 Our guest today are Amherst Town Manager, Paul Bachemann, Amherst Regional Public School Superintendent, Dr. Mike Morris, and Amherst Director of Public Health, Julie Federmann. She is joining us by phone, so you can't see her at the moment, but so starting us off with some important updates is our Town Manager, Paul Bachemann. Thanks, Brianna, and thanks for helping to organize all this. So, we're living in a Zoom world, whether we like it or not, and this is where we are and for all those who are, this is the first time you've connected to Zoom, congratulations for getting through the gauntlet and making it happen. We seem to be, Julie and Mike and Brianna and I seem to be living our lives on this or Teams or some other platform like that. One of the things I first want to talk about is how well our staff is doing. These are really different circumstances and every member of our staff has really adjusted, taken on new tasks, changed their work habits, and just stepped up in a million different ways. And I just want to especially appreciate all the staff in Town Hall and Bang Center, LSSC, everywhere. Everybody is taking on doing their best they can to make sure the town continues to run, which is our commitment to you as residents of the town. This I think this crisis will actually provide some major changes to the way we do business. We're learning a lot about things that we can do differently and better and we're really excited about that going down the road, which is a long time down the road. But we're at the beginning stages of this. We think that this curve is just beginning to accelerate, it's going to go up. The governor today talked about the peak being between April 10th and April 20th. That's when the hospitals are most likely to be overloaded. That's why it's super important right now to be social, to physically distance yourself. We don't want to be socially distanced. Julie keeps thinking, correcting me on that. We want to be physically distant from each other, socially close to each other, so that we can flatten that curve so our hospitals don't get overwhelmed. It's in our own best interests, it's in our parents and children's best interests, it's in our friends and family's best interests. If you come downtown, you see a lot, the streets are kind of empty and the parking lot's plenty of parking downtown, but it's really kind of depressing a lot to be down here. But I keep thinking to myself, that's a sign of love. That's a sign of people doing what's necessary to keep the community healthy. The more we can be apart and be away from each other, the less this disease will spread. If we only spread from human to human, if we separate ourselves, it won't be able to spread. So I think that this is a real moment. It's going to be a few weeks before we hit the top and I think that it's going to be a really trying time because we feel like we've already done a couple weeks of being stuck in our homes, but it's going to be a few more weeks and these are going to be much harder. My sister was telling me that we were talking on a family thing on one of these Zoom calls and she was saying that this is what our parents went through with World War II. They all had the sacrifice and they all had to give up things because they were part of a larger effort and that's what we have to do. We have kids at home complaining because they're not able to play sports or see their friends. So I just ask you and thank everybody because it seems to be working in our state and I think in this county in particular and we can talk a little bit more about that. So really terrific work on that. First, the first thing that we always talk about, so we have a team that meets every morning and the first thing we talk about is we do a check-in to make sure our force is called force protection, make sure that our first responders are healthy and safe and have the tools that they need to do the job. We do that every morning. We check with police, fire, DPW, our town hall staff, our finance staff, IT staff, everybody to make sure. Is everybody still, how are we doing in terms of who's being quarantined, who's not? Right now, all of our first responders are in good shape. Fire department, the police department, they're doing things differently than they have in the past because they're observing the rules so if there is a domestic violence response by the police department or if there's a party that they're visiting, they'll maintain distance from the interaction, which is different than they used to do, but they're all taking precautions so that our first responders don't get infected. So and then the other thing, the other really high priority for us as our DPW employees, especially the water and wastewater treatment plant operators, they're critical to our infrastructure. The DPW has taken to staggering our shifts so that we might have a day shift and a night shift so if one shift gets infected, the other shift is still operational so they're not all working the same shift and that's been really a positive thing for us as well. You'll see DPW workers out working, you won't see as many because we're breaking them up, but there's still work they have to do. This week they have a sewer pipe that they have to clean out mostly because of flushable wipes. They're not flushable and there's a term for it, wipes don't, what is it, Brianna? Wipes clogged pipes. Wipes clogged pipes, so please don't throw down your, the gloves or the wipes down the toilet, they don't, if it doesn't disintegrate in water, it will clog the sewer line so that's a big problem for us and it becomes just a challenge to fix all these things. We're flushing our sewer mains more frequently. So thank you for all that, our town operations are doing well, there's certain things we have to do in town hall like payroll and things like that so we're trying to keep everybody as socially distanced in town hall as possible and moving forward on that. You may have heard that this weekend we closed all of the playground equipment and roped it off both for the town and for the school playgrounds. This is because we could not adequately sanitize it on a regular basis. The parks, the space themselves are open and we hope that you'll be able to use that, but again in a way where you're maintaining social distance from each other. Yesterday, the governor extended the stay at home order till May 4th and we abide by that. If there are gatherings larger than 10 people, we would like you to let us know that, and so because we will have the police respond and start to educate people. We want to limit the number of the level of gatherings that we have. Let's see, we've talked a lot about continuity of operations, it's called Coupe Plans for all of our departments. We have a new website that Breonna's been working on, it looks really sharp, and it's called AmherstCOVID19.org and on this website we're working with the school department to put as much information on one website so it's easy for you to find anything that has to do with it. So that's the way it looks and it's still a work in progress, but it's going to have tons of information up to everything that's most up to date in terms of where we are and we are open to your suggestions and ask you for comments on how we can make it better for you. Four big areas that we've spent a lot of time on, we think of them as sort of our vulnerable communities. One is our local businesses and downtown, as I mentioned earlier, it's kind of sad to be down here because there's so many businesses that have just shuttered their doors and the restaurants are doing takeout, so we're trying to support takeout businesses to keep those restaurants, keep their employees employed. It's really hard for the employees who, they're not getting their paycheck. Many people work paycheck to paycheck and this has been really hard. The Chamber of Commerce has a tip jar on their website. If you typically would tip every day, if you were buying a cup of coffee, you can go there and put some money into the tip jar. So local businesses and the people who have been employed by our local businesses are struggling and so we're meeting tomorrow actually with the bid and the chamber to talk more about some of the opportunities and options we have for them. The second is our senior population, our elders. We have a director of senior services has worked really hard to make sure that they are feeling safe and connected. We think about social distancing is also social isolating and so setting up ways for people to connect with each other have been working on that. Food security is a big thing. Do people have enough food to work? I think it's been okay so far but we're anticipating that that's going to become more of an issue. People have gotten their last paycheck but then it becomes more of an issue. To address this on Monday, the director of the Amherst Survival Center will be at the town council meeting talking about what the Survival Center is doing and then how people can help with their mission. And lastly is our homeless population. People experiencing homelessness are in a really desperate position because if they get diagnosed with COVID or they have to go isolate, they get told at the hospital, you're not sick enough to be in the hospital, you should go home and isolate. They don't have a home so we have been working super hard every day seven days a week quite frankly to make sure that if that happens we find a place where they can rest comfortably while they they take on this this disease. It's hard to find a good place that's safe and responsive to them. So I think I'm going to stop there and I think Mike is going to talk a little bit about what the schools are up to. Good thing. So before I do I just want to really thank the town. We always from the school's perspective have a great collaboration with the town of Amherst and I think that goes really smoothly when times are good, when times are stressed or stressful or challenging. You know those relationships can go one of two ways and I just I want to you know share with the public that I feel very fortunate that our relationships only grown tighter and we have conversations nearly on a daily basis. There's plenty of days where it's multiple times per day whether it's Julie or Paul or someone else and it's it's been great and we really feel fortunate to be collaborating with the town who wants to collaborate with the schools and sees it as a partnership. So you know thank you all Paul, Julie, Brianna for your partnership and working with us and having me here on this call. Going backwards before we go forward just for folks who may not have had kids in the schools. On Friday, March 13th, I made the decision to close schools for a couple weeks and two days later the governor closed all schools in Massachusetts and since he made that initial closing he's now extended it till Monday, May 4th which as you know is the day that the stay home order ends. So many of us have some questions about the stay home order ending and kids being on buses the next morning and question you know is that going to play out and the governor is very clear in his statement that students will come back no sooner than May 4th, not that they were going to come back on May 4th. So I think we'll see how the next couple weeks goes as the town manager said you know we'll see where that how those lines look and and where we're situated but we are we're anticipating that we may go back then it may also get extended by the governor or we may feel like we need to do it ourselves and so since March 13th our schools have been closed and there's been the focus has been really on three things one's on communication, the second one on safety and the third one on distance learning and so I'll talk a little bit about communication so we've said about 15 or 16 communications since COVID since it's all started we do have a website oh thank you awesome Brianna and it has some of the basics but also you could see if Brianna scrolls down dated and we've been numbering all of our communications we have a couple number 15s because they went all went home in the same day that's what that is we've provided an FAQ document as well as additional resources linking to both the town site base state the CDC and information about our meals program which I'll speak to a little bit and we're constantly updating this site so that there's a bit of a history so people can watch the trend of what our communication has been and where it's headed all these are also shared on our social media networks Facebook Twitter Instagram and just one more I'm not even aware of because I guess I'm getting too old but you know that those are different ways and particularly for those who families who don't get our emails they don't have a child in the schools it's another way where people can find out what's happening in the schools pretty easily one of the big things that we've found is is sending videos of our principals in particular has been really helpful so especially at the elementary level our principals are sending multiple videos home to students a week and the feedback that we're getting from families is outstanding that that it really in this time and the town manager spoke about it before we're physically isolating how do we stay socially connected and the principal plays such a large role you think but an elementary school ever knows who the principal is and we've got some principals doing some you know special effects some pets are involved inside outside and but they're really making a very routine connection with students and our staff members in general just reaching out teachers para educators to families all sorts of ways you know another fun one is that tomorrow there's Fort River teachers came up with an idea to do a parade so there'll be two two different routes going through the Fort River enrollment zone of teachers staying in their cars one person per car but waving to all the students at a physically distant way just so that again that social connection can be in place and I can't wait to see it it's going to be really fun even if it's raining what kids are looking forward to seeing their teachers so much and so being able to do that in a safe way has been great the town's been supporting us with that as well so the second piece is really around safety so after schools closed in the 13th and even before that we changed our cleaning mechanisms and making sure schools are sanitized at this point our schools are locked and closed and very few people are in them so we're maintaining those but it's gotten a little bit easier the vast majority of staff members in our district are working remotely and those that aren't are working on staggered shifts so that we're reducing the number of people who are in any building at any given time we've purchased new equipment like a fogger machine that can sanitize large areas or a significant area like a school in a day and that's something that's becoming more relevant and more needed not just in the short term but we don't exactly know how things will move in the future and we want to make sure we have the best equipment to keep our schools as safe as possible and within two business days of the oh so when I think about safety I also think you know it's a matter of talked about food scarcity and that that's a safety issue from our perspective as well and so within two business days of the closure we had 13 sites and meals being delivered we know that for many families coming to a central site like a school is not necessarily a reasonable option and we also don't really want lots of cars and lots of congregation near our school sites for all the recommendations we have from CDC and the Department of Public Health so we have 13 sites in Amherst we're now partnering with UMass on the about half the sites that started the second week and to date we've delivered over 5,000 meals to our families and you know we're starting a new program tomorrow on Friday where we're going to double up the meals so that families have meals not just for Friday but you know to help with the weekend as well and we're looking to expand the program into the town of Pelham as well which is another our partner district and partner town so we feel very fortunate that our staff members have not just food service staff not just transportation staff but all staff members that were given the opportunity to volunteer and our problem is we had too many volunteers for our sites and that tells you a lot about the staff of the Amherst Regional Public Schools that they wanted to even from a distance see their students and feel like they were contributing to the food scarcity issue that's so real for many of our families and sadly only getting more real at the time manager suggested earlier. The last thing I'll speak to briefly then we'll open up for questions is distance education and this is how what supports are we providing both academically and in social emotionally for our students while they are not in the same physical location as our staff members so following the state's guidance the first two and a half weeks were focused on enrichment activities now many of our staff have maintained regular communication with our students in a whole variety of ways some of that's video conferencing audio conferencing emails using different apps and different tools at the primary grade levels there's some ones that I really need that you know books get sent home the videos of morning meeting the teachers do every morning and they send that video home to keep that structure and that normalcy for students we also had a college counselor in the first week we were done do 23 college college counseling meetings with parents and students for 11th grade students who are starting to think about college in a very real way so we are trying to continue that work we want to our kind of one of the hallmarks of the district is want to make sure each student knows who to call if they're not feeling great and that's not about this situation that's in general and we maintain that with a really strong counseling team who's very very active and reaching out to students and families during this time the state shifted the guidance for for what distance learning means last week so this week over 150 teachers and para educators got together and they formulate drafts of plans they're just went out to teachers a couple hours ago to get more feedback and what we're calling distance learning 2.0 which goes beyond enrichment activities and gets a little more into supporting students again academically and socially emotionally because of the extension of the closure and I think the teachers and para educators did a fabulous job and that'll roll out next week live once we receive more feedback from our entire faculty a major I keep saying it but I do want to stress that a major focus of these plans is not just the academic but that sense of connection that we know first you know for many many students I would argue all students that sense of connection to schools to both the peers as well as the staff members in their schools is a huge part of their life and it's very disorienting to not have that and we're trying to find the best ways we can to simulate that part of that is as the use of technology and so so far all of our middle school high school students have we have a one-to-one program so they all have Chromebooks which allows them to have that but so far we've delivered I think it's up to about 150 Chromebooks to elementary students and by the end of next week will be over 300 students that we've repurposed and made sure that elementary students had access to one of our largest problems is wi-fi access not every student in the district has wi-fi access we estimate about 95 of our students do and that still leaves 5 that do not so this week we've purchased about 95 mobile hot spots and we're in the process of getting them configured and which takes longer than I'd like but that's the nature of this this world and getting them out to families who don't have wi-fi access and we're really excited to be able to expand that program and so that it gives access not just for the academics but so many of us are relying on this technology to stay in touch socially you know certainly we're focused on the academics but but really to be able to have these kind of conversations with family with friends in different places we want to make sure that social emotional access comes along with the academic access as well so we hope to have that up and running in two weeks which will greatly close the digital divide in our district so I'll close by just saying again the partnership with community with staff with families and with the town has been critical and I think it will continue to be critical as this situation unfolds over the next couple weeks and months great thank you very much Mike for that update on our schools and all the great things you guys are doing before I open up the queue for the questions I just want to point out for those of you joining via the zoom app if you'd like to ask a question please click the Q&A button and type your question and only the host will see that question and we'll answer it in this session so one of the first questions we have is hopefully we can direct this to Julie if she can tell us how the testing for COVID-19 works can we just call in and get one or what is the process? Yes thank you for the question so the way that testing works is that only people experiencing symptoms can be tested first of all the test does not work if people aren't symptomatic that's a difficult thing I think for people to understand but it takes the presence of symptoms which indicates that there's enough of a viral load in the body that a test will actually be able to detect the disease so the next piece of this is that there are still not enough test kits the people who will get tested are those who are experiencing fairly moderate to severe symptoms so a person's first step is to context their primary care provider by telephone to talk with them and tell them how they're feeling their primary care provider then triages over the phone with them to figure out just exactly what their symptoms are and if they really do meet the criteria for how we're diagnosing COVID-19 many people will just be told to stay home to recover and to stay in touch with their primary care provider if they start to have worsening symptoms because many many people will not require hospitalization and will be able to recover at home tests are needing to be saved for those who are severely ill and so some people will be asked to drive to their PCP's office be given a mask and met outside where they'll be tested this won't happen for the majority of people at this time once someone is tested that result comes back in one to two days and then whether a person comes back tested positive or clinically diagnosed over the phone or by teleconference as having COVID-19 they'll be asked to isolate at home if a person is tested the result of those tests are sent directly from all labs to the state health department the state health department then notifies the time where the individual lives so in this case if you're an Amherst resident it it notifies the Amherst health department confidentially via an electronic system we then call someone up who has had a positive case go over with them how they're feeling their understanding of isolation and what that means staying in the home not sharing a bedroom or bedclothes or towels or dishes and if if they're able to have their own bathroom if they're not able to have their own bathroom then advising them to wipe down the bathroom with Clorox or Lysol after they use it and then returning to their own room so not having contact with anyone until 72 hours after they have no fever and no other signs of cough or shortness of breath and they have not taken any fever reducing medications for 72 hours at that point they would call their doctor review all this with them and be released from isolation meanwhile at that first call the nurses in our office will be going over with the person who's tested positive any possible contact they've had whether in the household or outside in the community we then immediately contact all of those people this is what's known as contact tracing we call them and review with them that they have come in contact with someone who tested positive and that they need to go into quarantine quarantine physically is the same as isolation so you're not sharing a bedroom you're not sharing towels or dishes preferably not sharing a bathroom but if you are cleaning that bathroom the difference is that if you're quarantined you're not sick you're not experiencing symptoms you are staying in quarantine for 14 days because that's the incubation period for the disease and if during that time you start to develop some symptoms of COVID-19 a fever over 100 degrees cough shortness of breath then you are to call your primary care provider so they can then triage with you to see if you have developed the disease if at the end of 14 days a person is feeling completely well they leave quarantine they are not sick they are not contagious in any way and quarantine ends great thank you Julie so next question is are there any confirmed cases in Amherst and if so how many yes we have had some cases in Amherst at this time we are reporting the number of cases by county so in Hampshire County today we have 186 cases the reason that we're not talking about the number of cases in our particular town is because we don't have many and the advice from the Department of Public Health is that when we just have small numbers in a community it's really important to not release those numbers because it could lead to compromising the privacy of the people who are experiencing the illness and with communicable diseases people do have the privacy to not have others being able to know that they're sick and that's why at this time we're not announcing a particular number the number is low thank you so we have a question here about town operations they want to know what is happening with dog licenses at the moment Paul you're on mute Paul so thank you um but first thank you Julie it's just a side note that it's really terrific that our town has Julie Thetterman and Jen Brown who are registered nurses working in our health department at during this critical time they both have decades of experience and this area in particular and it's just been fabulous because so many of our decisions are based on science and we need uh science scientists like nurses to help us interpret what the information that we're reading what we're receiving is all about so about dog licenses so this this uh pandemic affects everybody in different ways so we are processing dog licenses we have 210 dog licenses that have been submitted so far this year they are being processed through the town clerk's office we have a skeleton crew and the town clerk's office they're rotating through on shifts and we should have them all all the ones that are in as of today the 210 they should be out in the mail to you on by wednesday all right uh we have a follow-up here for Julie what should be done if you do not have a primary care physician who should you who should you contact thank you so i'm going to give you the number for um Cooley Cooley Dickinson helpline they are linking people with healthcare providers if you don't have one it's a good idea to do that now um so that you can get all set up in case you are sick they're also helping people to be linked up with health insurance so that number is seven days a week from eight thirty to four thirty the number is eight eight eight five five four four two three four so we do urge people to a primary care provider work on getting health insurance no one should be going to an urgent care or an emergency room or a doctor's office if they're feeling sick they should make a call first now if you are experiencing severe symptoms of shortness of breath and a high fever then you would call 911 and describe the symptoms that you're having if you don't have a primary care provider and then you could be transferred to the hospital for assessment but we're trying to avoid that because we don't want people leaving their homes and exposing others to the disease we also want everyone to get care so again we urge you to get a health care provider now if you can we will add this resource to our amherstcovid19.org website as well one of the questions just came in if we would do that and we will okay so we have a question here for the for mic morris our questioner wants to know can elementary school students have more structured zoom type teaching teachings given the school closure is so long yeah so that's really uh what I referenced earlier is the teachers are developing plans for distance learning 2.0 which will have much more opportunities for direct teaching uh the guidance we received from the state is that we shouldn't be exploring new content but taking existing content and going deeper into it so you know as we move forward there has been some examples of that and there's a couple different ways to do it one is live like what we're doing right now another thing that maybe worked really well for families is to have tape lessons where teachers teach a lesson and send out the video because we know for many families it may be hard it's not like the kids are getting dropped off of the bus and everyone's in school at nine o'clock for the lesson so I think what people will see is a mix of those two things moving forward and again that will start up on April 9th and then really an artist the week of April 13th will there be a really an increase from again from enrichment activities which was the guidance when we first closed to having much more instruction and much more direct connection in those ways so I think I would say that we have a really I think both locally and statewide there's an incredibly diverse schools incredibly diverse schools of thought about it there are people who don't want their children especially elementary school children on screens for long periods of time and there's other folks who are very comfortable with that and the way we're approaching is we're going to offer those that instruction and those skills to families and families can make the choice they think that's in the best interest of their child but I do want to acknowledge that there are some real differences of opinion of families and we're trying to strike it down the middle where we're offering the service for students and families if they so choose to take it there also will be other you know non-electronic resources that go home but I think for families they would I would expect to see an increase from as we move from enrichment to the implementation of distance learning 2.0 great thank you we have a another follow-up question on contact tracing and this person wants to know how do you how do we conduct contact tracing for the confirmed cases in Amherst thank you for the question so in Massachusetts there are over 60 plus reportable communicable diseases so for a couple of decades we've been the two of us who are working now have been tracking contacts for all of these diseases in various settings COVID-19 is just another more complex disease because it is so contagious that there are so many contacts so what we do is we have a very deep interview with the case the person who is ill we talk with them about who they live with what types of things they do where they work where they recreate and then we go deeper talking with them about what they had been doing during the period of time that they were contagious we then get names and phone numbers and addresses if we're not addresses names and phone numbers if we're able to if we're not able to get all that information at least we get names and then we track those down we then have confidential phone phone calls with all of those contacts so anyone who has come in contact with the case receives a phone call from us if it's someone who doesn't have a phone because that does happen sometimes then we send letters we do door knocks we do everything that we can to find a contact to let them know that they've come in contact with this transmissible disease and because we have so much experience doing this with so many different types of communicable diseases we have become quite adept at finding people and helping them to understand how to stay has to protect themselves from getting sick and from spreading the disease great thank you we have um we have a question about is there any advice if it's safe to ride in lifts and ubers right now that's a great question lift and uber all over the country have been very assertive in training their staff on how they should handle the interiors of their vehicle so lift and uber have been considered to be safe one percussion that people can take is having chlorox or lysol wipes with them wiping the door handle on the inside and the outside when they enter a vehicle and again uber drivers and lift drivers have been reached out to because they also want to be able to stay safe and healthy at the same time so they are cleaning their vehicle and being taught about how this disease is transmitted great thank you um we've got a question here or a statement rather um things are very stressful in the house right now with everyone home is there any advice that you can give us that's open to anybody to answer i can jump in on start on that one if that's okay uh identify with that um you know i've got young kids and and uh you know i can identify that and that's true no matter if kids are not but i think that's something i hear given my role quite a bit and so uh one thing i'll say and i think everyone on the call will agree with us and in physically distanced ways spend time outside every single day even if it's raining spend time every single day um i think another thing that's really helped that i've read a lot about is uh whatever the routine you want to have try to maintain some routine in this in this new world where people are in their homes a lot whether that's having a morning meeting your family whatever your rituals you want to have having adding some structure that that pushes you all to stop and and and be with each other and not try to scramble between work and how to get everything done and cooking and you know for a lot of people who used to order out like this is a big challenge right where you can get your food and how to plan that out but really trying to preserve time i think another thing and i said this in the earlier call is um make sure you're reaching out to people uh in your networks oftentimes people you don't always reach out to people are reaching out to you to check in make sure you're returning that favor it's amazing how uh to in my personal life i have two uh meetings like this except not public not recorded but with groups of people that um i certainly could have connected with any number of times once a group of college friends once for family and the number of people who want to jump in even for a 20 minute 30 minute call given the situation is enormous so trying to be the person who checks in on people who creates social capital you know within your group of friends that you are connecting or your family is hugely important and also being kind to yourself i think that's something that i'm noticing as everyone's trying to juggle more hats and they're used to juggling in a more confined space it may mean that you're not cleaning up as much as you'd like in your house and that can be really stressful for people i mean those small things really matter so just making sure that you're you're taking care of yourself especially if you're a caretaker for whether it's children or parents or other family members that you're finding ways to give yourself a break and give yourself time every day to acknowledge that one one thing that we're doing in a lot of my administrative meetings with staff with my kind of leadership team it's just starting the day every meeting we try to dedicate time to start sharing something that the good that's happening whether it's work related or not work related but just sometimes acknowledging the good things that are happening in the midst of this stress and hearing other people's can be a really helpful thing as well sorry i was long winded paul and julian briana you something can jump in but it's something that that we're deeply concerned about because we know how stressful this is for children and families and we experience it ourselves as well i'll just add a little piece to that i think with our team it's really about being forgiving of each other because we're making decisions every day people are doing the best that they can we might make a bad decision we might adjust it the next day but just giving people leeway to say we recognize you're really really strong people in our jobs but they're making the best decision they cannot each day and then you know just being forgiving like we get it let's move on to the next issue i think that's great i'll just reiterate what mike was saying that i think we are we can look at it that we're so lucky that springtime is coming and this is when this is happening we're not headed into winter i've recognized there are some people that love winter but really i think all of us can relate to the blooming of the spring and how beautiful that is and i think that helping our families and ourselves focus on what we can be grateful for now during these really tough times i think it really helps to decrease our stress when we're thinking about others too great thank you i think that is all we have for questions for now all the time we have so i want to thank paul mike and julie for their time today and to all of you for joining us we will have more information on future events like this so stay tuned again if you need to follow up with us or we were unable to answer your question directly today please email us at info at amherstma.gov or you can call the town manager's office at 413-259-3002 thank you thanks everybody stay safe and healthy thank you