 All right, we're recording. Thank you. Good evening. It's February 6th, 2023. This is a regular meeting of the town council. We are allowed to hold this meeting virtually as well as be in the room based on the open meeting law that was extended on November 7th, 2022. This meeting is accessible in real time by phone, in person and on Amherst media. Given that we have a quorum of the council present, I'm calling the February 6th, 2023 town council meeting to order at 6.32 p.m. I will be calling on each councilor to make sure that you can hear us and we can hear you. Then please mute your mic again. We'll start with Shalini Balmillan. I'm present. Pat D'Angeles. Present. Anna Devlin-Gothier. Present. Lynn Griesmer is present. Mandy Jo Hanneke. Present. Anika Lopes. Present. Michelle Miller. Present. Dorothy Pam. Here. Pam Rooney. Here. Kathy Shane. Andy Steinberg. Present. Jennifer Taube. Present. Alicia Walker is still not here. But let's make sure we check the audience. OK. I don't see Alicia yet, but we'll keep an eye out for her. Let me just complete this by saying, there's no chat room for this meeting if you have technical issues. Please let Athena and me know to make a comment. Use the raised hand button. And if technical difficulties arise, we will pause the meeting if necessary and make note of that. With that, I'm going to move to the announcements. And on your agenda that's printed and in the packet, we have included a variety of upcoming council meetings and committee meetings, including several that occur between now and the next time we meet, which is not till February 27th. We also want to call attention to two special events going on in town. One is the Winterfest, which has been going on since a week ago, and particularly the Fire Ice and Now Luminary event on Saturday, February 11th, on the town common. In addition to that, we want to make sure you're aware that one of our counselors is being presenting an exhibit at Amherst College, Ancestral Bridges, and that is Anika Lopes building upon historical photographs, et cetera, that she and her family have had here for generations. That exhibit actually opens on February 9th and will go through the summer. There's no hearings this evening. There are 11 people in the audience. And I want to note that there are two people here in person. Welcome. If either of you would like to make public comment, please make sure you sign in at the sheet over where Athena is. And we're getting ready for public comment. So if you are on Zoom, please raise your hand if you would like to make public comment. So Athena, I'm going to ask you to start. Her commenter is Roz. So if you'd please come up to the microphone here and state your name and district your address before making your comment. Hello. My name is Rizwan Sibi. I live on Spring Street in Amherst. I'd like to say a few words in favor of the Proposed Special Act extending voting rights to lawful permanent residents for municipal elections. I have lived in Amherst for 20 years now, but I was only eligible for citizenship a few years ago. As soon as I got it, I started voting in municipal elections. I've been voting in everything since then. And I'd like to say just a couple. I'd like to note a couple of things in favor of this proposal. The first thing I'd like to note is the fundamental principle that underlies the proposal. And that is that those who are directly affected by the actions of a government authority, particularly when it comes to taxes and policing, should have a say in how the government runs and who runs it. Non-citizen permanent residents are just as affected by taxation and policing as residents who are citizens. And therefore, I think they deserve the suffrage as well. The second point I'd really like to make has to do with the popular assumption that citizenship should come first and voting should come after that. But it doesn't have to be that way, not legally, or the US Constitution has nothing to say on this account. And indeed, several towns in the United States, especially in Maryland and Vermont, have the suffrage for non-citizen permanent residents, not historically, because from the beginning of the founding of this country until the 1920s, non-citizens actually did vote in all kinds of elections, including federal elections. And not morally, because as I mentioned before, it's only fair that if you are affected by the local government, when it comes to taxation, to policing, and for the purposes of the census, then you should have a say in who is running that government. Thank you. Thank you for joining us tonight. There's a third gentleman has just joined us in the room. Would you like to make public comment? Okay, thank you. Okay, seeing no other hands for public comment, we're going to go on to our next agenda item. It's the consent agenda. And I just want to make note as I go through the consent agenda, two things. First of all, there are several items on the consent agenda that are votes to refer, but later on, we're going to actually discuss them, even though if we leave them on consent, you've already voted to refer. It just cuts down on the number of roll call votes we have to do, cuts down on time. But if you would like to remove something because you are not comfortable with that, please state that and ask that that item removed. The following items were selected because they were considered to be routine and it was reasonable to expect they would pass with no current controversy to remove an item from the consent agenda for discussion later, unless it's already going to be discussed, ask that it be removed after I list the consent items. The request to remove an item does not require a second. So the motion is as follows. To move the following items and the printed motions they were under and approve those items as a single unit. 8D1, remote referral of the elementary school building project debt authorization to the finance committee. That is one we will discuss later. This just as a referral. Referral of debt exclusion, ballot language and impact to taxpayers to the finance committee. Again, it's a referral, but we'll discuss it later. Referral of non-citizen voting special legislation to governance organization and the legislation committee. Again, a referral, but we'll discuss it later. Approval of long-term reservations of public way, Amherst farmers market. And then there's an approval of several minutes they include November 14th, 2022 special town council meeting minutes, November 21, 2022 special town council meeting minutes public form on the budget. November 21, 2022 regular town council meeting minutes. January for special town council meeting minutes, joint meeting with governance, organization and legislation committee. January 12, 2023 special town council meeting minutes, joint meeting with community resources committee and finance committee. January 23rd, 2023 special town council meeting minutes, elementary school building project. And January 23rd, 2023 regular town council meeting minutes. Are there items that people would like removed from the consent agenda? Seeing no hands, I'm seeking a second. Pam, I'm sorry, Pam, you have a hand up. Eight F, approval of long-term reservation of public way, Amherst farmers market. You'd like that removed for discussion. Thank you. It's fine. Lynn, sorry, I can't hear Pam and I'm virtual. So I just wanted to. Thank you. Pam, could you turn your mic on? Yes, I forgot to push my mic down. And it is eight F, approval of long-term reservation of public way for the Amherst farmers market that's being removed from the consent agenda. Are there any others that people would like to request removal from the consent agenda? Do we have a technology problem? We're going to take a pause for just a moment. Oh, okay. Is there a second to the motion? Second. Devan got there. Okay. Then we're going to move to the vote. Just want to check one more time to see if Alicia has joined us. Okay. We'll start with Pat DeAngelis. Aye. Anna Devan got here. Aye. Lynn Greese-Mersen, I'm Andy Johanke. Aye. Anika Lopes. Aye. Michelle Miller. Aye. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Rooney. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Aye. Jennifer Taub. Aye. Thank you, Jennifer. Alicia Walker is presently absent and Shalini Balmille. Yes. The motion Pat is unanimous. Passes 12 in favor and one person absent. We have no resolutions and proclamations tonight and we have no presentations and discussions. This allows us to move immediately to the action items. Although let me note that action item A has been withdrawn and the reason it's been withdrawn is because once the decision was made that the council wanted the ground, the wires to be underground, they didn't need to erect another pole. And so there's no change in the petition. All right, we're gonna move on to the Centennial Funding Supplemental Budget Request. Is that okay? Oops, okay. And that I'm gonna call on Paul. Alicia's an audience. Alicia's in the audience. Please bring her in, please. And Athena, when you have a moment you can take the consent agenda down. Alicia, can you hear us? Yes, I can. Thank you, Lynn. And welcome. We've already gone through public comment and the consent agenda. We're moving on to the action items because there are no resolutions or presentations and discussions. So I'm going to call on Paul and Sean Mangano, Guilford Mooring and Amy Rusick from DPW. Thank you, Lynn. So again, being joined by finance director Sean Mangano, assistant superintendent of public works, Amy Rusicki and superintendent of public works, Guilford Mooring. We'd recently gone out to bid for the Centennial Water Treatment Plant. Bids came in, bids were higher than we had an appropriation for. So we're coming back to the council for requests for additional appropriation. And I think first we'll start with why this is what the pricing change was. And Guilford can talk a little bit about that. And Sean can talk a little bit about what the financing, what the request is specifically to the council. Guilford. Good evening. So most of the price increase was inflation. There was one item in particular, which are the filters for the treatment plant. They were, they doubled in price. So they added several million dollars to the project themselves. And then the rest of the price increase is just inflation over the time since the estimate was made, which to tell the truth, the estimate was not more than a year old. So we're seeing, we're still seeing in the marketplace rising cost, especially in steel and electronics. We're also seeing delays in delivery, which is affecting some of the pricing as well. So those are the two or the three items, three areas that caused the price to go up. As you see in the note, we can, we recommend that you do increase the price or increase the appropriation so we can continue with the project. Okay, if I hop in as well, Lynn. Please. So the previous debt authorization that the council approved was for 18 million. And even that number had a little bit of a conservative conservatism built in the, I think the costs were projected around 17 million. So we thought we had enough cushion in case construction escalation kicked in. But as you saw from the bid result, it came in even higher, much higher than even that, which already had a little bit of wiggle room in it. So the request is to authorize debt for the new total amount of the project, which is a requirement of the state revolving fund financing program. So it's to increase the debt, or it's actually to rescind the previous debt authorization, which was for 18 million and to replace it with a new debt authorization for 21.5 million. And the memo gives you a little summary of the financial impacts, which it does increase the costs to the water fund, the silver lining is that the state revolving fund has extended a larger loan, or at least in the conversations that Guilford has had with them, they've offered a larger loan, which means that we'll get more forgiveness and we'll get the beneficial interest rate of going with the state revolving fund for a greater portion of the project. And they offer a rate of 1.5%, which is much lower than the market rate right now. And they also offer 0% construction financing. So that whatever we borrow through them, we don't have to pay any interest on while we're borrowing it, or until we go out for a permanent financing. So we're asking you to rescind the previous authorization and replace it with a new one and both those orders are attached to the memo. Okay. I just remind you this, we already voted to refer this to the finance committee, but now's the time for questions from the council, Dorothy. Once this is done, do we have the cost locked in or can they increase it? Well, sorry. I can answer that. The contractor's locked in for has been priced. There is a contingency which is required by SRF, which I don't think we'll use it. The SRF is the state revolving fund. They require all contracts with them to have a 5% contingency, which for this project is almost a million dollars. And I don't think we'll come close to using all of that. Well, I don't expect to use any of it actually. So we're pretty much to this increase will be all we'll need is what we expect. Okay, thank you. If I can just add to that. So what we actually have bids, we have contractors who said they will build the plant for a fixed sum amount, which is in the memo, the 18 million, $870,000. So that's, we've gone out to competitive bid. We had three bidders and this is the low bid. So they have put pen to paper, looked at the project and said, we'll build it for this. And once we sign a contract with them, there's the contingency of course, but that's what they will build it for. Okay, Mandy, Joe, before I call on you, I just want to note that Jennifer, Todd is in the room, but she's having technical difficulties. So she's able to participate, but you just can't see her on the screen. Okay, Mandy, Joe. She looks stymied too. I don't actually have a question. I wanted to say thank you to Guilford and Sean and all. And we know those of us have been on the council for two terms, how much the cost of this project has gone up, but we also know how important this project is for the future resiliency of our town to keep that water supply available. But I wanted to say thank you for figuring out a way to get the state revolving. Whatever that program is to increase its loan amount to us, because I believe the last time we voted, the loan amount they were willing to loan us was 14 million. And so any increase above that is huge. So thank you for working on that to do that. Thanks. Couple of that, thank you. Anything else? Anybody else have questions? Yes, Kathy. Yeah, I'm on finance, so I get to ask it again tomorrow, but along the lines with Mandy, which I also thank you for, do we know, and I don't need an answer now, do we know whether any of the things that are moving at the state level now that are around climate or resiliency would help us with this? And so I know there's some infrastructure bills. So I'm not saying slow this down, but that might help down the road. So we actually discussed that this morning. We have this, along with several other projects on our list to go to our state and federal legislators. This is a perfect project for them. It's shovel ready. We have actual bids. And if they wanted to dedicate some funds to help offset water and or sewer infrastructure, this is the project that they can contribute to. So we'll be actively working on this as well. Okay. Anything else, Kathy? Pam Rooney. Thanks. I was looking at the current budget and the engineering fees. Will those fees or have those fees gone up as part of this bid or are the fees remaining relatively stable? No, the engineering fees are stable. They have not gone up in the last three estimates. We've kind of, we've cut that down and we actually have a chance to maybe lower the engineering fees a little bit, but they haven't gone up. Okay. Pam, anything else? Are there any other questions on this item? Alisha. I'm wondering if the town, like what kind of climate action lens the town is using during the bidding process? Guilford or Amy? So during the design process, everything we've looked at has been pretty much cutting edge technology. So we're reducing our electric cost. We're reducing all of our overhead costs. We're actually running the facility. That's been looked at quite in detail. The only thing that we truly haven't looked at is, and actually we'll probably start looking at it now as trying to actually pursue some offsets from Eversource for actually improving the efficiency of the new facility over the old facility, which is something that's still left for us to look at. Alisha, was there any follow up on that? No, that is helpful. I'm just also wondering if you could elaborate a little bit more on what the delay or the complications have been so far? Well, the delay in bidding or the delay in material that's going to, we expect. Yes, getting to the bidding process. Well, the bidding has been on track. We had to slow it down because we did get the, what we call the SRF, the State Revolving Fund Loan. They have special requirements and part of the engineering cost is actually to pay our consultant to meet those requirements. So that slowed it down a little bit in the bidding process, but now we're on track and we're moving well. As long as we appropriate the additional funds, the project will be starting probably within a month after signing the contract, which we hope will probably be around April. Okay, any further questions, Andy? Yeah, this is not, as was Kathy, I'm on the finance committee, so I don't need an answer today because if it's not available, it is an easy answer. We can always report it back to the council at a later meeting on the memorandum itself on page, I believe it is page five at the top. There's a chart that shows projected increase in water and sewer rates, the amount and percentage. And that's always very helpful, but what I'm curious about is how much of the, how much the increase has gone up as a result of the increase that has happened with today's news and what we're dealing with today. So if you can give that estimate to us at least a little bit tomorrow, that would be helpful, but I thought I'd just mention it tonight. Lynn, can I quickly respond to that one? Please. So if you look, so that chart that you're referencing, Andy, so there's a line a little bit less than halfway down that says estimated cost increase and it's probably not super descriptive or described as well as it could have been, but that line of $60,000 per year is the estimated increase from the proposed for the request to increase the debt authorization. And that 60,000 per year is essentially the increase in debt service that we project as a result of the higher debt authorization. So if you look at the estimated rate, the top green line, that's our projected rate. If we went forward sort of status quo, the lower shaded green line is the projected increase with the higher debt service costs for this project or for the new authorization we're proposing. And again, the increase isn't as great as one might expect because of the extension of the preferable rates from the state Revolving Fund. Andy, further questions? Yes, so I'm just gonna chart the question looks about how much the increase, how much of the increase to the increase. Andy, we can't hear you on the, I mean, we can kind of hear you, but the mic's not on. I'm sorry, I was pressing it, but the question I was asking was how much is the increase to the increase as a result of the change in the price? So for example, if you look at FY26, that's when we expect the permanent debt would start from Centennial. If you weren't to do this, if we were instilled in this world where we could do the $18 million project, the projected increase was gonna be 11.8% that year and we were gonna have a water rate of $5.88. With this request to increase the debt authorization up to 21.5, the increase now is gonna be 13% in that year and the rate will be about 6 cents higher as a result. And then going forward, everything sort of levels off because once we get that debt in place, it carries forward year after year. Okay, thank you. Using my privilege as a counselor, ask a question regarding that chart, but you don't have to put it up. So in other words, we will see this for the first time when we approve the FY26 rate. The rates that you're showing us, however, do not show any adjustment for the potential of a change based on the new water regulations that we'll be looking at within the next month or so. Right, yeah, but there's a lot of complex factors that could merge onto this chart if we wanted to. So you saw a similar chart that we shared with Finance Committee that had the impact of the water and sewer regulations as well. So if the Finance Committee wants, we could sort of merge this chart and that chart and do a sort of what-if scenario with both actions pass. And since we're discussing water and sewer tomorrow at Finance, that would be a time to do that. Okay, Dorothy. I'm remembering from some meetings in the past that sometimes debt is structured so that it diminishes over time. It sounded like you were saying it was going to be the exact same amount every year, but I'm just curious to pass to how you're going to structure the debt on this one. Yeah, so this one right now, we're projecting as flat each year would be the same amount. And so what that does is it'll lower the amount in the early years. You pay a little bit more over the life of the debt, but it makes the early years the first five or six years more manageable than if you started out high and came down over the life of the debt. Okay, thank you. Okay, Pam. Thanks. So just to make sure I understand, the estimated rates per 100 cubic feet, the current rate is 475 100 cubic foot. And it looks like it will increase by 3.4% by 7%, et cetera. But from today's value in the sixth year, we're actually looking at about 30% more per 100 feet than we pay today. And that to me is a pretty big number. So that, if I understand though, is what today's rates with today's equipment, with today's distribution is the difference with the new plant coming or the revised plant is a slight uptick in those rates by the sixth year. Is that correct? So tell me if this answers your question. So the reason why it's going up significantly and we've been projecting to go up significantly is because of the Centennial Project that started out at 11 million and went up to 18 million. But that's a significant new debt obligation in the water fund that we have to raise rates in order to pay. So that's why the rates have been trending up. And you see that in that top portion of the chart where it shows current debt and it goes from an FY 25, goes from about 800,000 and it goes up to about 1.3 million in FY 26. That's the projection of the $18 million Centennial Project. So that's one reason why the rates are going up and why it goes up significantly in that year, FY 26. The other thing that's influencing rates to go up is the consumption. So pre-COVID our consumption was over that $1 million per 100 cubic feet level. It dropped off significantly during the pandemic, as you can imagine with UMass depopulating and Amherst College, all the students going home. And so we haven't seen it come back up to the levels we'd like to see it come back up to. And some of that we think is just, new buildings have more efficient systems, but it is something we're monitoring closely. And so that consumption number is a key number that influences the rates as we are more efficient, which is a good thing for the environment. On the right side, it pushes it up because our infrastructure or the water system is very infrastructure heavy. And so there's not an easy way to reduce operating costs when consumption goes down a little bit. Really the only thing you can do is at a certain point, you may be able to take off a major water source, but we're not at that point yet and given the concerns around water, water usage in the future for avoiding that. Pam, does that answer your question? Are there any other questions from the council? Okay, seeing none, this will be taken up by finance tomorrow. Andy, is that correct? Or not until the 21st? No, it's tomorrow. Okay, thank you. And again, it's already been voted on in terms of referral. It's actually an automatic referral to the finance committee. The next is also an automatic referral to the finance committee, but we are going to have a brief presentation about the Community Preservation Act Committee's recommendations. There will be a more detailed presentation at the finance committee meeting tomorrow. Oh, that's right. That's not until the 21st of February, okay? So Centennial. I mean, I'm sorry, Community Preservation Act. And this is Sean. Yeah, okay, so I'll go right ahead. This will be a very brief presentation. It may help actually just to bring up that financial order FY2407A has a nice summary of the projects that have been approved. Yeah, perfect. So the CPA committee has wrapped up their work for the most part. They have recommended $2,349,959 of projects. And in addition to that, they have also recommended a $700,000 borrowing authorization. So of the projects that they've recommended, that including the debt authorization for now, $1,580,000 or so was for community housing and it's those top four projects you see there, two of which will contribute substantially to the affordable housing stock in town if they move forward. $366,000 was for historic preservation and three of those projects are for basically preservation of historic assets in town, including the paintings, the Mabel Lumistad paintings. And then the last 403,000 is for recreation and open space for the war memorial projects and the conservation area improvements. And then again, in addition to the 403,000 you see here for open space and recreation, there's a $700,000 debt authorization recommended for the Fort River fields as part of the elementary school building project. And so all of that sort of comes together. If you look at that chart at the bottom, you'll see the total available resources for FY24 was about 2.8 million. The projects that were recommended above was the 2.3 million and that leaves $443,460 left, which is the amount needed for debt service for CPA projects that were previously approved for debt in the past that the council has approved. And so that is what has been recommended for a slate of projects. There is one project that has sort of been not deferred. It's still ongoing consultation with the committee that might come back in the future. The town planning department is working with the applicant to sort of make sure to kind of clarify the scope of the project. If that project does come forward, it would be funded through an existing CPA reserve that was appropriated in the past. So it wouldn't require any new resources, but it would still have to go through the same process of approval with the town council. So that one, we don't know for sure if it's gonna come up this year, but it could come up later in the year. And if it does, we'll link it up with the regular budget process. So there's an opportunity to ask questions or just point different things you would like the finance committee to pay attention to. Mandy Jo. Just a question on that one that says repurposed debt, Kendrick Park, does that require a separate vote? Who repurposes that? Since we supposedly authorized that for Kendrick Park, I haven't seen anything related to that. And since if it hasn't been repurposed yet, can we authorize spending above the estimated amount that is available at this point to spend? Sean. So that's when I wish I had my friend Sonia right here to answer the debt repurposing question. So yes, that is for Kendrick Park. It was related to that project that we didn't need to borrow as much as we thought we were going to need to. And so we can use it for a like purpose. It'll be part of the slate that you vote, but what we're proposing is to use it for a like purpose, which was for recreation. Any further question? Okay. Michelle. Yes. Could you explain, I see that there's an award on there that is calling for borrowing. So I think that's the $700,000, like a separate appropriation order. And then others are not for borrowing. So I'm just trying to understand what is, I'm sorry if I missed this kind of the last round, but why would one be for borrowing and others not? What distinguishes those? Yeah, so I think there's, so it's ultimately up to the CPA committee what they recommend. Some of it comes down to the volume of projects that you have and ways to make it all work. And then some of it comes down to how expensive an individual project is. So this year was a year where there was a large dollar amount for the projects that were proposed. So the only way to do all the projects was to includes a borrowing for at least one of them. And the CPA committee decided to include the borrowing for the Fort River project because it was the original request for the Fort River project was somewhere over $2 million. They had ended up coming down from the original request to do what they felt comfortable with. But that's why that one was proposed as a borrowing because they couldn't have done it otherwise. Okay, so there's not like particular rules that trigger a borrowing. It's really just a matter of looking at the whole pie and then trying to figure out what happened. It still has to be something that we can borrow for. For example, like it couldn't be an operating type expense, it has to be something capital. And so when the, if it is approved, that's something that the future CPA committees will have to balance is every year we will present to the CPA committee how much money they're expected to have. And then the first thing we show them is how much gets taken off from debt from previously approved projects. So again, this year the amount taken off the top was 443,460. We showed the CPA committee what that looks like when the Jones library CPA project that was approved a couple of years ago kicks in. We showed them what it looks like when the Amherst Regional High School track and field which was a CPA had CPA funding but that was dead as well when that kicks in. And then with this project next year, well, if this is approved, we'll show them what it looks like when this kicks in. We have to make some assumptions around when the debt would actually kick in. But we want the committee to know how much is already obligated with debt. And there is a balance, there's no perfect number but we don't want all the CPA funds to be preobligated with that from other projects because that sort of ties the hands for future CPA committees. Thank you. Dorothy? Just to clarify, including this borrowing for $700,000, that would be, then it would not be part of the elementary school budget. It would be just part of the CPA budget. Is that correct? That's the plan is that if this is approved before the rest of the budget for the elementary school project is approved, that this would be able to come off the top of what would have to be borrowed. It would still be a borrowing that the town would pay back but it would be paid back from CPA funds as opposed to a debt exclusion. Thank you very much. Thank you. Kathy? I was just gonna say you will be able to see longer paragraphs on each of these to the extent you wanna see content on them. And I wanna commend the committee and what Sean just said in answer to you, Michelle, is they make these numbers work so that they look at the money that's coming in and then when you look in out years you can see some of these projects don't hit for a few years because you don't need to borrow it until it starts. So trying to figure out are they all coming together in 2027 or 2028 versus we have some more, we have some flexible room in the middle of it. So it takes a lot of work and I really appreciate the staffing because the committee goes back and forth with them to try to make this work. I do have one question and that is what is left in the CPA balance? And the reason I asked that question is because at least twice in our tenure as a council we have voted off cycle for CPA money once was for Kendrick Park to match a grant the other one was for, I believe the Belcher town road property there may even been a third. So I'm just trying to figure that out by looking at this. Yeah, so there's not much left in order to make this work they did have to reduce how much they set aside as a reserve. So the reserve has been something that's fluctuated in past years some years they had no reserve but they did decide for a couple of years to have a reserve as you noted but to make this all work they had to dip into it. So I believe what's left over is about $170,000 or so as a reserve and that is under consideration for that other project that I was telling you about that the committee is still considering. So it's possible there's no reserve if this is all approved. One of the things that Sonya pointed out that I'm talking with her is that because we do the CPA process earlier now the reserve is not quite as helpful as it was in the past where we did the CPA process later in the year in the spring since we do it now in the fall we really have to make a decision on whether or not to use the reserve much earlier. So not to say we won't ever do a reserve again but that's with some of the thinking why there's not as much this year. Thank you. Are there any other questions on this at this point? Again, it's a referral to the finance committee who they will take it up on February 21st. And if Freddie bring it back to the council on February 28th. No, 27th, thank you. Any other questions? See none. Okay, thank you. We are going to go on to the next which is a large item on the elementary school building project. I believe we're going to start with a presentation. I'm going to call on Paul and Sean Mangano and the discussion regarding this will be broken into three parts after the presentation. One is debt authorization. The next one is debt exclusion including the ballot language and impact on taxpayers. And the third is debt exclusion particularly selecting a special election date, early voting dates and locations and whether we do mail-in ballots. None of these will be decided tonight. They are all referrals to the finance committee, okay? But it's an opportunity for that preliminary discussion. Sean and Paul. Yeah, so I'll frame it and then Sean will do the PowerPoint. And also I want to note that town clerk Suadette is in the audience and can join if you have any questions as well. So this is our first presentation on the actual finances for the elementary school building project. In order to build this new building we will need to borrow the funds to do that. Once we get authorization from the council to borrow the funds, we will also not once but in addition we also will need the council to place a question on the ballot to ask the voters to exclude this from the limits of proposition two and a half called a debt exclusion. This is a majority vote at the ballot box. And along with those along that line there are some questions, some decisions you need to make about the actual election itself. You need to choose the date and you need to choose if you want to include early voting, early in-person voting. So those are the questions that are before you. Again, we're not looking for any decisions tonight but later in February on the election decisions. And so I think what we want to do is sort of frame this and Sean, do you want to do the PowerPoint? Sure, is it okay if I just share my own screen, Lynn? I think I have access to. Can you see the presentation on the screen? We can. Perfect, thank you. All right, so tonight, we kick off the planning around the dedication process and providing some of the numbers. So the agenda, do you guys see a Zoom quit unexpectedly? What is going on here? Sorry, good. Everyone can see everything on the screen still, kind of some weird messages. Okay, thank you. All right, so we're gonna talk about where we are as a town, the project costs real quickly, the plan for funding the project, a little background around what a debt exclusion is, the impacts or the estimated impacts of a debt exclusion for our taxpayers and then talk about next steps. So the town has received the reconciled cost estimate, which basically just means that two separate cost estimating firms have estimated the cost of the project and then they've gotten together and reconciled the differences between those two cost estimates to come up with a middle ground. And then the town's consultants are architect Nisco and our project manager, Anser, have also vetted these cost estimates. So we have a good solid total project cost number that includes an estimate for escalation, just following up on our centennial discussion that we just had. The elementary school building committee has reviewed this total project costs and they have approved a range of cost saving measures that reduces that overall cost by about $5 million. In addition, in late 2022, the town successfully advocated to the MSBA for higher reimbursement levels. The MSBA has caps on what it will reimburse. We advocated to them, saying that because of the extreme escalation in the construction industry, they really need to reconsider those caps. They did not increase them as much as we would have hoped, but they did increase them significantly. And so we believe the benefit of what they have done in terms of increasing the reimbursement caps will benefit the town somewhere between $3 and $4 million, definitely in excess of $3 million. And we are now preparing for three sets of votes, as Paul mentioned, the date for a special election and what the language will look like. The vote on the language itself requires a two-thirds majority because it is related to debt. And these dates that you see on here are tentative dates, obviously subject to your later discussion. The debt authorization, the next vote would be the debt authorization that the council would vote to fund the project that's tentatively scheduled for April 3rd that will also require two-thirds majority of the council and then the actual debt exclusion vote itself among town voters tentatively scheduled for May 2nd, and that would require a majority of the votes cast. Shifting over to project costs. So this is the same project cost summary that was presented to you at your last meeting. This is what we've based the financing, financing projections that you'll see in a few slides on. I do wanna note that Friday's school building committee, the project manager presented a version of this that was slightly higher than what you've saw in the past. And it increased a little bit because they bumped up the estimate for furnishings, equipment and technology per student. And they also bumped up the estimate for insurance while the building is being constructed. And so I think it increased to somewhere between $200,000 and $300,000 from the number you see here. That won't affect the numbers that you'll see later in this presentation. That's the change is not enough to influence those numbers in any material way. But I did just wanna let you know that you might see a slightly different version of this chart at a future presentation. So how are we gonna pay for the project? We're proposing to borrow money that will be the primary funding source that we would borrow money that would be repaid from additional taxation that would be authorized by the passage of a debt exclusion, the amount of money that we're proposing to borrow. We anticipate will be lower by a couple of things. One, Eversource incentives that we have, we've already sent in an MOU to Eversource to participate in an incentive slash rebate program. The estimated value of those incentives is about 1.6 million. And the primary element of that that generates that much money is the geothermal aspect of our project. Eversource has a new program that has significant incentives because of the geothermal aspect. And then the second piece that we hope will reduce the borrowing if approved is the Community Preservation Act funding request of 700,000. And again, with that, a group of residents submitted a request for this project at Fort River to support the fields next to the project or next to the building. The CPA committee reviewed that project request and recommended a $700,000 appropriation for that project. So those two pieces are two things that we believe could reduce the debt authorization if the council, definitely if the council approves the CPA request. And staff and others are continuing to explore additional ways to reduce the amount to be borrowed. So these are those ways that you see above or a couple, there's other ways that we're looking into like possible tax credits through the Inflation Reduction Act. There's still more information to come out on that. There's not good regs that tell us exactly what we could get, but that's something we'll be watching very closely and we'll be pursuing as a potential funding source for this. So there's things like that that we will continue to explore as a way to reduce the overall borrowing. We may not know for sure about them though before the decisions that the council and the town have to make. And then lastly, as we move forward with the borrowing we can structure the debt one of two ways. Actually, Ms. Pam, you asked the question a few moments ago how there's a couple of different ways you can structure debt. One is level payment, which works like a mortgage where you pay the same amount every year. Another way is level principle where you pay a higher amount in the beginning and then it trails off a little bit over time. The benefit of the level payment is that you have a lower amount in early years so you avoid sort of a spike at the beginning that can be difficult for some people to manage. So what you'll see later in this presentation we've projected it based on the level payment option to make those early years more manageable. So this next chart, this was provided by our OPM firm answer. This is the first chart, the first cash flow chart that you'll see but it probably won't be the last. This is an early version based on the timeline for the project that maps out roughly the outlays of cash that the town will have to make for the project. Again, the specific numbers in here aren't super important but the chart like this will be used with the elementary school building committee to help monitor the project. And what I use it for is to work with our financial advisor to look at roughly how much we anticipate using in a given fiscal year and that directly impacts how much we have to borrow in that particular year. And so what you can see here is that in 2025, 2026, that's when construction will really ramp up based on the current timeline and when we would expect most of the expenses for the project to occur. And again, there'll be more updated versions of this as we move closer to the actual project beginning. So what is a debt exclusion? It's a temporary increase in property taxes outside the limits of proposition two and a half to pay for the debt service of a particular project. So the key words there are temporary, that only lasts as long as the debt for that project. So once that project is paid off, the increase goes away. The increase is applied to all taxable properties. And the last time that Amherst did it successfully, at least or that implemented it, at least according to the state's website was in 1994 for renovations to the regional high school. And the town was actually using some of that debt exclusion probably many people didn't realize it at the time as recently as 2016, 2017, they were still sort of winding down that debt exclusion. So we're gonna look at quickly the language or draft language so far. So this first slide shows the ballot question. And so we've reviewed this with our bond council, which is a special attorney that the town works with that specifically focuses on debt. And so our bond council has reviewed this, our local legal council has reviewed this, the Massachusetts School of Building Authority has reviewed it and the Department of Revenue has reviewed it. All of them were good with this language. So we feel pretty confident that this language works. So not to say that there won't be any changes, but we think this is ultimately what it's gonna be. This next one is the debt authorization financial order much longer and much smaller font. So this one we have reviewed again with all the same parties. However, this one there's a little bit of a question on some of the language and it relates to Amherst no longer being a town. Now that we're a city, there's some things that towns can do that cities can't. And so it's not a big issue, but it might mean the language has to change a little bit. So this language could change by the time we'll make sure that all those parties that I mentioned earlier have signed off on the language before we bring it to you for a vote. So we're gonna shift to the estimated tax impact. So the traditional way to finance a construction project is to use short-term borrowings, which are called bond anticipation notes, and to use those while the project is going on. And then you use those each year to fund whatever the cost is for that year, whatever you would need. And then at the end of the project, once all the costs are done and you know exactly how much the project costs, you convert all of that, you roll it all together and convert it into a permanent bond. And then you make principal and interest payments on that bond. And while you're using the short-term financings, you only have to pay interest on what you borrow in those early years. So that's a traditional way to do it. It's a conservative way to do it. And that's what the numbers that you'll see on the next slide are based on. There's another way to do it that we will keep open if interest rates are in a good place. And that is when the project begins, if interest rates are really low or much lower than where they are now, it may make sense for us to do a permanent financing earlier to lock in a lower interest rate earlier. So there's some tools at our disposal to try to take advantage of lower interest rates and get a better deal for the town. But what we've presented tonight, what you'll see on the next slide is based on the more conservative option. So the current financing plan projects interest only payments that would begin in 2025 and then principal and interest payments that would begin in 2029. The financing plan assumes a level debt payment structure, as I mentioned before. And so the additional taxation that would come from the debt exclusion. So when it starts impacting taxpayers, that would begin in 2025 and it would be for those interest only payments on the short-term financings that I mentioned. Those would ramp up a little bit each year until 2029 when we would start our principal and interest payments. And at that point, it would stay fixed until 2054. So again, with this level payment, we would ramp up and then we'd get to a certain point where it would stay fixed pretty much for the life of the debt. And so what you'll see on the next slide is that fixed point, that maximum of where it's gonna be for the majority of the debt exclusions life. But just know that before 2029, it would ramp up a little bit, it would ramp up slowly to get to that point. And then the last thing is the debt, the charts on the next slide that we're gonna show you that it already incorporates CPA funds and ever source rebates. So that's based on a borrowing of about $53, $54 million which already incorporates the CPA and the ever source rebates. So if the CPA funds are not approved, we would have to back that out. All right, so this chart shows the impacts. There's a little link at the top here that anybody can click. It brings you to a tool on the state's website, that's where this information comes from. And what that tool does is it allows you to put in the annual debt cost and then pick Amherst and it pops out the numbers basically for what the impacts will be. So if anybody wants to look at any other towns or look at Amherst and play around with different things, they could. But what this shows you, that top little table shows you our current tax rate which is $20 and 10 cents per thousand. The first line in the next table where it says proposed tax rate impact per thousand, $1.07 is the estimated impact of the debt exclusion per thousand. So for every thousand dollars of assessed value, you'd multiply it by $1.07 to figure out the debt exclusion impact for that property on an annual basis. So if you go down to the third line in that second table, the average single family assessed value in Amherst and FY 23 is 446,953. And then if you skip down to the last line in that table, the estimated impact from the debt exclusion if it was passed is $478 for an average single family home. And then the table at the very bottom just gives you a range of different assessed values so you can see the impact at different levels. So again, if you wanted to get more refined and look up a specific value, you would just identify the assessed value for that property, divide it by 1,000 and then multiply it by the $1.07 and that would give you the estimated debt exclusion impact for that property. So what can change or what can change the numbers on the prior slide? So the overall cost of the project, just like we just heard with Centennial, project costs are not set until we go out for construction bids, which in this case, wouldn't happen until somewhere closer to the second half of 2024. So again, we've included a place holder for cost escalation, but construction bids could come in higher, could come in lower and that could change the overall amount that we would have to borrow. The projected interest rate could change. We've seen interest rates go up and down in recent years. That would impact the annual debt service. The timing of expending funds, if we spend more earlier on, we might have to borrow more and do more short-term borrowings in the beginning of the project, so that could change it. The tax base of Amherst is one that has a big impact on the numbers. So if the tax base continues to grow, the way it has the past five to seven years, the numbers on the prior side will likely come down. As we grow the tax base and as new properties come on, that helps spread out the burden of the debt exclusion. And so again, if we have another period of growth, like we had the last five to seven years, I would expect those numbers could be quite a bit lower when we actually go out to do the debt exclusion or when we actually go out to borrow the money. And then the anticipated reimbursement from the MSBA, so they'll give us a maximum grant amount, but the final MSBA reimbursement is based on the cost that we submit and what they deem eligible and ineligible. And then the last big thing that could change is the availability of other funding sources. So if we're successful in finding some other offsets for the cost of the project, that would obviously reduce the total amount we'd have to borrow and could reduce the impacts of the debt exclusion. So next steps, we'll review this in more detail with the finance committee tomorrow and also later in the month on the 28th. And we'll continue to update all these numbers and that this plan as market conditions change and as more information comes from the project as it gets developed further. And happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Sean. I don't want to say you make it sound easy, but you make it sound understandable. Maybe that's the best way. We're going to start with questions. Dorothy. Is there any kind of way for a low-income senior who lives in a house whose value has increased but their income has not increased? Is there any kind of help for that when we have a debt exclusion? So I think the first thing we'd want them to do is meet with our assessor's office and just see if they're taking advantage of everything they might be entitled to. I think that would be the first step. We have some exemptions already in place. I think we'd want to look there first and make sure that they're taking advantage of those if they qualify. Okay, thank you. Questions? Michelle Miller. I have a question about so funding the project. I think that it's important that the town show its commitment to the project, but also that we try to reduce the burden to the taxpayers as much as possible. So I am wondering if the finance committee is going to explore the possibility of using reserve funds. And I didn't have a chance before our meeting tonight to look at our financial sort of regulations that the town has or the policies, but I do remember as a prior member of the finance committee talking about reserves being used for our capital projects. And I know we have quite a reserve. I think it's maybe 24 million. So just wondering if there are any plans to allocate some of that or to explore allocating some of that money for this project. Yeah, so I think the first thing of what you said about lowering the costs, I think you're right, that's our goal is to continue to try to find ways to lower the cost. So far, we've been able to lower the cost by about $10 million from where it started. So there's been different factors that have contributed to that, but it has dropped quite a bit. I think when it comes to reserves, the one thing we have to keep in mind is that our overall goal is to complete four building projects. That's the goal of the council is to get four building projects completed. And those reserves play a really critical role in some of the other projects. So I think it's something that the finance committee will obviously discuss, but I just, I think that's the context we have to keep in mind is that our goal is still to move all four building projects to completion as quickly as we can. Other questions from the council? Yes, Shalini. Yes, one I wanted to just say that I'm happy to hear that there is a possibility of a tax base increases if there are other sources of funding that show up that this could go down. So that's encouraging for all of us. The question I had was about the language for the ballot question. It seems really legal and hard to understand. Like even as councillors, I mean, we know what that exclusion is and proposition to an half is, but I wonder if there's a way to put this legal language, but then also explain in simpler language to people who don't know all this. So the language that goes on the ballot is prescribed by state law. You have to, you can't put a number in there, which is what's always frustrating to people. It says, shall the debt be excluded from the limits of proposition two and a half and it doesn't show a number. And so you're not allowed to put other words in there other than what the state law prescribes. So that will require us to do an immense amount of education for people to fully understand what that includes. And so a lot of towns have passed debt exclusions. They've all faced the same hurdle and we've all attempted to educate the public as best they can so people know what they're voting on. But it is a challenge because the language is written specifically by the state law. And just building up what Paul said. Yeah, when you read that question, you might not know whether to vote yes or no to get the outcome that you want, right? So I think we have to make it very clear what a yes vote means and what a no vote means so that there's no confusion. Mandy Jones. Yeah, this may be a little technical, but when you were talking about what can affect that tax increase if the debt is excluded, you talked about the tax base increases. The chart you showed had a tax increase of 1.07, right? Once that number set, does that stay the same the whole 30 years or as the tax base increases by year 30, presumably we'll have added a larger tax base, it doesn't stay the same. So does that number fluctuate such that in year 30 whatever amount on our level payment we're paying is now spread out over more or do you just pay it off earlier because you took in more from every tax? I hope that's a clear question. Yeah, no, we expect that number will slowly decline as the tax base grows every year as we look at the tax base and we calculate that the debt will stay fixed but the tax base will grow. So it'll dilute the impact a little bit each year as we go forward. Alicia. Thank you, Lynn. So I think most of what I was wondering was already asked but I'm gonna ask just for further elaboration. And so going back to Shalini's question in terms of the ballot question and the wording I'm wondering is there specific criteria that needs to be followed for that question to be written and is there another way to further simplify the question because to me, I'm sure there are other criteria that has to be met aside from what Paul just said but like just because we can't say numbers doesn't mean we can't simplify what is being written a little bit more because I agree that it's very hard to understand and I think people are gonna have hesitation in voting for something that they cannot understand I can barely understand that just reading it. And so I would really, really strongly encourage us to continue to look at that and find better wording. Yeah, so we can obviously look at that. This language comes specifically from the MSBA both this language and the debt authorization language comes from a template that they provide and there's a couple pieces of information that we put in the city known as the town of Amherst and then the section around the elementary school for Riverside located in Southeast Street. But this and same thing with the debt authorization most of the language is from an MSBA approved template. We can again, we can reach out to see if there's ways to simplify it but a lot of it is very directly tied to the law and in a certain way you have to ask the question. And so the template is the only way that it can be written like there is no other way to write it while still needing whatever required criteria there is because I know like in other situations I don't know much about writing ballot questions that a template is usually provided for assistance but it's not usually the only way to do something. And so I'm wondering if we can still find a different way to approach it while still meeting all of the criteria required by law for the ballot question. Yeah, the state law actually prescribes the exact language that should be on except for the specifics about our community. But we can explore what any, if anybody has done anything better than that because I think everyone has always agreed that that language is very challenging for the voters to understand then you are all educated as elected officials and it's harder for just regular people going to the ballot. But the fact is that the state law and I can share this with you is a very explicit about what the words have to be on the ballot itself. Thank you, Paul. Sorry if I have one other question but also I would just continue to encourage to look into that more if that's possible. And then my second comment was again about the trying to figure out what else we can do as a town to sort of reduce the burden that's gonna fall onto the taxpayers. And I think it's great that we've been able to come down so much but just coming down like we're still looking at an increase in the tax bracket that this town falls within is already difficult where we are right this minute. And so looking at any kind of increase is difficult for not only people who may live here already and have a hard time paying the taxes but people who may want to move here. And so I'm wondering and hoping that we can explore further options into reducing that service to the taxpayers. Jennifer. Yeah, so continuing on Shalini and the Luchas question. Please use your mic. Oh yeah, can you hear? What I wanted to ask is if we don't have that much flexibility or leeway with the language on the ballot, have we ever literally sent out a mailing? I don't know if there's a tax bill or something going out before that would reach almost every resident in Amherst explaining the language? I mean, you know, the counselors, we can all send emails and mailings to our district mailing lists but those are not going to, it's their way much more limited than the entire town but is there some way to be able to explain what's being asked that would reach everyone? Paul, do you want to go and then I'm going to call in Kathy. Sure, so there's a fine line. The town can't use public resources to advocate for or against the ballot question. We can do educational material for people but we can't use public resources to say vote yes on this project but we can't say this is the impact on the project. I'd have to look into what if other communities have used public resources to do mailings. We can certainly share information sort of like what we've just done here but ultimately it would be advocacy groups either for or against the ballot question who would lobby the voters to vote one way or the other. But is there a way, I don't know if we just notify voters when and where the election will be? What, you know, say this is the question on the ballot and what it is asking is this. So they know- Yeah, so we can certainly educate voters that there's an election coming up, that there's a question on the ballot, what the question is, all those types of things is actually I think our duty to educate voters that there is an election that they should have the opportunity to participate in. Athena, you had a comment and I'm going to Kathy. Thanks, I just wanted to note that there's a memo from the Office of Campaign and Political Finance in your packet from the last meeting and that has good instructions about what elected officials are and aren't allowed to do in terms of advocating so you're not allowed to use town resources for advocating for the ballot question. Speak into your mic. Okay, Kathy. Thank you. So I just want to speak to this and I will do a little bit of work to see what other towns have done for their schools. But if you remember the complicated language we had this last election on, sometimes you had no idea what you were voting on but you got those little red booklets and they had a foreign against but they also just said, if you vote, yes, this means, if you vote no, this means. So what I want to see, Paul, is when people did mailings about special elections for debt exclusion, did anyone just do something simple like this? Here's the language you're going to see. A yes means this, a no means that rather than saying, we love our school and we want it. But really very neutral. And I know another part of this line is mail-in vote versus other, what we're deciding. So if we're going to have to mail something out to the households anyway to let them know that this is happening, even if we're not doing mail-in. So I've seen several towns have gone out recently for their schools and they have done what you've said, Paul, they've been very careful not to advocate but they've said, you're going to see this on the ballot. So I just want to see whether they mailed it, whether they mailed it to every registered voter or not. Okay. Anika. We can. The answer to my question is no, because it seems so simple, but is it possible at all to just have some sort of insert or something that accompanies the ballot that is not advocating, but just simply explaining what the vote means. I think that's the thing that Kathy was talking about and we can explore that what's permitted under the law. Again, if we're using public resources, we cannot advocate for or against a matter like this. We can educate, but not advocate. Anna. Yeah. I'm sorry, Anika, were you finished? Yes, thank you. Okay, Anna. Thank you. I'm just, I'm a little confused. Every ballot measure I've seen in the past has a summary and then has a yes vote on this question means a no vote on this question means. Why would we not be able to do that for a debt exclusion vote? Again, the debt exclusion language is explicit in the state law. Of the measure, but is there, and I can, I guess go look at the state law, but is there a reason why we can't have the summary section below as with other ballot measures? We can check with the town attorney on that. I think we're limited on what we can put on the actual ballot though. Okay. And Anna, when I was just saying that, I was in usually, I call them the red booklets, when we have more of them, but it wasn't actually on the ballot itself. It was just, there was a red booklet somewhere you could say, what am I voting on here? So that's the issue because those actually came out of the state usually. Well, it's on the warrant itself too. I think the answer is we'll be exploring that. Anna, anything else at this point? Nope. Okay. Dorothy? I personally think it's difficulty we'll be getting out the vote. It's a special election. And I think that anyone who actually goes to the polls will probably know what the issue is. When you have a special election, whether it's in May or April or sometime, it's not a time people are used to voting. So I mean, you're aware that our district counselors are not given email lists. And our lists are just things that we've been able to put together. They're very spotty. They're all kinds of people who we do not communicate with at all because we don't have their email address. So I think that in term, I'd be concentrating on getting out the vote. And I think in the past, I've asked, do we have like an electric sign that goes at the intersection that could say voting today with the hours? Because I think people who might even intend to vote who know what they're gonna vote for understand the language. We'll still not remember that this is the day you have to vote. So I just think we're gonna have to really work to remind people today's the day, go to the polls and to help. So do we have that kind of signage of the availability to remind them exactly when the voting is open? We do have electronic signs that we can put up that can notify people. There are other signs that we're allowed to put out and say vote today, that type of thing. And I noticed that town clerk Suadette has her hand up. Right, I'm gonna go to Sue. Thank you, good evening, everybody. Yes, I've already gotten permission to use the electronic sign from the police department. So it's just a matter of giving them dates. This is something we've looked at through the years and it's finally come to fruition. Plus we have a lot of long type signs that we can put out. So I just wanted to confirm that. Okay. Andy? Yeah, I just wanted to remind everyone that this isn't the first time we've ever done this. So we know the experience of using this language and going to the voters and the voters who've understood and devoted in the appropriate fashion for them. The 2018 override, which did pass for the schools, as you remember, the elementary school failed because of town meetings deciding not to borrow the funds. But the voters had passed an override before and the override language was virtually identical. I examined it a couple of weeks ago and compared. It seems to me that to an extent we have already discussed the data authorization and the debt exclusion. So I'd like to spend a little bit of time talking about the special election day, which we've tentatively set at May 2nd, the early voting dates, if we're going to do that and locations and mail-in ballots. This is a discussion only. So if we could focus on just one at a time, the first question is, are there questions about the May 2nd date? We've discussed it once before. Kathy? I like the date and what I would really like to know and when you say we're not voting on it, the sooner we can vote on the date of people, this education campaign, it's hard to say, it's tentatively set for May 2nd. I want people to start circling it in their calendar. So I know it works, the colleges are still in session. To the extent they're going to be voting in our election, trying to get out the vote. So that's my only question about it, Lynn. I personally don't want it to be later than that. Is the other- If it's later than that, the higher ed institutions will be starting into exams or it be out and that is not appropriate because it's not just the students, but it's the faculty and the staff who aren't around as much during the summer. So I agree with Kathy that the sooner we come to full agreement, May 2nd is the date the better. Pam, you have a question on that one. Is there any budget cycle reason for a particular date? No, this was, I did a lot of examining of calendars and it, I didn't, I mean, May 1st is when the town manager gives us his budget, but it's not, those two aren't related intimately at this point, okay? So let me just introduce the early voting dates. Usually that's for about a week before the election date and that would be, that would begin the week in April. It would be right after students and their parents in K to 12 come back from spring break. So they would be back, you know, starting school that Monday that you would do a week of early voting, which is also the reason to wait till May 2nd. Mandy Jo? Yeah, I wanna make sure that if we do early voting and I support that, that at least one day during the week is on UMass's campus because I think that's gonna be hugely important to the people who spend most of their time on UMass's campus, especially with our redistricted districts where most students are in all of the districts. We don't have a concentrated and we don't want students or faculty to have to be sort of location hop on the day of the election because they went to the wrong location to vote. Whereas if we do early voting on campus, they're at the right location no matter what. Okay. I do want to see if there's any further comments or questions about the date or the early voting dates. So they would begin on Monday. April 25th. April 25th, thank you. It's the 24th. 24th. This is Tuesday. Monday April 24th, yeah. And I remember Mandy Jo, I think it might have been you that we specifically asked that there also be one evening of early voting that in this last election. Is that, am I correct about that? Sue, you're still in the audience. Am I correct? I'm here. Yes, I didn't, well, I haven't heard that, but can I speak a little bit about your early voting? Sue, can you turn your camera on? Hold on one second. If not, that's okay. There we go. Okay, thank you. Is it working? It's working. Yes. Okay, so just a few statistics. I've just started to work up comparing in-person early voting with mail and balloting. And in 2018, when we did not have the mail and balloting, we had about a 25% turnout for in-person early voting, pretty standard. The minute the mail and balloting option came about, this last round, September and November, we had about a seven, eight percent turnout in the in-person early voting as opposed to about a 50% for the mail and ballot. So you can see where the shift is. It's gone over to the mail and ballot and the interest in the mail, the in-person early voting has gone down, down, down, down. In fact, the Secretary of State's office is exploring, shortening the term of the mail, I'm sorry, I can't get the name mixed up. Shortening the time for state elections for in-person early voting down to one week instead of two because of the lack of interest statewide. So just some interesting facts that have happened as a result of the mail and balloting. So we're saying we do early voting for two weeks, usually. Not for a town election, only for a state. Okay. Town and primaries are roughly one week. Okay. And it makes sense. I mean, if we went to two weeks, that first of the two weeks, the K to 12 families might not even be in town. Right, Anne? Yeah. Okay. Kathy, you have your hand up. Yeah. So I just thinking through this is a special election and you want people not to forget. So I think one of the things early voting does, especially if we have the flashes up, you know, you can vote anytime this week. You don't have to remember to put something in the mail. You don't have to, you can just walk in and vote. So I'm agreeing with Mandy if we can do at least one of those at UMass. I think people like they come downtown and say, oh, I can vote. And it's just incredibly convenient. And the other piece about it is you don't have to remember where you're supposed to vote. There's just one place to vote, which is a really nice convenient. And with the change in districts, the actual day of voting, they're gonna be still some people wondering whether they're going to the up in ours, which are the two churches you go to, or do I go here? So I would argue for the early voting. I just don't know whether we need a full week of it. I just think it makes it really convenient for people to remember. I can't see us doing less than a week. I think we wanna provide every opportunity to get people to the polls. So we're talking about early voting. Sue, did you wanna discuss the issue of early voting on the UMass campus? Well, like every decision that I make, I like to do a pro versus a con list, benefits versus the detriments. I still need some time to explore that. Past experience has not been good. We've had bad, unreliable workers that we've put up there, or it takes one of us leaving the office to set it up. We can't just trust it to anybody because as chief election specialist, one of us has to be there to make sure everything is the way it needs to be. And now that mail and ballots is a thing, the amount of time on our office for getting things done has astronomically expanded. That's one way to put it. We're stretched thin. So, you know, and I just think, I know there's about 250 registered voters, that's just students, I'm not talking about staff, which represents about 2% of the voting population in Amherst, it's not very high. So, I mean, this is all stuff that I'm considering and weighing my decision. Town clerk does pick, yeah. Town clerk does pick the location, but I have to think, is it worth it? You know, that's the bottom line. Is it worth the effort? These costs, the cost for mailing the ballots, that's one side, the cost for doing early voting is another side. For town elections, they're unfunded mandates, so it's all on the town. So, you know, I'm conscious of the cost, I'm always trying to keep things down, but I know we wanna have as many voters come out and vote. So, it's one of those things where, you know, I've got my list, pro-con. So, I will continue to explore. And I'll listen to your feedback and take that all into consideration as well, as I always try to do. Thank you. Dorothy. I remember standing outside of UMass for voting, probably 2018, and nobody went in, and the few people that did in, went in, didn't vote. Do you have the figures of how many, from the last time we had voting on the UMass campus, how many votes were actually cast? I would in my files in the office, which I can take up. Yeah. Because it was really, it was very, I realized it was a waste of my time, but I spent a lot of time standing out there, and there was just nobody going in and nobody voting. I was on a day where lots of people voted, Dorothy. So, we were just on different days. Yeah. Anna. I apologize for backtracking a little bit, but I wanted to know the answer to my question really definitively, and I did find it. So, I wanna clarify for other folks, in case they find it interesting. And I sent the links to Athena, if folks are interested in them. KP Law has a document about Prop 2.5 override ballot questions, and it specifically states, the law does not authorize the summary to be included on the ballot in connection with any such ballot question. So, no summary, no yes vote means, no vote means. That has to be done by other mailing. Thank you. Yeah, just not on the ballot. Right. Okay. So, we're still at this point, what I'm hearing from people is, we're not voting tonight, but what I'm hearing is that when we bring this back, we are in fact looking at May 5th, we are looking at early voting date, I'm sorry, May 2nd, May 2, May 2. Thank you. We are looking at one week of early voting, at both a town hall with the possibility of on the Amherst campus, the U.S. Amherst campus, and we are looking at mail-in ballots because of the success that we have seen since the state elections began using those during COVID. One of the downs, upsides, if you will, of COVID is we learned how to do mail-in voting. Are there any other comments before we move on to a break? Yes, Michelle. I just wanted to say that May 2nd is National Teachers Day this year, so that's kind of a cool, a cool day. It's National Teachers Day. National Geek. Teachers Day. National Teachers Day, thank you. All right. National Geek Day, Teachers Day. Some teachers are geeks and those are really good teachers. It may help us all remember in the community what we're doing. So that one I didn't find on the calendar when I looked. Kathy? So if we have those three options, then I don't need an answer now, but Sue was talking about mailing costs and I'll do a fundraiser if we need to for mailing costs. But if we wanna let everyone know you have three ways of voting, which was, we were all told last time by mail that. And here is it. Here's what's gonna be on the ballot and here's an explanation of it. That one mailing could go out and people would know that piece of it, right? There is a, yes, that, well, no, wait, you're saying that that one mailing can go out from the town. I think we have to check on that. Could that mailing go out from others? Yes. Okay. As long as we have a list of registered voters, right? Yep. Although I do recall that when we would get our mailing ballot, things that we had to then apply, it would have that kind of information on it. It's been, you know, since last fall, so I don't have a clear memory of it. Okay. Are there any other questions? Kathy? Okay. Okay. Sue, thanks for joining us. Thanks for your support of the upcoming election and all of our elections and other town clerk responsibilities. Good. Paul? I just want to mention that Sue was recently earned the designation of certified municipal clerk. Yes. Which is a big achievement. Thank you. Thank you. It takes years to achieve that, going to lots of classes and she is now mentoring the assistant town clerk to follow the same path. So credit to Sue for encouraging that professional development, but it takes a lot of time and effort and study to achieve. It's not just an automatic thing. So congrats to Sue for that. Congratulations to Rick. Actually it was, thank you. It actually was more work than my bachelor's degree. I don't know how. I'm not surprised. Probably more tests involved. Okay. Great, thank you. We are going to take a 10 minute break. You've deserved this. And we will be back at 8.17. Please unmute, please mute and turn your cameras off. And when you come back, turn your cameras back on. Thank you. We need to start gathering again, please. 100% ignore me. It's an important, we're debating the official handy of the state and the official thing. We should set up the idea. Okay. Please turn on your video so that I know you're back. We're going to move on to our next agenda item, which is the proposal brought forward for special legislation for non-citizen voting. And this is sponsored by Pat and Shalini. We've already voted to refer to GOL. So there will not be no vote at the end of the discussion, but the floor is open. I'm going to start by asking Pat and Shalini if there are some things that they would like to say. Yes, thank you, Lynn. Can you folks hear me? We can. Okay. If approved by the state legislature, the town of Amherst would be authorized to allow lawful permanent residents to register and vote in local elections. Lawful permanent residents are non-citizens who are lawfully authorized to live permanently within the United States. They may accept the offer of employment without special restrictions, own property, receive financial assistance at public colleges and universities, and join the armed forces. We, to have a, I'm a little, okay. To have a voice in Amherst, you need to be able to vote. To have a voice anywhere, you need to be able to vote. Throughout American history, every disenfranchised group has achieved greater social and civil rights by attaining and maintaining the right to vote. Why should non-citizens in Amherst, who work just as hard, support our schools, fire police and crest departments with their tax dollars and even risk their lives serving in our military, be denied the right to vote on local issues? According to the 2020 census, Amherst has 6,890 foreign-born residents, of which 4,249 are not U.S. citizens. This comes to 61% of all foreign-born residents, and a little more than 10% of all are residents. They own property, they pay local, state and federal taxes, send their children to public schools, belong to churches, mosques and synagogues, served on town committees and boards. They bring greater racial, ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversity to our town. They deserve a meaningful voice. They deserve the right to vote on local issues that directly affect them, their families, their property and businesses. Over the course of our history as a nation, there has been both expansion and contraction around the idea of non-citizen voting. In Amherst, however, in the 1990s, we started to look as a town at non-citizen or lawful permanent resident voting. And we have consistently over time forwarded special act requests to the state legislature. And in each town meeting vote, the majority of people supporting this have grown. We are part of a collection of towns in the state of Massachusetts who are coming together who have requested this before and who are coming together now and with support of Joe Cumberford and Mindy Dom to really push and shepherd this special act through the state legislature. That's all I have to say for the moment, but I'd like Shaline to share her personal story. Shaline? Yeah, thank you, Pat. So I just wanted to speak more from a personal perspective. As many of you know, I'm an immigrant from India and what I don't know if many people know is that it requires a big sacrifice for us immigrants to earn the right to be here today, the right to vote because the sacrifices we have to give up our citizenship in our native countries. So I had to give up my Indian citizenship in order to earn a citizenship here. And that was the reason why, even though I was here in 2001 and earned the right to be a citizen, I kept postponing that it was really hard to give up my own country's citizenship. So that's one block obstacle that many immigrants have. They have to make that choice, that difficult choice. And there's so many other obstacles for immigrants in terms of it's a very lengthy, involved process, very complicated paperwork. And so I can read and write English and I could do it, many people have to hire lawyers and there's a lot of cost involved. So meanwhile, that's one reason many people don't end up choosing to be citizen, but meanwhile we lose out on their, I mean, they lose out on the opportunity to vote and as Pat shared and as others have shared today. And I think one other thing that I wanted to say was I think for me and I know for others, the biggest change that this brings is a sense of belonging. So once we're allowed to vote and we have the right to vote is when we really feel that sense of belonging in a town, we contribute like as I have in the last five years or four years, I've been part of council. So we're really losing out while it's not fair to the people but it's also not good for the town because we're losing out on the opportunities, the town is losing out on the skills and gifts of so many immigrants who could be more involved in our town. So I really hope that our council, I have no doubt, will support it and I'm really also wanna say that having spoken with State Rep Mindy Dom, she is supporting this and hopefully we'll keep doing it till the state passes it. So thank you for your support. Quickly just wanna thank Resman Sibi who's here today and who is one of the persons critical for my jumping into this. Also wanna thank Michelle who started working on this issue with Pat before I jumped in, so. Okay, thank you. So the floor is open for questions or comments, Anna. I'm so excited about this, I think it's great and I think my questions are a little specific in terms of understanding why the language is crafted the way it is. And so I had looked up a couple other towns who have submitted similar home rolls across the state. And I think one of the things that I am curious about is why the language of have their name entered on a list of voters versus shall be considered registered voters. And I think the reason my rationale for that is that there's more than just voting in any election for our local office or local ballot questions. It also would, if they are considered eligible voters by the town on a local level, they could then, as per our charter, run for elected office, which you just mentioned, but also signing petitions, et cetera, et cetera. And so I'm curious, I wanna make sure that that's very clear to people that it's not just election. And I know this is what you're, I believe this is what you intended, that it's not just election day and early voting and mail-in voting, but it's also could run for local office such as school committee or town council or Jones Library trustee, et cetera, or and or can sign local petitions and warrants and such. What you're saying is critically important, Anna, and that bypassed us, I think. I think it would be certainly fine with me, and I think with Chalene, but she can speak for herself to amend the language in that way in the special act. And I know this is going well. So I guess I will pass my comments as- Yeah, no, that would be very helpful. And thank you for that. As chair of GOL Pat, I feel like I'm passing those on to you now. Okay. Are there any other comments or questions? Pam. I support this too. I actually thought we'd already passed this a number of years ago. We have. So it just never got to the legislature. Is that the, no, the legislature never acted? Yeah, that's not completely true. It has passed state committees, the election committees, the language was certified, and it never seems to get passed coming out of committee. And what the difference for us now is there seems to be a commitment by other communities to reapply with us. And there's also a direct commitment from our state senator and our state rep to really shepherd this and push this. There's a hundred percent support behind it, which we haven't had before. Yeah, cause it seems that Amherst itself is ready for this, but it has wanted it for some time. It's voted on at a minimum of four times at each time it has passed town meeting and gone forward and then failed to get passed by the state legislature. Okay, are there any other questions? Then this will be a referral and is going to GL, GL next meets on the 15th. Okay. Could I say one thing not related to this, but I'm going to leave the meeting now. I'm in pain and I really can't sit through more of it, but I needed to sit here for this. And I thank you for your support. Well, we're going to vote now. No, we voted to refer it. All right. Thank you, folks. Thanks. Good luck, Pat. Thank you. Thanks. We are going to go on to public way, long-term reservation request Amherst farmers market. It was pulled from the agenda. I mean, from the consent agenda. Pam, you asked to pull this. Could you please speak to your request? Yes, my very quick question was where would the power be held if there is somehow a potential conflict with the farmer's supply? A farmer's market. Thank you. Paul, you've been in discussion with him. Yes. I have with both the farmer's market and with the Odinong tribe. So the tribe came in last fall to reserve the common, knowing that the farmer's market also was going to be interested in it. We have promised the Odinong tribe the entire South Common and talking with the farmer's market, they are okay with relocating to the Spring Street lot for that one day. But the Odinong tribe is considering whether they even need the space that the farmer's market typically uses. So they have not had their committee meeting, but they will and they will let us know if they can free up that space for the farmer's market to be where it normally is or if they're gonna be utilizing the entire common. And last year, several of us attended it and was at the high school. They moved it to the high school and fortunately it was a good decision for them because it was raining that day. It was a terribly rain. But they really would prefer to be on the common. Yeah. Right. Any other questions or comments? Mandy Jo? Yep. I just wanna support the work you do to allow other concurrent uses. I was gonna pull this from consent because I had had a concern from the garden club. But when they saw the plan this year, they're pretty sure that they can still do it next year but I wanna just put my support out there for not just the powwow but all those concurrent uses to make sure that we can continue to use the common concurrently like that. Thank you. This is a long motion. But let me make it look for a second to approve the Amherst Farmers Market Long Term Event Use Reservation of the South Common and Associated Parking Spaces at No Charge Undertown Council Policy regarding the control and regulation of the public way as follows. On Saturdays from 7 30 a.m. to 1 30 p.m. beginning on April 22nd, 2023 and ending on November 18th, 2023. Exclusive use of the area on the South Common as shown on the plan entitled Amherst Farmers Market Proposed Layout 2022 Season. I think that needs to say 2023 season. January 27th, 2023. I'm amending the motion for vendor parking allocation of 15 spaces on the Spring Street lot and six spaces on Boltwood Avenue. And for customer curbside pickup only to be clearly marked by the Amherst Farmers Market five spaces on South Pleasant Street. And to further authorize the town manager the ability to modify the approval through November 19th, 2023 in order to schedule concurrent use of the town common for short-term use, event use. Is there a second? Second. Okay. Any other comments or questions? Yes. The layout is dated 2022. It's the same layout. So it's the same layout as last year. Thank you. Then I still correct it and the motion is correct as printed on the motion sheet. All right. Seeing no further comments, we're going to move to a vote. I believe we are going to start with Anna Devlin-Gothier. I. Lynn Griesmer is an I. Mandy Johanicki. I. Michael Oaks. I. Michelle Miller. I. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Rooney. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. I. Jennifer Tob. Yes. Alicia Walker. Yes. Shalini Balmille. Yes. And Pat DeAngeles is absent. It is unanimous with 12 people here and one absent. Okay. We are going to move on to appointments. There are no town, town manager appointments. However, once the council appointments were made for committees, Anna Devlin-Gothier chose to resign from the joint capital planning committee. I subsequently asked the full council if anybody was interested in the third position on JCPC. I received two responses. Those two responses were from Mandy Johanicki and from Dorothy Pam, who said, if needed, if, is there anybody else at this time who would like to put their name forward for JCPC? Mandy Jo, is there any comment you'd like, Anna? Please go ahead. Oh, I was just going to make a motion. So I never mind. Okay. Kathy. Is the, if needed, Dorothy, do you definitely want to be on it or are we really talking about Mandy? And it's just, we meet this Thursday and then we meet every Thursday. So from one to three, that's the schedule that, so this is imminently started. Yes, I would like to do it. But is this going to be a vote between the two of us? As long as you're both in, yes. Okay. Okay. Are there any other people who are interested in serving on JCPC? Michelle? I'm not interested. I just wanted to ask a clarifying question since we were going to have a vote on this is, just to say, Mandy and Dorothy, have either of you served on this committee previously in either of your terms? I have not, but I was on the finance committee for many years. So, and I certainly heard many reports on it. And I had kind of wanted to be on the finance committee again and that did not work out. So I thought, well, this would be something good to do because I'm very interested in the matters. Yeah. Thank you. That's helpful. Mandy, Joe. If my memory serves me correctly, I believe I've been on JCPC for the last four years, but it might only be three. I'm blanking on the first year of the council's term. I know I was on for the first year and that was at Shelleny. But who are the other members on JCPC? Pam Bruni and Kathy Shane. And we voted that very beginning of January. Okay, Anna. Sure. So I had Dorothy, I apologize. I had interpreted the as needed differently. So I appreciate you clarifying. I'd really love to hear from both Mandy and Dorothy about their interest in the committee since they're both, if they are both interested in the position, I'd love to hear more from each of them regarding why and their approach to it as well, if that's okay. Unless they don't want to share and that's fine too, but I wanted to open that up again. I agree. And Dorothy, would you like to go ahead? Well, I know it's an important thing to deal with the capital expenses. And I enjoy thinking about the finances of the council in the town. And I just thought it would be a good experience to do that again and to bring some fresh eyes. You know, I got sent all the invitations to the meetings. I didn't realize I thought that I had been appointed to be honest and I put it in my newsletter. So this is embarrassing because you know, so now I'm finding out. So yes, I definitely would like to be on JCPC. Thank you. Mandy Zhang. I like Dorothy have had an interest in finances since I joined this council. Unlike Dorothy, I have never been appointed to the finance committee, but I have had the pleasure of serving on JCPC for a number of years. It is a unique committee in that we make recommendations and advise the manager. We deal with the year to year capital expenditures. And it's something that I have enjoyed doing. I've enjoyed contributing to the change since the form of government changed to how the committee works and how the reports are presented actually and advising the manager on what would be more helpful to the council and most helpful to the council. And I think I've contributed a lot to that and would love to be able to continue to contribute. Any other comments or questions? Michelle. And we'd be reminded who was appointed to the budget coordinating group at our last meeting. Yeah, the budget coordinating group at our last meeting includes myself, Andy and Mandy Joe. And I also want to just be very clear unless we move into a fiscal situation of decline, BCG is not a heavy committee. I think it met twice last year. This is a very intense, what, eight to 10 weeks of meeting on Thursday, Kathy. Yes, and I just want to say on budget coordinating committee, I started out on that, Michelle, and we never met. So I decided I didn't need to be on it. It was just one more listing under my name. So I mean, as I mentioned, we met twice this year. And that was a lot. So, Anika. What do you say again? I know you did who is, who was already appointed to JCPC. Pam Rooney and Kathy Shane. And there were others that expressed interest, but when it came down to the vote, that was it. Okay, are there any other questions? All right, so when I call your name, you're either going to vote for Mandy Joe Hennikey or Dorothy Pam. And we will start with Mandy Joe. I'm gonna vote for myself. Anika Lopes. Mandy Joe. Michelle Miller. Dorothy. Dorothy Pam. Dorothy Pam. Pam Rooney. Dorothy. Kathy Shane. Mandy. Andy Steinberg. Mandy Tep. Jennifer Todd. Dorothy. Alicia Walker. Dorothy. Shalini Balmill. Mandy Joe. Pat DeAngelis is absent on a Devlin Bach here. Mandy Joe. And Lynn Griesper is for Mandy Joe. That is seven to five. Dorothy, I want to also suggest to you that I've often attended JCPC in the audience and I've found it very useful. So don't give up your interest. Okay. So I'm going to move to, I'm sorry. I said, thank you. Thank you very much. Absolutely. I mean, once I went on it, I was very interested. Kathy. I just want to second that because I think thought of myself as an understudy for the first year I couldn't get on it. And as an understudy, I went on it and then somehow I immediately became chair, but in any case. So I did well as an understudy, but I just, without it, I would have had no idea what was going on. It is my other point on it because there are all these tables that fly at us. So. And I will say that JCPC has done a lot of work in the last couple of years to get a much more solid five year plan. And to do the inventory and so forth. And that's both a compliment to Kathy, the committee and to Sean. Michelle. I just feel like I want to get this off my chest. And this is not about judging how anyone voted at all. But just to say that, you know, I often get the sense we're volunteers. We're volunteers. We're volunteers. And we come with different experiences. And I really would love to see us sort of. Share in our leadership more or. Work to sort of. Maybe. Consider someone that we might not think has the experience. Or uplift people or, or whatever. I just. It kind of just hurts me. Maybe I'm being a little too emotional about it right now, but I just wanted to get that off my chest because I think it's, it's important for us, not only as a council, but to model that for our community. For folks who may want to engage. But sort of feel like they're locked out because they might not have the relevant experience or. So I'm just sharing that again, without judgment for, for anybody's particular vote. Thanks. I'm going to make a motion to appoint counselor, made to Joe Hanneke to the joint capital planning committee, effective immediately for a term to expire January 2nd, 2024. Is there a second? Second. Are there any further questions? I think we've basically voted. Unless somebody wants to, you have to vote again. That's a different motion. Okay. So it's a motion. It's been made in second and I'll start with Anika Lopes. Hi. Michelle Miller. Hi. Dorothy Pam. Truthfully, I don't know what we're voting for right now. We're voting for Mandy Joe to be appointed to JCPC. I thought we just voted for that. Why would we vote twice? This is actually the motion that actually must. Is part of the vote. Okay. I'm sorry. I'll say yes. I made it into a motion. Thank you. Pam Rooney. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Yes. Jennifer. Yes. Alicia Walker. I've seen. every single. Shallows. Yes. Patty Angeles is absent. Anna Devlin. Got here. Yes. Lynn Greene. I made a Joe Hanikke. So the vote is 11 in favor. One, no, no opposition. One abstention and one absent. committee and liaison reports. And first, I want to start by thanking all of the people who chaired all of the committees and were vice chairs in this past year. And all the members as well but particularly, and I just want to recognize those who have been chairs and are no longer chairs. Thank you. And Anika as well for being chairing vice chair of GLL. And that was a year of a lot of work and for you, baptism under fire because you were a new counselor. For Kathy as the past chair of JCPC I don't know who's going to be next chair but we want to make sure we thank you. For town services committee, Dorothy, and who is vice chair. Shalini Shalini. Thank you. So Dorothy and Shalini for town services and outreach committee. We may have thanked you when the transition took place. But if we didn't we want to make sure we thank you now and Dorothy. That was a really terrific thing I know you were doing it while you were teaching many classes at the same time. And it certainly was a lot of work. So, as we are agreeing to be chair, because I really did need to be chair so thank you. All the committees have now met. They have elected their chair and vice chair. And so as we go through the committee reports. I'm going to call on Mandy Joe, and Pam Rooney as chair and vice chair. Thank you. Lynn did one of my announcements which was the committee elected myself as chair and Pam Rooney as vice chair it's the same leadership we had last year. I want to thank Pam for going to be back backing me up this year, and for backing me up last year. We have a listening session coming up one week from tonight at 7pm on our rental registration and potentially the public nuisance or nuisance house bylaw. We're renaming it. We're continuing to work on the permitting the residential rental permitting bylaws and regulations. We've begun revising the nuisance house bylaw again we're naming renaming it public nuisance. That was a referral from this council a while ago, and the proposed revisions to the zoning bylaw that are sponsored and proposed by counselors to Angelus and myself will have a hearing scheduled for March 2 at 435pm. It is my understanding that the planning board hearing will be March 1. I don't know they normally start their meetings around 630 so I don't know if the hearing will be 635, or later I don't know how many they have that day. But my, I have heard that they will be March 1, and we will follow the next day on March 2 for those revisions. And that's all I've got if Pam's got anything else. Okay, Kathy, you have your hand up. Yeah, I have a question. It's a process question, which is kind of unusual for me because I don't focus on them very often. But I don't completely understand how the duplex triplex townhouse didn't go through a thorough discussion at CRC before it went over to the planning board. I don't understand how that happened, and I don't know whether it was that when we were first referring it, if we had held on to it and not referred it, because does that mean that any one, two or three counselors can come up, think through some zoning changes we might want, and then go and get an audience with the planning board, you know, and so I mainly discovered that the planning board in fact was hearing it before it had really come back to us as counselors from the committee with the committee having a discussion. So it's, and now hearing their hearings on it, I'm even more surprised because a few years ago, there was a committee process, there was a council discussion. Then we went through Paul to say, could the staff work on it so and it so has something shifted. And I'm not sure I think it's a good shift because I wouldn't want to see lots of us go off and try to think about how we want to change some basic regulations so it's a, it's a, why wasn't this, didn't this stay within the committee to come back to the council with the discussion before it went out to the planning board is my if I'm not sure I stated that clearly enough. Kathy, very good question because we also refer to CRC, the whole rental thing but that was to develop a bylaw and Mandy Joe or someone from CRC want to discuss to the referral in this case was not to develop a bylaw but to use a take a bylaw that was proposed. Is that correct. So yes, so counselors, the Angeles and I proposed something submitted it to the president who put it on an agenda. Under our rules of procedure zoning bylaws shall be initiated and introduced by submission to the council and one of the following manners and one of them says by a counselor sponsor zoning law, you then under the state law if the council refers it, it has to go to hearing under by planning board and by the town council under state law so we proposed our zoning amendments under the rules of procedure and under state law. The council referred it under state law for hearings as required by state law within the amount of time required by state law. I just like to follow up. I, I thought, so I misunderstood when we were referring I thought we were referring it to CRC for discussion, not for a hearing. And let me go back to one that I know was not popular a few counselors were talking about a moratorium that would have been a zoning law change. It didn't go directly to hearings and planning board we had a whole discussion and then, because it wasn't going to get out of council. There was a petition that brought it. So I knew that was another route so it's just a, if I had known that when I was looking at it, that I wasn't referring it for discussion I wouldn't have referred it so I just, I just, I had no sense that I was sending it on as opposed to here are some ideas that are being brought to us. There was a garage proposal to that went to the committee so if I work was clearer so I think in the future I want to look at our rules of procedure but I think it's not a good practice because it's taking town staff time. I'm going to volunteer the planning board time. And if it's, if that's going to be all right, then I, then it's doing something more than I thought we should be doing if we want to be efficient. That's my raising it. So it's not necessarily about this specific thing but I'm thinking I could, I could come up with a few I might want to do and find someone. And if the referral is literally out to hearings that's a very different discussion than I thought just passing it to a committee. You know, went Mandy on the, the fine line distinction some of the things that are coming to the finance committee are almost done. It's not that it's not like we're, we're writing the language we're being asked to consider it and talk about it and bring it back so that's, I, I was just surprised that it went so really out rather than discussion first because I had a lot I wanted to discuss about it. So I just was quiet because I thought I'll get my opportunity later and, and so that's what I'm bringing it up. Andy Joe. I need to correct some things the solar moratorium bylaw proposed, which was a zoning bylaw did go to hearing at the planning board and CRC immediately. The moratorium building moratorium proposed by Darcy Dumont did go to hearing at the planning board and CRC immediately. The garage proposal proposed by counselors Ross and Ryan did go to hearing at the planning board and CRC immediately. So they all went to hearing immediately, because that's what the law requires upon proposal. The proposal is fully written. It's not, it complies with our rules and it complies with something that could be adopted immediately it's not a proposal in words that doesn't have actual changes to bylaw proposed it's a fully baked proposal. But just to clarify, and I'm going to use the rental bylaw that CRC is working on that will come back to the council in a draft form of some nature and at that point we will do an official referral is that correct. It depends on what the council wants it's going to come so it came to the council originally by sponsors who said, we were told we needed to bring it not quite ready by our council clerk and town council president, and so it went to come up with something and the council when the committee makes a recommendation in a month or so when we finally get there, the council will have to decide whether it needs to go to another committee. Beyond, say, GL for its review or whether it's ready to go directly there based on the committee's referral. That's the council will make that decision upon seeing the product that CRC produces. And that's not a zoning bylaw. That's not zoning. It's a general bylaw. And there are differences between zoning and general bylaws in terms of state law and how they need done. Okay. All right, so I think I followed that I think one of the things that I was trying to figure out as I was listening to both Kathy and Mandy Joe was I was looking at the flow chart for zoning bylaws. That is on the CRC website and that was helpful until you just reminded me that that what we were talking about wasn't a zoning bylaw. It's a rental permitting is not zoning. Correct. Okay, yeah. Okay. Now my head sounds great straight. So anyway, that flow charts great. My question is, could you remind me you said 7pm on Monday, is that what you said when when is the listening session 7pm on Monday, great one week from today. It would be really phenomenal. And I don't think this is to the sponsors I think this is to Paul engage Amherst is such a great resource and has a page dedicated to this but it's very out of date. And if it's being updated. Thank you, because I was just going to say, short of digging through old packets which I don't know that people would know to do. It would be great to have that get updated so that we can send folks to the listening sessions. Thank you. And I, we failed to point out that listening session on the agenda of future meetings. I apologize for that. So there is a listening session that CRC is having on Monday, the 13th at 7 o'clock, and the listening session will focus on residential rental permitting and potentially the nuisance house bylaw but mainly residential rental permitting. Okay, thank you. Jennifer. So I'm not. I just want to kind of make a statement. I'm looking for necessary discussion or an answer. Yeah, but I have some of Kathy's share some of Kathy's concerns that you can hear I have some share some of Kathy's concerns that the proposed zoning revisions are so sweeping with just major, you know, repercussions consequences impacts on the town. And I came across today just looking through some files. A proposal or maybe it was a motion that counselor Rooney proposed it might have been the first or second council meeting we had last year, and it was asking for creation of a task force or working group on retention of housing for workforce and families. There's some reason because I think counselor Rooney brought it up forward several times. It never. It was, it was not put together. It was they write squash. Thank you might be the group might be the word, and I think that that would have been a form for really taking through strategies and zoning changes or if that's what was entailed to increase housing for moderate and middle income and workforce households. And I feel like because that didn't happen there was a void. And so the sweeping zoning, you know, proposed zoning revisions that can be brought forth by one or two counselors are just now out there. And it's like they're the gates have been open and it as far as process that really it doesn't feel right. I'm hearing them. And I. Yeah. Andy. I'm aware of the same feeling that we have gotten into a point where one or two interested people on the council for good reason and I don't doubt their motives are putting forth very complex proposed bylaws, whether they be zoning or general. They're getting a lot of taking a lot of time committee time, community time staff time. And I think that we need to step back and think about our procedure and whether we need to recognize that when one or two counselors make a proposal that we really need to take the time to have some discussion. And before we decide to move forward and use that amount of time because these things are eating up our committees. On the other hand, I have another problem and I flip it around. And so I don't know how to handle this, because the purpose of committees is to try and help work through these issues. And to try and decide what is really important. And what are the key issues, whether the ramification of the issues to inform the vote so that doesn't have to take the time of having 13 people discuss it. And so we really get into a quandary is to which way that it's going to go and with zoning is it's a particular problem that is going to be harder to solve. And so we really make the conclusion that it has to go to a hearing is the next step, because the hearing then involves the planning board, and it gives it to the community, a much wider sense that this is what the council wants to do. And it is warranted by the fact that the council never really under understood it considered it or talked about it. So I really urge us to find a way, and it may be through GOL and the rules committee process to think this through and take this up as a major rules and and bring a thoughtful analysis back to the full council. And, and the timing of that is appropriate since GOL is in fact looking at the rules. Yeah, I hear what Andy is saying and I also am feeling a bit of what Jennifer expressed around, you know, I think it was Jennifer who said, you know, it's, it's at a hearing a planning board and we haven't talked about it in months or looked at it in months and we haven't talked about a most recent draft unless we're on CRC, or stocking their packets and, you know, if that's an expectation then that's an expectation but I will speak for myself that I'm not reading every committee packet for committees that I'm not on. And, you know, if that's not good then tell me. But I think that, you know, one of the things that I've been thinking about and this can be a thing for GOL the deal with is when we refer something to a committee we're saying this is what we're choosing to spend our time on and I think what's challenging to me is when folks, and I'm going to give this as well, have not brought up concerns because they say oh it's going to go to committee it'll get sorted out I'll deal with it when it comes back, but then by the time it's gone through committee it's gotten polished it's gotten, you know, really combed through and then you know someone has a huge issue that could have been solved easily at the get go but now is a lot harder to navigate so I think that this is. And again if this goes to GOL the discuss great but I'd like just to really think about when we're referring something to a committee what that means, and that that is our opportunity to either raise in the meeting or email the the chairs of the committee is what questions or concerns that we have with the, with the measure. I'm not saying that would have fixed this particular problem but I wanted to address what, what Andy, I think was talking about too. Can I just clarify my concern on as it went to committee and the committee didn't work on it. So, I sent questions, you know so I'm saying I thought that that was the process that we would go and have that discussion at a smaller group. So, so, yes, I think this is GOL. So I'm going to actually that we did not post this as an agenda item, and it's now looking more and more like an agenda item. This is a serious question, and it does need to be addressed by GOL. And I think we need to leave it at that. You have all been invited to submit suggested revisions to our rules of procedure by close a business on Friday. Later on during the President's report I was going to remind people of that. And this is one of those items that should be referred, even if you can't come up with the exact language at least articulate the issues of what it is. You want to make sure GOL addresses. Okay. Further comments, Pam. It was, it's a continuation of this topic, just saying that oftentimes we get something for referral. And there's very little time to actually understand it or have studied it. To think if we even want to support it. Generally. I mean, this, I would say we probably would want to support it generally, but have no clue what the depth of ramification is, whether it's either cost the town or time and energy from staff agree. Jennifer, you have your hand up. Yes, I have a question and then can I continue a comment on. Yeah, I just want to, again, we did not post this as an agenda item and so I'd really like to funnel the recommendations or issues to GOL who's looking at the rules. You know, with these zoning proposed zoning revision. So now the sponsors are going to meet with the affordable housing trust and the zoning board of appeals. So can, you know, other counselors meet with you know, if we have a different, you know, to share maybe both, you know, concerns. It just seems like it's just out of the gate. Athena. The sponsors attend ZBA meetings, planning board meetings, etc. And have commented. Let's talk about the dangers of that. So our rules allow any counselor to attend any other meeting of a public body and make public comment during the public comment period. As sponsors, the ZBA has specifically invited us to speak to them. And the AMHT has specifically invited us. We did not invite ourselves. We were invited. We were invited to the planning board. But you as a counselor, have every right to attend those meetings and speak in public comment. One other housekeeping question. Can you please move to the mic for one other housekeeping question for the hearing next Monday will we get the link somewhat soon so we can, you know, put it out to our districts. So being listening session for the listening session I had requested today I had sent the agenda to Athena but I have requested that she hold off on posting that till Wednesday because my vice chair had some concerns about the proposed agenda itself. So it will be produced on Wednesday. Okay, thank you. Okay. Shalini. Clarifying, but it's isn't, but I mean, isn't it a thing to have public input before we, I mean, yeah, we could have a discussion and then have input but I don't see what's the harm. I'm just clarifying what are the concerns people have that we're going to listen to people. And I think it's important maybe to clarify to the public this is not the final like set in stone. This is a starting conversation proposed by some counselors, and we want people's input and I think it's a good thing to get that early on. And it's going to be a reiterative process where we'll have multiple places where we're engaging with the public. Right. The problem is that on certain zoning on zoning bylaws, there's a very prescribed state calendar, by which it has to be heard, and then it has to be brought back to the council, and then we have to go through a first and second reading. And I think what people are, I'm hearing tonight, and I totally, totally understand is that we'd like to see figure out if there could be a step before referral for hearing. Okay. And that's something GOL is going to have to wrestle with. We may have to consult legal counsel as well. Okay. Can we help with Pam you were suggesting that that task force would do can this I mean I'm imagining that the CRC is going to be that group. And so whatever recommendations you I mean now that we don't have that group. It can we take your ideas of what you were proposing in terms of how we can think about it and study the pros and cons and whatnot. We ran into I spent a lot of time with Pam on the task force was to what extent was it a task force and was it essentially a committee that would be a committee of CRC based on the comprehensive housing policy. And it never could, we never could come clear I'm certainly more than glad to engage in the conversation again but we're not going to do that tonight. Okay. Again, it's not on the agenda. Okay. I'm trying to stick to the rules gang. Are there any other questions or comments we were actually looking for committee updates. Elementary school building Kathy and Alicia. Anything else from besides what we did today. Just, we did have two forums last week, and so far the school gets rave reviews. We've got great questions that we're going to be developing questions and answers. Alicia can speak to this too but we're starting to say how can we have some outreach and set up meetings. The next big step for the committee itself is not this Friday but the 17th. The whole report that needs to go to the MSBA will be pulled together and we vote on it. We've got most seen most of the pieces, but that's the step that then triggers the marching on to the MSBA meeting at the end of April. So after we meet on the 17th, we're more in the mode. What would Paul call it all hands on deck to go out and talk about the school provide information. Go out and talk to groups. So we're starting to set up those meetings. Okay. Alicia. Anything else. No, I think Kathy did a great job just to reemphasize that right now we're working on community engagement getting people educated on what's happening and getting people excited about the project and so I think that's a big focus as to where we are right now. Thank you. Finance committee, Andy, and Kathy, our chair and vice chair, Andy. Let's see if Kathy has anything that she wants to add. You do have a written report that is very brief, but was intended to let you know where we are what we did at our last meeting and we asked that is which has been a common procedure actually to have the quarter reports for first and second quarter of the current year that we're in presented and what that's about is that council adopts a budget and it makes it based upon presumptions of revenue and decisions about expenses and it's our opportunity to hear from staff about how revenue and expenses have performed during each of the calendar quarters to batch. Usually, the finance committee gets those in advance and can ask questions that we've had time to look at because I think you if you've looked at it you've seen the complexity of even the written comments. It was just a glitch this time that that didn't happen. So we're going to put it back on a second agenda stuff. Anybody has any questions are welcome to forward them to us and, you know, we can pose them or do welcome to attend the committee meeting when it's posted. Tomorrow, we're going to be starting the discussion. It's the way that it was written about discussing recommend action on that exclusion. There's no recommendation that's going to be made. That was actually language that was just adopted from the calendar that we received last week, when we had the presentation of what the process would be. We have stuck with those dates, but the actual vote on language and vote on exclusion exclusion language and date is before the council on the 27th and February and the February 21st committee meeting is more likely date to actually have further discussion about that. But we're going to begin the discussion tomorrow. The other thing we're talking about is the Centennial Water Facility which was referred to today. And the other thing while we have our staff there, we have expertise, we're going to get back to the water sewer regulations, for the reasons explained in the committee report so I won't repeat what that is. And we are working out a calendar which we'll be able to share with everybody that goes through the entire first half of the calendar year, explaining what our meeting dates and plans are. And hopefully we'll be able to get that out to everybody very soon, but I wanted to let you know where we were. So, I don't think I have anything else, Kathy, do you have anything to add. Okay. Well, the new chair and vice chair are Pat and Jennifer. Jennifer Pat's not here is there anything you'd like to talk about JOL. I'd say I don't have much to report from the last meeting but it sounds like we have, we will have a new task before us so I'm looking forward to that. We have a big task before us. So, JCPC, as we mentioned is meeting this Thursday for the first time. Anika anything on Jones library. Yes, so there was a presentation from Sephora associates, which is a design firm that has worked with the architects for over 25 years that revolved around feel and color. And there's a presentation on multi multi style all user style backgrounds, and also reconfigured floor plan for the second floor. The next meeting will be Thursday the ninth at 430 p. Okay. TSO chair and vice chair are Anika and Anna. Anything to report from TSO. I would like to thank the committee for putting me in as chair and and on in as vice chair. Thank you for that. We had a very brief meeting where we of course held the election we adopted the new meeting schedule. And we had a review on some upcoming agenda items, and we had a quick revisit on a community walk brought forward by your district for representatives and we explored a dark patch of sidewalk on East pleasant street with them. And then Paul welcome and Lynn you joined us and those residents there are so pleased and happy that that has been resolved. So, thank you to all welcome her for that. And then next meeting will be on Thursday, February 9 at 7pm. And Jennifer was with us on that. Jennifer, thank you. Jennifer was with us. And that dark cold night. Jennifer is always with us. So liaison reports. You all have new assignments or some people are new assignments are there any liaison reports. Yes, Dorothy. This is for CSS JC Earl Miller was a guest at the last meeting and they were talking about community conversations. And as part of the discussion the black community would like to have a bigger role in making decisions. And would like also a better way to reach the community hoping to have their own email, or at least an engage Amherst page so that people could contact them. But their major concern was talking about the youth empowerment center as a safe space and center, and that it's beyond recreation would include mentoring job readiness classes, entrepreneurship, and they're kind of hoping that some of them would be available. And Jennifer moisten who is at the meeting was bringing up a thought that she would like the center to be a little bit regionalized thinking of the, the youth of Sunderland, who might be needing some kind of like a more black friendly space. We're talking about upward the upward bound program which used to operate out of you mass and which people said spoke highly of and you know, I was a counselor and upward bound 100 years ago myself, totally believe in the program. And would like very much to see if we can't get that going again. Just feeling that the needs of the youth are strong and we need to get organized on them. So that's basically the report. Any other liaison reports. See no hands we're going to go to the town managers report. Paul, are there things you'd like to highlight. Sure, thank you Lynn. So we had a everybody experienced the freeze on Friday night and Saturday. I really credit our staff the crests and Craig's doors work together to ensure that every person who was on the streets had the opportunity and actually was housed someplace safe and warm for the weekend if not longer. We also had the fire department police department on high alert if they found somebody out this is it was really dangerous weather conditions on Friday night. So credit to them for that. In the town manager report, you see some of the images that we have been promoting called white white Amherst with our fire department to try to differentiate working for the town of Amherst versus another any other community. There are a lot of people out. A lot of communities all recruiting at the same time and this is a initiative by our communications director and fire chief to sort of like, let's put a face to the department to try and help people say hey I could be part of that department as well. And I just want to share those with with the council audit came in very clean. No management letter, which is really a super way for our control to Sonya Aldridge to go out. So very proud of the work that she's done for that. The health insurance rate increases came in that's something we were waiting for at the MMA conference 7.94% we had projected 8% so no big savings there unfortunately. But it's at least it's a piece of the puzzle in terms of where we are going financially. I mentioned that Amy was that he also received an award from the American water or Massachusetts Water Works Association. I meant to say it when she was in the room. That's a really big accomplishment that's something that one person gets every year. And it's not every year that they award it and she's shown her leadership statewide on this is has a real looked. Looked at as a water expert by other places in the state. And then I credit the crest department and the department who organized a grief circle today. And as many counselors were there so thank you for putting for being there and many members of the community safety social justice committee members of the public. And it was a very powerful time and on my way out the crest director said it's something he wanted to sort of continue that this was. It's a conversation that needs to be had by the town and this was a really nice starting point. A lot of people didn't know about it. We didn't do a very good job publish publicizing it so you may not have really noticed it. But we will be doing better looking forward. I think there were about 25 people there I'm guessing there's people in and out. But it's an important time for people just to sit and listen and share their stories. So credit to Earl basically and Pamela for thinking this up and thinking this is the right way to think to for the town to start to grapple with this tragedy. Dorothy. I have a second to your comments about the grief circle. I think we had some really great conversations today. But I just wanted to you mentioned the leisure or the recreation department production of little mermaid. I just want to say that it was an absolutely stupendous production. It was outrageously fabulous with costumes like you can't believe wonderful performances and more people flying through the air that I've seen on Broadway. And it was, you know, I had some family members with me who it kind of reluctantly came and they were just blown away it was. And I love the seriousness of the masking, you walk in, you're greeted by friendly volunteers who handed you your masks, the whole audience was masked. It was wonderful. So I want to thank them all all the people that were involved for the job they did. Any questions or comments from the council. Okay, seeing none we're going to go on to, we did minutes we're going down to the count council comments. The first thing is the addendum to my president's report that is in the packet. And specifically addresses the December 8 meeting with Senator Comerford and Representative Dom and the brief discussion of PFAS and turf. And Michelle, you have your hand up. Thank you Lynn and thanks for for doing that I really, I really do appreciate it. Just sort of along the lines of the president reports going forward, I wanted to make two suggestions or something for us to think about. It would be really helpful for counselors to see the notes that you create during those meetings as best as possible. So that if something doesn't make it into a president's report because of timing maybe to have it sort of stand alone, so that we can see notes from those really important meetings. One thing I was thinking about is I counselors have expressed interest in attending meetings with our legislative delegation. And so, similar to what we do for agenda setting. I'm wondering if we could counselors could sign up to attend those monthly meetings. I think there's a particular matter that a counselor is working on and the timing would make sense. Like, for example, well Anna would be there anyway but like with the special legislation for example that was proposed tonight. So that more of us can have an opportunity to be involved in those discussions and just to make those connections with our delegation. So we're considering those. Thank you. Are there any other comments. Are we just on President report right now. Yes, Alicia. Thank you I just want to take a second to vocalize my support for what Michelle just said I think that that will be a great idea if that is possible. Okay. Are there any other comments. Alicia. Yes, sorry. I'm actually just wondering. The reason why these are making it just to us now. Why what is just make that sorry the the update from the December 8 meeting. It was only requested earlier last week. But are those things not just regularly included. I do a President's report. Okay. And then I ask if there's questions and in the case of the President's report from December there have been two things that where I have been asked to do more elaboration on them. The first I did back in January and this one I did just now because it was just requested now. They don't get included without a without a request, just because they happened. I sometimes on the President's report I include things or maybe I missed something or whatever I mean it's, it's not a small task to do them. It means I go through my entire calendar. I try to include everything I can. In this case, I'm more than glad to speak more to this particular issue, but I, unless there's questions. Yes, I include them in the President's report and if it's not clear enough, or you feel I've missed something then people have asked for further clarification. And then I provide that. And that's why this one is still back on December. I think that's helpful. And I think maybe I would appreciate some more elaboration just because it's, I'm so I do appreciate and understand that the President of the Council is a an enormous responsibility. And that you take on so much, but as a counselor in order to stay up to date as to what is happening behind the scenes of like this is all council work right like it's not just personal work. It's really important for me to understand what things are being considered when they're being presented to us like is there certain things that you think of in your head when you're making the President's report like are there certain details that you include for a certain like what is your methodology methodology behind what you compile and bring to us. And the really specific reason why I'm asking is because like I just assume that everything's being handed to me is everything that there is. And so for me personally it's not often that I would ask for something more to be included because I would not know that there is more to be included if it was not just available for me to see in the first place. So if there's things or information that's happening that's really pertaining to specific things council matters or things that we're working on on the Council. I would just wonder why that wouldn't just be included initially and so I think it would be helpful for me to just know like how you how you compile these reports. I'll be more than glad to describe that. I don't want to crazy depth just briefly. I'm sorry. I don't need like super in depth just like a brief explanation. I mean I start by going through my calendar and recording when I meet have different meetings with different people like when I meet with the town manager when I meet with the bid or the chamber. The practice in general has been with the bid and chamber meetings and with Senator Comerford and and Representative Dom is to then also provide a little more detail. Since those are meetings that are, you know, they're not like for instance we all showed up to do a proclamation reading me that a proclamation reading didn't require any more detail. I provide that detail, and then on occasion that it's happened twice so far. That's people have asked for more detail. And that's what I that's how I do it. And I will also say that we only started doing presidents reports. What about three to two and a half three years ago, I think so. It's not required any place that we do it. The, and I'm more than glad to talk about my own process anytime but I don't want to bore people with, you know, how do I go through my calendar. Thank you and I think it's just, it's very helpful. The president's report in general so I'm glad that that's something that we do even if it's not required and I hope that we continue to do that. And I do think like Michelle said that it would also be helpful to have notes so that way, you know, if you're missing things, or if you don't have enough time or whatever be the issue that we have like a brief idea. And that it's not putting any extra work on you to include those things if there's just like jocks of notes that could also be very helpful. Thank you. Yes. I think this is more a clarification maybe for the public. But in my mind, the, when, okay, in my mind, when we had these discussions. There was a lot of discussion about the state, the, the task force about Joe Cumberford's bill about David Raqau, who is one of the experts at the State Task Force and so typically I would expect that Lynn would cover the conversations in much detail about PFAS. I'm just going to talk about like this, what was not covered the PFAS and what was discussed with Joe Cumberford. However, in this case, I can see why you might then might not cover that in much detail because we were already having those conversations about. And it was me specifically who brought up. What is the proposed bill, what does it include what is not include what is the state task force. David Raqau being an expert there what has he said and what is a task force included. So, I mean, I just want to clarify for the public that it wasn't like we did not know. It was like your admission to include more details kept us in the dark. Can I, I'm, I'm actually going to go ahead and make a much further detailed statement okay. Learning that Senator Cumberford plan to refile a bill relating to PFAS was not surprising to me. But what might have surprised me was if she is dropping her interest in the idea and was not going to refile her bill. The council already was aware of her involvement in the issue. In fact, just a few days earlier. Her bill filed in the 2021 22 session was referred to in a draft resolution discussed by the council on December 5. Her artificial turf would even be affected by proposed legislation was not at all clear in an email on December 6. Senator comfort comfort suggested that we add PFAS to the agenda for the meeting on December 8. At that time, the council had already voted unanimously on December 5 to adopt the amended motion to transfer funds for the athletic fields to the school committee, leaving it up to them to decide which option to or three to pursue. The council were still working on an amended resolution at that point, because we did not vote on the resolution on the fifth. And that resolution that we adopted said the state it was resolution about the safety of the athletic complex and the need to investigate the impacts of PFAS in all consumer products. The resolution was adopted on December 12, just a few days later. So what puzzles me is why. If the resolution sponsors dropped reference to Senator comforts bill for the 2021 22 session, the spot prospect of a refiled bill would be important. Since it was removed from the revised resolution did not seem to me then or now that Senator comforts ongoing interest in PFAS was notable. As we wrapped up our work on the resolution, we had already voted either option two or three. I will also say in doing a lot of research this weekend about how many bills are filed in the legislature, how many of them relate to PFAS how many relate to artificial turf, how many sender come referred has sponsored or cosponsored. How many send how many representative Dom has sponsored or cosponsored. What I also learned is the center com referred actually is a cosponsor of an omnibus bill on PFAS. And it's that omnibus bill that is now encompassing many of the individual bills 26 in number from last year that mentioned PFAS. So the ongoing debate, PFAS in the house and the Senate has increased. In fact, it's a great case study of how you take one issue. And it slowly starts rising in importance to the point that there's a study commission. And now there is an omnibus bill building on that study commission. That's all I have to say. Andy. First of all, Michelle or Dorothy have anything to pursue on the PFAS issue I would suggest letting them go before then coming back to me, Michelle. I wasn't planning to rehash this I've already spoken with you about it Lynn, but I do feel because Shawlini just brought this up and you made a statement, I would like to clarify that the discrepancy here is in the public records request that was made by a community member what came to light or some internal notes that you had taken during your meeting. In those notes, you say Joe has filed a bill to ban all PFAS products. Bill would make alternatives necessary. And so from some people's perspectives your understanding that the bill moved from only affecting consumer products to effect which is what Shawlini and Mandy and I were really talking about when we were working on the resolution to being bad enough to encompass all PFAS products and your acknowledgement that an alternative for the field may be necessary. That was really important information that didn't make it into the President's report. And while the vote had already been taken on the appropriation. I think at the time of the discussion on the resolution, it would have been really good for us to talk about that to say, Hey, there's this other bill out there and it may affect all PFAS products and we may have to go to an alternative. But sometimes I think it's easy for us to think that we all know everything, but we don't if we're not you know if we've got our lives and our kids and our work and everything else we don't always know every piece of the puzzle and so I don't think it's something that we have to be like reprimanding each other about or even just just to just to talk about like hey this piece was missed in the President's report and it could have been helpful for us to have that discussion. And it is from the public or from some of the public's point of view, particularly the notes that you do acknowledge that an alternative may be necessary and that it would ban all PFAS. But I think that is relevant information and I can see why public would feel you know concerned about not having had that information. So, thank you. Dorothy. I'm not going to talk about the President's report, because that's not what upsets me. But the discussion that we had I mean you know we can make this into you have to know this you have to know that we were basically talking about should we have PFAS and in artificial turf in fields for young people to play on. And those of us who spoke against it, who talked about the growing number of scientists who have given evidence that this was a very dangerous thing to do particularly for adolescents, terms of disrupting hormonal cycles and whatever. When we were talking about the sports people talking about injuries, we were made to feel that we were foolish, and that somehow we were standing in the way of young people having a successful sports activity. And there was body language from from people in the audience which was I would consider to be rather aggressive. And, you know, it's the issue isn't what you wrote in your notes the issue is when shall any made a statement that it was limited and it wasn't going to be whatever. She wasn't you correct other people, you correct other people say no that's not correct, even in cases where, when Jennifer was correct about saying more people were against something that were for it on a different issue, but you didn't correct shall any with information that you knew. And I have had great trust in you. And that's what I'm upset about is that I feel that the trust that I've had in you would have said that you would have said, Well, we should understand this may be a big issue statewide. And that didn't happen. So that's what I'm upset about. It's, it's not what's the President's report. It's what happened in the meeting that I'm upset about. So, thank you. And we just clarify again because Joe Comerford in the in the newspaper was cited as saying that while synthetic turf may come under a state ban if legislation is passed and signed. It's not currently addressed in proposed legislation. So my understanding is that even though it may happen in the future right now the legislation that she's proposing or is on the table does not include. And that's what I've heard from David Raqqa and the state task force which is what is informing a lot of these legislations. So to me it still feels it's not that the athletic turf field is not included in the current legislation. Andy. Yeah, the reason that I had asked to wait is because I was really not wanting to focus solely on PFAS is a single issue. And it's really may not be about PFAS at all. So I just want to make that clear that I'm not really dealing with that. But it's really, it's a different item and it's a matter of something that I want to entrust to the president, to the town manager, and to others who we put into unique leadership positions. When conversations take place with legislators and I know this because I had a lot of conversations with legislators, particularly in my days when I was director of the Western Massachusetts legal aid program. When we were talking about policy things. There were things that I knew that they were sharing with me that they did not one public that they were just venturing with their thought process might be. And there are other times when they were really stating policy, and it was very important in order to have appropriate trust. Because it's not just legislators because it was people in the administrative positions in state and federal government to that it was important to be clear about what the intent was as to whether it would be made. It was to be made public, or whether it was an attempt. Because I was in a leadership position in a national organization on legal aid to make sure that I understood what was going on. And I think that it's vital that we trust our leaders to have some discretion to recognize when there is information being shared with them. That there's an expectation that it is to help them to understand but it is not something that the person who's imparting the information wishes to be made public. And so I don't want us to set up expectations of anyone in this room who's in a leadership position that if they are, if they make that conclusion that it was not intended to be public. And it would not be good for their relationships with that individual to make it public that they shouldn't be able to do so. Michelle. Okay, now I'm really confused. I don't think that I appreciate what Andy was saying. However, I'm just not sure how it's relevant unless what you're saying Andy is that this particular information was not meant to be made public or I think that Joe was pretty clear that she wanted this information to be known. So maybe that's not what you meant, but I guess that. Let me clarify because I thought I said it was clear at the beginning. The reason I wanted to wait is because it really was not intended to be a comment about PFAS in particular that I had no basis for making a conclusion about PFAS. It's just a general observation that we need to trust our leaders to make appropriate decisions and about what is public and what is not, but it was not intended in any way to be related to the PFAS subject. Okay. Maybe this is for another discussion but I do just want to say in response to that that the leaders of our council is there to conduct the business of the council, not to have proprietary information that other counselors would not have access to. At least that's not my understanding. So when you say to trust the leaders that if they have information that's not ready to be public yet. That's not how I see what the role of the council president is. And if that is the role of the council president I would like to understand that more because it was my understanding that the role of the council president was to conduct the business of the council. Not to have proprietary information that other counselors would not have access to. And so maybe that's a separate discussion but that's very deeply concerning to me to hear that and maybe because I don't understand it all right now and I'm willing to hear more maybe it's a different agenda item at a different time. But I did want to just say to Shalini, because I do think we were grappling with the bill and, and, and when we were working on the resolution and I wanted to say that, as far as I understand it, Joe's bill would ban any artificial turf products that are soldier manufactured in the US. So unless we found an artificial turf that was PFAS free. Which we've tried to find some people have said they have found. We, that ban would prohibit those products so it's possible that we could install something that then would become illegal in the state of Massachusetts and I don't know what, but I know that the exceptions in that in the bill are very very limited. Again, the question that came before the council was whether we were going to give the regional high school money to do a track and a field. And it became a debate about PFAS. Instead of the question before the council. As much as I have wanted. I have resisted being very clear about my own position on PFAS which would probably shock all of you, because it isn't what the debate before the council is. The debate before the council was whether we're going to give money for a track and field. That was the debate. And when we came up with the amendment to say option two or three. It was to open that up and get out of saying it had to be this or it had to be that. One of the things that is troubling to me is how many times the council goes off of an issue that's not before the council. And that's where we use time that many people then complain about. So, I'm not going to make a public statement about how I really feel about PFAS, because that's not the council's business at this point. Alicia. Thank you, Lynn. So initially I was going to say a bunch of the things that Michelle already said, but really quickly, I also want to respond to that because I do understand what you're saying, Lynn, but I respectfully very strongly disagree because it's not that cut and dry and nothing we do here. No decisions we make here on the council are that cut and dry. Yes, but for a project that we essentially have to agree with the project if we're going to appropriate money for such cause. And this is this is and has been a significant portion of the project and what some people disagree with as a part of the whole project it is a part. It is a piece of a whole. I think it does not make sense for us to look at it without that one piece to the whole because it makes up the whole entire picture of the puzzle that we are all looking at together to see what works best for the people in our community. It's not just we're giving money or we're not giving money because it's the project that we're giving money to. But that was why the motion was changed essentially so that we could have there was less of a burden on the council as to which decision was being made. But the original decision was do we want to give money, appropriate money to put in to install the turf, that was the original decision. And so PFAS then became a huge part of that conversation rightfully so. I don't think it's like that cut and dry that they're that separate I think everything is really interconnected. And I think that's what makes this so very difficult. And that was not originally what I was going to say I just wanted to speak a little bit more about what Michelle said, and I just wanted to add my plug because she did say a lot of what I was already going to say. Speaking for myself personally like my experiences on this council in the last year, there has been a lot of times where I have felt excluded from information, or the knowledge necessary to know important policies or processes or make important decisions. And I felt excluded like me personally that other counselors had the information that I did not have. And that is an issue because we are one body working to make decisions together. Again, I just feel very strongly about the way that this is happening. This, this, in my opinion was very important information for us to be be able to have access to speaking for me personally because I know it was said that we did have access to this information. This is my first time working in politics, I am learning so much. This completely was over my head. I missed it. I did not know the dimensions of the bill I did not know the specifics I did not know the details it was taken out I had no reason to look into it any further. I had no reason to understand the ramifications. There was none of that for me personally. So for anyone who is going to sit up here and say the counselors knew you can exclude me from that statement. I did not know, and I would have been helpful for me to know this. And for me, this would have constituted new information. Shalini. Thanks for continuing to discuss and PFAS. I find it, and that's one of my proposals in the rules of procedures that I feel that sometimes when we do share research because I was one of the people who did a lot of research on this connecting with people in the task force. I attended it to the council that this is what the bill says, and talking about the bill again in the newspaper, Joe Comerford says the PFAS legislation has no position on turf as a concept. And she says that it may come but it's not currently addressed so I think there's still a lot of confusion right now whether it is not but my understanding is still the same. Back to the part where I talked about the Joe Comerford's bill, I talked about the task force. I talked about David Wreck how so I don't know what else I can do should I send share this information and writing maybe so that everyone feels like they heard because I feel I'm not heard, like I shared a lot and I spend a lot of time doing that research, but it's not. Clearly it wasn't heard by everyone. So that's something maybe we can discuss in the rules of procedure how to make sure that one is that the information is shared and second when it is shared that it is heard by everyone. Jennifer. Yeah, so I wasn't going to. I didn't think we need another person to wait in. And I don't think actually that it would have if the if what was it lens notes was shared I actually don't think it would have. I don't think it would have changed the vote because we but just to clarify because I think it was a December 12 you and I had a little exchange and you were clarifying for me that in Senator Comerford's bill it only spoke to PFAS and consumer products. So I think then the question became if four days before that when the President and Vice President were meeting with our state representatives and Senator Comerford said, actually I'm filing a bill that will. This is, as I understand it will include PFAS in all commercial products which would include turf would that have been a logical time to have corrected you because what you were saying is what you knew. But our President Vice President had new information from the meeting on December 8, would that have been the logical time to say that, not that it would have changed anything we'd already voted. The only information we had that was new and I frankly think I, I'm not even clear why I wrote what I wrote in those notes was that she was going to refile her bill, and that it dealt with commercial products that's it. That's all we had. And it turns out she ends up not refiling the bill because she signed on to the omnibus bill, which came out of the task force I only learned that this weekend. That's, I just wanted to clarify what yeah, the exchange was. Let me just go on and just suggest that. I have now invited because the council has asked for this, I have invited Senator Comerford and Representative dong to attend a council meeting. They have accepted. It is will be on March 6. The portion of the meeting that they will be here for will begin at 645. I would be asking counselors in advance, if there are specific issues, you would like them to address. Meantime, I have suggested that they think about the bills that they have either filed or they are aware of that would be of most interest to the town. And to the council. Okay. So, March 6. 645. That is, we would have done it earlier, but that is the earliest that the senator is available. I'd also like to remind people that, as I did earlier about the GL process, and I think we came up with a lot more discussion tonight that was relevant to that. And then we're going to go on to future agenda items and I'm going to call Michelle, who has placed a description of a retreat that she would like to propose. And I would like to hear from other counselors as to other issues they would like addressed during a retreat. So, Michelle. Thank you, Lynn. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to propose this and it sort of does build on a lot of what we were discussing tonight. In terms of the rules, there is a memo in the packet. I'll just briefly say that I respect each of you and your time. And I know that taking extra time to have a retreat can often be challenging. I also wanted to say that this proposal is born of what I need as a counselor to bring my best self forward, and I think it would also greatly benefit the entire council. As I said in my memo the council form of government is in its NC here in Amherst. And many of us have had little or no experience serving on a public body. We have limitations to ensure we comply with the open meeting law with ethics and other limitations. The question I've been asking myself is how do we make progress as individual counselors and as a governmental body to conduct the public's business in an effective orderly and efficient manner. And so I have taken some time recently to speak with folks who have significant experience working at higher levels of government. The major takeaway that I've received from those conversations is the importance of establishing strong rules of procedure to debate issues and advanced initiatives effectively and respectfully across differences. I may only speak for myself here but I have felt that we have a sort of family here in a way which is wonderful in some respects. In other respects it can feel really personal when I don't think it has to. I think what we do now as a council to cultivate and establish best practices and habits will provide a foundation for future councils, and ideally will provide a model for our community. If the council agrees to pursue this suggestion, I would love to work with other counselors to do the necessary pre work that makes retreats successful. I think we're considering it and I would be open to any questions if Lynn will allow time for that. Absolutely. Are there questions comments. Pam. I think it's a great idea I think we're working face to face and and brainstorming is always a really good way of getting to the heart of items of shared interest. I think it's a great idea. Okay. Yeah, so thank you Michelle for bringing that forward. There's a lot that I do appreciate about what you've just suggested. But I also do have some concerns or questions. In terms of like who would facilitate and I know you led with saying what you would need personally and what you need personally and and listening to comments this evening, our last couple of meetings. There's a lot of discussion newsletters that have been sent out where, you know, I think just the level of how things are taking personal here. I do have a bit of concern around that even even with saying now, like we're family, I think that it's great that we can all get along but we are here we were voted in by our constituents to take care of the broader town and to govern the town effectively. And I do think there is a call for balance because sometimes I feel that we're there's an imbalance of what's personal. We have some counselors that have just recently proclaimed themselves to be the the independence. You know, when you've had no discussion and do not know other councils personally so when you make these claims publicly you are, you know, it is it is borderline attack either I don't want to make it personal because I'm not I don't take it as such. But it's also spreading misinformation, and it's manipulative to the public that depends on our truth. You know we've heard today someone speak about the black community wants something I mean there's three counselors of color if you're not one of them, you do not speak for the community of color. And even those of us who are, you know that's just within our purview and who relates to us. I mean, so I would hope that we'd have just not only with this but we can maybe have some issues that are broader that just might help us to balance that we do have some very important issues that yes we have to spend time on, but just to take what is personal out of it in terms of a voting I mean, I think that it would be great I personally think a, you know, change of leadership is great but I'm not voting. I'm voting looking at balance I'm voting looking at integrity from my opinion of who's going to bring that and looking at individual issues. I just hope that we can also just look across the board because my concerns personally are that we are looked at maybe by the town is just an effective body of leadership, you know, and I hope that we can, you know, stretch out and balance and just to ensure that we are bringing all of the constituents views to the table, who voted I said. Thank you. I think that's an excellent idea to do this retreat. I was wondering if there's a way to bring back the, the facilitator we had in the first retreat, just because we started this work actually of how as a body we're going to go through the process of making decisions together, which incorporated our public opinion, and I did go back, you know, later on after the retreat like how are we going to incorporate what we learned I thought was very powerful what we learned in the first retreat, and how we're going to incorporate that into the processes that we use to make decisions, the processes we use to prioritize the goals, and maybe it will be a good idea to bring back the same person and, and focus on the rules of procedure that Michelle is saying, and, and the values and kind of maybe go back to seeing what we have done well and what we can improve. Okay, that's all for now. Dorothy. Well, when we talk about going over rules or procedure. I want to say that I understand the necessity for rules, but I like many other people but not all don't really like it when they're used in certain ways, and I see myself as being a member of the council but really I have one foot. You know, I don't know to in the general public. So when things get too technical, when the rules get to arcane, when I feel that games are being played. I usually ask to get things clarified, because I think of the people watching. I think of their audience. Do they know what we're doing. Do they understand what's going on, or are they saying, Oh, they're just doing hocus pocus. They're just playing these games again, because that turns them off. And our audience, our constituents, those are our future counselors, if the, the, the, if we get too precious. Okay, people don't want to be part of the group they don't want to be part of the body. They're going to say, Oh, I'm going to go there. And every time I talk it's going to be, I didn't do it the right way, or I didn't remember this rule, or they're going to use a rule against me. You know, there's some people to find that fun, but a lot of people that might be very good on the council don't find that fun. So, I understand our need for rules, but I will say, I felt about that last meeting when we had a revolt, because it was new information and then I said what's the new information, and I didn't get any new information, but there was new information, and we weren't told it. So I felt I really felt played. I felt very played. So, you know, if we're going to have rules, let them be very simple, let them be very clear, and let them be understood by everybody. That's it. Mandy Joe. So, I don't oppose the idea of a retreat. I think retreats can be very valuable. But I think with one year remaining in the council, I would prefer a retreat that deals with what we want to get accomplished in the last year. So, the commission talks about prioritizing something we had some long conversations that weren't quite on the agenda about different zoning proposals that have been made and different proposals people might want and different proposals different counselors as legislators that we were elected to do have been making and how they've been taking time on the council that maybe not all counselors have agreed with that committee time being taken up. And I think to see a retreat that at least talks about where we want to spend our committee time and maybe gets to some agreement about what our committees might be working on or where we would want them to focus in the last year. I also expressed some confusion as to counselor Miller's proposal, because it talks about the public participation and the civility portion of our rules only, and I am confused as to how that relates to the desire for people to know how to make motions and operate more efficiently on the council because I don't quite understand the connection between the public participation rule that was specifically mentioned in the memo, and how we can more efficiently as counselors make it through debate. And so I don't quite get my own understanding is to the goal, when it specifically mentions two rules that don't necessarily specifically relate to the efficiency of our process and meetings and getting through our business. Alicia. Thank you Mandy Joe I don't I don't actually necessarily disagree with what Mandy Joe just said, I think that there is value in that as well but I wanted to speak to Michelle's initiative which I also very strongly support and agree with. And I'm hoping that we can do that at some point that we can find time to have that retreat and that we might be able to look into having a BIPOC facilitator. I agree with what Mandy Joe just proposed I think that's important and I also want to actually. I think it would be nice to at some point standardized when a council is formed with sort of trainings, we can have maybe your one when we just join what sort of training, we need. And I think one thing that we could have the best rules but if you don't trust if you don't have that trust in the goodness, we can disagree, but just trust in the goodness in each other and trust our integrity. We will we can always find flaws like I made a mistake here and you could read endless number of reasons why that was made you know and that's not a mistake so all I'm saying is that I think trust building is an important issue I think having which we didn't have this time but we did last time anti racism training is important, I think, having a retreat to create a process that the town council uses to prioritize and how to get our work done. And these are important things and how do we find time so I think we, yeah, I don't know. What do other people feel who haven't yet spoken. You know, because we have two things one is just the internal processes as a council how do we make decisions and so forth and the other is, how do we actually talk about the work we need to get done. Okay, thank you, Anna. I think I appreciate counselor Michelle for bringing this forward, and I'm using my own error in that last second as a good example of how we constantly are messing up our roles right. One of the rules says we use for his names. And we we miss that a lot I think what I'm having a hard time with is that I, there are things that we are responsible for doing as counselors, reading and familiarizing ourselves with the rules of procedure with the you know parliamentary procedure. Those are things that I agree with what Shalini was saying that should be offered as training when we first start this role I see that as part of our responsibility. That's not to say it shouldn't necessarily be a topic of retreat I'm bringing this up because each of these four items could themselves be half day retreats. And so I think that these are big, these are big topics. I want to highlight a couple things and I believe these may have already been mentioned. This should not be internally facilitated this should be facilitated by an outside person. And I'd really love to see GOL develop this proposal a little bit more as especially as y'all go through the process of looking at the rules of procedure for this year, because I think that some of this. Like, it weaves in and out of what GOL does as we kind of bring forward what rules we'd like to see changed or what rules we'd like to add or take away or whatever. You know, and I think that to Dorothy's point are, our rules are a living document, you know, like the charter is stuck for a little while, but the rules are living and so if there are rules that we can't seem to follow. We shouldn't have them in our rules or we should be following them right and so I think that if they're so rigid that it feels impossible for people to engage. Great, this is our opportunity to change them so I think I'd, I'd love to see GOL dig into this a little bit and and streamline the the outcomes of a retreat because I don't want to set us up for just feeling like we had a retreat and nothing came out of it because we tried to bite off more than we could chew in a half day. But I mean, I love retreats it's like my job so I'm, I'm a big fan. Okay, are there any other comments. So I, my follow up to this would be to send something out. Ask for basically I'm hearing two ideas one is focused on priorities, one is focused on how we conduct business. And get some sense, also some sense of other councils you might like to work on that although Anna has suggested GOL and also some sense of dates when people would be available so that we're working toward a date that's near in the future rather than down the road. Michelle, thank you for putting your proposal together. It's comprehensive. It's a lot, but thank you for bringing it forward. Are there any other comments from counselors at this time. Mandy job. We're into just the counselor comment section right. Yes, we are. I want to say thank you to Jennifer moisten. I know she's probably not listening right now. I'm hoping it can be related to her. Particularly with her work with the spring festival Chinese New Year celebration. We didn't know, and she particularly didn't know how many people to expect and there were at least 200 people there. And she handled the last minute need to get more stuff and find more stuff and make food last tremendously well. I know she was very frazzled that day you could see it from anyone, but I just want to thank her for all the work that went into planning it and then all of the spontaneous work she needed to do to make it be wonderful with how many people actually showed up. I totally agree. There were about six or seven counselors there that day at different times and it was just a magnificent event and agree. Any other comments. See none. Then we are adjourned.