 Okay. Thank you. We have two attendees right now. Three. You can see the count, right Kathy? Yeah, I can see the count. Okay, I want to welcome everyone to the district one meeting that we're Sarah and I are hosting as district counselors and I'm just going to wait a few minutes as other people join us but the agenda was posted on the web and the first 40 minutes to an hour or whatever amount of time it takes us will be focusing on the UMass and Amherst response as students have come back to campus and COVID and Tony and Nancy will lead off with this. I think Angela why don't you put the agenda up so people can see who our panelists are. I'm just waiting a little bit to more people have told me they were attending this than I see in the attendee list. Okay, and can you make it a little bigger or a lot bigger? Is that better? Yeah, that's great. So the first part of this will be focusing on COVID with leading off with Nancy Bafoni and Tony Maroulis and they told me that they're a dynamic duo so they have a way of working this together and they have a few overhead charts that may help answer some questions but may prompt other questions and then Paul will come in but most of this period is for people to ask questions so I want to encourage you to ask questions either by using the raise your hand function when you log in or we've also opened up the Q&A box where we if you would prefer just typing a question in a few people sent questions in in advance but not that many of you did. So Sarah do you want to say hi also and welcome everyone. Hi everybody from district one I'm glad you came it's always good to see everyone or at least hear you. Yes definitely so thank you all and I'm literally just going to turn this over because I don't want to have it be talking heads you know at some point we'll figure out whether we can bring attendees into meeting safely so we can all see each other but right now this is the best we can do. So Tony Nancy it's yours. Hi well thank you so much Kathy and Sarah for joining us today we're really excited to be here I'm Nancy Bafoni I actually lived in district one for many years just north of campus and now I'm over in district two. Tony do you want to introduce yourself. Sure hi everyone I'm Tony Morales executive director of external relations and university events I used to live in North Amherst but that was a long time ago I've lived in Pellum since 2004 so thanks for having us here today we look forward to taking questions. So as Kathy said we do have some presentation that we can share and we want to just kind of give you some overall information and then we're looking forward to your questions. Can we Angela can we pull up the PowerPoint and so we can scroll through to the yep thank you so we want to just start talking a little a little bit about testing let me say you know I also want to thank Paul for having us here as well we have worked really closely with the town we always have but especially since this global pandemic hit we have been talking quite regularly we have weekly meetings Tony and I do with Dave and Paul where we talk about any of the issues that are coming up with COVID related and not COVID related. Tony can talk a little bit about the on-call meetings that happen on Mondays every Monday during the semesters and also since the end of July we've had our fall reopening town gown working group that has been meeting every week so it's really been great to make sure that we've got collaboration and partnership throughout this process so when it comes to testing some of you may be aware that we have opened up a pretty extensive testing site at the Mullen Center it's our public health promotion center is what we're calling it and since August 6 we have done over 46,000 tests these are all asymptomatic tests if we can go to the next slide so we've got a dashboard that we update every day as we get the results back and so I do have the URL there if people want to look at it closely for testing we have required that all students who are either living on campus or living off campus but accessing the campus because they have face-to-face classes they're required to be tested twice a week our students who are living off campus were tested upon arrival and were tested a couple times a week for the first couple of weeks and now we are strongly encouraging all of them to come in twice a week and we've had pretty good response to that the students are coming in and getting their tests we're also testing faculty and staff regularly if they are accessing the campus so as you can see we have a very low positivity rate so far we're really thankful to our students and the broader community for following all of public health guidance social distancing and wearing masks we think that this has really led to this low positivity rate and we have been encouraging everybody to stick with it if we can go to the next slide one of the questions that often comes up is what happens when someone tests positive and so we do have additional information on every case this is just a screenshot but you can go in and you can see if it's a student faculty or staff members tested positive where they are living and where they are doing their quarantine and isolation we have a really long history of working very closely with the town of Amherst public health department and we really value that relationship and so when we have someone who is a student who is living off campus we do the campus does the contact tracing but we do that hand in hand with the town of Amherst and if somebody is living off campus and needs to be quarantined we'll have a conversation with them and find out what is what are the current living conditions and is it appropriate or the inner space that is safe to do so if they are not we will offer them space on campus where they can quarantine so a big piece of this has been also around messaging and how we're talking to the talking to our students in our community if we can go to the next slide so we've created a public health campaign that was really driven by our students they said to us loud and clear that they do not want to be told what to do that they really want to be viewed as part of the solution and so we have really leaned into that and leaned into culture of compliance so we can just scroll through these next couple of slides these are just examples of some of the signage that we have on campus and that we have shared with our off-campus landlords especially at the apartment complexes and we've been using social media pretty aggressively around some of the messaging and we'll be having a very visible bus campaign in the next few weeks as well so we're really talking regularly and and pretty strongly with our students and our campus community about expectations for social distancing wearing masks and how to be safe so with that I'm going to turn it over to Tony to talk about some of the conversations in the neighborhoods as well. Great thanks Nancy so one of the things that you may have heard about Paul has talked about this and it's been in the paper is what we call our knock-and-talks which are our outreach efforts and also follow-up efforts in certain cases and so if we can go to the next slide so a knock-and-talk you really is a little bit of our old-fashioned PR and what I mean by that is not public relations it's personal relations we're getting to know our students in the community we are um able to engage face-to-face as Nancy was talking about and the town has messaged this out and I just love this phrase we are trying to create a culture of compliance with our student body and get them to be a part of the team. Kathy do you have your hands up? Yeah Nancy um Angela can you probably put it on slideshow just make I gotta text someone ask the slide be larger and I think if you put it on slideshow and if you flip to where is it people can't read it so if you just go to where he was sorry Tony didn't And so if we can just go back one slide Angela thank you so that that culture of compliance is something that we're trying to create and working in partnership with our students because that is the best way to work with a public health message that that is you know how the town is working with all of our all of its residents and this is something that we've found successful over the years so a big part of what we do during these knock-and-talks is we emphasize what an appropriate behavior looks like in a pandemic and you know we give people uh you know really try to try to give them the guidelines for for what you know how to be safe and if they are having gatherings what a safe gathering looks like and so that's 10 people or fewer where there's physical distancing where there's masks and where people are playing within their pods so you know we really try to you know instruct as as much as possible give the best advice on staying well below the governor's guidance of 25 that is for any kind of outdoor gathering um so we also have we do some education and party smart registration which is not a a licensed party but it is again a tool and some guidance for our students on how to have safe um safe gatherings this year we call it our COVID edition the idea behind party smart is that if there is a gathering and then there is a noise complaint that is associated with an address the uh resident will get a call from the local uh from Amherst police we also have this program in Hadley as well and maybe starting it in Sunderland very soon uh but that call will give the uh the resident 20 minutes to uh disband the party and get it back under control or the police will come and then a noise violation will be written so it's a way for our students to manage their parties it's been a very successful program well over a thousand parties have been registered in the last several years with very few and I'm sorry I don't have the stats with me but very few um of those uh events have led to any police action so um so we're really pleased how that's working again walk and talks are all educational in nature and if we can go to the next slide so this is our team as you can see it is a great uh town gown mix of us this is something that we've been doing for several years we have a couple of new additions to this team one being Kat Newman who is not only part of UMass off-campus student life she was a part of the team there but she's now the town of Amherst COVID I have ambassador down here she's actually the leader of that effort Paul brought her aboard and so she's doing work in you know two areas doing double duty for both the town and the gown now we also have our COVID ambassadors out in public working with us as well going on these knock-and-talks as well as team positive presence and of course we have the best addition and that's Winston the Amherst police comfort dog who has just joined our team in the last week and a half and if we can go to the next slide you can see I get to hang out with Winston every now and then which always makes me happy so as he gets bigger he's going to have a lot more work to do and he's a great way for us to open and conversation and engage with students as we're out and about I like that you added Kat Newman and the dog Winston Tony you know I didn't even think about that Paul but good catch there cats and dogs that's what we're living together yeah we go to the next slide so this is just a little sample of where we visited this year this is not unusual we're out and about in all of these neighborhoods throughout the year there have been a couple of different places that are kind of new to us and and that'll happen each and every year as new houses are rented throughout the community South Pleasant Street is one example of you know an area that we normally have not had to concentrate on before again some of this is just outreach you know that that happens proactively in some of those neighborhoods such as areas that we always know have a lot of student rentals such as sunset and fearing and in that area some of these are follow-ups to either COVID complaints that are received by the town or police action that has happened where we do stop by speak with the students about expectations going forward so these are again these are really great you know interactions for us one of the things that we're able to do this year is is ask about testing and and checking in with students whether or not they have been you know availing themselves of testing one of the things that we have found are not only students proactively you know going to the Mullen Center for for testing but they're you know working out packs with their roommates about responsible behavior talking about trying to keep gatherings very small it has been pretty heartening being out there next slide please and so you know one of the questions that always comes up is you know about discipline because I think that there is you know the thought that you know the town does work and the university doesn't in fact we work pretty closely together and this has been an ongoing way of working I'd say our you know the work that we've done since 2014 in the wake of the you know so-called Blarney blowout has been you know something that has been a model for for town-gown relations throughout the country it's sometimes hard for for residents to believe that in the town of Amherst and I understand that but a lot of things that we've come up with over the last several years have been stolen by other college communities and we're really pretty proud of that so we can go to the next next slide so you all may have heard about the UMass community agreement which was put into place this year for in the wake of the pandemic as we brought students back to the area we asked them all to to sign the agreement and you know good number of our students have that was however one of the things that you know people were a little bit confused about because the agreement is really an educational tool as much as anything else about public health and a pledge towards safety um is what kind of sanctions would happen if people didn't adhere to the agreement and one of the things that you know we just want to make very clear is that the agreement while there's a lot of fanfare around that it is always governed by the code of student conduct and if a student doesn't sign the code of student there's as a student at UMass they are subject to the code so um you know I won't read this for you I think you can all see this here but it is binding to all students of UMass regardless of location and that is really key when with regard to disciplinary action we can go to the next slide and so these are the sanctions of the code of student conduct I think the ones that are most relevant here are the ideas of or are the suspension or expulsion which I think a lot of folks want to know about in fact when there is you know any kind of police action if the police have a levy a noise violation ticket those where the action is taken that that is referred to the conduct office and the dean of students office at which time students we can go to the next slide have due process under the code disciplinary action is handled by the the student conduct and community standards office there are you know again there is due process the disciplinary sanctions are effective at the completion of the of the conduct process most cases are resolved within 14 days of course the sanction is always dependent upon the actual case right so for example there might be a noise violation in which students do receive a ticket but are compliant that would be looked at I'm just using this just as an example that would be looked at rather kindly throughout the conduct process and there may be the sanction may be to be reflective and there might be some restorative justice practices that go along with that however for more severe cases suspension or expulsion certainly can happen again the thing that we're trying to do here always is about education and about you know trying to do everything that we can to have students reflect upon their situation and and you know be able to make good and in most cases that this works 98 percent of the cases I think is you know we do not see a repeat violation so we go to the next slide so these are some of the examples of the behaviors that violate the code of student conduct disrupted behavior noise disturbances or disorderly conducts the noise disturbances I know are particular concern to this area also you know the public health issues you know all of all of these things can come under the code again we try to educate first before we ever get to the point of discipline but if you go to the next slide I think this might be it okay so we are done there so you know that is it in a nutshell however I think the one thing that I will say is that you know there there's a lot of concern about you know whether or not there are follow-up actions privacy regulations do restrict us from being too specific about the types of discipline that that we do meet out however there are aggregate we will be releasing aggregate data at midway through the semester and also at the end of the semester which is something that we customarily do so so I think that's it Nancy do you have anything to add on that that part just a couple of quick things one I would note that Tony and I both work in university relations we don't work in student affairs and campus life so we are not a part of the the disciplinary and and and conduct process so we can try and answer questions today but may have to get back to people because it is really not our area of expertise I will add though what we've heard a lot from both public health colleagues on campus and those in the conduct office just two things to remember when you know if we have students who are living off campus and they are suspended or expelled we no longer have any kind of jurisdiction over them and so and there's no guarantee that they are going to just go back to their parents house they may stay in in their rental and it can be a challenging situation at times then so we really try to avoid that if possible for many reasons but also from the public health perspective a lot of what we've heard from our team is that leading into this culture of compliance as opposed to strict discipline it impacts how we handle how our students trust us and how they interact with us and it impacts the success of contact tracing and so that's something that we're also very attuned to and and try and be sensitive to so sorry that went a little bit longer than than we talked about Kathy and Sarah but take any questions okay Paul do you want to add anything or do you want to go to questions you're muted Paul always happens I just have a couple points and then I have a couple slides to show and then I think going to questions there'll be lots of conversation after that if that's okay Kathy and Sarah okay so there's two initiatives from the town that we have done with one is the hotline and Angela Mills has been operating helping to operate the hotline with our other community participation officers it's a call in number dedicated to this and it's also an email address covid concerns at amristma.gov it's something that we are monitoring every day of the week uh Angela's here on weekends we are actually uh have to monitoring monitoring it for a couple weeks we're going to have it answered live during certain hours on the weekends when we think it's the busiest time so this is a number when you can call when you're not sure it's really rises to the level of calling the police it's not necessarily a noise it's just a concern you have like there are too many people gathered together there's a lot of people without masks there's whatever it is that concerns you we retake it we record the information we refer it to the right people we keep a running tab on what's being what's being called on so we can sort of track where the areas are of concern and what the topics of concern are and we review this at our regular covid core meetings so it started on august 30th these numbers are a little bit out of date but we involves the inspection services department the health department the police and our new ambassadors and the biggest sources have been noise that aren't quite rising to the level of calling the police but just uh noise i hear noise it sounds like it's too big a party type things gatherings mask wearing and questions about testing some people are calling saying i need to get a test i'm you know i've got my daughter coming and i'm not sure where to go and angeles gives them is a resource for all that kind of thing the second thing which is not moving oh yeah um we want to talk about the covid ambassadors and these this is a new initiative that the town has um and um so these these are uh this is we where we talked about cat newman who is also employed part-time at the university and part-time for the town she has set assembling this group of um people and it's not just students working it's it can be high school students it can be older people were recruiting as broad a group of people as possible to walk around talk to people engage with people who don't have masks if someone's walking downtown they don't have a mask they have a bag of masks they can offer them a mask uh and just generally to create this as tony referenced the culture of compliance and they wear these bright yellow t-shirts um and uh and again we're sort of we've got them working on nights and weekends for the most part and that's and and as as we ramp up additional people will have them out in different neighborhoods as well um and just if you see someone with a bright yellow t-shirt say hi to them they've been at the farmers marketing uh deal interacting with people and things like that so those are the two initiatives the town has taken on top of all the work the knock and talk and all the work that the university has been doing and I I do want to mention that um you know Nancy talked about how the town and the university work well together we do work well together um there is you know we're working through some really difficult things over the last few months um there's friction there's all you know if there weren't friction you'd worry um but I think really we're we're both both group groups are coming at it with you know good people with good intentions trying to do the right thing for our community and the university takes an orientation you know dealing with Nancy and Tony they really think about the community so recognize and just give a shout out to them for the good work that they're doing daily on this. Thanks Paul. I think we'll open it for questions and right now there's one hand up and three people have submitted questions on Q&A so why don't we start with the one hand that's up and Angela you it's Kathleen Carroll um so can you I bring Kathleen into the room so she can ask her questions hi Kathleen I think you need to unmute your mic it looks muted can we unmute her mic for her I don't know how to unmute her mic we can't hear you unless you unmute your mic. Yes you can. How's that Kathy? You are you are with us right now. Okay I have a couple questions um thank you very much everybody I live on Fisher Street which is one of the neighborhoods mentioned and we have had quite an active neighborhood up until this weekend when the cold weather came I have a few questions about what triggers um contact with the university administration is it a noise complaint or a COVID concern complaint? Well either I can answer that one first I know you had a series of several questions Ms. Carroll so um so this one um so you know the the knock-and-talk interaction you know could just be could come from the COVID hotline or it could be a police response so there were two addresses in your neighborhood um that that we have met with one on Harris Street one on the corner of North Pleasant and Fisher um in both of those cases I think one that you know I probably can disclose this without any kind of problem that that you know in one of the cases at the Harris Street location I think the outcome was really quite good uh one of the young women that lived there is has just joined the COVID ambassador team so uh so I think that certainly they they get it over there um that gathering received only a warning from the police the night that had happened and we had a um you know we had a really great talk with them and and I think that they're fully on board um the corner of North Pleasant for example um you know I think the details of of that particular incident the the one where the police were called was initiated by the the residents that live there themselves because of unwanted guests um we have also been in touch with the landlord so you know again I think that one thing that I want to put into perspective is that it's it's really a community response where we bring in um you know it's not just Bill Laramie and I knocking on the door and looking you know like someone's uncle uh showing up there but we get the landlords involved we we do have our peer ambassadors and you know I think that this kind of team approach really does work um we did not get to the one on your street on Fisher um Bill and I you know we goofed on that one we didn't have uh the address with us and that house really did not look like a rental so we didn't knock there uh we'll follow up we'll talk to the the folks there but the police action has been taken so that has been referred over to the conduct office by now um thank you I I think uh um I'd like to share that the neighbors on Fisher Street and Harris Street we have connected with um the landlords and the property managers and um I think we we've got a good mechanism mechanism in place to communicate with the residents there and at Fisher Street I think what the landlord did there after the complaint is that he immediately um organized a face-to-face meeting with the residents there and the neighbors and we had a very cordial socially distanced um exchange and they volunteered their phone number to have us call them if we have any concerns so I I'm really encouraged that you know it sounds like these programs are starting to work um but we have a lot of warm weather still coming up and I I think um I'm concerned about repeat offenders I'm also concerned about uh people and I know there's you have no control over this but it does happen because I've been here for a long time and I've seen it is that uh students from out of town will ride around in these neighborhoods and look for parties or look for some kind of gathering and they'll stop and um you know start partying and increase that I know that's nothing you can do um but I just wanted to share it I think that that's a great point though and we do have a little bit of a mechanism for that um this goes back to things that we've learned from you know years ago with um from 2014 I'm not going to refer to that incident one more time but um in the event that um a student from another institution uh is uh gets a police response and you know that information does get passed on to a dean of students office who sometimes that who can and often do uh refer those names to the dean of students offices at their respective campus so um so we've you know we've worked on some of that and you know and and made sure that uh the word gets out that people have come into our community and created unwelcome behaviors and so um so we do have a mechanism I mean I think that there's there's always things that you know we do share that information with other institutions so when the police does they do finally are issuing a citation do they collect the names of all four residents or just the person who answers the door uh it you know has depended in in the past you know it was generally one person might get cited this year uh that has has changed um I think and I'm not going to speak for the police action I can leave that to paul but um there have been uh multiple tickets uh on a location uh at most of the noise uh stops at this point right paul yes there have been so what does that mean so there was more than one one three hundred there was only one three hundred no there would be a three hundred dollar fund for each oh oh that's really good okay thank you you're welcome I I do have one other question and I know this uh well angela I think told me this was funded by a grant and I was wondering when the end date is for the grant so the ambassadors are funded through the town through a funding that we have called cares act funding and that's that money is lasting through december 31 at this point in time um we're hoping and hoping that it'll be extended into the next calendar year thank you I do want to make clear though that the the work that we're doing these knocking talks aren't funded independently and you know we're out there doing this work every year um uh you know this year I'm sorry I was a little distracted by my wife yelling at my dog um but so I'm sorry I just lost track but yes we do this we do this every year yeah so I just I think it's really important I think you mentioned this but to say again so every week especially during the academic year there is a meeting on monday morning that the fire department the police department the u s police department tony student service they all get together and go over the the weekend all the calls that came in over the weekend they review the the the sort of ambulance runs that were that happened and and the inspection services are there it's called the on-call meeting and they meet every week and go through the everything that happened over the weekend say what are we going to do about these are we seeing a trend are there things um you know tony is part of those meetings so it's it's and it's that's been going on for years so that's not new um but it's a really I think that's a really important thing because it means the people who are the boots on the ground are actually talking to each other saying I'm seeing a trend here this is what's happening so I think that's a really positive thing and a model for other communities as well okay I have um I think Mary ser I do see that your hand us up but I'm going to read a couple of these questions that were written and they came in just before your hand went up so we have one from joshna regate for Nancy buffon are the positive tests that you listed are they cumulative or is the numbers 18 that you showed just for one day is that the total total since you started testing so um the 18 and great question thank you the 18 is um the cumulative number since we started asymptomatic testing of our students faculty and staff so that was around august 6 I believe if you go on to the dashboard site you can see that it'll say as of right now I believe that there's been one case in the last 24 48 hours I think since the last reporting time period and there's trend lines so it'll show you you know what's happened over the past week how long is it taking for us to get results back so there's really it there's very rich information there and again this just focuses on the dashboard itself focuses on the asymptomatic testing if you go in and you look at the additional information about each case that does cover those tests that might be happening at UHS where people are symptomatic so we are reporting on all of that information but there's just 18 asymptomatic cases since august 6 okay the second question and comment I have and I just want to acknowledge that in the participant list that we can see but not everyone can see we have three counselors who are listening in but Alyssa Brewer she reminded us of this more than once but definitely the other night that this the number of people that can be in a house it's not capped it's capped at 25 but it's a measurement that's eight per thousand feet is that information always in your hands when you go to visit a house so a small house might not be able to have any more than eight people um so do you do you have that kind of information do the ambassadors have that information um in terms of what is a bigger gathering than is um and would be non-compliant with the state law so I just did text I texted Alyssa the answer to this just a couple minutes ago but um so the answer is yes we we so when I said 25 before I hope it was clear I think I think I said it that we're talking about 25 outside that that's the governor's regulations we're counseling everybody is under 10 for anything that they do keep it small keep it safe is the the way that we're you know messaging this out we have handed out through off-campus student life and the COVID ambassadors are handing these out as well we are handing out nifty masks like this this is our new mask mask but we are also handing out gifts our welcome bags and in the welcome bags are the regulations on what it what the size of gatherings are allowed by law so this 1000 square feet messaging you know which most most people do not have you know the the proper size requirements to have 25 in their house um students have that information in their hands um again the 25 number that that's the the governor's number we're talking 10 um however some students are very aware of of what the governor's regulations are and um you know most of them are trying to abide by staying below that threshold no matter what so Tony am I right I know that maybe at the end of August there were some slightly larger gatherings but um since then I believe that most of the responses um you know police responses have found that the number the gathering sizes have been very low for the most part yes I think that there is a very small percentage about two percent that have been over um over 12 I think that um and I think Scott Livingstone said that Chief Livingstone said that at our last town gown meeting um so um you know we're confident that students are getting it from a numbers perspective okay I think I'm going to bounce back and forth between the Q&As and writing and um let's call on Mary Sair Mary has her hand up and bring her in Angela and Mary you need to unmute yourself um you're on okay thanks um Mary Sair um Pine Street in Amherst so I had just three questions I don't um one is do you know how many students are living off campus who are working just primarily remotely um no um we so this is a place where we are still working with our campus partners and our students um encouraging our students to be submitting their local address um so we um and I haven't actually looked at the numbers recently and I don't know Tony if you have but um I think we have a sense of it but we do not have um definitive numbers of how many are living in the community do you have any any sense like a thousand or five thousand or any ballpark figure so what I think what I can say Ms. Sair is that that we are um you know in talking with landlords uh the market was incredibly volatile leading up to the university's ultimate decision of having a thousand students on campus and then um you know going fully remote for for most students uh the there are vacancy rates um throughout the area some complexes are you know filled puffed-in village uh I think you know is is maxed out which um but there are several others with um vacancy rates so I don't want to put a ballpark figure on it but I can tell you that our off-campus population is smaller than it was last year we we did not get you know I know that there was concern that that there was um you know a run on apartments and overcrowding certainly there there's probably you know instances of overcrowding and that's something that we you know through our knock in talks and with uh John Thompson the building inspector and um you know we discover throughout the year and and we try to remedy but um we are certainly lower off-campus than we have in the past and so if our undergraduate population is 22,000 and we had 14,500 on campus last year or thereabouts um that difference is say 7,500 or 8,000 we're lower than that this year I would also just add and and we don't have any sense of numbers on this but you know similar to where we have um students who are um you know fully remote and living off campus um we know that there are um Amherst natives who are in college whose colleges are remote who have um decided they don't want to live at home with mom and dad and they are renting locally and doing their school remotely but so so not my point is not all college students um are UMass students or Amherst college students or Hampshire college students right now okay um another question would be if a student um tests positive and is in an off-campus house um is there follow-up for them to know that they're quarantined and that they're not they're not they're not going out into the community or the other thing is their roommates um and the other thing I'm actually quite concerned about um is what happens if a student is sick and feeling really you know awful um is there someone that gets them to a doctor or you know gets them medical attention so um if a if a student has positive we work really closely with the town of Amherst health department on contact tracing UMass will take responsibility for the contact tracing but we really do it hand in hand with um the town department um and that includes you know talking with roommates and finding out what the living conditions are like and it's really um an extensive program and we're doing this and I should note it noted this earlier our the reason that we have been able to do the 46 000 asymptomatic testing is because of our incredible students in the College of Nursing who are really helping to staff that and similarly with contact tracing um we in addition to professional staff we're working on this we've got students from the school of public health and now sciences who are actively engaged in this and it's really um it's been a great experience um all around for them the um so if a student has positive they're living off campus there'll be conversations about what are the living conditions can that person safely um quarantine or do we need to you know offer them uh space on campus if it if it's just not if they're not in a living condition where um they can safely quarantine so there'll be um lots of conversations and we'll we'll work with them to make sure that they are in a safe environment and that the people that they are close to are protected we as far as um if a student isn't feeling well they can go to um University Health Services they still have full access to University Health Services even if they don't have classes on campus and we will take care of them and support them as they need to be okay great thanks um one final question i've gotten noticed because i get alerts from not alerts but um information about UMass activities and i see there's going to be a homecoming and i'm just curious about what what that means it is um fully virtual it'll be just like this on zoom yeah they've got um well weeklong of activities of all different kinds but they are all virtual um we have done the same with our family weekend all of the activities are virtual oh thank you that i mean it's kind of disappointing i grew up in Amherst with homecomings and it was really fun yeah i mean it's it's tough but okay thank you very much that's all my questions okay i'll read out the other questions one of them um from tony cunningham actually goes with a question about do you know how many people are living off campus because she wanted to know if you know them do you know how what percentage of them have been tested so i think if you don't know how many are living off campus you can't i just the question was you know how well can you know that you're reaching that group and testing yeah so i could i can answer that part though um so so out of the 46 000 tests i can't tell you how many unique tests there are right now but if we went back when we were in the vicinity of 30 000 tests we had about 7500 unique undergraduates that were tested within the testing pool so um so you know that doesn't count that also counts those that are being there twice a week but 7500 uh is what we had in there so we're getting a large number of those off campus students uh and and so you know by opening up the testing pool now for you know or the testing opportunities twice a week um again i don't know what the new and updated numbers are but we're quite confident that we're getting most if not all of our off-campus students so the other night this is completely a segue that's not related but we were talking about the census undercount for upper for Amherst and one thought that came out if you know off-campus students can you promote have you have you registered have you been counted by this census so there's sharing this information to the extent you can with the town on where you know students are actually living in on off-campus would be useful for us to know about residents because those addresses and names change so frequently yeah and so we we have done that um and and i i know this is an important piece and i was actually a part of our census response um you know on campus they were that was easily counted because we had group quarters enumeration we were able to just send in a file that um had you know our relevant uh directory information and that that counted um whatever our last year's number was which i think was again four i said 14 five before i think it was 14 three because we were over capacity on the off-campus numbers where we had addresses we did give that to the census bureau um but it was notoriously unreliable um and what i mean by that is before you know we really still figuring out you know and we're doing a better job of that this year with getting off-campus student addresses and and and asking students to put in a local address but um you know i think the the data that we gave uh what we had we did give to the census bureau as well um i haven't kept up in the last couple of weeks where where our numbers are but um i'm hoping they're better than the 65 that i saw some some time ago um we are a difficult community to count and i think we would have had some great success because we had some good partnerships uh with the sga and with um representative dom's office but with the town and brianna sundra you know like with the complete count committee um i think the pandemic has just really thrown a wrench into all of this so i'm seeing that we have uh another question i'm sorry to take us off into the census land but it did relate to how many people are here living in houses um so this question is coming in from robin on um worrying about the risk of spread that um if a party happens and then people leave the party and move out um that just doing a noise violation um the noise isn't going to kill us but potentially the spread would kill us so do you some in some way know who was there and then is this part of the contact tracing it you know if you if then something happens this uh notion that a small gathering can infect a lot of people um it only takes one who then moves around so nancy do you want to take that or so i i could do it um so contact tracing you know i think as tonia and nancy said is that it it's divided up between the town and the university both the town and the university have a public health nurses we have dedicated teams who do contact tracing amherst college also has public health nurses or hired the school department also has a public health nurses and we're utilized in school nurses to help with contact tracing so they're very active on that they're they have certain metrics that they follow they're very diligent to contact tracing as soon as there's a covet positive case it happens instantaneously no matter what time it happens people start uh category categorizing who that person had contact with and they start calling them and talking to the people they've had contact with it's not everybody they happen to walk by or anything like that there are certain metrics that they use in terms of is this person likely to have some kind of um contact with the person who's covet positive to have received a viral load or whatever they call it the viral load um and they're and it's changing all the time you know they keep learning more as this disease progresses um so very aggressive contact tracing really done very cooperatively and uh the our public health director is who's also a public health nurse is talking with Ann Becker at the university multiple times a day on these these things um so you know the concern I understand the concern is that there's a party and then that's that's the worry that there's a party um and then it gets spread but you know it's the same approach we take for any gathering it's not just students it's any gathering um you know and it's so we we need to collect the data on who was in that grouping or something like that yeah I'm looking to see whether we have any other um one of the um questions that had been um okay another one just came in I think um it's uh this is from Meg Gage is it possible that we working with UMass could retute students to engage in positive community activity public service work together on a safety issue um so that it's sort of spreading I I guess is building on the notion of the ambassador program so um hi Meg um good good to hear from you um so yeah we do that in a lot of different cases already um I mean I think uh and we're open to any suggestions on this I can tell you that that we just had a meeting in the Grantwood neighborhood about three weeks ago um and these there but ongoing concerns within that community um or in that area around some student rentals there um we brought together last week or I'm sorry again three weeks ago we brought together a number of community members um and some student residents as well to sit down socially distanced outside in in a cul-de-sac and you know talked about ways in which we can mitigate some noise issues I mean that that neighborhood's built a little bit like a bowl so every bit of noise is amplified um but having the students there was great it was it was an opportunity for them to meet the residents um and and uh for some really good positive interactions and great ideas um so you know we'd love to replicate that uh in in different areas we um Bill Laramie uh and I have uh you know along with Sally Linowski we've done this also in the um uh Fearing Sunset area and you know happy to do that almost anywhere else um so definitely do that more um looking at the public service piece I mean I think one thing a couple years ago we released a report through community relations about uh the numbers of students that that do do volunteer service and I think this is a conservative but I had something like 9,000 students and 20,000 hours of community service within the community so we um many of our students are giving already um and um you know and there are formal connections to many organizations if there are 200 nonprofits in Amherst and I think there are um there uh you know formal connections all throughout so I can go on and on with this but um any ideas you have please get in touch with me uh because I think that we can make them happen so and just on a very direct impact has been with our elections where students had signed up to work as election workers because we were worried about having enough election workers a lot of people were choosing that it was not a safe place for them to work and we depend on a lot of people our normal folks weren't able to do it and we had an over an overabundance of election workers this year mostly because it was a lot of young people who came forward we had the athletic department reach out and say we we want to help get the vote out and do whatever we can help the town do and we're you know engaging with them to carry things around for us and things like that so I think there is an interest especially in the elections from our point of view uh or it's had a direct impact on our operations okay so we have one getting back to your testing program this is from Robin on the testing program a uh big compliment the testing program is extraordinary and it's well done and it looks like the majority of the positive cases have been on off-campus students so it's you want to go back to um that how do you reach out to off-campus students to make sure they're tested are they required to be tested if they're taking an online class and you think they're local you know so this not just waiting for them to ask to be tested so um is it just people who come on campus for a lab or is it mandated for all so for the students who are living off-campus but but coming to campus either for a face-to-face class or a lab or um they may have an essential job such as um our PV our UMass transit bus drivers they are required to be tested two times a week um similar to the students who are living on campus for the other students who are living locally but um are not um coming onto campus and they are doing all of their classes remotely they are strongly encouraged to come on twice a week for testing and this is something that we just expanded I think it was a week and a half ago last week I have to admit I'm starting to lose track of the days um in this what still feels like March um maybe April um so the um we were able to extend that um I will say that um it's even though it's not required we are seeing a really strong response to that and I know that when um you know Tony has shared that when they've gone out on their um they're knocking talks that you know to a person everyone is talking about oh I got my test I'm getting tested regularly um and if any student comes on to campus and goes to the Mullen Center for the test we're not turning them away we are um you know come in we will test you and we're actually about to start um promoting as well doing some the flu shots for our students at the same time because the governor is now mandating that students get a flu shot so we'll be trying to combine that with the COVID testing for students to make it as um easy as possible but we're still working to get that um ramped up okay I don't think I'm seeing any more hands up on this um so I if I don't I'll wait a second we have we have Robin with our hand up okay so Robin has her hand up okay I missed it okay so bring Robin in it's funny I don't Robin you need to unmute yep I just did hello hi hi you can hear me thanks um first of all Paul for answering that last question that I had posed about um the follow-up contact tracing the question that's still I'm still confused about is um when there's a party going on it's clear that the students are already present the risk has already occurred or it's possibly occurring right just as it would for any of us gathering so not again placing too much on this on the on the students being different than anybody else but we're looking at um a gathering that is large enough that has either breached the mandate or breached the agreement already the police have arrived because of the of the noise complaint is there a reason that information is not being gathered at that time that would enable actually accurate contact tracing because I can't imagine that two weeks later if a student decides to go in and get tested because they're not feeling well or it gets caught in the naysymptomatic test that they happen to be positive that they will have any understanding knowledge of who was actually at that party right I couldn't tell you if I went to a party of 25 people who was at the party so I'm just wondering is every time I've looked at the incredible systems you guys have set up it's amazing I think we should be incredibly proud of our community and the work that the university has done and the town has done in response to all of this this this year but that keeps coming up for me is that we're missing this opportunity for protecting the community there's a lot of education there's a lot of other stuff going on but in that moment where there's the potential for spread I feel like we're we're missing an opportunity to gather information that would help us mitigate that risk and I'm just wondering why we're not doing that thank you yeah I understand that I think part of it is just capacity we would not have the capacity to do contact tracing for all of those if every sort of gathering that people potentially could have been together and it could be a party of 10 or a dinner party of 10 so I think that's one of the challenges and also I mean what we're finding it quite honestly is that the students are being tested pretty regularly you know even off campus and they're you know they're showing their their their app saying I've just tested as negative so I think that my bigger concern is the community if there's a large gathering in the community and tracking it you know we see this at mill river right you go to mill river on the weekend it's a huge number of people hanging around yeah nobody's masked you know there's there's not a lot of education happening in that environment either probably and they're not getting access to to testing but if we are looking specifically just tonight at the student situation I don't we're not asking to have everybody contact traced if they haven't tested positive but if you've got a bunch of 25 kids standing there at least gathering their names and asking that question have you been tested recently if you haven't been tested your name has been given to the university you will be called in to be tested because you have already breached the community agreement you signed about not being at this size of a party and not social distancing so you've already broken the agreement so you need to go in and go get tested and need to demonstrate that you're not putting the community at risk that would be the only that's the only thing I was just thinking it's like that is that different than the police I mean is that is that is that an impossible task to do I don't I'm not just curious as to why we don't do something like that I think where our system is set up to respond to actual cases of COVID-19 not every potential gathering of you know in a church or a get there any place like that I mean and just one as a side note we have a higher two additional people to work in our parks and playgrounds during key times to be able to help manage those areas as well and to do education and have masks with them and things like that those those folks are starting this week as well on different schedules so going to grove park mill river all the all the major places so we can have more of a town presence what we what we learned is that Puffer's pond having a town presence there really helped manage that the Puffer's pond beach areas really successfully this summer that was one of our real worry worries worry spots and it came out really well and part of it was very informal but a presence and I think having a presence at the parks will help us on that you know in terms of I don't know I have kids and they can tell you exactly who is at every party that they've been to I don't think there's they don't have short-term memory loss like I do yeah no I appreciate I appreciate the the limitations of resources again just trying to figure out if we're missing an opportunity to mitigate spread and have the information at hand necessary to make that happen because you had mentioned that the registered parties you guys give them a 20 minutes heads up so it's you know they've disappeared right so you're you're again you're not you're not talking to the group at the moment identifying really how big a risk was this and it being noted as such I understand it's they're being fined for noise but the focus and my concern is just about how we're how we're dealing with the COVID rest at that time but thank you yeah thank you Robin so Angel am I right I'm not seeing I'm somehow missed Robin's hand I don't think there are any hands up I don't see any hands up either you are correct okay and I don't see any additional questions so I want to thank Tony and Nancy I think Paul is staying with us for the next topic and I want to thank everyone who submitted questions to raise our hand happy just just to draw your attention there are a few more questions okay Tony and Nancy okay more questions came in yeah Donna Baron asks is there a target timeframe for the university to make a decision about how many students will be invited back to campus this spring um that's what we're all asking um there is a planning process there's been a there's a committee that um you know was looking at all these issues I think that um that process will be expanded I would anticipate later this fall we will make an announcement there are um different academic deadlines that we're pretty aware of and want to be respectful of so um I don't have an exact date for you and I don't have an exact process but it is top of mind and the other questions from Ava Fredkin since students living in dorms are required to be tested twice a week why are off-campus students not required to do the same the on-campus students are required it's part of their residential life contract and and so uh being on campus has as you know we have more of a lever there to um compel students to do the testing off-campus is it's the same thing that we were talking about before and creating the culture of compliance uh with off-campus students uh they are um they're not under the same type of uh control is the wrong word um Nancy give me another give me a synonym there but uh I think you get the point um so what we do is that we again we're teaming with our students to bring them in the the numbers of unique tests are certainly making clear that our messaging is working and I and you know the um our students are coming in voluntarily to be tested um and being tested frequently so uh I think at this point because we're seeing such high numbers we're we're quite confident um that students are getting the message and want to be a part of the solution I would also just quickly add um that um another resource for us um in with messaging are our students parents and Tony and I are both um parents of UMass students and you know we pay attention to things from that perspective as well and um see what's on social media and I can tell you that we are constantly sharing our messaging with parents and I see it happening all the time where the parents saying yeah I told my my daughter and my son they needed to go get tested um and so that is uh another avenue for us and it's uh one that's pretty effective so and so the last questions from Kathleen she wants you to go back to that certain address on Fisher Street and make sure you give them a welcome bag and there's a request that for the next zoom call you bring Winston so I just I I love that note so I I want to thank the panelists and the other thing I I just want to remind us all is that Amherst has actually been doing great we the number of positive cases um is relatively small given the size of the the mobile population we're talking about so I think um the importance that everyone is hoping is that we keep it looking great we know we're heading into a colder season and the flu shots are coming um so so I I do think there there's been a huge evolution from our thousands coming back to not as many coming back what's the plan and suddenly there seems to be a plan and so I want to thank everybody um and to have a dog join our team is just sort of an additional piece so thank you very much for tonight and um both Sarah and I are gathering questions so more questions occur and I think we can capture the questions and the answers because this was recorded so we'll type it up we're thinking are there frequently asked questions that we can type up in some way and not just share with our district but with other districts so that so that you don't have to do the show everywhere um but I just want to thank you very much and I think we'll go to the next topic then thanks for having us have a great night too so Paul I think you're on with the North Amherst library sure so um I again will share my screen um so uh we had an anonymous donor step forward it uh who offered there was a back up so tell me appropriated funds to look into a feasibility study for um developing addition for um the North Amherst library which we did um an anonymous donor came forward and said I'm interested in that and um let's uh I'd like to fund the next phase of the project which is the design of the building and the construction documents so we could go out to bid with the intent that perhaps there'd be additional funds coming forward somehow to build the actual addition so to orient you I'm going to run side through these sites as fast as I can because I know the time we spent a lot more time on COVID than we thought so this year if at the bottom of the screen is the intersection or the new traffic lights that we'll talk about later on the right is Bonnegu road on the left is Sunderland road you're looking hey face on to the North Amherst library and behind that is the proposed addition the footprint the little gray area um the so at the bottom is the existing library there's the wheelchair lift with stairs and then the addition would include a meeting room uh two restrooms in a storage area with a handicapped access through to the back where there'll be a new parking area which is where the the um where people park now quite frankly um and that parking lot that was with the old gas station so this this is the design I'm not going I'm not an architect I'm not going to talk to you about the you know fenestration and stuff like that but um we contract with Coon Riddle to look at the historic North Amherst library and do an addition that was respectful of and reminiscent of the original building but not a copycat but they did I thought they did a really good job of bringing the major elements of the existing North Amherst library into the addition this is a rendering it's it sort of looked like it's sitting the middle of a prairie or something like that because they didn't do any of the background stuff but this would be the entrance from the parking area on the north side of the library which is where the gas station is so you would enter the library this way on the right is where the community room would be and on the left is where the restrooms would be and then you could walk up into the library this is just another view of it this is what it would look like from the rear of the building the new addition there'd be handicapped parking in the back as well I think that's it so and so where we are now is the town council has approved has accepted voted to accept the donation and to move forward on the project the next thing we will do is I saw some email traffic today contracting with Coon Riddle to move to the next phase the next phase will be to take that rendering and reduce it and get into more of the design elements and then at the conclusion of that come back with actual construction plans and then once we have the money in hand we can then go out to bid and actually do construction if all things line up accurately we'll be going out we'd love to if the money comes in in we'll be looking to go out to bid in the spring of 2021 and you know I just want to thank the anonymous donor for coming forward for this significant improvement to the Northammer's community it's not just an improvement to the library there aren't community rooms in North Amherst that you know the district counselors can really have a meeting it's not a large community room I think that holds 30 40 people something like that but it will be a big asset and a big important addition to North Amherst and also it's just to me it's like we need some good news and this is an exciting good project happening at a really tough time of everyone's lives so I think this will be a a jolt of positivity for the art community so so Paul is there also is there a phase where you have a building committee or community members can as they the design gets more solid they can see what it looks like send comments in yes so so again we're in this new COVID world so we're looking at different options and this is actually a really nice little tight project where we're looking at different options for people to be involved electronically and we can do sort of socially distanced meetings but but we're going to be doing all the work during the winter so we have looked at some programs Brianna Sunrid our communications manager where there will be a project page that sort of establishes not just a website but it's a way for someone who can't show up at a specific time to participate in the process see all the questions and answers that have been posed previously weigh in on their own and there's different aspects of it so we're we want to use this this project as a test case for that we of course would want to get members of the community to participate in terms of help guiding some of these questions you know we obviously need someone from the library to participate in this as well since it's really going to be their primary home and we want them to be involved we need people from you know engineers from the town to be involved and maintenance people from the town to be involved so we want everybody who's going to be impacted by this to have have weigh in during the design process so that we're not just designing in a vacuum and coming out and saying here's something that looks great without having touch base with everybody so we are considering a building a building committee a small building committee to help work through all these different aspects of it so are there any questions from people um raising hands comments let me see I just knew oh these are more so we have a raised hand in the attendees and we have two typed questions where would you like to start do the raised hands i'm not seeing any raised hands angela so there's something odd about my um so you call on them um i'm going to bring mary back in to the panelists room hi um can you hear me yes good um i just wanted to um thank the donor because i think this as paul said is just the most wonderful positive thing that's happening right now and um everyone i've talked to has been delighted by i downloaded the the i don't want to call them plans from the the town site and i just everybody is really positive about this and i think it's a wonderful way to um bring north amherst community together so i'm i'm just delighted and i i know a lot of people are so that's all i wanted to say yes it's good to hear thank you sweet so it looks like meg gaige is the other hand that's up okay i'll bring megan but while we're bringing megan there's a question does the plan include an increase in space for the books i think the addition is for the two restrooms a storage area which would be where you can return books in a community room you know we've talked a little about maybe should there be books or um in that in the community room but i think that the idea is that the it will not include additional space for books um so then meg is the hands they're up meg's in the room next in the room get on to mary's thank you to the donor and to the town and to paul for moving this forward when you have so much else going on a lot of our kids grew up going to that library and learning to read there and getting books out and returning them and um it's really wonderful to see that we're going to have a better library and uh it's just wonderful the donor did this so thank you and especially thank you also not especially thank you to the donor but also the town for actually doing this because so much is going on right now would have been easy for this to be pushed over so um one of the related questions so i just want we we're all thrilled and just so people paul went through the designs very quickly but anyone who wants to see them there will be two bathrooms and as he said we'll have a community room and we're going to be able to have access to it when the library isn't open because there will be key fobs so we can be scheduling meetings and it will be a public piece so one question that just came in i do know the answer to this but i'll let you say paul is there any plan to redo the street patterns are we still on are we still on a holding um pattern i know the library plan does not interfere with potential plans to redo the street patterns but what is the larger piece yes that's a really good question so when when koon noodle was doing the design we said we don't know what's going to happen with the street patterns you need to do it within the constraints of whatever happens in that intersection they were able to accomplish that successfully including the parking and everything um so there are there's no funding for any kind of changes to the street pattern up there i think the sort of uh intervening step has been the introduction of the new traffic lights which are you know we deemed our ugly version because it was sort of done pretty efficiently and uh relatively on the cheap it wasn't the right wasn't exactly what we would have designed typically um and so i think you know at for the time being we you know we have tried multiple times for mass works grants to redo the intersection um and they have not come to fruition the plans are still there the the hope is still there but at this point in time i can't offer any hope for that happening anytime soon okay um it looks like mary's hand went up again or is that from before uh hand went down or did she come back in no i'm i'm there um hi mary another quick question was the town bought the garage and i was just wondering it's kind of an eyesore and probably a hazard and i was wondering if the i don't know whether the town dpw or somebody um is able to just remove that and level it maybe i have it as part of the parking lot until road plans eventually get done so yes i mean it is an eyesore there's no question about that the only thing that we've had in mind and um was that uh when if assuming the construction moves forward on the library the contractor may want to use that as a staging area for for material and equipment as in a construction office and instead of bringing in trailers and storage units and so we sort of not moved on that thinking that um that might be a benefit to a contractor um and because it's it doesn't have use and for anything else you know we've looked at um activating the restrooms in there and it's there just beyond repair um but that was that's the only that's the main major thing is holding us back on that okay so we'd like to use it uh they have a contractor use it for storage and offices rather than bringing a lot of trailers yeah that makes a lot of sense i so but but there is plans after the library is done to demolish that yeah yeah great thanks hey um i there's one question just i think we're moving toward closing and i'll do a quick update on the intersection but we want to also get anyone who's in the audience to suggest future topics but one person asked whether we um are uh going whether we're recording this meeting and where will they find the recording the answer is we are recording it and i should have announced that at the beginning and we um i can get you information later you see these recordings are available with a day or two lag before we figure out where we put them um so stay tuned paul unless you can tell people where they could find the recording i don't know yeah so most of these go on to our youtube channel we have a town of amherst youtube channel and they can be found there but you're right kathie it does take a few days to upload them okay so i i'll just give a quick we put on the agenda hilda has a question on the eruptor but hilda let me just wait for that question so just on the traffic lights um i think people have probably noticed but we have a new set of traffic lights in that intersection by the library and i just have to tell you that lots of you came to different meetings asking for these over the years to at least put in what's called a smart light so there's a green turn signal with the delay and it also has a counting mechanism that i'm not sure that's up yet but gilford had told us that we will be able to get a send of the traffic flow but both foot traffic bicycle traffic and car traffic so at some point i want to encourage everyone to be walking and biking through that intersection so they get counted because we've never had um we can show in the summer there's a lot of foot traffic back and forth across that intersection in terms of the design for the future if we didn't just have a traffic light but the town did respond and we have this light that um at least my experience is i'm getting through faster i'm not backed up all the way to 116 anymore in either or in the other direction so it went up and it's working and i i guess the one uh so i want to just throw it open to questions and any suggestions about future topics and hilda has sent in one do we know anything more about the project called the eruptor is it um still potentially there when will we know anything more um so i'm not totally on top of that i know uh davis ohmack's been working closely on that and i think they're going after a federal grant um and i don't know a whole lot more about the status of that but i know they've been working um at pretty high level with congress congressman of govern on getting funding to support some of the work that needs to happen for the eruptor but i don't know i'm not i don't know the status of the grant if it's in or not or whatever well sir and i can follow up and i see hilda's hand is up sarah was hilda was that the same question or do you want to be brought into um okay so i've got some future topics did hilda get brought in yes i brought her in okay hilda you have to unmute all right my question was about about the election coming up because there's a question on um rank choice voting that's question two on the ballot and and also i see that there's a meeting on tuesday of the town with the lawyer about rank choice voting and it's very complicated and i'm trying to figure it out whether i want it or i don't want it but i guess one of my big questions is how would those ballots be counted and how much this is i guess for some future meeting very soon before the election anyway uh what does the town need to do to change all the hardware and software that we have for ballot counting if rank choice voting passes that's so i there's two different things one is rank choice voting which is the ballot initiative that's on the ballot on november 3rd um and that's a standalone thing versus what the town charter has set up the the rank choice voting commission which is looking at right utilizing rank choice voting for local elections the rank choice voting commission met today uh they're doing tremendous work they've got very detailed plans they're working with the town the acting town clerk now was the town clerk and to talk about the machines that the need to happen whether that means machines have to be approved by the state or not that's why they're meeting with the town attorney who used to be the chief elections officer for the state chief elections legal consultant for the for the state lauren goldberg and so but you know i think you'll be really impressed by the work that the rank choice voting commission has done their goal is their requirement is that they give a measure to the town council by december 1st and then the town council will start to investigate how to implement rank choice voting but you don't have any idea the class or what nope no idea but if the state if the people vote yes in the referendum would we be required are these two independent processes or yes independent processes so the state passes that that has nothing to do with the local i don't know enough about what the state would require i'm sure that the legislature will get involved in exactly what's going to happen in terms of how it gets implemented because and i think that's going to be a challenge for the town of amherst as well because i think they'll want to make sure that all the rank choice voting once it gets implemented is being done the same way in all communities the so any idea that we might have an answer to those how much the class might be by the election i think they're just identifying the equipment they would need so i don't know that's a question for the rank choice voting commission i was just thank you i want to be conscious of time i know sarah told me she had a hard stop in at 730 which is now so i see there's at least one more question sent in about when the council is going to talk about the jones library the more major project but maybe we can we can table a few of these additional questions we will definitely be happy to do another district meeting and Lynn greasmer is in the audience as our um uh andy steinberg were and elissa brewer so people are seeing these questions as they come in so i encourage you for future topics broad ranging or small email sarah and i either one of us um because we'd like to know the issues and including if you want to hear from particular people paul has been very generous with his time he's a little more careful with all his staff time but when it's really except angela except angela but but um this is an after hours for them but um if they're they are the only people to answer some questions and it's particular to either our district or townwide please let us know so i just i want to thank everybody for sitting through a the hour and a half but paul you stayed with us the whole time so thank you very much thank you for organizing it thank you angela so thank you everyone i think we are going to end this it will be recorded and um everyone has my email i don't necessarily have everyone's email although we do know who is a participant here so i i know the person who asked about the recording if you just want to email me that you want to know where to find the recording once i know i will let people know where to find it so i think um sarah do you want to say some parting words too thank you angela thank you paul and it was great to be able to answer some questions i know that kathy and i are meeting with another small group tomorrow but thank you to the town for really being and the university for being very receptive and thank you to district one members who always have a lot of questions to ask and always have a lot of good input so thank you and good night for me good night everyone good night good night we're going offline now thanks everybody