 the June 18th select board meeting which is called to order at 6.33 before we get to into this I will note that we're not we're not getting good acoustics here in this room if it's possible Amherst media person to turn up the speakers in here so we can hear ourselves better it's getting better by the moment perfect thank you very much it really makes a big difference to us being able to when we know we're speaking directly into the mic because we get that that positive reinforcement that we can hear ourselves alright so this is the June 18th select board meeting we don't have anyone here for public comment and I will note that our 645 item in case anyone is rushing down here our 645 item is a public hearing for the Hess express new wine and malt liquor license at 645 we will open that public hearing and then have a motion to continue it there's been a request to continue it by the applicant so so we will not actually be considering that item tonight we will be considering that on July 16th just in case anyone is watching and wondering right now but in the meantime we will do some untimed items and we will do them very slowly because we have so much time to kill tonight because of this public hearing thing on gap in the agenda that who knows okay oh and the other thing I'll note is that when we do finish here we are scheduled to have an executive session this evening so just for folks to keep that in mind and as we go through the untimed items once we're done with them we will do what we do in these situations when we run out of things and we have extra time which is we'll start at the end of the agenda and work our way backwards because people aren't typically tuning in for things like the chairs report and liaison reports so that's the plan before we get started with untimed items does anybody have any announcements they would like to make no such luck Mr. Hayden well yeah I just want to say that the taste of Amherst last week was well attended by good weather and had seemed to have the benefit of spreading the crowds out overall for days and I saw many of you there but it was a good show it was it was a it was a terrific event and really the weather could not have been any nicer it was magnificent I always feel bad that the students missed that event it's one of Amherst's great events it was anyone else Mr. Wald just things that are on the town website and the calendar but you can correct me if I'm wrong we have the public forum on the Hawthorne property coming up this week and that's Tuesday right tomorrow tomorrow 19th at 7 p.m. in this room and on the 20th we have the citizen's owning forum I believe at 5 p.m. in this room thank you excellent points on both of those any other announcements Miss Brewer you always like to make announcements surely on this evening of so much time to kill now I don't need to all right then we will get right into the untimed items then tax title custodian we have memo and information in our packets about this this is a request to name the tax collector Claire McGinnis as the tax title custodian the person who would preside over foreclosed properties that the town ends up acquiring in the town government act it says it would be the select board or its designee and certainly we would like to designate such a thing we have all the information for folks who are following along at home there's information about this on our web packet for this meeting does anybody have any questions or additional information about this it comes with my strong recommendation our treasurer collector Claire McGinnis is our point person on property tax collection and dealing with the relatively low number of properties that become delinquent in taxes and there's a whole process to dispose of property through a public bid process so we can get properties that we have a handful that we've taken over the years for nonpayment of taxes back onto the tax rules so it's appropriate that our expert in house expert in this area the treasurer collector be officially designated in that role and she can proceed how has that proceeded in the past without such a designation well there's been relatively little activity I can tell you in my five or so years as treasurer there was one parcel that was through an auction process and we ended up selling that tiny sliver of land in a subdivision to butters the immediate butters and was not aware that this was an issue Claire's work researching the next batch this was brought to our attention and this is the remedy was wondering if there was a list of the properties anywhere we can get you a list I was just curious further discussion Mr. Hinton so if we don't do this then we have to play that role whatever it is and it's not exactly what we would have to sit through and sign and what extra meetings we'd have to schedule right or you know designating someone else but to me having the person who deals most closely with property owners current and former or perspective would be the treasurer collector so auctioning them off ourselves and splitting the proceeds to make up for that $300 a year thing this isn't one of the options oh well Miss Stein would you like to make the motion? Sir I move that the select board appoint Claire McGinnis treasurer slash collector to serve as custodian of properties on behalf of the town of Amherst in accordance with the provisions of MGL chapter 60 section 77B second further discussion Miss Brewer and of course we've been talking about a tax title custodian but the motions actually for a custodian of properties which doesn't include the word tax or title in it so can we add something to the motion that wouldn't mess up what legal relevance which I'm sure it must have or they wouldn't have written it that way for us isn't entirely fine adding the words tax title prior to the word custodian the Mass General Law chapter in section lays that out in detail but that removes all doubt that we know we're talking about the same thing further discussion Mr. Hayden I just wanted to voice my appreciation for getting this I mean it's these little details that can really mess things up if they're not done right down the road and I'm glad to get caught and that we can think about them and say yes. Alright further discussion all in favor say aye. Aye. That is unanimous going down the line here we have set fall town meeting dates so this is when we typically do this so that people have nice advance warning and so we can set the calendar with the deadlines for warrant articles etc the next town meeting is always just around the corner typically town meeting starts the first Monday in November but this November is the presidential election and the town clerk's office has asked that we not start it on the night before or the night after the election when they are really immersed in a huge amount of work so then that put us to the next week and well didn't you know that the second Monday in October this year is the observance of Veterans Day okay so that put us to the second Wednesday well that middle school auditorium is already reserved for a choral concert so now we are looking to start on our best case scenario is the third Monday in November which is the 19th and that is Thanksgiving week so we won't meet that Wednesday but we'll meet again the following Monday assuming we need all these dates and then the Wednesday and the next Monday if we need it typically fall town meeting goes only two or three nights so this shouldn't be a problem we do need to get the stuff wrapped up by December 1st is that the goal because we need to finalize the tax rate with the Department of Revenue and some of the budget amendments that we do in the fall affect that so the proposal is to call the fall town meeting special town meeting in the fall for November 19th any thoughts about that oh and I'll just mention we did explore the idea of doing it in October instead but really because it's already the middle of June and that sets the warrant deadlines for about two months prior that would have them be in the middle of August which just really is not practical in any way so this is our best case scenario this is just sort of a fluky thing to have the presidential election and the observance of Veterans Day happen when they're happening like this but there we go questions or comments about starting on the 19th Mr. Hayden. That's three meetings before December 1st I know you know that. We were saying about a consent calendar. That will inspire us. Miss Brewer. Associated with that I would encourage the town manager and his discussions with staff and other town bodies to consider whether or not any of the things that they were thinking about doing at fall town meeting might be better served by a special town meeting in January or February but one night sort of issue rather than trying to push us given what we're starting this late. I mean three or four sessions is not as big a deal when it's but normally but this late not only because of the December 1st I think just because of people's holiday lives associated with school breaks etc and which tend to extend even once their kids are long gone given the academic focus of this community so I'm very concerned about trying to have people during that time period understanding that we have no choice at this point but maybe that means that it's been a long time since we had a January town meeting and everybody would prefer to have fewer town meetings obviously but if there's something that's just not quite ready we don't necessarily have to wait till spring. Of course we do have the option of doing a brief one in January or February as well. Good point about other options. This is already a special town meeting so. Right. All right. Any other thoughts about this? I move that the select board approve the full 2012 town meeting dates I guess on November 19th 2012 with additional dates of November 22nd November 28th December 3rd and December 5th 2012 reserved. Second. Mr. Spoke November 26th not the 22nd. I probably misspoke but I do want to point out that I inserted the word dates after the first mention of full town meeting because I thought it belonged there. So technically we scheduled just the first date and we reserved the other ones so we are setting the date for the 19th. Okay. Was that seconded? Second. And further discussion Ms. Brewer. Can we include the word special in there because it's not a standard town meeting? Just in terms of the deadlines et cetera that might come up later it's good to remind people that even though we do it every fall it's not the same as the spring date. Mr. Aten. Can we get some of those guys from public radio who push for the one day drive to help us push for a one day time? That's right that would be great. Okay further discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That is unanimous. So shortly the calendar will be produced that has the deadlines for that because again those will come up very soon but just so folks are paying attention that's basically the early mid September to be looking at for those deadlines but that calendar will be published soon and be on the website. Ms. Brewer. I know that they'll get that calendar together very quickly because we have excellence people working on that but in the meantime just because it is always hard to schedule a fall special town meeting around people's lives I hope we'll put it out to TMCC right away that these are the dates and then just watch the website for more information because they'll eventually they'll want to publish all that stuff again for us but just to give everybody that's already in especially since we have a bunch of new people who aren't as familiar. Excellent point. Thank you. All right so now it is 647 so now we are going to I'll just reiterate quickly what I said at the beginning of the meeting. For anyone who's tuning in for the public hearing on the liquor license application for Hess Express on West Street we have had a request from the applicant for a continuation of this hearing so what we do in order to accommodate that now is we will open the public hearing and then we will move to continue it to 645 on July 16th that is our next meeting so that is a proposal basically that is agreeable to the applicant do slack board members have any problems with that date and time it's our next meeting and we don't already have something scheduled for 645 all right so then I am opening this public hearing at 648 and I will entertain a motion to continue the public hearing I so move and that will be continued to 645 on Monday July 16th 2012 for the discussion Miss Burr and I don't think it needs to be part of the hearing but I will alert it out now and you'll figure out where it goes that people know I know that you have been as people have been writing to us you've been alerting them to the postponement but to let people know obviously they have a little more time if they really did want to say something but that we have received comments that have been added to our packet and also if we could have a copy of the letter that you had to write on our behalf when we denied Cumberland Farms application I would like to remind myself of what wording we used associated with that in terms of our rationale just because we don't do these all that often very well absolutely all right for the discussion all in favor say aye aye unanimous the hearing has been continued to July 16th we don't need a motion on that even though it's on our sheet do you we just did a motion we did it okay so I did but I wasn't sure if we needed precise wording winged it a little bit so that's all right we will do more on timed items then we have the revised charge for the local historic district committee Mr. Malloy was here to speak to us about this last week a couple of select board members had little tiny things they wanted to change about that a new draft has been provided did anybody have any questions or comments about the revised draft Ms. Brewer associated with the special municipal employee discussion we had we had talked we had touched on the idea of whether or not given that town council was already being asked for some information if we had if we would be able to touch base on them regarding just historic district commissions and their relationship to special municipal employee since we have want to make sure we all have a shared understanding of what that status is before we give it to another committee which we were thinking we might want to do when we actually populate this committee I completely forgot to ask for that for information related to local historic district committees and SME it's okay I asked the town manager he forgot to have information about that okay so we will so we don't have a motion I thought we were going to have a motion to give it special the special municipal employee part of it or just establishing it I thought it was going to be a joint motion it's to get the nominees but not the charge to establish and solicit nominees it's a double barreled motion and I think that we could add without any difficulty a separate motion I mean given it was clear that we were talking about this the last time if we wanted to and I think that we probably could just we would go ahead and do it anyway it's that we simply need to understand better as we're soliciting people what it is they're being asked to do and what some of their limitations are but that doesn't mean that we really don't want to say yes we're giving them this status I'm sorry the last part you said I think that we want to have this committee amongst other committees be at least one of the committees that has that status even if we have some questions as to how much advantage that offers the individual so I think we could add that as a separate motion without being outside the idea of you know posted 48 hours ahead of time etc because we clearly discussed it it's on the agenda it's just not on the motion sheets not an official document so what I was going to say is that yes that I my understanding is that we had thought last time that we were sort of pre-agreing that we were going to grant the special municipal employee status because we thought it would help with the recruitment that would leave no doubt to people who are being approached to serve on the committee but I apologize about the extra information and we will get that also because you're absolutely right having an opportunity to further clarify our understanding of that is always good okay so so the motion is establishing it and basically by sort of a defect or approval of the charge but we could make that more explicit in the motion if you want or we could have an additional motion that approves the charge and grants it especially municipal employee status or however our motion people would like to proceed with that well I'm happy to accept the charge after to establish to establish the local historic district commission accept the charge and solicit nominees that would be one way to go I think we're still talking about two different things by saying establish that is accepting the charge and those words represent and then we're talking about the SME part of it okay this particular so Ms. Brewer you're saying you don't want to include accepting the charge I think establishing is accepting the charge okay and sometimes you want more but I think you could include I think it would be perfectly lovely to include it and I personally think it would be lovely to have a separate SME motion but I do think we need to have accept the charge in here because we are doing a lot of charge revisions and I think in those cases we so do you want the word established as well yeah okay all right this time all right I move that the select board pursuant to the authority granted under article 27 of the April 30th 2012 annual town meeting to and accept the charge and solicit nominees for a local historic district commission under the provisions of Massachusetts general law chapter 40c further discussion oh in favor say hi that's unanimous and another motion all right I move that the select board grant the local historic commission thank you um special municipal employee status second for the discussion all in favor say hi hi opposed abstaining sorry I oh thank you so that's unanimous Mr. Brewer the question I didn't think of which is right in front of us which was that we had talked a little bit about the fact that different communities do it different ways in our particular case we have a historic district commission we're setting up and we know it's very much for one particular area of town it was added to them up to the sheet to say Dickinson historic district commission it doesn't say that in our motion sheet which I think is fine I'm just wondering we will think of it and it's called this but I think it's I actually think it's fine because we're doing it under mass general law and saying that discrepancy is not a problem okay then noted I think it works because it has Dickinson instead of local all right anything else on that issue Mr. Walton they're depending on the practice sometimes you have a commission that handles multiple districts and sometimes you have separate ones giving it a generic name I think makes good sense in case other districts are added then people have options later but Mr. Brewer's point though is that this one says in the charge that it's specific to the Dickinson district right I just mean it's good to have a commission in place and so if we get another district then we can either amend the charge or create another commission how about that okay that's good that's fine that'll take care of it I was hoping not to have the word district I mean Dickinson in the title but that the charge could have been more general and this would have been the first application but we can fix it in the future you ever get another historic district okay this is what happens when you have half an hour to kill okay good that's right proclamation in honor of Hope Church's 100th anniversary I would like to thank Mr. Walde for bringing this to our attention the Memorial Day celebration in fact Mr. Walde thought of this and suggested because this is their 100th anniversary and they are having a special service next Sunday I believe is their centennial service he suggested that this would be a nice thing for the select board to do to make a proclamation honoring that important faith community and worship and historical building something that the town has been involved with through helping with their restoration through community preservation act funds etc and so he drafted a nice proclamation for us let's see Mr. Walde would you like to read that into the record I may have some typos here in which case it's my fault minor things okay whereas Hope Community Church whose origins reached back to the middle of the 19th century has played a significant role in the lives struggles and achievements of the African American residents of Amherst and whereas Hope Church which at its inception benefited from the support of such distinguished national figures as W. E. B. Du Bois and Mary McLeod Bethune has consistently advocated for and put into practice its commitment to civil rights in a diverse realistic and welcoming national and local community and whereas as one of three significant craftsmen buildings in its neighborhood Hope Church is a contributing structure in the Prospect Gaylord National Historic Register District and whereas the members of Hope Church working in collaboration with the town of Amherst and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts have secured resources and undertaken the labors necessary for the preservation of the building thereby proving themselves to be good stewards of this historical resource and whereas Hope Church continues to play a significant role in the spiritual and civic life of Amherst now therefore be it resolved that the select board of the town of Amherst thanks the members of Hope Church for their many contributions to the community congratulates Hope Church on the occasion of its centennial and urged other residents to celebrate this milestone in the history of the organization and our town thank you so moved and second further discussion again thank you that was very well done and much appreciated all in favor of so proclaiming is Brewer yes is it on our motion sheet okay good just making sure enthusiastically I sorry that is unanimous thank you very much and we've got a few more minutes before our 715 item so we have parking and street closure requests we have several of them these are all annual recurring events at this point the Hampshire County Big Brother Big Sisters Crafts on the Common Event July 14th the community the block party for the Blue Hills Road neighborhood on July 22nd and the first day celebration we're doing nice and early this year just so that they're nice and they can not worry that we've got it out of the way but they might come in and talk to us about that when it draws nearer in August so that is them. Miss Stein would like to start those motions. I move that the select board approve the reservation of 13 parking spaces on the east side of South Pleasant Street and 21 on the west side of Boltwood Avenue both bordering the South Common from 9pm Friday July 13th 2012 to 9am Saturday July 14th 2012 and on Saturday July 14th 2012 from 4.30pm to 7.30pm for artisan unloading and cleanup and to reserve the town hall parking lot from 6am to 8.30am Saturday July 14th 2012 to provide for vendor registration for the big brothers big sister Crafts Fair on the Common Event. Crafts on the Common is the title of it. Okay. Crafts on the Common Event. Excuse me. Second. Further discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. I move that the select board approve a street closing for Blue Hills Road on Saturday July 21st 2012 from 12pm to 8pm and a rain date of July 22nd 2012 for the Blue Hills 11th annual road annual 11th annual block party. Second. Further discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. I move that the select board approve a street closing for that portion of Spring Street within the public parking lot from the intersection of South Pleasant Street to the intersection of Boltwood Avenue on Wednesday August 29th 2012 from 5.30pm to 7pm to ensure the safety of attendees for the Amherst slash Pelham Regional School District's first day celebration. Second. Further discussion. Miss Brewer. We could just insert the word annual prior to first day celebration. And further discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. That was unanimous. Miss Brewer. If we could add annual back to the big brothers, big sisters, annual crafts on the common as well. Just again. We all know that but you know the wonderful people we have supporting us. Alright. One more things we can get to here. Mr. Musanti. There's one additional parking request, reservation request that's a handout for you this evening. Yup. Got it. A memorandum from me. DeAngelo Real Estate, the owner of the Tucker Taft building at 48 North Pleasant Street is doing some building renovation work and they need to reserve three metered spaces directly in front of that property on North Pleasant Street for one day only on Wednesday June 20th and in order to meet that deadline there's a suggested motion at the bottom of that memorandum for you. Thank you. Miss Stein. I move that the select board approve the reservation of three parking meters at 48 North Pleasant Street, Wednesday June 20th, 2012 related to a construction project on the Tucker Taft building at a cost of five dollars per meter for the one day. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. That is unanimous. Okay. Just blowing through this stuff. Okay. We have a few other time items we can do here. Minutes. We had several sets of minutes in our packets. These are from town meetings so they're all nice short minutes. Folks have a chance to look at them and have any comments or questions about them. I have very minor comments for May 7th. They're more in the nature of smoothing the English in a couple of places. It's not important. I have nothing for May 9th except there was a second copy of the May 7th minutes. Was there a change to that? That was on our table. We're not aware of a change. I'm not aware of a change. I think it was just an additional copy. Because we got those in our packet. Then May 9th I have no changes. I have one change or a couple of changes for May 14th. I think we should say Amherst Knights of Columbus member Bill Hutchinson. I don't know if he had another position. It's awkward not to include that. Ms. Stein was the person speaking to the article on behalf of the board. Again, there are a couple of minor things. That was on May 14th. Minor details on May 21st. That's it. And Jim first minor detail. Okay. Anybody have anything else they wanted to add? Little corrections. I had just on May 7th it said that the representatives from Amherst Brewing were present. It should say we're not present. And on the 9th and the 14th just to add two people, one person each, one person per set of minutes to the list of participants. But that's all I can give those to you. Throw out the one today. I have nothing. Oh, why don't you throw out the ones that I have nothing. So Resel doesn't have to figure that out. They're very trivial. Right. And if you'd like to make that motion. Okay. If I could find the motion sheet, which is disappeared. I move that the select board approve the minutes of May 7th, 2012 May 9th, 2012 May 14th, 2012 May 21st, 2012 and June 1st, 2012 as amended. Second. Further discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. That is unanimous. And I'll just note again how incredibly up to date we are on our minutes. Ms. Broussell is doing a magnificent job and that much appreciated. Okay. And we still have a few more minutes. This is great. Okay. I did the minutes. How about committee appointments? Ms. Stein. I move that the select board appoint Michael Hankey to the design review board. Ellie Tampson. I'm not sure. It's actually backwards. It should be Tampson, Ely. What did I do? It's correct on this sheet. It's just wrong on the motion sheet. We know it's Tampson, Ely. We know that's on the library of trustees. That's our first name. Yeah. Okay. I will start again. I move that the select board approve Michael Hankey to the design review board. Tampson, Ely and Emily Lewis representing the Jones trustees on the joint capital planning committee. Kathleen Wood-Mazalski to the town of Katsaki sister city committee. Stephen Schreiber as Amherst representative to the pioneer valley planning commission. Margaret Hankinson to the public arts council. And Sondra Burgess as a register of voter voters all with terms to expire June 30th, 2012. Second. 15. So it's 15. 15. Excuse me. I'm puzzling because I think it's these are renewals. I think all but. So it does say reappointments at the top. So we just changed the first verb to reappoint rather than appoint. I think that's right. That's what I was trying. I know for quite a few it is. I just think it's strange that we're appointing people to JCPC. We don't usually do that early ahead. Yeah. Well, but we don't like you just send somebody that's not that's not at our discretion. Why don't we don't think to make them out? Yeah. I don't know anyway. Right. So Miss Ely wouldn't be a reappointment. It's a decision of the sending board. I think perhaps the I would guess the office was just being helpful because we knew it was out of date because it went on our list. Like when Diana and I go through the list of who's on what it's like this is out of date. And so they probably found out who they were planning to send and didn't realize that we didn't necessarily. Yeah, we don't usually do BCG and JCPC at this point. So we're just taking them out. Not because they're not going to serve, but only because it's not our problem to right now. It's not our problem. Okay. All right. So anyway, then I think these are all reappointments. All right. Thank you for the discussion. All in favor say aye. And then for the next one, I move that the select board reappoint Mark Parent, Keith Langsdale and Carolyn Holstein as associate members of the zoning board of appeals with terms to expire June 30, 2013. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. That's unanimous. And above that section we have new appointments. Okay. Yes. Do you want to go ahead and do those now? Yeah, sure. Okay. I move that the select board appoint Rachel Mustin to the Amherst Cultural Council for a term to expire June 30, 2015. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That was cute. Mr. Wall poked Mr. Hayden together for those who missed that. That's right. I mean, we each have our roles to play. All right. Don't slip up. I move that the select board appoint Thomas Airgood as a full member of the zoning board of appeals with a term to expire June 30, 2015. And I should note he's moving up from the associate to the full so it is new. Second. For the discussion. I will just note that this is the end of service for Barbara Ford who has been on the ZBA for I believe it's nine years now and has served very well and really appreciate her service and her serving as chair. So thank you to Ms. Ford. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. That's unanimous. I move that the select board appoint Yuri Freiman as an associate member of the zoning board of appeals with a term to expire June 30, 2013. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. And we still have a couple of minutes. Mr. Hayden. One thing I'd like to say just like last week and this bears being said I think every time they really appreciate all of those folks for stepping up to do the work especially the two new names that are on the list. One of the new names is actually an old name is coming back but I appreciate all of them coming to help out. Thank you because we know that town services can be an exciting and rewarding and rewarding thing to do. Yes. So yes thank you to all of them and all of those that we we appointed and re-appointed last week and is this is this the end do we think or will we still have some in July? I think we're getting close. I know on my list I have someone to thank that somehow. I got to checking which form of letter and such so we haven't quite pulled that off yet. And I'm sorry I was gonna just say thank you both for your getting all of this process together and this is it's a lot to kind of get all this organized and and get it from where it was to bring it in front of us so many thanks to both of you Ms. Brewer. Yes staff has been incredibly helpful with that because it's surprising how many little gaps we still see as we try and figure out all these different automated systems that are making our lives easier but are still you know it doesn't really come to the front until you're trying to do a whole bunch of these at once but we're really really doing getting more and more close to having this be really simple. The other thing that I'm supposed to be looking into and frankly haven't done a thing about is associated with the Amherst Community Television also known as the Amherst Media Board of Directors we need to we've had Isaac Benazir serving in that for a long time which has been wonderful but it's it's one of those things that's never been entirely clear to us what this role is and the fact that it just it's in the bylaws for community but what's the relationship are we supposed to be you know telling him stuff as he's supposed to be telling us stuff I mean we just don't really know and so when you have someone who's willing to serve all this time which is great and Isaac has his own show and it's terrific but we just thought maybe we should have a better understanding of what that was before we worried about we are pointing him in the meantime he obviously is continuing to do his wonderful service and just one of those technicalities that we don't really know why we do so we'd find out a number of things we do just because we do them but we don't know all right so now it is 716 which is perfect timing for our 715 item which is to consider a new committee charge for the public shade tree committee and we have two members of public shade tree committee here this evening I don't have any sexy issues tonight yeah we had a public hearing that got continued to the next time so that's why we are we had a big gap yeah okay i'm uh bobber winner of the shade tree committee and i'm here tonight to try to cure a case of unplanned obsolescence our committee was formed about 40 years ago as an emergency subcommittee at the time the animal like struck tree were falling everywhere the charge and the mission statement and all that everything that was written at that time was still on the books and practices changed a lot and probably should change some more for example it says that the director of conservation commission shall approve the removal or planting of every tree in a public way hasn't done that for a year town nursery is mentioned tree nursery that experiment was tried twice and failed and it's unlikely to be tried again before seal the future and there's other uh out-of-date phrases and sentences and of course the tree warden has a much expanded uh domain compared to what what was what did exist is he called the tree officer now no he's still the tree warden he comes to our meetings and we still make recommendations but uh he doesn't have to listen to us if he doesn't want to well we've gotten into education last week we had two bus loads of seventh graders come to grove park and plant 70 trees many of them i think had never seen a shovel before but the trees are all on the ground uh since hope crullius became chairman we've done a lot more at on arbor day and earth day than than used to be done and uh it just seems to us that it's time for the committee to become a freestanding committee under you rather than a subcommittee under the old arrangement now we did write a proposed charge i think hope passed that by you didn't say yes i don't think i have any more to say right now but maybe i have some questions so uh thank you very much mr erwin so this has uh long been uh since the beginning 40 years ago has been a subcommittee of the conservation commission and uh there there's nothing subcommittee like about them this is a really a fully fledged committee just one moment and uh and they do extraordinary work and uh having them in sort of this alternative status didn't seem to make sense to them anymore uh and so they went to the conservation commission and and pled their case to be uh to be uh set free and the conservation commission agreed that it really didn't make any sense to fall under their jurisdiction anymore and they unanimously voted to recommend that that this be an independent committee now um under the slack boards purview and uh and hence the recommendation has come to us there's something else you want to add i was going to add that we had been the conservation commission but you did it for me very good so we have the proposed charge um and does anyone have any questions or comments about this mr waltz a small one about wording since we we like to look at these details on the top of page two the first paragraph educational in the second sentence it says school programs comma planning and pruning demonstration should that be planting or planting since we just mentioned free planting right good point i believe you meant planting demonstrations top of the second page right line two second the last i think it's typo says planning yes yeah yeah it should be planting thank you uh miss nine i just want to say i spoke to um um mr um deborah today and um this is which one narrow it down i said deborah i followed i know which one anyway um bottom line is work needs to be done to put this charge in the final format and she did not have time to work with the committee and to to draft it in the final format okay so um for example just um it's we can't say legally no more than seven or fewer than five voting members um so that's just you know why they never needs to put this in a more traditional format okay okay these issues that are described belong there um you know to do uh the the three functions but it's just a matter of the format so i just wanted to bring that out don't get too hung up on the wording okay miss breuer i would recommend associated with that that we go ahead with the motion that's on our motion sheet and then just knowing that we're going to see an actual generic much more generic looking charge um later which we will approve at that time i also had the comment so i think we need to come back to the special municipal employee status issue but the other item that i'm sure you were um thinking about associated with the five or seven members which i'm assuming is a recommendation from the current body as opposed to and i'd like to hear a little bit more about whether they want five or seven members and if they want to establish a quorum um because we certainly have plenty of committees with both those numbers the other item is the proposed by the committee for approval by the select board i'm assuming that's not saying that this committee would come to us with new members because that's not how we um appoint members to committees but i'm assuming that's just some reference to how they developed it up to this point but that's something that would obviously come out because that's not how we do this we have assumed that we would nominate people and bring their names to you and that's not how we do committee appointments um but we would still we would just ask people to go through the CAF process and they would list members of the tree committee as references and say you know so and so ask me to apply or here's why and that's what people do all the time on their committee appointments so that would take that into account right okay yeah so you're you're free to recruit membership as well as you can but you do it through the citizen activity form application process okay so you folks deal with our charges all the time so if you would coordinate with these folks to kind of tweak this but we can approve the concept of making them a standalone committee so that they can sort of go forth and recruit mr. museum yeah i was just going to make the point that the motion as drafted on the motion sheet spells out the substantive changes to the charge that they are seeking your endorsement of and it has my strong recommendation um i think the formatting of the charge document if you pass such a detailed motion is really an administrative function okay it needs another vote because the substance of the change is what's in the in the motion before you tonight um so so in other words we wouldn't have to see the charge again oh we would we would forward to you the updated charge in the new format and if in fact there were any issues or or questions we would we would put it on a future agenda yeah mr. that would be fine and i do appreciate the way this was written for that very purpose by having it sometimes we don't have that sort of intermediary step in our minutes and so i think this is actually really useful showing how we're getting there um and we can i think we can absolutely do the technical side of it we we want to decide the SME part of it before we leave this topic but i also want to make sure that we're talking about five or seven members and ensuring that there's not any type of um talking about what quorum is i'm assuming that just be a standard seven member committee unless the motion says seven so the body has a group has said either five or seven so are you good with seven you need to come to the to the microphone if you want to speak so the tv can hear you and please identify yourself we're seven now but the problem that we've been having is that the one member um according to the old charge was a liaison from the conservation commission and we've been as at six and we would really like the seventh member because we are short so so you want seven members you just expanded to seven if i'm not um mistake and not long ago okay so you want seven okay all right good so that's all we need to know for the motion and and you folks can work with them to or however this is going to work to get the motion to get the charge into final format okay next time okay um i'm going to alter this i'm going to drop three words the words are and provide advice because that's the same thing as recommendations okay so i moved that the select board authorized a change in the charge of the public shade tree committee from the seven member subcommittee of the conservation commission to a seven member standalone committee appointed by the select board duties to include recommendations and information to the tree ward tree warden on planting or removal of trees within the public way or on town of Amherst property and providing information and communicating the benefits of good tree cover to the general public and working to restore a beautiful tree cover for the town of Amherst second for the discussion mr. he's a quick question as i travel around the state i see a lot of um tree cities usa um and i'm pretty serious well Amherst is one of them i i'm wondering 25 years i know um the um the public shade tree committee has had a number of guests come and speak with them i'm wondering how many other committees like this uh you know of in the state oh there's lots dozens but we are probably one of the strongest ones there are some towns that just kind of leave it to somebody to do something about trees but they don't do much i remember that talk too north hampton is heavily dominated by lawyers and they keep reading procedures to everyone who comes with any kind of request endless procedures and they never do anything with the trees as crow list did you want to make a comment well i just wanted to say thank you and um for considering this and that i in the five years i've been doing this i've come to the realization that actually amherst is we're not unique but having a committee that is as involved is apparently um you know not in the norm we had uh we had a a tree warden from a neighboring town in up in franklin county come and attend our meeting last tuesday just to see how this is done because he's feeling like you know he's the tree warden how do you hold a hearing how do you get people involved when neighbors want a tree down or they want it to stand he he's in the process of just starting to do that outreach and he has no he doesn't have a committee he's all by himself and i'm gathering that's kind of the i don't know if it's the norm but we're definitely we're definitely through no virtue of our own we just thought this is the way it was done and that we should be doing a lot more and that's why we did this so i think that answers your question they have lots of volunteers and i may be vastly mistaken but i don't know if they have a tree committee you have lots of people with like friends of trees and lots of people doing volunteer things whether they are in this role in relation to their tree warden i wish alan were here i i gather not as much as we are thank you mr me santi yeah i just wanted to reiterate my strong support for this update to the public shade tree committee charge and extend my a deep appreciation for all of the members of the committee and and hope corollus who i think is doing an excellent excellent job as chair besides being a good idea on on on its own merits it's also timely because you know as we celebrate our 25th year as a tree city usa we are about to embark with a near unanimous support of town meeting just received of a very ambitious tree planting program for to plant 2000 trees over the next three years we have a full-time tree warden certified arborist on staff as opposed to being the volunteer tree warden which i think is the best practice and so it's an exciting time i've heard from a lot of people about how great the trees used to be 40 years ago working with the committee and others we've come up with a plan to do something about it so it's an exciting time in the town and looking forward to really getting started in earnest to improve our tree canopy canopy reduce pollution etc beautify our town over the next several years thank you very much this time i would like to add one word to the charge um after the word include put in providing so it reads including duties to include providing recommendations and information it was a little awkward without the word providing sorry about that no problem uh miss burr could we just double check while we're all here that we are as opposed to what it says on this we are going to go with public shade tree committee as the name of this not amherst tree committee public shade tree committee well we hope to find people in the neighborhoods who will you know collect their neighbors with trees and private property but we'd like to reduce them out is miss burr my name was senseless to call us the committee of the town tree but um if it's been known um as the public shade tree committee and i think it's deserved it's good reputation that it's developed over the years of public shade tree committee i don't think that that sort of outreach is outside its purview i mean nothing the public shade tree committee does really has the force of law so these are these seem like perfectly adequate um outlines of what they can do and would not preclude you from doing that that that would be perfectly fine and and if we change your name honestly we're just going to say it wrong forever after this is going to cause like a ctv you know you're the policy i think you're stuck with the name there could be a place where they let's say it's an eroding bank and the trees in that plant the shade that planted that full of soil it's that social other hypothetical situations i don't feel strongly about this what was the select really get into the finer points of what's a tree and what's a bush okay it's getting late um so um i agree with alissa i feel like it's a historical name and uh for 25 years you know i remember reading the original statement by nancy eddie you know foresters say the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago yeah that's true all right i think we're keeping the name then so unless the select board does not seem to feel differently miss burr all right so we should excuse me excuse me one second miss burr i'm trying to clarify whether or not we finally voted on the finally we haven't voted yet we're in discussion motion about sma status thank you are we ready to vote on this motion all in favor say hi hi hi that's unanimous now miss burr wants another motion and now she wants to copy whatever it was diana said earlier about the historic to grant the select board grants special means to play status to the public shade committee i so move second yeah that's for the discussion all in favor say hi hi hi that's unanimous thank you very much thank you for all your work on this and all your great work on our trees shane and otherwise yes here if you have any influence at amherst college they have the rarest most precious tree in town talk to this guy after the meeting thank you okay thank you all right thank you next up and it's 7 34 and my agenda is here okay vote to add retired teachers to town's health insurance plan are we all back with the agenda here okay so last wednesday we held a joint public hearing with the pelham select board and the regional school committee to consider the issue of the insurance advisory committee's recommendation to switch retired teachers over from the state's general group insurance commission g i c insurance plan to the town's healthcare trust fund as all active employees are covered by and our retirees are also covered by so retired teachers were on this other plan the group insurance commission plan from the state so we held a public hearing as noted there were probably about a hundred people in attendance 90 of whom were retired teachers out of 228 i believe retired teachers total there are also other folks who are affected by this change being surviving spouses and and dependence that sort of thing um so it was really a quite an excellent meeting and public hearing and it is in rebroadcast on amherst media now miss logar who is here to talk to us about this tonight as well as folks from our insurance consultant and folks from harvard pilgrim and blue cross blue shield were there to answer lots of questions from folks it was a it was an extremely interesting evening at the end of that meeting all the teachers in attendance took a vote and the vote is advisory to the amherst select board for the amherst elementary school retirees to the regional school committee for the regional retirees and to the pelham select board for the pelham elementary school retirees so our the vote that that informs us tonight was about three to one in favor of switching to the town's plan there is a memo that details this information along with a bunch of other information on the subject in our packet on the website for folks who are following along at home and so that is where we are so now to make this official we need to vote on this recommendation and i'll just note that in addition to the vote the advisory vote that we had that night we have the recommendation from the town manager and the unanimous recommendation from the insurance advisory commission and we have as a select board been paying a lot of attention to the question of gic versus the town's being self insured for a number of years now back when the healthcare trust fund was in a little bit less good shape or considerably less good shape there was a lot of talk about should we switch to the gic etc just a couple years ago the legislature made that more an easier thing for municipalities to do and all throughout we've been having the discussion about this it the discussion has always come back to the fact is you get better benefits for less money less money on the municipal side and by and large less money for the insured recipients through the town's plan so so i'll just say that all of those things are pushing me to vote to approve the recommendation as presented to us and miss logar is anything you'd like to have i think you've said it very well um we have found we've watched the gic very closely we've watched our group very closely we have a terrific collaborative um working relationship with our insurance advisory committee which is made up of a retiree representative as well as representatives from each of the employee groups whether they be union or non-union groups so this is something that i believe that the the three towns that are in or the three entities i should say that are in the joint purchase agreement for the trust fund have carefully watched over the years and we've utilized our insurance consultants as well as the feedback from our employees and our retirees to manage that thank you and i just want to take this opportunity to say that miss logar was absolutely amazing the other night there was no question that someone could throw at you regardless of what their situation was whether it was medicaid eligible or ineligible or whether they're in particular plan due to with you know things that are out of the out of the network or out of the country i mean there it didn't matter how how um how particular or broad the question was she just answered it like that it was totally amazing so and i think that gave folks a lot of confidence uh in in how the town administers this to have somebody be so expert and really knowing all of the details like that so i i thought that was really excellent so thank you very much miss burr thank you for saying that because i wanted to follow up and also say that um although clearly not all the attendees had read it there was a frequently asked questions document that was incredibly elaborate and she was so patient she didn't say it's on page three like i wanted to um and she explained it over and over in every way that they could possibly ask so and i know change is hard i want to i'm not i don't think this is any sort of formal disclosure i um but nonetheless my husband therefore my family is covered by gic and one of the things that i find interesting wearing my various hats is that we have had concerns in the past obviously with our health care trust fund here and we did have a period where things were awkward and people had questions about that let um at the meeting which was perfectly appropriate it was perhaps not as broad out as i thought it should have been that gic also especially ironically right after they suggested all the towns join it um ran into a bunch of problems with their underwriting when they suddenly had to then make draconian what i considered to be draconian measures which they suddenly started asking for upfront deductions and everything that they had not had before and one of the things that i not only is the fact that you know there was an issue with gic we had an issue we both over have had our challenges i feel incredibly confident about our town and the status the um procedures we've put into place to not have a problem like that gic don't have that confidence that they are prepared for that the next time around and one of the other things that people pointed out is because we do have we do have a feeling of more local involvement with our own trust fund it's not you know this removed thing off in boston where in theory you're represented at the table by somebody who represents thousands of people but it's people that are being represented right here in town so i think that that all of that really feeds together incredibly important and it's a really amazing thing i mean when people first brought up the gic thing i was like yep let's just get rid of our thing and but it became very clear that that was not the way to go thank you other comments mistyne i just want to reinforce the confidence that people got out of the fact that the meeting lasted till every last question was asked so people didn't feel that there could felt that their concerns were really being addressed and i think that's why the vote was like three to one for it thank you other questions or comments mr hayden and then miss recently yeah it's also sort of reinforcing the idea of the process it's pretty amazing that basically the people who are going to be most affected by it were sort of most clearly heard i mean they had their chances to read and stand up and everything else but um it also occurs to me that um these are people who worked with us and and in essence they're successors who will become part of this plan in the future are still to be recruited and it seems to me like it's kind of a it's a very good recruiting tool they look you know we will honor our commitments to you and i know so many other places that have snatched these benefits away because they can't afford it for whatever reason thank you and i think that was a that was a key point too that the that the town has a long history of treating the current employees and the retirees the same so i think that that was really meaningful to folks mr me sand yeah i just wanted to reinforce the the the good words that have been said about process and to the work of staff miss logar as kind of our our lead person on helping to administer uh employee benefits um and you saw that firsthand at the hearing but also in in all of the work going back many years now in the one-on-one uh counseling and questioning and answering that goes on with individual uh active and retired members and it was clear and we we made the point i hope as clearly as we could at the hearing as well that in any sort of transition if the board and the regional school committee and the pelham select board proceed um that they'll be open enrollment sessions and many additional opportunities for individual retirees to have their questions uh or just understand the process and how it affects them and that's that's a commitment we have and i agree that that's one of the strengths of our program is to have a local uh a local contact through the town and through our public schools that you can get answers to your questions and assist you in dealing with the health insurance companies now just make for calendar reasons the regional school committee is scheduled to take up this matter as you are tonight at their meeting next Tuesday June 26 and i don't have a confirmation as of now on the pelham select board but it was either this week or next week that they were planning to meet so they're all at planning to act before the end of June on this matter thank you any other questions or comments about this before we get to the motion this time i move that the select board terminate acceptance of chapter 32b section 11e thereby transferring all eligible retired teachers and their dependents from the commonwealth's gic health and life insurance plans to the local amherstash pelham health claims trust second for their discussion oh they were saying hi hi that's unanimous thank you very much all right now it is time for a town manager evaluation and goal setting process we have three different things to do under this um the first one is the town manager's self evaluation this is something that the town manager does for us every year that helps to give us a sense of of what his successes and challenges have been and and gives us just further information to help us as we proceed with our evaluations over the course of the summer uh mr musanti did submit a memo to us and that is on our web packet and uh mr musanti yes i just wanted to i hope very briefly touch on this progress report but also reminding people in the community that this entire report from me is posted on the town website as part of the june 18th select board meeting packet and we'll we'll stay up there as past reports have um and i wasn't intending to go through each and every goal uh but certainly you know if there are questions uh on the progress report of of any of those happy to try to answer those for you uh i do want to highlight a couple of things though from the self evaluation summary at the beginning portion of the memorandum first i think it's been a very rewarding year and but also a challenging year and every year is challenging in this position but this was a particularly challenging year for me on a personal level as well as a professional level i had a slip and fall accident as you know last uh september and had had an injury that i was recuperating from and i was forced to miss about six or seven weeks of work in september and october and then have returned returned then on a on a part time basis and over a period of weeks ramped up back to full time and beyond uh and that was you know a challenge for me and but i wanted to note again as i did in my january progress report that uh the staff of the town of amherst at all levels continued i think their excellent work and really stepped up in a major way uh in my absence really uh taking the ball and and doing the doing what needed to be done i wanted to particularly thank uh dav zomac who as you know served as acting town manager during that period and uh we continued our our ability to work well and his ability to triage issues large and small and bring bring some matters to my attention but not many others that he was able to do uh uh very very effectively and i also wanted to particularly thank uh debora roosell uh the assistant to the town manager in my office uh who you know has been doing excellent work right along but during this period in particular really uh really uh played a really good leadership role her continued support of the select board and uh the other particular challenges related to my absence so i just wanted to thank uh thank them again publicly uh for that i did also uh list what i think are key highlights and accomplishments over the last 12 months um make the point again that i think there's a lot of positive momentum in the town of amherst uh and i think we are poised uh to build on some of the successes we've had over the past a couple of years and this year in particular uh and really i'm looking forward to continuing our work um without and i've gone through uh an extensive list i'm going to highlight some of them um you know i think in terms of the delivery of town services uh ultimately we're as good as the people who work with us and for us and uh i was particularly pleased this year uh to be able to fill two very very important positions that had vacancies due to retirements i've been able to recruit uh what i believe is a really outstanding new building commissioner rob mora who started in april uh and really refocusing the inspection services department uh how the how the daily work is structured the uh the use of technology in the field the responsiveness and clarity to uh applicants uh about what's expected as early in the process as possible uh i think we're off to a good start on that and then most recently uh i've announced uh the appointment of debaugh radway uh to be known as deb uh for those debaugh watchers in the town of amherst uh as human resources director she'll be starting on july 16th uh she brings 23 years of public and private sector human resources experience and i think is going to be a real top flight uh professional presence uh overseeing our human resources role and the work ongoing work as human rights director and working with the human rights commission and others uh on those things so i'm proud of that uh we talked since last october about a no drama year for budget development and by and large it was a no drama year we've done a lot of hard work painful choices over the last couple years uh we had some projections back in the fall that were refined as we came forward we ultimately came up with a balanced budget plan uh that was recommended to town meeting uh that town meeting has adopted uh as recommended it's essentially a level services budget and a real stabilizing budget and i think uh in and of itself that doesn't sound all that exciting but given the period we've been through with this protracted recession and the work we've done uh really proud of that outcome uh and that's partially responsible for our continued strong bond rating double a bond rating which was reaffirmed in march uh that's a very strong bond rating and for the first time in our bond rating review when we issued uh bonds uh back in march uh the rating agency uh hinted at some possible next steps that would help us be considered uh for the first time to my knowledge uh in the future uh to become a triple a rated uh community which is the highest possible bond rating uh and that would further help us to reduce uh borrowing costs and allow us to spend more of our capital dollars on the actual projects and debt service and not as much on interest payments so pleased about that you mentioned earlier tonight the creation of the Dickinson historic district uh which was it was a big deal and was a great collaboration on the part of town staff historic commission and study committee and community members and uh leadership from people like jim wall to help make it happen so very proud of that uh was particularly proud in the budget process to uh introduce uh uh proposal with superintendent garrick to really strengthen an after school program partnership with our public schools in the town uh at each of our three elementary schools and we are working uh actively on that uh to uh retain the best of what we have and and and build upon it as we get into the fall um we talked about the pool we came up with a plan to fix the pool fund it and open it and while we're we're delayed a couple of days uh that pool has been closed for a couple of summers now and we now have a plan not just to reopen it but to have the pool be better than it's ever been uh through a grant uh mostly state funded uh grant um other highlights uh select board's endorsement of the petition to create a downtown business improvement district that occurred last october that is now coming to life uh this spring i serve on the board of directors as the town representative in the amherst college in umass are also participating members which i think is one of the unique uh characteristics of this bid but also a strength because it's not just the people power that um helps but also some financial support another in kind support and we've hired our a new executive director and i think we're off to the races on that really exciting uh on beautification programming special events marketing etc um all things green i think there's many different initiatives uh we can point to i can point to the tree proposal to plant 2000 trees adopted with with uh near unanimous support of town meeting uh the application for green community status has been submitted and we're expecting word any day now literally on whether we've been approved and we're very optimistic we will be uh and uh you know there's ongoing work on our solar project uh and uh fuel efficient vehicle policy there's a number of things um let's see another initiative sewer extension master plan was another uh long standing need that was uh the needs assessment was updated uh with the help of uh our consulting engineers at cdm we had a staff recommendation uh to you last fall uh the board endorsed an update to the sewer extension master plan um and how to pay for it um and we went to the fall town meeting last november and secured town meeting support for a bond issue of 4.2 million to extend sewers into the wildflower drive and harkness road areas over the next two years so that's a major step forward uh in serving the the uh the community so i'll stop there thank you very much that's an excellent memo and the detail is extremely helpful we've been uh trying to improve and build on this process of the goal setting and the evaluation over a couple of years and and to have all these different formal steps to it i think are is extremely helpful so for you to detail this for us is going to remind us of a whole bunch of things that we might have otherwise forgotten about it will inspire us to remind you of things that perhaps you've forgotten about and it's all extremely helpful as we as just another piece of the evaluation process does anybody have any questions or comments for mr musanti about his memo okay um so as you noted uh just a reminder to folks that this is on the town website soon at the beginning of july early july there's going to be a uh a public notice it'll be a news item on the website uh seeking public comment on the town manager's evaluation as well and so this could be a document that is useful for folks anyone looking to comment as just a again a sort of a reminder about all the many things that have happened this past year um under mr musanti's leadership so excellent all right thank you very much i appreciate all the work that you put into that okay next up we have a review and approved documents make any necessary timeline revisions okay so let's see the first one is i'll just say did was there anything about the timeline anybody thought needed to be changed that we wanted to deal with um we talked about the timeline last week but just in case you thought of anything okay if you think of anything let me know um the other documents and make sure i've got the right things going on here we spent a fair amount of time last time talking about uh a couple different documents one of them is the evaluation form that we use the select board uses um and i hope that i captured all of the things that we wanted to do so let me just go through make this work and then go through the the various revisions that i made to that that work yes okay so uh first of all i'll note that the this is a form that we inherited years ago and um uh it has been revised and updated many times and ultimately once we one of the major things we decided to do last week was take out one of the categories which went from being um uh six categories that we would judge from uh down to five that just pretty much exploded the old document so i had to start fresh so this is good we now going forward have like a new era document so that will be much better for anyone in the future okay that's not important anyway um so the this evaluation form did take out the outstanding part that we talked about it making commendable the top category because we decided that there was not significant difference between those two uh we talked last time about getting rid of what had been the number three question on there because it was um repetitive um in doing that i it occurred to me that we were missing one so the what's on there and right now actually i moved down i changed the order of them anyway um what's on there as number two is now new i added that and rearranged what had been the top three because we got rid of number three so i added prepares budget in conformance with the select board's budget policy guidelines memo um there's a lot of talk on here about the budget and the fact that uh that we are doing this other process that's associated with that and that he is uh is going along with that seem an important thing to note um the and i specifically worded it as budget policy guidelines memo as opposed to budget policy guidelines just in case this is something that stays for the future and in case other select boards maybe are not quite as formal as we are with presenting such a form um that it didn't just say budget policy guidelines which unless it is formally presented as a memo you couldn't necessarily know that there were any formally approved approved guidelines so so that was my thinking behind that are people good with having that in there okay um let's see what did i do here we had another one that we removed oh okay we wanted to add um what's now number eight we talked about last time adding um a reference to town meeting and how town meeting gets prepared for because in this whole document strangely there's no reference to town meeting and that seemed important so um taking the the cue from our discussion last time uh i said presents to town meeting with thorough preparation and clear communication for your consideration uh i got rid of uh oh wait there was another one that the numbers are just slightly different this time because once you start moving things around but um there was one that had been number 15 last time that um we didn't like it had the word selects in it selects leads and directs we got rid of the selects so that has been gotten rid of and i think that pretty sure that that was all of the things that i changed and all of the things that we noted um don't get too hung up on the um formatting the pagination of this because uh word really does not like to do this kind of dramatic formatting and everything will change once we start putting our comments in the right hand thing right so i decided not to not to make it too beautiful to deal with that part this time so i think that's everything about this form does anybody have any questions or comments or did i miss anything or not capture anything for what it's worth i thought it read better okay good so i was happier with it i didn't stumble over that redundancy for example yeah i think there was one other thing that was redone oh just one that we removed entirely that had to do with the long range planning that's correct um that we just removed entirely because we had such a detailed long range planning goal so yeah those are now all of the things that we did to it okay so do we think we're pretty good with this form to use for this year tweak it again next year okay excellent thank you all right so then the next form let me go my electronics work here the next form that we talked about was the staff questionnaire and here we go okay um so similarly we got rid of the outstanding category to make it match ours also this one okay we had a couple of comments on this uh the comments last week were that that um some of these were phrased as we called them you questions versus like your supervisor and and people kind of tripped over that so uh miss stein sent me a couple of um revisions to deal with that which i think captured the same thing we were talking about last time um and i think that that pertains to number five and number six it before it said something like keeps you or your supervisor informed whatever um so i got rid of the supervisor part and i might have added the word relevant i'm not sure in the next one it was similarly it said includes you or your supervisor whatever indecision making significantly impacts your department and i put as appropriate um so i think those are the only changes to that part the other thing i did was i changed the order we had originally started with what's number four now um but that seemed like a funny one to start with and we we even talked about you know whether it's the best question or not the more i thought about it i i still like it as a question um but i didn't like it in the top spot so i moved it down to four and moved everything else up um and uh that is all the changes that i made to the questions themselves at the very bottom i put please use the back of this form or attach a separate sheet for any additional comments and that is all and so we'll talk about the cover memo after that but um any other any thoughts about how this is revised uh miss burr uh two things one is it is it is really funny how when you just reorder things the first question is so much more the way we've done it the way you rearranged it is such an important question one that we've really struggled with over the years and um it's terrific to have it right up front like that so thank you very much for doing that i am not going to argue this to death which i'm sure will thrill everyone but um on six and eight it now says as or when appropriate i think that's unnecessarily hedging i think that everything that's on here is could arguably have the concept of appropriate applied to it i think we we don't want to make this more complicated than it needs to be if you don't think that if you don't think the town manager ever delegates authority and you don't have a problem with that i mean i i just don't see where adding when appropriate or as appropriate is necessary in either of those cases i hadn't thought about it before until we redid these things without the supervisor part which i think was a good idea to take that out and i think we should just leave them out they're much cleaner that way and people can write interpretations as they choose that's true because we've talked about this when we do the goals too that you take the opposite you say well does he do it inappropriately like okay he delegates all his authority and it's a stupid idea what okay um mr wild you i guess we're not in time wasting modem worse maybe i should be correct uh no i i think this i take mr bewer's point and it's a good one i just thought maybe especially for delegating authority it could be important because there it made more sense to me than the other categories because you want the town manager to be a leader but not to be a micromanager but i said i'd have no strong feeling either way as long as as long as we all agree on the on the sense of what's being asked for i think that doesn't make any difference i guess i sort of like it in number eight also a little bit better than number six again you're right it's it's not like as opposed to inappropriately which would be silly but it it just does seem a little like it to mr wild's point that like he doesn't delegate all of his authority or something which would be inappropriate i don't know mr hayden okay we're asking somebody you know to make a to make an assessment not an appropriateness that's that's someplace else but where they feel it's been necessary yes um i mean i'm trying to think of you know what what is the answer we're going to to solicit with the question and delegates authority well okay but i'm not sure i care as much about that as to whether they think it's been done an appropriate is is a slippery and not a very good word not a very appropriate word but maybe where they consider it necessary mr santi how would you like people to consider your there's your chance right your own question this is not a cop out i have no problem whatsoever with the deletion of as appropriate number six because i think all parties understand that that doesn't mean that every decision that gets made is subject to approval or feedback you know there's ways to solicit that input that are more efficient than others number eight i'm okay with when appropriate or when necessary i think it gets us to the same place okay so i think we're probably not liking number six because that's new because i added that as part of the revision um so it doesn't sit well with us because it's new and inappropriate so we'll strike that one um so because this we are now splitting hairs um mr are you fine with us leaving it in number eight okay everybody else fine i don't know okay uh anything else then about these it's inappropriate and unnecessary uh anything else about this form then all right so we're going to consider this form approved okay then next up is the staff cover memo questionnaire which mistyne has submitted um some revisions too and i will just tell you that the only thing i did to this was okay i added what is the third paragraph that says additionally if you have questions or if you have suggestions for how to make the questions more relevant or useful to you we would very much appreciate that information as well please feel free to add those blah blah blah so that was the only thing that was different from what went out last year so miss stein has some suggestions would you like to speak to your revisions i'd like to explain what i did um i tried i wanted the um suggestion that that the staff could make changes to this format to stand out more than i thought it did so i combined um well what um Stephanie had into the first paragraph and then instead of saying additionally i made a whole second paragraph that stands alone that says if you have suggestions for how to make the questions more relevant or useful to you we would very much appreciate that information as well the only difference in her wording on that paragraph is that i dropped additionally i wanted it to be on its own i want to people to pay attention to it in order to fit things into the first paragraph i tweak them a little bit so um instead of her wording it says um this life board is conducting its annual performance evaluation of the town manager that's the same as part of that effort we would greatly appreciate your feedback and enclose a questionnaire for that purpose and that's an italic just because that's a new way of doing it if you wish to expand on your answers feel free to use the back of the former attach a separate sheet then we go to the second paragraph there is incidentally two periods on that first paragraph i don't know why if you have suggestions and so on so the idea was simply to bring the i forward a concept that they could make suggestions about how to improve our questionnaire and there may be even you know other ways to do that but i thought making it as a separate second paragraph gave it more emphasis let me just read it over quickly yeah i'm fine with that everybody fine with that read well mr. heath yeah i am fine with it as well i'm wondering and i'm going to wonder out loud i know we're not in time wasting more anymore but still um if um we create a sentence that explains why we're asking i mean it's it's you know more useful well i mean i think that the reason we're asking the question i think i'd like us to say the reason that we're asking this question is that we're trying to make a more effective evaluation and you know we have questions and criteria that we are considering and we're wondering what their questions and criteria might be now i'm sure there's a better way of putting that um but i just just it's a little bit open ended to say useful to you to you know um but why how okay um maybe if we put in kind of a comma phrase that said something like um or or other questions uh and issues that you think should be well i mean more relevant are useful to you but also effective in helping us to make the evaluation or in future question something you know saying this yeah and you know the intention is to incorporate them into future questionnaires and evaluations but okay to help us improve our future it's not just sort of useful to define it nail it down a little bit give them something to think about push against okay i think i can work with that so thank you some words like that okay i'll um i'll run it by you erin and uh see if you can oh we forgive you okay anyway all right anything else then about this stuff okay so then we will proceed with the timeline and with these documents as presented and that kicks off the that part of the evaluation process okay so then the next part is our first goals discussion for fy 13 and we started doing this um a couple of years ago in this i think we found that it works very well that to be working in parallel on the goals for next year when we're giving um really detailed consideration to how the goals and the evaluation went for last year um so i don't know if this document ended up in your packet or not i fear not so i made copies and put them on your desk tonight and this is the one that looks like this yeah okay um so in keeping with the format that has worked well for us the last couple of years uh the first discussion is just about the fy 12 goals and whether we want to keep them delete them or revise them for fy 13 so when we talk in july we'll be talking about brand new goal ideas things that aren't aren't on here now but at this point um we're just talking about the fy 12 goals and and uh and how they fare for next year so and i'll remind us that this is as we do with all of these things this has gone through exhaustive processes to get them to this point and in fact last year we really improved them significantly in in wording and formatting um which is not to say we can't continue to do that but um you i'm just reminding you that we really did um make these pretty darn good last year so um the first question is about um budget issues anybody have anything they would want to change so i i think that this is a clearly a standing um goal one that that we need to have each year um so doesn't need to be revised at all okay if you change your mind we'll come back number two is uh this one we broke out this had been part of a of a like a community relations goal uh previously but we broke it out because it really is so critically important and that's about the town manager's relationships with umass and the other colleges um again something that i think clearly needs to stay so the question is doesn't need to be revised at all and shaking their head that's good so if i'm going too fast then then tell me and we'll slow down okay number three is uh the community engagement goal um about generally reaching out to the community to to inform them uh and to gather information from them about town issues again a standing goal i think miss purr um aside from taking the italics off of b although maybe we should put it in bold this year um it's it's definitely a standing three b for whatever reason it's italicized gotcha which the town manager carefully carried over into his self-evaluation because he wasn't about to change a single character of what we wrote because he knows how we are um but i i think that's a very important standard thing to keep there too it may not be something we get a lot into this year but i i think we've done a wonderful job getting these to this point and so as you indicated earlier but i think that uh it stands perfectly thank you all right number four high staff morale this is uh been an important one um maintaining this uh we changed a lot of things last year to make them be more like maintenance as opposed to achieve um so i i think this is one of those um and i think that that one looks good and should stay any provisions okay number five number five has been on there for a long time um but this is actually one of those goals that you can check off for this um so this is the one about uh assessing the town's human resources needs and capabilities i think that there's been long concern about the about the state of the town's human resources abilities and infrastructure and now we've had a change there we have uh miss radway coming in in a month um i would be inclined to just leave this off entirely and assume that that um there's going to be improvement there but that's not what i'm hearing from other folks so this time i'm not i'm not even close i agree with alissa i really think it's important since we're going to have a change to a whole new person in system that we determine in the future how well we are recruiting harvying retaining and supporting town staff i mean it's not just the top of the heap it's how things are going underneath and the rest of the substructure so to to still get an assessment to us about the status of that which new eyes will will um provide a lot of money i wouldn't take it at all okay right miss berth i think it extends with exactly all the words it has in it right now okay because all those things are going to happen once she starts right and then they'll be working on that together and then maybe after the the first year we would want to tweak it just to reflect something particular they brought to us as the next step rather than leaving it broad like this but it's both broad and detailed in ways that we don't have any of the answers to yet we just are putting a lot of word we're assuming that everything's the sun's going to shine and everything's going to be perfect but we still need to know all those things okay yeah so i guess my sense was not wanting to start this person off with the sense that this is a you know a problem to be solved or whatever but um but no i i completely hear what you're saying and and i want to emphasize that the the reason that number four and number five have been really important to this lifeboard for years and years now is because staff is what the town is you know when we talk about our budget you know the that 70 million bucks or whatever i mean that is staff staff is how the money gets spent and invested um they are the resource that makes the town run so uh so their morale is critical and how their um their internal human resource resources um situation is is existing for them and working for them has been very important to us so uh so that's why we've made these priorities Mr. Hayden i have to say that reading this brings back lots of memories sort of remembering commas and words being bought over i'm wondering i think i understand you know your initial comment on number five you know i'm wondering if if it's because we think of assessment maybe in a less than a positive way and i mean it isn't it's a completely neutral requesting kind of it should be completely um i mean this this is this is not a you know 2700 page report um but just something to to keep us um aware of you know how 82 of our budget is being spent so are you suggesting a change to the word assessment or are you no change in our thinking about the word assessment okay thank you mistyne and and goals doesn't imply that things are rotten in Denmark it's you know some of these goals we want to keep on having forever like high staff morale oh sure so you know i i don't think we're implying anything we just want to continue the process good enough okay anybody want to make any further revisions or comments then on number five then number six uh this is the big uh communication with the select board goal keeping us informed about everything this is really kind of all about kind of the the relationship between and the the difference between the roles of the select board and town manager and trying to make sure that we're all on the same page any issues with number six they're laughing i want to know what they're saying okay any comments on number six good enough all right number seven uh detailed assessment of town-owned buildings regarding their current use um so this was on here for a little while now we haven't quite continued to be on that for a little yeah so we may or may not receive more information in the meantime such that by the end of this process we might remove it but at this point we're thinking it needs to stay it it's burr i i can't imagine that i mean despite the wonderful information that's in the self-evaluation it's still i think there will still need to be some discussion about how we move forward after we get the report and what his next thoughts are about it so i think it stays for f y 13 period so um and obviously we're not just because we're talking about them and think we're approving them tonight we might as we get through the process both in our thinking through the evaluation and the things that will happen between now and the end of august that could change so uh if if need be we can revisit that uh in august okay number eight uh the green goal our wonderful green goal that was a new one i think it was it was i think it was last year i think this is the second year this is a good one um and again something that you want to kind of keep because it's about being very clear about the expectation and having that out there okay so no revisions just keep as is okay number nine is about um a staffing plan um so my my inclination is that we need to keep it and that we need to talk more about what our expectation is from this um so i believe i had initiated this last year to talk about um having gone through multiple years of of budget cuts and um layoffs and attrition you know general workforce um reduction um you kind of lose sight when you're when you're trying to stop the bleeding of the terrible budget cuts that we were having of um what would be what what is the optimal need the right size for the various departments and a lot of things have changed in the meantime so you wouldn't necessarily just reset the the departments to where they were you know pick some date in the past um because they're you realize a lot of efficiencies etc as you go along so so i'm thinking what we were looking for what what i think we were talking about then was um to have something that will that will help to guide us when there is new money or you know new priorities or whatever so that we can we can plan i mean again staff being the the big resource the big investment um what is it that we're looking to do in the fire department what is it that we're looking to do in the police department and um that that gives us a framework for talking about the budget each year and for talking specifically at town meeting and responding to various questions about um staffing needs or challenges or whatever with with a plan you know says yeah here here's kind of our general goal um so so either we're not entirely clear on that or you're not entirely in agreement with that so from what i just said you want to comment on that well i want to go nine for nine um the uh we've begun the layout staffing and other needs in our long-term objectives structuring of my budget recommendations to you department by department and like goal number five about human resources department the coming fiscal year is going to be about uh completing a number of those specific analyses for staffing and in particular public safety so um with or without inclusion onto this list there's going to be a lot of work done by me and uh staff on on this issue for the reasons that miss okay said about budget so i think guidelines planning so i think that what we're talking about then an end result which is something that we can read and look at that says um you know these are the departments these are the needs or whatever um you know public works is one of them that we talked about the the issue that was part of the budget discussion this year about um how folks there had been unfortunately in the past it kind of moved over to project based money and that's kind of um impacted mr. mooring's ability to shift staff around and and do work as needed and that kind of thing would would work well in this kind of a plan you know so so we would all know what we're striving for in a perfect world and and the steps that we need to take to get to that this time it's funny you mentioned public works because that's the one through serving on as liaison for the personnel board i got to see the people in that uh in public works and exactly how one relates to the other for most departments i have no idea um and i was just wondering just throwing this out as an idea if we could go through department by department with that kind of structure who reports to whom and where are the holes um it it would give me insights to to the functioning of the police department the fire department and other departments um finances i don't even know what they would look like i have no clue well whereas i have a better understanding of public works um i i think it would be a good framework for us to to consider where the holes are thank you i'll note that some departments um have been including an org chart like that in their budget so the in our big budget binder we we have some some nice org charts for some of the departments but not all of them and uh so you know consistency is always good and and to know that all right you've got this resource for for all the different departments so um so i suck into that notion also i'm gonna go over here and then just briefly maybe a good part of sort of civic community building edge information too because you often hear people especially at town meeting and especially with new elected people saying you know why do we need so many policemen in a town this size or why is our planning department this size whereas the one next door is a different size and i think it's helpful for all concerned if we have a ration now that we can point to then we could be debating something concrete not just speculating and then of course the common the the final point there about including post employment benefits just came up with the teachers so obviously we're that's another reason to keep it we're budgeting for the future the long term and not just right now so it's it's a it's a model it's not a it's not a a recipe that one's follows to the right it's a framework and i appreciate very much the point you just made about um about being able to talk about these things in in a in a context you know when town meeting that's kind of your classic thing oh why do we have so many planners or whatever um because then you can have a policy discussion about it you know i mean so if you're looking to put x amount of resources to this department versus that then we can really compare and contrast and and the community gets to weigh in on whether the the framework as laid out really matches the their values and and priorities so okay good so did we want to revise that at all or we're just good with it as this mr oh i'm sorry i meant to call you no problem um yeah i i think again just trying to clarify what what i believe this this goal to be representing beyond what's already been said is that it it could include um as part of an ongoing process the org chart type things that miss stein was talking about it is incredibly important to you know the more information we put out there for telling me i think that um i'm what i'm trying to say is that we are not asking for a whole new report that doesn't exist per se in that most of the information in this report exists or at least the very the bones of it certainly do within the big budget book within the objectives that's that are in there um and then but rather than just leaving them in there associated with the budget and any particular year or they just get recopied and pasted like they did for a few years um that we're looking for something that's somewhere between blue sky visioning and the specific analysis of public safety i mean in addition to saying you know given where we are with firefighters and new negotiations etc and 24-hour schedules so this year the next year five years in addition to that just in general what kind of fire department do we want to have in general what do we wish public works was doing we think it needs a tree department we had this big issue where people retired blah blah blah do we have a parks department you know how what do we what do we think works based on all your past experiences based on what you've seen as things that we could do better here based on all the feedback that you've been getting about different things so that it's kind of like our master plan for the town so we know oh this is working toward the goal of getting us to this point associated with the way our planning and you know we've done so many things already planning conservation inspections pulled together it you know what what more or less do we think it should be doing in terms of interaction with the schools for example is there a goal associated around that that we can kind of have although it's a separate document a bunch of the information that already exists it's just a matter of pulling it together in a slightly different way so we can say how things fit together without just having to remember that there's a separate isolated report on some particular issue at some particular point in time right right an easy reference document um and I will just emphasize that the that another theme since all of us have been on the slide board together and doing all these various goals is the select board has always been looking to emphasize and find ways to have the manager take the most advantage of getting feedback from the staff about stuff whether it's budget issues or staffing issues or whatever and so so this specifically says through consultation with each department staff on number four and it talks about high staff morale priority in a it's talking about engaging and soliciting feedback from staff that's always been the select board in recent times anyway I don't want to speak for past select boards but but that's been sort of a continuing theme again about valuing the staff these are the folks on the front line they know best how we do what we do as a town and where improvements might be needed or or or suggestions could could be made um so uh so just the select board is always looking to emphasize that and that was true with all these goals as well okay if I'm not mistaken we didn't make any changes to that document is that right beauty okay good next we have so that's that's the end of this uh the evaluation and goal stuff for today unless anybody has any other issues that they wanted to talk about um refer to your timeline for information about next time but specifically we'll be talking about new goals new goal ideas as far as the goal discussion go all right tell me Andrew's report mr. mcanti thank you uh several items I want to bring to your attention uh first I wanted to talk briefly about some planning we're doing at the staff level uh last year at this time we applied for the competitive uh park grant capital parc grant from the executive office of environmental affairs and energy um and we were awarded the grant for rehabilitating the war memorial pool at the time we submitted that grant uh I made clear to commissioner Sullivan that it is my intention for the town of Amherst to be regular applicants um and so we've done some brainstorming at the staff level uh the deadline for this year's grant application is fast approaching on July 12th and I wanted to bring the to the board's attention that we're focusing on uh what we think is a doable project the grant program has been revised uh last year there was a maximum grant award of 500 000 and there's a local match that has been revised downward this year there's a maximum of 400 000 uh we've coalesced at the staff level around submitting a grant related to uh rehabilitating and improving what we call the north common which is the portion of the the downtown town common directly in front of town hall between town hall and south pleasant street um that is a beautiful space as you know uh last updated in terms of landscaping etc when eisenhower was president 1958 so since that time there's been some deterioration in the tree canopy that alan snow is beginning to address we have a lot of erosion we have the footpaths the fountain sidewalks that have deteriorated uh it's tired and it's a it's a beautiful historic space that we think has great potential uh to be rehabilitated uh we are looking at a there's a design build option when you submit for a grant which would make this a two-year project there'd be a small amount of money I think 30 to 50 000 allocated if we were successful in the first year for a design phase and we have staff and uh graduate student and other ideas on how to improve that space going back to the 1980s that we want to update get the benefit but I can envision landscaping the walkways improving the sidewalks possibly expanding the sidewalks on the perimeter of even as many as all sides of the space funds permitting we will explore rehabilitating what we call the main street parking lot the parking public parking spaces directly in front of town hall that parking lot I think is the basic layout is fine it's just needs paving and all that kind of thing so we're going to look at that and we can anticipate uh submitting something by the july 12th uh deadline questions or comments from select board so the the common is part of our jurisdiction so that's particularly important to uh get our feedback on this um and grants are to be brought before us also so it's a double win here for this uh agenda item um so I think that this is just a fantastic idea and a really critical thing to move forward um this is one of those assets that if you just if you don't take care of it then look what happens um and uh and it's something that is very visible to the community all the time the community really cares about it and really it just makes us look bad and and it makes us sad to have it in such disrepair so um to uh to improve an existing asset and and take care of the deferred maintenance and now make it better than it was in Eisenhower's time uh I think is wonderful so I really appreciate you and staff pursuing that Mr. Hayden. Yeah I would add all of that how how frequently that space is used by people like besides in their right of free speech and assembly and and events. That's a critical space okay go forth with our blessing thank you and we will somehow make the deadline uh July 12th uh Main Street another 2012 paving plan changes it's really I want to give a brief update on our road construction season that's underway first about our Main Street project you know that there were funds allocated in the most recent community development block grant to do uh uh handicapped accessible uh related barrier removal uh improvements from the stretch of Main Street uh lower Main Street from the intersection of North East Street down by the Fort River School all the way up the hill through the newly named historic district past the Emily Dickinson Museum to the corner of Churchill Street in the downtown there would be sidewalk uh improvements on both sides of the street uh handicapped curb cuts were appropriate and ADA compliant crosswalks and then as part of that the road improvement itself paving but also the installation of bike lanes on both sides at the appropriate width uh and improvements for bus pull-offs on that stretch and there's a detailed plan that's been developed and vetted with the various groups that's the good news the bad news is that the bids came in uh earlier uh this month and they did exceed the CDBG money that's been allocated uh so far we're in the range of 250,000 to 300,000 short to do the entire uh project um we are actively working at the staff level to identify chapter 90 funds which is our annual allocation of uh state uh gas tax money that comes back to the communities uh for road maintenance road paving work i think there's a way to do that the only hitch on that is that the upcoming year's chapter 90 money is part of the transportation bond bill that's currently being discussed in the state legislature there's a 200 million dollar allocation for local roads contained in both the house and senate versions of the transportation bond bill so that gives us some assurance about the ultimate dollar amount we're going to get but there are other differences unrelated to that in the bond bill that are being reconciled in a conference committee at the state level and so the weeks are ticking by uh and it's important for us for the legislature to complete that work ASAP uh on the transportation bond bill so we can have uh access to those funds in order to award the contract to our contractor that has submitted the apparent low bid depending on the timing of that that may force us to phase this project and there are different segments and and uh so one option and then we're going to kind of wait and see over the next few weeks uh the resolution at the in the legislature but one option is to um not cancel but delay the portion of the work that's the closest to the downtown from roughly triangle street to churchill street until such time we have legal access to the new allocation of chapter 90 so that affects the timing we know this will will uh the work will be done over multiple over two construction seasons regardless but it may delay the awarding of that portion of the contract for a period of time so i just wanted you and the wider community to be aware of that we talk about uh improving our roads but also at the same time making our community more walkable pedestrian friendly uh bicycle friendly and main street is our main street so uh we are working aggressively to to do the entire project i don't want to spend five or six hundred thousand and not be happy with with the result when we could have spent seven hundred thousand or seven fifty and get to the result that we've been that's been laid out in the master plan and elsewhere questions or comments about main street miss brugh i think it's important to somehow succinctly express that in writing to both da ac and the cdbg advisory committee just so that they know you know and say you know detailed questions can be answered you know referred to the town manager's office but just so that they know when they hear something about this also if they have particularly strong feelings about a particular area maybe you know if we had a choice as to which area to prioritize not just for the obvious construction related reasons um they may have a very strong opinion on it one way or another as to which particular area that person that you know so just that later they don't say all the things they could have done it would have been better to do x it may well be that there is nothing like that but they would like sure okay i know that's important to them sure thank you um i wanted to also provide an update on other road construction updates for the related to the same reason i just alluded to about the timing and amount of our upcoming years chapter 90 uh road paving allocation from the state uh we are proceeding with our paving list that we've described previously in the spring um but um i wanted to update you on a couple streets uh in particular um first reassure those who are wondering cherry lane will be resurfaced uh and i know some may argue with the term resurfacing it will be surfaced from east pleasant street to a little beyond the uh traffic circle uh about a couple hundred yards into cherry lane and you can kind of tell where the old pavement meets the new pavement just prior to weaver circle um that will be done there's some sewer repair work sewer line repair work that's being done first and then the cherry lane work will the paving part of that will follow so just reassuring folks uh linkin avenue that is on our paving list to be a resurfacing as well as the installation of speed humps again given the timing of the uh and the amount of the chapter 90 award from which it would be funded and the needs on main street that i've identified uh my plan is to proceed with uh there's some sewer line repair work that's also needed on linkin avenue that needs to be done so that we're not in this situation that we're digging up a newly repaired street we're replacing in some cases clay sewer lines and things like that that just you know have served us more than well over the many many decades that will be done my intention this season is to proceed with the milling uh step so grinding down the street uh to eliminate the moonscape and that'll be the base coat and the manholes and catch basins and things like that will be lowered so they're flush with the milled layer that will be substantially smoother than the current situation but it won't be complete next season 2013 we will we plan to complete the repaving of linkin avenue and the installation of the speed humps that have proven to be so successful on sunset in mclellan and the objective and promise and commitment remains the same it's a timing issue based upon the dollars and so there's going to be a substantial improvement to linkin avenue this season but with the entire job being completed in 2013 those those are the those are the key ones a couple questions on that um so could you tell us what the what the final status was on the paving the the 4.5 million that we borrowed for paving last year because i thought that we were um that we were going to spend and pave half of that's worth last year and then spend and pave the second half this year and and that linkin av was part of that 4.5 million and that it was on the list for this year so but now my understanding is that all the 4.5 million got paved got spent last year is that because things cost more or did we do more miles of a road than we expected both both the actual pricing and the ability of our winning bidder Warner brothers and the superhuman efforts of the dpw engineering and other staff to monitor you know an unprecedented amount of paving in this town in one season uh there are punch list items related to things like landscaping that dpw is is working to complete but the paving portion was essentially done last uh in calendar 11 so if linkin was part of the plan for last for this year last it was part of last year's plan to be paved and paid for this year and it wasn't paved it's not going to be paved this year how come that money for its paving isn't still out there like what got paved instead of linkin that we spent all that money i don't have the specific uh answer to that but i can get it i can get it for you okay because i'm curious about am i the only one who thought this was sort of a half and half thing i thought it was half last year and half this year so to have spent it all but to still have some of these big ticket ones that that i thought were to be included for this year um i i just like clarification on that well that was the original plan but there was an ability to to utilize all of the funds in one in one season okay yeah so if we could know what what got paved with that money that would be great miss burr yeah absolutely because i mean one would have thought otherwise that one would utilize all that money in one season for the things that were going to be done in two seasons and so if we chose different priorities based on there there must have been a reason we chose something other than linkin rather than just that we like to get hate mail so um it would be really can i just say you know all seriousness uh and i don't you know claim to control what people's opinions are out there we're doing something about the streets and uh well we can take some pride in the first five million we've spent uh there's still 15 million to go and um two years ago we had 21 22 million to go so we we've made some serious progress but there's a ways to go and i think we have a path to get there and then calendar 13 also promises to be a big year where we're at the state legislative level and gubernatorial level we talk in detail in a serious way about transportation infrastructure and regional transit funding solutions that are real uh and substantive uh that will help us get us where we need to be to address this you know backlog as part of uh what the money got spent on and got paved last year could we also get an update on what the priorities are going forward you know triangle street is is another one of those critical roads that people are always using and always asking how could it possibly still be that bad um pine street people are always asking about so we've got the the situation with the grant um we're again applying for a grant again this involves sewer work and you want to make sure you sequence all this stuff correctly um but uh but there there is the grant involved so that that would be a really terrific report to have kind of an an update on what's already happened and and what the priority looks list looks like going forward miss burr yeah and absolutely and it doesn't have to be complicated i mean whatever the last thing was if you want to just write on it and say check check check did all these and you know parentheses this one's over here is fine it doesn't have to be fancy we just so we're all on same page okay any other questions or comments about paving all right moving along next i'm really pleased to announce uh that chancellor hollab superintendent garrick and i have executed a one-year extension of our strategic partnership agreement with the university of massachusetts we have a what is now we're approaching the end of a five-year agreement negotiated by my predecessor back in 2007 that provided a more formalized and detailed structure of of the various relationships services and otherwise we have with the university uh and that was due to expire my discussions with the chancellor and others at the university this spring uh was to pursue a short-term extension uh because of the leadership transition underway at the university and the university was amenable to that also find a lot of value in the fact that we have an agreement and that's what what i've executed now knowing full well that we'll be working with the incoming chancellor on an extension over the over the coming year and we'll be continuing to collaborate on things like water conservation water reuse and other other initiatives that were in discussions with with the university that's an important agreement there's a funding formula in there for things like ambulance services provided to calls to the university campus police services memorandum of understanding and some other things it's a it's a valuable agreement that both parties want to continue thank you and to get that done as a one-year extension during this transition makes the most sense i really appreciate that umass was amenable to that also that that's an excellent way to handle that miss bruer yeah that's terrific thank you because yeah that was one of the things that was a little bit worrisome what's gonna happen yes um i'm i'm also just um adding a reminder that i'm sure was on your list anyway because it's in the original agreement but i would like some characterization to us at a future meeting as you're going into the next set of this discussion about what we're doing about the students in non-taxable housing now that marx meadow has been determined to be no longer necessary to house our elementary school students because we do know that a substantial usually in the neighborhood of at least 50 students are in non-taxable housing many of them are low and moderate income students and um we just want to know what sort of arrange what we might have that might reflect that in some fashion and just so folks understand who don't pay as much attention to this as miss bruer does um so there's an uh it was referenced in the original agreement that um there was no kind of exchange of money related to the non-taxable housing because marx meadow which was on the umass campus was considered to be sort of that it was considered to even out they were providing us like the building for the elementary school and and so their students so it all sort of evened out but now the building isn't there anymore so it's not quite even anymore so it does need to be addressed thank you next warm memorial pool update i've uh distributed uh in your packet tonight or the updates to your packet uh we are working uh actively with our pool contractor to complete the uh rehabilitation of the pool to allow it to reopen this summer we do have to delay slightly the reopening date from saturday june 23rd to the following saturday june 30th the liner installation the completion of the decking the fencing the bathhouse uh repairs are essentially done um we need a few more days we we've lost some time this spring and we're hopeful really up until the last couple of days that even with weather related delays this spring uh impacting construction that we are still optimistic about meeting a june 23rd opening uh we're going to have to have that slip by a few days one more week to june 30th and we'll have an opening for community use on saturday june 30th our opening ceremony celebration whatever you want to call it that we've had a committee planning is also postponed and we will reschedule that at a date a date to be determined i'm sure it will be sometime over the course of the summer hopefully the early summer and we'll proceed that there was some programming scheduled through leisure services in the war memorial pool for the last week of june we have worked with the amherst public schools and we'll have access to the uh middle school pool uh for that programming uh during the week of june 23rd so lssc and the schools are working on that and the all the all the gory details on that and participants will be notified etc etc thank you questions or comments about the pool miss burr i appreciate that you told us right up front the uh about the swim lessons being moved to the middle school and unfortunately that is not far away and so it should not cause substantial inconvenience to parents to have to be in a different location um will mill river still open on schedule on saturday the 23rd yes everything else we know good and the other question i have that i don't expect you to answer tonight uh is um but in the future is what we could have done differently i'm not accepting the 20 weather related days as being the only answer to this i think there must be something we might have tweaked earlier in the process and i'd like to talk about that in a general sense at some point in the future because this is just something that we are taking a lot of heat for having known that it was going to be true for a long time and uh you know things do go wrong obviously all the time can i just say and i'm not trying to be defensive but i'm approached this whole endeavor starting from a pool that was broken and closed and not available for anybody's use or enjoyment we've come up with a plan to make the pool better than it's ever been and it's reopening uh in a matter of days a handful of days beyond the original target uh there are a number of factors uh the most significant one being uh weather and even that we are optimistic that would uh still not prevent us from opening at the original date but this is a tremendous project i know we all agree with that there's tremendous excitement in the community and support for it um but i'm happy to talk with you further offline about um there's a lot of factors and um we are where we are and i don't have any regrets so uh not to believe it but i'd like to talk a little bit more about what the factors were because um people are disappointed by this and and granted we can all wait a week like it was not the end of the world um but the sense that we've had a year to be ready for this why why was it coming down to being ready at the last minute how come it hasn't been already ready what why was the um let me give you another thing and this is meant not as any criticism whatsoever with the commonwealth and their uh support for giving us a grant in the first place i have no authority to spend uh grant money until those uh grants are formally executed on the part of the commonwealth and they're in hand and so the timing of those coming back to the town directly impacted our notice to proceed and by extension the ordering of equipment etc for the actual work despite all that uh we were confident on the schedule and then that was compounded by some bad luck with the weather um that you know you need some completely dry days as opposed to mostly dry days to get some portion of this work done so there are some factors that are almost exclusively beyond the town's uh control but the bottom line is the project is happening and it's getting done and we're a matter of days away so that's an important point for people to know and understand so uh knowing that town meeting voted the money with or without the grant um is the fact that had we spent our money earlier which we were which the town had authorized then it couldn't be reimbursed by the grant that is exactly right and we're talking 208 thousand dollars maximum uh knowing that we have this award uh knowing until really the last couple of days that we were it was quite possible to meet the original opening day even by those delays that were caused um I didn't want to leave summer all of the 208 thousand on the table and have the tax dollars that are spent locally to pay for this be any higher than than what they needed to be so um that was a judgment call that uh I made I hope it opens next week looking forward to it miss burr and and I would certainly argue that um town meeting would be very happy with the judgment call you made in that case I think it's just a matter of next time around when we get a part grant associated with something it's probably worth explaining a couple of these details that did cause us a bit of delay here saying you know I know on the surface of it we said town meeting would pay for it one way or another but guess what you didn't really want to pay for it if you had the part grant coming and some of it's just outside of our control and that might seem really obvious to you but that's not as obvious to the community that's just all excited about the pool opening up so that's the kind of thing I meant and I'm sure I get it and I hope the I hope this conversation helps in that regard um and you know with summer all of the 200 thousand coming out of the town treasury as opposed to a state grant worth it on this you know delay of seven days all right anything else on the pool and moving along anything recent and upcoming no I think the two key hearing dates this week on the Hawthorne affordable housing portion of that project and the zoning subcommittee citizen forum for zoning priority setting where the two key dates that mr. wall thank you okay member reports miss brewer wants to talk to us about state open meeting law and comment period on various issues you know I mean to talk about the leisure services meeting that's going to have a field trip to the pool on Wednesday um that'll be anyway so open meeting law well this is one of those things that wouldn't have been nice if I'd written up something ahead of time to remind us where we're at with this you have three pieces of paper that are in the packet I'm the top one's probably intentional violation I want to talk about the other two first both of these they're slightly different from each other one is a notice of emergency regulation that's the one that says remote participation issued may 24 2012 that's followed by this pretty printout that they made us in the office because they're so helpful um because they don't issue everything as PDFs that the attorney general's website that talks about um the talks about remote participation which I have talked to you about before what derlie an earlier comment period we have looked at we've looked at in general you know what the different restrictions were that they were setting up for it it wasn't clear in the regulations they were putting forward based on remote participation exactly who got to decide what would it be up to and of course we know in our town it's a select port that gets to decide but then could individual bodies then decide to accept it or not could they decide to adopt different regulations for the use of it associated with geographic distance and child care needs and that sort of thing you know exactly who got to decide and how blanket of a decision it was to summarize um the what's changed associated with this emergency regulation is that and they have it in the frequently asked questions is basically what they've said is that again in our case the select board is the adopting authority we can authorize the practice you can't say it's good for some public bodies in your town and not for others it's either good for everybody or it's not but the public bodies themselves can say we don't want to do it we've been given so we could say as a select board at all 54 committees or whatever can do this but they could say now we don't want to do it and that would be the one decision they could make they could not however decide that they liked geographic distance but they didn't like another part of the reasoning they can't they can't do that they can only do the one straightforward thing the one of the little tweaks to it that I thought was interesting that they made clear in the frequently asked questions is that the adopting authority being us is that we could say that if any equipment purchase is necessary that such money were to be spent could only be spent on say the select board doing um remote participation and not any other body if we wanted to which seemed really random to me but that's what they say you can do so you can say oh you can all do it but we're not going to give you any money to do it so that is one thing you can do what you can't do however is you can't go against state or federal law and what that means in this particular case is that because the attorney general's office has written the thing saying geographic distance is a thing we can't say geographic distance isn't a thing however we can say and we at this level not at you know the different individual body level can say that 30 miles is an unreasonable distance or 60 miles is an unreasonable distance or out of the continental united states is an unreasonable distance but then that applies to everybody that chooses to use this but we can't just say geographic distance is a stupid idea and we don't like it because the attorney general has decided it is one of the ideas so the purpose of bringing this to your attention now is because one we have to talk more about remote participation later this summer which is going to be over before we know it and two because there is a comment period available again which you can see at the bottom of the sheet submitted by July 17th which is the day after our next meeting. Personally when it comes to this particular issue I'm not sure I have any additional comments I mean I think the choice they made was unfortunate but that's what they chose to do and the fact that they're clarifying now what they meant by all of that I don't really have any further comments about that but if any of you do or find this very fascinating feel free to either write that on your own or let me know and we'll try and come up with something for the select board to say but at least it's nice that since they're doing some stuff they came up with a fact for it which kind of leads us to the other piece which is the intentional violation now this issue is something we've also talked about before it was something back in January as I recall I was quickly typing when we got to MMA in January to put in a last minute comment associated with this what is an intentional violation is it that I as a select board liaison am sitting at a committee meeting and I hear somebody say they want to have an executive session and I say you can have an executive session for that you don't know what you're talking about and they go ahead and do it anyway or is an intentional violation you know actually setting out to you know have a serial meeting on purpose where they got people going in and out of the doors like they've had in some city councils but of course no one's ever done here so what exactly did intentional violation mean so I did send in some comments they didn't address them entirely although I did notice in their minutes that it did come up what I'd said so it did actually matter that we sent those in and very few people send in comments big surprise and almost no one goes to their hearings yet another big surprise so they do have a definition here of intentional violation which you'll see as much longer now in my opinion I would like to send or I definitely do intend to send a comment and I will have it ready for the 18th for you to see that and again they're having the hearing at the same time very efficient on their part next day I still am not convinced with what they're trying to accomplish and like I said I read their minutes hoping it would become clearer to me but is what they mean by informed or advised so when they say that you were informed or advised by a court of competent jurisdiction or the attorney general does that mean there was a complaint something was written to you Bob Smith that said don't do this again or was there something written to your town three years ago that said Board of Health don't do this again or did something happen in Holland and Massachusetts and say you should all know about that or even even something that's updated on the AGO website for example this lovely fact which makes things much clearer than you would ever guess from the way the actual they have no RSS feed because it's so sad they don't have enough resources to do that so we have no way of knowing when they put new information on their website and they've admitted that we don't know how to tell people we need a different way of doing it we don't have any budget for that blah blah MMA tells us sometimes they're actually more on it than they used to be because me complaining but still how are we supposed to know if something has happened and when they put up new advisory opinions that's great but you know how much time does every municipality every individual person have to read those is it something we can just assume someone will send us a quarterly you know update of so there has to be a little bit more information in my opinion and whether it's in the regulation itself or in a frequently asked questions associated with the regulation as to what informed or revised means because I don't want to be checking the website every five minutes to see if something's changed versus what we're going to do next week just because there's a lot of different odd things that people do out there as we've seen from past opinions and a lot don't seem to apply to our particular situation but I wouldn't want us to be blamed for something that happened in the free town soils board or something because we didn't know about it right so so what accounts for what you should have known right so exactly so that that makes that sounds good on the surface but what does it mean okay so I will have something ready on that for the 18th 16th I think 16th right I'm looking at the 18th at the top of my page yet 16th I'm sure you all join me in being glad that Ms Brewer is handling this on our behalf instead of us right now thank you very much for paying attention to that kind of thing all right liaison and representative reports Ms Brewer would you like to talk about LSOC commission now well so they were gonna go to the pool to say look it's gonna be so nice on Saturday but obviously that's not going to happen and in fact their meeting is also occurring um I mean the the five o'clock there's the five o'clock meeting on Wednesday night and then their meeting was going to start at six and so there's some conflict there so their agenda as usual is up on the website um other meetings housing sheltering committee is going to be meeting next week CDBG is going to be meeting next week and so everything's perking along also associated with the regional I'm not even going to pretend I remember the acronym right now um yeah regional school district planning committees are now a regional school district planning board another open meeting while we're trying to sort out with that is how easily we can we can post meetings of subcommittees that include people from each of the four towns had all the four towns when some of the towns only have like a clerk who works two hours a week so um there there seem to be some ways of dealing with this and Debbie Westmoreland's been super helpful associated with the schools yet another Deb yes that's what I had to include her on the list and so those meetings get posted on our website as probably as well as the schools there'll be a more visible website associated with this but basically what's going to be happening associated with the four towns working together is the next step is to come up with an RFP to figure out where we want to hire some consultants to do various educational governance and financial analyses for us which we have no specific source of funds for right now but we're hoping that after this budget process is over in the legislature there might in fact be another grant program available to us that we will be more likely to rise to the top of whereas the last time around we weren't this far in the process because even though each town had said they were going to work on it they didn't say they were going to work together so apparently that might make a difference as to the next round of grants so probably nothing exciting happening there anytime in the meantime except for the fact that our finance committee chair Andy Steinberg very kindly agreed to be the chair of herding cats from four different towns which is really pretty impressive so he's getting hugely into this whole issue and as very very involved in all of it so if Andy seems more freaked out than usual it's because he's trying to do all this he's occupied he is um he's doing an amazing job thus far keeping us all together and it's not an easy task but we're hoping the whole process only lasts about two years so we'll see wow wow thank you okay miss Stein I went to the last agricultural commission meeting which unfortunately didn't have a quorum but peace westover was there and he pointed out that there are I think five fields awaiting farmers um that Amherst College owns I hadn't known that and um I thought that was fascinating so if people are interested they should contact Amherst College informing these they should contact Amherst College a lot of my committees are dormant so Stephanie and I went to the zoning board of appeals administrative meetings she needed some excitement that's right I mean you know life is so quiet not um anyway it was I I can only stay for part of it during which time I presented a possible solution for a complaint that I have heard about about two years ago the town attorney said quite appropriately that according to chapter 40 a they could not rotate member associate members onto full panels um they had to only serve on a panel of three full members in the case of one of the members having um bonafide absence due to stay health or conflict of interest um or vacancy this meant that the associates get to serve about one fifth of the time roughly um that the foals do and there was unhappiness about that and I was suggesting that the um one way around it would be to move to what would take a tell meeting bylaw to affect that is a five member panel of foals with only two associates that there is an imbalance to have more associates than there are full members um this would be the very very beginning suggestion of a thought to move in that direction there is no guarantee that that's something the zoning board of appeals would like to do but it is one way to handle that discrepancy between the number of associates and the number of foals Stephanie however stayed for longer than I did because I went down to the agricultural commission that was meeting at the same time right so I can just expand a little bit on that so it was a really good conversation great presentation by miss stein to the zba about that five member panel concept um to be able to get those folks feedback just their their thoughts off the top of their head about the pros and cons of something like that is really valuable and and as miss stein said to um that will all kind of inform uh this this process going forward of of much more research that will happen on that so uh so that was good the rest of the meeting was was really excellent um zba it I think I was a couple years on the select board before I even really understood what the zba did but um they're very different from from us and other committees in that as we're talking about they have seven members but they really only meet as panels for public hearings three at a time so these administrative meetings are something that happen very infrequently but they are their opportunity to sit around and talk about what they're doing and how they can do it better the way select board can kind of do it at any meeting and most boards can do but because they're always meeting in this public hearing panel that doesn't happen for them so uh it was really terrific to be able to sit there and watch them talking about how to improve their processes how to try and standardize um some of the the conditions that they uh that they deal with like they were talking a lot about duplexes and and conversions and neighborhoods and um every situation is very different so you can't necessarily you can't really have a standard set of conditions that you'd apply but um but they talked about the benefit of gathering a bunch of the conditions that they have applied in the past that they could use as a reference list because every panel is differently comprised as as Miss Stein is saying so you don't want to depend on somebody remembering whatever or having been exposed to whatever now they're going to be able to look at this list and say okay let's see it was this a good one would would that would this one apply in this condition okay this one doesn't apply now this one doesn't but oh but this is a good one glad we remembered this just to have as another resource at their disposal so they're talking about all kinds of things like that about how to kind of make their processes better and it was really they do great work and it was really impressive to watch so it was a good meeting other things from you okay folks over here mr hayden yeah the uh zoning subcommittee for the planning board met uh last week um with the change with the date now of town meeting set special town meeting set I imagine that they'll be able to refine their list of work um rather dramatically um they met it was as a public hearing an open forum I'm sorry an open a public forum where they took a lot of comments from the public as to what work they might consider prioritizing um a lot of the the planning that town meeting has authorized was seemed to float up to the top people are very interested in that uh number of zoning issues so stay tuned there'll be some uh there'll be a lot for us to consider this fall in the uh the planning board arena and they'll be considering further that discussion on wednesday night with the zoning forum so uh sorry plenty of time to offer comment thank you anything else mr yeah the town meeting coordinate committee's um audio and it's now it's becoming an av subcommittee met on wednesday not monday as I said uh adrian very kindly put together a list for me to to read tonight with all the good things that that happened at that and I of course left it on my desk at work but um um it was a good discussion with um um um a number of people who are important in making these things work you know um you know amherst media was there um brian eckleston from the the school was there the technical guy from there um people with hearing aids were there to talk about the issues they have it was a great great forum that to really um get started the um the town meeting coordinate committee are are quite committed to um making sure that the communications do work better um we talked about the the new audio in this room for instance and how much it's recently improved or it's been approved for a while and now it's getting better as we learn how to use it um so we're looking forward to um spending some effort and um getting town meeting as well to sound better some discussion about um you know there's a lot of meeting places that don't have built-in sound like this room where audio in audio issues of being heard are also important so that's come up lighting the visual part of town meeting was discussed um so i think there'll be a lot of work i'm looking forward to a lot of work getting done on that and on those issues great thank you and i'll just note from the tmcc perspective that uh i did pass along to them and you know that because i copied you on it um the the memo the the stuff that came out of our discussion last time um i didn't get that to them until last wednesday i think or thursday whenever it was um so it was after their most recent meeting but they're continuing these discussions all summer and in fact they're meeting with the moderator and the town manager next week i believe to talk about some of this stuff so uh so they appreciated that report from us um okay good uh anything else mr hayden no thank you mr wild okay uh let's see a couple things from me um campus and community coalition was supposed to meet tomorrow but that meeting or wednesday but that meeting has been canceled um what we're trying to do this summer is to um is to look at a strategic plan and kind of a master calendar much like the select board uses um to because we've been really doing what we've been doing for several years now and there are various various events or various challenges various uh dates that that are relevant that come up that are recurring and predictable so we want to have a calendar and a strategic plan so that the pieces are in place to deal with this stuff we also want to have a repository of all of the great um pieces communication pieces brochures table tents videos whatever the different uh partners in this effort are using whether it's umas police department amherst police department dean of students office residents life pvta the coalition itself are using to communicate about different issues we want to kind of have all those things in one place that any one of us can access or at least know okay you know for this upcoming thing this would be exactly the email that we need to send or this thing already exists that we want to communicate these the bylaws about whatever so um so that is going to be a really really important uh and very valuable step forward for the coalition and that's the summer project so at the last meeting we talked a lot about kind of what the year looked like what the successes and challenges were and how to move forward and and so that's our plan uh we already talked about zba um mr wild and i attended the 50th anniversary of the pioneer valley planning commission on thursday evening um mr schreiber who's the towns rep from the planning board was also there um and it was really a great meeting it was a great way to be reminded of how much the regional partnerships really matter there's so much that we can do uh there's only so much we can do as individual towns but working together really enormous things could happen like the formation of the pvta which was uh which was created by or largely led by driven by uh pioneer valley planning commission uh a long time ago um the regional bike trails is another example the whole transit thing uh train transit thing that's happening right now at the knowledge corridor um the pvpc is a is a tremendous resource and bringing together of other resources to make these regional things happen and uh and congratulations to them for 50 years and and really a great kind of reminder to all of us so uh that was a great event um and on wednesday miss brewer i just learned and i are going to be having lunch with a bunch of amherst college students i've been talking with um the uh the community service learning whatever they call community engagement project sarah center for community engagement center for community engagement the director of that um has talked to me at black sheep a couple of times and with students to talk about kind of different opportunities and and uh things that that the students can learn about and get involved with in town and so one of the things they want to do is is learn more about kind of the you know civic engagement itself and and public service and so i understand that eight students and the director are and miss brewer and i are going to have lunch and talk about all these things on wednesday so that should be very interesting and they've got volunteers uh these these kids will be coming from not kids the students will be coming from um volunteering at the survival center at big brother big sister um in the schools and several other places amherst media and a few other places that i can't remember so uh so that would be great i think that's everything i have to talk about um anything else on liaison stuff or whatever okay um i think we covered all of the untimed items if i did not then let me know of any glaring omissions um we don't meet again until the 16th at this point the things on our calendar for july 16th are the continuance of the liquor license hearing that we uh opened tonight for hess uh also there's going to be a report on the new parking machines kind of how they have fared where we are after a year's experience with those we had originally had that penciled in maybe for tonight but that just was kind of too big of a thing to to put together and consider for tonight which is good because you know now it's 9 30 anyway um so that's what july is looking like um and then we're only going to meet one other time this is assuming everything works uh in our favor and nothing critical comes up that we need to meet for um we'll be meeting august 20th as you know for the just an evaluation meeting but our regular select board meeting then will be on the 27th of august so that is all before we go to executive session uh anybody want to say anything before i make the executive session motion okay then uh i moved to go into executive session per mass general law chapter 30a section 21a subsection six to consider the purchase exchange lease or value of real property as an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the negotiating position of this body and open session will not reconvene at the conclusion of the executive session need a roll call vote brewer i stein i kief i hold i aiden i and that is a roll call vote so the public session of the open session of this meeting is adjourning at 9 34 thank you all see you in july