Pursuant to chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021, this meeting will be conducted by remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so in the following manner by emailing stevemccarthi at mccarthi s at mrstma.gov that's M-C-C-A-R-T-H-Y-S at mrstma.gov. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access proceedings in real time by technological means. In the event that we are unable to do so for reasons of economic hardship and despite best efforts, we will post on the town website in audio or video recording, transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting. And with that done, we'll call ourselves to order at 5.02 p.m. and take a roll call. Guest on. Here. Dylan. Here. And I'm here and we have two absent, Doug and Hallie. So, and let's next thing is the public comment. Is there anyone here for general public comment? Raise your hand with the hand raising button. Not related, unrelated to what is on the agenda. No? Okay. All right. So we have a couple of guests. We have Manny Johanicki and is the police chief coming, Steve? He was here a minute ago and it looks like we've lost him. Uh-oh, okay. So what we wanted to do is the police chief. He said, is that chief living, is that chief living stone? Yeah. Okay, so we're going to do the renewals and the licenses after and we're going to do chief living stone and then Manny Johanicki first. So welcome chief living stone. Thank you for coming to our meeting. Oh, he's still blocked. I should be coming up. Here we go. Hi. Good evening. Good, hi. Good evening. Welcome to the meeting. Thank you so much for coming. Of course. Thank you. We just wanted, I guess, to get your view on enforcement. There have been a lot of more than usual ABCC enforcement actions in the town. And I guess we were just wondering like how we would go, like if we were the board of license commissioners were to take action or wanted to, you know, do more enforcement, how that would work. Sure. Yeah, thanks for having me. And, you know, Steve kind of gave me a heads up of what was going on in town with the ABCC. So let me give you a little background and history with the previous relationship we had with the ABCC. So Ted Mahoney was the director for forever at the ABCC and we always had a great relationship with them and their constituents. So they would always call us and ask at the beginning of the year, hey, what do you need from us as a relationship wise perspective? And, you know, so we always had great communication when the ABCC was coming into town. In fact, we would always reach out to them and ask them to come into town for very specific events, for instance, Blarney blowout. You know, the Hobart Ho down back in the day we would always say, can you come in, work with our officers and do alcohol checks with the liquor stores leading up to the event. So, you know, if the event was gonna be on a Saturday we would have the ABCC come in on Thursday, Friday, Saturday night and work with us. So I was a little surprised when Steve reached out to me and said that there had been a couple of members of the ABCC that had come in and, you know, checks without notifying us because there was always the professional relationship that they would let us know they were coming into town and in fact requested us to join them in these liquor checks. And so that is new to us and I think they do have a new director which is totally within their purview.  It's just unusual that they would do that. So I was surprised by that when I heard from Steve that they had come in and done some liquor checks without anybody's knowledge. So now from my own agency, when it comes to compliance checks as we call them, we routinely have done those, you know, forever in existence, always all the way back when I was a young police officer, we would do compliance checks at all the bars and restaurants on a regular basis. And we would pick times when it was appropriate to do these as far as, you know, sometimes we would do them in August leading up to the return of the students and then we would continue them through September and October and typically we would do them Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights when the bars were most busy and we would pick specific time. Sometimes we do them multiple times in one night. So we would do them at eight o'clock then we would go back at 11. And I can tell you going all the way back to the 80s, you know, the relationship that our police department has had with the restaurant and bar owners has always been positive. Our reasoning for doing compliance checks was always about education, right? You know, here's what you need to do. We're very instrumental in getting all the bars on board with getting the electronic and automatic license checks readers and stuff when those came into existence and they've always been on board with that. The times we've had to take punitive action against them has usually been when a bar was repetitive in violations. So if somebody did something, you know, they had a when our officers went into bars and did checks and they found a minor in possession. First thing we would check was a legitimate license. Was it a false license? So we would take that into consideration. That's a little bit different than the ABCC does. They really don't take into consideration any of those types of situations where somebody would have a invalid license. We would because we knew that the bar owners were doing their due diligence and checking for minors, mostly minors trying to get into bars. So, you know, how we operated as an agency was September, October, November, we would always go in usually on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights, at very specific times. We had a protocol where if we were gonna check one bar, we would check all the bars. We didn't want to feel like, we didn't want it to feel like we were targeting one establishment. So if we checked McMurphy's, we would check all the bars. Rarely would we go into establishments that serve both food and alcohol. For instance, we wouldn't go into the Lord Jeffrey Ann or we wouldn't necessarily go into Judy's and interrupt dinner, that sort of thing. That was usually complaint driven. And that was what happened with Bandit East. So we wouldn't routinely check Bandit East. We more would concentrate on the establishments that just served alcohol. So the ones when it was restaurant involved would be more complaint driven. So, you know, hey, I would get emails, hey chief, we've saw a bunch of young people and so on and so establishment, you might want to take a look at that. And so, you know, the ones that were more food serviced, we wouldn't go in there because quite frankly, I think they would sort of construe that as a little bit of harassment. And we took that into consideration for sure. You know, trying to think of other smaller establishments that serve both food and alcohol. And, you know, it wouldn't be a routine where we would go to those establishments. So, and that's how we operated right up till COVID. Now when COVID hit, everybody was closed down and we both just recently got back into our routine of checking establishments on a regular basis. And I can tell you this, the bar business is down substantially. You know, we're not seeing young people going out as frequently as they used to pre-COVID. You know, it would be routine that bars were busy at seven o'clock or eight o'clock at night pre-COVID and that's just not the case anymore. You know, one establishment stat, I mean, it's not stackers. The spoke seems to be the busiest establishment. The owner of that establishment has a great rapport with our police department. If we see a concern, we notify him of that. And he's been very receptive to the recommendations that we've offered to him. So, you know, that's a lot of information, I get it. That's kind of how we operate. So pre-COVID, we were in the establishments a lot, checking IDs, making sure that they were doing scanning, making sure they're keeping track of the number of people in their establishments. You know, they all have counters at the door with their doorman. We don't enforce the number of people in the bar.  So we work cooperatively with them. Certainly work cooperatively with Steve and his group, inspection services and that sort of thing. So again, if there's questions, I'm more than happy to answer those now, but that's kind of how compliance checks go. There's no set schedule, but there's kind of an unwritten set schedule. Thank you very much, it's really helpful. Any questions? Yes, Dylan. I had a couple. First one is, so for the checks, is that being done by just a uniformed officer coming in? Or is there anything ever undercover? It's all uniformed. Yeah, good question Dylan. So the majority of the checks are done in uniform. Officers will go in, usually two at a time, go in, check IDs, making sure everybody's in compliance, make sure nobody's being over-served. So they look for the fact that everybody's of age, they look to make sure that people are not being over-served. So if they see a drunk patron with a beer in their hand, they would bring that person outside and just have a conversation with them. So those are the types of things they look for. If we have something that would be consistent with complaints and or officers saying, this didn't look right, we would go in with plain clothes officers and I go back to the Panda East incident. That was a complaint-driven investigation where we sent plain clothes officers in because we were getting complaints from both citizens and other members of the community. Like, looks like a lot of young people are in there drinking at very specific hours and it was early, you know, five o'clock to seven o'clock. And so that would result in a plain clothes officer, usually from our detective bureau, and we brought in the ABCC to assist us with that. I should also mention that, you know, we do compliance checks at the liquor stores as well. Those also involve going in, making sure that they're checking IDs, you know, have ID scanners. Those are very much complaint-driven as well. If somebody says, hey, look, there was a lot of young people going into this liquor establishment. We would have plain clothes officers view of that and make sure that they were doing what they were supposed to be doing. Thank you. Gaston. Thank you, Chief, for joining us. I wonder if there's something that we can do to try to, you know, improve the relationship with the ABCC and the police. You know, do you see anything that we might do a communication to try to, you know, get the two processes working together? Yeah, so, I mean, what I was going to do when I talked to Steve about this was because I wasn't aware that, you know, Ted Mahoney may have left or maybe had changed some of his responsibilities because he would always reach out, not just to my agency, but Hadley, Northampton, anybody that they were going to do compliance checks with, they usually wanted a uniformed officer with them because there were times when, because they're always in plain clothes when the ABCC comes into town. Quite frankly, people didn't believe they were with the ABCC, so there were times one of them got assaulted. So, you know, I think they appreciated the fact the uniformed officer was with them. So, I was a little surprised when Steve told me that there were some compliance checks done by the ABCC and we weren't notified of that. So, I was going, and Steve gave me the contact of the individual who's now in charge. I was going to just reach out to him, say, hey, look, here's how we've always operated in the past. Yeah, if this is something you want to continue, let me know. We're more than happy to help you out. Quite frankly, I feel very positive about the relationship my agency's always had with the bar owners. I think our bar owners do a great job in a college community. We have very few incidents of people being over-served or minors being served because we keep a close eye on that. And as do they, I mean, that's their livelihood. You know, if somebody leaves the bar intoxicated and gets in an accident, you know, they know that their livelihood is at stake. So, you know, they take that as, you know, very serious as well. So, you know, I was going to tell Steve, I'm going to reach out to the ABCC and say, look, is there a change of policy on your end? Let us know how we can help you. Here's my concerns and that's a conversation we'll have. So, you know, if necessary, I'll reach out to you guys. Thank you. Oh, Gaston, do you want to go again and then Dylan? Sure, just want to say, well, I guess we've kind of served our information function. Glad that that's useful. The, I was going to raise another question and so we can table it if, depending on Dylan's question, and that is about any feedback you have as we are going to be, you know, getting applications for the license that became open. Yeah. So, I don't know who's going to end up with that license.  So they're very specific protocols. I would ask that they follow. So when that time comes, if I could get the opportunity to either meet with those people and speak with them, you know, I always get the approval to do the background checks with liquor licenses, which I appreciate, but also have a face-to-face meeting with the potential candidates that who may get that license just to know, you know, how we're more strict than most, you know, probably the most towns and cities when it comes to licensing of establishments because there is the potential for minors being served and that sort of thing. So maybe we can come back to the logistics to make that work with talking with Steve before you leave us. Chief, thank you. All right, thanks. Dylan? Yeah, so I got one of the things that we're speaking of the liquor licenses that we're trying to figure out now are we're reworking setting our costs for liquor licenses. And one of the restrictions that we have is it can only be associated with what the cost of administration is. And one of the questions that we have really is what are our costs of administration? And I think enforcement obviously goes into that. Do you know what the, or are you able to get what it would be for the police department, what it costs you annually for to do this kind of enforcement? So that way we'd be able to say, all right, well, we know where police cost this and we can kind of build that into our liquor license price point. Yeah, I can tell you this, Dylan. You know, we're at a reduced staff level now with our agency. So it used to be very standard that we would have on say between the hours of 7 p.m. to 3 a.m., six or seven officers working. Now we have three. So it's gonna be more difficult for us moving forward with that sort of, with that number of officers to go into the establishments, to do these like these compliance checks. So we may have to hire people on overtime to do those because it used to be very easy. We had officers assigned to the downtown district. That was part of their responsibility to go into the bars and restaurants and do the compliance checks. And now that we only have three officers working per shift because our funding was cut and our level of officers working per shift is down. It's gonna be more difficult to assign officers because it takes, there's time involved. I mean, you don't just go into a bar or restaurant and check one license, right? You check multiple licenses, you make sure that the patrons are being served properly. So there's, it's a half hour, 45 minute process. Where our uniformed officer is inside that establishment. And so I think it's gonna, it never used to be a cost concern. And I think that's gonna become it's concern in the future. So I could probably give you a better idea of what that's gonna look like moving forward. I probably not gonna be in time when you guys change the regulations or the rules, but there's gonna be a cost associated with it. That's good to know. We can certainly take that into consideration. We think, if I can just follow up, I think we've got now, because we've already done the licenses. So I think we've got really till closer to the end of the year before we have to make, before we're really looking to make a change before we go into impact. So I mean, yeah, a number by the end of, before the end of the year, that way we can kind of build that in. And then I don't know the budget side of how that all works. So then you guys then recoup that from the town. I don't know how that is, but I imagine that that would all be, we obviously want to charge in such a way that it's actually getting to where the cost is actually going rather than just, a general fund kind of thing. Yeah, so yeah, by the end of the year, would be easily easy to do from our perspective as far as cost analysis. Typically our fee fund goes into a general account. So if, for instance, I overdrew on a certain account, I could withdraw from that. So, and that's through the accounting office. So I would feel comfortable being able to give a figure and saying if we went over that or matched that, it would all work out. And then, sorry, one more question. I'm not quite as related, but just kind of from what I've heard in here, I heard you were down the police part with down 10 officers or so. Is that, and are those positions not being filled or is it, that's just kind of temporary trying to restart? So last budget year, we were defunded two officers. So we were at 48, we're now at 46, and then we had a number of officers leave and retire. So we currently are funded at 46, and we have 42 officers, or excuse me, 41 officers in-house actually doing police work. So the process of hiring new officers is difficult.  The process of hiring new officers usually takes about a year between interviews and then sending them to an academy and getting them graduated and then training them. So, you know, and the academies don't always run when we need them to run. They only run about three times a year and they're 22 weeks long each academy. So it's a long process to hire officers. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Anything else to add? No. Those cover my big ones right now. Gaston, one more. Yes, so we expect to get multiple applications for the open license. And so I wanted to confirm whether your request was to try to meet with them before we identify who we would like to give the license to, and if that's, I mean, that makes sense. I don't know if that's what you were asking, but if that's the case, we should talk with Steve now about how to make that work. Yes. Yeah, so I think as long as the individual, whomever it may be, that is being, and again, I don't know your process for the decision of who gets this license. At some point, whoever that is is going to need to have a conversation with me and, you know, Captain Ting and operations, so they understand what our expectations are about running a liquor establishment in a college community because it is different. There's no question about it and what their expectations are from us. You know, we're there to serve them, to assist them and give them advice and our relationship with the establishment has always been outstanding, so just an opportunity to speak with them at some point. Okay. Yeah, Dylan. Yeah, just one more question. I found that logistically from our point of view because I guess it would probably make sense then for us to approve a license pending approval from the police department like we do for most things. I was going to say procedurally it could even make our job easier if we had you vet everybody before they even came to us, but I think that would be a whole lot of meetings which is only going to result in one of them meeting anything. So I think the former makes the most sense to, do we all think at this point in time that that is the way to go, approve contingent on approval from the police department? Yeah, I think so. Gaston. Yeah, I mean, I was waiting to see if Steve had a comment. I mean, the other side of it would be if, you know, you could give your feedback about what would distinguish a strong application because we may well get somebody who hasn't been an operator before. And so, you know, what should we bring to that kind of an application for, you know, if they're otherwise it appears to be a strong and interesting opportunity for the community. Yeah, I can tell you that past practice and I've been doing this for 12 years as chief. There are times when people have been approved for a liquor license and then they don't meet the approval because there are automatic disqualifiers for at the ABCC level. So, you know, there have been times when people have been approved, you know, at the local level and I have not been able to approve them at my level and at the state level. So it probably would be, you know, it would make transition smoother if I had some knowledge about who was applying, absolutely. Yeah, chief, we will be sending as per usual the applications long to your office for a background check. So we can just make sure to get those off early and you'll have all their information there so you can schedule a meeting with them as you're able. Yeah, that's great, Steve. Again, the majority of the people who apply for these types of licenses know the ground rules, know what are the qualifications. So it doesn't happen often, but it happens when somebody applies and they're just, there are automatic disqualifiers. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Are there disqualifiers at the local level that are different from what ABCC would deem disqualifiers? Not really, you know, it's very pretty specific because they do have the right of appeal, right? If I deny a license, they certainly have that right of appeal. So I kind of stay to the same rules at the state level as that. Great, great. Any more questions or comments? No, that's very, very helpful. Is there something that we could put on the books as a guideline for licensees that would in any way facilitate the work of the police department? I mean, I don't know if you do know, I mean, if you notify the applicants, but notify them that the police department is part of the process, it might assist you in weeding out somebody who would be applying who wouldn't necessarily be a suitable person to apply. But it might just be good knowledge for them to know that there's a process where the police department reviews background investigation, that sort of thing. So thank you. Okay, all right, thanks. You're very welcome. Yeah, and this has been very helpful. Does anyone else have another question? Well, I guess, thank you so much for all of the information. It's very, very interesting to learn everything about the ABCC and for all your help with the new license applications. All right, sounds good. Thanks, guys. Thank you very much, Chief. Thanks for coming. Yeah, see you, Steve. All right, well, that was interesting. Formative. Yeah. Okay, so let's... It just kind of following up. I mean, I think there's a capacity to kind of come up with an estimate of hours, and it's easy to price an hour. Yeah. And so I think it will be very interesting to do a reality check of whether our sum total of license fees are in the ballpark at all, or is it 20% or is it 200%? I have no idea. So I think it's gonna be a really interesting exercise because that's just one of the expenses for the town of having liquid licenses. It's not the only one. Yeah. Yeah. Do we... So we have our... When we put the license, the announcement up for the new license applications, does it listed in our... Steve, did you link to that, the liquid license guidelines and regulations? And that mentions the police department. Is that right? Those should be on the website, but I don't believe they are directly linked to on that posting we had, no. Oh, okay. You just referred to the... Okay, the Board of License Commission. But we do mention that the police will be vetting them in some way in that document. I believe so, yeah. I mean, that's part of the standard practice, yeah, so. Okay, all right. All right. Great. So let's go move on to Mandy Johanicki and rental registration. Welcome, Mandy. Is she here? This promoter to be a panelist, it might take a minute. Oh, right, right. Okay, I can see the little microphone. There we go. There we go. Hi. It took a little bit, but thank you for having me. Thank you for coming. Thanks so much for being here. Yeah. So I know you've been emailing with Gaston back and forth and talking about the Board of License Commissioners and its role with the new rental regulations and town before they go up for the town council and one of those was the point system. I would think you've put aside for the time being, is that correct? So I just, yeah, I think we just wanted to get more information, ask some questions. Yeah, so I think I sent Gaston the one that was the, and I apologize for not being as on top of it as I always intend to be to get you guys the most recent versions. They change and then I forget, but the December version hasn't changed that much to what will be in the packet this week for next week's meeting. That there's a couple of updates, but not much has changed from that one to this one. And so where the Board of License Commissioners is continues to be involved in the draft is in fee setting and in the two, fee setting and regulation setting, except what the council wants is that they want to set the first set. So that means what will get passed on to you would be an already adopted fee section, fee schedule, fee everything and an already adopted set of regulations. The council under the current draft would adopt the first set of all of that. And then we would hand it off to you. And you get to do what you want with it. So that's one of the big things that the Board would have at this point is the eventual changes to any of the regulations adopted under the bylaw and any of the fees. So the sort of the need to update the fees occasionally and stuff like that, which you're already doing as I heard for many different items and the council is trying to do it for the ones we're involved with. So those two, and I believe the last time we talked that the Board was okay with having that authority and also I just love to confirm that still. And then the next set of things where the Board would be involved, I'm going through my search is basically in the appeal process. Again, taking your comments from the last time I came to you and the appeal process for at this point it's written as only appeal that appeals only happen from suspensions, revocations and denials of permits or denials of renewals. So there aren't, we have not included in this draft appeals from just a basic violation of the bylaw. So the $300 fine or anything really what we've said is the only thing that can be appealed at this point at least under this structure is if the town refuses to give you a permit to let you rent your property. And then that whole section has basically stayed the same at one point some of it was in regulations it's moved back into the bylaw at a town attorney recommendation to have it more in the bylaw. And then that's where your big responsibility would be. If we suspend or revoke or deny permits it is my understanding that under the current system a permit has never been suspended revoked or denied. Right now the current system has a separate rental of appeals board that would be created it has never been created. And so one of the things we were looking for is if it's never been created and if it doesn't happen that often can we put it to some other committee that's already used to this and you had indicated that you were good with that I think you had some questions about that process. And we are certainly a CRC open to any and all comments you have about the language and the process to match whatever you guys do for your other appeals and stuff like that. We don't really want to reinvent a wheel. We've pulled most of this I believe from the current bylaw although it's been months. So I can't tell you exactly what's in the current one and what's not. But I think most of it came from what currently the rental appeals board would do. Okay. Thanks Mandy. Sorry. One more thing you wanted about the point system. So that is at this point gone from this bylaw. I would suspect it's not going to come back in this bylaw. One thought. The CRC had was to move it. Move a point system potentially to the nuisance house bylaw. As we rewrite that one. And so suspension. So we've gotten rid of a point system to determine system. And we've left suspensions up. I'll just summarize what could get a suspension or denial. Denial is anything for not completing an application. If your application is not complete, you're not going to get a permit. You know, you can be denied if you're currently suspended. And you can be denied for failure to. Pass the required inspection. So if you don't get a suspension, you're not going to be able to pass the required inspection. So if you don't meet all of the application requirements, some of which are inspections and all you could be denied your permit. Suspensions would be for again, failing to remedy any. Non-compliance issues. So failing to remedy those inspection problems. Eventually you could be suspended on that. Immediate suspension is if there's unsafe structures. If there's unsafe structures, then you're not going to be able to pass the required inspection. So if you're not immediately suspended, it has never been done, including in those unsafe structures found by the code enforcement officers. Now they tend to prefer to use the state building code to clear out a building without needing to actually suspend a permit. The public nuisance bylaw suspension. This is the, the, the one where. The point system would have. The only thing to do is. Link other bylaw violations to the permit system. And so this is not completely set yet. And CRC has not discussed this yet. Cause the bylaw for public nuisance public house, nuisance house has just gone into revision and gone into a packet for next week. But the thought is if you hit a certain level of nuisance house violations, which were renaming the public nuisance bylaw. If you hit a certain point, you would be deemed the property would be deemed a nuisance property after warnings, after violations, after corrective action plan, some of the stuff you saw on the point system would go into that. If the house, if the property is deemed a public nuisance and nuisance property, then the building commissioner would have the option to suspend the rental permit. It would not have to be an automatic suspension, but the property would be a public nuisance property. So it would be an automatic suspension. And so if you're not in a public nuisance property, you would have to be brought in a point system without actually having a point system. Those are basically the only things that a permit could be suspended for right now that you would be dealing with in terms of denial or suspensions. Okay. Thank you. Just one quick question. If we go back to fee and regulation setting for a second. So they're adopted by the town council and we would have the authority to change them thereafter. Okay. Okay. Okay. Not as currently written in the bylaw. It would pass directly off to you. Okay. All right. Great. Thank you. Any questions for Mandy Dylan. Gaston. Yes, Dylan. I think we've talked about it before if. So it's going to be the way that it works if a. Places marked as a nuisance property. I think it's going to be the way that it works. I think it's going to be the way that it works. I think it's going to be the way that a building commissioner can revoke the license. I'm assuming I haven't been to any of those, those meetings for discussing that. But some of the thinking that is the case of if you have. Perhaps. Tenants living there that, that we don't necessarily want them to be evicted, but we maybe prevent. New tenants coming in. Is that maybe some of the rationale behind it? No, you got student rentals that are there, and then I think that's, that's, that's probably the idea of, I don't know if you've seen yours is the idea maybe. That's part of the thoughts. Yeah. So the, the approaches and, and as I said, CRC has not talked about the nuisance. House revisions yet. They have just landed in the packet. The land this week. When, when, when our clerk can post them online, but the, you know, right now the nuisance house bylaw. And it's, and you can only be cited under the bylaw for gatherings that cause public nuisances or underage service of underage alcohol service and furnishing and drinking and all. So it's a very limited amount of what causes a nuisance and so one thing CRC has been asked to do is to look at that under a different referral and say, is that sufficient and and we basically said we want to expand what is a public nuisance on a property. But if a violation is written the first time in the second time, the owner does not get notified at all. It's just whoever was causing the nuisance that gets the violation currently under the bylaw and under the third time, then the owner would get notified and become partially responsible. And any subsequent ones after that within a one year period. So the thinking is to expand what a public nuisance is to some of the maintenance issues that are really neighbors are really having some issues with including littering on properties, you know, parking not outside of the parking management plan, you know, vegetation issues where things are just overgrown really bad, you know, and beyond some of the other behavioral issues of noise and all so some some sort of long term thing. And the way it's currently drafted would be that on the third violation, again, based on violations, the third time a ticket was written. The property would within a 12 month period would be declared a problem property at which point to the owner would have to submit a corrective action plan and work with the town. To correct the issues that are public nuisances and figure out a way to do that and then only if other violations occur after that plan is implemented within a certain amount of time would a property be deemed a nuisance property and only at that time. And could the owner become liable for the fines, and could a rental permit if applicable be suspended. And the goal is basically we want to fix the issue. And we don't want to take away people's livelihoods in general we want the nuisance is abated we want the quiet enjoyment returned to neighborhood so. And one thing we were thinking was the point system can get very complicated. So, so that's why we've moved to this sort of direction. Okay, thank you. Gaston is all helpful. Mandy I wonder nevertheless if you could try to imagine what's the most likely kind of appeal that could possibly come actually happen so that we can work with something tangible. I wouldn't suspect the most likely one is for either. I would actually suspect if, if a for a suspension, probably under a potentially new public nuisance by law that fourth or fifth violation under that that then would trigger the potential suspension or denial of a permit under that. I am guessing that because our history, we've had permits that could be suspension ability for those code violations for the past decade that this has been in effect and our building commissioners have chosen not to use that. And so, you know, the other one that might happen is, they might get denied for not being able to produce all of the application requirements. Okay, that that one, that one I think we can, we can handle. But let's imagine the public nuisance. So, who is it from the town who's going to tell us that the, the news, it was indeed a nuisance who's going to be arguing that to us. So there would be, I'm just thinking this through right now, the, the, the way the public nuisance bylaws drafted right now for potential revision. It would be police officers for criminal, because they can only do criminal citations so there would either be a citation multiples and remember it would have to be at least number four on a property and so there would be multiple citations issued by a police officer criminally, or on the non criminal side police officers or inspectional services. So, so it might be john Thompson or the chief building inspector might be a health inspector might be an electrical inspector or it might be a police officer for each one of those issuances, and then the person who would actually suspend the permit would be our principal code official which would be Rob Moore, our building commissioner. Okay, so, you know, it's, it's, you know, Rob and or health and police, and it would have been suspended, or the action would have been taken because they did actually have the number of violations. What's the scope of judgment that we can exercise mean we can't overrule the town law. We can't say that the system that the violation didn't occur because it did occur. So what can we actually, on what grounds could we reasonably overturn the town's Good question right and so we have put discretion in the they may suspend right now is is how it's written I do not know whether the committee will keep it as that if there's an if that hits to that problem proper that nuisance property designation. It is both both sides are written both bylaws are written, I believe I'm checking the, the, the, this one may revoke or suspend yeah both of them are written as may. So, it's a discretionary thing and so, you know, I'm not a practicing attorney and I'm not giving any legal advice, but I would say, you could potentially say they, the, the, since it's a discretionary suspension. You've met the four you've met the nuisance property but was it outside of the discretion to actually suspend the permit because they happened over multiple different x, y, z tenants or the corrective action plan wasn't what is being implemented, you know, potentially something like that I could see would would be where we're there. We're there to grant mercy. Potentially is what I would say. Yeah, do we have any scope to do anything but be merciful as is and I mean I'm trying to understand like what how we would reach a conclusion that the suspension should be overturned. And I mean I'm being very mindful of how flat footed we were the one time that we were in a kind of adversarial posture between two people that we normally like to just do what they say and that's the town manager, and, and Gabriel about how much to kind of cut license fees during the pandemic and so we're like, we like to say yes to both of you what are we supposed to do here in a case of this appeal, we like to say yes to Rob.  Is that the scope of what we're supposed to be legitimately doing. Reading the bylaw as written for appeals, I would say yes, or potentially saying, you know, we need more. Some of the items that it says you would be allowed to do are to overturn sustain, right. Put a stay involved, but a consent agreement so you could add potentially additional requirements right but yeah so so a way to confirm the town's decision or not confirm that decision with a residence right you know residents tend to like sometimes having it confirmed by fellow residents instead of town staff. Okay, okay. I mean it's helpful for me to hear that talk through I don't know if you all agree I mean the, the other issue that is being large here is the fact that the town is, you know short thousands of housing units, and the remedy here is to take one off the market. And it seems like the only way that this could really advance public policy is if the suspensions cause the owner to sell to a more responsible landlord is. I was just wondering if the design can achieve that can provoke that. And then I had a doubt, just to confirm whether the suspension is attaching to the landlord or the property. So if, if, if a landlord from one day to the next transfers the property does the suspension get erased or is it does it travel with the building. So I would read closely about whether the suspension attaches to. I mean it attaches to the permit. So that's the property, but, but at property ownership permits can be transferred so I'd have to go back and really read the language closely about that. The suspension can also attach to only a particular unit, even though the permit is for. We like to use the apartment complexes but not necessarily it could be a triplex or duplex or something but it would only attach potentially to if the suspension is because of inspection issues versus a nuisance property issue. It could only attach to the particular proper the particular units at issue. There's another question in there that I forgot. Me, me too but I guess thinking it through then the question is whether it was housing. The housing issue I mean I think the housing issue means that we're going to always want to find a consent decree and we're going to want to reach, you know in order do this this and this, and you're okay. And we're going to be taking guidance from Rob Mora about what, what should be included in that agreement, but it's kind of weird to get there and ask Rob to help us draft that because we're only there, because he's he suspended. So, I, there's something there that's that that seems like a design issue. I would be happy to. I'd welcome thoughts on how to fix that design issue, right, because it might be a design issue. I think what it means that housing issue. There are some counselors that would hope suspensions do serve the purpose of removing the rentals from a rental unit and moving it into an owner occupied unit depending on the suspension. There are other counselors that the main goal would be to fix them up right to make sure that the units themselves are safe and habitable and and they shouldn't be rented if they're not and so don't let people live in there if we really have these problems with inspections and maintenance and stuff. And that may result in it going from rental to owner occupied because the landlord may not want to. But it may not right. So, I can't say definitively one way or the other because different committee members are and have different thoughts on that. Okay, I mean, I guess the, the, that structure would seem to lead. I guess Rob if he's the person holding the role now to reach agreements and of what the landlord should do. Because when it's coming to us on a suspension and the record shows that they didn't actually do the things that they were asked to do then. Yeah, what are what are we going to do but affirm the suspension. I mean I'm not opposed to us having a deterrent role kind of that lead lead that affects how Rob and the landlord interact even if the scope for us to do things is very narrow. So we're just essentially giving them a public hearing, like it would work sort of like, like I'm trying to think back as down to the port of hearing and of course that was like, that was, you know, we issued the license and then had to take the license away but it was sort of in sort of all in the process and here, but the way that it worked is that there were members of the public and police officers and everybody kind of coming so I guess it gets everybody into the room at the same time to talk it through. After all of this has happened, and maybe that's one benefit of it. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Any other questions for many. So what's our next step with this, do you send us another drip. Oh sorry Dylan to have a question. I did have a question you mentioned something in the beginning about this is going to come to us and we're going to have brought authority to change it. Now, the idea of doing more work. Volunteer work on this is, yeah, I don't think it's going to happen. But what's what's in here that is unchangeable or is this really some bylaw that we really can just be like now we're getting rid of this whole thing and we're revamping the whole thing is that. Is that something we could do. Not really sort of it depends on the section so the bylaw you wouldn't be able to change right the bylaw is solely within the discretion of the council wants the council to dops it so any language in the bylaw or any requirements of the bylaw itself you could not change. With the fees the council would initially set the fees and then it would go to you to set the fees. After that, and so, you know, the council recently after 10 years or nine years changed the fee last year on rental permits. It sat there for nine or 10 years because it was part of the legislature to do so. And so one thing we were thinking was you as the board of licensed commissioners are probably more in tune with fees you talk about a lot of fees. But the council generally and the council generally doesn't set like any fees. And so this one might get lost in the fray. Whereas it might not with with you all because you're constantly looking at fees or you're you're at least I've heard you've got a goal to have a schedule of reviewing fees. The council wanted, I would say the feedback we got from the council was they wanted to be able to set the structure. And then you couldn't change the structure once the fee schedule is adopted and and that is completely right now still under discussion as to, is there a different fee for a 12 unit building than a one unit building. Is there how is it based is it based on the number of inspections that need to be done or is it just a permit fee that includes inspections were in the middle of those discussions but the council really wanted to sort of be the first be the adopting the structure for that structure, as well as the amount, you would be able to change the structure if you wanted, but I think the assumption would be mostly the amounts unless the structure is not working, right. And all and so if the structure is not working or if you don't like the structure, you'd have the complete authority on that on regulations. That's complicated. So the bylaw has certain requirements that must be met. And then the regulations right now talk about what some of them might be. And so I'll send you I'll make sure I send you a copy of the regulations but for right now, the regulations include the entire set of what questions to ask for the application. The bylaw has been pulled from the bylaw. So almost all of it would be totally at after adoption, the board's discretion to keep or remove. And, which is why it's been removed from the bylaw because things change, especially with energy efficiency or other types of questions some might not be necessary after a while that would be fully your discretion except for the two items we said needed asked in the bylaw, you'd get rid of those. But beyond that, the discretion would be yours after the council has adopted regulations. Same with the energy efficiency requirements we've put them in there. We've right now drafted them at the request of ECAC. And they're the ones that have provided us the language. And it would be my recommendation that if you wanted to touch that that you go back to them. And let them do the work for you on that that's what we've done is CRC. And the other set of, you know, and let me pull up the regulations to make sure I don't forget anything about what's in the regulations. Where is that go. So the, the regulations also then include the inspection requirements. They were drafted sort of from the current bylaw, but we moved them in. So that's how does the inspection work. What are they looking for. What happens if an inspection is failed, how long do you keep the documents and the inspection information and stuff like that. So, so that would be that you could change after adoption and then then we have in here property management plan requirements and parking site plan requirements are the only other sections of the regulations right now. So I would say the, what CRC envisions is we've been working on these and working on with Rob and John Thompson and all in the, you know, building commissioner and instructional services department on what the regulations need to include we've worked with ECAC. The changes would come if it's not working for them. I don't envision another sort of big issue. Do we need to add or subtract without a recommendation from Rob or John or ECAC or something like that, where you'd have to start from scratch I think it would be more of Rob or Steve who I think candles are permitting application requirements saying you know the set of requirements isn't working. We need to review this list is how I personally envision the regulation modification happening. Any more questions from Andy. So, when do you think you're going to send what or when would you like to send what you're drafting up to the town council. So, what's your timeframe. Early March right now is the time. We have a meeting on the 26th for CRC where we'll be reviewing the public nuisance bylaw for the first time, and starting to review sort of the general bylaws are near finished the right the permitting bylaw is near finished I would say we're on to the final. What do people want to finally discuss so we're into sort of those those final revisions at this point of picking out little things on that. I think that's where we are with regulations. We still have a lot to go with fee structures because it's very complicated as you know with other things and and setting your own fees and then we have this public nuisance we've got the we have at least one meeting in February. It might take two to get to the council. After the 26 so I'm envisioning early March we have a public listening session scheduled for February 13, which will be the last one that CRC holds and that the goal is to have near final drafts for everything for that session. February 13. Okay. Yeah. And so I can get you final near final drafts of probably everything after the 26 then I'll make myself a note for that or or the meeting after that the February 9 CRC meeting right before that listening session where that's where I hope to be able to sort of say, here's our kind of finalist drafts. And then we'll be working on final changes after comments. Okay, wonderful. Thank you. Thank you so much. Any more questions for Mandy. No. Thank you so much. Thank you. Really, really great really helpful. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Thanks. It's a lot of good good work, and I'm glad that we can, you know, serve a ceremonial function that I think can can can work. No, it can. I think it will. The whole point is that it never comes to us and that that makes it work. That's the whole goal. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Mandy. Thank you, Mandy. Bye. Well, again, very interesting. I'm still here. I'm just eating some pizza. Steve, do you have any reflections on our comments? No, I think it's clearly a well, a well thought out plan. And I think it would work pretty well. I think. I think I, you know, the discussion you'd mentioned your email there. I might also talk to Rob today and he didn't really see much of a chance for something really a technical appeal to come before the board. It would really be kind of more of, you know, multiple violations that themselves can be appealed to different authorities, but it would really be kind of a collection of things that would ever come up. I forgot to say it at the end. I wanted to stress that they have to keep it may, like may suspend if they change it from May, then we really have nothing to do. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Um, okay. So we go ahead and see.  I'm just going to say we do, if we are wrapped up with this conversation, we do have one other person in the audience waiting to, to present something. Oh, all right. Who's this? This is for Garcia Smith colors Inc. They're live entertainment license renewal and an association with the change of hours he had filed and the change to a nightclub style format there were some significant changes to his live entertainment license. So I thought that it'd be best to bring him in for renewal to present those changes to you. So, Federico, can you hear us? Federico, you are muted if you're trying to speak. Can you unmute Steve. I'm like, I can request he does so I've done that. Yeah, he's muted there. Maybe he. There we go. There we go. Can you guys hear me. Yes. Good evening, Mr. Mandela welcome. I'm not here screaming my lungs and I see the button on mute. I'm so sorry about that guys. Sorry. Hello, everybody. Hello. So you are changing something about the live entertainment license for Garcia's actually phone. Can you guys hear me now? Yes. Yeah, we can hear you. All right. Okay. So yeah, we changed the hours on the license. We want to better accommodate anything that happens at Garcia's now that we are changing the hours for entertainment. So we want to provide a DJ on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and we have mariachi band and I spoken to Steve about the hours for mariachi. And so we have the hours I think from from five to one, but in reality the mariachi is only there from five to eight or six to nine. They really go for three hours. But in case of somebody might want a special event on a Monday. We have those hours extended so that way they can have like permission to stay there a little time. So what were the hours? I put this on speaker. Give me a second. Okay. Don't. So just if this is what you're asking me and the, the application in the packet for this week was a new, his new proposal. Oh, okay. That was the new one. All right. All right, I'm back. Okay, Gaston. Thank you. I'm just curious if you could share the vision for how you'll be setting up a DJ. Are you hoping to have dancing as well or just like more energy with the music. No, that's a great question. Yes, we are hoping to put a dance floor out. We work with the town and we show them a blueprint from A to C on how we plan to do that safely. And we, we have shown to the bill department. We work with the fire department to make sure that if an alarm comes on, the music and speakers, I mean any music on the speakers, I'm sorry. And the lighting because we have lighting up on the ceilings that is safely hooked up to the electric system where if an alarm comes on, all of that will shut off. And all of the lights of the restaurant will come on 100%. So people have a safe way out. And the same with a hook up that we put on there for an electrical for an electrical outlet for a mechanical ball that we actually had had there a couple of times already on Wednesday. So we're trying to make a Wednesday for the mechanical ball. We had to remove some tables and open up space. And we have done that a few times actually. And we just want to bring a little more of a nightclub spirit to Amherst. We see a lot of kids standing on the lines outside of the bars downtown. And we want to make sure we provide a roof for those kids and one of the concerns from from the town was that these folks are going to be coming in and out to this to this building and and coming in drinking and all that. So in order to make sure we don't deal with any situations that we cannot handle. We want to charge a fee at the door. And when people go out, they will lose the ability to come back in. So that will force them to stay in there. And we are planning to have a security personnel there. We already have somebody at the door checking IDs, even this past few days with the mechanical ball. So whenever we spot an ID that doesn't check that is valid, we don't allow them to consume alcohol. And the people that are actually of age will put a stamp on them. And we keep an eye on and make sure that they don't do anything silly while they're in there. We as an establishment, we want to make sure we bring in people to enjoy themselves. But we don't want them to be safe haven for people who want to come in and consume six drinks in one hour. That's not our mission. Our mission is to do good business. We have a long contract for the building, and we want to make sure we do everything as safe as possible. So when we bring the DJ, the DJ is going to be on one corner of the building, which is already set up with the cables and all that. All the instruments that we're going to place are almost attached to outlets on the walls. There won't be any cables along the dining room. And I wish I could show you a video, but we tried during Halloween when we asked for permission to Steve and the folks out of town. We actually opened up the dining room and it's huge. I mean, we're talking probably 50, maybe 50 feet by 30 wide. And that's a big place for a dance for a DJ. Now we don't need a huge dance floor because we only plan to have around 200 people for our capacity. We're not planning to bring a thousand people and we will never do that. But like I said, we want to do a responsible business. And once the school comes back in, we want to be more consistent with the DJ and have things booked and also hopefully bringing some bands when the students are not in to keep it at a more responsible level. Thank you. It's very exciting.  Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Dylan, go ahead. I'm excited. I think this is going to be really good too. You guys have been doing a bang up job over there. I have never had a bad experience over at Garcia's food is just incredible. Thank you Dylan. Appreciate it. Now the one thing I will say now I'm only a little concerned about this is when I look out my front window I see Garcia's. I hear spoke on Friday Saturday night and that's fine. You expect it. The one thing I know is just how I'm configured. I hear anything coming Garcia is really loud. How are you obviously there's going to be noise on a Friday and Saturday night you live in a college town you expect it, but kind of what is just your general kind of noise mitigation to kind of keep as much of the noise in the building to really I'm not sure offhand what the the levels for decibels you know so far away from the building are but really how are we making sure we're adhering to that. That's, that's a great point of view. So the DJ will be in charge of the decibels and making sure that the noise is at a level where it doesn't go out of the building as much right now the way we set up the speakers inside the building is. If you if you're familiar with the restaurant when you first come into the restaurant and you have a box stop area where the boots are. We have some speakers up on top towards the back, we don't have any speakers on the front. Obviously, on those evenings, the speakers on the outside will not be live. And we want to make sure that we keep it towards the back of the building as much as we can towards the parking lot. So that way it doesn't affect the people around or across the street from the restaurant and I went to the we had some comments about the. These the sound level from across the street from the park so what I did one day I put up the speakers at a medium level almost above what they are usually on what the restaurant is operating. And I went on with my phone, my cell phone in my car, they want to run the park through the street. You could not hear it, but I just want to assure you that we're not going to be bringing these speakers to a max volume. And I don't think it's necessary because a lot of times whatever you're at if you're at the spoke or any other establishment. Anyway, really, and you come in with some friends, you're gonna also have the ability to talk to them so when we have the speakers set up in a Garcia's, we had them set up facing away from what's the bar area. So when people come in and ask for drinks or we have to engage in a conversation with customers, we can actually hear each other. So when I have more information about the decibels and all that information that DJ is going to set up in there. I'm going to make sure I forward that to you guys you guys know at what levels is going to be is going to be set up once we start going with the night club. Thank you. And then I'm sorry one more question you guys get to do a mechanical bull every Wednesday. Yeah, I mean we were trying to make it an attraction. I mean we're a business was trying to make some some money and I think it's worked out perfectly because Wednesdays Mondays is mariachi band Tuesday is kind of off day. Wednesdays, we want to keep the mechanical bull because when the students come back in Thursday, Friday and Saturday is going to be a dance floor so we need double out of there so you can allow for for room so people dance and then Sundays. It's still up in the air but I think we'll do some some Latino music for for those folks. Yeah, I'm gonna have to make it by on Wednesday for this mechanical bull that sounds you should even last eight seconds your dinners on me. Don't hold me to it you might be too good for that. Yeah, that's quite an insurance policy I imagine you have to get for that. Yeah, yeah, we actually have to get a policy for that we got a yearly policy I have to pay it in full. It's a little pricey but I think in the scope of things is something that is going to attract more customers to Garcia's and we are doing things a little different than a normal restaurant. We have the space we cannot slice the restaurant in half and pay for half the lease, but we can bring more entertainment and what you guys help we're going to be able to do that. We have a couple of dishes and you know I wonder if some radio ads would help local radio ads would help get people in for those Wednesday nights. We're thinking about doing some radio we're choosing between a few local popular radios and we are thinking budget but I think it's going to be on the radio, and we have asked on on TV already on channel 40. They're going to have the mechanical bull on there.  You guys got to make it bigger. Don't worry about. Don't worry about the job on Mondays coming on a Friday relax right the bull a couple of my career that's guys. What is the model your face that you guys work too hard. All right. Thank you Mr Mandela. I think Dylan's really great to Steve do we open a hearing for this one to vote on it or no. I guess it is just a renewal is being modified so I don't think a formal hearing would be required. Okay, great. Everyone has done with questions as there are motion to approve the license for live entertainment license renewal application with the changes to miss colleagues in doing businesses Garcia's restaurant. So moved. Thank you Dylan a second. Thank you guest on any further discussion. No. We'll take a vote Dylan. Hi, guest on. I vote I that is three to zero with two absent and the changes and the license has been approved. Thank you so much for coming in Mr Mandela. Thank you Mary and thank you Dylan. Thank you. And I want to point out Steve, thank you so much for your assistance. You have been great. My pleasure Federico. I'm glad to hear that and I wish you the best luck with your, your new changes. I think it'll be good. Thank you guys we'll see you out there. Have a great night. Okay. All right. Well, that's great. I was going to ask if the bull was coin operated, but we don't do that license anymore. Okay. You're right. So, common victoria. So can we just do all of these or should we. Well, Yeah, did none of these have any significant changes. Okay. All right. So is there a motion to approve the common victoria's license applications for crazy noodles pizza house Amherst, Osterbar, Savannah's and protocol Amherst. So moved. Thank you. Gaston is their second day. Thanks Dylan. Any further discussion. Nope. We'll take a vote Gaston. Hi, Dylan. Hi. And I vote I that is three to zero with two absent. And then the last one we have to do is Savannah's the live entertainment. Okay. Is there a motion to approve the live entertainment license renewal for Savannah's. Thank you Dylan. Is there a second. Second. Thank you Gaston. I'll take a vote. Dylan. Hi. Gaston. Hi. And I vote I that is three to zero with two absent that license has been renewed. Just a question. What is the live entertainment at Savannah's. Oh, Let me pull that up. I think that's a good question. It was a renewal, right? Yeah, it's a renewal. I'm just wondering what they, what was like, what's, I think it's the option of having bands. Let me pull it up. Okay. Are they, do they like a brunch jazz band or something like that? It might be something like that. I think that's ringing. Okay. I'm just going to load here. It is a, yeah, live music, music, acoustic slash jazz. Okay. All right. Great. Well, that's all done. So we already did our discussions except for upcoming meeting schedule and agenda. And so our next meeting is February 2nd at five. And Steve, you said we needed to. You sent an email. We need to do conflict of interest training. Yeah, so I got that email. I mean, it's a pretty simple training online. I mean, you could, you could get started on it if you want that is required, but we can discuss it more thoroughly at that meeting. Okay. All right. And then we should probably talk about, do we want to talk about rental registration? I guess we should bring Doug and Halle up to speed on what happened and also on the enforcement, just the compliance check discussion with chief Livingstone. And is there anything else that is in the works currently? I did have somebody inquiring about. Wanting to amend the BYOB by lodge and possibly make the hours earlier. There is a. A restaurant's looking to do a kind of brunch thing. Okay. I told them they could come speak to the board. And I think they are going to try to make it on the second. Okay. So we should put that on. And then. Oh, I just forgot what I was going to say. There was one more thing. I can't remember. Sorry. I'm drawing a blank. So those, does anyone else have anything else for discussion items for next time? Oh, I was going to ask Steve. And this is kind of in topics not reasonably anticipated, which we can move on to. Have there any applications yet? Or have you had any inquiries? Yes. Surprisingly, only one has formally come in, but I have had some inquiries. Oh really? Okay. I don't know. But we did receive a change of manager application for the spoke as well as well as a new license application for the spoke live, which is going to be a nightclub. Located in the site of the former old town tavern. Old town. Where is that? That is. Behind spoke behind. That's right. Did you buy that property? I believe he has a 25 year lease. A 25 year lease. Okay. Interesting. All right. Wow. Wow. Okay. We're going to be nightclub central.  All right. Steve, do we, who are they flossing as a manager? I don't know off the top of my head. I, I think I have that application locked away. Let me see if I can. Might take me a minute to dig this out. So. It would be. The gentleman would be rich Louis pulled. I have no idea who that is. All right. Find out more about him. I guess as the time comes. Will he be there? He should be there. Right? Yeah. If, if, if, yeah, whenever we schedule it, I probably can get it on the next one, but. Okay. Okay. Okay. Great. Anything else. That would be for the original spoke. There's a different manager. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what you're proposing. You want. First spoke live. When is that one coming up? That one. Well, we'll have to do our notice and everything with that one. For that one is. Proposed to be Colin Hughes. Okay. Okay. Oh, I think I know who riches. Yeah. Colin is my neighbor. Used to be my roommate. He's the guy who mostly is the on floor manager over there. So it's nice to see there finally making official to people who are using the spoke on a day to day. Well, speaking of the conflict of interest training, that might be a good thing to look into. I don't know if a former roommate relationship would. Oh. Would modify, but that might be something too. I think about as you take it. Yeah, I got to check that out. Well, I'm, I'm, I'm also worried about the conflict of interest of being enthusiastic about, you know. The mechanical bull. I know. I mean, we're going to deny this license. Well, hold on. What if we do a mechanical ball? All right, you can have your license. Get out of here. Yeah. All right. OK, so if there are no more topics, not reasonably anticipated, 48 hours prior to the meeting, is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. Thank you, Dylan. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Gaston. Take a vote. Dylan? Aye. Gaston? Aye. And I vote aye. That is 3 to 0 with two absent. All right, well, great. Good meeting. Thanks, everybody, and see you all in the second. See you all then. Thank you. See you all then. Thank you. Bye. Thanks, Steve.


It is about time that we start looking at interesting use cases which were conceived in the next generation mobile network alliance for adoption as a SON initiative and the consequent requirements which are going to emerge. Traditionally the network design and operation can be split into four categories planning, deployment, optimization and maintenance and planning being the overarching activity can even go through some changes while plan has already been made like capacity certainly changes or the technical requirements change. Similarly in deployment there is a possibility that some kind of relocation or re-association is required for the network elements like mobile station has to connect to home E node B instead of node B. Then when the network is operating it could weather or it could deteriorate in performance so some kind of continuous tracking is done using the radio parameters at the physical layer and the transport parameters at the higher layers. And lastly maintenance is a continuous activity as well which emerges from time to time like hardware, upgrade, replacement, software, upgrade, service patches, new software releases, security patches and if there is a failure so kind of failover and failure recovery mechanisms are also needed. So we can think about general next generation mobile network operator use cases so these all stem out of these four stages. Once we talk about the recommendations which were made by the telecom operators they came up with the top operational efficiency recommendations that is the use cases which must be integrated for self organizing network perspective that is these activities had to be automated whatsoever. This included operation and maintenance or management support. We know in telecom networks drive testing is something which essentially was a requirement for RF planning and deployment of the network elements like base transceiver and node bees. Then handover optimization of course soft handoff with hysteresis with thresholding so these are always required because the channel behavior varies over time. Load balancing is another concern. Cell breathing if you recall is an important concept in which the cell blooms or shrinks depending upon the transmit power requirements for a varying number of users. Then cell outage compensation what to do it's a failure recovery mechanism requirement then energy saving all the time is a concern because at the network side the energy is not a major concern but on the mobile side or the handheld device side. It's indeed a major concern because the mains are not available but these are mostly battery operated devices then common channels which are used for control signaling have to be optimized as well for a large number of users. Then interactions between home and macro base transceivers like the E node B home E node B etc. Then so on are also required for optimizing quality of service parameters and this list can go on and on but these were the top recommendations. Now these recommendations require some kind of parametrization. Parametrization means that how are you going to achieve self organizing capability on ground for that there is a control theoretic view on self organizing networks. SEPO Hamilton took it from from an IEEE paper in there the son functions are known more as a controller functions these controller functions provide input to the system as input parameters like neighbor density. The assignment of the RB channels downlink transmit power at the antenna directions polarization and switching capability of cells their current status how many of the cells are out have outages or how many are there using certain band of frequencies then handoff parameters and configuration for MIMO. Now these input parameters serve as configuration management input parameters to the overall system since our focus primarily is on telecom networks so we are using the specific jargon for telecom networks but it could be any network. However for our specific case the output parameters are going to result into change in coverage to accommodate varying degree of users across locations. There a change in capacity probably enhancing the capacity or conserving the capacity to be shared somewhere else the improving the reliability and the availability of the system. Now this view allows us to exactly know what requirements are going to emerge for the son implementation. This has been taken from SEPO Hamilton LTE self organizing networks.


Are you here? Are you still here? Are you still here? Are you breathing? Are you breathing? Or you forgot to breathe? Don't forget to breathe. This activity is to work on yourselves. Don't talk. I want you to think and feel alone. This first activity is alone. Gather. Re-gather. Reconnect. Go deeper. This activity that we have just done is an activity that we will cover when we finish this workshop. This is an activity that we have just done right now. But I want you to forget about this activity because we will go back to it when we finish. And I am again going to ask you to do this next activity privately. This next activity that I am going to ask you to do I think it is very private and I don't want you to be sharing with anyone. The next activity is the activity number three. You have it there also in the slide. It's the same. You have the same in the slide as in your handouts. And what it says is rate your attention with a number from one which is the minimum to seven which is the maximum. And it is to the following items.  How much attention you give to your workmates. How much attention you give to your students. And how much attention do you give to yourselves. So from one minimum to seven. I am going to give you one minute. Is it okay? Don't share. Okay. The minute is over. Finished? Alright. I want to tell you that when I first did this activity myself I noticed how much difference there was between some of the items. I remember that for some of the items my numbers were really low and for some others my numbers went up to more than seven. Do you have the same feeling or do you have a different feeling? Yes. Same feeling. It doesn't have to be the same. Would you like to share your feeling about having these numbers? Do you learn anything from that? Do you become aware of something when you discover like for example your attention to some things go down to two or to three or maybe you have the same attention to everything in a balanced way. Do you learn something about yourselves when doing this? Yes? Good. Look. I'm going to ask you another activity which has nothing to do with what we've been doing. People usually think that mindfulness is sitting down, meditating, going far from the rest of the people and being alone and being just a meditator. Mindfulness has nothing to do with that. We have started by doing these I would say introspective activities but this is not mindfulness. There is only one part of it but there is a lot, a lot related to talking to others, communicating and being in the moment when you are communicating. So we're going to do now a third activity. But before we do it I want to show one slide if you pay attention to what we've been doing I started by asking about your intention and then I was asking about what? I moved from intention to attention. Intention, attention and now let's move to attitude shoshing. This is a graph, a symbol a writing symbol, a Japanese writing symbol which means attitude. Mindfulness is characterized by a particular attitude. This attitude has to do with acceptance has to do with openness has to do with curiosity and it has to do with love. This is also called beginner's mind. Have you ever heard of this expression beginner's mind? Not even in Spanish mente de principiante? Yes? So beginner's mind or mente de principiante is related to whatever you do in your life, do it as if it were the first time in your life you do it. Even though you know what may happen shift your perspective and adopt this attitude of openness, curiosity, lack of prejudice don't you have the impression that in this world so full of experts we have experts now in so many different fields so many experts everywhere well in a world like ours full of experts how much wisdom do you find? So having an attitude which is open, which is curious makes an old subject an old topic come alive again because you are the one who has changed there is a sentence below can someone read it? Can someone read it? In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities in the expert's mind there are few. So what happens when we are beginners our minds are open when we are experts when we know a lot about a topic we lose freshness we lose perspective so this is what you need to have in mind when we start practicing mindfulness so we have intention we have attention and we have these three terms okay are you bored? I'm going to ask you to do activity four for activity four you are going to discover that you have three questions I'm going to ask don't forget about that forget about this look at those slides you've got three questions there and we are going to do an activity now which is a very crazy activity to do are you still breathing? on the verge of the tears again and reconnect are your soles of your feet touching the floor? are you on the verge of the tear? okay how is your posture? is it upright? yes it is upright okay let's have an open attitude okay there is something important going on here so that's why we have this posture because this is so important so let's stay let's feel where we are let's close our eyes and let's breathe together one time so I'm going to guide you you close your eyes you have this posture which is tense but it is also relaxed so you are there in a balanced posture in between being tense but being relaxed your eyes are closed and you are here feeling your body sitting down in your chair let's take one deep breath together inhale exhale welcome back okay now I'm going to ask you three questions and the three questions that I'm going to ask you the three questions that I'm going to ask you are the questions that you have on the slide so when I ask you these questions I'm going to ask you to decide your level of attention or your degree of satisfaction and I'm going to do the same I'm going to ask you to think from one to seven but we're going to do this with another technique and this technique is called systemic coaching or systemic photograph have you heard of it? so I want you to imagine that here this wall is one this wall is one this wall is seven okay so I'm going to ask you these three questions I want you to consider where you are in relation to the question and I'm going to ask you to put yourself to place your body where you think you are do you think you are in four right in the middle do you think you are in three in two so everybody stand up and I'm going to ask you a question and you don't know the question that I'm going to ask you because you're not reading the slide because I will be reading the question for you so I want you to tell me which is normally your level of attention to a conversation if you think that your level of attention usually goes down you move to one if you think that your level of attention is high you move to seven okay so your level of attention when you are in a conversation where are you okay I want you to see where you are in relation to the space but I also want you to take a look at where you are right now in this precise moment in relation to the rest of your partners here okay which is the wall which means one okay and the wall which means seven alright I have a very nice picture from here I have to say let's go to the second question don't read I will read it for you breathe inhale exhale second question how often do you realize that your attention has moved away from whatever you're doing okay now I want you to consider where you are now in relation to where you were before this is another nice picture as well this technique is called systemic photograph let's go to the third question one deep breath and be prepared for my third question what is your degree of satisfaction regarding finding the time to work on the things that are most important for you most times okay how do you feel how do you feel this moving in the space helps you understand on a different level where you are and how you feel yes look at where you were in the first question look at where you were in the second question and look at where you are right now and do you have now the same people around you in this third question no it changes a lot okay go back to seats but now different seats don't sit in your places go to a different seat I'm going to ask you now to go to the next activity you have the next activity also on the slides you have the next activity also in your handouts but you don't need the handouts if you don't want to and the next activity says it is an activity to do in pairs I'm going to ask you to think about what you learned from this activity that we have just done and now I want you to think about what you think what you believe mindfulness is and what do you think it is for and finally we've been talking a lot about attention I want you to consider also in your pairs what happens when attention fails so these three questions are for you to consider in pairs I'm going to give you three minutes I will play the gong to mark the beginning of the activity and then I will play the gong to mark the end of the activity I want you to share with your partners how you feel regarding the activity and also answer the rest of the questions yes, great excuse me excuse me excuse me did you hear the gong where is your attention okay


The aim of this study was to compare the safety and feasibility of spleenic vessel preservation distal pancreatectomy, SVPDP, with warshore technique, weight. Meta-analysis showed that weight had a significantly higher incidence of spleenic infarction, gastric epigastric varices, and clavian dendro3v complications. However, there was no difference between the two procedures in terms of pancreatic fistula, overall morbidity, and hospital stay. Therefore, SVPDP is considered safer than weight due to its relatively lower risk of post-operative complications. However, well-conducted randomized clinical trials are still needed to confirm these findings. This article was offered by Bingqi Li, Yixian Jiao, Jing Li, and others.


Now, Vice President Yemio Shabaljo today met with delegates of the APC and IMO behind closed doors as part of consultations for his 2023 presidential bid. In an interview with Newsman in Oweri shortly after the meeting, the vice president said the 2023 general elections were crucial to the future of the country. He added that he had a fruitful deliberation with the delegates on some critical issues that concerned the economy and the future of Nigeria.