 We're recording now. Okay, thank you. Good evening. It's March 20, 2023. This is a regular meeting of the town council. On November 7, 2000. Somebody needs to mute. On November 7, 2022, an act was signed into law, which extends the suspension of the open meeting law. We're actually waiting to see if that act will now again be extended. This allows us to continue holding meetings remotely without a quorum of the council physically present at a meeting location. However, tonight in the room we have seven councillors. Eight councillors. Miss one, sorry. This meeting is accessible in real time via zoom by phone. Or if you want to attend in the town room. And is live broadcast on Amherst media channel 17 or in their live stream. Given that we have a quorum of the council present I'm calling the March 20, 2023 town council meeting to order at 633 p.m. I'll call upon each councillor by name at that time. You should unmute your mic and say present. This one indicate that you can hear us and we can hear you. I'll begin with Shawnee Balmille. Present. Pat D'Angeles. Present. Anna Devon got here. Present. Lynn Griesmer is present. Mandy Johanna. Present. Anika Lopes. Present. Michelle Miller. Present. Dorothy Pam. Don't see Dorothy yet, but I'm expecting her. Pam Rooney. Present. Kathy Shane. Here. Andy Steinberg. Present. Jennifer Todd. Present. Alicia Walker. Here. Thank you. Okay. And somebody keep an eye out for Dorothy. Okay. If you have technical difficulties, please let Athena and me know. And we'll decide whether or not we need to stop the meeting. There is no chat room. And please use the remote participation. By raising your hand. If you want to ask a question, make a comment. There is no change in the order of the agenda as it is posted for this evening. I want to make sure we said that because of the changes we made last time. So with that, I'm going to immediately go on to announcements. Athena. We have an upcoming town council retreat this Saturday. We will be, it is actually from 830 to 130. Because at two o'clock, the CSS JC is happening a listening session in this room. The public forum on the appropriation and data authorization for the school building project will be on Monday, April 3rd, 2023. And do you have your hand up? Yes. Do you need me to call the finance committee to order? I will in just a moment. Thank you. Let me finish the announcements and then we'll do that. Okay. The regular, the council will meet that same night. There is still some things that are in flux about the timing of those meetings, but it is our intention to have the public forum at six. With and the council meeting at 630. There are various committee meetings and district meetings coming up. They're on the agenda with regard to community events. There is the screening of the big payback with the discussion with former Evanston Alderman Robin, who has been on the agenda for a long time. And there is a meeting with Andrew Simmons sponsored by HRA on March 30th, 2023. That is up on your screen. And in addition to that, there will be an interfaith gathering, remembering COVID victims, et cetera. And that is on Sunday, March 26th at two o'clock on the Amherst Common. And then we have a meeting with the district for night walk, our second night walk, which will be Wednesday evening, starting at 630 in Kendrick Park. And we invite everyone to walk with us down to Fearing street, down to Lincoln, up, up McClellan back to Kendrick Park. Okay. Thank you. Any others that I've missed. Okay. Then I'm going to. There is no hearing tonight, but I, I'm sorry, Jennifer, you have a general public comment. I'm sorry, Jennifer, you have your hand up. Dorothy is also in the meeting. Dorothy, can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. I guess if we're on announcements, I could say the district three meeting is this Sunday afternoon, March 26th from two to 430 p.m. In the Woodbury room at the Jones library and Kathy will be there to discuss the building. Kathy, you have your hand up. I was just going to add what Jennifer did on the March 21st, which is tomorrow night district one meeting. We'll feature the school building at the beginning of it, as well as reparation and crests. We are setting up a community wide meeting. Right now it's going to be at the bank center on Sunday, April 2nd from three to four. So that anyone who wants to come in person and ask questions or discuss the school, it won't be a district meeting. It'll be a community meeting. And it's not also just restricted to the senior seniors. No, it's not. It's the community room. It's not restricted at all. So we're hoping we're going to put a notice to parents through the school system in case they want to come and ask. I mean, it will be really an opportunity beyond the earlier steps that we had. Right. Shalini, you have a district five meeting coming up. Right. Six on zoom this time from seven to eight. 15 ish. And all of these are on the town website under community events. Okay. Kathy, you still have your hand up. Okay. With that, I'm going to call an Andy Steinberg chair of the committee to call the finance committee to order. They're here for our first action item, which is actually not an item we're taking action on tonight, but we will eventually so Andy. Yes. We have a quorum of the finance committee present. This was also posted as finance committee meeting because of the discussion we're going to be having regarding the school project and the budget and that authorization. And you've already recognized the counselor members of the committee who are present, but I need to make sure that the resident members can hear and be heard. So I'm going to ask them to just acknowledge that they can hear me by responding. Bernie Kubiak. President Bob Hegner. President. And Matt Holloway. So I just want to make it clear that we will adjourn after the conclusion of the discussion item. Before the next break. And the other thing that I just want to make clear is that. I am not sharing this finance committee meeting. Any members of the finance committee, including the resident members who wish to be recognized at any point during that section of the meeting. Will be recognized if she deems appropriate by the president. Thank you. All right. Thank you. I just wanted to move on to general public comment. There are two people in our audience and if you would like to make public comment, please go over to the clerk of the town council and sign up. And in addition to that, I ask anybody who is on zoom. If you would like to make public comment, please raise your hand. And I'm going to ask Athena while she's doing that. Do you also explain what's on the screen? There's a QR code on screen. If you're in the room or on zoom, you can scan the QR code and submit your public comment via the online comment form on the town's website. Those comments are posted prior to each council meeting also on the town's website. And if you have lengthy comments or anything that you'd like to submit in writing, you can do so that way. Dorothy, you have your hand up. Is there a question? Yes, there's an article in the paper about a new chat bot that will in fact be used on such things as engage amourst or sites. And then the chat bot will manage that. And I just want to say that I am up absolutely and totally opposed to any kind of chat bot bot being in charge of communication from the public. Just straight. Thank you. I'm seeing one hand in the audience and do we have any people in the room who would like to make public comment Athena? Okay. I'm now see two hands in the audience. So there are any other people in the audience on zoom who would like to make public comment. Okay, seeing that we have three hands at this point, we're going to go with three minutes. I just want to remind people that you're welcome to express your views. And based on the number of people who wish to speak for three minutes, we'll begin with Mark Barrett. Mark Barrett will not engage in a dialogue or comment on a matter raised during general public comment. So we'll begin. Athena is going to ask individuals to come in. And we'll begin with Mark. Okay. Mark Barrett, please state your name and your address before you make your public comment. My name is Mark Barrett. Please go ahead with your comment. Okay. It's a question and you have to, I apologize to everybody. It's my first time joining so the meeting. So I have a question. I don't know if it's allowable. So I'll just ask. It has to do with the, the topic of the, what do they call it? The town flag. Proposed flag policy, excuse me. And I'm looking at exactly at section three question number two, or point number two. And my own comment is, it says the town council shall consider the display of the commemorative flag only if requested by a member of the town council. And I'm just wondering if, if I don't know if it's possible to add that be. Somebody from the public could also request that. I don't know that. So that's my question. And I don't know if this is the format to put in or whatever. So that was my, my whole comment. Mark, thank you for that question. And as we finish public comment and move on to action items. I'll do what I can to clarify. Okay. Thank you very much. Jeff Lee. Please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Hi, I'm Jeff Lee. I'm a resident of a 15 Southeast street in Amherst. And I would just like to urge the town council to. Do all in your power to minimize how much you have to borrow and then charge to the taxpayers through a debt exclusion vote. Particularly, I would urge it to use the $10 million in the capital stabilization fund for that purpose. Difficult times for many people. Food prices, energy prices, health care prices are all up for many people and just concerned. A difficult tax hike will drive people out of town. So that's my request and thank you for hearing me. Thank you for joining us tonight, Jeff. Adrian Terese, please enter the room, stage your name and where you live. Hello, it's Adrian Terese. I live at 61 pond view drive in district three. So I'm calling in response to Councillor Shane's and Councillor Walker's motions, their proposals regarding increasing the town's reserve funds to help residents. I'm calling tonight on behalf of the seniors that live here, the retirees that live here, along with the families who might be taxed out of town. Again, the seniors are those who are also struggling to pay their increased mortgages not only under the 2.5%, but the increase that looks as if the average home will be increased by $487. I strongly favor the debt exclusion override. My concern this evening is that we're not going to get a majority to pass that very important school. The last school was built in 1973. I was here in town during that time. And yes, the economic times were better and we didn't have four major proposals facing us. In a show of solidarity and in the town, showing a sensitivity to not only our low income students for whom the programming and the space needs are required for 21st century education. I'm speaking on behalf of seniors with whom I've spoken or very concerned about being able to stay in this town that please consider the importance of both Councillor Shane and Councillor Walker's proposals. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for joining us for joining us. Whoops. I get an echo. Okay. I see no other hands. And so we'll be moving on to the consent agenda. Before I do that, I just want to mention for the gentleman that asked the question, the actual motion tonight is to refer the flag policy to the governance organization and legislation committee. And at that time, they can certainly consider your input, but we also invite you to join them at that meeting, and that will be posted on the town website. We're not going to be voting on that policy tonight. The consent agenda tonight is very short. And it does require that we wave rules. 8.6 because the Arbor month proclamation did not go through through review at GOL. I'm going to move an item. Please let me know that after I read the original motion to move the following items and the printed motions they're under and approve those items as a single unit. Let's say adoption of the 2023 Jewish heritage month proclamation waiver of town council rules of procedure rule 8.6 for the 2023 Arbor month proclamation and 6.B adoption of the 2023 Arbor month proclamation and 11 a approval of the following meeting minutes. March 6 2023 regular town council meeting minutes. Please go ahead. Okay, I'd like to make a correction 6 a, which should be adoption of the 2023 Jewish American heritage month proclamation. The word American was left out. Thank you so much for that. Okay. Are there any other questions or comments. See none I'm seeking a second. Shane seconds. Okay. Any other questions. See none will move to a vote. A roll call vote. I'm going to start with Shalini Balmille. Yes. Pat D'Angelo's. I. Devlin, got here. I, Lynn Grease Mersen. I, Mandy, Joe, Hannah, I. Anika Lopes. I, Michelle Miller. I, Dorothy Pam. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Hi. Jennifer. Yes. Alicia Walker. Yes. Thank you. And in our tradition at this point. I would like to ask Jennifer to read the last paragraph. Of the 2023 Jewish. American heritage month proclamation. Okay. Now. Therefore we, the Amherst town councilor council do hereby proclaim the month of May to be Jewish American heritage month in the town of Amherst and encourage all to celebrate the history and contributions of Jewish Americans to our culture and society. Thank you. And Jennifer and. Dorothy, I believe we're. Trying to set up time. For the reading of that proclamation on April 18th, April 18th. Thank you. Um, Arbor day month. Shalini. Thank you. Arbor month. I'm sorry. Yes. And also happy spring equinox to everyone. So today's subject is. Wishing everyone may we have for Amherst growth, new growth, new development and just holding those intentions as I read. The ever month, um, Proclamation. Now, therefore we, the town council of the town of Amherst. Do hereby proclaim the month of April as Arbor month in the town to protect our trees and woodlands and to support a town's urban forestry program. And also for those of you interested, April 8th, there will be tree planting from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Amity Street, Dana Street and Blue Hills. And also there will be, April 28th will be tree planting at Amherst History Museum and the other events are gonna happen at Jones Library. So please look out in April for these events. Thank you. With that, we're going to move on. We have no presentations or discussions this evening, although there are several items listed under the action items, which in fact are discussions because they're first readings of issues or their referrals to committees. The first of those is regarding appropriation and debt authorization for the elementary school building project. Paul and Bachman and Sean Mangano have joined us tonight and I'm gonna call on them first and then I'll be calling on the council and the finance committee to ask questions and hold a discussion. This is an automatic referral to the finance committee and at the end we will adjourn the finance committee. So Paul and Sean. Thanks, I just wanna turn it over. Turn it over to me. Lynn, is it okay if I share my screen? It is absolutely fine. Athena, do you need to give him permission? No, I think it's all set. Okay, great. Thank you, Sean. So I just thought for presentation, I'll just go through the order and kind of break it down into chunks so that everyone fully understands what's in the order. It's a little bit more complicated than most orders. In part because it's a, the MSBA has provides a language and they have to approve and factor in the grant but it also has to factor in some prior appropriation so that we get the full cost of the school project into the wording. So I thought it'd be helpful just to go through each kind of chunk. So this first chunk highlighted in yellow. This is the actual appropriation that would be approved by this order. It's for $97,492,297 and it gives the purpose which is the same wording from the debt exclusion ballot wording that you voted already. But this first section is the actual amount that will be appropriated. The second section that's highlighted in green, this just establishes the anticipated useful life of the facility since we're going out to borrow the life of the facility has to be at least as long as we borrow for. So this just make sure everyone knows that's gonna be at least 50 years and that the town is maybe eligible for a grant from the MSBA which we know we are eligible. So that's what that section does and that the school bill committee will oversee the budget for this project. The next section that's highlighted in blue. So this breaks down that $97.5 million appropriation into two different pieces. And this is where the amount recommended from the finance committee at their last meeting the amount of funds to pull from the capital stabilization fund gets pulled in. So the first amount, $92,492,297 that's what's left over after you subtract $5 million from capital stabilization. So if there's any different amount that ultimately gets voted from capital stabilization that $92 million would be the number that fluctuates up or down based on what the council decides. So essentially this just says that that total appropriation of $97 million is gonna come from these two different funding sources. One would be a borrowing and the other one would be the capital stabilization fund. The next section in yellow this is where we pull in prior appropriation so that we can get to the full project cost. So the first one that's listed here is the 700,000 from CPA that was approved. The next piece is it's actually two votes. The first vote was for 750,000 a borrowing to fund the feasibility study. And then there was a subsequent vote from Free Cash for another 280,000. So the combination is that 1,030,000 that's broken out in the table below. So these are two appropriations that are already approved and in place but we need to add them in there to get to the total project cost. The next section that I wanna point out so this next green section this is where the grant percentage is listed. So it's 67.66% of eligible approved costs. And we know a lot of the costs are not eligible because the MSBA has certain caps on things like construction and site. So this is the maximum if everything was eligible but we know that not everything is eligible. And then this last section in blue just says that this vote or this debt authorization is contingent upon the town passing the debt exclusion. And now if the town doesn't pass the debt exclusion then this debt authorization would also not go forward. And also that the town is allowed to accept contract for and expend any grants or gifts. So we do get any other funding sources that come in this authorizes using that but we do have to be mindful of the MSBA's gift policy. They have a policy on what gifts the town can accept or what rebates the town can accept and apply directly to the town share and certain things they apply to the overall project which they also get a share of. So we're putting it in this in this wording so that we can accept anything but what it is we have to look at each individual type of gift to determine if the MSBA is gonna want their share of it. And then this table on the second page kind of breaks down everything that's up above. So then the net borrowing authorization would be $92,492,297. This would be reduced by the amount of the MSBA grant in terms of the amount we would ultimately borrow. Five million from capital stabilization fund, 700,000 that was approved on February 27th last month. And then the two votes that make up the feasibility study to get to the total project budget of 99,222,297. So again, more complicated because we had to fold all these different funding sources that have already been approved in because we have a couple of different funding sources for the appropriation but this has been reviewed by the MSBA and they've given it to Greenlight and it's been reviewed by our bond council who has also approved it. So the wording is approved by those two parties and I will stop there. Okay, thank you. At this point, then we'll move on to the council and finance committee discussion and questions. And so I'm looking for raised hands. I know that this order is about as clear and plain English as you can make it. That was a joke. Just to appreciate that this becomes quite difficult but Sean, we wanna thank you for laying out in a table. I do wanna mention that the finance committee will be discussing this in-depth tomorrow at our meeting at three o'clock. And so there may be some issues that counselors particularly would like to make sure we think about. Mandy Jo, your rear hand up. Yes, thank you. One really simple thing which is I think there's two that's at the beginning, one in the motion and then one at the beginning of the big paragraph. So just we're saying just delete that but one of those that's. I believe the finance committee recommendation that generated this order was to have 5 million come from stabilization to then have that 5 million paid back to stabilization when some, I don't know whether it was ever source money or something came back to the town after construction but I don't see that anywhere, the repayment anywhere in the order and that concerns me. So I'd like to know what's gonna go on with that and how we as a council can ensure that when that money comes back it does at least get brought to the council to go back into stabilization or automatically go back there. I don't know whether we can sort of pre sort of vote it to be deposited into stabilization. My next question was related to that 5 million is how guaranteed is that number? Because it concerns me if we're going to be using it in anticipation of receiving all of that money back and we only received 4 million back that's not what we'd be, that's not the impression we'd be voting when we voted this authorization, this financial order. The belief is that that 5 million will all come back but I would be concerned if we don't know that we'll get all 5 million back. And then Shawn just said that sometimes the MSBA wants a share of gifts and grants is this something that they might wanna share of that again would mean our stabilization is not sort of made whole with the 5 million that it would get less than 5 million back. Yeah. Okay, Shawn or Paul, do either one of you wanna- Yeah, I can start. We will delete the second that, so that is resolved. The second question about the 5 million and how to guarantee it goes into capital stabilization. So again, these payments that come back it's a new revenue source. So we don't know for sure if there will be any special treatment that comes out from the state or from the federal government of how we would treat that. But if it comes through like some other revenue sources the year we receive it, it would be basically some sort of miscellaneous revenue that would fall to free cash at the end of the year. And then every year we have our conversation about what does our interview surplus look like and we follow our policy guidelines around 5% for free cash, 10% for general stabilization and then anything above and beyond that we would look to the reparation stabilization fund as the third priority and then the capital stabilization fund. So again, that's not a guarantee but it would follow our process of looking at our surpluses at the end of every year and making sure that we put that surplus in the proper bucket according to our policies. And then your last question, can you repeat the last question one more time? Part of it is how much of it is guaranteed so that we wouldn't be reducing the stabilization in the end after the project is done? And then could the MBSBA actually want to share of that money? So Kathy may want to weigh in because she's done a lot of research on this. The biggest issue we have right now is that we, there's no IRS guidelines or regulations that say here's exactly how it will work. Here's how the annual rules of how this will work. So the early information sounds very promising but until I see the IRS rules I say, there's no limit on how much you can get in a particular year, here's when you can get it. I do want to maintain a certain level of kind of caution until we see those rules. And we did, we actually had our project scope and budget meeting with the MSBA today. So we went through all the costs for the project, what's eligible, what's not. So we have a very solid footing and understanding of the budget for the project. And the MSBA is really great in a lot of ways. One thing that's hard sometimes is getting them to put something definitive especially related to something brand new like this. So we have posed the question to them and they have promised to get back to us, their legal department to get back to us with something definitive. So I think that's the best we have right now is that they haven't said they are gonna take a piece of it but they haven't given us a definitive statement saying they will not. Okay. Dorothy, call me after Pam Rooney, please. Thank you, Pam Rooney. Thanks. There was quite a discussion in the finance committee meeting about the opportunity to use reserve funds. And I think I heard a request for $10 million from the reserves and another one for $5 million from the reserves, part of which could perhaps be returned as rebate. I'd like to have a little bit of a discussion about that if there are other folks who want to weigh in on it. I don't know that the finance committee, well, the finance committee took a vote and brought forward tonight what we see here. But I think the council itself wants to have a little bit more discussion about the larger amount and the benefit of that. Okay. Let me collect that discussion, if you will, because let's see what other comments there are. Dorothy. I just wanted to add to that that I'm hearing things from people that I have not heard before. At the Amherst Women's Club, people came up to me during the flower show to say that they know people who are planning to move or people who have moved because they can't afford the taxes. I was at Holyoke Community College at a meeting on service learning today and talking to somebody involved and a very civic person from a service agency who said, oh, I used to live in Amherst for seven years and we had to move because we couldn't afford the taxes. So I'm just feeling something very different, partly because we all got a big boost because property values went up without us doing anything. So it's like coming would be coming on top of that. And you know that we support the elementary school. So I'm really very, I hope we can be open-minded to ways to make this something that would be more equitable, that and reduce the amount of tax increase that would come with the tax override. Thank you. Okay, Cathy? I just want to say a few more words about what Sean replied in response to Mandy. One of the issues on the new federal potential credits that we get back because of a new law in the books is that nobody knows. And many schools are asking the same question because many towns because this is for public buildings. One of the things I think we should be doing is talking to Mindy and Joe and I have raised this with our legislators to have this be similar to the utility rebates that this is an incentive to do energy saving and move away from fossil fuel that the federal government has put on the books. And that's the way we proposed it to MSBA as well. So this has been a direct question. What we did discuss in finance that separate from what you see here, that's the MSBA language that we have to have. We could have a policy that says if we get, if we make a capital investment, and in this case for the school that is for renewable energy for non-fossil fuel and we get a tax credit or direct payment that goes into the stabilization fund. We could create it as a policy or we could do what Sean was saying is it becomes free cash and we make it this just later. So that's something we could do. We could do it separately is my understanding. So it's not in this wording Mandy but we could as a statement or principle to say this is what we intend to do with it. Because I think if we look forward to the extent Congress holds on to these provisions, they are on the books as taxes now. This would be applying when we convert the town hall when we convert the police building. This is a moving away from one source of heating a building to electric. And there's no exclusion. This is just for schools. It's for public buildings now. So we could think in terms of some of this becomes available as a different stream of money that the town can take advantage of. Okay. Alicia. Yeah, I wanted to support Pam Rooney's request to have a more in-depth conversation regarding the amount of reserves applied to the project. Of course, because that was my motion that was proposed at finance that I am in favor of that. However, I think that because of, it was because of the outcome of that vote at finance that the amount that is appropriated in this document, that's where it comes from. It comes from the outcome of that conversation. And so I think it makes sense to at least talk about that conversation and where that's coming from. And so I would also be interested in having a larger conversation about that with the entire council. Okay. Thank you. Yes. My goal was not to say we weren't gonna have that tonight. It was to try to collect various thoughts about it, Alicia. So I appreciate that. Shalini. So I'm looking for a clarification and then I have a question. So my clarification is, my understanding is that if you do take away $10 million from the reserves, the impact on an average home owner would be $7.5 per month reduction. No? It's like $90 per year. So divided by 12 would be $7.5 per month. Yeah. So it's about $9 per million. So I think that makes sense how you describe it. So if it would be a $90 per year reduction, so yeah, if you divide that by 12, sounds correct. So again, so just to be clear that we're talking about, if you were to take away $10 million from our reserves, this would be a saving of $7.5 per month for the average home owner. Right, okay, so that's the first part. The second one is like, I'm weighing that against how is taking away the $10 million impacting our ability to build a fire station and the DPW in terms of does it affect our debt limits or what would be our interest payments and increase in interest payments or like what are the other factors on the other side? Okay, that's part of the discussion. And again, I'm collecting thoughts. Sure. Okay, and then can I add another one? Try again. Okay, and the other part that I wanted to say was that we're hearing from people who can't afford the taxes and that's a huge thing we've been hearing in CRC and everywhere, right? So instead of focusing on the reserves as a way to bring down the property taxes, some of the things I've heard so far is from Kathy, the grants for renewable energy and so forth. Let's make sure we're focusing on that. UMass and Emmer's College, I think negotiations are underway, so that's another. But I also again, want to invite us to think about the new development in town that is needed to provide more housing. And so let's not forget that as an important piece also of this conversation, that as we're thinking of these new development projects and how to contain the increase on residents is to also think about the new development. And when I say new development, I just don't mean anything in everywhere, but I mean, let's get really serious about the kind of development we want to see like we've been talking about, but we haven't done anything for families or housing or in certain areas, more college student housing or family homes and whatnot. And so whether we have an economic development director or someone in town who is actively pursuing these are objectives of getting more housing in town to bring down the cost of housing, but also to raise the property taxes, the base of property taxes. Thank you. Jennifer. Yeah, so I did again want to clarify, following up on what Shalini said, that we've been told that if we go for a debt exclusion override request of $55 million, that the average homeowners tax bill would go up $478. So if we subtracted from that $9 a month or $108, it would go down to $370. Sean, would you say that's correct? So the original $478 impact, it was based on a $53 million borrowing. So that's one thing just to clarify is that it was based on the CPA money being applied and also the ever source rebates being applied. So that's what got it from 55 down to 53. So that's first piece. And then, yeah, it's $9 for every million. So if you applied 10 million, it would be the 478 minus 90 million. Minus 90, okay, not $9 a month. Okay. Yeah, not $9 a month, $9 a year per million of reserves that were applied. Okay. And then I just had a process question that if we wanted, so this language or the debt exclusion authorization is automatically going back to finance. If we wanted, you know, I don't know if we'd have to come to a vote tonight or if we wanted to request an additional 5 million from the reserve fund, how would that happen? I mean, would that be something that would happen tonight or at the next council meeting? I'm just not clear on the process for all the counselors to be able to weigh in on this. I think the reason we're having this discussion is for the finance committee who has joined us this evening in addition to the council members, the three other finance committee members to hear this discussion and then look at it and think about it and weigh it and come back to the council. Obviously anybody can make a motion at any point but we're not actually settling on a final number at this point. Sean, you just raised your hand. Yeah, just another quick clarification. So we only have about nine and a half million in the capital stabilization. So I just want to clarify if we were to, if the number was 10, it wouldn't be able to all come out of capital stabilization. You'd have to pull from another, either general stabilization or free cash, but we don't have 10 in the capital stabilization fund right now. Jennifer, remember that we have two different stabilization funds. One is our capital and the other one is our operating. So I watched the February 28th finance committee meeting and they were talking about a reserve fund that I think had 24 million. Am I remembering that? That was probably the combination of all of our reserves, not any single fund. That's the combination of... Right, but that's what was being discussed at that meeting. But in the capital stabilization at this point, it's only nine million something. Okay. Yeah, Ryan. I'm gonna just see if there's any other questions from counselors who have not spoken. And the reason I'm doing that is because to the extent possible, I'd like us to stick to the timer, which we've not been running. Okay, Mandy Jo. Yeah, Sean actually mentioned one thing I was gonna bring that our capital stabilization fund only has about nine and a half million in it, our free cash, which is meant for operating downturns, not capital downturns has about six million in it. And I think then the regular stabilization fund also meant for operating has about, I guess that would be another eight or so, somewhere in there. So I am very hesitant to say 15 million of that, because that brings our operating reserves, not where we necessary, still within the five to 15, but we've worked really hard to get that up to 15 so that in downturns, in COVID situations and in emergencies, we don't have to cut operating too much. I would be hesitant to delve into that for capital when it's not intended for, at this point for capital expenses. The last update we had on the four projects was that the capital reserve that we just created at nine and a half million is meant to eventually fund the fire station and that we would not build a fire station until that number reaches an amount that would pay for the fire station without borrowing. And so I would be extremely hesitant to zero out that account, which is basically what a $15 million Elisha's request plus the five million with rebates would end up doing. It would more than zero it out, especially given that we're not even guaranteed to get five million in rebates that could go back into it. And then have to wait even longer to build a fire station or to then go out and ask for another debt exclusion to build a fire station. We've always told the voters we'll only ask for one debt exclusion and using the reserves in this way seems to appears to potentially require asking the voters for another debt exclusion in order to handle the capital needs in this town. And that just, I would be very hesitant to do that at this point. Okay. Anika. Yes, thank you. So majority of my questions have been covered, but I had a clarifying and then a curious question. And this would be for Sean, could you repeat what you said the additional potential savings to the taxpayer would be with the five and the additional $10 million? And my curious questions were in regards to the amounts like the five and the 10, why those amounts? And what was the perceived goal or a success attached to them? And then just last, if there is anyone or Sean or anyone else would weigh in on any perceived like trickle down effects, lack loss of flexibility that we might have for doing so. So we can have all of that information because I'm not clear and I would like to be. Okay, we are gonna have that conversation. I see two more hands, Alicia. Yeah, I just wanted to clarify that my motion was not asking for 15, it was asking for 10. It might be confusing because I think what you're referring to is in my memo where I detailed my 10 and Kathy's five, but that wasn't because I was asking for both. That was because someone in the Finance Committee meeting said we have to choose one or the other. And I was showing that that is not actually the case, but if you read what my motion is, my motion is moving to use 10 million. And so that was my request. And so the Finance Committee did go ahead and recommend or vote to recommend the five million that will be rebated or refunded or however that works. However, I think the question that at least I'm asking right now is can we appropriate an additional five million? So in total 10 million to offset the impact on taxpayers. And I was told that this motion, like my motion to do that couldn't be taken up tonight, otherwise I would have liked to include a memo in the packet, which would have helped to answer some of the questions that Anika has in terms of why I proposed this. And I'm not sure if you want me to get into that entire speech over again, if that's not something we can literally consider tonight. So I guess my question is in terms of process, because I did hear Lynn say something about unless there's a motion and anyone can propose a motion at any time. However, when I asked prior to this meeting if I could propose this motion at this meeting, I was told that I could not. And so now I'm slightly confused because I think Lynn, correct me if I'm wrong, just said that anyone could propose a motion at any time. And so I'm needing some clarity on the process here. So a counselor when we're on a topic that is relevant, a counselor can propose any motion that they want. The reality is that the motion on the table for this or that would be put on the table for this, actually it won't be. It's an automatic referral to finance. And the purpose of tonight is a discussion. And that's what I was, you and I were trying to communicate back and forth earlier. And that's, so any counselor can make emotion at any point relevant to the topic we're discussing. However, this topic, the motion for this in fact, it's not a motion, it's an automatic referral. So Alicia, it gets a little confusing and part of the reason it got confusing is because in a finance committee meeting, I think it was two finance committee meetings ago, maybe it was the most recent, we actually were discussing the date and not the financial order. And the financial order in fact, hadn't even been referred yet to the finance committee. That's happening tonight. So it's a matter of whether or not we wanna give, we're having this conversation because the finance committee is meeting tomorrow and we'll be taking up again, the discussion of the financial order and how we pay for this project. It's not always clean, I guess is the easiest way to put it. Anything else, Alicia, that you wanna say with that? I mean, if you would like to share with the committee with the full council, the same statement that you made for the finance committee and then we can place that in the packet for tonight, please feel free to do so. Okay, if you can come back to me, I can pull it up. All right, fair enough, Pam? Yeah, if I'm not remembering this correctly, I think we just recently established the capital stabilization fund and called it such. Otherwise it was all one big pot of stabilization and flash reserves. So to limit ourselves to the 9.5 in cap stabilization itself doesn't mean a whole lot to me. I would, at this point, I would like to speak in favor of consideration of some additional funding from our stabilization fund for the purpose of tempering at least the impact it doesn't sound like a lot of money, but I think we're talking actually longer than my lifetime of an annual payment of that amount, whether it's $90 a year times 30, starts to add up a little bit for a household. Okay, Pat, the Angelus. Thank you. I sort of need some clarification because we've been talking about the school, we've been talking finally about the fire station and putting money for that in the stabilization fund. And the most working class of departments is not even brought up. We're not talking about DPW, which is a building that is a sick building, that is a building that's deteriorating and needs to be rebuilt. We're not talking about the men and women who are plowing our streets and doing the dirty work of the town. And so I'm really having a hard time thinking about taking 10 million, 15 million, 5 million. I don't know where I am, but I'm having a really hard time understanding how we would finish the four capital projects. And it disturbs me somewhat that there doesn't seem to be a position for the DPW in even where we put the money away. And that just rocks my roots. Just, okay. Andy. Yeah, I'm gonna limit my comments tonight to a very small piece because we're gonna have a discussion tomorrow and we'll be reporting on that for the next meeting. But I did wanna clarify that our reserves are really now broken into four pieces. And one is free cash. Free cash is kind of this amount that is where the budget has some unspent funds and it hasn't been allocated to any purpose. And it's sort of, you have to think of it like the balance in your checking account that you wanna use as a needed basis. And not anything else you put into some sort of specialized savings account or investment account for a specific purpose. And that is then broken into three stabilization funds. One is for reparations. The second is for capital. And the third is general. And the general stabilization fund is what is wise to always have some money aside in cases of crisis. And I always go back to my experience on the prior finance committee when 2008 happened and the world caved in. And that stabilization fund kept us alive and kept us being able to provide all of the essential services and to manage through a crisis. And to not have the general stabilization fund takes away that ability should we come into that situation ever again. Now I always said that I hope it never happens. Well, I'm still in fault in town government. The other thing that we should recognize is that the general stabilization fund is important to our bond rating agency, standard and poor's. And in order to hold onto the double A positive rating which gives us the best possible interest rate that we can receive on our debt when we borrow. That fund is really an essential component of the pieces that standard and poor's looks at. And there's a real cost to not having that available. Thank you, Andy. Michelle. I have a question for Sean and maybe this is something that the finance committee will discuss tomorrow. But I am wondering how the reserves get replenished. Just really basically speaking, please give me the basic overview of that. And then also what methods we have to build the funds particularly the capital fund, are there particular methods for doing that? So just like very basically how the reserves get replenished and then if there are particular methods that we have to build the funds. Thank you. Sean, I'm going to answer that quickly. Please go ahead. So to date the reserves have been built up from end of year surpluses. So when our revenues come in better than what we budgeted or if we don't spend on the expense side all of the budget, whatever the sum of those two numbers are that goes into reserves. And so there's been some really good years recently because of the pandemic we were very conservative not knowing how that would impact the town. So there's been some positive years recently, leaner years in the past. When I looked at the average it was somewhere between $1 and $2 million a year on average if you go back 10 or 12 years. And then the other method that we can explore now that we have the capital stabilization fund and we discussed this a little bit at Joint Capital Planning Committee is the town could as part of the capital plan if it chose to budget a direct contribution into the capital stabilization fund it would come out of the 10 and a half percent that we set aside for capital. But in order to do that that would have to be prioritized over other actual capital projects. I think the discussion we have this year is that roads is such a high priority to put money into capital stabilization would mean money we didn't put towards roads. So that is an option in the future now that we have the capital stabilization fund we could budget directly contributions but again, it's a trade off with other projects. So Sean, could you just remind me as part of the answer to this question? In the past, our goal was to get to 10% of our annual operating budget is put into capital. And I believe this year we've got to 10.5%. So the plan right now goes to 10 and a half percent. So when we looked at the model for the four building projects we bumped it up to 10 and a half percent to reflect that costs are higher construction costs are higher everything costs more. So we bumped it up to 10 and a half percent right now in the proposal. Okay. And a follow-on question to that as we're paying back the debt each year on these loans it will come from taxpayers not from those stabilization funds? So the debt for the school project yeah, if the debt exclusion passes the debt would generally come from the debt exclusion. Yes, it would come from higher taxes from taxpayers. Okay, but if there could be a unique year where the town had some other funds and we didn't have to but I think the assumption we wanna make is that it will come from there unless we have an unusual year. So the original question that Michelle asked was how do we replenish and build those funds? And the way we replenish and build those funds is every year a portion of the operating budget is contributed to capital. That's not how we build the capital civilization fund though. Right, right. That's capital that we spend every year. Exactly. And then in addition to that as we had this year we had surpluses at the end of the year and we voted to put a portion of those surpluses into the stabilization fund. Correct. Okay, but the 10% or 10.5% every year is what we annually spend on capital. Yeah, capital and debt related to capital. And debt. Non-debt exclusion debt. Right, but other debt that we take on. Does that answer your question, Michelle? It's an important one. It does. I have a quick follow-up if that's okay. I'm just wondering, and maybe this is a different discussion but I'm wondering what the expected timeline is for the DPW and fire station if we have any sense of that at all just to think about when we're talking about replenishing and I think Sean said a million to two million a year on average. And so with the timeline expectations for those other two critical capital projects what are we looking at? Sean, do you want me to... Sure. So again, it depends. So the plan for the fire station was to build up the capital stabilization fund so that we didn't have to finance that project. And that was going to take pressure off of our how much we allocate towards capital each year because we weren't going to have to include financing costs as part of that. And so where we're at $10 million right now roughly $10 million in the capital stabilization fund we estimated sometime in the next five to seven years we would be able to build up to have it enough for the fire station based on the past 10 years. So that was the plan for the fire station. The plan for the DPW was to try to was to finance it within our capital allocation sometime in the later part of this decade. We would look to potentially secure a site sooner than that and then potentially build it in pieces. So there may be ways to assemble part of the building sooner than that. But the first thing we have to do is get a site and then we can look at different options for addressing the DPW. Thank you. Anna. I'm going to try to make a condensed version of what I said at finance. I think the part that's really challenging for me is that we will not do another debt exclusion. And so I'm comfortable with the $5 million the way that it was outlined with Kathy's motion because of the potential paybacks from the Inflation Reduction Act. But we've been building our reserves for a long time in order to only need the one debt exclusion. And gosh, wouldn't it be great if we could have built our reserves to not need any, but the reality is that this is where we got to and we can't keep putting these off. And we need to be able to fund these four projects. And so I don't have the PowerPoint off the top of my head. I couldn't pull it up as quickly this time as I did in finance, but we have models for how we finance these. And the amount allocated for the projects takes us to basically the limit of our reserves with the debt exclusion, right? And that's, again, still hoping that we don't hit the downturn that Andy's talking about having happened in the past. We've talked about the fire station being built with the funds we have in reserves and discussions about DPWR ongoing. But for me, this is an instance where projects are on a similar plane when we talk about funding all, when we talk about funding projects using reserves, it does put those projects on a similar plane. And so it does take away from other things that we've been saving the reserves for if we pull from that pot in order to fund more off of the schools. And so I'd love to hear a little bit more from Sean if possible about that modeling. And Sean, if you know the numbers off the top of your head for what we had kind of budgeted or allocated for each of those projects, I know that was in the PowerPoint and I apologize, I don't have it in front of me. But if you happen to know it off the top of your head, I'd love to hear that again. Thank you. Sean? Yeah, I don't wanna, I think the plan is a finance committee tomorrow to revisit the models. So there were four options that did look at some different ways to accomplish the all four projects, some better than others. Again, I think the theme of the presentation I gave in October was it was a big challenge to do all four building projects and with construction costs going through the roof and high interest rates, the challenge is greater. So some of those models were more viable than others. That's why we lean towards the one of the fire station because again, it allowed us to move that project forward at our own speed and build up towards that project without having to finance it and incur higher interest rates. So tomorrow, the plan will be to look at each of those different options and talk about how using different levels of reserves will impact each of those various options. Jennifer? Yeah, I kind of pick up on what Michelle asked. So when I was watching the finance, February 28th finance committee meeting, I was surprised to hear that the fire department and DPW were that many years off because those are very, I agree with Pat, those are very important projects. But because, so what sounds like it was being discussed and I think some of Alicia's motion was took this into consideration is that if those projects, and maybe they'll be sooner but the way it was discussed in that finance committee meeting was they wouldn't be coming on for like six years. And so this is just a question, could if $5 million was taken from the reserves to have a lower amount for the debt exclusion override for the school, could we expect that that would be built back up by the time that it sounds like the DPW and or the fire station are gonna be ready to be built? I don't know if that's for Andy or Sean. Sean, you want to go for it? I can just say that the way we fund the Capital Stabilization Fund right now, there's no guarantee that any money will go into it in a particular year. So again, it's built up from surpluses because we budget conservatively, but it's not like we say we're gonna budget $2 million conservatively, we just, we look at history and we try to make sure that we don't come up short on revenues. And every year that surplus comes from a different place. So it's not like there's one place every year where that's where the money at the end of the year becomes available, it really varies year to year. So I don't think there's, we can look at the history and say on average, this is how much we've had left over, but I can't say specifically, we're gonna put away this much each year because it's not like we intentionally budget to have a surplus, if that makes sense. And is this something that's taken up in JCPC as well? The large projects are not- No, I mean, just in terms of, I guess it could come up in JCPC about whether, about how the funds are replenished. The way it comes up in JCPC is that, and this is part of the four options is that when we do get the debt from the DPW and the library and potentially the fire station, depending on how the projects move forward, it impacts how much money we have available for other projects, for the regular year to year capital needs of the town. So we have put that in the preliminary capital improvement plan that we've presented to JCPC. We factored in the impacts of those projects so that the committee can see how much is left over and whether there's a deficit in a particular year because of the debt from the building projects. Jennifer, did you have a follow up? No, I guess so that what I'm hearing is that we, there's not, there is not a ballpark of what we can expect to be replenishing the fund. That is correct. And again, I'll just clarify. When we look back on average is about one and a half to $2 million a year. When you look back 12 years or so, some years much higher, some years lower, but just on average. So then we might, if we did take $5 million and we continued the average of the last 10 to 12 years, then that money would probably be replenished. The five million, are we talking? Yes. The additional five million or the initial five million? The five million that wouldn't be replenished with the energy, you know, tax credits. Sean, if I'm correct, however, the number that we're presently using for a fire station is 20 million. Yeah, the goal is to get to 20 million for the fire station. So if you take all of the 10 million, it'll take approximately 15. Well, but five million we're saying we'll be, we're risking, we're risking, right? Five. So if right now, let's just say we have 10 million, okay? We're saying we wanna put five million at risk because we think we might be able to get some federal dollars back, okay? Or other money. But now there's a question of another five million. So at that point, we have wiped out the fund. We might get five million back that we're taking a risk on, but if we don't get the other five million, we don't see any place we're gonna get it. We still need 15 million more to build a fire station. Yes, I understand. I think Alicia, I don't know if she had given it to Athena, had another graft that was being used at the finance committee. There is a graft that shows you, when shown on average, there were some years we didn't put anything in. There is a graft that shows exactly how this has accumulated over the last 20 years for a while we weren't putting anything in. So a graph I had seen was, Alicia, can I just ask, do you have it or is that something you were gonna hope show tonight? Yeah, I have it. I'm not sure if it's possible to show but I was definitely going to speak to it if I have an opportunity to. Could you? You are now next in the queue. Do you wanna send that graph to Athena? Yeah, sure. Give me just a couple of seconds. I don't know. Andy has one in his report. I mean, in the finance committee report. Is it the finance committee report, Alicia? There is a question. Alicia, is it the finance committee report? I, no, no. No, it's not. Hold on, I'm sending it to Athena now. Okay, I sent that to Athena. Is it okay if I talk? Yeah, let's see the graph first and then go on, okay? Do you know? Athena, the graph is on the last page of the document that I sent to you. And if you can pull up the first of the two graphs. And where is the source for these graphs? The town website. Okay. So is it okay if I talk now? Go ahead. Okay, so I just wanted to really quickly, well, it's not as quick, but I'm gonna give a presentation as to why I was requesting the 10 million of capital reserves. And I also just wanna make it very clear that at this point, I'm not hoping for an additional 10, but an additional five so that the total is 10. So the three reasons why I am requesting 10 million total of the capital reserves to be used for the school building project. The first reason is that we have sufficient reserves. Current total reserves are approximately 24 million, including almost 10 million in the new capital reserve account. Using 10 million would still leave 14 million in reserves or 16% of operating revenues, which keeps us within our targeted range. So that keeps our AA rating and even keeps us higher than neighboring towns who have between four and 9% with an AA rating. If we are looking at our capital spending plan that Sean presented to us, we are not anticipating the next capital project to come forward for a few years. The capital reserves should increase again before the next project is ready for construction. The second reason is that it would provide significant relief for individuals and families. Lowering the debt exclusion override from 55 million to 45 million represents an 18% lower impact to individuals and families. 40 million would be 27% less. That is substantial to our residents, particularly those least able to afford this and other tax increases and other upcoming fee increases. This would be about 90 to $135 per year, which pays for a lot of necessary items for people who are not wealthy. We also need to remember that the tax increase for the school project is in addition to the usual 2.5% annual increase plus higher water, sewer and electric rates. According to the 2019 American Community Survey, there are around 2,139 families in Amherst who live below the poverty line. That is 10% of all families and the rate is even higher for families who are single female head of household at 17%, multiracial families at 15% and black families at 21%. I have heard this project be touted as a social justice project because of the high percentage of minority and low income youth that are enrolled in our school system. According to Desi in this current school year, that is 37% of our elementary school students that come from low income families. We are discussing the funding of a school building for an estimated 575 students where a large portion of those children live in poverty. And I just wanna talk about what that means for a minute. By definition, poverty is not having enough money to meet basic needs, including food, clothing and shelter. And so by definition, 30% of the youth in this community on a daily basis do not have access to enough money to pay for food, clothing and shelter. And a majority of these students are on free and reduced lunch programs, meaning there are caretakers in this town who cannot feed their families on a regular basis. And we are here as elected officials representing the needs of our community in discussion to bring forward a project that will raise taxes beyond the regular 2% for the next 30 years as if it is an insignificant small task. Maybe for those who have enough privilege to measure the increase in an absence of a morning coffee or latte, but that is not the reality for many residents. Without a substantial amount of relief for these residents, this is not a social justice project. And so let's not forget that social justice doesn't solely encompass education and the physical spaces in which students are educated, but it's also about economic equity and its accessibility. I have lived in Amherst since 1993 and I have seen low income families come and go over the years due to expenses in this town mostly related to housing and housing instability. And so I wonder who are we really building this school for? These are the same economic disparities and discriminatory practices that have been causing our enrollment to find over the years. The third reason is that the reserves were built for this purpose. And so I know we have been talking about using the capital reserves for the fire station. And I want to be very clear that I am fully in support of the fire station and the DPW projects and moving those forward, but the reserves in my understanding were built for all of the capital projects. And this town has been building these reserves for years with the purpose of using them on all of the major capital projects. And it's time to take up on that promise. The school is the only project that will be ready for these funds right now. And this project and the residents in our community are very deserving of this initiative. Our town urgently needs a new elementary school building and our residents need to be able to continue to live in this town. And so I presented this to the finance but now to you all today in hopes that our town leadership will make this commitment to show up for our entire community. And so that is how I presented it at finance. And so I didn't know if that was helpful and you got to answering your questions about why I was considering this, but also this was the chart that I referenced to show that it looks like in the past five years since 2017, our total reserves have almost doubled. And so that I know that that's not our current plan, but that if we are serious about providing support and relief to the residents in this town and we're serious about supporting the students who will attend the school that we're talking about building that we can think or come up with a new plan, a plan that will both allow our town to move forward with the fire station and DPW and will allow our most vulnerable residents to continue to live here. Alicia, is there anything else you'd like to add? Not unless anyone has any specific questions for me. Thank you, Lynn. I'm going to pass for the moment, Andy. Yeah, a couple of things. One is that when the plan was originally developed for the four buildings, there was no thought that we would be able to consider building any building at all in cash. They were all going to be funded in some manner and other by debt. And with the idea that one being the school would be put on debt exclusion and the others would be absorbed within the budget. The purpose of the building this stabilization fund at that time, which was just at that point a single stabilization fund was conceived of because it was recognized. And you have to go back and look at some of the graphs that describe the whole project plan. But there were some years that the payment of all of the bonds was going to force us to exceed the 10.5% goal or 10% goal at that time or capital and in order to not take away from other capital needs, including roads, road maintenance and sidewalk maintenance that we needed to, we would need to use stabilization funds to pay the excess amount that was gonna probably be debt payments above that would force us above the line of the 10 to 10 and a half percent. The other thing that I just wanted to point out is that one consequence that we know is there is even before this current crisis where there's been really huge inflation and construction costs, there always has been annual inflation and construction costs. And used to be, you'd figure three and a half, 4% per year that construction costs would increase if you delay building just because of what was happening in the natural scheme of things. So even under the best of circumstances we're talking about for buildings are going to increase and that is something that the finance committee is gonna have to discuss tomorrow. So I just wanted to add those factual pieces to know that this is a complex problem and we will be talking about it tomorrow and trying to make better sense in organization of it. Okay. Kathy? I'm wondering hearing this discussion, whether we need to have a meeting of the whole to focus on this. And I know we can't do that tomorrow because we didn't post it that way because I think there's a lot of information people need to have and we're touching on it with terrific questions. So one question was about what is JCPC looking at? We're looking at a million and a half deficit starting a year from now when the DPW building starts to hit us. So what Andy just talked about is one of the functions of the reserves is we can draw on them. We don't have another source and when you see that accumulation it's only recently been accumulating that rapidly and in part that's because we've been so tight on operating budgets. So that's the other side of this equation. We can't, we already went up to 10 and a half. We can't squeeze operating budgets anymore. So we are faced unfortunately with one of the worst sources in my opinion of financing public services and it's called a property tax. So that is the box we're in on this. But Lynn, I'm just looking for, these are great questions and I feel like we need to provide everyone with a bit more information. I just did a quick look at the difference between a double A or a triple A bond and a lesser rating is at least a half a percent. So if you lose your rating you're gonna go up on your debt payments and whatever you think. And so the debt we're financing is gonna be more expensive. So these are not independent. They are interactive. So I think it would be just good to have a better foundation on how did we even build up these reserves? What are the consequences of depleting them when we have, as Pat said, DVW is falling down. I mean, we are going to need to do that project. So we just need to come back to that discussion and I'm looking for a way to do it without leaving things in the air as much as I feel like they are. Cause just coming to finance doesn't feel like the right way of doing this. Clearly we cannot call a committee of the whole for tomorrow for finance because we need 48 hours. The two options I would present to the council. One is that we actually hold a special meeting only on this topic on Monday night, the 27th. And the other option is that we make the meeting or we hold a finance committee meeting on the 28th and make it a committee of the whole. Those are the two options I would present the council with. Pam, you have your hand up. Yeah, to that effect. I was going to ask what is the timeframe that this particular wording, this particular motion needs to be addressed. And if we can, if we can put it off for the evening and put it off for FinCom for tomorrow and not discuss it there, you just answered my question. Sean, Paul, do you want to discuss the timeframe? Sure. So we have put in our schedule and we talked with the MSB about it, that there would be a vote on April 3rd. If we're going to change that, we need to communicate with them. So I think the goal was to have an action by the town council with a plan before the debt exclusion, people start voting on the debt exclusion, which will be happening in April. You know, I think that it's worth talking about it at the finance committee tomorrow, but I think it would be wise for the council. Ultimately, this body has to make that decision and you will have the advice of the finance committee, but you also have your own council, you know, your own considerations that you want to bring to the table. These are all really good and competing goods that we're comparing. It's a dollar going to tax relief or to the fire station or to DPWR. It's the same dollar. Unfortunately, you are in a position where you have to make the decision on where that dollar is going to go to. And having, you know, we've tried to put together a plan that addresses this and addresses all four of the capital projects comprehensively. So, but I think you're having exactly the right, a very difficult discussion. So I'm really valid points all around. So I think shooting for a separate meeting that where you would just talk about this and there's ample notice to the public. I would not take away the opportunity for the finance committee to discuss this tomorrow. And we'll try to get as much information as we can to the finance committee and then you will have that in advance of whenever you decide to meet and discuss this. Thank you. Man, did you have your hand up? I hesitate to suggest this, but we do have a retreat on Saturday and maybe a portion of that instead of council priorities for the year could instead be done to this if we didn't want to add an extra meeting next week. It's a tough decision. I'm seeing Alicia, you have your hand up. Did you still want to speak at this point? I think my hand was just still up, but I support having another time to discuss this with the council. I think either adding another day or Mandy Jo's suggestion is fine with me. But I would like to think of it as an opportunity for us to put our heads together as councillors and with the advice from the finance committee and with hopefully Sean and Paul will be there to see if we can find a new way to fund the projects that also supports the residents in this town and not for a meeting for people to tell us why the plan is the way it is. Because I think we're aware of what the plan is and we're aware of the situation that it puts us in. And I think the question is now, is there another way or is there really not another way? Because in my experience, there's never usually just one way to do anything. And so that's something I would like to explore when we bring up this conversation again. Okay. Dorothy? I have a question. It seems like a good idea to discuss this at the retreat, but then I say, well, although it is an open meeting and public can't attend, they're not likely to in numbers. Is this topic something we need to do with more access from the public? And that means the evening meeting you suggested as opposed to the two o'clock finance committee meeting. So I'm asking a question as to what is possible. And then there's a second question. If a debt exclusion amount is approved and there's came to be a reason, I'm not saying what, but if there can be a reason that you didn't need to borrow all of that, you don't have to borrow the full amount you've okayed. Is that right? That is correct. So we could authorize more knowing that we're still hoping additional money from the state, various things that we would not have to borrow that much. Right. That is correct. Thank you, Sean. Anything else you wanna add to that, Sean? No, even like if construction bids come in lower, right now it's all based on a budget, but if construction bids came in lower, right now we have a project contingency with about $5 million or four plus million dollars. If we didn't use all that contingency, for example, those are all things that could reduce the amount that we have to actually borrow. Thank you. Pat, you have your hand up. Thank you. I know I have something on Monday that I already planned. I can't remember what it is, but I would prefer a meeting on the 27th. I think finance does need to talk about this tomorrow. I'm very interested in hearing from the resident members of that committee. I would like us to meet on February 27th. Felony? I would also like to have the finance committee meeting still meet and I'll try to watch. And again, when we do discuss this as a council, I again really want us to, well, firstly, thanks, Alicia, for again bringing the issue of the unaffordableity and the living conditions of so many people in our town. I think we need to keep that front and center in all our conversations. So thank you for that. And then coming back to this particular conversation about the school, again, in my mind, this is solving for white people are moving out because of high property taxes and making the school building the sort of almost part of the problem or the solution is a very myopic look at what's happening. Why people, why our property taxes have been high has so many different causes for it, including some of the zoning that requirements and the large house plot sizes. And these are all values for our town. And I mean, I think as a council, we need to have those tough conversations that if we are talking about having more affordable housing and having more families live here, we have to consider all of these pieces and not it can't be just about, do we take $10 million from the reserves or the building or not? That is not solving for the fundamental problem in our town right now. So whenever we have that council, I would encourage us to think about all these other ways, how we can, what is the amount of development we can do to offset like focused development? And again, I'm not pushing for this and that. I'm saying let's in a very intentional way, think about what are the ways we can and where can we do that? That's one part of this conversation. And if there are any other causes and conditions for our property taxes for being high, the cause and conditions for families leaving this town, let's address those causes and conditions, look at those and then try to address them, but not with just this one issue, but not with this one solution. Sean, you have your hand up. Pat can go first. Pat. Sean, go ahead. Well, I was trying to recap the conversation, but I'll go since you. That's fine, that's fine. So I just wanted to say sometimes in these conversations about how much reserves to use, I think we lose sight that the most important thing for all four building projects is for the school project to move forward. And I just want to make sure everyone kind of has that centering that if the school project doesn't move forward, then all the projects are, again, we're back to square one with what do we do to just maintain these buildings. So again, I know that doesn't make your decision any easier, but that is the most, the decision that's coming up most in the near future is that critical decision and make sure this project moves forward. Pat, you have your hand up and then Matt Holloway. Okay, Pat. Matt. I'm sorry, I think I did say Pat. Matt, please go ahead. I think Pat was first. No, she gave you the, she wanted you to go ahead. Got it, thank you. Yeah, thank you everybody. And I know we'll discuss tomorrow in finance and I just want to extend my appreciation to this group for the deliberation and thought and genuine concern about this town as a place for young families and families with young children to live. It's something that as you may know, I proposed some notes for the town manager's goal to support making sure that the town is, a welcoming place for young families to live. I agree very much that being the top four or five in the state for property tax rates is problematic for us. And I think this is a really important discussion. That being said, I do have a basic understanding of what the plan is with these capital reserves and the importance of being able to build a fire station, a DPW can't be understated. I do want my kids to have a new elementary school but it's just as important, if not more so that they have a functioning fire department and that the roads are drivable. And I think that there's been just years and years of incredibly hard work to set up the capital reserves the way that they sit right now. And I would not want to jeopardize that on this issue. I agree wholeheartedly that our tax rate is too high. However, I don't think that this is the issue that creates that problem. And the 5 million that's been moved over from capital reserves, I think is an excellent gesture towards reducing the impact of this project. The additional 5 million for somebody who owns a house valued at about 450,000, which is not a, and the average homeowner would save an additional, I believe it's $45 a year. So the impact, the relief that a homeowner gets out of additional funds taken from capital really needs to be weighed against the impact of losing that flexibility and that spending power when it comes to having the capital reserves available. So I think we're in a really good place with this plan for this school vote now. And I just, I want to appreciate everybody for the thought that's gone into it. And I do think that we are going to be able to do this and also be able to build a fire station, which we need. Thank you. Okay. Pat. I'd like to make a motion that the council meet on February 27th at six o'clock, 6.30. Is there a second? Shane seconds. Either further discussion. March. It's March 27th. What can I say? March. March 27th at 6.30. I think you meant, you meant March. I know what day you meant, so I'm seconding that one. Alicia. I just have a question. So does that, that doesn't affect anything in terms of the process here tonight. This document itself will still get automatically referred to finance for tomorrow or does having a meeting on the 27th, does that change anything at all? That does not change anything. It will still be automatically referred. However, the finance committee may decide that they want to wait until after the meeting on the 27th, maybe perhaps meeting on the 28th to take into consideration all of the discussion on the 27th. So there would possibly not be a recommendation coming out of finance until after the 27th. Does that help you, Alicia? Yeah, so we would just discuss it more than one time. Yes. Okay, thank you. Okay, the motion's been made and seconded that we meet on the 27th at 6.30. I would like to be able to poll the council but I can't do that publicly, I don't think. Michelle. Will this proposed meeting have public comment or will this be a special meeting that does not include public comment? I think that what I've been hearing is first and foremost we want to make sure that the public finds a convenient time to attend. And second of all, it does seem to me that we would have a period of public comment. Okay. The motion's been made and seconded. I'm going to move to a vote. Hattie Angelis. Aye. Anna Devlin-Gothier. Aye. Lynn Griesmer is an aye. Mandy Jo Hanneke. Aye. Anika Lopes. Aye. Michelle Miller. Aye. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Maroney. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Dr. Steinberg. Aye. Jennifer Taub. Yes. Alisha Walker. Yes. Michelle Miller. I'm sorry. Shalini Balmilton. Yes. It's unanimous. We are now officially calling a meeting for the 27th of March at 6.30 and while it will be a special town council meeting with only one agenda item unless some emergency arises. Thank you. It will have general public comment at one point during the meeting. Okay. We're going to take a break. Yes. I'm sorry. Oh, we have to adjourn the meeting. I guess one question that I need to adjourn the question is whether the 27th is going to be a joint meeting with finance committee so that our resident members know and then I want to adjourn the meeting. My answer is yes. Okay. So I'm going to adjourn the finance committee meeting and thank our resident members for joining us tonight. Thank you. And thank you. And we are going to take a break. We'll take a 10 minute break. We're going to come back and at that point we're going to work on proposed water and sewer bylaws. Please turn your videos off. Turn your sound off. And when you come back, turn your video back on. Thank you. Three minute morning, one minute morning. Yes. No, no, we're being fed. I have to make, thank you for reminding me. Thank you. All right, ladies and gentlemen, please sit down. Andy. All right, please turn your video back on if you're back here. Michelle, are you back yet? Alicia, are you back? Yes, I am. Thank you. And Michelle, I'm waiting to see if you're back. All right. So our next agenda item is the infamous and long-standing project on the water and sewer bylaws and regulations. This is a first reading. We have with us tonight, Guilford-Moring and Amy Rizaki, who has been the hard-working person on this project from day one. So with that, I'm just going to again stress this is a first reading for both. The second reading, unless we need to change it for some reason, will come up on April 3rd. I'm gonna first ask for Anika Lopes. We're gonna take water and sewer first, then we'll come back and we'll do the... Oh, I'm sorry. We're gonna take the water and sewer bylaws first and then we're gonna take the water and sewer regulations. So TSO, Anika and Anna. I'm asking if you would like to make a brief report on the bylaws. Thank you for recognizing me, Leonard. I'm going to hand this over to lead sponsor Anna. Okay. Sorry, I didn't know that I was to prep something, but I can give you a rundown. The bylaw for water and sewer, they're pretty basic, right? They're really kind of enabling the regulations. And so the bylaw establishes the procedure for how we adopt and enforce the regulations. And so it retains us as the sewer commission, but basically is talking about how the town manager can also propose amendments to the regulations, both for water and sewer. There's not a ton to say about them, because honestly, they're pretty standard and true with what other bylaws that govern regulations are. So I'm going to leave it there and I apologize for not having a more thorough presentation. As y'all know, I do love a slide deck. So I'm sorry, I didn't prep one for you today. It's perfectly fine. GOL, Pat. We discussed the current draft of the two towns, water and sewer regulations with Amy. And what was stated clearly was that they reflect the town's vote regarding ownership of service lines, sewer service lines to make the regulations accessible for residents and to support future actions that might alter the regulations, because basically they are the bylaws pretty much as they are now maintaining ownership as it is. But that will be looked at over time. Okay. Thank you. Guilford and Amy, specifically, are there other comments you would like to make before we go to council discussion? No, we're really just here to answer your questions. Okay. Are there any council questions or discussion about the water and sewer bylaws? Mandy Jo. Just one quick one. The bylaws require either publication of actual changes of the regulations or notification, publication of notification of changes of the regulations, trying to save space in the publication and cost publication amount. But the regulations now will include an appendix A rate sheet. And so my question is, does that mean every year when we change and establish the water and sewer rates, we will need to pay for publication in the paper publishing the new rate sheet or notice of the rate sheet? And if that is the case, is there, do we want to pull the rate sheet off of the technical regulations and have it as a separate document? Good question. Amy, do you want to speak to that? I can, although I don't know if Paul wants to weigh in on any part of this. I will say that the requirement to fully publish whatever aspect you have changed is a state law, but it's only for sewer and not for water. And it's why that's the one place where there's a difference between the water by-law and the sewer by-law is recognizing that for the water we're saying, hey, we're gonna, as good practice, we're gonna publish something that says, hey, we've made a major change, you can find what that change is by going to town hall or accessing the website or whatever. The sewer one, it ties our hands a little bit that anytime you change the regulation, you have to at least publish what that change was. And it's why, rather than having all of the rates peppered throughout the rags, we pulled them out and put them on one sheet. So it's much more consolidated and just that one sheet can be updated every year. But certainly open to if there's another way to do that, that makes it an easier process every year. Thank you for the question. Dorothy. I have a question for Guilford. I'm not gonna push for the town taking over the pipes and public property until the two year, I believe it says two years time. But let's just say that we did vote that in two years with the current state of the DPW building, would that cause a problem in the town taking over some of that? That's an interesting question. Would it cause a problem is taking over? I mean, us not having a facility to work out of it would cause a problem. If we don't have access to some of the records we have and some of the equipment is as hard to get to because we don't have a building that could cause a problem. So I guess that's a yes and a no and the answer there. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Pam Rooney. I'm gonna go back to the fees question. And I'm looking at Mandy Jo because we talked about this similarly with rental permitting that perhaps basic rates are established by the council with the opportunity to update or amend or raise or lower fees in the future, but not through council action, but I believe town manager action. Would they still need to be publicized? I don't know. First of all, the town council is, we are the water and sewer commissioners, okay? And we set water and sewer rates every year. So that's something that will be coming up in the spring. It's spring is here. I know as of for something this afternoon. So yes, it'll be coming up soon, but that's something we always do. Is there other comments people wanna make to that? Shallani? So the last discussion we had, there was a suggestion and I don't mean to put you on the spot, but I think I heard that you were gonna propose a motion that would include the town manager doing the evaluation and is that happening? And is that gonna be part of the motion? Anna, this is the first reading. So it would be next time. It won't be part of the motion to approve the sewer regulations or the bylaw, water or sewer regulations nor bylaws. It will be a separate motion entirely. And it would be brought forward at the second reading of this, but it's not attached to these at all. Thank you. Someone is, you are looking into that. Or I'm proposing. I'm writing it. Yeah, okay, perfect. Thank you. Thank you. Are there other questions or comments about the bylaws? Okay, given that, I'm gonna move on to the proposed water and sewer regulations. Is there anything else that Anika or Anna would like to add to that from TSL? No, I'm, oh, sorry, Anika, do you wanna go? Please, Anika, are you yielding to Anna? Yes, Anna has been with us from day one as well. Thank you, Anna and Amy. So yeah, again, really, really Amy here, really not me. So the changes that you see here reflect the decision of the council at the last meeting to not shift ownership at all. And so you'll see some language that references that. Other than that, it's really about bringing these up to date. If you remember, these had not been brought up to date in a really long time. Some of the language had shifted for industry terms. There are also things that DPW needs to do, such as bringing it, that DPW does now. So you'll notice, for example, on page 15, they talk about radio readers and technology that was not there, was not being brought in at the rate with which we're bringing it in now. So really what you're looking at, and Amy, correct me if I'm missing anything big here, but really what you're looking at is bringing this into our present day reality and reflecting the decisions that the council made last time regarding ownership. And I'll turn it to Amy if there's anything else that she'd like to add. Amy? Yeah, I think the only thing to add is that, while we understand that the town council last time decided on the ownership issue for now, you'll notice that there's a couple of things that we baked in there that means that if the ownership does change in two years or at some point in the future, it's gonna be an easier transition. So stuff like on sewer lines, anytime somebody does a repair on the sewer line, we'll have them put a clean out in, because that's what we're gonna want if there's a split ownership. And so we baked that into the regs now, just in preparation for a future changeover, if and when that happens. And so both on the water and sewer side, there's language that just sets us up for an easier transition in the future. Andy Finance Committee did discuss this mostly in relationship to the rates. Is there anything you want to weigh in on now from the Finance Committee standpoint? No, I don't think that there's anything significant that hasn't previously been discussed at the prior meeting. We really were not trying to look at the entire regulation, but only look at the regulations for any points where there might be cost implications and to understand the cost implications and how those costs are gonna be covered. And I think that's the narrow piece that's already been substantially discussed at previous meeting. Thank you. Pat, GOL? GOL feels like the regulations are clear, consistent and can be enforced. And most, I think what Amy is saying is really making them accessible to residents who's been critical and part of why we recommend them. Okay. Are there any, Amy or Guilford, anything else you wanna add? Dorothy? I just wanna applaud them for the great work they've done and for going beyond what we discussed in TSO and saying, well, if this did come about, what would be something that we could do to get ready? I just think that's great and it represents really high level work. So, applause. Thank you. Applause all the way around for all of the work that's gone into this. Amy, Guilford and TSO and to some extent Finance and Jewel, but really TSO is the committee that has really struggled through this. And Amy, thank you for all the experience and expertise you've brought to this. Hopefully we'll have a vote on the third or the following meeting and move forward. Okay. Thanks, Dora. Thank you so much. All right. They're on the next one, which is the proposed surveillance use policy police department in cruiser video in audio. After this was put on the agenda today, a question was raised by Mandy Johanke with regard to some questions that she had asked. And so I'm going to open the floor to see if there's any other questions people have, but in essence, we're going to ask the TSO, go back and take this back on and work at answering those questions with the chief of police, which is why we did not have him here today. Anika. Thank you. So I just, I wanted to acknowledge that there were, there was a request for council questions that had gone in that week. And during our meeting, I had a complete brain freeze as to Mandy's questions that were sent in earlier. So I did want to acknowledge that and also, you know, offer that again, if there are any other questions that counselors have, we did not get any last time. But if there are, please send them in as well. And this has been put on our agenda for this Thursday, the 23rd. Okay. And let me just say that, given the length of the agenda that we're anticipating on the 3rd of April, if you don't come back until the 24th of April, it won't be the worst thing in the world. It'll help the length of the council meeting. Okay. Got it. Trying to look, is there, are there any other counselors who have questions that they'd like to raise now with regard to this so that when TSO takes it back, you've raised those issues. And if you don't think of it now, but you think of it later, please let Anika know. Okay. The next, I'm gonna turn to Anna. It's an authorization for the president to sign a letter regarding the East West Rail Commission. And it's in preparation for testimony this coming week. Anna? Yep. So it's tomorrow. All right. So I wanted to preface this because I think it's pretty easy for us to see something that says a hearing on West East Rail or East West Rail and get really excited and just wanna say yay trains because yay trains. But I wanna contextualize what this hearing is about. The hearing is of a commission that was established in 2022, I believe. And they are doing six public meetings. And what this commission is trying to do in these hearings is investigate and receive public testimony concerning potential public entities with the ability to design, permit, construct, operate and maintain passenger rail service proposals from the East West passenger rail study final report. So this is not a hearing where we go in and say we want trains, we want trains. We can absolutely include that but it's really about what do we want to see as a town from the people who are going to be governing this rail system. So my letter is in that vein and I wanted to contextualize because I think otherwise it might be a little confusing why it's not just yay trains. So the letter, the way that I framed it if you had a chance to read it is really saying that while we don't have necessarily a specific operator that we would like to see we don't have a specific governing body we'd like to see responsible. These are the things that we want a governing body to pay attention to as they're that we want this commission to be paying attention to as they're deciding which governing body. And these are the things that we want the governing body to pay attention to as they're moving forward. So I'm happy to run through this a little bit more in detail if folks want or answer questions, whatever would be more helpful. But just to give you kind of the quick outline of it the areas of focus included regional equity equity and governance. So basically ensuring that Western Massachusetts and the four Western Massachusetts counties are represented on any governing board infrastructure process. So not giving any sort of excuse that this could start in Boston and then run out of steam there's no pun intended there but really saying that it would start in Western mass and then meet up with Boston it needs to go in that direction in terms of infrastructure development. Stops need to be accessible they can't be so spread out. There's a balance between speed and number of stops but what we don't wanna do is create a real system that goes through people's backyards but they can't really access it. So we wanna make sure that the governing body is paying attention to equitable distribution of stops. Last mile transportation and regional transit. So we know that there probably won't be based on all the maps there probably won't be a stop that goes right to Amherst but there are stops in Greenfield, Northampton, et cetera. And so we'd like to see a governing body partner with our regional transit authorities or consider what's called last mile transportation in their plans. We know that a major user of rail for Amherst would be students coming to campus or going home. And so ensuring that they are able to get that last few miles, excuse me, will be key. So really ensuring that regional transit authorities are brought into that conversation as well. Pricing, so there are some rail operators that are not legally allowed to offer discounts to different groups. And so one of the things that I believe is important to Amherst is consideration for ability to pay and offering discounted tickets to certain groups for example, possibly a student rate for a ticket. And then funding, so just once again, recognizing that Amherst had the largest support for the fair share amendments statewide at nearly 85%. And that of the fair share amendments, some of that was supposed to go to transportation and for communities in Western Mass that really brought the fair share amendment to fruition or into being. We don't wanna see all that transportation funding going to Boston. We need to see it supporting transportation out west as well. And this would be an appropriate avenue for that. So those are kind of the quick, that's the really quick rundown. I go into more detail in the letter, but I'm happy to take any questions folks have. And the goal tonight is to authorize Lynn to sign this letter and I will be bringing it to the hearing tomorrow if we approve that. Thank you. Okay. Are there questions? Yes, Mandy, Jeff. I thought it was really well written. But one thing struck me on the last mile transportation paragraph, feel free to change it or not was the lack of a mention of a Palmer to Amherst regional transit. Yeah, I can explain why. Last mile, because that would, if there's not a connection there, you add hours to getting to Northampton to do the last mile connection if you're coming from Boston. I believe that that is dependent on whether they'd go with the Southern route that they're talking about or the route to route. And so, because they haven't decided that yet and I didn't necessarily think we had a stake in it. Maybe we do, but it's valid and I can add in. I could add in. So maybe that or Athol or Orange or wherever the Northern one. Right. Yeah. Something like that. I know I figured Northampton was the closest stop to us and I think that's the only one I included. Okay. I can try to play with that wording. I think we would have to edit it tonight though. How much of a hill do you want to die on for that? Like I said, it was just something that struck me. I don't necessarily need it. I didn't mean that flippantly. I don't necessarily need it changed, but recognizing that. I think that's valid. I think it would be more used if you could do it from that last mile, not having to go into Springfield to then go up to Northampton and then over. Yeah. So I think I guess I'm hoping that it's kind of covered in the idea of regional transit authorities being involved and then kind of considering that last mile in terms of big populations. But let me reread and think about that for a second. Thank you. And my only comment is that under the funding paragraph, which is the second last paragraph, I believe, after it says utilize for last mile transportation, I'd like you to ask if you would insert the words including repair and replacement of roads because while we go a little bit off script there anyway, I think what the residents of Amherst in addition wanting to see PVTA, they want to see roads. I hear that I'm uncomfortable adding it given the topic of the actual hearing and that it's really about the rail authority and that we're already kind of stretching when we talk about bringing in last mile transit. But if that's what the council would like to add, then we can add it. Okay. Are there any other comments? Seeing none, I'm sorry, Pam, go ahead. If the paragraph about the transit authorities, you could say such as Northampton and that opens the opportunity for other opportunities such as Palmer. Okay, so I'm looking at the, yeah, thank you, Athena. So if I go to the sentence that says for Amherst comma, so fourth line down, it would say including last mile transit from stops such as Northampton. Not there. Not there, Athena, sorry. Go down, yep, from stops such as Northampton. Would that be, feel like it covers it. I also want to give a shout out to Pam Rooney who helped me and give a second set of eyes on this. Sorry, I meant to say that at the beginning. Thank you. Okay, does that, okay. Anything else? Did you want in Palmer in that sentence? I mean, we could put Palmer or Orange or Greenfield even if you don't want to put, you know, such as Northampton, Greenfield or Palmer, you know, if we wanted to be inclusive. Yeah, I'm trying to think if those are the three closest. I don't know whether Athol's probably, I don't know whether they're looking at Athol or Orange or, I mean, at least Greenfield has bus connection to us, right? I would say, I'd say it's such as Northampton or Greenfield if that's okay. And then we're not kind of getting into advocating for a Northern route or Southern route. Are there any other comments, Michelle? I have just a, I think it's picky. It's a GOL thing. Under stops, it, so stops. The if is not capitalized and also... Thank you. Is that a question? So if we create high-speed rail, that only is if you stop, are we? It is a question. It should be a question, Mark. You're totally right. Thank you. I think I would be able to help me with those too. Where are you at? We're under stops. It's up above. It's the top of the second page. And yeah, Michelle appropriately pointed out the I should be capitalized and then that should be a question, Mark, at the end of the first sentence. Thank you. Okay, Pam, you have your hand up again. No, Kathy. I just want to say, I think this is great, Anna. So thank you for doing it. And at some point, it might be nice to just send the commission a little bit of history of what the tracks we've torn up over the years that have isolated us. She used to be able to get to Bradley by train. And some people used to be able to get from Michigan to North Hampton by train. I mean, it just pointing out that there was the beginning of regional rail. So I think just pointing out that it's bringing back and improving access would be good. But I don't want you to change the letter. I'm just saying there's some background stuff that might be useful to have if you keep looking on this. And I will say that the commission accepts testimony from anyone. So folks can, as I wanted, I thought it would be strong for us to send something as a council. And you all as individuals are welcome to also submit your own testimony via email, via Zoom tomorrow or in person tomorrow. And it is tomorrow at the North Hampton Senior Center. And I don't want to get it wrong. So I'm going to make sure I look at my calendar at one o'clock at the North Hampton Senior Center. So, but the commission is accepting testimony via email as well. So if you can't do that one, yeah. And then there's another one in Springfield and later on, I think. Are there any other questions or comments? Then the motion is to authorize the president to sign the letter to the Western Massachusetts Passenger Rail Commission regarding East West Rail on behalf of the town council. Is there a second? Second, Rooney. And any other comments or questions? Seeing none, I'm going to start with Anna Devlin-Gothier. Aye. Lynn Griespers and I made to Johannike. Aye. Anika Lopes. Aye. Michelle Miller. Aye. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Rooney. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Aye. Jennifer Taub. Yes. Alicia Walker. Yes. Shalene Balmone. Yes. Pat D'Angelo's. Aye. It's unanimous. Okay. The next item on the agenda is a referral of the proposed flag policy to the GOL. So let me start with a motion and then see if we have other things we'd like them to consider. To refer the proposed flag policy to the governance organization and legislation committee where the report to the town council on clarity, consistency and actionability. Actionability. Okay. By May 1st, 2023. Is there a second? Okay. So discussion and comments at this point. Mandy Jo. I'm gonna make a motion to amend it. Move to amend to add the phrase and a substantive recommendation after the word actionability. Is that amendment need a second? Is there a second to that? Second Devlin-Gothier. Okay. Okay. I'm willing to speak to that if. Please go ahead. Without the addition of that wording, GOL cannot talk about the substance of this policy at all. And we're not sending it to any other committee. It makes sense to give GOL the authority to talk about the substance. Got it. Thank you. Kathy. Yeah. I have a question for GOL to consider when they're looking this polls memo Pamela Nolan memo was extremely thorough and there's a link to an Oregon model legislation. And in that they have a clause about excluding sort of restricting flags that would be for a particular religion. And it's, you'll see that we don't have that in ours. And I wasn't sure why it wasn't there, but I'm also not sure that it needs to be there. So it's just something to look at. And they had specific wording. If that was something we wanted to do because my understanding of all of this is it's also protective. It's saying when we can do certain things and also setting a policy on things we're not planning on doing. So it might be worth looking at. Okay. Dorothy. I just want to second what Kathy said. I mean, I do realize that there's rules about keeping church and state separate, but I just think it's a good idea to do that in order to be prepared for the future. Okay. Pam. We heard from a gentleman this evening. Let's see, what did he say? That, oh yeah, that could it come from a resident rather than from a counselor? I'm pretty comfortable keeping it that you have to talk to a counselor. You have to get it. You have to get some support on it. And I think that just it's not trying to be exclusive. It is trying to just make sure that it's just not every, could be leisure services play or play announcement or something like that. So I'm okay. Yeah. It's also consistent with our proclamations and resolutions policy. Andy? Yeah, I have a request to G.O.L. when it reviews that I was trying to go through and think about all of the flags that we have authorized to fly for any period of time and see if they were covered by section three paragraph one. And one that I'm uncertain about is Tibet because I'm not sure that Tibet is actually, you know, it would get controversial and to define that under any of those paragraphs. I'm not gonna get into the topic now because I think that's up to the committee, but I urge the committee to think through each of the flags that has flown and make sure that it is either not excluded or that there's a reason to exclude it. So thank you. Oh, Mandy Jo. Yeah, I just wanted to mention a few things even though I'll get to discuss this on G.O.L. I found that curious that the POWMIA flag was mentioned in the policy, but not the UN flag and we fly both of them right now. And so I didn't know if there was a reason for that. And then our current policy has basically been unless we adopt it through a proclamation or resolution we don't raise the flag. And so I was thinking about adding to the counselor thing through a proclamation or resolution so that we know how we propose it potentially, but G.O.L. can work on how we do that in terms of what our current practice is. I do appreciate the policy making it clear that we fly flags as a government speech because that's sort of been what the council has adopted through this. You have to have a proclamation that the council adopts to fly the flag. So I appreciated that choice over, I guess the other choice that was out there. Okay, Pam. And that goes to Andy's comment that the proclamation accompanied the Tibetan flag. Yep. Okay. Are there other comments or questions? Thank you. We're going to go ahead and vote on this referral. I'm going to begin the vote with... The first vote is on the amendment. I'm sorry. You're right. Is there any question about the amendment? The amendment is to include, after the words actionable and a substantive recommendation by May 1st, 2023. Okay. I'm going to take a vote on that. Griezmer's first, I. Haniki. I. Anika Lopes. I. Michelle Miller. I. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Rooney. I. Kathy Shane. Yes. Shalini Balm. Oh, I'm missing now. Hold on. I didn't finish the alphabet. Andy Steinberg. I. Jennifer Tob. Yes. Alicia Walker. Yes. Shalini Balm-Milm. Yes. I think I heard you. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Pat D'Angelo. I. I. Okay. And now we're going back to the motion that's been amended and is to refer the proposed flag policy to the governance organization and legislation committee with a report to the town council on clarity, consistency and actionability and a substantive recommendation by May 1st, 2023. Any further discussion or question about that? Seeing none. I'm going to move to Amanda Jo Haniki. I. Anika Lopes. I. Michelle Miller. I. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Rooney. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. I. Jennifer Tob. Yes. Alicia Walker. Yes. Shalini Balm-Milm. Yes. Pat D'Angelo. I. Anna Depplin-Goth here. I. And Lynn Griezmer is an I and that is unanimous. Okay. The last item under action items is the town meeting format. I'm going to call on Athena because she's been tracking this. At this point, the legislature has not voted on the wealth. The extension has not been signed by the governor. Go ahead. Correct. She's been voted by both the house and the Senate. They need to reconcile their two different bills and then. Right. Right. It's attached to the supplemental. And I'm hoping that if the supplemental for some reason gets stuck in conference, they split this off and do it separately. But at this point, we have to see where it comes through. Athena, do you want to go ahead with anything else on this? No, unless folks have questions. Okay. Are there questions? Okay. Then there's no action at this point that we take on that. The approval of, I'm sorry. There are no appointments tonight. So we're on to committee and liaison reports. Mandy Jo, CRC. CRC, I'm working on a report that I should have to Athena tomorrow on an action CRC took, but since it might relate to conversation at the retreat, I'm going to summarize it, which is CRC recommended that the council essentially rescind the vote that it took back in 2021 to direct some zoning priority. The town manager to have some zoning priorities worked on and it would be a recommendation to rescind those that basically are not done yet, except for the consultant money, use of the consultant money. So I'll have a report out tomorrow sort of describing that and all it's more of a cleanup. CRC will be continuing the discussion on zoning priorities, but we thought we'd clean this one up before we come back to the council with a potential discussion and recommendations on new zoning priorities for the council to consider. And we're still working on all the other referrals. Okay. Elementary school building committee, Kathy. Nothing new to report other than we are conducting a lot of meetings to talk about the school. We are expecting at some point, but it sounded like still for a few weeks, MSBA will be getting us back something in writing, but right now that it's been evenly verbal communication. So we are, all systems go in May 2nd, it's a pretty critical date at this point. Okay. Andy, you have two things specifically listed under, but in addition to that, anything with finance? The major role of the last finance committee meeting was that hasn't already been discussed tonight was the annual requirement that we serve as the audit committee. And we had two fairly complex reports. You've seen the reports, they're in your packet. We included the slides that were used with the presentation of one of them. Committee attempted to sort of simplify it in its committee report to help out because these are very complex reports. I think my one comment, and I'm just one other thing I wanna say, the comment is that we did not take any votes. And the fact of the matter is, is that once you hire an auditor to do your audit, their audit is the audit of the review and of the financial statements of the town. And this question comes up by one member or another every year and I keep coming back to the same problem. It doesn't make sense to have a motion to accept it because we don't have the power to not accept it. So it is what it is. And the other thing is, is the big apology to Anna because the template that got used and I didn't catch it is that it still was Michelle is member and not Anna who replaced her in January. So I'm sorry. It's okay. I know I was there. So that's all, that's all that matters. Thank you. No, Andy. So unless there any questions to follow up on the reporter about what we were looking at, that's it. Andy, the only thing I wanna add is that the audit was very clean audit and a real tribute to Sonia who came in for the meeting even though she retired the Saturday before to actually be there for the audit report. So they were both excellent reports and thanks. GOL, Pat. We're still working on the obstruction of public ways waiting for some information from the Tree Warden and DPW. Our primary goal has been to move through the rules of procedure and we've had some rocky shoals as you all know. I think the critical thing that's going on right now is that there has been a decision by the Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts. And it's, let me see if it was a March 7th decision concerning the constitutionality of a Southboro Mass Select Board policy addressing participation during public comment periods of its meetings. And the court concluded that the policy which sought to implement standards of civility for public comment periods violated article 16 and 19 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights. This case has important implications for public bodies and we are looking, Paul, to meet with KP Law and have them join us, which I know that, you know, to really go over what we can do and what we can't. We can set time limits on public comment although this will not happen. We can ask for peaceable actions but we really need to look at the language. What happened in Southboro was outrageous by a select person and I don't see the same thing happen but we need to respond to this decision. And so that's anything else from anybody else on GOL that they wanna add, okay. Okay, JCPC, Kathy. We will be meeting this Thursday to go over a draft report. We have finished meeting with all the departments and a big thanks as always to Sean and Paul who came in with some creative responses and very responsive responses to things we've been discussing to make it easier to reach an FY24 capital budget that makes sense to all of us. So there is a draft report we'll be reviewing and that I sent everyone today. I think whichever day we're on Monday, yep. And then where it goes, we are recommending making a recommendation to the town manager so the council will get a copy of that and I'll do a brief summary of what happened in the meeting but it's not gonna require any action other than you all will be able to see what's in the capital at least is coming out of our deliberations and then we'll be done. Okay, John's library, Anika. Yes, so the last meeting centered around interim location updates, schedule for the schematic design closeout and the milestone schedule was the bulk of that meeting. Not sure Paul, do you have anything you'd like to add? Just to add that there's gonna be a change over in the person representing the owner's project manager for the, for Colliers. So we met that new person. Yes. Yes, we did. Paul, is that something that Mass Board of Library commissioners has to approve? No, it's not. Okay, thanks. That came out of an earlier discussion today about the MSBA. Okay, TSO, Anika. Okay, so we touched on TSO our last meeting. We had a thorough discussion on the surveillance policy with Paul and Chief Livingstone, Psalms, Mandy's question. So we will be, they will be added back. Subject will be added back to this Thursday's meeting along with the continuation of the proposed amendments to the Bible and refuse collection and recyclable materials. We will have a presentation by the Zero Waste Amherst Group. And that is this Thursday, 23rd at 7 p.m. Okay, liaison reports. Jennifer. Yes, I wanted to give a brief report on the affordable housing trust just in relation to an email that all counselors receive from a member of the affordable housing trust, Ashley Jensen, requesting the opportunity to meet with the council to discuss how we could really increase production of affordable and attainable housing. And Lynn suggested that the appropriate place to begin that conversation would be in CRC since in part because CRC is taxed with developing strategies for implementing the comprehensive housing policy. So we have invited the co-chairs of the affordable housing trust to come to the next CRC meeting on March 30th. And Carol accepted, I think probably Carol and Erica will both be there. So we're very excited to begin that conversation. And then, so that would be initial conversation with the housing trust co-chairs. And maybe from there, it will be a meeting with the full CRC and all the members of the housing trust. And then we might, you know, we'll hopefully get to a conversation with the full council. I know that you all received that email. So I wanted to, you know, provide a follow-up that we're continuing following Ashley Jensen's initiating that conversation. Okay, Pat. Yes, I'm reporting on the Disability Access Advisory Committee. They've asked me to address an issue that's come up over a year ago. A member, Marty Smith, reviewed every signal light in town and evaluated how it was functioning. And there was a lot of problems. That information was shared with the DPW and nothing happened. And on February 17th, the Myra Ross and Marty Smith met with the town manager in the hopes of getting some information and some money to do a study to evaluate the lights. So I have been asked by the chair of the committee to read this. I just received meaning Myra a reply from the representative from Ocean State Signal, the distributor for Pallara accessible pedestrian signals for traffic lights. He said he has not yet heard from anyone in Amherst regarding DACA's request for an evaluation of the condition of the existing signals and an estimate for the necessary repairs. The cost of the evaluation is $2,000. The finance director informed me that there is substantially more than that available for this project. Please, please do what is necessary to move this forward. So I'm Myra Ross on the committee. Okay. Dorothy? Oops, yeah. I'm reporting on CSSJC and it's made very easy because after a long, very long meeting, the chairs put together a letter to the town manager and basically it was sufficient funding for some of the new initiatives to be successful. For example, more hours for Cress, which seems to be doing a great job and some administrative help for the DEI department, which has a big task ahead of them. Support for funding for the BIPOC use empowerment center and I guess there's really nothing much going on on the multicultural center, no official discussion of support, but related to some of the things we've been talking about recently, a more diverse and representative council, the need for stipends. I mean, I know we're talking money all the time, but if we want to have a more diverse and representative council, we will have to offer stipends for childcare and elder care and they carry it to the broadest terms to all volunteers of appointed committees. That's a big order, but I think we understand why this is very important. So that is the report. Thank you. Are there any other committee liaison reports? Okay, seeing none, I'm going to move the minutes were approved in the consent agenda. Paul, this is one of those times without a written town managers report, but are there certain things you want to make sure you mentioned? Yes, there are three things and the written report will be at your next meeting. So today you received the response to your request from the vote of November 14th, 2022, on the sort of status update on various initiatives that are before the town. So that report has been given to you has also been shared with the co-chairs of the CSSJC and the Human Rights Commission and I'm assuming it will be scheduled for April 3rd, but that's up to you, the council when it will be scheduled and those two committees are to give you written comments five days prior to that meeting. The second thing is that we are finalizing our plans for the search for a new police chief. It's our HR director's first department head search. So we're being very careful and giving her the support that she needs because she will be the lead on it. We will be developing a committee that will be our screening committee and do the interview, review the applications and do the initial interviews and then they'll make recommendations to me for the final interviews. And the third is that we will have a councilor Shane and I will be on at a cup of joe with us on Friday at 8.30 to 10 or 9.30 however long we want to be there at the Banks Community Center. And really the topic is to talk about the schools and we may have some other special guests showing up. So anybody who'd like to just have their questions answered informally, you don't wanna make a public comment, you wanna tell us what you think. That's a great time. It doesn't have to be just about the schools, it can be about anything. So we're just there and I bring the coffee, you bring the questions and comments. Any questions from the counselors? Okay, all right, are there questions from the council? Pat, go ahead. Oh, thank you Pat. Nice, Anna. I mean, yeah, thank you for your work, Paul. I also have a question. Paul, you had emailed us some really helpful information about community choice aggregation and one of the things that you had mentioned is that the next step is a 30 day public outreach campaign. Do you have a ballpark idea of one that is going to occur? I don't, but I can find out. That would be great, thank you. Okay. And thank you again for all the work that you do. It sounded flip it again, like it sounded flip it the first time, it is sincere. The coffee, I understand. All right, are there any other questions at this point? Hold on one second, I'm trying to get to where I need to be. Are there any other questions of the town manager at this point? Okay, then let me go to councilor comments and we have a couple. First of all, let me mention that we did receive, as Paul mentioned, the report that was promised based on the November 14th motion. That has also been sent already to the chairs of CSSJC and HRC. They have requested that they be on the meeting agenda for the third and I have given them two options. One is to meet in a special town council meeting for one hour at five o'clock and the other is to meet after the action items that evening. So to give you a sense of that evening, we have a public forum on the appropriation for the elementary school building project. We have a motion regarding the follow-up with CSSJC and HRC. We have a vote regarding the appropriation for the elementary school project. We have the regional school budget presentation at a different time we will have a public hearing but it's also referral to the finance committee. So it's a night that has several other big items in it and it's one of the reasons why I suggested that if TSO didn't come back with surveillance until the 24th, that would be fine. So that's the agenda on April 3rd. What's unclear yet is when which part of the meeting that CSSJC and HRC will be meeting with us based on their written reports which was also part of the motion. They're having a joint meeting this week I believe to come up with their either separate or joint reports. Yeah, no, that's starting at five, right? No, I'm actually trying to time it and have it be based on their written reports. Let me also mention that we want to, Michelle, Lynn and Athena and I have been working with Pamela Young on the council retreat. And so I'm gonna ask either of you I'm gonna ask either Michelle or Athena if you wanna give a overview of the retreat and then I just wanna make sure we remind people of their reading assignments in advance. Michelle? I'm happy to, but Athena, are you prepared to do that? Do you have any notes in front of you? I can definitely try to pull it out of my head if needed. I can give some quick notes. I have another one for you in the morning. So after an opening and a little ice breaker, we have Pamela and I are gonna be talking about appreciative inquiry with the council. We'll kind of introduce that and talk about what it is and so forth. Before we get into a discussion on the rules and meeting procedures, I've had some really good questions from counselors so far that I think will be useful in our discussion. But if there are any other questions, I can work those into my presentation. So please send them ahead of time. After that, we're gonna use our conversation about the rules to do a brainstorm on both the rules and meeting efficiency and management. Then Pamela and I again are gonna talk about some appreciative inquiry questions and reflections and then get into criteria for developing town council priorities and a discussion about the current items that are in committee and items that have been carried over from the previous council. Okay. In preparation for that, you've already been sent an email by Athena that included the link to the rules or procedure, the link to the charter and a summary of some key Roberts rules, correct? A very simple summary of Roberts rules. I'm gonna have some other printed materials available for the meeting that has some information about Roberts rules. I just wanna illustrate quickly. This is Roberts rules and this is Roberts rules in brief. So it's a big task to try and make this briefer than this, but I'll do my best to put together some helpful information into a sort of cheat sheet for counselors that we use at the meeting and afterwards. For those watching along at home, Athena held up a book about this big and then a book about this big. So just to illustrate that. Yeah, and then there's the one page. Right. So the other, hold on Dorothy, let me finish my comments about things in advance. If you have questions in advance that you would like to ask about the rules of procedure, the mailbox is still open. So please, you know, ignore the deadline and just mail in your questions about the charter, et cetera. The second thing is I did ask committee chairs, and I'll be reminding you of this tomorrow to submit to Athena and me any items that are still on your quote, they've been referred to you or they got carried over from the previous council. Okay, and I believe I've received at least, I know I've received CRCs. I don't, I have to go back and check on others. And then the final thing is you will also receive tomorrow a thing, a questionnaire, if you will, or just an email that says, list three to five things that you think should be used as the criteria for deciding about priorities. Okay. We're gonna get an email with that on there. The respond to, okay. Yeah. Okay, now questions. Dorothy. I, in terms of the rules, I hadn't printed, I cannot find it. I don't read anything long on a screen. I use printed copies. And I thought Athena said that we would get them. So the question is, where do I get it? I have copies of the charter that I can find. But I need- If we send you a link or an attachment, can you print it out? I think it's many, many pages. Wasn't it like 40 or 50 pages or something? Yes. Not that I don't print a lot, but my husband is starting to really put breaks on me. Well, if you need be, you could probably stop by town hall tomorrow and get a copy. Sure. And I'll have printed copies of the rules for any counselor who would like that at the retreat. So just let me know ahead of time. I've already heard from, I think one or two counselors that they'd like a printed copy. Okay, so I'll put it up tomorrow. That was, thank you very much. Okay. And if it's, if Athena, you're not in this office tomorrow, then Angela could have it. I'll leave a printed copy at the desk up front. With Angela. Okay. Are there other questions? Are there other counselor comments? Michelle. Do you want to confirm in-person versus virtual attendance or have you already done that? I've asked, I think I asked all of you. I think I've heard from just about everyone, but one or two. So we are trying to have this to be totally in-person. It will be in the town room because that way we can also continue to broadcast it much more easily. Dorothy, you have your hand up. I had, I will show up, but I had said I would do in-person if it weren't in the town room. I just can't imagine being in the town room, which is just not that comfortable that long. And I don't feel informal or any of those things in the town room. So it'd be just another meeting as far as in terms of the way it feels. So I will show up to the meeting, but I'm really unhappy it's in the town room. Let me just mention, we're going to do what we did the first time we did a retreat here, and that is we'll do tables all the way around. So it's a big circle and not set up like a council meeting. I'm sorry. Lynn, may I add something? Yes. The reason we chose to stay in the town room is to offer that Zoom public access, which just isn't very easy in other venues right now. We need to both set up in another room. We consulted with Amherst media and that was a little more difficult with them. So it's trying to be as transparent as we can. Are there other questions? Lunch will be provided and at some point this week we'll be sending something out for people to indicate what they want. Lobster is out of the question. Well, you've seen our budget. Only if you plan to bring your own. Are there any other councilor comments? I can tell the witching hours, it's past 9.30. Are we done? We are adjourned. It is 9.31. Thank you all.