 meeting is being recorded and will be uploaded to the town of Amherst YouTube channel. Thanks everyone for all of your efforts and your hard work. Thanks Angela. All right, thank you. So yeah, being that she just read that thing, I think I don't have to read it. Hey there. All right. I think Jim decided to go. Okay, go sleep. So who are we missing just Jim then and Mikey Mikey and what's Mikey's full name Michelle Michelle Burnett cutting. Okay, so I, are there any members of the public here? I don't see anybody. Okay, and then chair report. We've got a few things I'm going to try and speed through the okay so I talked to while I was an email exchange with the finance team and the deduct this is regarding poetic dialogue. The deductible to get the insurance to do it is $5,000. So it's not to do the insurance thing. So we're back to I'm trying to fund that with our extra money that we had from that. Are you trying to fund the repairs? Yeah, okay, Robert Frost getting torn down. Is that incumbent upon us to do? It's $5,000. That's insane. It is. Okay. It's the cost is $5,000 or the deductible is $5,000. $5,000. Okay. So it's not worth it, unless it's like well over $5,000. Was this piece meant to last forever? Is there a reason like do we want to spend money on this? Is that something we can vote on or is that just something we have to do? It's not clear like if this has to fall on us or if we can try and plead with the DPW some more about it. What's the estimated cost for the repair? There isn't exactly one. It's Kamal Peters would be in charge of doing it and it's negotiable. Okay. Is that the artist? The original artist is like long gone, but he is the guy that refurbished it recently. Kamal Peters is in charge for doing the repair. He did the last repair? Yeah, he did the last repair and he's an Amherst native and it's Is he an artist? Yeah, he's a metal artist. Like most of his work is like doing, like he did that that's in front of the Drake right now. I don't know if you've seen that. Okay. So you said it's negotiable like the cost to repair this is negotiable with Kamal? Yeah, he's willing to play ball as far as like what we could afford if we took it on. What can we afford? We probably need a treasury report. I have no idea what we even have budgeted. Yeah, I think we could afford up to $600, almost $600. It would be like $500 because we put away like $600 for grounds keeping and stuff like that for the DPW. And then we only spent, I want to say like $142 or something like that. Okay. So we'd have to cut money around from our budget. Okay. Yeah. And like we can afford up to $500 to be taken out of our budget. Yeah, out of that original budget. When I talked with Robin Thompson and I gave her the final receipts for that, she said in her great wisdom that she was still going to cover for the whole thing because she foresaw like expenses coming up about it that. And Robert's got his hand up. Okay. So I'm not clear. Is the public art commission responsible for ongoing maintenance of this sculpture or what is the agreement for arrangement? It's not, I don't think it's written down anywhere that we responsible, but it's like no one else is going to probably do it if we don't push it. You know what I mean? It's like one of those things. Well, again, what is the total amount of money that the public art commission has in our account? Let me look in our same. Mind you, 2,000 of this money is for the the bolt wood, the bolt whatever it's called, the peak people gallery thing. What's that? I don't know what that is. The that gallery that's over behind the the like where Junies used to be that place. That project. The parking garage elevator. Got it. Yes. Yeah. Thank you. We have $2,000 in the budget for that. Wow. Yeah. And and that decided for that to be $2,000. That was what we requested from the the Amherst Art Council or not the Art Council. If I ask anybody. Cultural Council. Ah, Cultural Council. Okay. Cultural Council gave us $2,000 for that. But our final receipts for that actually be in at the end of bring, they said. So that we do need to work on that too. But that was. That brings up another quick question. If you don't mind, I think Robert probably has the same question. Okay. So we get money from the Cultural Council. Do we apply for grants or do we ask them for money? And do we go to the finance committee for the town to ask for money at all? We've never get any money from the town. You never get any money from the town? No, it's all from the Cultural Council. We like everybody like by your people. Right. It's usually in October, like mid-overs when they're deadline to apply in. Okay. Well, what's this for? So we just get money from the Arts Council. Yeah, the Cultural Council. Yeah, the Cultural Council. Okay. So we don't go through FINCOM at all to appropriate funds for this commission then. Is that just not something we don't, we just don't do or we're not allowed to do or is there just no path for that? Yeah, there just hasn't. Like, I don't think it'd be like if things worked differently. That's how it was done before. And like getting a line item in the town budget is like super hard. And in the future, we'll be getting that percent for art thing. Right. But it is very specific to the project. Okay. I look forward to working on this. Yeah. And still, we don't have specific, we don't have a specific cost for repairs. I'm not clear how much it's going to cost. Right. We don't know how much it's going to cost. We can't get that information. Can I ask a question? Yeah. Two questions. Okay. What's the, can you just give a narrative, tiny narrative description of the extent of the damage? Robert Frost has been torn down. He needs to be back into place. So then could we as a group agree that the cost of replacement is X and we set the price? Yeah, we can use that money that we've got in our account. I'm saying we set the price and tell the person who's going to fix it what we will give them for fixing it. Right. Not just wait until somebody says, oh, how much money do you have to give me? Here's what I'm going to give you. You know what I mean? Like say, okay, we have $300 to fix this. Can you fix it for that? Right. That's what I was thinking would probably wind up happening. Oh, okay. Okay. I know I understand. Yeah. But I don't know that we, I mean, to me that seems a little bit, I don't want to exploit him in terms of saying, you know, we only have this X amount of money. I mean, I'd like, he must have some sense of the cost and his time and materials to fix this. Yeah, he definitely does. Can we not get that number? And then if it's much more than we think we have the capacity to pay, then we would negotiate as opposed to us setting a limit. I mean, I personally have no idea how much it could cost for this. Well, I figured we could find out. Right. But I mean, we need to get that information from him, it sounds like. Okay. Is that not correct? Well, it could be anybody who can fix things like that, not just one person. And so it's. So do we have other people who might be able to do that? Or is he the only person with those skills? He's the only one that I know of. But do we, does he know that it's broken and we want to fix it? Yes, he does know that it's broken. And because the DPW asked him to fix it. And he said, essentially like, well, you know, when I, when I, like I didn't sign like anything that's like every time he gets to face like, I have to be responsible now. Like this is actually on the town to pay for this. That makes sense. Yeah. So can we ask him on Peters to submit an invoice to us, to the town, and we will approve it, vote for it, say yes or no, and then move it along. Is that something we can do? Yes, I think we would need a quote first as opposed to because it's I doubt he's going to do the work. I meant to quote. I'm so sorry, Robert. Yeah, yeah. I didn't in invoice. Yeah. No, no, that's okay. So I think we need a quote for the cost first and then see where we are. Right. Just ask him for a quote and then go from there. Can we, do you guys, do you have his email? Can you do that Shoshona? Do you want someone else to do that? Yeah, I can, I can talk to him. Cool. Yeah. Just see if he'll submit an estimate and we'll, we'll go from there. Okay. I'll get that. And then I can email it to you and I get it like to everybody. Okay. And then on a similar note, I've been contacted by the person, I think it's actually the mother of the person who did the mural that's over by the bank center. You know, the one that's like right across the little road parking lot road? Yeah. On that building? I'm sure that does. Yeah. It's like right downtown and I guess it's like flaking. I haven't actually gone over to look at it because I've been away. Um, but they say it's, it's flaking and it needs some restoration sometimes soon. So I just wanted to like get that on your guys' radar that that's a percolating issue. What, where is that mirror? It's, um, like there's the main entrance of the, um, the bank center. And like if you were walking out of that door, it's like that building. I don't even know what that building is called. But there's like this big huge mural of like, like a, I don't know. It's, I don't even know what to call it. It's like folksy kind of stuff. This is next door to the bank center? It's like across, you know, how there's that, um, parking, like there's a driveway that connects the two parking lots. Yeah. There, it's, um, it's like right across that. Is this the areas where the coffee place used to be? It's next to the coffee place used to be. Oh, in that little car there. What? It's, it's really close. You'll see it if you go on that drive between the bank center and across the street from it. Yeah. It's big. So Shoshana, when was it put up? I don't know when it was put up originally. And does it, is there a contract with the person who put it up talking about how long it would be preserved or who would be responsible for that or anything? I don't know. It's been because if there's nothing, I mean, well, it's just good to know because in the future, they, they have to have stuff like this. That's, you know, in writing. Yeah. And is it on a public building or a private building? That's a good question too. Yeah. Yeah. I've got a bunch of files at my house that I would love to have help going through. I bet there's a folder on this, so I should take a look. What do you know the name of the project? Is this possibly the Amherst Community History Mural designed by David Fitcher? No, that's a big, big one next to the cemetery behind, okay, and all those places. That's the one by the Youth Action Coalition. The names on the move? No, no, that one. I have a name somewhere in my emails. I'll dig it out and send it to you guys, but it's like, it's really like a top priority kind of thing right now because we've got many other things, but I just wanted to get it like on you guys' radar that this person is like contacting us. Do we have a person who does these kind of restorations? No. And who was contacting us? Like the artist's mother, I think. It was, I've got an email about it. I'll dig it out later. I can't find it right now. And what else? Oh yeah, we've got that. Normally we have to spend, okay, this is about the portal gallery. Normally we have to spend the money by like December 31st, but for, because this one was forwarded from last year, they want us to actually spend the money by, they say the, by the end of late spring, which would mean like June 21st. And so we should probably really kickstart the call for artists for that so that we can get the artist paid by the time we need those receipts in. So this is the $2,000 budget we have for this? Yep, yep. And that for the tiny little windows there? Yeah. Okay, and we have to get this paid by the end of the fiscal year then, okay. So we need to get the call to art done, okay. Yeah. It sounds like that might need a separate meeting or something. Yeah, or like a, yeah, if, if somebody wanted to work on the call for artists, that would be good. Is there one from the past that we can use to, like a, that's a, just a form so we can know what we're writing, like the one for last year or the year before? So could you take a look at anywhere? If there was one, it would either be in that, that basket or in the, the files on the Google Group. Okay, would that Amherst Cultural Council have a copy of whatever that, like information about it or do I not bother them? I mean, it wouldn't hurt to contact them. They might have like resources like that. I don't know if they're going to have anything like specific that we've used in the past for, for other projects, but. Okay, I'm going to, I'll look through this later. Maybe I get someone to help me out. It's like you're being given the box that the queen is giving. I know, right. Who wants to come over and look through the box with me? Let's have a party. Yeah. And I'm, my plan is that to make next meeting my last meeting. So I'm hoping that like, you know, you guys decide how to do the chair situation. Will you be in town or are you going to be still in California? Um, I'm probably going to be in town for that one. Okay. But that'll be better early. I feel so detached right now. I'm like, well, you're in California. You're detached. Hope you're having a good time. I really do. I am having a really good time. That's really great. Okay. So it sounds like we need someone to help work on a call for art for the portal gallery. I may also have the call for art for the MIP that we still need to work on. So maybe we can decide on a date to get together and talk about these two things. The other one is more important. We've got to get to that pretty, pretty quick. I'd like to ask if we can kind of hasten things along so we can get to that. Because that's kind of really immediate. Yeah. Okay. I agree. I think, I think that's everything on my notes from the chair. Okay. So we can move along. Okay. So I just want to ask me if I could find the document. And as you guys know, I found what we had come up with before that I lost the planner's name. What was her wonder? Maureen that we worked on with Maureen. And then she laughed, of course. So I used the minutes to hopefully reconstruct what we would have sent to her. I sent it. You guys have seen a copy of it. And I got the response and you've all looked at the response probably. So we're now at the point where we need to figure out who wants to work on this. And have a Zoom meeting with them so that we can get to the next step. So I'm willing to take that on because I want to see this thing done. If anybody else wants to join me sometime between February 13th and 17th for a Zoom meeting, if anybody has any availability, let me know. If it can be an evening meeting. I will ask. That's me too. What were the dates? So she asked if we can have a 60 minute virtual meeting to talk through this call for art between February 13th and 17th. So I replied back to her and said, do you have more specific dates that work for you so we can narrow that down? Because that's kind of a large window. And this is with exactly whom so I can put it in the minute. So this is with Kim S-Z-E-T-O who is the Program Director of Public Art for NEFA, NEFA, New England Fine Arts. New England Foundation for the Art. Thank you. So she, they should I'm going to maybe I'll summarize what she said in this email case. Not everybody read it. So the reply she gave to us says we give we need more time. So Nefa is looking over our call that I sent and they're going to get stuff back to us by February 10th. So that's Friday. And then she wants to know if a group of us can meet sometime between February 13th to 17th for a one hour meeting to talk about this call. And then they would need from that from that conversation we would have edits. And then by February 20th, we have to have a final draft ready for review to them. So there's kind of a 10, sorry, a 13 day window to get this done. Sorry, Derek ahead. That's okay. Um, so you this you're talking about editing the 15 page document. So they have it now. They're taking a look at it right now. The 11 page document. I mean, sorry. Yeah. So they're the making a public document, the call for art that we came up with with Maureen. I sent it to them. They're looking at it now. And they're going to get it back to us by February 10th with edits. And so once they're going to edit it. Yeah. So from, from their side. Yeah. So they're editing it because this is a little bit of an extension. So they're editing it now and they're going to give us comments and suggestions. We'll get those back and then we'll have a one hour meeting with them. And then hopefully figure out the rest of what we need. And then we'll work to that for the next hopeful final draft. Okay. Send to them by February 20th. And then we've got a calendar. There's an email I can share with you. I think you got it. But just in case there's a schedule of what happens next to make this call for artwork. Okay. So I'd be happy to work on it on the 13th or 15th. 13th or 15th. Okay. Let me make a little note here. In the evening, like you all said. Okay. So because I have a lot of comments about the original one. Right. That I'd like the 13th and 15th evenings. Okay. Anybody else? Yeah. I'd be willing again, you know, if it's an evening meeting. Which, which day works better for you? I'm sorry. I don't have a calendar in front of me. I'm doing like a Google calendar right now. What days of the week are those? Um, that's a great question. Monday. Oh, well today's the 13th. So 13th is a Monday. Um, I think, uh, I think any of those evenings. Well, actually, you know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or actually Tuesday night would not be good or Wednesday, but the others would be okay. So the 13th or the 16th? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I'm sorry. I'm just saying I can do 13th, but I can't do the other one. Okay. Anybody else? But you, you could do the 13th and the 15th star. Yeah. But Robert can't do the 15th. Right. I'm doing a doodle poll as we speak, like in person. How many of us need to be there? She didn't say. She just said she wants to have a 60 minute meeting virtual. She used the word what your availability is. I'm assuming she's talking about the you as a group, but so I think as many of us as can meet. Do we have to have a quorum? Well, that's a question. I don't think so. I don't think there's not going to be any voting going on. Yeah, this is just to kind of hone our call. And then we can all get together for those edits and do that as a quorum as a group. And then that document, we will be turning back in on the 20th. Is that? Can you spell her last name again? Kim. S, S, Z, E, T, O. S, Z, E, P, O. T, O. Okay. S, Z, E, P, O. T. E as in Terry. Yeah. S, Z, E, T as in Terry, O. Yep. Okay. Okay. So Dara and Robert can meet in the evenings. Can anybody else? I could only meet on Wednesday the 15th and Thursday the 16th. Is that Lori speaking? Who's speaking? That was me, Lori. Okay. Thanks, Lori. And that's evenings as well, right? I mean, I could find an hour during the day. Okay. So I've got Dara, 13th and 15th evening. Robert, 13th and 16th evening. Lori, 15th and 16th evening. All right. And I think I can make one of those two. So it looks like, oh, okay. Well, I'll either have two or three helpers. You're both Dara and Robert available to the 13th. Lori, can you, do you have any time of the 13th we can meet in the evening or is that just not available? No. Okay. Can't do that. All right. I have a question. Yeah. So has anyone from the town replaced Maureen as my person for this or is now the entire responsibility on this commission for this? Yeah, I know. Because originally we were supposed to just be advisory for this project. We weren't supposed to be actually having to do all this stuff. And thank you a million times, Terri, for really grabbing this by the horns. But no, they have not. I have asked them several times and nobody has been named to us yet. Okay. So no one from the town. And Bill Kaizen, is he available to share what he's learned from the training? So none of the current composition of this commission had any exposure to that training either. And yet now we're responsible for basically managing this project. It doesn't seem great. What was Bill Kaizen a part of in the trainings? Bill Kaizen did get the trainings at the beginning with Maureen. They went together into Boston and got like this like week long training or something like that about this project. But he was not available today to be here for the meeting. He is willing to meet some other time. He could either meet in person at Cushman Cafe or he could meet on a Zoom. But his availability is like irregular because he's got a lot of other stuff going on. So it sounds like we either need to figure out how to do a call of this magnitude or else we need to lose $10,000. Yeah. I mean, this is what it sounds like, you know, not very well. Yeah. Exactly. And I would like to say that if we, I'm concerned about, is there a delay? Can you all hear me? There's a delay, but we can hear you. Okay. I'm concerned about us going forward with this on our own and then the town not having someone in place to manage this and to, you know, be the representative of the town. And if that person isn't hired within these deadlines that we're really, this is too much for this committee who's taking it on last minute. My vote is not, is to lose the money, but I know we're not there yet, but honestly, if the town can't commit a town staff person to this project by a certain date, then I would propose that we let it go. Okay. I need to ask Shoshana a question. Yeah. So if this committee were to agree as a group that we have to ask the town when they'll commit to replacing Marine, who is the, who is the exact person that this committee would talk to? Well, I've talked to both the town manager, Paul Backelman and Angela about it. And I've gotten an email recently from Angela saying that they're close to figuring something out and that they're talking to a few different people to do. Do they know that there's any possibility that the commission would decide it's possible to say we can't do it? Do they know that? They don't know that idea, but I could definitely talk to them about that because that's definitely fair on us, you know, because it's like, it's a lot to expect volunteers to be tackling this without guidance. Can I propose something? Sure. Is there a way to collaborate with another organization in town like the Amherst Cultural Council? They have experience in these things. Like, does this have to be all the public art commission or can we collaborate with other organizations that do the same thing in town? Like why, we're so siloed. I don't understand why we're so siloed. I want that to stop. Well, I think it's part of the strategic planning process. That is definitely number one. We have the Downtown Amherst Foundation. We have the Business Improvement District. We have the cultural, what is it called? The Cultural Council. And, you know, when we were first talking about the Make It Public project and someone, maybe it was me, suggested murals. And I think Shoshona, you mentioned that Gabrielle Gould of the Business Improvement District said that they're doing a mural or something. And I, you know, it's, I agree. Absolutely, Terry. I don't understand why there's, why there are all these organizations who seem like they should be really well integrated. There doesn't seem to be any communication or collaboration. Fantastic point. I feel like there's a movement in local small towns, not even small towns, that they are moving many of these organizations under one umbrella. And therefore they, when they appropriate money from the town, they're able to come up with much better community engagement projects. And get more, more activity from them, from the audience. And I, that's number one on my list for things that I want us to work on, is to ask our town manager if there is any way we can strategize, you know, combining our organizations so that we, we can make more effect on our town. Yeah, that's a fantastic idea. I think that's going to have to come from us, frankly. I mean, based on the resources that they devoted to this Make It Public project, and the priority or lack thereof that they gave it, I don't think this is necessarily high on the town's priorities. Probably not, yeah. In my reading of the document of the temporary art project open call for December, that we got in email, on page four, the nine, number nine, our jury lists all these people y'all are talking about being on the jury or associated with the jury for making the selection for that $10,000 project. And it, it, it has two people from this commission on it and everything else. And there's a, I don't know, I didn't count on, but it's like nine other people, entities would have their say in it too. So it makes the commission fairly innocuously represented anyway. If you do it like that, this, there's like a list that's pretty long. Well, that'd be for the jurying part, which is. Yeah, yeah. Well, but that's all the people you're talking about, trying to collect into a group that would be responsible for stuff like this. You know, it's a lot of people, which is great. But it's like, that's hurting a lot of cats. Well, the fact is, we just, I don't think we have infrastructure to to make this thing happen. I was willing to do the part where I got the call out the door, but the rest of it would need a lot of hand holding from the town. And if we don't have town support, I'm not sure how we can do that. Well, you have hope that we could get town support by then. But if we can't, then what do we do? Yeah, I can't personally carry a goal like this through. And the rest of us can't. We're all volunteers. We need DPW. We need a planner. They have salaries. They get paid. We don't. So that's very much part of it. My time is valuable. And so is yours. So, Laura, you bring up a really good point. And I think maybe we need to talk about. Like maybe we need to talk to Kim Setso and say, this thing happened in our town. You know, do you have any ideas what we can do? Or we hate to say no to this money. It's really great that we got it. We're excited, but we can't follow through. Well, I think we should talk to the town first before we go to NIFA with that conclusion. I think Shoshana talking to the people you've spoken with. And I don't know if anyone in the planning department, I forget the name in the head of the planning department, but, you know, find out what they're willing to do. And if the response is not anything with a certain sense of urgency, given the timeline that NIFA has presented to us, then I think we'd have to go back to them and say, you know, we just don't have the capacity. Most of, I mean, Derek, you and Shoshana were on the committee previously, right? But the rest of us are new. And we just, you know, found out about this project, I think, at many of our first meetings here. And, you know, it just, there hasn't been good communication. And so I... We haven't had much communication from the very beginning. Yeah. Yeah. It was in the process before I, I haven't been on the commission for more than not even a year. Okay. And it's always been really, really hard to get the kind of background information that you need to have a real thought about something. So that can be... Shoshana, do you want to reach out to the powers that be? I don't know anybody, but I don't, I'm bold. Doesn't matter. I'm thinking about like we should come up with a deadline for someone to be appointed to us as far as this project goes and say like, we're going to have to turn down the making it public if we don't have somebody by, you know, like X time. So we have to come up with that date. Do you guys want to make it February 20th or the 13th or? I would, I mean, I, I would suggest that we need someone from the town on board before we submit a final draft. And February 20th, okay. Yes, because I think that we need at least to have a town, so a staff, staff person from the town to also read over the final draft and approve it because a lot it's in there involves the town and the town planner. So why don't we say February 13th is, is the day like with the time we give the town we need to know by February 13th if we're going to have somebody to help us shepherd this project through. If the answer is, you know, we're not going to have somebody by February 13th then I think maybe we need just to drop it. Well, let me ask you this though too. The foundation that approved the grant and is financing the grant, they're working on this right now. Yeah. And they think that we're going through with this. Well, I told them what's happening in our town and they're trying to give us an extension. No, but I mean, if we cut off the grant, we have to tell them that. Well, yeah, of course, of course, yeah. As soon as you know there's some possibility of it, they need to know because they're putting in their time and work on something that they don't know is in jeopardy. Yeah, I think we won't have to tell them until we make that final pull the trigger with the town on that. Okay, so Shona, why don't you reach out to this town as soon as you can? Yeah. And just tell them that their deadline is February 13th. Okay, everybody, you think? So that's a week from today. I don't know if you want to give them. From today to tell us whether or not we're going to have representation. That's not the word. A liaison, I guess. Okay. Well, to appoint a town staff person. Right. Yeah. To, until February 13th, to appoint a town staff person. To help shepherd this project. To represent the town for this project. Right. Well, that person has to work with us and represent the town in this project. Yeah, as Robert said, that person would have to be the project manager. You know, absolutely. And if they can't do that, if they can't sign up for that responsibility, then we're going to have, I will contact Nefa and say, we're, you know, we're so sorry this happened. It's not our fault. These things happen. Yeah. Well, I would rather not spend my wheels and spend a whole lot of time working on this call until we know for sure that we're going to have some help. So, I guess we kind of, maybe we just sit on this. And do you think that's appropriate? Will we schedule getting together on the 13th or 15th or whatever? I think that we're still going to, this is a really, it's kind of a big deal, you know, to decide that you're going to not take $10,000 that your commission applied for, worked toward, did all the stuff that they did. And yeah, you're right, that we don't know enough to know how to go forward. I don't think we do. But if we don't go forward and we made the decision not to, it's a kind of big deal that we said, okay, we don't need, we don't want this. You know. Why did that, I mean, whose decision, who ultimately applied for this in the first place? I'm assuming it was the town planning department, right? Yeah, I believe it was Maureen, because she's so, you know, the person in charge of it. But I thought she said that they told her to apply for it. They wanted her to apply for it. I remember her saying, because I remember asking, how did this whole thing start? And she said, I was asked to show up and do this thing. And I think it was maybe from the town manager. Well, wherever the motivation came from, I mean, someone has to bear the responsibility for it and the fact that the two people who were directly involved initially and in the trainings are no longer involved and people who are left to try to make sense of it have not had training and have been associated with the commission for a couple of months. I just think it's a lot to ask of a group of volunteers. I think all of us have full-time jobs. You know, it's just, it's not a well-conceived process or project at this point. So I think, you know, Shoshona, when you obviously, you'll communicate all that to the people in the town and then they're going to have to decide how to proceed. But I think it's important to make it clear that, at least, and this is my feeling and, you know, I'm curious to hear everyone else's view, but I just don't think we have the capacity at the moment without someone in the town playing the project manager role. So if this needs to take place like in a proposal kind of a thing, like, you know, Robert's Rules of Order kind of thing, do we need to, you know, somebody make a proposal and we second it and vote on it? Or is that what is the apparatus for asking Shoshona to go forward with asking the town to do this thing? Ideally, I think you would have the group of us who are meeting now have a written paragraph that summarizes this stance you're taking by asking them to do what you do and a written thing from this committee, a short thing, you know? Okay. Well, we've kind of had some verbiage as we're talking. Yeah. And I think then we would have the other members who aren't here also look at it or be aware of it. Sounds like we can't do that because of quorum and timing. I think we have quorum now and I think we would have to make this proposal and make this decision now. Well, we can make the decision, yeah, but they need to know about it. They need to be informed about it. Of course. Yes. Well, a lot of times we're not. I just think this has to happen while we're all meeting. And but a written paragraph would make a whole lot more sense as an agreement among a group of five people. Then I just saying to Shoshona, look here, take some notes. Remember this. This is what we want represented. It's kind of an unfair burden to ask somebody to not have words that everybody agreed were words that represented a point of view of a group of people. That's that's my feeling about stuff like this. All right. So do we want to make it when we want to make a document right now to do that? It sounds like that is what we should be doing. Well, I think Robert, you stated it very succinctly. So if we laid out the background of the project, the current, I think we can do this. Should we just go ahead and write something up and four or five sentences? Yeah, it's wordcrafted. Rob, do you know what you said? Should I should I share my screen and write this? Oh, sure. Do it. Yeah. Absolutely. I don't remember exactly. It was something to the effect of the fact that the. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. The host disabled screen sharing. You have to make her a host. Go to participants and go to Lori's name and make her a host. Make host. I think that's back. Oh, you made me the host. I see. So let me share my screen. All right. You can just play the recording back to get the exact language. Hey, there you go. Yeah, right. Okay. So, well, I think something to the effect that given the the town planner and was billed the chair of the commission at the time. Yes. Okay, so the the town planner and the former chair of the public art commission were the two primary contacts related to the naked public project. Yeah, wait, wait, both of whom received the NIFA training and subsequently both have both are no longer connected with the project. And I think we should also put in there something about how originally we were supposed to be like a advisory on this and doing the nuts and bolts. More craft that that sounds good. And now we're finding, you know, having the nuts and bolts. Yeah, we need the town to assign or to dedicate a staff person to be a project manager. Yeah. And we're up against this deadline. And if we don't have somebody appointed by this deadline, we will have to forfeit this particular project. This grant $10,000 grant. Yeah. Put some try to put specifics. Okay, I'm not doing a very good job of this, but I'm doing a great. All right, so given. Okay, so we are. So this is let's do this. Are you making it public project? Good. All right. Sorry. A little summary of like these summary of the project. Right. You're not feeling nervous. Are you? We're all watching type. Nice typing. Well done. Okay. So I understand that that might be project was initiated by the town of Amherst. With in conjunction. Collaborating with maybe collaborating with the chair of the Amherst public arts commission. Maybe we use it by the planning board planning office planters. Was initiated by the town of Amherst planner, not even a planning planning department planning. I don't know. Well, I'm going to put their names in in a minute. Okay. So by the town of Amherst in collaborating collaboration. Collaboration. With the chair of the Amherst public arts commission. To apply. To the, what is it? Foundation. It's any effort. Nifa, any, any effort. New England foundation for the arts. To the New England foundation for the arts for a. I'm sitting in someone's couch and I don't have my mouse. So this is. Yeah. For a temporary public art project to be installed in either. Kendrick park or. Sweets are park. And that's enough of a summary. Is that okay, Shoshana? Yeah. Okay. Although, yeah, you are going to punch in the names, right? Cause like that's not me. The public. Yeah. I want to put in. You'll case him. And we say the former, former chair. Yeah. Former chair. There's an I in his name after the a. It makes it so it looks like it's Kaizen, but it's actually case and how he's pronouncing it. Marine. Marine, marine. I forgot her. Pollock. I think her name is. Pollock like fish. OCK. Yeah. And is she the town project manager? Or a town planner? Hey, how many do we have? Not enough apparently. But there's a a, yeah, they see that they in front of town. What? Oh, that, that where? Yes. In front right there. Yeah. Right in front of town. Yeah. Make it an a. Oh, and a town instead of the. Yeah. Thank you. Okay, go. I just say just both are no longer involved. At all. Well, I think it's important. I think it's important or maybe you will subsequent to that to mention that those are the two people who received the training from the. Right. And. Yeah, these two people. Yeah. Both now are gone. Nefo offered. Yeah. Is it right to say as part of as one of the requirements for the grants being approved for the grants approval? Wait, what? Was it required? I don't know. That's what I'm asking. I'm asking if it is. What's the question I didn't understand. The question is, can we say that their training was required for the approval of the grant? And you mean like, because we haven't got the training ourselves, then I'm not going to say that. I'm saying that Bill and Maureen had to go to that for us to get the grant. I don't know. That because that would be that would be as required. Or if it was just incurred, would Bill know that? He possibly would know, yeah. Because sometimes things like that are contingent upon. Right. It's conditional on. Yeah. Yeah. And I would want to know that if we could. Right. How did we find that out? I can ask Bill. And then the Nefa people would know because they're the ones who would have made the rule. Yeah. We can probably look on their website, actually. You might could do that. Yeah. I just volunteered you, Terry, but it doesn't have to be. So I'm Terry to research whether looking right now it was required to have to. Let's see. Attendees. You don't want to say former. I was going to say the chair at that time. Okay. It sounds like we got the grant. And then because we got the grant, we got the training. I don't know. Well, I'm reading. I'm reading it. I'm sorry. Oh, okay. At the conclusion of the workshop series, each participating municipality will have the opportunity to put their new skills to work by conducting a call for temporary public art. So. So the workshop is part of the it is part of it. It is a it is two parts. It is it is supposed to be teaching municipalities and also creating this call for art to help so they can practice it. So we are people got the training and then left. And then we're stuck with it. We don't know what the hell we're doing. So okay, this is good to know. So yeah, this is called a it's called a dual track professional development series. Okay. And so we're operating on one track at the moment. We're operating on one track. Yeah. Or are we trackless completely? Oh, we're trackless. I like that. We're a train bound for nowhere. So I wasn't quite listening, but so they both attended the training and you might want to say required training or was it required? They use this sentence. Lori, the making it public project is a dual track. Professional development series designed for this purpose to give the training and then to have a call for art as a practice kind of. That's good to include that. That was yeah. Yeah, it's right in here. I would send it to you. I wish I could cut and paste it. Hold on. We have we have we have chat. Can we do chat? Chat is available. Chat is available, I think. Oh, see the chat. There it is. Yeah, we had chat. That's a sentence that's straight from the website. Wait, where I can't find my chat. The bottom of the window. There should be a chat button. You should be able to. I've got chat. Oh, yeah. Hey, okay. Mm hmm. That's the link it came from. I just got to move it somewhere. Can you see the chat, my chat or box or not? Yeah, yes. At the bottom of your window. I see it. It's right next to participants. Do you see it? Okay. No, I see it. I just didn't know if you could. Okay. Oh yeah, we can see it. Oh, what's that? That it didn't seem to. Oh, you know what? I tried to cut and paste it. It didn't work. I don't know if I can cut and paste from the chat. But you know what? I can go to the link. Okay. Maybe. Yeah, there it is. It's in the first paragraph, second paragraph. First paragraph. Convenient of them to put it right in the first paragraph. Right. Help. Where is it? In the first paragraph. Making it public. NMA is a dual track professional development, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Sorry. Now our pictures are in front of it. I can't see it. I wish I were at home. I have two screens and it's all so nice. I know. Okay. Okay. Let's see. So in partnership. Yeah. Okay. Making it public. Okay. And the first time you mentioned the New England Foundation, write out the whole thing and then afterwards you can do the initials. Okay. Down here? Yeah. Just the first time. Is it for the arts? I'm not looking at the. Oh, okay. I just was wondering. Here it is. Here it is. Foundation for the arts. Okay. For the New England Foundation. Okay. Sorry to say that. I think you should say our current commissioners are new to the project and have received no training. Okay. And found out about the project. Wait, wait. Bill and Marina attended the NIFA training for on public art. You can say training period. Do you want it? Okay. Okay. And yes, what were you saying, Robert? I think it's important to note that the current commissioners have not received any training and only learned of the project at our first meeting, which was when December or November? October? Yeah. Okay. No way. I'm sorry. I think it was November. I think it was November. Yeah. Yeah. I would say it didn't receive the extensive training because it really was. It was like a multi-day thing that they went to. It was like a big. I don't think you need to add that because if you said the extensive training, it could be understood to mean that we got trained, but it wasn't extensive. So I think it's better to just say that the training associated with the grant. How many members are we? Seven altogether. Yeah, we're seven altogether. Five of us here now. Is that correct? Well, except that none of us knew any of this except Bill, to my knowledge. Oh, so only Bill was. So even the current members of the commission weren't made aware of this project? I heard about it when it was announced, but we didn't know anything about the grant and didn't see the grant and didn't know anything about how it was going to be made, you know, made real. Yeah. So it's not as though I don't want I don't particularly want to be included in the people who were part of it who should have known something because I didn't. Right, right. Yeah. Okay. So where four of the seven members were new to the commission at the meeting, the other three had not been involved in the. Perhaps informed would be better than involved and formed is better. I mean the workshop is supposed to teach skills, teach municipalities the skills to put forward more equitable calls for art. It's a great idea. It's just that we don't we don't have the tools. I don't mean that there were a folder that they had passed down to us even some kind of. We were told by Marine at that meeting that the deadline to submit the proposal. Didn't wasn't the original. Oh no, actually it was the deadline to. The call for us to go out at the end of the year. Yeah, but before the call for artists. Was by December 31, 2022. Yeah, we're gonna have to make sure that like our our ask isn't buried in all this stuff. We might be going a little far. I don't know if we need this much text. Yeah, I think. I think maybe trimming it might be a good idea. Yeah, should we get it to get this done and then go back and trim it? Yeah. Okay, so I don't think you need to say we were told by Maureen at the meeting that the deadline to submit the call for art. That's that's when you go into too much detail. Okay, that's okay. Okay. Yeah, I think at this point we could just say that the town needs to. Designate a project manager by X state or. Well, I think they don't know where we're at, right? I mean, we we now have these deadlines and we've finished the proposal. I mean, it never got submitted, right? As far as I know, because they sure didn't have it so. No, they didn't. Yeah. Yeah, so so Robert, why don't you say what you're saying about the very end conclusion? Um, I was just saying that I think we want language to the effect that the town needs to designate a staff person to be the project manager by whatever date we have decided where we don't feel like we have the capacity, we don't have the capacity to undertake the project. And the and the town needs to inform the New England Foundation for the arts that they're not able at this time to complete the project. Okay, so the town of Amherst needs to designate a town staff. Project manager person to be the project manager either way. Okay. What was the date? We were going with the 13th, right? Uh, yes. That is really soon. Next week. I don't know. Well, they, we've been asking for a while now. Like a month. No, no, no. February. When did Maureen, uh. I'm back and I'm back. When do we, when do we hear about Maureen moving on? So that's kind of the date we should work from. Like, I don't know what date that was. It was our January meeting though, right? Last meeting. Last meeting. Yeah. The January meeting. But I knew about it before that and I had actually gone in to Town Hall to talk to people about that. Right after the new year. I think it was like, you know, like that first week in January. Right. Okay. Okay. So whether someone from the issue, Shana, just like curiosity. Did someone from the town inform you of it? Or did you hear about it? I heard about it when I saw it on the, in the bulletin that she had resigned. And then I was like, what? And so then I went and asked them about it. And they were like, yeah, yeah, we're going to get somebody. And then I emailed weeks later and that got no response. And then I emailed again, like last week or something. And maybe the week before the time is kind of slide. In the last sentence, do you want to maybe consider saying the town of Amherst will need to designate? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But the last email I sent, I did get a response saying that like, they're working on it and they're trying to figure out like the best procedure for, for the appointment and who that's going to be. And so this deadline, I think will be good. It will make it so that, you know, it'll, it'll long and not get forgotten. And maybe if, if, if we, if we, if the commission doesn't have an assurance that this will happen, the town will need to inform NIFA that it's rescinding the grants, you know, like word it to something like that. I mean, it's, the town ought to feel like it's their doing by not for taking care of the project manager thing that they're losing the money. Otherwise it's the commission who's losing, choosing to lose the money. And that seems to make a difference. That it cannot, what language should I use? If the town cannot provide a project manager, then the town needs to inform NIFA that we the, let me see what the wording is. Or how about without a project manager, the art commission does not feel comfortable moving ahead with this project? Or is not able, not, is not able to, that doesn't feel comfortable. Yeah, I would, yeah, that sentence that you have, the town of Amherst will need to designate a town staff project manager for this project by February 13th. For the public arts. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think we want to say for the arts commission to proceed. I think it's more in order for the project to proceed, the town of Amherst will need to designate a town staff project manager by February 13th. Yeah, the public art commission does not have the capacity to to take so responsibility for seeing this project through, given and lack of training and the transition. I wouldn't say that. There's something to that if I, no. I don't think I'd say you have, you lack anything. Well, I mean, we do lack the training. We, none of us have been involved in the information that was. Well, you said that in the beginning. Okay, okay. That's fair to just let it be an objective statement instead of, you know. Okay. Well, what was the state? I'm sorry. I'm, I've lost track in order for the project to proceed. The town of Amherst will need to designate a town staff project manager for this position by February 13th. Period. And I don't know why it's a little key there. Oh, that's automatic. It's fine. It's annoying. I know I hate it. I think I had said that the public art commission does not have the capacity to Sorry. The public art commission does not have the capacity to Shepherd Shepherd's good. Yeah. This project through to its completion. I know that I'd say that, but okay. If everybody else wants to, you can What's your suggestion? No, Dara, we love your input. Yep. I would just leave it. I would just leave it as like an obvious thing. We don't have to say we don't have the capacity. We're saying it by saying those other people are gone. You know, but I think, sorry. Go ahead. Because I don't Like, I feel like if we say too much that we don't have the capacity, they'll just start leaving us out of projects entirely. You know what I mean? Well, I disagree with that. I mean, this, this has been really poorly managed by the town, by any objective evaluation of this process. And so I think we do need a statement saying that, because if we just leave it, that they need to designate a project manager. I mean, I think we do need to make it clear that we haven't been given the tools to implement this project. Yeah, I agree. And that it's not, it's not fair to ask that we do this without having had any of the, the background. Yeah, since we were, we were told this wouldn't be, you know, we took, you know, we were told that we were going to have our contact person in the guidance and they were going to be shouldering this burden and we were going to be advisory. I mean, I can tell you during my initial interview with the town manager, you know, before being approved to join the commission, it wasn't presented to me that you're joining this commission. And by the way, there's this grant that you're going to have to administer right away without any training. I mean, there was a decided lack of transparency if that was the intention. And I'm not saying it was obviously because we were on staff at that time. But, you know, this is, this is a fairly significant thing. And I just, I just don't think. I don't think without some project management from a full-time staff person, we can make it happen. Or make it happen such that people will feel good about the result, you know. Yeah, I don't think we want to do this. I think the sentence that says the public art commission cannot move forward on this without a town staff project manager in place is real specific and good. I'm sorry, I think it needs the extra two. I agree with Robert. I think we need to specify that we don't have, we don't have the training for this. But we never said we did or would or could. It was the two people who applied for the grant who said they would and could. And so it's like, it may, I don't want to sound like we're all incapable of plans of things, you know. This is the dual track. This is the definition of this grant was it has two parts. And we don't, we didn't get the first part of it. We don't, you know what I mean? Like we're supposed to do the second part of it. No one else did either. No, no, none of the town people did either because Maureen's gone. Right. Lori, sorry, can we see the whole thing? Yes. I'm only seeing the bottom part. I think it's real close to being fine, you know. Yeah, I, if we could just see the whole thing and let's see. I could make it big and then I won't see you and hopefully this will work. You're not missing anything by now. Okay. And thank you. And yeah, call it the whole, call the project by its whole name the first time too. Because MIP project and the title, yeah. The title is going to be making in public. So this is where we're starting. I mean, this, we don't necessarily need this. Making it public is a dual. Maybe I should just, you know what, why don't I just do this? The foot, no, at the bottom. Yeah, move it and have like, you know, their website. This is what it is because, because just showing who you're going to talk to won't necessarily have this background information at all. Yeah, I have an alternate for the manager. I have an alternate first paragraph in the chat if you want to use it. It's close. So just trying to make it. Yeah, I'll be sending it to Angela first. And so her, she'll look at it and her interest and it will be that what our ask is. And then she'll probably bump it up to town manager and the town manager will bump it down to the plan board probably. And then that's when all this other stuff will get looked at probably about the project in specific. I think Terry's first new paragraph in the chats really good. Yeah, I was going to say, I agree because it puts the, it puts the ask right out there. Yeah, it's really good. We're out. Let's see. I can't see the chat. There it is. I can email it to Gloria if it's easier. It's fine. Well, I don't, I'm going to select all and then I'm going to copy, but I think it might not let me paste. Okay, I'm just going to send it to you. But let me see now. I don't know why you can't copy and paste from her. I can. I don't know if there's something wrong with your computer. Sending it to you right now. There you go. You're sending it to my email. Yes, ma'am. So let's run through some scenarios. They find a planner. Amazing things happen. I say, yes, here we go. Here's your person. Here you go. Do we then, we then move forward. So we get, we need two scenarios. One is we'll come up with, we'll figure out what's going to happen if we're going to wash our hands of this. But if they find somebody, we still need to plan to meet these people. Yeah, with a Zoom call. So let's just, I'm an optimist. Let's just say we find somebody. Can I still have two or three of you join me in a call? Is that still okay? Yep. All right. So I have two dates that work. Well, okay, 13, 15th. Okay, Dara and Robert can get together the 13th. Lori can get together the 15th or the 16th. The 16th is better for me. What day of the week is that? I can try to be, there's calendars for this one second. Why is this not letting me copy? It might actually be good for getting this meeting set up too. And then we can put into this letter Yeah, the 16th. I'm more available to 16th, if anybody. Is that a Thursday? I can do the 16th. Yeah, 16th is the Thursday. Is with that work or? I can do that. Yeah, if it's in the evening, I can do either Monday evening or Thursday. So I'm going to wait to contact. Ooh, here's a question. Do I tell them what's going on or do I wait? I think we can't seem to cut and paste. So I'm having a hard time here. Do you have a map that you see? You know what? My computer just froze. That's why I can't do anything. I think we should put into this letter that we expected the appointee to make it to this call with Kim so that they also get stuff. Yeah. Okay. So so this is all predicated on the idea that they have somebody who they're just going to move into this role. They're not advertising a job. Correct. This is going to be somebody who already works there. It's going to be their job. That's not going to go a job that it's hired for. Okay. Like they I've heard the name Nate being kicked around for being a possible appointee. But he hasn't been appointed. So that's just speculation at this point. Oh God. Now I need to find my password. It's really painful to have to watch you do this. It's really painful. I'm sorry. It's feeling awful. I couldn't cut and paste it for some reason. And comb it's not letting me do that. So I don't know what's going on. So I'm opening it up in another browser to see if I can make that work. But now I have my password. I actually saw an installation like this at Mass Mocha. It was a Zoom meeting and someone was trying to type in real time and it just was a continuous loop in one of their galleries. And it was miserable, right? It was horrible. It was just cringe inducing. Oh God. Okay. Let's try again. Oh God. Now how do you even get in here? Let's see. I just want to log in. I just want my email. I'm about to give up guys. Okay. Let's see. Okay. Why don't you hand over to me? Can you do that? Can I cut and paste this and hand this type? This part over to you. I could cut and paste and email you what we have so far. Sure. That would be great. Yeah. I think I'm going to do that if I can get into my... So it's interesting what happened when I went to Chrome and I'm on my work computer. So I don't know. Maybe that's the problem. It shouldn't be. That sounds like a really great art installation. Okay. Sounds like torture to me. I mean it sounds like it would really elicit a response. You know? It was very visceral. So there. Okay. Now it's letting me copy. Here you go. Let's see what happens when I go back to this document. You got it? Yeah. This is when I... Like I want to throw this computer across the room. But okay. It did it. All right. It is our end. So where do we want this? The APEC is... That would be the first paragraph. I mean... Before it is our understanding. Yeah. And then we can edit the rest, you know, to... So I move the APEC is required. The whole should go first. Yes. And then our understanding will be the second paragraph. And then... Okay. So... So you want to take this out, right? Yeah. Sure. Now we don't need this either, right? Sounds like we could go right to the share at that time. Couldn't we? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fourth line down. The chair at that time was Bill. Yeah. Yep. Let's get that out. Okay. We have scheduled a meeting with NEFA for... Where are we? 216... No. Sorry. Nope. Everything is fine, as it is. The part you have indented over, just bring that over. And then... All that looks good. So go back up to the second paragraph. And you can say, our current commissioners... Or our current APAC commissioners... And that... Make that a new paragraph. Our current... Go make that a new paragraph. Yeah. Okay. Our current commissioners... Our current APAC commissioners haven't received training and only learned of this project at their November 2022 meeting. Have not received training? Yeah. Don't say any. Yeah. And... And learned of this project. You don't need only... Actually, I think only was good there. Okay. Put it back. Put it back. And only learned of this project they're never meeting. I think we need to highlight that. November 2023, a 22 meeting. Okay. Well, maybe we should just leave out where four of them. Just take this off. I would. Because anytime you sound like you're putting blame on something that's going to hurt your case. That looks good. And we have scheduled a meeting with Neffa to... Sorry. You already have it down below. You have it as the last sentence. Yeah. That should go after the in-order paragraph. You were good. Take out what you have scheduled. Yeah. And then just... Yeah. And then just put in... I'm going to, I guess, send an email back to her and say the 16th will work for us. Six o'clock? Six o'clock, okay. Yeah. Okay. Right. Now I'm writing that down in my date book, so I don't forget. Yes. And I will send that email and copy you all. Okay. So we have scheduled a meeting with Neffa on February 16th. To discuss... Discuss this call for ART. This doesn't refer to anything else talked about in the note. So just don't say this. Don't say what? Don't say this call because it's not referred to in the piece. So just say to further discuss this grant. Okay. For a proper date. That's fine. Yeah. Okay. And maybe something like, and we expect... And receive an extension of the deadline because that's what we're going for. Well, they don't need to know that either. All they need to know is that they have to appoint somebody to be a manager. Okay. So it seems like that would be okay. Just... Yeah. Is there a way... And about somebody actually attending that... We need someone from the town hall to also be attending. Like the new project manager needs to be at that meeting. Like we have a scheduled meeting with Neffa that, you know, we need the project manager to also attend. Period. Yeah. Just to attend. Do we give them a... Or else? No, like if the town of Amherst could not, you know, help us with this commitment, we need to say no to this grant and it's going to look bad. Well, I guess it says at the very beginning, your new... That new paragraph at the beginning says is your appointment. Right about... Like right after the last sentence there have like in order to move forward with this grant. Here you go. That's good. We've already got that in the prior paragraph in order to... It says the public art commission cannot move forward on this project without a town staff. Project manager in place and we need them to attend if the town... We may not need that. We kind of have that in that... Yeah, in the prior paragraph, the in-law... An ultimate paragraph that says the public art commission cannot move forward without a town staff project. You can make it positive at the end and say, you know, we look forward to... There you go. Yeah, I feel like something in there about that last sentence though and making it really like, you know, because that's our opportunity to put it on the town is in... Like, you know, if you wish to get this money, that is what needs to happen. You know, that is not... Because like up above it's about how we need them to have it, but in order for them to access this grant, they... You know, it needs to be... Like that's where it shifts into... It's their choice to push away this money if they don't get that meeting. That's why I was saying earlier to say without the new town manager, the town will have to inform NEPA. That's what I was trying to get in there in this sentence. That is... Yeah. That without... If they can't send someone, but I don't want to repeat what we said before, then the town will need to inform NEPA that we cannot accept. And I would put it on the town to inform them that they're not accepting. So how do we say that? So if the town of Amherst cannot... I mean, that's what we said before, so I was repeating myself, but... How about we hope that the town can dedicate appropriate staffing to this project? That's good. Otherwise it will need to inform NEPA that we will be unable to accept the $10,000 grant. That's good. So I got the first part. If we hope that the town can designate appropriate staff for this project. Otherwise it will need to inform NEPA that we cannot accept the $10,000 grant for the project. Do we want to say designate or dedicate appropriate staff? I think designate is good, you know? And since we haven't been very editorial in it, it's been pretty subtle. I think you might could say for this significant project. And then a semicolon, please. Oh, sorry, before the end of the sentence before. We hope that the town can designate appropriate staff for this significant project. And you can say otherwise the town will need to inform NEPA not it. Yeah. Okay. For this. Maybe she's a grant, huh? I would say grant. Grant. Grant project, maybe? Yes. Okay. I got a new, this is a new computer. I really am struggling with it. I got it a week ago. Okay. Otherwise, instead of saying otherwise, comma, the town will need to inform NEPA. I'm going to need a glass of wine after this. That's okay. I'm wondering if your insert button is stuck or something. Is something, something weird with your computer? Something is weird. Okay. So we have the, this is pretty much the bones of this is done. At this point is 740. Yeah. You're, you know, your, we respect, I mean, your, your time is really appreciated, right? Shoshona, what do you think about our proposing to send this to the town and voting on it and, and putting this thing to bed? Yeah. Okay. I would like to make your proposal. I'd like to move. So wait, who's sending this? Okay. Shoshona is sending this as the chair. Yeah. On the behalf of the entire commission. Yes. Right. I propose you say on behalf of. I propose that Shoshona send the letter that we have all written together to the town of Amherst regarding this project. I second. Okay. All in favor. Shoshona hands. So is everyone raising their hand? Lower is your hand raised? Yeah. All right. Shoshona, everyone's hand has raised. So Terry proposed that we send that Shoshona. Yep. And it was unanimous. Send the following letter written by us to the town of Amherst. Unanimous. Past unanimously. By all those present. Yeah, SSCD. Yeah. And I guess you want to finish that sentence. We look forward to hearing back from. The town. I don't know. Shoshona, can you say who you think is going to respond to this? Well, initially it'll be Angela, but when somebody actually gets appointed, it'll probably be whoever it is that's getting appointed will be contacting. Or maybe it'll be the town manager. I don't know. But I imagine this will get an immediate response from Angela right away. Saying, you know, like something like we're working on it. Or where she's sending it up to. And Shoshona, should I send this to you? Yeah, send it to me. I can send it. Angela was copying all of us. Okay. I hope I have everyone. Shoshona, what's your email? Oh, I don't want to say it on the thing on. Oh, okay. All right, I'll find it. So I'll send it to you and can you forward it to everyone else if it doesn't have everyone else on the email? Because I'm not sure I have everyone, but I might in my email chain. It would probably be better if Shoshona sent you everybody and everybody's email because she has it. And then the reading goes to them. They can see that it was CC to everybody. I may have everybody. So if I do, I'll just do it. Okay. If not, if you don't. You've got emails from. I have gotten emails and they're in my email chain thread somewhere. So I should have it somewhere unless I deleted it. All right. So this piece of business is put to bed, right? Maybe. Yay. It's only 745. Yes. Okay. So and I am going to need. Thank you, everyone. I appreciate you're working through this. I'm glad that we don't, I mean, I think this is a really good step. Yeah. And I kind of figured we were going to go to eight, but I don't think I can go more than that. I knew this was going to take some time. I'm really appreciative of your time. So I'm sorry it took so long, but let's move along to whoever is next on the agenda. Thank you very much. And the other issue on the agenda is the strategic plan. And that's going to take longer than. I think I would like to propose that we start a task force of people who are interested in working on the project of creating, you know, the baseline of a strategic plan. Obviously it wouldn't be creating the entire thing, but coming up with some backbones and starting that project. And then I would like that project to continue on if we can possibly have a a get together later this spring or early summer in person for a number of hours at the same time to talk about this. I think that would be really helpful to our cause here. Have a question, Terry. When you say task force, are you limiting it to members of this commission or are we bringing in people, artists and community members to get a broader perspective? So I think that the task force is a mechanism that we can use for open meetings so that we can there is no voting. There's only kind of workshopping and talking and then bringing things to the whole commission together. So it's a little bit less limited in its scope and its rules. I believe them. I think I've got that right. That's that's the reason for it, but it would not at all be this would only be a very the only first steps. I would love to bring in more and have more collaboration. And you know, that's a large question too. So I guess I'm not clear on your response. So in other words, the task force would just be people on the commission or we would try to enlist artists etc in the community to join the task force to help us create the vision. The second time, not the first, the first time it would be just the people on the commission to lay out the plan for what to do next. And then we open it up. Community, collaboration, town manager, talk about that whole umbrella idea. It's really just a basic, I put in together ideas and a scope and then and then from there we bring that information, those ideas to the commission together to talk about. And that that meeting, I hope will be the one we are all together at that workshop. So without Jim's presence, I don't know. I know how a task force would relate to the public meeting laws. If this were a committee, if this were a committee. Yeah, I think no more than restrict, I believe is my understanding. You can create a committee but a task force is not at the level of committee and I may need to make sure that that's okay with Jim. I guess we should clarify that first. I mean, I'm all for having a focused discussion on this because I think it needs time and attention, not at the end of the meeting that we've been crafting how to refuse $10,000, it would be nice to spend most of the time trying to actually gain $10,000 or more. I've been looking at open meeting law and I've been trying to figure out where this lives so that it's easier to have these conversations and I talked a little bit to the commission that I am a contractor for and I talked to Stuart Akita who's a chair and he told me that sometimes they use the apparatus of a focus group or task force kind of as that mechanism of throwing around some ideas and putting them together to bring to the commission and that it has less, it's a little bit less strict rules with how you can speak and you always still engage the public and invite them to any task force meetings but I think there's a little bit easier parameters but I do think we do need to run it by Jim. Yeah so assuming that we can do it without running a file. Yeah Angela too, sure. Yeah, yeah I would definitely support that, I'd like to be a part of that as well. Yeah but I think like as long as it's just three because we're a group of seven, if three of us met together that's not considered something that has to be public meeting. Okay. And as long as like there's no like voting going on. Yeah there would be no, this will only be for brainstorming. Yeah. So we have two people involved anybody else might be interested? We can ask, we can ask Dara and Mikey if they're interested. Or Mikey and Jim. All right. Okay so in, so who are the three? Well right now it's Robert and me and we don't have a third yet. I would need to know when it is to know if I could do it or not so. Yeah this would not be an in-person unless we all wanted to get together this could also be something we do on a Zoom and chat. Okay I don't really have a date set up for it I'm just kind of proposing and seeing if anybody's interested in it and then we can go forward. I think you need to have something like this so that you know how you want to talk about stuff and you know and do a little research maybe. Right yep yeah well we've got some documents that people can look at in the on as a folder that was shared with you all that you can kind of if I don't know if anybody if you've had the time to read those documents. I don't know I looked I looked on one of them and I can't get in the folder so. I can't either. And I the only thing I could look at was the 11 page call document. Okay I'll try to figure that out I thought that had opened up permission sorry. It's okay. I looked at them some of them are like very long and like they're for cities a lot I think it would be like some you know a big task for for our group to do. It's really close to inform it's not. But there's another one that's much less I forget which town that one was but it that one seemed a little more doable but that 51 yeah. I had shared a number of those and it was really more just for informational purposes not that we would not make carbon copies and obviously you know given the size of our town relative to some of the others. Yeah well I mean you don't have to like reinvent the wheel too because like one of them was actually put out there for you know art commissions to kind of lift from so that seemed like I shared the one from Arlington because Arlington is is the same size town as Amherst is and they have a thriving art community and a large investment from the town that they have asked and had gotten and received and get lots of MCC funding and I thought that was an appropriate thing to look at because it's the same size town. So yeah yeah that's great. Okay well great so Robert and Dara maybe were you interested not not sure if you're interested you you're interested. Yeah it just depends on when it is. Okay how about I send an email we'll figure out a time to bring it together is that okay. I'll send it to everybody so that everybody can be you know obviously can be involved and well maybe I can't do that can I do that because this fits more than three then that's not a good thing. All right I'm gonna send Robert and Dara an email okay. Great okay. All right and um sorry I gotta reverse back when we were talking about the portal gallery about like looking at the call for artists somebody who was it that is going to be looking for a call for artists template to for that project. No I was gonna see if there was something from the Amherst Cultural Council that we could borrow to see what okay parameters around this are and et cetera I still I don't know anything about it except where there's some windows. I don't need it like last year's or a prior years and we could crib that and move forward with that I guess I'd love this to be part of our strategic planning and it just feels like we're just gonna put something out there we're not really yeah have any like future. The last time we didn't do a call for artists it was like an invited thing so it was completely different than how we're moving forward with at this time. Question so is that that money that money is from the cultural council yeah the $2,000 yeah so could we not explain to them that we're a commission and a bit of a transition and that we need a little more time I mean is there some. It's a it's a financial year thing it has to be spent in this. It has to be spent by the fiscal year. Fiscal year ends at the end of June so before July 1st all money has to be spent for these kind of grants. He said last time you an artist was asked and there was not a call for artists does there have to be a call for artists this time? No there doesn't have to be no. So the money was just given to us to have an artist do something in the portal gallery. Correct. So do we ever have to validate our spending with the cultural council? Yeah we have to then receipts at the end. Yeah okay so there's an old adage that when you get a grant so the more grants you get the more grants you expect to get for the next year so you get a grant you spend it you know what I mean and then the next year you get a grant and that's how you kind of grow getting grants. Now if we're going to turn down a $10,000 grant which sounds like might happen I sure don't want to turn down any other grants. If this one has already been granted it's a small one I think we should try to find a way to make this one happen. I think it's a little bit less involved and it can put out a call for artists and hopefully hopefully that's not a real difficult one to do. Which is showing a leaving I'm really nervous about who is going to have the legacy of information going forward for things like this and that does give me some pause. Yeah I'm a little worried about that part but I have this large stack of folders here to go through so. A lot of that stuff I think is really old though more of the recent stuff is in the Google folders. It's not a lot in that Google drive though so I do have this lovely flyer. Oh yeah there was one other thing there was one other thing I did hear when I was chatting with Angela about some other issue she did mention that Paul Backelman was delighted by the electrify Amherst and yeah you know and there's a lot of he's received a lot of community feedback and there's a big interest in that coming back to life. Great that's awesome and so they're essentially like really wishing that we would bring that back for the next grant cycle. What was that electrify? Electrify Amherst that's the utility boxes. Oh I love those those are the best projects. Do we have a lot of transformer boxes in town that still need to be arted up? Yes I have not been all over Amherst I haven't like noted every one but there are beautiful transformer boxes in Amherst. There are artists gorgeous I mean I'm moving from Arlington where we have this project as well and it's a great project you pay the artists you know it's a really nice project it beautifies the streets I'm a big big fan of this project. Yeah and it's really good for community building there's a lot of you know because there's so many of them it's like an opportunity for people to really like take ownership of their town by you know contributing to the artwork in it. This is the kind of thing that if the town manager wants to see it then we go in front of the finance committee and say if you'd like us to beautify our streets we'd like to ask for some money you know so that we can pay artists because we're not going to be putting out calls for artists for this kind of a project and not attaching any money because calls for artists need to get paid. Is the um do you have paperwork on how this was done before? Yes. Amherst. Yes. And is that this Terry do you have access to that in those Google Docs? There's some in the Google Docs and I think there is some paper in the basket on that too. Okay I'll take a look I'm very excited about that project I will yeah I'll be a big fan. Yeah the previous project to work that project the point person was Amy Crawley. This is great visibility for the for the commission too it really is it's a good thing to attach our name to this is a very visible thing that people see that you do. Yeah and a lot of people are very delighted with it. Well cool okay so what I'm going to do I'm doing two things I'm sending Robert and Darren invitation to a Zoom meeting to talk about strategic planning and I'm emailing the Amherst cultural council to try to get more information about the portal gallery. Uh grant we got to that so that I have that okay and that's what I'm doing and I'm sending an email sorry three things and I'm sending an email also back to Kim Setso with Nefa saying that we can meet on the 16th. Okay that's why I need to write all that down in our minutes. Uh I think we already I think we've already I think it's there okay and I'm I'm going to send this letter to all of you right thank you and finish the minutes. Yeah and I'm going to send that to um to Angela and I'm going to talk to Kamal Peters. Great thank you oh that's fantastic thank you and Robert you have your hands up. Yeah question Shoshona is there information or any details or anything you have on the treasurer's role and if I need any passwords or anything because right now I have nothing. You've been appointed is there an election how does that work? Well I know that's the other thing I don't know I I mean the past has been like you know I think it was default because no one else volunteered. Oh I would like to make a motion to make Robert to make Robert the treasurer. I second. All in favor raise your hand. Hi. Yay Robert. Thank you. Um the way that I've been doing it in um as like the last person standing kind of thing with um the the grants and all that was um every once in a while I'll talk to Holly Bauer um wait no she changed her name Holly Drake in the town hall she's like the distant to the comptroller and I just ask her what our balance is and like whenever there's like a spending there's like this procedure with like this form that you fill out and like the chair and the treasurer sign it and then they give it to the town and then the town will like cut the check and um so if I were to email Holly uh she's also sorry she's also the person you bring that to when you're doing that paperwork. Okay maybe I'll just send her an email and and she can kind of walk me through the processes. Okay thank you and is there any other do we have any sort of uh spreadsheet or anything with any budget that had been created or that doesn't. Yeah there is a spreadsheet in the google group in the sheets um but it's not up to date it'll need some love. How would that happen? Would um he'll have to get into the sheets. Can you share that with him? Um oh is okay. I don't think he's got um I thought you were the two I don't know if you had it open. All right I'm gonna I'll sign in here. Um I'm keeping an eye on this clock and it's eight oh four. Yeah I'm sorry guys. All right did you get that Robert? Uh did I get what? An email from me just now saying that you have been put into the document this sheet. Uh I've added Terry and Robert to the spreadsheet. Great I see it. Yes I see that uh the running balance seems to have stopped at 2019. Um I do not plan to recreate the detail uh for the last three years. So whatever Holly tells me the balance is at this point uh that is our starting balance. I think that's where we start. Yeah just remember that 2000 of that is for um the portal gallery and you know somewhere around 500 is for um the poetic dialogue and the rest is just our money. And we still can't vote just to keep Robert Frost with DPW. I mean we could vote on it if there was a shame. I think it makes a statement of sorts. Just leave Emily there no Robert. It would make the um Emily Dickinson fans happy. There you go. All right do we have any other business any new business or I think we need to let Lori go. I think there's a call for adjournment. Yeah I when is our next meeting? I'll send out a doodle. Okay unless Terry you want to do it as the emerging chair it seems. Oh god I'm not the emerging chair you just want me to be the emerging chair. She's cornering you. I know I don't know guys I so I mean I I'm sorry Lori I don't mean to take your time real quick um I know we need to chair I know I've lived here for less than a year and I feel so not ready to take on a chair position. I have ambition and things that I want to do together with you all I'm really excited about but I don't feel like I'm ready but I'm hoping somebody else on the commission is and if not then I'm I'm I'll do my best you know. I think you might I think you might be it I'm also not stepping up on this because I don't have the time to take that on I but I certainly will support you and you know back up and help you with it meet with you when needed. Okay are we gonna talk about this more next month because I gotta I don't know I'll talk to Mikey and I'll talk to Jim and we'll figure it out so um we'll figure it out Shoshona we should all get together and have wine though. Yes love to meet everybody. Yeah yeah that would be nice all right um so we'll all talk in the doodle and thank you so much for your time everybody. Thanks everybody. Thank you everybody. All right have a good night. Thank you. Thanks.