It is March 8, 2021, and we are allowed to have this virtual town council meeting based on Governor Baker's orders of March 12, suspending certain provisions of the open meeting all. We have a quorum of the council here and therefore I'm going to call the meeting to order at 632. I'm going to call upon each counselor and ask them to unmute their mic and say present. Just know we can hear them and they can hear us. And then please meet with Mike again. So let's begin with. Alyssa Brewer. Present. Pat D'Angelo's present. Present. Present. Andy Joe Haneke's present. Dorothy Pan. Present. Evan Ross. Present. George Ryan. Present. Matthew Shane. Here. Steve Schreiber. Here. Andy Steinberg. Present. Sarah Schwartz. Present. And Shalini Balmille. Present. Okay. This meeting includes audio video and is available live on Amherst media. It is also being recorded. There is no chat room. If you have technical issues, please make sure that you let Athena and me know. And we'll make note of that and determine at that point what we do with the meeting. Lindsay McConnell is taking minutes for the council and Athena is managing zoom. And I'm going to quickly go to the announcements and just point out two in particular. The first is that there will be two public forums regarding Tom or a village. These will be held by the town services and outreach committee. Although I understand we do have a quorum of the council who will be present for both of those. And then we'll have a meeting. And then we'll have a meeting on Thursday, March 5th, 25th at six o'clock. And Saturday, March 27th at two o'clock. And I also want to mention that in the agenda today, we will be on consent agenda. We will be passing a resolution with regard to Tibet day. And they will be doing a flag raising ceremony on March 10th in front of town hall. And then we'll have an additional March. To North Hampton. Thank you for the announcements. And we have no hearings. And so we're going to move to public comment. I do want to point out there has been a change in the agenda and that we are not doing the North common tonight at all. And when we talk about that, we'll talk about it later. I'm asking the audience to please raise your hand if you would like to make public comment. Alex Kent. Let me just state that for public comment at this time. The council will not respond. You have up to three minutes. And we will not engage in dialogue. So Alex, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. My name is Alex Kent. I live at 83 North prospect street downtown residence for almost 20 years. And I would like to voice my strong support for retaining. Put note M in the zoning bylaws. In the interest of preserving. Our. Downtown neighborhoods and protecting them from. Being overrun by. The city council. The city council. The landlord owned absentee landlord owned properties that you're primarily for students. Get a little reading on some of the materials that have been provided by the council. And I appreciate that very much. They also appreciate the efforts by. Our councilor Dorothy. Dorothy Pam. On behalf of. Maintaining a healthy and balanced approach to development. Thank you very much. Alex, thank you for your comments. I think we have a couple of people who would like to make public comment. Let me give it just a minute since we're just starting. Chris riddle, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Chris riddle. Strong street. I just need, I wish to hope to speak to the non-binding resolution. I don't know if I need to say that during the public comment period or not. Okay. We're not going to, it's on the consent agenda. So we don't have a separate. Agenda item. In with all the rest of them. So please go ahead, Chris. Okay. We support the. We, I'm talking about myself and police. We're here representing. A group called building electrification acceleration. And we have the Rocky Mountain Institute. Which is. Is working on basically a spy. Aspires to cause the. The Commonwealth to be largely electrified. Over the course of. Between now and 2050. And this resolution is asking. A number of things of the state. It is. I don't know. I think we can probably, I have a, I could talk about if asked when, when it comes up, what, what, what is the purpose of it? The basic purpose is to. Encourage the state to pass legislation or. Or administration actions that would allow. Towns and cities to. Set standards for building construction. That would, for instance, do what Brooklyn did, which was to prohibit. Natural gas can do the natural gas collection connections and new buildings. We would like not, we don't have. The purpose of it is to allow towns and cities to set standards, which may be more rigorous. Or different from what's in the building code. And that was. And it turned out that in Brooklyn that the. That the resolution which did pass there, which was to prohibit natural new natural gas connections was. Was disallowed by more Achilles office. Attorney General's office. On the basis of the. Preemption of that particular issue by the building code and by the state and the gas code. We would like to have that. That's that issue. Relaxed. For instance, could require more rigorous energy performance. Then is in the building code and particularly to allow. To require buildings to be electrified rather than have fossil fuel systems put into them. So there are several items on the, on the resolution, which was reviewed by the geology days ago. And I'm happy to talk about the details if asked. Thank you, Chris. We appreciate your comment. It was another person who had their hand up. And they seemed to have taken it down. Are there any other people who would like to make public comment? Yes, Gina. I'm high. Yes. I live at 253 Lincoln. We bought this house about two years ago. And I'd like to speak about footnote M. I am in strong opposition of getting rid of it. And I do want to also just as. The former speaker, I want to thank Dorothy Pam for bringing this to our attention and also friends and neighbors in the area. I can tell you that when my son became a graduate student here, we came up to visit and just fell in love with your town. We fell in love with the neighborhoods, with the people. With the New England mindset. We're from Louisiana. I can also tell you that. We would be loathe to completely relocate here. If footnote were to be rescinded. And so I. Probably there are other people who would be like me also and who would not move here, not by into your historic district. If it were to change its character. Thank you. And we do like your town very much, which we're considering our town. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Welcome to Amherst. Are there any other public comments at this time?  Please enter the room. State your name and where you live. You need to unmute. Here we go. So I wanted to repeat that my husband. Wanted to say something. We both live at 14 Elm Street. So it's mainly sourcing. After hold it. Okay. Hello, I'm, I'm hanging. I'm using time's computer. So I have to find out how to do that. Yeah. These projects. When you know, I listened last time when we had the meeting. The projects are really large. So even for individual lots. It will require some financial group to come in and perform that, you know, buildings and all of that. So I wonder what's in, in it for those people for, you know, what's in it financially when they take over a lot and put lots of apartments in there. They, they won't have the profit. And as a result, the rents, the rent in, in these units will be fairly large.  I don't know whether we have a accounting number. See how much it is, but the, the, the rent will be large and we know that in this case, students will come in and maybe share a three bedroom apartment and pay a substantial fee. And because of that, they can afford an extensive apartment in, in, in these new developments, but it does some, there are some consequences. If there are three students coming, they will have three cars. So we would need space for three cars. So that's probably not enough. Maybe there's one car on the building lot and two cars on the road, not just take a single lot and have five condominiums on that. That gives already, you know, five cars inside and eight or 10 cars out on the street. So pretty soon there will be a huge parking competition in our neighborhood and everything will be changed. Currently the houses have garages. So the cars are disappearing in outside people can park, but with these proposed plans, there will be a complete change in the, in the neighborhood because of these needs. So some of it up students will come in because of financial constraints of these developments and, and lots of cars will be flooded, flooding in our neighborhood. So thank you. Thank you for your comment. And Burton, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. And you need to unmute. There you go. I'm muted. Okay. This is Ann Burton. I'm a 10 day in a street. I think really a decision has to be made as to what you want the character of town to include. If you want the character of town to include individual domiciles. You have to make it possible for those individual domiciles to stay. If they are crowded with a lot next door, having built condos or on either side of them, the home is no longer saleable as a private home. Or there's really, there may be a market to turn it into more student housing. But this is a domino effect. And one really has to look at the future. If you remove footnote them now, you're basically charting the future of what all of the blocks that have private homes are. And I have to tell you, if that begins, I will sell before it's too late and get out. I think you really have to consider the domino effect of do anything that you decide to do. Thank you. Thank you for your comment, Ann. Are there any other comments at this time? Right. Thank you. Then we're going to go on. We're going to go to the consent agenda. Would you please put the consent agenda up on the screen. The following items were selected because they were considered to be a separate item. And it was reasonable to expect they would pass with no controversy to remove an item. Please let me know as we get to that item or as we finish the list before we vote. To remove an item does not require a second. The motion is as follow as and I'll be looking for a second. To approve those items as a single unit. To suspend town council rules or procedure for agenda item eight C one. Public way request. Farmers market. That would allow us to vote on this tonight. If it's not referred. Six A adoption of the 2021 to bet day proclamation. Six B adopt adoption of resolution calling for. Swift just building decarbonization in the Commonwealth. Adopt a D adoption of public way policy revisions. And 11 a approval of minutes, February 22nd, 2021. Regular town council meeting minutes. I see a hand. So I'm going to ask Kathy. Yeah, I have a question. Lynn, I have two very minor changes to request in the minutes that are more like edits. Should I therefore ask that it be removed so I can. Say what those two changes are. You do have to do it that way. Yes. Okay. Okay. I have a motion. Minus the minutes. Okay. Hanneke and Steinberg both seconded any further discussion. Then we will begin. Shalini. Yes. Grower. Yes. Thanks, Alyssa. Pat de Angelis. Hi. I see. Yes. I am in favor of that. Thank you. When Greece president, I am. Joe. Hi. Dorothy Pam. Hi. Evan Ross. Hi. George Ryan. Sorry. Mechanical error. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Yes. There are Schwartz. Hi. Excellent. We are now going to go on to, there are no presentations tonight and we are not doing the North Common because the materials were not ready. And if they had been you would have received them far enough in advance and they weren't so you didn't. Wayfinding signs Darcy let's start with a town TSI report. And by the way came to the council in the past, there was referred to TSO. And now I'm asking Darcy to give us the report from TSO and then we will move to a motion and vote. So, on February 25th voted unanimously to recommend town council approved the town managers request to place the way finding signs in the public way. And there were some issues that the counselors had brought up at the previous town council meeting. Which we did look at and try to get an answer about those things. So, Paul described it in his report that he that was in the packet for a little while, his, his is a little bit more extensive than my, my report but I need to go into all the reasons right now. If you read the report, you will have seen those reasons unless you think that's a good idea right now. I'm going to ask if there's any questions. I'm seeing no questions then we will move to the motion and the vote and the motion is to approve the way finding sign system and to allow for their placement in the public way. We'll hear a second. Second second. George Ryan made the second discussion. I see none will start with Alyssa Brewer. Hi. The Angeles. Hi. Rosie DuMont. I think I'm going to abstain and I had my hand up to mention why but too late now I guess. I'm sorry I didn't see your hand Darcy. Yeah, I. I only look at the, at the list sorry. Griezmer is an I, Hanneke. Hi. Dorothy Pam. Hi. George Ryan. Yes. That Kathy Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Hi. Steinberg. Hi. Sarah Schwartz. Hi. I'm going to move on to the public way request from the farmer's market. And I'm going to ask Paul as to who is presenting. But I also want to. Yes. The vote is 12 in favor, no abstain, no, no opposition. One abstention and everyone is present. So it's 12, 0, 1, 0. Okay. We are going to move on to the public way request from the farmer's market. Thank you. Thank you. Paul. Thank you. So this is. Last year in the farmers market representatives can. Report on this. The farmers market had a very successful season by locating on the town common itself. This year they would like to do the same thing as in prior years. We do not see the pandemic is lifting. Enough to have the town common itself. That's back to normal in terms of the number of events going on. So pretty much the same proposal as last year, some modifications in terms of. Parking that are put into place, but otherwise. You know, the, the same thing. As last year that you approved. The one thing we would ask is if things do change, if suddenly everybody is vaccinated and we can make adjustments. That. We can make that you give some leeway to the town manager to make adjustments based on advice from the health director and the building commissioner. And I believe, I believe this is the 49th year of the farmer's market. We can believe that. Dorothy, please go ahead. National question.  Is that correct? That's the plan. Yes. I'm just hoping that there's some way observing perhaps a social distancing that would allow you to go back. In some reasonable way, because I found that really just against my. How I shop at a farmer's market.  Yet having to go your way slowly all the way around, it gets kind of hard. So if there's some way to do that without it. Risking health. That would be nice.  Yes, thank you. My questions regarding parking. The, there are 32 vendors, but there are being reserved 36 parking. Spots. So I was wondering whether we can read, well, it's 37. If you count the drop off curbside pickup one, but I'm not really counting that one. Is there a way to reduce those number of parking spots to one per vendor? Or is there is, is it because they don't all fit in the spot? So they need that extra space on each side. And why, why did we choose. To have more spots reserved than number of parking spots. And why did we choose to have more spots reserved than numbers of vendors? I guess is my, the basic question I have. The vehicles and spaces don't necessarily correlate. So sometimes, especially when there's a truck and trailer, they take up space and a half or two. So we need that sort of. Constra, Constra, teenage elasticity. We don't use all the spaces all the time, but sometimes we use them plus. So it depends on which vendors are there on a given Saturday. And which vehicles they choose to bring and how much produce they have. Some of the vendors use smaller vehicles in the fall when the, when the crops are lower. But generally it's, it's not a one for one in the spacing sadly. Thank you for that. Can I have a follow up question? Sure. So I know we, we cover the meters for reservation. I truly don't know. I assume when, once the vendors are set up, they're not going to be able to do that. So I think that the spaces are generally set for how many you need for a vendor. So if, if I guess my question is, if they're not needed in a particular week, is there a way to sort of. Uncover them for use for the public during that part. If we find that. You know, in a fall, as you said, Mr. Mikowski, that, that there might be smaller. And so there might be less used to instead of leaving them vacant. So I think it's a good idea to, I think it's a good idea to, I think it's a good idea to have some parking them and utilize our parking as best as possible. Actually, we did that last year and we'll do it again. This year as the vendors start to wean out at the end of the season and wind down, I push everything north on the common. So we're moving the tents up and kind of consolidating them. And I'm doing the same with parking because they're parking adjacent to their tents. So after say mid-September. The spacing usage is a little less needy. And so I would imagine there'll be a few spaces opening up as we go down towards the end of the season. And that's easy enough to do. If I don't have people showing up as it were. Thank you. Are there other questions, maybe Joe? Nope. Okay. Are there any other questions from the council? Given that this was so similar to last year. We have a motion to go ahead and approve. We've already made sure that we can. We have a motion to go ahead and approve it. I don't want to do that tonight. Mindy Joe, you have. You have one other one that wasn't written down. It relates to actually next year, maybe not this year. Which is, it sounds like you've got the farmers market was very happy on the common. And so is this something that the farmers market is going to be looking to continue even after COVID is over? And if so, how do we plan for that? I think that's more of a question to kind of. It's, it's at this point, it's kind of hard to say, Mandy, I think that's a bit of fortune telling. I don't know yet.  Was very nice. I think it was a great presentation for the town. And it's nice to kind of bring the market back to its agrarian sort of roots as it were. It's a lot more work for us though, frankly, too, because we're cordoning off this whole thing. And patrolling it and making sure that people are not breaching the cordon and hopefully, you know, to, to address Dorothy's question about unidirectional traffic, we have to make sure that people are spacing themselves out and all going in the same direction. I do want to say just to address Dorothy's question. Last year as the season sort of worn on and wore on, and we kind of got into our groove, we started to allow people to work their way back and opened up our central line as it were, if you've been out there and seen the logistics. Luckily the common is beautiful and it's very spacious. So even if we have numbers out there, we can easily keep people distance. The distancing is not an issue on the common because it's the size of a soccer pitch. We have plenty of space out there. I believe John Spanetti has a Tanda. Yes. The common I want to make is that the common is great. But last year was a very unusual with year weather wise. It was a dryish year on record. I think an inch and a half of rain was recorded during the entire summer months. And if we have one muddy occasion, that would be a disaster in itself, but the chances of having more than one is fairly high. I don't want to be able to predict how many, but if that were to happen, then our contingencies would have to be, we have to revert back to Spring Street lot. So I think maybe we should be looking to going back to Spring Street lot. And I also hate to, to change the number on the number of years we've been there when, when the town manager said it was 49 years. This is actually over landmark 50th year. Yes. I'm very happy about it. I'm pleased. I'm very happy that we've been there for that entire duration. Successful. And what I'm looking forward to is saying that over that entire 50 years, we have never canceled a single farmers market. We have never missed a single day. And I can see rain days, muddy common, et cetera, making it impassable and unusual. And therefore start the beginning of the cancellation of markets. The parking lot drains very nicely. Spring Street is pitched quite a bit. And as a result, we can be out there and pretty much the gallery. And we've never had to cancel. So that's where inputs I'd like to add to the possibility of using the common. For continuous years that is. Thank you. Are there any other questions from the council? Okay, then the motion is as follows to approve the farmers farmers market. That long-term event use reservation of the town, town common south portion under town council policy regarding the control and regulation of public ways. And further to approve the reservation at charge for vendor parking of the first 15 meters spaces, parking spaces on the east side of South pleasant street, originating at spring street, moving south for college street and further to approve the reservation at no charge for vendor parking. Of the first 21 meters spaces on the west side of Fortwood Avenue, originating at spring street, moving south towards college street and further to approve the reservation at no charge for customer curbside pickup. Only of the first one parking space on the west southwest portion. Of the. Not to be clearly marked by the embers farmers market to accommodate the embers farmers market. Every Saturday beginning April 17 2021 and continuing through November 20 2021. From 6 a.m. to 2 30 p.m. and further to require that the embers farmers market John Spenetti market manager sign a written agreement applying with all operational guidelines set forth in town manager memo. May March 4 2020 embers farmers market. Application and further to authorize the town manager continue to modify these operational guidelines through November 20 2021. In response to the continuing COVID-19 state of emergency and other local concerns. And additionally to allow the town manager to schedule concurrent use of the south portion of the town common for one day events. Is there a second. Okay. Is there any further discussion. Then seeing none. I'm going to start with. Patty Angeles. Hi. Darcy Demont. Yes. When Greece Merseye. Mandy Joe. Hi. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Hi. George. Yes. Kathy. Yes. Steve. Hi. Andy. Hi. Sarah. No. Melanie. Yes. Alyssa. Hi. Okay. The vote is 12 in favor of one opposed. No abstentions and no absence. 12 1 0 0. Hi. We are now going to go on to amendments. John and David, thank you for joining us and. I'll see you on April 17. Thank you. Perfect. Take care. Thank you. Thank you. Amendments to town council rules of procedure rule 6.3. And 6.3. And we have a screen that shows. Motion as we are actually making it. And so. Put that up. And I'll call on George Ryan. Yeah, I think if we can, yeah, with the slide in front of us. We can see what GOL is recommending here. That might need to be a little bit bigger. Is that okay? Everybody can see it. Okay. What we decided to do we hoped in the spirit of making this as clear as possible is break out D into two separate items. Making it clear. I think it's important to make sure that the councilors when they cannot that they shall not interrupt. Except for two reasons, namely to raise a point of order. Or to raise a question of privilege. So for instance, if you can't hear someone or if, if there's a slide on the screen and you can't see it. You're permitted to interrupt and say, you know, excuse me, Madam President, I can't or speaker. I can't see what you have. I can't hear you. I can't hear you. I'm not sure what you are saying. I'm not sure. I can't hear you. I'm not sure what you are saying. And then E. Makes it clear that you shall not speak without recognition. Except as is stated in subsection D above or. To doubt the presence of a quorum to call the previous question. Or to assert the charter right to postpone. So. was a bit clear and hopefully he'll agree. Are you placing that as a motion? I'm willing to make it as a motion that we adopt 6.3D and E. I think that it's actually in the motion sheet, so I shouldn't be making it up on the fly. If someone has the motion sheet in front of them, that would be helpful. To amend Town Council rules or procedures 6.3.D by striking everything after the phrase point of order and replacing it with the phrase or to raise a question of privilege and to insert a new section 6.3.E that reads, counselor shall not speak without recognition except as in subsection D above to doubt the presence of a quorum or to call the previous question or to assert the charter right to postpone and to re-letter subsequent sections of rule 6.3. I think Lynn you missed the or the first or so after except as a subsection D above or to doubt. I think that's what I have. Yes, it is. Thank you. Lynn, thank you for reading it and I second that motion. The one that's on the screen is the right one, correct? Yes, it is. All right, so the motion's been made in second. Alyssa. Thank you, and I appreciate that after I looked at this motion to a meeting ago, not this past week, but the previous meeting that Lynn shared with George, my concern about the idea of interrupting and not speaking with recognition and what those words mean in plain English and you managed to accommodate it in fewer words than I had suggested. So, yeah, so I'm fine with that. What I'm not fine with is there's no discussion in any of the GOL reports about why we are suddenly equating what I often refer to as the nuclear option, which is the completely undemocratic charter right to postpone. And I say nuclear option and completely undemocratic because calling the question is something that requires you call the question and then two thirds of your colleagues have to agree that it's time to stop talking. If you are allowed to interrupt the proceedings, even if not interrupting a person, to do the nuclear option, you're preventing your colleagues from, who may in fact all be ready to act. And you're saying, no, what I think is more important than what 12 other people think. There's not that option of the two thirds, there's not that automatic two thirds vote. So I don't know why this suddenly got worked in there because I don't equate those two things at all. If there's calling the question requires a two thirds vote of the body, the nuclear option to postpone does not, as written in the charter, it does not say, it does say preempts other motions, it does not say you can interrupt people in order to make it, that you can interrupt the proceedings in order to make it. It says nothing about not doing it without recognition. Or maybe I had too many double negatives in there. So I'm very uncomfortable with including what I think is a truly horrible provision in the charter in first place is now being given an even more privileged position than it currently has. Lynn, if I may, I think that the sense was, I mean, there's nothing said because it was just understood perhaps mistakenly that this is just the right that you have by the charter. And it has been exercised on a number of occasions. And all we wanted to make clear was that you can't interrupt a speaker to do that. So if Alyssa were speaking, I can't interrupt and say, you know, I exercise my right to postpone. But we felt that since it is the right you have, you should have the right to exercise it while no one is speaking. So for instance, if you have this right, and you're not recognized, then it really isn't the right. So we felt that you shouldn't be allowed to do this by interrupting, but you should be permitted to do it when no one is speaking. And so that's why it was, and we did make a special point of it, but frankly, because it seems to be a basic right that you have as a counselor. You may not be happy with it. I can't, you know, but it's a right you have. And it has been exercised in the past. And all we want to do is make clear that when you do exercise it, you need to, you can do it without recognition. Andy, you have your hand up. Yes. Personally responsible was just said, I don't think that we've solved that problem. It was just being discussed, because if the first person who speaks makes a motion to call a previous question, then it is on the floor without debate. And there's no opportunity for the person who wants to raise, as Alyssa calls it, the nuclear option to do so. But I also want to harken back to the incident that happened when a motion was made to call a previous question before there was any discussion. And that was having to do with a letter that was being proposed to send to the task force that's working on police issues in regard to certain issues that we don't need to discuss. But I was very upset about what happened. And I think that there was at least one other counselor who at least that night shared the same thing, because I wanted to raise a question, actually just a suggestion, to improve the wording for clarification for political purposes. I was not really opposed to the letter being sent. But allowing somebody to interrupt without allowing any discussion and to make that motion that cuts off debate, I think frustrates the purpose of this council in the Charter's intent. And I don't think we're adopting a rule that solves that problem. Kathy. Yeah, could you put it back up on the screen again, because I both had the concern Andy had. And I think the wording is odd, because I'm not sure what it's trying to do. So the first D, I understand. But counselors shall not speak without recognition. Does that mean I can speak without recognition if I want to doubt? So I can just blurt out that I'm calling Delta President. I just call it out. Did you mean to say it? Yes, yes. If you you may call out, you may interrupt a speaker and say, I doubt, Madam President, the presence of a quorum, or you may write. Okay, so this is speaking without recognition is interrupting. So you've just stated in a different way. Correct? No, I'm sorry. That's not that's not what I meant. Okay. What he allows you to do is to speak when no one else is speaking without being recognized formally. So how do I do that? Do I just shout out? No, well, yeah, basically, we've we've done this in the past. I mean, we've had examples where in in the pauses between one speaker and another, someone has spoken. And it is allowed the rule would allow them to to speak at that point. They can't interrupt you, Kathy, while you're speaking. But once you're done, and before the next speaker is recognized, this rule would allow you to do do that in these particular cases. Okay, because I'm sorry. Yeah, no, so I guess I understand that. But I did have Alyssa's concern on why asserting a charter right to postpone and Andy's concern of before we'd a word got out of anybody's mouth to even discuss something, whether it was debate or not to call a question. But I don't think these two address Andy's concern at all. If I may, Lynn, and again, just to respond to that, I think we're conflating, we're confusing a couple of different things here. The question of whether we should have a rule that requires there to be debate, right, is a separate question. It sounds like what Andy would like, and maybe Kathy would like, and maybe this body would like, is a rule that says, you can't call the question until there has been some discussion. And certainly we could consider such a rule, I think that's, I would not agree with that, but that's a possibility. That's a different question. In other words, that would be a special rule. We felt, I'm not sure everyone, I could speak for the entire committee here, but we felt that you should be, if someone calls the question before there's been debate, it goes immediately to the whole body. And it's up to the whole body to decide if they wish to have debate on this topic. And it's a super majority, which is in fact what happened when it was exercised a while back. The body voted and a super majority agreed to move directly to a vote. And it seems they should have that right. You may not like it. I may not like it, but a super majority has decided that we should go to a vote directly. We don't want to or need to. I mean, the reason, you don't have to state any reason, but you simply wish to move directly to a vote. You could have a rule, which says that you can't do that. That's not permitted. You have to have some debate. I think that's a mistake. I think it should be allowed. And it's up to the body as a whole to decide. Do they want to have debate or not? We had a case, in fact, where the body, as a super majority, decided they wish to go right to a vote. And I don't see why they can't decide that. But that's a separate issue. Here we're just trying to, I mean, we could discuss this maybe even now and maybe decide, send it back to GOL and demand that they come up with a rule for that. I think that would be a mistake. But here it's simply trying to make clear when you can interrupt someone and when you can speak without recognition. That's all we're trying to do. I'm going to go on to Darcy. Yeah. I was part of the discussion on GOL and I basically made the same comment that Andy and Kathy brought up that the, you know, I don't have any problem with the language that's being proposed. But I think that it doesn't address the problem. And I suggested that we have a new rule that basically states that calling the question can't be used unless counselors have had the opportunity to discuss the issue at the same meeting. The group did not choose to entertain that. But I personally think that we should be doing that because I just don't, I think it's not a good thing for, even if it's a super majority to have a situation where, you know, some part of the council can prevent others from discussing a topic. Dave's, Robert, you have your hand up. Yeah. So yeah. So I agree with all the people that are really skeptical about part E of this. And actually I'm going to weigh in. I'm skeptical about part D of this. Robert's Rules of Order is a really good document. And we have it on our very first line of our rules is that we shall use Robert's Rules of Order unless we don't is what it says. So basically part D is very similar to a Robert's Rules of Order says, so why don't we just not say anything and just have someone that trust our confidence and our knowledge of Robert's to guide us. So I'm not sure why we're adding chains to the snow tires when we're doing just fine. The second part really bothers me because we've just agreed that, I mean, we agree that recognition is important. We wait our turn. I've been waiting my turn even though, you know, some people have actually spoken without recognition, which is a little bit ironic. So I was going to call point of order, but I thought that would be too meta. So so I think that you have to wait your turn. If you really, really want to have those right to postpone, you have to wait for the chair to call the president to call on you. And that's just the way it is. So I actually go back to Councillor Dumont's point for, I can't remember what it was, where she said she had her hand up and she wasn't called on. That would have been a perfect place to yell out point of order or point of personal privilege.  But I do think that there's order, orderliness to this. It's all spelled out in Robert's Rules of Order. I absolutely don't think that's something she'd be blurting out. I have the right to postpone or even I call the question until it's their turn. So I want to make one other point. So I voted yes. There was a, we all keep talking about this. The same person made the second and then called the question. I voted yes. So I know that bothered a lot of people and there was something that made me uncomfortable about having done that also. So first of all, we do have a consent agenda. So if we felt that it, you know, if we really felt that it didn't need to be debated, we could have just kept it on the consent agenda. But the other thing is that I had to look up what the purpose of a second is. So here's what I found out via Google. The purpose of second is basically confirming that at least two people on the body agree that a motion is worthy of debate. So the first person has proposed it. The second person has agreed that it's worthy of debate. So to me, that seems now inappropriate that in the same breath, someone can then say, but I call the question. So I think that, you know, I think the next person could certainly do that. But I don't think it should be done by the same person. So if we do have a role, I could not find this in Robert's Rules of Order, that there should never be two actions by the same person, like you should never be able to second and then use a nuclear option, you know, in the same breath or anything like that. So you should only be able to do one action per recognition, if that makes any sense. But I'm not ready to vote yes on this. So for those reasons, one is I think that it's duplicates Robert's Rules where it's unnecessary to. And then the other one is I don't believe that any of these are worthy of interrupting your colleagues. Thank you. I want to talk about the charter right to postpone. In nearly every instance we've used it on this council in the last two and a half years, it has been done without recognition. And that's because if you don't do it at a certain time, you can't actually invoke it under the charter. And so the charter, the charter says the use of this right to postpone must be raised prior to or at the call by the presiding officer for a vote. So if the presiding officer doesn't actually see a hand, or we're on Zoom might not see a hand, or you might not hit the raise hand button soon enough, or in a room might be looking the other way and starts calling the roll and someone actually votes before it gets to you. You've lost your charter right to do something. Not a rule right, but a right under our constitutional, the constitution of this town. And that seems wrong. And so in order to be able to fully fulfill what the charter says that it must be raised prior to or at the call by the presiding officer for a vote, I think you have to allow someone to raise it without actually being recognized. And so that's what this rule change is trying to do with that. The other ones, in some sense, I agree with Steve that section D is completely copying Robert's rules. It doesn't add to it. It doesn't subtract from it. But we've made a point in many of our rules to repeat Robert's rules as a way of educating counselors and the public on what can be done without having to memorize a 500 page document or book. The other one, doubt presence of a quorum was already in D. And you could actually interrupt. And so we've actually toned down that one from interrupting to just not being recognized. And to call a previous question, I think Brookline does it without recognition. It's a town meeting that does it without recognition. If there's a long line, we already have 13 people. If I finish and wanted to do it, I have to wait six more people it looks like before I can do it, which is potentially in our current rules, 18 minutes. But who knows whether we're all ready to be done with a discussion. And so it's almost a luck of the draw right now, where you got your hand up or when we're back in a meeting room, when the presiding officer sees you put your hand up and if she remembers the order or not, right. And that also doesn't seem fair. So I think it's I think it's a good thing to have being able to call the previous question between speakers. As many people have said, you need nine votes. If all 13 people actually vote without abstentions, you need nine, you need a super majority that can be very difficult to get, especially if it's a contentious issue. So, you know, if you're concerned that we're going to stifle debate by this, it then don't vote to actually vote no, if it's called. And then debate goes on. This is just trying to figure out how long you have to wait to actually call the question. I'm going to go on to Dorothy Pam who has not spoken yet, and then we'll come back and I'm still seeing people who have kept their hands up. And unless you take it down, I'm assuming it's because you have something else you'd like to say. So Dorothy, you are the only person with your hand up who has not spoken yet. Thank you. I have a number of points. I may not say them in the right order, but to me this solution is worse than the problem. I haven't come home from meetings and said, oh my God, they haven't followed Robert's rules. We were just an unruly bunch of people. I have been president of a number of organizations and I never got too deep into Robert's rules. I really believe much more in the Quaker sense of the meeting. I mean, obviously, we have to have some of the basic rules. But when people get into these refined rules, and I have been in clubs when they did this, then it's got your games going on. And I find I don't want to be there. I don't want to be in that group. So here we are. We're in the third year of town council. And people who watch these meetings are supposed to think, I could do that. I could run for town council. But if you make it sound like if you're not an expert in this and that, or if your brain isn't thinking of the rules instead of what you're thinking about and what you want to say, it's becoming, it's intimidates people from wanting to be a participant in this form of government. And that connects me to the next point so that I don't have to speak twice, which is the two minute rule. I really don't see too many people speaking over two minutes. I rarely do. However, somebody who's new or thinking of running would think, am I polished enough to be able to get my thoughts in order so I could follow all these rules and then speak and never go over two minutes. We're not a fancy British debating club. We are a town government representing people, residents, where we're supposed to bring their concerns together and try to deal with them as mature adults. So I don't think we need to get into all of these fine points. And I certainly don't want to be involved in gotcha games. So thank you. I'm going to ask that we stick to the motion that's on the floor, which is not the two minute rule. But that will be a separate motion. So I'm now circling back.  You're muted. Thank you. I want to emphasize that I don't see the reason for this change. And so now that it's been explained to me, I'm still not sure of why we're writing this additional detail into it because I don't perceive that we've had a problem. And I do want to underscore the other point that's been made. Steve made it with a can you second the motion and call a question at the same time? I think the issue of calling a question before we've had even three words of a discussion gets to what Dorothy was just talking about. You might just want to be clarifying a sentence and something to have had no discussion before we and the one time this happened, I think it was to save time. Instead, we had a really long discussion about calling a question. And why was it done that way? And people, but I just had a couple of questions I wanted to ask about this or something. So this particular one isn't talking about that, but I am not sure why we're adding all these words. I don't perceive that we've had a problem. Darcy? I just didn't put my hand down. Thank you, Andy. We've talked about this for a little bit. I think that we get circling back to the point that it's been made several times. And that is that if you call the previous question and it's allowed before there's any discussion and you're not allowed to have a debate on the previous question, there's never an opportunity for somebody to have a knowledgeable vote and calling the previous question because nobody knows whether there's a minor point or a major point that is there. They're just left with the having to make a snap decision as to whether this is so noncontroversial that it ought to go without any discussion whatsoever. And I want to circle back on one other thing. In site one sentence in the GLL report that we received for this meeting, that sentence with some concern was expressed over whether such right might be abused, but it was felt that we can revisit this at a later date if we find that to be the case. And I would suggest that today's discussion sort of circles around the fact that yes, we do know that there has been a case. And so let's face up to it. And for those reasons, I'm going to vote no when we get to vote tonight simply because I think that we've come up with a solution that doesn't solve a problem. Alyssa. Yeah, unfortunately, although I had worded it slightly differently when I had come up with an alternate motion on just the two parts about interrupting versus not being recognized when obviously interrupting is in fact by its very nature, meaning you weren't recognized, right? And so like, how was anybody supposed to follow that that stream of consciousness? The more we talk about this, the more you know, that is the thing debates good for right is that I'm starting to see that maybe it's not as helpful as I thought it was when I first read it. And that it you know, the idea of what Mandy Joe said that I think makes a lot of sense that we've done in the rules partly because I was on the original rules group is, you know, when it's something that's a little bit tricky that it can be helpful to lay out the Robert's rules again, so that you don't have to go to the source document. And again, to make it more accessible to people. But this is maybe bullying us up in a way to try and solve as we indicated through discussion here, a different problem. I do also cannot stop saying enough that I cannot understand how counselors who say they want debate to take place before the question is called, and potentially want to create a rule around that. When the questions called in a two thirds vote has to be taken. Our counselors who at the exact same time are comfortable with invoking the charter air quotes constitutional right of preventing any debate whatsoever without any vote by your colleagues. So it's called the nuclear option for a reason. It's just because it's in the charter doesn't mean I should use it every week because I don't want my colleagues to be able to talk about anything for as long as I can possibly postpone it. I appreciate what was said about how do you know if you really want to call the question if you haven't had any debate, but that maybe is more the question we're trying to answer that and the how many actions can you do once you're called on which was something that our town moderator was very strict about. It seems like we've developed those two questions separately as opposed to answering the questions that this particular motion seems to try and do. So I guess I'll end up voting against this one.  Yeah, I want to just come back one last time. I agree with Kathy that this has not been a problem. This has been actually until a few minutes ago, the president speaker, this has been a body that does not speak out of turn and does not interrupt each other. So I don't think this was an attempt to address a problem that we all felt was pressing. It was simply an attempt to clarify, as Manny points out, to use the rules just to educate ourselves on some very specific instances where something is permitted and where it isn't. So the purpose here wasn't to address a problem that we felt was pressing, but rather just to educate ourselves in this specific area. And I think that what's proposed here does do that. So I would still urge people to vote yes. I don't think that this does anything that is harmful. But I agree with Kathy that that's not been an issue. So I guess you could say well then just don't do anything about it. But the the issue of the charter right to postpone, that's a discussion. You could send it back to GOL, I suppose. But I think the issue that Andy's raising and a number of you seem to be sympathetic to is proposing a new rule. And so you could send that to GOL and we could mold it over and come back with something. I would be opposed to it, but that I'm just one person. So it sounds like I'm hearing that some of you would like that for GOL to look at proposing a rule to that effect regarding a postponing or calling the question. But I still think that what we have here is perfectly fine and just clarifies some things. It doesn't create confusion. And so I hope you will still vote yes for it, but perhaps have GOL look at this issue of calling the question. Are there any other questions at this time? Chalene. Yeah, I have I am for more clarifications always and duplicating what's in the Robert's rules because I don't remember. I haven't memorized them yet. So this is always helpful. But I would like to bring in or send it back to GOL, the additional question that's being raised because even about the calling the previous question because I do believe even though there's a super majority involved, but I think we as a council want to hear people who have a different point of view, even if they're in a super minority. So I yeah, that yeah, is it and again, someone explain why we have I mean, I understand that the context when it was done was for time. But then it's suggesting that that one person's decision or the super majority's decision that time is of essence, is greater than a counselor's questions or concerns about it. So yeah, it's just without yeah, I would want that to go back to GOL for as a something to be brought back to us. Yeah, so one thing we haven't talked about is the president or we have talked about that the president's role in keeping an orderly meeting. So the president has the right to declare things to be out of order. So the one circumstance that we keep talking about, you know, I think we were all caught a little bit off guard there, but that could have been declared to be out of order by the president for the purpose of an orderly meeting. And then there's another process that if we don't agree with that, and that's called the appeal. So the president can say that's out of order bang. And then there I don't know how exactly the appeal works never used it. But then there was a process for the body to say they don't like the way that the president or the chair is running the meeting. So I having never actually used the appeal I've seen it on TV, I think. But that's something else that I think that we should really trust the chair to keep the flow of the meeting going and to allow I'm sorry the president to keep the flow of the meeting going and for the president to rule things to be out of order when she thinks that there hasn't been any debate yet or when there should be. But there is a motion on the floor and the motion is the one you see before you that's under the category of tonight's proposed change.  I just want to comment to what Steve said. It makes sense, but what again I'm talking about not wanting to be a counselor who is thinking about what I want to say in my points and has to have part of my brain thinking about the tricks and ins and outs of Robert rules in the same way the president running the meeting has so many things going on. And yes, I understand could have done what you said, but that was another split second decision. So what I'm really saying is I think I'd like a kinder, gentler meeting where we don't have to be constantly alert on two tracks. It's enough keeping our own thoughts straight then to have to also do that. So I agree that that is something the president can do, but unless there's have somebody standing at their shoulder running one thing and running the screen at the same time, it's it's too much. It's just too much. We're putting too much of a burden on all of ourselves. So that's all I want to say. Any other discussion at this time? Then I think we'll move to vote on the question. And question before us is the following to amend our rules of procedure town council rules are procedure six point three point D by striking everything after the phrase point of order and replacing it with a phrase or to raise a question and to insert a new section that says counselors shall not speak without recognition except as in subsection D above to doubt the presence of a quorum. No, I'm sorry. Subsection D above or to doubt the presence of a quorum or to call the previous question or to assert the charter right to postpone and we begin with do not know um recenter is going to abstain anarchy. Yes. Dorothy Pam. No. Ross. Aye. Yes. Bang. No. I think you said driver. No. Dineburg. No. Warts. Aye. Melanie Balmoum. Yes. Alyssa Brewer. No. Pat DeAngelis. Aye. Six in favor. Six. Six. Six opposed. One abstention. Who to know. George. If the council says divided, um, I don't, you know, then we should probably just let it go and focus more on what seems to be an issue for a number of my colleagues related to calling the question, which I, as I said, I'd be happy to have GOL look at and come back with some kind of proposal, but it seems like we're divided. Um, and so I think my suggestion to you, if I may, is that we just let it go. We don't, um, you know, this has not been a problem. This effort was simply an effort to clarify something. I think it does do that, but a number of you don't agree or for whatever reason. So I think we can just let this go Lynn and, uh, let GOL focus on, on the issue of calling the question and see if we can make some headway there. I would like the, um, clerk of the council to tell me then what is the rule that we are working on? The next thing on the agenda is 6.3 D. E. E. I'm sorry. We do not move on 6.3 D. What is the rule that we are operating under? The current 6.3 D as in the rules of procedure. So the motion failed. And then the next thing on the agenda is you know, then okay, I'll clarify that later. Okay. Um, then I'm going to go to the next question, the previous question. I'm sorry. And it's to amend town council rules of procedure 6.3 point F by changing the numeral three to the new law to 6.3 point E. E. I'm sorry. E. It's wrong in the motion sheet. E. There's two in the motion sheet. One is if we change if that previous motion passed and one if it failed. Thank you. So councillors may speak. Thanks for that explanation Athena. Councillors may speak upon a matter for no more than two minutes at a time except when introducing a or presenting a measure. A councillor may yield. All are part of this time through another councillor. Darcy. Yeah, I I oppose limiting the speaking time to two minutes. I think that I don't know why at this meeting we're not using the timer. I think that enforcing the three minute rule would actually do what we would like to have done, which is shorten our meetings because some people, am I muted? No, that's fine. Thank you. How that Athena is not using the screen to show something, she can use the timer. It's when okay. All right. I'm sorry. So as Alyssa mentioned in our last discussion of this, the open meeting law prevents us from discussing issues between meetings. So we we really need the time to get our points across and three minutes is not that long. That's standard. I think that it would really be crimping our ability to have a full and fair process to limit us to less than three minutes. And it's also I feel extremely important to make sure that all all voices are heard to the extent that they need to be. Kathy. I'm where Darcy is on this and let me just say that three minutes isn't very long. And when we're talking about something fairly minor, most people are speaking very quick quickly and short. If it's a substantive where we're dealing with a complex issue and you've read all the material before you came in and you have a well orchestrated thing you want to say, you can't tell everyone what you're going to say in advance because of the public meeting law. So the only way you can do it is in three minutes. And then what Lynn let me do on one, if I have a two page thing that goes further than my three minutes, during the time I'm speaking, I say, here's a two page thing that you might want to read later that will tell you more about the way I'm thinking. But that's the whole purpose of debate to me. If you're seeing something that is a major change in the way we're doing business and you have an alternative idea. So it's not just you're against it, but you want to come up with something different. Three minutes is very short. And even if you can come back. So we're in effect sometimes giving testimony. So I'm just going to end with that because I've been on the clock in other major issues and had to be short with little timers going off. So I could time my statement, but two is too short. And three is probably just about right on a complex issue. And we should all speak short. If it's just to say, I agree or I don't agree. We don't all have to speak in paragraphs. And I rarely speak even in full sentences. So I try to be short. Thank you. Mandy John. I don't believe the motion was made. So I'm going to move to amend town council rule procedure 6.3 by changing the numeral three to the numeral two. A second. Is there a second? George. I am second. Thank you, Mandy. Joe. Did you have a comment? Not right now. Okay. Steve Schreiber. Three minutes. Let's keep it to three minutes. But the part that bugs me is yielding the time because and I know that that's not part identified here to be scratched out. So I looked at Roberts Roberts doesn't generally allow yielding a time and it feels yucky, right? So it feels yucky that we're kind of randomly selected by when we have our hands up and that our, you know, counselors might band together with and you agree that somebody is going to speak for 30 minutes, you know, like 10 counselors. Well, I don't have to be less important that six counselors agree that somebody else is going to speak for 18 minutes. And that would have to be orchestrated so that the president, you know, even chooses those that person in time. So why don't we just say you get to speak for three minutes. There's no such thing as yielding time. And because I could, I could just go ahead and yield my time to the next speaker, whoever that randomly selected person is. Thank you, Evan. Yeah, I am often someone who has firm and hard opinions on things as you all know. And this has not been one of those issues. I've really gone back and forth on it. Because truly, I'm not sure two versus three minutes matters all that much. Where I did sort of land is I started thinking about how I often speak in these meetings. And I was thinking about the fact that I am someone who often comes to some meetings with a big list of questions. And often when I have my moment to speak, I will give all of my questions at once. And I thought about whether that would change if I had less time, perhaps instead of giving all of my questions at once, I'd give my top two questions and then let someone else speak and then raise my hand again and speak later with some of my other questions. And I started to wonder what is the actual better way to run debate to give all of my 10 questions at once or maybe to offer one or two and then let someone else speak. And I sort of came down on the ladder of those two. I think that if you are someone who isn't too quick to get your hand up and you're later down the line and everyone uses their full three minutes to ask all of their questions, and then of course someone else is responding, especially during presentations. And that can take up a lot of time. You might be sitting waiting for quite a bit of time to actually get your chance to speak just because you weren't the first one or second one or third one to get their hand up. Whereas if we limit how much someone can ask questions, they might limit their questions they're going to ask in that moment. I would be completely against this if it said you have two minutes to speak and that is your only time to speak, but this doesn't limit that. You can speak as many times as you want. It just says keep it short when you do. And so I think I'm going to end up supporting this as I watch myself approach two minutes because I think it would allow it will force us to pair down what we're going to say in each two minute period. But if we have more to say, we can always raise our hand again. But I think it actually keeps the conversation moving from person to person faster, which will actually produce potentially a better debate. Or maybe it won't. I'm not really sure. I'm not really sure that this is the thing that our debates really need to change to make better debates, but I'm willing to try it out. And so I am going to vote in support. Did you say my name? Yes. Okay. Yeah, I was going to say that for people for whom English is a second language, it does take a little bit longer to think. And I tend to even though I'm very fluent, I still find myself needing more time to and even though I write down if I have a presentation of points, I do try to write them down so I can be faster. But I think for people with English, yeah, second, we do need two minutes and more than two minutes. And I think speaking to Evans, we could address that by putting another rule, which is that you can't ask more than two questions or make it like three questions. And so we could address that that way, but still give people a chance to be able to articulate. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to build a little bit on what Evan was saying, but hopefully shorter. There's a rhythm to debate. And debate goes back and forth. And there is no limit on the number of times that you can raise a hand. Limiting us to two minutes facilitates a rhythm and facilitates interaction between counselors. And it really gives us the ability to respond. I think I do agree with, I think it was Steve, and if I'm wrong, you can correct me. I don't think we should be yielding time, particularly at two minutes. Because again, that's kind of an interruption of who's had their hand up when it's very hard to wait in line. And I really want to, I think we have poor debates many times because we're hammering a position instead of listening or responding. And so I'd like to see a better rhythm and a better commitment. Thank you. People have different speaking styles. Some people speak slower than others, as Shalini said, second language learners need more time to clarify their thought. Some people come to a meeting without having prepared a paper, a paragraph, they come to listen. And as they're speaking, they're thinking and formulating their thoughts at that very moment. We have to remember that we're setting rules now, not for us, we know each other now. We're setting them for the next, which we said, we hope, is a more diverse representative council. So we have to think about that. And I think we should keep it at three minutes. Most of us do not speak up to three minutes. Thank you. Mindy Jo. I'm going to build on what Evan said. There are 13 of us. If in a very weighty debate or weighty issue, as Kathy referenced in terms of maybe needing the three minutes, you are the 13th person to raise your hand. And in the middle of those 13, there were a lot of questions actually answered or interruptions or a presenter responding to something as we sometimes let. It might take you, it would take you a minimum of 39 minutes, 36 minutes to be able to get to speak at all. And it might be closer to 45 or 50. And by that point, some people might have already called a question.  And then you've lost your voice completely. I think it's better for debate for people to speak shorter and more often. And that is why I support the two minutes. George. Just a reminder that this was motivated solely by desire to try and deal with the fact that our meetings do tend to go on. So that that's the purpose here. And as was mentioned in the report, you can speak as many times as you like. So there's no desire here to limit debate or keep people from speaking, but it's just to try and move things along. The third point would be that, you know, I think we should try this as an experiment and just see how it goes. It's if we find that it's a problem, we can go back. So I would urge us to keep to accept the change to two minutes.  I would not be opposed to amending this to drop the last sentence. I think Steve makes a good point. It seems to have been echoed by a number of others. This idea of yielding time. I'm not quite sure why it's in there. Maybe someone can speak to that. But I would be perfectly comfortable with dropping that last sentence. But I do think we should try the two minutes and just see how it goes. Darcy, have you spoken yet on this issue? You have. Okay, then I am going to go to Sarah. So I guess I would like to say that having been in town government for a while, when I first came in, all committees ran on Roberts rules and so did town meeting. And I think for someone like me who, once you get me started talking, I'll keep talking. But sometimes I hang back a little bit. Having structure, I think really helps. And I think having structure also adds a lot of civility into meetings. I think that a lot of people think that formality in a meeting makes things stiffer. And for me, I think it just reminds you that you actually are in a meeting and that you are part of, say, a team. And it's a reminder to stay civil. And I think it does actually lead to a more constructive, civil conversation. And the two minutes for me, I think is helpful because two minutes is actually a pretty long time. And I think that people can get out what they want. And I think three minutes or more sometimes leads to grandstanding. Darcy and Steve, both of you have spoken already. So I'm going to go to Darcy. Yeah, I just, George said that the motivating force behind this is to shorten our meetings, be more efficient and so on. But we are also at the same time saying that we have the ability to speak twice or more. So I guess I don't understand how this will help if people are speaking more than once. And I mean, the other issue is calling the question. Will we have the ability to speak twice? Or will someone call the question? And, you know, will we be able to get our points across if someone calls the question? Did you say I can speak? I didn't hear that. Yes, you have. So let me go to Steve Schreiber. I'm convinced that two minutes is probably a good idea. And I think that again, two minutes ish. I don't know if we can put the ish in. But the, I think it's particularly important in the lightning round, like in the first round, like in other words, so give everyone a chance to say their most important point on a particular issue. So one thing that I've learned from what is it two and a half years on the council, the five point, you know, sort of opening statements may not be the effective, you know, tool for the debate. But I think the most important point on the council's list, getting that out there, hearing what everybody else says and then going down your list is probably a more effective way of debating. So I think Councilor Ryan said that the two minutes and then get rid of yield in the time, I would completely support something like that. Melanie. I want to emphasize that we not, someone else mentioned this is not just about the people now, but it really does signal to people with a second language that you need to be really fast and you need to be fluent to be able to communicate. And it's not a good idea at all, at all. However, that being said, I appreciate what Steve said that if the rule was indeed and what manager was saying that if you're taking three and then it takes the last person, you know, half an hour, one hour later. So can we do something which is like, okay, the first round is your initial opening statement, which is two minutes or something or two questions or something to put certain boundaries around that. But when people are trying to articulate later on their argument, they should be given, and it really, really does signal that we want people who are really fluent, who can be really fast, fast thinkers. And that's not me. I'm neither, this is not my first language, and I'm not a fast thinker.  And then many people, and I know you all don't mean that, but it comes across that way for people who it's very challenging to be in this role. And this is just putting another barrier. So finding a solution, which is not an either or to make sure that both things happen, that we have that spirit of debate. And at the same time, I guess my three was over. Okay. I'm going to take my opportunity as a counselor. When we started to convene again in January, we actually for the first time instituted the clock, and we went to three minutes. And I think it's helped enormously. And at the same time, I also tried something just last two meetings ago, when we discussed the library. And I said, you know, ask your top two most important questions. And it gave a chance for other people to get their questions in faster. I, I voted initially for the two. I never thought about it in the debate. And I never thought about it with regard to a second language. And I am concerned about that. But I wanted to share those, the perspective of the fact and trying something new. And it includes the clock. And I feel like it's helped a lot.  Yeah, I guess this was, there seems to be some interest in removing the second sentence. And I guess I was wondering, since the motion is actually about changing that numeral, if it was possible to amend the motion to also remove that, that section, even though that wasn't actually discussed by GOL, that would be correct. So there is motion on the floor. And you would like to make an amendment to the motion, because the motion basically is to only change this in that section. And I'm asking, I'm asking if it would be in order to amend the motion to amend the rule further beyond what the motion is looking at. Unless somebody tells me that it is out of order, I am going to say it's in order. Okay. Then I will move to amend the motion to also strike from rule 6.3e. The sentence a counselor may yield all or part of this time to another counselor. Second. Thank you. That was Hannah. Okay. Are there any other comments on the particular motion, amendment to the motion? Okay. So then we're going to move to the vote on the amendment only. The amendment is, again, Evan, or actually Athena, would you read the motion? To amend the motion to strike from rule 6.3e. Counselor, I'm sorry. A counselor may yield all or part of this time to another counselor. That is what we're voting on. We're not voting on the two versus three. Right. Any further questions? Okay. Then I'm going to begin this vote. And I believe I go first and I agree with that. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Pam. Dorothy. I'm confused as to whether we're doing one motion or two motions. So I'm lost. We're voting on the amendment. The amendment is to strike the section that talks about accounts for yielding their time. We are not voting on the two versus three. That will come next. Yes. Evan Ross. Yes. George Ryan. Yes. Heather Shane. And I just ask if we vote yes on this and we live with three minutes, do we just change, will we have changed the wording? So we're getting this out. No matter what, Mandy is saying no. No, this amendments the previous motion. So the previous motion is to amend Town Council rules of procedure 6.3e by changing the numeral three to the numeral two. If this passes, then it would also say and to amend the motion to strike from rule 6.3e a counselor may yield all or part and so on. So if this passes and then the next motion fails, then this part stays in. Right. And we would have to bring this back as a separate vote. I'm just going to vote no then because I'd rather, I'll vote no. Steve. Yes. Andy. Yes. Sarah. Yes. Melanie. Yes. Alyssa. Yes. Pat. Yes. Garcy. No. Okay. So it's 11 in favor to oppose no abstentions and no absence. So we're going to now go to the original motion. Getting rid of. Milding time. Now in the original motion. That was. Dorothy. Say say again. Do you want me to vote or to or to mute myself? I want you to mute. That's what I want you to do. Thank you. Athena, would you please read the motion we are now voting on? It is to amend town council rules of procedure. 6.3e by changing the numeral three to the numeral two and to strike from rule 6.3e a counselor may yield all or part of this time to another counselor. Okay. Is there any question? I think Athena's answered this and I apologize to her, but I still am a little bit unclear. It would seem that if this were to fail, if we if the two minutes were not accepted, that would also lead to the failure of the amended the drop of that sentence, that last second sentence. It would just stay the way it is. The whole thing would stay the way it is. Right. So it's still love for the yield would still be in it if it fails. Okay. That's what it might be. I understand. I move to divide the question. Thank you. I was going to ask if somebody would like to be in the two, but with the question divided as the two to the changing the three to two is one portion of the question and the deletion of the sentence is the other portion of the question. Is there a second? I second Ryan. All right. So we have a motion on the floor now to divide the question. Is there any further at all we're voting on is to divide the question? We're not voting on the contents of the question just to divide. Okay. Mandy Joe. Yes. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Evan Ross. Yes. I can't hear you. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Yes. Sarah Schwartz. Yes. Sarah, was that a yes? Yep, that's a yes. Thank you. Kalani. Yes. Alyssa Brewer. Aye. Pat DeAngeles. Aye. Garcy Dumont. Yes. And Lynn Griezmerz and I. So if we have moved to divide the question and so that means that if no matter which way the vote goes on the two versus three minutes the thing that we have already voted on which was to know we have to vote again on that. Two remaining votes. Thank you. All right. Let's do the one where we are striking back to the motion where we are striking the thing about yielding. This would amend Town Council Rules of Procedure Rule 6.3e by removing a counselor may yield all or part of this time to another counselor. Okay. That's a motion. Is he wants to make the motion? Do we have to remake the motion? No, it's on the floor and it just needs a vote. All right. Any further questions on what we're voting on? Thank you. Let me start with Berthie Pam. I vote yes to eliminating the yield. Thank you. Evan. Yes. George Ryan. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Yes. Sarah Schwartz. Aye. Melanie. Yes. Alyssa. Aye. Pat. Aye. Garcia. No. Riesmer is an aye and Hanneke. Aye. So the vote is 12 in favor, one in opposition, no abstentions, no absence. All right. So that takes care of that one. So now we're going to go to the other part of this. And that is, and that motion has already been made and seconded. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Is there any further debate or discussion about the issue of the three versus two minutes, Shalini? Is there an option to change the motion to achieve the goals that we want of hearing everyone and in keeping the debate momentum going and making it accessible to people where English is a second language? And that would be like you suggested where we have other criteria that the first round is stating two questions or something, but then in the future around they're allowed to have a little more space. I'm more than glad to hear all the people's opinion on that. I frankly think it's starting to dictate what people should address or not address in a first round gets into being much more detailed than we want to be. I think it's a stuck thing. It's not a rule. Okay. Then any other comments or questions? Yes, Evan. I don't actually know the answer to this. So this is an actual question. Does someone have the ability to request more time from the chair to say I'd like to request an additional minute for my statement or something like that? Is that an option for a person? I literally just don't know the answer to that. I want to make sure you understand it. The ability, of course. If there's no ability, no. Dorothy, you're unmuted. Sorry, sorry. Evan, I know that that was a rule that happened in town meeting. Do we have such a rule? I don't think so.  I just want a clear statement of the motion before we vote. That's all. Thank you. Steve, did you have something you wanted to say? Okay. All right. The clear statement of the motion is as follows. Athena, please. It's to amend town council rules of procedure 6.3e by changing the numeral three to the numeral two. Is there any further questions?  Darcy? Yeah, I guess I just want an assurance that if this reduced amount of speaking time gets voted in, that we do have the ability to speak further later.  There's always that. Unless the question is called. That's right. So we don't, we don't actually. At this point, we do not have a provision in our rules that allows for the extension of time. Chaloney. No, Mandy, Joe. To answer Darcy's question, there is never a guarantee that any one councilor has the ability to speak, because as we have seen a motion for the previous question can be made at any point in time. And if it passes by two thirds, debate is over. And so no presiding officer can say every counselor will be given even a first chance to speak under Robert's rules or any rule that we've so far adopted. Thank you for that being so clear on that one, Mandy, Joe. Chaloney. I'm going to know and and at the same time encourage everyone to just self monitor themselves and keep the momentum going and and not make it harder. And every it might seem like a small thing to you all, but I think everything we do and say sends a signal and a message to people. So I would really encourage you to keep it to three and be very aware of the time we're using and not go into the long, you know, long whatever speeches. Okay. Is there any other comment at this time, Darcy? Yeah, I'm sorry. I guess I would just encourage us to experiment with the keeping time as we've been doing and having success and just see how that goes to limit, you know, the amount of time in our meetings because we just started doing that. So why don't we just do that? Okay, any further discussion at this time? Then I'm going to begin. Evan Ross. I George Ryan. Yes. Kathy Shane. No. Steve Schreiber. I Andy Steinberg. No. Sarah Schwart. I Chaloney Balmille. No. Melissa Brewer. No. Pat D'Angelois. I. Darcy DuMont. No. Lynn Griesmer is a no. Mandy Jo Hanneke. I. Dorothy Pam. No. Six in favor, seven opposed and no abstentions. That's what I have. No absent. Okay. So it's six seven zero zero. And so it fails and stays at three minutes. All right. We are going to take a quick break, 10 minutes, and we're going to come back and we are going to then proceed. Dorothy, do you still have your hand up for a reason? Just wanted to say I do understand the motives behind the work on the committee and that it's not because we're not not not not honoring their work, but just a difference of opinion. That's all. Thank you. Any further discussion? Okay. Please mute. Please mute and also take your picture down, put your picture back up when you return. Okay. While others are returning, I just going to start checking to make sure people can still hear. Alyssa Rurer. Present. Pat D'Angelois. Present. Shalini Balmille. I'm here. Garcy Devont. Here. And Greecemer's here. Hanna Key. Thank you. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Evan Ross. Here. George Ryan. I'm here. Kathy Shane. Yes, here. Steve Schreiber. Hi. Andy Steinberg. Here. They're towards here. Great. Thank you. We have no committee appointments tonight.  We're going on to the committee and liaison reports of CRC. Mandy Jo. It's written in a report. We're still working on housing tomorrow. We will get a presentation by the planning department on the BL proposals and on the ADU proposals at minimum. I believe there are going to be three other proposals potentially presented. The material that we have received so far from the planning department is in the packet right now that amounts to at least seven documents, including presentations if people are interested. And as I get more, I will obviously get it into the packets. So that you can find that information there. Okay. Thank you. Have you discussed with the town, I'm looking at Paul here on the new website called engage Amherst, having something on zoning. We have briefly mentioned it. We have not gone into extensive discussions yet because we haven't had actual proposals to put on. Okay. Thank you. Is there any question for Mandy Jo? Elementary School Building Committee. Kathy, anything new? I know it's actually in Paul's report. We did complete a draft request for services and sent it to the building authority. They have to approve it. So if we get rapid approval, we will be going out and advertising. So thank you. Finance committee, Andy, you're not muted. You need to unmute Andy. So I have something to tell my fellow counselors about zoom, which is that the spacebar doesn't always work, depending upon where you are in the program. And my apologies. You have the written report so that I'm not going to repeat what's in the written report. There's one piece that I wanted to just say a little bit more clearly, and that has to do with the Community Preservation Act proposals. We were looking at them from a financial perspective. And so as reported in the written report, we concluded that financially that they were sound proposals and that they were well thought out. We were, they were well thought out by the committee from the financial perspective. There are policy issues that may be involved in CPA proposals, but that's not within the realm of our exploration because it was not the charge to the committee. And I think that that's the other, the only other thing I'd say is, of course, that next meeting, we will start a more intensive discussion of the library financial questions. And we have reserved an extra meeting for the 30th of the month in case we don't complete the work at this next meeting on the 16th. So that's a report. Are there questions? Okay. G.O.L. George? Oh, I'm sorry, Brewer.  I didn't see it. Thank you. This is the part of the meeting where I get to say, I'm lost as opposed to a different counselor saying that earlier. So we have three financial orders in our packet. Explain, please. They are for next time. That was what I thought, but I just wanted to make sure that there wasn't going to be, that it's not like they're planning to change or something. It's just that you're prepping us ahead of time. They are for next time, but they were referred to in the existing finance committee reports. So we felt they needed to be in the document because they were referred to. Any other questions? Thank you. G.O.L. George? Thank you, Lynn. I have nothing to add to the G.O.L. report. It's in the report. Thank you. JCPC. Kathy? JCPC is meeting every week. And for those who are interested, this Thursday will be schools, recreation, and conservation. And if you want to see the list for everything Sean has put up all the departments, there is a way to see that as well. So we did DPW last week and fire and police. So you can see it, the schedule has the packets in it. So you can actually see if you're interested all the proposals Sean has been putting all of them up in advance of the meeting. Let me just clarify for the public that JCPC looks at capital. And so when they say they've been talking to those departments, it's in regard to capital needs. It is not the operating budget. Okay. Thank you for that, Lynn. And it is, it's not just capital, but we're saying what's this year. And we're all waiting a bird's eye view of next year and the next five years. So the discussion of what we're spending on vehicles on buildings is all in this document. Great. Thank you. TSO. Darcy? Yeah, TSO is going to have a second look at the stormwater bylaws on March 11th at our March 11th meeting, as well as finalizing our plans for our two public forums on the Potmoy intersection project. Flyers are going to be available for the public, for counselors to send out to their networks soon, hopefully. And as mentioned earlier, the two forums are at 6 p.m. So the second hour of our March 25th meeting and at 2 p.m. on Saturday, March 27th. And during the first hour of our March 25th meeting, we're going to be hearing from the town about criteria it's developing for a townwide residential parking plan. So that's going to be very interesting. And that is timed so that you will complete in time for JCPC. Seven, yes. We'll be done by seven. All right. Are there any liaison reports? Okay, then we're going to go to the approval of the minutes. And so the motion is to adopt the following town council meeting minutes as presented February 22nd, 2021. Regular town council meeting minutes. Is there a second? We need a second. And then we can amend. Okay, got it. You do get that, Athena? Yes, it was Maddie. Thank you. Okay, Kathy, you have amendments. Okay. And I do apologize because I should have read it earlier and I could have just sent it in a minor edit. On one small thing, I don't know whether we, we wouldn't normally do it, but I wanted the minutes to reflect that on the library discussion, the first hour of the time we spent was a library presentation. So it, you know, it's, it's a, you can see where it starts and where it ends, but it wasn't just the councilor's adding questions. So that's one edit. And then the second is we have a Dorothy Pam and a Bob Pam, both participating in the meeting. And I think the second time we say Pam, it's Robert speaking. And another time it's Dorothy speaking. So the simple way to clarify that is when it's Robert speaking, say Robert Pam. So I think, no, no, I don't think Dorothy said that. I think Bob sent it. It just says Pam said it, Pam said it. So I can point it out to Athena. It's just in one place. And if we vote Robert, then it becomes clear. So that those are the only two comments. Does anybody feel we need to have this as an actual amendment or is it just a friendly addition? Okay. Then I think we can go ahead and pass the minutes as they're now going to be amended. Yes. All right. George Ryan. Sorry. Yes. Becky Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Yes. Sarah Schwartz. Aye. Charlie Balmille. Yes. Alyssa. I'm Stain. Pat. Aye. Darcy. Yes. Bruce Merz and aye. Hannake. Aye. Pam. Yes. Evan Ross. Aye. I meant the Dorothy Pam, by the way. Just. All right. It passes 12. Zero with one abstention. No access. All right. We're now going on to the town manager's report. Thank you. So COVID update, we have, you know, we all had an increase in cases, primarily revolving around the university. Those cases have dropped down, but not as markedly as we had hoped and we're continuing to monitor that. We meet weekly with the leadership from the university, but also including the state epidemiologist, people from the tracing collaborative, and others from the Department of Public Health. And it's very useful to have all those folks, along with our state rep and state senator, actually, useful to have those folks there because it's good to have the outside eyes looking at the numbers as we are looking at them. They have a different view because they're able to see the entire area. We look mainly at Amherst and the impact on the town of Amherst. Our numbers continue to be higher than they have been in the past. So we're continuing to monitor that. Almost all of our cases are in the 18 24 year old range. So again, we are trying to manage that process. And it's becoming more and more difficult as the weather starts to warm up. People tend to want to gather outside. There was a major gathering last weekend. And the university has seemed has addressed this very aggressively. And we're hoping that we see real consequences going forward. So that leads us to the March 17th, which is a typical week area time of year that students tend to gather. This will be different this year. I think I talked about this before. We will be monitoring daily, especially on weekends with our trying to maintain gatherings at the smaller level, trying to be in close communication with the university because if students are violating their agreement with the university, the university would like to know about that. We respond to noise complaints and we haven't received a lot of them, but there was, again, one large one last weekend. In terms of vaccination, testing continues at the university. Anybody in the community can go down, get a test for free. It's very quick, very easy. It's reassuring if you haven't been vaccinated to continue to get that test. Vaccination clinics has been frustrating. We are now set up at the Bang Center to provide vaccinations. We're focusing on second shots, which is our top priority right now. While we have requested over a thousand doses, we're getting about 25% of those doses every week. And that barely covers our ability to give second doses for this week. We hope to open up next week to provide additional doses. We've been told, we're sort of looking forward to seeing the Johnson and Johnson vaccine come through, but the state has been told that they were getting about 50,000 for the month of March, which is a pittance, and not to expect any until April. On the other hand, using a different pipeline, CVS, using the pharmacy program, the federal government is putting a lot of doses of the vaccine into pharmacies. So a lot of our students, a lot of our teachers have been actually vaccinated. I've heard up to 7,500 have gotten vaccinated already through the CVS program, which is very exciting for us. And they're using the Johnson and Johnson, which is a one shot vaccine. That's anecdotal information. I don't have a headcount because we don't get that count, but it's very, very good. We've also had a program where our health department teamed up with our fire department paramedics to go to visit homebound folks to make sure that they're able to access the vaccine as well and developing programs to get into more vulnerable neighborhoods to be where people are so they can have access to the vaccine. Access is key. There's a lot of barriers for certain communities to getting the vaccine, but access, we want to take away that one barrier. So that's sort of where we are on the vaccination. It's really important for us, talking to some business owners. They're starting to feel some relief because people are feeling once they get the vaccine, they're more comfortable being out in public because businesses are starting to pick up. So we're excited about that happening. On outreach, we continue to do the Cup of Joe. We do the weekly community chat at noon on Thursdays. We're aligning those community chats with things that are happening in the town. So this week on Thursday, we'll have Chris Brestra talking about zoning because that's sort of a hot topic right now that people are starting to talk about. It's an opportunity for members of the public to just come in and ask questions. We don't do presentations or anything like that.  It's 30 minutes, so it goes by quickly. Next week on the 18th, we will ask representatives from our police department to be there, talk about whatever's happening at that point in time with our spring activities that night before will have been St. Patrick's Day. So we'll want to hear from our members of our community if their concerns, if they're seeing things and communicate to them how we respond to things. The week after that, March 25th will be a pulmonary village week. That night will be a public forum held by the TSO Committee, and then that Saturday will be another opportunity for people to weigh in on the pulmonary village. And we really want to hear about what people's concerns are about that intersection specifically. $1.5 million doesn't go as far as you'd hope it would, but we do want to address many of the key features of the intersection. It's not just sort of choose A or B. We really want to understand what are your major concerns. And along those lines, as Darcy said, the TSO Committee will be looking at the community engagement plan for that. Along those same lines, I think we are building out our Engage Amherst website where we're trying to gather things on each project, because we have so many projects in the works right now. It's really kind of amazing. And so this will help the residents to connect with where the information is and put it all in one place. Because sometimes it's hard to find what is this a public works project? It's a planning department project, we don't know. So we're organizing it by project. So right now we have the North Amherst Library up there. I forget the other ones, but we're building them out. And then one of the key features, oh, we have the four capital projects or the financing of the four capital projects on there. And one of the key features of it is that we show you who's listening. So we identify the staff person who's responsible for that. So if you make a comment, that goes to the staff person who's responsible and they will respond back in a sort of rolling question and answer system. Grants, the town has just, credit to our staff, they've been incredible about getting grants. We were so happy to get the $192,000 grant for the walkway improvements around the bank's community center, making the even more Santa center more accessible and more clear on how to get there. Having a path for people from Clark House to get up to the center of town and just making road, that area, especially since we've been spending a lot of time down there because that's where the vaccinations site. You really start to see where all the crumbling infrastructure is. So this grant, it's a lot of money, but we hope to really make some improvements there. We're very optimistic about getting a second grant. That will be in the same range, price range, but that nothing has been announced on that, but that's another building on an existing grant that we had previously. So we're excited about that. We have a small grant with the Business Improvement District to have, it requires you to hire a consultant, which the Business Improvement District, you get assigned a consultant. This is a person who will come in and help us scope out ways that we can bring back our businesses after the pandemic. And we received the cybersecurity grant from the state where we will train every employee and it's a very sophisticated online training, but also there are some test fishing attempts. They send out emails to people and see if you're gonna take the bait and then it's an educational thing. And you don't know when they're gonna do it, sort of like Secret Shopper or something like that. So I talked a little bit about the March 17th stuff. The budget, we're spending a ton of time on the budget meeting individually with every department. As we start to build out our budget, we're still sort of in a deficit mode in terms of the town budget that we have to work through, but we get there, we'll figure out how we can make everything work. We also continue to refine our numbers in terms of where the budget is for the entire town. And as we get more information, like there's a new commitment on motor vehicle that gives us a firmer number on that, we have updates on our new growth, we have firmer numbers on that. So all of that information will be presented and discussed with the finance committee tomorrow. And as usual, we start conservatively and then we're able to, as we are more certain about revenue, we can build that into our budget model and that will be good news for us tomorrow, I think. And then just making a concerted effort to get more and more material on our website so people have access to it, people have lots of information, lots of questions, and we try to provide them with all the information they can. And so that's sort of one of the things that anybody wants to ask from here. Yes, Dorothy. I think tomorrow we'll see our C and that finances next week. Right. Okay, my bad. Thank you. Kind of flipped a little bit. We have more questions, Pat. Yes, I wanted to thank you for getting together for the Homeless Advisory Committee and I'd like to know if there's a timeline about setting that committee up and pointing that committee. That's one thing. Hang on one second. Thank you, Paul. The other thing is I'm very glad the Civil War plaques are going to make it to the bank center. But I have a question. They used to hang in Town Hall. Is that accurate? Why can't they be hung there again? So my understanding is that they're incredibly heavy and they can't go back into Town Hall. So why, why? Because they're too heavy. I don't know. I mean, it's a question we can ask, you know, that was a decision, that was an observation made. We can ask the building commissioner about that. That would be the easiest solution to be perfect location. I know. So, so right now we will be relocating. We have a special company that's coming in. They'll relocate them and unveil them in the banks community center. We'll have a conservationist come in and look at them and analyze their condition. But I'll ask the building commissioner, like, can the walls support these things? I've never seen them personally, so I don't know how big or how they'll be there. Because they were there before, they must have been able to support them. So it's a little confusing. Yeah, I think they were in the basement previously. And that was not a very good location for them. They weren't very visible because it's only where staff goes. And I think they were sort of damaged because they were on the walls of the basement. That's what I'm told. But you could put them in the town room or in the hallway someplace. That'd be great. Mandy Jo. Pat, were you finished with your questions? Yes. Mandy Jo. Those are two questions. The first one is it looked like on your DPW and fire station sections, that there's a lot going on right now. And there was no mention of a building committee for any of those. Will there be building committees? And if so, when will they be formed? And are you planning on putting counselors on them? And the second question relates to what's been happening at the federal government. Do you have any idea if this bill makes it back through the house and then gets signed by the president? What will be able to use that funding for? Because there's supposed to be a lot coming to Amherst. I think MassLive estimated it in somewhere in like the 7 million range. And how long we'll have to use it and what we can use it for and whether that will help bolster, say, operating budgets in FY22 or even this year. Yes. So I'll do that first question first. I don't know how much will come. I don't know how we're going to be allowed to use it. The rules continue to change even with the existing CARES money. Things that were approved initially are not approved now. And we've tried to put everything through. We tried to buy an ambulance to the funds. They said no, but we're trying a different vehicle now seeing if they'll approve it. It would be significant if we could use it to plug some of the revenue gaps that we've had in our from the prior years because that's where most cities and towns have the need. So I think that that we'll know more about that. And for the, yes, we will have building committees, probably one committee for both projects because it makes sense to utilize both because they're moving on parallel paths. They'll be separate, you know, designers for each of them. I have not set up those building committees yet, but, you know, we're just going through the oak. I just want to give you a snapshot. I think the president wants a full report next at the next council meeting for where we are and where we're moving forward. But I think building committees help a lot. But I have not concluded about who should be on it or anything like that. Matthew. Mandy asked one of my questions. So I'll send the other. I had two related on Engage Amherst. I think that's actually a great innovation that's been set up. And what I wondered is how flexible it is to do something such as for the North Commons that we didn't have the pictures this time if we could say here are two possible alternatives. And can it handle like a survey monkey? Evan did it out in a newsletter, but it's like, do you like this one or this one better with a reason why? Give me, you know, give me a reason because then if there was something like that, I was planning on trying to do something up in district one, but we didn't get it in time. You could direct people to here, go take a look at the picture of it and weigh in on what we're talking about parking spaces for the farmers market, but we've still got that lot. So so I'm just thinking, can it be used that way as my question? You know, it's not just a question and answer, but a little survey monkey built in where you can respond. So that's number one. And then number two on the North Amherst Library, it's really exciting that it's moving along. If it goes through permitting smoothly, you know, when you had the planning board, do you have a sense of when construction might start and when it might be done in terms of opening? And that's followed up by the, when the library was asked on Saturday, where might you be when you're close? The community room that we'd heard a couple of times that they don't think they should have to clean, you know, because it'll be a community room, but they talked about it be a perfect place to relocate part of the library while the library is closed. So I didn't know whether the timing is such that that would, that would be a potential space, but also just for our community when it might be done. So I had the two not really related. One is using engage Amherst and one is North Amherst. So on the North Amherst library, you know, I think the timeframe for that is that we estimate about two to three months for permitting. And so, and then we get to construction documents. And when those construction documents are completed, we've completed our funding tranche. So we need to go back to the donor and say, are you ready to go to the next phase? So we don't move from construction documents until, so we will be in a position where we can apply for a building permit, but we won't do that until we have funding secured to move forward. If the anonymous donor says yes, and we have a sense of what it's going to cost, we go through bidding actually, so we'll know what it's going to cost. And if there's a green light, then we'll do that. We could get started this fall and maybe a year from now, we could have the building complete. That's hopeful, you know, as long as everything comes to fruition. So secondly, well, first off, I want to apologize to the town council for us not being ready for the town, for the North Common today. That was totally my fault, my responsibility to make sure that was ready. And we weren't ready. And I asked the president to take it off. And I mean, she was clear that you were not happy with that not having the material in advance. So we will be ready in two weeks when it comes back to you. I think using the Engage Amherst is a great idea. And it does have that function, there are widgets that you can pull into Engage Amherst and a polling mechanism is one of those widgets that you can put in. And putting, I think, two plans up there and saying, which do you like and why, is really good use of that tool. And it actually, we're always looking for things to pull people in. If it's a static page that you just go and read, it's not very interesting for the North Amherst Library. We have a little nine minute video up there now that the architects did. They could walk you through. So if you don't want to spend much time, basically have nine minutes, you can hear and see pretty much the history of the North Amherst Library. And so we need to be, we have to do that quickly though for the North Common. Sorry, I didn't think it was going to be my turn yet. That space bar, like Andy says, not always where you think it's going to be. The two things I was going to ask about, one is a really good follow up associated with what we were just talking about for Engage Amherst. So I see the North Amherst Library project there, but that doesn't feel to me like something we need to be doing a huge amount of engagement around because that's on its way. It's moving along. It's nice to keep people apprised of what's happening. And so it's really useful from that standpoint. I often think we have a press release problem rather than a communication problem, but so that could be really useful for that. But something like North Amherst, like the North Common and also Pomeroy coming up, because Pomeroy is at a very different stage. North Common is like, there's two things to look at. Pomeroy is at a different stage, but there's going to be a ton of people who can't participate in those conversations that particular week. And so if we could figure out how to frame that, and of course we could talk about that at TSO. If you think resources are available to add that to the engage Amherst process. So just, I guess, a highlight before we get to TSO later this week where maybe you were already planning to discuss that. Then the other thing is on a completely different note. I realized that the town manager reports are a huge amount of work, and I understand completely that you start from the base one week and then you cut things out and you add things to it. But I was really alarmed to see that the question about the spending of the $80,000 that we set aside for equity in July is just gone from the report. It's not as in there are other items in the report that are listed as no update. Nothing's happening with this particular thing right now, and particularly with capital projects of a smaller nature. And to have that just disappear from the report when we don't really have any way of carrying it, concerns me a lot because as I've talked about at length at several meetings that I will try not to do now is that we never set up that $80,000 saying there was going to be one committee that was going to spend all that money. We never envisioned that. I'm thrilled that the Community Safety Working Group found a group to work with that they think will help them figure out their many, many difficult, challenging tasks. And so I'm really excited that they got good responses for the bid, but it's still not going to use up the $80,000. And so the idea, it was an unusual thing to put the $80,000 aside in the first place, but to later make an assumption that it's just $80,000 that's spent however it's spent by the town manager of the Community Safety Working Group given the importance of the overall issue that we were willing to set $80,000 aside for and that we need to understand what should be in the next budget, right? And does it need to be something specific in a particular area of the budget or does it again need to be kind of a broad lump sum that we need to figure out where to put? I think it's a really important conversation for the town council to have. I think it's an important conversation for us to have that we were going to have on the 22nd. It was listed on the agenda items that was published the day before. We didn't have the agenda item. We don't have it tonight. I understand the question about the legal ramifications of anti-aid amendment, et cetera and at the same time, that's not stopping us from doing anything. If KP law doesn't respond to us for another three months on that answer, that's just more time that's ticked away when we haven't been able to discuss how anybody else in the community can engage in this. So I hope we will strongly consider having this as a near future agenda item whether we've heard back from KP law or not. Shalini? Yeah, I just wanted to acknowledge Brianna's work for Amherst. This is just so cutting edge and so incredible. And I'm just so proud of our town staff here. Along with that, could we get some clarity around the scope for how councillors can use or what goes into it and as we're doing the zoning. So how would that work would be if you have surveys? And I mean, you don't have to answer now, but it would be good for us to have clarity like how in what ways can council use it? Like for example, if Evan had his survey, is that still a separate thing or is that something we can post? So yeah, just overall, it's a scope. That's a really good question. I mean, engage Amherst, the reason we focus on North Amherst Library, we always had thought of that as our first project and we built that as a very easy sort of confined project. And we're going to work around, work out the kinks on Engage Amherst and then all these other projects sort of jumped in and so we're like, okay, we have to do them all. When we do an Engage Amherst page, we need someone to adopt it. We need a staff member to say, get trained up on it and say, I'm going to own this page. It can't be written off or everything. Brianna was the one who conceived of it, who brought to our attention, who said, here's a way we can fund it through CARES money. And so she was just brilliant about bringing this tool to us. So 100% credit goes to Brianna for that. But we also need, so we need willing partners in our staff who say, I'm going to take this on in addition. So for the financing one, Sean Mangato is all over it. He's very excited by it. Or we have Ben Brieger, who's a planner, who's willing to take us on. I think the perfect one is for the North Common because it's logical. The purpose of these things is to connect with people but also to collect information and to the counselors make decisions. So if there are things that you think, this would be helpful to me as a counselor. How about this? I think you should shoot it to me and we'll try and put it on there because it really is a tool for it to help you as you're in your role as policy makers for the town. So that would be, you know, be aware, you know, if we put in sort of questionnaires, you get whoever shows up but it's not scientific or anything like that. And yeah, those things can work. But it's, you know. Just had a quick second question. I didn't hear about the timeline for the homeless shelter task force. Yeah, so we actually had a meeting on that today and Mary Beth of Glovitz is going to be the lead on that for the town. You know, we're framed and you'll get more about this next meeting. We're framing it a little bit differently than finding a location. As we talk about it more, it's not just about finding a, putting people in beds in a congregate setting. We actually think that's the lowest thing that we can be doing. We need to look at this in a more cohesive, comprehensive way. Engage with the people who are working in the area work directly, listen to people.  So that's an important thing. That's a high priority thing. But we also need to look at this comprehensively in terms of our services levels that we offered. And what should the town's commitment be to this? Because that's a really important conversation. We, you know, the town isn't, you know, we do devote a lot of, we can talk about this for a long time, but we devote a lot of services through different departments. But we don't say this group or this funding is for this, except through CDBG or something like that. So we had a very deep conversation about that today. So, and Mary Beth is working on a memo of sorts for the council to talk about next time. Thank you. You're welcome. Yeah. So this is becoming an extended town manager's report. But I would, so engage Amherst, I just logged in and was able to look and saw the survey on North Amherst Library. Will you use it? Will you not use it? So these are great questions.  I would really offer maybe a great deal of caution of using it for some of the things that have been described and even frankly, the one that's often cited, the survey monkey for the North Common ARB. So, survey, non-scientific surveys, no matter how they're delivered on engage Amherst or in paper or whatever, are, you know, if they're not scientifically valid, they're going to provide really skewed results and those skewed results may send a direction on whatever it is.  So we're not basing it on surveys per se. We're trying to get the pulse of the community for sure. But I'd be very cautious of using, you know, tools, even like engage Amherst as a substitute for getting the pulse and the other ways that we're used to. So from, you know, from walking on the street, back in the days when we could walk on the street to talk to people or, you know, our district meetings or whatever. So it seems like we live in the electronic age. We're used to being surveyed about everything. Some of the issues we're dealing with, particularly zoning, are really complicated issues. So the question, do you want footnote M or not footnote M, would not give you any useful information. So there are other ways of getting useful information like that. Well, I'm going to also weigh in on this particular issue on two fronts. One is, first of all, Steve, thank you. The researcher in you shows up. The researcher in me shows up. I'm very concerned about a survey on a website that gets people driven to it and is not scientific. And yet I totally and completely value the collection of public opinion. And want to make sure that if we do that, we're looking at it from all the public opinion that we receive from public forums to emails to other kinds to district meetings to serve it. But I really caution us about just throwing up any survey up there and then suggesting that somehow or another, this is the public's will. The second thing is that I do think that you want to be careful and clarify the actual who gets to use this and for what. Because I could see an individual counselor perhaps wanting to use it, but I don't think that's what it's intended for. And so I think we have to have some level of protocol that basically says this is what it's for and this is not what it's for.  Yeah, I didn't want to. I totally agree with what you said, Steve and Lynn's. I didn't want like this is a way to get a scientific survey out.  This is the first tool I've seen, like the North Amherst Library. You can see the architectural drawings there. It would be hard to find them otherwise, you know, like what. So I think the imagery, you know, and certainly gathering information that way is one way. You might well get an article in the Amherst Bulletin that say, oh, here are these two pictures of things that the town is thinking about and we might get input from another. It's just usually hard to find it.  So that's what I like that this is done, is it's you can find something. If someone tells you it's there, you can find it, but you can really find it without being a good, how do you get to a packet of a meeting of a particular date and look at our listing and figure out which document you want to open up to see something. So that was in the spirit of where I was going on just profiling some things that are coming up, not that we would make a decision based on, you know, 50 people clicked it one way or the other, but just if you want to see it where to go. So that's what I really like that this has opened up as a possibility. If I can respond to that, you know, we talked about this with Pomeroy actually, because it's, you know, we don't want to say, do you want an intersection, signalized intersection or a roundabout because that doesn't help us, right? We want to talk about what are the concerns that you have, what are the things that you like, what do you dislike, all the normal questions that you would prompt people to, to weigh in on giving you some guidance, because then you say, well, what's the right fit for that. And I think that's the type of surveying we could do without saying, do you like A or B and A wins or B wins, you know. Are there any other questions of the kind of manager with regard to this report? We don't often have this luxury of time. All right, then we have two more items I want to deal with. One is under the president's report. And Athena, I'd like you to put up on the screen the items that we presently have for the next two meetings. Thank you. The reason I'm putting these up here, first of all, it's to say, you know, are there any other items? And a second is because there's at least one item here that it's still a little unclear to me about what our real intent is. And that is under March 22nd, we had the meeting with the chair of the school committing the superintendent and finance director, but in fact, we will not be getting the regional school budget until the 5th. And so there are discussions among counselors regarding this that would be useful.  Oops, you took the down. Sorry, I don't know why it was up. So my first question is, are there other items that should be on this list? I'm looking and then going, I hope not. And second of all, are there thoughts particularly about the one that is highlighted in yellow, Shalini? Yeah, I just want to bring up the email we've been getting from one of our school teachers. And we did get a response from Doug about applicability of what is that law? It's the, oh, just once again, I'm pulling it up. BFMLA for, and I think that's apparent to leave. And apparently the town council has to decide for the elementary school, whether this law would be applicable to teachers in the elementary school. And so teachers are going through a hard time and everyone is going through a hard time. And so I think it's on us to make, at least have a discussion on that. Okay, I'm going to look to Paul to decide when we bring that forward because I think he also has to consult for the super schools superintendent. Right. Are there other comments or questions? Darcy. Just wondering, I see on April 5th, there's a question mark after vote for the library. Is there some deadline for voting? There, one of the options for the library is that if we go forward with the decision to do the renovation expansion and we vote on it in April. Okay. Then MSBA is actually in a position to start giving us one-fifth of the payment in this fiscal year. Point of order. I think you mean library commissions. I'm sorry, the library. Thank you so much. What would be the last time that we would be able to do that and still get that? I don't know. I, we'd have to talk with MSBA, I think, with the last board of library commissioners. The idea was that if we waited too close into June, then they start dealing with next year's. And this way they could get the paperwork done and the grant done. I, I can try to find out more about the timing on that if that's useful. That's, that's the question I'm hearing. Steve Schreiber. Oh, so Alice, Councilor Brewer has me worried about the nuclear option. And I see some really important votes coming up. I'm wondering if it's possible to schedule. You know, I don't know exactly what the deadlines are. Like Councilor Duman just asked one about the library, which helps clarify for me. I guess I'm wondering about scheduling, pre-scheduling interim meetings, special meetings, just in case someone does pull the emergency break and we can't vote on a particular night. Let me just mention, after April 5th, we already have a meeting scheduled on April 12th. Okay. One of the things that Athena and I have talked about is polling to see if people are available to meet on April 26th, which originally we did not have on our calendar. Does that answer your question, Steve? Yes. Thank you so much. Alyssa? So given how incredibly full these agendas are, and we just talked about additional possible dates, which would be mainly if something went wrong, when do we have a conversation about the 80,000 that we set aside in the July budget? Because we obviously can't, it doesn't look like we could possibly fit it in one of these two meetings. Well, no, I can put it into one of these two meetings. I think the real question is going to be the town manager getting the information back from the town attorney. And if we want to go ahead, we can have the discussion without that, but I think there was an idea that it would be best to wait. But I'm more than willing to add that fuel on either of these. I'll try to balance it to the best of our ability. We also, by the way, as you can see, for instance, the illicit discharge in the stormwater is really dependent now on TSO and GOL finishing their work. So it's possible that would slide to a slightly different place. And then the other thing I just want to point out is that the community safety working group may be asking us for an extension, another extension. Okay. Alyssa, was that sufficient? If it isn't going to appear on one of these, then I'd like us to know about that before both dates have gone by. So, and maybe we'll have the KP law and maybe we won't. So thank you. That's helpful. And then actually on a completely separate note, now I'm taking advantage is I'm not sure what community safety working group report means, because the intention of the charge was always that the report was going to go to the town manager and the town manager was going to give us a proposal. So I obviously want to give all the possible time we can to community safety working group to be at our meeting because then even more people will see their work. But to me, the deadline is not for them to us. It's never been that. The deadline's always been for them to the town manager so that he can report to us. So what's the intention of that agenda item? I apologize for the lack of clarity. I think it's for the town managers on results. And again, it may not be ready. As you know more than I think many other people, these things take greater shape as you get closer and closer. What are they really? Kathy. I just want to come back to how much is on the April agenda, Lynn. And we had a good presentation from Jones with some questions from counselors.  I think we need to have a longish discussion on Jones before we vote. So I'm just wondering whether you want to schedule it for both April 5th and April 12th with vote listed on the other. Because we may want to have more of a discussion than we had last year on water and sewer rates when people see what these rates are starting to look like. The news is out on how much they're going up. If you anticipate, if you do your normal looking at an agenda, how much time for a discussion? To have a discussion and a vote on the 5th. So Darcy's question on if we're still trying to, in April, make a decision and I'm at a later date, I'll try to understand why we can't make it at the end of April or at the beginning of May. So I don't know how close to June, but I think we just need to have a fuller discussion than what we had before. Kathy, let me just point out, first of all, on April 5th, I have a question mark and on my longer list, I have April 12th Jones Library vote question mark. And I have an April 26th with a bunch of question marks. That's exactly what I would hope to see in a way on the 5th. I think it's highly unlikely. So maybe that doesn't have the question mark, but to have a marker saying there's going to be a decent discussion on one of these states, so Steve's worry about the nuclear option. And we're just having a discussion without a vote. So we're going to have a discussion and you're going to get a chance to vote that we're not tabling a discussion because we're running out of time. So that answered my question. Yeah, thanks, Darcy. Yeah, I would just second what Kathy has said and I would be interested to know what is the timing on, or maybe you've already sent questions to the library. I know after our last meeting you asked us to submit. So what's the timing on that? The time, first of all, the questions that I've collected and I've tried to assemble and believe me, it has not been easy. They are just now being, I have been working on it on a regular basis, but I still have not sent them to them. And the library will be at the next two finance committee meetings with any other consultants that we want them there. Okay, so that the finance committee now takes the next stab at all of this. Okay. Yeah, I guess I'm just, what is your thought about, if they're going to need a lot of time also to answer the questions? So I think they're going to need that much time. I think that both of the questions are financial in nature and either they have the information or they don't. Yeah, I think that there was a whole array of questions because there were a number of questions that were also submitted by the public that we also said we were going to forward on to them to get answers. Darcy, let me just tell you at this point, I have probably close to 200 questions, many of them overlapping and trying to come up with something that basically then makes sense out of it so that it is a question they understand, we understand, and we get the information we want. It is probably one of the most difficult times of wrestling it to the ground that I've ever had. Okay, so I am, I promise I'm working on it. In fact, we're meeting with the library tomorrow to talk about questions. Okay, and response time. Okay, I need other questions here. All right, then Athena, take this down please and I believe the next thing we need to do is have Pat and Shalini talk about the training. Yeah, I'm happy to start or share what we have. So, but first I just wanted to thank all my colleagues here for your commitment to this work and being willing to give up your weekend. And other than I believe one counselor who we hope will be able to join us still and I think everyone responded that they were able to participate. So we finalized the dates as April 10th and 11th from nine to five with a half day follow-up on May 8th and that's just half day, so that's 10 to 2 p.m. And we spoke with the references for this group and we got, I spoke with two references, one from Austin, the equity director from the town of the city of Austin and that was just so exciting to talk to him that the mayor there has taken training with Annie who's the principal consultant who will be working with us and he said we work with Gare and we love Annie the most, she's our most favorite facilitator and so they've done many several workshops with her so I'm really excited that we have this chance to do this work together and Paul and Athena have also agreed to thank you very much for giving up