 I'm sorry. He is joining from upstairs because of a conflict. We are recording. All right. Thank you. Good evening. It is September 11th, 2023. This is special meeting of the town council and the two remaining members of the Amherst School Committee. The open meeting law has been extended. This allows us to continue holding meetings remotely without a quorum of the council physically present at a meeting location while providing a public with adequate alternative access to the meeting. This meeting is accessible in real time by Zoom, by phone, and is a live broadcast on Amherst Media Channel 9 and their live stream. I also want to note that in the room tonight with us, Channel 22 news is recording. Given that we have a quorum of the council present, I'm calling the September 11th, 2023 town council meeting to order at five thirty three. Please indicate your presence when and then make sure you mute Mike again. Shallonee Balmillan. It's not joined us yet. OK, Pat DeAngelis. On the devil and got here present. The resumer is present. Mandy, Joe Hanneke present. Anika Lopes has informed me she'll be running a little late. Michelle Miller is not present yet. Dorothy Pam here. Pam Rooney is Pam. Can you hear us? Yes. And Kathy Shane here. Andy Steinberg present. Jennifer Todd here. And Alicia Walker. All right, so I'm going to make sure that as people join us, we can make sure they can hear us and we can hear them at this time. I would also like to again welcome the two remaining members of the Amherst School Committee to the meeting when I call your names. Please unmute your mic and indicate that you can hear us and that we can hear you or roads present. I can hear everyone and I can see everyone. Thank you, Jennifer, shall present. Thank you. Because there's no longer a quorum of the Amherst School Committee, I have not asked the committee to be called to order. Lynn Shalini has joined Shalini. Can you hear us? Present. OK. And do we have anybody in the audience that? No. OK, thank you. This is the first of two meetings tonight and we will use the same Zoom link for both meetings. Next Monday night, the 18th, we will hold the following meetings. At 5.30, there will be a master plan primer and at 6 o'clock, a public forum on the master plan. I just want to note that those are not required meetings of the council, but we will post them as meetings of the council so that if a council quorum is present, we will call them to order. If needed, after tonight's meeting, at 6.30, we will have another special meeting of the town council with the remaining Amherst School Committee members to finalize questions for the school committee candidates. Again, only if we need that meeting. And at 7 or 7.30, there will be a town council meeting based on whether or not we need or at 6 or 6.30 or 7, we will have a town council meeting. We'll clarify that after this evening. I do want to remind people that on Tuesday, September 26, at 6 o'clock, there will be a special meeting of the town council and the remaining Amherst School Committee members to interview candidates to fill the three presently vacant Amherst School Committee seats. We will determine at that meeting, whether the interviews and or the decision will be made at a special meeting that night or whether we will have to carry over to Monday, October 2nd, 2023. Please note the candidate statements of interest are due to the clerk of the town council. That is Athena O'Keefe. On by Wednesday, September 20 at 4 o'clock p.m. We've identified this for time for public comment. And encourage anyone who wishes to speak to make comments about desired questions we might include in our interviews of candidates to fill the three present vacancies on the Amherst School Committee. If you are physically present in the audience in the room and we do have some people with us this evening and welcome, please sign it. And you want to make public comment, please make sure you've signed in with clerk of the town council. If you are on Zoom at this time and you would like to make public comment, please raise your hands. Right now I'm only seeing one hand on Zoom. Athena, how many hands, how many people do we have that have signed up? Is that three? Thank you. Residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes. The committee will not engage, either committee will engage in a dialogue or comment on a matter raised during public comment. So we will begin Athena with your calling on the first person that signed up from the audience. And so Connor, would you please come to the microphone, state your name and address before you make your comment. Basically out of respect for others who may want to come forward and make public comment. I'll keep my mask on. Usually I'm going to take it off, but. Let's see how there's, I'm wondering. So I think what we're faced as a town is a sad and tragic situation. And because I intend to ask to be appointed to the school committee, but not run for that office, I would like to encourage those who are in the decision-making position regarding the process to be open to public participation in the process. Whether that's similar to a league of women voters, candidates night where people submit questions and two or three people sit around and say, okay, let's include this, but something has to be done to include the public in this process. I mean, I think we're very aware that the failure of people in authority to respond to the comments that they got, the concerns that were expressed either in meetings or in emails or however has led to a situation of really angry feelings about what is going on with certain schools. And that can't go on. And I think the way to reduce the tension around this process and around communication with the schools is to allow parents, the publication of newspaper articles should not be the vehicle by which parents and students express themselves to people in authority. And there is something dysfunctional about a process where you can only speak at the beginning of the meeting. You can't address issues during the meeting that are being discussed by a very small group of individuals, 13 here, five at the school committee, nine at the region. That the process has to be opened up because if it doesn't, what we see, what has happened to this point will repeat itself in other situations. That's not healthy. Please conclude your remarks. Yeah, so please find a way to allow the public to be involved in the process of asking questions, of making comments and so forth. Because quite frankly, for three months of an appointment, if I can't stand public comment, then I don't belong in the office. And I'd say the same things about others who would seek the appointment. Thank you. We need to hear from the public. I'm gonna go to Jenna Schwartz, who is on Zoom. Please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Hi, can you hear me? We can, thank you. My name's Jenna Schwartz. I live at 173 Mill Lane in Amherst. I use she and her pronouns. And I'm an Amherst parent and resident. As I fully realize and I appreciate that we are focused on the future tonight, I would be remiss in not naming my concerns about how bias might emerge in this process of questioning and electing school committee members to fill the current vacancies. I want to alert others who are paying attention to this transition, both constituents like myself and council members like yourselves, that some local coverage of the situation continues to center the narratives of former school committee members, something I find inappropriate. The last four paragraphs of yesterday's Gazette article, for example, devote yet more airtime to the voices of those who are effectively calling themselves victims of public concern, though claiming otherwise, rather than shifting the focus to where it belongs, back to the children who were actually victimized in our schools. The statement in the same article, quote, there was no wrongdoing, unquote, in reference to Mike Morris' resignation, is presented as fact, rather than part of the carefully crafted separation agreement statement. This might seem unrelated to this evening's meeting, but it's not. Reporting like this influences readers, and my guess is that many, if not all of you, are reading this paper. Lastly, the same article also published some of the 14 questions being put forth this evening for prospective school committee members. One of these is, quote, what is your understanding of the legal constraints about what school committee members can and can't do in situations involving Title IX investigation, unquote. This is a potentially leading and thus misleading question. It signals a reference to one of the things some members of the regional school committee meeting, including those who have now resigned, have continuously used as a shield against ongoing public calls for a more transparent process and more accountability and equity in that process. Instead of asking questions that further a story of a regional school committee whose hands are tied in situations that call for courage and action, how about asking questions that instead ask prospective new school committee members how they intend to acknowledge and honor deeply real concerns when they are brought forth by ARPS educators, staff, APEA members, and family members of students. Thank you. Thank you for joining us, Athena. Next we have Hailey Kelly. Please come up to the microphone. State your name and address before you make your comment. Thank you. Hello, I am Hailey Kelly and I am the non-binary representative on the Democratic State Committee. We are here because of unchecked transphobic abuse that has happened in our schools. When that was uncovered by the student newspaper, what the queer community was asking for was remorse to be put on leave until the results of the investigation were published. This is no different than when a police officer does an unlawful, an act of unlawful violence and the community demands that they be put on leave until they're investigated. The demonization of the queer community in response from our former school committee members cannot be characterized as anything other than transphobic. We have to make sure that whoever fills these seats have a history of being outspokenly pro-transgender. We cannot have a repeat of the situation where we call ourselves a progressive town and then have transphobic statements by people that we've trusted into authority because like this transphobic abuse that happened in our schools and then the demonization of the queer community afterwards happened here in Amherst because we let it. If the Amherst community is going to heal, then us versus the narrative between the school committee and queer people needs to be ended and condemned. The interview process must consider the history and views of the candidates on transgender rights. Failure to do so will only hurt the standing of the town leadership in the eyes of the LGBTQ community. The former school committee members want you to believe that they're the victims of a community asking for accountability. The real victims here were the kids who were hospitalized. The real victims here were the people who had to talk to school counselors who told them to pray the gay away. I grew up in a very conservative from voting household and they sent me to priests to try to get me to pray the gay away. That's something I expect from Trump supporters not from the Amherst school committee. I know it's not the school committee members who said those things, but it's the school committee members who defended Morse. A superintendent who lied about those things not happening even though he had gone complaints from parents. So the interview process must be mindful of making sure that the people we entrust in our government are protrans and this body has a decision to make on whether or not it's going to be trans-aliased or not. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for joining us. Athena, we're ready for the next person. Cairo Serna, please come up to the microphone, state your name and address before you make your comment. Thank you. Hello, my name is Cairo Serna. I am also a member of the Democratic State Committee. I live at 160 Clark Hill Road here in Amherst. I've been watching the situation for quite some time now and it's very clear to me and to other members of the community that I have spoken to that the school committee has continuously struggled with issues of accountability, transparency, and above all else equity. I want to emphasize how vocal your community, how vocal Amherst has been on how their school committee failed their students and the parents of those students. To add further insult to injury, former members played the victim, ignoring that students were terrorized and traumatized by the adults that were supposed to protect them. Those former members deflected blame and refused to take accountability for their role, especially in defending Michael Morris, who was in part responsible for turning a blind eye to the suffering of children under his watch. So when we try to choose new school committee members, we have to look to the future. We have to ask how do we prevent these kinds of harms from happening again? Without acknowledging what went wrong, we cannot move forward and we cannot better our schools. So questions for candidates must center the needs of the students, especially those students who were targeted and harmed. I personally am concerned about questions that I have seen that focus on giving school committee members excuses for apathy, allowing them to hide behind legal workarounds rather than encouraging them to stand up for children who are abused. We need school committee members who are committed to protecting students. When we ask questions of them, I urge us all to keep in mind that we must look to a better future, not just for Amherst, but specifically for these students because students are that future. And when queer students are targeted in a supposedly progressive town like Amherst, our leadership betrays them by refusing to respond. And that is exactly what the former school committee members did. That is exactly what we have to prevent from happening again. And so in the overall process, we must engage with our community, the very same community that has been speaking out against this for so long. Parents and students should be able to advocate for themselves and for their families and not simply in spite of their leaders. My hope is that we will find committee members with a stronger commitment to equity and more willingness to be held accountable for the decisions they make that affect Amherst's children. Thank you for your time. Thank you for joining us. Richard Rosnoy, please come up, state your name and address before you make your comment. Pardon me, Mr. Rosnoy, Anika's just joined. Can we confirm that she can hear and hear us? Yes, just a moment, Anika. I'm present, thank you. Thank you. Okay. Good evening, thanks for doing these meetings. Richard Rosnoy, I live at 11 Strong Street in Amherst. I have a question, I guess it comes out in the form of a comment. And it's basically, I'm wondering, and I hope it will come out in these two meetings that you're having to discuss the procedures for how to choose the school board members who will show an interest and apply. And the issue involves whether you are looking to choose people who express an interest in continuing to serve by running for election in November. I can see some value in why you might decide to do that. Some continuity midst all of the uproar that has happened would be beneficial, I suppose. On the other hand, I can see value in having the freedom of applicants to be able to say, I will serve for this limited amount of time. I will be objective and address the issues as they arise without any prior biases or prejudices and make decisions as necessary during this crucial critical time period. So somehow in these discussions that you will have, I hope that some clarity will be forthcoming that you can express so that we, those of us who may be interested in expressing our interest in serving will know what's expected, whether it will be strictly for the interim period or whether there, in fact, may be some indication that continuing would have some value. I do understand that from a legal perspective, you cannot come out flat out and say so, but I think that those of us who have been around town may be able to tell by some way the discussion proceeds as to whether that may be the case. Thank you, by the way, for having these meetings and taking the time to hear the people with interest. Thank you. Athena? That's all we have for now. Okay, that concludes public comment. So I now am going to ask the members of the council and the school committee who are here. Let me just step back and reiterate some things that I did say in the memo. We did receive comments from various people. I received comments from seven counselors. One counselor came in late and so I did not accept those comments, but they will make them tonight if they want to. I received suggested, I'm sorry, I received suggested questions from seven counselors. I received suggested questions from one school committee member and I received suggestions from one member of the public. I wanna thank all of you that have given us questions in advance. I then collected those questions in a manner trying to group them so that there was some similarity. I don't profess to have done that in any way that is absolute. And in the process, therefore you have before you either exactly the questions that were asked or by some people or in some cases when the questions were so similar, I did take the liberty of either adopting or adapting a question that already existed. Using that, I then came to a conclusion and presented to you for tonight for discussion 14 questions. That is not necessarily a final set of questions. It's in no way the final set of questions. So I think the challenge we have before us this evening with respect to the fact that we also have a town council meeting after this one is to express opinion about various questions and use the time appropriately. So what I'm going to do is take them by groups. For instance, reason for application, strength of areas for improvement in the Amherst public schools, understanding the role of the school committee, current and upcoming issues facing the school committee. I wanna point out that at this point with 14 questions with essentially two minutes allowed in the beginning and two minutes allowed at the end that each of the candidates would have over half an hour of answering questions. We have no idea, I have no idea whether anybody has submitted a statement of interest. I have no idea whether we have received one, two or 25. So at this point, we're not dealing with understanding the number. So with that, I'd like people to focus first on the reason for application and provide feedback about those questions. And please do so by raising your hand. Kathy. Thank you, Lynn, and thank you for pulling this together for us. I will, as you've requested, focus just on this one section, but I just wanna preface my remark as I make my comments with, in addition to your rough estimate of how long it would be to answer these questions. Some of these questions, I think, would take a minute to read because they're long and complex. So what I focused on, so I'll give you an example in this section, is shortening and simplifying questions and trying to make sure they only asked one question within a question rather than two. So my suggestion on the first two, on the first one is please include any experiences you have with the Amherst Elementary or Amherst Pellum Regional School. I would suggest deleting that sentence. We're gonna have a statement of interest. We're gonna have an opening piece and I expect everyone will tell us how they have or haven't been involved with the schools. So that just focuses it. And then there is one wordsmithing would like to add that additionally describes if we remove the word additionally, it just says would like to add. So that's just a pure word edit because it's a repeat. In the second one, if we make it a bit shorter and say, is there anything you would like to add as to why you are interested in serving and why we should select you, we don't have to repeat Amherst School, Pellum School committees, we can just do why you're interested and why we should select you. As I said, some of this I've just done to shorten the question to make it easy to ask. Thank you, Jennifer. So I think these first two questions can be omitted completely. I think they're extraneous and unnecessary. People are gonna, we're gonna publish the questions ahead of time. So people will see the questions ahead of time and they'll know that they'll get a two minute opening statement and a two minute closing statement. So after the opening statement, we don't need to ask, is there anything else you wanna say? I just, I think both of them are unnecessary. And since we have so many other questions, I think that the time is better spent on the other questions. Aside from that, I did wanna bring up one thing before we get too much farther. Lynn, I think I heard you say at the beginning of this meeting that next week's meeting would be held only if necessary. And that was not my understanding of our process we discussed last time. I thought we were, I have two meetings to discuss questions, not one and then one if necessary. Or maybe I might have confused that, but I think we do need to have this week's meeting and next week's meeting because that's what we had told the public we would do. And that maybe might help us finish quicker tonight. I think that's fine. And I agree, I don't see first of all, how we can finish all of this tonight and come to an agreement. So I have every reason to believe we will have that meeting as scheduled. So, and we will have public comment at that meeting as well. Mandy Jo. Jennifer made my job easy. I concur with what she said. I would also add to her reasons there's also a 700 word statement of interest that should cover the substance of both of these questions. So I would eliminate them. Okay. Dorothy. I wanna make a comment that in the attempt for fairness, I think sometimes that the council goes overboard and creates some kind of terrible system. But I do not like the idea of identical questions that everyone is given ahead of time and asked that allows for no spontaneity and no opportunity for two to follow up or discuss interesting items. And recently there was an article in the paper about professors being required to submit their own DEI statement in order to be hired. And it turned out it was just another opportunity to game the system and did not add anything to it. To me, it's not that we should be fussing about the questions we should be searching out good candidates and give them a chance to show who they are, but the more rigid we make this, the more supposedly fair, the more unnatural we make it. That is my strong belief. I think there's only one good question to ask anybody. And that is if you discover that you've done something wrong or have left something out, can you apologize and make amends? Because that seems to be a problem that's going across many levels, not just the school committee. So that we didn't have to have the town manager take upon himself in another instance, the act of apologizing, which was covered so extensively in the press, it was clear it was a novel experience to hear someone in authority apologize for something. People make mistakes, people can correct mistakes, but the more rigid we make our system, the more impossible we make it for people to do a good job and to carry things on. And I have one last little comment. I agree with the people from the queer community who spoke, but I wanna say that the idea of any bullying, of any child is absolutely outrageous. And there should be no bullying in our school systems. That's the first requirement I think of a school. And it seemed that there was a culture of bullying that was allowed to go on. And that must be decried as well. So that's it. Thank you. Okay, are there any other comments on this section? Shalini? Yeah, I was wondering if it might be useful for us as a coming together to create a rubric of what we will be holding as our most important values, experience, commitment in the participants, instead of having that discussion afterwards, which becomes awkward and whatnot. But if we can, we all agree that we wanna see people with high levels of commitment, experience with LGBTQ, anti-racism work. So maybe we can comment, identify what are some core experiences, strengths we are looking for in the interim committee, people with experience in mediation or leadership hiring or school. So come up with a list of criteria so that when we hear different candidates, we'll have at least some rubric to then base our decisions. Otherwise, it's really hard later on, in CRC we have encountered completely different area. But again, the conversations become really hard in the absence of what are we looking? Because these are not right or wrong answers. If someone doesn't know the legal process, we're not gonna say, oh, you're not gonna accept you or something like that. Okay, let me hold on that suggestion. And perhaps when we get through with the four different areas, we might come back to some of that conversation. Let me just hear summarize. I've heard two people at least say, listen, just let the statement of interest stand on its own. Maybe say, is there anything that you'd like to add and eliminate these first two questions? That's one of the options that I've heard. And I will say, I believe, and others with a memory on this one, we may have used these questions before we use statement of interest as part of the application. I can't remember the sequence on that. So is there anything else on this first section? Kathy, you seem to be wanting to raise your hand. Yeah, I just have a question. And if we all agree with deleting them, could we get a consensus of the group? I'd be fine with deleting them. So I just don't know how efficient you wanna make this. It's efficient as possible. And I want as much guidance as possible leaving this meeting because we don't have forever to keep formulating questions. Is there anyone that objects to eliminating the two first questions? And let the statement of interest stand on its own? Shalini? It's sort of these two questions. Could we maybe ask them if they, how can they provide value to in terms of specific experience? Sometimes people just take their past experiences for granted and may not have it in the statement of interest. And so can we make that just a single question but be more in addition to what you've shared? Do you have any experience or, I don't know how you wanna say it, how can you all provide value with our specific goals for the interim school committee? And maybe someone can, but that's the idea but if someone else wants to craft that in a better way. Are there any other comments regarding whether or not we can just eliminate these first two questions? I'll come back to the issue of values later when we talk about criteria. I'm not seeing any other objection. And so for the moment, that may be where we stand on that. Strengths of an areas for improvement in the Amherst public schools. One question. Comments? Mandy Jo. So I don't object to this question in general but I would be willing to eliminate it as a consideration if we have a lot more questions when we get to the end because the people we're going to be appointing will be serving for three months. And so that does not leave a lot of time for them to work to improve whatever areas of improvement they might identify. So I think it's one that we might be able to eliminate if we're looking at a list of 13 or 14 questions that we're trying to get down to like eight. Okay, so. Okay. Anna. Yeah, my thought is similar to Mandy but I think my pitch would be to actually combine it and I'm gonna break your rule halfway Lynn to actually combine it with the first part of question 10. So question 10 starts off with what are the two to three most important items that need to be on the school committee's agenda? And I think that this could be combined into what are two to three areas of strength that you'd like to see continued and two to three areas of opportunity for from now until New Year's Day. I think that it's, I think giving that timeframe is important because we also wanna be reasonable about what these school committee members would be expected to accomplish. So I see it as, I see the value in it if combined with that question about the next two to three or until New Year's Day. Okay. Are there any other comments on this section? Pam, Bruni. I think Anna's suggestion is great. Thank you. Thank you. Jennifer. I agree with Mandy, Joe that we, this could be eliminated if we find that we need to eliminate questions at the end. I feel like this is a good gauge of how much preparation or research that candidates have done. Some of the other questions I'll say later feel like a test like of how much you know about things. And I'm not so much in favor of like testing people's factual knowledge about what school committees do. But this one feels a little bit better to me in terms of have people's knowledge in general of the school districts. So I'm okay with it. And I'm also okay with eliminating it. And I like it better than some of the other questions later that feel like a test. So Jennifer, I'm just going to push for a moment. Anna's suggestion and others as well. Anna suggested that with some crafting it could be combined with 10 and eliminate. Kathy, you have your hand up. If you want us to speak to that, Lynn, I was going to speak to that. Are you, did you want to speak to that? Yes, but you asked Jennifer the questions. No, please go ahead, Kathy. I meant for all of you. Thank you. My thought on the other question was, it actually follows a little one, Jennifer. I don't want it to be a gotcha. I'd rather just have a structural statement that says during the next three months you will have to set up a search committee. You will be facing budget and then some better word about Title IX. And then the other questions ask you about each of these rather than have them guess what we might want to be. I mean, they can talk about other things too. So I didn't, I don't want to combine them. I agree with potentially deleting the one question we have. I also don't think it should be the very first question. So we'll just, when we get through this, we'll figure out, to add them, what's the one strength? So I would be okay with losing the current three if we need to for the length of the questions. Jennifer? Jennifer, shall. And then let's go back to Jennifer, Tom. Yeah, I like three better than 10. Just because like, as I said, it's a good gauge of like how much preparation have people done? What do people know about the district? Whereas 10, I was kind of meh about, an individual school committee member doesn't have much control over what's on the agenda. That's up to the chair. I mean, you can give input. And I like the idea of one and one, not like two or just, three was simpler. And I think it's a good gauge of just a general, a general gauge of how much you know or what research you've done about the districts. Thank you. Jennifer, Tom? Yes, I agree with Kathy. I really, I think it would be very helpful to me and to us as interviewers and to the applicants to know really what will be, what tasks will the school committee be focused on in like the 11 weeks that they'll be convened. Okay. Pat? Yes, I'm looking at tasks also, but I want to add, you know, yes, there's going to be search committee. Yes, there is going to be budget process, but they're also within this three month period needs to begin a real period of repair for harm that's been done. And I think that has to be addressed. Okay. Great. As we're all finding out, it's hard to stick with one section. Let me try the following under, I think we're going to hold on to three for the moment, but there's a possibility that some mixture of three and 10 is where we want to go, but that it may be more toward the end of the interview is what I'm hearing. Okay. So under the next one, you've got numbers four through nine. And the, it's really focused on understanding the role of the school committee. And I'm hoping we can find some consolidation here, but let's start with Jennifer Schau. So regarding four, well, I mean, my question is like, it lists curriculum, hiring of principles and addressing complaints about a specific teacher. Like I'm wondering why we're calling those three out. And then, this is one of the questions that feels like a test. And it doesn't matter if the person gets it because if they think that they have some power that they actually don't, that that's, you know, it's complex. And if they're mistaken about something that they thought they could, I mean, they'll figure it out, they'll be told. So yeah, it doesn't really matter if they get answers correct or not. And I don't know why we would call out those specific things. So I don't love this question. I'm okay with omitting it with the number four. Sorry. And number five also feels like a test. And again, it does like, I feel like five could be better worded, something about the really super in the way as opposed to what do you understand about the role that again feels like a test, that it doesn't matter to me if they get it right or wrong. Should I go on? I missed a word you said in there about instead on five. Maybe the question could be reworded something about what do you understand about the role of a superintendent? I mean, there are right and wrong answers to that question. And I feel like it doesn't really get it right or wrong because they'll figure it out or they'll be told when they serve if they're right or wrong about it. And I'm more interested. It's just not something I'm gonna base my criteria on. Okay. Did you have any other comments on six through nine at this time? Yes, I like six, seven and eight. For nine, I'm not sure what nine is trying to get. The processes and procedure versus advocacy and action. Like I'm just not clear what that question is trying to get at. Okay. Thank you. Andy. Yeah, I think the Jennifer was sort of going in the direction that I was thinking about too. My experience working with the school committee candidates in the past and new school committee members after election. It's my understanding that there is an effort that has to be made to convey in an orientation sort of way. What is the proper role of the school committee? What is the proper role of the superintendent and other members of the administrative staff? And so I'm curious as to how that information gets encapsulated and conveyed to new school committee members from our two school committee members who are present today and what is really practical to do in the short term that the people that we select may be serving on the committee. Okay. Are there other comments, Mandy, Joe? I've had my hand up for some time. I'm sorry, Irv, I didn't see your hand. I was looking for the raised hand function, but if you'd like to go ahead, Irv, please do. Yes. Number four, that is one of those questions where literally a person could attempt to answer that question without any information, which obviously is something that we and Amherst obviously like to do, but it is not something that is realistic. I mean, so this gets at what Andy was getting at when a new school committee member comes on board, there is a required onboarding process via our policies that would allow us to orient that new school committee member. And that is something that really obviously will take place with the new members. Now, having said that, I would eliminate that question because again, it sounds like a test and unless you've read the policies, you could be talking to someone like me who has read the policies and making a fool of yourself. So I would eliminate that question. Any other comments on the other questions or? The number eight, really I would like to see that expanded upon because what we have seen in terms of the resignations of the three school committee members and the comments of other public servants who have been elected is that the feedback that is forthcoming, especially from the public can sometimes be harsh. And one's reaction to that is really critical in terms of one's ability to function as a meaningful member of the school committee or any other public body. So answering that question for me and for expanding upon that question and making it more relevant is a really important question because I do not wish to have someone come in. It becomes controversial on one month they're gone because they could not withstand a public scrutiny, B, public feedback and C, public criticism. Okay, thank you. Mandy Jo. So I didn't necessarily have an issue with question number four but I would be completely okay with eliminating it based on what Irv and Jennifer and others have said I think they make a good case for it not necessarily providing us with information that helps us make our decision. I would do the same with, I guess it's number five, the role of the superintendent. I think that's again, something that doesn't necessarily provide us with information to help us make our decision. Six and seven, I am fine with. Eight. I think my initial thought was to omit it but a lot of that was based on not quite understanding what it was getting at per se whether it's trying to seek information on individual reactions and responses or how a committee responds as a whole to negative feedback or negative comments or criticisms. And so I think if we keep it, I like Irv's suggestion of expanding it or fleshing it out a little bit more. And then number nine, I as with what Kathy said earlier looked at questions that had multiple questions in them. And so I would eliminate the last two questions of that question and just keep with the first part then ended it balancing process with advocacy and delete the rest of it. Okay. Shalani? So regarding question nine, I think Jennifer asked what was the purpose of that? I did not offer that question just to be clear but I wanted to share my perspective on that balance between advocacy and process in my role as time counselor that sometimes we're dealing with issues. There's a lot of advocacy and I'm actually supporting those issues but then in my role as a counselor, I have to look at so many other stakeholder perspectives and honor and appreciate the work of the advocates to get us out of complacency and all of that. And I also have to hold the process. So I think that's an important ability for elected leaders. So there's some value in that question. Anika? Thank you. So yes, I also appreciate that balance question but so my question in understanding the time limitations that we have, I find, in most case, I think for modern interviewers, most people who are being interviewed, oftentimes not all, will also ask questions themselves. So with some of the questions that are being omitted, will there be that space or that ask if whomever is being interviewed, if they happen to have a question in regards to this role? That they could go into and would there be the opportunity to have that and also answer that or would that be too tight to work? It's a very interesting question, Anika, having interviewed just thousands of people, I think, over my career, when you're interviewing people for a job and it's a one-on-one, you usually always say, do you have any questions of us? And I'm hearing what you're saying as that. Perhaps others have some thoughts on that. I think it could end up not necessarily being productive in terms of assessing the person for this situation, but I could be wrong about that. But I appreciate the question because it's in an interview process, it's pretty much of a standard kind of thing to do. Kathy? I think this has been a great discussion, by the way. Jennifer and Irv and then Mandy followed up. I could see deleting both four and five for the reason that people have given. That it's also, there's not a short answer. What's the role of the superintendent? What's the role of the, it's a long involved and it takes forever to even read one of the questions. I like starting this section with number six. I like seven. Irv is suggesting a partial re-wording of eight and I don't know what you're getting at. Irv might be a time you were a group you work with, receive public criticism or feedback that was negative, just putting a few more words in it. Just something more there. And I would delete nine entirely. So Mandy, I wouldn't just pull it down because I think it would take a long time for someone to describe what they think is advocacy and what they think is action and then how they balance them. You know, I'm just thinking, how would I answer that? When am I, what is advocacy? What is, and then what's the balance? I think it's just a really tough question and Jennifer has suggested deleting it. It was on my delete list just for that reason. It's an involved question. So that which, if we deleted nine and the first two we significantly shortened this section which is a good goal. Pat? I'm trying to figure something out here and I, the idea of a time when you've received negative criticism whether it's private, public, that will tell us something. But when I'm in an interview situation, whether I'm interviewing or an interview with me or I'm meeting somebody and I'm trying to get to understand them and know them, I look for ways to connect. And one of the things I'm wondering about is I'm interested given, okay, I'm sorry, I'm doing this all in my head in the moment given that a great deal of harm has been done to queer and non-binary and trans youth. And what, I could somehow or other, I want A to include a time that you were discriminated against and how did you manage it or handle it? Because in times in my life I've turned it inward and hurt myself. Other times I was able to quell the person and ask directly because it was clear that they were somewhere else. That's not exactly what I'm looking for but what experience do you have of being harmed? Jennifer Schau. So I was the one who suggested eight and I like Herb's suggestion of fleshing it out a little bit and it sounds like people maybe agree with that. I might just add an introductory sentence like something like, school committee members can receive public input that is negative or charged. Please share an example of a time you receive negative input and high-delta just to make it more clear what it is we're asking. I had a similar suggestion about nine but I'm also in favor of omitting nine so I will hold it for now. And I like Pat's suggestion of tell us about a time you were harmed but I think that's slightly different from what's being asked in eight so I wouldn't want it to replace eight. All right, Jennifer Topp. Yeah, I realize this isn't very specific but just sort of picking up on what Kathy suggested. I did think that some of these questions just could not be answered in two minutes. So I'd like not to ask questions that can't be answered because then you're just getting very superficial responses to complex questions and it's not the fault of the respondent. They just told me of two minutes and I guess the advocacy and action would be this one example. Okay, Dorothy. I want to follow up on what Pat said. I like the fact that instead of focusing on the applicant and his or her emotions about possibly being criticized that some focus when asking have they experienced any harm would be focusing on the children, the school children. So I liked that question. It gets away with the idea that whoever can answer all of these questions is such an absolutely perfect and incredible person that they should be obeyed and listened to in all things which sets up, I think, false expectations. Thank you. Thank you, Anna. Yeah, I think I want to also follow up on Pat's point and I do think it's a different question than the initial question. I don't think that you were suggesting it was the same but I would like to offer a possible reframe. I think that question, while it's an incredible question and I think we should sit down and discuss it because I think it's fascinating. I do think that it's asking people to relive or rehash their own trauma. And so I think that it might be more helpful and productive for folks too. And it also we don't want folks to make something up, right? Like that we want folks to be able to speak from their own experience and I'm curious about a reframe that might say how do you support individuals who have been harmed? How do you engage in repair work, right? I think that there's a reframe that gets at what are you going to do here that allows people if they choose to to pull from their own experience but doesn't rely on them choosing to disclose their own experience in a room full of people that's recorded. Which I think is really important. That's all, thanks. Thank you. Irv. I would like to have a seven and eight combined. Those are important questions. I understand what Anna is saying but somehow that question has to be asked. Maybe not in a way that is currently framed but it has to be asked. And so I really want that in there. Number nine I would eliminate. I just don't see any value in it. Okay. Jennifer, one last comment on this and then we're going to try to move on. Yeah, I appreciate Anna's comment about not asking people to relive a traumatic experience. And I went back and forth with my own head about the two options of share an example of a time or how would you respond to charged or negative input? So it's not, and it's not, because this is an example that maybe people have experienced people maybe haven't had before or maybe they haven't been traumatic. So a hypothetical, how would you deal with it? To me is better than to share a time that you. But so I'm in favor of eliminating nine but I think I would like to keep seven and eight separate. Thank you. Okay. Anika. Yes, I agree. And I just wanted to add that overall I think that most of these questions are pretty standard and that especially with those having access to them ahead of time, I think that would, it would give people time to prepare for all this. And I definitely agree with not putting someone on the spot or making them feel like they have to share a harm public. Okay. This is what I'm taking away from this section. We're eliminating four and five. We most likely are eliminating nine. We are keeping six, seven and eight with some introductory sentence to it. And we're trying to come up with a new question that talks about how someone might deal with when they witness someone being harmed. That's my best way of summarizing it for the moment. I'd like to move on to... Sorry, Anna. Can I add an edit to that summary? It's not necessarily about witness because the school committee members aren't necessarily witnessing it themselves but it's about supporting folks who have been harmed. Okay, got it. Thanks. All right, I'd like to go on to current and upcoming issues facing the school committee and seek questions. Andy. Yes. We've actually had a pretty good discussion already and I think that it sort of helped me frame the thinking about this because I think that the likely things that the school committee is gonna face though I would like to hear input from Jennifer and Shao and Irv because they're familiar with what the school committee has ahead of it but it might be worth being more specific about what it is that we're seeing and recognizing that a lot of the discussions about healing really have been in the prior discussion and don't need to be repeated. So we're getting then two things that I can think of most strongly is framing the search for the next permanent superintendent and the beginning processes of developing the budget. And if those are the two items, I think that hearing what their experience has been in those two realms and what they bring to the school committee if chosen for this short period of time that they would be serving, I think that was where the value would be and I'm gonna be very interested as the finance committee chair for the council of knowing what they have to say about the budget piece. So those are my comments. Okay, Jennifer. So first, I think the last sentence of 10 should be its own question. If we end up keeping it, it's a totally different, and sorry, and then that last one is yes or no question and we don't wanna ask the yes or no question. So if we wanted to keep that last one instead of have you ever been involved in a search process, I would reframe it to what experience do you have being involved in a search process for a high level person in education or otherwise. But the beginning part of 10, again, I feel like that middle part, although you would stress your experience earlier is repetitive and it's the reason we eliminated question one and two. So I would eliminate that. And then the two different most important items on the agenda, there's two different committees. So which committee are you referring to when you say the agenda? And again, an individual member can suggest agenda items, but doesn't have that much control on the agenda. I would be okay with just eliminating 10, maybe keeping the superintendent part. Okay, so that's my feedback on 10. And then 13, again, feels like a test and it doesn't really even matter. The answer to that question, it doesn't really matter to me. And 14 regarding the budget, I'm gonna say like, doesn't the, maybe Irv tell me, is the budget season gonna start in the winter or is it doesn't start after the start of the year? Is this person gonna be involved in the early part of the budget cycle? I think not, but I could be wrong. And if not, then we don't need 14. Irv, do you wanna weigh in on that? The budget season starts now and we are going to miss part of that without a full compliment. And it is something that is of great concern to me because we're going to bring new people on as the budget season is really gearing up. I wanna pause for a moment. Michelle Miller, can you hear us? I can, yes. Thanks, Lynn. And Alicia Walker, can you hear us? Yes, I can. Thank you, Lynn. Have I missed anybody else, Athena? Okay, thank you. Cathy? Thank you. I'm not quite sure I got the whole of what Jennifer was suggesting, but initially, if we're gonna keep anything about what you're gonna be facing, I would just list what you're gonna be facing rather than ask them. So Jennifer, were you suggested we just start with the last sentence, however we word it, a search? Because I guess we're gonna have to start up a search for a new superintendent. There will be a budget process. If we do anything about Title IX, it should probably be what kinds of, what can the role of the school committee be to set up a fair and nondiscriminatory process or something like that, to avoid Title IX. So do that because those are three active things that are gonna be in front of people for the next three months. So I would either delete that whole first thing and just do, have you ever been on a search, however we wanna word it, and then the budget. And I don't think we need on the budget question, given the loss of ESSA funds, I don't want everyone to have to become a budget expert. Just what, and I would slightly reword it to be, what would be your objectives, not your considerations, but your objectives as you enter into the budget process. I do have a question, and I would suggest deleting it, is how will you help make sure that the school committee's practices, priorities and decisions are anti-racist? I think I understand the thought behind that, but it's a bit like saying, stop beating your wife or stop beating your husband. It's assuming that the school committee itself is doing something now. So I would, if we're gonna keep it, I would reword it in some way. It's like the school committee's actions themselves are racist, discriminatory. So that was one that just stuck out on me, and also in the next three months, I think getting them to focus on the three big issues would be more important than going off in that direction. So that would be my suggestion. I was cutting every place I could see a place to cut. Mandy, Joe. For the first one with the important items, I think I basically agree with Jennifer. I had originally thought about eliminating the, involved in a search process for a high level person in education in favor of a reword on, I guess it's number 12 about setting up a search process, because in three months, I think the process will be getting set up, but they might not be there except for that RFP out to a consultant or whatever is getting set up to start the process. So I would focus more on how do you set up and some question like that. So I was more focused on a potential reword of, well, getting rid of sort of the first half of it and keeping the second half of 12. And so I think the points about just stating what the concerns are and then asking a question about the issues they're gonna be facing are valid. If we keep 11, I would change anti-racist to equitable or some other word. It's clear that we're not just dealing with figuring out processes that are anti-racist. We have to look at other types of equity and discrimination and issues that have been happening at the school committee. So I would broaden that question. I would eliminate question 13. I think as Jennifer said earlier with some of the others, it's a test. I'm not sure I know what the correct answer is. And so I'm not sure I could evaluate the answers on them. And so I don't know how it would help me make a decision and go into that consideration. And as for the last one on budget, it was one I worded. I don't like my wording anymore. I would reword it myself. I have a potential rewording of if appointed, you'll be part of the start of the planning for the fiscal year 25 school budgets. As a school committee member, how would you approach those meetings or those conversations? Something like that. That's a little broader recognizes that they're part of the financial indicators meeting. They're part of the four towns meeting in December. And so those are the parts we have to be focused on if we're talking budget. Irv, you have your hand up. Yes. The, I think the numbering going mine is a little bit different but the question related to anti-racist. I would keep that, but I would reword it to say, how will you help to make sure that the school committee's practices, processes and decisions include the values of DEI? I could see keeping it if it were worded in such a way. And the thing that is hard for all of us and people outside of the school committee at this point in time, is that when I look at these questions, there are pressures and concerns that we have with school committee members, especially in related to a budget. B, the search process, which will be underway October 3rd with a regional school committee meeting dealing with having a person come in from the MASC to talk to us about the search process. That will already be started. And we will be under the gun to accelerate that process because of the timing involved in getting started. So those new members who come on board will in essence be put in the position of coming into something and being asked to perform and make decisions that they are really, really not familiar with. And I guess why reason I'm saying that is that I just need to get it off my chest, that we are under incredible pressure. We have been put in the situation that we did not ask for or want. And now we have to pick up the pieces. Pat, let Jennifer go first. Okay, Jennifer. So regarding question 11, I would be changing or adding, how would you make sure that practices, processes and decisions are anti-racist? I think it's really interesting to hear people push back on the term anti-racist. Maybe it makes people uncomfortable because it has the word racist in it. I know that all the town councilors have been through anti-racism training. And I'm sure you know that we all have to be actively and proactively anti-racist all the time every day because we all swim in this white supremacy world to that is the default for many institutions and organizations. And sometimes just the way meetings are run can be racist or can support white supremacy. Who's allowed to speak in a meeting and in what order can be racist and can support white supremacy? I'm just gonna admit again that I was the one who brought up that. I'm the one who suggested that question. And I'm particularly thinking of decisions the school committee has made in the past that weren't actively racist but were definitely not proactively anti-racist. So I would like to keep that question and I would like to keep the term anti-racist and I'm okay being inclusive and inclusive and equitable. Pat. Yes, thank you, Jennifer. I was gonna say something similar to that less eloquently. We made a resolution to become an anti-racist community. And I think that word, that phrase is critically important but I also, and I was struggling here and I wanna talk to some of you after, if I may, to ask about some terminology because I was also thinking about we have anti-racist but anti-gender biased, it doesn't seem to work. Just saying DEI equity, that's the easy way to do it. And I'd like to know if somebody feels really uncomfortable if I ask them about gender bias or if I ask them about are they anti-racist. We're raised in a racist culture, of course we're racist. And I'm gonna flash back to something of Councillor Walker said a long time ago. The important thing is whether we are working to be anti-racist. So that question is a valuable question. Okay. Anika. I'm sorry I was having trouble in meeting. So I also agree it's there but I also think that we've had and we've witnessed here even people having different understandings of what that is, of what anti-racist is. It also is thrown around almost to a t-shirt so like logo rather. So I think that it would also might be important to be very specific as to what exactly that, what exactly that we mean from that by that from someone who may not be watching town council meetings and watching just exactly how that is defined here. It's a big question to be asking so. I mean, they could be thinking like I'm thinking to my friends on the high school, does that mean that you don't allow people to hang Confederate flags from their talks in the parking lot? I mean, what exactly is that? I think it's a loaded question and it might need like what exactly that we mean when we say that. Are you a racist as opposed to what are actions that facilitate an anti-racist environment? We've gone back and forth with that amongst ourselves. Okay, Erb. Yeah, I think that when I encountered the word anti-racist, the first thing that comes to mind is how do you operationalize that definition? What does it actually mean? And does that, and without that operationalizing of what anti-racist is, it's meaningless. You know, it becomes some kind of mantra without meaning. Mantra that is all show, but no tell. It is something that one uses to try to or inculcate some visceral response without actually naming it or saying what it actually is. Yes, I can say yes, I'm anti-racist. And a lot of people can say anti-racist, but I don't know what the hell they mean, you know? And unless it is operationalized, when it's operationalized and we can, when we hear sitting and talking about it, give three or four examples of what we mean by anti-racist, anti-racist, then we have operationalized by just putting it here, it's meaningless. This particular question is a very difficult question to try to wrestle, if you will, to a point of consensus because as you can see, we're getting into the issue itself. And I wanna make sure that we try to stick with the questions with that, Andy. If Alicia is gonna be speaking on the subject that's currently being discussed, I'd prefer to take her first because I'm gonna change the subject a little bit with my comment. Okay, Alicia. Thank you, Andy, I'll be really quick. I just wanted to add that I would be in favor of both keeping the anti-racist and adding what Mandy Jo suggested, I think just to be more comprehensive because I do think that what everyone's saying is true, but I also think that being anti, like anti-racism means so many different things. It doesn't just mean one thing. And I also think that's the beauty of it and the beauty of keeping it in a question because we can let whoever's applying interpret it for themselves and let us know what it means to them or however they answer the question. So I would just be in favor of keeping both or keeping this and adding Mandy Jo's suggestion. Jennifer, did you want to speak to the same issue? Yes. So I agree with Alicia that the term does mean many different things and what the question answer interprets it as is information that we can use to determine whether we think the person's a good fit or not. So I don't think we need to define it for anyone. I think their answer will tell us what they think it means. And in terms of like, how do you operationalize it? Of course you can operationalize being anti-racist. I'm specifically talking about Irv's question. A meeting being anti-racist is when people of color are not silenced. A meeting being anti-racist is when equal opportunity is given to everyone. So I don't think it's as confusing as people are making it seem. I would like to keep that phrase. Melanie, are you speaking to this issue? Yes, yes I am. And I would like to support leaving this question because it indicates our values as a town and town council and school board, a school committee. And I'd like to expand it to as Pat was saying by including maybe like our anti-racist and LGBTQ and gender inclusive. Maybe adding that term so it expands it to being inclusive and all in that way. And I think in terms of operationalization of what it means, I think there's a lot of consideration that still needs to happen. It's not only just about listening to people of color, but it's also uplifting people who are afraid to speak and creating conditions, safe conditions for people like I'm from India and I'm hesitant to speak often. And then how do we make it safe to, and I don't know, I'm not saying that's an answer, but I'm just saying that those are kind of things that need consideration in terms of operationalization. How do we hear everyone in the room who's missing? And the other thing, the question about finance, I liked what Mandager's proposal was to make it more like kind of explain what it is and not get specific. But I think again, there's value in asking that question because it lets the candidates know the breadth and scope of work that they will be doing. So it's not so much whether they know the specifics, but we will get a sense of how are they gonna approach that and what is the, so I'd like to keep both of those. Right, in the interest of finishing this section up, I'm gonna go to Irv and then back to Andy. Irv? Yeah, I think all of us who are looking at this question, anti-racist, I just bristle at it because I don't know what it means. It really has no meaning for me, for me unless it is operationalized. If someone says anti-racist means that we allow and we have as a value that all people regardless of color, ethnicity, et cetera, are value and that they are not discriminated against in any kind of manner. That is, I can see that, but just to say anti-racist. And I heard one person say, well, you know, it's how a person feels about speaking or in terms of how they feel about speaking in a public meeting, whether they feel welcome or not. Now, the question that then raises is, what is an unwelcoming environment for a person who is a different color? And how does one, and how does a meeting such as this, would that be, how does one who is conducting a meeting such as this or a part of a meeting such as this say to a person who doesn't feel like they're a welcome, but you don't even know that because they look at the audience and say, well, I don't think that this is gonna be a welcoming place. But that gets into intent, et cetera. That's why it's hard for, and definitely, I certainly know where racism is. I certainly know when I encounter it. I certainly know when I talk to a person whether they're racist or not. But those are all kinds of internal mechanisms that are part and parcel of my experience in life. And, but I could not then extrapolate that and say, all right, I'm gonna project that onto another person who I don't know or audience of which I don't know. That's why to me, it is just to say anti-racist means to me that there is no attempt to understand it so that other people can understand it in a way that it's operationalized. That's why I say it's operationalized. What is it? Otherwise, saying it is meaningless. It's empty because we assume that by saying anti-racist, well, everyone knows what anti-racist is. Well, everyone doesn't know, and that's my point. Andy. Yeah, well, I am gonna switch topics, which is why I postponed, but I wanna go back to question 10 and the second sentence of question 10 just to make a point because it is not really had a focus that I think it needs. Two critical things the school committee is gonna have to do over the next months as we've talked about is start the process for going for hiring superintendent who's chief educational officer and chief executive of the schools and begin the development of the budget process. And we're gonna be choosing somebody who's gonna be three months on the school committee on the school committee, and that's it. Quite possibly, it depends upon whether they're candidates in the next election and elected. So the question of what are the relevant skills, knowledge, and experiences you'll bring to the school committee that will help to address those matters, I think is really an important question to consider because it is, what are you gonna be able to contribute during the three months that you're serving on two very important functions that the school committee is gonna have to do? I strongly urge maintaining that question. Okay, I'm gonna try to summarize very quickly and then I'm going to suggest what our next steps are. Okay, first of all, I've heard people suggest that we have two very important things that these members that will be new to this committee face. One is the beginning of the budget process and the other one is the beginning of the search process and that this section should be crafted to focus on what experiences they bring to those two critical issues. The very unresolved issue is 11 and how to put something like that together. With that in keeping in mind that we do have another meeting and we have people waiting for that other meeting, I'm going to suggest the following, that we not do the second discussion today that we had on the agenda and that is the discussion of the election process. And that was the issue about the remaining that comes over from August 28th and that's whether or not to include public comment during our interview process. What I'm going to suggest is that we deal with that next week. We will be meeting as scheduled next week in the same manner that we are this week. And what I would like to do is that since all of you now have the questions, I sent a word version to everyone. And to the public, if you have comments that you still would like to share with us about these questions, please do so. You can do that by sending it to town council at amherstma.gov for the town counselors and the school committee members with us in this meeting. If you have certain suggestions about how you would reword any of these questions, please send them to me by noon on Wednesday. And I'm sorry about the short turnaround but we have to post. So that is unless anybody has an objection, I'd like to adjourn this meeting so we can go on to the next one. You've seen no objections. And so I'm adjourning the special meeting of the town council and the remaining members of the school committee. I again want to thank everyone. This was a very thoughtful discussion and thank you for participating in it. We will immediately move on to the council meeting. Since several counselors have joined us and so I'm just going to begin the council meeting. Is that okay, Athena? Okay. Good evening. It's still September 11th and this is a regular meeting of the town council. The open meeting law allows us to meet this way and we have access to the public as well as in the room. The meeting is accessible in real time by Zoom, by phone and as live broadcast on Amherst media, channel nine and live stream. Given that we have a quorum of the council present I'm calling this September 11th, 2023 town council meeting to order at 7.02 and I'll call upon each counselor to confirm that they can hear us and we can hear them. Shalini Balmillan. Yes. Pat D'Angeles. Present. Anna Devlin-Goth here. Present. Lynn Griezmer is present. Mandy Johanicki. Present. D'Angelopes. Present. Michelle Miller. Present. Dorothy Pam. I'll come back for Dorothy. Pam Rooney. Present. Kathy Shane. Here. Andy Steinberg. Present. Jennifer Taub. Here. Alicia Walker. Here. Dorothy are you back yet? We do not have a chat function for this meeting. You have technical issues. Please let Athena and me know. And there is no change in the order of the agenda. Given that this is in fact, September 11th, I would like us to pause for a moment of silence in remembrance of all of the people who lost their lives on September 11th, 2001 and the many others affected by these tragic events. Thank you. I'm now going to ask Rachel Lisper and John Bellmen of GovHR Inc. They are going to actually make an announcement about the interviews that we are doing with regard to the police chief search. So I turn it over to you, Rachel and John. Good evening, council. I appreciate being able to spend the time with you as is my partner, Rachel. I'm John Bellmen, senior vice president of GovHR. We are beginning our process of finding your next police chief. We're doing stakeholder interviews, which we'll go on for the next couple of weeks and working with your town staff who've been very accommodating and very helpful in this early part of the process. And again, I thank you guys and appreciate that you've chosen us to help you in this very important decision. Rachel. Good evening. Thank you so much for having us. As John mentioned, my name is Rachel Lisper. I'm a vice president with GovHR and we are so excited to be on this search for your next police chief. And we're off to a great start. We have a full day again tomorrow and thank you all for your support in this effort. Thank you. I would like Athena, if you could put up on the screen the summary of the announcements. Next slide. Now, the one I sent you. Right. So I just wanna note that there are two public meetings tomorrow. These are listening sections. As somebody asked me, the listening session in this case means set up to listen to you. That is what our consultants want. The first one is at nine o'clock tomorrow morning in the Bangus Community Center. The second is at six o'clock tomorrow night in the Woodbury Room at the Jones Library. Please do not believe for a moment. This is the only way for you to give feedback on this search. In fact, you can go to www.amherstma.gov slash APD chief. And there you can find a feedback form where you can also provide feedback about characteristics, et cetera, you would like to see in that. And that same web page also provides information about the resources available. Thank you for being with us. We're going to move on to the rest of our announcements. On September 18th, we have a pretty complicated schedule. As I mentioned earlier in the earlier meeting, we begin at 5.30 with basically understanding what's in our master plan. And at six o'clock, we hold the required public forum for our master plan. At 6.30 or as soon as we finish those other meetings, but not before 6.30, we will again have a special meeting of the town council and the remaining members of the Amber School Committee, at which point we will need to finalize the questions and also discuss any additional issues around the process for the interviews. There will be public comment at that meeting. And at 7.30, we will then go on to our regular town council meeting. The town council and the remaining members of the school committee will meet on September 26th. We will at six o'clock, we will be doing the interviews and hopefully elect and actually appoint the Amber School Committee members to the three vacancies that exist. If we don't finish that night, we will carry over to October 2nd. And I just wanna note that there's a variety of other announcements on the agenda. So please make note of those. With that, I'm going to move on to the hearings regarding various ever source petitions. And I believe for the hearing purposes, we have Guilford mooring with us. Is that correct? Is there anybody from ever source Guilford? I do not see anybody. Here in the room, Lynn. They're in the room. Ah, well, please come forward and welcome. I'm Ryan Warch from coming to Massachusetts and I'm here on behalf of the ever source. And we will be, we have to hold this as three separate hearings. And so I just wanna ask, will you be speaking to all of them? Yes. Thank you. So with that, we're going to officially open the ever source petition to install one jointly owned mid span poll at approximately 191 West Pomeroy Lane. With that, I'm going to ask the presenter to, or the petitioner to make any comments. We're prepared to show on the screen the schematic. So we're wanting to install a mid span poll. You have to make sure that the button is on and you speak into the mic. The button is on. Okay, sorry about that. Got it. So we're requesting to install mid span poll. The customer is upgrading their service size to install solar on their house. And there's an existing underground service to his house that's kind of a hazard. So if we install this poll where I have it staked out, we won't have to cut any trees down and he'll be able to upgrade his service. Okay. Are there questions from counselors? Pam Rooney. Yeah, my question is, can you describe what the underground hazard is? It was my understanding that in fact, we're trying to push people toward more underground facilities so that we eliminate more poll. Why do we need a poll here when there's already an existing underground system? So his underground service is there's an exposed wire. The reason for the overhead is we can't feed his service the way the system is. So he'd have to pay a lot to upgrade the system in order to get his solar going. If we do an overhead, I don't have to charge him anything and he can have his service upgraded. Pam, did you have any follow-up question on that? Mandy Jo. My question's similar, but it relates to, it sounds like we'd be going from an underground service to an above ground service that crosses the road. So how many other services in that area actually cross the road above ground? Are we adding like, is it common for the services to those houses to be above ground there that they span the road above the road at 18 feet or whatever, or would this be sort of the only one? So Pomeroy, if you look at my, I did a sketch on the map. So I think the sketch is looking east on West Pomeroy Lane. All those services are overhead going down the road to houses across the street, but back this way towards the east this way. Sorry, the other way is west. There's a couple underground services off a one transformer that's very far down the road. So in order for him to do his solar and not have voltage rise to sell the voltage back properly for the system, he would have to upgrade that transformer and all the wire down the road and the cost would be to him. So this is the way to give him what he needs reasonably. Kathy? I have a slightly different question and this is a great picture to show it. This is along, I think the same side of the Pomeroy is the land the town owns. And we've talked about potentially developing some of the frontage for there's a range of possible. There is no sidewalk there now. If we wanted to put a sidewalk in because there were more people living on that side of the road, is there room or are we putting poles up where one might wanna have the sidewalk? I'm not sure how much the public, well, the public way it's all public land if we own it, but just trying to think of the future for sidewalk for bikes, something other than cars. And that may be a question to you, but it may also be an issue that Guilford would need to address. Yeah, can I take that one? Please. So in this area of West Pomeroy by Hickory Ridge, you have enough room to add bike lanes and sidewalks. You would trim back the trees a little bit to get the bike lane in if you put a bike lane and you could put the sidewalk on Hickory Ridge side. The one problem you have with doing a sidewalk here is you cannot easily connect it to Pomeroy Village Center because you have to cross a wetland. And somewhere in there, we'd have to widen the road over the wetland to get the bike lanes and the sidewalk across. So yes, here you could do it, but it's a bigger project and a harder project because of the wetlands to the east. I'm gonna go to Dorothy, Pam, and then I actually have a question, but Dorothy, go ahead. Pardon me if my momentary inattention that I missed something, but I'm looking at a yellow pole with the yellow thing doing it and then a yellow wire across the street. And it's looking very cheerful and kind of like a circus. And I know that there's an attempt on the part of some of us to restore the natural look of roads, not to have it complete with wires crossing the streets and too many poles all over the place. Is this really what is intended or did I miss something? Are you suggesting is the pole going to be yellow? Yeah, is it gonna be yellow? Is the wire gonna go across the street? It totally ruins the vista. I mean, I know I'm using aesthetics, but they matter. They really matter. And particularly when you're getting to, you know, outlying more rural areas, we just don't wanna get it all junked up. So there's gotta be a better way to do it is what I'm saying. I understand motivation is very good to not let a homeowner be saddled with a great excess cost, but there must be some rational way to deal with that besides this. So let's just address the issue of whether this is yellow because you wanted to demonstrate where it is versus it's actually going to be installed and be yellow. No, it's not gonna be installed yellow. It's gonna be like the other pole, it'll be wood. And then the wire going across the street will be like a black color and then the guy wire will be silver. Got it. But there will be a pole, a wire across the street. Yes. Another thing to mention is the span length here is very long. So normally there would be a pole installed there anyway. That's one of the reasons why I don't have to charge anything to the customer because the pole should be there to begin with. So my question is down the road. Another person wants to put in solar or we build something on the buildable land at Hickory Ridge and we want to not want to, we are required to make it net zero, which inevitably means some solar. At some point it seems to me that we need to have an appropriate upgrade of the system and that may also be the point at which we say, hey, underground again gang, just let's make it look better. But this seems almost like patchwork. It seems like we're doing this one thing to help one person put on solar without thinking about the fact that we're trying to encourage as many people as possible to add solar and you as our electric provider need to be taking that into consideration with the capacity of your system. One thing we are doing is we have a circuit going down College Street and my other two petitions later are to tie that one circuit to another which does increase the capacity for the downtown Amherst right over here. But not this area. Not this area, that's something that we can look into. You can always talk to your account executive from Eversource, Esther, and we could talk to her how those conversations, we can look at what the system capacity is, what you're planning on adding for solar. Those are conversations that can be had, yes. But for now, we're stuck with, this customer wants to put solar on their house. How do we get it to that? How do we allow them to do it? And this is, for them, this is the way that we would do it. And I just wanna mention this is not the first time that I've been involved with the solar project where capacity limited the amount of solar that could be installed. And that was also the case when we did the survival center that at that point, it had to be a major upgrade to the system. So I just, I can't, I've said enough. Jennifer? Yes, so just last week, I received and I'm getting, it's kind of a kippo what Lynn said, but an email from a constituent on Beston Street, close to in town, it's near a couple blocks from Kendrick Park, it's a small street. And a number of houses there put solar and then another, most recently a resident contacted Eversource to put solar and they were told that they would have to pay to upgrade the system. So I don't know if you couldn't do this, what you're offering here. So the way it is now in 2023, is that when a customer wants to add solar, they're responsible for upgrading the system to be able to sell the power back. That's just the way our policy is right now. So in this case, they would have to pay for this, but I can justify giving it to them based off the scenario, the specific scenario here. I'm not sure about the other one that you're talking about. Apparently he's the other, his neighbors didn't have to pay. So I don't know if he was just... So they may have done it in 2022, where that wasn't required for them to pay. In 2023, there was new laws that were passed. So that might be it. Thank you, Pat. Yeah, and I think it's important that we stick with this topic. Pam? Thank you, similar question. And that is, I'd be interested in knowing what legislation was passed that now requires a customer to cover that upgrade cost. But I would appreciate getting something from Eversource that describes as we encourage people to go toward solar, what the ramification will be in terms of all this additional infrastructure that may be needed, the additional pull here, the middle line pull there in order to facilitate solar. And just wonder if we can ask for a timeline, something that TSO perhaps could discuss. How do we get Eversource to give us kind of a global perspective and a global plan for the kinds of upgrades that may be needed as we move forward with more and more solar? Okay, we've had enough, we've had a number of councilor comments. I do want to open this to the public and ask if there's anybody either on Zoom or in the audience that would like to speak particularly to this request. Seeing none, I'll come back to any further councilor questions. So at this point, we are not going to vote because we don't do that during hearings, but later on this will come up as a vote. I think we have to move to close the hearing. I'm sorry. We have to move to close the hearing. To close the hearing, yes. So I'll move to close the hearing. Okay. And we have to vote on that. Yeah, we do. Thank you. Okay, we're going to vote to close the hearing on the Eversource petition to install one joint in the own mid-span pull at approximately 191 West Humroy Lane. It's been most, it's been made in second and I'll start with Pat D'Angelo's. Hi. Anna Devlin-Goth here. Hi. Lynn Griezmers and I, Mandi Johannike. Hi. Nika Lopes. Hi. Michelle Miller. Hi. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Rooney. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Hi. Jennifer Tob. Yes, Alicia Walker. Yes. Shalini Balmille. Yes. Thank you. So we move over onto the next one and this is a petition to install one solely owned underground duct bank within the intersection of college and South Pleasant Streets and one solely owned manhole at the intersection of Ceylon and South Pleasant Streets. And would you like to speak to that? And is this the map you need? Yes, that's the map. Thank you. For this one, yep. So there's an existing manhole there that we put in as part of that circuit project I was talking about earlier. So this conduit is actually in the ground already. Guilford gave us the OK to put that in there for now before they do the pavement. OK. So we're petitioning that and then the second part of it would be to continue that. OK. The other petition. Are there questions from the council? Mandy, Joe. So, yeah, this question is more for Guilford in the town. And then I have two about you for you. But the first one is you indicated it too. But his memo stated that part of the work has been complete. And you just indicated that potentially all of this has been complete, at least on this picture. There's a second part to this that's a different picture. And so I'd like to know from Paul and Guilford how that got completed without town council's permission. It sounds like right now we have no option but to say yes if it's already done. And when that's answered, I'll ask my other two questions. So this is part of the process of kind of planning and looking ahead. Eversource came to us with a petition and a plan to actually put more power into the downtown, the service and new buildings that we're putting up. This is part of that. In conjunction, Mass DOT doesn't want you and won't. They'll actually can find you and charge you money if you take a project they're building and you cut the pavement or do something to the project within five years of completion. So I didn't want to have to pay a fine to Mass DOT. We know we want to get more power to the downtown. So this full section of conduit was put in. If the council says they can't use it, the council said they can't use it and just sits there. But at least it's in and I don't have to go and work out anything with Mass DOT to cut the road in the next five years. So that's the reason it was green lighted and why we normally will green light something like this that's gonna save the infrastructure in the long run. And Joe. So I guess just a follow-up on that. If we knew it was happening, I guess why, you know, I'm guessing the council might not say no, but it sounds like it was known in enough advance to have to do it that the council could have had this hearing four months ago or five months ago to green light it and actually give the official approval before it was done. And I guess that's why I don't know what I'm not understanding as to why it took a while to do that conduit. Why we weren't asked to approve it before it was done because it doesn't sound like it was done on an emergency basis. It actually was done on an emergency basis. This actually wasn't in the original plan for this circuit. This was gonna stay open and not connected. And I brought it up to the Eversource Rep and said, when are you gonna try to connect this? And they said, well, within the next five years we're gonna wanna connect this. And that's when I pointed out that within five years I still can't let you cut the road because there's a project of that intersection that's a mass DOT funded project. So that's when it became an issue. The contractor came in and had it in in a day and it was done, we're actually scheduled for paving this section of roadway by the end of the month, the 1st of October. So we were trying to get it all in and tied up. And it was kind of, it wasn't the plan but they didn't realize the five year constraint on us. Thank you. May I ask my two other questions? Please. For the Selen Street duct bank. So I guess that's the next, yeah, the next part with the next photo. What kind of street cutting, it goes actually to this one. What kind of street cutting enclosures are required for the work since it seems to go across the entire street. And with what Guilford just said is it outside of the route nine work such that it won't affect that. But are you cutting the street to put that duct bank in? We would have to, yes. And so what kind of repair of that is that going to be? I don't know what where that street is on repairs and stuff, but and what kind of closure and disruption to downtown traffic will that have? So I'll jump in. So we require them to do a trench cut that's clean. If you look at the cut that they did for this previous work, it's only about 18 inches wide. This will be a little bigger because a lot bigger because the manhole goes in. And then once the kind of, it leaves the manhole, it'll be 18 inches again. It will run all the way across the road because we're not planning to pave this road anytime soon. They'll do a temporary patch. And then if it has a third settles, I'll have to come back and do a permanent patch to level out the road. And then they have to do the repairs to the sidewalk because they are going to go across a section of sidewalk to tie into the conduit in front of the old First Baptist Church. Thank you. And one last question, I apologize. The orders for both of these pieces of work include an entire paragraph about quote, poll shall be of sound timber and reasonably straight. And it goes on to talk about poles and wires at 18 feet and 20 some feet and 12 feet. And so that doesn't seem to be relevant to either of these works. So if we leave those paragraphs in, are we, when we approve an order, are we allowing poles to be installed in the future without another hearing? No. So if we're petitioning for underground, we would only be allowed to have the underground in place. We wouldn't have permission to put poles. That's the petition paperwork that we send to, you know, there's over 50 towns in Western Mass. It's the same thing that everybody gets. Thank you. Okay. Are there any other councilor questions? Are there any questions from the audience, either on Zoom or in person? Are there any other councilor questions? Do I hear a motion to call to close the hearing? So moved. Second. Thank you, Angela. Okay. We're going to move to a vote on closing the hearing on a Devlin-Goth here. Hi. Lynn Griespers and I, Mandy Johannicky. Hi. Annika Lopes. Hi. Michelle Miller. Hi. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Rooney. Yeah. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Hi. Jennifer Tobbe. Yes. Leisha Walker. Yes. Shalini Balmillan. Yes. Patty Anjans. Hi. We're going to move to the final hearing. And this is an ever source petition to install one jointly on pole at 354 Henry Street. And I'll go ahead and ask for the presentation, please. So this one is to install a pole. The customer has a very narrow strip of property. So we would have to install a pole across the street to feed him with power. He has a little bit more property further down the road, but that's wetlands and you're talking cutting many trees down. So this way we'd be able to do it without, you know, trimming or cutting any trees down. And we'd be able to get him the power that he needs. Are there questions? I have a question or two. Does this house, does it front Henry Street? It'll be behind 340 Henry Street. I have another picture. Okay. It does front Henry Street. Yeah. Got it. Okay. Are there questions from the council? Are there questions from the audience? And back to the council for one more option. And so I'm going to ask for a motion to close the hearing. So moved. Second. Thank you. And we'll begin the vote. Griezmer is an I, Mandy Johanicki. I. Anika Lopes. I. Michelle Miller. I. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Rooney. Yeah. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Hi. Jennifer Todd. Yes. Alicia Walker. Yes. Charlie Balmille. Yes. Pat Dangelis. Hi. Anna Devlin-Gothen. Hi. Okay. We will be voting on these when we get to the action items on the agenda, which will be after we do public comment and after we do the consent agenda. Okay. So thank you. And if you want to just sit in the audience in case there's more questions, that's fine. Sure. Thank you very much. Hey, we're going to now move to public comment. This is the only general public comment this evening. Obviously there was three other opportunities on the polls. If you're physically in the room, please make sure you've signed up to make public comment. And if you were in the audience, please raise your hand at this time. We're just taking a moment's pause while someone signs up for public comment. Let me go on and just say, residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes. The committee will not engage, or the council will not engage in a dialogue or comment on a matter raised during public comment. Athena. Alex, please come up to the microphone, state your name and address before you make your comment. And is the green light on? Yes. Good. Thank you. Hi. I'm Alex Niefer, owner of 354 Henry Street, the last of the three ever sourced properties that were under review or under petition, excuse me. I just wanted to comment on the use of the property. We are building a family farm, organic farm on the property. It's been our family's dream for quite some time. And so obviously, building a home and building a farm on a site will require electricity. And we're doing this in quite a tight budget and trying to be good stewards of the land while also being good stewards of the community and bring an organic product, organic produce, organic chicken eggs to the community. So we've been living here in town for several new years now on Southeast Street. My wife's a resident, been a resident for a number of years. I've been resident here and also a member of the trustees over at the Monson Building Library. So we're committed to the community. So I just wanted to leave that information with you. Your consideration. Thank you for joining us and thank you for sharing your dreams. Thanks. I'm surprised my kids stay quiet this whole time. We are very impressed. There'll be treats tonight. All right. There's no other public comments. So we're going to move to the consent agenda and I'm gonna thank you all for joining us this evening. The following items were selected because they were considered to be routine and it was reasonable to expect they would pass with no controversy. If you want to remove an item, say so after I read the original motion and then we will vote, okay? To move the following items and the printed motions they're under and approve those items as a single unit. Nine A one to seven approval of the following town manager appointments. Board of Health, Community Preservation Act Committee, Community Safety and Social Justice Committee, Human Rights Commission, Jones Library Building Committee, Recreation Commission and Public Health Director. Are there any requests to remove anything from the list? Seeing none, I'm seeking a second. Second. Thank you. Any further questions or comments? Again, seeing none, I'm going to begin the voting with Mandy Johanna. Hi. Anika Lopes. Hi. Michelle Miller. Hi. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Rooney. Yeah. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Hi. Jennifer Tobb. Yes. Alicia Walker. Yes. Shalini Balmillan. Yes. Pat DeAngels. Hi. Anna Devlin-Gothier. Hi. And Lynn Griezmer. It's I and it's unanimous. Thank you. We have no resolutions this evening. I know we will have some next week. We have no presentations and discussions. So we're going to move on to the action items and those are the initial ones are the motions regarding the over source petitions. So the first of those is to approve order, the order for joint or identical pole locations to install a one jointly owned 45 foot mid span pole labeled 3372-43 M between poles 372-43 and 372-44 on West Pomeray Lane as indicated on the plan marked 1-325-1233-8051-3137. Is there a second? Second. Is there any further question or comments? Seeing none. I'm going to move to a vote. I'm going to start with Anika Lopes. Aye. Michelle. Aye. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Rooney. Yes. Kathy Sheen. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Aye. Jennifer Taub. Yes. Alicia Walker. Yes. Shelly Balmille. Yes. Pat DeAngeles. Aye. Anna Devon-Goth here. Aye. Lynn Gries-Merson. Aye. Mandy Johannity. Aye. It's your turn. Second. Actually there are two motions. Regarding the second set of polls or second set of bannals. I think in this case and conduits. And it's to approve the order for underground locations to install a one solely owned underground duct bank. Six to four inch conduits. Incased in concrete. For an existing manhole within the intersection of college street and south pleasant street. And approximately 280 feet to the intersection of south pleasant and selling streets. As indicated on the plan marked 13939474 dash 80530649. Is there a second? Second. Are there any questions? Seeing none. We're going to move to a vote. And this time I'm starting with Michelle Miller. I do this to keep you awake gang. Hi. Got it. Little humor here and there. Come on. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Ernie. Yeah. Kathy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Pam Ernie. No. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Jennifer. Jennifer top. Yes. We should walk her. Yes. John好不好 mobile? Yes. Bottangels. I, Abby David. author. I'm increasing reason. I안�이트 scene anecdote. That's unanimous. The second. one solely owned underground manhole and a hundred and forty foot duck bank of six to four inches conduits encased in concrete at the intersection of Selen and South Pleasant Streets as indicated on the plan marked 13939474-80530649. The manhole will intersect the proposed duck duck bank requested and ever sourced petition 13939474 construction will continue north northerly along South Pleasant Street and connecting to an existing duck bank that ends approximately 100 feet from manhole 128-slash-6-U. Is there a second? Second. Any questions or comments? Seeing none I'll move to a vote and this time we start with Dorothy Pann. Yes. Pam Rooney. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Hi. Jennifer Tobbe. Yes. Alicia Walker. Yes. Charlene Balmille. Yes. Pat DeAngels. Hi. Anna Devlin-Gothier. Hi. In Greece, prison, I'm Andy Johanike. Hi. Annika Lopes. Hi. Michelle Miller. Hi. It is unanimous. We now go on to the poll regarding the third hearing and this is to prove the order for joint or identical poll locations to install one jointly owned 40 foot mid span poll on 354 Henry Street as indicated on the plan marked 13237440-80521995. Is there a second? Second. Are there any questions or comments? Seeing none, we all begin with Pam Rooney. I think that was an aye. Pam. Again, yes. Kathy. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Hi. Jennifer Tobbe. Yes. Alicia Walker. Yes. Charlene Balmille. Yes. Pat DeAngels. Aye. Anna Devlin-Gothier. Aye. Lynn Greasper. Yes. I'm Andy Johanike. Aye. Anika Lopes. Aye. And Michelle Miller. Aye. And Dorothy Pan. Yes. That's unanimous. Thank you for joining us this evening. We're now going to go on to the November 7th by annual town election warrant. We're joined tonight by Suadette and she has provided us with two different memos. So this is where we decide whether we're having, well, Su, why don't you just explain both things and then we'll go on. Okay. Good evening, councilors. Nice to see everyone. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Okay. Okay, good. Excuse me. So the first item is pretty standard. It's the town warrant. It has to be posted seven days before the election in order to legally hold the election. So that just needs to be voted. That should be straightforward. And the second thing is the whether to decide on in-person early voting under the Votes Act. It's not required for local elections and the Board of Registrar's must meet to recommend it and then the same process that we did in May. So the Board of Registrar's did meet on August 30th and discussed all of the different ways that we can vote and what to offer and decided that one week of early voting in person would be sufficient during normal business hours at the town hall. So that's what they were proposing to you. What else do I want to mention? The times and dates are set by the Votes Act. So they, it's normal business hours and they decided to leave that alone. They did discuss having it on a Saturday. They did discuss having it during the week at night and decided that the outcome of, or the turnout was not high enough to warrant it. Based on like the four different ways that people can vote, they thought that offering it for a full week for a local election was sufficient. So those are the two things. Okay. And for the benefit of the public and counselors who are regularly communicating with the public, would you please just review the four ways people can vote? Yes, absolutely. So you have absentee, which has been on the books forever. So that is when a person is not able to go to the polls on election day, they can vote as soon as the ballots are ready in our office over the counter or by mail. There's mail in ballots. Anybody can request a mail in ballot. No excuse needed. And right now we have about 1200 requests so far. There's of course voting on election day from 7am until 8pm at your polling place. And then the fourth is if you opt in for the local is the in-person early voting. Before we move to these two motions, are there other questions about voting at this time? Dorothy? I just need a little more specificity. So if that's, does that mean it starts on Tuesday the 31st of October? No, Monday through Friday. So it'll be October 30th through Friday, November 3rd. Okay, that's good. So Monday through Friday and then not the day before the election. No, because the law, no, the law outlines that, I mean, let me grab this here. And the hours again would be 8am to 4? 4.30, normal business hours. Yeah, but I don't, those aren't handy. I mean, I just wanted you to say what the normal business hours were. I'm sorry. Okay. 8am to 4.30pm Monday through Friday, October 3rd. And the way the law reads, we can't begin any earlier than the 17th day before the election. And we cannot end any later than two business days before the election. So we're constrained. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. Are there any other questions? Okay. Then I'm going to place the first, I'm sorry. Kathy. I just have a really quick one. Sue, I'm totally in favor of this. At a future date or just send it in, I'd be curious on how many come in person. And I find, we've been voting that way and it's so easy. So people are doing it kind of there in their ways. So just to get a count on how many we get in and that after this next election, I don't want you to have to do it. I think it's useful. I can tell you what happened in May. We had 400 and it was in the memo, 424, something like that. Can't find it right now, but it was about 105, 110 a day. And we did have one evening and it was only a handful of people that came in throughout the whole night. I mean, I could count them on both hands. So that was pretty dead. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions? Okay. Move to approve the warrant for the regular town election on Tuesday, November 7th, 2023 for posting. Is there a second? Second. Any other questions or comments? Then I believe I'm at Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Hi. Jennifer Todd. Yes. Alicia Walker. Yes. Shalini Balmill. Yes. Pat DeAngels. Hi. Anna Devlin-Goth here. Hi. Lynn Griesmers. I'm Andy Johanicki. Hi. Annika Lopes. Hi. Michelle Miller. Hi. Dorothy Pam. Yes. And Pam Maroney. Yes. That's unanimous. The second motion is in-person early voting. Do hold in-person early voting to or in the first floor meeting room of Town Hall for the following dates and times. Monday, October 30th, 2023, 8 to 4.30. We continue on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, October 31st, November 1st, November 2nd, November 3rd, all from 8 o'clock a.m. to 4.30 p.m. Is there a second? Shane, seconds. Is there any other questions or comments? Dorothy. In your spoken words, you omitted the word Friday. You gave the date but you omitted the word Friday. I'm sorry. Thank you. Friday, November 3rd is the last date for in-person voting, early voting. Okay. Thank you. Are there any other questions or comments? Seeing none, we're moving on. Andy Steinberg, it's your turn. Hi. It's Jennifer Todd. Yes. Alicia Walker. Yes. Shalini Balmell. Yes. Pat DeAngeles. Hi. Anna Devlin-Gothier. Hi. Lynn Griesmers. And I'm Andy Joe Hannigan. Hi. Annika Lopes. Hi. Michelle Miller. Hi. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Rooney. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Okay. Sue, thank you in advance for all of the work you do to make the elections in Amherst sound, defensible, and excellent service to our constituents. Thank you very much. Thank you. And keep the humor going. I like that. Okay. Good night. Good night. Okay. We are going to go on to the Charter Review Committee charge. We're going to hear from GOL. And Pat, is there a general GOL report or do you just want to go to this? We're going to go right to this and Mandy's going to take that on. And Mandy Joe is going to take it. Okay. Go ahead. So, GOL voted five to zero to recommend adoption of the modified Charter Review Committee charge that came out of GOL. And also to recommend that the council vote special municipal employee status for the committee members. We modified it that the modifications mainly relate to sort of condensing it down so that things weren't repeated. Removing specific deadlines for certain actions, except for the one year that the Charter itself requires the report by. And then the other big change is that we changed sort of the appointment timeframe from the original plan, the original proposal or charge that was referred to the GOL had a January one appointment and we moved it to April one with a hope that or an intention that the next council would be the one to actually do the appointments for the committee and we're here to make that process as smooth and easily pick up a bowl as possible when a new council is is inaugurated so that they're not starting from scratch. They've got a process that started a charge that started and the committee felt that April one was plenty of time for them to be able to accept CAFs do any interviews they might do and then make those appointments. Okay, Kathy, you have your hand up. Yeah, I thought the edits were a big improvement and they make it very simple. I have one question if you could scroll down a little bit Athena to the membership. So the membership shall reflect the diversity of the town of Amherst population. When we get to that in the future, the next council, it would be nice to have some definition of what that means. You know, I think we shouldn't the easiest thing is we shouldn't all be the same type of something but you know there we have people who are farmers. We have different social classes so I don't want it to find here. I just want maybe we have a quick discussion on what do we mean by that and then we see who applies, right? We can only appoint the people who apply. Are there other comments or questions? Okay, seeing none, I'm going to move to the motion and that's to adopt the charter review. I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry Dorothy. I had trouble raising my hand. I think in answer to Kathy's question, if we just add the statement about diversity that you just had the word representative and that means that the idea would be trying to represent a variety of people and classes in the town so that it speaks for the whole town. Are there any other questions or comments? Okay, to adopt the charter review committee charge as presented. Is there a second? Second. Are there any other questions or comments? Seeing none, Jennifer, it's your turn. Yes. Alicia Walker. Yes. Shalini Balmille. Yes. Pat D'Angelo. Hi. Anna Devlin-Gothier. Hi. Lynn Griezmer. Isn't I? Mandy Jo. Sorry, Mandy Jo. I. Anika Lopes. I. Michelle Miller. I. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Rooney. Is she still here? Pam. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Hi. It's unanimous. We also need to vote the SME or special municipal employee status for the charter review committee and so the motion there is to designate special municipal employee SME status for the charter review committee. Is there a second? There's a second, but I'll second, but I just realized that the no, there's more, but it's the 2024 charter review committee. Thank you. So that's how the motion should read. We changed the title of it. The other one should also be 2024. Okay. Is that acceptable? Do we have to go back and re-vote that? Okay. Okay. So it's a, it's been made and seconded it now and reads to designate special municipal employee SME status for the 2024 charter review committee. It's been made and seconded. Are there any further questions or comments? Okay. See none. Alicia, it's your turn. Yes. Shalini Balmillan. Yes. Pat DeAngeles. Hi. Anna Devon-Goth here. Hi. Lynn Griezmer is an I, Mandy Johanicki. Hi. Anika Lopes. Michelle Miller. Hi. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Maroney. Yeah. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Jennifer Tapp. Yes. So we have one more. Would you like me to speak to that one? Yes. Okay. Yes. I know where we're going. Sorry. There's a third motion here that talks about what GOL talked about was that to get the process started, some committee needs to be in charge of that under the council's policy to in making recommendations for appointments to multiple member bodies. No charge. What's a committee in charge of that recommendation process for this particular committee, I guess it would be. Although now that I'm talking, yeah, the town council is the appointing authority. So what GOL talked about was it really probably most logically falls within GOL's general charge, but in order to start the process, GOL needs a referral from the council to begin things like posting the bulletin board notice. Otherwise, there's no council committee in charge of it under the process for the council's adopted for making appointments or making recommendations for appointments. It's a really long policy title. And the other thing is things like the CAF that we have out there for council committee appointments might not actually have an option to check the 2024 charter review committee. I know the last time we had to do one with the precincting, the redistricting committee, we had to add that option onto the CAF. So they would check things like that. So this upcoming motion is a motion to essentially refer to GOL the start of the process. And within this motion, it really only talks about the bulletin board notice and reviewing and making sure the community activity form is inclusive of the new committee and all, but it explicitly states that the process would begin with this council, but finish and continue with the next council so that it's clear that this council is not intending to make the appointments. There is a date in here. GOL did not talk about a specific date by which it would post the bulletin board. And I must say as personally in reading the date and the I'm not even sure what the date is for. If it's you have to post by September 18th, I would not recommend that because then we'll be getting CAFs for months before anybody does anything with them. If we're going to put a date in, I would put the end of the year and aim for the council basically posting this sometime in December. One of the things that comes to my mind and that is that it really would not be appropriate for this council to be receiving the CAFs. And so it seems to me that the best time to post this would be January 2nd, 2024. At that point the council officially turns over and all CAF responses would come to the new council. And GOL could certainly do that through a direction to the town or clerk of the council of finish the posting and hey, can you post this on this particular day? Right. So if we're going to have a date in here, it would be by January 2nd, 2024. Does that make sense? Okay. So the motion then is to refer development of the Charter Review of the 2024 Charter Review Committee, bulletin board notice and review of the community activity form to the governance organization and legislation committee for recommendation on bulletin board notice language and confirmation that the CAF will be functional for this committee following posting to the council by January 2nd, 2024. The appointment process will begin with this council but continue, but actually be concluded by the next. Is that yes? Okay. May I ask a question before you. Yes. Is the council looking for a recommendation from GOL before the notice is posted? I think that word recommendation should be for posting on bulletin board notice language instead of for recommendation. Most committees just post it directly. Okay. Yeah. We did not eloquently word this motion at all. I don't even want to talk about motion development. Sometimes it looks like something else. It's not at the top of my game this weekend. So the council is not seeking a recommendation from GOL. They're looking to GOL to continue and approve the notice and then I'll go ahead and post it by January 2nd. Is that correct? I believe that is the intent. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. Are there questions from the council? I think you made that motion, Lynn, but we don't have a second. Oh, is there a second? Okay. Are there questions from the council? Okay. Seeing none, we've done the full alphabet. So we're back to Shelley Balmille. Yes. Pat D'Angelois. Anna Devlin-Gothier. Hi. Lynn Breeschmursen. I'm Andrew Johanke. Hi. Anika Lopes. Hi. Michelle Miller. Hi. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Rooney. Yeah. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Jennifer Taub. Yes. And Alicia Walker. Yes. Okay. Thank you. That's unanimous. And let me say we're going to take a break. Like I think people really need one. And when we come back, we'll talk about the town manager evaluation process and include our meeting. Okay. We will return at 8.15. Please turn off your mics. Please turn off your picture and turn your picture back on when you come back. Please return to your seats. Please put your video on if you're back. If your video is on, then I'm not going to take roll. Michelle, Shalini, Anna, are you here? Alicia, are you here? I am here. Thank you. Thank you. Shalini, are you back? Dorothy, you have your hand up, but we haven't gone back into session yet. So hold on. Shalini? It was a private question. Well, no, not whatever. Okay. Let's keep going. We are moving on to our first discussion of the town manager evaluation process. Dorothy, you have your hand up. Yeah. I just wanted to say that I will have to leave at 9. I've assigned my students to watch the busing battleground movie about Boston in 1974 tonight at 9. And that's where I'll be. So just wanted to let you know, thank you. Thank you for letting us know and we'll make sure we note that in the minutes perhaps we'll all be done by 9. Always a wish. All right. In preparation for this discussion, I put together the draft. It's all draft. It's everything is draft. Okay? Draft timeline and attached various documents. Some of them are not drafts. For instance, the goals for the town manager are not draft. We adopt both. The town manager's contracts and two amendments are not drafts. They've already been approved and signed. The other things that are in here that are obviously there for discussion is the valuation instrument for staff. The example of emails to staff, chair, committee chairs in the public and the instrument we used in the past just to remind people. Again, I did not try to get creative. I tried to basically lay it out so that we could begin the discussion. So Dorothy, you have your hand up. Thank you. All right. Comments, questions? Mind you. My basic comment is mainly on the proposed schedule, which I think is too long. As proposed, it's asking the manager to write a self-evaluation on a year's worth of work after barely nine months. Not even a full nine months. And then we spend the next two and a half months, essentially a full eight or nine weeks with meetings that discuss those evaluations starting on October 16th and ending on December 18th. That seems extremely long and drawn out. And so I would like to see the process shortened to sort of as short as it could get, as compact as it could get, I guess, or compacter with the possibility of having the manager submit his self-evaluation in late October, if not early November. Vindy Jo, I share your observations and remember that we wrestled with this very issue last year. So one option is for us to refer this to GOL, which is where something like this belongs, and have them discuss how to shorten this and bring it back to a future to the council meeting next week. It has been posted with GOL just in case we wanted to do that, but it doesn't have to be. And what I think would be interesting is to take your goal of having the town managers emailing us his self-evaluation to be sometime in late October and kind of work forward and backward from that, if you know what I mean. In other words, how can we abbreviate the time in front and how can we shorten it in the back? So versus sitting here and trying to rework the calendar as a whole group is my question. I'm open, but I'd like to hear other comments. Michelle? I support that. And I also just wanted to ask, so we just did this evaluation. Yesterday. Right. So and maybe this is a question if it does go to GOL, but is there a way that we can take the mechanism that we're using and have it somehow reflect that we like to build off of what we've already put a lot of work into in the evaluation nine months ago, as opposed to or will the mechanism be exactly the same, like the same sort of depth and breadth that we were asked to do? Let me provide kind of two or three pieces of history here. First of all, the charter requires that we annually review the town manager. Okay. So we have to do that. The process that we use to evaluate the town manager is a legacy from the select board. Virtually everything about it is a legacy. The staff questionnaire, the fact that we asked the community and the committees and the public to end staff to all give us feedback is legacy. The fact that we write individual evaluations is legacy. The fact that we then have a reading session is legacy. And the fact that we then do the review of the memo, which has to be written only by one person because otherwise it's a debate and outside a public meeting. And then we come back and we review the changes. So in other words, the entire process is a legacy. Over the years, and this is my third point, several of us have wished that we had personally taken the time and come up with a different recommended process that wasn't as long as and drawn out and wasn't as multifaceted. And some of the reasons that I personally, I want to be very clear, have been concerned about this process is that we particularly when it comes to the community and to committees, we do not hear from everybody. It is not a statistical sample. And therefore it makes it very hard for me besides reading those comments to say, I've now heard from the public because we haven't heard from the public. So it's very hard for me to defend something where you've only gotten 11 comments in a population of close to 40,000 people. So I'd love for this to be revamped, but I will personally also tell you I'm not going to have time to do that this year. I'm more than glad to work with anybody else who wants to. I'm also more than glad to have this go to GOL and see what we can do to shorten the time frame. But I'm I am not in a position to offer to redo this evaluation process this year as much as I would love to do so. Jennifer. Wouldn't I mean it does it, it just seems to me it's it is too late. We're at the evaluation. So this is really not the time we can revamp the evaluation. I mean, could that be something that's on the next council's early much earlier agenda. Be the best time to do it. We're talking about the question year is going to staff and departments next week. So how could we revamp it? Well, I think if we send this to GOL, there may be a way to shorten maybe a way to start this later and then end it even earlier so that instead of it being over a three month period, perhaps we can make it over six weeks or even less so that we would not have to send out everything by next week. It still seems tight to really make. Yeah, I mean to revamp it at this point is is well it's not something I can do as much as I would love to see it done. So maybe the best thing is to refer to GOL. Look at the timeline. Why GOL? Hey, all right. Is there is there a motion? I'll move to refer the town manager evaluation process timeline to governance organization and legislation committee. Second. When do they have to report back? When does GOL have to report back? You can either report back on the 18th or you can report back on the October 2nd unless something has to happen as soon after the 18th. There we go. I think that's wonderful. The motion's been made. Is there a second? Okay, we already seconded. Are there any other questions about this? Then we're going to move to a vote for referral. I have to find a sheet where I can record again. Thank you. Okay. I've been informed that Pat is the next one up. Dorothy has her hand up, Lynn. Dorothy? I just want to say something that's just totally obvious that the town manager has lots of vacancies in his leadership cabinet. And for us to take up too much of his time on the evaluation, when we're all going to say in the evaluation what a great job he does without enough people in his leadership cabinet is a bit ridiculous. I think we have to find time to shorten this process just in the reason of sanity. Okay. That's the goal. Good. Thank you. Okay. All right. Are we moving to, and I'm sorry, is it Pat is first? I. Okay. Devon got here. I. Lynn Grease-Murray is in the eye. Mandy Johannicky. Hi. Anika Lopes. I. Michelle Miller. I. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Rooney. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Hi. Jennifer Todd. Yes. Alicia Walker. Yes. Shalini Balmille. Yes. It's unanimous. GOL. Thank you very much. Okay. We are now up to committee reports. And we'll go with CRC. We're still working on the nuisance house slash nuisance property by law. We're trying to rename it nuisance property. And this coming is my calendar a week from Thursday. Right. There's my calendar. Let me make sure I get the date right because it would be bad if I had that wrong. On September 21st there will be a public hearing on the opt-in specialized stretch code and whether to adopt it. Okay. And so the earliest that would come to the council is October. Well, yeah, because if we finish with it, it goes to GOL from there. Got it. Okay. Anything else? Nope. Elementary school building committee. Kathy. We have a meeting at the end of September, September, Friday the 29th at which point we will have a new round of cost estimates. There's been a lot of work on the design and the detail of the building. And tomorrow I'll work with Angela to figure out a way to post the documents that went to the cost estimating team. They are extremely detailed. And as the designer pointed out, you can see how much work was done since the last time because we're down to what the portals look like, some of the internal exactly where things are. So that will, it's a presentation on the cost estimates. There were a few options in it in terms of should we do this or that, that would give us some leeway to work on different decisions. But right after that, the design detail report goes to the MSBA. And we don't really have to vote on it. It's just that this is a stepping stone in their process as we get to the point that there's, we've gone through all the town committees, the conservation committee, the planning board, so that we have those lined up before we can next year go out to bid on the project. So those estimates, the details went to the estimators at the end of August. There's reconciliation, so we should have them toward the beginning of that week to be posting, but they'll be discussed at that September 29th meeting at 830 in the morning. Okay. Alicia, did you have anything else you wanted to add as a member of that committee? No, I was not able to attend the last meeting. And so I think Kathy's update was also helpful for me. Thank you. Okay. Finance, Andy. The finance committee, so that you know, has decided on meeting for the present on Friday afternoons at one o'clock is the time that those accommodating the greatest number of members. And we had one meeting this past week, and we have another meeting coming up this week. And then we're going to be taking a break because we have a couple of Fridays after that where there's conflicts to make it difficult to meet. There are three referrals that were made to the committee. And we took a vote on emotion regarding town council compensation. And we have to then now agree on the language for the report on that. But I want to try and get that back to you. The date is October 2nd. And we're obviously on track for that. The next one is the one that's October 16th, which is the rental registration the fee schedule. And we have been, which is really gets into the budget for that process also. So we've been working on that for the last several meetings. And we'll take it up again this week. And the streetlight policy is not until November 20th, so that we're put that sort of in a little bit of a delayed status. We're also waiting for a report from TSO regarding modifications that are being suggested to the language for that particular policy. So those are the three and the other thing that we're well aware of and know that's going to take a lot of time then in the last month, the month and a half of the year, which is the budget guidelines for next round. So and that's basically what the committee has been working on. Thank you. Questions please Pam Rooney. Andy, please recap again what when the rental registration fee schedule was going to get discussed. I just heard the 16th of October, but was there another date as well? The way the motion read was the rental registration recommendation from finance is supposed to come back by October 16th. Does that help clarify, Pam? Yes? Okay, thank you. G-O-L, Pat? Yeah, we have been working on a series of proclamations, et cetera, which is a usual part of our work. We have also continued to look at or started to look at the charter review and we were able to do that as a council tonight. We are looking at a continuation of the rules of procedure. There are only six G-O-L meetings left before the end of the year. We now we all know we have a carryover memo to do. We have the town manager evaluation process. So we're going to be working quite intently for the next six meetings. Okay. Any questions on that? Jones Library Building Committee, Anika and Paul? So the next meeting will be on 9 27, which is, hold on, I'm just trying to get my better on this, which is a Wednesday at 1 p.m. at the Jones Library. Okay. Yeah, I can add that I think it's this week that the designers are taking the demolition plan to the historical commission and they're also starting to work their way through getting a schedule for going through the various boards like DRB planning board and other boards that they have to go through. Okay. TSO, Anika? TSO, our next meeting will be this Thursday the 14th at 7 p.m. Agenda will be posted tomorrow. Okay. AHRA, Michelle? Yes, we will be voting on our final report a week from today and we hope to publish it just a couple days after that well in advance of the October 2nd meeting in which I hope we are on the agenda to present. Okay. Any liaison reports? Oh, I'm sorry, Kathy. I just had a question, Michelle. If I wanted to see you did a pretty robust survey, if I want to see the results of that survey, are they posted anywhere that I could find? The survey will be part of the appendices, the full survey. All of the data will be part of the appendices of the final report. Thank you. Okay. Any liaison reports? We had no minutes to approve Paul, Town Manager's Report. You have a written report. Yes, so I would like to highlight a few things. So first off, thank you to the Council for approving the appointments. We're especially excited about having our Public Health Director joining us her first day, I believe it's like October 2nd. She's going to be coming in next week to start meeting with staff and preparing for her entry to the staff. I think she will be a really nice welcome addition to us. And as was pointed out, we do have vacancies at the high level, so this is good to get this one moving forward. For the other vacancies, you heard from the police chief search consultants that we have, you have the timeline for that. It's a pretty deliberate timeline. I will need to come back to you to ask for additional time to keep the temporary police chief, which I've noted in the memo at that time. But we will have a firmer grip on exactly how much time I will need. It's not going to be very much additional time I will request. So they spent the entire day today starting at 7.45 and concluded with you tomorrow. They again started 7.45. There's a public information meeting at 9 at the Banks Community Center and that's hopeful for people, hopefully for people like seniors and business owners, people who are finding it easier to attend something in the day. And then we also have one at 6 at the Jones Library. And the idea on this is that you don't have to be there at the beginning. You can just drop by and you can come by, you can stay for 15 minutes, say what you want to say and leave. But you're welcome to stay the entire time. But if you can't get there at 6, you get there at 6.30 or 7. That's all fine. So just so people know that it's more to listen to you. I've been really pleased with the work that our consultants have been doing. So I think this is a good outreach effort. And again, as I think they said, we have more outreach efforts that they will be doing with us. We are the finance director. We're reviewing that job description one more time before that gets posted. In the meantime, Roy, you've heard before that we have our co-in term finance directors, Jen LaFountain and Holly Drake. And also I put this in a town manager report. I want to note that your clerk of the council, Athena Keefe, is going to be taking on a pretty strong leadership role for our budget process, which is really terrific. Everybody needs support. The fact that Athena stepped up to take on this role. You know well, she's super organized. And that's exactly what we need at this point. And she's going to be helping to run all of our departmental budget meetings and move everything forward so we get the budget to you in a timely manner. So thank you, Athena. You saw communications director Brianna Sunred had heard last day. Last Friday there was a really nice send-off for her at Sweetser Park. That's a big hole to fill. Again, there are very few people in the Commonwealth have the skill sets that she brought to the job. So we're looking at that job description. It's always like whenever there's a vacancy, we start a sort of a zero-based budgeting approach, we think, because sometimes jobs develop around the person's skills. And that's what happened with this. This is a job that Brianna very rapidly grew into and developed in a very high level. So we want to look at exactly what we need for the town or other ways we can accelerate that position's activity. Notice that nomination papers are due by September 19th. There are a couple of neighborhood outreach sessions that the university is sponsoring on September 14th and 19th, I believe. And there's the East Gables ribbon cutting or grand opening on September 22, which I hope you can all attend as well. The North Common, you'll start to see work on that happening tomorrow. The DPW has gone and pretty much removed all of the appliances, as we call them out there, sort of like the bus stops, the parking meters, the picnic tables, things like that. They've done the trimming of the trees that they wanted to do before the contractor started and the contractor will mobilize. We anticipate tomorrow and then that work will begin. Most of the work they're going to be doing initially is really underground. It's going to be drainage work, water lines, sewer lines, things like that, the work that you probably won't see. But the drainage work is really important so that that entire parcel starts to not be such a wet area so that it can actually be used throughout the year. We will be relocating some of the events like Mary Maple and the Veterans Day, and the Veterans Director will be looking at some different locations. We could accommodate them on the Common, but we think that's probably better to find another location that's equally suitable for this year, at least, for Veterans Day. You will also see pretty soon some road construction work happening. There are second phase of road construction went out to bid. As we anticipated, we won't be able to do every road or all the roads in there because the bid came up higher than we had money, but that was intentional just in case they came in lower. There's already some work being done by the low bid contractor and the dig's safe to start to get ready to hopefully get some of those roads done before the winter ends, before the winter starts. So there's a lot of stuff happening. And I just conclude by saying I miss Sean. Big time. Paul, do you know the location for the UMass outreach meetings? I do. I think I put them in the report. There's one on lower Main Street, which is the first time they're doing it at Aspen Chase. And I can send them to you. They sent an update. The one this Thursday is on Fearing Street at 5 o'clock. No, it's actually on Phillips Street. It's on Phillips Street. Thank you. So we have hands up. A question, Paul, about the police chief. All of your communications, both publicly and to the council, have indicated that the counselors will have time to meet with the consultants next week and that a survey would be going out or Google sign up. We have not received that yet. When can we expect to receive that? Yeah, so these, I've got one of, I need to get the other consultants calendar. It's going to be a direct sign up with the consultants. So I've got one. I didn't get the right link. So it should have today, but you'll get it tomorrow. And in terms of, we have the website set up. There is a feedback form on the website that people can fill out. People can also just email if they prefer. And the consultants are also leaving their business cards so you can people can just write directly to them if they like. So we'll do more publicity of the website in the feedback form. Pam? Can we get an update of the Cress director and the status of that investigation, please? Yeah, so I can't share a whole lot about that because it is a personnel issue. Just that we're working very diligently on both the personnel issue and also on the sort of leadership issue at Cress directly. I'm hoping to have a little bit more to share with you in the next, you know, hot possibly this week. So at this moment, I can't, I don't have anything to share that substance, but we hope to, we know people are really interested to know what to know what happens, what's happening with it with the department. I can say that working with the DEI office, the police department and the fire department and the existing Cress leadership, we're working really hard to make sure that that department becomes success. That's our mission, make sure the department is successful because we're everybody in that room that we're when we're talking really committed to making sure that department is a success. Kathy? I have questions on a couple other parts. The VFW building that we bought, you noted, you noted that you're looking for demolition, but you have to also test for hazardous waste. So my question was when we pre-purchasing it, did we do any soil testing? Did we look at it? Was there any kind of insurance on it? That's part A of my question. The second part is when we saw the purchase price, did it include the demolition cost? So I'm just trying to get my arms around the cost of the project, because I know we're not even near to building something there. This is just the, we bought it and we're going to demolish it. So I have a question on another part, but I'll just wait for the answer for this. So for VFW, did do a preliminary analysis that I believe the funds are available for us to do the demolition of it. I don't know if we've got actual bids on it to say if we have enough funds. But in order to demolish it, we actually have to do a real formal, a real study to verify that there isn't asbestos in things like that. Okay. Can I do a second one? Or should I come back? No, go ahead. Okay. The second one is you have a note on some work done on North Pleasant up by the intersection on putting in a multi-use path. So we've had other discussions about that path, but I just want to make a comment that that's part of a larger plan that was referred to the council that we then referred to TSO in 2019. And I'd like to make sure we come back to that because all along the way down to UMass, there are plans for different crosswalks or bus stops. And so that we get a chance to take a look at that Mandy's questions about this is the public way. And in conjunction, be asking the question how much, if there's a cost, how much should we, you must be paying because this little stretch of sidewalk that was put in only goes so far. And it didn't repair the sidewalks that are actually falling apart. It removed a sidewalk. So it's just a question of setting our priorities as we look forward on that whole stretch of road. So I just want to make sure it gets back on the agenda. And I understand why it wasn't TSO has had a lot of other things bouncing it around. But before more work gets done on a plan that we have not yet discussed, I'd like to make sure that happens. Okay. Okay. Dorothy, I have a question and then a comment on different topics. Question is on community responders department going to the special program at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. I'd like to tell manager to explain a little bit more about that. And then I have a comment on the intersection at Amity. So it's called the Governance Performance Lab, which is out of the Kennedy School. We tried to get in last year. We weren't successful. We did get accepted this year. It's not going anywhere. What it is is they assign someone to work with our implementation team. They work with a number of cities and towns, actually all cities throughout the country to do the same kind of work. And they set up sort of interest groups. There's a group that's talking about dispatch issues. These are all very complex things. They'll be talking about staffing issues about what kinds of calls are people responding to. They basically create an online forum that people get together on, I think it's every month that they come together. And then if you're accepted to the program, they will assign one of their staff to work with you. They have a number of other communities. And it just sort of is a thought partner at the Kennedy School who can help guide us. So that's how we got admitted into that. And so we're really pleased to have done that. It doesn't require anyone to go to Cambridge or anything like that. That sounds very nice. I have a question. This is on page nine. The installation of rectangular rapid flashing beacons are our FBs at the following intersections. And yes, we are very grateful on Amity that we have been included in the list. But at a meeting I went to today, a resident of one side of Lincoln talked about crossing the street and it is still fraught because, yes, the beacons helped and one car on one side stopped, but the car on the other side just sailed right through the intersection while the other car was stopped. So we're wondering, can we have, there's a hill which really obscures some of the driver's vision. They don't really know what's coming ahead. Can we have like warning things on either side to give the drivers a little more notice that they may have to stop soon? Because it's still, and this was a grown up, not a child, it still did not feel safe. And it's yet a very major, I mean, people on both sides of that street know each other and you're crossing one across all the time. So is there any possibility of like warning lights being, what a warning notice is being put? I mean, the first step is the RFBs, which I think is an important first step. I think the next step probably is enforcement by the police department to sit there and sort of monitor traffic. And I think that's a, it's an area where people do travel quickly and sometimes don't pay attention to what they're doing at that moment in time. There was an accident this weekend there at that intersection. So it is, I think it was at that intersection. So someone driving in a car just didn't notice a motorcyclist, so it was not a good situation. So I think the police, asking the police just do some enforcement there might be the way to go. Well, people are grateful for the movement towards safety at that area, and they are still very grateful for the light at the bottom of Amity Street at University Drive that tells you what you're doing, how many miles an hour you're going, because it does help. It helps me when I check my speed. So thank you. Pat. Yes, I do want to thank you for your work, Paul, but I also want to talk about the DPW. I went there this last Friday and really toward the building and I was appalled by the condition of the building. And we talk about there being $100,000 in emergency money and that's not enough. I don't know if the building can be saved, but here's my real issue. Talking to the employees, the men and women who work there, they are really feeling forgotten. And one of the things they asked for was some kind of timeline. Now, it's very easy for us to have a timeline. We have it swung out five years. I think that they're looking for something more detailed, and it might be helpful to say, okay, we did this, but it's a very intense situation in some ways. And you know, I support the fire department, but this may be more dire. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right on that. It is in a very, very poor condition. The fire department's gotten more attention, but I think they both are needed. I'm not going to judge one over the other. We did have the building commissioner or staff review the building. They may have been there on Friday as well. I'm not sure if you cross-pass with them or not. And you're absolutely right. The $100,000 is not going to go very far. So we are, even as of today, looking at different options available to us to address the situation. Saving the building is probably not going to be an option. We really need to do something else. Relaying the information as it develops, I think, would be extraordinary helpful for people who are really feeling like nobody's paying attention. Yeah. And I think you are, so I want them to know that. No, yeah, that's it. That's really good advice. Thank you. Anika. I'm sorry, being the mute button this evening. I did want to respond to Kathy and share that the north pleasant street is coming to TSO. So it will be, you'll see it on an upcoming agenda. And then also to Mrs. Pam's point, I did see the accident on Thursday there and it seemed very apparent that the driver had no chance to even see the motorcycle even coming. So that was a very scary sight. Thank you. I wanted to add one thing here, or two things, actually. The first is talking about amity and speeding reminded me that the other thing that TSO is going to be taking up soon is discussion of safety zones. And this is something that had been on the radar for a while. I think, Anika, can we confirm we're talking about that on Thursday? Thank you. So on Thursday, we're going to be discussing safety zones if folks had remembered back. This is something that actually had been referred to TSO and it was a carryover item. But this is where it would allow us to set certain speed limits in front of things like schools that aren't currently marked. So if you're interested in joining and listening to TSO's discussion on that, come on Thursday. I'll be there on the right day. And then the other thing I wanted to just mention about DPW is again, this is more just kind of a carry on or carry over here is that on the 13th, there's a hearing regarding a bill that would create municipal and public safety building authorities similar to what we have for the Jones Library, for the libraries and for the schools. And you can I know that we've authorized Lynn to provide some testimony here, but we also as individual counselors can offer our own testimony and encourage our constituents to do so as well. So you my time sensitive notice here is that you have to sign up if you want to provide testimony virtually or in person by midnight tonight, but you also can email in your testimony. And there's there's emails available on the house webpage. And I'm happy to share those out in whatever way I can do with folks. But just as a note, as an avenue for supporting our DPW building in the future, possibly maybe I'm going to comment more on that later. But Jennifer, go ahead. Yeah, thank you for that, Anna. But just, you know, echoing what Pat said, because I also with a couple of other counselors visited DPW in the rain a couple of weeks ago, I had a chance to talk to Paul about it a little after. But it is, I don't know how they may wait one more day. So and it feels like the town is very exposed. So just whatever we can do to get something very soon. Yeah, continuing with the theme of capital projects. Paul, can you remind me when the town council is going to receive the cost estimate and risk analysis for the library project? Yeah. So yeah. So again, losing Sean was was I think we were supposed to be doing it in the next month or two. So we want to update that I'm not exactly we have I'm not talked with the council president about when exactly that will be ready for presentation to the council. It's just going to be one of the things that we the existing staff have to pull together. So I don't have a date for you. But we know that we want to bring we need to bring something back to the council, at least this calendar year. And also, I'm not clear with was the plan be alternative only going to be pursued if if we don't go ahead with the project or was that something the town was going to undertake anyways? For the library? Yeah. So it's not a plan B. So it's not like one or the other. It's it's knowing what we would have to do if the if the current project stops for any reason. So it wasn't like, oh, now we make a choice between plan A or plan B. That's not the intent of this of the work that we that they've done. They've done the preliminary work to sort of assess things. They haven't gotten into a lot of detail until we know more directly what where the council's going to go on this. Okay. Thank you. Are there any other questions of the town manager? I'm sorry. I'm going to make a quick note. I'm working with the town clerk to get the the page ready for the candidate statements. So counselors who are running for reelection and any new candidates will receive information from the town clerk this week and then the deadline to submit candidate. And then we'll get an official email from the town clerk the day after nomination papers are due. And the deadline is the same date as the withdrawal deadline. So we'll have more information for you later this week. I'm sorry. The publication of candidate statements. Yeah. We'll have for candidates who are running for election. Correct. I got it. Yeah. Sorry. I wasn't clear about which candidates we were talking about. So many vacancies going on. Yeah. So this is for the town election. We'll have candidate statement information ready later this week. And then Sue will send out an official email the day after nomination papers are due with instructions and so forth. Thank you. Are there any other questions of the town manager? Are any other comments? Let me just mention very quickly. I'm glad that Anna mentioned the hearing coming up. The this is a hearing on Senate 1489 and House 3802. It's an act creating a municipal and public safety building authority. This is something we have actually pushed Joe Comerford and Mindy Dom to do and they have done they put these bills forward. And I am in the process of I have already submitted for testimony, but I also submitted just the summary that's in your packet. It's not for discussion tonight, but it's a summary that we put together way back in 2018 of our 17 even about these two buildings and the state of these buildings back then. So it's not even a current one because there was an opportunity in submitting to provide testimony to also submit pictures of buildings and statements of condition. So I wanted to just let people know that I drew upon the research that had been done back with the fire and DPW advisory committee that I happened to chair. So are there any other questions or comments at this time? Then we are adjourned and it's 902. Thank you. Bye.