 Seeing that we have a quorum of the Town Council members present. I'm calling the Town Council meeting to order at 6 30 p.m. On Monday, October 21st, 2019. A few announcements. First of all, welcome. This meeting is being broadcast live and being recorded by Amherst Media. Copies of the agenda are projected on the screen from time to time. And if you are interested in speaking during the meeting, please sign the sheet at the back of the room. We will begin tonight's meeting with a public hearing on tax classifications. This will be followed by item 7a, the vote on the tax classifications and 7b, the discussion and vote on the Centennial Water Treatment Borrowing Authorization. Public comment will be held on both of those topics as we get to them. We will then return to the regular agenda as presented. I just want to call attention to a few items. First of all, next week, we will not have a regular council meeting. We will, however, at 5 o'clock, have a primer on the master plan. And that will go until 6 o'clock, at which time we will actually have a public forum on the master plan. This is required by the town charter. We will hope to be done by 7 o'clock or thereabouts since there is a debate for those people running for town office over at the bank center sponsored by the League of Women Voters. The four boards meeting will be held on November 7th in 2019 at a place to be determined. On December 2nd, the town manager and I will be giving our State of the Town address as required by the charter. And that will be followed by a pretty special council meeting at 6.30. Well, we will have legislative updates from both of our senator and our representative as well as reports from the other elected boards and the license commission. And then on December 7th, we have the four towns meeting which is the four towns that comprise the regional school district. So we'll begin the hearing. David? Just let me say, there has been a lengthy presentation on the tax classification information session held for the town council. And you can see that as indicated on the agenda. The hearing is now open. Mass General Law Chapter 166, Section 22, requires that the council holds a public hearing on the petition of this current year's tax allocations between the five classes of taxable property, residential, open space, commercial, industrial, and personal property. A brief slide presentation will proceed the discussion. The notice of the public hearing was published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette on October 16th, 2019, and also on the town website. The town manager, principal assessor, and board of assessors have recommended approval of a single tax rate for all property taxes, a factor of 1.0, and no residential or small commercial exemptions. We'd now go ahead and have you make the presentation, David. You're all done. Good evening. This is the annual setting of the tax rate, the classification hearing, as we call it. And it was just said, you have all had this in your packet, and we have had a couple of discussions beforehand about it. David, is the light on? Yeah, the light's on. Just make sure you're speaking into the mic. Tonight you have to decide if you're going to have a split rate, which means you're splitting the taxes between the residential and commercial properties. If you're going to adopt a residential exemption, a small exemption, a small personal exemption, or an open space discount, you will not be doing an open space discount because we don't have open space. The commercial exemption, we don't have any qualifying buildings, so that only leaves us the residential exemption on the split rate. What happens is you have the authority to move the taxes by increasing the levy on the commercial properties by up to 50%, and at the same time lowering the levy on the residential properties. If you did that, the average residential property would decrease in taxes by $502 a year. At the same time, you would raise the commercial properties by $5,599, and increase the industrial by $1,764. It's important to remember that within the classes, commercial includes all the farmland as well as anything else, and the residential includes all the apartment complexes. Your other option is to adopt a residential exemption, which we've discussed a few times. That would shift the tax rate within the residential class only, and it is based on 20% of the average valuation of the residential part partials. What would happen is the tax rates of the residential to that point would rise above the commercial industry and personal. Anyone who has occupied property as their main residence would be entitled to the exemption, and we could do up to 35%. Most of the properties in town would qualify, about 4,316 would qualify, but not all of them will get the same exemption, because the exemption impacts the valuation, and it's a single figure valuation, not 20% of the value of the property, but 20% of the average valuation of the whole town for residential. This, of course, would make a substantial difference to lower-end properties, but properties of about 450,000 and up will pay more as they go forward, even if they get the exemption. And apartment complexes will not get the exemption, so, of course, they will pay more taxes, the higher-end. I can't go into more detail, but we have done this a couple of times, so I don't know if you want me to go any deeper or not, or just answer some questions. Okay. We'll move on to questions from the counselors. Yes, Mandy Jo. I have one that sort of relates to this, but potentially upcoming stuff. If we would adopt a split rate now, what I'm not clear on is how does a tax override for bonds, like if we were to do a bond override, how does that calculate into a split rate? Does that override payments go and be calculated under that split rate, or are they still a one? We will calculate the initial rate, including bonds or anything else, and at that time, then we would split it, so yes, it would increase by 50% when there has commercial property. Okay. Yes, Darcy. I didn't attend the other hearing, but I did watch the video today, and I heard you say that there were 11 other towns that have the split rate within the residential, and I'm wondering how they handle issue of protecting low-income residents that are in rental units. I'm kind of assuming that are in our, how would it work with our actual affordable housing complexes? Would they also have to pay a higher rate, or how would that work? Yes, they would have to pay a higher rate. As I said at the meeting we had, most of the communities that you're talking about already split the tax rate between the residential and commercial, so that basically helps, and as much as if you then adopted the small residential exemption, or the residential exemption are not small, it would still reduce or have an impact of having a lower tax rate than it would be if it was a single tax rate, so that way it doesn't really impact the apartment complex as much as we would. I think it's something like if we had an apartment complex valued about $10 million would pay about $38,000 more a year in taxes, and that's where, so that would be quite an impact, and that's where most of your lower income folks live in the apartment complexes, obviously. And do any towns have any kind of by-law or ordinance or whatever that can protect those low income residents from that having the tax increase passed on to them, like rent control or some other thing like that, some vehicle to prevent that from happening? The only one that I knew about that had rent control was Brookline, and that went out a long time ago, so I'm not aware of anyone that has rent control or any other by-laws. Yes, Kathy. I was able to attend the earlier meeting where you described how this worked for us, and during that it was recommended if we were to consider an exemption within residential that we not do it now, but we ask you to do a study over the course of the next year to do both an assessment of how many homes do we have that are actually homeowner occupied as principal residents, and then some sense of within the lower end or higher end of the income of residents to talk about, because even, as I understand it, even within the home owner class, there's the potential of an exemption to increase the total taxes they paid. So if we go ahead with uniform tonight, should we also, if we want to see that study, be requesting it tonight? It certainly wouldn't do any harm to request it tonight. Obviously, I can't answer that. I wanted to bring it through the town manager, but we would definitely work with them on it. So yes, go ahead and do it tonight. Are there other questions? Yes. Dorothy. There's been some discussion and that an owner occupied house with a rental unit could receive some kind of tax exemption or tax reduction. Do we have anything like that? Is that anything that would be useful to proceed with? Any owner occupied property with a value under 450,000 would benefit from the exemption. It's based on value, not the use of the property at that time. So two or three families would probably, most of them would probably be under that if the owner occupied. That's what we have to find out. So I'm not hearing understanding everything. So does that exist now? Is that what you're saying? Or you're saying if it did exist, this is what would happen? What I'm saying is if you voted this, that's what would happen. If you voted residential exemption for the properties below about $450,000 that our owner occupied, whether it's one, two or three units, as long as one of them is occupied by their owner, they'll get the full exemption. Wouldn't that be good? Well, for those people, yes. I think the questions that are being asked are very much in the spirit that you suggested at our meeting, which is we would ask the town manager to conduct a study or maybe even a point to committee that might look at this and then come back to us in a future year yet next year in the earliest. So he wouldn't try to do anything to the recommendation this year. No, this year, as I said at the last meeting, we do not have accurate enough information. If we did, if you were going to do it this year, my next step would be turning Roy and Shadia, I need $150,000 in the overlay accounts and nobody wants to play with the budget at this time of year. Great. Thank you. Other other questions? Shalini. Based on the video that I saw, my understanding was that the towns where the split rates worked or maybe even the exemptions worked was where the commercial revenue was really high. Most of those communities, it's a 70-30 split. We are a 90-10 split, so there really is quite a difference. And Menelm are above the 70-30. Sarah. So could you just give me a little bit more information about how, so for like 61A for farms or farms that are APR'd, a little bit about if it's all, if we all merge together like how much of a difference that's going to make for farmers? Okay. The only one that would impact the farmers is if you split the tax rate between residential and commercial. And what it would do is raise, if you'd adopted a 50% change, it would raise the taxes on 61A and 61B by 50%. It's all within the commercial property. Additional questions from the council. Okay. Then we're going to go on for public asking questions. Are there any people here who would like to ask questions regarding the tax classification? Okay. The next question is, are there any public people here who would like to speak in favor of the proposed classification? Are there any public here who would like to speak in opposition to the classification? Any further questions from the council? The council debate on the merits of the petition shall follow the vote on a motion to close the evidentiary portion of the hearing, therefore the hearing is now officially closed. And David, why don't you just stay there since we're actually going to move on to the vote. Okay. So we're going on to seven action items 7A, which is the tax classification. And let me just say there are actually three motions involved in this. So the first motion that I need is to adopt a minimum residential factor of one equal tax rate for all classes of properties for fiscal year 2020 and that no open space discounts be granted. Is there a motion? Okay. And is there a second? Okay. Any further discussion? Okay. All those in favor raise your hand and say aye. Opposed? Abstain. 13400. The second motion is do not, do not adopt a residential exemption for fiscal year 2020. Is there a motion? A second. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor raise your hand and say aye. Opposed? Abstain. Okay. One abstention. So it was 1201. 1240 against and one abstained. And the next one is do not adopt a small commercial exemption for fiscal year 2020. Do I hear a motion? Okay. Mandy Jo, are you? That was Pat. Are you the second Mandy Jo? Okay. All right. Shake it up a little. Is there any further discussion? Early in the evening for this game. Okay. Hearing none. All those in favor raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain. So it's 1240 against and one abstention. David, thank you so much. Thank you very much. Yes. Have a nice night. We're enjoying your partial retirement. Well, this has been a last year. Do you see me? Oh, you'll have to come back. We'd also like to thank the board of assessors that have been here with us tonight. Thank you very much. Okay. We're actually going to again take the agenda out of order. We're going to move to the Centennial Water Treatment Borrowing Authorization. Finance Committee report, please. Andy? I think Mr. Zecki is here and she's going to assist if there are questions that need to be answered about the technical aspects of this. And she's the deputy superintendent of public works for the town. And this is really the one who's our expert on water and sewer facilities and policies. Finance Committee report supplements a number of presentations that we received from Guilford Morning Superintendent of Public Works. And we have heard several times and there was actually two different Finance Committee reports, including one that was in the packet for this meeting. I'm not going to go through the packet material that was in this meeting because I think that really speaks for itself as to why the Finance Committee voted five to zero to recommend to the council that it appropriates $692,000 for engineering services as described. And I think that the basic reason is that we conclude that the watershed area in Pelham is an extremely valuable resource to the town. We cannot continue to use it without the new water treatment facility being brought online. And there's a time limit to do that work or we lose the permission from the Commonwealth to actually use that incredible resource which jeopardizes the security of our water supply. And if there are questions about that, I'm probably going to duck it to Mr. Secki, but I think that it was a fairly clear understanding of the committee and we tried to communicate it fully. There was one issue that was left open that I did want to get back to and that has to do with the question of solar. And just to give a little bit of background on it, the net zero energy bylaw that was adopted was adopted after work of a committee of eight four that were representing various town capacities and four that were representing the advocates who had originally brought forward to town meeting the request to adopt a net zero energy bylaw. I was a member of that group on behalf of the town as was Mr. Bachlemann and President Griezmann. And one of the people who assisted us in meetings of our smaller group but was not not at the meetings directly but was there in spirit because he really worked with us to help us understand the system was Mr. Moring. So he fully understood what the bylaw was about. When we looked at the bylaw just to refresh our own recollection, the plant itself because it's a town-owned facility is actually covered by the bylaw but there was an exemption for process energy. And it turns out that in the reason for the process energy, I might just point that out a little bit more. This comes not from discussions of finance committee but discussions of the original ad hoc committee that developed the bylaw was that the amount of process energy can be quite high. It can be quite variable. It can be quite uncertain. When a building is built, we don't always know what the process requirements are going to be in the future for the building. And because of an example that I recall from that discussion was if you build a building and then later you put in a lot of computer technology equipment that's process energy that would be used because it has to do with processes of things that are happening within the facility. So the reason that this is important is that the facility that's proposed for Centennial will based upon prior experience we think actually use a lot of energy but energy for process. And then the question comes not so much as to whether we might be able to put a few panels on in compliance with the bylaw to handle lighting and heating but that's actually probably relatively small because it's not a building that's actually used by employees on a regular basis and which really gets back to the point that the power is the power that is processed for water purposes. And so that's kind of the background piece to this. A couple of the things that Mr. Morring pointed out to us and I think he apparently though I can't speak for consulted with Mr. Secchi about this is that the engineering work to figure out whether we could actually extend the net zero energy to process which is really what the committee was asking about is a fairly substantial investigation and it has several risks to it but the biggest risk might be going back to the original point that I raised which is if our goal is to build a plant in order to get it online in time to get the plant using the water from that resource before the expiration of the time that we have the permit to do so. We don't want to do anything that will risk that bottom line number one goal or it wouldn't be advisable to take on the entire project to begin with. There are several other aspects that we recognized that are uncertain in timing. One is that you never know with solar whether you can get permission for the interconnection even if you do otherwise do everything get interconnection to the grid. And the other thing that Mr. Morring pointed out was that this is actually impelled so that the permitting of any work that has to be done is not immersed it's Pelham that is giving the permits that if neighbors object to cutting down of acres of trees in order to install solar panels that we don't know that there might be a whether or not there would be opposition but that the whole hearing process and follow-up process that could result could delay the process and create the kind of difficulty that we described. So with that in mind I think that what we came down to is in consultation with Mr. Bachlemann who's not able to be here. It's his suggestion that the town go ahead and assess the readiness of the building and the surrounding land support solar and that that be done during the design phase of the process. And but otherwise is recommending that with the understanding that he wants to do that exploration that we go ahead and vote tonight to issue the order so that this can proceed. So I think I'll stop there see if there are any questions or Mr. Secki wants to comment on anything I've said. Amy. He did a wonderful job in capturing it so thank you. Kathy. I agree that that was a quite thorough explanation. My question is in the way we want to be requesting this for this design phase my understanding or my thought is that if the engineering firm who's doing the specs for the new plant has in mind that potentially we would want to add solar panels to the roof or right next door for feeding back to the grid at least partial costs that it might affect the way they design like the location of the roof the orientation of the roof the the slope of it so that we make that as an official request to not necessarily that it has to be done but it it's ready and then I was reading I am not an expert in this at all I was reading what some other towns have done and it's more with a wastewater treatment and was less with this that that as batteries are improving and thinking of what you can run off of this the extent at which you create plugs or other outlets that you might ultimately be running some of the processing off the solar panels when the sun is out because clearly we're not year-round sunshine here so I don't know how much that would change what the engineering firm would normally do for the design and specs for the plant so that's a question and does this add a lot or does this basically something that would be okay there are ten is would be up on this and that they would be looking for this as they design it please okay sure so I did actually speak to the design firm after Andy's email just to try and assess what this would look like and so I think what you know what Andy said and what you know Paul and Dilford and I have discussed is it during the design phase asking those questions so we can get better answers to know how that's going to impact the design of the roof or how that's going to impact other parts of it what the permitting process looks like in Pellum just exploratory stuff that we can include in the design phase to answer these questions a little better it's my understanding they don't necessarily have a solar expert there but they consult with someone so they would bring in a consultant who's an expert in solar that would be able to answer a lot of these questions shall any and adding to what Kathy said could we make the buildings net zero ready so even if we're not installing the solar now but the way they constructed are utilizing minimum energy or do we have those standards that we could ask for make sense it does make sense it's not something that I'm as familiar with in terms of what it would mean beyond having you know having the building ready to have solar on on the roof and that sort of thing but that also usually happens in the design phase and can be part of the specifications this this is a question that just later on not tonight but at some other point we will get to the issue of the DPW in the fire a schematic design neither of which were the feasibility study wasn't done when the net zero bylaw was in place and so as we move to schematic design we will be adding that onto the contractor's requirements Dorothy I'm not sure if I heard a contrast in wording or not uh first I heard of the design firm doing the exploratory work towards solar and then Andy said the town would proceed so when do you mean the town would proceed by asking the designs to include that or do you mean a separate action by the town the town manager in contracting for that would include that in the design requirements and what Amy has done is already talked to the firm and they have a solar expert that they bring in who is not part of their regular team it's the same thing we're going to have to do again with both the DPW and fire Dorsey glad to hear that Andy's suggestion is being taken up by the DPW and that you're going to go forward with that and you know I think the ECAC is going to be coming forward at some point with lots of recommendations about this type of thing and that we obviously need to be thinking about this in in everything we do considerations and everything not only the DPW does but all the other departments and I would endorse Kathy's suggestion of looking at innovative possibilities around battery storage and micro grids so that it would add to the resilience in case there was a problem on the grid you know we could we would be able to be more resilient so all of those things we need to be thinking about and I'm glad we are great are there other questions from the council at this time all right right Athena would you please put the appropriation and borrowing order up on the screen it's lengthy it is attached to your motion sheet which you were given as you came in tonight so basically this is the appropriation and borrowing order f y 20-23 an order authorizing a borrowing for engineering services for the rehabilitation of the centennial water treatment facility the motion actually is now therefore be it ordered by the town council of the town of Amherst that the sum of six hundred and ninety two thousand dollars be appropriated for engineering services for the rehabilitation and improvement of the centennial water treatment facility including all incidental and related expenses that to meet this appropriation the treasure with the approval of the town manager shall be authorized to borrow said sum under and pursuant to mass general law chapter 44 section seven or eight or any other enabling authority and to issue bonds or notes of the town therefore and further that any premium received by the town upon the sale of any bonds or notes approved by this vote less any such premium applied to the payment of the cost of issuance of such bonds or notes may be applied to the payment of costs approved here here under in accordance with general law chapter 44 paragraph 20 thereby reducing the amount authorized to be borrowed to pay such costs by a lit by a like amount and basically it is to it is to authorize us to sign an order of borrowing for engineering services for the rehabilitation of the centennial water treatment facility is there a motion dorthy i so move thank you alissa second no okay second now alissa so since these are things that never existed in town before before this form of government we didn't do it this way when we were select board we didn't do it this way at town meeting i'm wondering if there's anything that prevents us from including some phrasing in here since there are lots of phrases in here about the fact that this is the enterprise fund i think that's really important for people to see looking back to that it doesn't mean it's free money by any stretch of the imagination but it is coming from a different segment of our budget and so i wonder perhaps and you're someone more familiar with the where it might fit in there but i'd really like this order to say that it does it does highlight and maybe this would be the right place uh under the first whereas the town's council services the water commission and the legislative body of the town of amherst in accordance with section 2.14 an article too respectively of the town charter it's under that authorization that this comes under the water fund and so is do you have a suggested andy um interesting suggestion that the way that we receive these orders as they come to us from sonia aldrich and she um has um them reviewed by kp law and actually um the i think that the orders reach us through kp law not through um uh so so the so the final direct route to um our uh council clerk was keep into uh miss aldrich come from our town attorney and uh so for that reason we have uh not really delved into questions about the wording because we feel that they've been covered by our law firm listen if i could just follow up i mean we never did it this way before and so i don't understand why now after decades of not running our motions that way except for very specific things that we're removing from chapter land that we don't get any input as to what these include i totally appreciate not messing up the legal aspect of it and maybe we just have to add something in the minutes that makes it entirely clear but i think it's a deficiency of this order to have not mentioned that and i'm sorry the attorney didn't see it that way um i think the other thing is that we could have passed the motion and have such a uh statement added into this uh statement here and then i would sign it after that was done is that acceptable it doesn't mess this up legally like i don't i don't think it messes up so it's basically i don't i don't think it messes up so it's basically subject yes to um mandy joe i i thought the last time we voted on a appropriation order we voted on the order as a whole not just the now therefore clause we do because you just said the motion i just read that part of it but the whole motion is the entire thing thank you for that clarification yes i want to agree uh very strongly with the suggestion that the fact that this money is going to come from the water fund should be here because we have open government people can see our documents and somebody can read this and say what and get really upset that we're doing this on top of our other major projects so for the for the fact that this document is not just for lawyers and it's not just for town council members but it's for the public to understand too i think we should clarify the document all right so the motion is to adopt appropriation and borrow order f y 20-23 which is lengthy and here and then i would suggest as a friendly amendment that the motion be amended to specify that the funds for this would be specifically paid for from the water fund okay now is there a motion there was a motion is will you accept that amendment i do is there a second okay any further questions or discussion okay then all those in favor raise your hand and say aye aye opposed abstain okay amy thank you thank you we're now going to move to general public comment we have already had comment opportunities i'm sorry was there any public comment on the centennial water plant okay thank you there wasn't i forgot that little piece okay general public comment on matters other than those under agenda item seven c therefore public comment on those agenda items will be taken i'm sorry this is general public comment on unless you wish to comment on the amendment to the rules of procedure rule eight relating to proclamations commemorations and citations if you do not wish to comment on that this is general public comment okay could you just hold on a moment thank you residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes at the discretion of the town council president based upon the number of people who have wished to speak the council will not engage in a dialogue or comment on a matter raised during general public comment please state your name where you live and what you plan to comment on now hit the button it has to be red or green push the button thank you and make sure you're speaking into it i will do that if i can see it hi amy zuckerman 117 britney mary drive apartment a 145 years ago i came to amherst as the amherst record as a journalist i'll show you those clips later there's a very important reason i'm here tonight of several i want to thank very very much the police department of amherst massachusetts for saving my life many times from july 7 2018 to october 1 of this year when i had been arrested falsely as a terrorist by the norbert county d a d a and the law fall police chief was part of this and jade asked me a wicked local chain had a large role people know on having me sit up and put in prison now october 1 the case with the smith because there was no case i want to thank the police of amherst they know we're saving my life scarp gallagher knew at the time of a july 7 he had no desire to didn't see any reason to arrest me there was no choice because there's a warrant by norbert county and many times they were there for me to to help me when i came out of prison on august of 2018 2018 no one would house me in this town i've been here for 45 years i could not get housing in the fall by puffin village i was kicked out of the library emory sinma because i am supposedly a terrorist who's is going to give me over to the issue of the police log now my friend here scott is here from the newspaper what happens however is when someone is in the police log people think they're guilty this issue is now before human rights commission so therefore there is no disclaimer here that says sixth amendment right that you are innocent till proven guilty you're here they slander and then there's nothing there that says your case was dismissed so i've gone to human rights commission to say okay this is your sixth amendment rights violation in this town people slander you i'm very concerned that we address this maybe human rights commission the town council should know i was considered guilty until proven innocent i finally was proven innocent okay that's issue now the fire department issues in boulders i've been for many years concerned that we do not have a requirement in this town under bylaws for fire ladders for any dwelling over one story now these are what led allows you put on the windowsill and you come out we're not talking fire escapes under the bylaws and according to my friends of the fire department there is no requirement in the bylaw for fire ladders i think that's obscene i was in a house in sandhill road two years ago where there are people lighting matches kids in the bay and they're big kids in a bedroom and what happened is a fire department came in jeff olmsted net burges they came in john thompson and they said get out of their army it's dangerous i did leave but i had no idea what's going to happen later so what we happening i'm in the boulders they don't have fire ladders i've been complied said i'll sue you in housing court if you don't fire ladders there's no fire escapes now why does a complex not required to have a fire escape there are 278 people in those buildings there was a major fire in the spring and there's not one fire ladder that's required under bylaw and there's no fire escape i'm raising deep concerns i'm not sure how to address this i want to carry this forward because back in 74 i wrote about the amherst fire department and nothing's happened and this is a ton of amherst so you can see my clips amherst fire log 1974 and what's happening let's address this this is a scandal it's a sin in my opinion and we're getting over the gas and fire safety issues want to thank bill mooring almost done because back in 06 when the condo blew up across the street an emerson court just up the down the hill from ellen story and just down the hill from stan rosenberg i was there that day and people's lives but were endangered it was propane the fire was raising entire condo block you could see the smoke all the way to coolish bridge it took all night to put it out it was raised because an old man opened up a gas fell and he blew the place up so what happened now has anything happened this town regarding where are the gas lines well i was beat up a little bit about this issue i all i'm saying is gill mooring ought to come in here with me randy bouffin fire safety utility safety gas that you mass and we'll tell you they don't know where the lines are okay we should know where those lines are there's a way of finding out it's a little geiger counter thing this is a sin that no one knows where those lines are they will tell you why because it's very dangerous to tell you what is going on this town alone i'll be here i know dave zomek here knows about this and we have a new relative new town manager this started in 2006 with stan rosenberg said amy why don't you help rewrite the mask that's safety bill 1941 gas safety please wrap up well i'm gonna wrap up because we don't want anyone to blow up therefore i care call me in private meeting with dave and paul with the with the bill mooring and randy it's very serious thank you very much bless you for your help thank you no one dies on my watch thank you for your comments i'll turn this off are there any is there any other public comment at this time um we're going on to seven c which is an amendment to the rules of procedure i'm sorry exactly i went i just kept right on we are actually going back to number to proclamations and commemorations and there are none we're going on to the presentations and discussion and the first of those is the proposed approach for the four major capital investments my apologies for not getting this to you earlier than today as you can see that there was a lot of work to compile so i took the discussion we had the last time which was on the first attachment um which was a proposed approach to decision making regard and i revamped it and sent it out to you i asked you to then tell me if you had specific questions or frankly i asked you to vote on the options and the options were option a which was to hold a series of three to six meetings during november either facilitated or not option b was to hold a series of district meetings in november and early december option c was to hold one open meeting of the residents option d was to present the information at a council meeting and accept public comment option e was to hold a series of town council rule 5.3 public discussion dialogue excuse me sessions prior to council meetings or at other times and option f was to develop a slide video presentation to be provided on amherst media and option g was to do nothing so that i did tally all that and that's the second document there were 11 counselors responded eight suggested that we should go ahead with option a with a facilitator although not everybody mentioned the facilitator several people actually one person chose option b and another person indicated it as their third choice one person chose option c two i'm sorry two counselors chose option d and two counselors and a another person chose a second choice option e and there was very strong support for option f which was to develop a slide video presentation so based on that i'd like to really focus on two documents first is the last document and i think one of the things that is still in many of our minds and that is how are we going to go about this and what is this okay as we all know there are four major capital investments that are coming before the council what the first phase of this recommendation was was to initiate listening sessions with the community the second phase after that would be to hear the presentations from the different committees to the extent that they're available and they may not be fully available because but they will be able to give us updates they'll be able to give us timelines and they'll be able to tell us next steps and we would do that sometime in january february much like we did when we did the orientation sessions back when we first came on the council then we would move on in phase three to our first round of council discussions so that we actually can look at these discuss them decide if we would like to make changes in them and ultimately to draft and adopt an initial capital investment plan ultimately that also means we will decide whether or not we're going to make those investments not make those investments whether we're going to do it by investing in new facilities or renovations whether we're going to do that by doing debt exclusion overrides or by doing hold managing it within our own budget and over what time frame it's a very very complex set of issues that we're not going to be able to do in one night or with one listening session so by the summary of the comments from each of you was also in the summary of what I gave you and so what ultimately I'm suggesting our recommending is that very much like we proposed before that we provide information on each of the four capital let me say investments what services do they provide what are the significant needs what are the options for new construction or renovation an estimated cost to the extent we know them and what is the consequence of doing nothing and we asked something of the residents we asked them who do you like what do you like about the information presented what don't you like what what excites you what are your concerns and those would be worked out with a facilitator I have struck at least at this point a demonstration of the model since it seemed to be pretty confusing to many people and we would gather these these information through forms available at the meeting as well as online I did suggest that we hold a series of three to six meetings I've now extended the suggestion to be during November and early December that we have it facilitated by an external group and but we have participation in other words at at each of the meetings there would be members of the council members of the library and members of the school committee and it would be each meeting would be open to all residents so even though they would be held in different locations that proximate districts we don't want to say if you're in district two you can't come to one that happens to be in district five so that anybody can come to any of them I also suggested that our regular meeting of the town council on the 18th we either have a council presentation and accept public comment or we try out the public dialogue and do it before the meeting and that we do develop a slide presentation to be provided by Amish Media so basically what I've tried to do is listen to what you said listen to the feedback you gave me individually and come up with a proposed change if you will adaptation to the plan that I had originally proposed at the last meeting is there discussion questions Darcy I guess I I continue to have some issues with this whole process I I don't I can't quite get a grip on why we wouldn't be if we were going to the community about these projects why we wouldn't be including the whole capital budget because the community is interested in the whole capital budget if you talk to them they're really interested in roads and sidewalks etc so it's all part of the same budget and it seems like those things need to be balanced in so why why wouldn't we be asking people about that too I also have a concern about the long-term nature of this I mean it seems like we're trying to get people to give feedback about something that's far into the future and I see how that's a good thing for town planning but I also from the perspective of the ECAC I feel like we're about to be submitting some climate action plan and what we do here could definitely be influenced by what the town prioritizes around climate action so if that's not part of the conversation here it feels like something is something very important is missing so I and thirdly I do feel like although there's some advantage to having listening sessions I don't I think that they it isn't really a valid sample of what the town wants unless we reach out in a much more meaningful way through sending out information to all households or some kind of survey that will bring in you know a minimum of a certain number of responses from people in town okay thank you are there other comments Shalini in terms of reaching out to different populations which we all agree that we're not seeing the kind of participation that we'd like to see one thought that comes up just coming from the research background is that we go to let's say the library and collect information what we are observing there of how people are using the services and then having survey questions related to the use of library right over there or in schools talking to students or parents and teachers so it's really collecting information about people how they're using those services where they are rather than expecting them to come to these meetings or and that might be in addition to to the meetings okay Dorothy well we uh George and I had a community meeting on Sunday and in the small group session part many people expressed an interest and support in the capital projects but it seemed clear to me and George can comment on this that they really weren't expecting or planning to put together a plan that would include those projects they basically support the idea of the projects I think they so we would not be giving them any plans or schedules and how we're going to do this and what it's going to cost we just be saying these are the this is what the different agencies want we'd be giving them general information and kind of like cheerleading and informing which is good and there's been talk about having a good some good information on the website could have good information in the newspapers on on these projects informing people about what the needs are and what the requests are but in terms of how we're going to do it I don't think the general public expects to to do that they expect that somehow we're going to do that and okay so let me stop for a moment and just say I think asking another question about interest in it other capital spending is perfectly fine we do hold is it a hearing or a public forum Andy on the capital budget? Amanda Jo? I think that's a hearing on the capital improvement plan okay we do hold a required public hearing on the capital improvement plan as recommended by JCPC to the town manager and that's required once a year and so those so that is a time when issues of roads and sidewalks but if we want to add a question at these of what other capital issues are you most interested in or something like that I think there's no problem with that whatsoever in fact I think it would be a welcome question to people in terms of climate action let me just say the the real driver for these particular projects namely the school the DPW and the fire station are then is the net zero buildings bylaw now there may be other things that are recommended by the climate action committee that are more specific but as you know because you were part of the group that was that was presenting this some buildings that are net zero have seven different systems that help them get there so it's that's part of schematic design it's part of putting together your plan for building and that is now required already by the bylaw so there may be other things and these this would stretch out over a period of a number of years and so it's not like we need to hold this up because we're still working on that plan they can be simultaneously done and still implemented into it I don't see any conflict there at all the the issue of not being a valid sample there's nothing you can do about that I mean even if we send out surveys it's only people who are motivated to answer the survey it's only people to that are motivated to go online if you want a valid sample then the only thing you can hope to do is a phone survey and even those have been shown not be valid anymore because of the issue of cell phones so it's very very difficult to come up with a valid survey it's a valid sample I think all we're trying to do here is listen to what people have to say that helps us make us think about it we're not we can't claim it's a valid sample no matter what we do okay at least that's my my take on the research of today in terms of sampling you reaching out to different populations yes we've already talked about that and people wanting to express interest they can express interest ultimately we have to make the decision yeah George I hope I'm speaking for at least the majority but that we're approaching this from a sense of a genuine need that we're not interested in a debate or discussion about whether we really need to do something about our schools about whether we really need to do something about our DPW building about whether we really need to do something about our library so I I mean again maybe I'm all by myself here but my sense has been certainly my sense is that the need is real whether we can afford to do all these things you know over that's a question we obviously have to wrestle with but when we go forward I assume we're going forward to first of all articulate the genuine need and that would be some very straightforward bits of information perhaps backed up by having people present from the four areas that that we're focusing on to answer questions and maybe even speak briefly I think there should be some a sense of what the costs and possibilities might be new versus renovation and I mean it's vague but still some kind of figures and also the cost of doing nothing I'm not worried if we don't get 13 zero approval of this plan but if it turns out that we are deeply divided about whether we even have a need for these four capital projects and we're deeply divided about whether we need to articulate that to the community and and inform them I agree 100 we need to listen but I you know we need to inform we need to articulate the need and the cost of doing nothing and we need to articulate what we think the cost will be or some range thereof and then we need to listen and if everybody says no way okay but I really don't imagine that we are going in this direction to start the whole conversation over or to pretend that like somehow we're completely neutral about the state that we're in I'm not neutral I hope that most of you are not neutral and I hope that whatever process that we do create and we're obviously under some time pressure to create it is one that's informative and obviously which is out to as many people as possible but I'm not interested in a show of hands okay I want to inform I want to listen but in the end the decision comes to us to decide what we think is the best way or what the options are and then the voters will certainly get their say but if we're looking for them to lead if we're looking for a show of hands I'm not in but I don't want to be any part of that okay um go ahead shall any yeah I think oh we need to be clear about what is the purpose of those meetings and that would determine what the questions are that we're going to be asking and what sort of information we're providing and what sort of information we're asking from people and I would agree that I think the goal at least from my at this point one of the goals for me in listening is to understand what are people's needs with respect to how they're using the schools or libraries or I mean they may not be that affected but the fire station for example I mean they are affected by those things so what are the needs of people how are they using what so just listening to what not so much as is this something we want to do or not but more as how is this affecting your life what would you like to see happen and then also how the increase in taxes is going to affect them informing them and getting there like what is your capacity to you know getting a sense of how much people are willing to pay for for those things so Evan or Pat who wants to go next so I think that this is billed as an initial listening session I would back up most of what George said and I think we need to think about what we're actually looking for when we say listening and I think a lot of that is sort of just to me when I hear that when I want to hear sort of what is the community's thinking right now around these projects with regard to what do they even know Steve and I had a district meeting last week that focused very heavily on the capital project capital investments not by our design that was one piece that we had presented but it was something that the attendees had picked up on and one piece that I thought was very interesting was someone asked a question about the timing of the projects what why are we trying to do all of these in a short span of time why don't we start with one and it and then we Steve and I gave our answers but then members of the audience also sort of gave their thoughts on it and to me it was really instructive about how the people who are tuned in are thinking about these and the fact that some people who are paying attention still have a lot of questions I think we we're so in this that we just assume people know so they ask why don't we just do a fire station first and see how that goes and that got into the conversation of well the fire station has to go where the DPW goes so we can't do that and they went oh I didn't know that and to me I'm just like how do you not know that right but of course they don't know that because they're not spending their lives doing this right and so I think to me this initial listening session is sort of taking the pulse of where is what does the community even know what are there what are when you know Shaly's talking about needs to me it's what do they need to know to really be on the same page that we are I'm not expecting them to make any decisions I'm not expecting them to come up with a plan but I want to hear what information do they need to know and where are their gaps in information where we assume people know but they don't and that's where I think these could be really useful Pat I don't think I have my thoughts clearly articulated I agree about the need for the projects I'm having trouble understanding what leading means and where we as a council take our who leads us and I'm very concerned that we have not yet in Amherst successfully gotten all of the community involved we have generally speaking the same people responding to surveys and meetings etc etc etc so there is something different than that we need to do I had this discussion briefly with Paul Backelman and he agrees we haven't hit it yet so to me I I'm not interested in hearing the same voices I need us to lead by opening up our sessions whether and that may mean that we have to move out to the boulders to me have a meeting we need to do something our leading really needs to be about being inclusive and I think we miss that consistently even though we care about it I'm sorry if that's not very articulate but that's kind of what's rumbling in my head okay other comments over here Alyssa randomly struck together in response to various other people so this is not to me this cannot be just a generic listening session where I go to the boulders I go to a community room where a substantial number of people don't vote in elections normally have not been engaged in the process up until now fortunately more and more of our candidates are going out to the community rooms but we cannot just go out there and say so what do you think of the four capital projects like we have to provide a great deal of information yet without boring them to death which is one of the parts of having the video ahead of time that we could really promote for people to watch because a lot of people do have access to cable so I am very worried when I hear that's why I didn't vote for the listening sessions I did not vote for listening sessions okay because I don't want them to just be these open-ended so we don't know what to think why don't you tell us some stuff because I do feel like the leading needs to be in there I will say for a fact that their additional taxing capacity is zero no one is going to come to you and say yes I'm happy to pay an extra five dollars a day for this like I'm sorry that's just not a reasonable survey question we do have to do something with every project so if the 13 of us here don't agree that we have to do something with every project I'm not saying we have to agree on which thing it is with each project but if we don't all agree that we need that we shouldn't be going out there because we need to agree that something needs to be done with all four of these not because it's fair but because they all have real needs to serve our community better everybody has their own priorities everybody has their own little twist on it but if you're just not interested in doing something with one of these four projects then I think we need to know that now before we're sending people out into the community and I also just want to say in terms of figuring out what people are using for services I totally appreciate that model it's been done already so if you don't know the fact that the library's already done that to get this far into the grant process then you need to go back and read those materials the same with the schools I know Fire and DPW did some of that certainly around the employees in terms of what they needed all those assessments were already done so to say that we need to see how people are using the library now no we don't we already know that that's why it's gotten as far as it's gotten through the grant program so I totally appreciate that approach I just don't think it's relevant here because all that work has already been done and it's not up to us at this point to second guess whether that work was done appropriately and there was substantial outreach just some of the communities we don't get to as often but that means we need to continue that and we need to think of even more places to go but the library and the schools in particular worked really hard to look at all the different populations and I know Fire and DPW did stuff associate with staff at the least I'm sure Lynn could tell us more about that can I other yes Dorothy well I know I've said this before but I think that November and December are not the right months to do this they're very busy if I look at my calendar there are so many housing meetings housing forums that I have trouble remembering who is sponsoring this one what am I supposed to be learning from it my book is full already and people really do start to focus on family and holidays so I think if we want to reach people I mean you know we'll be here because we come okay but other people with a choice are just not going to do it in November and December so I'm voting for January shall we to respond to Alyssa's question or comments my point was not to second guess what the libraries have already done or schools have done it was more in response to how do we reach people where they are because we've already actually been to and that's just one data point we did go to the apartments for one of a district meeting then only four people showed up so you could even go to their residence and the resident management shared the news and information that will be there please come I went and knocked on people's doors that we are hey we're having this meeting down here please come and four people showed up in their residence so even going there is not sometimes so I'm just brainstorming right now not in terms of what we're going to ask them that's up to us we can decide but it's more like maybe if we catch people in action where they are like using the libraries on schools maybe there we can get because we want to hear them and we want to provide information of course so that was the point of that Kathy I just I want to come back to a point about the timing of this and then Alyssa mentioned a great video would be a useful thing to have I think if I think we need to put a bit of thought in the core presentation material and when we met in this small steering committee we talked about having at least one or two slides that were basic context that we're talking about a hundred million dollars plus or minus a few million of spending over some period of time we've got a capital budget that we've been getting ready we've been spending down our debt but we can only afford so much but just a context and then we've got roads and competing demands so there'd be a slide or two that just said this is Amherst and then we'd have a couple for each of the projects saying this is what the facility does and the scope of services and the needs but well you could put that on a piece of paper and the first or the second draft of it you might say or halfway there because you want to have it really work you know to spark interest be able to stand alone as a video and so coming back to could we be ready by November 18th I don't I don't think we would be well served by rushing it and I would rather time it around we can get a set of materials together that we're pretty excited about and each of us can say you know I could see how that would work in different settings that would spark it sounds like you're already getting good questions in district meetings where people have heard just enough but that DPWN and fire station are linked at the hips you know that they're two different projects but each is contingent on the other and we're going to get questions on them what are you doing to get ready and we can talk a little bit about that but we can have some Q&As where we have some frequently asked questions that we can anticipate so that whoever is out there isn't saying oh I'll get back to you know there are a few things we can answer and others we can say when we but I just think putting some time into this is really important so that when you whenever the when we go out or when we invite in it's it's a well thought out package so that's my my concern is a little bit about this the scheduling of it not the doing of whatever the it is okay Evan so I understand I think some of the concerns about timing I one thing I keep coming back to is that this is always intended to be initial outreach and just start framing the larger discussion one of the concerns I have because my initial thought was November is way too soon there's no way we could do this in November what I came around to and this happened in discussion with some with other people was that we'll find out likely on December 11th whether we get in to the MSBA process and I this is a community that haven't already gone through that is is very invested in that project and I do worry that if we wait to put these off until after that should we get into the MSBA process on December 11th that takes the oxygen out of the room with regard to the appetite to talk about any of the other projects because all of a sudden we're back in the MSBA process we're back in the schools debate and then we're starting talking about the schools again and so I think one of the things that we're trying to frame here and I I hope there's agreement on this although I'm not super confident on it based on our last meeting is that we are looking to have one holistic plan that allows us to do something with these four projects we may not agree what that something is but we want one plan for our four projects that shows how we can reasonably do something with all of them which means we need to start this discussion when people are willing to talk about all four projects together I worry that if we get in 10 SBA after December 11th all people are just going to want to talk about schools because that process starts so I think from an initial kind approach our first conversation a first touch a first framing doing it sooner rather than later might actually benefit us okay the additional comments George just briefly that I think it echoing I think what Kathy is saying that it's important that we be agreed as a group on the materials that are going to be presented at these meetings that we have seen them in advance it might even make sense for us to do like a little dry run which is the council with the presentation with the slides with the handouts so nobody gets you know sidewacked going into a meeting and suddenly seeing something in front of them and going wait a minute that's that's not right or I didn't know that so I understand the time pressures they're real I don't want to push this off but on the other hand I think I personally think it's important that we all have seen what the presentation is going to be we've seen the slides we've seen the handouts and maybe even done a dry run ourselves as a group before we actually go public with this just that's just to be clear there is no such thing as a dry run with a public meeting I hear what you're saying but just the moment seven of us are in the room it's a meeting so Andy yeah this has been a really interesting conversation a lot of good points have been made and I'm trying to connect to all of the dots one of them is that we need to move quickly and we need a good process to get started in designing the material and recognizing the MSBA is a driver that's saying that we have to get there quickly I hope we can get somewhere tonight because what the first I think one of the first things we would have to do if we're going to agree to go forward with this generally is to have the steering committee appointed that is referenced in attachment one for phase one that would presumably as proposed there be three members the council one member of the school committee and one member of the library trustees because they're the ones who would be charged with designing the material and if we want to get them to work on the material and then get back to us to show us where they are with it which I think was a worthwhile suggestion important suggestion to consider then we really need to get this process going okay shall I have a question about what is the purpose of the listening sessions so I'm what I'm hearing is that a big goal of those sessions is for us to provide the information to people so we're all on the same page and then what are we listening for are we listening for ideas there they agree disagree what are we what is the purpose of the listening sessions so at the very top of the page it describes the premise and basically then says that the end goal of the planned outreach effort is to provide the town council with some and I emphasize some information from the community that will help inform it should say our planning for and funding significant investments in each of the four capital projects it's to listen it's to provide information and then to listen that's all that's all phase one is it's not it's it's so that people aren't sitting there and saying what I didn't know dbw had to move so that the fire station could go there it's and the other thing I just want to correct and that is this is not something we're going to do we're not going to we are not going to start all of these projects in our term there is no way the town can afford to do that but rather than sit here and do nothing it's our responsibility as 13 leaders of this town to help this conversation to move forward in a manner that allows us to make very wise and very tough decisions these are going to this is going to be the toughest decisions this council will ever have to make I'm going to venture that to you and the first one by the way could come as early as December 11th because if we go into msba we have to appropriate the money for the feasibility study it's a good problem to have it is a good problem to have I hope it happens so I I'm hearing different you know ideas and additions I suppose we could try to do a dry run if you will but it's going to have to be in public on November 18th because that's our next meeting which is just a quirk of the council we could also have a special meeting and try to do quote a public dry run at that time earlier than that and then try to do as much as we can and maybe we only do three of these it earlier last time we discussed this Alyssa doesn't think anybody's going to show up yes so we make the decision now and we have a calendar that extends beyond our term new counselors are elected can they act like our president president and say I'm going to change that drop that we don't mean this president I don't mean you thank you please clarify clarify thank you he who must not be named okay future counts future councils can make different decisions well and anything I mean whether without a new council if the economy falls apart we're in a whole different you know there's no we we don't have a solid idea what year five looks like right and a whole it's absolutely right that's why we stopped with discussion of the fire station in 2008 because the economy went tanked george andy mentioned trying at least tonight to create or get started a steering committee maybe that's something that you're already to roll with the steering committee has met briefly that was where the discussion that if you look on the second page where it says develop materials powerpoint presentation based on the first meeting of the steering committee and they described what were the four major projects each project would have like two slides a piece because we felt any more than that would just bore people to death the consequences of doing nothing how is the town preparing for these investments and one is the issue we've gotten our present debt to just about nothing and the other one is we're preparing for a bond rating through various paperwork and and so forth that has to be filed and by the way the debt rate is a very important part of a bond rating I like the slides that we have I like them as a town counselor but I don't think they're really that effective if you're talking about the general public because there's no people in them and it's it's not just a question of charts and graphs and numbers of how many calls or whatever I I think a good presentation would have people in it I mean advertising does and once we come up with a plan with the immersed media we'd have to look at that if you remember the school presentation it was half and half it was half the superintendent speaking and half the presentation I meant the slideshow no people yeah right thank you yes quickly then would you think that November 18th is a reasonable deadline is that fair and secondly would there be written materials that would go along with the slide I think if it can be said as a deadline I think it's reasonable good and would there be written material with the slides there would be a script with the slides yeah yeah Alyssa I was just rereading the comments that everyone had sent and really appreciate the differences that are brought out there one of the things that comes up repeatedly is the facilitation and obviously the steering committee would be looking at that but just like we keep asking the question what is the question we're asking what are we listening for that determines who we hire was a facilitator right because we have seen mixed facilitation throughout the community on many different projects and even projects that were relatively well facilitated overall had weaknesses in certain groups where facilitators were not prepared the way the group across the room was prepared so before we tie ourselves to anything there I think we need to be clear what it is we want from them so we had somebody talked about somebody with capital experience somebody else had the impression it would be the league but whoever it is depending on what it is we're asking for we need to figure out a way to have it be done evenly I agree with that having been at all six of the sessions which I thought the overall facilitation was good but I do think it broke down at the individual meeting level are there other comments Darcy so I'm hoping that the other capital budget requests would be in the slideshow too the other capital requests are not done by that time that we can show them this past year's capital requests meaning the ones that were in our FY 20 budget but the ones for FY 21 won't be in won't be available yet because that's a whole process that goes on during the winter and spring right but we can show them last year's yes the ones that are actually in this year's budget so yeah I think that's important to put out with whatever we do and that we not frame it as one town one plan because I think we agreed on that and I think this has been revised so that it doesn't suggest that we've all agreed already on one plan for all four capital projects except to the extent that all four of them need some type of investment yes Mandy Joe so I would respectfully disagree with Darcy on the need to indicate on these listening sessions and put forth current capital issues we're looking at developing a plan that we can put forth to the town that says we have four big capital investments that need to be done and here is a timeline that can get them done under this potential number of cost and with that say one starting in 2020 one starting in 2022 one starting in 2024 one starting in 2030 I'm just throwing numbers out right now and two of them or three of them or zero of them will have debt exclusion overrides that we're going to go to the people with that is one plan that we need one of the things we need to find out when coming up with that plan is what are people's concerns with how that plan would affect ongoing capital needs which is I think where Darcy is getting it we need to present stuff but it doesn't the ongoing capital needs other than how that plan and the funding for those four investments happens doesn't affect the specific capital projects that are going to be funded under the ongoing capital needs it might affect the number and how much gets put towards capital needs and that's something we need to figure out and present when we do figure it out but to come into a discussion that is focused on how to fund and plan for funding for major investments and bring in potential additional capital investments or major or not or these particular roads every year or the improvement to that building or the improvement to those trails will derail the conversation that we need and the information that we need to get from the public to be able to come up with the plan for funding for big investments and so I don't believe we should be bringing them in right now I think there's a place for that later when we have a plan to address how that plan will affect the rest of the capital budget but for now we need to figure out what people want to know and what type of tax burden they're willing to potentially absorb or not absorb because that will affect how quickly we can do these four investments whether those investments look like major renovation or not or whether we can even do for if it is true that no no matter what project we go to the people with they will turn down an override that changes dramatically what this plan looks like and so that's information that we need to know now if we want the plan to be successful because we don't want to go out with a plan that says we're going to override two projects whatever those two might be and the people aren't willing to override any that means the plan will fail I don't want whatever plan we come up with to fail and so that's the type of information we need to start gathering Dorothy I'm almost agreeing with you but you won't get the attention of a lot of people if you don't make a statement upfront that roads and sidewalks what the money that we've been told that is committed because people will drop one of the four projects for roads and sidewalks you've got to show them that there is a plan to be addressing that issue very quickly at the beginning so they can get off that topic and listen to the new projects we have to talk about given the fact that the model continues to show expenditures for other capital projects I think we could include a slide that basically says that there will be continued investment in those other issues and just make sure that that's known up front and then we then we go on to the other so that we we don't I hear the issue I really do because people could get into a whole lot of different sidewalks but if we say up front in the model that we have been using we will continue to invest in other capital expenditures roads sidewalks etc and it's shown there and I believe as we go through JCPC this year the plan is to do a five or ten year plan Andy Kathy you're the one that's pushed for the five or ten year plan I would I was pushing for at least a five what I would call realistic I like plans not to be deficit spending money they don't have right that's down that that's the JCPC side of this thing yeah no but you know that's what Mandy was saying if you're looking out 10 years I mean we spread things out but that that is the kind of conversation we have to have if we can spread out but there are going to be some tough decisions that have to be made okay so Andy we're all hesitant to show the model financial planning tool because it is so confusing and but I do we all need to recognize here because I think probably those of us in the council beginning to understand it that there is a line that's that very visible line that is the 10 percent that's currently in capital and as you make various choices within those boxes you can take the repayment obligation for future years well above the line or if you spread it out long enough and you make the costs right and you make the correct choices you can make it be under that line and that what that line is when it comes down to it is what Darcy's talking about which is our ability to do what the current capital plan does in total regardless of what's in it in any given year if we make the wrong choices within the model and so it's a very difficult discussion to have because we really need to make it understandable to the community and get and get across the message the careful thought has to be given into those questions we keep talking about amount of what we do in spacing and those are the tough choices that we as a council will be making in what we're hoping for is a sense of our constituents as to what they think about some of those things to inform us I don't elissa yes quickly so um Andy could probably rattle off the percentages for the last 15 years off the top of his head but we to be clear to the public we don't devote 10% capital we'd like to but we almost never do and that was in years when we weren't trying to also fund for capital projects so I totally appreciate the need to put the slide up to make it clear that yes we will be investing in things we won't be possibly putting as much in to say some years we did more sidewalks and roads and others less because of that percentage and what was available given the economy etc but the goal of 10% is like realistic at this point I believe last year was nine nine or nine and a half percent this year was nine and a half and we actually have been moving to 10 so we've been getting there but this is right and I think that we all recognize some that whether we blame the president whose name we don't talk about here or anybody else we could be heading for a recession and I think that um whether the list was referring to is when you get back to the 2008 9 10 period which was um the last recession in the years immediately following um we took lots of money away from capital did made choices not to do lots of capital just in order to make sure that we had enough police officers and firefighters in the street and you know I just hope we're never faced with that situation again but that's why we have struggled to get back to the 10% goal that we had said years ago I don't know that I could Evan go ahead so two things based on comments that were made earlier so one roads and sidewalks are absolutely not part of this presentation and should not be this is a presentation about the four capital investments uh I just was talking with my students today about how if you want to focus people in on a paper focus in on that issue because the moment you start introducing related issues you start opening up discussions that are not what you're going to talk about I think if people bring up the question of how will this impact roads and sidewalks that's actually a question we want right and so part of what we're doing here is saying what are your questions what are the gaps in information so what are your concerns and if what we hear from people in these discussions is how is this going to impact roads and sidewalks over and over again that's something that we want to collect right that's the whole point of a listening session but that's not part of this presentation and given that we're trying to create a presentation in a slideshow in a video that would be very people would actually watch so already we're asking a lot of people to watch a video about capital investment right so the more every additional slide diminishes the the chance that people are going to watch this if people at the end if we hear resoundingly from the community at the end of these listening sessions that they're concerned about how this will affect roads and sidewalks that's data that we want to collect right that's the whole point of a listening session but that's not part of this presentation the second thing that I heard that I'm really concerned about it was a statement that I think was false which was that we there was an agreement last time that we aren't going with one town one plan in concept and I don't remember hearing that agreement and in fact we have this document in our in our packet capital investment proposed phases and proposed timeline which lists phase four draft an adoption of initial capital investment plan singular and so my impression was we were all working towards a single holistic plan of how we're going to deal with these projects that was my assumption of what we're doing what those projects might end up looking like if it's new construction renovate that hasn't been decided but a singular holistic plan to finance something to deal with these four major capital challenges and this gets back to I think what Alyssa said earlier which is if we are not on the same page we need to make that clear right now before we go into the community and so I don't know how we assess that but if you don't think that we're coming up with one plan to do this that's a discussion that we have to have now okay Darcy I don't think we are that's what we use and Darcy is there anybody else who would like to speak on the issue of one town one plan Sarah since I was the other person who said I felt like it was a little much to say you know we're all doing one town one plan I think I think I what I was trying to say is when we're initially coming together to find a plan like I we're talking about things there might be like Evan said you're going to hear people give you some input on what they would like to see or not but ultimately I think it's it's similar to what happened with the schools where we all have to get on one page there does at some point have to be a consensus you know and that means that everybody may becomes more towards you know the middle but the whole town does have to agree at some point on a plan otherwise I don't know what we're really asking if we're people if we're not through listening sessions everything we're doing trying to come up with one plan that like that we do actually expect that we can get over the goal line with everybody so I do agree that it that's what we're working at and that's what we need to ultimately present is one plan for this town to agree on that's our goal to go out and and be able to do that. Okay, Shalini. So just to clarify what I heard Sarah say is that eventually we're going to come to one plan about how we're going to execute it but before that I think what we're what was being raised is are we in agreement that there is one plan for the four projects that the four projects need to be taken care of is that a fair understanding. I think the question is that is the goal of the council to get to the point that we have a single plan that addresses in one form or another all four capital projects and yes Darcy. My fear was framing it as one plan is that to the public it looks like we're proposing four new buildings that's what it looks like that's and that's what you know some counselors are and you know promoting but not everyone not everyone in the council is promoting four new buildings as one cohesive plan so that's that's the hesitation that I have is that it sounds like that if you put it forward like our plan for new capital projects. Whether or not we build a new building we will have a price to pay for what we don't either build or repair so the capital plan ultimately may be that we're going to do a massive renovation on some building but that's the plan because whether we do it or not whether we build a new whatever I'm not even going to try to name one or we don't build a new whatever there is a cost of not doing it and that cost will have to be factored into the plan so my my sense is what I'm hearing is right now we don't have a plan we're trying to get to a plan we're trying to do that as a whole town that addresses four areas of service of the town where there are some serious needs some may be more needy than others some may need more repair than others some may need more buildings but ultimately we have to address the all four of the issues and that's the plan well how we address them is the plan it may not be that it may not be all new buildings for everything. I did hear back from some of the constituents in one of the groups who love the library but if it came down to it they would take roads and sidewalks the roads and sidewalks is so big particularly in the near downtown area where people walk I'm not sure we can assume anything. Let me just say if we don't go with whatever the library has put forward at this plan we will have to come up with some major repair money for the library that's that that would be the alternative plan it just I just want to say the plan addresses all four departments all four services it doesn't mean we've decided everyone gets a new building that's why the framing of this is so important you know that what I just said you know wanting to vet the materials your sentence these investments could happen through new construction extensive renovation or addressing significant repairs as the need occurs I mean that's the key sentence here you know and just starting out with that and throughout saying you know this is what's in front of us right so again to clarify the one plan at this point is just suggesting that we are going to address the needs of the four capital projects and how we do it is what we still have to come to decide but at least we can all be in agreement is that right what we're saying here with the one plan and Joe so the way I'm looking at it is there are four town departments the school department the library department however you want to describe it the fire department and the department of public works that have a significant need for major investments in their facilities we are not at this point coming up with we are not going out to the public with what those investments are we are saying they need major investments in their facilities and we are going to try and come up with one plan to fund finance those investments and over the course of the next eight months that that plan is going to flesh itself out in terms of what those investments in those facilities look like how much those investments are when those investments are made and how all those investments are paid for whether by debt override or out of capital or out of stabilization and other things but it's investments in facilities and for departments and I hope this council agrees that we need to make major investments in facilities at four departments in those four departments garcy so we will eventually need to have four separate votes on those issues we're not this is not building up to some kind of a vote on all four projects at one time so we'll be we'll be deciding on them individually there's multiple votes let me just say that you vote we vote on we vote on appropriations for schematic designs we vote on plans for feasibility studies ultimately we vote on whether to go out for a debt exclusion override and it has to be for a specific amount of money for a specific facility we vote on whether or not to use reserves for a certain facility but what the plan does is map out the direction of your votes so it allows us to look at the whole situation and then say as we move forward here's the votes we have to either us take or go out to the public to take there's lots of votes you said something earlier about this being the hardest or the most difficult vote we have to make and I don't think it is anymore because all four areas do need to be addressed and one of the critical factors that contributed to their demise is a lack of ongoing maintenance and care of the buildings so we know we can't do that I'm no longer afraid I support addressing the four projects I'm not saying I want new buildings I'm not deciding how we're going to do it but I definitely want us to move forward and start to create a timeline etc and hear the voice of residents about how they see funding it because if we because I don't think we'll pass two overrides so given the information I have about where people are around taxes etc and those are real issues so what so we have to plan on one or we have to plan on none and then we have a pot of money or we have a you know but the direction is still there and the pot of money then determines what the renovation or the new building etc etc looks like so I guess I really do agree if let's take a vote right now how many of you support the the fact that we need to address these four departments projects whatever you want to call them and stop pulling around is that a motion it's a motion okay seriously I know I am too and I I'm asking whether or not you would like to make it in the form of a motion okay would you like to word the motion okay Evan would you like to word the motion I think it's something along the line that the motion would be that the sense of the council is that we as a council are committed to a plan that will address all four buildings that have been named the elementary school library dpw facility and fire station in some fashion is there a second is there further discussion all those in favor raise your hand and say aye opposed and abstain it's 12 4 1 opposed and no abstentions okay then I would like to see if we have a consensus that we are going to try to proceed with the public the first phase of this which is to go out and present something to the public and listen and what we'll try to do is have that as a quote dry run honor before November 18th yes minor question about the 18th that doesn't have to do would it if we're talking about a public forum then or a public meeting I need a commemoration voted on by the council at that meeting would we also be having a council yeah we have a regular council very minor and I apologize I mean this could be something where we decide we're going to meet early and do this or whatever thank you that's to be worked out so there's other things that are coming up on the 18th including ecac's recommendation yes mendy joe so I'll move to move forward with the recommended approach document that was presented to the council with acknowledgement that the steering committee has their ability to modify that recommended approach as necessary okay is there a second okay is there further discussion then all those in favor raise your hand and say I opposed abstain 12 4 1 opposed and 1 abstain no abstentions okay then I think it's time for a break to 6 B which is presentations and discussions under B is general bylaw review process timeline and Evan I believe you're doing this and it's up on the slide hey y'all so you you may remember last December January we created the bylaw review committee and appointed it whose job it was to continue the work of the previous bylaw review committee to bring our general and zoning bylaws into conformity with the charter and to make them better so we already did the zoning bylaws we voted on that as a council in July that one was a easy one so the bylaw review committee is completing its work and it is ready to bring forward to this council it's recommended changes to the bylaw the plan is to do a repeal and replace and so in one moment we would we would repeal in one motion we would repeal all of our bylaws and replace them with the revised bylaws and so it wouldn't be a piecemeal approach it'd be a complete swap out in order to do that we have the timeline that's up on the screen in front of you because what we want to do is provide you with the information ahead of time get your feedback get your comments and then give the committee enough time to make any changes so my whole point today is just to point out to you this timeline it's in your packet so we're there on Monday October 21st I'm talking so on November 5th bylaw review committee will be sending the council two documents a draft of our recommended new bylaws the changed bylaws and also a report that will detail the work we did the report is divided into bylaws that we are recommending we rescind bylaws that we made fairly major substantive changes to and bylaws that we made minor changes to like we capitalized a word here and there and then also a really fun section called future consideration which are things that we think the council should act on in the future but was beyond the scope of this committee the council received that November 5th we're then asking the council to take a week read through those two documents and send any questions comments feedback to Jeff Kravitz by Tuesday November 12th we are then going to take the month of November to go through all of your comments and feedback on both the report and on the bylaws and make and and go through either making changes in response or responding directly to your questions for us then to send you a revised new bylaws and report by December 10th with the hope that the council will have the first reading on December 16th and the second reading in our first meeting in January what you need to know right now and what you need to write into your calendars right now is that you will get the draft report and bylaws on November 5th and you need to send any comments questions concerns or feedback to Jeff by end it by close of business on Tuesday November 12th that's your homework for bylaw review between now and the next time this council meets are there any questions how long is this report going to be that you're giving us only a week to respond on the report is like 12 pages and the bylaws the bylaws are like 95 I did sit and read through all of them the other day it only takes a couple hours um but here's the here's the thing the report will tell you exactly what we did for all of the bylaws and for some of them they literally are just like we remove the italics from a word for the ones that we made major substantive changes to those are called out we explain what they did and so you also don't need to do like cover to cover read through of the bylaws you can do a I'm just going to read through the bylaws that we see that they made substantive changes to or the bylaws that they're recommending rescinding are there other questions Kathy um in to make the reading of it easier um I take it you're not sending up a marked up where we can see track changes because I know you are moving things around too so that gets messy so what I'm wondering is in the draft we get could um any part of it that was substantially be rewritten be yellow highlighted you know so that you can see it right away you know and then could there be some notation of something was deleted here so so that we I can cross read back and forth because otherwise what I'm going to do is go back to the bylaw that I know that's on our books and try to do a side by side reading so you would save me a lot of time if you could flag just by yellow highlighting you know and then you know and I don't mean every single word because I so I leave it up to you but you're not giving us a track change so if we know that something was deleted what was deleted uh or something was changed and simple things like the select board references now says council or now says town manager I'm not talking about those changes I'm talking about anything uh you you're talking about the new and improved so it's figuring out some simple way to signal that to make our reading of this easier so I can take that feedback Evan uh I can take that feedback back to the bylaw review committee which meets tomorrow the other document that we'll have for you is a crosswalk document that will show here are where all of the bylaws were in the original bylaw here is where they are in the new one including if they were rescinded and so that's actually also where I think really help getting to where you're getting at is you know art article four you know article three whatever where is that now what does that look like so that that will also help okay further questions comments okay sounds like the committee has been quite busy thank you we're moving on to action items and the first one is c amendments to rules of procedure rule eight regarding relating to proclamations commemorations and citations this is the second reading and George so this is the second reading and you have the report that's in the packet I don't really have anything to add to that the motion is also here for you to look at but we'd like to do is revise the language primarily related around the notion of proper resolutions proclamations commemorations citations perhaps one of the issues that was maybe somewhat contentious was the idea of having a single counselor sponsor I don't know if how people feel on that but that but I'm ready to actually make a motion but questions discussion I'm probably the only one who said that I thought two counselors but that's because somebody a constituent asked you to do something and you really think it's not appropriate but it's very awkward to say no I won't do it but so if you can say I have to get that you have to get the vote of another counselor I think it just makes life a little easier because the two counselors can talk about it and say should this is something that we should do and if not they don't do it otherwise every all counselors are going to say yes to just about everything I think one is enough I mean that it would be wonderful if things were sponsored by more counselors but I think that we have to step forward and say this is something I'm supporting or I'm not there are other comments on that particular issue I would agree with just one but I also think we should not if you basically are not in favor of the resolution no one should be bringing a resolution that they can't be an advocate of and so that's the point you know that so people are looking to find a at least one counselor who's an advocate they can get more if they want and I I appreciate the way it was reworded George on a the other route is what charter section x y and z say I mean and just you know and you could even do that even a little simpler that citizen petitions or as described in charter you know so people understand these are the other route is these petitions and go read how they do it but I think you've captured that in the rewording that what is that other route if you can't find one counselor can you find 250 people okay any further comments on that yes Darcy I'd agree with Kathy on that I I guess I thought that we were going to be a little bit more people friendly in our editing so that it said or exactly what you said in the box here in the slide or the group petition or initiative charter requirements are met as set forth in the charter section 8.2 etc etc so when people read it they can understand that there is I thought that's what you had agreed to do I think you had that as you're dealing with the new chair and that's no excuse but that's actually my recollection too so perhaps a friendly amendment would be welcome I certainly would welcome it I think in fact you're correct that we had agreed to make it a little more user friendly just the references by themselves are somewhat outputting so if you could offer us just quickly some language you said how if you could rephrase it in compliance with right introduced either by a counselor sponsor or or charter requirements are met under charter section 8.2 be 8.3 and 8.5 so after or you want to insert by group petition or by group petition or by initiative as described in charter you know so it's those are the two right so you can do a group petition or you can do a group and I guess it's a group initiative so it's not even a charter requirement so much as the charter gives you these two other vehicles so the language would be introduced either by a counselor sponsor or by group petition or by initiative as described in charter section to be 8.3 and 8.5 yeah I would see that as a friendly amendment I have no objection to it is that clear to the clerk I can make your life a little difficult is there any question on that yes start I'm sorry Mandy Joe so we haven't made a motion yet so but I I actually wouldn't support changing the language in rule 8 itself you have to remember GOL has a frequently asked questions document that describes what those charter petitions are and if anyone comes to the council and says I want to do a resolution or I want to do this that's the document we should be handing them not our 30 page rules um and that group that FAQ on resolutions proclamation citations and commemorations does say resolutions proclamation citations and commemorations submitted to the town council should have a direct bearing um actually no sorry to ensure council action by the council the easiest and quickest way is to approach a counselor and ask them to sponsor it a second way is to present a group petition c charter section 8.2 b signed by at least 150 voters you may also present a resident petition signed by at least one resident and submitted to the council action on resident petitions is purely at the discretion of the council president so the FAQ gives you the more information that you need the rule itself I think is quite explanatory and is already hyperlinked to the charter it's a simple click directly to section 8.2 b so I don't actually support adding the language into the rule itself but so there's no harm in adding it to the rule though it's just a few extra words just gives the person who is only looking at the rules and hasn't found the FAQ the information so I mean that's just sort of what we were trying to do when the ad hoc rules committee was to make this people friendly and able to be understood without having to look at two different documents and I just want to point out throughout the rest of the rules if we say you know the president has the following appointing authority and then we set it out then we just put in Perenn that's the charter section we didn't say the president has authority as described in charter x y or z I mean we we wrote it out so you could go read the whole thing or you could just read it right now so it was an attempt to have a reference point where we needed it and then with the mgl references we tried to say what it was in that mgl we were referring to you know as you know voting as described in mgl rather than just mgl x y or z you know we tried to just give a little bit more so it was readable and I would say this is not just for the general public it's for us as council members if we want to look at the rules we're living by we should be able to to read through them so would you like to start as the regular motion then add this as an amendment then we see if the amendment passes and then we go back to the regular motion or would you like to present this as a motion that includes the change my personal preference would be to present it as a single motion with the change but maybe we need more discussion I hear what Mandy's saying but and I blame myself this was in fact something we had agreed we would do and then I didn't bring it to the attention of the committee so that's on me but I hear this and I think it makes sense personally speaking not for the committee now my preference would be to amend this if we agree and then present it all as a single motion all right why don't you make the motion the way you want to all right um I want to move that the following revisions to the town council rules procedure rule 8 be made number one add a new paragraph to the end of rule 8.1 a quote proposed resolutions proclamations commemorations or citations shall be introduced either by a councilor sponsor or by a group petition or by initiative as described in charter section 8.2 b 8.3 and 8.5 2 insert after rule 8.2 e a new rule 8.2 f and relabel and relabel 8.2 f and g as 8.2 g and h respectively um then the quote resolutions proclamations commemorations citations all resolutions proclamations commemorations and citations complying with rule 8.1 a shall be automatically referred to the governance organization legislation committee the president shall notify the council of the referral at the next regular council meeting three insert the phrase commemoration citations quote unquote into rule 8.4 after the phrase quote except for resolutions proclamations and quote and four add a new paragraph to the end of rule 8.6 quote resolutions proclamations commemorations and citations goal and the council shall not vote on any proposed resolution proclamation commemoration or citation until it has been considered by the governance organization and legislation committee and five update the table of contents pagination if necessary motions been made is there a second Evan is seconded further discussion hearing none then all those yes Darcy so when in the last provision um the resolution shall be considered by go well first uh just for clarity consistency and whatever whatever that thing is action ability um so it's not for content no it's never been for content is there any further discussion points of clarification okay all those in favor of the motion as it has been read made and seconded please raise your hand and say aye aye opposed abstain there's 13 favor 13 people voted in favor of the motion there were no opposite there was no opposition and no abstentions we're moving on to revision of g governance organization legislation committee charge uh gel george again this is in your packet the language is there um i have really nothing to add to it there are some minor changes made um any questions are this is a change to the gel committee charge you have the red-lined version i think in the packet that shows you what changes were made um i think the biggest one has to do with proclamations commemorations and citations and resolutions not surprisingly are there questions at this time then uh george the motion i would move to revise the governance organization legislation committee charge as recommended by the governance organization and legislation committee per the document titled gel charge revised 5 22 2019 and 2019-08-15 is there a second any further discussion all those in favor say aye and raise your hand i opposed abstain at the end did you get everything so it was 12 in favor and none opposed and one abstention thank you we're moving on to this is the first reading of the amendment of the rules of procedure for rule 10.84 and 10.5 relating to ad hoc committees and work groups gel and the updated version of this was in your folder george you want to proceed so you should have a copy hopefully useful this also up on the screen of the current rule 10.4 ad hoc committees says existing and also the charge to gel which is 10.5 on work groups and then below that you have um what we're proposing as the ad hoc council committees and you'll see no 10.5 because we're going to propose the 10.5 be deleted but we back in August took seriously what the council said and when we went back and looked carefully at the existing rules and we looked at what people had been saying about what they wanted for ad hoc excuse me for work groups we found ourselves coming to the conclusion at least as a group that we couldn't really see a big difference between the two and so what we are proposing and see what you think of it is to basically take ad hoc council committees and and give them the kinds of qualities and abilities that seem to be desired for work groups so what you have in front of you then is our proposed 10.4 and so we are suggesting there would be at least for the time being no work groups but that these sort of bodies would be called ad hoc council committees if you look under the original 10.4 there were two items a and f those are retained down below but obviously everything else is meant to capture hopefully accurately the desire of the counselors to have this kind of flexibility and ability to draw on many different sources for help so that's sort of the background to how we got into it I think it was council Ross who I think originally made this point to the committee itself and we eventually came around to see it his way that it was hard to see why we were creating a whole new entity when we had an existing entity that we already used and it seemingly successful and with a little tweaking would function quite well we'll see if you agree so you have the document in front of you and the items a through I I don't know if it benefits me reading it out loud I don't think so so perhaps comments questions or discussion this is the first reading so we aren't taking a vote Alyssa so I can tell you right off the bat why it doesn't meet my needs but that's okay because it sounded like that's where we were headed last time we talked about it anyway the reason I wanted work group is I wanted work groups to be formed by the committees themselves I didn't want the work groups going through the presidential appointment process now I understand completely that the president that we have now is going to be very likely to solicit who you want on your work group but that was not the intention of that at all this is just a different more formal process so it is different it is completely different than a casual decision of a committee to say I want to get three people together to talk about this and then bring me information back I guess we can do that anyway they just won't be subject to open meeting law and they'll just go off and talk to each other and come back and talk to a committee I mean there are ways around these things but that was my intention is that there would be short-term working groups that were not going through the presidential appointment process so you know I can give up on it but there really was a big difference other comments Kathy I agree completely with what Alyssa said that's what we were trying to create and I know we ran into who can appoint who should appoint legal opinions on this but there was other language that we had that was describing this that's missing from this I don't mind the current formulation but the notion was and I'm just going to read you the language that we had thrown out was a worker study group to consider a new measure but determines that the issue is sufficiently complex to warrant analysis of alternative approaches and or consequences of action so it was a media issue it wasn't just go write a proclamation so I'd like to see that language come in come back in here and I know I was personally in part wanting something like this because we had a proposal from a resident group for a town meeting advisory town council advisory group where they were pointing out that we don't have staff we don't have a legend and analyst group we don't have a bunch of experts we can go to so if we get something that we want more information on and we want someone to be giving us pros and cons this was a vehicle of a way of reach doing that so I think we could do that with an ad hoc group but I just want to bring that sense of it was you know the reporting back it's like I'd like to find out how other towns do this or I want to know three different approaches to get us to the same thing that that's what that's what the idea around this was it wasn't purely uh we're too busy right now so a few of us are going to go off and work on something it was we were really going to have to pull in some people from around town or potentially outside of Amherst and so that was the notion that it's complex and that those are the words that we had written it's complex and warrants analysis alternative approaches or consequences that we wanted a thoughtful coming back to us and the new proposal loses some of that what we were talking about because we've used ad hoc for all sorts of things you know just uh we need to get something done so I just want to bring that back in and that's why we also allowed it that a committee in theory could be creating these because a committee said you know we only have one person on our committee who knows a lot about this but we have a lot of people in town who know a lot about this let's pull that group together so just to bring that flavor back in would be useful and I'm not sure where one does it but it's a why are we uh why weren't we happy with just ad hoc so it's expanding ad hoc but including this notion George you don't feel that uh item b be standing council committees may recommend to the council the creation of an ad hoc committee to consider an issue or measure if they determine that it is sufficiently complex to war in depth research did I just did I miss that all together there it's there in front of you and be it's right in me it's be so I thought we tried to capture that and be I thought I mean we'll see how it goes but we tried to capture pretty much all the desires for flexibility that is the wording I just missed that yeah it's okay but it's I think it's in b but look at it it's not quite exactly what you said but I think it is trying to capture that c points out that ad hoc committees may include non-counselors as members and a makes the point that they're created by the council to serve the council and are not subject to charter provisions governing multiple member bodies I think the idea also is that it's helpful for us to know what other committees are doing committee goes off and create some kind of working group we may or may not hear about it and that's not necessarily the end of the world but maybe some other committees also foundering you know thinking of making up a working group and this it just seemed the title just for me initially I was on the other side of the fence too I like the word working group I like that phrase like you know let's get out there and do something ad hoc committees like your head hits the table but in the end it just seems like a label I think this is meant to capture all the things that we wanted and without having to create a whole new kind of entity but your point is well taken and maybe there are some things we're missing but I think be captures what you were looking for there are there other things that people want that that are not here or you really want the idea working group just because you like the working part comments Darcy maybe we could call them ad hoc working groups I also I like a lot of this the only thing that I have you know problems with or the same issue that Alyssa brought up is that it would be nice if the committees had the ability to work more nimbly and and just set up a work group quickly or an ad hoc ad hoc work group but otherwise it looks good and I'm thinking that this would be something that could be used by the CRC because of the massive multitude of issues that you're dealing with would be perfect for CRC are there other comments yes Pat I agree with Alyssa and most of what Darcy was saying I feel like what the idea of working group particularly for CRC was the ability of this flexibility it was not slowing the process down and bringing it back to the council having the president select the people who's on it that it all takes time that's then taken away from the work and I don't know whether that slowdown is always a good thing shallony one of the advantages I'm seeing of this proposal is that you can have people from other other who are not in the committee to be recruited in a special like I might be interested in something that the CRC is doing but I'm not a member of CRC so if you were going to create your own committee you might not think of me but when it comes to the council we're looking at the whole council and and the possibility of recruiting people from across I do like that additional comments Alyssa would anyone reading this have any question as to whether or not these bodies were subject to open meeting law because they best not have that question because they are but I just wanted to make sure that that was clear to everyone right all of us reading this ad hoc committees are absolutely subject to open meeting law same as every other body it's the multiple member bodies in terms of public comment that the charter calls out but it just makes me nervous when it says you know you're not subject to this but we all need to agree that the unspoken thing here is of course they're subject to open meeting law because I was advised recently that there was a committee that had had its own work group that wasn't one of our committees and they were told by that they didn't need to follow open meeting law that was false so would you like that to be in statement since they are a separate committee if we found if we we don't have a lot of other committees that aren't council committees in here as I recollect but maybe Mandy joke and help me out in terms of like where do you think we might cover this or do we even need to I was going to say we probably cover it I think the reason we put the provisions governing multiple member bodies in there is one of those provisions is composition is odd numbers only and so this is sort of clarifying that hey we can have an ad hoc committee that has even numbers of members so I think that was the main probably reason we thought to put that that item a in there any well the analogy I would make is the finance committee we say in it says in 10.4 D one is proposed our way to do one but one that says that it can include non council members also implies it includes council members so we have the analogy of the finance committee I think there's no question that council committees are subject to open meeting law Darcy so if they were community members and one counselor they would still be subject yes I yeah I do know of some committees that are not if they're not following open meeting law they should hypothetically you might know of some but yes all of the town manager appointed committees are subject to open meeting law yes Evan so all I was gonna so Mindy Joe was right about why that section was an a also the fact the charter provisions says if the appointments are more than one year they have to be staggered which I think we didn't want some of those things so I guess my question is to clarify what we meant by that would it be useful to actually put the charter reference to section nine point one two in after it says charter provisions governing multiple member bodies so it's clear we're not just talking about generally we're talking specifically about charter nine one two thank you again this is first reading we're not voting tonight so that can be added as it comes back are there any other questions can I just um for those people that have really passionately spoken about working groups I would hope not just myself as president but future presidents CRC has a discussion they want to form an ad hoc group they write a memo to the president they say here's what we'd like here's what we think the composition is it comes up at the next meeting for that matter even we could go ahead and start collecting names and the appointment can be made immediately after so it really shouldn't bog you down and I hope that we kind of proved that with the percent for art we just kind of went ahead and did it so I personally am committed to making this work for you like you envision working groups but do it within the charter provisions all right moving on okay we're up to the town count the calendar for the coming year we've already discovered one mistake and let me just say that April 20th it turns out is patriot's day always a school holiday always a town holiday and so that should now say as it does below it should say April 13 or 27 comma 2020 and let me also mention we adopted a calendar once and then we had to bring it back and so even though we adopt a calendar at least gets us started and as we were sitting with Athena doing this we also began to actually set targets dates for the forums that we have to do so that we aren't kind of jamming them all in up against the deadline so are there discussions about the calendar yes I was just going to say I messed up the motion you want to make everyone know I messed up the motion originally and so maybe I can make it accurately if Athena can help me out so I could make it and then we could not have people reading the wrong one and please might be good why don't you do that to approve the proposed 2020 town council meeting schedule with an additional regular town council meeting to be held December 14th or December 21st of 2020 and also amended by deleting the 2020 meeting that okay I'm going to stop here and say when you make a list if we haven't voted on it yet change it however you want rather than having the motion read all these different ways so let's just go with what's on the actual sheet so the 2020 town council meeting schedule as amended tonight okay is there a second George any further discussion let me just point out the two amendments one already one is to instead of saying April 20th 2020 it would say April 13 or 27 2020 that is the only amendment Steve sorry to do this but we're sticking into 2021 and January 4th should say 2020 January 20 January 4th is 2021 thank you also as amended yes Pat I was just gonna say I'd rather decide on either the 13th or 27th of April and either the 14th or 21st of December now so that we can put it in our calendars instead of having to save both nights fine with me yes Andy I was actually going to say something similar except even a little more definite I would specifically propose the 27 because I want to remind everyone that the town manager is required to present his budget at the first May meeting and it would be good not to have a long period of time in the month of April without a planned meeting so I was going to propose just putting it in for the 27th sir any is there any concern about that okay do we want to go down and make a similar decision around December 14th or 21st I think the reason we were concerned about the 21st is it actually starts budding up against the holidays for schools um Andy Joe so I would actually propose the 21st it keeps us away from two meetings two weeks in a row um and the schools at least my familiarity with general school schedules they'll be in school till the 20th at least the elementary and secondary schools will be in school till the 23rd probably okay they won't be off okay is there any further discussion on that okay so Alyssa different month so just because I nagged everybody about it associated with Thanksgiving this year just to be clear it's so hard to schedule November right we know that this schedule says we'll meet the Monday of Thanksgiving week which means that all the UMass affiliates who are planning to go out of town that week good luck with that because this schedules a meeting so the alternative is to make it November right so the alternative or just for November 23rd is to make it November 16th either November 16th or December 30th I mean November 30th is there a preference the schools are not out the public schools are not out on the 23rd and actually the Monday after Thanksgiving is probably actually a lot harder because that requires us to prep over Thanksgiving weekend and the the town staff to have stuff before they go off for their day off and I think the 30th is worse than the 23rd so but the all the other alternative is November 16th I will just tell you I don't want to see another November where we only have one meeting it's killing us this year so November 16th or November 23rd I'd say the 16th I'd rather do two together and be free to have a holiday okay yeah yeah November 16th those in favor November 23rd so the 16th seemed to win on that one it was a straw poll so right now the calendar then the adjustments to it are instead of April 20th it's April 27th instead of November 23 it's November 16 and instead of December 14 or 21 it's December 21 and it is January 4th 2021 are there any other changes okay a motion was made to adopt the calendar as amended or would you please state your motion again to approve the proposed 2020 town council meeting schedule as amended motion second motion has been made and seconded any for the discussion all those in favor raise your hand and say aye opposed but abstain is 13 in favor of the motion we're going to move on to appointments there's two appointments one is the confirmation of the town manager appointments for the council on aging Evan sure so I'll assume that you all read the ochre report thoroughly so I won't go into too much detail but the committee did consider the council on aging appointments at two meetings one in which we sent the memo back to the town manager to ask for some additional information you'll also notice that you received several council on aging memos over the course of the weeks as it was discovered that two of the original appointments were not actually Amherst residents which means that we are making some appointments today of five people but that still leaves some vacancies on council on aging so you can expect to see more appointments to council on aging at some point in the future I expect but the committee voted unanimously to recommend the town council approve the town manager's appointments to the council on aging are there questions at this time okay Evan you want to go ahead and make the motion so I moved to approve the following town manager appointments to the council on aging effective immediately as recommended by the outreach communications and appointments committee report of October 21st 2019 for three-year term to expire June 30th 2022 Rosemary Coffler reappointment Evette Palacen for a two-year term to expire June 30th 2021 Sue Dirks Patricia Rector and John Wolensack any further discussion all those in favor say I and raise your hand I opposed abstain that is 14 13 people in favor of the motion okay the next one actually is a little more complicated but Evan it's yours c-pack there's two options so uh that this morning's meeting so I don't know if you had a chance to read the supplement that you received today to the OCCA report but in brief OCCA was scheduled to consider and vote on the town manager appointments to the committee for reservation act committee this morning for council action October 28th that meeting was then canceled we don't have the luxury of waiting to act on this until our November 18th meeting because the town manager filed these appointments on October 15th which means they would go into effect on November 14th which is before our next meeting after this so if the council wants to take action tonight is the only time to do it so I apologize for again this quick turnaround in this pressure but the committee discussed the town manager's council community preservation act committee appointments unfortunately because he's on vacation the town manager wasn't able to be present and so we sent him our questions in advance and received from the town manager responses you have both the responses as a single document in your packet and also attached to the OCCA report supplement the discussion that occurred within the committee had to do with both the contents of the memo and also the responses to the questions OCCA has worked over several months with the town manager in an iterative process to try to improve the information that we receive on the memo so that we can make informed recommendations to the council and so it not not once and more than once we have sent memos back to him asking for additional information as you saw with council on aging the conversation that occurred in OCCA this morning was a division within the community about whether the combination of the memo that was provided and the responses to the OCCA questions provided sufficient information there were some members of the committee that felt as though his responses still were insufficient given what we've been asking for specifically with regard to the question we've been asking which is don't just tell us about this person tell us how this person contributes to the success of the body so things like titles don't really matter so much to us as what are the skills that they bring to the body for it to be successful other members of the committee felt like they had sufficient information and so the vote that OCCA took in today which is why you have two motions in front of you was a 3-2 vote to recommend that the town council take no action on these appointments so as you'll remember we have three options to approve in which case they become effective immediately to reject in which case they're done or to take no action in which case they go into effect on November 14th the action that was taken in OCCA this morning was no judgment on the individuals appointed themselves in fact there was broad agreement within OCCA that these were competent qualified people who would be happy to have on the committee and no one sought to stop their appointment which is why we did not recommend rejecting their appointment this was merely a process dispute and so the recommendation that came before you today from OCCA is has no judgment on the individuals themselves but expression of a process issue that was felt by the majority of OCCA members who still wanted to see these people appointed but did not want the town council to proactively approve uh given that so if that if you have questions let me know questions Dorothy I remember reading the list and thinking they all sounded like good people but I understand the point but I do know that people will always remember that they weren't approved and therefore although I understand your reasoning um and I think you should make you want you want to make a point that this is a change you want I agree with it but I don't want to do something that um cast a shadow on some good people other comments Mandy Joe I was going to make a similar one that if we decided not to vote tonight do we actually take a vote to take no action because that seems really weird um I would say we either vote to approve or we don't take any votes at all this if that's the way we go it sets a precedent for other sort of pocket approvals is what we referred to them on on the charter commission of the council's not taking action that means they're not taking action it doesn't mean they're voting not to take action um and so I was confused by the first motion of to vote to take no action I wouldn't recommend that at all I'd either say we vote to approve or we don't do anything okay um Pat I uh actually um am disturbed by aspects of the town manager's responses um and I feel like uh he needs to address the concerns of the committee uh I know for a fact that Nate Buddington is one of the best chairs uh in the business and he's wonderful I've sat on meetings uh I don't know Stan well um Diana Stan Stein has done excellent work on the committee so it is not about the members uh the appoint the people who are being appointed but the process and I think that there's like a territorial spat here that the town manager needs to get over are there any further comments yes I have to say this or or my committee needs to get over George Steve I'm ready to make a motion which is to I'm going to move to approve the following town manager appointments to the community preservation committee effective immediately for a three-year term to expire June 30th 2022 Nate Buddington sim a cloud reappoint reappointment for a two-year term to expire June 30th 2021 Diana Stein reappointed second is there any further discussion Darcy I'm I'm concerned that there were alternative motions provided here because the majority uh of the committee recommended the first motion and um you know I would I would appreciate it if the council I mean now now we're in a uncomfortable position of having to vote against these people okay and uh you know I I think that we came to you hoping that you would help us send a message to the town manager that we really need better information on the applicants and so by bypassing that we're basically back to square one with the town manager and not getting the information and he will hear this and he'll say oh well I guess I don't have to give them good information listen since the motions are my fault I wanted to explain to both you and Mandy Jill why they're written this way there was a motion that was already on here on this motion sheet before Oka had its conversation that said to approve reject as recommended by Oka well Oka then this morning didn't recommend approve or reject so I either had to just pretend we had no motion because I was working on the motion sheet after that meeting or I needed to provide alternative language so I provided alternative language simply to show the difference between the two as opposed to the first one really being a good one because as Mandy Joe points out why vote at all except that way I could say because it wasn't effective immediately it was showing the contrast it was that it would result in appointments effective November I left that in there so everyone would understand that based on the position that we took in our split vote today that we understood that that we understood those those appointments were going to take place so even if we didn't vote to take no action that that would somehow then be reflected in the minutes even if we chose not to make that actual motion it so happens that because two motions were offered simply so I could explain what people were doing because I was doing this independently of our chair actually managing to write a report after a meeting this morning which is quite impressive I didn't know if he'd have a chance to do that and so I wanted us to have the options of motions because we know how hard it is to word Smith motions on the floor thank you there's been a motion made in second and further comments Sarah so I just want to say since Pat has sort of made everything be kind of blunt tonight I would also like to say that also while we I understand the point of if maybe people would remember that we didn't directly approve but at the same time the bulk of Oka decided today to take no action in order for us to get you more appropriate information about maybe people you're not going to know everyone we need to provide to you all of the information so that when you all look at us and say well why is this person you won't you won't like everybody so we're trying to do a service to all of you to give you the best information that we can so by taking an action you're actually I would say disrespecting or not completely supporting the the majority of Oka any further comments at this time Evan so I know we want to move on from this but I said this in the meeting this morning but it was really more appropriate for this audience which is that Oka is tasked with making recommendations about town manager appointments and we've been working really hard to figure out what that means and what our role is and what type of information we want and what information we can get but all of this is done in service to you all the council at some point and not right now but at some point maybe in a future retreat it would be really useful I think for Oka to hear some feedback from the council about are we serving the purpose that you all intended are you getting the information from us that you want how much of that is what information we're trying to get and can't get how much of that is what we're not asking but what it'd be great to get some feedback and I'm going to continually reference until I get direct feedback on it the August 19th report that was sent that include the detailed many of the conversations Oka has had including some where we have a committee that has been unable to come to consensus and so broader council feedback would be useful because I think a lot of what we're doing is navigating what we think you all want and it'd be great at some point not now to get some feedback on that. So I have a process procedural question with the motion on the floor the charter requires seven votes in favor for passage the motion is to approve and I don't know the answer to this but if for some reason eight or seven abstain and it only gets six does that mean it's been rejected? It just means it's not been approved. So it would still remain as taking no action because you could interpret a non-seven or higher vote council vote to approve if it only gets six or fewer as taking an action that was not approval and therefore the pocket approval and the charter might not apply. As I say I don't know the answer I don't know whether anyone here is equipped to potentially be able to answer that but I wanted to throw that out there as a concern that I have because I I'm getting the idea that no one on this council wants to see those appointments actually rejected. Andy? I guess my concern about that is anything that is short of actually approving them is going to have the taste of rejection. I think that I'm sorry that this is coming up at a meeting where the town manager is not present and we can't ask the assistant town manager to speak on his behalf because this involves his thinking, his intent but we are where we are. The other thing that I noticed that it was three to two which was obviously it was a close vote and I'm not asking who the three were who the two were because I don't want to get into actually knowing because this isn't about a popularity contest but it was something that obviously was debated and was not a unanimous recommendation of the committee. So for that reason I would be inclined to support the motion that is on the floor and assume that we will have an opportunity to engage with the town manager at the appropriate time about the very issue even if it's in the context of what was suggested which was a discussion about what the council is expecting the committee to have. I think that that is a obviously a matter of great interest and at some point we have to find the proper forum to take to have that discussion. Kathy. I'm agreeing that we would move forward with a motion to approve but I just want to say that I think the much stronger if the effort to not do anything and just let it slide and therefore they're appointed is to send a message. I think it's a very weak message. I would send a stronger message and say next time appointments come with insufficient information we will stop them we won't bring them to the council. Do something that's stronger saying there needs to be enough information to go by and I think this could be a time constraint that there was additional information that would have been easy to add to this and it just wasn't but in action letting it just slide is not as strong a message is direct communication on this so I don't don't think that it does what the intent was of just letting it slide and therefore they're appointed. Steve. This seems really appropriate for the town managers evaluation and completely inappropriate for three volunteers for a very important committee so they should not basically be subject to this discussion you know if they're qualified and we think that they're capable so it's perfectly legitimate for us to use this to evaluate the town manager but not to evaluate these candidate not for the evaluation of these candidates but the memo says that it's not for it but you know even proposing no action means that we're somehow protesting their qualifications. So let me just set this in context the town manager released these appointments to OCA and to the town council at that time we were still planning to have a meeting on November on October 28th we then last Friday afternoon when realizing that there was a conflict with our meeting with the League of Women voters candidates night we canceled our meeting and instead we will be meeting for our primer on the master plan at five and then at six the public forum required on the master plan and then if you care to move on to the candidates night you are free to so at that point the manager was stuck in that the fact that the memo had been released and then we come to the issue that November has this awkwardness of only one meeting and not until November 18th. I just want to also add Mr. Bachmann is not on vacation he is at a professional meeting in another part of the country that is relevant to his position so I just want to correct that for the record as well. I personally feel that we need to approve this I plan to vote to approve this I know all three of these people I have attended these meetings they the two people that are back up for reappointment are outstanding members of this committee and the third person has been written about I am sorry that this is feeling too oka like we're going against your recommendation but believe me I'm sure the town manager has heard the message tonight and so any other questions yes. Okay well actually he hasn't heard the message because we asked for this after he wrote the council on aging memo before he wrote the CPAC memo and he chose to do the same thing and so we did think along and hard about how strong of a message to send and we absolutely didn't want people to feel rejected the charter very clearly says approve reject or pocket do nothing it doesn't mean you have to be approved by the town council not going to repeat everything else everybody else said but I don't think enough of us are thinking about something I said to George earlier today which was it's not about you meaning it's not about whether or not you personally know these people and think these people are awesome this is also about the community reading this the community understanding why these people are awesome when they've never met these people when they didn't get chosen for this and they understand why those people are awesome not just because we happen to know them because they've been doing this a while and also all the people who say you don't choose from a wide enough variety of people you're not giving us all the options that's why we want more information that's why we're going to have a future conversation that's why we've been telling the town manager for months after every single memo he sends us that we don't have enough information which we do have a split vote about whether or not we have enough information because we feel those in the majority and speaking for myself say that we are not providing enough information to our community to show how amazing these people are in comparison to the global so that you don't feel bad when you don't get appointed because these people are great and you're going to be really proud to have them serving your community any further comment okay the motion has been made and seconded any further questions yes the motion was made to approve the following town manager appointments to the community preservation committee effective immediately for a three-year term to expire June 30th 2022 Nate Buddington appointment of reappointment Sam McLeod for a two-year term to expire June 30th 2021 Diana Stein reappointment the motion was made and seconded any further questions then call the question all those in favor raise your hand and say I I opposed abstain so is eight in favor of the motion for opposed and one abstention the next issue is because of a quirk of what's going on with the planning board at this point we've had a resignation on the planning board therefore we're down from seven members to six a vote of the planning board requires five votes the at this point among the six members for a certain item coming before the planning board in relationship to the Amherst College athletic fields there are two people who in one way or another and they have filed for you a conflict of interest two people have some relationship to Amherst College and the manager has written a memo about this and attached those particular conflict of disclosure statements and at this point the real question is whether or not we as a council agree that the interest the interest of these people is not substantial as to demand as as to be deemed likely to affect the integrity of the services which the municipality may expect from the planning board members and the two members in question are Maria Chow and David Levenstein and we will vote separately on those are there questions yes Alyssa so I just wanted to add since I work reworked the motions on these today to reflect not only what town council had said but also what the the law said and to use the people's names rather than just generic words like municipal employee I wanted to thank Athena for including these two things in our packet tonight this is the actual general law that it's about and this is the instruction sheet that unfortunately I don't think the town attorney gave to the people before they filled out their sheet so that would explain why one of them didn't write very much on their sheet because they didn't know that they were supposed to write a little ideally perhaps a little more than that but I have no question that based on what the town attorney has said based on my reading of these things based on things we've done in the past this doesn't come up very often but it does occasionally and when I was on select board Mr Steinberg was probably with me then too we had to do this for a particular member of the zoning board of appeals as I recollect because it just so happens you luck out sometimes and there's a project that's near you that's actually something you need to do but I wanted to make sure you had these materials as well even though you didn't really have time to read them today to understand what we were agreeing to and I made it clear that in the most in the revised motions that I prepared that it would be just for this project this is not a blanket anything it's just for this project thank you for including that additional information I think it was very helpful are there questions particularly about the issue before us Kathy um I'm not sure I understand why we would say this is an insignificant financial interest when uh both of them are butters and have received a butter interest if thinking of potential issues that could come up one way or the other I can't imagine that if you were in a butter you won't react about how is it going to affect me my housing value my neighbor's housing value when you're sitting there so it feels like it's not uh they're not owners and you know so it feels like a fairly substantial conflict of interest to me um you know thinking of the butters when the solar field went up in North Amherst um we wouldn't have put them on the planning board make a decision I mean it was definitely going to change this so um I read the attorneys uh uh sort of torturous thinking through this that you know if we had enough members on the planning board this wouldn't be an issue because these two people could recuse themselves the problem is we've got a vacancy and we don't have enough other members so isn't one of the ways we could solve this is to quickly get an appointment to the planning board um one of the ways we can solve this is to get an appointment to the planning board but however that is not quick it's not going to be quick I look to Oka for that issue Kathy I mean anything else Kathy okay Mandy Joe so I'm gonna first disclose that I lived across the street from this project at one point just over a year ago I was on Orchard Street and the athletic fields are across the street um so and my husband is also an employee of Amherst College but we're not voting on the project so um I don't see a conflict to vote on this um I want to give a little bit of description of to what this project is and what the athletic fields are to help um do something about whether this is a substantial interest in and monetary and all um I happen to know where David Levinstein lives I do not happen to know where Maria Chow lives um but the Amherst College field renovation that is proposed on the slight plan review there is essentially a four sets of fields off of Route 9 a budding Route 9 and Orchard Street um the first field if you start at Orchard Street is the football field as my understanding is there are not a single proposed change to the football field section and then you don't go down a little bit and there is what is now a field hockey field that is a astroturf field my understanding is the plan is to reastroturf that field I don't know whether that's part of this application or not um and then there is a third field that is even lower than that and farther towards University Drive farther away from where David Levinstein lives um that field is currently grass um and it is my understanding that this site plan review and proposal is to convert that into an astroturf field and probably add lights I don't know the extent of it but that's the field that is the main proposal going on here the next field down even closer to University Drive is a softball field I don't think anything's going on with that one but I don't know um so so at least for Mr. Levinstein it is essentially three plus fields away three fields away from where he lives he happens to live on Woodside not Orchard Street Woodside comes off at the diagonal and he lives close to the corner of Hitchcock Woodside in Orchard Street but not on the corner he's not the corner property um that's the project that's being proposed so it's not a lot of building going on it's resurfacing and adding up some some light stanchions is my understanding so I hope that gives a little bit of background as to what the two planning board members would make be making decisions on okay Dorothy um I I have a question really for Mr. Zomick um when I first read this I said astroturf haven't I been reading that that's not really good for the environment and that you can get those um killer staff inspections from astroturf and like wrestling mats um so I just wanted to ask that thank you for the question I don't know the specifics of the of the product they're using I know that you know if you google these kinds of projects you will get all sorts of um information and research on on the newest the newest kinds of artificial turf and you know I trust that Amherst college is well aware they have multiple uh artificial fields so I trust that they are exploring the best and safest option for their athletes and the public um for this for this field as as Mandy uh described are there other questions yes Darcy uh I'm just wondering if this is the situation where the two people in question would normally recuse themselves yes it is it is but the problem is that leaves the planning board with only four votes and so they can't approve the project to move forward until a seventh planning board member is appointed which we don't expect will happen for at least two months maybe more maybe three yes Steve yeah and I'm not sure what no action I'm sorry I did not see the attorney's letter but I'm not sure what no action would mean but wouldn't mean basically approval if it's so there has to be action taken or else there has to be action or else it's approved right we there has to be an action on the part of the council to approve the board doesn't take action I think it I'm speaking about my pay grade I think it becomes approved oh yeah it eventually does yes so that there's not a quarrel so David what you're saying is whether the planning board if they take no action the project eventually will go forward without a vote what I don't know and I apologize tonight what I don't know is is then how the review process happens with so few members of the board participating so you know the planning board often will weigh in and and help shape the project and and I just don't know this evening how that would happen without these two members participating in that process okay yes so I mentioned that in part because the town will lose its voice so this is if we don't approve at least in terms of the shaping of of the project listen so I just want to point out again in mass general law I know this is so exciting the the larger font item they've advised us of the nature and circumstances of the matter and made disclosure of their financial interest although they've both kind of made it clear that I don't really know what the impact of this is this isn't like a contract that's worth x amount of dollars or something like that and the interest is not so substantial as to be deemed likely to affect the integrity of the services so it doesn't mean there's not a financial figure involved it means that we don't believe by agreeing to these that we believe that the interest is not so substantial as to be deemed likely to affect the integrity of the services that we can expect from them as planning board members can they honestly say I can do this even though I technically live there and I will be impacted by that and I also refer you to item three which is exactly what all the UMass affiliates just did the other week which is a determination of general policy and the interest of the municipal employee or members of his immediate family is shared with substantial segment of the population of the municipality so it isn't just whether or not you think they will be affected because some bizarro thing gets built in the middle of the astroturf that I'm sure isn't actually part of the plan but it's also can they act with integrity and if they're saying that they can then I have no that's why I am able to support this because I have no reason to doubt them manager I was just going to say I I support the exemptions having lived near this field it's it's quite a large parcel which is part of the reason why at least one of these individuals is being deemed in the butter because he's definitely not within 300 feet of the actual field that's being renovated you can't even see the field that's being renovated it's just a large parcel I don't think that it can it will affect their integrity to allow them to discuss a site plan review and if we're accurate that if we don't do this and the site plan review eventually becomes approved it's definitely not going to really affect I mean a site site plan review is a by right type item it's not you know and so it it I'd rather have them discussing their concerns than not be able to be there if it's automatically going to be approved anyway okay Darcy what is the time frame of the site plan review because we you know we are talking in Oka about getting up in a new process to appoint another you know to fill the position on the planning board so is there a possibility that we could get someone appointed I don't I don't I don't see in the letter here any reference to a time frame I don't have the answer to that Steve I think it's on the next agenda okay but well it says here that it had been on the Wednesday October 16th planning board meeting okay that's so it's it's an imminent project so up so it must have been continued so it's an active live project right now and they probably continued it so because at that point they wanted to get our vote one way or the other but is there some kind of time limit on the actual project usually people submit it and then they want to start but I have no idea I mean we could try to find the documents but David I guess the clock starts starts when they file so it's been filed I don't know off the top of my head how long the planning board has to address the application but there is there is a timeline by which they must take action right I think it's 60 days but that's thank you Evan so because this is my district I know where both of these people live and I have no concerns about this because even though they are technically a butters or butters to a butters as Mandy Joe pointed out they actually are all not immediately adjacent to the property there's a fair bit of space so I'm ready to make a motion okay so I move that the town council has made a written determination under mgl chapter 260 a section 19 b that the financial interest is not so substantial as to be deemed likely to affect the integrity of the services which the municipality may expect from planning board member Maria chow and a matter of SPR 2020-02-amorous college-amorous field athletic field renovation-212 Northampton road further conversation okay then all those in favor raise your hand and say aye opposed abstain 11 voted for the motion non-opposed and to abstain the next one I'll keep going I move that the town council has made a written determination under mgl chapter 260 a section 19 b the financial interest is not so substantial as to be deemed likely to affect the integrity of the services which the municipality may expect from planning board member David Levenstein in the matter of SPR 2020-02-amorous college-athletic field renovation-212 Northampton road second any further discussion all those in favor raise say aye and raise your hand opposed abstain okay um 11 in favor of the motion no opposed no opposition and two abstentions thank you can can I just ask I just have a question for the future sure on these um when I've seen these before and this is more in the private sector or nonprofit the disclosure that the person made usually had a statement toward the bottom you say I have this interest but I don't believe it would materially affect my decision on this do we not ask the person to write that in we do you know because they don't they just say please explain the financial interests and both of them just say it and then one of them says I have no idea what the financial consequences might be but we would be helped if the if people were attesting to their decision will not be so I would just advise the town when they're collecting these to ask people to do that you know that I don't think it will material because that would help this decision to have had someone already say say that um I found this odd to read it this way it's not the way I'm used to seeing it okay and do they sign it they do sign it so now I'm just saying when I've had to do and when I've checked that I do have something and it's then I have another thing do you think this in any way will so I get to say no you know it's insubstantial whatever right all right moving on to committee reports audit anything pat okay by law review I think we've already had that uh CRC Mandy joe uh we'll have a report for the next meeting but we intend to have a feedback back from the housing priorities policy affordable housing priorities policy draft that was referred to CRC we intend to have that feedback back to this council by the 18th of November town manager and council goals we met last week and I had an initial discussion about the broad areas of the goals basically following the five broad areas that we had in the written evaluation that we reviewed and then added one more in around sustainability we did not get into the detail of those goals and we are meeting again next week finance committee finance committee is meeting tomorrow and our principal discussion tomorrow will be to talk about the financial implications of the proposed housing policy we're hoping to be able to distinguish between the financial consequences and the housing policy itself which is really a CRC issue we also have percent for arts on the agenda but Kathy will report on that committee and until the committee has a specific proposal in which we can comment on financial consequences of we really not in a position to have a finance committee discussion of it so I'll leave it at that and the third thing that we will be talking about for at least to get started on is a little bit of the regional school budget knowing that the four town meeting is coming up okay the governance organization and legislation committee hi you've heard from us a lot tonight we're working on liaisons and we'll be meeting again soon okay outreach communications and appointments committee we've been enough percent for art by law ad hoc committee Andy gave you my report we don't have anything to report back right now what we are doing and it was because of my forgetting the 48 hour rule so trying to file on Thursday afternoon for Tuesday meeting or Friday was too late we're not we didn't we would have been meeting tomorrow morning but we're starting to go through the draft taking into account the comments that have already been made by town staff and addressing one of the issues that was a major concern but we expect to be working through a major major major but we will be doing a revision and we'll be taking at least two meetings to be going through that okay thank you and I do want to say that I think the motion setting up this I'm going to forget the timeline set up on this but I'm vaguely remembering it was the end of October but you know so at our next council meeting I'll report back when I think we you'll get a full draft but I'll be able to report on where we are thank you any further committee reports no all right approval of minutes um we only have one set it is the October 7th 2019 town council regular meeting and there's a motion to prove the minutes of October 7th 2019 as presented is there a second and uh changes were made I believe and it was refiled are there any other changes corrections amendments then all those in favor raise your hand and say I I posed abstain so it was nine voted for them proving the minutes none voted against and for abstained um okay we do not I'm sorry I just pushed the wrong button we do not have a written town managers report in fact the plan was that the town manager was going to have one for next week's meeting which is not happening now so I will discuss with him as to whether or not there might be a report he would be sending out to you but David do you have a few updates you'd like to provide sure thank you I appreciate being with you tonight I recognize the lateness of the hour so I will be very brief I just um had a couple of kind of community development projects that you might see happening out there um throughout town and wanted to give you a quick quick overview of a few of them on east Adley Road I'm excited to say that our construction has begun for the extension of the multi-purpose path which will we started in 2018 from about the Hadley line um moving east or yes moving east um past the boulders and south point and the other apartment complexes and we have awarded a contract I saw them out there working today so that multi-purpose path which is between 8 and 10 feet wide will continue all the way up to the intersection at the old grist mill at 116 or or south pleasant street um our goal of course is to help um make it more accessible to reach uh our new amenities that are taking shape over at grove park so look for that construction to hopefully be done by the time the snow flies moving across the way and east over to grove park we're racing the weather a little bit if you've been down there recently they're making a lot of progress but it's gonna it's gonna come down to the wire and we're meeting weekly with our contractor uh jl construction they are doing the final uh concrete pours at the spray park and the playground uh they'll be um putting down by two minutes asphalt um as quickly as possible all of the um amenities at the uh playground are for the most part in place the last things that will be going up and vertical will be the spray park um fixtures and the goal is to at least run the spray park I know we had hoped to open it in 2019 certainly will open as soon as soon as we can in the spring early summer of 20 but the goal is to at least run the spray park so the DPW can get a sense of how everything works so look for those two projects um completing in the next four to five weeks um moving east uh even from there the dog park we are completed with design on the dog park at the uh old landfill off of belcher town road we're now just waiting we'll put this out to bid sometime in the next couple of months and that'll be based on when we think the most favorable bidding climate will be we have most of the funding uh thanks to the stand in foundation and money from CPAC or CPA funds um the the uh dog park task force is doing a significant amount of fundraising just to make sure we have enough money for that entire project um so again we'll put that out to bid in the colder months and hopefully get a favorable bid so that we come in uh early in the spring and start constructing the dog park again this is about a one and a half acre two acre in total park it's fairly small and fairly fairly simple walkways shade structures a fence a wonderful place for dogs and their owners to meet and have fun there'll be a small small dog area and a bigger dog area so it's it's pretty straightforward um i think the council is well aware that we did get the four hundred thousand dollar um park grant for kinder park kudos to the planning staff and dpw and lssc for for putting that grant forward we're now going to work with the town manager um and have discussions uh with with him about how to um come up with and and and approach what will likely be CPAC for the additional matching funds for the grant uh in total that project is about a six hundred and fifty thousand dollar uh park so we're gonna um we're gonna need some matching funds there and then lastly uh moving back west i don't have any new updates on hickory ridge we're still waiting uh the the project has received all of its state approvals the solar project at hickory um so we're simply waiting to see how things develop with the smart program as we've talked about and whether that solar project gets accepted to the smart program so uh we'll be back to you i'm sure and paul and i will with updates uh at your coming meetings so that was a quick a quick uh a tour around amherst of some exciting projects some of which will be completed this fall and then we'll roll right into 2020 with some other improvements so thank you and december 1st right now is the date on the purchase and sale for hickory ridge that is correct we've talked about that and and again um there may need to be some adjustments to that but we've been quite up front with the council as well as with uh the owners are there any questions at this time from the council okay um under town council comments just let me say i want to thank lsse and uh one of our cpo's jen for their excellent work on saturday for the fall festival and also thank both darthy and darcy for joining in those festivities and darcy made enormously good use of the time by collecting comments and engaging citizens that would not normally come out to meetings to talk about um the kinds of goals that eca seeks should be considering so i thought it was a really effective i was very impressed and uh darthy was her usual grandmother helping people get food and make their scarecrows and so forth um i had a UMass student with me the whole time yes she did a report which was really great because she was i think she you contacted some of you she wanted to interview a counselor and i had no time but i said if you want to walk with me we can talk and she really enjoyed it a lot she's a journalism and political political politics person and got a lot of new insights into the town of amherst so i would think this is not a bad thing to do you know the future is good um that anything else on the future agenda items just let me mention on the november 18th uh in addition to what we talked about earlier tonight regarding the capital projects we also are going to be receiving the presentation and the recommendations for the goals from ecac and uh we may be doing hickory ridge at that point we're not we're not sure and there's a bunch of other items it is our only scheduled council meeting but remember we have another meeting in which we will be convened as a council and that is at the four boards meeting which is on november 7th okay any other comments about future agenda items can i just have a question or one that might slot in we had a presentation of the report from the parking uh the work group um and i've received a lot of comments from residents i have a list of my own and it's not so much the report but what the parking what are some creative ideas for parking policy so i'd like to schedule a time where the council could have its own discussion and whether they get referred to crc or not to put up you know generate a list of what was missing from that report not just what do we like or not like about it because i think there was a lot that was missing um and i just want to bring this up because i believe things like the setting of rates for the meters the setting of hours for the meters how boltwood lot underground garage is or is rented out how permanent project works i think the council can be policy setters on these and a lot of these are just by regulations so it's not a bible so it's a meaty topic that we could get into if we schedule it so i just want to make sure it gets on an agenda so it doesn't just sit there here's a report and you know seven months from now we'll come back to it i think the next the appropriate time for the next discussion with the council is when the parking downtown parking committee meets and brings us their report which they did not do the night of the consultant report and so i don't know that we have a specific date as to whether they'll make it by november 18th or more likely december 16th okay great i just i think it'll require a chunk of time so it's not so much i want to slot it in right away but create a slot for it yeah okay other future agenda items yes evan the four boards meeting yes time to be determined do we we really don't have a time for it i don't think it was time to be determined um i'm sorry it's november 7th i do yeah hold on i had it listed as five o'clock but i don't know i have it as six but let me just say we'll clarify by tomorrow and send something out we want that's right it at four o'clock there is a panel on marijuana at jones library sponsored by the chamber and we are now doing the four boards meeting at six and the question is where and i think that given the fact that literally it will be as many as 13 of us six people from the school committee no i'm sorry five people from the school committee um uh six people from the library board and the regional school committee three residents from the finance committee and three residents from the finance committee those are the four boards and whether we do it in this room or we move it to bangs i think is really the question yes so we had talked about doing the budget public forum that same night is that still scheduled for that night it is so that should get on announcements yes that it will be thank you the annual budget public forum remember seven add to that remember last year in march on march 15th when we all sat in the middle school auditorium and did our first public forum from which we learned a lot and in the process it was so people could talk about ideas that they wanted to be considered in the budget for the coming year well by that point the budget had pretty much left the station so the idea is move that particular forum earlier for fy 21's budget and so it would be to have it that night okay will you do it before or after the four boards meeting and also the bcg has to meet at that point too okay let me get more detail to you on all of that further agenda items questions other councilor comments lisa just really quick referring back to what kathy said about parking so planning ahead and you may have already had this and i just overlooked it in the future agenda items so if we talk about it on the 16th for example because downtown parking working group finally gives us the recommendations we can certainly have that discussion that night but when we go to make the changes as to what hours what how those are all subject to a hearing and so there's an actual hearing process associated with that and so we'll just want to build that into our schedule sort of you know not too far apart from that whenever that is well and the other question is going to be whether or not the council wants to tackle that as a committee of the whole or whether or not we're going to have some committee tackle recommendations that we may give our suggestions to and they come back to us okay any further comments at this point all right there are two this is odd and i am i'm actually quite open to suggestions and recommendations periodically we get things in the emails and you've received two of them this week or i've received two of them in the last week or week since our last meeting one is about the net zero stretch code and the other one is about the carbon pricing legislation and they're asking for some kind of endorsement or letter or for a statement or signature of support and both of them are very important and interesting things and unfortunately the deadline is before we meet again and so the issue is we didn't send these to OKA to go well so they have not been reviewed and Mandy Joe do you want to tell me or tell us what has to happen if we want to do anything with these tonight so we just adopted changes to the rules of procedure those changes include things like this having to go to GOL before the council acts on them let me find the the what could happen is that the very first there is an ability to if the council wants to act on them tonight without seeing GOL and that acting being sort of designating or approving it as a full council versus just each individual counselor deciding on their own whether or not to sign on there is a provision in rule 8.6 of consideration of non-emergency measures prior to vote that if two-thirds of the full council waves the requirements for measure for a specific measure at a regular council meeting then it can be acted on prior to being seen by GOL so it would require a two-thirds will require nine votes in order to act tonight but that is able if the council decides it wants a motion from sort of for the whole council to support these items okay so the question I would want to have that on both of these as a separate vote and then we would actually vote on each individual item Evan you made it I'd like a little bit of clarification on the statement that the there's a deadline with these yeah the one that I did include both in your the one on the zero energy stretch code is they want you to sign on by November 5th before the hearing and the other one I thought I had it but I don't see where I have it yes Alyssa so again we're still figuring these things out as we go along so given that I'm not clear that we all agreed to this based on previous conversations we've had like sometimes we talk about something so many times that then a letter would come up and we'd be like yeah we just talked about that we totally agree with that sending this to GOL wouldn't really help in that it would just they'd be able to say if it was actionable or not which they would and so I don't know what the pros and cons of signing on to this are and GOL wouldn't be able to tell me that and so that's why that's not really the helpful part at this point unfortunately we're just not very nimble for something like this and that's just the reality andy I think that the other thing that about this particular request is that it has that when you go back to the original email and you click on the link the link gets you to is a form it's not to be filled out by the council it's to be filled out by individual counselors and so it doesn't seem to me that they're really requesting action by the council they're requesting support from individual counselors and for that reason I'm not sure how we proceed with this at all because it's not even technically as presented or a quest for council action the one that I looked at that carefully andy and one of them is for individual and then the other ones is specifically able labeled the net zero stretch code municipal support letter which in my mind would mean a body Steve yeah so this is a legitimate thing right so and it's an important thing and so it obliges to me obliges the council we can sign the letter and I might move I hope it moves the needle but it doesn't oblige us to then adopt the net zero energy stretch code but it does make it an option for us to consider because the building code is at the state level so for that reason I normally would have this whole big thing about we shouldn't sign on to things like this before they're vetted but this particular thing because I know it's a thing I would I would hope that we would support this path I also would like to see us support both and I think that the one that is being where you can to Charlie Baker etc that you can sign individually I think there is strength in us signing as a council and I would like to see us do that Dorothy I have a question for Andy is this going to I wasn't Steve made it sound like that it could we can sign it and yet it's still optional other financial implications of us as a council signing this Andy actually don't know the answer to that so is that something that I've looked into or the committee has looked into okay oh Evan so I don't know that I have any issue with the contents of either of these letters but I did find myself earlier very frustrated to see them on our agenda and that was before I knew there was a deadline so I understand that but some of the documents in there were added like three hours before the meeting and so normally GL has this process that admittedly makes things slightly less nimble but allows for some length of time for consideration for us to see things think about them have them read through I mean I don't know who I don't even know who wrote either of these letters this looks like it was written by an organization this one looks like it could have just been written by a person like you know what I mean like an average person and so I it's a little let me just say I felt obliged to bring them forward to the council because they're regarding state laws or state hearings about laws and because of the issue they're about the problem for me in both of these is when I got them and the fact that we don't didn't have time in between so I'm I'm willing to do whatever the council wants and I'm not you know pushing up a particular position or whatever but just to go with the will of the group Darcy I would just like to say that I forwarded both of those things to Lynn and I I would be you know if needed I would be willing to sponsor both of them if that helps matters I'd also really urge all Pete counselors individually to support these the stretch code sign on if Steve wanted to make a motion about that tonight I bet we could pass it and I'm guessing we could probably pass the carbon pricing too so they're both state issues that will directly affect Amherst if passed in a way that will really help us achieve our our climate action goals I just was looking at because I was busy all day and didn't have a chance to read it the one that's on the carbon pricing it's talking about funding it's talking about the state increasing money for these things what could be bad about that you know so I think that I certainly don't see any problem with that one because it's not saying that we have to spend more says the state will give money that we can apply for to do some of these things we keep talking about Steve so well on the advice of my attorney I'm going to make a motion okay the first motion we have to make is that we're willing to act and that means we have to have two thirds that we're willing to oh the first is that we are willing to act on these without the review of GL I move to do what she said manager do you want to I was going to try and form that motion um I move that the town council waive the requirements of rule 8.6 for the for the net zero stretch code municipal support letter is there a second hope that's the one you wanted to make the motion because I just picked one is there a second okay that one it needs nine votes to pass okay is there a further question on that George I'm just uncomfortable with voting on something like this not about GL it's just about having a chance to talk and think about a little bit and I hear Steve's point and he's probably right but I just what's the rush here and I'm not comfortable voting for anything when I've just I've not actually even read it and I guess I could read it quickly and I could take Steve and Darcy's word for it but I'm much more comfortable this is coming from you know a formal committee or from town staff or some right but even then I'd like to have a chance to read it and think about it and get some input so I can't support this motion because I just I don't know what to vote for I totally understand that's shall I yeah I agree with Alyssa and George that I would want to know the pros and cons what are the implications on the different stakeholders the low-income people the renters or businesses and in the town so okay okay Evan conceptually I support both of these things but I don't support being asked to make a decision based on something I just received without any analysis on it sounds like there is nothing that stops any of us from independently signing on to this letter correct which we can do we have some time to do you said the deadline was like November 5th so we have some time independently to consider and weigh these things but I you know I do intend to vote against the motion because I don't feel like I have sufficient time to really actually have a discussion about these okay any further discussion so the motion is as to whether or not we're going to proceed to vote on these and we need a two-thirds vote does that need to be a roll call okay okay nine the motion was for only one of the two documents yes would you read the motion that the town council waive the requirements of rule 8.6 for the net zero stretch cord code municipal support letter okay any questions okay all those in favor of waiving the provision raise your hand and say I opposed nay and abstain I guess that's me so we are not going to proceed with that one the bill on climate pollution pricing a similar action this one says it's asking for more money from the state didn't say Darcy to voting on it is that we don't have adequate information let's not vote tonight okay and we can even bring up the zero energy stretch code later too we don't have to vote tonight and I really urge people to sign the the zero stretch code zero energy stretch code individual letter but if people are feeling uncomfortable you know for me I feel like oh this is a no-brainer but I get that there are people who do not understand these things so but so maybe we should schedule it for another meeting the next meeting that could be on is November 18th and even though they're having hearings it doesn't mean they've had their vote so if you want to maybe help us provide more information on both that would be great okay okay Alyssa that would be helpful because yes they do usually accept testimony for some time after the hearing but I will point out it isn't that we don't understand it it's that we just got it and I have literally no idea what's in house bill 28 right right I I just we all just got it in the mail so I forwarded to Lynn and she forwarded to us so Andy and I appreciate it having been forwarded to us I think carbon pricing is an important discussion for the entire nation to have as well as the state and therefore the council but I don't want to hope we don't spend too much time on it however carbon pricing is a controversial issue because it is taxing people for the use of energy and then giving it you know it would get back to communities including ours but I hope that we find a way that the community knows we're having the discussion because we really do need to hear from the community as well as understanding it ourselves we'll look at a way to bring this up on the future agenda with additional information on both of these okay thank you I appreciate your input in this discussion it's exactly what I wanted you to do was to just say how do you want to handle this and so meantime I think it would be appropriate also to refer these to GOL okay Athena yes sorry just really quickly I just need everyone to come in and sign off on the tax classification it'll just take a couple of moments but if you can schedule a time with me I'll send an email reminder but we need to do this before the end of the week you just need to log in I have your credentials to log in check a box and that's it okay so finance committee we will be here for a 2 30 meeting tomorrow so maybe the five of us can arrive early and make that signature and then CRC is meeting on Wednesday Wednesday 8 30 to 10 30 and maybe GOL could either do that before or after and then anybody else GOL meets 10 30 on Wednesday I'm sorry GOL meets at 10 30 on Wednesday yeah you've got just about everybody in the council coming here thank you just make sure that you may have to come down here and drag them down to your office you know I'll bring candy I think that sounds like a nice yes all right any further questions or requests of us a motion to adjourn I'd move that to adjourn the October 7th no it's not October 7th the October 21st 2019 meeting of the town council is there second I second it all those in favor say I I opposed abstain it was unanimous