 In this chat, to ask a question from the Zoom application, click the Q&A button to type in your question. Your questions will only be visible to the host. Additionally, if you'd like to speak and ask your question, you can use the Zoom raise hand button or press star nine from your telephone. We just ask that you introduce yourself before asking your question. So I wanna welcome Amherst Public Health Director, Julie Federmann and Town Manager, Paul Bachmann. Nice to see you both. Hi, Brianna. Hi. So before we launch into Q&A, do you have any updates that you'd like to share? So I'll start. So there's a lot of activity in town right now in terms of getting ready for the reopening of our businesses. The Planning Department and Building Department have come up with a plan to expedite permitting for restaurants and other retail businesses. We're looking at utilizing public spaces, including roads and public ways to allow restaurants to have outdoor seating during the summer months primarily. And we're waiting for the state to provide some allowance for having alcohol consumed outside as well. So these are all things that are happening in the next couple of weeks. The council will probably be looking at voting on them in the second week of June. And so that's a very quick turnaround for adopting a zoning bylaw and that will really support local restaurants who are trying to open and keep their businesses going. Yes, so a couple of things to update on. I know that folks are really wondering about swimming pools and camps. We don't know yet when those will open. We're depending on the governor to give us that guidance. That would be part of phase two. So when the governor rolled out his plan for four phases, he talked about there being probably a three-week span of time between phase one and phase two. And that would bring us to June 8th. But rolled into that is the fact that the state is monitoring the public health data. So we won't know until fairly close to June 8th if that will truly be the start of phase two. Phase two is when swimming pools and camps could open. Again, the state is coming out with very strict protocols and guidelines for what that would look like. And the entities that run pools and camps don't have those guidelines yet. So it doesn't mean that those things would then open right away at that time. It means there would then be the guidance ready for folks to move forward and to look at opening those types of facilities. And I know people are anxious about that as the weather gets warmer. So I think that's all I have to ask. Great, thank you both. So we do have some questions already coming in and I wanna take a quick chance to remind those who've just joined us to use the Q&A function to pop a question in or use the raised hand button in Zoom and we'll pull you into the room for you to ask your question live. If you're joining us from a phone, to raise your hand, you press star nine. So the first question here is, are we seeing an increase in the spread of COVID within Amherst? Thank you for that question. What happens is that people who are experiencing symptoms can go and get a test for COVID-19. And those tests, if they come back positive, get reported through individual health departments. So the Amherst Health Department would get a report on a positive case. We are seeing that our cases aren't rising exponentially. It seems as though we're getting less cases. I think it's complex to measure the rate of illness because we still don't know how many people have access to testing, how many people are going, seeking out their healthcare providers. So what we definitely feel that we've seen across Massachusetts, and that's true out here in Western Mass, is that we flattened that curve. So we are seeing less people in the hospital in general. We're seeing less people in the ICU and we're seeing less people come back with positive tests. So that's all good news. It's a pretty recent trend. And so we're continuing to monitor all that, but it's always really important to note that the number of cases in a given town is mostly a snapshot into who has been able to get tested and the fact is that we still don't have the robust testing that we need all around the country. And the fact that many people we know now can have no symptoms and still be positive for the disease and still have the capability of transmitting it. And that's the facet that we really don't have a way to capture. Thank you, Julie. I do see a hand in the room. So I'm gonna bring Kay Rosenthal in if you could just unmute and introduce yourself. Thank you, Brianna. It's Ken Rosenthal. And I wanna talk to Julie for just a second. First, Julie, thank you so much for your service. I see that you're gonna be phasing out and retiring eventually. And that's a wonderful estate retirement. So good luck to you. Thank you, Ken. It's been good to be working with you. I see that the state reports that we have something like 89 cases in Amherst and that they also give a number per 100,000 and their number is something like 219, the equivalent of 219 per 100,000. That means I think that they're giving us a population of 40-some thousand people. And that, of course, includes residents who are student residents who haven't been around for the last few months. So I'm wondering whether that statistic tells you something about us other than what the state is telling about us and what your conclusion is if you adjusted for the smaller population that we have? That's a really good point, Ken. Yes, so those are infectious rates that are calculated by the population of a town. And that's exactly right, that we know that a big population of our town is our students, which is normally in that number and that a huge proportion of those students are no longer in town. So it does change that rate there. Another thing that actually changes that rate is that a large number of those cases are at the Center for Extended Care. So while those rates for disease can be helpful, it's kind of like all statistics, you sometimes have to drill down a little bit. And so you're exactly right that in this university town where a big part of our census population includes the students, that that number is off. Well, the Center for Extended Care is now listed at around, at more than 30 if I read the report again today. So that's 30 out of the 90 or so, so it's a third. And that's quite a lot and it's unfortunate, but so it is. Yes, and it's actually more than that because again, these numbers, so it doesn't include unfortunately that the deaths that have occurred. So if we look at our total rate of cases in Amherst, we've had over, and so that total number that that's that number that's being looked at, it's a cumulative number. More than 50 of those have been at the Center for Extended Care. Yeah, yeah. And this does give me the opportunity to say that we've worked with the Center for Extended Care from the very beginning of the pandemic and they have done an excellent job there with preparing for the moment when they would have their first case. They did early testing, have incredible infection control and this disease once it gets into, you know, large congregate living facilities like this with folks at an advanced age that it's just such an insidious disease, very hard to control. Thank you. I just wanted to add a comment looking ahead to opening up. I was able to get a haircut today for the first time in three months and it was very, very well done with cleanliness, with a throwaway robe and everybody, there was just a barber and two barbers in me wearing masks and gloves, very efficiently done. But it points up the challenge that any, every business in town is going to have as it opens up, trying to spread out the activity to make it a little safer and that's going to have an economic impact that is going to be really challenging. So I think we all have to be understanding about that. And again, if we can get the message to our town residents to patronize the businesses in town when they do open up because that's the only way we're going to be able to keep this town going the way we'd like it to be going. And with that, I thank you very much for the chance to participate. Thanks for being here, Ken, yeah. Okay, well, one of Ken's comments leads to one of the questions that we have here is what is the town doing to help our local businesses survive the pandemic? Yeah, so we have weekly, I was just on a call this morning with our business improvement district director and the director of the Chamber of Commerce and the council president and Dave Zomek, our assistant town manager. And we meet weekly to talk about all the things that are in play. And we talked somewhat about the zoning being relieved so restaurants can open up more quickly and with less red tape so they can get going. But again, there will be inspections to make sure everybody's doing things the right way. We're talking about the liquor licenses that we talked about. And there is a proposal, the business improvement district has collected over a quarter of a million dollars to, and they've given away $150,000 to sustain local businesses during this time. There also is a grant application that the community development block grant committee is reviewing of I think $200,000 for micro business support. So we're trying to put money into it. We're trying to create the physical structure so businesses can reopen and survive. So much of it though depends on whether the university and the colleges are gonna open. We know the Hampshire college has announced that they're going to open. We have not heard from Amherst College yet nor from the university. So we have again, not been enforcing parking downtown and it's helping businesses in that way. That's been a significant drop in revenue from the town, but that's an important thing for our businesses that they've identified. So we're just thinking of new things, all as many things as we can as we move forward and open to other ideas on how to help our local businesses survive. It's gonna be tough for them though. I think this is a, it's not a short term thing. And I think there's a lot of evidence about consumer confidence, people willing to go to restaurants once they are open, will people go to them? And that's a big question I think. Great, thank you, Paul. So we have someone else asking is, is town hall open to the public? If it's not, when will it be open and what will that look like? So I'm in town hall today and there are people in town hall every day, the town manager's office is always staffed. We, all of our services are available to the public virtually either online. There are offices that are serving people drive up service in essence where someone needs a birth certificate. Immediately our town clerk will go out and meet them in the parking lot and proper distancing and you'll hand it off to them. But town hall is not open to the public and we're looking at ways to do that. That's in the second phase of how we're looking at it. Right now we have a team of employees who are looking at how we can bring more employees back into the building safely and make sure that all the proper social distancing is in place and people feel comfortable working in the building. And there is a limit on how many people are permitted to be in the building by state law, by state, by the state rules. I think we're at 25% occupancy. So we're not gonna be able to have everybody here all the time. Once we get that situated, we can start to think about how we would start to open the building for more complicated discussions that people might wanna have with staff. But honestly, we haven't had many people complain about the building not being open because I think we've done a really good job of serving people through the online portals and we're getting better at that. We're getting better permitting software in place. So there's been a lot of work behind the scenes. But so I would not expect that anytime, probably in the July range when we start looking at that. Great, thank you. So we had a district meeting last night and a couple of questions came up. So I'm gonna ask those now and I do see the community member who asked them originally in the room. So feel free to raise your hand if I'm not asking the right questions. But there was some clarification on etiquette for the use of the trails right now, mask etiquette, passing etiquette. So if either of you could speak to that and then just the general idea of whether or not signage will be posted around town and at trails with these types of recommendations. Julie, you want to take it? Sure. And you chime in with what I leave out pop. So I think, yeah, we are hearing from people who are concerned mostly about the bike trail. It seems like on other trails, people really have gotten the message, use six foot distance, step aside, wear a mask if someone's close to you. The bike trail is a state park basically run by DCR. So we don't have control over the rail trail, but I think some important things to remember about that are if someone is bicycling past you really quickly in any setting, you're really not outside, not inside, you're really not going to be getting much virus that you can breathe in because they're just passing you really fast and it's being mixed with all that outdoor air. So that's one of the reasons why people being outdoors is considered so safe. The reason we talk about the six foot distancing and the masks is when you're kind of in more proximity to people, so you're walking along a sidewalk or you're walking with someone, but if someone is zooming past you on the rail trail on a bike, your opportunity to be exposed to virus is very, very small. If people are walking on the bike path and they're going to be coming within six feet of each other, then yeah, they should be wearing a mask. And I think it's important to realize that lots of people are out and about now. Weekends have always been very busy on the trail, so evaluating when the best times are to go for a walk and all of that is also part of it, but it's really up to individuals to realize that the minute you go out the door, even if it's for a bike ride, have a mask with you. Suppose your bike breaks down and you're repairing it or whatever, you know, you always wanna have a mask with you for those times when you really can't safely social distance. And there are signs, leisure services did put signs at critical points at certain trail heads and at our playgrounds and parks, but if people are noticing that there's, oh, there could be a sign here or there or this is an entry point that you didn't notice, we're welcome to hearing about where we can put additional signs. So that's always, we're looking for advice on that and suggestions. And if you have any of those suggestions, you can email us at our info at AmherstMA.gov with the best location information that you can provide to us would be great. So let's see, we have someone asking about schools. Are local schools, are they gonna be open in the fall and what's the thought on whether colleges will be open? You spoke a little bit about that, but. Yeah, so I'll start with colleges because we don't know anything about that there. I think their decision points are gonna be in June sometime. Well, they're already in June, but initially it was May, now they're talking about the end of June before either one of them makes a decision and who knows if they truly will make decisions at that point. And if they do come back at least from the Amherst College point of view, it'll look differently. They will try to contain all their students on campus and not have them leave campus and things like that. So they're looking at all the different models on how to do this and keep everybody safe once they're on campus. They feel a high level of responsibility for that. For our elementary schools, I think there's a pretty strong economic imperative to open our public schools just for the economy. But also for obviously the education of the children, the superintendent and his team have been working endlessly on coming up with plans that meet the requirements of social distancing, follow the guidance from the Centers for Disease Control. And it's really a big challenge. And what school looks like in the fall will be a lot different than what school looks like this year. I do want to call out that they had the graduation for the high school seniors yesterday and it was a terrific event. A lot of people, they did it over about a nine hour period where everybody had a couple of minutes to walk up and there was a schedule and you were there and your family could be there watching and then you guys left and the next group came in. The parents and the schools put individual photos of all the graduates on the town common and in our local towns where it's a regional school district. But I think that to go back to whether schools will be open, yesterday will be open, what they're gonna look like. I don't know, I think the superintendent is going to propose some ideas in the next week or two on what it will look like. And I think that will get a lot of attention when he does. Great, thank you. I just want to remind everybody we've got about 10 minutes left. So if you want to raise hands or post a question in Q&A, now would be a good time. So the next question we have here is, is the town council meeting in person yet? And how do I participate? So the town council, no committees are meeting in person. And in fact, I think that that won't happen for quite some time. And the main reason for that, and Julie can will test to this and gave me support for this, I think. When you talk about where viral spread is most likely to happen, it's where you are in close proximity to another person in a enclosed space for an extended period of time. And that pretty much defines what a public meeting is. The other side of that is that Zoom meetings have worked out really well. We've really got it nailed down on how they work. And people are able to participate and more people are in many ways are able to participate because they don't have to traipse into town hall or to the bank center, wherever the public meeting is to participate. And the other advantage is that because we're using Zoom is we're recording all the meetings. And so all those meetings are able to be watched online. So town council is not meeting. I don't anticipate they'll be meeting. They are meeting, but not in person. They're meeting a lot. And they have a very aggressive schedule over the next three months as we go through our budget process. They have to meet very frequently. But I think you won't see the committee's meeting in person. I say at least to Labor Day, I'm thinking it's beyond that, though. And I'll just say, in terms of how people can participate, all of our meetings are on the public meetings calendar on our website. And every meeting posting that goes up is required to have the link to the to the meeting so that you can join via Zoom. So any meeting that is posted should have that link in there for you to join the meeting. OK, just a general question here is, do you think we are ready to reopen in Amherst? Is that the whole town or the town hall? Or I think that we are just like everyone else in the country, kind of watching the public health statistics. We're working with following closely Mass Department of Public Health and the governor's guidelines. And certainly, I think one of the things is that people are really, really trying very hard. You know, people are using social distancing. They're washing their hands or hand sanitizing. They're using masks. I think just by virtue of Ken Rosenthal's description, of his haircut, I think that as a society we've learned an awful lot about the fact that we're going to have to make changes and we're going to have to make them for a while. So I think we're ready for this next phase that's happening right now where things are opening up. I think we are excited about getting back to our offices. I know I'll be back in my office on Monday for the first time in months. And yeah, I think we're ready. I think we're at this point in the pandemic where there's certainly so much more to learn about this virus, but there's a certain amount that we now kind of understand that, and I think the key piece of that is just how careful we have to be and that people really understand that. So, yes, I think we're ready. And I just also, when we talk about reopening, it feels like, oh, are we back to normal? And it's, no, we're not back to normal. We're back to something that's different. We're not in the lockdown phase as much anymore, although, again, that's the advice, if you don't need to go out, don't go out. But it's not going to be like, okay, everything's back to the way it was six months ago because it just won't be, and it won't be that way for a long time, I fear, just because the way this pandemic, this virus has ruled, and I like how Dr. Fauci always says, we don't set the timeline, the virus sets the timeline, and we try to adjust to the timeline that the virus is setting, and we can influence the timeline by doing the right things and following the advice of our public health officials. And if we don't follow that, we're going to follow a different timeline. So I think that we're in Massachusetts, and we've really put a lot of effort to pay attention to our public health in the science of the matter, and I think the state has actually done a pretty terrific job of putting information online that we can all look at people. Every one of these calls, someone has said, I looked at the state website and I saw this information, and that's useful information. As Julie said, it does need to be drilled down into it to understand what does that really mean. But I think that I'm ready. I think all the town staff are ready, but we have to do it in a deliberate, safe fashion. Great, thank you. We get this question a couple of times a week in different shapes. I see people without masks. Who should I report that to? Well, this is a tough question. First of all, if you see someone without a mask, then your first shot thought should be, do I have my mask? Because what we really have control over is our own behaviors. And then am I standing six feet away? Because if that person doesn't have a mask on, I should be six feet away. And then to understand that people who are not able to wear masks won't be wearing masks. This comes from the Department of Public Health. Not everyone is able to wear a mask for a variety of health reasons that really won't be visible to you. It's not just someone who has such difficulty breathing that you're going to be able to see that. So I think you have to assume if you see someone that doesn't have a mask on, that there's a good chance that there's a reason that they can't wear a mask. And it really doesn't have anything to do with age. It could be a younger person. It could be anyone because there are reasons why people can't wear masks. And so, you know, it's just like with all things, right? If 80% of people or 90% of people do this, take this one health measure, it really protects us all. So if there are people who aren't able to, and they're just sprinkled throughout the population, we should be able to absorb that. And again, because it's a recipe, it's not just the mask. It's the hand washing. It's the social distancing. It's not being out and about all the time so that you're getting multiple exposures to things. So, but getting back to the question, who should you call? You know, if it's a citizen, there really isn't anyone for you to call. You just, you know, people are making their own decisions and we can't take a complaint about a person who's not wearing a mask. If you're in a business in a situation where people should be wearing masks and it really seems like they're not, I encourage you, if it's a comfortable situation to engage and say, oh, I'm just, I have my mask on, I, well, maybe I shouldn't even say that. Let me pull that one back. Employees also, there are some employees who can't wear masks. So I should also address that also. You know, if you have a real concern that a business in general seems to be not complying with masks, then you can call the town manager's office and we, an inspector can look into that for you. You could also, once you return home, call the manager for the company and check in with them and find out, you know, because I think also as employers hear back from people going to businesses, hey, I'm concerned because you had an employee that didn't have a mask, then it helps them to realize that, you know, they need to be checking on their staff. But again, it could be that an employee is not able to wear a mask. So I'm sorry, that was a bit of a muddy answer. Thank you, Julie. So I don't see any more hands or any other questions in the queue. So, and we're at our 1230 mark. I will just say a quick reminder to folks that we will be here next Thursday at noon, same link, same phone number. If you're joining on a phone, we also have a virtual cup of Joe next Friday from eight to nine a.m. with our new finance director, Sean Mengano, as well as our comptroller, Sonya Aldrich and the town manager and the links and information for that will be up on our website and social media channels today. Julie or Paul, any last remarks? I'm good to go. Thank you all for attending. Yeah, thanks, Brianna. Thanks everybody. Stay safe.