 chair the link. Absolutely. I'll forward it to you like I always do. Yep. Okay. Have a great meeting, Meg. Angela, thank you for, oh, for everything. Sure thing. Take good care. You too. Hi, everybody. I'm going to read this statement now. I'm convening the meeting at 331. Pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. GLC 30 a section 18. This meeting of the participatory budgeting commission is being conducted via remote participation. And I'm going to take attendance now, just ask everybody to individually say here, if you're here, John, I'll go in the order. I see you. John McCabe. And raise my gauge here. Liz Larson. Here. John Page. I think you're muted, maybe, John, or at least your lips were moving, but we didn't hear anything. Muted. I think his mic may not be cold. He's got earphones on and maybe the mic isn't connected. Yeah, John, we're not, your screen says you're not muted, but we're not hearing you. But we saw you nod, shake your head. No. Well, we see you're there. But try to maybe, yeah, well, oh, I think I heard something. You're there for a second. Oh yeah. John Feske. I'm here. Kathy Shane. Yes. I'm here. Great. Let's do a review of the agenda here. I'm just going to say, John, there's usually a choice of use your computer audio or use your headset audio or something somewhere. Do you see it, John? Can you hear us? Okay. That should work. Yep. Thank you. Try to be fancy with these headphones and apparently it does not want to cooperate. Yes. Sometimes it works. All right. So let's take a quick look at the agenda. And which were right here. We have two goals at this meeting. One is to discuss the terrific notes we have from the interviews of staff and committee chairs. And then to determine how to use these insights in affecting our consensus memo that we're working on. We'll determine the minute taker. I'll be happy to take minutes this time, although I'm not going to actually write anything down during the meeting. But thanks to the video I do that. We want to approve the minutes and then discuss these interviews and then discuss the implications of these insights that we've gained on the memo. And then topics that we didn't reasonably anticipate of which I have four. There was a suggestion from Paul that I don't want to discuss these now. I'll just tell you what they are so you can be aware. Paul suggested that we update the council sooner rather than later to keep rather than waiting till our final report just to keep them in the loop and use your guidance, Kathy, in doing that. Should we share all the meeting notes with everybody who was interviewed? I thought would be helpful. Scott Merzbach is still interested in an article. And then what about our public forum and meeting? And this one here may be a little, maybe I'll cross that out. That may be premature. Any comment? I have our final meeting. I've listed all the meeting possible meeting dates between now and when we have to get this report in. I think there are only six more meetings unless we change our schedule. Any changes to the agenda? I have just a total, if we're saving these, Sean's name is not spelled right. Thank you. Oh, right. I do that quite often. I put the N in the wrong place. You can fix it later. I just thought if we keep a record of it, we'll keep it. Well, mango now. I'll get it. I'll fix it. Thank you. Any other changes to the agenda? Okay. Let's take a look at the minutes. Stop share. The minutes have two parts. The beginning and the end are the actual minutes that John took and the middle of them are Sean's interview. And so I wanted to see if people have any comments on the minutes in terms of corrections. I think we can comment on all of, we don't have to comment on everything that Sean said that we may want to discuss in the context of our core work, but just in terms of accuracy or things we want to point out. I have just a tiny typo. It's under Sean's interview thing. It should be PGO, parent guardian organizations. We do not have parent teacher organizations in Amherst. Okay. Thank you. Do you remember what page? I don't have them in front of me yet. It's on the first page of the section that's Sean's interview. Okay. Thank you. I wanted to draw attention to page three and something Liz said that I think is important to do at this meeting, which is the bottom of page three. I'll just read it. Liz would like us to decide during this meeting now the 4th of March on the forum to present our individual contributions to the discussion of the report of the memo at the next meeting. So at this meeting, discuss how we want our ideas about the final memo to be incorporated into the next meeting. It was a little complicated, but I thought it was important and it's basically what we've agreed to do. I'm sorry, Meg. I was focused on so it's PGO instead of PTO. And you're saying do we need to change or were you just commenting on the point that I had Liz making in the minutes? You're talking to Liz? I'm asking you about what you just said. I'm not changing anything. I'm just drawing attention to what Liz said, which is important for this meeting we're having now and it's reflected in the agenda. Right, right. That's all. I was I think minutes are good to remind us not only to correct typos and stuff, but to remind us of what our plan is. I guess you can see that I'm getting more and more aware of the limited time we have and eager as Liz was in her comment to move things along. So let's all in favor of the minutes with that one little change of PTO to PGO. Favor, okay. I see hands, Kathy, everybody unanimous. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Okay, great. We've proved the minutes. So now we're going to go through each of the interviews, which I thought were really helpful. We learned a lot, but I thought we should my proposal is that we'll go one at a time through each one and first give everyone the opportunity if they choose to take it to make any comments just to be sure everyone has a chance to ask their questions or make their observations and then have a discussion on that. Those notes all of us together and then move on to the next one and after we've done the five to talk about them as a whole. I think if I don't think that'll take that sounds like it might take long, but I don't think it will. So I don't think everybody will have to be wanting to comment on everyone. Does that sound like an acceptable process? Anybody object to this? I think that's fine. So what order, what would you, where would you like to start? How about Lynn? We start with Lynn and Paul. Does that make sense? Okay, I just was wondering with Lynn, didn't maybe we didn't, did we just, didn't we discuss the Lynn ones at an earlier meeting or maybe not? I don't think so. The notes were from the 15th and did we discuss the Lynn one? Yeah, I thought we did. Yeah, I thought we had to. Okay. We looked over it. Okay, well let's just see if anybody has any to recollect, you know, to remind ourselves of what she said. There's some themes in what she said that other people said as well. Let's just go around and see if people have anything they want to say. John, McCabe, anything? Liz? Nope, John Page. Kathy? Nope, John Fenske. I thought one thing that was important that other people echoed was the challenge of survey data and encouraging participation, making the challenge that the data is accurate and not just the most upset people or the ones who always have a strong opinion. That was a theme that I think came across in a number of these that the challenge of getting input that's balanced and informed. Any comments in general about Lynn's what Lynn had to say if nobody has individual comments? No, and Meg, I do think we need to, we sort of should step through them quickly, but that is a theme, is a theme on who comes to meetings, who does public comments, so it's broader, but I think it was in particular when and if we're writing up the document, the notion that any kind of survey, and I've been involved in many, has a participation bias and the big thing that's happening, if you do phone running into all sorts of problems, if you try to do online form, you have similar problems, so we shouldn't be thinking that there's some magic way of getting input from people we don't often hear from. I mean, I think that is, it's not that different ways get more people involved without a doubt, but there's not a magic way. Right, so this is part of what we're observing now as we look at these different points of view. John? Yeah, I just wanted to say that in all three Lynn's comments and Paul's and also Sean's to a lesser degree, I felt, how can I say, a lot of cold water thrown on my ideas about consultation and facilitation. I mean, there was a good deal of, oh my gosh, we've got these procedures in place and there's information going out and we know these things and let's not shake things up too much, but I think they had some very, as Paul and Lynn especially had some very sensible comments about the limits of surveys and the limits of doing things differently. I would add to that it's kind of a related concept that we'll get into when we talk about the format, I mean the form that the final report will take, but it struck me that a lot of this hinges on what you mean by participation. I mean, it can be a blunderbuss word and, you know, we started out with participation just meaning this idea of the pot of money that people vote on how it's used and we've tried other things, but I'm just saying that I'm finding what Lynn and Sean and Paul say make it problematic to engineer as it were new forms or better forms of participation. John? Yeah, in relation to what John is saying, John, you can say something different if you interpret it. Her name was Gloria that we interviewed. Yeah, the CDBG chair. There's very little participation in CD, from what I could tell. It is a pretty close process, so I mean when people say, well gee, I don't know what we can do. She was actually, it was interesting because she said we pretty much fund the same, not entirely, but almost the same projects year over year. I asked about other programs, do they throw their name in the hat? They often don't. I think that there might be some recognition that for new people to come in and request money is going to take money away from some of their allies in another organization, but it just seemed like an almost completely closed process and I asked her, I wasn't trying to criticize her by any means, but I just said, is there any, do you see any advantage to trying to open this up? And theoretically, sure, but practically I don't see it at all. I was kind of surprised. Can I ask a clarifying question before I call on Kathy? Are you saying, John, that she didn't think it could be opened up or it shouldn't be opened up or something? I don't think she thought it shouldn't be opened up. Now she seems really, I mean it was a really pleasant conversation. It seems like a really interesting person. She's been doing it for about four years. She was new to it when she came in and I think she became the chair. There was a much older group, not to say that about us old folks, but there was a much older group when she came in and they slowly cycled off and she became sort of younger old hand that is now in charge. But it just sort of seemed like there were, I don't want to use a critical word, seemed like there was an element of sort of acceptance for the process the way it is, even though it's not really open to a lot of new participants. It's just not, there's a set pot. There are a lot of rules that do not allow for the kinds of things that we're thinking about for the most part. But not even, there doesn't even seem to be room for other. I asked her, is ABC House ever put in? Nope. I said, are you surprised that there are so many groups that don't put in? And she said, yeah, I am. And I said, well, why don't they? She said, I don't know. Kathy and then Liz and then John. Okay. Yeah. So I want to just, I want to respond to the, but I think there are two ends of a spectrum here. One was in the conversation with Lynn and Paul. It was, were formal surveys new, bigger ways, as opposed to, are there ways we could improve participation in various ways? Because I think what we heard in, certainly in the CPAC discussion with Sarah and Ben were a responsibility to our thinking that what would happen if the town had an information session saying these pots of money are going to open up on such and such dates, hear the kinds of things they consider, get your ideas in, and we could help you figure out where you might fit. And then we could direct you in the right way. There was a positive response to that. And Sam had went a step further saying, you know, some things might fit better somewhere other than CPAC. So it might be good if the departments had an information session at some point, big departments conservation. Because what they pointed out with CPAC, which is a bit like CDBG, they have earmarked ways they have to spend money within some limits. And so if you come in through their door, you have to fit. And then if you fit, probably the best route would be go right to the historic commission if you're historic or right to conservation to help them figure out what else is going on, because they would want an endorsement. But people wouldn't necessarily know that. So they were open to leaving the open period, open longer, thinking about getting fact sheets out, thinking about a bigger kind of thing on where are there opportunities for this, where CPAC would be one of the opportunities. So so they were particularly open and interested. So I think maybe what I think, and I was in the Gail interview, so Liz, I want you to speak too. I think CDBG is particular. It is $840,000, which is not a small amount of money. CPAC was $2 million this year, which is a bigger amount of money, a lot bigger. But they probably haven't been thinking about how long an open period do we have. And CPAC has been. They were really feeling it was too short. And what kind of guidance or help if we get an inquiry from someone who's never been here before? How would we find those people? So we found a group that was starting to think that way, you know, a Facebook page. So, but I think otherwise they also said we fund a lot of money goes to the town and to a few big groups. We don't get a lot of outside, but they weren't close to the idea that it could be more open. Liz, and then John, or John, can you wait? Liz, I just wanted to, I don't like using the term that they are closed, because that to me suggests that other groups aren't open to, that they would not be open to other groups applying. It's the way I understand it. If there is a set group of people, groups that always apply, and it's not because no one else is allowed to or that anybody else is discouraged from it, it's just people are not, they don't know about it. They're not aware of the process. And I'm sure that the committee would love to have more applications. And I'm only, I mean, this is my, my personal experience over the dinner conversation, knowing that they are open. And so I guess I just didn't like the use of the term, it's a closed process, because it's not a closed process. I didn't mean it like that, but it just sort of, it just sort of seems to I realized that, but just like for the record, I didn't want it to say that the PBC judges them to be closed. So does everybody understand the deal? And they also said that they don't want to be closed. I mean, if they just said it sort of happens that way, and they're not sure why. Yeah. John. Sure. So I think if we're going to talk thematically, then for CDBG, I think the question John was trying to get at was, what was the value of participation and what is genuine participation? But that came about because, for example, the public hearings are very well attended. And the format typically is everyone who would like to talk about this proposal in support or against now speak, and they'll get a dozen people sometimes say, an example, maybe the Amherst Survival Center has a proposal, and they'll say anyone here to speak about the Amherst Survival Center, please, please give your comment. And would having 25 people instead of 12 say, yes, please fund this project, be of any value to the committee? And the answer was, I'm not sure it would. And I think that was the point that we were on was what is participation, right? If 25 people still read the same statement, yes, I would support this project. What value does that bring versus bringing new voices into the room or different proposals? I think that was more like, as Lynn was saying, the nature of participation, just numbers of the same copy and paste of email, for example, doesn't have the same message as new voices in the room. So I think that's what we were trying to get at in terms of what is what participation are we trying to garner? John, I just wanted to pick up on what you said. And I want us to file this for later reference. I loved what you said about what is the value of participation and what does participation look like? To me, that's like, boom, theme for our memo. Boom. Thank you. There's something Paul said that I think is obviously we're jumping now toward comparing them all and not going one by one, which is fine. He said something that was a new idea to me in this conversation, which was if the town had more communications capacity, they could motivate a lot more meaningful participation. So for example, going to community groups that are typically not participating and so on, you know, we all know what communications is. I thought that was an interesting, and of course that costs money, but so does almost, you know, a good professional service, very expensive. And Meg, that, I don't know, anyone else? Just one of the ones being influenced by this, the conversation with Sarah and Sam, you know, they've been thinking through how do they communicate and do more outreach. So one of their thoughts was come to district meetings and what would they come with? You know, if they refer them to the big plan that's up on the thing. So we said, do you have a frequently asked questions? Do you have a fact sheet? And they said, no, we probably, that would be good to have, you know. So the note, you know, we have volunteers on these committees, I'm telling you about one specific one that are willing to do more. You know, they're not necessarily willing to go around knocking on apartment doors, but that is a different kind of communication using that. I don't think that it certainly does not lend itself easily to resident capital requests or to CDBG. Although CDBG could be similar, like once a year, they could send someone to district meetings to say, what is CDBG? Do it four months before the period for applications comes in. But if they're also looking for the nonprofit, you know, things like ABC house, you know, so it won't necessarily reach that. So Paul's point about who are we trying to reach, which goes into the value of participation. What does it look like, John? You know, the, you know, it's a really big question on what does it look like? Because the, whatever you think about the library project, I'll just make one more observation we had at last night's public forum, which was to ask questions, you know, just any question you have about what's being proposed, what they heard, there were 85, 90 people in the public. Wow. Okay. A handful of them had questions. Did you listen to this? Oh, yeah, I was, I was one of them. And yeah, most of the were comments attempting to freeze it in a question. Right. So, so a handful had real questions and you know, when I have a handful, maybe 10, the library had very smartly lined up quite a few people who work for the library who could tell us what terrible working conditions they have right now. And Lynn finally said, I'd like to know if any of the other people in the queue have a question because we would love to hear those comments, but would you send them in? So it was like, so I was trying to figure out of the, and one is, was the lead fundraiser for the project, you know, so we got interested parties, but I'm not sure it succeeded in reaching what we wanted to, the intent was a bigger discussion about what's being proposed and things you might have heard and don't understand. So Liz was that, you know, I mean, it was somewhere, but somewhere. Yeah, I only listened to the first hour and 10 minutes or so. But there were some questions and it is, I think people and when we get to talking about how we would want to solicit public comments, I think a lot of people have already made up their mind. And so they needed an outlet to make their statements. And that was my takeaway from it. I think there were also people who came in late and didn't hear that the first part of it was supposed to be questions and then comments. So I was being generous in my family. And I just one final thing. So people know this went on for over three hours. And there was no presentation. So all of us, the council people who came were silent. So this was meant to be, you all come. So it's what's participation and what does it look like? It's an excellent question. Value of participation and what does it look like? Meaningful participation. John? As a former library board member, you're absolutely right. I mean, people are just sort of, for the most part, people have already made up their minds one way or the other. And what's frustrating is that participation then just sort of turns into it's not that different from the way people participate in our letter writing and op-ed page and the Gazette. People present the same arguments over and over again on opposing sides. And it gets a little frustrating after I said, but you know, I mean, I did not see that, but I pretty much know every argument by heart at this point. Some of them are good and some of them I don't find persuasive. It just depends on where you're at. I think I'm the only person in town who's completely neutral on the library or, you know, like, anyway, John? Sure. I don't want to backtrack too much, but I don't want to backtrack too much, but I got to be in the CPA conversation and the CDBG conversation. So one comparison which I wanted to draw was that CPAC often gets more proposals than they can fund, but not always. In fact, last year with some creative financing, they were able to fund every proposal they received versus Gail shared for social services with the limited CDBG funds. Sometimes they get four or five times the request than they can fund on at least a dollar amount. And so she said, so there was a difference of opinion there where in CDBG, they said, we would like new proposals, but if we're already getting way more than we can fund, what does that look like versus CPAC said, we actually have some room to grow. We had a year where we could fund every proposal without even knocking one out of the ranking. So that was a distinction to in terms of CPAC being more open to increasing them proposals. It also has to do with just the amount of money they have to give out, I think. One of the things that changed with the new government was that town meeting was able to shift the budget around and often moved more money around in the social service areas and partly because people understood it. They understood what the social services are, but that didn't happen in some other categories where they didn't. And the other funny thing that always happened in town meeting is we'd have these discussions about $30,000 for a translator or something in social services and multi-million dollar school budget would be approved without any comments. But people, yeah, anyway. Other comments? I think it's helpful to go back and because we didn't really look at each interview in detail if people have other comments about any of the particular interviews. Any more comments on any of the things people picked up? Well, Sarah made after she, the edits that she and Sam made to my notes were to, in large part, turn them into full sentences since I don't tend to write notes, but clarifying a few places. But when she sent back, she said, interesting project you've got here. I'll be interested to see what you're able to come up with. So it was, I thought that was a useful comment to hear because as I said, both of them are looking for ways. I would say it's something we have written somewhere in the memo already of a more regularized open period, maybe synchronizing them so that they're all open at the same, you know, to the extent you can submit a proposal. Well in advance, they were saying they want to well in advance let people know it's going to open up, you know, put the word out. So, and information sessions. So this, these are generic kinds of things that I think could work for anything. The thing I learned from Sean's, the resident capital proposal, which I found to be an eye opener, because I never thought of it as this, is it's problematic as anything to do with roads, or sidewalks, or crosswalks, because there's a big plan in the sky. And if you don't fit the big plan in the sky, that even if the money people decide it's a good idea, the big planner who controls the money may or may not do it, because it wasn't part of the big plan in the sky. So I think it's a really bad idea to have something called a resident capital proposal that you can award it and say good to it and then never do it. I think that just gets people frustrated. So on that, they would have to, I think they're going to have to figure out what kinds of proposals where CPAC already has to figure that out on what kinds might fit. But, and I didn't understand that as much in a generic way, but hearing Sean say it gave me a sense of the internal dynamics among town staff. I'll add to that that people do care a lot about sidewalks and crosswalks, because it has to do with safety and kids and bikes and walking. Even when you get something approved in the budget, like the East Pleasant Street sidewalk survey, some reason it doesn't necessarily happen. That's what I'm saying. Sean was using that. And then we went back, I actually went back because I knew that proposal to see if they dotted all the i's and crossed the t's. It had to fit the transportation plan. Well, they made sure under TAC, it was the number one priority. So it was the transportation plan and it still didn't get done. And it's not on the list. I'm for tonight. So that's what's really strange. Well, it's a line item in a budget with those words next to it. So what I'm saying is that if it's a fungible pot that can be spent anyway, the person who's in control of the pot is one shouldn't raise expectations that the resident proposal will ever see the light of day, especially if it, even when it gets positively voted on by everyone who's reviewing it and it gets put in his line item and doesn't get spent. I think that's a way of frustrating or angry. I mean, you don't want, I'd rather not open up participation and then do it that way. Right. Yeah, I'm underscoring what you're saying. Yeah. That East Pleasant Street sidewalk is very much an example. John McCabe and then John Page, I think that's where you put your. I mean, people in my little neck of the woods down here by Speedway have been trying to get a crosswalk forever. But serving on the Joint Capital Committee, I think it's a function of the enormous expense involved with paving. Just going up Pomeroy Lane, it's ruining my car. But to go from the Speedway to the top top by the church, it would probably be a two or three million dollar paving project. It's just cost so much money. There's no way that they can meet these needs. And we see that all over town. The roads are falling apart. Yeah. And John, I didn't mean to say that this is just whimsical, you know, Guilford told us a mile of roads is a million dollars. So that's a kind of a shocking number. And the sidewalk study, he had told us to put a sidewalk, it would be three to four hundred thousand dollars. So I can understand that when you when you start down a road, you want to finish it if you can, you know, I mean, rather than but I'm just saying that that was an eye opener to me that some things could be requested, viewed positively and then not happen. It should be circumscribed in such a way that people understand. Yeah. Yeah. John Cage and then John Fenske, or do you still have your question, John? Yeah, I just thought a theme that's going to continue to come up is expertise and staff support. So with roads and sidewalks, it's still not clear. But I think the assumption was that because engineers are involved and there's a there's a detailed complex matrix of funding and process behind that, part of that's going to be left to the experts. And so that's a theme that's going to come up and again and again. And with CDBG, the one thing that we found is Gail noted that residents, a group of residents that were organized as a non-profit or something like that would not be able to submit a proposal. And she also noted that and it says it's on the website, if you're considering proposing, get in touch with Nate Malloy, the town staff person, because the reporting and the application is set up by the federal and state government, and it's rather complex. So that's another scenario where if you had residents propose something, even if it got that far, you really need a level of expertise. So then as we continue our work, it's going to be a question of staff support. And is that feasible because you need an expert to work on roads and sidewalks with you, you need an expert to work on demographic data for reporting for CDBG proposals. So I think that will continue to come up. So to these points, it strikes me that there seems to be a good deal of interest in DPW type projects, roads, sidewalks, whatever. And on the other hand, it seems to be its own separate domain. Maybe not for us, maybe there's not enough time left in the life of this particular iteration of PBC, but perhaps public works could be looked at separately as its own participatory effort. And so for example, maybe there are some smallish projects, 300,000 to a million that are near the borderline. And the experts who know about these things are somewhat indifferent whether something is above the line or below the line. And that's where citizens could participate by saying, oh, we really want this one. And that promotes it to be something that gets done this year or the following year. I guess the general concept would be look at DPW projects on their own as something that could take more participatory input in some way to be invented. The trick would be that the most people, people would vote for the thing like everybody on East Pleasant Street. I don't know. We've talked about this a little, that the balancing what people understand and want because they live near it versus what's actually the most important for the public good. Some of the infrastructure things you don't even see. But that's a really interesting idea to say, these are the things the DPW has on its should be done list and see how people weigh in differently. Kathy? And Sarah mentioned that there is a form. I meant to attach it to my notes because I've actually seen the form. There's the see here, click problem thing, but there is actually a form to suggest a project idea and it can go to tack. So it could be a sidewalk, it could be a crosswalk, it could be a bikeway. What's been interesting about that form is what happens to it if you happen to use it. The first time I heard it exist and I said, really? And a person gave me a link to it because it was someone here on Summer Street who wanted to get a speed bumps or something. But so I love the idea, John, of DPW, public works, look at separately, the notion of opening it up maybe once every two years with this is what's on the list. Send me your ideas, something like this. And there's tonight's, this is probably overkill because it's such an ongoing story. Gilford has almost $2 million for road repairs with town money and state money. And what he wrote up is this may or may not follow the five-year plan for roads. And the first couple of years people have said, ah, is there a five-year plan for roads? Like, which road is going to be done next so people could say is mine? And he said, well, there sort of is. Well, could we see it? No, can't see it because it changes all the time. But it was an interesting comment that it might or might not. But I think that's partly what people are asking for is if, you know, is my street even on the list? Or is my crosswalk, the crosswalk down on 116, I have been at tech meetings where people talked about needing one and slowing down on that thing. And parents came in where their kids were almost hit or one child was hit. And it was ranked really, really high. And then they were saying, what does it take to get a crosswalk? You know, what does it take? And but but I think it takes money. It's not as expensive as an intersection or a sidewalk. It's paint, right? Well, it is paint. No, it's cutouts also. But, you know, the one that got installed up here on Cole's Road where the new apartment buildings are, I asked that went in so quickly. And I said, how did we do that? And that was part of the developer developer had pledged to do that. So they did it. And it went in really fast. So I'd love to know how much it costs. It's a really nice one with the blinking light. But but I'd love the idea of DPW being a, could you periodically and let people know, you know, give me your ideas, give me your priorities and see what's on the list and what's not on the list. Is there really a list? No, there definitely is a list. It's just they may not know what's on the list. There is a list. Yeah. And I really, I really sympathize with your point of view that to get people excited about a project that will happen at some point on their block or wherever is going to be discouraging. Because I think the reason the list changes so much is because the roads are so subject to, you know, a water main break or the things that just destroy the road. And then it becomes a priority overnight, you know, other things get bumped. Or a tree blows over. Yeah, you mentioned it. See it. Click it. I've used that a couple times. It works really well. Then they come back with other things in your neighborhood to tell you about other things that have been reported. I think it's great if that model could be adapted. Yeah, I like to see it. You know, people don't know enough about that, but other people when I was running for council said they got their pothole fixed because they use that device. And someone else says, my pothole will never get fixed. I said, have you ever seen this thing, you know, like take a picture of it and send it in. It's not just important people who get their potholes fixed. So I think this is, people may not even know that exists or how to use it. So one of the things, whatever we do with our report, it might be a way of highlighting where we do have opportunities. And there might be more hidden, that there are forums, there are places, you know, this new Engage Amherst webpage that's been opened up. It's not, it's not, that was brand new news to me. I didn't even know it was in works. I don't know what the plan is for it. And that's where Sean has put up his, see how the four projects play off against its tool. I don't know whether people know the tool is there. Well, yeah, actually, that's not a minor point. I went all over the budget pages, you know, where it lists the budget and so forth. There was no link to the Engage page with Sean's model. He had to tell me it was there. Yeah, that's a really good point that you can go all around the town website and things that should be connected to other things on the website just aren't. Yeah, and he's doing two, two seminars on using it, but two people told me they couldn't find them listed anywhere. I mean, Lynn is announcing them and I can, well, it must be on some calendar, you know, I use this function. It didn't show up, you know, I tried model, I tried budget, none of that works. Well, there's one on Saturday. I'll send everyone the link to it. That's when I was trying to find and I couldn't, it literally, I thought, is this a different organization? Is this the bid that's doing this? So it's a different web. I mean, it literally looks like it's a different organization, not the town. I just, I think the general point is there, there are a lot of people in town hall doing great stuff. And the communications folks have done great things on that Engage Amherst art. But you know, how it all fits together and how people know about it, this is an important dimension that I don't know needs to be thought about more systematically in some way. Yeah, I'm just looking at it now, the town website and also the town mobile app. And there's just no, there's no integration. There's no, it's the, I think Bram has done a great job in making it more user friendly than it has been since I moved here. But it still has a long way to go just, you know, in terms of easing people into participating. Right now, our front door is not easy for people to use. And maybe that's the front door to comment in our door, even on calendar, because if you don't happen to do the right collection of calendars, you don't find a meeting, you know, so you're right, Liz, you know, I think I'm, I'm in this meeting, how can I find it? But so it's some of these are brand new. And you can see that they might be not be integrated. But I think we I think we should write up that in a nice way that some of these new things need to be built on and made made more user friendly. And this may be what Paul was getting at in part when he said we one thing that would help a lot is more communications capacity, which the website is one of the most obvious examples of John. But it was interesting that Paul put it in the form of, you know, more resources for the town. And then when we talk about, say, this kind of committee or a future iteration of it being a resource, or interns or academics who volunteer time being a resource, he kind of threw some cold water on that saying, Oh, but that takes more staff time to coordinate what they're doing and so forth. I mean, it just sounds like we're blacked. We can't, you know, get improvements unless there's more money. And we don't have the money. Right. So our meeting is time is a little over half over. I want to make sure we get to the second big discussion. Before that, does anyone have any other comments about things that came up in these interviews that haven't been said yet? Just to note them for the minutes, John. So another kind of big bucket, which I think Kathy raised was priorities versus decision. And I think if you think of even the council town manager structure, council sets a list of priorities, and the town manager has to figure out how to accomplish those. And I know Gail said for CDBG, people don't often participate in their priority setting meetings. You know, those are less attended than the hearings on projects. So that's an area where more people could come to what are the priorities for the year. And so that could be true across the board. It's less of the traditional PB being involved directly in the decision. But there's lots of avenues to influence what the priorities are. Even this infamous DPW list, there's lots of avenues, but people aren't getting to use them. So if we can figure out a way to connect more people with the access points to identify priorities, then those priorities should be in good government reflected in the decisions that are made. Wow, that's interesting. I like that, John. And it's really interesting. You know, keep these thoughts. I'm taking my kind of notes, but it's a section that points out there are these moments. And again, people don't know about them. So how can we get with not a lot more staff? So it's not a staffing issue. It's how can we say in a central place a combination of each year we open up for ideas in a few different places. Each year we have a priority setting. Here are the dates, and have it in an easy to find somewhere. If you're searching for, if I want to, I have an idea for something. I have an idea for something. How do I, and when, how do I, when do I, or I'm hoping someone has an idea for something? Yeah, it'd be nice to be able to do that. I don't think, you know, in the contrast with what you just said with CDBG, CPAC said they never do that on priorities. You know, they have to spend a minimum of 10% in three buckets. And then they're basically waiting to see what comes to them. And that's their constraint. And they make judgments on the value. They said they could have policies, you know, that this year we want to do more here or more there. They haven't. The council could, with public input, say that we wish you would do more on affordable housing, you know, spend more of the money here, but the council hasn't. It could. You know, so they just were saying that just has not been the practice. So there isn't a point on CPAC that you've just described that CDBG has. There isn't, they just don't have that. Let's have a brainstorming on what we, if we only got the proposals, what would we like to see? Yeah. One thing that hasn't been mentioned, I'll just quickly mention that came up in both Paul's interview and Sean was both of them were very fund raising or bringing an outside donors for projects is very doable. And they do it all the time. That's something that John, McCabe and I are interested in. And I regret we haven't had the time or maybe the appetite to think that through, but that might be, and I certainly don't think we can go out and do it right now because the time that we have, but that might be a recommendation for down the road. And some of us have a lot more experience than others in that. So that anyway, I'm just, they both were enthusiastic. I just think it's an important hook to put in, to put in, even if it's just a vague line about to get people's juices falling. I mean, we have a lot of academics in this town who know how to bring in money. We could do that. Yep. I just heard, yeah, there's so much you said about to do the research. This is sort of unrelated, but it's for the town. I just heard that the Massachusetts Department of Public Health gives grants to towns and cities for co-responders, social workers who respond with the police, like they fully pay for co-responders. And maybe everybody knew that, but I didn't. Well, see, that brings up an interesting point in order to effectively do fundraising and grant applications. That really needs to be somebody who that's their job. And so we're getting back into the app support of such a program, which, you know, I deal, I think that's great, but I just know from my experience, yeah, you need to have people who are on top of that and are looking for it and following through on everything. So that would be another down the road when we've got all this staff support to do it. We can add that, but it's a job for sure. Yeah. But there's a lot of wealth in this town. I'll just say there's tons. And anyway, so it's just something to put in the back. It's not for this something to work on right now, but it's definitely I think is John and I maybe the only two strong advocates, but to put. Well, Meg, if you found that it would be worth you sending a link into the Public Safety Committee, because one of the issues is, you know, and I'm hoping they already know it. The police do have a big grant that is an ongoing federal grant around this that funds people. But I didn't, I didn't, I didn't know the Massachusetts Department of Public Health also has them. One other thing just that Sam raised that had never occurred to me. And I don't even know whether it fits. But we have properties, meaning the town of Amherst owns properties that are not currently being used at all and or are being underused. And we've just done a capital inventory, meaning we the town that shows you all of those. So he said what about soliciting community ideas for how the building might be used. And so he has the South Amherst school would love to see a community center with arts and workshops and rental spaces in there. And then that mentioned the North Amherst school, that's a different kind of piece that the town could do to get ideas. Where the old Hitchcock Center, which is falling down next to the common school is a town owned property. We have a list of them. I mean, but it was an interesting outside the box because it wasn't CPAC, although CPAC money potentially could be used if it's a historic building and someone says it's historic and important to renovate it to be used in this other way. So I think his mind was going toward and maybe there's funding to do that. But he clearly has some ideas personally on what to do with a piece of property. Yeah. And has nowhere to send his idea, was it? Where would he send his idea to? That's actually an interesting dilemma. If people come up with creative ideas of any sort, where is the place to bring them? Anyway, if people are ready, let's shift to the second part of our agenda, which is reflecting on how this conversation we're having in these useful interviews are going to influence our memo and our report. I mean, not just the report and the memo, but our recommendations. Where do we want to take this? And what Liz said at the last meeting, a key thing we do at this meeting today on March 4th is to have that discussion. So Kathy. Well, I've had one thought, particularly after I heard Sean and then CPEC. And as you know, I did the first jump in and try to draft something. So we'd have something to react to. That was great. I, well, it may or not be, I'm ready to rewrite the whole thing other than, you know, I think some of the recommendations about opening it up, keeping it up longer, using CPOs, using district, those all apply, you know, but reorganizing it. I don't think it's possible to carve out any money on any of these. So there's somewhere along resident capital, could we say up to 50,000 a year, and there would be a commitment to do it or to some piece. I think for different reasons on those, that that is not possible. So I would remove that idea from my thought would be, I would just take it out of there, you know, a protected pot of money for people. That doesn't mean there's not money to fund resident public ideas, you know, so the, but it wouldn't be a designated pot of money. I do like the list. Did you raise it when we talked to say, I couldn't, when I looked at my notes, one of either you or John said, we had this idea of you come in through one door where you send in your ideas and then we figure out, oh, that would fit over here or that might fit over there. I think that's a good idea. You know, some central flow where you could come in through the other door, you could always come in through the other door, but so I think that's a good idea that it might give rise to more resident public generated projects, but I personally think carving out will not and cannot happen in the foreseeable future with these big projects starting to move where Sean's little, what if we try to do all four of them puts every operating budget on a diet that they can't live with. You know, there's just, we're so squeezed over the next five or ten years that we're not going to be carving out money. So I just want to make sure it's the carve out that I'm talking about, not that these processes couldn't work a lot better. So that's one thought. The second is we should have a longer section that has all the thoughts we just were talking about. Better ways of integrating things, finding things, where there are communication, letting people know where they can send things that or look, we discovered things we didn't know existed, and it shouldn't be so hard. So that's a, maybe it's communication, but it's organizing things in a way that people can find them. So that was just two thoughts. We don't have a section that talks about that as a, and it's a finding I think that we're doing. Let's make additional just brainstorm comments about the memo and then try to pull it together. I have one suggestion, which is inspired by what Liz is pulling up, what John Page had said of not necessarily a long and meandering, but some kind of opening section that reflects the general challenges of, you know, what is participation, what is meaningful participation. I'm just trying to look at, find where John said it. Well, I'm not going to find it. But some reflection on the insights that we've gained that are about the cost, about the challenge of people weighing in when they actually, only when they care about something, the difficulty of measuring opinion, just it seems like we've made some observations that I'm outlining them briefly, even demonstrate how challenging this topic is. I see Holly's about to land. So building on that, what if we structure it, the memo, in a way that we, there's a section like the opening section is what is the value of participation? What does meaningful participation look like? And then we have a section on just briefly like here's, here are the areas where we already have participation opportunities in Amherst, I'm saying opportunities. And then we have the section on here are the challenges that are faced with these various opportunities. And here are the challenges that could be faced trying to move forward. And then the last section is actionable ideas, things that concrete things, steps that can be taken right now to lead us to a place in the future that can build on other steps for the future. So kind of, you know, great. That kind of really well organized. What am I thinking of? That sounds great. What do people think of that out five part outline? It's great. Go start with the general and work to the particular. That's the way to do it. I like it, John. Could we take kind of the 50,000, 100,000 foot view for a moment and ask ourselves, first of all, are we still thinking that there's going to be a public forum or some kind of direct from the public feedback? Or are we just, are we in the end game here to creating a report that we hand off to town council? And that's it. And town council decides after this what goes on. Excuse me, second 50,000, 100,000 foot question is, are we going to try to, as it were, accomplish or establish anything in what we give to town council? Or is it really a collection of ideas? We've organized things. We've said, this is what we've looked at. This is what we think is feasible. But town council, if you want to do anything, you have to make decisions about this. I'd be curious to hear what the rest of you think, what is the overall purpose of this report or memo that we're working on? So I've always understood that our purpose is to look at whether or not participatory budgeting could work in Amherst, not to design a program to make it work, but whether or not it could work. So I'm imagining this memo as here's our research. Here's what we've looked at. Here's what we conclude. Here are some areas where a future structural committee who's setting up such a program could take and run with, but we are not. So that's why I don't, you know, I don't want to shut the public out in this, but I don't know if, if we have anything for the public to be giving us feedback on because we're not setting up a structure. So can we put off just for even a few minutes, if not till the next meeting, the question of whether we're going to have a public forum, because it seems based on what Liz just said, that'll grow out of what our report says and what we're recommending or not recommending. In other words, if we don't have anything we need feedback on, we could give a report. I don't know, it just seems a tad premature. I like talking about, John, though, the purpose of the memo, but let's discuss this however you all want to. And I just, you said that there are five parts. I've only wrote down four. Do you want to do that? I have the value of participation. What does it look like? It was the second one. I thought it was value, but what does it look like as you had us two? Okay. What are the opportunities? Well, I don't know if they're five. This is just what I wrote down. And the opportunities now. And actionable ideas. Okay. Okay. Because I heard four. And I just want to say on actionable ideas, I thought it could be, when you made that big category, Liz, I really like it, because I think it's what we can do now over the next few years, and these are these, make what we've got now work better, and then getting ready for the future. So it's just two parts. And what we could do now, and we should sort of take, I would love it if we implemented some of our ideas. And we said, four years from now, let's talk about what happened because of that. Did we, did some new ideas come out of this? Some people that we had never heard of got together in some terrific projects, whatever. It would be nice to sit back and kind of look at it. Yeah. Non? Well, yeah, there's also the possibility that some, what's the right term, you know, some money could fall from the sky or some, you know, somebody with deep pockets could say, Hey, I really like this idea. And yeah, we should have things that people can vote on, or I don't know, or John is able to convince a local academic to, you know, to really get on top of this. In other words, we should be open to the fact that if money were to appear or somebody who's willing to work on this, you know, wholeheartedly full time or whatever, it could, it could, it could present an opportunity that Paul and the council would want to grab. Yeah. And the thing about the academics, I mean, at this point, I'm so glad I'm not a full time academic anymore. Well, never really was I was an administrator. I'm so glad I'm not a full time academic now because they're forced to be so entrepreneurial that you don't get to stay if you don't bring in money. So I'm wondering if there's, you know, there's a lot of people in that political science department over there at UMass that the enormous group, they need to do things, you know, and maybe someone says, Hey, wait a minute, this is cool, I could do this. Maybe. I mean, that's what I'm kind of hoping, you know, that we get people to think, how can I get involved in this in a way that helps me as well professionally because they have to do it. They just have to. We'll see. So just going back to the memo outline, do people like the outline that Liz? I do. I saw a lot of smiles and thumbs up. Great. Um, do we want to, I want to do want to come back to the question of whether we want a public forum or not, but I really want to see if we can pull more together around this memo. And if we want to try to have some kind of fleshed out outline, not necessarily for the next meeting to start looking at, and maybe we could divide it up a little. So Kathy's not I'm not going to do this one. No, really, no, because it's hard. I think there are parts of the old one that could be copied and pasted into actionable ideas. But it's, I often tear apart a first draft and throw it on the floor, you know, so it's not problems. And there was one year, I just quickly tell you, I just couldn't figure out how to write this particular thing. And I thought I was on a deadline. My husband was away for three days. He came home and found me. I hadn't eaten. I was, I don't know what to do. And he said, let me take a look at me. He said, your beginning should be your end. And then I think it would work. And he took the first, and it was perfect. But I couldn't see it, you know, so I couldn't. So I think, well, no, it was really said, what if I take the 20 pages and move them to the back and it works. But in any case, my thought, Meg, you said we have six meetings left. Well, yes, I'll show you. No, no, you don't need. I'm just thinking that we meet every two weeks starting March 18, April 1, April 15, April 29, May 13, and May 27. We maybe don't want to go to May 27 because that's three days before this where our report is due. That's six meetings. So what I was going to, where I was going to go with that is we don't have a lot of meetings left. So maybe if people have a, do any of those sections or subsections, particularly appeal to them, draft something so we could come together and instead of having one person try to do it, you know, and then it could be super messy, you know, at first where we just say, you know, here's under the value of participation or what does it look like, you know, that we take the thing we've got now, anything that's useful, pop it in, write more. It's a thought of a way of getting here to a working document that we're really calling a first draft. Right, Liz? I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I will volunteer to draft it if everybody can be assigned to send three or four sentences answering each question, what is the value of participation and what does participation look like. And then if everybody sends those to me, then I can put them together in that section. The other ones about like what our current opportunities are and what challenges, I think that that we've had enough of those conversations and I can pull enough from the document that Kathy did to have a working draft of those things, as well as the actual ideas because we've talked about those enough, but it's the first to your thoughts and feelings and takeaways. If people can send those to me, I can put them together. Thank you, Liz. That's fantastic. With the caveat that I actually have jury duty Monday before our next meeting and... Be crazy. That's going to be... I'd be happier. Does everybody agree to send three to four sentences on those first two? Yep. When do you want to add each sentence? Each question. So the first question, send me three to four of your thoughts on what is the value of participation and then secondly, send me three or four sentences on what does meaningful participation look like? And I stress meaningful. And you're talking, you're talking still pretty much in the abstract. These two things are... In the abstract. Yeah, I have some background in the stuff, so I would be happy to. Yeah, I like that because we should be... Well, you're the writer, but by asking us to do that, we can be as succinct as possible while capturing the big ideas. I like this a lot. But I also think we're not going to end up with 24, 25 different ideas of what meaningful... No, there are five or six core ideas and each of us is focused on a different one. Liz, do you want some ideas on the challenges? I was going to offer to pull some of that. Yeah, if you can pull apart some challenges too. I think we've really identified some big ones. Deadline. Weekend before our next meeting. Really? Not sooner? You can send them to me sooner if you want, but the deadline is the weekend before. All right. So like 10 days from now? So wait, today's the fourth. Okay, so yeah, by the 11th, by next Thursday. Okay. And then that gives me a week to pull it all together. But if that gives us time to be late. Are you doing criminal or civil? Because if you get into criminal trial. The last time I actually, I didn't have to go, but it was for a bar. I showed up and got to excuse because it was a bar fight. I was like, two meatheads going at each other in a bar. I don't need that. So. Hey, so now we're going to talk about things that haven't, that I didn't think of 48 hours before. Paul suggested that we should give the council a heads up either with a short verbal presentation working with Kathy. I'd be happy to do that. Is there someone who'd like to do it? Meg, are you talking about the note he put into the email to you and me? I can't remember where he said it. Well, he said, okay, I'm going to read it. I don't think that's the sentence. My only concern at this point is whether the town council is on board with where you are headed with your efforts. Kathy can guide you on that. For some, it may be news that you shifted from a fund that would be allocated by a participatory process to how to engage people in broader community outreach efforts. I did not read that as an instruction to make a report to them. I read it as ask Kathy what she thinks and consider yourselves. Have you gone too broadly? Have you strayed from the pot of money idea that people vote on? So why don't we have a conversation about that at our next meeting? I interpreted that as with Kathy making a short presentation about given COVID and given the realities of the budget but you didn't. No, I mean we can send it around. He's not asking us to make a report, he's just asking us to ask Kathy if, well, maybe if she says so, yeah, maybe we should but it's not an instruction to go to town council prematurely. No, I agree with you, John. So do we want to discuss this now, Kathy? I have an idea that might address exactly what you just said having read that is we have a five-part outline. Okay, we could say, you know, in three sentences given COVID, given the restrictions of town, we've moved away from the formal participation and we've learned a lot and we're working on a report that will have these five sections. Okay, I'll volunteer to write that and send it to you all before the middle of next week, John. And we could decide and I could talk with Lynn whether we just want to put it into the council readings for the next meeting as opposed to ask for four minutes so people would just get an interim heads up from the PB chair, you know, whatever that is, you know, so it doesn't take up anybody's time but they just know that we've done a pivot. I have the reason I'm rushing a little as I really want us to finish on time. And does that sound like a plan, John, that works for you? John McCabe? Did you have it up? Oh, just I'm just wondering, Kathy, maybe this maybe we'll talk about this next time. I mean, how seriously do you take this whole thing? Because you would be the logical person once we're done with the report to sort of say, this is an issue that I want to continue to talk about on the town council. I mean, do you feel that way about it or not? Well, we can talk about it next time I don't care. Look about that next time. That's a different conversation. I think that's a really good topic though to talk about. Make a note. Actually, I don't want to be watching the whole video. So, okay, I suggest that we, John. I was just going to say that even if it's to revisit it later, we do need to address our charge in our report. So we'll just make sure when we go through that we do that. Good. Agreed. Very good. Our charge is very specific. So we will have to address that at some point. I don't think it's going to be too hard because everybody's extremely aware of they're probably going to be grateful that we're not proposing. Meg, if you write up this thing that we can present, there's a second clause in that participatory budget or other ways of participating. So I just think copy and paste that whole sentence. We weren't, I was there writing that and I wanted it to say participatory budgeting and the Charter Commission insisted that it be or other because there was so much controversy about it. I'm just saying copy and paste what John is saying. That's our charge. We have four. I agree. Let's see out. They're going to be grateful, you know, believe me. But anyway, I mean, they wouldn't approve if we had said we want $100,000 or something. But anyway, we'll discuss at the next meeting what I write and what Kathy's role might be going forward. That was another big topic and a good one. I think it would be nice to, as a courtesy, to send the people whom we interviewed all of the interview notes, taking Sean's out from the minute since making it a separate. Do you think that's a good idea? At least a thank you note. Well, I think we did thank you. Well, a thank you note. But what about sharing as a way of keeping people might be interested? I did thank Sean and I also wrote a note to Paul about how helpful Sean was. But I didn't tell him. I want to think about that because I'm trying to think about what we wrote up. Okay. I have no problem with Sean and CDBG seeing what CPAC said. I'm not sure. Well, what do we think about? Yeah, maybe not. And I would want to really and really look at word choices. So Liz's sensitivity on, is it closed or is it, you know, be really careful on our words? Right? So I'm just saying that, you know, it's one thing to have these as our internal discussion on how things work and another thing to suddenly send a batch out to Lynn, to Paul, to Sean, you know. Well, especially since they weren't informed before the fact that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm. They were public documents. I'm not pushing this. I just wondered if it would be. I'm feeling a little squeamish about it. So let's. We're not going to do it. I have an alternative suggestion, which is that we could send these people a copy of our final report. I mean, Lynn and Paul are going to be seeing it anyway, but maybe the others wouldn't necessarily look at the final report. We're not going to do it. I was just asking because I thought it might be community building, you know, spread the word of what you're all thinking. We're not going to do it. All right. Scott Merzbach still wants to write his thing. I think I'll call him and tell him we're working on it. And we should have a memo very soon. And we're looking at, you know, I'll just smooth it over unless anybody objects to that. No, I was in favor of keeping Scott at our lane. Yeah, I'm actually, I've mastered the, you have to remember he really respects off the record and background. And he's totally professional that way. So that means well, he means well, it just doesn't always turn out well. He does mean well, and it doesn't always come out well. All right, everybody, let's see. I'm looking at the other things. Is there any public comment? I see no participants. So there couldn't be. Actually, there is one. Is there anybody, but I don't know who it is, but is there anybody, Holly, are you there? Holly, Holly's, she never came into the meeting. She's out in. No, she is in the meeting. She's in both places. Eight participants. Yeah, it says we have eight participants. Is there anyone public would like to make a public comment? I'm just looking at attendees. It's Holly. Yeah, this is the way my students attend my class. They put up a picture and they go. No, I'm just saying that Holly is out there also. Is she twice? We have eight participants. Yep. She's listed in attendees and in our group. Okay. Okay, that's why. Okay, so she sent a note. I'm I have no audio or camera. I'm in the participants room. If someone wants and knows how to, you're the host, Meg, you would have to bring it back in. If you click on her name, you can bring her into the room. I didn't. I didn't know that until just now. Let's see. There she is. So she'll be here in time to vote. Just trying to bring her in, but move Holly Bowser. Well, we're about to. Okay, there. Now she's an attendee. Sorry, Holly. You want to know you, you want to bring her from attendee into us? Oh, I thought I did. Okay. Well, now you moved her out. You move her in. I'm looking at the attendee list. You want to click on her name. You're the host. I can't do it. I might make you host just so you can do it. I'm going to make you host. You can just promote me to host here. I'm clicking on it. Now you're host. Anyway, I think our meeting is just about over, but I don't see her. Do you see her anywhere? Yeah, I allowed to talk. Hi, Holly. You can unmute. I brought you in. You're muted. So maybe it's not working more. Promote to panelists here all the way. Holly is now joining. She's muted. Okay, we're going to give up. Hi, guys. I've been listening. I have this weird setup where I have two screens. If I open it on one screen, I go as a participant. If I open it on the other screen, I go in the right way, but I have no camera or so I've just been listening on one and watching on the other. Sorry. Holly, just for the notes, what time do you think you joined? Oh, I joined. I didn't join till like about 4 30. My other meeting ran late, but it's okay. I'm just this time. Did you capture the Liz volunteering to rewrite the entire? I captured that part. Yes. Okay, good. That was that was the most important thing to hear. And you got your homework assignment. I did. I wrote my questions down. I have them written down over here. Sorry for the technical difficulties. Okay, so I'll make a motion. I think we're all done. This was for our agenda. Make a motion. Holly. Yeah, that's a jerk. All right. Yay. All in favor. Yes. Thank you guys. Great meeting. Good meeting, everybody. Thank you.