 This program is brought to you by Cable Franchise Vs and generous donations from viewers like you. I will call upon each counselor by name. At that time, please unmute your mic and say present. This will indicate you can hear me and we can hear you. Please remember to mute your mic after saying present. This is also how we will conduct Council comments throughout the agenda. Let me begin. Councillor Ball-Millan, can you hear me? Present, yes. Thank you. Alyssa Brewer. Present, yes. Pat D'Angelois. Pat, you have to unmute. Present, yes. Dorothy Dumont. Yes, present. Darcy Dumont. Lynn Griesma, present. Mandy Jo Hanneke. Present, and I can hear you. Dorothy Pam. Present. Evan Ross. I'm here. George Ryan. Present. Jane. Yes, present. Steve Schreiber. Here. Andy Steinberg. Present. Yeah, here. Present. Given that we have a quorum with the Council, I am calling the April 13, 2020 meeting of the Amherstown Council to order at 631. This meeting includes audio, video, and is also available live on Amherst television. It is also being recorded and will be available later for people who did not get to quote attend the meeting. There is no chat room for this meeting. Counselors, if you have technical issues, you should be in touch with Sean and Athena. And to make a comment or ask a question, please raise your hand, the raise hand button on the side. If technical difficulties rise as a result of utilizing remote participation, I will decide how to address the situation, particularly given the wind that we have going on tonight. Discussion might may be suspended while we address technical issues and minutes will note if a disconnection occurs. Sean will be monitoring counselors connections, and if necessary, we will pause the meeting until you are reconnected. Sean, there's a big black square, can we move that off. I'd like to go to the screen that has the agenda so we can look at our announcements about coming meetings. The council will be meeting on Tuesday, April 14 tomorrow night at six o'clock, that will be a joint special council and school committee meeting to interview candidates and make our decision, which will be tomorrow night. If there are any technical difficulties that meeting will instead take place on April 16. There are upcoming standing committee meetings that are scheduled in the coming of days and weeks on Thursday, April 16, 2020 at 730. The outreach communication and appointments committee will meet to interview zoning board of appeals applicants. And on Tuesday, April 21, 2020 at 430pm, the town services and outreach committee will meet. I just want to mention and if we could have the slide that we are still looking for volunteers for the senior center. And that information is on your screen this time. And I want to thank the many people who have volunteered. And we are also in the process of still seeking funds to enhance the connectivity of students in our public schools. And that information will be available on the town's website as well. Dorothy, please unmute Dorothy, please unmute Dorothy. I'm working. I'm working. Okay. You said that the school meeting was going to start at six, but I received some communication that said it was going to start at 530 and I wrote it in my date book. We're going to open it up at 530 because we have 13 counselors for school school committee people and the four candidates and bringing them all on is something we want to make sure happens smoothly. Okay. We'll talk more about that meeting in a little while. Okay, we're going to move on to general public comment. And I need to look at participants at this point. Is there anybody who wishes to make public comment at best at this time. Please raise your hand and Sean or Athena will let me know. Okay. It looks as if we do not have any public comment at this time. We'll move on to proclamations and commemorations and let me just say that the voting on the first one of these is actually going to be part of our consent agenda, unless someone asks that it be removed. This proclamation for the Arbor month is sponsored by Dorothy and Darcy. I think I got that wrong. I'm sorry. By two counselors. And it has been reviewed and adjusted. I just want to make note that due to the present restrictions on public gathering, there will be no public gathering to commemorate of Arbor month. We're then going to go on. So, unless again, if I hear later that people want, do not want this on the consent agenda. We're going to go on to presentations and discussions. And I'm going to turn it over to Paul. Thank you. So this is again, one of our weekly updates to you and we'll try not to be repetitive and tonight we're really pleased that our fire chief and also emergency management director Tim. Nelson is here to join us and we also have Julie Fetterman here. As usual, in case there are any questions, particularly to her as her position is health director. So next slide. This is what we'll talk about tonight. Next slide. These numbers are again updated. The new number for totals cases is 26,867. The total number of deaths is up 88. The new number is 844. The new new number for patients tested is 122,049. 11 cases that we've identified and Amherst. Next slide. So the things that are that you can read easily are the, the one, the three bottom things at the bottom where the governor has issued guidance on public construction projects, greenhouses and garden centers and grocery stores occupancy limits, which places occupancy limits for grocery stores at 40% of what they otherwise would have been allowed to have on their premises. And these things that the links are there if anybody wants a link to read exactly what the governor has put forward. Next slide. So what I want to talk about tonight is that, and maybe Julie can speak to a little bit of this as well as based on what the governor had decided to put out, we issued specific Amherst specific information for our construction sites and grocery stores. And we're making specific calls on the, on restaurants and other retail establishments. So Julie, is there anything you want to walk through these things because you were involved in creating these. So the governor has put out more guidance about construction sites and grocery stores in particular. And so what we're doing is our inspection services department, all the inspectors are working remotely now. And so they are calling all of the businesses to go over what the new guidance is. And also you can see that with construction sites, any new permits and any permits that have been open in the past three months, they're sending out that guidance information to the person who pulled the permit. And so with the new construction sites. This is to really help businesses understand how to keep themselves and their workers healthy went on site. So there's a lot of detail in how to communicate with their staff and how to create the necessary environment with social distancing and disinfection materials so that they're safe on the job. A big part of the guidance was the fact that grocery stores are now required in Massachusetts to decrease their occupancy load. And so it will be 40% of who's usually in a grocery store, including employees and customers. So our inspections department is calculating what those occupancy limits are and giving them to the stores and doing up phone calls to just go over with them. Other details in this guidance, such as if lines are forming outside that they need to have a staff person outside who's monitoring those lines and making sure they're social social distanced. The fact that all stores grocery stores are now required to have one hour of shopping for those over 60. So they're just going overall with overall that with our business owners, so that they understand what's expected of them. The other thing that's happening is with restaurants, we're really encouraging everyone to have curbside pickup only and delivery. And again, doing phone calls talking with all the owners and managers to go over that with them, trying to find out if their business is where that's an impediment to their business to put that in place. Most places already have this in place, but just having that one on one conversation with them to see if there's ways that we can assist them in coming into compliance with that. Next week, the inspectors will also be contacting convenience stores, pharmacy liquors, liquor stores, again to provide guidance and recommendation for them to really decrease any possibility of transmitting illness. Thank you. The next slide. So now I can give you a little update on our town operations. Next slide. So this is these are the areas that we pay special attention to these are the things the departments and operations that are that are really key to keeping the town operating. And so far so good. And Chief Nelson will talk a little bit more about what he has done for his department to make sure that we're able to respond to any emergency that will come through from the fire department or emergency medical services. We, we is the first thing we do every morning when when our core team are covered response team meets, and we talk about the health of our employees, they have the material they need to be able to respond to emergencies. And, and what are any issues that are popping up. So occasionally the department will have somebody who has someone who who might be have been exposed to potentially exposed. But it's, you know, we're helping to manage through that with a lot of guidance from our health director she's she's talking with our department heads one by one about the situations that they have so it's very helpful for that wastewater treatment plant. We talked about treatment and collection. So there's an emergency notice out right now that there was a break on redgate lane. They have done a bypass on the break for the sewer line sewer line. And because of the weather they will go back tomorrow morning and start working on that to get that fixed so we asked for asking the public to avoid redgate lane if they possibly can. And so, so we're in good shape, you know, and every week I'll report to you on how we're doing for all of our key services here everybody's working really well. And if you can work remotely we have you working remotely sometimes people aren't able to do that. So we appreciate all the work that everybody's doing for that. So next slide. So, we had on April 2 we had two calling shows and then on Friday we had our cup of Joe and Julie Thuderman was part of that and that's where we sort of opened up the door and have people actually talk to us if they chose to they didn't have to they could also talk to us. And that worked out really well we have about 30 people in attendance at that session. People would come in stay for a little while and leave and so it was sort of like a normal cup of Joe in a lot of ways and we all have our coffee that we are drinking all day long it seems like. But that was a morning thing so it was kind of fun. And on this week we were we are standardizing on two times when we will be available to the public every Tuesday and Thursday at 12 noon. We will have a zoom meeting and you can see the ad for it on our town website you can click on the zoom meeting and just listen. You can come and ask a question. So this on Tuesday I'll be having a one of these calling shows with police chief Livingstone and then on Thursday we will have a reprise of our first one when when we had health director Julie Thuderman and the school superintendent Mike Morris with us. So those are Tuesday and Thursday at 12 noon. I think that these things tend to go best when they're not too long 3045 minutes typically because then people sort of get tapped out and I think there's a certain kind of you tired of watching the entire thing and we will record them all as well so if you can't watch it right at noon you'll be able to watch it at another time. Next slide. So what's coming up. So these are all the things that we talked about the, you know, I think the governor continues to, you know, focus on the next four weeks because that's going to be the time when we're probably going to get to the peak of our experience. I believe that Western Mass will be later than Eastern Mass so the press coverage will be focused on Eastern Mass and we might be a couple weeks behind that. So as people talk about it being a wave and it's sort of usually will come east to west. And so we're paying attention to that and making sure the hospital capacity is up to speed, making sure we're addressing all the things that we possibly can. And then we'll be focusing on the next couple weeks is going to be about finances. And that's a big topic of conversation tomorrow. The state, the chairs of the House and Senate Ways and Means Committee plus the Secretary of the Administration and Finance are going to try once again to have a teleconference where they will talk about the budget projections and the revenue projections for the state. They tried it last week. It sort of failed. We got a lot of counselors all an IT all trying to different methods to get it turned out it was not on our end. It was on their end. So tomorrow at 10 a.m. I sent every counselor the link to the session so it's a public anybody can log into it as public. And so we'll see what they have to say. I think they're going to show some pretty dramatic news in terms of the collapse of revenue to the to the state and the projections lasting for relatively long period of time. It's not going to be good news, and that will reflect have to be reflected in our financial thinking going forward, but it's really important for us to hear this information first. Thank you. Next slide. So that's the section for Julie and me and if I think we might want to pause here and see if there are questions before we go to Chief Nelson. Are there questions of the council at this time. Please raise your hand. Yes, Mandy job. My, my question is probably more for Paul and Julie, but we got an email as a council last week after Lev Benazir from the survival center presented to us some very helpful things about the food security and insecurity in town and she had an email about how the tents they've been using outside on the parking lot are not holding up and is there any way they can be get some help with a more permanent structure to help on days like today, where even a makeshift tent might not do so well. And so I was I was wondering, I know Lynn said that she had forwarded it to you and that you were looking at things so I was wondering. One, what the status of that is is that something we're going to be able to help with and to this might be for you, but it might also be for this survival center is this something that maybe we could talk to Amherst college about potentially helping out with funding or also personnel if they have people sitting at home because they need less facility people maybe to help build something. Great question. So our building commissioner did meet at the site last at the end of last week in the Thursday or Friday, and they came to the conclusion that the best and quickest way to respond was to build it was erected tent. And so one of the questions we did post to Amherst college was if they had a relatively large tent, because we know they have tents up different times of year, and they don't they rent all their tents except they have they had, they had four 10 by 10 pop up tents and that wouldn't survive whether like this. So, our building commissioner has been working with them to secure a tent that can be erected pretty quickly, and would meet all the requirements that the code would require on correcting something like that a tent is a temporary structure it's not a built environment so you don't have to go through any of the zoning or anything like that that. Otherwise, we'd have to go through. So I think this is a really good solution. I think the survival center is okay with it. And, you know, I think as we think about this, I think the survival center is going to be needed for many, many months. I think we're going to have this going to be a long time so we want to make sure that they're able to deliver their services over pretty extended period of time. So this is a solution that we can get up and running and see how it works. And if something else has to happen down the road, we're always happy to help and support the survival center. Thank you. Dorothy you have your hand up please unmute. Okay, I think that's right. Right. Two comments. One is for what Paul was just speaking about couldn't you use one of the pavilions at Mill River because it's walkable from the survival center. One question I first person was for Julie. Some of my students who are still working in delis and whatever have been told they can't wear masks by the bosses. The advice to grocery stores, does it include that all of the personnel in the grocery store should have a mask on. Thank you for the question Dorothy. The governor does not include face coverings. I was reviewing our document that was created today and I see there is a typo in there which says that face coverings are being asked for so cloth face coverings are a recommendation by CDC for the public to wear when they're out when they go to a grocery store. The problem with using cloth homemade face masks in any kind of food or retail environment is that they're different than the paper surgical masks, which are removed thrown away you sanitize you get another one. So one of the problems with people using a cloth face covering at work is you can't wear them all day. They get damp their cloth, you know, and then they have to be taken off and put somewhere and they're essentially dirty. So the recommendation for grocery stores is the plastic face plastic shields that go up at counters and things like that. They're not cloth face coverings. And as we've said before, the other kind of masks, paper surgical, or what we call simple masks are still being reserved for healthcare settings because they're just aren't enough of them. Okay. Any other questions at this time? I just want to answer Dorothy's first question about use of Mill River so that's certain something we would look into if the survival center felt it was an important thing for them to do. You know, if that's if they think that that works I'm assuming that they feel like they need to be near their headquarters, which has all the water and you know hand wash stations and things like that but if they were interested in that we'd certainly talk to them about that. Any other questions of Paul at this time? Okay, then Paul I guess we're going to move on to Chief Nelson. Nelson who's in his office right now ready to talk about his presentation and he's Fire Chief Emergency Management Director and on top of everything. Is he there Chief? Tim you need to unmute your mic. He's having some connectivity issues with his computer so he's dialing and he'll be on he'll be on shortly. He looked frozen but I wasn't sure if that was him just I was boring him to death. Here you go Tim. You're muted Tim. I was having some broadband access. I was in trouble here so you ready for me or? Yes, you're us. And if you want to slide change just tell Sean that you want to slide changed okay. No, no, I'm not not muted. We can hear you Tim, but we've discovered some of our buildings aren't as well connected as other buildings I think. Sean, we're not hearing him. Yeah, I sent him the dial in information he should be dialing in on the phone shortly. So we fought you just as I'm excited. Your participant ID would be pound. Otherwise just press pound to continue. You have joined a meeting as an attendee and will be muted throughout the meeting and will be muted throughout the meeting. Okay, we're trying here. We hear you Tim. I'm out again. No, that was that was the way you wanted to come in chief it just. If you do that again and now I'll change it so you can speak from your phone. If you do it dial in the same way. Okay, let me try to try I'll try to try it again. Okay, thanks. Welcome to zoom. Enter your meeting ID followed by pound for your participant ID followed by pound. Otherwise just press pound to continue. You have joined the meeting as an attendee and will be muted throughout the meeting. If you could just turn the sound off on your computer. Okay, how's that now. Excellent. Okay, let me get out of this. Okay, boom. All right. So I can't see the slide. So am I am I up? I guess. Yes, you are. Okay, thank you. So first slide is our core emergency team. And as you see, we've got a lot of really talented people there. And it's not just that in their areas of expertise. It's the experience that the group group brings and and you know what light light life experience too. So that kind of adds to the knowledge pool that the town town and the manager can draw draw from to make make make his decisions as as we go go forth in this. And in this, I guess, well, it's it's a health health prior crisis. So, so next next slide. That's this, this, this is our, I guess, I guess you say it's our public public safety safety triumvirate. And depending on what the issue issue is, a different facet of that group would will take take the lead. And since this is a public health emergency, help our health health director is taking a lead from from a strategic standpoint. And then we and we and we we come in to to assist and support from from a operational stance and standpoint. So, and I and I have to I have to say too, I can't can we leave out the db does W as as really one one one of those critical critical parts as well. So, all right, if you can go on to the next the next slide. So, throughout out this we're, we're working, you know, we don't we don't work in in a bad vacuum. It's we have some re regional and state state partners. First, I'll talk about the way West West health and the medical court coordinating coalition, they're charged with with court coordinate and public public health and medical emergency, and that's where the four Western counties. So, they're they're deeply involved involved in this where we work with them is coordinated and getting getting supplies for right right now for, you know, and I'm talking about Santa, Santa, Santa, and things like like that. Mass and that and that type of thing for our nursing nursing homes in town, we were able to facilitate through them a shipment from from from the state to one of our nursing homes. So that's so that's so that's one. One of our big part part for partners is name of the map and that's two systems of emergency management, a agency, and that's it's a part of partnership. It's a really cool relationship. We we've had a good good relationship with with them ever since I've I've been been here, and I've been working with them for about the last 25 years. So, and what and what they they've been able to do is get get us, you know, they they they have a giant to the distribution where we're where we're house and sense sense and central math, which is the to the distribution point for all kinds of equipment, primarily, primarily personal protective equipment, and we've we've been getting our we've been building our supply play up since this thing started. So, and I'm talking about gowns, gloves, masks, goggles, thermometers, all kinds of equipment. That that type type type of thing. So we've been doing a pretty good good job at or or ordering that and get getting it up, get getting that rolling down down our supply supply supply chain. And then third is our mutual mutual aid partners. You may have read or heard heard on on the news that I think the town's of long long metal Springfield Aguam West Springfield Westfield formed a mutual aid pack. In case some large a large proportion of their respective staffs go go go down or go go out of service service service. And that's and that's and that's a good good thing. But here in Hampshire County, we've been do-doin' that for a very long, long time. We don't have to make up a special pack because we already have one. And going back three, three and a half weeks, we all got to get together. And it's not so much that we had to reinvent our mutual aid plans. We just want to review it and make sure that all those parts still fit and they do. As I said, Hampshire County has a long history of you using mutual aid. So we all stay in touch. We know what the capabilities are of all our department departments. We know what resources are available. If the need does arise to supplement a neighbor's neighboring department. So if you go to the next slide. Another thing that we've been doing is staying in touch with our elder community. That's the most vulnerable part of our community. And that's the thing that I guess I'm most concerned about. So what we've done is we've reached out. We're in touch every few days with each part of that community. And they're doing a very, very good job at protecting their residents. They're doing a lot, a lot, a lot with the restricting of the access. Doing a super job to keep the keeping things clean. They're working, they're doing such a personal separate race. And they're screening folks as they come in to their buildings. So they're doing a lot to maintain the safety and welfare of their residents. And I can't say enough about the job that they're all doing right now. And I didn't want to leave out our community or the emergency response team. There are a bunch of citizen volunteers under the offices of the fire department who are there to assist in any way, way, way possible. I call them our force model multiplier. They're here to assist with meals. If we were to set up a test site in town, they'd be here to assist. They're all trained in the community for first aid and community emergency response. And they're all volunteers and the thing about them is they just want to give back to the town, the town, the town that they live in. So the last slide, kind of the new way of operation is just what it says. It's all those steps that we take to make sure that we can continue to provide services to the town. I'll start with, you know, workforce protection. One of the things that we did quite early on was we restricted access to our buildings to just do the duty per personnel. We know that none of the public were allowed to come in. Deliveries were left at the door of that type of thing. And we did that early on. We screen our personnel every shift coming on shift. Or in our off duty per personnel, if they happen to come in for any reason, they all get screened for, you know, kind of the temperature and if they've had a fever or just their general health. So we really lean forward on that. And we just encourage our folks just to be smart in terms of their health. We've reduced our inspections. We've put those off. And in fact, Marshall has come out with some statutory line language so that we can hold those inspections in a band until such time that the state of emergency is over. One of the things we did was we added some temporary staff. We took folks that were part of our student force who had transferred to our call force when UMass closed down and we added them to our permanent force on a temporary basis. They were already trained by us. They're part of our department. They met them in the minimum call qualifications for a temporary employee. And so again, and I'll use the term again, they became a force multiplier for us. Now they're all on duty now on their various shifts. And it's going to be a great, great, great help to us. If as they keep predicting we get that surge, we're going to need all hands on deck. So talk about our supply chain. Again, we were pretty good with this early on. We identified that we probably should start to order equipment early. And I'm talking about personal protective equipment. And we did that. We ordered it early and often. And we've got some pretty reliable suppliers. So we were able to build up our stock for the time when it would become really a pressing thing. What I'd like to say is that if our supply chain stopped right now, we are still good. We just did an inventory. We would be good for five weeks in terms of supply. So again, that's because we saw this early on and decided we needed to just prepare and stock up. And plus, to be honest, we've been able to order quite a bit of supplies. So our challenge is going to be as this thing goes on, supply chains get the short or tight and the longer this goes on, everyone throughout the world is ordering the same thing that we are. So it was a good thing for us to start early to get ahead of the game. Presently, we're getting ready for that surge. We keep people ordering supplies. We've changed our response posture a bit. We're going to go on with a minimum amount of personal protective equipment because you never know what you might run into. So we've changed that. And we've worked out with our dispatch that if we're going to a place where we believe that it could, where we need to enhance our protective posture, that's communicated. And then we go with a full ensemble of personal protective equipment. But now and in the future, that's where we are. But at the same time, we're still going to go to the car accident slips and falls, all that type of thing, our bread and butter response posture. We're still here. We're still going out the door at 24. So that still goes on in spite of the focus that we have on COVID-19. So with that, I'll entertain any questions that you might have. Thank you so much for this and for all the service of you and the force. You have your hand up. Thank you, Chief Nelson. That was also a tour de force of a presentation. So I really appreciate it. So I'm jumping into just one small piece of it. When you mentioned the places where seniors are living, nursing homes, assisted living, or independent living, first is a question of have any of them had any cases? No, not as yet. And that's, I think, is a testament to the work of their staff. They're really doing a great job at protecting their people. And so my follow-up, because that is terrific news, if there was even one, would the recommendation be for the person to be totally isolated at their current place if they're in a, and then would there be any assistance given? Like are the places staffed so they can make sure that their staff comes in and is fully, when you see what the nurses have on with the face masks, they have. Right, and that, and that's one of the things that we talk about a lot, is what are you going to do if in the event, and they're set up to isolate their residents, as long as they're in a condition that does not require hospitalization. I mean, they're doing that right now, separating and segregating as much as they can in each of the different facilities. So I can weigh into that. Yes, Paul. So the other thing that the fire department does is they proactively check in with all of our, all these places where seniors are living on a regular basis. So they have established relationships with all of the assisted living facilities. So they proactively check in on a regular basis. And I'm not sure if Julie, do you want to weigh in any of this about what the, what if there were a case, what would happen? Sure. Our public health nurse, Jennifer Brown, also works closely with the fire department and with each one of these entities, so that they're well aware that if something happens, they'll be consulting with her. The state has set up a system so that, for example, in a nursing home, if we did have several cases that the state can bring in a team to help with doing rapid testing of everyone. So there's a lot of backup systems in place here. But as the chief said, these great relationships that are already created and the fact that the fire department and public health nurse are checking in constantly with these entities to see how they're doing creates that communication pathway because it's finding out things early and then putting things in place that helps to mitigate further problems. So to echo what the chief said, yes, these places have already thought about how they're going to isolate folks. Of course, there's the case where people have to be removed also sometimes for hospital, for treatment in the hospital. And then there is the monitoring of those folks who are still in the facility, who may have some kind of exposure and so need to be really closely monitored to see if they develop disease. And all those plans are in place and are being checked on. There are other questions of the council at this time. Don't see any. So Julie, again, thank you. And thank you, Chief Nelson and the full team of our tremendous response. Many people have been noticing how well prepared Amherst is and we owe a great deal to all of you in the Paul's leadership. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. We've got we've got some good people here. We certainly do. Thank you again. We're going to move on with our agenda with the consent agenda. And if you could pull up the next slide on the agenda. So the consent agenda includes, first of all, the need to waive council rule 8.6, which would require us to have sent this proclamation for Arver month to GOL. But since GOL has not been meeting, we did have members of GOL look it over and provide us with the clean copy that is in your packet. We also have an honor consent agenda than the Arver month proclamation. We have the amendment to the town council rules or procedure. This is the one that relates to liaisons and the fact that CR GOL will look at this yearly and post the ongoing list of liaison committees. And then finally, the approval of the minutes for the March 30 2020 special town council meeting. Is there anybody who would like to have any of these items removed from the consent agenda? Okay, I'm not seeing any. So I'm going to read the motion and then ask for a second. The following items were selected because they were considered to be routine. And it's reasonable to expect that they would pass with no controversy. So the motion is to move the following items and the printed motions they're under and approve those items as a single unit by they wave town council rules of procedure rule 8.6 for agenda item 5 a Arver month proclamation by they the adoption of the Arver month proclamation 7 D. 7 D the amendment to the town council rules of procedure rule 10.8 K and 10 point a approval of March 30 2020 special town council meeting as presented. Is there a second? Second. D'Angeles. Okay, Pat is the second. Thank you. And is there any further discussion? Hearing none, then we will do a roll call. This time I will start with Alyssa Brewer. Brewer. Aye. Alyssa, we didn't quite hear you. Brewer. Aye. Thank you. D'Angeles. Aye. DeMont. Aye. Rhysmer is aye. Hanneke. Aye. Pam. Aye. Ross. Ross is aye. Ryan. Aye. Shane. Yes. Schreiber. Aye. Steinberg. Aye. Schwartz. Aye. Schwartz, aye. Thank you. Paul Milman. Aye. Thank you. It passes 12. I mean 13, 0, 0 and nobody absent. So we are then going to move on to the rest of our agenda. We have, and I do want to thank both Dorothy and Darcy for their support of the Arbiday proclamation. I was able to go back and make sure I got that correct. We're going on to the appointments. There are no town manager appointments at this time. However, please put the slide up that allows us to look at the charge for the budget coordinating group. Thank you. So the budget coordinating group is, we did their charge a while back and it's, it consists of the town manager and representatives of the town council as designated by the council, the representatives from the elementary and regional schools as designated by the school committee and regional school committee and representatives of the library as designated by the library trustees. The question before the council tonight is right at the, as of this time, we had only voted in two people for the BCG. That was back when we weren't quite considering the financial situation we're presently in. So in the middle of last week, I sent out a poll and I asked if we increased the number of people to the BCG, who else might be interested? And you have a memo in your packet that tells you who else might be interested. And the, so the real question and discussion before the committee is, shall we increase our number of people on BCG? And if so, to what number and how shall we proceed? So may I hear any discussion, please? I think it would be good to just get a quick explanation, a rationale for why more than two. I heard it directly from one counselor, but I think it would be good. You know, why at least three and what does three do that two can't? If not three, should it be four? So just some, it's a committee that basically didn't meet as a committee at all last year because there wasn't a need for it. So it was when we were dealing with the whole budget, we were all in the room anyway with that first set of guidelines with the four boards meeting. So just thinking of the rationale for needing more people. So let me start with Paul and ask Paul for his expectations of the BCG. Thank you, Lynn. So the BCG has been in existence since prior to the council, and it was an important group that would get together and make projections early on about revenue forecasts. And it was a real good communication tool between the school department, the library, and the town, so that everybody was on the same page in terms of what kinds of revenue forecasts were expected. And we do this typically in the fall when we look at the projections, everybody says, okay, we can afford X percent. And then we all go about building our budgets according to those general guidelines. BCG comes into play in a more significant way during times like this when there's a lot of uproar in the economy or in revenue projections. And so it'll be a really important group that gets together because we really need to be on the same page with all of our groups and have a place where we can share information from all of our revenue sources and talk about where we want to go. Ultimately, it will still be the town council that makes the final decisions on budgets and all those things. But this is the precursor to all those conversations. So I think it makes sense for a broader group, especially from the council to be present. But I leave that up to the wisdom of the council as to how many people are going to vote on this. As you might recall, the last time BCG met, it was actually a committee of the whole, including the entire council, the entire school committee, and the entire set of library trustees. Obviously, that's too large a group. But again, as the town manager has stated, the idea of having a few more councils on this is not inappropriate given the time and responsibility that we now face with regard to this budget. So, Andy, you have your hand up. Yes, hi. I actually was the one who started the discussion of whether under the circumstances, we should increase the size of council representation. And there are several reasons that I did that. And I just so to give you a little bit of background, I was on the finance committee when the budget coordinating group was conceived. And the history of it was is that generally budgets went, processes went well, except when they didn't. And when they didn't, we didn't have a mechanism to talk about it. And there were times when there was tension between various components, the school's library and the municipal functions, as to how to divide up the available money. And there was no mechanism to talk about it other than when it got to the floor of town meeting. So we created the budget coordinating group. And the budget coordinating group probably had its greatest role in that period of time. And there was post the 2008 recession as we were developing the 2009 budget. And then when we got to the point where we had diminished resources and had to consider whether we would ask for an operating override for 2000 and 2010, which we did do the budget coordinating group was a very effective group of trustees from the library, school committee members, select board members, finance committee members from the old finance committee and key staff that got together and talked about whether an override was necessary, the amount of the override and the budget plan that would underlie the request to clarify what would happen if we had an override and if an override was not presented or did not pass. In subsequent years, the budget coordinating group kind of fell into just coordinating process, setting up the timeline. And at times after that initial meeting that Paul described where all of the boards are present, if there was a request to add one particular item and there was money available to add one particular item to make sure that the other components of the three major functions had an opportunity to talk about it. This year we are in an extraordinary position that is taking us back to where we started the whole process with the creation of the budget coordinating group because we are facing sort of extraordinary circumstances in the budget that Paul talked about earlier this evening. And it seems important that the budget coordinating group have a key role in that so that the school committee, library trustees, and the key staff of those two components of government are present in the discussion or the consensus discussion. But it is still, as has been pointed out, ultimately a decision of the council. I think that it is important for us as counselors to make sure that the budget coordinating group serves that purpose of providing a forum in order to make sure that everyone has heard and that we have some consensus going into the process because they are all the central elements of our government. And I felt that because of my experience of having been through the 2008 and 2009 process, the creation of BCG, and then being co-chair of BCG in some of those critical moments, including the period when we were doing the override discussion for 2010, that I should have a role and it did not seem right that it could be a role other than to be a role with an expanded BCG. So I made that request and that is what is before you. So that provides some background. Thanks, Andy. Pat, you have your hand up. Yes. I agree that we should expand the committee. And I would like to withdraw my name and support both Andy and Mandy Joe going on to the committee. Andy, because of his experience previously as he just eloquently described, and Mandy Joe because she has not been on the finance committee. And that brings a fresh eye. And so I would like to support expanding and have those two people be Andy and Mandy Joe. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to ask whether or not we're prepared to put that in the form of a motion. And the motion would be to appoint counselors Steinberg and Panicky to the budget coordinating group in addition to counselors Griezmann and Schoen, who were appointed on March 9, 2020 under town council rules procedure 10.6. Counselors appointed to committees named in the charter effective immediately for a term to expire January 6, 2021. Is there a second? George? Second. Okay. Is there any further discussion? George? No? Just a tricky finger, sorry. We all understand that. Is there any further discussion? Dorothy? I'm just not sure what we'd be doing in the finance committee then. Okay, plenty. The finance committee still completely reviews the budget. The budget coordinating committee sets essentially the guidelines for all of the three different groups going forward. So for example, this year, the guideline was two and a half percent. There wasn't any debate about it at the time it was set. It was the guideline council adopted. Now because of the situation we're facing, we may be needing to set a guideline that says we're going to go on one 12th budgets or we may be needing to set a guideline that starts changing the percentage down from two and a half percent to something else. But the finance committee still reviews the budget and recommends the budget to the council. Andy, you had your hand up first and then Darcy. Andy? Yeah, just very briefly. The purpose of the budget coordinating group is to achieve consensus. It is not a policymaking board because it has no role to make policy when it operates in that fashion. It is making a recommendation to the council through the finance committee and the finance committee will receive that recommendation and consider it as a recommendation. It is not bound to it because it is a council decision and this is just the mechanism to get us there. It gives the school committee and the library trustees a very important role before it's presented to the finance committee but it is the finance committee and ultimately it is the council's decision. And Darcy, I want to say thank you for asking that question because I felt like it needed clarification. Darcy, please unmute and ask a question. Darcy? Darcy, you need to unmute. I didn't. Sorry. I feel a little uncomfortable about this because I have confidence in Kathy and Lynn and it feels strange to me that a councilor could just ask to, you know, be added to a committee like this. And I'm also wondering does this mean that the library and the school committee will feel like they need to add members also? Does that give us some kind of an unfair advantage by having more members on this committee? There is no prohibition in the charge which is in your folder on the number of people from each at this point given the fact that the trustees and the library only have six people and the school committee only have actually four, they'll have five hopefully after tomorrow night. They may also request to add another person and that would, you know, be perfectly acceptable under the charge. The only requirement we have under the charge is that no more than two councils from finance shall represent the town council on the budget coordinating group unless the council designates more than three representatives to BCG. Thus, somebody from if we go to four, one of the people has to be a non-financed committee person. Are there any other questions or statements? Kathy? Just a brief one. I'm not sure that library or schools even designated any last year, you know, we didn't get any notification, this is who they are. So I think it's time around they're going to want to send people to the table because we're potentially talking about a consensus agreement where people would have to take cuts to the budgets that they were thinking they were going to have and figuring out, you know, what levels where and what can they put on the table as possible. You know, it's a shared percentage. So, you know, I don't think they're at a point right now where I would assume they send their most finance-minded people to the table who can look at numbers. So it's not going to be numbers as much as people who already knew what was being asked and can be thinking hard about where is there any ability to manipulate? Let me just mention the library and the schools have both now at Paul's request come forward with their, the names of their people, both have brought forward two names. Okay. Alyssa, you have your hand up. Thank you. I really appreciated Andy's overview of history because you know how I like that too and the fact that the role of the BCG has changed a lot over time and then was put in the charter in a very specific way and it is, it does feel a little bit weird, right, to not have equal numbers like we used to. But the other thing that you have to bear in mind of course is that it used to have two finance committee members, which were representing town meaning, right, because finance committee was a creature of town meeting at that time appointed by the moderator. And so it is just different now and it's just one of the many things that's different because our legislative body is so big. It is so important though at a time like this to have a body like BCG because as Andy elaborated on in many points, if you don't, then the only people who are talking about the shares of the budget that they need in the situation are the paid employees. You don't have any buy-in from the individual committees. And when you have the elected committees all having seats at this table where they are conduits of information back and forth between their bodies, it just, it goes so much more smoothly and everyone understands what's going on. We've done it without and it's not a good situation. It can be a really helpful tool and it's not a matter of not trusting people. It's simply bringing in fact more voices to the table so more people understand just where we are so that one elected body doesn't read in the newspaper that a different elected body is going in a different direction. Lisa, thank you for adding that additional piece of history. So in fact the previous BCG back when they were meeting in 2008, 2009 and 10 were two from school committee, two from the schools, two from the finance committee and two from the select board. So this would make it in a way a similar kind of appointment. Is there anything, any other discussion at this time? Okay the motion's been made and seconded. I'm going to do a roll call vote and this time I'm going to start with Pat D'Angelo's. Yes. Darcy DeMonte. No. Griezmer is a yes. Panicky. Yes. Pam. Dorothy. Oh, oh, oh, sorry. Yeah. Yes. I'm unmuted. And your vote was yes, right? Yes. Okay. Evan Ross. Yes. George Ryan. Yes. Beth Schoen. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Yes. Sarah Schwartz. Yes. Shalini Balmoun. Yes. Alyssa Brewer. Yes. Okay. The vote is 1210 and none absent. Okay. We're going on to the remainder of the agenda and at this time we have committee reports. Mandy Jo, I believe CRC has met since the last time we met. Yes it has. Not much to report in terms of substance of issues. We're going to keep meeting on that but I do want to report that I was elected chair and Shalini Balmoun was elected vice chair. So we are moving forward with that. We did decide on our next meeting date today after a doodle poll and that will be April 21st at 2pm. I sent an email to the committee about that. It is a different time in day. That's a Tuesday, not a Wednesday than we've met in the past. That is for this coming meeting only we have not yet had a chance to set sort of a regular meeting time to confirm any of that at this point. Andy, can you just quickly tell me when you're thinking of having finance committee next? The next finance committee meeting is going to be determined by when Paul decides to schedule a budget coordinating group. The charter provides that it is Paul who schedules the BCG meeting and we will schedule it afterwards so that we can receive that input. And you have the report in writing so I'm not going to review a report that you already have in hand. Just respond to questions if they arise and there is one action item that will be required at a future council meeting because it was a recommendation made regarding the audit but it is a council decision not a finance committee decision according to the charter. So it's our recommendation but requires action of the entire council. That action with regard to the audit will come before the council at the 27th meeting. Andy, the reason I asked the question is because we also for finance committee meet on Tuesdays at 2.30 but obviously we won't be ready to meet by the 21st because BCG will have not met yet. If there turns out that there's enough information available to us on any of the issues that are identified in the finance committee report which the written report we could schedule a meeting at any time it might do that before the BCG meets if it's a very long time but we did not specifically set a date at the last meeting because we felt that it was important to find out if at all possible about BCG and availability data. I think that the key point next key point for the finance committee and the entire council is going to be when we start getting information about the FY20 budget the current year and within the next couple of weeks we should have from Sonya the third quarter report which he's already told us that the largest impact of the additional costs and the changes in revenue for FY20 are going to really be fourth quarter not third quarter issues. So until we get the third quarter report we're not going to know what the impact is. Okay, thank you. GOL, anything, George? No, our next meeting is the 22nd of April. And that's at what time? 1030. And that is your organization meeting so I will be present for that meeting to run your elections. Okay, JCPC, Kathy? We haven't met so I have nothing to report and right now there's not a meeting schedule. We need finance first so we have a better sense of the budget. Okay. Oka, Evan? No, very active right now. Yes, Oka has been very active in its waiting days. So we met this morning. The only major thing of course is a reminder that we have this Thursday 7.30 p.m. the interviews for zoning board of appeals. One slight thing has shifted since we last talked which is that there were two associate members who were up for reappointment at the end of June. Associate member terms are one year so their terms are expiring June 30th of 2020. And so instead of treating those separately the associates will also be interviewed on Thursday and so the purpose of the meeting on Thursday will be not only to consider the seats that are currently vacant but to consider the potential reappointment for associates. There'll be two meetings much like we did with planning board, a 7.30 p.m. meeting of interviews and then a subsequent meeting of deliberation with the hope of having a recommendation to the council for the council's April 27th meeting for ZBA and at that point hopefully Oka will consider our role in ZBA appointments done and we will move on to the three expiring planning board terms. So Evan I just want to clarify the your meeting for both of those meetings on Thursday, April 16th at 7.30. Correct. The interviews and then you'll reconvene as a committee to make your recommendation. Correct. Thank you. And those meetings are posted and the interview meeting posting has been updated with the names of the interviewees so we will be interviewing seven people and those names are now part of the public meeting posting. Right and the town services and outreach committee Darcy. Yes we had had a meeting scheduled for today but we postponed it until next Tuesday the 21st at 4.30 so that we can get the recommendation from the town manager with regard to the his recommendation regarding a finance director and I guess some other appointments also. Yes my understanding is that the committee may also be receiving appointments recommended appointments from the town manager for the Board of License Commissioners and Conservation Commissioners. I see some hands up with questions regarding committees so George. I think you're misreading my hand should not be up if it is I'm sorry. Okay Kathy. I had a question of Evan when you're interviewing the associates will they be potential consideration for for being a full member so are they part of the larger pool who are applying to be a member of the board because there's some of these associates originally applied to be on the board but they were given associate status I just or are they only getting an application to be renewed? So in theory part of the larger pool so part of the reason of doing the associate interviews and the reappointments together is one for efficiency but also to have a more holistic approach to filling the vacancies practically speaking I have spoken to both associate members one is willing and interested in moving up to regular member one has asked that she only be considered for the associate position as she does not interest in regular membership so they are being considered holistically but one has asked specifically to remain as an associate. Okay thank you and and during the interviews everyone in the committee knows which one has which you know when you do go into your deliberations. Great thank you. Yes Dorothy you have your hand up. My question was partly Kathy's question so my understanding is that an associate member does not have is not part of the board unless they are asked to be to take on something because a regular member is unable to do so. Okay all right so you will consider one for a full time and one for reappointment is that correct? Yes I mean they're both being considered as part of the broader pool. And there are how many regular member vacancies at this time? There are two regular member vacancies and they are technically up to there are technically two associate member vacancies so there are four potential slots that could be filled. Okay great thank you any further questions about committee reports? Okay Paul does not have an official town managers report but are there questions of Paul at this time in general? Um with regard to town council comments we just mentioned tomorrow we are going to open up the site for the interviews for the school committee at 530 which is 15 minutes before we normally do. It will be open so that we can get all 17 members of the school committee and the town council and all four members of four excuse me four candidates on and make sure everybody can hear everything. At that point we're going to open the meeting talk about how it's going to proceed which is all described in the memo you have but in addition to that it's on the agenda and everything is posted. We are going to then ask that during the question period the counselors and school committee members who are not asking questions which is basically six of 12 counselors and three school committee members that you mute and also turn off your video so that we can get as good a picture on the screen of Amherst media as possible of the candidates they will their video or their picture will come up whenever they're asking questions and as you know we will go through a rotational process for each of the questions. Alice and I have reviewed the questions she'll be asking some I'll be asking some and then we will proceed afterwards to have the members of the people who are candidates will then actually be muted and not return to the meeting. The counselors will have an opportunity to discuss candidates and then we will move to vote and a vote looks like the following you basically say who your candidate is at the point at which we have one person who gets nine votes we now have a successful candidate. If there is not a successful candidate after the first round we keep voting and we'll see how that goes. Kathy you have your hand up. Yeah on the ways of if we turn our video off and I turn mine off it just says my name that's what you're asking us to do. Yes or your picture. Yeah or your picture and I haven't figured out how to get it in yet even though I've tried a couple times but that's all right. Okay. Alyssa you have your hand up. Yes thank you. I just wanted to mention while we had a chance to speak of process just incredibly briefly is that because you know this is still an adaptation of a previous process with a lot more people involved and then you add on the zoom complication right we're all going to just have to be super patient. But the other thing to bear in mind is because we don't have selection criteria that's going to make it extremely awkward to deliberate about what we want to see in a school committee member. So I am just asking everyone to take a breath and please don't refer to the individual candidates and why you think that they're better or not. I would really ask that you consider thinking about what it is we're looking for in candidates that selection criteria idea that oak has been promoting because it's very difficult if all the comments are about one particular candidate or not and just to give you again the history on that typically over the many many ones of these I've done over the years we have not deliberated about these humans who are in front of us at all. Now that's not a very satisfying situation so I appreciate that Lynn and Allison have tried to work in an appropriate deliberation period here but I just caution us to be really thoughtful about the message we're sending to the candidates if we end up talking about them personally because when you end up voting for them as Lynn said she just calls the roll and I say Brewer and I say Jane Smith and that's it I don't say why so I don't have to participate in the deliberation and neither do you but if you do I'm just asking please let's try and talk about ideas and reasons rather than people. Allison thank you for saying that the really the criteria though they're not written as criteria should be the description of the roles and responsibilities of the school committee that are in your packet okay Darcy you have your hand up Darcy. Sorry I thought I had already unmuted but I just feel like if we are trying to replicate a town council meeting that we are all present at and and and seen on video in the past that I think it's comforting to the public for them to see us and I think it's actually most comforting for them to see us in our homes. I think that we're seeing that in everything that we see on social media and everywhere on television. We're seeing people in their homes and I personally think that it's would be advantageous for us as a council to at all of our meetings have our videos on and be seen so that the public can feel comforted by the fact that we're there and we're all listening and we're all watching and we're in our homes and so I just wanted to express that because I think it's nicer than having an icon or having our name there. They don't know if we're even present if they can't see us engaging and listening and so on so just wanted to say that because I don't like turning my video off. Okay, we will leave it to individual counselors. Kathy? My understanding is we're just turning it off when we're doing the interviews are happening, correct? You know and then we can turn them back on when we're talking to each other. I just want to make one comment about potentially that's a good idea is some people have mobile faces and no matter what they can do what they do about it they express an opinion with their face and so during the interview it's a nice thing to just focus on what who the candidate is who's talking and you're not distracted by or someone's drinking water so I don't mind that but I what Alyssa was saying about um selection criteria and Lynn you said what's in the responsibilities in the roles I think one criteria that's been in my mind and I will say it on Tuesday night is I think this is going to be a challenging year for the school committee so someone who's prepared to put in a lot of time and is going to be realizing there's going to be some tough budget issues in the tent that the superintendent is facing but then the school committee and they have to get a whole school building committee up and running and bringing home things so I'm looking for some evidence that people are aware they're jumping into that and that they have something that indicates there'll be a major contribution so I just I've got some criteria and I think having a what what what we were looking for and listening for um to help us make our decisions because we've all read the statements so that's all I just the role but I think it's going to be a very challenging year I think the point you're making is that we all have our criteria we just don't have these common set of criteria Dorothy I don't like the idea of turning off our pictures um a hangman is hooded I I think our whole democratic idea is that you should see um people who are questioning you and who are there so I really don't like that idea all right then we'll leave it up to individual counselors how they want to handle it okay any further questions or comments um I have nothing else is there any future agenda items that people like to bring to our attention okay are there any other counselor comments at this time Dorothy Dorothy you need to unmute there we go um some people who expressed a lot of great concern about the homeless people particularly in weather like today and um just wondering when are we going to come up with some more um permanent shelter for them um you know it's really inclement it's like Lear on the Heath and I just think that we should come up with at least for the time being in this time of difficulty some kind of housing for the homeless people all do you want to respond to that issue so there is a the town has always had um a seasonal shelter that goes from that goes until April 30th which is when it will close again this year just like it always has and that is um at the first Baptist church and that houses 28 adults 22 men and six women roughly it sometimes they switch back and forth on that um and so and it's a shelter that doesn't open till nine at night 9 30 at night and then it closes at eight in the morning and that's what the town has always been offering uh in this period of time it's not enough it's never it actually it's a non-profit that actually offers that service uh with with funding from the state so it doesn't meet the need there's always additional need and all shelters throughout the state so there the sheltering those experiencing homelessness is a really complex challenging um problem and so it's um is there's no easy solution at all I can say about that are any other questions or comments from the counselors we have no other agenda items and so I want to thank you all we have a shorter meeting tonight um and the meeting is adjourned