now. Okay, I'm looking for Shalini. She's here. I don't see her picture. Oh, okay, I got to change my view. Okay, let me do that. Gallery. There you are. Good. So thank you for changing the view. Okay, so I'm going to call the role and Shalini Balmille. I am here. Anna Devlin Goatye. Anna, present. Anna, sorry. Anita Lopes. Present. Dorothy Pam. Present. And Andy Steinberg. Present. Okay. And acknowledging the presence of Paul Bachman, the town manager, and Athena O'Keefe, our town council clerk. Okay, so I have a comment to make on the report that I filed at the last town council. There is a omission, two names were omitted in error. And I will file if I can before I get home, the corrected version in the next day or so. But the two names that are missing. And I just don't I don't know how how they got this into some kind of Scrivener's error. For for a term to expire June 30, 2024, Deborah Ferrara and Freca Ette and for a term to expire June 30, 2023, Allegra Clark and Pat Onanabaku. So it was Deborah and Pat's names were omitted. So I will file the corrected report. And your minutes are correct. Okay. So in the council's action was accurate. It reflected the actual action of the TSO Committee. Just to be clear. Yes, because I think I think Anna, for some reason, I remember hearing Paul saying that you read all the names out. Yes, when the motion was done. So it's just some kind of a Scrivener's error. So okay, so now we look at our agenda. And I guess if you look at your you'll see that you have as a result of a meeting with both Lynn and Paul and Athena, we got three agendas put together. And I would like to take a minute or two to just go over it very lightly with you to see if there's something that we should add or consider when we get closer to the date. But so for tonight we have rental permit fees. And I guess Rob Mora is going to be here. We have lunch carts parking fees with a summary from Andy and he sent us some. Well, yes, he sent some really interesting material, which gives a lot of background. It was very interesting. And then we should just discuss a carry over item from CRC and Paul is going to lead on that street closures are possible. It was possible street closures for summer dining. So any comments about something that you think should be on today's agenda tonight's agenda? Yes, Paul. Yeah, I just want to note that Councilor Hanakie is in the audience as well as Rob Mora and Marion Walker, who is the chair of the Licensing Commission. So when those topics come up, you may want to invite them as as this Council President Grisner. OK, and I will Athena is the one that knows how to let them in. Is that correct? Right when the time comes when you are on the topic that concerns us. OK, thank you. So is there anything else that should be or that you want to bring up for tonight before we get started on tonight's agenda? Well, we're going to go over the other two issues for a minute. OK, I see nothing. Then on April 7th, dry the challenge at my hand up. Yes, shall any as could you please tell me when hands are up? Yes, of course, I'm happy to do that. Yes, absolutely. So I just had a question about the agenda setting that again, what are the criteria we're using to organize? I'm not saying we should change today's. But for the future, for example, like senior services was on our initial list or speeds, the car speeds. And we recently had had two accidents. And so to meet those two items in speed and with senior services, we've been getting emails with the 5000 seniors who are, you know, not getting the services perhaps or it requires, you know, we need to look into that. So how do I justify to people who come to me that why are you looking at lunch carts when there's only one perhaps lunch cart versus looking at something like that could threaten people's lives and seniors? So what is the criteria? The criteria were that Lynn and Paul knew what was on the agenda that had to be dealt with and should be taken care of right away or was ready to go. Okay, so that is one point of view. I believe the points you're raising are also very valid. So tonight, we will not bring those up, but I don't think we'll get to those. But when we look at the next two weeks, again, with Paul and Lynn's input, because, for example, on the lunch carts, we had I received emails from the licensing committee, because this was a piece of business that they were nearly finished, they were halfway through. And there was a sense it had to be done. Okay. And we hope to do it rather quickly. And street closures for summer dining again, a carryover item. So there was a desire to go through and carry out the memo and with some idea of our calendar. Paul, do you have anything to add to that? Yeah, I think Dorsey put these agenda previews on the agenda so you could discuss that tonight. If there are things that you want to reprioritize that this is the opportunity to that when you get to that agenda item. Okay. And sometimes it's when our people in the town ready to do a report. So what we did, but concern thinking about things that the that this committee had mentioned outreach notice is on the next agenda April 7th. And please note that the meeting time start time will be 630. We had been at seven because I think JCPC had a series of meetings that were overlapping with ours. And it just wasn't possible to have them do that. So I was asked if I preferred 630 or seven and I said 630.  There's one other thing that I was just at the TAC meeting as the council liaison to TAC, which was also I was chosen because of this committee. They had a substantial discussion today with the planning department and DPW about the proposed crosswalk that is part of the grant that Paul has informed us about previously that would go from roughly Garcia's across to the new playground area in Kendrick Park. And it was a really extensive and very good discussion about safety protocols that might be built into it and how to make it the safest for all pedestrians, but particularly there are a lot of kids, people who have kids who are parking in the parking lot that is sort of immediately behind and off the prairie street. And so I assume that eventually TAC, which passed a motion at the end of the discussion today, will present that motion back to us. And I assume that it then comes back to TSO. I don't know if Paul has any comment on that. Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, it's ultimately it will come to TSO, because the permanent change in the public way. I don't know when the timing of that will be, but I just want to point that out. That is very good. So I can address that. So I think when I talked earlier, we knew that the TSO committee would be interested in knowing the recommendation of TAC and DAAC. And so staff were taking it to those two committees prior to bringing it to the council. Okay. So the two committees will have to meet. The council discusses it. The council refers it to TSO. We meet and discuss it. And then it goes back to the council. Is that the process? Right. The council can vote on it that night or it can refer it. It has the choice of deciding what it wants to do with it. And we could, I suppose, do that at the same time or at least in the same meeting that we discuss speed limits. I mean, they are pretty. This is a specific proposal for a specific crosswalk. So you can talk about speed limits on whatever you're ready to talk about speed limits. Very good. Okay. Right. And so this outreach, the idea is to try to talk about outreach to see what the three CPOs are doing and whatever. And then to get the input from our committee as to where we see ourselves sitting in and to see whether then fact Paul agrees that we do whatever it is, wherever it is, but we have to really have this big discussion. So that's on there. The water bylaw on regulations and sewer bylaw on regulations. Okay. We've had a presentation on water. Have we not, Paul? I get confused, but we haven't had one on sewer. Is that correct? Correct. That's scheduled for the April 4th meeting of the council. Okay. So but April 7th. Okay. So that'll be April 4th. Okay. Council. And then. Okay. What we are to do on this, what our input, what kind of materials we should be looking at. I mean, is kind of what I want to know from you. Like what do you expect TSO TSO members to be thinking about when it comes to water and sewer? So these are very detailed regulars bylaws are relatively straightforward. The regulations are really detailed. So I think what you'd want to do on that first meeting is to have Amy Resek you the assistant superintendent of public works at Guilford mooring. If he's it's really sort of Amy's territory, but they both can are conversant in it to present it. I think that you will want to have more than one meeting about it because you're going to have them make a more detailed presentation. If you have questions, you will have had them for a time a week in advance. The water you've had for about a month now. If you have detailed questions about it, you can you can continue to have the conversation or just to understand it about what you're you're approving. Ultimately, you want to make a recommendation to the town council to approve or whatever you think you is your best advice to the council. Any questions or comments on that from the committee? Okay. The TSO charge review. This was referred to us from GOL. They're looking at committee charges. I don't think we're going to have too deep a discussion too long a discussion on this, but that's something that we have to do. And again, there may be some appointments. It doesn't look to me. I mean, dealing with Shalini's question, when do these other topics get on here? Is it possible that we could talk about speed limits on April 7th? Paul, or is there room for that? Because really, it's a really topic. It's a it's a major topic right now because we see the foot traffic increasing on Massive. It would probably be more appropriate for April 21, which is when the town engineer will be here. And he can talk to you about the limitations on what you can do with speed limits. You can't just choose to set speed limits. There are rules about what you can set. Right. Right. Okay. And it would it would fit in with your roads overview as well. Yeah. Okay. That sounds good to me. Any anybody comment on that one? Okay, then April 21st. Kendrick Park hearing on any issues related to public way and finished recommendations and all items go for it. So that I believe is when we'll also be going over some tack recommendations on parking sidewalks possible by clean. Okay. So that can be a big meeting. And is this when we would also get the some of the previous page? But we were discussing the tack proposal that might be coming to us. Or is that too soon? So I think on the 21st is will be your roads thing. So you'll be looking at Kendrick Park parking, the roads overview. And then if the council decides to deli to refer the specific crosswalk on east plus the street to the to the TSO, that would be a good day to do that as well. But if the council may act on it, if they feel it has enough information to act on it. Right. Okay. And the sound is up to me. Oh, hi. Thank you. Just one little thing on we really talk about speed limits. You were very focused on Massav because of two accidents that have happened there. That may not be within our jurisdiction because that's a university road. Correct. Okay. Well, originally, when the speed limits were brought up, it wasn't about Massav. So correct. Not sure that was it was a fatality on a town road. I don't remember what street or road it was. I know we're certainly going to be paying attention to Amity. In terms of the route nine detour. But, you know, actually, the whole I think that the speed limit should be dealt with, Paul, at the same time that we're dealing with details of the route nine work. What do you think? So I don't think there's anything on the route nine work that will come to this committee. So the speed limit, I think what would be helpful for the committee is just to understand what role you can have with setting speed limits. And there isn't a specific proposal that I have seen that's that a counselor has said I want to set speed limits at this rate. So I think it's better. It would be advisable for this committee to say, here's what we can do with speed limits here, how speed limits are being reviewed when we want to lower speed limits on certain roads. I thought that Pat D'Angelo's made a specific. Did she do a referral? Was there a referral? It was a while ago. I don't do TSO exist. I know what that's about. And it's actually Paul, it's your next door neighbor. Yeah, yeah. There's somebody who lives on Northeast Street, a little fairly close to the intersection with Main Street, Pelham Road, and planning about the speed of traffic going in that first section. And he's been complaining about it a while. And he managed to get the three of us who were running for counsel. There was a fatality. There was I was there was a meeting. A man came to talk about his friend who a man who got killed. And then Pat was very felt very strongly. I remember that moment, but I don't know. And there was another. The other one was the worst. Somebody was killed was North Pleasant Street. So getting information from people who know the council referred to speed limits about three years ago from and to CRC and the CRC transferred at the TSO utilizing a new state law that allows you to designate 25 mile per hour speed limits. So thank you, Councillor Haneke. What happened? I mean, has this been dealt with and done and no, it has not been addressed. No, I was on CRC at the time and we had a presentation from Jason Skeels, town engineer and Captain Ting from the police department about the whole issue of how you can go about setting speed limits. What the discretion is, it's allowed to a local community what the criteria is. And then the police side of it is, you know, is it feasible to enforce it once it's done? And it was a good discussion. And I think you need to have a discussion repeated for this committee. OK, Shalini. And also, so it was there was a lot of discussion in our first council one 16. Remember when we had meetings with Rachel Green and in Pomeroy and yeah, so one 16. And then once the potholes were fixed on Station Road, people were complaining about the speeding. I'm like, see, the potholes were actually natural speed breakers. Now that you fix them, you have speeding problems. So Station Road is another one. So I'm sure if I go through my email, I can pick out for the next meeting. I'll make a note to go to him.  So I I've read some heard something else that somehow the tenor of the time covid angst or whatever, they're they're blaming it on it, but that people are not behaving well in their cars. Yes, Paul. So I think it's important. So as we looked at the agenda is going out, we tried to manage the council, the committee's time. So we sort of set two hours as a budgeted time. So the committee's going to have to be disciplined if you're going to take all these new things that each one can take a lot of time. So I think we were allocating a certain amount of time for each meeting, assuming two hours is what you want to achieve. It's less than that or more than that, you can say that. But then we should be saying, yes, Kendrick Park is going to take, you know, forty five minutes. Road to review is going to take forty five minutes. If you're going to speed limits to that, you're going to. But I think as you manage the meeting, you're going to say, OK, the time is over for discussing this, we now need to move to the next one, just so you're able to take on what you want. All right. So then shall we proceed to I truthfully, well, rental permit fees. I have no idea how much that will take. But we should get started. Lunch cards, I could say what? So did you? Yeah. So did you want to invite? I think who are the councillors? We have councillor Miller, councillor Hanna key and Rob Moore was here, but he's available if we need him. But I think the proposal came from those two councillors. And Rob is here. Yes, I'm sorry. Yes, you're talking about rental permit fee. You're talking about yes, he's listed and street closures would be Hanna key and Hanna key. You said is here. I haven't opened my thing up. OK, hi. And councillor Miller, yeah. OK, and which item is councillor Miller working on tonight? I think this is the rental this is the rental property permit fees. Very good. OK, thank you very much. And I think the proposal is from the councillors. OK. Right. So, Rob, did you want to start this off? No, I think it'd be better for the sponsors to start off, but I'm happy to help anywhere I can on the way. OK, well, I will say does anyone want to say something? I am not I'm not going to give a presentation on the rental permit fees. It's to me, it's a large topic. It took a long time. And if somebody would like to lead that, I certainly welcome them to do it. Mandy, Joe. I would just say thank you for hearing us tonight on our proposal to change the inspection and permit fees under general bylaw three point five zero. That bylaw gives the town council the authority to adopt fees for registration permit applications and inspections. And so the four co-sponsors have proposed fees and we worked with Rob, the building inspector to, you know, to get his sort of a sent an agreement that this fee structure makes some sense. He'll be able to talk about that a little bit more. But what we wanted to do was actually institute a fee for inspections because there is none right now, as far as we know, as co-sponsors. And then, you know, since this bylaw was adopted about. Seven years ago. Or so I think it went into effect in 2015. The fee has for registration to get a permit has not increased. It was set at $100 for all parcels and it has not changed since then. And so we're trying to start a differentiation of different types of parcels. And so we're proposing keeping the $100 fee for any parcel that has up to six units with at least one of the units owner occupied as a principal residence. Keep that at $100 and then for all other parcels move it to $250. And, you know, that in theory will raise a little bit more money for the inspections department to manage the rental registration program. But the you know, that money may or may not result in the ability to hire someone in the next fiscal year. But the goal is to be able to through new systems and new things to be able to potentially get more management, more people funded through this program to manage this program and to do enforcement in the future. But there's no guarantee that that could happen next year but this is the start of sort of what the cosponsors hope would be better matching the revenue raised through this bylaw and this program to the required costs and expenses to administer and enforce the bylaw. Right. So, okay, Anna. Shalini, Sandra's up performing. Oh my, I couldn't even see the contract yet. And I can wait until it's time for questions. I just want to forget. Great. Okay. Shalini. Yeah. Could we get a sense from other college downs what is their fee structure? Because what I'm thinking in my mind is that smaller, you know, smaller renters and I think you have that separation but you have the criteria that the owner is living in one of them. I like that. But then it might be that I am not living there and I have like two units for rent somewhere, right? And so to me going from 100 to 250 seems like maybe not fair to them. And I wonder if there's like a third category, right? So you have one in which the owner is living. One could be a still less than six units, the render not living, maybe it's 150 or something. And then the ones that have like a hundred units or like 50 or a hundred units, I mean, could we make that 500? I mean, I don't know how to set the scale. So which is why I was thinking if we could get a comparison from other towns like we did for our parking as well then that would give us a sense like it's 500 too much to ask once a year for somebody. Is this done once a year? Every year they have to renew it? Like the license. Okay, yeah. So once a year, $500 for 100 units is that too much or too less? Okay, I think so. Mandy, Joe, if I can call on you or Michelle I think you did do some comparisons with other towns. So I give you a chance here to answer that Shalini's question. Yeah, so sometimes many towns and cities do not have a flat structure but we are trying as co-sponsors to work within the current bylaw, which is problematic for not having a flat structure because right now the current bylaw all you're doing is applying for a license and you're as a property owner submitting your own inspection certification. And so the work, as Rob will say, I don't wanna put words in his mouth but what he told us was the work for issuing the permit from the town side is the same no matter how many units are there because the inspections are not done by the town. And so that's the current bylaw we're operating under. New Haven, for example, has different buildings different unit sizes, buildings with different unit sizes have different costs. So they do it by size of rentals, number of rentals on a property. State college is very similar that they do it on a sort of one to four a five to 25 and a 26 type one. I'm not sure those are their exact splits but state college, Burlington, Boston all seem to do a unit split with as you add the units in each unit costs a smaller amount of money is the way some of those towns do it. So the first unit might be $100 for a license and these are just examples that are not based on anyone but then units two to five might cost $50 per extra unit after unit five, you might be at $25 per extra unit. So, you know, each town does it differently and it really is based on the bylaw they have and our bylaw doesn't and almost all of those towns the inspections happen within the inspections department ours the inspections do not happen within the inspections department which is why we settled on proposing sort of another flat fee system differentiated in a way that we believed could be easy to administer the more complicated, the more steps there are the more exceptions there are the harder it is to administer. Before I call Anna right now we have a system inspection only upon complaint I thought that this new bylaw said when you apply for your permit so the fee is for the permit application and inspection have I misunderstood? So there is no new bylaw yet. This proposal for this set of fees is for the current bylaw that is in effect now. So what's been heard on Monday is a working having CRC work on a new bylaw that may or may not come with a new fee proposal but this current proposal that these four sponsors have proposed is for our current bylaw which is fully self inspection driven. So the fee is for the permit it is not an inspection fee or is the fee there's been a complaint and there's an inspection and then you pay it. There is a proposal to add an inspection fee in our proposal that is in front of you today and that would be a fee upon inspection after complaint because that is a basically I think Rob can correct me as the only time an inspection falls under this bylaw. But- I had written down fee for inspection I should have written down fee for permit, okay. Oh yeah, at least, okay, Anna. Sure, I just have a couple of questions. So this is, it's a little tough, right? Because it's kind of like the cart and the horse but they kind of need to cross at the same time. And so I empathize with that. And you're just pushing the cart I guess. So the things I highlighted. So the 150 inspection required under the bylaw that is per unit, right?  So you're talking like over $750,000. Okay, Paul you can shake your head at my math. I know there's more than that, I saw that. So here's my question. My question's about numbers, right? Like I, when you're looking at this you talk about needing to that the fees may permit an increase of staffing. And I would like clarity on the path to the path that links those two things, right? And Paul, I know I asked you if this was an enterprise fund and I believe you said it was not but I need clarity on how it goes from fees collected to salary benefits position on the payroll, et cetera. Do we have a response from Paul? You can correct my math too, it's fine. I know we have more than anyway. I think I'll just look to Mandy, Joe. I think there's a clarification on the inspection is not required, that's only on demand. So the fees one thing so let's step back. We're looking at the existing by-law that's on the books right now. We're looking at increasing the fees for that existing by-law. Don't even think about the next by-law that's a different topic. So this is increasing the fees for the rental permit that people have to get every year. That's a guaranteed fee. And then when there's a required inspection then that's the 150 fee. So you can't multiply out the number unless we have an enormous number of inspections but that's not the case. If there's no complaints then the inspections will all be self-certified that as they did when they applied for their permit. But this would be a set that we would do on the way while we're waiting for the by-law or the new by-law that would increase the fees when people apply for permits which would give either going towards a fund or saving or allow some future staff increase we hope. Okay, Anna. I still, okay, bad example, sorry, mix them up but can you still walk me through money in position out? I can. Someone, sorry. I don't know who to send that to. Yes, I can do that. So money in does not equate. It's not an enterprise fund. It does not equate to a new position. Typically what we do when we introduce a new fee we give it a year to see what kind of revenue is actually going to come in. We don't budget for prospective income. So at the end of the year we would look at we would know pretty quickly this year depending when the rental fees come in, how much money we have. If there was an interest in adding a position with proven revenue we would come back to the council and have to ask for an additional appropriation to hire someone. So the budget is the budget once the council approves it in June. And then if we want to add anybody we have to come back to the council to add that position. Right, and remember there was an interesting fact in the presentation that although we know there are more rental permits there the number of permits actually went down in the last couple of years. Andy. Yeah, I just wanted to mention that you know I think the finance committee at some point would be interested in talking about this topic too. But the finance committee doesn't really want to get into it at the beginning because the setting of a fee policy can't be in too many committees. And I think we sort of feel like that'd be too many committees. But the question that Anna is raising about whether the fee that's being in fee schedule that's being proposed connected to the costs. Quates to the services that are required to support and to administer the program is something that I think that we feel that we are interested in later in the process. And I will add one last piece and that is I think we were thinking more in terms of the long-term bylaw as opposed to the interim piece. So there may be a little bit of that too just to make sure that on a budget side what's being proposed makes sense but we don't want to be the proposers. Okay, Paul. Just one more clarification. So typically we don't say this sum of money is coming in as going to this position. That's not how we run our government. Money comes into a big pot and then the council approves it in terms of general. This justifies adding a position because we have a new revenue source but we don't tie it so that that position isn't tied to whether that revenue source goes up or down. Okay. And Michelle, I'm seeing you here now and do you have anything that you wanna add at this moment? Or welcome, raise your hand, speak when you want. Okay. So the question before us then is a question working with the existing bylaw is shall we increase the fee? Shallony had asked if there had been research as to what other towns had done. Mandy Jo responded with some information. I do remember reading some of that in the report. It sounds to me as if whatever we do here is not gonna be carved in stone. It's a beginning, it's a start. There's a new bylaw coming. So we could see how it goes and not have to make everything perfect as we go on but that's just putting that thought in. I see your hand up, Shallony. Yeah, could you clarify and manage your, Michelle, if when you said New Haven, Burlington, their fee structure, did that include inspection or because I was looking for parallels to what we have right now with the flat, like we don't have, we have self-inspection. So just for registration fee, do we know what other towns, other college towns especially are charging maybe Northampton or where they don't have inspection which is similar to us. So New Haven has a fee for the first two units, a fee for each additional unit. So the first two units are $200, each additional unit is $50 and that is the fee for registration, for getting the license. A second reinspection or a failed inspection caused by a failed inspection costs $75 in New Haven and a failure to appear at a scheduled inspection costs $50 in New Haven. Some bylaws and this is where we're basing this proposal on this bylaw. Most towns require the city to do the inspection and when that happens, towns make two different choices which we don't really have in terms of fee charging because we're self-inspecting in this town. One choice is to make the license fee at a cost that covers the required inspection by the town due to increase in costs per unit and all and then do not have a fee for the first inspection or the reinspection if that first inspection fails that that's sort of covered by the license fee. Other towns keep a license fee lower but then add an inspection fee for every single inspection or even just a reinspection after a first failure. So there's a lot of choices any one town makes depending on how they want to run their fee schedule differentiate between a license fee what they want to include in a license fee and what they want to then include how they want to charge for a inspection fee. Since we self-inspect and our only inspections at this point are generally complaint based that's harder to make those decisions under the current bylaw which is why the co-sponsors proposed the fee structure they have. Oh, Anika hasn't talked to you. So I'm curious, forgive me if this has been covered or is there's been a lot going on. So my question is around the self-inspection. So I see you again. How did we come to determine or lean on that as opposed to having an inspector or have this done by some sort of management have it overseen rather? Rob, would you like to speak? Sure, yeah. So as was mentioned, this bylaw was adopted in January of 2014 and the full year prior to that there was a working group that was established by the town manager that had representation there was a big group was 15, 16 individuals, staff, representatives from the university, people representing the neighborhoods and tenants as well as landlords. And it really was from the very beginning when we set out what the goals of the program would be it was really clearly decided at that time that we would be not going into a full inspection program wouldn't be generating a big staff to do this and it would be a complaint only program as the phase one and something to revisit and look at in future years. And I think that was an agreement that was made with everyone around the table including very strong opinions from the landlord community. Okay. And we didn't have the staff to do inspections upon permit anyway, isn't that correct? That's right. So when this program was initiated and just prior to this program being initiated we hired one code enforcement officer. That's about 10 years ago, John Thompson, everyone knows him. He was hired for this purpose to start outreach, education and being there to respond to complaints. And he today is our only position in this program and continues to be the individual that responds to complaints and works with the university, the police department and others to help improve the situations in the neighborhoods. Right, so Anna. Sure, I have a question for Rob and maybe Paul. I'm curious as you look at this plan what do you anticipate the challenges being knowing that there's potentially future changes in the future, I'm so sorry, my brain has locked my body knowing that there are potential future changes what are the things that are maybe showing up for you on this document that will need shifting down the road or maybe nothing will. Oh, Rob, do I have to call on you to speak? I mean, I think you should just answer in a normal way, okay? Okay, I'm not used to that in these meetings, but okay, so I see this as a phasing in and working towards moving away from a complaint-only program. And that really, I see this as the first step. So if this were to be adopted at some point whenever the decision is made that it makes sense to bring on staff to start to build that program to something more with required inspections, different types of interactions with the landlords and neighborhoods and looking differently at these properties, maybe a little bit of proactive work in ways that we're not able to do it now. So I don't think it would be anything we need to undo necessarily. Of course, if we do move into a very complicated permitting program, the fees might not make sense anymore to be a flat fee, it might have to be based on some sort of unique count or inspection. So the fees could be adjusted again, but I see it as a step towards where maybe some of us believe we have to go. Good. And Anna, Thompson has come to some of our community meetings and I think that this has been like a trying out period. It's been very successful and kind of saying what can you do is a way that you're trying to talk to everybody in a reasonable way. So at least we've only heard good things. So- I love a trying out period. Yeah, yeah. So you've got the floor now. I do have one more question. So the one thing that I think is, I don't even know if it's missing because I don't know if it's appropriate to put in here, but we are seeing, this is the second time that we're seeing raises and fees that have had a big long gap between being right or being changed, right? And so I would love to see a provision in here that they are revisited at a certain interval. If that's, I don't want to suggest what that would be. I'm thinking annual, but I don't know if that's too much given how much work this takes. So I would ask the sponsors to consider that and maybe to consult with Rob on what would make sense in terms of how often to revisit. And if that makes no sense at all to do, just tell me. Sounds good to me. Mandy Jo. I would just say now that it's in your committee, those types of decisions can be made as you vote a recommendation to the council and they don't have to come back to the sponsors for discussion. You're giving me too much power. I just thought I'd mentioned that. Yeah, I thought we could too. Good, thank you. All right, so just to clearly restate this, what are we asked to agree to tonight? And I'm gonna ask Mandy Jo or Michelle to tell us exactly what we are to agree to or not to agree to. My perspective, I think that it's for this committee to look and discuss as you have what we've presented and then to make a recommendation based on what the committee feels is best. And so that could be not to promote this at all. It could be to promote it completely. It could be like Anna just suggested adding in some provisions. So I think it's totally in your wheelhouse now to be able to make whatever recommendations you see fit. And yeah. Shalini. It just took you a sense of what's happening right now.  And is there a certain trend or like who raises those complaints? What are the complaints about? Yes, so Rob, I'm calling upon you to answer this. Thank you. So not counting the, say the past two years because our numbers of service officers are all off of course, but leading up to that prior to that consistently we responded to about 350 to 400 complaints annually. There are a number of things that just don't get recorded. John Thompson has built really good relationships with a lot of landlords and things happen even by text message. There's a car on the grass, it needs to go. That's the kind of exchange that happens in some cases. And the time to put it into the system and report on it, I can tell you doesn't happen or hasn't happened in all those cases but our service levels in all those prior years are somewhere around 350 to 400 complaints. They're mostly, they're mostly complaints that come from either the neighborhood, the tenants themselves or parents of the tenants where a lot of these complaints are generated from. And usually they have to do with building conditions. So their health and building code, fire code matters. I think what everyone has probably noticed since we started this program, one of its big successes has been the visual appearance on the daily experience, the cars are parked a little bit more organized. There's some signage is a little bit better delineation on the site. So those improvements have happened as a result of this program. We still respond to those types of complaints and we still use parking as kind of our first way to investigate complaints or suspicions of over occupancy in a property. So, but most of them generally are health and building code related matters that are found once an inspection occurs, which is really one of the reasons why we feel so strongly about moving this program to the next step is that from our experience from the things we deal with day to day, we're certain that there needs to be improvement to the quality of the housing that's out there. And it's not, by far, it's not all of the properties but it's more than the ones that were there only on a complaint request. And that's what we're hoping that we'll be able to address someday. Yes, thank you. Andy. Oh, Chalene, did you have a response? Are you finished? I'm sorry. I can come back. We can hear Andy. Yeah. Andy. There's one additional group of complaints. I think that Michelle and Mandy and the other two counselors have thought about a little bit in the long-term by-law, but I know that John has talked about it to me several times and that is when he gets a complaint about a house and the rentals from the house and then it is not even registered getting going through the act of enforcing the registration which is really complaint-driven also because the only way that he becomes aware of the fact that there's a rental that isn't registered is when he gets a complaint about the property. And so then there's also the question of fees and fines that might make it, might strengthen the system so that there's less of those situations. Right. I mean, one of the issues has always been the health and safety of the tenants. And we pride ourselves in being a college town. We want to be a safe college town. So I think it's very important that we do have the system of rental registration and that we have, and I'm pleased, Rob, that you're planning to move towards more inspections because that will ensure, I mean, one of the easy one of course is the fire prevention, what do we call it? The smoke alarms that are not there. Another area is porch safety. Students on a porch, gathering on a porch and porch collapse and those can be deadly. Okay, do we have any other questions or comments here? Anika. Anika, I can't see the hand. Your background is too much like the color of the hand there. Okay, Anika. So I have a two-fold. Well, one would be, oh gosh, I'm pulling it on, it went out of my head. It's gonna come to me. I'm so glad that's catching on as a phrase. It's gonna, it's coming to me. Well, first of all, I just start here. Like I'm so, I'm thrilled we're having this conversation and grateful for the work that has gone into this. And, you know, understanding that we have issues and problems and need to figure them out. But I, so my question was for owner occupied, owner occupied homes or units. What does it say for, you know, someone who lives on one end of town has a rental on the other? No complaints. Would, would they, well, one, would they have an increase? Okay, so I guess that John. Okay, Michelle, you had your hand up and then we'll call on Rob or what? This is definitely something that we talked about in terms of, you know, differentiating between an owner occupied landlord and an in town landlord. And it was sort of, we had to just make a decision to sort of for owner occupied to have that reduced or I guess same fee and then to sort of keep it everything else in line. But I think it's an interesting point and it's definitely maybe Mandy wants to add to it but we, we did talk about, you know, landlords that are living in town, you know maybe a few doors down or across town from another home they own and it's a tough call for sure. Okay, and Mandy, Joe. Yeah, I would just ask Rob to address the administrative issues with that. Cause I know that's when, when we suggested some stuff he came, he made some suggestions regarding administration issues regarding some of those choices. Okay, Rob, please go. Well, I mean, I think it's hard for us to manage that. It's hard for us to, you know establish a fee that would be different for essentially every property in that case. So it's a lot more involved administratively to build that program from the beginning. So we want to make sure it's worth it. I think, you know, as you were talking about this examples in my head, I had, you know one is where I think, oh, it would be great to just reduce the fee for all the properties for this particular landlord or land property owner. And then I had the complete opposite thought for other situations. So it wouldn't fit in every case, you know so I don't think I could say one way or the other that it would be, you know how well that would work. But, you know, like what I can say is that there's no question that owner occupied properties generating less complaints and less issues for us. That's absolutely a fact. And then the majority of our complaints come from one to four unit properties. So it isn't the larger complexes that are creating issues for our work, you know for the things that we're dealing with with code enforcement and zoning enforcement. So the bulk of those are the smaller properties which make up the majority of these permits anyway but that really is where the focus is for our work. Thank you. And if I could, if I could just follow up. So adding the voice, I'm not sure if I'm the only renter here but, you know, adding this voice as a renter, okay. As a renter in a single family home property without increase, I would ask that you consider the implications that could come down because you have, I know that you have a lot of wonderful landlords, right? And their tenants included. And, you know, I'm just, I'm concerned also about a trickle down effect for some. There are some people that this would really impact them. I know I was talking with a neighbor who is concerned. You know, she has a set, she has a duplex she's right next door. And she has, you know, some wonderful tents that she has not raised the rent on for quite some time. And, you know, she will have to. And also just the trickle down effect because you have, I mean, the rents here are comparable to other, you know, cities where there's a lot more opportunity in terms of, you know, various types of employment and also what's offered.    Like sometimes when you're talking about renters you're talking about problematic renters or areas or homes that absolutely do need to be addressed. But, you know, you have a lot of folks and you have folks that are in subsidized housing that have no say really in where they are, you know. So they could be like around areas that are, you know seemingly problematic and, you know, they don't want to live next to what they're living with either. So I just think like that trickle down effect especially with folks still dealing with COVID recovery and whatnot would be nice to really just be mindful of that as well. So just to clarify, a person with a duplex lives in, it was renting out both units. This is a non-owner occupied building, right? And so there are two units. The rental registration fee now is what Rob and then what would it be? How much of an increase per year would this be? I thought it would be like just an increase of $100 but maybe I'm not good at math. Yeah, in that example, it currently is $100 and it would be $250 under this proposal. So it would be $150 more per year. That's right. Okay, so Anika, do you think that would actually end up with, I mean, it certainly could add, you know a little bit to the rent, but it wouldn't, of course but you're thinking of the new bylaw that's coming and wondering if there's going to be more fees and the inspection fee and whatever I suppose. There could be some increases. I'm sorry, Anika. I'm clear that we're talking about an increase that would be before the new bylaw is created and then that would be worked out. I'm clear there. I'm just, you know, just in terms of like moving forward and how that is developed. There are going to be fees that are recouped and some landlords will eat them but I'm just saying that for landlords that they may not live where there are rentals but they have no complaints, you know?  They're not all going to be families are not always going to be two person income you're going to have one person in many cases dealing with, you know, market rent. So I think that it's just, you know just being realistic and making sure that we're you know, we're having lines of exactly who all of our renters are, you know? And we're not just putting people in a lump of students where we want to deal with the neighbors. But we're talking about in this small home you're talking about an increase of $150, I believe. Okay, just wanted to clarify that. Okay, I think Shalini, you had your hand up and then. Michelle, did you want to respond to that? Oh, Michelle, please go ahead then. Good. I just wanted to say that I sort of regret that we didn't include a comparison chart of other communities, but I can assure you that in the communities that we did look at this was actually still really much lower even in many cases than what other communities are charging. And in some cases is in line with where we were previously or where we are now is very low compared to other communities. So I'm sorry that we didn't provide that comparison chart. I think that would have been really enlightening to see because it was clear based on my individual research and I think the other sponsors research that this was very aligned with what comparable communities like ours are doing. So if that's any help at all. Okay. That's what I was looking for, thank you. Right, and I'm going to say we're going to have to wind this up if we can, Shalini. Yeah, maybe we can write down our questions and send them because I think having that comparison chart would be helpful for our next discussion. We can make a decision then once we have thought through this and write down our questions and then, so we can move on. And I was also just thinking in terms of like who is impacted, right, like food. So Rob, on the one hand, I guess I want to understand again what is the problem we're solving for which I'm hearing is, and I'm not talking about the ultimate bylaw, but right now with just this increase in registration fee what is the problem we're solving for? And secondly, then it would be who is being impacted because I think Anika is right that most landlords are going to pass it down. You know, when I was renting downtown every time the bid increase their fee it was passed on to the tenants. So even though it's a small amount it feels like $50 that it was a huge shift for me to pay $50 more per month. So it can be a huge impact on people. So what is the problem we're solving from with this? With this increase? You did propose, Shalini, an increase that would be greater than $150 over a year is like. Sure, it'll be less. But still, like for me it may not be but for somebody else that increase may be a lot. So just to keep in mind like who is being impacted by it. But he did answer what is the problem? The problem was health and safety regulations. We're not changing the inspections at this point. So right now we're just talking about the increase. Yeah, the registration increase. So why are we doing that? Okay, so I see hands of Mandy Jo. One of the reasons is that the fees have not been increased since the bylaw was enacted seven years ago. Eight years ago now it went into effect in 2015. It was enacted in 2014. And so costs rise, salaries rise when this was enacted in 2014. The intention was that the fees would cover certain salaries. I did not ask Rob directly or Paul on whether they currently are. But I remember being in town meeting with the goal being that instituting this and then adding a fee would cover an inspector. A code enforcement officer would cover at least a part-time administrative assistant. And when you don't increase fees for seven years yet salaries and healthcare and all of that go up every year for seven years your original intent no longer matches what's actually going on on the ground. Okay, thank you.   Please go ahead, Rob. Oh, I was just gonna add to, besides the fact that we set the rate, I think the town manager intentionally, purposely, meaningfully set the rate very low to begin this program with the intent to look at it in future years. I remember him telling me that that we will revisit these fees and we've long passed that timeframe. What we're trying to solve here are a couple of things. One is prepare for a transition to be able to do more. Maybe more like the bylaw that the counselors are working on or maybe more like the proposal that I have with the Board of License Commissioners to just make some little small changes that we were pretty close to finalizing that would give us the ability to work differently with for lack of better term problem properties. The ones that we see over and over again or more than once in a year. And incorporating an inspection fee would be useful for us in those situations where we're making repeat visits to properties and we have a very, very weak enforcement section for the real enforcement. Yeah, we can assess fines and we can require leases and call for inspections but we can't really suspend permits in any meaningful way for those very small number of properties that we would even consider that for. When you have time or we wanna talk about in a future date really how the program works now with that level of violation. Years later, you make sure wonder why we did it that way but it's not really helpful on those really egregious situations. Okay, and Michelle, thank you, Rob.  Rob basically said what I was going to say which is this is a sort of a stepping stone to get ready for another change with the bylaw. I also wanted to say that we are certainly happy to take any questions or do any additional research that may be helpful and put together a little comparison chart so that you can see what's happening in other communities if that might be helpful for the future discussion that you'll have. Yeah, can I just add one more thing then and maybe Rob and maybe all of you is like we hear a lot from seniors who paid taxes a long time and they're finding it really hard and so are there ways to like how do we make sure? Like you said, there are a few properties that are the problem properties and then it's not the big buildings. I was thinking let's charge more from the big buildings and I know there's not an inspection fee it's a registration fee which is the same amount of work but just for equity purposes we're trying to make sure that the lower income senior people are not impacted by this but we also want to increase some of it because realistically as Maddie said and then we have bigger buildings that making a lot more money and so like with all these different pieces like what is the right amount that we should be charging without impacting the most vulnerable people? Okay, I guess I thought they'd done a good job of threading that needle but Anna. Yeah, I mean, I do think that you threaded the needle well. I think my question is, it feels like we're trying to find the line where people aren't gonna skip out on the registration process, right? And my question is what's on the other side of that? So Rob, you had mentioned some folks were getting complaints about properties that weren't registered. Is there a fine imposed for properties that we find out are registered? And so how does that go along with it? Right, like so I think Shalini prompted this thought of how do we make sure that we're kind of balancing this so that we're not jumping so high that people skip it because there's no repercussions if they do or are there repercussions? Okay, yes, Rob, do you have an answer for that? Sort of, I guess I think I just want to say that most of the cases we come across when there isn't a registration in place, the owners are sometimes even surprised to know about the program. So it makes me believe we need to spend more time. That's part of why we need some more help eventually is that we really need to get out there again. And I think we did a great job in 2014. I mean, we did so much work. We held meetings and gave trainings and mailings and all kinds of stuff for months before the program started, but it's been a long time. So I think we need to be able to continue to do that. And I think that would really go a long way. There's another way that we go about finding unregistered properties and we actually find them this way more than the way Andy, the example Andy gave was that we monitor the transfers. So if we see something like an LLC transfer or if we see a name that we know is an investor, we contact them and remind them. And that always, from our first request, we always get the registration done pretty quickly. So we never have to go to the point, we don't find properties. We, you'll see in the annual reports, the fines are very small. There's multiple reasons for that. That's not really our approach to get compliance. We wanna actually see the money and the improvements go into the property and not collect fines. We don't wanna spend a lot of time in court. We don't wanna go to court for things like you didn't register your property on time and have to deal with explaining that or arguing that to a magistrate or a judge, especially at that point, they've probably registered it anyway. So we choose our path through the courts very carefully when we need it. And we have done it and we have assessed fines when it was, we thought it was appropriate. So I just hope that was helpful to... Yeah, it was. And I definitely prefer carrot to stick, right? I just, I think when we were talking about the parking permit fees, we were worried that raising it too fast would have repercussions. And so I wanted to just make sure we weren't doing that here where people would skip out on it. But it seems like this is not a major job. You're not anticipating folks having so much of an issue with it that they bail on the whole system. Okay, thank you. So in terms of our agenda and time, we are not ready to act tonight. Is that what I'm hearing? Okay. Will we, if we get the additional material, will we be able to do this in a reasonably amount of time on April 7th? Because we have a big agenda then. We have to be able to move forward on this. Okay, Shalini. I have a clarification question. So if we have to make a decision on this, do we need a public, whatever, meeting, public forum or something? No, we don't need to let people know that we're increasing this like landlords or tenants or, I mean, it doesn't affect tenants directly, but it will affect them. So- Who can answer this? Athena. Oh, we have to do- Oh, Mandy Jo's here too. Okay. Yes. Athena, you're- Yeah, we had to do a public hearing for the parking fees because that's in the general bylaws and our, the council's policy on control and regulation of the public ways, but I don't believe that there's a similar stipulation that we have to do a public hearing for the rental permit fees. Okay. All right, so that has been answered. Oh, do you have another question, Shalini? Yeah, just that, if it's impacting people, I think it's good forum to let people know landlords or just people, I mean, we already started getting complaints from people that, hey, don't increase it, it's gonna impact us and whatnot. So it feels like it's good forum to find a way to let people know and get their feedback on this before we decide and at least have a good justification. That's why the table, a comparative table of other college towns and nearby towns would be really helpful to justify. Paul, I'm gonna ask you to arbitrate on this. So I think what Athena said is you don't, there's no requirement for a public hearing, how you make your decision, if you wanna engage the public in a different way, that's up to the committee. You know, I don't, there's nothing in the rules or procedure that requires it. Well, I would suggest that in the interest of moving forward with our agenda, we've had a full discussion, the fee increase for at this moment is a modest increase, which would not have a major impact, I don't believe. And this is part of a process where they're trying to see how things go. So I don't see the necessity for a public hearing, like, you know, if we had world enough in time, but we don't, Paul, your hand is up. Well, I do wanna recognize that Anika has her hand up, but I guess we have to be after her. Thank you, Anika, please. I was just going to ask that if we are not going to have a public forum, what are we waiting for to go ahead and vote on the referral? Okay. All right, so that is an interesting position and Paul, do you have something to say now too? Yeah, the only thing I was gonna add is that whatever you decide, think that, you know, you may be setting a precedent for how you handle things. You don't think you can go back and forth, say, hearing for this because it's not that much, hearing for that, we think it's a little bit more, I think you should be consistent in how you present things to the public. Well, that's, okay, Anna. Sure, so I mean, we are town services and outreach, so every single thing we do is going to impact the public. And so I agree with what Paul said. I think I really, I appreciate the spirit of what you're saying, Shalini, and I think that in my mind, if we start doing this, it's gonna be, we're only gonna spend our time on public hearings and we won't get to half the things that we were trying to get to. So that's my current thought. To Anika's point, if we can add a provision saying every three years this is revisited, then I'm comfortable living on it as well. Can I just respond to that? I wasn't saying that we need a public hearing necessarily, but we need a way to inform people. So maybe in the bulletin board or something so that when we're discussing it, just as people coming in as public comment, they could come and make a comment, but we need to at least let the information out. Because when I shared it in my newsletter, a couple of people said that they had not even heard that this was being discussed and they were grateful that they heard about it. So I think it's important to, even if you don't have a public forum on the town website page or the bulletin board or whatever we have to let people know that this is on our agenda, please come and share your public comments. How is this different from everything we talk about? I'm, this is asked really just because I don't understand. Everything we talk about is on a says affects people. And I began noticing that except for a few issues, we're getting fewer people attending whenever we have a hearing. We had nobody attend the last one because the, and we counselors are getting exhausted because we have so many issues and so many meetings that. I think when it affects people's money or what they're paying for rent, any time it affects them directly, that might be the reason to, that could be one of the criteria where we make an extra effort. I mean, for you maybe- I don't feel called to answer this. So I'm going to leave others to answer this, okay? Anna. I think we're straying away from what we're talking about and a little bit into outreach. And so I want to keep us focused because if we're talking really generally, which we, I think we need to do, we want to make sure the public knows that we're talking about general outreach, right? So I want to keep us a little bit, if that's okay, focused on this issue. I mean, Shalini to your point, and again, like I'm not saying what we're doing is reaching the audience we need to, but this agenda item was on the town website underneath the TSO meeting, right? So I think that there are improved ways to do it. And it's not that it's not out there. It's just not out there in a way that's reaching people. So I think that that to me feels like a conversation for our outreach when we talk about outreach, that's fine. Yeah, as a broader discussion, we can leave it for outreach. Right now we're talking about this particular agenda item that in the next meeting, we're going to talk about increasing something that may not affect you or me, but there are people we're hearing from already. I don't know if you're getting those emails, but I'm getting emails that are saying that we're concerned about the increase in registration fees. So it sounds like people are worried about it. And if you're hearing from few, that means other people are also worried about it or it might impact them. So I'm not saying we have a public forum, but at least have things that are going to impact people, which is different from the agenda because we're doing a lot of discussions. I'm not saying every discussion item should be in the bulletin board on the town website because it's under agenda. But when we're making a decision about something that's going to impact them, just like parking fee was going to impact a few people, but we had a public forum because it was required. This is not required, but it is going to have a direct impact on people. So I just feel having a mention on the bulletin board that please come to that. I think it makes sense to do that. That's part of the transparent government we're running. Okay. If you have a hearing or a forum where you have to pay for advertisements and newspapers and I think several weeks in advance, I don't know how to use the bulletin board. I would say perhaps we could add that to someone's official duties to know, but to know when something, I mean, I think almost all the things that we talk about, water and sewer, that's going to be money too. A lot of things we do involve money in terms of things that people are really going to be interested in. I think anything to do with Kendrick Park, pedestrian safety, those are things people could be really interested in. But my question is how do we go forward? That's really the question. And I think that we either have to say, we're not going to vote on this tonight and we'll vote on it next meeting or we will vote on it tonight and we'll put a provision saying that we will add the words that we will revisit this in, I don't know whether two years or three years. I would say two years just because things are changing and just say we're going to make an effort, we're going to do this and then we're going to see how it goes. But somehow we have to move forward.  Oh, Anika, I see your hand now, I see it, yes. Okay, just my last comment. If this is referred, would we be able to, in addition to having our community out, we engage in with the community outreach officers to do what they do to get the word out? Is there possible, I don't want to add to another agenda, but maybe it's possible to have a bit of extended public comment. When this does go to town council to give community further opportunity to speak, or even just if it's going out, I'm sure that we would alert more people and the emails or calls will come in. Okay, there will be public comment at the town council meeting, that is true. Certainly there's going to be, I mean, Rob said there's going to be town outreach on any changes that because one of the things that when the rental registration first went in, they did a lot of public outreach and that it's time to do some of that again. Okay, so, Shalini. Again, I think for the general discussion on outreach and when to do it and how to do it, that's a separate discussion, but just for this item, I'm not ready to vote today because I wanted to see the comparative chart. I just don't know how we're voting on these numbers, just on hearsay. So I would like to see if possible, a comparison chart of what our neighboring towns are charging with college towns. And so that's next week or next meeting. And secondly, I think if it's okay to add Paul, have Brianna or someone put this on the thing, on the bulletin board, on the town website. What are the disadvantages of doing that? If you want to provide something to be posted on the bulletin board, we can accommodate that. Yeah, and just to let people, let them know that we're going to be discussing this if they have comments. We want to hear from people, right? Yes, we do, but I guess I hadn't thought this was more important than the other items that we want to hear comments from people on. So we've been asked to do something which I think is relatively a small increase. And there are other major things going. So I mean, we can post all of them on the bulletin board. I'm not seeing what the stopping place is here. So that's- And that's a discussion for the larger, let me discuss. But just for this, like not to compare it with other things but just do, because we are going to have a discussion on outreach and so we don't want to mix up the two, right? Yes, right. I'm just saying, okay. So the reason why I'm insisting on this is because we're already hearing from people who are concerned about this. And it might be only one who's getting those emails. Yeah. Okay. I live having people complain about sidewalks. You've got them too. And I'm still here and alive going into my fourth year and the sidewalks haven't been repaired. So, I think there's a lot of business that town is trying to do. And a lot of business that town has to do and we're really trying to play catch up. And so we have a strong agenda. So I would say, let's get that chart. Michelle has said that she will help put it together. Mandy, Joe will do it. And let's see if we can act expeditiously on this next meeting so we can move forward because we have so many things to do that are coming at us. And we can't just get stalled on this one. We're not getting stalled. They're not mutually exclusive. We can have it on the bulletin board and just invite people to come to the public comment. We're not doing a public forum. We're just letting people know. I think it's an important enough issue that people should know. Okay. So we, I guess I hear those words. Okay. Anna. So just to reflect the emails that I was getting were more so we're not about the changes that are proposed in this document that we're looking at. It was if you were doing, it was about the potential future of inspection fees. So I'm not saying that negates the need to figure out outreach. I do just want to consider staff time, our time as we do set precedent. So that's my consideration here is if we do this for this one, I do not think it would be fair to not do it for all the other ones. I don't think that we should give priority that for issues impacting landlords, we put it on the bulletin board. So I want to make sure that we're being consistent. And I would ask that we consider, are we equipped and ready? Who's going to handle it? Who's going to write whatever the text is? Who's going to ask for it to be posted? All of that in my mind, if we do something for this, it needs to be done for other discussions as well. And that's my concern with it. And I am ready to move on from this topic as well. Okay. All right, let us move on. We have lunch carts and we had Andy's memo and his including documents going back many years. Thanks, Michelle. Thanks, Andy, Joe. Bye, Rob. Oh, thank you. Thank you, everyone. I have asked you all to help you on these meetings and thank you very much because I never, I always forget to do that. Thank you, Anna. I appreciate that. Okay. All right. So now we're doing lunch carts and just lunch carts is the term of trade, I guess. We're really talking about not the cart, not the man that sells hot dogs, the breads, hot dogs or the chopped ice with the syrup on it. We're talking about food trucks, but they're called lunch carts. Is that correct, Andy? Well, I just sort of got summed one together into one category for the sake of conversation. But for the purpose that I think is left to us, it has to do with things that are big enough to occupy several parking places in strategic locations like next to the common and the ability to reserve those spaces and how we set fees for those spaces and those sorts of issues.  It's also an issue of import, but it's not the one that is left for us to talk about that was not dealt with in the prior council, prior to us. I went through most of the information today and I did notice one area of possible conflict. I was very interested to find out that actually specific spaces had been noted and numbered for different types of things. So that that's been done. I do see that when we have the permanent Article 14 sidewalk dining that one of those spaces, I believe on South Pleasant Street across from the North Common, I think is a space that's being explained, gonna be just is being discussed as a permanent outdoor dining space. So that's just, I just wanted to bring that in as a possible thing where something that was, there may be a conflict between something we're going to do and something that we have done. That's all. But Andy, please present. Yeah, I mean, I would not get too fixated on that list that was in Jeff Gabbits' lengthy memo that he wrote to the select board because they never did produce the volume of requests that were there. And it was well before we were into this current era where there's outdoor dining and trying to create spaces for the restaurants to do outdoor dining. And so, I don't feel like we need to go back there unless all of a sudden tons of vendors show up and express an interest and then the Board of License Commissioners slows up their hands and comes back to us again. Okay. I think we're sort of looking at it right now is if a request comes along from even one that they want to know what to do because they are not the keepers of the public way. So if you had to, like if this were a town council meeting and we had a draft motion sheet, what would the draft motion for this issue be? Do we, does the TSO grant the Board of Licenses, the authority to decide? And then this is where I get confused, okay. We could do that. There are lots of things that we could do. I made one suggestion, which was in the email that I sent to Evan, which was there. I mean, I think that's where the last committee was dealing with, but it was late at night that night and nobody had the desire to craft the revision to the policy that late at night and actually get something to propose and we were just running out of time in the old council, which is why I did what I did. So I mean, there's one possibility is just take, start with what I sent to Evan. The other is to just start over again and think about other things as to how you would handle it if a request came up. Mine was just simply written so that it would fit within an existing policy in the simplest way. Okay. Could you read that please, Andy? What I also would do is it would add to the section of the current public waste policy for reserving of public waste dash parking, which already exists. There's short-term requests, which go to the town manager under the current policy as was adopted previously and there's long-term requests where we said that the town council remains keeper of the public way. And so if it was somebody who is saying that they wanted to do it for one event, it really falls under the short-term request and would be covered by town manager as responsibility. If it's a long-term request as find greater than 14 days, either cumulative or consecutive, but not permanent, then there's no provision in the current policy to do it. So what I suggested was that after subsection I where it says town council remains keepers of the public way for long-term requests to create a section two, which could cover this issue and the language that I had set off Devon that night was prior to taking action on the reservation of parking spaces or spaces for lunch cart for more than 14 consecutive or cumulative days, the town services and outreach committee will obtain a recommendation from, and I put it in the board of licensed commissioners and consult with town manager, police chief, fire chief and health director. Health director is important because health director has a role in anything that bends food. And I did not run this by Paul, so I'm interested in what this comments would be about it if we were actually going to seriously talk about it, but the thought was we would get that and then TSO would make a recommendation to the council or act in a way that just seemed appropriate for a long-term request. And a long-term request would really be somebody who comes along and says, I have a food truck and I'd like to come every day of lunch and throughout the entire season or it's warm enough to operate my business. And then you have a significant request and at that point it falls under the long-term request definition. Right, yes, I have this, it's underneath the different paper, I see that, okay. So when I read that, I thought, well, that sounds like a really big deal. The town manager, police chief, fire chief and health director, that's a lot of people, but you're talking about something which is, it's kind of hard to figure out more than two weeks cumulative or consecutive, but not permanent. When does something become permanent? That is my first question. And I guess this is to Paul, when is permanent? I think anything over two weeks, I think it's your definition of that semi-permanent, nothing is permanent, obviously, but I think that's the threshold that the council put. Well, they said long-term, which is more than two weeks, but it's not permanent. So my question was, okay, it's maybe 20 weeks, maybe it's 40 weeks, is it 50 weeks? When does it become permanent? That's my question. Well, I don't think anything ever comes permanent because when you take a look at the lunch cart that's currently in operation, the food truck that's near the UU church, they just do an annual application through the Board of License Commissioner to renew and because it's sidewalk placement, it comes under, it's not in the same category. And if somebody who has an actual truck wants to park in a parking place, but do the same thing that that vendor is doing, then it falls under long-term requests, but there really is no such thing as permanent. We've defined what requires long-term requests and what belongs to the council. And so the question is, if that request ever did come along, how would the council deal with it? And as far as the number of people to consult with, I started with long laundry list figuring out that by the time we got around talking about it, we can cut the list down to whoever is deemed most essential. So it was a starting place for a conversation, not an ending place. So you've answered my question. Permanent, it has to be renewed annually. Therefore it's not permanent. Okay, now I've got that clear. Paul, your hand is raised. So I do also want to note that you do have a memo from Marion Walker, who's the chair of the Board of License Commissioners. She is in the audience and she has suggested, alternatively to what Andy had suggested, that you just delegate everything to the Board of License Commissioners because right now they feel it's disconnected from their licensing process. I don't know if you want to invite her in or if you're- I would absolutely like to do that. And then Paul, then I would ask to have you comment after that, okay? Please welcome to the meeting. There she is, Marion Walker. I see the name. Are we going to see the face or just the name? Hello, how are you? Hi, I'm well, thank you. Thanks for having me. Thanks very much for taking this up. So soon I didn't expect it to come up so soon, but I'm very glad to be here and I'm pleased for the discussion. Okay, so give us the case as to why your suggestion would be the correct way to go. So when we first took this up in the Board of the License Commission, this was actually brought to our attention by former counselor, Alyssa Brewer, who was on the, I believe she's on the select board. I don't have a lot of historical context for it. Doug Slaughter, who is on the Board of License Commissioners also was also on the select board. And what happened with the change of government is that the authority for licensing and the authority over the public way was under one, it was under the select board. They did all of that. When the new government comes along, those things have split. And so now the License Commission has the authority to license lunch carts, but we don't have the authority, which the select board had formerly to license them on the public way. So Alyssa said this has to be taken care of and the simplest solution, the one that we thought would be, streamline the whole process would be just to grant the License Commission the authority over the licensing the public way. And it's not anywhere in Amherst. I think if you notice, and I know Mandy sent me, there's a very specific places which are currently allowed for lunch carts. Right, right, yes. Okay, so in other words, you're saying that when it comes to a restaurant, a permanent structure, right? You do all the steps of checking things out and investigating with the police, fire and health director, is that correct? That's correct. That whole, yeah, all of them that Mr. Steinberg read, we go through all. Okay, so the only difference is that now these are public way and they're not permanent. And we have been given the right of the public way. Okay, so you're asking us to wave our right and to grant this to the License Board because it is consistent with the licensing, with the practices of what you do or something of that nature. Yes, I think that is correct. I think currently, as Mr. Steinberg said, the short term, the town manager has the authority and then longer term, the town council has the authority. And we're just asking in this instance for this specific that it would be moved to the Board of License Commissioners. Okay, all right, that's clear. Paul, what is your comment on this? I think what we wanna do is make it as clear as possible and efficient as possible for permitting so that it's really up to the council how it is all within your power. So it's what you feel comfortable delegating. That's what this is a discussion about. Okay, so any thoughts from members of the committee on this issue? So we have two possibilities. Andy suggested one that we do it and call the various people. The other one is that Marion has suggested that the Board of License do this because they do this now with existing restaurants. The floor is open. So I'll ask a question. What would we lose if the town council in this instance delegated its right to the public to control the public way to the Board of License? Do we think that we lose something that we don't wanna lose? Oh, Anika has her hand up. Thank you, good. I was just this question is for Andy. So after hearing Marin Walker do you feel the same way? How do you feel? No, I'm certainly open to either suggestion as to how to go about doing this. I think that the last TSO was concluding with the discussion of what it would look like if we built it into the current policy of the public way. And so I just threw together that proposal for in Senate Devon but it never came back to the committee before the old committee and the old council dissolved. So that has left it left as sort of an extra piece. As far as what the difference would be I think that you just have to ask you all of ourselves as counselors whether a decision to give up one or two parking places to something that is a fairly significant long-term because it says it was five or six days a week from April to October was what the request was. How difference is that from the discussion of giving up two spaces for any other purpose for a long period of time? Do we wanna keep that to the council or do we wanna give it away? I think it's a fair discussion to have, I can say. Okay, well my comment is that I think we have an awful lot to do in the town council. But I would like to know the next. So let's just say we give it to give the right to the Board of License and then something comes up and some people start complaining and they don't like it. Now, a license is renewed every year. Do we then as a committee discuss this and then go to the Board of Licenses and saying we've had a lot of complaints, people feel it's unfair that this food truck is parked there so long, it's impacting some of the brick and mortar stores. Either we don't want them to have it that long or we'd rather have them be at a different place. Do we have any recourse or have we given it up and it's gone forever? Okay, Paul, your hand is up. So the decision, this is the power that lies within under the charter with you, the control of the public ways. If you wanna just in your current public way policy is that you can delegate what you want. You can delegate this and you can always take it the power back. You've delegated some to the town manager. If you don't like what the town manager is doing with that authority, you can always rescind it on a moment's notice. Okay, so that is definitely clarifying and Mary, did you have your hand up? No, okay. All right, so then it's really something that we can do. We can see how it goes. And if we say this is not, we don't wanna do this, we'd rather take the time and effort because as Shalini says, people complain to us and we hear the complaints and we wanna act upon them. We could take it back. Okay, so that calms me on that. Okay, Anna. Yeah, so I'm comfortable moving forward with this. What I'm struggling with is right in my head or on paper, writing a motion about it. Anyone have support for me here? Cause I'm ready. I love the idea that you might make a motion. Okay, that's really good. I'm happy to make a motion, but I don't know what language to use. If there are folks that would like to keep talking, please keep talking. Okay, any help with a motion from anyone here? I'm looking right now. Oh, thank you. Yes, good. We can take back our delegation. Okay, so we can make some decisions and it's not like the whole world is gonna stop or end because we can change our minds. Okay, that's- I'm not launching rocket ships. Okay, Anna. I'm not ready yet. Not ready yet, okay. Sorry. I'm gonna ask Nina to tell you what you said. I think it looks like that we are at, it's 12 of nine, ready to kind of come to grips with this one. So that's very good. Sorry, Anna, I can't read fast enough. I think it's going to be a recommendation to change the policy on control and regulation of the public ways to delegate the authority to the Board of License Commissioners, but I just don't have elegant words this quickly, but it could be a recommendation like that. And then the council can refine those words when it comes back up to the council. All right, so it is that I am moving that TSO recommends we change the policy of public ways to delegate the responsibility for lunch cart siting, lunch cart permitting. For, you have to list this thing, the group. Hang on, yeah, hang on. Temporary reservations. Okay, so, but Athena, is it permitting? It's not permitting for the lunch carts themselves. It's the reservations for the parking spaces that go along with them. Andy, correct me if I'm wrong. Thank you, Andy. Thank you. Okay, so I'm going to start over. I move we recommend to the town council that a change in the policy of public ways, delegating the responsibility of lunch cart reservations, short-term lunch cart reservations to the Board of License Commissioners. Right, but I think we should say, should do the definition. What it has here is a request for long-term comma, temporary reservations, perenn greater than 14 days, either cumulative or consecutive comma, but not permanent end of perenn. I think we have to have that. You haven't written. The difference, I have those with a different outcome. So what I have does not include the part that we delegated to the Board of Licenses, okay. I will try one more time. If someone else was like, Andy's fences from Paul, Paul has a hand up. So may I suggest that you just say, delegate the location of lunch carts to the Board of License Commissioners. And just leave it at that. Cause that's what you're really doing. You're saying wherever they want to put on the sidewalk or in the street. And it's, and that's how it's defined in the sort of rule regulations that we've talked about before with the lunch carts. Okay. So you're combining with what they've already doing. So that basically lunch carts, right? Okay. I think that the words on long-term temporary are useful so that somebody doesn't think that somebody who has that right to have that forever, that the fact that the license are renewed annually, I think is a comfort, you know? So that if something doesn't work out that that person can't say, I have this permanently because they don't. I didn't catch it. Someone else can make the motion. Sorry. One other question that we have and that is, and I didn't really deal with in my motion either. And that is a question of if it's parking spaces, does the lunch cart vendor pay the equivalent of the parking meter fees for the time that they are using meter spaces on the street? Well, if they don't, then the town has lost revenue and is not gaining any. So I would think they would have to include that. But yes, Marianne. Yeah, we do have, in our regulations, they do compensate the town for the parking space. Great. Okay. Okay. So we do not have, we have our measure, Paul has suggested that delegate location of lunch carts to the board of licenses. And that was period, right? And I'm sorry, the council has already delegated authority for lunch carts to the board. It's really the parking that goes along with the lunch carts that we're talking about here. So I think what I had is to recommend a change to the policy regarding control and regulation of the public ways to delegate authority to the board of license commissioners for long-term temporary parking reservations for lunch carts. So where did the parking, I didn't hear, can you read that again? I didn't hear parking fees in there, but I liked the rest of it. Maybe it was there and I didn't hear it. I didn't have anything on the parking fees because the whole delegation of authority would go to the board. So the motion would be to recommend a change to the policy regarding control and regulation of public ways to delegate authority to the board of license commissioners for long-term temporary parking reservations for lunch carts. Does that do it, Paul and Andy? Yeah, as long as it's clear that it's both sidewalks and roads because sidewalks are also the public way. And so wherever a lunch cart is located would be with the board of license commissioners. The board of license commissioners already has authority for lunch carts. Yeah, so they have reservation of sidewalks for lunch carts already. Okay, so this is just the public way, got it. The street parking places, this is how Andy has been telling it to me. This is the street parking places. And the fact that you also mentioned a different thing though. You said they might feed the meter while they were there, but there was also stipulations in some parking places that no one could park there for more than say two hours or three hours, but they would be breaking that if they're gonna be there the whole day. I know that was something that you had brought up a couple of times. Is that dealt with in this? I think it would be dealt with in this. I think that what Athena has crafted matches what I don't wanna put words in your mouth on it, but I think it matches what Anna was trying to do. No one knows what I was trying to do. Athena, could you either repeat it and speak slower or put it on the screen? I tried to catch it, but I know I missed it and I'd rather not rehash from the start. Sure, I'm sorry for sharing draft minutes. No, thank you. I appreciate it. So it's to recommend a change to the town council policy regarding control and regulation of the public ways and state to delegate authority to the board of licensed commissioners for long-term temporary parking reservations for lunch cards. Okay, I'm gonna do it. Now that Athena helped write it, Athena did write it. Okay, so I moved to recommend a change to the town council policy regarding control and regulation of the public ways to delegate authority to the board of licensed commissioners for long-term temporary parking reservations for lunch cards. Okay, we have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. Okay. Anika, second it. Okay, I will now call the question. Okay, Shalini. Yes. Okay, Anna. Yes. Anika. Yes. Dorothy, yes. Andrew. Yes. Okay, so it is unanimous, five, zero. Very good. We have dealt with lunch cards. Right, thank you very much. Thank you, thank you for coming. It was very useful. I'm glad you came. Thank you. Thank you, goodbye. Okay, so now I'm looking at the agenda and we've got, where is the agenda? Street closures for summer dining, carryover member. Okay, and I do believe that, I don't know, is Mandy Jo here, are you still here? Let me just take a peek. Is there any participants? No, she's not here right now. Okay, okay, right, okay. Okay, Paul, you would want her to speak on this. Yeah, so the way I read it is there, someone has recommended that the North Pleasant Street be closed to the public to put to vehicular traffic. That doesn't, isn't really possible because that is the main North South route through the center of town. Also our fire department at EMS is located right in the center of town. They need to be getting in and out of that station. When we close that road for the bid block party, we relocate all of our emergency vehicles out of that area to a different location so they can still move. That's not, to do that during the summer, it's just not feasible. Well, I believe there's also the problem of our big road project where the state's big road project on route nine and the detours and the, it's gonna be really challenging this summer getting around town. Any questions or comments? Anyone have their hand up here? We could do, we could discuss whether we can do it more than the bid block party. You know, that one thing is, this was just a suggestion, okay? So it could be a question of can we do it more than one time in the summer? Could we maybe do it two times, maybe do it three times? Okay, I see, I recognize you, Shalini. I was just thinking, and I'm just geographically challenged, so I don't know. But are there other areas that we could block up, maybe not this main street, are there other like a whole block, like block of boltwood or, I don't know. Are there any other areas, like in Northampton, you have all these little alleyways where they have places or, do we have anything like that? So we don't have a place like that, we've looked at that. You need a location that is adjacent to the restaurants. I mean, the idea of this is, I guess what you're saying is to have restaurants be able to sit outside like they have in Northampton, which is very pleasant. We don't really have that. What we, you know, when restaurants have been asked to participate in something like that, if it's too far from their establishment, they're not gonna do it, they're not gonna run back and forth. We have done it successfully on boltwood plaza. Johnny's has worked outside. Pasta Basta has had outdoor dining. Other restaurants were offered it. A lot of them tried it and abandoned it pretty quickly. It's a lot of legwork and, you know, maintaining the outdoor spaces is hard. The way they do it in Northampton is that there are sort of common areas too that people can access. Right, so the question, I think somebody raised the issue that there's difficulty with staff. And when you're doing this, you have the staff in the restaurant and the staff at the other place. So this is where a food cart would come in. Okay, Anna. So the other part, it seems very clear to me that, and from the get-go, it seemed very, very clear to me that closing North Pleasant Street wasn't going to work. So, but the second part of the memo is the continuation of outdoor dining. Is that settled, right? I believe it was settled. So I just- Yes, so you have extended Article 14. Yeah. Working closely with the bid. Not many restaurants are interested in pursuing that this year because we did it last year because the restaurants weren't open. And this is a way to get people to dine in their establishments. We have some who want to continue it. And for those who want to, we're working with them. So, you know, Fresh Side, Laverre, Cruzana, Amherst Coffee, Bistro 63 Mike, the other restaurants kind of, even though they had space last year, they abandoned their spaces when the indoor dining opened up. They just, it wasn't useful to them. So we don't want to dedicate, we were finding ourselves dedicating parking spaces to tables that weren't ever being used. So, but we're working through the bid. They, you know, we're asking the restaurants to be, to show it commitment to operating it.  And then again, it's up to the business owner to decide if they can do it or not. So I think we're pretty actively working with the bid to say which ones are working and which ones aren't. Great, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't ignoring that. I thought it had been settled, but thank you. Yeah, you're right. You do see like Amherst Coffee really seems to always like that. There's always somebody at the table on the sidewalk. So I think that's a good approach seeing who really wants it and then, and they'll want it if it has worked out and if people like to use it, like sit there. On a hand still up? No, okay. Other questions or comments on this issue? Okay, so then we'll come back to the street closures. I had asked you, Paul, is it possible to close the street more than once in the summer? I definitely understand why we cannot close it in any kind of permanent way in the summer. Your arguments are good, but is it such a big deal like moving all the trucks that like once is really all they really want to do and they say, please, please, we can't do it again? No, you can close it, but there just won't be anybody in the street. You know, you need- I mean, for an event, I mean, if another event just, it has to be- Oh, sure, they could do it for an event, but the bid didn't even want to do it an event last year. So if someone wanted to do an event and they were prepared to take on the organizational task, it's a pretty big, or it takes months for the bid to organize that one night. Okay, all right. So you're not saying that it cannot be done. You're just saying it can't be done on a regular basis without really tremendous dislocation and extra work for the town and maybe it wouldn't even be safe. You would need a proponent, someone who's saying, here's what I want to do. Yeah. And that means all the abutting restaurants would have to say, not all, but we'd really look to them and say, is this going to help your business or hurt it? Mm-hmm. Shalini. Random idea, but just putting it out there because we're TSO. When we spoke with, I spoke with Tony and Nancy and we talked about welcoming students and making them feel more welcome. One of the ideas was that we could have as a town council, like you know how we did for the India Pakistan event. It was a smaller event, but it was really well received. But if we did something for welcoming all the students where the town council does this proclamation the thing and we like welcome and then you have the UMass band or something, like make it like a really celebratory event. I mean, that just popped in my head when we were talking about closing. I'm not saying we'll close the street for that, but just that's something. And when do we discuss something like that? Because I think that would be really cool where we, and we get the restaurants involved and all of them or the cinema and everyone like involved in welcoming the students and making it like, yay, we love you. Come back and be good citizens and neighbors. So the chamber organizes the adventure into Amherst. I believe it's the chamber who does it. Someone has to take it on. It's an enormous organizational task. And so some, you know, could be a counselor doing it. It could be the bid or the chamber. They would have to say, yes, I want to do this activity because it's a lot of organization. It could be the university who organizes it. Our council staff could not take that on. No, no, no, no, no, I'm not asking. I think if, I think Tony and Nancy were pretty, I mean, they just want, I mean, if the town council can do the proclamation part and then we can have the bid and chamber kind of coordinate with the restaurants, but then have Tony and I'll do the other part of it. I think it could work with no burden on the town staff. Minimal, I mean, there would be some because I'll have to broadcast and all, but minimal. Okay, Anna. Okay. I'm channeling my inner Alyssa Brewer and saying, Shalene, I think if you want to chase that idea, do it, but I don't think we can talk about it because this was about outdoor, specifically closing the street for summer out. Oh, right. Yes, future agenda, Adam. Okay. All right. So do we need a motion on this one, Paul? Or do we just need an understanding? You do, you do have a memo from the CRC that handed this off to you. So you might, I don't know, Athena or Andy might have a sense to this. Go ahead. If there's not a decision that you're going to recommend the council make, then you can just report back to the council about your conversation and that you're not recommending any change at this time. Okay. Is that suitable to the group? Okay, Andy, let's hear what you have to say. Yeah, I think that's suitable to the group. I just think when you write it up to make sure that you include the organizational part and the burden on the fire department, it's just being something that we see as a barrier and include that in the report that you make on behalf of the committee and just be done with it. And in some future time after the fire department has been relocated and the fire department building has become a theater and art center, we can then think about this again, you know? If any of us happens to be on the council at the time. It's going to be a brewery, Dorothy. I don't know, that was me. The fire department's going to be a brewery. I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. You said theater. I'm saying brewery. You mean firehouse beer? Okay, sounds good. Okay, Anika. I was just going to send my inner, at least a beer after Anna with that one. Point of order, beer was not on the agenda. Thank you, Anika. All right, so that we will just read, we have discussed it, we will report it. And it is eight minutes after nine. Does anyone want to make a move to adjourn or I gather the chair can just adjourn? Is that correct? Public comment. Oh, public comment. Oh, thank you so much. Yes, stalwart public. Do you have any, anyone want to raise their hand and make a comment? Tracy, you emailed me at a time when I couldn't respond today about the TAC memo. And if you want to say something about that, feel free. And Dorothy, I should note that you also have minutes to do if you want to do that quickly. Oh, okay, we discussed the minutes and the corrections, the minutes are here. Okay, great. Did anyone have any comments or changes on the minutes or can we in fact accept the minutes? Okay, let's have a motion to accept the minutes from someone. Well, then I will move that we accept the minutes. Is there a second? Second. Okay, and I call the question and Anika. Yes. Okay, Dorothy, yes, Andy. Yes. Okay, Shalini. Stain. Okay, and Anna. Yes. Yes, okay, the minutes have passed for yeses, one abstention and we have done that. Okay, are we now ready for public comment? Okay, anyone who wants to speak, you can raise your hand. I've got it set so I can see if you do. Okay, then I think that we could adjourn the meeting. Is that correct? Okay, very good. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Thank you very much. Thank you, nice to see everybody. Bye-bye.