 Good evening and welcome to Byline, and we have as our guest, back by popular demand for her third appearance, the president of our town council, Lynn Greesmer. And Lynn, things are moving along. They certainly are. And in our first interview, we were talking about all the work that had to be done just to stand up the government, never mind to get involved in issues, but things are coming along, and committees are being named, et cetera. So speaking of committees, just recently a new committee was created, a charge was adopted by the town council. Correct me if I'm wrong, community resource committee, resources committee. Tell us what the charge of that committee is. It's really a comprehensive look. It's the committee under which things like economic development, planning, zoning, these things that one considers when they think about the entire gestalt, if you will, of a town and how we move forward. And that committee has not met yet. It was just, I just named the members to that committee from the council because it's a standing committee of the council. And once they meet, I think we'll start seeing much more of a definition of, and a set of priorities as to what they're going to look at first, but it was a committee that morphed from an original committee that we discussed back in December. And we for a time jokingly called the committee to be named. And now it has a name. And now it has a name. We actually had an ad hoc group of six councillors work to define that committee. And now they will meet and get moving. Okay, so the council has, from what I can see, three or four, what I would call operational committees. We actually have five. Five. Five standing committees. Standing committees. And those relate to the operation of the council and the government itself. And so it's appointments and governance and rules and all of those sorts of things. And then you created a climate committee, which is a real substantive committee. Right. Has that been created already? That has been created. Okay. And so that's a real substantive policy-oriented committee as opposed to an operational committee. Although that's a committee of the town. Okay. It's not, there will be two councillors on it, but it's a total of nine members, seven people from the community and two people from the town, from the council. And the interviews for that are being held as we speak. And those recommendations of that will go to the standing committee that does appointments. And then from there it will come to the council for approval. Okay. So is it too late to apply for that committee if you wanted to apply? I'm not going to say no, but I, we're pretty much down the road on that one. Okay. Yes. So there's a new committee called the Community Resources Committee. Is that a committee of the council? It is. Okay. So only councillors can serve on that. And I bet you got a lot of councillors who want to sit on that. We had 10 people who said they would like to sit on it. For five slots. For five slots, which was the way that the charge for that committee was adopted. Okay. And my sense will be bringing that committee up again. As they look at what their overall plan will be to move forward. We may see that committee having subcommittees, some of those subcommittees may have residents on them. There's any number of things that could come out of that whole effort. That committee, to my way of thinking from what I understand about the five other committees. Four other committees. That's one of my five. That's one of the five. Okay. So is, isn't the Community Resources Committee then the second policy oriented committee? Because it's less about operations and procedures and more about public policy matters. Right. Issues. Yeah. I mean, governance, organization and legislation clearly is policy oriented. This committee, the Community Resources, is clearly policy oriented. The, the, we, one of the other standing committees is an audit committee. And we actually, that committee will look at the town audit every year. We'll meet with the town auditor and review the audit. That's substantive. That's substantive. And then there's the finance committee. Has the audit committee been named? The audit committee has also been named as of Monday. And then the finance committee, which has been extremely active. And you're going to be talking with Andy Steinberg and he's the chair of that. And then the governance or no, the, I'm sorry, the, um, out, outreach, communications and appointments committee is a very important committee with a lot of work ahead. Because between now and the end of June, we hope that that committee will have the opportunity to advance to the council their nominations for zoning board of appeals, for planning board, for the council members and the town manager will forward his recommendations to that committee for both the rank choice voting and participatory budgeting. Okay. And so we're going to talk about some of those others in a minute. But let's, let's just remember that on your first appearance, we talked about the balance between the operations and setting up the council and getting the new government working and policy. And we were talking about the balance that you were hoping for. But when this show is being broadcast. So as you're watching tonight, the government isn't even four months old yet. And look at all the progress that's been made at getting the organizational stuff done, because now you're actually also starting to see with the formation of the climate committee and the community resources committee, you're starting to see much more movement in the direction of policy, which is what people look to their government for. You know, we know you have to be organized and know how you're operating transparently. It's transparently and and do the big picture things. But we also care about the policy. And so we're now starting to see this ramp up toward policy. So let's talk for a minute though, going back to the work of committees. So there's a bunch of committees whose current membership are coming close to expiration. Doesn't mean some of those people can't be reappointed, I assume, but the ZBA, the planning board helped me. Well, the other two are participatory budgeting, which is a new committee. And then also the ranked choice voting, which was required in the charter to look at rank choice voting before we have the next town council elections. There are some people in town who would like to see it even sooner. There's just no way. It's it's got a lot of work ahead of it. And that the work once that committee finishes of then implementing ranked choice voting falls back to the town and to the town clerk. And that requires a lot of everything from the logistics of how do you do that with the voting process and so forth. So it's a bigger, much bigger job. It's a big idea. It's embedded in the charter. It's a mandate that you have to research it. It's not a mandate that you have to implement it. That's correct. But there may be a lot of momentum in town to actually do it. That is also correct. But in order to do it, we need to know how to do it and how to do it properly. And now we're seeing this is one of those wonderful examples about the sometimes the gap between the theory and the vision and the hope and the aspirations and what it takes to actually make something happen and make it happen properly and well. And I bet there's a lot of counselors who really want to see ranked choice voting, but they also have a responsibility to make sure that it's put in place properly. And there's a lot of work to that. So ranked choice voting will be under consideration and committee is already named. No, not will be named. So if you want to be on the ranked choice voting committee, get your application. Get your application in. How do you get your application in? You do it on the town website. It's called the participation. It's the community participation. Go to the town website, find the menu and go to I Want to Volunteer. And in the big headlines, it will say committees. And then you go and you can see not only those committees, but all the other committees that town has and where there's vacancies. And you use the path. Okay. So if you want to be on ranked choice voting, you go and file your application. But also if you want to be on zoning. That, yes, you could still file for that. File for that. And this is the right time to be thinking about that. And for the planning board as well. And for participatory budgeting, you said, where are we on that process? Same, same timeline. So between now and the end of June, we hope to have interviewed people and appointed them through the council. Okay. And so those, all of those committees, hopefully will be populated and will be continuing work or starting work depending upon which committee. So have you gotten a chance to think much about the participatory budgeting committee and what's involved in doing that? Not really. And some people would suggest that the real challenge to participatory budgeting is when we don't have enough funds and we certainly could be seeing that. So it's the committee that starts having to look at and talk with the citizens, the residents of the town, and saying, you know, we have some tough choices to make. So again, this is a vision that's embedded in the charter. Yes, it is. And this, this isn't totally unique, although we know only one other community that's done this Cambridge Mass. And it's been working there for quite a while. And it's been working well. But this is another aspiration here, but it isn't a slam dunk yet because it hasn't even been thought through or designed. But we are going to have a committee that's going to be working on that. That's the ranked choice. I'm sorry. That's ranked choice voting. But also Cambridge has participatory. Okay. Yeah. So isn't that funny? Yes, Cambridge has both. But I was, at that point, I was focusing on the participatory budgeting committee because there are a few other places that have ranked choice voting. But so in both of those cases, we have to take a deep dive, figure out how it's going to work, design the process, educate the community, and then decide whether we can actually go down that, those paths of ranked choice voting. And then the other one is participatory budgeting. And for those who may not have heard about the participatory budgeting before, essentially it's a set aside of some money that people in the town get to come to the town council or the powers that be to propose specific spending for that pool of money. That's how it works in Cambridge. But not to be confused with CPAC, which is the Community Preservation Act. Totally different. Okay. Totally different. I mean, this is a community, this is a committee that actually has input to the thinking of what the budget should include. Exactly. Okay. It's, it doesn't actually have a pot, but a thinking about what the total budget should do as priorities. Oh, and is that the way the charter constructs it or that's the way people are thinking about it? I think that's the way people are thinking about it. I don't think the charter is a lot more cleaner than that. It's not specific about that. And that's part of the committee's charge is to think about how would we do this in town if we could carry this out. Right. Okay. And, but we're not doing that, we're not doing participatory budgeting this year because it's, we're into the budget process already? Yeah. I mean, this is where the fact that the council was sworn in five months into the fiscal year, the guidelines had already been presented by the town manager and adopted by the select board back in October. So the town council is kind of diving into the budget in the middle of it, if you will. And the whole calendar around budget, which Andy's going to talk about a whole lot more, is completely changed from what it used to be when we had town meeting. So we haven't even seen a budget yet. And we won't see it till May 1st. So the months of June, of May and June, are just enormously intense. And in addition to that, in June, on June 10th, we will actually have what is, again, a required forum. And in this case, it's a forum on the whole comprehensive capital planning process and get a look at what is being proposed for this year. And this is not just the big projects, but the smaller projects and equipment and buildings and things like that. So on June 10th in town hall at 6.30, we will have public forum on that as well. And then in May, I think it's May 21st, we actually will have a public hearing held by the finance committee, but to which we encourage all counselors to be there. So it would be a full council meeting as well. And that will be actually a hearing on the budget. And the two have different requirements to them. And we've already had one forum. The turnout was not great. We'd certainly like to see better turnout at public forums. That's where the requirement is that 50% of the time is given to public comment. And hearings that there is no such requirement, but yet it's an opportunity for people to come and listen to the presentation and then make comment. So they can weigh in after they've heard what the town officials and the people who work on these things are saying. And so even though the participatory budgeting committee may not be functional this budget cycle, the public does have the opportunity to participate and weigh in on the budget process by attending forums and hearings, talking with their town counselors, and weighing in on things that are important to them. And the participatory budgeting committee is another aspiration that we will see how this evolves over the course of the next year as we head toward the council's second budget a year from now. And it'll be here before we know it, for sure. Okay, so let's see. I also wanted to ask you about the capital budgeting. So we have this committee of folks in town. These are officials who meet and work together to try to figure out the various capital projects we need. And there are the four biggies that we keep hearing about, schools, library, help me. Schools, library, public works, fire station. Fire station and roads and streets. And many people would say sidewalks and roads are right up there as a big project. Got to talk about that as well, because goodness knows we're all struggling to keep our cars on the road these days and out of potholes, although I've noticed things have been getting better since the snow has ended. But there's still a lot of rough spots around town. So these folks are trying to figure out how to weigh and balance all of these competing goods for the town and figure out what can we afford and what order, et cetera. So that group of people is working in parallel to the finance committee. And there's some overlap because some people sit on both. And I'm actually one of those. And Andy is the other person that sits on both finance and what's called Joint Capital Planning Committee. Joint Capital Planning. JCPC, which is actually a committee that has been in town probably for close to 15 to 20 years. And it was created actually because of the demand for big capital projects and trying to have a conversation with libraries, school, and the town all sitting at the table so that you're actually balancing out what each of those needs. In everything from oh, we need to make sure we invest in new technology this year, or for firefighters, we need new protective equipment, or for the police, we need new cruisers. And those would be considered the smaller capital outlays. And then there's the whole issue of yes, we need to do road improvement. And in fact, this year in our recommendation from JCPC to the town manager, I think you're going to see about half of the money that's set aside for capital, not big capital projects, but ongoing capital, about half of that money, four roads and sidewalks. And then that committee also has in its docket these major capital projects. But that's only one place where we're looking at those as well because the finance committee and eventually the full council and eventually all of the residents that want to. Sean McGonough, who is with the schools, but now 5% with the town, has further developed a tool where you can actually look at all of these different capital projects. You can look at everything from, well, if they were cost this much and the interest rate was this much, and we actually built it in this year, what would the impact be? What can we actually afford? What can, what will the impact be on your taxes? And where does it fall in the debt ceiling? And have you used that tool? I have. And is it fun? It's fun and it's scary. It's scary. I'm going to guess that it's easier for you than a lot of other people because you've had so much experience working on the capital side of the town budget, having chaired our fire station committee, if I recall. DPW and FIRE. Both. So you have some familiarity with capital budgeting and the subtleties and the nuances and how to do that. But so it's scary not because it's complicated to use the tool. For you, it's scary because... What you rapidly realize is we can't afford them all at the present price tag. They're all carrying. And so this is where the tough decisions are going to have to get made. And what are those decisions? You know, one of them is the big school decision that Monday night the council voted unanimously to support the statement of interest to the Massachusetts School Building Authority. For our viewers, that would have been about a month ago. Yes, thank you. And then, you know, we hope at some point and we're still exploring options for placing DPW and then that would free up the DPW site for a fire station. And then the real issue is going to be what can we really build for those projects? Can we build something and stage so that in the future we can add to it as we have money available? And what's most important to do, for example, with DPW, one of the most important things is to get vehicles undercover. Because a vehicle loses about three years of its useful life if it sits out in the elements. So these are very complicated things. On the issue of the fire station, remembering we also have a very robust emergency crew who does all of our ambulance work, actually the decontamination areas for ambulance people are different than the decontamination areas for fire. And right now jammed into our central fire station, it's marginal. Yeah, having those functions right there. And we have to think about the health because, you know, there's clear relationship between cancer and firefighters. And so it's interesting because the state does provide funds for building and renovating schools. Yes. Fairly generous for the school building assistance program. And there's a program for libraries. In fact, Amherst was in the very first round, funded 25, almost 27 years ago now. And here we are looking at the next generation of our library needs and what we're going to do and how we're going to do it. And so there is some state money for that, but there isn't for DPW. Not at this, no. And there isn't for fire. And believe me, over the years, there was lots of pressure to try to create new programs in those areas. But it was very, very difficult. And occasionally someone will be able to squeak through a little earmark, but it's usually either in some urban town or some really tiny little town that has 700 people or something. But there are no robust programs for either of those two functions. And then you have what I would consider the highly visible but not high-cost capital thing, Station Road Bridge. We're still waiting for information from the state. We have high hopes of having a temporary bridge up by the summer sometime, moving along. There's the whole intersection in North Amherst and the North Amherst Library. And obviously a huge infusion of people who will be living up there when the Mill District Apartments open this summer. So there's other competing demands. And one of the interesting things about the joint capital planning process, this was started under the Select Board, was we now actually invite citizen applications for projects. And we received three really interesting ones this year that were very much focused on good ideas for the town and the question is how can we afford them and how can we move forward? Very good. And when we're talking about the capital budget and the operating budget, the two things that they have, the thing they have in common is you need money for both. Right. And the reason you have to make choices in the capital budget and in the operating budget is because there's never enough money for everything. But there can be more money through successful economic development. Exactly. And I've heard from some folks in town recently saying that they're really excited and looking forward to the New Town Council and the new government structure creating a capacity to be able to expand upon some really great ideas that are out there for economic development in the community. And is that likely to be in the in the Bailey WIC of newest committee, the community committee on resources, community resources committee? Yes. In fact, it was discussed when the committee was being defined and formed. And I'm sure it will be one of the first items to take up. In addition to that, as we as a council have been working on our goals and we hope to bring forward a full set of those goals on the 22nd of April. And that's just next week. That's just exactly. Thank you. And the reality is that those goals also help define and help us think about when will we get to certain things. So two other things that are looming out there with committees that include counselors or are counselors that are time sensitive. One is our rules of procedure committee. And that committee has to come to us within six months of the council forming. And so by June 3rd, we will adopt the permanent rules of the committee. But one of the things that they've done is occasionally during their meetings, they've actually come forward to the council with suggestions that we try out. So two of those suggestions, one was very early on, was that we move to the informal use of just first names. This is Amherst. This is not Washington. The second one was around the whole use of public comment and when we would have that. And we've tried that out. And I think people have come to see the wisdom of moving public comment earlier in the evening. And we have had some really robust public comment periods. It's horrific. So those have been suggestions that have come from that group. The second group, and this gets back to your economic development question, is around the whole issue of our bylaws, which include our general bylaws and our zoning bylaws. And the zoning bylaws are directly linked then to master planning. And so the question that's out there, and I think we're going to see the council, which by the way, at some point, does have to accept a master plan. I don't see us getting into it robustly in this first year, but I see us talking about what would be the time frame for that. Fantastic. And we're going to get into that on your next appearance. And as we bring other counselors on. And so I want to thank you for being with us this evening. And so what I get out of this conversation is, June is a watershed month for our town council. Because most of the work, the committee work, of standing up the government will be pretty much done, not 100% done, but pretty much done. It's ongoing. You will be close to having a town budget. And we will have seen a lot of progress on researching some of the work that's going to have to go on in the second half of this calendar year around other committees like Ranked Choice Voting or subjects like Ranked Choice Voting and the participatory budgeting committee. So remember, if you want to get involved, there's plenty of ways to do it. Go to the website, volunteer. Go to the hearings, go to forums and get involved. Thank you so much for joining us. And thanks for being here again tonight, Lynn. Thank you.