 This program is brought to you by Cable Franchise V's and generous donations from viewers like you. We are allowed to have this virtual town council meeting based on Governor Baker's orders of March 12th, suspending certain provisions of the open meeting hall. We have a quorum of the council here and therefore I'm going to call the meeting to order at 632. I will call upon each councillor and ask them to unmute their mic and say present. Just know we can hear them and they can hear us. And then please mute the mic again. So let's begin with Alyssa Brewer. Present. Pat DeAngelo. Present. Darcy DeMont. Present. This one is present. Dorothy Pan. Present. Evan Ross. Present. George Ryan. Present. Kathy Shane. Here. Steve Schreiber. Here. Andy Steinberg. Present. Sarah Schwartz. Present. And Shalini Balmille. Present. Okay. This meeting includes audio video and is available live on Amherst media. It is also being recorded. There is no chat room. If you have technical issues, please make sure that you let Athena and me know. And we'll make note of that and determine at that point what we do with the meeting. Lindsay McConnell is taking minutes for the council and Athena is managing zoom. I want to quickly go to the announcements and just point out two in particular. The first is that there will be two public forums regarding Palmyra village. These will be held by the town services and outreach committee. Although I understand we do have a quorum of the council who will be present for both of those. Those are on Thursday, March 5th, 25th at six o'clock. March 27th at two o'clock. And I also want to mention that in the agenda today, we will be on this agenda. We will be passing a resolution with regard to Tibet day. And they will be doing a flag raising ceremony on March 10th in front of town hall at 10 o'clock a.m. And then they will do and be doing their traditional March. To North Hampton. Thank you for the announcements. And we have no hearings and so we're going to move to public comment. I do want to point out there has been a change in the agenda and that we are not doing the North common tonight at all. And when we talk about that, we'll talk about it later. But meantime, I'm asking the audience to please raise your hand if you would like to make public comment. Alex Kent. Let me just say that for public comment at this time, the council will not respond. You have up to three minutes. And we will not engage in dialogue. So Alex, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. My name is Alex Kent. I live at 83 North prospect street downtown resident for almost 20 years. And I would like to voice my strong support for retaining. And I would like to make a quick note and in the zoning bylaws. In the interest of preserving. Our. Downtown neighborhoods and protecting them from. Being overrun by. Landlord owned absentee landlord owned properties that you're primarily be for students. And I appreciate that very much. They also appreciate the efforts by our counselor. Dorothy. I'm on behalf of. Maintaining a healthy and balanced approach to development. Thank you very much. Alex, thank you for your comments. Are there other people who would like to make public comment? Let me give it just a minute since we're just starting. Chris riddle, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Chris riddle. Strong street. Amherst. I just need, I wish to hope to speak to the non binding resolution. I don't know if I need to say that during the public comment period or not. We do because we're not going to, it's on the consent agenda. So we don't have a separate. Agenda item. In with all the rest of them. So please go ahead, Chris. Okay. We support the, the, we, I'm talking about myself and police. We're here representing. A group called building electrification acceleration. Sponsored by the Rocky mountain Institute. Which. Is. Working on. Basically a spy. Aspires to cause. The. The Commonwealth to be largely electrified. Over the course of between now and 2050. And this resolution is asking. A number of things of the state. It's. I don't know. I think we can probably, I have a, I could talk about if asked when, when it comes up, what, what is the purpose of it? The basic purpose is to. Encourage the state to pass legislation or. Or administration actions that would allow. Towns and cities to. Set standards for building construction. That would, for instance, do what brook line did, which was. Natural gas can do natural gas collection. Connections in new buildings. We would like not, we don't have. The purpose of it is to allow towns and cities to. Set standards, which may be more rigorous. Or different from what's in the building code. And that was. And it turned out that in brook line, that the. That the resolution, which did pass there, which was to prohibit natural, new natural gas connections was. Was disallowed by more. Healy's office. Tony general's office. On the basis of. The preemption. Of that particular issue by the building code. And by the state and the gas code. We would like to have that. That's that issue. Relaxed. So the towns and cities, for instance, could. Require more rigorous energy performance. Then is in the building code and. And particularly to allow. To require buildings to be electrified rather than. Have fossil. So there are, there are several items on the, on the resolution, which was reviewed by the GOL a few days ago. And I'm happy to talk about the details if asked. Thank you, Chris. We appreciate your comment. It was another person who had their hand up. And they seemed to have taken it down. Are there any other people who would like to make public comment? Yes, Gina. Ethridge. Hi, yes. I live at two 53 Lincoln. We bought this house about two years ago. And I'd like to speak about footnote M. I am in strong up. I'm in strong up. Position of getting rid of it. And I do want to also just as the former speakers. I want to thank Dorothy Pam for bringing this to our attention. And also. Friends and neighbors in the area. I can tell you that. When my son became a graduate student here, we came up to visit and just fell in love with your town. We fell in love with the neighborhoods, with the people. And I'm happy to talk to you. We fell in love with your town. We fell in love with the neighborhoods, with the people. With the New England mindset. We're from Louisiana. I can also tell you that. We would be loath to completely relocate here. If footnote M were to be rescinded. And so I. Probably there are other people who would be like me also. I would be like me. I would be like me. I would be like me. I would be like me. I would be like me. I would not move here. Not by. Into your historic district. If it were to change its character. Thank you. And we do like your town very much, which we're considering our town. Thank you. You know, thank you for your comment and welcome to Amherst. Are there any other public comments at this time? Yes, Karen winter, you had your hand up earlier. Please enter the room. State your name and where you live. Okay. Yeah. Here we go. So I want to repeat that. My husband. Wanted to say something. We both live at 14 Elm Street. His name is. After hold it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Hello, I'm, I'm hanging. I'm using time's computer. So I have to find out how to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. These projects. When you know, I listened last time when we had the meeting. The projects are really large. So even for individual. It will require. Some financial group to come in and perform that. You know, buildings and all of that. So I wonder what's in. The profits. The profit. And it will be. Financially when the take over a lot. And put lots of apartments in there. The, the owner of the profit. And as a result. The rent. The rent in these units. Will be fairly large. I mean, there's. You know, it sums up. I don't know whether we have accounting. the rent will be large and we know that in this case students will come in and maybe share a three-bedroom apartment and pay a substantial fee and because of that they can afford an extensive apartment in in in these new developments but it does some there are some consequences if there are three students coming they will have three cars so we would need space for three cars so that's probably not enough maybe there's one car on the building lot and two cars on the road not just take a single lot and have five condominiums on that that gives already you know five cars inside and and eight or ten cars out on the street so pretty soon there will be a huge parking competition in our neighborhood and everything will be changed currently the houses have garages so the cars are disappearing and outside people can park but with these proposed plans there will be a complete change in the in the neighborhood uh because of these needs to sum it up students will come in because of financial uh constraints of these developments and uh and lots of cars will be flooded flooding in our neighborhood so thank you thank you for your comment uh Ann Burton please enter the room state your name and where you live Ann you need to unmute there you go and I am unmuted okay this is Ann Burton I'm a ten dynasty um I think really a decision has to be made as to what you want the character of town to include if you want the character of town to include individual domiciles you have to make it possible for those individual domiciles to stay if they are crowded with a lot next door having built condos or on either side of them the home is no longer saleable as a private home or there's really there may be a market to turn it into more student housing but this is a domino effect and one really has to look at the future if you remove footnote M now you're basically um charting the future of what all of the blocks that have private homes are and I have to tell you if that begins I will sell before it's too late and get out so I think you really have to consider the domino effect of do anything that you decide to do thank you thank you for your comment Ann are there any other comments at this time right uh thank you then we're going to go on we're going to go to the consent agenda would you please put the consent agenda up on the screen the following items were selected because they were considered to be routine and it was reasonable to expect they would pass with no controversy to remove an item um please let me know as we get to that item or as we finish the list before we vote question remove an item does not require a second the motion is as follow as and I'll be looking for a second to move the following items and the printed motions they're under and approve those items as a single unit to suspend town council rules or procedure for agenda item 8c1 public way request farmers market that would allow us to vote on this tonight if it's not referred 6a adoption of the 2021 to bet day proclamation 6b adopt adoption of resolution calling for swift just building decarbonization in the commonwealth adopt 8d adoption of public way policy revisions and 11a approval of minutes february 22nd 2021 regular town council meeting minutes uh I see a hand so I'm going to ask Kathy yeah I I have a question Lynn I have two very minor changes to request in the minutes that are more like edits should I therefore ask that it be removed so I can say what those two changes are you do have to do it that way yes okay so those minutes will be later on in the agenda is there a second to the motion minus the minutes and I think okay uh hannity and steinberg both seconded any further discussion then we will begin shallony yes drawer yes thanks alissa uh patie angeles i why is he juman yes lindy greece president i mandy joe hannity hi dorthy pan i evan ross hi george ryan darn mechanical error yes uh kathy shane yes beef schreiber yes andy steinberg yes fair schwarz hi excellent thank you um we are now going to go on to there are no presentations tonight uh and we are not doing the north common because the materials were not ready and if they had been you would have received them far enough in advance and they weren't so you didn't wayfinding signs darcy let's start with a town tso report this item by the way came to the council in the past it was referred to tso and uh now i'm asking darcy to give us the report from tso and then we will move to a motion and vote okay um tso um on february 25th voted unanimously to recommend town council approve the town manager's request to place the wayfinding signs in the public way um and um there were some issues that the counselors had brought up at the previous town council meeting um which we did look at and try to get an answer about those things um so um paul uh described it in his report that he that was in the packet for a little while his his is a little bit more extensive than my um my report but um i don't think we need to go into all the reasons right now uh if you read the report you will have seen those reasons unless you think that's a good idea right now nope i'm gonna ask if there's any questions okay seeing no questions then we will move to the motion and the vote and the motion is to approve the wayfinding sign system and to allow for their placement in the public way is there a second second second um george ryan made the second discussion okay seeing none we'll start with elissa brewer hi pat the angeles hi barcy demont um i think i'm going to abstain and i i had my hand up to mention why but too late now i guess i'm sorry i didn't see your hand dursey uh yeah i i i i only look at the at the list sorry uh greece murr is an i hanakie hi hi george pamm hi evan ross hi george ryan yes pat cathin shane yes steve schreiber hi hi zaynberg hi sarah schwarz hi shallie belmeld yes the vote is 12 in favor no abstain no no opposition one abstention and everyone is present so it's 12-0-1-0 okay uh we are going to move on to the public way request from the farmers market and uh i'm going to ask paul as to who is presenting but i also want to welcome david machowski and john spinetti thank you thank you paul so thank you so this is um last year in the farmers market representatives can um record on this uh the farmers market had a very successful season by locating on the town common itself this year they would like to do the same thing as in prior years we do not see the pandemic is lifting enough to have a town common that's back to normal in terms of the number of events going on so pretty much the same proposal as last year some modifications in terms of uh parking that are are put into place but otherwise um you know the the same thing uh as last year that you approved the one thing we would ask is if things do change if suddenly everybody is vaccinated and we can make adjustments that we can make that you give some leeway to the town manager to make adjustments based on advice from the health director and the building commissioner and i believe i believe this is the 49th year of the farmers market if you can believe that um north please go ahead national question um i believe you're going to have the same premise of you enter a line and you go around but you can't go back is that correct that's the plan yes i'm just hoping that there's some way observing perhaps social distancing that would allow you to go back in some reasonable way because i found that really just against my how i shop at a farmers market i i like to take a little look and then i think oh and i want to go back and yet having to go your way slowly all the way around it gets kind of hard um so if there's some way to do that without it um risking health that would be nice and you have your hand up yes thank you um my questions regarding parking um the there are 32 vendors but there are being reserved 36 parking spots um so i was wondering whether we can read well it's 37 if you count the drop off curbside pickup one but i'm not really counting that one um is there a way to reduce those number of parking spots to one per vendor or is there is is it because they don't all fit in the spot so they need that extra space on each side um why why did we choose to have more spots reserved than numbers of vendors i guess is my the basic question i have the vehicles in spaces don't necessarily correlate so sometimes especially when there's a truck and trailer they take up space and a half or two so we need that sort of constant contra teenage elasticity we don't use all the spaces all the time but sometimes we use them plus so it depends on which vendors are there on a given Saturday and which vehicles they choose to bring and how much produce they have some of the vendors use smaller vehicles in the fall when the uh when the crops are lower but generally it's um it's not a one for one in the spacing sadly thank you for that can i have a follow-up question sure um so i know we we cover the meters for reservation um i i truly don't know i assume when once the vendors are set up those spaces are generally set for how many you need for a vendor so if i guess my question is if they're not needed in a particular week is there a way to sort of uncover them for use for the public during that part if we find that you know in a fall as you said um mr mikowski that that there might be smaller and so there might be less used to instead of leaving them vacant a way we can make sure people can park in them and utilize our parking as best as possible actually we did that last year and we'll do it again this year as the vendors start to wean out at the end of the season and wind down i push everything north on the common so we're moving the tents up and kind of consolidating them and i'm doing the same with parking because they're parking adjacent to their tents so after say mid september the spacing usage is a little less needy so we tend to open it up towards the south end of the common on that end so i would imagine there'll be a few spaces opening up as we go down towards the end of the season and yeah that's easy enough to do if i don't have people showing up as it were thank you are there other questions mendigo nope okay are there any other questions from the council given that this was so similar to last year we have a motion to go ahead and improve we've already made sure that we can do that tonight mendigo you have you have one other one that wasn't written down and it relates to actually next year maybe not this year um which is it sounds like you got the farmers market was very happy on the common and so is this something that the farmers market is going to be looking to continue even after covid is over and if so how do we plan for that i think that's more of a question to kind of know but it's it's at this point it's kind of hard to say man i think that's a bit of fortune telling i don't know yet i mean you know to be on the common was very nice i think it was a great presentation for the town and it's nice to kind of bring the market back to its agrarian sort of roots as it were um it's a lot more work for us though frankly too because we're cordoning off this whole thing and patrolling it and making sure that people are not breaching the cordon and hopefully you know to to address Dorothy's question about unidirectional traffic we have to make sure that people are spacing themselves out and all going in the same direction i do want to say just to address Dorothy's question um last year as the season sort of worn on wore on and we kind of got into our groove we started to allow people to work their way back and opened up our central line as it were if you've been out there and seen the logistics um luckily the common is beautiful and it's very spacious so even if we have numbers out there we can easily keep people distance um the distancing is not an issue on the common because it's the size of a soccer pitch we have plenty of space out there i believe john spinetti has a chance yes um the common i want to make is that the common is great but last year was a very unusual year weather wise it was a dryish year on record i think an inch and a half of rain was recorded during the entire summer months and if we have one muddy occasion that would be a disaster in itself but the chances of having more than one is fairly high i don't want to be able to predict how many but if that were to happen um then our contingencies would have to be we have to revert back to spring street a lot so i think babe maybe we should be looking to going back to the spring street a lot and i also hate to to change the number on the number of years we've been there when when the town manager said it was 49 years this is actually over landmark 50th year um yes i'm very happy about i'm pleased i'm very happy that we've been there for that entire duration successfully and what i'm looking forward to is is saying that over that entire 50 years we have never canceled a single farmers market we have never missed a single day and i can see rain days muddy common etc making it impassable and unusable and therefore start the beginning of the cancellation of markets the parking lot drains very nicely spring street is pitched quite a bit and as a result we can be out there and pretty much agility and thoughtfully we've never had to cancel so that's one of the inputs i'd like to add to the possibility of using the common for continuous years that is thank you hi are there any other questions from the council okay then the motion is as follows to approve the farmers farmers market long-term event use reservation of the town common south portion under town council policy regarding control and regulation the public ways and further to approve the reservation at no charge for vendor parking of the first 15 meters spaces parking spaces on the east side of south pleasant street originating at spring street moving south for college street and further to approve the reserve the reservation at no charge for customer curbside pickup only of the first one parking space on the west southwest portion of the parking lot to be clearly marked by the emmerced farmers market to accommodate the emmerced farmers market every single day and we have to be aware of that and we have to be aware of that and we have to be aware of that and we have to be aware of that farmers market to accommodate the emmerced farmers market every saturday beginning april 17 2021 and continuing through november 20th 2021 from 6 a.m to 2 30 p.m and further to require that the emmerced farmers market john spinetti market manager signed a written agreement applying with all operational guidelines set forth in the town manager memo may march 4th 2020 emmerced farmers market application and further to authorize the town manager continue to modify these operational guidelines through november 20th 2021 in response to the continuing cobit 19 state of emergency and other local concerns and additionally to allow the town manager to schedule concurrent use of the south portion of the town common for one day events is there a second okay is there any further discussion then seeing none i'm going to start with pat dantles hi garcy demont yes when greasmer's eyes and mandy joe hi bertha pan yes eddie hi george yes kathy yes steve hi andy all right sarah no jenny yes elissa hi okay the vote is 12 in favor one opposed no abstentions in no absence 12 100 um okay we are now going to go on to amendments uh john and david thank you for joining us and i'll see you on april 17 thank you go out there great terrific take care thank you by now thank you uh amendments to town council rules of procedure rule 6.3.3 and 6.3.3 and we have a screen that shows motion as we are actually making it and so we should put that up and i'll call on george ryan yeah i think if we can yeah with the slide in front of us we can see what gl is recommending here um that might need to be a little bit bigger is that okay everybody can see it okay what we decided to do we we hoped in the spirit of making this as clear as possible is break out d into two separate items um making it clear when counselors when they cannot that they shall not interrupt except for two reasons namely to raise a point of order or to raise a question of privilege so for instance if you can't hear someone or if if there's a slide on the screen and you can't see it um you're permitted to interrupt and say you know excuse me madam president i can't or speaker i can't see what you have or i can't hear you would be to raise a question of privilege um and then e makes it clear that you shall not speak without recognition except as is stated in subsection d above or to doubt the presence of a quorum to call the previous question or to assert the charter right to postpone so um this was voted five zero and um the thought was that this was a bit clear and uh hopefully you'll agree uh are you placing that as a motion i'm willing to make it as a motion that we uh adopt 6.3 d um and e i think that it's actually the motion sheet so i shouldn't be making it up on the fly um if someone has the motion sheet in front of them that would be helpful to amend town council rules or procedures 6.3 point d by striking everything after the phrase point of order and replacing it with the phrase or to raise a question of privilege and to insert a new section 6.3 point e that reads counselor shall not speak without recognition except as in subsection d above to doubt the presence of a quorum or to call the previous question or to assert the charter right to postpone and to re-letter subsequent sections of rule 6.3 i think lin you missed the or the first or so after except as a subsection d above or to doubt i think hopefully that's what i have yes it is okay thank you lin thank you for reading it and i second that motion the one that's on the screen is the right one correct yes it is okay all right so the motion's been made in second listen thank you and i appreciate that um after i looked at this motion to a meeting ago not this past week but the previous meeting that um lin shared with george my concern about the idea of interrupting and not speaking with recognition and what those words mean in plain english and you managed to accommodate it in fewer words than i had suggested so yeah um so i'm fine with that what i'm not fine with is there's no discussion in any of the gl reports about why we are suddenly equating what i often refer to as the nuclear option which is the completely undemocratic charter right to postpone and i say nuclear option and completely undemocratic because calling the question is something that requires you call the question and then two-thirds of your colleagues have to agree that it's time to stop talking if you are allowed to interrupt the proceedings even if not interrupting a person to do the nuclear option you are preventing your colleagues from whom may in fact all be ready to act and you're saying nope what i think is more important than what 12 other people think there's not that option of the two-thirds there's not that automatic two-thirds vote so i don't know why this suddenly got worked in there because i don't equate those two things at all if there's calling the question requires a two-thirds vote of the body the nuclear option to postpone does not as written in the charter it does not say it does say it preempts other motions it does not say you can interrupt people in order to make it that you can interrupt the proceedings in order to make it it says nothing about not doing it without recognition or maybe i had too many double negatives in there so i'm very uncomfortable with including what i think is a truly horrible provision in the charter in first place is now being given an even more privileged position than it currently has um then if i may um i think that the the sense was i mean there's nothing said because it was just understood perhaps mistakenly that this is just the right that you have um by the charter and it has been exercised on a number of occasions and all we wanted to make clear was that you can't interrupt a speaker to do that so if elissa were speaking i can't interrupt and say you know i exercise my right to postpone but we felt that since it is a right you have um you should have the right to exercise it while no one is speaking so for instance if you if you have this right and you're not recognized then it really isn't a right um so we felt that you shouldn't be allowed to do this by interrupting but you should be permitted to do it um when no one is speaking um and so that's why it was and we did make a special point of it but frankly because it seems to be a basic right that you have as a counselor um i you may not be happy with it i i'm i can't you know but it's a right you have and it has been exercised in the past and all we want to do is make clear that when you do exercise it um you need to you can do it without recognition and you have your hand yes um personally responsible was just said i i don't think that we've solved that problem it was just being discussed because if the first person who speaks makes a motion to call the previous question then it is on the floor without debate and there's no opportunity for the person who wants to raise as elissa calls it the nuclear option to do so but i also want to hearken back to the incident that happened when the motion was made to call a previous question before there was any discussion and that was having to do with a letter that was being proposed to send to the task force that's working on police issues in regard to certain issues we don't need to discuss but i was very upset about what happened and i think that there was at least one other counselor who at least that night shared the same thing because i wanted to raise a question actually just a suggestion to improve the wording for clarification for political purposes i was not really opposed to the to the letter being sent um but allowing somebody to interrupt without allowing any discussion and to make that motion that cuts off debate i think frustrates the purpose of this council in the charters intent and i don't think we're adopting a rule that solves that problem yeah could you put it back up on the screen again because um i both had the concern and he had and i i think the wording is odd because i'm not sure what it's trying to do um so the first d i understand um but counselors shall not speak without recognition does that mean i can speak without recognition if i want to a doubt so i can just blurt out that um i'm calling doubt the president i just call it out did you did you mean to say it yes yes if you you may call out you may interrupt a speaker and say i doubt madam president the presence of a quorum or you may um right okay so this is speaking without recognition is interrupting so you've just stated in a in a different way correct no i'm about no i'm sorry that's not that's not what i meant okay um what he allows you to do is to speak when no one else is speaking without being recognized formally so how do i do that do i just shout out no well yeah basically i mean we've we've done this in the past i mean we've had examples where in uh in the pauses between um one speaker and another someone has spoken um and it is allowed the the rule would allow them to to speak at that point they can't interrupt you kathy while you're speaking um but once you're done and before the next speaker is recognized this rule would allow you to do um do that in these particular cases okay because i think i'm sorry yeah no so i i i guess i understand that but i did have elissa's concern on why asserting a charter right to postpone and andy's concern of before we'd a word got out of anybody's mouth to even discuss something whether it was debate or not to call a question but i don't think these two address andy's concern at all well if i if i may lin and again just to respond to that i think we're conflating we're confusing a couple of different things here um the question of whether we should have a rule that requires there to be debate right um is a separate question it sounds like what andy would like and maybe kathy would like and maybe this body would like is a rule that says you can't call the question until there has been some discussion and certainly we could consider such a rule i think that's i would not agree with that but that's a possibility that's a different question um in other words uh that would be a special rule uh we felt i'm not sure everyone i can speak for the entire committee here but we felt that um you should be um if someone calls the question before there's been debate it goes immediately to the whole body and it's up to the whole body to decide if they wish to have debate on this topic and it's a super majority which is in fact what happened when it was exercised a while back um the body voted and a super majority agreed to move directly to a vote and it seems they should have that right you may not like it i may not like it but a super majority has decided that we should go to a vote directly we don't want to or need to i mean the reason you don't have to state any reason but you simply wish to move directly to a vote um you could have a rule which says that you can't do that that's not permitted you have to have some debate i think that's a mistake i think it should be allowed and it's up to the body as a whole to decide do they want to have debate or not we had a case in fact where the body as a super majority decided they wish to go right to a vote and i don't see why they can't decide that but that's a separate issue here we're just trying to i mean we could discuss this uh maybe even now and maybe decide send it back to gel and and demand that they come up with a rule for that i think that would be a mistake but here it's simply trying to make clear when you can um interrupt someone and when you can speak without recognition that's all we're trying to do um i'm gonna go on to Darcy yeah um i was part of the discussion on gel and um i basically made the same comment that um andy and kathy brought up that the you know i don't have any problem with the language that's being proposed um but i think that it doesn't address the problem and i i suggested that we have a new rule that basically states um that calling the question can't be used unless counselors have had the opportunity to discuss the issue at the same meeting um uh the the group did not choose to um entertain that um but i personally think that we should be doing that um because i i just don't i think it's not a good thing for even if it's a super majority to have a situation where you know some part of the council can prevent others from discussing a topic Steve's rubber with your hand yeah so yeah so i agree with all the people that are really skeptical about part e of this and actually i'm going to weigh in i'm skeptical about part d of this robert's rules of order is a really good document and we have it on our very first line of our rules is that we shall use robert's rules of order unless we don't is what it says so basically part d is very similar to a robert's rules of order says so why don't we just not say anything and just have someone that trust our confidence and our knowledge of robert's to guide us so i i'm not sure why we're adding chains to the snow tires when we're we're doing just fine the second part really bothers me because we just agree that i mean we agree that recognition is important we wait our turn i've been waiting my turn even though you know i um some people have actually spoken without recognition which is a little bit ironic so um i was going to call point of order but i thought that would be too meta so um so i think that um you have to wait your turn if you really really want to have those right to postpone you have to wait for the chair to call the president to call on you and that's just the way it is so i actually go back to uh councilor dumont's point for i can't remember what it was where she said she had her hand up and she wasn't called on that would have been a perfect place to yell out point of order or point of personal privilege you know i have my hand up you didn't call on me but i do think that there's order orderly nest to this it's all spelled out in robert's rules of order um i absolutely don't think that somebody should be blurting out i have the right to postpone or even i call the question until it's their turn so i want to make one other point so i voted yes um there was a we all keep talking about this the same person made the second and then called the question i voted yes so i know that bothered a lot of people and there was something that made me uncomfortable about having done that also so first of all we do have a consent agenda so if we felt that it you know if we really felt that it didn't need to be debated we could have just kept it on the consent agenda but the other thing is that i had to look up what the purpose of a second is so here's what i found out via google the purpose of second is basically confirming that at least two people on the body agree that a that a motion is worthy of debate so the first person that's proposed it the second person has agreed that it's worthy of debate so to me that seems now inappropriate that in the same breath someone can then say but i call the question so i think that you know i think the next person could certainly do that but i don't think it should be done by the same person so if we do have a role i could not find this in robert's rules of order that there should never be two actions by the same person like you should never be able to second and then use the nuclear option you know in the same breath or anything like that so you don't you should only be able to do one action per recognition if that makes any sense but i'm i'm not ready to vote yes on this so for those reasons one is i think that it's it's duplicates robert's rules where it's unnecessary to and then the other one is i don't believe that any of these are worthy of interrupting your colleagues thank you i want to talk about the charter right to postpone in nearly every instance we've used it on this council in the last two and a half years it has been done without recognition and that's because if you don't do it at a certain time you can't actually invoke it under the charter and so the charter the charter says the use of this right to postpone must be raised prior to or at the call by the presiding officer for a vote so if the provident presiding officer doesn't actually see a hand or we're on zoom might not see a hand or you might not hit the raise hand button soon enough or in a room might be looking the other way and starts calling the role and someone actually votes before it gets to you you've lost your charter right to do something not a rule right but a right under our constitutional the constitution of this town and that seems wrong and so in order to be able to fully fulfill what the charter says that it must be raised prior to or at the call by the presiding officer for a vote i think you have to allow someone to raise it without actually being recognized and so that's what this rule change is trying to do with that um the other ones you know in some sense i agree with steve that section d is completely um copying roberts rules it doesn't add to it it doesn't subtract from it but we've made a point in many of our rules to repeat roberts rules as a way of educating counselors and the public on what can be done without having to memorize a 500 page document or book um the other one doubt presence of a quorum uh was already in d um and you could actually interrupt and so we've actually toned down that one from interrupting to just not being recognized um and to call a previous question i think brookline does it without recognition it's a town meeting that does it without recognition um if there's a long line we already have 13 people if i finish and wanted to do it i have to wait six more people it looks like before i can do it um which is potentially in our current rules 18 minutes but who knows whether we're all ready to be done with a discussion um and so you it's almost a luck of the draw right now or where you got your hand up or when we're back in a meeting room when the presiding officer sees you put your hand up and if she remembers the order or not right um and that also doesn't seem fair so i think it's i think it's a good thing to have being able to call the previous question between speakers um as many people have said you need nine votes if all 13 people actually vote without abstentions you need nine you need a super majority that can be very difficult to get especially if it's a contentious issue so you know if you're concerned that we're going to stifle debate by this it then don't vote to actually vote no if it's called you know and then debate goes on um this is just trying to figure out how long you have to wait to actually call the question um i'm going to go on to Dorothy Pam who is not spoken yet and then we'll come back and i'm still seeing people who have kept their hands up and unless you take it down i'm assuming it's because you have something else you'd like to say so Dorothy you are the only person with your hand up who is not spoken yet thank you um i have a number of points i may not say them in the right order but to me this solution is worse than the problem i haven't come home from meetings and said oh my god they haven't followed robert's rules we were just an unruly bunch of people um i have been president of a number of organizations and i never got too deep into robert's rules i really believe much more in the quaker sense of the meeting i mean obviously we have to have some of the basic rules but when people get into these refined rules and i have been in clubs when they did this then it's got your games going on and i find i don't want to be there i don't want to be in that group so here we are we're in the third year of town council and people who are watch these meetings are supposed to think i could do that i could run for town council but if you make it sound like if you're not an expert in this and that or if your brain isn't thinking of the rules instead of what you're thinking about and what you want to say it's becoming uh it's intimidates people from wanting to be a participant in this form of government and that connects me to the next point so that i don't have to speak twice which is the two-minute rule i really don't see too many people speaking over two minutes i rarely do however somebody who's new or thinking of running would think am i polished enough to be able to get my thoughts in order so i could follow all these rules and then speak and never go over two minutes we're not a fancy british debating club we are a town government representing people residents and where we're supposed to bring their concerns together and try to deal with them as as mature adults so i don't think we need to get into all of these fine points and i certainly don't want to be involved in gotcha games so thank you i'm going to ask that we stick to the motion that's on the floor which is not the two-minute rule that will be a separate motion so i'm now circling back uh kathy you have your hand up you're muted thank you um i want to emphasize that i don't see the reason for this change um and so now that it's been explained to me i'm still not sure of why we're we're writing this additional detail into it because i don't perceive that we've had a problem and i do want to underscore the other point that's been made um steve made it with a can you second a motion and call a question at the same time i think the the issue of calling a question before we've had even three words of a discussion gets to what dorthy is what what dorthy was just talking about um you might just want to be clarifying a sentence and something to have had no discussion before we and the one time this happened i think it was to save time instead we had a really long discussion about calling a question um and why was it done that way and people but i just had a couple questions i wanted to ask about this or something so um this particular one doesn't do isn't talking about that but i am not sure why we're adding all these words i don't perceive that we've had a problem darcy i um i just didn't put my hand down thank you andy so um we've talked about this for a little bit i think that we get circling back to the point that's been made several times and that is that if you call the previous question and it's allowed before there's any discussion and you're not allowed to have a debate on the previous question there's never an opportunity for somebody to have a knowledgeable vote and calling previous question because nobody knows whether there's a minor point or a major point that is there they're just left with the having to make a snap decision as to whether this is so non-controversial that it ought to go without any discussion whatsoever and i want to circle back on one other thing in site one sentence in the gl report that we received for this meeting that sentence was some concern was expressed over whether such right might be abused but it was felt that we can revisit this at a later date if we find that to be the case and i would suggest that today's discussion sort of circles around to the fact that yes we do know that there has been a case and so let's face up to it and for those reasons i'm going to vote no when we get to a vote tonight simply because i think that we've come up with a solution that doesn't solve a problem uh elissa yeah unfortunately although i had worded it slightly differently when i had come up with an alternate motion on just the two parts about interrupting versus not being recognized when obviously interrupting is in fact by its very nature meaning you weren't recognized right and so like how was anybody even supposed to follow that that stream of consciousness um the more we talk about this the more you know that is the thing debates good for right is that i'm starting to see that maybe it's not as helpful as i thought it was when i first read it and that it you know the idea of what mandy joe said that i think makes a lot of sense that we've done in the rules partly because i was on the original rules group is you know when it's something that's a little bit tricky that it can be helpful to lay out the robert's rules again so that you don't have to go to the source document and again to make it more accessible to people but this is maybe bullying us up in a way to try and solve as we indicated through discussion here a different problem i do also cannot stop saying enough that i cannot understand how counselors who say they want debate to take place before the question is called and potentially want to create a rule around that when the question's called in a two-thirds vote has to be taken our counselors who at the exact same time are comfortable with invoking the charter air quotes constitutional right of preventing any debate whatsoever without any vote by your colleagues so it's called the nuclear option for a reason it's just because it's in the charter doesn't mean i should use it every week because i don't want my colleagues to be able to talk about anything for as long as i can possibly postpone it i appreciate what was said about how do you know if you really want to call the question if you haven't had any debate but that maybe is more the question we're trying to answer that and the how many actions can you do once you're called on which was something that our town moderator was very strict about it seems like we've developed those two questions separately as opposed to answering the questions that this particular motion seems to try and do so i guess i'll end up voting against this one george you have your hand up yeah i wanted to just come back one last time um i agree with kathy that this has not been a problem um this has been actually until a few minutes ago the president speaker this has been a body that that does not speak out of turn and does not interrupt each other um so i don't think this was an attempt to address a problem that that we all felt was was was pressing it was simply an attempt to clarify as as many points out to use the rules just to educate ourselves on some very specific instances where something is permitted and where it isn't so the purpose here wasn't to address a problem that we felt was was pressing but rather just to educate ourselves um in this specific area and i think that what's proposed here does do that um so i would still urge people to vote yes i don't think that this uh does anything um that is harmful um but i agree with kathy that that's not been an issue so you i guess you could say well then just don't do anything about it um but uh the the issue of the charter right to postpone that's a discussion you could send it back to gel i suppose um but i think the issue that andy's raising and a number of you seem to be sympathetic to is proposing a new rule and uh so uh you could send that to gel and we could mull it over and come back with something um i would be opposed to it but that that's i'm just one person so it sounds like i'm hearing that some of you would like that for gel to look at proposing a rule to that effect regarding a postponing or calling the question um but i still think that what we have here is perfectly fine um and just clarifies some things it doesn't create confusion um and so i hope you will still vote yes for it um but perhaps um have gel look at this issue of calling the question um are there any other questions at this time gelony yeah i haven't i am for more clarifications always and duplicating what's in the robust rules because i don't remember i haven't memorized them yet so this is always helpful but i would like to bring in uh or send it back to gel the additional question that's being raised because about the calling the previous question because i do believe even though there's a super majority involved but i i think we as a council want to hear people who have a different point of view even if they're in a super minority so i yeah that it yeah is it and it's again someone explain why we have i mean i understand that the context when it was done was for time but then it's suggesting that that one person's decision or the supermajority's decision that time is of essence is greater than a councilor's questions or concerns about it so yeah it's just without yeah i would want that to go back to gel for as a something to be brought back to us the yeah so one thing we haven't talked about is the president or we have talked about but the president's role in keeping an orderly meeting so the president has the right to declare things to be out of order so the one circumstance that we keep talking about you know i think we were all caught a little bit off guard there but that could have been declared to be out of order by the president for the purpose of an orderly meeting and then there's another process that if we don't agree with that and that's called the appeal so the president can say that's out of order bang and then there i don't know how exactly the appeal works never used it but then there was a process for the body to say they don't like the way that the president or the chair is running the meeting so um i having never actually used the appeal i've seen it on tv i think but that's something else that i think that we should really trust the chair to keep the flow of the meeting going and to allow i'm sorry the president to keep the flow of the meeting going and for the president to rule things to be out of order when she thinks that there hasn't been any debate yet or when there should be but there is a motion on the floor and the motion is the one you see before you um that's under the category of sure night's proposed change um and we dorthy you have your hand up i just want to comment to what steve said it makes sense but what again i'm talking about not wanting to be a counselor who is thinking about what i want to say in my points and has to have part of my brain thinking about the tricks and ins and outs of robert rules in the same way the president running the meeting has so many things going on and yes i understand could have done what you said but that was another split second decision so what i'm really saying is i think i'd like a kinder gentler meeting where we don't have to be constantly alert on two tracks uh it's enough keeping our own thoughts straight uh then to have to also do that so um i i agree that that is something the president can do but unless there's have somebody standing at their shoulder running one thing and running the screen at the same time it's it's too much it's just too much we're putting too much of a burden on on all of ourselves so that's all i want to say any other discussion at this time then i think we'll move to vote on the question and um question before us is the following to amend our rules of procedure town council rules are procedure six point three point d by striking everything after the phrase point of order and replacing it with a phrase or to raise a question and to insert a new section that says counselors shall not speak without recognition except as in subsection d above to doubt the presence of a quorum no i'm sorry subsection d above or to doubt the presence of a quorum or to call the previous question or to assert the charter right to postpone and we begin with uh dumont no um rissmer is going to abstain panicky yes dorthy pamm no no ross hi yes bang no i think he said driver no dineburg no warts hi valley bowman yes lisa brewer no pat de angeles hi six in favor six six six six opposed one abstention i don't know i'm going george my thought is if the council says divided um i don't you know then we should probably just let it go um and focus more on what seems to be an issue for a number of my colleagues related to calling the question which i as i said i'd be happy to have geowell look at and come back with some kind of proposal but it seems like we're divided um and so i think my suggestion to you if i may is that we just let it go we don't um you know this has not been a problem this effort was simply an effort to to clarify something i think it does do that but a number of you don't agree or for whatever reason so i think we can just let this go Lynn and let geowell focus on on the issue of calling the question and see if we can make some headway there i would like the um clerk of the council to tell me then what is the rule that we are working the next thing on the agenda is 6.3 d e e i'm sorry we do not move on 6.3 d what is the rule that we are operating under the current 6.3 d as in the rules of procedure so the motion failed and then the next thing on the agenda is you know then okay i i'll clarify that later okay um then i'm going to go to the next question the previous question i'm sorry and it's to amend town council rules of procedure 6.3 point f by changing the numeral three through the numeral two 6.3 point e i'm sorry uh e it's wrong in the motion sheet eight there's two in the motion sheet one is if we change if that previous motion passed and one if it failed thank you so counselors may speak thanks for that explanation Athena um counselors may speak upon a matter for no more than two minutes at a time except when introducing eight or presenting a measure a counselor may yield all are part of this time through another council garcy yeah um i i oppose limiting the speaking time to two minutes um i think that um i don't know why at this meeting we're not um using the timer i think that enforcing the three-minute rule um would actually do what we would like to have done which is shorten our meetings because some people am i muted no that's fine thank you um how that Athena is not using the screen to show something she can use the timer it's when okay all right i'm sorry um so uh as elissa mentioned in our last uh discussion of this the open meeting law prevents us from discussing issues between meetings so we we really need the time to get our points across and three minutes is not that long that's standard um i think that it would really be um crimping our ability to have a full and fair process to limit us to less than three minutes um and it's also um i feel extremely important to make sure that all all voices are heard to the extent that they need to be nathy um i'm where dorsi is on this and let me just um say that three minutes isn't very long and when we're talking about something fairly minor most people are speaking very quick quickly in short if it's a substantive um we're we're dealing with a complex issue and you've read all the material before you came in and you have the well orchestrated thing you want to say you can't tell everyone what you're going to say in advance because of the public meeting law you know so the only way you can do it is in three minutes and then what um lin let me do on one x you know if i have a two-page thing that goes further than my three minutes during the time i'm speaking i say here's a two-page thing that you might want to read later that will tell you more about the way i'm thinking but that's the whole purpose of debate to me um if you're seeing something that is a major change in the way we're doing business and you have an alternative idea um so it's not just you're against it but you want to come up with something different three minutes is very short and even if you can come back so you know we're in in effect sometimes giving testimony so i i'm just going to end with that because i've been on the clock in other major issues and had to be short with little timers going off so i could time my statement but two is too short and and three is probably just about right on a complex issue and we should all speak short if it's just to say i agree or i don't agree we don't all have to speak in paragraphs and i rarely speak even in full sentences so i try to be short thank you mandy joe i don't believe the motion was made so i'm going to move to amend town council rule procedure 6.3 e by changing the numeral three to the numeral two a second is there a second george five seconds thank you mandy joe did you have a comment not right now okay he's driver three minutes let's keep it to three minutes um but the part that bugs me is yielding the time because and i know that that's not part identified here to be scratched out so i looked at roberts roberts doesn't generally allow yielding a time and it feels yucky right so it feels yucky that we're kind of randomly selected by when we have our hands up and that our you know counselors might band together which um and you agree that somebody's going to speak for 30 minutes you know like 10 counselors really well they have to be less important that six counselors agree that somebody else is going to speak for 18 minutes and that would have to be orchestrated so that the president you know even chooses those that person in time so why don't we just say you get to speak for three minutes there's no such thing as yielding time and because i could i could just go ahead and yield my time to the next speaker whoever that randomly selected person is thank you evan yeah i i am often someone who has firm and hard opinions on things as you all know and this has not been one of those issues i've really gone back and forth on it um because truly i'm not sure two versus three minutes matters all that much um where i did sort of land as i started thinking about how i often speak in these meetings and i was thinking about the fact that i am someone um who often comes to some meetings with a big list of questions and often when i have my moment to speak i will give all of my questions at once um and i thought about whether that would change if i had less time perhaps instead of giving all of my questions at once i'd give my top two questions and then let someone else speak and then raise my hand again and speak later with some of my other questions um and i started to wonder what what is the actual better way to run debate to give all of my 10 questions at once or maybe to offer one or two and then let someone else speak um and i and i sort of came down on the ladder of those two i think that um if you are someone who isn't too quick to get your hand up and you're later down the line and everyone uses their full three minutes to ask all of their questions and then of course someone else is responding especially during presentations and that can take up a lot of time you might be sitting waiting for quite a bit of time to actually get you a chance to speak just because you weren't the first one or second one or third one to get their hand up whereas if we limit how much someone can ask questions um they might limit their questions they're going to ask in that moment um i would be completely against this if it said you have two minutes to speak and that is your only time to speak but this doesn't limit that you can speak as many times as you want it just says keep it short when you do um and so i think i'm going to end up supporting this um as i watch myself approach two minutes um because i think it would allow it will force us to pare down what we're going to say in each two minute period but if we have more to say we can always raise our hand again but i think it actually keeps the conversation moving from person to person faster which will actually produce potentially a better debate or maybe it won't um i'm not really sure i'm not really sure that this is the thing that our debates really need to change to make better debates but i'm willing to try it out and so i am going to vote um in support did you say my name yes okay yeah i was uh going to say that uh for people for him english is the second language it does take a little bit longer to think and uh i tend to even though i'm very fluent i still find myself needing more time to and even though i write down if i have a presentation a point so i do try to write them down so i can be faster uh but i think um for people it's english yeah second we do need two minute more than two minutes and i think uh speaking to evan's we could address that by putting another rule which is that you can't ask more than two questions or make it like three questions and so we could address that that way but still give people a chance to be able to articulate yeah uh yeah i'm gonna build a little bit on what evan was saying but hopefully shorter um there's a rhythm to debate and uh debate goes back and forth and there is no limit on the number of times that you can raise a hand uh limiting us to two minutes facilitates a rhythm and if it'll facilitate facilitates interaction between counselors and it really gives us the ability to respond i think i do agree with i think it was steve and if i'm wrong you can correct me i don't think we should be yielding time um at particularly at two minutes uh because again that's that's kind of an interruption of who's had their hand up when it's very hard to wait in line um and i really want to i think we have poor debates many times because we're hammering a position instead of listening or responding and so i'd like to see um a better rhythm and a better commitment people have different speaking styles some people speak slower than others as shallony said second language learners need more time to clarify their thought some people come to a meeting without having prepared a paper a paragraph they come to listen and as they're speaking they're thinking and formulating their thoughts at that very moment we have to remember that we're setting rules now not for us we know we know each other now we're setting them for the next which we said we hope is a more diverse representative council so we have to think about that and i think we should keep it at three minutes most of us do not speak up to three minutes thank you i'm going to build on what evin said there are 13 of us if in a very weighty debate um or a weighty issue as kathy referenced um in terms of maybe needing the three minutes you are the 13th person to raise your hand and in the middle of those 13 there were a lot of questions actually answered or interruptions or a presenter responding to something as we sometimes let it might take you it would take you a minimum of 39 minutes 36 minutes to be able to get to speak at all and it might be closer to 45 or 50 and by that point some people might have already called a question i mean this is this is the thing if we want to have meetings that have good debate but also allow everyone to if you're that 13th person and 35 minutes of speaking has already happened your points you might feel like you don't even have to say anything anymore because everyone else has and then you've lost your voice completely i think it's better for debate for people to speak shorter and more often and that is why i support the two minutes gorge yeah just a reminder that this was motivated solely by desire to try and deal with the fact that our meetings do tend to go on so that that's the purpose here and as was mentioned in the report um you can speak as many times as you like so there's no desire here to to limit debate or keep people from speaking but it's just to try and move things along um the third point would be that you know i think we should try this as an experiment and just see how it goes um it's it's if we find that it's a problem we can go back um so i would urge us to keep to accept the change to two minutes i'm just throw this out here and then shut up i would not be opposed to amending this to drop the last sentence i think steve makes a good point it seems to have been echoed by a number of others this idea of yielding time i'm not quite sure why it's in there maybe um someone can speak to that but i would be perfectly comfortable with dropping that last sentence but i do think we should try the two minutes and just see how it goes um sarci i have you spoken yet on this issue you have okay then i am going to go to sarah so i guess i would like to say that having been in town government for a while when i first came in all committees ran on roberts rules and so did town meeting and i think for someone like me who once you get me started talking i'll keep talking but sometimes i i hang back a little bit um having structure i think really helps and i think having structure also adds a lot of civility um into meetings i think that a lot of people think that formality in a meeting makes things stiffer and for me i think it just reminds you that you actually are in a meeting and that you are part of a say a team and it it's a reminder to stay civil and it i think it does actually lead to a more constructive civil conversation and the two minutes for me i think is helpful because two minutes is actually a pretty long time and i think that people can get out what they want and i think three minutes or more sometimes leads to grandstanding darsie and steve both of you have spoken already right i'm going to go to darsie yeah i i just um um george said that um the the motivating force behind this is to you know shorten our meetings be more efficient and so on but we we are also at the same time saying that we have the ability to speak twice or more so i guess i don't understand how this will help if people are are speaking more than once and i mean the other issue is calling the question um will we have the ability to speak twice or will someone call the question um and you know will we be able to get our points across um if someone calls the question um shall we not spoken on this one wait did you say i can speak i didn't hear that yes you have so let me go to steve schreiber okay yeah yeah so um i'm convinced now that two minutes is probably a good idea and i think that again two minutes ish i don't know if we can put the ish in but the i think it's particularly important in the lightning round like in the first round like in other words so give everyone a chance to say their most important point on a particular issue so one thing that i've learned from what is two and a half years on the council the five-point you know sort of opening statements may not be the effective you know tool for the debate but i think the most important point on a counselor's list getting that out there hearing what everybody else says and then going down your list there's probably a more effective way of um debating so i think counselor ryan said that the two minutes and then get rid of yield in the time i would completely support something like that now let me um i i want to emphasize that we not someone else mentioned this is not just about the people now but it really does signal to people with the second language that you need to be really fast and you need to be fluent to be able to communicate and it's it's not a good idea at all at all however that being said i appreciate what steve said that if the rule was indeed and what manager was saying that if you're taking three and then it takes the last person you know a half an hour one hour later so can we do something which is like okay the first round is your initial opening statement which is two minutes or something or two questions or something to put certain boundaries around that but but when people are trying to articulate later on their argument they should be given and it really really does signal that we want people who are really fluent who can be really fast fast thinkers and and that's not me i'm neither of this is not my first language and i'm not a fast thinker so i feel like i'm actually being told to shut up and there are many people and i know you all don't mean that but it comes across that way for people who it's it's very challenging to be in this role and this is just putting another barrier so finding a solution which is not an either or to make sure that both things happen that we have that spirit of debate and at the same time i guess my three was over okay um i'm going to take my opportunity as a cancer when we started to convene again in january um we actually for the first time instituted the clock and we went to three minutes and i think it's helped enormously um and at the same time i also tried something just last two week two meetings ago when we discussed the library and i said you know ask your top two most important questions and it gave a chance for other people to get their questions in faster i i voted initially for the two i never thought about it winning debate and i never thought about it with regard to a second language um and i am concerned about that but i wanted to share those that perspective of the fact than trying something new and it includes the clock and i feel like it's helped a lot evan you have your hand up yeah i guess this was uh there seems to be some interest in removing the um second sentence and i guess i was wondering since the motion is actually about changing that numeral if it was possible to amend the motion to also remove that that section even though that wasn't actually discussed by go that would be correct so there is motion on the floor and you would like to make an amendment to the motion because the motion basically is to only change this in that section and i'm asking i'm asking if it would be in order to amend the motion to amend the rule further beyond what the motion is looking at unless somebody tells me that it is out of order i am going to say it's in order okay then i will move uh to amend the motion to also strike from rule 6.3e the sentence a counselor may yield all or part of this time to another counselor second thank you that was hanagy okay are there any other comments on the particular motion amendment to the motion okay so then we're going to move to the amendment vote on the amendment only the amendment is again evan or actually a theme of would you read the motion to amend the motion to strike from rule 6.3e council i'm sorry a counselor may yield all or part of this time to another counselor that is what we're voting on we're not voting on the two versus three right any further questions okay then i'm going to begin this vote and i believe i go first and i agree with that yes yes uh i'm confused as to whether we're doing one motion or two motions um so i'm lost we're voting on the amendment the amendment is to strike the section that talks about a counselor yielding their time you're not voting on the two versus three that's the next yes evan ross yes word ryan yes as a shame and i just ask if we vote yes on this and we live with three minutes do we just change we will we have changed the wording so we we're getting this out no matter what mandy is saying no no this amends the previous motion so the previous motion is to amend town council rules of procedure 6.3e by changing the numeral three to the numeral two if this passes then it would also say and to amend the motion to strike from rule 6.3e a counselor may yield all her part and so on so if this passes and then the next motion fails then this part stays in right and we just have to bring this back as a separate vote i'm just gonna vote no then um because i'd rather yeah i'll vote no uh steve yes andy yes sarah yes sallani yes alissa yes pat yes garcy no okay so it's 11 in favor to oppose no abstentions and no absence so we're going to now go to the original motion getting rid of yielding time now in the original motion that was Dorothy say say again do you want me to vote or to or to mute myself thank you athena would you please read the motion we are now voting on it is to amend town council rules of procedure 6.3e by changing the numeral three to the numeral two and to strike from rule 6.3e a counselor may yield all or part of this time to another counselor okay is there any question on the council lord i think athena's answered this and i apologize to her but i still am a little bit unclear it would seem that if this um were to fail um if we if the two minutes were not accepted um that would also lead to the failure of the uh amended the drop of that sentence the last second sentence but right it would just stay the stay the way it is the whole thing would stay the way it is right so it's still love for the yield would still be in it if it fails okay that's what i'm about to be a marathon thank you i move to divide the question thank you i was gonna ask if somebody would like between the two but with the question divided as the two the changing the three to two is one portion of the question and the deletion of the sentence is the other portion of the question is there a second my second ryan second all right so we have a motion on the floor now to divide the question is there any further at all we're voting on is to divide the question we're not voting on the contents of the question just to divide okay um mandy joe yes northy pam yes ebb and ross yes we're coming in yes patty shane yes beef schreiber yes andy steinberg yes sarah schwartz yes sarah was that a yes yep that's a yes thank you call me yes elissa brewer hi pat de angeles hi garcy demont yes andlyn greasmer's and i so it we have moved to divide the question and so that means that if no matter which way the vote goes on the two versus three minutes the thing that we have already voted on which was to you know we have to vote again on that yeah two remaining votes thank you um all right let's do the one where we are striking let's go back to the motion we are striking the thing about yielding so please read the motion this would amend town council rolls a procedure roll 6.3e by removing a counselor may yield all or part of this time to another council okay that's a motion is he wants to make the motion do we have to we remake the motion no it's on the floor and it just needs a vote all right any further questions on what we're voting on thank you um let me start with berthie pan i vote yes to eliminating the yield thank you evan yes george ryan yes kathy shane yes beef schreiber yes andy steinberg yes fair schwarz i galani yes alissa i pat hi garcy no greasmer is an i and hannity i so the vote is 12 in favor one in opposition no extensions no absence all right so that takes care of that one so now we're going to go to the other part of this and that is and that motion's already been made and seconded yes yes thank you um is there any further debate or discussion about the issue of the three versus two minutes shall we is there an option to to change the motion to achieve the goals that we want of hearing everyone and um in keeping the debate momentum going and making it accessible to people where english is a second language and that would be like you suggested where we you know have other criteria that you know the first round is stating two questions or something but then in the future rounds they're allowed to have a little more space i'm really glad to hear all the people's opinion that i frankly think it's starting to dictate what people should address or not address in the first round gets into being much more detailed than we want to be i think this is stopping it's not a rule okay then any other comments or questions yes evan i don't actually know the answer to this so this is an actual question does someone have the ability to request more time from the chair to say i'd like to request an additional minute for my statement or something like that is that is that an option for a person i literally just don't know the answer to that i want to make sure you understand that the ability of course if there's no stability no dorthy you're unmuted sorry sorry um evan i know that that was a rule that happened in town meeting do we have such a rule i don't think so steve or dorth actually dorthy you have your hand up i just want a clear statement of the motion before we vote that's all thank you all right the clear statement of the motion is as follows a thing of please it's to amend town council rules of procedures 6.3 by changing the numeral three to the numeral two okay is there any further questions dorthy you still have your hand up garcy yeah i guess i just want um an assurance that um if this um reduced amount of speaking time gets voted in that we do have the ability to speak further later you always have the ability to come back a second time a third time a fourth time with always that unless the question is called that's right so we don't we don't actually at this point we do not have a provision in our rules that allows for the extension of time channel any no dandy joe to answer darcy's question there is never a guarantee that any one counselor has the ability to speak because as we have seen a motion for the previous question can be made at any point in time and if it passes by two thirds debate is over and so no presiding officer can say every counselor will be given even a first chance to speak um under robert's rules or any rule that we've so far adopted thank you for that being so clear on that one dandy joe nalini i'm gonna would know and and at the same time encourage everyone to just self monitor themselves and keep the momentum going and and not make it harder and every it's it might seem like a small thing to you all but i think everything we do and say sends a signal and a message to people so i would really encourage you to keep it to three and be very aware of the time we're using and not go into the long you know long whatever speeches okay is there any other comment at this time darcy yeah i'm sorry um i guess i would just um encourage us to uh experiment with the keeping time as we have been doing and having success and just see how that goes um to limit you know the amount of time in our meetings because we just started doing that so why don't we just do that okay any further discussion at this time then i'm going to begin evan ross i george ryan yes sathy shane no dave schreiber i andy steinberg no garish work i shallon e balmone no elissa brewer no pat de angeles i garcy demont no in greasemore is a no mandy joe hannacky hi garcy pamm no six in favor seven opposed and no abstentions i have no absent okay so it's six seven zero zero and so it fails and stays at three minutes all right um we are going to take a quick break 10 minutes and we're going to come back and we are going to then proceed darcy do you still have your hand up for a reason just wanted to say i do understand the motives behind the work on the committee and that um which it's not because we're not not not not honoring their work but just a difference of opinion that's all thank you any further discussion okay please mute please mute and also take your picture down put your picture back up when you return i'm here garcy demont here and greasemores here hannacky name of jack thank you uh derthy pan yes ebb and ross here i'm here gathie shane yes here steve schreiber hi andy steinberg here they're towards here great thank you we have no committee appointments tonight i mean no um appointments tonight we're going on to the committee and liaison reports uh crc mandy joe um it's written in a report uh we're still working on housing tomorrow we will get um a presentation by the planning department uh on the bl proposals and on the adu proposals at minimum i believe there are going to be three other proposals potentially presented the material that we have received so far from the planning department is in the packet right now um the amounts to at least seven documents including presentations if people are interested um and as i get more i will obviously get it into the packets um so but you can find that information there okay thank you um have you discussed with the town i'm looking at paul here on the new um website called engage amherst having something on zoning we have briefly mentioned it um we have not gone into extensive discussions yet because we haven't had actual proposals to put on okay thank you um is there any question for mandy joe elementary school building committee kathy anything new i know it's actually in paul's report we did um complete a draft request for services and sent it to the uh building authority they have to approve it so if we get rapid approval we will be going out um and advertising so thank you finance committee andy you're not muted you need unmute andy so i have something to tell my fellow counselors about zoom which is that the space bar doesn't always work depending upon where you are in the program and i my apologies you have the written report so that i'm not going to repeat what's in the written report there's one piece that i wanted to just say a little bit more clearly and that has to do with the community preservation act proposals um we were looking at them from a financial perspective and so the as reported in the um in the written report um we concluded that financially that they were sound proposals and um that they were well thought out we were they were well thought out by the committee from the financial perspective um there were policy there are policy issues that may be involved in um cpa proposals but um that's not within the realm of our exploration because it was not the charge to the committee and i think that that's uh if the other the only other thing i'd say is of course at the next meeting we will start um a more intensive discussion of the library financial questions and we have reserved an extra meeting um for the 30th of the month in case we don't complete the um work at this next meeting on the 16th so that's a report fine are there questions okay um gel george oh i'm sorry brewer you have your hand up i didn't see it thank you this is the part of the meeting where i get to say i'm lost as opposed to a different counselor saying that earlier so we had three financial orders in our packet explain please they they are for next time that was what i thought but i just wanted to make sure that there wasn't going to be that's not like they're planning to change or something it's just that you're prepping us ahead of time they are for next time but they were referred to in the existing finance committee reports so we felt they needed to be in the document because they were referred to okay um any other questions thank you uh gel george thank you lind i have nothing to add to the joe report it's it's in the report thank you jcpc kathy um jcpcs meeting every week um and for those who are interested this thursday will be schools recreation and conservation and if you want to see the list for everything shawnes put up all the departments there is a way to see that as well so we did dpw last week um and fire and police so you can see it this the schedule has the packets in it so you can actually see if you're interested all the proposal shawnes been putting all of them up in advance of the meeting let me just clarify for the public that jcpc looks at capital and so when they say they've been talking to those departments it's in regard to capital needs it is not the operating budget okay thank you for that lind and it is it's not just capital but we're saying what's this year and we're all waiting a bird's eye view of next year in the next five years so the discussion of what we're spending on vehicles on buildings is all in this document great thank you uh tso dorsi yeah tso is going to have a second look at the stormwater bylaws on march 11th at our march 11th meeting um as well as finalizing our plans for our two public forums on the pathway um intersection project um fliers are going to be available for um for the public for counselors to send out to their networks soon hopefully um and as mentioned earlier the two forums are at 6 p.m so the second hour of our march 25th meeting and at 2 p.m on um saturday march 27th and during the first hour of our march 25th meeting uh we're going to be hearing from the town about criteria it's developing uh for a townwide residential parking plan um so that that's going to be very interesting and that that is timed so that you will complete in time for jcpc seven yes we'll be done by seven all right um are there any liaison reports okay then we're going to go to the approval of the minutes and so the motion is to adopt the following town council meeting minutes as presented february 22nd 2021 regular town council meeting minutes is there a second you need a second and then we can amend okay got it listen did you get that athena yes it was many thank you okay kathy you have amendments okay and i do apologize because i should have read it earlier and i could have just sent it in a minor edits um um on one small thing i don't know whether we we wouldn't normally do it but i wanted the minutes to reflect that on the library discussion the first hour of the time we spent was a library presentation so it you know it's it's a you can see where it starts and where it ends but it wasn't just the councillors adding questions so that's one edit and then the second um is we have a dorothy pam and a bob pam both participating in the meeting and i think the second time we say pam it's robert speaking and another time it's dorothy speaking so the simple way to clarify that is when it's robert speaking say robert pam so i think no i don't think dorothy said that i think bob sent it it just says pam said it pam said it so it i can point it out to athena it's it's just in one place and if we vote robert then it becomes clear so that those are the only two comments does anybody feel we need to have this as an actual amendment or is it just a friendly addition okay then i think we can go ahead and pass the minutes as they're now going to be amended yes all right um george ryan sorry yes yes back to shane yes see schreiber yes indy steinberg yes sarah schwartz hi challenge baumilm yes alissa i'm stain pat hi dorsey yes brismar is an i hannity hi ham yes evin ross hi i meant the dorothy pam by the way just all right it passes 12 zero with one abstention no access all right uh we're now going on to the town managers report thank you so covid update we have you know we all had a increase in cases primarily revolving around the university those cases have dropped down but not as markedly as we had hoped and we're continuing to monitor that well we meet weekly with the leadership from the university but also including the state epidemiologist people from the the tracing collaborative and others from the department of public health and it's very useful to have all those folks along with our state rep and state senator actually useful to have those folks there because it's good to have the outside eyes looking at the numbers as we are looking at them they have a different view because they're able to see the entire area we look mainly at amherst and the impact on the town of amherst our numbers continue to be higher than they have been in the past so we're continuing to monitor that almost all of our cases are in the 18 24 year old range so again we are trying to manage that process and it's becoming more and more difficult as the weather starts to warm up people tend to want to gather outside there was a major gathering last weekend and the university has has seemed has addressed this very aggressively and we're hoping that we see real consequences going forward so that leads us to the March 17th which is a typical week area time of the year that students tend to gather this will be different this year I think I talked about this before we will be monitoring daily especially on weekends with our trying to maintain gatherings at this at the smaller level trying to be in close communication with the university because if students are violating their agreement with the university the university would like to know about that we respond to noise complaints and and we're getting we haven't received a lot of them but there was again one large one last weekend in terms of vaccination testing continues at the university anybody in the community can go down get a test for free it's very quick very easy it's reassuring if you haven't been vaccinated get to continue to get that test vaccination clinics has been frustrating we are now set up at the bank center to provide vaccinations we're focusing on second shots which is our top priority right now while we have requested over a thousand doses we're getting about 25 percent of those doses every week and that that barely covers up covers our ability to give second doses for this week we hope to open up next week to provide additional doses we've been told you know we're so we're sort of looking forward to seeing the Johnson and Johnson vaccine come through but the state has been told that they were getting about 50 000 for the month of March which is a pittance and and not to expect any until April on the other hand the the using a different pipeline CVS using the pharmacy program the federal government is is putting a lot of doses of the vaccine into pharmacies so a lot of our students a lot of our teachers have been actually vaccinated I've heard up to 7500 have gotten vaccinated already through the CVS program which is very exciting for us and they're using the Johnson and Johnson which is a one shot vaccine that's anecdotal information I don't have a headcount because we don't get that count but it's very it's very good we've also had a program where our health department teamed up with our fire department paramedics to go to visit homebound folks to make sure that they're able to access the vaccine as well and developing programs to get into more vulnerable neighborhoods to be where people are so they can have access to the vaccine access is key there's there's a lot of barriers to for certain communities to getting the vaccine but access we want to take away that one that one barrier so that's sort of where we are on the vaccination it's really important for us you know talking to some business owners they're starting to feel some relief because people are feeling once they get the vaccine they're more comfortable being out in public businesses are starting to pick up so we're excited about that happening on outreach we continue to do the cup of joe we do the weekly community chat at noon on Thursdays we're aligning those community chats with things that are happening in the town so this week on Thursday we'll have chris breast drop talking about zoning because that's sort of a hot topic right now that people are starting to talk about it's an opportunity for members of the public to just come in and ask questions we don't do presentations or anything like that we just give a brief talk and then open up the floor it's 30 minutes so it goes by quickly next week on the 18th we will ask representatives from our police department to be there to talk about whatever's happening happening at that point in time with our spring activities that night before we'll have been St. Patrick's Day so we'll want to hear from our members of our community if there are concerns if they're seeing things and communicate to them how we respond to things the week after that March 25th will be a pomeroy village week that night will be a public forum held by the TSO committee and then that Saturday will be another opportunity for people to weigh in on on the pomeroy village and we really want to hear about what people's concerns are about that intersection specifically you know $1.5 million doesn't go as far as you'd hope it would but we do want to address many of the key features of the intersection and where it's not just a sort of a you know choose a or b we really want to understand what are your your major concerns and along those lines that's as Darcy said we'll be the TSO committee we'll be looking at the community engagement plan for that along those same lines I think we are building out our Engage Amherst website where you can we're trying to gather things on each project because we have so many projects in the works right now it's really kind of amazing and so this will help the residents to connect with where the information is and put it all in one place because sometimes it's hard to find you know you say what is this a public works project it's a planning department project we don't know so we're organizing it by project so right now we have the North Amherst Library up there you know forget the other ones but we're building them out and then one of the key features oh we have the four capital projects or the financing of the four capital projects on there and one of the key features of it is that we show you who's listening so we identify the staff person who's responsible for that so it says so if you make a comment that goes to the staff person who's responsible and they will respond back in a sort of rolling question-and-answer system grants the town has just I just credit to our staff they've been incredible about getting grants we were so happy to get the $192,000 grant for the walkway improvements around the Banks community center making the even most anti-center more accessible and more clear on how to get there having a path for people from Clark House to get up to the center of town and just making road you know that area especially since we've been spending a lot of time down there because that's where the vaccination site you really start to see where all the crumbling infrastructure is so this grant it's a lot of money but we hope to really make some improvements there we're very optimistic about getting a second grant that will be in the same range price range but that nothing has been announced on that but that's another building on an existing grant that we had previously so we're excited about that we have a small grant with the business improvement district to have it requires you to hire a consultant which the business improvement just you get assigned a consultant this is a person who will come in and help us scope out ways that we can bring back our businesses after the pandemic and we received the cyber security grant from the state where we will train every employee and they it's a very sophisticated online training but also there are some test fishing attempts they send out emails to people and see if you're gonna if you're gonna take the bait and then they and it's an educational thing and you don't know when they're gonna do it sort of like secret shopper or something like that so I talked a little bit about the March 17th stuff the budget we're spending a ton time on the budget meeting individually with every department as we start to build out our budget we're still sort of in a deficit mode in terms of the town budget that we have to work through but we are we'll get there we'll figure out how we can make everything work we also continue to refine our numbers in terms of where the budget is for the entire town and as we get more information like there's a new commitment on motor vehicle that gives us a firmer number on that we have updates on our new growth we have firmer numbers on that so all that that information will be presented discussed with finance committee tomorrow and as you know as usual we start conservatively then we're able to as we are more certain about revenue we can build that into our budget model and that will be good news for us tomorrow I think and then just making a concerted effort to get more and more material on our website so people have access to it people have lots of information lots of questions and we try to provide them with all the information they can so that's sort of there's things that anybody wants to ask from here yes Dorothy I think tomorrow we see our C and that finances next week right okay my bad thank you kind of flipped a little bit we have more questions pat uh yes I wanted to thank you for getting together or the homeless advisory committee and I'd like to know if there's a timeline about setting that committee up and pointing that committee yeah that's one thing hang on one second thank you Paul the other thing is I'm very glad the civil war plaques are going to make it to the bank center I have a question they used to hang in town hall is that accurate why can't they be hung there again so my understanding is that they're incredibly heavy and they can't go back into town hall so um why why because they're too heavy I don't know I mean it's it's a question we can ask you know that was a decision that was a observation made we can ask the building commissioner about that that would be the easiest solution be perfect location um so so right now we will be relocating we have a special company that's coming in they'll relocate them uh and unveil them in the bank's community center we'll have a conservationist come in and look at them and analyze their condition but I'll ask the building commissioner like can the walls support these things I've never seen them personally so I don't know how big or how because they were there before they must have been able to support them so it's a little confusing yeah I think they were in the basement previously and that's was not a very good location for them they weren't very visible because it's only where staff goes and I think they were sort of damaged because they were on the walls of the basement that's what I'm told but you could put them in the town room or in the hallway someplace that'd be great nandy joe pat were you finished with your questions nandy joe these are two questions um the first one is it looked like on your dpw and fire station sections um that there's a lot going on right now and there was no mention of a building committee for any of those will there be building committees and if so when will they be formed and are you planning on putting counselors on them um and the second question relates to what's been happening at the federal government do you have any idea um if this bill makes it back through the house um and then gets signed by the president um what will be able to use that funding for because it's there's supposed to be a lot coming to amorist I think mass live estimated it in somewhere in like the seven million range um and how long we'll have to use it and what we can use it for and whether that will help bolster say operating budgets in f y 22 or even this year yeah so I'll do that first question first I don't know how much will come I don't know how we're going to be allowed to use it the rules continue to change even with the existing cares money things that were approved initially are not approved now and you know we've tried to put everything through we tried to buy an ambulance to the funds they said no but we're trying a different vehicle now see if they'll approve it um it would be significant if um we could use it to plug some of the the revenue gaps that we've had in our from the prior years because that's where most cities and towns have the need um so I think that that's we'll we'll know more about that um and for the yes we will have building committees probably one committee for both projects um because it makes sense to um utilize both because they're moving on parallel paths they'll be separate um uh consultant you know designers for each of them um I have not set up those those building committees yet um but you know we we're just going through the oak I just want to give you a snapshot I think that president wants a full report next at the next council meeting um for where we are and where we're moving forward um but I think building committees help a lot um and but I have not concluded about who should be on it or anything like that Matthew Mandy asked one of my questions so I'll I'll send the other I had two related on Engage Amherst I I think that's actually a great innovation that's been set up and what I wondered is um how flexible it is to do something such as for the North Commons that we didn't have the pictures this time if we could say here are two possible alternatives and can it handle like a survey monkey Evan did it out in a newsletter but it's like do you like this one or this one better with a reason why give me you know give me a reason because I then if there was something like that I was planning on trying to do something up in district one but we didn't get it in time you could direct people to here go take a look at the picture of it and um weigh in um on we're talking about parking spaces for the farmers market but we still got that lot um so so I'm just thinking can it be used that way is my question you know it's not just a question and answer but a little survey monkey built in where you can respond so that's number one and then number two on the North Amherst Library I think it's really exciting that it's moving along um you have a if it goes through permitting smoothly you know and you had the planning board do you have a sense of when construction might start and when it might be done in terms of opening and that's followed up by the when the library was asked on Saturday where might you be when you're close um the community room that we'd heard a couple times that they don't think they should have to clean um you know because it'll be a community room but they talked about it be a perfect place to relocate part of the library while the library is closed so I didn't know whether the timing is such that that would that would be a potential space but also just for our community when it might be done so I had the two not really related one is using Engage Amherst and one is North Amherst. So on the North Amherst Library you know I think the time frame for that is that we estimate about two to three months for permitting and so and then we get to construction documents and when those construction documents are completed we've completed our funding tranche so we need to go back to the donor and say are you ready to go to the next phase so we don't move from construction documents until so we will be in a position where we can apply for a building permit but we won't do that until we have funding secured to move forward if the if the the anonymous donor says yes you've got we and we have a sense of what it's going to cost we go through bidding actually so we'll know what it's going to cost and if the if there's a green light then we'll do that we could get started this fall and maybe a year a year a year from now we could have the building complete that's that's hopeful you know as long as everything comes comes to fruition so secondly on well first off I want to apologize to the town council for us not being ready for the town for the north common today that was totally my fault my responsibility to make sure that was ready and we weren't ready and I asked the president to take it off and I mean she was clear that you were not happy that not having the material in advance so we will be ready in two weeks when it comes back to you I think using the engage amherst is a great idea and it does have that function there are widgets that you can put they can pull into engage amherst and a polling mechanism is one of those widgets that you can put in and putting I think two plans up there and saying which do you like and why is it is really good use of that tool and it actually we're we're always looking for things to pull people in it's if it's a static page that you just go and read it's not very interesting for the north amherst library we have a little nine minute video up there now that the architects did that they see to walk you through so if you don't want to spend much time basically of nine minutes you can hear and see pretty much the history of the of the north north amherst library and so we need to be we have to do that quickly though for the for the north common so sorry I didn't think it was going to be my turn yet that spacebar like Andy says not always where you think it's going to be the two things I was going to ask about one is a real is really good follow-up associated with what we were just talking about for engage amherst so I see the north amherst library project there but that doesn't feel to me like something we need to be doing a huge amount of engagement around because like that's on its way it's moving along it's nice to keep people apprised of what's happening and and so it's really useful from that standpoint I often think we have a press release problem rather than a communication problem but so that could be really useful for that but something like north amherst like the north common and also pomeroy coming up right because pomeroy is at a very different stage right north common is like there's two things to look at pomeroy is at a different stage but there's going to be a ton of people who can't participate in those conversations that particular week and so if we could figure out how to frame that and of course we could talk about that at TSO if you think resources are available to add that to the engage amherst process so just I guess a highlight before we get to TSO later this week where maybe you were already planning to discuss that then the other thing is on a completely different note I realize that the town manager reports are a huge amount of work and I understand completely that you start from the base one week and then you cut things out and you add things to it but I was really alarmed to see that the question about the spending of the $80,000 that we set aside for equity in July is just gone from the report it's not as in a there are other items in the report that are listed as you know no update you know this nothing's happening with this particular thing right now and particularly with capital projects that of a smaller nature and to have that just disappear from the report when we don't really have any way of carrying it concerns me a lot because as I've talked about at length at several meetings that I will try not to do now is that we never set up that $80,000 saying there was going to be one committee that was going to spend all that money we never envisioned that I'm thrilled that the community safety working group found a group to work with that they think will help them figure out their many many difficult challenging tasks and so I'm really excited that they got good responses for the bid but it's still not going to use up the $80,000 and so the idea it was an unusual thing to put the $80,000 aside in the first place but to later make an assumption that it's just $80,000 that's spent however it's spent by the town manager so if they need a safety working group given the importance of the overall issue that we were willing to set $80,000 aside for and that we need to understand what should be in the next budget right and does it need to be something specific in a particular area of the budget or does it again need to be kind of a broad lump sum that we need to figure out where to put I think is a really important conversation for the town council to have I think it's an important conversation for us to have that we were going to have on the 22nd it was listed on the agenda items that was published the day before we didn't have the agenda item we don't have it tonight I understand the question about the legal ramifications of anti-aid amendment etc and at the same time that's not stopping us from doing anything if KP law doesn't respond to us for another three months on that answer that's just more time that's ticked away when we haven't been able to discuss how anybody else in the community can engage in this so I hope we will strongly consider having this agenda item whether we've heard back from KP law or not shall any yeah I just wanted to acknowledge Brianna's work for Amherst this is like just so cutting edge and so incredible and I'm just so proud of our town staff here along with that could we get some clarity around counselors can use or how like what goes into it and you know like as we're doing the zoning like how would that work would be if you have surveys and I mean you don't have to answer now but it would be good for us to have clarity like how in what ways can counsel use it like for example if Evan had his survey is that still a separate thing or is that something we can boast where so yeah just overall it's a scope that's a really good question I mean engage Amherst the reason we focus on North Amherst library we always had thought of that as our first project and we were going to sort and we built that as a very you know easy sort of confined project and we're going to work around work out the kinks on engage Amherst and then all these other projects sort of jumped in and so we're like okay we have to do them all when we do an engage Amherst page we need someone to adopt it we need a staff member to say give training them on it and say I'm going to own this page it can't be a problem for everything Brianna was the one who conceived of it who brought to our attention who said here's a way we can fund it through CARES money and so she just really ended up bringing this tool to our to us so 100% credit goes to Brianna for that but we also need and so we need willing partners in our staff who say I'm going to take this on in addition so for the financing one Sean Magano is all over it he's very excited by it or you know we have Ben Grieger who's a planner who's willing to take us on I think the perfect one is for the North Common because it's logical the purpose of these things is to connect with people but also to collect information and to the counselors make decisions so if there are things that you think this would be helpful to me as a counselor how about this I think you should shoot it to me and we'll try and put it on there because it really is a tool for it to help you as you're in your role as policy makers for the town so that would be you know you know be aware you know if we put in sort of questionnaires you get whoever shows up but it's not scientific or anything like that and you know those things can work but it's you know just had a quick second question I didn't hear about the timeline for the homeless shelter task force yeah so we we actually had a meeting on that today and Mary Beth will love it so it's going to be the lead on that for the town you know we're we're framed and you'll get more about this next next meeting we're framing it a little bit differently than finding a location as we talk about it more it's not just about finding a great putting people in beds in a congregate setting we actually think that's that's the lowest thing that we can be doing we need to get this in a more cohesive comprehensive way engage with the people who are working in the area more directly listen to people and you know we do have the short-term thing of you know crate stores and where are they going to go in the fall so that's an important thing that's a high priority thing but we also need to look at this comprehensively in terms of our our our the services levels that we offer and what should the town's commitment be to this because that's a really important conversation we you know the town isn't you know we do devote a lot of we can talk about this for a long time but we devote a lot of services through different departments but we don't say this this group or this funding is for this except through cdbg or something like that so we had a very deep conversation about that today so and Mary Beth is working on a memo of sorts for the council to talk about next time thank you you sure yeah so this is becoming an extended town managers report but i would so engage amherst i just logged in and was able to look and saw the survey on our cameras library will you use it will you not use it so these are great questions you know are you excited about it i would really offer maybe a great deal of caution of using it for some of the things that have been described and even frankly the one that's often cited the survey monkey for the north common a or b so survey non scientific surveys no matter how they're delivered on engage amherst or in paper or whatever are you know if they're not scientifically valid they're going to provide really skewed results and those skewed results may send a direction on whatever it is and and i guess what i'm saying is in the end we're politic you know we're we're elected officials and we are elected to make difficult decisions so we're not basing it on surveys per se we're trying to get the pulse of the community for sure but i'd be very cautious of using you know tools even like engage amherst as a substitute for getting the pulse and the other ways that we're used to so from you know from walking on the street back in the days when we could walk on the street to talk to people or you know our district meetings or whatever so it seems like a we live in the electronic age we're used to being serving about everything some of the issues we're dealing with particularly zoning are really complicated issues so the question do you want footnote m or not footnote m would not give you any useful information so there are other ways of getting useful information like that well i'm going to also weigh in on this particular issue on two fronts one is first of all steve thank you the researcher and you shows up the researcher and me shows up i'm very concerned about a survey on a website that gets people driven to it and is not scientific and it and yet i i totally and completely value the collection of public opinion and want to make sure that if we do that we're looking at it from all the public opinion that we receive from public forums to emails to other kinds to district meetings to serve it but i really caution us about just throwing up any survey up there and then suggesting that somehow or another this is the public's will the second thing is that i do think that you want to be careful and clarify the actual who gets to use this and for what because i i could see an individual counselor perhaps wanting to use it but i don't think that's what it's intended for and so i think we have to have some level of no protocol that basically says this is what it's for and this is not what it's for um so kathy you had your hand up yeah and i i didn't want to i totally agree with what you said steve and linds i didn't want but like this is a way to get a scientific survey out it's just if you go on our website normally and you want to see what are they talking about you know what are they looking at this is the first tool i've seen like the north amherst library you can see the architectural drawings there it would be hard to find them otherwise you know like what so i i think the imagery um you know and certainly gathering information that way is one way you might well get an article in the amherst bulletin that say oh here are these two pictures of things that the town is thinking about and we might get input from another it's just usually hard to find it so you have to say oh go to the packet click on this you know it's not posted so that's what i like that this is done is it's you can find something if if someone tells you it's there you can find it but you can really find it without being a good um how do you get to a packet of a meeting of a particular date and look at our listing and figure out which document you want to open up to see something so that was in the spirit of where i was going on just profiling some things that are coming up not that we would make a decision based on you know 50 people clicked it one way or the other but just if you want to see it where to go so that's what i really like that this has opened up as a possibility thanks if i can respond to that that's you know we talked about this with pomeroy actually because it's you know we don't want to say do you want to intersection signalize intersection or around about because that doesn't help us right we want to talk about what are the concerns that you have we what are the things that you like what do you dislike all the normal questions that you would prompt people to to weigh in on giving you some guidance because then you say well what's the right fit for that and i think that's the type of surveying we could do uh without saying do you like a or b and a wins or b wins you know are there any other questions of the kind of management with regard to your report you don't often have this luxury of time right then uh we have two more items i want to deal with one is under the president's report and athena i'd like you to put up on the screen the items that we presently have for the next two meetings thank you um the reason i'm putting these up here first of all it's to say you know are there any other items and a second is because there's at least one item here that it's still a little unclear to me about what our real intent is and that is under march 22nd we had the meeting with the chair of the school committing the superintendent and finance director but in fact we will not be getting the regional school budget until the fifth and so there are discussions with among counselors regarding this that would be useful um dorthy you have your hand up oops you took the down sorry sorry i don't know why it was up okay so the first my first question is are there other items that should be on this list i'm and then i'm going i hope not uh and second of all are there thoughts particularly about the one that is highlighted in yellow shallony yeah i just want to bring up the email we've been getting from one of our school teachers and we did get a response from doug um about applicability of um what is that law it's the oh just once again i'm pulling it up b f m l a for and i think that's apparently uh and apparently the town council has to decide for the elementary school whether this law would be applicable to teachers in the elementary school and so you know teachers are going through a hard time and everyone is going through a hard time and so i think it's on us to make at least have a discussion on that okay i'm gonna look to paul to decide when we bring that forward because i think he also has to consult with the super school superintendent great are there other comments or questions darcy uh just wondering i see on april fifth there's a question mark after vote for the library uh is there some deadline for voting um the one of the options for the library is that if we go forward with the decision to do the renovation expansion and we vote on it um in april okay uh then msba is actually in a position to start giving us one fifth of the payment in this fiscal year point of order i think you mean uh library commissions i'm sorry the library thank you so much what would be the last time that we would be able to do that and still get that uh i don't know i we'd have to talk with msba i think with uh the last board of library commissioners the idea was that if the if we waited too close into june then they start dealing with next years and this way they could get the paperwork done and the grant done i i could try to find out more about the timing on that if that's useful that's that's the question i'm hearing steve schreiber oh so elis councilor brewer has me worried about the nuclear option and i see some really important votes coming up um i'm wondering if it's possible to schedule oh uh you know i don't know exactly what the um deadlines are like cancer demonetist that's one of the library which helps clarify for me um i guess i'm wondering about scheduling pre-scheduling interim meetings special meetings just in case someone does um pull the emergency break and we can't vote on a particular night let me just mention after april fifth we already have a meeting scheduled on april 12 okay one of the things that athena and i have talked about is polling to see if people are available to meet on april 26th which originally we did not have on our calendar does that answer your questions yes thank you so much elisa so given how incredibly full these agendas are and we just talked about additional possible dates um which would be mainly if something went wrong when do we have a conversation about about the 80 000 that we set aside in the july budget we went because we obviously can't it doesn't look like we could possibly fit it in one of these two meetings well no i can put it into one of these two meetings i think the real question is going to be the town manager getting the information back from the town attorney and if we want to go ahead we can have the discussion without that but i think there wasn't an idea that it would be best to wait but i'm more than willing to add that fuel on either of these i'll try to balance it to the best of our ability we also by the way as you can see for instance um the elissa discharge in the stormwater is really dependent now on tso and gol finishing their work so it's possible that would slide to a slightly different place and then the other thing i just want to point out is that the community safety working maybe asking us for an extension another extension okay elissa was that sufficient it answered it if it isn't going to appear on one of these and i'd like us to know about that before both dates have gone by so um and maybe we'll have the kp law and maybe we won't so thank you that's helpful and then actually on a completely separate note now i'm taking advantage is i'm not sure what community safety working group report means because the intention of the charge was always that the report was going to go to the town manager and the town manager was going to give us a proposal so i obviously want to give all the possible time we can to community safety working group to be at our meeting because then even more people will see their work but to me the deadline is not for them to us it's never been that the deadline's always been for them to the town manager so that he can report to us so what's the intention of that agenda item i apologize for the lack of clarity i think it's for the town manager on results and again it may not be ready as you know more than i think many other people um these things take take greater shape as you get closer and closer what are they really kathy um i i just want to come back to um how much is on the april agenda lin and and we had a good presentation from jones with some questions from counselors because we as you know use s2 and then we generated a bunch where they're going to get hope answers i think we need to have a longish discussion on jones before we vote so i'm just wondering whether you want you want to schedule it for both april 5th and april 12th with vote listed on the other because we may want to have more of a discussion than we had last year on water and sewer rates when people see what these rates are starting to look like the news is out on how much they're going up um and just if you anticipate if you do your normal looking at an agenda how much time for discussion you know to have a discussion and a vote on the fifth so darcy's question on uh you know if we're if we're still trying to in april make a decision um and i'm at a later date i'll try to understand why we can't make it at the end of april or at the beginning of may so i don't know how close to june but i think we just need to have a fuller discussion than what we had before uh kathy let me just point out first of all on april 5th i have a question mark and on my longer list i have april 12th jones by jones library vote question mark and i have an april 26th with a bunch of question mark behind it that's that's exactly what i would hope to see you know in a way on the fifth i think it's highly unlikely so maybe that doesn't have the question mark but to have a marker saying there's going to be a decent discussion on one of these states so steve's worry about the nuclear option that we're just having a discussion without a vote so we're going to have a discussion and you're going to get a chance to vote that we're not tabling a discussion um because we're running out of time so that answered my question then yeah thank you darsie yeah i would just second what um what kathy has said and i would be interested to know what what is the timing on or maybe you've already sent questions to the library i know after our last meeting you asked us to cement so what's the timing on that the time the first of all the questions that i've collected and i've tried to assemble and believe me it has not been easy they are just now being i have been working on it on a regular basis but i still have not sent them to them and the library will be at the next two finance committee meetings with any other consultants that we want them there okay so that the finance committee now takes the next next stab at all of this okay yeah i guess i'm just what is your what is your thought about you know if they're going to need a lot of time also to answer the questions so they think they're going to need that much time i think that both of the questions are financial in nature and either they have the information or they don't yeah i think that there was a whole array of questions because there are a number of questions that were also submitted by the public that we also said we were going to forward on to them to get answers so darsie let me just tell you at this point i have probably close to 200 questions many of them overlapping and trying to come up with something that basically then makes sense out of it so that it is a question they understand we understand and we get the information we want it is probably one of the most difficult times of wrestling it to the ground that i've ever had okay so i am i promise i'm working on it in fact we're meeting with the library tomorrow to talk about questions okay and response time okay any other questions here all right then athena take this down please and i believe the next thing we need to do is have pat and shallony talk about the training yeah i'm happy to start or share what we have so but first i just wanted to thank all my colleagues here for your commitment to this work and being willing to give up your weekend and other than i believe one counselor who we hope will be able to join us still and i think everyone responded that they were able to participate so we finalized the dates as april 10th and 11th from nine to five with a half day follow-up on may 8th and that's just half day so that's 10 to 2 p.m and we ran we spoke with the references for this for this group and we've got i spoke with two references one from austin the equity director from the town of the city of austin and that was just so exciting to talk to him that the mayor there has taken training with annie who's the principal consultant who'll be working with us and he said we work with gar and we love annie the most she's our most favorite facilitator and so they've done many several workshops with her so i'm really excited that we have this chance to do this work together and paul and athena have also agreed to thank you very much for giving up your weekend and being willing to do this work with us i would also encourage us to if you and you don't have to but if you have any questions that you've been struggling with with relate related to race you can send it to us and we will forward it to annie there's no guarantee she will respond to it in the two days but i think giving it to her ahead of time will allow her to see what are the issues we're working with and if she can talk to that within the framework she's providing that might be really useful to us and i see there's a hand up from mandy joe thank you um two things we were told the you know i hate to be sort of the person that keeps harping on time but we were told the follow-up session would be three hours um and you just said four and so i was expecting a nine to noon that would not sort of take attention to essentially kills the whole day um to do a lot of things um and adds the other hour beyond what we were told that follow-up would be we're already devoting 16 hours right to what is essentially supposed to be a volunteer position um another four on is a week of work um so i i would encourage you to go back and say nine to noon um so that we have some time in the afternoon i was actually hoping i wouldn't have to give up another saturday that it would be on a third to have that um secondly i appreciate that paul and athena have agreed to do this but i'm actually given that um they are both technically our employees a bit uncomfortable with them joining us and i had not realized the council had decided that that was an appropriate thing to do and and so i don't know whether we need to have that conversation or not um i have heard that this requires these workshops require a lot of personal disclosures um and as employees technical employees of the council i don't know whether that's an appropriate thing on either side for that to happen so i don't know whether we should be having a conversation about that one of the things that um we've been careful to do is to talk to uh paul and athena um and i was surprised to hear shallownay say that athena was going to do it because i hadn't quite gotten that conversation but that she might be bad if i said that wrong sorry no no that's all right um and i know paul's excited to do it and i think we all have fear about what we might say who we might say it to who we're in charge of who we're not in charge of and fear can make us hesitate to do a lot of things um the work is um with any and and and certainly other facilitators confidential between the people who are doing it and i have a lot of trust in this council and in our relationships both with paul and athena and their relationship with us that it would that would be honored um in many many ways um so i i understand you're concerned um but i think that it is appropriate um particularly for me for paul even more than athena um but i feel like she is part of the council which is why i would like to have her there we work in a very different way yes we're paul's boss but when i was at the collaborative for educational services every employee was required to do an anti-racism training um and and we did them um with bosses and and you know the maintenance person and the director of the agency and um and the groups were very mixed and it was not problematic on that level uh in terms of interaction between employees um the other thing i want to say is that we'll talk to annie and i think that we can get saturday down to nine to three and because it is a follow-up session it's going to be different um there was one other thing oh and in terms of developing a contract i'm gonna shallony and i will put paul and annie together to work on that so um mandy i hope i answered your question i'm not sure if i did can i just add to that that uh regarding timing i think that was coming from annie she's offering that time to us and i think it's up to us to decide whether we want to use the full four hours she actually had five hours but do we want to use up to five hours or four or three uh and i think it's just a chance for us to and maybe it can be optional for people who maybe have more questions they can stay longer so i i feel comfortable saying it's from nine to one nine to twelve but asking her of that additional hour if we if some of us have more questions because i already have a list of questions for her that are really hard and i cannot ask anyone else the second thing i wanted to also offer was that it was an invitation for paul and it's an invitation to everyone actually you know it's not mandatory and we also and annie is very skilled in dealing like i said in austin texas in austin texas the mayor did it with the staff with community members and the city counselors and i like whoa that's intense we are definitely don't we want to do it you know at least at the first go we want to do it just with us so but they are very skilled and we've questioned them again and again about what would make it the most useful and safe place and they were like we definitely encourage you to invite um atina and yet it is an invitation and we completely leave it to paul and atina to choose to join us uh while knowing it is safe to do it um in this to do this particular work in this way or do you have your hand up yeah i just um i mean unlike paul and atina we're elected officials and we are governed by open meeting law so i'm just wondering if anyone could address how that yeah i'll go ahead with that um we have talked to the attorney general's office and because we're using an outside facilitator and it is a workshop we will not be deliberating about anything this is a workshop about white supremacists the white supremacist system that we live in um and it is perfectly legitimate for us to do this uh without breaking the meeting law i thought that was clear last time but i've contacted them twice and i know we are not breaking any rules let me just also say that that is consistent with previous uh training that i was in charge of that involved the messachusetts general court elected officials um so it's you can do this without breaking open meeting law because again you're not deliberating you're not you're it's not even about an issue you're going to deliver george do you have another question dorthy i just want to follow up what mandy joe says shallony said that the time was made available to us but we did not have to choose to use all of it together i think that a council member who has a young school child really should be have a half day which means the whole council since we're supposed to do this together i think nine to twelve would be sufficient that's no but we want to make this job not look so terrible that no one will run again okay are there any other questions hopefully training okay are there any other council comments andy yeah i there's one thing that i should have mentioned uh when i gave the finance committee reports i decided to wait for this portion of the meeting on the 16th of uh this month there's one additional item that council should be aware of and that is that um we will be getting a report uh from uh the advisor who does the uh work for the uh have other post employment benefits uh calculations uh it's an actuarial and it's the time when they recalculate what the depth of our liability is and an opportunity to talk about how we in other communities can handle the liability what it means for us so i just wanted to alert um fellow counselors anyone who might have been at any time concerned about that rather large number of other post employment benefit obligation that we carry um as a community that's a meeting where the expert will be there to present are there any other comments from counselors andy did your hand go back up or not no i bought it okay anything else from anybody i want to make sure seeing none then with the meetings adjourned at 940