 Okay, we're recording. Okay, wouldn't it be nice if I had the agenda right in front of me. This is it for today. Yes. I got the agenda hello. Ladies and gentlemen. I shall take attendance I guess, and I Dorothy Pam and present. And Anika Lopes present. Andy Steinberg present. And we are visited by Jennifer Taub and we have our staff liaison town manager Paul Bachleman and our sources of all wisdom Athena, the goddess. So we're ready to go. I can't tell. And Guilford mooring looking like a what is it? What is it? I can't tell what that is. That picture. I think he has a traffic circle there. Okay, because it kind of looked like a motorcycle, but a vehicle for transportation. Oh, okay. New Zealand. Very good. All right. So we are open to public comment. I have no idea if there's anyone in the public. Let's see. If there is any attendance, there is one attendee. Lynn Griezmer, who is. Will reveal herself whenever she wants to make a comment, which we will welcome. Does anyone want to make a comment at this. At this moment. No. Okay. So I guess that public comment for this matter is over. If we see Dean, it appropriate, we will have public comment again later in the meeting. We're number one on our agenda today is water regulations. And we're very lucky to have Guilford mooring here to tell us where we are. And this part of the meeting will be run by. Committee TSO committee member. Anna Devlin. Go to you. So I turn it over to you, Anna. And Guilford. Go for it. Do you want to tell us where we are? Do you want me to jump in? You talked to Amy. She, she got you. I wasn't, I wasn't sure if you had something that you, you wanted to say first. So just check in. No. All right. So folks. I, I know this came in a little late, but Amy did a great job. Synthesizing. Kind of our main discussion. Points for the water regs. And she also gave us a full run through with all of the comments. My only disclaimer is that well, on the document, it looks like I made all the comments. Those are a combination of. Of the comments I received. Just didn't want people to think I was that meticulous. So, so what Amy did is she synthesized this down into kind of three main decision points, which are ownership. Dispute resolution and then water use restrictions. And so I figured we would go through these one by one. And discuss kind of where we are. And then my thought, and I guess I'm looking to. Guilford or Paul or Athena on, on for confirmation on this. Is that once we decide in kind of discussion. I can go back or Guilford can go back or whoever can go back and edit the comments. And so I figured we would go through these one by one and that would be really good. But I thought, but, but, but actually, if we can go back or Guilford can go back or whoever can go back and edit the policy to reflect the decision that we make. Does that seem okay. Great. It makes more sense probably for Guilford or Amy to do that. But I'm happy to, yeah, great. Okay. Just confirming was the plan of action. All right. So let's, let's just jump right in. where does ownership change from town to owner? We've discussed this before. So this is really a confirmation of what we discussed before for water and then we'll also repeat it for sewer if that's what people wanna do. So that's the second part of the decision. So the current policy just to reiterate for folks who may not remember, sorry, there's some chaos happening here. The current policy is that the town only owns the large diameter public water line and the owner, the property owner owns the entirety of the water service line, which includes all, big word I don't know, appurtenances, appurtenances, appurtenances, whatever. Thank you, which is the curb box, the curb stop, corporation, et cetera. The exception to this is that the town owns the water meter. So what we had discussed is switching it over at the property line, having it be that the town owns the corporation, the curb box and the stop and the pipe from, you need to settle yourself down, from the large diameter water line to the property line and then the owner owns the water line between the property line and the building. So that's where we're at so far. If that is the case, Amy then provide a, it's like a fun little choose your own adventure story. Amy, thank you for that. So the decision we need to make, if that's what we wanna do, which we've discussed that before, so I wanna confirm that with a quick little straw poll, okay? Then we need to clarify who owns the curb box and the stop if they aren't located at the property line. And so I just wanna clarify what that means and I can give it my best guess, but where else would it be, Amy or Gelford? Like if it's inside the property. Okay, so do you have a recommendation here or would you like us to kind of, do you know the merits of each option, either DPW owns it regardless of where it is or anything to that property? It's nicer if it stays, if we have the property line as the lineation. So if it's inside their property, we can put a new one in at the property line and we do a replacement or repair, but if it fails outside, they have to replace the service and put a new one in or at the property line. That's kind of where. Okay. Okay. So that makes sense. Yeah, I think so. So Paul, did you have a question? So I thought that you, don't you prefer the current policy Gelford or do you prefer the property like policy? Well, I don't think we're gonna get our preferred policy where the resident owns the service all the way from the main to the house. So the property line is, would be a nice demarcation line for us. Do I, oh, sorry. So if the curb is inside the property because of some reason it was easier to put in or something else at whatever time where someone actually replaces that part of the service or we have to replace something, it'll get moved to the property line. So if they replace their service on their side, they put it at the property line, we replaced the from the property line back to the main, we would put a new one in at the property line. That's where we. And then you would be responsible for it. Correct. Okay. Dorothy. This is just clarification. From past conversations, you don't wanna get involved in changing things on private property because they could like it or not like it. And also if things are in the road, which you would now own from this point on, other things that the town does could mess up the box. I think I remember that discussion. So the new thing that I'm hearing tonight is that if a homeowner's box, I can be called this the curb box is inside their property line, the town would at the town's expense or at the homeowner's expense, replace that box if requested into the road. That's where I need a little clarification, whether you would just do it or only if requested and who would pay for it. What we prefer to do is that we would only do it when we have to replace our section of your service line. Okay. And then if you have to replace your section of the service line, you would put the curb where it belongs to the property line and then run your new line to your house. That's what we would prefer. Okay. So there was a part where a minute ago where I got confused. So let's say I'm a property owner and you're not doing anything, but I've decided what the heck, I wanna get this out of my yard and you pay a private contractor to move the box and you say, put it at the property line. What if you don't like the way they've done it? I mean, how do we know this is gonna be good or whether you have to redo it or you have to inspect it and say, yes, this is okay. You would still have to get a permit from us to renew and repair or replace or repair your service line. And then we do come and inspect those that work. Okay. So that's good. I understand that. That sounds good to me. Okay. So can I clarify one more time? So if the curb box breaks and it's inside the property line, the owner pays to move it to the property line. If the curb box needs to be repaired, but the break is outside of the property line, then DPW would pay to move it. Yes. Okay. Anika. I was wondering, excuse me if this has been said, but is there a known or estimated cost for moving the curb box? I was curious. No, it all depends on how much other work has to go with it. Actually relocating the curb box is the cheapest part of replacing, probably the cheaper part of replacing the service line. Okay. So do folks feel, TSO folks feel comfortable with that designation of if the break's on private property, the owner pays to move it to the property line. If the break's on outside of the property line, DPW would pay to move the curb box to the property line if needed. I think you really do have to add that this would have to be permitted and inspected by the town. Absolutely. Everything has to be, I'm pretty sure. There's nothing in here to present. I have a question. Why would, if the break is outside of the property line, would you just be taking advantage of that time and everything's dug up to move something on the curb? Okay, great. Thank you. Just confirming. All right. We did one. Number two, clarify what to do, for example, or IE, who owns it when the water line crosses over someone else's private property. So basically you're saying if it goes through the neighbor's yard to get to your property, what do you do? That's a good question. What are the options? We've got, yeah, what are the options? Cause I'm actually not sure what the possibility is. This was more looking at a clarification of if we're saying from your property line, you own it and anywhere else the town owns it, do we say that or do we say once it leaves town property, it's the property of the person whose service line it is. And this is a rare case, but there are cases where it goes over someone else's property line and we just need clarification. I like what you said. Dorothy, we have to raise our hand. Oh, I'm sorry, sorry. Okay, Dorothy, what's your comment? I thought that what Amy said made sense, changing those words, if it leaves town property. So I think, yeah, so Amy was giving us the option. So what I'm hearing you say, Dorothy, is that what you would prefer is that the town owns the extent of the town property, but then we still need to figure out the second part, which is, is it the person who it is servicing or is it the person whose property it's crossing? Is that, am I summarizing that? No, you're saying it would either be the town, regardless of if it's private property or the... I guess the question is, let's say Anna that your line comes from the road, comes from the road, goes a little bit across Dorothy's property to get to yours. Does the ownership for you start when it gets on your property and therefore the town would own that part that goes over Dorothy's or does the town only own when it's in town property and you own that portion that goes over Dorothy's property onto yours? Cause once it's off town land, it's no longer the towns. Does that make sense? It does make sense. And so I guess my question was there's not a third option where Dorothy would own the part that's on Dorothy's property and then yeah, no. Okay. That face is enough of an answer. That's fine. You could do it to make it more complicated that we would say no. I think that's... That would be really tough to have somebody assuming responsibility, like I don't know that you can get the third party to assume responsibility under there. They don't have any sort of easement or anything like that. Normally you would have an easement. Okay. Dandy. So can you describe a typical situation? Is this flaglots where it happens most frequently or is it some other situation? And how does often occur? Oh, Guilford. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. I just, yeah. Most of the time it's a flag lot situation and there's some, for newer houses, it's mostly flag lot situation. And there's some type of information in the deed that talks about sharing things. So, but it won't talk about, it probably won't talk about the ownership we're putting into it right now. Then in the older sections of town, there are actually houses that run across, they have lines, they have sewer lines and water lines that run across each other's property because it was just easier to put it there. Our ancestors are really nice about the fact that if it was easy to do something, they usually did it. So there are a few in the older section, but predominantly now it's in the newer flag lot situations and there's some other type of delineation or clauses in there that things are shared or something like that. Thank you. Sorry, not any good. Dorothy. In my previous house, we had such a thing that we had to leave a pond and share water with the people next door. We got along fine with our neighbor, the person who bought the house after it was war, absolute total war, as to who's flooded whose garage and you ruined my blueberry plants, et cetera. So in one of those cases, I would think there might be some body, some town body that would, are portrayed in other words, you can't write rules because they're unique and weird if they're old because this is an old, old property that I lived on. Just say, if there are difficulties with the pipes being on several properties, then this would be referred to the arbitration of and list a couple of people. Cause I just don't see how you can write rules for some of these crazy things that might exist from old deeds. I think we might have to do that, Dorothy. I think that's what the point is, is that we have to make a rule about Andy. No, go ahead, because I was gonna go back to the flag lot, I don't want to. Okay, Paul. So right now, whatever, right now we don't own anything that goes from the pipe, right? All you're doing the same, we're gonna go to the end of the town property line. Whatever rules exist now can just continue. You don't have to decide, change the rules for everybody. You can just say, we're taking on additional responsibility from the main line to the property, the end of the public way, and then we stop. And then whatever is pre-existing pre-exists, and people probably had rules with each other or whatever it is. I think that you don't need to make a decision about this. Okay. We don't want to be the arbiter between two property owners. No, thank you, Paul. Yeah, my inclination is to leave it as the town owns to the end of the town property, and then, yeah, it goes from there. Andy, tell us about flag loss. What you just said makes sense, but it does get complicated when you have a flag lot because a lot of flag loss, I imagine are set up and Guilford or Amy can confirm this is that it runs from the street to a branch to the first house in from the street. And then at that point, there's a juncture where the water forks off in two directions. And we would need to have language to clarify what's happening. So is there currently, to Paul's point though, this is currently the situation, right? If these currently exist, they're already not under town ownership. So there's already some sort of thing figured out about this, right? So Guilford or Amy, can you tell us what's the current means of navigating this? So for a flag loss situation, if it's a new flag loss been done in the last 20 or 25 years, there'll be an individual service running from the road to each individual house. What is shared is the location. Most of the time these services will run pretty much close together and they'll just follow the driveway. And then when they get to the driveway, the services will go off to the houses. So if there's three flags, three lots on the property, there'll be three individual service pipes leaving our main when going to each house. Does that answer your question, Andy? Yeah, I think that does as long as that's, I guess the only question I would have left is if we ever come across an exception where it's not as described, do we have language that allows resolution? Don't have the answer to that. Or does it just need to have language as determined by DPW subject to whatever the appeal process as we come to later? Well, right now the language is the property owner's responsibility. So if we're just taking, like Paul said, if we're just taking it to the property line, that's all we're responsible for and everything that's been in place up to now just stays in effect on the property lines, that those property owners have to sort it out themselves. We can help them, which we often end up doing, but we want them to be the ones to make the recommendation on what they want to do. So are you comfortable with the way that the proposed wording is now to cover those situations? Because if so, then I'm okay with it. Yeah, so we're comfortable with you saying that we own only to the property line and then the rest is the property owner. Okay. Okay. So the next question is clarifying around transition and ownership. So reading from this wonderful document, prior to the town assuming responsibility, does the owner, so we're talking about if this passes and we switch the responsibility of the town to the property line, does the owner need to, one, confirm the location of the curb box, two, make it accessible, and three, investigate the water service location, size or material, or does the town just, I love this, I love the way you phrased the same thing, or does the town, no, no, no, it's true, it's really valid, I was legitimately, does the town simply blindly assume responsibility for all of these without documentation or responsibility on the owner's part? So basically we're saying, if we change this, what do property owners need to do to make sure that the town is able to take ownership? Is that right, Amy? Please tell me, yes. Yeah, I'll try not to get on my soapbox too much. No, it was good, it was about this, but I mean, obviously the fear is, there's 20% of the houses where we don't know what's under the ground, we don't know if they're led service lines, we don't know if their curb box is buried under their driveway, is underneath a tree that nobody's done in a while, and my fear is all of a sudden the town is taking on all of this responsibility without knowing what's there, and so I didn't know if there was some sort of a transition plan where, yes, we'll take responsibility for it, but is there a way to just, the homeowner who has supposed to be responsible for these things as much as anything else in their house, is there some responsibility on their part to at least make these things accessible, or are we gonna be cutting down trees, cutting people's driveways, investigating all of this stuff because they didn't manage their resource? Yeah, and this has been kind of the known pinch point of this, one of the known pinch points of this transition. So if we were to say the owner needs some responsibility in, let's start with the first one, confirming the location of the curb box, it, how, I'm thinking out loud here and I apologize to everyone who's no subject to my mind, would it be as simple as the town sending out a notification and explaining to people how to find their curb box, or is it something that DPW needs to come out and do for them? Like if you told me, if you gave me instructions right now, could I go find the curb box and make it accessible? You don't know, okay, because it's different. Oh, she's pointing to me. I was pointing to Gilford, you were pointing to where he was on my screen and I was like, I don't know how to answer the question. Gilford, and then we'll go to Nika. So it's sometimes gonna be very difficult. We really kind of wanted to say this so people understood that there's this unknown out there and if we accept this, there's this unknown and we may not know because we didn't install all these services and we don't have records for everything. It's just sort of a, if you, you know, the easiest way to do this is to say we figure it out as we go along. The hardest way is for us to tell customers you figure it out and tell the town what's going on. And we understand that, but I guess this really is meant to say that there is an unknown, there is some concern, but as long as we understand this and we tell people there's going to be some unknowns here and we won't be able to immediately respond to everybody if there's a real, real problem. That's really what we're all we're saying here. So if you say yes, we're responsible and the homeowner is just gonna, once we take responsibility, we have a responsibility, that's fine. And there's no way to, sorry, Dorothy, I'll get you in one second. There's no way to phase this in like slowly in terms of saying where you go through an inspect and after you've inspected it, it becomes the responsibility over the course of like a couple of years. That's not a thing, right? It could be a thing if we want to do it that way. It's gonna take time. Yeah, okay. Dorothy? I'm wondering, first of all, what are the rules for buying a house? What does, what involvement does the town have, if any, in somebody's purchase of a house? Cause if the town has some role, could there be a requirement? Maybe there are requirements now that somewhere on the deed of the property, some of these facts should be noted or found. And if you don't know, if you're buying an old house and nobody knows, would it then be the seller or the homeowner's responsibility to, cause I mean, they can use metal detectors and stuff to locate this as part of the, being hooked up to the town water system under on their own bill. We have no, we have no participation whatsoever except doing a final water read in a property transaction. So at that moment then, the final water read, the transition moment, is there something where you can say that you can look on your records and see if you have information on that property. And if you don't tell the homeowner, it's your responsibility to find out where your thing is. Cause it wasn't done by the town, it's not in the town records. Yes, we could leave somebody a note saying that, yes. Or we could pass it to the, I mean, when we do the final reading, it's just passed to the lawyers. They do the calculations. So there could be a, there could be a document we passed with the final reading saying, we have no clue where your stuff is on your water surface. I would like to read exactly that, please. Andy. For current construction or recent construction, is that on plans that are submitted to the planning department, the location of the curb box? Go Amy. We need to talk about this. Yeah, so I'll say for even for any project that's may happen, maybe for the last 10, 20 years, we probably have, as long as people pull to permit, we've got great records on what's underground, where the curb box is, what the material is and stuff like that. Granted, the property owner may or may not have actually maintained access to the curb box. So it could have been paved over or they could have planted a tree right next to it that has grown over it in time. But at least we've got records of that, where the gaps in records are, are some of the older stuff. We do have any of those, it's called a water service card and any of those water service cards that we have, you can actually view, we scan all of them and link them into GIS. So you can actually go to the town's GIS and look on your property. And if we have that information, it's scanned there and you can actually see measurements from two corners of your house that will tell you exactly where your curb box is and where you tie into the water made. So for all of the ones that we have, they're scanned and they're publicly available. It's just that we don't have all of them. Anika? Okay, my mind is stuck on the curb box being underneath the driveway. Now in the event, if it is, would it have to be dug up or could the homeowner have a new one put in? Those are both options. If the homeowner's replacing their driveway, the easiest thing to do is to dig it up, install a new curb box that's accessible and put your driveway back in. But in that case, if it's under your driveway, you would be responsible because ideally your driveway's under your property. Right? To tell the truth, that's going to be one of those little gray areas where we sit down with the property owner and say, we're responsible for this piece, you're responsible for that piece and we'll just have to go. Because they're responsible for their driveway up to the edge of the road. So they would be responsible for replacing the driveway. Would they have to dig it up or is there an option that they could have a different, like a new curb box installed? They could put in a new curb box that they wanted to. Without ripping up the old one. But we would have to, it would take some coordination, but it's possible probably to do that. So we're getting a little in the weeds on the curb boxes, which is fine, but I want to pull us back to the question here, which is really about the transition period and the unknowns that we're accepting as a town if we make this switch. So what is, Gilford and Amy, I mean, you were saying that your preferred, neither of them as ideal, but your preferred method would be to take things as they come up versus there is no preferred method. Yes, it's been a big discussion. As much as you guys are discussing this among yourselves, this was even bigger discussion among our staff and they're like, well, no, we want everything to know everything because otherwise we'll waste a lot of time trying to find stuff. And people will get upset at us because we can't shut things off. So it is a gray area. People, and my personal take, doing this as long as I've been doing it, the easiest way to do it is just say, there's not going to be a transition period. We're just taking it on and we take it on. Are we, and we go from there. Amy says no. We disagree on this. It might be because a lot more of the guys have been freaking out in my office about this. Like I said, and that's why I'm trying to capture at least really what the fear is, is that all of a sudden we're assuming the liability of all of these resources that we don't know. Like at some point, the homeowner in the past had responsibility for this stuff, whether they knew it or not, they had responsibility to maintain these items and they might not have maintained it and now all of a sudden it's our problem that someone else didn't maintain their water service line and maybe it's leaking. They didn't repair it for 50, 60, 70 years, but all of a sudden it's my problem because they just waited it out until we owned it. Okay. Sorry, I'm more just, I've had a lot of my guys be very nervous about this. Seemingly validly so. It makes sense. Dorothy. So I wanted to reply to Anika. Right now, if somebody had the curb box under their driveway and they developed a leak, they're not only responsible for that, their driveway, the leak, they're responsible for it. And I didn't hook up to the town till down the, 90 feet down the hill on the corner of a sunset. So we're limiting, the homeowner is better off under this new plan even if there are wrinkles is what I'm trying to say because most people don't pay attention to this. Most people don't know where it is. I certainly never knew where mine was. And if something goes wrong, you have to dig it up and it has to be fixed. And the town is never gonna pay for your yard, your lawn, where it is there. It used to pay, but now it's gonna pay for up to your property line. So that is gonna be a better deal for the homeowner than the previous plan. So we're gonna- I misunderstood something. Thank you, Dorothy. We're gonna go to Shalini and then I have a pitch on this one that I wanna run by Amy and Guilford. So Shalini. Yeah, I was wondering, this was brought up, I think Ana you brought it up, the trend like there's an inspection. So the town takes over pending and inspection of, you know, whenever that decision point arrives. And so you have an option then to look at what are the cost stock to the owner, everything before you. So there is some sort of an inspection or something that the owner is then transferring it over to the town. I think my understanding is that, sorry, there we go. I don't know why I keep echoing for some reason. So my understanding is that the inspection is only if there's new construction or an issue. But in those cases then, yes. I don't know, Amy or Guilford, if you wanna respond to that, if there's anything I missed. I mean, what's in this number three is you need to decide if you want us to have a transition period. Are we just accept everything once you approve this? That's really what you're asking for. Are that what we're asking you? Yeah. Will there be a transition? And then are we just taking on when it's approved? So I have an idea and I would love to hear Amy or Guilford. What if I can sit down with you, Amy or Guilford, whoever and come up with like three different potential plans for this and bring those back to TSO to look at, does that sound okay versus trying to hash out a transition, okay, great. So we're gonna move past this one but we'll come back to it and I'll reach out to you guys and set up a time to maybe just draft out some thoughts. Does that sound okay to other TSO folks? And that way we can, okay, great. So we're gonna move on to the second, okay, see, we're still in question one. All right, next one is, oh, no, we're not. You're on question two now. We didn't do, oh, that was the other option. Thank you. All right, dispute resolution. This is the second biggest one. So basically we need to figure out what is the process for anyone to appeal a decision within these resolutions? This was something that was mentioned a whole bunch in one of the comments that we got or one of the sets of comments we got. So options are, am I right, A and B are different options. So option one is the DPW to the DPW superintendent to the town manager. So basically DPW issues the warning or the fine. It can be appealed to the superintendent and it can be appealed one more time to the town manager whose decision is final or it goes DPW initial fine complaint or appeal to DPW superintendent. And then the further appeal goes to the town council whose decision is final. My understanding is the reason why the town council would be in that position is we are the water commissioners. So that's why it would go. Those are the two potential avenues. So folks thoughts on, I guess this is kind of getting into the role of water commissioners versus town manager in terms of where responsibility lies ultimately. Do folks have thoughts for against Andy? I was hoping Andy would, I knew it. All right, Andy, can you thank me? Yeah, I guess, I mean, I wanna hear from Paul before we make a decision on this, but it's sort of like public ways policy where the council by the charter is the keepers of the public way, but we have delegated some authority to as appropriate to the town manager. And it would seem that that is possibly a preferred option just for efficiency's sake, because if it's the town manager who's making the decision, he regularly works with the superintendent and public works and therefore is in a position to really understand the issues in the established communications. And it's a simpler process than delegating it to the council or a committee of the council because we don't have the same level. Future councils are not gonna have the same level of knowledge that we have right now. And so you have to be thinking to the future and it would seem that the future town managers better place for that role if Paul agrees than having a future council takeover that has not been involved in the development of these regulations and is unfamiliar with them. Yeah, Andy, I agree. I think my question is, Paul, do you realistically think you'd ever come to a different determination than Guilford in terms of if it goes from the Guilford's nodding? But I mean, is that, I guess I'm asking is that a fair line, right? If it's all within the same reporting line, is that equitable or fair to the person making the complaint? Well, ultimately, you are the water commissioner so you can choose. I think that it's just having a second bite of the apple by the applicant who feels aggrieved. I think some people would prefer to have a bigger body but I think that it doesn't matter to me. Quite honestly, I don't think it's gonna happen very often. The issue for the council is that then it takes up time for the council and there's the educational component for the council. So whichever way you, it looks like Amy has an idea but I don't know if you either want. Amy? I only wanted to point out, I feel like the pros and cons of this like Paul is saying is if it goes to Paul, at least there's not the educational component of bringing up a council to kind of understanding what the rules are and what we've done in the past but the flip side of it is if it goes to the town council then at least the person's heard in a public forum and so they feel like there's not things done behind a closed door. So I feel like those are the two sides of the argument and I'm okay with whatever as long as we're fair and consistent and there's a process. Yeah. Any other thoughts on this Dorothy? If the town manager wanted to, could he consult the town council? I think he can talk to us at any time, but I don't know. Paul? Yeah, obviously the town manager could but I think you would want to place it in one realm or the other and not try to do a hybrid because I think it's tempting to say let's do a hybrid but I think you should say it's this body or this body and set up, leave it at that. Yeah. For the reason I prefer what Andy suggested. I'm inclined that way as well and I'm seeing nods from Shalini and Anika. Okay. Bang, done. Hey, guess what? Question three. So before you get a question three. Oh yeah, follow-ups, sorry. I know. Yeah, there's some follow-ups. Yeah. Do you want me to do the follow-ups first and then let you speak? Okay. So question two had follow-ups which are reasonable expectations for timing for each step of this process. So essentially is this asking how much time does Guilford have to make a decision and then if it's appealed, how much time does Paul have to make a decision? Okay. So how much time Guilford needs one day? That was a joke, that was a joke, that was a joke. Sorry. Can I choose which day it is? Yes, absolutely. So two years away. How many days would be reasonable? I mean, is it a 30 day thing? Is this a two-week thing? I'm not having never gone through any sort of appeals process in town. I'm not sure if there are other appeals processes that exist. Anika? I was just going to ask how long does this take now? I don't know if we have one now, do we? Yeah. Or something similar to compare it to. We don't have a formal policy now and it depends on what the person talking to us about what type of dispute we have going on. Most of them get handled pretty rapidly. There's very few that go much for very long. But I mean, if we wanted to say there's a, we'll give you a decision in two weeks or 30 days. I mean, we just want a number in here so people kind of have a expectation this is the maximum amount of time it can be. Okay. And we can do it later if you don't want to weigh into this minutia. I think we can figure something out or take your recommendation. My only concern is that it stopped the clock on all the other timelines of if there's a dispute that it stopped the clock on payment and deadlines and things like that. Dorothy? I like the phrase not to exceed or up to 30 days which means it could be decided quickly but it won't go more than 30 days. Do you believe that for both Paul and the DPW superintendent? Well, I would suggest it and if they think that's not good then they'll tell us right now. I just wanted, before we suggested I wanted to confirm that that was for both of them. So it could take 60 days total to resolve it. Sometimes something might need to take 60 days but the phrasing that Guilford had was this isn't the time it will take but no more than that time. Right. Understood. Understood. Thank you. Well, thanks, Billy. Andy? That's just gonna ask Guilford if there's anything in the, or Paul for that, both, whether it's anything in the current tree regulations which you have had more recent experience dealing with that you think is helpful to consider. Got any thoughts on trees? Paul, you're muted. Or Amy? I don't think there are any time constraints, Amy. No, I'm more just gonna ask and this is my ignorance but even if someone gets, say, a parking violation or a speeding ticket, like I don't know even what the resolution process is or the timeline is on that but I wonder if that gives us an example. Let me look in. Oh, go ahead, Paul. I think it's 15 days. 15 days? Okay. I'm not sure. Let me check. All right. So Paul, while you check on that, are you checking on that now or do you wanna? No. All right. Can I come back to us with that one? Does that sound okay? I'll confirm. We'll say 30 right up to 30 unless I look at all of the other processes and they're like two or 15 and if so, I'll come back. Okay. Let me write down that I have to do that on a look. Okay. Now are we good to question three and Guilford, you can give us. Okay. Go ahead, Guilford. Tell us about question three, which is about water use restriction declaration. So just as you read this, this is a little different than the first two because this is not three options. These are three ways you can have any water emergency declaration. Okay. And they're all kind of the separate. Got it. And then you can speak to them specifically better than I can. Yeah. I don't know if you want me to drive you through them quickly. Yeah. Yes. Okay. So there's kind of three different ways that we might have water use restrictions that have to be declared. And so the first one is an emergency. I'll tell you, we've had all of these recently so we can tell you. An emergency is like when we have a major water main break and we lose a ton of water in like a two hour period. And that's when we just need everyone to kind of tighten the belt, not use water for a short period of time so that our tanks can recover and the system can recover. And so that's the sort of thing we need to figure out who makes that and what timeframe constitutes an emergency? Is it something where we think the system can recover in a day? Is it something where we think the system can recover in a week? But that's an emergency one. The second one is we are probably in the next year or so we're gonna get our next Water Management Act permit. And in that permit, it is gonna be written in that when a stream hits a certain flow you enact water use restrictions. We're gonna have zero say in this it's gonna be driven by the state in our permit. And so this one is more of a formality of who is the official body that's saying based on our permit, this is what we're doing. And so again, we just have to kind of know what the process is for that. But that's gonna be one, I just wanna be really clear that it's gonna be out of our hands and it's not up for public debate. That's permit state required. And then the third one is when we have a low water trigger and I'll give you an example of that which you guys are familiar with which is even like this last fall where it wasn't even in a drought but we had a couple of large water sources offline and had we had a couple of warm days in a row our water system was gonna be stressed based on the amount of water that we could provide. And so that's something where we said we feel stressed based on the water situation that's going on and we need to do something outside of the permit. And so that's where typically we know when that's coming even if it's not necessarily drought related we're watching all of these indicators and we at least have a couple of days a week of several weeks heads up on when that's coming but somebody does need to make the determination on that. So my thought when I was reading the third one is the sticky one for me is I think is easy to anticipate. My thought for the first two fellow TSO folks is that the DPW is the kind of authority on it they make the decision but they have to inform the town manager who has to inform the council sort of just like a heads up. This kind of happens already, right? Paul tells us if water is getting shut off so I think it's kind of just continuing that practice but in my mind, I'm comfortable having the water experts be the people who say we're gonna turn the water on and off. The last one, I still don't it's kind of the same situation as before where town councils don't necessarily have the expertise on this. And so I still feel more comfortable with DPW making the decision but the last one feels like there might be a different role, I don't know the last one feels like there might be reason to switch it up but I'm not necessarily convinced of that. That's my take on it. Dorothy. Well, I would want all three to be in the hands of the experts but I'm paying attention to something Amy said earlier which is the educational component. So I'm wondering if there's another way that this is done by the DPW and the town manager but that he doesn't just read it in his town manager's report but that there's a more formal presentation at the town council meeting. We don't vote on it but maybe we assent or I've heard a term somewhere else in my life and I don't remember what it is where it's a more passive thing but it's formal, you present the case we get the ruling from the town manager and the DPW and we like rubber stamp it or something like that because I think the educational is important. I think people have to hear this but I've been to enough meetings and spent a lot of time talking about water on the finance committee to know that I can trust our DPW that they are gonna do the right thing. I can't say I can trust some future or random town council in the same way to preserve water because sometimes there's a cost to preserving water that some people don't wanna pay. Dorothy, you're bringing up something interesting for me which is that, is it the decision to do it or is the trigger point the decision, right? Like I think that's, Amy, that was a half hand. I'm like, yeah. I'm kind of debating as we're going on because I get that this is a little bit minutia because there's gonna be very few times where DPW maybe recommends something and the town council isn't gonna agree or the town manager doesn't agree. I guess I just wanna be clear on what the process is. Is the DPW just making a decision or is the DPW making a recommendation to the town manager or to the town council in some of these cases? So first two feel settled, let me break these out. Do the first two feel settled for other folks as DPW is the authority, the decision maker, they inform the town manager who informs via email not waiting for a meeting informs the town council if there are water use restrictions for emergency or water management act triggers. Does that seem solid to folks? Just for the first two, Dorothy. I can't see why the third is different. I really don't. Okay. I think all three of them have the same standing. There is a very good reason to restrict water that the people who run the system know the details about and that we have to do it. Okay. So Dorothy wants the third one to be the same way. In my mind, the opinion, the difference is that there's weeks of lead up time and it's not triggered by a mandate or a main break or something. Paul. Yes. So I think there are, the first one, the A emergency that's like, there's a fire. We have to take care of action. DPW should be able to do that instantaneously without question. It's dropped or we suddenly discovered that it dropped. So that's DPW, DPW acts notification to town manager, right? The other two, I think DPW acts and gets confirmation from town manager with notification to town council. So you want there, I think the idea of this concept is to do a check and balance. And so you want a second person to say, yeah, you're right, we should do this because it doesn't, and the key here and why town manager, not town council is that town council, there's always the public meeting posting. Can you get a quorum? And if you don't get a quorum, you can't act. And so we're stuffed. So you give it to the executive with notification. So I think that on BMC, you'd say, town, you know, DPW makes a statement, gets confirmation from the town manager with notification to the council. That would be my suggestion. I'm more comfortable with that than just inform, I think confirmation from town manager makes sense for the last two or even just the last one, but last two is fine. Cause the second one, it doesn't matter. I mean, whether or not you confirm it, Paul, it doesn't really matter. It still has to happen. Okay, so right now as written, it is the authority to make the determination for one, two and three lives of DPW. For emergencies, they tell the town manager who tells the council for water management act triggers, they tell the town manager who tells the town council. For low water triggers, they confirm with the town manager who signs and rubber stamps it and then the town council is informed. Does that seem? He said notified. In the last one there, Paul had mentioned that there was a confirmation versus just an information. Right, confirmation town manager, notification town council. At least that's what I wrote down. Yeah, I just said informed, but yeah, notify works too. Okay. We have dealt with one, two and three. I have a little homework to do. I'll reach out to Amy and Guilford to talk through this and I'm only five minutes over my, a lot of time. So with everyone's confirmation, I guess I'll use that word. I will wrap this up for today and Guilford and Amy, thank you so, so much for all of your work on this. I really appreciate it. It's been a joy. Thank you. Yeah, good job team. All right, Dorothy, back to Amy. One quick, quick question for Anna. Let me just think it was so clear a minute ago. They're not smooth. Okay, the question that had been asked at the beginning, we're doing just water or are we doing water and sewer? There were, I, this has been raised a couple of times, I think, as if we could. And so I guess I'll ask, is there any reason why we can't say some of these decisions that we're making would be the same for sewer as for water? Some of the decisions that we are making should and would be the same for sewer as they are for water because it could get confusing if they are different, but until we have an opportunity to look at those and ensure that we don't have, that if we've already answered the questions, great, and I'll bring those answers to you. And if you haven't answered the questions, then we'll discuss them separately. Okay, good. Did that sound okay to you, Amy Guilford? Are you thinking something different? Yeah, I was gonna say, I can knowing these decisions tonight when we go through and answer questions and make edits to the sewer, I'm gonna assume the same, and that'll be our starting point, but we can discuss if there's sticking points where we need to make a different decision. But this gives me a starting point. Great, perfect. All right, great, with that. Thank you, Guilford and Amy. I think you're free to go. I don't know if Guilford- No, they're not. No, Amy might be. Amy might be free to go. That's right. But Guilford is definitely here for a discussion of Lincoln Avenue. Lucky that you're here. Thank you, Dorothy. I'm gonna stop talking now. Okay, but you're staying. You're not- Yeah, of course I am. I'm thinking too much on it, is that you're still here. I'm staying, absolutely. Bye, Amy. Sure, bye, Amy. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Okay, so we now have bringing up again the question of parking regulations on Lincoln Avenue between Amity and McClellan Street. And I think this was reactivated by Andy, who, so why don't I have Andy speak first? And we have Jennifer Taub, who is working on this issue too. So is that okay, Jennifer, if Andy speaks first? Sure, nice to say it. I really found your previous discussion fascinating. So I'm glad I was here for that. I don't really have much more to say. I really think we should turn it over to Jennifer pretty quickly, because what happened in the last council is really what it's going back to, because I'm the carryover member from the prior TSO to this TSO. And we developed a series of criteria to examine when we looked at these kinds of parking restriction requests or referrals. And it was pretty comprehensive document that was developed by the committee and then used not to zero in on Lincoln Avenue. It was used in Lincoln Avenue discussion. And we went through the list and compared what we could determine to be the facts from testimony we had received at public hearing and at other points from comments from Guilford and all and others. And we then had a recommendation that was made by Councilor Ryan that was essentially saying that for the relevant section of Lincoln that there would be a parking restriction during the time that the university is commonly in session. I don't have the exact wording in front of me. And that went to the council and the council on a tie vote because it required a majority to prevail. One absolute. If the motion did not carry, there was somebody absent or can't remember what the circumstance but it was a tie vote. And the one person who definitely changed vote from the committee to the council meeting was because during that interim period we learned that Lincoln Avenue was going to be closed off at its end in the last section as the construction began on the apartment development there and was possibly going to be permanently closed. We weren't sure. And so the argument was essentially that the factual circumstances, the factual analysis that was made was based upon what was available for information when the road was open and it should be reevaluated after the road was closed. And there was one other piece that was relevant to it because in no time did we get into the question of consideration of what might be the effects on neighboring streets if that decision was made. So there was two things missing. And when I've spoken about this with Jennifer said, well, she's closer to looking at Lincoln Avenue on a regular basis than I am for obvious reasons. And that therefore if there were changes in factual circumstances, then it would be valid to bring that back and ask for reconsideration against the criteria because we will have essentially done the experiment that the one deciding vote on the council last time was most affected by. And so that was the factual, that was background piece and it kind of therefore unfortunately left it for Jennifer to make the next call. And that's why I said I'd rather have her pick up on it than me because she is the observations that now would be relevant to the discussion. Okay, thank you. And we're ready now for Jennifer to make a presentation. I see. Thank you, Andy. I really guess I was deciding whether just go in and I have like three short slides or if I should provide that context which you just did. So I really appreciate it. And I just, I won't go to the slides but to respond to take it from where Andy left off is they did close the intersection at Massachusetts Avenue and Lincoln Avenue in November. So we have like nine months or a semester and a half of school since it was closed and it did not change the parking situation at all because you can still walk or ride your bike which people do take their bikes out of the car. There was pedestrian access to campus. So it didn't change the situation of people parking. And then it was almost more crowded than ever probably because they closed some lots on campus. And then Paul in his town manager report just this past Monday, I had never heard any, I thought that it would be only temporarily closed the intersection at Lincoln and Mass Avenue because when it was explained to us by the university they said it's only temporary during the construction. And in fact, in Paul's report this week under university and college update it did say that UMass has no plans to keep that intersection closed. So not only did the closure not cause any ebb in the parking but the intersection is going to open at the very time although it may open before the dorms open but presumably at the same time there's 800 new residents coming to the street and that is a lot more cars that will be traversing. And they might add that a lot of the street surrounding Lincoln like McClellan, Cosby, Fearing already have parking restrictions. So I could see maybe some spillover onto sunset but we're one of the last streets in this particular neighborhood that doesn't have any parking regulations and we are the main thoroughfare from Amnesty and Route 9 onto campus because we were a direct route onto campus at sunset and now that that would really deter people but you do have to make a few turns so people don't tend to take sunset to get to campus they take Lincoln. So I just wanted to provide a little kind of overview of the background where we are now and what our request is and I was gonna ask Athena so I've actually never shared my screen. So I don't know if I should do it or Athena has the slides. Can I have them ready if she'd like me to put them up? Yeah, if you don't mind that probably be easier so I have to take up to this time. I'll try and be quick about this. Thank you very much. You're welcome to go fast, yeah. Turn up, you can see. Thank you. So basically, and again, when I talk about some of these numbers this came from the work that DPW did when it was before TSO during the last council session. So the source of the situation, the problem or challenge we find is that Lincoln Avenue is classified as a collector roadway. And during an evaluation previously conducted by DPW it was determined that Lincoln Avenue is actually not wide enough to accommodate two-way traffic and a parking lane. That the street is 24 to 25 feet wide and the recommended width for a street to accommodate two-way traffic and a parking lane is 27 to 32 feet. And as, so after the previous TSO studied the matter, referred it to DPW or came back and then they took a vote recommending to council that they approve the TSO's recommendations. So in an October 15th, 2021 memo from the then TSO chair Evan Ross to town council he said, given Lincoln Avenue is a collector roadway with high traffic flow and pavement width that does not meet the recommended pavement width for two-way traffic plus parking lane the criteria suggests that parking should not be allowed on Lincoln Avenue. And again, so that's even if it wasn't the main connector road from Amity and Route 9 to UMass. So cars begin to arrive on Lincoln between Amity and McClellan and that's the parking part of the east side of Lincoln between Amity and McClellan and that's the part of the street that has no parking regulations now around 8 a.m. on most weekdays and remain there until late afternoon, early evening. And it's not unusual for vehicles to remain on the street overnight. So I was getting emails from residents saying they're parking overnight and if it's snow it even can cause difficulty for the plows. So I emailed Paul and I said, oh, cars are parking overnight. And I think we all assume that wasn't allowed but it turned out it is allowed. So you can basically park there. There's no restrictions. You can park 24-7 for weeks at a time. So when UMass is not in session there are rarely any parked cars. So this is not a place where people are parking who are patronizing downtown businesses or even working downtown because when school is not in session there's no cars. So it really is all parking for the university. So the feeling is that during the academic year particularly that again we kind of function as a parking lot and the concern is I guess even greater when the additional 800 residents move on to the street as I can definitely see where there's students in the new dorm and let's say somebody's going for spring break home with a friend and they could just leave their car for the entire week or two on the street. And as I went into detail in the previous when I was speaking before the full council as it got referred to TSO is it's not, I mean, nobody cares that it's unsightly that the cars are parked there but it's really become a problem for the people who live on the street. I mean it's become a problem for two-way traffic. That's the first problem. So that's everybody. There is not room for two-way traffic around the park cars that the school bus driver to Wildwood had to actually change the way he approached the street because he was having to stop and wait for cars to pass over the parked cars. And he was getting behind schedule but that the cars park right up to the driveway curves and all the driveways are narrow one car driveways through one car in width. And the residents would have been happy if there was some way to mark the curves or keep people from being able to park right up to the driveways or just over them. But that's very difficult for the town to enforce. So that kind of stock gap measure we were told isn't really an option that we would have. Okay, so the next slide. Thank you, Athena. Great, thank you. So again, some of this is repetitious but looking forward, we have two new dormitories that are currently under construction. When the dorms open in fall 2023, there will be 800 additional residents living on Lincoln. So in anticipation of even more cars parked closer together on this narrow residential street, there's really a feeling that it's more critical than ever that some level of parking management may adopt it. And I think also as you have all these cars and their guests coming to look for parking on the street that I can't even really imagine what the traffic situation is gonna be once the dorms open. And not every student will have a car, but if even half of the 800 did and they have guests, 800 new residents on the street and they really are on Lincoln Avenue, they're in the neighborhood more than they're actually on what we consider the campus. And no resident is ever objected to the dorms being there. We do live near campus, so we feel like we have to do some planning for this. So as per the town managers, again, reports to council on June 27th, the university representatives indicated they have no plans to close Lincoln Avenue, it's intersect with Massachusetts Avenue. Therefore, we'll continue to function as this main access North, South route two and from route nine and Amnesty Street and that we anticipate hundreds of additional cars traversing the street and buying for parking on a daily basis. I actually, again, we're just requesting parking restrictions during the weekday, although with the new dorms, I would imagine there'll be demand on weekends, but two days will be better than seven. Okay, so thank you, Athena. I think I'm at the last slide and this really gets to the request and the request is specifically what TSO, the last TSO was asking the town council to approve. So the request would be for TSO to recommend that town council adopt the following regulations for Lincoln Avenue, which were approved by the prior councils TSO in October, 2021. And this is what they came up with that parking be prohibited as a tow zone from September 1st to May 31st, Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 a.m. And those restrictions exist on other blocks on Lincoln Avenue and some of the surrounding streets on the east side of Lincoln from a distance of 200 feet north of Amity Street to 60 feet south of McClellan Street. That parking be prohibited as a tow zone from September 1st to May 31st, Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the east side of Lincoln from a distance of 60 feet north of McClellan Street to 30 feet south of Fearing Street. That restriction is already in place and parking prohibited as a tow zone on the east side of Lincoln Avenue from Fearing to South Hadley, to North Hadley Road, excuse me, which is almost right on the campus and that restriction is already in place. So in speaking with Lynn, she suggested that we request that TSO hold a public hearing on this request and then based on how you vote after that hearing, hopefully it would be to recommend that you would refer this matter to the town council for final approval. Thank you. And I'm happy to take any questions, of course. Okay. I had a question on that slide. First, it said town zone which, when you mean tow zone, that's a typo. I had a question on the last two things, on North of McClellan and on Fearing on East Hadley. Is that, you said that's already in place. I just, I got confused there. I understand from Amity up to McClellan. I understand that. But then the part North of McClellan is that the rule that you read, that sounded like you said that that's already in place. Yeah, so baby Paul can weigh in. I've always been confused, frankly. Whenever I read it, it repeats what is already in place. So I live between McClellan and Fearing. I'm just like two blocks from Canvas. So there it, although my driveway's on Cosby, so this really doesn't impact me, but there is already no parking weekdays going North. So this, I think when the town initially did that, they thought that they were, they knew that there was gonna be a horrible parking situation within a block or two of campus. So I think in Paul, you might, I don't even know if this predates your coming to town, but I think they thought we will restrict parking on the two blocks closest to campus and people won't park further and walk. But that has not been the case. They park all the way to Amity. So, but again, so I don't actually know why they repeat what they're gonna keep in place. So that's why this is only asking for the restrictions in this long part of the street where there's cars bumper to bumper every weekday during the school year. That's really impeding traffic and people getting in and out of their driveways. And I mean, just as one example, there was an ambulance had to come twice over a period of months to the same residents. The ambulance couldn't pull into the driveway of the home because the cars were blocking it enough that the ambulance couldn't get onto the driveway. And there were so many cars parked on the street, they couldn't park, they literally had to park like almost down the block. And it was a very serious situation. So that's what we're kind of faced with every day. So can we have an answer from Paul and Guilford on why those last two paragraphs are still here if in fact it's already been done? Guilford, is that a hand there? It is, sorry. Okay, it was just to clean things up and just to have it restated. This is what we were gonna do. Okay. All right. So when we presented to town council, do we still present it with all three paragraphs and say two of these have been passed and one hasn't or? No, I would recommend doing it. This is gonna be a complete new parking regulation and doing it for the whole length. So it's clear cut. This is the parking regulation and... Okay. I see. So keep it as typed up by Jennifer, the whole thing. Okay. And Paul, is that your understanding too? Okay. Very good. Okay. So I think Shalini, you have a question. I'm gonna write this down. Yeah. I was wondering what the Transportation Advisory Committee what they feel about because the note says that they did not offer a comment. And I wonder if you could hear from them. Well, I did notice that there is an attendee, Tracy Zaffrian. Now, I don't know what the etiquette of whether I can call upon that or, you know. So if it ever went to TSO? TAC. The... I mean TAC, I mean TAC. I think that might be why that's a challenge. It's really important that clarification that you're asking there and I really appreciate it. So whether they have come in or not, TAC hasn't met recently. Although Tracy has her hand up. Oh, great. Okay. So let's take the questions from the committee first and then we can call upon Tracy. How's about that? Okay. Anna. You're gonna call on Tracy. So I took a bite. Question? No, it's fine. What's gonna prevent this from just squeezing out onto every other road right nearby it? What I'm saying is there's, there seems to be parking restrictions on a lot of the streets already. Not a lot. I mean, there aren't that many streets here. Do we have information on what those parking restrictions are and how far out they go from Lincoln? Can you tell me, I guess is my question. I know we have it. I just don't, I don't know it. And so I'm curious what, because what I don't wanna have happen is, you know, we do this for Lincoln and then they all move one or two streets over and then we have to do it for those street, right? And like we just keep squeezing. I'd rather figure out what the actual problem is and how to solve it versus just, I'm not saying this isn't a problem, but I'd rather also address the underlying issue that is, you know, why folks are parking here so that we're not just moving the problem to different streets. So this is a very tiny neighborhood. There's basically, so I was lucky when I was campaigning. I mean, I could walk it like several times in one day. It's very compact. So it's not like there's that many streets for it to spill over. So there's Lincoln, fearing already, I believe, incorrectly has no parking on one side of the street because that's a major through street. Then there's Cosby, Page, McClellan, Best in Artini Street. So they, there was like on Cosby, there was already no parking. There's no parking ever on one side and another side, I think it's not from like eight to three on weekdays because you literally, if the car was parked, you could not get down the street. So the only, I mean, from what I can see, the only street there might be a spillover is Sunset. The other streets have restrictions and they're just teeny little streets and the houses really close together. But in fact, the residential parking permits, which I didn't realize we had, but we have a small number of residential parking permits for people who live on Page and Best in, and we, the town council included Page in that group, allows people who live on those streets because there is no parking on the street because they're so narrow to buy a town permit for $25 and to park on those street, I think on Cosby. The only street that I could see having any spillover would be Sunset. There's only one street. You don't think it'll go down to Dana or Blue Hills? No, no. There's somehow Amity is, nobody parks on the other side of Amity. So you can't cross Amity. So that's pedestrian crossings. There's almost no pedestrians crossing on the road. Kind of brave enough. So, but Jennifer, what you're saying, sorry, I'm wrapping this up, is that Sunset does not currently have the same restrictions that are being proposed for Lincoln? No, and they don't have cars parked on it. But if we put these restrictions for Lincoln but not for Sunset, would we be squishing everybody over to Sunset? I don't know. I mean, I don't know. That's the only street where that could happen. Okay, thank you. Okay, so I'm gonna call on Andy. I have a call on a make after Andy. Several things now that I've thought about and was looking at as we were talking, but to the last TSO, we did talk about Lincoln and Sunset as being parallel streets in the uncertainty about Sunset. And we recognized that in the adoption of the proposal for Lincoln that we could be looking at Sunset very quickly. The question came up about why is there a problem? And I think that the problem probably exists for two reasons. One is the lack of adequate parking on campus. We know that some lots were sold out, but probably the larger is the cost of parking and people who are trying to avoid paying the cost of the parking charges for on-campus parking. We have only anecdotal evidence. We have no real hard evidence that that's the cause, but I think it's, let's say, a reasonable assumption to make. But the last thing that I think is where I'm gonna leave my suggestion for today is that there were actually two different things that were developed by the last in the last TSO. One was public way review process, and the other was to the TSO review criteria. And the one I was able to find of the criteria was labeled as a draft from September 23, 21. I need to see if I can find that there was a final adopted or if we were ever forever operating off of the draft. But I can also ask some other former members of the committee if they have recollection on either of those points. As far as the first of those two items that I was referring to, which is the public way review process, it was essentially the same request for parking changes or other public way requests should be sent to the town council president. The president can automatically refer the request to TSO with notification to the council or may choose to bring the request to the town council for discussion and a formal referral vote. So that was left for the president to make that determination. And then indicated proposals can come from number four, bullets, town staff, town committee, town councilor or resident request if there's a town council responsibility. So I imagine that if you would apply those bullets because the TSO has adopted as a policy and it could be the considered a town councilor request or resident requests with the town council sponsor. But I think either way, Jennifer's making that request or forwarding the request. And then there was the questions about how to proceed deliberation. And the deliberation says that identification of stakeholders and soliciting comments. And it says after soliciting comments, for example, TAC, which we just mentioned, DAAC, which is the Disability Access Advisory Committee, the Public Shade Treat Committee, et cetera, because it was left open as to whether any might be added by a TSO as it was considering the process. The next step was a public hearing and then final TSO review and vote. And the council voted and so in the, and it left that the council could refer it back for further review as one of its options. And when you get to the review criteria, that was what I said was the only one that I could find quickly as I was looking through is labeled as draft, but it is the one that has all of the criteria that I was describing earlier. I'm looking at roadway classification, available pavement with traffic flow data available, and then the application, guidelines for application of criteria and additional considerations for collector and local roadways. Which is where I think that we are here. And I'll just read a couple of bullets to give you a sense of them. I'm not gonna read them all. Closest is downtown or village centers, accident history, public safety, for example, sufficient access for school buses, and there's fire department trucks, parking demand, and it goes on from there. So my suggestion to the committee, obviously I'm only one member, is to get those two documents and what the current versions are to the committee for the next meeting and then pick up on the discussion from there. Thank you, Andy. That sounds very good. I'm gonna make my brief comment then call on Paul. And that is that the new dorm that UMass is building is on a parking lot. So they know what they're doing. They have lots of time. And obviously it is up to the university to find a way to provide more parking for its students. And I trust that they will, okay? The other comment is about sunset. I've been, because of the closure of the top of Lincoln, I've been, and also I drive around my district, but I've been coming back and you can't go south on Lincoln from Mass Ave now. You have to go to sunset. And it's just not a really easy or friendly entrance from sunset. There's a little divide of you not quite sure which lane you're supposed to go in. It's just not that main road. Lincoln is the straight shot to the university, takes you right to the center and which is why it's called a collector road. So the end of my comments, I'm gonna call on Paul now. Thank you, Dorothy. So the question I had, and this was for the prior council's recommendation as well was the problem that was identified was the proximity of people parking to driveways, making it hard to get out. The danger of attempting to have two lanes and a parking when that was just not impossible and proven by the truck, the bus driver, the inability of emergency vehicles to get in. And the solution that the council recommended was to fix that during certain hours, but not all the time. And so it seemed like what then the concern was, those are concerns, but then we don't want students doing that. But if other people did it, it was okay, because it was addressed. So I didn't understand why someone parking close to a driveway at 5.30 was okay, but at five o'clock it wasn't okay. And so I was just, I mean, I think what council Ross said and the highlighted thing was just make it no parking period because that will be safer. And that's what the solution is. So that was just when I read that last time with the council, it just confused me why there were the time where it was okay at some point but not okay at other points. Okay, Paul, I didn't totally understand what you said because the parking too close to driveway happens during peak parking times when people are desperate to find a parking spot. The parking too close to driveways does not seem to be a problem after five. It's not who does it. It's that the time of day seem to have something to do with whether everybody was jamming and trying competing for those few parking spots. What about the widths of the road where it was like two, it was 20, I think. Like if you come down in the summer, there's not too many cars parked, but it's just an occasional guest, I guess, of somebody in the house, but it's literally during the school year, there's not Christmas vacation. I don't want to have this be a dialogue back for it, but you did say people called when people parked overnight when no one was parked on the street and that was concerned for residents. So does it- I mean, as Dorothy said, I mean, yes, I guess it could happen and it has and they call, they've actually called for it to be towed. If somebody, like sometimes a couple of times people parked overnight on the west side of the street where you could never park and they'll call. But if, like, if you were coming to visit someone on Lincoln, you wouldn't have to park. If there's not a lot of cars parked there, you wouldn't have to park right up to the curb. Now, I don't know when the new dorms are built. I mean, we might well find it's not all year round, although one of them is a graduate dorm and graduate students may be here year round, but I wouldn't, I wonder if on weekends we're gonna have the same situation, you know, with people's gas because there's gonna be, you know, like 600 undergraduates. But that's what we found that there's, it's not an issue when there's not a lot of people competing for parking and it only seems to be during, so thus far has been weekdays during the academic year. Right. Paul, your hand is still up. You want to say something more? Okay. And Anna. Yeah, I do want to echo what Paul was saying. If this is a matter of public safety, which it sounds like it is, then we should make sure that the public is safe at all hours of the day, not just during daytime hours and make sure that people can't park right up next to driveways because it limits ambulances, right? I think that if there are parking restrictions for public safety reasons, then I think they should apply at all hours because people don't only have medical emergencies and happen to have a car in front of their driveway at, you know, 3pm despite if that would be convenient. So my thought would just be, I don't like the idea of limiting it, even if that's the, even if that's the, those are the perceived hours that there's an issue because it only takes one time for it to be off hours and not be during, you know, and I'd rather not run that risk. I'd rather have it be that the ambulance can get down that road and turn around whenever. And then the other thing is, Andy, I appreciated your request to bring those materials to our next meeting. I'd also love, and I guess I'm looking to Guilford because I know Tracy is stuck in the audience right now, but I'd love if TAC could review this prior to our next meeting, if that's possible. I don't know when their next meeting is. And I also know that there's, we're not sure if we're still figuring out all of the roles and the charges for some of our committees, but if that's possible, that would be great just to get there, whether or not they come down on one side or another, but they can give us some things to think about. Okay, so Anna, I do need some clarification. You're saying that you think there should be no parking at any time on the east side of the road. Whatever we decide the parking limitation is, I don't think it should be our specific because I think that from what I'm hearing, the primary reason to put these parking restrictions into place is public safety for the folks living on Lincoln. And I don't think that we should limit public safety emergencies to daytime hours. But Anna, I will point out something too, when it isn't packed all the way parking when the university is in session, then the driveway issue is not quite the same. I mean, there's nothing totally different about driveways on Lincoln than driveways on other streets. What was different was that too many people were trying to park in limited space. And the request to have driveway lines painted and forced is not something the town does. I mean, there's nothing brought up a number of times. So I would love to hear Gofford on this point because I do see you're saying, if it's a problem that you can't get into your driveway and it has certainly has been a problem, does that problem go away at five o'clock at night? That's your question. And it does. I mean, there's not a question though, Dorothy. It's not a question because there's nothing stopping it from going away, right? Like there's nothing that stops them from going right up to the driveway line and just thinking that that's a parking spot even if they're the only car on the road. But they don't. I mean, I don't think we should come up with lying on that. But how is that different from other streets? Yeah, there's plenty of other streets that have, I mean, we just have parking at Kendrick Place that have restrictions. I mean, that's like, it seems like it's punishing. I mean, why would we want to say nobody can ever park here when it's only a problem during, it seems like you're being, like why would we do something for which there's no reason? Oh, there might be or there might not be. We don't know. No, but there's not. I mean, if one car is parked on the street, it's not. If it's not parked in front of a driveway. But it doesn't. I mean, would you find, I mean, people, the reason they're over, they're right up to the driveway is because all these cars are trying to squeeze in. And that is, there's, and it only happens. I mean, I guess we did not want, or we, the residents who live, they do not want to say nobody can ever park on Lincoln. That seems very restrictive. But there's, and they would actually be okay if you said maybe two hour parking. So there wasn't just people, well, I mean, they would be happy if you could just park, you could just mark the curves. But I think it's, at some point, it's just like bringing a sledgehammer to a thumbtack. Let me call on some more people here. Okay. Anika, your hand was up. You still want to talk? Yeah, I agree with what has been said, but didn't the report also say that a lot of these sorts of parking during the day are staying overnight? There are cars that stay overnight. And when people, I would say most cars don't, but when they do, I think the residents didn't think that you could do that. I think there needs to be some level of parking management. And there is something between saying you can park on the street 365 days a year, 24 seven, and you can never park on the street. I mean, we should be able to come up with something that makes, is more, I think, common sense than one extreme or the other. Yeah, I mean, I see what you're saying, but we're getting cut between like inconvenience and safety, you know? And I think that if it's about, I agree that if it's about safety, that's blanket whereas if you're saying, okay, just in the evenings, people can park, and if that would decrease a lot of the people coming for university, but still, I mean, it is still a street that is close to town and the same issues could happen with guests parking, going to visit people at night and coming up to the driveways. I mean, it may happen, what we, it's not a street where there's a lot of people park, I mean, there's usually not cars parked on the street at night, so it's not, so that's how we came up with those hours because those are the hours in which it's congested to park, and that's also the hours like when a school bus and people are commuting back and forth. I mean, we may find that when the doors open, it does become a problem more, you know, I still don't know that it's a problem in the summer. Like, okay. Well, I'm gonna call Andy, but just remember, and I think this may relate to what Anna was saying, there's a problem between two lanes of traffic and a lane of parking. That is a problem. Andy. Yeah, I mean, there's the answers to some of these questions probably by recollection, and I can't remember if this came from select board days or council days, because I've been dealing with Lincoln Avenue for too many years in both, in sequential positions, but there was a concern and a desire expressed by some residents of Lincoln who spoke at one point that they would like to have the ability to guests come to their house at night for entertainment, dinner party, whatever. And so the total restriction of parking was not necessarily something they favored because they would have the flexibility to be able to do that, to be a host in their home and not make it impossible for people to actually visit. There's not a lot of traffic at those hours. And again, maybe we'll find that's different. Yeah, maybe we'll find it's different, which sort of gets to my, but the major point is, I mentioned when I spoke in the previous time about the two policies that exist. And so we had a bit under the existing policy that the request should go to the president who makes his termination. I don't know if she has or not. You guys have to tell me as to whether she's made a formal referral to the TSO or not, but that's something that was left to the president, but equal importance. We're jumping way ahead of the process, even if she had made a referral because we haven't sought input from other committees. We haven't had a public hearing, which we would be required to have. And we haven't spent the time looking at the criteria, some of which were originally provided by Guilford in classification of the streets and what is needed in the width depending upon the classification of the streets as far as how wide each section needs to be for two way parking for two way traffic parking and what's required for the three classifications that exist and that's part of the criteria that we have to look at. So I think that by jumping to the conversation at the stage we have, we're way, way ahead of ourselves in the process. Lynn has a handout. Yes. Oh, thank you. I guess very much. Lynn, would you please be admitted, Athena, and Midland to the meeting, please? I'm only here to clarify because otherwise you have a quorum at the council. I am going to ask Athena, but I believe the council voted to refer to this to TSL which should be sufficient. That's correct. Okay. Please exit me. Okay. Okay. So there had been discussion with Lynn and I could probably get things wrong here that her view, this had been studied. We had very detailed reports from DPW and that it seemed that what we needed to do was to have a public hearing and actually without spending tremendous amount of time past this request. If that's not going to be, it's not going to be, but that was the information that was passed on to me that it seemed that it's something that could be done easily. And that is, I guess, my hope. Shalini, I see your hand is up. Yeah. And so public hearing and then we need to send it to TAC. And should we, while Tracy do come in? Absolutely. Thank you so much for keeping that on. I'm going to let Paul speak first just in case it's relevant to this unless you want to wait until after Tracy speaks. This is just a clarification. This is how do you change, is the question is how do we change the regulation? And Athena has already done this. I'm just going to read it, Athena, because you wrote it. The general bylaw 3.14 requires that there be a public hearing. TSO is authorized by the Council to hold the public hearing. So the hearing must be posted, the notice of the hearing must be posted on the Count Bolton Board for at least 14 days and publish a newspaper for two weeks prior to the hearing and notification of the hearing be sent to a butters 14 days prior to the hearing. Any notice of the hearing would include the specific changes that the Council is considering. So I think we have to have a specific proposal that I think, you know, the Councilor Tom has said, I'd like it to be this, whatever Councilor Tom says is going to be my recommendation, I think it would be the proposal. And it's best to include whatever the proposal is in the notification. So everybody who gets a notification knows what's being contemplated. The bylaw also requires that all reasonable and practical, will attempt shall be made to notify businesses and residential tenants of immediately affected or abutting properties. Given the university is named in the memo and students are identified as well, it could be problematic to hold a hearing outside of the school term. At a minimum, the university should be sent notice of the public hearing. So, and I, but you could initiate, begin this process, certainly tonight or send it to TAC to get their recommendation back and then initiate the process. It's a different option to develop. Okay. And I think Athena for putting that all together. Right, that was really useful. And so you're saying that tonight, what we have to really deal with today is, we have, we can, we will have a vote on whether or send this to TAC. But first, let me call Tracy to speak on this topic. And I see the name, I don't hear a voice. Sorry, can you hear me now? Yes, we do. Okay, great. Sorry, I was just interrupted at my door. Okay, there are a few things. So one is the question had come up about why TAC hasn't provided feedback on these changes. And I think really, I mean, I, you know, this has come up before about what's TAC's role and how do items come to TAC. I think that's still in progress on the town manager and I have met on that. We're going to meet again. And there, he's in the process with some feedback of drafting and updated track charts. So, I mean, the TAC has commented previously on Lincoln parking when the proposal, the previous proposal that was introduced by counselors Ryan and Pam came to, came to TSO and the council. I mean, we did provide, there were TAC members including the chair at the time, Aaron Hayden who came and came to TAC meetings and provided their feedback for my member Eve Vogel also provided feedback. I know I wasn't on the TAC then and I made comments as well. A lot of our comments were focused on safety at that time, particularly the safety about sight lines if, you know, at the driveways and also at some of the intersections if you can't see very well. I mean, to me as like a driving safety person, like that's always a big concern and that's where you have a lot of crashes. That's where kids get hit. That's where pedestrians get hit and so on. So, that's always a risky area. So, basically, I mean, any summary I just mentioned about the procedure that TSO developed for assessing public way requests including parking and that procedure that was developed by TSO was used the last time the Lincoln parking proposal for changing the parking was considered and TAC had weighed in on that as well. And we provide some feedback in the draft versions and it seemed like that process worked well. So, we're just, you know, sort of in that pattern. So, I mean, I think TAC could, I'm actually right now we TAC is scheduled to have a meeting next week and I'm working on the agenda. I mean, if TSO would like this to be on our agenda we can put it on our agenda. I need to get it to Amber tomorrow. And I mean, just a few comments, you know too I think there was a question raised about, I mean, just from my own perspective about the public safety, you know if it's a danger during sometimes like why isn't is it not a danger all the time to have parking on the street? I think that one big case with Lincoln as opposed to say someplace like Kendrick Place Kendrick Place is just such a narrow road. So it's never gonna be really appropriate to have a lot of parking there on both sides of the street and they are, I mean, we are still allowing parking on one side of the street, right? So this current proposal would restrict parking on Lincoln on both sides of the street for certain periods of time. Those are the periods of time that do have the highest traffic volumes related to UMass. You know, they are weekday traffic, you know particularly we don't see it as much now when one Lincoln is closed off but also because it's summer but when you do have like high traffic roadways particularly for those busy times of day those commuting patterns which Lincoln has always been a major commuting road even with the speed bumps, I mean the speed tables and I mean actually one thing I really like is the idea of, you know now that those are there and they're on Blue Hills Road as well that people do use those streets to cut less cut through less and so maybe, you know if Lincoln was ever closed as was previously proposed and some people have talked about it again if it was ever closed at Fearing it really would take drivers who are going over to UMass or coming from UMass out of the neighborhoods like an onto the major streets like University Drive and North Pleasant Street and things like that that are more designed to have three traffic. So to me when there are times of day that have much, I mean it's just like other major roadways, you know if you look at, I can't think of examples right around Amherst but, you know like state highways that go through busy business areas and things like sometimes a day they say no parking, right? Because they know they want all the lanes of traffic and things and then when it's less busy you allow parking. So I see it like that. So I mean, I think, you know it is an issue about it like if you look at the map as Jennifer was saying I mean, most of the parking in the area is restricted the fact that Lincoln is one of the few streets that doesn't have any kind of restriction right now in that section South McClellan is one of the reasons I think that people are parking there but if you look at that map you can see that most of the map is red or it has like permanent parking things and since it is the one exception I mean, Sean McGonnell has brought up a number of times in talking about the new parking rates about how, you know that people will find the places where they can still park and not pay like people will find the loopholes and like what are the loopholes and can we cut out the loopholes? I mean, I know for me just anecdotally I work at UMass I work right off of Commonwealth Avenue a lot of my colleagues we're parking in some of those parking lots including where the new dorms are being built and they can't park there anymore they have to park for their way they also don't wanna pay those high parking permit costs at UMass particularly because we also have offices off-site so like some of them spend half their time not at UMass Amherst and at UMass Amherst so they don't wanna be paying and the parking tickets are pretty big and they've been like piling up and I mean, I do think I mean, even I occasionally have parked in the neighborhoods because it's pretty close to high no shot but it's pretty close and now it's summer and things and I don't wanna pay it either I mean, so I end up parking in the hourly parking and a lot of students park in the hourly parking too and that pushes there's not enough spaces for the hourly it's interesting because all the hourly spaces at UMass will be full and the hourly parking is pretty expensive I think is up to like 250 an hour or something like a quarter every 10 minutes so if you're working there a whole day that's like quite a chunk of change and but they prefer that instead of having those permits so you'll see that the parking the permitted lots aren't even full and the meter spaces are awful Okay, interesting That's it, thanks Okay, Andy, got your hand up Thank you, Casey If I may share a screen maybe it's worth looking at the policy quickly on the procedure yes, so that we just can apply it and get moving I don't think I think we're making this more complicated than it needs to be so I think that I can do this fairly quickly let's see if this one works Okay, so this is the TSO public you see what it is it's the review process and we've already talked about time council referral Lynn came in and clarified that for us so we're moving on to number two TSO decision to proceed once referred TSO decides how it wants to proceed may decide not to take up the request which I don't think we've decided but it moves forward from there TSO deliberation and this is where we have the opportunity to seek stakeholder input and so as to solicit comments from TAC we just had it informally we could do more formally disability access advisory, policy entry or any other committee that we deemed to be relevant for the discussion and I see that there was a spilling area here in stakeholders but what we get to is the appropriate point we moved to the public hearing stage and so I think that's why I think that we just need to figure out where we are with the process and then just keep it moving because I think it provides guidance on how to proceed with this request and just would be a way to move forward I can go back a little more slowly to people Okay, so I know that when we spoke to Lynn earlier she was trying to move towards a public hearing this summer and but looking at this process we have to do number two we have to decide to proceed how we're gonna do it and we can formally solicit from TAC and DAAC so theoretically if we agreed we could have given the two weeks if we have the two weeks and all the time to do the notification of the abutters our next meeting could be a public hearing and deliberation and getting some more input we do the public hearing and then get formal input from TAC and DAAC and the stakeholders and the abutters would have been notified and we can then proceed to vote on this but the question is, are we ready to do that? Lynn's hands up again. Oh, thank you. That's really helpful because I don't see that at all. Okay, thank you. Lynn, please, I'd love to hear from you. I believe that Paul and Athena and then Paul have made a very good point which I did not consider in my timeframe and that is that this probably should be done when the university is in session and so that would move our timeframe to the earliest being September. Okay, thank you. Throw me out again. Okay, thank you. Yeah, I wasn't quite sure how formally we took that but let's, listen, we've spent a lot of time on this. I hope that we do it and do it right, okay? And then we can then move on to other things. Andy, comment. No, I should take my hand down. I should quit sharing too if people are ready for me to do that. I think that the question that Athena raised before is question of whether you need to do something in having a proposal to take for public hearing as opposed to just a general word you think. And that's a decision that requires application of the public hearing policy also in mixing that in with this. So I think that has to be considered as we make the determination of when to have the public hearing, but also we have the point that Linda's raised about not doing it when the university is not in session. Okay, just before I call Paul, I am confused. I thought that we were, what the proposal was to represent the proposal that DPW had given us which as Gofford said, would include two parts which have already been done but he wanted to have a complete redone parking thing. So that we don't have to spend time creating a new proposal that we have that proposal which was done by the experts. Okay, Paul, calling on you. I agree, I think that's what I think Councilor Todd has said. I would like the council to reconsider the proposal, not reconsider, but we want to look at the exact same proposal again. And so that's the proposals on the table. I think the other action you can take tonight is to ask the TAC, if you would like the TAC to comment on it, have them say here's the proposal, can you look at this? So you can get some things moving, right? Right, right, okay. And TAC already has a meeting scheduled, it's tracing and put through that on the agenda tomorrow. They can start to move that quickly. I think then your decision is, should we have a hearing during the summer or should we wait till the university is back in session? That's a decision you can make. Okay, that's very good. Okay, so three thoughts then. One, stick with the proposal that we have. Two, formally say Tracy, this is a proposal and I believe Andy, you can send over the, send to Tracy or TAC our process, whether we finalized it or not, I thought it was finalized when it was used by TSO. I think it is a good process, it's very thorough. And to ask TAC to give a formal request and what was the third one? And the question was Lynn came down, Lynn had wanted to do this before the university is in session. I think the more conservative point of view is to say, okay, since the university is in the butter, they have to be notified, let's wait till the university is back in session so that when we do this thing, we do it with all the eyes dotted and we can move forward from it. So that is my recommendation called from what people have said in this meeting. Are there any comments on this, Shalini? Do we need to make a formal vote to send it to TAC or is it already decided? I think what we said, one, that we're going to represent the motion that was presented before, two, that we're going to look at the process that TSO developed in the past, whether it was finalized, finalized, we don't know but it's really pretty much finished copy. That we would send that proposal to TAC and formally say, TAC, we would like to have your opinion that we have a public hearing but that we wait to have set that public hearing for when the university is in session and that that's how we move forward. And now, do we want to vote on that? We can or we can have an understanding if nobody disagrees with it. I mean, you know, quicker sense of the meeting. Yes, Shalini. Oh no, I'm just, I'm saying I'm good with that. If you don't need the motion, then yeah. Yeah, okay. So then we're agreed how to move forward. And since Guilford has been forced to hang out here this whole time, I'd love to hear a comment from you because a lot of questions and comments have been raised about why prohibit parking in the daytime and not all the time. And I just would be interested in any thoughts that you've had when you've heard us struggling with this issue. That's not an interesting question. To look at every street the same way, we go back to our memo we sent earlier, which said we should look at the classification, the use of the road and the widths of the road. Based on that, we would recommend no parking on Lincoln at all, either side, no parking, 24 hours a day. Okay. We understand that doesn't meet every resident's needs and that there might be places in town where you could allow it, but Lincoln is a well-traveled road. And if the campus does reopen it at their end, when the construction is done, it will remain a well-traveled road. And as you have travel and you also have people who park there because it is one of the last free things in America, free parking, everybody loves free parking. So we would go with our original suggestion is that those criteria should be applied even to Lincoln and we would say no parking whatsoever. Then we would have to, if we were gonna do that, we would have to reword the proposal, right? You would, but I understand that there's other considerations that go into it if you want to and make certain considerations. But then if you make those considerations on Lincoln, when you go to another neighborhood, you're gonna have to make considerations for those neighborhoods too. So are you willing to do that for Lincoln and then do it in other places? And that's- Okay, so that is an interesting question. Okay, so this is the first time I've heard you state this clearly, Guilford. And I have to say that when it comes to things like parking and safety on the roads, I'm gonna really listen to what you have to say as being very, very important. So I will call up Paul and then on Jennifer. So maybe a path forward, you're gonna send it to, you've already said to agree that you're gonna send the tech pack. When they get back their recommendations, you can hear BQW's recommendations. You have the counselor's proposal. And then I think as a committee you say, what do we wanna advertise? What do we wanna put out there is what we're gonna recommend. And then you all agree, this committee agrees what it wants to advertise. And it can be no parking either side. It can be the existing proposal. It can be something in between. But you guys, it's not like you've made a decision, but you need to post what you're gonna talk about or anything. And then you wanna listen to the public comment and then you make your recommendation to the full town council. So I think, you know, I think moving this forward and then folding off on what your judgment is until you're the meeting after that might be the best path forward. Okay, okay. That sounds good. I hope I can remember it. But in other words, whatever we understood or not, we're just formally asking tax opinion. DPW, you can send us whatever you want again. Then we're gonna have, we will advertise, we will meet and talk before we post for the public hearing. So we don't have to make, we don't know right at this moment exactly what those words will be. Because we're waiting for the formal input again. And then we get the input from the public and then we talk and decide, okay, this is what we're gonna propose to the town council. So, okay, I got that. Jennifer. Yes, so I do have a question, Guilford. There is no place else in town where there's only parking restrictions during certain hours? No. So if I have my face starts twitching is because I'm having flashbacks to the 2000s. We went through this during the 2000s and there was these restrictions were, some of these restrictions about hourly parking were in place before that. Others were put in place around the 2002, 2003. There are parking time limit restrictions on several roads in town. They're predominantly near the campus. And then there is the permit parking. And a lot of this all came about because people were concerned about parking and traffic on their street and being able to enter and exit their driveways. And that's how the residential parking permit system came about. And that basically was the fact that the need was to have parking 24 hours a day in front of the house except overnight in the winter at that time. And then there's a couple of streets that have different hourly parking. There's probably three or four, I think, that have hourly parking throughout town. So, because so where I live on Lincoln, there's no parking eight to five weekdays during the academic year. And occasionally there will be cars not in those hours parked on the street and it's not a problem. I mean, there's rarely, but I mean, there are sometimes cars like we'll park on a Saturday night or a Sunday morning or whatever. And it's never been a problem. So I just, and I've lived in many cities and towns and different places. And there's always streets where you can park sometimes and you can't park others. So I just don't see why that, how that possibly is an issue that you have to say all or nothing. That doesn't, and it's working on the portions of the street and the other streets that they all have different hours and days you can park. They have different parking restrictions from Cosby to McClellan to Best and to Page to certain parts of Lincoln. And it seems to be working. I mean, the only people that the concerns, and again, I haven't had any concerns from sunset is on the part of Lincoln where there's bumper to bumper traffic all day. That's the only, and I don't know why we have to fix other, you know, what's not broken. That I'm confused about that. So Gopher's got his hand up and so you say that you did all kinds of different things in the 2000s. And some of them were ones which had hours when you couldn't park and others you just couldn't park at all. Do you have any gleaning from that process? I mean, did you say after you did it, oh my God, I wish we hadn't done that. It didn't solve the problem. Parking is a, I've been here 20 years and parking has been an issue routinely throughout the 20 years. It's moved around town. The place that it actually, the place that actually amazes me the most is around the high school. It's kind of an interesting thing that we'll never be able to solve because when you start the school year, you have a bunch of students who are under 16 and a half. And as the school year goes along, they'd be aged and get their drivers permit. And then as the year goes along, the parking problems in the neighborhood goes up until graduation time where the parking problem, people are complaining the most, which has been interesting to watch that. There have been, that has actually been a little less in the last few years, but that was something that's just a cyclic thing that high school has a population that ages and then starts driving and then starts parking on the side streets. You have issues in other parts of town which have been interesting where it's just areas that become more student rental areas, we've seen parking change in those areas. It's more a fact that a few houses will turn into rentals and they'll tell their friends, hey, you know there's free parking on our street. And then you'll see parking pick up on those streets and then people start complaining about parking on those streets. So parking is always going to be moving. Parking is always going to be dynamic and there's gonna be the residents who own the house who want to be able to do the park in front of their house when they wanna park in front of their house and there's gonna be people coming to town who always wanna have a place to park and find the cheapest place to park. That's always gonna happen. The only difference on Lincoln from many other streets like Cosby is the only street that's close to Lincoln that has a time limit on it that I know of and it has a time limit from eight to three. Why eight to three? That was just chosen at the time it was chosen. Lincoln's eight to five. So and it's got a lot less traffic on it. Lincoln has a lot more traffic on it and it's a lot more of a through road has been a lot more through in the past. So you have a lot more conflicts between drivers and cyclists and parked cars. If you look at the crash data, the majority of the crashes on Lincoln are with parked cars. So is it two cars trying to pass each other and one car doesn't make it and has to park car on the side of the road? What is the, we don't really know what that dynamic is. So that's parking in Amherst. Jennifer, can I say something before? Sure. Okay, you just prompted me. When we first started talking about this, a resident of Lincoln said, listen, I wanna bring back that Lincoln was a bikeway. And so this is a chance for me to bring this up. If in fact, we did, as you said, no parking, okay, on Lincoln, would you be able to do something more formal in terms of a bikeway? Because I do think that there would be people using it to commute to the university and it would be part of our general urge to do safe bikeways. We could look into doing something for that. When Lincoln was a bikeway, it was back before it was done back before 2000. It was done with the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission. They were going through and designating certain roads that connected that weren't numbered routes in town, but had direct access to places as a bikeway for people to use it for biking. And it was basically a share of the road type biking system, it wasn't build off-road facilities or separate facilities, it was share of the road. And that's how Lincoln was designated and kind of how it came about. Did it get undesignated? It's not marked that way anymore because we've kind of moved away from that. It still shows up on the Pioneer Valley planning commission maps or bikeways. Okay. Thank you. Okay, Jennifer. Yeah, two things I just want to reiterate again as Gofford said, Lincoln is a throughway during commuter hours. And there's also, there's people that park here and there's people that just drive here to get to campus. I know people that work on faculty that this is the street that they use. So we don't need, there are definite hours when Lincoln cannot accommodate traffic and parking and it's not Sunday night. So to say, I feel like there's a little bit of, okay, you don't want parking, well now we're really gonna give you no parking, but we really want parking management. And I know of a neighborhood, I think it's in district one, it's on North Pleasant Street, just the neighborhood north of the campus. And they were having a lot of students parking there at night. And I think they were for parties and then they were having people that were just letting their friends park there. So I know in this particular neighborhood, there's parking loud during the day, but not, I think, maybe after 10 p.m. or something. I mean, they got very specific to deal with when there was an issue. And again, the issue on Lincoln is commuter traffic and parking during workdays when the university is in session and not other times. And I would not, so I think we should be, we don't need to fix something that isn't broken or break something that's not broken. I would just really not ask us to play, it's parking management, we're not looking to say you could never park on Lincoln Avenue. Thank you. Okay, so do we have any other comments at this time? Can we wrap this for now and do the process that I outlined a while ago, which I've written down, but can't remember what it is anymore. I guess seek formal input from TAC and Disability Access Committee. Use a proposal that Jennifer presented. Understand that we will then meet and talk before we put the words together for the public hearing and that public hearing will be held after the university is in session. Is that okay with everybody? Okay. All right, so Guilford, we could release you unless you have some parting words you want. But I do appreciate your being here today. I really do, it's very helpful because I know that you know the answers to these problems. So thank you very much. You're welcome. Okay. And now where Shalini is prepared to change our mind, it's course related of course, it has to do with public input, which that's who we are, where the public face of the town committee. So Shalini, the meeting is yours. How much time do we have? Because I was thinking that since we don't have much time, I could just do the first three slides to give you a sense of what I was thinking about it and get some feedback from you, what you think is missing in the process, what it's just a starting point for us to start thinking about how our council committees can think through these initiatives that we have in a way that we are uniformly across committees following a process where we're really understanding what is the problem we're solving for, who is it impacting, and what is a systematic way we can reach out to the different stakeholders without being too burdensome on this town staff or us, but I think there's some avenues and channels we have that are currently not being utilized and by systemizing it, we will be able to do that. So given, I've said, I mean, how many minutes do we have? Well, okay, it's quarter of nine and I think we're supposed to close at nine. No, we're supposed to close at 8.30, Dorothy. Oh, thank you. Okay, so then Anna, since you know that, do you think that we should go on to give Shalini the start to get us thinking? I don't remember the date of the next meeting. So that would be nice if somebody knows the next TSO meeting. I believe our next meeting, I guess, Athena can confirm, I just closed my calendar, sorry. I don't think it's for another couple of weeks. I think, I don't necessarily think it's... I have July 21. Yeah. It's a while. Okay. I, if Shalini can give a quick overview and maybe then send us some stuff to review before the next meeting so that we can come prepared, if that's possible, that might be good. So not keep everybody here too, too much longer. We did, everyone get the email I sent out though, that was with the slides. And that's the material, basically, is that the slide. So I can just run through the first three slides, I think explain the process and that way you'll have time to think through and make suggestions. So I'm going to share my screen in the second. Our options screen. Okay, everyone can see that. Where is that? Okay. All right. So the objectives of having this discussion is that basically we want to create a process, like I said, to systematically plan and implement our community engagement and outreach for town council initiatives. And so the first thing for us to discuss is what are the steps in designing a community engagement plan? And I don't mean like we need to spend hours, but I think once we have the template down, it's very easy to walk through it fairly quickly. The second thing is under each step, what are the key questions we need to ask and then identify, it'll be great for us to start building an inventory of community partners and whatnot. Okay, so the step one is what is the problem we're solving for? So can I give an example of the rental registration by law? Yeah, so the CRC is working on that and we're actually using some of these steps now. So the problem we're solving there is how to improve the quality and safety of housing in our town, right? And so once we articulate what is the problem we're solving for, then we think about even do we even need to engage the community because not every decision or discussion we're having involves the community or impacts the community greatly. So there are specific questions we can ask under that. Like does this have environmental, economic, social justice? Any of those impacts, is it going to impact the taxes of the people? Like, you know, so those are the kind of questions we want to think through to see if we need to engage the community. And then the step three is assuming we are engaging the community, what do we already know? What are the, because often we have consultants reports we have like tax ed, they had provided the comments. And so, you know, seeing the committee comments, consultant reports, previous engagement of the public, you know what, because I know, for example, with the downtown, they were two great public forums that were held using very innovative ways to get people's feedback or what they want to see in downtown, and it sort of lost, we never really think about it. And so, you know, those are the kind of things we want to gather at the outset before we start engaging and doing everything all over again. Then the fourth step is like, who is impacted by this issue and how? And so again, in rental registration, obviously we have the renters and tenants. And tenants could be people of low income who are generally people we don't really reach out to or students that we don't often hear from, but it also impacts the residents and neighbors. So there is that group and then there's the landlords. But then besides that, we want to hear from ECAC because we're talking about updating our residential bylaw. So what sort of inspections might include energy efficiencies and what, so the committees, which committees do we want to include in this process, which town staff needs to, do we need to hear from? And then the last one is the step five, is the actual engagement. So once we know who we are talking to and what is the problem we're solving for then, what sort of questions do we need to ask as opposed to just open opinions? Do you think we should increase our rental registration pay or instead of asking blanket questions like that, it's probably a good idea to have more targeted. So like with rental registration, we want to understand the lived experiences of tenants, of neighbors, of landlords, what are the difficulties they're encountering or what are they noticing that's working well for them, that's not working well for them. So kind of guiding the conversation in a way that it's constructive and helping us design policies that are really helping people. And so then I've taken each step and I've given recommended questions, just some ideas for people to think through under each step, but each committee can obviously, depending on the topic, they might come up with their own questions that are important to them. I think the problem statement is a really important one. I think that's one I was hearing right now on Lincoln Avenue, for example, is it a safety issue? Are we solving for safety or are we solving for convenience? What are we solving for over here? So that problem statement needs to, and everyone needs to be on the same page. And who initiated, who sponsored it? Is it coming from town staff? Is it coming? So these are like just kind of questions that really help to understand the process. The second is, do we need to engage? And I think over here, like I already stated some of the reasons when there's an environmental, economic, racial, when there is an increase in taxes, or if there are concerns already, like Lincoln Avenue is like their neighbors who are concerned about it. So it is something we have to pay attention to. What do we know and not know? What research consultants, I think already said all of this, who's impacted by this and who is hard to reach? Who are we already hearing from? And that's kind of what the pattern we see is that there are people we hear and that's great that there are residents who are involved and we're so grateful to them. And at the same time, there's so many people who are impacted and who are not there. So how can we, even just having that intention, I feel, really makes a difference. Like even in designing this thing, you know, just having that question, what would success that was the last step? What would success look like? Even just asking that question made me include that question in the survey. What are you gonna have for rental registration? How did you hear about the survey in us? So I think just thinking about what questions to ask. What sort of demographic questions do we need to know? What channels of communication? What tools are available? What's a timeline like? And I think the timeline manager has done a really good job with rental registration. She's broken down the bylaw into specific pieces that what we're gonna be discussing each time and who we're gonna be calling at different points of time. So like breaking it down in that way is really helpful so people can anticipate, and especially since that's a very long-term kind of discussion. This is the fun part, and I think it's fun, but also like it's like how many channels do we have that we're not using right now? So key channels like many of us counselors have newsletters. Some others are good on social media or the public forums, of course, is a way we reach out to communities. Public comment, the written one. Many people don't know still that the town council has that written public comment as a way we can hear from people. The town website, Engage. So we're planning to put the survey on Engage Amherst. Community click is a tool that we're collaborating with UMass. Tell me if it's information overload at this point. I feel like I've like turned a lot ideal, but this is something I think we can keep building the inventory of the channels and community partners. Like I feel, you know, what we're planning to do with rental registration is like Mandy Jo writes a small blur about once we have the survey, we're creating a survey right now that is gonna go specifically like if you're a renter, it's gonna go to you certain set of questions but the same set of questions from the point of view of a landlord and the same question from the point of view of a neighbor. So we have the same questions but we're looking at it from different points of view and we're gonna put that on Amherst Engage website and then hopefully send it, send a little blurb. So Mandy Jo as a chair is gonna do the blurb but I am the key community outreach person who will then coordinate with Brianna to send out the surveys and then I as the lead community person will send it to Amherst Indy, Amherst current doctor because it involves students, we send it out to Tony and Sally. So depending on who is being impacted, the key committee outreach person for that project can be the one who coordinates so that it doesn't fall on the chair. And then how do we measure success? Like we kind of at the end of the process we kind of take a few moments to see like what was the participation? I don't think this is gonna miraculously improve our participation because it is hard to get people's attention but I think just being more intentional will allow us to see what channels are working, what's not working and yes, ordinary people working together can do extraordinary things. Thank you, Shalini. Okay. And I realized after you got started on that that I hadn't said to Jennifer that she could leave after her presentation but then I thought, you know, this is really very important for what she's doing. So I'm glad that you stayed to see Shalini's presentation on her initial go at talking on this. So I'm sure we have many, many questions. I'm gonna be true to what I said before but I do wanna offer people a chance to make a comment and then we'll close. Anyone want to make a comment of any kind or have we all reached past your awakeness hours? I think so. Okay, so thank you, Shalini. I could see a lot of good work and care in there. What I liked when I read through it very quickly was I said, well, she certainly has asked all the questions. I don't know the answer to any of those questions but it's really useful to have all the questions. So that's my ring too, so that really did me in. Okay, so are we all set for everybody? We know what we're doing, I think. And Andy, you're gonna find out if you can, what the actual status of that presentation is. The status of that process, the TSO process is, whether it was finalized and voted on, which I kind of remember that it was, but I have no way of proving that. So I really appreciate your following that up. Paul, do you have any final words of wisdom for us at this moment? Okay, so thank you Paul. Sorry, I just want to thank you very much and I appreciate you gave parking on Lincoln so much time and attention, I appreciate it. And Shalini, I've heard you do great slides and you, they're amazing. So I wish you'd give a tutorial. Okay, yes, okay. Canva, just one word, Canva, look at it. Spell it. C-A-N-V-A dot com and it's free and you can create your slides and posters and anything you ever wanted to create. Thank you very much. So everybody have a wonderful weekend and a great fourth of July and town is closed and Paul, I assume you're gonna go and personally set off all the fireworks, okay? All right, see you in a couple of weeks or when the next town council is, whenever. Bye-bye. And if anyone has any questions, comments, I think don't reply all, but you can send them to me and then maybe through and next time we can have a healthier discussion around it. Good, thank you. I will try to do that, thank you. Okay, bye-bye.