 2020. I'm sorry, I will now begin again. Good evening. It's May 24, 2021. And this is a meeting of the town council. I'm going to go through opening meeting and then we'll immediately be going to the hearing. Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law allows us to hold this virtual town council meeting. Given that there's a quorum of the council present, I'm calling the May 24, 2021 meeting together at to order at 631 p.m. I'll call upon each counselor. Please verify you can hear us and we can hear you and then re-mute your mic. Shalony Balmille. Present. Alissa Brewer. Present. Pat DeAngeles. Present. Garcy DeMond. Here. Lynn Griesmer is present. Mandy Jo Hanneke. Present. Dorothy Pam. Present. Evan Ross. Present. George Ryan. Present. Kathy Shane. Present. Steve Shriver. Present. Andy Steinberg. Present. Sarah Schwartz. Present. Thank you. We're going to immediately move to announcements, which will be shown on the board. And I want to particularly call attention to the May 27, 2021 530 special meeting of the town council and finance committee with the community safety working group for the purposes of looking at the social services line item for community responders. On June 7th at 630, we have the public forum on the capital improvement program. You can see the list of other committee meetings on there. And to just remind you, race amity day is June 13 at four o'clock. And that will be a virtual ceremony. And you can look at it on the web or you can see the connection on the website of the town. And Juneteenth is Saturday, June 19. And there'll be events throughout Amherst and throughout the day. Please note there are three opportunities for public comment tonight. The first is regarding the North Common. The second is a general public comment. And the third is after the presentation and the council question and dialogue with the community safety working group. We will go on then to the hearing. This public hearing is on parking regulations. GART changes related to the North Common. Let me just give you a little background. The plans for the North Common were brought forth to the select board prior to the seating of the town council. Feeling it was too close to the transition in government, the council, the select board did not act. These plans were then officially introduced to the town council on November 16th, 2020. They were referred to the town services and outreach committee. Joint meetings between committee and the council were held on December 17, 2020 and January 18, 2021. And discussed at other meetings. This was brought back to the council who voted on March 22, 2021 to approve plan 3B as shown with no modifications. However, right after that it was brought to the council based on our public way policy, we needed to hold a hearing. And that brings us to tonight. Notice of this hearing was on the town's bulletin board and in the Hampshire Gazette on May 10th and 17th on the bulletin board on May 6th. In addition, a section including, I'm sorry, notice was mailed to a butters on May 5th, 2021. In addition, a section including the two options and an opportunity to ask questions and make comments were included on the town's website, www.engageammer.org. We will start with a brief presentation by Dave Zomac and Giltford Mooring. And then we'll go to public questions and comments both in favor and in opposition. And finally, we will take this up as a vote later, which point counselors may have additional questions they want to ask as well. So David, please go ahead. Thank you, Lynn. You stole a little of my thunder there, but I think I've got some material to work with. So thank you very much. As Linda indicated, there's been an extensive planning process leading up to this evening's discussion. I would refer those listening at home to the town website and particularly the Engage. We do now have a page up specifically on the North Common Project. And there's more information, of course, on the town council website from previous meetings and the TSO site as well. As Lynn indicated, some months ago TSO and the town council discussed in some detail the plans for those new to this project or to refresh your memories at home. We landed the town council with various input from the community and from staff ended up on plan two, the revised plans. And if necessary later in the hearing, we can pull these up. Athena, I'm sure, can pull up plan two. We call this plan two revised or plan three B. And again, those are available on the website. Those discussions were lengthy and they were supported by drawings developed by the engineering department at DPW with input from the planning department. In addition, there were two memos, one from the superintendent of public works who's with us tonight. Go for morning to the town manager dated March 16th and then one from the manager to the town council dated March 17th. And those summarized a number of the features of both of those plans with specific emphasis, excuse me, on parking and the changes proposed in parking. If I could, I just wanted to quickly go through and I'm referencing the March 16th memo from Mr. Mooring to the town manager. And if I could quickly go through some of the major differences between the two plans and some of the similarities. And I'll really, I'll go quickly through this because I know the town council has spent a great deal of time on this. But in terms of the plans themselves on South Pleasant Street, the plans are quite similar. The main feature is that they close the entrance to Main Street from South Pleasant Street. On Main Street, the major difference is in plan three B and that had seven angled parking spaces on Main Street. And I'm sure we're going to be talking about those later. So that's the Main Street side. The Main Street parking lot, there is a significant difference between the two plans. In plan two, the lot is reduced to a total of 22 spaces. In plan three B, that plan removes the entire parking lot. And then on Bultwood Avenue, both plans strongly encourage and design for one-way traffic from north to south. And then both plans, both two modified and three B, both plans add eight parking spaces along the west side of the street. In total, the parking summary, well, I think I'll hold on the parking summary until later. But in total, we go from a total of 43 spaces to kind of that that's the do-nothing plan. Plan two modified, there's a reduction to 38 spaces in total. And then in plan three B modified, there's 27 spaces total. And by total, I mean those both on the North Common on Main Street or on Bultwood. So as Lynn mentioned, on March 22nd, the Council did vote to move forward to proceed with plan three B, which eliminated all of the parking on the Common itself, added the seven spaces on Main Street, added the eight spaces on Bultwood and added the seven spaces on Main Street, which were back-in parking. So I think I will stop there unless Mr. Moreing would like to add anything else. I believe he is with us here tonight. Wilford. No, I think Mr. Zoeman covered everything. Then I'm going to ask for public comment. Please raise your hand if you'd like to speak about either the plans in opposition or in favor of Sam McLeod. Please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Sam McLeod, Southeast Street, Amherst. I also have to disclose I'm on the Community Preservation Act Committee and we did authorized funding for North Common. My comment just relates in general to parking. I want to thank Gilford, Dave and the various folks who were involved in generating different planning for their efforts and looking at the parking carefully in response to comments from many folks. I think they did a great job of delineating what the choices were. The committee did vote in favor nine to zero for funding. There were some differences raised regarding the options for parking. I understand based on the recent vote from the council that it's pretty likely that the positions of the counselors have been determined, but going forward I want to reiterate my concerns about the importance of parking in downtown for Amherst in general. There's no question having lived in this town for quite a long time. Central parking is an issue. We're living in a dormant time right now with the university and everybody on COVID, but it will come back and I thought it was 19 spaces that are being removed. 34 minus plus seven plus eight, but it may be 16, but it's going to have an impact when we're in crunch times. That's 16 to 20 more vehicles circling the common all the time. So after this long preamble, my comment is this. I'd like for the council representatives in the future or even as they look at plans here to consider the need for parking options. We know the business community is very much concerned about this and so assuming we go forward with plan 3B, parking garage, parking garage, parking garage. I know it's on the agenda to look at different options. It's going to raise its head in the future. Keep it in the back of your mind and thank you to Guilford and others who have been looking at parking options very diligently. That's my comment. I'm in favor of a long-term parking garage. We need it. Thank you. Thank you, Sam. We appreciate your showing up tonight and providing comment. Are there other people who would like to provide public comment with regard to the North Common renovation and changes in parking? I'm going to give it a minute or so. Michael Childs, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Yes, can you hear me? We can. Yes, my name is Michael Childs. I live at 45 Oak Knoll. I think that's District 2. Yes, it is. I wrote a letter yesterday and it's too long to read, but I've tried to abbreviate my comments. I'm sorry if I sound, I don't know, on point. I've been in court half the day. I feel like I'm just giving testimony. I do not see how the council can proceed with plan 3B without first ensuring that this town has adequate parking after plan 3B takes effect. The only plan I have heard about additional parking is that one day the town may build a parking garage behind CVS. As yet, that's just talk. No one has committed money to that plan. If you intend to address a parking garage after there are acute parking problems in this town and then build a new garage to taxpayers, you will outrage the town. We need the parking spaces that are part of the current North Commons parking lot for the foreseeable future, especially post-pandemic. And in any event, you should first plan additional parking before you remove current spaces. Please consider the following. You have voted to build a new library and that project alone will tear up the center of town and definitely reduce parking. The North Commons 3B design will eliminate all parking for a period of time and then permanently decrease the number of spaces. The North Commons lot is the busiest lot in our town and is often full, especially on weekend evenings and days when the farmers market or other events are held on the common. The money to redesign the North Commons lot does not need to be spent this year. It can be applied in future years once alternative parking is in place. The 3B redesign is poorly conceived in several respects, especially the seven back in angled parking spots with two hour limits. Please explain how elderly citizens and others will be able to back into a spot on busy main street near the main intersection of this town. Neither the council nor the BID made any statement on March 22 regarding the impact of plan 3B on the Saturday farmers market that occurs nine months of the year. There are other events that take place on the Commons that attract a crowd as well. Where are they going to go? If you make the farmers market inconvenient to attend, you will kill one of the highlights of living in this town. All of the existing 34 spaces have four hour limits and only six of the new spaces will have a four hour limit. With the remainder limited to two hours, how does the council propose attracting citizens and visitors to a prolonged experience in the center of town, often involving a movie, dinner, and a coffee? Your vote on March 22 appeared to disregard your own consultant study, the Nelson Nygard study that noted near capacity parking in the North Commons at 7 p.m. on two nights per week when they surveyed the site. Major stakeholders in the area, the Grace Episcopal Church, the Amherst Cinema voiced their concerns about plan 3B, but the council did not appear to consider those concerns. The BID director stated clearly that the majority of businesses around the common were in favor of preserving some parking. There are many reasons to postpone a renovation of the North Commons, but the most important is that you do not yet have any funding for replacing lost parking or even for providing new parking for the many new buildings you see you are approving. It seems very obvious that the plans for new parking and the funding that will make it happen need to be in place before you start limiting parking further. Plan 3B appears you'll conceived at this time. Thank you. Thank you Dr. Trials for your comments. Are there other people who would like to comment on the North Commons at this time? So I'm going to ask one more time. There are other people who would like to speak regarding the North Commons parking at this time. Seeing none, then I'm actually going to close the hearing and rather than move on to the agenda. Since we have both Guilford and David here, I'm actually going to bring up item 7, it must be 8, which is the parking regulations related to the North Common. The hearing is closed, so the councillors, are there any further discussion points that you would like to make at this time? Yes, Mandy Johanna. Yeah, I was looking at the motion and I was looking at the shape of the schematics and the motion indicates that we would be trying to find it, that we would be adding six spots to the Bultwood Avenue, but the schematic says eight. The motion says add six parallel on-street parking spaces on both sides of Bultwood between Main and Spring, yet the schematics say eight. So I think we might have a disagreement there and need to change the motion. Okay. And do you want to go ahead at this point, Mandy Johanna, and make the motion? Sure, I can make a motion. I move in accordance with general bylaw section 3.14 and town council policy regarding the control and regulation of the public ways, having held a public hearing on May 24, 2021, notice of which was published on the town bulletin board for not less than 14 days on May 6, 2021, and published in a newspaper of general circulation in the town once in each of two weeks, the first publication not less than 14 days before the day of the hearing on May 10 and May 17, 2021, and notice mailed to a butters on May 5, 2021, and having referred the proposed regulations to the town services and outreach committee for review and recommendation to make the following parking regulation changes related to the North Common. Remove the Main Street parking lot with its existing 34 spaces at $1 per hour with a four-hour limit and enforced from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Add seven angled back-in on-street parking spaces on the south side of Main Street west of Bultwood Avenue intersection to be $1 per hour with a two-hour limit and enforced from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Add eight parallel on-street parking spaces on the west side of Bultwood Avenue between Main Street and Spring Street to be $1 per hour with a four-hour limit and enforced from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Add spaces if possible on the east side of South Pleasant Street between Main Street and Spring Street to be $1 per hour with a two-hour limit and enforced from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Is there a second to the motion? Second, Ross. Thank you. Kathy Shane, you have your hand up. Oh, I'm sorry, Mandy Jo, would you like to speak to the motion? I'd like to hear what Kathy says before I guess I would speak to it. Okay, Kathy. Okay. As you know, I voted against this earlier, but I would just like to make sure people in the public and everyone in the council pays attention to the information that we've received following that vote and really think again about what we're doing here. This lot brings in anywhere from $51 to $52,000 per year. It is by far the busiest, and we just got information that thanks to one counselor's request for information, it's another 7,000 in fines. Not that we want to count fines as a terrific source. This almost $60,000 is the type of money that we desperately need in the Transportation Fund. It is a source of revenue for funding our bus line. The Transportation Fund revenues are way down, and these meters really matter to the town. It's vital for the downtown businesses. There are lots of studies that talk about the need to have parking very close to where a downtown business is for easy access, because otherwise people just go to the mall and walk around. So it's a lifeline for the downtown businesses, and we had 66% saying, don't do this, and if you added Grace Church and Amherst Cinema, it would have been near to 70% of businesses saying, don't remove parking. We don't have an alternative right now. The lot is often full. And the other one other thing, since we met, I've tried to find out more information on back in angle parking. It's absolutely true that that is safer than front in angle parking. But the engineer studies, and I found one over the weekend, when talking about this say try to do it mainly on non busy roads. Don't do it on thoroughfares. Don't do it near an intersection, and do it with super wide roads, preferably one way roads, not two way roads, and one way roads that don't have parallel parking on the other side. There were dimensions, and Guilford can probably tell me what the exact dimensions are in what is being proposed, but on the depth of the angle parking, the overlap on the curb, the width of the bike lane, and the width of the road that you needed before it was even safe to put them on, and those were recommended again for non busy streets. So that's a way that 3B is trying to compensate by grabbing another seven spaces. But just look at where the bus will be parking. It will be parking right by the light when it has to turn in. That's where we've moved the bus stop up, then people have to back in. And this is a thoroughfare. The advice is just don't do it there. You may want back in angle parking somewhere else. So I think it's a safety concern. And I would ask if this plan gets voted again, despite all this information rather than waiting till we have an alternative. I would really ask that we get some outside traffic engineers that have built back in angle to really take a look at Kendes Road. I know Guilford, I'm not saying that you don't know what you're doing, but people have had experiences with these and you do's and don'ts on where to put them. I'm not questioning the back end. That is better than front angled in. So I have no question on that. I'm ending there, but we don't have a garage yet. If we get a garage, if and when we get a garage, we don't even know whether it will be available to replace the revenue from the lot we're talking about. So we shouldn't act before we have an alternative. Thank you. Guilford, I'm sorry. You had your hand up. Was there something else you'd like to add to the motion or anything you'd like to say? Yes, ma'am. The number and the motion is correct. There's only going to be six additional spaces on boltwood because even though it says eight on the west side of boltwood, we lose two spaces in front of town hall. So there's a total of six we're adding and we're losing two. It's a total of six. Okay. So I'm going to go back to the original motion and that is to add six parallel on the street parking spaces on the west side of boltwood Avenue. I would ask to instead of change the number eight because the west side is adding eight that we add a sentence that says and remove two parallel parking spaces on street parking space in the east side of boltwood Avenue between Main Street and Spring Street. Okay. I want to make sure the town, the clerk of the council has that motion change. Mandy, it was add eight on the west side and remove two to the east side. It's just clearer that way. I'm sorry. Go ahead again, Mandy. It would read add eight parallel on street parking spaces on the west side of boltwood Avenue between Main Street and Spring Street to be $1 per hour with a four-hour limit and enforced from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Remove two parallel on street parking spaces on the east side of boltwood Avenue between Main Street and Spring Street. I think that's all you need. Billford, is that consistent with the drawing? That is consistent with the drawing if you want to break it down like that. Okay. Great. Thank you. Mandy, Joe made that motion and Evan, you seconded it. Do you accept the changes? Yes. Okay. Dorothy, Pam? If revenue is our only guide, then we're very happy with what we have done down on East Pleasant Street because that is bringing in lots of revenue. Although we didn't seem to think we needed any revenue or any parking down there. So in order to get revenue, we said you don't have to park here. So I'm just saying in defense of what is left of historic Amherst, which is the area around the green, which everyone agrees on, is a beautiful area that we must defend and protect that area. And that means keeping the New England Green a green. So when you look at Town Hall, you don't see cars. You see the town, you see the building, you see the green. There will be temporary inconveniences. I have great confidence we will have a parking lot very soon. But I think that we cannot always, revenue has led us to what the changes further downtown, which many people are very unhappy with. So I don't think revenue should be our only guide for everything we do because we're behaving in a very inconsistent method on terms, on other terms. Shalini? I wanted to hear from Gilford about the concern about the back end angle parking that we heard in the email we got from that all of us got today. And I also wanted to make another comment, which is, you know, people sort of related to what Dorothy was saying, people ask for a vision for downtown. And right, if you were to look at the short term, yes, we're losing this parking. But given that we are going to build a parking garage, and it will not be with taxpayers' money. And given that we are moving towards a walkable bikeable, I'm not saying it's right now, but let's say five years down the road, we do have a garage, we do have a bikeable walkable town, will we regret the decision we're making today that we made all that into parking lot, whereas that could have been a green. So as a council, we are trying to create a vision for the kind of town we want that will bring community down. And it's a hard decision. But that's the reasoning that I'm leaning towards plan 3B. Lin, you're muted. Thank you. You started with a question. And Gilford, it was to address the back end parking. You need to unmute Gilford. Yeah, I keep forgetting. I know. The way the way we laid it out. Yes, it's not ideal. Ideally, we wouldn't have the bus stop there. But then again, we also need the unloading area for the businesses. So the bus stop and the unloading area kind of go together. We move the back end parking as far away from the intersection as we could, which is, yes, you shouldn't have it close to an intersection. This road is considered by some to be a main road is called Main Street. But we consider college to be a much more busier thoroughfare and a much more used thoroughfare than we do Main Street. So we took all that into consideration. And this is the best compromise we could come up with in this area. If you gave us more parameters, we would do it a little differently. If you gave us less parameters, we would probably, we would, this is what we would propose. This is the best compromise to keep some parking in there, keep the bus stop in there, keep the loading and unloading area in there and make everything work. And we're pretty confident it's probably the best. We're confident we're happy with it and we like it. So, Andy? Well, I guess there are two things in relation to what's been said by others. One is that about the revenue in the lot, if people are going to still park and pay to park, it's going to increase some revenue in other parking places. So we don't know exactly where the displacement will be. We do assume that there will be displacement. But I don't think that it's fair to assume that the entire amount that's been collected in the lot in the best of years is going to just disappear because a good part of it is going to be placed in just different meters and different pay parking options to the town. So I'm not confident in that figure that assumption that you should just lose that. The other thing is on the back end parking, I know that some people have reservations. We've talked about it. We've recognized it as a safe option. There have been, there are some good videos and others that have shown how it works in other communities. It has worked very effectively and it's safer because people can put their things in the back of their car from the curb as opposed to the street. And when they pull out, they can see who's coming. Whereas when you back out of a space, you don't have the same visibility. And that's actually for what I've read more dangerous for bicycles. And the last thing is that when you back in, it isn't any more difficult than parallel parking. But in parallel parking is something that exists all over town. And I guess the last thing that I'll say to conclude is that if you, if we're unhappy with the back end parking is other communities that have experimented with it and decided against it have found it's just a matter of reversing it so that you can always reverse the directions of the spaces. So I don't think that that's just positive of the question that we're making today on the choice of the two options because it's probably the most easily changeable piece. So. Lisa, you have your hand up. Yes, thank you. And I know everyone watching us here knows that I voted against this proposal at this level, both at TSO and previous town council meeting. I just want to add a couple of points. One is that I do feel that we are clearly sending the message that we know better than businesses and Grace Church, what their customers want to do, then they know. And I find that unfortunate. I hope that we can find a way to express that differently if the vote goes, as I suspect it will, because that's the clear message we're sending now based on the percentages. And I know change is hard, but it's still the message we're sending. I'm also frustrated that history is being thrown around again as a rationale as for historic amourst when let's be real here. People on this council didn't live here when there weren't cars parked there. People in this town, mostly many of them didn't live here when there weren't cars parked on that. We're not reversing a bad decision of 10 years ago. We are changing something after several decades. I totally agree that we're moving to a different reality with cars, but this fake idea of it being that this tiny portion of the north common of our entire large common is we've somehow done this horrible disservice to history, I find is incredibly histrionic. When it comes to the back end angled parking here, we also got information as Kathy looked up information and we got information from Tracy Zafian has been a really incredibly helpful member of our tech and talk to TSO about this as well. And assuming I'm going to lose this vote to keep easily accessible parking to town hall and surrounding businesses again, I hope that given the timing of this project, we can figure out a way to simply pilot some back end angled parking somewhere else in town, final to the prior to the final installation. The first time people are practicing to do this should not be in those spaces for all the reasons that have been described, literally set it up in the high school parking lot if you have to set it up on a different part of town, set it up as a pilot we can use engage hammers, but to say that people will of course just figure it out they'll have newer cars it'll all be wonderful. I think we do a real disservice to the community just say of course we're going to pilot you'll see what it actually looks like somewhere else and that way people who are nervous about it can go ahead and take that opportunity to practice somewhere else before they're doing the larger stakes parking right there because we all know that approving this tonight doesn't mean like it's going to happen in July. So we have some time in parallel to provide people with that kind of parking experience as a pilot this is not the first place in town we should be using it. Thank you. Are there any other comments at this time Darcy? Yeah I just wanted to say that I was also one of the counselors who didn't vote for this the last time around. I am not going to go into all of my reasons again but I do want to say that I support what Kathy was saying and also what Alyssa just said and that I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of us would be willing to amend this to remove the one piece about the back end parking. So I am not going to put that forward because I'm planning on voting against but just putting it out there it seems like it's something that a lot of us agree is not that good an idea to have back end parking right in the middle of a high volume town center. Okay any other comments from counselors Kathy? Yeah I just want to um I might not have spoken clearly um I am not saying don't vote for this because of revenue I am saying don't vote for this because of the survival of the businesses downtown and we have green we actually are pretty amazing town the South Commons is huge we have Switzer Park we have Kendrick Park we have more than a lot of other towns and cities even in western Massachusetts Belcher town has a very nice parking lot right in front of their town hall and a big green. I am really worried about the downtown businesses I don't think we should be risking their health coming out of the COVID pandemic we already have removed nearby parking because the restaurants are out in the street which is great we want people to come downtown but just really think of what we're doing um this is a very fragile time for time for businesses so I've just brought up the revenue because it's also money but even if this lot was free and we got no money I think this is a bad decision for our downtown businesses um one drove up my driveway to say please be eloquent about this it will kill my business people don't stay very long downtown they come they get a sandwich and then they leave please don't do it so it was a plea it wasn't just a maybe yes maybe no it was a plea okay thank you are there any other comments at this time so the motion has been made and seconded it did clarify that there are eight parallel parking spaces on the west side of boltwood and six on the east side um given that I'm going to go ahead and proceed with the vote uh elissa broer no patti angeles no garcy demont no greece murray is a yes panicky yes ham george seven i george this pathy shane no steve schreiber all right andy steinberg all right sarah schwarz no palamy ball mill yes the vote remains eight in favor five in opposition no apps no abstaining and no absences it is now seven thirteen so i'm going to go back to the consent agenda and general public comment and um so general public comment is next let me remind people that there will be a period when people can comment after the community safety group working group has made their report and counselors have had a discussion and we have already had public comment on the north common so i'm looking for any other public comment at this time about other items than those two nadine please enter the room state your full name and where you live um my name is nadine mazad and i live in um amherst in east pleasant street so i'm giving you a call i'm not i didn't hear if um did you already talk about with regards to the um allocation of funds to the community safety program that is actually our next period of public comment not okay but i i've since i am here i do want to make sure that i am i just want to say that i am in agreement and i with that community safety program and the agenda items and that we should um as the town of amherst continue to put you know money behind action and actually try to make a difference and be one at the forefront of change so i'll just acknowledge that at this time thank you thank you is there other general public comment not about the community safety working group and not about the north common okay seeing none then we are going to go on to the consent agenda uh if we could have that placed on the board the following items were selected because they were considered to be routine if you'd like to remove an item after i make the initial statement please let me know i will be seeking a second to the statement as well so uh the motion is to move the following items and the printed motions they're under and approve those items as a single unit 6a lesbian gay by trans queer lgbtq pride month proclamation 6b citation and recognition of mira seddy charity upon receipt of the gold award girl scout 11 approval of minutes may 13th 2021 special town council meeting minutes um may 17th 2021 regular town council meeting minutes may 18th 2021 special town council meeting minutes is there are there any items that people would like removed is there a second second d angeles thank you pat any further questions okay then i'm going to begin with pat d angeles hi um darcy demont yes then greasmer's i mandy joe hannity hi Dorothy pam hi evin ross hi george ryan yes gathie shane gathie shane sorry i didn't unmute yes it's a it's a thing tonight don't worry c schreiber hi andy steinberg hi sarah schwarz hi chelony balmine yes elissa brewer hi it passes 13 00 and no absence so i am going to ask for the two sponsors of the lgbtq pride month proclamation if they would like to have a word with the council and the public and our read part of the proclamation evan and pat go ahead evan sure so um i'm proud to uh once again for the third year in a row with councilor d angeles sponsor um the lgbtq pride proclamation uh this year's proclamation is largely the same as past years um but with two additions um one is an addition that i referenced in my public comment last year but was not actually in a proclamation which is recognizing the fact that the reason that we celebrate pride and the reason we have pride is because of queer and trans people of color who were on the forefront of the fight for gay living gang queer liberation um and who are largely responsible for much of the achievements that we've seen in the second is specifically calling out the need to protect the trans community in the clause about remaining vigilant against continued oppression and discrimination and i think that's because within the past year we've seen attacks on the trans community increase i think 2020 was a record year for homicide of trans folks and especially trans folks of color um 2021 is looking to be another record year including the recent murder of a transgender activist from western massachusetts jahara dialto um in boston um and on a national stage we're seeing attack on uh the ability of trans children to play um in in youth sports and so i think it was important for us to specifically call out the need to stand up against oppression of the trans community um and especially trans folks of color so those are the additions um to this year's proclamation um and i look forward to seeing folks uh at the flag raising on june 1st at 10 a.m that we can now do in person after doing it virtually last year pat she's shaking her head like she doesn't really need to speak evan was quite eloquent and i'm grateful for its comments thank you pat um the other one is a citation hold on one second please um the second one is a citation in recognition of mirah seti charity upon receipt of the golden of the gold award girl scout uh as a sponsor of this citation and as a former girl scout with continuing ties to the girl scouts of central and western massachusetts on behalf of the town council i wish to congratulate mirah on her outstanding achievements and note that she will be honored with the presentation of the gold award girl scout on thursday june 17th 2021 at the hanover theater and conservatory for the performing arts in wister congratulations mirah so we are moving forward i want to be respectful of the fact that i told alissa i'm sorry you have your hand up the reason i have my hand up is because we have a slightly confusing situation not at all to take away from the two incredibly important proclamations we just did but last week we said we were in a hurry and we wouldn't talk about race amity day because ash heartwell would speak to us tonight but it appears that mr heartwell has not been able to join us and so that's kind of slipped through the cracks that we voted on that last week and didn't get a chance to mention it so i really appreciate so if you don't mind i'll take another minute to do that and i really appreciate you mentioning the event at the beginning of our meeting there are two things i always like to point out about our annual race amity day proclamation one is how important it is when a legislative body decides that there is to be a proclamation that it continue to follow through each year and that it decide to help everybody understand why it was important to have done that and i really appreciate for example that evan and pat have been bringing their newer resolution forward each year and making changes to it as necessary race amity day is a bit more of a static sort of announcement because it's the basic idea of the principle of oneness of humankind and the rich cultural ethnic and racial diversity of its inhabitants it's a very very broad and and about civility respect kindness and friendship and so having that follow through so for example town meeting could pass a resolution and then maybe we never did anything about it and so i think that's one of the things we should feel good about that we're trying to do on the council is we're trying to say okay and then there's a flag raising and then there's an event and we should all be participating we're putting it on the town website i think we're doing a better job of following through on the values we say we espouse through these things so it was kind of a speech about the generic overall concept as well as the fact that we as you indicated that there is an annual celebration which will be virtual this year because of course the planning was done before we knew what was going to be opening up and that'll be at four o'clock on june 13th and my apologies to mr. Hartwell for not doing it as well as he would have or certainly if ray elliott was still with us um and missing him very much thank you elissa thank you for that i really appreciate it dorothy you have your hand up uh yes uh as a former girl scout and daughter of a girl scout leader uh i don't know what the gold girl scout award is is it something like equivalent to the eagle scout for a boy scout or i just wish you would explain what it is it sounds very important okay in the actual uh resolution if you'll give me two seconds i will pull it up it defines that and we were asked by the girl scouts to uh do this resolution or to do something i mean it could have been a simple uh write a letter but in the process we came up with this instead and i am just getting to my thing um because it defines it the golden the gold award girl scout is the highest achievement that a girl can earn in girl scouting uh and in fact um barra is the first that i know of an amherst in recent years but she is certainly the only one this year um in order to earn it it requires many years of challenge and commitment to service leadership career exploration and a take action project and in mira's case it was the format formation of an international student club at her high school to raise awareness about um international communities and organized school she organized a school wide guided discussion about xenophobia and racism and formed a tutoring program for international students to learn english so it is the highest award that they give and it has many requirements and she met one of the most uh stringent requirements by the formation of the international student club said help thank you very much thank you any other questions at this time okay then i'm going to um ask that uh athena to begin to bring all of the people who are in the attendees who are part of the community safety working group and that may take a minute or two so people want to take a two minute break they can but that's it you're only allowed two minutes right now i i believe that the community safety working group has also asked that you bring in the people from the seven gen research group i think i have just about everyone i don't see tashina bowman in the audience unless she's not using her name as her screen name here so tashina if you are in the audience and you're named something differently than your name um please raise your hand rihanna do you see the attendees in the right side and alicia alisha um yes so tashina is unable to make it today okay thank you otherwise do the best of your ability to look through the screen rihanna and alicia do you see everybody that we're supposed to bring in yes i believe so great then i'm going to turn this over to paul bakerman since this is a committee that he is town manager appointed and has worked very closely thank you lin so since november the community safety working group has been hard at work to present the report you have before you tonight i hope that everyone takes the time to read it it's very well written and organized very efficiently uh the the working group has taken this work on with great energy and commitment and for many great personal costs to their families and their own health both physical and emotional this is hard work and i thank each member of the committee the working group for the work and i was honored to be able to participate as often as i was the report of the working group produced addresses the main areas of concern and sets the stage for change establishing a vision a direction that the town can follow to create maintain public safety for all members of our community and so with that i will turn it over to the co-chairs of the working group miss bianna owen and miss alicia walker thank you mr bakerman for introducing our group and also for acknowledging the amount of stress it has put on every member of the group and how personal this work is at this time i'm going to screen share with you all to share a power point for this evening before we get going on the power point i wanted to be frank in why the power point slides were not sent to you all beforehand we do have some content that is in the slides that really illustrates why our charge is so important however the person in this content is very adamant about remaining anonymous this person is okay with us using the content for the good of our presentation but not okay with us distributing it to the town council we will remove this content after the meeting and send you all the slides to look back on and i'm going to share screen now to get the presentation started there are some members who could not be here today but for those who are here with us i will call on one by one to introduce themselves briefly and answer the question why did you join the community safety working group um tashina bellman was unavailable to be here today dairies cage um can you guys hear me um so i'm dairies cage i'm a first-year student at emerson palomigino high school and the reason why i joined the community safety working group is because i feel like as a 15 year old with prior um experiences with the police um i felt like it would it would be a good a good job for me to um stand up for other people and help advocate for the people who cannot be on this community um working group and i felt like um by me being on this committee it would do the greater it would be a great um a great thing to do for the people who can do it thank you debora ferrera hello everyone can you hear me all right so um my name is debora ferrera uh thank you all for having us here today to present to you all uh i am a resident of amherst and i've been here for 23 years i'm doing this because when my son was 10 years old last year he saw jord foyd being murdered and when he saw jord foyd being murdered he saw himself in that he saw that that could happen to him as as a black boy i'm doing this because both of my sons i had to have the talk with them at eight years old right and the talk means that if you're a black parent or if you're a bipark parent you have to talk to your children about how to interact with police so that they can be safe because we're afraid that if they interacted with the police they might get harmed okay i'm doing this because i have a 17 year old son who just got his driver's license about two weeks ago and i again had to have the talk with him had to implore with him to do everything correctly to make sure he goes by the speed limit because i'm afraid every time he goes out that he might not come back right or he might be harmed when he's out and so i'm doing this because as a mom even though i know if he does everything correctly he might still be profiled he might still be stopped and he might still be harmed right so every time he goes out the door i'm afraid for him i'm doing this because i had to do something as an attorney as someone that can can contribute something i had to do something beyond protesting i had to do something to better our community to make sure that all residents feel safe and not just some residents that all children feel safe and not just some children okay and i think for our recommendations we have to go beyond just the normal recommendations because what we've been doing the same old same old it's not going to work right we have to do something different do the same things you're going to have the same results so our recommendations is to is a change of paradigm it's to do something different to make change the time is now we need to make change it's critical for all of us that's it pattern on a baku yes can people hear me okay so um my name is pattern on a baku i live at summer act drive i moved to armist modern 35 years ago and very little has changed to include biker people who look like me in the political and power structure of this town i'm a mother of five children i fear for their lives i i fear for my own life as well racism is real and is trauma traumatizing i joined cswg because i am tired of waiting and excuses for addressing racism in this town you the town councilors you have the power to do the right to invite fully funding all the recommendations made by cswg and seven gen thank you breast fernan jones hi uh when i saw that the charge adopted by the town council included making recommendations for alternative ways to provide public safety service alternatives to policing and also recommendations for oversight of the police i decided this was an opportunity for me to go beyond education about racism and actually help change the concrete conditions experienced by bipoc community members in amherst to help our town take a significant step in dismantling systemic racism in amherst you know white people sometimes wonder what we can do to dismantle systemic racism and i believe our working groups report provides an answer and if you as the town council will insist on more robust financial support for our recommendations that is in the current budget proposal you can make this an historic moment in our town a turning point in making racial justice a reality in amherst thank you rihanna owen i found out about the opportunity of the community safety working group through one of the kids on my caseload i work as a program director at a non-profit working with young people who have aged out of foster care i decided to look at the article that this young person sent me from mass live and fell out an application i joined this group because i'm a latinx woman a former foster alumni and a first generation college graduate the older i get the more i realized that people with similar shared experiences to my own don't get seats at decision-making tables and they don't have a voice at tables like this i want to be the change in the community i want to be the change that i want to see in my community and i thought this might be a good start my name is alisha walker this is the community that i grew up in and this is the community that i am now raising my children in this is the community that i care deeply about and i believe in its potential to be a community that is committed to the safety and well-being of all of its residents for me this is about showing up for my community and i am very grateful to be able to be a part of this process so we're going to start off our we are going to start off our presentation by reminding the town council of the community safety working groups charge and purpose then going over history that has influenced our recommendations and then get straight into our recommendations what the research says and what lived experience has taught our group the community safety working group was assigned the following purpose to a make recommendations on alternative ways of providing public safety services to the community and be to make recommendations on reforms to the current organizational and oversight structures of the amherst police department we were specifically charged with studying the complex issues of delivering community safety services to ensure racial equity collecting data from people's lived experiences and amherst engaging in communities most impacted by policing to develop alternatives and identify solutions to diagnose problems investigating existing alternative models and programming for providing community safety services examining existing town funding priorities regarding safety services and exploring models of resident oversight for police departments the second part of our charge is to recommend reforms to the current organizational and oversight structures of the amherst police department this presentation will be on the first part of our charge we want to point out that the community safety working group was very intentional about the recommendations in this powerpoint the recommendations that we put together have two goals to ensure any public safety any public safety response it's anti-racist equitable just and fair and that we also offer preventative services to get at the root of assisting our residents to avoid necessitating public safety involvement in the first place we want to point um sorry our next slide is to give reparations for amherst a shout out because the work that they they work that they have done has been very um essential to the work that the community safety working group is doing for outsiders amherst is a place where residents are health conscious we're a college town and we're a town where you drive down most roads and lawns are plastered with black lives matter signs members of our group know that although all of that looks great there are problems in this community that need to be addressed the community safety working group for that reason found the research done by reparations for amherst essential to our work community safety requires racial equity in order to envision what a more racially equitable amherst would look like we needed to as a group understand what got us to where we are and more importantly what the historical intent of law enforcement was how can we create a better future without context of what the past was really like and how it got us here the cswg finds the historical context of white supremacy and amherst extremely relevant to our work and to the town's commitment to dismantle white supremacy the founding of amherst is based on genocide amherst legacy is controversial due to his expressed desire to exterminate the race of indigenous people during Pontiac's war and his advocacy of biological warfare in the form of gifting blankets infected with smallpox as a weapon our group is well aware that amherst was once home to slave owners was once home to documented redlining and once home to primarily white schools this history has manifested into the community we are living in now so for our group when we hear the school system is under constant scrutiny for racial equity that the universities are year after year having problems with racially targeting vandalism and that rent has increased so much that predominantly families of color have been forced to move we believe it we also believe that our work is directly connected to these intersections community safety is going to school and feeling safe being in the community and being safe and trusting that our leaders will stand by that policing in the united states began with slave patrols in the south created to capture black people seeking freedom from the involuntary servitude of slavery with the great migration police police departments grew in northern cities charged with controlling black and brown people and protecting the property of well-to-do white people in this context the law was used as a tool to allow white landowners to remain in power the list of black people killed by police just in the last decade is long and horrifying in addition to george floyd some of the names of those who lost their lives at the hand of police are daunte right ray shard brooks daniel prude bryona taylor atatiana jefferson or a rosser staphon clark tamir rice tanisha anderson and the list goes on the question to ask is if there had been an alternative to armed police would the outcome have been different given the history it is logical to ask whether an armed predominantly white police force can ever provide a sense of safety and security to black indigenous and people of color and their communities historically these were restricted to not allow certain residents to reside in certain areas black and brown families were pushed to less desirable areas in amherst like the housing complexes and today the demographics are not much different modern day redlining and the rise in rent continues to keep black and brown and low income families in these same areas if they aren't forced out of amherst completely many social service organizations that we connected with let us know that their employees travel from outside of amherst to work here due to the unfeasible rental prices many town staff also do not reside in the city of amherst perhaps due to the housing prices as well this provides further insight on the disconnect in the services being offered in this town how does redlining and the rise in rental prices in amherst influence current policing methods and outcome the tendency of low income and working class families and students with families is to access housing through apartment rentals and as you can see from this chart a large portion of apd calls are officer initiated and with the highest concentration being on one street in particular and located in apartment complexes a further breakdown of the data shows the difference in police conduct between certain complexes and single resident areas and if you focus specifically on police initiated calls these disparities are very clear the apd uses a community policing model that includes practices of surveillance and patrols which differ by neighborhood in terms of frequency and types of calls with one of the methods being to identify specific problem oriented areas of town and direct patrols to those areas this has resulted in the profiling and over surveillance of certain communities and in turn certain individuals nationally our research has shown that community policing has contributed to deaths of by park persons and not to their safety a tale of two cities when the community safety working group came together we all brought lived experience as a group composed of mainly by park folks for the first couple of months of our work we received stories from the community via email via email videos clips and we listened in on hours of forums of people telling us stories I personally hope no one ever has to experience again I want to remind the town council that although a few positive police experiences have been mentioned in our forums that is not the that is not the majority you have brought us together today to come up with with a solution to make all members of the community feel safe and from what we've gathered white folks have always felt safe here in Amherst for the BIPOC community it has been lost after loss even the way the community safety working group has been treated illustrates this and just because a person has not died at the hands of the police does not mean that there is not work to be done Amherst for white folks has been a place to enjoy to feel community and for young people to make mistakes and recover but for BIPOC folks it has never been that during our forum many youth attended what we gathered from that was that BIPOC youth and Amherst feel over surveilled to them Amherst is a place where you're constantly looking over your shoulder when you're walking downtown after school to get a slice of pizza to see if to see if a police officer is watching you it's a place where you walk into CVS to get a soda and the store clerk thinks you're stealing it is a place where BIPOC youth who get their license create group chats to support each other in case they may be pulled over and profiled but for white folks it's never been that these different photos here illustrate the two different versions of Amherst this is the first version we'd like to illustrate and at this time we'd like to share this video before we get into the video this is an interaction that was sent to us by the community and it illustrates the importance of our work in our charge and why these recommendations need to turn into reality listen listen listen brother listen i'm listening to you like stop stop because if you do i'm trying not to resist but 134 my name is Setkowski we're going to go you're gonna replace me what does that mean what do you want to hey 111 main street i'm recording i'm recording my phone i got your phone i got it i got it you're good thank you every day this is crazy we're fine work inside job and talk to you i'm not it's okay i'm gonna get you up it's a noise complaint you're not gonna get o.d charges nothing like i know i understand i'm gonna get her in the hour she's gonna be out before the morning i'm gonna be done you're fucked up it's over where i want to go you're fine bro you're really fucked up we're gonna get around you couldn't have made them lose and you couldn't have been grabbing on me like that i'm gonna stop the video here but i wanted to share this with council members to illustrate what happens in amherst when a noise complaint happens as you can see from the video five different officers showed up to arrest one young woman seeing the two worlds in amherst is almost is almost explainable for people who choose is almost unexplainable for people who choose not to see i think the only way to paint this picture is to remind you all the overwhelming amount of new apartments that have come up in the last couple of years that are clearly geared towards students that can afford to live there i also urge you all to think about all of the riots that have happened at umass in the past two years even throughout the pandemic i live five minutes away from the university and it was breathtaking to me that white students can riot and set off fireworks after after umass wins a hockey game but when my foster family has a barbecue and broad daylight multiple cops need to show up to quote unquote calm us down similar to the prior video you saw next we want you to watch this video so you can see what the other world in amherst is like we found this video very symbolic we also found it symbolic that these college students were predominantly white and included police officers in their video as you could see in the prior slide a noise complaint happened and four officers arrived on scene to arrest one young woman this video shows what amherst was really like for other people on may 25th 2020 george floyd a 46 year old black man was murdered at the hands of the minneapolis police the repetition of these egregious incidences sparked national and local movements organizations and the advocacy of local groups like defund 413 the racial equity task force preparations for amherst and the youth of blm have been doing tremendous work to bring education and awareness to inequities and policing and in our town as a response to the national and local uprising on june 1st 2020 the town council adopted a resolution affirming the town of amherst's commitment to unstructural racism and achieve racial equity for black residents in order to commit to the affirmation the town manager was assigned goals that would help to specify what steps could be taken to help position amherst in the direction of change with this goal being assigned the town manager assembled the hiring team to help him create a majority bipoc working group to amongst other things explore what alternative community safety services could look like in the town of amherst before we get into our recommendations i now want to open the floor to seven gen movement collective to explain to council members what participate what participatory action research is what the benefits are and answer any unanswered questions about the research before we get started thank you brianna and alisha and the cswg again thank you for all the the work you've been doing i am demetria shabazz and i'm a member of seven generation movement collective we have several members here with us tonight terry mullen terry we are just say hi hi thank you and uh dr cady ladowski lesdowski and dr uh sanji uh johnson anderson and so they uh were responsible for designing uh and conducting the research having to do with participatory action and so i'm going to let them speak to their research thank you thank you dr shabazz um so here we have three central questions to just give a brief overview of what participatory action research is which is what we chose uh to use to conduct the uh research on the experiences of bi park and api folk in amherst uh with the police so participatory action research um was born in central and south america's a tool for action against social injustice and uh in par uh stakeholders are positioned as the experts so the knowledge of stakeholders is based on experiences related to the context and the location uh therefore they are vital to the steps um to each step in the process it's they they participate the the participants of the research participate uh in uh helping to shape the research and that is central to par the benefits of par serves to explore social injustice and acts as a means to address social wrongs it uncovers the reasons behind injustice uh all the while maintaining change as a fundamental outcome of the research it provides an opportunity for researchers and participants to work together to analyze a problem and generate the change the desire change uh why was par used for this work uh par was used because it empowers and actively engages participants and approach and promotes collaborative inquiry leading to action um uh participatory action research is the most appropriate method to implement to implement in order to develop recommendations for the cswg and this methodology is grounded in the mission to address the social injustices that it explores par insists that those persons who have been both structurally disenfranchised have a right to research the conditions of their oppression and their resistance and their i quote our own uh dr lesdowski i don't know if um katie you want to add anything to that i think you did a great job thank you dr mr anderson i the only thing i would add is the fact that with qualitative research we really need to focus in on our positionality which is where par plays such a critical role um my identity you know as a white woman is completely different from someone who's experiencing the policing firsthand and therefore as as dr johnson anderson described we leave it up to the the participants in our case the community ambassadors to identify which questions to ask to collect the data in their own communities with people you know who they have a rapport with um and to um analyze that data as well through their lived experiences and the lens that that offers them thank you both and this fit in well with the community safety working groups charge which was to reach out into the community and assess these most vulnerable community groups and their experiences with policing and therefore dr katie lesdowski and dr sanji anderson chose par as as they mentioned the appropriate model to do so that's i think it awesome so thank you seven gen for explaining why you all use participatory participatory action research for this we wanted to um introduce what this was to town council and whoever may be listening right now so that everybody has a background of the research because um their research was very helpful in creating our recommendations to serve the community so our first recommendation is to create the crest program crest stands for community responders for equity safety and service the mission of the crest program will include contributing to dismantling systemic racism through providing racially aware safety and social services to persons of all races with a conscious anti-racism focus i want to be clear that although the crest program is designed to incorporate professionals who have experience with mental health and so other social services this is an alternative to policing our charge at the community safety working groups charge was to come up with an alternative and this is what we have come up with the crest program that we have outlined includes two person teams of unarmed responders with expertise in mental health social work and medics in conflict escalators we'd like the crest program to be accessed either by calling the crest phone number directly or by calling 911 studies of the police department data across the country estimate that 20 to 35 percent of 911 calls could appropriately be handled by trained on-arm community responders our very rough analysis of data provided by the apd pertaining to calls from may of 2019 to may of 2020 suggest that similarly somewhere between 20 to 35 percent of calls to the apd could be alleviated to the crest program these estimates are based on crest teams being on duty 24 7 crest responders will be dispatched in response to two specific categories of calls for service that do not require police response first they will be dispatched to lower risk 911 calls related to mental health addiction and homelessness second community responders will handle unrelated to behavioral needs which may be classified as disturbances suspicious persons trespassing incidents noise complaints other quality of life concerns and lower risk neighborhood conflicts we'd also like to include that crest should do wellness checks interactions with youth and be the first the first point of contact to respond to school calls in regards to community safety the crest program is again a public safety program designed as an alternative to the police department again what it will do is relieve the apd of many calls that don't require the response of a police officer or an armed responder it will provide provide responders with skills and experience better match the needs of the residents and situations being addressed the crest program will also build greater trust with marginalized communities including the BIPOC community and functioned with a heightened awareness of the importance of dismantling systemic racism in Amherst we developed the crest program by investigating models such as the Eugene Oregon cahoots program and the Denver star program and the Albuquerque Mexico community safety alternative although we liked bits and pieces of what we read about from these different programs we developed crest by using these programs as an outline and finding out what's going to work for Amherst the crest program is an alternative safety model specific to the needs of Amherst we made it we made it specific after hearing hours of people come to forums having people fill out our surveys and an emphasis on mental health and cultural competency was a theme we couldn't ignore our second recommendation is to create an in Amherst resident oversight board we recommend that Amherst create a resident oversight board that will provide oversight for both the Amherst police department and the crest program we included it in part a of our charge because this recommendation does need money in short funds will be needed for training of people on this board for research the hiring of investigators as needed and stipends this board must be authorized to hear complaints access police and crest records initiate policy reviews and proposals subpoena documents in persons recommend discipline and initiate investigations as needed and be able to provide appropriate confidentiality to those submitting complaints I hope that you all got a chance to read seven gents report one thing that really stood out to the community safety working group and encouraged us to recommend a resident oversight board was this quote the philosophical justification for civilian oversight as a twofold one to compensate for governmental failures to combat police deviance and two to equalize the balance of power between public officials and citizens right now Amherst does not have a formal way that reduces fear for citizens to complain about their police interactions although the chief does make it a point to talk to people who do complain we find it a bit problematic that when we asked them what their formal complaint process was we were told that anybody can call it anytime to any officer and they will handle it we find this highly problematic this board must be authorized to again hear complaints access police and crest records initiate policy reviews and proposals subpoena documents and persons recommend discipline and initiate investigations as needed it is important that this oversight board consists of non-police community members and that it is representative of community demographics this board is also essential to oversee crests we will provide more details about this recommendation in our June 30 report but we wanted to include it here tonight because we recognize the great amount of work we'd like the resident oversight board to take part in and in order for that work to take part we'd like each member of this board to receive a $10,000 stipend we recommend that Amherst create a well-funded department of diversity equity and inclusion with a full-time director and assistant director in completing our charge the CSWG could not ignore the lack of representation in local government in town positions and the climate between BIPOC owned businesses and the town the department will ensure tight alignment between town activity and the push to end systemic white supremacy in Amherst this needs to be strategically addressed with a formal plan and staff to execute it diversity is not a check box it is an ongoing commitment to inclusive environments and this department will show how open the town of Amherst's to creating an equitable and welcoming environment for all of its residents a future Amherst as a place for all the office for diversity equity inclusion within the town structure will elevate the role of the diversity equity inclusion into the hierarchy of the town administration it prioritizes the consideration of inclusion and equity throughout hiring training housing policing policies planning leadership and the environment and the economy it improves decision making that better represents all communities and it is less likely to suffer from unintentional blind spots and biases it assures a more equitable allocation of public resources to all communities not just a few reduces staff turnover increasing employee engagement and awareness and builds community trust in town and offers more options for BIPOC and AAPI community members to be seen as well as heard we talked briefly at the beginning of this presentation about the historical context of white supremacy in Amherst and and it's important to understand that there are other implications that this holds intergenerational trauma is defined as a physical emotional and psychological abuse that has passed down generation to generation through the projection of fear historically Amherst has been home to slave owners and to people that have upheld the saddest quote to make BIPOC people feel unwelcome at the university at the high school in town government and which only perpetuates this generational trauma and fear what impact do you think all of this trauma has had on our BIPOC communities in Amherst a microaggression is defined as a statement action or incident regarded as an instance of indirect subtle or unintentional discrimination against members of a marginalized group such as a racial or ethnic minority we'd like to include this video to illustrate what microaggressions look like in action for people who still don't think that microaggressions are a problem oh you're so well spoken oh just imagine instead of being a stupid comment a microaggression is a mosquito bite it's a compliment mosquito bites and are itch and one of nature's most annoying features if you're only bitten every once in a while no where are you really from uh Cleveland sure it's annoying but it's not that big a deal the problem is that some people get bitten by mosquitoes a lot more than other people i mean a lot more whether it's on a date oh here he was so good excuse me going grocery shopping you know everything happens for a reason just going out commuting to work so when you're gonna have a baby watching tv or just walking down the street with your partner i couldn't even tell you were gay mosquitoes seem to pop up everywhere you know john can be shopping it's like so i love sheer two and getting bit by mosquitoes every goddamn day touch your hair multiple times a day seems like a huge overreaction to people who only get it every once in a while of course beyond just being annoying some mosquitoes carry truly threatening diseases that can mess up your life for years astrophysics maybe you should try this challenging major oh another mosquitoes carry strains that can even kill you look like you was up for trouble okay i felt right so next time you think someone's overreacting just remember some people experience mosquito bites all the time you're also exotic wow and by mosquito bites we mean microaggression now that you've seen this video you may have a better understanding of what a microaggression is and i'd like to tie that into what it means to be a bipoc person in amperst just looking at the town council right now i would consider this to be a white space a white space is designated for white people and these spaces usually are designed intentionally to exclude bipoc folks the accessibility of our town government itself with things like access to an understanding of technology and internet connections flexible work schedules and availability to attend meetings and access to child care service barriers to inclusion historically bipoc folks has never have never dominated government positions political roles college campuses town halls all because these spaces have a historical intention to exclude bipoc folks a fully funded diversity equity and inclusion office would help to create and maintain more inclusive spaces in amperst the following statements are to educate you all on the health consequences racism has on bipoc communities our next slide will summarize how these health issues traumas and stressors translate generation to generation experiencing racism is associated with higher levels of stress which increased the risk for someone who identifies as bipoc for health conditions such as high blood pressure the cdc reports black people are more likely than any other group to have hypertension stress is a result of experiencing racism can also lead to behaviors that may cause further risks to health for example research has found that discrimination is linked to higher rates of smoking alcohol use drug use and unhealthful eating habits in 2015 a medical study found that compared with other racial groups black children with severe pain from appendicitis are less likely to receive pain medication this suggests that racial bias is causing medical professionals use different thresholds of pain for different racial groups either inadvertently or purposefully before administering care the american medical association and the massachusetts medical society have recognized that racism is a serious threat to the health of bipoc citizens internalized racial discrimination elevates stress that has a direct and damaging effect on bodily systems increasing vulnerability to asthma cancer cardiovascular complications obesity diabetes and early death as well as mental health outcomes such as depression substance abuse disorders and sleep disturbances locally for hampshire county the effect of racism has resulted in higher rates of carter cardiovascular disease asthma and diabetes in people of african descent our fourth recommendation is to create a bipoc led amherst youth empowerment center and a bipoc cultural center we recommend that amherst create a bipoc led youth center this is a long needed facility facility that will be open to all youth in town and serve youth of all racial backgrounds the massachusetts department of children children and families quarterly profile for the western massachusetts region fiscal year 2021 quarter two states that 55 percent of kids involved with the department identify as bipoc while just 35 percent identify as white given that bipoc folks in the hampshire county only make up about 17.9 percent of the population this is an alarming indicator that existing child advocacy and resource agencies are not enough the youth center will give bipoc youth a voice a place to excel in a place to participate in after school activities the youth center will provide a wide range of activities such as theater arts fitness classes job readiness and academic support we are recommending this center be fully staffed with at least three individuals to allow this program to run monday through saturday until six p.m the youth center will provide a stable place for youth to go after school and be connected to the bipoc cultural center for families who may need more support the community safety working group was lucky to work with seven gen and gather data specific to young people in amherst their report told us that this district is made up of over 50 percent sorry their report told us that the amherst school district consists of students 50 percent who identify as bipoc between 2007 and 2017 latinx students increase in the elementary schools by 30 percent and english language learners students increased by 35 percent this recommendation was motivated by our forum responses from youth who said there's not many places to go after school and guidance from our young person on the community safety working group dairies cage we can't ignore the overwhelming amount of data that we've also received from seven gen currently free programs in town our gear toward teens are hosted by are posted at the public library where bipoc youth do not see themselves reflected in the races and ethnicities of the employees of the youth center led by bipoc folks is a proactive approach to community safety if young people had a place to go after school where they felt safe and could receive academic help as needed exercise and participate in productive activities it would eliminate a need for heavy surveillance by the amherst police department in downtown and also be a reminder to bipoc youth in the amherst community that they are safe and we care about their growth in seven gen report research stated that youth benefit from culturally and linguistically competent support through purposeful and authentic engagement with community members as the seven gen participant interviews reveal bipoc youth and amherst are surveilled whether in their homes as young drivers and targeted especially downtown quality after school program designed with bipoc teens and minds have shown to support and increase academic achievement and play a role in reducing disparities in other communities youth programs to promote positive social behaviors and emotional develop may strengthen meaningful relationships between youth and community members for similar reasons we are recommending a bipoc cultural center dcf data in our report is relevant because it illustrates that bipoc families are in need of more support right now our consultants research highlights that cultural organizations have helped to raise the quality of life in cities by creating safer communities and that cultural organizations strengthen social connections making communities stronger and more attractive to live in and build revenue and social capital community centers have been used around the world to also bring people together and solve problems and build community research has found that community centers in the southern united states have been used to provide a space for exchanging resources learning about services and gathering information to access emotional support all of these aspects would be just another reason to support a bipoc cultural center bipoc families need the support and white folks in the amherst community need to do more learning to really create community safety and amherst we need to embrace different cultures that exist have a space to uplift and celebrate them and to teach and support families in need our fifth recommendation is to reduce the size of the amherst police department we recommend a reduction in the number of amherst police officers in the apd for three reasons one fewer officers fewer officers will be needed because a significant portion of the current work the apd does will be assumed by the press program funds currently allocated to the apd are now needed to fund cress as an alternative community safety program to fund other proposals in this report and for other services to meet the needs of amherst residents and lastly reducing the size of the apd will reduce the over-policing of bipoc communities we recommend that the number of sworn officers in the apd be reduced to 43 for the start of fiscal year 22 we recommend that no additional apd officers be hired until a robust cress program is implemented and the town is able to determine more precisely what percentage of 911 and other calls will be allocated to the cress program over time the number of sworn officer positions in the apd should be reduced to the minimum number needed to fulfill the remaining police duties after cress is fully resource staffed and implemented cress again is an alternative safety service to the amherst police department the cress program once fully fully funded resource and staffed will lessen the need for the amherst police department with a shift of nonviolent calls to the cress program apd officers will no longer need to operate at full capacity the funding of cress will reduce the apd and lessen profiling of eight of bipoc and api residents and persons visiting amherst our sixth recommendation is to continue the ongoing work of the community safety working group it is critical that the cswg stays together our recommendations need to be executed with input from all of our members we want to be a part of planning our recommendations the specifics and most importantly the hiring process these recommendations have been made very carefully so we would appreciate appreciate being part of the conversation as all of these recommendations are brought to reality this group also plays an important role in gathering input from all segments of the community especially from the bipoc community and other marginalized people maintaining a resident working group with the same stipulations for for this group will be important but until we have a resident oversight board we need to keep the cswg going in order to oversee and support the implementation of these recommendations we again need the community safety working group to stay in place the community safety working group serves as a necessary liaison between the town and the amherst police department and its presence is essential to ensure measures are taken to increase the accountability and transparency regarding policing the community safety working group will help advise the processing of scaling down the police a process that requires overseeing the reallocation of police funding ongoing research of its impact and be a part of the hiring process for crest employees and ensuring all details of recommendation are seen through as proposed and not seen as a vague idea the budget for these recommendations the community safety working group has been working diligently over the past six months as a group we are deeply insulted that since youth protest reparation for embers and defund 413 work alongside our own that the embers police department was fully funded for the next fiscal year this slide is to represent the money that we know that exists for our recommendations to become reality we are at a crossroads right now and forging a path towards our dream destination a movement of reimagining has begun by our youth organizations and the community at large the movement will continue and the only question is which side of history will we be on the cswg urges you to act in favor of the overwhelming majority and stand with revolutionary change towards anti-racism and in racial equity in the town of amherst this is going to feel uncomfortable because we are going to create something that has never existed before and that our community has never experienced before but we can assure you that it is worth it and we must do this we must show our elderly bipoc residents that their efforts will come to fruitation we must assure our bipoc youth that their futures are bold and bright and that we will live and that they will live in a community that supports their whole being and authentic selves unapologetically and without fear i am now going to pass it back to brianna to read the town council's affirmation be it further resolved that the amherst town council here by affirms its commitment to eradicating the effects of systemically racist practice of town government and town affiliated organizations and will review and revise its policies procedures bylaws values goals and missions through an anti-racism lens to foster an unbiased and inclusive environment that is free of discrimination harassment and negative stereotyping toward any person or group be it further that the amherst town council will engage an individual and collective work to understand bias and the historical role racism has played in amherst and the community at large in order to better lead a town which is safe welcoming and equitable place for all people be it further resolved that the town of amherst counts the town of amherst town council is committed to engaging in a path of remedy for black amherst residents who have been injured or harmed by discrimination and racial injustice be it further resolved that the amherst town council acknowledges this resolution as a first step in the reparative process and understands there are substantial work that needs to be done which will take considerable time and commitment to meet its goals of being an anti-racism town as a reminder to all of you integrity is when your intentions and actions meet on a consistent basis these are your words not ours we hope you act with integrity and reject the budget so a new budget can be written with the intentions to dismantle white supremacy and keep the entire community safe by by implementing our recommendations thank you that was very informative um presentation capturing your report and the research that has gone into creating that report we're going to open it up for counselors to ask questions and make comments at this time and so I am looking to see who has any comments at this point Alyssa there there's so much here and we appreciate so much that we were able to get your report both reports a week in advance of tonight's meeting because you've done so much work one of the things I've wondered about since most of us haven't actually seen your meetings is that when you've met week after week is the amount that ended up in the town manager's budget was the beginning planning amount of 130 the amount in your proposal is obviously much larger do you see any way to to phase this like if you had a chance to even have a conversation about that yet if 130 isn't enough which it clearly is not and if yet the town manager feels like he can't possibly find the funding for all of it right now have you thought about what might be a reasonable not ideal but a possible way of breaking it up more or have you even had a chance to have that conversation yet so my plan is to directly questions to the co-chairs and if they have anybody else they'd like to call and let them do that Brianna um miss walker is it okay if I answer this councilman councilwoman now brewer I really appreciate this question and you for listening to our presentation the community safety working group finds that the press program is not going to be effective unless it is fully funded I appreciate that you've got a chance to read the report beforehand and some of the questions that were sent to us beforehand from the council was how are we going to evaluate markers for success in the first year the second year for the press program these markers won't be able to be created unless we implement all of what we're asking for if we only implement half we're not going to get the same results and additionally our other recommendations are equally as important to the press program as um alternative safety models alone do not make communities more racially equitable so we have to take a preventative approach with our other recommendations as well okay Darcy please I'm sorry um okay um I just wanted to thank you very much for your presentation and I want to state that I very much endorse the idea of creating a director position for an office of diversity equity and inclusion because I see with my climate action work that the only way that initiatives put forward can really be fully implemented is by doing so uh funding the operations budget to fund those types of positions show the commitment of the town to fulfill the goals that we've set for racial equity and climate action and it's really impossible to implement broad-based plans for fundamental change without accompanying those plans with with staffing and um also I just wondered if it's possible to ask Paul the question Alyssa brought up about um the possibility of phasing and funding of the Crest program because that's another thing I heard I heard Paul say um that that it was the intention to fully fund it at some you know at some point so I'm just wondering if if he could address that the possibility of somehow now committing to a phased in plan to fund the whole program okay Paul so thank you for recognizing me I do think that was a very powerful presentation so I appreciated the work that went into that um yes that's the work that we're um working on now in terms of if the community safety working group say basically put a stake in the ground saying this is what community safety looks like how do we get there and that's the work that we're doing internally and I think that's why I hope to have some um some work on that prepared by Thursday night for you for the for the finance committee Lynn before the next comment can I just add something please I also just want to add um I just want to let council members know that phasing has been done in Denver, Colorado and in Eugene, Oregon both times there has been a need for more coverage so based off of the programs that we're trying to make fit for Amherst we are trying to learn lessons that their programs have already learned and phasing is not effective thank you uh Andy Andy yes I last term my uh partner was to get to the unmute uh so I appreciate very much the presentation also and um we will be coming at it as a I'm chair of the finance committee so I'll be meeting with you again in a few days um to look at it from the lens of the finance committee and what um and I don't want to uh sort of presume anything about that discussion whatsoever I can't speak for the committee I can only speak for myself and so in speaking for myself there are two pieces that um I thought about when you've talked about quite a bit and uh but I do have some thoughts about it too and I just want to share with you if you don't know me personally you had little introductions at the beginning my little introduction is that my background is I had a career in doing legal aid work and that was all that I did from the time I graduated from law school until I transitioned out of the legal career altogether and I was the both director of the western massachusetts legal aid program and active on the national level and doing consulting work with legal aid programs there's a couple one of the things that I um found in the work that I did there is the transition is not easy and that I appreciate what she just said about programs in communities that are totally unlike amherst because um and I said they're unlike amherst because uh Eugene Oregon and Denver Colorado and Albuquerque are all substantially substantially larger communities and operating in very different realities but any program requires a transition plan to go from where it is at one point to any significant change and uh the steps in transition um can be very complex I don't want to suggest that we can have a conversation about that tonight but I do think that it's not easy just based upon the experience of working in management in a legal aid setting the other thing that I thought about have thought about quite a bit and I want to just raise the question now but it's not one that has to be answered today because I don't think that we're prepared to spend that much time at it but I do think that it's very important if we're going to have two program two departments that are running in parallel um and each needs to be large enough to run effectively to figure out how large the police department has to be to be effective to do its work and how large the CES program has to be to do its work and that we that needs to be examined and then we need to consider what the consequence of that is in the context of a community the size that we have and the resources we have that size and I'm going to close by giving an example that has been very important to me in the work that I did in legal aid and that's domestic violence there's no question that without police department working with legal aid and working with domestic violence programs in Hampshire county being safe passage and ultimately working with the people who are victims of domestic violence but there has to be an adequate support in order to enforce restraining orders and enforce court orders otherwise the work of CES passage and getting restraining orders in the legal aid program and getting the legal orders through a court don't work they and you need to have immediately available police to respond when the victim of domestic violence calls for help and that there's no substitute to I'm worried that that is one example that I lived with in my career that we if we end up with an inadequately staffed police department it goes against all of the work that I had done on behalf of victims of domestic violence in a 35-year legal aid career so I do ask that some thought be given to the question of how big each department needs to be to be effective in order to have a really good conversation going forward about how we can get from where we've been to where you envision we should be going so thank you Brianna do you want to speak to that now but also know that that will be part of the question on the table on Thursday evening absolutely so council member Steinberg I want to one thank you for your comments similar to you I actually also share a background in law my degree is in legal studies from the department of the department the university of Massachusetts Amherst and it's interesting that you worked in legal aid I spent most of my summers at the law service center in greenfield doing somewhat similar work so I understand the angle you're coming from so first I want to answer the question in regards to the calls and the transition period and two I want to open up the second part of that question in regards to domestic violence open to the group because the community safety working group has met with safe passages to discuss topics like this and we also do have members of our community safety working groups who may be able to answer this a little bit better than I can so first I want to know that the town manager chief of police and communication center director are currently arranging for leap leap stands for law enforcement action partnership to do an analysis of calls and amherst to get a more exact and more expert estimate of number of the number or percentage of calls that crest could be expected to handle leaps current protocols use one year's data from 2019 from 2019 for this type of analysis in order to avoid the distortions in the data that could have been created by the pandemic this analysis will be shared with the community safety working group and again I just want to emphasize to you the working group does understand that this transition is going to be tough but for members of the BIPOC community and other marginalized groups this discomfort has existed for a while so a little bit of discomfort in defunding the police is going to have to happen to accommodate the needs and the safety of all amherst residents I now want to open it up to other community safety working group members to address the answer to address the question around domestic violence please raise your hand if you're a member of the community safety working group and want to add to these comments and alisha alisha alisha yes thank you um I just wanted to add slightly on to what Breonna to what Breonna said um and just state that the first half of our charge also specifically stated that we were to identify tasks that were currently being performed by the police department that can be outsourced to other social um to other public safety services um and so we have identified those things that can be outsourced and so I would say just as a basic example if we are um functioning at minimum capacity this year due to COVID and due to the frozen police positions but we didn't have any issues as to capacity now and what we are going to be doing is going to be reducing even further the number of calls and things that the police need to respond to then that can be used just as a basis for measurement just because we don't have any other real um numerical numbers to measure off of at this time and so those calls that are being outsourced and moved should not call for a larger police force because they're being moved away from the police department they no longer have to respond to those calls and that also speaks to the the necessity for more funding for the crest so that they have the resources to respond to the calls that the police were once responding to that do not require armed response and in terms for domestic violence I do also work in the legal field um I spent three years working at the courthouse and I do work for a law firm now so I also understand the lens that you're coming from and I've also dealt a deal with um domestic violence survivors and in what I have collected in my experience most domestic violence survivors say that the police were not particularly helpful but it is other agencies where they receive the resources that they needed in order to combat what they were going through and so I think that um not in terms of enforcing particularly the restraining orders but just in first responding to like we said earlier low risk conflicts so I know there's a there's a spectrum of domestic violent calls and that's why this work also needs to be fun there needs to be more funding going into the analyzing of which calls specifically can be moved to the crest program and so that just further emphasizes the real need for funding even just to get this off the ground because a lot of research will be required and if we want this to be successful and we want this to work out then we need to put the resources into figuring these things out and that will also cost us money are there other members from the community safety working group that have a comment on this I'm I'm looking over at the raised hand Brianna go ahead I also just want to reiterate these are really great questions and that's also why in our recommendations we recommended um a BIPOC cultural center with the intention to showcase BIPOC culture and support the community but also to provide case management for families as a preventative solution to things that things like this domestic violence um I think that a center such as this would be able to centralize resources such as safe passages and connect to community members that may have been discouraged to connect to those resources otherwise maybe Joe thank you and and I also want to add my thanks to the entire working group for all of the work they've done and the presentation today um so many thoughts and questions and all going through my head and I know I can't ask them all today um but I'm going to try and focus on a couple um and some are questions for the working group and some are probably questions for Paul the youth center and the cultural um center um a lot of the descriptions the working group provided in its presentation about these two items um seem to have some overlaps and you mentioned one with the library but that the BIPOC children are not and teens are not necessarily comfortable going to the library but I I think about the family center at the schools um our recreation department our our library um and especially an expanded library and so have was there any thinking about um the overlap that things are providing and how maybe some of the youth center or cultural center could be provided within some of these other ones with the hiring and I want to be clear with the hiring of of BIPOC staff to help run them but within other programs um in terms of the policing I absolutely support the creation of a Crest program I think it probably needs more money in the next year I would like to figure out how much more it needs to get it up and running in a good pilot um so I have a lot of questions for Paul on that one but I had two concerns in the report um the first one was mutual aid was mentioned about how we have a UMass PD department that if we lowered our police department UMass PD could potentially respond and I wanted to ask whether um you thought about whether that was appropriate um and I say that because when I attended some of the meetings I heard a lot of concerns about the UMass PD responses um and and some of the concerns that our BIPOC members had about how UMass PD respond to various things um and we would not control um their response or their training on racial bias and racial incidences and so I get concerned about relying on a mutual aid there versus our own police department and then I just encourage you to think about what the minimum for both a Crest program and a police department would be to actually provide 24 seven staffing when you get into vacations and all and I I assume this is something that was talked about with the APD chief um but there's got to be a minimum no matter how many calls you're answering and I just don't know what that number is and whether even what you've proposed for the Crest program is is sufficient for that 24 seven staffing when you get to vacations and such shallony I'm sorry it's uh Brianna did you want to respond to any of that at this point or again the opportunity is there for Friday I mean Thursday at 5 30 absolutely I'd definitely like to respond to some of those questions now Mandy Jo thank you for listening to your to the our presentation and for these thoughtful questions and concerns so I want to be clear that to ensure Crest is successful the program should be fully funded with 26 employees from day one there will be no phasing up this program so I wanted to answer that off the bat in regards to the overlap with youth programs I think similar to the police department as a whole the intention of institutions versus adding intentions are two different things the intention of law enforcement today the Amherst PD's mission is to serve everybody in the community they've done trainings to do that and it's not happening I think there's a parallel between that and existing social service programs that the town of Amherst has to offer and it would be nice for Amherst to stand behind something intentionally for BIPOC youth and families I also just wanted to add on to what Brianna said which I think was a wonderful well thought out answer just because versus you said do you think it would be possible to just use these already existing spaces within higher BIPOC staff and possible I don't think is like yes it's possible but will it be effective and will it accomplish what we're trying to accomplish is the real question and I think this goes back again to to white spaces in Amherst and that all of these spaces that exist in Amherst have been created to be white spaces and what we're trying to do is to create spaces for the BIPOC community. Deborah Ferrer from the committee has her hand up and so I'm going to call on her because she may want to respond to these questions Deborah. I just want to make sure can you all hear me because I'm having some internet issues so that's why I'm not on video thank you all for these questions and thank you Brianna and Alicia for obviously answering them at you know the way that you all have been very fully and thoroughly I mean I just want to add to the fact again to state what Brianna and Alicia has stated that we've done a lot of research we've really focused on you know getting a lot of the information especially through 7Gen from the marginalized from the most vulnerable communities that basically are saying that they are living in fear of the police interactions right so if that's the case right and if you all are committed to really dealing with making Amherst a space for everyone we have to be able to really look at these recommendations as ways especially in terms of crest right the fact that the police we need to have you know another a way to respond that's unarmed that will de-escalate and will fully resolve situations as opposed to a lot of times even Chief Livingstone said that it's it's been too much for them to handle that they haven't been able to handle all of these especially when it's when it's dealing with mental health when it's dealing with homelessness substance abuse that they're always having to go elsewhere to try to resolve some of these issues so we need to have a crest program as Alicia and Brianna has stated right off the bat that is fully funded fully resource fully staffed so that it can be it can have a chance to be successful now you're asking us for my new details right which is something that we'll have some time to really figure out in terms of how many people indeed obviously you saw in our report that we said three shifts at least four four four people so that there's two teams right we're saying two teams go out so at least that there's four people so there's two two teams of two people to go out to deal with with situations as they arrive now if the situation is dealing with something that's going to to create any type of violence yes then they can call for backup for the police right so we're not saying for these unarmed teams to deal with violent situations we we haven't made that statement that's very clear in our report our report is to make sure that they're dealing with with situations like noise complaints and other types of disturbances that are nonviolent and and I've seen and others have seen and I'm a BIPOC person where the police are called to those situations and instead of de-escalating they escalate those situations especially when BIPOC populations are involved and so what happens is that when they get to those certain situations as BIPOC people what happens is that either they're arresting people or they're making the situation worse so what we want to do is to as we stated fully fund and then what we've had with the other with the other recommendations is to really get at the root of creating spaces that are safe for BIPOC populations but also for other all all residents will benefit from a youth empowerment center from a BIPOC cultural center from a diversity equity inclusion department right because when we're whereas the versus possible as inclusive as possible everyone wins right and so you gave us the charge and you and you said that this was a priority so therefore how are we going to prioritize the funding for this right because if if you gave us a charge and now there's no funding then why were we doing all of this work since November right so I'm just asking these questions and these are questions that we need to think through because you really need to think about the commitment and how to to get this accomplished and so I mean I'll stop here but I hope I've given you a little bit more information to ponder. Brianna with your agreement I would like to call on Mrs. Pat because she has her hand up. Yes. Can people hear me? If I may call you that Mrs. Pat please. Oh okay can people hear me? Yes. Okay good okay so first of all I want to thank our co-chairs as you can see tonight it was done on purpose we wanted our young generation to take the lead at CSWG. I just want to add to what everybody else have said in terms of why not have the existing overlapping services for us to to use that so my answer to that is that if we look at that at the town government and the town officers all we have are white folks who are the administrators the APD is a white man we have the white town manager we have the DPW white man except for the fire department where we have an African American and so we are recommending strategically to have Crest Program to be a department of its own for alternative public service where you have a BIPOC director in the same level as the APD chief the DPW and so on and so forth and also for the we also want to create another department for for the diversity equity and inclusion that department will oversee by a person of color or BIPOC administrator and will also run the the youth empowerment program as well as as well as the BIPOC multicultural center so that's the you know we need to start creating positions where we have BIPOC folks on the table making decisions in this town that impact all the residents right now it's not happening the faces with the town council are white who are making decisions for for the town they are they are mostly white administrators we need to take the the balance we need to include more BIPOC administrators so to be part of the decision making that will benefit everyone so so that's part of the reason right now there are some programs for youth in the in this town but it's not our spaces it is white spaces it's run by white supervisors or whatever and that's not it's not encouraging our youth or our families to access those those services and so that's part of what CSWG is trying to accomplish to get more decision making to be more equalized in this town thank you thank you for your comments Brianna can I go on to some other questions and then come back or no I just like to add something very quick I'll be brief so I wanted to address Mandy Jo's concern about the mutual aid with the UMass police department I think that's only another reason for the for the town of Amherst to not feel uncomfortable defunding the APD we are a town operating with three other police departments the over not the overwhelming but the amount of young people and people in the community who came to our forums to complain about the UMass police department and ask for alternatives should be assembled to the town council that the Crest program is needed and that college students are probably going to want to use Crest as well I I I do need to just point out that Hampshire college no longer has a police department so there are only two others in town Hampshire college has a public safety office and we now provide police services for them thank you for sharing there's also a movement on Amherst college to try to get rid of their police too which creates another question Dorothy Pam I want to thank the group for all of your work and your insight and also for explaining the youth program better I do think it is a key element of the work that needs to be done and particularly when you stress it will be BIPOC run but open to all of the young people of the town I think it's really important then that all kids can get the kind of support that only some kids get when their parents have the money and the time to drive them around to put together all of the educational recreational programs that are important but I I just want to say that I support your committee I also support the Amherst police department I don't know how to do both at this moment but I think it sounds as if you are trying to do it change has to come but it just has to be equitable somehow but I do agree that change has to come and when it comes it will be big so that is why I will support your request for the full funding as they say I have no idea how we would do it and I don't want to do it at the cost of the careers of the people in the Amherst police department but I'm hoping that somehow it can be figured out how we can do this big change in a way that's fair and equitable thank you Shalini yeah I also want to thank the committee members I tried to attend quite a few meetings and I saw the sincerity the hard work and the really difficult work that each one of you did so I think all of us really from the bottom of our it's thank you for the work and I also want to thank Jen Moisten and Paul for supporting the committee in the way they did I think all of us in the council I can speak for myself at least want to ensure that the investment we're making that all of you are making is going to be successful in serving our goals of safety for all our residents and with that in mind I have a couple of questions one for the committee one for Paul and one for police chief which I don't know if he can get answered now or we can send it to him and I think what I'm trying to understand like I mean there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that we need a radical change in policing and the Crest program is exactly what we need and I'm really proud and looking forward to implementing that and seeing it succeed my question where I'm still not clear and need some help is how did what is the basis for the number of people that you're proposing and the budget for the Crest program because I heard the number 20 percent of the calls being directed to Crest in which case that would be about one million dollars of the budget and and if you compare it with cahoots which is in Oregon with a population of 168 thousand and has a budget of two percent of the police budget of 66 million which so their budget for cahoots is 1.3 million and we're asking for something like 2.8 million I believe and so it would be really helpful to understand what what is the basis for that number I did hear someone mentioned leaps and if that is what is going to provide us the number of calls that will be directed to this program and so if that's the case then are we not clear what percentage of the calls are going to be directed at this point and if you're not clear about that can we for sure ask for 18 people in in the Crest program at this point and shift the budget and so that's one of that's for the committee the question for paul is what do you think is needed to launch this program so it's set up for success and what you know with the budget that you've proposed how do you plan to implement a what in this year to make sure that we succeed that this program succeeds and the question for the police chief is what kind and percentage of calls do you see and being moved to Crest and which calls might involve an overlap of the police and maybe with the fire chief as well so those are the questions for now thank you okay so I let me just take definitely go to the ones for the community safety working group unless paul indicates I would suggest that his plan is to bring something forward on Thursday and so rather than try to answer that tonight and although chief living stone has joined us in the audience unless he indicates to me that he's prepared to answer that question I would also defer that question until Thursday so Brianna or Alicia I just wanted to make a quick comment and then I'll pass it over to miss walker shalini I think these are really great questions one of the questions that we were forwarded before this meeting happened was what we have learned from other programs and I want to emphasize that although Amherst is Amherst in Eugene Oregon is Eugene Oregon the Kahoot's program has fallen short with the amount of people they're able to serve with that budget so when we came up with the budget for the Crest program we were learning from what they did wrong we wanted to come in at this program with something fully funded that could serve the community immediately not half of the community not a quarter of the community but serve everybody and that's why that budget was so large and I know it looks big and I know it's uncomfortable to move away from the status quo but we needed this program yesterday I also just wanted to add thank you again also Shalini for your comments and questions I just wanted to address that like yes you did say something about radical change in policing and that is actually the second half of our charge to address actual policing methods and protocols this is an alternative to policing so we want for the people that policing is not working for them what is their safety service what who can they call when there is nobody who is there to protect them and this is the alternative this is not a change in policing this is an alternative what people can use instead of the police when this does not work for them so I just really wanted to emphasize that and then I also wanted to share that the estimates that we got for the amount of calls that we expected for Crest to be handling we got directly from police data that was given to us from the APD and there was a breakdown of the calls received over the last five years and they were broken down into categories and so we got that number directly from the number of nonviolent calls received by the Amherst police the last two years it was actually a very similar number off by almost just five calls I believe within the last two years and so that would result in 30% of the calls being handled by the Crest program and so we don't expect this to be an exact number this was just an estimate that we came up with based off of the data that we have and we do understand that further research will be needed to determine the exact amount of calls that will be transferred but just given this we expect it to be a pretty large number and so that just also emphasizes the need for funding off the bat because they won't be able to combat anything with a portion of the funding and then I also just wanted to say that Kahootz it has a similar goal but it's an entirely different program it's inside of their police department we want this to be completely separate from the police department so that it can be a complete alternative and so that also leads to the reason why this would be a lot higher in terms of the budget I would defer to Russ who has his hand up he might want to go I'm sorry I didn't see that Russ yes and thank you for all your fine questions one of the differences between the Crest proposal and the Kahootz program and Eugene is that that program is contracted out to a mental health agency and they handle only the mental health and substance abuse type question type calls our program we're looking at also handling noise complaints and trespass and you know that other category that Breonna referred to I did speak with Amos Irwin at the law enforcement action partnership he's had only a very preliminary look at the Amherst data but he felt that we were likely to fall within the range that they find for other departments in the 20 to 35 range and possibly even on the high end of that range um so he wasn't he wasn't giving me a number but he said there's no shortage of opportunity in the calls that the APD is currently handling to have things picked up by a Crest program thank you Russ um are there any other comments from community safety working group people on this particular issue Breonna I want to thank everyone for their questions and I think there are going to be a lot of specific questions that come up so I want to emphasize what Ms. Ferrara said that the community safety working group is willing to iron out details but you have to give us time this we've done a great amount of work in such a short amount of time and we want to be part of the hiring process and the implementation of all these recommendations we don't want to hand you something vague and let you guys fill in the gaps and create it we want to be a part of a part of implementing all of this to make it into reality and in order to do that the community safety working group needs to be continued thank you Mindy Jo I just have a couple more questions um you in your report spoke about a dispatch service we had some dispatch supervisors and some dispatchers in the budget um but today in your presentation you said um people would access the Crest program by calling 911 or the program directly um and so it goes back to duplication of services our 911 dispatch service response is dispatched for not just police right now it's for police fire and EMS and um and so I guess my question with that one is are you looking at at creating a duplicate dispatch service um that does something different than our 911 dispatchers at this point um or or something else I didn't quite understand that because that's about 900 000 of the budget from what I could figure out um and so that's a significant amount of the budget um for something that I was looking at as potentially duplicative of something we're already providing um and then I want to thank um Alicia for talking about what part two of your charges because I had a lot of questions um about how to change policing um not the alternative um and so thank you for mentioning that that is coming later um because I won't ask those questions because I will expect answers to them later so thank you for mentioning that um and then to Paul um I assume you'll provide this on Thursday but our charter has a reorganization plan requirement um so just on Thursday I hope you address um whether you intend to file one and about the timing of filing a reorganization plan and whether that would include a diversity equity and inclusion office and whether that would include a separate department for the press program okay let's begin with the question regarding dispatch and I'm going to look to Brianna or another member of the committee Alicia yes Brianna this walker has her hand up so I'm going to let her okay please so um so this is another one of the details that we don't have a definite answer on but we did offer a suggestion because um a few of the members um one of myself being included had the chance to actually visit the dispatch center um and we were able to learn how it works there and so there is the ability to use the current dispatching services and um their system and there is a way to keep it separate from police records and to keep it confidential so that police data is not being accessed with crest data and there is a way for us to access their switchboards but have our own line so we have we've talked about some of these things and so it is a possibility but we want people to be able to call crests directly also um and so I'm not sure if that necessarily needs the entire switchboard and all of the equipment also again but just so that they have the option to to con to connect directly with crest but that also if you're in a pinch and you just call 911 and you're not familiar with crest but but what you're really needing is crest services that you can call 911 and they will know that this call should be dispatched to crest. Okay thank you. Mrs. Pat you had your hand up and so I'm going to call on you. Okay I was going to say some of the stuff that Alicia just stated when we start the crest program not everybody will have the new crest number to call so we want to make sure that people are still able to access crest services if they call 911. We hope that in years to come people will get used to calling crest directly so we don't see this as a duplication of services but complimentary is the way we say it. Thank you. And Deborah Farah you have your hand up also. Yes thank you and I think I'm going to kind of you know say some of the similar things thank you Alicia and Mrs. Pat for for already kind of highlighting some of those and and for me is just to kind of give you all the sense of when we were writing this it was more so because we also wanted as we said crest to be a separate program from the police for people to feel comfortable to contact crest directly because from all of the research from all of the information that we got from community members from the forums from surveys and from seven generation talking with community members right is that the fact that they distrust the police that they inferior them they they get dehumanized by the police that they get you know treated differently than other you know residents in in in in Amherst and so therefore we need to make sure that there's dispatchers also at crest right dispatchers that have the equipment there that are able to get the information and as Ms. Pat said obviously is going to have to ramp up because people are not going to know the crest number you know right away so the other part too is that we need to make sure that there's a full you know media campaign education campaign marketing campaign to to to let people know about crest right to let people know that you know Amherst trust crests and that we want them to to be able to handle these types of calls and so we need to make sure that this patches and that's why we said you know one supervisor per shift along with two dispatchers because calls are going to be coming into crest separately you know as well as 911 is going to get calls that obviously they're going to have to decide whether it goes to crest or whether it goes to the police but while we put that funding in there is to make sure that crest as an independent program has sufficient staff and has the equipment available to be able to be responsive and I'm sure that that is going to ramp up as people know more about crest and and the word get gets out there to the community that crest is fully functional. Shalini you have your hand up you're muted. Okay I had a couple of other questions and so what this may be more pertaining to the June report but if you don't want to answer them now but just keep a note of it if you want me to send it later I can do that but one of the questions I had was like if you are looking for more diversity in our staff and specifically speaking to police department because I was just thinking if a person of color wants to join the police department so that we have more diversity in the police the remaining police department then and we're freezing the hiring if you've thought about that and you don't have to answer it now but that was one question coming up that how can we have more diversity even in the police so yeah and then the second question I had was this is I think more pertaining to the police chief again are any particular officers disproportionately implicated in community complaints and concerns and and maybe you'll already have those answers we know that in places like Philadelphia Chicago relatively small number of officers account for a large share of our use of force complaints and that feels the bad apple claims but it also feels the systemic problems and concerns if and when nothing is done to remove at least discipline these officers so that was something maybe for the police chief and the third question I had within this I'm speaking as a qualitative researcher myself having taught qualitative research and grounded theory that it would be helpful to like it seems like the concerns and I think Mr. Rusk friend and Jones raised that question that the concerns were due to experiences were they due to personal experiences or experience nationally and separating what the locus of concern is will really help the police and help us facilitate solutions to address the problems that are unique to Amherst because as it stands the report the statements that are there about 80 to 85% of the statements are general and not pertaining to people's lived experiences in Amherst and I think it's really important to separate the two because the solutions will be different based on on what the the issues were um Dr. Sonia Johnson Sanji Sanji thank you Johnson is it Anderson I'm Anderson yes thank you please go ahead so in terms of the uh first of all we want to want to remind us all that the BIPOC community talking about the experiences of police interaction um that renders them a vulnerable community because there is overwhelming fear overwhelming um unwillingness even to come forward and to speak those experiences we had to retain the services of a licensed therapist because the experiences are re-traumatizing also so we tried as best as we could to protect the identities of the the participants in our study um uh and and we promise that in the informed consent that their identities and many of the experiences that they that they that they shared with us are of such a specific nature that were we to uh give the full measure of uh those quotes that um they would run the risk of being identified so I want to assure us all that the the the experiences and um many of the comments that the uh respondents made although those comments may appear to you to be sort of of a general nature that these are comments that directly relate to the experiences that our participants have had with APD and UMass police so um that is what we want to um assure you we are we think very seriously the confidentiality of our participants and um and and that's what and we'll stick to that thank you Shalini oh I think Dr. Shabazz has a comment as well um okay where are you there you are Dr. Shabazz please sorry hello I wanted to address the issue of complaints uh in the police department part of our research did reveal of course not only is there fear in terms of interactions with the police by the BIPOC and AAPI community they also fear going to the police and lodging a complaint one having to do with they feel it goes nowhere once you complain but also a feeling of safety and within our research um in 2014 the former chief of police of Boston came into this community to consult with the police both the UMass police department and the town police department after the the Blarney blowout um uh situation and one of his recommendations that was never taken up was to have a formal complaint process that has never been taken up within the police department in a way that allows for safety and anonymity and a feeling that there won't be reprisals against citizens and residents who file complaints so that is a fact it is in the report and that has never uh been something that we as a town have actually instituted in some way to have our citizens and residents feel safe and doing thank you Shelly um I'm sorry Brianna you have your hand up also I just want to address the concern about hiring I'm sure that we'll be able to address that more thoroughly in the second part of our charge but I do want to just read you this section that we sent out to the town council ahead of time in regards to hiring so we're recommending that hiring decisions for Cress be made by a committee that includes the director of the Cress program BIPOC community members from the community safety working group um and the director of diversity equity and inclusion um the Cress program will prioritize bilingual candidates so to kind of counterpart the chief of police difficulties in recruiting diverse candidates I think the Cress program will enlarge the pool of candidates um to promote diversity and safety services in Amherst and I also want to say I do understand your concern about these being national trends and not unique to Amherst but I'm just wondering like are we going to wait for somebody to die at the hands of police before we take this serious for new in massachusetts for new in massachusetts um what really activated this type of reform and change was waiting until somebody died and I just don't want somebody to lose a member of our community to wait to change Can I just speak to that yes uh so the reason I'm raising that question is of course not to as as you suggested that we wait for but it's to actually identify what are the specific because even after we defund the police and what is remaining of the police if you don't solve for the challenges like the complaint process for example that's a very specific process and system failure that needs to be put in place and so in terms of what we're hearing from people I think it's really important to understand what are the specific experiences of people and and I understand and appreciate the concern of concealing the identity of people but when we you know but when there are statements like police don't need to acknowledge their biases before they kill black people or good police officers are still maintaining oppressive systems I think it would be helpful to show these statements as a separate category but not as people's lived experiences because we know in Amherst so far and hopefully in the future there will be no violent experiences of people so I'm just saying that it's in order to actually correct the systems and processes and practices it is going to be really helpful and valuable to separate out the the lived experiences from people's impressions based and fears and which are very legit fears I am not disputing that at all so can I speak Yes D. Thank you so I believe Dr. Sanji Johnson Anderson tried to provide the reason why many of these sound like generalities the things that offered more specificity Shalini basically identifies with much clarity the interactions that were negative in some very harmful ways with the residents of Amherst so I agree with you that it would be helpful to identify the issues that need correcting specifically but first off we were unable to do that safely without then identifying these situations that these folks were caught up in with the police and so we did not include them for that reason because we actually created contracts with our community ambassadors who then went out to interview these within their affinity groups and we had to guarantee their feeling of safety and we did that as the researchers that we are and so we continue to do that but I do agree with you that at some point we were not able to do it within a two months time and also doing the work that we were tasked to do within four weeks analyze and then write up a report to have it to you today right so if given more time I think it would be helpful to parse that out not only in terms of you know good research practices that I believe we did do and we stuck to and we accomplished within two months but it would be much more helpful in terms of giving you the specificity in which to offer some more corrective you know practices and policies so this could be something to do in the future just as Brianna and Alicia have outlined continuing the the CSWG as a means to extend this community engaged type of research that is that is sorely needed here in Amherst. Dr. Sanjeev, Johnson, Malka would you like to say anything else on that? I took my hand down because I absolutely endorse Dr. Shabazz's response. Thank you. Deborah Ferreira did you have anything else you wanted to say on that? Yes I do. First I mean I want to say that I think you asked about like the diversity in the police department I think some of these questions we're going to be dealing with it in our second part of our charge that's not anything that we we were charged to deal with with the first part right first part was kind of deal with alternatives to public safety services and that's what we're focusing on but the June 30th report we will go into diversity we'll go into hiring we'll go into you know all those other aspects around reforming right the organizational structure of the police department now in terms of what Seven Gen did and I want to applaud them again you know for the work that they did and what they included in their report which you know they took so much care and sensitivity to really make sure that they had a therapist because this was all I have to you know make sure to impress upon you all how retraumatizing it was for them to go and go talk to to folks I mean they I think they explained it how they weren't even able to you know at the first you know at the first time going out get people to even come and talk to them because why because people are afraid I don't know how many times I have to say this throughout this this this presentation that we've had and in my response people are afraid the police they're afraid that they're going to be retaliated against they're going to be profiled they're going to be harassed they're going to be pursued they're going to be intimidated and and when they have interaction with the police it is long-term traumatization right when and and not only within the seven generation report but also in our public forums I don't know if you all had a chance to to hear the two two public forums that we had countless people said that they no longer come to Amherst because they're afraid of the interactions with police if they are by far they do not come into our town I think I want to pause there let's say this again people are afraid to come into Amherst if they are BIPOC if they are younger if they look a certain way right they're afraid they are going to be harassed intimidated profiled retaliated by the police okay that's why seven gen had to take so much care about the comments that they had in there which are specifically the Amherst Amherst in interaction with the police not nationally not globally right here in Amherst I know that it's difficult for for you all and for folks to really understand that this is happening right here in this town that I've heard over and over again because right I've been here over 23 years and even longer because my brothers came to UMass when I was eight years old so I've been coming to this area for a very long time for like 40 years and there's always looked upon as the happy valley right happy valley for who who's who's who's a happy residence right are we saying happy valley for everyone are we saying happy valley for just a few few that look like a certain group that are that have you know own owners of property those are the ones that were saying a happy so we need to really you know hone in and stop really thinking about you know what we're doing here and the charge that we were given and the fact that you all stated that you all are committed to making this an inclusive you know town that this is going to be an inclusive town for everyone so why are we continuing to kind of you know talk about these things in the abstract as opposed to really focusing in on the information that we provided that is there and the charge that we were given and the fact that we were responsive to this charge and in creating something because again we weren't charged to create the same a program you were charged to create something different right because the same program of what what has been in place has failed let's be clear that has failed that does not work because people are saying they do not feel safe so if if someone if people in our town are saying they do not feel safe then we need to create something that will make them feel safe so now our charge and what i'm putting on to you all right and what i'm charging you all town council and the rest of the members in in this community that are not by pop is to really think how are we going to get this done how are we going to make this happen how are we going to make this a priority and and really stop with the quibbling we need to stop with the quibbling and really get to how are we going to get this done because we've provided ample information through public forums the surveys and seven gen saying that this is a need and this is a priority i'll stop there thank you ever i am going to now go to the audience but i'm going to be very clear we are only going to have public comment for about 15 minutes if we do not we've already had two hours of public comment about defunding the police last week so this needs to be about what's been proposed the community safety working group and their serious and terrific efforts over some very very intense months come forward so i'm going to ask the first person is angela angelica castro please enter the room state your name where you live and please keep your comments the two minutes so we have time for everybody angelica you need to unmute so we can hear you there you go did i accidentally raise my hand you did okay well i guess it was meant to be um because i didn't press it so i guess i would just say um really really supporting um oops am i can you hear me yes we can okay um just supporting what's been said that debbert mentioned i've i've grown up here well i raised my four children here since they were one and three and they're uh two older 24 22 um 16 and 14 and so i think i just wanted to support what folks were saying around i know that there's a lot of fear and trauma and so um and i hear that all the time i do a lot of trainings around diversity equity inclusion with organizations greenfield savings bank amherst chamber of commerce um just a lot of businesses here and we hear that from you know by pock staff you know in terms of white supremacy culture but also you know white um i mean by pock residents and and customers and so i just wanted to you know kind of really think about it is really getting that it's systemic it's not just the amherst police department it's not just you know businesses but it's it's really um it's it runs deep you know it's so i just wanted to support what was being said and just wanted to also um just show my gratitude for the community service working group for all the work that they're doing i know a lot of them and they're so dedicated and committed to doing this work um to represent our voices uh so i just wanted to as a by pock a long-term resident and you know graduated from you mass my holy oak college i teach at you mass and my holy oak college as well and i just wanted to support everything that they were saying and for their work and also for seventh gen um thank you thank you for joining us this evening angelica nadeen i am actually going to skip you since you got to speak a general public comment on this very issue and i want to make sure others who have not had an opportunity to speak have an opportunity we are limiting your comments to two minutes lauren please enter the room state your name and where you live yes hi uh my name is lauren mills i live in south amherst and i've spoken before on town council and i just want to um say that i thought that the presentation was thorough and very um you know well researched and i really appreciate all those who contributed to it on the sw the s the c swg and um i just had a few things um from the presentation um that i want to say one is that if you want um this um this group to answer and know all of these questions then there shouldn't be a question of giving them more funds to you know get these questions answered that you um continue to ask and especially with the diversity of the police um we're not from my standpoint i think people of color are not trying to reform or we're not trying to um reform the police and we do need an alternative so um again if there's any other you know resource that needs to be done then the um the group needs to have the full funding to do that that work and also there's um something that came to mind was the saying that you need to stop trying to get in where you don't fit in and i i just don't think that um community of color want to try to fit in white spaces you know not that you know we not that we don't want to be inclusive but we need our own spaces so um also i just wanted to say that i hope that with the recommendations that there is a trauma informed care that is given to the dispatchers and also i do um have an interest in finding out how does the police department how do they deal with um trauma and how are they informed about trauma and um also i i just lastly wanted to say that i think the way that police respond and the way that you know community communities of color feel that it is about fear management it is about managing pain and sometimes racism is what harm others have done to you but also what you do to you know try to try to reinforce um not reinforce but how you deal with the harm that has been inflicted upon you sometimes you know those who deal with um substance abuse are inflicting more harm because they are dealing with pain and um so i just i really think that going forward that um trauma informed care and um dispatchers and the police department need to recognize that they need to have training in in that area thank you thank you for your comments i want to remind the rest of the people we're going to limit you to two minutes um we've not even had a break and we still have an additional rest of our agenda to accomplish tonight Allegra please enter the room state your name and where you live hi my name is Allegra Clark i'm a resident of district two um i just wanted to thank the community safety working group for all their hard work as well as the seven gen movement collective for their consulting um i obviously am in full support of the recommendations made by the group and i i really just want to speak to the fact that the community safety working group needs to be extended beyond september obviously they put love care into their work and they need to be the people in charge of implementing their their recommendations because we see tonight even still with this beautiful report and this well thought out well research put together in two months project and proposal that people are still questioning whether there's violence and policing in hammers and i just want to say carrying guns is violent miss ferrera talking to her 10 year old about how to engage and and be fearful of the police that's violence mr cage being 15 years old and already having experiences with the police that is violence and that is why the community safety working group should be in charge of their recommendations as opposed to any other body that's currently operating in hammers that's it thank you uh alex lafave please enter the room state your name and where you live can you hear me we can um my name is alex lafave i live in district three i'm a trustee of the jones library and a member of the joint capital planning committee but i'm speaking tonight as an individual i want to first express my deep gratitude to the community safety working group joining any town board is a tremendous amount of work this group however had the added context of being tasked with developing and presenting solutions in a very short period of time to change structures systems and cultures that have been embedded into the fabric of this community for hundreds of years while exposing themselves to potential trauma and triggering conversations i want to first state that i'm a firm believer in the importance of and vital impact that the creation of a standalone bipoc led youth empowerment and cultural center would have for amorce youth secondly i'm going to assume that we all agree at least on some level for the need to unbundle police services and redirect some of their duties as well as their funding to some type of community responder program while i appreciate the initial proposed measures from the town manager and it sounds like more might be coming after the finance committee meeting implementing the recommendations of the cswg is a tremendous commitment and necessarily will require us to make dramatic rather than incremental shifts as referenced in the presentation tonight in december of 2020 the town council approved a resolution affirming the town of amorce commitment to end structural racism and achieve racial equity for black residents and that resolution they acknowledged the trauma inflicted on black community members by persistent white supremacist ideology that results in psychological harm affecting educational economic health and social outcomes a member of the cswg made a comment in a meeting that is really struck with me about amorce choosing to fund roads over people a budget is a moral statement of our priorities and reflects the values of our community i hope we can use this budget to show our bipoc and a api community members that the town's priorities lie in all community members feeling safe secure and included and equity is a reality rather than just an idea thank you thank you for your comments alex michelle miller please enter the room state your name and where you live my name is michelle miller and i'm a district one resident and co-founder of reparations for amherst tomorrow is the one-year death anniversary of george floyd the event that set the work of the community safety working group in motion at that time there was a very powerful feeling throughout the country that change in policing was necessary some cities and towns defunded the police immediately without any period of study amherst said let's really look at this let's create a body that will understand what this community needs and make recommendations to our policy leaders for the past six months this group did exactly that they worked within the system and delivered on their charge with intelligence and courage i tuned into many of their meetings and i can personally attest to the deep and thoughtful work they did in the midst of their own personal pain that arose throughout the process i understand there is a long friendly history between white people in the amherst community and the police which makes it difficult for even reasonable folks to support the concept of defunding the police which like the term reparations is often misunderstood and unfortunately politically charged i've heard fellow community members say they support these changes in communities where the possibility of violence is greater but not in our peaceful community with the caliber of police department we have from my perspective exactly why we are conditioned to adopt the crest program in amherst and become a model for other similar communities this is an opportunity for our community to be empowered to come together and work cooperatively with the police to serve all of our neighbors more justly and equitably no one loses change takes time and we're all grappling with our own hang ups but we can do this counselors thoughtfully responsibly and sustainably and yes it may feel a bit uncomfortable for a period of time but like many worthwhile endeavors discomfort leads to positive growth i believe in us amherst and one last final comment i would point people that are listening if they haven't had a chance to look at the report the report's fantastic but for people who want some more like really specific concrete data i would point them to page 11 of the report thank you thank you for your comments zoe i believe it's zoe crabtree please enter the room state your name where you live can i be heard in this moment yes you can awesome thank you my name is zoe crabtree i live in district five i want to start by thanking the cswg for all of the emotional and intellectual labor that you've done over the past six months you've worked tirelessly and i this report is amazing and you shouldn't have had to make it in the first place i also want to thank seven gen mc and the community ambassadors and the participants who contributed to the seven gen mc report um and a special thanks to the fortitude of everyone on the cswg and seven seven gen mc that you provided in your answers this evening uh i believe that the crest program should be fully funded and i appreciate hearing uh from at least star c elissa mani joe and dorthy i might be missing someone but at least those folks uh all recommending uh this evening that crest should have more than $130,000 in fiscal year 22 i hope to see each of you who made that claim tonight follow through that sentiment with action uh additionally i want to make clear that the de i office the youth empowerment center and cultural center are vital pieces uh of the cswg's recommendations and their purpose in creating an environment of widespread safety for everyone as opposed to a reaction to a violence that has already occurred will be a great benefit to our community i also wanted to point out that earlier in this meeting uh tom manager bachelman said that uh work on figuring out how we might phase in the crest program was being done internally um i want to make sure that uh internally uh includes the cswg and is not x does not exclude them because they've made it very clear um both that their recommendations should not be phased in over years but also that they would like to be involved in the implementation of their recommendations um so that is all to say i'm in full support of all of their recommendations and i think it's been made very clear tonight and last week and last year that uh we need to as brianna said have this done yesterday thank you for your comments sorry cid for error please enter the room state your name and where you live good afternoon good evening my name is cid for error and i'm in uh north prospect street in amherst a resident of amherst for over 40 years accounting my student years and currently the co-director for the abc program i also want to thank you know the committee safety working group and seven jan and all the other folks who have contributed towards this report there's not much that i can add to what has been said but one thing that i want to to to say is that i've heard lots of people say we committed committed committed to me there is a difference between commitment and priority what i would encourage um everyone is to make these recommendations a priority because when it's made a priority it means that it's that's the first thing on the agenda to be taken care of we all have bosses and i know that when our boss says this is a priority we all get to those things you know we all in meetings where people say we committed committed committed yeah we committed to a bunch of things you know um and when we get to them we get to them but once it's made a priority then we get to those things so i would encourage you know everyone who is involved in in making this happening to make it a priority and to implement all the recommendations all of them not just one two or three but all of them of the uh of the of the uh safety community safety working group um because there's a lot of us watching outside of of this uh of this committee and um you know we want to make sure that we have equitable community members um that is fair for all so again want to encourage everyone to make this a priority and put it on top of your agenda and implement all of the recommendations made by the group thank you have a good night said thanks for joining us this evening one last comment from caroline murray please enter the room state your name and where you live hi everyone thanks so much um this was really an incredible presentation uh my name is caroline murray and i live at amity place i have been a resident of amherst for 38 years and i would just like to very briefly pull up some numbers um i was looking at the budget and in f y 15 the social service budget was 1.8 million dollars and the police budget was 4.5 in 20 f y 21 the social service budget had been cut down to 1.5 and the police budget had been increased to 5.3 that is an example of how the town of amherst is not prioritizing the people who live here when i was raising my two children here i received a subsidy for my child's care from the town of amherst my children attended leisure services activities with a subsidy from the town of amherst my neighbor who was getting evicted received a rent subsidy from the town of amherst none of those things are available anymore and what we're facing now with the need for police accountability and the crest program is all part of the same concept that amherst has been gentrifying and prioritizing those with money and with privilege over the rest of the residents here including of course the bipog residents so i would just like to remind us that the budget is a moral document we cannot continue to pass resolution after resolution without putting money behind those resolutions when we say that we believe in justice that means policy and policy costs money i fully support the crest program and i really urge this council to support it as well by fully funding it and i just want to close by saying one of the most important things that amherst did recently was support the amherst sanctuary bill it took a lot of hard work and it took some really courageous leadership this is the exact same requirement for courageous leadership amherst continue to lead us and the town will be here to support you thank you thank you for your comments i'm going to just come back and conclude this section by saying to the community Lynn before you make that comment can i just make one last closing comment sure i just want to beg you to consider the treatment of the community safety working group when we present our second part of our charge the fact that you're controlling public comment after we present our report is a complete is an example of white supremacy operating um several council members have asked why people don't share their experiences and you controlling public comment is a clear illustration of why so i hope for our next part of our charge there can be more time for public comment community support to be spoken lived experience to be heard and for us to not squeeze in or consolidate our work thank you i want to thank you all for your very thoughtful report and the comments tonight we will reconvene on this topic with the full council welcome but with the finance committee on thursday the focus on thursday will be predominantly and in fact on the line item or the crest program or the initiation of the crest program and we are expecting the town manager to provide us with some additional information and proposals for how that program would be developed d thank you i really just want to express my appreciation to the public that took time out staying up late as you all are as well and offering their responses and comments it's going to be really important as the cswg works to make this happen to have the public be a part of this i want to to make one last comment about the diversity equity and inclusion office that i see as crucial to bring amherst into the 21st century we have almost 50 percent by pock a api and english language learners in the school district if we are to retain this rich diversity to not only stay in this area as families but to return here and have memories of being here and wanting to raise their families here we must move into the 21st century and have a diversity equity and inclusion office to look at hiring entrepreneurial activities art etc on down the line because what we have now is simply as my colleagues have stated over and over again a replication of white spaces where people of color and api and indigenous folks have to negotiate on a daily basis so i leave you with that charge as our elected officials be thoughtful understand the budget is a moral issue and that these young people are the future and i'm so proud to have them in this town thank you ever yeah i wanted to also thank alisha and briana for such a spectacular presentation i mean they were just you know phenomenal and obviously all of us you know for all our hard work all the members of the cswg and all of those that stayed up to listen in and to show their support and to say that yeah people are watching and people are taking note in terms of of what's happening here so hopefully you know town council and others will really you know take heed and and really think through thoughtfully one question that i have for the town council though is why are we only focusing on crests on thursday while we're focusing on the budget for all our recommendations and if thursday is only on press when are we talking about the other recommendations because again we have made recommendations for all those recommendations that we fully funded and fully staffed and fully resourced thank you uh pat go ahead please just quickly i just want to echo what everybody has said you know thank you for our young uh coaches uh today um what i observe is that i it's just a white supremacy having um the town council not devoting tonight just for cswg rather squeezing other topics if you really really respect cswg who are made up of many bi-pop folks you should have allowed tonight to just devoted to what we have to say and to the public and not restrict anybody to say what they want to say so i i just see history happening all over again for more than 35 years in this town from the school committee to the business community we don't have any power you guys make all the decision you set this meeting tonight and then you have other items included how many times do you see faces like me you know i come to this meeting why couldn't you give us that respect tonight and just have the agenda to the cswg presentation period so when we talk about white supremacy this is an example of that good night thank you we're going to take a 10 minute break and uh come back and deal with the rest of our agenda please mute and also put yourself on your video take turn off your video thank you please show your screen when you return please show your screen when you return okay please show your screen that so i know you're back shallony george lisa hathie pat paul do we still have gilford oh yeah there he is i'm sorry all right um we are going to move on to the other action items first is the water and sewer rates um we we have a um item in our packet that is in fact the financial order for water and sewer rates and um the motion is to adopt um approval order f y 22-10 an order setting water and sewer rates to be effective july 1 2021 as recommended by the finance committee report of may 17 2021 since i've read the motion is there a second panicky seconds thank you athena could you show the order on the screen please and andy while we're doing that do you uh want to weigh in with the finance committee report yes um unfortunately the finance committee report was in a prior packet and i don't think it got included in this packet um it was the may 17th meeting and that was the date on the report and i think in the committee was recommending both of the uh i was recommending this order which encompasses the rates and there was some additional information that was provided within the uh finance committee report that um adds to information that is otherwise in the packet for this meeting and part of it was uh rate projections through f y 26 and uh on both water and sewer that was provided during the finance committee meeting with uh gilford and uh assistant uh in the uh other in his uh his staff that was very important the other thing that i just want to point out and then i'll turn it back over to lin is that uh we were provided information at that finance committee meeting that had to do with what will happen to the average median water and sewer bills for ratepayers and it was amy rsecki who deserves the credit because apparently it was a lot of work to produce this information but um what she reported to us is that the median amy rse water bill will go from $239 a year to $262 a year increase of $23 and the median sewer bill will go from $262 a year to $279 a year an increase of 17 and of course we all know the median is the halfway point when you stack from top to bottom the rate payers and is uh sort of a good sense of what the median the the uh what what's going to affect a lot of people so that gives you a sense of the dollar amounts that are involved so thank you lin thank you alissa i just wanted to clarify that of course we had all read that information in preparation for last week's meeting because we believed we were going to be acting at last week's meeting and in fact athena did very helpfully ensure that that information was placed in the public packet yesterday so it as far as i know or it was earlier this morning at any rate that information is all there in the public packet and has been thank you so thanks alissa thank you athena right dorothy please unmute okay just wanted to add that we had much discussion about the rising rates and compared them to the rates in other towns and found that they were in fact uh lower than the highest and um that one of the things from a good government is planning and planning ahead and this increase in the water rate flex long-term planning to make sure that emerson always has an adequate water supply and i think of this when i listen to the news uh which is a towns whose whole water supply will be disappearing this is out west primarily uh in the next few years and i i just want to say thank you gilford and your department for your long-term planning on this andy joe yeah i first want to thank um the dpw and the water department for providing then calculating the actual average and actual median um in our town that was very helpful for me um and i just had a question that about a year ago if not a little more i think we were provided with um potential alternatives for rate structures for water and sewer and i thought that we were going to get the feasibility of that for this year and so i saw in the report that um they will do it for next year and so i just want to make sure that it will get done by the time we have to do these votes again next year um because i'm just concerned that it seems to be pushing forward each year to the next year right i certainly and um i'm glad to have somebody else join in this we delayed it because of the skewed nature of the um water usage this year because of covid it was not with any malicious intent but i do i there has been discussion at the finance committee that we will in fact undertake that this coming year is there any other comment on that from a counselor are there any other questions then uh yes kathy yeah yeah i just wanted to build on what you said um mandy and i can share it with the rest of the council as well we we have done a memo to ask for some looking at some possible alternative scenarios a few um and we're planning on as i understood it is we'll we'll have what people felt is some decent data and capacity to do it by this summer but um lin we're going to still have to use a year or so use rates we don't have we're we're not going to it's not a delay just because of the use rates we could always model it off of the old rates but it'll give us a sense of what ifs if we change it this way that how would it affect um long term uh rates and i'd be happy to show you thank you okay thank you are there any other comments from counselors seeing none then i'm going to start the vote on this and i i'm starting with um Darcy Dumont sorry yes in greece mercy yes mandy joe hannacky hi shorthy pam yes evan ross hi rorge rime yes kathy shane yes sieve schreiber hi andy steinberg yes sarah schwarz hi county balmielan yes elissa brewer hi pat de angeles hi the vote is 13 zero zero with no absence we're moving on to uh the palmery village intersection second time this is on the agenda uh i'm going to read the motion and look for a second to direct the town manager to proceed with an intersection design as a single lane roundabout designed with consideration of the reports of the transportation advisory committee and the disability access advisory committee at the intersection of west street and palmery and west palmery lanes with the town council to review 25 and 75 percent schematic designs is there a second ryan second thank you questions kathy could you explain to me what the review at 25 and 75 percent actually means in terms of an ability to rethink this and let me say the reason why is i remain very concerned that when you have children walking across the road bicycles walking across the road that yes i understand traffic circles are a good calming device but the interaction with pedestrian and with children um is is not a good mix and so i just i i want to know more about whether we have an opportunity to look at this again and then we heard one business only one i will worry about the amount of land that we might have to take um in terms of how it interacts with current businesses um in the area both access to the business so is this the last time we'll see it what does it mean when we get 25 percent so that's my question uh paul shall i just go to gilford gilford please please unmute so what we expect to happen is that we've already got the draft survey in we're kind of trying to take the draft survey and place it in with the plans we also have some basic starting traffic counts once we have those fleshed out and have them more finalized we'll have this 25 percent drawings together you'll be able to see basically what we think is going to be the impact of doing the roundabout on the properties and you'll also be able to look at some um look at the we'll be able to look at the numbers of crossings and so forth to see if we need to change anything about pedestrian safety um that'll be the 25 percent drawings and then we can go on to 75 75 is really it's all basically done by 75 percent and we're just finalizing the little um crossing the t's and dying the eyes so when you see the 25 percent that's going to be the big chance for you to look way in on seeing what our impact will be on properties and um a little bit about what we're planning on doing for pedestrians do you have foot traffic information as well as traffic information we we tried to get we tried we're having a hard time getting both actually so we're actually reaching back to older accounts and we're using some escalators to um make some more sensible numbers out of it kathy did you have another question no that was my my main question and I voice like my concern um okay yep thank you Dorothy um I I have some concerns I I know that a lot of good work has gone into this but um just to double check I've been very concerned about the children crossing at a rotary I took a little drive a few days ago to take a look at it just in terms of the rotary and what I found was it was flat so I didn't see any people speeding down a hill or up a hill and I thought you know if you want to calm traffic you just need to put a speed bump um before you get to the intersection and you could do it with a simple traffic light so um I'm just you know I I am not an expert and I know the experts have weighed in on this but I still think that roundabouts are very difficult for children and people on bicycles to do and there's a lot of children activity that goes on in that area so just just expressing Dorothy did you want to finish you seem to yeah all of a sudden I got got muted I don't even know where it stopped I just said I want to express my concern because I worry about children and people on bicycles and there seem to be quite a number of them in that area and you know Amherst Montessori and other children in child care groups so I just want them to keep that in mind they could do traffic common by adding a speed bump before traffic light thank you um Alyssa I just I want to mention two things one is that the concerns that are continued to be expressed were thoroughly discussed at TSO they're not new concerns I understand people may not feel like their concerns have been finally addressed and obviously people are still allowed to have concerns but they're not new concerns yes we did think of all that yes we did talk about that yes we did look at some traffic data information that indicate engineering studies etc so our there is that balance between our individual comfort levels with what seems right to us the idea of suddenly putting a I will say the idea of suddenly putting a speed bump at an intersection is certainly not something we ever discussed but in terms of child access bicycle access etc and we are not trying to go into this just guessing it's going to be fine it's because we believe it's going to be fine based on engineering practices that are out there and again why I was one of the people who pushed to ensure that we see the 25 percent design so people could have a much clearer idea the other point I want to make sure is I understand it's not part of the motion but I want to make sure it's clear in terms of process is I don't want the 25 percent design to come back to town council until after TACC and DAC have had a chance to look at it because I would rather they looked at it at their meetings with their level of expertise before it came back to the full town council Darcy yeah um I I've had a really hard time with this uh decision because so many of my constituents in district five expressed reservations and because business and property owner proposed it and I I think it's a little crazy to put one at a at a simple intersection up to the streets and I also think our staff's time better used elsewhere but in spite of all of that I have decided that I'm going to vote for it because I I want to show uh confidence in our transportation advisory committee recommendation I trust it um they put a lot of hard work into it and to researching it and making the recommendation and also because um you know uh there's a really good report that came out from fur cog it goes into all of the details also and it's it appears from the tax research and from that report that um generally um the research indicates that opposers turn into supporters soon after the installation of roundabouts so I'm feeling less concerned about my own constituents because it feels like they will probably change their minds after they get around about it that's what that's what I'm hoping thank you Darcy uh Evan so this has been an interesting process speaking to my role as a member of TSO because what I found very quickly from the public comments in the forum and engage AMRs was that pretty much everyone was on the same page as to what our priorities were pretty much everyone prioritized pedestrian safety bicycle safety then where they differently was which of the two options was the better way to achieve that and so you heard in public forums people say I think pedestrian safety is the most important and that's why I support a signalized intersection and then the very next person would say pedestrian safety is the most important and that's why I prefer a roundabout and so it reminded me of a statement that I heard from a very wise drag queen once who said all opinions are valid but but not all opinions are equal and so when you think about that everyone's opinion on this was valid everyone's concerns were valid everyone's experiences with roundabouts and intersections were valid but because they were so divergent I think I had to personally default to the opinions of the experts on this and people who have researched this Darcy put a really interesting literature review in the TSO packet that I read through and the research is pretty conclusive on this that roundabouts are better for traffic calming they're better for pedestrian safety they're better for bicycle safety and that's not just national level experts I also want to second what Darcy said we have incredible on our transportation advisory committee they came down on roundabouts are safer so if you know our decision as a council is what are our priorities but our community priorities and how do we meet that and the community made their priorities pretty clear pedestrian safety bicycle safety they had different opinions on which was the better option but looking at the research looking at the expertise even within our own committee community on the transportation advisory committee it's pretty clear that the roundabout despite people's varying opinions despite people's different experiences is the better way to achieve that and so that's why I came out of TSO pretty strongly in support of the roundabout Shalini oh and also what I just uh talk about the addressing concerns for people with disabilities and that is that something that it sounds like that's going to be addressed that I just wanted to make sure that that has been agreed upon that that will be addressed like the speaker the when they're crossing there'll be voice activation and things like that goford oh you're muted please unmute I keep it right there but then all of a sudden I moved my picture moves I I lose it I'm not as gifted as you guys are doing this sorry so yes we've talked to our vendor we've worked out the the plans for how we can buy the um r the rectangle rapid flashing beacons the rfb's that will have the little voice that chirps to you so you can find it and then it can say once you push it it'll say wait and once it goes in the flash mode it'll say the lights are flashing and when it's done it'll say wait again so that's kind of how it's set up um and we're working on that to make sure we get that finalized thank you um andy you need on sorry about that yeah I did get a new finally um I actually spoke with somebody because it's a personal friend who's also a member of daac and we had quite a conversation about this and she uh was very um you know the daac had submitted a report and they're fine with doing the roundabout as long as it meets a series of standards that they put forward which gilford was in part referring to and uh her only concern was that they would not be able to see the 25 percent uh report and be able to comment on it and have their voices heard and I um I said I would pass that along at some point to paul I didn't think it would be during the meeting but I guess I'd now has been during the meeting but um I also uh appreciate that elissa essentially raised the same issue even though it was uh not from source to decide mine was from a member of the daac and pat da's on the daac right I haven't had to talk other people are doing a great job I just want to say that one of the concerns of the daac has been the maintenance of audible signals and so my concern since the town is would be required to keep them in working condition that's I'm trying to understand why the audible signal in main street amity street um uh north and south pleasant street why we no longer hear the chirping and things like that why is that not working um and it's not been working for a very long time and it affects people's ability to to use that intersection and I'm concerned we have a way of um loosening our maintenance standards once things are created so I'm concerned about that um it was working it was working this week and last week um so usually what happens is sometimes you get there and you don't hear it because it's turned itself down because the ambient noise around it turns itself down uh it does turn itself down to in the early morning and during the night time around round one or two I think is when it turns itself down um and then uh but it was working in the last last week and a half it's been working so I can have someone check it out I just appreciate it thank you yeah sometimes they do break I mean that this is my public service announcement for tonight you do not have to push you do not have to kick you do not have to beat on the button all you have to do is make contact with your hand and it feels your presence just because you're that great of a person it will feel your presence and it'll know you're there so don't try to beat it up and break it it's not supposed to be breakable but they get broken quite a bit and that's usually the one place we have problems with is it just gets beaten up and broken and then we have to buy a new one um but no there's been working the last week and a half at least because I pushed it and talked and listened to it okay thanks for that public service announcement Indy I assume I assume you've just had left your hand up and you're you don't have any further comments okay are there any further comments then we're going to move up for a vote we've already uh had the motion and the second and we begin with uh Griezmer and it's an aye Mandy Joe Hanakie aye Dorothy Pam abstain Evan Ross aye George Ryan yes Kathy Shane abstain Steve Schreiber aye Andy Steinberg aye Sarah Schwartz Shane Shalini Balmielm yes Alyssa Brewer aye Pat DeAngelis aye Darcy DuMont yes it is 10 in favor none opposed three abstentions and none absent we're going on to the next which is a counselor initiated proposal and it's for the rezoning of parcel 14A to 13A33 from RG to BG and it is the municipal parking lot on north prospect street behind CVS um Evan Dorothy or George would either of you like to would one of you like to speak to this Evan yeah I can start and then hopefully George and Dorothy can add on their input so there's about a year and four months ago that we as a council heard or got a first look at the destination Amherst plan was involved for investments into downtown to support a dynamic and vibrant downtown one of which was already underway which was the Kendrick Park playground which if you've walked by recently you'll see there's been quite a bit of progress another one we moved forward uh finally tonight which was the renovation of the north common one of the other thing that was presented to us as part of that presentation was a public private partnership to provide a parking garage on the lot that we termed the CVS lot the municipal parking lot on north prospect street next to the actual CVS parking lot um and that had been put on the back burner as we dealt with COVID um but given that we are now um turning our focus back towards elements of the destination Amherst plan and given um some of the concerns we've heard both from counselors and from the um from residents about the loss of some parking spaces uh associated with the plan we approved for north common this seemed like a good time to return to that conversation about pursuing a public private partnership for a parking structure um at that lot there's many things that has to happen in order for that to occur the land first needs to be rezoned as articulated in the memo its current zoning wouldn't permit a parking structure at that site um we would also the town would also need to um execute in RFP um to uh see if there's a developer interested in developing a parking structure there and then of course um it would have to be go through the special permit process in front of the ZBA for it to be built so there are many steps in order to make such a thing happen this would be the first one but this would be the starting point um and so this is to return to that conversation and to begin that process to see if the council is interested in moving in that direction and doing that first step of rezoning the lot so rezoning the lot would not all of a sudden make a parking structure happen it would just lay the groundwork and create that opportunity for us to then have further conversations and move that um such a project along um so I'll turn it over to George and Dorothy if they want to speak um to their support of it there's a lot of information in the memo but I'm assuming it y'all write it so I don't want to repeat what was in the memo thank you George I just want to also um connect it with the vision of the expanded and renovated Jones Library um that this structure would definitely serve what many of us hope will be um a very attractive destination um in the community and then also the Amherst Cinema um which has long uh argued for increased parking and so I just like to connect this initiative to those two very attractive and important destinations for our town Dorothy um well one of the comments that Evan made in his memo was to do the perception of parking and other people I think the consultants also made this so a parking garage would in fact increase the perception yes you can park in Amherst so come on down and do things and just to make sure that this is not a plan to kind of bail out the builders of the new large apartment buildings downtown which has a no a parking no parking overlay um it would be mostly not completely but mostly parking that would be accessible to all of us and I did when this was brought to my attention I did some very preliminary discussion with the butters and what I found is that the people I spoke with have been thinking about this for years have been expecting it for years and they have many thoughtful comments and how to do so in a way which is is you know not destructive of their neighborhood so I Dorothy I think you just froze did other people freeze or is it me I think it's just Dorothy okay because everyone else is still moving Athena can you be in touch with Dorothy yeah thank you um we'll get to Dorothy's comments I'm going to go ahead and ask Evan if you would like to read the motion and get a second and then we'll come back well no I we can't we've completely lost her now so we have to wait and see if we can get Dorothy back before the motion is read yes that it not be a joint hearing that it not be required for bluntness because CRC is having as chair of CRC I am having a very difficult font time getting quorums for Wednesday night July and August meetings so I would love to have the motion not required joint just a plea before I actually had already made that little notation Mandy Joe based on a previous conversation that we had so um I I have it reading for hearings held no later we're waiting for Dorothy to rejoin us I'm trying to return Kathy you have a comment you need to unmute yes it's a question as I read the memo um for the authors of it the wording uses commercial parking lot parking garage lot would this not be a public parking garage is it assumed that it would be and I'm distinguishing I'm I think the Northampton one is a public parking garage as opposed to a commercial so it's it's a question on what the intent would be you just speak on peace fine Dorothy we can hear you can you hear us oh sure Dorothy Dorothy can you hear us I don't know I don't know I don't know Dorothy we can see you and we can hear you good good okay thank you so scary I the computer died because I had I didn't have it plugged in and zoom consumes everything so I switched computers but everything's looking funny thank you for what's holding standing thank you so much okay um and uh so Kathy you were asking about whether or not this was a public or a private parking lot Evan so I to some extent the rezoning would open the opportunity for either our new by-law treats them the same in where they're allowed although differently in how they're permitted but I think our intention is for a public-private partnership so we would not be using public tax dollars to build a garage and so the town would provide the land for a developer but a developer would be the one putting up the money to build and then operate the garage itself so it would be a private garage but it would be it would be a privately built and finance garage on public land and that would be a way of getting a parking garage without having to invest taxpayer dollars in building it would the revenues be private revenues or would the town get revenues from the garage I think that would have to be a question when we get to what would be the next step which would be developing an RFP and going through the procurement process of what are the parameters of such a public-private partnership them clearly is the purpose is to just create the possibility that a garage can even be built there and I'm only asking because the words are commercial parking structure throughout land it didn't I do understand and that you said they might be treated the same way but a public structure to me is not the same as commercial so is our motion just is it agnostic on whether it's public or commercial it is like it is I will review it carefully but I believe it's agnostic it's actually agnostic even your parking structure the way it's worded is one could have an apartment building on that lot right I mean it's just rezoning it is what I'm reading it could become an apartment building correct correct you're correct in that this is just the rezoning of that but the town would retain control of the land so it would only become an apartment building the town decided they wanted an apartment building there okay Mandy Joe yes thank you and I know as a member of CRC I'm going to have a little more time to explore this but I was curious whether proponents of this had thought about this or investigated it or have an answer to a few of them they're similar by proposing only to rezone the one lot would that be considered spot zoning because in particular the lots north and south are in Margie and the other than question related is is there a reason you proposed only the one lot instead of the parking lot that is currently owned by CVS to and or in fact the entire block that it's I think there's four parcels there something owned by the church the one owned by the town that is parking lot the one owned I think by CVS or some entity related to CVS that is a parking lot and then the historical society plot is also RG in that block had you considered proposing rezoning more than just the town of Amherst owned lot question Evan I saw Dorothy has her hand up so if she wanted to answer that I would defer to her Dorothy well in discussing the lot with some of butters they pointed out that CVS drives very large trucks into that lot in order to supply its store and so I discussed this with Evan and I said well if we're going to take over that lot does that mean that those big trucks would then try to be supplying CVS from the main street on North Pleasant and he pointed out to me no CVS lot would maintain and that they would be able to use their lot they would need to use their lot in order to have those trucks come in to supply the store so that is why the proposal was only for the part that is owned by the town so okay sorry I just wanted to also add to that that I think that because zoning can be obviously a controversial thing rezoning to BG obviously opens quite a bit of development opportunities for any parcel but of course by confining it to just the town owned land we still maintain control over what could be built there but I think rezoning a private parcel from RG to BG and pretty dramatically opening up the density that could be built on some of that block then it becomes a much bigger discussion and I think community concerns would be larger but I think that there is I think the fact that the town owns the land can can lower some of those concerns of the community about other things that could be built with the rezoning I'm going to go on to Alyssa I'm not implying that any of our counselor comments have done this but I do want to crush a conspiracy theory that I know is already out in the world there that somehow we were going to zone this lot so that a commercial so that what some people think of as a commercial developer what I think of as a private developer could just build a parking lot there for their tenants who live downtown and we're going to retain control of the land and I can't imagine we would ever have officials who would grant a permit for such a use it's not expressly forbidden as I understand it by this language but that's the kind of thing you have to work with in a zoning bylaws that you can't always figure out a way to prevent every possible bad thing people think might happen but I can't imagine there would be a circumstance under which the town would own that land and say sure it's fine with us if only tenants can of our company can actually work there so let's put that aside and then the other thing I just wanted to ask about as this goes into its process is I know that we had a very blue sky sort of conversation several years ago before several of you were even engaged in town government about the idea that that particular portion of the lot in theory could have this really creative solution where the food co-op is there a couple of housing units are on the prospect side and the rest of it's a parking garage would that sort of amazing thing that I don't know that would ever happen would that be possible under this zoning and you don't have to answer that tonight but it's the kind of possibility I would want to know later on in the process small question that if the town is leasing the land would the we currently get income from the parking meters there would we the lease cover the loss of that income or how or would it be a 99 year lease for a dollar the way Amherst college was going to do for us for our DPW land that didn't work out I'm a little concerned about what our loss would be and what our gain would be finally Paul Paul you have your hand up to answer that question sure if the town decided that it so the town owns the land if the town decided it wanted to do something with the land it could set the parameters that it wanted on the land to say no net loss in revenue or increase in revenue or whatever it is that that it wants to do so if the town owns the land it would put an RFP out that had constrictions on it restrictions on it thank you I'm going to go on to other people Kathy I don't know if you're you still intend to have your hand up thank you Darcy yeah I have a I just have a list of questions here oh how many floors are you considering in the parking garage and what would be the net gain and parking spaces considering you know we lose the parking spaces that are under the under the building and as a commercial parking structure would it be likely to charge a different rate from a public parking structure so that's another question have you looked at what the cost of the town would be of you know if there's a lot more traffic coming into the lot and out of it the types of traffic changes that we would need to make and at the entrance and the exit would it affect parking on north prospect because of the additional traffic that would have to travel down north prospect and lastly did you consider making it bl instead of bg okay let's go with the first three questions I think Paul those are all questions that would be addressed through the rfp process in terms of and and the zoning will restrict the height and and that that type of thing but since again since the town owns the land it can control the the disposition of the of that land however the council would choose to do it okay and Evan I believe will come to you for the other question about why this category categorization of zoning yeah so that was just in the memo there there are four zoning districts that permit parking structures the problem is as you know from that lot it's not a huge land area and so in order for a lot to be or our belief is that for a lot to be viable I'm sorry for a parking structure to be viable on that lot it will need to consume pretty much the entire lot and so the bl because it only permits 85 maximum lot coverage in the dimensional regulations because it requires 20 foot front setbacks 25 foot side and rear setbacks the dimensional regulations essentially would limit a structure to too small an area of the part of the parcel for it to uh likely be viable and so I think only the bg provides dimensional regulations that could actually make a structure uh viable for that specific lot even if other districts do permit uh parking structures okay all right Darcy yes can I ask a follow-up um um uh I think uh most of us had had some kind of conversation with the bid about this idea some time in the last couple of years and um the the proposal that I heard was that it was going to be something quite modest you know like a couple stories um with you know a lot of um greenery around the the borders to to protect the butters and a lot of other stuff like that so I'm just wondering if that still sounds like the plan that you're talking about Paul so we I know that's what uh the bid has said we have not developed any plans from the town's point of view along those lines so the first thing is to do to find out is if the council wants to rezone it to be able to use be used for parking and if so then we would go develop the the um RFP if that's what how we want to dispose of that property and in there we would decide what we want exactly the bid might may choose to bid on it someone else may choose to bid on it Darcy Darcy oh that's all thank you okay shallony I was just curious how many spots parking spots do we have right now and if we know that and otherwise in the future um and I just wanted to put it out there that in terms of like if you're providing the land and let's say the bid is getting the developers or whoever's getting developers I'm thinking just to put it out there that you know when I think of the arrangement that Coles had with Beacon so Coles provided the land and then Beacon built on it but then Coles got the ground floor for retail so even though we're providing the land we can have some negotiation that we would get some revenue and or something out of it not just the land so just that and um um uh so many questions but I think those are details we're going to discuss them more the later point so I'll hold you back Paul you had your hand up there are 70 parking spaces there now seven zero okay Dorothy um I just want to mention something that I that I hope is true that the butters will play a role in this process that it not just become the bid or or us the town council or the town but as I say I spoke to several butters and they have been thinking about this going to happen for many years but they have some very interesting ideas on how to make it um work with their neighborhood so are there any assurances that the butters would have some role in this I'm going to mimic Paul and say that can be added into the RFP Paul anything further no okay well if I could also just and of course at the end of this they would still need to go through the ZBA special permit process um which would require a butter notification and so um there's at least one requirement um for a butter input at the ZBA Steve Schreiber yes I don't think I've said anything all night but um I think maybe a difference is that typically when things come to the ZBA or the planning board they're pretty cooked already so I think that what I'm you know hearing the request be that the butters could get involved sooner you know before the actual you know before the projects that far that they get their their influence is only you know yes or no so and actually I think Alyssa was referring Councilor Brewer was referring to a workshop that I think I I think we're both at the same workshop 10 years ago or something like that looking at the continuum from this particular lot all the way to to the library is what I think it was about it was it was fascinating but those sorts of workshops I think are really useful to you know sort of get neighborhood input and to into you know get a common understanding what the what the goals are okay I'm going to go ahead and read the motion and look for a second uh to refer the proposed rezoning of parcel 14a-33 from rg to bg to the planning board and the community resources committee for hearings held no later than july 28th 2021 and for a written recommendation and an explanation as to whether the proposed bylaw is not inconsistent with the master plan from the planning board to the town council and to the community resources committee no later than 21 days after the hearing hearings and for the community and after the I'm sorry hearings and for the community resources committee to send the written recommendation to the town council and to submit all material to the governance organization legislation committee for review of clarity consistency and action ability in 60 days of the hearings of the hearing held by the community resources committee is there a second ryan second okay is there any further question or comment steve you still have your hand up dersey i guess i'm interested in um um uh i see this being kind of put out as a project that is not going to cost the town but it does seem like there are a lot of different ways in which it will cost the town even if we aren't paying for the building so i just wonder if there's any more information about what what people have looked into about what the additional cost would be oh or evan i don't think so at this time are there any other questions or comments all right uh then i'm going to begin with mandy joe hannacky hi dorsey pam yes evan ross hi george ryan yes kathie shane yes steve schreiber hi andy steinberg hi sarah schwarz no shallony belmill hi elissa broer hi pat de angeles hi dorsey demont no and lin greasper is an i so the vote is 11 in favor to oppose no abstentions in no absence we've already done the approval of minutes and so i'm going to um quickly ask if there are any additional committee and or liaison reports andy i mean mandy joe uh nothing new at this time um crc will be discussing and deliberating on the two joint joint hearings that held last week with the planning board we will be deliberating tomorrow afternoon okay and so you do you still see june 7th as a possible time by which we will be able to bring forth the moratorium vote that's actually a question that has to go to george as well uh you can't bring vote on 7th because it needs to be heard at two different right i'm sorry for the first reading i can't answer that until after tomorrow's okay all right the recommendation uh kathy elementary school building uh yes we got notice we we submitted our proposed choice for opm and we got noticed that the we got all the paperwork done correctly so we are on our way to the june 7th opm selection panel which was really good news we weren't we weren't sure that they would speed us through and they did so steve i haven't put that out to everyone but it looks like we're on track which is great news excellent andy finance the finance committee is so good involved with so many things right now with the budget review and but we heard earlier and what we referred to last meeting but we have it all on on our schedule and trying to and working through it and we are still going to be trying to get you in the next finance committee report which may not be timed to a meeting a summary of our discussions around various departments so that we can more efficiently handle the report after we get to the recommendation stage and we have two meetings scheduled for thursday including the one at five thirty which is a joint meeting with the council to continue the discussion from earlier today but on the financial impacts great thank you and uh go l uh george just a quick update on the dab we are seeing more applicants which is encouraging and again urge you all to continue to reach out to residents and ask them to apply but i'm pretty confident we'll be able to declare the pool sufficient on june 2nd and be able to move ahead making a recommendation for a potential council vote on june 28 we're also doing the thin com and that will come thin com has one vacancy and that will be coming a little bit sooner to the council but again please continue to encourage people to consider dab and when do you expect thin com to come to the council uh good question June 7th 21st uh the 21st okay got it thank you um uh tso garcy yes we're meeting on thursday at seven third um we haven't met for a while we're going to have a load of reappointments i think um that we'll be looking at and um um we are looking at some other stray issues uh we're going to look at um uh some background information about um hauler solid waste hauler options we're going to look at um uh the triangle street pedestrian um accommodations an update on that and we're probably going to ask the town manager questions about the homelessness and unhoused residents working group charge um so that that's about it on the in june 10th we're going to the hope is that we're going to hear from the the DEP technical assistance person about her study of different waste hauler options thank you any liaison reports any questions from the town for the town manager i'm sorry Dorothy please on report please just just a brief one from the council on aging they're still working on um reorganizing their committees and their charges and they're having some trouble with wording um to do whether the word racism should be in the charge or not in the charge and discussing the timing of a possible retreat with the Jennifer moisten's uh group um in other words they're doing the same thing that all the committees are doing working hard but okay any other comments or things about uh liaison reports in the past minutes so any questions of the town manager at this time Alyssa i didn't know where to shove this in but it actually has a follow-up on the gol and also for paul's benefit as he's talking with our senator and representative as mandy joe and i and you are as well then in terms of remote participation yes as paul very carefully explained in his report we default back to the previous to remote participation effective june 15th if the legislature isn't able to magically wave their wand and get something through that extends what the governor had done in terms of quorum and chair being president person but one of the frustrations associated with that for example is i had certainly been when i was recruiting district advisory board everybody thought it was going to be remote meetings and given that it's over the summer in amherst and that people are starting to travel it's going to definitely cut into people's ability to serve on this committee if a quorum has to be held in person so it's just a perfect example of the fact that we we are on this issue and we need to continue to be on this issue because what's going to happen is we're going to have less participation not more when we go back to the old way of remote okay thank you shelony yes i had a question about the town gown oh wait paul has his hand up first go ahead okay uh this is a question about town gown related question uh so we hear from a lot of residents about umass taking responsibility for housing for students and my question was who is speaking or having those conversations and with who at umass to discuss possibilities of you know just having this con who's having this conversation with who at umass yeah so if you're talking about the two developments uh north village and um the new dorm on at lincoln and on mass av those are the discussions they're moving those forward they update us periodically uh the president and vice president have been included in some of those conversations for the most part any any major presentation they give to us they've been invited um this and it's i guess it's more of you know just even for the sake of clarity with the public because we keep hearing you mass should build it and it's not our responsibility so one is like what i mean can we in any way engage with you mass and with who in your mass is making these or can make these decisions about housing and what sort of conversations can we have with them to see how lack of housing is impacting even maybe you mass faculty or just like have i mean the two developments that they're doing is their initiative but do we have any kind of negotiation power with you mass do we even yes um yes we do have a negotiation power but it's not a whole heck of a lot they claim that they have one of the highest percentages of housing students on campus as it is in the country but you know clearly there is a need for housing for students in town and for faculty members and they have a role to play in that um we had been having those conversations but they sort of fell off the rails during COVID for to be honest all of our conversations are every other we have a meeting Thursday with the university about COVID hopefully it'll be our last one on this topic and we can shift to something else but um yeah it yes so it it can happen it's not happening at this moment in time I guess is my answer to you okay thank you Mandy Joe I just want to follow up on what Alyssa was saying um as town manager Paul you have the authority to amend at least the town regulations and I know they are slightly more strict than the state regulations especially as it relates to how many meetings in a row someone can attend remotely and so if the state legislature can't get remote meeting legislation through in time I would suggest maybe reviewing that and thinking about some amendments to that just to allow people a little more leeway even as we go to a different sort of system of remote meetings if I can address that one yes please so I would like to address that and a couple other things just um so yes that's on the agenda I mean June 15th is our our date that we go back to previous um unless we know no otherwise another part of that is at June 1st a week from tomorrow we reopen town hall and that will be um we will be back we'll have a separate we'll have the people coming in the main street entrance and we'll just for the first couple weeks we have A's in the transition to um you know offer people masks if they wanted they were going to require masks if you're walking around town hall um but by June 15th I think it will be back to normal um a couple other things I want to mention was that um the we we did get our bond rating renewed at double a plus um and we did a borrowing and our one borrowing was at 0.34 percent that's less than 1 percent for borrowing and another borrowing for five billion dollars was at 1.07 percent for a larger longer period of time excellent rates excellent um borrowing so we're really pleased about that um the um and the you will see some construction happening downtown we have a grant to redo crosswalks and the walkway that's adjacent to where the old starbucks used to be forget the name of the business that's there now that has all these divots in it so that will be redone as part of a um ADA grant that that we are able to achieve and crosswalks like near brugers and a few other crosswalks to fix them up to be more ADA compatible and lastly um Memorial Day is coming up on Monday um I talked with the Veterans Director he has not put out anything yet it's going to be real very low key they're not going to have any speakers they're just going to it's going to be a small memorial service to recognize those who have passed away in the past year um but there will be an event on um on Memorial Day I think at 10 o'clock it's his plan but once I get that information I will share it with the members of the town council but he's not they're not going to have a band or anything major um this year um purposely um and I just want to say finally kudos to our um health team for continuing the vaccination clinics doing a terrific job and I know members of the council did thank the health director last week but I was hoping to get it in earlier but it's about the same time as last week so there we have it Darcy yeah I just want to have a quick follow-up question to Shawnee's um question about you Mass and then um just wondering if that um big stretch of land um on University Drive north of Amity is uh that's Mass land I assume and I'm wondering if that there have been discussions ever of building on that land I have not heard them talk about that piece of land in particular um so I would say the answer to that is no we have had discussions with them about the intersection at Amity and University Drive because that's outside their their entrance of their property but I believe that they should be a participant when we have to redo that intersection but uh beyond that they have not talked about redeveloping any of that other land yeah a lot of land there um thank you Darcy um any other questions of Paul all right then I have uh three items and then uh call on Paul for a fourth uh first of all I did not write a president's report I will do that for June 7th uh second I did send you a memo uh appointing people to the RFP audit committee uh their Pat DeAngelis myself Andy Steinberg Polly Brouser and Athena O'Keefe the last two were solicited from the town manager um and third last Friday we had a council meeting we did not go into executive session and the reason we did not go into executive session is because we had received notice that case number 212180CV00043 Gray Carroll at Al versus Suadette in her capacity as acting town clerk had been dismissed and uh therefore we did not have a basis to meet and unless you have a basis to go into an executive session you cannot go into executive session so um the reason for this dismissal it was applied for by the um plaintiffs and filed with the court and uh Paul do you have anything else you want to say about that or the Jones Liver yeah just to I mean I know the council had carved out time to meet on first thing on Friday morning but there was no basis for going on which is what we explained and that that notice of withdrawal of the um case um came in I didn't see it until Friday morning quite honestly so um so it's with that information we have subsequently signed the contract with the mass board of library commissioners we have assigned contract with them now and I've talked today with the library director about establishing the building committee so we will continue to make progress on this project are there any questions shall we so will we be able to get that advance money we were expecting this year they had they not in FY 21 but in FY 22 in fact at the beginning of FY 22 so it's only by two two months difference are there other questions uh future items for the agenda let me just mention what I have on for next time and that is a hearing on the capital improvement program uh potentially the moratorium building bylaw for the first reading the two zoning items that we postponed from a meeting ago that is the amendment to the zoning bylaw section 5.011 accessory dwelling units and proposed changes to zoning bylaw section 3.3241 and article 12 converted dwellings and the finance committee will be able to um give um basically a report back on what the finance committee has been discussing with regard to the budget and if they're ready appointments for the zba and the redistricting advisory board although I believe we just moved redistricting advisory board to the 28th are there other future agenda items shall we well we can have a discussion of the anti-racism training that we did I and actually hope that we could do that again tonight and really not in any shape to do that now so I will move that again to June 7 okay would you like that as an item earlier in the evening like a discussion item maybe that would be the best time to do it is please okay are there other future agenda items and so if not then I'm going to I'm sorry Dorothy um I just want to have a report of what the school system is going to do for summer makeup classes or whatever okay I don't know I don't mean to right now if you don't have it but I'd like to know what they're going to do when they're going to do it okay we'll ask Paul to get a brief report from the school superintendent lisa can that brief report just be placed as part of the town manager report I don't think that has any place on the town council's agenda I think that'd be fine any other comments requests andy I think the only thing that I was going to add is just to clarify what you said the I think under the charter the uh we don't have a hearing on the capital improvement program I think it's specified in the charter to be a public forum thank you if that's the case there'll be two posted meetings for next week I mean for the not next week we're not meeting next week June 7th okay anything else all right then I'm going to adjourn the meeting at 11 24