 All right. Great. And so item number one is to discuss highlights from DH. CD one year action plan. And I do have a few follow-up things from the last meeting, but I will say those for last. All right. Great. Yeah. So we are, let's see our last meeting was, I think May 18th around there. And we held the public hearing to hear from the public review priorities. And we were kind of operating in that limbo state where we were like, we're. Gearing up as if the grant might be due in. The fall, but knowing that DH CD had. Indicated that they might move it to March. And so we. Just a few weeks ago got. A little bit of confirmation that it is indeed their plan to have the grant be due in March, March 3rd to be specific. It's still technically like a proposal, but. My, our program rep is saying it's very, very unlikely that they would. Not follow through on their proposal. You know, it's more or less what they intend to do. And so. Yeah, I guess I'll just, just the, the highlights of it. It's the grant would be due March 3rd. It's a also unique in that it's a 24 month grant. So it really spans 22 and 23. Grant cycles. So. Whereas like previously we had, you know, issued a grant. Annually. And it was an 18 months. Implementation window. This would be. Basically covered to grant cycles. What does that mean as far as. impact their budgets? Well, so it's also they're doubling the amount of funds available. So it's basically just everything times two. So previously the total grant was $825,000 for the many entitlement communities. Now it's whatever two times that is 1.65 million total. Total and... And is that still among just five organizations or can we do 10 organizations? Right, so yeah, the proposal is still that it's five, limited to five social service organizations and three non-social service projects. They're having like a public here, the state's holding a public hearing to hear, feedback on the plan for 2022 and Nate and I, we were, that was plan, that was gonna be our suggestion is that they allow additional social service applications and maybe even more importantly is the non-social service projects because it would be, I think for, I'm thinking for the town, especially like, it's hard enough for us to come up with projects that are in the $250 to $200,000 range because we have to have all the, construction documents ready and projects ready to go. And so to then say, oh, you actually need to come up with projects that are in the $300,000 range or $400,000 range. That's a much bigger project that we're, we have some things in mind, but we're, I guess we'd almost rather do more projects for a smaller amount than a few like really big projects. So we'll see, they might not change their mind, but I think that's our one point that we would like to make at the public hearing. Hopefully they would be open to that. I think other communities are in a similar position. So Ben, just, it's hard to wrap my mind around exactly how the timing works, but just in terms of continuity. So to take an example of, we've been funding for a number of years now the survival center food pantry. Will this new schedule leave any gaps or will it be kind of seamless if they're successful from one cycle to another two years? So that's a good question. Let me, I'm gonna miss off the contracts that we just signed. So yeah, the contracts that we just signed for the current grant go from June 1st of this year. So just a few weeks ago through May 31st of 2023. So if this grant is due in March, then we probably wouldn't have an award until early summer and then contracts up and running until maybe late summer. So yeah, there would be a gap, maybe up to three to maybe six months, which definitely is an issue. It's also an issue for, because as part of my salary and part of my colleague, the admin assistant PAM is covered by block grant. So we're, luckily we're in a town setting where we can fill the gaps, find other ways to fill the gaps. But yeah, the timing is not ideal for both the admin part of it and for the continuity for the agencies. And so that's gonna be something we have to let people know is that there will be this gap. So. Although if they're working on the same sort of fiscal year basis, there might be a kind of cash flow gap of a few months, but if we can award the entire amount that continues or whatever in that fiscal year, it might just be back-end loaded. Right. But they're also not supposed to budget assuming that they're going to get the grant. Right. Because, I mean, obviously not everybody can use them. But I just wanted to make sure it wasn't like, you know, like a full year gap or something. Right. Well, what do we do? Yeah, I wouldn't expect it. I mean, I would expect them to have a reasonable turnaround on the grants and get contracts up and running by late summer. But yeah, I don't think it would be, I don't think it would be much worse than that. Is this date just generally behind on a lot of things at this point? Yeah, my sense is, well, so I think with this in particular, Bachran there, and you guys probably know this better than I, but I guess that this has always been the schedule. It's like March due date or somewhere around early winter. So they're trying to get back to that schedule. I think it better aligns with fiscal years because in theory, they're saying that they would have contracts up and running starting July 1st, which is their goal, but I think that's ambitious. But yeah, but in general, yeah, there has been a lot of turnover at DHCD and they do seem to be a little bit, they were definitely behind on processing the past two years grants. So yeah, I think DHCD in particular has had a little bit of some struggles lately, but. Okay. But yeah, that's basically the overview. There's a few other things in the action plan that are important. One is they're putting a bit more emphasis on just planning and public outreach, which we do a great job of anyway, but they want us to refine our community development strategy, which I don't know, Nate sent me the one from 2018. I don't know if that's, if there's a more recent one, but he said it's supposed to be updated every few years. So maybe it hasn't been updated since 2018, but they're expecting an updated community development strategy, which is just like a three pager that kind of goes through category by category, housing, land use, economic development, natural resources, kind of how we're doing outreach for those things and kind of a synopsis of like, what does the master plan say about this? What is the housing production plan say about this? And then using that to then justify the projects that we're supporting when those come in. So. And whose responsibility is that? Collectively ours or yours? You know, I figured I would start by just amending or editing the 2018 one, and then I can share a draft and maybe get feedback at like our next meeting or something like that. As I look through it, my first reaction was, well, this looks like it's above my pay grade. This might be something that the town council might be responsible for setting the direction for the town. Yeah. Yeah, no, I can definitely, truthfully, I've only started looking at it today just to kind of figure out there's still references to the select board and town meetings. So like even just updating those and putting in newer up to date numbers for census information and housing production over the past four years. So I think even just updating the information in here will be a good start. And then the substance of it will kind of be the next step is what are we actually saying are the priorities? But those wouldn't be something that we're, I mean, to Nat's point, those are things that exist somewhere, right? We're not determining what the priorities are. Yeah, it's kind of a synthesis of other plans that have been developed. Anything else to do with number one? No, not at the moment. Something might come up if I think about it, but nothing at this point. And Lynn, did you say the public meeting is or the public hearing on when the decisions might be discussed at least about how? Oh, they just announced that today. It's like the first Friday in July, maybe? Not the first, but yeah, I think it's the eighth. Yeah, there it is, Friday, July 8th at 10.30. I can send folks the link if they're interested. No, I was more just wondering what, or it seems like it would be important for us to know that as we are determining, I'm just looking at your schedule that you had sent to us or sort of a proposed schedule, that we would want to have that information. Right. Hopefully we'll have it before we have any kind of a public hearing. Yeah, definitely. I know, because that was the other thing too, talking to our program rep, he said, well, he said, you know, while it's, he commended us for having a public hearing in May and said, you know, it's great that we did heard from the public and got the ball rolling. He said that at least his supervisors would expect the public hearing to be held once the action plan is finalized for the next grant because, you know, and to their point, there can always be little slight changes. You know, they might put a bigger emphasis on, you know, one priority or another or at the state level. So it's good to have, you know, all the information available to us once to, in order to hold that hearing. So in my rough timeline, I was like, I assume they would have that released by August, but so that was my intention. All right. Do we want to talk about the preliminary timeline for the application process? Sure. Kind of know when everything, how long everything needs to take from the moment that the RFP goes out and all of that, but here we go. You said you do know or you don't know? No, I mean, those of us have been on the committee now. Right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I invite feedback on that because I guess I was kind of shadowing Nate the first two times and maybe wasn't as aware of exactly, you know, the different steps that were happening, but so, you know, the March 3rd is the application due date. I guess I'll start from kind of where we are now, just thinking that over the summer, we would finalize the timeline we're doing now, think about the target areas, this community development strategy that I was just referring to. And then, yeah, assuming DHCD has finalized the action plan in late August, we would have another public hearing similar to what we did last month to establish priorities and also review that community development strategy. That was one thing they had in the action plan was there needs to be a public forum that includes a review of this strategy. So that'll serve that purpose. So, you know, if that's in late August, I think I could then take the next month to, you know, finalize the RFP, incorporate any changes that emerged, you know, incorporate the community priorities. So if I issue it on September 30th, give applicants basically the month of October to respond. So I think, you know, four or five weeks should be sufficient time to get the application prepared. I tried to, you know, be conscious of holidays here. So trying to get, so for you guys, you would get the applications on November 4th, have two weeks to kind of review them, put together some of any questions. On November 18th, you would send those questions to the applicants and then let's see if you would, we're now in the Thanksgiving time of year. So the applicants would have, let me just look at my calendar here. So November 18th, they basically have, because the next week is the week of Thanksgiving, they basically have two weeks after Thanksgiving to respond to the questions. That brings us to December 9th. And I was trying to get to a point where at some point in December, the DHTD is gonna release the application. For the grant. And this struck me as a little peculiar because they then in the action plan, they said they expect to have a list of all the activities that we wanna fund within a week of them releasing the application. Because basically, oh, I guess it doesn't have to be all the ones that we wanna fund. It has to be like all the ones that we are considering. So at this point it's just the activities that have been submitted. Because they like to do just an initial check of like, is this, does this meet the criteria for the block grant overall? Is it applicable? It's kind of just an initial check. So I was trying to get, yeah. Does activities mean organizations? I don't know what is activities mean? Oh yeah. It's not organizations necessarily. It's like the survival centers, like entire food pantry like project, I guess, or operation or the literacy project doing adult education. So it's- So it's our categories almost. The kinds of things are okay. Thank you. Yeah, it's both the kinds of things but also they get into just like, how are they serving low moderate income, clientele and how are they meeting these criteria to make them eligible for block grant funds? Did we just give them a list of who was applied? Yeah, basically we just send them a list and then like a, probably like two or three sentence description, which I think is submitted as part, we asked the applications to do like a very short description. So we would just package that up. And again, this is, at this point, it's still every application that's submitted. It's not the ones that have been prioritized yet. So December 9th, applicants respond to questions. And then this is where I was a little fuzzy. So I wasn't sure. So you guys will have received responses to your questions by then. And then is this the point where you sit down again with the applications and review them carefully and rank them and fill out the matrix and all of that? Cause I was thinking then, we would have them on the rest of December and then about two weeks after New Year's to make those rankings and evaluations. And then we would have the public meeting where we discussed the recommendations and kind of get a first glance at how the projects were evaluated. So does that kind of stretch seem logical? But I think there needs to be a timeline after December 9th. So applicants respond to questions. And then I think that we need to, so we're gonna ask questions. They respond on the 9th and then we need to make a timeline between their response and when we have to have all our scores in. Does that sound like to folks that have been through this with us with me? Yes. Yes. Because there needs to be time before the January 12th meeting for Ben to compile all of his scores. And in the before days, we used to come together to talk about the scores and everything I think before Ben compiled them if I remember correctly. Nat, can you back me up on that? No, I thought that we just submitted the scores and then once we got those back, then we were able to sit down and meet to make the recommendations. You're right, okay, okay. I just remember- That's my recollection as well. And then yeah, I just remember being at the Bang Center and being in person and having a discussion in public. Okay, yeah. So I think there's a date that needs to be in there somewhere for the deadline for the committee to submit their scores to you, Ben. Okay. So that can be, I assume probably after New Year's even? Yeah, I would. So, you know, even a week before January 12th maybe to give enough time. Yeah. And then the public meeting, I get confused about the difference between a meeting and a hearing. If there is one, I assume there is one. Because there's one meeting where the applicants essentially make a pitch to us based on the applications. Is that the public meeting? I apologize. I have to run upstairs for a second, I hear that crying. Yeah. The public, yeah, maybe I have these flipped around. I think the- The public meeting is where it's more you all just discussing and public comment is at the discretion of the chair. The public hearing is like advertised throughout the town and posted 14 days in advance. And that's when it's very much the purpose of the hearing is to hear from the public. So, I could see it going both ways. Does it make sense to have that? So, it's going to be swapped. No, my recollection and Gail, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that what I think Becky was referring to as kind of being the pitch meeting, I thought that was really where the public hearing was to establish priorities. So, even though it's ostensibly to establish priorities, it always seemed like a kind of pitch thing where the various organizations would kind of pitch their priority. But then my recollection was that once all the applications were in, we did the scoring, and then we met, then that would be a public meeting, but not a hearing. And that's where we would all get together, look over the scoring and make all the really hard decisions. And then we would make the recommendation to the town manager, but then only after that point when everything was announced that this is what the recommendation is. Then there would be a public hearing on that recommendation, even though the decision was already made and we would just sit there and listen to people react to it. I think you've got it, that's it now, you got it. So I think it looks to me like the 12th and the 19th are flipped, is that kind of? Well, so that the 12th is public meeting to make what are to determine the recommendations. And then the next one would be the public hearing to... For comment? Yeah, comment on the recommendations. So after the decision is made, people can say, that's great, thank you very much. It's really important or we're really disappointed, you didn't, you know. Yeah, and they're similar to, we've done this before too, where we have a public hearing that's, maybe an hour long and then we'll go into a public meeting format. And so there could be the opportunity if you're like, wow, we heard from a dozen members of the public who berated us for this decision we made, maybe we want to reconsider a recommendation. So there could be an opportunity to reconsider after this public hearing. So I'm sorry, so I guess I'm maybe just blending meetings, but I could have sworn that there was a meeting after the applications come in where the applicants come and present and where we kept saying, we've just assumed that we've read everything, what we're looking for now is information that's maybe, not in the application, but that you wanted to know about the organization, that there was a pitch. But I think what happened was that to streamline, I think you're right Becky, but I think in order to streamline things because of COVID, that's when we introduced this question period because when I first initially joined the committee, that's how it worked. And then we decided that we would have, so we get the applications in hand November 4th, we read them for two weeks, we have time to get questions back to Ben and then that's when folks, that's when we have the opportunity to express, we didn't understand this budget or you didn't list your board correctly and then they get back to us. So I think that that's how it needed having come in person to do that, to address questions. Right, but I didn't mean that question. I meant, I just remember there was a specific meeting and I remember the one thing I wanted to know from every organization was, how is this different from what you already do? And I had to ask that of each organization because they had a different thing that they were presenting. And I'm just trying to, so we'd already read everything and we were hearing from them about their applications. I remember that meeting as well because it felt like they were not giving us anything new. And I think you, Becky, kept trying to clarify what we were trying to get from them and that was almost to no avail. Right, no, and I remember it because I felt rude the whole time because I felt like I kept interrupting people but it really was just the one thing that I wanted to ask. And so that's why I'm trying to, but we definitely had read the applications already. Yes. And we weren't looking for new information like, oh, we didn't understand this part of your application. It was more like, okay, if you're here to talk to us, tell us something that we don't know already from having read your applications. I think there was two question scenarios that we had. We had one written and one verbal and this shows the verbal, the applications respond or the committee asked questions. That's the verbal, but we have written questions that we submitted that I don't think is on here. No, no, I think that's not how Ben explained it. Okay. I think the November 18th is us asking questions which then get written. That's not a meeting. That's just us. That's when the questions are due, but then we, that's not a meeting, but there was a meeting that we had. That's what you're saying. Correct. Where we didn't, like the questions we asked via email, we then got responses back that were written. Yeah, there was, yeah. They go through Ben. The response. Yeah. Applicants respond through Ben, right? And then Ben. Right. And then we use that information to do our ranking, which we submitted, submit by January 5th. And then January 12th, we hear from the organizations and they tell us what they want us to know. And then in the 19th, we have every piece of information we could possibly have. And that's when we discussed and made our decisions about what we were, what we were going to. There should be another meeting between November 4th and December 9th somehow, is what you're saying? No. No, I'm saying that my recollection was that either the 12th or the 19th meetings that are on here in January, one of those involved people telling us information they wanted us to know. And then the next one involved us with all the information, just talking amongst ourselves, basically. Wouldn't it be helpful to have that question and answer and that information prior to making rankings? Because what if we then wanted to change our rankings based on the information we received? Like if they didn't clearly state a priority and then we decided, wow, this really should be prioritized. Yeah, that's why we don't give the rankings until after we get the answers to the questions. Right. So what I did was I had sort of preliminary rankings as I was developing my questions and then I get the answers to the questions and finalize my rankings. But there should be another meeting sometime before the 12th is what I think because after where we talk, is that what we're getting? Are you saying the 12th then? Because we've already, so the committee members submit their evaluation should be after the 12th. That's what I think, but I don't know, I haven't been on the committee before. No, I'm agreeing with you. I just, I thought there was another meeting in the midst here and maybe it's just that the 12th and the 19th are sort of a double. And one of those guys should be moved. Or like the 12th priority then the 5th priority then the 19th priority. Yeah, kind of like that because we did have a question after we got the, we did have a, where we talked to the people who submitted the applications after the questions, but before we made our decisions. Correct. So that's what I think the January 12th meeting. Right. Exactly, that's the January 12th meeting. And then the January 19th meeting is when we convene and just talk really amongst ourselves about. We hadn't done the rankings yet by the 12th. Yes, we have done it by the 5th. No, I know in this scenario that we're talking about they're what we didn't do the evaluation rankings until we after we had talked to them about the questions. I see what you're saying. Yes, so almost like we would have January 5th be a meeting. January 12th. Yeah, you just switch the date to the 5th and the 12th. I see what you're saying. I mean, that seems what that is what I was saying. And that makes the last sense. And I remember having that where we did, you know, we had people come on a pitch but it was after the questions. I'm pretty sure. I would just be worried that I that someone would want to change their ranking after hearing in person Q&A. Right. Yeah, that makes sense. I don't know. And you can and you can because that's what it's for. And then after we hear from everybody we can discuss and opt to change our rankings. But hopefully between the completion of the applications, the question and answer period, there shouldn't be that much new information that gets entered into the process. So we I don't think we've ever changed anything after the hearings, but it's just to be transparent about everything. Right. And also, Suzanne, just to clarify, the rankings are like a starting point for conversation. We don't we didn't use the rankings as OK, this one scored the highest. And so that's definitely who's getting you know, they're not public. A place to start. The conversation, basically. Lucas, what were you going to say? I was just saying they're not public. They're just what we submit to each other and sort of where we try to sort of come to consensus on, you know, sort of what we want to do. And that it might have been the same. It might have been actually the same meaning that we came to consensus after hearing the pitches. Yes. Yeah. That's that's something that's the hardest in my head. Sorry, I is a long time ago for me. I'm I'm trying to come back to that. Feels like I mean, maybe you're right, though, but that feels like it's a really long meeting. It is hearing from everybody. And then we're having our discussion about. Yeah, but you limit. Here's the deal with that meeting. It was like a few minutes. You limit each organization to maybe like two people. They're like six people there to talk about the survival center. What we do is we go through each organization once. And then if somebody has a second representative, you go through twice and then you cut it and you give everybody like three minutes. So you can't have six folks from one organization giving up and giving a spiel. It becomes redundant. Anyway, yeah, how much can you say? Right. I was just going to say, I've been digging over here. I found the meeting minutes from June. 2021 and it kind of laid out the. Timeline for the summer last summer that we did. I'm just copying and pasting from the minutes here. So we this was from, I think last summer. Where we. Committee questions. August 6th applicants respond August 12th. And then there yeah, there's a public meeting to make recommendations and then the public hearing on the recommended activities. So maybe. So maybe it's just the language we used in the proposal for this timeframe is what kind of confused everybody. Because one said to make recommend meeting. The meeting was to make recommendations and was the hearing on the recommended activities. Right. So I think that helps a lot just to cut and paste them before. Yeah, well, that was a busy August. Yeah. But even even before COVID, it was a pretty tight schedule over like the Christmas New Year holidays because the RFPs were due like right before Christmas. And then we would have a couple of weeks to look at them and very early in January, you know, have the rankings. Because at that point, we weren't even doing the questions and we decided, well, really needed to kind of do some follow up and get some questions answered. So we added that. But yeah, it has in the past been a very condensed time schedule. It's always the busiest time of the cycle. And then it kind of slows down for the rest of the year. OK, so does this seem like we can be, this can be the, I guess, tentative schedule? Or is there any more clarification? It's pretty reasonable, not too rushed. Yeah. And it looks good. It's also kind of a better time of year, too. You know, a little bit better. And so would you think tonight we should set a late August date and just know that if we haven't received back the final information from, you know, regarding number of organizations and then all of that, that we would then postpone the meeting? I think it makes sense. I'm going away for a bit in August. So I think there's a limited time that we could. But I think it makes sense to schedule it. So this would be for the late August public hearing. Yeah, I'm going to be gone, actually, from the Monday, the 15th through the Friday, the 26th, so basically two weeks off, which I guess that gives us three days in August. So maybe, yeah, maybe it's Thursday, September 1st. I think that we could do that. When is that the Thursday before? Before Labor Day, the 5th. Maybe we're worried about people being on vacation, not us, but from the organizations. Yeah, but the RFP is not going out to the end of the month, to end of September. So everybody's kind of back in there post-vacation, seldom from vacation for the RFP to go out on the 30th of September. It just feels better because in the old days, we used to do it like right in December, and it was like fiscal year end for people, and it was challenging. And schools start August 25th, so most people should be back. That's right, yeah. OK, so are we good for this timeline? So do we set September 1st? Is that what we're talking about? For this public hearing, yeah. Yeah, or the 30th, can we do a Tuesday? The 30th, does that work for people? That 30th isn't good for me. The 31st would work. I'm just thinking because as we get closer to the weekend, people may be making it a longer weekend. Right. If the theft is the holiday. Yeah, really, anytime that week. Yeah. The 31st is good for me. I'm open all that time. That weekend is bad. So we'll say the 31st. Is that right? Sure. Yeah, sure. Sorry, I'm just making a note of that. So we're saying public hearing on Wednesday. I'll have to get used to that Wednesday block grant meeting. Yeah, so I think that that works well. And then we'll have that public hearing. And then that gives us a month to get the RFP ready and get that out the door. So that's good to me. Any other questions, comments about the schedule? I guess the other dates are January 12th, January 19th. That's far in the future. But we won't really need any meetings per se during the fall. It looks like it's mostly just going to be email back and forth with applications. And during that time, is there any necessary follow-up from prior grant cycles? Right, yeah, that's a good point. Maybe at some point we would want to do a check-in or a review of the current activity. So that would be the current grant that just got started last week or two weeks ago. Yeah, I feel like by the fall it would be a good time to do a check-in. But we don't need to schedule that now. But maybe sometime in. Just want to factor that into your schedule. Yeah, exactly. We go with number two, with the timeline and the application process. Number three, review target areas, review criteria, and community development strategy. Should we wait on that until we get information from the state? It seems like we had a preliminary discussion but felt like we didn't have enough information. Now it feels like we're somewhere in the same place. Yeah, we can. I just put it in there in case if we did want to discuss it. I can just show you what this community development strategy looks like just to give you a sense of it's a three-page document. It basically starts again, it's 2018, an overview of the town and the public participation, 60 standing boards and committees, which is pretty unbelievable. And then it basically goes through each category. So it goes through housing, talks about the housing production plan and the different needs that have been identified. Community services, yeah, it basically just mirrors the community priorities, homelessness, homelessness prevention, youth development, land use. That's mostly about zoning and growth and development. Economic development basically talks a lot about the university and just the need for partnership, working with the bid and other stakeholders in town, cultural resources, open space, transportation. I can send you all this to look at it more carefully. So given that Lydia, Ron and Jones gave a pretty impassioned speech of the last meeting and we were going to bring in Stephanie Trello, the climate person in town, obviously that's something that feels to me like it needs to be included in this. Yeah, I know. I'm surprised there's nothing about sustainability. Community development strategy. Yeah. Of course, yeah, this was five years ago, too. So whether it's climate or kind of anti-racism, the new public safety, can't remember exactly what it's called, but press press. Yeah, those things would not have been glint in the eye back in 2018. Right. Well, yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. I can definitely add in sections about that, both climate and sustainability and then racial justice and equity. And didn't we actually add two target areas? Don't we have five target geographic areas or no? Right now. I don't know why I thought that. This is the latest iteration of the target areas map. It's still three. OK, thank you. Looks like people died there on the outline their bodies. Yeah. Only two of them. Yeah, so I think as we maybe later on after the public hearing in August, we can think about looking at this again. I did want to ask folks how you feel about the survey and if there's any need or to reopen the survey. Now that we're kind of pushing back the clock a little bit, I got 100 responses mostly through my outreach through the superintendent's office. So I wanted to get more than 100, but I feel like I exhausted most of the outlets that were readily available. But I could do another push to get it out there. There's no way in the survey to know whether somebody's done it more than once, right? There might be, because you do have to register for this Engage Amherst tool. You have to make a username. I only say that not that somebody would mean to, but I just feel like we get a survey and it's like, oh, I'll fill that out. And if it's the kind of person who does surveys, they would likely be like, oh, I'll fill this one out, not realizing they'd already done it. Right. But I do think. Can you omit the respondents from the subsequent push? I think I could. Well, I think there's a way in the back end to look at the usernames of who's responded. So I could sort by username and then just omit any duplicates. It's hard for me to see how it's really going to be very different. You did the outreach that you could. And we got the responses. There's not that much time that's passed. It's hard for me to see why it would be different. And also, I'm kind of concerned about the more we do it, the more people's eyes just glaze over. They say, oh, they're doing this again. So I'm a little bit hesitant to do it more than once a year if we want people to kind of see it, focus on it, and respond seriously. But it's just my initial reaction. I guess I have a little bit of a different reaction, which is that I was surprised by how many people at our last meeting didn't were unaware of the survey. So even though we felt like we did everything that we could to get it out there, I mean, all most organizations have a mailing list, for example. And we could ask or give them the opportunity to include the link to it in their mailing list that goes out just to sort of expand that the reach of it to that many more people and maybe even figure out a way to make it available to people who use the organizations, not just the who are on their mailing list. I would also be interested in seeing what people had to say more in the fall than maybe the summer. The world is changing rapidly. Good point, Lucas. Yeah, I mean, one, I do remember talking about this a few months ago about the survey was the idea of using the agencies to send out the survey. Just obviously some of them have much bigger mailing lists than others. And just wanting, I think we consciously didn't do that at first just to try to make it more from the community rather than the agencies sending them out, sending it out to their supporters, I guess. And again, I feel like it would definitely help us reach a lot of people who are interested in social services and support the work of the committee, which is good. I guess I just worry about it kind of skewing things, but I don't know. Yeah, I agree. I don't think that's going to necessarily be as representative if that's the publicity. I think that there's a lot of overlap in who's on the list. But I mean, both in terms of who's maybe on the list and who has given money to, because anybody who's going to give money at some point is going to be on that list forever. And also a lot of overlap in the consumers of what the organizations are offering. So I just don't know. I don't know. I mean, I obviously I understand that issue. But I guess in the end, it seems like the more people who understand what's going on in Amherst who have a feeling about it and can give some information. It's not like we're binding ourselves to what they say, but we're just using it as a guide and as community representatives to have something to go off of. Could we go old school and leave a pile at Amherst Community Connections? Because folks come in there and are getting help in person because they don't own a laptop if they're living behind a guai or folks that are taking the bus to the Amherst Survival Center for either a takeout lunch or to get a food box once a month, maybe give it to the pantry coordinator or at lunch. I mean, the work would be on somebody to tell you those results. But it feels like the people that most need the services might not have the capacity to access the information to make their voices heard and their voices only get heard through the staff of the organizations. And those are the folks that we hear from all the time. So it sounds retro because it's paper, but I'm just thinking about reach. And that's my comment. And my question has been, why are you dissatisfied with 100? Like, what was your ultimate goal that we're thinking about? And so that's what we're interested about. Because that is how we should be framing this discussion. Yeah. Oh, just because I'm competitive. And I think when you did the survey a year ago, he got like 200 responses, I think. Or it's better. What is the percent? I don't know what percentage of our population is that? 100. We're at about 38,000, 36,000 or so. But so yeah, not a whole lot. But I'm not even. Go ahead, Rika. I don't know. That's a really tiny percentage to make a lot of conclusions, I would say. The paper thing is an interesting idea, I think. There's certainly then no user name or anything, right? I mean, then you're just. I mean, whoever does it, I don't know. We do ask if they're an Amherst resident or not. Um, so that could narrow it down. And I think we want to make sure we're mostly hearing from Amherst residents. Also, not to, you know, I mean, I know Ben is competitive and wants, you know, a lot more responses and everything. But but, you know, just the big picture of the way I see it is that, you know, these responses are great to help us. But basically, you know, we're on this committee. It's our job to try to understand what the town is about and what the town priorities are. And so we have to use, you know, our own judgment as part of that, too, what we think, you know, the town wants. And it's useful to me to have that input. But on the other hand, because, you know, 100, even 200, even 500 might not at all be representative, we still have to apply a lot of our own judgment. So it's helpful, but, you know, it's really not, you know, sufficient, you know, in itself to, you know, substitute kind of, you know, what we think the town is about. So I guess I don't want to put too much work on Ben to, you know, try to get to 500 or 1,000 or whatever, you know, paper or but that's just my perspective. I agree with that perspective. And I guess I see the surveys being actually a way for us to learn information that we wouldn't otherwise have from the community, because otherwise here we are, whoever many of us there are, right, seven of us just sitting in our houses making some guesses. So the more we can learn. Totally agree, yep. But I mean, obviously we have no idea who's filling it out. So there are limitations. So I think we could discuss this and go around and then go around and go around again. For the sake of time, I think that what we should do is just table this discussion. I'm rolling off the committee, you guys can all do what you want. But until August, because nobody's gonna respond to anything now, it's the summer. And I think wait until people are back and at their desks and in school. And then if you're gonna send it out, you're not gonna send it out to September anyway when people are here. So table this discussion until August and at your August meeting, bring it up again and see where you are and how you feel. Yeah, I guess the only consideration is I agree with you, Gail. So, and you guys probably know this better than I. When the survey is to develop the community priorities and those priorities are then added to the RFP, correct? So we're like, we want to solicit mental health services, food pantry, youth development, this that homelessness prevention. So I guess the, when we issue the RFP, we'll want to be either, you know, just, I don't know if there's any priorities that we would add. So I feel like we have a pretty solid list and there wasn't anything in the survey that was like, oh, you didn't include this. But I'm wondering if there's any, we would consider removing. And I think we would want to decide that after, you know, before the RFP is issued on September 30th. So I guess we would have some time in the late summer, early fall to figure out if there's any changes we wanted to make to priorities. Well, and then is the paper option something that's doable or is that, would that just make your job impossible? Because I don't think there's probably much of a difference in who's using services over the summer versus not. And some of us are gonna have to stop summer, sadly. Right, yeah. I think as long as I'm not expected to translate anything, because that's takes a lot of time. If it's, I think it's easy enough to print it out and, you know, bring them over to the various agencies. I mean, I don't. And I wouldn't leave them there all summer. I would say you have to have a finite amount of time because you're dribbling in and dribbling in and you just say, okay, just pick two weeks. And could you really? I'll go first or whatever, and then. Yeah, and put them out there for two weeks and that's it and whatever comes back in those two weeks. That's what you have. But at least you've put forth the effort. You've found a different means of gathering the information and then you can feel that we can feel like we've really expanded our reach. So that's what I would do. I agree. Yeah, and I think hopefully, I mean, in theory, it takes like two to four minutes to fill out the survey. So hopefully someone could just do it right then and there and we don't need to track down people who brought it home and then we'll want to bring it to town hall or this. Yeah, and I think you just lean on staff with the organizations, you send them a memo, we're putting this survey out. If you don't mind collecting them for us, the deadline is this and it's information gathering. That's what we're trying to do. So we can have a, be a better informed committee. And then just lean on. It's the tabula, yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah. But no, no, go ahead. It's the tabulation, I'm wondering about, not getting the surveys. It's like compiling the data. Student intern. Student intern. Great, okay. Is that an option, Ben? Probably not. But how about I can give you each a few surveys and you can each enter some. I have an intern. Yeah, there you go. No, it shouldn't be that bad. It's a few multiple choice questions. Okay. I guess the only thing would be just having to transcribe someone's, if they do do an open response answer and look at their handwriting and blah, blah, blah. But I think that my priority would be to get the open response, or sorry, the multiple choice rankings there and then work on the open response. But I think it's worth the time. I think the block grant DHTD is putting a bigger emphasis on community planning and outreach this year. So I think they'll smile that we did a survey at all, but then even more appreciative that we did outreach directly to agencies and use paper copies as well. I might, I would recommend maybe you just have the multiple choice with only one open response and even have the option to reopen the online because somebody might say, I'll take this and then maybe have the link at the top of the page or whatever, if you wanna do this online, if they don't wanna do it at that moment, if they're just going to pick up something at the survival center and getting their meal for the day, they might have five minutes. They might not have even that limited amount of time to fill out a quick multiple choice. So they might want the option to do it online. That makes sense, yeah. But I think that's just more work for you. I mean, and now I'm leaning towards, I mean, it's reopening the survey and then also doing this in paper copies but then also having agencies distribute it to their supporters. I don't see a huge harm in doing it, I guess unless folks are concerned about it, kind of skewing results. But at the end of the day, they're still Amherst residents and they're involved and support these agencies. So, and I think too, it might be interesting like supporters of the literacy project, also have things to say about homelessness and needs for food as well. So all these things are connected. Okay. All right. So the plan is to move forward with this but not until August, correct? If somebody's keeping it. I mean, Dan, you should just pick a date that you would want them back by. Yeah, yeah. The two weeks before then for doing the paper ones. And if you could let us know when the survey goes live again online, just send the link out to us. I'm happy to repost it on social media and get out as much as possible that way. Sounds good. All right. Number four, use of CDBG funds for sustainability initiatives. Is this in response to Lydia Vernon Jones's appeal at the last meeting? Yeah. And is that given that we fund social service agencies and capital projects, I'm not sure how sustainability initiatives can enter into the conversation, you know, or into the mix. So let's hear about that. Yeah. So it's tough because I think the block grant program is a little bit constrained in, you know, its initial scope is from, you know, slum and blight removal from the, you know, 50s and 60s. And then it's evolved over time to, you know, still focus on housing remediation but now has this focus on social services as well. But I feel like it hasn't quite caught up to the, you know, climate emergency that we're in and the imperative for sustainability. And what's her name? Ms. Vernon Jones. Last time she brought up a few examples of block grant funded sustainability initiatives. And I looked a little bit more closely. There's a special program for, it's called CDBG-Disaster Relief. And it's specifically focused on communities that are recovering from like hurricanes and climate induced storms, wildfires, I believe. And it's a specific pot of funding for like climate related damage. And so it's not really for sustainability initiatives or at all really, but, you know, I guess that was a push for the Biden administration, I think was to allocate funds, block grant funds specifically for disaster recovery. And, you know, and I looked at their website HUD, it's like, oh, look at us, block grant is no, supporting sustainability, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, well, not really. The two places I would see that it would impact us is on the community development. Sorry, yeah, the community development strategy that having them have been put on that is very important. And then for us, probably it would be food waste, which is actually a significant contributor to global warming. And I think that is something that people at the survival center and other people could address. We also talked about it, I think just around the public service projects, right? That we were going to have somebody come and talk about Amherst's, I mean, whatever the foundation is that we, or the environmental impact of public service projects or whatever is required in our contracts around that. Yeah, so it's kind of a overlay on top of everything else. And so there might be various proposals to do different things, but okay, how does your proposal impact sustainability and climate change or how does it address it? And it might be, well, it's not a factor or it might be, you know, this actually is helping address climate change or whatever. So it's a useful kind of overlay lens through which to look at them. Right. Lucas, what was the other thing you said besides food waste? I'm just trying to take notes. Just the community development strategy. Oh, yeah. The update. I think that, yeah, for them to have been put on that would be, I think, particularly. And even the infrastructure stuff, you know, it's like, what types of materials are we using? You know, different materials have different kind of climate, you know, carbon impacts, so. So didn't we decide that we were gonna have somebody come and talk to us? Yeah. Stephanie Chigarrello from the climate person in town. I have that note. Yeah. They have to volunteer to do it, though. Was that the issue? Yeah, Stephanie is one person who probably does the job of like three people in our town. I did have two good conversations with her about it, but she has so many evening meetings and has a family and I just didn't wanna add any more to her workload, but, you know, we had a good talk about the, sorry, I should have sent it out, but the ECAC, that's the Energy and Climate Action Committee that kind of, they developed the towns that Climate Action and Resiliency Plan and that's probably been published for about a year now. And so the CARF as it's called Climate Action and Resiliency Plan, the CARF has a lot of different strategies in it. So Stephanie outlined a few, a lot of them are very technical, but there is a push for to try to specifically look at low income housing and rental units in town and try to find ways to subsidize energy efficiency improvements to those buildings specifically. And so we talked a little bit about, you know, what that would look like in terms of a block grant project. And, you know, it's tough because it's, you know, if it was the Amherst Housing Authority, you know, that would be, that's a public agency, it's public housing and it's all affordable, subsidized housing. So that would probably be our best bet because otherwise it's, you know, a private developer would be, you know, we'd have to enter into a lot of contracts with them and it would be a little painstaking, but the Amherst Housing Authority, we could work with them on, you know, energy efficiency improvements to their buildings. It's not quite like the exactly what block grant is looking to fund, it's usually they're doing, you know, new siding, new housing, or sorry, new roofing, that kind of stuff. But we would have to basically make the connection that those energy and energy efficiency improvements are directly benefiting the residents. So ideally we would want some sort of agreement that it's, you know, reducing their utility costs directly and it's not just the housing authorities, you know, still gonna charge them the same for your utilities or something like we need to show that there's a direct. Is there any initiative to put solar panels on any of these spaces and with an agreement through the town or the utilities? I don't know, but of course that's the first thing that comes to mind. Right. The savings can be passed on to the tenants and not just for the Amherst Housing Authority. Mm-hmm. I'll ask Stephanie about that and Nate also specifically about that. I feel like there might be, you know, it's not quite considered housing rehab because we would have to find a way to call this housing rehab. That's like our in kind of for this type of project. And so, you know, we could, you know, for example, Watson Farms, they're doing the roofing project from last year, you know, we could say, you know, you have to, or maybe for a different project for the housing authority, you know, like, do this roofing project, but also make sure it's, you know, PV ready, for example. But I don't know if the actual installation of solar panels would be considered housing rehab, which seems like a big missed opportunity in my opinion, but I also thought sort of what we were talking about was not necessarily that the project itself would be specific to, with a sustainability focus, but just understanding that it was something that we cared about in looking at the overall project itself of the, you know, whatever materials were being used or, you know, sort of that piece of it. So we're asking for a solar panel project, but how are, you know, what materials are they choosing over others as they're doing that and then they make that with the application. So my understanding from our last meeting is that we were looking to sort of know what kinds of questions to ask and what kinds of information we would want to know in looking at the public service grants going forward around climate issues. Yeah, that was sort of my understanding was sort of like, how do we focus the lens of sustainability as we evaluate projects? Right. That's for both the social services and for the infrastructure project. I mean, yes, but I think that we all sort of understood that for the social service, that's not really what their focus is and we wouldn't ask them to create, you know, that that should be a priority. It's more of the larger building type projects. How do we do it? Mm-hmm. And I think the speaker from last week or from last meeting also is, you know, it's the, the committee isn't the one putting forth the application. So it's not like you guys are. Right, and that's why it was just information that we would have as we're reading, not about asking for certain kinds of applications. It's exactly what Rika says is the lens looking through these applications, looking at these applications through a lens of climate sustainability and are the overall carbon footprint, you know, and all the other things that Lydia had mentioned. So there's really maybe that's something that we include in the RFP. Maybe that becomes a line. I mean, you're not gonna say create a project, but in your overall project, like Lucas said, you know, if you're serving meals at the Survival Center, tell us about what you do with food waste or expired food because they get food that's already expired. What did they do with it? Mm-hmm. But it's only gonna be applicable to a handful of the applicants because what are brothers, big sisters have to do with, you know, they're making matches out in the community. So it's a little tricky. I'm pretty sure there is, I think it's in the, I'm looking at the RFP now for the non-social services. There is, one of the criteria is consistency with sustainable development principles, which, you know, I feel like that's not, like for example, for a sidewalk, we would say, oh, that supports walking and pedestrian, you know, activity and, you know, and that's how it connects to sustainable development principles. But I think the going deeper would be like, well, you know, what about the concrete that you're using? You know, that's incredibly energy intensive. And, you know, at the end of the day, there's still not a great alternative to get around concrete, but maybe it could at least start a conversation of other materials to look at or, you know, really like, is there a way to really get the most bang for your buck with the concrete sidewalk, for example. And Lydia had mentioned that the town committee is working on a planet and climate plan. I don't know where that is in process, but if there happens to be, I don't know about a finished product, but even in draft, by the time the RFP goes out, you could include that information, the energy and climate, I'm reading my notes here, the planet and climate plan guidelines or draft or whatever it is in the RFP that goes to the social service agencies. So like you said, you're digging deeper and it's a little more specific, not just pulling things out of the air, but seeing how their proposals, the RFP apps applications adhere to what the town's putting forth. So there's symmetry. Right, right. Yeah, I think, you know, as for the town, speaking for the town, I think as we get closer to the end of the summer, we'll begin talking about different projects to put forth and we would definitely bring in Stephanie to help better understand, one, is there anything that's project that's directly stems from this climate action plan that would be eligible for this? Or is there another project we have in mind that could also be made more sustainable or have a more of a sustainability focus? I think everyone in town hall, at least on my team I'm on is looking at it through that lens. And I think we would also, you know, push the housing authority in that direction as well. And does Lydia, Rene Jones need a response? I mean, we kind of just listened to her at the last meeting and I think somebody had mentioned like, you know, we get our instructions from DHCD and we're limited by what they put forth. And so our hands are a little bit tied. So I don't know if she needed a personal response from you or not, or maybe you already got back to her. No, actually, no, I did get back to her and I asked her, I put the onus a little bit on her. I said, you know, I really appreciate your comments. And I said, I've been looking, I spent like a few hours one morning just Googling everything I could think of to try to find examples of, you know, because Block Grant is a national program. I was like, there has to be a town out there that has found a way to fund some climate initiatives with Block Grant, but I spent a lot of time Googling and looking through various state and town websites across the country and really couldn't find any examples of projects of, you know, funding solar panels or funding, you know, energy efficiency improvements. So I asked Lydia in an email nicely. I was like, if you have time and want to look into this a little bit further, you know, I think the number one thing for us would be to find examples of projects that have been funded through Block Grant because then, you know, we need to be able, as a committee or, you know, I guess as a staff person, I need to be able to pitch those projects to the state if they give us pushback. So I want to be able to say, hey, look at this town, you know, in Minnesota or something that did this project. But I really couldn't find anything. So that was my challenge to Lydia. So. Good for you. Yeah. All right. Are we good? Are we good with our discussion on sustainability? Anybody have any comments, questions? All right. Moves this onto public comment, but I don't think we have a, as I look at the number of participants, it looks like it's just all of us, right? Correct. Okay. And other items not anticipated within 48 hours. Well, I wanted to take the opportunity to thank Gail for years of, you know, leadership on the committee. And I'm sure, wish her all the best. We'll miss her wise counsel and in the coming meetings. I know that that hasn't always been easy, but, you know, being the chair and having to, you know, enforce time limits and all that kind of stuff. But thanks for all the hard work you did. Thanks. And if I had a gavel, I'd hand it over to Becky at this point. I can give you my green marker. That's all I really want. No, I've always said that what I love about being on boards and committees is that you meet people you don't get to meet and you learn about things that aren't in your wheelhouse. You know, you stretch yourself. And I think that this committee has really been, I mean, there've been a lot of new faces that have cycled through. I think Nat's been with me the longest on this committee. So it's been really great and informative and it makes you open your eyes when you walk through town and you read the paper. So it gives you a different lens with which to see what goes on in town. So you're all going to have a great time and go forth and be productive and stick to those time limits. And don't be afraid to take it down. You always did a very gracefully, Gail. Thank you. It's a little bit easier on Zoom than it is in person. It was really stressful when you're at the Bang Center. Oh my, but you know, it's a little bit easier on Zoom. Anything else? All right, thank you. Yeah, I know. Yeah, yeah. And I'm sorry I didn't get to shake people's hands and sit with you in a room together. It's been an odd, an odd sojourn just the past two and a half years. It's nice to sort of meet you. Yeah, right. All right. Good luck with your move. Yeah, good luck with your move. Thank you. Thanks so much. All right, take care. Take care. Bye. You too. Bye.