Seeing that we have a quorum, I am going to call the meeting to order at 6.30. We do have remote participation this evening. We think it's only for part of the meeting, but we're going to proceed as if it's for the entire meeting and if that changes, we will. Councillor Brewer has petitioned and I have reviewed that petition and agreed to remote participation based on 940CMR 29.105. This will be recorded in the meeting. Councillor Brewer, can you hear me? Okay. Councillor Brewer, can you hear me? Thank you. Are you monitoring for her today? Are you monitoring for her? Okay. Let me just explain that while we're trying to make that connection, what we often do is have, when we have the remote participation, we often ask another councillor to monitor for that person so that person has a way of asking to make a statement, ask a question or whatever the case may be and Mandy Johanicki will be doing that for her tonight. Councillor Brewer, can you hear me? I'm going to go ahead and ask that you let me know when she's available. We're going to go ahead with announcements, which Councillor Brewer either has or will make sure she does have. First of all, we want to recognize that Athena O'Keefe is performing the duties of Town Clerk this evening. Over here. Second of all, on March 20th at 4 p.m., there will be a welcome reception for the Kana Kusaki sister city delegation at the Banks Community Center. On the March 20th at 6, the Jones Library will kick off their celebration of their centennial. Even though we will be discussing and hearing the school district's MSBA statement of interest tonight, we will be voting on April 1st. That is also true for the East Street School Affordable Housing Project. In addition to that, on our April 1st agenda, we will be listening, hearing from the Town Meeting Advisory Committee who has presented us with a proposal. After that proposal is heard, we will be referring that proposal to the Governor's Organization and Legislative Committee for further consideration. We also want to note that the Western Mass Public Meeting of the Regional Transit Authority will be held this Friday, March 22nd from 4 to 6. That's brand new information to us. That will be on the UMass Campus at the Campus Center and Room 168 on the first floor. We will have a public hearing of the Finance Committee on the Regional School District Budget on April 4th, 2019 at 6.30 in this room. This will be a special meeting of the Town Council. And while we have a very full agenda tonight, we may possibly take some items out of order because John Hornick, who of course will be here for the affordable housing vote, is not able to join us until 8.30. Have we made any progress yet? So I'm going to ask and just define public comment. We are going to have a couple periods of public comment tonight. One will be on the schools, one will be on the East Street proposal. And there may be another public comment at some point when we actually consider the resolution for the League of Women Voters. Given that, I ask right now whether there are any people here who are planning to make and would like to make public comment about something other than those items. Okay, I see two hands. One in the back. Reverend Kemper, come forward please. First Church Amherst and it's good to see you all again. I'm here to very briefly say something that you may not hear very often, which is thank you. As you recall, we were here two weeks ago and you unanimously passed a resolution in support of our appeal to the State Board of Building Code Appeals. And in large part because of the statements and support of Building Commissioner Rob Mora and Assistant Fire Chief Jeff Olmsted and the Town Manager and your resolution, we were successful in that. So thank you very much. It is really wonderful to be part of a town that has such a responsive and supportive government and our friend Lucio Perez also extends his thanks to you all. Thank you. Also good news, very brief. I wanted to share that yesterday, March 17th was the 150th anniversary of the founding of the North Amherst Library. I have a picture of it, but I don't want to take the time with such a busy meeting to figure out how to get it up there with some time. I'll figure that out. The building that's there now wasn't actually built until 1893, but the original library was founded 150 years ago yesterday. Thank you for that recognition. No other hands for general public comment. Then we are going to proceed with and we sort of have connectivity. Okay. Let me just mention that the slide presentation and all of the other accompanying documents have been made available to Councillor Brewer and she will catch up with us and have obviously another opportunity next week. So with that in mind, I'd like to call on Mike Morris and Anastasia Ordinez to come forward and make the presentation on the schools. So I'll keep with the theme of thinking. So I want to thank you all for having us back. We're here, I want to say late January, talking about a similar topic and I think what we'd like to do today is share where we were, where we are and where we hope to be. I think those are the themes. It's a rather short presentation, shorter than the last time we were here and then see if we can answer any questions that you might have for us. Okay. Thank you. Simple solutions, right? So the first thing we want to share is that you likely have heard from many educators in our schools about the current conditions and Mr. Doniz and I would like to start by saying we're with them. We understand how challenging the environments that many of our staff members work in, 180 days a year and that's the minimum. Frankly, our staff are in our schools many more days than that. Trying to educate the students of Amherst and this, so we put up this quote from Ms. Fay that was a letter that was signed by many Amherst educators. You've received that as well. And I think the thing that I want to highlight in Ms. Fay's comment is that truly the second part of the clause. They're no longer challenges, but in many cases they've become barriers for providing a quality education that our students deserve. So I want to thank, staying with the theme again, thank our educators for doing the best that they can do under the current circumstances that they're in, which I think is nothing short of miraculous considering many of our educators have been in these schools for a great many years. They weren't great to start with and they've really deteriorated since that point. For us, the urgency is high and I want to, we've got the permission to speak for the school committee collectively. And from my vantage point, the urgency is incredibly high to resolve the challenges that these buildings face as soon as we can. So you've seen a slide similar to this. Again, you've heard from us before on this topic, but I know there may be new people in the audience and perhaps I want to add a little detail. So in terms of the summary of the problems that our schools are facing, particularly at Wildwood and Fort River, building conditions, both buildings are approaching 50 years, which under the best of circumstances, the MSBA right now, new buildings built in 2019 would assume that 50 years is about as long as school buildings can function without major renovation or reconstruction. We know that these buildings were not built effectively from the beginning and there hasn't been substantial renovation to date. And I want to put a little finer point on some of the types of issues without belaboring the point because I know there's other slides to get to. So our HVAC systems, as you may know, that for the first couple weeks of school, Wildwood Elementary School had no cooling. And if you remember the beginning of the end of summer, beginning of fall this year, the temperatures were pretty unbearable outside and they were the same conditions that were inside at Wildwood. We do have some capital funds that we've asked for to try to resolve temporarily the situation at Fort River and Wildwood, but they're part of, they're emblematic of a larger issue with our HVAC systems that are outdated and needful replacement. Secondly, our electrical systems. So another capital request we've put in this year is to certify our electrical systems. They're extremely old. The maker of those systems is no longer in business. Fixing those systems is going to be a huge challenge and we're really worried in unsprinkled buildings about electrical systems that are nearing 50 years old that the producer is not currently someone who can come and help us with that. In terms of safety, I just mentioned sprinklers. We saw, I'll leave it there, but we talked about neither building is sprinkler so if a fire happens we're still in the old fashioned way of taking care of it. Our entryways in the buildings are close to 100 feet away from where the main office is. There's access to students about three feet in in terms of the art rooms at both buildings. You couldn't build a school like this before. If we were to propose this to an architect or to the MSBA, they would say you're not taking into account the safety, the minimum safety requirements that we need. And so we're highly concerned about that. From the educational challenges point of view, our classrooms are about three quarters of what are typically sized. What the MSBA would say is about 950 square feet, typical size classroom, Massachusetts elementary schools. Ours are actually about that size, if not larger, but because of the quad system, significant amount of real estate has to be given for hallways for students to get to the rooms, get to the bathrooms, walk through the rooms to get to the other quad where the bathrooms are outside. So we have our students packed in smaller spaces than the state would suggest by about a quarter. As you know, you've heard an awful lot about. It makes it sound better with the music. I'm really not trying to. Well, we keep, I don't know how long we keep trying, but. She's on. Could we just pause for a moment? Absolutely. Thank you. Counselor Brewer, can you hear me? Yes, I can. Thank you. Let the record show that Counselor Brewer is participating by speakerphone and can be heard by all present in the meeting, of which there are quite a number. All votes taken during a meeting with remote participation shall be a roll call vote. Therefore, all at all. All votes the town clerk will ask for the individual votes. If technical difficulties arise again as a result of utilizing remote participation, the president should suspend discussion until reasonable efforts are made to correct that. And if the remote participation is disconnected, that disconnected needs to be noted in the minutes. I have asked each counselor in advance to let us know to look at the agenda. And as I mentioned before, Counselor Haneke will be proxy for letting us know that Counselor Brewer wants to speak. When counts when remote participation happens, the counselor that is. She'll speak by stating their name. Okay. Okay. And we will acknowledge her by calling upon her and the usual time limits apply. Thank you. Thank you. So just finishing up educational challenges. The lack of walls. Full walls that are acoustically that provide acoustic privacy affect all students, but particularly our students who are least served most underserved and across the Commonwealth. Our special education students are students of special needs. Also our English language learner. There's a lot of evidence that that the ambient noise that occurs again certainly affects all students recent study in a neurological journal that talked about ambient noise affecting students, young children, seven to 11 year olds, much more so than adults. So even while adults may be able to manage the noise slightly better having taught at Fort River, I was always in the middle of that. It really did affect me. What we know is even when students are self reporting that it doesn't affect them, it's actually affecting their academic performance, their ability to focus. And finally on the educational challenges, a recent Americans with Disabilities Act audit showed that both buildings had numerous problems in terms of accessibility. We knew that. We knew that from the lived experience of staff with disabilities and students with disabilities in the school. And it put both a finer point on specific areas of that need remediation and a price tag on what it would take to do that. So we have many problems. Again, I could speak for at more length of this, but I think you might hear about that a little later in our public comment as well. So the statements of interest. So simply put that statements of interest are what the MSB requires to apply to be invited into their core program, which is what we're talking about. What the core program defines when you're really trying to either fully renovate or replace the school. And statements of interest using plural because there was two that were shared with you, one for Wildwood and one for Fort River. Statement of interest require boats of the school committee and the town council. So what has already occurred is last week the school committee had a unanimous vote to support the filing of the statement of interest. And now it comes to the town council to either accept or not accept the school committees, what the school committee has accepted in terms of the statement of interest. And the statements of interest really are simply put a description of the current conditions. So when the MSBA, when the state is looking at the many applications that come in, about 80% get rejected each year. They have some baseline of what the identified issues are. And the primary author of that, our facilities coordinator, Mr. Roy Clark is here and he can certainly answer any of their technical questions about anything. He'll be well positioned to answer those. And I think, I hope you were able to read through. I know the font is tiny and I know the length is long. But the statement of interest to a pretty nice job detailing many issues more than I can describe in today's meeting. I know they're each 27 pages and similar, but not identical. So that leads to its own challenges. But they really are a description of where we are. There were hyperlinks to many, many reports over the last 10 years that have looked at our buildings. And so hopefully they were informative for the counselors to understand the buildings a little bit more detail. A lot of what's in the reports too, you can't get.  And I really appreciate Mr. Roy Clark's work to describe that in significant detail. So the proposal. So the MSBA, just to go back for a second, in December when our previous statements of interest were rejected, when I called them and said, how can we improve our chances? How can we strengthen our statements of interest? I heard very loudly and very clearly that what we needed to do is could we develop consensus? Could we develop consensus on some core principles that would help guide us, guide our analysis as we went into, hopefully, the core process that they would support us in funding? And so these are not new. You've probably heard these before, but I think it's just good to restate them. One is that we replace both Wildwood and Fort River Elementary School's infrastructure issues with one building. And really the thrust of that is we need both buildings are an urgent need. We don't think one building can last a decade or more longer as it waits for the other one to happen. We have declining enrollment in the district and we feel urgency to take action now. The second is create a school of approximately 600 students. This came from a lot of community feedback on the prior project that 750 felt like a bit more than people were comfortable with. Some people were comfortable with. 600 is the size that the community is familiar with. Both Wildwood and Fort River had over 600 students in them in the 1990s. And I'll talk a little more on how to get there, but that was based on community feedback we received. Third bullet point is that it creates a school that's either K5 or K6. There's really strong feelings about reconfiguration from the last project. This is not actually taking a side. It's saying if we're going to build consensus, can we remove some variables to attend to the critical needs of the infrastructure of our schools? The fourth point is creates a warm child-centered school environment. I've been in small schools that were incredibly not warm or incredibly cold and not child-centered. I've been in large schools that are the opposite. And with the talented citizenship and the Amherst that would be on a building committee, we want to set a framework up front that we would be able to achieve that. And finally, that we'd utilize a process once we're in the MSBA pipeline that would surveys and engages the larger community throughout the feasibility study. That this is not actually the end. It's the beginning. And based on a lot of the process that have already taken place over the last couple months, we've learned a lot and we would build on that into the future. And really this comes from principles that were developed as we were considering options moving forward. So one was that we wanted to say there were people with really strong feelings on both sides of the last project. Could we identify a reasonable compromise that the community could move forward with and not repeat the kind of dynamics of the past project? The second is that we want, could we achieve where current kindergarten students would not graduate in sixth grade from a building of open classrooms? That's probably the most reasonably aggressive timeline that we could come up with. I think I said last time someone else framed to me. It depends on the age of your kids, how you think about this. But could babies born in 2019 never see an open classroom? Could we make that commitment as a community? Another principle is fiscal responsibility. You know, well, we both were involved in the schools. We're aware there are many other capital projects that are incredibly important for the town to take on. We're not going to stop advocating for the schools. That's not who we are on the school committee or on the staff side. But we also want to be good neighbors and conscious that there are other projects that people care a tremendous amount about. You've all heard about a lot of those. And the last thing I want to do is put project against project. That's not how I work with my colleagues at the other departments of the town. And that's not something I'm willing to do. I think I'm going to transition to the educational advantages of the proposal. And so I haven't actually, I don't think I talked about this as much the last time I was here. But I could go on again for half an hour about the educational advantages, but I'm just going to pick out some of the high points. So provide greater access for students entry into a dual language program with a more balanced cohort model. I'll show the cohort model in a second with the visual. But one of the things that we have now that we're spending a lot of time and energy on is Fort River is slated to have two classes per grade level starting in kindergarten next year in the dual language program and one class that would be in a more traditional monolingual environment. And we're doing, I think the principal is doing a fantastic job working on making that be balanced in the whole school to embrace it. And yet we are concerned about that. That's not the ideal model to have two classes that are going to be sharing teachers and then basically one straight lined monolingual class model. And so this would really allow for more balance and also more access because right now Fort River families have a little more priority because of their proximity and this would change that in a more positive way no matter where you lived in the town. Secondly we have transportation challenges faced by students in special ed programs and those on East Hathie Road which were redistributed in 2009 and 10 to maintain socioeconomic balance. The short story is for many students they're not attending their school that's closest to their residents or that their neighbors are attending. And this proposal wouldn't fully resolve but it would make significant progress to reducing the number of students that are bused outside their neighborhood zone which is something we all care a lot about in the district. As soon as possible you've heard me say this multiple times. It would get us in facilities that are commensurate with the values that we all place in education in this community. And the last point kind of connects to the first around the dual language but it really creates cohort sizes that are familiar to our current model right now. And I'd rather show this visually because I'm doing a lot of talking and there's a lot of words. So one model shows if the new school was a K-5 school and the other visual shows if it was a K-6 school. Let's see if I can use this fancy clicker. I may or may not. Ooh so cool. Sorry I'm amazed by little gadgets. So if you look at the K-5 school for instance you'd have two cohorts per grade level going up. And the reason that I use the word cohorts is that those teachers, those students and those teachers really will act as a cohort. The students will be in one of those two classes every year. The students will mix with the students from those classes because of the nature of the dual language program. They'll function that way and the English and the Spanish teacher in this program will also be collaborating at a very high level. In the other cohort I mixed it up just to show that some years there's variants. We can't totally predict how many students are in a grade level. There's between two and four classes per grade level which is identical to our current schools right now. And a K-6 model if that was chosen for this proposal. Again two classes per grade level in the dual language and two or three sections per grade level in the non-dual language cohort. Again identical to our current model. So it seems very familiar and you know all the research I've read on school size talk about the relationships being the big thing. It's not about the size of the school or how many stories it is and we're not talking about a crazy storage school. But just you know there's schools in New York City where up's the only place to go. It's really about do I know my classmates, do I know my peers, do I have friends in my classes that I can trust and do I have adults that I know. And because of the dual language program it really promotes that to make an even smaller environment within a 600 student school. Frankly we had these size schools not that long ago without this cohort model that were working incredibly well but this actually makes it even feel even smaller. So just to interrupt for a moment I'm wondering Dr. Morris if you can explain to the council perhaps the dots. Oh sorry I've been through this slide a couple times so I apologize if I was going too hastily. So the dots are the number of classes per grade level so I apologize. And there are some that are right so in the dual language it's pretty standard because you need two classes to make that work. In these so you have three, three, two, three, four, three right. So these are made up numbers are not based on any real enrollment because this would be too far out for us to project. But it's showing that there's between two and four classes per grade level in the non-dual language cohort. Thank you. So I think I'm going to turn it over to my colleague here to talk about the process. Thank you Dr. Morris and I also want to take a moment to say thank you to all of the town councillors for attending the six listening sessions that we had. It was really last time we were here I had mentioned I had said sort of imparting thank you for your partnership in this process and it really was a partnership because you all came out to at least one of those sessions. Many of you came out to many of the sessions and so we really appreciate that it made a very big difference. So I just wanted to walk us through the process both for the folks watching at home and here in this room who may not have been there in person. So in December as Dr. Morris mentioned the MSBA senior staff had advised the district to include a consensus statement in the 2019 statement of interest that showed readiness to reenter the core program. And this consensus is something that we've talked about a lot during the past few months. How do we know that we've achieved consensus you know how do we get to a place where it feels like people people feel like they're being heard. So what we came up with was hopefully something that gets us started on the right foot moving forward for this kind of engagement around these issues with our schools knowing how much our community members care about this. So first we had three listening sessions for the district staff that was facilitated by Dr. Morris attended by educators and by staff you know who work in the offices. We then had six community wide listening sessions which you all attended who had a professional professional facilitator that was there. And he and his team were in charge of both you know managing the conversations but also in note taking and making sure they were capturing in all the questions and the issues that were coming up during the sessions. And these took place at varying times and locations around town. And there was a final summary report which has been linked to in this PowerPoint presentation but can also be found on the district website. There was information included in the local newspaper. There was a dedicated page on the district website. A videotape presentation on Amherst by Amherst media and made available on YouTube Dr. Morris explaining the entire proposal. There was a regular superintendent's weekly newsletters that were sent to families that are in the district. There was an online feedback form that was emailed and posted online. And we recorded the information that came back from the feedback form that was included in that final summary report which you all have received a copy of. And then there was dedicated discussion and public comment during six posted open meetings of the Amherst school committee. And during all of those conversations that we had we had members of the public that were coming and asking questions. But we also had a lot of emails sent to us independently as school committee individually and also as the district superintendent received as well quite a few. So there's a lot of engagement and I think that we heard from folks from varying sides of the previous project but also a lot of new voices that we had never heard from before. Which made me feel better because it felt like we were actually engaging people that had not previously had a position on things but felt strongly enough that they wanted to make a statement. They wanted to make sure that they were being heard. So again you know I think that there's a lot that we've learned through this process. It gives us something to build upon moving forward and this is actually what we're hoping we can carry through in the next iteration of this. Thank you. So I think that you know given me the conversations that we've had the folks who have talked to us through this entire process most recent application process as well as prior. We've heard a lot of you know concerns and questions that have been raised and many of these questions and concerns that were raised were actually put into or synthesized into an FAQ which was shared back during the listening sessions. And provided some of the basic answers I guess to you know the most common questions that we received. But we also wanted to share a few of these with you here tonight because we think that it's important for you to hear back if you haven't had a chance or you haven't heard them directly. To hear back some of the questions that we've received and also hear the responses that we've been sharing with folks throughout the entire process. So I'm going to turn it back to Dr. Morris so he can review these in a little more detail. So one that we continue to receive and I get the I really understand the complications of what I'm saying and the question. But if the consensus statement that's part of the statement of interest talks about a 600 student option. Why would we have to study or why would we study all the other options that are required in the MSBA and the MSBA has been clear on two things. They wanted us to enter with a consensus option to study and that's what a feasibility study is as you study options. And that they wouldn't absolve us of studying their requirement which is three options including a renovation of the current site. So there's no conflict in that from MSBA. I spoke to them a week and a half ago just to make sure I was crystal clear on this which I thought I was and it confirmed it that we would move forward. We would be studying this option as well as other options. But what the MSBA is looking for is do we have consensus that if we can show that this option is feasible. It's viable both financially and educationally. That's something they're looking to know that we have some consensus about moving forward in that way. It's not binding. It doesn't mean that it again absolves us of anything else in their process. One of the questions that happened at the listening session that I hadn't heard before but I wanted to put out there because I also agree with what Ms. Ordena said and the listening session was wonderful because it pushed all of our thinking on questions. Some that were predictable and some that were not. And there was a parent at Crocker Farm who was really pushing me slash the group to think about the specialized programs, the specialized specialized programs. And while Crocker Farm is a preschool there from a K to 6 level they don't all the specialized programs are at Fort River and Wildwood currently. And if we're making a change would we also consider it because she felt like her child wasn't getting to see the neurodiversity that the students at the other schools are getting. And that there was some loss in that. And would we use this as an opportunity to open that conversation. And as you say in the answer we've not discussed that but it's certainly if there's community interest those things can be discussed once we start entering the feasibility study. Why 600 students instead of 750 you know as I mentioned earlier it was being responsive to community feedback was trying to find that reasonable compromise. And we feel like there's multiple ways to get to about 600 that can work well educationally and also fiscally for the town. So a lot of interest in what do I think is the best way to get to 600 and for me it's just simply too early to suggest a preferred model. All of you are welcome at the next Tuesday night with all of your free time not being at town council meetings that the consultants looking at both sixth grade to the middle school and seven through 12 consolidation. They'll have their final report and they're presenting it at the regional school committee meeting on the 26th at 6 30 if anyone's interested. You're more than welcome to come but that's only one piece of the puzzle that's looking at the infrastructure not the education. So we'll be talking over the next couple months about next steps regardless of this process. About the results of that that project but I know there's a lot of interest in that hot button issue for our community at Renault or new construction. Another one is specific project site location would be better to be a wild river to Fort River. Similar answer not to sound like a broken record that that's something that would be talked about in the feasibility study. We'd be led with professional designers specialists engage the community on that and the school building committee which would have a member of this board. A member of the school committee myself a principal and many community members on it would be making those decisions after hearing from the community. So I am fully agnostic on those questions right now and that's part of that process of feasibility. That's why you have designers and other people come in to weigh those options talk to the community as well. Similarly how green will the new building be. There's a lot of interest in giving the net zero bylaw and just the community ethos around sustainability. In that question I've already heard lots of really strong opinions frankly about you know new construction would it be net zero. Is that better than right. I don't have an answer and you don't want me to have an answer right now. We want to have professionals come guide that process to get community feedback and input once people see what those designs actually would look like. So I know a lot of my answers are school building process committee would do that but that's part of the MSP process. If we put answers to these questions in a statement of interest we get some not so happy responses from the MSP and I think for the right reasons frankly. So just two more slides. The cost implications of waiting right now actually a bit above 4% right now in the cost escalation school building projects in New England. A one year wait would cost the town about 1.5 million for this proposal and over 2 million for other most more costly proposals. So the challenge is that escalation continues to rise and with every passing year these projects get more expensive and as you know that 4% above inflation. So it's not just getting more expensive adjusted it's actually literally getting more expensive for the town with each passing year. Our capital plan which I know you've seen request capital expenses over two million dollars per year and the longer we go and waiting the more capital expenses will come with buildings this vintage. A lot of these items will be sunk cost even if we did a renovation. Some of the things that we'd be replacing until you literally rip them out and replace them are really just putting band-aids on and their expensive band-aids and frankly they're needed band-aids because our staff and our students are in schools for seven hours a day in buildings that have real problems. But you know fiscally I'll just say that sunk cost items are painful task for you know and I feel like I need to do it and we need to do it. Because that's what our students and teachers and our staff need at the same time fiscally it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to continue requesting sunk cost items. Finally that in the past you know essentially year and then moving forward we've added 2.5 or plan to add total 2.5 maintenance and custodial positions and we value our custodial and maintenance staff none of this is a negative. But certainly if you ask the principals in a perfect world what would be adding you know with some other costs getting better this year it wouldn't necessarily be maintenance. And really if you look at our per square foot custodian rate it's very good it's just the frank reality is that our buildings are incredibly hard to maintain. Things go wrong all the time and it really is a challenge for us to be proactive. So we could think of any number of things that are more directly connected to educating students that we'd love to be including in our budget. And right now this is what we're primarily adding in our budget for next year and we're doing it because we need to do it because our staff and students deserve that. But certainly if we were mapping an educational priority list it wouldn't necessarily be what we would be looking to do. I think I'll turn it back to Mr. Ordonez the chair to close out the presentation. So you know we had our meeting last week with the Amherst School Committee and the committee wanted me to convey to the town council a few different things that they felt very strongly about. One was to ensure that you understood that every single committee member at this point has expressed a very strong sense of urgency about the conditions at their schools in Fort River and Wildwood. And you know there was I will tell you something that I saw just a few days ago from a community member who had sent over a video of a leak in the ceilings in Fort River with water literally pouring out. And this is following a particularly you know heavy rain and snowfall that we had. These are the conditions that we continue to hear about and see for ourselves on a regular basis and that we hear reported to us by our students and by our educators. And so at this point every single committee member that I have spoken with and the superintendent administrators have repeatedly said we must do something and we have to do something now. The other thing is the school committee also wanted me to express that we really believe that we have heard consensus at this point for in favor of this proposal. Again we have been you know the past few months requesting and hearing feedback from the community across meetings via email social media what have you. And while people do not necessarily agree on every single detail of this proposal they absolutely have expressed to us that they feel this is a reasonable compromise. And we've heard this from all various sides of the previous project. And so again we do not believe that consensus needs to be unanimity that everyone is going to agree on every single aspect of this but we absolutely believe that we have heard consensus for this proposal. And then finally that from the MSBA's viewpoint you know consensus means a close or unanimous vote from both of these bodies because we are the ones that have to sign on to these applications. And so we had a unanimous vote as Dr. Morris mentioned from the school committee and we're looking to you now hoping that you will also see the value in the work that we've done so far. And we have a commitment that we've expressed to continue listening to the community in whatever next phase of this application or pipeline hopefully that we get accepted into. We are hoping that we can turn a page in the history of our schools right here in Amherst and that we have an opportunity to make a huge difference for our students and for our educators. But we need your support in order to make that happen. Thank you. So let me just explain the first round is to allow the council to ask questions and so forth. And then we will actually move to public comment and there may be some need to come back to the superintendent and the school committee chair for clarification. So let me just say first of all I want to thank my fellow counselors as well. I if my notes serve me correctly there were no fewer than five of us at every meeting and sometimes as many as seven. And so we took it seriously. We came out we listened we didn't talk except once in a while we had to clarify when our next meeting was and so I feel like we did live up to our terms of a partnership in terms of listening. The other one thing I will say is that we have also received many emails. I did not take the time this evening or today to count them all up. And from those emails we are also we see a trend as well. But with that let me ask counselors to raise questions etc. Yes, Dorothy. I have questions about the little dots. Sure. The cohorts. So the picture on the left. Does that mean that say for example those children in that model will spend the next five years together. So it would mean that within those cohorts. Yes. So let me let me say this differently. So let's pick on I'm going to just make it. Let's say we were a kindergarten or you were this you were in this blue dot classroom. It means when you went to first grade you'd probably have roughly half your class from kindergarten and half the class from this group would would go with you to first grade. You know because we do some mixing of students but it would mean that you would not be in class with students that came from this cohort. So then the follow up is for the English language classes which is where there's more dots. Do they have some of the similar sense of traveling with people they know? Yes, exactly. Okay. Questions. Kathy. First of all I want to commend you on the listening sessions. I went to several and one of the brilliant things about them as you took us to the elementary schools. So you got a real physical sense of the difference in the schools. And the kinds of questions that people had and I like the summary very much because it's both a summary summary but then you get a flavor of unanswered questions. So there was a very strong endorsement on continuing to do what you've just started which is regular updates, surveys, decisions get made. So I want to encourage you to keep doing that. And I have a couple suggestions on the SOI, the Statement of Interest itself. But I don't want to sit here and say I have some stronger wordings, some slightly different wording and I'm just going to pass them through Lynn so that you get them later. But as a few examples I think you can make a stronger case that the town is committed by talking a little bit more about the Fort River feasibility study. So just namely we put $250,000 into it and we not only looked at whether the site was buildable but we looked at how might you do zero net energy. You know some beginning thinking through what this might look like. So we've done some with a full renovation. Well you know what they, but we started to do some of what MSBA is asking us to do, you know, like knock the whole thing down and build a new one or talk about something in between. So pointing out that we invested in doing that early on. And there are a couple places you could add maybe a sentence so it's not a lot more. I also thought this piece was one of the strong positive statements that I heard in the listening sessions that this school might not feel so large because there are cohorts moving in it. You don't see that. I don't find that statement anywhere here, you know, that you're coming up with, you know, involving the town with thinking about it. So putting that somewhere in a little bit stronger that it's in a like clause. And then so those were my two main points. And as I said I'll just lend my comments on a beginning on page six where I think the process that you laid out was here's a possible framework that's a compromise. What do you think about it doesn't come out on your page six. It almost comes out as if out of that process these ideas came out rather than people were reacting to some well thought out ideas. So my last comment is just a question. I thought the work on Fort River and then the work in your space study group on what does the middle school have room does the high school have room you know. Would you want to start prefunding at least a look at Crocker. So when we're in the budget process right now on a small amount of money to say a space study of Crocker is it filled. We would be in a better position if we get a yes go ahead to know more. And I think that's in this year's process. So it's not in as a request right now. But I think it again is is a strong statement that this town is behind it. So that's I just want to close with my sense. You could put a stronger sentence that their sense of urgency and that the town is behind it and have that as a closing part. So those are just some suggestions on that's what I was hearing to additional comments or questions. I just want to speak to the one of the concerns I've been hearing from a few people is the the loss of small schools and neighborhood schools. And so I my default is research going to research and full disclaimer. I didn't do as much research as I would have liked. But what I did discover as a definition of neighborhood schools was having two to four grades with two to four classes within a grade. And that's what I'm seeing over here in this diagram that we're not going to go beyond the four. And so would you say that we're still staying within that idea of a neighborhood school. Yes I mean yeah the reason I pause is that neighborhood school means different things to different different. So I'm sensitive to the two folks to one of the educational benefits who don't feel like they go to a neighborhood school because their children are bused outside their neighborhood. So I think that's why I had a little pause to your specific question though. I apologize for that. Absolutely that we'd be staying within the two to four classes per grade level. You know that cohort model absolutely. If there are any specific advantages that we might be losing with a single building. I wonder if you can look at those specifically and then address those like how would those be addressed in the in the new in the new proposal. So I think you know the probably the most challenging thing to think about is there's another change that's going to accompany this one if this all goes through. And that's really what the feasibility study is about is to identify all the variables. What models might we look at. How do we make decisions on that when we're at a binding place and then communicate that and get tremendous amounts of community input from all sorts of the community including those who who weren't present at the listening sessions around that. So you know I think it's a little bit I don't want to sound again like a broken record but I think what we're trying to do is apply for a grant with you know some level of consensus. And for me some of the details that you raise very you know very real question very real points that has to be baked into how the feasibility process goes forward. Feasibility processes have educational required by MSBA educational planners who work on questions precisely like the one you asked. And I think that's why we need a really broad cross section of folks to be on a school building committee to be encountering those ideas thinking about it and also think about some of the benefits. And so I think you describe you know a concern that you have or you've heard about the size of schools. I think one of the other challenge one of the other advantages is when we think about alignment of curricula and materials and supply like there's some real advantages to having some economy of scale. So I think it cuts both ways and that's what we would really be studying in the feasibility study and it's not just about where the bricks go or new construction versus add rent out. Actually what you have to submit has to go through the school committee is an educational plan to define how you're going to make whatever it is whatever model you want to have. How that's going to work and how you're going to mitigate any challenges that come up educationally. And so really the way of process it would process that we would use is that the educational consultant who's part of the architectural team would work with a broad cross section of stakeholders including staff to work in a document that actually gets voted at school committee and then submitted to the MSBA and is a required element of their feasibility process. Sorry that was long winded. Additional questions or comments? Pat? I spent a lot of time in the Fort River feasibility meetings and I was impressed by the fact that the committee was diverse. It came from all of the schools there were and I was sort of proud of the people that were getting together and hashing out these issues. I'm hoping and I'm assuming in a positive sense that that was also true of the Wildwood feasibility study. So there's a certain way in which we've been building consensus for a longer period of time and I think if there's some way to really state that also to go back. Even the dual language program is a result of the failed co-located schools because we've talked about it for a long time but we made it. Thank you for making that by the way. Additional comments? Dorsey? I would just endorse both Kathy and Pat's comments and I am hoping that the feasibility study is going to be a meet, it's going to go to all households. In some way or another because I really feel the need to make sure that the whole town is behind this that we have real consensus that it's a full and meaningful process and that people are given the chance to look at different cost comparisons so that they can understand why it, you know, what looks like a majority of people have agreed on this. I mean, we don't know that yet because we haven't contacted everyone but I think that we just need to get more information out to people so that they can compare all the different options and see what the merits of this one are. So I just want to thank you for one of your earlier slides that talked about the feasibility study and the requirement that we'll still be there to investigate more than just this proposed solution because one of the biggest concerns I've heard throughout this process is that it might foreclose some options or this proposal potentially forecloses some options that might be necessary depending on all of the unknowns that we know. So I thank you for making clear that it does not at this point foreclose those options because we don't know so much about what would need to go into during a feasibility study things to get us to that the current proposed five agreements. Other comments. I want to make sure that we all clearly understand the goal is to get the funding for the feasibility study which also then puts us in the queue and getting to the queue is where the long term prizes, okay, which is to get the state money for whatever we decide to do. Okay. I want to make sure just put it out there in layman's language, okay. Are there other questions from the council? We have a very robust audience here with some of our notable leaders from our school district as well as students, teachers and other people. So I'd like to see a show of hands and I'm going to have to stand up to count or ask Mr. Bachman to help me of all of the people who would like to make public comment. So we see approximately 20. That's why I love about this council. So if we go with three minutes, that means we have 60 minutes of comment. Perhaps we have configured a way to do that less. At the same time, we really don't want to prohibit the discussion. And I also want to point out that we do have another discussion or if you will, a vote on this in two weeks. But what we would like to do is to ask those people who are either students or teachers because we know you have an early day tomorrow. And we'd like to give them the opportunity to go first. So we have one very eager volunteer to come forward. Good evening. Please state your name. My name is Joy Wood. And where you live and where you work? I actually live in Chickapee. That's okay. But I work at Wildwood. Thank you. I'm a fourth grade teacher at Wildwood and have been so for over 12 years. I have had the opportunity, the fortunate opportunity to be a part of a great community of educators and learners coupled with the unfortunate issue of being exposed to a number of issues that the Wildwood building has. About seven years ago, I was located in a classroom that I was having a severe allergic reaction to. I was consistently itchy, uncomfortable and gradually developed pandemic eczema. I went further to have symptoms evaluated and tested. The results came back as being allergic to mold, mildew and dust mites. As a result of these findings, I was moved to a classroom with no carpet and run an air purifier consistently, which I still continue to do to this day. This room that I was referring to now is currently known to be one of the rooms that has one of the highest levels of carbon dioxide. The teacher who resides in that room now suffers from chronic sinus issues and often has headaches. I share this personal experience to say that as a member of the Wildwood community that cares about our population of learners and educators, it has been time towards making a change. There has been consistent evidence throughout the years whether it be observational in nature or experienced as a health issue which demonstrates immediate need for learning spaces that are healthy and actually conducive to learning. We have some wonderful custodians and administrators and others doing the best they can to mitigate the situations as they arise, but it is not enough. Oftentimes, those of us that are removed from the situation can sympathize in the moment, but may forget that these are our children, families and friends that experience challenging conditions on a daily basis. Too often, it takes a severe situation for a call to action which then thrusts us as a community into reactionary mode. I would encourage you this evening to assume a more proactive stance. One that thinks of students of Wildwood and Fort River as our children and teachers and administrators as our educators. That we are a village taking into account all voices and thank you for taking the time to listen. Thank you for your comments. Next please. We just so you know the council does not comment back. It's not that we're not listening. Hi there. Hi. My name is Diane Chamberlain. And I'm Nicky Effie. And we came intentionally as a trio. We came intentionally as a trio representing the administration of the three schools. I live in Leverett, but I'm the principal at Fort River School. And I'm the principal of Wildwood School. I'm the principal of Cocker Farm School and I was just talking to my colleagues there and we tallied up that between us we've got 67 years of experience working in the Amherst schools and approximately 90 years.  So I don't think we need to present any new evidence to you, but I think what we wanted to make clear is that the situation that we have now is untenable. And we know it does not allow our students to achieve at their greatest extent possible. And I'd like to commend our faculty and staff for doing an outstanding job educating our children under circumstances that are far less than ideal. But it is time that we move forward with the statement of interest because as you noted it gets us in a queue. It doesn't make an instant gratification kind of situation evolve from up for us. It's going to be a long process and we can't wait any longer. Our children's futures are really in need of dire need of support. And the thing that I've thought about a lot is as you're going to hear for the rest of this for the next hour is how immediate the situation is. This is a situation that needs to be dealt with now. This is, as Joya just said, our educators need this. Our students need this. And we are primed to continue to do even more exciting things in our buildings. But the buildings themselves cannot sustain what we want to do in terms of the project based learning or really hands on work that we're doing with our students. The second thing I want to make a point about is I know there are concerns about building community. And that's something that I want the people of Amherst to trust that we can do. This is something that as educators we have done this. We've done this through a shift already nine years ago I think almost in the redistricting. And it's something that we will work really hard to create a new vibrant community with a 600 student school that you can build small communities within a larger community. Again, my name is Derek Shea. I've lived here in town for 24 years. I worked for the schools for 22. I would just reiterate, I'd say two quick things, but just what Nick was saying here, that the notion of a 575 or 600 student school doesn't frighten me in the slightest. And I go back to, I've known Lin for quite some time, I go back to Fort River days when I worked there way back in the 90s, early 2000s. And we had approximately 575, 600 students. And I can say for sure that there was a large number of people in the building, including myself I think, who knew every single student and knew something about every single family who came into the building. And we certainly made that happen I think in a beautiful way. I would just say this, I'm the principal at Crocker Farm School. And I shall tell you that we are not without our warts and struggles as well sometimes. We could certainly bring the same photographs with the water coming from the roof in recent weeks. But we are in a slightly different position, right? You can come to our school any time in the morning and the buses will drive up and you'll see a large number of students very excitedly sort of getting ready to go play in our playground and have a wonderful bright start to the day. They will then proceed to go to a classroom where every single classroom in our building has a beautiful big picture window, right? There's four walls, there's a door where you can connect to the next classroom if you want to go next door and connect with other people. You can come and have lunch with us in our cafeteria. And again, it's not completely 21st century but it is beautiful, it's got a huge big cathedral ceiling. So if you want to have 140 students to sit and have lunch together, they can talk with one another without it sounding like it's too loud and without maybe teachers or counsellors myself saying, please stop talking, please be quiet. Well, you shouldn't be quiet because you're at lunch, have a good time and talk with one another. But we've got this beautiful big ginormous ceiling that allows that to happen. So I think I can say with almost certainty, and we do have some warts that we would like to fix, at Crocker Farm School our students, our teachers and our families really like to come every day.  And partly it's because of the physical shape of the building and how beautiful it is. Again, my kids went to Marks Meadow, they went to Wildwood, I know a little bit about Wildwood. I was at the high school, Crocker Farm. We certainly need a new school. It's not, I think, something that is just a wish, it's something that I think we need. I want to thank you very much for letting us talk even early so we can go home and go to sleep. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, it's on. Okay. My name is Julianne Hines and we live on 54 High Street in Amherst. And I would say my first comment is that this is an issue that no matter really what way to look at it, there's a lot of people on the different sides of the issues who both have really good points. And I think the most important thing is that from some of my teachers back there to myself and most of the townspeople, we all, no matter which side of the issue we fall on, care that something needs to be done for our children, including myself who previously attended Fort River. So I personally am on the against side of building this new school simply because of small details for the first part, small details like how there's the bus loop in the new design of the new proposed school at Wildwood. You have the bus loop and then you have a hard surface play area for like four square and basketball in that bus loop. Those are small things that are fine, but in that need to be changed. But there's a lot of those little details that make for an unsafe situation in and of itself where you have three or four buses all in the circle. And then you have the kids trying to cross through the buses like it's not a good idea. So that's my first thing. And then my second thing is that would we, I want to make sure we build a building that doesn't last us 50 years because our old buildings are only 40 years old. We're discussing about replacing them where this town hall building in my house were built in the 1900s in the early 1900s and are still standing without any of the issues that the schools have. And I want to make sure we build, if we build a new school, we build one that has that has that doesn't last us only 40 years that lasts us 100 or 200 years. So I think that is an important thing that we need to think about planning for both for so we don't end up in a situation as quickly where the students are uncomfortable in their own building. And we also don't end up in a situation where we have to build a new school in 40 or 50 years. So just consider that when you vote on this. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Please come forward. My name is Jean Fay. I am a resident of the town of Amherst. I am also an a pair educator working in the Amherst public school system. This is my 21st year. And I am also the president of the Amherst Pelham Education Association. Those that know me know in my role as president that I advocate strongly for the members that I represent. But those that know me really well know that I also advocate for the children and the students of this town. And one of the things that I have heard regarding this proposal is that we can wait. What I want you to imagine is being I want you to imagine being a student who is differently abled and cannot access the same educational opportunities as their peers and being told as that student that they can wait. I want you to imagine being a student who has a respiratory issue and being told that in a building that has air quality issues that they can wait to have a safe building that they can wait to have clean air. We can't wait. Our buildings are being held together with Band-Aids. Our maintenance staff are doing their best to keep the buildings upright and to keep the buildings open. We're running out of Band-Aids. Our students deserve the best education that we can provide all students. It should not matter what your address is whether you have access to a quality education in a safe and healthy building. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm Nicole Singer and I am the art teacher at Fort River. There is one classroom of the more than 20 classrooms at Fort River. There is one classroom where it is possible for a student to listen to a single sound at a time. This is also the only classroom that has four walls full full real walls and windows and ventilation and storage. This is a room that they only spend 40 minutes a week in because it is the art room and I'm lucky that it's mine. I want to see all of my students enjoy the rest of the building the way that they enjoy the art room and learn in the rest of the building the way that they learn in the art room. Up until recently the art room was also the only room in the building that didn't have some kind of leak happening.  To have to be grateful for that kind of happening is very difficult and awkward to explain to the students. And I know that there are many many details to be worked out along the way about outreach to the whole community about all the different possible plans physically and architecturally for this building. But I'm here to urge the council to please move forward with the SOI and with consensus as quick as we can. It's what we need to make all of our classrooms as good as our one little art room where the kids only spend a precious 40 minutes a week. And hopefully none of them will have leaks than either. Thank you. Thank you. Hello everybody. My name is Laurie Hickson. I teach first grade at Fort River. I've been there for 31 years and in the time that I've been teaching at Fort River since 1988 there were many health concerns that I heard about when I arrived. Mold growth and roof leaks and air quality and noise levels and space concerns and rodent infestation. And some of these issues have been temporarily controlled over the years but never rectified completely. Our custodians and maintenance staff are truly our superheroes. When the roof leaks they rush to catch the water. They replace the ceiling tiles. They scrub the mold growth. When something breaks they work overtime to fix it so we can live in our classrooms the next day. They set and remove rodent traps when we're out of the room. They make sure the bathroom drain issues are plunged. And for over 30 years we've been learning and working in a building that may look okay when you come through for a short tour.  We can say that it's fine to wait but these issues have been really there for a very long time. We don't think that perhaps waiting more would really solve a problem. And so I'm asking you to please understand that although I will never work in the new building our children deserve it. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Are there additional comments from teachers, students and personnel from the schools? I'm Kristen Roder. I teach sixth grade at Wildwood and I live in Amherst. I've been teaching at Wildwood for about 10 years. And I don't want to repeat a lot of what people have been saying but at the same time it might be good to hear it from a different perspective. So a few years ago myself and a few colleagues wrote a letter to the editor of the bulletin about the condition of Wildwood and our concerns about that. I think around 50 people signed that letter showing concern. I have had pneumonia four times since I've worked at Wildwood in the classroom that I'm in. I've had pneumonia before that and I also heard that the teacher before me also had pneumonia repeatedly in that room. So you know that concerns me in terms of myself and other teachers and the students. Today when I was teaching English students were reading their stories out loud but we couldn't really hear them because next story in one class they're running the science fair. In the other class there was a substitute so it was a little louder than usual. And that's pretty much what happens every day. So I tell kids you have to use your recess voice now. But some kids they don't access their recess voice very well. Over the years I've had student teachers and sometimes when I've had student teachers I've sat in the back of the room and observed what goes on in my class. But in the back of the room I'm almost as close to the other room with the open doors. So it's really hard to screen out what the other teachers saying in the other room or what the other kids are doing and really focus in on what's happening in my classroom. So again I'd like to urge you to proceed because all these things happen every day and it concerns a lot of us. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Additional teachers, school personnel. Then may we have people who are here who would also like to speak to the school issue come forward. Sir. Yes. My name is Brian Scully and my daughter is a student at Fort River. There's a problem in both Fort River and Wildwood Elementary schools that has been hurting our children in heartbreaking ways for almost 50 years. It's not as obvious as a bad roof or mold or poor air quality. It's the open wall classrooms that allow the sounds and voices from one classroom to bellow over to another classroom. It creates noisy distractions and an obstacle to learning for many children that I have experienced myself. At my daughter's fourth grade open house while I was trying to listen to her teacher tell us what his plan was for the coming year. I could also hear the teacher in the next classroom telling those parents his plan. The voices and sounds coming from that other classroom created a distraction and I missed about half of what my daughter's teacher said.  Not two classes of active tenure roles all talking, asking questions and making the usual kid noises. Some children are able to overcome the distractions from the open walls while a lesson is being taught. What about the kids who can't overcome them and are not able to focus on what their teacher was teaching? They go home not having understood the day's lessons because they couldn't ignore the distractions and they fall behind. And you know what the heartbreaking part is? Those kids don't blame the open walls. They blame themselves. Because they couldn't learn the stuff that some other kids could learn. They feel like they're not as smart as everybody else, not as good as everybody else. And those are terrible things for any child to feel and they're not true. We tell our children that they can be anything they want to be if they study and work hard enough. Some may want to be a veterinarian or an astronaut or maybe even Wonder Woman. Well those kids are studying and working hard enough. But some can't overcome these open wall obstacles to learning that we have put in front of them. And that's when they begin to lose their confidence in themselves and their love of learning. Don't let our children's dreams die in these open walled classrooms. Please vote yes for every elementary school kid at Amherst. Especially the little ones who are in preschool now and already starting to dream of what they want to be when they grow up. The world can always use another Wonder Woman. Thank you for your comments. Good evening. I'm Catherine Oppie. I am co-chair of Amherst Forward along with Ginny Hamilton. I'm a former school committee member and a one-time Wildwood parent. I fully support this proposal for a single child-centered school building with windows and walls to replace both Wildwood and Fort River. Like many people in town, I recognize this proposal as a compromise. One that can't possibly meet everyone's highest hopes including mine. Someone who has been involved in the details of this issue for years. I also understand the injustice of keeping two-thirds of our school children, teachers and staff in buildings that the president of the Amherst Pelham Education Association says are barriers to learning. And even apart from the horrible infrastructure, there is the open classroom design which causes significant noise pollution and regular instructional interruptions making it harder for all children's learning, but especially our most vulnerable students. Having been a Wildwood parent, as Brian has pointed out, and I've been in that situation, I know from my own experience that anytime I was in a classroom, I struggled to hear teachers teach and students present their work. I also want to support our educators who do amazing work with our children every day. We trust them to educate our children. Let's also trust their calls of urgency about the inadequacy of our current school buildings. I think this town council needs to send a unanimous message to the MSBA. Let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good and the just. The need for a new school or renovated school building is long past due. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Mike Hankey, I'm the resident of Grey Street. I feel like I'm at the helm of the Starship Enterprise. I'm just hoping that you are not Romulus or Klingons. I have a different view about capital projects. They're not all created equal. I'll say what Dr. Morris, who I have great growing respect for and maybe what the town manager would disagree with, but I believe in triage. And when you come into a hospital with a skin knee or a broken arm or you're suffering a major massive heart attack, who gets treated first? Well, both Fort River and Wildwood are having massive heart attacks. So I'm a designer and as a designer who has spent countless hours inside Wildwood School, I've spent over 100 hours because both my kids attended. I enthusiastically endorsed the proposed plan for new grade schools as Fort River and Wildwood schools. Decades of neglect have eroded all of our school buildings at Fort River, Wildwood and the Middle School, the most decrepit condition. One reason for this neglect might be high operational costs of our schools, which diminishes the appetite for capital spending, but that does not excuse the decades of shameful neglect. Now, there's a myth of neighborhood schools. Some insist that Wildwood and Fort River are neighborhood schools. The facts do not bear this assumption out. We do not have neighborhood schools in Amherst. They're more like regional schools and serve large geographic swaths of the town that include many neighborhoods. Very few students walk to school with the majority being transported in a bus or a car. What we do have are strong school communities of students, parents and teachers, and that would not be diminished in a consolidated school building. Let's face it, these are social centers for our town. We've all made many friends at our schools. The myth of the large school. A consolidated school building need not feel large. A talented architect could design a building that would feel significantly smaller than the current grade schools by splitting the new building into smaller, linear two-story wings and including an entrance that was more in scale with grade school students. This is something that Dr. Morris has been talking about. Let's do a child-friendly building, not one that looks like a reject from some kind of corporate office park. As a designer, I know it was designed for the Quad system, but as a designer, if I was the professor teaching those architects, they would get a D minus on the design of Fort River and Wildwood. Fort River and Wildwood currently have sprawling floor plates on one level and were designed to house over 600 students each. They do not feel like small neighborhood schools to me. The myth of renovating the current schools. Fort River and Wildwood were designed for the Quad system of teaching and feature large square spaces that were divided into four smaller, discrete classrooms following the abandonment of the Quad system, which worked well initially. I've talked to a teacher who worked in those for about 10 years and so when you got three teachers that worked well together, it worked well. Well, think about how often you have three people working together that well, right? This has not been successful because HVAC systems that have prevented solid floor-to-ceiling walls from being installed, this leads to sound bleed and distracting environment. Both schools were designed in the shape of a donut with minimal connection to the exterior environment. Why would you do that? The current restrooms are located at the periphery of the building, further blocking windows and light. Another mistake. I'd start to lower the grade to an F at this point. The current rest, a new linear design would provide light and view to the outside world for each classroom. I don't want to see a brick wall outside any of these windows. I want to see green. That's what I want to see in lots of light. Even with the renovation, the current layout of the schools would not achieve this goal and would require additions to meet current needs. To renovate these structures minimally to meet current building and life safety codes, they do not meet life safety codes for energy efficiency and they don't meet current energy efficiency codes. Meeting these codes or renovating it to that level would not solve the configuration issues and would be costly. Solving the configuration issues would require gutting the buildings down to the walls and removing the slab, which has no subfloor insulation. If we submit a proposal to MSBA to renovate one school, it could take up to five or six years until the building would be ready for use. What about the other school? If all went well, that might not be ready for use for 10 or 11 years. Can we afford to wait? Basically, it's not about the buildings. It really isn't. I believe our most valued asset in this community are the students and the teachers. Let's face it, nothing is as valuable as those two bodies. They're both equally important to our town. Thank you for your comment. I'm Jan Clausner-Wise, Amherst resident, but I would like to read a statement from Megan Carroll, a special education teacher at Fort River who could not be here tonight. I'm writing to express my concerns about the current state of the Fort River Elementary School Building. As a special education teacher, these concerns are beyond what others might have. Quads without walls make students have a difficult time focusing on what is expected of them in a classroom setting. Students with autism spectrum disorders and attentional difficulties have an even more challenging task as they often cannot distinguish what things they should be paying attention to and what things they should ignore. After a recent snowstorm, I was helping students transition from one classroom to another in the hallway. We had to move around multiple trash barrels because of a leak in the ceiling. There were other classes in the hallway which created a distraction for my students. There were trash cans in both major hallways to the left and right of the library, preventing a clear path for us to walk. On another occasion, one of my paraprofessionals had to leave her student to get a custodian when the ceiling in the classroom they were working in started to leak. Working with students who have complex profiles makes having a safe space that much more important. The quads may get extremely difficult to contain students who may try to leave and navigating hallways with trash cans adds stress for everyone. Multiple students and staff consistently complain about the smell of mold in my classroom and in the building. Two students are particularly distracted by the smell and report it as a distraction to their work. At least three paraprofessionals and myself have allergies to mold and consistently experience headaches when at school but not at home. The heater in my room rarely blows warm air. When it does, by 10 a.m., the air is cold. Everyone expresses frustration over the temperature. My students experience sensory issues that make school difficult. The quality of the building they come to school in should not further escalate these issues. Thank you, Megan Carroll, and thank you. Thank you. Claire Bertrand, 610 Bay Road. I'm going to read from a woman, Lani Leckman, who could not be here. Lani is the Fort River Librarian. She writes, I strive to make the Fort River Elementary School Library a place where all of our students, staff, and community members feel welcome to explore their interest and passion and to find and nurture a lifelong love for reading. Each student spends 40 minutes with their class in the library every week, but unlike the art room, which we heard about earlier, this room is not quite as welcoming. The library has a steady flow of people and students every day, and she tries to teach and maintain in the library space with the resources, mostly books. But the library itself is making it difficult. The outdated HVAC system makes it necessary to constantly run fans in order to circulate air so the books stay readable. So for much of the year, it means the library is cold. And even though we can't see outside because we have no windows, we know when it rains, there's leaks in the roof. There's a consistent leak that pools water in a light fixture before it gathers in a strategically placed trash can, you've heard that before. Last year, we had to move classes out of the library one day because the leaks covered 20-foot area, and it was too slippery for classes of students to access books. She writes more about it. On sunny days, the lack of walls means that unfortunately, normal hallway noise causes disruption and distraction in the library. So as a librarian and educator, I want our students to see their library as a safe place for kids and books, but our current building doesn't support this. I hope our community can come together to start the MSBA process immediately. Laney Blackman. Thank you. I'm going to ask that if at all possible, when a point's been made, you kind of just move on to other points you might have to make. Be quick. Great. Thank you. My name is Deb Leonard. I live at 401 Old Farm Road. I have an elementary school student in fifth grade, my daughter, and two who went through Fort River and currently in the high school. I volunteered in the library and I'd like to share a short story about that. We were in the library shelving books. Laney, Engage, and I, and there was a lockdown or a shelter in place. I can't get the two straight. And here we are in the middle of the room with no barriers, always all around us. We all kind of looked at each other and I thought, what do we do? There's no protection. There's no doors. There's no windows. There's nothing. So in the many and varied ways that I've participated in the Fort River elementary school since my son started in 2006, there have been so many instances where I like, I think, what do you do? When the ceiling leaks, when we had a leak at home, we had a pipe burst. These guys came in with fans and they stuck holes in the ceiling and they blew air through the ceiling so that the wet material dried out. We don't do that. We can't do that. It's just time. It's just time to say goodbye to the 70s and the open floor plan. It's just time to say goodbye to putting band-aids and money, throwing good money after bad. It's just time to move on. It's just time to give our educators a building that supports their efforts instead of thwarts them. It's time to tell the kids that we're going to fix this problem. We, the adults in the room, are going to fix this problem when we're not going to wait because there's no reason to wait. It's just time to do it. It's time to come together. It's time to solve these problems. Thank you. My name is Ginny Hamilton. I live at 140 Middle Street and I'm a current Crocker farm parent but tonight I'm speaking in my role as co-chair of Amherst Forward. It's no secret that those active in our network were strong supporters of the previous school's project and because of this, some people have questioned whether we support the current compromise proposal and a few have even suggested we might derail the future process. So I'm here tonight to publicly state that Amherst Forward supports the proposal for one building, a one building solution to address the needs of both Fort River and Wildwood. We support the compromise that this school will serve approximately 600 students in grades K through 5 or K through 6 without the grade reconfiguration. Yes, we are disappointed to lose the expanded pre-K program offered by the previous project and we favored grade reconfiguration in the past project because doing so would have eliminated the current practice of busing kids based on socioeconomic status and special needs. However, we do fully support this compromise proposal because it's the best path forward to get all kids, teachers and staff into classrooms with windows and walls. Amherst has excellent educators who tell us these buildings are barriers to learning and so we urge the council to please unanimously support this SOI. This compromise proposal is physically responsible and it's urgently necessary. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, my name is Heather Sheldon and I support this consensus proposal to get all of our students into school with windows and walls as soon as possible. I am a parent of a kindergartner and a second grader at the Fort River School. My eldest is enrolled in an intensive special education program at Fort River where she can get the programming, teacher and peer support she needs to grow as a learner who is on the autism spectrum. I am so grateful for the Amherst schools that have made it possible for our daughter to remain a part of our Amherst community. This signals a level of acceptance that families with children with special needs are often denied as being able to attend a community school is not an option for most students who have as challenging a learning profile as my daughters. In Amherst, two of our three intensive special needs programs are located at Fort River. The third is at Wildwood. Students served by these programs come from all three of the district's geographic enrollment zones. Our programs are rich and meaningful because we have a critical mass of students with like needs. Students form peer relationships, special education teachers become experts. The program's pool of paraeducator staff share responsibilities, information, it can tag out when needed. We simply do not have enough students in our district with like needs to duplicate each of these programs with all their richness and resources at three schools. While out of enrollment zone placements mean we can provide outstanding program, it also presents challenges. My daughter is fortunate that the program she needs is located in the school for which she is zoned. However, two-thirds of the students in our intensive special education programs do not attend school with their neighbors and siblings. This creates barriers to entering and leaving these programs. It makes full integration into both the student's school community and home community challenging. It puts a unique burden on special needs families to juggle social relationships when siblings will never have the same teachers, principals, and school family relationships. At Fort River my children's peers have the opportunity to see how teachers respond with kindness and calmness when my autistic daughter is having a rough time and is behaving in unexpected ways. The Fort River children practice doing the same in an environment where they know they are safe and supported. It is one thing for our community to teach inclusion in the theoretical. It is altogether more powerful to have the opportunity to truly learn it by practicing it. Both of my girls will emerge from Fort River with an understanding and working skills of how to be part of an inclusive community. I support this proposal that may move us from our existing three enrollment zones to two because it offers opportunity for more of our students enrolled in our intensive special education programs to be fully welcomed into our community while maintaining the level of programming they need to be successful learners. I also support the proposal because it means that more of our students will have the opportunity to learn side by side with all kinds of learners. I support this plan because it makes things better in so many deeply meaningful ways than they are now and is achievable within the near future. I am unwilling to wait for a theoretically perfect plan that will come too late for hundreds of our students. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening to all of you. My name is Stephen Merriman. I live at 56 Mount Holyoke Drive and I'm here to read a statement by Nancy Stewart who is president of the Special Education Parent Advisory Council. Prior to that though, just as an aside, I would like to say I'm the father of a seven-year-old child with special needs who's in first grade at Fort River and I just want to acknowledge that it amazes me how much care, devotion and education transpires in that building given the fact that that facility itself currently functions on life support. Here now is Nancy Stewart's comments on behalf of CPAC. CPAC supports this compromise proposal to address as soon as possible the significant infrastructure deficiencies at both Fort River and Wildwood schools. The Special Education Parent Advisory Council, otherwise known as CPAC, is a volunteer organization of parents and guardians of children who receive any type of special education services or accommodations in school such as the IEP, the Individualized Educational Program, a 504C accommodation or an out-of-district placement. These students make up approximately 20% of our school population, one in five. The noise and distraction caused by the open classroom design at Wildwood and Fort River profoundly affects all students, but this is especially true for students with autism, ADHD, children with trauma histories, and there are no shortage of those, and children with hearing impairments. This often results in children with disabilities spending significantly less time with their general education peers than they might otherwise. CPAC will continue to work with our administration to ensure that the new elementary school that emerges from our collaborative work as a community will meet the needs of all our students. We believe that this can be accomplished under the framework proposed. Sincerely, Nancy Stewart, president on behalf of CPAC. Thanks so much for listening. Thank you. Hi, my name is Lisa Salloway. I live in Amherst. I'm here to urge a unanimous vote in support of the SOI. I have two girls who attend Fort River, who love their Fort River community and hate their Fort River building for all of the reasons that you've heard everybody else here say, but I wanted to speak specifically about how the building affects both of my daughters in different ways, and if it affects them, it must affect other children too. My high achieving, relatively well-adjusted nine-year-old is anxious every time it rains or if there's a thaw in winter. She begs to stay home. So when you look at the weather report and see a thaw coming in spring, you might be happy to see the end of freezing temperatures, whereas my nine-year-old, her classmates, her teachers, and especially the custodians at Fort River see something very different. Her sister, my seven-year-old, who has a learning disability, is unfortunate enough to receive her special education reading services in Room D1 of Fort River. All of you should be familiar with Room D1 at Fort River. It's the room where the video that has been going around would be just pouring rain in the corner of the building. And why I am here today is to explain to you that that's not some back room. That's not some room where kids don't go. That is the room where my daughter and her two little best friends are pulled out of their regular classroom and taken to receive their reading special education services. So every day they're taken there to fulfill their IEPs because of their various learning disabilities, and that is the classroom that they are in. There's no way that those three little girls can fully concentrate with that happening in the corner. None of us would be able to. And so these little seven-year-olds certainly can't. My girls will grow up and leave Fort River in the next four years, but what's truly disturbing to me is that their amazing special ed teachers are still going to be in that building trying to do this with other generations of kids. So I'm just here to ask you to please give it an end and make it stop and vote unanimously for this SOI. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Bennett Hazelup. Also, Ms. Griezmar, I'd like you to note that I have crossed out all the sections that would be repeating previous comments. Thank you. I lived here for 10 years and I have two children at Fort River. When town meeting voted down the last elementary school building project, there was a lot of talk of finding a compromise solution. This, what Mike has proposed, is that compromise. But I personally don't think that the MSBA will give Amherst's proposal the nod without the unanimous support of the town council. I think that would send a clear, strong message that we can all be proud of. Thank you for considering it. Thank you. Alex Lefebvre, 52 North Prospect. I'm a volunteer at Crocker Farm. My son went to Crocker Farm. My husband's a teacher at Crocker Farm. And both of my in-laws are retired educators who also volunteer at Crocker Farm. I guess just the thought that I want to leave you with is I think the need is clear. I think what gets easy to get lost in is the perfect solutions. And people talk about what's best for our children and can't we do better? And shouldn't we be thinking about ideal solutions? And unfortunately, we don't have that luxury. We don't live in a homogenous community anymore. We don't have kids that all learn the same. Amherst has this wonderful reputation for working with kids with special needs, and they actually come to our schools. So we have a large group of students who come to our schools because it's such a great community that works with kids with special needs. So we can't afford to continue to have our kids in these schools anymore. Is there a perfect solution? Possibly doubtful? Is it the same today as it will be tomorrow? So I urge you not to get caught in that message of there's a better way than what's in front of you today. And I urge you to trust the people that, one, are elected, that, two, have been hired, and three, who have sent their whole life in education and really are trying to do what's in the best interest of our kids. Thanks. Is there anyone else who has not spoken? Thank you. Okay. Are there other comments from the council at this point? Questions, comments? Yes, Andy. Well, first of all, I want to thank everybody who spoke here today. I thought about saying something earlier when the council was speaking and decided that it was important that, as somebody who's elected to the council, that I hear from you. So I really appreciate that. I just have three really quick things that I just want to share. One is that I was a Ford River parent a long time ago. My kids were there as students in the 1980s. And it was a fairly new building back then, but it had a lot of the same problems that exist today. And I felt then that my children got a great education despite the building, not because of the building. And as I look at what has happened to the building, it has deteriorated over time, which is why that is true. The second thing is to the superintendent, the statement of interest, the one thing that I was sort of curious about was why did not mention a little bit more about some of the environmental aspects of the building. The Ford River building, actually both buildings are built on cement slabs. Nobody would construct a building that way now, not a school building, certainly. And it is, as we found out from the Ford River feasibility study, only worse because it's very wet property and it is close, Ford River is close to a river, which is how it has its name. So I think that it would be, it's an important point that we need to remember the community and if we can remind MSBA of it, that that would be helpful. And the final thing is, as chair of the Council's Finance Committee, we have, we submitted our report for the last two Finance Committee meetings and we touch on the subject quite strongly. It's mostly about, as a matter of fact, the feasibility of going forward with the number of different major capital projects that are there. And one aspect of it is the work that we did with the help of the professionals who work with us to study the costs of the various school options so that we could understand that as how it fit in. And there's no question that the options with a 600-student single school are the most cost-responsible way to address the multitude of projects that we're having to consider as a council. And that is the, a major substance of the report which is available to the public through the website. And so thank you. Are there other comments from the Council? Dorothy? I want to thank everybody for filling in all the details and yes, it was a good idea to have us go to a listening session next to a very active open classroom. And I want to say that I am dedicated that the new school building that we build be built well, be well-designed and that we don't, it is the most responsible thing that has been presented but that we make sure that it is done well. Because at the beginning I didn't understand what the problem was. I taught in an open classroom for three years of the Louis Armstrong Middle School in the 1980s in East Elmhurst, Queens. I never had any of these problems. And it sounds like this school was flawed. The two schools were flawed from day one. So I just want you to know that there will be a new school building and it will be well-built. Additional comments from the Council. We want to thank all of you. This has been a very informative evening and with audience comments that have reinforced much of what the superintendent has told us and we've heard it directly from you. We are going to take a break at this point and reconvene at 8.30. Thank you. It's amazing. The big brothers, big sisters, representatives come forward to the seats. Good evening. Hold on, hold on. Just getting us queued up. We're going to reconvene and this item is actually a request for permission with regard to a public way. And please proceed, identify yourself and let's come forward. Thank you. My name is Jessie Cooley. I'm the director of Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Hampshire County. Thank you for letting me speak now. I appreciate that. And so I'm here to request the road closure that we need for our daffodil run. And we've done this in years past. Some of you may recall, hopefully you've been there. It's the, this is our ninth annual daffodil run, which is a 5k run and walk and a 10k run to benefit Big Brothers, Big Sisters. And the event takes place in Kendrick Park. It's Sunday, April 28th, always the last Sunday in April. So we need the road that is right next to Kendrick Park, Old North Pleasant. We're requesting for that to be closed for the duration of the event, which we're requesting the closure from 8 a.m. to 12 noon on that Sunday. And a small portion of North Pleasant, basically from the corner of East Pleasant and North Pleasant up to Main Street, closed just for 15 minutes from 10 a.m. to 10, 15 a.m. I do have a map if that's helpful that I could pass out, but I didn't bring an electronic version. We were all provided with the map in our packet. Wonderful. Thank you. So this is no different than what we've done in any years past, but if you have questions, I'd be happy to answer them. I did meet with Captain Ting, who has taken over for Captain Gunderson on the police department. We drove the course and talked about the plans for the officers that we'll need and all of that. So I'm happy to answer questions along those lines. Are there any questions of the council? Mandy Jo. So I have a couple of questions. You talked about some road closures, but we also were provided with some metered parking reservations. So I'm assuming that's part of your request. Yes, it is. So I have a couple of questions. And this will be just confirmation from the town manager, I believe the road closures that any police will be or is charged to or is paid for by big brothers, big sisters. The metered parking is not. And I guess I have a question about the road closures, the 9 or 8 a.m. to noon road closure, the North Presidency Street one. Are people still allowed to park in the meters that aren't part of the reserved meter parking? Because aren't there more than just those seven? Yes, there are. And they can park in those. But basically not many people park on that street at night, overnight anyway. It's not a very utilized parking area. Did you have additional questions? Okay. Are there other questions from the council? Okay. Then the motion reads and so I'm going to place this in motion the interest of time to approve the closure of that section of North Pleasant Street beginning at the intersection of Hallock Street and moving north to the intersection of Triangle Street from 8 o'clock a.m. to 12 o'clock p.m. and North Pleasant Street from East Pleasant Street to Main Street from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Sunday, April 28th, 2019 for the CHD Big Brothers, Big Sisters annual daffodil run and further to approve the reservation of the seven meter parking spaces on North Pleasant Street along the southwest side of Kendrick Place from 8 a.m. to 12 noon on April 28th, 2019. Is there a second? Pat D'Angelo seconded. Any further questions? Yes. This does have to be roll call. Okay. Councillor Balmille. Yes. Councillor Brewer. Yes. Councillor D'Angelo. Yes. Councillor Dumont. Yes. Councillor Grismar. Yes. Councillor Haneke. No. Councillor Pam. Yes. Councillor Ryan. Yes. Councillor Shane. Yes. Councillor Schreiber. Yes. Councillor Steinberg. Yes. Councillor Swartz. Yes. You have 11 to 1. No. It must be 10 to 1. I'm sorry. There's one person absent. I'm sorry. 10 person. I'm sorry. It's 11, 4, and 1 opposed. And one absent. Okay. Any further questions on that? Okay. Then we're going to return to item 5b. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. So item 5b is the street school affordable housing. John Hornick, please come forward. And let me just mention that this portion of the agenda will begin with a presentation, have the opportunity for the council to ask questions. Then we will open it up for public comment. I am John Hornick. Name's properly spelled there, but not on your agenda. I'm sorry about that. I am chair of the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust. And as you can see, I have a presentation. Even though it's 5x, it won't take very long. Nate is going to distribute copies of the presentation. I urge you not to look ahead because there are spoilers. Okay. Let's see. Whoops. I have no idea how I move this along. He needs technology help. Sorry. Okay. So creating affordable housing at the east street school site, a play in 5x, and I start out as you should with a play listing the Dramatis personae. Basically, if any of you have ever renovated a house or built a house or other building, at least half of those actors will be familiar to you. And they're roughly in the order in which they appear in the play. So I think I'll just move that right along. And before I introduce Act 1, I want to introduce our actors for Act 1 entering stage left. There is myself who is kind of the face of the housing trust. But beyond that, it's important to know that we have a very solid, smart, experienced membership. The next person I listed was Tom Kegelman, who in his day job is head of home city development. That's a not-for-profit corporation with headquarters in Springfield that does a lot of affordable housing in the Valley and has for a long time. That's a substantial part of Tom's career. Next, I listed Nancy Schroeder. Nancy is currently a member of the Amherst Housing Authority board. And before that, for many years, she was the director of operations. Doug Slaughter was part of our group from the select board. Greg Stutzman is included. Obviously, he served for a number of years on the planning board, very involved in zoning issues, as well as local real estate. Sid Ferrara is at the University of Massachusetts. He's in charge or director of residential academic programs. And some of you may also know he and his wife direct the ABC House. Finally, we have Jay Levy, who when I met him 30 years ago, in the eastern part of the state, was involved in homeless services. He still is. So it's a long career and he's in charge of Elliott Community Services in western Massachusetts, which is a principal provider of case management and clinical services to persons who are homeless in this area. Finally, Nate Malloy, who's at my left, who is a senior planner and brought wealth of experience to all of our work. And last, but really not least, because she's really the heart of the work we've done, is Rita Farrell, a consultant to the trust, who had a 25 or 30 year career with the Mass Housing Partnership, working with local communities on the development of affordable housing and actually included Amherst. I hate to interrupt the play, but we have lost Alyssa Brewer, who was here on a remote participation as a member of the council. And we need to note that in the... She's back on. So we're just going to make some delays. Yes. She's back on. Excellent. Great, Alyssa. I wouldn't want to miss it. Great work. Okay. Act one, a feasible project. We've taken a number of steps to the housing trust that I just wanted to briefly outline. We moved control of the property from the schools to the town with the collaboration of town meeting and the town manager's office. We did an assessment of wetlands. Which was disappointing. For people who are familiar with the property, there's a back lot that we hope would be available. It's not. It's all wetlands. It's been used as an informal recreation area. But the front of the lot is available. We had a site survey. And as many people probably know, we hired Cune Riddle architects to try to understand what is possible for the site development. And they've done, I think, three public presentations, including one of the major housing form that we had last November. Finally, our last step was to draft a request for proposals, which spells out the qualifications of the developer. Both minimum requirements and higher program expectations for which bidders will receive more point for the development of affordable housing at the site. And finally, a process for selection of the developer. So Act 2, having demonstrated that we have a feasible project through the steps that I just outlined, we are now seeking permission from the town council to proceed. So enter town council, center stage. The steps that I understand, we are looking for you to take our first to declare the East Street school site as surplus property. Second, to authorize the town manager to execute a land disposition agreement. It's a special form of contract and it will spell out the conditions under which the developer will qualify for the next stage, which is the authorization for the town manager to sign a 99-year lease. Alyssa asked me at one point, why now? What are the pros? What are the cons? For me, the main pros is this is going to be a long process. If you act on April 1st to approve this, it'll probably be two to three years before the first renter walks in the door. And the second thing I'll note is if you pass this on April 1st, then you're in a position to move on to the huge backbog of other business that you've created. What are the cons? Maybe someone else will come up with a better idea in the next five years. That hasn't happened in the last five years, but some of you may be quite optimistic about the future. The most important implication of town council action is that it will give the developer site control. Under the land disposition agreement, the developer will have a legal commitment from the town to turn over the property. If they don't have that, they're really not able to go to lenders to ask for money. They'll turn a deaf ear. They can't go to the zoning board to ask for a special permit. They can't do any of the actions that are really required for them to move forward. So if they don't have that, no one will bid. Okay, we're already on to Act 3. Now the stage manager and his staff come in and their tasks are releasing the RFP, getting bids, selecting a developer, signing the legal agreements, including the land disposition agreement and eventually a 99-year lease and finally monitoring fulfillment of the contractual requirements. This is the town manager's role as I understand the charter. Okay, Act 4. Enter the developer. Now center stage. The developer will have to undertake due diligence process, which means that they'll go over back over some of the steps and go over new steps to, for example, evaluate the old E Street school building. Is that something they'll be able to make use of or not? Cune Roodle provided a path, but they couldn't tell us, for example, how much later asbestos they would be have to deal with in the building and if that turns out to be very substantial, then the developer probably cannot reuse that building. The developer will then come up with a plan for the site. At that point, they will probably have an architect almost certainly and then, given that we've given them site control, they will go through the various town approval process, funding processes and possibly the historical commission, both state and local. That would need to happen if they do not want to use the old school building or they want to seriously change the exterior in some way. Finally, the developer gets to execute that 99-year lease with the town and actually do the construction of affordable housing. Now, this next slide after Act 4 isn't an act, but this goes along with Act 4. What I want to do is reassure all of you that you are not the last review that only you are responsible for making sure that this thing works. In fact, there are many reviews. Well, I won't rate them, but I put Department of Housing and Community renewal first because they have more requirements than the length of my arm or maybe two arms. If you go up on their website, you can see very lengthy requirements and restrictions in order to apply for a funding agreement from that agency, and they are likely to be the major funder or the major source of funds for the development. They have to go to the Amherst zoning board, likely to get a special permit because the site will not be easy to use and will not fit easily into a buy-right development. Likely, they have to go to the Amherst Historical Commission, maybe the State Commission, if they go to the local one. They have to go before the Amherst Building Commissioner. Actually, that happens multiple times. As you all may know, there are electrical inspections, plumbing inspections, other inspections. So there are a lot of things that have to happen before the Building Commissioner signs off. And finally, the Fire Department gets involved as well. Checking out smoke detectors, fire safety, and all of that. So, as I said, there are many reviews. You are not the last review. You are the first review. God help the developer with all of that. So last, Act 5, Welcome Tenants. It's likely the developer will choose a management company to continue to manage the property. That company would ordinarily be included in their description in response to the bid for proposals. So that means the town gets to approve that choice. Then they select eligible tenants. They can't take anybody that they want. They have to follow the rules of the Department of Housing and Community Development to ensure eligibility for affordable housing. Then they rent units. They maintain the property. And everyone lived happily ever after. But only if we get beyond Act 2. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for, first of all, walking us through the process. Since this is the first time this group although a few members of the group have gone through this before. But it's the first time this particular group has gone through a process like this. And also for adding just a little bit of humor at this hour of the evening. Are there questions from the council? Shalini. This is a question for the town manager. And I think this is something we were discussing earlier that if this property developer is then does it become eligible for property tax? Would that bring property taxes too? It depends what developer owns it. So in terms of if it's a non-profit I don't think they pay property taxes. But if it's a for-profit developer they would pay taxes. So if it's a non-profit whose main non-profits if it's not their main source of main work then it's still taxable or something like that. There are various non-profit developers who develop particularly affordable housing. And so if it's a non-profit developer then they don't pay taxes. As it was explained to me this is a use that is separated in the law. So they're not going to it's not a non-profit that's a religious institution it's not a non-profit that's an educational institution. They're essentially in a business and they're renting these places out to people. And so that is a taxable activity. Pat. I just actually wanted to ask Tom back there. You were saying that was and John clarified some of it but can you go further? Tom Kegelman. President Bammers. Executive Director of Home City Housing we're a non-profit. We do a lot of affordable housing. Louder. Tom Kegelman Executive Director of Home City Development we do a lot of affordable housing development. We're a non-profit and I have never had a project that we didn't pay property taxes. I'm sorry please repeat that sentence. We have never had a project where we did not pay property taxes. It's if our office where we serve people that can be tax exempt but providing residential housing for people that's a business it is I don't know anywhere where you can get a tax exemption for that. Thank you for that clarification Tom. Sorry Nate Maloy I just want to jump in affordable units are taxed it's a prorated amount because it's affordable the way the assessor calculates the tax it's a prorated amount so it's different than if it were market rate but it is still taxed. I've got a couple of questions but I'm going to stay on this one. My understanding is the town would still own the land so why is there any property tax being taxed because it says here that it's for 99 year lease so isn't the town still keeping ownership of the land and leasing it out and if the town owns the land are there any ability to collect property taxes at all? It's my understanding that if it's a rental that you would collect the taxes based on the rental income and that's typically how the assessors would appraise that property based on the rental market. So we have a couple of other pieces of land that are rented out to other entities right now do they pay property taxes on that land? They do you know Olympia Oaks for instance was developed as affordable housing and they pay taxes. But do we own the land underneath Olympia Oaks? Yes, we entered into a brown lease. I'm sorry. The bottom of the page on Act 2 implications of town council actions you say the developer has a legal commitment from the town to turn over the property once contractual conditions are met and I'm not sure what that phrase to turn over means. I mean to do the lease the 99 year lease it's a technical term. Yes Pat. Dammit. You talked about diversity around affordability and I'm wondering what other kinds of diversity can you assure us will this be available to people of color to disabled people how will we expand our idea of diversity beyond income? As I said the eligibility for tenancy will be based on rules set down by the most likely major funder department of housing community development. I can't tell you that they're going to select so many persons of color Councillor D'Angelo but there's no question in my mind that these units will be available to rent for persons of color. Yeah I did Nate Maloy I just want to say that the housing agent for the property has to comply with fair housing regulations and so they base their marketing on what the demographics are of Amherst and we're in the spring field metropolitan statistical area so there's a pretty big area where they develop their marketing and then typically for affordable housing projects you can have up to a 70% local preference so you can try to get local residents but they market the units and then they might have a lottery to apply so it is a pretty broad area that they market to so there's a good chance you'll get a good representation of people. Thank you. Yes Dorsey. I just have a question for the town manager on his memo to John giving bullet points with regard to the RFP and one of the bullets I think there's a typo in it but I think it means to say to the extent practical maybe says to the extent practice development to incorporate green building technology and solar renewable resources and just wondering if it could say something more like to the extent possible that's one thing and also I just want to know I think that there's probably a niche for affordable housing developers and whether we know that we can find developers that are both for affordable housing and green using green technology and so Department of Housing and Community Development has been pushing the people developers that it funds to move in the direction of greater energy efficiency green technology and remember I said that if you go to their website you look at their requirements for developers they include statements about energy efficiency green technology and we have incorporated those or at least reference those in the RFP so yes we are committed to it and and so if you looked at the RFP that's who you would find I hope you'll consider changing to the extent practical to the extent possible again we use DHCD language the language that I used in the memo may not fully represent exactly what the developers will be required to do by DHCD it may be much more consistent with what you're asking for I have two questions they might not all go to you John but thank you the first one is when you're reading what town meeting voted and all of the memos talked about the town meeting vote and what the town council's role in this was the town council's role under that vote was to vote after a determining that a feasible project has been identified and there were legal opinions and all about that but I've seen and then there was a legal opinion that said for understandable reasons there's a request to sort of change that vote but I've seen nowhere here an actual motion to change that legal requirement that was passed under town meeting if we are going to do this prior to determining whether there's a feasible project that has been identified don't we need to formally amend the town meeting action somehow so that's more of a process question because there's been no sort of in all of your what votes we need to take none of these actual hey we're going to amend and acknowledge that we're amending something that town council actually told us we should be doing and we're going to do it differently so I'm concerned about sort of skipping that process and sort of glossing over the fact that we're changing what town meeting authorized us and gave us the authority to do but my next question goes to sort of this whole process in general and planning in general and it's more for I guess the council and for discussion potentially last next week or next meeting we're being requested to take an action without reference to a finance committee despite there potentially being fiscal ramifications to this action we're being asked to take an action without reference to any other committee that might deal with policy we're being asked to take an action prior to what in two years the planning department has requested a ten year capital plan for $70,000 of an east village planning and zoning studies yet we don't have those studies we don't have per the charter a capital improvement a capital inventory updated to give us all our inventory yet we're asking to be and to make a decision that it is surplus property and that is a major decision that affects the town for 100 years if the lease goes through and I'm concerned that the potential process for making that decision is being that we're being asked to shortcut that process on a number of levels so I don't know like I said it might be better for that but it would be great for maybe our town staff that are here to address potentially some of those concerns and maybe what hasn't you know what has been done already to look at whether this is surplus property and how that potentially was determined to recommend to the select board or ourselves because we haven't actually heard from town staff that they think this is surplus property. Let me ask Mr. Brachman if he has a response at this point and then we'll come back. So two answers first to your first question you are town meeting so you can supplant whatever prior town meeting said you are the legislative body so we would get you the proper legal language from our town attorney a prior town meeting doesn't direct what you do you have independent authority to choose what you choose to do you can put what any restrictions you'd like on the transfer or anything like that in terms of the whether this is surplus or not we sort of work from the action from the last town meeting which has moved this in this direction it really is up to the council as to how you want to take it under advisement if you want to have it go through a committee process or if you want to wait until studies are completed that's totally within the bounds of the council to make that decision if you feel like this has already been vetted and we're ready to go you can choose to do that it's totally how you want to handle this whether you'd like it to go to the finance committee or another committee that might be created by the council or you want additional studies done by the town those are all things that you could request and we would comply with okay Kathy you had a question earlier and then I'll go over here yeah yes okay I had a couple questions that I think build on I shouldn't say what might underlie some of Mandy's questions so I'll just take it off do we have a sense of what this piece of land should we sell it would bring you know so what is in essence the gift the commitment that we're making to affordable housing in dollars so that's a question and then my other if the developer comes in and part of this would be a question I would have of any developer not just for affordable units but as part of the development requires us as a town to redo the roads to do something different with sidewalk so there's a public related cost to the development because of what they need for the site could there be a way of asking the developer since if we're giving them the gift of the land to ask them to incorporate that into their costs of development so could that be done in the RFP you know I know we don't have it in our zoning law that we can do an impact fee but could we do it in the terms of the RFP so if anybody wants to add on to this you can you can put whatever you want you own the land if you say we're going to sell the land with these restrictions on it meaning that we're going to have brick sidewalks in front you can put that in the developers will then incorporate that into their pro forma as an added cost that they would put forward into their project you can put any restrictions you want as you move forward on this project just so you can put any coddles on it because you can you are the owners of the land in essence you know maybe I was doing assume we still hold the land and we get a response to the RFP notifying them that to the extent that's going to be needed they should incorporate it so it's it's a twist on what you just said Paula I think you're saying yes we could make that we could write that into an RFP if we wanted to right I wanted to respond to that as I can't disagree with the town manager that you can do anything you want but I wish you wouldn't and I'll put explain it this way the housing trust went through a lengthy process of determining what should and should not be in the request for proposals we went back and forth on what the requirement should be and where we needed to give a potential developer flexibility frankly strongly influenced by Tom Kegelman's experience and what we tried to determine is what the minimum requirements were absolutely should expect but then left room for the proposal or for the developer to propose something beyond that to get more points in the bidding process so as an example we said there have to be a minimum of 15 affordable units honestly I'd like to see 30 Cune Riddle provided a path actually more than 30 units and it's not easy to find a site it's a big deal and so we didn't say you got to do 30 because we don't know what the developer is going to encounter in the process planning for the site in the process of seeking funding in the process of dealing with the zoning board of appeals and all the other reviews that they have to undergo are important to leave flexibility so if you add something require something in addition what you are doing is constraining the developer in a way that may make following through on this project either more difficult or potentially impossible Thank you. Mr. Bachman did you have anything further to add to that? Yes, it's shallowing I'm Steve So one answer to Councillor Shane's question is I'm looking at the property card which is probably partly fiction but it has the building value at 2.3 million and the land value at 145,000 So a question is the intent that this would be a copy as a permit like a friendly 40B or has that not been determined yet? Nate here, I'll jump in the minimum was 15 units and the zoning requires so much additional lot area per additional unit and so the lot is pretty big with the backfield so if you keep it one lot at 15 units you may be able to do it as a special permit it really depends on the developer and how they respond to the RFP so if they would like to do more units and reduce parking and do certain things then it could be a comprehensive permit but as the minimum standards John described you know you could it could be done without a comprehensive permit it really depends on how they respond with a site plan Yes Pat While I'm gaining slowly, slowly, respect for process and process questions I think there's a great need for affordable housing and Amherst the making and creating of it so that it's available not just to current residents but to potential residents of Amherst I think that this project has gone through quite a bit of analysis and thoughtfulness and it's produced some really interesting the Coon Riddle study particularly has created some really interesting possibilities and I think there's a basic urgency to getting the RFP out there and so I would hesitate to send this to a committee to do the things that would slow it down because this is such an important and critical issue in Amherst Dorothy I'm going to say something and then I'm going to ask you if I've said it correctly in going through the math on how you figure out what the rent would be for an affordable unit I was really surprised to find out that it could be like $800 and to me that's a lot of money so if it's so expensive to live in the town of Amherst that $800 rent is considered affordable then it would sound to me as if we've got a very big problem and that we really need affordable housing are my numbers correct? Well I can't speak to $800 specifically because the rent will depend upon the number of persons in a family for example and what their income is the amount of rent they have to pay varies as I said with family size and income I guess I don't want to get into the weeds here but if a unit is rented for a family at 30% AMI it's going to be less than if it was rented to a family at 80% of area median income I can provide more information to the council on that point but basically yes somebody might be charged $800 a month but it could also be significantly less John I'm just going to clarify I said that Amherst was part of the Springfield metropolitan statistical area they take the income for that area and they determine for a one bedroom if it could be one or two people they have the median income for a certain percentage level whether it's 30% or 50% of that median income so in a one bedroom it could be one and two people so they take the average of that at 80% and they say no more than third of your income can be paid for housing and that's how they determine the rent so it's by bedroom size so a one bedroom might be around $800 a two bedroom might be $1100 a three bedroom is $1300 and so in comparison a one bedroom market rate might be anywhere from 1500 to 1700 or you know depending on the range how it's figured so the rent for Amherst isn't necessarily you know it's factored in to a bigger region and you can have a lower percentage so you could say well 80% is the maximum allowed income for affordable unit but you can have reduced 50% AMI or more that just means the developer has to come up with more subsidy to pay for that difference in rent level but it is actually surprising how much it costs to live so I'll grant you that you know even an affordable unit to me is not afforda