 recording, you can just go to YouTube and type in ECAC transportation task force task group. And you'll get any of the recordings that we did under that name. But also, because it says ECAC and task group, you may get the other task groups as well. So please feel free to watch some of those sessions. If you're curious what some of the other groups were doing, you're welcome to watch those there as well. So again, thank you all. If you're having any trouble with your connection, please feel free to turn off your video. And that should help. I know I had trouble yesterday. So I may be on and off. Should be fine today. But if not, I might actually turn my video off as well. And also a reminder to please mute your microphone. If you're not speaking so that we don't pick up any background noise. So my name is Stephanie Chagrillo. I'm the sustainability coordinator for the town and my pronouns are she and her. And we'd appreciate if you would use your pronouns when you speak for the first time. I would just like to start with a statement of the indigenous heritage of our land. We humbly acknowledge that we stand on Nanatuck land, acknowledging also our neighboring indigenous nations, the Nipbuk and the Wampanoag to the east, the Mohican and Pequot to the south, the Mohican to the west and the Abenaki to the north. Ghazikaya. Thanks, Stephanie. Alright, so I'm just going to briefly go over the group agreements that we talked about at our last meeting. And after I'm done going through them, if anyone has something that they'd like to change to those agreements or add to them, we'll have a chance to look at that. So first and foremost, just to remember that all of the topics that we're going to be talking about throughout this process affect real people in their lives, and that our focus we really hope will be on people's people and relationships, rather than on making sure that our individual goals are met or that we're winning any sort of challenging situation. We really want to be listening to each other and learning and focusing on how these topics are going to interact with people's lives. And as a part of taking care of each other, we really want to encourage you to take breaks if you need to to check in with your children or anyone else who may need your attention to step away to use the restroom or to get a drink or a snack, whatever you need. We just encourage you to take care of yourself with that. We're going to ask that you think about speaking slowly and clearly so that we can have a thoughtful pace to the conversation. One way that we're going to help remind ourselves about that is to raise your hand before you speak. You can do that by actually holding up your hand if your video is on, or you can use the three buttons to the right of your video and just select raise hand and that'll let us know that you'd like to speak. And we're going to ask that you try, sorry? I don't, I'm Karen Jones. I'm sorry. I may have missed a few minutes. I don't have a screen like that. Let's put my hand up. So great. I was, yeah, I was just going to say, sorry. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I was just going to say that if you're on a phone, you can select star nine. Okay. And that will also let us know that you'd like to speak, but did you say it was Karen? Karen? Karen, yeah, maybe Stephanie, you can change the name there for Karen so that we can know who we're speaking to and Karen, if for some reason the raising hand function doesn't work, you can go ahead and unmute yourself and interrupt just like you just did just now. Thank you. Absolutely. And I'd like to note also that Tracy has her hand up. Tracy? Sorry. I can wait until you're done, but I'll just wait until you've like launched the meeting. Are we all good? Oh, so one thing was Eve Vogel had said she couldn't attend today, and she's in class right now. Also, I had wanted to know, maybe we just don't have this when we're doing these meetings, but like usually there's a chat window or something. And so I was actually going to say the thing about even the chat window not disrupt the whole meeting, but I don't see a chat option for this session. Yeah, we unfortunately do not have chat for this because it's a webinar format. Oh, okay. I mean, you can still have chats, but yeah, that's fine. Thank you. Okay, but I think it also has to do with security. Okay, is there any other questions there if not I'll keep going? And just a reminder to mute yourself when you're not speaking. That'll help us all to hear more clearly and avoid background noise. Okay, there we go. Okay, the other piece I'm not sure if I actually said or not, so I'm just going to repeat it, is to do your best to avoid any jargon or technical terms. And just to speak as clearly and simply as you can knowing that we all come to this space with different levels of experience and exposure to this information. The next piece is step up, step back. So if you're a person who tends to talk a lot and share a lot, we're going to encourage you to do a little bit more intentional listening. And if you're a person who tends to be on the quieter side, we're going to hope that you feel comfortable to share a bit more. And part of that is that we would love to allow for silences because that can be an opportunity for people to jump in that might not feel as comfortable if the conversation's going very rapidly. The next one is to remember to keep what we share here confidential and not to pry, not to ask for more personal details or information and to not ask for someone to prove any need that they might share. And then the last one is to really think about this as an opportunity to learn about each other's personal and cultural values. Remembering that our versions of right and wrong are usually a reflection on our cultural values and are likely different from others in the room. So we want to be talking about our own experiences and be open to learning by asking questions. And as Stephanie said, we're going to ask you the first time you speak to introduce yourself with your name and pronouns. And also want everyone to be aware that we are recording this meeting and it will be made public. So if there's anything that you would rather not share publicly, you can definitely reach out to Stephanie or myself to share stories or ideas that you want to contribute but you want to be kept anonymous. Is there anything that I missed, Jim or Stephanie? I'll just add that while the the process is recorded we're also taking notes and so even though you may say something but then the conversation veers another direction but all those things are collected in the notes. We don't tag names to the notes but all of the ideas that come up are saved in the notes and so we have record of everything. So you don't have to worry about saying something and then oh people didn't stick with it. Hopefully people will but we get everything into the notes and all of that becomes important part of the process of creating a climate action adaptation plan. Okay awesome. So the next piece that I was going to go through is your homework contributions. Thank you so much. I would say this group definitely gave more responses than any other group so we have a lot of good information. Everybody had a lot to say about garbage. As a reminder our questions were what are the issues with garbage for you? Where does your trash go? Do you have access to recycling or composting? Who controls these decisions and what barriers are there to recycling and composting? So I would say that overwhelmingly what we heard was that those who are living in complexes where the garbage and recycling is controlled by property manager or a complex owner, there was a lot of negative experiences with the trash being very messy, the recycling rules being unclear or not being followed, the area being very dirty or having a lot of bugs and that there is no access to compost in complexes from what we heard back and that those decisions are all controlled by the property management and that people would be interested in the option to compost or places to store food waste that wouldn't attract bugs or animals or also it came up across the board that a lot of people would be interested in a town composting program that could be available for everyone. Several people across all different living environments said that they had tried composting but that it was too difficult that they couldn't keep up with it or it was attracted bugs or animals. Some of the homeowners said that they have a very straightforward pickup of alternating weeks of trash and recycling and that they're able to do their own composting and nobody knew where the trash goes that I can tell. There was an idea that it may be very far away and that the recycling may go to a facility in Connecticut. Let's see what else if I'm missing anything. I think that was about it. One of the main consistent responses was that people would be interested in a composting program. So thanks everyone for your responses and if you hadn't responded yet and you have something to add please feel free to send it over. We'll definitely add it to the mix. Fantastic thank you Kazika. Any questions or comments on that? Yeah Brenda you're muted. My question is actually taking a step back and let me know if this is not the time to do that but I am finding that it would be helpful for me to to understand. I'm very clear about the kind of the process but the product for me to know what the goals are for this meeting and by the end of it what we are hoped to accomplish and then by the end of the third meeting and then even like the bigger picture like what and maybe I have missed this but what our charge is as kind of community members and contributing. Are we at the end of this going to come up with real specific contributions? I guess like the list that you're getting now is that how it's going to be presented is kind of homework each week and then we sent it in. So I guess if that's not appropriate to answer right now but just kind of like the bigger picture. Thank you. Sounds great. So before we go much further hi I'm Jim Newman. My pronouns are he, him, and his and as soon as I sort of launch into our process I'll go ahead and set the stage for our charge and what we're up to today and kind of a vision of where we're going with this what the steps are over time. We are building a climate action adaptation resilience plan for the town of Amherst essentially. So does anybody else have any questions about the homework or thoughts about that or things that they'd like to say that didn't get said or great. If you do please either provide material to Gazikaya or we can come back to it in a little bit. You can always talk about it. So I'm going to sort of start our process here and just remind us of some of the principles that we that we generated in the last meeting and then hand it off to Laura and Darcy to talk about some of the sort of big ideas the thoughts that we might really look at in this meeting. Our overall process is that we have we've been sort of defining this good point. We've been defining this process in so the Energy and Climate Action Committee has been sort of set the charge for with Stephanie and the town and the funding for this process set the charge for creating a climate action adaptation plan. We developed a process of sort of as a team. When I say we I mean Stephanie and the Energy and Climate Action Committee and Lauren and myself and Gazikaya work as a team to do all of these things together. I have set a process of creating task groups around four different topics. This is the transportation and non-building infrastructure task group and within those topics we'll go ahead and set some principles which we have done in the last room although we'll probably come back to some more. For how we act we'll set some goals and ideas of actions for what we might do and then in the final meeting we'll set some parameters around how we do things. What pathways we might take out of that we'll take this process back create a draft plan and essentially come back to all of you to see how does that work does that do the job does that say what you had to say. As part of that setup we have set up today for our conversation we have a guest expert which is actually really exciting. Sara Bankert has been working with Halsey Hampshire to look at transportation and transportation needs sort of around the Pioneer Valley and some specific work in Amherst. I'm going to let Sara describe what sort of what the scope of that and the materials she's going to talk about today but this is highly relevant to exactly what we're up to in this in one of the topics in this task group. So Sara would you like to take it on? Sure hi everyone my name is Sara Bankert and I go by she heard they them and Jim when you when you said there's an expert here I was like I hope he's not talking about me because I don't feel like an expert most of the time. I I feel like I'm someone who's been involved in public health for a long time and I'm very passionate about it so that's that's sort of a more comfortable I guess title for me. But I've been asked to come to your meeting today and share a little bit of past work that I've been involved with in Amherst doing some assessment around transportation needs particularly in South Amherst and the community of East Hadley Road. So should I go ahead and share my screen or do we want to pause for any questions or anything like that before I proceed? I think you can you can proceed although anybody who has a question can either raise your hand or wave whenever you're ready. Okay sure I'm happy to Tracy just raised her hand. You're muted Tracy. Hi I'm Tracy and my pronouns are she and hers and her and Sarah I'm really glad you're here because that's a really important topic so I look forward to seeing what you have to say. Thanks. Thank you. Okay so I'm gonna share my screen one second. Okay everyone see? Yes awesome. Okay so before I get into some of the work I've done I'll just say very briefly for some of you who are familiar with Healthy Hampshire you might already know this I know some of the people in this room were collaborators with but for some of you Healthy Hampshire might be a new organization that you haven't heard of before so just very briefly we came into existence in 2012 when the Massachusetts Department of Public Health released grants to municipalities and regions under the Mass in Motion program and this program was really about trying to get local and regional public health and planning departments to work on looking at sort of the community level issues that are causing people to experience barriers around access to physical activity and access to healthy food and so that's sort of how they defined our charge and so I began working on this tiny little grant back in 2012 and then since then Healthy Hampshire has grown to include a lot of other work but very related around the areas of healthy food access health equity I would say we definitely are are embedding racial equity and undoing white supremacy and a lot of the work we do many of you are probably familiar with the Amherst mobile market that's a project that we've supported and yeah so I don't want to you know take too much time but that's a sort of a gist of what we are involved in there's 15 communities in Hampshire County and the Hilltowns that we touch or work in so and it's me and another person so we're Caitlin Markey is my colleague so we're sort of pulled pulled in a lot of directions and we've done a lot of things and one of the things that I was telling Lauren and Jim about was some assessment work we did about five years ago around we were actually asked by the town to do this assessment work specifically assessment in East Hadley Road housing complexes around transportation barriers and then another assessment that I'll talk about a year later that actually we work with Stephanie Ciccarello on to understand primarily the question was whether people in that neighborhood would be interested in gardening at the new Fort River conservation area and so you know just a little disclaimer I mean the the data is a little bit old it's five years old there's many things that have happened particularly around East Hadley Road in terms of improvements and this data was in part you know helped with making the case for some of those improvements and I would say there's probably things that are still problematic that you know could be addressed by future work I will also say just very briefly that the way we approach assessment with Healthy Hampshire is to really include the community as much as we possibly can in that assessment process so for both of these assessments we actually hired young people who lived in those neighborhoods to administer the surveys excuse me and so they actually we actually train them on survey administration and they actually went to their neighbors and administered the surveys and at least the one at East Hadley Road is in was in Portuguese and Spanish and I don't remember about the Fort River one but maybe when we look at it I'll remember and so also we did a photo documentation project of East Hadley Road with these youth that I can just kind of highlight really quickly after I show you some of the reports so I'll just pause for a second before I go into a couple of highlights to see if anyone you know has any questions or anything they want to I can't actually see everyone so I'll be relying on the facilitators to tell me what's going on okay I think you're good okay good okay so there's a lot here and I'm sure these can be furnished to all of you so I'm not going to go through everything but I will just make a couple of highlights so this is the health survey report of East Hadley Road housing complexes so I'm just going to scroll through here this is a picture of some of the young people that we worked with and you'll see some more pictures in a minute I'm actually going to share with you I'll just share with you the demographics of the people who responded so 166 people were interviewed and these were the apartment complexes that they came from so primarily south point in the boulders and a lot of that actually had to do with permissions granted for for surveying it's actually well at that time was really hard to get permission to go door to door so we had to use some interesting tactics to do that the age distribution was you know fairly you know young adult centric I would say demographics 60 percent were identified as female 39 percent as male one percent other and then we actually when we asked a question about race or ethnicity we actually allowed people to just write in how they identified because I found from previous surveys that that's really important to people and so you can see just the amazing diversity of you know identities that people self-identified themselves as here and I'm not sure if actually everyone can read this text sometimes when I share a screen it's very tiny you can okay I see guys you guys great okay so I actually want to just because we don't we don't have a lot of time so I'm actually going to focus on I think what might still be an issue because we know the sidewalks are being redone on East Hadley Road which is amazing right and there has been some food access interventions the survival center has been doing a mobile pantry as probably some people know and Healthy Hampshire has worked with community partners some of whom are in this room right now worked very hard on getting a a mobile farmers market set up so there's a couple of things that have happened in the last five years that are significant there's one thing that I think is hugely significant that has not happened actually two things I would say the making a more formal or safer link between East Hadley Road and the bike path a multi-use path and then working on bus transportation okay so I'll just in case people don't know there's an unofficial path that a lot of people use that I assume they are still using from East Hadley Road to the bike path here is a picture of it coming off of East Hadley Road interestingly enough when we were actually doing this survey DCR was redoing the rail trail and they actually fenced over the entry from this unofficial path onto the rail trail I haven't been there recently but I'm sure some of you have you've probably seen that it's actually cut people cut it down more or less they cut a hole there but you know you can see that there's like this steep path already and then this fence went up which was really an interesting thing for me to see that they decided not to formalize that path you can see how often people use the bike path so just over 10 percent every day some people 15 percent two to three times a week two to three times a month again at 15 percent and then about 15 percent only when I have no other option so there's a fair amount of people who are actually using this people do use the bike path by getting through the cornfield 70 percent say yes and then this is one I really want to focus on which is you know what whether people's usage would go up if the path was paved now I've sort of since understood that that's probably not actually possible because there's a number of different legal issues with that land and probably people here know a lot more than I do about it but we wanted to we sort of used the paved language you know kind of thinking like hey is if this was a safer path in some way shape or form like would you use it more and so we we saw that that that was definitely true for people who are using it every day or two to three times a week and see here when people use the bike path where they go you know almost 50 to get exercise but also we have things like work to visit family or friends to get food at the grocery store to buy things other than food to go to school so you know a lot of these trips are actually you know what we we would call in public health very utilitarian their recreation is a wonderful thing but people are using trace transportation options because they have to it's their transportation to get somewhere which is not often how we think of bike paths right we think of them as primary primarily for recreational use but for people east heavily road you know there's a lot of people using it for for need daily need and you can see it's interesting here the question why don't use the bike path the path through the cornfield is too dangerous for almost 25 people which I think is is a significant number before I move on to just show talk a little bit about buses maybe I'll just pause and see if anyone has any questions or you know maybe people here live in that neighborhood and you have some more information than than I have right now about the problem you did Tracy hi um so I had a few comments questions so one thing that's happened since 2015 is that some of the fields that people used to cut through from east heavily road to get to the bike path and the mall now are like have been well not really developed but they're now set off for solar panels and that so you don't have that same access not that it was great access but you have even less access now and that's true including like if you're trying to cut from the Hampshire mall like directly to the bike paths and again some of that place is no longer open the other thing with the bike well there's a few things with the bike path is one it's very very I've I've lived near the bike path for a long time I live about like a quarter mile from the bike path and it's very very dark at night it isn't plowed during the winter and intentionally you know there's always there's always some cyclists who love to use it in the winter and they'll go and they'll plow it themselves but DCR doesn't plow it and there are also people who like to use it for cross-country skiing so there's like that conflict of uses but the other thing is that there's no lights out there and I've been like stuck on the bike path at night and I know other people and it's literally like pitch black especially like with the trees in some of the sections there is now a sidewalk on route nine that goes to the mall so people from east heavily road if you can get over to that sidewalk too that does provide more year-round access to Hampshire mall and the other places and the people I know who live on east heavily road a lot of them cut through in order to get to the mall not just like to do biking for not just to hit the bike path for exercise and stuff but just utilitarian purposes because as I'm sure you're going to tell us about like the disconnect with the transit and how you have to go through Amherst center to get to the mall and that doesn't make any sense. So there is some access now with the new sidewalk that's on route nine and that sidewalk was put into winters ago unfortunately however that sidewalk is not consistently plowed and that's been a major issue and so until that sidewalk existed you would see like pedestrians and people in wheelchairs and so on in the road and now because the mass DOT and the town of how they don't really agree who's responsible it is to plow that road plow the new sidewalk that continues to be an issue so great thank you thanks Tracy um uh Andy you have had your hand up for a little bit uh just in regards I was just trying to look on my phone exactly this cut through path was if I couldn't exactly see it we had looked at upgrading south maple street at one point and providing pedestrian and bicycle access via that roadway I wasn't sure if the if these cut through paths are in close proximity there and that would be something maybe we could look at with the town of Amherst again in the future as just kind of more of a question and a little background than that great thanks uh Brenda it looks like you have your hand up yep I didn't say my pronouns before sorry about that she heard they and one quick comment on the bike path and what I have seen work well is to have one lane plowed so therefore that could be utilitarian for people that want to bike in the winter and then the other side not for skiing so there's this small little plows that can can do that and there was people in the past actually shoveled their way to work for two miles doing that and allowed for there to be kind of a a merge of everyone using the the path over the winter so that would be great dcr could do that thanks uh guzikaya did you uh raise your hand there sorry I'm looking around to see who else is yeah that's okay I I think it's mostly it was just going to echo that the getting there is really hard in the winter still and the that the solar panels have made it more difficult right I just put a map up here so everyone can see the different options that people have from that neighborhood and again this is five years old so I don't know if the if there's been changes I do know the buses still take 40 less minutes even if the route has changed a bit but you can see you know people do walk on maple street and that that's treacherous for sure I don't I don't live in amherst and I don't live in Hadley but the couple of times I'm over there I always see someone right there by the side of the road like carrying like four bags and so if I'm seeing them and I'm not in that neighborhood very much I can imagine that it's pretty regular thing for people and then this is the cut through although as people have mentioned it might have it's actually probably a bit different now because of the solar panels and then the you know bus options are are really really challenging and I know people maybe in this call know more about conversations that have happened at the town around you know working with PVTA to do a shuttle bus that kind of goes like this you know just kind of goes down maple street and back and I don't know where those are at but that would be I think you know a potential pilot program that would be really intriguing because the distance to actually get to at least the Hampshire mall area is so short to potential food options is so short but the bus ride to get there takes an hour and a half or longer you know once you once you do the whole thing so I think that was those were the major takeaways and I know you know this is no news to anyone living there in fact all of this data came directly from folks and we really appreciated their their input so I can see Brenda has her hand raised so I'll pause another quick comment I'm also in South Amherst not in the apartment complexes so a shuttle would be welcomed it seems to be kind of like a desert in about around the common and the Amherst woods and the bus can't come down because of the overpass there so having I've always thought a smaller kind of shuttle that was able to to run out a quicker turnaround and that could service that that whole kind of circuit down there thank you and I mean I think like although this is five years old as I keep saying like in our mobile market planning efforts you know people just talk so much about transportation that you know and actually if that was an easy thing to solve like we'd be working on it right now but it is quite complicated around working with regional transit and also the the path through the the cornfield crosses over into Hadley and is on agricultural land and so there's there's actually my understanding is many layers of barriers but I think with a coalition approach around this work there could be possibilities and ways to make movement around the transportation issue for people in this neighborhood so I'm going to switch over to the Fort River survey and just highlight one thing before I go over to that does anyone else want to ask a question or say anything about East Hadley Road I just wanted to add something that Caitlin shared in another one of our meetings which is that 26 percent I think she said are families or individuals without cars in our little five complexes so that's very high Darcy you uh you have noticed you've been unmuted for a little while yeah I just wondered if um if Sarah you've noticed that there's been any much of a change with the the Valley Bike Share being available to the to Hadley Road complexes that's a really good question and I actually don't have any data personally on that myself but it's a really good question and I will wonder if you know Valley Bike themselves might be able to answer that question in terms of memberships and trips and things like that Jim I can jump in I don't know if you can see me but I can answer that it's Stephanie and yes Darcy we can talk offline we have data and I can share that with you Tracy has your hand up I have a comment related to Valley Bike is that it is great that there's the Valley Bike station right on East Hadley Road but one big challenge is that there's no Valley Bike stations in Hadley because earlier earlier in the spring like the Hadley Select Board like rejected the request of Valley Bike to locate some there so it is a major issue not only for East Hadley Road people but also other people in Amherst or Northampton who would love to especially Carlos people who would love to be able to bike to the malls and so on but then they can't because there's like no place to park them there without getting charged so I'm really hoping that that can be resolved because that's a big issue the other thing is that there is a lot of there is an increasing demand in general for bike sharing programs like with COVID because people are taking buses less as buses are both supposed to just be for essential services so the bus riderships are down significantly great yeah because you can I'm just gonna say to that point that the people that I know who can't use the bikes are same reason that you can't park it so if there wasn't without paying like every 40 minutes or something like that so alternatively to getting Hadley to put in stops would be to make a more affordable day pass for the bikes so that you could actually take the bike to work and lock it up and then bring it back or shopping or whatever you have to do Stephanie so there are a couple of things so Hadley it's not for one trying we've tried many times to get them to join Valley Bike and it's frustrating for us too because it is such an obvious connection point and destination point so there have been conversations about you know maybe how we can get around that potentially but we just keep trying to get them on board so yes that is a you know a challenge for for the program and as far as there are discounted passes and if you go to the Valley Bike website now there's information about that it's also been in the news recently so there are some more affordable passes and you know that that's kind of a challenge again Hadley not having any stations is kind of a challenge for a lot of people because that is a destination and of course if you're coming from East Hadley Road it doesn't make sense to go back into town to go to a station you know to get a bike you know and so you don't you know have more than your 40 minutes so you know we're aware of some of these challenges but I would just definitely direct people to the discounted passes right now that's great hey Tracy let's hold on for just a sec thank you appreciate it and let's Sarah why don't you continue on we probably need to keep this rolling a little bit okay I realize I haven't shown you the photo documentation project which I'll just touch on really really fast because I think it can be shared with everyone by email so you can sort of view it on your own time I'm trying to arrange my screen here so the young people who were involved in the East Hadley Road survey we also worked with them on photo documentation and so essentially just going around town taking pictures of you know elements of their environment that they kind of felt could be improved and so I'll just flip through a couple of these tennis court at South Point I do have to say that I remember now that there was some sensitivity around sharing these wider widely because some of the folks at the town level were a little nervous about the apartment managers feeling too criticized so I'll just say that and I'll let you all figure out how best to utilize these reports but these focus on on some of the issues at South Point around lack of recreational opportunities like a basketball hoops there's some comments about PBTA buses and you know if you look at this on your own time you can actually read some of the comments of the youth about the pictures I'm going to flip down to this was again accessing the rail trail some people might know this family a Vietnamese family with two parents who are blind and they have four children they now they now live I believe well they moved recently after I did the survey with them but they so they might they might live at Olympia Oaks now I'm not really sure but I actually watched their entire family navigate this fence and they had a dog and two bikes and four kids and the parents were blind and I was like pretty much floored that this was happening in front of my very eyes I have to say so there's that here's here's a view towards Maple Street and you can there's no shoulder here but as everyone probably knows it tapers off and then you know this is a typical scene right on Maple Street so this might be East Hadley Road oh this is on East Hadley Road so yeah those are just some of the pictures of the youth that I wanted to share I'm going to move to the Fort River Survey and just mention a couple of things really quick so this was done a year later you know again I said it was it was youth led in that youth from the neighborhood were employed to survey their neighbors and the the the real I think goal of this was to understand you know whether people would want to garden at the Fort River Farm and so there's just a piece of data in here sorry for my scrolling but I just going to find it here was the the response of people two-thirds of respondents reported that they would be interested in gardening at Fort River Farm and so that was like a very clear indication that this was of interest of people and I will say we surveyed Colonial Village and Watson Farms and there were I think 60 responses we collected information about what kind of activities they'd be interested in harvesting volunteering preparing the soil weeding and upkeep of course is the least interesting for probably all of us and then I asked people you know what do you need to actually grow food at at this conceptual community garden and we found the education was definitely a big one and and then we also asked like how do we reach out to people about this and kind of build community and get some more input and the most popular response was to offer social events such as picnics or barbecues at the site to kind of get people engaged now we know that might not be possible during COVID but I am very excited that I believe Healthy Hampshire and the town through Stephanie's department are going to collaborate on actually building a garden this year at Fort River Farm and so it was nice to sort of look at this data again because it looks like it's actually going to be put to use and although you know some of the people who we surveyed five years ago may not be there we can sort of assume that there's probably still quite a demand for gardening given the fact that people that live at those complexes don't have gardening at the complex itself I think Watson Farms you know people are able to garden a little bit in their backyard but there's no dedicated community garden space in that neighborhood it is accessible without a car I would say so I'm going to stop there I definitely I know where you have a lot on your agenda so I'll sort of again pause or stop and happy to answer questions or follow the lead of the facilitators however you all want to take this sounds great thank you Sarah fantastic why don't you stop sharing your screen and that way we can see everybody a little better and that's great thank you so much so anybody have questions or comments about that portion of the of Sarah's work and presentation sounds good Darcy has a Darcy do you have something oh no no that wasn't that was a mistake all right that's okay just just asking I'm trying to be observant Lauren what did you just say no that was it just that Darcy had her hand raised ah great um awesome uh fantastic thank you very much Sarah super super useful um really uh it really sets the stage and I think um it uh it really uh it fits right into uh our work from last uh the last meeting where we developed some principles and I'm just going to highlight four of those principles that kind of bubble discussions uh and I'll do this sort of quickly so that we can move on to really looking at some of the the major actions that we want to talk about which are very much related to the topics we have just been talking about so the first principle that we developed was really to do things together as a community to build empathy and perspective to better understand what each other are going through and helping where there is clear need and that's something I we were very attuned to and asking uh Sarah to help share what some of the needs really are the second is um to build plans and actions based on the needs of those who will be most negatively affected by those plans and actions there's so many examples here uh that uh that are sort of highlight that principle is something that we need to follow that really came out of our discussions uh last at the last meeting the third is to prioritize the needs of those who have the least access first consider the idea of transit maybe as a fundamental human right and then the fourth is to connect people to jobs and amenities through equitable transit options to promote public health especially in areas of low car ownership and high render occupancy so those are those are principles that have very much related to what we're up to and kind of what we're talking about and what we have been talking about here and now I want to turn it over to Darcy and Laura to introduce uh the major actions that we were hoping to talk about today great thanks Jim um my name is Laura Drucker I usually hurt pronouns um I am at the chair of the ecac so thank you again for joining this group and taking your time for some of us this may be one of many zoom calls of the day so I'm feeling tired myself um although I really found that presentation to be so interesting so thank you Sarah um so one of the big big moves or sort of big ideas that we talked about last time and that also feeds really nicely into the conversation we the presentation we just got from Sarah was um sort of how do we think about mobility in a future where we're not using fossil fuels um and so and how do we do that in a way to the principles that Jim just relayed that is you know connecting people that need to be connected to their jobs and to shopping um you know building the plans that really service those in our community that that need them the most while also addressing this challenge that we have of moving towards this a future with without fossil fuels um so when you think about the big action of improving safety and connectivity for alternatives to single occupancy vehicles um what we're trying to do is really with with this whole plan is to take that idea and um come up with specific actions that we can take to do that in a way that sort of abides by all those principles while also meeting our goals that we need to meet to reduce our green house gas emissions for the town which is the charge of the e-cac um so something I was so we're going to talk about this as a group but just to sort of prime the pump if you will that there's um something I was thinking about in that presentation was you know how do we develop a way to improve safety and connectivity so potentially if we take the idea that was thrown thrown out by Brenda of the smaller shuttles and someone else mentioned that as well you know how do we make sure those are servicing the uh area with which we have 26 percent uh occupancies without cars and also service the areas where we have people that use single occupancy cars a lot because we need not only to provide transportation to those that don't have it but we also need to convert people that are using single occupancy cars to have adequate accessible um and useful alternatives so so yeah so I don't know the answer that's why we're here um but I think that's the that's sort of the challenge that's kind of the lens I think we want to approach we want to approach all of our actions that we need to to to take because at the end of the day we're trying to reduce the amount of transportation that happens with the fossil fuels to meet our plan fantastic Darcy you want to uh leave the other and then we'll open up into a general conversation about how we might do those things that we just described yeah we we um this uh working group also is looking at at the whole issue of waste and um so uh the sort of overarching issue with waste is you know getting to zero waste in some way or another uh so that we can reduce our emissions and get to our our climate goal of reducing our emissions by 25 percent by 2025 that's that's the big goal um but within within that we have you know a variety of sub-goals and um some of us have looked at other climate action plans to look at to see what what other communities have been focusing on and basically in the waste area they're focusing on the like the five Rs that you've all heard of the reduce reuse recycle repair and compost and so just to talk a little further about what Gazette Haya was uh mentioning earlier one of the one of the um the actions that's considered the one of the most impactful that we could take is to um to reduce food scraps um and by composting so we'd we'd have to look at the different uh ways in which we could do that so we could compost do residential composting for residences which um right now uh residences can actually do that I do it uh every other week at USA recycling picks up my compost but I have to pay extra for it every month um and um another person on ECAC Andrew Rose she uses city compost where and renters can do that too but it costs $15 a month so you know it's expensive um and uh you know another whole area in which we wanted to compost is with our businesses and because Amherst is such a big restaurant town um we produce massive amounts of food scraps and restaurants are already required to be doing composting if they produce more than I think 500 pounds a week something like that anyway there's there's a requirement that they do it so you know we have the challenge of trying to get residents to do it trying to get um people who live in the complexes to do it which like as I said there isn't anything available from USA recycling for the complexes um and getting um uh businesses to to um you know use composite compostable takeout containers and so on and so forth so one of the things that the town could do um is to um change their hauler system so that we have curbside composting as the default so then it would be available to everybody including people at the complexes and there would there would probably be big containers or maybe even a dumpster that would be devoted to compost so um and I just have to say that I you know having done it now for about a year myself it has reduced my trash just dramatically I basically have no trash left because I put everything either in the recycling or the compost um and because you can put dirty paper pizza boxes compostable containers meat eggs all the things that I didn't want to put in my backyard compost um and so it's it's you know if we provided it through our local hauler then that would that would be one way that it could be available to everybody across the board so um that's the big action that we could conceivably take in the waste area that we're going to talk about today there are there are quite a few other ones too but that's the one we're talking about today great thanks Darcy uh Lauren do you have something to say yeah go ahead I was just gonna add quick oh sorry not me sorry sorry not Laura Lauren yeah we'll come back to you Laura I I have a few questions and um I wanted to get some more understanding about the east heavy road um bike path that it was pretty much made because there is no real bike path so it was made to be more of a direct um travel to the malls in that area I'm not I don't really drive myself so I'm not really familiar but I'm trying to just give some understanding to myself when I think of like energy and travel and why people may use you know different transportation or what they have to do if they don't have particular transportation my family recently got um a car um and so the statistic that was mentioned about like 25 percent of um renters or people who lived in um I guess it was Fort River area uh they they lack transportation or they lack a car I'm not sure if I got that right but um I guess what I'm asking is um those who do not have cars and are seeking to get to wherever they're trying to get to work or shopping areas what what is the what is the the way forward for the town to address that like if people are making their own bike path or making a path to these areas like what do we see as the town or just in our own ideas of what the solution would be like I don't know if that's like preserved land you said that there's solar solar um panels in the area now so is it that we're looking to pave you know actual bike path in that area I'm just you know I'm not sure if I have all the information but I'm just trying to understand um that standpoint um sarin uh do you want to or Stephanie you want to talk about that uh and as a just to sort of as a setup part of what we're trying to do here today uh is to understand what we'd like to have happen and what the sort of what kinds of things we're trying to fix and so those questions are right on the money Lauren about well how does this work and why does that work and and trying to get to the the idea of what is it we need here um so thanks uh yeah Laura yeah thanks jam thanks Lauren for that comment I think um something we could something I was thinking about when Sarah showed the map is that I think we could take the one approach could be to take the existence existence of the dirt path to recognize that there needs to be a path that doesn't mean that the path needs to be there um and when I looked at the map I happened to notice that there's the golf course and there's a few other places is there ways that we could actually create a path through land that is town owned or um you know that we could do a public partner private partnership on of some sort so that we can create that path that doesn't necessarily need to be that path that was created yeah exactly it's like what what are the needs what it what is it what how do we do this together what does that look like uh yeah Rob uh you're muted there you go I just thought am I now unmuted can you hear me now now you're good great so so I just sorry for coming in so late I have many other things to do and I wanted to get here before five but now it's after five and I know you started an hour 20 minutes ago uh Dave Zomek and I and folks who were involved with the um Norwatic Rail Trail Advisory Committee so I know somebody from PVPC is here uh said Paul Andy Andy so it's um huh I've forgotten who my colleague is uh your colleague is down there uh Jeff McCullough all right Jeff McCullough was one of our staff people in there but we we looked um for I guess a couple months I think we met with one of the uh maybe the health director also on the presence of the path and how to try to um find either a way to get the farmer there to allow the use or to find alternative spaces there and um if you're aware of how for example University of Massachusetts has dealt with desire lines places where people have walked over the years what they tend to do is either finally pave that very desire line that path or they put up enormous obstacles at great expense like buildings and so forth so I I'm very sanguine about you know I scoped out I mean sort of in the business of trying to plan paths I'm the guy who designed the Swift connector like was the chair of the committee that reconstructed and whatever the redesigned the rail trail over the last maybe 15 to between 15 years ago and about uh five years ago it was a long process that there's there is a way to connect from um um I guess the uh you know what's the what's the what's the road there it's not Mill Lane it's the East Hadley Road up through just to the west of the golf course to the rail trail but it's not the desire line people don't seem to be walking on it and it would it would be a detour it would be you know round trip if you're going to the shopping malls an extra mile or so and so we could build it but would they come and I don't know I don't know if I mean Stephanie I don't know if you're still on the line yeah I don't know if you're talking with Dave I mean he and I talked about it some as recently as about a year ago and um I'm not aware that there was a lot of interest in turning sort of the very western end of what I think is the farm owned by sorry again I'm having name of Asia the they own they own a shopping sort of building in downtown thorn the thorns market right it's the owner of the thorns market I believe of a farm there it's the western the western that border of that farm with the farms in Hadley I think is where there is in effect a walking path but it's it's not a very direct path and it may not be so nice for people to walk on if they're trying to get to the malls in Hadley might be a nice path to get to Amherst Center anyway just sorry for going on so long I'm going to try to give you geography and history all in the same thing there but it's uh yeah thanks Rob um so this brings up the the principle of working together uh that we were talking about so what would it take for uh people people to work together to define well what would work how does it work what does it need to have uh how do we what matters in this setting does going a little bit further along to get a paved path is that way better but something that might be plowed what who would work together to figure that out uh how would uh members of the town's dpw say and uh you know some of the transportation planners and community members who use the path in multiple ways get together to to really figure out what's what what works for everybody and then the the third principle of designing uh designing solutions so that the people uh who are most negatively affected by those solutions have an input into that process uh I think those are those are key principles within this process we're talking about right now and thanks for Rob for bringing that up and really really highlighting that as a as a thought uh and Laura and you as well uh to put that together um the uh so we have a couple of questions that sort of is part of our sort of process of discussing these things especially the things that uh Laura and Darcy brought up uh as well as some of the material that Sarah brought up and that is what what does this action uh what needs does this action address and who will be most impacted by it we're beginning to start on this conversation what are the different kinds of potential carbon reductions related to this action I think when we're talking about transportation they're pretty obvious uh I think when we're talking about garbage and waste they're probably not as obvious um and then uh how can this uh but they but they exist uh and then how can this action be shaped to better serve uh the needs of the community while reducing carbon um so uh we have three topics right now we have topic about uh the path itself that we're talking about as well as sort of the general transportation uh conversation about how best to serve uh both people who don't have cars and need transportation or need to be able to do things like shopping we had like the conversation we had last at the last meeting uh and uh and to convert people who do drive cars many of whom have already expressed they really would prefer not to drive their cars if if it were possible uh and then uh the second thing about well what's the way to work like how does compost and and trash what would be best to work with those and I know they sound like they're not the same thing but they're kind of there there's kind of some some issues here that go together it's really about infrastructure it's about how are we serving everybody in the town in different ways with the infrastructure that we all share um so I will stop talking um and uh does anybody have yeah Stephanie um just in terms of how you were framing some of the issues around the path um I don't think we need to start from the very beginning of that because there is a conversation that's happened around that path the health director did meet with Dave Zomek the assistant town manager slash conservation director um so you know I know there are conversations but like a lot of things if sometimes when you get to a hurdle there's so much going on and certainly covid sort of stopped everything in its tracks and shifted focus um those conversations got put on hold so it's I don't think we have to start from the beginning and I think we should pick up from where we left off so I think if people are expressing you know still that very strongly that desire to make sure that that conversation doesn't fall away it just needs to be something one that we certainly include in a plan but also that people can reach out either through myself you can reach out to the department you could reach out to gazikaya to get information to the town or me there's you know pathways if you want to reach out to people to do that so I would encourage you to and know that you don't have to start from the very beginning uh thanks thanks a lot that's that's actually a huge comment and to to think about especially as we put together plans and thoughts where do we start to to start from so Brenda I see your hand is up before I uh I'm go to you I just want to ask penny uh oh penny your hand is up penny and Karen haven't said much Tessa hasn't said much so penny hi I'm a shishi and um I was wondering if it was possible that the town could give everybody you know those water bins that you have that the rain go into but maybe they could give everybody a compost for themselves and then everybody like instead you know how the trash gives you your trash can they could all give that everybody in the town their own composting component and then you do your own composting and um do it that way thanks penny I love that is that something that you could do and you would do yeah if they gave me um a thing to put the compost in and I could get my own like we have tons of leaves and grass and you mow your lawn and that could go in it too and uh I guess maybe we could try to get hay or I you know or worms we could do worms you know everybody get some worms and the worms would be eating up the compost and you know making good dirt do it that way I don't know sounds great uh and that sort of ideas that's that's a that's a great sort of uh sort of root to uh part of what Darcy was talking about about um how do we actually get get change the the the waste and waste to such a point change the garbage process and and also we can have it so that maybe the um the garbage people or whoever could we could have a system where the compost people could come and pick up the compost and take it and um to where the gardens are you know everyone compost all winter long and add your dirt and whatever and your riches to your compost and then they could all scoop it all up and then people would have good fertilizer for the garden that you want to have it wild was it wildwood or Fort River one of the schools that's all I'm saying yeah yeah perfect that's fantastic yeah uh uh okay uh Lauren uh go ahead and then I'm interested in we haven't heard from Karen I'm interested if Karen has anything to say but go ahead Lauren I just wanted to make a quick comment about the the compost um uh where I live we do have a community garden and out in the back we um have our little um lawn space and um I think it was Darcy who said an idea about like having a big compost bin or something but I would be afraid of that like attracting more bugs or more smells so I don't know if it's better to have like a smaller like individual compost and also I remember um where I used to live um in Boston that a really good gardener he said that there's you know there's different kind qualities of compost and sometimes the compost it will create weeds so I think you have to think about like if you do a systematic way of collecting um leftover food or whatever people are throwing in the compost that it doesn't create more of a problem and that what people are putting on their plants and on their in their gardens is not like contaminated somehow so that's the only thoughts I had about that those are those are hugely important to learn from what we've seen from other communities that have done composting and large-scale that those those are those are key issues for sure uh so uh who was I missing uh oh I missed somebody is out of my view that so it was uh did you say Karen was yeah I haven't heard much from Karen Karen is unmuted now Karen yes you want to speak can you hear me now yes and good thank you this is such a wonderful conversation thank you so much for involving me I've been dealing with all of these issues for decades and I feel so optimistic hearing what you're doing um I just want to say one a couple of things just to fill in I'm surprised that people have to pay to have someone take away compost compost is such a valuable commodity so we'll leave that um and I wonder I want to just say that the folks from South Point and who are walking to the mall the people who are walking are making a contribution to the community I think there are ways in which we need to look at all the things that people do they may be compensating for what isn't being done but I think we start with that recognition I have a lot more to say but I just want to commend you all and I will send some notes another time okay feel free to go on if you'd like for a little bit Karen okay if you don't mind um the whole issue of finding a way to provide bicycles to people who want them there are bikes that are thrown away every day and working I don't know if the Hampshire bike exchange is really the useful partner in this but there are people who care very much about bikes and are willing to find a new home for them that's another thing to pursue and I also I feel that just hearing all the things that have been mentioned it would be very useful um two things one Lauren I was so glad to hear your comments and it made me want to support broader dialogue among the among the the folks the different parties who have an interest in the stake and what's going on in in their communities I think it needs to be very personal building relationships locally and then identifying what people want to do and how how to proceed um and but as the thing that I was going to say that having an awareness of the living building movement which integrates so much of what you're really talking about um and I'm willing to I mean I want to just jump in and get involved I'm in I have a long a long-standing love affair with Amherst I worked there I worked for the town uh with my heart not with enough for money um and I'm I'm grateful for that opportunity and my investment has not waned so I think that's that's enough for now thank you Karen that's a beautiful way of setting a passion as a as a key driver um so Brenda you raised your hand earlier do you want to speak we're not hearing you super well I hope you can still hear me if some of you know I'm okay looking good yeah okay can hear me now yes okay great as some of you know I'm camping so I am trying to find the best place to be able to continue with this this call okay great um I really appreciated Penny's idea of giving out compost bins to everyone and um and this um this is a question kind of my role I kind of keep doing the the zooming out and um and thinking what Stephanie said about not having to start from scratch and um I'm thinking with so many of these things that we are are grappling with there's so many you know cities and towns that that have already put together you know climate action plans and bylaws and ordinances so I'm wondering um if we have um and some of the committees I've been on have done that but the town recycling committee we put together a solid waste plan uh some years back so that that exists and something to to look back at but just wondering how much of uh if there's a climate action plan that is going to be looked at from other towns um in developing this whole whole plan to look at kind of best practices um in addition to all the input that that is being provided so that's that's my my that's great thank you brandit and and uh the answer is yes absolutely and part of what we're doing here is to understand the both the principles of how we want to act and then the the ways in which action need to be specific to Amherst while then those ideas may be taken from somewhere else they have to fit our principles and our process so that's great um who um I was noticing that Tessa has not said anything Tessa do you want to speak at this point yeah I'll say something so um talking about compost I guess I know that I tried to do one at my house but like my parents didn't really know how to do anything with it because I don't think they ever have either so I just tried to do it myself but it didn't end up working that well but I also know some people in my neighborhood have like a couple group of houses have their own little compost that they've tried to make together but I just think no one's really informed enough about it so if there was maybe like I don't know something on the Amherst town website or just a whole section for composting or just how to clean up like trash and recycling or just more information on that where people could educate themselves so that they could compost themselves might be a good idea or also just like community building through environmental things like that like composting might be a good idea just using the whole community neighborhood building factor of it to help get people involved and interested I guess in helping that's fabulous thanks Tessa um um Amy you looked like you had something to say do you want to speak I mean I can so I'm Amy she her pronouns um I don't live in the town of Amherst I work for the town of Amherst so I work with the public works department um although I did actually live in the East Hadley road area for like five years when I was in grad school and when I was a young professional um but I mean I just um what Tessa was just saying I mean about the education on composting I mean I I'd like to also see just kind of education on recycling I feel like a lot of people try to do the right thing with recycling but aren't entirely clear and sometimes if you put the wrong things in recycling you can waste an entire batch and so I think that that's just kind of globally not just in Amherst but globally that's something that we everyone can use a little more education or reminder on what's allowed so they can do the right thing intentionally thanks Amy uh Jennifer so also Darcy and Tracy have their hands up but Jennifer you've had your hand up for a little bit and you have not spoken much today imagine that right like okay so I'm Jennifer and she her hers I'm at work I work for the town manager's office but I'm here as a resident um and so I've basically lived in just about every apartment complex from one end of Amherst to the other so I um usually typically can relate to these issues and you know I've gradually made myself come up the financial ladder a little bit so but um I have to say like I think that the composting should be as big as recycling is at some point right like it took a while for everybody to get adjusted to the whole process of recycling um and then compost should now move in that same direction and I do agree with Amy I'm still confused about the yogurt containers I am confused about many things that I get the little weird muffin containers stuff that you get in packaging and I just don't know what to do with that and as many of the people when I did my homework and I both agreed that I what happens when you have single streamline recycling like who's sorting that and you know I'm I'm in condos now and we have these different barrels but I think USA comes and picks everything up in one day so we're over here separating and we're is and I'm not sure if there's a point and then we have a lot of students who perhaps don't recycle at all so I hey those are those are yeah big and clearly there's as Amy said there's there's a you know there's a there's a clear need for some action around education and around and and sort of the transformative role that these things can play in how our towns work um so uh Darcy you had your hand up for a bit yeah um just to take off on what Jennifer said you know there's a huge issue at the complexes um about education about recycling uh not about composting because it's not available but about just recycling and we used to have a a recycling enforcement person who worked at the complexes but her grant ran out so so that's an issue because that that's very helpful um and you know it's just an issue of getting enough money to be able to pay somebody to do that kind of thing but the other thing I wanted to mention is that Penny's idea about smaller compost containers the perfect compost container is a five gallon container with a lid and I've seen that now many times a lot of people you know it it is available at the transfer station so if you have a if you have a sticker you can take your compost to the transfer station of course that means that you have to buy a sticker but um but yeah um you know my bin is like a 50 gallon bin I could never fill it up ever if I ever wanted to I could have like three weddings and still not fill it up so my my uh my uh I actually did my my son is going to have a wedding and we're going to fill up the bin but uh yeah my daughter has a five gallon container and she just brings it to me and I put it in my bin so I could probably do all the neighbors too if any of you want to put your compost in my bin you're welcome to really there's enough room I just wanted to say one thing that I got off of amazon and it's a bin about this big and this wide and I put it right next to my sink in the kitchen and I have a compost bags and I just fill it up every time and I just throw it in the trash so I've been composting that way all summer long except that it ends up in the trash right well it stays in its bag so I'm hopeful when they I hear that they go through the trash to take stuff out no they don't oh well good thought yeah but uh but there is the possibility if you're no matter where you live you can hire city compost to come and pick up and they just give you a five gallon container like that once a week to come pick it up and do you put it in a bag the composting bags no you just leave it like it is directly in your it's a plastic five gallon container you know you might want to like spray it out after you dump it right what I do I just spray it out and you put all vegetables no meat products or anything like that and just vegetables and stuff like that right no I put everything in oh you put me all food scraps meat eggs bread yeah compostable containers like if you have takeout containers you put them in there those things that are uh like they look like they're plastic but they're compostable and that that's through what trash plate USA recycling I'm going to call them tomorrow uh if you but it's only that's only residential so they don't oh but I live in Amherst Woods so yeah so you'd be able to get it okay just call them and that costs a $15 a month the city compost costs $15 a month this costs um I think it's 11 of additional dollars a month okay wow cool cool um so a couple folks we got some folks stacked up here so Tracy you raised your hand early and then Brenda will be come to you uh and then uh Jennifer um hi so I had a few thoughts um so one thing I was thinking about somebody had mentioned the transfer station um and I know for a while the transfer station did offer composting I don't know if they still do um Amy Amy says yes okay great and I guess um a related question with the transfer station is like the costs of the passes keep going up and um I think are they they're now $100 like for a year are there is there a subsidized pass option at all you know for low-income people I mean maybe that could be there isn't currently I mean maybe that could be something that town could explore the other thing is what the transfer station is if you're a resident and like for example you're doing a clean out or something that I don't think they offer like passes that aren't for a whole year right so that um like if you just need like a week pass or something or I mean so what happens is if you're doing a clean out and you don't want to pay the hundred dollars then you end up I mean it doesn't end up getting recycled or you know reused or whatever as well as it could um and also right with COVID too like one reason I go to the transfer station a lot is because of like the free area like the take it or leave it area and of course that's closed with COVID um on the composting side I was thinking about partnerships with farmers and other agricultural people like for example you know there are farming there are farms that do collect people's compost or leaves or you know some people advertise that they want everybody's Christmas trees or whatever so there are some possibilities there um and maybe there could be some like formalized partnerships maybe working you know with the agricultural commission or something um the other thing was that so I mean in Amherst I mean I lived in Amherst now 20 years and it's always seemed a little confusing to me that all of the hauling it's all private and like on our street we used to have like three different sets of garbage trucks and recycling trucks I come down our street every week so USA recycling USA took over a bunch of the hauling now from Amherst trucking and so now they are doing they're doing trash every week by recycling every other week so they gave everybody giant bins which my family actually fills it up but it also is just really energy and efficient so like so for example say 80 percent of the people on my street they all have the trash pickup on Monday's but then people who moved to the neighborhood at a different time they have the trash pickup on a different day you know and when there were the three haulers like every hauler would be on basically every street every week and there's definitely some room for in terms of like fossil fuel consumption I would hope that there would be some better ways of doing it so anyway great well thanks Jane and I well and I just I'm more I mean I thank you for saying those things Tracy um you know I I will say I'm here to most of the time just listen because you know I don't necessarily want to sway conversations with oh we talked about this sort of things um because I think all these ideas are great and a lot of them have been talked about specifically about the trash hauling I will say that you know at public works we're having that conversation a lot because we certainly feel the same way you do about the inefficiency of multiple haulers coming through and then when USA all the sudden you know when all these things condensed down into one company then you know they kind of have a monopoly and initially the private hauler some of it was you know getting local businesses uh or supporting local businesses I don't know that that was a driving cause but I know that that's at least part of the conversation and and it's no longer a local business and so um I just want to thank you for that and certainly you know we we welcome those comments in this report because you know that would support something that we're in favor of but you know at times you know at least it's not it's not moving forward or you know the conversation we're just not ready to have that yet but um I think that's great thanks Amy yeah and this sort of that's sort of the ideas to forward things so Brenda you've been very patient so this is where my passion lies about you know getting to zero waste I'm trying to do it my own lifestyle um so um let's see so recycling is really the last thing to think about doing as uh some may know uh China's not taking our crap anymore and so most most of the stuff is going into the trash anyways plastic is really not worth anything and it is so confusing you're never going to figure out like what's recyclable what's not because mostly we're not it's a sad fact but when you're buying something it's mostly going into the trash so the aluminum and the glass that stuff is still valuable so putting bands in place and ordinances in place Northampton just today is putting forth banning the styrofoam banning the bags banning the plastic bags banning single-use plastic so that's you know waving a stick I guess is how things how you know things kind of work so those are are some really things to consider compost um as someone mentioned um a half a ton a week is banned from going into the landfill from restaurants I'm sorry it's at one ton I think it is it's going to be dropped in half residences pretty soon we're running out of places to put our stuff and so pretty soon we're not going to be allowed to put food scraps into there so making that yeah easy for everybody to to do at home um yeah the idea about having a monopoly on the hollers so maybe with the town is kind of you know have the contract with them and then therefore determine the contract and say you gotta compost you gotta do this you gotta do that you gotta you know have recycling every week and the trash every other week I mean what kind of a message is that to say we're picking up your trash every week but only recycling every other so that's and then you know all this stuff is being looked at by another committee that I'm on so that's what I got to say all right thank you Brenda that was that was a lot to say and and the idea of transforming what we're doing to really like how we live and how the town operates and how other organizations operate uh into uh how ways that really don't generate trash uh or generate trash in a way that gets used by directly by something else or you know this is these these are key thoughts about how to actually move this process forward and you know we want to do it in a way we want to look at these things in ways that actually help people and help your lives to be better and easier uh yeah because you can't so the one thing I'm going to say is we're sort of aiming to try and go ahead and finish up around six uh so we'll kind of wind it down a little bit uh but that doesn't mean we have to stop right now uh because you can't go ahead yeah I just wanted to make sure Jennifer had had her hand up as well oh okay great yeah Jennifer thank you thank you um so I don't know enough about composting I think I watched a family member do it for whatever amount of time when I was like in high school and went to go over there where they just had like this pile and everything just kind of went into the pile um but I'm a little bit curious like if you live on a third floor how does that work for composting um are like do you have little containers that because I know Penny said that she had like a little bag in a container like can you use one of those is Rob trying to tell me that you use that I think that's what Rob is trying to say so what you're saying and then as you would take out your by the way those are those are also yogurt containers and I I mean I've got thousands of these the farm is here where I am right now and I I bring them up to Amherst when I travel back and forth and they're very effective for storing beans and sunflower seeds and you know one a few I can bring them to you because I never know what to do at the end of the day um so I and and so part of me I need to learn more about the whole process of composting but I was just curious how it works for folks who are on you know in stacked apartments or around third or fourth floors because we do have some complexes that have that and then um I think Brenda was commenting and I get a little frustrated when I go like to a favorite restaurant in Springfield called the Puerto Rican bakery and they give me all styrofoam containers right and then I have to bring them back here so it's great like that but it's like it has to be more than just Amherst in Northampton right because I go to Hadley and I get plastic bags from the grocery store there I end up using for doggy no-nos but it's still all just a mess right like like there's no consistency when you can go to the next town over and get takeout food and it comes yeah definitely regionalize it and bring your you can bring your own containers sometimes to places too I mean it's a short gap measure yeah I know but they load it up and that container so well and kids don't bother me but I mean I have a I have a related comment is I work at UMass and so UMass is pretty good about composting and all their materials are compostable but what happens is like a lot of people on the UMass campus get takeout from the UMass dining services and so on like the blue wall and everything on campus and then what they do is that they you know they go back to their offices or whatever and then they want to recycle or they want to compost the materials just like they could if they stayed in the at the blue wall because if you if you check out of the dining services there like there's this whole huge list of like stuff to compost and recycle and everything but what happens is that like all the whole rest of campus um has only recycle bins and they have actually because people try to put the compostable stuff in their recycle bins all the time they actually have these like big signs and most of the recycle bins like do not put your compostable clam shell in here so it's a little discouraging because it's like you start with the materials that could be composted and then there's no system for them and I do remember I don't know a few years ago that there was a compost thing in downtown Amherst like right near the Starbucks when it was a Starbucks like I don't I guess it was just a trial thing I don't know if we would try that more you know as people are eating out like if people are eating outside at restaurants and stuff more like if there could be like one or two of those and you could actually hear it like crushing and compost I don't know so I'm sorry to interrupt I just wanted to share that because we've reached six o'clock some people are going to have to start leaving and I I don't want us to have too much more conversation without having everyone present Penny did apologize she has an obligation with her kiddo so yeah just wanted to bear that in mind yeah so that's that's great thank you Kazika and so what I was thinking is that we might close with sort of if you have a sort of final comment on sort of the the three different topics that we've been talking about and and it's something that hasn't been said that would be great if you want to make that and then we'll sort of wrap it up and you can unmute yourself and go ahead yes Stephanie Jim's yeah I just want to respond to Tracy those units were big-bellied trash compactors and they were something that we were able to purchase with grant funding we had two of them and then they broke and then the company who makes them decided to only rent them so you couldn't purchase them anymore and they were pretty expensive and because they also had some problems we just didn't think they were as effective you know it wasn't necessarily worth paying the money for them it might be something that we look into again at some point but at least at the way things stood in the time that we looked at it it didn't really make sense for us to financially do that yeah that makes a lot of sense Stephanie and you know what's what I think is interesting in this conversation is that there's so much desire to figure out how to make something make different things work to do composting at a pretty big scale and that's an interesting outcome of this conversation where it's a lot of desire here and and we don't know exactly what the roots are we've tried some Stephanie said we've tried a few other folks have tried a few okay we still have the desire is still there which is fantastic yes i just want to add that was a trash compactor it wasn't a composter or a recycling unit in fact they had separate recycling units that you could purchase along with the compactor because people were putting the recyclables in the trash compactor so just you know it still wasn't necessarily an easy downtown way to deal with compost yeah um uh great anybody else uh so Amy you want to talk and then Rob and I I'm going to circle back on the education piece um and especially what Stephanie said just jogged a memory that um even the trash cans that we have downtown and some of those are recycles and we do everything we can to label them as such and I'm sure everyone on this call is very diligent about putting recycling in the recycling and trash in the trash but there's others in the community that aren't as diligent or maybe they don't notice the the signs and it's just the most convenient place um but we end up when we do our collection of trash downtown we end up having to take a lot of the what was in the recycle bin and putting it in trash and that's always a shame sometimes we have a one of our workers who is willing to literally pick through um which isn't quite in her you know it's not in her job description it's pretty gross but she's willing to do that because she cares that much um but it's it's also a hard ask so you know I more throw it out as you know if people have ideas on how to educate or label or do something that makes it more obvious so that people do use these things correctly because that's all that's what we all want yeah awesome thanks Amy uh Rob you want to jump in much as I'd like to continue talking about compost uh because I'd make quite a lot of it and it's these these one quart younger containers mostly of rather things but you know days worth of compost fills two or three of these and goes right out to the compost spot but but I like to go back to uh paths and desire lines so for about 30 years I've been you know looking at this uh the primary valley is someone involved in bicycle path planning walking path planning whatever um you know the swift connector the swift way was probably the primary one years ago and that's why it's there it was a way to connect to the university and the rail trail and I think the ones that remain that are of high priority there's one more that's essentially entirely on the UMass campus but with north village having possibly a completely different incarnation it's not clear if that's still going to be a high priority but for more than 20 years connecting north village maybe almost 30 years the university by a walking path perhaps closer to the mill river has been a desire line but the university has been unwilling to go there either for safety reasons or for the investment reasons and clearly the one that we were talking about earlier that I guess Stephanie pointed out that Dave and forget was it Elsie Fetterman or it's one of the Fettermans I don't know which generation but we met about five years ago when the Nordic Rail Trail Committee was still still active and we're hoping that as the rail trail was completely fine then a nice connection one of the goals of a non-profit that I'm actually the president of it's called Nordic Network that compasses actually entire Commonwealth now is to try to create connections to the mass central rail trail which runs from Boston all the way to Northampton and the Nordic Rail Trail is one link in it and the biggest desire line is clearly that path from East Hadley Road area cutting across the fields there in Hadley possibly some other route and I think that is probably now the most desirable new path to try to implement when there's either the willingness of landowners the funding to do the project you have to pay something to build these things and it'd be nice to have input from community that might use it which will include people like me just like to find out what alternatives would be workable because if people are going to be cutting across the shortcut on the cornfield it's probably going to be hard to do as an engineering project but if there's some buy-in from the community that wants to use it to to take a slight detour it's a very workable project I spent a lot of time thinking about it where to do it designing it in my mind designing out papers I hope Stephanie and Amy and whoever else is working with DPW and the conservation commission and can work with landowners that we can get that going because it's it's it's been on my radar for nearly 30 years also that that desire line that in the northeast village connection to to UMass it seemed to be the two most desirable desire lines uh handy handy oh yeah I just wanted to um kind of follow up on what somebody else said and with this whole regionalization kind of idea of you know Amherst has always been pioneers and in the front runners and and you know new initiatives and things and and how do we make these new policies or new programs appeal to the other communities so that you know have the buy-in or northampton buys in so you don't have a you know a bike share that has a huge gap in the middle of it and and I don't know the answer that that's what we we try to do is you know come up with these big regional initiatives so how do we first obviously how does Amherst implement it and then how do we make it appeal to you know not only your neighbors but more more of western massachusetts it's in in that way so you know air quality does actually improve or or our movement of waste improves and obviously our movement of people you know improves and and and better is everybody yeah great thanks andy awesome um how are we doing all right oh jennifer jump in okay i'm just going to say one more quick thing so the amherst survival center at least has a really good attempt at composting recycling and trash i don't know who's been there or not but i don't it's there i mean at least they're they're making that attempt to to have it done and i so yeah and go and volunteer for the day and see how they do it i don't know that's a great idea uh that's awesome thanks uh thanks a ton um so stefanie you uh yeah i was just gonna very very quickly say laura had to um jump off because she had young children who needed her attention so um yeah and i think other folks are probably needing to wrap up so um we're just at about around the time that we started so it's been you know almost a full two hours now so great well i think that's a great uh call for us to for us first to say thank you for participating uh and uh we have a full set of notes um and you will see some of them and uh we will be having our next meeting in about a month as soon as we get to get the time set uh we'll send it out to everybody and make sure it works uh and uh really really appreciate everybody's time today and uh doing homework and all of those things so thank you very much uh anybody else no good all right thanks a ton thank you everybody