 finished town meeting last week in just three sessions. Tonight we have a number of things on our agenda. The first timed item is at 6.45 and that is our property tax classification hearing. In the meantime we have public comment and then other things we might tend to. So is anyone here for public comment? Ms. Prow, please come forward and introduce yourself to the folks at home. I'm Melissa Perot from Precinct One and first of all I want to thank the select board for supporting our article 19 and we're very hopeful that this will begin to have some change although we're not expecting a dramatic change. Fortunately we are entering the quiet time of year. But going forward from that I'd like to ask what is the process for developing the schedule of costs? Response costs. We don't actually deal with questions during public comment so you can just put to us that you would like. I am concerned that we have a process for developing the response costs schedule. And also to a request that the letters that go out. We've had a request from some people who would like that to be pretty specific about the date, the time that people involved, and the offenses that were contributed to the letter. So that they can take the appropriate actions. It wouldn't be enough just to have a letter saying you've had a nuisance response at such and such an address in their view. So I don't know what has been in the letters but that's just a request that they be fairly specific. And I guess my last one is a question so I shan't ask it. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much for coming in and not expressing your concerns to us. And I also have anything for public comment? Okay. Then we will deal with a couple of untimed items. And the first one we will do is the annual proclamation for human rights day. And we have DeBradway here who is the Human Resources and Human Rights Director. And she's going to tell us about this year's plans. Welcome. Thank you very much. Before you, you have a request to declare December 10th International Human Rights Day in the town of Amherst. And it's the 64th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights on December 10th. And the Human Rights Commission would like to invite the greater Amherst community to its annual vigil on the town common at 6 p.m. for a community reading of the International Declaration of Human Rights. If you've ever read it, imagine reading it, a body of people reading it out loud. Its meaning takes on greater dimension when you have a body of people each sharing the reading of it. And we invite everybody to come by candlelight, bring a flashlight or candle, and celebrate their International Declaration of Human Rights. And the Human Rights Commission does request that you issue the proclamation in front of you. Anyone have questions or comments about this? First, could we have the volume up because I'm having trouble hearing. And the second thing is, did you say what day? Can you remind us the day? It's Monday, December 10th, 2012, 6 p.m. on the Amherst town common. Thank you. Other questions or comments? Ms. Stein, would you like to make the motion? I move that the select board proclaim December 10th, 2012 as Human Rights Day in Amherst, and encourage all Amherst citizens to be mindful of human rights principles and urge all municipal, state, federal and international bodies to incorporate said principles into their laws and policies as a means to move toward the creation of a human rights culture, which is a quote, lived awareness and quote of human rights principles. Second, further discussion. Oh, in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you very much. Thank you. Do you happen to know how many years Amherst has been declaring this? I don't. That's okay. I was just curious. I assume that it will go on the website with some information about how to attend. Yes, it will. As opposed to just being in select board minutes. That's great. Great. Thank you so much for coming in. Thank you. All right. Next up, we have, oh, let's do finally the approval of the FY12 Select Board Annual Report. I've been putting it on the agenda every week as pressure to myself to try and get the darn thing done. Finally have. I appreciate your patience. So you have the draft of that select board report in your packets this month. And of course, as usual, everything is on our website. So questions or comments about the draft of the report. Ms. Stein. I thought it was an excellent, excellent report. I would make only one suggestion. And that is under the section on the last page of the minutes. I would say that I would like to add Mr. Musanti's name to it as having facilitated this new procedure, which is working so well as well as the great work of Debra Rousseau. Happy to do that. Anyone else have anything to add or subtract? Ms. Burr. This is just one of the many things we're grateful for you to you for doing because it would be way more work for the rest of us because we wouldn't keep, we don't keep nearly as comprehensive of notes. And it's still a lot of work for you to do. So thank you for doing it on our behalf. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. All right. Then we need a vote to approve the report as amended. I move that the, excuse me, I move that the Select Board accept the FY12 Annual Report for the Select Board as presented by Chair Stephanie O'Keefe. With a similar amount of gratitude, I second. Another discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Thank you. All right. Next up, we have renewal of annual licenses. This is of course the time of year when we renew all of our licenses because there are so very many licenses that come under the Select Board's purview. We're kind of doing them in waves as the office gets them all ready for our approval. You can imagine there's quite a lot of processing that goes on for each one of those. So this week we are doing just the liquor licenses. Those are all ready for us. There is a sheet on your desk that is just slightly different than the one that had been in your packet. There were two establishments that had the incorrect license listed for them in the first version. That was Amherst Brewing Company and Amherst Wine and Spirits. One business had inadvertently been left off the first version. That was Edible Adams, which is Che Albert. And it's just been a slight revision in how the information is presented on Hickory Ridge. And everything else is the same. So any questions or comments about that list of licensed renewals? Ms. Burr. I appreciate the comments being listed to the side indicating what information is still pending, even though none of us personally are going to do anything about that. And it's up to the office to make sure that comes in. This is the same kind of stuff that we see cause problems for people when they submit their original liquor licenses. They don't have all their paperwork taken care of and workers comp seems to be a particularly big issue for people to get finished. And who knows if that's partly a state not helping them or maybe it's just a complicated process. But there are lots of hoops for people to jump through and it's good that we're keeping track of what those are and we make sure that nothing goes through without it. So great work cause it's lots of different pieces. Correct. So those are all, the license fees are all paid as was required by the state as of last Friday. And none of the licenses obviously will be issued until all of those final details are taken care of. But our approval vote enables that to happen. Other questions or comments? Mr. Hayden. I'd also sort of as background, I want to appreciate all of the communications that we've been getting through the year as when there have been questions about enforcement and issues. So we're well aware of what's going on here and the resolutions for that kind of stuff. And they are all recommended for renewal because there were no significant issues with any of those businesses. All right. Ms. Stein, would you like to make the motion? I move that the select board approve the list of renewals for alcohol and non-alcohol licenses presented dated December 3rd, 2012, subject to receipt of documentation noted as pending for the calendar year beginning January 1, 2013 through December 31st, 2013. Second. Further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Thank you. I have many more of those at our next meeting in two weeks. Let's see what else we've got here. We have special licenses while we're on the liquor license subject, Ms. Stein. I move that the select board approve a special oil alcohol license for Amherst College catering services on behalf of the trustees of Amherst College for a cash bar to be held for a 21 plus student activities event to be held on Thursday, December 6th, 2012, from 8 p.m. to 12 a.m. in the Freeman Room, Keef Campus Center at Amherst College, Greg Wardlaw, catering manager. Second. Further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. I move that the select board approve a special oil alcohol license for top of the campus incorporated on behalf of the University of Massachusetts for reception to be held Wednesday, December 12, 2012, from 4 p.m. to 6 30 p.m. in the Fine Arts Center, UMass Amherst Merited Assistant Treasurer. Second. Further discussion? Ms. Burr? I would just ask, and I know that it's an issue with the applicants, and it's a small one, but what we list the people's names for is, as a contact person, and that we don't actually have a space on the form that says what their title is, and sometimes they include it, and sometimes they don't. So it would just be, I think, helpful to just say, Meredith Schmidt Campus Center, Judy Bardwell Campus Center, just so that somebody knows where they are. They're not from the Fine Arts Center. They're from the top of the campus or campus center. I don't really care how we do it. It's just that it comes across slightly different every single time, and it's just like, okay, Meredith Schmidt works with the campus center. That's the important thing to know at this point, and Judy Bardwell does, too. So something maybe worth keeping track of, but whatever. Okay. And then the final one for Amherst College, which we haven't moved yet, we just will want to include a contact person on that one as well. All right. All right. So further discussion on the second one, top of the campus. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Unanimous. Okay. I move that the select board approve a special wine and malt license for top of the campus incorporated on behalf of the University of Massachusetts for reception to be held on Friday, December 14th, 2012, from 3 p.m. to 5.30 p.m. in the atrium of the School of Management, UMass Amherst, Judy Bardwell. Second. Discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Unanimous. I move that the select board approve a special oil alcohol license for hurricane boosters for a fundraiser to be held on March 16th, 2013, from 6 p.m. to 12 a.m. in Valentine Hall Amherst College, and you'll have to fill in the name. Um, I looked at it and I couldn't decide if it was a student or actually the appropriate contact person. Peter Silvan's a parent. That's a part of the boosters. Okay. So could you fill in that name please? Peter Silvan. It's on, it's actually on the form. It just doesn't say who he is. Okay. All right. And Mr. Hayden, would you like to second that? I would like to second that. Thank you very much. Further discussion. I'll just note that that is the annual Monte Carlo night fundraiser for Amherst High School Athletics. It's a wonderful event, one of the really fun things that happens in town during the year. So mark your calendars, March 16th. Further discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Thank you very much. That's so cute. Ms. Brewer. I'll just add the follow-up that this is just part of my encouragement of staff to redo the form however they want to make it work easier for them, because it's obviously been old for a long time. Very good. All right. So now it is 645. Perfect timing, because at 645 is our property tax classification public hearing, which I would like to now reopen at 645. You'll recall that this meeting, this hearing was given legal notice for six o'clock p.m. in this room. And so Mr. Hayden, Mr. Misanti and I opened the meeting at 6 o'clock and immediately adjourned it to 645 just like we were supposed to. So we are here with assessor David Burgess and John Kick and Marilyn Blaustine from the Board of Assessors. And this is something that we do every year. I will note that this particular select board has been doing this together for quite a long time now. I guess three years is the minimum for us, four for most of us. But we're not going to preempt your presentation, because you all work so hard on it every year. And because this is complicated, it's good to refresh all of our memories about it. And in particular, it's good for the public who may be turning in for the first time every year to know. That's what I wanted to say. Okay. So with that, I was just about to say you could go ahead and make a motion. I will note for folks who are following along at home that all of this information that Mr. Burgess has provided to us is also in our web packet. So everything you ever wanted to know about tax classifications, you've got access to with that, Mr. Burgess. I'm not quite sure if it's everything, because we never split the tax rate, but at least we go for it. As Mr. Keefe said, this is our annual setting of the classification. The classification, the select board are the only people in Amherst that can make a decision if we are going to have one, a single tax rate for all classes of property, if we're going to allow a residential exemption, or if we're going to have a small commercial exemption. So that is why we have to do this every year. I did speak to the Department of Revenue today, and there's a possibility this may not happen in the future if we decide to just go for one tax rate sometime. They're talking about it, but that's a ways away yet. So just to start out, this year evaluations will not be changing, and not a significant amount. There will be individual changes for new growth. There will be some changes for areas that we have found. We're continuing with the program of inspecting properties in Amherst. We started up in North Amherst. We've gone through most of the neighborhoods up there. We're about 25% finished, and we'll keep on going with that over the next three or four years. That said, some people are going to see some values go down. Some people are going to see things go up because we see them. But generally, properties will not change. Last year we changed 6%. That will not happen this year. If the slack board votes to maintain a single tax rate, which I expect to do, we're looking at the moment that a tax rate being $20.39 per thousand. That's up approximately 65 cents from last year. And that will mean that the average tax bill will be $6,504 this year. And that's a change from last year which was $6,283. So it's going to be about $211. And that's all due to the increase in the levy. I'm out by 2.5% and there is small reduction on the values because of the abatement that we carried during the year. So that is the first thing you'll be deciding if you want to do that. This year's budget is $41,799,725. And the total valuation of the town is now $2,050,011,060. That has gone down about $8 million from last year. Could you repeat that? $2,050,011,060. And that includes all classes of property, commercial, industrial, residential, and personal. Personal being all the utilities and business properties that have inventory and various items that are taxable. So the average value of the property this year for a single family house will be 319,000. And that is down to about $200 from last year. Sorry, let me correct that. That's actually up $200 from last year. I'm sorry. So that's because we've had some new houses that have been built and we've added them on. The average value for a commercial property this year is $360,000. And that is up from last year when it was $354,800. So that's the big one. So if the select board voted to change the tax rate, in other words, apply more taxes to commercial, industrial, personal property than residential, you have the option of raising that by 50%. The impact would be that a property, a commercial property would pay on a tax rate of $30.58 up from the 2039. At the same time, the residential property would go down, the tax rate would go down to $19.23 from $20.39. So the residential tax would go down about $370. While the commercial tax would go up about $3,700. That would be the impact of splitting the tax rate this year if you did it at the 50% level. The next item you've got to decide on is if you want to have a residential exemption. A residential exemption as an exemption would be given to owner occupied properties. And at the 20% level, that would mean the residential tax rate would go from $20.39 to $23.39. So those properties that didn't get it would see an increase in their value of taxes of $3 per thousand. At the same time, the commercial, industrial, and personal would all stay at the $20.39. And the third item you have to deal with is a small commercial value. This is the exemption of up to 10% of the property valuation that can be granted to commercial, not industrial properties, just commercial properties that meet the requirements set forth in the law. And that is the businesses must have occupied the property as of January 1, 2011 and must have had no more than 10 employees certified by the Department of Employment and evaluation of less than a million dollars. The business, which is one of several businesses within the commercial building would not be eligible to go to the property owner, not the business. Similar to the residential exemption, the level does not change and the exemption is borne within the commercial class resulting in an overall increase of the commercial, industrial, and personal class value of tax. We are unaware of any qualifying business properties in town, so you really have nothing to work with on that one. The other item is a selection of this kind for open space. We don't have any this kind for open space because we don't have any open space. All our open space is under chapter lands in the commercial class, so we never have to worry about that. Those are the four items that you have to deal with. And we have three motions. That while they're not in the book, Mr. Puller very carefully went upstairs and made a motion sheet for me. They're on the select board's motion sheet. All right, before we get to the motions. So that's, if you have any questions, feel free to go ahead. Okay, first questions from select board. Ms. Brewer. I just want to thank Mr. Burgess again for having done this for several years now and having watched it even before I was on the select board. The explanation just keeps getting tweaked and getting better and better every year. So thank you. Having statements about the fact that Amherst has never voted to discount for open space in the past because we don't have that kind of open space like you just pointed out. I mean those kinds of things seem really confusing to people because they're like open space. We've got lots of open space. So thank you for that and making those clarifications. Something we might want to add someday to the important term section, something that sometimes confuses people is the personal property concept. That personal property is all associated with businesses as I understand it and is self-reported. It is self-reported but I want to make people understand that while the apartment complexes are not considered commercial property for real estate purposes, for personal property, they are considered commercial property. So anything that they would have such as machinery for lawns, gardens, laundromats, all the washers, dryers and microwaves and the units, they're all personal property and they would all be taxable. So they actually fall into a commercial point at that stage when the real estate isn't. The person who has their own home does not pay on personal property. The only thing I wanted to make a note is that Amherst several years ago through a town meeting with the select board's help voted that anyone with a value of $5,000 or less does not pay personal property tax and that cut out quite a few of the small mom and pop operations, the two and three family units, two family units and small businesses. So Amherst has helped along the lines, business help with that exemption. And I'm sorry I had another one, that's okay. I believe you might have given a number, Mr. Burgess, but I'm not sure when you characterize new growth for us. Do you have a sense of, you know, just again to give people some context, you know, seven new houses were built, 70 new houses were built. The new growth this year is not all in the residential section. We've only had about five new houses built this year, but you've got to remember in that same period what's adding, what's saving our new growth this year. I had originally estimated I think $450,000 and we came in at just on or just over $500,000. I can't remember at the moment, but the 12 units behind Judy's came on this year and the Lord Jeff came back on this year for the first time in a long time and those were large increases. And as well as that the utility companies came in with nearly $6 million in valuation, which is nearly $100,000 in taxes. So that all helps. Thank you. New growth is actually up this year from last year. Thank you. Ms. Stein. When you have a mixed-use building like the one behind Judy's, are the rental units above considered residential and the ones below considered commercial or is the whole building considered commercial? No, it's based on the percentage and it's the all of the property, all the residential will be classed as residential and the commercial will be valued as commercial. On Judy's it's not just that partial or just that building because Judy's itself is part of that partial so that's why it's a mixed-use and it's very close to 60-40 and I believe. Okay, thank you. Other questions or comments from the select board? Questions or comments from the public about the tax classifications? Okay, before we close the public hearing I'll just note a couple of other things that we often talk about and I just don't want to be kind of skipped over here. Okay, the single versus the split rate as Mr. Burgess mentioned that if we were to go to a split rate, a split commercial rate, because we have about a 10% roughly commercial property percentage in town the effect of the change is as he mentioned about it's a it's the effect is tenfold for every $300 approximately that that would save a residential property that would increase a commercial property's cost by $3,000 and that's just so out of whack that that's among the reasons that in the past we have typically we have only rejected that idea. The residential exemption this is something that we talk about every year in varying levels of detail this is something that works particularly well in communities that have vacation populations, second home populations in communities that don't have that like we don't have that it doesn't work particularly well sometimes folks say okay well what about the fact that we have such a high student rental population because typically what we say is among the impacts that it would have is it would favor homeowners but then put a burden on rental properties and at times like this people might be looking to increase the burdens on rental properties but there are various reasons that we have not gone along with that logic in the past. One of them is that it is an exemption up to it's the 20 right so there's actually a tipping point for many properties and in addition to burdening rental properties which is not just students of course it's often low income folks and others it would it has the tendency to make the it makes older homes are not older homes and more expensive homes considerably more expensive so we have always said that that might increase the incentive especially for maybe an older person who's living in the old family homestead or anybody else who is house rich and cash poor to that would increase their tax burden considerably and so again it would not be it would not be targeting any tax assistance what's the word I'm looking for tax relief at all it's a very broad brush that catches a bunch of unintended victims in it and the third thing that we talk about in relation to that is if we were to try it and then decide this just didn't work it was a disaster to switch back would be very complicated because then people's tax bills it would it would be a vast increase in people's tax bills to get us back to this level of normal so and also let's see we already talked about small commercial exemptions that that we just don't have commercial properties that qualify for that in Amherst and I think we covered everything else so I just kind of wanted to make sure that all the usual things are on the table for anybody who's tuning in for the first time with that are there any further questions or comments before we close the public hearing all right anyone from the board of assessors want to add anything to any list no all right then I will take a motion to close the public hearing I so move second and uh all in favor of closing the public hearing at 701 say hi hi hi and that is unanimous all right deliberation time for the the questions before us um we have always done what we've always done and the circumstances don't seem to have changed at all when anyone care to uh try and persuade us to make a different decision than we've ever made on any of these Mr. Hayden and I want to say again that the uh the presentation that we were given with all of the ups and downs and the what ifs it's very helpful and reaffirming that we've made the right decision in the past so thank you anything else about the the classification questions any reason to consider changing at this time all right let miss diners like to make the motions I move that the select board adopt a minimum residential factor of one equal tax rate for all classes of properties for fiscal year 2013 and that no no open space discount be provided second for the discussion oh they were saying hi hi hi that's unanimous I move that the select board not adopt a residential exemption for fiscal year 2013 second for the discussion all in favor say hi hi hi that's unanimous I move that the select board not adopt a small commercial exemption for fiscal year 2013 second for the discussion all in favor say hi hi hi that's unanimous miss burr I I don't know how to make this comment without it just sounding like a platitude so I guess it's going to sound like one but I hope that people understand despite the fact that this all goes very smoothly because we've done it a million times we have a good structure to base it on um we take this tax rate very seriously we realize it's high and we don't feel great about how high it is because we know it's hard for people yet at the same time we know it has to be what it is so I guess I don't want people to feel like oh we just blew right past that 20 bucks whatever um we know it's a serious concern for people um and we are trying and all the different things that we do talking about priorities for the budget etc to address you know making the most of what we've got associated with that so while tonight was talking about the tax rate and all those underneath the parts of it we do recognize that it's also a substantial rate and we will do our best with it thank you that's a good point and it's also important to note that this is going up by the allowable two and a half percent that uh under the state law proposition two and a half um plus the amount necessary to to make up for the abatements etc um but that amount does not keep pace with inflation and how much even the programs and services that we have this year will cost next year so uh it's a it's a very complicated set of circumstances and uh and leaves us fiscally challenged which is why mr musanti's budget process is about to get so uh exciting and then in the coming weeks because the budget that he presents to us in january has to deal with all of these realities is there anything you'd like to comment on about this mr musanti uh no I mean I think that's that's a good point to make about you know it's an ongoing effort about how we might be in a position to uh have a situation with a tax rate per thousand is less so it's obviously it's spending restraint but also what's the appropriate mix in our tax base compared to the 90 10 residential commercial split uh and all those kinds of things so I just want to also uh thank uh Dave Burgess and his staff publicly for ongoing excellent work and the entire board of assessors uh maryland john and curl mail is not here tonight uh ongoing civic duty uh in a very important uh position and also 2013 promises to be another exciting year including the provision of assessing services to our neighbor and tell them that we've negotiated a fee on that Dave has done nice work on thank you very much so thank you for all of your good work on this thank you for coming in again and just to remind mr musanti I have one form there in these uh have you all signed we will do that we'll get that to you in the morning yeah but I'm fine thank you thank you very much okay so it is now 706 the next item on our agenda it's a seven o'clock item a new taxi business for christian cab is anyone here for christian cab all right we'll come back to that just in case he shows up so our 705 item then is a request to petition the governor to close uh the power plant at mount tom and to speak to that we have former select board chair elisa cambell and some colleagues with her welcome I have to say I do some of these budget things on my condo board so I know exactly what kind of things you're dealing with um I'm here today with kim selnick and drew grande and we're here to talk about coal and air pollution and we brought a visual aid a map of the exceedances of air pollution standards in the one hour permit in the area as you can see mount tom mount tom itself the holy oak range pelham hills etc so I will let them have the microphone drew and I'm the uh holder of the poster thank you elisa uh thank you uh thank you the board for allowing us to come here tonight to uh to speak about this issue uh my name is drew grande i'm an organizer with the the sierra club working on the the clubs beyond coal campaign uh the beyond coal campaign got started about 10 years ago when 150 new coal fired power plants were proposed for the country uh communities around the country those plants were proposed started organizing started working to say this is not the future that we want for a community it's not the future we want for our children uh and it's also not the economy we want our we want our hometowns based around uh from there 162 proposed coal plants have been stopped from coming online uh and from that from that point the beyond coal campaign started working with other local communities to start retiring the the existing fleet of coal fired power plants that are out around the country much like the mount tom coal plant here in uh just down the road in holy oak mount tom was built in 1960 uh it's a relatively small plant about 146 megawatts uh and it's also a very old plant it's it's beyond uh it's beyond it's expected lifecycle uh and we're taking a closer look at this plant and and the effects it has on on the communities one of the biggest things that stuck out for us on mount tom is uh the situation that the the position it's in in holy oak itself as you know holy oak is uh community uh full of uh a lot a lot of first and second generation immigrants that have come to this country and one of the biggest things we we learned when we started talking with these families is that they would uh a lot of them moved here from Puerto Rico and they said I moved here healthy my kids were healthy and within a month or two we developed a cough we went to the doctor and all of a sudden we're diagnosed with asthma we came here healthy now we have asthma uh one of the people who worked with vermina pares uh she moved here in 1982 three of her four children have asthma and 12 of her 16 grandchildren and great grandchildren all have asthma uh once we started hearing more of these stories we took again took another closer look at the mount tom coal fired power plant uh and we did we one of the things we noticed on it was that the tidal five air permit this is the permit that allows mount tom to uh essentially put its put its exhaust up into the air was last issued in 2002 uh this month will mark five years since that permit expired so that permit expired on December 31st 2007 uh and what what's happened since then is that the there's been updates to clean air standards and one of those clean air standards is the uh NACS national ambient air quality standard for sulfur dioxide sulfur dioxide has been recognized by the EPA as an asthma irritant uh and they've also set a level of this one this 196 level right here of micrograms per cubic meter so essentially a concentration of sulfur dioxide in a given volume of air which is common that's unusually on this map red is better than blue yeah it's hard for me to get it through my head but I think in in the world of engineering they they decided that this is the color code they want to go with but yeah normally red is the worst but in this one red is red is the best and it works up up to blue and purple up here but you can see there are areas here where there is blue there are blue and purples uh and they are the mountain ranges yep they are they are the mountain range uh you know recreation areas that that people come to the area to to spend some time on uh but the rest of the a lot of these red and orange areas especially in Holyoke and some in some in north Hampton are areas where schools are located and those and those the children and and and older residents are the ones that are most at risk for this but that 196 levels is the the level that the EPA has said this is air that is unhealthy to breathe this is air that if you have asthma five minute exposure to this you are at risk for for developing asthma attack uh and if you are healthy if you're exposed to this for for longer periods of time you're at risk for developing asthma so we worked with a the engineering company out of out of Madison wisconsin to do an air model on on on the pioneer valley and on mount tom and this is the results that they've come up with based on this new ambient air quality standard uh so what they found is that there are numerous violations here and one of the biggest things that they've said is they kind of ran this model twice for us this is the model you're showing with mount tom uh to show you this model without mount tom essentially we would just take this background map and hand it over to you because we see these levels drop far below the uh the the unhealthy level uh so we can pretty conclusively point to mount tom as as the culprit for for this right here uh and essentially what we're looking at is the the air on the pioneer valley is unhealthy we've seen uh over the summer on a lot of the hot days there were air alert days the the department of iron melt protection has issued air alert days for anyone of sensitive groups and that's pretty much anyone children or uh or seniors or anyone with with any kind of breathing issue that may range from asthma to COPD to to to to any any kind of uh uh affliction worse than that but those are the people that are at risk for this uh and what this what this standard says is that we don't have an issue currently the you know mount tom is is meeting the the expired permit that they're operating under what we have what we have is that we we're asking governor patrick to have his department of iron melt protection update the air permit so that the complies that so that coal plant complies with all current air standards including this this ambient air quality standard here uh so essentially what's happening is that mount tom is is meeting the current permit but the pioneer valley isn't meeting ambient air quality standards that are set forth by the EPA because of that because of that coal plant i've got a copy of the of the modeling report here i can pass on to the to the board and i have an electronic copy that i can pass on to everyone afterwards as well but i'm happy to answer any questions about that but right now i'll i'll give it back over to cam and i think uh any questions anyone may have we're happy to answer at the end of that hi um my name is kim selznick um thank you for allowing me to come speak on behalf of my generation who's very very concerned about the environment um i am a student at hampshire college um and there and within the five college system i study environmental science and environmental social justice um through these studies um i pretty much spend my days learning about how activities such as coal burning power plants are leading us towards one of the greatest environmental disasters of human history um i've also learned in through the environmental social justice component of my studies that these plants are often put in low income immigrant neighborhoods such as the one in holy oak um so as far as i can tell the coal team and the burning of coal and the not switching to renewable energies of which we do have the technology and the mind power is a losing game um this town these colleges hampshire college particularly is teaching me how to be progressive how to be environmentally conscious and how to fight for social justice um i am asking for this town as a whole and this valley as a whole to fight against the grain in the same manner that it's teaching its students too um i have a letter here um that we would like you all to sign read it over think about it to governor patrick asking him to retire this plant or at the least um require them to operate under clean air permits that are up to date thank you okay thank you very much questions or comments from these folks from the select board mr hedon yeah i've got a couple of things one is a very technical one i'm looking at the map and it's granted it's you know 15 feet away um there's quite a bit of granularity on that i didn't realize that that many sulfur dioxide monitoring stations i only knew of two in the region how do we how do you get to such a fine um uh map of of the danger uh keep in mind i'm not a scientist or engineer but i can tell you that the way the the way the modeling was done it wasn't uh just from just from monitoring monitoring stations uh what we're able to do is take actual um data from epa that the that mount time reports reports the agency on uh the type of coal they're using the number of hours that the scrubbers are being turned on while they're operating which is scrubber operation is less than operation of the plant they don't always turn turn the scrubbers on so using data that mount time reports the epa uh and then using that within the the model that the engineering firm is you as they were able to to set up this map here so i uh thank you um i mean that's that's i'm looking for a little more technical than that um i understand that the model behind it and that there are similar models for mercury which is another contaminant and and nitrous and magnesium manganese there's all kinds of spad stuff that comes out of a coal stack but um you know i'm i'm always a little bit i want to be careful when we're presented with data which is not which is a model i mean there are facts here there are real problems here and i think they need to be honestly reported um there's another thing that i'd like to point out about this particular uh station um it's got a sludge pond very similar to the one that collapsed and flooded town i can't remember where where it is now kinkston tennessee yeah so we have one of those two and it has the exact same kind of earth and dike around it um and that leads me to my my last question um one of the things that that i'm proud of here in amherst is that we recognize that um we can't just eliminate 146 megawatts worth of generation without replacing it with something and that thing is apt as not to be another coal power powered fire power station someplace else further away from towns like amherst that are active and interested in this thing you speak of social justice um so i'm proud that that um we have understood and i'm hopeful when i look at the um at the proclamation at the request here that we keep shutting the power plant down whether it's a nuclear power plant in vermont nearby coal plow plant you know here nearby where coal plants in ohio which are not so nearby but the air gets to us too that we are actively replacing that with something with renewables you know um governor patrick has a very comprehensive program if for the state um which is under some attack um in fact it's under attack every time a project is proposed in places like waitley or amherst um and uh we have to recognize that we can't just shut these things off yes it's making our kids sick yes it's threatening our river with the sludge yes it's putting mercury into the air but we can't just turn them off without doing whatever it is beyond coal and i'm kind of hopeful that you're as active in talking about you know why natural gas may not be the exact best way to go it's a nice stop gap for the meantime why we have to support efforts for solar power and other renewables thank you very much miss kim please speak into the mic yeah i mean i think no one disagrees the sierra club does not disagree with anything you said you know um we're actually asking at this point that the current air standards being forced on this plant that's what the the letter is basically asking for um and of course the sierra club has been out there supporting solar and wind installations here as well as other places and like the town of amherst has gotten some flak for it generally about wind rather than solar but you know i think we're all on the same side thank you very much other questions or comments from select board right now okay so you've given us good information you've given us a draft letter which we're now just seeing for the first time um i think we need to sort of chew on this for a while if we have questions for you we will get back to you if we have a new draft that we would like revise and in fact if you could send electronic versions of the materials you provided where should i send that to uh to the select board address which is select board at amherstma.gov the modeling port there as well that would be great yeah anything we could get electronically would be great so in case we want to um either adopt or revise the letter or anything like that whatever our next steps are in the future would be easiest to have all those electronically and if we get these to a next step such that it's on an agenda again we will let you folks know great uh the other thing i do uh mr hayden i can get you in touch with the engineering firm that did this for us they can better answer your question than i than i could as far as how the modeling uh was conducted that would be cool like that yeah i can i can do that say amherstma.gov thank you there miss burr beyond the time frame of five years ago um in terms of current time frame is there a particular deadline that you're looking to get letters in by etc just in terms of our planning if we could do this uh in the next four weeks i i think would be would be great uh on last tuesday we just delivered 1600 petitions from residents of massachusetts to governor patrick asking him to to act on uh renewing the the air permits from out tom and several towns have already said similar yeah we've seen uh shoots barry has has has sent a similar letter uh and the north hampton east hampton are in the similar kind of same steps as where you guys are right now they've got maybe a two-week jump on you right now but uh similar situation competition okay yeah right so after the first of the year would be still good yep so be good um and just one other point so as we're talking about retiring coal plants across the country we are we are as you're saying we are working to support clean renewable energy in other places we've seen about tom go from about 3600 hours of operation uh four or five years ago to only 800 in the first half of this year so we're seeing that plant come down uh and we're also working with the governor's administration to to actively help push those clean renewable projects where where it makes sense and where it's smart to do so uh whether that's through energy efficiency we're proud to see massachusetts be the number one energy efficient state in the country uh excited to see the governor out in this area in florida today opening up the new wind project that happened there we're also working with uh the governor's administration also the federal government with the uh the bowham process and for the offshore wind project in off of uh massachusetts waters there as well so if there's any other projects uh around the state we're always happy to jump in but also if there's anything happening here in amherst please let us know how we can help you out with any kind of energy efficiency or clean renewable projects we're always we're always happy to to lend our voice to that and and support uh anyone working to do that thank you very much thank you appreciate your time and all your information um so mr heaton is someone who clearly has uh interest and knowledge about this would you be willing to sort of take this to the next stage with us and for us rather and anyone who is uh has a keen interest as mr heaton does to consider the letter recommend the next step for us um if there is one you know just kind of let me know if this should be on the agenda either next time or in january or whatever mr heaton yes because it is important okay so you'll you'll you'll shepherd this to the next steps for us i will end with mr waltz perfect yeah so yeah i'm sorry i can't hear the report also what passing along the report to mr heaton also oh yeah sure great okay good so mr heaton will bring this back to us for next action and anyone who wants to have a hand in that before it gets to us get with mr heaton okay moving along um sir are you here from from christian cab terrific please come forward and it could what's your name my name is daniel welcome okay so you are starting a new taxi business in amherst yes and you are aware that as of january first we are changing our taxi regulations and requiring alt cabs to have built in fare meters meters yeah i'm aware of that okay okay good um all right so um so this gentleman's application has gone through all the regular processes in the office and with the chief of police and is being recommended to us for um for approval um do folks have questions for could you pronounce your last name again for me okorafor okorafor thank you very much any questions for mr okorafor mr heaton maybe not directly but maybe for us when are there enough taxi cab companies in town well how will we know it's a good question i don't think it's now i i but but it's it's one that that we're i know we're grappling with this and some other types of licenses and well there's a lot of these right so there's not a direct answer what we do know with the new regulations is that we have the ability to limit the number that's specific in the new regulations um i think we won't know how the taxi industry is functioning in amherst until we get a sense of how the transition goes i think that the metering of cabs is probably going to shake out if not companies certainly vehicles because we've kind of raged the expense and the level of investment that's required to to operate legally here um so the the question will remain a question for a while miss burr yeah along those lines um there's it seems like there's always town meeting when we're trying to plan well when should we follow up on this oh wait town meeting time no wait that's town meeting time too um how about like june maybe because maybe even july because that would give us time for you know people that have actually installed these things and then said you know what i'm not going to bother with that van anymore etc and like you said some of this fall out end of the school year etc because i think it will be good to have a sense you know before the next whole year starts of licenses of where things are going rather than just assuming a whole year i'll go by so i don't know if that's a good point i can plug it into the calendar so we'll make sure to be getting feedback from uh from the police folks and from the inspections folks about how the new regulations are are working out there in the field okay but for mr or core for a specific uh application right now so he'll be he'll be running under the current regulations for the next couple of weeks uh and then the new regulations as of 2013 mr musanti just the application is actually for the new calendar year beginning january one oh i apologize so you're not going to start having cabs in amherst this month at all oh january one yeah okay so this is a new license so this way it skips the renewal process so that makes good sense okay so you'll you'll be operating entirely under the new regulations which presumably you've seen and are aware of all right mr hedon i i see that you're the first driver for the the company yes that's i don't stand here um it's been a long time since i've been able to ask the question how well do you know you were around town yeah i i lived in amherst for 24 years i just moved to south idly um last i mean in 2007 so i went to umas and i lived in amherst for 24 years so i know the area very well okay thank you excellent okay any other questions from mr akura for mr stein would you like to make the motion sure i move that the slept word approve a new taxi business license for daniel akura for doing business as christian coach taxi 13 montague road amherst ma for the license year to begin january 1 2013 through december 31st 2013 second for the discussion oh in favor say hi hi hi that's unanimous congratulations good luck to you and uh very much look forward to your new business mr hedon thank you drive safe thank you thank you very much all right moving right along we have speaking of town meeting we have our uh semi-annual uh town meeting a wrap-up discussion uh we try and do this at the first select board meeting following the wrap-up of each town meeting during the year um to just talk about particularly our process part of it but also any other thoughts or suggestions we have about how town meeting went and how it might be improved for the future so before it gets banished from our minds by uh by other things we uh we try and have this conversation promptly so uh we did just finish town meeting it finished in three sessions this time we started uh we we did our experiment of starting at seven o'clock and i have not gotten any formal feedback from town meeting coordinating committee on that yet uh they are looking for folks to return the surveys that we included in their packets that rather tmcc included in their packets and made available during town meeting so anyone who's watching this who's a town meeting member is encouraged to get their feedback to town meeting coordinating committee about how they felt about the seven o'clock start time so otherwise how do folks feel mr hedon about the seven o'clock start time um i might notice that uh quorum call every night well i mean the select board was late one night but otherwise the quorum call was was pretty close to to seven o'clock i think the latest was like seven quad past seven or something like that so that kind of sounds like an endorsement to me from town meeting members themselves thank you yeah so i'll note uh you're right the quorum call is around sort of ten past ish nightly which means that uh that was 20 minutes before seven thirty that we had three nights which is an hour which could have been the difference between coming back or not for for a session so thank you good point other thoughts about town meeting mr um i i think it might be useful to speak with the planning board and and i don't mean that the chair just has to talk to her husband even though i guess they're occasionally allowed to do that but perhaps in a slightly more formal fashion um on two issues one is whether or not it seems worthwhile given the experience we just had of trying to set the citizen zoning petition deadline even earlier which i know sounds awkward to people but nonetheless that's there's no requirement to file citizen petitions one can just work through the planning board if one wants to have something that one is sure is the one's own then um it doesn't seem unreasonable to perhaps add even more time into that process assuming the planning board thinks that would help them in their process particularly when they have very similar sorts of things going on um it's unusual that they would have completely separate things going on where you know they they have no idea that petitioners are working on something and they wouldn't even attempt to be working on something at the same time but to get a better sense of that see if there's a point to making that earlier um so that it doesn't feel quite so rushed toward the end with you know rewrites up to and including on the floor the other aspect to that that i think is just always complicated for zoning but like the longer i serve in town meeting i guess the more it comes back to me is that if people are going to question zoning when we get um to the actual articles rather than just saying sure sure whatever the planning board wants um then they need to remember that those books those zoning bylaw books have actual useful information in them and then so if there's a way that we can if you know planning board wants to work with us in some sort of joint education effort or bring tmcc into it but there were people who say well does that mean i can do this anywhere it's like no it says right here you can do it in rbc you can do it here and here and then what's that mean again you know what actually as much as we try and put into the warrant you can't assume that that's enough you have to be able to put it into the bigger context and so i think sometimes when people go to that very first if they have the chance to go to the moderators education session that says here's your zoning bylaw here's your town but then they forget and that those things all fit together and that it's kind of hard to take it completely out of context and say oh i don't actually know what that means because i don't know what the definition section actually says before this and what the section before it and what the section after it looks like so um you know personally uh zoning is not my most thrilling aspect of my life and i'm willing to concede some of those points to people i consider more expert on the subject and one can't prevent all questions and one doesn't want to but in terms of just people understanding their role as a town meeting member i think there needs to be a better grasp of the fact that zoning things are complicated because they take place inside a much bigger picture than we necessarily see within an individual warrant article and although they don't have to memorize the whole book they have to be able to know that there are different sections of it that they'll need in order to understand so future education okay so i think that that your point is kind of largely about um town meeting members doing sufficient homework just like we want them to do homework on the budget you know read the the finance committee report um before spring town meeting um the zoning bylaw is an important part of your preparation for zoning articles additionally there is a zoning primer document that perhaps should be uh encouraged for to be circulated more and just kind of remind people about those because that is a that's a very helpful document and and you're right it's it's full of kind of arcane detail very complicated and interrelated detail and just to have a refresher on it for folks to kind of do their own personal refresher course on that before each town meeting could be helpful okay um as far as the citizen zoning petition calendar stuff um you'll be happy to know that my husband and i actually tried to talk about things other than town it's a lot of opportunity so we do minimize these things um so yeah it doesn't doesn't make me do with what i talk about talk to him about and in fact what we'll do with these suggestions is what we do with them always which is we kind of give the whole thing to tmcc but also give um pass along the relevant elements to whatever other bodies it is relevant to so um so these two elements of that are relevant to the planning board i will i will pass along to them as well and anything else we come up with miss train yeah i would like to just uh point out or recall i found myself um going back to the planning department's um um presentations for those articles i mean that those are very very helpful in at least steering you into the right place if you want to do more research so i just want to point out i want to be appreciative of that and i don't know um if there's if there's some way um i don't know to have have more to them to help people not have to flip through their zoning i mean i know the rules sort of um i spent a lot of time with them um but still i found myself going to the report and saying oh yes i remember that now i i'm going to just go bone up on that for a second and make sure i i've got that clear so i found those to be very helpful not unlike the paragraphs after each section and the the budget that each department puts in but still um i don't know if we want to uh encourage more verbosity there or something um beyond saying i appreciate them they really do work thank you very helpful okay mr wand yeah in the in the same vein you know these things are always a two-way street and i think we need is both better communication and instruction on the part of town officials and better homework on the part of town meeting members which we know is difficult and mr haydn's an unusual position because he'd shared the planning board and immersed himself in these things the rest of us are still learning uh some more some less and i guess one of the things that that concerns me is that zoning is by nature complicated and all too often we hear people say they can't support something because it's too complicated to understand we've got to figure out what the problem is you know to what i said it's the thing itself or the communication i think in egypt right now they're being asked to pass a constitution with something like 230 clauses by december the 15th and you don't want to be in that position uh we can't keep putting things off forever too so i want to pick up something that miss bruer mentioned i believe at one of the select board meetings during town meeting uh with regard to petition articles because you know it's wonderful that citizens are so involved in amherst that they bring forward articles they begin to try to learn zoning imperfectly sometimes but they make the effort and they get something in shape that the planning board can deal with it that we can deal with it but miss bruer mentioned that there are alternative routes and one of these of course is not to bring forward your own article but simply to approach the planning board and say here's what we want to do in other words maybe it's less important whose name is on it and where it comes from than what the result is because if you look at the actual votes in town meeting the ones from that mistaken that had the highest degree of collaboration between town hall that is town manager's office select board planning board and so forth past and others tend to get referred back we're not sure and especially given that we've got a two-thirds uh threshold uh you know successes that are mutual interest so that might be one route to try you know not just earlier submissions of citizen articles but earlier conversation with planning board about joint efforts just a thought thank you and i'll note that um part of the uh planning board's process is to hold i believe they do it twice so you're also is a zoning forum where they are collecting input to help uh add to their list and and figure out their priorities for things going forward so um so it's very important also for folks to be to be participating in that if they want to make their priorities known okay miss stein we had talked about a consent agenda and i don't know what i would have put on it but it didn't come to pass so i was wondering to whom we should re-suggest that so maybe for the um annual town meeting in the spring it could happen okay thank you for that point so yes we did um we talked about the consent calendar recommended its consideration uh for usage um last time that is something that's under the moderators control and he needs to have that published i believe it's 10 days prior it's not a spur of the moment decision um when we got our feedback from uh TMCC they said they didn't have a problem with it which i think was good to know um what i think would actually be useful if we're going to kind of change course and go the consent calendar route it would be good for TMCC to back that and to encourage its use and so that they're kind of preparing folks ahead of time about what this means and here are the things that are part of it and here's how you get more information and etc um because that that will be something that's different for the body so it needs some introduction so i think that personally i think TMCC needs to do more than not oppose it they would really need to support it and kind of champion it if that were to and have its greatest um chance of success going forward because as we know anyone can pull something out of the consent calendar and i believe the last time it was used which was probably 2007 um it just stopped being used because people were always objecting to the stuff that was was in it they wanted it all pulled out and with with i think really inadequate uh reasons for that being oh well there are always new town meeting members you know people might not understand what we're voting on well yes but that's what the finance committee report is for and that's what the warrant review is for there are all kinds of ways to get your questions answered everything is very well explained at the same time you do have the the opportunity to ask questions about anything you want um so if something should be pulled out of the consent calendar then it should but um just kind of a blanket oh some people might not understand isn't quite a good enough reason so it's reasons like that that i think it would be really helpful for TMCC to get behind um the the what and why of the consent calendar if that were to be successful but uh i appreciate you bringing that up again fist raiden yeah i might on that point i just i did take a good hard look at the uh but the warrant when we first received it to try to think of how we could possibly group anything in that particular warrant into um into a consent calendar and they were disparate enough that i think that would have been difficult at best as most of the things maybe except for not paying the bills that we don't know um really did require a discussion so that's that's uh in reverse order another point i'd like to make is that i i appreciate that um despite the complexity of some of the articles that we're looking at there was much less of the confusion expressed by members of town meeting this time than and times before um i just wanted to appreciate i i know that a significant number of town meeting members spent a lot of time you know working and trying to figure figure these things out before they voted and i think mr. waldo's is is correct to point out how well that works and how valuable that that effort is and that we appreciate it other questions or comments okay i'll note that um personally i think that uh that we do need to look at and and i'll be meeting with the town manager and uh miss russell in the office about the calendar in general um and i don't know how much of it as miss brewers point to how much of it was about the citizen petition articles and how that kind of changed things um but uh our our process was was rougher going into it i mean it really emphasized to me how much we do not want to be taking positions on articles at the middle school i uh in thinking about the votes i mean it really we're we're not able to give due diligence to things when we're making a decision when we're sitting there going okay uh yeah we've got to be in there in five seconds so yeah okay how about we take no position or yes sure we support it like that that's just that's not fair to us it's not fair to town meeting um and i think that some of our decisions were rushed that way because we were taking the path of least resistance we needed to get done and get in there um and so i don't know how much the the calendar part by changing the deadlines could figure into that i don't know how much of it maybe is improving our communication to say petitioners about what what our needs are in in terms of trying to um take a position on things and and obviously i mean it is the system that we all have to work on it and work within it and um and sometimes it's just imperfect and and maybe we just sort of had a perfect storm of of imperfections if you will this time but um but if there are ways that the calendar can be tweaked for example even at the beginning of our process we always start taking positions on articles before we sign the warrant we've been doing this for as long as i've been on select board um but for some reason we didn't have enough materials ahead of time this time and i don't know what the problem was with that i'm not sure if people were not getting communicated to that they needed to have their packet materials or if i was doing a bad job of setting up which articles we were going to deal with at what time because their materials weren't ready so there's just kind of a general like sitting back and going okay what just happened then how do we make it better than needs to happen so um so if you have any particular thoughts either now or or later about the calendar part of it that should feed into that discussion um then then definitely let me know because that that will be important to me miss stein and the mr hedon um one of the things that made it difficult but i think it's okay was the fact that some of the articles kept changing right sure and there wouldn't have been much we could have done till they got to their most completely changed form and actually became considerably short which helped right so that's part of it like the the process is what it is and obviously that needs to be able to happen and so we can't deal with every eventuality but are there some of them that we could have anticipated better and uh so i think on our end that that there probably is and and maybe we also need a better mechanism for you know instead of a rush decision maybe we just don't even bother you know maybe we just say to town meeting you know not only are we taking no position we're taking no position because we just didn't have the time to adequately consider this it's nobody's fault it's just that's how this has ended up but rather than sitting there you know talking about it as though we're being thorough when really we're just being we're just scratching the surface and then we go in and make some kind of a rushed vote that maybe we're not all comfortable with having been ready to take the vote i'm not sure we added any value and in fact sometimes we might be providing misdirection to town meeting if they think we've considered this more thoroughly than we did so um so just kind of weighing all of those um all of those pieces is something we'll try and do better mr. Hayden yeah i was i was going to to notice that the articles that we were most rushed about were the ones that were changing most right to the end i also wanted to comment is that there'll never be enough time i mean let's be a little bit careful about imagining you know a nirvana where we can get it all done and have nice ribbons on the packages before town meeting for sure and that's an excellent point um so you know i say this all the time that anything that we do that we've been doing over and over again is the question of are we doing it by accident or are we doing it on purpose and so if we're doing it on purpose then that's good and if it's we're doing it by accident and we shouldn't be doing it that way then let's change it so um so we do sort of uh always use the same calendar and just sort of move up the dates etc but if there are ways especially from what we learned from this and really one of the key things was about the materials that we had ahead of time when we needed them um and uh and so making sure that that's very clear particularly to petitioners just to because it's part of all of the it's part of all of the different kinds of preparations that are happening so i want to be very clear that i'm not in any way um criticizing as i know my colleagues are not the petitioners and and the timing that happened here and everything that happened at the end of the process in particular was happening at the end because it was the end of the process um but uh but anything we can do to improve the front of the process to kind of bring us to a better place at the end then uh then we will try and do that so uh so yes mr in i also don't want us to dismiss the value of the select board's position um i mean we are responsible for taking maybe a different view the other view than than other boards might be and i think it's it's important that we help town meeting as much as we can to make their decision on these things so i don't want to throw that away yeah and that's an important point and we noticed that a couple times at the with the articles at the end when when select board and planning board was in agreement with the petitioners that was a powerful statement to folks um the select board made a different recommendation on one of the articles than the planning board did at the end again that was a really rushed decision and as soon as we were done i was like wait a minute that wasn't what we did and that really kind of confused town meeting i think so but again that was part of our being rushed and um and so i think it i think it was a very good learning experience for us to have gone through it that way you know and with with no ill result really but it gives us a lot to try and improve on um to think about trying to improve on for next time others okay so it's really uh scheduling stuff taking a look at that um encouraging more um more and better use of kind of the preparation materials that we have the uh potentially that zoning primer thing um the zoning bylaw uh the planning board reports and whether they might uh even have more detail perhaps um consent calendar okay anything else people are thinking of right now miss bruh um this is actually not within our purview but i heard some just random comments that check-in was not smooth every night and so it would it might be worth just checking in to find checking in with the check-in to see if there was something we could have done that would have made their lives easier because it just seemed a little bit more a lot more people standing in the hall and a lot of those people getting materials um rather than the kind of usual just flow that tends to go on yeah maybe that might be another got tripped up somewhere that might be another information opportunity because um i think that started happening last spring and i think that that was part of once we stopped needing tally cards for every new night so i think that there might be some confusion about what you're doing when you're checking in whether you need to yada yada yada um so maybe just maybe part of it is communication and i don't know what else is happening there because of course we don't check in but mr heen which brings me to a question i guess that more of a question to ask um i'm wondering how well the uh the cards are working out i mean there were a couple of you know sort of harrison had to stop and hand stuff out and make those arrangements which is fine i mean it's just a ton of paper that was not used um but i i just want to sort of maybe check in to make sure that we're on the right track with that still i wonder with who who would know if that's working or not like so as a body we we have never yet um gone beyond our cards it would make sense for me to follow up with the town clerk okay yeah thank you issues were identified if any well there's that other thoughts on this subject at this moment very well if you think of anything else let me know and we'll put on the agenda again for next time uh in the meantime i will summarize this discussion it will be in your list tomorrow or whenever i get that to you and i will send that to tmcc and other appropriate folks mr not that i can imagine there's a member of the public who watches select board meetings who doesn't already know that harrison's retiring oh thank you but um i while i'm sure someone would make much grander remarks than i would be on to thanking harrison for as many years of service i think that one of the things that people don't recognize is that the select board chair the finance committee chair town manager town managers office and the moderator do an immense amount of work behind the scenes organizing this every time around and of course everybody has their own style and it'll be different so that will be part of what we're moving into too is you know depending on who runs depending on what ideas they have that might bring us you know a new consent calendar idea but it might also change some other things so more challenges ahead yes indeed that's an excellent point and thank you for just the opportunity to also remark on the fact that this was uh as uh harrison greg announced his final town meeting session as moderator unless we get we call another special town meeting between now and may 6th and let's hope we don't do that we can't think of an excuse to do that but uh harrison greg has served as town moderator for 19 years now uh that's an extraordinary run of service in an incredibly difficult job not only does he uh is he responsible for running town meeting but he also has the appointments of the finance committee and other things that come up that he is the appointing authority for for example the regional school district planning committee that town meeting established a year ago that miss brewer is the representative too um so uh i was saying to mr missy and to mr hayden before the meeting started it's a it's it's a very difficult job it's a very intense job and it's one that typically you know when you're doing it really well people don't notice because you're doing it really well uh and so they kind of take that for granted and it's only when you trip up every now and then that people notice and that's what gets all the heat so that really makes it extra difficult um and he really has just done an extraordinary job for all of these years and uh and he's he's the face of town meeting it's really going to be very different and uh wow incredible and uh just in general thank him so much for his service and uh it's been a heck of a run mr hayden yeah i'd like to uh also sort of to pile on if you will um to to remark on the quality of of the service that that he did render to town meeting um to the point that it was recognized by his colleague moderators and and he's chair or will have been chair of the state town moderators secret cabal whatever it is right yes he was president of the moderators association uh 11 years ago and uh and anyone who is interested enough in town government that you're watching this meeting but you might have missed the town meeting definitely go to uh the amherst media website or look on youtube or whatever but amherst media has put together a great clip of the farewell speech at the end and uh and uh the moderator read some wonderful remarks that he had written upon becoming president of the moderators here within three minutes association yes and uh it was it was very powerful it was a it was a very meaningful uh way to close his term of service and it was really lovely for the body to have the opportunity to appreciate him in that way that has got to be the longest standing ovation i've ever seen i think so uh so that was lovely so do check that out that is uh that is a separate clip of video in addition to being part of the whole video of that town meeting night so all right thank you anything else on town meeting very well moving right along next up we have town managers report great thank you very much uh i want to update you on a number of issues including safe and healthy neighborhoods working group uh you know that i appointed a work group that has now uh 17 members representing a wide spectrum of of uh uh interests uh on uh neighborhood issues most notably related to issues related to uh rental properties we have a work group i've asked dave zomac to chair uh we've got umass representatives neighborhood multiple neighborhood representatives uh mizokif representing the select board sandra anderson from planning board we have uh public safety leaders health director uh planning staff uh some one or two students we think will be uh pointed in the days ahead uh we've had our first meeting uh last week on november 27th very ambitious uh but i think achievable uh charge which is to develop uh specific recommendations for uh reviewed by me and then consideration uh for spring town meeting related to rental registration and property uh rental property inspection protocols and then also looking at our foreign related persons by law and offering suggestions if any on how to further improve that by law so very ambitious we had a very excellent meeting last week people are engaged there's a website that is growing by the day if you go to the home page of the town website and click on living uh tab you'll see the safe and healthy neighborhoods web page all the background information for our efforts in this area progress reports from departments and the work and the backup documentation that the work group is is looking at are being posted as we go along their next meeting is tomorrow and they'll be working up calendar and some other things and really getting into the nitty gritty with any number of uh best practices examples from other college towns and other experiences from the members that they want to bring to bear on improving our systems and protocols and also uh specific suggestions from the neighborhood uh folks who are active on this effort with us so i'm uh very optimistic i think it's uh it's off to a good start and they'll they'll be very very busy over the next uh two or three months and we can you can expect to see uh i think some action recommendations at the spring town meeting uh related to that add a couple things to that i'm sorry we're going to move on to a different subject i was going to talk about security details oh okay yeah i'll just add a couple things about the safe and healthy work group before you get into that um the uh he's absolutely right it was a great meeting it is a very uh ambitious plan and timeframe but uh i'm very confident we'll be able to do it and in fact i've promised town meeting that we would and i have every intention of fulfilling that promise um the um so folks know this is a working group that has a ton of work to do it is a public meeting they happen in this room people are welcome to attend um because there's so much work to do public comment is not being taken during the meetings but public comment is encouraged by email anyone can give any thoughts to the group that they want by either emailing mr zomek whose email is all over the town website or um myself who if you don't have my personal email address you can certainly send it to the select board and i i will take that to the group so uh and it's possible that a safe and healthy work group email is going to be set up for that purpose as well um the other thing that's going to happen is at certain points when we get the draft regulations into certain forms we're going to have specific meetings to hear public feedback about them and that schedule will be determined either uh tomorrow or at the meeting next week but before long as soon as that um schedule is available uh that will be widely publicized so people know when exactly they can they can come in and be heard on the specifics of the the draft regulations uh to date and as i said any any comments along the way please feel free to to be emailing them to us and we just can't take the time during the meetings to hear all of those um as mr musanti said the website is full of documentation in fact it's being set up like the select board packets so it's terrific you look at the meeting and you can look at all of the information um so we're trying to make all of the the same information that the group is using available to uh anyone interested in the public uh just in our process or in commenting um and um i think that's all i have to add to that yeah i just wanted to mention that so thank you great okay uh i did want to spend a moment uh updating the board uh uh you had asked a while back now uh about uh tell us about security details that some uh residents or groups of residents in particular neighborhoods have uh hired or are thinking of hiring and how do they interact what's their role how do they interact with the embers police uh we're aware of three neighborhood groups presently that have security hired security uh agencies the group in the Lincoln and Fearing Street areas as well as uh Coles Lane Coles Lane Hobart Lane area um puffed in and townhouse also have private security uh that who are employees of those rental properties uh most work uh evenings Thursday Friday Saturday between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m. um there is regular dialogue between security agencies and the embers police and that's strongly encouraged um the embers pd meets regularly with uh security personnel discussing appropriate protocols uh there are written reports that are typically done by the agencies to their clients which are the neighborhood groups in this case uh again with upfront communication those are shared uh regularly with the embers police um the bottom line on this is that they really try to act as the eyes and ears of residents looking at foot traffic you know large house parties disturbances etc patrol officers and the security agent agencies themselves are encouraged to have dialogue with each other I have witnessed that on some of my right along with the embers police that there's a lot of you know they what's going on updates that go on over the course of the evening or getting uh notifying hey you might want to you know we hear there might be a larger gathering at such and such an address just keep an eye on that but also making clear that they do not have police powers these security agencies that's an important distinction that both residents and the agent agencies need to know they cannot act as a complainant for things like noise disturbances they can alert residents and the police about potential problem addresses over the course of their shifts um and so there's an ongoing effort by uh uh chief living stone and his uh people to have that dialogue ongoing if there are specific questions certainly having people contact me or uh embers uh the chief's office at the police department you want additional background is is entirely okay it's great I think and and maybe I don't want to make safe and healthy neighborhoods encompass every possible thing we could ever think of but um perhaps particularly with I'm so glad the students are going to be able to be involved in that effort you know it's difficult to engage them in a big project they're busy with everything else they do but um I just want to make sure that that we're keeping the lines of communication open with the various groups that are working with student renters on campus and getting them educated about how to be a good runner how to be a good neighbor that they also understand the role of these security folks because it seems like if anything we will continue to have them for a while rather than not have them and just so that people understand what role they do play that they're not as it sounds like they are not coming up and knocking on the door and saying I'm going to call the police if you guys don't settle down or I'm going to write to the landlord and say that you can't be here anymore because I hear you being noisy it's it's not quite that strong of a position like you say it's more of an eyes and ears thing it's a heads up to the police when something's happening around it's a heads up to the property owners if there's a particular area that's an issue but it's not they're not complainants I guess like right with the way you phrased it and I think it's important for the students to not not so that they disrespect them so but so that they understand where they fit into the big picture thank you any questions or comments from Mr. Sandy. All right moving along next I do want to spend a couple minutes reviewing with you as we typically do during December in the hours and minutes after the conclusion of town meeting get back to working with staff on budget proposals that I'll be submitting in a formal way for the next fiscal year that begins in July I'll be submitting those on January 16th to the select board and the finance committee and I wanted to give you a little bit of an overview of kind of what I'm thinking about at this point it's very much under development and it's a work in progress which is normal for December but you know back in October with our traditional preliminary projections Sandy Poole or the finance director was talking about this next cycle being hopefully more of a slow and steady kind of a process and I think what we've been focusing on as we put together our budget proposals in a preliminary way for next year is really focusing on making sure that we're budgeting realistically for known costs you know that the big picture as it stands now is that after years of cuts we think we might get you know even a modest increase in state aid and then our allowable local revenue increase and that after we apply what we know are some of our fixed obligations are for next year that leaves increases of roughly three percent on average available for town school library that also assumes a capital budget increase in terms of a share of the levy going up to seven percent of the levy from six and a half percent of the levy which is worth a couple hundred thousand so those are kind of the baseline assumptions so known costs I want to start with what has been a growing share of our budget although in the last couple years has been more stable as you saw in the 10-year fiscal trend report back in October health insurance back in October we were talking about potentially a two and a half percent increase I'm going to firm up a recommendation before January 16th but it is quite possible I'll be able to recommend a second consecutive year of no premium increase the trends knock would health claim trends knock would continue to be favorable that plus what's been done on moving the retired teachers on to the town plans and there's a savings to most of them and a savings to the schools as a result help so that is different from October and it's a good thing it's a good news kind of category so I'll have something firmer as we get closer to January 16th but I wanted to put out that out there there are other insurance items that we need to budget for be your property casualty liability all kind of the basics workers comp or self-insured there'll be some modest increases there but nothing nothing outrageous but we just need to account for those I'm looking at things like caseload and veteran services we think you may we may have a small increase there and we're waiting to see what our cherry sheet state aid reimbursement which is typically 75 percent of those costs eventually being reimbursed whether that's affected for the upcoming fiscal year we're not going to know that on January 16th so I think I'm going to go with what we know on the spending side on that we're looking at things like human resources are refocusing on things like employee training having a more defined and systemic training protocol so you'll see some specific recommendations on that some of which have a cost applied to it more realistic for our known costs solid waste on the enterprise fund side it falls into that category there are cost obligations there's very little fund balance remaining in that account and there's a cost to providing our existing services at the transfer station etc that so we'll be looking at at the fees for that with the goal of trying to have it be as close to self-supporting as possible by the users of the service circling back to safe and healthy neighborhoods focus you can expect to see specific recommendations in my inspection services budget proposal as we've rob more our new building commissioner has hit the ground running and has looked at restructuring the work day of staff restructuring the workload and then taking a look at what we're able to get to which is most things in a more timely and consistent way but looking at workload ahead some of the baseline inspection needs that are out there in the community there will not yet be ready specific recommendations related to inspection services needs related to the safe and healthy neighborhoods and that will be fleshed out as we get a little more specific about quantity and timing and pace of the inspection program that will be mapped out over the next three or four months in the form of a proposal so you're not going to see the magic proposal on January 16th because it's very much a work in progress but you can expect to see other other changes and within inspection services that I think will be a further improvement to their ability to do what they need to do again the thing that you probably just think about all the time is OPEB I know one of your favorite subjects long-term liabilities again as we're in a better position to think about our long-term needs and begin to deal with them as town meeting did with the extra state aid we received this year as kind of a down payment on OPEB there is no reason we think to wait on budgeting for OPEB related costs in our enterprise funds most notably water and sewer which is I forget what the percentage is it's under 20% of our total obligation but it's the share of the workforce we think we're in a position to begin meeting those long-term obligations from water and sewer rates and you can expect to see no or a very small increase in rates for water and sewer which will be the second such year with that so I just wanted to give you a head that there'll be progress on OPEB in the budget I'm also working on some of our structural gaps so-called in the budget for example the fact that we have essentially a one crew within the DPW that for many years now has been funded by capital project monies which is not a sustainable or a desirable strategy long term it also provides the town and the DPW with a lot less flexibility about allocating those personnel for more routine maintenance work because they're busy working on projects which is paying their salary so we think with our green community status and the installation before the end of the fiscal year of LED efficient streetlights that will generate a lot of electricity cost savings I want to be able to reinvest those savings against that structural gap and that's kind of boring by itself but the practical benefit is that will be able to allow us more flexibility in reallocating those crews for things like potholes so these kind of down week to week issues so we're not going to get all the way there in one year but we're going to be able to make decent progress on that I think given that we're still looking at an overall three percent so there'll be many other specifics laid out as we get the of the budget proposal fully fleshed out over the next few weeks but those are some of the key ones that I wanted to throw out there for you thank you excuse me I'm sure we're all curious about it are you making progress on the ability to find funding to replace the loss of cdbg funds and are you confident of being able to it's a multi-part problem and a multi-part answer that is in development we are very hopeful now to receive transition transition funding that will be firmed up certainly before january 16th that could give us as much as half of our block grant that we received in the current year we think that between those dollars and unobligated monies there's a portion of the block grant for example that goes to administrative support we think there's a way to cobble funds together from the existing grant and the in any transition money to have that not be an fy 14 general fund budget problem so that's good we're still working with DHCD and others about how the capital and social services agencies monies how fungible they are we want to explore that whether there's any flexibility there typically they're allocated on a percentage basis with caps so we're taking a long look at that so I don't have a specific recommendation ready for you on that but I am completely aware of the issue and will be responsive to it thank you very much questions or comments from Mr. UCantibud any other budget issues no none okay I have to ask about the health insurance part I think we've touched on this before but I don't recall the answer so obviously it's incredibly good news to imagine that we might not need an increase in health insurance again presumably you're also looking to the future and to the degree that you can project for that fund for the future and thinking about the benefit of a small increase now even if you don't totally need it versus a larger increase in the future that just is it because these these same increases go to the employees and the retirees it's not just the town so to kind of manage the smoothness of that increase for them um yeah no we are painfully aware of that concept and painfully because we've we've lived it when the rate increases you know many years ago we're not adequate to meet what was clearly a trend not a not a aberration um but we're working now in an environment where the trust fund is in a much stronger position so there is much more of a cushion and it's we are getting regular quarterly or more frequent updates from our benefits consultant about trend or claims projections going out 18 months at a time um so it's with that background um that uh we're moving toward a zero it's it's knowing we're not expecting well I shouldn't jinx it you know uh year from now we're looking at 10 percent I mean I can't predict the future but so far so good on the trends and and I want to emphasize and slide for it all knows this of course but um just thank you and congratulations on what a success the turnaround of the health care trust fund has been um it is not the usual in any other community or industry or sector at all that the health care uh uh cost increases are being held at zero or close to zero for multiple years and as you alluded to this certainly was not the case a couple years back when kind of the bad planning had us had us doing a lot of catch up and things were really out of whack um but since then this has been just an enormous success and so I just want to make sure you recognize how how appreciated that is and uh you know we can't be complacent and take this for granted that that really is that is some seriously skillful management of a very expensive and complicated trust that is uh that is keeping us in good shape so that's that's fine work by you and your staff thank you all right anything else on budget so the part of why he's doing this is so that we don't get to january 16th and then throw him some big surprise like you didn't what or you know you told us what and uh so so this is an opportunity for feedback so miss burr um yes I think it would be a really useful chart of all the many charts we like to use in the finance committee report because it it is huge it figures into collective bargaining discussions it figures into everybody looking at their own personal budget you know they think oh my gosh my property taxes are going up my health assurance is going up but the town is budgeting well enough that we're not having to suddenly leap like some private and other organizations are having to do so I think the emphasis on that is good in terms of the solid waste enterprise fund I imagine there'll be lots of background material on this when we get to it but I know that I'm sort of vaguely remembering this effort of the recycling refuse committee trying to get their arms around what might people be willing to do what might they be willing to pay for you know to throw my personal anecdote in there I haven't bought a sticker this year because I decided I didn't really need to go to the take it or leave it just to pay that money to go for a sticker if it might just depend on my private hauler for all my recycling needs but I know that there are people who depend on being able to get rid of their trash there and being able to get rid of their recycling there so I mean at what point does it just become you know I guess I'm trying to get a sense of how significant this is because you know 70 dollars for a sticker that can't be transferred from one car to another is already expensive and that doesn't even give you the ability to throw any trash away so at what point is it a service you know for 10 people versus is it a service for 300 or 400 people how do we make that I spent part of my day in the gory details of solid waste management with staff today I know there were somewhere around 2000 people or businesses in town who have the stickers for solid waste so that 75 dollar a year fee and then there's a per bag fee with you know bulky items have a slot have different scale to it and the commercial stickers are per vehicle and it's a larger amount than that so we're looking at specifics that'll be refined for January um keeping in mind that there's a cost to providing the baseline services so the recommendation isn't going to be you know it's going to be close to a status quo service level budget because there's all these other things playing out including okay what's the long-term future should we stay in the transfer station business what about other recycling initiatives and how might they be organized or paid for that's not ready for January or even July but it's a big to-do item that is well down the field but the fee levels are being looked at in the context of the contrasting that with what the cost of curbside pickup and recycling are you know for the average family it's 400 dollars or more depending on the volume of how many barrels and all that stuff so it's in that vein that that an adjustment would be considered that it's still meant to appeal to the do-it-yourselfers and those looking to save some money so that'll be the contact but there's also a gap between what they are now and what the cost is of keeping it afloat because and without wanting to get into the huge discussion of it in terms of structurally I think it's one of the areas where we look at what is the point of providing the service because right is the town's job to provide a lower cost alternative for people to get rid of their trash when we have to have the overhead of having people there blah blah blah blah like you say these various things down the field and so I think just you know as we explain it to people going forward that it isn't just we're trying to recoup costs but we also are evaluating whether or not this is a service and just like we don't have a leaf vacuum anymore this is the kind of thing we are going to be able to continue to do just because costs have gone up so much so thank you yeah and I think in the interim you know to the extent we're going to stay in that business which may be a long term thing don't get me wrong because those recommendations aren't ready yet the pricing should be reflecting what it costs right so that's that's the analysis that's being updated now other questions or comments this best thing what I was gonna I was expecting you to say something about the reduced revenue that the state is experiencing and giving us really bad news so this is relatively optimistic I wondered if you want to say whether you think that local aid will be which is always a worry again I cannot predict the future guarantee the future I'd be in a different line of work probably all of us have been doing this for a while in different capacities it's not unusual that there's a lowering of expectations kind of language that goes on this time of year okay having said that the year-to-date revenue at the state level is below their budget revenue and the question is is that a trend or is it temporary what is it and if so what what does that portend for next year our existing projections we haven't really changed since October which was basically level funded state aid with a very tiny incremental chapter 70 education aid increase I don't see my recommendation changing before the governor's proposal comes out at the very end of January I have a hard time believing there will be a reduction it really remains to be seen what's the magnitude of any increase you know I guess I'm less optimistic than October because of that more recent news but I just don't see it being a cut I really don't at this point but then we'll see well maybe we've even yeah increased taxes for some of the areas of the budget at that state level that have big holes like the transportation sector we'll see as per as a preview I guess to an upcoming BCG meeting I guess we'll hear there where the schools stand in terms of their grants just as we what you're trying to accommodate with our block grant loss they were also looking at some potential losses just to ensure that somehow that's being accommodated in a way that needs to be done without throwing all our percentages and pie pieces and everything off other questions or comments I'll just note that I think the the part about using the energy savings from the new lights to make more efficient and practical how we fund our DPW folks is fantastic and I think that that would be a really great thing to explain in detail in the in the budget report in your budget to us and and also remember because you know we talk about this project work like you know most people have no idea what that means and to the degree that that is really a big impact on how come our potholes are in such a terrible condition now people would like to know that there's a real cause and effect there and that there is a specific steps are being taken to remedy it and I would really love if we could in that report have kind of some history on how that happened what what was the decision that got made that that put the that staff funding in that peculiar category did it have a benefit was that a good idea was it a good idea at the time and it only has played out badly like eventually or or what but it would be good to know how that happened and when and if we're doing anything else weird like this now such that we might want to worry about it and also I think the OPEB the idea of being able to deal with some of the OPEB obligations from the enterprise funds that's that's like painless and just seems so practical and I think that's brilliant so I'm happy to hear all of that all right we're ready to move on from this okay did you have any recent and upcoming stuff you want to talk about yeah again real quick there is tree work that is beginning this month on the notch related to the next state project which are uh long plan for and uh funded improvements to the road when 116 through the notch but there's some tree clearing that's going that will be going on on the state job uh state officials along with mr. zomac mr. mooring have come in and briefed the public shade tree committee recently cons comm has been in the loop on that just wanted you and the public to be aware that you'll see activity out there the good news is that it's not related to the Atkins corner work but it's it was planned as a coordinated effort with the Atkins corner work to make that right stretch of road on the southern tip of the town safer next there'll be a ceremony press conference if you will this wednesday morning the fifth at 11 a.m. with the executive office of energy and environmental affairs secretary rick solovan and his staff key staff will be here they'll be announcing 13 land grants and I can tell you that we are going to be receiving one of them we'll get those details on wednesday so we're very pleased to host that and there'll be other communities and you're certainly encouraged and we've asked key members of staff and boards etc to also attend so we're excited about that that's wednesday morning we did receive word if you remember there were a couple of items funded recommended by the community preservation act committee in article eight of the november 19th town meeting one of those was for for improvements on the north common directly in front of town hall we did receive word from the same agency that we did not receive that grant so we were not like shocked by that but we were disappointed they did tell us that was a very competitive application strongly encouraged us to reapply next year that would have been the second consecutive year we received a park grant parks and recreation improvements grant after getting a grant last year for war memorial pool they strongly encouraged us to reapply and they said while it was a strong application it could be even stronger with some additional community input so we've had some so i've directed staff to think about how we would solicit that additional feedback knowing that would be a design bill grant anyways that we're being told look it would be even stronger if there was a more specific reference to community feedback on that so we're going to pursue that i've asked staff to reapply that article was contingent on the grant award which didn't happen in this case i've asked staff to reapply for cpa money through the cpac process that's beginning in about a week this week this time question um i was wondering when you resubmit or reapply for the park grant for the north common when is that due uh the deadline is i believe june or july so the timing would work out fine because in this scenario with additional community feedback and ideally uh cpac recommendation and town meeting funding in place at the time of the application that would be another positive for that application okay the questions or comments from mr musanti all right then thank you very much moving on member reports liaison and representative reports we have not done this for about a month because uh we've been at town meeting since then so who would have liaison reports miss stein um the board of health met it no hammer 29th and approved drinking water regulations which were requested by the department of environmental protection and mr moran came and spoke about them and they have been completed hammers to rejoin the public health emergency coalition um the cambodian outreach worker funds tried up so at the moment we don't have a cambodian outreach worker but we hope that there will be funds somehow the sooner or later um you may ask this going smoke free in 2013 which i think is very interesting and then i also attended the personnel board meeting which was on november 28th the day before and the um un resources um group under demrad way are thinking about reorganization and there was discussion of exit interviews which i got to read one and they're extremely informative about how a particular department is functioning and what the stress is might be within the department and what the kudos to that department should be so it they're extremely valuable i had no idea how valuable an excerpt interview could be until i got to read one so that's all i have to say um those are my two days on reports thank you mr mr sandi could you comment about the cambodian outreach worker situation yeah that for many years has been funded through grants from a hartford based agency chimera health associates and they've been relying on federal monies and after many many years their funding was not renewed and so they're still making efforts working with our health director to try to identify alternative funding this has been kind of an unfolding thing over the last several months and as of now there is no alternative funding and it doesn't the town match those funds we've been we've been providing the benefit costs the in the grant that was paying for the hours worked i just i regret that i don't remember more the details obviously time manager does but i know that this was a point of contention for people a couple years ago a time meaning that this was a particular concern years ago we used to share one with the schools i don't know if they have any relationship there's still that coordination between health and schools associated with that but to have this just kind of disappear mid-year feels off in turn i mean it's the reality but at the same time it seems as though we need to do not to necessarily immediately say oh well i guess we'll have to stop doing something else to pay for this but it's not it given that it's been a point of contention in the past i think it's a bit of a problem to just leave it lay there so i'm wondering well there's been exhaustive well discussion and attempts with schools and other community groups about alternative models or funding models that that will continue so far one has not been identified that works for all parties still working on it okay other questions or comments oh that was for miss stein's liaison okay uh any other liaison representative reports okay i hate to do this to you but i've got a few um so a council on aging which i finally got to after many many absences um i wanted to just give you a couple updates on things i think you need to know one of them is their parking pilot program that they had brought to us a while back um the pilot is now over it's been very successful um they would like to make a few tweaks to it um and i'm going to get them scheduled pretty soon to come and give us an update on all of that um so there's that also related to transportation uh this is just kind of a shout out to the friends of the amer senior center that has just recently purchased for the senior center a 2010 dodge caravan is a seven passenger van senior center for a while has had a uh like a small bus um that that they bought i don't know what years ago but the problem is you need a commercial driver's license to drive it so they can only use it when they can get a commercial driver um and they've had great cooperation from the schools and stuff on that but um this really increases their options to have a seven passenger van this was bought by the friends of the senior center this is the uh nonprofit that town meeting voted to form just a couple of years ago to in order them to enable them to raise funds to support the senior center so this is a great really concrete very practical way for them to support the senior center and what they've done is they've donated the van to the town and the town will pay its insurance and maintenance but uh but the vehicle was purchased by them so that is terrific um community innovation challenge grant uh and regionalization the senior center is like the regional school district planning committee and others i understand because it's a very big grant program is seeking a community innovation challenge grant and they are looking to do it on the basis of uh essentially trying to regionalize or increase regionalization options with pelham for senior services a lot of folks from pelham already attend the senior center but there are various amor specific programs like the uh are you okay uh emergency calls from the police station um the uh salt council things like that various things that pelham folks might be able to participate in also so uh so they are pursuing that i can just give you a quick update on that i know that i mean there are some other issues that need to be worked out so i know that uh they did not apply for the senior services challenge grant by the november 30th deadline but there'll be there's ongoing dialogue with staff and with pelham about how we might better collaborate in the future that works for all parties thank you so never mind about that part um another thing relevant to us is um raking raking leaves is always a big deal for senior citizens and they they try and get volunteers to um to do this and match match the needs of folks who who particularly if you can't afford to hire somebody to do it for you then what do you do and the select board's coffee hour which unfortunately i was not able to be at that was right after my father's accident um it was a great source of volunteer contacts so all kinds of volunteer group student groups came forward to assist with that so i just wanted to let you folks know that uh that that coffee hour was very helpful uh in that regard and that's exactly what we're trying to do with that really big building bridges between the students and the and town government so there's a perfect example okay and a little bit more detail a little bit longer i'll try and be quicker actually but um campus and community coalition of course this is how i spend my life right so the uh this group has been we've been trying to identify not just our strategic plan for the future but really specific goals for this year and um so some of us have been meeting kind of in smaller groups to do this and and what we want to do is be not just kind of you know the the pie in the sky like high level stuff we want to be talking about real deliverables um so we are concentrating our work for spring and just a couple of key areas um we we talked about okay we've done all of this work we've got all of this outreach happening we've got all this coordination happening all kinds of good messaging blah blah blah but we've got ongoing problems the ongoing problems and we talked about what those were and and as we talked about everything we really came down to the fact that they are primarily disruptive parties and i emphasize the disruptive because parties that aren't disruptive are not a problem um the walking around between parties that happens kind of these roving bands that we talk about um which sometimes become parties in themselves but they certainly have a bunch of negative impacts as far as noise litter you know all kinds of things um and something called pre-gaming which is a a growing problem and this is um young people drinking typically in their dorms before they leave uh and what they what the the impacts that has among the impacts that has is they typically do that in a very short period of time they ingest a whole bunch of alcohol um because they're going out and they know that they can't get into the bars uh they won't be able to be served downtown they get to a party they may or may not be able to be served at a party so they're trying to make sure that they have plenty of alcohol in them before they go out so this has this has many different problems it it uh contributes to the disruption of parties it contributes to the this walking around group problem when these kids are all uh intoxicated it has a very big impact on our ambulance response situation um it has a big impact related to the ambulance response at things like mullen center events and other on campus events where again the students know that they're not going to be able to drink um so trying to discourage pre-gaming is another way that we're that we're trying to direct our efforts um and so when we talked about how to do this we said all right so part of all of these issues is communication it's about the messaging the information making sure people understand a bunch of information related to to these issues some of its town bylaw stuff some of its code of student conduct stuff it's all kinds of things so that's a component of of all of these parts but then what are the other components so what we've done is we've set ourselves up into four working groups one of them is going to concentrate on the communication part of it the others are going to concentrate on specifically the disruptive parties what else is it that makes these things disruptive and how what do you do about it and so among the things we talk about there is um um when parties go viral this is the whole social media thing so you invite you know 10 of your closest friends and somebody tweets about it or texts their friends about it that gets passed around the world next time you know there are 300 people you don't know at your party that's a really big deal um so they're gonna they're gonna be looking at specific things like that how do you prevent that what do you do about it and they're going to make recommendations on on strategies to deal with that the walking around group again what are the causes and effects of these roving bands of students kind of going from place to place being noisy etc and brainstorm on how to how to diminish those causes and diminish the negative impacts and obviously the pre-gaming as I talked about so this is another group with a really ambitious schedule we've set the end of january for each of these subgroups to bring back recommendations that we can then try and massage and really make actionable for the spring to make to make the the coalition's group extremely concrete and and practical for what we're doing right now because really we are doing all this work we've got all these great resources a bunch of great people at the table so we're trying to focus on what are what continue to be the weak points and the vulnerabilities so you'll be hearing a lot more about that related to that we're also looking at that group and others are looking at party registration and we had last week we many of us attended a webinar a web seminar from a group in fort Collins Colorado that at Colorado State University is there and they do a party registration system which it's kind of complicated in various schools do it various ways across the country and so it would take a lot of homework and research but but kind of in a nutshell what they're doing in fort Collins is in return for the students registering their parties the point of registering is that a they then get a bunch of information about how to be responsible in the party that they have registered and b if they've registered their party what that equals for them is if somebody calls with a complaint about the party dispatch at the police station would call that party host the person who's listed as the contact on the registration and say okay you've got 20 minutes to shut this down either shut it down or you know seriously reduce the noise or whatever if we get another call after 20 minutes that things are still noisy there then the police are going to come and so the benefits of this are the students when they were talking about you know all kinds of students say well if if the neighbors just told us if we just knew we were too loud we would have stopped you know it's too bad we had to get a rest or we had to get a big fine or whatever to to learn that if we just knew so so this is a system that they worked out and said okay here's your warning and if if that doesn't work then we all agree that you're you're gonna get the fine sometimes you're still gonna get the fine I mean if it's totally egregious and you know the cops can hear you three blocks away or you know all kinds of things it's not a get out of jail free card and it does not in any way guarantee that these students wouldn't get uh these party hosts wouldn't get a fine but it's a way of of helping to prevent that on the police side the appeal is that they in a college town like ours they have all kinds of high priorities all kinds of calls they need to respond to noise complaints are not at the top of their list I mean they're dealing with domestic violence all kinds of very serious issues are happening so they can't always get to a party call as quickly as they want to so you know just like here you've got long long wait times for their responses this drastically cuts down on where the police need to respond so the police appreciate it because it helps them to better stretch out their limited resources so so far it's it's been a very successful situation for them doesn't eliminate the parties doesn't eliminate the tickets anything like that but it has struck a real balance that has um has been beneficial for for all involved so these are the kinds of things when we talk about you know best practices and other communities and everything like we're looking at this at all of these issues from all of these different ways and um and this is just another another thing that's on the horizon and under consideration so I just wanted folks to know about that questions or comments miss burr how does kegg registration fit in with that and it just in terms of your experiences thus far and having these conversations because kegg registration is kind of this just this odd little thing we've got off on the side that people don't grasp they don't know why they're doing it blah blah blah so does it fit into that as well is it kind of another variation on that um the so I wasn't around for when kegg registration was created we did boost the fines for that to three hundred dollars like everything else a couple years ago my understanding from students is that they basically don't bother to get keggs anymore because you don't want to be telling the police department where your parties are and I don't I'm not aware that we get too many unregistered kegg violations um what the and we don't know what the fort collins folks say and again there's every flavor of this and just because they do it one way doesn't mean that we would have to do it this way if we went down this road at all but um the police don't get the list of parties they specifically don't so it's not like the police are driving around looking for the parties because that was kind of the first reaction of the students why the heck would I flag my party for the police but the police have better things to do than go around and look for parties um but the dispatch officer has them and so it's something to check against so once you get a noise violation you say a noise complaint call you look at the list and say okay is this on the list of of registered if not then it just becomes another police call they just let the police know you've got a noise complaint on you know elm street and go check it out if that's a registered party then before the dispatcher does that they call the host and they say listen your party that's registered here we've gotten a noise complaint you know consider this your warning here's your grace period if if we get another call after that grace period then the the police are are going to come out so uh so it's a very interesting concept and uh and we'll be looking at it even more anything else okay anybody else have ways and reports miss burr you mentioned the coffee hour could we and and that there was obviously much confusion around that time because we missed you so desperately when you were away but we still need the sheet of the context yeah yeah so you know it's out there sounds like senior senate just got you the annual report hey that's great and i mean it shouldn't be your problem but it is just one of the things on the list because it is awfully nice to remind ourselves especially since you see a lot more of these people on a regular basis than we do but if we can remind ourselves oh yeah that's who that person was who i said could talk to so-and-so about that thing thank you yes so yeah it is on my list i hope to get to you before to before next year's coffee hour in the meantime if there's anyone you want to contact let me know i'll put you into it okay anybody else really is on reports if nobody else has a liaison report may i ask a quick town manager question sure and that is in regards to and you know email is great but then you sometimes forget to bring it up in public as well which is that the parking the free parking has been awesome so far as i understand it and it was great having the little bid elves give out brownies on saturday during the snow it was quite lovely however had not realized had not noticed had forgotten whatever a few people noticed that the bag said two hour limit and that's not what we actually voted on yes they're normally two hour meters etc so what i would just like to know is that at some point in the future that we would y'all can just do this and let us know how it works out um talk to the chamber talk to the bid to say you know did customers have any complaints i mean there were some vendors that were concerned at a particular fare that was taking place the unitarian because they just didn't they were just worried because you know vendors always worry because they never know where they're supposed to park at any given event um if it actually became a problem for any customers i'm assuming we didn't actually chalk tires or anything which we don't normally do anyway but we didn't try and enforce the two hours and that nobody got tickets for that um but just so that we all have a shared understanding next year of how it's supposed to work and so that people know that yes those are not if we continue to do it the way we are doing it to say yes it's two hour parking we're not enforcing the two hour limit but obviously we would like turn over because that's what you do in a downtown kind of thing but just so everybody's clear on what it is but just to make sure there weren't any particular concerns that arose from when you're having your usual conversations with parking and chamber and did people be useful to hear back i'm happy to do that and at some point i have a quick question how many of those banks are left i'll take it back to you on that i'm just i'm just wondering if um they aren't left over left over stock and that's why they got used well can i just say the the the clear advice and commitment is follow-up on this uh the holiday parking incentives that the board has voted in various ways over the years is related to the cost of parking not that every other parking regulation is you know temporarily taken out of context so i think whenever those bags were purchased which was a number of years ago i don't know when the encouragement was free parking and making it clear that it was free parking but also in a hopefully friendly customer friendly way with the holiday colors on the bags and everything else that it's a prime on-street space and it's encouraged for turnover which was the whole point was to get more customers and visitors into the downtown during the holiday season so that i suspect was a motivation behind putting the two-hour reminder on the bag itself versus an all-day pass to shuttle over to campus or whatever so that the larger point i think miss bridge point is the shared expectation just so we know it either it either is for two hours or isn't for two hours and so when we make the vote that we know and we then discuss it appropriately yep okay anything else on liaison remember okay i don't have anything for a chair report calendar preview we have one more meeting this year at that meeting we will have a uh liquor a license hearing for the alteration of premises for mission cantina hooray they're expanding and uh we will have an update from the town manager progress report on goals to date um and there will be a bunch of other things i'm sure that happens between now and then but that is our last one of the year which will be very nice and then we start meeting in in january um if you have things that need to happen i can't remember at the moment when our first january meeting is i think it's the second week of january so that's going to be several weeks between meetings so do be do be thinking about anything that might be time sensitive between that time and try and try and uh front load those to me so we we get them on to the agenda for next time all right if there is nothing else then i will make the executive session motion okay i was going to move to adjourn to a special to yeah you don't mind my goodness all right so um i moved to enter executive session per master's general law chapter 30a section 21 part a subset three to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining an open meeting as an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining position of the public body and the select board will not return to public session at the conclusion of executive session through or i oh keith i bald i hayden uh i thank you then uh without objection this meeting adjourns to executive session at 8 57 and again will not reconvene publicly so we will see you all again on monday december 17th thank you very much