 All right, we're recording you can go ahead. Okay, hello everyone and welcome to the TSO committee meeting on this Thursday evening. Thank you for joining us pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 extended by chapter 22 of the acts of 2022. This meeting will be conducted via remote means members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so via zoom or by telephone. No in person attendance of members of the public will be permitted but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. With that, I'd like to call the meeting to order and be sure that everyone can hear and be heard. We can see everyone so I'll start with the committee so Andy. Yes, I'm here. Anna present. I'm here. Okay, move on. Tina. I'm here thanks. Oh, here. Okay. I'm here. Thank you Darcy do mark here. John root. I'm here also. Hello welcome. And Kelly can you hear us Kelly. Yes, I can you sound great. Thank you. All right, so we will move on to public comment. If we have anyone with us in the audience. Oh wait, I'll pause. Sarah, can you hear us and make sure we hear you. Hi everyone, how you doing. Welcome thank you. So we'll go ahead. Do we have anyone with us in the audience who would like to make a public comment. Please raise your hand if so so we can bring you in. Okay, John root go ahead. Yes, so I need slides for this. This is Oh, perhaps I should be waiting for for later. Rather than calling this public comment. So I'm not ready yet. Yeah, if it has to do with your with your presentation. Yes. Okay, so I cannot see Athena. Did we have anyone. Okay, no, no hands in the attendees. Okay, thank you. So with that. We are going to move on to appointments followed. File, excuse me appointments filed with the town clerk for the recreation commission. Paul, would you like to walk us through and tell us about the recreation commission that you are. So there are two appointments that I'm putting forward to tonight, both for the recreation commission. Jonas Cox who lives at 70 Hillcrest place. Has been working in multimedia webcasts and things like that for 25 years. But more importantly, he's as a sports and recreation enthusiast. Ever since he was young and now continues to organize. Amherst youth with soccer. He's developed summer leagues. He understands all the pieces that you need to know about what it takes to schedule fields to put a team together to communicate with parents. So he's going to be a terrific addition to the recreation commission. The second person is Jean Janicki who lives on Memorial Drive. She has a lot of experience and in other communities actually and has and wants to bring that experience to Amherst. She identifies as bicultural bilingual and wants to really expand the offerings for the town of Amherst. To access more communities than actually participate at this point in time. So these are the two appointments. I hope that you'll support. Thank you. I'd like to make a motion. All right. I moved to recommend to the town council, the town manager appointments of Jonas, Jonas Cox and Jean Janicki to the recreation commission with terms to expire June 30th, 2025. Steinberg second. Thank you. Well, I haven't. Hello, Shalini. Yes. Andy. Yes. Anna. Yes. And I am a yes. So that is a four with one. Absence. Thank you. Really quickly. Anna, could you read me that motion just one more time? You can even wrote it down today. Move to recommend to the town council, the town manager appointments of Jonas Cox and Jean Janicki to the recreation commission with terms to expire June 30th, 2025. You got it or you want another one? With terms to expire June 30th, 2025. Got it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Kelly. I just want to take a moment to Dorothy has joined us. Just want to make sure Dorothy that we can hear you and you can hear us. I can, but I will tell you, I, I clicked on the link Athena sent. And it sat there. Didn't move. I went and found another email from Athena and clicked on that one. So I've been sitting there trying to come in through official entries. What, what did I do wrong? It may have been the wrong invitation, Dorothy. I'm sending a lot because we have so many special meetings coming up. So I'm, I'm sorry if that, that was confusing, but you're here now. TSO and took the day's date. So I was kind of weird. So how did you guys get in? What was. Because obviously what I did wasn't right. It was the same with the email. Yeah. Same for any. The last one that Athena send today. That's the link I used. I, that was my second link. Okay. All right. Just was glad that you're here. Okay. So with that, we will move on and welcome. Sarah bar. and campus initiatives and director of community engagement at Amherst College. Thank you for coming by to chat with us this evening and will you need a screen share? I am not going to need a screen share, although I might at some point decide to reference the internet. So for now, I think I'm okay. Okay, the floor is yours. I am so happy to be here with all of you tonight and my understanding is that TSO plays a very particular role in the town and so I'm looking at the website right now. And so your responsibility is to attend to matters concerning the day-to-day provisions of services by the Amherst government and relations between the town and the community, giving attention to the meeting of the council's statement of values, particularly those of diversity, equity, inclusion, environmental sustainability, fiscal responsibility, as well as ensuring that measures foster an unbiased and inclusive environment that is free of discrimination, harassment, and negative stereotyping towards any person or group. Is that correct? That's what they tell us. Okay, so there are so many things that I can talk about, but I think what I really want to focus on are the really positive connections between the college and the town, particularly the different town departments. And then also some of the ways that you may or may not know that folks can get involved in Amherst College and come to public events. So I'm in a relatively new role at Amherst College, although I've been here for 15 years, which is kind of wild. But over time, I've been involved in internship programs here, so getting students out to local community sites, like the Amherst Survival Center and the Hitchcock Center and the Eric Carl Museum. I worked with faculty who made connections between the town and the college, so helping students link learning inside and outside of the classroom. Right now, I think we have 20 community-based learning courses. There are some particularly fat ones right now working with the Amherst Public Schools. There is a pair of faculty members working with all of the fourth graders at Wildwood on an Indigenous Narratives class. And so there is a book club between the college students and the fourth graders. And they're learning about the ways in which students may or may not see Indigenous authors and illustrators. And so the college students are going to the Eric Carl Museum with the fourth graders. And ultimately, the students are going to write their own children's books. So really trying to contribute to overall the conversations around Indigenous literature. There's another group of two faculty members that are working with the Family Center at Amherst Public Schools and thinking particularly about college access. So we've had our students going to the middle school and the students are coming here to Amherst College. So really trying to like help build connections between our students and the students in the public schools. Kind of thinking more broadly about sort of the other kinds of partnerships that we have. I've got a Spanish class working with the Jones Library. So thinking about bilingualism and hints and storytelling. The Spanish department is actually amazing and working with the dual language program in the public schools and trying to connect with Crest and the DEI department to think about translation. I see Scott Livingston on this call and I know that John Carter and is a good partner for you all as well. So it really is department by department trying to figure out how to connect the talents of town employees with the talents of Amherst College employees to make good things happen. One of the things I want to mention is that I don't know if you remember we had this pandemic and it kind of made everything extra super weird. And I think what I heard from a lot of members in the community was that there was a lot of appreciation for Amherst College creating a bubble. Do you remember the bubble? Do you know that the students may have wandered outside of the bubble on occasion? Anyway, I think that everyone tried very hard because we're a residential community. I mean 97% of the students live on campus. So we really had to pay a lot of attention to public health issues and kind of keeping the students safe because a number of them couldn't go home. And what happened by creating that bubble is I think that we lost a lot of the connections that we had before the pandemic. So one of the things that I think we're really working on is like how do we re-establish relations? How do we help students get to know their neighbors? How do we help Amherst College town members remember that we're here and get connected? And so there were also some other weird things that happened. The Mead Art Museum was like closed for a year because there was a structural problem with the steeple. And so I'm happy to report that everything is pretty much open and everyone is welcome. So I've actually been to the Mead Art Museum a number of times lately. If you haven't been, it is free. There is an amazing James Baldwin exhibit. There's this really cool exhibit called Black Art Matters where Black students have contributed art and it's been curated in the museum. And so it is a really special opportunity to see student artists in a museum. Beneschi is still there and they're getting a wild amount of traffic. So the dinosaurs are there. The dinosaur tracks like please come by. Emily Dickinson is back open. The athletic program is great because there's lots of free opportunities for people to go to sporting events. I mean the list goes on for ways that people can get connected. I've been trying to do a better job of posting public lectures to the public calendar in town. So if anyone is signed up for what is it called? The special communications. You all are signed up for it, right? The town. I'm sorry on the town website listserv. And so you can post things on the town calendar and they get sent out on the listserv. So we're trying to do a better job of pushing communication out and staying connected. And then there are fun things too in the sciences. We did astronomy night in the fall and so welcomed. It was particularly targeted to middle schoolers so they could learn about the cosmos. But we had the telescopes on the roof of the science center open so people could see Jupiter. We had a portable planetarium set up in the lobby so people could go and like have a planetarium experience. There's this great program called Mass Mammal Watch. I don't know if any of you have bears in your yard but you can totally like track bears and report it and be a part of this massive citizen science project that's tracking bear movement in Amherst and beyond. So there's just lots of cool ways in which we're connected. The Mass Mammal Watch is one of my favorite programs because I've had a bear in my yard and it kind of is overwhelming when that happens. But we've partnered with eight local schools and so there are kids that have access to trail cams. And so kids in the science classrooms get to go through the trail cam footage and then contribute that science to this broader tracking of bears and other mammals in Massachusetts. So lots of different ways to get connected. I would be very curious if there are things that you think that we could do to help folks know of the resources that are available here or if there are ideas for partnership projects. That's certainly a thing that I would love to learn more about. Dorothy I see your hand up. Yes well because I have subscribed to a concert series at various times at Amherst College I get emails telling me about music activities. But what I don't get emails on are plays and I love to attend plays. Finally at the high school it was like you could never find out what the show was but now that they used Eventbrite to sell tickets Eventbrite somehow keeps your name in there and sends you notification that there's a play and when it's going to be. And I would love to be because I did get to one play production of yours in the powerhouse but it was just a total accident and you know I'd love to be able to participate more with the arts at Amherst. I did see the museum exhibit it was wonderful and I heard about the science the telescopes on the roof and I thought oh I wish I'd known that but I didn't know about it in time. And we're trying to be better about it so there is actually an arts at Amherst email listserv and so I can email that to you so that you can sign up for it but it's a go-to source for all of the galleries all of the arts all of the music events. But does it have theater events? Theater events too it's all of the arts so arts theater dance music all of the things so that's that's usually a great source so I'd be happy to send that information to you so you can sign up for that newsletter. Thank you thank you Anika. Yes I just wanted to share Dorothy the astronomy night was pretty great and that that was great I've and I've also you've made my rounds to the that I shared last week to the Meade Museum that was great and and I'm ready for others so. There's a there were two opening art openings on campus tonight and so I actually went to an event at the Meade and everyone was kind of splitting off because there is a new exhibit in the Russian Cultural Center so Amherst College has this very unusual collection of Russian texts and art and so that's beautiful and then there is another art opening in the art building so really sweet amazing art to see. Andy. Well the only thing I was going to add Sarah thank you there was one thing that we did a few years ago we have a sister city in Japan kind of a sake and they every year had been sending junior high school students to do home stays in Amherst and we try and come up with activities that are would give them an introduction to the Amherst and to just life here and in the last visit we did an informal thing that I put together with the visit to the Boneski Museum and lunch at Valentine and it was very successful and I think that it actually could be expanded to give them a little bit more flavor of what a college is like in the United States because I think it's a very friendly place to do it so if we're able to pull us off this year it has been suspended for several years because of the pandemic I am in contact with Kanagasaki and if there's going to be an exchange this year I will get in contact with you. Please do and all of the conversations that I've had with the folks at Boneski Emily Dickinson and the need have consistently said like please send people our way you know we're happy to give tours we're happy to make connections like folks on campus very much want to build relationships with you and make the resources that are on campus accessible and welcoming. Shalini. Hi I actually pronounced my name perfectly that's so unusual and nice. Okay so listening to all the ways that students are participating with schools and libraries I was wondering if they might be interested in interning with with town council or some of our committees in terms of research in an area we always look we're always wanting to do research and so if they're and there's you know they you can look at different committees and they can go to the website and see what each committee does so if they have interest in zoning planning you know urban design or so that would be the CRC our town TSO is more around services quality of services safety inclusion you know those kind of things or so that's one area of where we could benefit and and similarly with faculty as well you know when we have openings could we send them to you and then you could forward it maybe like you know because there's I mean there's so many before I joined council I had no idea how our town runs and I could have been I was pretty clueless and having joined it's just created such another level of involvement belonging respect for our staff for our town and so I think it's just such a great opportunity for people that they may not even know exist so so would you be the person we send it out and we actually have two students serving on committees right now so there is a student that's serving on the arts commission and another student that's on the human rights yes yes and we actually post the vacancies on the cce's website so I did hear that we're about to push again for like vacancies on committees and so that's an easy thing that we can do but if there are specific technical skills that folks need or area of expertise like you know absolutely committed to making those things visible um one of the um I'm actually meeting with the head of the student newspaper tomorrow morning and this is one of the stories that I want to pitch to him because I think that there are going to be um a lot of students that are interested in that it's worth mentioning that we've had students do research projects for different groups so a couple of years ago there was a student who worked with John Hornick on affordable housing um and was doing research so Amherst college students are are very good at research and sometimes it comes in the form of an internship um sometimes we do class projects so Spanish senior seminar it's translation projects with community partners um but the other thing we have as a resource is federal work study money and so there are federal work study students that work at the Jones library right now um and we've had some conversations with other departments as well so I think there's again we're sort of relearning how to be connected because during the bubble times no one was allowed off campus and so the tradition of those jobs and those relationships kind of um went away as seniors graduated so I think we're in this time of rebuilding but Michalini I 100% agree like there's opportunities to intern to do research um and to support government we actually had one intern that got a job after graduation in the IT department in town um so so there is a history of doing this but but again we're out of practice so so part of it is like how do we how do we get back into the zone there and now I hear you and and most of our meetings are still on zoom so hopefully it's easy and convenient for them to participate and also your two blocks down the road that's true I mean like you could actually like kind of cross I mean like three or four buildings and you you hit an Amherst college dorm um so it is it is super close you know just share one other ask one other question then um so also there are a lot of fun things happening now in downtown like in terms of drinks the music scene or you know in summer we have the jazz series of music and on and in the comments is there a way for students to know about what's happening in town yeah and so the communications department at Amherst is trying to help move that message around and so the block party was actually the first time that we've been back in like semi-normal times and so like Amherst students were really excited to go out and you could tell that they were the students because they had little purple lanyards on um and so I think that there's been a lot of that action in town I actually had dinner um at one of the restaurants and as I was walking to my car I saw a pair of students in their Amherst college gear so they're they're definitely around um one of the I I serve on the board of both the bid and the chamber in my and so I'm trying to like really sort of say like okay how do we make sure we push this information so is it posters is it social media um but but again it's it's new it's new um habits that need to be developed um and and if you if you watch Amherst college and social media we're trying to like post and repost um opportunity so absolutely some and they can perform at Drake's too yes and they have and we and yeah the Drake uh it's I was talking to one professor who had assigned um Drake concerts as as a class assignment so go and see live performance and write a because you know you can you can theorize about music but it's very different to watch performance and you know what he is was saying is that he discovered that the students just kept going back time and time again because they love it um I also discovered that Amherst college students can go to Amherst cinema for free so so we have paid for tickets and made that a resource that's available so so I think that we're really trying to like drag or like drive traffic into downtown businesses um there's a program called um typo and Tisa which is take your professor out to lunch or take your staff out to lunch and so um students can like pick a staff member and take them out to a couple of different restaurants so that program is restarted so they can go to Mexico or fresh side um they just added um Easter 63 so again we're trying to grow those connections so that students can get you know lunch with their professor and then tell their friends about it and go back at another time can I pause one second and tell you about our students because I um I forgot to ask how long you all have been in town um I mentioned that I've been here 15 years since 2008 but for those of you who have been here longer the the demographics of the student body have changed pretty dramatically so Amherst has been around for 200 years um it was a men's college up until the 1970s um but right now we just admitted the class of 2027 which makes me feel my age in kind of an uncomfortable way um but what we did in admitting these students is 60 percent of the incoming class are domestic students of college um 21 percent identify as first generation college students um 12 percent are international students coming from 54 different countries um as well as 49 of the united states and the district of colombia so when we talk about the Amherst student body it is truly this amazing diversity of students that are coming from all over the planet so when you go to see a student performance or you go to see you know students share their art for black art matters they are truly coming from all over so it is um you know from a dei perspective like please come over and meet the students and and talk with them and you know it's a it's a pretty um pretty special place in that way it's also worth noting that i think 60 percent of our students are on financial aid um and so Amherst is one of the only schools in the country that is need blind and does not package loans so when you graduate from Amherst college you are not graduating with a mountain of death that there is this real commitment to full access um and just ensuring that students can come to Amherst college to have a great education um and then leave without student loans thank you so much are there any other questions for sarah not a question i just want to thank you i think this is so exciting to have this level of engagement um i think it's not necessarily something we've seen in in quite this way before and i i really think it speaks volumes not just to your work but to you know the the efforts to really make this an ecosystem i think it was one of the things i remember talking about when we were talking about the UMass Chancellor was that it takes intentionality to not just exist around each other and so i really appreciate the um that you and and the college are making that intentional effort and hopefully we will meet you right back in it so appreciate that thank you thanks um Dorothy um for many years since we we moved here 13 years ago i went to the co-festival and participated in the you know the performance workshops and that meant i was on Amherst college campus for a good number of weeks in the summer and i would see high school student groups coming and clearly you had a whole array of programs but i don't know if any of those were Amherst town of Amherst students and what i'm asking you is to think about having more programs like that for students in this town for them to come in and get a good idea of what the college is like sure um so um i think the athletic camps have been very popular for Amherst residents so the the athletics department and the coaches put on tons of sports clinics so i think that is the place where mostly it's it's local folks um i don't know if you read that we are um have started the uh the infrastructure work for the geothermal system so we've kicked off our climate action plan so this summer a significant portion of the campus is actually going to be offline because it's getting retrofitted for geothermal because we're trying to be climate neutral by 2030 so um my understanding is that there will be a limited number of campers the summer it will be thrive which are students that are low-income first-generation students like getting ready for college um i feel like tennis was the other one we had those we have those in Amherst i just want to make sure that yeah and oh great books is the other one so along Stovins who's an Amherst resident does the great books program and so um that's that's sort of the other the other summer program we also have about 600 students who are on campus during the summer so we're kind of leaning into being a 365 day a year campus so that's also a pretty significant change because when i first started there were only about 80 students on campus um so big change i we did um have students that interned with the rec department over the year so we we've had students um do internships and work study there as well but i i totally hear what you're saying in terms of of camps for kids absolutely thank you Anna i think you're next again i'm next again it's because i thought i didn't have a question and now i do okay um so i i think as i was thinking about ecosystem i was thinking about um you know intentional partnerships and i'm i'm curious if there have been ways that folks have explored things like you know as as we know one of the things we've really been navigating as a town is our lack of playable field space and so regardless of what solution the town comes to i'm curious i know amherst college has a couple turf fields a couple grass fields and so i'm curious if conversation has happened or is happening and maybe this is a paul question maybe this is sara question about sharing resources in that physical resources i'll rephrase um in terms of field space in terms of facilities things like that um and if there are examples of that that you can share i'd love to hear sure so this has come up and i um was told and i can't remember if it was by someone at the high school or someone at amherst college that the the use of the fields in terms of when the amherst college students and the high school students would need them don't align so that the amherst college fields are used intensely at the same time that the high school students or the other students would want to use them so that's not to say no i mean i'm certainly happy to go back to athletics and see what the possibilities are but but my impression from the athletics department i think at the high school was that it's not it's not an easy kind of like oh we'll just use those fields it's because they're playing on them at the same time that that the like baseball is baseball season yeah yeah yeah um thank you i appreciate that it's been looked into yeah absolutely paul you're next oh we'd always look into that more sarah as i'm sure it's not one-to-one alignment so i just want to um so shout out to my alma mater so you mentioned the co-theater festival which was started by a hampshire alum sabrina hamilton who ran it for so many years so we allow all of our colleges contribute in many different ways and do want to just um note for the committee that um sarah's done a tremendous job of connecting with town officials across the board and it's just a real person who is a real strong connector and delivers on what she says she's going to deliver on so we really appreciate what you're doing sarah so thank you thanks paul i mean i i hope you all know how much i care about the town um for those of you who don't know i've lived in town for a number of years behind mission cantina um i owned the little brown house back there um and then i fell in love with someone who has a kid and he lives in north hampton and then i married him and so i moved out of amherst for love and so like i love amherst i love chris more so i just my heart my heart is with you all um yes and i'm sure just kidding but but i i i also just sort of expressed the the generosity of the the town staff that i've met with i mean i um you know i've gotten a tour of the dpw um and gullford has helped me understand like all of the different departments in the dpw and what they do and i'm so appreciative of the work um you know fire department um i go to the campus community coalition for iris drinking dorthy is that the name of the committee um and i have just been so impressed by the ways in which you know the towns of of amherst and hadley and umass and amherst college um everyone's like working together i mean it's a it's a pretty great place to be and so um i'm thankful every day for the partnership i'm thankful for the great folks that work in the town and i'm pretty optimistic and excited about our future together thank you so much and i love that and well we have one more we have another i'll just ask paul whether this is a time to um ask about amherst college and land for more affordable and accessible housing you can ask that question i'll answer that question if you'd like is that okay if i if i feel that go for it go for it so um i think you all know that we got a new president last august and we're getting a new chief financial and administrative officer on monday so um mike thomas who is the new chief financial and administrative officer has been working for middlebury for a number of years and has done a number of projects both in california and in vermont so part of um what i think we're looking for as a college are like our exciting projects and ways to partner together with the town um the president has said that the priorities are sustainability diversity equity and inclusion economic development and public education and what i've heard from the town is that public safety and affordable housing are sort of the other party so these are the six things that i think we have shared value around so um the new guy starts monday i think that uh it's definitely something to be thinking about but i don't want to make promises that we're going to do this because you know it's the kind of stuff that would involve the trustees so um i think there is again excitement about partnership and ways that we might build and create things together is that a fair enough answer dorthy it's a great answer okay and i just also want to say how is your wonderful addition to the ccc which is the community and campus coalition it rounds out the town and it's really so so thank you and it's a great partnership i mean it's just um it's really wonderful to see the ways people work together and if you have ideas for projects or partnerships and and i know that you all are focused on the town um but we have lots of partnerships with local nonprofits like the immerse survival center so i was on the board there um as the board president for a number of years um connecting with ancestral bridges and so really thinking about the racial history of the town and celebrating black and afro-indigenous community members um you know there's there's so many possibilities and and you know to be honest like sometimes it's it's a mismatch and so sometimes the students want to do something and i can't find a partner or the timeline doesn't work out but but i think you know if you are in a good relationship you kind of talk things through you you find out ways to make things work so please please please be in touch um i'm in commerce hall which is like three blocks from town hall so feel free to stop by anytime or drop me a note okay thank you so much i really appreciate you being with us and being so flexible to join us uh this evening and definitely look forward to continuing the conversation with you fantastic and hopefully i'll see you on campus and i know i'll see you all in town okay absolutely thank you everybody bye bye thank you well that was lovely okay so now i am going to hand over the floor to shalami d'arcy deumont and john root uh for their presentation on the proposed amendments to bylaw 3.33 um the zero waste hammer's presentation uh the floor is yours thank you anika and welcome john oh wait i'm sorry i'm gonna pause we have paul yeah can i just ask a time question uh i know chief living stone is here are you allowing how much time are you allowing for this discussion so he can go do something else while this is going if he does yes please thank you for saying that and i and i do i want to apologize um chief living stone i i was not aware you'd be with us or i would have put you ahead as this is a you know probably a shorter agenda but we will have uh the zero waste hammer shows and show and they have 45 minutes so it will be it would be a hard stop so that is what is it oh 45 minutes you figure yeah and we will we'll be we'll be staying to that time okay though sounds good okay thank you um yeah so welcome d'arcy and john thank you all for being here and thank you for all the work you've been doing with the community in terms of education and um and so today you are here to present the the findings from a survey that you did to gather information i'll just let you do the presentation and share with yeah what was the purpose of that presentation of this survey and what were your findings okay i'm gonna screen share and let's hope it works let's see um okay does that look good okay john yes uh zero waste amherst is pleased to be able to share the data from our trash recycling and compost survey as well as data that was shared with us last week by usa waste and recycling we were initially requested by our partners to conduct the survey in particular to ascertain the costs of these services since this information had previously been unavailable our members devoted a considerable amount of time to preparing and administering the survey analyzing the data and preparing this presentation as your committee is aware this information is being provided to move forward the proposal to amend our town's solid waste bylaw that would require the town to contract with a hauler through a competitive bidding process provide a townwide compost pickup and local compost processing and implement a pay as you throw a fee structure the intention of this bylaw is to dramatically reduce waste and it's associated pollution and emissions and to reduce waste and recycling costs for residents as well as the former chair of the town's recycling and refuse management committee i'm delighted to be participating in this process the zero waste amherst bylaw proposal under consideration is entirely consistent with proposals contained in the solid waste master plan that our committee submitted to the select board six years ago i'll go through all the slides and would ask that you save your questions and comments for the end of the presentation we reached out to a number of organizations and individuals in an attempt to have a representative sample of amherst homeowners to gather this information we also asked respondents about their current usage of the transfer station we were delighted with the community's response to our survey 510 people filled it out 450 of these were homeowners 69 of these homeowners contract with the hauler to handle their waste and recycling about half of respondents purchased transfer station passes for an annual fee of 125 dollars approximately one third of respondents who contract with the hauler also purchased transfer station stickers for that additional 125 dollar fee so hauler service this section of our presentation analyzes data about hauler services gleaned from both our survey and information that was recently shared with us by us a waste and recycling zero waste amherst survey results suggested that homer homeowners on average are paying about 550 dollars annually for hauler services with negligible differences in fees based on cart size data provided by the hauler a week ago revealed that most residents contract for large carts we were pleased that usa waste and recycling was able to meet with us recently to share their data about amherst residential service they provided us with approximate numbers of customers as well as costs for each cart size we also learned that weekly pickup of trash is offered regardless of whether customers sign up for weekly or bi-weekly pickup customers who are unable or who don't choose to bring carts to the curb have the option of contracting with the hauler to come to their house to pick up bagged trash and recycling bins there a service that the hauler refers to as boutique the the hauler has not provided us with a standard rate for the service but has reported that the fee starts at a thousand dollars annually 200 households or six percent of homeowners are currently choosing this option average fees reported for different cart sizes were slightly higher in our survey because some respondents with each cart size are paying these fees that are approximately double the amount that residents who bring their carts and bins to the curb pay uh almost all survey respondents reported contracting for weekly rather than bi-weekly trash pickup on the other hand bi-weekly recycling is the norm and is used by 19 out of 20 survey respondents zero waste advocates note that communities with curbside compost pickup usually are able to implement the opposite arrangement namely bi-weekly trash pickup and weekly recycling pickup since this uh is effect this more effective in encouraging uh greater waste reduction when food scraps and other compostables are removed from the waste stream there's much less need for homeowners to put out their trash every week in summary homeowners are paying on average $550 annually for waste recycling pickup there is virtually no incentive to reduce the the amount of waste discarded based on cart size since fees are identical or quite almost identical for the three sizes for an additional two dollars a month homeowners can dispose of 64 gallons which is twice the volume of trash that is contained in a small cart for an additional four months four dollars a month it is possible to dispose of 96 gallons of trash which is three times the volume of the small cart customers also pay virtually the same amount regardless of frequency of trash and recycling pickup whether they have signed up for weekly or bi-weekly trash pickup the lack of incentive to reduce waste based on pickup frequency is partly due to the fact that trash is picked up weekly even if customers contract for bi-weekly pickup the data indicates that some customers think they have bi-weekly service when all customers actually have the ability to put trash out weekly regardless of the pickup frequency they have contracted for of the 310 survey respondents only five are contracting for diversion and disposal of organic materials so we can safely assume that this optional hauler service is not having a significant waste reduction impact our survey gave respondents the opportunity to indicate whether they were satisfied with the hauler's performance 90% of those who expressed their views were dissatisfied with at least one aspect of their service with 10% commending the hauler for efficiency and convenience one homeowner stated I am frustrated that I have so little choice and have to pay more than I need there should be incentive and award for making less trash another said this company gives no discount for seniors and charges for bringing to curb unlike Amherst trucking yet another remarked that it's rather shameful that Amherst doesn't provide a trash pickup option given how high our taxes are another person said it's expensive but I'm disabled and can't use the transportation easily rates go up every six months said another I rarely fill my trash container and would throw out even less if I could do curbside comp composting but I'm not willing to pay them anymore per month another homeowner shared that I get recycling every two weeks and would be happy to have trash every two weeks as well in order to decrease truck driving hours I love the idea of bundling with access to the town transportation another person said and we were grandfathered for biweekly pickup but we're not allowed a choice of smaller cart size said another responded this next section of our presentation provides information about use of the town's transfer station the two left hand columns of this slide show responses from people who only use the transfer station while the two columns on the right present the views of those who use both the hauler and purchase transfer station passes among those who opt out of hauler service in favor of using the transportation virtually all site cost as one of the reasons for doing so this is understandable since the transfer station sticker costs only $125 which is approximately one quarter of what all our customers pay other advantages reported by sticker holders include access to take it or leave it and the book said the ability to handle their own materials the opportunity to use dual stream recycling a dislike of big haulers and the ability to recycle bulky waste items looking at the right hand columns we see that cost is not the primary factor motivating homeowners who contract with a hauler and purchase the transportation stickers as well for them the most popular services mentioned where take it or leave it in the book said this slide shows how the transportation is being used now and how a past sticker holders have used it the left hand column refers to people who currently have the transportation stickers including those who also contract with the hauler and the right hand columns is people are people who have had stickers in the past note that the most used service is dual stream recycling at 81% and that take it or leave it in the book said again are popular with both current and past users our survey revealed that ticket holders make trips to the transfer station every other week on the average 26 times a year approximately this this and the next slide shows that the majority of past holders visit the transfer station every other week or slightly less often so again the primary motivation for people choosing to opt out of contracting with a hauler and instead using the transfer station is financial savings one third of respondents who have hauler contracts also purchase transfer station stickers to avail themselves of services that are otherwise unavailable to them more than more than 60% of transfer station users cited the ability to use dual stream recycling as a reason for purchasing their annual passes about three quarters of past holders use the transfer station biweekly or less often take it or leave it is a service that is highly valued by many transfer station users about one third of the transfer station past holders recycle organic materials there but less than two percent of homeowners who do not have the transfer station sticker contract stickers contract with a hauler for pickup of compostables this service costs them an additional $15 a month or $180 annually finally the transportation is clearly valued by many USA customers even if we were to have a town contract for hauling we would continue to need transfer station services our survey data and information recently provided by the hauler are in substantial agreement on several counts first there is only a small difference charged to customer based on customers based on cart size the average annual cost for hauler services $550 when the boutique service customers are included less than two percent of hauler customers opt to pay $180 annually for organic pickup hauler pricing varies because some homeowners have been grandfathered in some contract for the hauler to pick up trash near their house instead of curbside however no senior citizens or or mean based discounts are currently offered by the hauler in summary USA waste and recycling data revealed that pricing difference based on cart size ranging from $42 per month for small carts to $46 for large ones is negligible residents who do not wish to or are unable to bring their waste and recycling to the curb pay at least $1000 annually for pickup near their house we also learned that the size of the smallest trash carts offered is being increased now from about 32 gallons to 45 gallons two years ago a zero waste Amherst member interviewed the South Hadley DPW superintendent to gather details about that town's waste management experience we learned that the town contracts with Republic for waste removal and dual stream recycling homeowners purchased bags for their trash and received bi-weekly waste removal service the South Hadley enterprise fee is only $125 annually per household for 6400 households which is twice the number of households in Amherst bag sales are a significant source of revenue for the town enterprise fees and bag sales provide South Hadley with a total annual revenue of a million three hundred fifty five three hundred fifty thousand dollars we also obtained data about costs for collection and disposal 12 twice monthly yard waste and organics collections in addition to three fall collections and two spring collections amount to a total of 650 thousand dollars for those collections the total costs for collections disposal and the contract with Republic add up to a million four hundred seventy thousand dollars listed listed here are the town provided services in South Hadley which are similar to those provided in Amherst this slide notes the difference between the cost of the current waste hauling contract in South Hadley for those 6400 households and the fees collected by USA hauling for 3200 Amherst residents which is half the number of households served in South Hadley the difference is great the amount that USA collects from Amherst households is actually more than the amount collected by Republic in South Hadley even though they are serving half as many households you can also see the difference in annual costs to residents finally zero waste Amherst has also surveyed 18 Massachusetts towns with populations comparable to Amherst to learn how other communities are managing their waste residents in these towns are charged for waste and recycling management in a variety of ways including different combinations of taxes enterprise funds and pay as you throw bag fees 12 of these 18 towns provide hauling in-house five contract with a hauler and only Amherst has a resident subscription hauling arrangement so we appreciate the efforts of the TSO committee to move the CWA proposed by law forward at this time in the town's history when we are asking taxpayers to pay on average an additional 468 dollars per year for the new school wouldn't it be great to be able to give it back in waste hauling savings thank you for giving us the opportunity to share this information with you and we'll be happy to answer any questions thank you john and any questions from comments i'm sorry to interrupt but you have um Jennifer Tav Jennifer Tav and there's also Susan wait and i don't know if you wanted to oh yeah bring them in for these comments thanks for noticing that Anika yeah definitely we could invite them in Anika did you want me to go ahead well they're in mind hi Jennifer welcome hi yeah thank you and thank you for the presentation hi Susan welcome hi there yeah so any questions from the committee or observations comments um um yes Andy Andy you're muted yeah i got it i definitely was able to get to my mute button thank you thank you for the presentation john um i guess that there were several things that i thought about as you were presenting um and one is that when you and i had that conversation on our own i raised the question about a survey which was done by asking people to volunteer to respond i think you get very useful data but you have to be careful as to whether statistically presentable as households it's only statistically presentable as people who respond in um which doesn't make it not valuable because the comments are very helpful but i just wanted to make that observation um there were several other things that um i thought about and i'm hoping that Susan's work with us is going to be able to explore them a little bit more deeply because um you know i've thought about this long and hard enough talk to people in other communities not so heavily but i did similar investigation with an eastern Massachusetts community about our size that has a lot of experience with uh with this issue and the question of cart size unfortunately i'm not sure that it means a lot and Susan i'm hoping we'll end up being able to give us a better insight in it because the cost drivers as i understand what goes on in the hauling business is the their biggest costs are the equipment the personnel to actually run the routes and work for them and things like gasoline and just trying to move that you know what all of the costs of moving things around as well as their with their administrative piece and that um the only relationship between the size of what they take away and the charge is the tipping fee which then comes an important but a relatively smaller part of that whole bundle of costs and and so it made me curious as to whether this division where you have relatively small additional charge to have a larger bin whether you use larger bin or not is really uh common because of those kinds of factors that i was referring to and the other thing that i i'd always said gee how does south heavily do it but if they have bi-weekly like you know in just what i said it strikes me that bi-weekly is a very big difference because it has to your major costs so i guess those are when my thoughts are on the initial presentation that said i want to make it very clear that i still think that having a town when service where we competitively seek bids is the best way to move forward because we clearly are not getting a competition i don't know that we're going to save as much for our um residents and i've been very careful to not make that a prime promise of this i've been trying to talk about some of the other factors that we've talked about but not over promise on the cost savings because i'm not sure we can deliver on it so those are my comments good there i see please go ahead yeah i would just say that um the default pickup time in south hadley is bi-weekly intentionally because that encourages people to use bi-weekly they still can opt to use weekly and pay the additional fee to the to the republic services so but by having that be the default and having to pay extra for weekly encourages people to do the bi-weekly and as john said during the the presentation if you remove food scraps from your trash you can put it out once a year because it never smells if you don't have food scraps in it um so uh that is a consideration when you're when you're removing compost from your trash yeah no i certainly agree with that because we don't put compost in our trash for that very reason that we do have a backyard bin um as far as the bi-weekly in south hadley when i looked at their rate structure their charge for getting from going from bi-weekly to weekly is fairly steep and i thought about that for a while and i would wonder if the reason that it's as steep as it is is because they have to run another set of trucks around town for all of those expenses for a relatively small number of households who opt into it um and uh that makes a big difference and so i'll leave it at that i guess i'll go next um following up on the bi-weekly because that was like a little surprising to me i was like oh my god i can i can't throw my trash out weekly that's weird but then you just clarified that when you don't have the composting it you know there's no reason because i don't have enough trash so but i was just curious though is that becoming more of a best practice to do the two questions around best practices one is is bi-weekly you know moving towards a better practice for the goals that we have and my second question around that which came up a lot in your presentation was the dual stream and do we know whether dual stream is better than single stream um because i do know that what we just learned uh you know full disclaimer we we've been talking with people in different stakeholders just like we hear from you we also met with uh US trucking USA trucking and one of the things we learned was in terms of the types of plastics so that was i mean to me that's helpful to know that when we are asking haulers you know what are you going to accept for recycling and what we heard was that they are willing to take plastic number five or so that's more than what is generally taken so all of these things are just helping educating us in terms of what is the maximum weekend recycle um so just coming back to that question is bi-weekly a better practice and then do we know for sure whether dual stream is better than single stream and maybe susan if you want to um sure um hi everybody uh let me think about this for a moment um i just got back from a conference in marboro so my brain is a little tired um i need to put you on a spot do you need a few more no no the the dual stream one is very easy to answer i'm just kind of formulating the so dual stream recycling yields an extremely high quality product you don't get broken plastic shards mixed in with your paper you don't get broken glass mixed in with your paper um it is the reason why amherst is able to uh to not belong to the springfield mirf because sanoko is happily willing to take their paper because it's dual stream paper sanoko does not like single stream paper if they can help it right so um it's it's easy to find buyers for single for dual stream material and um that being said uh well and also uh we are very fortunate to have a dual stream mirf at the in the springfield mirf they sell um most of their product is sold domestically um some of it is after it sold is shipped overseas by the middle people but um a lot of it is processed here in the united states and again they've never had a problem finding buyers they might have had a problem especially after chinese sword getting a great price because the market was down but they've always been able to sell their material so um but dual stream mirfs are a dying breed i will be completely honest with you most mirfs that are being built are single stream mirfs um the technology is getting better for single stream mirfs they are able to sort and and remove contamination better and better but it's still not great and there's also of course the risk of more contamination because having one bin and throwing everything in it um has a tendency to attract more trash people do wish cycling um and so i want to share with you just um the the springfield mirf just recently released five different videos that i really encourage you all to check out um the first one is a it's an overview video called me and my bin that was um that it's it's it's designed in part for a somewhat younger audience but it's a really well done piece of work and then there are four other videos and all of these videos are about six minutes or uh six to seven minutes long there are four other videos on specific topics one is on container recycling one is on paper recycling one is on wish cycling or putting stuff in the bin that you hope or think should be recycled even though it isn't and and then the fourth is on what happens to the products after they leave the mirf so they're really um nicely done pieces that i encourage you all to watch so when you say is dual stream better than single stream in many ways it is yes as far as finding buyers it is um that being said the there are there are very few dual stream facilities left in the united states and it was interesting because i was looking at a sustainability report from waste management recycles america which is the company that the mass d e p contracts with to run the springfield mirf and in their sustainability report report i found out that they only operate two dual stream mirfs in the united states and one of them is ours in springfield so the fact that a major multi multinational company like waste management recycles america is willing to continue operating a dual stream facility even given that the trend is to move towards single stream means that it's economically viable it means that they it's a it's a good operation and they're willing to continue doing it so um that to me speaks volumes um let me think did i have anything else to add about single stream oh yes just found out the city of holy oak had had been a mirf community for many years and in 2020 i think when they when the mirf first came out with their new contract they went single stream and i just learned yesterday or the day before that the city of holy oak is going back to dual stream they do their uh self haul and um they are going to be picking up dual stream again um i don't know the start date i think it i'm not sure what the details are but um there are other communities after the chinese sword that also went back to collecting dual stream um because of various reasons but mostly that they they wanted to make sure that they had a higher quality product we're lucky because in western mass a lot of our residents have already been trained to do dual stream and so it's not a hardship for people they just they just know and it makes sense to keep them separated i mean why would you want a salad dressing bottle um thrown in the same container as your computer paper you know um it just doesn't it doesn't make a lot of sense in a lot of ways but that being said um for efficiency sake etc the trend is definitely to go single stream so with regards to your uh other question bi-weekly bi-weekly uh moving towards better practice so cart size um cart size master ep has data that shows and i can share charts with with you all um year after year it's clear that the larger cart that you have the more trash you produce we have um you can all go online and find the the data yourself they have i don't know maybe something like eight years worth of data from our annual waste and recycling survey that's done from something like 260 80 communities in in messachusetts so we have the data and we in it's clear that the larger cart size you have um the more trash you produce with the pay-as-you-throw program um it's really uh key for master ep uh you're supposed to have a garbage can size no larger than 35 gallons and it needs if it's picked up weekly if it's picked up bi-weekly then a 64 gallon cart is acceptable so um when you know it kind of the weekly versus bi-weekly kind of depends on the size of the cart and um it depends on the community and and what's going on so um and of course you have to think about um the the fuel and emissions etc you know based on the frequency so um with an official pay-as-you-throw program can be cart based if it's if the trash cart is 35 gallons or less and it's only picked up weekly or if it's picked up bi-weekly and it's 64 gallons so it's possible that south hadley i have to look to see i think that their pay-as-you-throw community so that might be why they're being picked up bi-weekly because they wanted to have 64 gallon carts um haulers tend to prefer 64 gallon carts um i'm not i'm not clear on all the reasons why um but their preference is 64 gallon carts but mass EP encourages municipalities to push back on that because of the data that clearly demonstrates that the larger carts you have the more trash is produced it's like it's like if you're going on a trip and you have a huge suitcase you know are you going to fill the suitcase more than you would if you had a smaller suitcase sure you would or if you go to all you care to eat groceries uh all you care to eat restaurant and you've got um a big plate versus a small plate it's just it's it's human nature you want to fill it absolutely yep there's tons of research on that around food the bigger bowls to eat more absolutely okay uh thank you any other questions jennifer um thank you yeah and you asked um the questions i had particularly about dual versus single stream so um even though a sponsor i'm still learning as we move along um but i i did have a question because um i also um met with um usa yesterday and um there was you know a lot of discussion around different types of billing and i was wondering if um i don't know if this is part of i guess my question is to paul part of what susan will be doing but um is you know if part of um our preparation for the rfi is to look internally at you know what kind of um billing system we think we would prefer is i don't know if that's something that um susan would do or other staff but so so one of the questions is who does the billing right that would be an rfi so we can say the town does it and then what's the cost of doing that we can say whoever gets the bid does the billing we don't we're not involved in that so that's a question that we would pose during the rfi it's like which do you prefer and offer that to the um companies and say tell us what you think about that and then we would discuss that internally you know before we went for the rfp exactly exactly yeah thank you do i see okay i have two questions um is amherst the only town where the town plays no role in the curbside pickup and individuals have their own contract that's a question is that directed to me yes please yeah okay can you can you ask it again i'd want to make sure i'm understanding it correctly um okay okay is amherst the only town i've got to start off this phone it's coming okay amherst the only town where the town is not with it where the town is not involved at all in the curbside pickup we know the north hampton is also yes belcher town yep yep there there are many towns in western massachusetts where the the there is the the town is not involved in curbside service absolutely especially in the berkshires so many communities in my district have transfer stations that are municipally run and and the curbside service is considered subscription where they they can based on the number of hollers who are offering curbside service they can contract on their own for a curbside holler so there are there are definitely communities that um have the same model with with the exception of of north hampton most of them are much smaller than amherst's okay because i'll tell you one thing that confused me because we go straight we just use the transfer station in my house so i don't have personal experience with the hollers but when i got here it became to be aware of these things we had several companies doing it and when all of a sudden it became just one company um i guess i thought the others had gone out of business or whatever and then i find that they're operating in other towns so i'm just kind of curious as to how this monopoly came about i know they're not operating in other towns the um it's funny because i um i joked with eric frederickson who's from usa waste when i first met him and i said um it it makes me sad that we've lost our local hollers but i have to hand it to your business development people they they like are amazingly smart because well essentially what happened was we had private hollers and it just so happened that most of them were of or nearing retirement age and so usa waste purchased do-so trucking amherst trucking and alternative recycling services so those three companies are not operating anywhere oh okay in in the pioneer valley there are pieces of those companies that were not purchased by usa so you might hear about um alternative recycling services because they run had least transfer station but they no longer do hauling um at least curbside pickup okay so the republic see i didn't even know the names of who they were since we didn't we weren't involved with them so republic was not one of the companies that used to serve amherst oh no no they were they were small regional um hollers and uh usa in their um they had i like i say they've got a brilliant brilliant brilliant business development person i i couldn't have done a better job because um yeah i mean it was a great really great business opportunity and i applaud them for thinking of it they were smart because republic charges much less money and so that was of interest to me um it was well it depends on the community right i mean the republic has contracts with communities all over so um it just depends on the surfaces you get and you know um i can't say that republic charges less because there's it's you have to compare an apple to an apple and i'm not clear that that's being done okay thank you um since andy you've already had a chance could be here anika first anika go ahead okay sorry i thought i was muted uh so thank you uh for your presentation and um acquiring so many responses i know that's not always um easy to do and um you know for providing us with that information i had just a well i have a two questions one is clarifying so you had mentioned in what i may have heard wrong that there were 6400 households somewhere and that that was double the amount of households in in amherst so maybe i heard wrong um if maybe you could clarify that and the majority of my comments or i can pause if someone if you want to go ahead okay um i i that was just the slide that compared the south hadley services with amherst services they their republic services um 6400 households in south hadley and we were comparing their numbers to the 3200 that are are um uh serviced by usa in amherst okay thank you and then um so the rest of my comments were covered really between andy and shallownay but i had just one other and this might be personal to me and certainly you know not in defense of any company but i just would caution us sometimes when we say monopoly if that's an opinion i you know as um a business owner had you know something similar happened to me in regards to my signs and signature and were kind of taken and put into like a a bigger uh company and in the in the interim had really erased uh a business and the black business and thankfully we have the internet that doesn't allow that to happen as much but i'm just i was under the impression that the that zero waste had accumulated other businesses because they wanted to sell to zero waste that they were um sorry i didn't want to say zero waste usa that they wanted to sell to usa because they were a family business or in consideration of their customers as opposed to a monopoly so i don't know if that was the the intent in there or yeah please go ahead yeah i would just say that uh uh i think by monopoly we just mean that they're the only hauler in licensed to do residential hauling in amherst okay thank you for clarifying that indica because i just heard suit and that was i think that is the understanding i had to you that this is a monopoly but my understanding especially as susan also just clarified that the two businesses were going out of business and they bought over and it's like anyone can come and bid or anyone can enter the town of amherst they're not choosing to yet so but we should not imply that it is um it's a monopoly being created by a particular company yeah or even just clear clarified on what that means so yeah i i know i appreciate that thank you indy did you want to yeah i i guess uh follow up on that last point first though our current bylaw process provides that any hauler and choose to go to dpw is really running it even though it says board of health and regulation in dpw um and license any hauler that's interested in picking up trash in marketing and services within amherst and when we met with usa trucking you know one of the points that they made was well why are you um since the competition is helpful because nobody's competing with us right now and i guess i think that's something that dso needs to talk about when we get into the nitty gritty of this because i actually um and not necessarily in favor of having multiple companies competing to pick up um in amherst because everyone that comes is another set of trucks that's running up and down the streets causing pollution and um i'm not sure that it's an economically sound model they have three or four companies all competing um with each other and therefore the competition that would make the most sense if you're trying to use the competition as the mechanism to get the lowest price is to have one townwide competition and i think that's what we're exploring because in the end the side of such an effect that i'm not sure that we get any gain i think that we really have an interest in i know that uh when john was working on the recycling or if he's manager of the plan that's one of the things we heard a lot about was people complaining about how two or three different companies coming down your street would spend an awful lot of trash trucks coming down your street for and it seemed like uh even back then when people were not as conscious of the ecological the ecological impact of that there was still complaints about it then so it'd only be worse now going back to south heavily though one of the things that usa trucking also put in and i couldn't figure this out i actually spent a little bit of time this morning trying to explore the south heavily budget um on their website which is not an easy document to follow makes me very much appreciate our own budget and how easy it is to follow our budget but the assertion was that there were some costs were being picked up by the town and that that was supplementing what the homeowners were being charged and therefore you have to be careful in how you compare those costs and i don't know if in your exploration of south heavily if you picked up anything that is asked to that or whether susan knows anything that might either substantiate that statement that was made or provide a counter to it but i couldn't get anything by looking at the budget to see if i could find a budget line because their budget is so mac you know they do have a budget for the trash hauling so that we know that they're supplementing the costs out of the town budget but we don't know for what purposes so i guess that's the last thing i'll come back to was my prior question about whether there's any break this is susan if she can answer that i'll drop it for now whether there's any breakdown generally about trash hauling and what is the typical breakdown of various costs that go into running that kind of a business and can i just alert everyone to the time that we promised chief livingstone and anika if you want to just let us know where we are on time we are there would have a please if um if susan if you can answer uh if you have time to answer um and each question or if you can and then i do believe that um john you had your hand up before so if we can you know yeah i'll defer to susan okay thank you i um i've been speaking with south hadley recently about other issues and i can certainly um ask some questions and come back to you with some information and he also asked for a typical breakdown of costs for services that's the kind of thing i think that i can get fairly easily i do want to explain that south hadley was in a unique situation because they had been the host of a landfill for many years and as part of that host agreement they got free tipping tipping services and a bunch of other stuff for free and so their residents were used to not having to pay anything for trash so when they migrated to having a townwide hauler they had to be very careful with how much they were charging because it's they had to do it it's a transitional kind of thing and so i'm not i'm not aware of them subsidizing but it's very possible that they did in in part because to ease that transition because people for you know 15 years or something like that had been getting their trash services for free thank you so i will i will check into some of your other questions and see what i can find for you thank you can we also invite people to send over the questions you can send them to me and i can always forward them to susan and to zero waste if we need to wrap up soon that's a great idea uh yes we do we can allow darsie your darsie and dorthy and then we will end yeah i just have a quick quick answer to to andy's question and it was on it was actually on the slide with the comparison um that the the south hadley revenue that comes in comes from their yearly resident fee plus they they have get five hundred and fifty thousand dollars from sale of their bags and that completely covers the cost of the holler contract they do have additional costs for the transportation staff etc but as far as the contract itself that it completely covers it okay and that includes the disposal and everything you're saying yeah you can read answer because that thank you darsie and dorthy just a comment that i'm i'm glad that i received some good clarification today that the previous companies uh went out of business um and asked to be taken over and we're very happy to be taken over retired retired and i'm also very uh in agreement with andy that i think we do not want to have competing trucks going up and down the streets when we did have more trucks here i was i did comment at a town council meeting at the ridiculousness of these huge monster trucks going up and down residential streets so i think that uh what andy's described sounds like kind of like i hope the way we're going which is um trying to do a competitive bidding townwide bidding and then selecting the one company that would do the best job for amherst so i i you know for me this has been a really informative meeting so and thank you thank you susan you've been very helpful and thank you john and darsie and jennifer and and paul just before we wrap up i don't know if you have an update for us about uh the staff person who would be uh designated is that has it been decided yet it was gonna be gilford morning until you hear otherwise okay got it thank you thank you all so much for all the valuable work doing in the in our community thank you darsie jennifer and yeah i'll zoom out thank you for letting me join thank you for joining thanks so i'll be zapped out oh i'll do it thank you okay if we could please welcome back chief living stone and thank you for being patient with us like i didn't set a timer i'm paul were you able to text um okay thank you you guys looking for me yeah for you yes indeed there was some basketball being played who's playing oh were you playing don't mention it i'm taping the games oh yeah yeah that's why were you rooting for you con or were you in brecanda state march madness i'm not even talking about it the correct answer would be you con in that yeah it's a blue steak i won't say anything good well thank you for being with us we're here to revisit the um surveillance use policy uh because mandy jose questions that had been submitted prior to our ask i guess two weeks ago now uh were not included and um if i'm correct uh both paul and chief living stone you both have them and um would you like to is there anything you'd like to to walk us through or explain yeah so i can start and there are basically the way i understand mandy had four points that she had brought to our attention um and some of them apply to the policy and some of them apply to the police directive which is something that the chief issues right do you have them in front of you scott yeah i have um most of mandy jose um emails including the questions and some of her potential emotions to them to amend the policy perfect of course i pretty knowledgeable about our policy so do you want to go through them one i think we should focus if that's okay with everybody on the motions to amend the policy because i think that's what she was focused on she sort of reduced everything to an actual what would be changed in the policy so i think that was very helpful do you want to go through them one by one sure um and i'm assuming all you guys have this in front of you as well or do you want to share this does everyone have them i'm not sure that we know when did we receive it's not in the packet that it's not in the sharepoint i don't i haven't looked at the town it's not there is it is an email from mandy joe on march 20th to um yeah so hold on let me find it yeah so i mean i can most of what mandy joe is proposing for her amendments while while paul gets that up is pretty easy to do except for the last she has one two three bullet items specific to language add-ons for our policy and um the first two are really easy to do the third one is not because it involves very specific language that would not be doable for us we look at the right thing here yes so the first one scott is this one yeah so let me just make sure it's the one i'm reading as well so yeah that's that's not a bit that's not um an issue at all the only thing is um it might be easier just to eliminate the entire language that speaks to special events and the the reason i'm saying that is because first of all i don't know if it's ever been used where an um in-car video system has been used to document a special event we put that in there and don't forget we've been using in-car video systems for i think 25 years and so we put that in in case there was a time where an officer went to a really large noise disturbance like when the entire street was taken over in order for them to videotape that in course in case we had to go to court to show you know the courts what it actually looked like from an officer's perspective so it wouldn't necessarily be used for an individual specifically where it would for like an OUI arrest or something like that so that was the special event clause was put in there in the event that we needed to use that just an overview of what the street looked like um and i'm not even sure if we've ever actually used that to be honest with you so you know maybe i you know i i don't want to say it's never been used because i'm not 100 percent sure but if if it was used it was rare so um you know i'm not even sure if that needs to be in our policy and or in the town bylaw to to include that and that's a discussion we can have uh with Mandy Joe if she wants to include that we can have more discussion on that so i think the question was should this be i mean i think she's saying it should be in the directive not in the not in the surveillance use policy that but that require you to say yes i'm going to put this in the directive yeah because in her question part of it there's some very specific language she she asked about it um so she gets in like should they be activated during other stops than a care a current year i'm sorry to i'm sorry to interrupt but here she is okay this might be able to help if we have if we have any questions Mandy can you hear us yes i can okay you can hear oh cool that's so much better that saves us some time hopefully um so yeah the the part Mandy Joe where um you and your in your actual questions about the the policy um bullet item number two where you ask should they be activated during other stops that occur near vehicles or pedestrian disturbances on public ways outdoor noise complaints or the or others question mark um i have concerns about how we would put that into a language whether it be for the policy or for the bylaw because it's too it's too vague it's too general um we like specifics obviously um um and i don't know how we would make the wording fit so that officers understood exactly what they're supposed to do yeah um i would just say it's kind of in it now which is why my question was there and and you know i don't know whether the better thing to do is to delete that paragraph that's in the directive or try to make it less make it more specific that that was my concern like do you want to use it and if so make it more specific and if you don't want that authority then maybe just delete the paragraph yeah and the more i read it the more i thought about it more i wanted to delete it because um it's just it's it's just too general and too vague to accommodate probably what everybody would like it to say and what it would like to more specifically what it would mean right um because it's not good for either party whether it's the police or the public to have general general references that sort of thing um so i can certainly clarify that and maybe even just delete it from the um the from our policy about using it because again if it has been used it's been extremely rare when it's been used and it was initially put in there as a mechanism to just show an overall like for instance this past barney there was a street south whitney street where we probably could have used it just to show the sheer volume of people that were in the street but it wouldn't have been for a specific you know john doe got arrested and here's the picture of it you know what i mean so that would be i think better if we just deleted it from the from the policy are you talking about saying revise this we call it the direct your directive i think it's called the police policy and you would revise that exactly and that's not unusual because we review most policies annually and most of the major ones annually and all of them are reviewed at least every three years when we do our accreditation review um i think there was another question and bullet item number two you are a bullet item number one you had a question about what um stops that occur in their vehicles all right we did that one oh what's the difference between a traffic stop and an enforcement activity and a special event so the special event is what we would eliminate traffic stops are very specific to a traffic vehicle stop where an officer views a chapter 90 violation right so a speeding stop sign violation anything that refers to chapter 90 and enforcement activity is anything where an officer would make a vehicle stop that isn't witnessed necessarily by the officer so we get a call for somebody's just robbed a bank and they're leaving leaving in a black Volvo we wouldn't necessarily see the robbery but we would know we're looking for a black Volvo we would stop that or more specifically what's happening almost on a daily basis now is somebody is driving down the street and they call 911 because there's a road rage incident or somebody's tailgating them or somebody passed them in a no passing zone so people call us almost daily and say this guy's following me um he's tailgating me i need an officer to come stop this guy so an officer we'll respond and we won't necessarily see the violation but we'll stop them and see a lot of times they'll say things like he seems like he's impaired or he or she is impaired so an officer officer will make that stop and ascertain what's going on with the vehicle so that sort of thing so you have a vehicle stop that is witnessed by an officer for a chapter 90 violation and then something else that is called in for a more specific request for a stop um and the last one please clarify what considerations are not allowed when determining whether to activate um so if we eliminate the special events clause i think that would answer that question it would be very specific when an officer would be recording and it would be anytime the act the blue lights would be activated does that make sense or did i just confuse everybody any mandy jill has her hand up anika mandy please sir that makes sense um i just had a question about enforcement activities what you describe sounds basically like traffic violations or other violations but not observed by the officers is there a way to define that better within the directive because you know i read that and i said is that like any enforcement activity not even related to motor vehicles so still um it kind of is any activity not related so yeah i could research that more um obviously most well all of our all of our policies are governed but through um the mass accreditation um commission so they have to be approved by them so we're not the only police entity that uses these so i can review other departments and see how specific they get into that and certainly make changes as appropriate um you know this policy was reviewed last year when we received uh reaccreditation um if there was concerns by the and it's a most mostly civilian commission that oversees this now um if there were concerns they would have brought it up but that doesn't mean they wouldn't have missed something so um i can certainly look more directly and be more specific about what types of stops that would involve criminal activity concerns with the public that sort of thing the things that we specifically respond to now we can incorporate that you know the biggest concern i had was trying to adapt a policy that would be inclusive of this special and special events wording that would be really hard to do you know i i know you had asked a question about responding to noise complaints with 100 plus people and you know that would be really difficult to kind of meld into our policy vandy yeah um the only other thing is when that gets fixed i think some of the proposed potential motions to amend i talked about which the use policy or the directive that the use policy would govern um with the enforcement activities listed in the directive i think it still conflicts with the use policy that says on and i'm trying to pull it up um let's see if i can get it up quick um the very first part purpose of the use policy um technology is to document through audio and video recordings all motor vehicle traffic stops for those marked police vehicles that have it yet the directive has these enforcement activities along with traffic stops so my i guess my only other concern is that seemingly contradiction it's not necessarily a contradiction but the directive goes a little bit further than the use policy and so clearing you know sort of fixing that that that disconnect okay um yeah i'm just trying to read it real quick um it might be easier if i just sit down with with captain young and lieutenant daily who oversee our accreditation process and just pick out some wording and then get it back to the child council and see if that fits um is there urgency um when we're voting on this for any entirety or um so i appreciate that i think that you know you can take the time our next meeting let me just confirm here sorry just one moment our next meeting will be um April 20th oh yeah um but let me just pause for andy in case i'm speaking andy yeah i guess i just have one concern what we're talking about unless i'm misunderstanding and that is that it's always been the wisdom of how you do this that the bylaw um is more general so that you don't be in the specifics are in the use policy and i want to make sure that we don't do anything to amend the bylaw that then makes it um more difficult for you to be responding or your successor to be responding during the accreditation process the needs to change policies uh we don't want you to then have to come back to the council to a future council on an amendment of the of this bylaw in order to just make it possible for you to do what you need to do to change the policy that you need to change for accreditation purposes yeah thanks for that andy um i think probably we're the biggest difference of opinion or maybe not it's not a difference of opinion but the biggest concern is this to me is the special event clause because everything else is very specific when it involves the stopping of vehicles which is 99.9% of what the in-car video system is designed to do um you know again we we put that clause in for special events basically to help ourselves right to in the in the case where we came upon an incident where there was an extremely large number of people who had taken over a street um we were able to document that to show to a court in the event because back in the early 80s when we most of the really troublesome times were at hobart lane um you know there'd be thousands of kids in the street we'd make a rest for things like you know failure to disperse for a riot those sort of things we needed to be able to document something and that was a mechanism we had now that doesn't happen that much anymore it's not to say it wouldn't happen but um we've educated the court systems we've educated the certainly educated the university about what our concerns are so there are other mechanisms now to when we bring somebody before a court jurisdiction to show that they're you know this is the reason that we had to make an arrest or this is the reason we had to charge somebody with a tbl violation that sort of thing so i'm not as concerned about the special event language um the other language is pretty straightforward and we can be more specific mandy joe to fit that so that we can document all the other reasons that we would make a car stop aside from a chapter 90 incident just so people know tbl means town by law yeah violation thank you mandy yeah um the purpose amendment might be easy to fix to conform to the directive but i wanted to uh and you asked about timing and i know i don't sit on tsl but the bylaw says that if the council doesn't act on the use policy within 180 days it automatically becomes adopted so that 180 days is sometime in early june i believe um because i think it was referred in december so that that's that would be a timing potential timing thing to watch out for okay so if april 20th anika is the the next meeting i'm very confident we would have the we would have the wording in place even if i have to have a you know just an individual and i don't know if that's allowed but an individual meeting with either yourself or the tso group or including mandy joe to make that wording fit i'm not i'm not overly concerned that we couldn't get this done okay thank you thank you for working with us and we'll you know figure out all of the the specifics how how we do it so we can meet with you um and again i appreciate you taking this time at night and thank you mandy as well for coming in i'm sure after a long day joining us thank you um and so if you want to stay i'm sorry go ahead pa so this will be on the agenda for april 20th is that the goal and then they have uh revisions uh back to the count by the tso the week prior to that yes okay got it thank you and thank you so just one question anika so when i start formulating wording changes should i direct those to you or to the tso group or to mandy joe or how do you want to make that how about how about you send them to me and then i can share them with um the chair and the maker of the person to mandy joe does that make sense to everybody okay nika yes that works thank you uh okay so uh it would be it would be helpful to get them in the packet um prior to if that's possible yeah absolutely yeah thank you scott sure thank you scott and mandy joe you're welcome to stay with us i'm glad and enjoy thank you for inviting me in i'm gonna leave the meeting to the tso i appreciate your willingness to have me though thank you well great night okay all right so it's about come to our end here has everyone had a chance to look at the minutes that were included i did send them off did everyone have a chance to look through your team um i just wanted to say what a good job is being done on the minutes i guess we should say thank you kelly and um absolutely thank you kelly it's also nice you know when we have a meeting where we're dealing mainly with one topic so because actually i'm going to top tso the date and the topic of the minutes this is a really good record better than my notes so thank you i really appreciate that thank you so much for your kind words we appreciate you so do we have a motion to approve i so move a second okay so i'm going to approve the mark minutes for march 2nd and march 9th 2023 anna hi shalini hipstain andy hi dorthy yes and i'm a yes as well so because that's for yes one abstention okay uh are there any announcements to make i guess i should not real quickly that the um graphic guys just said to committee met um earlier this evening and traffic advisory committee and they talked about the street lighting um proposal again and came up with a resolution i think uh which is basically the um without uh i can't give it to you exactly this isn't a formal presentation it's just a yes on report to the committee that is most interested in it um that uh they agree with the uh they want to endorse the sky the the sky lighting issue um to try and reduce it but they also want to emphasize safety issues and so they're working on a resolution to that effect but i think that's kind of what we expected and the other issue that they're working on this too would be getting something back to us representing the council and that has to do with bicycle routes safe bicycle routes and trying to map out new policy on that we need that infrastructure on that thank you and go arty um i just wanted to say this is particularly i want i want paul to to hear this one um that we had occasion to use the emt's last saturday night and they were great they were wonderful and uh just totally professional um so i haven't gotten around to coming out with a thank you letter but i just wanted you to know how well they did so thank you thank you thank you dorthy and paul and uh district three and four had a neighborhood walk last night that was quite interesting and i will uh we'll have some notes compiled that i'll we'll share with you all at our next meeting district five came they just missed the walk that's right that's depth district five was there as well in spirit i missed the kickoff my dog on a nice little walk around town which was lovely well thank you for that thank you for that actually could we have a walk i still don't even know which is a new district five like how far did it go oh it goes right up to town yeah we can definitely do that okay so i'll give you the information so right now we're you know have we've kicked this off at uh three and four until the clock strikes midnight and changes that um but we'll definitely share that info and so we also had no items and we have nothing but was not anticipated thank you all for this meeting and being here and we are adjourned thank you