 All right, great. Thank you for your patience. If you have been waiting and I'm gonna call the African Heritage Reparation Assembly meeting of Friday, June 17th at 2-11 p.m. to order. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021, this meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so via Zoom or by telephone. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time. All right, so welcome. Let's just make sure everyone can be heard and can hear me. Dr. Shabazz. Yes, I can hear you. Great, and Hala. I can hear you. Excellent, and Alexis. Yes, I can hear. Awesome, okay. So, I know that Yvonne was not able to meet. I thought that Irv was going to be here because he had given us, I think, the time of 2 p.m., so I did text him and maybe he'll be able to join us. But since we have a quorum, we should just get right into things. And I will report here that I am, maybe I look tired, because I am. I am working, and my eyes are tired, really. I'm working on this document, so what I'm going to show you is a real work in progress, process. How do you all say that? Work in process or progress? Progress? Progress, yeah. Okay, well, hopefully it's progress. I like the process, too, though. They both work. Right? I say it different ways at different times. So please bear with me that it is coming together, but it's very in a draft format right now. So I'm going to just go ahead. Actually, let me just pause before I bring it up and just see if there are any general questions or comments before we move right into the meat of what we're here to discuss today. And maybe there are questions about Juneteenth. Hala, I would love for you to announce what you did to Angela if you're open to that, about when you'll be participating over the next couple of days. Right now? Yeah, why not? I mean, I think she asked me the question and I responded. She did. But you are correct. The Amherst Area Gospel Choir and the Goodwin Memorial Amy Zein Choir will be singing at the Heritage Trail stop when they come to Goodwin at three o'clock tomorrow and on the Common for Juneteenth at 12 o'clock on Sunday. Look forward to seeing some of you and thank you. Awesome, awesome. And did anyone else have any other questions or comments about Juneteenth before we move on? That was on our agenda. So we are free to talk about that if needed. Okay. Well, we can always come back to it. So I'm going to share my screen with you in just a second here. All right, let's see. So right now you see my agenda, right? Is that what you're seeing? Okay, the agenda. All right. So this is the document that I'm working on here and I'm going to move us through a lot of this. So a starting point for the discussion and for the memo or the sort of, yeah. So there will be a memo that I'll send to the finance committee that will include what we are proposing for a policy and there will be background information and context. And the first piece that you're seeing here is from a very interesting document that I recommend everybody to read and it's linkable here. So I'll, this will be in the packet but it's called the financial management policies document and let me just see if I can link if it will open here. Yeah. So this is the financial management policies and objectives. And so these are the policies of the town related to the budget and anything that is financial in nature. And so there were some questions as you know that came up at our last meeting. I think that Sonia and Sean had posed with respect to certain percentages that needed to be in keeping related to reserves. And so I wanted to pull that information out and see what they were referring to. And I have an email out to both Sonia and Sean to get some clarification. You may remember they were talking about being concerned that there needed to be 5%, there was like that 5% piece. And so I looked at the financial projections for FY23 which was a budget planning report that was prepared and presented in November of 2021. And in that it reported that the combined free cash and stabilization funds as of July, 2021 is 23.1 million or 27% of the operating budget. So the question that I have out to them is that unless I'm missing something or I just am not making a connection, I'm not really sure why there was a concern when there seems to be more than enough in the fund. So I'm waiting to get clarification there because there certainly could be something I'm missing but that's where this kind of first part comes from here. And if you're interested by the way in that that particular report is also really interesting and as I start to really dig into the finances of the town it can be a lot, it's very overwhelming but it can also be really interesting, especially this report because there's a lot of visuals if you're in like me, you need visual. But this is where I found that information here. So you'll see that it tells us what the reserves which healthy reserves it says and that's free cash plus the stabilization fund. Yes, Dr. Shabazz. And I see that Irv has joined Irv. Can you hear us? I can hear you. Okay, welcome to the meeting. Dr. Shabazz, please. Oh, we're talking now or this information is relevant to the first part of the kind of request we've made regarding until we can, until the FY24 budget where if approved we would have the cannabis revenue earmark that until that time we're asking at the point where free cash is certified that an amount equivalent to that raised in cannabis revenue would go, would be directed to reparations fund. So this is relevant to that part of our request. That's a great question, Dr. Shabazz. And maybe I should have not started here to make it clear that it is relevant to that request and it may be relevant to the larger request. And I'm gonna get to that and open that up for discussion in a moment. So if we can just hold that seed that Dr. Shabazz just planted and we're gonna come back to that in a minute. Thank you. Does that work? Yes. Okay, great. So hi, Herb, I'm not sure when you joined because it's a little harder for me to see but I was just in the last finance committee meeting when we were making our requests there was some confusion about the policy of the town with respect to what needs to be in reserves. And so we were just talking a little bit about that and where I pulled that information from. So I'm gonna move down here. Okay, so I pulled the past and projected cannabis tax revenue from this FY23 budget because it shows us the past it shows us where we're at currently and then what's being projected all the way up through FY27. One of the policies that you'll see in that financial policy document if you look at it is that the finance department is encouraged to make conservative estimates when they're projecting out. So right here you can see that we have an FY20 you can see what we had FY21 and that actually the FY21 was what they based our allocation last year off of. And then the FY22 is the recap that shows us what they have so far I believe. They are proposing 150 for FY23 based on some competition in the area based on one of the major recreational facilities going back to fully medical. And then they're projecting from FY24 through FY27 $200,000 per year. And again, I would say that's conservative. We can have up to eight recreational retail cannabis shops. And we have three so that number can certainly go up but this is what they're projecting. You'll also see a note here on Evanston just to give us some context and comparison. So Evanston has made a $10 million commitment and you can see what their budget is which is almost four times our budget. And so that's what Evanston is projecting is which is almost four times our budget. And so here we get into parameters of use of the funds. So first and foremost, the use of funds would be vetted by the African heritage community or members of the African heritage stakeholder body that I think we've sort of talked about as a successor body to our assembly but we don't need to necessarily go into detail with that right now. They'll need obviously to be legal. So if we're going to direct benefits we'll have to make sure that it's legal to do so. And then of course in keeping with the guidance developed by the AHRA which will be what we ultimately will report on throughout our time and in that final report. I listed some paths again, this is a very, very rough. This is not what it's gonna look like at the end. It's a work in progress but some possible uses. I pulled these from the ENCOBRA website from their local reparations guidance. We can add to this of course these are just some possibilities here. I also included some other sources of revenue for AHRA. So CPA funds, grants, federal, state or private and then private funds of course. But that's again all going to come in a final report from the AHRA. For example, private funds we may decide or this body may decide we wouldn't want private funds to be contributed into the municipal fund for whatever reasons. Okay, so here's where we get to sort of as I started to work out the policy piece of things. Oops, I didn't mean to do that. So here we have the way that I've started to think about this is adopting a policy for funding reparations. Okay, so that's really what we want the town council to do is we want them to, however it's going to be done, we need to have a policy for funding reparations. And so you'll see here that I put modeled from cannabis tax revenue and I'm going to get to that in a second but I have one option here where there's an annual appropriation from free cash. And then I have another option here where a new line item is created in the budget for reparations which as you may remember, non-voting finance committee member had recommended that as a possibility. And then down here, I started to kind of work with have a framework here. So if we assume a base appropriation of this amount which is when we started this, the first ever appropriation spaced off the FY21 actual cannabis tax revenue, 208,554. And then we are saying that there will be an annual review by the finance committee during the drafting of the budget policy guidelines. That's the most important document really in some sense in my mind because that's where the finance committee and the town council guide Sean and Paul and the finance department in their creation of their budget. And then depending on the financial position of the town, the finance committee can recommend the appropriation go up or down. I put 10%, that's just a number I threw in there. I'm just giving sort of some sense of a structure here. The policy to be reviewed by GOL for recommendation at the beginning of each new cycle of council. And then the policy to expire when appropriations have reached X amount. And I just wanna give you a little bit of a background about where some of these kind of stipulations that I've put in here have come from. They're really very much in response to counselor feedback. They're in response to the financial health of the town currently. They're in response to the need for us to be flexible and also recognize that there are other sources of revenue that we will want to pursue. So this is in particular to how the town is going to fund reparations through the general fund. And so each one of these, like for example, an annual review, I talked about the budget policy guidelines. The looking at the financial position of the town, I think that it's going to be difficult to pass a policy that the council doesn't feel there's any flexibility to discern from year to year based on the financial position of the town. And then also reviewing the full policy by GOL with each new council because there are concerns that what we do now, this policy we create will sort of bind future councils. So this calls for a recommendation at the beginning of each new council on the policy. And then the policy to expire when appropriations have reached. I was really surprised to find that Evanston, their policy was made through a resolution. And I reached out to Alderwoman Robin Ruth Simmons who wrote that resolution and asked her why she did it as a resolution and not a policy because resolutions are non-binding and generally they're symbolic in nature. And she said if she had like, I think she was a newer Alderwoman and that if she had had more staff support she may have created a policy but what's really interesting is that on the good faith of that resolution they're pursuing their goal. And if you look at that resolution and I have it linked here somewhere you'll see that the language that's in there and that they've committed to an expiration of appropriations at $10 million. And again, I just ask us to look at the difference in their budget and ours. theirs is almost four times higher than ours. So just thinking about that. So I'm gonna be quiet now and just see what questions, comments, concerns. I think we really do need to come in there with something solid, something that will gain wide support. And I know that Lynn in particular and coming back to Dr. Chavaz's earlier question the question of an earmark is controversial. And it's not embraced I don't think by several members of the council. And so we have to make a decision if we are, if that's like the hill we wanna die on or if we're willing to say it doesn't need to be, you don't need to earmark the cannabis tax revenue but we want you because of the sort of all of the reasons we've laid out we want you to model your yearly appropriation on the cannabis tax revenue. And whether you take it from there or whether you take it from your free cash, we don't care, but that's the base of where we want you to take it from. So I'm very curious what you all think about that. So please raise your hand if you'd like to. And I'm gonna, should I keep sharing screen or I guess I should probably, I have a hard time checking attendees. So if you could just give me a second I'm gonna stop the share, make sure we're good here. Okay. And then I will look for hands. Did we lose Alex? Yes, Hala, please. I don't have a constructive hand but I do want to thank you for all that exhaustive work you're putting into this. I really appreciate that labor. Thank you, Hala. Thank you. Really appreciate that. Any other hands right now or, and again, we have, so two things to keep in mind. We have another meeting at 2 p.m. before the finance committee meeting to really solidify things. And between now and then, you can reach out to me directly. This has been daylighted, it will be in the packet. So you can reach out to me directly. It's just that we can't be on like an email thread deliberating things, but yes, Dr. Rhodes. Well, reading between the lines in terms of what you've been saying, it seems to me that is how do we respond to the political reality in relationship to the town council, especially the chair, the president of the council, Len, and others, but Len especially. Not only that, we also need to be aware and we are, I'm assuming all of us are aware that the council is in a sort of a bind going forward. They know that physical 24 and physical 25 and 26 are going to be really difficult years. So I would suggest that we approach this by your recommendation, Michelle, in terms of looking at the political reality and what is that which is going to get us down the road for physical 24, 25, 26, and something that the council will be able to pass. So whatever that is, we need to bring forward. I'm not entirely sure what that would look like as a proposal to go forward to the town council, but I certainly would like to entertain it. Thank you, Dr. Rhodes. Yeah, and I think in terms of what the proposal would look like is once we've agreed on these things that are set for us, then this would, I would write a memo that includes a lot of background and context, and then put this proposed policy in there. And essentially it may turn out, for example, that we get a commitment based on what we've put forward but that the policy language will need to go like through GOL, for example. I mean, when you think about this, and I don't know if you all saw, some of you may have seen the Boston Globe article today about local reparations initiatives and Amherst is highlighted in there. And we're creating, like I said, Evanston's policy was based on a resolution, which is fantastic that everybody has totally centered around that and has rallied around that and it's a commitment and they're moving forward with it. But in some ways, this policy that we're developing that we're trying to enshrine into the town is something that other communities are also going to be looking at and watching for. And so it may be that the policy language has to go to, for example, GOL for working out and then through the lawyer for working out. But what we really wanna make sure is that we get the main points agreed to, that there's nothing here that we don't feel comfortable with. And I think the big thing here is deciding on, and again, we can propose and they can, the council can decide on something different, but when, how much inappropriations are we hoping to get from this particular funding source and through this policy creation here? And that's the big question that I have open here. The 10% is also, I threw that one in there, but that, that's something that can be changed, of course. Yes, Dr. Shavas. I'd like to thank you as well for this document that situates the issues that are coming up via the finance committee regarding this revenue stream where we're discussing trying to, as an earmark, I would say this in relation to the questions at hand. First of all, if the policy is being reviewed from council to council, I don't know why we'd have to have been a sunset on the policy. The policy is already sunsetted each year. You see what I'm saying? You're only, so then to say, we're going to stop bringing this up by X year or when X amount has been spent, is, in a way, unnecessary or redundant. It's because the policies being reviewed from year to year, there's no life to this. We can say until 2020 or we can say until 2063 when the town of Amherst celebrates its tricentennial, but it's reviewed year to year. It could be stopped from year to year, regardless of whether it could be stopped in 2024 and whether anybody brings it up the next year in 2025 or if it is brought up, people just say, get old, we're not doing it this year. So again, putting in a sunset provision on it to me when you've made the concession that this is reviewed and goes through a GOL and finance committee and again, notwithstanding that if you're reserving these funds, again, the actual expenditure of the funds is also in the council's hand. So I just really see it, I just really question the last bullet, the necessity of the last bullet, given the concession you're making in the second to the last bullet that the whole policy is reviewed every year to begin with, that's my first reaction. Sure, and let me just respond to that a little bit, Dr. Shabazz. So when I talk about the policy being reviewed by GOL from year to year, and I think it's important to note that at any time the council can vote to pause the program, stop the program altogether, take it completely off the priority list. So there's nothing that we can do that can prevent that. So what we're saying is, okay, we understand that reality and we understand that it will make counselors feel more comfortable if on an annual basis, and what I mean by the GOL review, just to really clarify that, and I will definitely add much more language to this, is that GOL would review the policy from the standpoint of, like for example, if something changes from one year to the next that would impact the legality of something, like we get our special legislation that we didn't have before. So now we're able to make direct benefits, we're able to put direct benefits out. We would wanna dictate that in the policy when that review happens. So it's not so much to say that, actually all of the GOL reviews, all of the bylaws, right now we're about to start a process of reviewing all of the bylaws that were passed that we inherited from the last council. So I don't know if that clarifies that for you, but the other piece, if we don't put in a number here that we really wanna hold them to in terms of a commitment or hold ourselves to as a town. And so I'm trying to take the personalization out of this. Then I worry that without that milestone, without that commitment, and this can even be written that beyond that point, let's say it's $2 million or whatever it was decided that it can be extended or it can be modified, but I worry if we don't put something in there that we will be at risk of maybe a council coming along that just kind of sees it like, oh, we're doing this review and there's only, you know, there's 500,000 in here, but there's nothing that tells us where we really need to get to. There's no commitment that's been made because there is some reverence given to a commitment that a previous council will have made. Whereas without that, I am concerned that there will be less, there will be more risk for what we're trying to accomplish here. All right, so I'm gonna go to Alexis and then I'll come back to you, Dr. Shabazz. I'm sorry if this has already been said because I know I've been back and forth, but I guess I was wondering if a money limit is possible instead of a time limit in the way that Evanston is like, okay, we'll raise money up to $10 million or is it like, I don't know what's, but I agree with Dr. Shabazz that it feels like it's giving people a way to kind of like snake out of this. So I don't know. No, I appreciate that. And maybe it's not clear in what I wrote here, Alexis. So it says policy to expire when appropriations have reached. So that means a dollar amount goes in there. Yeah, I took Dr. Shabazz's point well last time that putting a time limit on it, I don't think is necessary. So this would be like when appropriations have reached X a dollar amount. And I will tell you that Lynn clearly stated to me, and I understand that everybody is coming at this. I do believe with a lot of good intentions and wants to put forward a policy that is not only responsible and insustainable, but also that really is meaningful and significant. So I do think that those intentions are out there, that everybody has different ideas, but Lynn very clearly said, we've got to have, if we're going to, for example, designate cannabis tax revenue, it can't be in perpetuity. She's not going to support something that's in perpetuity. So I think that that's where my thinking is is that if we have a goal number that we're trying to get the, we're trying to commit our community to our council too and our leaders too. So Dr. Shabazz. Yes, thank you. So part of where I'm looking at this, this is framed, the language here currently makes it look as though this is a policy on funding reparations writ large, and in a way, then this, so if we set a figure, we also say that figure limits us vis-a-vis CPA funds. So if CPA proposals came in in our final report that called for X amount that would go against the monies we're talking here from a cannabis earmark. So if this is a policy in relation to that specific funding stream of cannabis tax revenue, then I'd like it to be kind of couched in that way or expressed in that way here, because here it just looks like this is the whole general framework of all funding streams that it expires or the council trying to grapple with it is limited to that dollar amount we set here. So right now I might could say relative to cannabis tax revenue, a figure of two million, okay? That if we get to two million, all right, then the policy of earmarking or of trying to reserve cannabis revenue could sunset at two million. Well, that's for that. That's not then any and all reparations funding is limited to two million. And the only reason I say that is that right now, I don't think we've without the consultative process with the community and really getting a broader sense of the needs and of the harms. And it's hard to say at this juncture what the whole of what we could be looking at is. We haven't done that. So it feels kind of arbitrary to set a cap at this point. Again, I can set the cap if this is around, the question of how much from cannabis are we trying to draw? But if we're saying this is how much we're trying to draw from any and all funding streams, it just feels a rather arbitrary at this moment to say this is the point where we can sunset our efforts. You raise an excellent point, Dr. Chavez and you're absolutely right. This is very much specific to the revenue stream of cannabis tax revenue and only to that. As I have listed up here, other sources of revenue potentially, I would make it explicit in this memo and in the policy language that what we're talking about here is only in relation to that revenue stream, not any of these other potential revenue streams, which by the way, I think as more and more support is raised for reparative justice work, there is going to be more money available and more financial support from, even within CPA for example, I think as more support is raised, it will be less challenging to get, for example, grants through the CPA funding. So yes to that, absolutely. Alexis. I guess I was wondering if it's putting the cart before the horse to say like, okay, does this funding stream continue until we've accomplished thing? And that thing could morph and could evolve and I guess is very, you know, not informed but built by the things that reparations would be funding, like the reparations fund would be funding, but I guess I'm wondering if it's, cause I'm like, I'm trying to like, that's sort of like two sides of the like, okay, there's this time, but also there's the money and how do we accomplish both, right? So is there a way to say like, okay, like when we see this in, you know, manifested, then at that point, this particular stream can stop or is that putting the cart before the horse? Irv might have some good answer for this, but what I would say is that in municipal government, everything goes right to the money. So there's really nothing that we can say, like when this happens will, you know, because it's too like ambiguous. We have to be very clear from a budget Terry perspective, what we're trying to achieve. Now, with that said, I do think that our final report is going to be very explicit about the reparative justice, like full policy that we're putting in place. There are full policy that we're recommending or the recommendations or however you wanna call them. And that will have more explicit detail about what we're hoping to, for the community to achieve in terms of the design of the reparatory policy. Does that make sense? Well, I think that I'm thinking more in terms of like, this is kind of special because it's almost like rather than like a thing, right? We can't just say like, oh, like we'll build, like we know that we're gonna build this structure and it's gonna do this, we're almost more so like, or maybe I have this wrong, but I thought that we were like moving more towards an impact, which is less of like a thing and more of like a how have we impacted the community because like, okay, great, if we were to say like, okay, we're gonna build a school and we're gonna make a nonprofit and we're gonna do this and such a thing, like what happens if the reparations like was put into those things and then the impact wasn't what we intended to do those things. And so I guess I was wondering if that sort of like impact landmark could potentially be a thing, but I understand that it's also still kind of vague but it could potentially not be, I don't know, I don't know. Yeah, I think I understand what you're saying. Dr. Shabazz. Yeah, I concur with what I think I understand Alexis is saying as well. And really I just wanted to elaborate on the two million figure. I think in some respects, it's the parallel or comparable to Evanston given the size of our budget. So if our budget is about 90 million compared to their nearly 400 million or 360 million, then two million versus 10 million would be a kind of a comparable amount. I'm not just going on the comparison to Evanston. I'm also going on the ideas that right now if we have a kind of an average coming out as about 200,000 just looking over the different fiscal years here since the start of this revenue, then if you think about it, then that's over a 10 year period. To get to two million averaging out 200,000 coming per year, then it would be about 10 years that this would run before if the revenues averaged out at that amount to get to it. So with 10 years in mind, with the comparison to Evanston in mind and with respect to this being strictly about this one particular stream and the idea of trying to get the council understanding its hesitancy to kind of reserve any sort of revenue or a funding stream to any sort of purpose, then with all of that in mind, that's where I suggest a figure of two million. Thank you, Dr. Schwarz. And how do, because as far as I can see here if we just go through these points and maybe I've missed a point or two or more and again, you can send me, I will send this out to everybody and then you can send me directly, just please do not send anything to the whole group. And so I think these kind of just like the review, I think this is actually really important in annual review by the finance committee during the drafting of the budget policy guidelines that really make sure that this policy states that like for example, I had a lot of frustration that the town last year appropriated $206,000 into the reparations fund, but when it came time to do the budget policy guidelines which are what Paul, our town manager looks to to develop his budget, there was nothing in them about reparations. That's a disconnect, you know, because it wasn't enshrined through a policy that the finance committee had to include it. And so what we're saying here is that, and especially if by the way, this piece here about adding a new line item in the budget for reparations, which I think it was Bob in the finance committee that recommended that as a possibility, as long as there's a policy in place, that can also happen. Okay, I saw Alexis and then Dr. Rhodes. I'm sorry, Dr. Rhodes can go before me. Okay, Dr. Rhodes. I was just looking at your, going to three point number four under the town council policy on funding reparations, policy to be reviewed by GOL for recommendation at the beginning of each new council. Why GOL? Well, it doesn't have to be GOL, but GOL is tasked with reviewing all of the town's policies and bylaws. So like as a GOL chair, when I became a counselor and became the chair, I received a list of all the bylaws that were determined from the last council needed to be reviewed this year, because it's the governance organization and legislation committee. So it reviews policies and bylaws. Someone had to recommend that those policies and bylaws be reviewed. It just doesn't automatically occur that all of the policies and bylaws get reviewed. There are only some that get reviewed, not all. And the question is, why are some reviewed and why not all reviewed? So my understanding is that what happens is GOL goes through the list of all the bylaws and all the policies and looks at when they were reviewed last, if there's any charter provisions or state provisions that require reviews at any certain times schedule. And then GOL basically says, here's the list. These are the ones Paul has to review as the town manager. These are the ones the council has to review. And then GOL proposes that list to the council and they adopt it. And then the next GOL gets that list based on those factors. But if the GOL review current bylaws and say, well, we think this bylaw needs to be reviewed and taken to being changed or whatever, whatever. That's a huge thing. The bylaw just doesn't get changed by the council. Well, it actually, so I'll give you a good example. GOL is beginning its review of bylaws. And the first two that we're reviewing are one in relation to firearms and one in relation to peeping, actually, which is really interesting. But it had been recommended that peeping should potentially include virtual ways that somebody might peep. And so we're bringing in the appropriate people like the director of Cress and the police chief to say, we're reviewing this bylaw. It's been recommended that we should include virtual ways that someone might peep into the bylaw. What do you think? And then we'll take that feedback and we will change it based on that. Oh, now I understand. So these are bylaws that are not bylaws that are part of your charter. Exactly. These are the town-created policies and bylaws, not the state level at all. No, no, I'm talking about your charter as bylaws in it. The charter has a couple of specific things. You're absolutely right. And those would have to go through like a referendum or something. I think that's what you're talking about. Yeah, that's different. All right. Our policy here would be like, and I don't know if you were on Dr. Roadsman and we said this, but like if for example, we have the policy in place and then something changes, like we get special legislation comes through then reviewing the bylaw, we might be able to deal with it if something needs to be added to the bylaw or to the policy, excuse me in this case, to take that into consideration. Alexis? Oh, there you are. I'm sorry, I forgot to take my hand down. Oh, did your question get answered? Well, actually, do you mind if I ask the silly question? I'm sorry. Of course not. I'm trying to keep track of everything. So when our specific group ends this committee, there will be no committee that follows it or is it that BAM becomes the liaise or they become the community sponsors or is it that they become the new AHA or is it that like how, I'm sorry, I feel like we're backtracking a little bit but I just wanna be clear if people ask me. You're actually forward thinking, not backtracking. And that's something that will be determined but I think in theory, our final report will include a recommendation about a successor body. So our final report, as an example, might say that a 13 member appointed body of Black residents in Amherst will be the next, will be the group essentially that's gonna be like the CPA committee in a way taking project proposals, going through the consultative process as Dr. Shabas is with the community and be entirely made up of African heritage residents. That's one recommendation that we might make. How BAM kind of interacts with that, that's yet to be seen as we're working through but I would think that there would be a crossover very much so. Dr. Shabas. Right, so I wanted to just move on to the other bullet item. So again, all of these are fine. Again, bearing in mind if that little masthead is town council policy on funding reparations via cannabis tax revenues, that that's what we're talking about there but is to then come to the third one about the question of the financial position and the policy in effect providing guidance to the finance committee to look at that. I would like to hear or get an understanding a little more about that in relation to the last meeting as I listened to things and it was like conversation first sort of went like with Sean Magano and with the comptroller way again. It was like, oh, what you're asking can't even be done. And then I think you pointed out, excuse me, you just did it with the last year's fiscal budget. We're just trying to follow what are the procedures and then it finally got kind of clarified, okay, well, the finance committee has to recommend an order and then from the order that goes here and then that goes there and then once free cash is actually certified, then you can actually then request that it be moved to here or there. I just would say given what I heard that that line, that bullet item should perhaps really be tweaked to, it's not just a matter of that they review it and can recommend the appropriation go up or down. I think it's really about recommending, kind of defining that whole process of the finance committee in relation to the process of cannabis tax revenues, when they're coming in, when they go, relative to this being no longer contingent on the free cash process, but it now being contingent on the actual collection. So for example, what I'm saying here is, since we're talking about this specific stream and it's not having to be contingent on certification, the way I understand it, those revenues are actually collected every quarter. So perhaps then, why does one wait do you need to wait until the end of the year for that transfer to happen? Or is it something that can happen even sooner than that can happen on a quarterly basis? Because where is it docked when it's collected quarterly? Where is it docked until it's moved to the general fund? Is it already in some other account? So anyway, all I'm suggesting here is that you've been serving on this committee, you know the chair and Andy Steinberg, I would think, I don't have much to say about that. I think this item ought to really define the whole financial process of moving the funds and that at some point, if you're trying to say what the assessment is about the financial position and whether you're going to then move it to this purpose or whether you need to dial it back, it's just really kind of murky to me because you're collecting this and you make the decision to reserve it somewhere based upon, you know, this is your will to do it and you just are gonna be hands off. This proviso seems to suggest that if things are in the toilet or going in the toilet, then you can back off it by 10% or somebody before this meeting gets over, they may say by 25% or they may say 50%. I mean, at some point, how does this jive with the processes of the finance committee vis-a-vis the financial health of the town? You've been on it, Irv Rhodes, you're on it now, Michelle Miller, help me to understand how does this language really get tweaked in a way that's consistent with how the town budget operates. Thank you, Dr. Shabazz. And I, you know, as you were speaking, I was getting some pretty clear guidance about, I actually don't think that including this provision is necessary in the sense of an up or a down. I think that, and I'm obviously open to whatever you all think, but I think that what you're saying is the policy language is to outline the process to find the process. And this goes back to what I was asking you in the beginning about is the hill we wanna die on, does it have to be cannabis tax revenue or can it be modeled from the cannabis tax revenue and come from free cash? I really think the hesitation to earmark is strong enough that it will cause us some challenge, particularly I think Lynn will be a lot more comfortable if we're modeling it off of the cannabis tax revenue as opposed to earmarking it. So I'm really stuck about what to do there and whether or not, you know, we wanna, yes, Dr. Shabazz, please. Good point. Thank you so much in clarifying that modeling thing that you presented earlier. This is good, but help me understand now, did I hear in a previous meeting that at this point, the expectation is that there's not likely to be any free cash off this year's budget. Is that right or wrong? No, that's the point I picked up earlier in this document here where I showed that it was reported in November of 2021 that we have $23.1 million in reserves, which is 27% of the operating budget. It's the guidelines as we shall keep between five and 15%. So I have an email out to Sean and to Sonia who brought that concern forward with some questions, like am I missing something here? Because they brought that concern forward, they sort of threw it out there in the meeting and it was very confusing because the policy of the town does state very clearly here that the reserve should be maintained between five and 15% and Sonia from what I could understand was potentially saying that the reserves were going to maybe dip below that. And so I don't see that being the case unless I may be missing something and that's why I asked the questions. But I do know that the reserves are being airmarked is not the, that's not true, it's not truly being airmarked but they're being thought of for the four capital projects. Yes, Irv, please. I think it's how money gets in through the reserves and how money is spent from the reserves are two questions. And how did the reserves get established in the first place? Well, the town council via the four capital projects the town manager and Sean, finance director, they make a proposal that X% of the amount raised appropriations will go into reserves. They had a goal of 10% and I think that goal, anyway, they had a goal of 10% and it was for next year also 10%. So each year that amount would go into reserves and obviously the reserves are spent not only just for rainy day things but for capital projects to come along. And as you know, we've got some quite a few that are coming along. That's one thing. The other thing is that in terms of budget surplus in terms of budget surplus, the surplus that then is declared as free cash, we will always have budget surplus. The only way we will not have budget surplus is if the town of Amherst was nuclear bombed. And the reason I say that is that we have to have a perfect expenditures and everything would be on time being expended. Staff would be hired on time, projects begun on time, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That is almost, well it doesn't occur. Free cash occurs because of the delay in terms of implementing certain parts of the budget that has been voted on. For instance, bringing new staff on board, bringing new projects on board, et cetera. Those things always lag. And that creates free cash and as to the surplus. The other thing that I wanna say is that once we have this as a policy, as with all other policies that relates to the budget, those policies are subject to the availability of money, A, and B, subject to the town manager. And we need to keep it in mind, the town manager can decide not to include it in his budget recommendation. I do think from what I understand, Irv, that if it becomes a policy of the council and it gets put into the budget guidelines, it will be, I mean, I want to clarify with Lynn, I know that earmarking a certain revenue stream, if that is a policy decision, then town manager Vakalman has to do that. I don't know, however, and I will get clarification on, if we do the modeling approach, and it's not officially been earmarked, but there's a policy that says it's modeled, does he have to file? My belief is he would because he, if that's where those guidelines become so important, is that it really has to be enshrined in a policy and then that policy dictates what gets put into those guidelines. And I would not imagine a situation, now he could come back and he could say, we're in really tough shape this year and we're gonna have to look at these different places to see if we can loosen something up or like he could do that, but I'm not sure that he can just reverse or not follow the policy. This is going to be interesting. I mean, I don't think your charter envisions something like this, but it will be something that will be interesting to see as it unfolds because the town manager would conceivably say, you asked me to come in with a budget. I come to you with a budget, however, you have tied my hands in these ways in terms of presenting a budget. And therefore I can't honestly come to you with a budget that I know is gonna work because I have these policy guidelines in there. Now that would go back to the council then the council would have to decide. My estimation, what would need to be done? Was they allowed it to happen or not? And I think that that's, it's just interesting from a political standpoint, but I think that we all must realize that if we're gonna have an opportunity to have success in this, we have to understand the political environment in which we're putting this forward, especially on the financial side of this because the financial side, as I said before, is something that you can see then guarding it, you can see anti-guarding it and wanting to have all kinds of flexibility going forward in terms of this. I don't want any kind of error mark. And so if this has put forward here, Michelle, if you're putting forward here, passes as a policy guideline, that would be a pretty good victory. Yeah. Sorry, can you hear me? Yeah. Yeah, I think it would be a good victory for us. And I don't know if folks have ever looked at the budget guidelines and I was gonna try to bring them up. I had them up here on a different window here. So I'll send them out. That's really interesting. Dr. Shabazz, please. And I just wanna note that I don't know about your time, but I do have a time limitation. I'm gonna have to wrap up by 3.30. So sorry about that. But Dr. Shabazz. Yeah, this was our whole agenda, right? So we're having something else we're looking at. And I know we do have one audience member or head of audience members. So we might have to take a couple of minutes to a few minutes to talk about public participation, public comment. But I just would say this, that I would... I've tried to understand what I hear as the pushback to the idea of a specific earmark around cannabis. I still disagree with it. Lynn Grismur or any other counselors on the finance committee or within the 13 member body have an opinion and I respect their opinion. I respect their history. I respect their... But I've overseen budgets too, as I was saying in the meeting. I've been around when there've been years of rescission and I'm being told to do models of reducing my budget 10%, 5%, 3%. I've been there, okay? But the idea of trying to make a binding commitment of this particular revenue stream of the cannabis tax revenue, to me their concerns that I've heard raise, precedent setting, ties, hands of future councils, this, that and the other, they don't impress me because when the times are hard, then the very, you know, that's often when the kind of fun we would be wanting this dedicated earmark to build is gonna be as more necessary than ever when those times are that hard and that difficult. But now we're throwing our hands up and saying, you know, because, you know, let's give them, let's ask them to not make a binding commitment of this revenue stream, but we're just gonna kind of model it and do it out of this free cash process when it looks okay and when they can all feel comfortable about it after the budget year has gone through and they can still kind of tweak it with what they put in. That's to me, you can call it, any of you can call it an enormous victory, this policy. I still look at it as an enormous defeat. It's an enormous defeat on the moral grounds, not so much on the financial grounds. We've seen free cash come through, I give you that. And if it can come through again this year, I'll be even more happy with it. But I'm saying on a moral grounds, when I heard counselor Alicia Walker and her expressing her view of the justice of putting the fund, of putting cannabis revenue, binding ourselves to put it into this repair of justice process, that to me is what I wanna hear out of my counsel, not, and it's the other side of the argument so to speak to what the others so far have raised. But again, I'll go along with it if it's the will of this body to take this more free cash approach, but I go with the will of the group. Earth? All right, in the background of all of this and when you talk to certain town officials including land, Paul and Andy, what in the background is, hey, you guys, i.e. African-American community, we gave you crest. And now you're coming morning more money for reparations. And why? And do you wanna cause a battle between these two? In terms of who gets funded? What is going to be the priority? In other words, looking at it as if, and then you wanna say, well, crest is for the whole community, but in their minds, the budget is already has a huge appropriation for quote, unquote, the African-American community. And why would we want to then go and have another airmark for that community? And that is a backdrop. And you can hear it if you listen close enough to the people on the finance committee, land, Paul, et cetera. Alexis? I'm gonna say that I agree with Dr. Schwarz and here's why, I feel like why did they make us then? Like why are we doing this work? I feel like then it kinda comes back to this sort of like, didn't you make, like put us together to do this? And so I'm wondering like, if it's sort of, for me it feels like, well, then like, what about the commitment? And what about, I don't know, I don't wanna say, cause I know that we have a time crunch, but like it feels like that's sort of like the opposite of what they made us to do. And so they're kind of like being hypocrites if that's the case. So yeah, I feel like too, like are we really gonna be hurt if we ask for the earmark and they say, no, can't we come back? I mean, I know that it's like a deadline that we're hoping for, but like, what if we get it? I don't know. And let me speak, yeah, let me speak to this because from the person that's on this committee, that's also the legislator on the council, I wanna be able to tell you what I'm thinking. So the process is the finance committee has to make a recommendation and they take that recommend and they don't have to remember, I was even saying that I felt like I wanted to push it through without the recommendation because, but that's not sort of the general practice. The practice is that the finance committee makes a recommendation. They're the experts that have been sort of tasked with really understanding the town's financial condition. And there are at least a couple counselors, if not three on that committee that have these strong concerns that we're bringing forward. As far as the full council, I do feel like there's a very good chance of success in the council approving the earmark. So the question is that interim step of getting the recommendation from the finance committee, if we have the risk tolerance in us to say, if the finance committee comes out with a recommendation that says we're not doing the earmark and we're still willing to move to the full council with that request and hope that we get it passed and that those counselors who aren't comfortable with it somehow convince something otherwise, I really do feel like what you, Dr. Shippas, what you're saying, Alexis, about the moral piece of this is it is really important. And I have the risk tolerance to do that, but I feel like partially as that person that's playing both roles, I feel such an enormous sense of responsibility to you all, I can't even tell you. And I wanna get it right, I don't wanna misstep. And so I would be happy to come into the finance committee and really fight hard for the earmark. And then if the recommendation doesn't happen in the way that we were hoping for, still come to the council and still ask for that and let the council decide. But ultimately the more consensus we can get with the members of the finance committee, particularly with the chair of the council and the chair of the finance committee, the better off just overall we're going to be. It doesn't mean it's not possible, but so I'm trying to find a place, maybe what we do is we go in and we ask for the earmark as we have from the beginning. And if the modeling question comes up, we'll all be there together at that meeting and we'll be able to sort of consult together with the finance committee around that. And Dr. Shabazz, I see your hand. Quick follow-up, I know we got a hard stop. I'll just say this, clearly for this year, if anything, we're trying to pull from free cash for the budget that was already, that's already in process of being voted on for next year, it would have to come out of free cash because we weren't in the budget guidelines back in November, even though December, whatever, even though we made our recommendation back in November, it was not taken up for that. So for two years out, we're definitely looking at free cash, I would even stipulate for 2024, we wouldn't have to start the earmark. We could continue to be on the certified free cash. We could call for the timing of this to start in fiscal year 2025 for the earmark of cannabis or 2026 if we think we might be out of, away from the cliff by then Irv, Dr. Rhodes and everyone. If it's 2026, we think we'll be out of the cliff. Let's call for the earmarking to begin then and we go by this free cash modeling process. But the objective I would still say to push for is the earmark even if we wanna date it as starting 2025 or the 2026 fiscal year. Thank you, I'm done. Thank you, Dr. Shabas. Irv, did you, I see your mouth moving. Yeah, I'm for the modeling. I mean, I'm looking at what is the politically possible. And once you have that in, the moral questions come up in relationship to the council in terms of funding this. Then you put that moral responsibility right on them. And I think if we are explicit, you have to leave Alexis. Yeah, I gotta go. Okay, thank you. We'll see you at two o'clock on Tuesday, okay? Thank you. I think if we are stating that base amount that we want is that has a real history, a real root that we can point our finger to that came from somewhere that came as an intention through all the stuff that we've talked about the justice reasons and the moral and ethical reasons that we've talked about for cannabis being. And Jennifer's not here, but she pointed out to us, I think that the cannabis, we don't know how dependable it's gonna be either. I think it's gonna be pretty dependable personally, but it's hard to tell because of how many shops are opening. So maybe there's some hybrid. And I really appreciate the intention that you brought forward, Dr. Chavaz looking at, giving some flexibility, some hybrid, where there's both can be happening. So let's kind of all sit with that and then we'll all further develop based on the feedback you've given me, these written pieces and we'll see how it kind of all comes together. But if we get to the finance committee and we ask for the earmark, they can say we'd rather recommend the model and then they can put that in their recommendation and then we can get to the town council and we can, I have an idea by the way that I was thinking I'm gonna blast out to like the 500 people on the reparations mailing list that I have and wanted to know what you all thought about what if we ask people to come to the meeting during public comment with a symbol next to their name? And I don't know if you can do that on Zoom so I have to check it out. But maybe it's a cannabis leaf or some symbol next to their name, not everybody's gonna raise their hand to speak a public comment, but for the counselors to see that people have come out and showed their support for this in a very visual way because as counselors, we can see everybody that is there in the room and participating. So we can talk about that more, but well, maybe we can't. So hopefully that's not a problem for anybody. RJ, RJ, RJ, Repair of Justice, RJ. Oh, I love that, yeah, like exactly. That's perfect because I don't even know if visual symbols are okay, but RJ is a great idea. Does everybody like that RJ? Does that work for people? Okay, cool. And then I can say, you know, because they'll see maybe 10, 20, 30, 40 people that all have that that are there, just a way to for people to stand there with us on that day. And if the recommendation comes and says that there'd rather be a model, we can still request the earmark from the Fulltown Council with that recommendation and we can see what gets decided, you know? I do have to call for public comment. And so if you, there's one attendee and if you'd like to make public comment, oh, okay, no attendee. All right, so if there aren't any other questions or comments, what's that? Move to adjourn. Yes, I moved to adjourn at 333. Thank you all very much, okay, bye.