Thank you very much. All right, welcome to the May 13th select board meeting. We are still here at the middle school because this is a pre-town meeting meeting. We have a number of things on our agenda tonight but the folks who are here to talk to us about those things are actually here at the moment. So we're gonna get started on a couple of other items. One of them I'd like to get out of the way is we always talk about whether or not we need to meet on Wednesday at the Monday meeting. John would like to have an executive session. We've got to get that boosted at the time executive session really quickly. But we can do that. So if I have a brief executive session in advance of the Wednesday's town meeting session, so are folks okay if we meet at six o'clock that night? Yeah, sure. Okay. All right, really. All right, we've got to check into that executive session situation actually. Okay. We need to make sure that we can announce it. Correct. Yeah. Let's see, other things we'll do quickly is we need to sign the June 25th, 2013 special state election warrant. I forgot to look at the motion sheet. It seems to me we don't have to vote on this. We just announced it, which is what we always do. Yes, that is true. So I'll make sure you don't leave without signing the state election warrant. We have a couple of parking and street closure requests or just one, I guess, Ms. Stein, would you like to? Sure, start with, okay. I move that the select board approve the following street closing slash parking request from the Amherst area chamber of commerce for the annual piece of Amherst event. Place no parking bags on parking meters around the perimeter of the town common, including the north and south sides of the Spring Street lot beginning Thursday, June 13th from noon to 9 p.m. Friday, June 14th, 2013 from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday, June 15th, 2013, note the change from noon to 10 p.m. And Sunday, June 16th, 2013, note the change noon to 4 p.m. to accommodate taste vendor parking. Second. Further discussion, Ms. Brewer. Oh, I didn't quite finish. I realize there's another bullet point. Close, Boltwood Avenue between Spring Street and Route 9 on Friday, June 14th, 2013, and Saturday, June 15th, 2013 from 7 p.m. to 9.30 p.m. Peak pedestrian crossing times for the beer and wine tasting. Second. Further discussion, Ms. Brewer. I guess it's as much of a comment as a question that I'm assuming based on the cut and paste from last year, et cetera, that the coordination will take place between the taste parking and the farmers market parking, like it always does on Saturday. And it will all magically just work out. Thank you. Thank you. Further discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. And might as well do the liquor license. Sure. I move that the select award approve a special alcoholic license to K-Ride Incorporated for a charity family bike ride and walk-a-thon to be held from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, June 1st, 2013 and from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. June 2nd, 2013 on the Hampshire College grounds, 893 West Street, Amherst, Stephen D. Stark Treasurer. Second. Further discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Thank you. Yes. I'm sorry, I did also have a question about going back to the taste for a moment. The comment that they made in terms of suspension of food truck vendors on the South Common Location, since this is in our packet, et cetera, I just thought we should touch base on what was actually happening with that. Oh, thank you. So is that the same parking that we've given them? I didn't even look at that. I don't know. And I'm guessing that even if it wasn't, that they would not want food truck on the Common if they possibly could, just like other events. Wish they wouldn't have food trucks. If they, if they, if we have been, if we've given them those parking spaces, then that's a non-issue. Because it's a set on South Pleasant Street. Okay. So they've don't, so they're asking that the one vendor that normally parks in South Pleasant Street not put there to compete with the taste. I don't know how we would enforce that. Mr. Miesanti, like they should have asked for that parking if they wanted that. You know, it's kind of under their control. Just like you can't do another event on the Common while the taste has it. They kind of take control of that. I'm not sure what we do about things that are not happening in space that they've reserved. Because we haven't made any provision in our food truck regulations that says, except in the case of special events when we might decide to tell you to go somewhere else. Which doesn't mean we couldn't, in theory, do that. I just didn't know if the bid had already had a conversation with you or the town manager about this. No, I didn't even notice that. So that was in our packet? It was in their letter. I didn't even notice that. So the answer, I think we should just tell them officially that the answer is no. So that they don't think it's yes and they go and tell the person not to park there. Right. So we've got plenty of time to just consider this. This is another time. My green is a little bit full of town meeting stuff to think about this, but it's a good point. So I think I'd rather put off a consideration to that question. I'm fine with that. I would just like the staff that when staff tells them that they have the parking to turn, they don't know the answer to the other part yet. Yes. So they don't make an assumption one way or the other. Very good. All right. Okay. All right. So those are the untimed items we need to take care of. All right. So we're going to get started then on our six o'clock item which is voting and assigning selected positions on town meeting warrant articles. Not everyone is here who I was thinking might be here for this discussion, but we don't have that much time. So we're going to get started to recap. The select board considered had an initial consideration of article 42 a couple of weeks ago. We decided at that time that we needed more information because at that time housing and sheltering committee was still in the process of considering it and was going to come up with a recommendation on it which they have done. We have a very clear and excellent memo from housing and sheltering committee in our packets. So there's that. We also received opinion from town council about what the passage of article 42 would or would not compel the town to do. And in a nutshell, it would not compel the town to necessarily do anything. It would enable pursuit of anything should we decide to move forward with it. But for sort of the basic reason that the legislative branch of government can't control, can't compel, does have no authority over the executive branch of government does not actually a compelling, compelling in the verb sense result from the passage of the article. So, and in part, that is the reason behind, that's some of the reasoning behind the housing and sheltering committee's recommendation which we'll talk about in a minute. But anyway, so there's that. So we have the recommendation for housing and sheltering committee. We've got town council's opinion and then we have Mr. Musanti having met with some folks the other day and Mr. Zomek that we will hear about also. So first, I guess I would ask Mr. Stuthman from housing and sheltering committee, would you like to summarize your memo to us or just assume that we've all read it? Or any recommendation? I mean, new information since the memo was sent. So essentially, as the memo was said, the committee had kind of a nuanced position on what we had a lot of concerns about potential legal repercussions and the lack of specificity in the article. But in general, the committee supported it in principle and it forwards the cause of affordable housing in town. And like you just said, town council's opinion that it would not compel the town to do anything that could open the door to the course of action was pretty much the reason for the committee to endorse it. Thank you. Questions or comments from the select board on the housing and sheltering committee's recommendation? Ms. Burr. I appreciated the memo's level of detail because I was at most of these meetings and they managed to capture like so much of that. So thank you because a lot was discussed during those meetings. And one of the things that I found particularly compelling as I listened to these ongoing discussions and then as pointed out here in the memo is although I had first come to this with the idea of a concern of trying to figure out in my head how to protect this set of tenants versus any other set of tenants versus someone who's losing their home versus this that of the other thing. The idea of increasing at a relatively low cost to us increasing our inventory of affordable units became clear as being a goal of this as well. So those like those many discussions I think were valuable in terms of talking about the different aspects. Thank you. Are the questions or comments for the, for Mr. Stutzman for the housing and sheltering committee's recommendation? Okay. So Mr. Mecanti, why don't you tell us about the meetings you had on Friday? I think they were with how that went. Sure. And I also was able to attend the housing and sheltering committee and Greg and the committee captured it well on their summary memo. Subsequent to that met on Friday with Greg was there, Dave Zomek, representatives from the Housing Authority, Mass Housing Partnership. He was a good group and we really tried to get into the nitty gritty of what the issues are surrounding preserving affordability and eco-village apartments and what among the many options that are laid out in the proposed article, what are the ones that might have the most promise. And it was a good discussion and it's really at the beginning now of what our Mass Housing and Council suggests that it's likely to be a good 12 to 18 month process, both on the potential eviction relocation scenarios as well as putting together viable potential funding sources and also assuming some cooperation from the current owner. Some of the funding areas that we think have the most promise at state and federal level, low income housing tax credits, affordable housing trust fund, locally looking potentially at the Community Preservation Act or even CDBG funds for a part of this and how it might are if there was a local match of some sort and the end result how that might be structured. So it was a very good discussion. We're going to get some technical assistance from the Mass Housing Partnership about financial feasibility. Tracy Lee has just come in, perfect segue and so that was good. On the heels of that request from town council and offered to the petitioners that we make an attempt at trying to translate the article into a prospective draft motion which I've handed out to you and here's some extra copies. That I wanted to walk you through briefly and it basically attempts to capture what the thrust of the Housing and Sheltering Committee recommendations were which was it keeps the use of eminent domain as one of the acquisition tools because there's no legally according to council no legally feasible way of saying friendly versus unfriendly taking that can clearly be explained and we could explain that if there was to be an affirmative motion that it's the view of the Housing and Sheltering Committee and one that I share that if in fact eminent domain becomes part of this that we do so in coordinated effort with the owner and ideally with his cooperation. Purchase price was adjusted to what the current estimated value is of the residential units because there's two buildings on the property commercial and residential that's two and a half million and then there's language in there in addition to acquisition it also gives the select board authority and or acquiring an affordability restriction like the entire if such an article were to pass that would all of it requires a negotiation but it would give you that flexibility in a negotiation to include an affordable affordability restriction. So it's not my motion it's not the town's motion this is a draft and that was what I promised the petitioner would come up with a draft so there it is. And so I think that's where we're at. Okay, questions or comments from Mr. Moussanti? Those meetings and the motion is presented. So can you your meetings with these folks did it change your sense of the timeline at all? No, I think it provided more clarity about what the action steps are within the timeline but Greg or Dave might help Amy. 12 to 18 months was talked about and there were some people at that meeting who thought even that timeline was what's the right way to describe it? Aggressive, maybe too fast given all the steps that need to go through but it was more of a reality check I think on the timeline but it's not by next Friday kind of thing. And so in that time these folks would not need to relocate out of the apartments. Well there's a parallel set of actions being taken by the owner that has its own legal process to it relating to tenant notification and eviction and so that's kind of happening over here but it's certainly affected by this it would certainly could influence our conversation with the owner about what happens in the interim. Ms. Burke. So town meetings approval of this just as we've talked about town councils depending on that doesn't compel a particular action but enables us to pursue basically all these actions and see which ones fit by town meeting approving this that does not have in the technical sense any effect on whether or not these tenants themselves might choose to move out or first to move out through the eviction process. It influences the conversation we have with the owner which may cause the owner at some point to do something different associated with the eviction process but that's like you say that's a parallel track. So simply passing this does not mean that oh of course that means the owner will stop the eviction process or oh of course everyone will stay and through the process obviously some people will choose to find housing elsewhere so it's not to remain in that limbo and that would be their decision obviously to make. So whether or not we have the same residents at the time we would work through our power parallel process on the purchase potential purchase. It is not entirely clear. Other questions or comments? Select board. So is from your meeting did you get any sense of whether this needs to be what the benefits are of acting on this now versus waiting until the fall? And I'm eager for any additional feedback from those at that meeting. I think quite frankly a town meeting adoption of an article could be helpful in and of itself that doesn't without the article that doesn't prevent the town from pursuing all of these approaches with the current owner and other potential partners but it certainly would have a sense of town meeting and the sense of the town behind that and may in fact require a future town meeting action depending on the specific structure of a deal especially if it deviates from this broadly worded draft motion that's before you. So I don't know, Dave? I could add a comment or two and maybe Greg. So I think what I've attended a couple of meetings with the town manager and I think a couple of things have become clear. One is that first and foremost we want to talk as often as possible about willing seller and friendly actions here and our initial conversations with Mr. Chawati have been very open to listening and dialoguing and I think that's hugely important. Secondly, I think Mr. Mazzanti made it very clear at this meeting that I attended last Friday that whether this article moves forward now or a similar article in the fall he's committed staff time to work with the folks around the table to explore this fully, to do our due diligence, to do some feasibility work. I guess I share his perspective that there are some advantages to it moving forward now, although as you just noted moments ago it doesn't compel the town to do anything. I think those are your words, so. Yeah, so we were talking about time frame. I think really there's two time frames here. Reference have been made to two parallel tracks and I think the two tracks really are the time frame for a possible acquisition of the property and the time frame in which tenants who are there now may have to leave some point in the future. And although some reference was given by the petitioners and by the council I believe they're working with from Community Legal Aid, there's a chance that some of the tenants or all the tenants who are facing eviction now could be there as long as fall of the next year. A real sense of certainty around that has been made. So to address the question of why act now rather than it fall I might turn to the other track which is the, although we call it the preservation of the affordable units, these were not in fact affordable in the subsidized inventory sense but really looking at production of affordable units and the town just completed its housing production plan and where the entirety of these units to be preserved all 24 as the memo states that would represent half of the town's goal for affordable housing production and at the price per unit that is presupposed by the number mentioned in the article that would be a steal. So that's one reason to consider acting on it now and consider putting in, to place the funding for an acquisition. So what would the end result of this look like? So now we're 18 months or wherever down the road. What is the finality of this in a perfect world? We don't know for sure. I mean the petitioners and then in our own meetings there's been kind of a laundry list of prospective possible sources. So it's, if there's acquisition, what does that mean acquiring the property? Is there a deal to be struck with the current owner? Is there an affordability restriction that's acquired in exchange for some public funds that are requested? So we don't know yet. We don't know yet. This article, if adopted, would certainly give the town and the select board the authority to pursue those with multiple funding sources, including a heavy reliance on outside grants and gifts. Questions or comments from the select board? Ms. Brewer. I wonder if someone could just speak very, very briefly. I realize we don't have much time, but I just wanted to clarify for all those people watching us out in the world as well. When we talk about the eviction process taking this long, it's not because, and I'm trying to be thoughtful about the way I phrase this, but I mean I don't want anybody to have to move out of their home obviously. But the eviction process does not take this long because the tenants actually have a reason to not be evicted. The reason for eviction is you don't want to pay the rent that I want to charge you. And that just takes a long time in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as opposed to there's some other underlying reason here that the eviction process takes a long time, correct? It's just the way the hoops, the barriers go. Okay. Ms. Ray. So as I take a little bit of a step back, because I understand it, but this article, especially if we recommend production, does is commit or suggests that we will commit town resources to acquiring those funds somehow or other. It means staff time. It means staff time and likes of that. Is that a fair description? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's the nature of a project like this is complicated, so it's going to require many hands. I'm not going to take public comment yet. So I think the select board has spoken very clearly. Clearly we're all in favor of finding a solution to this problem. And then the question is, is this the right path to the solution? I'm very concerned about the idea of symbolic votes for monetary appropriations. Things that, well, we know it doesn't compel us to act, but we think it strengthens our bargaining position or something like, I'm very concerned about the precedent that sets. I mean, you could almost say that for any random article that came up. You could say, well, but we support it. It doesn't matter because it doesn't compel us to act, but it shows that we strongly support X. So I'm worried about that precedent. I'm worried about the idea of really kind of authorizing an appropriation, even though it's not compelling an appropriation, but authorizing the appropriation before we have a plan, that's just absolutely backwards from anything that we do. And so again, as a precedent setting thing, I have a lot of concern about that. I guess I'm not personally sold on the idea that it has to be now. I would feel much better, and I completely appreciate the Housing and Sheltering Committee endorsing this approach. This is, you know, this kind of advocacy is your job. I mean, this is what you're doing. I think that the select board's role is a little bit different. So we need to be thinking about the larger context of the precedent that that might set. So I'm not convinced that there's a difference in the timeliness of supporting this as drafted in this motion versus, you know, speaking strongly in support of finding the solution, continuing to work at the solution, maybe referring this article back to us or to us in Housing and Sheltering Committee or whomever to keep working on the solution. And that maybe that appropriation will come in the fall, but we would have a much stronger case, a much stronger justification that's more consistent with the kind of money that we ask town meeting for, the kinds of plans under which we ask them to appropriate money than if we do that now. This time. I disagree. I think if this would strengthen the bargaining positions, the role that Mr. Musanti has to play. I, all for being willing to take a symbolic vote, maybe because I know of circumstances with say single payer, where we know it's not gonna happen tomorrow, next week or next fall, but we make the vote because we want people to know where we stand for a better way of doing things. And this is, I think the piece of property, a building echo village would do a lot for, not just the current residents, but for our affordable housing stock. And so why not say this is something that we are for and we hope we can get it to work. It's not binding and we know that legally it's not, but at least it states what our best hope would be. Thank you. Mr. Haley. I raised my hand before it was completely formed, but I'm gonna try to push on this at the sake of time. The, so maybe in response to Ms. Thine's comment is, would be if this is going to be symbolic, I wonder if you would be more comfortable, I certainly know what I would be, with it speaking more directly to the symbolism, to what we are, to what we are gonna commit to do. You know, we might commit it's a nice idea to do this or that, anything else. And that's fine and all symbolic and everything else. But what I would want the vote to intend to symbolize to signal to people that we might be negotiating with is, you know, what we will do. And that might be, you know, we will ask the town manager to spend time, to spend committee time, to spend staff time to do the work. I mean, the two and a half million dollars or the three million dollars or the 1.75, whatever that number is, it's unlikely that town meeting, even in its best mood, would say yes, we're just gonna put that money on the table. We want you to raise our taxes by that much and get this thing. I would be much more comfortable saying, you know, that's not the only money that we have available and we really, in order for this to work, we do need to look for those other things. And that's the thing that I would like to vote on and say yes, town meeting, you can demand that of us. You can take us up on our offer. You know, and I understand your precedent, sort of the lack of precedence that this sets. You know, okay, if we need to do it, if we'd like or not. And it doesn't allow me to say, this is what I'd like to do. This is what I'd like to recommend town meeting to do. I hope that was sensible more than another. Oh, there's Ms. Brewer. Couple of quick things. One is, I'm just verifying, this is a two thirds vote, which is perhaps our biggest issue that we're facing here. One of the things is, in regards to the 15%, basically 15% of 2.5 million, we're looking at 375,000, right? So basically 16,000 in unit, which would be, as I refer to, I believe these refer to earlier as a steal, which would certainly be a steal. If it was more than that, however, and not being familiar with as many of the details of the housing production plan as they should be, the cost per unit at the price of 2.5 million is still only $105,000 a unit, which while that sounds like a lot, really is not a lot. And so I'm feeling like given the numbers and being completely aware of the precedent that Ms. O'Keefe states, because that was certainly very compelling to me much earlier in this conversation, I feel our housing situation is so serious that this is the kind of thing that I can say it's okay to make this kind of vote for this particular purpose. If it was for conservation land, I might have a different answer. But for affordable housing units at this point, I feel okay about doing it this way, but I totally understand why people might not. Mr. Wall? Yeah, we're not. All right. A good illustration of the messy nature of government where we have, it's easy to talk and abstract about the things you want to do in high moral causes, but then we have to put our names on things. We have to think about legal precedent and practical realities and all the rest. So I'm as often torn, and I find this here as arguments very compelling, but I think ultimately I come down close to where Ms. Brewer is. We've been talking so much about the housing problem and the lack of affordable housing, the fact that as this very document states, the behavior of predatory land war just destroying a retro market and making it impossible for people to rent apartments and houses, a smaller scale even. And the question of price is interesting too, because we probably brought the Hawthorne property, which some of the sense renamed Hawthorne and that was good, sounds nicer, with that decrepit farmhouse and large open space there. And one reason that proved not to be practical for conversion is because the price per unit would have been over $300,000, $350,000 to $75,000 above the median price. So given the amount of money as Ms. Brewer suggested that we also spend on other pieces of property, this would seem to be a good investment. In other words, I'm aware of the precedent issue, but I'm inclining toward taking action because the housing issue is so important. And if we're gonna be leaders, I think we need to leave. All right, we can talk about this for about five more minutes total, because we do need to take positions on the other articles, even though the petitioner's not here, Ms. Streeter. I'm speaking for myself rather than a member of the CPA committee, but while I've been on that committee, I've learned a few things, and one of those is that having some positive votes, especially from a local community, does help to gather further funds. We've seen that repeatedly on various CPA proposals. The other thing I'd like to remind the committee that about a year or so ago, we voted, I think it was upwards of $74,000 per unit to upgrade 22 units throughout town, and that didn't get us a single new unit of comfortable affordable housing. And then this year on the warrant, there is another CPA article that again, will be putting a fair amount of money, $110,000 in CPA funds with CPG funds added to that, but again, will not get us new affordable housing. So I think that when you start to look at what some of the other things are, this does look like a bargain. It's sometimes when there's a bargain on the table, you have to grab it when you can. The other thing is that I think, I have to commend Ms. Petitia for getting as far as she has gotten, given that you're an honest to Amherst politist, and that's no easy task to really figure out how things work and come up with an article for the warrant. But I think this is a situation that cries out for support and leadership from the select board in a way that I'm hoping that perhaps Mr. Mousantier or the select board could call together a meeting maybe of the CPA committee, the select board, the housing committee, finance committee. I mean, what this is really calling for is a collection of heads together to find a realistic and practical way to solve this. And so I think that it's great that it's coming before you, and I think that the whole thought of a symbolic, the precedent sort of hails in comparison to what could be accomplished by doing this. I hope you'll vote to support it now and then to work actively over the next few months to really see what we can do. And it may well influence the landowner. It may well influence state grants and certainly the CPA committee, especially if you have a good solid town meeting to vote and support it is, which is unlikely to happen unless you give strong support for years. Mr. Oldham. I would just like to add that giving a town meeting the opportunity early to support this article, which I'm hopeful we will do, I think does strengthen the town manager and your staff when you're speaking with the owners. And I said the owners because there's several individuals involved in this LLC. There are several people who are potentially profiting through this eviction. And I think that once the town steps up through town meeting and puts up town money and says we're willing to pay for this, I hope you will invite these individuals who've started this whole process in motion to put up some of their money to invite the owners to give us a bargain sale. I think that the town should say loud and clear that affordable housing is an important thing. And those who would profit at the expense of low income people in our community should be challenged to rethink their business practices. And I think the town meeting will make it easier for you to say something like that today. If it's really. Yes, I don't think it's going to cause our property taxes to go up because we support this. I think that if there is a good solid support from you and Tom meeting now, it's more likely we'll get the grants that will get the CPA funding and that we won't need to raise property taxes as a way to get Mr. Haynes up. I'm hoping that that is what, the messages that is conveyed to people that we're not asking the town to raise their taxes. And extraordinary way. Ms. Rutelia? Yes, just to kind of piggyback on that, I broke down, I made another handout, we just broke down in terms of the funding. I know we kind of went over it, but just tried to make it look a little clearer if I can hand it to you guys. That's huge. But, so, good sideway. No, sorry, I kind of wanted to take it out and pretend those sources and when we were looking at presenting this, we also did not want to ask the town to really limit property taxes first and foremost, but to limit other potential sources of loans and grant funding and things like that. Again, also, of course, as tenants, if you feel that the quick action with the leadership of the town and committees would have definitely an immediate impact for our situation and could potentially put the legal side of this on pause as if there was discussion going on that they may have some willingness to kind of just pause everything else on the other side, which would then give even potential more time to work things out, but without commitment, without something firm and firm in terms of yes, we are willing to work together, there's no incentive to pause the quick action of the legal action in terms of the tenants. Thank you. Ms. Brewer, before you ask your question, I want to ask you a question. So if you could summarize what you think we would be asking town meeting to do. Oh, is this a quiz? Well, I mean, so this is very confusing to me. Like honestly, I'm not sure what we're asking town meeting, considering the conversation we're having. What, how do we describe to town meeting what this vote would be? Well, I'm not sure I've described it exactly the same way Mr. Hayden did. I mean, obviously, I would go by the motion language, the motion that we have here, which basically says to me, what this says is we will explore every means available to us to find a way to purchase an affordable housing restriction on these units. And I would, and one of the notes I made to myself as to whether or not people might find compelling is that there's always the question as to what town meeting action means and what it compels and what things get referred and things get suggested and yada, yada, yada and does anybody actually do those things that town meeting asks for? And it sounds like from what Mr. Zomek brought up earlier that town staff was planning to support this effort anyway. So that's one of the things that I think plays into your concern about timing. If we had a more firm package in the fall, it isn't the town staffs refusing to work on this unless there's a town meeting vote. So that's a non-issue so to speak and that town staff will work on it regardless of the town meeting vote because they see it as an important priority and we haven't said, stop, don't do that. And if they listen to us anyway. So I guess that's circling back. I just see it as giving us all these possibilities and that you will see something in the future and that yes, it's absolutely different than other things we have done in the past when we usually have a package ready when we say we'll get this grant and we'll match it with this and if the grant falls through, we won't do it after all. And yet again, I'm compelled by the idea of the affordable units. Although I do have a question, just. Okay, I do have a question. So this has been brought up, this has been alluded to previously and it's mentioned again on this handout and I'm really concerned about what this means because of the conversation that might take place at town meeting. So we have CPA articles that are coming up. They're gonna be rescheduled to later in town meeting as I understand it. Is this saying, is the intention of the petitioner to ask on the floor basically that CPA recommendations be changed for this town meeting? Or is this when fall happens, we will ask them to adjust things. So that's. Ms. Brattano. The intent was not to ask this on the floor. I had a conversation today and these are printed out after the conversation I had today but the intent was to have met with and just in unforeseen circumstances, multiple lines that these have fallen through but the intent had been to have met with CPA prior to the moment that we're in now. So that's where that was coming from and not that this would be on the floor saying, oh wait a minute, we're changing the whole way. So those are ongoing discussions but at this point we don't predict there to be a different set of CPA emotions than the ones we have predicted for the last couple of weeks based on the CPAC report that we have available to us and all other town meeting members. As we said. Yeah, and that's consistent with my discussions as late as today with the CPA chair, Peter Jessup. The nature of the Echo Village Apartments project is the kind of project that is like that have lots of sympathy within the CPA committee as an affordable housing project. That's different than turning over the apple cart of the proposals that are literally on the floor of town meeting. The beauty about CPA is that it's recurring revenue and there's, there'll be another cycle starting for next year, the moment after this town meeting votes this year's list of projects. So I think there's a lot of openness and sympathy when there's more of a specific plan ready to come forward, how or if CPA might play part of the solution. I think we actually need to vote on this unless people need more information to determine their vote. One small piece of information. So if anything in this, and maybe I'm asking all the way over to the end of Ms. Brewer, is there anything in this should it come in pass that doesn't require another vote of some sort from the CPA and town meeting or town meeting if it's to accept a grant because we have to authorize that kind of spending through town meeting? I think that's an excellent question that depends on what funding sources get brought together. Right, but are there any of them that would not, any of them large enough in this list, for instance, it has three quarters of a million here and a million there and 400,000 there and any of those that would not require a town meeting vote? I would think it's possible we could get certain grants that wouldn't have appropriation, that wouldn't require town meeting action. That's right. There's some grant programs. So ACPA and ACPA appropriation cannot come to the floor of town meeting without being originally a recommendation from the CPA committee. That's in the state's den. For instance, right. But if other people wanted to throw money at us, we wouldn't necessarily need town meeting to take additional action. But conversely, in order to borrow or in order to have an actual firm borrowing plan, we would expect to come down back to town meeting. There's not, even though this gives us all sorts of authorization, we would not actually flow to bond next week based on this authorization. Okay, that's it. No, I'm sorry, we gotta move on because we've gotta get this wrapped up because we need to talk about what we're gonna do with the other two articles. So, this time. I move that the State Board recommend to the May 6th, 2013, annual town meeting, Article 42, Petition Affordability Restriction, Echo Village Apartments. Second. Okay, for the discussion, Ms. Moon. Just quickly, I'm going to abstain from this because I think that there is an article that's very similar to this that would speak more directly and more directly to what I think we think needs to be done and what town meeting needs to authorize. For the discussion. Mr. Wall. I may be reading Mr. Hayden's mind. I know our time is late. I was going to ask whether any change in the wording would enable us all to agree and yet not subvert the desire of the petitioners. Is the problem in the wording acquired actual action as opposed to, is that more of a differences, Terry? So, this to me is a good intention, but not a plan and I just can't vote for a good intention in these circumstances. So I know a motion change right now. I mean, maybe over weeks if we were to talk about something that was more kind of symbolic or whatever on the realm that Mr. Hayden had been talking about before, but I don't think that would satisfy any of your folks sense of wanting to say, yes, we're going to put up money for this. So, no, I don't think there's a quick motion change that we can do, but thank you for the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed say nay. Nay. All abstaining. Abstaining. So it's three to one to one. Three to one. Yes. We would like to speak to this. We'd like to that person explaining. Who wants to positions here? Ms. Brewer, I think it's got your name all over. Yeah, that's okay. Okay, thank you all. Thank you all for your work and your comments and your thoughtfulness on this. Okay, so then the other things before us are articles 40 and 41. These are two petition articles. Mr. O'Connor is not here to speak to them. Is anyone here to speak in his bid? Okay. I did speak with Mr. O'Connor about these on Saturday. I had expected him to be here. Let's start with 41, which is easier. 41 is about residential parking. And as we know from the memo from the town manager and as I know from my experience on the safe and healthy neighborhoods thing, we simply can't do this kind of parking thing through the general bylaws. We wanted to for safe and healthy and the attorney general's office said, nope, can't do that. That's basically trying to get around zoning. So I don't know what Mr. O'Connor's position is going to be, but the only suggestion that I can make is recommending dismissal on this. I mean, we can oppose it, but it really needs to be dismissed because there's no such thing as approving it. Right. Is this 41 or would just say no? Right, because 41 is easier. So I just wanted to talk about that quickly. So the act, as a general bylaw, would it go to the attorney general from us? Or would it just be that eventually when someone questioned it, the attorney general would say, yeah, no, that's not gonna work. If town meeting passed it as a general bylaw, it would go to the attorney general and the attorney general would say, that's a... Right, because it's a different time frame than zoning, but the attorney general still has to do both. Right, and since we've already had essentially a pre-opinion on this concept through the safe and healthy proposed bylaw, we just know this isn't gonna fly, so there's no reason to... I'm ready to vote. Yep, makes sense. Okay, I move that the select board recommend to the May dismissal of residential parking at the May 6th, 2013 annual town meeting, article 41. Second, recommend closer to dismissal. Pardon? That's recommended dismissal. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry if I missed it. It's a little bit closer, that's all. I don't want to know. All right, further discussion. All in favor, say aye. Aye. I already wrote down that it was okay. Yes, thank you. That's so great. That's okay, yeah, okay. Okay. That's you. Yeah, that's me. That's me, that's me. Okay, so article 40. So if you read the memo from the town manager, this is a little bit more nuanced. This is basically Mr. O'Connor is proposing this instead of the rental regulations, and so I don't know how we could support the rental regulations and support instead just sending some information to tenants. The rental regulations is all about supplying information directly to tenants. My conversation with Mr. O'Connor the other day was not only is this information available online, et cetera, but the idea of if we don't do the rental registration and permitting, then we wouldn't know who we're sending it to. So his response was we have 95% of the addresses we think. I said, okay, who's going to open anything then that just says occupant on it? So now you're going to be mailing out something that people are just going to toss in the recycling. This is not an effective way to communicate the what we expect people to need to know about the laws and their rights, Ms. Brewer. Which is such a great segue to the fact it's not an effective way to communicate, which is why we don't follow our own current bylaw. Because our current bylaw says we'll do this, we don't have a good way of doing it. So we don't do it anymore. We haven't done it for several years. And like you said, the information is available online and UMass housing resources has like that much more information as you well saw safe and healthy neighborhoods. But so it isn't that there is no place local to get this information. But our whole point is to do it through a rental registration by law. So it gets to the people who actually need it. So do we think we're ready to take position on this? Okay, Ms. Dyer. So next board not recommend to the May 6, 2013 annual town meeting article 40 petition rental housing information. Second. Further discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. And I guess I might as well speak to that one also. Sounds good. All right. Do we have anything else we need to discuss? Now, let me tell you that next week we meet on the 20th, I will be looking for us to set our June and summer meeting date. So if you could email me with any vacation or other plans between now and then. If that is the only thing we need to meet about next Monday, then we will cancel the meeting unless people would prefer to meet because we don't actually critically need to do that on the 20th. But if we are meeting on the 20th, that is what we will do. I will also remind us that Wednesday, the Wednesday of this week when we are going to meet because when I'm in executive session, as we mentioned at the beginning on that night, we are going to consider article 26, the town down strategic planning, followed by 10 and 11. Those are the two easement articles for Atkins Corner that we had moved. So that's just a reminder. And so select word knows tonight, if we get to 25, whether that's tonight or whenever we get to right before we do 25, I'm going to make a procedural motion to consider 45, which is Ms. Greenlee's petition right after that, which is something we had discussed previously at this meeting. And she is supportive of doing that because her plan is to simply make amendments to 25 and then move to dismiss 45. So Ms. Brown. And it's also my understanding that the CPA articles are going to be moved away. So we're very likely to get to 25 tonight. Yes. All right. My speech yet. That's important to me. Anything else anybody needs to know? I move to adjourn. And without objection, this meeting is adjourned at 6.54 PM. Please make sure that you sign the warrant before you leave.


Every few years, there is a new buzzword in the technology space that is on everybody's lips, everybody's tongue. Everybody wants to talk about this new kind of technology that's going to completely change everything in that space. A few years ago, everybody wanted to talk about cloud. Everybody talked about cloud, cloud computing, cloud servers, enterprise cloud, you know, cloud, cloud, cloud. If you had a cloud service or a cloud-based application, that was the future.  And now the latest buzzword in the tech space is AI, artificial intelligence, and especially because of chat GPT. Now I actually haven't tried out chat GPT, but essentially what it is, it's an interface where you ask it questions or you tell it to do things for you, like write a piece of code or write a poem or, you know, if you want to ask it questions, like look up something for me or give me a definition or something, you can think of it as like an interactive encyclopedia almost or whatever it is you want to know, you can ask it and it will tell you. And that's kind of cool technology. I mean, I've got some opinions on this because there are some pros and cons to this kind of technology. But I haven't actually tried out chat GPT yet. So I just signed up for an account and I'm actually going to log into chat GPT and try it out for the first time on camera and let's see what kind of questions it's able to respond to and see what kind of answers it gives me. So I've signed up for an account and I'm logged in to chat GPT and you can see the interface if I move my head out of the way here. You can see there is a text field here where I can input something and chat GPT should respond in some way. So you know, one of the things maybe that I want to know is, imagine I want to write an article or a blog or even a novel, you know, and this is the kind of thing a lot of people are interested in this AI kind of technology is, hey, can you actually do my work for me? So imagine I want to write a book, maybe I want to write a book about Linux. So I can say, give me 10 titles for a book about desktop Linux since I'm not interested in, you know, Linux on the servers, at least not for my book. So let's see if it actually gives me 10 possible titles for a book I could write about desktop Linux. It's actually doing just that mastering Linux on the desktop, the Linux desktop experience. I like that Linux for the non geek desktop. Yeah, these are actually really good titles. I actually should copy some of these now. Now I'm not actually interested in writing a book about desktop Linux, but that's kind of cool. Let me zoom in a little bit so you guys can see the questions and answers. Now I'm assuming I could get it to modify some of these. For example, many of these titles are quite short, which are nice. But can I say, give me 10 more titles that are longer? I see if it can actually understand that because that's kind of vague what I just typed. Yeah, it understood that sentence perfectly. It understood that I wanted 10 more titles that were longer in length. You know, so that's, you know, pretty smart already. I can say I'm pretty impressed that it was able to to handle that request. And let me just enter something that would be the kind of thing maybe you would enter in something like Google, for example, give me five words that rhyme with. And let me think of a word that, you know, has some words that could actually rhyme with it. I don't know pizza. Let's see if it actually gives me some some decent answers here. Yeah. Are those real words? I'm not familiar with any of those words. So yeah, I those could be real words, but at least in the English language, I'm not familiar with those are those words English. Again, kind of vague. No, those words are not commonly used in English. Oh, OK. And it actually tells me what the words are. Well, now that is very smart. This is the kind of response you definitely couldn't get like from a search engine. You can actually tell it actually has to kind of interpret what I'm asking in a much more intelligent way than the kinds of things you typically ask Google or Bing or whatever search engine you happen to use. Now, that's nice that, you know, it gives us facts and things like that or it can help us create, I guess, titles or even, you know, actual articles or books or works of art, I guess. But let's ask it something that's more of an opinionated kind of question. For example, why is Linux better than Windows? And yes, I'm trying to to trip it up here. It's kind of a trick question, right? Since there is no objective answer to this question as the superiority of one operating system over the other depends on individual needs and preferences. However, some of the reasons why people might prefer Linux. OK, so it actually tells me why people could choose Linux over Windows. Some of the reasons why some people find Linux better than Windows. So very smart answer. I will say that is a very level headed and well reasoned response that it gave actually a lengthy response. That's good stuff right there is Richard. Stallman. Crazy. Again, just a random question just to see if I can trip it up in any way. Says as a language model, I do not have opinions or emotions, but I can tell you that Richard Stallman is a controversial figure. Whether someone views Stallman as crazy or not is a subjective matter. Very cool. Very cool. Let's see if it can actually do any programming. Can you give me an example of a for loop in bash? Certainly. OK. Well, I thought that might be a tricky question, too, but it looks like it's going to actually come up with one. Yeah. Pretty standard for loop in bash scripting. And it's going to actually it's not just going to give us the code. It's going to actually give us a description of what the code does. Ah, that was very cool because when I asked for an example, I really just thought it would give us the example code. I didn't actually expect it to give us all of this extra information as well. I think one last question I want to ask it just to put this thing to the test is is AI dangerous to the human race? Let's see if it takes some kind of personal offense to that question. There is an ongoing debate and discussion about the potential dangers of AI and its impact on society. Well, you're not lying about that matter of fact. We're going to talk about that in just a second, but it looks like it's going to give me a lot of talking points I could use because there are definitely concerns about ethical and moral implications of creating intelligent machines. Absolutely. So let's discuss this a little more. Well, now that I've tried out chat, GPT, I can say I'm actually pleasantly surprised with the responses I got from this thing, because I asked it in some cases, purposely vague questions or I tried to. Some of the questions were very leading like I was trying to get certain responses and it kind of figured that out like, you know, some of those subjective kind of questions, you know, the AI was not going to fall for that. Also the book titles and things like that, you know, when I asked it for 10 book titles about desktop Linux and gave me 10 titles and then I asked it to change the titles, make the titles longer or I could ask it anything, eliminate this word from the titles and give me 10 more titles. Like you can really, you know, fine tune some of these questions. You can keep modifying the questions and, you know, I find this. I can understand why people think this kind of thing has a future. Like, like I could understand in the future, us interacting with such technology a lot more because I could see this replacing like standard search engine kind of stuff or standard like a encyclopedia dictionary kind of stuff like Wikipedia. Why would I ever go to Wikipedia? If I could simply ask an AI in this case, type it. But once we also have, you know, voice commands as well, you know, where it could, you know, respond to me actually just speaking into a microphone, I think the time saved just in research from being able to ask a question and get relevant responses. Where a search engine, you get search results, but the search results don't necessarily answer the questions you're asking. Some of the search results may be relevant. Many, in many cases, they're not relevant at all. Whereas this, again, I think it would save so much time on that kind of thing. Now, is should people be using AI to do like blog writing, article writing, essay writing for those of you in school, dissertation writing? Should should AI write a novel for you? Should you have AI just spit out a novel and you'd be able to throw your name on that as the author and write, right? And I think and I understand why people think that that's kind of lame because most of us are used to having to put in real work to do those kinds of tasks and now, you know, because you can kind of cheat the system, right? I don't have to do it. I'll just have the AI, you know, write my next blog post. Well, you can do that. Will it have the same soul, heart and soul, right? Because the human experience is a little different than a computer. A computer knows how people write. It can interpret all of the things that people have written in the past about a subject and kind of mimic what other people have written, their style and things like that. But at the end of the day, would a generated novel, for example, be as good as a novel written by a human being? I don't think so because human being being an emotional being. You know, we understand the words we write, how it will potentially impact the reader, where AI, of course, has no such no faculties, no facility for for understanding emotion. It can't be emotional. It can't say, well, this is a really touching, moving passage. In this book, it wouldn't know, right? It just knows all of the stuff that's been written throughout history. Every book that's ever been written. So, you know, you give it some parameters and it'll spit out a similar book. But it will it actually. I don't know. Like this, it's a tricky subject. I understand why a lot of people are really anti AI, anti chat GPT. And again, there's some other ethical concerns with this, for example, when you start asking it, political questions, ideological questions, religious questions, things like that. What kind of responses would this thing give? I think the danger in this kind of technology is that the creators chat GPT in this case, but any of these AI tools, because there's others out there that are being developed as competitors to chat GPT, chat GPT, by the way, is proprietary. So I just want to put that out there. But there are going to be free and open source implications of this kind of AI stuff. There's already work on that. And we're going to have a lot of these competing AI tools. Hopefully some free and open source ones, probably in the very near future. But what happens when the creator of this particular AI tool that you happen to be using, the creator decides they want the AI to always steer you in a certain political direction, right? Or they want to censor certain things. And this would be a very serious issue, especially in certain countries. Think about the way Google has to censor its search results in a country like China, right? Would AI also have to censor its responses for the Chinese population or based on geolocation? If you are asking chat GPT a question in China, would it give a different response to the question than it would to somebody asking it in the United States? And for me, I think ultimately these kinds of AI tools, they need to be able to be adapted by the user, right? I want my AI tool to understand who I am, my particular ideology and worldview. You know, I want them, for example, if I ask the AI questions about free software versus proprietary software, it needs to know what what kind of views I already have on the subject to give me appropriate answers, right? Because somebody like me, a free software zealot, asking questions about free software versus proprietary software. I'm going to want the AI to actually give me different kinds of answers than someone that was very heavily invested in the closed source proprietary world, Steve Ballmer, right? XCO of Microsoft. If he's asking his AI questions about free software, proprietary software, he's probably going to want very different responses from his AI than what DT wants from my AI. Really, the biggest concerns with this are really censorship, which we've already talked about, you know, certainly certain nations are not going to to like this particular kind of technology because they don't want. Free information to be freely available to everyone in the world, right? That's a very harmful and negative thing to certain kinds of governments and political systems. But also even in, I guess, what we would consider the free world, censorship is a big deal. Because what if I asked the AI questions about really sensitive topics such as certain, you know, hate groups or incest, rape, molestation, right? What if I talked about child slavery and, you know, topics that are very dark and, you know, the dark recesses of humanity? Would the AI or would the person that created the AI want to censor certain kinds of information about those topics? Or, you know, it's a tricky. It's a tricky thing, right? Is like, am I actually going to be able to ask the AI anything and get a response about anything? Or should the AI actually hold back a little bit? Like if I asked the AI, how to build me a nuclear weapon? Would it actually give me schematics, right? Well, I think if the information is freely out there, you know, the information it's giving is freely out there on the web anyway, in books and on Wikipedia and things like that. It should just give me the information I asked for. But there are going to be some people. I know this because this is just the way the world works. There's going to be a certain segment of the population that will want AI to be very limited in the kinds of things that it will actually tell people. And ultimately, these tricky situations, they're just going to have to play out. We're just going to eventually have to see how all of this plays out because there's more and more millions of people play with tools like chat GPT and I can envision a world in a few years where these kinds of tools are like commonplace.  We have to see how this plays out in real life. And in some cases, we're going to have to see how some of this stuff gets settled in court. But honestly, I've got to say, I'm a little surprised. I actually expected to hate this thing. And the few minutes I spent playing with chat GPT, I got to say, I'm going to play with it a little more because it's pretty cool technology and I can't wait until the free and open source community actually put something out there because I think this this kind of technology is too important to be locked up behind closed source proprietary licenses. Now, before I go, I need to think a few special people. I need to think. Gabe James, Maxim Matt, Mehmet Mitchell, Paul Royal, West Armored Dragon, Bash Potato Chuck, Commander Erie George Lee, Methos, Nate Erion, Paul, Peace, Archon, Fedor, Polytech, Realities for Less Red Profit, Roland, Tools, Diffler and Willie. These guys, they're my highest tiered patrons over on Patreon without these guys. This quick look at chat GPT would not have been possible. The show is also brought to you by each and every one of these fine ladies and gentlemen, all these names you're seeing on the screen right now. These are all my supporters over on Patreon because I don't have any corporate sponsors. I'm sponsored by you guys, the community. If you like my work and want to see more videos about Linux and free and open source software, not proprietary software like chat GPT, subscribe to DistroTube over on Patreon. All right, guys, peace.


Welcome, everybody. We're fortunate to be able to kick off this set of conversations about such a critical issue to United States society, politics, and the world. I think that the experiences of individuals in the military tends to stay with them for a long time and provide an important touchstone not only while they're in the service or serving in a war, but also afterwards as well. And understanding the full range of those experiences is a big part of what conversations like the ones this is kicking off here can do. The experiences you'll hear tonight from the panelists come from those who have studied these issues in the military, who have influenced the progress of LGBT rights and human rights in the military, and who have lived that experience in the service and then after serving. So with that, I'm going to turn this over to our first speaker, Zoe Dunning, who will talk to you about her experience in and around and after the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy in the US military. Thank you, Dean Hillman. When I entered the military, the policy was simply, you just can't be gay. And they would actively investigate you and witch hunts. And I became active in the issue when President-elect Clinton declared that he was going to change the policy on gays in the military. I came out publicly in support of him. And as a result, went through my discharge proceedings and was this weird exception and was allowed to continue to serve openly in the military. But I think when we talk about LGBTQ issues around the military and for veterans, one of the things that I think is really unique is that military experience. I do a lot of public speaking at American Legion posts and veterans organizations. And someone may have only served one or two years in the military or three years, but it is that common experience that sort of binds them together. And it becomes their primary social circle. It just becomes a really critical part of your existence and your identity and who you are. So when you have policies around gays and lesbians in the military, it's almost a different plane than just regular employment or regular schools or whatever it might be. I heard an expression once that I really liked and resonated with me. It said that a veteran is someone who, at one point in their life, walks into a recruiter's office and signs a blank check to the American people payable up to and including their own life. And that's a pretty severe commitment. That's a pretty serious obligation that people who enter the military give. And so I think we really owe people who serve as well as veterans. We owe them something for that commitment, for that service. And so that's why it's very important to me. The repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell was a critical period of time for the LGBT movement. I think where the military goes, society goes. I think we've seen that time and again when it comes to battling discrimination, whether it's African-Americans or opportunities for women.  And I think we've seen it in terms of LGBT rights. Once Don't Ask, Don't Tell is repealed, suddenly a lot more states, marriage rights and DOMA and all of these other things kind of fell into place because again, how we treat our military oftentimes has ripple effects throughout society. So to me it's very interesting to continue to study the military and how it evolves because I think it is a precursor to society at large. Thank you. So now we'll ask Aaron Belkin to talk to us about some of his most recent work which involves transgender rights in the military. Thank you so much and thank you to the audience and the other panelists. It's really an honor to serve with you on the panel. So in terms of the question of transgender service in the military, Don't Ask, Don't Tell was a statute, a congressional law that didn't address gender identity. And so when Don't Ask, Don't Tell was repealed by Congress, the regulations that prohibit transgender individuals from serving remained in place.  And so the president as commander in chief could get rid of those rules with a stroke of the pen. On the one hand, you can make some really smart arguments that again, we're pushing against a brick wall and it's gonna take years and years and years to change the policy. But I think the better evidence lines up behind the idea that we may actually be pushing against a house of cards and for the 14,500 transgender troops who are serving now, I think there's a very good chance that the Pentagon will update its policies relatively sooner rather than relatively later.  They just lied all over the place. And one thing they lied about is that in many cases, their motives were really ground in whatever you wanna call it, homophobia, moral animus, intolerance, what have you. But they couldn't admit in public that their support for federal law was ground in personal animus. And so they came up with a phony argument about unit cohesion that if gays were allowed to serve openly, that would prevent the troops from bonding with each other and the military would fall apart. Seriously. The transgender policies, unlike Don't Ask, Don't Tell, are articulated in medical regulations. There's a psychological piece of the transgender ban and a physical piece. So you're not allowed to have a transgender identity and you're not allowed to change your genitals. So there are two pieces to the ban. But they're justified by medical arguments that suggest that providing healthcare to transgender troops would just be beyond the military's competence.  They're not lies about military performance. So we can talk more in Q and A about how to get rid of this policy, but that's kind of where we are for now. Thanks, Aaron. Jeff. Got involved with OutServe, which before the merger of the two organizations did have a little input into the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. They realized that the active duty military did not have a voice in trying to get the repeal to happen because if we said something, then we'd no longer be active duty. And today our focus turns a little bit from the advocacy piece. We are still working, there are still some issues that we can get into later that we need to kind of address, but there are still LGBT military members out there actively serving, and they go through all stages of life. They go through all stages of needing support that is different than their straight counterparts. Are they coming out or are they coming out to their commanders? Do they have certain issues that they need to be addressed? And so there is still a need for a social support network. And I think what it comes down to, and one of the ways that we can kind of roll this all together to really move things forward is education. You know, we think of pride, we think of, okay, let's have the parade, let's have all the fun that goes with that. That's not what's happening. It's programs, it's local chapter leaders with an out-serve SLDN going to their base leadership and saying, I wanna put something together. They're doing 5K fun runs there. They're doing an hour long educational seminar to educate base leadership or just people in general about still the issues that are facing LGBT military members. And so this education piece, as we can educate commanders, we can educate those that still believe the lies that are out there, is I think what's gonna continue to change the hearts and minds. And so that's a lot of the work that we're trying to focus on right now as an organization to continue that education piece so that people really understand. It's not a big deal. Thank you. I'm gonna start with a question that Aaron reminded me of here. He mentioned medical lies. I always thought there were three kinds of lies, right?  Now we have to add medical lies to that. But let's go back to number three on statistics because we are in the era of big data and the numbers are a lot of the truth for many of us now and how things get presented. And Aaron, since you started with a number out there, 14,500 transgender service members serving today. Many Americans aren't aware that there are any transgender service members. And so to talk about 14,500 people serving loyally, not being able to access healthcare, being subject to discharge if they tell the truth about who they are, not being able to report abuse when they're abused because they could get discovered as transgender to know that there are 14,500 people in that situation I think is very compelling. Other ideas about numbers? So you brought up the sexual assault and I mean it might sound cliche but one sexual assault is one too many and while I think numbers like Aaron said kind of bring awareness to where we're at, having just gone through our annual sexual assault prevention response training within the Air Force, they threw the slide up there of how many cases there were last year compared to the year before. And those numbers don't do any good because as there's more awareness risen to this topic, the numbers are gonna increase. So what do you do with that? Part of the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell was that the Department of Defense was not going to track in any way, shape, or form sexual orientation and of course by default, gender identity. So numbers can help but again, I'm gonna go back to the education and trying to correct the problem as opposed to just pushing numbers out there to try to get to where we need to be with it. And I would just say that one of the statistics that I often cite, a lot of people at the time thought that Clinton's compromise around Don't Ask, Don't Tell was sort of a step forward or it was a partial solution or it was an improvement of some sort. And in reality actually it was worse because it shined a light on LGBT service members, LGBT service members and caused a lot of investigations and things like that. So the number I often cite is 13,000. So during the course of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, over 13,000 service members were discharged. And the other thing that was interesting is that the number of discharges increased every single year from 1994, I believe is when it was actually implemented, up until 2001 and then we started the war. And guess what? Suddenly the discharges went down every year once we went to war because they started to look the other way and we need qualified troops and when that happens we're not so aggressive in investigating and discharging people. So I have a question for you about how these changes have come to be and what made a difference in changing things because it did take a long time to undo Don't Ask, Don't Tell. And Erin, you mentioned that toppling that unit cohesion argument made a difference in this. What are the external factors, the things that really mattered and what are the barriers now that we have to look ahead to get around or to get over in order to get to the next level here? That's a really tough question to answer because so many people and groups were doing so many things to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell. And the way I think about it is that there were kind of five strategic baskets or sets of activities that different groups were pursuing. We didn't always have coordination among our groups but as a movement I think we did about as well as any activist community could be expected to do and I was really proud of the whole community for that. So moving forward on transgender, I think it's gonna take the same strategies. And we talk about non-discrimination and knowing that gender identity and sexual orientation are still not written to the Department of Defense's equal opportunity non-discrimination clauses. How many of you knew the Department of Defense has a human rights charter? They do and it was just updated. And it's a charter signed by the Secretary of Defense and the update was to include sexual orientation. Great step forward. It should include gender identity as well but what does that mean? What does that do? You know, we're having a conversation kind of beforehand. It's not a directive. It's not an instruction. It's really not enforceable. Great step forward. It's part of a strategy to kind of get there but my next step would be great. Let's update the non-discrimination clause. I'll just add. So I sometimes do these panels and my friends joke about like, you know, you're a professional lesbian and I was like, well, if only I got paid for it. So a lot of the stuff I do kind of, you know, volunteerism and trying to spread the word. My paid job is that I actually do what's called change management consulting. And involves, you know, stakeholder engagement and communication and training and impact assessment and things like that. And I look at the way the Obama administration actually carried out the repeal of don't ask, don't tell. And it hits like every single change management principle you can imagine. And it's almost like the exact opposite of what Clinton did. You know, Clinton was just kind of like sort of forced it upon folks. And it obviously, as you can tell, didn't work out very well. But the way the Obama administration did it, you know, in terms of getting the most senior leadership of the Pentagon on board before trying to push it forward anymore. Trying to do an assessment of what the impact was. So they did a survey of all the troops before they did it to understand where the attitudes were, what the issues were, what the concerns were. They did a lot of communication within the military to help them understand what it was gonna happen and when it was gonna happen, how it was gonna happen. And then there was a training. And so every single member of the military, and I think you went through it, had to go through training about, you know, what it meant to serve alongside gays even though they were all- Face-to-face training. It wasn't an online thing.  And it's like, well, no, I already am serving alongside gays. I just, you know, know it now for a fact, as opposed to a hunch. So, and really what most of the training ended up being was just about respect. That's all it really was.  It's about respecting individuals, respecting people. And if we treat them with respect, then you've got nothing really to worry about in the implementation of don't ask, don't tell. So I think that that was really key in the implementation. And I think the lessons that we learned from that will be useful, I think, as we try to address things like benefits or transgender integration, well, recognition of and ability for transgender troops to join and stay in the service. So I wonder, where do we stand with service members, active duty service members, access to benefits and where do we stand with veterans access to equality in terms of benefits? So speaking for active duty service members, it's from a benefits perspective of what you get is a legally married same sex couple. It is exactly the same from the perspective of if you are a legally married same sex couple, you get access to absolutely everything that legally married straight couples get. Where a little bit of the difference is, is that LGBT people can't get married in every single state across the country. So there's a little bit of a discrepancy there. The way the department handled that was to create a policy that became very vague and did not include sexual orientation in it. Obviously gender identity is not a player in this because it's still a bar to service. Anybody, if you could not get legally married in the state in which you lived, you could get non-chargeable leave so you wouldn't have to take vacation to go get married somewhere. Veterans benefits are a whole separate ball of wax. Unfortunately, the Department of Veterans Affairs has not come out with a sweeping policy as to how to address LGBT veterans benefits and they are not being handled equally across states, across where people go. We are slowly getting there but the department obviously has other issues to deal with not that this is not important but there are other things that they need to focus on. Well, there are other things they are dealing with and we're slowly starting to see veterans benefits roll in for LGBT service veterans. There are still claims that are being denied for whatever benefit that they're trying to get to and that's one thing that we're trying to work to equalize that because it's not fair that it's not happening across the board. So one thing, Jeff mentioned the leave that's been allocated for service members who are in places where they can't legally get married. The Army used to say that if they wanted you to have a wife, they would issue you one. So not long ago you could not have done this. Now you're actually outspoken on an issue. That's an unusual profile for a military officer to take to be outspoken on a public issue that still generates significant political fire. Likewise, commander Dunning, unusual to be an officer, a serving military officer who has been outspoken on an issue that remains not only not unresolved but resolved against you actually sort of in policy and law at the time. So how did that affect you and how do you anticipate that affecting you as you go forward? It was interesting. I mean, I think when I first came out publicly and I went to my, I was a reservist and so I was stationed at Naval Air Station Alameda, came out publicly, it was in the paper, I reported for duty the next weekend and they informed me that legal wanted to see me. Thank surprise, right? But what I found interesting is that my colleagues, it wasn't so much, just once I'd like to come out to someone and have them go, no, not you. So, it wasn't like it was a huge surprise, I think, to my unit members, but I think they felt almost like I was being disloyal to the organization, I was being disloyal to the military. The fact that I hadn't gone through my chain of command, the fact that I had been public about it, they felt like I was trying to shame the military and really what I was trying to do was shame a policy that I felt was making the military weaker. So it wasn't like I was trying to make the military weaker and shame it, I was trying to make it stronger by shaming this policy that I felt was undermining it. And so, their reaction was really very much more about like why would you risk your career, why are you trying to shame the military? And once I sat down and I got like on your fitness report, it goes from, it isn't just like ABCD, it goes down to like FGH, I mean they use like half the alphabet in terms of the grades that you can get on your fitness reports. And I got like an F or a G in judgment shortly after I came out. And I knew that that would be a career killer, I knew that if that ever went into my record that I'd never advance. So I went to the commanding officer and I kind of explained to him, I sat down one on one with him and I explained why I came out, what it was like to be gay under the policy. And he understood and he went back and did a corrective letter and ended up giving me an A in judgment. And in fact, he actually testified on my behalf at my discharge hearing.  And all the media was like men, showers, showers, men, men, showers, men, showers, men, showers. That's like all they cared about. And I was like, the lesbians must be dry-cleaned because there's never a mention of women in this entire debate. So that was another part of my impetus is to sort of bring a female voice to the conversation. You know, it was like the L, G, B, T. And so anyway, I would just say it's challenging. You get sort of a group like, why are you doing this? But then when you talk one on one with people, they tend to get it. They were a little nervous about it and they were nervous about my career. They were nervous that I was trying to shame the military, but overall, I think the reception was pretty good. So from my perspective, I mentioned earlier, it's no big deal. So my intention on repeal day was just to show up to work and the weight was lifted off my shoulders. That's kind of the way I wanted it to happen. It didn't so much go that way and looking back, I'm glad and here's the story.  I actually had done an interview prior to the repeal within Colorado Springs where my face was blacked out on a local TV station. And so I did a follow-up interview with that and then also the Denver Post interviewed me. And so my colonel at the time got wind of it, it got to him and he was actually geographically separated in Alabama and he went and called my civilian boss who was a government civilian and Colonel Mitchell was asking, Frank, Frank did you know about this? And Frank was one of the individuals I had confided in before the repeal and Frank said, well, yes, sir, I did and kind of the way Zoe said, Colonel Mitchell got all in a huff and said, well, Frank, why didn't you tell me about this? I need to know about this stuff. And Frank kind of said, sir, don't know what you don't get about. Don't ask, don't tell. So in one of my feedback sessions, he actually kind of brought it up and he said, oh, Jeff, I know this is a sticky topic. And I'm like, well, no, sir, it's not. And he wanted to make sure everything was going well and it was. Thank you. I don't know if you all have any questions for us, but if you do, you should write them on those cards and we'll be happy to try to answer them. While we're pulling those up, let me just ask Aaron to talk about what these last few weeks have been for the transgender rights movement in the military because things have happened very fast recently. Yeah, I think we're at the beginning of the end of this policy. All of a sudden, the president's spokesperson in the White House said not only is the Secretary of Defense in favor of open to a review, but the president is open to a review as well. So that doesn't mean the policy is gonna change tomorrow, but once the White House says that it's open to reviewing the policy, that's the policies going out the door. Until the person in the White House changes. Well, said it might take a long time, President Obama might not be the president to do it and you might get a Republican president, so this certainly might be a very drawn out process. And actually you could also get a statutory backlash in Congress depending on who's in control of what, which will set the clock back potentially decades. But that having been said for now, with a favorable administration and a regulation that the administration is open to reviewing, that's a big, big change. So where to go? Where should one go to get legal guidance on changing of military records or upgrading a discharge, especially for veterans who served during World War II? Right, actually this is right after World War II, 1946 to 1949 on this. www.outserved-sldn.org and click on legal assistance. In all honesty, yes, so one of the arms that our organization, after the merger that we have kept, is providing legal assistance to veterans that wanna get their discharges upgraded and other kind of issues that they're dealing with. We have hired a team of lawyers that look at this, that push the discharge upgrades. There's a specific discharge upgrade form on our website that you put in all the information and they open your case and then they go ahead and start their proceedings. And there are discharge upgrades, but there's also, you may not be aware that if you get kicked out for being gay, your DD214, which is your record of service, will actually show the reason for discharge and it'll say right on there, homosexuality. And so a lot of people who are kicked out for being gay now have this, anytime they apply for a job, sometimes they ask for this evidence of service and you're essentially outing yourself every time you apply for a job. So it's not only the upgrade of the characterization of discharge, like from dishonorable to honorable or whatever, but also you can get a new DD214 that does not have homosexuality written out and big letters on your paperwork as to your reason for discharge. Another question here. To what degree do you think a generational change in LGBT acceptance and awareness contributed to the change in the military's policy on LGBT and LT service members? Just anecdotally, like huge. I mean, I think even the survey that they did, the Pentagon did of troops, they showed the level of acceptance and resistance by age band and it was a direct correlation, sort of like the older they were, the more resistant and the younger, the more like whatever. And you had poll after poll after poll coming out showing between 70 and 80% of the public in favor of gay serving openly. With the question of transgender military service, especially if the change happened sooner rather than later, there's a chance that the military could proceed a lot of the attitudinal shifts that are just now happening and that are gonna happen more and more over the next number of years. And so there's a way in which it could really have pretty profound implications for gender in America, for the military to stop discriminating. Another really quick observation on that is as well as it becomes more accepted, I see that the service members care less about it as an issue and there's not, they don't feel it's normal to them. 18 year old soldiers that signed up six months ago never knew what Commander Dunning had to deal with. This, so maybe I'll ask one more question here. Do any of you have pressing issues we haven't resolved that you'd like to raise before I do that? Yes. Okay, Erin's up for our question here. Well, so this, but you wanted to ask a last question as well. No, I see the floor here, go ahead. I think we do need to talk about the militarization of the gay and the queer community. And I feel like there's a way in which our kind of, I will use the word uncritical, veneration of veterans and warriors does a lot of work to kind of push off the table some pretty important points about militarism and militarism of the queer community. And I feel like, yes, Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal was a very important moment and I fought personally very hard for it, but what impact did that have on kind of pushing aside other voices in the gay community and as we move forward with transgender inclusion, what effect will that have, for example, on gender queer people who will not be accepted in the military right away or gender neutral people? And this is just not something that we've talked about yet. Any last questions from you all or issues you wanna raise? I'll just close by asking you to comment on the military's in a drawdown now. Generally minority groups have made inroads in equality and opportunity in the armed forces and elsewhere in society at times when the demand for services was so high that there wasn't the will to continue to discriminate. So are we at risk? Maybe I'm an eternal optimist, but it would seem to me that the train is going so fast right now that we almost could increase the work that we're doing because now we really are trying to take a look at, okay, if we're gonna have a leaner, better force, it really needs to be a leaner, better, more educated force. And so it would be a great opportunity, again, my optimistic side. But I think we can do that where we're gonna focus more on education, we're gonna focus more on making sure that everybody has equal rights and understands what's going on because we're all gonna be, there's gonna be less of us and we're gonna have to work as a better team to get to where we need to go and the only way we can do that is if we have equality. It feels like at least for now, even in a drawdown, they're still keeping a kind of broad embrace of diversity. There's always room for improvement, obviously, but I haven't seen that suddenly these programs are being kind of ignored because we don't need to recruit as aggressively. Okay, I wanna thank everybody for coming tonight. I wanna thank Alicia and Karen and Louise for setting this up, the Cal Humanities, UC Humanities Research Institute, the Cal State Library, the San Francisco Public Library and everybody here who came and let's have a round of applause for our panelists. Thank you.