By the way, we have no mics on so you should pull a mic over. Oh my goodness. No video, no mics. We're doing really well. What George just raised is one way or other, we will have a downtown. Somebody switched them. It's probably this one over here. And that's what the group has been asked for. Maybe we should just stick to downtown. Let's not worry about other places. Whenever there's a new construction, what is the policy around how much parking you allow? And some of it may not rise to the council. So when a new building comes in, like in the North Amherst, it had to come in with so many parking spaces per unit. What they realize is there'll be an overflow. So the town is getting prepared to tow people away from Mill River Recreation Area because people will start parking there overnight. Wow. Because why not? You have guests come to visit you and you've got one parking place and you tell them to just go park overnight over there. So it's that kind of overflow issue? Exactly. And I heard one developer, the one who's building on University Drive, when asked what would you do about overflow like into the big Y, he said, I wrote into the leases that if they're found abusing it, they get evicted. And I said, well, that's a good course. They barely can get tenants. Of course, but at least Amherst College had asked that for the Spring Street. So you could have parking strategies that were prevented. You didn't solve the problem, but strong incentive to not abuse it. But this is all part of establishing a plan, our parking strategy. Yeah. We could say develop a comprehensive parking strategy and make it a two-year goal. Okay. I mean, it's true that once this report comes out and we get the, want to read it and we're all going to want to think, okay, how can we implement this or is there ways to, and that is trying to create some kind of comprehensive strategy around parking. Yes. Okay. Maintain better relations with our higher ed institutions. This is an obviously ongoing. So in this one, Lynn, did you want, I wanted to add a word maintain and build. Wait, which one are we on? So maintain better. Excellent. Maintain better, maintain and build relationships. And strengthen. You know, because they're already built. The question is. Okay. Maintain and strengthen. I just, the maintaining better didn't make sense. Maintain and strengthen relationships. Maintain and strengthen. That's just what I wanted. Yeah. I think that's fine. Yeah. It's the one that says higher ed. Those that are still on business. Maintain and strengthen relations with our higher education institutions. Yes. Thank you. And then establish or re-establish economic and community development committee. That really is, it really goes under a recommendation that could come from community resources. I wouldn't tie us to this as we failed if we didn't do it because we might decide. So maybe we take that off. Or maybe. Or make it a sub bullet is something we're referring to that committee to come up, you know, so you could make it. Okay. Yeah. I'm beginning to see. Just saying that so many people are saying that, you know, what are you all doing about the linear way they're at that. But under the goal that is town council has put in place a new form of government. First of all, I go back to the economic development. Sure. So the other thing that I'm hearing from Dr. a lot of the smaller businesses and stuff is the culture. It feels like it's a very new culture. Like you go to a no kind of culture where for businesses when they go, the first thing is like, you know, yeah, related to that. Yeah, it feels like there's a lot of blocks that I put rather saying this can't be done. And here is what you can do in order to, you know, so it just feels like the culture has been more of a website. The website doesn't feel like it's promoting businesses and local spots and tourism. And so it's just like it feels like it's a very static kind of place where we're in. And I don't know. So what I'm going to suggest is that under the one, the goal for establishing the town council that we move that under there and we move it under the committee's piece. So it's an activity. Okay. Okay. So let me do this. Are we going to look at the wording of some of the big goals that you skipped? I'm going to send this to you as version two. I'm sending you an email. And that's where we presently stay. The handoff was received. Okay. So first of all, I took the one that said countdown council established new form of government. And I'm trying to come up with a label for each and then say what the goal is. So let's do some words in here. See, whenever anybody says we have to establish a new form of government, I'm going to, you know, it's the legislative branch. We didn't throw every legislative branch. Exactly. I mean, there are significant changes to the administrative side as well. Because that's all they'll pull and under Paul. No, we did do. So maybe it's, maybe it's more than legislative branch. So I'm just thinking things that are now delegated to Paul that used to be done by the select court. Yeah. So we've changed, we've changed functional relationships. We've changed the way the fiscal flow flows, you know, in terms of timing. So should this first one be Amherstown government? And then just not the town council says it, but establish a new form of government. Not all kinds of new things in it. You know, public forums and no, it's got requirements that are changes for our election cycle of other committees. So I'm suggesting that the lead there says Amherstown government and the goal is establishing new form of government. And then under that I'm keeping just for notes for later. Establish or reestablish economic communication. To open it up to communication plan that encourages broad resident participation. So I like that wording and I have no problem with any of the ideas. But part of what we're doing throughout is providing new ways for the public to participate. It isn't just communication. You know, so it's. How about a communication engagement? Yep. And communication and public engagement would be fine because it says both under the one. And then, and then, you know, and then you could say instead of a plan, you could say develop and adopt processes or put in place processes that encourage broad residents. What's the broad, what's the first thing that right now says communication? How about public engagement and communication? I like that. What about robust public engagement? That's not worse than I've ever done. And public engagement and communication. Develop and adopt a. I would do processes or that encourage broad resident participation. You know, so whatever instead of a communication. Right. Instead of repeating it. Yeah. Processes or develop and adopt. Encourage broad robust. No, I don't mind. Okay, so let me try public engagement and communication is the title dash develop and adopt processes that encourage broad resident participation. I like it. Yes. Yeah. Okay, budget and fiscal. Establish an annual calendar to provide oversight. I would put a comma, establish an annual calendar provide oversight. I got it. You know, like each is provide oversight. Approve. The annual budget. And provide guidance for the common fiscal year. So prove the annual budget. Yep. So each is. The annual budget and. Provide guidance for the company. Provide guidance. And. Provide a furnish whatever if you want a different verb and provide guidance for the coming fiscal year. Okay. So it says budget and fiscal. You could say instead of provide if you don't, well you don't want to or words you could say. Oversee. And to prove annual budget and provide if you didn't want to have provide twice. Because you don't. Why don't we don't overseen. Okay. Provide oversight. Yeah. It's overseen by Sonya center. Yeah. Okay. So it says. Budget and fiscal. Establish an annual calendar. Provide oversight. Provide fiscal oversight. Yep. Comma. Comma. Approve the annual budget. And provide guidance for the coming year. Schools. Develop an ongoing partnership with the elementary and regional schools. Okay. Just it just seems kind of. I mean the others sound like okay. Communication plan. Great. Establish account. Right. Great. Schools. Let's be friends with the elementary school schools. So what is it we're really trying to do here? I mean it really does seem it's the elementary. I mean in the short term at least it's the elementary school that's the issue. And it's going to take a couple years to get this result. We've taken one step. Do we want to. I just have trouble with this particular one. It seems like it's like. Appliance. You know. Since they're two different. So here's another issue. If we put in schools. Should we be putting in library? No. Not here. Okay. Maybe we should just call this elementary schools. And it's also under ongoing. So I mean I agree this is going to take a couple years to resolve. But eventually once it's resolved that's that. I like the you know the only reason I changed the other one is I didn't want to stop with the SLI. I mean. No. I'm trying to bring home the bacon. Right. There is an issue here. It's very real. We have a goal which is it seems. Shared by the council to replace these two schools with a school. That's a goal. And at the end of a certain number of years. Someone will tell. I can look and see. Did they achieve it or didn't they. What about elementary school colon partner with the school committee. To. To move toward the new elementary school. You know to get us to get us through the whole thing. I mean the goal is to replace Wildwood and Fort River with a new school. And is that to controversial or to seems like the best. Well we don't want to say what. No we're not saying we're not saying anything we're just kind of restating. What. Was approved by the council 13 to zero. Yeah. Yeah. One building child friendly blah blah we have to put that in there. But the point is we all agreed to that. So that is a goal we're committed to for the next couple of years. But the SLI basically will require. That we still look at the alternatives. But if we but if we make it. Big generic partner with the school committee to succeed in getting a new elementary school for Amherst period. Period. You know it won't say. Right. You know if we got him to people would really. You know but getting a new. So in spite of what we all just signed off on 13 to zero. It isn't actually one school. It still could be two schools. No no no I'm not. I kept it as one George just to succeed in getting a new elementary school. I think that's a way to put it. So then we don't have to say replacing the two schools. Right. We can make it really short. Right. So that's a way to partner with the elementary school district to build a new elementary school for Amherst. Yeah. Yeah. That seems to be an actual goal that the council wants to accomplish over the next couple of years. Right. And it isn't one sense a it's not this year only but it's not ongoing either. So whatever. Great. It is what it is. Time management evaluation. Value. Time management. Contract and renew and we've already made the contract decision for next year by very virtue of not making it. But that's okay. But normally we would evaluate and what review. And review contract. Review contract. They just take the word decision out right. Right. Just put in review. Unless it becomes really bad. Then we review our contract decision and then maintain it. The next one works fine. Well I need a lead. So I guess I say higher education. Higher ed. Right. So it's maintained and strengthen relations with our higher education institutions. Yep. At some point one of them will decide what they're going to be when they grow up. Right. This year only. Rules of procedure. Develop and adopt rules of procedure for town council. Bylaw review. Complete and adopt the general and zoning bylaws. See the zoning bylaw code. We've got there. Capital plan and projects. Rehensive capital plan. Energy and sustainability. Adopt climate action goals and implementation plan. Public ways. I'm going to keep going until you tell me this. No. I thought these were. Public ways. Develop and adopt a plan for approving public way requests. Year two. Master plan. Develop and begin implementation of a plan to review, revise and or develop a new master plan. Zoning. This one needs work. Review. Discuss and revise zoning. Bylaws. That are ready for action. Prior to adoption of the master plan. And that upon adoption of master plan. Or revised consistent with the master plan. My. My problem is with the high level one. That says we have already decided. We're doing a major revision of the zoning process the way I would read it. So review, discuss and assess potential zoning law. Revisions. I would couch it a little bit because we don't. And. And. Like are we going to put it. Otherwise I think we're like putting our throwing a whole. Revise. Yeah. Some of us. There's a. I have heard a very strong sentiment may not be shared by everyone or even any strong sentiment from people who do are familiar with our zoning bylaws. Pretty, pretty well that they really do need serious. Review revision. It's not just, you know. But right. It's it's it's not just hit or miss or piece of mail. They really need to be going through. And we reviewed and revised. But this should be done in light of. And they were actually saying in light of the master plan. But now we're thinking, well, we didn't do it with the first master plan. Now we're coming up with it. We're thinking we're going to create a new master plan, which to my thinking won't be all that different from the original master plan. I can't imagine that a new master plan is going to be a radically new document. Maybe I'm wrong. But so I would think that whatever master plan finally comes out if anything from this review process, it's not going to be that radically different. And so I guess the question for us is, do we, is there a sense that this is something we really should do? I certainly feel we should. I've heard this from people who know a lot about it, but that's just me. No, I wasn't saying that I don't think there's a lot of change potentially needed. What I watched Northampton do, and I just went to one meeting. So I'm not like a major watcher of this, but the planner was describing. They went through a process of going through their zoning laws and identifying larger changes and smaller changes. And then bringing the community along with the big ones. You know, in terms of these will be major. And then figuring out a timing that the easy to do ones, you did like technical fixes. And the others you did with a lot of buy-in. And what I don't know is whether George, whether they put them all up on the Blackboard and said this is where we're going over the next two years. Where they said this is the process in which we're going through identification of which things are critical to change now, which things could wait a while before we change it. So I don't know, but our law, when you try to read it, it's actually very difficult to even read. You know, so part of the fixing it up would have normal people. It cross references things that don't exist sometimes. So let me just give you an example of what I think you're going to see real serious push. The present master plan does talk about village centers. And it talks about clusters and stuff like that. But what it doesn't get to is, and maybe a master plan is never going to get to, you know, maintaining a village feel or whatever. But what the zoning laws are going to get to is things like all buildings need to have F setback from the road. The kind of things we all heard during our campaign. We don't want these buildings feel like they're hanging over us downtown. So those are zoning by law changes. I'm certainly a master plan by law. A master plan change. So it's Georgia saying that it may not be that the master plan has to change. Exactly. Exactly. But we have to adopt it. And in order for us to adopt it, we have to look at it. Absolutely. So develop and begin implementation of a plan to review, revise. You know what? Develop and begin implementation of a plan is one of the steps of reviewing, revising and or developing a new master plan. It's really, the goal is review, revise or develop a new master plan. That's the goal. And one of the steps under that goal. Well, first step would be is develop a plan to do that. Right. Which would mean something like that. Does that make any sense? Develop. So it would, under master plan it would say review, revise and or develop a new master plan. Right. Review, revise and or develop and adopt. No. The charter actually tells, simply commands us to review it. Or does it, I have to get our plan. It tells us we have to adopt it. We do have to adopt. We have to adopt. I mean we could adopt. We could just adopt the document that's already there. Right. We could review it and say it's good enough. It's great. Exactly. But we probably make some. But anyway, good. So it is a plan to review, revise and adopt a new master plan. And maybe the new master plan will turn out to be the same as the old master plan. To paraphrase the who. So we don't even say develop a new.  That's right. That's right. And then under specific goals would be the first step would be to create some kind of body to begin this process. That first goal could in theory be something to aim at for this year. Maybe that's way too optimistic. There's nothing wrong with saying A might be done in the first year.  Right. We're still talking master plan. Zoning is separate. Okay.  I think that's nice and short. And then one of the things under that will be developed plan to do that. Exactly. Review, discuss and potentially revise zoning. Now I'm thinking I'd like to make that stronger, but maybe that's just not, that's not how would you make that we really make it a goal to thoroughly revise our zoning bylaws and bring them in conformity with the master plan. Because I think there's, I think many people have said to me that there's a real problem. I'm hearing from some of you that there is a real problem. So we could just fudge it, but do we want to take a strong stand and say, this is something we really want to see. It would take more than a year or two. It would probably take three years maybe. But to actually go through and get the zoning bylaws to be in conformity with the master plan and to be in a state that, that, you know, as you said, would be readable or, you know, comprehensible to the ordinary mortal. Is that a worthy goal? Is that just way beyond what we can do in three years? If I thought maybe my, if I, if I make the word discuss stronger and make it be a CESS, you know, something I want, I want whatever we do to be considering if we do this, what are the potential consequences of it? I'd like to work a CESS because a CESS is part of this going out and looking. Right. This is what it looks like. And if you don't want it to look like that, what does the bylaw have to say? Right. So if I use, put the word review, assess rather than just chat about it. So again, where's this? I'm just taking the word discuss. Oh, discuss. Right. Yeah. I just think if we really are doing. Right. So when we went, many of us went to the chapter 40 or where people were selling it, right?  No one was saying, here are all the good things, but here's some of the bad. Here's things to worry about to guard against or whatever. So you want to go to a few towns that had done it and say, what did you do to make sure success? Was there any dance? And what were the dance? So zone review, assess, and potentially revise zoning violence and conformity with the master plan. I'd like to get rid of potentially, but maybe that's that's the full record here. Because they really do need to be revised. Everyone is making. And my mind is just not doing this because I'm not completely embedded in Amherst culture and master plan culture. Does the issue of how wide a sidewalk is so two wheelchairs can pass each other in a downtown? Is that linked to the master plan? Or could we just say if you want a downtown that's walkable? You know, so it's the master plan has to say walkability before we can talk about it needs to be this one.   Yeah, but you're infusing two things. First of all, the whole thing about the two wheelchairs is all about ADA accessibility. So ADA accessibility is part of a master plan. That's one thing. And then there's the issue of this. There's this, you know, five story building that's right at the edge of what is the walkability. And if you in the master plan, there's just a lot of it. You know, see, that's what I'm saying. Not everything is linked. The master plan conceptually talks about it. And then I see some towns, Buford did it. Dartmouth, they said, okay, we want it. If it's going to go tall, it starts further back. And one of them said, if it goes five floors high, the third and fourth floor step back a little bit from floor one and two.  But this is not in the master plan. No, but no. So they did. So what I'm saying is they didn't have to link everything to the word master plan. They said, this is the way we want our town to look and feel. And what a master plan does is say, this is how we want our town to look and feel. What zoning bylaws and codes do is interpret that in a much more detailed way. What might get us there? What would get you there? And so when people particularly are upset about some of the buildings downtown, the reality is those zoning bylaws were passed by town meeting. But nobody stopped to say, well, then what will it look like? And what you're saying, and what I think a lot of people are saying is if you're going to do zoning bylaws, then doing where you go out, you see what different places have done, et cetera. So the real question for us here is, is it review, assess, and revise zoning bylaws in conformity with the master plan? And I think I'm only balking at the absolute link with the word the master plan. And it's the town. The master plan, vibrant village centers is a goal. And then what? So I'm fine. The master plan has three or four pages that anyone would love. These are great. And then you can say, well, our town doesn't look like New Hampshire's Hanover does or Manchester now does. So what's going wrong here that we all say we want these things and we get this and they get that. Northampton has people buzzing around the street. Well, they have a big wide commercial street and we don't. So under A, we want to adopt the zoning bylaws that are ready prior to adoption of the master plan and then adopt the zone. You've got a sequence to wait for a new master plan in B, right? That's the way I would read B. So just say upon adoption of the master plan. The zoning bylaws to bring them to make them consistent with to bring them in conformity with to Kathy's comfortable with that kind of language. But the thing I'm looking for is if I'm talking about the person in the street, they talk about the character of town, the vitality of town. They never say the master plan is the reason they want change.  They're saying there's something we're doing that's not steering development in a way that we would like. Well, some people say that. Or enabling or enabling the development and even enabling development that we get excited about when it comes. But it's not because it was or wasn't in conformity with the master plan. So that's right. I agree. That doesn't settle it. I'm fine with leaving it this way because it anchors it in something without saying what is it we want in the town of Amherst. What's our vision? What's our shared vision of what we want Amherst to look like five years from now? Right. Right. Right. Okay. So zoning. I have review, assessment, revise zoning bylaws in conformity with the master plan. A, adopt the zoning bylaws that are ready for action prior to adoption of the master plan. And revise zoning bylaws that they are consistent with the adopted master plan. Revise additional. You don't need the second. Well, you can word Smith consistent with the master plan. You don't need to adopt, you know, upon adoption. You can make it consistent with the master plan. You can take the second adopted out. So once you adopt it, it is the master plan. So upon adoption. Revise zoning bylaws. Consistent. Yeah. Consistent. So that they're consistent with the master plan. Right. Exactly. Right. Just a second. Adoption. Revise zoning bylaws. Consistent. So that they are to make them consistent. Or to bring them into conformity. I don't know how you want to phrase it. Or with the master plan. So upon adoption, revise zoning bylaws to make them consistent with the master plan. Transportation. Develop a transportation plan and priorities and integrate into the budget. Integrate those. Integrate them. Integrate. Develop a transportation plan and priorities. Okay. And priorities. And you think it's important to have this integrate into the budget. That's crucial. You could just say. No, you know what. Develop a transportation plan and priorities. That's a given. I think. Anything you do. Anything you knew you develop, you then. You're going to have to. Figure out how your budget takes care of. The real broad goal here is to grab our minds around transportation. Plan and priorities. I think that's nice and true. I like everything that is. Doesn't go across the whole page. And then parking is this comprehensive parking strategy which I have my doubts about. Establish plan to develop. Hardly says it's really talking out to say established plan. But, and you have to put down develop a comprehensive parking strategy is like. Put your neck in a noose now. I think we hedge. All right. So this is just the goals. Version three. How much of the other. You want to go back and look at. And then. Oh, before I do this. Is this the order you want them in. On going this year. I really like starting with. Town or town. What you could do. And instead of. Year two is. When I'm thinking of the way you edit set up in your boxes, you have things happening in year one that relate to master plan and zoning and transportation and parking. So it's more. So why don't we say year one and year one and beyond. Yeah. So in a way, there's a multi year goal of something you're trying to do. And then the other things you're saying was we're just going to always be doing, you know, what you're talking about ongoing. I have year one and year one. That work. Yeah. And within the categories are you worried about how they're ordered? Is that something you want to talk about? We should talk about that. Yeah. I haven't changed any order since I sent you. Yeah, I don't see really a sense of priority in the ongoing list. They're all. Well, I think we should put elementary school and higher up together. Yeah. And then how manager after that. Okay. Maybe town manager comes at the end. Yeah. Better than that. I mean it's the bottom line is they're all ongoing. They're all things we're supposed to be doing. There's a sense of starting with town. Government's fine. I'm from with that. This year only rules of procedure by law review capital plan. Again, I would put capital plan projects at the very top, but that's just me. I'm in the sense. Speaker. Okay. But it's, they're all, they all have to be done. And if they're not done, then we'll all start pointing fingers at each other. So capital plan is that the project then rules of procedure by law review, energy and sustainability. I can't really. And then. Transportation and parking. Anything else? Well. Just let me ask in the organization, did you move town manager above elementary and higher ed and leave them at the last two. No, I moved to a manager last and left elementary comes right after budget and higher ed comes after elementary. Okay. It's the most processing. That's why I'm actually half thought of, can we just move it under. Amherst town government. Because it's one of the things we have to do as a council, but it just seems, it's not small in terms of an activity, but it, it doesn't have the weight of. You know what? You're right. So let me just have it be an activity. That's going to happen. Right. So. Okay. Because everything else has this higher. Yes, it does. Purpose to it. Yes. And my notes that I have under these are ones just so that when I get back to the chart, I remember to put them in there. How about, let's look at it again. So we have Amherst town government town manager evaluation. This is also where we should talk. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. All of you saw the things you had listed under your steps. Public engagement and communication. Budget and fiscal. Elementary schools. Higher education. You notice we have no relationship about regional schools. But in fact, we've accomplished some stuff with regional schools. No. We have nothing about housing here. Ooh. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. So we have a lot of housing here. Ooh. And I'm making notes to myself.  How many, how many housing units have been created this year? How many roads have been paved this year? Should we have housing under year one or year one and beyond? Year one and beyond. And there's two places this is happening. We have a housing production plan. is having a discussion of this, there's a, you know, it's like go back and look at it. So yeah, I think it's a huge issue. But is it something, and how would it fit into this? We're not, in broadly speaking, we're not revisiting the housing production plan. I don't think we're not rethinking this stuff. I think now it's a matter of implementing some of these, is that what people are thinking? If the work's been done, the plan is there, the need has been measured. To me, it goes with the words transportation in part, it's in that context. Yeah, so I think it belongs in year one and beyond. And then if you put housing after zoning, right, you know, so whatever housing colon is, you know. So it's implement housing, I mean, is there a comprehensive housing production?  No, there is a housing production plan. I don't, you know, it's been formally adopted, and that's certainly not by us. I don't believe my town meeting, for that matter either. It's a document that makes a series of recommendations. But I don't know that it's ever been actually, you know, adopted. So we want, do we want to say review and adopt a housing plan or a comprehensive plan? It would seem to be housing is a crucial issue and the council needs to address and come up with some sort of, yeah, some sort of vision for the next few years. What's our vision? How many new units do we want to see built? What kinds of units? Talking about rentals, single family, multifamily, how many affordable units? I mean, we don't have to get, you know, down. I mean, the plan actually gives specific numbers. That may be a bit fanciful. But still, I think we should have some sort of housing plan or housing production. So if you had review and envision a housing plan or something, because it's going to be interrelated with what you're just, this thing right above it is zoning, like a whole bunch of pieces of zoning or, you know, take a lot and allow more dense units. But no, I'm not saying put it under there. I'm just saying, you know, are we? It's a separate one. It's totally separate. Lynn and I were talking about are we potentially going to see a housing glut of certain kinds of units that we've just built? High-priced units that rent for $3,500 for a two-bedroom. You know, if we build a lot of them, do we get to a point where we've got a glut in the market, but we don't have enough of, you know, for, so I like the idea of housing here. But I just, we don't have a lot. But rather than what we're going to have or what it might look like, what's the broad goal? Review and adopt a housing plan. But we have a housing plan, right? Well, we have a housing production plan, a document called that. But to my knowledge, it's not been adopted by anybody. It's just a plan that was created, it's a bit dated now, but it makes for interesting reading. In 2014, the same woman, Sondberg, who's still, you know, doing her consulting, was one of the principles of creating it. It's worth reading, and it has some all kinds of interesting ideas and suggestions. Is it about affordable housing? It's primarily us. It's main, yeah, it's pretty much exclusively about affordable housing. So is this review and adopt a book, an affordable housing plan? I'd like to see housing in a larger perspective, but this document really is affordable housing. It really is about affordable housing. But affordable means is specifically also including workforce housing. Oh yeah, totally. Which is 120% or is it 80%? What is workforce housing? There's a technical definition for it. Maybe it's 80%, I thought it was 100%. It depends on how high median it is, you know. But from the point of view of the council and what we're trying to, in terms of goals, what do we want to, I mean, for instance, when the Community Preservation Act committee comes to us with their proposals in the best of all possible worlds, we'd be kind of thinking about this in light of a larger sense of what we're trying to aim at with housing. You know, because they're making, you know, they're giving money to groups to build, to build housing. Same with, you know, open space and so forth. But so some kind of goal of discussion we haven't really had, I mean. I think that is the problem of, you know, I think that is the problem that we don't want to set a goal to do a specific thing if we don't. Agree on the general goal. And I think we need lots more housing of all kinds, but not everybody agrees. It does follow your master plan. Yeah, you guys need to build housing. And we have been, and it's not we, it's actually, you know, the town doesn't build housing. You've got to have conditions that developers want to build on. With the E Street project, we actually are in a sense, in a sense, encouraging a certain kind of building and housing. And there are other ways we could do that, but by and large you're right. It's private, it's the private part that does it. What do, could we say something is review and put in place a housing strategy? Well, we don't know, we're not going to say whether it's purely affordable housing, whether it's worried about rental housing market on controlling the overflow from UMass, but to make. Does that mean adopt a comprehensive, see, whenever anybody gets into this, I want to say comprehensive housing plan. I agree. Because it's everything from workforce housing to affordable housing to. Retirement. To retirement. Right. At the upper end housing too. Right. So. So. Review and review. Right. And develop a comprehensive. Comprehensive housing plan. Yeah. Review, develop and adopt. Adopt. Comprehensive housing. Well, if you develop a, if you develop a plan, you better have the money to do it. If you develop a strategy, you at least know what kind of levers you're going to try to pull to get it to happen. So we could say plan slash strategy. Yeah, I'm just looking just to get us out of. Meeting with the plan, you're assuming there's going to be consultants and. Well, how are we going to do it? So can we give away, do we have some more public land we can give away to, you know, to be a sweetener? How many tax rebates can we give and still have it municipal? But, you know, we've got to do the, we could do this, but it has this consequence. So here's the strategy, but let's, so I'm just looking every time we give away a revenue source. So by us, I have nothing against it. But for 26 units, we gave them $2.5 million in tax credits for 10 years that would have been real estate money. So you can do that. And then you could say, how many times can we do that? You know, maybe we can sometimes, you know, that's in our toolbox, right? We have East Street School that we can say it's surplus and we're going to give you the land for 99 years.  I can have affluent people moving in who would love to retire in Amherst and we don't have to put a lot of public dollars into it. You know, so that's why I'm just calling it a strategy and a plan. But it seems like it's something that you think the council as a whole should try to come up with some sort of. Well, and we have, don't we, the housing trust, there are a bunch of committees that are supposed to be looking at this specific stuff, right? Including the planning thing. So some of these ideas are flowing up to us, correct? And then some of them you'll be liaison, we can liaison with, you know, like attending the meetings and people can say, what else, what have other places done? What could we do here? My feeling is that there's a consensus amongst the council that we need to increase production of housing in Amherst without getting into what kinds. If that's a fear statement, then it would seem we'd like to have amongst ourselves some sort of discussion or some sense of what our priorities are or what our plan is for housing in this town. And then we battle it out, I guess. So maybe. Or do we just, are we just letting tools do it? I'm actually looking at transportation where we said develop a transportation plan slash priorities. Right. I'm wondering if the word we want to, with housing, is review, review, develop and adopt a comprehensive housing plan slash priorities instead of strategy? That's okay with me too. You know, what are we? Because we just, we just had about 13, I believe it was 15 to zero. Yeah. Which, you know, was, right, for the street school. But it's not based on any larger vision that we've crafted or talked about. It just, it was a one-off. I mean, a number of us had sort of committed to this, you know, during the election.  And he got his ducks in a row. And town meeting had already come to me. Yeah, no, exactly. So, and, and, as you're saying, we had that. It was not flowing from some broad vision that we have crafted. Absolutely. And that's understandable. It's nobody's fault. But it sounds like it's a conversation that maybe we should try to have and see if we can come to any consensus about. And so housing plan, call it what you will. And it's pretty vague. And it's a one, it's a, it's a one and two year. It's a multi-year goal. It's a one year and beyond. And beyond, exactly.  Right. And one of the very first things is to further define the goal and the activities. I think it's really good that you did, George, because we've got. I'm glad you came up with that. Yeah. No, because we've got energy and sustainability. If you think about what Amherst thinks about, we, we don't want to completely destroy what we've got with open space and conservation land, but we've got an engine, energy and sustainability here. We also want to house people and we want to move them around. And it's right. You know, so these are the big things that people, that a town cares about. Let me throw an interesting one at you. Did you know that we also set the sewer and water rates? I don't see us having a goal for that. It's just part of our budget. We're just setting our fees. That's what sewer and water rates are. And they create these parts of money that are fees, excuse me. When I'm looking at this lend having just gone up to the this year only, I would move energy and sustainability to this year and beyond, because they're going to do in a beginning work, but then the implementation plan is coming. You know, just to make these, this is the shape of the town. I see you. Right. Energy is just to adopt climate action goals and implementation. If it's right there with housing, transportation and parking, this is like this. So where do you want it in the order of that? I could make it after parking, if you want, you know, to have it be. I often think that the first thing and the last thing in the paragraph is what your eye sees, but it's a biggie. So that people will realize we didn't forget that. Yeah. I mean, it's part of it is also trying to look at this from the perspective of your average voter. We're looking at it, understandably, from our perspective is trying to really create a new form of government. So a lot of this is very broad, very general. But they're thinking about, you know, concrete things like sidewalks, schools, and we have this. It's in here. It's not, I'm not saying it's not here, but they would look at this document very differently than we look at it. And that's why it's moving energy out, because who cares about rules of procedure? There's a lot of this. You didn't approve the public ways. You know, this is stuff you got to do. And I was thinking charter schools and the issue of charter schools and also the issue of a declining school age population. I mean, Lynn talked about the broader relationship with the schools. Maybe there's something to be said to that when you think about the kinds of things that people are talking about. They're talking about charter schools and the challenges, both pro-incon, I hear both sides, and also the declining school age population. Isn't that something that we should, to the degree that we can do anything about it, be in conversation with and part of our broader vision? Because if we end up, fewer and fewer people come to live in this town and have children, that's, you know, it seems that's something that some people are saying, we need to work on. We need to figure out ways to make this town more attractive to families. So, Lynn, I want to go back to the elementary schools. Right. Yeah. I think we have to put parentheses S when we say built a new elementary school. Mm-hmm. Because politically. You think that's an issue? Yeah. Or could it be an issue? For the moment. Okay.  It's just, we just signed an agreement for one school. We all agreed with the superintendent's plan. But ultimately, what we agreed was to submit the SOI. Right. That's all of us. And what the SOI basically says is, if you're funded, you have to look at at least new options. Fair enough. Right. That's true. I want to go back to your thing. There is a whole thing we do with the regional schools. Mm-hmm. We, and that is, we have a formula. And we also have to have a regional school revision of the agreement. And depending on how the meeting on Saturday sets our tone, that could even get further revised based to include a regional elementary school. So you might do elementary school, regional schools, and then higher education. I know. But what do we want to say? Regional, regional school district. Well, you again, it's a partnership, right? I mean, that's, you're trying to raise that. Or is it more specific? Are you talking about an agreement? No. Or are you talking about a relationship we're trying to nurture? Or is it more, we have to craft an agreement every so often? We have to craft an agreement. We have to fund their budget. I'm just talking about that. Sure. We have to have an agreement with fund their budget. We have to agree to their capital plans. And it's not craft an agreement. It's revised. Exactly. We're not making them inscribed. We have to adopt budget. It's a adopt a new school budget and an assessment plan, right? Each year. Thank you. Adopt a new budget and an assessment plan. Plan and budget. Capital is part of it. And now the other thing that's brewing out there, but this is nuance because the school committee would bring to us is consideration of yet another elementary region with Pellum. Right.  But I don't think we have to put that in. No, it shouldn't be. No, no, no. These are just things we have to do or we think we want to do. The library and DPW fires all under the comprehensive capital plan. That's correct. And what else are people complaining about? And capital, the capital plan slash projects is a year one. We have committed. Yeah.  But we're even in the pipeline. Yeah. Whether it's an active point for it, which creates, I mean, just creates a huge timing and pressure problems in us. But in terms, do you think in terms of crafting a broad capital plan, we could still have like a placeholder number that's somewhat reasonable? I mean, not completely crazy so that we can. You can be as a placeholder and protect. And then you can. And then see how that would fit in with the other. And then the issue when you start, when we're not, you're going to see this when we finally release this tool and the tool has to be changed because we've been in, in response to everyone in town saying, don't forget rooms and sidewalks. We're not allowing that budget to go way down. If you don't allow that budget to go way down. There's a lot less to pay for costs of any building. So the timeline for all these buildings has to be longer. I think, you know, and that's part of this plan. So that, so that's when can you reserve a slot? Well, only if you do a tax override for the first couple out of the box, have you can reserve a slot.  And then the meal is less for the one. You have less to share with. It's like we can't run two mortgages at once that are equal. So the one that comes in first gets first dibs. You know, and that's, I mean, Lynn was pushing, I thought the discussion on DPW and fire was really good when on pushing for those schematic designs. If we could get, if we could early on find out, could we build these in pieces? Could we build them in phases? Could we build them somewhat smaller and cheaper? You know, or build them, you know, year one does this and four years later we do something, you know, so that we don't have these as big a number, but we can still do something we want. Then you can save the spot for schools, you know, but if we can't do that, everything is in, anyway. It's that we need to, that's why Rob has said to me, can't we deficit spend at a municipal level? And I go, no, actually you can't. The federal government can, because it prints money, but towns can't. Oh, you didn't know about it. We can't print money? I just sent you version three, but it said version two. Okay, that's right. I'm sorry. We can't print money. Question. You know, I feel like we're running this 90 million dollar business, kind of. Yeah. And if you were running a business, we've spent, we spent all our time discussing the expense side. Again, I'm just saying. No, we don't talk about the revenue side. Why do we, have we had a single discussion on what is our revenues? How do we increase every time we, we delay the license, we lose $70,000 a year from just one building. No, no, we're not, we're not speeding up the places that could be. There's so many things that we could be doing. My son came up with a, if every UMass student actually had to get a town license plate, we registered their car.  And he's thinking, well, that's not very much until you do $65 times 5,000 cars. Yeah.  Great. It turns out it's actually a lot of money. You know, so. Yeah, so I really hope there'd be someone who's having these conversations in our committees in a focused way. Because most of our discussions are about expenses to keep adjusting our expenses. I think that's a good one for when there's a, well, there's also a lull in finance where we could just sit down and say, let's think outside the box here on. Okay. Now we have the, I'm sorry, just to follow up with you. We do have the development panel coming up, you know, there's I'm sure on Wednesday the 17th. Yeah. And that's, yeah, that's the old chapel UMass. What's that? Oh yeah. You know what we're trying to figure out. I haven't made a Margaret Paul and I have to talk on Wednesday. And our regular meeting agendas of the meeting, whether or not we're going to have to call a 10 council meeting. Because if we all show up, you know, and the public is available, but there's a charge and see whenever we meet, there's not a charge. Anyway, the moment I got that notice, we've been having this conversation with John and uh, has money. Mm hmm. Bloody. For a while because we've known they wanted to plan this. Mm hmm. And we've been trying to figure out how to do it so that town counselors feel completely comfortable going and exchanging ideas, but not anyway. Don't worry about it. Go. Sign up. I plan to be there. Okay. I just don't know what our. That's, that's Wednesday because that's the overlap of tech. Okay. And that's the tech. That was the problem. I'm teaching on campus at engineering school. Okay. But I'll come a little bit and I'll do that. CCC makes that way to Wednesday too. Yes. I will not be there on Wednesday. All right. Because someone should just film it. All right. Are we going to try to tackle anything else or are we going to call us today? Mm hmm. Tell you what, this is what I think I need to do next. I think I need to take this, what we did today. I need to go back and look at Kathy, some of your comments and send you all the next version, which is, we'll have the goals reordered and stated and all the other stuff we've. You're going to see Lynn, a lot of the things I dropped in with track change, our little bubbles. Mm hmm. You have begun to address by creating a better, the goal will be more succinct. And then I just, sometimes on timelines, it didn't look, and for some reason my computer wouldn't insert a row. So sometimes I just created rows within one row. You'll see. Okay. You know, it's like, I just made space. It was because I was in track edit mode and it didn't want to do it. But so I was doing what did I think were reasonable because you were doing, you know, by this date, by that date. So I just, I didn't do a lot more than say what I thought was reasonable. Yeah. One just simple practical question is which document or draft should we be looking at as far as things other than, in other words, for timelines and activities? Or does it matter? I need to turn this around to you tomorrow so that we're ready for fronting. So whatever you turn around to us would be the one we look at. Yes. Right. So what we'll probably do is re reword the goals. Okay. Like we just did today. I might mess a little bit with the activities only if we have to add something. And then leave all of Kathy's comments. Unless they've been addressed. Unless they've been addressed. Okay.  And are you going to also try to reorganize the order in your next draft? Oh, yeah. Okay. So it'll come in the new order with the activities. So Kathy, you know what would be really helpful? If you would just go through yours and send me one more version. A strip out the things that I think you've already done it. And if I need to make it into two lines, just give me a note on that. Okay. And so on Friday when we meet and we have this document and we go through it. We also have to approve all of our minutes. Well that, we would be done, correct? Yes. Except to approve our final minutes. And what other committees are doing now is they are allowing one person on the committee to approve the minutes. I'm trying to write. So I sent you minutes for this for last week. Yeah. And they were pretty generic, I must say. You know, they were we discussed. And George sent me minutes from them. So those minutes are. So I can just have it done with. But just practical. How does this work? Well, one person improves the minutes. Did they hold a vote? I would be happy to have Lynn just approve. I just don't know what to be. Okay. The committee agrees. The committee agrees that one person can approve the minutes. I've never heard of such thing before. But if it's legal, it is. It actually, the AG has that one process. But, but I think for things like this to me makes sense because we've just gone through. Yeah. We looked at major goals. We Lynn said, and you know, so we're not having major discussions. It's when you have major discussions, people feel like you didn't contract. Right. You want to, you want to review what we said about it. So maybe we should make them. I could make a motion that we would let Lynn be the one person who approves minutes. I second. Any discussion? This. Any thoughts on this? All those in favor? I send you a copy of minutes. So it's four zero and two absent. So good. We have to worry about minutes now. And it means that next Friday, this coming Friday, we'll have the chance, hopefully more than a chance of finishing this thing and being done. And then it goes to the council. And then, Shalini, I'll send you what I wrote up last week. I mean, I did a simple format because it was simple. Yeah. So Lynn. No. She'd never do it. So what I noticed, and you'll see this when you look at it. Yeah. Very specific in things like bylaw and stuff where it's going to happen by April. It's going to happen by November. So I put a few more in the biggies. Like on such and such a day, we do a public forum. We do a something or other. So it wouldn't be like we're revising the zoning laws. Thank you very much. So I put, you know, at this state, we go out to the public on something. So that's what you're going to see when the rows I was adding for really big ones doing some time points. So people wouldn't think for big ones were. The two towns meeting is in here. Is that where it meets two towns meeting on Saturday? No, it's at the schools. Okay. I'll look it up on the website. Oh, I did send you already, Shalini. I sent you a copy of my goals. I mean, my minutes. You would have received it on March 28th. 352. I'm just, I send it out to everybody. Cause I. Right. Motion. Okay. Okay. All those in favor. The meeting is adjourned.


Are all sins the same? Well, the answer is yes, no, and it depends. The fact of the matter is everybody sins. Everybody commits a sin, including the person who thinks he doesn't sin. Now, how do sins affect us? How does God look at sins? Well, it's going to depend. The question is, are all sins the same? Are there differences? Well, all sin is looked down upon God. Whether it's a small sin that we categorize as a small sin, whether it's a large sin, whether it's something simple as not telling the truth or taking someone's life, God looks down at all of them. And so, determine how sin is looked at and even how it's treated. There's a couple of factors. One, who commits the sin? Two, when are the sins committed? Three, and this is the most important, what does God intend to do with the sin? Now, all of us will agree that certain sins are very different ramifications, whether it's in the spiritual realm or if it's in just in life in general. If a person jaywalks, well, that's a ticket. If a person runs a red light, a greater ticket.  There is a difference between the person who sins and doesn't know the Lord and the person who sins and knows the Lord. The person who sins and doesn't know the Lord, well, that person's sin or sins, plural, are all couched under the same umbrella. That is just the sin of unbelief. But then for those people who do know and know better than, i.e., the people who are saved who are his, their sins are going to be treated a little bit differently. As a matter of fact, Jesus says in Luke 12, 40, 80 says, But to the one who did not know it and committed deeds where they were flogging will receive a few. But from everyone who has been given much, much will be required and to whom they entrusted much of him, they will ask all the more. If you have been entrusted with obviously salvation, then more is required. You've been given more and so more is required. We are required to be a light to the world and when we sin, what does it do? It diminishes the light or to someone it might diminish who the light is supposed to be reflecting on, which is God. And so therefore God is going to have a problem with us sullying his image before the world. Obviously, when a person sins, if they are a believer, also matters. If a person is, let's say, a new believer, they've been saved for a day, for a week, for a month, or a year, or even the age of the person. Let's say it's a eight-year-old, a nine-year-old, a ten-year-old, someone younger and they just came to Christ. Let's add that as well. Well, they're going to be given a little bit more of an opportunity to be a Lord compared to someone who was older. Let's say the pastor. Both of them tell a lie.  Well, how is God going to look at that and what will God do as a result of that and what should we do? James 3.1 says that as such, we will incur a stricter judgment for we all stumble in many ways if anyone does not stumble in what he says he is a perfect man able to bridle the whole body as well. With that understanding, we understand that the person who is a teacher, the leader, there is a stricter judgment. As a matter of fact, it's even a higher bar to charge him. When it comes to even accusing an elder it must be two or three witnesses and then that elder is to be rebuked or punished before the people. This is to show that even this person has to be dealt with and so obviously we as who might be lay members also ought to be considered of sin as well. The question as to whether there are even degrees of sin also comes up. Is one sin counted more even as believers, is one sin counted worse than the others? Well, there are some that come with different consequences obviously and we should remember that even as a believer a person who might be seasoned in the word maybe someone who is a leader or a person who is new in the faith still sin comes with consequences. Maybe the consequences won't be heavenly although some of the consequences are we won't get into the difference between different rewards and so forth. That's a discussion for another time but suffice it to say there are certainly degrees in terms of punishment or consequences here on earth. For example, in 1 John 5.16 he says brother committing a sin not leading to death he shall ask and God will for him give life to those who commit sin not leading to death. There is a sin leading to death. We won't go too far into it but suffice it to say that there are certain things that you can do that will lead to a physical death. For example, if you decide that you've got this wild whim that you want to rob a police station it's one of the largest sources of cash you can find in the city however it's pretty guarded and it's a foolish thing to do because of greed and so you decide to rob it. Well, that sin might lead to death if you want to let's say someone wants to start selling drugs. Well, that sin could possibly and in many cases does lead to death and so there are certain consequences that are going to come as with all that if a person commits murder depending upon the state that sin that you commit might also lead to your physical death and so there are consequences for certain sins. Is there forgiveness for every sin? Absolutely but there are consequences and we don't get the option to determine what the consequences are no matter how remorseful we are afterwards. For example, even as relates to something that's prevalent today sexual sin. Sexual sin is a scourge and it places a particular type of burden on the person because as the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 6, 18 this is not like other sins, this is a sin that is on the body. Verse 17 of 1 Corinthians 6 says, but the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with him flea immorally every other sin that a man commits is outside the body but the immoral man sins against his own body or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you whom you have from God and that you are not your own because you have been bought with a price and so obviously sexual sin is going to be a problem because what does it do it involves the senses also involves the mind and it's for some people it is a hard sin a hard addiction a hard problem to overcome and it comes with a lot of bad consequences similarly there are those that may have another addiction maybe an addiction relating to drugs that particular sin also like sexual sin is a sin that affects the body and it destroys the mind there is this connection with somebody who is an addict might feel the need as though they are actually joined to it to have to have it there are certain consequences that come as a result of that that you don't see with other sins the consequence of some of the sins also cause for a public rebuke for example when it comes to the sin of pride pride as it says in the bible is going to precede a fault people who are profound with pride people who have an immense amount of pride are going to have an immense fault that's just the way that God has prescribed it whereas someone else who might be in another sin their consequences might be different there are consequences to every sin and the consequences as God we are going to find out are commiserated with the sin and also what he is wanting to do but pride is something that God does not like because it's the person placing themselves in a position where they don't have no business being thinking that they should be viewed a certain way where only God has that right to be viewed in a positive fashion there are those who love money the person who wants to get rich the person who desires to get rich he is going to fall the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil you end up going down different roads it could be sexual sin, it could be drugs it could be murder, it could be robbery different things because you want to get things for the love of money and it causes all sorts of problems and all sorts of evil and so therefore you are going to get all sorts of consequences now there are two sins that we need to talk about and they are both a little bit different as believers we don't have to worry about that one is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit that is knowing full well that it is the Lord it is the Holy Spirit in what Jesus is doing to knowingly discount that to blasphemy that knowing that what Jesus has done is of the Holy Spirit we see this example when Jesus has just cast out a demon and the Pharisees knowingly blasphemy they know that he is from God because Nicodemus tells us in John 3 and they still want to publicly impugn him and so Jesus says that particular blasphemy will never be forgiven and what essentially is more than anything else is really a denial or a refusal which is the second thing a refusal of Christ a refusal to place your faith in Christ that particular sin that sin cannot be forgiven can that sin be overcome while you are alive sure will it be we don't know but there are many people obviously who live in that particular sin the sin of unbelief until they actually do place their faith in Christ so obviously that sin can be overcome and so there are myriad of sins that people can be engaged in and the consequences are going to vary from person to person but the good news is even as it relates to our sins as believers and remember even Paul himself struggled with sin read Romans 7 he struggled with it he even called the things that he struggled with he called them evil or wicked but his desire and this is the key was to not sin which should be ours and if you do sin notice what he says Paul says in Romans 8 28 we know that God causes all things together for good to those who love them to those who are called according to purpose it seems like an odd passage to bring up in this conversation but all things even include sin God will take our sins, our missteps, our failures and he will still cause those to work for the good to those not even to the person who committed but to him as well but also to someone who is on the outside why am I making that statement well because sometimes your sin will serve as a purpose to help someone else and also to put God and his power on full display in 1 Timothy 1 15 it says it is a trustworthy statement deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came to the world to save sinners among whom I am for most of all yet for this reason I found mercy so that in me as the foremost Jesus Christ might demonstrate his perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in him for eternal life so God can take and will take those things that we do and use them to glorify himself God is going to get glory either one through you or two in spite of you so even with our sin he will use it as a demonstration one either as bringing that person to him or in showing what can be the result of sin and the punishment for it and so God is going to use all of that the good news is though he is not counting our sins any more 2 Corinthians 5 19 since anyone is in Christ he is a new creature old things have passed away and that's what he says verse 19 all these things are from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation namely that God was in Christ, reconciled the world to himself not counting their trespasses or their sins against him this is what God is doing so regardless of the sin if you are in him he will not ultimately as far as attorneys are concerned is to count those trespasses against you because why? the debt has been paid you stand before him justify but he wants you to live in that and so yes you might sin as a matter of fact we are going to sin and if you do sin you have an advocate and so are there degrees of sin are there differences do you treat it differently? yes they are are all sins missing the mark in that case they are all the same but remember whatever it is that you are struggling with whatever it is you are going through there is one simple remedy draw closer to him he will draw closer to you resist the devil and he will flee the closer you get to God watch him take away all the sins that he wants to take away but you have to do that one thing by praise anything that you can think of that is godly focus on that move closer to that and then sin won't be an issue amen