 Okay, hello. Welcome everybody to our Amherst Community Chat for Tuesday. Thank you for joining us. My name is Brianna Sunred, Communications Manager for the town. We'll be holding these short live chats like this on Tuesdays and Thursdays at noon for the next couple of weeks. As a reminder, this webinar is being recorded, so please refrain from asking any personally identifying health questions. To ask a question today from the Zoom application, press the Q&A button, type your question into the box, or you may raise your hand through the Zoom application, or by pressing star nine on your telephone. So today we have Town Manager Paul Backelman, and joining us is Assistant Town Manager and Director of Conservation and Development Dave Zomek. Welcome to you both. Hi Brianna. Thanks for joining us. We do have some questions lined up today, and we invite our attendees to also chime in with some questions. But before we do that, just giving a chance for any updates. Paul? Sure. So there are two things that I want to update you on. One is the governor extended his order for essential businesses only being open and that this stay-at-home advisory from May 4th until May 18th, and at the same time he set up a reopening committee that includes three municipal officials among a lot of industry people and public health people. And they will sort of set the parameters for what it's going to take to reopen our businesses and our economy going down the road. They are taking this in sort of chunks of time. So the next chunk is from May 4th until May 18th. And before May 18th, the governor, I'm sure, will declare whether it's going to be extended again, or if that it will actually start, will be able to start opening on May 18th. The other thing that they did, the governor issued a requirement that if you cannot properly social distance outside, that you need to wear a face covering of some sort. And I always have mine. I got several because they're cloth masks that you can put on. You need to, I've heard our health director, Julie Thetterman, talk about this a lot. You need to have multiples so that when you finish you take them off without touching the cloth. You take them home. You wash them with soap and water or throw them in the laundry. And then they're good to go. So you need a few of them. And along those same lines, so we're going to make sure to help people get masks so we can talk a little bit about that later as well. So thanks, Briana, for hosting this. Thank you. Thanks for the update. Dave, do you have any updates from your realm? I see that you're in town hall right now. I am in town hall. I'm in the town room. Beautiful day here in Amherst. I think the only update, and we might get into it a little bit more with permitting is, folks should know that to the best of our abilities, we are moving forward on a variety of different permitting projects through conservation, the zoning board of appeals, the planning board. So we're doing our very best. Staff is doing a terrific job working with those regulatory boards and committees to keep business moving through town and flowing through the process. So we can talk more about that in a few minutes. And if there are questions, happy to answer those. So Dave and I are both in town hall and we're on different floors. You can sort of tell by the windows, but I haven't even seen them today yet, although he's been working. So we are keeping our social distance by floors actually today. We've been in multiple zoom meetings today, but that's true. That's true. And I'm in the North Amherst satellite office of town hall. So well, you mentioned permitting and we did have a question come in asking, you know, is town hall open for me to apply for a building permit or how do I get a building permit for the project I want to do? Yeah, it's a great question. And so building on my earlier comments, so we are absolutely open for that kind of business. So if people need conservation permits, building permits, zoning board of appeal permits, if they need to contact the licensing, the board of licensed commissioners, staff are actively working behind the scenes. So you can email or call any one of those departments and somebody will respond to you and guide you through the process. Our building, our permitted Jennifer Mullen is in the building for kind of staggered shifts, but she will respond to emails and voicemails as well. So please, I encourage people if you have projects, whether you're working on a deck or a new building project in town, please contact somebody on my staff and they will help you through the process. And of course the boards and committees that oversee those permits and those processes are meeting remotely. And I'm sure that people have seen those advertised on the town website. So that would include the zoning board of appeals, the planning board, the concom, and the historical commission, for instance. And the contact information for our permit administrator and the various staff is on your web pages. Right. Okay, great. So we have a question here about what's happening with Hickory Ridge. Is that going to be opened up to the public or any updates on that project? Yeah, well that's a great question and I get it a lot. As people know, who might be listening, we've been working on the Hickory Ridge project for a couple of years now. We have had very productive conversations with the owners who are out of New Jersey, as has been reported and has gone through the town council process and many other processes in town. We do have an active purchase and sale agreement with Hickory Ridge. We have not set a closing date on Hickory Ridge yet, but we're hopeful on that that it will proceed. The town is still doing its due diligence, looking at survey work, assessing buildings, looking at 21E, which is making sure that the property is clean, looking at the title. All of those things are happening now and we hope to be able to close sometime in 2020 and this year. So we don't own it at this point, so we can't give permission to be out on the property. I know that the company that owns it has taken some more proactive steps to kind of safeguard their property because there were a lot of people golfing on it earlier in the year, but I think they've blocked off the parking at this point. So again, we're hopeful and really it's still private property at this point. So that's all up to the company, what they allow or don't allow on the property. It's a stunning piece of land and really important to the Fort River watershed and we're really hoping that we will move to closure on it, but Dave has been working this tirelessly for a long time, so we'll get there. I'm very hopeful for that. I'm going to take this quick chance to remind those who just joined us to please put your questions in the Q&A feature via Zoom and we'd also love to hear from any of you who want to come in and ask your question live. You can raise your hand in the Zoom app or press star nine from your telephone. So next question is what is the most recent updates for the planned playground at Kendrick Park? I'm happy to take this one of you on Paul. We have an interdepartmental team working on this. It's a great project. We're very supportive. We got a very large grant from the state, a $400,000 grant to go with CPA dollars to build this playground, wonderful playground in the kind of in the central part of Kendrick Park. And so the team of DPW staff and planning staff and LSSE staff have been working for months getting input from the public. They've held a number of public meetings. They've been gathering input online. In fact, I saw something on Facebook this morning where somebody from Amherst had put out, you know, here's another chance to give input to the plans. So those plans have been posted online. And, you know, we're under a pretty strict timeline from the state to get that design done in the next about 30 to 45 days. So anybody who wants to give input, you can find that project on the town website and send in your comments. Nate Malloy in the planning department is kind of gathering those and providing them to our team, which includes the engineering staff on DPW and the recreation folks from LSSE. And that website for people who are interested is amherstma.gov slash Kendrick Park 2020. And that's where all the updates and feedback tool can be found. Okay, we have another question regarding the rail trail. Rail trail seems jammed nowadays every time we try to use and it seems tough to achieve social distancing. Can the town do something about it? Yeah, well, that's a great question. And I've certainly been out there and, you know, Paul walks a lot. I walk a lot and bike a lot. And both of us visit our trails throughout the week, and particularly with this nice weather. I was just out on the bike path, the Narodic Rail Trail for two, two and a half hours on Sunday, which was a very nice day. So first of all, the rail trail is a state facility. It's not a town facility. So we don't have legal jurisdiction over the rail trail. The parking areas are on state properties. So we have a good working relationship with the Department of Conservation and Recreation, DCR. They're the state agency that oversees and manages those facilities. And we've had communication with them about their facilities here in the valley. But at this point, they've chosen not to close those parking lots. Honestly, on Sunday, when I was there, which was late morning, what I found was that the parking areas were actually very crowded. Once you got out on the trail, and again, I was on a bike, there was a considerable distance between the users. So for me, personally, professionally, I did not see that as a major issue. I think what I saw was I saw walkers giving a wide berth, minimum six feet, 10 feet, 12 feet as they pass by each other. I saw a fair number of people wearing masks, both walkers, as well as bikers wearing masks. So I think there are ways to achieve a level of greater safety and comfort out there if people are interested. During this time, a lot of people do want to get exercise. So I would encourage people to go at different times, go early in the morning, go on some of the overcast days. It's gorgeous out there. There's lots of wildlife and birds, but don't pick those banner bluebird days when there's going to be a lot of people on the trail. The other thing you can do is folks can choose trails that are a little bit off the beaten path. If you don't want to go on the bike path, look on our website at our trail map. We have 80 miles of trails in Amherst alone and try to select a trail that maybe you haven't gone on before or is a little, you know, out of the ordinary for you or on the outskirts of town and you'll probably find very few people on those trails. It's interesting. I was talking to Mike Morris, our superintendent of schools and he and his kids have a project where they're trying to find a trail to hike in every community and they keep going farther and farther out. They were in Hatfield I think last weekend and it's really helpful because his kids like to look at maps. They get to look at a map. They use an app while they're hiking and they're discovering new places. They don't go really far because the kids aren't that old, but it's a really great family activity. For the for the rail trail, I think what worries a lot of folks and we think about this too as you're biking or something that if you switch by somebody you worry about the sort of jet stream that follows them and that's why I think the idea of wearing a mask whenever you can is going to be suggested or required by the by the governor's order. That being said, if you have an underlying medical condition or and you can't wear a mask because of that, there is an exemption from this from the governor's order that says you don't have to wear a mask if you have an underlying medical condition. Yeah and just the build on that Paul was talking about with trails. So that's a great example with with Mike and his children. So it's a great opportunity to study maps to look at maps learn how to read maps. We have maps on our website of course for our trails. The Kestrel Trust also on their website provides a number of trail options in the 1314 towns around Amherst and then there's a wonderful app a free app that you can get on your phone called All Trails. That provides you trail trail information for any any town any location you're currently at. So lots of options there to get off the well-worn trails like the rail trail. Now those are great tips. So just it was another question about what do you do when you come upon somebody on a trail and I think some of that is just common sense. Again, I was out at Amethyst Brook. I've been out there a couple of times a very popular dog walking spot and hiking spot in Amherst and I found people to be very irresponsible. People will pause and get off the trail six eight feet ten feet and allow you to pass. And I think there's a real understanding that people don't want to go close right now that's not in in everyone's best public health. So I really found people responsible and open to allowing you know a family group to pass by or whatever. And I think if people think about that and have your head up and be looking anticipating oh there's some hikers or there's a runner or there's a mountain biker you know you need to anticipate a little bit more than you did pre-covid. Oh you know this trail is only six or eight feet wide. I need to maybe step off into a lower underbrush here and give someone a chance to pass. So Dave thinking about trails has anything changed with leash laws or is there information that you can share with folks about that? Nothing has changed with regard to leash laws. But what are the rules for leash for dogs on the trails? So the rules in Amherst are pretty clear and have been consistent for a number of years. So the conservation commission has authority over our trails and our conservation land. And they have promulgated regulations that basically state that for most conservation areas dogs need to be on leash at all times. The only two areas where dogs can be off leash are at Amethyst Brook and the Lower Mill River which is down near Mill River Recreation Area. And those two areas they can be off leash from dawn to 10 in the morning. So that's really those are the only two off leash areas. We're specifically asking people not to have their dogs off leash at Puffer's Pond. Dogs on beaches even though those beaches are closed right now we can talk about that in a little bit. But dogs on beaches really are kind of a recipe for problems to happen. You see a lot of dog bites, a lot of dog-dog interactions, dog people, dog children interactions that are not very positive. So the commission really does not want people swimming with their dogs in Puffer's Pond. You can go upstream or downstream on the Mill River of the Cushman Brook and a lot of people do that but not right at the two beaches at Puffer's. Can you can you update us on where the dog park is too? I know that that's been a really active project and you've been taking put a lot of time into that too. Oh yeah it's very exciting. I mean our dog park task force chaired by Jim Pistrang has done a wonderful job. So the project just went out to bid and we got the bids back about 10 days ago and given the bidding climate we think that we have a bid range that is conducive to moving forward. So we're doing our internal due diligence on those bids checking references and similar processes that we have to go through before we award a contract but we're pretty confident that we'll be awarding a contract here in the next two weeks to be under construction this summer. So we've again a great team. DPW has really helped us out the engineering staff, the Nate Malloy, the planning staff and the committee has been fantastic. We've gotten a lot of private donations. We're still looking for donations if anybody would like to give to that project by all means but I think we're over $40,000 in donations. So we'd be under construction later this summer. We do have to navigate, we do have a rare species out on the old landfill where the project will take up about two acres of that 55 acre site. We've got a rare species out there which is called the grasshopper sparrow so we'll have to do some inventory work to see if the grasshopper sparrow is there this summer. If it is, that just means we have to wait until after they finish breeding and then we can construct the park. If there aren't any grasshopper sparrows then we will commence construction probably in July and it's about probably a three-month process to complete it with paved walkways, ADA walkways, shade structures, and entrance pavilion parking for about 21 cars. So it's really exciting. The task force has been at this for about two years I think so and many people on that task force have advocated for it for many, many years. How can people donate if they are interested in donating Dave? Well the town can accept gifts and we do have a special account, a dog park gift account and a number of people have made small, medium, and large, some quite large gifts to that account and that money is then pooled with money we have from the Stanton Foundation which is the private foundation that has funded about $250,000 worth of both design and construction on the project. We also were successful in getting some CPA money so all of those sources will come together and hopefully by the fall, late fall, we'll have a beautiful new dog park. We do have to work on when it will be open exactly because you do need to let the grass grow and really, really get hold before you let all those people and all those dogs out on it. That'll be a little bit of a nuance whether it opens officially. We have a ribbon cutting save this fall and it officially opens in the spring. We'll have to see how that goes but it's coming. Great. So we have a question here if there's what's the latest on business in Amherst? I can take that one. So last night the executive directors from the business improvement district and the Chamber of Commerce presented to the town council a plan for the resilience of bringing resilience back to Amherst once we get through this crisis and to address some of the needs for our local businesses to make sure that they can survive this COVID-19 pandemic and so they I would encourage people to look at their their slides that they put together to if you want to watch the the presentation that they made they did an excellent job. One of the real points I wanted to bring about this I didn't mention it last night I should have one of things that's really a hallmark is that the two executive directors for the bid and the Chamber are working very tightly together and they've really unified the two sets of business communities the business improvement district is a geographical area you know basically constrained to the downtown and the Chamber is Amherst area wide and they've really been working together as a team to recognize the importance of reviving business in the town of Amherst thinking about the new ways that business might be conducted looking at ways that we might have to introduce social distancing in our restaurants and things like that so there they have I really give a lot of credit to Claudia and Gabrielle for taking the lead on this and they have boards who are very supportive of the work they've been doing they're looking at you know parking issues permitting issues how do we how do we position ourselves so when businesses start to look forward to reopening or relocating that we're the community that they want to relocate to and in that recording if people do want to see the presentation should be up online on Amherst media's website or youtube channel yeah just you know you might want to talk about the spring on it because one of the interesting things about these types of things but also all of our meetings are now when they are conducted in zoom are automatically recorded we record them all and then we can put them on our youtube channel and people can see almost any meeting so it's not just the meetings that Amherst media covers now it's pretty much all means so that's one of the advantages of using a zoom technology there's a lot of disadvantages but one of the advantages is everything's being recorded now and thrown up on on youtube which is fantastic yeah we've seen a big increase in even the meetings that were traditionally broadcast or recorded we're seeing a huge increase in public participation in the sense of people actually tuning in live to the meetings so that's been one of the one of the silver linings for sure so let's see I think we wanted to leave a little time to talk about Amherst masks for all and how people can request a mask if they need one for themselves or their family members and also sign up to sew masks and or donate materials if you have them so we we have put that up on our website for the community participation officers it's amherstma.gov slash get involved there's a web form there that you can go on and request a mask for yourself or a family member or neighbor and we'll coordinate with you to get that get that to you you can also sign up to sew masks and donate any materials that you might have and we can coordinate pickup and material distribution so that's something that's up live now we've already had over a dozen people sign up on the form for either requesting a mask or to donate or to volunteer so we would encourage you to go there if you are in need of a mask yeah that was amazing because it just went up yesterday late yesterday afternoon so they have that many people already signed up it's fantastic it's really important because these are for folks who might not otherwise have access to a mask and now that you're required to have a mask to enter stores or anything like this we don't want to have people who don't have access to a mask to be deprived to being able to go to the grocery store or go to any kind of facility we want people to have the access so the intent of this is for those communities who might not otherwise have access to a to a mask and so everybody's it's going to be a real group project and a community wide project so just credit the community participation officers for pulling this together and rolling it out so quickly and again the the website's amherstma.gov slash get involved and you can also find it on our home page news item there's a link to it there if you're interested so are there any any things you want to leave the community with before we wrap up today that you didn't get a chance to touch yet either of you I have one thing I just want to mention next Monday at 5 30 the interim Sonia Aldridge our interim finance director and I will be presenting the budget information for FY 20 and for FY 21 and these will be projections of our what we anticipate to be our revenues and expenditures for those two years as much as we know at this point and so we will it'll be a group meeting that will include the town council the board of library trustees and the school committee and so it won't be a really long presentation but it'll be a lot of information we'll set the stage for the decisions that we have to make coming forward as we move forward making decisions about the budget and just as a spoiler alert it's not a pretty picture it's going to be a difficult year and we just want to help we want to be as transparent as possible with the information that we have at this point in time thank you Paul and I imagine we'll we'll be getting materials added to our budget webpage and so hopefully you can follow along yeah Dave do you have any parting words I think the only thing I'd say is something I touched on earlier which is you know town staff I know Paul has said this before but through all this I've been just so impressed across the departments with the dedication commitment of town staff they want to be here they want to serve the the residents of Amherst they want to work with their committees and boards and they want to get government back up and going we realize how important you know government services are government contracts are we're trying to as I said we're trying to get contracts out for dog parks we're trying to finish the golf park spray park and the I've just been so impressed with the creativity and and the you know people are very emotionally attached to their work here in Amherst and and that's you know you you don't see that in every community you don't see that in every job workplace but Paul and I see it every day people want to be be here and and they want to work and so we will do everything we can to bring them back at a time and in a safe environment based on the guidelines from the governor and our our health director and others so I think people should know that people are here they're they're working remotely they want to serve the residents of Amherst you know that's a that's a very important reminder thank you for that so I just want to reiterate too if there's something you heard today that you want to follow up on and get more information or you just have a question you can always email us at info at amherstma.gov you can reach the town manager's office at 413-259-3002 you'll either get Angela or Jen two of the community participation officers they're they've been there one of them has been there every day to help so don't be afraid to call us and we'll be there to pick up the phone so I'm going to say thank you to you both thank you Dave for joining us as our special guest we will be meeting on Thursday at noon with health director Julie Federmann so same same link same phone number we hope to see you we hope to see you there and we'll be putting this recording up on our COVID-19 playlist so stay safe stay healthy thank you have a nice day