 Welcome everyone to district five office hours, which is our informal meeting every other month so one meeting one month we have the official district five meeting which is has a proper agenda and and a more formal agenda rather. And this is the other month where we have a more flexible open informal agenda where we share what we are doing and updates and we it's an option D for you to share what's on your mind or questions or ideas. And Anna do you want to say something. And Anna is in the car trying to get parking so we may not see her till she gets parking. I'm trying to also promote other people to panelists. Well that's a lot of pressure on people who are managing this like we have to promote people to panelists and whatnot. So, okay there's still no way okay so Angela do you want to share the. Your page or how did you want to do that. Yeah, so I am going to share screen. So the, your counselors are using a new service from UMass. And if you want to participate in this, what are we calling it my mood. Community click. Yeah, click. So I would ask you to open up your web browser. Well that's not where we want to go so you're going to go to www.amors.may.gov, which is the face page for our town website. And here we are in the beautiful town of Amherst. And I asked that you just scroll down all the way down on that face page to the community calendar. And here to highlight all of our community events on this last day of March. And you'll see there's a circle around the number 31. Yeah. So we're going to click on the number 31, and it brings us to this event. And here we are at the district five office hours. So, I'm going to make it a little bit bigger there we go. If we click where it says community click feature. It brings us to the portal for this feature and I'm assuming that I want to click on I'm an attendee. Yeah. So we're going to be in district five office hours at the very top. And then choosing the town of Amherst is committed to help the community in order to understand and address our community needs, we need to hear your voice. Please help us by introducing yourself and engaging the town. So I live in South Amher. So the first question is required. The others are optional. If you want to answer, you can answer otherwise you can just Okay. Great. And you want to take it here. Absolutely. Just give me a moment to just let people know just make sure that everyone is on board with what's happening here. Because we just have people and we're suddenly showing them websites and links and graphs. So, so again welcome everyone. As Angela explained, we're collaborating with UMass computer science department to try some new technologies to engage and make create safe spaces for different people in our community to participate and engage. So one of the tools that we are trying today and hopefully we encourage you to try it out so that you can give us feedback is this community click, which is basically a way for people to while we're having a discussion. You can anonymously click on this and react to the discussions that are happening so you could click agree disagree or this is really important to me or I'm confused or unsure. So those are the different reaction buttons you can click. And then there's also a way to when you click on the arrow I believe there's a way for you to even comment and leave a comment anonymously there. Right. So if you want to offer a comment and it'll be completely anonymous. Thank you we thought so too. Okay. So that's that for introduction and Angela do you want to close the screen on this anyone has any questions with any of this and then we'll just introduce my mode and have him say a few words. Does anyone have any questions or comments at this point. And if anyone in the who's in the attendees wants to be promoted to panelists. Please just raise your hands and we will bring you into the room. So people are still coming into the room. Welcome everyone my mood if you'll just wait for a few minutes maybe Anna and I can just go over introduced to something. Yeah. Well I mean there's a couple exciting things happening that we can definitely talk about while we're getting while we're eating and more folks if that's what you want to. Hi everybody so I think I've met most folks on this call but for those I haven't met my name is on a Devon got there and I'm one of your district five counselors. And so while we are getting this set up just to give you maybe a little bit of context to this is something that this this tool is one that we are trying in a lot of different areas and the office hours set up with a great place for it because it's a little bit formal. It's a little lower stakes and can really get feedback in the moment from you all as well. So throughout our conversation today will will be testing it out and seeing how it works. I want to apologize I'm sitting in a very parked car I'm not moving I'm not driving but I am coming to you from a car so I apologize for that today. Things happening in town from my end Shawn you don't me to start and then you can jump in. So a couple a couple things. First off if you have not taken the active communities survey that is focused on seniors making how to make Amherst dementia friendly and aging community please do that today today is the final day to do that. And that link is up on the Amherst MA website. The other thing that is really exciting that I did today is the community development block grant survey. And that is up on engage Amherst and that is helping us to figure out how we should prioritize those community development block grant funds. And I see a question or comment from Tracy Tracy. Hi, it's actually this is actually just facilitating like technical question is now that you've elevated us to panelists. We can't put anything in the Q&A and there's no chat. So only people who are in the queue only attendees can ask questions in the Q&A. So if I wanted to make a little comment or something and not interrupt you or I can't do that. I know I know yeah no no it's okay we we we learned that last time it's one of the challenges of this is that we either can see everybody or everyone has access to a Q&A and honestly the Q&A is the thing that gets hacked the most or zoom bond the most in my recent meetings and so please feel free I guess I will happily set the norm for myself of please raise your hand and interrupt me at any point. I know that not everyone is comfortable doing that and so also please feel free to email us with questions if you're not comfortable asking them in this, in this setting, and I apologize there's it's kind of one of those no perfect, no perfect solution. So my experience with zoom meetings and I was on zoom most of today but we've also I've run a lot of conferences on zoom and stuff is that you could actually control the Q&A pretty well, and you could set it so that the questions that are asked in the Q&A are only published when a panelist says to publish them. I think if you're letting us all in as I don't know. Anyway, I mean you can have a Q&A and chat going at the same time. Right. The thing the feedback that I believe we received a lot was that people really like to see each other in these district meetings and so in the webinar style, the only way to see each other is if you're all promoted to a panelist. And so that was one of the challenges. The chat is set up so that attendees could do it, could ask questions and see answers but, as you said, panelists cannot ask questions. And it's been zoom bombed. It's which is just hard for the folks who are panelists. That's all with folks asking questions. Yeah, no I'm with you though I also run large events for my job too. It's, there's a lot of different ways to do it but thank you. Sorry. Can I just maybe have Mahmood go into the attendees who's so Mahmood is here from the UMass computer science group who's helping us try out the community click app. And maybe Mahmood if I can send you to the Q&A to the attendee group and then you can share the link on Q&A that everyone within the panelist can click on and that will allow us to chat, as well as share your comments and your sentiments during the discussion. Okay, so I'm going to just send you back into the change role to the attendee. Okay, there you go. You're still here. Chalani while you're doing that I'm going to jump onto my computer so that I can actually really be here. Okay, so what Mahmood is going to do is hopefully be able to share in the Q&A. Let me see I'll keep my Q&A open. And there isn't anything yet. So he's going to share the link to, oh boy. Oh yeah, we do have something open one is everyone seeing the Q&A and everyone see what Mahmood has posted. Yes. So if you click on that link, then very quickly you can join this community click website which allows you to then share comments and we can just open that window on the side to I know it's not very smooth. But since we are trying out different technologies that's the whole point is in this informal way, you can provide feedback about this technology. So the first question can everyone see the Q&A and the link. Okay, great. Awesome. Angela if you needed to leave I would totally understand and you must welcome this day if you want. But those of you don't know Angela, Angela Mills, she is one of the community participation officers. And she makes amazing cookies. I do know those two things about her. So Shawnee do you want to ask a question and have people try answering something. We can talk about community engagement as a question like what could be a question it could be a comment or so the question could be how can how satisfied are you with the engagement in our community or what could we improve how can we get more people to participate in our district meetings in our town council. How do we get because it's generally a few people who know about these meetings even the district meetings and or when we're discussing policies that impact people how do we get more people to know about that. And so then so you're saying that in order to this so this is also just for everybody else's knowledge this is also my first time using this tool. So you were saying in order to do that and not submit just a multiple choice, you can, I found you click the little arrow on the side and then it opens a comment box. Right. So there's a little carrot arrow on the side and then if you want to submit your response there. Right. Yeah, ways we can get more people to know about our meetings to know about the policies we're discussing in our committees and council. So what ideas do you have. And what can you do as a resident as well to let more people know about these meetings why it's important for people to stay in the now. So any comments ideas are welcome. I'm promoting you to panelists if you want to come back. Come back. So we are here. So one comment we got is I'm loving the engage on this page on the web so great to check out the progress of the projects that's awesome so that has been an amazing innovation by Brianna and her team. And the communications team in the town office that has created the engage website how many of you here know about the engage website that you can just raise your hands just a few of us. Awesome. Yeah, because that's a cool website where we are adding some of the projects like the Hickory Ridge project is there so people want to share their ideas and whatnot, they can do that over there. Exactly. Okay, so, so yeah as we're discussing about engage website if anyone feels like oh we really like that you could discuss you could basically action. Shawnee are you able to reset those tallies, because I have a couple questions I can ask might be interesting to see. Yeah, definitely you want. I don't know. So I think it's good it's by timestamp so memory if you want to answer that. I don't think we can reset it it's like, based on the time when the topics are happening it'll show us the. I think, but why don't you go ahead and we'll see we'll find out. I think my mood is still in the attendees I think you need to promote him. I did a couple of times. Um, hold on, I think he's using the hand. Yes. Allow it to talk. Remember, are you able to come in. To panelist. It says he'll be rejoining the webinar as a panelist. Well we are getting that set I want to just again, you know, let folks know this is an opportunity to chat with us these are much more informal sessions and so we don't have if you don't remember last time I had a whole slide deck I didn't do that this time I will not do that every time but I will do it and I think I'm going to try to do every other we're going to rotate so we'll have we'll have office hours and then we'll have an official district meeting. So we have a couple littler updates. The one I am most excited about is that, well, that's not true I don't want to, I don't want to rank order, but one I am very excited about is that since the last time we talked we closed on Hickory Ridge. And so that's something that I'm, I'm so excited to, I know some folks worked incredibly hard on that and it was, it was a feat so that will be moving forward and again some folks mentioned engage Amherst. Please go on there Hickory Ridge is still on there there will be continued opportunities for engagement around Hickory. I know I'm sure Angela is involved in that I know all the community participation officers are very very keen to get into the community and hear what you all want to see at Hickory so please keep that in mind. As we go into spring, what you'd want to see there, Martha. And on that, on that note is there going to be an effort then to go out in some of the surrounding areas I'm thinking particularly of all the rental areas and East Attlee Road, because they're sort of right up against one end. I envision having things like community gardens or special playground for the kids or. Yeah, like that but of course they're the ones that should say what it is they'd like rather than, you know, yeah. So I asked, I completely agree. I asked Dave's on like that specific question and he said absolutely there's not only general questions but they have and will continue to specifically go to the apartment complexes and do listening sessions specifically for those residents, as well as the general ones for those who don't live in those, those areas. Yeah, but it's also I'm not for nothing to Martha even though that is very clear it's, it's always helpful to add that as a comment on engage embers to right so so that is also known that it's it's not just coming for me right, which I know it's not but that's also a helpful comment to add if you if you feel like going on the engage in our site. Yeah. Other things that are happening. Shawnee is on CRC and so one of the things that CRC has in front of it right now are some major a major look at our rental registration by law, a group of counselors was looking on that I don't know Shawnee if you want to speak to that or not. Yeah, go for it. Yeah. So actually today manager the chair of our committee presented a really good working plan that you all can see a different stages we're going to be discussing the rental, the residential rental by law and how it's being changed to make sure that we maintain the homes that are rented that the people who are living in them feel safe. The noise regulations around that or, and then the fees that are paid because we're getting different right now. People just pay a single amount of I think it's $100 to register a single parcel for being able to rent out, but we're looking at separating that out so that the bigger apart, at least that I'm just speaking from my side because this is still in discussion. And, and as you'll see in the work plan, every time there's a different focus different part of the by law is going to be discussed in detail. But you don't have to come to all but if you are a renter or rent or landlord who's renting out. And I would definitely encourage you to see how this by law might impact you. And so that's one thing that we discussed saying the other thing we're doing is we're actually working with your mass to work with the CRC to for this rental by law to create a plan of to try out community engagement how at different points of time, who do we need to reach out to which residents or different stakeholders different committees, and what are the different channels of engagement, and to kind of lay that out so that we have a systematic plan for engagement for all our different discussions. So that's happening and next CRC meeting there'll be a public hearing for the demolition delay by a lot anyone is interested in that and the focus of that is how do we maintain the historic buildings because that's, you know, that's how unique and attractive and want to retain the history and culture of a town. And at the same time, it is burdensome for the owners to maintain some of these buildings, especially if they're not, you know, they can't be rented or they can't be lived in because they're in such a bad state. And so how do we balance those competing things to make the process fair. And at the same time, not burdensome for the for the owners. So that's happening. One thing we are also doing in CRC is we've created a matrix for the different because there's so many issues right that all of us committees can be working on. So whether it's sidewalks should be should the community CRC be working on or that's a TSO sorry I'm fixing it up should that now the town services committee which on an IR in what should be the focus of our committee and so some of the things that we have in the TSO that we're working on is the rental by law the residential rental fees we're talking about economic development of using outdoor spaces maybe we're talking about community engagement. And one of the things that I do want to highlight highlight that's in our list of discussion items is the senior services and because we have many seniors living in our town who have who have contributed to our town as we all know and they continue to live here and continue to contribute to our town. And so, and during COVID people were impacted adversity and seniors were impacted adversity more than some other groups because of isolation and whatnot. So, Rosemary who's here with us is in this aging committee and she reached out to us to inform us about the lack of services, especially when we look at relative to other neighboring towns, that we have more than 5000 seniors in our town and the amount of money that is spent in our town the staff that we have the space that we have for our seniors is really not enough and not supportive to the seniors. So I wanted to invite Rosemary if she wants to share something and we could even use that as a place of discussion for people if you all have ideas or or even what sort of senior services do you think would be useful to you and what would you like to see in your town that would support you or seniors in your home or your neighbors. So Rosemary if you want to share. Well we have for many years actually been trying to get improvements at the senior center in terms of yes there were some renovations that were done but it's our space currently is the biggest problem because we now have rooms that have been taken away from us and even in the beginning before COVID. We had to struggle sometimes to find the right space for all of our programs. And now with two rooms taken away from us. We're really in a in a bad way because we would like to re institute the programs that were closed down during a budget. So the space is a big problem but also we don't have much in the budget in terms of from the town for running our programs for any kind of supplies that we need. It's a very limited amount of money, especially compared to other towns in surrounding areas. And we looked at about seven different towns and for the number of people and Amherst, it's pretty shocking to see how little support the senior center is getting. So, does anyone have questions, but I'll leave it at that. I, as I say we've been working on this for even way back in 2017. This came back to a standstill during COVID somewhat, but it's, it's been a struggle for many years and we're in a building that was never designed to be a senior center. It's a very poor space. Yeah, my pal. Oh, what's what's the status of things right now in terms of the senior center program now getting, you know, sort of reopened and in person or we have in person. Yeah, the doors during COVID were locked. The doors are open. People can come in freely. We have started some programs we have exercised some exercise programs going, some dance classes going. We have what, well, the clinics, the vaccine clinic took up a lot of space for during COVID. And now we're able to use some of that space now for the dance and exercise. Haley is working very hard at reintroducing programs we're going to start again with the blood pressures and the, the ear irrigation clinics and and things of that nature. She is having we are having a program on April 20. We have a program called living with hearing loss and that's being put on by we're we're coordinating that with Amherst neighbors and also with the UMass hearing department. And that will be a one hour class. We have an art class that's going to be in person on April 8. And there will be an open house on May 11 for people in the community. So there are things starting. I think we all have to realize that with this people are a lot of seniors are still reluctant to, to come back. You know, it's not going to happen overnight. The senior center had once been a high, a behalf of activity. That's not going to return in one or two months. I think it's going to take a while. About the survey, the what is it dementia friendly or age friendly survey. I mean that's being done online. I did it some weeks ago and so on. But what about the people in Amherst who aren't just on the internet all the time. Is there is there an effort to reach out to the people who don't normally tune into such things. And there is indeed actually 500 of those surveys were mailed out randomly from the street list for people over 55. And we've had a pretty good return rate on that better than most communities in in in Massachusetts. Not surprising for Amherst, I guess. We also did a second mailing for those that didn't return the first mailing and the senior center has been working hard to call people who do not have internet access or may not have internet access. They have we have some ambassadors who are calling people who may be be other languages. And so there is an effort quite an effort going forth to get people engaged who are not easy always to access. Okay, thank you. I wanted to. Yeah, I was going to actually welcome our state rep Mindy down who's here and actually had a question for her so thank you for raising your hand. And welcome. Thank you and thank you to both my town counselors because I live in just five, and also to all of her work on the council on aging. I also wanted to point out though on the survey. I have checked with Haley to find out if people can continue to fill it out after March 31 because everything says by March 31 and she said yes people are welcome to continue to send it in. I've had some constituents say that they wanted to provide more information about what they need as they begin to plan to be aging in place. And I felt there wasn't a way to do that in the survey and Haley encourages people to also email the senior center directly with those comments and they'll be added on and for people to come to listening sessions because there'll be an opportunity to talk about it. I know that I can also to try to get people to fill it out. I think it's really important. We need to document that we are actually failing our seniors and Amherst. And we need a roadmap on how to make sure that we don't we stop and that we correct and the comments that can come in on this kind of survey can provide both the impetus I think and the support for changing, but also the direction and where we have to go. So, thank you Rosemary for everything that you do for our seniors. Well, thank you. And I just like to say that I appreciate the written bulletin that comes out every couple of months, you know, printed one. You know I usually save it and reference it. So, hope you can continue that. Oh, I think it's an ongoing thing and Haley has changed the format to make it easier to read. So, I think my mood is in the attendees as you again just so you know. I don't know if you want to bring him back in. Rosemary, thank you so much for your work. So, yeah, he's coming in as my doppelganger online. But, Mindy, did you know of funding we were just talking today what sort of funding is available for seniors specifically right now to the other funds or anything. Well, in terms of just general estate grants, I would love to be able to set up an opportunity with the Council on Aging, Haley and elder services at the state level and have that conversation. And so Amherst could, you know, we could have a meeting of so what grants are available from the administration right now in terms of existing programs, because my sense is that Amherst has not kind of applied for any state funding regarding senior services and so we need to start that process and a really good way to start that process is to talk with the people who ever see the grants about what's available and what they think my Amherst might be eligible for. I'm not going to have a second ARPA bill but I'm not exactly sure when it is the next budget piece that we're working on as a state is the FY23 operating budget, which the house will start to deal with in April. We'll finish our work at the end of April and then give the Senate our budget. They'll do their work in May, they'll probably add things to it, as they usually do, and then there'll be a conference committee between the House and the Senate and they'll have to figure out what they're doing. I'm planning on putting in an earmark for the senior center this year I'm working with Haley on what that's going to be for. You know, I'm not a big believer in earmarks supplanting regular programming money so for example, it wouldn't be appropriate for an earmark to pay for the executive director of the senior center because that's something that if the earmark goes away we don't want the executive director to go away but special programs or purchases that sort of can be purchased in this year and then they go on for a couple years that's perfect for an earmark or a local authority. So, and I'll also be looking to see when we get a second ARPA bill, if and when we get a second ARPA bill, what the house is going to be really saying they want to see in it. So for example, if at that time, you know, it's tied to COVID so we don't know what the pandemic will be doing at the time that we do the second ARPA. If we were optimistic and we'd say let's say the epidemic would be receding at that point, then it might just be so how does your community recover, like how to, how does it gain resilience. If the pandemic is raging God forbid again, then it may mean what does your community need to be able to withstand this you know in terms of public health. You have to see my ARPA. So I had my meeting today with House Ways and Means about what some of my priorities were. And I don't know when the ARPA bill will come down so I'm not sure what message what the state's going to want to see as priorities, but the kinds of things that I put in there were like funding for energy sustainability for a new school. Expansion of the ESL program in a new library, like things that could be a lot of money spent over a number of years, because the ARPA budget, unlike the operating budget, doesn't have to be spent in one calendar year. It can be spent for up to four years. So trying to think big, although I'm the likelihood of me getting really big money is really tiny, but think you never know. You never know and you don't get unless you ask. Exactly. But so I'm asking for big and also for programs that go over a couple of years, because I think that Amherst has plenty of those to choose from right now. Several construction projects. So I think in any little bit helps, because it reduces what the taxpayers have to pay in Amherst. So I do, I do want to ask me to kind of, you know, and I'll let you, I'll give you a minute to think on it, but kind of top three things coming down the pike that you think we should tell our, tell the folks in our group today about. You can have three to five, if you want, or one, you know, whatever, whatever works for you. And while Mindy is thinking, I do want to let you all know because she mentioned ARPA and that ping a little flag for me, very unrelated flag, but I can make these jumps in my head. We are approaching budget season for Amherst. So you will have a lot of opportunities to weigh in. If you did not know already the regional school budget has been released. Something that's really exciting is restoring some of the arts, the funding for arts so that we can have more full time teachers in those roles. And a couple other couple other shifts in that budget so please, you know, keep an eye on these meetings what happens is the budget comes to the full council. It then goes to finance for a very, very, very long time, and then it comes back to the council. What's really important to note just a little thing that I think sometimes gets lost, the council doesn't actually dictate specific line items in the budget, our job is to say yes or no. We send it back to Paul and we can explain why we're saying no, but we cannot as a council specify what changes we want to see. So when you're crafting comments, if you have comments on the budget, what's really helpful is to tell us what you'd want to see, but to understand that ultimately the creation of the budget lies with the town manager. And so when we, if we say no, it's got to be for really good reason. And we need to give him some guidance on what we expect to see differently, not necessarily line items but more of focus or general areas. And so the full calendar of that was in the full calendar the budget breakdown because they go by kind of like area by area. And that's in the finance committee packet and so if you go back to that calendar of meetings and you go to the finance committee meeting from Wednesday, yesterday. It should be in there. Yeah, and then I will turn it back to me but I want to let you all know that that that is coming down coming down the line faster than we know. Well, that's super helpful for me too. I also just want to clarify that earmarks aren't given in the state level, the federal level. Those are just that that's what we call it when we want to steer direct money to our districts, but they're really amendments to the budget so they have to be accepted as an amendment. So just wanting it. That doesn't make it happen. We have to advocate for them we have to advocate with House Ways and Means as well as colleagues just to kind of give it a context. So some things that are coming up. I also want to say that in June, I'm going to have my first musical bingo at the senior center. I'm thinking either Broadway shows or 50s music so I'm open to whatever but it's going to be musical bingo and I'm psyched. I guess there's a couple of things we have the budget coming up in the state and in this case you should, there are a lot of advocates see organizations that tell their members exactly what they want to see in those lines. We have specific line item numbers with dollar amounts. If you care about something you definitely should be emailing me, we flag it, we kind of keep this really big spreadsheet with everything that we get from constituents as well as advocacy organizations that's color coded it's very, I don't would actually love it. Love it already. Good color coding. So you should don't be shy. Let me know what you what you want to see where you want to see state money go and how much you want to see go into it. I anticipate that sometime in either April or May, probably may given the budget. The house will consider another climate bill. And I really want to kind of like, like, let's applaud for this because when we passed the roadmap bill earlier in the session last March, which said okay so here's what we want to do to be able to get to a renewable energy. Lots of folks asked me from the district. Okay, so are you going to do anything else though is it just a roadmap like, how are you going to actually implement it, and people were very skeptical that the state government was going to do anything more than just say we should be doing x, y or z without really doing x, y or z. Well, a couple weeks ago we in the house, we passed a huge wind bill. It's like a Green New Deal in Massachusetts for wind. It's about building an industry, a pipeline of workers, training, incentive research and development that's money that will come back to UMass. To some extent we have they have a whole wind center at UMass Amherst that hopefully is going to benefit and be able to participate in the development of wind as an industry. And it also had a great bill that Replay from Sunderland filed that I was a co-sponsor of that upgrades the grid. It was also incorporated in that because as many of you know, we have to update the grid so that it can accommodate all this renewable energy. So this big wind bill, the house passed. It's now at the Senate and they're dealing with it and I think they're also coming up with their own climate bill. The other rumor has it, but there's another rumor that says the House Committee on Energy is actually working on a third climate bill. And this will deal with other pieces that weren't included in wind. So likely other renewables like solar. We have a bill in that some of the constituents that were interested in this are people who live in co-housing, which would allow multiple houses that are on a single taxed parcel that have separate solar arrays for each household to benefit from the midterm credits. Right now that can happen. Right now if they're all on a single tax parcel, only one person, the entity that the tax parcels name is in, gets to benefit from the midterm credits. So we're lobbying and advocating and hoping that our bill, if they're developing a new solar legislation, will be put into that. So that's a good thing. And I'll keep you posted on whether that happens. There are people, Amherst residents who would directly benefit if that got passed. But we are expecting another climate bill. And the reason why I really want to spell this out is because I think it really debunks a myth that I've heard a lot about how that House and the Senate aren't doing anything. That we're just lazing around, collecting supposedly enormous paychecks. And, you know, twiddling our thumbs. And that's not what's happening. And I really want to stress to people that not only, not even when we're not doing a climate bill, we're not sitting around twiddling our thumbs. We are that the building is working and the legislature is working and trying hard to deliver legislation that constituents are demanding, and that live up to our aspirations. So that's good news as I really, I feel like that's a good news story that we all should feel good about you should feel good about it because I get pushed and prodded and advocated by constituents and that helps me be a better rep so continue to do that please. Prouding with care, always prodding with care. And hugs, I take hugs. I'm into the hug. I'm getting back into the hugs. The last thing I wanted to say and it's not really at the state legislature but just to remind everybody that we have statewide elections coming up. In Massachusetts will likely be September 6. The general election is in November. Every statewide office is up for election that's governor lieutenant governor, treasurer auditor, Secretary of State, forgetting some attorney general are all up for election. There are very few incumbents running so they're all new fields I think the only incumbent actually that's running is Deb Goldberg for treasurer secretary of state as well. But he's got a challenger. Oh, I thought you meant that is no no I mean I'm sorry incumbent who's running thank you. An incumbent who's running doesn't have a challenger, but every other race has a challenger. I do know we passed the bill a couple of about a month or so ago, called the votes act that makes vote by mail for every election. The house version of this bill reduced the time that it takes for a person to register before they can vote to 10 days and expanded early voting. The Senate version has all those pieces plus same day registration. It did election day registration in the house but it did not pass, but now it's on the table for the conference committee because since the Senate passed same day registration. The house passed nothing like that is it's a disputed item, it has to be worked out, it has to be negotiated. So we're all eager to see what happens with that. If the worst case scenario for people who are election day registration advocates happens, there won't be election day registration but there'll be a shorter registration period and extended early voting. And actually when you do the math that's about three days of election day registration, because it overlaps. That's kind of like a consolation, not good enough for a community like Amherst in my opinion, we have too many people who move into the area, like two days before the election, and should be able to vote. I think that I think I've taken too much of your time. And that was so helpful and if people want to talk to you more you have office hours coming up I believe. Oh, I better. I don't know them offhand but I'll, I will raise my I can't put them in the chat. Apparently. I'll raise my hand in the other chat, you know, the, the website community click chat. I'm going to look right now and see if I can find it. If you click in the Q&A there is a link the community and if you click that you can very easy just have to answer one question and you can get into the chat. I have it may I just take two seconds just that I'm opening up the document that has. Yeah, meanwhile we can take Martha's question. Comment. That'd be great. Thank you. Since since you're going to have office hours like really I was going to ask about the climate bill but I can save that for your office hours so I just want to say Mindy. Thank you for all you do. I think all of us recognize how hard you work. We're always hearing about the things you're doing and advocating for and everything so we really appreciate all that you do. Thank you so much. I really, that means everything to me you know I really, I do feel like I'm representing 40,000 people. And so it feel well represented. That's the world to me, truly. So thank you. Sorry my office hours in April are going to be Monday April 4 from four to five Monday April 11 from five to six and Saturday April 23 from nine to 10. I'm going to go to my website, which is rep Mindy Dom.com. And those are mostly by zoom in May, we'll see what's going on with the pandemic I may make them in person and I may also resume my coffee hours but I'm going to actually just, I want to see what's going on and I want people to be comfortable. And so the coffee hour can be held outside in May or June so I'm thinking I might start it then. So, so I, when I was still running for office I did office hours every Friday on the cell hammers common. And every Friday I, well, it wasn't every Friday the table just lived in my car but I brought my little card table and my, I didn't have lawn chairs so I put three like dining room chairs in and of course Subaru has seen a lot. But, after that, I wrote a couple emails to Paul Bachman and said, Southampton, need some places to sit. And Paul Bachman came through so if you have driven by the Southamers common there are four new picnic tables out on there that I'm so excited about. And that means I feel now I was going to and now I feel even more excited about doing in person office hours on on the comment as well so those are many thank you for reminding me, I do plan on bringing those back once it's warm enough. Well, that's great I made the Southamers common with you. Right, we can do joint hours. And the other thing, Mindy mentioned the elections that are coming up this the primaries, which reminds me that at our next council meeting we will be hearing again from Sue Audette, who is our town clerk, who will be presenting us with the new polling locations that are proposed and those would go into effect for these primaries. And so there, there may be some shifts it's really important as we went through redistricting and re precincting there were some shifts in including in District five and so it's really important for us to look at. And since those are completed. So we'll be doing a whole lot of education you will not be uninformed about where to vote. But it's also helpful if you, if you are watching those as much as possible and staying up on it. We were waiting for things to get approved at the state level and then come back down and so it's a lot of kind of up and down and back and forth, but we will get those locked in before the primary so that everyone knows where to vote and when to vote stays the same, but yeah. Any other questions that folks have for us while we're here. I know this is more casual so we want to make sure everybody feels comfortable asking any questions or things you want us to be focusing on or anything like that. Yeah, now I was going to say things that so basically when we hear from residents, especially when you come to or even you don't even have to attend. So there are different ways you can speak to the town council and the committees and the more we hear from residents that we really are concerned about our senior services and here is what we need this is what I need, or it's about composting is another thing that's coming up side, you know, pick up of composting or speed. You find that your streets the speeding is really dangerous or so those are some of the things that the town services and outreach committee is working on so anything that is impacting your quality of life and you also love to hear from people what is working well for you what you're loving about living in. So we can continue to uphold all of that stuff. So I really encourage you all to write to us and the different ways you can write if you're not sure which committee to send it to just send it to the town. Council and whoever is in the committee will pick it up I feel there's a public comment option. And that's on the town council when you go to the town council page on the town website. That's another place where you can leave your comments and those get recorded as public comments of people in the public can also see them. So the authorities of course attending our meetings. And does everyone here know how to find the committee meetings and how to use a town website here with the calendar and can click and okay and you can subscribe to the committee is that you're interested in following. You can subscribe to the updates over there so those are different ways you can reach out to us that's what I wanted to say. So talking about district meetings office hours we also received an invitation from senior center to hold one of our district meetings there so maybe every quarterly or you know every now and then hold the district. So instead of expecting people to come to us we can hold our district meetings there. I love the suggestion especially as the weather improves we can do it outside in the patio or somewhere in the senior center and hold a district meeting there or if you have other ideas where you think it would be helpful for the district counselors to go where the people are you know we can consider different locations. Any questions from folks or comments anything you want to talk about me. Yeah, Martha. I just wanted to to say that, as you know we now have a director for the Crest program, who is just really fantastic. And, you know, if you haven't had a chance to meet him or hear him, and so on, you know, make a point of doing this show because you know he jumped right in even before his official start date and is trying to meet with groups and learn as much as he can about Amherst and I heard secondhand he stopped by the Jones library and wanted to talk to the staff. He asked them he said what is the hardest thing for you. And they said getting people to leave at closing time, because particularly in cold weather if you know if people are homeless or something. And he immediately said okay, and we get our Crest people set up, we will have our Crest folks come at closing time. And, you know, therefore anybody that needed help, they would be there. So you know that was just like an immediate response of what can I do to help the community. And so he sounds great so Mindy I don't know if you've had a chance to meet him yet, but I hope maybe you if not you could sometime. I haven't, but I want to as you may know, Senator Cumberford, although she credits me as well. It was mostly is like 95% her actually got the money for that position for that program. Yes, yes, yeah. Yeah, and I really very much want to meet him and his qualifications sound like perfect. It's phenomenal. On April 15 for folks who are around there's a community chat with Earl Miller and Paul Bachmann and that's going to be in person at the Banks Community Center. Yep at 830 to 10. And so folks do want to meet him if, if you can make that but he's also yet jumped jumped in with both feet you know and so please also feel free to reach out and and contact him. If you have any questions, but he is definitely already getting to work which is great. Yes, yes. And so my concern is well what about the budget for next year. Is there going to be money in that budget. And I hope that you town council members can, you know, press for that and speak up about getting an adequate budget for that. Well I also know that Senator Cumberford and I and several other legislators are also trying to work with the administration to see about state funding but again this is one of those situations. I think it's great if the state comes through but I don't think we should rely on the state. Right, right. I mean, we need you to, you know, have a certain number of town employees and make that, you know, then go ongoing in an annual way, and then the additional services and so on can come through the grants and, and so on you know to sort of expand the program or yeah because there's going to be a DEI director soon, I hope. Very soon. Yeah. Yeah. So, so people have any comments or reactions to what we're talking about feel free to use that chat box, and it will be anonymous we will not know who, because these are difficult conversations to have where sometimes people hesitate to speak up publicly but that's where I think this community click is an option where you can share whether you agree or disagree about something that we're talking about or if you want to add a comment or question without being identified. So, yeah, so I encourage you to use that. I just want to leave a few minutes at the end for memory to just tell us a little bit more and to get any kind of feedback what would make it easier for you to use something like community click because we have a community click was used in the last round of schools building meetings so they have been used by a town in large groups where you know not everyone had a time to raise their hands and so forth so it's a way to record all the sentiments and all the comments. And, and the artificial intelligent aspect collects and you know creates all these aggregates which is really helpful because it saves time staff time. Hopefully, so, so there are a couple of different advantages we're hoping it's a little challenging initially, because one of the challenges I'll share is that I have to keep two windows open. And I wish it was part of the chat within zoom for example so I could just stayed there but right now I have to keep that other window open and do this so that seems like a little challenging to me, but if anyone else has any comments or if you like about using an anonymous chat feature like this. And can everyone see the graph as well because we have like nine agreed although we don't know, and maybe memory you can answer that question so when we see the aggregate nine people agreed three disagreed six thought it was important this is the aggregate right and. So this is the aggregate over the whole conversation that has been going on. And I can see that people have been enthusiastic about this and they have been responding to several discussion points which is these were important. And people have been agreeing and disagreeing on several points that have been discussed so this tool allows you to do that without actually speaking up. So this tool allows you to maybe you don't want to get into a confrontation or not feeling comfortable to share opinions directly, while mentioning your name. So you could use these options are also the chat options to basically write down if you have something in your mind. It's completely anonymous if there is no way for us to, though, like we are the developers of this tool. Even for us there is absolutely no way to know who's actually writing this so your identity is anonymity is protected. And then after the fact how do we use this information we're able to track the agrees and all these different sentiments, according to the timestamp. Yes, that's in development right now so the way we are trying to develop the system is that generally this public meetings has open data so the meeting transcript or the video will be available for the public. At this time, we will match these reactions and responses, and also the chat messages with the timestamp so that we know what was discussed when which are the topics that people thought are very important and needs to be discussed, and on which topics people agreed and which topics people disagreed so that the town can have a better picture of all the discussions that went on and how people responded to these things. Great. Thank you. Any other questions people have about the app itself. So how many of you actually I mean it was 10 people. Is that 10 people or is it 10 agreements. 10 times there was an agreement. So I'm looking at the dashboard right now so it seems like there are 14 attendees who has been using community click today. There has been 10 agreements on several topics. Four of them are unique participants. There has been seven important three disagrees one confused one other and the other one is unsure. In the dashboard we can see these reactions in real time while this is going on and also from the attendees side of things whenever someone expresses a concern or presses a button. You can also see that live bar chart that shows you how people has been responding to this discussion points that isn't going on. 10 is really the number of times somebody agreed. Number of people can we see how many people are participating because it could be the same person could be just one person who's clicking I agree I agree agree. Yes. Yes. So to do that. I have the option to share my screen, but shall we can probably do that if you are if you joined in as an organizer. At the top few, there is a button that looks like a speedometer. If you can click on that that will allow you to see the detailed dashboard where you can actually see how people have been responding to these things and what are the trending conversations trending reactions and the rate and a bunch of other information. Does anyone want to see that what that looks like. And I can share the screen if there is any curiosity if not, we can leave it to the nerds to figure it out. But yeah, what it looks like is there 14 attendees or 14 people signed into this and the two active participants in the last minute. Yes. Okay. And agree seems to be the trending reaction. Okay. All right. Let's see anything else coming up for you all anything you'd like to see us work on. I had one request from the attendees who has been participating today. So if you have been using comment to click, we would love to know how to improve the experience and if there's something that confused you how is the, how does the reaction work or how does the tool work. We would love to know so that we can have a better expert we can create a better experience for the attendees. The objective for this tool was to basically provide you another way when raising and had an etc all this. Sometimes it takes up a lot of time and sometimes people do not have the opportunity to speak up in the first place. The tool is a companion app for people who wants to share their opinions, while not waiting for a chance and also maybe they want to keep silent, but share their opinions nonetheless with the security of being anonymous. So yeah, anyone, if you have any comments or suggestions for us to improve the whole experience would love to know that. Thank you. And I just want to also mention that mammoths was part of the team at the computer science department UMass basically got this grant to improve participation amongst people whose voices are not heard typically heard or how to include bring more engagement in what was how is it defined mammoth the population that you were underserved population, people who generally do not have the opportunity time wise are also ability wise and also people who might not be able to join in at the appropriate time, they can basically share their opinions like this. Right, so it does still involve using technologies, and so in that way it may not be really truly accessible, but on the other hand, it does make it accessible to people who have technology but are busy with their work or with the kids or home in a work that they're not able to participate in the meetings. And so the, the other technology that they have is called small towns, which is similar to engage but that's the parallel technology that people can go on that and share their ideas and so forth. If they can't attend a meeting. Anything else that we can talk about. I don't have anything else on my left Shawnee, if there aren't any other questions. Thank you all so much for for joining us. And we will. This is an official district meeting. And so if there are folks that you would like to hear from at those district meetings please let us know. Last time we heard from Kathy Shane about the elementary school so if there's other folks that you'd like us to invite, can't guarantee it but we can always invite them. Please, please let us know send us an email and we will do our best. Other than that, thank you all so much for for joining. Yeah, and can we just let them know ahead of time if you want to mark your calendars the meeting dates are I think the next one is April 28. And it's generally the last Thursday unless it's conflicting with a town services committee meeting so. So it's basically if you want to mark it down right down I will send a newsletter out with the upcoming dates so that you can mark your calendars way ahead of time so it's April 28. And then the district meeting May 26 will be the office hours and then June 23. And then July 28. But we will send it out to you all by email also. So, so, for now, that's all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I've heard from some people in other districts that their town counselors never schedule meetings like this so we really appreciate that you're very faithful here in district five of keeping us informed and giving us a chance to participate so thanks and good luck. Absolutely. You want to participate even more. Because you all really know what's happening in your group in your neighborhoods to definitely keep us informed and share ideas with us and just today I was at the senior center and I learned so much over there and hopefully we'll start working more with the senior center and doing. So yeah, so thank you all so much to everybody. Thanks everybody. Bye. Good night. I have to run to are you, you're good. Yes. Wait, let me stop the, but do we want to know I don't think we need to really talk about I mean I think we can just confirm those dates but you don't have to do it. You're still recording. Just saying. There's a little except. Okay.