 Record now. All right. Thanks, everybody for joining today. It's the December 4th rec commission meeting. We've got a pretty full agenda of items here. We've got folks who are going to present, excuse me, who are going to be presenting from the town, from rec commission, as well as their own members here. I think we do have some public that has started to join here. I look forward to hearing from you guys. We're going to have two opportunities for public comment. The first one, right after, essentially right after I talk now, will be anybody who would like to make a comment on anything unrelated to our topics of discussion today. And then as we go through our actual topics, once we hear from the presenters, and once we have a chance to talk amongst ourselves as a committee, we're going to ask for any input or feedback from the public. And at that point, Ray will just let you in. So you'll have an opportunity to speak. Try to keep your comments within three minutes, if possible. Yeah, and I think that's it. So first order of the agenda would be the approval of minutes. We chatted a little bit before we all grouped here. We've got the minutes, but not all of us have had a chance to read them. So we're going to just push that action item on to our next month's agenda. All right. We can, I think, now move over to public comment. Ray, are there anybody, anyone in the public who's interested in making a comment that is not related to one of the items on the agenda? I'll just raise your hand so Ray can call on you. Otherwise, again, you'll have your chance to speak on specific topic items when we get you. All right. I don't see anybody, Ray. And minutes for this meeting? Oh, yes. Can we get a volunteer to take minutes? I'll volunteer, I guess. Thank you, Matt. Appreciate it, as always. All right. With those items taken care, I should also, as I'm looking at the attendees, should also point out that we do have everyone from the committee on, except for Jean. So Sanjay, Jonas, Chris, Matt, Jeremy, myself. All right. Ray, why don't you get us started? We can have Dave and Amy come on and give us the latest non pickleball. I will then elevate Dave and Amy right now. So we should have, did we lose somebody? So where we are right now, we are in a little bit of, I'm sorry, Ray Dave, I think he's still in the attendees. I think he's in the process. And if not, yeah, okay. So as you know, since we last spoke, pickleball has been a sort of a point of contention for our site plan for a lot of different things. I can give you a little bit of a background commission. We did receive the missing medals of homeowners association, did research in response to our site plan, and in response to the CPA proposal, did present an argument against the courts being cited in the Kiwanis, on the Kiwanis field. They brought up a number of different, very relevant, very important arguments about the nature of the pickleball sport and its impact on neighborhood and community. And they wanted to try and make sure that their voice was heard in that process so they didn't end up right on top of them. We met after the original, the last time we met, we met to discuss what our plans and what our proposal was, what we were presenting to the CPA. We did, when we introduced those projects to the CPA and the missing medals community did also present their arguments against that proposal. We sat down with missing medals, with representatives from missing medals to try to certainly hear them in the process. It was very much part of the process we did. This was not after the decision was already made. This was during the decision-making process. They were willing to come in and speak to us. They're willing to come in and participate in a sit-down conversation with us. And I believe that both sides considered that to be a relatively productive conversation. We have, on the part of the town, we agreed to go back to the drawing board and look at some of the other options that were still option one, option two, option three, to look at some of the other options that we had in acknowledgement of the interests of that community and of the interests and due process and the interests of making sure that this project that everybody agreed was an important one was situated in the right space. And so the timing is interesting for us because we are in the process of having a conversation with CPA. We're in the process of pushing forward an important request for funding for this project. And the site plans, Dave, Amy, and the rest of our team, we did want to make sure that we were making a... We're providing the CPA with enough information to be able to make a funding decision in our favor. Real quick, Matt. I'm sorry, Matt, I see your hand up. Did you have something to jump in real fast? Yeah, so as opposed to the other Recreation Commission members, I have a little bit more heads up on this because I was in the CPA meeting last Thursday, where the Missy Meadows Association discussed... Oh, not the last Thursday, the Thursday before... Oh, sorry, Thursday before Thanksgiving Thursday, so I guess two and a half, three and a half weeks ago or something. And then I also received those documents that Ray just sent out 10 minutes ago on Monday, so I had a chance to look at it. But my question, and maybe you discussed this in your meeting with them, is their principal concern seems to be that they think the pickleball clots are too close. Now, aside from one house, which is 240 or so feet, the second closest house is over 300 feet away. And I'm struggling with that being too close. So their too close argument seems to be based on one source, which is just some blogger who wrote an article saying pickleball decreases property values. And he just, as far as I can tell, made up numbers about how close was too close. So maybe you have more insight into that. Maybe real quick, Ray, before you answer, Dave and Amy, do you have anything prepared that you want to go through first, and then maybe we can hit questions afterwards? Or are we ready to talk? Yeah, I think Amy and I are here really just kind of to answer questions and help you guide the conversation in any way. We don't have anything prepared. Just in terms of Matt, your questions just now, I do know that members of the community, the butters and neighbors to Kiwanis are here in the audience. But it is more than, I think we should acknowledge, it is more than just bloggers. There are a number of pickleball, there are a number of communities in Massachusetts who are grappling with this very same issue, who have built pickleball courts and discovered that the noise caused by the paddle sitting the ball can be quite disrupting to residents. Yeah, absolutely. I can understand if it's over the fence or across the street, that makes sense. But who is, how are we determining too close? Because if 300 feet is too close, I think you're going to find trouble anywhere in town. Yeah, so in short, before we open it up, so we've really looked carefully and we're feeling some time pressure as Ray indicated. And there's no easy answers to this. I mean, we've looked at distance to butters. We've looked at some of the financial limitations. Each alternative if we started out looking at all of our recreation areas and we landed on Kiwanis as a possibility. So we're still open. We want to hear your guidance and feedback tonight and why don't I leave it at that and Amy and I can answer questions. Go ahead, Amy. Yeah, all I was going to add was partly why we really wanted to have this conversation is because what we're grappling with is what's the trade-off for distance from a butter versus cost versus some of these other potentially putting it at a site that maybe fits those two criteria but then maybe you're taking a space away from another sport because maybe you're putting it over tennis courts or over a softball field. And so that's a lot of what we're hoping you guys can provide us feedback for is just how do you weigh some of these different options that we're going to have to make? Well, I think you have to. Something's going to be compromised in the situation because there's not one that's going to be the lowest cost option that's hundreds and hundreds of feet away from a property and that isn't going to take space away from another sport. So we need help kind of prioritizing those competing needs. Makes sense. Ray, hey, I've got, if you can let me pull up my screen. Just for reference, I have a map which has a 300 to 500,000 foot ring on it. To pull that up, and I also point out that Jonas has his hand up. Yeah, I'm going to get to him next. I just wanted to make sure that we saw a share screen. It seems like Jonas takes it away. Seems like the main potential issue is noise. It is a public park, so I feel like there's not a lot of expectations that it won't be used as a public park. So it seems like the question is, what will the noise be? So couldn't we do just a low tech basically free test to get some paddles, get some pickle balls, go over there, get some, I don't know, some kind of surface, knock them around, go 300 feet away? Can you hear it? If you can't, it's low tech. We don't have the money for anything more scientific, but I think it'd be a shame to derail all the planning you've done, based on something that might not even be an issue. So that, thank you for that. I will also speak to the out argument against this and say that what you're describing there is basically a sound study. One of the things that the community has been interested in pushing forward in that process is to have a sound study done to figure out just what the effect is, as opposed to us assuming that, A, it's not going to be that bad. It's not going to be so. So they're talking about a sound study. They recommended a sound study for just what that impact would be, a elementary one that you describe there or to make sure that we do it right. And so I will speak. I'll say that's that. That's that. I think you're saying the same thing that we can go out there and test it and see what the effect would be of having this court there and looking at some of the existing information and a plan off of that. We are looking at that as being part of this process. Also, it could be it could be a cost in the process. It could be something that we're looking at as being as being just something that's important information for us in citing it here or citing it wherever. Go ahead. I'm sorry, Andrew. No, I mean, it's a great suggestion, Jonathan, happy to hear that that's part of the formal consideration. Just for folks, we can see that this is I only look through that article briefly. This is I'm citing the court right about here. This first ring is 330 feet, which was a number that was referenced in the one of the documents that was shared. This is 500 feet and this is a thousand feet. Just again, for perspective. All right. So I guess, Matt, go ahead. Yeah, I don't want to make it sound like I don't think 300 feet is too close. I just say I want to have an actual basis for that number, whether it's something like Jonas's test, whether it's something like going to another neighborhood, whether it's referencing what's actually happening in other towns in Massachusetts. But I'm going to want to have some kind of like now that this concern is raised, some more information about like what actually constitutes too close. Because I'm surprised that 300 feet would be too close, but I don't know anything about pickleball. Also, I noticed that Ryan Harve had his hand up in the attendees. I don't know if he wanted to comment. Yeah, I'm going to just go across the panel real quick here, and then we're going to open up to some some public comment. Jean, it's your hand up. Yeah, I mean, we really haven't had time to read all the documents. I don't know if there's more than just the sound issue that they're concerned with. And I did notice those who many who signed live on Temeric Drive, which you said is probably about a thousand feet away. So I mean, that seems like I don't I mean, I'm here at Mount Holyoke right now, like our tennis courts are probably about that far away. I mean, I don't know. I again, I think we need more scientific exact measurements and testing to see what other issues there are and how really this would be effective. Again, there might be more issues in the documents. I hadn't had a chance to really look at them as a matter of just just the sound. Yes, as a matter of information, I can tell you that the three other three other referred points were parking in the area, increased parking. That it was property value, the effect on property value in the area. And it was effect on on other programming in the at Kiwanis Park. Those were the three that they cited. Would this if this went in with this impact program, other programming? Is this this space isn't utilized for anything right now? I can tell you that that that is one of the reasons why it was selected is because it has zero impact on on the other uses of Kiwanis Park. Other than pickleball, it does not affect its space that was not previously used for recreation purposes. It's converting over basically a small hill and and and unprogrammed space. Got it. I guess maybe just a real quick overview then. So I so in terms of from Amy and Dave, things that you you looked at when you got to this spot in the first place were things like the programming. But you also looked at, I know, like access for ADA as well. Are there other things just that we should be aware of that helped you land on this particular site or rule out other ones? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a good idea to maybe stay focused on this one for the time being, because when we when we look at other recreation areas, you throw in a whole host of other factors that we consider. But yeah, these are the main ones that it was unprogrammed space. There was an existing parking area there that, you know, for much of the year, this is an underutilized recreation area and to financial considerations were smack dab, you know, in the top three. This is one of this is probably the least expensive place that we can build build new pickleball courts, not refurbish old courts or anything like that. But we've looked at the finances and this is a flat dry piece of land that is relatively inexpensive from our standpoint. We still need probably two hundred and twenty thousand dollars to do it for three courts. But that's relatively inexpensive compared to the other sides. Amy wants to add anything. No, I think you you hit them all. Very good. All right, Jonas, let's hit you and then we'll let's go to public comment. Yeah, just wondering to quantify parking. We're talking three pickleball courts, probably four players most at a time on this court. So maybe 12, 12 players, five people waiting, maybe 17, 20 people, maybe at any given time, I guess, worst case, 20 cars, best case, 10 cars. So just wondering about quantifying that. And obviously, it's very anecdotal and rough, but any feedback? David, I guess, Dave, Rami or anybody else relative to parking demands? On most days, there's, you know, between the parking lot behind the pump station and the parking lot over near the small diamond over on the other side. There's plenty of parking for that for the pickleball use. Again, this is this is not Mill River. This is not Grove Park. This is a park that on many, many days of the year is a quiet place to throw a ball to your dog or, you know, or throw a ball. We don't heavily program it currently. But I will acknowledge that traffic, you know, increased traffic in general was a concern. And I think Ray mentioned parking slash traffic noise, property values, et cetera. So and of course, the battle noise. Thank you, Sanjay. Yeah, thanks, Andy. I just wanted to try to get clear. I'm looking forward to hearing comment from the public. And thanks to everyone who's attending, including Amy and Dave. I was hoping that we could clarify what we're trying to accomplish this evening under this agenda item. I think as as many, but not all people understand, this is an advisory commission to the Department of Recreation. And so unlike committees like Planning or CPA, we don't have any decision making authority as far as I'm aware. We during the CPA process reviewed the recreation proposals and provided comment via Matt to the CPA Commission. And so I wonder if we could try to clarify our objective tonight as a commission. And I think maybe the way I would phrase it is we could decide to reaffirm our recommendation. We could decide to suggest or recommend further action such as a sound study. We could conceivably decide to reverse our recommendation or we could do nothing. And so I don't necessarily mean to step completely in front of public commenters and have a long discussion about this. But I think it would be helpful for us as a commission to be focused on some decision making, right, within the context of our rights and responsibilities as a part of town government to maybe prevent us from simply having very open-ended discussion and conversation about the myriad issues that are being covered by different departments of the town. Yeah, that's I think very well said, Sanjay. The way I was envisioning this was the outcome would be providing Matt guidance through the CPA lens as a voice of the rec commission. I think your four your four suggestions make sense, right? Continue further action, reverse or do nothing. I would hope that the panel could come up with a recommendation for Matt to carry forward to CPAC. But that would be the extent you are correct that we're an advisory body. Ray, did you have any other expectations? I would I would say that because you're that on that same note, because you do have the ability to give your your consent to give your to give your approval to Matt as a representative on that commission on that committee, I would say that it's important for you to also this if the the public comments come in for you to hear that as you have already you've heard our our push this whole time. You've heard why we wanted Kiwanis as you give Matt that feedback as Matt carries forward to CPA. I think it's important that you that you sort of hear some of the information that that is that that's there also. Very good. Dave, Dave, anything to add? Yeah, I would just add that I think from a staff standpoint, you know, working with Ray and Amy and our town engineer and wetlands administrator and other staff, I think I recognize you know, you are advisory, but I think you're you're also advisory to the town manager and his staff. So we would like your feedback CPA. To some degree, doesn't really have the power to say, you know, their job is not to say, don't do this at Kiwanis. It's really to fund pickleball and Amherst or not. So I just want to make sure it's a broader your guidance comes to Matt as he takes that to CPA, but it's also to staff. We also have to recognize that the just to put it in perspective, the planning board will eventually hear this wherever pickleball goes or wherever we propose will will hear this through a site plan review process. So hearing from you and giving your recommendation to staff. That will also go to the planning board, which does actually have authority on the site. They have a lot more regulatory power, if you will, to kind of guide where this goes. So I just wanted to put that in broader perspective that staff is looking for your advice and that will flow to, yes, CPAC, but also to the planning board and also the design the design review board and the disability access advisory commission. Thanks. OK, thanks, Dave. Matt, is it quicker? Can we get to public comments? Yeah, just to expand on what Dave said, the CPAC decision is whether or not to fund pickleball in general. And Dave's concern is that if pickleball is to be built, but not at Kawanas, the fund, the amount might be different. But but yeah, so that's why this is coming up now. That's that's it. OK, thank you all. All right, great. Let's just start. Invite anybody from the public would like to make a comment can do so. The comment relative to pickleball can do that now. Can you can you get me off with a share screen? See, sharing your screen or can I do that from here? Where's my attendees? I do have two hands raised. Ryan Harb was the first one. I will allow Ryan to speak. Hi, Ryan, welcome. Hey, everybody. Hey, thanks for having me. What would there be? Hey, Ray, Dave, good to see you again. Would there be any way for me to to share anything on this call tonight? Like as far as a share screen goes would because I was hearing some comments and, you know, I know you're looking for more of a basis, like more scientific, you know, type stuff than just like the one email that was sent. And so my my concern is tonight just, you know, this is before me going into my comment, but concern would be making a recommendation tonight without having having all that like at your fingertips. And I think I could help with that because it's been a lot of research and a lot of work that, you know, has been done. And it's really if I was in like your guys shoes, it's seeing this like community response right now saying, hey, we don't want to go ball courts at Coana's Park. And then you're probably like trying to figure out is this real or not? Is there real issues? And there's not a lot of time to kind of make that decision on your end. And so it's I can just tell that this sort of process right now, we're in sort of a time squish. And so my my hope would be I because I have this like very well organized, I could probably answer a lot of questions if I had the ability to just do a really quick share screen and show you just a couple of documents that I have. Would it be possible because that is so would it be possible to email that to Ray and he can pull it up on the screen? And you can pull it up on the screen. Then yeah, possibly some of them are, I think it would be hard logistically, I think. Or you could just promote him to power right now because then I would have to stop and I will say that again, sorry. Yeah, I mean, I'm fine with that. I don't know whether the town, like whether there's any protocol letting anybody to share stuff. But I guess Dave or Ray, any concerns with some from the public hearing between? No. All right. Let's let's let's do this. And then keep keep your documents focused to the task at hand. Thank you, Ryan. OK, thanks, guys. I appreciate it. I'm going to promote Ryan to panelists. Is that that that would be the way to do it? Right. I believe so. OK. Are you zoom competent, Ryan, to share screen, I presume. Andy, sorry, this is Sanjay. I wonder if you could just offer a little clarity on the timing here. We are asking Ryan to still remain within the three minutes that's allocated to public comment. And the reason I ask is because we need to make sure that we treat all members of the public equally and fairly. And it it sounds like what Ryan is about to do may take substantially longer than three minutes, which is going to open the door for other members of the public to expect the same opportunity. Yeah. Can we can we keep this as brief as you can, Ryan? Try to keep it to that three minutes. Yeah. Yeah, I guess definitely. Could you guys give me like at at three minutes to say, hey, we're at three minutes now. I'm not going to pull the plug, but you understand what we're saying here is we want to make sure everyone has fair opportunity. Definitely. I and I respect that completely. And then just the one thing I guess going back to my original comment is we're trying like making a recommendation tonight with just like a few short minutes is that that's a challenge that we're all in. So I'm just kind of, you know, putting that out there to the group. So let me I'll do a share screen now just to get into it, then call me out when I'm at at three minutes. So here we go. OK, can you guys see my screen or everybody see my screen? We can, Ryan. And great. OK. So Dave Finray and Carolyn Naylor. We we we did this presentation together. So I brought this when we had our two hour meeting together before Thanksgiving. So I just wanted to walk through this very quickly. The first the first slide being just pickleball has been the fastest growing sport in the U.S. And our group is not anti pickleball at all. We're totally like what I want tonight to be about is not having us prevent anything from going forward and saying we don't want pickleball being approved as part of the CPA funds. We're actually completely in support of that. It's just how much is it going to cost to do it? Where is the best location to do it? So that's what we're trying to get to. There's been a rapid growth period of pickleball where twenty five hundred forts have been built over the past like three years across the country. A lot of them were built in residential neighborhoods. And then what what has happened is we're in this sort of unintended consequences phase where all of a sudden there's communities all across the country like popping up and saying courts were built here and now we're hearing the noise and now it's really disrupting our lives. So it's just coming out now. It's the ones that were built like two years ago and people have really started complaining about it. So this is what's happened is there's been closures of pickleball courts across Massachusetts and so one question was what what is that distance? How far away is like two hundred and twenty feet five hundred feet three hundred feet? What what is that distance? And so that I'm going to get to that. There's best practices now that are emerging from across the country. So this is just a few pickleball courts in Massachusetts that were closed. There was a court injunction. There's been lawsuits not saying this is scary. Anybody is just this is facts. This is what's been happening. So there was one ordinance that came out in Centennial Colorado. This is probably the most famous one or the one that people are looking to right now. They declared a moratorium on building pickleball courts within five hundred feet from residential. I'm going quick. So I will send this presentation if you all haven't seen it. I think this was not part of my original email, but I just wanted to kind of walk through this. So the best practice is emerging right now. Five hundred feet is sort of a minimum by six hundred feet from residential to edge of pickleball court is a best practice. And by doing this, you would not need a noise impact assessment or a sound study if you're six hundred feet or greater. Now, the challenge is finding a place a park six hundred feet or more from residential. So we'll get to that. How to measure it is not from the middle of the pickleball courts, but from the edge. This is the best practice edge of pickleball court because that's where the noise is, you know, it can be from the edge of the court to the edge of residential. And then it's just what, you know, what do you need? How much do you need to spend on it? So there's a couple of things I know I'm getting close to three minutes. You can get sound curtains, which is this top picture or sound panels. If you're closer to residential, you need more sound debatement. If you're farther away, you can do this. It's kind of like cheap cheaper stuff. It's called acoustic fence, but either way, you need tall fencing in order to mitigate sound. So right now I think one of the costs was fencing in the proposal. It was four feet fencing, but that's not going to be enough for doing any sort of sound debatement. Yeah, these are just different things. I was getting quotes. Dave Ray, I just wanted to kind of work alongside you, like what I'm hoping from this process is all the research, all the care that we have about, you know, pickleball courts affecting the neighborhood. We wanted to get real quotes and kind of work with you guys. So for getting like a wrap around the court or 10 feet high, we're looking at about 50,000 for that sound curtain. That's for the sort of cheaper one and then the sound panels are a lot more expensive. So here's a couple, just different locations. Kiwanis, that was the first one. When we did the measurement, it's really close, guys. It's not 220 feet. That would be from edge to the house, but you have to think of it as to the property line because people are outside on decks, they're outside in their gardens. So we're actually a lot closer than the 220 feet. It's 85 feet to the closest one here. If the courts were a little this way, it might have been 120 feet, but we're really close on this one. The next one was Mill River, that you guys, yeah, totally. So just looking at different locations and costs and everything. Mill River, we talked about putting it here in our last meeting. This is about 400 feet from closest. So it's a little bit better from a location. There's a lot more parking. There's other things here. And the other one we just looked at, which, sorry, Roth Park. And that one, we were talking about a location that's potentially 500 feet. And this would be probably the best location that we found, I think, so far in Amherst. One other one would be Plumb Brook. So I just wanted to throw that out there as different locations might have actually different sound abatement and then different costs. And so I wanted to open it up to just, this is how you measure them. This is sort of the best practices, 500 feet. The very best would be 600 feet. And we have sites that are better than others. And so the very last thing I'm going to show, and I want to show you guys, I can stop there. I know I'm at time, so anyway. Yeah, if you don't mind. I mean, I think we get the point. You've done some research on other sites. You consider I know off to the town has as well. Let's, I believe I have this, the email was given to me, the slide that they shared. And so I can share that with the commission. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Ron. Yeah, and just maybe if I can say one thing to wrap it up before the last comment, I won't share my screen anymore, but I know we have to make a decision on sort of a recommendation and, you know, just my hope would be to just be really careful with this decision. It's just something that's been so highly sensitive and so polarizing in communities that it's caused so much conflict. And there's all these people out there that have real complaints and real negative health effects. And it's caused so much community divide. And I know it almost seems crazy. It's almost like I feel like the crazy one where I'm talking to you all and saying, no pickleball courts and people are like, what's the big deal about pickleball courts? But until you like dive into it and you start listening to people who've been impacted, it's like a really, really big issue that's been happening all across the state and all across the country. And so what people have done before is just not think it's an issue and make kind of a quick decision. And so my ending point is just being really careful with that and just take in all the information, all the research to make. Thank you, Ryan. Slow and thoughtful on this. So thank you guys. All right, Ray, can we move on to maybe next? Next up, one second. Next we have Pat and Anabaco. So Pat, welcome. Yes, good evening. Pat and Anabaco from Tamarack Drive. I'm one of the Arbutus and board member for Mr. Meadow, I'm the vice president. First of all, I wanna thank the town for reconsidering its position and for working with some members of my neighborhood. I know that some representatives met with town officials. I don't have much to say, but to urge this committee, this commission to look for alternative sites for the pickleball. It doesn't matter if some houses in my neighborhood is very far away. The reason why I moved to this neighborhood more than 30 years ago is a diversity and we are like big family. If something affects one family, it affects all of us. So it's not about folks who live in Tamarack Drive or folks who live on Stanley Street, the proximity, it's not about that. And finally what I wanna say, let's do this peacefully and avoid lawsuit. So governance is not an option. Please, let's do this. In a more peaceful manner. Thank you. Oh, one more thing I want to add. I think that the town corrected itself, but as an aborder, I never, my family never received any notification from the town. It does not matter the distance where my house is located. All houses in my neighborhood should have received notification from our town. And as I speak tonight, I did not receive anything up till today. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Pat. I get just real quick on that last point. The notification would occur when this goes to the planning board. Is that right? The procedure, is there any reason why that we would be sending out notice to butters at this point? All right, some did. I think through our front houses did. I'm sorry, Pat, could we let Dave answer? Oh, sorry. Yeah, so all throughout the process, there are requirements for a better notification. So the formal one that has occurred already was when the conservation commission reviewed the pickleball site proposal. And that was that legally, that requirement is everyone, every residence within 300 feet of the property line of Kiwana Spark, the town's park. So everyone within 300 feet should have received that. The conservation commission reviewed it. And then the next would be the planning board. Again, depending on how these discussions go and the CPAC goes, I believe the planning board is slated to hear about this proposal later this month. That might be postponed to another date in January if we're not, we've got a lot to discuss here. So I don't recall that setback, excuse me, that it might be 300 feet again, it might be further. But anyway, that meeting may be postponed based on all these conversations. So we'll- Okay, thanks Dave for clarifying that. All right, Rake, we move to our next. Thank you Pat. Yes, next is Richard Bogarts. Yes, I raised my hand to speak because I was wondering whether I could donate my three minutes to Ryan, but that's pass A. I also did not receive any notification and I'm the second house in on Willow. I only recently heard about this issue. I haven't been paying attention to pickleball very much. I'm concerned about the noise. I will await your actions. I thought the many suggestions that Ryan made were quite right on and I'll leave it at that. Very good. Thank you, Richard. Thank you. I have one more hand right now. It's Mr. Carlos Torriaco. Welcome Carlos. Hello everybody. This conversation has really have been great to me. Hi Ray, hi David. Good to see both of you. The topic is a topic that involves the whole community. I've been a dweller on Willow Lane for the last 20 plus years of my life with my family and listening to everybody, there are a couple of things that I wanna share. The first one is if we're gonna make a decision, let's be informed. Let's find out what is out there. Let's do a little bit of homework because if we don't do the homework, some decision might probably look to some of us quite unfair and I like what I saw tonight. Some people are changing their mind in terms of what they said and what they heard and adjusting, shifting a little bit the thinking. I'm concerned that we make a decision without having information about the issue. Some of us are gonna be a little bit unhappy. I have something that I created for this conversation called the golden rule of neighborhood. Don't do to my neighborhood what you don't want me to do to yours. Let's talk. If this is the time that we love, let's come together and find a solution where the pick of all will be placed and everybody will be okay with it. Simple. It's very simple and I ask you please make an informed decision. Learn a little bit more about this and we can learn together and together we can make the best decision for the town and for the whole community. I don't wanna get to the position where I had to disagree with my neighbors because I don't like that. There's no need for that. I'm for the town, for the town of spirit, for the town community and let's work together. Let's educate ourselves and make the most, the wisest decision in terms of where the location that everybody's okay with it. I will speak up for my community. I will speak up for my neighbors and I will speak up for you too if I had to. I will, I promise. Thank you Carlos. I have a, I have a second hand raised, I believe by Richard Bogarts. Is that just a legacy hand there? It may be a legacy hand. Richard, if you are, if you're still looking to try and if you're just trying to speak again, leave your hand up, otherwise take your hand down please. Does the commission mind my bringing Richard Bogarts back? Let's just lower all the hands and then if he wants to opt in, again he can, but we've got comment from folks here, let's sort of hear on this stuff now. Any, I guess as we consider some of the feedback that we've heard there and we think about- I'm sorry, I need Richard's hand was up. Richard, are you trying to speak? Yeah, yes, can you hear me? I can hear you. I just want to make a comment about procedure and that is the committee's members are all faces that are speaking to us and they're very human in that way and the people who are speaking from the community are faceless and that renders them a little bit less human and I would think it would be more appropriate to have a procedure in which when you asked someone to speak, you showed them. That's all. Thank you. Yeah, no, let's just want to open the floor up now to committee members as you've heard that. With the charge we discussed going into this, into the public comment of providing some guidance to Matt, providing some guidance to Dave, Amy and Ray. Is there any new information that we heard there that we'd like to talk about as a committee? Matt? Yeah, so Ryan Harb has obviously been doing a lot of research and what he shared today was something I hadn't seen before and I appreciate all that research and I think what he's saying and we need to read it and review it to verify the veracity of it, but what he is saying does make sense if communities around the country are establishing a five to 600 foot line, then we have to be cognizant of that if that is what is actually happening. And so, I mean, that makes sense and I look forward to reading what Ryan said myself and I expect that Ray and Dave are thinking similarly. All right, I will just say real quick from the radii search I had done there, even moving it over, 500 feet gets you about 10 houses. I think one thing that it's important for us to keep in mind based on what Dave and Amy shared earlier is that from a cost-effective perspective, while you might be able to put something out in the middle of Graff Park, which is further than 500 feet away, the cost to build that, I imagine would be substantially more to the point where it really comes down to do you want pickleball or not, right? Okay, Jonas. Well, I guess I would echo what Matt said about some revelations about the noise and community's reactions. And I guess we've established there's really no other place within Kiwanis that this could go, right? Without encroaching on other recreation. The softball diamonds are both kind of used and we don't want to get to the point where we're making a trade off there, I assume. Amy, Dave, can you confirm that, yeah, Amy? Well, I mean, all I was gonna say is certainly that's a conversation that I'd appreciate your guys' feedback on. Are we okay with, say, compromising the softball fields there or compromising tennis at Mill River to put them there? I think that those are all conversations that we'd like your guys' input on. Can we be reminded why that site within Kiwanis is ideal cost-wise? Is there like substrate or like, is there already concrete pavement there and it's flat or like one of those? Flat and dry. Flat and dry. It's flat and dry. It's also right next to parking. So anytime you put it not next to parking, then you need an access path to get all of the construction equipment there. And then you also need an ADA accessible path to get there, which may or may not be the same thing to get there. You also need parking. So if you were to go, say, to the cow pasture, there's not existing parking there. So we'd have to either have parking or we'd have to have a sidewalk or a crosswalk to connect it to other area parking. So those are some of the costs that come in at some of the other locations. Right, and I think I've tried to do a soccer, summer soccer at Kiwanis Park. It was not a non-starter. No goals, the fields weren't good. So I'm wondering, is it maybe ultimate is still using it sporadically? So that's why we couldn't just put it in the middle of that far, you know, far away on one of the corners. There's kind of opposing softball that is used. I don't know how much the baseball in the opposing corner is used. And then often in kind of nuzzled between the two infields is where we put ultimate and soccer. It's the layout for that. And the other thing, I guess, just kind of to keep in mind that the challenge of all of this is also, you know, with Fort River being constructed, they're gonna start tearing that up, you know, this spring. And so we're gonna have several recreation areas taken offline. And so some of these sites like Kiwanis that, you know, like the soccer that might not be used that much, but this year, you know, over the next couple of years might get higher usage. So it's a challenge, I guess. You stole my thunder, Amy. That's right where I was going. You stole my thunder. All right, Jeremy. Thank you, Amy. Thank you, Jonas. Jeremy, take it away. Yeah. Amy did steal a little bit of my thunder, but that was, which I appreciate actually, because that was what I was thinking about is that I know there's gonna be upcoming construction that's gonna mitigate field usage, which is I'm sure was considered by Dave and Amy going in, which is part of why Kiwanis lost the site chosen. I think it comes back to something I've heard for me anyways. It comes back to something I heard from Sanjay. It is a complex question. I'm not trying to minimize it, but it would be in addition to the town it'd be an additional amenity and service town doesn't currently have. And I understand I want to be sensitive to everyone's feelings who lives in town. I live in town myself. I don't have lived here for 30 years. I've only been here for less than a decade myself, but I will say that I feel like it's another one of these scenarios where it's an amenity that the town should have. I will say I felt like refusing myself somewhat. I play pickleball. It happens in Greenfield on Sundays. A great buddy of mine were top of the gym. I played it before. It's a great sport. Rarely is it played when the sun goes down. Rarely is it played at six or five in the morning. And also as a previous outdoor basketball player in my life I can say basketball is way more intrusive than pickleball ever is in terms of noise and noise disturbance. So also I have read a lot of what Ryan submitted prior to Ryan submitting it because as a pickleball player and fan you read about these sorts of things because it's in the community. A lot of these I would just suggest that everybody read through some of the information and understand the communities that are indicating injunctions and indicating not that our community is not in some of those folds but I'm an advocate for it. I'll continue to be an advocate for it. So Amy and Dave and Matt if you're asking my opinion I advocate for the existing plan. The existing plan seems pretty terrific. It's pretty outstanding. I think it'd be an amenity. I understand people's concerns but pickleball as a person who's played it I don't know. I live next door to people who are renters who party the kid students. It is that is way more intrusive than any pickleball I've ever seen. So I don't know. I know it's recorded but that's my two cents. Thank you, Jeremy. Gene. Yes. I mean that very appreciative of everyone's comments many presentation there. I would like to know more but it seems like I don't know if the attendees realize that the committee or other people have looked into other spaces. Not like we just went into Kiwanis and said, okay, this is where we're gonna do it. Mill Valley was looked at. That was the original site but for whatever the reasons that were not conducive to setting up the courts there we moved on to other sites. So I just wanted to make sure that the attendees knew that we just didn't go to Kiwanis and said this is where we're gonna put it. The research has been done to find out what would be one of the best sites cost wise for all the reasons that we've already talked about and that's why Kiwanis was chosen. So I feel like if it's not gonna happen at Kiwanis it's almost it's not gonna happen. And I think pickleball needs to happen in Amherst. Very good. Thanks, Gene. I guess Chris or Sanjay I don't wanna put you on the spot but just since we kind of I think heard from most folks anything you'd like to add I do not have anything further. I think I'd have to put some thought into it. I kind of get where everybody's coming from. I kind of agree that the other sites have been deemed like it's probably the best site. I mean, in my eyes I was driving by the high school basketball court the other day. I put it there but I don't know where the pool project stands. No, it's more central to the center town. You're gonna rip those basketball courts up anyways. And then the other thing is I mean sometimes I think I just I gotta go out there and see where they're thinking visually at Kiwanis or maybe I'll go out there and next there too and see it. All right, I had I guess just a thought on the sort of the noise attenuation. Is that something Dave and Amy that we were sorry if you had already said this and I forgot but is that something that was a town planning on doing any sort of noise attenuation study or that that was just a suggestion by neighbors? I think it's a suggestion, a strong recommendation. I would say it's a strong recommendation from Ryan and other members of the association and the butters. So that's definitely something we're considering. And based on the feedback we've gotten from you tonight and from the neighbors butters I think we will certainly consider whether is there some opportunity at Kiwanis to move this way on the southern end of Kiwanis and do a sound study at the same time that adds cost as Amy said, you need a access road slash walkway to get there. If you're 400 or more feet away we've spoken to Ryan and other members of the group. And I think the advice is sound. We, sorry, I didn't mean to put that button there but yes, there would need to be a sound study. I think that advice is solid. I will say we've looked very hard at Grove Park and although we can achieve some separation there the cost to put pickleball courts on the northern end above northern end of Grove Park above the new spray park and playground would be, I think, astronomical. And I seriously doubt whether CPAC or the town would fund those courts. Although we could achieve 500 plus feet it would be hundreds of thousands of dollars. Many hundreds of thousands of dollars to get an ADA walkway and an access road there. So I'm sensitive to the time at seven o'clock and we don't wanna take up more of your time this evening. I think we've gotten some feedback. I think we need to come together as a group again, that's one staff and then also have a conversation again with Ryan and other members of the association and see what we can do here. And frankly, I know CPAC meets on Thursday night. They begin their public hearing. I'm hoping they will be generous enough with staff and allow us a little more time before taking a vote on pickleball because they have weekly meetings throughout December. So I'm hoping they will give us a little more time to gather information and work this challenge because we all want pickleball to happen in Amherst. It's a conundrum. And if it were easy, somebody would have said, hey, this is the easy answer and we got a lot of smart people working on this and nobody has really come up with the, the answer, let's go back. Yeah, understood. I appreciate you both joining. I guess Matt can ask you real quick from a time in perspective, we usually meet monthly and I was thinking so the next time would be sort of early January. When again, we'll see back have its final recommendations. I would expect that the CPA committee will vote on the proposals before the next recreation meeting. Okay, all right, very good. Jonas and Sanjay. But also, just as I said before, the vote for CPA is funding, not location. Understood, yeah. Jonas. Yeah, I'll go quickly. If there were, for instance, some extra costs maybe around sound abatement or maybe moving it slightly within Kiwanis would there be any possibility of pickable advocates helping basically fundraising to, in a similar way that there's a fundraising effort to have the high school playing field be turf, not grass. And could that be defrayed? Kind of a partnership. That's an interesting thought. I don't know that that community is organized well enough to be able to do any kind of significant fundraising but it would certainly help tremendously. I've apparently known from the communities on the call tonight, the word they invited, presumably. I'm just expecting to see, we were expecting to hear, I guess I was expecting to hear a pro from all people coming out. There is, at the CPA have received dozens and dozens of letters pro pickable. Just didn't hear them tonight. Yeah, okay, thanks. Yeah, just not at this meeting tonight but at the CPA meetings, yes. Very good, all right. Sanjay. All right, yeah. Thanks just briefly to reiterate something I said several months ago when this first came up that my opinion is strong that the development of pickleball should not remove other recreational opportunities. And I think the siting at Comanas was done with that in mind. It certainly might be possible at other places but most specifically the notion of returning to the idea of replacing the tennis courts at Mill River with pickleball to me is exactly the wrong thing for the town to be doing and for recreation to be doing. We should be looking at adding opportunities not sacrificing one opportunity for the benefit of another. And if one were to do that, one might then face a situation where another group of people organizes in objection to a given plan. Maybe just very briefly, I think there was some discussion of different siting within Kiwanis. My concern with that is given some of the things that Ryan has said and some of the things I've read that the objections from this particular group of citizens do not end at sound and continue to cover the sort of, I will say, classical objections of traffic and parking and was clear from the public comment that this group of citizens either individually or collectively is prepared to take serious action against the town, whether that's for real or not. It's hard to predict and hard to see into the future, but I wonder how much effort it's worth thinking about alternate sites at Kiwanis, given that the sound objection is not the whole of the objections that we're hearing from this group of citizens. Thank you, Sanjay. All right, Dave and Amy, I know you're looking to move on out of here. We've got, hopefully you've got some good feedback so far from us as kind of individuals, but also just some common themes are also to wanting to understand a little bit more about the kind of the science behind the noise attenuation. I think what I've heard pretty resoundingly is that people are comfortable that the vetting process for the site was pretty robust if folks have disagreement, just raise your hand. But we all certainly here are interested in having pickleball be part of the town's portfolio of opportunities for us as well. So encourage you to continue to do what you can to push forward and make it happen. Very good. All right, thank you both for joining. I know we still have a couple items on here. Ray, we had mentioned, so for the OSRP update, Rob, I see you in the attendee list. I think that with that not being quite as time sensitive, we'd like to just push that back to January so we can focus on the other items that are on here. So sorry for having to wait so long, but try to keep this thing, keep our timeline a little bit more compressed here. So with that note, the next item on the list would be a winter programming review from Ray. I was just talking to Ray because I got my mailer, I can't remember when this exactly showed up, but as this showed up, a friend of mine had talked to me about the downhill skiing option for my kids, which I'm super excited about and didn't know about right away. So I thought this would be a great thing for Ray to do as these things come out, or just as they're getting ready to introduce new programming just to kind of walk us through it. So as champions for what your group does, Ray, would love to hear from you first hand kind of where your head is. So if you guys have this, you can follow along. Otherwise, Ray, you wanna just hit the high notes of some of the new offerings that we're gonna be bringing out. I will go very quickly. I know we went over a little bit here. The ski program, it's something that we've been looking at since I came in a couple of years ago. It's been in our offerings before and we lost it at some point around COVID and around staff reshuffling. We did make a commitment to bring that back this year. It's a combination of young recreational club folks. We have some parents that are going out with them. We're up at Wichuset Mountain and it is, right now it's filled. We're trying to be creative about trying to find ways to get a considerable weight list for us, but we're hoping to grow that ski program, that downhill ski program for us in the future in a way that I think maybe we even surprise ourselves a little bit at just how quickly and how popular that offering was when it came out. Can I ask real quick on that? So right now people would register for the seat. When you said there's a weight list, people register for the season or is it a week by week? There are six sessions which includes if there are people who want to do an introductory lesson, there are lessons involved in that also. So there's an option of renting equipment. There's an option of getting ski lessons. There is renting equipment, ski lessons and I think there's one other potential added cost in there, but for people who want to go and ski, it is basically we are taking care of the bus. So it wound up being a really good price for people who are interested. Wichuset was able to give us a group discount and ready to go. Okay, I may not have been clear though. Is it you would register for all six sessions or is it you? Yes, it is. You are registered for a package. You're there for six sessions. The club goes out six times. All right, and you've already filled it up, which is... It's from January until February break. Great, exciting stuff, cool. Yeah, glad to hear that back on. It is exciting. Jean? Yeah, just a quick question. Considering the weather these past years, what happens if you can't go or any of the sessions are canceled? Do they start to kind of refund? Is that clear to the participants? I believe that the mountains have a way of making magic. If there is, if we know the winners have been hard and the skiing hasn't been as predictable, but we are, we will definitely work with groups if there's just no skiing available, if it ends up being 50 degrees and sunny the whole winter time, we will definitely be working with people. All right. Any other items on here to share with us? I just, under new, I also see dance fitness fusion under adult activity events as a new one. That's a, I can definitely, that's actually a neat segue in because the person who is responsible for putting that together is also the person who's responsible for Winterfest. And so I can merge those and bring her to the, bring her to the panel. That would be great. Thank you, Ray. Bring in our outreach director, Becky Demling and presenting her. She is, of course, one of the main things that she's doing here for us is in coordinating. We just moved from Mary Maple and we're getting into Winterfest now. She also has brought in part of her, part of what she's been concentrating on and outreach is and is in growing many of our community-ed programs. And so I'll let Becky speak to dance first. You're on mute, Becky. I'm mute, Becky. Thanks. So, yes. One thing that I want to share with you is that we have a lot of people who are working with us. So, yes, one thing I did work on this fall was trying to get new programming in. To add to our repertoire, I will say honestly, there's not a lot of space available for programming, given the adjusted times at the middle school and high school and the frequency of reservations at the bank center. It is a little bit of a challenge, particularly with the uncertainty going forward with the library and where that's going to be. But we were able to bring in, we have two dance fusion classes. One is a conscious movement. It's reformer Pilates type classes. They're taught by someone who's also an instructor at a Pilates studio in the area who's doing it at a much reduced rate, you know, for Amherst recreation. We have one is a more serious work out, one is more of a, you know, conscious mind body breathing connection. We also worked with the Hitchcock center to bring in some family science programming. And we, one of the connections I was able to make is offering a baby and toddler sign language program, as well as an adult basic sign program. So those were the classes we were able to bring in. We're looking at other things to bring in for the spring, but this is where we were able to start and find space to run programming for the fall and for the winter, sorry. I had a quick question for space. Do we do anything in the South Amherst public library? We are running the sign language courses to be at the South Amherst library. The South Amherst library main hall is actually really hard to get into. Oh, really? Okay. It's gorgeous. It is, it's fantastic. We're using the downstairs room at the Monson for some of our courses. Okay. Very good. Do you want to jump into Winifest then? Yes, I do. I'm going to jump in. Yeah. I'm going to jump in there. So, um, Winterfest is, we've gotten some donations in. Um, I don't know how much I mentioned. Last time I spoke with you all, but, um, this year. We're, um, planning Winterfest to not have snow. Um, just as a safer bet, we can add activities if there is snow, but, um, we're going on the more cautious side and planning that we won't have snow, but we'll have, you know, cold weather. So our kickoff games are going to be at the Mill River recreation area. We're going to use the basketball courts for, um, street hockey games. We're going to have, um, foam snowball fights on the tennis courts. Um, we'll have distance tosses with foam, but, um, we'll have a couple of other penguin races, things like that. So it'll be non snow based family fun. It'll be free and open to all in the community. Um, Summerlin floors. Flooring is, um, our Winterfest. Opening game sponsor. So we're really grateful to them. Um, because, um, we charge a tabling fee. We don't take any of the profits from the vendors. Um, thus far, we have 38 vendors who requested to, um, table at the event. I do have to get over to the bank center and measure the room to see how many I can accommodate. Um, and that will kind of determine how many I can accommodate. Um, and that will kind of determine how many tables we can have. Um, Honestly, my goal is to keep it a little smaller. Then. I might otherwise want. I'm leaning towards the 20 to 25. Table enough that there's variety, but not so much. Never run a large craft fair before. Um, So I want to make sure it's done well. As opposed to done well. As opposed to done big. Um, the cultural council, several members of the cultural council have offered to help. They were actually instrumental in helping me find some vendors. They sent out a call. Um, to some of their grant recipients. Um, so I was able to use them. So they've been a great partner. In this. Um, Um, Amherst college has stepped up the Benin ski museum of. Natural history and the meat art museum. We're going to run special winter fest programming. Um, we have a. The Amherst history. Museum. Um, In historical society. Sorry. Um, are running a history of ice making in Amherst. Um, Um, We have a lot of discussion and we have a couple other things we're exploring before we end the, um, Oh, another big one. Working with Amherst college. We're going to do a national women and girls in sports. Um, Day as part of winter fest. At Amherst college in their gym. And we'll end the, the week with a luminaria and fire and ice making. Um, Um, It should be fun. We're going again, instead of two weeks, we're making sure we do one week really well. Before we look to expand. Very good. I think I may have asked you this before, but in terms of the, um, Listings of the events, um, how is, how are the activities going to be, uh, publicized. Um, so right now, um, Um, I'm not sure if you guys can see the, um, Um, I don't know how much reconfigured up and like updated and all that before it's, it's already live, but doing background things too. So when I update it with sponsors and all that. Um, That can go live. We'll also put it on our Amherst rec website, as well as the town of Amherst, um, community calendar. We gave out at Mary Maple, we gave out 100 craft bags where kids could make their own Mary Maple. And inside of that, I had a little save the date flyer with some of the bigger winter fast activities on it. We'll also be working with the chamber and the bid who are community partners in winter fast to have them help push out the information. Okay, anything in the bulletin. Yeah, we'll do a press release through the town of your most. Okay. Um, Sanjay. Yep. Thanks, Andy. Back. He sounds great. Well done. Tremendous energy. You're bringing to the project. It's really exciting. And I appreciate the plan for snow and be ready to capitalize if it comes approach. Excellent. Um, one question. I know the mill river basketball courts were recently completely refurbished at not insignificant expense. And Ray, are we, are you confident that roller hockey is okay for that surface? It's it's sneaker. Oh, it's foot hockey. It's okay. Thank you. Question answered. I was like, wait, do we have roller hockey coming out? You said, you said street hockey. It's that my mind turns street hockey into roller hockey. Okay. Apologies. Thank you, Sanjay. Any other feedback for Becky Jean. That feedback, I mean, that sounds wonderful. Is there any food involved? Any kind of food vendors or like at the craft fair or. And people in selling food or. So I've been in discussions with the mill district. They're definitely going to do s'mores. At mill river. I'm trying to figure out how much, I don't know if you know, like how much work it is to get a food truck in the permitting. So honestly, with the mill district right there, I'm. I'm honestly trying to avoid it and work out ways. I was talking to the middle district about discounts to eat at. The river locations. So that's what we're trying to, that's the route I'm taking for food to kick off. And at the craft fair. Yes, I've selected a couple vendors that sell like fudge and gourmet popcorns and like snacky or kind of things, but it is going to be at the bank center. So it would also be hopeful that people would go to one of our downtown businesses. Nice. Okay, thanks. Jonas. Not so much a question, but it's amazing amount of programming and I'm wondering. Seems like you're going to be rivaling first night in North Hampton at this rate. You might be. Yeah, it sounds good. And then just the ice making one of my favorite corporate slogans I saw was in the back of an ice truck. And it said so and so ice for the last 100 years secret family recipe. I love that. All right. Great. Well, yeah, Becky. Awesome job. Let us know. I think last time we talked about, you know, if you needed to bet some ideas, reach out to us. We had, I think, Jean, myself, Jeremy and Jonas all volunteered. So if you need any more feedback. Can I hold it? But otherwise. Pardon. Oh, I was going to ask Ray. Ray, could you send them that spreadsheet? I sent you. Yes, I will. Okay. Thank you. Very good. Yeah. Otherwise, we're going to stay out of your way because sounds like that's one good thing. Oh, I mean, I, and I also want to say I told Ray this, but we presented to the town manager, the sensory proposal. The day after the recreation meeting and I want to say like the commission's feedback was actually really helpful in me. I was testing how I was presenting to the town manager so that it was like, clear to him what the goals of the program were and not so like, that was really helpful feedback. Paul was very supportive of the program. He gave us some outreach to do to get feedback. I'm from the proposal. So Ray, Denise, I can be and I met with our administration, particularly the special ed administrators. They were incredibly supportive and really loved the idea of the program. So we're going to be presenting to CPAC, which is the special ed parents advisory committee, not the conservation group. We're going to be presenting to them the earliest we could get on their agendas for January 5th. So that's, that's moving along, even though it does. It's not public fully yet. It is moving along. And we're dotting our eyes crossing our teas with hopefully a roll out in January. So that's the program and one other thing that's not on the agenda, but I'll bring it up anyway is a survey from Amherst Rack about community wants and needs for us looking at program and outreach and what barriers people have in accessing our programming. So we can do a little community evaluation is going to be going out within the next couple weeks. It's very good to know. All right. Okay. Awesome. Well, thank you, Becky and appreciate you hanging on so late with us here tonight. Thank you so much. Have a great night. You too. Bye. All right. Matt, I know we, you know, pickleball isn't the only thing I'd see back any, any other updates for some of the other projects you've heard. So you've heard from all of the. All of the groups I think at this point anything to share with us. Coming out of those conversations. Not really. I think that. So we reviewed the recreation proposals before Thanksgiving. I think there isn't a whole lot of discussion during the presentation phase, the discussion that there was, you know, there was public comment from the misty meadows neighborhood association. And pretty, pretty similar to what you heard tonight. Maybe they've gotten done more research and now they have more information so we're moving forward there. A lot of the other projects. The commentary was not dissimilar to what we had in the recreation commission. So we this coming Thursday is the public comment session and then we begin our deliberations. So deliberations will probably last for a few weeks in December. And usually the town helps us with a suggestion of how to. Get a how to prioritize different things and how to. What we shouldn't include and what we shouldn't include, but we're going to move through that in the next few weeks. Very good. Any, any questions for Matt? All right, well have fun with the deliberations. I, I know they can take time. All right. So the last item I have on here, just as your Jean and Ray and I had been talking over the, you know, these months or whatever that we've, we've kind of shifted some of the. How we're organizing our meetings around is wanted to have an opportunity to hear more from each of us. You know, specifically, right? Like, you are all volunteering. To help champion for, you know, the needs of the town from a wreck perspective is, are there some areas. That you would like to see more attention paid. Some questions around maybe potential future programming, but just really an opportunity to for Ray to hear from us, the things that us as volunteers on this organization. That we're passionate about in the, in the community. And so really kind of open floor here for anybody to raise their hand. We're not, we're not asking Ray to do anything at this point. We're just trying to give Ray some, some, some more food for thought. As he, you know, contemplates what's next. All right. So yeah, if you just want to raise your hand, Chris, I see your hand first. So a lot of the things, I mean, thank you for having me on the board, obviously. But the thing that it seems to be talking to people around town and with coaches and with some of the younger parents and, you know, the kids with younger kids is it seems to be the lack of. And I could be updating myself. I mean, I remember when we had a ton more things when I was a kid here, but that was also 40 years ago times of significantly changed. Like sort of athletic feeder systems. You know, for, and I think every to try to tackle every sport at once is just tough. I'm just a pick lacrosse because there's a guy, you know, sitting right in front of us. But, you know, feeder systems for girls lacrosse at really like ground level. I mean, it's, and I don't even know if it starts at the, you know, the after school programs with some of the athletes from that program. I don't know how it starts. It just, I think we're hearing some of the girls basketball numbers for, you know, who tried out this year. And then talking to other parents, it's just phenomenal how some sports are just like going the, not the wrong direction and it's not just here. I'm not saying it's I'm not picking on Amherst or anything like that. Right. It's just, you know, just I'm not saying lack of programs but just maybe a different outlook at programs to how to how to introduce these kids to different athletics to keep it to keep it going. And obviously, Ray obviously knows my CIT program thoroughly in favor of but also, you know, like my daughter this summer that this winter does not do a program. Ray, she needed to volunteer somewhere where where can, you know, right now I got her five days a week at home. I'm ready to pound my head into the floor. You know, I mean when she's on the lacrosse when she's on the volleyball court. I know where, you know, that that leads that leads to good things. This is this is a tough time I got to wait until you know I get it my email from the showings and McDougal was letting me know lacrosse is coming, you know, that that's some of my concerns with rack because I and I also think that if you get those little feeder programs, it leads into, you know, other other programs, you know, people people. There's there's a lot of recreational athletes out there that seem to get forgotten in the system right now. All right. Thank you, Chris. Not a few news, actually, but but the development the girls across feeder systems actually developed through Ray, since Ray coaches in spring. Yeah. Is is the voice of youth girls lacrosse in town. Hopefully you keep doing it for us right. Well, I'm just, I'm just trying to make sure I can keep Chris from banging his head too much. I got to make sure. Well, it's just, I don't know. And I mean, I think some of it's some of it's the parents to they just, and it's not the cost. I mean, for some of the parents. Yes, it is the cost but your programs are very reasonably priced. I don't know if they're too reasonably priced. I don't know because honestly, I just look at this, this area I don't go to like Northampton because I might drive my kid over to Northampton. It's just, I guess I'm still shocked. I mean, against some of the parents just, they just, I don't know if they don't want to have the kids do anything or the kids don't want to do anything. I didn't even ask my daughter what she wants. Last year I told her and her friend she was playing JV and varsity lacrosse. And honestly, it was one of the best experience she had. She loved it. It's just sometimes that, I mean, there is a bad push to a kid. I mean, I don't think she's going to make North Carolina lacrosse but just being part of that team aspect. And Ray, you and I have talked before like, if you have that program, it should be mandatory that a couple of girls or boys from JV and varsity lacrosse, if it fits into their schedule, go down and help your programs. I would send my kid, I'd drop her off, pick her up, whatever. That connection they have with the younger kids is crucial for those younger kids to stay in the sport and just kind of feel that camaraderie thing. It's huge. All right. Thank you Chris. Yeah, I also got a few more hands up here and don't want to totally overwhelm you Ray, but let's let's keep going around the horn here. Please overwhelm me. I'm coming from a soccer family so soccer is always big on my radar. And I remember there used to be a soccer fest that I think it was, I think it was UMass athletics that actually put it together. I remember coming here to Amherst when I came for my interview and there was this huge banner that said, you know, soccer fest. I was like, oh my gosh, this is the right town. We've reached it. So that used to take place in the summer. My son later when he was in, I think he, I mean he could have been in middle school. I think he was in high school. He actually volunteered at this soccer fest. He was one of sports clips or somebody was the sponsor. But anyway, having something like that, like a tournament where we had, I mean, we can get soccer clubs or, you know, teams from around the area to come and have a big tournament. And, you know, in the summer, I think would be fantastic. Of course, we'd have to find a place to play that, but they did do it at UMass. So, you know, also making those connections with UMass, with their, like you were just saying, because, you know, having that connection with the players who are more advanced, you know, getting them excited about, you know, where that sport can take you when you're older. I think that we would be fantastic if we could, you know, get the high school kids involved, get the middle school kids involved, girls and boys, you know, have them volunteer. They would do, like, little clinics. But if we had, like, a tournament and the clinics, you know, something like that obviously starts small to bring in, you know, just that soccer experience, you know, at different levels. I agree. And it's good for the community. Yeah, exactly. 100%. Awesome. All right. Thank you, Jean. Jonas. Yeah, fellow soccer obsessive. Jean. And I used to live in Boston and like, I came out here. I couldn't stop just looking like, Oh, that would be a great place for soccer field. Oh, that like people's farms didn't matter like that should be a grass field. And then actually the, the all sport in Northampton was another, I looked at that when I was deciding to come out here. There's a soccer there. So I feel like actually, and then I've been looking, even like a place like Bramble Hill has this huge barn that doesn't get used. I'm like, ah, indoor soccer. And I mean, it seems a little, a little impractical, but I'm, I do wonder if there are unused places in the town that you could do indoor soccer, but then also, I feel like maybe we just need to know. I don't think we need to push. We shouldn't be pushing towards one sport. It should be lots, obviously lots of options. So like, do we know, are there, are there more opportunities for winter versus summer versus fall. Do we can kind of assess those things and like, that might be maybe worth. Because again, it's, yeah, it shouldn't be. You know, every, everyone, if they give an opportunity, they're going to gravitate towards different, different areas. So, there you go. Thank you, Jonas. Sanjay. There we go. I should have to I'll try to be quick. But first, this is a question for Ray and may require a little bit of work. Ray, if a group of citizens donated the materials and labor to assemble an ice skating rink at Kendrick Park, would Amherst rec maintain said rank. I can't do that now. But the playground at Kendrick Park has been a huge success in the warmer months, despite some nay saying on the part of even members of the town council. And it'd be great to see Kendrick Park used for outdoor winter recreation. I'm basically 100% confident that I could, over the course of like a day and a half, get together the fundraising and labor and materials to put together something. But it does take work, right, occasional reflooding shoveling, although if you left some shovels out. You know, people might do their, you know, anyway, there would be details to figure out, but I think for a new England town to not have any outdoor public skating is a shame I am aware that rec did try a rank at community field. A couple of years ago, I think maybe pre COVID or such it was not successful. It's not a good location. Kendrick Park is the spot, as I think has been demonstrated by the success of the playground in the summer months. It was one, and it's December 4. It's not too late. We could do it. And then the second I think goes back to Chris comments at the beginning and some of the others right. I'm not a member of the Amherst soccer Commission, I want to go on the record. One of the things I've observed is that it's extremely difficult for parents, especially parents who did not grow up in town to figure out what's available. And I actually had some informal conversations with with Amherst hockey. I'm president of Amherst baseball and at least a couple of other organizations soccer included about some sort of centralized web resource. So Amherst youth sports dot org. Right. And the sort of model I was beginning to pitch was well each organization throws 50 bucks a year in. You know, a website costs 200 or 300 a year to maintain with domain registry and hosting. But there could even then be some centralized marketing and advertising around such a site. So there are multiple paths to that one would be to just do it privately, right. But another might be to have rec do it. Now, there are subtleties to it right does rec want to be in the business of advertising non rec programs. It's something this commission could talk about right. So I don't want to. I don't want to dismiss that as an issue right something to talk about and consider. But right now, like, how the heck are you supposed to find what's available in the different seasons. I mean, it's just almost impossible right it's just word of mouth or if you happen to grow up in the area you know it's out there. So those are my two. I don't necessarily have wish list items I would just say at what point as we think about spring season. I know you're just going to start with basketball but as we're trying to build the pipeline and get people interested at what point. Do you have office resource that's able to start thinking and marketing and planning for spring sports. You know, to keep momentum going and get people excited in advance. Again, not when you need to answer at this point, but I do feel like there may be opportunity. Whether it's like through a website, which which sounds like a really great idea, but just keeping like the drum beat going for sports, even outside of their seasons to get people prepped for it or just kind of winding down and thinking about the next season. All right. Very good. So yeah, I've, I've jotted some notes down to Ray and again, this is it's food for thought but and obviously any of you guys you're like just reach out to Ray anyway independently if you have some follow up on this stuff but hopefully some things there Ray that can that can get sort of assimilated into your planning process for 2024. Hopefully there's some some like just do it type things we can actually put out there but not trying to make your life harder here trying to try to make it easy for your customer. Right Ray remember if you need help feel free I mean just you have all my information. I just won't give you my social security number. Absolutely I really I mean I appreciate thank you Andy for putting this as a as an agenda item because it. I mean it is helpful to see that that's those are if this is an advisory board and this gives us a chance to turn you all into advisors. But I hear you all these are all very reasonable. Your requests of looking at what we do it's not like any of your, any of your comments here are are inventing something that we don't like that that's just another world we're not we're not reinventing the wheels certainly and we're not. We're not trying to imagine life on Mars. These are things that we already have lined up as as ways to enhance the programming that we have and can make happen realistically. Matt to your hand up. Yeah, I sort of building on what Jean was talking about and to some extent Chris. So soccer fest was put on by UMass, and I forget if it was the school of sports management that organize that. And I've seen other sort of interactions between. UMass teams and and youth teams. Sometimes often they seem to go sort of because somebody knows the coach of the UMass team or whatever it's very ad hoc. So on Amherst College coach of some team brings like my daughter did a session with the UMass field hockey team, but all those things are very ad hoc so I don't know if it makes sense but if you have some kind of more direct relationship with UMass. And potentially Amherst College as well for kind of mediating and making these things happen because a lot of times it is actually in both of your interests. A lot of the UMass teams actually want to volunteer time with youth teams. And there's a school of sports management also those people want to be to some extent involved in volunteering with youth sports. So, yeah, and I mean, I don't know if that makes sense, but that's something I think for you to think about. Do we have the pipeline into either of those colleges, right? We do. We have we've we've been building on relationships with both UMass and Amherst athletics. Certainly, you know, in my work with Andy and girls across we we had a tremendous resource with a nationally nationally renowned lacrosse program and we were able to get a connection with their program and with with their their players and as a resource they came in. And it's inspirational to get young athletes looking at college athletes in the area and you're right UMass does value that also because they're trying to make connections with the community around them as an Amherst College alum who still knows all of the Amherst College that sort of is close to the Amherst College administration and and I'm close to the Amherst College basketball program and that sort of thing. Amherst College is also a resource that's been good for us. We're we're working through other town and gown relationships we are building with Amherst College. We're building with UMass. We've had as a resource for our we mentioned about our morning or our MMP program the morning the morning mentoring program with the middle school. UMass has been an incredible resource for us athletes and other the athletic department has was our first major partner from UMass over there and they're there three or four days a week. Working with hockey stars working with their cheerleading team working with working with their their women's lacrosse team their their people who are putting in time to try and spend with our with with with the kids that we serve. And so that is an important part of of I like to think that it's it's part of my my focus when I sold myself as the right guy for this position that connecting those pieces of generate I hear so many of your comments are about generational connections are about about young athletes and older athletes. You know competing like athletes on television competing for national championships and on a scholarship and are in our town professionals even I mean we talk about trying to build some generation of non celebrity folks in the community that are that are running and training for like their ways that we want to try and connect. Generations of people who are at different stages of doing this and. It is challenges to Chris's point I think it is a different challenge today given all of the different influences that kids see. But but we still there is never a good role modeling and good good modeling never really goes out of style and having people and people willing to spend time and having people willing to. Think about what that next generation of Amherst of Amherst participants looks like it never really goes out of style so I hear a lot of generational interest in the comments that you all are sharing here. All right, we're a couple of my hands up just we're 748 now so just. As we get more chance to. I was wondering with UMass being a public institution are there any guidelines on. What of their facilities are public I mean I. I've taken my son to their their fields and I'm always looking over my shoulder. I've never had I've never been, you know, kicked off. I know Amherst and Amherst colleges. There's a couple of fields that local kids go to and sometimes, you know, I feel like that's with being a private colleges, a little less, a little more tenuous for them to be there but just wondering if there's any. Kind of. De facto arrangement or understanding. UMass does have proprietary control over their fields and that sort of thing. It's not. It is a public institution, but they, but they can't your question is largely legal. So I want to stop and leave it there because I don't, I don't want to, I don't want to. I don't want to claim. I can go on this field. There have, I mean that has been an issue in the past where town. It can be maybe to a lesser extent. Town entities like recreation, but more so private private groups are looking for space to go and play and so they say we'll just go until they kick us off and that's not the relationship we as a town want to have with them. With their, with their spaces. Jean. Yeah, just real quick. I mean, you were talking Ray about, you know, like with the lacrosse, you know, finding, you know, these nationally great players to connect with, like Amherst College, the men, they just were runners up for, you know, for soccer for third division in the country. So like, and hockey, you know, at UMass, like, you know, how many a couple of years ago, they were, you know, one national that's like, we have, we have it right here. We have that high standard that high class players and teams and yeah, it'd be great to, you know, just make those connections. Let's see, we're near the end here. Any old business or new business. Ray, anything from your side. I would just say that, and, you know, as the, as the last just comment on the pickleball situation. I would just say that please be prepared just to plant a seed here be prepared in case we need to do a special session at the end of December. I would certainly follow Matt's interest on that a little bit also as we're looking for, you know, I apologize to the, you know, I probably could have gotten you the misty meadows information a lot earlier. Then you received it, but be prepared in case there is a follow up conversation needs to be had. I'm, I feel like our conversations are moving in a pretty good direction. Thursday's meeting is not about the site, but just be prepared in case we need to come back together for a quick sort of thumbs up thumbs down reach out to me if you have any questions. Okay, good to know. Um, I guess the only item that I was curious to know is if we have a status on the turf at the high school. If, if are you aware of another. I am not a, I'm not an authority on that and the, and that status, there may be people who have a little bit more insight in that, but I don't have any official status on that. I actually have a question about that also. I hope I'm not jumping Jean, but the, the, as far as I understand it, the CPA grant that went to the high school was contingent on there being a turf field. And that needs to be made. People need to be aware of that because if they're trying to save money by not by putting grass instead of turf, but they lose the 700,000, they don't actually save money. Yeah, it's a bit of a sin. So that's just my understanding. But if that's if my understanding is correct, then people need to be aware of that. Yeah, no, I think, I think you are correct, Matt. You know, the original, it was, it was recommended. I don't want to say poison pill, but it was. That was that language was inserted to, to really make sure that the money wasn't co-opted to do a different plan. Yeah, now, maybe the town council can revisit that, but I'm on the settings. Yeah, the turf option is cheaper. With that provision. Yeah, well, cost equivalent, maybe. Yeah. Jean. Just real quick, I just was wondering if we've raised any updates on going to a hybrid meeting or we'll be able to meet in person at all. Any updates on that? Dave Zomek, I will, Dave Zomek is my, will be my, my angle in there. I will get back to you on that this week. Thanks. Colleges. Okay, no, thanks for following up. I guess, yeah, if we do have to reconvene, let's, let's make sure that we get some conversation or update on turf. Right. If you could just sort of put that. That's on your list. All right. And then I just report that chairs. Oh yeah. In what ways is the turf project part of the brief of this commission. That's not entirely clear to me. And I just would want to avoid us getting waiting into a topic that is really controversial right now. You know, without saying which side any individual on this commission might be favoring, but it's not clear to me that that's really part of our brief. Yeah, so my perspective is I would like to get an update, right? Because it is something that I've been people have asked me about. Assuming that on the recognition, we would have some sort of information around it, not just, I'm not up to speed at all. But I'm not, I agree. I'm not looking for this committee to interject itself into that process. Okay. But to me that, and I'm not, not trying to be critical of you Andy right I like information to but to me that sounds more like Andy McDougal as an individual wanting to know what's going on. Then, because I just don't know that this commission has a role in that project. I mean, that's, that's a fair point. Jonas. If that turf field was, would this turf field be open for non school recreation. If it wasn't, I think we do have a, a stake in it because availability, then is an issue. And I will put a personal. out and that would be that turf is going to be more available than grass because we had so many rain out where, you know, the fields are unplayable because of grass. Well, even aside from that turf fields at four times, you can play four times as many hours on the turf field than the grass field. So I, I would, I would say I think you guys are linking up on the same in the same way to try and respond to Sanjay's important question. I had the same question. I wasn't, I'm just taking my, my marching orders. I'm going to go and get some information. I like information also. I think that information is useful for us, despite the fact that it is not I'll be clear is not out. I'm not involved as a decision maker in that process. I'm supporting the process. I would like to give them input. I'd like to, because we will be beneficiaries of, of that, of the, of that project. We will be using that space. And so to Jonas's point, if the project, if they say, well, we're going to have it next year. That's not a quote. Please don't. If the track is going to be in next year, then we can start talking about what our role is and using that space and our access, but that's, that's what that information would mean to me. We can start to think about what, how that affects us when it is our time to be involved in that conversation. Right. Excellent. Jean, any just kind of report of chairs? Anything you want to. No, I was just wondering about meetings. Okay. Well, I know the last two meetings have been longer than once we've done the past. So appreciate everybody's patience. We'll hopefully be able to streamline things a little bit more as we get a rhythm going, but. We're under 2 hours. So, like, that's, that's the start better than last time. Right now, I, we've got January 11th as the next tentative one, just the holidays. Ray, keep us posted if you, if you need to hear back from us so we can kind of pull the room here and see if that's doable with. With various activities happening the other month. January 11th is a Thursday. Right. It didn't, I didn't mean it to be. Yeah. I may have the wrong date, then I'm sorry. That's why. Yeah. So it'd be the 8th. The 8th is Monday. Yeah. Thanks for catching that. Okay. Keep us posted please Ray. And otherwise everybody's thanks again for the time and feedback. And. If we don't meet before enjoy the rest of 2023. Happy holidays. Yes. Thank you. Thanks.