 I'm going to call this meeting together. We are allowed to do this by the governor's orders that allow council meetings like this to be held virtually ever since the beginning of the COVID pandemic. This is a very unusual meeting in that we will actually be on mute and have just our pictures showing for up until now until 7 o'clock. Then at 7 o'clock, we will actually reconvene in an active conversation. I did mention in an email to you earlier, and I'm mentioning to the public now, and it will be shown on the screen that the hearing that was scheduled for tonight was canceled because, in fact, the polls that were being discussed are on the Pellum side of Harkness Road. Pellum has to have that hearing. We do not. In addition to that, I just want to mention that all of the materials are now in the packet. They were placed in the packet as a five o'clock, and each town councilor should have received an email with all of the materials. And for those of you that requested, you should have received a packet of the materials in printed form. There were only five of you. So with that, I'm going to basically make sure that everybody is connected and you can hear me. And then please do not disconnect, but instead show your face and stop your video and show your mute. And then at seven o'clock, I will ask people to start showing their face again so that we know that you're ready to proceed with the meeting, okay? There will be public comment during the meeting, both general public comment and the specific public comment to town manager's evaluation. So with that, let me just start. I'm going to just go on my left to right. Andy Steinberg, can you hear us? Yes. Hi, Evan Ross. Yes. George Ryan. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Yes. Sarah Schwartz. Yes. Alyssa Brewer. Yes. Pat DeAngelis. Yes. Garcy Dumont. Yes. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Mandy Jo Hanneke. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Shalini Balmilne. Yes. And Lynn Griezmer is here. Again, for those of you who have come in as attendees, you're welcome to stay on as attendees, but you're also welcome to rejoin us at seven o'clock. The period between now and seven o'clock is an opportunity for you as well as the counselors to read the material that were for each individual counselor's evaluation of the town manager and look at the summations in terms of the actual ratings as well as the written comments. And then there is a draft of the memo which will form the major portion of our conversation this evening. So we will reconvene, if you will, or we will start the meeting back up at seven o'clock. In the meantime, the screen will show people what is going on and how to connect to the material. See you all later. Bye. Sean, please take down the screen. As you complete your reading, please turn on your screen so that we can see you, but stay on mute. Sean, please bring Dave Zomac into the room. I'd like people who are joining us to stay on mute, but turn their video back on so that I know that you're back and available. Paul, I thought you were on vacation. I'm sorry to see your face. Can't hear you. All right. Alyssa, are you back with us and Sarah as well? I was just not done reading, and I thought we weren't supposed to be back till we were done. So I'm back. I'm not done reading. Whatever. Well, we're going to begin the regular part of our meeting, but I want to make sure that everybody can be heard and I can hear them. We can hear them. And so let me just start with Dorothy Pam. Here. Lynn Griezmer is here. Pat DeAngeles. Here. Matthew Shane. Here. Garcy Dumont. Here. Andy Steinberg. Here. George Ryan. Here. Ross. Here. Steve Schreiber. Here. Mandy Jo Hanneke. Here. Alyssa Brewer. Present. Sarah Schwartz. Here. And I know Shalini is here, but she's not sitting in her chair. So I'm going to wait for her to. Melanie, can you hear us? Please unmute and tell me. Yes, sorry about that. Okay. Let me just go on and say. On the top of your gender, a couple of meetings that are coming up. We will have a regular town council meeting on August 31st. And another on September 14th. The community, the various committees are meeting as well. And please watch the Amherst Bulletin Board. The UMass is holding a community forum. And it will be held on the 3rd on Thursday. We don't have the time yet. And it will be participated with, by the people who are on the joint committee with UMass, but it is a UMass forum, not a town forum. I want to also call attention to the fact that all of the materials for the meeting tonight are in your packet. The hearing that was scheduled for tonight, we will have a public comment on the town council meeting. And we will have a public comment on the town council meeting. On the 2nd of August, because actually the polls in question are on the Pelham side of Arknis Road. And so therefore we do not have to have a hearing on that. I, we will have public comment after we have the initial discussion about the town managers. Evaluation of the two agenda items tonight are in fact, the town managers evaluation. We will have a public comment on the town managers evaluation. We will have a public comment on the town managers evaluation first. And then also the first draft of town manager goals. And again, this is the first time. We will be looking at that. And the second will be on the 31st of August. So. I'd like to go ahead and. Have counselors make general comments. About the performance evaluation. And then we'll actually go through it and see if there are general things. We will not edit the memo online. Of course, I always am pleased to receive any edits. And I know you'll have them. But in general, are there particular comments that. Mandy Joe Hanna key. I was just wondering about our agenda order. We have general public comment listed as before we talk about the evaluation. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mandy. Why don't we go ahead and have general public comment, but I want to remind people that. If your comment is related to the manager's evaluation, we will have specific public comment at that. So if there's general public comment, please raise your hand. I'm not seeing any. So we'll see whether there's. General public comment later on. So going back to my question, I would like to ask you, if you have any comments that the council would like to make with regard to the evaluation memo, or would you like to just start the conversation after the game? Okay. Shalony. Could someone clarify for me? What is the goal of our discussion. Around discussion is to provide feedback on the memo. Received tonight along with the individual councilor evaluations. And the basic goal then is to say, does the memo reflect what council said? Okay. And the goal then will be to receive your comments. And make adjustments to that. Written memo. And that will then come back to the council for the final discussion on the memo on the 31st of August. Okay. Kathy. I'm not sure whether this is general or not, Lynn. I have some specifics, but what I saw is when I read through people's individual written comments, there are a few areas that I don't feel are as fully fleshed out in your summary. And it's likely a few more sentences. And I would put them in the area of room for improvement or room for a new tactic. And one. One of the things that I think is, I think we have a new economic reality in front of us. And, you know, for learn from planning for capital and everything else. And that was captured by some. Of the comments. And I don't see that as much in that. And I think it is in the town managers. We sort of had a question that got at it, but it isn't the town manager. I mean, you know, you know, I, you know, you know, I'm not going to rank and say, you know, I was really optimistic a year ago, but now. We were in a different world. So I have a, that's a general and it cuts across a few different areas. I think that is a very, that's an appropriate general observation. And meaning that thank you for making that. And I agree that that is a general observation. And then when we get to specific areas, I think that's a general observation. I think that's a general observation. I think that's a general observation. I think that's a general observation. I think that would be strengthened. Okay. We'll do. Are there other general comments. When you say memo. I have counselors comments. Then I have the thing with graphs. And then I have one that talks about the input impact of COVID-19. Is there another piece of paper that I'm. Missing or as one of those. Is there any way that you can help me. I got my, my share point up. And it'll be called memo. Is that right? You look at your email at about 501 Dorothy came in, because it wasn't in paper packet. In the packet now. And it's public packet now. But it is also. Your email. Okay. I think I see it. Yes. Is the attempt to take all of the feedback from all of the counselors who in their own deliberations had access to staff, community and committee evaluations, as well as their own the town manager self evaluation, etc. And it's to try to pull it together in somewhat of a summation. Right, I see. Yeah, never hit everything. Okay. All right, Alyssa. So, to clarify then where we are, I don't want to pick on Dorothy because she self identified. But if there's anyone else who didn't read your memo then we aren't really prepared to have this discussion with Dorothy at this point because that was the whole point is looking at our individual things and seeing as you just described, if it's reflected well enough in our full memo. So do we need to take a pause here because that's unfortunate that she hasn't seen that or is she just going to try and like read with one eye while she pays attention to the meeting with the other. I thought we were supposed to read the packet that's what I understand. I'm just saying you may not be alone. Okay. Are there others who feel they need more time at this time to believe Dorothy probably went to get a printed copy. Yeah, I didn't come yet. So do it again. So don't hold up anything on my account. Okay. All right. Thank you. Is there anybody else that would like more time at this point. All right, then let's go back to the main question. Are there general observations about the memo. No, I'm not doing none. What I'd like to do is we'll come back to the opening part of it. Where we talk about the strengths and so forth. I do want to say that I use the same measures as last year and if I misidentified by bolding something I shouldn't have or italicized something I shouldn't have or vice versa. Please make sure you let me know. Alyssa. Thank you so much for your patience. A new computer has been dropped off for me, but we haven't had a chance to set it up yet and I am having terrible problems switching between one thing and another. I'm sorry. Are we now at the point of once again, where my computer has dropped showing me the page, but your beautiful memo that most of us have had a chance to read, we're now just going through it section by section. Thank you. We want to strengthen it or add additional comments. Okay, because I had something on page one and something on page two before we get into the specific section so they're quick. Okay, why don't we go with that then. Okay, so we're on page, actually, I guess it, it's start, we start on page one, obviously, but it says how it's the fourth year of the town managers work for us which is true, absolutely as a town, however, we're on page two, it says it is just kind of worded funny in terms of the town council thanks you for a great fourth year, since the town council obviously hasn't been in existence for four years, could we just change it to second year. And I think that, you know, it bookends both parts of that right four years but two with us. Yeah, my other is in regards to police the comment about police issues so if somebody has something before that section then. Okay, yes, we will eventually get there. Are there any other comments on the first two pages at this time. Okay, then we're going to go on to the first goal which is strong fiscal management. Yes. I'm so sorry, I thought we were still. Yeah. So, you're right, you're right go ahead I am so sorry. I'm going to just try and stay muted because I think more problems than it's worth. Second. Are there any questions or comments on the first write up regarding the first goal. This is where I would make my first specific so on page three, the paragraph that says regarding strategies for maintaining and strengthening the town's long term fiscal health. It has, we look forward to continued efforts to work with you mass on a new partnership or agreement and right now it says and with Amherst College, but we don't seem to have a formal agreement. And that was addressed in several comments that that didn't transpire other than the land. So I just thought we should, and as something, something to the account of establishing a more formal agreement with Amherst College and then the rest of the sentence is great including trying to find out what happened between William's town and Williams. So I can give you specific wording. And then toward toward the sentence that says that includes funding plan for the four major projects. This is where I think something like several councils noted that the town will likely need to reassess what's affordable, given the change economic reality, where we, when we wrote these goals, we were in a very. And so, which will might. And so I have wording, you know, which will likely mean a less optimistic view of what will be possible over the next several years given the town and residents budgets. So I saw in several people that we might have to postpone certain things, and that went in through later. So I can give you specifics, but I wanted to just get that tone in little bit because we were asked to constantly think of COVID and COVID didn't just change the world of Paul dealing day to day but we had to say oh we don't have the revenues they think we think we're going to have and we have an uncertain next year also so that clearly affects capital. So I just something you know the August end just specifics but I don't know whether others agree with that kind of a change. Let me speak to the issue of providing me with individual feedback please do so but do not send it to the whole council. Sure. Thank you. Steve Shriver please unmute. Yeah so I know we want to go home tonight so I'm reluctant to even make the comment. So I completely agree about the comment about Amherst and UMass and then also Hampshire should be included sort of in the you know in the same sentence and it's not up to us to to determine which one might be more willing to to give so really the point is that the area's large nonprofit employers is a partnership agreements and I think we're thinking largely of pilot maybe but other but other things and then I found the comment about Williamstown to be interesting in one of the councilor's comments but there's so many other examples I would hate to single on that one because if the Williamstown model isn't appropriate but there are other ones that are appropriate so I would say something like including examples of other similar programs and other communities in Massachusetts or New England or whatever so I would be much more general because I don't know if Williamstown is appropriate model or not okay and if it was we would have done it. Is there any other comment on that or Darcy you have a comment? Yeah I don't know whether this really is more relevant to our our upcoming goals discussion but I did a little math on our data here and I multiplied 13 times 46 questions and I got 598 or 600 votes that we cast because I was looking to see how many votes were cast for unable to judge and I know that you mentioned that on page two as different reasons why we might say unable to judge but one of one out of eight of our votes was unable to judge and or 75 75 of our votes were unable to judge so I I'm concerned about that because I feel like we weren't adequately clear about how we wanted the town manager to report progress on a particular thing like did we just want narrative in his self evaluation or did we want some kind of documentary evidence that something happened and so that was a little confusing to me and I felt it was more our process than you know a comment on his performance because I don't think we were clear with him what we needed to show progress measurable progress in that area is there anything specifically you would like to add to the comment within the first two pages you might want to think about that I will think about that I haven't thought of actual wording but I just and I know at the GOL meeting last week he he actually brought up you know what what how am I going to prove that I did what is in your goal do you want a narrative do you want documents do you want and so we need to be able to tell him and I think that when we get to the goals discussion we should add additional comments about this but in the actual thing here I did cover that but if you feel there's more explanation as to why people did not we're not able to judge then please say so let me know that okay all right are there other comments on number one Alyssa thank you I thought Darcy articulated that really well and I really appreciated she sent you some language on that because my bottom line has always been if we're marking unable to judge one of us is doing it wrong either the town council didn't ask the question the right way or the town manager didn't answer the question the right way and by right I mean by addressing it and so that that GOL discussion sounds incredibly valuable as to you know not to not have those kinds of answers next year because it was such a predominant theme in here what I wanted to add to that particular paragraph we were on I agree with what Kathy said and I know that that's one of the tricky parts about this memo is we could be here for eight or 12 hours talking about how to adjust it because the memo is supposed to be what all of us generally agree to I would hope that since somehow the marijuana statement ended up being strategy about getting money and getting more of it that's not the entirety of the question about marijuana the entirety of the question about marijuana revenue if the council wants to include this in the memo is around not only a the fact that we don't know what it is or what it represents and who it how how it's coming in and if it's post-community agreements or if it's excise taxes but what we're going to do with it so we it's been made clear yes of course we're not um unlike East Hampton and North Hampton which are having saying you know we're going to spend it on housing we're going to spend it on social justice issues we're going to spend it this way we've not even begun those conversations and so it's not just a matter of knowing that money's coming in and that we want more of it because of course that's always wonderful but it's also about what does it represent in terms of our values it's not just another pot of money that's coming from somewhere that is just supposed to get plugged into the operating budget somewhere in my opinion and then my next thing before we get to another specific is about police but i don't want to take away other people's time is that relevant to this particular question our police issue is the next paragraph that carries over to page four so if we're still talking about this paragraph i will stop we are so we are still talking about this goal so if you have comments about the write-up on this goal please go ahead elissa the i tried to let's see if i can flip screens without it flipping out um i really appreciate how because i've done this before so i really appreciate how incredibly hard if all of you don't appreciate how hard it is to try and turn several people's seemingly random comments into a coherent whole so thank you you've done a wonderful job and i really appreciate the input you're receiving from us i appreciate what you tried to do with the police uh issue which is the way it's phrased right now led to a it so it says the police issues of recent months which to us is really obvious what we're talking about but given that this is a document that lives forever and that many in the community may not be as familiar with what we're talking about i think it definitely implies that there's been an issue with our police and i don't think that's the impression we want to leave anybody so i have some language that people may or may not appreciate but i hope capture some of the spirit of what i'm looking for instead of that sentence of the police issues of recent months that language would be for example national attention on the murder of black men women and children by police in other states led to a council resolution asking you to postpone filling two police positions so that you can evaluate our communities public safety needs and staffing requirements to meet those needs again trying to be clear that this was a national movement we are all really trying really hard to make sure we're doing making proactive change here in amherst and also to make sure we're talking about the community's public safety needs not just but including what the public safety departments say their needs are right because that's usually how we focus is they tell us what they need and we should see if we can give it to them it's that what the community wants in terms of public safety and also the staffing requirements it will take to meet those needs and you'll be forwarding that means that suggested language um kathy i'm i'm still on this same page that elissa was those sentences and i agree with um what her uh the general sense of rephrasing it um i want i thought we should add some kind of sentence linda and that sentence that is this was not in the goals set last fall but will likely be a new goal for f y 21 because if you look at our goal there's we talk about fire ems but we never talk about police um and then i had things like with an exploit exploration of what could be financially possible because we actually started a conversation of different kinds of staffing you know or or other kinds of investments so i want to keep it in this financial section which is where you brought it up but um it's hard to hold them accountable for a goal we didn't set um but i i like the way you brought it up so i think it was good great thank you dorthy you have your hand up yes adding to the what elissa said and kathy said i do believe we need an additional sentence yes it's it was in response to national actions but towns people uh many towns people expressed um discomfort with some of the police practices or some of the forms of neighborhood policing or some such phrase because it was of course the the thing that really lit it was the national action but that caused people to reflect upon their own experience and many people felt that that we needed to look at our policing structure and practices in amherst as well okay all right thank you any other comments on this particular goal of any comments on the climate action goals and write up i just want to remind attendees that we will have public comment at the end of all of the council discussion on this yeah uh please raise your hand using the hand raising thing kathy got it yeah go ahead okay um it's i i thought this section was fine but um there is what i noticed is i went across ours the item c explorer internal systems to track many people on this one which was uh it did stand out and you've italicized it as a needs improvement it was either we don't know whether there is such a thing or it didn't happen so i think um maybe and i didn't read pencil this um it was uh toward the end of that summary statement saying this this should be continued to be a goal for next year as far as we know there aren't these systems you know it's a flagging the concept is there but it probably didn't happen and it may not have happened because we didn't have a facilities director or whatever but pick up on that italicized because it was notable as an area as i went across counselors with more needs of improvement or if it's happening we don't know about it um and it was acknowledged by the town manager that there was no progress right okay any other comments on this goal darcy yeah um i my only comment is that and it's a little bit related to what i just said and that is that um there was one goal to educate staff and paul went further in his self-evaluation to say that he had um worked with department heads to to encourage them to use a climate lens and all their decision making etc and at a meeting i asked him if he could provide some kind of documentation about that and i have never gotten that or we haven't never gotten that and so if um so that sort of goes to do we just take the town manager's narrative about what he says he's done or do we can we see something indicating what he's done um and so anyway i'd still like to get that fyi thank you darcy uh your hand is still up but i assume that's from before are there any other comments on goal two challenging please unmute yeah i think my comment is just um in agreement with darcy what i was also going to say the comment i had made was if you could see how examples of how uh climate action goals have impacted decisions being made in the different departments because that's what was shared by paul and also um to get a sense even even though there was training provided what was the participation like and and the outcome of that participation in the staff so i i think the issue i i just want to be clear at this point the evaluation material that we have is what we're going to have so we can try to glean out of it as much as possible but it has not been the council to go back and ask for more i think when we talk about whether or not uh we would like to see more in the future that really relates to next year's goal thanks your goal it's got it okay are there any more comments on question on goal two yes steve so i'm trying to do the math here so and i'm trying to figure out all these percentages so uh this one isn't i'm sorry i should have this is maybe just looking at the totality here it's a possible for us just to give the raw numbers like one counselor said this two said you know two said the commendable rather than percentages and the reason i mentioned that is like sometimes we're using the number 31 percent sometimes we're using 33 percent and i assume that means four out of 13 or something like that but some you know so we're so that's my comment is that can we just use the flat out numbers rather than percentages yeah like having 31 percent in one place that i think i saw 30 and 33 percent those are or some of those become mathematically not possible at least i unless i skip it there's a typo okay so what you want to see is the number of counselors that said something one said this five said this yeah that's just my opinion just just one thought on that is this um summary memo we got of the actual ratings steve every single one of them has three six two zero just what you want in it so if it could be the appendix it might help you you know like i'm just looking through it you know what you said is right sometimes 13 answered so it's a certain number of people but lenice put in the percent and the head count um so it it's just the only difficulty of flipping it to counts is the very beginning of the memo has this bold means at least x percent loved it or you know y percent said needs improvement so then you if you just have raw numbers it's hard to do that i could also translate what 30 percent or better would mean let me see what i can do without completely revising the memo but if you look at the actual printout of the percentages from the survey then you do get a sense but we can figure i'll try to figure something out but doesn't um yeah let me just look at look at that okay are there any other comments on this section okay then i'm three i'm going to actually read this is long range planning develop plans consistent with town long-term vision kathy this um i i just yellow shaded number c and d because again these are relatively high needs improvement areas um the hickory ridge you know what is the plan and there were some specifics in here and i realize covet is intervened but these become outstanding but on the um safer to walk and bike um there were some specific comments on uh that we say that um when it comes to dpw priorities and tack priorities it's not clear that those are the priorities on where they do it so so we might want to just add a sentence or two after them that these were two areas where needs improvement that it may be that is a goal but does it translate down to holding key managers uh department heads to that goal and making it their performance goal also you know and and i you know all of this is so difficult because we set these at the end of last year um you know late december early january and the world changed in march but late january yeah so but i just think these again these were two areas that got had quite high needs improvement on them um so they're they need attention is the way i would write it so i don't know whether we yellow highlight or something but they they were more negative than comments in other areas um i think that i can add to the write-up and um only d met the threshold but c as you have pointed out before a lot of people unable to judge because of um that's on hickory ridge but let's just add to the write-up and again welcome your suggestions okay mirthi i have a comment and a question comment is at the top of the play page where we have three higher educational intuitional plans which i thought was a really great idea hold on hold on let me make sure i it's boldface so it's easy to find oh i'm sorry you're still back on the other one yeah but well i'm on page five um so my my comment my question is at the bottom of page five yeah destination amherst plan you know maybe we voted on it but i don't remember voting on it so that my question is did we vote on it and when it was presented it was um i'll have to ask somebody else else with a better memory did we vote no i don't think we voted i think we all were um um there was a major presentation on it and uh it was about you know a new parking garage a shell performance shell uh doing something with parking in uh the north amherst common uh and i think it at that point COVID hit and that was it because i have major reservations about many aspects of that plan so i was surprised to see that there as if we had agreed reflected a vision it didn't say our vision um like if you have suggested changes um let me be glad i'll be glad to have them okay or later any other points on this one mandage out yeah um going back to that one i think the way that one is worded that it reflected a vision for downtown is absolutely accurate um and i i wouldn't necessarily change it you know we we had some goals of downtown visioning the manager presented a vision we have not voted on it so but i don't think the language as used is inaccurate i think it reflects what the manager did um whether or not we agree with it it reflects what he presented to us that he presented a vision for downtown and that's about as far as it got because we so are we evaluating it um i mean why is it here in the goals that's my question it's part of what was done during the year it was part of the write-up he presented it and then the whole discussion got completely deadended by covid and so we never got to the discussion of did you agree or not agree or how would you change it or are we willing to um you know do the things we need to do to move the land behind cbs into parking garage if the whole thing just fell dead in the water and to the point now frankly that the bid doesn't i mean they're using their money to try to help save businesses but to say that it didn't happen is inaccurate also any other comments on this one we are in goal three we're going to move to goal four which spans from page six through halfway through seven goal four is personnel management shallony about the not having an economic development director do we want to put that or reflect that the absence of that in over here or in the economic development goals um probably in the economic development goals since it's specifically mentioned okay are there other conscious kathy um i just my comment on this you'll like my comment i think you did a really nice job here because you did pick up from the comments that we have some systems in place that in theory our customer service oriented but nobody knows whether they ever got a response so the re and paul had already identified that but i think that's important and you've done it well here and i don't know whether you can um maybe even bold it because we still hear you know i sent in something and i never knew whether anything happened and paul has several times said we have a system design problem that is both it that we can't enter that it happened it didn't happen it's on the list um so you've already got it on the counselors are concerned that residents don't feel follow-up communication i think paul what i'm remembering is in his self evaluation he also said this so it's it's uh it's something that he is aware of in terms of the need to fix it yeah okay are there other comments on this goal darcy yeah i'm going back actually to page five and i'm just this is just a question for the whole group and that is um i i know i am just wondering about the language that we use and our evaluation and whether uh for example um the you began this year with amazing efforts toward this goal is that common in in an evaluation of a town manager um that type of language or is it um um is it on the i don't know it feels like it's not um like professional or something it just feels like it's uh you know too gushy not that he hasn't done an amazing job it's just that i feel like there are a few sentences in this evaluation that feel um um too close to the town manager and i i'm just putting it out there that is this common for town you know for town manager evaluations to use that kind of language um i just i don't know i would suggest that she was saying that the language should be a little bit more objective rather than subjective yeah that's that that is yes thank you that is what i was saying all right andy i guess that uh on that one my feeling was is that we were encouraged throughout to think about what the whole COVID-19 pandemic meant to what we expected and what the town manager was able to do and this is a way of recognizing that uh whether there's specific wording changes i think that they need to just be offered but uh the general comment that i would have is that yeah it was a little bit unusual but then this year was extraordinarily unusual and it changed a lot of things and the adaptation was necessary and we we were just recognizing reality right let me try to find a way to balance that better okay Dorothy well i think you did that very well in the paragraph on the top of six despite the pandemic we celebrated the reward of being invited by MSBA into the process to build renovate an elementary school the completion of grove park and the significant progress on the dog park north amherst library and the new high speed fiber optic intranet um and then maintaining a healthy homeless shelter throughout the pandemic was a credit to many um you also continue to make progress on maintaining streets sidewalks bike paths and infrastructure although these will always present challenges um and many of these projects have been augmented by grants and gifts i mean that's a pretty positive paragraph and i would say quite an impressive list of of accomplishments during this time so i think you did it there okay any other comments on goal three and then on goal four we're going to personnel management uh then let's look at expanding goal five which is expand community engagement and strengthen intergovernmental relations volunteer committees boards and commissions comments here it starts on seven and goes to to the middle or so of page eight on the top of page eight uh the first full paragraph the part that refers to zoom meetings i was a little bit uncomfortable with all of that specificity the whole question of needing to do zoom meetings the needing to provide support for zoom meetings the fact that it requires substantial it and is support i think was something that was just a reality to what was going on and it was another example of what i cited earlier that we really had an extraordinary period and i guess that i need to give some plot to those few sentences because i wasn't entirely comfortable with what was with with some of the conclusions that were being suggested they're not sure that they really reflected the majority view or consensus view of this council and i need to go back and actually look at what everybody said in specifics before i even think to offer any language but i wanted to at least highlight that paragraph okay thank you um i i will admit when i read it i thought to myself that seems a little um whatever maybe not reflective alissa so again i mean to a large degree we're just saying thank you so much for doing this and good luck with tweaking it but um the part about suggesting i'm going to use this as an example even though i don't disagree with the idea one counselor suggested considering a stipend and my answer to that is wait for it so what this is a memo from the town council so if we all sit here and discuss it and say yeah we agree that might be a thing but i'm really not sure how that has anything to do with the evaluation so it's a two-part problem one is whether or not offering a stipend was not part of the evaluation might be for our goals we might put it in our goals and two one counselor suggesting something does not make it into this evaluation into this memo it's why we publish all of our individual things and it feels a little like some places we're pulling out individual things that people said and i appreciate that part of the reason to go through this really painful exercise here is so that we can say oh look somebody said something and i can't believe none of the rest of us thought to say that that's brilliant please put that in there that's why we read everybody's individual along with the memo to see if we missed anything because we didn't vote for it because we didn't know that we didn't think of that idea but putting in here one one person's suggestion no matter how wonderful the suggestion is just doesn't this isn't that's not a counsel agreement that we agree that that's a thing to pursue that might be in the goals but it doesn't belong in here even if it's cool idea which it is i'm you i muted because my phone rang behind me garcy yeah i just want to note that of course i made that comment and um and i guess i was under the assumption that there were a number of counselors that did agree with that and also that um that we heard tons of public public comment to that effect um and we heard that the town manager was uh you know also saw it as a concern and also was looking into it and so that's why i put it in here okay i think let me see if i can find a way to balance how it's reflected okay are there other comments on this section okay we're going on to economic development starts on page eight and goes through page nine and ends on page nine ellenie i specifically want to go back to your remark but and you have your hand up first let's go us into what elissa pointed out in the first one in the very first paragraph of the narrative section after the bolded language the words the one counselor felt that the bid's vision was not shared by all residents and some felt that felt their opinions were not being solicited um i was a little i was sort of in the same place in my reading of that that i think elissa was expressing in a prior comment so i'm not going to go further than that but i just wanted to point it out okay was this on page nine in the big long it's in it's on page nine and it's immediately below the letter f and the first paragraph of the narrative where it says after the bolded language the one counselor felt the bid's vision was not shared by all residents and some felt their opinions were not being solicited gets back to the question of whether it's reflective and how you and it's it's a challenge as elissa was saying you take 13 comments and try and figure out what to include what not to include it was a real challenge and we appreciate your taking it on but that was just another place that i want to point to that um are there other comments on that particular write-up shallony i'm going to move your comment earlier but i'd like to see if you want to elaborate on it because this was regarding the economic development director shallony yes it's reflected here so i just wanted to clarify whether it should be there and here but it's fine it's here so i'm good with that hope i can read my scribbles tomorrow uh elissa you have your hand up thank you just to elaborate a teeny bit more on that one counselor said thing i can't support a memo that says one counselor said anything none of the sentences that say one counselor pointed this out one counselor pointed this is a memo from the council our individual comments and darcy i don't disagree with the fact that you put it in your evaluation it's great it just doesn't belong in this memo i had specific things some of which got mentioned because other people mentioned that and again i'm happy to have the conversation here even though people keep feeling time pressure to say should we all agree that in fact that is actually way more than one person believes that if more than one if the majority of the council believes that right now and believes it belongs in the evaluation right now then we should absolutely have that discussion that's what we should be doing more so than wordsmithing but if we aren't going to have that conversation then every one of those that says one counselor pointed something out needs to be excised because this is the town council's memo and then absolutely all of our individual things go along with that and all of our individual things should be influencing our goals for next year but this is a memo from the town council and i'm not going to agree that in paragraphs 3 12 and 15 one counselor's thing got called out but i saw a cool thing another counselor said and that's not listed in here because that's not what this is for it's the preponderance you shriver yeah so i think the phenomenon might be that we're trying to get this is the annual evaluation of the town manager so it's not the critique of bid or chamber commerce or whatever so if the critique is of the bid i think that critique might be more appropriately directed to them or perhaps through the town manager to the bid but that's my concern is that we're using this as a master plan rather than as an annual evaluation and i think that these are really important conversations to have i just don't think this is the right instrument so i'm with those that have expressed concern about the one councilor comments okay garcy yeah i would just say that um you could say two counselors there but um uh 15 percent basically basically i would just say that this sort of goes to our whole discussion about minority opinions on the council um and i think that um lin was and i applaud her for trying to include some minority opinions about different things which could be you know about the town manager's evaluation we need to have that we need to have some people think you did a great job some people uh you know maybe it's a minority don't or on that particular thing or whatever so we have to put that in there otherwise it's not an accurate evaluation um so minority opinions are valid in evaluations also and it could be that two people thought he did a fantastic job on something like leading the town on racial equity um and a bunch of counselors didn't think that i'm going to ask that we complete the discussion and we're going to have to come back to this issue because um i need a little more guidance than what i'm getting right now evan well you said you wanted to complete the discussion but i was just going to say that i agree um that uh for the most part if only one counselor said something that doesn't belong in a memo that represents the sense of the council which again as elissa said is why we give individual um evaluations as well that the town manager can read um i i want to diverge from what elissa said for one point which is uh i do think if there's something that represents a sentiment of the council but then one counselor said it really well it's okay to take it out so for instance there was something in there about under community engagement um one counselor described it as the gold standard but from reading our our evaluations it seems like the overwhelming majority of the council um commended the town manager on community engagement and so if if that's the sense of the council i think it's fine to say you know one counselor said this because it's sort of representative um but i i don't feel comfortable um with if it's just one counselor of 13 said something that we get that counselors one thing gets to come out um but the one other thing i wanted to say with regard to all of this is it um i don't want to have a discussion tonight about whether we should be paying people to serve on committees or any of these things because that's not evaluation and one thing i did want to see removed from this um our suggestions um suggestions are belonging our goals they don't belong in our evaluation of the town manager and so um in a few different places there's you know one person felt that maybe we should do this or wishes he had done that anything that's that's our opinion on policy or suggestions i don't think belong in this this is all about evaluation of how well the town manager met the goals that we established for him and so i don't want to have conversations tonight to see if we all agree that people on committees should be paid because that has nothing to do with the town manager evaluation that has to do with the goals discussion so it shouldn't be in here in the first place shallony yeah i was being to the same issue so um i i mean okay i'm just gonna say it i think that minority um positions are important and should be reflected however in this particular instance um the goal was to work with bed and others in an effort to enliven downtown and village centers so we're giving him that goal and then whether we like whether the counselor likes a bit or has heard things that's a different issue but we put that as a goal that the town manager should work with bed and other stakeholders and that's what we are evaluating him and so the comment doesn't belong here whether the bid is reflecting people's issues or not so therefore i don't think that statement should be included here Kathy um i'm just trying to go back um we've done a nice job in giving us this question by question kind of response and comments so i can't do it carefully right now but i thought the way you led into this that there was a diversity of opinion was the right tone because as i'm looking through i don't see overwhelming responses that highlight the bid work or downtown there's a few you know and then a few make others so i just thought maybe just check this lin when you go back and look at it um because it did it certainly does come up but there's an equal number of others say this did happen or this didn't happen so this you start out with a very nice frame um in the area of economic development uh marks were considerably mixed you know which kind of sets the tone for you know what what's going going on right now so there may be just way of softening some of it and seeing whether there are only three or four people that called a particular thing out and a couple people called it out a different way so then it's not like 10 people said hurrah and only one no um so that's that kind of balancing and i just don't have time to go back and look at uh the i think this was q 36 as opposed you know whatever it's a specific piece um Dorothy you can be advised to go work with somebody but that doesn't necessarily mean that you get co-opted by them the same way we want the town manager to work with the institutions of higher ed but we assume that he's going to keep them the goals of the town so those weren't my words although i agree with those words so obviously it's not just one person um it was a question of balance and in terms of the town manager representing the town's needs working with another group which had the town's needs at heart but also a particular aspect so it's it's it's how you work with somebody that's valuable so i think we should keep it in right let me go back and read individual ones and um come up with a way to try to solve this um relationship to the town council starts on page 10 and goes it on it starts and ends on page 10 you'll come are there any so let me let me just give you a summary and then i think it's time we hear from public um i'm hearing that i need to find a way to well one of the ways for to balance off individual councilor comments is to make sure that in the first two pages we directly refer to the fact that individual councilor evaluations are also available and maybe even a pendulum so that it and at that point there is the clear ability to have everybody's opinions named and heard and seen and have them as part of the record they're part of the record but we've never made a comment about them per se in here um i want to make sure that uh well evidence has been brought up i want to make sure that we retain that comment or that issue as we move forward into goals um and not necessarily try to look for evidence for this year um in general i will go back and read all of the individual councilor comments um where possible um try to make sure we couch um if something is a minority of opinion of more than a couple people but um try to also stay away from the individual conclusions one way or another that would not be part of um an evaluation these are not easy to write i'm just going to uh tell you that right now uh and um um the best thing i think i can do is uh just tomorrow morning go at it with my notes make sure you provide me with any of your suggested comments um and do not send them to all counselors that would be debating online um Dorothy i just want to make a general statement i did not write detailed answers to questions because i was totally so impressed with how the town manager conducted himself communicated with the town council and communicated with the town during this incredible time that i just found it very hard to apply i mean i helped i was on the committee to help develop the goals but i just felt his keeping the town together and moving forward as much as he did i just couldn't find it in me to to nitpick even though i realized that was our task so um i just want to say i was very very positively impressed with his presence his strength his leadership and the fact that as i said my one of my few comments i felt safe with him in charge so that is my overall evaluation okay okay Dorothy uh you still have your hand up okay before i go on to public comment any other further comments at this time all right then i'm going to um go on to public comment and i have curry kouts this is public comment with regard to the town manager's evaluation curry please enter state your name and where you live okay um i'm curry um where i live i live in district two on hickory lane what was the last thing name where i live that's your name and where you live okay great um yeah about the town manager i have a few things there are other things that i would be more interested in talking about but i was a little confused at the opening thing i'm yeah honestly i think the public comment in general has been a little confusing um i appreciate a little more clarity um i think it's cool that it's at the beginning though i just wasn't expecting it um anyway about the town counselor i'm looking through the uh uh what is it the town council performance objectives and um what i care about most is community safety as like that's a personal thing for me um yeah and i just i worry a lot that a lot of this is just going to become performative um that it's here um and that um yeah i just don't thank you anyone is really doing enough um about this i think there's plenty of people who cannot have the same resources and that they just need to be able to have that um and yeah i like that it says to like i don't know to fully explore is not enough um i think there needs to be action i think just doing their research and then i'm not doing anything doesn't really do anyone good i think that's almost a waste of time um yeah i think that's my biggest comment on that um yeah i think i'm going to see my time to someone else thank you thank you for your comment are there any other public comment at this time yes disha boss okay hello hi yes hi so um i just need a point of clarification are we also commenting on the 2021 uh goals set for the town manager it will that be a separate comment or period or is it all now i had not scheduled it but i would be fine if we have that public comment later okay okay well mainly my comment make sure we do deal okay okay thank you then i'll wait any other comment at this time on the town manager's evaluation all right then i'm going to go back to the council and ask if there's any other comment at this point on the town manager's evaluation okay then i want to move on to the town manager goals and um these goals were developed specifically um through a meeting with gol they are brought to you as draft and i do want to emphasize draft uh they represent a change in how we've been moving it's kind of a similar if you will a systematic change that we've been moving from where we used to have a hundred different things to rate the town manager on this time we got it down to fewer and this set of goals reflects an ability to state some broad statements and then give some examples and of what the objective actually looks at so with that in mind let's begin this discussion and um i just hold on one second um and we're going to begin it with the town council's discussion so i would like to um call on whoever would like to speak and i want to point out that this was made in two separate set of goals policy goals and then management goals andy i just wanted to point out it's a somebody on gol that the policy goals were listed alphabetically so that it wasn't a question of prioritization it was a question of alphabet okay um and any other points from gol at this time George Mandy joe or um pat okay uh dorsey why don't we start with you i think the the paragraph on um community safety should include a sentence um that i do believe that i think desha boss did address this in a letter to the town council earlier but that uh we had talked about and yet it seems to have gotten disappeared some kind of review board to go over the practices of the police department and to have give the public an opportunity to get into it in a little bit more detail okay all right tassie um i i have to i'm just going to be looking at you while i read from my other screen because i don't have two screens this uh the community safety uh number two goal i think we should potentially expand it in words to be community health comma safety and social justice we talk about that when we get into the piece and then i've got some specific words i can send in later but it's um it's not it is this different kinds of staffing and that other actions that could reduce economic and social inequities due due to income race or ethnicity and you know it's it's uh it's a potential and i'm going to talk about it later as a performance goal but are we we have been starting to talk about potential areas to expend support of residents and paul asked us for action items so i just wanted to add a sentence or two here so it's not just policies and procedures but real action shifting some of our resources around i think has been the discussion okay shall we um yeah i would like to echo what kathy just said about including racial equity and inclusion in the title or even making it a separate goal and that actually takes me back to a statement i made a question i asked the council last time that what is the intention as a goal when i heard the gol meeting it was very clear to me that there was no clear clarity around what what are our goals as a town council are we are we wanting focusing on public safety are we looking at um eradicating social inequities and racism systemic racism and is it related to housing education business opportunities so it seems like we're all not when i heard different counselors speak i was i felt like we were not on the same page about this and so having a really clear intention and goal because if that's not clear all our strategies flow from that so i would really encourage us to have a very strong clear goal around racial equity and inclusion and then from that flows all of these other subgoals which is up for discussion and i don't know if they happen here or somewhere else but i would like us to see for example mentioning the committee and and not just a committee for research but it's a committee for assess engaging the community members and to assess what are the challenges they encounter and find out the sources of the problem so that then we can find appropriate solutions to target that and i mentioned some other towns that have been doing that kind of work it's not just another report we're going to create but that's a way of problem solving and finding solutions based on using empathy and engaging the community members i'd like us to look at that i'd like to also think about having an advisory committee for the council because we're making so many policy decisions that have implications for different community members that we don't have an in a diverse enough council to even fathom how it's affecting people and Darcy and i saw that firsthand in our district meeting where we are hearing from residents for example about masking but then we also heard how putting that order in place impacted other community members so they're sometimes conflicting needs so we do need an advisory council made advisory to the council that represents different community members and maybe that advisory is even paid for but somehow we need a way to get get these different perspectives so that we know what are the implications of the policies we're making um one other thing i had was um yeah and the other thing was specifically looking at diversity and empathy trainings for the town staff and all of us because if you do not have the capacity to really listen even though we disagree i don't think we can really make real change what is going to happen is we're going to just be politically correct and not speak up but we shut down and we're not really listening so i would really want my i mean that's my personal goal is how do we create a council a town staff and a community that's based on compassion where we are really have the capacity to listen to each other and and bring real change not just uh be politically correct and not speak up and be polite but internally we disagree and we feel shame ashamed to speak up and that's starting to happen now where we're hearing from some residents who are like we feel afraid to speak up because we'll be ashamed we'll be shamed or judged and that's not a healthy community and environment to have so how can we all have some kind of training so that we are really encouraging and making a safe place for different perspectives to be brought to the table and have these difficult conversations and make some real change that's all uh alissa you have your hand up i'm hoping that other people after me will help me understand this better but in in reference when when dorothy first mentioned you know d mentioned a commission it's been mentioned by many many people in the public we've never agreed that that's what we're gonna have we've never agreed that so we can't put it in goals so we're trying to write goals at the same time we're trying to have the conversation that shallony just elaborated on in great detail which was really helpful thank you so practically speaking i don't want to keep putting off that conversation that shallony wants to have and that dorothy wants to have and that we all want to have right which we've barely touched on so far in our town council work so maybe one way forward and hopefully some other people have better ideas maybe go else already discussed this we don't want to be in the position of just putting off the goals forever right while we're trying to figure things out but maybe we have some sort of goals for now that's more of the beginning part of what's already written there and rather than trying to flesh that out tonight while we're only working on the goals document we say these will be the goals we adopt now and then at our very next meeting which i know is already jam-packed but we were already planning to talk about what are we going to do what are going to be our next steps are we going to have a are we looking toward a commission are we looking toward training i think we're doing a whole bunch of things all at once and then we can revise the goals based on the things that we agreed we're going to be the things we do next and we might not find out we might agree on something next week or two weeks from now and then we might agree on something else that we want to hold the town manager to account three months from now and so we'll need to revise the goals we can't in in today's rapidly changing world with all the issues that we're facing we can't write a set of goals tonight unless it's just totally generic that will cover us for all the things we're going to keep talking about so if we can somehow communicate effectively to both ourselves and to the public that this is our initial set of goals but we are going to be fleshing out that goal in particular for example because we're going to be having a conversation our next thing we're going to start making some decisions about ways forward and then we can put those in the goals i agree that we don't want to just leave the goals document sit until it's time to do the evaluation again with it sounding really vague we would need to revise it based on the agreements that we make as a council which we haven't made any of yet pat you have your hand up um i'm i get one of the things that i want to speak to is what elissa is saying uh we have not made a clear decision i think we can take part of tonight to make a decision about a commission and i think that we can use the example that's been presented by the racial equity task force and and the shabazz and an email which is the creation of an oversight commission on police practices that incorporates significant black indigenous and people of color into its membership i think that that is something that we've talked about several times well and yes it isn't long going ongoing conversation but it is a critical factor for us to look at and look at now um and i want to quote the reverend mark d marison read uh and it is neither possible nor necessary to know the outcome of our actions we are not called to succeed we are called to try call because it's right and i feel like tonight is a perfect time to expand the social justice aspect of this goal and respect what's come forward about having a commission on the police even the police chief when he was making his presentations was very proud of the fact that we followed in amherst the obama 21st century policing uh guidelines well we don't we we support them selectively one of the most important issues is a commission or committee whatever you want to call it that is reviewing a resident commute that is reviewing police policies and procedures and another committee that is really looking at and calling to account decisions um by the police department in this instance but as uncomfortable it is as it is and it certainly has been uncomfortable for me we need to have someone call us out as well which is happening and and this is a decision this aspect of this expansion of the policy can be decided tonight and then we can move forward with elissa's well maybe we'll advise it revise it three months down the road the world is rapidly changing so let's rapidly make one aspect of this one part of the decision to create this commission we have not yet made the decision because we were told as a council to wait for the report of committee or committees that we're working on this and so we have not had the formal report from the committee or committees um i suspect that we could have such a report by our next meeting um that would be you know written in whatever form is required um and distributed to us before the meeting and then we could we could do a vote because we we deliberately did not do anything because we were told to wait for what comes up from the citizens the people of the town so once it comes up we should be able to act on it i have mine is just a question rather than a comment on the content um we've got the goal sitting up at top that we're talking about then we've got town manager performance goals none of this is in this performance goals are we saying if we can come to agreement what's up at top as a council goal that we then make it also a manager goal because i said i'm going to have the same comment climate action is up at top but it's not down below so i'm just trying to for the people who are in gol i found a disconnect between the higher level goal statement and then the and then the performance so i didn't know what the thinking was on that disconnect or are we going to try to reconcile the two once we put some meat on the bones but right now we're on social justice and race equity put some meat on the bones and then have some expectations of the manager's actions that's my that's a question i don't understand the question yeah is there somebody from um gol who would like to speak to this andy mandy joe i see your hands up i would if possible please so this document um was drafted all 10 of these goals policy and management would be goals for the manager and he would report on them in an evaluation next summer so they're written very similarly but no they're not repeated down below the management goals are more of the managing the day to day staffing um and the policy goals are what he should be thinking about and doing to set forth and promote the policies the town council has adopted that's why every policy goal actually references a vote the council has taken um but but the point of the policy goals is we've instituted these policies we've adopted these policies as the policy leader in town and now the executive needs to figure out a way to help us implement them and that's part of the manager's goals for the year is to help prioritize you know for climate action to implement the regulatory other actions to meet our climate action goals for economic for community safety it's to do what we said to do in the vote for the budget for the four projects the way to implement that goal for the next year is to get us a funding plan and so i hope that clarifies it they're not only our goals they are because we've adopted them as policy goals they are the policy focus for the coming year to get us towards closer towards implementing those policy goals we've actually voted on and had votes on i want to stay on this particular issue so because i want to make sure people understand these are the town manager goals but the top group represent as mandy joe said things that we have voted on that in essence therefore become our priorities and so therefore they are stated as policy goals and yet at the same time the whole second half of the document is what we expect you as the town manager to run the town and in doing that this is what we're looking for are there uh pat you want to talk about that particular issue yeah as a member of go well i just want to read i'm sort of uh restating what mandy joe has said but i i want to read what we have in this performance objective uh document it says um these policies goals should this uh guide decision making at all levels of town government therefore they are set forth as part of the performance objectives for the town manager because the town manager must use them to set priorities direct work activities and allocate staffing and financial resources so i know i'm i'm saying the same thing that you said mandy joe but this is again why we need to clarify the community safety goal and even if we reflect on the decision made around the budget it would expand this goal to include committee committee um and we're not saying that now uh darcy you have your hand up yeah i just wanted to say that um i i watched the g in august 5th gol meeting and i um appreciated the fact that the town manager came and he was asked what his view was about the goals it it was interesting to me that you know we had the same discussion when i was on the committee last year and he had said that we should have like five overarching goals which is what we did and i actually like those better um but anyway i i would like to just say that at one point at the beginning of the meeting he was asked um if he would make any changes and he said that he felt that racial equity was missing and that in fact he used that language racial equity and he suggested that it should be um even a separate goal and um that's at minute 12 if anybody wants to watch the video um and so uh i the the committee talked about it and they did add um a little bit of language about social justice in the under the community safety but as shawni said um racial equity spans more than the police department and our police department and our decision that we made about the police budget um and i think that um we really looked at that for quite a while we passed a resolution the town manager put out a statement on behalf of us and him and i think that we need to um we need to either make you know redo the community safety part and add the actual words racial equity or make a completely different section entitled racial equity um just to underline our commitment to working on that and um i'm you know i i'm assuming at least a majority of us would agree with doing that so i endorse what what shawni uh put forward and um i just think we need to put the words out there to represent our commitment to racial equity okay andy steinberg yes um the first sentence is really policy that the council voted on once because that was at the meeting where we adopted the budget and was a straight iteration of what was agreed um with discussions uh that paul's participant at at the finance committee and i think it was important that if we have voted on that that that is something that to be included as it was voted unless through a separate process and i don't think that this is the process to do it um because the community's not unnoticed that we're having that discussion we haven't uh had the opportunity to alert the community and alert others um that uh we're having that discussion um and i think it is an important one as far as the second sentence um i agree with the idea that if we're going to include um the question of social racial justice um power we want a word that we should probably put that into the title too but i think we need to again make sure that we decide whether what we're talking about is a process um or whether we actually have goals to implement i don't think that we have goals to implement and so maybe what we're really getting at with all of this is that we would like to see a process that um allow that encourages the discussion and that any um outcome that from that process that is approved by the council let steps be taken towards implementation thank you andy i want to reiterate something as much as i understand people would like to be very explicit about exactly what we are going to do we did not post on this meeting that we would actually come to a conclusion about next steps and so that would be it's not only unfair to the council but it's really unfair to the public that we would have that discussion without posting it in advance it is fine to post that for our next meeting and i i totally support that um but i want to make sure that it's posted in a way that the public has an opportunity to participate uh what we need to try to do now is focus on the goals again we're not adopting them tonight we're only taking our first pass at them they will go back to gol and i know people from gol as well including myself are taking copious notes evan you have your hand up yeah i just wanted to respond um briefly to the idea of either trying to expand the community safety section to include uh racial equity or create its own racial equity um section and i think that shalini's point which was well made is that racial equity is intersectional um and in that regard it doesn't make sense for me to have a standalone racial equity section as much as it makes sense to try to weave it into some of these other sections so we know that um stephanie chiccarello when she did the mvp planning process worked really hard to include community members who don't often show up to meetings right so that that might be something to work into climate action is we want to make sure that as we're implementing these goals as we're preparing our climate action plan we're doing so in a way that brings in community members who are often marginalized or underrepresented when we're talking about housing affordability i will later talk about uh how in the economic development section i don't like the term strong neighborhoods because i don't know what that means but i do like the term diverse neighborhoods or something along those lines so perhaps in housing affordability we talk about um housing diversity and and supporting racially diverse and and um integrated neighborhoods and so to me i think it's actually better instead of having a standalone section if we really want to show that racial equity is important to us um it isn't about having a standalone section that goes this is the racial equity section yay it's about actually working racial equity into all of our goals around housing around economic development around planning around personnel around community engagement instead of just saying here's where you deal with racial equity it's no no no when you do any of these goals racial equity has to be a lens through which we look in the same way that we've largely done for climate in a lot of ways calony i would agree with evan and also like you just said with climate action that's the same idea whether we're looking at economic development or housing that we are considering climate action goals but we still have a separate climate action goals i think just because that we haven't done enough for so long around racial equity and just inequities in our town that putting it out there separately as a goal and it is a goal and the thing to eradicate systemic racism and inequities that is a goal to provide public safety that is a goal and public safety of course is already here so i think we do need to put it as a goal specifically the other thing i just want to say before we decide on we need to create a what is it called a committee to oversee police i see i've spoken to four BIPOC leaders and black or black leaders specifically in our community and they all felt very strongly that we want to start from community engagement and start with we don't want to lead with a solution so fine getting a committee to oversee policing is a solution whereas all the four black leaders that i spoke to felt that you want to start with engagement of the different stakeholders framing this as whatever we want our goal to be whether it's public safety that's the framing and that means how do we engage all the different stakeholders starting from children school children what does safety mean to them what teachers what does safety mean to them people of color BIPOC the different communities what does safety mean to them and then from there we come up with what the solutions are whether it's overseeing the police is that where the problem is or is it in the communications or is it in in policies processes so where is the breakdown and that's where we will and maybe yes we do need a policing oversight committee in the end but i don't think we want to start with the solution when we don't know what the problem is at this point i know we're hearing from you people who've said we know what the problem is we've researched it thank you so much for doing all that work we are listening and and yet we are also listening to other people who who i've spoken to who are writing to us that there are other other safety issues other problems that they're seeing so this has to be done in a systematic way and i do agree we need to take some action bold action we need to have clear goals firstly united as a council which we all believe in and buy into so we're not at different places around this we have specific goals clearly stated and then we have specific strategies and measurables right like whether as paul himself says what are the smart goals that these should be specific timely measurable and and yeah that's all thank you that you have your hand up yes i just want to sort of speak to evan's point about how racial equity should be integrated throughout all of the work we're doing and the town manager is doing that speaks evan to the fact that we need a racial equity policy that it does need to be there i would be comfortable having it be say public safety and racial equity or racial equity uh public safety for me includes that but it needs to be directly addressed and it need it not just integrated through because it's a good idea but spoken as a clear and direct policy in our policy goals for the for the town manager and for the staff all right are there any other comments from the council because i do want to give the public an opportunity to comment and again the comments at this time are specifically regarding the town manager goals and i know there was one hand up and i know d you specifically wanted to speak to this would you like to come forward at this time i'm looking for hands for public comment on the town manager's goals okay d thank you please come forward and state your name and where you live so this is demetria shabazz and i live in south amherst district five and i was having technical difficulties so thank you for waiting i just wanted to address quickly two things because i i think this uh deliberation was very helpful uh not only for me to hear from town counselors who are our elected representatives but i think for you all um i wanted to first express my support of darcy do mott about minority opinions um i understand this is a summation and i i read you know uh the the beginning paragraph of your uh summary for this memo but it's to be shared and to inform the public i uh see it as uh creating a kind of false narrative if all of the the ideas even when there is some disagreement are taken into a collective narrative people will not residents will not then go and look for the individual document where darcy has disagreed i think it is helpful to at least indicate that and then we could do that research so i i wanted to support darcy on that but then secondly having to do with um racial equity as a goal i am in agreement with those that spoke up pat uh evan and shalini um and really uh what shalini was uh talking about having to have a stated and specific goal around racial equity that is what's needed in this document this town due to structural racism and bias which i saw performed and demonstrated on that august fifth g ol meeting where people's bias in um discussions around equity and race just to get to a policy document were on full display furthermore as you can see how this goes your biases are then written into a policy that is then carried out within this town so when you talk about achieving levels of equity within a system such as this small town as opposed to anywhere else you have an opportunity to make a difference by having that as an achievable measurable goal that the town manager could work towards okay secondly regarding the commission the commission we can flesh that out later but i think we have consistently had conversations with you all as our representatives but also with the police chief that a commission is something a unit in which we can bring community people together to have subpoena power to be involved in public safety within um amherst this is something out of all these conversations has been consistent all around so i just want to end there thank you for having this discussion obviously there's much more to be fleshed out but this is needed and we need measurable goals so i support shalini and pat and um evan i don't know if you spoke to measurable goals but we definitely need that and um i believe there's much more discussion that needs to happen just within your own ranks and i do pray and hope that happens within the year thank you thank you for your commenting uh lid liya lidya irons hello can you hear me we can name is lidya irons i live in district four and i want to echo everything that dr d shabazz has said in this meeting um one of the things that i think is really important for everyone on the town council to understand is that there is a reason why only a few voices can be heard in these meetings and they're very difficult to access understanding when we can comment on what section through the agendas um i just want to point that out and put that out there because i think one of the things that i have heard from many counselors is that you feel like or from at least one you feel like you're only hearing from a certain segment of the town but know that we're organizing so that our voices can be unified for the people who can sit on these calls until 9 p.m 10 p.m 11 p.m um as far as the goals for the town manager um for the coming year and into the future um i do think that racial equity and social justice should be prominent and paramount because goals are a compass for what we do they give us a true north as to where our decisions lie and how we make decisions and how we operate and the town manager is the person who has the power to decide where money goes to decide um many things that affect everyone's life here in this town and so i really would like to encourage everyone on the town council to think about that but also i was going through the town council's testimony from the meeting that at the g.o.l had um and here is some i was reading in the transcripts about the town manager's performance objectives where patie angeles brought up perhaps putting in social justice or racial equity um and i was particularly disturbed by george ryan's um comments about he said quote we can acknowledge a concern but i have a deep ambivalence about some of the claims that are being made just because people claim things doesn't mean that they are true and i just feel so saddened and disturbed by that comment he also said later in the meeting quote this is not about what people believe it's about what we do it cannot be held responsible for people's beliefs that there's lots of stuff that has been thrown around in the last couple months and i don't have the slightest interest in responding to them end quote and i just want to point out that on many of these calls black people indigenous people people have color have come forward in a really dangerous and exposing and retraumatizing way to speak to these things and it is your job to believe them and i really would hope that you would know that the voices that you're hearing don't represent just a few but represent many and that we're working really hard to bring you this message that our town needs to change and it needs to change by putting things like racial equity and social justice in things like goals for the town manager the people in power need to reflect that these things are important and if you don't it really shows us where your values lie thank you thank you for your comment sarah palace please state your name and where you do sarah palace district five i would like to agree with dr shabazz and the previous speaker that racial equity and social justice issues need to be front and center in the goals document i moved here fairly recently and the first town council video i ever watched was the august fifth ul meeting and i was really shocked and disappointed at the comments of one or two of the council members that black people are implying that black people are fabricating or imagining experiences that they've had that it's just really beyond insulting and it's unacceptable for a council member to be talking that way about their constituents and that they're going to be believing some constituents and not others based on the color of their skin it's not acceptable the council members need to get some bias training clearly and that is one of the reasons that putting racial justice issues front and center in the goals document is so important we're seeing this right here in our town by the people that are supposed to be representing all of us it's just not okay and uh very very disappointed that that was my first experience with town council i'll be writing a longer letter so i don't take up your time now thank you thank you for your comment allegra please state your full name and where you live my name is allegra clark and i live in district two and i just wanted to also voice my support for not only creating a racial equity goal that stands alone but for weaving it into all of the goals that the town sets for the town manager i think it's a both and situation not neither or um we know that there are racial disparities in healthcare we know there are racial disparities in housing we know there are racial disparities in policing we know there are racial disparities in education we know there are racial disparities in economics and if we don't address the racial disparities in all of those areas we're not going to be doing anybody any favors um So I again want to thank Dr. Chavaz for voicing her concerns and the previous speakers as well. I hope you will listen and hear what the community has to say, especially the BIPOC members who are brave enough to come before this council again and again, expressing their concerns. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Gabrielle. Hi, my name is Gabrielle Davila. I just want to say, first of all, that I think in terms of racial justice and labeling racial justice as a goal, that should be the first step. We have to understand that it's not acceptable for us as a town or you as a town council to think of racial justice as just another goal, just another thing you have to get to. So I went to a meeting where this actually happened. There was a discussion and then a public comment on the construction of electrical poles parallel to each other in downtown Amherst. And then after that was the discussion of the multimillion dollar police budget. So I think we have to evaluate not only getting racial and social justice as a goal for this group, but thinking about how it's extremely important and one of the most important things that any group of people and political power can tackle. Nevermind this group, which is as all local government is supposed to be held very close and accountable to the people. Now, allowing it just given antidote, it's surely not the worst experience of race, having to deal with Amherst. First, I'd like to say that the belief in racism, that that's not really a belief. If you choose not to believe in racism, you're not believing in the truth. And racism exists in Amherst too. So it isn't a belief to think that racism exists in America or that racism exists in Amherst. So for the quick antidote, which Councilman Ryan may feel quote, ambivalence towards is that, you know, when I went to school here in Amherst during my elementary school age. I never encountered a teacher of color to teach me I know there's one at the school, but I never had one personally. And that might not sound like a big deal but you know when you're elementary school, you read Harry Potter and teachers are cool teachers are positions of authority and you experienced that in your school as well. And so it was only until I left the Amherst school district that I was able to get a teacher of color and feel this sort of belief, you know, he told me that he believed in me and all that and it was really nice. But it would have been lovely if I could have gotten that at a younger age when I was in the Amherst school system and that's just one example. I also don't think people of color like me to have to prove to you that racism exists. I mean, it is a fact that racism exists in America, and that it exists in Amherst. So I really don't think that we should have to come and petition the town council over and over again, just to get it on the agenda of goals. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Someone who is titled peace and love please state your name and where you live. Sorry, I didn't hear your, my name is Jose Duster I didn't hear the last part. Oh, and where you live Jose. I was born in North Hampton resident. I was born in a union in Puerto Rico. And I, I'm just here to. I'm exhausted. And I've been fighting the abolition fight for my entire life. My parents and uncles and cousins were all incarcerated because of the drug war. And I have magically managed to stay unconvicted and innocent of any crime for my whole life, even though my darker siblings have been convicted and arrested and harassed. I come from a land that's colonized Puerto Rico had was taken away from the people that live there by the United States government. We're the most recent colonization. And it's really hard for me to watch this process and even sometimes it take part in it. Because then a lot of Native American communities have abandoned this fight because they have given up. And they're sick of hearing white people say, Oh, you're overreacting or your feelings are too much or we took your land and it's not a big deal because we have more guns, or whatever. I see a lot of my siblings from the mainland, dissociating from the fight, or making their own communities which is great. And finally, they can make their own communities of Native Americans. But like for me my struggle my people Puerto Rico still very heavily colonized. I stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement because I know what it's like to be a second class citizen because I'm a Puerto Rican and they said that I had American citizenship, even though I didn't have basic resources like education, social welfare, medical health care, or any sort of local like no elected representation, no representation at all from me as a child coming here to this land that I was a citizen in somehow magically thank God you're a citizen now right. I'm here to remind you to be very sensitive to the demands and requests of the minority movement here the Black Lives Matter movement because I watch you take things away over and over again. It's not a question like the last person just said it's not up for debate. You've taken things and you've taken things and you've taken things and you've taken things and you've taken things and your response to the people who have been the most traumatized has been to police and to incarcerate them. So I think that the best thing that you could do would be to reach out to your local Black Lives Matter activists and really, really include them in how you budget your town, and especially how the police work. And we're all tired, we're all so tired. I need you to complete your statement. Thank you very much. I want to tell you, we all have children we all have families and listen, we're never going to stop fighting one way or another. We're going to get our rights. We're going to get ours. And you're either going to suffer, or you're going to be remembered historically as the people that helped us. So I would tell you to really think about whether you want to suffer, or you want to help us and be remembered in a positive light. It's not long. We will not survive much longer under the conditions that you've provided us, and we will not tolerate it. So get with the movement, resign, and let other representatives be elected, move aside, or be pushed out. Thank you for your comments. Esolda. Good evening. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Postel manager goals were not shared on time for any meaningful public comment tonight. Dozens of residents of color offered public comments specific suggestions and written testimony to the council over the past few weeks and a variety of issues. Yet this document fails to acknowledge the existence of people. Let alone address any of the issues brought forth in recent weeks. One would never know that the BLL BLM movement and local resident participation on race democracy and housing have been front and center in the public eyes. When you read the proposed goals. The town council failed to give a meaningful response to the call to defund the police. The town council failed to address the use of last minute $80,000 allocation to address systemic racism and Amherst. The town council failed to prepare a tenable plan for the voting locations and propose a flawed plan based on misinformation. The reversal of the plan was based on resident participation. The town council has failed to provide enough information on a timely basis tonight as an example, the, the format is not accessible for public comment. So August 3rd, 2020, the discussion of the consolidation plan was placed very late on the agenda. The August 10th agenda. I will actually look it up. Looks like it is violating the Open Meetings Act because at the top of the agenda, you state that there is a document that that needs to be reviewed for the time of public comment. The document was not available the day before the meeting. In addition, when a cross section of residents of color commented on August 10th about their experiences with racism and Amherst and called out the need for anti bias and anti racist training, rather than listen and learn the council reacted with a mixture of silence, defensive outrage and repeated statements about how they needed concrete suggestions. Residents had already offered these suggestions. They were not sounded like patronizing or placating. What is needed are listening sessions to establish real respectful dialogues with residents of color. I do hear our district five representative making new efforts today, but I have to say that I was completely surprised in that meeting. The representative said that that she was surprised that people experienced racism and Amherst district five includes many working families. Some residing in apartment complexes suffering through the crisis of unemployment exposure to COVID in essential jobs, food insecurity, the threat of racist policing and or unjust immigration enforcement. I hear elected officials say that that she didn't realize people were experiencing racism and district five honestly was breathtaking. This comment and others were flashing me on sign pointing to the need for people's council made up of BIPOC BIPOC Amherst residents. The reconciliation process has already been mentioned by others and these are not original ideas and obviously we see many people in the black community taking leadership and I support their leadership. It would be incumbent on elected appointed officials to to begin crossing this yawning gulf that apparently separates us. August 10th video I am, I, you know, I don't know how the leaders who preceded me can be so incredibly patient and polite it's to their credit. I will be brutally honest with you and say that the August 10 meeting actually provides case studies for future anti racism trainers wishing to showcase the failure of public bodies to take in the experiences of people of color. However, I had not even seen the transcript of the August fifth meeting which has been detailed previously I won't go into the quotes here. And that was incredibly offensive because in denying racism, you are cementing it that the result of the meeting was to exclude any reference to racism, and to offer a weak vaguely wordly goal is is enacting biases and I won't go into the excerpt people have already read it. In addition to the implicit bias plaguing the council. It has also demonstrated an anti democratic streak, for example, the dissenting voices on the commission that was studying the change in zoning regulations, those dissenting voices were allowed to speak. And there was a two thirds majority previously required for rezoning now it's a simple majority zoning and voting are issues of tremendous importance to all residents, and a particular impact to residents of color these are not separate issues by any means from policing and from the failure to address the needs of the BIPOC residents of Amherst. All these recent events laid bare the truth. And I do feel that this council does not represent us. If I am wrong, I will gladly admit it as I watch council members try to repair the damage with their actions and the words of that one time resident of Amherst the writer James Baldwin quote I can't believe what you say because I see what you do. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Please state your name and where you live. And we bring birdie in. Apparently birdie is running an older version of zoom that does not allow birdie to participate to speak due to the version of zoom that they're running. Can she at least speak without coming into the room. I'm going to try right now. No. We ran into this previously and what we did was we had the person update their zoom and then participate later. Unfortunately, it's I think we're at the end of the meeting. Yeah, exactly. I would like to do is ask that you submit your public comment to us in writing, since we were unable to bring you into the meeting. And you send that to town council at Amherst MA calm. Sorry dot gov. Let me do that again. Town council at Amherst MA dot gov. I see two hands up of people who have already spoken and so I'm going to move on and back to the council. Are there additional tap councilor comments with regard to the goals of the council of the town manager, the draft goals of the town manager. Dorothy, are you having trouble using the ant. And up so Kathy Shane, you have your hand up. Yeah, I don't know how tired people are in terms of going through them but I had some specific comments on the economic vitality some of the things that we're doing as well as on the capital projects, you know, I realize we're trying to be consistent with past statements but I'll do capital projects. It references back a statement that we did in November 2019. I think the conditions of the town were very different at that point so I have some suggested wording changes. I'm going to suggest Kathy that you just went mute. I don't know why Kathy, you're muted. So what I thought I do is I just send them in and and I was going to request like I get a word document and I can just insert economic vitality. One of my questions is it makes a statement about supporting new growth. I'm not sure that we've ever had a discussion on new growth we've talked about economic and cultural vitality. And so I think just some of this wording, we have to pay a little attention to the world we're living in right now. And I don't think it's any new growth, whatever in whatever form. So again, I'm not sure how you want to get the comments because these are pure wording changes that probably would require discussion and I'll just send them in with why I'm suggesting changes is probably the best because I don't think it warrants a long discussion right now. Thank you. And if you send them to George, who was chair of GL that would be good. And George maybe if I could get the word document, I could insert it I can mark up a PDF but it's going to be very hard for you to read. So, if that doesn't work I can copy and paste into another thing too. Thanks. We'll take care of that. Thank you. Dorothy you have a comment. I would like a way forward on the issue of racial justice in the goals. And we talked about not having had the conversation we haven't had a formal presentation from citizen committee or the commission. So I'm wondering if it is possible if you could say work with D if there could be a proposal that we could have presented before the next meeting that we could then. Okay, town manager is actually in conversation with a variety of different groups D is one of them. And is planning to come forward with a proposal I don't know if it will be by the next meeting but I know he's working hard to try to meet that deadline. Paul did you have any other comment on that at this time. Okay, Evan do you have a comment. I guess I just had a process question, which actually I think was answered by Kathy, which is is the, I wasn't sure how much we want to have a discussion tonight or how much we were going to do this the same as we did the last goals in which we would just send GOL, our edits or comments and they would bring them back and so if, if that's the process, then I will hold off if the idea is that we're actually going to be editing and changing this tonight then I have much more suggestions but I gladly hold them for time if if I can just send them to GOL to be considered. I think if it's substantive like the discussion about adding an equity and racial justice goal, then we should have the discussion. If it is editing, or wanting to add a pointer to I think you can do that in writing. Okay, that I will save mine and get it in writing to GOL. Thank you. Darcy. Hi, I just wanted to make a comment about the climate action goal. My first, my first, first I have a question and that is, are we, we have the goal, and then we have some statements under it, and a list of three actions. Are we planning on rating those separately or how, how will that actually end up in the evaluation tool? You know, we've only briefly discussed the evaluation tool and whether it would end up being a broad evaluate a broad rating for each of the major goals or whether there would be any breakout. I believe I think the thought was it would be a broad rating for each of the overall goals and then the comments would speak to the various pieces underneath each of the goals. But that was the extent of the conversation. It really hasn't been a fully in depth conversation. Yeah, I guess I, I'm disappointed at the comparison between this year's climate action. Which will end up being just a comment on that one objective versus last year, which were five different elements that were significant goals to be answered by counselors and counselors. So that I'm disappointed in. And secondly, the first, the first goal within the objective implementing community choice aggregation. I'm very glad that Mandy Joe thought of putting that in. And but the, and the municipal vulnerability preparedness program. And that isn't something, I mean, it gets implemented when, because we've received the grant, but the ultimate goal is to produce a climate action and resilience plan, which would then be implemented on our adoption. And can I ask you just to clarify, will that, will you get to that plan by this year. Yes. Okay, then I would suggest that you send us something that would augment how that is stated. Okay, I will do that. Okay. Are there other comments about the goals in general, or specific, not tweaking or not additions, but substantive issues that we should discuss. Okay. So, again, I want to just point out in both in Alyssa, yes. I'm so sorry. I think that I mean, in terms of, like you said, substantive, I do we have some agreement that geo rather than each of us having to write to GOL that GOL is going to work to see what it would look like to integrate the things we were talking about associated with race and social justice, in addition to a specific measurable goal. And so that's one of my questions is if we need to write about that or if that's the sense of the body and they can take that away with them. Because there might be individual things each of us have mentioned tonight that we won't all agree is actually a goal right I mean we can all send in edits to our hearts and content. But the practice here that GOL is followed was trying to follow along with actions we'd already taken, and people have individual thoughts about what new growth means or doesn't mean doesn't necessarily mean that's going to end up getting adopted one way or the other it might just be left over hold over language. And I guess my other question is if we're not. I want to hear back from GOL before we adopted whatever set of goals for adopting more about the instrument, because I am well past the point of of doing things the way we did them tonight. In terms of town manager evaluation. It sort of worked when there were five of us feeding into it. It doesn't work to do it this way with 13. You did a masterful memo, but this is not really workable. We would rather be able to say we adopted this goal around community engagement right when it came time to do the town managers evaluation that we would have a discussion, a real full town council discussion about what community engagement looked like not sit down and decide what to write commendable about and what to write individual comments about, and then you have to try and figure out if the preponderance of us believed one thing about community engagement, and one or three or something else. So I'm asking us to kind of open our heads a little bit more about what the instruments going to look like because we're required to evaluate the town manager. It doesn't have to look like the instrument I fine tuned for many years as a select board member. It doesn't have to look like the instrument we've looked at the last two years. 13 of us, like I, I don't know how we're going to, no matter how much we fix this goal set that we're going to feel like we did a better job of evaluating the town manager next year, just based on the simple logistics of 13 people. So I just really hope that you can think a little more about just how might we do it whether it's just text, I mean, like, not text to each other but write out full text things rather than trying to come up with percentages. But more importantly to me is that we agree like if somebody says you know, I'm the only person who noticed this and we can all say, Wow, we shouldn't definitely make sure the town manager pays attention to that the following year. We're not effectively having that conversation now. So I'm, although I appreciate the movement we're going toward I still don't think it's going to fix our technical problem at the end, we'll be all proud of what we came up with, but we still won't want how to use it to know that we whether or not these goals have been accomplished. Let me try to mention a couple things in response. First of all, GL all five of us are here and listening and taking copious notes. And we'll also have the tape to look at. And the second thing is that we can have a further discussion about what the evaluation instrument might look like. I do want to point out that we have already asked GL to relook at the whole evaluation process. This year anyway. And so that was on the docket. And while I hear what you're saying about discussion. I want to just point out that we already take up almost an entire two months of the council's time doing the manager's evaluation. And I'm not clear that we really have the time to devote any more than that to it. It is an arduous process. And while I think it's very important that we spend significant time evaluating our chief executive officer, I also want to make sure that we get the work of the town done and like the kind of work we've been hearing tonight. So that's some of my final comments. Any other comments at this time. Both the document for the goals goes back to GL. The document for and, and we will provide you with a word document but please only send the response to George. In regard to the town manager evaluation only send the response to me. Okay, any other comments at this time. We have no other comments we don't have regular reports tonight we have no town managers reports. There's other general comments from the councilor council and give you a minute to decide if there are. And I'm going to call the meeting adjourned at 920. Thank you.