 Okay. Okay, hi everybody. I think we have everybody but Oshawa and Sarah Swartz here but I sent an email back to the group so hopefully if they're available they will join. So let's jump right in given our delay here with the minutes. Does anybody want me to share them on the screen or are they looking at them themselves? Everybody okay. And Jesse remind me did you take these minutes or was it Steve? It was me Steve. Okay. So then Jesse you're on deck to take minutes. Is that okay? Great. Two thumbs up. It is okay. I do need to stop at 6 30 as I assume other people do as well. Okay. We will make sure that happens. I was going to move to accept the minutes but since I wrote them maybe I'm not supposed to. I'll leave it to somebody else. I'll second that. Perfect. Thanks Sarah. So I think we need to do a roll call so I'll just call based on who I see on my screen. First being myself, Drocker, yes. Rose. Yes. Demant. Yes. Selman. Yes. Roof. Yes. I'm counting where. Say my name. Yes Sarah. Yes. And Dwayne. I guess I'll abstain because I missed most of the meeting. Okay. Great. So I think that is 601. Yes. And two absent. Great. So let's move on to don't believe we don't have any public here. So and Stephanie is on vacation this week so we don't have any staff updates so we'll move straight to ECAC member updates. Yes Darcy. I just would report that Laura sent a letter an email to the GOL committee about the town manager evaluation and I think you all got a copy of that. So I do not know what happened at the at the GOL meeting following so I need to read the minutes and figure out whether they how they incorporated what we suggested or if they incorporated it into the town manager evaluation guidelines. Yeah I don't think I got any response from that email so be good to know. Okay. Thanks Darcy. Anyone else have updates? I have one other update. One is that I've been working with the Zero Waste Amherst Group and we ended up asking the town manager and Guilford Mooring if they would ask for a DEP land to look to compare systems hauling systems in Massachusetts and around the U.S. and it was approved it was just approved yesterday so that is going to be happening and so we will be able to look at the result sometime in the next probably six or eight weeks so that that could that could contribute to the to the transportation slash waste dash public health group possibly. Great. Are they going to hire a consultant to do that research? There actually is already an existing western mass recycling person who her job is to carry out these DEP grants. Her name is Veronique Blanchard and so she actually helped write it and she's very excited about looking at Boulder and Portland and a lot of different places to compare hauling systems. Great. That might be of interest to the colleges as well probably maybe not UMass but the other ones because you know they're looking at that too. So great. Anybody else? Sort of unrelated but just acknowledge the really nice coverage that the town had and the university had nationally on the PPS news hour last night. Not sure if anybody else covered it. It was wasn't energy related but it was COVID related but pretty nice segment. Paul Bachman was on the Chancellor. The Chamber of Commerce person for Amherst I forget her name and and and quite a few others. It was pretty surprising. I didn't know what's happening. We were watching and hey nice views of the town. I can just add that Laura Stephanie and I did present to the town council last week just very quickly an update on where we were and I think Darcy said it was the longest meeting you all have had maybe or one of the longest. So it was very quick and dirty but you know we just reminded them what we were doing and that we will be coming back to them towards the end of the calendar year with report and some budget ideas based on the work we're doing now. Great. So let's dive right in to the task group co-chair debrief. So I think I'll first turn it over to Jim and Laura and to see if they have anything they want to add holistically and Gazikaya as well. But then I think it would also be helpful to have each of the co-chair groups sort of go through their thoughts and then I don't know if we should do that first or if you have something to say first. Lauren I'll let you jump in and Gazikaya. Sure. I think we're just really excited to hear from the co-chairs in terms of the themes that you are all noticing coming out in the conversations. Talk about overlaps between the different groups and then I know that that will lead into the later conversation around what the ECAC can be doing concurrently. So we'll save that for after but I think that's sort of what we were hoping for as part of this conversation. Gazikaya did you want to add anything to that? I'm not sure if they're able to. I did not need it so. Oh okay. Took me a minute to get there sorry. Oh that's okay. Now I don't have any content. Didn't you hear that? Yeah. Yeah we did. Yep. Yeah that's great. And just also that you know there were notes that you get out of the meetings. The notes are reasonably comprehensive and and so you know should be used for as resources for for the co-chairs. Okay great. So why don't we let each of the co-chairs maybe take about 10 minutes to talk about their meeting. Some thoughts, key takeaways, any feedback for next time and then we can roll that into a next steps discussion. Which group went first? I think the land use group. Okay that would be me. Let me just get my windows organized. Yes what a go. There it is. So I can see. Okay so we had I I guess it looks like a pretty good attendance list compared to some of the others. It seemed to me not that many community members. There's a lot of us associated with the committee and the consulting group and Dave Zomek from the town of Amherst as you can see to a farmer, Bernard Brennan, the mammothist farm, Mark Wemsley and then several other folks as you can see up there. We did have translations so we had to say speak in short relatively short bursts and then it was translated to I believe a person on the phone. So that that took a little time and we didn't weren't able to go back and forth on communicating quite as much. We started with an exercise on imagining outer spaces that we like. That was the leading up in the values there and that's summarized so we all had a chance to talk about some of our places that we wanted to that we'd like to visit. I guess that was sorry that was a little further down in the agenda. We did talk about our values there with a lot of attention and people speaking about the value of outdoor spaces that are local, close, accessible and typically that meant in the backyard for some people it meant within close driving distance for those with cars and or it could have been in the neighborhood for some folks. So kind of a neat list of places that people like but in general people like outdoor places. Quiet trees, perhaps a river, those are features that people spoke about. There's a mention of getting the kids interested and connected to outdoors and maybe we could do more of that. How to grow things, how to fish and that and how to learn more. That was another thread sort of how do I learn more about outdoor spaces in conservation land that's accessible. Some people were confused. They weren't sure if all conservation land was publicly accessible or not and it turns out not all conservation land is publicly accessible. The town, Stephanie pointed out, does have a great map with lots of well-marked trails so that's something that could be easily promoted. The existing map that the conservation department has created. Yeah, going on I think you can see in the minutes there this I identified the principles. More connecting to nature of all sorts. Perhaps more programs. People seem to like that. Community gardens, bird watching. There could be opportunities there for some existing nature organizations like the Hitchcock Center that was mentioned many times to do even more outreach. They are continuing to do a few programs in this day and age but not nearly as much as they normally would be doing. Barriers working to dismantle barriers, transportation, liabilities for property owners about having people walking on their land and physical access whether that's a bridge or a map that tells people where the trails are. Moving along there there was one mention from one of the farmers about a way to perhaps enhance, encourage the things that we want and that would be carbon sequestration. That would be could we have payments to farmers for farming carbon, sequestering carbon in the soil. There was also a note to be careful or thoughtful about citing renewable like solar and taking into account the value of farmland and forests and not to harm one thing that we're trying to protect while we're trying to protect something else. Then we went into the conversation of this favorite outdoor places. That was fun. A lot of neat places that people mentioned. Mill River, Groth Park was very popular. Amethyst Brook, very popular. Even the cemetery in downtown was mentioned as a peaceful place. Okay so then the homework questions and I was able to ask or talk with a couple of people but I know if they're not in town so it's a little biased. But one friend has a vegetable garden. They grow their own vegetable. Sorry the homework question as you can see at the bottom of the are minutes there. Ask two or three neighbor or friends where do they get their vegetables? Can they grow their own food where they live? Do they have access to land or outdoor areas where they live? Two people that I talked to one does grow their own vegetables. Both have access to a lot of land that they live up in Leverett and Shootsbury so it's even more rural than Amethyst and they're also quite familiar with the access of vegetables and farmers markets and local markets as well as conservation areas. So that's probably for at least my aspect of the homework not a very representative sampling particularly for town residents. But those are my neighbor or my friends at least. Any any questions um on our conversation from you guys? Steve what do you think you learned out of the process? Oh boy um I guess you know I learned that that people use the conservation land they value the conservation land and at least in some level they want to use it more. They want to grow their own food. I don't know how many of the people that were in the conversation have actually grown their own food but they would like to. They like the idea of it at least. So I think there's a lot that we in conservation department and environmental education centers could do to help connect residents to the land and natural resources that we have. Yeah great. Yeah Steve is there anything else that comes to mind around um coming out of that conversation priorities that you saw emerging or things that were unexpected that you feel like now we probably want to think about? Um not coming to my mind but that almost sounds like a leading question that perhaps you had something that you remember from the conversation of that sort. I understand yeah I see how it could have sounded that way but I promise it wasn't meant to be I was just curious. Um people like the idea of protecting the land protecting the semi-rural character the farmland the forests they liked the idea of protecting that and as well as the particular resources that they're familiar with whether it's Poffers pond or Mill River or Groth Park um they liked that they wanted more of that. Yeah I I definitely second the um the idea that more engagement with natural areas was that's a common theme yeah especially for you as you mentioned. The people living in the apartment complexes even though in some cases they're fairly close to conservation areas and trails they may not be aware of them or know about them or know that they can go hiking and enjoy the natural environment in those places. Something I'm taking from your overview Steve is definitely a theme of education um or awareness I don't mean education may not be the right word awareness building and making sure things are accessible but I think it also highlights that you know when and if we move forward with more renewable projects in town that we're educating around well that we're being thoughtful about what land is being used and that we're educating around you know whatever trade-offs or other things we would need to consider for that. Yes yes I think that's very important um a comment that I made and I'm not sure I didn't mention it just now and I'm not sure if it's clear in the minutes is that things are changing our natural environment is changing our forests are changing our farm fields are changing and people may not like the changes that we are going to be facing in the coming decade so the things that we know and that we love now it's probably not possible to preserve them as they are or even maybe their ways we can make them better but they are going to be changing so we have to also help people appreciate what's there appreciate they have changed in the past and they will change even more in the future. The one thing that that I was surprised at and I suppose it's probably the wrong word but I was uh it it really opened up some thoughts for me in that meeting was the concept of sort of sort of where things are relative to where people are and um kind of how that works uh and that that works for as we were talking about it especially around natural resources uh both you know things like uh works and streams for fishing and conservation land for walking and and taking kids into and stuff like that as well as food growing and uh as well as the sort of renewable energy development and things like that that that uh there was a a very strong perspective of sort of access to things especially natural resources is kind of tricky unless you have a car and even if you have a car you kind of got to know what's going on and uh and that there's a sort of an interesting opportunity to rethink that and I think that uh uh what's the name from kestrel uh uh mark um uh sort of said it said the sort of the sort of awakening moment well when you sort of said oh uh uh you know it's interesting I never really thought about conservation land being where people are as opposed to conservation land being somewhere else and that was was kind of an aha moment for for them so great um so that that was 10 minutes um so let's maybe move on to the next group and then we can come back at the end and see if there's any overarching themes so what group was next electricity I believe yeah so um we had a nice kind of small group you know there were the six of us and um with three very active um communities members who spoke a lot thanks to jim's facilitating it and um three others who who are part of the task group um and we spent after you know the intro to you know framing why we're here and all that um we almost exclusively talked about the first question which was how do you eat and cool your home and who who controls it control do you have over it and people talked at length about their situations in their very different situations the condo owner two renters three renters um and um you know one person who's got their own solar and um you know has the choice to to choose what kind of heating system although hasn't yet and he mentioned feeling he had a guilty about that um and the the whole tone of the conversation was really very personal really you know people sharing more than information but but how they felt about um the choices they have and don't have and um it was i think a very successful conversation in in in terms of hearing from all parts of our community um so i was very happy about that and um i i think it was pretty compelling to think about the um energy justice issues and and how that will be a really important piece of um in our prioritizing what kinds of programs projects direction we want to go dwayne yeah i can add to that and and thanks under for that uh perspective which i agree with i thought it was um well a couple a couple comments some are more critical than others i guess or at least more more suggestive of um maybe where we can go with the next two meetings um and um that is i thought you know this process is very important um to really engage with the um cross section of constituents we have in in in town um i think at the end of the day not only are we um uh want to be true and we aren't being true to um those issues and concerns and those goals um of this effort and and ultimately the plan but also uh really important to have these voices with us um as we um put the plan forward and move the move to action uh after the plan so i i'm um really thought it was um effective and uh hearing from the voice of of um pretty wide distribution of of uh well let me say a very small sample size compared to the town of a very small sample size but nonetheless a pretty broad distribution of um of people from um uh you know renters low income um ethnists uh people of color um and those that are probably uh some one at least that may be amongst the most wealthy in town um and and some in between um and so i think thought it was pretty helpful i thought there was some i wouldn't say tension but some sort of like um uh um issues with regard to haves and have nots and i i don't i'm not sure if that's quite helpful um because we want to be inclusive of everybody and and uh people of means um actually have a lot to offer and and critical and need to be a critical part of of um this plan going forward as well and shouldn't be alienated in any way uh but really uh celebrated particularly those that have the passion to help uh help the town uh move forward in the world move forward quite frankly um i did find that um um the conversation did um revolve more around building comfort and heating uh which actually isn't uh part of our group it's more on the building side um and didn't really get get to the as much to the um electricity um topic uh or theme that we needed to cover in our group i i hope that's sort of more of a focus in the in the next two um meeting uh working groups or meetings um uh electricity is a little bit different because it's a little bit it certainly has uh it's a personal impact as well in terms of how you make your choice about where you get your electricity from and and whether you can have solar or not both in terms of whether you have the means to do it or how do we provide the means for lower income to do it but also if you if you're not a homeowner how can you work with landlords and so forth to to uh have access to solar um for those that that would like um but it's also very much about um uh electricity generation that's not in your home or on your home uh but how do you engage in community shared solar um i think you know how do you get to these issues of um everybody likes their open space and all these nice places that steve referred to um uh but uh and you know how do we grapple with um uh those trade-offs uh associated with okay well where you know what what are some of the and maybe a conversation with the land use group is well where are the lands you don't care about not the ones you do uh but where the ones you don't care about uh that would be um that more acceptable like the like like the landfill uh for example uh but now it's a dog park and and uh it's got other plans i guess uh but nonetheless you know uh we got to sort of grip uh grapple with those issues uh i think even with with with our group on the electricity side which we didn't really get to um and um i think we we um we're teeing up the cca that um uh and sort of decided purposely not to um dive into that in our first meet god meet and greet meeting we didn't want to scare anybody scare anybody away uh so we're teeing that up uh or i should say andra is taking the lead on on teeing that up uh perhaps is some primer uh before even the next meeting so that we can sort of dive into it a little bit more with people um having some some familiarity with it um already so my i guess my you know i thought it was really well done really important uh process uh but i did find that it um it was when all the conversation when so much of the conversation had to do with heating and air conditioning um uh and building comfort um and making rent uh energy efficiency retrofits the building is like okay this uh jesse and somebody whoever else is on the building side i hope they're recovering that as well but it wasn't it wasn't um as uh um uh it was a bit beyond it's important obviously to hear that but i think we were tasked with um uh really focusing on some some other some of the other issues as well i will say that the um comments at the end indicated that um community leaders felt like we covered a lot of new ground um so i'm glad we didn't dive into the cca i think that would be a bit much um i i have to say that um i i really like the process and the inclusion um but i don't believe that in these three meetings we're going to get uh far enough to um get any real decision-making done um with the help of of the these community members um and so i'm i'm really hoping that they'll stick with it and participate in the the later steps once we've sort of taken these conversations and then research that we're doing um and boiled it down to our suggestions for what we want to do and then get their feedback again uh andrew and dwayne um did anything you learned in that process about what might uh some some of the shape of maybe some of the cca uh might be that was from my perspective that that was kind of where it ended up that that uh that there was a lot of stuff that's probably useful in what needs to be part of the cca process you mean by that jim well uh there were there were sort of three big ahas for me one of them was if we're talking about building electrification as something that is part of an overall plan most renters buildings are already electrified that's not an issue that they need that they need help with what they need help with is rearranging the the systems to be semi-reasonable instead of crazy uh but they're already electric um the uh the other thing it was the issue of who has access to the benefits of the cca process and that seemed to come up quite a lot and that that seems like something that is perfectly within the structure of how you define the cca and what goes on with that and that it's like great this perfect feed-in to uh those discussions which hopefully you know come up with the next meeting yeah i think there's um and we haven't really um broached the cca in detail with this group yet i think there's two aspects to it one is just your your basic cca where you're automatically opt in opted in to a um electricity supply that has been negotiated on your behalf by by the cca entity which for the purpose of Amherst will be green fairly green and maybe there was some opt-opt-up opportunities for even even more green so i think it did um address how much of was gazikaya herself or one of the people that sort of had all these sort of problems with signing up for a green product from a third party vendor and then had a way big higher bill and couldn't couldn't uh could negotiate or or have a address the issue well with the electric supplier and it was a it was a fiasco quite frankly it sounded like i think to some extent the cca will make it easier for these people to access greener electricity at minimal um complications um the other aspect of the cca which is more the innovative the 3.0 as we call it part of it which is really about opportunities for the cca to proactively work with the community to to to um develop finance develop and potentially own uh renewable generation and and participate in other greenhouse gas reduction reducing activities like energy efficiency and so forth um you know that's where um we're hoping um and expecting and designing so that those those opportunities are um accessible across income classes uh and maybe even purposefully um incentivized for um lower income classes um and and uh and you know a wide spectrum um but you know that's still a lot of detail that needs to be worked out in in the season that is that it's definitely part of the mission goals agenda of the of the cca and you know hopefully that is helpful across the the the spectrum of of uh constituents that we have is that the 10 minutes Laura? Yes that was 10 13 minutes um okay so we'll we'll move on to the buildings group Cassie want me to start or would you like? Oh sorry my computer just did something very interesting Sarah why don't you start then? I'll let you pile on at the end um just logistically speaking I think our our meeting had a pretty equal mixed of members from our group ECAC and in Linnaean and then uh task group members and community leaders we had ASL translation and Jesse and I are both learning how to speak more succinctly for the translator um but I don't think that it I don't think it deterred from our meeting at all I think I think it it flowed well um I just need to do better um so Jesse set up our conversation and you can read this in the notes but um for us to think about two kind of overriding priorities um how to enhance the quality of life and how do we reduce carbon emissions and people were sharing experiences about what makes a building better um lived experience in or where they live where they work um what they value in a building when they picture a building that adds to quality of life as we were as we set up and I think two well accessibility actually accessibility seemed to come up a lot both in the buildings themselves and then regarding governance and community engagement in this process and then others in town so accessibility on both sides of that um I think one thing that sticks out in my mind is how accessibility and sustainability might sometimes be seen as conflicting priorities um so building accessibility here one of the community leaders expressed they've experienced landlords or building owners who are not willing to make buildings accessible because it's not an aesthetically attractive solution or might lower property value um and so I was I was just learning and hearing that you know values for accessible upgrades don't necessarily always line up with values for sustainable upgrades and what does that mean for people um who who need different accommodations to use buildings so that sounded like an interesting opportunity and challenge marrying those two goals together um and then regarding accessibility as it relates to community participation um our community leaders expressed very very passionate frustration and concern that the end result of our process is a plan that then has to be carried out by the town uh they feel as though town leaders are all talk and no action we create committees all the time and we'd like to talk and and things don't get implemented um so that got me thinking a lot about what our role is as a committee if any after the plan is created what is that what does that look like in implementation um you know Andra mentioned she hopes that community leaders will want to be involved in the later steps but I'm seeing it more of as how do we make sure that we keep centering our community leaders in the work you know as as the plan keeps moving forward as it gets passed through to various groups to keep getting carried out so how do we how do we continue with the level of community engagement and advocacy that we're trying to set up the plan with um that's pretty much all I've been thinking about since the meeting so I'll let Jesse share yeah I would say that we I cannot understate that that point um I think I would describe I thought it was a very positive meeting but what to me was positive about it was a high level of frustration from multiple people in nuanced ways about the way that the town has let them down in all kinds of ways um and it was it was and I've actually resonated with me um I think that it's hard because I've been thinking about this a lot too that and my kind of answer is well let's do something bold and and not let people down and and and really come through and really do something bold and then I keep coming back to oh but we're in massachusetts and there's a ton of laws that are really set up to make change slow and difficult and it's pretty humbling and I it was humbling and so I think the question I would ask to to this larger group is what can we do to um show the people that are watching us and the people that we've asked to help us to what can we do to show them that this is going to actually add up to something I think some question like that and then that was one of the primary takeaways the second primary takeaway was kind of popped in at the end there and it was subtle there were people that were not complaining there were people that were mostly quietly listening and at the end they were like so what can we be doing to work on this and it was people who I think have already started working on these issues particularly with buildings it's they're in their wheelhouse they're more sort of activists and experts and stuff in there and so I balancing these two things of like I need I want to give them tasks to do and I want so that was I don't know if that was necessarily attention but it was another big takeaway and then my final point is the ASL interpretation I think is one of the best things that happened to that meeting if we had ASL right now in this meeting I'd be done right now and you all would know exactly what I said and I wouldn't have done whatever I just did and and I think it was a lesson and it was awesome and and so that was a huge positive and I think everything that people said like was like Jim I've never heard you speak so clearly so and I'm not kidding I really think it was a very cool and I think a lesson to us to not be like like this kind of so yeah back to the question like how can we what is the action like how can we not let people down and are we just doing that work and sort of slowly doing it but I'm nervous I am nervous about the plan on the shelf so I'd just like to say Jesse that I think that everyone is nervous about the plan on the shelf and that is probably one of the key questions here is how do we not let that happen and it matters to everybody I would even flip that question a little bit and offer that we want to think about if we don't want that to happen what do we want to happen what's that sustained model of engagement that helps us carry this work forward with the spirit that you all are pointing to right now of engagement at all levels of expertise and and inclusion and accessibility at the forefront that's what I'm hearing yeah and I think Sarah what you said really resonated with me around what do we do as a committee you know we're the first committee out of the council and we're the first group of ecac and most of us this is our first committee we've been on so I think we're all learning about that and I think we can shape that in some respects and we need to shape that so that's something that I want to make sure we carry throughout this work as well your trailblazers any questions for Jesse or Sarah I'm curious if you see the accelerator program as something that might engage some people who want you know to expand or more right now can you say that louder uh the accelerator program the building electrification accelerator program could use some more people so if there's um some people in in the group it'd be nice if it was you know sort of representative but um that would be a great asset for the accelerator team to have some more people yeah I'm sure we have at least one or two people who might be interested if if they're not already aware yeah okay great I would I would throw out one other question maybe just like to ask all the groups was do do do people have a sense that the that the your guests at the group that were the non ecac people were felt like it they it was time well spent like was that the takeaway because multiple people had for us it was like I I don't know if I can give time to this like this seems like a waste of time and and not that they don't think we're trying and they just so I'm did people feel like was that the sense there was positive use of their time yeah why don't we um let Darcy and I talk about our group and then maybe we can circle back onto that Darcy do you want to kick us off why don't you do that Laura okay let me time myself here um yeah so we were the last last group to go um the transportation I think we had a good good mix of folks um Darcy and I I don't think spoke at all I think we really just listened which um was great um we had a lot of conversation there I don't think there was any times where it felt like it was forced or um folks didn't have things to say um one of the challenges of our group which we knew from the beginning was that it's a bit of a mixture of things put together it does connect through non-building infrastructure but transportation waste community health um communications you know it's hard to speak to all those things at one time so we really focused mostly on transportation although aspects of health and communication and a little bit of waste did come through um I felt like one of the things that resonated with me a lot was um this feeling that I've had in that I think we have a sense of what technologies we need to use but we don't always have a sense of what impacts that has on different people um and so something that came up in our group which was news to me um was that when folks ride the bus they only are allowed to bring three bags and so that really limits people from going grocery shopping or doing going to the survival center and getting their box or doing things like that on public transportation um and so I think before this conversation if we hadn't had this conversation we might have said all right well climate action plan we're pushing public transportation and not thought about the fact that that's actually not useful to people that want to use that for all of their transportation if they can't even go to the grocery store um so um it just highlighted for me the importance of these types of meetings um and what we're trying to really get get out of it um I thought that our group were pretty positive I felt that folks at least the folks on the call that are more sort of um engaged in other town councils and town meetings so this is you know they I've seen them in other things um felt like it was useful and important and they got something out of it as well which I thought was a positive um so that was good we did talk a bit about COVID and the relationship between COVID and um not only sort of short-term kind of reduced bus routes because of students not being here um but also the challenges of taking public transportation in the middle of a pandemic um and sort of some some challenges that folks have around even carpooling where they used to be able to carpool to pick up survival center boxes and things not feeling as comfortable doing that in the middle of the pandemic um so we did have someone from pv pc on our call which was great and we had um love who is Ben Ezra who's the director of their survival center and that was helpful because they were able to give um specific as someone who grew up around the area and lives in the area and who traveled without a car for a while was able to give specific personal details as well as sort of details from their experience with the survival center which was which was super helpful um anything i i missed and a lot of talk of course about what you know kind of the complete street needs of um safe places for people to walk more lighting um cycling Darcy you have anything to add um i guess i i felt like um people were um accepting of the format that we had um and the questions that we put forward and i think um as Laura said i think it might be because they there was a there seemed to be a general understanding of what we were trying to do which hasn't always been clear to me by the way so um but uh i i felt like they sort of understood how how this was supposed to be an introduction to the group to each other to the issues in general to the overview about the different issues and um you know my impatience about getting to climate action issues you know what are we going to do about this um was not something that we uh you know i think people felt it felt like people were okay with allowing this process to evolve um so um yeah uh it seemed like a a group that is going to be able to work together nicely um we didn't have any issues of translation or interpretation or anything so it you know it moved along pretty quickly um so um anyway yeah that's about all i have to say about it um i'm i'm interested to know if people will be will respond with the homework questions and what we're going to do with the answers to the homework questions how will we use them or is it what you know what kind of exercise is that great um the only other quick thing i'll add just from looking at scanning the notes again is um i think the section here on sort of connectivity is challenges is a really important one um and one mentioned here that i didn't mention was the sort of access barriers to economic mobility that folks have because of our reliance on cars in this region um and so that sort of made me think about the the concepts we we've been talking about from the beginning around like what does a thriving amherst look like for everyone a low carbon thriving amherst and i think that's something that will need to be addressed in that model um any questions for Darcy or i or them or else i think we can start to talk maybe about these more bigger picture next steps no um maybe just quickly give the other groups a chance to answer jesse's question around like did folks did you feel like anybody felt like it was a waste of their time or um indifferent or seemed satisfied my my sense is that people will be eager to meet again did did the people who said it was a waste of time um have they indicated that they're they're going to be coming back i don't know the answer to that and i also want to i want to kind of characterize i don't think that was the phrase per se although those words may have been used but it didn't feel like this is a waste of my time it was more like i'm concerned that i don't have time both in hours and minutes but also emotionally to do this you know to put my heart into this and see it and so i think it was a it was a more and so i guys okay i may know uh if if our if our group has changed but i that i haven't heard anything about that the only comment i yeah i go ahead guys i was just gonna say um to my knowledge nobody is not participating after the first meeting um and i would say that um one thing for everyone to just sort of be aware of as they think about the way that community leaders were sharing is that one of the best things about this process is also one of the tough things is that it opened up based for people to share in a way that they feel like somebody who has a little bit of power i know you guys are clear about you don't have decision-making power but um is listening to them and for a lot of folks it's it's the first time after a series of really trying for a long time and so the frustration or the you know sort of the concern about is this going to make a difference may be more reflective of the the years of experiences building up to this moment in time than this isolated like climate um ecac project so i would maybe encourage people to consider that you know this energy not not put pressure on you all so individualized and the one climate action can but um give us the opportunity to think about um how to give give a diverse group of community members access to participation across the board in town because there's a desire yeah i think that's really well put because you can um uh and i think the in the the building's task group was was probably the bumpiest of the task groups um but it was also the setting in which the that it's like some of the key issues really came up and that you know that's part of the deal it's like made us uncomfortable um and i thought that was that was great and you know john hornick from the affordable housing trust had really brought up that issue um and uh and you know i think he he brought it up in a uh you know in a way that really set the tone to what you were saying jesse um you know i'm not sure this is one of those things like everybody's language is not fantastic every time it's like you know we've got to be willing to accept how people say things uh and uh but i thought it was a great it was a great comment about and and really gets back to sarah's uh perspective of hmm and that's the matter we have to do something here and john's comment was i don't want to be on an advisory board i want to be on an i want to do advocacy the word he used was he wanted to be an advocate not an advisor and that was the specific language i think that jim's mentioning yeah i also i just want to say i am really thought it was a great meeting i am really glad that this that people were comfortable enough to say how they really felt and i think it is seemed very clear to me that understanding that and working with that is our task or one of them i was just going to say that uh just the one comment i heard again not a great sample size but one comment i heard from somebody after the meeting was um they wish they would have been a little bit more prepared to know as to what to expect uh at the meeting um and so maybe we can think about that for the second meeting uh i don't recall whether we to what extent we sent out an agenda ahead of time uh uh he he was just taken um uh was a little bit surprised with the with the direction and scope of the of the conversation um and um uh you know maybe there's an opportunity um in in form or or layout sort of what what sort of the goals and objectives are for you for the for the each meeting and agenda a little bit more explicitly if that makes sense um ahead of time i heard that comment too from one of the participants uh same type of thing and also a suggestion that the homework be more directed about climate action planning in the in the land juice group i didn't hear any complaints i haven't communicated with anybody who participated after after the meeting um i was a little disappointed we didn't have more in the way of farmers involved and so much of the conversation revolved around using land for recreation and um valuing the land in that context not so much as farming or for other resources so with that group i had trying to imagine how we would go forward i it's gonna be hard to imagine turning the corner to talk about carbon sequestration or things like where could we put pv arrays that wouldn't be detrimental to these people's minds um and i would really like to see more input from farmers we could talk about soil um carbon farming carbon sequestration and um forestry practices that can help us with carbon sequestration so my own thinking was that yeah if we were doing a recreation plan this this was great this would be a great start on that if we're doing a using lands to suck up carbon i'm not sure how we're going to get there in three meetings um yeah i think that's a i think those are two important things that are sticking out in my mind um both what you just said steven what andrew said earlier which is like we have three meetings we're not going to do it all in three meetings so what are we doing for the next two meetings that is setting us up to have a successful continuing um engagements not the right word but bringing community members in and moving forward with the plan that also and then as a committee how are we ensuring that the plan is actually useful and getting implemented so with that i'm going to move it to jim and lauren to answer both of those questions immediately no problem so i have a couple of things to say sort of about those thoughts um and um and you know i'll say them sort of concisely and then you guys can bat them around a little um and probably the most important one is that part of this process is uh to figure out what questions we're answering um and the committee sort of walked into this thinking we know what the questions are and i think one of the things we're discovering is that actually we didn't quite know what the questions were uh and uh and so that first step process is really okay what are the questions we need to deal with here uh and uh and i think in fact two of those meetings spread did a pretty good job of doing that um so i'll stop talking now well i was hoping you know the agenda was to come up with principles um knowing that we might not get much farther than that um in these three meetings and i didn't feel like we got anything concrete you know so i just think in the next meeting in addition for us we're going to introduce this really technical and it's hard to get your mind around idea um could take half the time um but i think we really need to have more structure around um so you know what what are the criteria that this group would want to put on the kinds of projects we would do um i think that makes sense uh um and i would hesitate to say that no principles came out of that meeting but one of the principles that came out of that meeting is if people are going to be able to use a cca structure it has to work with fuel assistance that's something we can do uh one which is not imminently obvious in the cca structure just saying i've now read quite a lot about what's going on with it and uh um and one of the other things was the issue of cost and that cost is going to be a big factor for a lot of people and it's a attackable in a lot of different ways uh those are all things that are pretty good pretty good items to work on within the structure of defining a whole set of sort of renewable and energy functions um i mean there are things that are the the cost thing is not necessarily new but sort of understanding the role plays is probably valuable uh um so yeah uh let's leave it let's hold on to next steps for a little bit um i think laura you had a second question what was the second question um no i don't think i i mean i was just sort of summarizing what i heard so they weren't really questions cool and i think that there are definitely people who want it to move into the realm of action and i i think that people are going to be excited about that um one of the things um just and this can bring us into next steps potentially as well but um and just noting the time that we have about 20 minutes left um one of the things that that i think may be a tangible next step for everyone to do is take the excel spreadsheet that we got which is really helpful it has all of our task groups and all of the previous strategies grouped together um i would almost i almost think we need to add a column there on sort of take notes and takeaways from the the outreach group of you know anything we heard that impacts this so you know expanding pvta i'm looking at ours expanding pva to make them more frequent like i would write here yes and you know figure out the bag limit thing and and other things that we've we've talked about we talked about in our meeting so i think that would go along that would help make sure that we're translating the information from the notes into our working documents um so that we're not losing some of this material yeah that could also help sort of doing the print sort of figuring out what principles are are coming out of of all of this absolutely so let me let's just real quick talk a little uh about next the next steps in the next meetings and then we'll get back out of that and you guys have your meeting back um uh um so our sort of after this process and we sort of had this vision it's like okay well you know we do a thing where we set principles we do a thing where we then talk about strategies then we do a thing where we talk about implementation um that does seem uh seem ambitious however i think people are ready to talk about strategies and i think that's something that we need to do and so we're we're thinking about ways in which to seed that conversation in a way that will generate a a useful uh both conversation and information out of it uh and i think that idea of going through the spreadsheet and and annotating those uh strategies is going to be really useful and then we might pull a couple of them out for the meeting and to talk about here are the things that we're uh sort of trying to accomplish here's what we heard about um sort of the principles of how it should work here are you know three things that we think would be actions that would support that let's talk about those actions what do they mean and then are there other ones we want to do we really think are important and that gets us into that conversation pretty directly uh in a way that potentially could be really valuable um you know obviously managing conversation is part of it lauren does that make sense to you i mean this is sort of what we've been talking about yeah i think the way i've been thinking about it is is applying the principles to some some of the strategies that are have been elevated or that we have a sense are the most important from the group conversation so far and kind of testing that assumption and letting a conversation emerge around that um but not necessarily going through a laundry list of strategies just using those example strategies again to really pull out the thought processes behind what makes those strategies valuable or or important and what needs to to change in order to make them align fully with the the principles so how how are you thinking of coming up with those are the the team leaders are going to come up with those strategies that was your idea uh yeah i don't i i i guess i assumed that they would look at the list and figure you know prioritize that the group would prioritize it but but i'm glad to prioritize it well i think we know we can start without the prioritization and maybe pick three two or three on the list that that we already on the list that we already have that ideally came up in some way in conversation and in the first meeting even if tangentially and then use that do that to go through and then step after that would be more prioritization of all of the ideas would be my sense it's yeah i would suggest we try to select a representative set of of strategies not try to be exhaustive but maybe some representative ones that really test some of the values that we've uncovered or at least explored a little bit in the first meeting because as i mentioned before at the end of the day this is hard because there's hard decisions and trade-offs between values that that people have to make and i i i think it would really be helpful to really stress the participants and and have them stretch their own thinking about some of these strategies so that we get some sense of where these trade-offs might be again it's not a great sample size but but at least you know between some of our community leaders some of the low income some of the better off to do participants of where those values sort of meet and compete potentially with each other because i think that's really what we need what would be really helpful coming out of this so we have some basis of putting together some set of strategies for this plan that hears is sensitive to to how people are thinking and willing and able to make make some of these trade-offs so you know i'm a little bit concerned about strategy of let's increase public transportation everybody says great but but you know that's not the that's not that's not the difficult issue the issue is well why does PBTA have a three bag limit maybe there's a safety issue you know maybe it's it's uh maybe it's a state law who knows but it's not it's not there it's there for some reason it may be a crazy reason or it may not be but it's there for a reason and so you know you're gonna you're gonna give up something if you get rid of that law it might be public safety or or something i don't know uh but um but that's just an example but i think in any if we can think about these strategies as as really being test cases to stretch the thinking and and and and really be to some extent it helpful to be stressful uh to these participants you know really see where the where they're willing to and able to bend uh on on uh competing values yeah i can i just get a clarifying jim quick thing real quick Darcy jim you mentioned the three meetings the principles the strategies what was the word you used to describe the third meeting implementation okay thank you i just want to get that in there thank yeah i was just going to say that i i don't think the initial meeting was organized to necessarily be all inclusive of the issues that we might end up thinking are important um and so for example in the transportation issue we really focused on on um the pvta and we did also focus on connectivity with and bicycling and so on but we never once mentioned um electric vehicles or electric vehicle infrastructure which is i'm assuming going to be a piece of any climate action plan so anyway i'm just saying that um that most of our topics probably have four or five main subheadings or maybe fewer some of them might even have fewer um that we could just put out there and and get people suggestions as to what the subtopic should be or what what what our goals should be under those areas might take on the land use strategies that are listed in the spreadsheet they are ideas that people wrote down on sticky notes or wrote on the paper easels that we had at a couple of public meetings both in the resiliency meetings that we had a year or two ago as well as a couple of meetings that the ecac has run so some of these ideas are are there but they may have been proposed by one person and so these ideas have not arisen collectively they haven't necessarily even been seconded by a second person in some cases so they're almost like seeing this kind of a hodgepodge of ideas that have come from the people who happen to be there and they persisted in our list um so i would be a little uncomfortable working with these as the priorities or as the strategies that have come up from the town because i don't think they are entirely representative so we maybe need to think of a way of of getting more ideas or us distilling the list and then bringing that back to town to the community so that people could confirm or disagree and then we refine the list subsequently i think the list needs more work second thing on this list is an awful lot of these things i think probably be handled by committees other than the ecac food and agriculture or green infrastructure some of the zoning i think we may want to see if we can find some committees in town that may be able to take some of these projects great ideas and maybe they're better positioned to move them forward yeah um steve good point and i think yeah right now this is still just everything um but what i could almost see happening is if at the next meeting the next task group meeting the task group co-chairs together with the consultant team sort of identified two to three representative topics to kind of talk through from a strategy perspective then i think before the final meeting the task group co-chairs and the and our group together is going to need to take that take those examples of how we think through strategy around ideas and then apply them to the rest of these lists and clean it up and start to focus it in a little bit um and then maybe that's the list that we share with the full group at the third meeting or maybe it's we're not even there yet and that's the list we share with we do another round or do something else in the third meeting and we share this list you know um i don't think we're going to sit in these task group meetings and refine this list i think that's the work that the that we will need to do um and then share to make sure we haven't missed anything and maybe something we took off the list will come back up in discussion and that will be a reason why we put it back on the list but um there will be some work for us to do we i don't this this is not ready to share um with the full group yeah yeah darsie i would also add that um back in the beginning of this process uh lanay and very graciously shared um a list of different communities on each topic that were leaders in that area so those you know what the climate action plans in those communities it are highly relevant to what we're doing here um and so i i analyze transportation and waste because those were under the category of my committee so i you know i'm hoping that we can share that with the group so that they can see well i don't know if we're at least going to share it with us at some point but i don't know at what point the this group is will be ready to see something like that if i were on if i were a community member in one of these groups what i would want to see is an example of what the end product might look like um i would like to see a climate action plan that's like a model i guess i'm i'm just thinking what i would want if i were in one of these groups and i um was told that this was part of our task that this is what we were helping to to to produce eventually so darsie this is gazette hya um can you you guys hear me yes yeah i was just gonna um say that one um thing that we're working on for the next meetings potentially is something similar to what you just said you think would be helpful um not so much in presenting a plan from another town but presenting some examples of ways that um different organizations or groups of community members have worked towards integrating resilience into the work they're doing and um we're working on having like a brief presentation for each group of a program or a group of people that have already had positive outcomes um for just that reason that it's helpful to see a real-life example um and that that can sort of be a counterbalance to um some of the uh just not being able to picture things and feeling a little bit doubtful about possibilities if you don't have a tangible example um so for one of the groups i believe it's land use we're going to have the mobile market um participants uh do a little presentation uh and and we're working on other ideas for the other groups for that um reason that you mentioned that it is helpful to see something actually um in real life that would be able to reflect some of the values that we're hoping to hold up in action and we want it connected to climate mitigation too not just resilience so examples of climate mitigation actions yeah i i think that's nice great to have those examples but you know we're supposed to end up with a plan that outlines what we're going to do in the next five years to reduce our emissions by 25 percent so that's pretty concrete just saying so i think so what i'm hearing is that those example you know it sounds like you all are appearing to to bring those examples which i think is important um agree with Darcy these to include mitigation as well um and it sounds like we also are going to bring a couple specific actions to road test a bit with the group um for the next meeting so looking at the time here is there do we know when we're aiming to have the next meetings yeah great question um so we're looking at the last week of august which is a couple of weeks away since vacations are also something that we need to consider um i think in all likelihood we can do the scheduling the same way we did last time where i'll look at all of the the availabilities that everyone's given and come up with a couple of options in the hopes that um at least one will work for both co-chairs um and um set it up with Stephanie from there with the webinar and everything like that um does anyone foresee any issues with the last week of august you're talking about the last full week of august or yeah yes the last full week of august so the week of the 26 or 24th sorry and most likely an evening again um i will leave that question to guzikaya because they have the information about um which groups have different timing requirements guzikaya uh guzikaya's phone uh called dropped so so she's back on but um would be the same right probably as it was before it might be you might have to elevate them to be able to speak um but uh while you're doing that uh um what was it gonna say uh yes so the timing uh the ones that were in the evening will probably can probably be in the evening again uh so one of them whichever one it was was during the day um that i'm not remembering why that was but um uh and uh yeah i mean so if that week is problematic that's probably useful to know uh and that will also give us plenty of time to interact as co-chairs and and planning to get all the things together we need to get together and uh you know so the idea was not to be like running through the process but to actually be able to do the stuff we need to do to get ready for each one yeah um because we all have that is only two weeks away so um i think that yeah i mean i'm assuming we would have a co-chair and consultant meeting too before we could either do you know we could either do as a meeting or we could do whatever the co-chairs feel would be appropriate okay i mean we're up for it but it sort of depends on what you guys feel like okay okay so we'll look learn for information from you on that scheduling um just really quickly jim did you want to say something about this niche engineering oh that's a good point yeah um so um at the next ECAC meeting uh we're setting up a presentation by niche engineering who you met um three meetings ago or something uh um that team is about cow bush and uh her team member and uh they are gonna talk uh not super long but a little bit more in depth uh about um uh sort of resilience green infrastructure some infrastructure things that they have have done but would be appropriate for amherst and why uh as a way for the committee to start to understand what those things are because that seems to be an area that is the committee has less expertise in uh and to sort of try and introduce some of that expertise into the process i thought that was like a product of the land use infrastructure task group yeah the the idea we sort of talked about it a bunch of different ways um and decided that probably it would be useful but it might tie into a couple of different groups and so it might be useful for all of the co-chairs essentially to be able to to hear that uh to bring it into the to the uh to the task group process we're also a little nervous about using that much time in the task group process um because we have kind of limited time uh and to try and make it more efficient by you know having the the ECAC members be able to observe that stuff process it figure out where it fits and then take it into the respective task groups it's giving you more work i know okay oh go ahead jesse i wasn't at the meeting where they originally presented um did they talk about uh carbon at all in that meeting and if if not that sounds more i mean i'd be just as happy for them to to send me something to read about green infrastructure but i'd rather hear about and understand how they the reduction of carbon if that was gonna take up our our meeting time that's just my two cents yeah part of the thinking is that uh in just that way the committee is heavily focused on carbon and that just providing a little bit of grounding in what is you know what are the resilience issues we're talking about here that might be useful uh in being able to tie i mean those things all get tied together uh and they can certainly talk about sort of the carbon impacts of green infrastructure and some of the carbon impacts of uh different uh you know infrastructure settings uh that have been implemented in different settings like what you were saying garcy about uh um one of you garcy randra um i'm sorry about uh um electric uh vehicle infrastructure i'd be interested to jim in um having that in writing or not in writing it's not the right word but like having those specific project ideas written out whether it's in a presentation or just by in words so we can see what they are and how they may or may not already be included in some of our lists and what questions we might have i think having that in advance will be extremely important to make that a great that sounds like a great idea yeah a good good conversation um so sorry go ahead just seconding what jessie's saying i'd rather spend our time being able to ask questions you know we're pretty fast learners so i think we need to be stepped a lot okay great yeah um so no we all need to move on so um in terms of next steps we're preparing for our next task group meeting um i think task group co-chairs should decide amongst themselves if they want to have a meeting with lauren and jim and ghazi kaya and everybody um um maybe looking for you know like you did before a more a more finalized agenda with some talk you know kind of how it will be facilitated i think will we will help that and apologies if you've already sent that and we haven't seen it yet but or i didn't see it um and then looking to have the next task group meetings the week of the 24th so i think we should be open to the idea that potentially if that's the case we may or may not have our etac meeting that week we'll see where our house scheduling works um but let's stay tuned over email to to move those forward does that sound good great um okay well then i think we should go ahead and and close the meeting unless anybody else has any last minute things i just have one thing i i was contacted by the sunrise group uh today and they wanted an update on what we were doing and um i don't know whether it's too late for them to be included in our task groups if they want to be um but i just thought i would throw that out there they asked you know how can we be involved how can we help this process so you know i told them i wasn't sure that they could hop on the task groups at this point yeah i think last when we talked about you know if there were folks that were not able to come to the first meeting then maybe we would try to have a one-on-one conversation with them before bringing them in so i think the same could apply to a representative from the sunrise group yeah i could tell them ask them if they want to do that yeah which i will do great okay um everybody stay cool and uh we'll be in touch meeting in front all right thanks learn thanks all