 Good evening. It is Monday, March 3rd, 2021. Under Governors Bakers March 12th, order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. This allows us to hold this virtual town council meeting. Given that we have a quorum of the council present, I am calling the meeting to order at 6.31. Yeah, I'll call upon each council by name at that time. They're going to unmute and say present and then they will mute again. This meeting includes audio, video and is available live on Amherst media. There is no chat room. If you have technical issues, please let Athena or me know and we will make note of that and either pause the meeting or if necessary, go on with it. Athena will be monitoring councilor's connections and with that I'm going to go ahead and call the roll. I'm going to start with Alyssa Brewer. Present. Pat DeAndalus. Present. Darcy DeMondt. Present. Lynn Griesmer is present. Mandy Johannick. Present. Earthie Pam. Present. Evan Ross. Present. George Ryan. Present. Kathy Shane. Here. Steve Schreiber. Here. Andy Steinberg. Andy, can you. Thank you. Sarah Schwartz. Present. And Shalini Balmille. I'm here. There you are. Thank you. We are going to continue on with a couple of announcements and we're going to show those on the screen. I just want to point out to the audience a couple of key hearings that are coming up. One is on the proposed budget and that will be joint with the finance committee on the 17th. Another on the 24th is when we will hold the required hearing on the North Common. And then let me also point out that there will be a joint public hearing with the community resources committee and the planning board regarding article 15 includes inclusionary zoning and the temporary moratorium. And that will be on May 19th at seven and eight o'clock respectively. The finance committee also will have a number of seriously long and serious debate over the budget. That calendar can be found on the town website. And I just want to make note that the meetings begin at one, not the normal two o'clock, giving the council more time. And if counselors that are not on the finance committee wish to attend, please let Athena know as far in advance as possible so that if we need to call the committee of the whole, we can do so. I also want to point out while there is a GOL meeting on May 5th, there is no TSO meeting, town services and outreach committee meeting. It has been canceled on May 6th. One other quick announcement we're going to show you and that is we urge you to help honor high school graduates and they have a link that you can get to through the Amherst Regional High School website and allows you to order signs to honor a graduate. We're going to move on. There is no hearing tonight. Our next area is public comment and let me just mention this is one of two public comment periods tonight. This is the time for general public comment. Later, there is a special public comment period associated with the regional school budget. So with that, residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes based on the number of people who wish to speak. And I will ask for people to raise their hands momentarily. Kathy, you have your hand up? Yeah, I just had a request, Lynn, for the hearing on the North Commons, is it possible that we can post the diagram somewhere where people can find them of the two plan options? I just checked and engaged Amherst, they're not up yet. So that's just a great question. They're working on it. Thank you very much. I know Breonna just made one update already today with regard to zoning. So the council will not engage in dialogue or comment on a matter raised during general public comment. Just to participate, please raise your hand. At this point, I see three hands. First one is Zoe Crabtree. Please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Hi, everybody. My name is Zoe Crabtree and I live in District 5. Firstly, I want to just say that only being able to look at the budget for a couple minutes ahead of this is a little bit frustrating, but my first takes at looking at the executive summary and the very helpful chart at the beginning, thanks for adding that, is that I am very excited to see that there is funding for the Cres program, which I think is really lovely. However, it is only the $130,000 that was taken from frozen positions from the police department that you all froze last year, which is drastically less than the $2.2 million that the CSWG requested to fully fund and support this program. So I would urge everybody on this call to consider how such a program could be successful with such little funding compared to the budget that was devised for it to run. And that's what I will say on that today. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. We have caller 0810. Please identify yourself and where you live. It's star six to unmute. Yes. Okay. So I'm here. This is a Vincent O'Connor. Is this an appropriate time to make a comment? Yes, Vince. We can hear you go ahead, please. Okay. So I would like to renew a request I made, I think almost two years ago, that the council appoint an Amherst refugee and asylum applicant resettlement commission. At the point that I made the request, there was multiple litigation against the various facilities that were being used to house immigrants in really poor conditions. And we had a very unfriendly federal administration. We now have a much friendlier federal administration, but a substantially different situation where there are many unaccompanied minors who have applied for either refugee status or asylum in the United States. And I think I know that there are individuals who would like to do something. In fact, that I have spoken to a four or five Spanish speaking residents of the town who would be willing to serve on such a commission, but really finding a way for people to express their interest in housing somebody who is seeking refuge or asylum in the United States, I think is impossible for an individual to do. But if there were a local, a municipal commission that could solicit interest, interview interested parties, and make a brief report to the council that could be forwarded to the appropriate federal agency saying we have interviewed so many people, there appear to be so many slots available, please consider us. And for, you know, for people who don't have relatives in the United States, and we don't know how many there are of those folks. I mean, the problems that have been, that are the reason, that have resulted in these refugee and asylum claims are, you know, long standing. We all know the United States' involvement in Central America, very tragic and sad history. And as much as we decry the history, we have an obligation to try to do something as individuals. And I think that a municipal commission would be able to accomplish what what individuals cannot do. And I would ask the council to refer the matter to the appropriate committee, inform me of when the committee would meet, and I would be happy to attend by Zoom, I suppose, to a committee meeting, provide them in writing with a proposal, and see if we could move forward and the names of people who are willing to volunteer so that they could be, have some guarantee that if a committee were established, it wouldn't be a half a year before there were enough volunteers. Vince, we want to thank you for your comment, your time is up. Yeah, thank you very much. Okay, thank you. Joanne Morse. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Please state your name and where to live. Hi, I'm Joanne Morse. I live on Potwine Lane in Amherst. It's nice to see many of you. Who have been at many meetings within the past. I was really disappointed to see that my signature was not counted for the put the library decision to voters. It was really interesting to have that example of voters disenfranchisement become so personal for a small thing. I mean, a petition, although not a small decision about how we spend our money as a town. But I'm really shocked that signatures seem to have been randomly, or at least without much explanation, not considered valid to bring the number of the petitioners right below the required number that was needed. I ask that you reconsider that, that you follow through with seeing our affidavits. I've signed an affidavits saying that, yes, this is actually me. I've lived in the same place for 13 years in Amherst. I know many of you. And I would like to not have my signature not counted as a voter in town. And I know that I'm not alone in being just a resident of town who signed that petition and what was not counted. So I look forward to hearing your response about that when it's appropriate. Thanks. Thank you for your comment. Bailey, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Can people hear me? Great. My name is Bailey Batty. I live on North Whitney Street. I would like to start by reminding the town council that last year during the budget process you asked for research and you asked for somewhere to move APD money to so that it wouldn't be lost from the budget. The community safety working group have worked to some pretty intense deadlines to give you this alternative to do this research and have been given according to my math, which is often wrong. Please feel free to check me on this. What looks like six percent of the budget that they have asked for for this initiative for the Cres programme. And the police budget has actually slightly increased, I think. This is setting the Cres programme up to fail. They have proposed some really great things, they have done this research, but if they are not like if the Cres programme is not able to be run in a way that like can actually be successful, then of course it's going to look like this is not successful and like this is a failed initiative and that this isn't something we should be worth we should be working on. In addition to asking you to fully fund the Cres programme, I would also urge you not to cut the budget of one of the hardest hit and most important town services are schools. School staff have been working exponentially harder this year and the past year. In some cases for less pay and while risking frankly their lives in some of these situations to perform some pretty impossible things. I don't really like the phrasing that students are behind on things because it sort of makes it sound like education is a competition and I don't I don't agree with that. But it is definitely clear that students have struggled socially and academically through this pandemic and for several years coming after this now they are going to need significantly more support, not less support from Paras, from ELL services, from special education services. In conclusion, the proposed budget for the police department, the schools and the wildly small percentage of the Cres programme are going to continue to perpetuate and increase the harm done to our BIPOC house list and student populations in Amherst. Please consider taking money from the police budget to fully fund both the Cres programme and our school budgets. Thank you. Thank you for your comment, Bailey. Maria Capecchi, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Hi, my name is Maria Capecchi, living in South Amherst. I'm speaking tonight in support of a thorough review of the certification process of the recent petition by Amherst voters. This resulted in the erroneous rejection of dozens of signatures of registered voters. The subject of the petition is irrelevant to the issue at hand. The particular ask of a petition may make you furious, it may make you ecstatic or you could give not a wit about it one way or the other. The issue here is that a petition had numerous signatures rejected and this resulted in that petition being denied. The petitioners have asked the appropriate bodies to review those rejections and correct these mistakes. Whatever one thinks or wants relative to the subject of the petition, we should all be concerned when people are disenfranchised. It's not only the individuals whose signatures were rejected in error who were affected. Every person on the petition was negatively impacted when the petition was erroneously certified. If not rectified, every resident in town will have been denied their right to vote. Thank you. Thank you for your comments, Maria. Mona Shadi, please state your name and where you live. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. My name is Mona Shadi. I currently live in East Hampton, but I have lived and worked in Amherst for many years. I am calling tonight because I am a former ELL student and I am deeply dismayed at the cuts that I see in the new proposed budget. I thought that maybe sort of talking about some of my experiences might help, but I have been out of ELL for 30 years. When I look around me, I see that access to those classes are not thriving. They are dwindling. I am very, very concerned about that. One of the things I would like to put past you is an analogy that really helped me a lot in understanding the dynamics of town funding. What I would like to do is compare the police department to the ambulance department. Excuse me. The police force is unique because they are the only public servants who are armed. Yet just as ambulance services act as the emergency room arm of our health system, police act as the emergency arm of our justice system. And they are armed because they cannot prevent violence. They can only meet or respond, act to deter or neutralize it, which is why they are armed and why ambulances at the same time have intubation and oxygen equipment. We don't ask ambulances to prevent car accidents or heart attacks. We ask them to respond after trauma has taken place. We know that preventing heart attacks and car accidents requires the work of several agencies, the public, and departments. It requires a focus on integration, safety, quality of life, research, and changes where needed. This is the job of our community. If we want a healthy and secure community, we need to look at it holistically. Asking emergency workers to ensure a community of fulfilled, healthy, and thriving people is like expecting EMTs to address the causes of cancer. We know that there are experts and doctors and nurses. Excuse me. Let's leave the health prevention to them. And let's leave the idea that more police equals a safe and thriving community. There are experts in this field. We need to defund the police and reallocate those resources to them. And certainly the people that stand to lose the most, the interpreters, the parrots, the teachers, the art teachers, these are the people that we need to be nourishing. And I would like to ask that we defund the Amherst police department in order to fund the Crest Program and to take that community, to take our community service budget out of 6% where it's been stagnant for the last few years. I thank you for your time. Thank you for your comments, Mona. Lydia Irons, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can. My name is Lydia Irons. I live on Jeffrey Lane in Amherst. And I'm making a comment tonight to ask you to fully fund the Crest Program at the $2.2 million that they asked for in their unbelievably well put together and well researched proposal. I'd like you all to remember back to the budget hearings that we had last year where many of you talked about if we had an alternative, we could maybe think about it. And then this amazing group of people came together and worked so hard for a very small amount of money and put so much of their own blood, sweat and tears into this proposal and to have 6% of that in this budget is pretty insulting. I also would like to point out that on page 65 of the budget that the public got maybe an hour, two hours before this meeting. On page 65, the public safety is 44% of the budget in that pie chart. So 44% is for public safety, but we can't even provide the Crest Program what they asked for for their pilot. I find that pretty enraging. Also, there's some very upsetting language in there. Quote, no other community in mass has such a program. This is ridiculously self-congratulatory if you're not going to fully fund the program that was put together by the community safety working group. 93.6% of calls to the APD are for nonviolent nonviolent calls and that would be answered by the Crest Program in theory. So if 93.6% of calls would be going to this pilot program, yet you are only giving them 130K, you are setting them up for failure. So I am going to ask you to when you see this budget presentation tonight, reject it and fully fund the Crest Program for what they asked for. Thank you for your comments, Lydia. Allegra, please enter the room, state your full name and where you live. Allegra, you need to unmute. Athena, can we help her? I've sent a request to unmute. Okay. Allegra, you've received a request on you. Please do so. Allegra, let's try one more time. Please unmute your mic. Is there any further instruction we can give her, Athena? No, if she's not at her keyboard, she might not see that request. I see. Okay. Then let's put her back into the attendees and we'll see if it works later. Okay. Lauren, please enter the room, state your full name and where you live. Lauren, you need to unmute. I'm sorry, my hand was not supposed to be raised. Sorry. Okay. Thank you, Lauren. Are there any other comments at this time? Allegra, did you figure out how to unmute? Okay. Are there any other comments at this time? Lydia, you already spoke, so I want to go to Adrienne Therese. Please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Good evening and thank you, Lynn. Thank you, town councillors. My name is Adrienne Therese. I do live in District 5 and tonight I'm speaking on behalf of the League of Women Voters of Amherst. Previously, I had attended and I'm speaking tonight about the District Advisory Board, which is coming before you later on. I have to say as background that I attended the April 7th and the April 21st meeting of the GOL Committee and I was pleased to hear their deliberations on a draft that the League of Women Voters was unable to support at that point in time. The official position of the League of Women Voters is that we believe in the responsibility for districting preferably should be vested in an independent special commission. So with that having been said, I want to thank and hats off to the GOL for presenting to the town council tonight an independent commission composed of nine, nine elected resident members who will come from the districts within the town. I also commend the GOL on the timeline that you've presented, although we don't expect census data block specific precinct level information until the until the end of the September early reading is it could be arriving by the end of this month. So I love your charge. Aside from that, the charge, the composition of the committee, your very effective timelines to get us up and running with census block data by the end of the month is all speaks well for our town in getting us to a redrawing of maps that are contiguous, compact and include communities of interest and just with one more thing. I hope the town council will also entertain on behalf of the residents of Amherst an opportunity to take a look at the maps that you've redrawn. Please allow us at least one public hearing. I know in past years during redistricting, people have said have comment. Why do I have a precinct change? What's this all about? I like my old polling place. And I think if we all work together and inform voters that redistricting is happening, that indeed we can have our individual input into how we draw our maps and then do outreach to inform everyone as to what's taking place and why then it's a win-win. So I'll conclude by saying GOL, terrific work. I really enjoyed listening to your two meetings. Thank you for accepting my public comments and on behalf of the League of Women Voters, let's do this together. Thank you. Thank you, Adrienne. Amara, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Hi, my name is Amara Donovan and I live on Amity Street. I'm extremely disappointed to see the lack of funding for the Crest program using only the frozen police positions while seeing an increase in the police budget itself. This shows a clear lack of priority in centering our BIPOC residents and in honoring their lived experiences as valuable data when making decisions about our town. It's a check-the-box response to the critical needs of our community and is incredibly racist and oppressive. If any of you have followed the history of this town beyond Jeffrey Amherst, you know that this is not new. Generation after generation of BIPOC community members have served on committee after committee have been subjected to trauma over and over again and then ignored over and over again until the work is forgotten and started all over. Investment is a direct reflection of our values in this town and we continue to fail Black and Brown residents, families and young people. It's extremely disturbing to see the funding spent on other things in our town like $117 a day on gas for police officers to circle our town day after day, surveilling Black and Brown residents at alarming rates, even investing in the library as a building before we invest in the safety and well-being of Black and Brown people, children, families is ridiculous and again is a clear reflection of the values of the values those in leadership in our town today have, which can also be reflected on this very Zoom in the sheer absence of Black and Brown people on the council and in leadership positions. This is a problem. Even the police themselves expressed publicly on a community safety working group meeting that they would be, quote, dancing in the street, unquote, if they didn't have to handle nonviolent calls. The majority of all calls made to our police department. We must defund the police and invest in our BIPOC community based on the needs and solutions they identify. That is equity and that is anti-racism and amorous is falling behind. Thank you. Mara, thank you for your comments. Allegra, you've already spoken once today and so I'm actually going to go on. She hasn't spoken. Oh, I'm sorry. Allegra, you are the person that we were not able to unmute. Please enter the room and my apologies. Allegra, there you go. Hi. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Sorry about that. I was just joining. My name is Allegra. I am a resident of Amherst. I live in District 2 and I was just right. I wanted to say that I hope that the town council will fully fund the CRUST program as the community service working group has put it forward at the $2.2 million with money reallocated from the police budget. It's my understanding that the two frozen positions from last year are being diverted into the community services budget to cover this and that there is an additional position that just became vacant last week and if that is in fact the case that that also be frozen and reallocated towards the CRUST program. Additionally, I'm interested to hear more about if money did come down from the stimulus package to fund education and if that would mean that we wouldn't be looking at cuts there and if we still are looking at cuts in the schools that we again think about reallocating funding away from the police because it has been a really difficult year for children and to take away supports and basically enriching activities for them I think is the wrong move. So that's what I want to say and I hope you have a good evening. Legra, thanks for your persistence and we're glad you could join us and unmute your phone. And thanks for your comment. Are there any other comments at this time? Okay, then we are going to go on to the consent agenda which will show on the screen. I just want to note, Adrienne, did you have your hand up or did you just not put it down? We're going to go on to the consent agenda. The following items were selected because they were considered to be routine and it was reasonable to expect they would pass with no controversy. After I read the items, please let me know if you would like to have an item removed. Removal of an item does not require a second. So I'm going to go ahead and read this as a motion and then I'll be looking for a second to move the following items in the printed motions there under and approve those items as a single unit. Six A, wave waiver of town council rules of procedure, rule 8.6 for agenda item 6.8, Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month Proclamation. Six A, adoption of the Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month Proclamation. Eight B, referral of the FY22 budget to the finance committee. Eight C, referral of the FY22 capital improvement program to finance committee. Nine A, approval of town manager reappointments to affordable housing trust and human rights commission and 11 approval of minutes. March 25th, 2021, joint town council and town services and outreach. Midi meeting minutes, public forum on primary village intersection. March 27th, during town council and town services and outreach. Midi meeting meetings, committee meeting minutes. Public forum on primary village intersection. April 5th, special town council meeting minutes. Public forum on library appropriations. April 5th, 2021, regular town council meeting minutes and April 12th, regular town council meeting minutes. Is there a second? Second, Ross. Thank you. Is there any item that anybody would like to have removed? Okay. Seeing no hands, I'm going to begin the voting with Melanie Beaumont. Yes. Alyssa Brewer. Aye. Kathy Angeles. Aye. Darcy DuMont. Yes. Lynn Grismers on aye. Mandy Johanicki. Aye. Dorothy Pam. Aye. Evan Ross. Aye. George Ryan. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Yes. Sarah Schwartz. Aye. Passes unanimously 13-0-0 and no absences. We're going to move on to the next agenda item, which at the request of the GOL, we're going to have a new practice, and that is given the item of the Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month Proclamation. George Ryan will say a few words about it. George. Thank you, Lynn. First, just a very brief thank you to Jen Moisten for bringing us to the council's attention and providing us with an initial draft. While the council this evening is seeking to honor and recognize the contributions of residents from Asia, India, and the Pacific Islands, and so therefore proclaims the month of May as Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and we ask you the public to join us in the town's first Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month virtual celebration on Monday, May 17, 2021 at 5 p.m. Thank you so much, George, and that will be a new practice of the council so that we recognize proclamations besides just listing them. We're going to move on to presentations. First one is an update on the library, and I'm going to call on town manager Paul Blockham. So thank you, Lynn. So a lot has happened since your vote on April 5th to fund the library. So at your meeting, you voted to authorize borrowing to fund the expansion renovation of the Jones library. Subsequent to that town council vote, residents initiated a petition to trigger section 8.4 of the Amherst home rule charter that provides for a voter veto protesting against the measure approved by the town council. To initiate this process, the petitioners needed to submit a petition physically, quote, physically signed by a minimum of 5% of the registered voters as of the date of the most recent town election, close quote. The town clerk determined that this number was 864 signatures. The petitioners had 14 days following the date on which the town council had voted to approve the measure. However, the 14th day was on Monday, April 19th, which is a holiday. So due to that holiday, the deadline became Tuesday, April 20th at 5pm. The town clerk's office received all signatures submitted by 5pm on that deadline and certified 842 signatures. The office received 12 written statements in proper form from voters who asked that their names not be certified. However, only two withdrawal letters were received prior to the filing of the petition, which is required for withdrawal. So only two were not certified. Because 864 votes signatures were required and 842 were submitted, the petition failed to produce enough signatures of registered voters to trigger the next step in section 8.4 of the home rule charter. A legal complaint was filed in Superior Court requesting, among other things, to extend the period of time for collecting signatures, to reduce the number of signatures required to 50% of the charter requirement, and to provide for the submission of electronic signatures. A hearing was held in Superior Court in Northampton on Wednesday, April 28th. The town was represented by the town attorney, Lauren Goldberg, in a detailed legal decision. The judge denied the complaint. I have submitted to the MBLC a certified copy of the town council vote and a signed contract and associated documents for the first disbursement prior to the April 30th 2021 deadline to meet the schedule that we have established. So that's the update on where we are today. Are there counts for questions at this time? Darcy Dumont, you have your hand up. Yeah, I just wondered if you could give us an update on the status of the petitioner request appeal to the Board of Registers with regard to the names, additional names that they got affidavits for. So the deadline for submitting those affidavits is tomorrow Tuesday at 5 p.m. So the town attorney had recommended to the clerk to not call a meeting of the Board of Registers until 48 hours after that deadline. And I think they're looking at scheduling a meeting for the Board of Registers for Friday. At some point I don't know the exact time, but I know they were working together to get a quorum of the Board of Registers to be able to review the request that was before them. And we do have a legal opinion from the town attorney, which I can share with you about what the number of issues that have been raised by the petitioners at this point in time, that will help guide the decision making of the registrars at that point in time. Alyssa? Thank you. And thank you for answering that. So to follow up on another aspect of something that you mentioned, I know that several days before the petition deadline, people had contacted us and said they weren't clear on what they were signing. It wasn't that they thought one thing and then changed their minds. It's that they didn't understand what they were signing. And so we gave them a form to fill out and you said the X number of those. We keep hearing different numbers. We heard 20 at one point. Now we're hearing 12, then we're hearing two. And I'm wondering if we gave adequate information to the people who told us they wanted to do that because I'm hearing you now say they had to have them in before the petitions were filed. I believed at one point we said they had to have them in before the deadline for the petitions to be filed. So I don't understand if those larger numbers we're hearing about from individuals out in the community were because, you know, I don't know what time the petitions were filed, but say they were filed at three o'clock, that people didn't turn their signals, their withdrawals in until 345. I just would like you to clarify that because we've just got a lot of confusion out there about that issue as well as the other issue. So at the time that the the town clerk certified the signatures that 12 had been received by the office, more came in subsequent to that date, but at that point she had already said determined that those there weren't enough signatures to move to the next stage. And it is one of those things where it's like if the petition comes in first and you come in the next year, the next person in line, you say, I want to withdraw my signature, it's too late. That petition has already come in. They timestamp everything in the office. And that was the situation for the majority of people who asked to have their signatures removed. The process for the board of registrars is to start to look at if there was any fraud or anything like that in terms of signing the documents. Listen, did you have a follow-up question? Dorothy? Yes. As you know, I voted to support the library, but in my had a lot of experience with the board of registrars in New York City. And the protocol would be to take a signature on a petition and compare it to the voter card, not to a voter list. And in all the conversation I'm hearing, it's very unclear to me what the process was at our registrar's office. Were those signatures compared to the voter cards? Because there it doesn't matter if a signature is legible, as long as it matches. So I'm not an expert in this area. They have a very, the Secretary of State has issued a long sheet. I can share that out with you, that details exactly what the, whoever the clerk is who has access to the voter registration information system that the town clerk, that the State Secretary of the Commonwealth maintains. They have to follow a strict protocol. They do not look at the, they're not handwriting experts. They're not, they're trying to say that's a signature or not a signature. They're trying, there are certain rules that they have to follow. And our town clerk has experienced doing hundreds of petitions. You are all of your nomination papers. They go through this all the time. They follow the exact same rules. And it's an independent office and they go about their business. And this is what they come out with. Okay. So it was according to some state protocol, I will send you the protocol. Yes, I can do that to the council. Thank you. Steve Schreiber. Yeah. So I'm going to continue a conversation that just happened, but I too am concerned about voter disenfranchisement. And I'm concerned about those people who in good faith tried to have their names withdrawn. So we all know that the town clerk sent a actual email to somebody that was copied to a number of us, including me, that basically said, here's the form. You must email it, fax it or drop it in the drop box. There was no deadline given. Others trying to be helpful gave a deadline being April 20th because we knew that that was the deadline for the petition. So lots of people, we know that there's at least 10, but we think there's many more have tried to take their names off the petition through a good faith. And I'm very concerned that their desire to have their names withdrawn is being disenfranchised. So voter infranchisement is a two-way street, and we need to make sure that it's known that it's a two-way street. Also, and with all due respect, even right here, we've heard different deadlines given. And due respect to the town manager, but I think that one point you said the deadline was when the petitions were filed and another time you said when they're certified. That's very nuanced. In other words, I personally don't even know the, until now, what the difference between those are. But certainly, if I'm a voter in good faith, trying to do the right thing, I signed a petition by mistake. I want to have my name taken off. I don't know the difference between filed and certified. I don't know that town halls closed on Monday. I leave it in the drop box like I'm told. And it's like a somebody happens to come on the front door of the town hall and get their petition time stamp before the town clerk is able to pick up the withdrawal form. That sounds like that does not sound right to me. So that's where I stand on this. Thank you, Steve. Are there any other comments at this time? Darcy? Yeah, I just wondered, Paul, if you could let us know what what are the legal issues that KP law is is looking at about the the Board of Registrar's hearing. I can say I can send you the opinion that she has written for the and which has been shared. I believe it's been I think the clerk has shared it with the Board of Registrar's can share it with the council if you'd like that. Yeah, I mean I think the you know what I didn't say is that the with the original complaint that went to the Superior Court last Wednesday and the judge issued a decision on Friday that the plaintiff has the ability to appeal that decision to Superior Court to wherever they appeal it to. So that is still an option as well. Darcy, you still have your hand up. I'm wondering how how will the public find out what those issues are that KP law is looking at? We can add it to this to the meeting's packet. Yeah, I mean I just want to be clear that my job as town manager is first to make sure that the town charter is honored and that that's you know that that's what the vote of the people have done and so that was the first order of business and my second order of business is to carry out the votes of the town council. So those are the two ways I look at the actions that we take as in town hall. Are there any other questions from the council? Okay, then we are going to go on to the next item and let me just say I want to make note on the agenda that this was posted at the last minute. It is the item referred to as the application permissibility opt out of state reclamation and mosquito control board spring. Our goal tonight is not to debate the merits of this. It is only to learn from Paul how we as a town are going to follow a process to try to get to the point that we make the right decision to move forward. So Paul, would you talk about that? Of course, so there's this has received a fair amount of interest in the community. So there is a new law under the law. The state has given expanded authority to engage in mosquito control and that's usually called aerial spraying only after the Department of Public Health declares that there's an elevated risk of Arba virus. DPH must publicly publish the data supporting this declaration. Under that authority, the state reclamation and mosquito control board can then be active throughout the state. This includes public education, standing water, drainage, ground, larvicide application and other steps in addition to aerial pesticide spraying. Before any spraying, there must be at least 48 hours advanced notice to the public, including notice to local boards of health, property owners who have opted out of spraying and farms, including beekeepers and certified organic farms. Anyone can use an online form if they want to, to be informed of aerial spraying in their region. The notice will include a process for people to opt out of spraying. Cities and cities and towns, which is us, can also opt out entirely from pesticide spraying. If they wish to opt out, however, they must have an approved alternative mosquito management plan. There is an overall directive in the bill that all actions taken under the authority of the section shall be designed to protect public health while minimizing to the extent feasible any adverse impact on the environment. So in this, no one can recall when there's been aerial spraying in the town of Amherst in recent memory in the last few decades for everyone I've talked with. There was one incident of aerial spraying last year, which was in Plymouth County. And they went through all the process, but this is a different thing. It changes the rules. And so the challenge for the town is that, or if you want to opt out, according to the current rules, you have to notify the state reclamation board and mosquito control board by May 15th, which is a Saturday. I've asked the health director to initiate the process for opting out and preparing a substitute plan that would then go to you, the town council for your action. It requires the town council to act to opt out. In this requirement, but in order for you to opt out, you have to have an alternative mosquito management plan and receive the advice and receive the advice of the Board of Health and listen to the public things like that. So I have contacted state officials at the board. There's a call today that we were alerted to and that we listened in on and also contacted our state senator and state representative to get an extension of time. So we have the time to create the alternative management plan. These things are not small or easy things that we can just take off the shelf. And we're not, and we found on this call and from our state legislators that we're not the only community doing this. Dozens, dozens and dozens of communities have the same concerns that we have. So we're moving to extend the deadline and failing that. Our goal is to get a, I've talked with the council president about having a special meeting of the council to be able to act on this prior to May 15th. Whether we can be in a position to have the information that you're going to need to make an informed decision is unclear. The town, the public health director is looking into this from looking how other communities have done it. Most communities, many communities are part of larger mosquito control districts. And they don't really have to address it because they're part of the district. We're not part of a district. We could join a district if we so chose, but there's a continuity. You have to pay to join in these districts. So that's the sort of lay of the land. And we will move, you know, the first order of business and I talked with our staff of the state senator's office to expedite a decision on whether they will extend our request or not. They've received lots of requests for extension of times. We're hoping that they will grant that that will give us time to get the information we need to make a coherent presentation to the council. Are there questions? Yes, Pat. I'm just wondering if you don't hear back from the state and or they say no extension, can we respond by the 15th? Yes, I talked with the council president. She estimated that she was going to see if we could call, if she could call a town council meeting on May 13th, which is a finance committee meeting, maybe immediately prior. I know she's talked with the finance committee chair on that. I think that's the backup plan is to take take that date as a date for the council to act. Let me just expand. I have talked with the chair of the finance committee meeting. We would do a poll and see whether or not we can have a sufficient number of counselors present to meet at noon on the 13th. If need be, hopefully we don't have to go that route. Hopefully we get the extension and we have a much greater opportunity to look at this with reasonable input from the public. Alyssa. So I wanted to bring up two things. One is that we, as some of us will recall and others might not, we have a nine nonbinding resolution on pollinators that we passed last spring, which is on our resolution page. And so we should be taking that into account when we explain our plan since we've already gone on record of saying that. And the second thing I want to point out is I really appreciate that we are attempting to extend the deadline and that we are not alone. And at the same time, I will point out that Senator Cumberford's office advised us of this program on March 19th. And we've had several town council meetings since then and had no idea that this needed to be dealt with by May 15th, even though, and hadn't been, even though we received that information back in March. So I appreciate that it's a new law and that it wasn't something we'd had experience with and that we're not part of a district. So I realized the many levels of complication for this. So I'm hoping that the board, I was disappointed to see the Board of Health doesn't appear to be taking it up this week on their agenda that they posted after this issue was brought to their attention. And I realized that we're now scrambling. So I hope they'll scramble a little bit too to be as supportive as they can of making, moving this forward, given Amherst history. Thanks, Alison. George. Yeah, my understanding is the Board of Health does not meet this week, but meets on the 13th. Now, maybe they've changed their date or maybe I misread the calendar, but I checked. And my understanding is they meet on the 13th. Does somebody know for a fact that they meet this week? Because my fact is the 13th. So if it isn't 13th, that's the very day that no, it is going to be this week. Oh, yeah. So they have scheduled a special meeting for this week initially to talk about mask. They have a local mask requirement that is out of step with the state's requirement about mask wearing at this point. They have, I haven't looked at the agenda, but my understanding from the health directors that they did not put the mosquito control thing on their agenda this week. But the health director felt she had enough ability to move forward on doing the research that needed to be done prior to your May 13th meeting. Okay, so we would hear from her. If we had to act quickly, because I'm very uncomfortable acting without getting some kind of reasonable input from the Board of Health, since this is a health matter as well. So it sounds like we will get something. Thank you. Okay, are there other questions or comments from Council? Okay, then I see that we have the superintendent of schools and we have Dr. Morris and also the finance director Dr. Slaughter with us. And so we're going to go on to our action items. We begin with the regional school budget. And because this is an issue that has picked up some controversy in the last couple of months, we're going to begin with a couple of items that myself and then this chair, the finance committee are going to just review for you the process. As with any decision of the council, there's a significant amount of lead time and work that goes into taking a vote. Each year we begin the budget process with financial indicators meeting. That meeting took place on November 20, 2020 and included the town council, the school committee and the Jones Library trustees. That was followed on November 19 with the required public forum where we really encourage residents to talk about their priorities for the coming year's budget. In December of 2020, the town council adopted budget guidelines and shared those with the town manager, the town council and the full discussion they were developed by the finance committee. And regarding this year's budget, we started by agreeing that all departments including the schools, both regional and elementary schools would develop budgets that included no increase. In February 2021, based upon updated financial information that all departments were told to develop budgets with a 1.5% increase. And in March 2021, that was increased to a 2.1% increase. In other words, all departments including the schools have received an increase in their budgets for the coming year. The adoption of the regional school budget is outlined in the charter, sections 5.4, 5.5 and there might be others. Time-wise, it is always out of step now that we have become the town otherwise, the city otherwise known as the town of Amherst. And the reason it's out of step is because it's a regional budget and includes four municipalities. The other three municipalities have town meetings that happen before we have to adopt our budget. And because elected representatives of all those four municipalities also meet, they did twice this year, once in December, on the 5th and once in February, on the 6th. The adoption of the regional school budget is a complicated and collaborative process. And I'm now going to turn to Andy Steinberg to talk about that. Thank you, Linda. This is a complicated topic. And if there are questions in the council, we have a lot of people who are pressing on the call who can help me to answer those questions. But basically for the members of who are attendees, I think most of the council realize this, but I'm not sure everybody in the community always recognizes that the regional school district is a separate entity with a separate process instead of laws on how budgets are adopted. So our elementary school budget, which is part of town government, and we have an elected school committee, has a proposed budget that is was available today through the routine budget process, which considers all other aspects of the town budget. But the regional budget is really a unique process because it is a separate corporate entity. And it is made up of multiple towns. And this, in our case, four towns, there's advantages to having a regional district. It gives size to the middle school and high school, which gives the ability to offer a wider range of options, both economic and extracurricular. But it really does pose a challenge for the member towns and the regional district to adopt the budget. The budget has to not only come up with amount, but has to have a methodology that allocates portions of it to each of the member towns. And we have the process that the president of the council just described that is really an effort to try and adequately fund the schools, but also recognize the unique budget pressures for every member town. And therefore, we go through a much more complicated process in some ways than we do for other kinds of aspects of the budget. The four town meetings are an opportunity for the superintendent and the regional school committee to explain their needs and for, as noted, the towns talk about their unique challenges, which can be financial and can be political. These meetings historically included select boards for finance committees and school committees of each member town. Now the council has replaced the towns our representation. The finance committee is aware that there's a lot of concern about the budget. There's some members of the council who've expressed concern about the growth in the budget and the fact that we have amongst the very highest cost per student of any of the towns in western Massachusetts. And that includes the regional budget having a very high cost per student. There are people who are concerned that there may be programs that are being lost. And we're trying, we tried as a finance committee to understand both. One of the things that I want to clarify is that this $1.2 million of budget cuts has been talked about, but it's sometimes a little bit misunderstood. Because when the region develops its budget, what it's doing is developing a level services budget initially as a first step in looking at revenues and seeing what the differences between the two. The gap between those two was $1.2 million. A portion of the gap was closed with adjustments and one time funds, like the savings from the employee health insurance plan, that proposed actual programmatic reductions are much smaller portion. But as noted, this is a regional process and the regional budget is proposed to increase by 0.72% through assessment, those assessments to excuse me to decrease, yes, I said decrease, but 0.72%. But the assessments to the four towns combined actually increased by 1.52%. And Amherst share is increasing by 2.1%. So that we actually right now are putting a higher level of increase than some of the other towns, which are actually having a decrease. And that's because of the assessment methodology to two of the towns have a decrease in budget. The major reason for the budget decrease, in fact, is because of non assessment revenues that are decreasing by around $500,000. So going on to the process going forward, the budget has to be passed by three member towns. If one town doesn't pass the budget, it's still binding on all of their towns. The only town that's already acted is Leverett because they had their town meeting last Saturday. They approved the budget and the assessment method, Pellum and Shoesbury, have town meetings in coming weeks. The assessment method must be passed by all towns. If the budget fails to pass in three towns, so the assessment method fails to pass the regional school committee can amend the budget and send it back to member towns. There's a time limit to their doing that action. And then ultimately, at that point, the commissioner of education can impose a temporary budget, one 12th budget until to give the towns and the region a longer opportunity. Eventually, if it is not passed, and there's still no budget passed, there's a date in which the commissioner of education can actually take fiscal control over the district. So in conclusion of my opening remarks, Amherst cannot vote to increase the budget that has now been submitted to member towns. And one other thing to note is that this year, the region has federal funds from previous COVID relief bills known as ESSER or elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund and money from the American Recovery Act. When we asked about that at the finance committee meeting, Dr. Morris indicated that there had not been time to talk about how American Recovery Act might be used, but that that is funds that are available to add to the budget that's been proposed before us. So that's basically the overview of the process that I was going to offer. So, Andy, do you have any particular comment you want to make with regard to the finance committee's review and discussion? That report is in your packet. Yeah. I think that the finance committee discussion was really focused pretty much on what I already said. I think that there are a couple of things. One is that there are questions that were raised by various members of the committee and the council members who participated in that particular meeting. And as far as the regional budget is concerned, we felt that the process has really gone on to a date that what we really were going to recommend to our three adjoining towns is that we have an opportunity over the summer to really look at some of these budget questions that were raised and have a dialogue about them with the schools. And Dr. Morris indicated that schools would be happy to participate in that kind of a process. So I was going to reach out to our neighboring towns and see if they are interested in joining us. So that's kind of the forward-looking part for the budget as far as this year's budget. I think that in the end, we concluded that the school committee very carefully worked with the superintendent to develop the budget that they felt that it made sense. We recognized that the American Recovery Act funds are available to address some of the issues that have been raised by members of the finance committee and that it was important that we engage in our process so that we can get the budget approved along with the other towns because of the complicated nature of what happens if two towns reject the budget. We don't even know if that would ever, if there's any other town that would be interested and we felt that it's a reasonable, well-thought-out budget and we would recommend that it be passed tonight. Okay. I just want to ask Superintendent Morris whether you have any additional comments you'd like to make at this time. Thank you for the opportunity. I think at this point, you know, given the hearing with the finance committee and the other with the town council prior, I don't think I have anything more I'd like to add. If it's okay with you, do you have Dr. Slaughter, if he is an opportunity, if he has anything else to add, but otherwise we're just here if there's questions. Thank you, Dr. Slaughter. No, I don't have any other comments to add at this time. All right. And we're going to have a council discussion, an opportunity for public comment, come back for any further council discussion and then a vote. And I might add that there are several votes that go with this particular item. Dorothy, you have your hand up. I'd like to ask Superintendent Morris if Amherst school system will be able to offer some kind of enriched summer program using some of the federal monies. Yep. Just to clarify, and I think I don't want to harp on this, but since this is just about the regional schools, I'm assuming that your question was not about the Amherst public schools, but the Amherst Pellum regional school district or secondary schools. I just wanted to make sure because that's a common point of confusion. We already have at the high school put out information about our summer programming options. And at the middle school that'll be coming soon. So we are having summer programming options for both for seven through 12 and Summit Academy because of the nature of a day school always has a summer program and there was actually a meeting about that today. So we are moving forward with more summer program, but in the neighborhood at the high school about a third more offerings than would typically have. Thank you. Thank you very much. Alissa, I don't have a comment on the budget at this time because thank you. We did have a good hearing about that before, but I just wanted to mention in terms of kind of a point of order is that when we get to this public comment period, I understand this is a separate public comment period than one we had before, but I know it came up in our original public comment period tonight and it's come up in recent meetings. Under our rules, we only have one person per public comment, one comment per person under our rules 5.1. And so that's up to you to manage what happened at the earlier public comment period. But just during this one, if people I just don't want people to be upset to feel like they should get to talk more than once because our rules say they talk once. And obviously we could we've talked about the idea of having work sessions under rule 3.9, but we don't have that yet. So given that, I'm hoping that people will not be offended when we restrict them to one public comment during this comment period. Thank you, Alissa. And I appreciate that reminder to me and the public. Are there any other questions from the council at this time? Darcy, you have to unmute Darcy. Darcy, you need to unmute. I just have a question about the process here. As far as council discussion, I see we have four different motions coming up. Yes. And so are we going to have separate discussion after each one or how is that going to work? Yes. The motion will be made seconded and then there'll be questions. Okay. For each of the four motions. Yes. But if you have a general question at this point, please ask. Yeah, I do have one general question. That is that if we fund a less than level services budget, does that then become the baseline for the next fiscal year budget? Yes, it does. We don't make that up. We don't assume we're going to make it up later. That's not been the past practice that I've experienced. Thanks. I'm working on my answers being succinct, so I hope that was okay. Got feedback and I'm working on it. We appreciate that. Shalini? I apologize. I wasn't attending any of the earlier discussions of this has already been answered, but I'm struggling with how to respond to kids and teachers who are, and if you could, who are especially in coming out of a pandemic when we're looking at core academic FDE reductions, reductions in para reduction in art, and given that we have funding coming from the state. Some of this is due to declining enrollment, and is that enrollment decline pertaining to this one year or was it? Just like how do we, what is that information gap? Because I know you all have been so thoughtful and you've struggled with this and you've come to this conclusion. So how can we, what is the information gap that might help us all understand better? Sure, so and I'm struggling with it too. So I'm right there with you. So I think a couple things. I think the first thing, the enrollment drop is very real. So we're anticipating unrelated to COVID and assuming that people come back. We're assuming not much over 800 students at our high school next year. That's a high school that for quite a while has been in the neighborhood of a thousand students. And this is a demographic shift. It's already been through our elementary schools. So if you look at our elementary schools, these same cohorts, it's not like, oh, people are fleeing. Our charter numbers have been very consistent for the last couple years. They were going up, up, and then they flattened. But if you look at the cohorts, our cohort, when these incoming ninth graders were incoming kindergarteners, it was a smaller group. And we've seen that shift over time. So that enrollment drop is very real. I think the part that gets where it gets tricky is that we're not making widgets. So it's not easy to make reductions based on in the overall context of the, of the district, a relatively minor drop. You know, I think it's been going on a couple years and we've been trying to sort of meet it. And it's, it's a little bit of, you know, a dance of, you know, what, how do you reduce given lower enrollment, you know, is it elective, is it reducing core academic subjects because there's not the need. And for us, especially at the high school level, it's really the students demand forces on the course, right. So we don't create the courses and just say students register, we look at the past courses that students take and then make decisions about what to offer as best we can. But that gets really hard. And I want to really honor and recognize the comments from staff and from students. There is a real, real loss of electives and opportunities when we make these reductions, even if it's accounting for very real reductions in number of students. If I'm an individual student, I still have less options than I had five years ago. Right. And some of that's related to budget and some of that's related to enrollment, but none of it feels very good. None of it's satisfying. And I struggle in the same way, again, that you raised that point. So I appreciate you raising it. In terms of the stimulus funds, you know, I know I talk with, you know, Doug and I talk with Paul and with Sean frequently. And as things become more clear on the use of those funds, we'll be having active conversations about whether they might be able to be used to assist in this regard. But at this point, I don't have, at least on the school side, the stimulus funds, we have three different estimates we've gotten from three different legislators, state, federal, and then another one from the state, none of them match. We have not gotten clear description of intended uses. We heard it's for three years and I heard the commissioner last week saying, no, maybe it'll be for four years. So there's a real lack of certainty right now on those funds that the funds we've already received from the ESSER, what's called ESSER. A lot of those are related to we still have ventilation we have to fix. We still have other things that we need to do as we continue to use more and more of our spaces. And so some of that is going to be earbarked specifically for COVID related in terms of the newer stimulus funds. Right now, we don't have full clarity. And when we do, you know, I know Paul and Sean have shared that they're very open to having conversations with us about seeing how things develop over time. Sorry, I didn't do well in the succinct part of that one, my apologies. No, I did actually quite well. And I really want to appreciate that. Having taught in high school 400, believe me, Amherst is looks like a great school district to me. One of two math teachers for 400 kids. So are there any other council questions? Then I'm going to ask if there's any questions from the audience. Please raise your hand. Okay, seeing none, then I'm going to begin the process. These are all orders, financial orders that were reviewed by the finance committee and recommended to the council. The first one is I moved in accordance with section 5.5c of the Amherst Homeworld Charter and in compliance with section 5.5a and 5.5b of the Amherst Homeworld Charter to separately consider and act on the Amherst Pellum Regional School District budgets and assessment method for fiscal year 2022 due to the agreement with the three other towns in the regional school district. Is there a second? Second, D'Angeles. Thank you, Pat. Any further discussion or questions? Seeing none, we're going to begin with Alyssa. Hi. Pat D'Angeles. Hi. Garcy. Yes. Grace Merzin. I, Mandy Jow. Hi. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Evan. Hi. George. Yes. Kathy. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Hi. Andy. Hi. Sarah. Hi. And Shalini. Yes. It's a unanimous 13-0-0 and no absences. The next one, in accordance with Charter section 5.5, having been referred to the finance committee, a public hearing held on April 5th, 2021, having been recommended by the finance committee report of May 3rd, 2021, a public hearing held on April 5th, 2021, notice which was posted for a minimum of 10 days on March 25th, 2021, to adopt council order 2020-01 in order approving the Amherst Pellum Regional School District Assessment Method for FY20-22 as presented. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. Any questions? Seeing none, I'm going to start with Pat D'Angeles. Hi. Garcy. Yes. Grace Merzin. Yes. Hanna Key. Hi. Garcy Pam. Yes. Evan. Hi. George. Yes. Kathy. Yes. Steve. Hi. Andy. Hi. Sarah. Hi. Alyssa. Hi. I'm sorry, I skipped Shalini. Shalini. Yes. And then Alyssa. Thank you. That's also unanimous, 13-0-0, and then absent. The next one, in accordance with Charter Section 5.5, having been referred to the finance committee, a public hearing held on April 5th, 2021, having been recommended by the finance committee report on May 3rd, May 3rd, 2021, a public hearing held on April 5th, 2021, notice of which was posted for a minimum of 10 days on March 25, 2021, to adopt Council Order 2020-02 in order approving the Amherst Regional School District FY22 budget and appropriating the town of Amherst share of the budget. Assessment. Sorry, went to the next page. Is there a second? Yes, second. Okay. Thank you. Any further questions? Yes, Darcy. That's the motion about the assessment method or about the budget? This is the motion about us appropriating our share to meet the budget. Yes. It is also about the budget. Yes. I'll have a comment. It's about the budget. Okay. Okay. Darcy. Yeah, I'm in agreement with the students and the speakers who commented about the school budget and how important it is to maintain at least level services from year to year. And I feel pretty strongly that we should have been able to figure out a way to do that either by by not taking so much from our capital budget or from moving from other departments. I guess I feel like once we take away something like dance or other electives, it's really hard to bring them back. And dance is exactly the type of class that motivates students to come to school and stay in school and an adjustment counselor, same type of thing. So as the students in the sunrise group requested, I really think we should be prioritizing education and restoring the school district budget by by relocating at least the funds equating to a certain number of APD positions toward the arts, middle school teaching, health and bilingual psychology. And I know that there are actually more than those two positions that we are we have seen already being used in the budget. So I've heard that there are up to five potential APD positions. Are you planning to make this as a motion? No, I am not. Okay. Dorothy. Well, I am going to vote for the budget because I know that we have to for the process to go forward with the towns, but I am taking a bet that somehow we will be able to do what Darcy suggests is to make the budget whole when we find a way to use additional funds. And that I'm hoping that all efforts will be made to do that because I do agree that the things that have students come to school are often things that get cut. But I know that we have to vote this tonight if all the process is not going to go forward properly. So I'm balancing hope and expectations. Thank you. Andy. Yeah, just in response for mine everyone, but I had reported on earlier, because since it is a four-town process, we don't own the budget the way we own the budget of our elementary schools. And our ability to increase the budget is not one that we can make as a single town. It is, it really has, even if we wanted to do that, and there's a lot of financial reasons, we'd have to consider the four-town process makes it a very difficult process to engage in. Kathy. I also, I'm not speaking against going forward with this, but one of the dilemmas I find myself in is that we get a budget efforts going through the school committee. So aside from the four-town side of it, if I were to look at declining enrollment and then what the allocations are, I would look to have we, is the administration, what's the administrative non-classroom staff look like? What do those line items look like over time? I would do more assessment and no Doug and Mike that you've been doing that, but I would be really hard noticed about it to see, you know, to protect classroom hours by looking to other parts of the budget. So that's the broader discussion that was just beginning to be touched on on Andy, because we are spending more, a lot more per student than surrounding towns are. So I'd also want to look at the, you know, what's happening with the mix of spec spending on regular classroom hours and special needs hours, but it's more an overall look at the budget to say, can we get more classroom hours and more pieces out of what we are spending? Because I don't think we're underspending per student in our school system. My question, more is how are there better ways to allocate it? And I absolutely agree with the statements on art, music, dance, anything that gets the kids involved. Because aside from what those are, I've been seeing these incredibly creative programs that teach STEM by dance, you know, bring kids in in ways that they wouldn't normally, the kids who dance are learning math and science, the kids who like math and science are learning how to dance. It's an enrichment program. And I would like to think that we can be creative in our budget and get more for a similar amount of dollars. So I am strongly in favor on how do we look closely at these budgets as we go forward in the years to come, as if enrollment is down, I'm looking at when my kids were there, how many top level staff who weren't in a classroom do we have? And now how many do we have 20 years later and asking, have we adjusted as much as we can? And those are questions I would love to have answered. Dr. Morris, you have your hand up. Yeah, thank you. I'll be brief. So one is that there is no production to the dance program. So I just want to be really clear, because I've heard that mentioned a couple of times. The second thing I'd like to say is we've caught about 20% of our staff at Central Office. And honestly, we've frustrated the heck out of certain counselors because we don't produce the level of documentation that some of you would want. And so I think just bluntly and succinctly as I'm trying, I think we've made a much higher percentage of reduction of non-classroom staff as we cut year after year after year. And at some point, we are running the risk of not being able to support what the community demands in terms of data and information. So I think that's really the tension point. And I think the mental note I'm taking on the conversation tonight is when we get to Fort Town meetings next year to have a more active conversation. Because the idea of those being before, especially the December one, before the school committee actually sees and interacts with the budget is that the Fort Towns give the feedback on their comfort level of what's being proposed. And so I think good feedback for me is to be a little more forceful of pushing the town to say, where are you on this? I think it's a delicate dance and maybe I'm dancing a little too much on the delicate side and a little less on the blunt side of saying, what schools do you want? Because that's essentially what it comes down to. So I'll own that part and I'll take that with me and may annoy a lot of people next Fort Town meeting next December by being that blunt. But I think it's really useful feedback and we'll certainly connect on that next year. Thank you. The motion on the table is the one that is to adopt council order FY 2020-02 and order approving Amherst Pellum Regional School District FY 2020 budget and appropriating the town of Amherst share of the budget assessment as presented. See no other questions. I'm going to move to a vote. Darcy? No. Lynn Griezmer is a yes. Mandy Jo Hanneken? Hi. Dorothy Pam? Yes. Evan Ross? Hi. George Ryan? Yes. Jane? Yes. Steve Schreiber? Yes. Andy Steinberg? Yes. Sarah Schwartz? Hi. Galenie Balmille? Yes. Elissa Brewer? Hi. Pat DeAngeles? Hi. The vote is 12 in favor, one opposed, no abstentions, and no absence. The last motion that is related to this item is the following. In accordance with Charter Section 5.5, having been referred to the Finance Committee of Public Hearing held on April 5, 2021, having been recommended by the Finance Committee Report on May 3, 2021, a public hearing held on April 5, 2021, notice of which was posted for a minimum of 10 days on March 25, 2021, to adopt Council Order FY 2020-03 in order approving the Amherst Regional and Amherst-Pellum Regional School District Debt Authorization for FY 2022 as presented. Is there a second? Second. Any further discussion or questions? Seeing none, I'm going to begin the vote with myself. Lynn Griezmer is an aye. Mandy Jo? Aye. Dorothy Pam? Yes. Evan Ross? Aye. George? Yes. Kathy? Yes. Steve? Aye. Andy? Aye. Sarah? Aye. Shalini? Yes. Yes. Alyssa? Aye. Pat? Aye. And Darcy? Yes. That vote is unanimous 13-0-0 and no absences. I want to thank the superintendent and the finance director from the schools for joining us, especially this evening. And we are going to take a five-minute break and be back for the budget. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Have a good night. Please mute. Yes. Thank you. Mute and also put your video. Alyssa and Darcy and George, are you back? Yes. Thank you. Sarah, are you back? I'm waiting for George and Sarah to put their cameras on. George and Sarah, are you back? Please put your cameras on. Okay, George. Sarah, are you back? I'm just going to briefly introduce this next, which is one of the main shows of the evening. It's really picking up on the budget process that we just discussed. Only in this case, it is the town of Amherst operating budget and capital improvement program that the town manager and his staff will be talking about. We've already voted to refer this to the finance committee. And I want to make note that there will be a hearing on the operating budget on May 17th and on the capital improvement program on June 7th. And somewhere in the month of June, it is hoped that after the finance committee has thoroughly explored the budget that the town council will vote the budget. I want to particularly thank the town manager, the finance director, the controller, and the many, many other staff who worked hard in long hours to bring us this budget. It's been driven by many factors, including the town council's budget policy guidelines and the town council's performance goals for the town manager for July 1st to June 30th, 2021, which have been amended at least twice. In addition, the finance committee will provide a brief update on the review of the town council's budget at our meetings on May 17th and 24th. So when we get to June, it won't be the first time you've heard about any deliberations. With that, I'm going to turn the podium over to the town manager, and we look forward to your presentation. Thank you, Lynn. So we're here. We put a lot of work into this process, so we're really excited to be here and thank you for the time that you're giving us. And I'm really proud of this FY 2022 budget. It's balanced. It aligns with the allocation of funds, with the goals that you've established by the town council. It identifies some of the challenges we have faced during the pandemic and what the town did to meet them. We emerged from this pandemic full of hope and optimism. We've built a strong foundation based on good planning, strong leadership and prudent financial decisions. Even so, there are many unknowns before us. Nevertheless, we are one community with mutual interest. Our institutional partners are reinvesting in our community and our economy has proven its resiliency. The budget before you, all 279 pages of it, has extensive information to provide the information you need to make wise decisions on behalf of the town's people. So just as context, this is a once in a century pandemic that none of us have ever experienced, both in municipal life or any other life. The pandemic hit Amherst particularly hard because the three institutions of higher education and our three largest employers pretty much shut down very quickly and sapped the economic energy out of our community. This created a budget crisis which we all lived through last year and we appreciate the work and the flexibility that you had and that the state government gave us to have a one month budget and then a year-long budget. Our focus, and you've heard me say this a million times, is continuity of operations and being able to adjust to new challenges. And I think, and I've said this before, also our strong creative leadership team was core and we continue to, we call it a COVID response team, core team. We continue to meet on a regular basis at least weekly to review anything that's coming up around COVID-19. And the last thing I want to mention is just how proud I am of our staff. One of my missions in this process was to try to avoid layoffs or furloughs because I believed that as a town employer, a local employer, maintaining people's jobs was a high, it was a very high priority. And because if you get laid off and you lose funds, it disrupts your family and it has a ripple effect. And to do that, we had to ask our employees to do different things. And every time I asked staff to do something different, they asked, tell me what you need. Never did I hear anyone say, that's not in my job description. So really proud of all the staff who've stepped up and taken that on. So next slide. So this is usually, this is a slide that usually comes at the end, but I want to state right here and now and up front, thank you to our town staff, to our partners in higher education and the business and nonprofit communities, and all the community members who have battled through the pandemic and continue to contribute to the well-being of the town and our elected leaders. You guys have muscled through this entire time. And so it's, I think the community needs to recognize the work that you've put into it. Next slide. So as I mentioned, this is how we are starting our budget. It's a budget built on hope and optimism and sets the foundation for our reemergence from the COVID downside that we are coming out of. Next slide. So as we built this budget, we are fortunate to be in a very strong financial position. Our reserves are strong, 21.5% of our budget, and we have a strong AA plus bond rating. We're hoping to have that improved, but we're given the sort of general status of the economy. We're not sure we'll be able to achieve that. We maintain our core services, 2.1% increase for funds through all the, through all the different budgets to fund our operations, which means few new initiatives. And then we have this, the new thing that we've talked about, which is federal CARES funds, the new ARPA money, which no one knows what it means, and the ESSER funds that the schools are getting. And the exciting thing about this budget, I think, and where we are as a town, is that we have a funding plan to, thanks to Mr. Mangano, to fund our four capital projects with one, just one debt exclusion. And we have developed five-year operating and capital plans and have, are developing the basis for inventorying all of our capital needs. That will make us even stronger as we move forward. Next slide. So just so people know that the town's budget has five components. The municipal budget, which is, we're going to talk about tonight, which includes the four enterprise funds, the elementary school budget, the library budget, the Amherst Pellum Regional School District, which you just voted, and then the capital improvement program. There's also two pieces. If you want to see the town's budget in total, you should also look at the Community Preservation Act budget and the Community Development Block Grant budget. So that is everything in terms of a nutshell, and we tried to assemble this all together on one location on our website. Thank you. So, big highlights. Proposed budget, $85,566,836, sets the foundation for recovery, which is where we're starting to feel it already. It aligns the budgets directly with the goals adopted by the town council, and you will see that throughout our presentation and throughout the budget document. We have been able to afford modest operating budget increases of 2.1%, which went to the regional school district, to our elementary schools, to the town, and to the library. And we begin to restore our capital spending, moving it up to 8.5% of the levy. Last year, we used the capital expenditure to help balance the budget. It was down to 5%. So again, moving that to where we think it needs to be in order to move our whole operation forward. So overall, when you take into the fixed costs that get factored in, our budget increases 5.7%, but that's from a reduced base from last year. So it's a good increase, but we're still not where we were prior. I mentioned the new federal funds are coming forward. And then the other thing I really want to mention is that we have a new budget format and an interactive story map to make the budget more engaging. And it's going to look different. And it took a lot more work and effort than it ever did before, because of all the format changes. And at 6.25, Sean was still working on things like why isn't this not showing up my computer, right? So it was an exciting last couple of weeks, but we were here tonight. So thank you. So one of the big pieces of this is our capital improvement program, which we're going to talk a little bit more about. Again, talked about the restoring the budget. Incorporates the capital requirements of three of the four building projects in the existing budget. And we don't know the price of the schools yet this point. So that's not addressed. Address is deferred maintenance of existing infrastructure. Maintains, and this has been a high priority since I've been here, our investment in roads and sidewalks. And you'll notice in the capital improvement program that we've looked at all of our projects through the lens of the impact that they have on climate change and which ones are helping with that by a little green leaf on it. Next slide. So this is the new thing that we're presenting tonight, the budget story map. So we're going to go into a different format. And I'll tell you why we're doing this. So something new. You have the 279 pages that you can study at your heart's content, but that's not very accessible to the general public. They're not going to sit down and read it. Some people will. We have some people who live in town who will get into that, which is great. But we also want it to be accessible to other people. And this story map is easier to read than a PowerPoint. It's designed to be mobile friendly because a lot of people are accessing information on their pads or their phones and make it more easily accessible to people in a more friendly way. So Sean and I are going to tag team on this presentation. But before we start, I do want to thank everyone who built the budget. Sean is the finance director. He's guided the work, but the nuts and bolts and the crunching of the numbers was done by our esteemed comptroller Sonia Aldridge and assistant comptroller Holly Bowser, who are both Bowser, who are both here tonight. They worked hours on this, met and met and then met again with all of our department heads to get them in line. And then lastly, the whole concept of how to present this information, how to redesign the budget, which when you look at it in its totality, I think you're going to really like the view. It's much more visually pleasing was the work of Sean with communications manager Rihanna Sunred. So this is our sort of quote of the day where we're going to reemerge a stronger, safer, more resilient community with new initiatives that will invest significantly in our collective future. These are things that are the new initiatives are not fully funded, which we will address in a little bit, but they show a direction where we think that we can go. So next. So everybody hear me okay? Yeah. Okay. So Paul, before I go on to the budget overview, do you mind if I give a quick orientation of how this thing works? Perfect. So as Paul mentioned before we started working, I had to make sure it looked okay on my screen because I really wide monitors that are designed more for spreadsheets, but not so much for this. So I'm actually on a laptop right now and hopefully it looks okay to you all on the screen and the size is good. But the way this works is you can essentially scroll through it or you can click over to these different content areas at the top. And so the content areas are sort of a welcome message. There's a budget overview, which provides sort of the baseline knowledge that you need to understand the highlights of the budget. Some of what we've already gone over in the PowerPoint. This year we specifically added a section on COVID response because we know there's been a lot of questions about what has been done in response to COVID. And so we highlighted some of those things, but there's also a much more robust section on what we did for COVID in the budget book. And then the next six are all goals of the council for the town manager. So when we go through those, you'll see the goal for the council and then some of the highlights of what this budget, either new funds or existing funds, are doing related to that goal. And then we wrap it up with sort of how to get involved section. And also there's lots of hyperlinks as well for people to click on. Yep. So this section, budget overview, as Paul mentioned, hyperlink right there. So anyone viewing this can click to the whole budget document if they just click that line right there. Proposed overall FY22 budget, $85,566,836. Paul already mentioned about 2.1% increases for all operating budgets. Again, that started at 0% as more information came in. It was increased to 1.5%. And then more information came in again. We increased it to 2.1% to try to capture the latest information we could. Capital spending has increased about 2.6 million. Again, this is from a significantly reduced FY21 figure. So that's about 8.5% of the levy for capital. And it also includes a rollover of the FY21 Capital Reserve. For those that you remember last year, we didn't specifically allocate some of the money for projects because we wanted to be a reserve there in case there was an emergency. Fortunately, no emergencies have occurred this year. And so this proposal appropriates that to support a specific project in the Capital Improvement Program for FY22. We continue to fund pension and OPEB commitments. So one area we reduced in FY21 was our OPEB contribution. It went from $500,000 down to $250,000. This proposal increases at $50,000 back up to $300,000. And we've recently received the actuarial analysis. And it is important that we keep trying to stick to our funding plan for OPEB. It does impact our bond rating and things of that nature. And it affects our overall liability that we have on our books. This proposal includes a small commitment of funds from the American Rescue Plan. We're still learning more information about that grant, but we do have sort of the key areas that it can fund. And so we've put out some ideas of the specific things that we think are good ideas that are aligned with the goals. And then also there will be a process for allocating the much larger portion of that grant. And Paul already mentioned about the new budget format and this interactive companion piece. And again, the overall budget increases 5.7%. So the way you work through this is you just keep scrolling down and it kind of scrolls with you. So I won't spend a lot of time here, but here are the tables that you're used to seeing about the different departments and what their new allocations for FY22. And here's capital, retirement, and then other which is state assessments and some other areas. And then our overall budget. So the next piece, so that was more on the expense side of our general fund budget, this next part is about the revenues. So property taxes, we're projecting the 2.5% increase, allowable increase plus new growth. We've returned our new growth estimate to be more in line with where it's been in the past based on the projects that we know are in process right now. And there was some unused excess levy capacity last year that's also been included. So the overall property tax increases 4.1%. Local receipts are we're projecting a large increase because that was one of the areas that took the biggest hit in FY21. So the overall increase to local receipts is 23%. And that includes areas like excise taxes, hotel motel, rental revenue, departmental receipts, licenses, fees, penalties. For the first time, we did include a preliminary budget for the marijuana tax. That's not the impact money. It's just the excise tax portion of that. And so there is a budget for that included as well. State aid, we are estimated 2.6% increase. That's mostly due to an increase in the unrestricted general government aid allocation. Chapter 70 was pretty much flat. And there was a change in charter tuition reimbursement as well. And then the last major section of our revenues is other financing sources and we're projecting a 24% increase. Sorry, it's cut off a little bit by the people on my screen. And so the major areas there are ambulance receipts. We're projecting I think about a 7% increase in ambulance receipts. That was an area that was cut down for FY21. And as the university and college comes back, we anticipate that will recover a little bit. This area also includes that capital FY21 capital reserve that I mentioned before, appropriating that for FY22 is here. And the other kind of noteworthy account here is we are appropriating some of the cable money that we get that will fund the municipal fiber installation. The first year of that funding is appropriated here as well. So then we navigate to enterprise funds. So water expenses are projected to go up 9.4%. This, the two major drivers here are increases in our debt obligation and increases in capital expenditures. So one of the strategies that we use for FY21 to respond to the pandemic was we reduce capital and the enterprise funds quite a bit as well. And so the FY22 proposal here in water restores some of that capital spending. On the sewer side, it's a 7.6% increase and this is mostly some increases on the operating expense side. And also this also has some new debt obligations that will increase the payments for FY22. Transportation is a decrease of 17.1% where this is one of the really these top three enterprise funds are the ones that were worried about their revenues for next year because they were hit pretty hard by the pandemic. Transportation were projecting sort of a very slow recovery until we see things bounce back to where they used to be. And so this has been reduced. And so one of the ways that we, one of the items that we reduce in these budgets when revenues don't come in as much as we expect are the indirect costs that they pay to the general fund. And so when they're not bringing in all the revenues that they're supposed to, that does impact the general fund pretty directly. And so this is an area that we expect to recover, which will help the enterprise funds, but will also help the general fund in the future. And then the last one here is solid waste were projecting a 4.2% decrease. There was a sort of a temporary bump up in FY21 because we had a matching portion of a grant for the roll-off truck that we had sort of a one-time expense. And now that that grant has gone through and we have the roll-off truck, which you see here on the left side of your screen, we can take that matching expense out. Just some other notes on enterprise funds. So we do continue to project reduced water and sewer consumption. And that has a direct impact on the revenues as long as our consumption is sort of below normal levels. That translates to our revenues below normal levels and puts more stress on the enterprise fund. So we're projecting a little bit lower for FY22. And as we monitor things, we anticipate that it'll start to recover in the years after that. We've talked about water and sewer rates a little bit, but the proposed rates for FY22 are still below state average and a lot of our surrounding communities. Gradual upturn in business activity downtown. We're hoping we'll produce a modest increase in parking revenue, but we will see it hopefully when the college university's return. And we are proposing to use a modest amount of moderate amount of reserves in the sewer and solid waste fund for FY22. This is another area that we'll come back to when we do eventually talk in more detail about the American Rescue Plan Act funds. One of the explicit purposes for those funds is revenue replacement. And some of the areas where we've seen the biggest impact on revenues are in our enterprise funds. And then to the last key section here is our capital improvement program. So as the town manager said, continued commitment to repaving roads and sidewalks. This proposal has 850,000 for roads in addition to the chapter 90 money that also goes towards roads. 200,000 for sidewalks. And then we also noted that we have a couple of grants that will have some benefit for sidewalks as well, which is the multi-use path to Graff Park and some ADA improvements to the senior center. For the first time, I think the first time, we added a recurring item for sustainability projects. For FY22, it's 100,000. This is meant to fund things like upgrading vehicles to hybrid or fully electric, to do studies. We had a request during the Joint Capital Planning Committee to do a solar study. This money could fund something like that. That specific project we're pursuing grants for, but if the grants don't come through, it could fund a project such as that. And it can be serviced as a match to lever state grants as well. In that capital improvement program, we also have 100,000 for support services to update zoning bylaws. This specific 100,000 is a combination of about, I think it's $60,000 in new money and $40,000 that's been repurposed from an old article to come up with a total of 100,000. We also, for the first time, are putting in what we intend to be a recurring item for accessibility improvements. We had the ADA study that listed a whole bunch of areas where we could make improvements. And so this specific proposal, the capital improvement program includes 50,000. And that could fluctuate because we have other facility improvement money that could also be put towards accessibility improvements as well. But we intend for that to be a recurring item. And then sort of a big piece that we added is design and project management services for the fire station and for the public works. So really the next section or the next stage that we need to move to to further those projects is to start doing some design work. And before we can do design work, because of the amount of those projects, we're required to have a project owner's project manager. And so you'll see a borrowing authorization in the capital improvement program, which is roughly in the ballpark of 70 to 80 percent of what we anticipate to be the design cost and the project management cost for those buildings. And there's a little pie chart over here that you can click on. I'll make it a little bigger. We got some, I had some feedback earlier today that I couldn't fix, but I just wanted to clarify in case anybody has questions. This slice here, public works, administrative other, it looks like a very big slice. It's normally for things like the stormwater program or the transportation plan. It's a very big slice this year in particular, because this is where the borrowing authorization for the the DPW building is. And this is where, and the fire slice is big, because that's where the borrowing authorization for the fire station project is. So those, that borrowing authorization is part of this pie chart. And so those slices are bigger than they normally would be in a different year. And if anybody wants to, they can click to the full capital improvement program. By clicking this button, but I won't do that now. And with that, I'm going to pass it back to Paul to talk about the town's COVID response. So if there's a, thank you, Sean. So if there's a time magazine story of the year, obviously it's COVID and and everything that we've done during the last year and everything we're looking to do has is is framed by the by COVID. So we want to talk, take a few minutes to look at what what is what we're doing about COVID. So at the beginning of the pandemic and through the entire 14 months we're on, we've been looking at this, though we've been working to meet the needs of our most vulnerable people that the folks who are experiencing homelessness. The first thing we did when COVID first hit, it was the most is a very high priority was to identify a location for isolation and quarantine space with support services. We were fortunate that Hampshire College came through and dedicated an entire dormitory for our use and offered meals service and recognizing the population. They even established a designated smoking area on a virtually non-smoking campus. The staff and volunteers at Craig's Doors were creative in securing millions of dollars in state funds to help relocate the seasonal shelter, secure the university motor lodge and the O'Connor Lodge in Hadley for individual residences and provide better safer shelter for more people who are unhoused than the town has ever accommodated. The town supported these efforts and helped with permitting and facilitating and setting up a cooling shelter last summer. So there's a lot more work to be done. We understand the the need for a new location because the Unitarian Universalist Church will be terminating their relationship at this point with Craig's Doors because they want to reopen their building, but the building inspector has given a building commissioner has extended the occupancy of the Unitarian Universalist Church through July 31. So next. So the front and center in our in our COVID response has been our health department. They didn't miss a beat as we transitioned health directors and we're able to manage the cases that came before us and even clusters that have come through. We've done the contact tracing that we've had to do. We've built a robust vaccination program that has vaccinated nearly 10,000 people so far and that has expanded to offer with the fire department vaccines to homebound members of the region to ensure the reliability of our staff. We added four firefighter paramedics temporarily to the fire department for most of the year provided added staff support for the health department and we created that COVID ambassador's program which you know about. So we keep moving. So one of the key areas that we've so we just I just talked about this and we one of the last things we talked a little bit about redeploying people to current staffing needs like at Puffer's pond at Cherry Hill instead of hiring temporary employees our current our existing staff were able to fill those those slots. A key piece of our efforts has been on communication and under the guidance of our communications manager we are able to maintain multiple ways for the public to connect with our town government. We set up the COVID hotline that handled hundreds of calls and every one of them was answered in real time or returned if there was a message left. We set up a special COVID website to funnel all relevant local and state information into one location. We initiated weekly community chats with the town manager and the communication manager and special guests where members of the public could just join in to the conversation and we continued our monthly office hours in Cup of Joe with Paul. And in terms of digital services you all experience it we're experiencing it right we're experiencing it right now. We hustled to get zoom and teams up and running IT or miracle workers really at getting the technology and the systems in place to let us including our key decision makers to continue working and do the important work that they do. We just developed the engage Amherst online platform and then also expanded our bill paying online permitting and licensing online licensing for some of the work that we're doing right now. Paul and I'll just add real quick I'm sure you'll you'll touch on it later. We have an engage Amherst site set up for the FY 22 budget. For those who have seen the Pomeroy Village one or the four building project one it's a really nice way to submit questions and get answers and kind of log and then you can keep a kind of running list of those questions and answers which has been really helpful and so that is set up and if you click the engage Amherst link here or it's also in the budget document in a few places it'll bring you to the FY 22 page and people can send feedback and get questions answered. So one of the things that we had to maintain we had to set up new protocols for how we add access to buildings. All of our buildings have been utilized by town staff on a regular basis and our town facilities department has been spectacular about making sure everything is sanitary and we have the right air quality systems in place and so we just want to thank them for that work that they've done. Okay now business support was really crucial because that's the lifeblood of our downtown area and those businesses took a hammering. You know we saw Hastings closed for the first time in 100 years. That really was an indicator that things were different. We saw some restaurants closed and won't reopen. Others have staggered through the pandemic and will come back with and are excited to be returning. We redesigned the downtown area and purchased these umbrellas and lighting and heating and drove all over New York to try and get enough heat lamps because everything was in demand at the same time. The town council passed special temporary zoning to allow all this to happen and then we put through, put picnic tables in other locations in downtown at Cushman and on the parking lot. So this is where we start to launch into the goals of the council. We're just going to hit each one very briefly. There's a lot more detail in the written document that you have. Yeah so Paul and I are going to kind of flip back and forth on some of these. So most of them are broken down into some of funding and then staffing and there's a little bit of overlap somewhere, some places. So the capital improvement program as mentioned earlier allocates 100,000 for sustainability projects. We are proposing 10,000 from the American Rescue Plan Act funds for an intern to support sustainability. I believe that was a recommendation from the ECAC and so we're putting that forward as an idea. Valley bikes share an EV charging station so I know there's grants for EV charging stations in particular. There's grants being pursued currently and all the pre-development for the solar project at North landfill is getting completed and that's moving forward. I don't have an exact date Paul. I don't know if you but I know it's in the coming months that we're hoping groundbreaking for that. Yeah in the fall I think. So obviously we have staff that are making all these things happen. Well we've taken tangible steps to move forward on the community choice aggregation program which the town council has approved. You know staff are working on the development of solar projects including the assessor and then the assessors are also working on implementing the PACE program under the direction of the finance director. And there's more information on some like the PACE program and the community choice program in the budget book. So community health and safety another goal. So on the funding side we're probably over this now but we've expended rough you know over three million dollars to date on materials, equipment and services to support the town through COVID. Most of that funding has been from CARES or FEMA and it's still going. So it's a frustrating process at times because we have to submit just about everything for FEMA reimbursement and FEMA does not move quickly. And until we know what FEMA is going to reimburse we don't know how much of our CARES money we're going to use. We're almost to getting reimburse for our first request back in June. But in FEMA's defense they're getting probably you know 3,000 requests for funding or they're not used to dealing with that many. So but we have expended quite a bit and that supports all departments, schools, library, town. The provided families in need with free meals that we partner with local restaurants and a bit in the chamber on. We contracted for a social service support without reach of Amherst. This program specifically helps families who are negatively impacted by COVID through potentially a loss of a job or having a quarantine or something of that nature. And we are reallocating $130,000 from the police department budget to social services for the creation of a new community responder program. And so the initial funding is based on the work of the community safety working group. And in the budget book just so people can find it so there used to be a social services section of the budget book for the last couple of years there's been zero funding in it because there were some issues with the types of funding that used to be in that section. We have re-engaged that section of the budget. It's under community services and it's called social services and the only thing in that section right now is this $130,000. And so that was sort of our first attempt at where we thought this program should exist. But again this is an evolving thing. So we welcome your feedback on that. So I do want to talk about community safety a little bit more because that group has been working tirelessly for the past six months. The work is grueling. It's emotionally draining in a way that I can never fully comprehend and it's very important. They're working with their consultants to finalize the report and right now I think they're scheduled to come to the council on May 17th. And just because there were comments made, the $130,000 is not designed to staff an entire program for a year or anything like that. It's going to take time for us to build this program. I mentioned that it hasn't been done before in Massachusetts and I can only find two or three programs outside of Massachusetts where this is done all on pilot and programs in Albuquerque and in Rochester. Most of the programs you see out there are co-responder models that are located in the police department like the CAHOOTS program. And the community safety working group felt very strongly that this had to be independent of the police department. So that's what we're moving to build on. But it takes time to develop job descriptions, decide what calls are going to be handled by the group, hire the folks and establish the offices where they're going to work out of. So it takes time. So this $130,000 is set aside to help move that forward and we're committed to doing that. Do you want to touch on this too, Paul? Some of this is actually redundant with the COVID, but we thought that it kind of lives in both places. Staffing for Fire EMS and the Board of Health and the Ambassador Program. So the next goal is racial equity and social justice. So in FY21 we added 80,000 diversity equity and inclusion initiatives and to confront systematic racism. This proposal maintains that for a new round of initiatives in FY22 that will include training for staff and elected officials. And we also, I don't know if it was last year or this current fiscal year, became a member of the Government Alliance on Racial Equity. Yeah, so here to go a little bit off script, the community safety working group has offered a direction for the town to address the needs that have gotten unaddressed. They've recommended $1.1 million to fund and create a Department of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. And again, we're working with our core equity team and creating the position of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Coordinator to better address this mission. And so that's what this funding from ARPA and taking a current halftime position to try and bolster that activity. The next goal is economic vitality. And we mentioned earlier about the money to support the update of the zoning bylaw and the Capital Improvement Program. So yes, so filling the economic development director position so that we're poised to surge out of this pandemic in a good way. And then we'll also be having staff, i.e. Mr. Mangano, who's going to be really taking on the parking improvements that have been lying there ever since the community, the parking working downtown parking working group has been together. Yeah, it's weird. Whenever I bring up parking, everyone laughs at me. They all give me this look like, yeah, we've tried that before. You're going to do it. You're going to do it. So we've got a few more slides here on specific economic vitality, sort of projects that are going on. Paul, do you want to walk through some of these? Sure. So we, again, working with, this is our planning staff. So they've been working directly with the Business Improvement District and the Chamber to move forward on a lot of our initiatives that, again, there have been some grants that have been achieved by, that have been garnered by the bid in the Chamber. So I think there's a lot that will be happening downtown soon. So I think we're going to walk through these one by one. So the next few slides, and Paul, that you touch on, on the next few, as we scroll down are some projects that are in the works and that were mostly funded by outside sources. Yeah, I think that's one of the real exciting parts of our project, of what we're presenting tonight. So many of these projects are being funded by federal, state, or private funds. So we're just going to run through the things that we have on the list that are either being done or about to be done. And it's a pretty impressive list. So you already voted to go in a certain direction of the historic North Common. You have a public hearing coming up on that to make a final decision about parking and things like that. $1.4 million from multiple sources. We're hoping to get additional funds to either substitute for some of this money or to expand the scope to allow us to do some of the work around the Common to fix sidewalks and roads in the immediate vicinity of the Common. North Amherst Library, this came through as such a crucial point. A private donor offered to help support it and through going through sequentially, getting bids, doing design, making sure that designs were approved, were okay with everyone. Now we're in building up the construction phase. We will be going out to bid and then construction happening. And again, the anonymous donor is very eager to see this going forward. And this should not be costing the town hardly anything. We might be using some DPW crews to help with some of the landscaping and things like that, but this is a really game-changing moment for North Amherst, I think. The Pomeroy Village Center, many of you were there at the public meeting that we had. Again, a very successful $1.5 million grant from MassWorks to help look at that intersection that, again, is going to be in front of you and for your decision as to whether we're going to go in the route of the roundabout or if we want to go in the route of the signalized intersection. The East Adley Road multi-use path, we got another grant to extend it across South Pleasant Street and then go up Mill Lane to Groff Park. So we will have completed the ability to walk safely from a major concentration of residents, especially a lot of young residents, to the brand-new rehabilitated Groff Park, which we're really thrilled about. It's a multi-year, these things take 10 years and so this has been an effort for town staff for a long time, so we're so happy to see it coming into fruition. Again, downtown, a private park grant or a state park grant that allowed us to install a playground in Kendrick Park. It's one of the things that when we're doing downtown things, parents would say, you know, we don't have a place for our kids to go and this will help the downtown become more of a destination, so you can go get your slice of pizza, you can come down, let your kids play while you're enjoying your friends in a safe environment. And I'll just add that there was some CPA funding in addition to this $400,000 dollar grant to support that project. Dog Park, another grant from the Stanton Foundation to create the dog park on the South landfill and that project is moving forward as well. All right, the next goal is housing affordability. So some of these items are things that have been done recently. So Secure 730,000 to create the affordable housing future development at Belcher Town Road and that was CPA funding and funds from the Affordable Housing Trust. There's $30,000 allocated in the Capital Improvement Program for the Housing Production Plan Update and there have been allocations of grant funds for rental assistance and temporary shelter initiatives, some of that out of CARES funds, some of that I believe was also out of CDBG. So again, we have high level staff who are working on all these projects because these are high priorities for the town, both on the Belcher Town Road, E Street School, and the shelter. And then the last goal is capital investments. So the two pieces on the funding side proposing $100,000 of the American rescue money to hire a contract for or to hire or contract for a capital projects manager for when we have multiple building projects plus some other large-scale projects in the enterprise funds going. We wanted a position that could really focus on the day-to-day to keep things on budget and on time and not taking all the department head staff from these projects. And then the other piece here, as I mentioned before, is roughly a total $3.4 million which would fund design and OPM services for the fire station project and the DPW project. And then the last little piece Paul just had here is that staff have been assigned to support the school building committee. The procurement officer in particular spent a lot of time recently helping with the request for services for owner's project manager, putting a lot of time in to move that forward, and that committee is on track. And Paul's going to wrap it up with how to stay involved. Yes, so we have lots of different ways for people to contact us. Obviously, counselors can email me anytime and we'll get answers for your questions and we'll share them with all counselors. The FY22 page is up and we have the Engage Amherst page that's active right now. Members of the public can email counselors, all counselors at one time, by writing to town counselor to amherstma.gov. And all of our documents, every document you see here, plus additional documents, the school budgets, the library budgets are all available at their amherstma.gov.com. So with that, we took too much time. I apologize for the amount of time we took. So if we have questions you have. First of all, thank you to all of you that put so much time into the document that led them to be made of the book aid this way. We're going to just remind you that this is just the beginning of the process. I also want to remind you of what the charter allows us to do and does not allow us to do. It allows us to cut things but it doesn't allow us to add things. So are there council comments at this time? Dorothy. Just a brief comment of praise for the expansion of the North Amherst Public Library. It's beautiful and I hope that we get a chance to see more beautiful buildings. Thank you. Pat? I guess I'm struggling with $130,000 for the Cress program. It feels very inadequate. And so I just want to say that I have concern there. I'm going to be looking at it carefully. I just I heard what you said. I guess I would like to know what the process is and that and to have some kind of timeline to how it will be implemented and and quite literally are we actually going to do this or not because I'm concerned that we're not going to follow through and I don't pin this on any individual or anything but it just feels like my heart is aching in a certain kind of way. You're so little given to the program. I understand. I think you're not alone feeling that way and I'm sure others feel that way as well. So there is a design for a program that the community safety working group put together with a lot of work and a lot of effort. And I think I see that is where they have established where we need to get to. But we don't get there in one step. You know, we need to figure out again, like I said, what calls are going to be transit transitioned to community responders. We need to talk with the fire department and APD and understand exactly we can't let calls fall through the cracks. We need to hire people. We need to train people. We need to do job descriptions for people. And the reason I said that it's not been done in the Commonwealth is not for not to brag, but to say that is it makes it a bigger challenge. If there was a model that existed somewhere and said do this, that would be so much better for us and we'd be able to move, turn it around very quickly, but we're going to be breaking ground on every decision that we make. So it's going to take time. We are going to be assigning, I am assigning our high level staff to make sure it happens because we feel like this is something the council said we want to see happen. And so we are committed to doing that. And I think is 130,000 enough? I don't know. It depends how quickly we move forward on it. And we'll look at that as we move forward. Thank you. I just want to mention I can't raise my hand because I'm a co-host, but Paul, do you see this as an area for potential grant funding? Yes. There are Department of Mental Health has grants. And I think there will be a lot. There's a lot of groups out there who might find what we're doing based on the goals established by the working group is to be pretty attractive because it's really different than what other communities are doing. Yeah. Alyssa. My apologies. I didn't expect to get caught on so soon. Thank you. Thank you for the new format. I appreciate that it was a lot of work to consider trying to do something like this in a year like this. But I think it's a really creative approach. It took me a few minutes to figure out where Sean's material was coming from. And then I went to the Engage Amherst site and I found it because I'm so used to us getting slides of the paper that's in our packet. And that paper is not in our packet because it's an interactive website. So that's exciting. I just want the public to also understand because we had these comments earlier during public comment that we didn't have this budget either. As Paul mentioned, this was still getting refining touches on it tonight late. We didn't get it until during the meeting. So it's not like we the town council knew what was in it before the public did because we didn't. So it's all new to us. And so I really appreciate the highlights you've captured. One thing I will point out, which I suppose in the long run is not particularly problematic because you've got the important part, which is the funding parts. But when you transfer the policy goals portion of the town manager's performance goals to pages 24 and 25 and then also in the interactive story, it doesn't include the updated date from community health and safety. And it doesn't include the two resolutions. So it was using the wrong version of the goals. And so that happens when you have versions of goals. And that's why we started dating our versions. So yay for that. And one thing I wonder if you could speak to briefly tonight, Paul, is that when it comes to the work of the community safety working group, I know we've mentioned that we expect that they may be coming before the council on the 17th. But one of the things I've been emphasizing all along is that they're reporting to you, right? And so you were able to say, Hey, I was able to go to all their meetings. I know what kinds of things they want, even though the report's not ready yet, right? Because we had this really compressed timeframe. And so the reports do for May 15, potentially coming to town council. But again, the be all of their charge was not to report to the town council. It was to tell you what we needed to do to do things differently in the budget. And so that seems to have been accomplished. But one point of confusion that's come up with several community members is the consultant's work is not done with that report. That large consulting contract is not completed as a March 15 report or as of them coming along, I'm sorry, May 15th reporter them coming along on May 17th. There's a whole nother section of work that they're planning to do, right? Could you just elaborate on that a little bit? Because some people were thinking, Oh, well, they have reported to community safety working group already they're done. I'm like, huh, that was just the first part of what they were doing. So I mean, so, so I do the community safety working group did take votes on specific motions. And I mentioned those in the report. So they did take active positions on things and made that recommendation. They are working on their final report and they have a subcommittee working on that. The we recognize that the consultant had a compressed timeline that was known to everyone when the bidding happened. And I think the they're in close contact, the consultant with the leadership of the community safety working group to make sure that the community safety working groups gets the information it needs from the consultant to be able to build their report over the next couple of weeks. Did I follow up on that? Because I'm still lost. Please listen. So that contract was were over $50,000. It was not for a singular report that was due March 15. Is that covering all the items that were in the community safety working groups charge, including the whole part two of their charge that wasn't needing to be completed until June? Because right now we're we're hearing about an 18 page report and that I'm not I'm not understanding. Okay, I don't know how long the report is. But the we have a specific RFP that went out for specific things that were focused on the beginning the first half of the working groups mission, which was the more intensive research that needed to be done. So the second entire part of the charge is not going to be addressed by that consulting group that consulting group's work will be finished when this report to you March 15. I'm sorry, May 15 is done. Yeah, so this this I think this is the police oversight civilian oversight board or whatever it is that that whole part to isn't going to be covered, except in terms of general recommendation. Yeah, they're they're they're probably going to be joy. I'd rather leave it to the community safety working group to explain where they're going to come from. But they I think you'll see recommendations about how to handle that as well. Anything else, Melissa? I'm just a little confused about the charge, but we can talk more about that in the next meeting. Okay. And as Paul mentioned, they'll be coming for the council at our next meeting. Darcy. Yeah, I just also want to say that I think this budget looks way more accessible to the public. And I thank Sean and Brianna very much for that. I have two questions and they they both relate to staffing. First on climate action. I welcome the $100,000 set aside. Though the types of actions needed will clearly cost more in the future, more like in the millions. The funding request of ECAC was for a department level position based on the number and types of actions that will need to be implemented under the proposed climate action plan will need that type of position to be able to implement those actions. And I'm interested in finding out what you have in mind for the $10,000. I hear that it's for an intern, but I just would like you to respond to that request for a department level position. Also, the community safety working group also requested a department level position and the $30,000 coordinator position is not that. And can you explain that and where this position would fit in and what authority the coordinator would have? Paul, do you want me to take the first part? Yeah. So, so, so we haven't got received the official resiliency plan yet. So we did our best to try to, I mean, we've seen drafts of it, but we haven't seen the official version. So we tried our best to include some pieces into the FY22 budget proposal to help with that once it's officially released. But we know, again, that's an area that we'll have to come back to and revisit in future budgets. I know it's really not be enough. Thank you, Sean. I want to add also that as of just today, there was a request to move that agenda item to June because the report won't be ready yet. Okay, Dorothy, you had another part to your question, Paul. So the DEI coordinator role. And so what we're looking at for that is to leverage an existing position to create a DEI coordinator position and to work within the HR department and with the HR because that's where we want to focus our activities. This is a person who's really interested in developing their skills in this direction. And also we, I feel like it will be a big asset to the town to have to start to move in this direction. So what authority would that person have? Sorry. I'm just wondering what authority a coordinator would have. So a coordinator has a role that it's not a director position. It's a coordinator position. They have a role to contribute to conversations at all different levels to help coordinate outreach to areas to try and broaden the diversity of our workforce to also work on retention issues. So it's at a certain level, sort of. So, yeah. Yeah. And I think I'll just add, you know, and Paul and I have talked about this. We view this as sort of the start again of something that might evolve into the future. I've seen this work really well at the schools. I'm sure you've heard lots of good things about the school human resources department and a lot of their initiatives to diversify their staff and retain staff and recruit staff. And so again, this is sort of a first step and we've seen a model here in town where it's worked really well. Right. So I would just add that that is a super important piece of what we're doing with both equity and sustainability as far as integrating it into hiring and training and so on. But we also need staff to be able to implement on a department level so that they will have, you know, sort of equal status with the other department heads so that they can implement these programs easily. It's hard to be a coordinator and get the attention of department heads from what I can tell. Alyssa. Okay. Are there any other comments? Okay. Again, thank you. And this will now be referred to the finance committee. I really want to urge all counselors to make sure that if you have specific questions about various areas of the budget, please note the calendar that is in your packet tonight in terms of which departments and portions of the budget will be discussed on which days. Those have been assigned to individual members of the finance committee, including the non-voting residents of the finance committee. And we just want to make sure that we as counselors on the finance committee respond to the rest of the council's questions as we look at the details of the budget. So with that, we are going to move on to the next item, which is D, which is the proposed zoning amendment to Article 15 inclusionary zoning. I believe Paul and Christine and Nathan Roy are part of this. Just go straight to Chris. Chris. Hello, everybody. My name is Christine Brestrup and I'm the planning director for the town. So may I just launch into a brief introduction? The purpose of, so Nate and I are here tonight to present the amendment to Article 15 inclusionary zoning. The purpose of this inclusionary zoning bylaw amendment is to require that private developments include affordable units in most residential developments in town. Senior planner Nate Malloy will present the details of the zoning amendment, but I wanted to give a brief history and background as to why we're here. It's really a summary of Paul's memo that he sent to you. Since early 2020, we've been working with the community resources committee and the planning board to develop a list of zoning priorities that we all need to be worked on. On January 4th, the town council voted to direct the town manager to present a list of zoning amendments to the town council for consideration. And simultaneously the planning department and the building commissioner have been working on a list of their own zoning priorities, some of which overlap with the priorities of the town council. So since January, we've been working with the CRC on an almost weekly basis, well it seems almost weekly anyway, to develop these zoning amendments. The CRC and the planning board have been working really hard and this is the first one of the zoning amendments that's ready to be considered by town council. We ask that you refer this zoning amendment to the planning board and to the CRC for a public hearing. The original inclusionary zoning bylaw was adopted in 2005 by town meeting and that bylaw required that affordable units be included in residential developments that had 10 units or more if they required a special permit. The bylaw was interpreted to mean that developments that needed a special permit for use would be required to provide affordable units. So from 2005 to 2013, just about eight years, the bylaw yielded no affordable units at all. In 2013, presidential apartments on North Pleasant Street needed a special permit to add 54 dwelling units and as a result, they were required to provide us six affordable units. Since 2013, there have been more efforts to amend the inclusionary bylaw to make it more productive in terms of providing affordable units. Article 22 was brought to town meeting in 2015 and that would have provided cost offsets for developers who would provide affordable units but it was defeated by a vote of 88 to 100 because it was complicated as well as for other reasons. In 2015, a local tax incentive was approved by the state legislature allowing Amherst to offer a graduated tax incentive for developments of over 10 units in which at least 10% are affordable. Then in the spring of 2018, another inclusionary zoning amendment was brought to town meeting and it was a joint effort of the planning board and a group of citizens who had filed a petition article. The planning board's version of this zoning amendment was eventually approved by town meeting and it required that some developments which needed special permits for dimensional requirements as well as for use would be required to provide affordable units. It also allowed the provision of offsite units and payment in lieu to meet the requirement for affordable units. In 2018, the zoning amendment was adopted by town meeting and it has been successful in producing about 20 more affordable units. The town has also been able to develop affordable units and other using other mechanisms such as supporting developers who choose to use the 40B process or comprehensive permits and examples of this are North Square at the Mill District in North Amherst and the proposed supportive studio apartments at 132 North Hampton Road proposed by Valley CDC. All of these efforts have resulted in incremental increases in the number of affordable units in town. Meanwhile, the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust continues to work on development of affordable housing by encouraging the town to provide CPAC funds, Community Preservation Act committee funds to support affordable housing development and the trust has proposed that the town set a goal of producing 50 affordable units each year for a period of five years for a total of 250 units in five years. In addition, the housing production plan which was done back in 2013 set a goal of producing 48 affordable units per year for Amherst. So in order to come close to reaching these goals or even begin to approach these goals, the planning department believes that private developers should have a role in providing affordable units. They benefit from the favorable conditions that allow them to develop property in Amherst and we think they should be part of the picture. So the town manager and the planning department request that town council review and adopt the proposed amendments to Article 15 inclusionary zoning as the first step of which is the first step of which is to refer the amendment to the planning board and the CRC for a public hearing. And now Nate Malloy will present the zoning amendment to you and I think Nate Malloy is here. I'm here Chris. My video isn't working. I've tried trying down Zoom three times. I'm sorry. I even got a haircut and shaved for this. So I didn't realize. I think I have to restart my computer. I don't have time for that. No, send us a picture, Nate. Should I share my screen of the zoning and just walk through the zoning. We will actually do that for you. Okay, great. Okay. So Athena will be able to put that up. She will be able to put that up on the screen. Thanks, Athena. So yeah, I think the, you know, as Chris mentioned, the inclusionary zoning has been periodically updated. You know, it's been a few years, but you know, it's been, it was, you know, initially adopted in 2005. And so, you know, staff sees this as a periodic update that that'll just help, you know, create more units and just align the inclusionary zoning with what staff sees as priorities for the town and help make some clarifications. The first one is in the intent and purpose. And the fourth one it said originally it had local preference for only those who lived or worked in Amherst, but local preference has more categories than that. And so we're proposing just to change the language to say, you know, the permit granting authority or the special permit granting authority consider offering local preference for new affordable housing as a condition of the permit or special permit. So really just to kind of, you know, clarify that any of the local preference categories, you know, can be discussed on a project. And then right here for, if you just scroll up a little bit, Athena, for 15.1, you have right here regulations. I just want to say quickly too that the planning board and the Community Resource Committee have both looked at this a few times and staff has incorporated the changes through these meetings. So, you know, it's been a really, a really nice effort, kind of, you know, with comments and public comments received as well. So these changes incorporate a series of public comments. It's been a really good iterative approach. And so right now the above everything in bold, the talus is new. So it says that to ensure the purposes of the section, the following regulations shall apply to residential development, including but not limited to townhouses, apartments, mixed-use buildings, perds, planned unit residential developments, and open-space cluster developments or conservation developments in AMRs that provide new dwelling units. And this is a really big change. So, you know, the current bylaw is only if the use requires a special permit. And now it's saying, you know, residential development, and it names a number of those. So many of these included now would typically not be, would not trigger inclusionary zoning. And it says new dwelling units means the combination of units that have received or will receive a certificate of occupancy in any five-year period and are located in new buildings or additions to existing buildings and any net increase in units resulting from reconstruction of existing buildings with exceptions. And so this definition of new dwelling units is new. It's really trying to clarify what exactly are new units. So, you know, it's ones that and will receive a certificate. What we're getting at here is that have received or will receive are trying to capture projects that may try to be phased, incrementally phased, to try to be exempt from this bylaw. The exceptions to the bylaw are affordable housing developments under Chapter 40B, a conventional residential subdivision, and a cluster development, and a residential subdivision is exempt because really a subdivision is the layout of a road and properties. It's not necessarily the development of units. Any uses permitted under Section 3.326 in the Paternity Residence District. So essentially, we have a few properties in town that are under a Paternity Residence District. So housing in there would be exempt institutional uses under Section 3.33. And those uses are, for instance, government uses or educational uses, like Amherst or Hampshire College providing residence halls, and then housing constructed by a public agency or nonprofit that meets the goals of this bylaw. So, you know, we're trying to, you know, we have clear exceptions to this, to who would be required to provide new units. Further down, Athena in 15.11, again, we're eliminating the special permit requirement. We're saying, as up above, any residential development resulting in these new units are required to provide affordable units at these rates. And the rates aren't changing. So if it's 10 units, if it's 1 to 9 units, there's no requirement. If it's 10 to 14, if it's 10 to 14, it's 1 unit. If it's 15 to 20, it's 2 units and over 21 new units. So it's not just, you know, if someone's proposing 21 new units, 12% of the units need to be affordable. We're eliminating the special permit requirement or the trigger if there's dimensional modifications because now it's basically any development. There is a new set aside here. When six or more affordable units are required under this bylaw, 20% of those units should be affordable to households earning 60% of the area meeting income or less as calculated by HUD. And this is a new provision. So in our bylaw, we define affordability as 80% of the area median income. And so that's, that's what the units will be. However, if there's six or more affordable units, which this is essentially a 46 unit development. So it's almost a 50 unit development would then need to set aside 20% of their affordable units at a tiered income level. And Brookline does this, they actually have it down to 50%. And other communities are starting to do this where they have a tiered income. So you can have a mixed income development. In 15.12, we're defining residential development. So this term had been used throughout the bylaw and never really defined. And so we're saying now it means new dwelling units on one or more adjacent properties developed at the same time or in phases and that share aspects of the properties such as but not limited to shared utilities, a common driveway, shared parking or the use of combined properties for a lot or building coverage calculations. And so for instance, you know, again, a property owner may own two adjacent properties and they may want to develop them as a project, but they don't, they may not want to provide affordable units, which we actually have, has been asked, you know, how can I not, you know, how can I basically be exempt from the bylaw and they might develop it, you know, nine units at a time and never trigger 10 units. But residential development would, you know, would capture this because, you know, really, that's really one project. The remainder of the bylaw, if you can go to the end, you know, none of that, none of these, none of these other conditions change. One of the recent amendments that Chris mentioned back in 18 was the provision of offsite units or a payment in lieu of to the housing trust. So initially the bylaw said if four or more units are provided or acquired, half the units could be off site. And we've increased that to six or more affordable units. So again, this would be for a 46 unit project. They have to provide six affordable units. If they provide half of them on site, half of them could either be located off site within the same zoning district. And this only applies to projects in the BG, BVC, BN, or some BL districts. And we're not changing this, this is already in the bylaw. But what we are changing is the payment in lieu of, we're increasing it from three times the median family income to four times the median family income. And the increase from three to four is actually an effort to get to a cost of what it takes to build a unit. So the median family income is about 76,000, 75,000 at NAMRS. And four times that amount is really about the cost of what it would take to construct a unit. So, you know, the consultant back in 2015, when the town hire Judy Barrett, she said that these provisions right here, you know, they're still, you know, it's through a special permit. And the applicant has to make a good faith effort to provide units and then make the case why they can't and why they either have to make a payment in lieu of or provide off site units. And so, you know, we increase the threshold both for the payment and for the number of units. Because as Judy said at the time, you want it to be kind of a higher threshold, you know, for someone to be able to, to, you know, want to use this kind of this, this waiver provision of providing affordable units in the development. So those are the changes to the bylaw. Thank you. I want to just set this in context. As you all know, back in the beginning of January, we decided to move forward with a variety of different zoning efforts. And that process had been being developed by CRC over a number of months. The planning department then weighed in and said, here's some other things we'd like you to look at. And they came up with a plan. In addition to that, CRC and the planning department have been actively working with CRC and the planning board have been actively working with the planning department. And so this is the first of the proposed bylaw amendments to come before us. We're not voting on it tonight. In fact, we're not ready to vote on it. It's now our vote tonight actually puts it through the formal process, which is to vote, to have it go to CRC and to the planning board who will hold formal hearings and come back to the council with their recommendations about this bylaw. Okay. I just want to make sure we understand where we are in the process. It's not a bylaw before us tonight for adoption. It has not gone through the formal hearing process by CRC and joint with the planning board. And I believe, Mandy, Joe, that will take place on the 19th at 7 o'clock. Is that correct? If the council refers tonight, that notice is in the paper this coming tomorrow actually. So we'd have to withdraw the notice if it's not referred. But yes, the 19th at 7 p.m. for IZ at 8 p.m. for the moratorium. And, Mandy, Joe, on behalf of CRC, are there any other comments at this time? I'm not at this time. Okay. Questions before we move to a motion. Kathy? I just want to say I'm strongly in favor of this. So I understand we're just moving it away tonight. I just have one question and it's actually already in the existing law. Nate, when he talked about 15, 17, and offsite being just in the specific zoning areas, I wanted to know if the payment in lieu of it applies anywhere in town or is it just in, just in how I read this. And I also understand, I heard Chris present on this, that neither of these have ever been used. These are atypical of being used. But can you, would payment lieu apply townwide or is it also I, I would read it as townwide because it doesn't refer explicitly to districts. So it's just a question. And it's already in the current law bylaw. So it's me understanding this bylaw better. Sure. Yeah, I guess the payment and lieu would apply townwide, right? So it's not specific to any districts. And yeah, right, these, these, these provisions have not been used. And, you know, like, I think, you know, as when these were added, the consultant recommended that they be kind of high, kind of a high barrier, right? It's almost, these, these are not the preferred, this is not the preferred alternative. But it's a way for a developer, if there really is a hardship for them to provide affordable units in the development, there are these two ways they can mitigate that. But we don't want to make it so easy, as the consultant said, that they would opt to use it. So they haven't been opted yet. Thank you. That is just my question. And I just, you know, and I agree with you both, both on the way these thresholds are set. But I think, you know, the, the goal is to have the units in town. So, you know, in all of Amherst. So these are important features of it. Thank you very much. Chris, to do of anything you wanted to add to that. I don't, not at this time. Thank you. Dorothy. I just want to thank the planning department for, I think, doing a wonderful job being very responsive, coming up with a bylaw, which is clear and understandable and is coherent and it's comprehensive. And, you know, I've been involved in so many of these discussions and this piece, that piece, whatever. And I really saw it come together tonight. So I want to thank them very much for all their hard work. Thank you. Pat. I also want to thank the planning board for this bylaw. The amendments to this bylaw. I just have a annoying feeling. And I'm kind of glad they haven't, it hasn't been used. When you can have offsite affordable units, can that lead to a kind of economic segregation? Or could a developer move everybody into a certain neighborhood that would, I don't know. So I'm just curious about that. Sure. Thanks. Yeah. At the recent housing trust meeting, this was discussed in the, you know, the, I think it was the planning board or the CRC, you know, they write this provision of offsite units was one that wasn't looked on favorably. And one of the members of the housing trust works for mass housing. And she said actually that other communities have this provision in and it doesn't violate fair housing. It could, but especially the way Amherst has written, because you have to provide the offsite units within the zoning district or within 500 feet of the project site, that that proximal distinction, right? That that, you know, because of that, it's actually, it would make these offsite units work. If we didn't have that criteria, right? And developer could then put the units, you know, if they're doing something in the town center and they put the affordable units, you know, on Bay Road, then that clear, that's a big separation of the neighborhood. But because we have this proximal requirement that, you know, the trust felt that that was a good thing. And they also actually felt that getting the offsite units built would be better than the payment in lieu of because then you actually have affordable units. And so it's kind of a, it is kind of a catch 22, how do you balance kind of these, you know, these waivers to providing them in the actual project. So the trust, you know, they actually preferred the offsite units because of themselves to be within the same zoning district or kind of almost the same neighborhood. Thank you, Nick. Yeah, I had a question about the, there was an email that Jerry Weiss had sent to us about the smart, it was citing one second, I need to open it. Hold on. The smart growth toolkit for inclusionary zoning on mass.gov. And I don't know if the planning department has responded to that email. And that was, I think, something we had discussed about for inclusionary zoning to be effective, what the, what the website is proposing and what Jerry Weiss was proposing is that we offer density incentives in lieu of the inclusionary zoning. And that's something that was also discussed in, I think, the CRC meetings. Chris. So we have looked into that there are cities and towns in the eastern part of the state that don't have that kind of offset. We don't really think it's necessary at this time. And the other thing is then the, in the BG zoning district, it would be very difficult to offer a density bonus, because you can already put as many dwelling units as you can fit. The way I like to express it is that you're allowed to build a certain size box at certain height, certain, you know, lot coverage, certain setbacks, and however many dwelling units you can fit in that box is what you're allowed. So the BG doesn't really allow room for much more density. The only thing it would allow for is potentially a sixth story since five stories already allowed. And we don't think that members ready for allowing a sixth story in the BG district. So all in all, we really don't feel like that that kind of offset is, is necessary. We've seen, you know, developers developing housing in the area. Barry Roberts has two developments that he's including affordable units in. Aspen Heights has a development on North Hampton Road and they're including affordable units. So, you know, we feel like the time has come and Amherst is a real, still a really attractive place to develop housing. And, you know, we think that this is the right time to bring this forward. Thank you. Okay. Are there any other questions? Alyssa, I'm sorry, I didn't see her hand. I literally just put it up. So thank you. Could we talk just a little bit more and I know there's going to be hearing etc. But in this venue about local preference, because I understand that it's a hot button issue. I understand that it's complex. I understand that we remove certain words here. But I also know that we've had numerous conversations over the years where some residents have felt more comfortable that if the new affordable housing is for people who are already living or working in Amherst, they have a different perception of those affordable housing units than they do. If there is no local preference for that first round, because that's the thing we always have to remind people it's it's only a first round sort of process. So could you talk to us a little bit more about what the actual meaning of 15.03 is in terms of consider offering local preference and then with none of the explanation that used to be at the end of it? Sure. So there's local preference is anyone who lives in Amherst, works in Amherst, a municipal employee, or people have school-aged children in Amherst. And then it also includes, for instance, if someone even has a job offer but doesn't live in Amherst and not your work. I mean, there's all these ways, but essentially there's like families, people who live or work in Amherst. And so those are, you know, if we said just live and work in Amherst, then that excludes families with children, for instance, possibly that go to school in Amherst. And so, and it's really not, it's really the permit granting authorities decision on a case-by-case basis to recommend local preference. So we as a town can't say that we, you know, and we're allowed up to 70%. So what that means is 70% of the units right on the first round of lottery of tenancy can be reserved for people who meet local preference. But every time on a project basis, we have to apply, the town has to write, work with the state to prove that we can actually, that we have enough need, enough demand for those units to get up to 70%. So for instance, if a product has 10 affordable units and we say, okay, we want local preference for seven of those, and they're for, you know, they're all four bedrooms for families, we have to write to the state and say, okay, based on these plans, and this, you know, this information, the census information, we actually have enough need for a need for seven families for seven units of families. The state could say, actually, we think you only have enough for five units, you know, 50% local preference. And so the way the bylaws change now is just, it's offering the permit granting authority to say, okay, let's, let's look at all the categories of local preference, unless, you know, we can go up to 70%. So it's not, you know, it's not excluding anything. It's actually broadening how we can use local preference. If I could just follow up real quick. Yes, and that's excellent. And that's exactly what I was looking forward to hearing based on our previous conversations about 132 Northampton Road. The only question I have is associated then with, that's a lot of work to ask the state for that information. So does this bylaw where it says consider offering, give the permit granting authority the option to say, that'd probably be a lot of work. I'm not really sure it's worth it. So let's not do it. The permit granting authority doesn't do the work staff does. So we can tell them that we're willing to do the work. So I mean, I'm not, you know, even for North Square, right? For even the comprehensive permits, we have to do the same thing. And so every, every, every project, I'm not, I think, great. So yeah, I hear what you're saying, but I think it's something that staff or the trust would advise the permit granting authority on saying that we want local preference. Are there any other questions? All right. I'm going to read the motion and look for a second to refer the proposed amendment to zoning bylaw article 15 inclusionary zoning to the planning board and the community resources committee for a joint hearing held no later than July 7th, 2021. And for a written recommendation. And an explanation as to whether the proposed bylaw is not inconsistent with master plan for the planning board from the planning board to the town council and to the resource community resources committee no later than 21 days after the joint hearing and for the community resources committee to send a written recommendation to the town council and to submit all materials to the governance organization and legislation committee for review of clarity, consistency and actionability within 60 days of the hearing held by the community resources committee. Is there a second? And a key seconds. Thank you for the discussion or questions. Seeing none, I'm going to move to a vote. And I start with Mandy Joe. I Dorothy. I Evan. I George. Yes. Kathy. Yes. Steve. Yes. Andy. I Sarah has had meetings, so she's absent. Chowney Balmille. Yes. Alyssa. I Pat DeAngelis. Hi. Darcy Dumont. Yes. And Lynn Griezmer is an I and the vote is 12, 0, 0, and one absent. Thank you. The next item on our agenda is the prom already village intersection. This is a first discussion only. And so I just at this point want to ask Darcy Dumont town services and outreach committee to just give a little bit of an overview of their recent discussion and vote. Okay. We the town services and outreach committee was referred the question about the Pomeroy village intersection, whether or not the design should be around about or a signalized intersection. We were referred it on January 25th. And on April 22nd, we voted four, zero, one to recommend the town council proceed with the Pomeroy village intersection as a single lane roundabout designed with consideration of the reports of the transportation advisory committee and the disability access advisory committee. And both of those reports are attached to the TSO report to town council that dated for the meeting today. So all of this is in the report, but I'll just briefly say that we looked at that. We had two public forums, including staff presentations on March 25 and 27th. We had outreach to five different town and town council committees. We had a staff presentation at the district five town council meeting, which is where the intersection is. We had a staff held a pop-up event on April 17th. At the in front of mission cantina, we're around 40 residents attended. And we also had staff outreach to businesses and property owners and butters. And the engaged Amherst web page. There's a special page with regard to this project and a survey. So we did a lot of outreach. We did a lot of outreach and staff did a lot of outreach. And I really want to thank staff profusely for all the work that they put into this and to the volunteers on the different committees that put a lot of research into it. So anyway, we looked at a number of different issues. Safety, including traffic calming, pedestrian safety that included people with disabilities, children, seniors, bicycle safety, driver safety. We looked at traffic flow in particular, the fact that there are delays at certain time of the day. We looked at what which option might be a better economic driver for businesses in that area, which option caused more disruption to do the construction, which option would create more of a land taking. And we looked, we asked to look at the difference in cost, which we did not actually receive that from the town staff. And we also asked about what the greenhouse gas emission impact would be of the two different options. So I'm not going to go into all of those things because they're in the report. We included the considerations, as I said before, of the Transportation Advisory Committee and of the Disability Access Advisory Committee. And one of those recommendations or considerations was that the roundabout were the town to go ahead with the town council to decide to go ahead with a roundabout that it would have auditory and visual signals for safety, for pedestrian safety. So there were a few remaining questions. I was the one abstaining vote and I abstained because I was interested in hearing the answers to the remaining questions. The remaining questions are in the report. And so that might be something that the town staff would be interested in in providing at this time. Okay. Are there questions or is there additional discussion from either Guilford or Christine Brestreff at this point? Guilford? No, we have no additional information. There was some information sent to the town manager on greenhouse gas effect for building versus not building and the type of intersections. And we haven't really sorted through all that yet. So there's nothing much more to be added right now. Okay. Paul or David, you were also very, oh, I'm sorry, Chris, you have your hand up. So I wanted to just mention a few things. We wouldn't be able to have a line item cost of construction for the two options right now because we don't have a plan. We don't have a survey and the engineers haven't done any of the engineering work. So it's really not possible to give that kind of a detailed cost estimate. In terms of how parking will be affected in each of the four corners, I spoke with the representatives of Slobodee Development. They own the northwest corner and the southeast corner. And I've had a number of conversations with them and Dave Zomek was part of the most recent conversation and they are concerned about losing parking on their, particularly their 479 West Street property, which is the property where Valley Transporter used to be. They would lose some, a little chunk of their property and probably as much as four parking spaces. So they, and they have some zoning issues on their property that would be impacted by the taking. So I wanted to mention those two things. And I think that's all I have to say. Maybe Dave has something to add to that. David? No? Paul? Okay. Evan, you have questions? No questions. Just a comment. I just wanted to, Darcy, but I want to very specifically thank the Transportation Advisory Committee. I hope that everyone had an opportunity to read their report, which was the second report they sent to us. They sent us an original report and then they added to it quite a bit. And their work is definitely notable on this. The TSO put a tremendous amount of work into its deliberations around this. Darcy should be commended for facilitating all of that work because it really was a lot and a lot of meetings. But also the Transportation Advisory Committee, I know at least one of the members is in the audience today, really did a tremendous amount of work. And their recommendations, I think, really ended up driving our discussion and our final decision. I know I went into this already somewhat biased towards you, Roundabout, for reasons of pedestrian and bicycle safety. But their report is what really sealed my decision for me. And I want to thank them for the work they did on that. Are there any other comments from staff at this time? Our questions from the Council are shallowing. Chris has a hand up first. Chris, did you want to go after? I wanted to mention that one of the representatives, this Nobody Development is an attendee tonight. And so it would be nice if you could hear from him when we've all asked all of our questions. Thank you. Okay, David. Okay. Sure. Thank you, Lynn. I just wanted to mention I, and Guilford is here and happy to have him add anything to this. But as Chris said, we have been having ongoing conversations with some of the property owners and or business owners in that in the in the Village Center. And I think that's going to be an ongoing process. You know, this is not going to happen over days or weeks, but this is a many month process. So there, there's going to be need to be ongoing outreach discussions. As Chris mentioned, there are concerns, at least from one significant property owner at the Four Corners. We have heard from the owner, I believe you have in your back, get some information from the owner of Siby's Pizza. Again, not a land owner, but a business owner. I've done some outreach to Mission Cantina, and we are supposed to meet this week. As a matter of fact, so I just wanted to put out there that regardless of what decision you make on and in directing staff to move forward with design A or B roundabout or signalized that outreach and those discussions will be ongoing. I know that Guilford and other staff worked, you know, tirelessly through the years when we did the double roundabout down near Atkins. So these are, these are processes that take months sometimes to move forward. And because we don't have a design yet, we really don't know the extent of the improvements that will happen in the Village Center or that we can afford. And because we haven't done the survey work, we don't know how much of one side or the other of the intersection will be affected. We have general information that I believe Guilford and his staff have provided, but we don't know if, if we're going to be needing 12 feet or 15 feet of one side of the, of the intersection. So I just wanted to put that out there. This is not, it is not fully designed yet, and the process of meeting with and talking with and working with property owners and business owners will be, will be ongoing as we move through the rest of the year. Thank you. Kalani, you have your hand up and then I want to call on Alan Sharp. Yeah, I just wanted to check in whether the recommendation of the Disability Access Advisory Committee about, would we be able to reach out to the US Access Board and implement their recommendations? Is that something we plan to do and would we be able to do that? Chris, Guilford, David. I think that Myra Ross reached out to that group. They have some what should I say, regulations that are going to be promulgated but have not yet been. And so, you know, I'm sure Myra will keep us well informed about that. She's brought the, she's brought the consultant in or her contact at this group into our email chain with her and she brought a person who is an expert in training people with visual impairments, how to deal with intersections. So Myra is very good about keeping us informed about what the latest requirements are. So I feel pretty happy about that. Guilford. Just a quick note that that board actually is really a recommendation board and it makes recommendation boards to people who make the regulations. And some of the things they do recommend, while it would be helpful, have not become regulations. And if they were to become regulations, they would actually make these projects and many projects in the town of Amherst, because we don't live on a flat surface, a bit onerous. So we try to take the recommendations and make the best we can out of it. So even though they may say something, we have to make it fit into the project. And that's just something to remember. Thank you. Athena, would you please bring Alan Sharp into the room, Attorney Sharp, into the room. And welcome. I understand that. Thank you. Have some comments. Can you all hear me? Yes, we can. Good. So for those of you that don't know me, I'm an attorney. I've been practicing in Amherst for 35 years and I'm currently the president of Slabody Development Corp. Slabody Development was started by Richard Slabody. I represented Richard for about 30 years. And around five years ago, Richard got pancreatic cancer. He was never married. He never had any children. He knew that he was he was dying. And he came to me and he came to Dwight Scott, who I think is also on this call. And he asked us if we would run his company for 10 years. His goal was he owns a number of properties in Amherst. And his goal was to create some generational cash flow for his niece and nephew who, when he died, were too young to operate the businesses. So that's my role in the business. We're going to be mentoring his niece and nephew into the business. And so I'm not an owner, but I do have a fiduciary obligation to the to Richard's estate and business and nephew. Just make sure that, you know, we are making prudent decisions for the company. Our concern we've met, we've talked to Chris several times. We've seen the preliminary plans of the roundabout and the signalizing intersection. We had a nice meeting last week with Chris and David, myself and Dwight. And our main concerns right now are the roundabout as it's currently presented. As Chris said, our property at 479 West Street is currently non-conforming for coverage. And the roundabout takes at least four of our parking spots and a fairly significant chunk of the corner of our property at 479. And it also, at seven Pomeroy, it takes a chunk of our property or our detention base and currently sits. So our concern with 479 is that the roundabout would make our property more non-conforming than it currently is. We have right now around 4,000 square feet in that building that we're trying to rent. We're concerned that that taking might affect our ability to be able to rent space in our building in the future. We also own a lot behind 479 that we may develop at some point in time. With regard to seven Pomeroy, we've thought at some point, why maybe putting a second story on that bill is concerned with the roundabout and the amount of taking on the corner of Pomeroy also. When we looked at the signalized intersection, the impact on our properties is much, much less significant than what the roundabout showed with the roundabout shows currently. And so we would ask, we also, we've always been very collaborative in nature, not only our neighbors with the town. We feel like we've always tried to work with the town. One of the things that we do, the Montessori school, when they got their permitting, they were required to get a digital parking, and we're the ones that provide that parking to them. And so we're concerned that if parking is taken away that we might not be able to have that arrangement from Montessori anymore, which would in effect, affect potentially their ability to even exist. Because it's my understanding that their special permit is conditioned upon them having the parking that we provide for them at our building. We've also historically, Mission Cantina, when they were busy, we've always allowed the overflow of their business to park on our property at 479. So we would just ask that, you know, look, we're open-minded right now. We haven't seen any final plan. We would hope that that if it was going to be a roundabout that it would have a much less significant impact on our property than what we've already seen. And we would ask the council to take that into consideration. Because obviously, we want to be able to continue to exist as a business. We're very excited about what's going to be happening down there. We think that the improvements any improvement, whether, you know, the improvements that are being planned down there are going to certainly benefit that area. We applaud the town on this grant and we're here to work with you. Thank you very much, Attorney Sharp. I wondered if Dwight Scott also wanted to say anything. No, I think Alan, can everybody hear me all right? Yes, we can. Okay. I think Alan covered pretty much of all of the issues that we're concerned about. In the building of those two properties, I constructed both of those properties on each of the corners back years ago now and watching the intersection evolve. It seems like that particular intersection, and this is just my opinion, is definitely more controllable by left-hand turns and signalization than by the roundabout being able to control for pedestrians there and watching people try to get across the street there. And here again, that's the only thing that I want to add to that. I'd be much more favorable for the signalization. And I think at that location, it would work better than a roundabout. Can I say one other thing? Yes, sir, please. Thank you. And call me Alan, please. I'm also concerned with the safety of the roundabout. I know I heard that it may have been some studies that roundabout, maybe in a study that you looked at the roundabout is safer. One of the things that we do have is all about learning, has a significant portion of our building at Pomeroy. It's preschool, you know, pre-age, preschool children that are there. They have a playground in the back. I live in North Hampton, and I come to the roundabout every day that's at the bridge. And I also, I live near the roundabout Look Park. From my own experiences, at least a couple of times a week, there are accidents in the roundabout. The bridge, it's almost chaotic. I find that people don't really know how to drive through these roundabouts. There's nothing that causes them to slow down, because there's no signal. So I am concerned that the roundabout is actually going to be less safe, because at least with a signalized intersection, it causes people to slow down. So we are also concerned, you know, the safety factor for our tenants. We thank you for joining us, both Anna and Dwight, and for your custodial responsibilities all these years. Alyssa, give your hand up. Yeah, so two things, and I really appreciate those two representatives indicating that they are still open-minded about the process, because TSO didn't hear any of that information that the town council just received, that none of that was presented to the TSO. Before we made our recommendation, although we did go over a lot about safety issues associated with roundabouts, and you see that in the DAC and TAC reports. In terms of one of the things that we talked about at TSO that I'm not sure was entirely clear, and of course this is the first major roadway project that the town council is doing since it's been in place, is that we, you see mentioned in the DAC report, the idea of the design going back to the DAC at each phase, that is not necessarily something, just like, you know, every individual word that's in both reports is not necessarily something that TSO said, yes, town council do these things, we were very careful about wordsmithing that, but we did make clear to the town manager, and he was in agreement because it's a major roadway project, that once the town council makes a decision, which the TSO hopes is around about, that it would come back to the town council for additional design review at the various stages that that's appropriate for, just so that it would, we'd have another look, and also that DAC would have another look before, so like if it was scheduled for a town council meeting to look at the X percent report, the DAC would have had time to look at it at their meeting, so we'd have DAC's report when we looked at it at town council. So it's not just town council vote on this, and it's over, there are a few more stages to it, and coming back to the, and then having it go back to DAC before it comes back to the council seemed like a consensus that we developed at TSO. Thank you. Dorothy? I just want to follow up on the statement about Amherst Montessori School, a, to my mind, an extremely important place in the town of Amherst. They have very limited parking, and they cannot expand the parking because of the nature of the lot, where the building is, and I think some some wetlands, so I don't want their overflow parking, which is required for their operation to be jeopardized. I just wanted to put a strong word of support for that. Thank you. I want to note again that this, we are not voting tonight, but in order for us to proceed with the vote on March 17th, I would like the staff to provide us with some sense of those additional checkpoints, where you would be bringing things back to the council. Scheduling these things into council meetings is interesting at best, difficult at worst, and so I just want to understand, since this is our first big road project, what those looked like, and when, not just as so much a timeframe, but, you know, you come back because now you have the actual design, or you come back because now you're able to tell us what land you have to take. So I, to me as a counselor, and as somebody who works on the agenda, to understand what those are, and when, at what point she would come back. Darcy, you have your hand up. Yeah, I would agree with that, Lynn. Also, I guess I just feel like one of the things that the town staff had said from the beginning was that they were going to have one-on-one meetings with, you know, the property owners and butters and so on. And, you know, there's a lot of effort in that direction, but we didn't ever, like Alyssa said, we, TSO, didn't get that input before we made our recommendation from the gentleman who just gave their public comment. And nor have we heard from a number of the other business owners and property owners. So I guess I feel like that should be done before the council, you know, makes a final vote on it. So if, to the extent that we could get that, you know, I, and, you know, I also, I know that you have said that you can't provide some of the other remaining issues, remain, you know, answer the remaining questions, but, you know, I just feel like it's some, the climate impact issue I think is very important going forward that we need to be doing that. And even if we can't get really close number on it, we could get some general estimates that you could give us having to do with the different, different, you know, ways in which the two different options have to be constructed. So, yeah, the climate impact and input from the butters is what I would be looking for before being able to vote on this. Thank you, Paul. So thank you. The, one of the questions you raised was, Lynn, was when would it come back? And I think what the, what the TSO committee, when they voted on it said was at the 25% design phase. And that's before things are really settled in. It's a, it's a, it's an obvious, it's a, it's a clear stopping point that engineers are used to abiding by. And then that's pretty early in the design process that you can see what it's, it's, you start to see things laid out on the ground. Of course, you know, Guilford wasn't available at that meeting, but that's, that was what I agreed to was at the 25%. Because it's, you're not at the 75%, it's pretty much a done deal. 25%, they're still like, Whoa, this is going the wrong direction or something like that for you. That's, that would be the timeframe for checking in. Thank you, Andy. Speaking again as a member of TSO as several others have, one of the comments that was made was about, you know, observations about other roundabouts and comparing one of the comparisons was to the one at the bridge that was just built with the bridge in Northampton, where the intersection of comes in from, because of Damon Road and interstate 91 exit. I think that one of the things that we were recognizing is, is that there are various types of intersections that have circles. And a roundabout and a traffic circle are two different things. And the number of lanes is one of the factors. And we had substantial conversation with Guilford about that. The two lanes is makes it much more precarious, which was the source of the recommendation that it be a single lane roundabout. And the analogy was to make it similar to what is at the north end of the University of Massachusetts campus, which is a very different kind of intersection and construction than the one that we have down at Atkins, which is two lane and has a very different aspect to it. So the, and the other thing is that the reason that I certainly was in favor of it is that what traffic circles like the one at the north end of campus serve a traffic calming function. And that as people approach that intersection from coming up from the either the south or the north, they can come at a high rate of speed and be tempted in a yellow light to go faster. Whereas the, with a roundabout and a single lane roundabout, they in fact are going to be forced to go slower. And the accident rate is one thing of a roundabout, but the nature of the accidents, the serious injuries happen from what research we could find from TAC and from Guilford. Those happen at signalized intersections, particularly making turns. So thank you. I appreciate that. And I think the difference between a single and a double lane is very good, very serious. I just wanted to clarify, is it for sure that this property will be losing four spots? Or is it something we're speculating at this point? And secondly, it may be obvious, but is there a way to, if they do indeed lose four spots, is there a way to give them that lost space somewhere else? That's only a speculation on the number of lots, the number of spaces that will be lost right now. When the survey comes in, we'll be able to better identify exactly what the impacts are. Okay. Thank you, Guilford. Kathy. Yeah, I have a question that I'm not sure whether it's easier, hard to answer or has been answered, but when you look at roundabouts, including the one Andy just mentioned on the north end of campus, one of my observations is there were rarely young children crossing the sidewalks, crossing the crosswalks there. Every once in a while, you get some students walking and you get some bicycles. So do, whereas this intersection, what I'm hearing is, I know there are crocker form kids can go down there. There's Montessori. Is there information that differentiates what's in the immediate vicinity of the roundabouts that have been studied on how many people walk through it? So not cars through it, but walk through it and the type of people. So can you look at those issues relative to where the roundabout is? You know, walking back and forth across the street to a restaurant, which you don't do up at the north end of campus. There's some housing. It's a question. So I don't have an answer to it. So if there's any way of differentiating it, because I think of them, even when I think about driving around England or some of the European, the roundabouts are often not in as much of a commercial area. They're a little bit more, not rural, but small town, allowing cars are not stopping and crossing and people aren't walking back and forth across. That's my question. I don't know if anybody has an answer to that kind of question at this point. Right. And I wasn't necessarily expecting it, but I've been just watching who even the one in Triangle Street, there's sometimes our students crossing there, but they don't often cross right near the traffic circle. They some they can go up that where silver scape is, if they're going to UMass, they can avoid the traffic circle altogether. So it's just thinking of who might be walking, what kinds of people might be trying to cross the streets in this area. And we heard from one person who has an office near there that they often cross just a little bit north, back and forth across the street. So it seems that there's more, there's potentially a fair amount of foot traffic. So it's a question. It's my question. I'm not expecting an answer right now, but I think it's something, especially what we just heard about the Montessori kids and small kids being nearby and the housing developments that are nearby. That's it. Steve, I think most of the questions I was going to ask have been asked, but the one about the being an old planning board guy, the one about creating a greater non-conformity is an interesting one that I don't know exactly how to deal with that, but it'd be a shame to let that derail this project, especially if the landowners would otherwise be cooperative. So of course I was looking at the zoning bylaw and that particular issue, the lot coverage for that particular zone does not have the asterisk A in it. So that could be repaired by through good old asterisk A or there could be a contract zone, I think, which is a way of zoning a particular parcel, which is used occasionally. So I think that there's workarounds for that, but I think that's a legitimate question because it does affect any future development if it's already a non-conforming lot. So that's, but also I think that the question about where the pedestrians cross, particularly in a world where cars are getting quieter, electric cars quieter than combustion cars, that I think that needs to be addressed. But again, I mean, I think there's so many pluses to the recommendation of the TSO plus the transportation advisory that I'm generally in favor of that recommendation. Okay, I'm going to suggest that we move on. This was only a first discussion. Obviously, there's some additional information that if it could be available by the 17th, that would be useful. And otherwise, it may not even be able to be available at all. So I will look at that carefully as we look at the scheduling for the next time. This appears on the agenda. Are there any other comments? And if not, I'm just going to keep moving on. We're moving to your list of discharge detection and elimination bylaw. And simultaneously, the stormwater management bylaw, both of these had to have a slight change. They went back to GOL. And I'm going to call on George Ryan to just discuss that briefly. Thank you, Lynn. Yes, I think it's wise to deal with these together because the issue essentially, it was raised concern both at the first reading. The issue was raised about the language around enforcement. As it was written in both bylaws, Superintendent of Public Works was the sole enforcement agent. And that would seem to prohibit allowing others to enforce, for example, police officers. So this was sent out for review to KP Law. And they agreed with the suggestion that the phrase and their designee would adequately address this concern. And so in both documents, what you see is the only substantive change to what you saw at the first reading was inserting that phrase in the place is appropriate to allow for other enforcement agents other than just the Superintendent of Public Works. So that was done and voted by GOL unanimously on April 21. And that's really the only change of any substance in the document you have in the two documents you have in your packet. Are there any questions? Okay. So both the IDDE bylaw and the stormwater management bylaw are attached to your motion sheets. I am not going to read them. Thank you. But I am going to make the motion and look for a second. And that is to adopt the illicit discharge detection and elimination IDDE bylaw as shown on pages six to 12. Second. Thank you. Any further discussion? Okay, then we're going to start with Dorothy Pam. Yes. Evan Ross. Hi. George. Yes. Kathy. Yes. Steve. Hi. Andy. Hi. Shalini. Yes. Alyssa. Hi. Pat. Hi. Darcy. Yes. Linda. Yes. Mandy. Joe. Hi. That passes 12 in favor. None opposed. None abstained. And one absent. We're going to move right on to the next one and that is to adopt the stormwater management bylaw as shown on pages 13 to 19. Is there a second? Second. Okay. Any further discussion? Then we're going to start with Evan Ross. Hi. George. Yes. Kathy. Yes. Steve. Hi. Andy. Hi. Shalini. Yes. Alyssa. Hi. Pat. Hi. Darcy. Yes. Linda. Yes. Mandy. Joe. Hi. Dorothy. Pam. Yes. That also passes 12-0-0-1 absent. We're going to move on to the district advisory board and George I'm turning this back over to you. Well, this one's a bit more complicated. You have three documents in your packet. You have the charge that the GOL is sending to you that it has vetted. You have a sample vacancy notice. And you have the memo that I compose, one page memo. So given all the things you had to read for tonight, I don't know how much of this you're able to get through. But we, I guess we have two motions in front of us this evening. The first has to do with the charge. And so I thought I'd focus on that first. And then you need to make a decision as a council what you want to do with this timeline and process. I think the most sensible thing would be referred to GOL. And we would need some guidance from you this evening as to what you would want. And maybe we can even decide that tonight. I don't know. But I thought I'd start with the charge. The charge document is in the packet. The main question that issue that we spent two meetings on was the composition of the board and whether there should be elected officials on it. And the decision was made that it should not have elected officials on it. And that it would be nine residents. And that we also would have suggested there be three non voting. So nine voting members would be residents of the town. And one from each of the five existing districts and no more than two from any given district. And that there would be three non voting members. One would be the town clerk. One would be a member of the IT staff with GIS experience. And one would be a member of the board of registrars. The document was looked at by the town attorney. It was also sent to Michelle Tassenari. She was surprised to get it. I got caught up in an email chain. And she said normally she doesn't see these sources of things. And she's been at this business for 30 years. But she said it looked okay to her. The KP law attorney looked at it and she had no problem with it. So other than that, I think, I don't know, Lynn, if you want to go right to that. And then we can come back and talk about the issue of what to do with this in terms of processing them on. So I'm going to make the motion about the charge. And that is to adopt the district advisory district dean advisory board charge as recommended by the governance organization and legislation committee report on May 3rd, 2021 as presented. Is there a second? Second, financials. Thank you, Pat. Any further questions on it? Seeing none, I'm going to move to the vote on that, George. Yes. Kathy? Yes. Steve? Yes. Andy? Aye. Shalini? Yes. Alyssa? Aye. Pat? Aye. Darcy? Yes. Lynn is a yes. Mandy Jo? Aye. Dorothy Pam? Yes. Evan Ross? Aye. Votes 12, 0, 0, 1 absent. Okay. The next one is really basically sends everybody, everything back to GOL, but they'd like any input from you at this point. And then GOL would return to the town council in a very short turnaround by June 7th with recommendations for the people that we would then, as town council, appoint to the district dean advisory board. Mandy Jo, you have your hand up. So I think June 7th is a bit ambitious. The notice of vacancy hasn't been published on the bulletin board yet, and it must be published for 14 days before any interviews or any appointments and stuff can happen under the charter, I believe, which takes us to May 17th at the earliest, which is a whopping about 20 days before June 7th. And there are nine positions, that's potentially 18 or 20 or even more statements of interests, coordination, and all of that. So my main concern is about the timeline. So you are asking that we would move it to June 21st? Yeah. The only reason I'm pushing is because we're already behind the awareness, but I understand where you are. George. If we're not doing interviews, maybe we could make sure. If I may, and Mandy, I really want to make a strong case for, I mean, this was done 10 years ago. And I put that link and also that information if people had a chance to look at it, essentially through CAS and the then town clerk, Sandra Burgess, reviewed them, made recommendations through a memo to the Select Board, and then the Select Board made its decision. When Michelle Tassanari reviewed our charge in response to Suadette's request, she was surprised by the degree of formalism. And she's been at this for 30 years. So I would just ask the council to consider, you know, we're asking people to basically for three months in the summer. So we're looking for a group of people are going to be here in Amherst for three months who are responsible citizens who can commit. And I'm not sure what what good an interview would do. I'm not even sure SOIs are needed, but perhaps we could we could do that. But if we have to do 20 or 30 interviews, just right, so I would ask people to think about that. If that's what you want, that's what we'll do. But it's going to be extremely difficult time wise. And also, I think is not going to be that productive. We have amended the CAFs. So currently, and recruitment is important. So I mentioned that in the memo. And right this moment, I've already done some I urge everyone to go out and just to their constituents and you can go on right now the town council, the CAF site, and the boxes there for DAB. And that's where it all starts is with the CAF. So we need two things advice from this body in terms of do you want SOIs? And do you want interviews? I would strongly urge you to think strongly about not doing interviews at least just for the sake of time. But I need you I need your thoughts on this. Melissa. So I'm the one that pointed George at the old information, of course, because I said, hey, let's not overthink this. You might remember me saying this at a previous town council meeting. And it certainly did simplify matters when we had Sandra just look at the CAFs and be done with it. And I appreciate that when I said not overthink it, it has now been revised so that it is no longer got town counselors on it. I'm not sure why. Well, I went ahead and voted for the charge because we were clearly going to I'm not sure why we're saying the term of appointments one year. I'm not sure why we're making this into such a huge deal. It took them six meetings to do this last time, six, not six months, not three months of meeting every week like community safety working groups having to do what actually more than three months in their case. It took six meetings. It's not a one year process. And I don't think that we should I know we just voted on the charge, but I don't think it should say it's one year process because it's not we're not going to still be doing it next year. So we can point people for a year if we want, but we're going to end up ending this way before that this is going to end at the latest at the end of the year, probably before then. So when we're recruiting, we need to be clear to people that it's really a relatively short time period, but they do have to be available during this time period, right? If you can't do it in the summer, then you can't do it because that's when and through the fall and that's when it's going to happen. And so as to how what type of process we need to use, I'm struggling because obviously Oka had a process and obviously GOL and CRC had different processes now. I'm not convinced we need interviews. I'm not convinced we need statements of interest, but with the caveat that can you talk if you don't have those things, George, I don't know how GOL runs things in terms of how they talk to people, right? So in the past, when we didn't have this whole series of formal interviews way back in the olden days, people would just get called on the phone and say, you didn't say anything on your CAF. Tell me more about some stuff there, but we have a much more formal process now, right? And so I wouldn't want somebody to be judged on their CAF if they don't get the chance for a statement of interest. They don't get a chance for an interview. So I don't want to make this an uneven playing field for people, but I also don't want to overly complicate this in comparison to a lot of other things that we do. So I appreciate that we're open to suggestions on this particular thing. I just don't know an obvious path beyond. I liked the old one of just dumping it on the town clerk. Andy? Just a simple question. Do we have any idea when the Census Bureau is going to have the data that's going to be needed to make the decisions of this committee? And has that been factored into the schedule that's not being proposed? Yes, we do. George, do you want to answer that? Yeah, we have those dates. Andy, Sue has given them to us. The first numbers, she calls them legacy files, but essentially there are a set of raw numbers and numbers that according to the state census people, the DAB can begin to work with as of August 15th. So there will be actual numbers that they can begin working with by August 15th. There's also training. And again, Sue's not here. I'm not quite sure what that entails, but it does sound like that the members of this body would at least need at least one or maybe two sessions of training. So she mentions some training. And then the numbers, preliminary would be available August 15th. The final census figures are September 30th. And then we have to give a vote and submission by October 30th. So back to the earlier point by Alyssa. This body really is only going to exist from maybe sometime in June or July or June, say, to the end of October. Because at the end of October, we have to have a vote and send things on. So the key dates are August 15, September 30 is when the actual census figures are available. And then October 18th is the last council meeting before October 30th. So that's the timeline. Essentially, August through October 18th is when they'll be doing the bulk of their work, but there's some training involved before that is my understanding. Yeah, I think the goal is that there is state level training. And in fact, the list is already out and towns are signing up for that state level training at this time. Then, and really just learning about how the whole process is done. And then you actually start working with the raw data and moving on through the process. So if there's a little more involved than just, you know, you get a few numbers and you draw a few lines. Mandy, Joe. I think I'm okay with not doing interviews, but we modified our CAF form so that it didn't have any questions about why you wanted a position or anything like that. So I think the statement of interest are absolutely necessary given the modification of the CAF form to give an even playing field to anyone who is seeking this position. Darcy. Yeah, I was going to say the same thing about the CAF. I think that I mean, another way you could go is just to have the members of the GOL committee have some interview questions all the same and make and call people because there might be a lot of people for, you know, for Zoom interviews, but we might be able to just divide them up and call them. So that and then report back to the committee with their answers to the interview questions. So I'm going to suggest a modification to that. And that is you have the CAF and your statement of interest has more structure to it than just saying, tell us why you want to do this. You know, tell us why you want to do this and talk about this, this and this and and us a SOI. I'm fine if you think you honestly can do this without interviews. I think the burden of the number of interviews is huge. But I also really, in addition, and I said this in a GOL meeting, so it's not going to be anything new. I would really like this committee to reflect the population of Amherst, not just the districts, but our diversity as well, in a way that it literally is representative of the town we are. George. Lynn, I share that, but we are going to be limited by whoever fills out a CAF and then submits an SOI. So and we're also limited by the fact that the individuals have to be literally from different geographic areas. So you might have someone you'd love to have on a committee for various diversity reasons, but unfortunately, you already have that that you don't have that position available. You only get two for district at most. So I would say the most important help you could give us would be all individual counselors reaching out to people in their districts that they think would be serve on this committee and encouraging them with the understanding it's these three months. Essentially, it's the summer. You're not hearing the summer. You can't do it. But if it's something you're willing to do, it'd be a great service and encourage them to submit a CAF. And then we will reach out to them directly, tell them about the SOI. It sounds like that's something that and maybe have a series of specific questions they need to address and then try to move as quickly as possible. But it's going to be recruitment. I'll put out the vacancy notice tomorrow, but I don't think that's going to produce 20 responses. It's going to be recruitment, particularly by counselors. And then, you know, we'll do the best we can to represent the community that will be dependent on who fills out those CAFs. So I guess I want to ask the question back to GOL. Do you feel you've heard enough from the council? Well, what I'm hearing is that, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that you would like SOIs because the CAFs do not provide enough information. We should construct some kind of request and that if they don't submit an SOI, they can't be considered. So it's another hurdle. The nice thing about a CAF is once they fill it out, they're in the pool. And then we just, the five of us look at it and, you know, we talk about them, maybe we consult the town clerk, I don't know, and then we make a decision. But if we have the SOI, fine, that's another hurdle. If they don't submit it, they're out of the pool. Interviews, sounds like people are saying, you don't have to do that. Would you allow us to do some follow-up if we had to, you know, if we had a question about somebody's SOI, we could reach out to them informally. Is that okay? That's where I need help. Yeah, I don't have a problem with that, Darcy. I guess I just can't feature choosing people with whom we have not even had a conversation because you can't tell, you know, there are a lot of things that you cannot tell from the written word. I guess I don't, I don't see us not having conversations with these people in some way or another. But, you know, that's... Well, there's maybe something that you all can work out together as long as I have the permission of the council to do this in a somewhat less than formal way. Because the system we've been following, say, for instance, for finance is very strict. And we're not going to, I'm urging us not to do that. So people are okay with that. Fine. But... Wendy, Joe. I just want to give guidance on the non-voting members or suggestions. The town clerk's on the charge we adopted is the town clerk. But there are two other ones that need chosen somehow. And so I am assuming or would this committee, not the committee, but the council essentially suggest to Paul that he reach out to the board of registrars for them to designate someone that just gets passed on to the council and similar for the IT department? Or is GOL going to be expected to figure out something with those two non-voting positions too? I think it's an excellent suggestion to ask Paul to recommend that reach out to those two groups or figure out how to reach into those two groups and figure that out. Is that work for GOL? Happy to have Paul do that. I could also do that as chair. Just reach out, whichever. I don't care. But that's, you know, you see these folks all the time. What I'm hearing is that you some other additional kind of instrument to get some information. Call it an SOI, call it a set of interview questions. You may need to have some conversation follow up with a few people, but that we are giving you permission to relax the rigor of other nominations. Alyssa? Yeah. And I think we are doing exactly that. And I think if you just document what you decided, right? Then then it's clear to everybody how it worked. And so even though people 10 years from now might look up your URL as well, but it'll all just help us understand it. And I realized that obviously things change a lot, but I will point out that hundreds of people have served on town committees with no appointing authority ever speaking to them personally before they got appointed. Hundreds and more than a hundred. Okay. I'm going to make the motion and to refer to the governance organization, legislation committee, recommendation to the council appointments to the district dean advisory board, including publication of a charter nine comma 11. They can see notice solicitation of statements of interest and recommendation to the town council by June 21st, 2021. Is there a second? Second. And for the question or discussion, Alyssa? Okay. Then we're going to move to a vote. I believe we're up to Kathy. Yes. Yes. Steve. Hi. Andy. Hi. Shalini. Yes. Alyssa. Yes. Hi. Pat. Hi. Garcy. Yes. Lynn is an I. Mindy Joe. Hi. Dorsey. Hi. Evan. Hi. George. Yes. And that is a 12, zero, zero and one absent. And that concludes our votes for the night. We are now moving on to and the reason it include means because we already have we already voted appointments on the consent agenda. We are now to the committee and liaison reports. Mandy Joe, anything from CRC? The report I filed was mainly so that the dates were in writing. Check out the report for all the dates and all the dates matter. So yeah, we're moving forward with everything. The report's just a basic notification of dates. Are you saying that I should look at the dates in the report for updating the town council agendas? You should have them all already, but this is to make sure the entire council has all the dates for everything that's going on in CRC. Great. Thanks. Kathy and Steve, anything on the elementary school building committee besides the fact that you've been doing a lot of interviews? Well, I'll do just to a quick summary. We're at the point of selecting an OPM and we have done the interviews. We did well, first we did a short list, then we did interviews, and we've made a recommendation for a finalist. And now it's in Paul's lap to negotiate a contract. And that hasn't happened yet. But if it happens, then we submit to the granting authority and they edit what we've written. I won't say it quite that way, but we try to get past the slap. So we're still trying to get to a June 7th decision on an OPM, but it does depend on this negotiating contract. Steve, anything to add? You hit it wonderfully. We're going to stay on the call because we meet again tomorrow at 7.30. We're meeting at 7.30 in the morning to tell the rest of the committee what I just said because we... Okay, finance committee. Andy, anything else except that we have our work cut out for us? We have one additional item that we're still working on. When the matter was referred to us for the audit review committee and the audit process, the auditor selection process, their request was to provide a written report for this meeting, which was part of the finance committee report. Our work really isn't finished and we're going to have to continue that work as we go forward through the budget process, spending a little bit of time on it so that we can get that done in an orderly fashion. The piece that was described in the report regarding the committee, the interview committee, is something that we probably need to move on an earlier date than the entire process. And I think that Lynn has tentatively placed it on the May 17 agenda. So is that to approve the charge at that point, Andy? That would be to... We're trying to get the charge, the committee charge because then it has to go, I think to GOL too. So we would need to... I'm actually going to suggest that since it's three counselors that I, once we approve the committee charge, that I would then hold the council to see who's even interested in being on this selection committee and bring it back on the 21st when the council can vote. That we don't need to spend GOL's time on picking three counselors. That sound okay? I didn't know if you had anticipated that GOL would look at the charge itself. Okay. Normally we do. Maybe we do look at charges. Yep. Okay. Good. The finance committee can be advancing that to you fairly soon. Okay. Thank you. TSO. Darcy, anything else? No, not really. Okay. Alyssa, do you want to mention anything about the licensing for the licensing commissioners? Why, yes, I would love to. Thank you. So remember how last year we revised the longstanding general bylaw on open containers of alcohol that said no person shall consume any alcoholic beverage nor possess or transport any open can blah, blah, blah, blah. Through all any of these places, unless a permit therefore has previously been secured from the board of license commissioners, and the board of license commissioners has come up with those regulations. And so there's a memo in your packet dated April 30th and their regulations are on their website. They did a terrific job of reaching out to other communities and talking to different various people throughout town and exploring flexibility and clarity. So applicants know what to expect. And it allows the board of license commissioners to look at each application in context. So we should all consider this a win. Thank you. Are there any other liaison reports? George, you have your hand up. Yes. GOL, and you forgot my committee. I mean, I know I've been talking a lot tonight, but that's all right. It's okay. I did actually have two things I wanted to say briefly. And I'm sorry. Maybe it's because I've been calling on you all night. That's all right. It's but if you'll bear with me just for a moment, one is something we've already done this evening. And I just want to make sure that it's if people have concerns or problems with it, they should speak up either now or later. But Lynn was very gracious in allowing us on GOL felt, I think as a group of consensus, that we should somehow acknowledge our proclamation citations and commemorations, not just have them in the consent agenda, there's no problem with them in the consent agenda. But we should take a moment and recognize them. The thought was to have either a council sponsor. In this case tonight, it was Mandy and myself. And so I did it, but or have the chair of GOL, but ideally be a council sponsor. Just briefly introduce it as I did tonight and then just read the now therefore clause. And if someone's in the audience, perhaps recognize them. We felt that was important. So if people just I mean, it takes up time. And I know that's precious, but you saw tonight what we did. And if people are unhappy about it or concerned about it, maybe at some other point, they can express that or even tonight. But I just wanted to touch based on that briefly. And then the second thing is that GOL will continue to work in addition to working on the DAB process. We are still working on the possibility of creating a town council policy and appointments, putting it very briefly a town for the council for all council appointments, at least for those for finance ZBA and planning. And we have a document in our folder for Wednesday's meeting, actually two ones redlined and one is clean that we'll be working with on Wednesday, trying to make some headway with that. It will come after we work on DAB and a few other things, but it should get dealt with on Wednesday. So if people are interested, they should definitely look at that document. And if they want to come to the meeting, they're certainly welcome. It will be in the second half of the meeting at the moment, but we are still working on that sort of a council policy for appointments. Okay, Dorothy, you have your handle. Quickly, I really do appreciate the nod to the proclamation at the meeting tonight. And a question, do we submit these to the Gazette each time we have one? We post them on the town and we now do a news release with them. And so they are, they're available to the Gazette, but the Gazette can choose not to publish them. Okay, thank you. Okay. Any further liaison reports? Did I miss anybody else's meeting? Okay, town manager report, Paul. I don't really have anything to call out. I will be meeting with TSO. They usually have a series of questions at TSO, but if there are any questions from the council, I'm here to answer them. Are there questions from the council, Darcy? Yes, I have, let's see, two questions if I can find them. One is about the report about the bid. Oh, the bid grant. You mentioned that they were going to lease the most prominent largest building downtown. And I wondered what that is. And I also had the question about the board of assessors. How will the board of assessors obtain clarification of the council's goals for the residential exemption study? Those two questions. Can you hear me? Yes, it's muted. Sorry about that. I'm not sure if that location is public. I can ask the bid, if it is, and if it is, I can share that with you. In terms of what the board of assessors plans on doing is, I think after the last year, the council expressed interest in the residential exemption, they were going to look into that, see what the options were, and then present the options back to the council. And perhaps with a recommendation. Right, you had said that they want to find out from the council what our goals are. So yeah, they will probably write to you if that's what their interests are, to find out what your goals are. I have to follow up on that, I'm sorry. Okay. Do I see anything else? No, that's it. Pat. Thank you. Paul, I'm wondering where you are in appointing, creating the task force to look at the shelter situation and also about what's happening with the shower. I know there's a lot of correspondence this afternoon on the shower. I don't know, I think there's a meeting tomorrow at noon at the site with the building commissioner and a few other staff members with Kevin. So I don't, I'd have to find out where that is, but I know they're actively working it. There's different options available. The committee, I've recruited a number of people who are willing to serve. I've got like one more seat to fill. So it's going to be a very strong committee, I think, that we focused. I've got representatives from the trust, from the Craig's Doors, a couple of staff members, and then there are a couple other people I'm trying to recruit in who have specific skill sets that are going to help that group. Thank you very much. Are there other questions of the town manager? Then we're moving on to the town council comments. I sent out a updated, it was updated at the time I sent it, and there's since been changes on a set of basically looking at our meetings between now and the end of June. I did ask individual chairs to basically look at that and let me know if there are changes. And so are there any questions on the future agenda items? Pat? I was putting my hand up for comment for something else. Sorry. That's fine. Then I also sent you my president's report. Are there any questions on that? And then let me just mention on future agenda items, there's been this ongoing back and forth about a potential parking garage and also the parking shell. I mean, I'm sorry, the shell on the common. And I would like to work with the town manager to see how we bring those forward since I think they've both been on the plate and then kind of then been a little off the plate as future agenda items. Alyssa? Yeah, my question was just, and I had sent this to you, Lynn, but I guess I don't understand as a town council where we're at in terms of talking with UMass about the P3 projects because I appreciate that you've met with them and Paul meets with them and they've talked about that and they sent out a press release in March about where they are and we know that they still have several steps to go before it gets approved by the board of trustees. But just because we as town councilors get asked a lot of questions about this, it's not clear to me that since the town council has zero role in making any decisions associated with this, how can we best keep the town council kind of so we all have the same information as they get it? Or, you know, if there's something that you get that you want to send to us in an email or Paul gets that Dave gets or however that works just so that when we get questions, district meetings, people just calling us and asking us where they're at, that just seems like it would be helpful because they're not going to put out press releases as often as one might like. Paul actually has a fairly robust, not about a fairly good summary of what we do know in his town managers report. And then I think I sent all of you the link of the recent press release. We don't really know anything beyond that. I mean, we've seen some potential building eye concepts that are not even designs. There's a graduate dorm and an undergraduate dorm or living quarters, I should say. And then with the idea that those would be completed by the fall of 2023. And they're placing a higher priority on North Village with the idea that that would be ready for occupancy in 2022. Paul, 22. Okay. I will see what else they still have to go through some additional approval with the Board of Trustees of the University. And that's not going to happen until September. But I think that's about all we know. Pat? I just wanted to remind everyone that we have the rethinking racism, half day follow up this Saturday from 9 to 12. And we will be breaking up for a variety of different discussions and we'll be in small groups to do that. So anyway, look forward to seeing you there. And you'll be sending a link to all of us for that anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Connectivity. Okay. Dorothy? In reference to UMass dorm building, I guess it was the press release had an interesting statement in it that once they get these new dorms up, they then would decommission existing dorms to do needed renovation, which is very reasonable. But so I'm interested in net number of new units because it may be there are no new units. They just may be replacement temporarily until the refurbished older dorms get come up. I think that's kind of relevant. I personally don't have an answer to that, Paul. Maybe we can try to get an estimate to the extent possible. I do know that in a variety of different ways, in fact, office building that was actually an old dorm built from World War Two returning vets was a building that my office was in. And they basically used to this swing space whenever they were going to renovate somebody else's offices. That was after they kicked us out. So, you know, they do that. But we might be able to get more firm numbers for you there. Steve? Yeah, so on that same topic of P3 and development in that area. So a couple of comments. So I'm on the campus planning committee, which is a faculty, I have, you know, obviously a UMass employee. So I'm on the UMass campus planning committee as is Chris Breschrup, actually, and the developers presented the work for that. And the developer made the comment that she had never seen as many undergraduates living in family houses than she had in Amherst. So I asked the question, I think I've communicated this to some of you, but I asked the question, then why aren't you going bigger? So in other words, if we, if you think it's a lot of, and she wasn't saying that as a compliment to the town of Amherst, she was seeing that as a sign that there was a lot of pent up demand for, you know, basically on campus housing, but students couldn't find it. And therefore they were living in houses that were typically owner occupied. So my question is, why not go bigger? 1200, because we're only building on one of the parking lots. So I think the point I'm making is that I'm, I was a rogue actor acting in my capacity at UMass, but I think that there could be a coordinated response from the town. And maybe there is, but I'm not aware of what that might be. But I do think that while we don't have direct jurisdiction, we definitely have influence. So in other words, and actually the same developer talked about, there's a carrot and a stick. So the town can be doing things that encourage, you know, if we think it's a good idea, you know, students to live closer to campus or on campus. Wait, is that the stick or the carrot? Whatever. So that's one point is that I do think that we, as a town leadership, can influence, you know, decisions that UMass is making. The other one that I was going to mention is the Newman Center. So the Newman, the town bought the Newman Center, I'm sorry, the university is buying the Newman Center and in turn leasing land on their campus for a new Newman Center. So that was also presented to us. And that's a really weird situation because it's neither under the university jurisdiction per se, nor the town jurisdiction. So it's they're leasing the land, but they're giving the Newman Center complete, what do you call it, freedom in terms of what the design is. But because it's on university land, then the town has no jurisdiction. So the university doesn't have jurisdiction over the design of it, or because they've just drawn a line, said, do whatever you want. But then the town can't get involved in site plan reviews, special permit. So in fact, they said that they weren't even clear who the building inspector would be for that. But so that's the first time I've ever come across that a reasonably significant project that didn't have clear jurisdiction either being the university or the town. Okay. Any comments on that? At this point? I don't see any. Are there any other comments or questions regarding future agenda items or councilor comments in general? Steve, you still have your hand up. Okay, seeing none, then I am going to call this meeting adjourned at 1112. Have a good evening.