 Seeing that we have a quorum of the council present, I'm calling the meeting to order at 6.30. We're going to review the agenda with regard to the timing and a few rearrangements of items. But prior to that let me also make a few announcements. First of all in this room on June 10th we will have a public forum on the capital improvement program. This is per the section 5.7d of the charter. That will start at 6.30. On June 17th we will convene again as a town council in this room at 6.30. And on June 18th we will have a community discussion regarding the proposal for the Valley CDC project for 132 North Hampton Road. That will be on June 18th at 6 o'clock at the Bang Center and more information will be coming out. I briefly want to mention because they've been wonderful collaborators of ours that the League of Women Voters is having their annual book sale. It will be on July 26th, 27th, 28th and August 2nd and 3rd at Fort River Elementary School from 9 to 4 except on the very first day it will be open until 6 o'clock. In terms of the order of the agenda we will be here having the hearing for the poll from Eversource. And then the council will close that hearing and the council will discuss and vote that. We will then proceed to agenda item 7A, which is, I'm sorry, it's 7B, and which is dealing with the water and sewer rates. And then we will proceed with the agenda as follows including public comment. So since this is the first time that the council has had a public hearing during a council meeting, let me just say I have to declare that we open the hearing on the placement by Eversource of a utility poll on East Pleasant Street. Massachusetts General Law chapter 166 section 22 requires that the council hold a public hearing on the petition of any utility provider to construct or locate polls, conduit or underground wires for the transmission of electricity. This hearing is on the April 2, 2019 petition of Eversource to install one solely owned poll approximately 73 feet northerly of the center line of Harlow Drive and 23 feet easterly of the center line of East Pleasant Street as needed for a new transformer. The plan is shown on the screen. If we could please have the map. Okay. And you might want to enlarge it for those of us that are going blind. Okay. Thank you. Notice of this public hearing was published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette on May 14, 2019 and is required by Statue of Written. Notice of the time and place of the hearing was mailed by the town clerk on May 13, 2019 to all owners of real estate abutting the proposed poll location. The Department of Public Works has recommended approval of this petition and reminds the petitioner that a street opening permit must be obtained prior to commencing work. Therefore, we'd like to ask the petitioner to come forward and present. You come to the mics here. You push the button so that you see a green light. State your name and where you're from and proceed. Good evening. Nicholas Langoni, Eversource. So we're petitioning for a poll between Harlow Drive and Grantwood Drive on East Pleasant Street. It's gonna be a 45 foot poll owned solely by Eversource. Hold on. Have you not pressed the button in the microphone? Closer. Thank you. How's that? All right. Much better. First time we're here. All right. So I'll just quickly restate that. So this is for a new 45 foot solely owned poll between Harlow Drive and Grantwood Drive on East Pleasant Street. The purpose of this poll is to relocate a transformer. As part of our grid modernization project, we have installed a recloser on the pole to the north. And that pole had a transformer located on it previously. And we needed to keep that transformer to feed the customers. So we had to relocate it in the best place to put it was a mid-spam pole as shown in the petition. Okay. Any further comments from you at this point? No. Okay. Are there questions from counselors? See none. Does the public have any questions? See none. Is the public here? Is there anybody here from the public to speak in favor of this? Is there anybody here to speak in opposition? Are there any questions from the council? Okay. Yes. Andy. I just want to note that I don't think that the witness needs to will need to respond to this. When I was member of the select board and regularly did these hearings, one concern that I regularly had was whether the choice of placement of a pole endangered shade trees. And I note that Mr. Moreing, superintendent of Public Works, sent a memorandum to the council on May 30, in which he responded to that issue and indicated that that is not a problem with the location that's proposed for the pole. So unless there's any other contrary indication, then I will just want to have that for the record. Okay. Yes, Ms. Boer. Along those lines, I was just going to recommend that since we do these very irregularly, that there's somehow be some sort of checklist maintained in with staff, et cetera, to say that we should go ahead and mention that if Mr. Steinberg didn't remember to bring to our attention that DPW had an opinion had already offered us their opinion. So we knew that because we read our packet, but we didn't announce it as part of the hearing. I think it is useful as he just did. Okay. Are there any other council comments at this time? Okay. Then I'm going to declare that the hearing is completed and we will immediately move to a vote. So the following is the motion. I will need someone to place the motion and then a second to adopt the order for a pole location as petitioned by Eversource to install one solely owned pole approximately 73 feet, northerly of the center line of Harlow Drive and 23 feet easterly of the center line of East Pleasant Street for the purposes of installing a new transformer as shown on the plan marked 6A82132 and is recommended by the DPW superintendent and to authorize the town council president to execute certification of the council's adoption of the order. Do I hear a motion? So moved. Is there a second? That was Pat D'Angelo's. Is there a second? I second it. Dorothy Pam seconded. Any further conversation, discussion, questions? All those in favor? Aye. It is unanimous except for one absent. I'm sorry. Okay. I'm sorry. Are there any opposed? Any abstained? It's unanimous except for one absent. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you for your time. Mr. Bachman, I believe you and Mr. Mooring are going to do the water and sewer rates. Yes, thank you. So in your packet is a memo from me to you on the recommendation for water and sewer rates. As you know, under the town charter, the town council serves as the board of water commissioners and the board of sewer commissioners. The recommendation has been reviewed as part of the budget process, but now you wearing your hats as board of water commissioners and sewer commissioners need to vote the actual rate change. The rate change, the modest rate change for both of them, 2.6%. The old rate for the water is $3.80 per 100 cubic feet. The new rate is $3.90 per 100 cubic feet, which is a 2.6% increase in water rates. For sewer, the old rate is $3.90. The new rate is $4 per 100 cubic feet, which also is a 2.6% rate increase. If you look on page two and on this chart, you will note that we have very low water and sewer rates. So I think Mr. Steinberg has referenced, you know, people talk about the property taxes in the town. We also, we, you need to also combine that with our relatively low water and sewer rates. And Mr. Morey is here. If there are any questions or concerns or, it's mostly, it's his department and his work basically on this. Are there questions from the council? I'm sorry, Ms. Brewer. I mean, Alyssa. I know there are two copies of this in our uploaded public packet. So I assume the May 31st is the more recent. And so that's the more accurate. Dorothy, I have a question. I think it's great that our rates are so good. And I may have asked you this before, but I don't remember your answer. Why are our rates so better than many other people's rates? So good evening. There's several reasons for that. I mean, if you actually look at the water rates, we're actually kind of in the median of the area. Our water rate is, I mean, we're higher than Greenfield or higher than East Hampton. I mean, yeah, East Hampton and Springfield. So in the water side, we're pretty much in the median. Our sewer rates, the one that's a little lower. Most of this can be attributed to the people who work for your town. The staff at the wastewater treatment plant, the water departments, they work very hard to maintain their systems and keep things running. And we haven't had to do a lot of major, major upgrades. We're just now, we do have some on the horizon as our permits come in for water and wastewater. We'll know there's more things we have to change in the plants and there'll be some major upgrades then. But our wastewater plant is over 30 years old and we have not had a major upgrade to the plant. North Hampton's wastewater treatment plant is about the same age. When I came here in 1997, we were just completing a major upgrade to that plant. A lot of plants go through upgrades more frequently. It has to do with how well the plants are maintained and how their permits change mostly. Amherst has been lucky in our permits and has been very well staffed and the staff has been able to do a lot of things for the town and keep the prices low. And that's basically the reason. Okay. Other comments or questions? Kathy? We started to have a conversation when you were in the finance committee about the setting of water rights and the way we can, the way we do not have a differential between relatively low users such as individual residences and large consumers. We have a constant rate. And during that, you talked about North Hampton as commercial versus residential. But I think it would be good to look at the potential of what would happen if we did it differently. So I'm not necessarily saying we should do it this time around but maybe look at it in the fall. And what I'm asking about is large users such as the universities and colleges where they're using it both for dorms but also for fields. So it may not be a per person use but a volume use or big apartment buildings because that will affect the way our permits are set up and also affect the wear and tear on processing plants. So I think it would be useful. So even if our rates on average are fairly good, it would bring the residential rate down if bulk users paid more. So I just would like to have an examination of the pluses and minuses of that. Not necessarily saying definitely go that right? So that was a comment. But I also, I think it would be good to get a little bit more justification for to and the actual proposed increases because you note the expenses are not going up as fast as the rate increases. So just say a little bit more about what the rate increases are anticipation of. So as we look at our rate increases, the biggest rate increase we have right now, our biggest increase we have in the sewer side is waste disposal. The getting rid of the sludge and the process is done. We have two products. We have an effluent water which is clean and discharged to the river and then we have a sludge of stuff that has not been eaten by the bugs. Dead bugs, non-organic matter, and so forth. We have to get rid of that. That has to be shipped away. It's trucked to, right now it's trucked to Connecticut. So that's our biggest cost we have in the wastewater side. And that goes up pretty substantially and as fuel prices go up, it's fluctuates because you have to put it in a truck and you have to ship it off. There's some changes coming to the market which may help us. Greenfield just talked about anaerobic digester. If they build their anaerobic digester at their treatment plant, we'll have a disposal site which is closer to us. Is it closer to us? We can actually talk about reducing the hauling distance and the hauling cost. If they actually take solid, what we call cake sludge versus liquid sludge, this is probably too much information and it's not cake you eat. If we make cake sludge, it's more solids being shipped out versus water being shipped out. So it's more waste you're getting rid of and that's better for us as well. But there's no place in the area that will take cake. They want it liquid so they can get it off the tankers and process it. So that's one of our biggest price changes is in sludge disposal. Electricity rates always are going up just like in home rates. We pay a different rate because we are an industrial user. We have higher consumption and higher demands. If our lights don't come on, we get a little upset and have to start talking to people and it has to get fixed pretty quickly. Same on the water side. Water side is electricity is our biggest cost. Using well number four actually is very expensive as electricity cost and we've been working to bring those costs down by automating the plant and making it more energy efficient. We installed a variable drive on the well last year and that's brought some costs down and as we actually go through automating the plant we'll be able to fluctuate the plant and make the plant work a little better and more efficiently and that's the thing we're working on next. So electricity is a big cost in water. Chemicals also we use a little bit of chemicals on the water side. Those fluctuate every once in a while but basically that's kind of where we are. There's not been large salary increases. That's good and bad. If you're on the receiving end of the salary it's not so great. If you're on the paying end it's okay but our salaries have stayed in the market in the normal range so we haven't had large rate or salary increases and we've been keeping our costs for medical expenses. Our health insurance down as well. Usually our health insurance because the enterprise systems pay for their health insurance and all their benefits even the benefits in the post world it's all included in this rate you're looking at. So those are the things we have to look at. Are there further questions from the council? Yes George. Given 30 year old wastewater plant is it reasonable to think that we're probably looking at a major upgrade in the next five years? In the next five to ten years you're looking at a major upgrade not just from the plant age of the plant but from the changes in the permit that's coming. Yes Evan. So just to because I don't have the institutional memory here when was the last time that we raised these rates? How often do we do it? We try to raise the rates every year. We'll raise a water rate then raise a sewer rate or sometimes like to this year we're raising both rates but we try to make small incremental changes to keep pace with inflation and so we don't have a really really big rate just for normal operating costs. And just to build off because that's tied to what George said so in the budget under long-range objectives you mentioned a major upgrade of the wastewater treatment plant there's also a major upgrade of the centennial water treatment plant. So do we feel as though these modest rates will get us there or is there going to need to be a pretty significant rate or would that just be capital borrowing down the road? So on the water side we've kind of taken into the fact into account what we're going to do at Centennial so even though we haven't designed it we know a ballpark or where that price tag is so that was kind of figured into this rate. The wastewater treatment plant we have a the field is huge the ball field is just quite big right now so we don't have a good handle on how big it is and we're trying to narrow it down. We're also looking at ways to bring in additional revenue streams into the wastewater side that could help offset the rate increases as well. So we're looking at a bunch of things but wastewater we're not really it's too soon for us to really say on wastewater. So I have two things one goes to rates this table is helpful but I'm I would also like to see if possible a table that shows like what our actual rates are compared to other rates and I don't know whether those are you know instead of average bills if those are comparable because some do it per hcf others do it other calculate them different ways so I don't know how easily you can do that and also what our average use is per year compared to other towns especially residential versus commercial versus farming because I'm curious whether we have higher uses than others or lower uses than other towns in terms of average water use and then I was I was wondering I think the select board a couple years ago split out a separate metering for farms for sewer use so that the irrigation water didn't have to be paid for sewer too. Are there other policies out there for things like if a homeowner's water line breaks or an irrigation line breaks and they don't realize it because it's an underground irrigation line until the bill comes are there policies out there to mitigate those costs at any point in time I know other towns have done that in the past so I'm wondering what our town policies might be on things like that. So we can working we're not getting those other information for you that's something we just put together as a packet. Our rate is comparable well our almost everybody in the valley right now uses 100 cubic feet so it's easy to compare that based on what's going on. Our rate we're going up to is on the memo which is going to be $390 and $4, $390 for water or $4 for sewer. So if you you can kind of get a good feel that way but we'll give you the information and put a look together for you. If you feel your water bill is too high because of an accident an accident or some type of issue you can ask the Pella Works Department for an abatement. We typically try not to give an abatement on issues it's really it's just like anything else. If you go away for six months and leave your lights on in your house the electric company is not going to give you your electric bill or break you left your lights on you're going to pay the bill. We're having to treat the water that's something that has a cost to it. Some instances we will because the water didn't go into the sewer system if it's a really big break and you turn your basement into a swing pool or something like that will give you an abatement on the sewer cost. So we'll cut the rate basically your bill gets cut in half but it's because we're abating the sewer charge not really abating the fact that you used all that water. We have in some situations given a full abatements based on some of the conditions that have happened but what we find is that this is a rental community the biggest industry here besides education is running property. Education of the your renters is important and managing your properties is important. Just as it is to keep your the trash out of your yard and to make sure your people are parking correctly you should make sure the house is operating correctly. The town of Amherst shouldn't subsidize your rental industry to allow someone to let the water run toilet constantly or for people to take showers or to leave the shower or anything else running. You should monitor your your property and make sure it works properly. That's where we have the biggest amount of requests is for rental properties. Someone left someone left the water running someone heard the toilet running and didn't tell anybody. That's not acceptable and that's not what that kind of use we want to encourage so we tend not to give breaks on that we might give you one until you next time you saw yours you need to make sure have a way to keep that from happening. We don't have any irrigation customers yet we have a policy for irrigation but after we pass the policy it started raining. So we have uh no one has gone into the process of becoming an irrigation customer. Are there further questions from the council? Yes. So a couple associated with timing so obviously many things are new this year but and in our old form of government we used to have the budget come out in January 15th. Obviously these things were related to the budget. However the water and sewer rate used to come out before the budget did and so we used to do it in early January and the nice thing about doing it then was that people had six months notice of the increase there is almost no notice here of the increase and I realize it's small but still people do like to be aware of things. So I'm wondering if this is a one-off kind of year if we're planning to go back to the January schedule or if we've now decided to have it follow along with the other schedule. I think we can take that under advisement Mr. Bachmann. Yeah no I think because of the the new council we did not present this in January when you're you're forming up we were you know we can just present this when the council was prepared was ready and I think making it part of the budget process makes it a lot more sense as the finance committee is considering the water and sewer budgets it becomes part of the budget process as well. So I but I think early I think the councilor is correct and that people like it some advanced notice so if we can do it earlier we can. Okay thank you and also I want to make note of the request that we at least examine the option of variable rates. Yes Alyssa. We have talked about variable rates in the past with that has been promoted to us by various members of the public and so yeah figuring out how we might follow up on that would be great. In terms of again just and I appreciate the comment about the notice but you know the budget process won't give people much notice on this rate. I think we can move this just like we do this earlier. We can move it earlier but have it effective July 1 and also just the way we do with the schools we can take something if we have to out of order. And associated with that we typically would talk about it one night and we would vote on it at a separate meeting. Okay. And so if we did that for example we could do it earlier right and then vote on it at the same time as the rest of the budget for example so we have choices like that but it just gives people a little more notice that way. Also it gives people the chance the press to have written an article about how your water rates going up and then people will come and tell us that as opposed to expecting them to have necessarily read the packet. The only other thing I wanted to mention is that last year's memo which you can of course find in the select board packet did include a rate history from 1977 through the present and so we could perhaps request that we it won't be the other communities but we could at least have our rate history published next time we do this memo. All right. Is there a desire to delay the vote on this given public notice to next two weeks from now or would we like to go ahead? Can I just ask Lynn? Yes. These rates go in effect July 1st? Yes. So correct. Yep. So delaying the vote wouldn't give people any advance notice. Okay. Yes, Mandy. Although delaying the vote would as Alyssa said allow an article to be mentioned in the paper and other notice so that we could get potentially comments from the public on this issue if they have any amount of opinion that they might not have noticed it on today's agenda. So if it's not going to affect when it can go into effect it might be good to delay it just in case people do have comments. All right. Any further comments on that? Margaret, do I need a motion to delay it or just go ahead and delay it? I can just use my right to postpone. Okay. Given that we have a counselor who is the rate to post who's raised the rate to postpone it automatically goes to the next agenda. Thank you very much. Okay. Moving on. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good night. We're now moving on to public comment and let me just ask we are going to have public comment. Actually, we were going to have it on this. Is there anybody here who wants to make public comment on the sewer and water rates? Okay. Then we will allow for public comment on that two weeks from now. We are going to have general public comment now. However, I want to note that later under item 7a 7c8a and 8b we will have public comment and so if you want to make public comment it should be on items other than those. Is there anybody here who would like to make public comment at this time? Okay. Seeing none then we're going to move on to proclamations and commemorations and I would like to call on Pat DeAngelis and Evan Ross for their proclamation with regard to LGBTQ Pride Month. Great. So across the country June is typically celebrated as LGBTQ Pride Month. June has special significance for members of the LGBTQ community as the Stonewall riots occurred June 28th 1969 which is 50 years ago this month. This is the 50th anniversary and so many communities including many of our surrounding communities issue proclamations to mark the month. Amherst to my knowledge historically has not done so but I believe it's important to do so in this month to recognize the contributions made to our town by our vibrant and diverse LGBTQ community and also to affirm our town's support for that community and I think that's especially important right now as that community often feels under attack from our federal government. Just in the past month we've seen from the federal administration moves to undo health care protections for the trans community moves to make it easier for adoption agencies to deny adoption to same-sex couples and so I feel like a lot of times in Amherst we feel really insulated from that and this is Massachusetts right this is Amherst like we don't have to worry about that but I think those of us in the LGBTQ community know that violence against our community anywhere is violence against our community and that oftentimes when it comes to civil rights complacency can be one of the greatest threats and so with the help of Councillor DeAngelis we've drafted a proclamation to dedicate or to mark or to proclaim I guess would be the proper June 2019 as LGBTQ Pride Month to join many of our surrounding communities who have done the same and so mine is not loading so Pat if you would be so kind as to read it I'm going to make a comment before I read the proclamation I came out when I was 30 years old I faced a lot of opposition from my family from my neighbors from students of mine who were adults and I learned that I many instances still needed to hide many years later I met a woman and we've been together for 38 years we were not allowed to marry when our son was born she was not allowed to be on his birth certificate when he went to school he had to constantly explain from preschool kindergarten first grade who he was and what we were what who we were not what we were but who we were and then he had two moms and it was normal and I learned lots of ways to share that information but every time a new friend of his called our home and said they'd like to come over we had to have a conversation with their parents so I want us to also think when when we read this proclamation that we are talking about family members from the youngest child to grandmothers who are affected by the prejudice against lesbian gay queer transgender people so I will read it now whereas Amherst is a community that values diversity and inclusion and is committed to equal rights and opportunities for all its residents and whereas Amherst recognizes the important contribution of its LGBTQ residents to the town's history culture economy and civic life and whereas we celebrate the accomplishments of the LGBTQ community towards securing important rights and freedoms often through struggle and adversity and whereas we remain vigilant against continued oppression and discrimination against the lgbt community and against any new political efforts to overturn these accomplishments and whereas we affirm our support for our lesbian gay bisexual transgender queer residents and stand with them to protect their civil rights and ability to live openly without fear now therefore we the town council of the town of Amherst do hereby proclaim June 2019 as lgbtq pride month i'd like to read the motion and pat uh to adopt the lgbtq pride month proclamation as presented so moved thank you are there further council conversations or questions discussion okay then all those in favor yes main to joe thank you for drafting this great any further conversations comments or questions great all those in favor please say aye and raise your hand aye opposed abstain it is 12 zero with one absent thank you we have one item of presentation for discussion tonight and i'd like to ask eric brody to come forward and bill are you coming forward with him thank you please introduce yourselves where you live and make sure the mic is right up to your mouth good evening i'm eric brody i live at 318 strong street and i'm currently chair of the amherst public art commission and my name is william kason 32 golden rod circle and i am the incoming chair of the public art commission so mostly here for support but i'll be picking this up where when eric stepped up go ahead please i'm coming before you this evening regarding our proposal our proposed bylaw to establish a percent for art program in the town of amherst that was passed two years ago last may by town meeting the vote was 71 in favor tonight i want to a remind you what the terms were in that bylaw be bring you up to date and what's happened with it since it's approval two years ago and see describe what action i believe the town council now needs to take in its behalf the bylaw provided and i think you all have received copies of it for this meeting that one half of one percent of the total construction costs of any new capital construction project over one hundred thousand dollars would go to provide some kind of public art at that project site as you know the town has four possible projects in mind that would trigger this bylaw for public art a new elementary school or schools a new firehouse and dpw garage and the jones library renovation further the bylaw provided that any capital improvement or renovation project over one hundred thousand dollars would generate one half of one percent of that project's cost to go into an established public art fund that could be used to support public art projects anywhere in town including support for the performing arts finally the bylaw stipulated that a public art fund would be established in the town's budget which uh into which these sequestered monies could be placed and expended as needed as determined by the public art commission and consultation with others all this is spelled out in detail in the bylaw itself because no changes can be made in the town's budget lines without state approval and the bylaw specified a change by adding a public art fund a special act by the state legislature was requested to authorize this suggested change the town submitted the bylaw to the house state house for its approval of the special act in september of 2017 and it slowly made its way through three committee votes and received approval by the house about a year later in the fall of 2018 it then went to the senate to undergo the same procedure after which it would go to the governor for signing and finally to the state attorney general for a final sign-off and at that point it would become an official valid bylaw that's my understanding of the process as explained to me by then-representative Solomon Goldstein Rose who was extremely helpful in shepherding the bylaw through the house however the department of revenue attorney on the senate side raised the concern last October regarding whether it was legal to establish an ongoing public art fund with money that might carry over from year to year given the source of the funds generated by the capital improvement or renovation projects so a little complicated to explain in the few minutes i have here but suffice it to say that this attorney's objections combined with our transitioning to a new form of government here stalled further progress of the bylaw through the legislature and it never made it through the senate or to the governor's desk a pretty disappointing outcome i have to say after nearly three years of work in a meeting about 10 days ago in the town manager's office with the town manager the controller Sonja Aldrich Lynn Giesmeyer Andy Steinberg myself and Bill Cason it was proposed that the best way forward to salvage the percent for art bylaw was to strip from it the part relating to capital renovation and improvement projects as potential sources of funding under the bylaw by doing so there would be no need for a special act to establish a separate public art fund in the town budget and thus no need to go to the state legislature for a special act the revised bylaw could simply be enacted into town law by the town itself no state approvals needed so that's what we're proposing to you here this evening that you take up this revised bylaw for discussion and then a vote for approval at the appropriate meeting essentially endorsing the wishes and overwhelming vote by town meeting members two years ago members of the art commission would be happy to speak to this revised bylaw at your convenience we feel a certain sense of urgency to have this revised bylaw enacted as soon as possible in order for it to apply to whichever of the town's capital projects is first to be budgeted with only four projects anticipated in the next decade or two it would truly be unfortunate if further delays in enacting this bylaw would disqualify any one of those projects from benefiting from public art being included within it the revision does mean that the bylaw will provide no funding for performing arts which was very important to some in town meeting and indeed to members of the public art commission i can only say in that regard that the public art commission will do its best to remedy that by seeking funding sources elsewhere for that purpose so thank you for your time this evening and you have in your packets actually i had taken the original bylaw and for your convenience to read it stripped from it the portions that i just described so that you you have a bylaw how potentially a revised bylaw for your consideration without the public fund part to it yes elissa having struggled to work with this percent for our bylaw for most of those years although not in the great level of detail that mr brody had to i would like to be clearer and i really like the explanation that was very helpful but i believe that before this body proceeds much further including any possible referral is that we need a copy of what town meeting previously passed specifically marked to show what's been removed and before any further work is done on it by council that that actual town attorney has actually looked at the revision because we went through so many iterations of this over the years when we were trying to make it work for the very complex reasons that were discussed and so i would just not like to see us spin our wheels associated with that and i appreciate the draft that's been provided us so far but again as we look if we are promoting the history of what town meeting did we should know exactly what they passed and exactly what's being stripped out and that the town attorney agrees that this will be a whole thing okay dorsey i think those are very good suggestions and uh steve um once that is done this would be something good for the community resources committee to spend some time on and then to bring to the full town council mandy joe so i had a technical question on the lines of elissa's but then i also had a different question um technically would this as proposed in some sense it's a repeal and replace in a sense um it could either be amend by stripping out or it could be just a strict repeal and replace because i think we've got something in the bylaws right now so is is the technical a revision or are we going for repeal and replace mr bachmann did you have a comment on that so it is a i think it would be a repeal and replace because i think there is a bylaw that's been approved um subject to oh it has not been approved right by the attorney general the attorney general was waiting for the state legislature to act right and um and so there is no bylaw at this moment in time so it has to be which is why we a new act by the council right which would not have to be reviewed by the state because we are now a city council form of government okay can i ask my next question the next one was about construction projects and what the definition is and i know you've talked about the major building projects coming up but i had some questions and i don't know whether you could answer them or maybe the town manager or someone from his office um the dog park's not being fully funded so i think that would be excluded from it but something like the gruff park renovations um or any future mill river renovations um or even say the station road bridge if it ever becomes permanent are those types of items that would be included under the definition of construction project now that we've stripped out sort of the capital improvement section i'm trying to get a handle on exactly what construction project means for the purpose of this bylaw mr bachmann it depends how you define it right now i believe those the horizontal construction projects are excluded so that is meaning like gruff park and things like that but it depends how you write the bylaw what it would apply to you'd have to define what it would apply to i might also add that as we went and looked at the zero energy bylaw and moved to the rewrite there was a whole section added on definitions for exactly this reason for the comments yes pat a very minor question um it you're talking about um the town ensuring the works of art uh and i'm interested with the funds for that uh the cost of that be covered by the art commission or some other way through the town i think the assumption was that the town has insurance policy for existing structures and it would be incorporated into whatever insurance the town currently carries it not be borne by the art commission okay further conversation further questions yes steve i'm sorry i'm kathy i thought i saw steve um i just i i just want to build on um mandy's question i'm reading the bylaw as proposed the revised and the first definition under construction project says any capital project paid for info dot dot dot to construct a remodel any building decorative commemorative structure park or any portion thereof within the corporate limits of town so i don't think it says anything about horizontal versus vertical you know i i think it's a pretty broad definition i'm not i'm not saying that's a bad good or bad thing but i think there is a definition written in to what we're looking at um and then it goes on to say it can be part of a building attached to the building outside of building within a public space you know so it's not necessary you know so you could get a structural that was separate so we have a a fairly robust definition of what this half a percent would be um and it's things over a hundred thousand so at least i would take this as an answer because public space includes landscape structures or infrastructure public parks plaza streets libraries bridges stairways public fountains and buildings so we we've got a something in front of us that is fairly robust in terms of defining what it's meant to do i could add one caveat to that that's uh somewhere it's mentioned in here that it these are projects funded by the town's general fund they're certain like enterprise funds don't qualify so there are certain um projects that wouldn't qualify just by definition and i think the wording is eligible projects and like the there's certain funding projects through the enterprise funds that make those certain projects not so the sewer plant doesn't necessarily have to have a statue on it no but we might we might want to decorate it andy so uh just wrote he knows i've spent a lot of time with him on the original proposal in all stages described one thing that i just want to clarify it's just a minor point but it's still a clarification and that is that it was not a senate the department of revenue of attorney the senate council's office referred it to the department of revenue the department of revenue provided a response to senate council and based upon that senate council did not recommend to the senate that they go forward in a timely manner to get it completed before the end of the last session but it was actually a dor attorney not a senate attorney the second thing is that i have looked at the Cambridge bylaw and discussed this at the meeting that was referred to in the memo Cambridge is the one that has an operating bylaw that we can really look on into and say hey that works because we know it's worked in that community what is being proposed as drafted has some significant differences from the way that the Cambridge bylaw is structured so i would be a little bit hesitant uh from my role of having been involved with this for some time to recommend it until we take a really close look because i don't think that what we got in the bylaw exactly coincides with the provision that was even described in the remarks and i think it would be worth moving forward what's most important to me and i think that mr brody touched on it is that if we're serious about this and i think they're very important reasons to be serious about this knowing that we have four major construction projects that whatever process we use we need to get that process moving because you know if we spend if we're going to have to spend a little bit of time trying to figure out what's the best and the most appropriate wording for us to use whether it be the approach Cambridge has taken or something entirely different i don't think that we serve the goals of town meeting in delaying this and the one thing that i regret is that mr brody didn't do something he did very eloquently at town meeting i don't think i could ever match his eloquence on the subject and that is to tell us why public art is important to this community but that was the point of the whole thing is that when we do new buildings as has been done in other communities not just Cambridge public art is as important an element as good architecture and good landscaping so i think that was if i have mistated you in any way by being too quick about it you can supplement thank you any further conversation on this i'd like to summer yes go ahead dorsi i'd just like to say here here to andy's comments and that i'm i'm sorry that your initial efforts weren't fruitful but i'm really happy that you're persisting and i will be supporting it all the way thank you appreciate that so we are not voting on this tonight in fact if anything it would be referred one obvious option is the crc committee i want to turn to andy and say do you feel like because of the financial implications it also needs to go to finance i think that it probably would make sense for to go to finance just so that we can comment on the amount of money in the funding in the effect on funding sources that would be there and provide that information and as i said since i'm also on crc i would like i just hope we can move this along so that we can get the discussion proceeding in addition to that elizabeth stated that we need to look at the previous bylaw and its intent and also at some point when we feel we have the right draft to have this reviewed by town attorney okay so um we can do yes i would just state that if it does get referred to crc or finance with a positive recommendation then it automatically under the rules then goes to gl before it comes back to the council but that's an automatic okay once those recommendations are done now you've gone through three committees sorry about that is there any so the question at this point is whether or not we want to move based on additional information being provided for referral to crc and to finance in a manner that they would you know report back to us no later than i don't know middle of july um i have a question i mean new york city has had one of these laws i don't know the details for many years and i think that it might take a little bit of time to do researching cambridge and new york city to see how they do it i would say that we do have to be very careful about vandalism free art which is i remember there was a beautiful piece of work put up in front of the college where i was teaching in in the bronx and it lasted a week so they came up with a different project which was safe from vandals casual vandalism i just think we have to be concerned with that steve so i i the intent here is to basically take the discussions that happened at town meeting and basically we package it and hopefully approve it through the town council so i'm wondering if that rather than kind of relitigating because of all of these discussions have have happened and it's a new many of us were on town meeting when they happened i was wondering if we could maybe even find the clips of town meeting in which you were so you know eloquent and have that as sort of background information so so that those who are interested really know what the discussion was because so much of this was uh you know discuss thoroughly okay so there's two pieces of information the clips from town meeting and the actual previous bylaw that was passed by town meeting okay as background but the question really is on the issue of referral and the again keeping in mind and the reason i'm pushing on the time and it can slip a little bit but um is our goal as a council is to move forward with the development of a comprehensive capital plan this fall and this clearly would be part of looking at that me any job so i would support the standard 45 days that are in the rules we just adopted that report if crc and i would support referral to both crc and fincom um if neither of them or one of them aren't done in 45 days the report can be hey we're still working on it um we'll get back in another two weeks and all it doesn't you know but that 45 days gives a timeline of this is when we'd like to at least know what the status is and while i'm talking dorthy um and and for the two of you philadelphia also has one is there um are you prepared to make a motion sure i'm always happy to make motions i move to refer the percent for art bylaw proposal um to the crc and finance committees for reporting back in 45 days is there a second i second that motion dorthy second it yes steve so i have a question about the order so we're gonna have a town attorney review of this ahead of time yes um margaret you are paul do you have a suggestion as to when we would have them review this now or after it's been reviewed by both committees probably both okay i have a drafter have them look at the draft that submit it and then after the council the council committees look at it okay thank you so the answer is now and then when we have a final one okay any further questions there's a motion and it's been seconded any further conversation i have a question yes what point in this process with the art commission be involved i think at the point that you would meet with both of those two committees when they're meeting fine okay further conversation yes george i'm just we are to mention that in this referral before these two committees um this bylaw may go through some changes in conversation and so forth and so you have two different bodies looking at it and who's going to sort of make sure that it's the same bylaw that both of them are looking at and uh so it comes to us um okay i'm just wondering why it wouldn't come to us first and then it would go to you for the the sort of comments on it sounds like you're going to be engaged in a process of back and forth trying to shape the bylaw um and then eventually it comes back to us meaning go well yeah but does anyone have this problem that i'm having that it's not quite clear what i mean you you'll be all looking at the same document but then it'll get changed in one committee and then it'll go to the other committee and then you there is some overlap in the committees yeah i prefer that they actually have a document that you're both looking at and you make comments on its implications for you know economic or whatever but uh it sounds like you're actually going to be engaged in some sort of back and forth as to how to shape this bylaw and make changes to it is that right so the only committee i'm on is gl but my thinking in referring to both was that crc would take the lead with the public art commission to come up with the actual draft of the bylaw that finance would look at the financial implications of whatever that final draft is and once that final maybe that goes back to crc at some point depending on what that language is and what their thoughts are once it's out of both of those committees with a final wording then it comes to gl automatically because gl should not touch it until it's gotten its final wording okay further comments on that as a process i don't think we need to vote yes dorsi and then it comes back to the full council yes it does as and it has to be to before the council for two meetings since it's a bylaw that makes sense to me too crc finance gol council you got it all these times that you've been sitting back there William you've gotten it i've got the acronyms down yeah okay is there any further question before we vote then i call the question and mark margaret would you please read the motion back to us the motion is to refer the percent for our bylaw proposal to the community resources committee and the finance committee for reporting back to the council in 45 days okay the motion has been made a second call the question all those in favor raise your hand and say aye opposed abstain it's 12 0 and one absent thank you very much thank you and i just want to make note we're still on time oh god and we're going to move on to the budget so this you have had before you since may first a budget proposed by the town manager and that budget then was referred to the finance committee and the finance committee has met no less than two times a week for sometimes as much as three hours and many of those meetings have been done jointly with the full council and several of you participating in what have been incredibly informative meetings the finance committee has since prepared a report and i just want to say that indy steinberg has done that with advice from members of the finance committee and it really sets a precedent for this being the first time that this is how a budget comes back to a legislative body in this way up until now it's always been the budget goes to town meeting well this time it's coming to town council so if you have not read that document i please strongly urge you to do so since this is one of at least two and maybe eventually three nights that we will be discussing the budget um so tonight um we're going to just go through the various uh parts of this and he's going to talk about it as well but with both um margaret and sunia and our lawyers they have pulled together the various parts of this and let me just say that tonight we are not going to vote on all of it in fact if you don't want to vote on any of it we can delay but there's three areas in which we actually have no reason not to go forward unless there are overwhelming questions the first one is on the general operating budget which is um appropriation and transfer order f y two zero zero four and it's part a b i'm sorry part b and that includes all kinds of different things and we will review those and make sure your questions are answered meantime sunia is coming forward the second area the second one part c is actually not something we will vote on tonight because it's on capital and we would not want to vote on that until after we have the public forum the third part is actually um it's a it's basically housekeeping and sunia is much better as explaining these kinds of things but it's basically taking care of previous appropriations and rescinding and on and authorized and authorized but unused bond unissued bond excuse me part d is the community preservation act and I would suggest that we're going to hold off on voting that on that until the 17th and even with that there's one exception and that is the finance committee has asked to hold off on the vote regarding the valley cdc until after the forum on the 18th the finance committee will be meeting on the 25th of june to then forward a recommendation to the council and then finally the final one is on the transfer order and tax exemption and that's one after we have discussion tonight we may be ready to move forward however before we start i'd like to turn it over to andy and have him as chair of finance offer comments okay thank you and i am going to be fairly brief because i think we've spent a lot of time on the budget already and hopefully you've had an opportunity to review the report that was provided by the finance committee after its extensive time reviewing each section looking at it from sort of the you know thousand foot view down is in taking the bigger view and not getting into the details and on everything because that would be impossible and it is a balanced budget and by balanced i mean that revenues and expenses balance each other it was not easy getting there i think that's one thing that we didn't really recognize or have to talk about because the hard work and that was actually already done by town manager and uh with miss aldrich's assistance to try and figure things out and come up with solutions early in the process when the first um first take on the budget was done in the first projections it was not in balance and i think that we should recognize that there were a couple of things that really helped or three things that probably really helped one was when we got the health insurance rates and that they were substantially lower with less than a one percent increase than we might have feared and we were able to this continues some payments from that we thought might be due from prior year's health coverage so that was one piece of great news the state aid budget came in i think this it came in an amount that was at least helpful to us to get to the end result and then the last thing was that if you look closely there's three hundred thousand dollars that's being proposed to be used from what's called the overlay surplus account that helps to balance this budget and the important thing that we should remember is that the three hundred thousand dollars from overlay surplus is not going to be available every year and but it is available this year and it is a sound decision to use it the there were some things that happened this year that were significant in addition one of which was that because Hadley discontinued its contractual arrangement with Amherst providing ambulance service we lost both the money from the contract and we lost the billing that goes with it billing meaning patient billing for health insurance or medicare whoever might pay for the transport that is actually a permanent loss we did not do any adjustment in the staffing of the fire department and there were solid reasons to not make any adjustment in the staffing of the fire department so we lost money from the revenue side did not affect the expenditure side so those are the major points that I wanted to start with the budget was had a primary goal and that primary goal was to continue current programs that are provided by the town through the three parts that are funded in the operating budget town municipal departments schools in the library and in doing that we were recognizing that these are the services that people expect from our town and that maintaining the services that people expect in value was what the manager was recommending to us in the finance committee is making that recommendation to you in saying that we concur with the town manager's budget recommendation we know that there were still stresses within departments as we met with each department think that as you read our the finance committee report in the short sections we put in describing each department there was frequently statements made by various departments about we're not sure or we know that the staffing is really inadequate we understand that you can't do anything about that but if we had to do anything it would be to add more staffing and so that was a significant recognition on our part that it was a budget that we couldn't do more to add for our departments but we needed to get a responsible balanced budget and that is what the manager had offered to us so I think that that is probably where I'm going to stop with my introduction and between the manager's budget and all of the information that you've received since then and with the finance committee report I think probably you should just open it up for questions so we're going to excuse me we're going to look at this and it's a little blurry but you have your own copies as well we're going to look at this in regard to part b which is the appropriation and transfer order fy 2004 and it is in your document on page 10 and 11 of the document entitled town council finance committee recommendations on fiscal year 2020 budget it's also in that separate item packets of which you're seeing the second page up here and Sonia if you would just review for us what is in this part of the budget and then have people ask questions and we're going to just stick to this one for the time being okay so instead of doing this in all separate votes like we used to at town meeting we put it all together as one and if you look at the first three retirement assessment the regional lock-up assessment in the op-ed that was usually on the consent calendar so it was all voted at once I know people used to pull out the op-ed and ask a lot of questions about the op-ed but it used to be just one vote that would go through the rest is the operating budget and it used to be listed separately by town the town operating budget was by functional area we voted each number we just put this as a total here library services elementary schools debt service that was all part of the budget article at town meeting like I said the only difference here is that we put the total at the bottom you can still discuss each line item you can still have questions on this it's I added the funding sources for this so it's clear where the appropriations are coming from I really don't know what else to add to that and then the final one is actually the enterprise funds right and that used to be part of the budget in the okay town meeting articles are there questions let's just start with the top three that are really relate to our retirement funds are there questions on that andy the original lock-up is not actually related to retirement funds okay regional lock-up is an agreement that we have with the sheriff's department I believe is that they run a regional lock-up that the police department can use which is a more cost-effective method than trying to staff a similar detention facility of our own when it's needed thank you for that clarification I kept looking at that and going I don't think that's retirement so are there any questions on the first three items yes I had a question when we went over this at a previous meeting about fully funding or movement towards fully funding the pension system and I believe you said that you were working towards that or moving towards that I just wanted you to clarify that for our retirement fully funding our retirement I think it's um slated to be fully funded in 2033 the retirement board we do pay more than would be the annual amount to try to catch up and this is um the general funds portion of the retirement it's the actual retirement is about 6.5 million but the enterprise funds pay their portion and we get a discount if we pay it all up front of two percent I think I'm not sure about the percentage but I know it's about 117,000 that we save by paying it so okay right other questions on this portion and then moving to general operating this is the town's operating if you want to see a breakdown of that 24 million it's on page 12 of the budget book there's a chart there that has all the departments and what the amounts are and it totals to the 24 million if I did it right yes shall any so I had a question about the community services community services I had a question about that that's part of the operating budget right is that okay to ask that right now I didn't hear the second word community oh sorry community services community services yes okay mr. Bachmann or yeah you probably know you've actually highlighted and it's the the figure of $60,000 that's been removed this year from this was for youth programs last year and we've removed it this year and Paul actually raised that as a question for us as a town council to discuss how we would like to go about you know what are our goals for social services and I just wanted to share what Darcy and I have been hearing in our district specifically especially relates to children having access to leisure services programs and after school programs and you know and I would highly recommend that if you could find a way to not to make sure that every child has access to these after school programs in leisure I mean that's a one commitment I'm hoping we can make as a town council is that no child is left behind in these programs so yes so I think that is a goal thank you that is the goal of LSSE and because of the 60,000 we do have funds to make sure that that's the case this year in terms of future years we would probably have them reprioritize some of their funding to make sure that it can be done but whether the reason I didn't include it in the budget is because we would have had to cut something else and I didn't wasn't prepared to do that and I also wanted to have that conversation a more open conversation with the full town council to say where do how much do you want to invest in community services and then give me guidance on how you want that to be done that would be part of the goal setting process I would guess but we do not need to make that decision to pass this amount no okay Evan yeah so building on that I think that the two numbers that jumped out to me as sort of concerning for lack of a better word was the 60,000 community services and then also the 53,000 for transportation I understand those were one-time appropriations and I and that were made by town meeting but I guess I'm just curious when you make a one-time appropriation you know what happens when that's taken away what is that what does that look like for the departments that actually receive that appropriation and were they expecting that that would be a one-time thing or had they made changes with an understanding that once you get that then you level fund from there so they understood that this money was coming basically out of our savings account that it wasn't a recurring source of revenue to support these two those two activities so I think they on both of them they understood that this was a and it was a one-time thing but it was concerning because they worried and the PVTA said this explicitly is that they worry about setting up expectations and then not having is the town going to promise funds every year so we can continue that and that's that was there was one of the PVTA's concerns was yes you can do it once summer but what about next summer and that was something we did not address yes so I think that just as a council this was something I hadn't really thought about before but trying to avoid these types of I mean obviously we don't have as we can't increase we can't do a town meeting did right but but working with you to make sure that funding is sort of sustainable because my first thought was I understand why we're not keeping that 60,000 and then my second thought was why would it we let I'm trying not to curse you know that that's unfortunate for a department to receive in flux of cash and then have it be for one year and have to always use it so my hope is that I mean didn't see anything in this budget that would seem like next year there's going to be a dramatic cut but hopefully that's something that we avoid going forward as a town just these one-offs. Andy. It might be helpful there's actually were three different actions that I think have been touched on in this conversation several years ago and I think at least three it was probably the year before you were here Mr. Bachmann there was a initiative at town meeting to increase the funding for LSSC and that actually is where a lot of the really all of the money comes from for the tuition assistance for after-school programs and for camp programs if I'm wrong please correct me but that was actually then built into the budget so that it was a continuing it became a continuing commitment and therefore is built into this budget because you did not remove it from last year there were some additional one-time votes that were for not specified programs one was used with for nutrition program and I'm not sure what we did with the last round you'd have to know that better than me at this point but there were really three separate ones for on that score and as far as the transportation one in this gets back to it I'm saying the select board actually advised town meeting against it for the very reason stated it used half of the money from the transportation enterprise fund balance and to make a one-time expenditure of a transfer from fund balance that expended half of the fund balance for a specific purpose was a matter that I was concerned about other members of select board were concerned about but town meeting did proceed to make that vote nonetheless and that's the other item that was been referenced. I'm looking back at town meeting and seeing Jim Olden standing up and talking about increases to the social services funds and I think we really need as a council on a town to really think about what our priorities are in terms of resident needs. Dorothy, on Saturday I went to two community events with community participation officer Jennifer Moylston and I thought she said to me that any child in Amherst who wanted to go to a summer program who needed a scholarship could get it and she also mentioned that there was going to be the meals I don't remember the name of it but the meal truck coming to the playgrounds and it sounded as if it was really a strong program this summer so I'm a little bit confused about where we are. The events were lovely it was really great and people had a good time and it was very nice to see North Village and also butternut farms they're very nice events so I don't know if you could clarify that. So this summer students will have the ability any student will be able to attend any summer program and also they receive some grant funding to make sure that the meals are available at all the different recreational sites so I think we're set for this summer which we'll be fine. Alyssa, just to add a little more context as some other people have been doing so the meal program is not coming out of the town budget so that's other programming that some of us have been to meetings associated with and it's very new it's only been a couple been doing it a couple of years will be wonderful if it continues but like other grant funded programs things don't always stay and so LSSC has been really important in coordinating that to ensure that it gets to all the people that we would want it to get to. In terms of the social services commitment that town meeting has expressed over the years as well as has been expressed by the select board in their various policy statements etc we do need to have as the town manager indicated another conversation we set up a special topic for that at a select board meeting prior to a fall town meeting and it didn't get a particular lot of interest from people because what had started happening traditionally at town meeting was people just started lumping in some extra money as Evan pointed out we can't do that under our new form of government so we do need to think it through ahead of time so that we aren't questioning after the fact when it's too late to change the amount while for several years now we have been working really hard to ensure that students do all have access to all programming they might desire to participate in that has not traditionally been true we have in fact always traditionally funded some scholarship money but that scholarship money often decreased when budgets got tight and so for many years we were not funding every child who wanted to participate and for the last several years we have been which is really exciting to see but it does mean obviously not only is it somewhat unpredictable but it also involves a lot of outreach and it also involves ensuring that people know it's available which is again the outreach part because otherwise people give up and they don't attempt to participate so people have recognized those frustrations for many years at town meeting and that's why often at town meeting some money got lumped in for extra the most recent times it got lumped in is when town meeting and the reason I say lumped in is because as we would have to explain from the front of the room on a regular basis is that town meeting could not control how that money got spent they could send it to the community services budget but they could not decide how it was going to get spent that was something that was worked out with staff afterwards so that again just brings us back to this whole idea of setting up our priorities with a good conversation well before the town manager has to create the budget with his departments in order to be able to do that because the one of the more recent times was associated with block grant funding and as some of you are aware only five social service agencies can be funded that's the maximum allowed by the state so people at town meeting said but what about those other two groups let's give them the money that's not where the money went so the money got voted but that's not where the money went because that process wasn't the what process we used so we have a different process now that I think is good in that it forces us to coordinate ahead of time rather than trying to just tack things on at the end and and this year we begin that budget discussion actually next month aren't you excited Mark Darcy um could you just clarify where the the $60,000 did get spent I know it's on it's getting spent on youth services um some at groff park so you could just clarify for this year so yeah so one of the things is to have enhanced programming at the new groff park and the other is to support tuition so everybody can participate any child can participate in the the summer programs if we're able to make that work really work so that that's how we're handling those that source of funds the second piece is through LFFE and the schools thank you further yes Mandy Joe so I'll stick on this I'd like I read in the budget both for mainly community services but also library services and I know we're not on library services that the increase in minimum wage has really affected particularly those two budgets can you talk about um the ongoing effects of that at least as it relates to community services and and what how you're managing that so that's something that we had not budgeted previously the projected increase in in minimum wage and the the departments were absorbing that increase this year we did recognize that and I don't have the numbers in front of you but Sonya might be finding them we did increase especially the library analysis these budgets to recognize that they were um paying more per hour because of the increase in in minimum wage and that we wanted to be be doing that that was and we didn't want them to be have their programs be hurt because of that so that is in the budget this year for those two departments especially we did we did increase some cherry hill and leisure services 13 000 10 for leisure services and three four cherry hill the library is a different budget yeah further questions on the town operating budget if not we'll move on to the I'm sorry yes Evan um I had a question about the I guess this also relates a little bit to the library but the shared maintenance manager um position it it seems like a lot of responsibility was added and only 0.27 FTE I'm wondering if if there's a feeling that all of those additional responsibilities are adequately captured in that point to say I mean I don't know if this person is having also go to like JCPC meetings and whatnot um if if 0.27 is sufficient to encompass all of those additional um responsibilities or if there's a thought that in the future that might have to be bumped up so so the agreement we have with the library director is is that we would take some time of their person who is in charge of main facilities because he was a higher level person and then we would utilize him for some of our sort of managing our our buildings not necessarily the major capital projects which is what the previous facilities manager did which was a much higher level so this is a managing people level position and in exchange for that they were able to hire we gave them enough money or they were able to have access to enough funds to hire additional staff at the library just for cleaning services which was this maintenance manager was actually doing some cleaning as well so we elevated him to be able to manage people across both organizations both the library and the town and so he's much more of a manager George Hicks you may have met him or not I'm not sure if he came into your committee meeting or not so he but he's not expected to do as much face time with the finance committee and things like that other than his particular projects further questions on general operating yes Mandy Joe so thank you for first of all I sent you a number of questions last week and so thank you for answering them um I'm gonna refer to one of those which was my tree and ground question which came from page 80 in case people are curious but um that was the maintenance of the ball fields and and all um what is the plan going forward I know things have changed in the last year or so in terms of what you mentioned in your answer about auditorium use now that we're not really using it and all what's the plan for coordinating the receipts or the offsets for the fact that the towns tree and grounds are currently maintaining not just elementary school budget what I would think of as budget areas but also regional school budget which is something that three other towns maybe should be chipping in for um so could you talk about the plan for relooking at that so this has become a very popular topic lately and has been at on this at the school committee last week will be again on their agenda on july 11th uh they have a athletic director who's the sort of point person for that um we've identified um two major things what one is the the condition of the fields themselves and then the management of the fields and so it's the maintenance of the fields and the management of the field so we had we actually had a pretty comprehensive meeting this morning to identify the short term issues that need to be addressed the medium term issues that need to be addressed and then the long term issues which uh came out I didn't bring it um there's a report that weston samson has issued that's on the town's website I believe that talks about the long term and they're still it's a still a draft form so they're revising it um a lot of the relationship between the town and the schools and the regional schools has been kind of a handshake shake agreement there's not it's not quantified in any way uh the town in the L has certain responsibilities and they we are staffed to handle those responsibilities the schools provide a certain amount of um uh seed and fertilizer and things like that that comes out of their budget um it's it's I think because everything was under one facilities director at one point Ron Bahonowitz that he sort of managed it himself and sort of had a sense and you know I asked this morning does anybody feel like they're not getting a good deal out of this between public works and and the schools and they both felt that was kind of equal but it's not quantified in any way we don't quantify how many hours are people spend on fields because it it varies depends on weather things like that um but we are looking at how all those services are provided uh and the two big things are the fields are not built really well um the origin of the fields is they were generally um farm fields then but people didn't really farm in Amherst because it's not great soil for it there's a lot of clay it retains water um and when we built fields we just sort of built fields over farm fields and uh other than Plum Brook there weren't really extensive irrigation or drainage that was installed into the fields the other piece is the maintenance that fields get used fields need to rest and there's not a clear hierarchy of decision making in terms of who can say no to field use and that's been identified as a major issue um that we need to address and we've talked about who could be who would be at a level high enough to be able to say no you can't use the fields um or yes you the fields are available for use based on their conditions um so we we've we're having that conversation recognizing working with the schools and public works and LSSE who are all the players in this in this um situation and I I think the biggest thing is going to be um at some point someone's going to say no to someone who wants to have a tournament or a game or important game and it's going to say the field isn't usable and then there's people people have to respect that whoever that person whoever is empowered with saying that is going to be backed up by the leadership of both the town and the schools to say yes they have the right to say no because the field the field conditions are important so we're those conversations maintenance and management are both recognized as being things that need to be addressed and that's where the conversation is moving and I think the athletic director um is moving going to have that a little bit more comprehensive conversation with the school committee on July 11th okay Dorothy um when you said fields need to rest yes um in farming you do that you rotate and you rest do you have enough fields so you can say this year this field is not being used we're letting it regenerate or maybe doing some work on it um we so when you redo a field it needs at least a year maybe two to just have the the roots take hold and we don't the fields in Amherst are very well used and they're being used more and more and there's also we've talked about equity issues between boys teams and girls teams and who has access to fields so they're used the report has some some details about the intensity of use and they do get used intensively and and then what happens is we have sort of pirates who just go to come on and sort of have an event or or have field be use the fields without anybody you're scheduling them or knowing them knowing what's going on with them so we what the best solution from our perspective is not the creation of new fields which used to be the solution but to create fields that can be used more intensively typically that is means artificial turf because that is the thing that's easiest to use year round and there's it's usually not a water issue which we suffer a lot from in this town in the last couple years we've had severe drought and the fields have suffered because of it and then we've had severe wet weather and the fields have suffered because of it so we know what both of them look like and it's pretty easy we're also looking at establishing a protocol for when fields are taking offline like just very clear things like if there are puddles on the field no play on it and just so everybody knows what it looks like and we're more transparent we're also looking at a shared calendar that's available to the public that everybody can see when fields are being scheduled things happen a lot at the last minute because it might rain and then you think you have a game on Sunday you think some people might say that's good enough to to play on but others might say no it's not so it's a complex thing but it's it's becoming because of our experience over the last two years it's not just this spring it's been over it's been growing over number of years last fall if you recall the soccer teams were being questioned whether we could actually host home games on our soccer field and whether we could have events and that's become something that is a concern for the school district as well further yes can I see do do we um have arrangements where either emers college or UMass will be our alternative fields so so we we are using their fields now because once you know come once the first of may comes around they're very generous with their fields before that they're not and because this class is in session and it depends on who we talk to at the different institutions and it's also something that we're talking with the university about and want to talk with college about as well in terms of what we should expect from them we'd like it to be reliable what's happening now is that they're very flexible but they don't give us advanced time because they need to make sure that their customers and the university are serviced first and then they'll say well you can use a field that doesn't give us a lot of comfort when we're utilizing your fields but right now the university especially has saved in essence the the fields for our spring sports just build on that connection also there's a sports management degree you can get at UMass and there are people that I assume work with athletic fields are there ways we could when we're doing a redesigning and major construction pull on less expensive resources whether they're the design firms versus a western samson that I know is a big name but pull on community volunteers looking for ways that we could get community involved in and helping or the university involved in a contribution of graduate students and professors and thinking through solutions to some of the how to fix problems so we have graduates of the turf management program on our staff and they're the ones who are in charge of managing the turf and they do a really great job it's what I'm my first one my first comment is the fields themselves don't start great and that's one of the challenges so you can aerate it you can do all the things that you need unless you take them offline and recondition them in a pretty serious way no matter house you know whatever source resources but we have a person on our DPW staff who is graduate of the turf management program really knows this stuff and it's trusted by everybody but the conditions of the fields just don't lend themselves to being easily rehabilitated without taking them offline and putting a lot of money into them the estimate is about twenty five thousand dollars per field that you're supposed to be spending on them and we're not spending that kind of money on each of our fields per year okay are there further conversations about the operating budget yes Evan um which one do I want to ask so uh one is maybe just a clarification because it confused me um the enterprise funds with the exception of solid waste have a line item that they pay to the town council what I don't I don't understand reimbursing other departments what are they reimbursing us for for indirect costs and it's a percentage of my salary a percentage of the town manager's salary percentage of collector treasures for billing and collecting funds it's all in the um it's actually in the budget book so for an enterprise fund it's full cost accounting so any services that we provide to them for you to serve as water and sewer commissioners for instance where we can charge the enterprise fund and we should charge the enterprise funds so they reflect the full cost of them doing business it was as if we were to farm this out to some company the idea of an enterprise fund is that you capture all of the costs and place it in that enterprise fund and you'll count for it it's not like we hire a special finance officer we use some of some of Sonya's time to do that okay additional questions on this yes mark darcy um on the water and sewer funds I maybe should have asked this before but um what are there other sources of revenue other than the water and sewer rates for those funds gilford mentioned new sources of revenue oh so um there are out of the wastewater division they can take gray water which is water that now goes straight to the connecticut river and with certain processes may be able to use that for irrigation or for cooling at the university they can use it to their hvac systems at the university so trying to capture that resource that's now just flowing into the connecticut river and using utilizing it in different ways um if we you know there there are opportunities that building a system that would use this gray water to irrigate their fields might be another source of revenue for us from the wastewater side so that would be funds from we would charge them for that yes uh huh it would be cheaper than clean water for them so they might find it attractive or they may have a well that they're using or they may be looking at putting in a well to bypass the town system all together thank you any further questions on the operating budget evan i'll ask just one more um the maintenance costs 30 almost 30 000 to maintain east street school if that project is it anticipated that we are maintaining that at least through the next fiscal year so that property won't be released likely until fiscal year 2021 right okay garcy i just wanted to mention that um in case the members of the public didn't know that you know the finance i've gotten a lot of my questions answered already by watching the videos of the finance committee over the last month which i'm just completely amazed that you've met twice a week for the last month and also i wanted to thank mandi joe for asking that huge long list of questions because they were all that was really informative to see your questions and hear the town manager's answers to those and i thought i wish i had asked that question but um anyway i just wanted to put that out there in case people didn't understand that we'd already seen you know we've already had an opportunity to ask questions and already um whether we were there in person or watch the videos one of the other things that i think was extremely helpful in this year's budget process was the fact that we also went through all the orientations way back in i guess it was february and march so that we understood what these departments did at a certain level so then seeing their budget wasn't completely blind as well yes evan just to say something on that's when i was going through the budget i was taking notes of questions and i was categorizing them between like budget questions and then just like oh i'm interested in this and i didn't feel like it was necessarily appropriate to ask some of these more general questions um but now that i've gone through the budget and i have a better understanding of what the goals and objectives and long-term plans are of these departments um i wish i had known a lot of this during those sessions and so while i'm sure it would be a lot of work for staff if that was like an annual thing for the council early on that would be great because i have 30 questions that i pulled out for departments not necessarily related to the budget and a lot of them are just like this is a cool thing you're thinking about doing i'd like to hear more about it um that i wouldn't obviously ask now and i wouldn't want to email them but um if that if that was something that could become regular i know it's it's staff time but that was a great service and if i knew now what i knew then i think it would have been even more productive okay so thank you so one of the things i did have talked with the president about was to have scheduled tours of facilities i think that's and with department heads leading those where you can ask all the questions you want or have sessions again it's it's your time our our staff will be ready ready willing and able to do it because we work full-time you have part-time jobs here and um and i think that it's when you have availability in managing your time over the coming six months happy to do all those things are there further questions on this Kathy it's not a question i just want to make a comment to build on Dorothy's on going through this with your departments one of the things that i think we all need to be aware of and it was very clear as we went to partner department that one of the side effects of a great labor market meaning tight labor markets for people is the difficulty of retaining people in town whether it's the police department the fire department the library dpw that positions are some of them are changing more rapid people are leaving more rapidly than they might have once or we're not getting internships filled by top engineering students because they don't need to take an internship in amherst during the summer so it and then even coming up with the minimum wage which is a good thing to be doing it puts pressure on budgets because whoever is slightly above the minimum it moves the pay scale so we are in an economy that we are i think very lucky to be able to have balanced the budget this year without having to to to deal with staff issues and be able to maintain staff so it really was very striking as we went through the different departments how often that came up are there further questions yes Dorothy just a brief comment we have been going over this a lot so that you will kind of say what have i read what have i done but it's it's really like for me anyway like an onion we just peel a layer so uh things become more familiar for terms i say i know what that means um in the beginning it's like there's just too much so this is really to the general public um don't despair watch the tapes and you too will gradually understand what's going on um it's all there i'd like to yes andy i want to know that we're getting to the end of the discussion just mentioned one other topic that was referred to a little bit in the report and that is that when we were looking at the general services part of the budget the the general government part of the budget that funds both the town clerk's office and the town manager's office we did have some discussion about the amount of pressure that has been placed on those two departments because of the work that their staff is done to support us as a council and uh we didn't really reach a conclusion but we had a very frank and honest discussion amongst ourselves with the key staff about that and um sort of where it was left is that recognize that this is our first year as a council and that it is a matter that um needs to be looked at when we get into the second year and we really see how we can are functioning on an ongoing basis um but um it is something that um was a very important part of our discussion and i didn't want to leave today without thanking both Paul and Margaret for all that they've done since they were the key people who were involved in that discussion and Sonia who's been great helped us as a finance committee. So and we are going to return to the discussion of the town clerk since Margaret has offered us her letter of resignation i haven't accepted it yet you know we're not accepting it uh so we will be talking about a process to move forward to appoint a clerk of the council um and there may be some opportunity to do a little shuffling with that as well. Darcy is there anything really or i'm gonna just call time um this is related to both operating and capital budgets but um i i'm really hoping that i know that we're we don't have that in this budget but that if we i'm hoping that we can look at future operating and capital budgets to see if we can um find some kind of dedicated revenue stream that we could we could put aside for sustainability initiatives or at least think about it whether it's by department or something separate but um i think that's something that we'll probably be talking about in the new energy committee you know how how we're gonna get funds for for example consultants to do various things um but just putting that out there because that's something that's coming down the pike. That's a pre-lead to a discussion this fall thank you all right i'm going to relieve you of the anxiety you're all sitting here wondering if i'm going to read that entire item up there and the answer is no um so here is the motion i'd like somebody to make it it's to adopt appropriation and transfer order f y 20 dash 0 4 and order appropriating the town of Amherst f y 2020 operating budget as recommended by the finance committee and shown on pages 10 and 11 of the document entitled town council finance committee recommendations on fiscal year 2020 budget is there a motion so Mandy Jo moved second Pat seconded any further discussion all those in favor raise your hand and say aye aye and opposed abstain it's 12 0 with one missing absent we're going to take a five minute break and come back for further budget i'm going to ask that for items pertaining to the community preservation act materials and the capital plan that individual counselors send questions to me only not reply all etc and you do so by the end of this week at the very latest so that we can advance those questions if and to see if we need to have anybody especially here on the 17th and then that way we will not have discussion about those items tonight okay so what we're going to move on to is uh the order and order rescinding and authorization of unissued bond and this is this if you look at the finance committee report on page 14 it speaks to this particular issue and i think at this point Sonia if you give us a brief explanation of what this is about all right this is a housekeeping item back in town meeting of 2014 town meeting authorized a borrowing article of borrowing authorization of a million dollars for the wildwood feasibility study we also got reimbursements from msba at the same time for this so even though we authorized a million dollars the amount we ended up borrowing was 317 thousand so there's 683 that's authorized but it was never issued so we need to do this in order to add it back to the debt capacity so basically it's taking it off the books right okay any questions about that all right then the motion that i need is to adopt appropriation and transfer order fy 20-06 an order rescinding and authorized but unused bond as recommended by the finance committee and shown on page 14 of the document titled town council finance committee recommendation on fiscal year 220 budget is their motion mandy joe moved second george ryan second any further discussion all right then all those in favor please raise your hand and say aye aye opposed abstain it's 12-0 in favor one absent okay moving on the next one we're going to deal with is the acceptance of optional tax exemptions for fy 2020 and again this appears in the finance committee report on page 21 and uh sonia or paul do you want to do a brief description of what kind of exemptions we give and how that works all right this is really a david burgess thing i know every year we have to authorize um optional tax and exemption the state only allows us to authorize exemptions up to 40 percent and this is bringing us up to 100 percent and it's for um qualifying exemptions for veterans elderly blind surviving spouses thank you and handicap in handicap thank you so these are the tax exemptions we give in summary the state only reimburses up us up to 40 percent for the ones that they qualify we pay up to 100 percent any questions on this shall we just a clarifying question like for 70 or over held what is that for is there an income level for which over 70 this tax exemption applies or is it just anybody yes i believe there is i don't i don't know what the amount is or anything but we can get those answers for you right it's it's on the website i imagine somewhere on the website okay if not we have david burgess and and i answer those questions okay further questions about this okay and the motion is to adopt appropriation and transfer order fy 20-11 acceptance of optional tax exemptions for fy 2020 as recommended by the finance committee and shown on page 21 of the document entitled town council finance committee recommendations on fiscal year 2020 budget is there a motion isa Dorothy Pam move second shallony is there further discussion yes elissa totally minor thing but in future for future motions like this next time we do the next round of these if we can make sure we show the date on the finance committee report it's fine and well to call it the document and the page number but it should always have a date as well in the motion because sometimes drafts change thank you any further discussion hearing none all those in favor say i and raise your hand i opposed abstain 12 0 1 absent we're on time gang reminder get me those questions about capital and also the community preservation and don't forget that we have the capital hearing next week at 6 30 in this room i'm sorry capital forum okay so we've done the water and sewer we're moving on to limitations on campaign contribution bylaw may we have the slides and evan and mandi joe so i i guess i'll do the report um as chair of gol and as a sponsor and evan can add anything after um gol met and discussed the bylaw and the opinion um the written opinion of the town attorney um that was presented to us and in response to that opinion suggests one change to this bylaw and which is in the third section um and when i get to that because i think do we technically have to actually read the whole thing because of the charter says it needs read at two meetings um Margaret that was a question do we have to actually do i have to read the actual bylaw proposal because of the charter language that says bylaws must be read at two meetings okay so i'll i'll read what's on the screen it's not that long excuse me yes so i think a lot of councils don't literally read okay they consider reading is that it's available to be read not that you have to read every word that's how i've seen other councils work i'll go with that then because i'd rather not read the whole thing we also want to just note that this was in the packet it was made available to the public and is shown on the screen as well as for all of the individual counselors yes and this is actually the second time we're seeing it minus that one change um so to finish the gol report the gol voted three zero with two abstentions which were myself and evan um to declare the proposed bylaw as amended at the gol meeting clear consistent and actionable section a that is on the screen right now remains the same as it did two weeks ago at our last meeting which would number one a one would limit contributions from individuals to a candidate or candidate campaign to two hundred and fifty dollars at at this time two hundred and fifty dollars a year a two would limit contributions from municipal PACs to candidates or candidate cam can that campaign committees um to 125 dollars um a year section b would limit individual contributions to municipal PACs to 125 dollars a year um and section c is the one section and that section had no changes either at gol and section c is the one change one section that did have a change and it involves the last sentence um this is the enforcement section and the last sentence was changed to subject to be a fine not exceeding 250 that was deemed by the town attorney not quite actionable so that that fines have to be a certain amount not an up to amount so that gol changed it to uh excess contributions per excess contributions the fine would be subject to a fine of 250 dollars to make it an amount certain that's the only change gol recommended the sponsors accepted that change and were okay with it so in keeping with gol's policies and procedures they talked to the sponsors beforehand um and this was the declared um vote that the campaign finance bylaw is clear consistent and actionable we did not talk about the policy of actually adopting this and the pros and cons in that meeting we'll start with comments from the council and then we will have public comment i also want to apologize i forgot the public comment on the budget and we'll come back to that so council comments yes dorthy um well i am opposed to this um bylaw i think the limit is too low and there are a number of reasons uh one it mentions money but it does not mention in kind contributions which can be worth more than money secondly somebody who is new to the town politics uh or may have lived here a long time but not been active in town may have to do more to become known in order to run a campaign and there are no limitations on individual money so if that person has a lot of their own money then they can spend it but if that person does not have a lot of their own money they can't they have to raise whatever money they need from other sources and if the limit for the contribution total contribution is 125 a person per campaign that means they'll spend a lot of time running around raising money instead of getting to know people and going door to door and talking to people because you really don't raise money going door to door and getting to know people that's not how you raise money so i feel that instead of opening up i understand the purpose of this bylaw is to make it more attractive and seem easier for more people to enter i understand that that's the goal but i'm saying i don't think it would work i believe steve you had your hand up earlier so i am also opposed it may be for slightly different reasons than stated by councilor pan but one is that there i find that there's a logic problem in the statement which makes a comparison of boston to amherst so in the city of boston is 10 times as many voters so the the statement says that then the individual contribution should be less than amherst because we're a smaller community but this isn't about the aggregate contribution so this isn't about all contributions that you have at your at your disposal it's about single individuals contributing to your campaign so the logic would then be in boston if there's 10 times as many voters there'd also be 10 times as many contributors so basically the state law doesn't make a distinction between sizes of communities for that exact reason that the assumption is that there's the same proportion of donors in the same effort to reach out proportionally the same effort to reach out to to to voters so that's one reason the second one is that the state law doesn't really have a provision for exceptions so we know that north Hampton did this that's an anomaly and there's some question as to whether or not that can be challenged but my feeling is that if we feel that this should be tailored for particular communities based on size based on whatever the qualities are then we should be trying to change state law that we shouldn't be acting on our own to be sort of make up numbers that we don't even know those are the right numbers the third thing is the limit itself so 250 to me seems really low so if you look at recent school committee elections a number of the candidates there were some of the candidates that really fit the profile of whom we're trying to help or whom this this bylaw is trying to help exceeded the 250 limit they had $500 contributions so these were newcomers to the Amherst political scene so you know I have I have no comment as to you know the sources of those but they were above the 250 and so these are so if the effort is to diversify the pool there's evidence that in fact this would restrict the pool and so there's also similar to what Councillor Pam was saying that there's comments in here about broad-based support that people who are incumbents already have a broad-based support but then the intent of this is to encourage broad-based support those are contradictory ideas in my opinion and I have no judgment as to whether or not someone who is running with no campaign contributions or with a single friend that's able to contribute $1,000 to help them along I have no opinion as to whether or not which of those candidates may or may not be the better one so I think that the state law does fine in this particular circumstance I don't think we should be meddling with the state law or I think we should if we really feel that it's worth changing we should act to change the state law but not have our own new kind of new limits additional comments Andy oh I'm sorry Evan had his hand up so I just I'll be brief I just wanted to correct one thing that the Councillor Pam said the statement that this does not cover in-kind contributions this does cover in-kind contributions a contribution and this we this was run by OCPF and a contribution is defined as either monetary or in-kind so anything that OCPF just defines as in-kind contribution is encompassed by this to speak to the question of the limit you know I think that that's a real debate that manager and I expected to have in the council is and we heard this last time is 250 too low the I guess my question that I would ask is is a thousand dollars too high right and so the question is right now you can country you can receive from an individual person a thousand dollars to me personally that feels high for Amherst so if you feel like 250 is too low the next question is is a thousand dollar contribution too high and if your answer is yes a thousand dollars is too high then then what is it so I think the the real question here is do you think a thousand dollars is too high and if you don't then you know how to vote on this right but if you do think a thousand dollars too high what do you think is the acceptable level and if it's not 250 what is it and I think that's the conversation uh that I expected to have and then I would also be interested in hearing from people about okay Darcy um did you in your um and I'm addressing this to Evan or Mandy Joe um when you were finding out about in-kind contributions what what is the value of a an email list of x number of people um that has already been honed to be all of the potential supporters Evan so my understanding is an email list that you purchase from an organization it's the value is the purchase value um but an email list you receive from someone um is not encompassed by OCPF and my understanding is that uh there are some comments about whether or not this could encompass that um that would dramatically expand this because it would go beyond just tightening what exists and it would actually be broadening um I think there's some question about whether legally we could uh do that my my impression is that we we probably would be uh running a foul of state law if we were to start to redefine these categories for OCPF so are there some in-kind contributions that you do have the value of for example um uh uh assistance in setting up a website uh that is offered free of charge Mandy Joe so as Evan said all of that's in some sense governed by OCPF the office of campaign and political finance and how they define what an in-kind contribution is and we are not attempting to redefine that but for example um a number of us that are sitting here and some that were not elected were supported by a group called Amherst Forward a municipal PAC we all on our year-end contribution reports had to claim my number was 120 dollars and like 28 cents or something like that as an in-kind contribution for a mailing that they did um that is quite just under that 125 this is proposing um but that is an example of an in-kind contribution a mailing that i know is a candidate myself i never saw i don't know who it was distributed to but i had to list that as an in-kind contribution on my campaign finance report and it would not if it exceeded 125 dollars in a future election i would have to purge the excess even though i never received any money from that municipal PAC i would have to purge if they had told me that that in-kind contribution was worth 150 dollars i would need to find 25 somewhere in my campaign and purge it either back to the PAC or to a um which is it it's a charity essentially um and so that's an example of an in-kind contribution that is covered under this bylaw at purr the office of campaign and political finance Dorothy um i think 125 dollar mailing i just really don't even know how you would do that um i did a mailing and it certainly cost a lot more than that which i paid for myself i mean the printing the postage there's not that many of them but i think what you're starting to talk about is getting awfully complex i think if you want to encourage people to run to keep it open i do agree a thousand dollars may be too high i agree with you because i never got a thousand dollar contribution i think it kind of depends upon where you feel about that but um i think you could say 500 or i think there used to be something 400 or 450 dollars at least i heard that informally before um i think we don't want to make it so you have to have a treasurer who's spending all of their time figuring out balancing and and doing that kind of thing and to to keep it open because otherwise you're going to have people who have their own independent money finding this is no problem for me i can just spend my money okay um and people who don't um there's going to spend all their time raising funds garcy you had a question or comment uh yeah i just uh you know on the issue of in-kind contributions i feel like uh the i had to you know when i was campaigning i had to pay for um website development uh you know a lot of money um and i think that that was offered to candidates supported by emmers forward at least i think it was offered to me when they were courting all the different candidates um i believe that emmers forward either sent out mailings on behalf of candidates or offered them mailing list i'm not sure because i'm wasn't supported by emmers forward but but i feel like um that in an in a in an ideal world this would be a great um campaign finance bylaw but in amherst in particular where we have one pack it doesn't really make sense to me because the pack provides a huge amount of service to candidates that are supported by that pack and the other candidates don't get anything so um you know i received a fairly large amount of of funding from people who were interested in in uh sustainability issues and um but i had a mail mailing list of like 125 people whereas i know other people have larger mailing lists that because they had help from emmers forward so um i i guess i feel like this is amherst is has other issues that it has to deal with that um are separate from this and this doesn't level the playing field andy i guess there's several things one is is that one of the major reasons was put forward for this proposal was that it would encourage or enable more candidates to step forward and participate as or potential candidates as candidates um certainly um the gazette in its editorial made findings that were totally contradictory to that just because it pointed out that northampton which had that intention presumably behind its um campaign finance rule not in fact get that result that was just described um the second thing that i thought about is i've been dealing with is that um when i heard arguments being made potentially in the town meeting that didn't end up happening as to why there should be campaign financing it was actually for a different reason and one that i actually didn't give more thought to and that was um whether big donors would then feel some ability to influence the person if elected than um smaller donors were and i don't know that that's true or not but it is really a very different reason but the third thing is is that this actually could be a barrier to some new candidate coming forward because um a candidate somebody who is not run has never been involved in the political process but someone else has a lot of faith in that individual and says if you run i'll help you out and it enables that person to get into the race and to um start a campaign going that they would not have been able to do but for that one big donation um that's actually turned out to flip the whole thing on its head because that person would not have the ability to get that one big donation that would help them kick start their campaign so i'm not sure that i see the connection between the intentions that are being put forward and the um what's being proposed is being logical connections um steve or i'm going to go to listen only because you spoke on me thank you so in addition to all the things that were said tonight and i really appreciate andy following up on something i said last time this came up about it serving as a barrier for some cases i just want to add a couple of points associated with the frustration i'm hearing expressed about a particular pack that existed a particular moment in time and say a couple of things about that one is there have always been organizations in this town that have promoted candidates that have not necessarily followed office of campaign and political finance rules that is true i've been in town government for 11 years and i know of flyers that were made mailings that were made that were never claimed in any fashion so putting this all at the feet of one particular pack i find is is not helpful um i would love to see an organization that will help new candidates and maybe the league isn't really quite prepared to do that at this point and because they can't talk about individual candidates they do things for all of us but i think it would be great to have such an organization that would really help let's be clear that various website purchases and mailing purchases as as evan spoke to you know you can purchase a mailing list but you can also get free mailing list and that's perfectly okay under office of campaign and political finance rules you can also get free website development in many cases under certain considerations and so while it's true that some candidates had to pay for their website some did not and it had nothing to do with amherst forward it had to do with who was providing the services and how office of campaign and political finance looked at that whether that's unfortunate that some people spend five hundred dollars on their website and other people got them for free it's not about amherst forward it's about whether or not they thought they were complying with office of campaign and political finance rules which does in fact allow for that to happen and let's also bear in mind that when we talk about money one of the other things money purchases is lawn signs now some people don't like lawn signs but if you're going to have lawn signs there are a couple of different things you're fighting with in terms of what are your values as to how much you pay for lawn signs traditionally until we had local printing ability for that lawn signs were made in kansas or they were made here they can have union bugs or not have union bugs shipping costs environmental costs associated with shipping versus the cheapest possible web lawn sign you can get now that's from out of the country so all those things play into you know what is my candidate is my concern that my candidate got a thousand dollars am i concerned that my candidate bought cheap lawn signs or bought local lawn signs that kept the money in the economy all those things play into this and so when we put a really low dollar limit on things we artificially constricted that situation as well i don't want to have to buy my lawn signs from out of the state much less locally so that i can afford to do some of the other things that people are talking about doing i want to keep the money locally so those are all choices we have to make so that in addition to all the other things people said are why i can't support this are there other comments i'm actually going to this is the first of two readings on this we're not taking a vote tonight i also do want to allow for public comment Steve so so whether this should be 250 or 500 or a thousand dollars or 750 or 499 or whatever to me is a political decision so once you get above certain thresholds 200 dollars aim and occupation it becomes more and more public the donations become more and more public so whether you want if you want to accept a thousand dollar donation for your political campaign you do so at your own peril basically because that becomes public information it can be used in any political race in ways that are political so that's a decision that each candidate should be able to make on his or her own there are some very good and noble thousand dollar donors you know out there and there are some very good reasons for accepting thousand dollar donations the other thing is pay attention to the fine so so here we are trying to encourage people to we're trying to encourage people to get into politics right so we have a very if we have a very low threshold for donations the people that are most likely to get in trouble are the ones that don't have political experience so they perhaps sort of read the state law which says that there's this thousand dollar cap so they might be accepting donations above this limit it'd be subject to this fine it's highly there aren't that many thousand dollar donations in Amherst as has been noted in the white paper so the prospect of summing it in in trouble is much less likely if we simply keep the state cap further comments shall any I just I wanted to ask Evan and Mandichou if they had done some kind of research on what were best practices in terms of doing something like this like what is the amount like 250 or five and like what kind of like what is your reasoning for suggesting these figures Evan so we spoke to this a little bit last time which was basically so Northamptons is at 500 and the rationale for that was that that occurred after the state had upped its limit and they essentially bumped back down to what the state limit was because Northampton has mayoral elections which are more expensive in some ways we felt like the limit could be lower I think I speak for myself but I think that Mandichou agrees with me it says that we are amenable to a conversation of increasing the limit if people feel like 250 is too low which is why I said last time the real I think the real question is do you think a thousand dollars is too high and so if folks here say a thousand two fifties that's peanuts and that's too little but a thousand dollars is outrageous you know I think that we're open to amendments of that number one thing just since I have the mic that I also want to say is you know I've I've heard a lot of this won't fix the problem you identified and I think my response to that is of course it won't right because no one solution no one bylaw will fix a problem that has a whole lot of causes the gazette article that Andy referenced looked at this skeptically and then proposed pairing it with something else which is to say maybe if this is paired with something else it'll work and my first thought was yes of course this has to be paired with many things my hope is that over the next several years might be ambitious maybe decades but that the town will continue to improve its elections to be better that will require a series of bylaws to me this was a first step it was a low-hanging fruit that we could do and my hope would be should this pass that then we can say okay now what do we pair with this to make things better and I would be happy other counselors offered things in our last discussion about ideas that they had I would be more than happy to work with any counselor on any idea on how to make our elections better because my thought is this has this would be one piece of a much larger puzzle so regardless of how this this goes I don't want anyone to say well Evan said this would fix things no of course it wouldn't right this is one thing and so the the question I guess is do we feel as a council that we want a lower than a thousand dollar limit and I think that's the the central question before us are there any other comments before I move to public yes George I'm glad we're not voting on this this evening and this is part of a process but I really am struggling with the idea that there is a problem in Amherst that needs to be solved by this this measure we just had our first election in this regard I will take a closer look at the numbers from the recent election but the moment I don't get a sense that this is something that needs to be addressed at this moment maybe over time you may discover that we really have a problem here in Amherst with finance contributions and and things are out of control but I don't get that sense myself personally but I'm going to think about it over the next two weeks Kathy just I I think I'm building on George's comment a little to the extent I think there's a problem I don't think this is the problem I think that that too much money was flowing in to some people versus others I think if you're a first-time candidate and running then unless you find a lot of willing volunteers which I was very able to do who could do some technical support it's hard to jump in so I think it's something that would make entry easier is if we could over the next year or two figure out a very cheap way to do a website and make that available to everyone just you know here's the cheapest possible way to do a website here's the cheapest no-cost do-it-yourself kit you know like write an essay and plunk it up with a trainer some briefing books could be prepared the town has just done a wonderful job for us when we first came in as counselors but you could have you know here's the basics about the town that just everyone who wanted to run could get access to rather than some people got it so I think there's some things we could do that if you wanted to jump in and hadn't been heavily involved before it would make it easier so I'm not sure this addresses the problem in seeing I'd have to go look at the campaign contributions a lot not the people who ran successfully didn't necessarily have the biggest pots of money at all and some of the people who had bigger pots of money didn't win but so I think money is a problem but I don't think this is going to fix it and I'm very troubled Steve's pointing out the 250 penalty you know if we're going to put in a cap I don't want to penalize people just have them pay it back you know if they exceeded the cap by accident or whatever or let it sit in a pool you know monitoring this and slapping on hands but I understand why it's there it's to enforce it but but I just not sure this gets at the making it easier to enter problem that we're trying to work on. Thank you. So I want to address both the last two comments Steve's comment about the fine so the fine is the last there is a 15 day to purge without receiving a fine this is not oh you did you missed it now you pay 250 this is oh you missed it purge it purge means pay it back to the person that gave it or donate it to a charity you do that within 15 days there is no fine so let's you know it's not jump to a fine immediately it's rectify the mistake and if you don't rectify it then there's a fine and I am certainly open to as a sponsor changing that number if people think that is too high just like if people think the 250 and 125 is too low I'm amenable to a different number to address the it's not a problem now um let's maybe deal with it when it might become a problem I would just offer if by the point a council sees it as a problem it's probably too late because you've already had at least one election if not more that it's been a problem the best time to deal with something of a concern and I know during this campaign and also the charter campaign itself this was a huge concern of people in town that campaigns would cost too much to run it would cost too much it would be influenced by big money it would be influenced by large donations we might not have seen it this first one but by the time you see it it's probably too late to fix or it might be too late to fix I'll give you an example of something we're seeing now town meeting attempted to adopt form-based zoning prior to large buildings going in and downtown it did not adopt form-based zoning before that now we have large buildings in downtown at five stories if form-based zoning is future adopted some of that form is based on the buildings that are there now it is potentially too late to rectify what that form of downtown looks like because it was not done prior to the building of the first couple of those buildings that's not to say we shouldn't enact form-based zoning I'm still really want to see it happen but sometimes if you wait till it's a problem it's too late and I think this is one of those times I'm going to suggest that because we will be taking this up at a future meeting that we move to public comment and I also want to suggest that we will do everything we can to fit this on the agenda for the 17th but we know that that will also be a full agenda so is there any public comment on this particular issue please come forward make sure the lights on state your name and where you live hi Jennifer page 291 pot wine lane so I think the cap is too low at one quarter of the state maximum I might be in favor of a cap of the state maximum but right now 250 feels too low and full disclosure I say this as a former school committee candidate whose parents got me started with a $500 donation to my campaign the idea that this bylaw would encourage an increase in the number of people running for office seems misguided to me I don't see it as a barrier to entry to running for office that currently individuals can donate up to a thousand dollars perhaps the thinking is that if I'm someone who's new and considering running for office I might be intimidated by the idea that another candidate would be able to raise more money than I could but if that's the case then it makes more sense to cap the total amount as opposed to individual contributions and if the goal is to encourage people from all socioeconomic groups to run then I think that that you need to talk to people from those groups talk to Ben Harrington talk to Vera cage talk to people who are renters who ran for townwide office and see what they think if you haven't yet and see what they think about this bylaw so I so in my opinion there are far better ways and more effective ways to encourage more people to run for office to encourage people from many different groups to run for office one would be for the town council to endorse the legislation that's currently making its way through our state legislature called enact supporting parents running for public office which would allow candidates to spend campaign funds on child care another would be to not have town council meetings and school committee meetings that run till all hours of the night those two things would show that you are supportive of a broader group of people running for office more so than capping individual contributions to 250 dollars and lastly capping even in kind donations could actually discourage the very people that you want to encourage to run if I'm someone who's new to public service and I don't know a lot of people but I have a friend who's a graphic designer or a web developer who's willing to donate their time to running my campaign website I'd only be able to take 250 dollars worth of their service their time and effort and that would be a hindrance to people who are all not already well connected so I would encourage you to think about a higher cap or or no cap at all thank you thank you for your comment are there other comments at this time on this issue sure um Julian Heinz 54 high straight Amherst um so I feel like pretty much every number I've seen on the screen like the fine of 250 and the caps on political action committees and campaign finance all of this is a good first step even though we've got so much more to do I encourage you to take this first step and to start limiting people from giving so much from political action committees and people from giving so much to certain candidates for example we know one person gave over a thousand dollars and in this type of thing that thousand dollars for one person is some random donation that doesn't really affect them much where a thousand dollars to another person could be their rent or mortgage so I think it's important to understand that this is a good first step but only a first step we need to build from here so we can get a more diverse less wealthy group of applicants to come to town council and at this late time of the night it's particularly difficult for people who have jobs that run at certain hours and who have kids to come participate and get their voice heard in town government so I think what we should do is we should use this money cap as a good first step to sort of jump on or trampoline off of to a different step that would help us even more to get a more diverse less wealthy pool of applicants in to our town council thank you thank you for your comment any other comments at this time is there any final comment from the council remembering that we will be returning to this at a future meeting okay it's hearing none then we're going to I just want to clarify when this comes up for a vote it's a majority vote is that correct bylaws that are other than zoning bylaws general bylaws are majority thank you seven minimum of seven yes it's a majority of the full council whether they're present or not okay we have one more item on oh I want to go back is there anybody here that has a comment on the budget all right thank you I want to go back I want to move on then to the town manager evaluation process and calendar so let me just explain that in my attempt to help OCA move forward with this part of their charge which was to propose a process and timeline for the town manager evaluation I met in advance with Alyssa Brewer and also with Andy I've still not had a chance to meet with Doug Stein slaughter or frankly one of any of the other previous town councillors I'm sorry select board members so this is a calendar that's proposed based on the format of the evaluation that has taken place in the past and it has a very tight time frame of basically everything occurring from the beginning of June through the end of August and it has the creation although we have discussed a potential alternative of a a web I'm sorry an email address that all comments can be sent to comments are sought from councillors through a form through committee people of through an open format where an email is sent to committee chairs and they share it with their committee members from staff where they are sent something and also a form to fill out and also then posted on the town website so that anybody from town is willing as welcome to sending comments those comments from town councillors and the evaluation forms are public all the other items are not public but they are made available to all councillors and they are made available to all councillors in such a manner that they can then incorporate if you will by example or trend or whatever what they might see all of that is then put into a composite document by the president of the council previously the chair of the slack board and discussed with the town manager but then brought immediately to the council and at that point along with the composite councillors see everybody else's every other councillor's feedback on their form and they sit here for a night and they read with a camera flowing but i'm not sure i like that but nevertheless that's the practice in the past and at the end of that they hold a discussion so predominantly that meeting is strictly on the issue of the town manager's evaluation and would be proposed that that meeting would be on august 19th from that their next meeting those comments are taken into consideration and at the next meeting of the council which in this case would be one week later a final evaluation form is presented or final evaluation composite and comments are presented and in an executive set that's done in public session but in an executive session a discussion is takes place regarding compensation of the town manager and we resume then in public session so basically that outlines the calendar there were many other accompanying documents with what you received and one of those documents was taking the manager's goals of this year which were established with the select board and putting them into the format that has been used in the past and it makes up about a 13 page document the thing that i think many of us as councillors will struggle with is whether or not we feel that we honestly have enough information to evaluate the town manager using those goals that were agreed to between the council between the select board and the count and the manager you will also receive a self-assessment by the manager done against those goals and you have your own experience as well so we i met today with ocha and frankly it was a very excellent conversation with lots of good questions feedback concerns we made a few adjustments to this timeline which you'll see up above including the possibility that on the night we sit here and read we would meet as early as five but i also mentioned as we went through this that i feel that this is an area in which we need to take a serious look and come up with a way to revise the process in the coming years in preparation for this mr. bakerman did poll other towns bluntly they pale in comparison to what we do because they don't look for staff comment in many instances they don't look for public comment or committee comment and sometimes they even forget to do the evaluation so it this is not something that amherst has done in any way that is shabby but it is something that we as a council need to look at but nevertheless every year at this time of the year the town manager does need to be evaluated and we need to proceed with something so with that i guess i would like the members of ocha elissa to comment on this further great we did have a very long discussion we really appreciated that lin could come to our meeting this morning so we could discuss this and you as you all will remember of course from the charge that you voted on in december that okas to coordinate this process and so obviously as you know and as we'll be talking about tonight there are lots of committee appointments that we've been needing to focus on to get down in a certain period of time and while it may not seem self-evident to all of you but it does seem self-evident to me having done this for many years that this would not be the year to change the process but that we would never do it again after this way because this way is the way it's been being done there's this weird transition where there was the select board in the town council but it is not going to be a viable method moving forward we'll have to have lots of discussion about how that's going to work and so that's worth keeping in mind as you look at all these pieces of paper and think wow i actually really appreciate all the work the select board over the years did doing this thank you so that all being said and you can read oodles of old evaluations on the town website anytime you want a couple the two things that we came up with as votes in addition to many just many questions about how the process works and how we might improve it already thinking through how might things work in the future is that okah voted to adopt the town manager evaluation timeline as amended as it was amended this morning by lin on the fly as we were talking where we tried we basically just consolidated a couple of dates to make a few things less confusing we also voted unanimously that while former select board members are welcome to participate as committee members which some of them are right now or members of the public they're not they are not participating as select board members they're not filling out the town council evaluation form the only people that fill out the town council evaluation form are counselors the only people who fill out the staff form are staff and then there aren't forms for anybody else as you can see from the many pieces of paper you received and that you had in your packet electronically over the weekend we put information out on the town website that says please go look at the goals that were established then you'll know what we're rating the person on but if you want to complain about a bridge that's fine too actually doesn't say that on the website but we know that people will do that and that's fine but sometimes they want guidance as to what we are looking at and of course what's also really important as Lynn pointed out is that although it doesn't happen this early in the process soon in the process you'll be getting the town manager's self-evaluation so anything that you're like I don't even know what that means when you look at the particular statement you will understand once he explains what he's been working on associated with that and then all those things that you end up marking I don't know what that means maybe those aren't good goals for us to carry forward maybe those would be different goals for us moving forward so we had those conversations we had the two votes about adopting the timeline and how former select board members fit into this because we looked at it as just as if we set the goals and at some future year not all of us may choose to run for re-election not all of us may gain re-election and so whoever's there at the time that it is time to do evaluation is who fills them out the idea did also come up briefly and I believe Lynn touched on it this is the time of year we've been doing this because it's just the time of year we've always done it and it's also when the town manager's contract changes but there certainly can be future discussion about is another time of year better so based on all the other kinds of things we do as we develop our new brand new spanking new town council schedule so this is just the process for this year one time only is there anybody else from OKA that would like to add to that questions yes so when you spoke about it you said we will sit here and each read our own evaluation everybody else's I'm sorry okay so is this reading to do we just sit here and pass them around the table quietly you or do we read them out loud no when you walk in the room you're given a packet and you literally sit here quietly and read them okay that sounds much better because the other sounded like a roast and the idea of Paul having to sit here with the camera on his face while we it's going to take a while to top that one Dorothy yes so I definitely can't top that I have a couple of questions and concerns about this timeline I noticed and I'm just going to go through a couple of them I'll go through them in the order I have them written the date for committee chairs well committee evaluations do was the fifth is now the 12th that goes along with the public comments right but on the 15th the 12th is a Friday by 4 p.m. and on the 15th Monday is when this document says that the illustrious Angela Mills needs to send everything out to the counselors that seems like a very quick turnaround that may not be practical or advisable so I'm concerned about that especially with the change to everything being due the Friday before the Monday it all goes out I'm concerned about the council receiving all of the counselors evaluations the same day it receives the composite evaluation because it does not give in my mind the counselors time to really digest the 13 evaluations to ensure that the composite evaluation is accurate complete and isn't missing anything if you're trying to do that all at the same meeting at the same time that seems really difficult I'm concerned with the cancellation of the August 5th meeting and our president just stated that we have a really full agenda in two weeks that we might not be able to add something to it like the bylaw thing as in sort of a normal course if we're already really full and we're still going to be full with these other things should we be canceling a meeting in August where we could actually do non-evaluation items I'm not necessarily saying it needs to be an evaluation meeting but if it looks like the 19th would be full of reading reviews and discussing everything that might not have normal business on it the 26th might not have normal business on it the 22nd of July may or may not have a lot of normal business are we hampering ourselves come September to actually get typical business done by canceling an August 5th meeting and then oh and then one thing about the staff emails like the the thing and this is in a timeline issue um there was in the staff letter it said that staff responses remain anonymous unless they choose not to be not confidential because the town manager reads them and we read them but if the email if they choose to respond by email and that email response goes to the email here that includes the manager and the council they're not anonymous even if they choose to unless they print them on paper is there a way we could give the staff an email address because that just saves on paper that doesn't I don't know is there a way to keep an email from staff anonymous without having them to require submitting theirs on paper if they want to remain anonymous okay that was a lot okay did you have a question I can wait too but I just wanted to say about the anonymous thing I I think we should just keep it all anonymous because of the people who don't I mean it deters people who are um then I mean if people can have the choice to give their name and not then the people who are not giving their name would feel awkward and they might be identifiable okay so on the issue of anonymous you can also provide a hard copy and that can be put into the town mail so you can keep keep it totally anonymous right it's I don't know of how to do that yes um okay Alyssa so we've been doing this for a while unfortunately the staff we have now has not and so that's been one of the difficulties is they don't necessarily realize what's available to them it wise so for example as you may or in fact I know some of you were not aware the town council address that we currently use doesn't just include town counselors it includes the town manager it includes the assistant town manager it includes Angela it includes Margaret what we did in the past is we had it strip those people out for the short period of time when people were sending us the public comment the advantage to that is people were already used to our address select board at they didn't have to come up with a new address the disadvantage to doing that is we had to change something right whereas if you just set up a new address then you don't have to change anything however you will have people who will use the town council address because they didn't pay any attention to the evaluation address and so therefore it will not be confidential except all those employees are no already have to deal with confidential things just like if somebody walks a letter in as Lynn mentioned there's a box for people who actually want to do it the old-fashioned way if somebody from the public wants to walk in a letter they don't read those they scan them but they don't read them there was a way we in years past many for many years we did not allow any electronic submissions from staff for the exact reason you're referring to we they were all on paper in fact they were on special papers so it was clear that no one was ballot stuffing it was very fancy um H the HR director we had then who may or may not have left notes about this for the for the next person figured out a way to provide that electronically that she didn't see who sent them in and who didn't and then in terms of turning the information back out your concern always viable associated with staff time there isn't anything to turn back out in many cases because most submissions have been made to us electronically but the staff ones if we get a good turnout yay um you can look at old ones to see how good to turn out we get those do need to be submitted to us either by someone scanning them or by someone photocopying them and so that is actually you know a few minutes work at the copier but since most people will send us electronic comments whether they're committee chairs or members of the public we get those we all will get those directly no matter what email address we end up using and so you'll have those weeks before you actually sit down to write your evaluation and the time for the evaluation is building into the fact that many of us go away on vacation at some point in the summer and that's also true for committees and that's also true for staff and so that's why some of those guidelines are in there that might seem longer than necessary is because we know some people will be away when the first notices go out I hope that answered most of the things the other piece that um was pointed out at the OCA meeting today and that is that if you this is going to be able to say this better if we sent all of our evaluations individually to people in advance via email it's a violation of open meeting law I'm aware of that I'm wondering I guess one of my questions was could it be done at two separate meetings um you get the full evaluations at one and the composite a week later at a different one which it's not at this point I don't think from well you've got the 19th or when you get it all and then you meet again on the 26th so there's two meetings well I guess the 19th when you get it all it's hard to come talk about a composite if you've just read everything and isn't OCA's been doing this where the OCA designees report gets posted on the website simultaneously with the on the calendar listing simultaneously with the notice of the meeting and that's certainly an opinion is that something that since these are going to be public documents anyway is my understanding that the counselor evaluations could be posted simultaneously with the meeting notice on the calendar so that the counselors have it two days before they see the composite we talked about this at OCA and I'm sorry I did write that down but it was one of the questions I didn't answer because evidently I didn't make the font big enough on my notes um so there is a reason for that Mandy Joe the reason for that is a political reason if you release that information by posting it to an agenda which is technically okay to do so that you do have it ahead of time you've now lost control of the narrative so now you have the press writing articles about what Mandy Joe wrote on her evaluation what's on the draft composite and what Alyssa wrote on her evaluation when you do it all at the same time which has been our tradition of doing it with that really boring reading meeting yes it's going to be more work than it was when we were reading five but remember the composite is not copying the cop composites actually just bunch of check marks the cover sheet to that if you look at one of the old ones and obviously Lynn can do it however she wants but it's not 40 pages long it's actually shorter than the individual evaluations because she's talking about themes she's not copying down what everybody else wrote so I don't deny that it's a huge amount to digest but if you post it ahead of time and do it in such a way that you're not doing it simultaneously with the press and the public seeing it here you now have everything out in the ether whereas if they want to sit here and post to their blog while we're sitting here reading I suppose that's okay but at least we know we're gonna have our first conversation that night and then our second conversation as Lynn pointed out on those two different things but that is the reason for it it seems super efficient to get it ahead of time it also means that just all the stuff is out in the world and then someone's asking you in the grocery store what you thought of Shalini's evaluation before you've had a chance to sit here and ask Shalini about her evaluation further comments Andy. So this is a torture subject for me because I have to say having been through this process a number of times I was never a great fan of it to begin with and so it sort of horrifies me that we're not seizing the opportunity as a new body to right off the bat think new in how we do it on the other hand it's a little late now and I think we do need to come up with process and to be guided to as much as possible by the former process probably makes sense so I started to think about what are the things about the for the process that really bothered me the most why I had such a negative feeling about it when was the length of the form that we were filling out in the complexity of the form and I had an advantage as a select board member because a lot of the topics that were on there that are going to be totally unfamiliar to many of you as you look at were things we talked about because we did have a different role as a select board the second thing that I really didn't like was of course it took a lot of time in my summer but then I can't do anything about that but the third one is the what we were talking about with the meeting where we all read and to give you my experience with that in the first meeting I tried very hard to read four other evaluations and the composite evaluation and be conscientious about it by the second year I realized that that was not something that was humanly possible for me in any amount of time and you feel even more pressure doing it when there's a live television camera showing you just reading it is really you become very conscious of that so that is a big problem what I was doing more towards the end and actually think that it was fairly effective is I was reading the composite first and seeing if the composite made sense and was coinciding with where I had knew my comments had gone and then I would spend my time reading specific comments from my colleagues on the select board about the issues that where I was seeing some difference to see if I could get an idea of where the difference was falling from between me and the composite if I was agreeing with the composite I didn't spend as much time with it so I'd have two suggestions to how to stick with the process as much as possible but to think about doing differently one is to revisit the idea of doing this on live television but instead doing something that I actually had asked the select board to do and they rejected it so I'll ask the council to do it and you can reject it too and that is to give out the information to read early in the evening with the understanding that there would be no discussion whatsoever in the live television which said started a specific preset time in which the meeting was announced and then we would begin with an explanation of what had happened to that time it does take a little bit of the pressure off from you having to sit there and read and knowing that the television camera is showing you doing something particularly boring and it actually was even more awkward for the select board might be for this group too because the tradition was that the town which I always thought could be construed as bribe I suppose was buying pizza for us so that we would actually be sitting there eating pizza on live television reading these things so then the other thing though that I'm very serious about is I really would encourage all of you before we vote on this to take a look at that forum say is this the right forum for us as a council and should we charge the president with proposing a different forum based upon a discussion which we might have as a group and then having the discussion and vote on whether to adopt the forum that president might propose to us so those are my ultimately my two suggestions after sharing my horrifying experiences horrifying to me anyway maybe not to you but one is to not do the live television reading but start start the television later and the second is to consider asking the president to do a revised forum thank you for your patience I have a question of Margaret can people show up and do reading without calling a meeting no the council shouldn't do that however isn't there a provision in the new rules of procedure that would allow for a work session that you might be able to call and actually just have quiet reading during that work session before a meeting yes but we still have to call a meeting you still have to call a meeting and do we have to have it televised at that point you do not need to have a televised I mean of course if somebody wants to sit and look for you know three hours to watch us read that's you know that's like watching wallpaper dry it would be a work session where we're not taking any votes I mean that's the way we all right all right um Kathy you had a question I was uh coming on and Andy's I when I looked at this forum the evaluation forum my first reaction was I wanted to edit it and get it much more focused um you know I've been in other organizations where we've done evaluations I've never seen anything that went on as long as this one did um at the level of minutiae that this one did you know I mean you know there's some big topics in it so I'm not saying it's all minutiae it's just you know it it didn't and it led me to think that when I wanted to talk about larger topics I would have to search for the place to do it because I had to you know there was the small things you know one what was uh sent in a public works proposal for the North Amherst intersection was one of the things and I know that happened you know so that was my example of something an action that happened but I wanted to get it more focused on some larger issues um so if there is a would it be a way of doing it it would save us time in terms of skipping things but it would also open up more space where we could be writing a sentence or two if we had more to say additional comments cut yes at one point you said being able to ask I think you're using shallowness example about her opinion it was you or Andy said it so I understand that we sit and we read silently are we able to then ask the person say here you said this what do you mean are we allowed to talk to them yes you are okay then that does sound like a work session that but at that point it now becomes a public a you know the tv's now on and it's a public session yes Andy just for clarification or for information I do not recall or we ever did that on the select board where we quizzed each other about their particular evaluations you might recall from it because you were on it longer than me yes I was quite a few years younger and yes it did vary over the years but um in terms of you have you basically have to make a note to yourself and then once everyone's done reading and the president's opened it up to discussion that would be the time to say I read three people said something about this and I don't even know what that means you want to tell me more about that but it would have to and that's why we can't really get any other business done that night in terms of the form I'm not pretending the form's pretty but I'm really concerned about the idea of saying I want to talk about bigger picture issues these are the goals you don't get to talk about bigger picture issues you're rating him based on his goals but but there is space at the end to talk about other things that you want to talk about and so it's a it is it it's only pretty because we made too long of goals and then I did understand but I think you could consolidate a few but but they are the goals and so you would have to word Smith them to an agreement that that's what the goal that that's what it represents and this was what we word Smith to the point the reality is these are the goals that the select board approved with the town manager and these are the goals to which he has been working this year and that's what he will write his self-assessment to so changing we can't change the goals however I want to build on something Andy suggested and something Alyssa just alluded to and that is in the comment section on the back I would I would actually and I this is where I might add some things something like please find attached the draft of the council goals that we have been discussing and you might talk about the extent the ways in which the town manager has supported the achievement of those goals that kind of thing but the reality is when you establish some goals in public with a person and that is what you say they're going to be evaluated on that's what they can evaluate it on you can't change it midstream Mandy Joe so I found the form long I understand that those are the goals even though we didn't set them that we have to evaluate the manager on this year but I wonder if there is a better way to organize them as Kathy and Andy were suggesting and maybe that better way is to somehow figure out how they fit into the charter defined duties of the town manager there's a list of a to I don't I think we ended up with like a BB or something or a CC I don't I think we went past Z but maybe not maybe we ended up like X and I don't know whether that's possible but maybe that's a way where you could group the goals into sort of these goals fell under negotiating contracts these goals fell under this duty and ability you know authority of the town manager and these fell under this one so that maybe you don't have to evaluate on every specific you could have an overall whatever that section is in the charter accomplished not whatever those items are with here's the four things under that thing he was supposed to do this year and maybe that would help it be a little more understandable a little more readable it's just an idea so one of the options would be to add another column and in that column list the section of the charter that it relates to however I just want to point out that the people that set these goals were not functioning under the charter they were functioning under the select board rules the charter was adopted a year over a year ago but they were not governing under the charter they had some restrictions and that was it so let me suggest the following because I do want to try to help people move along with the meeting that I would add a column where I relate to the extent possible where one of these might fit under the numerous town manager responsibilities that are in the charter that might help us actually as we translate to next year that I would also then add at the end reference to the draft goals which by the way we've not adopted that the council has been working on and specifically ask you to comment on those as we move forward and just be very straightforward and say if you don't feel that you are if you feel you are unable to judge just say so you just unable to judge don't there's no more comment needed that was my question can you leave things blank absolutely because I just so annoying when I'm asked too many questions about something I end up just not wanting to play yeah just check unable to judge and the composite might show that there were 11 or 12 people or even 13 unable to judge because that's the composite is the composite of the ratings here and then the cover memo is the themes that's what's been done do we get these as an excel spreadsheet or is an interactive something this is an excel spreadsheet no actually this is a it's a document that you can put your own it's a word document but it will be able to fill oh yeah absolutely oh yeah absolutely Dorothy Dorothy Darcy Darcy I'm sorry never oh my god now you've really confused me Dorothy so uh I'm on ochre and I just wanted to add this one comment that I mentioned this morning I I um you know we'll end voting for this because it's another one off um and we're like in ochre I especially am our extremely appreciative that the president worked with Alyssa and Andy to try to come up with this process because ochre was you know we have are now backed up with a lot of different issues around appointments that are coming through um but I I would really like us to um uh consider in the future having ochre be involved in this process because it's in our charge and we and it makes sense to me uh as representatives of the council which in the charter that it's the town council has the responsibility for evaluating the town manager um I think in this year you know the council president has taken that on uh but in future years it makes sense to me for the town council do it to do it via ochre in whatever way we decide we're going to do it once we have finalized our goals and so on um set up and possibly use the process that Mandy Jo suggested which makes a lot of sense using the criteria in the charter it's a discussion for the future not to be settled tonight Mandy Jo so could I just get a response on why the august fifth meeting has been canceled if we're going to spend the three other six weeks of meetings essentially doing only it was town manager evaluation stuff tooth you can go ahead and have the august fifth meeting I was also looking for a way to give the council a break I'm not going to be here I'm not here it it may violate the Geneva convention as well but that was the only reason otherwise we can go ahead and have it and just people can either participate remotely or whatever but it was the attempt to try to give people a break since I've been hearing a lot of people saying they need a break is it is it just Shawnee and Dorothy that can't make it and I I can come I can participate remotely I can participate remotely I'm sorry I can participate remotely and as well I so Andy so I just want to point out that what we did also was you added an august 26th meeting and some of us planned vacations for that week knowing that there wasn't going to be a council meeting and that's fine too the the problem will be is we won't be ready for the fifth to do all of the things it would be a regular meeting if we need it yes I just want to say that in the OCA discussion this morning the president did offer to provide pizza for that reading session and I want to make sure that that's in the minutes right thank you that's to make sure you don't feel like you're being bribed by the town manager um I guess the question before us is whether or not we are going to vote this calendar and it does not need to include the august 5th cancellation but at this point that doesn't figure into this particular set of activities anyway and there's no way that given everything that has to happen that by august 5th the evaluations in the drafts will be ready I move that we approve this timeline because we have to get started in order to accomplish the goal is there a second would you be removing the monday always fifth line though from this would we be moving what would you be taking away the august 5th the timeline currently shows monday always fifth no the august 5th meeting has nothing to do with the actual timeline for the process so that's a separate discussion elissa could i just quickly add that should could we ensure that the motion says town manager performance evaluation those words in that order so it's to prove the timeline is recommended by oca for evaluation of the town manager not that town manager performance evaluation i need to be able to google things from year to year town manager performance evaluation is what he calls it on his self-evaluation it's not the valuation of the town excuse me so the motion would read to approve the timeline as recommended by oca for the town manager performance evaluation is there a motion okay and second yes oh okay so dorthy made the motion and elissa seconded any further discussion all those in favor please raise your hand say aye aye nay okay it's you and upstanding unanimous 12 one absent all right we're moving on to the appointments and the first one is rank choice voting and i believe that evan you're going to do this right do you want to go through the process again okay thank you okay so oca is back with more appointments for y'all and so we have appointments to rank choice voting commission and participatory budgeting commission and i want to first talk about the process because last time we talked a lot about the process and this process is similar but different so if you could go so this looks really really messy and i know and the reason it looks messy is that rank choice voting commission and participatory budgeting commission as you all know are weird bodies that have joint appointing authority and so rank choice voting has three appointments from the council three from the town manager participatory budgeting has two from the council three from the town manager and so the question that oca had before us is when you apply you don't say i want to apply to be a town manager appointee to rank choice voting it's all one pool and so it didn't necessarily make sense for us to for it oca does a need to interview everyone and then the town count the town manager to interview everyone it made sense to sort of have this joint interview to reflect the joint appointing authority so what you see there is actually even though it looks really messy is the exact same diagram you saw last week for planning board and zoning board of appeals except it has sort of a parallel process that includes the town manager and shows that so i'm just going to walk us through it so applicants apply to the caf pool that went both to oca and the town manager and then oca selected a designee for rank choice voting i was the designee for participatory budgeting the designee was george ryan uh the designee then worked with the town manager to schedule interviews the interviews where the oca designee and the town manager were required and then per availability a member of the resident advisory committee and the staff liaison so in the rank choice voting commission interviews it was myself the town manager and then the town clerk who serves on the on the rank choice voting commission in participatory budgeting it was uh council ryan the town manager uh sonia as the interim finance director and a member of the resident advisory committee was able to be in those interviews they were not able to be in the rank choice voting ones so you see the dates those occurred there's then a conversation between the town manager and the town counselor about you know what we saw and then sort of a dividing up of whose appointments were whose uh all of those information uh almost all of those recommendations came forward at the same time and then oca at its may 22nd meeting looked and voted at them and now we are ready for town council to act and so it's it's really the same process you saw last time except the town manager was not someone who was just being consulted it was also someone who was actively interviewing and had a consulting role um are there any questions about the process that was used before we move forward me and did you so this is more of a follow-up question it's about all the processes um in this one since the town manager was also an appointing authority the memos mentioned that the town manager and sometimes the town clerk of the clerk was sitting in or the finance director um asked follow-up questions and all of that but that the oca designee never asked any follow-up questions just those exact questions on that list could you give me um some reasoning behind why the oca designee cannot ask anything but what is on the list uh because that seems really weird to me in an interview of course so um when oca was deciding on this process way back what not this one exactly but sort of the overall process there was a feeling uh that i think was shared by many members of the council that the oca designee had a lot of power right they were the sole person in the room and so one of the things that oca sought to do was to make sure that even though there was only one person in the room conducting the interviews that oca still had a lot of say in what happened in those interviews and so uh we oca came up with standard interview questions that were to be used and followed exactly um so that oca knew and had a say in what was being asked in those interviews so if i was to you know the idea being um that oca wanted to know exactly and have input into what was happening in the interview even though if we couldn't be there so it was just a part of that sort of process we discussed last time of only being able to have one designee but still having oca feel like they had some control over what was happening um but certainly the other members of the interview were allowed and did ask uh their own questions other other comments on the process okay all right then we're going to move along and let me just yes i was yeah it's going to move along okay i just want to point out there for each of these committees there'll be two votes one will be the vote regarding the people recommended by oca and the other will be the vote of the people recommended by the town manager but those have also been reviewed by oca okay i don't have a question but as you go into your recommendations can you tell us how many total there were in the pool as you lead into then who you're recommending i read the memo but i wasn't really sure whether you had like twice as many as what you're bringing just the number you received all of the applications right i just didn't take time you know so i thought for for one we were one short of the total number shot i just didn't count them in i just wanted that for one of them there was still an open position yes okay okay i think i can address this yeah oh wait yeah sorry i didn't realize it so i just want to put you back to again we keep providing you with this decision tree to help you inform you um the first two again are questions about the recommended appointees the bottom two are questions about the applicant pool which i think you're asking so for this you know we did make a note in the report of saying one for one of the commissions there was a fairly sizable applicant pool for the other there was not and so one of the things that oca noted in its report is that oca needs to have a discussion going forward about when we decide an applicant pool is insufficient to move forward with appointment the reason and i want to make clear the reason we did not do so in this case even though one of the committees did have a fairly sparse applicant pool uh is that per the charter we need to seek these committees and so we sort of under a time crunch moved forward despite our answers to the questions of was the applicant pool sufficient probably would have been no in this case but because we had a time constraint we had we sort of had to move forward anyway so for rank choice voting commission since i was the oca designee i'll speak to this one uh so i am recommending uh as that the town council appoint as town council appointments uh tanya lease jesse crafts finch and john brian in your report you have uh profiles about them that's written from their cafs and from the interviews uh you can also see the other town manager appointments um as lind mentioned those would be voted separately since we're confirming as opposed to appointing um does anyone have questions about the people that i am putting for or that okra is putting for thank you for that correction i recommended that okra put forth and they yeah voted to put forth are there questions for i i actually just i'm gonna suggest that are there questions for either those being appointed by the uh recommended to the town council appointments and versus the town manager appointments are there questions for any of these at this time okay then i would suggest and this we're gonna do a little wording on this motion because we need to tell the committees when they would start when they would have to complete when they would have to have things come to the council and when they would be ending so the first one is to appoint to the rank choice voting commission under the amherst home rule charter section 10.10 for terms commencing july 1st 2019 tanya lease jesse jesse crafts finch and john brian as recommended by the outreach communications and appointments committee furthermore their appointments would commence immediately they would report back to the council by september 1st 2020 and the council would act within 90 days thus by november 2020 and the committee would cease to exist on december 1st 2020 is there a motion no did i get the dates wrong i think you have the terms commencing at two different times oh okay margaret do you have it written down okay yeah i would suggest just changing the motion where it says commencing july 1 2019 to commencing immediately okay thank you so do you have the full motion margaret okay if you could read it to us the motion is to appoint to the rank choice voting commission under the amherst home rule charter section 10.10 for terms commencing immediately tanya lease jesse crafts finch and john brian as recommended by the outreach communications and appointments committee furthermore i'm gonna i'm gonna pass on the commencement the commission would report back to the council by september 1 2020 the council would act on the commission's recommendation within 90 days and the terms of members would expire on december 31st december 1 i'm sorry december 1 2020 elissa that's what i had calculated based on the 90 days plus a day because the 90 days ended on a monday which would probably be a council meeting and then tuesday the next day so i made the motion is that how we're recording and it was seconded by elissa further yes mandy joe so i wonder if it's wise to put in the report back and then the dissolution dates um the report back date is in the charter it's already in the charge so i don't know if we need to include it in this motion but we might the charge the charter doesn't require it be dissolved at any time and depending on what we decide to do with their recommendations we might have more stuff for them to do like actual acquiring of voting equipment and other potential things that i can't think of right now that we might not want this commission dissolved on december 1 we might not want to have to appoint new people to deal with something this group's already very familiar with so i wonder if we should just i think we should i think we should just leave the dissolution open and do that when it's necessary then and we could just say terms most most terms are two or three years but um you know we could just leave it all open so the way i personally like even though it's in the charter and in the charge to say in the motion that they would report by september 1st 2020 and that the council act has to act in 90 days and then just drop the last part yes so i i appreciate that i'm getting some agreement on repeating what's in the charter and charge because the charges whatever the charter is true but these motions have to stand on their own we cannot expect people to go off and look and see what the charter says in section 10.10 i also think it still makes sense we don't appoint people we've never previously let's start doing something new we've never previously appointed people to terms that don't end so we pick an end date whether we pick an end date that we think i added on the 90 days plus one there's no requirement that says if you say that their term ends on december 1st 2020 that you don't decide in october or november or whenever that you want to ask those people to continue that doesn't mean they get thrown out that doesn't mean you have to start with new people but i think it makes eminent sense when some of these people move away and need to be replaced which they will not all these people will stay on this committee is that they know what the commitment is that they're signing up for and they shouldn't have to go read the charter to find that out i think it should be really clear right up front what their commitment is we should never have and we won't have on any of our other things no end date and just guesses associated with that so i appreciate that we may want them to continue and that is something we've done plenty of times as appointing authorities in the past is said now we need to continue because they're not done yet andy joe so the charge we passed says two years for term of appointment so why don't we make it two years that's what the charge says there is no such thing as two years there's a date that has so if it's a two-year term of appointment we could make it if it's going to commence immediately we could say to end on june 3rd 2021 which would comply with the charge i'm okay with making a two-year appointment i'm okay with leaving it open um let's make it a two-year appointment and on june 3rd 2021 and is that's a friendly amendment is it accepted all right could we have a reading of the motion the way it is to appoint to the rank choice vote and commission under the amherst homeral charter section 10.10 for terms commencing immediately tanya lees jesse crafts finch and john bryan is recommended by the outreach communications and appointments committee furthermore the commission would report back to the council by september 1 2020 the council would act within 90 days and the terms uh and the commission's terms would expire june 3rd 2021 okay is there further discussion yes mandy joe i hate to be particular but um the charter if we're going to use the charter language the charter says the council shall adopt within 90 days not act okay i accept that as a friendly amendment elissa that's fine okay any further questions or points of order miss okay then all those in favor please raise your hand and say i i opposed abstain unanimous 12 with one absence we're moving to the next one which is to confirm the town managers appointments to the rank choice voting commission under the amherst homeral charter section 10.10 and 2.11 b for terms commencing immediately ellen lindsey carol rob robertson and peggy shannon as recommended by the outreach communications and appointments committee further they will report to the town council by september 1 2020 and the council will adopt their recommendations within 90 days and their terms will expire on june 3rd 2021 any further discussion on this okay then all those in favor raise your hand and say i opposed abstain unanimous 12 when absent okay we're moving on to participatory budgeting commission george yeah mine was the the body that did not have a large pool in fact it was one short um and so at the moment we're actually still looking for one more member but we felt that it was important to move forward i still felt the candidates were strong in the best of all possible worlds have been nice to have a large pool but i felt the candidates were strong i also felt the process went well so you have in front of you the names may gauge elizabeth larson that i'm recommending or the okay excuse me is recommending us town council appointees and um i've had entertain any questions but that's in the report discussion and this by the way is the one of the committees to which the council already has an appointee and that appointee is gathie shane okay and the empty seat still remains to be filled and that is an appointment of the town manager okay any other questions all right then the motion is to appoint to the participatory budgeting commission under amherst home rule charter section 10.11 for terms commencing immediately may gauge and elizabeth larson as recommended for by the outreach communications and appointments committee for they will report back to the council by december 1st 2020 and the council will adopt measure act i'm sorry will act by within 90 days and the appointments will end on june 3rd 2021 is there a second okay um any further discussion i just want to say that at least in my conversations with these people they will be a little surprised by this end date um they i think thought that their time would end um in within the december date um so i guess we'll explain it to them um and george if they get done even before that that's fine yeah okay thank you and thanks for your work as well as evan for your work on this kathy so i just wanted to uh build comment on what george just said so if they do make a proposal by this date and we act on it that's the end of it yes if the question would be as if it's it's a lingering discussion that then it then they continue yeah we would call them back but otherwise we can dissolve the committee early okay so i think that would be the way you would we would be explaining it to people right that we use the two-year term for the charter is there any further discussion on this the motion's been made and seconded all those in favor raise your hand and say aye opposed abstain 12 0 1 absent okay then finally it's to confirm the town manager's appointments to the participatory budgeting commission under amherst home rule charter section 10.11 for terms commencing immediately john fenske fenske and john page as recommended by the outreach communication and appointments committee they will report back to the council by december 1st 2020 and the council will act within 90 days and their terms will end june 3rd 2021 is there a second second well i had several thank you pat pat got the second in on that one um any further discussion all those in favor i opposed none and abstain none 12 0 1 absent we have one other set of appointments tonight and leisure services these are appointments made by the town manager they've been reviewed by okah is there anyone on okah who would like to speak to the motion yes evan so okah voted these on may 22nd and that special meeting where we also considered rcv and pbc um we had received the memo several days before um and we voted 4 0 with one absent to recommend the town council approve uh the names and terms outlined in the town manager's memo i do want to note that there was a conversation uh that okah had in this process about uh two aspects of our okah review of town manager appointments one had to do with information provided in the memos so if you look there are five people being five four people being recommended uh two are already on the committee uh the two who are new members have written profiles the two who are not just as they're serve on the committee um and okah did feel as though we would like uh a little bit more information other than this person is already on this committee um and to see written profiles uh okah also had a discussion about um in the future hoping that the town manager uh this would take some scheduling could participate in okah's when we do vote on town manager appointments um because for this instance and we gave him no notice we were going to do this so i'm not putting any blame on anyone um but if we had a question uh the town manager wasn't present to field them so okah is continuously thinking about how we're doing this process and and two of the things that came out of this discussion were uh what what information we want and looking for equal information from incumbents versus non-incumbents and also requesting that the uh we work with the town manager so that he's present uh when we review them so that if we do have questions uh he's there to field them okay any questions at this time okay then the motion is and i'd like someone to make the motion it's to confirm the town manager's appointments to the leader services and supplemental education commission under amherst home rule chart charter section 211 b for a three-year term commencing immediately upon confirmation stefanie jackson for a three-year term commencing july 1st 2019 victor new naz or tease for a three-year term of reappointment commencing july 1st 2019 sarah marshal all whose terms shall expire june 3rd 30th 2022 and for a two-year term for a for two-year terms of reappointment commencing july 1st 2019 rebecca demling and meg rosa whose term shall expire june 30th 2021 as recommended by the outreach communications and appointments committee is there a second no actually i want a motion i so move pan dorthy pan moved second alissa any further discussion oh i'm sorry george was a second okay now problem with the motion problem with the motion so it doesn't follow the old way it's select board you do things which is fine you can do things however you want but it's confusing and i think partly because the way it's structured is why we're missing sarah marshal's term it it's just her name's just thrown in the middle here without an explanation of how her term works so it talks about stefanie jackson for a three-year term commencing july 1 victor new naz or tease for a three-year term commencing appointment reappointment commencing july 1 and then it just says sarah marshal so i think what it means to say is based on the memo is sarah marshal is and and victor isn't a reappointment so the victor is not a reappointment they're all there it's just the clauses before the name for a three-year term commencing which is why this is stefanie jackson semi colon for a three-year term commencing victor nunia 30 semi colon the clauses before the name which is why we'll never write it this way again because this this just does not work no it doesn't what points are fine it's all in there then i i see that i don't ever want to see one structured that way again but i've seen that it's in there are there any further comments or questions all those in favor raise your hand in essay i i opposed abstain 12 nothing 12 zero excuse me one absent we're moving on to approval of minutes i've consulted with the clerk in advance we can do this as a consensus vote um so it's to approve the may 15 may 20 may 21 and may 23 2019 why is that all of them okay all right let me start over to approve the may 15 may 20 may 21 and may 23 2019 town council meeting minutes as presented is there a motion george is there a second okay any further discussion on any of these corrections on i i just have i have a correction i already sent in but i didn't see it on the one that's still online so i'm assuming it just it was a minor one it just had me both absent and present at a meeting and i so i thought it was a maybe a good show of but i but i you know i'm assuming that already got taken we'll get take care okay thank you any further conversation on this okay let's see none all those in favor i pose you may vote even though you were not at a meeting that's fine okay all right all those in favor i opposed no abstain we have two abstentions so it's 10 0 2 in favor all right we are moving on to committee reports nothing from audit path not until august okay bylaw review same old same old that's said before okay although we do have some zoning bylaws coming up on the 17th but it's but it's for referral to the planning board zoning board zoning board i'm sorry no the zoning subcommittee of the planning board okay some of it's true okay so so june 17 so bylaw review has completed its review of the zoning bylaw uh it was introduced i believe to the zoning subcommittee on may 29th i believe the planning board of all is going according to plan she'll be holding their public hearing on it on june 5th that means that we will have our first read of it on june 17th okay and then ideally second reading and vote on july 1 okay margaret question okay um and so thank you for that no thanks community resources committee we have not met since the last council meeting okay we meet on wednesday this wednesday 2 30 uh council goals ad hoc committee um that is still in business we're waiting for some committees to get their different goals back to us but we have received it from some others i'll be back in touch finance committee and the anything else just real quickly the next three meetings are june 11 at 9 30 a.m to discuss budget amendments on the f5 19 budget and uh jcpc um discussion on the proposed process and the um further possibly possibly the further review of the analytical tool that we had looked at for major projects june 25 at 9 30 um is to discuss the valley cdc cca proposal on the financial considerations and uh as we postponed action until after the uh discussion that's been organized by the president and then july 23rd to begin the discussion about the uh next year's budget process okay thank you um go well and nothing to add to the report for now okay outreach communications okay anything yes i want to go back one moment to buy law review and just add to the wonderful reports that pat and evin gave that you will have in your town council packet for june 17 the planning board's report on their hearing so you'll have that to read ahead of time the other thing is in regards to okah just to update you um and okah designee is doing the finance committee non-voting resident interviews this week and we expect to be able to get something to the council for the meeting on the 17th no july 1 we're actually not going to be able to bring those forward till july 1 we're going to have some other ones for june 17 but we won't be able to do we worked on our timeline today we won't go to get those to you until july 4 july 1 although you may get them a little bit before july 1 and the other thing that's an update beyond all the things you already heard from us tonight is that we asked via angela mills who was present for part of our meeting that the resident advisory committee come to the june 10th okah meeting since it's on tv and that's our standard meeting because some of us meet every single week crc looking at you and um to discuss a number of our shared concerns and challenges right so as we see these things coming forth through the town manager and through okah and we all know we're going to be relooking at the okah process anyway what are some different questions we have just like haven't brought up earlier associated with when you write biographies do you write a little biographical statement or statement about the person if they're continuing to serve or do you just say they continue to serve that's something we can talk about with each other of course the town manager can still do what he wants to do with his things but just to have a shared conversation the other thing that we've also recognized is that as the process currently stands based on the way staff is managing interviews we have had no opportunity as okah to decide whether or not a pool is sufficient to schedule interviews or to consider making appointments we've just been told when the appointments will be when the interview appointments will be and so we're realized these are things that you know develop over time that you realize are weight things you might want to address because you might not want to start interviewing people if you only have half as many as your applicants so we'll discuss that with RIC because they will obviously be struggling with some of the same things and also the fact that we have all we have up until this point interviewed people who are currently serving who wish to be reappointed the town manager is not doing that right now and so again it's you know he does what he does but just for us to kind of bounce ideas off of each other as to why we might do things a certain way would be helpful so we're hoping that'll happen next week I just want to say in defense of CRC we canceled our meeting because of a conflict with the panel on economic development which had been rescheduled and so it was felt that since economic development is part of our charge that we should be there and I certainly was there all right having now taken things out of order we're moving on to number 11 town managers report thank you a few things I'd like to report on kappa joe is coming up on June 14th will be in North Amherst at jakes at the mill seems to be the most popular place to have coffees by anybody from North Amherst our community participation officers I gave them a shout out last time they continue to be working very hard going to lots of events where people are already gathering to pass the word and I really appreciate the hard work they're doing because those events happen on weekends and they're taking weekends away from their family time away from their families to go to these things because they really believe in their mission which I really think is a terrific thing we had our employee picnic on Friday and that's why you saw town hall was closed at noon this is an event that the employees organize that the employees pay for it's a terrific event because it really is the one half day a year that all the employees from all the different departments get to be together and and hang out and have barbecue and things like that actively recruiting for several positions and that work is moving forward the road work is nearing completion on West Bay Road and East Pleasant Street I think there's some lines that still need to be painted they've started up work on Main Street today because we had held them off during the April and May period where the local business owner said was their most important months the challenge for a lot of road work now is finding police officers so if they can't find police officers they have to make other arrangements they reach to our police force to state police to local police officers I guess a lot of police officers are working a lot of overtime already and if they can't get a detail they make some other arrangements the LSSE is working very well with the university over preparing for their Independence Day fireworks celebration this will be in a slightly different location because of construction at the university but they've been really cooperative on this you'll notice on page two that under the action taken last month by the council this is the first monthly report on delegated authority on short term event use of town commons short term parking request and short term road or sidewalk closures and we'll continue to do that on a monthly basis the station road bridge has been delivered the station the existing station road bridge is being deconstructed and hopefully in the next couple weeks we will continue to be installing that station the new station road bridge which which is sitting on the side of the road the mill street bridge you're all invited to a ribbon cutting tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. to officially receive the bridge from the state who paid for it and constructed it and with that turnover the town will be able to go in and make some permanent changes to make it clear where you can drive where you can't drive where the where you where the walking path is the concept has been to create a safe walking path around puffers pond and this will be a key part of that and lastly the president already alluded to it i'm sad to report that our town clerk has submitted her resignation effective june 30th she's also the clerk to the council so that's a position that council will be seeking to fill and i think margaret has done yeoman's work there's i don't think there's anybody who could have carried the weight of being both town clerk clerk to the council chief elections officer all at the same time she was an unusual person we're really fortunate to have her for the time that we have sad to see her go and but understand her reasoning and so we will be looking for a new town clerk so that concludes my report okay pat i know we had agreed and i was one of the people who pushed it that we wouldn't applaud but i think we owe this woman a round of applause i was going to suggest we would embarrass her more in a future time mandy joe excuse me that's just one question um and one of your first bullet points you referred to an eighth grader in amherst who wrote an article or an essay in an essay contest and got third place where can we find that essay that was titled is it there yeah it's attached to the report yeah i i scrolled all the way through and it didn't it didn't show up so i'll have to smear and you couldn't read it yeah i don't know i'll have to look again i made it to the end and it didn't okay we'll find i'll relook alissa can we add to our next agenda what's so margaret's been amazing and wonderful and we were grateful that when paul hired her we knew we weren't none of us were elected yet but we knew that he was going to ask her to be clerk of the council i think now we're at a point where we should have some say in who the clerk of the council is and whether or not that's automatically assumed to be part of the town clerk's duties or not based on budget limitations obviously but when do we get to have that conversation or does the town manager just go hire a new clerk and we just say okay we get part of them first of all time paul and i will be discussing this on wednesday and i hope to bring forward a recommendation to the council at our next meeting okay if not soon after that or an interim basis okay yes dorthy um i am curious to know what margaret thinks about this um the double duty that you were put into um you are very uh experienced and came with more background than say somebody the next person might come with we don't know but certainly a lot of background do you think it's doable for some person you don't know to do the two jobs um with with all due respect i'd prefer not to comment on that and leave that to the town manager and the town council to decide okay okay um so i'd like to move on to the town council comments i have no additional comments to well i do actually so we're moving along with their plans for june 18th there is a we have a proposal before us from nancy jackson who is a skilled facilitator and that has been sent to the town council i mean to the town uh since they will be retaining her this is a moment when we like with the schools will be listening and the format is in general going to be what they call a fishbowl where you have an inner circle and outer circles the inner circle will have representatives of housing seat valley cdc the neighborhood and the town and an empty chair and the empty chair is for other people who then come in and add comments or questions so that there is room for additional participation the plan is to be there for no more than two hours and there will be material provided in advance we're working as fast as we can pat yeah i understand the importance of the empty chair uh but it seems like um who are we at who represents the neighborhood only someone opposed to it or somebody for it i i think there's a funny kind of glitch there i i hear i hear your point uh i actually have been in fact george got an email from me because as much as i have been trying to get a set of email addresses for this neighborhood i haven't received that but i would like them to at least identify two people and then also will look for others as well and encourage them to come sit on the empty chair because we have gotten as we know letters both going on right and from the neighborhood yes all right i just want to come in here um the only email addresses i have is if somebody sent me a letter um certainly um almost everybody's letter does include their address yeah some don't but there's quite a variety of opinions expressed in the letters right so but i think i don't think i have any email addresses that you don't but i think i can find them from what i have i just literally didn't get to that today in preparation for the meeting yeah right we'll manage that okay uh any other future agenda items this point yes on which one oh i'm sorry go ahead yes yes so i just right i didn't know if we were on c or if we were just please um i just wanted to to recognize because it's not in the manager's report and it's not in any of these lists of dates uh last wednesday uh april 29th i attended one of the uh two scheduled community gatherings around climate change vulnerabilities which is part of the municipal vulnerability grant uh program grant that our sustainability coordinator stephanie chicarello is um coordinating so the first one was last wednesday i went it was um a very interesting meeting because i walked in and i didn't know anyone there and that almost never happens with meetings i go to nowadays stephanie put a tremendous amount of effort in into trying to make sure uh that there were new people that it was diverse it was the most diverse meeting i've been in in my role as a counselor in amherst uh she did a lot of things to make that happen everything from making sure it was on a bus line to providing child care providing a meal um i think there were a lot of lessons there that members of the council and oka can take on um you know how we can make sure that our meetings aren't just always the same people uh there were a lot of people coming up to her after saying i've never done anything with the town before and i wouldn't have in less and you know um but there's a second one is scheduled for this saturday um at 9 am in crocker farm i won't be able to be in attendance i'll be out of the the state um but for anyone who has that time free uh i i went and it was really great and i did something that i was never doing meetings that you all know and i didn't talk at all i don't believe it i i promise i didn't say a word and i just listened and it was just really great to hear from people who we don't usually hear from and to and to hear them talk about climate change and vulnerability um so i both want to thank stefanie for the effort she put into that um because i think it was successful and also encourage everyone if you're available to go to the the june 8th meeting at cracker farm thank you are there other comments what what time is it nine o'clock other comments at this time yes dorothy um i think if we had some food at the meeting on the 18th it would be nice make it a little friendlier i mean i don't think we want oh i don't think that's true i think if we i think food makes a meeting different let me take that into consideration and see what we can do thank you all right any further conversation any comments we have no executive session do i hear a motion to adjourn so am andy joe said so moved andy seconded it all those in favor i and that was unanimous excuse me opposed abstain unanimous thank you