 screen, as well as I will put on the live transcript. And so now on to our PowerPoint. So the implementation team was is tasked with determining the scope of the Crest program, the relationship with the police, fire and EMS identifying calls directed to Crest, projecting the numbers of Crest responders in the size of the department, developing descriptions, recruit applicants, review communication protocols, develop outreach efforts and create training requirements for staff and developing program details, including policies and procedures. And we're not seeing the PowerPoint. You're not seeing the PowerPoint. Of course. Hold on. How about now? Oh, much better. Yeah. Can you see it now? Correct? Yes. And Miss Alicia, do you want to go ahead and speak on in the beginning of the program for us? Yeah, thank you. I just wanted to again thank everyone for being here tonight. We really look forward to hearing from you and then to just give full disclosure that this PowerPoint includes topics and decisions that we have come up with as a group that we've agreed on together, but that they are subject to change that we are still in the process of implementation. And so any new information ideas or data can have influence as well as we are looking to hire a director that will be on board soon. And we are looking for their input on a lot of these crucial decisions. And to also just keep in mind that throughout the implementation of this program in real life, we will also be continuing to learn and adjust. Thank you. So the community to respond is for equity, safety and social and service is an alternative public safety department. And the reason for creating this department is to provide community safety services and situations that don't involve violence or serious crime. It will create a civilian unarmed alternative to calls that might otherwise require response from the police department. The purpose is to ensure that any public safety responses anti racist equitable, just and fair, and that we offer preventative services that can get at the root of assisting our community members to avoid necessitating public safety involvement in the first place. $250,000 of ARPA funds have been allocated for startup costs $90,000 has been earmarked from the state, and the town and the African diaspora mental health association, which we'll speak about, I'll speak on more later, applied for a grant together in collaboration for $450,000 grant from the Department of Public Health. The Crest program, all of the full time permanent positions will be funded through town funds. And there will be a director, eight community responders and administrative assistant. The project manager and the transitional assistant coordinator will be funded through the grant and they are temporary positions. So we hope to have the director and the project manager positions filled by the end of February and the transitional systems coordinator position in March. We also would are hoping to create and post the community responders and administrative assistant positions shortly after the hiring of the director. The community responders will work in teams of two, our goal is to have one responder with clinical mental health expertise and one with de-escalation mediation skills. We will also seek to hire responders with varieties of experience and expertise, including with homelessness, substance abuse and youth training. So the responders will have to go through an intensive training, which will take about eight weeks and will include de-escalation and mediation, local social service agencies, communications equipment, recording, keeping system, town by laws, knowing when to identify when to call APD, APD or the fire department or EMTs and first aid and CPR, equity awareness and social justice considerations with regards to race, class, disability, religion, LGBTQ plus persons, age, homelessness, et cetera. This is a preliminary list that will be expanding and these trainings will be continuous after initial training. Once Crest is fully staffed with eight responders, we expect to be able to provide 24, seven response. A team of responders will be on duty at all times of the day and night except for 1 a.m. to 9 a.m. on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday when a team will be on call. The on call team will respond in person if needed. This is the period of the week with the fewest calls. The on call arrangement is necessary because eight responders is not enough to provide full 24, seven onsite coverage. And Russ, do you want to speak on LEAP and how they determined that this was the appropriate amount of responders to start with? Well, we've been fortunate to work with a national consulting group called LEAP, which is the Law Enforcement Advancement Project, I think. And they've studied these alternative community responder programs around the country. And for Amherst, with the cooperation of our communications center and our police and fire departments, they analyzed our call data and identified types of calls and when the calls came in and charted this all out so that we could identify when the most calls came and when the fewest calls came. So they've been very helpful to us. The decisions are still up to us, but they've analyzed the data and been able to make some some very helpful suggestions. Thank you. The schedule responders will work four days on and two days off. The schedule currently is used by the Amherst Police Department and the dispatch resulting in a rotating coverage for weekends so that no employee will have to work every weekend. Assessing the Crest Department, individuals can call the published Crest phone number. They can call 911. Calling the APT, they can also call the APT business line. There'll be walk-ins and also the Crest responders will be out in the community. So you can always approach one on street. All calls will be answered by the Amherst Communication Center that currently dispatches EMT's fire, the fire department and the Amherst Police Department. Dispatch, Crest responders will not be sent to situations that involve violence, weapons or criminal activity. Dispatch will be required to send police officers to those calls. Dispatchers will be trained to route calls to the appropriate public safety department. And they will always ask if you would like to be connected to a Crest responder in the event of a non-emergency, non-violence or non-criminal activity. Crest and APD will stand ready to assist each other if needed. If the APD arrives at a situation that they believe could be best handled by Crest or with the assistance of Crest, APD officers can request Crest responders join them or take over for them. Similarly, if Crest responders arrive at a situation and discover that it's dangerous, a violent situation, weapons are present or serious crimes are occurring, they will call for the APD. The town of Amherst and ADMHA, which is the African diaspora mental health association, apply jointly for a DPH grant and rewarded funding. The grant will enable ADMH to establish an office in Amherst, which will be at the Bang Center and provide services to community members. One of the major functions of Crest will be to connect community members to the appropriate and local social services, including ADMHA and other agencies. Vehicles and equipment. Crest responders will be equipped with two dedicated electric vehicles, large enough to be stocked with first aid and other supplies and to provide emergencies transport for clients if needed. Crest responders will be equipped with communications, equipment similar to what the police department has. And Crest will have its own record management system in which confidential case notes will be maintained. Separate records will be kept that enable dispatch to see whether Crest has previously responded to any caller or address. Appropriate data showing numbers and times of call types of service needed and demographics of community members served will be kept for all Crest activity. This will enable appropriate compliance with public record requests and appropriate reporting to the town. We are committed to successfully implementing the Crest program. We expect to learn from our experience as we begin we begin implementation. We expect that we will need to make changes as we gain experience. And so now I'm going to go ahead and open it up to the public for any questions or comments. I'm going to stop the share. And Miss Nancy Gilbert. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. This is absolutely, absolutely phenomenal. Thank you for all your work. I'm chair of the Board of Health, and this is very important to me and the Board of Health. I'd like to with you in the future explore how the health department and how we might be able to even have a community health worker connect so that we're working together. There's there's several groups working on a lot of health and safety. So I want to try to build bridges so that we can support one another and that the health department while the Board of Health and the Health Department can support you too. So I don't know if you have any questions from me, but thank you so much for this work. Thank you so much, Miss Gilbert. Does anyone have any questions for Miss Gilbert? No. And does anyone say thank you and we will certainly put it on our agenda to be thinking with you about community connecting with the health department. Okay, thank you. And the board because they're two separate entities. The Board of Health does regulations in the health department. Does the health piece? Thank you. And are there any other questions or comments from the audience? And also when you for the audience when you come in, if you could please let us know what town you live in. Hi, Miss Glazer. Hi, Judy. Are you there? Sorry, sorry. I I'm just amazed and delighted at the progress you've made and the terrain you've covered. And so important to have all these parts of our community, these important parts of our community working together. And as a person with interested with interesting groups, I would have been really interested in your group process because you've you've fully overcome a lot of really difficult things and you've done it on behalf of our community. And I thank you. I'm wondering what your plans are for continuing to meet as an implementation team. And if you have is, is there a formal status of this team in the community? So we will continue to meet into Cress rolls out and we will probably have to meet a few times after that to make sure we're meeting the goals that are needed. And I'm not quite sure I understand the second part of your question. Well, I was looking on the Amherst site for information about how to join this meeting and yesterday's meeting. And I didn't find it on the town of Amherst site. And I was wondering, then that led me to wonder, you know, there was no place to look for the implementation team among the list of committees and stuff. And then I wondered, oh, whoa, what is this a regular meeting from the town? Or is it what is it? What's its status in the community? Yep. So this is a town, it's similar to having like a department head meeting or a staff meeting in the sense that it's not subject to the opening meeting law. And we have the three individuals from the community safety working group to help advise us. So you wouldn't find anything about it on the website. Anything that we would do it could be found on the calendar, which means we're having a community forum. On the calendar. Okay. But we're not, we don't announce that we when we meet. Right. But if the people do have questions or comments that they want to ask or to let us know, they can email at moistenj at amherstma.gov, which is M-O-Y-S-T-O-N-J at amherstma.gov, or they can call the town manager's office at 413 259 3002. Thank you. Oh, you're welcome. Thank you. I'd also be interested, if you would be interested in talking about it, what have been some of the most difficult things you've worked out as a committee? Yeah, I think everyone can kind of answer to that. Mike, I'm going to start with you. Sure, we still have a ways to go. We've come a long ways. We have the basic framework of how it's going to work as far as communications goes. We're still looking at some of the bigger pieces, but originally was discussed, maybe the Crest program would have their own office staff that might do some of the communications work. That was problematic because a lot of these calls, some of these calls are going to be coming through 911. That actually has to run through a state certified 911 center and can have two in town, things like that. So we have come to the decision that the starting point for the majority of these Crest calls will be coming through the communication center. I would expect the community, the Crest teams to self initiate a lot of calls out in the public. I would also expect both the fire department, police department, consulting with the Crest teams, where they might be able to do some follow ups or go do some visits or be of assistance to their functions. Alicia? Yeah, I agree with Mike. We've come a long way, but we still have a lot to really work through. So most of the things that we have talked about and come to complete agreement on were presented in the slideshow beforehand, but we've had a lot of discussions. And I think that one of the difficult things, which has also been one of the benefits of the group is that we all have very different perspectives, different lines of work and different experiences. When we're coming at the issues. And so having all the different approaches has been both a difficulty and a strength in coming up with these decisions. So I'm really looking forward to, you know, sort of pushing this through having the community's input is also very helpful because again, that's another perspective that we can work with. And so I think that, you know, again, we've we've come a very long way and we still have a lot to work through. Thank you. And Brianna? I have to agree with Alicia, I think one of the hardest things, but one of the greatest things is the different skill sets that we all bring to the implementation team. And I think between that and using our consultants, the LEAP group to guide us has been great. And I think that we still have a long way to go, but we have made a lot of progress. Chief Nelson? Howdy. I guess I'll ring ring ring and then the green green group of everyone else. It's about, you know, we all all bring up something different to the table table here. There's a lot, a lot of extra experience here and a lot of experience here and and trying to and that and that can lead lead lead lead to a little little content tension role once once a while. And that's not a bad bad thing. If I think that that just that just lends lends lends to the path of passion that everyone brings to this. And at the same time, we all leave in in in in the goal. So it's it's it's taking those skills those sets and trying trying to melt melt melt them in such such a way that that we can kind of move together, get together towards what's that that call so it so so it's stuff that it's hard. But you know, and anything worthwhile is going to be tough and hard. Thank you. And Russ. Well, I certainly agree with everything that's been said, you know, I mean, everything from what kind of calls is Chris going to take? What kind of expertise is the do we need in the responders? How do we handle the communications and the record keeping? You know, what's it mean to say that this group is going to focus on having an anti racism response? Well, we recognize that every other department in town is also trying not to be racist. But I think part of what's been key is that over time, as we've hashed things out, we have become more of a team. And we have greater connection and trust in each other, because we've worked through some hard things together. But Judy, while you're here, I just want to again, publicly thank you because you are the person who first brought the national report by leap on alternative community responder programs to the attention of the community safety working group. And maybe we'd have eventually gotten to it. But you're offering that to us early on and drawing it to our attention has made a tremendous difference in our work over the last more than a year. So I want to thank you and publicly appreciate your contribution. Well, thank you. Well, it was it was great that I came upon it. And then I decided to call Amos and that Amos was so interested in Ambers. So I'm glad it worked out. I'm glad I can contribute in that way. Oh, thank you. And so just to add, I agree with all the statements that everyone said. But I think one of the most fascinating things about this is you take an idea and you're pretty sure this is how you want it. But then when you when everybody's at the table, you find out that there's rules and regulations that it things don't work the way that you wanted to and then learning how to adjust to them to get it as close to that goal as you can. So that was also really something and I agree that we've just come work, you know, we're so much more of a team now from hashing out all of these other things that we have in the past. And so it's been great working with this group of people. Wonderful. It's wonderful for the town for the community. And I thank you all so much. We thank you. Thank you, Judy. Okay, and just gonna see if anyone else has their hands up. Miss Hanner. Hello, Miss Hanner, how are you? Here. Okay, I'm Martha Hanner and I'm representing the Amherst League of Women Voters Racial Justice Committee. And I just want to add our thanks. It's just really exciting and impressive, you know, how far you all have come and the, you know, the concrete status of this now as as you progress forward. We're just really grateful to all your hard work and really thrashing out the practicalities. And I would like to add to what previous person said, I really think it would be helpful if there could be more publicity. I would like to suggest that on the town website, right up at the top, where there's the featured recent events that there would be some statement about the implementation team and perhaps a link to the PowerPoint that you showed, Jennifer, so that anybody could easily be updated on the progress. And certainly, we would be ready to help you in any way that we can when you need community support. Thank you. Oh, thank you. That was a great suggestion. And we can actually check in with our communications manager, Brianna Sonnery, to see if we can have this added to Amherst, would engage Amherst, which is kind of an interactive. You can put questions or comments on and they get routed to the correct individual. Thank you, Ms. Hennard. Do you have any other questions or comments? Well, I guess I would ask, you know, what's the status of finding these, you know, eight wonderful, talented people to be the community responders? Does that look promising? Or are you finding that that's difficult to find people? No, we actually, so we're going to go back and start with the director. So we have an excellent pool of individuals who have applied or applicants who have applied for the director position. And so the hiring committee for that committee has just formed and they're under review of the applicant. So we're going to start with the director, the implementation team project manager, which is the position funded from the DPH grant. We are continuing interviews for that process as well. And so once we get the director, we're hoping to get some insight from them on, you know, the community responders, their job description and getting that out and posted. And Russ, do you want to speak on that a little bit? Yeah. So we're still working on job descriptions for the community responders. And it looks like we're going to have, now this is still tentative, but it seems likely that we'll have, you know, half of them specializing in behavioral health and half with being mediation specialists and, you know, hopefully more connected to the community. And there aren't a lot of programs with that particular combination in the country, but there is one in Dayton, Ohio that's in the hiring process right now. And we just got word that they got, I think the description was amazing candidates for their mediation community outreach responders. So we're encouraged by by their experience and hope ours is similar. Thank you, Russ. And Martha, Miss Hanna, do you have any additional questions? No, thank you very much to to all of you and appreciate your time with hosting this forum. Thank you. And so Nancy Gilbert, I see your hand is still raised. I didn't know do you have an additional question? I realized I won't be able to see her respond. So hi, Bertie. Do you have an additional question? Do you have any questions or comments for us? Yeah. First, I'm so grateful for the work that you all are doing. The other thing I was curious about my understanding from one of the slides is that in addition to working with other town departments, you envision connecting people to like organizational resources like the African diaspora Mental Health Association. And I was curious with your different backgrounds, if you have other either local or larger organizations you envision connecting people to. So we're hoping that 80 may change so that we will the community responders. We will utilize all of the organizations that are in that are available to us, you know, at the end of the day. But the 80 MHA can also help be a resource for that as well as the transitional assistant position that will be a temporary position in helping kind of filter through that. So, you know, the overall idea is that we can be more proactive, proactive and and start working with folks before there becomes a crisis. Did that answer your question? And then Mike, let me have Mike speak. I can just speak briefly. We are using clinical services right now. CSO out in Northampton, who does similar stuff to the ADMHA. Those type of things, the police department work with places like the Bradelboro Retreat, where they've actually brought people up there themselves to try to get assistance that way. Craig Stores is a good resource, a survival center, all things we get calls on and work together with those agencies. And Russ, I just wanted to ask Bertie, whether you had some recommendations in that area? Oh, I would say the survival center is probably the one I know most about. So I was excited to hear that. But I overall, all of these answers have been really helpful for me. This sounds great. Thank you. Alisha or Brianna or Chief Nelson, do you have anything else to add? Yeah, sure. I think what you're going to see in the end is we have a variety of options that are out there for us. But I think what you'll see is when they end up collecting emails and have some more, I guess, a courier house or a single point of contact where we can collect, collect, collect those. Those are provided by us and then reach out to the one that is most appropriate for that, for a particular person or an incident. You know, you won't have a scattergun approach, but we'll have a collection to be able to choose from. Yes, that's a great point. Thank you. And do you have any additional questions or comments for us? No, thank you so much. Okay. Thank you. So I'm just going to go back to the audience to see if anyone else has additional questions. I see two people's hands raised and I'm trying to move them in. Oh, here comes Miss Glazer. I have a comment in terms of the discussion we just had about other agencies. You know, for the general public, we once had an agency whose responsibility was putting together kind of mapping all the agencies that were available to help people. And that has disappeared. It used to be in the bottom of the Jones Library and then it was the United Way. And then it just kind of disappeared. So if you all will be putting together that kind of information, I think it can also be helpful for the community to have a death. I'd like you to share that with the community in some way, because they'll be needing to keep it up to date. And it would be a wonderful resource. Thank you. Thank you. And Mike, just real quick, Miss Glazer, I just listed a few of the resources that we use. But I can tell you the police department has a binder of community resources from housing assistance to job assistance, walk-ins that people come in. In the communications center, when we get those calls, we usually just refer them down to our station officer. But things like CSO and places like that sometimes we have the ability to directly connect to our 911 system, our phone system to transfer people over those services. With the police department does have extensive list of community resources. Sure, that's great. And, you know, I think it's helpful to the public to, since there's a list that exists to have that be public information. And if you're, if the police department is gathering it, then sharing it would be great. Thank you. Thank you. Miss Gilbert, I'm trying to let you into the room. And again, I'm not sure if your hand is still up or if you have additional comments. But I'm going to go ahead and let Miss Hannah are in. Yes, we'd just like to say it looks like your funding for this current fiscal year is well in hand through all the grants and everything else. But now looking ahead, what about the next year? I mean, the budget talks for the town are already underway for the fiscal year that starts in, I guess, July. So what does the funding look like then? And have you folks started to plan for that? Yes. So the positions themselves are funded through the town minus the two temporary positions. And the grant for DPH is hopefully renewable is it is renewable. So hopefully we can get they will still continue to give us that money. But I don't. Is there anyone else wants to speak more on that? Well, I think I could just say our understanding is that the town council and town manager have made a commitment to continue to fund the eight responder positions, the director and the administrative assistant. What doesn't seem to be in the planning at this point is any growth or expansion of the Crest program. And if we get you know, lots of calls and a strong response, we hope that there will be, you know, public support or expanding the program. But I think we're. From my perspective, we're in reasonable shape for the the coming year, but not much space for expansion beyond that. Our racial Justice Committee and the League of Women Voters had sent a letter to the town council this fall regarding the budget and requesting that really there ought to be a five year plan for this work and the other racial justice projects that this should be sort of at the level of the capital planning for, you know, for buildings or the other major categories that we would really like to see the town do some long range planning so that again, this program could expand as the need is clarified and other initiatives can be introduced as well. So there are some of the other recommendations from the CSWG, for example. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And so I'm just going to go back to the attendees. Is there anyone else who has a question or comment from the audience? And I'm going to bring it to the implementation team to see if anyone has any questions or comments for the audience. So it is a little bit earlier than we would like then, you know, this was scheduled to be for an hour and a half. And so I'm just going to see if we can have a little bit of dialogue going on between the implementation team to the audience. So I guess I would say if there was something you wanted to tell the community about this program, what would that be? And I'm starting with Russ. Well, first I'll say I love the idea of getting the PowerPoint up on the town website so that other people can access it because people may not want to listen to the whole recording of the, you know, one of these forums. But the PowerPoint does summarize, give a snapshot of where we are at the moment. You know, over time, we're going to be thinking about how do we spread the word about the program when it's ready to go operational? And at that point, we will be particularly interested in suggestions from the public and and help from the public about getting the word out. We're not we're not quite there yet. I guess where we're at at the moment is if you know people either in town or I mean in the Valley or willing to locate that you think would be good community responders, please encourage them to apply and bring their names to our attention through emailing Jennifer. Thank you, Russ Breanna. I just want to thank everybody for joining us today and what everybody know that feedback to implementing and developing this program is critical between the forum that we have Thursday night and the forum today, comments, questions, all of those things are very important to the conversations that we're having in the implementation team. And I hope that the public continues to engage with us in that way. Thank you. Chief Nelson. I think I want to echo what the other room just just said. Uh, tell tell, tell, tell, tell your friend, friend and neighbors. What's, what's going on? This is, this, this is about them. This is about our community and doing what's right to help about our some more, more folks that have, have, have, have a say that, that when they're very, very close to this, the better. It'll only make, make, make the, the goal that, that is, that does that much. I want to say you're to, to, to attain. So just, you know, we would get folks and get folks involved with this. It's going to mean a lot to the whole community. Yeah. And Mike, thank you. So again, I'd like to thank everybody for attending today. One of the things I know there's some frustration out there that this is government things to be things that seem to be moving in a snail's pace. But I really think once we get the director in place, the Crest Director in place that things will pick up. A lot of decisions are kind of hinging there. We need the Crest Director to kind of have their vision put into what we've been working on. I can't imagine there'll be any 180s or anything coming in there. Once the Crest Director is in place and the applications are out for the Crest Responders, I think that and there'll be more community outreach. I think things will be moving a little more quickly. Thank you. And Alisha. So I also want to thank everyone for coming today. And basically, I would just echo everything that has already been said. I think a lot of the work we have done, everything has been based on the community needs. And so it's really important for us for you all to continue to show up and share information and feedback with us. I again think that we need some assistance in getting the word out, whether that be for people applying for the job or even for more people coming to the forums and sharing information with us. So I do expect that we'll continue to have community forums throughout this process. And I guess part of it is on us to make the information more accessible so that you all know what's happening. But if you all could continue to share it with your friends and your neighbors and your family and also get the word out when the program is up and running, we really appreciate the community support. And this has truly been a collaborative effort. So I really appreciate everyone being here. Thank you. And I echo everyone's statement. I will say this is similar to what Alicia was saying. This is a community based department and therefore we need as much community input as we can as we can get. And of course, hopefully we'll be able to move a little bit forward with boots on the ground in the spring to be able to really get the word out even more. And, you know, you've maybe going to different neighborhoods to speak and to talk. So hopefully that'll be something we'll be able to do in the spring if COVID is going to just take a little bit of a break. This is this process is ongoing. And I think one of the things that people need to realize is things happen locally and nationally and globally, it will change. It can change the way that we are operating to a degree. So, you know, this is it's just going to be a process. And as things as things happen in life, it can kind of change the way that the program is run to a certain degree. I mean, it will always be based as it is. But, you know, we had some comments at the last forum where someone had mentioned about having crests and the PD go to things at the same time, which was kind of new to everyone, because we were, we had the more focus on doing separate calls. And so, but that was a result of what has happened in Springfield with the death of the young man who had the mental health issues. And so that is something that kind of changed. And now, you know, we'll go back and take that information and relook at how we can make that happen and work together. So I'm going to turn it back to the audience to see if anyone else has any additional comments. And it looks like we do not. So I think perhaps we could end this session a little bit early. I don't know how does the how does the team feel about that? It is. Yes. Okay. So we're going to end this session a little early, but we appreciate everyone for coming and and coming with their questions and their comments. And again, yeah, we should look about having a way for the public to access the implementation team and in another way, of course, I will share anything that is sent to me. But we should have this more visible to the community on our webpage and another location. So I will talk to the town manager in the IT department about that. Thank you, everyone. Have a good day.