 so we're now recording and okay we're recording um I see one doggy here mine's lying down on the floor so you can't see him I see another doggy there um so I'm calling this meeting to order a couple reminders if you want to be recognized you should either physically raise your hand or zoom raise your hand either one and I'll recognize people to speak and unmute them or you can unmute yourselves any vote that we take will require a roll call if there is any public comments um I'll recognize them and they will introduce themselves before speaking there's nobody here yet so we don't need to go around the room and introduce ourselves because we know all of ourselves um Jim if I could I see one oh there was one attendee but they left uh Brenda Brenda is is an attendee I don't see a Brenda oh you might have you might have to let her in and she's raising her hand um anybody else be a Brenda yet and how do I make this how do I make you the host remind me how I make you the host I don't know I can't make you up Carol can you mute yourself hello can you mute Carol uh Dave Brenda was the Brenda bus house Brenda was the gal who um who emailed the task force that she was thrilled that the dog park was being creative and right right right I don't want to volunteer okay um I don't see that that's purchasing I can mute people maybe Carol has two things that's where the feedback's coming from all right I'll believe one of them since I'm not the host it's not letting me mute other people as far as I can tell or any can anybody remind me how I change the host to Jim um participants yeah go to participants down at the bottom and you should have another screen pop up and that will maybe give you that option I think if I go change role let's see make hosts there we go Jim you want to make Jim best drying you are now the host Jim I said I'm a co-host and now this lets me mute people cool I just muted Ted because we don't want to hear from him and I muted Carol so I can unmute people when they want to speak there we go full control is all I'm interested in and maybe a dog park someday and you do see there's one attendee right oh I there's one attendee but I can't see who it is I just see one attendee so Brenda if you can hear me hi but I don't see the attendee which is odd um hang on Ray have you won't see them unless you elevate them to panelists which I'm not well we saw people last time yeah but that's because you made them panelists you added them to the to the group uh so they should still be able to hear and so what we do in concom is when they raise their hand then you add them as a panelist so that they can talk to us oh there now I see her and I can say allowed to talk I'm gonna hey Brenda I'm gonna promote you to panelists so we can see you there you are hi Brenda can you hear us there hang on I have to unmute you on on bluetooth speakers there you go I just unmuted you but now I can hear you okay now I'm inside on my laptop versus I was outside I'm bluetooth speakers on my phone okay so we haven't done anything except officially call the meeting to order and announce that video has begun and basically the ground rules for zoom is if people wish to be recognized to speak they raise their hand either by zoom or by physically raising it and I will recognize them and for you Brenda there will be a public comment period if you want to make a public comment so our agenda tonight is called to order we really did we're going to appoint a secretary for the meeting we're going to approve the minutes from the May 21st meeting hopefully a project update from Dave fundraising status and planning public comment other items not anticipated by the chair set next meeting date so let's dive right in and see if there's a volunteer to be a secretary for the meeting and I see Mike has raised his hand so Mike is the secretary for the meeting and just a reminder Mike you can also just watch the recording and make your notes from that later or you can take notes now whichever you want and hang on if you want to talk here I yeah that's why I volunteered because I knew I couldn't make too big of a mistake okay thanks Mike thanks Mike and next on the agenda is to approve the minutes from May 21st and they are awesome minutes by the way Ellen thank you and I didn't see anything that I felt the need to change did anybody else find anything they needed to change okay I'm gonna now unmute all so we can I will call on you one by one to say whether you vote yes or no to approve the minutes because votes have to be by roll call so the vote that we're having is to approve the minutes from May 21st 2020 I just allegedly unmuted all but you still show up as mute so we'll see if it works oh it's doing it gradually okay so um Anna do you approve yes or no Anna yes Ellen this is Brenda because I'm not what was that Brenda oh hang on I'm still okay good that's fine um Ellen either say yes or raise your hand yes okay ten either say yes or raise your hand good Gina either say yes again you can say no too but you don't have to say yes okay Gina say yes Jack yes either yes Mike is a yes um I think that's everybody so we and Jim is a yes so we've unanimously approved the minutes and we can move on to I'm gonna mute everybody it's just so much fun and I'm gonna now unmute Dave and you can give us an update on what's going on sure thanks can everybody hear me from the top of mom Pollux here um so yeah I I guess yeah sharing for the most part very good news tonight um let's see I've got my kind of bulleted uh last year so um starting off the town has awarded the contract for the dog park to the valiant group I think we covered this a little bit last meeting um the base bid and the alts were two hundred and eighty thousand four hundred and sixty six dollars um there'll be some there's always some negotiation and discussion with uh you know successful bidders so um that is kind of an ongoing discussion right now with the uh with the contractor we'll be scheduling kind of a kickoff meeting with the contractor in the next couple of weeks but we have our contractor um what preceded that and what allowed us to uh contract with them officially uh is even more good news so we have received the full two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars from uh stanton uh which is great they turned that around very quickly uh we did sign what a memorandum of understanding with them it's a pretty simple document but basically saying you know you will spend the construction money uh on what you said you would and they're aware of who we're contracting with so we have the full uh construction grant uh in the bank shall we say so we are we are moving forward um so let's see what happens from here we have a meeting I have a meeting next week with DPW DPW is basically going to move into the role of really construction management so you know myself and and my department uh that's not our thing if you will we will have the engineering staff from uh I'll be working with them and and with all of you but uh we basically turn over the management of the construction itself to DPW so Jason Skeels our town engineer and Paul Dethier another one of our engineering staff will work with Valiant Corp to chart out a schedule and and and begin to navigate the you know the the bidding excuse me the bid document and the scope of services is what I was looking for um so they will come up with a start date and there's a couple of things that factor into the start date so right now let me just finish and then I'm sure there'll be plenty of questions um and happy to take them at the end so um the grasshopper sparrow determines our start date right we've talked about this for months so um I do have some local friends of mine birders who have been checking the landfill I've checked the landfill two Saturdays ago and right now no one has seen or heard grasshopper sparrows on the landfill this season now keep in mind they are um this is not uncommon uh you know some years they're there and some years they're not they may be uh the nearest large nesting uh group of grasshopper sparrows is that Westover Air Force Base in Chickabee so sometimes there's there's not enough room at the Air Force Base and you find grasshopper sparrow pair is looking for other suitable habitat but again June is kind of their month so we'll continue um we got two weeks left in June we'll continue to monitor the grasshopper sparrows there but my guess is by the end of June if they're not here they're they're not coming so that will not slow down our our construction uh we'll verify that with the natural heritage program they'll probably want somebody uh to certify that the grasshopper sparrows are not here so we may just arrange for somebody from a local consulting firm uh who specializes in biological verify that um we're also working with the Department of Environmental Protection uh they we're talking with them about what they'll require during the construction process they'll want a monitor on site so we're we're we're getting some estimates as to what a monitor would cost during construction this is pretty standard you know DEP uh wants to make sure that uh somebody is is watching out for that cap more than the town um so pretty standard stuff but it's a cost that we're we're factoring in so we're getting some cost estimates for a construction monitor uh for the cap um we'd like to i've mentioned to paul bachmann that we'd like to have some sort of socially distanced groundbreaking so as soon as i'm not able to hear right now somehow i've been muted from sound oh hmm it might be a problem on my and sorry Brenda huh just wanted to make sure i hadn't been muted no i see your i can see no i can't i can't mute you from listening i can only mute you from talking but you're not muted now so we can hear you can you hear me here you fine hang on let me just i can chat with her somewhere can't i hmm Brenda can you hear us now or no you could anyone know sign language um her hand is raised i can lower it Brenda we can hear you no sound huh we we can hear you how about now can can you hear us now Brenda can you go into your audio settings you may have your speakers oh she can't hear us you can't hear um hold on where'd she go i don't know but that's what i'm just gonna say check your audio check your audio i wonder if she's going out and coming back in and restarting or something let's see if she pops back in in a minute yeah so let me just um i'll finish and if there's questions so um i want to talk to paul and jim about whether we think it's responsible to hold a socially distanced groundbreaking you know it'd be nice to get the council out there maybe cpa committee and you all and you know be six feet apart and put some shovels in the in the ground but not in the cap um so that's kind of where we're at it's it's a go so we're gonna get some firm dates from the contractor we'll get the green light from natural heritage you know hypothetically it would be you know based on the contractor schedule it could be a a july you know third week in july or last week in july uh start date um so we're we're good on that let me just give you some numbers while i'm here if that's okay um my my numbers indicate uh and again there's please these are not absolute but um what i have in my records uh for private fundraising um you all have raised um 45 nine hundred and fifty dollars this does not include in kind um we we have approximately this amount which is 72 thousand eight hundred dollars in cpa funds and then 225 thousand dollars from stanton which gives us a working total and again let's let's make sure we call it a working total of 344 thousand five hundred and fifty dollars 344 five five zero and so out of that comes the construction any monitoring any bird uh all the wetlands work um all of it um and then we we've also got to work on i've got to revisit the in kind list um you know we have the barry roberts the generous offer of the front kiosk from barry roberts uh i think we were talking about conservation donating some uh some stones for the dogs to jump on or jump over or whatever so so we'll revisit that but but our total right now is 344 five five zero and a base contract of 280 280 466 um so again out of my meeting with dpw they are very very skilled at kind of saying okay Dave you know you got your base bid but here are all the other things that might not have been in the base bid i'll give it examples like the little shed out back wasn't in the base bid we took that out when we were worried about money so you know there's a good size shed you know you all some of you have them i'm sure you know could be four to eight thousand dollars you know and installation you know so it adds up so it looks like we have a good contingency and i'll work with dpw on kind of the honing those numbers next week so i'm open to questions if you have them my hand is raised i think you can just go ted i can just talk okay i think it's like a normal meeting um so are there anything is there anything in the bid that wasn't listed as a contingency and included besides the shed where the sprinkler system uh the temporary fencing necessary to make grass um any any of the other you know niceties that we had talked about is there anything else that wasn't you know accounted for so far um so the sprinkler system is all in the bid that's all that's all in there the only the only thing i can think of really is um the shed and shed installation purchase the shed shed installation um anything fitting for lack of a better phrase fitting out the kiosk any of the you know any of the signs uh acknowledgements any of that kind of fancy or not fancy whatever you know on that scale of you know simple to fancy acknowledgement of donors signage all of that stuff is not part of the base bid so that would come out of our remaining dollars so we'd have a contingency for any kind of uh cost overruns any kind of change orders and then we would need to keep a certain amount aside for signage um you know plaques things of that sort so i mean we haven't really started the public outreach for fund raising i don't know if this goes into the next topic if we could just kind of segue it jim i guess right before we go raising ted is there is there just any questions about where we are construction anything i got one jack what would you end up uh how do we end up dealing with the fill and the source is that is that something that the contractor has to provide and we find a local source through dpw which is at a discount yeah that's that's the way we did it um they did accept that part of the bid so we will be providing them with about six thousand cubic yards of fill and they'll be responsible for any um i'm blanking on that sorting it or uh what do you call it uh help me out here jack oh it's screening and screening thank you yeah so what is this what is the source dpw has pots of fill all over town okay at ruckston gravel bit there's actually a pretty large pile of fill right up at the landfill um right above where the dog park will be built and that's all going to be part of the the uh fill that we need good so that saved us quite a bit of money right there mike did you also have a question um yeah but it fell out of my head i forgot okay so anything else any other questions about project and where we're at so far from anybody oh i do remember okay i just wanted a repeat of um possible timelines for the groundbreaking today yeah um i'll know more next week when when i talk with dpw but um you know we could we can do i mean we have the money the contract is let the site is solid you know we we have the green light from dep to to go ahead with monitoring a natural heritage is is really probably a letter you know saying good to go so we could schedule the groundbreaking if if paul bachelman is on board um probably with with lin greece mere the chair of the of the council we could schedule the groundbreaking you know anytime and and that would be a kind of a symbolic thing and then i meant when they could start building oh um we just have to we'll probably get through the month of june verify that the grasshopper sparrows are not here and then um you know it's up to the contractor to fit us in so i don't want to presume we don't i don't know what valiant has going in their other work but it could be you know we could break ground uh with the with the contractor in july or it might be an august first groundbreaking that'll be kind of up to the dpw to negotiate with them okay and obviously the sooner the better for all of us i think any sense from people um you know i think i would want to wait at least until we know what this you know till july to have any kind of groundbreaking and preferably do it you know right when they're really about to begin construction would be my thought i don't know if it's nice to have the construction people even there you know at the ceremony representing you know with a piece of equipment or something it it's kind of a stronger statement yeah yeah we might we might be able to do that i mean i'll have to keep you posted i mean i guess the worst-case scenario would be they say well we want to start on august 15th or august 20th and do we want to wait that long before we actually do something and you know we can talk with you all i do know the council and paul and the council are pretty um sensitive or you know they're really thinking uh thoroughly about gathering people it's just not the thing to do so so we'd have to think of how large this is it might be more like a photo op frankly uh than than inviting the public i can tell you there you know we're going through the same thing with the spray park and the playground and a crop park which is finally i can say nearing completion so we're going through the same thing there is how do we do uh not a groundbreaking but a ribbon cutting in a responsible way during covid so so we can talk with paul a little bit about it and see yeah i think it could be a bring your own shovel event so you don't have to share a quick so we don't have to sound good so i'm sorry i think oh good jack well not about the construction um so nevermind but i guess at some point uh jim i'm just wondering about that article in amherst indy and and any obstruction you know at the 11th 11 30th hour so basically there hasn't been any more comment on the amherst woods listserv and i posted a response on the amherst indy and there hasn't been any other comment there and you know i got some great information from david i don't know if you remember at the last zoom meeting we had there were questions about why didn't we notify a butters and it turns out we did notify a butters a letter was sent to 70 different addresses a budding a landfill for the planning board meeting in june of 2019 and there was no public comment at the meeting so so it was great news i wish i had known it last month but it probably wouldn't have made any difference so at any rate i haven't heard any other negative things since i posted yeah that was amherst indy thank you for responding to that for us yeah and one handy thing um due to the lack of ultimate coaching this spring i've been spending more time learning wordpress so i now can very quickly make responses on the dog park web page so there's a whole new page all about questions from the neighbors and responses to the questions that i can react to very quickly and add to very quickly and no jim your responses have been great and i would just add that you've also included responses to the town council members whose district this is in yeah it's been great and actually it was not only did we notice the plan the for the planning board we also noticed for the concom process as well in addition to all the public meetings that you were so careful to log yeah so yeah so you know holding my breath but haven't heard anything lately so should we move on and talk about fundraising status and planning a little bit and i might turn things over to ellen or ted and see what they have to say on the topic well ellen i'm happy to hear what you're thinking you know when i heard the numbers day that we raised $50,000 roughly more than what the construction budget is that's great news uh from a fundraising point of view it kind of makes it hard to go out with any type of urgency and say we desperately need your you know donations to construct because it seems like we have money in hand to build the park and i guess what i'm wondering is one what are the plans if any for any excess unless you think there won't be any excess left over after we're all said and done with all the other little details that need to be paid for uh are there any other things on our original wish list or things that were left out other ways that we could improve the park given the fact that we have more money than we need to build what we've asked for and we haven't gone out and solicited and so when we're going out to solicit you know if we were to say you know we have this but we would like this and your contribution would help you know ensure that we're able to get that and i i don't know if anyone else on the committee can remember any of the other things we might have talked about that were taken out of the plan along the way because of budgetary concerns um so that's my my first thought well if i could jump in there jim just for a sec so by my calculations it looks like we have a contingency of about 64 000 dollars um until i meet with dpw i'm i'm not you know i i just don't know what else they might see or you know think we might need but having just gone through the uh process with the spray park uh which is a much larger projects and much more complex you know i i agree with you said um but i could i could easily see you know i could easily see there being change orders and you know things we didn't anticipate uh relative to phil or the cap or whatever you know so that's why you have a contingency um but i'll know more when i meet with dpw's no even if there's five thousand dollars left or ten thousand dollars left what where does that money go does it just go to friends of amherst dog park to hold for the future no it it would really stay in a special account with the town so for future you know somebody cuts a hole in the fence um five uh five uh sprinkler heads break somebody hits something with a mower something like that so at this point that would stay there it would be dedicated to the dog park it would be a special account for the dog park so this this getting back to the fundraising it's very hard to go to people and ask for a significant amount of money for a fund that will be used to repair fences in the future you know i'm being facetious but what i'm trying to say is if there were something else you know i realize we can go out and say you can sponsor a bench or a water fountain or a plaque or in the donor's pavilion or whatever but what are we going to do with the money and what's the point of the fundraising if we don't have a need for it i guess that's what i'm asking so one of the things we talked about in the future was having some sort of an endowment for just those kinds of things that are going to come up in the next three to five years so um i this is this will be a wonderful conversation if we end up having it what to do the extra money but i just made sort of a short list of things that i think aren't in the base bid so they mentioned the shed i believe the the panels for the kiosk you know not the wood frame itself but the stuff that we're going to display there i don't think that's in the bid sign as he mentioned isn't the large dog area shade structure is not in the bid and that's the big why is that not in the bid i believe the shade i remember were never in the bid well they were alternates weren't they and dave didn't you say all the alternates were covered hold on why pretty sure the shade structures were not but i i i agree i don't think they were included i think they are they were all not yeah you can't have a shade all this is the base bid plus all alts so we got the base we got alt two which was the shade sales great so we got signs we got a kiosk uh accoutrements and we have a shed anything else jen did we have all the benches we wanted dave or benches included i assume they are but i got to go over this in more detail i'm sorry i i'm looking at some of that but i'm not you know i'm seeing the bids but i'm not seeing that kind of detail in the scope of services so let me get back to you on that but you know i think we i i hear what you're saying to but at the same time i think one of the one of our goals or our dreams was to have a fund that would be significant enough so that um three years down the road or four years down the road when things break or don't work or we need to be replaced we want to have some fun to to draw from so we be fundraising looking really for a sort of an endowment for the park to support the park going forward into improvements well i yes i i agree but i there's still so many naming opportunities so really to go out fundraising you're you're offering if you will um people the chance to have their name on a bench or on the water fountain or whatever it is so that's what they think their money is going toward you know they're paying for that opportunity to have their name attached to some component of the park but the money may end up depending on these alternate lists may end up going into that endowment yeah i mean so you know your point is well taken ted we we can't go out to businesses or people and say oh my god if you don't give us money we're not going to have a dog park that that isn't true anymore but i think i think we can still honestly say we need money and here's naming opportunities and here's things you can do to support the dog park that makes sense i mean we should have at least every bench should be named i would think yeah and i think we currently have two committed okay names it'd be great to have those all named by the time we open and once once i meet with dpw i'll i'll have a list for you all once the engineers go through and and i will say you know listen we need to know exactly what is not what was not included in the base bid plus the alts and did we miss anything because we're looking at you know 64 thousand dollars and you know i can think of maybe 25 to 30 that might get used up but that still leaves the remainder so um what other things did we miss or what what other things might have been on our wish list all right so moving forward what should we do about fundraising well i mean i i still feel like it's a little premature personally for me to go out and start soliciting uh businesses veterinary hospitals and so on so forth uh even local businesses that maybe aren't even open or just barely open or doing curbside service or that kind of thing i think that you know by the time construction starts sounds like it's starting sooner rather than we at all anticipate possibly might be started as early as august so that by the fall you know the thing will be well under construction and i i think in some ways uh when it's being built it's going to be easier to approach people a little more time you know we'll see what's happening with the virus i would still for myself want to postpone my attempts to go out and solicit money for right now and um i i just think that times on our side and that we have a better chance of being successful the closer we are to it actually being under construction that's not to say we can't be ready to do it and uh i think we have all the materials we need in order to um solicit when the time comes uh i think it's a nice feeling to know that what we're doing is you know uh gravy you know and just it's not required but we don't have to tell anyone that but it's kind of a nice feeling to know that and but i agree that giving people the opportunity to be part of the project is important and i just think it's going to be easier as we get further down the road and people you know everyone is getting a little bit looser and more relaxed about things as time goes by they're going out and doing more things going getting haircut you know which used to be you wouldn't even think of it people are doing it now and going to eat in a restaurant outdoors people are doing it now they wouldn't have thought of doing that a month ago and i think a month from now people may start to feel hopefully a little more secure even more so and when it comes to people's businesses in town maybe they'll be a little bit more willing to not dismiss the opportunity out of hand does anyone disagree with that or no i agree that this is kind of an opportunity for us to to not pause but to kind of delay our timeline on soliciting donations because we are we know that we can move forward in the in the immediate that we can wait till people are ready to to start giving again two causes like this i know giving to like other causes is doing really well right now but for us we're kind of more of that like bonus bonus got started this one curl is bugging me it's like hanging out there but uh yeah so i think that that's going to be i think it works to our favor actually i would agree ted um i just i again having come off a couple of town projects i'm just more conservative like you know i i feel good about our numbers but until i meet with the engineers and they really you know tell me otherwise i just want to be conservative i mean i don't want to put gravy i want to don't want to put the word gravy in the minute i i had a comment on the word gravy also i think it's really yeah it's really important to emphasize that any money that we bring in is money that's covering our costs and ensuring that the dog park isn't going to be a burden on the taxpayers of the town and that's really important to us and that's why we still need money yeah could i also you know just trying to share good news i know ellen was a dog but keep in mind the mo u i'm looking at the mo u here it is i'm looking at the mo u so other good news is it says the foundation will provide three capital grants i just to remind people up to five percent of the hard construction cost each during the period beginning one year after the opening of the park and not later than five years after the opening of the park provided that they get an annual narrative and the financial uh reporting is up to speed and the town is supporting the operating budget you know through dbw you know doing maintenance so we have an opportunity for three capital grants if we want to improve the the park so so that's good news too yeah each one ten ten thousand plus it sounds like yeah and i i believe you said stanton also um gives maintenance grants well is that i thought that's what he was talking about that is oh okay sorry there's a lot of noise in my house right now oh yeah that's um dave i wanted to ask is there a town policy about mask wearing on town property and obviously the virus is here for the foreseeable are we gonna can we require people to wear masks in the dog park um it's an outdoor space and i know people are a lot less vigilant in outdoor spaces about wearing masks so it's a great question i've spent most of the day at puffer spawn we just did a soft opening at puffer spawn today um with increased staff and it actually went very well so we're crossing our fingers there in terms of how that goes over the next couple of very warm days and human days um so short answer is no i don't think the town would require masks outside um you know i've worked very closely with julie federman our health director over the last couple of months on covid related things and frankly the science just isn't there for that it could be optional we would you know if we open whether it's opening this fall or opening in the spring of 21 let's assume this thing is still going to be with us i think we would message and we would sign the park appropriately to say that um you know we encourage social distancing um some people like to wear masks when they're disembarking say at the rail trail or a place where there's going to be a lot of people but once they spread out into the trail or or the park or or or they're get on their bikes and they they feel more comfortable taking it off but so i think we do that we we'd work on messaging with with the health director but we wouldn't require masks uh outside okay thank you um another question i have is we're preparing to reopen the museum net and um we're only allowed by the state to operate at 25 capacity there's such a rule about dog parks from the state so do we have to pass the number for the dog park and if so do we have to monitor that to a quarter of the number wow these are great questions um i guess you know what i've been working on for the past couple weeks the short answer is i don't know if dog parks we can certainly find out whether dog parks have been included in the governor's um you know uh guidance okay certainly beaches have indoor pools outdoor pools indoor spaces clearly have been but we can look at that deal of what we did at buffers bond and obviously it wouldn't apply to uh the dog park directly but you know we could message and we could sign at the dog park you know we we encourage you know x number of feet beaches are 12 feet by the way it's not six feet are recommended you and your party be 12 feet from the nearest party so what we did at buffers bond is we put down uh about 30 hula hoops um and those hula hoops designate areas where we encourage you or your family or your party or you individually to put down your chair or your towel and those hula hoops are 12 feet from the nearest hula hoop so a lot of people just don't know what 12 feet is or six feet for that matter but the hula hoops are not there to play they're there to designate where you put your stuff and chill out and you know have a picnic whatever party and you know on day one it actually kind of worked pretty well so the 12 foot rule is my favorite rule it made the beach amazing so good yeah i went to the beach in in road island and nobody was wearing masks and nobody was it was so packed we just left it was before i i went to the cape before i got warm and it was like the best beach experience i know we did digress so we can work on that but i think it'll be a messaging thing but i i don't see it as being a big impediment to opening either this fall or in the spring whenever the grass is ready i don't know who would be monitoring such a thing anyway but okay thank you i think that would be carol she'll keep the dogs a safe distance from each other that's her job yeah deal with the people right no touching um i think we can probably kind of say fundraising we're kind of not doing any proactive thing now and waiting at least our next meeting to talk about it again what our next steps will be what i'd like to do so we don't brenda i sent brenda an email and i said come back come back but she didn't come back um so no public comment that means i had here she's just in the attendees section jim well she's back oh i didn't see oh i'm gonna there we go thank you i didn't notice let's see if she can hear us this time i think the attendees can hear the whole time i think it's just that they can't talk i'm trying to unmute her there we go hi brenda can you hear us am i unmuted yes oh good no i've had tremendous problems i've been back and forth between my phone and my laptop on this three times so i think it's probably a problem on my end but i teach it you mass and we have many more functions so it must be that these functions are turned off like there was no chat option yeah i noticed there's no chat option also because i'm used to that on my private zoom calls as well it's because we're using the webinar zoom not zoom calling what was that the town's the town set it up as a webinar not as a call yeah oh so that has a lot more restrictions so like i wasn't able to say i can't hear right now can you see we can't see you now can you see us are you just on audio now i am not able to put video on okay yeah so i'm not sure what changed but i'm not able to put video on but anyways i don't really have any comments other than to say that if there's any pushback from surrounding neighborhoods that'd be happy to rally an opposition in whatever way is helpful doesn't sound like there's going to be now i thought maybe there was going to be but looking at the map i can't see why anyone would complain honestly um so i'm just really thrilled that there's going to be a dog park because amethyst brook is just overrun yeah yep we're thrilled too and you know i hope you're right that there's not going to be pushback or much more pushback you know we won't know until it's built but we're keeping our fingers crossed and you know it's you know it's i just i feel that sort of common sense and the facts are so overwhelming that this isn't really an issue that that's got to help us i hope yes and as much as the runners are angry with the dog owners and some dog owners are really irresponsible i have to say i see that a lot yeah as a responsible dog owner this will give a place that's fenced in so irresponsible dog owners can bring their dogs to yes yeah well i really appreciate hearing from you it's really and we'll call on you if we need you for opposition to opposition but hopefully we won't yeah and also if you want any uh perspective on the fundraising strategy let me know okay um we've done a fair amount of work but probably we can get you involved in that as well um so yeah we are forming the friends of the Amherst dog park and we are looking for active members so i'm sure there's a way for you to have the bylaws drafted no so that's a great segue into the next topic that we're talking about um which is i've came and this is on the other items not anticipated by anticipated by chair but i did mention them in an email that i sent out to the task force there are three different things that i'm hoping i can get one it could be two but or one person to volunteer for to kind of do background and research and then report back to us at our next meeting and the first is kicking off the friends of Amherst dog park group so the tasks that i'm looking for someone to volunteer to do is to gather from all the sources that we have all the email addresses and contacts that we've accumulated to date and i know they're in a couple different places prepare announcements for gazette bulletin amherst nd community groups that we're having this friends group and work on a first draft of a mission statement and an organization structure and bylaws for the friends group so is there somebody or some two people who want to take on that task on working to report back to us at our next meeting on the kickoff of the friends of amherst dog park group jim do you know where all the names are i know k was aggregating them but she's no longer in i think i have i have to go through my big notebook and emails and stuff and i'll be able to build a collection of everything i have which may be everything and you know everyone else should look at their notes and we should look at the minutes carefully and kind of you know scrape off from there all the names and email addresses and phone numbers that we can find so that would be so whoever volunteers to do this task can reach out to everybody in the group and say hey by you know middle next week send me every name and every contact that you have of anybody you think might be interested so we would reach out specifically to people who've said they're interested and then we would also reach out through facebook through the gazette and the bulletin send in something to phyllis lair for her going on about town thing that we're looking for people and kind of reach out in all these different ways and get a core group of people to be the beginnings of this friends group and jim is it the friends group or is it our group that writes the bylaws and all the the mission statement i think well it's kind of a can you can you write a bylaws i think the friends group which will probably include some of us if not all of us but certainly some of us but it's not until you have the bylaws are you a group yet i don't know which comes first but i would think that you know some small group of people would volunteer to write a draft of bylaws and a draft of a structure and bring that back to this task force and bring it to anybody who has said yes i want to be part of the friends group and let everybody look at it and make changes or additions and yeah so if i could just interject here um so yeah it would be a separate incorporated 501c3 on c3 non-profit and there are lots of friends of around the country so we could just crib from their bylaws but the first meeting where it's developing the mission statement is really important and then drafting the bylaws so once it gets to the point of drafting bylaws i'm happy to do that great so is there somebody on the task force who wants to wants to kind of take the lead at this point in time and start putting it together all right this is awkward sorry y'all i'm like just so at capacity i know i wouldn't do a good job yeah me too we're reopening so that's just my pure focus at the moment i don't know what your capacity is but i bet you would do a good job i just started a new job and it is kicking my butt where are you i'm now at amherst college oh wow oh no sorry jina i'm learning development oh that's great oh i'm sad that you're not a smith though anybody else want to volunteer to do this hang on mike i just unmuted you yeah i was planning on volunteering for number two so that was what i was hoping to get involved that's the kiosk and recognition yeah i'll help with that too with which number two the kiosk yeah we need somebody to take the lead on the friend's group mike's dog will do it yeah good it doesn't ask to sleep no he's barking how are you raising your hand hang on i unmuted you carol maybe trying to unmute you carol there you go carol were you raising your hand well i was just thinking about something are those the friends of the dog park rules are they going to be our rules in that we're going to try to enforce in the dog park park itself or are they separate rules they're typically separate if i could just sorry go ahead so they're typically separate the friends of are basically those there's kind of two types one is that it's purely fundraising another one is that it really helps with kind of maintenance issues but it's the town that would create the rules for the dog parks the friends would have no say in that so we've already done that too so we already have the rules so if you think of puffers pond as a model there's a friends of puffers pond group and they do fundraising and they help with maintenance but they don't set what the rules are for being a puffers pond the town sits a town property and town sets those rules and that would be the same for the dog park yet so first then carol yeah and i would i would just kind of bad i mean this is our first dog park you are the dog experts you know we spent a lot of time on those rules and regulations i in and i can't imagine the town really veering off into you know dog rule lands so you know my my guess is we'll just kind of adopt those as these are the these are the rules for the town of amherst dog park you know and we'll put our our seal on on it and you know i can't imagine us going in a in a wildly different direction on the rules yeah but the friends group wouldn't have anything to do with that no not not not really no i think it would come out of the task force right you would say amherst here are rules and this covers the the small dog area and the big dog area and you know already on the web page we already know those yeah Gina uh i don't get excited i'm not volunteering oh i'm so excited two two elderly parents that um i was going to make a proposal because brenda is is here and we have lost two members of our task force um of and brenda you can say no to this but my proposal is i don't know if this is feasible she's brenda seems to have a lot of knowledge about this and to possibly make her an honorary task member um and i'm just making the suggestion jim we've lost people i think others of us are just kind of tired i know we all have a lot on our plate brenda i don't mean to put you on the spot there but you seem to have some working knowledge about this um i don't know what the feasibility is of any of it but that's my suggestion brenda disappears i second it i second it well let me let me thank you um and i'm very happy to help out i have some expertise that might be useful in terms of bylaws and mission statements but i don't have the capacity to put together a mailing list i'm happy to run a meeting uh once the announcements get out and the meeting is held i'm very happy to to run that but i don't have the capacity to develop a mailing list so what we're hoping for is somebody who can mike just raised his hand what i'm wondering is once the dog park is open if there wouldn't be people that get excited about it and then that could be where the friends the dog park grows from i'm sure i'm sure it will but i think we need to start planning for it at least now i'm not saying that you know tomorrow there's a friend's group when we start sending out emails what i'm looking for is someone to come up with a plan here's the steps we need to take including building a draft mission statement and organization structure and that sort of thing and then come back to this group to review what we've got and go from there so this first step isn't sending out emails to a million people it's just figuring out who we have that we can send emails to and what our plan is to get more people involved that's what we're looking for at this stage jim could i just add on the mailing list you know we have i believe you used in the past or we certainly have access to every every dog owner who registers their dog in the town of amherst right so i mean that's a pool of potential members for a friends group moving forward the other thing i was going to say is that eventually this task force you're a limited time body so at some point when the time is right the task force hands hands the you know hands the baton if you will the town takes over operating if you will caring for the dog bark and the friends take over the communication and the you know that side of it so that's an interesting point i mean i just and i'm happy to serve on the task force if if i'm if it's useful i given a plan that jim's talking about i'm also wondering if it would be useful to have some new mass school of public policy students develop a plan for us we teach nonprofit management we've got students that are always looking for projects we could put a team of students on it this fall that certainly could be useful and could help and again that could be one of the things that we come up with as these are the steps we're going to take to kick off this friends dog park group so i'm not sure where to go from here so i'm going to just skip it and get back to it and i'm going to go to the number two and three jobs then we'll get back and talk about the number one job again so the kiosk information and recognition panels and that's the one that sounded like mike and was it jean or ellen mike and ellen want to research that so what i what i have here is tasks would include determine what will be built by barry roberts and what we have to supply you know what are we going to have as a starting point determine what materials we use you know work with the town on this because they've got plenty of other information kiosks and there've got to be people who dav knows who work with them or for him who know the range of materials that you use for this sort of thing and then also determine the content of the panels what are we going to have a believer talking about a six sided structure basically we're going to have six spaces to work with so figure out both sort of physically what the material it is that we're going to want or what that you would recommend and then also figure out what the content is going to be and we have talked about this some in the past so there might be notes in older minutes about it that you can look at so it sounds like mike and ellen are going to take on that task and basically report back to us at the next meeting with what you've come up with and then signage other than kiosk is the third item so this is you know what signs are we going to need in terms of rules and things like that where will they be displayed what recognition plaques do we need for benches fountains waste barrels things like that and then again work with the town on acquisition of the actual materials put on a bench and how do you put it there and that sort of thing how do you get it in great I'll help on three okay anybody else want to do that with them or you can just do it yourself it's not that I don't think it's that big a deal making some signs getting some plaques and talking to the town about it so yeah I would just like to put in a word that I'd love all the signage to be consistent yes make sure our fonts match up whether we use the logo or colors you know we're going to talk about everything together I'd like to be involved in helping you guys with the kiosk and you can help it's not like yeah coming back to the next meeting with a report right yeah yeah um Jim could I just add before we move on um I think it would be good if maybe caro and I sat down or stood six feet apart from Barry Roberts at some point and talk with him about about the six-sided kiosk uh does that make sense caro yeah I was just going to say that because the way I understood from the last time I talked to Barry and he's kind of a you know the way Barry is um he just he doesn't like a lot of he just wants someone to hand him and tell him what he has to build he he bring his own material he he's going to build it the way it is and then you guys will decide what's going to go on the inside of the report but the structure of the kiosk he will build all he needs is the plans the design and all of that stuff so yes Dave I think that's a wonderful idea I think we should get together with him okay well well just remind me next week caro it may not happen next week but maybe the week after um I'll pull out the it's been a while I have to blow the dust off Mike uh Mike Lu put together a little plan I I hope it has enough detail there and we could sit down with Barry he's got very talented carpenters I do think going back to Ellen's comment about you know I happened to just about consistency and you know we want this thing to last so um you know this this problem this this is going to have to be something that um you know Barry's Barry's a craftsman and he's got good people working for him so I just happen to be on a website because we're looking for a kiosk for Groff Park and we're working with a if you google there's a company uh it's it's actually Vermont timber frame or something like that they do timber frame houses and they do really beautiful kiosk so we might give Barry a couple of images that might help his folks in addition to Mike's plan the other thing I was just going back to what Ellen said about consistency um I think the signs are are easy as Ted said but I just want to make sure we're consistent across the board on you know welcoming and you know none of that is part of the base bid so that's going to come out of that extra money as well and so maybe we can have a zoom meeting where we talk about that you know we've we've worked with designers we may need to pull into the designer just to design some of these professionally and then have a maid and and that's pretty easy to do it be a small a small contract so that would be smart yeah we work with a really I'm blanking on his name but a really talented guy from Northampton who um did some very nice designs for us so he might be an option you all may know some other folks too we could come up with for the next meeting maybe a list of the signs and the general content and maybe even some of the specific content that then you could run by the designer and maybe he could get some ideas for how what are the options that we could think about you know to to fit in with the kiosk and the fact that it's a dog park um maybe that would be a way to approach it okay yeah yeah and we you know that the rules of the park are already on the web page so you can see them there yeah and that's I imagine that's what we would have in our signage as well does anybody recall if the six panels will be behind glass or not because that affects what we think about I think that's part of what your little group is thinking about I'm pretty sure what Barry is going to be building us is just the wood and we can decide what we want to put on there maybe some of them need to be behind glass and some don't maybe none of them do I don't know and that that's what I want us to start thinking about basically and you know Dave obviously anybody who has expertise in the town should you know send them to us or jump in about their recommendations as well but yeah that's exactly the sort of thing we have to figure out I think Ellen Ted and I and anybody else who wants to be part of that Mike anybody um I do know we can order off the shelf once Barry has his the thing with the roof and you know all of that and it looks nice you know we we can um based on those designs we can order whatever we want kind of off the shelf you know they have the glass cases or the plexi cases with the you know double opening single opening we want to make it easy to you know one we want to make it you know last through the elements uh aesthetically pleasing but also you want one of those panels or more than one of them to be so you can change the items frequently and updates notices etc bulletin board yeah bulletin board yeah so getting back to the kicking off the friends um so I don't you know all I was hoping for for the next meeting is someone to volunteer not to do any of this stuff but come up with a plan here's the timing here's when we should be sending out emails here's when we should be having something for the gazette um maybe it's just not time yet maybe we could ask Brenda to go ahead and start thinking about and working on you know look at our existing web page and see if you can come up draft a mission statement and an organization structure based on what you can see that we've done so far I don't know if you're willing to do that Brenda maybe that's enough for now I'm happy to do that I mean typically on these things it's more of an organic process with the emission statement at least the bylaws are all pretty standard so I'm happy to do that while we were talking I just sent an email off to two faculty at school public policy seeing if they could put students on the project this fall UMass is starting August 24 so students would be you know back and ready to do projects I think the timeline might work but yeah I mean I'm happy to do that I do think that a mission statement is more of an organic process with people who show up at the meeting uh-huh yeah but I understand what you want Jim I'm just a little bit hesitant just because I'm slammed with work it sounds like everybody else is as well yeah but I you know and also I'm just coming on to this and I don't have full information on the dog port dog part so it gives me a little bit of pause because I haven't been part of these discussions but I do think that probably you're right that it's a little bit too early and I think maybe waiting until July might be a better time to start thinking about this um that probably sounds reasonable and okay to me by then other people will be in a volunteering mode more maybe I can you know what I will do in the meanwhile I will go through everything I've got and see if I come up can come up with a single list of people who said that they want to be contacted when we get to the friends phase and I'll send something out to everybody else reaching out to see if anybody else in this group has contacts that they might have that I don't have so I'll do that part um Jim I'm happy to help writing um press releases about the opening or whenever we're ready for that uh-huh that I that I can do yeah and I can try to put together if you're talking about a timeline for like a launch timeline um I can try to think about that in terms of when we should put things out in the gives that like when press releases should go out when we should really try to pull people together I can try to work on a timeline for that kind of working backwards from a launch date good so why don't you so Ellen probably you don't have to do anything yet except I've already written down that you're going to write our press releases but Anna you could now you're locked in next meeting you know on a couple of the timeline and you know kind of go backwards you know this is the launch date is how many weeks before do we do this how many weeks before we do that that sort of thing good can we also just do like kind of a soft ask on the facebook page just to kind of throw it out I don't know who has the advantage what just a soft ask on the on the dog park facebook page for for people who might be interested in being my friends right right yeah I and then we can all share that and that just is another way to get stuff out there kind of a yeah Nina and I have access to that um just let's if we could just talk really quickly about how you might want to frame that question um that would be really helpful for me to know moving forward could just because we haven't necessarily introduced the concept of the friends of um dog but we've mentioned it a lot but we haven't clarified what it is um yeah so I would want to make sure that that is clear to people if that makes sense yeah yeah so I'd say we want to you know that also for the next meeting think about what we want to say on facebook but I think it's it's connected with what Anna's talking about of the timeline so part of this timeline is when we promote on facebook that we're looking for people for this friends group um anybody want to take a stab at writing I don't know should we try and write a draft mission statement or Brenda are you saying you should wait until we have a core group of people before we work on a mission statement what comes first there once you get the core group have a meeting and then you have a you know there's a lot of different ways to do that but you basically have a brainstorming session and and that gets people really excited about it and then you get a couple drafts and then there's a number of different techniques to try to narrow you know what should be the one that it's chosen and that way the people who are volunteering really have a stake in it because they're the ones drafting it so it's kind of a really an important part of the process yeah i actually i have experience facilitating those processes and so i'm happy to to step in in that way once that group is there um that's something that i i can do i think it's just yeah my my hesitation comes around what Brenda was just saying about how i don't necessarily feel comfortable with this group drafting the mission statement that we aren't going to have to abide by right like that that is for the other group and so um that being said you can write me down as like i can help facilitate that process if that's appropriate i already wrote you down okay good so it's it's a little tricky because but it makes sense in a way but we want to reach out to get people to join this friends group but it doesn't have a mission you know mission statement normally when you're reaching out for someone to join a group you can tell them what the group is but we're saying and we can frame this positively we're saying and you get to decide what the group is and then we can give them their charge it's just a little bit different than their mission like we can tell them the intent of the group and yeah the the official kind of charge for the group but they can develop their own nice wordy mission so maybe for the next meeting also you can give us your draft wording of the chart oh jim that's exactly what i said i didn't want to do um yeah i can i can throw something together that's awesome okay i think that covers everything i was hoping to get out of this um yeah anything else let me just look at my notes but i don't know next meeting when should we have a next meeting go for around four weeks mid july i'll send out a google poll and brenda i've got your email so i'm going to include you in doodle polls and things like that yeah i just did a quick search of friends of dog parks and there's one in waster um so we can get a pretty quick uh like an idea of what you know kind of standard terms about what the dog parks do without going into mission yeah i agree i don't know people's names yet but for the person that volunteered to facilitate i'm happy to assist with that as well awesome thanks brenda this is this is anna who's who is doing that oh hi anna hi um okay so i will send out a doodle poll oh by the way just getting back to the question for brenda i had actually asked paul bachman the town manager a couple months ago is it worth it to actually appoint another member to the task force because we did lose two members one who's still active but she no longer lives in amherst and the other dropped out completely and we kind of decided it wasn't worth it because by the time you go through the whole interview and appointment process and the way it all has to work we're hoping to be close to being dissolved by the time we'd get a new member so this means what i'm hoping for is to keep you involved and get you involved and it just means you're not you don't get a vote in terms of things like approving the minutes of the previous meeting which i know that's hard not to vote on that but so it's not an issue we'd be very happy to have you as involved as you're willing to be and i will certainly include you in the doodle poll for the next meeting and hopefully you'll come and maybe even with video i'll do my best yeah yeah but i mean just looking at here's one in california friends dedicated to enriching the lives of our dogs in our community with off-leash options and that one doesn't say anything about fundraising others do so it can be a dual kind of we're going to be supporting our community with off-leash options and we're going to be fundraising to maintain the dog park uh huh yeah and brenda i'm pretty sure i remember early early on doing some research i'm pretty sure i think it's east long meadow has a friends group the one up in greenfield might have a friends group i i randy has a friend i i just remember doing research what's not yeah we got a lot of them there's a lot of them just close closer by too yeah yeah so we don't have to reinvent the wheel yeah jim could i just ask for ted and ellen and myself so ted will you try to get us together you know sometime in the next couple weeks on zoom or something and we could talk fine well we can do that or i could just put together a list a list with the content and send it to you and ellen and ellen yeah and then you know we can augment that and then you can take that to a designer and maybe they can get give you some ideas about how they what kind of material what kind of because we want to coordinate it with all the founders plaques and all the the bench signs and you know everything else okay and then the last thing i was just going to remind everybody is it is all very exciting but um what i don't know is about remember we always keep reminding ourselves about growing grass and and you know if we get under construction in july or early august that's wonderful but the question is when will be the when will the park be ready to host dogs and people so you know growing grass is key whether we need to have two seasons of that growing grass you know i'm not an expert on that but that will be all part of the you know part of the discussion with dpw and valiant because the worst thing in the world would be to open this thing with all this beautiful grass and then right before winter so david that's why it's important when you're in discussions with the contractor that they focus and i'm sure dpw would be aware of this to make sure there's very good temporary fencing that can go in and out easily so that not only when it opens when the hard surfaces are open and the grass is off limits that there's a fence there you know a plastic fence but that it can be taken out and possibly put back if the lawn doesn't hold up well and needs to be set off so you know p we talked about pvc tubes or something some way to put fence back and forth intermittently as the ground needs repair to keep people off of it i'll bring that up to dpw i know it came up um they were not big fans of putting tubes in the ground mainly because lawnmowers will just hit them and break them or the lawnmowers so but all unless the tubes are in the gravel there's gravel all the way around and the tubes don't have to be in the grass the tubes could be in the gravel section on this side of the grass yeah and again remember this um the temporary fencing won't be on the contractor that'll just be something to add to our list of things we need to buy so that's fine but we have to plan for it you know when you're building right but what i'm saying is even in the fall if you have all new grass you may want to we may want to wait until spring to open the thing for sure we're not going to let them on in the first season yeah okay that's a good reminder because i forgot about that discussion okay yeah okay i think we're ready to adjourn anybody have anything else before we adjourn yeah i do yeah carol hey you're going to call me on when we're going to meet with barry or how are we going to yeah we'll we'll get together yeah i have it on my list uh meeting with barry roberts uh does that just michael and ellen want to come to that meeting also since they're going to be helping with kiyoshi i will send around um i'll send around mic's design again just to remind everybody if you don't have it um but i don't i don't think we need i mean i think we go with that design i mean that's kind of like that's the bones of this thing yeah and then we're gonna have to figure out what what holds all the the writing and the acknowledgments and all that stuff yeah we'll need we'll need dimensions for sure yeah but other than dimensions you won't need much you know it's really two separate phases no okay give me a call when you're good all right girl okay i think anything else are we good we're good all in favor we don't i don't think we need to do a roll call for adjourning if it's let's see if it's unanimous if it's unanimous we don't need to roll call all those in favor of adjourning just physically raise your hand and it's unanimous of our voting members thank you everybody appreciate it everybody thank you