 And maybe, maybe Andy will come back. Let me just, I'll just pull up the message. So this is attack meeting for September 7th. And one thing I realized for Amber last time is we did not go around the room, the virtual room and introduce ourselves. And so she may have had trouble knowing who was here and who wasn't here. So I'll say that I'm here. I'm Tracy. And I'm the chair of the committee. Never make it go around. Everyone. Hey, I'm Joe. I'm a student in Amherst college last semester. Volunteer here attack. I'm Chris Brestrup on the planning director and I try to come to tech meetings, but I often have other things going on. So. I'm glad to be here. Thank you. Welcome. Hi, I'm not. I am currently watching my. I suck. Anyway, I'm here. Better than an outdoor sport today. Oh, yes. I'm loving it right now. Okay. So fun. Tate, anybody go for it. Oh, I'm Tate Coleman. I'm a grad student in civil engineering at UMass Amherst. And I'm a member of the tech currently. Feel for more in public works. Okay. And so we also have Andy. Hi, Andy. And, uh, hi. I'm a town counselor in liaison to. Yeah, Andy, we were doing this just for Ambers benefit is sometimes we don't go around our virtual room and then she's got to figure out who is here or who wasn't here when she's listening to the minutes. So. And I'm Chris Lindstrom. A member of the tech. I wish Marcus had invited us all to. The ice rink. Then you. It's kind of hard to actually see because. The, uh, the glass is all fogged up. The community ring. Yeah. Oh, it doesn't sound so bad. Okay. All right. Thank you all. So, um, hopefully, uh, I will text Kim and see if she's joining us, but I will just read the announcement about. Um, having remote meetings and says pursuant to the. Chapter 20 of the acts of 2021. And extended by chapter. 2020. 22 of the acts of 2020 and 22 this meeting will be conducted via remote means members of the public who wish to access the meeting and they do so via zoom or telephone with the instructions, including the link that's on the posted agenda. No in-person attendance will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. So let's just check and see. I think we do have even the room as an attendee. So Guilford or whoever's the host can be a letter in. No cost her. Yeah. Okay. All right. So welcome all. So. Um, we don't have anybody, I think he wants to make a public comment right now. Um, so our first time around the agenda is the street lights policy. You know, we had set this meeting in August based on the timeframe. Of, um, That we would that there would be a version to review. Um, So, um, I think that's what we're going to do by now. And unfortunately there is not. Um, So, uh, Mandy had met. Mandy Joe Henneke had met with evil go over the weekend and they made some changes. And, and then I've been involved too with making revision. So we will be bringing this to the attack for the next attack meeting. And then it will go back. It will go to TSO and then to the council after that, and then it will go back to the council. Um, So you can give you a brief update, you know, where things stand and I can weigh in as well. Um, I didn't want to just mention too. Um, and this is an unexpected announcement, but this is Tate's last meeting joining us. But we're happy that he's here. Um, he did resign from the committee because. He is not an Amherst resident because. Rent an Amherst are too much money. Unfortunately. I'm not sure that he's going to be here and, um, and his contribution to the committee. Tate, do you have anything else to want to. Thanks Tracy. I mean, yeah, it's quite unfortunate, but. Um, As I relate to Tracy, I'll be happy to give. The committee. Um, updates about the PVTA. Service. Overall. Um, redesigned. Um, as that happens, if that is something that the committee is interested in. We definitely are. Do you know of a timeframe for that? Well, everything. Always takes longer. But I expect by the end of this year that there will be some. Measurable progress. In terms of. Releasing more information to the public and. Going further along. Everyone at PVTA just has a lot. Going. And so it's hard to. Think about, but just by the way, also. In this past. For this fiscal year. RTA's got a 50% increase in funding from the state. So. You know, that really helps and may speed along. The redesign because they actually have some funding to do something. Which is great. Anyway. Just wanted to say that. Thank you. And I guess. So is the funding. Just temporary, like for this year only. Or is it likely to be. Continued. So it's not guaranteed to be. No, of course. All right. No, I understand. But. It's. Considered a budget. Increase. Not just like a one year thing. But. Of course. You never know the legislator. I don't know. That's not never a guarantee, but. They've said they've. They've specifically said, well, that's great. Now we need to find the drivers. So that is a concern, but it allows them. Potentially to think more about. What. What makes the most sense in terms of where to invest that. Those funds. Excellent. All right. Thank you. Just, I'm sorry, I, I'm, I had to bug out for a second and then come back in, but when you say redesign. Are you. What are you referring to? Is it just the roots and, you know, potentially increases in roots or is it. Is it beyond, you know. Roots. Yeah, thanks. It's a network redesign. I will find the. Oh, there's not a chat in this one. I was going to say. If you want to send me a link and I can send it around again. So Chris, I don't know if you were here, but there was a T and another graduate student. Presented on the project that they had done is. They worked with the PDA through a graduate student. Studio project. And they were looking really comprehensively at like updating the roots. Yeah. So just, thanks, Tracy, just, just to give a quick. Overview of what, what the project was. So. PDA got a grant from the federal transit administration to work on a network redesign. So that's. Realigning the roots because a lot of them haven't been changed in decades and. And. You know, but population centers employment has moved around. And so the idea is how to reallocate. Your existing funding to better serve your communities. So. They PVTA contracted out to the planning department at UMass Amherst. To do the work on this study. And it was a. Two year project. I should say for the fixed root redesign. They had. Like. New Western New England university. Looking at some of the other aspects of the system. But anyway, that was a two year process and I was. Able to be a part of one of the years. And the result. After extensive public input. And. Thought and effort. The, the result was a proposed network redesign. That was. Intended to be approximately level funding, but just shifting around those resources based on data and what. We heard from the public. So anyway, that is what I'm referring to with the redesign. So the next steps are. It has to go through the whole operations. Planning phases in terms of vetting out everything, making sure it makes sense. And then the next step is to do the operations. And then there will be the final report. вопросы of the operationally. Which takes a long time because the people who do the operation who do that work. Also have a full time job. That they're already doing. So it takes a little while, but eventually the, the idea is, I think, at least some, I don't know if it'll be in phases or whatever. Anyway, I'll send the final report. But the idea is that some of those changes. more gradually would be implemented to, yeah, to the network. Okay. Thank you. So Eve, do you want to go, do you want to give a brief update about the status of the street lights? Sure. But first, I just want to say Tate, I'm sorry to have you leaving. I was, I'm going to take credit for recruiting Tate to this committee. I let him at the checkout line at Target and somehow we made the connection. Anyway, so I'm psyched that you actually did this for as long as you could. All right. So street lights, I'm not going to give you the detailed presentation that I thought I was going to give you, but I'll sort of give a summary. So I think as most of you or at least almost all of you know, I got alarmed by the street lights proposal because I saw it potentially jeopardizing existing safety and also the potential future of lighting that would support transportation mode shift to more biking and walking and other alternative transportation. And to really try to figure out whether that might be the case. I did a series of, I dove deep into some of the, you know, the policy details and I translated them into words I could understand. And then I set out, I created diagrams and then I turned all of that into a series of three articles that I had published in the indie that sort of showed. And I'm one of those people that writes too much and then can summarize much more concisely later. So the summary is that my concern is really that if we, you know, cover shield all the lights that there's going to be less surface on the ground that is actually lit up and that's going to create more islands of darkness that are already, in my opinion, too many and that make it difficult to support increased or existing safe biking and walking. And so a lot of my diagrams really show how those areas of darkness would multiply unless we add more lights and then that raises issue of cost. So that was sort of the big theme of my set of three articles. So I went and Tracy and I was working with Tracy throughout this. She's got the research expertise. I just was the translator and we talked to the town council when it came up to council and expressed our concerns. And it seemed like there were enough people that were concerned either about the issues we were raising or financial issues or other kinds of issues that basically it got deferred for a few months. And it's supposed to come back to the TAC as well as several other town committees. So in the meantime, the main sponsor, there are two main sponsors, Mandy and Anna and Mandy reached out to me to meet with me. And so the goal being that we could really kind of put our heads together and come up with a package that addresses our concerns together so that it doesn't have to keep sort of bouncing back and forth from the council to other committees and people like me raising alarm after the fact. So currently the hope is that and I'm also working with Tracy on this that our hope is that we're going to get sort of a tentative. I met with Mandy, she put together an initial redraft. It's now back on my plate and I am now working to sort of remassage that redraft. Tracy is helping me with that. We're hoping to get it back to Mandy this weekend with some key questions that would then go on to some other people. And just to tell you some of the big picture things, one of the key things we want to do is have a categorization of streets that would be not just the street, the existing categorization of like arterials and collectors, but that it would incorporate things like is it a primary connector on the bicycle and pedestrian network? Does it have a sidewalk? You know, is it a street where you already have a ton of pedestrian traffic at night like North Pleasant, you know, or places like that? So to think about the existing usage, the desired usage, the crash data, the existing infrastructure of sidewalks versus shoulders, et cetera, put all of those things together into a new classification of streets that would basically indicate sort of how much lighting we think we need for the different categories of streets. And then depending on that, then come up with the appropriate standards for what the lighting should look like. So like for the safety, the pedestrian safety standards, for example, that I looked up that Tracy helped me find, it says you should have a minimum of two lumens the whole route, right? And that, you know, has some implications for how often you would have to have lighting along the way. So that might be something that we want to say should actually be the case on North Pleasant, where we have, you know, existing really high rate of crashes and a lot of pedestrians walking at night. Whereas in a. Yeah, I mean, we will come back, like with the details, I think, yeah. Yeah, I'm trying to just give a few. No, of course. Right. Yeah. I mean, so initially too, so when the sponsors originally brought it to the council, it's more than a year ago now, like in August of 2022, at that time, they did have as a proposal. Now, they did have a map that they put together of like where there would be street lights and where there wouldn't be. And they had based it just on zoning districts to roughly represent where people walk at night or where they don't or where there's more dense development and where there's not, except for that it always to me, it always seemed like really problematic. And and that because there are exceptions to that, you know, like some of the densest housing developments aren't necessarily in places that have the densest zoning districts in general. And that they can also be if it's like a low income project, it can also be a place like we're or a place where a lot of students are living. It can also be a place where there's still a lot of pedestrian traffic at night. And so this is like the, you know, updated version of that. I mean, one of the keys, Tracy, I want to I want to try to not say give too many details about how we're doing things. So I was going to, yeah. So so I just wanted to say what we're looking at is not that in the current policy like they were trying to do, but instead setting out a way that that would be created after the policy that the policy will sort of set that in motion. So one of the things we're trying to put our heads together about is what that looks like. And then in the meantime, within the policy sort of water to the parameters of what we do in the meantime. And then the third thing that we're trying to think through is what's the process for for change both before and after that sort of set of standards is set up. So so those are sort of the three things we're trying to think about. What's the process to get that set of standards to happen in a way that doesn't take a crap load of town resources to get there, nor to actually do the lighting. And then secondly, what do we do in the meantime before that setup? And then thirdly, what's the process for change both before and after? Does that make sense? So that's what we're working in. We're trying to put our heads together and help Mandy kind of put that together consistently. And I think I mean, just to respond to a comment that had come up like since it first came out about like the need for like like the public to be involved and so on. So we're not going to be setting the standards, you know, saying exactly where there's more lighting, less lighting, exactly what the lighting is like and so on like that. But like deferring, as you said, to having a process, you know, whether it's like a task force or committee or some other process that involves, you know, a variety of experts and the public in like setting those priorities and setting those standards and then using those as a basis moving forward. So. So go ahead, Chris. For both questions, I think for what I'm hearing from you too, is that your your bottom line to sort of. So you wouldn't, you know, continue to critique the policy if it had some kind of process for analyzing which roads and and how much lighting for each road. So I guess what another way to say that is if a policy appeared before Town Council to. I don't even know what it's called, promote dark skies or whatever. And it didn't have that in it. Then. You guys would still be completely opposed to. To that kind of moving forward for a vote in Town Council is that. Yeah, I mean, I was especially opposed because I think if the policy were implemented as it's been phrased thus far, it would actually increase danger. So I was going to oppose it as hard as I could. As I know, I got that. I guess I'm just trying to understand, you know, you covered a lot of ground. I'm just trying to understand the bottom line. Like, if assuming you don't get a perfect policy, what's the bare minimum that the policy needs to have in order for it to be? Yeah, good question. So my bare minimum is it's not going to increase danger. And I did communicate that to Anna. And so that evaluation process. But my biggest is that this is partly a process to get something that we've talked about in transportation committees for 15 years, which is we actually need better lighting to promote alternative transportation and improve safety, not just to head off worse danger. And so my my real hope, honestly, has been not only to head off the worst case scenario, but to harness the momentum that is here for something that's actually really good. And I think dark sky protections is part of that, actually. I mean, I think you really can have both. If you have less layer, it makes things more visible. And then you add some in between lights that are smaller and lower and hopefully not as expensive and you get continuous lighting that is dark sky friendly and pedestrian and bicycle and scooter friendly. But I think you're missing the point that I'm trying to make. How are you measuring increase or decrease danger? That's I think what you're after, right? She is like really talking about the trying not to make things worse or trying not to make trying to make them better or whatever. But it sounds like we need to have something in that legislation that will include some form of analysis to determine. Yeah. So so Marcus, my take, and this is built on Tracy, is that Amherst policymakers should not have to be experts in lighting and that they should defer to existing guidance from professionals and experts. And so the dark sky advocates have been referencing manuals from the Dark Sky International Dark Sky Association and the Engineering Illuminating Society. Sorry, in any ways, it's IES. Tracy pointed me to the Federal Highway Administration, pedestrian lighting primer. So it's really those standards that I've been comparing to the standards that were in the policy and saying, wait a sec, you know, these standards are really not going to meet these minimum lighting standards that are in this other manual that's guidance based on safety for pedestrians. And so I I mean, yes, we should have data on actual safety and crashes that happen after whatever policy we do. But in the meantime, I think that the basic idea is that we need to have equal status for the safety manuals as for the dark sky manuals. No, that's great. That's but yeah, I was just concerned because early you were saying what I want to have, you know, safety and all this sort of thing. But that to me means we need analysis to confirm that, right? Versus saying I want to have the same priority with, you know, safety manuals, cross-series, dark sky manuals. Yeah. Right. Yeah, I mean, I mean, we're not going to lay out the the way it's proposed now, right, is that there's going to be a process for deciding exactly what standards are set up. I mean, I had got involved with it initially before the initial proposal because when I first read about it a year ago, right, there really wasn't much considered like the focus was mainly on dark skies. And there really was very little about transportation, transportation safety. And I just know from my work with transportation with drivers and with transportation data, right, that so many fatalities happen at night on roadways and particularly for pedestrians, like 75 percent of people are killed or killed at night. So so I just came to it and they I mean, the sponsors will admit like, oh, we hadn't really thought as much about the transportation impacts as much as dark skies. And so yeah, so I mean, we're working on the balance. And I mean, we will come back next time. And and to me, it's not just about more lighting. Like it's really about I mean, I'm not a fan of lighting. That isn't good lighting either, right. And glare can impact cyclists and pedestrians as much as it can impact vehicles, right. So we really would hope that the standards that we also need to be aware of the impact on homeowners, too. Right. I mean, that was kind of why this whole thing started. Sure. Yeah, right. You know, complaints on homeowners. So it's there's a three three-legged school almost in the vehicular, you know, pedestrian, four-legged story, right. And so but I completely agree, there needs to be a balance between those things and not a focus on one. Right. So we need to be careful how we're putting it or else it's going to, you know, we are going to end up having to put numbers around it. And then, right. That is, then we are going to have to be experts, but you know, which is not what we want to be. Yeah, I mean, if you want, I can give you a couple of examples. I didn't bring all my diagrams to present to you, but that was one of the things I did. But so I'll give you two specific things that that I was looking at. So one is if you shield the lights, you have less ground illuminated, then you have dark spots between the lights and the safety standards for pedestrians and cyclists are clear that you need continuous lighting. And, you know, the minimum even in rural paths is two lumens. So if, you know, if you're taking our existing lights and you're covering them and they're covering less area, then you're going to be creating some darker spots. And if we're trying to keep within a town budget that is already strained, you can't just add a bunch of extra lights and feel like, oh, yeah, we can do it perfectly. You're going to have to have some tradeoffs about maybe on one road, you'll have a few extra lights and you'll spend that. But on another road, you're going to be like, no, we're really going to just assume that people who are biking are wearing lights. Tracy keeps pointing out that, you know, if you assume that all bicyclists have lights like is now the law, you're basically telling people who are low income and don't have, you know, are just getting a bike for a day or having bought lights that they shouldn't be biking. And if they get in the accident, it's their fault. So if we want to promote, I don't feel like I'm saying this very well, but again, let's get specific. So if we're talking North Pleasant, there's a bunch of students walking home every night. There's a whole bunch of students partying up and down that road, walking at 2 a.m. drunk. That's one of the highest areas of traffic accidents. We might tell them they're a bunch of idiots for walking drunk at night and true enough, but on the other hand, we actually don't want them to die, right? So in a place like that, we might say we're going to spend a little more money to get those shielded lights without the glare and a couple of in between lights to make sure there's some continuous lighting and they're going to be seen the whole way. Whereas on East Street, where it's super dark, we're going to keep it super dark. And we're just going to make sure that we get the paint strip painted every year because then maybe those two people that were walking side by side and one of them was hit and killed would have been visible to that car because there was a paint stripe that they would have seen. So I hope that gives you at least some examples. Does that help, Marcus? When I can find the new button, yes. Yeah, no, that was great. I mean, that was exactly what I was thinking anyway, beginning, but like I say, we just need to be careful how we put it or else we are going to walk ourselves into some defining numbers and all that sort of stuff. Right, so we're hoping that we can defer that to someone. I think simply just saying, we want to put equal balance to all these four things or whatever, you know, capture that, right? But I'm going to draw it right. Yeah, and I mean, if you look at the guidance, I mean, if you look at the guidance, right, in terms of, and when I look at crashes at night or just crashes in general, right, a lot of fatalities, be it motorists or pedestrians or bicyclists, and a lot of motorists are killed at night too, but that they mainly happen on larger roads because people are traveling faster and the risks are higher. And so to me, you know, coming from a safety, a transportation safety perspective and trying to save lives, like I am in generally more supportive of having more light on larger roadways and having less light on roadways that are less risky. And if you look at the guidance, you know, from Federal Highway and other organizations that have studied this a lot, like they kind of lean in that same direction. And so we're not going to be setting those standards right now, but those are kind of the thoughts that we're having. And then, you know, there will be a process for deciding in more detail. And it is going to be a while. I mean, Guilford would know better than I, but it is going to be a while before, you know, Amherst lights are, like, overhauled on mass in terms of, like, replacing a lot of lights. So... Yeah, they're still standing. They're going to be echoed on. Right. So... Marcus, one of the reasons we're not giving you a ton of details is because Mandy has asked us, basically, you know, in term, because of the process, we aren't supposed to give, you know... No, I'm not looking for a ton of details. Yeah. So I'm trying to give you kind of the conceptual framework, but it's like Mandy and Anna are still the sponsors of the policy. For sure. So the thing that Tracy and I suggest is just suggestions. And it's still going to be framed by sort of their vision of what they want. Yeah. And so, you know, in terms of timeframe, like, so Eve and I are continuing to talk with Mandy and we will send her information this weekend and we'll meet with her next weekend. So my... I would anticipate that at our next TAC meeting that we would have, like, more details to discuss with you then and then send any feedback that the committee wants to send as a whole to TSO and then TSO will... I mean, it needs to go back to the council in November. So there is a little bit of time. We're hoping to actually have a draft policy. And I mean, and typically, right, we would have a meeting on the third Thursday, but the third Thursday this year is like the downtown block party. So I don't really want to compete with that as exciting as TAC is. And so I think, you know, we'll have to have her meeting at the end of the month or something. So... Chris has had her hand up forever. Chris Brestrup. Oh, I just had a comment and I think you have resolved my issue. I just wondered what the goals would be that you would suggest that Mandy and Anna state in their policy because I think their original goals had to do with dark sky and they didn't necessarily include a big emphasis on safety. So I just wondered if you were helping them to frame their goals for this policy? Yeah, we are. Okay, thank you. I mean, and there are a number of town goals, right? That we want to be more age friendly. We want to support climate change goals. I mean, there's so many different goals. And so it's always been my approach that no more of the goals should be considered in the policy. So, okay. All right, thanks. So we'll bring it back to you. And I do want to move on. I know that Chris Lindstrom has to leave at 6.30. And so I did want to just share about safe routes to school and what's happening with the schools. And also just see how people are feeling. We did talk at the last meeting about if we wanted to table at the downtown Amherst Block Party. I've been in touch with Angela Mills. I sent you actually one of the attachments I sent you was it said, I did reach out to the downtown bid and they sent me to Angela Mills. And they said that the town of Amherst is already having like 12 tables or something and that we could share a table with one of the existing organizations that's there. If we wanted, like maybe we could share with ECAC or something. And I wanted to see if people felt like doing that. And if anybody wants to volunteer to help on that night, the downtown block party is from five to nine. So volunteer. What night is that? Sorry. It's going to be Thursday, September 21st. Yeah, I'll help out. I can totally do that or take a shift or whatever. I'm happy to help out as well this evening. I'm sorry, I have my kids. Now, that's fine. OK, so and do we feel like, I mean, so Chris Linsham and I, we were at, you know, Kendrick Park with that kickoff event with the schools and so we think Chris, you think it works with us like sharing a table and we can do you see that that would be a good opportunity to sign up people for the October 4th event or is that too late? Or can we just, you know, give out the bumper stickers about the four feet and give out some more bike lights and so on. If we get them, what do you think? I don't really have a theory. I would imagine that we'll give out way more stuff than we would get volunteers, but that's OK. I mean, if we get and we're asking specifically for volunteers from the public schools on the 4th, more people is good. OK. Yeah, Tracy, let me know what needs done and I can help like. So I didn't, you know, I like the pool noodle thing, too. Like the like the visualization of four feet, I think is very important, too. Yeah, I brought my bike to the Vene Kendrick. It was helpful. It's a little hard to get to a crowd with the four foot buffer, but yeah. But I just think having it. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I agree. OK, that sounds good. So I'll let them know. So hold on before before we move on from that. Let me just I just want to pull up. I just want to share like Angela's email. Oh, here. OK. All right, so I'm just sharing my acrobat. So so one of the things she wanted to know, I mean, what do you think people who are offering to volunteer and we can like set up some shifts for that? I don't know. We necessarily have to cover all the way till nine, but it says, so Angela is asking me. So these are the different tables that are already set up with the town. And I know, too, when Jess Slavin was here at our July meeting, she offered to come, you know, and have some last bike stuff, too. So I can reach out to her and see if she's still up for that. And also, if not, you know, we can also request some more lights and so on. So Chris, I don't know. How do you reach out to her mass bike to get more lights and so on? Yeah, I have not. But I can do it tomorrow. OK, thanks. That would be great, Chris. Thank you. So here. So Angela said, you know, could we possibly share a table with the CPOs or public art or do we need those are the community participation officers? Chief Petty officers. So why can't we be with DPW? Can we be with DPW, Guilford? That seems like a natural, like, yeah, I'm fine if you want to. OK, yeah. All right. Me seems so natural. So Guilford, will you let Amy know or Angela or? Yeah, we're all we're. Are you going to be there, Guilford? Well, we have we started noon or a little before noon. Oh, you have to set up, right? Yeah. We'll be there quite early and we'll be the whole time. And I've got about 20 of us all together. So yeah, we'll be there so we can we can push some people around and make more. OK, thank you. Yeah, DPW, I think that would be great. I like that. Thanks, Guilford. Do you know where you'll be, Guilford? No, not yet. OK, if we don't like our location, we'll move. So it's it's the block in front of the firehouse. Like, if you remember last year, they had like tents and tables. I know, but I don't know. I could double my commute depending on where it is. So hopefully not not too close to the stage. It gets kind of loud. Yeah, it does. There's only two stages this year. Well, I'm going to see. I have to confirm my schedule. But what time would we be starting ish, like four ish? It starts at five and goes to nine. So maybe if we staffed it, you know, from five to whatever, eight something or. I mean, I feel like a lot of the community groups aren't necessarily out there so much after dark. But yeah, all of our bikes with bike lights on the back. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think it's I think I think I'm happy to be there later because I think they're going to be there and whatever. OK, OK. So we can take shifts and we can take shifts. Yeah, it's fun, you know, it's also fun to go out and enjoy it and stuff. And we had talked about I didn't ask the bit about this. But, you know, we had talked about that it would be a great opportunity to like do the bus. Oh, my God, that would be so great. But I mean, to do the bus, we'd have to be like at the like you can't have the bus in the middle, right? So you'd have to have the bus like the the Kendrick Park end, I guess. And yeah, I think maybe for this, maybe we do the bus demo. At on campus or something. Yeah, but maybe or maybe we could do a demo on October 4th at one of the schools. Oh, yeah, that I think that would be really great. Maybe even honestly at the high school. OK, at some point, because Mickey Grimacky tomorrow morning, I'll I'll see. I think that would be great at the high school would be great because then I mean, those are the kids who, you know, are able to be out and about on themselves, you know, on their own and maybe they need to extend their commute a little bit. I think that would be really helpful. I don't know, Stefana, we want to get a U-Mass transit bus. How hard is that to do still here? Anyway. Yeah, I didn't I didn't ask a bit about that part. But let's see if we can come up with some other ways to do it with them. Great. All right. Well, it's a go and I'll let Angela now go first, but we'll be sharing. Thank you. And. And then what else? So, Chris, did you want to say anything more about the October 4th? Um, October 4th. Yeah, I mean, I'm we we have coordinators. So October 4th is the international walk, ride and roll to school day. And it's promoted in Massachusetts through safe routes to school, which is a project of the Mass Department of Transportation. And so we have the middle school and the three elementary schools signed up to participate. And we have three coordinators at each location where a family has agreed to either lead a a bike parade to school or a walking school bus to school on that day. And all the principals are planning to host a small reception for them when they arrive there in the morning. And, you know, words will be said about making our community walkable and bikeable for our kids starting at school. And that's that. So I'm, frankly, happy with that. It seems like Wildwood Elementary will have the largest one and has the kind of the most both enthusiasm from parents sort of stepping up. And then, you know, I think Nick Yaffe, the previous principal, did this quite often, at least once a year. And so Alison Estes is the new principal there is kind of used to that and has it in her book and is sort of ready to go. But it's exciting that it will be happening everywhere. And for me, that defines success. You know, I don't necessarily care that much. If we have huge numbers of participants, I think that's going to depend on the principal and the PGO and the in the parents who are leading it in terms of whether or not we get decent numbers. But right now, I know Wildwood, for instance, I think that they reached out to Augie is the police dog, but what is the community outreach officer? What is his name? Bill Laramie. Thank you, Chris Restrip. So they think they reached out to Bill Laramie and they asked if Augie could come. Um, we did sort of I sort of signed Paul Backelman up to participate in the Fort River event because he lives on Northeast Street close by. So I'm happy about that in part because it there actually does seem to be a fair amount of parents who really care about this stuff. And then, of course, this is the kind of sort of active participation and atmosphere that I think Safe Roots is looking for. You know, as we might move forward and want to try to take advantage of some of the funds that they have available for, you know, signs and lines. Renovations or try to go for the bigger enchilada, which is up to one point five million for rehabbing infrastructure and intersections around schools. So we all have that concern about those two major intersections flanking the Fort River site. So I'm pleased with where we're headed. And I'm also meeting with the high school tomorrow. So obviously we can't really have parents leading their kids at the high school. It doesn't work that way. And so we did have a student from the high school sign up, but, you know, he's bringing the idea to the environmental club. And so whether or not that goes anywhere, I think it's a different it's just a different question. So I am meeting with Mickey Grimacky tomorrow just to discuss things that the administrator, you know, that the principal just might be able to do on the day of some kind of education events like we just discussed, maybe it's a demo on how to put your bike on the front of a bus. But there are some pretty cool programs through Safe Roots for high schools. So I just kind of plan to educate them, educate Mickey about what those are and just kind of see what they're interested in doing and support and help them. Yeah, no, that's awesome. And I think to like to recap, too, we had also talked about I know you've reached out to like the PE teachers in the schools about the curriculum for elementary school students, you know, so if we can get like funding and support for that, too. Yeah, so I think that I didn't even know this. But last year, I guess a student at Wildwood walked out, walked into a car in the parking lot. Which really kind of freaked out the PE teacher, Keith Burgoyne. And I think that's why he was so enthusiastic about trying to do for get plugged into curriculum that Safe Roots can provide. And so Debbie Westmoreland was actually really interested in bringing the principals around and around this idea to provide professional development curriculum for all the PE teachers. And that was supposed to be in August. But then there was a big power vacuum, you know, that occurred in the school district in August and it just didn't get brought up. So at this point, I think it's just a conversation between Keith Burgoyne and Allison at Wildwood about whether or not it makes sense for him to do it. Since the professional development is free. There's not a cost barrier, which is nice. And then I haven't been able to connect with Ben Coblin, who was the other PE teacher at Arms. But we weren't able to make a district wide, you know, like professional development day for the PE teachers happened this fall because, you know, the best laid plans. But I am just trying to go through. Yeah. And I think it's exciting that we're like building this, you know, and we can if we have a flyer, we can put together like a general flyer or contact flyer or something for when we're tabling on the 21st, you know, just to even share with families or like a QR code or something that if people were interested in finding out more like Chris, maybe if you wanted to send them to the coordinator to the school or something just to connect for like for their info or we could we could figure something out and also just to get the word out. Like I think if we, you know, if we reach out to Scott Merzbach and the Indie and other things like that, we could do a press release, but we could also get with advance notice they could send something out and take pictures and things like that. So I think any of those things to kind of build that and Debbie Westmore and it's got to start the sign ups through, you know, the district emails out next. Right. Yeah. Awesome. Hopefully it, you know, yeah. That sounds amazing. And so the other safe reach to school update I have and I know Chris Lincoln has to leave in a minute, but also that last week, Chris and he both attended the ECAC meeting. ECAC, the energy conservation action climate people had reached out to us to see if we wanted to participate in the meeting. They were having a discussion about safe reach to school in the context of the new school that's being built on the Fort Riversite. And they invited Kathy Shane to come to that meeting because she's the head of the elementary school building committee. And we were intact. People were invited as well. I was not able to go. I did watch that meeting. It seemed like a really rich discussion. There were a lot of great ideas. And one of the announcements at that meeting and Guilford, maybe you know you can share more on this is that there was a that a consultant was recently hired to investigate those intersections close to the Fort River and do some analysis. Yes, we brought a consultant on it's a couple of things forced earlier and they're going to do a little more in depth. OK, so that's going to. So I assume the right that works going to build on the analysis like there were all those traffic counts and stuff done for the elementary school building study. So they're going to be using that data and building additionally, right? Yes, hopefully we actually the way things are going, we may do even more counts before we make this decision. I guess it's wild and crazy out there right now. OK. Wait, what is that being? It's it's been really good everywhere since everywhere. People are just got back. Oh, yeah, it was insane. The things I've seen have been insane on my bicycle. Really? Running have been crazy. Well, I saw a person make a left turn on route nine when they had the red arrow, they just turn because no one was coming and they just turn. It's like, oh, it's optional. I saw someone pass someone else on North Pleasant, like between between Kendrick Park and the university. And the school buses are reporting that people are passing on the left. Oh, yeah, I wouldn't guess. Oh, my God, that is so bad. So can we get out? I know that there was like some social media posts that went out from the town about, you know, like the four foot rule and things, but could we get? And I seen that mass dot, like on their Twitter feed and other feeds, like they're they have a bunch of graphics about the school buses. And can we get some of that? Or maybe we can get I know, I could ask Deb Westbarlin to send out some of those graphics, especially about the school safety, right? Because that's like a major concern if if people just you actually look at the people on the vehicles who are doing the wild and crazy things. I'm not too sure many of them are social media type people. Now, but just but also just to make people aware, I guess. One thing. There hardly might be free of a pair of ruffled flashing beacons soon. The rail trail is getting the Cobra stuff. So they're going to have some extra. They're going to have some extra. Sorry, my daughter's trying to find out what's going on. Right. You're talking about on Maple Street, right? On South Maple. I think you're talking about on South Maple that they're changing that I am crossing into a hawk crossing. That's true. Yeah, those are all masks on it. Oh, no, I think, but are they they can you can ask for them. But Hadley has first dibs on them. Well, if we ask quicker, maybe they won't never that they exist. And Hadley is putting some other ones in too. Like they're putting in some along nine. Well, nine doesn't belong to Hadley. No, but none of nine belongs to Hadley. But the anything that surplus from the project Hadley gets the first crack at if they wanted to get it first. Tracy, I'm going to. OK, thank you. I just want to make one thing. One comment out of the ECAC meeting is they were they were really interested in hearing about the bicycle plan. So, you know, I just wanted to put in whether or is there a way that we could work together, et cetera. So I know that you probably heard that, but I just thought I would raise that. All right, I've got to go. Sorry, guys. Thank you. Yeah. I think that that's a great idea. So, right, we had Stella come to from ECAC, come to TAC, so we could TAC people could go to ECAC at a future meeting. Tracy, we should really approve the minutes before other people. Let's do that for a while. Yeah, sorry, I've got to run two. So can we approve minutes before you go? The minutes are better. OK. Yes, I'm just I'm plugging my ear. Well, no, so can we we approve two minutes last time? And then we just we ran out of time, but I agree. So which one did we not approve? I thought maybe hold on. We got we we didn't do the May, May, June or July. Yeah, let me. Yeah. So I think we should go ahead and do those. Does everyone the minutes because Tracy uploaded those earlier? Yeah, I can share it again. But OK, and I didn't get I didn't get the minutes from Amber for our last meeting. This is OK. We just haven't approved minutes in a long time. No, we approved them at the last meeting. We approved two sets. OK, well, we have three more. And yeah, we have three more. Really. So this was from the May 8th meeting. So, Mark, we need to know, first of all, if Marcus was actually there. I think those highlighted are. Well, they were there. That was one of the cases where Amber just asked if we could please identify ourselves with the beginning of the meeting, because it makes it easier with the meeting in the minutes. So we can go ahead and say that this indeed was there. Right. And then it was Kellogg and TAC and. It all looks good, right? Still being reviewed and OK. Do you think we need anything more? We want to prove those then. I don't. But perhaps we can approve them in batch. So let's go to the. OK, all right. All right, let me. Unless, yeah, it looks like everybody was there for this. Everyone who is present is one too. Then let me we'll do June, at least. Let them posted. OK, June. OK, bye. OK, so I think it looks like Stefan was not at the. I mean, Marcus wasn't at the next one. So if anyone Marcus was here in June and you and I in June. But can we. So shall we batch the first two? May and June, correct. Staying from those two and I'll abstain from the other one. So OK, so all those in favor of approving the minutes from the Thursday, May 18th and the Thursday, June 8th. Say aye. Or raise your. Aye. Great. Stefan. Oh, sorry. I raise my hands too. OK, thanks, great. So that is from from all those. Joe, so that that was five five to zero. Tracy and Marcus for the first two. And then maybe we're saying goodbye to Marcus. Thank you, Stefan. You have a question. May, June. No, I was just. He was raising his hands for the minutes. I've got it. OK, so the next. So it's five, it's five to zero. That's fine. OK. And the next one is the July meeting of Tracy. Me, Tracy, Stefan and Joe were present. Yeah, that's good. So Marcus, I assume, will be abstaining, correct. That's fine. And we're all here still. And we met with it and. Yeah, I abstain. That's fine. OK, so then we have four to one. Well, all those in favor. Great. Thank you. July on Stefan. Yes, great. OK, I abstain in approval of Marcus is abstaining. Got it. Thank you. All right, we'll send those back to her. OK, all right. Yeah, thank you, guys. Sorry, I've got to run now. That's fine. OK, and then and then we still have quorum. So yes. So now that Tate has left our committee, you know, if anybody knows anybody who wants to serve, because it does become harder, right? So yes, if we have six members, if we have two members that can't attain a 10, then we don't have quorum. No, we do. We still do. We have four, right? I'm saying, right? Because we have five. Now you're saying, right? No, no, no, you're right. So yes, we need to have we need to have four people attend. And we only have six members. So we lose two, right? Anyway, yeah. So hopefully it'd be nice to like fill it again. But OK, so. For the other thing with, let's say, so we didn't have any referrals. I guess Andy left. We didn't have any referrals from Councilor TSO. I know there's other meetings in terms of the other road project. So I think it's really exciting. I think about the Fort River study. And it's great to see the RFBs that are in all around town. So on the 29th that event in the park in Kendrick Park, like I saw people using the RFBs right there and like crossing back and forth, you know, kids and families and students. No, that's really really great. It also slows traffic down. And it's good to remind people to I don't know how we remind them to hit the button. Because I find that a UMass, too, that people just assume like people will stop and they don't. I mean, there's these huge signs on each one. It says push the button and people are crossing. So. Maybe you have to do some outreach on that. So Guilford are all of those now in those ones that we're getting in. Like I see that they're in on triangle, like triangle near the high school. And the one on with the East Pleasant down street downtown one in the Amity and Lincoln. Are there any more? Guilford. OK, I did have I did have a question about the triangle and prey one. Hey, Guilford, are you still here? Maybe he just stepped out. OK, so one thing is I've seen. Have you seen how the ones on prey, the prey and triangle that it's like the box intersection and there's one light flashing on one side of the street on one side of the intersection and the others on the other side of the intersection on triangle, which maybe we did because we were running out or maybe it was hard with the right away. But what I did find, though, is if I push the ones that are like closest to like where that medical office is, whatever the dentist's office and things, right, it's on medical or dental on the like high school side. If I push that one, those the lights on that beacon flash, but they don't flash across the street. No, because it's because it's split across the block, like it's they're like they're diagonal across from each other. So I sort of felt that it'd be better if they were rigged as a pair and they're like flash. It's odd that they're not. But maybe it was because we are running out and maybe there's not enough space if Guilford was here. I'd ask them. But they seem to be working and they and they're all I hear the audible signals like the beeping and things and the audio, the messages are pretty loud, which is good because I know sometimes DAC has said that sometimes the sounds are really quiet. Somebody did tell me that the one on Amity that they hear it saying all the time, like some message about needing to be reset or something. But hopefully that's happened now. Yeah. And the Pomeroy project looks good. Yeah, that's amazing. Love it. And yeah. So all these things are regressing. Hi, Guilford. All right, I was on the phone. No, it's fine. Oh, so we I had a question about the RFB. Well, one, are there other RFB pairs that you're still installing DPW are you done for now? We're we have we have some we have them for the roundabout at Pomeroy 116. We're short one set for that project. So we have to order that one. And then once we get that in, we pretty much have done everything for now. Yeah, they're really great. So I was saying at the one at Triangle and Frey, at that intersection, right, that there's like there's the box intersection and that there's on the side on the high school side, right? There's one on one side of the intersection. And then the other one is like a diagonal across the street on the other side. But there's there's two there's two remote push buttons coming that haven't come in yet. Oh, OK. But I guess, well, so one question. And both up so they'll both simultaneously flash. Oh, they will. OK. Yes, that's what the remote buttons are. Got it. OK. We didn't want to put just four in there. It would be kind of overkill. So they're off. No, I hear you. OK. And then there'll be remote buttons. And once the remote buttons are in off, the two will flash. But together. Got it. That's what I was wondering. Yeah, I knew there was something more going on there. And the one on the like one East Pleasant Street side, right, that that that one isn't near the curb, is that right? That one is kind of it's kind of close, but not that close. This is where the bump out. I think it's a bump out there is what kind of throws it off a little. Well, I was thinking just about like in terms of like access for people who are used to the curb or like, you know, like. I was like, you know, just for the access advisory or something. Because they're also there, if they didn't put them close enough, we'll move them, but they're all supposed to be the button is right there at the curb at the sidewalk. Yes, sidewalk being rerouted in that. Is that why I'm in the building? It's Guilford is being bumped out a bit or not. Maybe maybe I'm wrong about that. I don't know. I mean, I have to come back and look. They're supposed to be placed so that the button is right there so you can push it. OK, I'll send you a picture of what I mean. OK, it didn't look like the curb cut is like it was near the curb cut. Do you know what I mean? But it could also be that there's restrictions because of the other poles and things like that. So I wasn't sure. And it also has to be at the level pad area. It can't be at the ramp. Right. No, I understand that. Yeah. I thought they were redoing that whole area in front of the building once the building gets fixed, gets finished. Right. They're putting in a grassy strip and they're having some seating there. And on triangle, there's room on no, no, no, in front of one. He's pleasant when you were. Oh, I meant on the triangle side, like on the. Yeah. But they might got too far away. They tend to do that. Oh, right. They're really effective, even if they're not flashing. They're no, they're really working and then you go, oh, I better watch. And I was saying that I see people like, I mean, they, some of them were just activated like last week and it seems like people are using them a lot. We just, I just wanted to remind people to like hit the button. You know, especially if it's like getting darker, but. The one in front of. The one next to Kendrick Park. I mean, that one seems to get pushed all the time. Unfortunately, people like them. Why? That people seems we're not budgeted to buy a bunch more. So it's it's we got a call. We got we got an email from like you heard all the email too. They won't one on one 16 over here by the DPW at the crosswalk there. I mean, everyone's solution now is to put in one of those flashing beacons. Well, that's kind of crazy to have them everywhere. I mean, most people want them everywhere. Now, so some of those, like some of the ones near Amherst College, you know, on College Street and the and on one 16. I mean, haven't haven't some of those been installed by Amherst College? Yes, by the town. Yes. And those are all getting replaced. Oh, OK, so they just have the little ballard right now. It's just right. Yeah. So they're actually we're talking to them. They want to put full RFBs there. So those will be maybe they might go in over the winter or they might go in first thing in the summer. What about what about the park that is that going to happen this summer? Which one like the new North Pleasant Street and stuff? No, it probably it got pushed off. The bids were more. Well, the bids are more for more money we have. So we have to re rate. We bid it and it'll probably get awarded probably towards the end of next summer. OK. Progress. Thanks for that. All right, that's it then. OK. I think we can call a meeting. OK, Chris, Chris, do you have anything else to see you again? What did you have anything else to know? Except that I'm glad that I met Kim's husband. He's. Oh, so that's really good. Thank you for signing up for that. So now we just need to schedule a meeting at the same time. No, we may not schedule meetings. No, and so Chris, you had sent information to just about the safe reach to school like funding. Oh, yeah, I just sent that to you because. Yeah, no, it's fine. I mean, we're familiar with it, I guess. The question is it sounds like I, you know, when Chris Lindstrom, when she was, I mean, maybe that Fort River, depending what happens with Fort River, I mean, maybe that could be you could apply for the funding, right? For that, like up to one point five million dollars to reduce some of that, some of those nearby intersections or whatever. I mean, last time we got a safe routes to school grant in Guilford. Was that one here? That one, the one at Wildwood, right? It's on strong. It also included like the driveway to Wildwood. And then there was some stuff near the middle school, right? Yeah, yeah, but it was all on grant. Yeah, right, it was all on grant. I mean, I don't think they like to give them out to the same communities like multiple times some, but I know that Springfield has gotten multiple ones. So we can make a case for it. If you read the documentation they send out, I actually got it from the last presentation, which was a couple last week. Right. Signs and Lines grants. Well, they're tiny. Well, it's yes, it's ten thousand dollars. They only give out five. Oh, my God. There's three hundred and fifty some municipalities and how many schools in the whole state. So you're competing, you go in and compete for this little bit of money. Right. No, I agree. The one point five million, it's like ten grants to give out. Yeah, but it's still it's over three hundred communities that could apply. Right. So I agree. We might have to brainstorm for other money or something. Yes. Well, we still want to apply. I mean, Guilford UMass was still interested in applying for some of the USDOT funding. So we should. Yes, we can talk about that more. There was another grant idea. I don't know if you were you and Jason were contacted again, but like we miss the safe streets for all funding, right? With the timing, it was just really bad, but there's some other USDOT money. So. Yeah, I didn't hear about that. OK, I'll I'll I'll make sure that people check in with you or not. So just make sure they copy Jason. Yeah, absolutely. We will copy Jason. Well, Jason, yeah, Jason had offered to do a lot of the work and hey, he's not here right now. So let's just volunteer him again. Well, I mean, that falls into Jason's wheelhouse, Jason. Oh, no, I understand. Yeah. So if he knows about it, he'll remind me. OK, got it. If I only get it, I forget no one reminds me. OK, we got it. Thanks. OK, thanks, everybody. Good night, everybody. Good night. Bye. Now you're going to take care. Bye.