 Okay, now we're recording. Thank you. It is May 12. This is billed as a joint meeting of the finance committee and the town council. At this point, we have a quorum of the town council present. So I'm going to pull the count, pull the town council and call people by name. And call the town council meeting to order at 109. Just making quorum. Oops. Yeah. So, with that, let's start on a Devlin got here. Present. Lynn Greece, Mr. President, Mandy, Joe Hanneke. Present. Dorothy Pan. I'm here. Jennifer. Todd. President. Andy Steinberg. Andy Steinberg and Alicia Walker. Here. I'm sorry and Pam Rooney. Here. And then go ahead because we now have a quorum of the finance committee. So I'm calling the finance committee to order. And this is a meeting that's being conducted by zoom. I do want to remind everybody for both meetings that this is. Being recorded so that we have provided that. Notification. And. I think that the. You've already acknowledged the attendance of. Some members of the committee and I won't go back and repeat. Those contacts. But I think we have Bob Hegner. Present. Okay. And I did try and call Bernie and got no answer. Just kept ringing until. So. How do you want to proceed? The way that this is set up. Lynn. Is that. We are going to be starting with. Through the public safety departments first. In order. Is crests and. Then we're going to police and. At least that was the order that. Sean had established notified staff. So. Sean, do you have. Initial questions that you've received and. I know that Anna has prepared some questions and. Sure. I'm sorry to interrupt. We lost Alicia. Can we hold for just a moment? So I want to, I want to just say really quickly. Sean got my questions like about a minute ago. And that's completely on me. So not, not Sean's fault at all. So just quickly. Does everyone have a budget book that wants a budget book? Is there anybody who has not received one yet that. Does want one. Okay. Alicia, let me know if you, if you'd like me to drop yours off. Or if you'd like to pick it up and I can arrange that. Perfect. So yeah, so we received some questions. I forward those off. The format is Earl. We'll kick it off for us. You know, an overview of. Your department and kind of the things that are going on. And if you can answer the questions as you, you know, in your opening remarks, great. If not, I can pull them up and we can go through them one at a time. We've done it both ways. So. I'll kick it over to Earl. Thank you all for letting me be a part of this last year. I was the only staff member of the department. And I was meeting with PD and fire and boy, were they really holding me up. So I'm excited to share. And we recruited, which was a challenge. Just kind of in the current market. July 5th, we started, we swore in eight responders and a program assistant. I just want to, for a moment, talk about what that team looks like of the eight of the 10 folks who work in our department. Eight of them lived, worked or went to school in this town before we started. Seven of the 10 of us identifies people of color. Three of us identifies people with, with a disability. We really were able to bring to bear the diversity vision of the town in the forming of this department. We entered what we thought would be an eight week series of training ended up adding a week there at the end, just to make sure we were good. September 6th, we began deployment. That makes us the fastest department in the country by about 15 months from the council deciding that Crest would exist to us delivering services. We started in September. Times were slow. We really chief Nelson says this often and I find it to be very true. We are building the plane as we fly it. Which means that we are kind of constantly in this pull between operations, delivering the best services we can today with the things that we have available to us. And doing the groundwork to expand that. So we started September 6th delivering services in town at the end of the week. We were able to be kind of supplementing some volunteer things, getting to know folks. When we came out our biggest thing was delivering meals for meals on wheels at the senior center. I know one of the questions was our impact on volunteerism. We very intentionally do not supplement, do not take on a role that is served by a volunteer. When age, when the survival center, we were able to do that. We were able to do that. We were able to do that. And that those services still happen. Which was a real great thing for us as we were looking to start in the field. So we kind of worked through September to January. Everyone worked nine to five Monday through Friday. That really allowed for us to get a lot of supervision, some on the ground work, expanding kind of what the idea was. Our eight responders work in teams of two. We work from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Monday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday. So that's about, you know, 10 different shifts for a department that only has 10 people were pretty, pretty proud of that. And that was developed looking at the call information, the leap report, but also kind of looking at the context nationally. Right now we are preparing to begin our deployment on 911, which is for us our next big hill to climb. That has involved things like purchasing CAD software, record keeping software, entering into an agreement with the Donahue Institute at UMass, to make sure that the data we collected met the needs of the town and potential funders in the future. Actually about half of our team is meeting with them as we speak. I know some of the questions were around data. And what I would say is currently we are very much. We are using a very vintage style of data collection. It's a lot of paper and pencil ESO is a system that we will be onboarding at the end of May. And so we will be able to generate data reports for folks, but we don't have that functionality today. We have done 570 reports. So that's 570 unique calls for service. That doesn't capture when we're in the community and someone kind of stops us and asks for a resource in the moment. It will at one point, but we're, you know, early days we didn't quite get that of those 570, 556 of them were unique calls for service. The other 14 were actually more calls for consultation. A business is struggling with someone they call us. They don't actually want us to come do anything. They want us to talk their staff through how they might handle it, what resources they might use. We don't currently break the calls down into, I know there was a ask about calls for schools, nonprofits, businesses, the town. Again, with our current technology, we don't have that functionality, but we do believe we will have it by the end of this fiscal year. We purchased the radios. We use a radio system I'm really proud of. It is on the cellular network. It actually has been such a success that the fire department is transitioning over to it. On Blarney, the day of the event known as Blarney. If you were in one of the emergency operating centers, there were points in a day where the only radios you could hear in those faces were ours. That is again a testament to the existing first responder groups. We are working with several different collaboratives to try to gain the wisdom of other departments. We don't want to make all the mistakes for the first time. We'd like to learn from some other communities. Currently we are not doing joint calls. We are not a co-response department. So you won't see a crest responder come out of a police car any more than you'll see a police officer come out of a fire truck. We have distinct work. There have been calls where we've shown up and police have arrived at the scene and all of those have been handled professionally with dignity for the person involved. We all, because of the training that folks receive from police, the police department, a special shout out to Officer Ting, who has been a, was a real robust part of our training milieu. We have a sense of what it looks like when police are doing their work. So when the step back, our relationship with the other departments is, I think a model for departments of our type in the country. You often hear of them talking about fighting a battle in the public safety sphere. We do not. There is nobody in the police or fire department. I can't call right now with a question that I wouldn't get an answer back before the close of business today. And I'm, that's, that is a unique feature of our community and a testament to the humility of the public safety folks working. So we have, we've received two calls from dispatch, but I would, I would say that that we are not on 911. So those were both very specific situations that the, the dispatch thought we were the right folks to handle. Until we take 911, that just isn't the way that works currently. All of our calls are self initiated, which means that either someone reached out to us and we decided to send a resource or we saw something happening in the community and kind of responded to it out. We continue to develop policies, protocols, procedures, traditions, customs, norms, all those things that you need to have a healthy institution. And I don't know, I would say that, that we are, my expectations are about that 556 number. My ultimate goal is to get us closer to what the leap report suggests, but that can only happen with time and experience. That number would be closer to 4,000 calls a year. I don't know exactly when that will happen, but I want you to know that that's my goal. That's what we're driving towards. And we are shooting 100% on goals that we set on achieving them in a time period faster than anybody else in the country has more efficiently and with, with better production on the other end of it. So I don't know, I live in this thing. I love it. Best job I ever had. I could talk about it forever. I just want to note again, it's important for me to say this out loud that the police department and fire department have been wonderful partners in this at dispatch. Mike Curtin and his team have been wonderful partners for us. When there has been disagreement, we have always ended up on the thing that we believe served the town the best. And I hope that that continues as long as the department exists. So I will stop talking and start answering questions. Do I call on people? And you're muted. You're muted. Sorry. Sean, is there anything else that you need to. I think Earl covered pretty much. The questions that I'm looking at right now. If not, we'll. Feel free to, if somebody knows he. The question was submitted that wasn't answered. Feel free to jump in. Yeah, I have one. The one that I did not answer is the call types will take. And so I pulled this up. So nonviolent calls to the school. Violence is a rule out category for us anywhere. So saying nonviolent before a thing is just a reminder to us that that's what we take. Non-criminal trespasses is something we aspire to take. Obviously if it's criminal, it still sits with the police department. Community engagement. Follow up. Assist other PD. And this allows us to support Amherst colleges, police department, UMass's police department. If things come up and that will only be generated when they request us specifically. Citizen transport. Mental health. Well-being check. Assist business. It's important to note that the way that the system in town works is that. Count departments are also considered businesses. So this would, if we went to Bueno, or we went to the rec department, those would both be assist businesses calls. Assist citizen. Assist admin calls. That's really when one of us is going to be out. Assist AFD assist APD assist. APD assisting crests. The crest business line. So a call that comes in through our business line that's initiated. That's what we have now. I do expect that kind of as the rubber meets the road, as the work hits the air that that list may change. It may grow. It may decrease. And when we start, I think folks should expect that we will start the way we have with everything with low, slow achievable calls. And then slowly, but surely building up a capacity. We are, we are not trying to be showboats about this thing. We intend to win. We intend to be successful. We want to increase the intensity and complexity of calls over time to ensure that the responders are able to grow into first responders, which there is no way to do that except to take 911 calls. So sorry, that was the last question I missed. Girls. Thank you. I mean, I'm not sure what. Thank you. Earl, you, you answered a lot. Thank you so much for, for sharing and I apologize for having my camera off. My only question is actually my only remaining question is about the org chart that was in the budget book. And it says the eight press responders and then an admin assistant. Where's the program assistant on that chart and in the budget. Do you also have an admin assistant? Is it just missing? Yeah. The admin assistant is the program assistant. The implement the implementation manager position, which is where the program assistant is currently vacant. The implementation manager position is paid for out of the DPH grant. That's currently where Kat Newman sits. And I'm proud to say we've had a real good response to that program assistant position. We expect to fill it very soon. Okay, that's great. And so, but so Kat Kat's role is the implementation manager role now. And you have applied for the, the DPH grant moving forward. Correct. Yes. And the most recent Senate budget, it was 99 points, 99% back and we, we hope that we'll get all of it. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you. So, if you have nothing further than I'll ask Dorothy. Okay. So I have a couple of questions and you are getting into one of them. And that is the, the big $450,000 DPH grant is likely to continue in some form or other for a while. Before you're just a regular budget item in the town budget. You beat yourself at the end there. Yeah, I am. So that's my question one is, is that. It's going to be some public funding for a while. It seems to be pretty secure and then we will somehow pick this thing up. Is that right? Yeah. So I think. So on the DPH grant, this is, this year has looked exactly like what last year looked like. It wasn't in the governor's budget. It was a little bit in the house budget and it was restored in the Senate. So I, that may be the life cycle of, of how this looks every year. So we're, there is no, it is currently still a year to year grant. And we expect that until something changes until they ask us to reapply or something that we would continue to get it. So I think that's another piece. I know I want folks to know that we are committed to kind of entrepreneurially looking at funding sources. And that isn't just about money. We are, we hope to always have some funding from the state because having the state have some skin in the game will help us long term. There are long term legislative questions of crest that can only be solved by the legislature. This allows us to have a direct line to them. We also hope to open up federal funding resources, which are fairly common for public safety. We're engaged in talks with folks who are on that level of things. We also expect to apply for grants from the private sector. From, from groups around the country that are looking to seed this work. And, you know, the town budget is a part of it. It's meaningful. It's helpful. It's helpful in recruiting folks that we are funded by the town of Amherst. We're looking for funding from any source that's available to us. And we recognize the constraints of town budgeting and, and are aware and coherent of that all the time. And just a quick follow up. All 10 responder positions and benefits. And the beginning of an operating budget, those are already in the general fund budget. The DPH grant is funding sort of startup costs for the program and wrap around services and additional services. That are really provided to the community training, things like that, but the sort of the core of the Crest program is already funded within the operating budget. Great. That is so good to hear. I had another question and a comment. I had the pleasure of, as I sat waiting for my car to get repaired since 7 30 this morning of reading through this beautiful budget book, we'll starting the budget book. So thank you Athena for the personalized hand delivery. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This phrase motivational interviewing. You've mentioned it has been in the reports, but I can't figure out what it could mean. So I'd love to have an explanation. Absolutely. Motivational interviewing is a framework of behavioral health connection. It really is a framework around asking open ended questions to people to help them to find. You know, a lot of our work is, is when we run into a person, we're going to be able to help them understand what their own needs are, what's possible, what's doable, what their own kind of restrictions are. It's an evidence based practice. The department of mental health offers it to their staff regularly. And it really, it's a training that through the grant, we've been able to offer to other folks and allows us to have a common language. Often getting other providers to understand, to take the training allows them to understand why we take such a slow and deliberate pace when we work with people. We don't want to force them to do anything they don't want to do, but we also want to kind of support their recovery process. Anybody who's interested in the trainings happen fairly regularly in town. And this is not just for the folks on the screen, but folks outside. I would love to have folks attend a training. I think it's useful in the real world in lots of places. We offered it at the library and they have found that interacting with folks. It allows them to do that in a place that doesn't feel so top down. And actually that idea came from the folks doing this work in Akron, Ohio. They had piloted it with a team and found great results. Okay. Okay. And then a quick question about Elliott homeless services. I know I've heard of Elliott. I think it's Elliott home care services where there's day service offered where you can bring people in, but this says homeless services that the correct title or a typo. Yeah. Elliott homeless services is a DMH funded program that provides outreach to folks in the homeless community, particularly folks who are what they would consider, you know, duly challenged or who have been homeless for an extended period of time. There's two folks doing outreach network here. I believe they're an outbreak of Riverside community services. So there's not a lot of that work from that agency happening here, but Elliott also works in Boston. They have great results with folks who are, you know, when you've been homeless for a few years, it's really hard. It's one of the things I think about a lot. If you've been living outside for three years and we get you into an efficiency apartment, it can feel claustrophobic. And so there's a real need for supports around that. Jay Levy, who is an Amherst resident as the director of that, that agency. Okay. So my last thing is I enjoyed meeting with some of the Crest workers. I think it was at the grief circles. And when I see their pictures, I can't put the names to them that well yet. And I'm just thinking maybe we could have some kind of like three, three hour social interaction event with changing tables or games or, you know, some kind of way so that we can all be intermingling. And when we, when we walk out of there, they know who we are and we know who they are. I think that would be really nice. That's a fantastic idea. Thank you. So that, that's it for my questions and comments. Thank you. So, I lost my clicker. Sorry. Back to mundane questions. I'm interested to know if there is. A focus or, or if nuisance. Calls sort of the non-criminal nuisance calls will be part of your repertoire. I was reminded of that last night with my windows open and a great deal of noise coming from nearby establishments. Just what, what is your take on that? Yeah, every month is an increasing category for us. I'd say this week we've done six or seven of them. Often trying to get out there early. The hard part and the nuanced part that we're going to have to develop is the difference between a criminal nuisance and non-criminal nuisance is. Context. It's where, when, who, and so there are times where people call us for a thing and we, you know, there's a sense that there might be violence involved, a sense that folks might want to do a trespass. So we're still really developing our capacity to work through that. But it grows every day. And we had something we expected to do. And so, we're going to have to, you know, we're going to have to work through that, but it grows every day. And we had something we expect to do more and more of, and the results have been, you know, fairly good. We've, you know, gotten calls from one of our most successful ones is we got a call about a really upset person in town hall. And when we were able to get there, the responder who went there was able to engage so well with this person that we were able to take a person who'd been homeless on the streets and Amherst for two years and actually support them to access shelter for the first time in years and actually get them to stay there. And now we're working towards permanent housing with a person who, when we first, you know, I made the first attempt that at engaging with them, it did not go very well. So this is a, this is a really nice thing. But yeah, those, those sorts of things. And I would say the other part is working with the community to understand the difference between, you know, sometimes there is some level of, of annoyance from our neighbors that is just part of living with people. And so helping people to understand the difference between that, you know, if someone violating a town by law, are they somehow impeding the peace? Or is this just a person who is a loud talker, which I am. So, so yeah, I think there's, there's lots to learn on all ends. We're doing that. And we'll be doing, you know, once we start on 9-1-1, I anticipate that will grow. And, but yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Earl, I want to start by thanking you for your part in the presentation on Wednesday night. I don't think. Any of us as counselors expressed our appreciation to all three of you. About the extensive work each of you has done with your teams. And so I think it's important for us to publicly be out there and saying, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And it's very relevant to this discussion. One of my takeaways from Wednesday night was because of Cress, we may find ourselves providing services in this town that we have not been able to provide in the past. And you just gave a beautiful example. Of the homeless person. And so as much as people keep wanting to balance the possibility of the homeless person, I think the reality is, I don't think so. I think we're going to find that we're going to continue to have a full police force and a full Cress operation, whatever that means. Because we are going to be able to font, provide more comprehensive services to the residents of our town that we were not able to provide in the past. And I cannot say that enough. I do want to ask, not necessarily today, but sometime in the future, if you would share the scope and the timeline for evaluative data that you'll be receiving about Cress, because I think it's that evaluative data that begins to help shape where we think Cress will go down the road and into the future. Yeah, I actually think that's a pretty. It's a simple question to answer these days. We expect to have a report on the kind of first year of operations to provide in September, which will be our year anniversary there. Our contract with UMass hopefully will provide us with an evaluative tool by the end of the calendar year. And then we do anticipate our, my goal from day one, the town's goal from day one has been that people will be able to go to the town website and get as close to real time data from us as possible. I would encourage folks to go look at the Durham, North Carolina website for their responder team to look at the kind of bar we're setting for ourselves. Now I do want to say that they have a lot more money than us, so it may not be as pretty as that, but it'll be the small town version of that. And I think we recognize the importance of that. So it's something that we'll talk about kind of as regularly as possible, folks are doing the work right now. As soon as we're able to generate those reports, we will share them with you. Thank you. I also have a comment that's really is sparked by Dorothy's question about the grant. And that is that it's been observed by Senator Comerford and Representative Dom that as programs like this continue to be in the Commonwealth, we may not be able to get that grant on a regular basis. And, but there may be other things that we should look at as well. So it's really use, it's heartening to know that we are already carrying all of our responders and all of you on our regular budget and the grants being used to augment that budget because grants can go away in a heartbeat. And again, thanks a lot. Great start. And, you know, July 1st, July, whatever it is fourth. First, I think it is, we actually have the anniversary of swearing the first group in. And it's important to know first group in New England. You know, this is a, we are setting the tone for everyone. I would encourage folks, if you're, if you're hoping to support us, talk to legislators about state funding. One of my hopes is that at some point we are a public safety department while that public safety approach may look different. Public safety is at the core of our approach and being eligible for state public safety grants for crime prevention grants for judicial diversion grants would be really important. And it's important to note that that is not something that any of us have control over. So it's important that as folks advocate that we don't forget to advocate with the whole state to make sure that we're able to access all those things. I do hope people join us soon though. Thank you. Okay. Sure. Other questions at this point is I think. And move on to the lease if there are no other questions for Earl. Because we just sit along with you the other night. And with other two other boards involved. So we really did a lot of thinking and. Asking you questions and so between the two, I think that we really have gained a. Great appreciation and we know that. This is an evolving process and so some of the questions. There might be on our minds or things that were sort of high for one and leaving in the background because. I know that you're working on things and you need time to develop it and to work with the other departments and. Cooperatively and that's where I have to that we're going in. I think. We can work with the budget and set up to enable. All of us all the departments and public safety to work together to achieve that. So thank you. Appreciate you. If I could just take one quick moment. To thank Chief Livingstone, none of this would have been possible without him being the human being he is his mentorship, his guidance. And his example has been of immense value to this department and it will bear fruit for us for as long as this department exists. I know this isn't really the thing he's into, but it is important to me that we say this publicly that his legacy will live on with us forever. And I couldn't have had a better partner in doing this thing without him being the human being. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chief Livingstone. And so I wanted to thank him here for it. Appreciate you all. Thanks, Earl. So that's. I will turn to the chief and. This is going to be one of my last opportunities to. Call you Chief Livingstone. But I too want to thank you. I really appreciate what you have done in. Providing leadership to the department and. Just building on a very good department and. Making it a better department. Which is hard to do when you inherited a good department. So thank you for all that you've done for the town and behalf of. I think it's a great honor to be here with you. Me as one of the elected. People who's sort of overseeing things. And with that, I'll turn it over to you. If you have any introductory comments. On the budget and then. I'll go between you and Scott. And Sean for. To make sure that the questions that he's aware of. Get it. Get asked first because. People have provided Sean. With questions. Chief. Thanks. And thanks, Andy, for those. Kind of words. I mean. I'll actually miss these types of meetings, believe it or not. And. I actually used to enjoy town meetings standing up in front of that body as well. So call me crazy. But probably the only department head that enjoyed that, but. In any case. Thanks for having us today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Captain Ting is here. Captain Gabe Ting. Ron Young is here with us as well. In case there are administrative type questions and my curtain will handle the. Majority of the communication centers. Budget explanations and stuff, but if it's okay with you, Sean, can we go. Animal welfare communications and then please. I don't have any issue with it as long as somebody on the committee does. Animal welfare is pretty straightforward. I don't have any issues with it. I don't have any issues with it. I know that in front of you, Carol continues to do an outstanding job. The majority of her budget is her. And the job that she does. And the job that she does is outstanding. And she's actually a lot of fun to work with. And I know the cops really appreciate the fact that she's here. And in this building. So. Her accomplishments are all there for you. Challenges. So I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. New dog park. You know, gave her a little bit of extra work, but I think she enjoys it. She won't say that, but she enjoys the extra work. And. Everything that she does is just really outstanding. So I don't really have anything to add. Other than the fact that unless there are questions specific to. To Carol's job. And she informs me that she plans on. You know, I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. Because she just did bring on. A unpaid intern. Who's a local resident and she's. Going to be outstanding if someday she's. Carol's successor. We finally got her to agree to bring somebody on board as a intern. To start learning the ropes, but. It's a local young lady and she's. Been, you know, mingling with the cops and everything. And everybody's getting along great. So, so that's good news that she's. Unless there are specific questions again, her budget is pretty straightforward. Most of it is her personnel line item and then some little add-ons. She does have in the mix, a new vehicle coming hers is in really bad shape. We don't like her to leave town with it because it's just, it's getting old and rusty and things like that. So we're trying to get it here. It's on back order. Like a lot of police vehicles are. We're trying to get it here. We're trying to get it here. We're trying to get it here. What about the only thing we're waiting for as a new vehicle for Carol? Questions. Anything I missed. Thanks. So I didn't see any questions on the animal welfare that came in. Did you shot? So. I think we can go on. Okay. We'll move on to communication center. Mike curtain is here. To go over some of the details and specifics of. Of Mike's calm center. We had a. Personal up at the communication center. We've had a couple of dispatchers leave in the last year and. You know, the folks that have been applying to the position. Aren't always sure whether the communications job is the type of job that fits for them. So it's been kind of. We've had people come in and interview. They tried out for a while. It doesn't work for them. We just had a new young man in today who looks like it's going to be a good fit, but I'll let Mike speak about that. So we currently are. At 11 dispatchers. And again, we have one vacancy there and we're hoping to fill that position. With this new gentleman who came in today to meet some of the folks, but Mike, you ready to go? Sure. I mean, she's covered just about all of it. And if you look at our budget, you know, 90% of our budget is personnel. We do have a couple of capital things coming up that I'm here to discuss. If anybody has any questions about those, our greatest challenge, especially coming out of COVID is hiring. We used to put an application process out. We get 100 plus people apply. Now we're getting, we're lucky if we get 25 30. We had a round of interviews recently where we invited seven people in for interviews. And only two showed up. Two were nice enough to let us know the morning of it. And then the rest of them are coming in. And then the rest were just simply no shows. We had a couple of good candidates that we offered one candidate. In particular, we offered the position. He's all set to go leaving the interviews. And then he decided that he didn't want to work the overnight shift. And we just can't hire somebody for specific shifts. And we're not getting into union stuff or anything like that, but we're kind of struggling in competition against other communities. But they're going through the same thing as well. We've hired a, made an offer and hired him through the whole initial phase of training with an experienced dispatcher. Who came from a much bigger community. And was kind of surprised on how much we do in Amherst's dispatchers and decided they'd go back to their whole job besides instead of work here. So I really don't have much else to offer or to put out there right now, but if you do have some questions, I'm certainly hearing it from Andy. Can I ask a couple of questions? Just things. Two things, Mike, one. This budget includes the creation of the second lead dispatch position. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of that position? And then the second question is just do a quick breakdown of the difference between the, the radio equipment upgrade that we have in the plan coming up for this coming year. And versus the IMC software, which is, we have scheduled scheduled for a few years down the road. Okay. If you don't mind, I'll work backwards. The radio. I thought was for an FY26 project. So. No, so we, the radio is in for FY24. Okay. Because of the, what we were told is terms of the import. It was the importance of that, Mike. Yeah. Is why we moved it up. Sure. I mean, it is becoming legacy equipment. So our radio vendor, we happen to hear that. So what we, the equipment we have right now was refreshed about seven years ago. It's really going on 13 years old now. This will be the first major radio upgrade we've done. And it's radio equipment in the comm center. And in the station officers position. So it allows for a lot more interoperability as we move forward. And it's designed for upgrading, or the emerging technologies as we go forward. The, what you refer to as the IMC project is actually the computer aided dispatch and record management system. So it serves a dual purpose. And I'm sure that captain, captain young could speak on. And even as Earl was saying earlier, the equipment we have the CAD system, the record management system we have right now makes it very difficult to extrapolate any type of data and things like that. And this is legacy equipment for sure. It's not being supported the way it was even two years ago. So getting upgrades. And if it was ever to fail to get any type of repairs on it, it's very difficult. The second lead position. So we developed the lead position, which is a full-time train dispatcher who's taking out more responsibility. Part of it was for transition for when I pull the plug. And what we're looking for now is more supervision for a greater period. Obviously we'd like to have 24 hour seven supervision, but that's kind of not feasible. But as we bring on newer dispatchers, there's some things that you just need the, the hours in and the expertise and the seniority. And having seen things before to deal with the same way that there are, there's a career ladder for the fire department, a career ladder for the police department. We need that extra supervision. The one lead we have now, I've been trying to get up to speed on some of the administrative things, but to our, to our staffing levels. Our lead dispatcher Jason, Jason Rushford is on a rotating schedule. And sometimes I see him. Sometimes I don't, because we're short staffed. I am spending a large percentage of my time on the radio console working the 911 phones and the radios. So we don't have that time to interact, to talk about grants, to talk about things like the budget, to talk about scheduling and payroll and all the other stuff that comes up. So the hope is if we can get the second lead position, and it would be a promotion, it wouldn't be hiring at another position. If we can get that second lead, we can have some after-hour supervision. We can move Jason into a position where we may get four hours, eight hours a week. We could actually sit in the office and go over some of the things that need to be gone over. I'm just looking to see if there are any other questions. Well, I was going to, let's say, let me call on Paul and then I was going to ask one and then start recognizing others. Paul? Yeah, I just, I know Mike and the chief would say, you're welcome to go up and visit the dispatch center and just watch them work. It's an eye-opening experience, especially on a busy night when they are carrying on conversations, managing, dispatching, people receiving 911 calls that were people are freaking out and life emergencies. And, you know, just call ahead. It's open 24 hours. If you can't sleep at night or sometime, swing up there because it really, it's one of the things in my experience in the town where it's like, wow, I just did not know we were doing this every day, 24 hours a day. So I just really encourage you all to take a chance to do that. Well, thank you for pointing that out. What I wanted to start with is we had discussions the other night about the Christ program at a council meeting. And it was a little bit when we were just meeting with Earl a few minutes ago. And one of the things, of course, that is sort of envisioned for the year ahead is the development of starting to identify appropriate calls through the dispatch that might, involve press solely or in partnership with other program. Other public service. Public safety department. Public safety departments. So I, I guess that I'd be interested to know a little bit about what do you think is the steps that we've taken already or need to take. To facilitate that. And whether you have any concerns about. Staffing or other needs that you might have to make to help make this work. So chief, I'm not sure if you want me to answer this one. Or do you want to. I'll start with it. Go ahead, Mike. And if I'm going to jump in. So the list of calls in our old. Stated are right off earlier. Those actually came through some collaboration. They came from the dispatch center. So those are the type of calls we thought press may be able to start on. There's been some other things in the background that we've been working through. The technology is more or less there. But there's been some other. Things. Both that. The procedural level. And the, the, the, the, the, the, the procedural level and documentation, other things like that that we're working through. And I'd really defer to the chief or top manager on where we're going from there. Yeah, I would just add that. Andy. Where it's a work in progress. But one of the big. Things that we have to make sure that we're very. All agreeable on is that the dispatchers are probably going to continue to still handle all of the phone calls. Coming into. Request either a police officer and or, or a crest membership. We certainly know crests will have. Direct contact or direct request for calls from some individuals, but most people are going to call the police. Dispatch center. And it's going to be really come down to. Some experienced dispatchers. To screen the calls to find out what exactly. Can be sent creches way and what. That can be sent to the police officer's ways. Because. I'm concerned. We're all concerned. That we don't want to have sent crests into something that is going to go bad or go wrong and have somebody injured. And that's the biggest. Concern we have. So we're going to err on the side of caution. You know, because what we're going to be, what we're already telling the police officers is down the road. There will be times we'll send you on a call and you're going to need to make that determination. And then you will have to. Like, look, Chris can handle this. Please dispatch crests to this call. And then, and then that'll happen. And I think we just need to get into involved in it and start doing it. And we hope to have it beginning this summer. To dispatch them and we'll figure out as we go. And it's going to be a, it's going to be alive. You know, and it's going to change frequently, I think, to establish exactly what type of. Crests can handle and feel confident about handling. So, I mean, there's no easy answer to that question. We know it's going to evolve. We know what we're going to be sending crests to calls. That maybe they shouldn't have been sent to, and we're certainly going to send police officers to calls where they're going to defer to crests. So, you know, it's going to involve just a lot of teamwork. Thank you. Paul, I know you had your hand up and then take it down. So I'm assuming that, you know, longer looking. The chief made my point. Yeah. So. We'll go back to Pam. Thank you. I see the dispatch center is sort of the lynchpin for all the public services. I think it's a great department. So thank you. I have a really dumb question, I guess, and that is what is holding back the formation of the, the, the second lead position is, is this, you need negotiation or. Or what, why, why, why can you not get the second position? And I understand. Sometimes it takes time. So. Probably the main reason is up until this point, we've had a really a senior staff. And there was need for a lead position. If I want to take a vacation or times when I wasn't here. But it is our staff becomes younger and younger. We just lost 44 years of dispatching experience in the last three months or no longer than that, about six months now. We're two people that retired. It's the first time we've had anybody retire from the communication center. And the 24 years that I've been here. So we're starting to see that type of. Looking at dispatch as a career. But as we get into a younger staff, we're kind of in this weird spot where we try to give senior people their choices. And we're trying to get them to, you know, We're trying to incentivize it. And then we have all these other things that are being added. Our emergency medical dispatch program is becoming. The state's requiring more and more documentation on everything we do there. Our grant programs. We have compliance things now that weren't there before. Just QA, QI stuff on a. On a 24 hour basis. So we're trying to incentivize it. And then we have all these other things that are being added. Our emergency medical dispatch program is becoming. The state's requiring more and more documentation on a 24 hour basis. It's just becoming where we need. We need somebody responsible. On more of our shifts. It's also for the police department, fire departments. You know, I don't mind taking calls at 2 o'clock in the morning for questions that are things that are going on, but it's much nicer. If there was somebody here. That had the responsibility. That's really on the police department. They need to find out something right away recordings and accessing certain certain things that only admin people have. The position wasn't the business position doesn't exist. Yeah, and it wasn't funded. This budget is proposing funding for it and if approved then the town manager would work with Mike and the union to create the position. That's why it hasn't been filled in the past. Yeah, sounds like it sounds like Mike deserves a few evenings off. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. So, anything else with that Dorothy. There's a very obvious answer on page 135 looking at the number of calls and it's comparing FY 18 with FY 22 actual. And, you know, it was just the numbers are much higher in 18. It was that because I'm going to get the facts wrong. We used to do ambulance we had had recovered Hadley with the ambulance at that time. Is that why the call volume was much higher in 18. So I don't have the specific book you're looking at in front of me, but I could say most likely we were probably still doing Hadley and FY 18. We also had some covert numbers that are starting. I guess that doesn't really trickle back to FY 18 but I don't know if this is student population, some different things that the police started doing different ways that they became. I don't want to get into this too much but they kind of changed the way they did things where they had a lot more conversations with people instead of doing things some ways they done in the past. Some population things and, you know, the students over UMass have become much nicer to us. You know, the cause that we used to get from them were much more confrontational. So, all of those things led into it. Okay. Thank you. It's very interesting answer. That's it. I mentioned this in a previous meeting, but in a previous life, I had the misfortune of having responsibility for a call center. So, Mike, I do appreciate now want everyone to appreciate it's really hard to find the right people for a call center. It's really hard. And the fact that you, you know, you've kept kept this thing going for so long is really a testament to your skills and to the skills of the people that you hired. I do have one question that is in the larger call centers and your call center may not be big enough. They use a tiered system where, you know, the newbies if you will, will handle the calls and if they can't quite figure out what to do they kick it back to the next tier. They kick it to a more experienced person. Do you do that sort of thing or do you not really have the personnel do that. So, we rely on our training heavily. And after that first four months, and when we release somebody to be a dispatcher, they should have all the skills to do it. But you are correct there are times where there'll be a junior dispatcher that just has never experienced something like this and senior dispatcher will step in. We simply don't have the staff to handle calls that way. Maybe we, you know, we operate with a minimum of two dispatchers on and you could have one dispatcher that has 20 years, and the other that has a year. And it's a 20 year dispatcher is dealing with cardiac arrest, and there's a domestic on the other line, it's that dispatcher that has to take it. And I'm not going to get into too many stories here but one of the people we hired came from a center that has this tiered response or tiered responsibilities. So a lot of the larger centers will start with their newer dispatchers will be call takers, and they will take all the information and they'll enter into a computer system. And then I'm going to transfer it over to the radio dispatcher who will read all that information, and then dispatch the call. This person we hired was used to that type of operation when they came into a place where they had to take the call, check history, ensure safety and dispatch the call. They said, you know, for the extra $3 an hour it's just not worth. So the short answer is we just don't have the personnel to handle them that way. I assume that was the case just based on the size of your call center. But thanks anyway thanks. I appreciate it. It's anything else that chief. I guess we can go on to the next thing which I guess is a department. Great. Thanks Mike, you can take off. Appreciate it. So yeah just moving into our police budget now. So we're budgeted at 46 and we are currently at 46 we have four new officers that graduated on March 17, and they're about halfway through their field training program they're all four of them are doing outstanding. Emily Rebecca Andrew and we're missing a Steven Steven, Steven, you know they're doing great and then we just had two officers. Andrew Coblin who's a local kid and Amherst kid and Romano who's from Chicago he just started the Academy but they won't be out on their own till probably sometime in October. But we are at 46 people so that's good news. Our recent accomplishments and key challenges you guys all have that, you know the big ones are being re awarded accreditation this past year and also meeting all the post certification standards for everybody in the building so that that went very smoothly and Captain young handle all of that documentation and it was a lot of work so we're up to speed there. Again my budget I think most of you are very familiar with it 95 97% of it is personnel cost. And yep, so that's where we are about 97% now for personnel cost for call volumes, we're starting to see us creep back into pre coven numbers and I know I have some questions here that I'll address about some of those numbers. Yeah, we expected it to really kind of get busy last fall, and it kind of didn't become as busy as gave and I and the officers had thought it kind of moved slowly to the point where now it's really just starting to step up the spring is really getting into pre coven times with call volumes and that sort of thing so I think you'll see in 2023's call numbers it'll probably be more like they were pre coven. So that's the trends that we're seeing. Want me to just jump into questions Sean that I had addressed to me previously. Yeah, that would be good. Sounds good. So I can answer a couple of facilities questions. I know there were two. I'm not specific to a full time position for a maintenance person which we do have it the question was about a description of a part time weekend custodian and why isn't that position listed in the staffing trends. That part time weekend person is even part time part time. So he doesn't come in every weekend. So he comes in as needed so it's not something that we would have an individual listed on it for an every weekend type position. So I believe that's the reason Sean that it probably wasn't listed is because it's not a full time part time person. Yeah, the only positions we put in the orchard are budgeted permanent positions that they're under 20 hours. And they're temporary and they fluctuate from week to week we don't. There's budgets for them but we don't consider them and serve our FTE for the for the town. Yeah, and he's definitely less than 20 hours for sure. So, and then the fuel and electricity usage have decreased significantly, which is positive and the reasoning for that is so last year we had all 12345 boilers replaced. The old ones were the original ones in this building from 33 years ago, all of those have been replaced and we just started, just had replaced the ACHV system. And that's literally just took place so those costs for the fuel oil were expected to go down because it's all new. It's all new. And then we also expect the electricity usage to continue to go down, because that equipment's been replaced as well. I do know that, you know, the roof is still on the list of things to get fixed on the building because that's the original roof, and we are definitely looking at the potential of solar on the roof. So I know our southern exposure well gets just what you'd expect from southern exposure so I've kind of been pushing that for a long time, but I know it's in the works. We had some questions about call service and game I'll let you answer those about increases and decreases so if you want to jump in. Sure, thank you. I will ask for questions for specifics in a moment, but there's there have been a lot of changes since if you take a look at the chart fiscal year 22 compared to fiscal year 18 so certainly COVID played a big role in some of those numbers. We consistently analyze where our stats are to forecast problems and to try and figure out solutions. There's a lot of variables and factors that may change our numbers, causing them to either go up or down. Some of those factors are staffing levels. Our department certainly becoming much younger. So there's training milestones and expectations for the new officers. We're seeing a different type of student with the higher standards at UMass. Certainly this year we've been waiting for the shoe to drop in terms of large scale parties and we haven't seen that since pre COVID so there have been a lot of changes with that. We also credit our outreach efforts. We have a really strong collaboration with the University and Amherst College to figure out solutions and to really keep their students accountable for for their actions off campus as well. So, this particular year there's a calendar change in terms of the graduation and we're trying to see you know there's some new norms coming out we're trying to see how that's going to affect our spring. You know years ago before that change, they would have graduated around this time, and which alleviated a lot of our headaches and one of those headaches was the Hobart Hoedown back in the day. So we're kind of waiting to see if if that's going to resurrect or not or if if activities going to increase so far you know fingers crossed it's been pretty good we've been pretty fortunate. And also, you know, we kind of prioritize our shift in focusing on de-escalation and diversion. All of these different variables are going to kind of change the numbers here and there. So with that being said, are there any particular questions for any of the specific crimes? I had some just that I would fill in game because I know Sean had sent me some questions. There was one that was are there any increases or decreases related to the changing policies with respect to working with fire department or Cres and if so please explain and including animal welfare. If we change that would be a no. You know, where we do see once Cres really starts to get established and responding to calls where we really see that being beneficial to us is in calls that involves a lot of length of time and a lot of our medical mental calls are just that. So we have to go to a call that involves an individual in crisis. And even though we have our crisis intervention officers, we still only have three officers on the road at any one time. So we just don't have the ability to be with an individual for an hour or two hours or three hours at a time and get them the services and the necessary people involved that maybe a Cres can do. So we see that as a really big area that Cres is going to be able to help us both in call volume and in the time that's an officer has to spend with an individual. So we're looking forward to that relief. There was a question to discuss what an officer's time commitment and respond to and then finish the reports for a call and examples of those types of calls. Yeah, I know Mandy Joe and when we met last week, we had these conversations but, you know, if there's an officer involved in a domestic violence case that is not unusual for that call to take two to three hours because you're talking about having an officer come back getting getting statements from an individual contacting judges contacting civilian advocates for domestic violence and that stuff and that officer has to be present for that entire type of a call because they have to speak with the judges and make sure that the 209 aids get issued and those types of things so a domestic violence call can take upwards of two, three, four hours. And that entire time the officer is not able to respond to calls. You know drunk driving arrest same thing, a drunk driving arrest for the processing of that, getting somebody booked bailed and that sort of thing. That's a minimum of about a two hour call. So, again, you see that our OU IRS numbers are up. We did see some trend we did see with the return of the student getting back to more normal and we're also seeing an increase in not just drunk driving arrest but impaired impaired driving related to marijuana use and that sort of thing and we were told that what happened from all of our, when we did outreach to the states where they had already had marijuana legalized Colorado Washington told us that we would see increases in that and we did see increases in that as well. I think Earl kind of covered how Crest and PD will be working together. You know, just a little amount of time that we have been working together it's been very fluid it's been very beneficial I think to both of us, and we see that continuing to expand. Pure usage going down just a little bit we've only got four I think of our vehicles, or five that are actually the hybrid patrol vehicles. We are running into an issue with maintenance on the new hybrid vehicles two of them have been out of service for upwards of a month, they found a glitch. It goes with the amount of equipment that we have it's that making them overheat and some wiring is burned and so forward is aware that they're going to try and it's not just our department. It's all police department so you know we haven't seen the full effect of gas savings yet with the hybrid vehicles we anticipate it will be significant though. I think those were the questions you sent me Sean. And so, if there are other ones. Yeah, we're here. Did you get the ones got that I just sent. I don't know if you kind of look at the ones I just forwarded. And let me bring it up on my phone here. Did you speak to you. Yeah, yeah, we got those okay. Can you tell us the amount of overtime worked and amount paid in the last the past year so. So I've never. I don't believe I've ever used up my entire overtime budget, my entire line item. Over time budget since I've been chief and I, we're going to go over this year. We've had we have to replace every officer that uses a vacation time sick time or personal time, because we're at minimum, we were at minimum staffing or below minimum staffing up until this last four officers graduated. Every shift that an officer took off had to be replaced on overtime. So I'm going to go over on my overtime budget this year. And there's not much I can do about that the positions the you have to get people time off and they have to be filled. So, I think it's the first time since I've become chief that we're going to exceed our overtime line item budget. What is the timeline and the practice for moving to body cameras. I don't have a solid answer for that I expect that. And again I'm not sure about whether the horse goes first or the cart. I wanted to get it out to the town council to get their feeling about their approval of the officers the police officers want body cameras. And that's why I submitted them to the budget, and in conversations I had with Sean we thought it would be good to defer that until after we had conversation with town council about where exactly we want to move and how quickly we want to move on that. I've got quotes from our supplier on what it would cost. So we have the actual cost and I submitted that as a capital request. I think we just need to work out the details of how that fits into the surveillance by law and next steps to take so we're ready to move on that. I don't have, I don't know, honest still here yeah, I don't know the specific timeline on when that will happen on a Scott can I add a couple things. Yeah, a couple pieces and Paul feel free to jump in that have to happen. One, I believe it has to be part of negotiations at some point if it isn't already. So that that has to occur next that has to go through the surveillance by law process. And one of the reasons we pull it out from a request for 24 but we still kept it sort of on our radar is because we believe there's grant funding that will be available for it. At the Scott's point the order in which those three things happen. I think we're still working through, especially with the surveillance by law because that's a new, I think this will be the first major application of it. Second, and, but we are starting to, we filled out the grant free application are starting to get ready to submit for that grant. Right. And I would just say, you know, I think a lot of departments are moving to body cams. If the counselors are saying we do not want it. I mean, we, I would really that's one of the things we're hoping if the council's like they know way we don't want to support this. It'd be good for us to start to hear that conversation so we know we should have a more focused conversation with the counselor. We will be applying for grants because I think that's the best way to move forward to have the money in hand for the capital, and then work, we will need to do collective bargaining with the union on this. And that's sort of other departments have already done that it's all over the map in terms of how they've settled out. And then we do would do the surveillance by law meet that requirement as well. Any other questions on that specific item. And I know there's a couple more questions here from on. Why the large uptick in OU eyes. People are drinking and driving more. And people are smoking marijuana and driving more. Nothing's changed from the practices of the police officers. The most of the time and I know you I arrested involves somebody doing something like well, a they got into an accident, and it's part of the investigation or they're pulled over for speeding and or some other motor vehicle violation and the officer makes up observations that are obvious that they've been drinking and driving so you know that's pretty straightforward. I just add to that, you know, I do listen to the scanner. There are a fair number of people who call in saying someone's working all over the road in front of me. Can you send a true a cruiser to and that happens at least a couple of times a day. Yeah, so I'll be driving down the road they'll call 911 saying this person's driving on safely. They're speeding up there's, you know, slowing down whatever it is. And they ask for an art officer to investigate. Yeah, thanks for bringing that up all because you're right. At least a couple of times a day we'll we'll get calls of that nature. A lot of times it comes from a PVTA bus driver to when it's at night, things of that nature so you know that's, that's a pretty obvious one as well and I appreciate you bringing that up. And the last while you're on that subject. Well, this takes me back to my select board days, but when we were getting to ready for legalization of marijuana. There was a lot of concern about the challenge to develop protocols for being able to assess whether somebody is impeded in driving because of use of marijuana and I was curious whether that has turned out to be a problem. Yeah, so what typically would happen Andy is the officer will pull somebody over or get a call and have conversation with them. And they know that there's something not right right through their training and observation they know they're impaired. It's time to take a PBT test which is a breathalyzer test at the side of the vehicle, and they'll blow a 0.0 so there's no alcohol in their system but the officer can't let that person drive away because they're impaired. And so, the officers only other recourse and then is to make the arrest for impaired operation and then during the course of conversation the person usually is like yeah I smoked a bunch of marijuana earlier or sometimes it goes to court and the judge has to testify to what they observed as far as operation, or whatever and you know the judge and or jury then has to make a decision on that. You'd be surprised the number of people who are upfront and forth right after the arrest is made say yeah, I did, I shouldn't have been driving that sort of thing. They're usually pretty honest about it. Is there anything else in the list. Yeah, there's one last one and it's the community outreach call that we have. And are those numbers impacted by crests. Again, too early to tell on it numbers are being impacted by crest, probably a little bit. So the community outreach calls that we have are started by officers doing follow up on specific type calls, or Bill Laramie and all the work that he's doing in neighborhoods, and that sort of thing. We now have officers that are going in the morning to the schools and reaching out with working with some of the kids in the middle and elementary schools, and doing some work there. So one of it is just follow up. And our crisis intervention team members will follow up on all of those calls so if we deal with an individual in crisis, they will go and follow up with that individual afterwards. Maybe they get released from the hospital and they'll go back and check on that individual. See if they're doing all right if they need resources. That sort of thing. Am I missing anything Gabe. Absolutely correct. I mean a lot of it is self initiated proactivity to try and get things done. And we document that so that's you're going to see the numbers reflecting that. And I think that's it Sean for pre questions. Yeah, I think it's I think it's a good time to transition to if there's any other questions. Yeah, actually, I was with Anna and she and I discussed the body cam so I will work with the town manager as to when we want to bring that to the council. It seems to me that your proposal, if you write one for a grant will be stronger if you have a town council vote that indicates the support from the council. That may also weigh into your negotiations with your workforce as well. I want to go back on the, on the various trends though community outreach. There's this serious and ongoing decline does that reflect a change in policy and practice or what is what's going on there. So, I can answer that a lot of that is activity dependent, and that goes back to if you look at the numbers to pre COVID, you know activity was really high there was, you know in terms of party and quality of life issues was was really an issue. Not that it isn't an issue now still is it's just it's kind of changed. So we really had to ramp up our efforts at that time for outreach initiatives and, you know, most recently, the activity has kind of died down in terms of large amounts of quality of life issues. As an example, I think you're kind of familiar with the grant would drive neighborhood. We presented a lot of energy and time and and focus on that particular neighborhood. So that one neighborhood presented a lot of issues. So that developed a lot of call numbers for us in terms of documenting productivity. You know, this year, it's really died down and we really haven't had to visit grant with too much. And that's just one example. And that's kind of been townwide in terms of large scale issues. So really is activity dependent. So you're going to see that number to be really low. But that's not to say that it's not in our forefront is still is it's just really activity dependent. One of the other things to Lin is we're really transitioning over to a younger police agency and some of the younger officers are being trained in how exactly what we want them to be doing as far as community out. They're getting their feet wet as taking the initiative to go to a neighborhood and do follow up and that sort of thing. So they still need they're like puppies. Sometimes they need to be urged to go do that and try some of those things. And right below that, the mental medical assistance obviously peaked during COVID but it still seems to be pretty high. And I think Ron could probably speak to that the most. That's certainly an issue that's been extremely prevalent, not only in our town but nationwide. Ron is our expert on that. Yeah, so certainly certainly during the pandemic. We those calls did not those are one of the few calls where the numbers did not change as a matter of fact they increased during the covert years. And of course now having a clinician on board for the last year or so. Some of the, some of the calls that we have are replicated calls because we're going back for after care checks. So as we try to get people wired in with various different resources whether it happened to be a recovery coach or something along those lines. They're reflected those numbers. And it doesn't seem to be causing math to be quite frank. And a lot of it. It looks like there are numbers but some of those numbers represent the same community member who are we're trying to wire in with specific resources. So, there might be an initial call that involves the police or crest, but then the clinician will go back and have additional follow up calls with them that may not even have an intricate part of police response it's more. It's either clinician based or clinical based. But yet, as, as Captain Ting had said earlier when he was saying, we do need to track our activity to some level because his grandfather position so it's, there's a little bit of being counting in there. Thank you all for all those answers. Thank you. Lynn asked many of the questions I had. So the one that I have left is vandalism, which seems to be going in the opposite direction of many of the other calls with the more responsible college students so maybe the vandalism is not being caused by college students. And I personally, I think there's a lot of variables to that, you know, if you look around town there's a lot more cameras now. Certainly all over the place that certainly factors in as a deterrent. It's just a lot easier to catch them nowadays and unfortunately I can't answer if these college students enjoy vandalizing more or less. There's a lot of variables to that. And you know the consequences nowadays are pretty hefty, like I said, we have a lot of collaboration with the university. And if their students do get in trouble, we report it, and there are heavy sanctions. And most often, these students are a lot more afraid of the, the sanctions come down from the Dean of Students Office, frankly then then a criminal charge. So I certainly think that that plays into it. I don't want to follow up on that. I know that one form of vandalism is stealing street signs, particularly with provocative names. But the other kind of vandalism is like bashing in the windows and really damaging property is it more silly stupid vandalism or is it kind of nasty vandalism. I would say it's more silly stupid versus nasty what I guess I would equate nasty vandalism to an on purpose versus more of a wanton destruction, you know where you know these college kids are going to lose their inhibitions and especially when they're frustrated, they're going to do stupid things. And most recently, a couple weeks ago, we have had some issues like that where there have been some parties at the frat houses. And the fraternity brothers have tried to turn away unwanted guests, and they get upset in a couple brick or rock and throw it through the window so that's more of a nasty reason. But we haven't been seeing a huge uptick in that that's something that's been pretty consistent throughout the years. Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks. I had two questions and one, obviously, I don't know the answer to why the number of deaths. Luckily, 00 to one homicide in the last five years. Are these all accidents in terms of the deaths or automobile accidents or what caused yourself. No, I mean the homicide, obviously, those are never an accident we have very few and far between. The deaths, the deaths are just ones that we investigate so we respond to every death. Well not every death because some of them don't get reported for obvious reasons if they're at the, you know, it's based on elderly and things of those nature but you know we come upon a well being check and individuals to see so we still need to conduct an investigation on that. And we do. So, you know, the deaths kind of looks like yeah they kind of been consistent until the 22 year. But I don't know if there's any primary reason to those bam and the numbers changing like that. I can just jump in chief real quick this. So we account for, I guess what we consider unattended deaths. So there's a death that's been, if there's a patient that's under physicians care that would be considered an attended death, which means there would, it wouldn't be necessary for police response or investigation, but throughout town if the resident passes away for medical reasons or whatnot. That's something that we would investigate. So the majority of those, those are just that unattended deaths. Thank you. The second question has to do with back to community outreach. And one of the things that we heard on on Wednesday that there was, there was a great deal of concern expressed by some of the members of CSJC and and HRC that the presence of uniformed officers in the school was that something to their liking. You, what are you thinking these days about that particular activity. Are you, are you reconsidering it based on some of those comments. Well, we, we take the lead from the schools with that Pam. So we don't ever go to the schools and left, unless we're requested. That's just the way the Amherst community has been ever since I've been a police officer here we've never really we've never had a school resource officer. The times we have been into schools, we used to do like after school activities when I was probably going back 20 years where we do bike ride programs after school with some of the students who wanted to do it. We used to do homework work with some of the students when they wanted to show there are a lot of after school activities we did. There's never been anything where we've really been in the schools. Bill Laramie on times would go in with this comfort dog for very specific request or invitations. The most recent one was where we're invited to participate at the students request. This early morning group of students who wanted to interact with our officers and as you, you know, some of our officers that they know these students from coaching activities and, you know, gave himself coaches lacrosse Casey Nagel coach to the junior varsity basketball team. I used to coach soccer and wrap soccer back in the day so we've had interactions with the schools but we've never been in the schools. I'm kind of sad. I didn't see the, the Wednesday meeting I'm sad to hear people were concerned that we're, you know, having some small activities in the schools again. I love to hear their reasoning for it. Yeah. Okay, I'm just just to add to that. We haven't heard any complaints from the schools or from the students at all. So far it's been really positive. Thank you. So I have since I don't see any other hands up by one thing that I wanted to bring up in that I think we can see if we're ready to draw to close. Chief is Wednesday night. And the rose about weather. The full engagement of crest would affect staffing needs in the police department and I spoke up actually and said that based upon my study of budgets over a number of years and my conversations with you and prior budget meetings. I think that we're at the current level of officers stretch to the point of just having enough officers to be out on the street to handle. There's no necessary emergency responses with appropriate backup, and that there is no capacity to have 24 seven department with less officers than are currently budgeted. But I wanted to give you an opportunity to say, I was right I was wrong. And to get it on the record. And I wanted to get it confirmed. Yeah, Andy, you're absolutely right. And I'll try and keep this brief but we are at the actual minimum where we can be when it comes to patrol officers on the street responding to the calls, because the next positions that we're going to be cut. Further or defunded further where bill armies community outreach position, and then sending detectives back to the, to the streets and that would have had a devastating effect on our ability to investigate crimes, whether it be domestic violence or, for instance, I gave many Joe's example we are investigating an assault that occurred in one of the schools. And off detective Nagel was working on it he had an interview over 20 people who were witnesses to that 200 man hours probably, and scheduling those interviews and don't forget that most of them were minor so you have parents involved in their schedules. I mean, one investigation, just to gobble up that many man hours is a big deal for our detective bureau, and, you know, whether it be sexual assault or anything. It's a necessary part of our agency working as well as we do but you know when you start making comparisons to our agency, you know North Hampton is budgeted at 60 University of Mass is budgeted at 62 officers. We're have done have always, and it's just been the culture of this agency has always done more with less and it was always a source of pride but then it was getting to the point when we're hearing all this talk of defunding we're like wow I don't think I don't think people really understand where that would go. You know when I, and I met with a few of the 413 defunders they're talking about a defunding of 4646 and we would be a part time police department with cuts of that nation there would be no midnight shift there would be no detective bureau, if you're talking about cuts that significant. So, in the last thing I'm going to say about it is because I remember a member of the CSS JC bringing up the Ed Davis report going back to 2014 and the eight recommendations that he made and six of them were implemented the only two implementations that did not occur from his report. And he recommended an increase in staffing to 51 officers, and that was never done any in any. He's mandated that the state allocate money for mutual aid training and that never happened so I was upset about that that the two items that the were positive for the police department were never implemented. And that's all I'm going to say about that. Thank you. I see two other hands up if I may go back to the door thing. Okay, so I want to ask with the kind of like a trans down department. Are you able to do frequent practices or planning for like a major emergency response, such as a shooter incident at the school. And I mean, you know, following what goes on around the country. The police departments are saying realizing now the faster they get there the better and just basically run in I'm just kind of wanted to have you talk a little bit about what's your philosophy is and how the police department is dealing with this kind of vague ever present right. Right. So that's good question Dorothy. So yeah we train on that regularly and we have another training with our entire department going through the schools coming up this summer because we like I mentioned earlier. We have a lot of new officers who have received the training in the academy, but they haven't trained specifically with our officers as well so if they're working a shift where we are going to need to respond to one of our schools or one of our town builders or that matter. That is how our response policy is written is we respond immediately drop everything go to that call. If it was an incident that happened when I was working I would be a responding officer. So, and there's no waiting around it's first officer on the scene goes in and then other officers arrive, they go in as well that's how we operate and that's how we've always trained that training is continuous and it's ongoing. We train regularly with the Amherst college police department on that we have not trained in a while with the university police department, although they are part of our backup system. If there's an incident off campus they would come to assist us. If there was an incident on campus we would go to assist them. Thank you very much. I mean it's important that the officers know the schools very very well know all the staircases and all the ins and outs. Absolutely. Lynn. Yes. I want to just make sure I'm correct about something and that is that if we don't have the ability to respond as police because we are. We've become a part time department that it is the state police that then come in. That's correct. The people that don't know our town. Thank you. People don't know our town they're just in from our town and with a little bit of much delicacy is I can put into a state police. They're not perfect as we found out from how they've handled some driving. Also did now required that the convictions be eliminated. The only thing I would add on that Andy as well as you know our state police backup. Their manpower on their shift is three officers so they have an officer that patrols. 91 North. They have an officer that patrols 91 South and then they have an area patrol in that area patrols responsible from Williamsburg to East Hampton to South Hadley to Pelham. To as far north as dear field. So that one officer is responsible to cover all of those. So if you needed a state police backup you're going to get one officer. Greenfield is an employee where they were not having 24 seven for a period. Leisha. Good question. Yes, thank you. I think when the CSWG was talking about moving funding away from the PD it wasn't necessarily about just taking money away. It was more about the moving of the actual services. I know that that makes no sense now because Chris is not taking any police calls. But in the future, if Chris were to be taking a certain percentage of police calls and I think chief living zone said, when he was talking about the Crest and the PD that the hope is that there will be a reduction in the calls. And so is there any possibility that in the future when and if crests were to be like a full time functioning department that is you that is helping to decrease in the volume of calls coming from the police at that point where would there be a possibility that you didn't need as many officers on at one time. Yeah, thanks to leash. Because we're at limited numbers of officers where we are now so in other words we only have one officer who is responsible for the south section of town, one officer who was whose area patrol is the center so basically from college street to fairing street everything east and west, and then one officer assigned to the north. That is the regular patrol shift and then when we do have extra officers on on weekends, let's say 7pm to 3am that's always done on overtime. And if we can like we've been able to have some officers when we're fully staffed and we haven't been fully staffed in a long time we would have a couple officers assigned to that 7pm to 3am shift as overlap. So we wouldn't always have to fill everything with overtime. Somebody could just come in early maybe for three hours instead of hiring somebody for eight hours. So that sort of thing so when we're at maximum staffing, and hopefully we will be by this October when everybody's trained and out of the Academy, and out of their field training then you know, we would have a little bit of filler I guess you would call it, so that somebody would take a day off and then we wouldn't have to worry about it being filled ordering person, a person to come fill in working on overtime. I mean I hope we get to the point where crest is handling some of our calls but I don't think that's going to get to the point we'll be able to eliminate a police officer from working. Okay that makes sense. Thank you and then so my follow up to that is just that. So, because I heard you say that like a large percentage of the funding is personnel. And so is the funding less it's less related to or connected to the number of calls or the types of service, and more connected to just the way in which the department functions that you're talking about like an officer position here here and here, and less related to the actual number of calls and things that you are responding to. Yeah, if we ever got to the point where we had, you know, as few of calls is like a well even Hadley has three officers on now so but they used to only have to. You know the university has five officers on patrol at one time. It would be great if someday we reached the point where we'd only have to have two off. I mean when I first became a police officer here 46 years ago we only had two officers and a sergeant on. But that was very short lived. We've had three officer patrols for probably 30 years. So three officers assigned to patrol districts in town it's been a long time since it's been that status quo. Thank you. I have an understanding from prior conversations with you that there are. And unless you know otherwise it's not always it's not good practice to send just one car if you're concerned that there could be violence involved. As a matter of fact Andy we have specific protocols that mandate a two officer response on some calls, domestic violence being one of them. And that sort of thing so, and you know Gabe talked earlier about the mindset of the student that we're getting now at the university which is not bad and we aren't seeing the types of calls where there are 1000 people at a party. Again, we had several were there 300 and to us that's manageable with two officers. Everyone else in the world of policing things were nuts but you know that we would respond with just two police officers to a call like that but that's just how we are kind of geared that's what we've always been doing so. The behavior of the students definitely gotten better at least these past two semesters, we're keeping our fingers crossed that it stays that way. We'll see. Paul. Yeah, so I think Alicia elicit some important information so that it's partially about call volume but what you're saying Scott is that it is about coverage, like we try to have three officers and three different one in each sector. That's what we think is safe coverage for the town from your staffing point of view. And in order to meet that standard you need X number of officers to cover vacations and all that stuff and, and then you have the peak times from seven at night to three in the morning that you like to fill in so it's it's about staffing a fixed a static number of staffing of slots that you need to fill and how do you fill that that that's a, and says call volume is one, one piece of it. And the other thing I want to note is about the advantage that Crest brings and I you know I'm a big advanced fan of Crest because I think they really bring just important new tools to us. They are, as I said they are able to spend a significant amount of time with people, we have prominent members of our community where they're spending hours a day to help them through some very, very difficult time and they they have the ability in that, and what he says is that we're upstream, we're, we're, we're intercepting people before they get to that 911 call, someone has called 911 on them. They're, they're, they're talking to people in advance so that's the I think that's the advantage that Crest brings to us. So, I just want to make that point as well. Thank you. Sean, do you have something else? Only that it's a good conversation I just wanted to try to keep us on. Yeah, no, you realize that. So, if there's something else for police department today. I'll just leave it for both Crest and police, any members who are present from the community council. Any additional questions. Those, I wish I had asked questions. You can send them along to Sean and he'll get, get us to the right person. So, if you think of a question afterwards, but I want to thank all of you. Scott, for the, for your final. Thank you. And, John, thank you. Thanks, Andy. Thanks everybody for listening to us. See you guys. Thanks everyone. Thank you. So with that, Sean, are we. We're up to Haley. Yep, Haley's here and she'll give an overview of the senior center. Yeah. Yeah, when do you want me to start. Right now. I'm fired up. You're going to have to probably refresh my memory on this process is only the second time around, but for anyone who doesn't know or isn't aware the senior center we are serving and supporting older adults in the community we are trying to help them be active help them age in place, provide supportive services for caregivers. So let's make it a fun place that people would love to spend their golden years. You know, I, as director, been here almost a year and a half now. We have a program director licensed clinical social worker administrative assistant, a dining site coordinator and a outreach and volunteer coordinator with a team of probably 50 or so volunteers. And then we do also have some other positions through the senior employment program based out of Springfield. So we were very fortunate to have extra hands through both of those programs. And I do better with questions so if people have anything they wanted me to talk about a couple of things Haley, you might want to describe so. One, I think for the first time in a long time. We were able to increase the senior center supply budget a little bit. I know that's, that's an annual conversation the finance committee how much the senior center relies on volunteers and donations as well. And then the other one it's sort of outside the budget but I think there was an article today about the, the band. Yeah. Yeah, sorry, I'm still thinking volunteer fair from earlier, maybe too much son. So yeah, big thank you to the town for our extra supplies that you know really needed and we will definitely put those funds to good use through ARPA we were able to hire a part time driver for the silver shuttle. We had a beautiful picture in the paper of it being in motion. And we are now offering rides on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays from nine to three. Folks can call the senior center and through the senior employment program, we actually have a woman who books the rides so we have one dedicated person to help us manage all of that. You know we develop some protocols that I've used with the Franklin regional transit authority for vehicle maintenance. And take process is pretty quick and painless. And all the affairs are really just suggested donations that you know go to the friends group to help us support gas and you know maintenance costs. So yeah, there were no formal question questions submitted so really up to the committee if you have any questions. Yeah. First of all, Haley thanks for what you're doing. I have to say I've had more interactions with seniors lately. And they seem to be out and about a whole lot more. Yeah. And, you know, they, for instance, one of them was the person that arranged our visit to green leaves. It's just, you know, to talk about the school so the place seems energized and you need to be glad to be back in person. So, I do have a question, you brought up the issue of rides and we also have Amherst neighbors as a group do you collaborate with them. And in what ways, we collaborate quite a bit. I, we were just the other week doing a program together on some of the differences between the two organizations and how we work together. You know, we, every other Friday we do a tech time that Amherst neighbors put together using UMass students and then we provide the space at the bank center. We collaborate with programs like that. We've done events in the past where we invite Amherst neighbors to come on cypher coffee as a way to help them get new members and just meet the public. So we do a lot of collaboration they certainly help a lot with rides and they probably have more capacity right now than we do. But the key with the silver shuttle is that it has a wheelchair lift. So we have people who are using walkers and wheelchairs who can't get us a ride through Amherst neighbors can call us and we light went off. We prioritize trips to and from the senior center medical appointments and then we do like a weekly grocery shopping trip. Thanks. I just someone just passed me this morning. In fact, a graph of the population changes from 1990 to roughly 2020. And the besides the 15 to 19 and 20 to 24 bracket, which is slightly the biggest increases from age 50 to 54 to 85 plus, which grew almost the most. So 70 to 74 was the largest gain. I'm not there yet. I'll be very public about that. But I'll be joining, I'll be joining that graph. Thank you so much for the services that you provide and I've been, I've been struggling with how to how to get information about all the great programs out to people without sort of integrating them. You know, with weekly updates, but there is so much going on. Is there, is there sort of a centralized point where I can direct people to probably your website, I guess, all the activities that are available. Yeah, the website and we love to encourage people to call. You know that it's a great way for us to kind of identify what needs that person might have you know as we're talking maybe there are other concerns that come up. You know it's funny that you talk about that graph I met a woman today at the volunteer fair who told me at 78 she's too young for the senior center. So those are the kind of things that were were up against. One of the things that we've been really working diligently on for like the past six months or so is how do we get the Gen Xers who will be 60 and two years, how do we get the baby boomers to really embrace the concept of a senior center when they don't like being called seniors. So it's definitely keeps us on our toes, we are very creative and quirky bunch here. And we've got our work cut out for us. Dorothy. Okay, so I have a couple of questions. In my old neighborhood in sunny side Queens. They had more than one van and there are people booked that there was great need particularly for the one with the wheelchair lift. Do you need another van. I mean, do you have more demand than you can handle with your one van which I know you didn't have anything for a while so it's great to have something. Yes. It's too soon for me to say the only thing I could tell you for sure is that limiting it to three days a week and for a narrow stretch of hours. That is certainly a challenge. And for example, Monday Wednesdays and Fridays works we have a lot of programs going on but then we also on Thursdays, once a month do a foot clinic, right but if my band's not active if I have someone who is using a walker and needs a foot care appointment. You know I would have to see if my driver can come in on his day off or try to have someone else fill in to drive the van so I'm really thankful that we have it. I'm not going to be wrong but you know I can definitely tell like even in Bernhardsten with a population of, you know, I think it was like 1000 seniors, you know, our van was used daily, like, like, it was always on the road. And that was for a much smaller community. You know, because I'm just thinking like today, I went to Aqua arthritis at the North Hampton why, which is an activity that is just perfect for most seniors with any kind of balance movement whatever and it's it's a great activity, but if people aren't driving they can't go to something like that. Right. The other question I had was with the situation is the meals, you can't you're not able to prepare meals on site is that that is difficult. One other thing about the transportation that I wanted to say and forgot. I'm looking really aggressively at grants to try to supplement the funds that we have now. So it's certainly on my radar to keep working on that. In terms of food preparation we did have a visit from the health inspector. We are permitted to like brew coffee and serve prepared foods, but they were not comfortable with a full cooking license. Yeah, we can I will I do intend to work with her a little bit we have like a steamer tray so maybe if we were doing that could it be something where we just you know we're not cooking something on a stove or in an oven maybe if there was a steam table. Would that be something that we can continue to do or start up again. But, you know, well, you know, as I mentioned to you before I was a director of a senior center many years ago. People who are not coming to the center now would come if they serve meals like we served at the Richard older adult center, which was the main meal of the day. The variety of people from incomes and education that showed up was basically do the fact that it was a really great hot meal, and you didn't have to cook it. And if you ever get the new center. I hope that it's going to have a fabulous kitchen, where a real cook would be happy cooking. Yeah, that draws people in and I would come if you had that. Yes, Paul has definitely let me bug him quite a bit about that so I think and he and I are really on the same page where I've said this is a priority for me and we're working together on that so yeah because who doesn't like a good home cooked meal. Yeah. And the last thing is, I'm thinking about this a lot because I have a very old friend coming to visit and she's a friend with a hearing aid. Her phone is not good and she is totally useless with the computer. You know, I actually sat down and wrote a letter and put a stamp and took it to the post office in order to communicate with her. But you said something that really excited me that buildings that now senior centers are built differently. And then there's something I'm not too sure of the science but that you can connect in with hearing aids. So that noise, so that they're in a communal meal, the people with hearing aids are not being bombarded with noise or have to turn them off and not be able to talk to their neighbor. Yes, is that something that you guys are looking into. Yes, and I think at one point in talking with more in Pollack who's no longer with the planning department but there had been that was identified as something that to move forward and pursue hearing aids are also really sophisticated now and they are more readily able than they they used to be you can get them over the counter and for your friend if they don't know there are some phones you can get where you can talk into it and it'll translate it on a little screen. So if they can't hear you while you're speaking they can read it. So that that might be a good option for her. And just quickly there was there was funding approved a couple years ago for assistive listening. Maybe at the community center I don't know the status of a guy I think Maureen was in sort of spearheading that one, but there was funding approved for it so we can check it on the status map. Andy I just, I want to make note that you've lost the quorum or the form of the finance committee but we still have a count console or five, and we've lost the quorum of the council. You didn't make a quorum call. Okay. That was counting Anna. One, two, three, four, five years. Yeah, we lost Alicia was the quorum for finance committee. I didn't, I didn't say anything. Okay, so I just want to conclude with Haley that I hope that you stick with us through the time until we get the center that we're talking about. Thank you. I appreciate that. You know, by that time I will show up. Okay. Thank you. Okay, duly noted. Okay, anything else. When asked about senior center. I can, I just want to say that I think they've been great strides made in. I've been trying to come out of COVID and come a live service agency and I've seen it and heard about it. And so, congratulations for the good work and moving us into the next stage where everybody needs to put COVID behind us and that pretend we're still there. So thank you. Yeah, it's, I'm could not be more proud of my staff and the work that they do and the support from the community. You know, it's not always an easy job and there are times when it's really difficult, you know, we've had fall, we've had people pass away that we really come to care about. So I think that this, the senior center is really like you said it's waking up and it is, you know, we put a lot of heart and soul into each day that we're here. And I think people are really starting to get that and you know, things are just going to grow. Okay, so anything more because I don't see anyone from recreation here Sean. Yeah, so Marion, I'm guessing there's two variants. I'm guessing one is Ray and one is Marion, our recreation director and Marion Jordan's operations manager for the rec department. So, so anything else that somebody wants to. I'm happy with a no, that's okay. We appreciate it. Thank you for being a problem. Thank you. Have a good weekend. Okay, thank you. Um, so, one of the merrians Ray and this one Marion or you're in low snow. Sorry, I'll change your name. Thank you. I was going to say I did just find my invite. This is Marion's invite I'm on. Hello everybody. Hi. So, I'm glad you're here and working budget and look forward to the opportunity so the way that we've been starting this office. Do you have any introductory comments to want to make those things that particularly obviously pertaining to budget but in general, the department is moving anything and then Sean may have some questions for you. I don't know. So start with you, right. Okay, thank you. Well, yes, I like Haley this is my second time through so please point me in a direction if you need to. I can say that we've got a lot of energy in a lot of different places right now in recreation in terms of the budget I did want to just introduce our, our financial situation here by saying that we are. I know that that you all have seen our pushes for capital protections on two of our essential assets pools and Cherry Hill. Those are two that we think that the investment the capital investments are really important for us in terms of keeping those two really important parts of our responsibility to connect to the town and to keep people's recreation recreational the pools are we had a lot of conversations about direction of the pools in a lot of conversations about direction of Cherry Hill. Right now, my, my energy is still very consistent in, and we own these, these assets that make us pretty. They're pretty unique tools for us and and connecting with the town of Amherst, and so that is why we put a lot of energy into thinking about. Their long term health and looking at capital needs. We are right now in a position where, where we are looking to, you know, maintain our levels of staffing we've lost some pretty high profile members of our department in the last few months, and we've been able to make sure that we're doing what we can to do that we have sort of shuffled around the way we do our, our org chart in the department and trying to make sure that we have the ability to, to recreate the work that we've lost to make sure that we have the best possible structure and order of doing our best work going forward so the staffing push is something that we've also been been talking about for pretty much my entire year and a half. And lastly, I think the year was strong for us and, and looking at ways to create more revenue and talking about the pools in particular. Our, our United, our Amherst United swim team is a program that we think has has a lot of potential at being a mainstay in our department. So really popular program that a lot of kids have gotten into some new kids that we're trying to find a way it's recreational programming at its finest it's competitive but it's a wreck spirit and their kids who are trying to be trying to get some training and some introduction to competitive swimming and it's a really really if, if you get a chance to look at it it is a really really really sort of engaging way of, of pulling kids in and extending our mission of getting people swimming and we also introduced the master swimming program which we think, you know, in addition to addressing adult needs adult pool needs and adult swimming interests. It also is another thing that we think is long term, a revenue billed for us because it has connected us to Hampshire region to Hampshire College, and, and some of the, the potential capacities to expand our swimming programs are, we are looking for ways to continue doing our job better doing our job and expanding the way that we do it, and some of our requests are ways of doing that but in general we're looking for ways to do our job better and continue to put people in those places with, with that said, I, I guess that's my introduction for, for where we are I would be happy to field any questions from the committee from Sean or Paul I'd be happy to take any questions from anybody here. And Mary and Jordan my operations managers here also. So the way we usually do this is to then see if Sean has received any questions in advance. And I don't know if you have Sean. Yeah, there's a few that I'll run through and read just if I if you already answered this just tell me to skip to the next one. The outreach director position. This budget proposes has been restored how long was it gone and what was the rationale for adding this position back. Well the outreach, the directors position has been gone certainly before I got here. About three years or so three years. We wanted the position I've, I've believed that it's been a pretty important part of our department to have essentially two wings our sports program which we have a lot of weight and a lot of energy behind has a program director in place. The outreach director position is a very visible is a very basically is is the, it's, it's our community engagement wing of the department which includes in it our, our after school and school support purposes. It is our special events and things like July 4 and Winterfest is pulled underneath that outreach director it's our relationship with the business communities that supports everything we do in the department. But this, this director's position, the amount of work, the amount of of labor and coordinated coordinated effort and multiple directions there. We believe that this position is a vital part of our long standing success because of the number of people that it gets into it also includes summer camps which we actually don't have. I didn't talk at all about summer camp here at the intro and I hadn't prepared to talk about summer camp but summer camp is another place where we think right now is a pretty consistent revenue producer for us. Yeah, and the outreach director also presides over that summer camp. So all of our childcare, all of our, all of our community facing a table events that go on in town that are outside of the town's interest that that other groups bring town representatives involved bring representation from the town and we usually have our outreach directors there to basically promote our, our purposes to put to provide a space for the town in all of these situations and then also to conduct our own programs, Winterfest July 4, Halloween to basically extend our presence in those places where we don't have registered registrations and kids coming into us is to go out from recreation. So that outreach position is essentially first interaction that outreach is sometimes the first interaction to bring people into our programming to bring people into our recreational world. We have relationships with some of the housing communities we have relationships with the business community. Sometimes it is people who come to Amherst, it's their first connection to Amherst Recreation. And just to clarify, the, it's not a new position it's similar to the lead dispatcher. Well, it's kind of a new position. This is replacing an existing position and this position has a little bit more responsibility and can do more than the other position so in terms of FTE the department is staying the same, but in terms of capacity, it's a it's an increase in their capacity. Thank you. So the next question, sort of related the administrative assistant position is gone are those duties being adequately covered by existing staff. This was a little bit of a confusing question because I'm not sure exactly what position it was being referred to. But the one thing I'll say and right you obviously expand on it is. So there was a program assistant type position and that's the position that the went away and the outreach position came back. And but that position has the some of those duties have been picked up by others and that when the outreach position is created they will pick up a lot of the duties that that program assistant position had previously. So, you said the, we lost an administrative assistant position and I'm, am I, do I understand correctly that we're talking about the position that that turned into the outreach director position that's what you're. I'm not 100% sure. The question didn't specify what position they were asking is because there's a vacant administrative assistant position right now. Which right is filling. And so staff are doing double to fill that position. And then there's a separate one that again is being converted to this outreach position. I can answer either of those questions. Let me, let me try both of those angles here. And that's that administrative position position that we're talking about is that vacant position that we're looking at higher right higher right now. That's a position that's going through slight changes for us but it is a, it's a really important position for us to fill because it's the hub of our office it's the, it's the one that that basically does our payroll it manages our front desk and it's, it's basically the, the, the primary customer service part of our department. So that is a really important position. It is, right now we have a lot of people filling that role and trying to try to manage the missing responsibilities there. If we're talking about the position that that is so called lost when we create the program director position that position we also at the same time, part of the responsibilities that the person who had that position before. It was it was juggling special events and it was juggling the, all of those, those outreach responsibilities, along with managing summer camp. We did hire a seasonal summer camp director coordinator of our summer camps. And so, so in terms of covering that role that that role essentially is being absorbed into the program director's job. What is the one piece that we're taking out of it and leaving in a summer seasonal position is the summer camps. That's the one, that's the one part of that old job that is now being situated in another person that we've been able to create the space for it to make sure that we have that seasonal that that that seasonal performance we have somebody hired for six months that will be running that camp. And so, so the position that's that we lose when we, when we bring back the outreach director, it is being the responsibilities are being absorbed by the outreach director and by the summer camp coordinator. And so the next one Ray is will this department is maybe for Ray and Paul will this department be responsible for the town manager goal exploring ways to promote a more child and family friendly town culture. Yes. I can expand. I think that's what draw what drew me to this position. I think those goals are my goals. I think that that is why I think this job is for me right now because it's all I'm thinking about is the best job in this town. It's, it's a that that is a chance for us to look at child interactions trying to create, try to create a way to allow Amherst youth to have ownership of their own experience here. We have a long way there's a lot of ways we've been talking to partner organizations about how to do that better. But that is, I think that we are situated to do that. And I just would add, you know, raised on a phenomenal job since he's been here making connections with people with different departments, especially. I mean he's gone through some significant staff change, which he's managing well. And it's not easy. Mary and Ray will pose the test, I'm sure, but just credit to his team for keeping the rec department moving forward. But especially what you just heard is what makes him such a terrific leader for that department. The next question is, how does our recreation spending compared to similar sized municipalities. This one's always a tough one to answer, in part because every community does things a little bit differently. So we have a dedicated recreation department. Some communities have a parks and rec department that are combined. Some do a lot of in house programming some rely on nonprofits in their community I think Dorothy you mentioned a good example of one, you know where you were at the YMCA. We don't have a north Hampton, you know, we don't have a we don't have a comparable entity to the YMCA here so a lot of that falls to the rec department. So, I think it really varies town to town. I took a quick look at like East Hampton north Hampton and it's pretty different depending on what community you look at. Do you want to add anything based on your experience with your colleagues. I haven't had a chance yet to really do thorough comparison between you know our our systems and others I think that that certainly is on my to do list here. I'm not into a little bit of it of veteran status but I, I, I know from my experiences with other departments working with other departments in the past that we are different, we are. I just recently came back from a, from a rec conference from a directors conference where where it was. I think it became pretty obvious to me that we do some things very differently from, from some traditional parts of rec programs. Okay, so we're, I think we'll take, unless you have an objection Andy will take rec pools golf course sort of as a, as a whole, for the sake of efficiency. So, and I was going to point out to counselors and finance committee members who didn't think to look. In addition to the community services section in the budget. There's another important section to pay attention to when you're talking about recreation that's the revolving fund section that begins on page 249. Because China can explain why and how it's set up but programs that are supported by family contributions whether the summer camp programs or recreation programs for fees are being paid. So a lot of those expenses and revenues are shown and involving funds. Yeah. Ray and Gilford are in unique positions and that they get to juggle multiple funds to support their operations so Guilford with his enterprise funds and Ray with three revolving funds so sort of the base level of rec activities as funded within the operating budget so the positions are funded within the operating budget. But then the, a lot of the programming that takes place are in three, three revolving funds. And the reason they're set up like that is because there's fees charged for those programs. So the fee revenue for those programs go in as a revenue source and then the revenues used to pay for the programs themselves to pay for instructors officials whatever needs to happen. So the three revolving funds that we have our adult education which is on the, there's not much going on there there's a couple programs and adult that. Next is our after school revolving fun and ready to jump in if I, if I have an awkward pause again. So the three revolving fun which manages is our after school program at Crocker is up two sites or just a cracker. Okay. So again there's tuition paid for after school and then the pays for the instructors and the, and the supplies that go along with it. And then there's our sort of programs the sports programs. Anything like that even the sort of sandlot programs or the pickup type things. Those are all within a third revolving fun and so there's a, yeah there's a section on that. It hit pretty hard during the pandemic so I would say this is an area, sort of like our transportation and some of our other water and sewer this is one of the areas that was hit hardest by the pandemic because it limited so much of what they could do and how, how they did it. And so, you know, you lose some people when you don't have the programs that you've had for a couple years because of the pandemic and so Ray's been doing what he can to kind of get people back and that's why I talked about the outreach position being so important. So we've got to get people back in and get up, get the number sort of to where they were before. And we're seeing progress on that front. So the next question, again, transitioning to the pools so within the operating budget we sort of have three sections of rack we have the sort of rec administration, then we have pools and then we have cherry hill. So we finished the first piece of that pools is next and the question is, do we have adequate maintenance and staffing to avoid a repeat of last summer, when we had the, because of that mechanical issue the pool was down for a little bit. Do we have adequate maintenance and staffing. I think, you know, we've talked to DPW about about making sure that we're doing service checks on the pools ahead of time we do have an inspection coming up before the year again, but that mechanical issue. I don't know if we have fail safes for every potential problem, but we are confident that that in our conversation with DPW that they have. They'll have the pools up and running. I think last year was a very rare mechanical problem. It wasn't a matter of where it wasn't a matter it was a. And that was an issue that we ran into and it was unfortunate because it knocked us out of the beginning of our summer season. In terms of staffing we are right now in the process of building our aquatic staff. Staffing wasn't as much the concern last year we had anything because of the mechanics issue we were overstaffed. And we certainly felt that in our budget but we if anything we were overstaffed last year to manage the pools at least for the first half of the season. But it was an unexpected situation was an unexpected failure. I don't believe that that we have to worry about anything particular on that mechanic issue. Will the waiting pool be open at Mill River this year. And I spoke to Denise today just to make sure that we were talking about no scheduling the opening anyways, but I did ask her specifically about the Denise like and be our aquatics coordinator. I did speak to her about the waiting pool and about potentially expanding more access to the waiting pool and she is, she is on top of that that's a that is a popular piece of it we lost a little bit of that last year also because of staffing staffing would be in effect there. More than it would be for the, for the mechanical issue but we are looking to build a staff that can cover that waiting pool. So the last couple questions are for cherry Hill and I'll probably take. I'll probably take these two and again right jump in if you want. The first question is the requested appropriation is 223,469. And there is a long term goal of paying full operating expenses out of fees and income. What percent increase in fees with this represent to the current membership. So, difficult to answer that question specifically what I will say is that they wreck Ray and Marion they did recently look at fee levels at cherry Hill. They were adjusted this past it was just this past fall, they were updated. And so, they have made adjustments that will continue to monitor our rates compared to other, you know, similar municipal nine hole courses. And then the other thing I'll point out is that the one of the very few silver linings of the pandemic was that chair held it really well. Two years in a row, maybe the only two years in a long, long time revenues exceeded operating revenues exceeded operating expenses I'll say it didn't cover all capital needs but, but just the fact that it was covering operating expenses is a big improvement. So, FY 23, we'll see if we can keep that trend continuing. As of the third quarter there was a little bit of a deficit of some of that's timing because the revenues for golf kind of comes in two waves throughout the year. And when I looked at that. And the other thing is, cherry Hill is not in a revolving fund in some ways would be beneficial if it was. If the revenues came in higher they could spend more, but it's not it was brought into the general fund budget a while ago so all the revenues for cherry hill or sort of revenues for the whole budget. And even if they bring in more money it doesn't help them they still have to stick within their operating budget which can be a difficult challenge for Ray. Again, well that's all good news that they brought more money doesn't help expand flexibility there through the third quarter, which will be presenting this third quarter report to the committee in the next whenever we have time. Cherry Hill was about 76% spent through the year so more or less on track again some of that's a little hard to gauge because again similar to revenues on their expenses they sort of have two waves of expenses as well in terms of staffing for the clubhouse. So we'll report more on that to the committee soon. And I think that was a double check I think that was it for submitted questions so if there's any other questions people want to ask now would be time to start with since you just were dealing with the golf course question and just jump to their first. You've raised a good question as to why it was set up to separate budget as opposed to revolving fund within the recreation department and I think you have to go back and look at the history of the golf course and given by one citizen in the other who wanted to make sure that it was breaking even because it was put out as it was acquired that would break even sadly that citizens no longer with us, but in any event that was the thought and there are some people to look for that. The budget book itself doesn't help assess that because you know, prior times, it showed revenue doesn't show revenue so you can't look to see if the revenue balances the costs anyway and I was wondering why revenue isn't listed. This is really a Sean question. So it kind of is maybe it's not it's, I agree with you it's not listed in a helpful way. It is broken down on the local receipt section of revenues for departmental. It breaks down the departmental revenue categories so we do provide it there. But your point in terms of having one place where you can look at the operation and how it did it's not. It's not listed all together so we can look at that in the future if that's a helpful addition, or we can just provide the information when you need it. I think we're going to evaluate the department and whether it's evolving as a revolving fun right. There's definitely some logic to doing that it would be like any other program that chair recreation overseas. And within the revolving fund you could have a very clearly broken out chair hill revenues and chair hill expenses. And if it was once in there and maybe you recall I believe it was once either an enterprise fund or it was a revolving fund but it because it struggled year after year to break even. That's why it was ultimately brought into the operating budget, because if it goes into a revolving fund or an enterprise fund it's supposed to break even regularly. And it wasn't doing that back in that time so it's something we'll continue to evaluate. Another question I keep being looking to see if hands are growing up and nobody is going there yet so I'm keeping going. I was curious about several things having to go back to the pools question for a moment and that is Amherst United is that replacing Triton's or is you know how does what's the relationship there if not. No it's not replacing it is. I don't have a lot of working like inside working understanding the trident with tritons is separate entirely from our operations tritons also use the same pool where neighbors and we use the same, the same space. There are a there are training club that has training club of missions goals and what when Amherst United began for us as a wreck department program. It began for us as a way of taking people who maybe aren't looking for the Olympic, the Olympic track of swimming swimming to have lessons at that level. We're looking to just get in a pool and compete at a as a recreational program we are allowed to do basically swimming it's a feeder program for the high schools where people are end up, end up swimming it's a chance for people to work and exercise or people maybe don't want to jump into a world it's it's club versus wreck that just we are operating the wreck portion of this sport. We still be doing some things with wreck interest, what they do or what their interests are not my concern, but our entire concern is giving young swimmers middle school elementary school, high school, giving them an opportunity to get in and swim at their own, sort of at their own level at their own capacity and that's, that's why we think that it has been so popular. I was just curious. I mean, had prior involvements and try things when I had get to the appropriate ages just curious about that as far as the swimming pool itself is concerned. In the use of the outdoor pools. Is there been a shift in the mission of what the pools with the, you know, major goals are and vision for the use of those facilities. I don't believe there's been a shift. That's not something that I've consciously steered in a new direction. Our goal is to make is to provide the opportunity for lessons to the entire town. To every child in town that we want to one of our goals is to make it possible that everybody has a chance to learn how to swim. We want to try and provide enough space for people to have recreational access as young folks as adults as you know we put together that master's program Denise's piloted a master's program over at New Hampshire, which is allowing training adults to have basically, basically, it's, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a program that allows people at a high level of skill to get tutelage and get, get coached in swimming and to compete to work on their fitness and their health so there's a way for us to engage the entire town. In terms of the use we still, it's still a major part of our camps war memorial is still a major part of our, of our camp operations to provide in our summer camps, kids the opportunity to learn how to swim and also recreational play in the pools. It's one of the big attractions why people send kids to camp. So, the pool is a matter of public health, it's a matter of public engagement. Last year, certainly with encouragement of the town manager we did extend free days when the summer got really hot and a couple weekends. We extended free opportunities free access to the pools for the entire town to come in there was once towards the end, the middle of August and then once at the very end when it got blazing hot. We did offer that it's a chance for us to reach out we have a partnership with the survival center where we where we produce swim passes for survival center to distribute to people who use their services people who they're familiar with and that's a good way of us getting out and and supporting other institutions in the town that share our mission of, of giving recreational access and, and the public health of, of learning to swim, have an opportunity to get that type of exercise, it's, and it's a pretty great feature over to survival center also. So we're, because it's an important asset for us, we want to try and democratize it as much as we can, and give as many people a chance to, to, to, to use it to make it. And when we're producing it also does draw a lot of people we've had a conversation very recently about, about what our mission is we, every, every town doesn't have public pools public outdoor pools, like this, and so we do see the summertime, a lot of people coming to us from, from surrounding towns from sometimes camps from other towns, or, you know, just drop in pool visits that come in and so there are a lot of people who use our pools I think it's, I think it's a really privileged position for us to be in. I agree and I didn't make that last question and see if then there's others is. I've heard some comments and complaints from people who are recreational swimmers who like to do lap swimming that they want frequency and regularity of hours and that otherwise it isn't a good solution for somebody who likes to do regular lap swimming and we were getting a lot of people coming from out of town. Not, not Amherst residents but we're augmenting our attendance and our revenue at one point with that particular segment of our programming and so I was wondering if you've done any analysis to see if the way that pool hours is being arranged is of net positive and that going to be a net negative for pool membership and daily paid participation. I can tell you that no I have not done any, any, any quantitative studies into the distribution of who's using and how much money, yet we have, we have spent a lot of time and energy and trying to try to set those schedules. Denise, like can be and Marion certainly have been looking at, at a setting schedules that made the most sense to the most to the, to the most people that are using those pools I think the, the, the finality the, the, the, it's, it's a, it's a finite resource. In terms of making sure that there's downtime for clean make sure that we have staffing resources making sure that we have that we can manage it, we're trying to make sure we get as many people to do as much good for as many people as possible. I believe that that that we've put together a program schedule that I think is is that does provide as much of that opportunity as we can. And so when the question comes up about whether or not these pools that go back to the fact that having these two outdoor pools or an asset, when the question comes up as we've already started thinking and looking at that question about just how important those pools are. We are, we know that there's we do overlap full times we have, we have in terms of all the people that we know use it the programs we have the lessons to lap swim. Early morning, early morning swims, free time in the pools we as, as much as we schedule in there, we can't schedule enough for everybody. And so having those two pools is a really important part of, of our being able to are being able to keep those people who rely on those pools, at least to some sense happy. The pool, the camps aren't necessarily always happy about the amount of time they get the people at the that we've we've extended early hours for masters. And that's, that's also not something that makes that that everybody gets everything that they're looking for is a finite resource and I think that certainly. I think Denise has done a remarkable job in her first year of trying to hear and look at all of those interests and put together a program that speaks to all of them. Thank you. Thank you. First of all, I really want to compliment you on the alternative swimming program I've heard really positive and significant feedback about it and the just providing recreational opportunities for people who don't want to be at, as you said, Olympic level of competition is, is just a real plus for kids. You know, I'm one of those people that learned to swim early in life and glad I did. I want to go back to Cherry Hill because from time to time there's been a suggestion particularly as we were in COVID of trying to kind of grow the uses of the clubhouse and, you know, make it more of a community facility, and so forth. And I wonder if there's been any further discussion about that. And say with regret, that's been, that's been tabled probably about eight times we've, we've had conversations with, with golf members, one of my first conversations was to sort of introduce myself up to the Cherry Hill community and to meet some of the folks that were there. And we started bringing some ideas what is it that we want here. We've come back to it a number of different times we talked about I talked with Mill District about partnering a little bit with, with, with providing more access to trying to find a way to make that clubhouse more inviting. There, there are some limitations obviously to the physical space and the way it's laid out to how to do that, but we have been looking at that for a while as we've, it hasn't been able to crack through as an immediate priority for us here in this period of time as we've been chasing these other, these goals, but it is something that is really important. I know it's important for our golf and community I know people want to try and use that we talked a little bit about, about the cost of keeping the clubhouse open in the wintertime to extend, extend some of its versatility and do some, do some like clubhouse sort of things out there for kids or movie nights or game nights or something in the clubhouse just to get people into the, into the clubhouse to, to make it a space that is not just a walk by. Find a way to raise revenue but we've been looking at ways to try and do that, even outside of the outside of the, the given golf season. That is a matter of concern that we just haven't been able to finish yet. Thank you. Thank you. Just want to say that I started. I came to Amherst first as a visiting grandmother who took babies to the swim classes in the big pool. And that was really exciting. In terms of the question about lane swimming at the Hampshire why you have to join though there are subsidized memberships but at the pools, I remember joining. And there was an out of town fee and an in town fee. I know that they're subsidized memberships. And if you have a membership if you're a member of the pool. We have an app. And I can go on that that app and it has my favorite activities that are going to be happening. And I can sign up and they'll say exactly how many spots are going to be in it and the time frame. And then if it's full, you get put on a wait list and it's all done automatically. And I can back out at the last minute and I always know somebody will be on that wait list. And that's how lap swimming is done. I mean, it was stricter during COVID, but now people reserve for a certain time slot. And this app, I can handle it. I mean, you know, I am not a technologically, you know, fancy person, but I can handle this app. And I could show my husband how to do it. So, I think that's one way to get some lane swimming in because I understand there's tremendous demands on the pool. And a lot of people like me wanted to go and swim with babies, you know, which is like, but people who want to swim laps, don't want to have happening at the same time or the same part. I also love the waiting pools. Oh, the way I haven't actually been there when the waiting pools have been jumping, but, but that's I think that's what you said is, is kind of the nexus of our management issues is when we have overlaps in there when we have, we split the pools between activities and sometimes having to compromise in that space is is the pressure point for us. Again, I think Denise has done a remarkable job at, at setting up schedules and communicating those schedules to the people that are that are going to be using it. I also will say that and you, you talk about trying to find ways to make the process a little bit, a little bit smoother. Marion is here, Marion has been has been, you know, really trying to find ways to make sure that, that when people are signing up to use these is user friendly that we have. There's any way to trying to make that process quicker and easier. We are, we're not stuck in trying to do things that worked back before COVID before we came aboard. We are looking at ways with feedback from people so I would, I would certainly encourage people to, to share those concerns if there are concerns that would things that would make things easier in operations, share it with us share with our operations manager we can, we can make that work. Andy, given we have one more department, can we make this the last question. Yeah, Jennifer. It's not that important I can, I didn't realize we had something after this. Yeah, go ahead, you can ask. I could probably find this in the budget but does in terms of insurance. The recreation department is just under the town's insurance because I can't even imagine when you have, you know, kids and swimming and. Yeah, yeah, their activities, any town sponsored activity is under the town's insurance. And again, and the summer camp, you don't contract that we don't contract that out, you run that so that so you staff. There's there's some camps that maybe have an outside person but the general summer camp is all run by the rec department. Sports clinic sports clinics are frequently outside groups that come in sometimes they come in because of insurance. It certainly makes it easier for some people to come in under our umbrella, but we are, we do run that summer camp, we do run that day camp. And I just wanted to quickly echo again a big thank you to Marion and Ray. They've navigated some bumpy waters they've had some staffing issues. Ray has been rec director coach facility manager. You name the title Ray is worn it and Marion, you know keeps everything moving despite all the the turmoil around where she's always calm and happy and keeps things moving forward so. I was going to say just if I look smart is only because Marin's here. So, so, so thank you Marin, and thank you all for the opportunity. Thank you. Appreciate all you're doing and it's complex department with a lot of pieces and it's a pleasure to have you. Thank you. One person left and that's today and that's veteran services. Yeah, so Steve is here Steve Connors our veterans agent. It's a relatively small section of our budget but it's important function. Steve can speak a little bit to it. Just keeping time in mind, but essentially there's two major functions within the veterans group there's our cost there's the assessment that we pay to be a part of the veterans sort of county system. There's the cost with Northampton and then several other small communities. And then there's the benefits that we pay out and Steve really manages the system but he also is in charge of managing the benefits that we pay out to better veterans for eligible costs. Steve you want to give a little overview. Yes, hey, I'm sorry I thought this was an in person thing but I've had five budget meetings in the last three weeks so I lose track of who's who. So my apologies. But yeah. So, we have been in the creation of a district since FY nine. Oh nine. And Amherst has been an original member. We started at six and we are now at 11 communities. Well, actually, I should say we're up to 12, which I'll get to in a minute. But we pride ourselves and delivering the benefits that eligible veterans and their dependents receive because we pretty much as a general rule always get our 75% back. It's going to be very rare that you'll see any of our communities not get the full 75% back. And if we don't get it, it's usually because I've gone to the mayor, the town manager, the town administrator of the community and said, look, we're going to need, you know, if it's all right with you folks, we need to try to assist this person. And I know it's not going to get authorized by the State Department of Veterans Services now the executive office of veteran services. But can we help this family anyways or this veteran. So other than that, pretty much Amherst has always gotten the 75% back while we've been managing the chapter 115 benefits. The numbers in that have gone down from COVID. They also were dropping down because a lot of the World War two vets in Korean war veterans were passing. A lot of them did not have a lot of. I want to say pension kind of benefits that went to the surviving spouse. So when I first started 19 years ago, we had a lot of World War two veteran widows on our benefits because they just didn't have enough to get by that hasn't been as much of an issue as it was back then. So our numbers are down there. However, where the numbers are down on our state benefits. They're up throughout the district and from what we're understanding throughout Western mass regarding the federal benefits, especially those provided by the VA. And those are both for disability claims for veterans who were injured while serving both men and women. But there are also claims for their pension, their programs that are based on the pension. I know that's confusing. Let me say the pension with the VA is for any wartime veteran. If they serve during wartime, they get the pension, but they only get the pension if they need it. It's not a very large amount. Most people have enough even from Social Security that surpass that. What they may need is care in the home because they're homebound or they're in need of a attendance of other people to do their activities of daily living. And that is based on the pension. You don't have to have been service connected. You don't have to have a service connected injury. You just have to serve during wartime. We get a lot of calls for that. If anybody's ever interested in what it takes to do that. I will fill you in, but it is a very painstaking document driven process to get people money to have to keep a veteran at home or in a assisted living facility. We get a lot of that because people will come to us and say. Dad or mom, but mostly dad is not so old. He can't live by himself anymore. He can't do this, you know, and we don't know what to do. So that's one of the programs we have the VA. Health department is trying to deal with that on a national level because it's becoming an issue. And there are programs coming on board. That's our biggest demand, usually in our offices is that kind of need. With that in mind, I worked with a few other VSOs here in Western Massachusetts. About how do we deal with it and we've developed a program. It's called learn it before you need it. And it's about all the steps. Before your parents are desperate and need this care. We are going to show you all the things that are out there and how to apply for them. And I was struggling trying to get it done this spring because it's just not enough hours in the day. I went to the board with Sean as a member of and asked 1 of my positions to be increased. A few hours back to what it was. A year ago to help that happen. The, the board did approve it. So there is an increase in this year's budget. But what that means is that come the fall time, we're going to be spending the summer, putting all the materials together. Lining updates and the guests that need to be there because we need to invite about. 7, 8 people to it, but we are going to in 4 different locations. So far the new. New town that has just joined us Huntington has a space, which will cover our Chester middle field Worthington area along with Huntington. Williamsburg, which is going to handle the coming to go to Chester field area. We're going to do it in Northampton. We're planning to do it here in Amherst, where we're going to do this training for families, whether I talk with the Jones library or we do it at the banks community center. But it's going to address all the needs that families need to know about their ailing parents and especially their veteran father or mother. What what there's out there for them. So, Steve, I'm giving the time, I might just turn it over and do you want to hit any other points before we open up for questions as want to make sure we have time for questions. Yeah, no, that that's the biggest thing that's the biggest change we're looking for in the year otherwise we're running as normal and just echoing echoing quickly what you said Steve part of that increased hours. There may be increased hours and Amherst specifically in terms of the office that's set up at the banks community center. Yes, exactly. And the other thing was is we just, I went to the select board meeting on Wednesday night and the town of Huntington voted to join the district so it's the whatever is on the sheet it's going to go down a little bit. That helps spread the cost out among. Yeah, yeah. And we're getting addressed by another community but I don't think they're going to join but they may, but I do know that Huntington has now joined the district as well. Thank you Steve Lynn. I basically just want to thank Steve for his service I think it's terrific that we have this relationship it's nice to know that Amherst was one of the founding members. So thanks. Thank you so much for your service and Amherst it really has. I have to say that talking about the founding of it. Makes me feel like a relic because it was actually I guess. John Musanti Stephanie O'Keefe and I were at the original meeting with called by player Higgins who is then mayor that launched this. I feel like I've been with it for as long as you've been around Steve, even though I've been North Hampton before. I have one quick question. And if there are any others and we can close it up. The veterans that I now think about is the youngest veterans who are in Afghanistan and Iraq and wondering if we are seeing that population moving in whether that population is in any way also in our homeless population and whether you're able to work with Craig stores or crust to reach them if they are there. That's a very good question and yeah and and people kind of forget they all of us think about veterans that they're older veterans so on so forth but there are a lot of younger veterans who do fall into trouble so I am on a. Two different meetings on zoom with Craig's place and their their people and anytime there is somebody who is let them know that they are veteran. We talk so I have addressed in the past and of course Earl and I have worked close before in our homeless work. Now he's doing the crest so he's got my cell phone I got his and he actually has helped me out with a veteran right here in Amherst. That's had a very difficult year and I've been trying and so is Earl and the team tried to assist him to the best of our availability. Unfortunately now I'm dealing with court and he is going to be evicted so I'm trying to stay the eviction so I can find him a place to live. It's more appropriate before it's enforced because if they actually enforce the eviction, then it's going to be really hard to house him and he's a much older gentleman. Yeah, so both young and old we deal with and Chris also does so we are in communication and I do deal with the people that Earl gets and I send them some of minus Clell. Thank you. Other other questions. I don't see anyone shown is there anything else we need to. There were no questions submitted but again if anybody has any other questions for Steve you can send them all send them along to me and Steve's very responsive so I can get answers to anything. I mean, and look for that program coming in September or October depending on our schedule but I think it'll be an impressive program, very helpful to the families, I'm sure. Thank you, Steve. Thank you. Thank you and we'll see you maybe at Memorial Day. Oh yeah, I'll be there. It's a different program I'm looking forward to it. We're going to be giving out the Medal of Liberty, which is a state medal to a family member of a World War two veterans so it should be quite interesting. So, we are signed up for the parade and the Memorial. And the resolution. Great, I will make sure the reading of the resolutions in the program then. We will see that. Thank you. So, with that said, we have anything else we need to do today, you know, Sean, did we already do public comment. Andy, I guess I shouldn't ask. We have one attendee, just in case. Yeah. There is anybody who's in public who would like to be recognized to speak. Like the person wants to move. No. So, we're there for nobody's asking to do public comment. And I can't think of anything that was unanticipated business at this point. But when we have more committee members present, we need to start picking up on the report. In decision making stage. I sent out some material to committee members today to help that kind of position along and when we get to it. And otherwise, the other two parts of public safety and public service. Have been put up, I think, to the 23rd in this fire and public health. Yes. Yeah. And I know I still got to get the questions posted in the packet. And I'll send them to everybody. Just have to organize them and get the responses plugged in. So I'll send it off to everybody when that's ready. So, so anybody's thought of other other business than I think. One can we assume that the council is adjourned and the finance committee is adjourned. The council is adjourned. And finance committee. Have a good weekend. Bye. Bye.