 expanding the economic base, diversifying the economic base, encouraging vitality in downtown. And many of these are taken from our master plan but adapted, affordable and workforce housing. Is it contributing to a workforce housing, community and quality of life, especially the most vulnerable residents? So is this proposal going to contribute to the quality of life? And then the second criteria was urgency, like how urgent a project is and what's at stake if you don't do it? That's something like what manager was saying. So not only looking at how it is but if you don't do this or don't do anything, what is a consequence? And then we can prioritize based on importance and urgency and the last is resources. What are the resources needed to complete the project, the funding, staff time, external consultants, other committees, nonprofits. So those would be the criteria that I think are important when we thank you. I'm hearing some similarities in many of these themes. One of my strategies is effectively lobby the state for better funding based on the state property and the other higher ed institutions in the town. You all have mentioned the same things more articulately. Sort of reaching out to others to help pay for us. Again federal loans so to promote the home ownership opportunities that many people have already mentioned. And then my third was that we have a sustainable reparation program which means that it is it can grow and build on itself over time. So it's not a one-time thing. Let's see some of the criteria before someone brings something forward to actually weigh the actions and actually try to write down for themselves what the pros and cons would be of that activity, that action, that motion so that you think through, I think through whoever thinks through it ahead of time and understand that there may be some opportunity for improvement when you discover that that may be more cons than you originally thought in your excitement. Thank you. So mine was I had a how do we achieve looking at our community or having more of a global vision and how do we relate to the community. So one was understanding as probably most of us do that we are in a global community and just the realities of such and also with consistency. Some of us have been shocked if we seen like that how many residents actually do live in poverty or have to make ends meet and that was shocking to a lot of us and it's always been and hopefully will not always be but it's just a real reality and you know consistency around that like if for instance if $100 is a big savings then $100 is a big increase you know it goes both ways. Things like you know for instance with with housing I really appreciate all of the comments that I've heard about housing you know gentrification is real here like it is everywhere else we have you know areas that people you know before no one wanted to be and only those that were considered lesser than would be and now these are areas people want to be you know and there's you know issues around what kind of housing can go in this type of place or so I think like everything else turning going from a dream to a goal how do you get there how do you get from point A to point B is also you know having a plan so doing that together would require a lot less of you know I want and more we will achieve and you know really having to pull upon all of our individual strengths and we'd have to really know what they are rather than assuming what they are and being realistic about those priorities so thank you so starting with some actionable strategies it goes back first one goes back to what I think a number of other people have said that we need to secure the funding from state and federal government and from our higher education partners to achieve what we need to achieve as a community to serve all including people connected with the colleges and university and our residents who are not connected to the college and universities so that we are a thriving community that meets all needs that are identified for those groups the second thing is and this is um just a recognition that what does set Amherst apart from other communities and what sets us apart from other communities is the fact that we have a university and two highly respected colleges and that we need to accept that their presence is what makes us not just any other town in massachusetts or new england but something that is really unique and special and so we need to under to establish a common vision with the university and the colleges about a community that enables residents and institutions to thrive and to support each other and I think we need to encourage ourselves and our community to move away from rhetoric that is a blame or tries to place place barriers between us and our institutions and the third one is to continue to develop mechanisms that find out what the needs and desires are of our residents and the way for them to help us to set the priorities because we represent them and we represent our residents and we need to incorporate them in our prioritization process so obviously a criteria is going to be what would achieve those goals but then i'll list some other or choose those strategies but i'll set some other priorities just three or four quick ones will the effort develop the re is this an effort that will develop resources that enable us to achieve our goals and strategies are we focusing on things that we can accomplish is a municipality can we assure that the financial and time resources required to achieve a strategy are consistent with the benefits and the fourth is will the strategy advance our master plan our climate and action our climate action plan and our diversity equity and inclusion it feels good to follow you andy because we have some similarities um there are lots of things i could agree to but i think i i just want to uh state one if we want to change things we really need to take diversity seriously and that means many things uh and one of those things is finding creative collaborations um and that can be as simple as uh the rec department um director meeting with a counselor or two counselors about um seeds that would build eventually to a youth empowerment center what can we have now what can we create now not the final thing because we're not there but what can we create now uh andy i think it was you who said a common vision um for me a common vision means i need to find commonality with all the residents in town that means i have to make students uh part of that process both high school probably elementary school kids too because they're incredible with i in terms of ideas but uh our college students both undergraduate and graduate need to be involved in town committees and town processes but i want to sit very closely on on the on idea of creating and this is something we can do now community dialogues that are a little bit different than how we do it and i'm going to jump to the creation of the mobile market because that it hit um so many important issues number one it was um people who were uh facing food insecurity were invited to gather around a meal on a regular basis and begin to talk about their needs but they weren't the only ones there the other people who were there were some other members of amherst both by pock and non by pock people who weren't facing food insecurity so there was a coming together there were homeless people there that i knew from volunteering at the survival center everyone was there to share a meal and they began talking about the issues that they were facing and through the looking at that they began to create a structure that eventually evolved into the mobile market where members of this community were even hired by the market to help run it and organize it that there was connection with local farmers there were students involved in this so that's a different way how many times have we offered a meal or gone to a community because the start of that and the invitation to the meal went to the apartment complexes on east hadley road where people were who might have this need and years ago lin and i you know had failed in some ways but we were we engaged the community with support from the staff around moving the dpw to um off um sydney street i think stanley street and it failed but it didn't fail in terms of building community and building uh bridges between the the people who regularly talk and we all know who they are and in town uh around any issue and people who don't regularly talk and and if we're gonna create a real community then we have to see the humanness of each person if we had uh dialogue sessions with students maybe they could begin to understand some of the problems that neighborhoods face we don't do that yeah we do in some ways in terms of staff in a community you know bill larry and you know but we don't reach out without having some um predetermined idea of how this meeting should go or what should come out of it and what i'm proposing is an ability to to have a dialogue where we don't know what the result would be and i think that's scary for most of us um you know well there are lots of things here but i think that we need to change our idea what uh inclusivity is what diversity is um what equity is and okay we have less than five minutes so i'm gonna try and go fast no um so i maybe a big rubric for me is do our actions and our policies and setting priorities does it help to advance sustaining and expanding our permanent year-round population the universities in the colleges will ensure that which is an integral part of our community that we have college and university students but i think if we look at that we want to have a between the two humps and i guess the second hump including retirees as well that this be a welcoming place for for me right for us to continue to live and be able to afford to live in but you know when we're looking at expanding and sustaining our year-round population and we get to um you know we need to build schools we a senior center a youth center a vibrant downtown that all falls within that um and can taxes be at a level that people can afford to live here can we provide um rental and home ownership opportunities for people that will you know are here and want to stay here for years and i think you know if that is how we approach zoning to me that would be very helpful um i don't think that all changes are changes for the better so i'm always concerned what we need we we need to do something no we need to do something that helps us achieve the goals that we want to achieve and not just have change and i think part of supporting all the resources schools community center what we want for our community without driving we don't want changes that drive people out of town as certainly as it becomes more expensive to live here and as you know we're going to lose population and i in addition to federal state and the support that has been um others have articulated i think the pilots and the strategic agreements with the university and um amherst college are key i went to college in a neighboring state they set up a ten million dollar endowment for the public schools in that city and i don't see why we can't have that here in amherst okay starting with criteria um some of the criteria that we sent in advance uh when i was thinking through some of those questions um it it really was sort of a methodical way to apply a lens um and then in one of our retreat planning meetings um it came up that we also have like for example a couple counselors i think are working on access to reproductive care by law around that and it got me thinking about the difference between what we stand for and what we stand on and how as a council we have um political and social values and how as a community we have political and social values and so how do we move those things forward versus our streets that need to be and our potholes and our sidewalks and all of the other things so i just wanted to think about it sort of loosened my mind up to thinking about criteria and considering what we stand for and what we stand on so that we can balance those priorities that we have and then in terms of priorities um i was hoping that we would come away from here with some sort of sense of what priorities that are on this list so i do wonder if we need to have a follow-up working session to sort of take the priming that we did here and then actually get to these uh important measures that are already in play and consider what we want to focus the rest of our term on um to move those things forward all right so we're going to end on time uh i i promise that we would um explore the five senses and we're um down to the last sense which is taste and i'm going to um ask um to either take and if you don't like chocolate i apologize but take one anyway because there's there's a there is a method to my madness so there's dark and milk chocolate going around so i just want to summarize what i heard which i think um will help guide you towards the next section which is will be sort of determining what those specific priorities that you want to work on and so i heard from that round that you want to be informed by your goals and your master plan that you want to look at the urgency of the issue you're going to examine your authority you're going to review the staff time you want to be consistent about the actions that you take you want your plan to be collaborative achievable that it reflects the needs of the community you want to exhibit fiscal responsibility you want to emphasize diversity equity and inclusion you want to think about and emphasize the needs of the year-round population here and recognize i will say that the council has an obligation beyond just the legal obligation so that i think as michelle's point around what the council stands for and stands on so all of those things came out from that round and they're recorded here and we'll be sharing with them with you as you move forward into uh the next stage which is really sort of making concrete decisions about your priorities i think that i hope you will agree with me that you had a really fruitful day and that it really met the needs that you had or what we envisioned that you really needed the time to spend time with those rules and motions so if you opened your dove chocolate there's a little message there and we're just going to end with that little message so has someone oh i i also kept track of the list of criteria both that folks sent ahead of time and during the meeting so we were hoping that this would be a tool that you can use to start thinking about when we're making referrals and so forth what criteria are we using so i'll be sharing that as well so i know that there's chocolate has been open but we'll just live love it's your call hands are meant to be held mind's on every moment matters including this one i didn't take a chocolate live your life every day with no regrets it'll be worth it your vibe attracts your tribe keep life moving forward looking backward is only for time travelers i keep getting the same one as other people um i had the same one as Dorothy live your life every day with no regrets it'll be worth it i have a write a letter to a friend and send chocolate with it your vibe attracts your tribe so thank you guys very very much and i hope you found it i have to formally adjourn the meeting but before i want to start by thanking our two facilitators yeah wait do you see it i'm gonna let them decide if they want to swap but this is for paul for being the runner for today and for all the basketball games you still have to watch so and also i want to thank michelle for making us do this thanks you're adjourned