 the webinar is now being recorded. Welcome everybody, Jonas is here. Welcome everybody. This is the, I don't know when our seasons begin or end, but since we had a little bit of a break since our last meeting in May, I figured we'll just call this the start of our new year. We have certainly had a little bit of turnover with the change of the fiscal year. We had two people term out and we have two new faces with us here. So I will certainly get to a point where before we move into our really light, I think it's a pretty light agenda here today on purpose. And hopefully we'll be able to feel a little bit as we fill some people into positions here and get some projects on the table. But we will, maybe the most important thing for me is to make sure that we just give a warm welcome to our two new members. Before we get there though, we have, and on your agenda, we have the, that's not right. So, oh yeah, we have to find out who's doing the September minutes. Matt Kane, I will ask you if you were willing to take the minutes again. I don't know if that is a motion that we need to do, but Matt has been doing the minutes for us pretty consistently since we looked at on those. The minutes that we have received, those that were there have received the minutes from before so you all know the routine. The person who takes the minutes, Matt Kane, in this situation, we'll compose them, put them together and email the draft to everybody for us to approve at the next meeting. And so that is our time right now for us to take a look at those minutes, see if there's anything in there that we need to address. There is nobody in the public comment. There's nobody in the public attendance room right now. I have an eye on it and there is nobody here in the community section. Dave Zomek may appear shortly. But I need a motion to approve the May minutes. So moved. Motion is on the table to approve the minutes from May. I'll second. Motion was seconded by Andy. Let's put that to a vote. We have seven in attendance here. Two were not here, so I'm assuming that we should look at those, isn't it? As a abstain and haven't reviewed, but of those five that were here, we can take a vote for those five. All in favor? Hi. Hi, approved. I see hands from all five members. I'm an abstain. Oh, I'm sorry. I saw four members and one was not there and he was not there. So we have for anybody who, anybody vote nay, then the motion passes four to zero. Five, if Jeremy's vote counts, I don't know what the plan is for that overlap of the two times of the two different seasons. But that motion passes, the May minutes are now entered into public record and we can reveal, we can release those to the, to Town Hall. That piece, that piece done, I would like to take this opportunity now to introduce Chris and Jeremy. They both stepped up to basically offer themselves in this position on the rec commission. It is, I think personally, I think it is a really cool way to engage in the town. They both have been involved in a number of different ways, some very similar, some very different. But I did want to make sure, I think one of the nice things that we have here is we have a bunch of people who kind of, there are people here who know people, know other commission members very well. There are people here who are just getting to know each other. I don't know how well Jeremy and Chris are known by the group, but I do want to give an opportunity just for them to share a quick introduction for themselves and what brings them to us, the sorts of things that, the sorts of energy they have for commission work. So I say we go alphabetically. How about it, Jeremy? All right, I like the alphabetical. I'm Jeremy Brown, hello everybody. And my wife and I and our son moved into Amherst about six years ago now and we experienced rec, like I told Ray in the show from my son joining what was LSC then for classes just to kind of get to know people in town because we were moving here and we wanted to have a good friend base. And that evolved into using LSC and rec throughout the time that we've been here and what sort of migrated me into town into committee service was Angela Mills. I actually am part of the parent committee for my son's Boy Scout troop and I went to apply for the tree sale permit and Angela was like, hey, would you ever thought about committee work? And I was like, I have work, troop, child. And so then we kind of bounced back and forth and back and forth and she was persistent about asking and I said, yep, absolutely now's the time. So I applied with Paul and with Angela and we all met and Rex in like a very natural fit. So I'm excited to be part of it. Hello everybody and nice to meet everybody. Well, welcome. Where did you move from? Oh, Holyoke. Holyoke, okay. Yeah, we bought my wife's mom's house in Holyoke and then we were there for a few years and then my wife said, I'm sick of this house because I grew up here. Is that all right? There you go. Yeah, glad to have you. Thank you, Jeremy and welcome. We should do an informal poll and find out how many people here were led to this position by Angela Mills. So thank you, Jeremy. Chris, you're up. Chris Barroso had graduated from Amerside 91. Also was part of using LSSC as a kid and also used for my daughter who is now 14, the coordinator will be 15 next month. Had a great time at summer camp. Utilized some of the other programs. Just interested at A to see what it's about and obviously whatever energy I can give and see what other areas for growth for the program because it's much needed for sports and also for different type of programs. It's not just 100% sport program. But looking forward to it. Thank you, Chris and welcome. Both Chris and Jeremy have one place where they overlap as they've both been volunteer coaches in rec programming before. They've both volunteered as coaches for their children. And I don't know, this part of Jeremy's story, I'm guessing it's probably Chris's story also is reaching an age where the kids are kind of saying, all right, I'm one of the coaches too now. But the two of them have been involved with rec programming from the, from the adult supervising perspective here. And we are eager to get them involved in the other projects that we might, that they might have or that we might have with each other and with the town. So I can go, I can do this really nice and quick. Our for a recap for us. I wanted to take a little bit of time. A lot has happened since we last met, not a lot in terms of the whole structure has changed, but we have seen an eventful summer in a lot of different ways. The town has seen an eventful summer and our department, other departments and town management, it certainly is a time right now where we're looking for stability. Those that have children in place here, there is a want, a need for having a little bit of stability for our kids that maybe even right now is screaming out even louder than normal, we always want stability for children. I think that there's part of this right now that is looking for our institutions to provide a little bit of normalcy, to provide a little bit of an opportunity. One of the things that I think we are in a pretty good position here in rec is to hopefully provide some of that through our programming, provide some of that fun opportunity in programming. The summertime, which is our busy time, it's busy in a different way. There are kids running all around, there are kids who need to place their energy someplace that we become involved with through the summertime. We had a full slate this summer. It feels like we are back to a little bit, a little sense of normalcy, which we've been talking about for a little while. July 4th was a ringing success in a lot of ways. That was the big stress that I had for those that were here. That was the big stress that I had the last time we met in May, because here we come. We were hitting a June stretch where we had to make sure, and I did it in May, if I looked like I knew that it was gonna be successful, then I'd give myself a lot of credit for acting. We didn't know in May that it was gonna be as positive and successful as I think it was. It was heavily attended. It was, we had, as all public events like that happen, there were some wrinkles that we have taken notes and we're working on trying to fix for next year, financial floor arrangements. We're looking at entertainment. We're trying to iron some wrinkles out there, but it was a fantastic and well-received event at UMass. There were no major issues in terms of management. It was a spectacular show. The performers all really loved performing and we had good feedback about the performances. We had a wide array through our partners inside the town and outside. We had a wide array of community support and volunteers and vendors, we had options for people to come and basically enjoy the evening. And so we are still in a way enjoying and basking in the success that that was for us. And after the previous year, I thought it was a really important success for us because the previous year didn't go as well as we were elected to have. It gave us a building block to move forward on and I'm really, really proud of everybody who put a small or large energy into making that happen because we looked strong, we looked stable and it bought us some, I think, a little bit of credibility here for people who are wondering if we could respond after last year. The summer programs, it is, like I said, it's the busiest time in terms of all the people who come through our summer sports camps, our summer day camps who basically participated in our programming, our pools are one of our big revenue, or one of our big revenue builders for the summertime and also one of our most important public services. And so the pools also were a wonderful success. We got over, we just finished a sort of wrap up with DPW in terms of the function of the pools again after the previous year were an incredible success. I think we were able to keep those pools moving even though the weather wasn't perfect for us all summer. The pool operations were strong. There are some management issues that we were working on and we think that we are certainly well-equipped to move past those in terms of some of the ways that we used to move past those. In terms of some of the ways that we did our management piece of it, but that was the pools were a wonderful opportunity for us to demonstrate that we can learn the lessons from a prior year and move forward and make, I think, stable success happen. The, I guess there could be more with the summer programs also. Oh, our summer sports programs, our contractors came in one of the big things that I know Jose Allen and sports had to steer for us this year was we had, it's been two years in the process here of transforming how we hire and employ our vendors, our instructors for our camps. And so this year was the first year that we basically had to get all of the training wheels off. The summer sports clinics are now ours. We can't hire them as independent contractors. There are a couple that do meet the criteria but the criteria for independent contractors has changed. And all of the patients in terms of getting us to a point where we can bring them in and hire them and vet them and pay them out of our own budget and our own, that it's no longer is it paying contractors to come in and do a service if they are not vetted as independent contractors. So that was, to be able to do that, I don't know, it can be hard with people who've been doing it a certain way for a long time to flip them and turn them into something else. But that has been a, we certainly had more numbers this year as people were looking for places to go and the feedback there was also pretty positive. Last piece on this agenda item is pickleball. There may be a conversation that we had about pickleball a little bit later. Dave was threatening to be here. Dave was certainly going to, he told me he might try and get in here. If he comes in, then I might go back to this in case there's any questions for him. But our last group meeting on this was in May or June, I believe. And that was right when we had, we granted the town the ability at our last meeting, we voted in and gave them the ability to basically use our ARPA funding and to convert that space over in Kiwanis over. And so now we are in the process of making that happen. The schedule, the timetable for that, I have on the table, I have a letter to the butters of the community. We are the town engineer is now taking the next steps for him. And so we should be moving to construction. We're hopefully going to move, it's got to go out to bed and we're going to look at making that work. But we should be moving, ideally we'll be moving into actually transforming the space physically by next spring. And that's our intention, our hope. In the meantime, we will still be doing through the cold weather, if necessary, until we can't, until DPW takes us off of the court at mill, we will still be at mill on the temporary courts and looking to try and facilitate that. We're ready for the interrupt. Could you flip out the site plan for what this course will look like at Kiwanis? I was at the last meeting and didn't get a chance to take a look at it. Let me see if I have that up. And if I don't have it site plan, if I don't have it right available right now, I can certainly send it to you all or send it to you, Andy, if necessary. That's great. Thanks. I'll take it. Yes. How many courts? Give me one cent. It's going to be, it depends. That was the one piece that we were looking at for a pricing issue. We are looking at three. It may be two with the intention to try and build in the future. Feeding the VTL. Got it. Pick a ball. Feeding the VTL. Yeah. Okay. Coming back to you now. Let me share a screen. And so are you looking at the map right now? Yep. Okay. And hopefully nothing else because I have a bunch of stuff behind it, but... So our general layout here to bring everybody up to speed on where we were is if, for those who need orientation, this is up on the basically the northeast part of this, of the northeast corner here is Stanley Street. And this is the parking lot coming in over by the station at Kiwanis, if you're familiar with the space. The fields are here. And right now this is a large, it's basically a hill moving up to where these two trees are. Those two trees will be removed and the earth will basically be flattened to create ADA access, three pickleball courts here moving north south, which was an orientation concern that we had early on about lighting to grade this and to make it so that it is access in the parking lot here for anybody who comes over to use it. There is a little bit, the engineers are working out the spacing between the courts and this tree line over here. But the three courts that we're looking at basically are set outside of the softball field, outside of the softball lines with the intent, we don't operate softball from this field, but outside of the softball line so that we can look at programming, scheduling and mostly for open play, showing us your hand is up. Yeah, my question was actually about the softball. So is it not too active a field because there'd be no heroic foul catches on left, is that left field? Okay, pretty tight to the courts, is the idea? That is pretty tight there on the left field. That's a good question about, right now we don't, the reason why I pause here is because the Fort River Building Project will end up putting some pressure on us in terms of field scheduling for us and the schools in terms of field scheduling while that field is in transition. And so I don't wanna say that it won't ever be used, but Kiwanis is not a field that we are using or we have used recently. All right, now that we're closer to the infield, that's a pretty long foul ball. That's a long foul ball. So yeah, it's probably very rare. That's gonna be an issue. Thanks. I have a question too, Ray. I'm sure this came up, but just I had done some events here with in the past is like, why do those pickle ball courts need to be that close to the parking lot? No, I mean, those trees there, whatever, that big oak or whatever is huge and was like a great shade spot for folks. Seems like it would be ideal to continue to have that here. And I'm just wondering why, again, I'm sure there's a great answer, but why can't we just moved it a little bit further south or west to be able to save those? There are a couple of answers there and I'm not the expert on this, but I believe that we had this question. I may have been me that asked the question on our walkthroughs, but one of the big reasons is because the mound that is over here is here because of those trees. In order to avoid those trees, there's a slight hill over here basically coming down to about the 169 here. There's a slight raise in the ground here because the trees are basically, because the trees roots are in the ground there. In order to move it to avoid the trees and the roots, it would have to move all the way down into space where it's not where you're gonna run into the flood plains, you're gonna run into the space that you can't build those courts into. I think they looked at turning them at one point. So they're east-west until we said that's a hard sell to move a bunch of pickleball courts east-west. I think they looked at trying to turn them and move them outside that space. Another reason is because the trees, please don't quote me on this because I'm not qualified to speak on it, Alan Snow I know has given the emphatic thumbs up to the project because those trees are in need. Okay, that's great. Yeah, I mean, I know it would have been thought about. Thanks for the overview. You got it. Jonas, is that your hand still? Or, okay. So this is the blueprint that we're working with. Of course, our next phase is in the bidding process and the accelerating towards actually putting shovels in earth and also in terms of communicating with the neighborhood. This isn't like when they were investigating moving the DPW station over into the area. This is not like, this isn't a major change. This is essentially a, if you have popular tennis courts in the area, we talked about some of the detractions for a community. There are a couple of houses that are close enough that we'll reach out to them and just let them know, but we do have a letter going out to the whole community over at the Stanley Street community, which I'm proud to say that I was a part of for about seven years, for about seven, eight years I lived in the area. And so I think that it's a good opportunity for us to have a different and excited group of people come over and use the space. It's not all simply like rec programming that it becomes a destination spot. There is no plan for lights right now. And so it's not like you're gonna have to deal with a night crowd at all hours of the night and we're at the police that there's no plans for lights, no plan for night tournaments or anything like that. It is essentially a popular tennis court. It's akin to a popular tennis court for my estimation. I've been wrong before. So I'm gonna stop the share here. We are kind of on schedule. I'm gonna get rid of this. And the other piece of this agenda item, we are staffed up. I am happy to say that we are, that the rec department now is at essentially full strength, the same excitement I have about having seven people in a commission meeting right now. It feels like we have people in places that we should be. Over the course of the summer, one of the big strains that we had was that our part-timers on the front desk, as well as our, I say long time, because since I was here, which isn't that long, but our registration coordinator also took another job in town. And so we lost our entire front desk and Marion Jordan, who has been maybe one of my most important assets for the last couple of years, for a lot of reasons, stepped up to do a lot of different things for our front desk. So everything we ran for about four months in the office was run through one person. We now have a full front desk of very, very capable, very, very strong. I encourage you all. If you ever come by, if you ever have business in the area, we'll make sure we get you connected to the public face of our department. We have a one part-time person who's been with us since the start of the summer. We hired a registration coordinator who has been, who's already, I think she's learned pretty much everything that we could have expected her to learn at this point and more. And we're just getting stronger and stronger in our front desk. So that's gonna make a lot of our jobs a lot easier and most importantly, perhaps, Marriots. We have also brought in here, am I forgetting somebody? We also brought in here Becky Demling. I didn't wanna skip anybody else out of this. Oh, I was gonna say our summer camp, our summer camp, we did successfully split our, and bringing in that program director for outreach. We did successfully create a summer seasonal position for a camp coordinator, supervisor for the camp that responds to our program director. We found our program director towards the end of the summertime, and that's Becky Demling. Becky is here with us right now. She is our program director in outreach and special events and dot, dot, dot. She basically took the ground running for us. She initiated a couple of projects which we've been kicking around in cooperation with the schools, in cooperation with other outside agencies. Her energy is one that is important for us because that outreach, as she's following somebody who I obviously had a lot of admiration and respect for, Nikki, a belly for people who would work with her. She was incredible for us. She had a lot of that outreach energy that you wanna put in there. Becky has some of that same energy and she also brings a long career in the schools of the same type of work which we are now going to pay her for. And so I wanna give Becky an opportunity just to introduce herself to you all and some of the work that she is doing or has been interested in doing. For the town at this point. Becky Demling also was a member of the Rec Commission for years. I can let her talk about that. Becky. Hi, y'all. Yes, I'm a 15 year resident in town, served on town meeting for 10 years. I ran at least one of the school PDOs every year for 14 years. I have been blog editor at, like newsletter editor for three different schools including seven years straight at the high school, that Friday newsletter if you know it. I'm also, I'm a partnership person. It's what I love to do. I did a lot of that with our schools with the like Wi-Fi fundraiser when COVID hit, things like that. I come into this position having done a lot of volunteer work and a lot of fundraising for our schools. I also worked on two school playground projects at Crocker Farm for both the preschool and the upper grades. And I served on the town committees for Kendrick and Graf Park. Well, a commission member. So I love kids playing. And I also worked in the preschool program for 14 years. So this is kind of a big shift for me career-wise but very much akin to what I've been doing in town. So I'm on week, this is the start of week seven for me. I'm excited to announce that one of the first things we did is partner with the family center. We're gonna be partnering with the ARPS Family Center as well as Amherst Police Department and Cress and we're pulling in the Senior Center for a program called Morning Movement and Mentoring that's gonna target at-risk seventh and eighth graders at the middle school who are referred due to behavior concerns or other issues. We found a great coordinator for that program who's gonna be really infusing some good curriculum. And it's gonna be a sports-based program that runs seven to eight 30 in the morning from Monday through Thursday. They did a pilot of it last year and it served 45 students. We're looking to expand that. We're also funding transportation for it so that students don't have to have a parent drop them off. We're using ARPA funding for that. We made a, Ray and I made a presentation with Paul Bachlemann and he authorized that funding. So that's really exciting. I've also been working a lot with DEI where it's gonna be supporting the events that the Department of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are running. So we're gonna be at the Latinx Heritage Celebration this Sunday on the town common. We're gonna be running some soccer and some crafts and doing Nikki's famous gift bags for the event. So we have that. We'll be at the block party on Thursday doing face painting and glow in the dark tattoos. We're really fortunate. We have five Emerson College student volunteers who are gonna be helping us out. So hopefully we can keep those lines short and the smiles coming. We are already working on our Halloween spooktacular, which is gonna be on Sunday, October 29th at the bank center. We've started securing sponsors for the event and are diving deep into logistics. We're very fortunate that the Jones Library is gonna be co-sponsoring the event with us and running some of what they would normally do with the Jones, but don't no longer have room for. It's gonna be folding into our event. So that's pretty exciting. And then we're also going to be working with the Jones Library and DEI and the Human Rights Commission to do a festival of lights around Diwali and a few other holidays in November. We're working on securing a date for that. And we will be part of Mary Mabel as always in early December. So we have a very full events plate. Some of the other things we're working on, we're gonna start offering some Hitchcock Center programming. We're gonna partner with them and they're gonna do some community-based programming, not at the Hitchcock Center, but either at schools, after school or in some of our conservation lands. Becky, I'm sorry, what type of programming was that? Last one. Hitchcock Center? Oh, Hitchcock, all right, okay. So we're gonna be, we're folding them into, they're gonna add some more programming through our, in our course catalog. So one thing I've been really trying to do is beef up our offerings. I've been talking to professors in the area who have content, like today I met with, Amherst College has this program called Mass Bears. And it's an educational programming that runs year round around teaching the community about bears and safety and habitats and way to coexist, they also track bears, things like that. The community won't be doing that, but they're gonna be doing some community workshops like Saturday morning workshops that people can sign up through Amherst Recreation. So we're looking at expanding our partnerships. We've met with Amherst College, Ray and I met with Amherst College two weeks ago. And so we're doing a lot more, we're trying to find ways that we can work together with them a little more to boost some of our offerings. So anyone, so that's just the first seven weeks. Is that all? Is that all? That's all for now. I've asked her to slow down a little bit. She's gonna burn out and then I'm gonna have to do it all by myself. No, this is, I'm really excited to have her bored for a lot of different reasons. This is an exciting time for us to start thinking about how to reimagine recreation, thinking about partnerships, building partnerships, which I think Becky's background and sort of teaming up with agencies, departments all around the town about having already been in essentially a lifelong conversation with some of the most important voices in the area here. I think that helps us out a lot. It always is useful for us to have people who are already situated and are talented about turning that into something else. And one of the things I have also been picking her brain about this is, if there's anybody have any questions for Becky because my transition into rec commission does sort of feed off of where Becky is in the agenda. Any questions for Becky, clarification on any of the projects here, comments, concerns. Welcome. She won't be here for all of our meetings, but she will be a presence in our rec commission meetings because some of the connections, some of the things that I think might help us work on projects, Becky will be looking for commission help in some of these areas for things like this, for things like she had mentioned Winterfest because it's not on the table yet and I don't want to stress her about it. We barely even talked about it, but when we start talking about Winterfest, commission will be able to help us along those lines. We're talking about some of these expanding resources where you all have resources. We will be looking for your help and getting those. A lot of what Becky does, Becky also is very, very strong at supporting these ventures with data and in terms of data collection, you all might be able to help us when it comes down to gathering information about what this town is looking for needs, what has worked, what hasn't worked. You all might be able to help us to take ideas and start to sort of give it some legs before we put it into action. So some of our outreach interests, you all will be able to be directly involved in. One thing that I would really love is if you know anyone who's got any special interests that you think might make a fun course, I am trying to come up with a way to help people on board better into teaching, like to make it seem less daunting to teach a course, providing like logistical and other framework. Having a background in preschool, a lot of it builds up really nicely. So, and I did forget to mention that we're also gonna be partnering with the Senior Center on adding intergenerational programming into our catalog this winter. And I had sent a message to the, I'm not certain exactly who was, someone at the Senior Center. Cause I gave a talk at the Senior Center in South Hadley. So I teach at Mount Holyoke. So I was invited to this, I teach languages. So I was invited to the Senior Center in South Hadley and I gave a talk on like seniors, like it's never too late to learn a language type of thing. So I thought, oh, that'd be great to maybe do at the Senior Center in Amherst. And like I sent a couple of messages and like never heard back from anybody. So, you know, something like that I would be interested in doing at the Senior Center or. That's a great idea. And we can help make that connection. We can help follow up and make that connection to. A meeting with the Director, the Senior Center Director tomorrow. Okay. Yeah, I think it's great that Becky's on board because she knows a lot of people around town and she knows a lot of the things that are going on. And it's great that building connections between these different town departments and also with the other institutions that are around town. Because a lot of times I think people just don't really realize what's out there. Like different people are doing things and they just don't really realize it. And that's especially the case with things like programs at Amherst College and UMass that we could like help to distribute. And but there's also, you know, Jones Library versus Senior Center versus, you know all these different things. Getting them all connected is really great. I agree. Agreed. And so I know we've been nibbling it. This was probably the last sort of mission other than pickleball. This is the last mission that Carolyn left for us. Two new folks. Carolyn Maylor is our departed chair, commission chair. One of the last things that Carolyn left for us was it's like she was at the very end of her term. She was really interested in trying to find ways to turn this into a project-based commission. She was really interested in trying to find ways to take maybe projects that were really close to your own personal heart or projects that could be converted over. You could fight for somebody else's heart. She really wanted to try and find some way to take the energy of the commission and make projects and move, make some action here. Pickleball was largely has been she's carried a large part of that mantle in the last few months. She's not out of it as a common citizen now, but she's left that for us. She also talked to us about sort of thinking about our mission and being aware of what our mission is and maybe starting to really think about how to put something into writing that helps us to be what we can be. So that everybody knows, especially our two new members, we talked about it a little bit at our get-together over at Cherry for the four folks that were able to make that. What the WREC commission is, I'll say it a million times, you guys don't work for me. You're not like, I didn't employ you. I gave a thumbs up for folks in terms of, I think they'd be a good fit on the commission, but you don't work for me. I work with you, you guys certainly have the ability to guide and put pressure, to put the appropriate amount of pressure to make sure that I am saying and doing what I'm saying that I'm saying and doing. So I think that as an administrator, your voice and your input is important for me. But any place where we have public space, if we're trying to transform public space, and pickleball is a good example, if we're trying to transform public space, it's been set aside for recreation, your voice is the important voice. You're going to have to, as a group, give a thumbs up or a thumbs down on the town's use of that recreational space. That is one of the main places where your authority is heard. If we are trying to transform our programming, if we're trying to create new programming that has a widespread effect on the people who are using the space here, you also have an authority of voice that town hall, our administrative staff, you have a voice that we need to hear from because you all are the ones that are basically speaking as citizens who are speaking for citizens and keeping me as the going dark side, I'm becoming the bureaucrat here. You need to make sure that I am still responding to the residents of the town of Amherst. Heck, I don't even live in the town of Amherst. It is your responsibility to make sure that I am serving the town that I've been hired to come and serve. And so I don't say that to say, look, you guys need to come in and sort of force my hand and kidnap me and make, that's not what I'm saying, but I am saying that your effect on the process of recreation here should be one where I don't mind reporting to you everything that's happened since the last time we met. I don't mind that, but I would love to see if there's energy and interest that you all have. I would love to hear from you. I would love to try and find a way to make the interests of this town come to light. Like I know, I'm not saying that somebody has to take it on right now, but I know that in this year, especially, we are going to be looking at Cherry Hill as a entity that we have to do something with. The rec commission will be involved in our conversations about Cherry Hill this year because that relationship is one that's always been complicated. I walked into a complicated relationship and now we're in a situation here where it's not untangling for us. And so when I talk about gathering information from the public, when I talk about the use of resources, when I talk about outreach and moving into the areas, we talk about transforming, using it in different ways and seeing how we can't maintain and build and investigate existentially. What are we? What do we want to be? The rec commission is going to have to have a voice in that. And so I put that on the table and I'll take it back off so we don't have to deal with it right now. I mean, on that one, right? I'm with you. When Fort River happened. But I need to see, I just need to see some stuff. Yeah, about it. And so we can definitely have it. We're still early in the conversation about sort of a fork in the road, what we're looking at here. You and I, anybody here at any point in time, if you want to sort of sit down and meet and throw ideas back and forth or just sort of checking in and see how things are going, I'd be happy to meet with you. For us, you and I can certainly talk about sort of where we are and what I think the issues are there, what I think we're moving towards or away from. Anybody else? Go ahead. It's just you can't, I think we just have to readjust. You can't, you just, you can't get rid of public entertain, public entry level golf. Not everybody's going to join Springfield Country Club or Long Meadow. And when you start getting rid of that sort of stuff on every level, swimming, it'd be like saying, hey, we're going to close the pools. It's just maybe it's being looked at as the same thing as it was for years and now it's needs to be adjusted and changed. So I will be more than happy to help you with that one. I would be happy to sit down. Because even if you and I have, there's places where we don't like that. What you just said there is what I'm soliciting that sort of opinion about the course. It means something to people that use it. It means something to people that don't use it. It means something to people. I'm not telling you that we're going to get rid of it. That's obviously that's not my intention, but I already can sense that our conversation is one that can help me figure out how to manage that space. Sanjay. Yeah, we got to be looked at a little differently now. I mean, you can't if I run a business like I did 30 years ago, I'm out of business. You got to make adjustments. So you and I will be talking frequently. Yes. Sanjay. Yeah, thanks for I think, I mean, you know that I have an interest in Cherry Hill, right? And for a couple of years been hearing about there's going to be some special commission forum to work with the town on the future and doesn't seem like that's really come together. So if this is going to be a year when some decision making is made at the town level, I would I would like to be involved in ways that may exceed my role in this commission, right? I would, I would hope that as a commission, we wouldn't be eventually presented with, I mean, we're a commission without, we're an advisory commission, right? And it would be unfortunate if this commission were presented with something at the end of a long decision making process that had occurred within town hall without some of us having been able to be involved in that decision making process. So you sort of, I don't need to give the long speech again but you know my feelings about Cherry Hill and golf which are positive as a four season spot. And so I'd like to be involved and I'm willing to give time to it. Thank you. If there was talk about a golf commission, this is, I've never been involved in that conversation. I know that that conversation predates myself. And so I, to echo what Sanjay just said, I am bringing this to you now. This is the first time I've talked about it at this length about the state of Cherry Hill here because for two years, my whole thing was we have the asset. I'm gonna manage that asset and see what we can do. I'm gonna try and see what kind of revenue we can build out there. And I'll ask for what I think we need. There is a sense that the way that we're going right now Chris's comment, the way that we're going right now is outdated, the way we're trying to do this right now is outdated and to make that work, we're gonna have to be really inventive and we're gonna need some partners on that from Town Hall to the business community, to the residents to, we're gonna need some partners on that to make this feasible. And so I bring this to you all now because it's the very early stage. I don't know what the next steps are right now. I don't even, maybe I'm just making a big deal out of nothing. I'm not, but I'm bringing this to you right now because I know there's gonna be action on this front. And with that action, you are going to want to be involved. You're gonna need to be involved. And I would not wanna bring that to you after we get everything set, Andy. Thanks, Ray. Is there any way you could share just some information around how the operations are working just offline? What are we getting for like how many people are going to play? What sort of revenues being generated? What does it take to operate that year round? Because I think obviously we need to be as well informed as possible as a mission on this. Yes, and I can put that together. I have my second budget meeting with Jose Allen runs the clubhouse there. And so we'll be putting together all the numbers for revenue on the site here this week. In terms of maintenance, I also have a meeting with John Cuolo who runs the, he's a superintendent up there and he runs all of the course maintenance. So I also have a conversation with him. We'll be able to put together a description of what the current situation is with some history. Sanjay. Thanks, Ray. Just briefly, I think that data is great. I would love to see it in the context of other programs that Amherst Rec runs, the ones that come to mind are the pools. And I did a little bit of digging a couple of years ago. I mean, the pools don't make a profit, but no one says the pools are supposed to make a profit. And so there's, I think, there's risk in presenting the Cherry Hill numbers in isolation. Correct. Right. And I mean, this gets to Chris's comment about preserving entry level opportunities and different kinds of activities and so on. So looking at numbers is good, but it needs to be done in a fair way across different programs is what I would say. I agree. Agreed. So Ray, do you think we have those numbers by next meeting or? Yes, definitely. I'll put those together by next meeting. Okay. So you'll have a chance to look those over. We'll have, that gives us a concrete agenda item for the next meeting to go over some of that. We'll have other conversations with folks about where we are with sort of next steps in the conversation. If there is a committee to be formed, if there is a focus group or anything that we need to involve the community and we'll put that on the agenda also. And so that brings me to my last segue here is the two positions that I was putting on, putting out for you all that we wanted to try and deal with this. Nope. Yes, Becky is that. Thank you, Becky for being here. I saw, as an old teacher, I know that wave, that wave is, hey, listen, I gotta go walk the dog. Bye, Becky. So the two positions that I wanted to make sure that you all can, I can't appoint, I can't select people. CPAC has already begun to meet. Matt Kane, who served in that role in this capacity for us last year. Matt offered to serve in that capacity again. He did go and represent us. I asked as tactfully as I could, if there was anybody, I didn't say his name, but I said that one person did put in for the CPAC offered to serve in the CPAC seat. I will let you all motion and second, Matt's candidacy as the CPA representative. Oh, Andy. Jean was up first, if you know. Oh, I'm sorry, Jean. I'm not certain what the CPAC representative is. Okay, for excellent, that's right. Jean probably came in after CPAC season last year. The CPA, Matt or Andy, do you want to explain better than I can? I can definitely do it, but you guys are probably much better at it than I would be. And Andy, why don't I let you do it since? Or Matt, how about Matt? Or Matt. Okay, I can do it. So CPA is a Community Preservation Act. It's a statewide program whereby there's a surcharge on property tax bills and there's a partial state match. State match is like 25% of what the town raises. So that goes into a bucket. And then the CPA committee receives solicits and then receives proposals for how to spend that money among recreation, open space, historical preservation and affordable housing. And the CPA committee has the role of reviewing and debating those and voting them up or down. And then the recommendations from the CPA committee go to the town council for approval, which as far as I know is pretty much the town council has approved what the CPA committee has proposed. So it's the typical amount is around one and a half million dollars per year in the town of Amherst. That's a reasonably significant amount of money. And some of the projects that have been funded or partially funded relating to recreation is like various different playgrounds such as Kendrick Park, school playgrounds. The track project at the high school has an allocation. We put aside some money for ensuring that the Fort River fields get renovated, various things that Plum Brook over time, pools. Yeah, we put aside some money for some necessary maintenance of the pools over time. The pickleball courts was also funded from the CPA money. And then in affordable housing and historical preservation there's other things over as well. So hopefully that explains it. Okay, thanks. That's very helpful. That was much better than my saying your basic comparison shopper for large public projects. And so, Matt, thank you. Jonas. You then take some of the recommendations that are in the recreation bucket and then we kind of talk them through and then you would kind of be our face to that you would be the vote either I guess yes or no. Well, so yes, the recreation proposals do get discussed in the recreation committee and then I bring the opinion of the recreation committee to the CPA committee. That's my role as representative of the recreation committee on the CPA committee. And then everyone on the CPA committee votes for all of the proposals. Right. So the more forcefully you represent Rec, more likely that, you know. Okay, got it. Yeah, yeah. Cool, thanks. Andy. Yeah, so I'll make a motion if you're asking one to nominate Matt. I did serve with him, I was on the planning board and Matt did just a fantastic job. We should, I mean, he's the guy we want on there. So I will only vote for Matt. Second that motion for Matt, for sure. Okay. Moved and seconded, all in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed. Thank you, Matt. You are our CPAC representative. And that formalizes what he's already sort of started for them if there was any sort of objection then we could have passed it off to somebody else. But Matt, we do appreciate your, but I echo Andy's statement. I was really impressed by Matt's thoughtfulness on that committee last year. And so the second, oh, Jonas, is your hand still up? Okay. The second piece is commission chair. And that may be a little bit diced here. This was back to my old way of doing this where I sit down and I put together a soft schedule here and try and present that. I would like to obviously, again, that you don't work for me. I don't run this meeting. I would like to be able to work with a chair. Carolyn and I, I thought we were in the process of making something pretty cool happen in the last few months because she only became the chair about, I think she was a chair for about three meetings. And so I would certainly sit down and meet with the chair, speak to the chair about agenda items, anything that needs to be put through. We can talk like the voice of the chair is important for our commission meetings, of course. More importantly, that's who town hall and that's who the public identifies as the voice for the commission. When they're looking for the commission's input on something, the chair is the person who can speak for that commission. Without a chair, we don't have that voice. And so it has been emphasized to me that we need to have a chair. That's why Carolyn stepped up last year. And so I would like to leave that up to you all for who you believe would be the most appropriate chair. I have a very, very strong opinion, but I will let you all figure out if that person wants to step forward or if you all want to bring that person forward. What if we withdraw if we don't believe we're worthy for the chair? So I will withdraw. Okay. I was going to now write you down. Yeah, the dark horse, the sleeper. I like that one. I'm back too, Jonas, because being new, I'm going to also respectfully withdraw from the commission. And now you are a chair. Well, sometimes that's the punishment of being the new person on the group. Everybody else says you're on leader now. Andy. I'd volunteer for that. If we can't find a better person. You are the best person. Have you ever considered or would, has there ever been like co-chairs or is that too much? Not my commission. I can't tell, I don't know if that's, I assume that that would be legal. I can't tell you that you can't. If I don't know, it's not possible. I can't tell you this. There, I mean, there's certainly other boards have chairs and I mean, there are other designated positions. I just, I mean, if this doesn't have a mandate, then I imagine we could craft whatever we think makes sense. I know Andy. He volunteered and I nominate him. So does anyone else volunteer? I'm not in. I don't want to do it. I would co-chair, but I don't know if I can have, if I have the capacity to do it all by myself. And Sanjay, I assume. Yeah, I'm not a volunteer for chair of this commission. Okay. Then either go co-chair with Andy or Andy chairs. Gene and I live like four houses away from each other. So we can, we can certainly very easily trade notes on stuff. So is there a motion? I'd like to motion to the commission for co-chairs on Gene and Andy. Second that. Motion that Gene and Andrew are identified as co-chairs by Jeremy, seconded by Jonas, all in favor. I'm in. I'm in favor. All opposed. Congratulations, Gene and Andrew. I will check for the, just to make sure that it's possible. I assume that it is, but I will check to make sure it's possible. And if it isn't, then I will let you all know that we need to re-vote. Sounds good. Okay. So if there aren't any other, if there isn't anything else that people need to, need to share, I will ask if there's anybody in the, in the attendees that has anything that they want or need to share. So are we going to go over the mission statement or is that at another meeting? I, we haven't selected one. I think that what I'll do is this. I can share with you the mission that, that Carolyn was able to come up with. I believe that we got to the point. Yeah, her and I worked on it. I, I sent her and then her and I worked on it. I will submit it. I will submit that with you when I submit the other piece. I have two things, two pieces of homework for you. One is the big one, which is Cherry Hill. The other one will be that mission statement, which I will put forward and you guys can, Ward Smith and come back to the next one. And, and we can put that on the agenda. Andrew Jean and I can talk about where and how to put that into the agenda and we can deal with the mission there. Sounds good, right? I'm off to volleyball. Yeah, I've got to go. Okay. So absolutely. What we need to do, we have to make sure we pick a date for next time. You guys pick it. I got to go. I know. Go ahead. Good luck. Okay. Good luck. Good luck. Yeah. Let me know. I'm a good one ever. All right, we'll do. Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Ray. Ray, can I ask a question before we drop? It has, it's not efficient at all. What role, if any, does this, do we have in kind of programming in the future, like in the winter for my mind turns to basketball in the winter? Yes. I guess it's really the fall command, but do we, what do we have? Yeah, on any role and what happened, how it happens. And basketball. Yeah. For instance, basketball. Or I know those. So in terms of like gym space and the schools and that sort of thing. Or kind of getting the organizing the WEC League, which I think was last I remember was at Fort River. Some, some, some practices were going on there. And then there was also like the middle school. So that's the, the responsibility of scheduling that falls on my department staff and the concerns there. Jose Allen is our sports director. And he's the one who works with the, with the school department with, with facilities and the school department, all the different schools to, to line up space for basketball and anybody else that's using the schools. Obviously we're indoors mostly in the winter time, which is becomes a big premium. Would you be involved in that? I think that you could, if there was a concern about, about distribution of those resources, you could certainly bring it to us and, and make that. No, there's not so much in that I'm getting involved. I guess it would be, I guess it would be coaching. So, but it seems like that would be, I'd have to kind of approach that as a regular civilian. I was going to say that would not be a commission role. I can tell you that we definitely have, we have interest and space for people to be involved in our rec basketball programming. And I can put you in touch with Jose easily. Okay, thanks. Oh, and you've, you know, you've, you've been to Jose before. So Jose will be looking for volunteers to come and help with, with AYBL. And, and at that point, you would certainly be able to serve not in your commission capacity, but you'd be able to serve as a volunteer coach. Thank you. Okay. Next meeting. Next meeting. When is CPAC meet, Matt? No, I'm sorry, just started to catch up right, but just wondering, should we time it to be like right after a CPAC? So the, the deadline for proposals to be submitted is the end of September. And then I can't remember what, I don't know if it's better to meet before or after. I think it's probably better to meet before the CPA actually discusses, but I don't think the CPA actually discusses the, because there's, there's the proposal sent in, then there's a written question and answer. And then the CPA doesn't actually discuss them, I think until November, November. Yeah, that's right. So, I don't think that's a factor just yet. Makes sense. Okay. Any interest in going, we're sort of mid September right now. The other thing we can think about is how, how long we want to go, do we want to go in mid October? Do we want to go in late October? You want to get back on to an early, typically we had tried to do first Monday or early Monday in the months. That's probably not wise for this soon after September 18th. On to the 6th. First Monday in November. That would skip an October meeting or do you want to go to, do you want to do it late October? Do you want to skip October and start up with a early November meeting? I mean, I think like CPAC is sort of an important thing. If there's no, no pressing need to meet before then, I think it would probably make sense for, I know you've heard from multiple people, mission who have, you know, some passion around Cherry Hill and then just working with Jean and I, like, might not be a bad idea to, to do some of that stuff offline before we get back together again, just so it can be, you know, maybe more productive. Agreed. Do you want to shoot for first weekend of November? I mean, the first Monday of November. Works for me. Good with me, yep. Yeah, work for me. That's Monday the 6th. Yeah. It's in the planner. Monday the 6th. I will, I will look into Monday the 6th for our next commission meeting. I have two pieces of homework for you all. The people like 6 p.m. 6 p.m. Yeah, what time are we thinking? Is that an issue? I like that, it sounds great. 6 p.m. is great. Fun. Yep. Sounds good. Then thank you all for coming. I will, I guess we should move to dismiss. Ray, do you have, do you have five minutes where we could stay on this and do some non-commissioned chat? Definitely. Okay. Okay. All right. We'll do adjourns. Okay, move to adjourns. Move to adjourn. Seconded. All in favor. Yeah. Okay, thank you, Andy, for volunteering for chair. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Andy. Thank you, Matt. And Andy, I'll be in touch with you and Jean about trying to set up a first meeting between probably early in this hiatus. Yeah, sounds great. Sounds good. Thanks, everybody. So you can stop the recording. Yes, we will. Yep. Great to meet everybody. Same. You too, Jeremy.