I have now pressed for we're we're recording today is March 8 this is the meeting of the disability access advisory committee. It's 1131. I believe we have all members present except Marty Smith. Do you want to confirm that just by saying yes. Or Maureen, you can just look. I think everyone is present except Marty Smith. That is correct. And Pat DeAngelis is present. And so do we have any announcements. Nope. Okay, then we can get to the what are we getting to. Oh, there is the first let me look here. Let me see if I can even get it. One second announcements. Oh, and we don't have anybody from the public here, right? No. Okay. Reappointments to the doc Pat has been reappointed. Yay. From the select board from the select board from the town council. Hello Pat. Yeah. You're allowed to say hello. We're getting to unmute myself. Oh, okay. I'm really glad to be back. And I hope I hope I make more meetings than I've been making recently. So. Okay, everyone. Yay. So three of us need to be reappointed Elise. And Ruth and me. So what, what do we have to do Maureen. So the town manager's office reached out to Myra and myself. Indicating that Elise, Myra and Ruth are up for reappointment. And so the town council will need to vote on it. And. So Angela Mills from the town manager's. Office asked if Myra and myself would recommend. Reappointing Elise, Myra and Ruth and Myra said enthusiastically. Yes. So that's, that's weird to be enthusiastic about it. Reappointing yourself. I have to say. Conflict of interest. But what the heck. So, but what do we do? What do, what do I do? I don't think any, I don't think anyone needs to take any actions. So, you know, the town council at one of their future. Meetings, they will make a motion to vote to reappoint. The three members. And I think it's. I don't think a discussion or, or your attendance is needed, but it's just to let you know. If you don't feel like you would like to be on, continue on this committee after the end of this June, let us know. But otherwise we would love for you all to continue to serve on this committee. Oh, so Elise and Ruth have not been approached yet. No. I've reached out to you as the chairperson. Okay. So Elise and Ruth, I guess. Yeah. I'd like, I'd like to hear. If you'd stay, but you need to let us know if you don't want to. Okay. I thought you didn't want to. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah. All right. And then, of course, while I answered Angela's email. I also told her that we have a vacancy that we've had for six. Well, now seven months. And I'm. I asked her to look into it and she said she would. And so far I haven't heard from her, but she's got other stuff to do too. So she's aware. That we would like to have another member. Okay. Let's see. Let's see. Oh. The curriculum for the Amherst public schools. Tori wrote. A nice letter on our behalf. Thanks, Tori. And then it was re framed a little bit so that a little different version of it would go directly to the department head from the one that would go to the school committee. But it's essentially the same letter. Yeah. One talk about it. Yeah, I have, I may have missed it, but if you look at it and I don't have it in front of me right now, but it says your. For the one that's going to the school committee. It says your curriculum shouldn't say. It should say Sarah Barbara just. Oh, thank you. Yep. Or I could just say the curriculum. And leave it simple. Yeah. Oh, good catch. Good catch. Okay. Did anyone want to make any comments about the letters? Would anybody like to vote or make a motion to send the letters? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. You can make a motion. You wrote them. It's fine. I'll make a motion that we send them to. The school committee and. Sarah Barbara just. Because they're two separate ones. Yeah. Do we have a second? A second police. Okay. So we have a second. And we need a roll call vote. For sending the letter. I think it's very nice that that we're that. I mean. I hope they think it's very nice. I mean, it's. It's always nice to send a thank you note and to acknowledge the work. Sarah is so proud of this work. It's amazing. She should be. Okay. Who all in favor. No, let's see. All in favor of sending the letters to. Sarah Barbara just on behalf of the English department. I'm going to take this call. I'm going to take this call to the school committee. In praise of the English department. Say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Oh, say no. I might have to take this call. No, I don't. Okay. All right. Sorry. All right. I'm going to mute. So just go on without me. All right. So I just made. Chris breast strip and then fragger. Panelists. So they'll be coming up in a second. And I can go ahead and make Tracy a panelist as well. Let's see here. So. The next item. Is my room on the phone. Maybe. Not really sure, but I guess the next. Yeah. I don't have a particular update about that project. And like two 30 or something. I don't have a particular update about that project. I know it went through the town council. A month or two ago for review. And so. Myra. So about the status on the Pomeroy village intersection project. So I don't have a particular status update. I don't have a particular update. I don't have a particular update. I don't have a particular update. I don't have a particular update at all. For presentation. Feels like a month, month or two ago. And so DPW is still, you know, working with their design team to. To. You know, further the project design along. Other than that, I don't have any particular. Doesn't it have to be bid in. FY 22. I don't know if it has to be bid by a certain date, but I don't know if it has to be bid by a certain date. And I think that the DPW is still working on the plans. So the last time I think they were at 25%. And we're expecting to see another iteration at 75%. But I haven't seen anything recently. And. I don't know if it has to be bid by a certain date. And I think that the DPW is still working on the plans. And I think that the DPW is still working on the plans. And I think that the DPW is still working on the plans. And I think that the DPW is still working on the plans. And. You know, normally they would also show these things to the tack. The transportation advisory committee of which Tracy's affian is the chair. But tack hasn't seen anything recently either. So. You know, I'm imagining that the DPW is still working on the plans. And when they're ready, they will show them to us. But I don't think it has to be bid in. FY 22. So I think that the DPW is still working on the plans. And I think that the DPW is still working on the plans. And I think that if we had consulted with someone about. How to build. The crosswalks and whatever they have to build so that they work for blind people. They haven't shown any evidence that they know themselves how to do it. And it's a very difficult kind of place to do because it's not straight lines. Yes. I think they are. Aware of the issue. Tracy's affian's hand is up. So she may have some information about that. Okay. That's great. Thank you. Tracy, do you know anything? I don't know anything on that particular point, but. The last tack meeting last week. We did ask the. We did ask about the status of Pomora village. And Guilford said he does need to spend the money within a certain amount of time and he would be coming back soon. So. So a month ago, right after that. Meeting of the. Well, talk about last week. But after the town council meeting, which I believe was in. January. I'm not sure. Or maybe I made a statement. And shortly thereafter, I sent. Maureen, the name of the consultant. That I recommended and she, because she sent me an email. And she suggested people to talk to. And I guess I dropped the ball and that I didn't follow up with anybody about it. But I'm just concerned. I think all along. We wanted to make sure that they were going to build this. Properly. Cause you only get one chance to build it. And I don't. I don't know. I don't know what happened with that information about the consultant. Yeah. So I, I did afford the contacts. That Myra recommended their. I don't even know who they are. I sent the letters. It was a website actually. And so it was like a consulting firm, perhaps. That. Work with designing. With the intention of. Of considerations for blind. People. So. Yeah. So I did forward that website link to Gilford as well as. The individual from the mass commission on the blind. Mike was his first name. I don't know. Those are two, two sources that DPW can reach out to. About, you know, what recommendations. Would they suggest to the town. As they move the design forward. So I'm worried that they're not. If they haven't told Chris doesn't know, and you don't know. And I'm worried that they didn't do it. So. I'm worried that they didn't do it. I'm worried that they didn't do it. I can certainly send a follow-up email to Gilford. With the link and the contact from. From mass commission on the blind and. And say, if you haven't, you know, contacted these, these resources, please do so. Okay. Pat, you're hearing this, right? Yes, I am. And I was just say, if you could CC me on that. Email, then I can bring it up during councilor comments at the next meeting. Sure. Okay. Thank you. That's good. Cause I, I did make the statement in January. And then I followed it up. And we were supposed to be involved. Even at the, you know, at the point of the earlier stages to make sure that they were headed in the direction of making sure it was done, right? I certainly don't know how to do it, right? I know nothing about topography.  Correct. Exactly. Okay. Yeah. There are people who know how to do it, right? And that's why. We wanted the consultation. I missed part of this because I got a phone call. Were we still on the. The crosswalk thing. On Pomeroy. I just wanted to know if they had. Consult it if they had engaged a consultant to help them figure out how best to build it. Yeah. For blind and visually impaired people and nobody, nobody knows whether they did. They were told. They got information about who to contact, but nobody knows yet whether they have done it. So I mentioned your name because I said, I don't think either you or I could tell them how to build an intersection, but we could both tell them when they didn't do it right. Okay. I must say that Pat has more influence over. What happens then I do Pat can reach up to the town manager and can reach down to DPW. So. Enough said. I'll make sure that copy Pat in my email. Please. Please. Okay. Fabulous. Thank you. Okay. And then the next one. Yeah. What's the status of the. The town common projects. Oh yeah. Where are we with that Marty. Sent in the letter that we sent to Dave Zomek. There was Marty had cited some of the. M a. A B M a, M a, a B. I don't know. Rules. I don't know. About where the parking has to be versus, you know, in grades and things like that. Do you know if they paid any attention to her comments? And do you know where they are with the. Design of the parking for the North common. Chris rest up has raised your hand. I don't know. Okay. Yes. So that project is on a little bit of a hold right now. But it's a little bit of a, a little bit of a, a little bit of a funding source. And once we find out about that, we'll. Know.  And I think Gilford. Guilford is again, sort of the gating item here. He is doing the, the plans. Guilford and his team. And so I don't think they're working on the plans right now until they have a better sense of what the funding is. I don't know. I don't know. Like I said, it's on hold. Okay. And again, if you have concerns about. Handicapped accessibility, you can certainly tell us, but you know, Pat is also here and she can. We sent a letter. Dave's omic. I don't know who's seen it. Have you seen it? I mean, I don't know who got that letter, Maureen. I don't know. Unfortunately, I can't recall if Pat. That was where I was. I think we're only four to long. I'd appreciate that. I don't really have. And you can send it to Chris as well. And I just want to say to. Chris. And to Pat that at the last meeting that we had. Forgive me. I don't remember the name of the gentleman who came to talk about the sidewalk at Kendrick Park. Who was the man? He's a registered landscape architect that works within the DPW. Okay, so we talked to him about our preferred design for Kendrick Park. And we told him that the same principle because that's also a one way street in the plan, the same principle would have to hold there about how to where to put the, you know, the lane and how not to put the bicycles on the same level as the pedestrians and that the bicycles needed to be at the street level and the pedestrians needed to be raised so that there wouldn't be any question about where a pedestrian was. And it's the same principle we told him that it that needed to govern that particular redesign of the west side of the North Commons sidewalk. And I just want to make sure that you heard it Chris, and that Pat you heard it, because Guilford and Paul and Paul to tear or death year, whatever it is, I'm sorry, heard it. I did not attend that tech meeting, but maybe Tracy did. I did not attend the meeting where they talked about that particular item. I thought that that hi this is Tracy. Yep. It hasn't actually come back before attack. We've asked Guilford to talk about it at our March 24 meeting. I believe the last meeting was at the DC meeting. And I got my updates from you and I also heard last night at the council meeting that for the agenda for the council meeting on March 21 that Guilford has some updates. I'm not 100% sure if that will be on the council agenda on March 21 or not. But my role we do share your concerns, and I did reach out to various people. And that's one of the reasons that we've asked tax asked to see it again. So they're concerned about that project too. I can bring them up now or later, but we can we can do it later because right now that's not the agenda item, but I guess. I just want to say just so Chris and Pat here that plan B that Paul, death year had is the one that we endorsed. He gave us plan a we for various reasons, three or four of us spoke out against it. And he told him what he want what we wanted. And he's, I said, do you have a plan that looks like that and he said well actually I do. And he pulled it out. You know, and I said, that sounds like plan B and he said yes we call it. I forget what they called it option B. And the same thing that the same principle that you held in the design for option B should also pertain to the North Common. And I want to make sure that we don't have to go through this again, because we already talked to him about it. He seemed perfectly agreeable to it. I mean, did he not. I mean Marty was there and she was speaking to it but she's not here today.  I think I did yeah. Yeah, I did. He did end up emailing me option B. And so I can forward that long to to everyone present here today. So you know that and I am preparing a memo on behalf of the DAC with your recommendations regarding option B in your support of that so we can we can certainly send that along to Paul Dethier and Gilford. Okay. I mean it didn't seem like there was any conflict it seemed like there was a reasonable discussion he had already drawn up the plan it wasn't like we were telling him anything he hadn't thought about. The one sort of clarifying question is so for the North Pleasant Street project along the westerly side of Kendrick Park, they were trying to accommodate on street parking sidewalk and bike lanes. North Common I do not know if bike lanes are proposed. But that that's just, you know, a subtle difference of, of But people can ride their bike there because it's a road, but it's only a one way street because so their losses, because it's a one way street, the bike can only go one way.  I see people riding their bike they're the wrong way, and they need to know where they're supposed to ride it. Yeah, and, although the concept plan as Paul Dethier indicated at that meeting that where they are right now is at a concept level and they weren't showing markings of how they would delineate the bike lane. The project moves along towards a, you know, actual construction they'll they'll of course update the plans to show the exact way that they are going to indicate, you know, through signage or markings on the, on the, on the pavement, where the bike lanes are and So option B, the sidewalk would be at at one level with a curb and at the level of the road, there would be a bike lane heading southbound, and then it would be traveling traveling, then there would be on street parking, and then there'd be a level and then it levels up with a with curbing to a sidewalk in there there would be a sidewalk with I believe would be a where there would be a shared pathway for a bike lane and pedestrians. Oh, I believe I almost want to, I would need to pull up the plan to my sense was that the bikes the northbound bikes would go in the road with you might be right. Let's see here, option B I can actually pull it up right now because this was a conversation, maybe a month ago so maybe my memories fading a little bit. Okay, so here's a section view. I'll describe it. So, on the west side of Kent of North Pleasant Street, there would be a six foot wide sidewalk at a particular grade with a curb, and then at the lower elevation there would be a five foot bike lanes heading southbound. And then there would be a 15 foot wide northbound traveling, and then there would be an eight foot wide angled back in parking space. And then there would be a curbing that is now at a higher elevation than the traveling that would be a six, six foot wide sidewalk. So that was destrians go on the sidewalk and the bikes go in the 15 foot. Correct, have a lane. Yeah, okay. That's what I thought. Okay. Anyway, right so if we're if the North Common is on hold we can wait on that one. So the only one that seems a little urgent might be Pomeroy that we don't have enough information about. Okay. What's the next item I'm sorry. The next item is is the status of the 2021 mass DOT shared streets and spaces funding grant projects along East Pleasant Street and we have planner Ben Breger who will give us a status update. Great hi everyone thanks for having me. I want to talk about the shared streets grant. As you know the town received three shared streets grants and they're in various stages of complete in progress. And kind of just getting started so the most recent shared streets grant the third one is what I'm going to talk about today and that was focused on crosswalk improvements in the north part of downtown focused on East Pleasant Street and Triangle Street. And I have a few slides I can show you, but I think the purpose of the kind of discussion today is to kind of just give you an update on where we are with the progress of implementing the grant. And then specifically we do have a kind of a new proposal for a, or a proposal for a new crosswalk that we'd like to discuss with you and we have drawings front that a DPW has produced that I'd like to show you all and get some feedback. So I will share my screen here. Just to provide an update on the shared streets grants. We have implemented part of the work so far we have. I'll show you some pictures in a second but we have a three crosswalks that have been repainted and kind of resurfaced. That happened in the, in the fall. We have, along with those three crosswalks there's six curb ramps and tactile surface pads that have been redone with the new repainted crosswalks. We have a 200 feet approximately of sidewalk that's been ripped up and repaved and that's kind of a long East Pleasant Street near the the spoke in that area. We've placed an order for five pairs of rapid response flashing beacons the their audible rapid response flashing begins. Those have been ordered. Unfortunately, like everything nowadays there's supply chain issues and those are probably going to take many more months to actually be delivered but the order has been placed. We also I'm going to talk about this a bit more we have a proposal for a new crosswalk. We have the Garcia's restaurant, the former Bertucci's restaurant, and that would connect to the Kendrick Park playground kind of where that there's a trail that leads up to the playground. Right now kind of just dead ends in the sidewalk on East Pleasant Street and so we'd propose to that that pathway would lead right into a new crosswalk. And then lastly, some work that we also plan to do with the grant is to fill a sidewalk gap along Triangle Street that I believe has remained kind of a gap in the sidewalk since the Kendrick place development when when in was developed. There's a utility box right there and I think there's some utility work done when the building was developed and the sidewalk gap has remained so we're going to use some of this funding to kind of complete that gap in the in the sidewalk network. Along the side of the building. Is that where you are. Yeah, right next to the building on the side. Exactly. Yeah, right next to the now you have to go out in the street. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So we have a map kind of showing a kind of where all those locations are being planned for so there would be new. The new crosswalks that have been built are on the south side of Kendrick Park at the intersection of North Pleasant and I guess this is no this isn't my client, what is that cottage cottage. No cottage. Wait point where point your mouth. Oh yeah, so it's the intersection of North Pleasant and I guess that might be south prospect street. Yeah, and then there's also been crosswalk work done where pray street in East Pleasant Street meet. There's been two and two crosswalks to actually cross over North Pleasant, or East Pleasant and then to cross over pray street. That's where the work has been done there. The new crosswalk is being proposed for the third green arrow from the top at Garcia's and Kendrick Park. And then we do plan to close to the roundabout is that. That's a good question I would say, you know, maybe, you know, 100 or 150 feet or so, something like that. So it's south of the roundabout. Correct. Yeah. So it's north of the pray street. Exactly yep. Okay, okay. Yeah. And so you might remember that part of this original grant proposal was to look at the intersection of pray street cottage street and triangle street. So definitely looking at that further it became technically kind of infeasible to to make improvements at that intersection. So we've kind of changed course a bit since that happened it's a very physically constrained site and there's utility polls that come up right against the sidewalk so making improvements in that area proved kind of a logistical challenge and would have involved moving utility polls to find room to build new curb ramps and place their flashing beacons in the right place. So, you know, with these types of grants where we're applying very quickly and coming up with ideas, sometimes that happens where we don't have all the time in the world to review all the proposals carefully but luckily DOT was flexible enough to allow us to switch focus to along East Pleasant Street and to construct a new side new crosswalk over to Kendrick Park. And similarly, part of the original scope was along pray street to paint the crosswalks on pray street and after we got the grant DPW informed us that you know that wasn't really in there. It was kind of standard or downtown design standards that kind of would be setting a new precedent for painting crosswalks that kind of cross into parking lots as opposed to, you know, typically they reserve the crosswalks for road crossings but along the street these are kind of gaps in the sidewalk that lead towards parking lots and so, you know, unfortunately DPW did not, was not supporting that project. And so we've again kind of switched focus more towards flashing beacons and the new crosswalk along East Pleasant Street. May I say something? I think that DPW wasn't opposed to painting crosswalks across those driveways. What they were opposed to was using this thermoplastic material that's, you know, expensive and hard to maintain across the driveways so painting with normal paint is within their, you know, realm of doing things, but having these thermoplastic crosswalks at parking lots was not. And they were reluctant to do it there because it would set a precedent for elsewhere in town. And then they would be forced to have thermoplastic crossings at all of the driveway crossings and that's not feasible within budgets. So I just wanted to make that clear. Thanks. And then here are just a few pictures of the new crosswalk and curb ramps that have been built. This one is, you're kind of standing at the spoke looking towards the people's bank with the new thermoplastic brick. And if you recall there wasn't any tactile warning surface here. The curb ramp. I'm not sure where you are. We would be at the intersection, excuse me, the intersection of prey street and East Pleasant Street kind of looking south in this case, kind of towards the rest of downtown. So this crosswalk has been redone. Similarly the cross the sidewalk in this area, almost 200 feet of sidewalk from the spoke, you know, almost down to where the new Garcia's restaurant is crossing prey street and then almost up to the people's United Bank that sidewalk has been replaced. And then here are the two also two other crosswalks that have been repainted. One is you're standing at the people's United Bank and you're crossing over East Pleasant Street towards Kendrick Park. And then the other one is you're kind of at the facing Kendrick Park here at the intersection of North Pleasant Street. And you'd be able to get over to the park that way. And again, these are the thermoplastic crosswalks just painted. Yep, yeah, so the thermoplastic is nice because it's much more durable stand you don't have to repaint it that often if really ever you know can last decades, and it has kind of a raised surface to it imprinted in the asphalt. So it's better for like slip resistant as well which is nice and kind of when cars go over it has a little bit of a rumbling effect to make drivers more aware of the crosswalk. And there's tactile surfaces at each end of the crosswalk, and then the crosswalk itself has, how would you say contrasting colors so yeah. So that would be helpful for the visual impairments. And they're wonderful. Good. Yeah. So now I'm just going to switch gears slightly to look at the drawings for the new crosswalk. So I'm going to pull up the DPW drawings here. This shows the project site on the left here it's. So this would be considered a mid block crosswalk because there's not really it's not at an intersection per se but it's an important crossing. For pedestrians, you know, someone might be parking over the prey street lots or they're you know having lunch or dinner at Garcia's and then wanting to cross over to go to Kendrick Park with right towards the new playground. But one of the goals of this crosswalk was to make that crossing possible. And I think to my risk point there's, there's not another crossing between prey street and the roundabout, which is a you know fairly large gap for kind of the downtown area so this would fill that gap in having a crosswalk to get to cross over East Pleasant Street here. The bottom right picture here you can see that it, it kind of leads, it would lead right into the pathway that leads up to the Kendrick Park playground. And I can zoom in a little bit here you can see that obviously some curb ramping would be necessary because right now it just leads into a you know six inch granite curb so that was part of the technical kind of design that the DPW had to work on was how to make that, you know, do that curb ramp and make that possible so I'm just going to go over the next tab here to show the actual drawing. You know essentially kind of at the top here is Kendrick Park. They kind of meet that asphalt pathway and have a concrete curb ramp that leads down into the road or sorry into the sidewalk. There would then be a landing area that has a 2% grade where you can wait to cross the road, a tactile warning surface as you go on to the crosswalk. It doesn't say here but I did confirm with Paul Death here that this would be the thermoplastic kind of crosswalk as well. 10 feet wide with one foot kind of white strips on either side of the crosswalk. And then similarly kind of come up towards you cross East Pleasant come up towards Garcia's restaurant. You have again a tactile warning pad, a ramp up, and then a landing area up on the sidewalk with a 2% grade. And that kind of just ties directly into the existing concrete sidewalk on along East Pleasant Street. So yeah I think that we all you know I think this fills an important gap in the kind of network of crosshawks we have downtown and is a logical place for one given that the background kind of dead ends right now in the sidewalk so it's a logical place to have an opportunity to cross the road there. And yeah we're excited that Mass DOT was kind of amenable to us using the funds for this project even though it wasn't in the original scope. So I'm just going to go back to my original slide show and just have kind of a closing slide. This shows the gap at triangle street that we hope that we're going to fill that gap in the sidewalk. And kind of here just our next steps moving forward so we're going to determine the flashing beacon locations for downtown once those, you know, planning for when those are delivered. We're going to, we need to get town council approval for that new for the new crosswalk I just showed you so we need to kind of confirm the design and then receive approval from the town council. And part of, you know, coming to you today is to get some feedback on the new crosswalk in advance of us speaking with town council. Yeah and then just to finish up the grant to build the new crosswalk fill in that gap on triangle street and then install the rapid response flashing begins so that's going to kind of be our work to implement the rest of the grant from here probably until, you know, the middle to end of the summer. So, yeah, thanks for the chance to chat with you all about the grant today and I'm happy to kind of take some comments and discuss the new crosswalk on East pleasant street or if you have any questions about the grant overall. Does anybody have any questions or comments or observation. I'm really at least here I'm very happy to hear about the audible beacon things. And I do love like I said before I really do love the new crosswalks that have been put in. I speak as somebody who's vision impaired I find them so much more visible and wonderful. It's too bad they're so expensive to you know, put all over. Thumbs up. Awesome. This is Tori I'm happy to hear that. Can you hear me. Yep. I'm happy to hear that you've dug up the sidewalk by Garcia's and you're fixing that because that was difficult to maneuver. Absolutely. Yeah, every everything sounds great. Thank you for that question. If you're walking down cottage street from chestnut, you know, like walking on the big part of cottage street, and you get to triangle street. No changes are going to be made to that particular intersection at all. That was part of the plan that's the part you knocked out. There would be no, no changes made to that intersection of triangle and cottage and pray street there. Yeah, unfortunately the, the, the private property like parcel lines come up right up against the, the sidewalk and in some cases the sidewalks actually in private property so that's one issue. Also, the utility polls just make it very difficult to fit any more signage or, you know, bump outs in that area. Hold on a minute. I have to get rid of a phone call. I'll be back, but I have a big problem with this. Hello. I'm in the middle of meeting. I got to go. Bye. There you go. How are you there. My art. Did you want to. It looks like Tracy is raised your hand. Did you do you want to. Yeah. Can you hear me? Am I, am I. Yep. So the purpose of this. From at least from the blind people's perspective is that the roundabout isn't usable. And you get to the end of like, if you going up cottage street and you turn right to go to what used to be the corner with the light. Remember with the island in the middle used to be the corner with the light, and then you went down East pleasant into town. That that's part of the roundabout so there's no way to cross there anymore. And so we thought that the place to cross would be straight across cottage onto pray street. And then you'd walk and do the right angle and pray street and that's how you would avoid the whole need to go across that part of the roundabout, which has no signals. And so what you did is great. And it's necessary. So what you didn't do is solve the problem, which is, there's still no way to get from the north to the south because the roundabout is there. There's no controlled intersection anymore. Does that make sense to anybody. Yep. So what, what you did is great. What you didn't do is solve the problem, which I thought was the whole purpose of this project project. So maybe I'm just not getting it. But, and I'm not sorry that you're spending the money that way because it's better than not spending it at all. And you did do something that's very important to do. So don't get me wrong. The purpose of the project was to do something about the fact that that roundabout is unusable. So it's not possible to walk from the north to the south across triangle street safely. And it still isn't. So, I, I don't know what to say. I mean, there's nothing to say at the moment. I wanted on the record that this does not solve the problem that the roundabout created. Right. I believe Chris restaurant. Okay. So I think that this, you know, raises an important issue of something that needs to be dealt with. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough money in this grant to move light pole or move utility poles and acquire private property in order to do this intersection properly and we weren't aware of that when we went after the grant. And so, you know, this is risen to a point where we understand what the issues are, but we need to, you know, go after some other kind of grant to get enough money behind us to do what needs to be done at this intersection. I mean, I hear that. And I'm not what I wanted to be real clear that what you did sounds very logical and really good. And you fixed up some of the sidewalk on East pleasant street that was pretty bad. And the sidewalk. When you do get across triangle street on to pray it goes through a bunch of parking lots, you know little broken curves here and there busted up this and that, when you're using a cane, it's really hard to know where you are. It's really hard to know when you're on the street so it's, it needed a lot of work to make that that essentially. What do we call that that's a walk a work around for what the what the roundabout did needed a workaround and that was the workaround. And it needs a lot, you know, it needs sidewalks, and it needs. It needs the you know that crosswalk to be secured I understand what you're saying. And I understand that you need more money. And I would hope that that would be the next thing that you would apply for to do, because the roundabout created the problem. And this doesn't solve it. I just wanted to keep an eye on the time we're at 22. We want to make comments about the proposed crosswalk along East pleasant street in front of Garcia's which was formerly known as formerly. I think we endorse the, I mean I what I heard was that people think it's fine to build the crosswalk from Kendrick Park to. What are you, what are you calling it there I don't even know what what you call it, but it sounds to me like it's a good idea to put the crosswalk in there. I mean does the group, do you have any comments about that I mean about looking at it doesn't go to the right place I mean it seems like you've thought that through pretty well. I don't know anything about, you know, you know how how it actually hits the curves and all that but sounds like a really good plan to me. And the police already said it is does anybody. And the photo showed that when it crosses over to the park side. It's a direct access to the walkway, leading towards the playgrounds. And so that so it aligns well with both sides of the road. Right, that looks good. Yeah. And then as has been showed that cross proposed crosswalk will have the thermoplastic crosswalk with the contrasting colors and they'd be the tech cow surfaces at both ends of the crosswalk themselves. From what we know now does anyone want to make a motion to endorse the plan as presented the plan for the new sidewalk is what I mean. Does anybody want to make a plan about the new sidewalk. The new start I'm sorry crosswalk. Yeah. This is Tori I'll make a motion. Anyone want to second it. I can. Okay. So, all in favor of endorsing the new crosswalk from Kendrick Park to. I'll make a motion to call it that it's hitting Garcia's Garcia's. Okay. Okay. All right. So does anybody I'm. Let's see. I guess we can just vote Tori. Yes. Sarah. Yes. Elise. Yes. Ruth. Yes. And I'll vote yes for the sidewalk. I would like to make a motion that we tell the town. That the work is not done. And that. The work that the intersection at triangle and cottage. And pray street itself still needs attention. Yes. Because of inaccessibility. And I, that's a motion. So I would, I'd like the DAC to go on record. That we. Do not support. Or that we, that we think that the town should. Make every effort to secure funds. To. To make the intersection. Yeah. To improve the intersection of cottage and triangle. And pray street sidewalks. Yeah. Right. As a high priority. Yeah. Yes. Okay. So I have a second. I'll second that. Okay. Tori. Yes. Ruth. Yes. Elise. Yes. And I will vote yes to, and I, okay. Thank you. I understand the money problem. I do understand the money problem. But it's. And I hope the other table. I hope they will look at this issue. That is raised about these roundabouts about. Pedestrian crossing. So they don't repeat the same thing. I'm part of our village. Roundabout. Because it's a big concern in my mind. How are they going to do it? I think pedestrian crossings could have been handled. Safer with the present situation. Improving what there's. Right now. So roundabouts. To me, it seems like it's not very safe pedestrian wide. It's not very safe. It seems like it's not very safe pedestrian wide. In crowded areas where there's be lots of traffic. I mean, pedestrian traffic. Yeah. Well, we already talked about the reasonability of putting. Roundabouts and heavy pedestrian areas. But it doesn't seem to have had very much impact. Yeah. But. Okay. So as long as we have two motions that carried. And I think it's important for us to support what you did. I think the idea that you'd came up with for. Building a crosswalk there is a good idea. Thank you for attending today's meeting. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. This is. I had a couple. Sorry. I had a couple of questions for me. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I had a couple of questions for Ben. Is he gone? He's still here. I'm sorry. So I guess. One was just the whole question is. And I agree, Myra, that particularly on the roundabout, one of the really complicated things. Frosting from the north side of the roundabout where you're talking about. Like where the bank, like Bank of America. And things are over to one East pleasant street. Is that it's really challenging because there's two different islands. So there's actually like five different segments that somebody needs to cross. And. You know, and that particularly, I mean, with a lot of these intersections, I've just found that it's so helpful to actually go there as a pedestrian and cross them and also think about. How bad it can be if you are visually impaired or even 100%. You know, blind. Or if you want. And you actually, the other thing too is you actually need to change directions. It's not a street. You actually need to like curve. And so, and that's one of the challenges with that roundabout on two different sides of it is that there's two different sides where you have like five different crossings. But my question for Ben was just about, you know, you mentioned that there's the five rectangular rapid flashing beacons that have been ordered and like, are those being, I know in the preliminary presentation that you gave to the council, you were looking at putting some of them near the roundabout. And if that's like still in our consideration. Yeah, where are you going to put them? That's a good question. Yeah, no, it's a good, it is a good question and something we're still trying to figure out. I think. They've been ordered. We have, we had enough funding. We thought for five pairs of the audible flashing beacons. Our intent, and I think still our, still our intent is to place. Round flashing beacons within the roundabout, specifically on the south side, kind of from Kendrick place over to Kendrick park where there are kind of three different crossings that need to be made. So we thought that was an important area.  And it could actually, you know, it could actually detract a little bit from the safety of those crossings if drivers are kind of could be distracted by all the different sets of flashing beacons that they come across as they come up and down East pleasant street. So we are trying to, you know, find a way to prioritize those, those crossings and figure out kind of which ones would have flashing beacons. And, you know, maybe we end up putting them at all of them. But I think we still need to kind of look at that closely and come up with a, with a plan, but certainly the plan was to put some at the roundabout crossings. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think that one thing that could be considered, I mean, like precepts is having them also at that problematic side of the roundabout that Myra is asking about from the Bank of America side to one East pleasant because it is complicated. And I would also encourage as I had commented, you know, I think I brought this up at the council meeting too about having them extend, if you're going to have rectangular rapid flashing beacons on a segment of street having to extend all the way across the street and not just like to an island or something because I thought that that could create some safety issues. And I think actually, I mean, one good model you could look at, I mean, one example of a number of rapid rectangular flashing beacons along one street corridor is in Northampton. If you look from downtown Northampton, going south towards the Northampton Eastampton exit, that stretch of street actually has a number of them. And to me, they, as well as a number of roundabouts and they seem to all work well together. I think people just realize that this is a corridor where they're supposed to go slow. So I don't think that that's distracting to drivers or that there's so many of them that it's a problem, but I haven't asked Northampton about their experience. The whole topic of where to put those is a big discussion. And thank you. I can't believe I didn't think of it. Tracy, thank you for bringing it up. It's not something, I mean, it's something that has to be brought back to this committee about where to put those beacons. And I think we have to go out and walk around and figure out where they would be best used as part of, we need to be part of the decision about where to put them. And so Myra, I know too that Ben, sorry, go ahead. Yeah, so Myra to that point, Ben and Chris are scheduled to come to the attack meeting on the 24th and discuss it more. I'm discussed the project and also asked for the tax endorsement on the crosswalk. So I'm sure we'll have questions for them then. And for me personally, I'm very happy to see that that one missing segment on Triangle Street is being fixed because it's been, it's been troublesome for a long time. So that's just the one right on the roundabout side of the cottage triangle intersection.  So that's a really important link. And I had always liked the original project proposal that focused on linkage between Kendrick Park and the community pool, right? And that's why I think the town had talked about improving that whole corridor. So I mean, that's, that would still be our priority for tack too, but we can talk at the attack meeting. But thank you very much. And Christie, do you have something to add? Oh, I just wanted to say I'm glad that Guilford will be there at the tack meeting because I think his point of view is important in this conversation. You know, we're juggling a lot of different input from a lot of different points of view. We have Guilford, we have the town manager, we have the town council, we have tack, we have DAAC, the planning department, you know, and we're trying to satisfy all these different points of view, including the state. So I just wanted to put that out there. But I also wanted to say that the town council did give the town manager ultimate responsibility or say in where the rapid flashing begins go. And so town council is, has given that over to the town manager. So that's a topic of conversation that people can have with the town manager. We agree that this is a serious issue, but at the same time, you know, I think we have to take into account what Guilford says about vehicular safety as well as what Myra and this group is saying about pedestrian safety. So lots of different points of view. And hopefully some of those will be worked out at the TAAC meeting on the 24th. Thank you. So perhaps we could move on to the next big portion of the meeting. In the interest of time, we have about 25 more minutes left. Okay. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. So the next item is discussion and with. Advisory committee chair, Tracy Zafian. So Tracy is going to provide a broad outline of the things that the TAAC is doing that might benefit from some input from the DAC. And sort of starting that conversation. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Somebody mute. Yeah. I'm getting a lot of the background. So. Thank you. So, I'm Maureen. I did have a question. I sent you that like three page summary of the TAAC. Did you send that around to the DC members? No, I did not. Okay. I didn't have a chance to read your email. So I did. No, that would be great.  So I want to just, you know, I've been asking, I've been talking with Myra, I think, since we were first talking about roundabouts last spring. And I expressed interest in coming to the. The AC meeting. So part of the reason for that is that. You know, I just think that there's a lot of overlap in interest, particularly the TAC does have a lot, the tack does have a lot of interest in accessibility issues. And, and including we have some new members you've explicitly expressed interest related to pedestrian concerns and so on. So I'm just a little background on me. So I had been on the public transportation and bike committee back in probably about 20 years ago. So long, long time before the TAC and Guilford was the, that committee's liaison as well. So he's been here a while. I mean, in those, in those days we used to have, I mean, the committee was somewhat small, but we did have a number of people who always came to our meetings, including from the senior center from five colleges, from UMS transit and so on. And so it really was a coalition of people. And it was really powerful and helpful to have everybody at the table together. And one of the reasons I had reached out is because there have been some cases where there have been items that I see on the DAC agenda. I do try to attend those meetings when I can. And because these issues are all of interest to me. That I'd also think like, wow, TAC is also thinking about this, like, for example, even the shared streets grant that Ben was talking about, like TAC was never asked to weigh in on that at all. And I know that, you know, triangle is an important corridor for us and so on. But I also see some cases where things have cons attack. And I'm like the DAC really, I really want to know what the DAC thinks. And the questions about accessibility are just so important even for framing how myself and how TAC members think about these issues. And I remember with Kendrick Park, when I first saw the Kendrick Park plans and it came to, I think, the TAC before DAC. And I said, well, what about, you know, we're seeing the plans from DPW where I say, well, what about accessible parking and things like that?  And so it was like, but wait, this is a huge piece if we want to have this place that's welcome to everyone in the community. I mean, I can tell you, I know we don't have a ton of time. I can tell you a little bit just about my background. If it's of interest, I have been thinking about transportation topics for a long time. You know, I've worked in transportation and planning and safety and research most, you know, for a few decades. And I've also been involved personally, both, you know, serving as a citizen member. I've been involved with some advocacy groups and so on. I currently work at the UMass transportation center. And there I do a lot of research and I support research for the state duty, including the shared streets program. And I do have two graduate degrees. One is in a masters in planning, like land use and planning, a typical planning degree. And I also have a master's degree from MIT, specifically on transportation. And I'm just also just as I was, I'm really interested in equity and accessibility and accessibility in general, I mean, around transportation, particularly around safety and access, but I'm also interested in them just in terms of general access and equity. So I've been involved, you know, educationally and on other issues as well. And this is really, how do you think, how do you think we can communicate about the issues that we had in mutual? Yeah, I was really happy to see, for example, that like on the question of the crosswalk that it is coming, the town manager asked for both, or maybe it was a town council. I'm not sure where it came from, but they asked for the DAC and TAC input. So I think it's just, you know, maybe periodically, you know, we can be on each other's agendas or whatever. And just also, I mean, I know that I always want to, again, TAC and my TAC colleagues would agree with this is that we always want to hear what DAC thinks. Can you send us a schedule of your meetings? Do you have them already? Yeah, I mean, we typically meet on Thursdays. We typically meet on the first and the third Thursdays of the month. We've been meeting at 530. There is a little conflict with TSO. And I know we did move our March meeting, for example, because it's like spring break. So we're meeting on the first and the fourth Thursdays. But I can send those to you. I mean, we typically decide just a few months ahead, but it's usually in the evening. And we try to have it before TSO.  So I had sent Maureen just an overview of TAC because there's a lot of questions about what we are, what we are. I mean, I think there's been some people when TAC was shut down over COVID, there was some conversations that were happening about how well there shouldn't even be TAC anymore, that we're redundant with what the council is doing. We see ourselves really differently. And also that we really focus, I mean, the council has to do everything, you know, they have to be involved in many different domains. Whereas we were focused on transportation. And we're focused on it in a comprehensive way. You know, where we're looking at how can we improve our transportation network and services, you know, in terms of accessibility, equity, sustainability, safety, all of it together. And we're not looking at it project by project, but also how some decisions affect other decisions and so on. And so the three page memo I sent to Maureen and that hopefully she'll distribute after the meeting was just, you know, summarizing that and summarizing how the TAC has been involved in different decisions, including related to the roundabouts. We also have some crosswalk guidelines that we just sent to the town manager for getting approved and forwarding to the council. Those have been sitting around, I guess, they were originally drafted in 2017. I know that DAC had feedback at that time. That feedback was incorporated. And we just sent it forward again because again, it was never formally adopted. One thing that we've been looking at a lot and talking about a lot is the winner access and maintenance with the sidewalks and curb cuts and the bus stops and so on. We do have a new member in our committee. He just joined us for the first time last week who works for UMass transit. And he feels it is definitely the responsibility of the transit authority to clean around the bus stops. It has been an ongoing, what's that? UMass transit or the PBT? He works for UMass transit. And he says when he comes across, you know, a bus stop that really needs to be shoveled out, but he calls UMass transit and says we need to get over here and we fix this. We're really glad to have him on our committee. I know that the GOL had looked at updating the bylaw on snow and ice and snow and ice removal, which is by, you know, section 3.40. And they didn't get to it. It's on the list of items that they carried over. So I'm hoping that that will come back to them. I mean, there is, I know that you had sent around the article. I mean, that was a letter from where was it?  Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. I mean, one of the things that I found, so I personally have really been, because I walk all the time. I personally have been trying to, you know, looking at where there's like poor sidewalk shoveling and so on like that. And I was a little, you know, when I went on the website, I originally submitted a request through C-click fix, Which is like, it's touted on the website. and I put them in there. And that actually goes to DPW. And what they said, they looked at my, what I filed and they said, well, you know, that's not our issue, you should contact the police, case closed. And I was like, wait, it's still not accessible. And so, and then I went to the police website, and there's no information there about sidewalks or anything. So I finally ended up emailing, personally, you know, emailing just a general information at police. And I finally got, I finally got a response. And I was told that in those cases to call the police, if sidewalks aren't shoveled, you call the police. It seems a little odd to me. And I also don't feel totally comfortable about calling dispatch and having them send, you know, a weapon to officer over to somebody's house to say, make sure you shovel your sidewalk. But so I really, I mean, I know that the community safety working group is not focused on those types of issues. But I do think there are a number of calls that maybe they should not be handled by weapons officers. And so, so I have called a number of times about sidewalks. And also about with some of the rental properties about sidewalks being blocked and so on. And I mean, I'd also be curious about how many fines are actually issued on the sidewalk. So we do have a $50 fine. It's up to $50 per every 24 hours. And anyway, I hope the GOL will start to look at this again. We're also interested in the better lighting and pedestrian areas. You know, we've talked on and off with Guilford about that. And also just the idea. So there is a Amherst bicycle and pedestrian network plan that was approved. I mean, it was completed by the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission in 2019. It's a pretty long document, but one key component is maps that show the priority parts of the network for bicycles and for pedestrians. So a few summers ago, we updated, TAC went through it, you know, section of the map by section and we updated it. There were some little quirky things in there from the GIS from the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission. And we asked for those to be updated. We're hoping that there'll be an intern who can help with that work. And then that could go, those maps and the plan could go to the Council for approval. But we use those maps in guiding, you know, what we're thinking about where priorities are and things like triangle are really important. So, I mean, a few projects. I guess in the interest of trying to figure out how to, how to draw a good line of communication that all the people on both of these committees know about so that if you're dealing with something that we need to know about, we can know about it. And if we're dealing with something that you need to know about, then you can know about it. And like, for example, with these beacons, the town manager is going to determine where they go based on, as Chris said, input from everybody. And, you know, when you get input from everybody, you make decisions that aren't good for anybody, because you have to. And I don't, I don't know how we can work together on, on stuff like the beacons. Is he going to ask you where the beacons should go? We didn't tell him where the beacons should go. I mean, well, what Chris Bressup is saying is that she's saying that the council, you know, in terms of the public way policy that they put the decisions about beacons to the town manager, like it's under his discretion. So I guess if the council members did feel like such decisions should actually come, you know, to the committees, then that would have to be revised in the policy. I mean, there are some other elements, including the location of the crosswalks that do go to the council. That's why, you know, Ben and Chris came today. Well, we didn't know anything about the beacons. We didn't know we were going to be asked about them. We didn't know we had no a priori knowledge of any beacons and any possibilities of making, you know, recommendations about beacons that we just heard about sitting here. That's not the way to do it. May I say something? We weren't really asking you about beacons today. We were presenting crosswalk plan and we were updating you on the status of the Mastio T project. So we ordered beacons as a result of the original plan that we had in mind, which involved the Prey Street, Cottage Street, Triangle Street intersection. When that didn't come to pass, we had this order for beacons that's been sent out. So now we're going to receive beacons and we need to figure out where they're going to go. And that conversation hasn't really started yet. And Pat will be involved in that conversation. And we will be involved in that conversation before the town manager makes a decision. That makes sense. That makes sense to me. Before I want to let Pat speak. Go ahead. Thank you. I just have a small suggestion, just like I'm a liaison to DAAC, I'm wondering if you couldn't appoint a member of DAAC who attends TAC meetings and if Tracy could get a TAC member to consistently come to DAAC so that you're communicating fairly directly on a regular basis. So a small idea. So Pat, I had raised that idea with the town manager, you know, just looking back to that history of when there was always that attending, like whether you would have some cross members. He thought it was challenging enough to fill the slots, not to do it formally, but you could do something informally. And I personally, I do try to attend most of the DAAC meetings. So I'm happy to help be that liaison. And I do care about... TAC meetings, but you have more than we do. And I, yeah, we meet twice a month usually. And I brought up the question with the beacons just in part today, just because I know that Myra, I was just thinking about your concerns about Cottage Street and the Roundabout and things. And so it was just something that's continued to be in my mind about the beacons. But there are a few projects, I mean, I can talk briefly about and I know we only have a few minutes. So one was this idea with North Pleasant Street at Kendrick Park. I am really glad that in the end, like TSO, and I do think TSO is an important, is important too. And if we make it clear, if the TAC and the DAC make it clear to TSO, you know, that we do want to be referred to items, like not just one or the other ones. A lot of times it may be both. And that would be appropriate. Okay. One thing I heard from Guilford at the TAC meeting last week is that with the redesign of North Pleasant Street, much of it, much of which is intended to improve the safety along North Pleasant Street, West to Kendrick Park, now that the playground is there, and also to increase the parking supply, is that there is so much on the DPW's plate this year for construction projects. And also there's questions about funding and that there is no dedicated source of funding for those improvements, that those improvements are going to be delayed. So that really threw me for a loop at first because I know when TSO was considering it last fall, they kept saying, now Guilford, what's the time frame that we need to get back to you in order for this project to be on your construction schedule for the coming season this year. And so I think a lot of people were assuming that the work would be done this year. So one thing I've been thinking about, I did reach out to Guilford on this yesterday, and I haven't heard back. It's just the idea about what traffic calming and safety improvements can still be made even in the absence of the major construction. Some things I'd like to see, and I haven't discussed with TAC yet formally that I've talked to a few members, is still have the street become one way going north because that will cut down on the cut-through traffic next to the park and also still move the on-street parking from the west side of the street. It's currently permit parking over to the east side of the street adjacent to the park on the lower part of the street between Hallick and McClow and it's already on the park side. And the TAC has brought up a number of times about the safety issues related to all those driveways and the people who are parking in the permit parking and the very poor sightlines on the west side of the street. So I'd really like to see some improvements this year if possible. Did they say they were going to do that? So the thing is, I guess the question is because the whole, the project as a whole isn't proceeding until at least next year. Like, is it possible to still do some of the safety improvements now and, you know, get them happening? And again, Guilford hasn't given feedback on that. So the other projects, you know, that we've weighed in on are the Pomeroy Village. I mean, I understand how the DAC has a lot of concerns around roundabout. I understand those concerns. I know in the fall when TAC was researching it, I sent a lot of research and links and I've read a lot of materials about the accessibility of roundabouts and how to make them safe for people with visual impairments. There are a lot of things that can be done. And in general, I mean, as a person who looked at a lot of, you know, as a traffic safety researcher, I mean roundabouts are, particularly one lane roundabouts are much safer than signalized intersections. And the risk of fatalities at roundabouts is really limited, particularly with one lane roundabouts. You cannot have T-bone intersection. You cannot have people red in red lights. You can't have any of those like types of crashes, which are really high fatality crashes. The most of the crashes are fender benders. You still do not want those to happen, of course. But in general, they are safer. The other thing that TAC was asked to weigh in from the old TSO, which I think it would be important for DAC to weigh in too, is about North Pleasant Street, north of the UMass campus from Eastman Lane, where there's the roundabout up to the center of North Amherst, Pine Street, Meadow Street, and where hot is. We've walked that area. We've done site use of that area two different times. And we're writing up our findings and we'll be sending, we'll be sending those to TSO. And I know TSO will be taking up this item again, and they do want to reach out to all the constituencies. So I hope that they will be in touch with DAC at that time. And I would encourage them to do so. And one of the things along that corridor, there's some pretty poor sidewalk sections along there, including some very narrow sidewalks, sidewalks where there's a lot of trees that have overtaken the sidewalk over time. Also, where Crestview Apartments is, where the bus stop is, there have been two fatalities there of people getting off the buses and crossing the street and being hit. So some of the plans that the DPAW is developing are to have more crosswalks as well as to have a roundabout and slow down the traffic there. So, and another project that the TAC has pushed is about East Pleasant Street north, like north of UMass, where the sidewalk currently ends, going up to Pine Street. So that would be an important corridor too for access. I don't know how much people would walk. I mean, like Myra, how much demand there would be for walking along there, but there is an area where a lot of students and other people still live. So that's something that the advocates in North Amherst have been talking about. So I believe the sidewalk, well, I don't know, it's going to be surveyed. It's current rate, it stops, you know, it stops when you get to UMass, like to Eastman, right? And so it doesn't go north of Eastman. So this would be a continuing corridor to provide that access to all those neighborhoods up there. There should absolutely be sidewalks there. So what's your answer? Yeah, if you read the town manager's report to town council from when was that last night, I guess, there is a mention of the DPW working on surveys along East Pleasant Street in preparation for designing and constructing sidewalks. We've heard a lot from neighbors up there. So I just wanted to give you that report. And it was something originally approved by town meeting. You know, town meeting looked at it, and so there have been people asking for it for a number of years. Well, for our sake, I hope that the town actually owns the property where they have to put the sidewalk. And in terms of in town sidewalks, one that came up at the council meeting last night that's also come up at the attack meetings is the questions about Amherst College, you know, Amherst College is building that new building on West Street south of like the center of town, where they're going to have like a huge, you know, building over there that's going to have classrooms and spaces and it's going to and people pedestrians are going to be crossing 116 on the hill going down the hill to get to the main Amherst College campus. Amherst College has been asking for a number of different crosswalks along that corridor there, in addition to the ones that are already there. I know the DPW has expressed some concerns about the safety of those crosswalks particularly when you have these poor sight lines with the hill. So that's something that TAC will be looking at and I think the DAC should weigh in there too. I mean, one concern I would have is that if there aren't sidewalks, if there aren't as many crosswalks that it could sort of be a free for all as used to be on the UMass campus, where in the absence of crosswalks, students are crossing everywhere. So if there's that many students on the West side of 116 next to Amherst College, thanks. So it sounds like can you send us a list of those projects and when you're likely to be taking them up so that we can know maybe to come to your meetings to talk about those. Those are future projects and I don't know what your current projects are the same as ours. I mean, so we don't set, I mean, we have this network plan, you know, about like these are important corridors and these are areas where we know there are issues. But as an advisory committee, we're not doing a lot of our own work on them until directed to do so by the council. Got it. Okay. Right. So it goes to the council or it's a request from the town manager for TAC to look at it. And so, I mean, we've identified these areas and, but again, like they're not, we're not really doing too much with them until the TSO says, hey, we're going to be looking at this and we want tax feedback. And of course, I'd be happy to keep you in the loop on those. Yeah. Pat, Maureen, Chris, how do we, who is the person who we should ask to make sure that any transportation or pedestrian related streets, you know, streetscape related questions that would go to TAC also come to us and that would go to us also go to them? Who is, who's in charge of making sure that that connection is made? I have no idea. Chris? So I would suggest two things. One, the person who's really in charge is Guilford, but you can imagine Guilford is very busy and probably doesn't have a lot of time for communication. But what you could do is try to get each other's agendas.  Tracy can send the TAC agenda to Myra and Maureen. And Maureen can send the DAAC agenda to Tracy and Myra. Did I say that right? No, I didn't say that right. That works fine. I'll ask Amber Taylor who works in the DFW is the one who sent out our agendas. I will ask her to add you, Myra, to receive them. Okay. Okay. And Maureen, you can ask, and I think that we'd all benefit if Tracy received our agendas. I think I usually look them up, but yeah. And our new TAC liaison, we've been with that liaison since the summer, but the counselor recently chose to have Andy Steinberg be our attack liaison. Okay. Because he had been involved with the public bike and public transportation bike committee before. And he also, I think, used to be a liaison with the DAC. Okay. So he has a big interest in these issues. And he has a lot of background. You could occasionally communicate with Andy about absolutely look like they belong to both. Okay, I can do that. Yes. Yes. Right. No, this is good. I think we really should work together because we don't want to work at cross purposes and we don't have contrary interests. So I think it would be really good. And I think just wearing just my would just wearing my research or hat.  I'm happy to look at because I look up research a lot for my job. Yeah, wait, no, that's fabulous. You've actually been a great friend to this committee about a lot of things because you've told me things that I didn't know. I don't know half. I don't know a tenth as much as you do about this stuff. So my family thinks I need another hobby, but it's okay. We are. We have ran out of time. I just wanted to get out. So we'll thank you, Tracy. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. And we have no minutes, right? We don't, unfortunately. But for next time, there were two things that we wanted to add to the agenda, one being that Berkshire Eagle article and there was something else that I just emailed Myra about. I can't remember. And I said, oh, let's make sure to add it to the next meeting agenda. But while we think about that, I actually have a schedule conflict for the next April meeting. And we can hash this out via email. But I if needed, but I was wondering if folks can meet on April, hold on a second. I think she wrote that she could not. Yeah, Sharon could not. I get that. All right. Well, let me send out a couple dates for consideration because April 12. Does anyone know they have a conflict with the 19th? I'm fine with the 19th, at least. Okay. I don't, I don't actually know. I think all right. Probably not my preferred I could probably do the 19th, but it's not my preferred. I'd rather do the early thing. I think it was the fifth. Would that work with everyone else? The fifth at 1130? Oh, wait, I'm sorry. I don't think that. I don't know what date you gave, Maureen. I can't remember what the date is. April 19th. 19th. Yeah. No, but you gave an earlier date. I'd know I didn't actually. Oh, I thought you did. No. So I cannot do it on Tuesday, the fifth of April and Tuesday, the 12th of April. Okay. Well, why don't we, we've done this before with sending around other times and maybe we can do this via an email. Yep. I'll do, okay. I'll do that. So we can, all right. One time you gave us a bunch of times and we shows and we actually worked it out. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Sweet. Okay. Alrighty. Well, thank you. This was a, this is very interesting meeting. And hopefully, hopefully, you know, some, some, something will come of it. I'm very sad about the Triangle Street, I have to say. I was looking forward to being able to cross that street. Great seat. Did you have one final comment? Yeah. I just had a final question in terms of working together. I mean, I would love to work with the AC related to the whole snow removal and sidewalk access bus things. If we can figure, if we can make a little progress before next winter, that would be awesome. That would be great. We wrote a letter each of the last two winters to the town manager, especially because there were businesses that were closed that were changing hands. We figured we didn't need to get into a turf war about whose job it was to clear something when it wasn't even clear who owned the property or who was responsible. And I don't know how it actually worked out. And I don't, I never heard back from the town manager. I mean, I know for the I'm sorry, let's continue this conversation at the next meeting. All right. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Bye-bye.


We demystify what goes on behind the therapy room door. Join us on this voyage of discovery and co-creative conversations. This is The Therapy Show, behind closed doors podcast, with Bob Cook and Jackie Jones. Welcome back to the next episode of The Therapy Show with myself, Jackie Jones and Bob Cook. What we're going to be looking at and really interested in this is the rising, well no we're going to look at the rising online therapy next time but what we're going to look at this time is how to work with people with intrusive thoughts. What are intrusive thoughts, Bob? Well they're very normal. I mean I don't know how you see intrusive thoughts but I think most people have intrusive thoughts. I mean if you think about from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep or we're just talking to ourselves. So are we talking internal dialogue? Is that intrusive thoughts? When people talk about intrusive thoughts, what they're talking about is thoughts that may appear when they're anytime during the day. So they may appear and it might be things like fantasies or they might have harmful thoughts against themselves or they may think things that they haven't thought before or they may obsess about things or they may think oh well I haven't shut the fridge in my house, I've got to go back. Those are these sort of thoughts which I believe are in the subconsciousness but may raise their head and people don't know why. Okay so yeah they're quite normal, I have those in awful lot. Yeah I think the most important thing to think about is that their thoughts. Now the problem is of course if people then may, if they go the next step in action them then we have got a problem.  Yeah 100% agree with that but I talk with my clients so often about thoughts and the thoughts create our feelings and then we have a choice whether we act on them. And we you know hopefully we don't act on a lot of these compulsive, intrusive thoughts might suddenly pop up and we don't know why we think them and I think then people get worried about why they think about them but actually if you know if you don't action them they might my advice would be just to accept them and let them go. Yeah but for somebody that does have an awful lot of overthinking it's it's quite easy to say just let them go. For me one of the things I talk a lot with people about is that thoughts are neutral until we give them energy. A thought is just a thought whether it's a good thought, a bad thought and a different thought. I want chocolate ice cream thought to anything it's the same makeup but some we give more energy to and kind of build a story around it. And then like you said exactly why am I having that thought? What's it about? Where's it coming from? What if I act on it? What if this happens and then it becomes a bigger thing than what it needs to? Well I agree with you and you know often intrusive thoughts might be linked to OCD and you might start worrying about them, things that pop up in their head about I've left the keys in the car or I keep thinking about whether X is safe or not or I keep thinking about Jo and I don't know why I do. So these sort of thoughts might suddenly pop into people's heads and they are internal and not external unless you carry them to carry them out and put them into actions. There's not really a problem. The problem is when people start worrying and worrying and overthinking and the real problem then is if they act out some of those thoughts. So how would you work with somebody in a therapeutic way if they came to you with overthinking, intrusive thoughts, worrying? Some of the overthinking can be protective. Some of the intrusive thoughts can be protective. Most of them are. Survival, a lot of it. Yeah and keeping self safe and thinking about whether I've, as I've said, whether I've left the phone or not or will I've left the keys in the car or whether. So some of them are protective, intrusive thoughts aren't they? So that's not a problem. Yeah. The problem only becomes when the person's obsessing, overthinking, getting the anxiety with the thoughts or even may worry about acting them out or if they move to actions then it may become a problem. But the first step is to normalise the process. And then if a person, if it gets to a place where they are so worried they might act them out and their functioning gets impaired or they find it hard to concentrate or they confuse themselves or they feel they're going to act out on these thoughts or some thoughts might appear in a way which isn't good for them, then that's another story. So the first step is to normalise the process and then if we are going to go just step further where their functioning is impaired in some way or there's a tremendous lot of anxiety which means that they aren't able to stay an adult or they think they're going to act out on those actual thoughts in ways which might not be useful, then we might take it further and ask them to explore their thoughts and see how much, you know, how much it's actually in reality that they may sort of play out these thoughts or these actions and get to bottom of what these intrusive thoughts actually are. Yeah. So that would be the next step. Yeah. And again in a safe environment in the therapy room. Yeah. Go on. No, I was going to say because sometimes clients are okay kind of having the thoughts but as soon as they start to talk about them, certain clients kind of think well now it's a thing because I've actually said it out loud. It's not just something in my head. It's not just internal talking about it is kind of bringing it to life which can cause stress in itself for some clients. Well, it made. Usually I have the opposite experience by the way.  But my experience is usually the opposite with people. And that is once they are start actually talking about the thoughts or what's going on for themselves internally, they usually feel much more reliant, relieved. And instead of repression, you get more relief. Now, but that doesn't mean to say there aren't people who might bring it and bring it alive. And I still not quite sure what you mean by bring it alive. Do you mean that it becomes an entity and they feel compulsive that they're going to act on those posts? What do you mean that it becomes alive for them so they'll get more scared? I mean, yeah, yeah.  I talk quite a lot about myself, but I suffered from postnatal depression with all three of my children and it got progressively worse. And I can remember having an awful lot of intrusive thoughts after the birth of each one of my children. And I got scared when I spoke about it because suddenly then it be, you know, having my head was one thing. But when I spoke about it, then I got more anxious about, I suppose people knowing about it, am I likely to act on it? All those sorts of things, it then became more real to me, if that makes sense. Well, okay, and this is the therapist's job then to listen to the story and normalise the process. Yeah. That's the therapist's job there. Yeah. I was thinking a step further really, where I see intrusive thoughts can start to be problematic particularly with it. And that's in posttraumatic stress disorder. Yeah. So posttraumatic stress disorder, where somebody's had a traumatic experience in the past that often does come out in flashbacks. It may come out in the present in intrusive thoughts. Yeah. So when I think of intrusive thoughts, I think of that process being linked particularly with posttraumatic stress disorder, maybe with OCD. But certainly, those intrusive thoughts can often be a way of replaying the trauma in a way, in an attempt to get a different outcome. Yeah. Or even an attempt to relieve that trauma from their system. So it's very, very common for people with posttraumatic stress disorder to have intense intrusive thoughts that is linked not to the here and now, but to the time of the trauma. Yes. Yeah. That's extraordinarily common. And actually, so it's got posttraumatic stress disorder, it'd be unusual for them not to have intrusive thoughts. Yeah. And I suppose the thoughts then, you know, the intrusive thoughts can be triggers to take them back somewhere. It usually is. Yeah. Absolutely. It's the same as the function of flashback, flashbacks. Yeah. Which is that both triggers, like you've just said, however, the desire of both of them is to have two parts of it. One, the desire to have a different outcome. And secondly, to get the thoughts and the flashbacks out of their system. The problem is, of course, especially with intrusive thoughts, people keep them in inside rather than outside. So I would always encourage people to talk about their intrusive thoughts. Now, of course, but with PTSD, if they talk about the intrusive thoughts, they usually go back to when the trauma actually began or when the trauma actually occurred. Yeah. That's where healing can happen. So for that bestilling with PTSD and intrusive thoughts, as the person starts talking about the intrusive mind, the trauma. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. Just recap over that again, because my screen actually froze, so I'm not sure whether we got that on the recording. Okay. It didn't freeze my end, but I'll say it again. Yeah. When I think of intrusive thoughts, you're correct. I do think about in terms of, you know, people who come in, they overthink, they worry, they find they may act out their thoughts. I have somebody today in an assessment who actually had intrusive thoughts, they overthought, they were worried that they might act out those thoughts, and then they came to see me. Yeah. Yes, I do see people like that. And the other thing I want to say is, intrusive thoughts are linked to post-traumatic stress disorder. Yeah. And they're often triggers to go back to the original trauma. So a therapist needs to trace the intrusive thoughts back to the traumatic occasion to help get some healing for the client. Yeah. So I would always encourage and facilitate people who have traumatic events who perhaps have intrusive thoughts today to externalize them so we can get back to where the real trauma is. Yeah. It's the same with all intrusive thoughts actually. But it's an interesting thing that you just talked about from a personal experience is that it became more alive for you. Perhaps you can talk about that in a minute. But with most intrusive thoughts, you would not only help them get the intrusive thoughts out and the next step would be normalization because it's very common. Yeah. You would also trace back to where those thoughts actually occurred from. What's the process behind them? What's the function of these thoughts? Now, sometimes they're protective and that's fine, so that's not a problem. But they may and usually do link back to some time of distress or trauma or in fact, where they've been frightened or frightened themselves. That, yeah. See, I think that's very relevant where they were frightened or frightened themselves because I think a lot of the clients that I see, it's around anxiety and it's like they kind of pin their anxiety on something. That's what caused it and then the intrusive thoughts start around that. That what if I do that again? What if that happens again? What if I catch a train and the same thing happens and it's all that overthinking and the what ifs, which is a protective mechanism? That's what I was just wondering. You pointed out what I was going to point out. Yeah. You see the protection in that. Yes. Yeah. Now, usually with clients, when they start seeing these thoughts as protective, then the normalization is much easier to process because they see the function of them. Yeah. And then we can get down to what they're frightened of in the first place. Yeah. I'm frightened of being like my mother. I find of being like my father who hurt people. I'm frightened of so they get so they get intrusive thoughts about being violent. Yeah. Just like that father did, for example. Yeah. Or they get intrusive thoughts about thinking about or sexualized young people or they get intrusive. But if you start, if you start helping the person externalize these processes and trace them back to the point of origin or what the scare was, that is part of the healing. The worst process, Jackie, is when the person keeps them internalized. Because if that happens, it's very hard to get any help. Yeah. And again, just using a few of those examples that you've just spoke about, I would imagine with certain thoughts, there's a lot of shame and guilt around having certain thoughts, which is why a lot of people, I would imagine, don't talk openly about the intrusive thoughts that they're having because of the belief that what is the other person going to think about me if I tell them about these thoughts. Absolutely. So that's what I'm saying. Normalization is the second stage after externalization with intrusive thoughts. And I think most people have intrusive thoughts and usually they're protective ones and the person can accept them and move on. The problem comes, I said, when it's linked to trauma, when it's linked to OCD and it's linked to anxiety, then the person might go to a place where they find every day functioning difficult. Yes. Yeah. And I think that's what I see probably most in the therapy room. Which what?  As soon as they're doing something that they think is going to trigger their anxiety, you know, the world is getting smaller because of the intrusive thinking that they've got. That's right. So if we look at a stage plan for intrusive thinking then, encouraging them to externalize those thoughts. Number two, normalization. Number three, encouraging them to see the function of the intrusive thoughts. Yeah. Number five, I think, would be to trace back the origin of all the repetitive processes involved in those intrusive thoughts. And usually, you know, however bizarre the intrusive thought is, if you trace the thought back to that origin, it's the opposite of bizarre. It's perfectly normal. Yeah. And that's when healing occurs. Yeah.  But and they kind of, they're minimizing the thoughts that they're having. They're already talking about how ridiculous it is, or it's stupid, or it doesn't make any sense. Yes. And also they're protecting themselves against perceived rejection or ridicule. Yeah. So that's why they say that. Yeah. Which is why I said, you know, earlier on about the guilt around having certain thoughts and what the other person will think of them if they talk about it. Yeah. So this is all very normal. Yeah. And you are right when you say that, you know, that anxiety overthinking and especially the fear of acting out on their overthinking or their intrusive thoughts may bring a certain lack of functioning. And that's when you need to start to help them externalize and talk about their intrusive thoughts and certainly help them seeing that this is normal and protective. Yeah. And also I'll repeat it again. When somebody's had high trauma and they haven't had therapy or haven't dealt with it and they've compartmentalized, then they often have intrusive thoughts. And the intrusive thoughts are number one, they're protective. And secondly, I think they're aimed at a desire for a different outcome. So with trauma will come flashbacks trigger and will often have intrusive thoughts. Yeah. And many intrusive thoughts, by the way, are as I said before, when people are frightened or have been frightened or have fear that they may act out like their perhaps abusive dysfunctional family. Once they've started to separate out that they aren't that, then healing can happen. Yeah. Yeah. I think it, you know, providing a safe space for them to talk about anything is really important. And it's one of the first things in therapy. I've never had anybody come because of intrusive thoughts. It's always been part of something else that's brought them to therapy. Yeah. It's to do with trauma anxiety, OCD particularly, I think, often thinking about, well, as I said earlier, did I leave the cars, the key in the car, or did I close the door, or did I shut the fridge, did I feed the cat, did I take the dog for a walk, did I do this, did I do that? And the more obsessive the process, the more the overthinking, and the more those thoughts rise up from their pre-consciousness. And then they start worrying and overthinking. So they're all linked together. How long have you been seeing clients now, Bob? I stopped two years ago, I mean, still do therapy intensive, but one to one groups finished about two years ago. But when did you start? How long were you? Oh, 1985. Well, so what, 30 years ish? 36 years, 37 years. Would you say that you would towards the end of your, you know, practicing that you were seeing more people with intrusive thinking than what you saw back in kind of 85? I think the language is different. I don't think people use the words intrusive thoughts back then. It's all a common day phenomena. As languages, as mental health has been more accessible and discussed, diagnosis has changed, language changed. But if I look back in 1985, 1986, you know, those 80s and early 90s, I think people talked a lot about intrusive thoughts that probably just didn't use that language. Okay. So only in recent times, I've heard that language where people talk about they have intrusive thoughts because I think it's part of the mental health lexicon now. But yeah, back. I'm just thinking our lives now are a whole lot busier than what they used to be. You know what I mean? Social media, all those sort of things, access to Google, you know, none of that was around kind of in 1985 and 1986 and things like that, that we've got access to so much more information now that I think sometimes our brains can find it difficult to process that information. And whether you've seen a difference in that impacting on clients over a 36 year time frame. Like when you were saying about, you know, checking that you'd left your keys in the door or that you'd turned the cooker off and things like that. I see that an awful lot. But it's because we're not mindful on what we're doing. Our head is so full of other stuff that we're not kind of in the here and now a lot of the time. So we forget whether we've done certain things because we're not focused on it. Yes, true. And that's why I say intrusive thoughts are often linked to OCD. Yeah, certainly linked to trauma. But if we use transaction analysis as a model to look at intrusive thoughts just for a moment, particularly the perhaps the more intensive or intense toxic narrative thoughts, then we can think of using the PAC model among parents and adult child. We need to start working out where those come from. Do they come from the internalized parent? So they actually aren't, you know, they aren't the words from themselves, for example. Do they come from a scared child, which is what I think mostly. Intrusive thoughts come from the child ego state, whether the person's being frightened or fear. And one thing that is really important about this is to help the clients, how can I explain this, be able to soothe themselves under stress. In other words, you know, if somebody's got very little nurturing parents internally, they aren't so able to soothe themselves or understand the process that when they get these sorts of thoughts, they're very common, it's okay, we can accept them and let them go. But often what they start doing is telling themselves off. So there's a toxic narrative, just like you just said earlier on. So I think TA is a good way of thinking about what we need to help the person internalize, which is a nurturing parent, which they've probably never had, and help them understand quite often that these intrusive thoughts come from a child or younger self-position in response to an internalized parent. Yeah. Yeah, I love that, Bob, yeah. That's something that I do talk a lot about with clients, yeah. I'm being compassionate with that side of ourselves, that scared young child that, yeah. Because often we wouldn't do that to an actual child.  No, we would do the complete opposite, yeah. That's right. So that comes with the territory, how to help people nurture themselves and accept these thoughts as part of a whole process and move on from that and see them as normal. And also at the same time, if those thoughts are so frightening that the person isn't able to function well or regresses or frightens themselves so they get confused or or that process to trace back where those thoughts came from and what's the function of those thoughts and what's the scare about. And I say quite often it's linked to trauma. Yeah. The process is linked to trauma. And also if they've been in a traumatic family situation where they've been part of a dysfunctional system and so haven't been able to internalize a model of positivity, they often get scared that they're going to act out like their mother and father or people they've seen around them which hasn't been positively helpful. Yeah. Yeah, which, you know, what you were saying then it all kind of links together. If they've been part of a you know, a chaotic family and maybe they, you know, there was a time when they were younger where they didn't feel protected or safe, you know, and nobody soothed them, then they don't know as an adult how to soothe themselves at times of high stress and emotion and you know, then it becomes part of who they are. So yeah, it's, it's all linked together. I think self-soothing is something that a lot of us find difficult. We look for something external to make us feel better. Yeah. And if you haven't had in your own history, if you haven't had a model of somebody who is soothing to you or to their partner, then you haven't got that internalized model. You have a high, if you are, I don't know if we've talked about strokes in the podcast, but if you're brought up on a culture of negative strokes, then you haven't had a full meal and therefore you aren't able and distressed to be able to soothe yourself and especially when you're having these intrusive thoughts. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. And I think we have touched on it in the very, very early days. Yeah, positive strokes and negative strokes and yeah, as a unit of recognition from our main caregivers. Yeah. So if we haven't had that or haven't internalized that experience, it's much harder to be able to take care of ourselves in a kind way. Yeah. And the lack of that leads to low self-esteem. Yeah.  Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. You've hit the nail on the head there. Interesting, interesting. So we'll leave it there. No doubt we'll come back to this. It was, I quite like this subject and yeah, I'm interested again to know more about the changes that you've seen over your career, but maybe we'll hold that for the next podcast. The biggest change I think is in accessibility to mental health services, the de-stigmatisation of therapy and counselling and the change in language. That's a long time that you've been doing it, but a long time. A long, long time. Right. We'll leave that there. So the next episode, talking about how things have changed in the time that you've been doing it, we're looking at the impact or the growth of online therapy. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Okie doke, until the next one, Bob, speak soon. Okay, great. You've been listening to The Therapy Show, behind closed doors podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We'll be back next week with another episode.