really appreciate all the work again that you you put in and we'll we will move on so we're going to and we're we're pretty much right on schedule amazingly so we're going to look at our review process we had we were referred to review process by CRC and just I just want to mention that with regard to prioritization of our agenda items as for now I'll just be working with the town manager regarding figuring out which items are time sensitive so and I would like your ideas as we go on on how to review some of the larger issues that we will have in front of us like the downtown parking working group study and speed limits but we have three new items on our on our docket as of or we're going to have as of the meeting today the town council meeting we assume that these items will be referred to us the southeast street public way requests the farmers market public way request and the proposed surveillance technology by law and because the farmers market request is tied to a goal of opening for Memorial Day weekend on May 23rd we'll be taking that up on May 18th and that will probably take up a fair amount of time so before we have adopted our review guidance or review process we do need to be doing a few one-offs which is what we're doing in order to handle existing requests that are time sensitive and also like the wage theft issue that are are connected in some way to COVID-19 so today we're not talking about prioritizing though we're going to take a second look at a possible review process or review guidance at least for this committee about how to look at agenda items as they come up so Meg Gage who was the original presenter for the town meeting advisory committee of the proposal to create a review process looking at community impacts is here today and is just going to make a very brief statement about the reason for the original proposal and then we will look at the TSO process proposal that we have in the in the packet so Meg are you still here I'm still here great thank you good morning everybody first of all I want to thank you all and express my not only gratitude but astonishment at how hard you're working through this hard time and also in particularly the town staff I just have had new and the town manager have had numerous reasons to be in touch with various people in the town staff and I'm just really impressed with the professionalism and showing up big time so that's maybe the most important thing I have to say but thanks to all of you especially because you've really I just can't imagine how hard this has been and thank you I want to make a brief statement in support of a process that helps a legislative body think about things they didn't think of oftentimes legislative bodies like the council are dealing with a problem and sometimes in solving that problem there may be consequences that you didn't think of and I think the discussion you just had on the wages was a really good example everybody coming from pretty much the same place of wanting to do the right thing but in the course of the conversation really good points were made about things that should be considered so that there weren't unanticipated consequences we often talk about the need to remember the voice of specific populations that aren't as experienced or vocal or powerful low income communities and children but there are other constituencies and groups that have an impact of policy that where there wasn't a mechanism to consider unintended consequences for example specific neighborhoods changes to a zoning bylaw about traffic development conservation can have a benefit or an impact on a particular neighborhood individual taxpayers there's a wide range of incomes and amherst and abilities to accommodate the rising property tax that we have to be sensitive to the Amherst streetscape downtown we have to think about the impact of history the balancing of history and a lively economy as well as culture and the lives of citizens who want to go downtown public safety beside the brilliant well-trained police officers and firefighters legislation can have more indirect benefits and impacts on the safety of town residents the town economy parking public spaces tourism those decisions can have consequences the environment of course now we have the committee that is doing a lot of that and then also agriculture decisions made to solve one problem can have a really deleterious effect on agriculture so i'm encouraging you to build all i'm not necessary all sorts of processes and the particular one that the committee is recommending is excellent that allow you to think of the things you didn't think of i don't know if you've had surgery ever but they have this checklist thing now that everybody stops in the surgical office and they literally go through did we think of this did we think of that my niece is a covid nurse at umass swister and there's they change have to totally change all their equipment between pet patients and there's a nurse whose only job is to sit there and watch them do it to make sure they don't accidentally unintentionally do something they didn't notice because they're so tired or whatever so the problem with things you didn't think of is you didn't think of them so any mechanism you can use to pause and think what what do we need to think about here so when we're solving problems which you're awesome at we don't unintentionally create another and the good thing about our council one of the many good things is that you basically agree on what you want to achieve there's like in the discussion you just had there was no one who said oh this is a horrible idea i want to rip off workers it's really thinking it through so thank you for the opportunity may the fourth be with you couldn't resist um and i'll go back on mute i love may fourth thank you this is really important and i'm really grateful that you brought this back i thought this was never going to happen and our committee and those of us who worked on it last year for months uh we don't care if it's our proposal or another one but really we all appreciate and i'll be sure everybody hears about this that you're taking this forward thank you thank you meg um mute now and i would uh just say that that uh we need to thank the crc especially for for taking it up and and passing it uh on to us so if um uh if you mandy joe could pull up the document entitled tso review process um that would be good and this when we looked at the crc version of it last at our last meeting um it was simply the crc document and it wasn't in the form of a proposal for the tso um so that is what this is this is this is a proposal and it's uh it's very much uh very very very very similar to the crc proposal and you'll notice that all every time it says crc it now says tso and there were about a hundred of those stuff but i did do it all at the same time you'll be happy to know i know how to do that um so um both documents are based on both the crc and the tso documents are based on that original uh town meeting advisory committee proposal made last april that meg was talking about so numbers one and two here uh we looked at uh last time they were a and b the last time um and they are kind of represent the initial footwork uh needed to be done to prepare agenda items for review and then three is basically uh proposed review process um so um if we could just look through this starting with number one um and we could see we can read these together and see if we have consensus and whether i mean we don't necessarily have to adopt them today but um we can if we want to so um the first two are again just just prep prep for review so um number one uh if you just want to read that to yourselves um about identifying the purpose of tsr review um anyone have any comments about it um i'm trying to get alissa thank you um obviously the wage and theft bylaw was a different animal and i'm excited to see it moving forward and obviously we're in this bizarre headspace now with cobit 19 but as we adopt some sort of process which you know may or may not be this process which does just have crc changed tso that first part are we who's who is tso when you reference tso in that first statement because again this was an exception hopefully to the rule but tso didn't decide it was ready for a wage and theft presentation no matter how many counselors wanted us to talk about it we didn't decide that proactively and so are we planning to do that in future when we're out of these bizarre circumstances or is that a decision you're making in conjunction with the town manager who is it that is who is meant by tso in that first paragraph um are are you asking me as the proposer alissa yes i am um i am assuming that this is something that we would adopt for um agenda items going forward um and i'm assuming that right now in this in this moment in time where we don't have a review process yet that there are going to be a few items that come up that are just time sensitive that the either the town manager has asked us to do or in the in the in the um in the case of the wage theft that was yes that was me being urged by other counselors that this was related to the COVID-19 uh crisis and that gave it some urgency so yes so that was we clearly did not use this process to put that on the agenda and and that has been made very clear um but this would be for um going forward although i'm sure that there will be issues that come up on a regular basis that are simply time sensitive and may need to bump other issues for that reason um so you know we may want to somehow add that into the process um but this this process isn't about prioritization this is just about how once we have something on our agenda how we're going to review it um do you have any response to that alissa yeah i guess i do in that how is it getting on our agenda in the first place i mean if we again obviously we're not normal times but one would hope that normally we would be able to have a conversation at a tso meeting saying okay we still have five things on our list that we need to work on we've talked before about which are the highest priority ones which are the ones we're going to talk about next time okay if we're going to talk about issue a b next time what do we need to be prepared for circumstance a and b oh a isn't going to be available well then we'll have it the next meeting if we don't decide that as a tso group then literally every time tso walks into a meeting we're going to have 48 hours notice of the fact that we're getting presentations on any number of things and i just i'm trying to avoid that and trying to avoid that frustration and so um i i don't know why there would be time sensitive things that would have to come up for tso review immediately because normally things would get referred to us by the council so i guess i'm looking at a more strict interpretation of the tso is deciding as a group what we're working on next and so i understand that you're saying the prioritization is a different question than this question but it's not in that you're saying once it's on the agenda well the only way it's going to get on the agenda in my book is if we all agree that it's going on the agenda um i think that you make good points and i i think that that should be a part of each um meeting where we're talking about upcoming agendas definitely um but that doesn't mean that i won't then have a meeting with the town manager two days later where he says oh there's some other thing that's going to be referred and it's really time sensitive and that might need to bump some other issue that on a on an upcoming meeting um so uh but it's something that we would need to that would be a referral from the council um so i'm i i agree with you listen that we should make these decisions together um and that the wage theft issue is was a one-off um so uh dorthy you have a comment yes um yeah i'm i'm really good so the first paragraph clearly identify the purpose of the tso review um i thought i saw this document in earlier stages with much simpler language and um and and fewer words so i and it was something that we at crc kind of felt with a small sense of revelation with that we wanted to know why are we why is this coming before us and what are we supposed to do with it as opposed to ultimate response to the council should encompass i i just find those words take me away of because we all said yes that's right why are we even looking at this are we supposed to pass it on are we supposed to do something we somebody want feedback what is our action what action are we to take and i i think that that can't be stressed too often because so many things come our way we can't keep up with it uh we're on several committees we have to have that really strong focus why are we seeing or listening to this today and what are we supposed to do and then i would even put in that same one is there a time frame okay and that would answer some of the things that you are just responding to garcy um if that were clear then we would have an easier way of knowing what we're supposed to do and reading it in a certain way i mean i read things differently depending upon what i'm supposed to do with it um so that's my comment on this is to keep the language simpler clearer and more focused as to what we're actually saying and make it read you know just get get rid of all the bureaucrates as we can and and make it very simple okay um other comments evan yeah so um i think and this might contradict this might be in conflict with the door they just said um but one thing to me that's important um is trying to um say why are we seeing this but how does it relate to our charge in some way um and so specifically being able to reference what aspect of our charges relates to um because i think that would help us look at how we review things which i think is sort of the next two steps um one thing that i was struggling with when i was reading through the uh the wage step stuff that we just looked at is having served on gol for a year is it was very hard for me to not look at it with my gol brain because i was looking at it and i was like and this could be clarified and this is maybe a little inconsistent and i was like wait you're on tso tso doesn't care about clarity consistency actionability that's gol and so um i think i think being clear on why we're looking at it in the context of our and what our charge expects us to look at is going to be important because for me as someone who served on gol so i was looking at it through my gol lens and then who also serves on crc and was looking at it and there was like how might this affect the economic activity of businesses and i'm like well that's really the crc thing this is tso and we really look at you know how it affects town services which in in for the purpose of the wage theft was really procurement and licensing so really for wage theft we should be looking at it from the lens of procurement and licensing but it's hard to disassociate all of these things and so i think the charge is maybe the starting document um and maybe maybe we'll say we should look at all those things um because that makes it easier for gol down the line if we tackle those things first but i do think that's maybe a conversation we need to have okay that that actually makes a lot of sense to me to connect it more to the charge but unless unless we're making things more complicated than they need to be you know because this is pretty simple um so other questions or comments um do we have consensus on the general gist of number one is there anyone that objects to those ideas would be hard to object to those um so can i can i speak here um given what we just said i really would like to i would prefer this to be actually in bullets not sentences i because uh what what evan was just saying okay i could see that as being why the measure is in front of tso okay um i would just i just think it's too many words too many sentences but we do want something that would focus we want a document that helps us focus quickly um and so that would be why is it before tso what are what what are we supposed to do with it maybe you can pass them alternative you want there is there a time frame do we work with other committees on this or i mean that just um if i'm going to use it it's got to be simple i i am surrounded by paper i have paper in piles neatly put together labeled all over my desk the question is where will i find that paper next time will i look at that paper will i read that paper so i'm really for simplicity at this point okay yeah the original uh proposal the tmac had was a lot simpler than this the line this this one yes um so um those are both good ideas so let's take a look at number two so i'm i'm i'm hearing that everybody agrees with the intent of number one um but that it could be connected to the charge and it could also be uh stated more succinctly um okay let's look at number two could you scroll down a little bit mandija thank you so um this is all the same as what was proposed by crc um and it's just put forward to make sure that um all the various relevant entities are contacted to make sure that that we have all the information needed in order to go forward um i added f um so because there didn't seem to be anything including that in the others and that seemed like an obvious common sense um addition and and if you can see it appearing in anything else please let me know but i couldn't see it in a through e dorthy am i am i am i muted yeah i'm fine okay my question is who is going to do this this is a lot of work a lot of research and i agree it's good to do that and it would be nice to do that it's like what is the past what is the present what is the future and what has happened and all of those things are great but i'm thinking okay so who's going to do it um we don't have a research arm so that means that the the committee does all of this work um and i'm beginning to feel a break with reality okay i mean i totally agree with all these things but i'm having a break with reality of how we can do this stuff it's too much work there's not enough time and and who even has access to all these documents where do we find this information who answers them um i mean if we had a meeting with with a bunch of people there i could just see having a meeting and saying okay who knows this who knows that and then say okay send me a report and we'll put it together okay that's a nice old fashion way of doing it but that's not really open to us now so it's it's yes it's a great idea and a great plan but is it possible yeah i think one question that we need to answer is and i'm just answering Dorothy here is whether this document is um uh we would want to adopt as a hard and fast rules of how we operate or whether it's just guidance um so um that is a question for us because it may just be obviously we may not need to do all of these things for each measure that comes up on the agenda uh but it is a good as Meg said a good checklist to see if we might maybe should be looking more deeply or or finding out more about whatever the issue is Evan yeah i share Dorothy's concern about workload certainly um so i'm thinking um you know looking at this and thinking about this um and maybe this is complicating the document which i know we're also trying to avoid um that to me mentally two should be split up into two different categories so one is just identification of stakeholders um who are the people that we think will be impacted by this and i think that really deserves its own section and so we should be able to look at this and say who are the stakeholders involved who would be invested in this um because the purpose of that list is really who do we as a committee potentially want to reach out to or even invite to a meeting to get their input um which is a little bit different than information needed although it's certainly related because part of the information we get the stakeholders um and then this the second part of that is um i may be labeled as context which is what's the broader what's the broader context that we're considering this in which is really e and f which is what already exists and then what are other towns doing and to me if we're dividing that two into sections two and three one and two of this process would be things that would happen within the committee discussion the committee would get together and say who do we think are the stakeholders in this that that we might want to bring in and then the context is is really what Dorothy's getting at which is this is a little bit harder who who does that research it which is another reason i kind of want to let it up because i think there's a differentiation between the committee and part of me looking at this is thinking is that we don't have staff right it was just Dorothy's point but to some extent that's information that staff would likely know right and so if we're looking at the responsible employer by law i assume our procurement officer would have the answers to what regulations policies already in effect that we need to follow and so it wouldn't make sense to say hey george go find all of the policies surrounding procurement that might impact responsible employer when anthony delaney could probably do it for us right um and and so that that's where i think the context is trickier and where we get that information i'm not totally clear evan on on on what you're suggesting about how we would split up okay i do i know i know what he's saying go ahead i think um what he's saying is we had many meetings at crc in which we would be there and um staff would be invited so if you were going to deal with um the wage theft evan's suggestion would be that we had we certainly had some some good guidance from the piner valley workers group but that there also should be somebody from the town staff to say well this is how we do it or we used to do it this way and we had problems and or that's a great idea but it would never work i mean you know some practical voice of somebody from from our side who would at least know what the town had been doing and how it had been working so that we're not just you know in a kind of an abstract environment so i i think that's um i like his separation of we could do the stakeholders we could talk about it we could then even divide up who would speak to whom or whatever but when it comes to some of the research as to what is the history of practice in this town i mean we've got some so we've got some resident experts on the committee elissa can be counted on to give us background um and which you know as they say i always appreciate but also people in the staff were doing it right now i think that would be a good way to do it because i just don't see us writing papers i mean this is like going to college and having to do another paper and we're here to think respond and to act um and not to spend all of our time in research that's at least that's not what i signed on for okay all right other comments um yeah i guess i i feel a little bit like um you know we have we have a committee that looked at this and created the crc document that was forwarded to us um they took the time to create it and and now we're going to take a whole lot more time uh making it very complicated uh remaking the process that seems pretty pretty common sense to me but evan uh i'm not actually sure i agree with that i think that you know if i'm envisioning how this could play out um so taking the wage theft example um if we had been able to you know um go through a process first you know we would probably sit there and say so why do we have wage theft in our pockets and what are we actually looking to do here and as a committee we discuss that and come to an agreement and then we'd say okay cool who do we think we need to talk to for this and so we would obviously have said the sponsors probably also pioneer valley worker center but for instance one of the people who i'm hoping will be invited to a future meeting on this is our procurement officer right i mean this will affect procurement um it'd be great to have their opinion because i don't actually know if the wage that sponsors talk to procurement right um and so it'd be nice to have to have that conversation and then you invite them in and and have a conversation with them and that's going to give us i think some of the information in e and f because if you're thinking about what's happening with the wage theft um i know elissa and i are very skeptical of this wage theft advisory committee um and so what we were able to gather from having those stakeholders come in is they were said oh lin already has lin the town not lin our president has this committee um and here's how they structure and what it does and so we were actually instead of saying hey george go find out this information we actually got the information about what other towns do from the stakeholders we invited in so i think having the stakeholder conversation first and figuring out as a committee who we want to invite actually helps get us a lot of the information that's in e and f without us having to do that research because i know dorothy doesn't want to do that research and neither do i because we don't have enough time and yet there are people who have this expertise that could bring it to our committee if we're inviting the right people i i uh i hear you and you know the list under three gives uh different different categories of um stakeholder groups so we might use that for that purpose george i'm just uh thinking about the kinds of things that are going to be coming to us um public ways requests right and those are sometimes going to come with time pressure um probably right they'll have some kind of specific time stamp on them um the farmers market has a time stamp on it and my sense is the sooner that gets done the better um i'm a little concerned about it coming to us a few days before people are hoping to open the market but anyway the point is that their public ways requests their appointments we're going to end those again will be largely largely controlled by the uh the town manager and when he sends them to us but they will have a certain time stamp on them um and then their bylaws and those are the kinds of things that uh like the wage theft uh the surveillance this surveillance bylaw that apparently is going to come our way those are going to take more time and are going to I think raise many of the questions that are on this sheet I think the questions here are good I hear the concern about too much words I hear the concern about making it clear but many of these are as Darcy pointed out our questions that uh should be asked um when we're dealing with all these issues in a sense but I think particularly with bylaws this is where this is going to be useful and that's going to be a much more time uh it's going to take much more time for us to work through that so I think we maybe I'm missing something but my sense is those are the three main areas we're going to be working in public ways requests bylaws and appointments and this sheet seems to me largely to focus on when we're dealing with bylaws okay and I hear also the idea that looking I understand research and so on we're not going to be going out writing papers and so on but uh take the wage theft um many of the the research has already been done it's being brought to us by the sponsors and we bring questions and very good questions and then we get answers and also we reach out perhaps to uh stakeholders that haven't been involved yet um that seems appropriate so um I guess I'm not so much worried about the issue of research and finding you know I think that we can work that out um and I think this gives us a good framework for what we should be thinking about I don't think it should be a step by step process I think this is a guideline this is a set of guidelines it's my personal feeling and um I think we should keep those three main areas uh that we're going to be dealing with in our minds in general um and maybe I'm missing something so I'm just going to add something that I'm missing but I basically I sense it as public ways request bylaws and appointments so George are you saying that you are um um you feel comfortable with this document in general as it got as as guidance as opposed to step by step yeah yes yes I think it's excellent for guidance I mean we can work Smith into death I mean I can sit down and write down a series of bullet points or a series of you know questions one two three four five six seven that might be a little bit clearer for me and maybe eventually others would do the same and we could finally come up with something we'll agree on but I think basically what we have here is fine um it could be fine tuned um but you know we need to get to work and this gives us I think uh some the questions we should be asking are here and clearly don't apply to all the things that we're going to looking at thank god um but they certainly will apply to any bylaw that we are dealing with Alyssa thank you I was just gonna volunteer if Dorothy didn't because you know in all our copious free time to try and take a stab at more of a bullet point kind of approach because I appreciate what George is saying about not trying to word Smith into death I also but I also want it to be kind of more of a checklist that I can race through rather than get bogged down in the sentences I also want to point out that although I'm the first to point out that Oka's process is amazing and needs to be adopted by all the other town council committees as they move forward this is a CRC process that was never actually used so they wrote it and they didn't do anything with it so obviously they did many of the things in it but they didn't use it as a process so we're not insulting their work by not using a thing they never used um and obviously we have CRC members here who who know how they got to this point and so I think that that's actually really helpful to us the only other thing I got confused by is because just you know in the translation as you said you added one bullet point there's a reference in item 3b which I know we are not at yet and it was referencing something and I'm like where is that going and it's referencing back to I guess it's 2b so you know we'll just fix that but I think that you know trying to maybe simplify it a little bit but then you know overall I think it's just like the original conversation we had about this back when it was brought as a different kind of proposal and before CRC tried to codify which is that these are the kinds of things we'd like to be able to do but to be able to approach it so that we're asking the right people as people have already said to the conversation so that we're not redoing other people's work or you know sending people off on wild goose chases when we haven't yet agreed as to what direction we're headed okay thank you any other comments or questions about one and two um my my inclination is to not discuss three today because we have 15 minutes left and we have you know we're going to talk about our upcoming agendas and minutes and other things that minutes are a little bit more complicated than normal um so uh I I am going to suggest we end our discussion take it up again at the next meeting um be ready to talk about three um and uh yeah just continue the the general discussion about um whether we want to adopt this as guidance or what what we want to do if if we want to uh somehow rewrite it um or not um my my inclination is always to uh not complicate matters but um uh Evan so uh Alyssa had volunteered to try and take a stab at formatting one and two as both points or is that something that we want to see her do I'd love to give Alyssa some work yeah I thought that was a very nice offer um so one and two Alyssa you suggested doing it for Mike it's unprintable yes I could it is yes I could start there um yeah I think three has a lot of um information and parentheses that seems like it's um necessary so it's a little harder to do three but if you want to take a crack at one and two that's that seems like a great idea um so yeah that would be good and um so I think we'll just move on and take this up again at the next meeting that's okay with everybody um okay I don't know if you all had a chance to look at the minutes uh but they um uh are um I I made the initial track changes in them um this is interesting because it's we're abiding by rules that FYI we did not abide by in oak which which are that the raw minutes um oh are my track changes not here I I have a form that has everything just about everything crossed out that's what I printed out like like almost all the minutes disappeared yeah that that might be the the other set of that's up here but um so I I attempted to do some editing of the very raw minutes um and um I think these are these oh April 6th okay so um uh the the issue in the April 6th minute is that I did the editing myself and without track changes and then Athena informed me that I should not do that um and with the April 21st minutes I then attempted to use track changes which I realized I do not know how to do so I did a lot of strikeouts and you'll see that it it it um is doesn't look that good so um the question is whether we are prepared to approve these minutes or whether we want to you know like approve that occurred to me that we could approve the the first draft being made into a second draft so that it's more comprehensible for the for the April 21st uh minutes um Darcy I'm not seeing minutes like this why are we supposed to have them with all this this other committees we don't get them I mean this seems like very annoying and why did you have to cross out everything I like minutes I mean if minutes is just about a record of what was voted on then they're very boring minutes and don't are not useful in trying to remember what the heck went on um mine I have the one on the 21st everything is crossed out and this one has all these little tracking changes which I I why are they crossed out is it decided that they're not worthy to be in the minutes all the details of what we did uh it it is a long story Dorothy but mostly it's about um that they just needed to be reformatted the the um April 21st was basically because Donna had not ever taken minutes before and so that that they needed to be reformatted there were a different substantive um statements that needed to be corrected and so I can't Athena inform me that I can't just go in there and correct the raw minutes without track changes so if what we could do is just accept the track changes and then we would be able to see um whether you accept that second draft um we didn't actually ever deal with this in Oka because we just um you had it you had an experienced minute taker I guess well I guess we didn't we all of this all of this busy stuff on the side with your name and font and whatever and indent that is uh really distracting and I'm sorry that you had to spend so much work on it um I guess if you're not a lot I understand why you're not allowed to change the minutes because that would be tricky um so I I I guess that if the whoever took the minutes took the minutes it wasn't us that we should just have the minutes that they took and if we wanted to add things afterwards we could do that together but I don't see how this forwards anything um Alyssa and then George okay so let's talk about rules for a second not our town council rules but rules that you referenced about minutes when you said we didn't follow these rules at Oka that's because we chose a different process at Oka it isn't that we didn't follow the rules it's that we chose a different process I think our process is too cumbersome for this committee reflecting some of the things you guys have all already said I also want to make it very clear that it's not our fault the person that was given minutes responsibility wasn't properly trained and that's unfortunate for her too because I'm sure it was frustrating for her that's not our job to train that person the other thing is it is it is not in fact in any way true that it is illegal or inappropriate to change the raw minutes what that what the difference is is the raw minutes that they took are subject to public records requests we don't have to use those raw minutes we can look at those and go that's not what happened and write our own minutes or we can change them completely and we don't have to show track changes the raw minutes are always going to be subject to a public records request and can be requested and have the time period go by well before we ever have another meeting of TSO and could have been released the way they are which is why it's such a tricky job to take minutes I would suggest that given the difficulty with track changes etc it may just make sense to have a variation of what we did at and continue we're doing at OCA where basically we just depended on the chair to say here's what I think the minutes look like do you see any egregious things that are missing here and we'd write back by a certain time just like we do for town council yeah so I don't know why we have to make this so complicated right right with you um is Athena on no she's not raw minutes are a separate document than finished minutes there you never change the raw the raw minutes are never officially changed they they never get thrown away okay well um uh um does anyone have suggestions about where to go with these two sets of minutes do you always have a thought Evan I read through them um I teach writing so I'm very used to reading through track changes um I thought they looked fine that literally I especially liked the part in the April 21st minutes where it said Evan stated he was confused which I hope is reproduced in a bunch of minutes across the town council um I mean literally the only thing is on our screen right now uh one called the order link called the council meeting councils misspelled but for the most part I mean I don't care if minutes are a little bit sloppy as long as they have the record of votes and they accurately describe the discussion and so I would be fine accepting these track changes and improving both these sets of minutes hi okay is that a motion uh sure I can move to approve the minutes from April 21st and April 6th 2020 I will second okay um all those in favor Alyssa Brewer hi Darcy Jumat I um Dorothy Pam I Evan Ross I which uh Ryan yes okay wow I'm glad we could get those approved um and so I'll talk to Athena again about my ability to kind of um uh take the raw minutes and make them into ours uh our draft copy so okay um now announcements I think that we need to speak for a moment about the possibility of having a meeting on the 11th I would love to avoid that um I think that we are going to you know we've seen the farmers market request and all of the town manager the town manager's memo and we're going to get answers from him tonight at the town council meeting of all all the questions that the counselors have sent in there's some possibility that we will all feel very secure and good about the proposal going forward in which case we could conceivably just have our our meeting on the 18th but if there are people here who think that we should still meet on the 11th um but why don't we talk about that oh I'm very happy nobody wants to meet on you no one oh George just help me um is the 11th strict B to deal with the farmers market yes it would be and basically um we we went through a number of possibilities of how we could deal with the timing in case the farmers market needed to come back with an amended proposal but if if we have discussion and questions tonight at the council meeting then that will be an opportunity for the farmers market to come back with an amended proposal to our meeting on the 18th um so that was the that was the issue is that did we need to have a presentation and meeting from the farmers market that would allow for another an amendment a period of time where they could amend their proposal or you know if they saw that there were concerns from the counselors tonight about a couple things they could come back with a an amended proposal they just are concerned about starting on the 23rd one question that hasn't been answered is are they is it is it clear that the farmers market will be ready to provide all those accommodations by the 23rd I asked that of the town manager and hopefully there'll be some answer to that tonight but um so uh the question is do we need to scramble in order to make sure they can start on the 23rd um Alyssa I think the answer is we won't know the answer until after tonight's meeting I think once we see tonight what kinds of questions the counselors have and and if I don't even know if someone's scheduled to be there from the farmers market to answer those or not um and if most of those feel like they can get answered then I would actually argue strangely perhaps sounding at first that we should in fact meet on the 11th I know grown because we already have other meetings that day just about this because I would want it to go to the council on the 11th I don't want to nothing's I can't imagine what's going to change between the fourth and the 18th that can't change between the fourth and the 11th if the 23rd is important to them so it feels like we're stretching it out too long you know I mean it's theoretically possible as you mentioned R.C. that we could have that the town council could approve because all the questions have been answered tonight it seems a little unlikely that'll happen since you know people's first chance to get their questions answered but I'm not seeing what value we add to wait between tonight's meeting and then not talk about it at TSO until the 18th how does that help the farmers market be ready for the 23rd that's my concern and so what I'd actually rather do is hope that tonight we get enough good information that we can say you can say to Paul okay these are the questions we still have they can be answered on the 11th at just a purpose for that for an hour hopefully no more and then we can recommend to the council that night the 11th yep it's good to go that's possible that's good Heather Dorothy I agree with Alyssa I mean the farmers are ready to go the forget what it is the special snap benefits if you use fresh food people need those we really want this market to get started and I just think that we'll know tonight whether we need to meet on Monday the 11th and if we do we should get the thing we just finish up all the details on the farmers market so that they that gives them a better chance to get themselves ready for the 23rd the question in my mind is what can we do on the 11th that we couldn't do on the 18th I just feel it's better not to drag it out because we don't know what's happening work ahead of time be proactive don't be reactive and just make sure that it goes forward um if if somebody can't be at the meeting um how many what is the minimum number of people that need to be at a meeting three three I would say because I mean listen people have things that happen in life and sometimes they can't make a meeting I understand that um if three if three people I can be here on the 11th if three people can do it um I'm sure it's not going to be earth shaking it might be just something procedural we can do it and then it's done and then if something else pops up then we'll deal with it I mean I think we have to be this is a big thing in terms of our committee function this is a big thing so I want to make sure that we do whatever we have to do to make it go help it go forward George what time on the 11th it would be right after our okay meeting okay I can live with that that's 11 30 just to clarify yes okay because on the 18th I have down 9 30 or 11 30 uh no 9 30 is the oakah meeting and 18th too and eight o'clock is my community choice aggregation meeting you're trying that the 18th 11 11 we're mixing up the two days we're meeting on the 18th no matter what right yes because we're talking about wage theft and whatever else the 11th is simply to get the farmer's market done because otherwise the farmer's market is basically sitting there twiddling their thumbs going what's TSO gonna say two weeks from now I don't know why we would want to do that to them okay so but on the 18th I'm just asking I have down two times which time is the time we would meet on the 18th 11 30 11 30 on 30 okay both 11 30 they're both that's all I need that's good I just had to get my book straight okay all right the 11th of 9 30 on June 1st is that not true isn't the 18th oh the 18th you else you're on mute Evan the 18th is 9 30 oh right yeah 18 it would just be this one yeah okay all right that's what I need I wanted to get that straight and Evan can you make it on the 11th if we need to as long as it's a really short meeting just because I have stuff in the early afternoon that was my only sort of break in the day but yeah well there might be presentations by the farmers market there might be presentation by Julie Federman town staff I'm assuming that that's what's going to happen at whatever meeting is the big farmers market meeting so anyway okay well good to know that you're all on board with having a meeting the 11th I guess um let's the meeting on the 18th then that's a question pardon with the meeting on the 18th is the meeting on the 18th gonna happen no matter what or is it one that we would have if we needed to have it well we set that meeting up to um um or I mean we populated that meeting with the appointments on 18 although it might be a fairly quick I mean if we're getting a bulk request for reappointments that might not take that much time I don't know I don't know exactly how we're going to arrange that um but um so as of right now it does seem like we need the meeting on the 18th um so um uh Alyssa I was just going to say that we just told the wage theft people we were going to be talking about it again on the 18th so the 18th was already on our schedule something we were going to do that's why we were loathe to add in the 11th because we were trying to not do that but again the reason to not do it as we've said is so the farmer and market has some direction I personally am hoping that enough questions get answered tonight at town council that we don't have to have a presentation by the farmer's market and we don't have to have a presentation by Julie Fetterman that they're only there if we have questions because we don't really have time for presentations and starting this late in the season those presentations should be made at town council tonight not at TSO I don't think they're on the agenda for tonight though um that's not our fault right so let's um uh do we agree that we should wait until after the meeting tonight to make a final decision about the 11th I'm I'm leaning in that direction myself George okay I see nods um all right so and then so sometime before um Wednesday uh I'll um we'll we'll make a decision about the the 11th that's your call Darcy uh that's Darcy's call well thank you for giving me that power George for the chair I apologize I have a quick question at my confusion the meeting on the 18th is at 9 30 9 30 yes I'm okay at 9 30 but that's probably an ancient okay so 9 30 TSO the 18th thank you right there's is okay on the 11th yeah um okay so um uh the so we already talked about the agenda at the next meeting we did say to the wage theft people that they will either be on the 18th or the following meeting depending on whether uh you know because I I thought we might be doing the farmers market on the 18th um so that you know that that is movable if necessary um so any items not anticipated by the chair at 48 hours in advance that's mine now there are none uh any other comments before we adjourn I have a comment I just want to thank Alyssa for making the clarification between raw minutes that was useful you know any other comments all right the meeting is adjourned at 11 38 a.m and I will chime in to formally adjourn the council meeting oh yes 11 39 a.m thank you Mandy thank you very much Mandy Joe for for sitting through this and being our producer today very much appreciated you're welcome all right thank you and to tonight oh yeah oh boy