 This program is brought to you by Cable Franchise V's and generous donations from viewers like you. Governor Baker's March 12th order suspended certain provisions of the open meeting law, which allows us to hold this virtual town council meeting. I will call upon each councilor by name. At that time they should unmute their mic and say present. This will indicate they can hear me and we can hear them. Please remember to mute your mic after saying present. This is also how we will conduct councilor comments and votes throughout the agenda. Given that we have a quorum of the council. I'm calling the meeting of June 1st, the order at 632. The meeting includes audio, video and is available live on Amherst media. It is also being recorded. There's no chat room. We will have a time for public comment. If there are technical issues, please let Sean or Athena know. And if at some point if we have to, we will stop the meeting and begin to try to make sure everybody can reconnect. Having experienced that myself last two weeks ago. I understand the problem. The town has developed a two minute video helping people to connect. So I'm going to start by asking for the following people. I'm going to indicate if you are present. Shalini Balmille. Present. Alyssa Brewer. Present. Pat DeAngelis. Present. Darcy DeMont. Present. Lynn Griesmer. Present. Amanda Jo Hanneke. Present. Dorothy Pam. Present. Evan Ross. Present. George Ryan. Present. Kathy Shane. Present. Steve Schreiber. Present. Andy Steinberg. Present. And I know that Sarah Schwartz is not able to join us this evening. Thank you. I've sent, we're going to be doing the agenda in a slightly different order but not completely. I'd like to utilize the 48 hour rule and bring to discussion first. Something where we would have the town manager and the chief of police chief Livingstone. Talk about report of this last weekend's events. So Paul Paul. Sure. Thank you to the president. So we're all aware of what happened. And for us, for me, I have to speak for myself. This is a time for us to listen and pay attention to what's going on. Our job as municipal officials is to listen and amplify the voices of those who aren't being heard appropriately at this point in time. And to that end, we felt it was important to put out a statement from the. The appointed leadership of the town. And so I worked over the weekend with chief Livingstone and superintendent Morris to craft a statement. And included the chair of the human rights commission, Matthew charity. And the chief engaged with the two police unions at Amherst police department. And we all signed on to a statement that you all have and. Which tries to convey our feelings are horror and. Just where we are at this moment in time. And what our responsibilities are. So. I don't want to really go into that you've read it all. You have a lot more to say than I do chief. I'm not sure if there's anything you want to add to this. I'm not a lot Paul. Thank you. But, you know, we've received quite frankly a lot of comments and a lot of support from from the community and Amherst, which was really nice to. I mean, we're kind of transitioning in our agency from a, you know, some older officers to a relatively young police saw force. We had a lot of new recent hires and retire so a lot of my police officers haven't really experienced this before. They certainly understand it, but they're, they had a lot of questions I can tell you that. I'm not sure what to expect from the public and didn't know how to really respond, but, you know, they're getting a quick education, but it's really about communication and, you know, I'm a veteran officer and I've been through all the way back to the Rodney King incident. Through Ferguson and some others. And, you know, it's going to be a difficult time. There's no question about that. But, you know, we need to support our community members we need to compute our, you know, support our citizens who are going to definitely want to, you know, have vigils and protest and that's their right and we will support them in that right. And, you know, I just appreciate Paul reaching out to me this weekend, you know, letting me participate in the statement we made I supported it 100% and both unions supported it 100%. So, you know, it was, you know, we're, we all are really on the same page when it comes to, you know, moving forward and, you know, how do we get there I guess is the next step in question I've got a lot of meetings coming up with some community groups. And it varies from a lot of different people but I'll end there and just, you know, if there are questions at some point, entertain those but I'll just thank you to Paul, certainly to the town council into the citizens who I've already spoken with. Are there any questions from counselors at this time. Okay. Then, in a very unusual way we'd like to proceed with the following. We do have Pat D'Angelis contacted me yesterday and asked if she could make a statement and call for a moment of silence. And in addition to that we've developed a resolution that she will read as well as her statement. Before she gets into that I'd like to ask for a motion to suspend town council rules or procedure rule 8.6 for the resolution and the aftermath of death of Mr. George Floyd. Is there a second. Second. Absolutely. All right the motion has been made in second we have to have a roll call vote. I will start with Alyssa Brewer. Hi. Pat D'Angelis. Hi. Darcy Dumont. Darcy. You have to read her lips. She said Darcy Dumont. Thank you. Hi. Rhys Merz I, Hanneke. Hi. Pam. Hi. Ross. Hi. Brian. Hi. Shane. Hi. Breiber. Hi. Steinberg. Hi. And Balmille. Yes. Hi. And then Pat, why don't you proceed with your statement and we'll go forward. Thank you. Today marks the eighth day. Since George Floyd was murdered by police officer. He was killed in her home. The 99th day since Ahmaud Arbery was killed by white vigilantes for the crime of jogging in his neighborhood. And it marks the fifth day since Christian Cooper was targeted by a white woman who called the police claiming she was being threatened by a black man. And then in her day added to the day since Dauntray Hamilton, Eric Gardner, Michael Brown, Esiel Ford, Dante Parker, Tanisha Anderson, Akai Gurley, Tamir Rice, Raymond Brisbane, Jermaine Reed, Tony Robinson, Phillip White, Freddy Gray, Atiana Jefferson, Pamela Turner, Corrine Gaines, Yvette Smith, Ayanna Stanley, Philandro Castile, Sandra Bland, and Amadou Diallo were killed by police who were, who in most of these cases, not charged for the action of murdering unarmed African Americans. This is not new. It has been going on for years. Today marks the 99th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre. The massacre began over Memorial Day weekend after 19 year old Dick Rowland, a black shoe shiner, was accused of assaulting Sarah Page, the 17 year old elevator operator in a nearby building. He was taken into police custody. The White rioters used this incident to rampage through the black neighborhoods that night and morning, killing men, burning and looting stores and homes. About 10,000 black people were left homeless and property damage amounted to more than 1.5 million in real estate and $750,000 in personal property loss, which is the equivalent of $32 million. The deaths of these African American men, women and children are emblematic of the racism inherent in our country, our town and in ourselves. They reveal the disparity between police interactions with white people and black people and the disparity between existing as a white person and existing as a black person trying to park a car, watching birds, walking with a loved one, playing with toy guns, carrying cell phones or pill bottles that get identified as guns by police officers with fear and hate in their hearts. Police violence and white threats of violence need to stop. It is not acceptable in our country, in our town or anywhere, for a white voice to be heard, respected and responded to when a black or brown voice is not heard and where the person themselves is not seen. This morning, Christian Cooper's sister wrote in the New York Times, quote, we live in a country where a white person breaking rules feels confident and comfortable, clawing the police to threaten the black person, doing nothing wrong. This has to stop, whether through more discussion to raise awareness of the issue or better enforcement of laws against false 911 reports. Lots of people keep asking me what they can do. We all have a chance to step off the sidelines, to speak up, to take action and to shine a blinding light on the racism lurking in so many corners of our society. We need to fight together wisely, boldly and unflinchingly while staying aware that our passion and actions can and will be used against us. But we must not stop. This isn't, this is the time. It will not be easy. It will often be messy, but it must be done, unquote. Today marks the day when each of us must step away from the sidelines and stand with our black brother and brown sisters and brothers. The day when we must stand as a community that sees what is before its eyes, that listens to the voices of the unheard and cares for and protects all of its members. Today marks the day when the town council of Amherst, Massachusetts joins our town manager, the superintendent of our schools, our human rights commission, our chief of police, the Amherst police patrol officers union and the Amherst police supervisors union in pledging anew to do what must be done so that Amherst is a just and equitable community. A community that is truly welcome to all. And with that, we're going to introduce the resolution that Lynn and I worked on. And I'm going to ask Mandy, Joe, a favor. Would you read the resolution when it comes up? Is that all right? That is all right. That would be very helpful to me right now. Thank you. Sean, can you put that up? Yeah. Can it be bigger, Sean? Thanks. Resolution in the aftermath of the death of Mr. George Floyd. Whereas we are haunted by the searing vision of a Minneapolis police officer kneeling on a subdued man's neck. As other officers witnessed Mr. George Floyd's pleas for help be ignored by the very people who are trained to help and assist. Whereas we are haunted too by the knowledge that this was not an isolated incident in our country. The number of names and similar experiences is unconscionably long. And an undeniable part of the history of this nation. Whereas we extend our condolences to Mr. Floyd's family and friends. And to all who grieve his death. We offer our thoughts to the countless members of our community who have been personally impacted as well. Whereas we condemn the actions of the police officers involved. Whereas we feel compelled to say affirmatively and with real compassion. That violence like this is yet another blow to black and brown people. Particularly African American men. Who are too often told by our culture that they do not matter. It confirms the lived experience of black men. And we are not afraid to say no. We are afraid to say no. We are afraid to say no. Nationwide and yes in our own community. This is a wrong that needs to be righted. And white Americans need to join those who have been carrying this burden. And do the heaviest lifting to write it. Whereas as public officials. This tragedy makes us reflect on our own practices. Behavior and attitudes. Have we fostered a true culture of respect and honesty. We strive to remain ever thoughtful in our work as public officials. To ensure that all members of our community feel part of Amherst and feel protected. Listened to and served by their public servants. Whereas as public officials. It is our duty to use our legal and moral authority. To protect all members of our community. No matter their race or color. Or where they fall on the power spectrum. It is our duty to foster a community free of fear. Intimidation and violence. A community in which people are not targeted or hurt unnecessarily by law enforcement. And provide equal protection under the law. Whereas we know we can do better as a country to confront the systemic racism that has brought us to this place of fear and distrust. We can advocate for the criminal justice system to take a firm stand against officers who use excessive force. Those of us who are white can demonstrate that protecting and promoting the rights of black and brown people in our community is integral to securing the well-being of our entire community. Whereas we know many of the young people in our community have been in this situation. They are threatening to stop this video and other similar news. And are trying to process these traumatizing events with their families. However, the current public health situation makes it that much more difficult as they are unable to connect with friends, extended family, or school staff in person. commitment to the larger goals of social justice and we'll focus on how we can deliver on the promise of good and fair public safety protection. We will work with our community leaders to determine the best ways for us to engage on this important mission as we continue to move forward. Now therefore, the Amherst Town Council joins the Amherst Town Manager, Police Chief, School Superintendent, the Chair of the Human Rights Commission and the full support of our police unions to denounce in the strongest possible terms the actions and inactions by these police officers that resulted in Mr. Floyd's death. Voted this first day of June, 2020. Thank you, Mandy. You're welcome. I have a motion of Pat. I move that we accept this resolution and vote favorably to support it. And is there a second? Second. Shallowney. Thank you, Shallowney. I'm going to do a roll call vote and start with, is there any other discussion? I'm sorry. Now a roll call vote, I will start with Pat DeAngelis. Yes. Darcy DeMond. Yes. Lynn Griezmer is a yes. Mandy Johannike. Yes. Dorothy Pant. Yes. Evan Ross. Yes. George Ryan. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Yes. Shallowney Balmille. Yes. And Alyssa Brewer. Yes. It is 12-0-0 with one accent. And I want to thank the police and the school superintendent and the town manager because we have borrowed heavily from the statement that they released last evening. We would like to go to a moment of silence, but I see a hand up, Dorothy. After the moment of silence. Thank you. We will begin a moment of silence at this point. Thank you. Pat, thank you so much for being very active and bringing this forward. Dorothy, you had a comment. Yes, I was very lucky to be, have been watching television when Floyd's brother let a prayer vigil and spoke to the people that he wanted to continue demonstrating, but absolutely no violence, no destruction, and said that the proper response from the people at this point, besides the things we've talked about, is voting and not just at the top, all the way down to the smallest local election. And I think I was very, very impressed at his speech in a moment he was deeply emotional, but he really had his focus on the constructive aspects. So I just wanted that to be part of this meeting. Thank you. Shalini? Yeah, I just wanted to appreciate Chancellor Pat Dangelis for bringing this statement forward to us and also the town officials. I was very moved by the statement and the commitment of all the people in our town office. And I also have a question moving forward beyond this resolution, who is gonna look into what needs to be done further, does anything need to be done in our town? And at the town council level, who amongst us is looking into this, which committee and what, I just feel like days will pass and this will become another event and nothing will have happened. So I just have that question. Let me just address that, I do know that the chief is planning to pull together a group and we will make people aware of those meetings so that people can attend them as well. Okay? I just have another question. There's a person on the telephone, Gazelkaya, and that's when we come to the public, people who are on the telephone, how can they ask questions? Or how do they raise their hands if they're on the telephone? We're going to be doing public comment in just a moment and we will show how that's done because there is a way to do that, okay? Dorothy, I assume your hand has just not been taken down. Thank you. We're going to go and show the announcement slides and I'm not going to read the announcements, but Sean, would you please put them up? We have three groups of slides and I wanna just note that a couple of these on the slide are in yellow and we wanna make sure that the public notes that these are public hearings, their forums, they are information sessions and all of this information is available on the town website. The dates and so forth are available at amherstma.gov slash calendar and you can also get all the materials for all of these meetings, the first one beginning on June 8th at 6.30. Next slide, please. These are the upcoming committee meetings and I wanna just point out that for example, the very first one is a joint meeting of the Community Resource Committee and Finance and then there is a joint hearing of the Community Resource Committee and the Planning Board and this is particularly in relationship to the town manager's proposal with regard to temporary zoning, helping us to try to open our town. Mandy Jo, did you have a comment you wanted to make about that? Yeah, I just wanted to point out that the highlighted meeting, the June 3rd meeting is not the joint hearing on the temporary zoning that is on a different issue. The joint hearing is the last one on the list, the June 10th meeting at 6.30. Thank you very much for that correction. It is June 10th at 6.30. And the next slide, Sean. These are just a few things that the school would like to make sure we're aware of. One is the joint meeting of the three school committees around how they're going to deal with going back to school in the fall. And that will also include some public meetings as well. And then on June 5th, the Amherst Regional Haste School Class of 2020 will have a car parade and Amherst Media will have a program beginning at 6.30. So with that, we're going to proceed on to our meeting and the next item on the agenda is in fact, public comment. So for public comment, if you are on the phone, you need to do the following. I just need to get the instructions. You need to indicate that you wish to make a comment and you press star nine on your phone and that should show up when we ask for public comment, okay? So what I'd like to do now is ask for people who have public comment and I see one caller and I need to have you identify yourself and where you live. Hi, this is Gazethaian Nakosi and I live in district five. Okay. Please proceed with your comment. Thank you so much. I'm just calling in tonight and I appreciate the resolution and the commitment to working with community leaders and specifically appreciate Shalini's question about how exactly we're going to make sure that the emotions that are so high right now lead to specific actions within our town and to that end, a group of community members are of course in a very big time of grief right now and mourning and that grief is very heavy but they would also like to request an opportunity to be on the agenda at the next town council meeting to discuss what policies or specific actions the town council can take to ensure that these values that were expressed in the resolution actually turn into a commitment to action. We appreciate your comment and if you would please be in touch with me so we can figure out how we can add that to our agenda. Okay. Okay, thank you very much. Certainly, thank you for calling. Are there other public comments at this time? Okay, I don't see any. Garcia, you have your hand up however. Yeah, I just wanted to mention the list of meetings that you had upcoming meetings that the town services and outreach next meeting is on June 15th at 9.30 a.m. I didn't make it on the list. Okay, remember the list is public and it's on the calendar of the web town website. Okay, we're going to proceed on then with our presentations. I'm sorry, no. Our next thing is I just want to mention because these are on the consent agenda. We have two other consent agenda items are resolutions tonight. One is the LGBTQ and Patti Angelis and Evan Ross are the sponsors of that. Would you like to say anything about that at this time? Okay, we're going to move on then. And the other one is Race Amity Day and Alyssa Brewer is the sponsor. Alyssa, anything that you would like to say at this time? This is something town meeting did several years ago and so the select board has been doing it annually since to show everyone that it really is an annual event because much as the previous caller referenced is what's our follow through and our follow through on this has typically been trying to participate in the event. Of course it's going to be a Zoom event this year so it'll be different and Lynn's already reached out to us about how we might divide up reading the proclamation. So thank you. And Evan, you had your hand up. Yeah. I wanted to just say briefly the Pride Month proclamation on this before us is almost identical to last year and yet it feels very different this year passing it. I think that given the discussion that we just had in this council often pride is seen as a time to celebrate and it doesn't necessarily feel like we're in a celebratory atmosphere right now but I think it's still something that's important and I think what if I could have written rewritten the proclamation now as opposed to reusing the one that we reused I probably would have strived to acknowledge in it that what this proclamation is celebrating the rights, the freedoms that have been secured that we need to maintain, where those came from all came from black and brown LGBT Americans who fought for them. And I think in this moment right now it's worth recognizing that. Last year we raised the Pride flag for the first time to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Stonewall which we celebrated as the start of the gay rights movement but don't often talk about the fact that it was a riot against police brutality and against police targeting a marginalized group and it was a riot that was led by queer, brown and black folk. And so that's not something that's in this proclamation but it's something that I think I wanna make sure we acknowledge given the moment we're in right now and that it would have been in there otherwise. Lynn, you're muted. Thank you so much. I try to mute in between. We're going to go on to our presentations. The first one is the one month budget and I'm gonna call on Paul Backelman and Sean. That's Sean McDonnell. Yeah, Sean, you're here. And there's a picture. Okay, good. Glad to see your picture. So previously the town council had authorized the manager to present to you a one month budget in anticipation of a fuller budget process as you delayed the presentation of the budget. So what Sean and Sonia have developed and I'm basically forwarding to you tonight is a one month budget or what we call one month budget. It's slightly larger than it might otherwise be and Sean can walk through that. The way the finance team looked at this they looked at the historical level of spending over the past four or five years I think and then talked with all the department heads and sort of identified the level of support they needed to get through July. So Sean, do you wanna add anything? What do you wanna add to that? There is much to be added. Yeah, I mean, it's a relatively brief presentation tonight. I have a couple of slides. Should I share my screen? Actually, I believe you sent those to us. So we're gonna put them up. Perfect. All right, so first just a quick reminder why we are looking at a one month budget. We wanted to extend the timeline for the budget process to allow us to gather some more information on some of our revenues and some of our expenditures. Some of the things we are keeping a close eye on that will affect our budget is the status of the colleges and the university, the status of our K through 12 schools, the library and other town services, whether they opened in the fall either under a normal approach or if they have some sort of modified approach that they have to open up under. We're monitoring the state budget which still isn't finalized. We're waiting for a word. We've received some word on state and federal government aid programs but there's still more to come and some of those programs are changing. And we're also, we wanted more time to gauge the impact on our local receipts. We knew a month ago that things were not gonna look good but now we have much more information on what the impact of the stay at home orders were on things like parking and permits and things of that nature. So that's why we decided to go with a one month budget is to give a little bit more time to gather information on these types of things. If you could go to the next slide. So the one month budget is here on the left. It's broken down into different categories. Town operating budget, elementary schools, region assessment, library services, retirement assessment, regional lockup and the different enterprise funds. And the total of the one month budget is 11,570,046 dollars. So it is a little bit greater than one 12th of a typical operating budget. And that's because there are some expenditures that are in there that are things that are paid in July. Primarily the Hampshire County retirement system we pay the full amount in July. And by doing so we typically get a discount that's in the range of $20,000 a year. Some other things to note about the one month budget, it will give us the authority to spend money during the month of July without a full budget in place. We determine these amounts as Paul said by looking at historical spending over the last few years and talking with each department to see if the amount that we put forward made sense for what they expected for the month. As I mentioned, the large one time expenditures have been considered. It is not intended to replace the full FY21 budget. As you can see, it's a very simple table with some amounts and some backup that we have to support those amounts. But we still plan on doing a full FY21 budget document that will really be the policy document for the town. It doesn't include any budget additions or reductions. Those will come with the full FY21 budget. And ultimately the way we hope to approach this is that this one month budget will be replaced by the full 12 month budget when that's approved by town council. So we'll get this in place. We have the authorization to spend. And then when the full budget is approved, we'll rescind this and the full budget will go back to July one. So you'll still get the full 12 month budget to review under the modified timeline. And this will be discussed in a little bit more depth tomorrow at finance committee. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Okay, Kathy Shane. Thank you for what I think is a very clear set of two tables. So my question is what's about what's not on the table as you well know, because your staff too, we've just gone through what's capital spending gonna look like starting the next fiscal year. You don't have any specifics for CAPA, which I think makes sense. But my question then is if roads and sidewalks and some other capital needs need to happen in July, do we have enough money left in unspent funds from money that was already appropriated for the current year to go ahead and be doing some of that work in July? So not just roads and sidewalks, but if there was a repair or something. So are we saying that on the capital side, we have some spending that can go on in July. We don't have to wait to do a one month budget for that. Yeah, Paul and Sonia can correct me if I'm wrong. I think that we're still planning to do the capital budget by July one. So that that budget will be in effect for July one. I thought that's how we, the last timeline we looked at it that the vote for capital was gonna take place at the end of June. Okay, so we would have a full year capital budget at that point. So therefore we don't need, okay. It'll be under our modified, the approach that we'll talk about more. With joint capital planning committee and their recommendation. But unless I'm misremembering, I think we set that up so the timeline had the vote for capital happening before July. Okay, we did. Can I jump in for that? Paul, did you have another comment? Yeah, so tomorrow's finance committee meeting, the schedule for the next two months is laid out. That's where the finance committee will review that schedule. And once the finance committee says that's a go, we will share that with all committee members and put it on our website as well. That does include reviewing the capital requests on a truncated basis based on the JCPC report and delivering that to the council on June 15th, I think or something like that. And then you'll be able to vote it with a recognition that we will come back in the fall to do a more thorough review of all the capital requests that are before us. Andy Steinberg, do you have your hand up? Yes, I was gonna partly respond along the same lines that Paul just responded to. June 15th, at the beginning of the meeting when we showed schedule of events to happen, there are two important things that have to do with capital that are on June 15th. One is the presentation of the capital improvement program. But the other is the council is required by the charter to hold a public forum annually about the capital improvement program. And as you recall from prior experience of public forum is the time when we have to have at least 50% of time devoted to hearing from members of our public. And that is scheduled also for the same day on June 15th. So those are two very important days. And as Paul indicated, if the finance committee agrees with the proposed schedule for the process, then the council of the June 29th meeting would take up both the one month budget and the capital improvement program. The other thing that was on that list of events at the beginning are two things that were very important. One is relating to what we're talking about right now. And that is the finance committee is required to hold public hearings on all segments of the budget. And that includes the one month budget and the regional school budget, which were both in the packet for tonight's meeting. And both of those have been scheduled for June 8th and they will take place early in the evening of June 8th before the full council meeting. So it's a joint meeting of the council and the finance committee for the purpose of satisfying that and giving us more opportunities as counselors as well as members of the public to ask questions about the one month budget. So thank you. Are there any other questions or comments on the one month budget at this time? We will do the referral of the one month budget as part of the consent agenda. So it will not come back up, all right? Then I wanna move on to the next item which we, I don't wanna get into a lengthy discussion tonight, I'd like to use this as an opportunity to introduce this. It has really been come to my attention and to several people's attention that as a council, we have not consistently dealt with requests for permanent change to the public way. And so I put together a memo with the assistance of Mandy Johanicki, of Paul Backelman and Dave Zomac that outlines two potential possibilities. Sean, would you please put the memo up? That's coming up now. Thank you. While he's doing that, let me just start by saying at this point, we do not have an automatic referral of requests for long-term use of the public way to any committee. If we did, it would be to TSO. So one of the options that you'll see on the memo is that we either create through our rules of procedure an automatic referral or we continue to use the option that we have been using, which is we vote to refer from the council. The second option on this is to basically say, well, the council will deal with it and then it might or might not go to TSO. The thing we're trying to avoid and we have a couple of people tonight who are directly in relationship to that attending this meeting. And that is causing people who are petitioners who have to come back to multiple meetings. And so, no, that's not it, Sean. Okay. So with that, I just wanted to say that we're going to introduce that this evening. If there's any quick comments at this point, maybe maybe, Joe, you'd like to add an explanation to it, but the reality is I don't want to take the time from the rest of our agenda tonight and give you more opportunity to look at it since you did not receive it until this morning. Mandy, Joe, any other comments? No, I don't think so. Okay. So unless there's a burning question, I'd like to go on. Darcy. Hi. Am I on mute? No, you're, we can hear you. I guess I was just interested to, I'd like to be involved in that committee as chair of the committee that would be receiving the public way requests. Seems like it would make sense to, for me to be involved in that committee. It would be TSO. So you are involved. But I'm talking about involved in the committee that is working on the proposal. Okay. This proposal or this is not a proposal. It is a memo. And depending on the council's discussion of it, it would then be referred to TSO for and to GOL for recommendation back to the council on how they would like to proceed. So that we would expect both TSO and GOL who would look at and weigh in on a process. And how did, how did the council deal with these issues when they went to the CRC? It was as inconsistent as it is now. And tonight we have two examples of the inconsistency. One of our public way requests that we're going to hear tonight is Southeast Street. So Southeast Street is, came to the, referred to TSO and then came, is coming back to the council tonight with a recommendation from TSO. On the other hand, last two weeks ago, we introduced the university drive. And we require that it had to be discussed and we weren't prepared that night to discuss it at the full level because we assumed it might be a referral, but instead people felt like they were ready to act and they asked for us to have the full presentation at the town council instead of referral to TSO. So it puts us in a situation of not knowing which way these very important and significant long-term requests are going to go. And so sometimes we're at a council meeting like we were two weeks ago and we don't have everybody there because we weren't expecting that. So what we would like to do with this memo is have a referral to TSO to discuss what process they think would be best and then also to GOL if there's going to be a rule change. So it's not a separate committee that would be looking at this. It's the existing committees of the council. Okay, Darcy. Yeah, I guess I feel like this is a policy of the whole council and it would be good to have a discussion among the whole council about it. Kathy, you have your hand up. That was going to be my comment. And I just, I agree with the thrust in the purpose of this, of getting some clarity on how we're handling and my memory of the short year and a half we've been together, which feels like a lot more is that GOL at one point had the public way and did some things with parking meters in very short term to get some things off our list. So I do think going through it systematically and I just, I guess my question, Lynn, and I don't need an answer now. I think it needs a deliberative process. It's not a quick, it's trying to really think through different options and you described a small group that certainly had the right kinds of people in it, but getting some input on how do other towns deal with these issues? How can we do it in a way that we're sure we have had enough discussion but not keep people bouncing back and forth? So the sentiment is there. Okay. Dorothy, you have your hand up. You have to, Dorothy, you need to unmute. Yeah. I'm looking at this memo and the third bullet down, I'm finding the type size just a little too small, but when I try to read a complicated paragraph like the third bullet down with the magnifying glass, you can't really do that. You can't really grasp the comments. I think that we have a very great inconsistency in how we've been talking about the use of the public way and that we need to really put together a better, a system that is clear, consistent and fair in our responses. And if you're going to, I don't know what that third bullet paragraph is saying because it's hard to get a document that is just, that's complicated, that has got legal things in it and that isn't very smooth. Could you explain that third bullet? Yes. The third bullet basically addresses the possibility of if there needs to be a hearing and where would that hearing be held? And right now we have not authorized TSO to hold hearings but one possibility just as we have authorized CRC to do hearings and the charter authorized finance to do hearings would be the possibility that TSO could do hearings as well. Yeah, hearings don't have to occur all the time but they do have to occur when it's issues like parking or a butters. And so it's basically just laying out that possibility. I apologize for the small type. Right, but you know, the question is if you're having the people who want the, to use the public right of way to the TSO committee meeting so that we could have a good discussion that town council would also feel that they would want to be, here's those facts at least in some form. So I noticed that CRC hearings are often done as part of a joint town council meeting and it's getting kind of confusing at this moment. I just feel like somehow things are getting more complicated and not simpler, but that may just be my point of view. Okay, Alyssa, you have your hand up. I know you didn't want to talk about this at length. So I think telling us that we'll talk about it at length. Another time is terrific by appreciating pulling it together because it has been super confusing as we've all talked about. The other thing I wanted to clarify that was a little different is that when we talk about required hearings we're required to have hearings if we intend to change something. One of the things you've heard me argue at various town council meetings is maybe we don't want to change something. If a petitioner brings us something that in fact is not something that's been done under the petition process under the charter we can say that's interesting, but no thank you. We have too many other things on our plate and we don't ever have to hold the hearing at TSO, at town council anywhere. If we want to make changes however there are things we have to have hearings about as we'll hear about again later tonight. So that's part of the issue here too is how much of it as Lynn has very carefully pointed out is like efficiency of going ahead and just referring it right away. And maybe that's efficient, but maybe it's not because if people have to talk about it multiple times or have joint meetings the other part is who's deciding when it ends up on what agenda? And that does tend to, you know that plays out a different way, right? If we talk about it first at town council and then decide to refer versus the other. So I appreciate her drawing these things up and I assume we'll just bring our feedback to whatever meeting she tells us to bring it to. Right. If there's any other comment at this point fine but otherwise we've introduced the subject and we'll bring it back at another time. Okay, seeing none. Then we're going to move to the consent agenda. So Sean, I want to make sure you put the consent agenda up and that you make sure it can be read. It's multiple sides. So just tell me when to advance. I'll start. So let me just remind people the consent agenda is the following. The following items were selected because they were considered to be routine and it was reasonable to expect they would pass with no controversy. To remove an item from the consent agenda for discussion later in the meeting, ask that it be removed when the president lists the consent agenda items. If you'll wait till I get all the way through them that would be good. Request to remove an item from the consent agenda does not require a second. So the motion is as follows. To move the following items and the printed motions they're under and approve these items as a single unit. The first one is suspend town council rules of procedure, rule 8.6 for the following agenda item, race, amity, day proclamation. And that's because we did not have this in time for it to go to GOL. And so therefore we are asking exception to that rule. The second is to suspend town council rules or procedure rule 8.4 for the following agenda items. The permanent change of public way, 133 and 143 Southeast Street and 7D, town council policy regarding the control and regulation of public ways, section 3B. All this does is us to deal with these issues tonight. It does not, they will still be on the agenda, they will still be discussed. And it does not mean that you've accepted them, it just means that we can deal with them tonight if we feel we are ready to. 5A is the adoption of the LGBTQ pride month proclamation and 5B is the adoption of the race and amity day proclamation. 7C is referral of the amendment to zoning bylaw 11.250 regarding the votes required for the planning board decision, the community resources committee and planning board. This is a straightforward referral to the bodies that are most affected by this. It does deal very quickly, hold on, I'm sorry. It does deal with the issue with regard to site plan review and the number of votes and is basically related to the issue of the fact that the charter reduced the number of people on the planning board, but this bylaw did not get changed. The next one is the referral of the one month budget to the finance committee. We've already had a presentation on that. The 7F is the referral of the regional school budget to the finance committee. We will, that also is pretty straightforward. The next one is the referral of community preservation act, community recommendations, committee recommendations to the community resource committee and finance committee of the town council agendaed June 1st, 2020. Both of those items are on the agenda, but this refers them without further discussion. Approval of amendment to town council rules of procedure, rule 4.2, proposed rule 4.6, regarding the use of consent agenda. And that is something the council has discussed at least one previous council meeting, if not two. Please go forward. And then the last item on the consent agenda is the approval of the minutes. And we have four sets of minutes starting with April 21st, May 1st, May 4th, May 11th and May 18th. I see one hand up at this time, Darcy. Yes. I'd like to remove 7A, 2 and 9. 7A. 7A, 2 and 7A, 9. Are there any other question, any other requests at this time? I'm sorry, I'm not sure which ones Darcy you're referring to. Yeah. Would you tell exactly which ones you're referring to? Could you go to the previous slide? It's up there. Oh, okay. 7A, 2 is exactly what it says there. They're two items to spend town council rules for 8.4 for those two items. And 9 is approval of amendment to town council rules. Proceed your rule of four points regarding the consent agenda. Okay. Kathy, you have your hand up. Yeah. Which is the one that changes the number of votes on the planning committee and is that, would this be for site visits and everything, the number of votes required? It's site plan review and it's numbers items. Five here. It's a 7C on your agenda. Okay. 7C. I'd like to move that and have a quick discussion of that also. Okay. Great. Are there any other discussion at this time? All right. So then the consent agenda is as follows. Okay. Thank you. To move the following items and printed motions there under and approve those items as a single unit. Suspend town council rules of procedure. Rule 8.6 for the following agenda item. 5B race amity day proclamation. Adoption of the LGBTQ pride month proclamation. Adoption to finance committee referral regional school budget to finance committee referral of community preservation act committee recommendations to the community resources committee and the finance committee. And approval of the minutes for April 2nd. I'm sorry, April 21st. There are two sets of minutes. May 1st, May 4th, May 11th and May 18th. Is there a second? Second. Yes. Thank you. Did you get that, Athena? Yes, thank you. Then we are going to move to a roll call vote. I'm starting with Darcy Dumont. Yes. Grease merge. Yes. Hannah key. Yes. Pam. Yes. Evan Ross. Yes. George Ryan. Yes. I'm going to move on to Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Yes. Melanie Ball Moon. Yes. Alyssa Brewer. Yes. And Pat D'Angelo's. Yes. The vote is 1200 with one absent. Okay. So then we are going to move on to the permanent changes to the public way. If we. If we need to move to this and our first item, if you'll take that down, please. This is a report that's coming from the. TSO. And because we did not suspend town council rule. A procedure 8.4. For the current agenda item, we need to have that motion at this time. So in the event that we go ahead and do this, we need to have that motion at this time. Okay. So then we're going to move on to the permanent changes to the public way to suspend town council rule procedure. 8.4. For the current agenda item. Is there a second? Second. Okay. Any further discussion. Just. Just trying to figure out what we're doing here. Did you explain again what the motion was? All this motion does is allow us to act tonight. So we're going to move on to the permanent changes. And then we're going to move on to the permanent changes. I think it's been before the council. This is the second time. And it's been before TSO in between. So we, we would be acting on TSO's recommendation. All right. I guess I would just say that. This is technically our first. Reading of it in the council. Is it not. No. It was presented to the council. And then it was referred to TSO. Mandy Joe. It is technically the first reading because we didn't consider that referral. The first reading, which is why we have to suspend the rules tonight in order to actually vote tonight. Thank you for that correction. Okay. So I'm, I guess my argument would be that. That I feel like if. They're not looking at it. For substantive issues such as public way requests that. Are otherwise required to have two readings. That. It's fine. If members of the council or feel that they're ready to go. Even if the. The committee in question voted unanimously for it, I feel that at least part of the reason for having two readings is to allow the public to have adequate time to weigh in. And so I guess I feel pretty strongly that with with proposal like this there's there's really no reason to rush it through. There's it would only be an additional two weeks. The the the public would have an opportunity to weigh in if they had any anything to say about it at all. And I think that's an important consideration. The motion's been made and seconded are there other comments. This is the motion to suspend town council rule procedure 8.4. And we're going to call the question on it and move to that. It's a roll call vote. And we start in this case with Lynn Griezmer and I vote to support the motion. Yes. Pam. Dorothy. I'm trying to unmute abstain for now. Evan Ross. Yes. George Ryan. Yes. Kathy Shane. Abstain. Steve Schreiber. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Yes. Chalene Ball Moon. Alyssa Brewer. Yes. Pat DeAngeles. Yes. And Darcy Dumont. No. Okay. So it is nine four. One against two abstentions and one absent. Did I get that right Athena? Yes. Thank you. So the motion passes. So now we're going to move on to actually hearing the report. From the committee. That's TSO. Who discussed this. And Darcy, I'm calling on you for the report or any other committee member. You designate. Evan, would you like to report on that? I defer to you as chair. Fine. So we, we discussed this at our, at our next to the last meeting. And you. Received the report at our last time council meeting. Evan led the discussion. And it was. Fairly brief. We didn't hear directly from the owner developer, but we did hear from. From Chris Brestrup. And we voted unanimously to approve the application. There was some, some degree of discussion. We brought up the issue of the recommendations that were made by the, the design review board. And so we, we, we, we, we, we ended up with regard to the amenities for the public way request. And we ultimately ended up voting not to include them. Because we thought that they would stand by themselves as a recommendation from the design review board. This group might decide to do something different about that. But the recommendations of the design review board were. The addition of recycling, a recycling receptacle, a bench with arms, a bench without arms. And light fixtures. Which they thought would enhance the public way. So, unless any of the other members have anything to add, that was basically. What we did. We recommended approval. Darcy Pam, you have your hand up. Right. Let's just say that I've been doing further thought on a topic. I've done a lot of thought on. And that is that I don't know what our policy is on the public way. Except that the word public is in there. And it seems to be not really. Not really thinking of the public that much in a lot, a lot of the time, the public way is being given away to private interests. And what got me. Really going with going through the papers and seeing the latest drawing, very clear, colorful drawing. Where there's one sidewalk right up to the edge of the building. And the other one is up to the edge of the street. And I thought, Gina, which one would I walk on? The answer is I wouldn't want to walk on either one of the two sidewalks. I'd be who wants to walk right up next to the edge of a, right next to the street. And I think it's a very, you know, Simple plane building and who wants to walk next to the street. And yes, there are amenities that have been put in the middle between them. But it's not a really good. Way. And I think, I mean, right now we're getting ready to open. Use a public way to help the businesses downtown open. And I'm saying, thank goodness that in some of the blocks downtown, there are wide sidewalks so that you have actually to do that. There are other places where their sidewalks are not wide enough for anything. So I just feel we don't really have a firm understanding of how we deal with the public way. And protecting it. And it's each situation is different. And I have different feelings about other spots, but this is one where. The building is right up to the edge of the public way. And then the sidewalk, narrow sidewalk is put there. And then there's some green grass. And then the other sidewalks next to the street. And I'm, you know, it looks kind of interesting, but then when you think about using it, being a person on it, and I don't see it as being a good use, even though it went through many, many meetings and many, many boards. So I feel that we have to have a clearer understanding of, of that. Maybe talking with lawyers and I don't know, maybe checking other towns. I think. The Darcy's right that we have to see what do other people do? What have they been doing? Because right now we're being very inconsistent. We have no, I have no sense of what we should be doing. Alyssa. Well, I'm going to have to say that one of the reasons we feel like we don't know what we're doing is because we don't have a consistent process for how to address it. But then beyond that, it also doesn't come up terribly frequently. And so it feels like a series of one offs. It's in fact, not accurate to say that in the town of Amherst, a lot of the time the public way has been given away. That's, that's not factually true in Amherst. It might very well be true in other communities. It's not true here. I understand the concern of not wanting it to happen here, but it hasn't happened here and it won't happen here. And in fact, in many cases, sidewalks exist that didn't exist before. There were just dirt paths and now there are sidewalks. They may not be the sidewalks on the back end, the set that you would like, but they are sidewalks. So I think the difference here is, is, is trying to figure out, and we struggled with this at TSO is how much of it is our personal preference as to how we really think the urban landscape should look and how much of it is given the zoning bylaw we have given the requirements around that, what do we need to potentially change? And we do that through zoning. And that is a way of looking at design very carefully. But I don't, I think one of the struggles we had at TSO is that we couldn't take our preferences for that future design and apply it to something that was under done under existing design. So I think it does put some additional pressure on figuring out what we, what the master plan said, what we think the master plan means now and what that means to the town council, because then it will be clearer how those two things fit together. But at this time we aren't getting to decide that that's done through planning and the ZBA in some cases. And so it's the underlying zoning bylaw and the underlying lack of various design guidelines. That's the underlying problem, not the process of the town council having to talk about public way. And part of the reason that we haven't had this very often over the last several years is because there's been very little new development over the past several years. And so when you have the new things happen, then it suddenly brings all this to the fore in a way that we didn't necessarily have to deal with for several years in a row. Evan. Yeah, I just wanted to make sure for the public and the press that could be covering this conversation to push back on two statements. One is the idea that we're giving away the public way. We're not giving anything away. We're maintaining ownership of the public way. It will still be the public way. We are allowing a developer to improve the public way to add amenities at their expense. That's the proper way to frame this. We are not giving anything away. And in fact, we are receiving great benefits. I'm not sure if councilor Pam has walked on that section of southeast street. There is no sidewalk right now. It's not a great place to walk or bike. It's not a great place to walk or bike. It will be after this. And so I would hate for us to say we are giving it away. We are maintaining ownership and we are accepting improvements to it on someone else's dime. And the other thing that was stated was that the sidewalks that were being put in would be narrow sidewalks. One of the things that came up in the conversation at TSO with Chris brush up was the sidewalks and their width. And she reported that they would be six foot sidewalks on both sides. And she reported that they would be six foot sidewalks on both sides. And then the sidewalks that are in front of my house and the sidewalks that are in front of councilor Pam's house. So these are not narrow sidewalks. These are actually pretty big sidewalks on both sides. George Ryan. I'd just like to point out to my colleagues that TSO voted unanimously. To approve. This permanent change to the public way. And I hope that we will move now to. Is there, are there any other comments? Then I'm going to ask. Either Darcy or Evan to read the motion. Okay. I would like Evan to read it. I'm actually going to make a motion. Very. Small motion to amend this. So I'm going to ask Evan to read this. Evan, do you have the motions handy? Yes. I am, I am pulling it up. Right now. Why not just make the motion? Why not let Darcy make the motion she wants. To begin with. Oh, I could do that. Good idea. All right. I can read it. To see if you have any questions. I'm going to turn the line to the property line in front of 133 and 143 Southeast Street. As detailed on the document titled Southeast Commons CD set 2020 0305 PDF. To be made by the applicant as indicated in SPR. including repair and replacement of paving and site furnishings as needed, including those recommended by the design review board period. A maintenance plan for this area shall be submitted to the planning department and the department of public works and shall be drafted in accordance with the email from Jason Skeels, Town Engineer to Christine Brestra, Planning Director, dated October 16, 2019. The area shall be maintained in accordance with the maintenance plan. Is there a second? Alyssa, you have your hand up. No. Okay. We need to, Athena, please take people's hands down. Is there a second to the motion? I will second it. Yeah. That was Mandy Jo. Mandy Jo. Okay. I just didn't know for sure. People would like to speak to the motion. Alyssa? As both George and Darcy pointed out, we voted 5-0 on the motion that was originally on the motion sheet. We did not, we specifically did not include that language Darcy just added. That was voted down. The sense of the group was that that was not necessary to do. I understand that she gave the idea of that during her report, but that's not what the group decided to do. If you would like us to rehash the entire conversation we had there about that, I think we can do that. But I don't think we should just do it based on, let's just add it in. Evan? I agree with what Alyssa said. So I was going to offer an amendment to the motion to strike the language, including those recommended by the design review board from the motion. Okay. Is there a second to the amendment? I will second that Mandy. Okay. So the second to the motion that is now on the floor is include to strike the words including those recommended by the design review board. Is there any further comment? I would just suggest that it is actually important for us to respect the work that's been done by the committees, by the planning board, by the design review board, and so on. And I understand that the group didn't end up voting for that. I regret my vote on that. In retrospect, I think that it just is really important. The suggestions that they made are very modest and obviously would enhance the public way and would be helpful to the public. And that, I believe, is our job to try to help make these public way requests to focus on the actual public way and making sure that the developer is providing what the public needs in that spot. So that's exactly what the design review board did. And like I said, I get that we voted unanimously for it, but I think that at least one of us would change votes now. Evan, you have your hand up. Yeah. So just to provide a little bit of context in the TSO discussion about where we came down on the design review board recommendations, there was agreement in the committee, excuse me, at least at that time, that we wanted the developer to have those recommendations, but we didn't want to make those compulsory. We didn't want to make it a requirement for the developer to get the public way. So just because we don't require it doesn't mean the developer might not take those recommendations on, but we didn't want to say, we're not giving you the public way unless you do this number of benches with arms and this number of benches without arms, which as a reminder is what was in the designer review board recommendation, this many benches with arms, this many benches without. And we thought that it was really important that the developer had the recommendation, but that we didn't want to say we're not going to let you use the public way unless you do these things. And so that's where TSO kind of came to a decision was important for them to have the recommendation to know, but we'll leave it to the discretion of the developer, whether they wanted to implement them. We weren't going to make our approval contingent on that. Dorothy, you have your hand up. Yes, I do. I understand Evan's argument. However, when we discussed it, one of the objections to the recommendations was the recycling container, and the question was, would that become a trash nuisance? Which is why Darcy has the maintenance plan accompanying with the design review board recommendations so that that objection would be answered. I do agree with Evan that recommendations are good. However, this builder will do things that he is required to do, at least in terms of why there's no affordable housing and there is none. And when I asked why he has handicapped accessible, he said because it was required, which is the importance of requiring things if you really want them. So I support Darcy's motion. All right. There's been a motion made and seconded, then we had an amendment to remove the words, including those recommended by the design review board. And that was seconded. I'm going to call the question on the amendment. Go ahead. Okay. The amendment withdraws. The amendment. I'm sorry. Okay. The amendment withdraws the words, those recommended by the design review board. Okay. Yes. Yes. Okay. I find this complicated. Mandy Jo, do I need to do the two thirds call the question? Okay. No one's got their hand raised, so I think you're okay. Okay. Good. Then let's go. This, the motion is to withdraw the original from the original motion, including the recommended, those recommended by the design review board. The roll call vote. And we will start with Griezmann. I am in support of the motion to amend. Hanneke. Yes. On the motion to strike. Dorothy P. M. No. Evan Ross. Yes. Brian. Yes. Shane. Yes. Driver. Yes. Dinder. Yes. Valmell. Yes. Brewer. Yes. DeAngeles. Yes. DeMont. No. Okay. The motion on the, the vote on the amendment is 10-4-2 against no abstentions, one absent. And we're back to the original motion. Is there any further discussion? So the motion now reads, it reads as follows. To approve permanent improvements in the, to the public way from the curb line to the property line in front of 133 and 143 Southeast Street as detailed on the document titled SE Commons CD set to 2020.0305 PDF. To be made by the applicant as indicated in SPR 2019-07 and to be maintained by said applicant or future owners for the life of the building from the curb line to the property line, line including repair and placement of pavement, paving and site furnishings as needed. A maintenance plan for this area shall be submitted to the planning department and the department of public works and shall be drafted in accordance with the email from Jason Skeels, town engineer to Christine Breastrup, planning director dated October 16th, 2019. The area shall be maintained in accordance with the maintenance plan. That is the motion. I'm going to move immediately to the roll call. Hanna key. Yes. Pam. Yes. Ross. Yes. Brian. Yes. Shane. Yes. Shriver. Yes. Steinberg. Yes. Balmille. Yes. Brewer. Yes. The Angelus. Yes. Humont. Yes. And Greece Mersey. Yes. So the motion is passed at 12, zero, zero and one absent. 12, four, none against, none abstained, one absent. We're moving on to one university drive and I'd like to call upon Dave Somak. And we need the map for university drive shown. Is Dave. Yeah, there you are, David. I am here. Great. Great. Thank you very much, Lynn. Thank you for having me tonight. I'll try to be brief. I'm joined tonight by the applicant who is represented by attorney Tom Reedy. I know that Jason Skeels, our town engineer, is also available tonight if the council has questions. And I'm going to try to be very brief and let Tom tell you more about the proposal. I know you discussed this public way request briefly at your last meeting, but in consultation with Paul, I wanted to share a few introductory remarks about the proposal from a staff perspective and then I'll turn it over to attorney Reedy. So very quickly, the permitting, can everyone hear me okay? Yes. The permitting process. There's been a very thorough and rigorous public process to get us to this point. The conservation commission reviewed the proposal, the proposed project and issued in order of conditions allowing the project to proceed. There are significant wetlands as you can see from the site plan, but all of the plan was approved by the commission some months ago. The planning board reviewed the project and recommended approval to the zoning board of appeals. The zoning board of appeals reviewed the project and granted a special permit back on March 12th. It includes a mixed use building with 45 apartment units and key to this development is five affordable units. There'll be 3,700 square feet of office space for a doctor's office and an additional just over a thousand square feet that can be rented to another tenant. I'm going to save talking a little bit about the parking and some of the public way improvements to attorney Reedy if that's okay. I just wanted to talk a little bit about the advantages to the town. So throughout the process, I talked about the public process briefly and how thorough and rigorous it was, but throughout the process, town staff have worked very closely with the applicant and in response to concerns expressed and and improvements suggested improvements expressed by committees and boards. Town staff have worked diligently to improve the project. We've had input from the two chiefs from Guilford mooring our superintendent of public works from Christine Brestrup, our planning director Rob Mora was very involved in in these discussions. And finally, credit to Jason Skeels for helping the applicant to make some significant improvements we believe to the public way and to traffic flow and safety and parking. And I'll let attorney Reedy talk more about that. What other so advantages of the of the projects first and foremost, it will provide housing and we know from the housing production plan done back in 2013. The town of Amherst needs housing, new housing, more housing in all categories. And as I said before key to this would be at least five affordable units. The property and the project as envisioned will also provide substantially increased tax revenue for the town over the existing single family home, which is on the property now. I think I'll end there and turn it over to Mr. Reedy. But in closing, I guess what I wanted to say was that there's been a very thorough process. Town staff have been right there all along the way, given feedback, trying to make the project better as it went. And I think it's a great example of how we can work with the development community. We can work with our boards and committees to put forth a project that is in the right location, the right size, working on working around environmental concerns, in this case, wetlands, sensitive wetlands and come up with a project that is better and a win-win for the town. So let me stop there. And Mr. Reedy, I think, can tell you more about the specifics of the project and talk about the proposal that his client would like to put forth for the public way improvements. Great. Thanks very much, Dave. Good evening, Madam President, counselors. I'm Tom Reedy. I'm an attorney with Bacon Wilson in the Amherst here on behalf of U Drive South, Barry Roberts, Kurt Schumway. And I think Dave Hithnell on the head. This project started in late 2018 when we first approached the town to talk about the planning department, the building department, to talk about this site and the potential improvements. And I can say that this parking and the public way improvements were not part of any of those initial discussions. And in fact, they probably weren't part of the discussions until late 2019 when I think it was Mr. Skeels had suggested the creation of a roundabout. And so if you're familiar with this area, which I'm sure all of you are, University Drive South is a 100 foot wide right of way, which is relatively unique as right of ways come. I believe it to be somewhat vestigial. University Drive is also 100 feet wide on the other side of North Hampton Road. That, as many of you know, was essentially a limited access highway that only allowed a certain number of entrances and exits because its genesis was to be a highway from UMass to I believe it was Bay Road. It was going to be 116. That never came to fruition. And on this side of Route 9, University Drive South, it has that dead end that really goes to nowhere. I think it might be used for maybe trash collection or some snow storage. And so we were dealing with a relatively unique one of a kind road. And then I think you're probably all familiar with traveling on that road. And I think Jason saw an opportunity and he's here obviously to speak to that, but saw an opportunity for substantial improvements. And after we started to discuss the roundabout, we also started to discuss parking. And so really through iterations, you have the plan that you see in front of you today. So as Mr. Zomick mentioned, the project was approved as a 45-unit three-story building with about 4,700 square feet of commercial space. The commercial space is tucked into the northern side of the site facing onto Route 9. And then out of those 45 units, there are 32 studios and 13 one bedrooms. And as Mr. Zomick mentioned, there are five affordable units proposed as well. That use is supported by 44 on-site parking spaces. And then the zoning board of appeals, as you see in the memo from the town manager, required as a certain conditions, approval of these off-site parking spaces. And so on your screen, you'll see the purple spaces. Those are the eight on-street parking spaces. And then in the lighter yellow, there are 12, in that dead-end space, there are 12 additional parking spaces. There is also a proposal for a sidewalk that if you zoom in, it runs the entirety of University Drive South on that westerly side along those parking spaces. There's also some plant things proposed in that dead-end public way, but then the balance of the plant things will be on private property. There's also going to be some pedestrian lighting along that sidewalk as well. I'm happy to screen share. I've got some other slides that I can show. There's obviously no need to. It seems like from reading your motions that we'll likely be back either at the TSO or at the June 29th hearing. And obviously we're happy to provide more information than. I'm happy to get into any other details of the project that talk about the roundabout, but that's generally its genesis in how we got to where we are today. David, are there other presentations on this? There are not. We wanted to try to keep it brief and leave time for questions. I do think, I know that the council had in their packet from the previous meeting, there were a few renderings that I found very helpful if the council would find those helpful. Again, I'm sure Mr. Reedy could speak to those, but there are some renderings of the building that I believe Cune Riddle Architects did that might be helpful. Sean, that is the additional packet that we discussed earlier today. I've got them up now. Do you want to just tell them? They're graphical, so they take a minute to load. But if you want to just tell me next, David, I'll run through them. David, I'm happy to take this. I would leave that to Mr. Reedy. So a lot of these, as Dave mentioned, we had Cune Riddle Architects design the building. And so we also asked them to do some context renderings. Most of them are pretty self-explanatory. This one is on route nine traveling east, and this is obviously after construction. If you'd like to go to the next slide. So this is pre-construction. I'll draw your attention to the left side of the screen. You can see the intersection of University Drive South and route nine. And then if you go to the next slide, and then you'll see what it would look like with the three-story building instead of that single family home. Next slide, please. This is from Baker Street, so this is to the southeast of the project. You'll see if you look, you'll notice a yellow sign. You'll see the roundabout. There looks to be a green car in the distance. And if you go to the next slide, you'll see but roundabouts creation. And then you'll also see the building and what it would look like from Baker Street. So certainly tucked away from the view of Baker Street. You'll also see some of that landscaping that I had mentioned. It's on the left side of the screen. You'll see some of those pines, some of those evergreens that would be planted. Next slide, please. This is one of the better ones, because you can see existing conditions. You can see the width of University Drive South being 100 feet wide. It's got that boulevard in the middle. And then you can see that dead end. You can also see the wear on the pavement from vehicles traveling in that direction. Ultimately, we believe that the roundabout is a traffic calming measure. It's going to give more stability to that intersection, more predictability to the intersection. Hoping that it will calm Snell Street, folks coming, traveling west on Snell Street, and also those folks coming University Drive and traveling east on Snell Street. We'll have to take a step back and think a little bit about the traffic movement that they're going to make. Next slide, please. And so there you'll see the property as improved. You'll see that you can see the sidewalk that's being proposed along those eight on-street parking spaces. You'll see, I'll call them bump outs, those the grassy areas at each of the bookends of the eight-meter parking or those eight on-street parking spaces to provide appropriate protection for those vehicles. I believe that from the easterly side of the parallel spaces to the median is about 21 feet, which I think Jason can talk to if you need him to, but we think is more than sufficient width for vehicles to both parallel park and to still allow vehicles to travel beyond that parking vehicle. And then further in the distance, you'll see the roundabout with the additional landscaping. Next slide, please. Again, from this is a view from the south, probably more focused on that roundabout. Next slide, please. And so you can see the creation of the roundabout and that additional parking. If you're familiar with the site, there's an existing tree line that is pretty well marked. That tree line is not changing. That is not coming down at all. So if you're driving by for point of reference, you can see that that tree line will continue to exist. Next slide, please. So just a view from the intersection, existing single-family home. And next slide, please. And this is the proposed building. You'll notice that there's no curb cut off of route nine. There was an existing driveway off of route nine, but through discussions with the planning department and neighbors, we decided that it was best to eliminate that driveway. And so access to and exit from the site will all occur from that University Drive South, Snell Street roundabout entrance. Next slide, please. Again, from across the street. Next slide, please. And the proposed building. Next slide, please. And these are just showing some comparative heights, probably more useful for the zoning board of appeals and the planning board when we were talking to them about some of the surrounding, the heights of the surrounding buildings and that this was in concert with those. So I don't know, I recall this presentation from the meeting a couple of weeks ago. I don't know that there are any more slides that are useful. I do have on my screen some details of the roundabout, should anybody be interested? And I've got the lighting plan, but absent any particular questions on those, and I'm happy to take general questions. Dorothy, you have your hand up. Okay. This question, I realized that it's not exactly part of this problem, but you have the sidewalk in front of the building, which is nice. And then you have the roundabout. There is commercial space, but there's a lot of residents in this building. And I would think if they wanted to take a walk, they would not want to walk along Route 9, but they would want to walk along the continuation of, I guess it's Snell Street. And I don't think there are any sidewalks on that. So I'm just wondering if you had thought about sidewalks kind of connecting it to a way, so they would, so people could have some place to walk beside the parking lot in Route 9. Sure. So if I may, if we want to go back, maybe three or four slides to one of the aerials. Yeah. That's probably, that's good, that's a good enough one. So you'll see that, yes, you've got that sidewalk along University Drive South. And then I think what you have to remember is there's that crosswalk. And so part of that Route 9 is going to be improved by Mass DOT. I think they're doing a complete streets project from this intersection all the way up to the top of the hill, South Pleasant Street. But you've got that sidewalk and it leads to the crosswalk. And then if you look on the easterly side where that crosswalk terminates, that is the Swift connector. So that's the bike trail. And so the thought was, instead of having folks walk up and down Snell Street, which is not the widest road, especially as you start to get up towards that railroad, the former railroad bridge, was to route folks towards Route 9, but then to utilize the crosswalk, especially because it's going to be improved through that DOT process and to access the bike path for walking. Okay. That's, thank you. Wendy Jo. Yes, thank you. And thank you for the presentation. I just want to, as I was drafting the motion that might come before us later and trying to figure out whether our bylaws on parking regulations applied, I was looking at the vote of the ZVA and I just wanted some confirmation that a vote to approve this as it's listed in the ZVA sort of statement of decisions is a vote to actually approve the regulation of those parking spaces in the public way, as presented in the first slide you had. The eight along the side that would be metered, if we vote for this, they would be metered. And then the 12 would be, I'm calling them semi-public and semi-private, 8am to 5pm for office visitor use, 5pm to 8am for resident only use, even though they're in the public way. And so I guess my question is to confirm that that's what we would be approving. And if we didn't like that particular regulation, would that, and we wanted to change that, say we didn't want to metered or something, would that any potential change of those conditions listed in that first slide result in a ruling that the special permit could not be issued? Because the way I read the special permit decision is that we have to vote as presented. So I'm just looking for confirmation as to what, if say we didn't want them metered, those eight along the street non-metered say, would that result in the special permit not being able to be issued? Great question. Ultimately, I think that's a question for the building commissioner. I think there was thought behind having those spaces along universities drive south metered, you know, something like one to two hours to prevent folks from coming, parking, staying, whether they're involved with this project or parking there and going to UMass or Amherst College or somewhere else. Whether it would void or require us to go back, you know, I'm not sure. I think what we would be looking for is, you know, on that on-street parking, probably a mix of metered and then permit spaces, you know, maybe eight to five for metered and then five to eight for permit. And then that dead end parking area, I think we would look for permit spaces there as well. And so based on your reading of the bylaw, whether or not that would be a regulation by town council of parking, you know, I think would determine your next steps and whether or not you have to hold that public hearing. Do we have, I don't know, is Rob still on this? I don't see him on this. I'm just hoping we can get an answer as to whether if we change, if we don't want it metered. I'm using that one because that's the easiest example, but there's also the 12 spots that are eight to five, presumably public use for use of the building, but then five p.m. to eight a.m. completely private use. And if we don't like that, say, split, does that jeopardize the issuance of the ZVA special permit is one of the questions that I'm, I'm, I'd really like an answer to that. Yeah. So I mean, I think if that's the way you're looking at it, yes, I think it would jeopardize because I think what the, the zoning board of appeals felt comfortable understanding that there would be those 12 spaces that essentially there would be use of, you know, assumedly permit parking. So the project owner, you know, Barry would buy the permit spaces and then be able to divvy it up, whether it's eight a.m. to five p.m. and then five p.m. to eight a.m. And then also in consideration of those additional parking spaces along University Drive South, I think the existence of those parking spaces and the regulation of them made the zoning board of appeals feel comfortable enough that there would be sufficient parking. Our position was we think we have sufficient parking, but I think they thought with those, you certainly will have sufficient parking. Thank you. Mandy, Joe, is there anything to follow up on that? Nope, that, that answered my questions. Thank you. Thank you. Darcy, you have your hand up. Yeah. I just wondered if you could talk a little bit about what you have looked at around sustainability for this whole project and especially in the parking lot, for example, have you considered having electric car charging stations and have you considered having the building be solar ready or solar equipped? You know, what are you doing for heating of the units and all of those questions? Sure. So probably the the electric vehicle charging station first, so Barry has experienced 70 University Drive, which is just down the street, was an approved mixed use building. He put in an electric vehicle charging station there, and I guess simply put there are plenty of strings attached, costs, etc., and frankly has not seen the use. So I don't think he would be inclined, he explored it, but I don't think he'd be inclined to put that electric vehicle charging station here. And the way that the building is heated, it's going to be heated and cooled through mini splits. And so you, if you look at the building, you can see, and maybe a side view would be better, but there's, you see the exterior of the roof. And then a little bit in, you see almost like a parapet. And then what would be inside of, or yeah, we're getting there, maybe, that's probably good. So if you look at the, you see the side of the building and then stepped back a few feet, you can see a higher roof line. And behind those will be all the mini split units. And so everything will be high efficiency, energy heating and cooling. And so because of that, we can't put solar on the roof, because that's where we're putting all the mini split units. I mean, it really is a very energy efficient building. It'll meet the stretch energy code. If you go to 70 University Drive, you could probably, it'll be somewhat similar in construction. And it's just, it's a very tight building, especially without gas. So there's obviously, you know, about the gas moratorium. And so the building is not able to be heated by gas. So that's why they're using the mini splits on the, on the roof. David, have your hand up. Is there something you'd like to add to the discussion that we're having right now before I call on the next person? Sure. I just wanted to reemphasize the company, what Mandy was asking about with Tom. And I think he characterized the outcome of the ZBA process that in off street parking in combination are a critical component to the project. But I think what I wanted to emphasize is that both of them, you know, again, we, I think the applicant is requesting use of the public way. The applicant is requesting to improve the public way. I think we, that's some, one thing that may not have been emphasized here is that all the improvements that you see before you tonight and in the packet would be provided by the project by the applicant. So the roundabout, the sidewalks, the plantings, the parking, both on street and off street would all be provided by the applicants. The other piece of this is that both the set of eight and set of 12 spaces would be revenue generating for the town. And I guess our goal, I think the goal tonight was not to get into the specifics of that. But if you will, that would be something that Paul could pursue in the future with the applicant. If you agreed in concept that the on street parking and the off street parking was appropriate and an appropriate use of the public way that the town manager could negotiate with Mr. Roberts and his partners on a fee system for that, be it a combination of permit and obviously the metered parking. And then we would, our parking enforcement folks would monitor the on street parking and, you know, we would work together with Mr. Roberts and his partners in the future on that. So I just wanted to emphasize the revenue piece. And yeah, if there are any other questions about the process itself, I know Christine Brestrup is on this call. So we could pull her in if necessary. Thanks. Kathy Shane, you have your hand up. Yeah, can you go back to the aerial view that you used when Dorothy was asked about walking that looked down at the building? That one, yeah. So mine was about walking, but walking to stores because I believe this is right near where we've also, we've got the old Amherst Motel turning into a taller building with some affordable units. And then up nearer to town, 132 Northampton Road will be a large complex with all affordable units. And some of the discussion of that is people could walk to shop. And I heard you say that, and we've heard this before, the DOT has a master plan for the roads here, complete streets. And you can see that sidewalk, if I was to be on this building side is a small sidewalk. If I wanted to ride my bike, so biking or walking, or if I wanted to go to stop and shop, I have to cross the street, or I want to go to Big Y, I have to cross the street. So just describe a little bit how you think DOT is going to do this. And if people don't want to have a car, because this is actually a great location for being able to walk to shop, except that walking would be quite unpleasant the way it's currently configured. I mean, not so getting to one of the stores and the quarter of a mile up the road where people were hoping to have, you know, pulley things with shopping carts. So it's this unit and the other unit. So there's a bunch of units that would benefit from an ability to walk along Route 9 or cross Route 9 to go to food stores. Sure. And maybe Jason could talk a little bit more about what DOT is proposing for the complete streets. I know that it is an upgrade to some of the, some of the signalization at the crosswalks. And so from this site, the sidewalk that you see is a five foot sidewalk that ends at that corner. So the northeast corner of the site. And then there are obviously crosswalks, three different crosswalks. If you wanted to get over to Ginger Garden, you could go across those three crosswalks or two crosswalks to get along University Drive. And then that's the Swift way. That's the Swift connector to go along University Drive. The complete streets, frankly, I'm, I know that they will have a bike lane. I believe it's also a sidewalk. Yes. Good. Want me to chime in, Tom? Sure, please. Okay. Sorry to interrupt. So yeah, the complete streets, their design isn't 100% yet, but they do have sidewalks on both sides. They're still working on the final elements of the intersection. But there will be, at least on North Hampton Road, there will be bike lanes going in towards Amherst. There will be sidewalks on both sides, full five foot sidewalks with grass belts. But again, I don't, they have not finalized on the intersection yet, and they're still working out the finer details. So I don't know that I believe a fourth crosswalk would go in so that there would be crosswalks across all four legs of the intersection, but I don't know for sure yet. Be aware of this building and the other buildings as they're thinking of where the placement is and what the access is. So it just, I realize the, this builder is not doing this, but rather than DOT comes along with its own idea. And you could imagine that some things would work better than others for giving biking and walking access either into town or to food stores. Right. So DOT, all of these developments have had to submit sort of an impact statement to DOT since North Hampton Road is a DOT road. So DOT is fully aware of the proposed developments as they, as they stand. I guess my question is, will they integrate those kinds of needs into the con, I mean, do, do we have a conversation with them where everyone, I guess we're in the Zoom world now, but I think of sitting in the room saying, let's talk about it if you do it this way versus that way. Just a separate process. It's definitely a separate process. And there's still, I think they're still at the pre 75% design. So there'll still be more public hearings with DOT to present their next level of design. So there's plenty of opportunities for folks to show up and the town to show up and say, we like a fourth crosswalk or we really insist on bike lanes or, you know, whatever, whatever it is we feel is important. We have the opportunity to throw in there. Thank you. Thank you, Jason. I want to go back to the question before us. It's about this project. As Jason has pointed out, there'll be opportunity for the other complete streets thing with route nine. Are there any other questions from the council at this time? All right. So there's a variety of options here. And both Alyssa and Mandy Joe have weighed in on them. So let me start with Mandy Joe and then ask whether we're, which way we want to go. Mandy Joe? Yeah. So I, there's a bylaw that requires us to hold a hearing. I think the motion sheet has sort of my comments on this. And so I think we're required to hold that hearing because the plan indicates the parking would be regulated and the bylaw talks about the regulation of parking. So I think just to be safe, we'd want to hold a hearing. So I would not, I am not in favor of voting to suspend the rules to vote tonight simply because I want to make sure we comply with the bylaw. So my preference is to vote to hold the hearing or set the hearing date. I don't know whether we need to vote to hold the hearing, but I would argue we should be setting a hearing date. Alyssa? I agree with Mandy Joe. I think this is one of those process things we're still working out and that it definitely, I agree with her interpretation that we need a hearing, much as it frustrates me if we need to push something out. But I think it's entirely appropriate for the town council to agree that we'll be ready to have that hearing whatever the earliest date is. Chris always tells us how much lead time we need to get things published. And you guys have probably already talked about that, but I do not want to see it get referred to TSL. I think we've had an adequate conversation here. And in fact, since we're going to have a hearing, there's even more opportunity for some of that presentation to be fine tuned for the, for presentation to the public at the hearing. I believe that the motion would be to advise the president to set this hearing date. And am I correct on that Mandy Joe? I drafted a motion that said to hold the hearing on a certain date. And then I didn't have a time in there, but it's, it's your decision whether you wanted a motion to hold or a motion to advise you to hold. I don't care. So why don't you make the motion and the date is fine. What time? 6 30. So I move to hold a hearing pursuant to general bylaw 3.14 on June 29 2020 at 6 30 PM regarding the regulations governing the location time and duration of parking on university drive south pursuant to the approved plans referred to in ZBA 2020-26 special permit decision. Is there a second? Second. Okay. Any further discussion on the motion? Okay. Then I'm going to move to a roll call vote. I'm going to start with Dorothy Pam. Yes. Evan Ross. Yes. George Ryan. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Yes. Charlie Balmille. Yes. Alyssa Brewer. Yes. Yeah. Pat D'Angelo. Yes. Garcy DeMont. Yes. Lynn Gries-Marzy. Yes. Mandy Johannike. Yes. He votes 12-0-0 with one absence. I believe that those are the only motions with regard to this particular event and we will then bring up the motion to approve after the hearing. Brett. Thank you. Thank you, Tom. And thank you to our staff for all your work on this. You are welcome. Thank you all. Okay. We are going to, let me just recognize here. We're going on to the amendment to zoning bylaw 11.250 regarding votes required for planning board decision. This is a vote to refer. It was on the consent agenda but at the request of a counselor it has been pulled off. Would you please show the motion on the screen, Sean? It's very brief. And enlarge that please. So basically some other counselor can chime in but what happened is when the zoning, when the planning board was reduced in size in the charter they did not change the vote that were needed in order to do site plan applications. And that's what this zoning bylaw would do. This is a referral of this bylaw to CRC and planning board and they would have a hearing on it. At what point, ma'am, did you? We are scheduled to hold a hearing on this on June 17th at 6.35 p.m. So are there questions? Yes. Darcy, did you have a question? Yes. What's the purpose of the change? So if I may, Lynn? Please. So before we adapted a new charter the planning board had nine members and so this has a but not fewer than five and two-thirds. It now has seven members so we reduced the nine to seven but that number never changed. It still requires five. This is for site plan review. There's a difference between site plan review and special permits. Site plan reviews are the review of a proposed use of a piece of land that is allowed by right. I'm using a lot of jargon here. I'm not sure Steve would probably better be able to explain it but a use allowed by right is a use allowed just in the normal circumstances. So in a residential neighborhood it is a use for a resident say a single family home. In a commercial district it might be the use as a restaurant. There's a whole table and chart that says what the by right uses are. In a professional research park it might be a medical office and that if that's what you want to build that use is allowed automatically. And so the site plan review is a less rigorous review than a special permit which is requesting a use that is not allowed by right under those use charts. And so the change is twofold. One would be to remove the not fewer than five recognizing that the planning board went from nine to seven. Five was a majority of the planning board at the time it was written. It is now a super majority of the planning board because the planning board only has seven members. And it would change the voting quantum down from two thirds to a majority which my understanding in speaking with people and planning is the standard in planning in zoning and planning right now for site plan review. It is the type it is this voting quantum that Northampton uses. And it is a and what I will say is the planning board has not fully discussed this particular wording yet. That's what the referral is for. The CRC has not fully discussed this particular wording. We looked at a chart of what a couple of different options and there was a leaning towards majority but it has not been talked about nor voted on at CRC. We would not vote until after public hearing. I think Shane you have your hand up. Yeah I'm focused on the wording and I realize this is a referral but the way this is worded now since we you do a majority it's of the members participating. So if I take an example of seven people are participating I mean not if we're only six participating or four so that they have enough to go ahead and you don't count an abstaining group. We don't have any minimum so a majority or at least three so you could have two people if there are four people there and one abstains or three people there and one abstains. So I think we need to consider like how few what's a quorum of the board and if someone abstains because the wording doesn't have a minimum and I can see why we might now want to have five as the number anymore but when you're discussing this the other did it in two ways to protect the if someone wasn't there that day or two people weren't there that day or one person wasn't sure to get down to a smaller and smaller number and this wording leaves you open to a very small number of people wanting to do this if some people are absent. Steve Schreiber you have your hand up would you like to address the question? I had it up and I had it down but I mean Kathy's excuse me Kathy's hitting on an important point so a quorum would be four people and this is not this is going to be referred but you know four would be a quorum and then a majority of four would be three right but that's what democracy is also so that's a basic principle of democracy is that those who vote I mean those who show up are the ones that get to vote and then typically the majority of those voting are the ones that make decisions so we see examples of that throughout democracy again this is a by right use so it's basically by right with with some input from the planning board it just Steve I just want clarification so I'm comfortable with three but I read this is we don't count an abstaining member so four people are there and one abstains then we're down to three and a majority would be two I mean that's the way I read the words so a majority of three would be two Steve you muted Steve you muted yourself yep yep so democracy you abstain you're there but you're giving up your vote that's so you know in theory you could have everyone could abstain right so for whatever so the vote could be one to one person voting everybody else abstaining and that that would um you know I'm speaking off the cuff but if people are willing to get their vote by abstaining that would be the result yes Alyssa yeah I got lost when we decided that quorum was no longer five I mean it's a seven member planning board quorum is always going to be five if as was indicated three of those people decide to abstain that's the same as always so so where did we how did we get from five you can't change the quorum requirement what I'm doesn't quorum's not five on a seven member planning board quorum is four okay so we're talking about mainly your concern that if quorum is only four that you're saying only four people intentionally have the ability to make a decision instead of if the seven had shown up am I understanding that correctly you're just that four should be allowed to make such a planning board can hold a hearing and a meeting with four people present not all seven at this point the way this bylaw is written they could not actually vote at all on that because they don't even have enough there to get to the five but they could still hold the hearings because they have a quorum present and I think what Steve was saying is if four are there and four have attended you know there's all these different rules about how how many you have to beat all the hearings to be able to vote and stuff like that um yeah and all if only four meet that requirement um this would allow if all four using their vote three people to pass the site plan review Steve you have your hand up again yeah and I always thought it was ironic that the zoning board of appeals which has discretion can say no used to be a three person body so we um and then the planning board which typically doesn't deal with discretionary permits was a nine person body and that was one of the reasons that the charter commission made that change or recommended that change that was passed by the voters this is a vote to refer I think it's been useful that we discuss it because once it's referred and the hearing is held it will come back to us with a recommendation and we will vote on it so is there any other discussion at this time all right then um I believe we have the motion is to refer the proposed amendment to zoning bylaw 11.250 to the planning board and the community resources committee to hold joint hearings and provide a recommendation to the town council within 90 days is there a second second all right and any more conversation then we'll move to a roll call vote Evan Ross yes Ryan yes Shane yes driver yes Steinberg yes well mill yes brewer yes but de angeles pat de angeles she's nothing yes pat pat you need to unmute you're clicking too much to me okay all right yes okay thank you elissa come on grease merseyes hannoky yes Dorothy Pam yes it's unanimous 1200 one absent um we're moving on to the town council policy regarding the control and regulation of public way section 3b this was on the consent agenda but it was removed and so we do need to start with a vote to suspend rules of procedure 8.4 for this item let me just point out that this is um the item that is related to the um zoning temporary zoning bylaw that has been forwarded it's already been heard by gol and it's and discussed by gol and by town services committee and um we will at some point have them speak to this as well but let's start with a need we need to suspend town council rule a procedure rule 8.4 for the current agenda item is there a second yes good okay uh motion has been made and seconded we start with george ryan who wait wait wait arsi um sorry i didn't forgot you could hear me i again i i was the person who asked to take this off the consent agenda because i i think it there is no rush we don't have to we can do this two weeks from now um i i actually feel like we need we need to um see if there's any other input from the public by waiting for those two weeks and i'm especially interested in making sure that if anybody from the disability community wants to weigh in that they have the opportunity to do so um shalini and i did hear at our district five meeting from a concerned person whose wheel chair bound was a few questions about um what the new situation is going to look like downtown if we do this um so i think that it this would be good to have the time to allow people to be reassured if they have concerns and that's why i would vote against um okay is there any other comment at this time okay so there is a motion on the floor it's been made and seconded and it's to suspend town council rules of procedure 8.4 for the current agenda item let me mention that we did hear earlier that they're they will have to abide by all the handicap accessibility rules and that we've been assured that that is part of the process of approval um so i just want to point out that that's been addressed in an earlier conversation this evening motion's been made and seconded we'll go with a roll call vote start with kathy shane yes steve schreiber yes andy steinberg yes shalini ball mill yes elissa brewer yes pat d angeles yes darsie dumont no lynn greece mersey yes mandy joe hannacky yes dorothy pam yes evan ross yes and george ryan yes it's 11 in favor one against no abstentions and one absent so now we're going to move on to the larger question and before we do that i would like both um we hear from both gl and from the town services let's start with george thank you lin i wonder if you could uh if shan could put up the slide so people can see the language thank you um right there sorry so the language you see in front of me um i'm going to be drafted by gol actually with the actually through mandy's hard work and i'm going to ask her if she's willing uh to speak to it specifically as to the nature of the language and why we made it a separate item item four um she's already spoken to this once today so she's warmed up but hopefully she will be kind enough to speak to it directly but this language was developed at gol and then it was sent to tso for tso to review but i think she should speak to it first if she's willing i'm willing thank you please go right ahead so um i i proposed this instead of the the town manager had proposed a change to only the long term uh no the short term closure um long term closure of one of them i think it was short term sidewalk closures um and or long term sidewalk closures and in reading our public ways policy i realized uh if restaurants are looking to operate in our public way for public seating for outdoor eating um which was the goal of some of the temporary zoning and and granting the town manager the um authority to delegating the authority to the town manager to grant those requests in the public way that those requests might not come for under 14 days which is a short term closure they might be longer than 14 days which would be a long term closure of a sidewalk or use um or they might be for a road or a parking a parking spot which would be under the item section two reservation of public ways short term requests and long term requests under 14 days over 14 days maybe they'll choose to use a a parking space in front of theirs on north pleasant street say for an example i don't know um and instead of adding the the work the town manager's language into all of those sections that that might apply for long term requests and short term requests for parking and roads and sidewalks um i thought it was simpler and more clear if all we did was add a full section that dealt with article 14 temporary zoning related requests um and and you know sort of applied it to parking road um sidewalks closures um and all of that for short or long term as long as they're temporary not permanent um and that they could not be granted for longer than the bylaw is in place essentially um so the bylaw is set to sunset if it passes its sunsets 180 days after it passes so this would grant the town manager the authority to grant approvals up to that 180 day mark um and so but i thought it would be clearer to be a separate section so that people know what they're looking at if they're looking at this policy and that the manager knows exactly what he's allowed to do thank you mandy and then we passed this five zero um and then shipped it off to tso okay tso garcy garcy uh yes we we also uh passed it five to zero with uh as amended by gol so our our uh hearing our presentation was by mandy joe and she basically told us what she just told the rest of the council um the only deliberation was um me bringing up the issue about uh getting input from the disability community um and um paul rob mora and christine breast strip um responded that they would be looking at um and following a da uh requirements okay is there any question all right then there is a motion the motion is to amend the town council policy regarding the control and regulation of the public ways by adding a new section four zoning bylaw article 14 temporary zoning related requests and renumbering the current section four miscellaneous to section five is there a second second is there any other further discussion garcy i i just want to say that i i support this but i'm going to vote against it because i don't feel i feel like we should be having a second um reading of it okay are there any other this any other discussion at this time all right then i'm going to begin with i guess schreiber yes steinberg yes bellmilne yes brewer yes yangelis yes dumont no greasemurs yes panicky mandy joe sorry yes i forgot to unmute myself dorthy pam yes evin ross yes ryan yes and uh kath shane yes votes 11 uh four one against no extensions in one absent we have already taken care of item e and f in the consent agenda and so we're going to move on to um g and g is a straight charter requirement it requires that we agree that we need to consider the regional school budget off cycle we did this last year and it's straightforward fairly routine but we wanted to make sure that we go ahead and vote it are there questions before i put the motion okay in accordance with section 5.5c of the amherst homeworld charter and in compliance with section 5.5a and 5.5b of the amherst homeworld charter um to separate we're moving to separately consider and act on the amherst pellum regional school district budget for fiscal year 2021 due to the agreement with the three other towns in the regional school district is there a second second any further discussion all right then moving to a roll call vote steinberg yes bellmilne yes brewer yes the angeles yes dumont yes greece merges yes hannoky yes northy pam yes yes ebb and ross yes george ryan yes keth shane yes steve schreiber yes it's 12 001 absent okay the next item is was done in the consent agenda and it was to on the community preservation act and we now move to item i on the agenda and it's the amendment with regard to town council rules of procedure 4.2 proposed rule 4.6 regarding use of the consent agenda would you john would you please put it up on the screen let me just say this has been before the council before it basically put formalizes the consent agenda which we've been you will trying out for the last couple of several meetings now and it's particularly been very useful recently so um the motion is to amend the town council rules of procedure rule 4.2 and add new rule 4.6 as shown in the document titled rules of procedure consent agenda revisions 2020-05-6 is recommended by gol there a second second okay elissa you have your hand up i'm confused and i'm trying to peer at mandy joe through the little tiny screen wasn't this still on the consent agenda i don't remember anyone pulling this out uh it was called out it did oh okay my mistake i thought i wrote down some i must have written down something different thank you it was called out is there any discussion at this time darcy please use your hand raising things yeah i i can't i can't um reach it because there's a bar over my participant icon don't know why sorry um i i have a simple um issue with this and that is that that um especially with zoom meetings i find it kind of nerve wracking to um to be ready with whatever um we're doing around consent agendas and and i feel like we should uh i know at at least one time in the past a counselor has contacted the president in advance of the meeting and just said um please take this off the consent agenda so i think that we should be able to do that um because um i i find it super nerve wracking to be ready to do that when there's plenty of time beforehand to be able to just email and say um please take that off the consent agenda um so darcy let me speak to that i'm glad to receive uh questions or comments or statements that i would like to be able to remove this from the consent agenda and even for that matter explain why it's on there uh but at the same time you have to ask for renewal in the meeting you ask have to ask for removal in the meeting why fire it's a requirement of open meeting law you can't ask for removal removal of an item or taking an item off the consent agenda through an email without being in the public you can warn me that you're going to ask for that but you need to ask for it in the public meeting so what i've been trying to do is make sure that i go through the list very slowly explain why they're there and then deliberately go back and say who would like to remove items any further discussion on that okay then um motion's been made and did i get a second yes i did any further discussion okay then we are back to ball melm yes brewer yes the angeles yes yes dumont yes resp. yes hannoky yes ham yes ross yes ryan yes shane yes schreiber yes steinberg yes the motion passes 12 4001 absence and we are now moving on again we are on time are very close to it um but we never taking a break in this meeting lind we actually if people need to take a break they should just exit out and take it we are so close to being done let's just keep moving um there was a question as to whether or not um this next item which is the letter in your this comes under 13 b the 48 hour rule and this is the letter to desi and there's been a question raised by both andy and mandy joe as to whether or not it's appropriate that the council does this letter or should the town manager be doing this letter and uh i was asked by doug slaughter to bring it to the council but then both mandy joe and andy have raised the question based on the guidance from the department of elementary and secondary education as to whether or not this is really the town manager so andy or mandy joe you want to speak to that andy joe i mean the guidance says that the letter would come from the select board or the mayor of a town or a city both of those individuals or groups are the head executive of the city um or towns um we are not the head executive so that would be the town manager however um because the deadline in theory is today and if we are unsure whether it needs to be the manager or the council i would argue we should vote and the manager should also sign a letter and then we will have both for whichever is required great so then would you please put the letter up on the screen this literally the language was straight out of the email i received from doug slaughter from the school district and it's to say that we agree that the amherst pellum regional school district can seek a 112th budget and we have to record our vote is there any further discussion then what you want the motion should be to authorize the president to sign the letter and approve this mandy joe you want to try a motion i don't seem to have one the the motion that that was drafted and in our packet is to authorize the president to sign the f y 21 letter of support for regional schools amherst town council june first 2020 there's been a motion is there a second second de angeles okay uh further discussion dorthy pam dorthy yes um i'm i'm the last sense we acknowledge that the district's 112th budget will be calculated using the statutory method if any member town fails to pass the 2021 budget okay so we're going to pass the 112th budget now and the others haven't done that yet so i'm just confused about how the time how those ideas fit together in time andy you'd like to address that please yes um we don't actually pass the 112th budget for the purposes of a regional school district uh the the department of elementary and secondary education imposes the 112th budget if the four the towns in the region in this case four towns can't agree on the budget on time for the start of the fiscal year under the standard procedures this being a very unusual year um raised a series of questions one of which was what happens to the assessment method the uh department of elementary and secondary education has the long-standing policy on the issue which they apply in years where there's been a failure to reach an agreement because of problems that the towns had and uh in reaching an agreement and that automatically then defaulted to the statutory method because of the unusual circumstances they uh created the ability which hadn't existed before to get excuse me to an alternative method that's what this is so you have a question we won't go after now that's we're we're okaying the 112th budget now and we'll find out whether we have a problem or later we don't pass the 112th budget if we don't if all four if the towns the other towns are unable to schedule town meetings on a timely basis and it misses the date um of June 30th so that we're in a position that there is no budget for the year um as it begins then a 112th budget becomes necessary and will be as i said earlier imposed by uh desi department of elementary and secondary education but it only comes to play if we fail to pass the budget on time if we pay if if the other towns can get their town meetings we certainly can get a council meeting because we meet on a regular basis and then the assessment method will be voted in the normal course of business as for the budget okay thank you okay alissa yeah my my my concern is just exceedingly minor but if you were to just read the title of this motion you would have no idea what it means to say we support the regional schools so could would andy what would be the right wording for that to support the regional schools budget assessment to support the regional schools 112th budget assessment it needs to have words not support regional schools that's all we need to have to look at the the motion is exactly worded but it's to support the alternative assessment method as proposed by the regional school committee in in doing a 112th budget yes the regional school committee of course is proposed that method for our considerate when we actually get to the full year budget that was the agreement that was made through the four towns meetings and so it's adopting the agreement that we made at the four towns meeting which has been put forward now for consideration at town meetings by the council with the regular budget pursuant to the agreement made in the four town process and this will allow that to be adopted by desi should a 112th budget become necessary so mandy joe you have your hand up i assume you're going to to state a friendly amendment since i made the amendment i am happy to add the words to support the alternative assessment method as proposed by the regional school committee to the end of the motion so that the motion reads to authorize the president to sign the f y 21 letter of support for regional schools amherstown council june 1 2020 to support the alternative assessment method as per as proposed by the regional school committee and the second person that second did it that was pat pat except that motion change yes is there any further discussion okay a roll call vote then we are going to start with brewer yes the angeles yes demand yes reese merges yes hannokie yes ham yes ross yes ryan yes chain yes driver yes steinberg yes and ball mill yes so it's 12 001 absent thank you we are now moving on to the appointments the town manager appointments are not being dealt with tonight but we are dealing with one finance committee extension for one month george ryan would you please present that yes uh at glls meeting um on may 20 we voted unanimously to recommend to the town council that it extend mary lou tileman's term as a non-voting resident member of the finance committee by one month to august 1st 2020 is there a second second okay any further discussion baffin i have a am i on yes yes um i just have a question um in the memo uh george i saw that you said you have a uh sufficient pool of applicants so does the decision to go for just a one month extension mean we have more than one person interested in this the available slot and how many are interested george i would want to keep completely separate i mean i'm willing to speak later about the the pool and and the situation but this is strictly a decision that was made utterly apart from the fact that we're going to have to fill this position but um so i'm sorry this decision i'm asking is if we only had one person we could have just gone to a year appointment correct you know i i just i i had i had been expecting we would get a recommendation for an appointment for a full year but it sounds like i'm fine with the one month but it sounds like the reason you didn't do that is uh i don't know no you are totally separate fairly separate um because of the the one month budget extension it didn't seem to make sense to the committee that we could potentially put a potentially new member of the uh non-voting resident member in that position so that was the only reason so um okay thank you there there will be a on another selection process but that is a separate issue with gol okay any further questions okay the motion's been made and seconded uh we begin with de angeles yes domont yes greece mers yes hannoky yes pamm yes ross yes ryan yes shane yes driver yes steinberg yes ballmail shallony shallony sorry about that yes grower yes it's a 12 001 absent uh we now move on to item nine which is committee reports uh community resources mandy joe i want to say thank you to my entire committee between um i think it's tomorrow and two weeks from two weeks and 15 days from tomorrow they will meet five times um we have a meeting tomorrow partially joint with the finance committee to talk about cpa we will be talking about some other things including noise by law that time on wednesday we will meet with the planning board at 7 45 to talk about zoning by law process not any of the hearings the next wednesday june 10th is the hearing on temporary zoning by law article 14 starting at 6 35 on june 17th at 6 35 will be the hearing on the zoning by law 11.25 that we just referred to day on site plan review voting requirements quantums and in the middle of that we will also have another meeting on june 16th so i thank the committee for all of the meetings that they will be going to we will have a lot of reports coming up on all of that stuff we're working on noise by law a little bit on wild animal act we're we're moving forward on stuff um and the report next next council meeting will have a more full report on what we've been doing we take up the whole town packet uh andy finance committee yeah just real briefly because i've already spoken to all of us anyway um we are meeting tomorrow it's mandy indicated in a joint meeting to um receive the presentation from the community preservation act committee um i expect that we will uh be taking up all of the issues that need to be decided in the regular course of budget process that um proposals that have to do with funding uh by borrowing can be dealt with at a later date um and uh that doesn't need to be determined right now so we may take those up as separate um and then we have the joint hearings that i've already reported on next week and i will submit a report as soon as we agree to the proposed process for the entire budget cycle and make sure that you get that promptly probably at the next meeting thank you george gl yeah um relevant to kathy's comment earlier the committee did vote unanimously at its last meeting to declare the pool for non-resident members uh for the finance committee to be sufficient um so it is definitely more than one and um we are now soliciting statements statements of interest s o is and uh waiting to get those back and then we'll proceed on that the process is in the works and uh whereas it's soliciting s o is kathy joint capital planning committee um so i want to start the way mandy started with uh uh thank you to all the members of jcpc and that includes three counselors so in addition to all the meetings mandy's going to um and andy's going to they serve on that committee we filed uh the report and it's with our recommendations to the town manager today and it was today was the deadline and some of you may or may not remember that the guidelines were changed only a little over 10 days ago so we met twice since that to consider an entire different piece so i'm not going to talk about those recommendations because ball will be talking about them with the capital plan but two issues i just wanted to bring to people's attention and i did a brief report that you can read about this later is we did come together and focus on the coming fiscal year and given the uncertainty on where we'll be as we get into the coming fiscal year the multi-year the five-year capital plan becomes even more uncertain so we're expecting jcpc will be asked to meet and the town staff has agreed in the fall so this wouldn't be typical but coming back to the multi-year plan so expect to see that discussion the second issue is the um we have in the charter something called a capital inventory that the charter calls for that we have an inventory of all significant assets they're a useful life and it has one additional sentence in it and the guidelines on specs on what should be in the inventory shall be developed by the town council and we haven't gotten that thorough inventory i think in part because we haven't developed specs so i'd like to bring it back to the council to say should we refer the development of that either to the finance committee to another committee or to an ad hoc committee on what do we mean by a full capital inventory because it's supposed to be done at least annually so i think the buck is on our shoulders right now to get this moving and i would say given the situation we're going to be in at least for the next year knowing what we already own and it's useful life and will help guide decisions on what other things we need to invest in so the inventory is going to be even more important than it would be just as a document to file but are really you know how many buildings do we have are they're buildings that are surplus you know so i think we need to take action council members to figure out where to put the development of the standards and the specs for that and that's just the report gives you the citation to the charter but it's just a uh ask that we move that into move it somewhere that we can come back with a recommendation hopefully this year not waiting a long time so we could develop an inventory that's it thank you for bringing that to our attention kathy let's discuss that and come up with some kind of motion okay um outreach communication appointments ad hoc committee evan uh okay meet you again on monday but it's not that since the last council meeting so it has no report okay and are you still accepting applicants for zba we are we are always accepting planning board all live but we are especially accepting applicants for the planning board right now thank you okay and town services and outreach darcy yeah um like we said earlier we met this morning um we and you have a report about that meeting but it didn't come in until very shortly before this meeting um we we acted on a list of um reappointments to 11 different town boards and committees that were set to expire at the end of june which we we will act on at our next committee our next council meeting we looked at the temporary zoning moratorium public way policy request um which we already acted on uh and we started looking at a surveillance technology bylaw mandy joe and pat our cosponsors of a surveillance technology bylaw so we got a brief introduction to that today mandy joe answered some questions um and we'll be looking at that uh later on uh after we talk more about our review process which we are going to do at our next meeting okay thank you uh we have already approved all the minutes uh for the consent agenda and so we're moving on to the town managers report and paul we only have one item after this so why don't you take advantage okay well you have my written report the only things that I would want to point out to you are um the farmers market went off um pretty well over the weekend it was very popular a lot of people showed up there were things that we learned in the process things that will change for next week um the the building commissioner was there pretty much most of the morning as was the assistant town manager and the um the health inspector and then our health director also swung was there and I do want to note that our um uh council president was first in line and uh made the first purchases of the day so um it was great because it was a glorious day and it turned out well um the um we are beginning our work on reopening the building the building to our staff that's that's a slow process but we're doing it step by step so that's moving forward doing a cup of joe on friday with uh sean mangano and sonja aldridge as the guests and then on thursday we're doing our call-in show but instead of having julie fetterman there we're going to have a takeover by the asleep community participation officers so they will all be part of it um answering questions for anybody so it sounds that's going to be a fun time too the last thing that I want to mention was that we are working on uh voting locations I mentioned that last time so we have a team setup that includes the um our uh facilities person the public works superintendent the fire chief and the town clerk being led by the town clerk so those are the highlights I want to mention okay we have a question george yeah paul I just wanted to touch briefly on the the reopening uh work of the reopening committee and I'm particularly wondering about people around june 15 when most of the staff is perhaps many of the staff will be coming back to town hall if you have individuals uh on staff who have people at home who are have pre-existing conditions or have some kind of vulnerability is that something that that will be taken into consideration um and if they have these concerns how could they how could they raise them um that's the kind of question I'm wondering sure so and we do have people like that and it's a it's a case-by-case situation we talk with them there are certain um options that are available to people under the um FF CRA I forget exactly what that stands for uh that gives people additional um protections um but it depends on the job if if the job can be done remotely we we can accommodate that uh we but it depends on the um again on the department's needs and what we have available we can't bring everybody back at the same time I mean I have the privilege of having an office there's nothing that prevents me from being here on a daily basis but there are people who live who are working in uh open space and so we have to worry about how many people are in the shared space so one of the things we're doing is looking at additional spaces in the building that have been used for meeting space that we can distance people and people would have people give people their own space so that they feel a little more comfortable so but it's something you know we talk about with our health director with our HR director and think it through in a on a case-by-case basis Are there other questions or comments on the town manager's report? Yes, Mandy Jo. To follow up on George's question we've gotten a lot of you know we've seen I've seen a lot of other towns in the area starting to open up their libraries for curbside pickup um maybe some beaches are opening um to reference Puffers pond and we've gotten a lot of questions about can people swim in Puffers pond can you give us an idea of a timeline maybe when our library you know I know you're not the library director but um you know when that might open up for potential I know the employees aren't in there yet but maybe when we might see a curbside pickup what the thinking is on that um and then things like Puffers pond um playgrounds play structures and since I think those were included in phase two we don't know when phase two will begin um but we know the announcements coming in a week. So for the library the the director does have a plan for bringing for opening curbside but isn't isn't ready to staff it yet at this point because they it does require a fair amount of staffing to accept material coming back I think that's the first phase is to accept material that people want to return and it takes a lot of space inside the library as they manage because they have to bring books in they have to have them be in a space for a couple days before they touch them and things like that so I don't have a date for you and I can I can ask her to seem determine we're sort of trying to walk together on this and we've been targeting June 15th for our staff to again it allows the governor's order allows 25 occupancy so that's not everybody coming up building open or anything like that to various we might be at 25 today in fact just with the number of people who are here today um so in terms of Puffers pond we were shooting for June 1st you know the police chief and the assistant town manager been working this with the superintendent public works think about how it's going to work if we are going to manage it it's going to take an enormous dedication of staff time and we're not looking to hire a lot of people we're trying to repurpose people who otherwise would have been doing something else and to work up there but if we're going to manage it say 10 to 6 7 days a week it just takes a lot of effort and we would be regulating it by parking and then putting circles on the beach you know where people this is where you can safely social distance we were initially looking at June 1st we just had a conversation this afternoon with the town assistant town manager concerned about me having said that date in the town manager report whether we can actually hit that date or not for playground equipment we've opened up the tennis courts we have not opened up basketball courts or playground equipment yet again that's in the next phase for the governor the governor just came out this afternoon or tonight or his office with guidelines for summer camps that we're just starting to study I haven't read them yet so we'll see what that how that impacts our summer camp situation again we focus we funnel everything through our health director because we want to make sure that we're following the science doing things the way we think it can be and trying to be aligned with the state government's rules Kathy Shane I just you you may have heard this already Paul in our district one meeting as well we're talking about but also the bike trail came up a couple people pointed out that the trail all the way around puffers is a favorite walking trail um in and out and it's often no more than a foot and a half wide in some places you know it's a little bit wider and and that they said there's there's posting that your dog needs to be on a leash although people don't always do it but there's no posting that you should be wearing a mask um and so the suggestion was do some kind of posting because there's a lot of people passing each other on that um in a way that you cannot you cannot be six feet apart that well you can if you're very agile because you can climb up the hill and get behind a tree or but you can't just move to the side of the trail so it was thinking of that and and the bike trail a similar comment that it's not that wide but just a reminding people um and most people I think are behaving quite courteously um in my experience but we had several comments I mean Lynn was on the call with that where people were talking about both biking and walking in narrow places and they thought signage might help just to remind people oh you know the bike trail is is run by the state it's not a town bike bike trail um but again the if bikers go by when we have had this conversation many times with the health director and she thinks the viral load coming from a bike or moving quickly is pretty minimal compared to other situations I think you're right now I have you know we walk the trail around puffers a lot too and it is narrow and while you people are very courteous and try to socially distance you know you have to have your mask with you because you are going to run into somebody and you know let me think about that and I'll raise that with um we're meeting up there on Wednesday maybe make that a one-way path if we can somehow make it might make sense um at signage we have some signage but it does not address masks you know the policy of the town is that masks are required if you can't maintain social distance but you never know when that's going to happen like if you're downtown or if you're on that path probably you're going to have a hard time meeting social distancing um just to go back to one thing Mandy mentioned was about you puffers pond if people want to swim in puffers pond or do their aerobics exercise or something that's permissible um it's the camping out on the beach or sitting on the beach is what we're trying to you know prohibit or inhibit for uh manage I guess is what I was saying I'm not sure people know that so um yeah I think we might it came up again in our district one meeting but we might put a note out because this this area uses that they it's okay to walk into the water yeah yeah okay yeah I understand that lisa thank you following up on the puffers pond conversation and tying it into something george said earlier I appreciated george leaving me not be the only one who kept bringing up over and over the idea of bringing back staff who may have underlying conditions that they're perfectly adequate employees under any other circumstance but now this is a fearful situation and we don't want to just say well I guess it's time for you to retire um and at the same time we're talking about puffers pond where we've made very clear and even had a sign up that said beach is closed and there were people interviewed in the newspaper who said gee it's great there's nobody here because I can hang out on the beach now and so I'm really concerned that if we aren't going to be clear about that as we heard so much at district one and was very obvious in that mass live article that if people think they're allowed to do something we need to be clear on what they're not allowed to do because I don't want to see a ton of resources put into enforcement either and when we're talking about staffing we all know we've had incredibly minimal staffing at puffers pond over the years at best we're lucky if we can hire somebody to do trash removal and keep people off the dam and so I'm really concerned that there are people who show up in fact some of which are not amherst residents and say I get to hang out on the beach because nobody else is here how does that put us in a position if the next group of people is there and the first group of people didn't get asked to be moved along but the people who showed up the next day did so as we can get this clarified I think that will be incredibly helpful I realize as I said to the people talking in district one we don't have the same rules that Northampton does because our board of health hasn't done that here so we don't have those kind of signs but that doesn't mean that we can't be clear but people were literally photographed next to the sign that said beaches closed and said they were surprised no one was there because it was great so thank you for any work that you guys can do to be creative so that we don't later get accused as we could quite reasonably be for discriminating against some folks and not Earthy Paul could you give some details of possibilities of summer camp and amherst I don't know the details I know that LSSE I just saw an email while this meeting was going on from LSSE saying that they had a plan set up and now with the new state guidelines Barb said looks like we have to go back to the drawing board it messes with how we'd laid out things we we had anticipated so the work that they had done they now have to filter through what the state guidelines are so I don't have guidance for you on that okay thank you yeah I think it's a stay tuned for you know a bulletin any other questions of Paul at this time all right then I have a few comments and that is first of all I would like to thank all the counselors and all the committee chairs you've actually gotten us back to normal business and that has not been any small feat several people have learned how to produce for other counselors and I really appreciate that and how everybody has pitched in I also want to thank all of the district counselors and the townwide counselors who attended all district meetings everybody in the last two or three weeks has had one district meeting so district one two three four and five have all met and with varying levels of attempt of attendance but some excellent issues raised which I've heard several counselors representing those remarks here today and I believe that the at-large counselors were able to attend many of those meetings and I want to thank them for doing that it was highly appreciated I will mention but not for comment at this time that I've given you a draft and I do mean draft timeline for the town manager's evaluation it's going to be most unusual to evaluate the town manager when a good third of the year or one fourth of the one third of the year was COVID and but I will be bringing that back I have asked you for individual do not reply all comments on that and with regard to that one of the things that we are going to have to look at is the town counselors calendar for council meetings particularly as it relates to late July and early August and whether or not we maybe need to schedule another meeting in order to get everything attended and I am still working on the future agenda items and in fact because we now have a finance agenda calendar for the various items will help me at least put together between now and I think the end of September if not beyond are there any questions at this time are there any future agenda items to be raised Kathy raised one earlier and are there any counselor comments then given that we have no executive session we've dealt with all the topics that were 48 hours I call the meeting adjourned and it's only 945 thank you have a nice evening