Yeah, we're recording. Hey everyone. Welcome to the. March, whatever the date is March 24th date of the JCPC meeting and my, the first order of businesses for me to call out everyone's name to make sure we can all hear each other and be heard. So I will just, um, I've already been talking with Sean and Sonya and, but I'm going to call out the committee members names on up. Mandy. Present. Alex. Present. Farah. Present. Jennifer. Present. And Irv. Present. And we don't. Um, I think you're the only one who hasn't had the honor of doing minutes for JCPC. That would be an error. That would be an error. All right. So we, what we can do if people want to is this meeting will be mainly to go over the report and focus on the substantive area. So we can make the meeting, the minutes be fairly short to say we reviewed the document and we made changes, you know, and then we can list any substantive ones if that's all right with people. So we'll do a short version of minutes. Um, I mean, we'll capture whatever we do from this. Um, because I don't want any, I can't take minutes while doing sharing. So. Does that sound like a reasonable approach? And this is being recorded correctly. No, there, there, there will be, you don't have to take minutes during the meeting. Okay. So as long as I can access the recording, I can do the minutes. Perfect. And we will send you the format with John will send it to you. It's an easy format. And then just do it off the recording and we get the record. And we can send you a copy of the recording right after we close down the meeting. You'll have it by tomorrow. Okay. I can do that. Perfect. Thank you for the volunteer. Great. I'm not doing, but I'm doing it. Okay. So I think, um, for those who just came in, Sean needs to leave at six o'clock tonight. A sharp, but Sonya will be staying with us. So we're going to start with him showing the screen. Of the document that everyone saw yesterday with the only changes on it since yesterday is the blanks where there were numbers missing. Sean has filled in the numbers. Um, and some of them I started to just put them in and, um, put them in and put them in and put them in and put them in. Um, a non track change. But as we go through, he's, and he'll double check them again, that a few changed from the very beginning and, or I didn't get them quite right. I think most of them were changes, um, from the most recent. And the other thing is after we're finished with this document, it calls for a few tables. He sent us those tables and he will incorporate them in. So they're not in it yet. So we're going to go ahead and organize the discussion tonight around anything. Where people think. There's a substantive issue, meaning. Uh, the recommendation doesn't sound quite right. And, or we never said we would recommend that. Or there's wording later. I know Anna's. Anna has alerted me that she doesn't think we really had a full discussion of the resident proposal and she wants to bring that back up. So, um, I think what I'd like to do is just have people. Um, I guess on the easiest way would be to start on page one, Sean, if you go down to scroll down to where we're making the first set of recommendations. Um, these were what we discussed last week. As recommendations, Alex has sent me some. Excellent additional wording to explain these a little bit better on the first page. Um, but I wanted to make sure that, um, we weren't missing anything on these three main areas. Um, and Irv you missed last week, but what are the things Sean came back with? Is he had discussed with the town manager. Um, the issue of the HR study and the assessor study and also the issue of Jerry Hill golf course equipment. Um, I think we should have an agreement to go back and take another look at those capital requests and see if we can. Lease or borrow or get used equipment and also to. Try to address the issue of it doesn't, these others don't fit in the capital costs. And we all thought changing the definition of capital costs to revise it in a way that restricts it to these particular kinds of studies that go over more than one year. So, um, I don't think we should have an agreement to do these were discussed last week, but I just want to check whether anyone had anything else major on this page. Jennifer. With regard to the Cherry Hill bullet point, I feel like it's a, um, I feel like it's very sort of prescriptive at the end when it says, um, potential for free access for Amherst public school students, just in that, like, you know, I didn't, and I know we've talked about doing it for free. And at the time I wasn't clear if what was meant was like golf, the high school golf team, or just like students using it as part of their school day. Like, I guess a couple of thoughts are like, I think. Uh, young people who are young people and Amherst, you know, live at Amherst, even if they don't attend our public schools. So I wouldn't necessarily want to restrict it to just public school students. And, um, I don't think that's a good thing because like the pools aren't free. They are like low cost and subsidized. So I don't know, it's just just a little prescriptive, prescriptive to say free access and for public school students. I think, I think just, just more creative uses for the golf course that benefit young people. Um, just, just to sort of broaden it a little bit. Um, so just, so if we did potential for recreational access for Amherst students. Does that edit work? Yeah, yeah. That sounds good. And it takes it. And Alex had suggested wording, expanding recreational use of the facility and providing, you know, so we, we, it gets at the sense that it's not just for golfers and it's a recreational area. Right. So. Yeah, I really appreciate the. Wording and the cherry hill. And especially the recommending the exploration of, of leasing the equipment. I'm not sure about use equipment, but leasing the equipment is always a viable opportunity. When cash flow is, is a problem because it allows you to lease the equipment, use the equipment. And at the end of the term, it allows you to be able to purchase that purchase that equipment at, at its depreciated cost. So I really value that a lot. Alex. Um, yeah, I just, I, Jennifer, I appreciate your comment. Um, and I, I added the expanding the recreation, the recreational use of the facility, but I also liked your clarification and maybe we changed children to youth. Make it a little bit broader category. Not that that was your wording. I'm just, what's up. Yeah. I think that's great. I thought we had talked about making it a reduced cost to Amherst, to the Amherst community. We definitely did. And you know, I, I got the free access. So if we, if we say potential for recreational. Access, we could say at reduced cost. So is, does that, to me, I would like to do that. So I don't want to put words and it doesn't have to be free. So. As opposed to the regular golf or fee when they come on and play non-holes, you know, it's not. Yeah. But we're also saying that. Besides. You know, access to golf and other stuff. The community still gets to use the space. But we don't pay when we go sledding there. Yeah. No, everything is free at cherry Hill. If you're not playing golf. Yeah. Right. Thank you. So I'm just wondering, do people want to add the word at reduced costs or leave it as, as, as is. Jennifer is saying no. And I, I don't, this is not. It is just a recommendation. So we can say this is not the town manager. Doesn't have to do anything we're recommending here, but. And Kathy, I would say as much as we can stick to sort of a capital element of. I think that's a bad recommendation, but I think that's where it starts to crossover into other territory. Okay. So let's go to the next page then. Actually, I'm sorry. I have one more comment on this page, which is just regarding the third bullet point. So the current definition of capital costs does not include anything about studies, right? Right now it includes studies if they're related to a. Like a tangible capital project. And so we actually want to. We actually want to expand the definition to cover studies that may be expanded over more than one year. So it just, I'm just confused by the word restricts. Like, I know what you're saying you want to expand to studies, but only studies that expand that go over more than one year. So just like, I just was confused about the word restricts because we actually want to expand the definition. Yeah. But I take any wording. I mean, Anna brought up that she didn't want to just create a huge loop hole that everything could come through. Then Mandy talked about. So I think. I think the town manager's recommendation back to her is that we add this to the definition of capital costs. So it's, how do we want to add it? Is the question, Alex. Yeah, so I had proposed language that I sent to Kathy for Jennifer, exactly that to change to say, while these types of studies have typically been included under the capital budget, it was noted that they do not conform to the current definition of capital. We recommend revising the definition of capital with wording that specifically includes periodic study expenses that may be expended over more than one year. And which would not otherwise be included under an operating budget. So Kathy has that language, but yeah. I think that I thought that wording really was a good revision of this Alex to make it very clear what we're talking about. I, you know, I wish I were there last week, but that particular definition leaves a whole large enough to drive a Mack truck through and relationship to future kinds of issues related to that particular definition. And it is, it doesn't work in my mind. If you leave it in as is, as being suggested, I can guarantee that over in the future years, people are going to take advantage of that for all kinds of things not related to capital. So Alex's wording talks about doesn't conform, but expands the issue of is if it goes in an operating budget and you don't spend it all in a year, you lose the money. And these types of studies go over more than one year for the assessor. And so you don't, it's a user to lose it in an operating budget. So traditionally, they have always been literally always been in the capital budget and they only come up with a certain amount of money. Right. And it's not every study. So the planning department. Yup. So I won't, I won't oppose that this, but what I'm saying is that if, if the other departments have studies to be done, like the appraisers, then why isn't it under their budget?  Because once you, once you do this, then why not other departments being able to say, Hey, we have to study and it should fall under capital. Cause the town manager won't let them in. Sorry. I mean, I mean, so I think I, I've heard what herb has shared. I think we can, we can work on a definition with the town manager that allows for the things that we've typically done, but tries to address that loophole concern that herbs raise. Cause I agree with her like we don't want every, every planning type of thing to come through capital. It's sort of like these multi-year projects. That we want to focus on. So, so I think that recommendation, we can bring that back and work with the town manager and accounting to figure out a way to, to, to open, to, to include the stuff we've been doing, but not make it so broad that every planning project can come through. Okay. So the next item. We discussed this last week and Sean brought us feedback from the town manager that this idea of a reserve fund for price volatility was a good idea and that it could be funded. But with repurposed unspent capital funds and this year, this current year, there, it's could be starting with $85,000. Alex sent in some potential minor rewording, but I think we all agreed this was a good idea. So I'm just double checking on this. And then Alex, you can talk about what you're, what you're rewording on this. And this was to address the fact that when they price it at the beginning of the year, they don't know for sure what the price is going to be. And whether the word volatility is right is, is guard against price increases might be a better wording than volatility. But everyone was saying that there's a lag between when they first put it on the list and when they actually go and get it delivered. And then we see this big price increase. So this would be a risk fund, a risk fund basically to guard against it. And the $100,000 was suggested by the town manager. We, that didn't come initially from us. You need to unmute. I love, I love this, this paragraph. I think it's unbelievably welcome in terms of going forward, going forward with the price of volatility of vehicles and other kind of capital expenses, expenses going forward in the future. This is an incredibly great addition. So then the last paragraph of a recommendation is that the town manager doesn't need to hear this, but that he will have to balance the budget. So it's basically, it's not, we're looking at a budget. That's what Sean now we're about $81,000 in your recent calculation over the amount of money there is to spend. And you had told us this information last week. So I think you said the ambulance fund might pay for the lease payments for defilibrators. Mandy had heard ambulance, but I don't think it's ambulance. It's just defilibrators. No, so it was both. So, yeah, Sonya looked at the balance in there and we feel confident it can pay for both. And if we couple the, the defibrillators coming out with reducing the cost at Cherry Hill, because looking at a lease or a used option, those two items should get us pretty close to being balanced. Okay. So I'll take out the strike through on ambulance, because that's accurate. So. We. So next, the next set where these were more comments. I think everyone liked this was when we were going through this, we thought the doubling of the sustainability fund made sense. And some of this language borrows from last year that it would be good to get a regular report back on how the fund has been used. On the facilities repair fund, this was noted by the fire department that by moving to a broader set of buildings, meaning the fire department's buildings in the general facilities fund having Jeremiah be looking at enable them to focus on prioritizing within vehicles and equipment. And this may not be the best wording Alex question, whether this is wording quite right. So they, they basically says that their wording was, we don't have to force be forced to choose between fixing the building or buying needed equipment. So there may be better wording that we can put in here. But these are more commenting on we thought this was a good change.  And these came up last week, a couple of them did on inventory, the main thing on inventory that we talked about was that we can't necessarily match the new trucks that are being requested with the trucks that are on the list in terms of their description. And it would be good to, to make the inventory more specific. And then Anna, I think you had one other issue on inventories on, on whether we want to say anything here or not. You had brought it up in the discussion. Yeah. So basically, I was just trying to figure out the best avenue for writing a memo to finance about including increased sustainability measures in the inventory. And I just wasn't sure if it was something that we thought we should mention in the report, or if it's just something you all want to leave to me to write a memo on later on. I'm fine either way. Yeah, Sean. So remind me if there's something, there might be something beyond this, but there is a town manager goal for this year to basically show how we would convert the fleet to carbon neutral or reduce carbon. So that is a goal that we have to stated and we're working on. So I don't know if it goes beyond that or if that would, if achieving that goal would cover it. It covers it perfectly. So the other part of it that I'm well, and it might cover the whole thing. So this is where timelines aren't perfect, right? But I'm talking with ECAC to see if they want building inventories as well around that as we move to net zero. And it's the net zero bylaw impacts more buildings hypothetically moving forward. So it may go beyond vehicle, but that's the like five year plan or whatever, right? That you're referencing. Yeah. And that's great. So it's a little bit of a yes and, but I'm hoping to have a more firm answer from them. Sometimes soon. Okay. That sounds good. Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, I think I'm, I'll leave it up to the committee, whether or not you want to reference that we may be coming forward to finance with a different ask. Because this report is going to the town manager. I'm not necessarily sure if it's as relevant for him because it's, it's something that would come from council. You know, you know, I think it would. I, well, my reaction is I think it would be good for you as a counselor to bring it up through the council and come right back to finance because we don't have enough to say anything right now on it. Yeah. And it would just get buried here in this paragraph. Okay. I'm going to learn how to write that kind of about. Okay. So next. I'm just looking at. All right, Alex, you call out because you're, you're the one who's sharp. I saw where I think it's in the next paragraph. There's a recommendation in it that Alex notice where I beyond that first beginning. Yeah. Yeah. I think we have some words in here. We recommend that we didn't have a discussion on them. So Alex, can you walk us through when, when you see them? I think this is the first one, right? Sure. Yeah. In the first paragraph, about halfway down, it says that we recommend that the town manager. With the town council assess whether the projected timeline for DPW and a fire station building are realistic and affordable. I just didn't think we actually had that conversation and made that recommendation. I don't think that is a recommendation that's fine, but I just didn't want to put a recommendation in that. I didn't think we had. So. Mandy. That was a good catch, Alex. I think I would lean towards not delving into that since some of the first one sentences are we're not in charge of that. And so that might delve into something we don't want to dip our toes as JCPC in. So I think we could just delete the sentence. That's Kathy thinking out loud. Rather than. Right. Is that okay with everyone? Yeah. I think that would be fine. I also highlighted that sentence like, oh, I didn't realize that. I didn't know that. I mean, we are going to bring that up in the finance committee. I mean, part because the budget isn't balanced. We're going forward. So it's something that's going to have to be addressed, but. Yep. Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure if you keep this up here to be made vice chair, because that's really all I do as vice chair. You're doing, you're catching all the same thing. So careful. Okay. The next page. The next one was where are we. Okay. This is the highlight. Okay. It's right here in the, in Vance. He's made, we talked about this, that there's, we've been making road and sidewalk. But when you look forward, we, we have to drop back down. And so this, this was a sentence directly out of last year's JCPC report, but we recommend that he highlight tradeoffs when presenting the capital plan so that. So in that last sentence. So the question. I literally just kept it from last time because. Yeah. I mean, there are some tough choices we're making in this plan. And I thought it would be good for the town manager to say that when he does it, but we don't have to recommend that if people aren't comfortable with it. It's a big drop down roads and sidewalk. Yeah. So the question is just where we recommend sentence, right? I mean, it was good, Alex. I'm glad you, because we didn't have a conversation about that sentence. So. Pardon. I know we didn't have a conversation about it, but I think it's a good thought that, that it's, I like the idea. Okay. So I think that's what you're doing, Alex. You're flagging it throughout on, do we actually want to say, right? It's, it's not a necessarily take it out. I'm valid. I try to validate everyone right now. Good job, Alex. Kathy. I like it. That's my. Okay. So seeing no one say. Delete. We'll move on to the next place. Okay. So the comments I've got on the others are all copy edits and I got several excellent copy edits and I will honor all of them. So I'm just looking, Alex, you know, you're. What you've marked up better than I do. I'm seeing. You know, people can call out if they have anything on any of these pages. I know we've got one coming up. From Anna. Okay. My next, my next paragraph. Okay. My next time it's on the top of page five. So. Okay. So I know where is. So I'm just doing. So on us is on the resident proposal and that's on page four. Sean, it's on the top of page four. Sean, if you stop there for a second. Go back up to the modified. We need a period. That's all. Right here. Yeah. Thanks. I have to tell you the copy edits far did. Bound every missing space, every missing. This sentence didn't have a period on it. You did a fabulous job on finding these. Yeah. So since we were, since we're just talking, since Mandy Joe just brought up the period in the balance budget. Para shortfalls should be one, one word. I was just going to email you, but you could just do it here too. Sorry. Okay, but don't go. So where's that one? But just why don't you email it to me? Cause this is the section. We do need to talk about the resident proposal on it. This is on, this is your, this is the issue you wanted to raise right here. We're on this page. So I, I emailed me that I didn't say this quite right because we actually didn't reach a conclusion on what we were going to do with it. And also she didn't. She just came up right at the very beginning meeting and it wasn't a clear. That it was going to be discussed. So Anna, why don't you speak to this? Because I hadn't realized how much process you'd gone through before it came to us as a resident proposal. Sure. And I appreciate Sean and Kathy, your willingness to let me talk more about this. I will ask Sean, there's Rob Moore is in the audience. Is it possible to bring him in for this as well? So what I want to just do is, yeah, when this came up on. Oh, what? Kathy, that's okay. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. So what I want to do is just briefly. One apologize on our first meeting. I didn't know that I should have brought a presentation. If you worked with me before, please know that that was like single-handedly one of the most stressful moments because I very much like to be prepared. And so hi, Rob. So where this came from, and I do have a visual of a timeline to show you all. If that's a, if that's okay, just because I'm a visual person. I'm waiting for Mandy to tell me it's not okay, but I'm going to keep going till she says it's not. Yeah. So essentially what we're talking about here is funding for a feasibility study for Middle Street to look at improving pedestrian safety. And pedestrian and cyclist safety. And, um, general kind of traffic calming. So where, okay. All right. And so Rob and Lisa are here. They live on Middle Street and, um, they brought this to my attention. Last year. So I wanted to just quickly run you through this. Thank you to Lisa for sending me these pictures today. So the overview and we're shifting it a little bit based on information from Sean that was super, super helpful. Thank you. Um, so initially we had sent in a request or I submitted a resident request for, um, funding for a feasibility study for Middle Street. After speaking with Sean yesterday and this morning via email, um, it, what makes sense is to ask to increase the amount allocated for DPW to do studies in order for them to do this study because we cannot prioritize a project as JCCC. It's a little confusing. So how we got to this point in September of 2021, the folks on Middle Street brought the issue to a district by meeting. I was not a counselor at that point. October, 2021, the Middle Street residents then go to a TAC meeting, a transportation advisory committee council committee meeting. And, um, then all the minutes read is discussion was held about various factors, which was a little bit hard to now sleuth through. I spoke to someone who was on TAC who said, we, um, we did talk about this issue. And, uh, what we decided was that, you know, the most reasonable thing would be to make it a one way and add a bike lane, but we'd need more study on traffic and stuff in order to do that. So again, it kind of gets back to a study might be helpful. Um, Also in October, uh, I had emailed town staff. Uh, I believe it was Dave Domek to ask about the resident, uh, request form and said, I have no idea how to estimate funds cost of a sidewalk. I don't know. I know it's different than just concrete costs. So what, how do I do this? And, um, um, Dave, I believe it was Dave replied that, you know, this makes more sense to apply for an engineering feasibility study, not a, um, a sidewalk directly because you don't know if it's possible. You don't know which method makes sense, et cetera. Um, I also reached out to the chair of T of TAC and, um, explained the issue and asked for their thoughts on how, how to price this out. The response that I received was that council is the chief of the public way, which is true. And that request for any changes need to go through the council per the TSO public way review process. So now I'm sent in another direction. Um, and I'm not even the one who's been starting this from the beginning. So again, many props to Rob and Lisa, who have already gone through the whole washing machine before I jumped in. So I submitted the form in December, uh, seeking 50 K and funding for an engineering feasibility study. Um, and it's really, it's, it's gone now to so many different groups that it's really confusing where to go. And, and I think that what was reflected in the presentation was that it go back to TAC, but we've been to TAC now. Twice. And so, uh, clarity on the process is leading to a shift. I will say that, you know, Rob and Lisa, um, Have been speaking to their neighbors on this. We have a resident petition or resident support signatures on this as well. Um, and it's really, you know, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a process. And so I think it's, it's a little tough to, to navigate this process. Um, and so just to kind of illustrate what we're looking at here. Uh, middle street is a 30 mile an hour road. Um, as you can see, it is very narrow. Uh, and it's very residential. Houses are close to the street. Um, there is no sidewalk. There's no shoulder. Uh, there's the, uh, as you can see on the off to the side of the road. Um, the road is within two and a half miles across the farm, and it's for this point in 1.4, it's closest. And part of it is within three quarter mile buffer, um, of a main, I don't know if it's defined as a village, yeah, a village center. Um, and so just a couple more images. So this one was really helpful. Uh, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, I have one special video a week ago called a five houroshop believed lesson. One of my, one of my reports was, But it was really helpful. Lisa took this today to show you just how much space a car takes up on that road. Um, and she cited in her email to me today, a terrifying example, there's someone on the road in a wheelchair. Um, and when they go down the road, they are in the road. demonstrating like if someone were walking in this space right here the car would have to go completely into the other lane or to stop if someone was coming up right. And then last thing I just want to briefly touch on middle street is a preferred route according to the bicycle pedestrian network plan and it's rated a three out of four on the level of stress analysis. Oh and I put that twice just in case you missed it the first time. So the what I was going to put in this second text was you'll see southeast street was a four out of four southeast street is a faster street it's also a wider street and it has a shoulder so that for me is the big difference with with southeast street versus middle. So I'm going to stop there and I would like to invite Robin Lisa to introduce themselves and share anything that they would like to and then I will happily take any questions. So hi Robin Lisa. Hi thanks everyone for for having us and thanks for your attention here. We are as honest first off Anna did an excellent job summarizing where we're at and what the the issue is. I just like to point out that we're here on behalf of actually a number of families in the area in middle street and in the area. The fact is that five to seven is a challenging time for those of us who have young families so a number of us wanted to attend but couldn't. That isn't of course for lack of interest. As Anna mentioned we organized a petition we actually held an event at our house that Anna attended and actually it was pretty well attended this fall to promote the issue. That's where we got many signatures. There's significant interest here. A lot of people as Anna said walk up and down the street we have young children who would like to be able to bike to to school to a crocker farm but it's quite dangerous for them to do so. The side of the road aside from just being just a difficult place to have to jump into whenever a car speeds by also there's there are a lot of there's a lot of long grass that has quite a few ticks in it. So that's we've actually experienced that with our with our daughters they have gotten ticks just from walking on the road and have from biking actually on the road but being as close to the side as possible along grass is just just tons and tons of ticks there. So we're we're concerned about the safety here it seems likely to us that sooner or later someone's going to get hit. That's probably a potential source of liability for a town to be honest with you. So that's something I think that should be taken into account as well. We're pleased that this is this is on the docket and is getting your attention now but we're we would really appreciate any guidance anyone has about what else we can do and what the rivals we can take this. So I thank you both for joining us in the comments and I think what we're going to do is put you back into the public audience at this time and we made we wouldn't normally do this at the end of the process but we should have had you on at the beginning of the process. So we missed that step in terms of notifications. So I just want to make sure we get that. So so I think Anna what what you're what you wanted to focus on is looking at what we do want to recommend here rather than the way it's written right now is we had this proposal and we're saying it should go back to tack. So do you have a suggestion and then the question is whether the what the committee wants to do. So I just would first like to hear what the suggestion is. Yeah so as is written this year so if we kind of ignore the ignore the paragraph about the resident request DPW every year does apply for funds for studies for things just like this. They applied for $50,000 this year and and we seemingly are recommending that which is fine. Middle Street is a little bit of a complicated streak which is why the request for an engineering feasibility study looks pretty high. So I would like to increase the DPW allocation for studies. I'm going to say by 50 and I know you're not going to let me have that for much longer but because DPW should be able to do more than just this one study even if it you know hopefully that the next step that's outside of JCPC is now encouraging DPW to prioritize this as one of their studies in the fiscal year. But if this one study would eat up their all of their funds then they're I don't see how they would want to take it on. So I'm asking us to increase the DPW allocation for studies by $50,000 instead of having it be a standalone resident request because as most stated JCPC cannot allocate two specific infrastructure projects like this. According to the intel I have gotten but I've gotten a lot of different intel and so I'm happy to get clarification. So Alex you might want to speak because this had come up a few years ago too as wording that a proposal came in and then it was folded into sort of a larger executive decision and then Sean I don't know whether does DPW have other flexibility in their budget? Does their budget have to be increased or do they actually have flexibility? I just want to get some factual information before we then have a what do we want to do here? Yeah I don't know that I don't know that funding I don't I have to talk to Guilford I don't know that funding is the reason why this study what hasn't been done or wasn't done it could be the case that increasing funding would make it more likely that it's done but I just don't know what TAC has discussed relative to this project and if this project is in a list somewhere and if it isn't a list somewhere in that list it is so that's why speaking with Don I said we could we could request more funds for this air for this line but I still would have to talk with Guilford to find out the status. So Irv and then Mandy Irv? Given that I live in South Amherst and given that I have also taken my life in hand walking on Middle Street I totally understand we're honest coming from and other residents on the street however for whatever reason I'm really uncomfortable in terms of going forward with this except for that this should definitely go to TAC first. Yeah and and and I really think that that should happen I also would like for us to think about how we how do we proceed with proposals that are initiated by a members of of this committee or and also members of the town council I feel uncomfortable with that it's almost like there's an access privilege that could be perceived and and I don't want us to get into that or be be subjected to that kind of criticism and this has nothing to do with the merit of the proposal it just has to do with what I consider to be a process question. Can I respond Kathy? Sure and then let me take Mandy because I think you want to respond to the councilor side to this right? Yeah yeah I just want to say so I submitted this before I was elected or before I was on this committee I do recognize that it's hard now that I am on it and I will if there's you know because it's not a resident request anymore if we broke them all out it's absolutely something I would abstain from voting on. I think the the challenge for me is that I sent the form out to folks and it was so confusing to navigate that even before I was elected I understood enough clearly not because I still did it wrong but I understood enough to at least write it and so that's where my initial proposal like we really need to re-look at that because if we're soliciting resident requests and the form is completely confusing to everyone why why are we doing it right? When I also sent it out I had asked whether it made sense to have multiple people submit a request or if it made sense for it to just come through one person and town staff said just send it once don't have everybody submit it and so you know I think in retrospect I should have apologized to Sean in advance and had multiple people submit it because I don't want this to be I recognize the position that you are in because I'm sitting in the room and if you would rather me leave the room to discuss it that's fine but I think that the fact remains that that form was was really confusing to some very smart people and and that's why I ended up doing it but I was not elected I was not in office at the time. I'm Mandy. Yeah um so I'm not in favor of changing the the wording we have here um Middle Street is just one of many streets that residents walk on the street on very small streets small width streets two-way streets in town um you know just another example in South Amherst in District 5 is Station Road from Amherst Woods and Amherst Hills down to the actual rail trail big hill big everything very small leeway you know there's plenty of places in North Amherst where residents are walking and so you know I think we don't get into that prior prior prioritization that's for TAC to figure out what is the next study in the next area that really should have sidewalks figured out next um and in terms of the money I thought we talked about this with Guilford when he was here and he seemed you know the last time we we recommended funding for one of these I think it was three years ago my first year on the JCPC and that study is just being started this year um because that was not prioritized um and so I 50,000 seems like a reasonable amount every year to do a study partially because once you do a study if you decide you need to go forward you have to fund that one then you don't want that study sitting there for 10 years before you do anything with it and so if you do too many studies a year what's the next step and so I I hesitate to even recommend increasing the amount of money for studies in the capital program because we already know the next few years of spending for capital are going to be really tight and so we don't want to complete more studies than we could actually then potentially add sidewalks to within a reasonable time after the study is completed because otherwise you just have to do the study again given changing engineering requirements. Alex thanks um so both Irv and Mandy said exactly what I would say and what my feelings are about this um and um also I I am not comfortable nor do I think it's our position to um change a department heads budget I mean we we have department heads for a reason to prioritize their budgets and so I am not entirely comfortable with that um but for information purposes so what Mandy was referring to was an FY20 and so there's precedence for how this has been handled in the past um and so and I think it's important Anna to separate out the resident request process which I think we all agree needs to be tweaked it's been a work in progress ever since it was adopted and you know we've all agreed that that needs to happen and so I think the frustration with that process doesn't mean the result should be that we should fund something right so I think there are two separate issues and so what the precedent has been in the past so in our um in our report for FY20 um we basically said there were three um sidewalk and paving requests from residents and they were in our report referred to TAC which I know it worked apparently that round I don't know why it's different this round but basically the language was that they were referred to TAC um the town manager and the superintendent of public works since the decision of what projects should proceed in that fiscal year is an executive decision and not a matter determined by the capital budget and so I just think for all the reasons that have already been articulated um I've walked Middle Street I've campus Middle Street I in no way doubt I'm very familiar with Middle Street and in fact I would argue that 116 to the Crocker Farm entrance on Shays where you potentially have kids who walk to school also doesn't have a sidewalk southeast street from Andrews down to you know like we could go on and on with a list of places that are not safe um and I think I've said before um I feel like this privileges certain people in terms of jumping the priority list and I think ultimately that needs to be a different process where there's pressure put on DPW not coming up through this group and again we need to fix our process we need to make it more clear for residents but I I would not vote in favor of of increasing the funds for a sudden so Anna your hand is back up so here's where I'm stuck because first off we're set we're gonna I'm asking us to separate because you are you all are absolutely correct we cannot ask to prioritize a DPW project right so ignore that please um because I know that we can't do that so where I'm stuck is that because this project is over 10 000 it gets sent to JCPC and then it went to TAC but TAC says well you have to be able to pay for this and so that again it goes back to JCPC and then TAC also was saying it needs to go through council so so while I recognize that the process is not all our problem I think it's important to also recognize that this is the process that folks were given and so so I think that like we we do have a responsibility to address the parts that we're able to do and so then where I'm suggesting adding to DPW what's challenging is like all right well if I we can't have an independent project but then we also can't change budget knowing that this project would eat up the entire budget what is the solution like what is the answer and I don't know I don't know so Farah so I um so I'm probably gonna repeat a lot of what people have said but just living where I live and biking on middle and actually having my kid bike to school on 116 I don't let her go on the bike lane on 116 I make her go on the sidewalk the whole way to proc her the only only way I would see prioritizing anything like this is the fact that I think it's really a great experience and independence for kids to be able to bike to school and walk to school when they live so close by so I don't even know like I don't know how things are prior prioritized in town I'm not even I'm not even speaking to Anna's request to increase the amount but I'm just speaking to what do residents do and who decides that and who decides to prioritize and um and who like you know in this case we had we had these residents and get together and have this petition signed and we had Anna help them but how does someone else who has no idea that they can do something like this how do they petition for things like this for their kids to be able to walk to school or even to just be able to walk on the street so it's just my comment so Mandy then Irv um let Irv go first I'm still looking up for a document okay Irv so Alex is hurting the earlier one by the way yeah go on Irv so when I when I look at this I just want to make sure if my assumptions are correct is that are we voting to recommend just $50,000 that's the first question the the second part of that for me is that if we are doing that um then I have severe reservations about that I would rather change the language and the wording of that particular to say that we recommend that the that any funds expect uh expended be first endorsed by tax as an expenditure and that way I would feel a little bit more comfortable with it and not feeling like one member or any members of this committee or of the town council could be seen as being privileged in any kind of way Mandy thank you what I was looking for was our town manager goal document for the year because um uh under our community engagement goal which is one of the not the policy goals but the management goals is developing a list of future road and sidewalk repairs that is available to the public and updated regularly um and that is in there because the council has expressed some frustration about not being able to see that list themselves let alone anyone in the public um and so it is specifically set forth in his goals this year to not just develop that list but make it accessible to everyone and update it regularly which I think will help um residents see if studies and stuff like that that's repairs and all we can maybe add to that the studies and and future sidewalk projects and all the as we move forward and get those on there because this has been not just for south Amherst residents for at all Amherst residents just frustration about no one knows what's on that list or where on the list anything is and so you know I'm I'm still not sure it's JCPC's job to do anything other than say this needs to go to tack for for adding into or discussion as to where on the priority list such a study would be um in terms of the study priority list but I did want JCPC members to know the town manager's goals are essentially to not just create that list but daylight that list and update it regularly for this coming year Alex yeah that's actually a really good segue for what I was going to say so in the five or six years that I've been on JCPC every year we're talking about roads and sidewalks and ever since the resident request was added it's almost always been a sidewalk request and so and I think we get sort of stuck in the middle of not really being the right I'm not sure that's when we were contemplating when we originally started the resident request idea and it's unfair to the public and I think we on JCPC have also felt like you know there's like IT is like a black box nobody really understands like what all goes into the IT budget I think the same is sort of around roads and sidewalks so I don't know if it makes sense for us to make a recommendation that maybe sort of reinforces what the goal already is for the town manager that like we as a body are seeing these requests coming in and there needs to be a clear articulated process as well as you know the list of projects and priorities and just maybe sort of reinforcing that as a recommendation the town manager that it's impacting our ability as a committee as well and so we recommend that. So this would be an add to I'm going to I don't word Smith well on the fly but recommend that the town manager make the process and prioritization of decisions about roads and sidewalk safety transparent to the public and provide a pathway for people to raise issues I mean right now it's supposed to be it goes to attack for prioritization if they move it up the list it's supposed to go to DPW to put on the list of things to do that doesn't always happen quite that way but so we could expand this paragraph not to just send it out to the netherworld to reinforce that goal so hey Mandy. I was just going to say instead of recommend we could use the word we endorse the council's goal for whatever whatever the language in the council goal is for that that goal on that and and maybe the recommend or suggest that planning studies or studies sidewalks whatever we call these studies for new sidewalks be added to that list or as a separate category or something not just we're going to pave these sidewalks this year and these roads this year but here's our list of studying for new sidewalks and stuff. Anna. Yeah so I think what's hard is is the study component of it right like I think so TAC has a or TSO has a public wave review process that was sent to me by TAC the second time that we took this project to them and I think that there isn't a lot of clarity around the specifics the study component of shifting a road right and so I think that it's definitely clear that that needs to be part of the the process um and and there's like many many steps in that because I think that what what happened in this case is I think it was Rob and Lisa you know brought it forward to Guilford who said well you have to do a study so like it's not on the list because you have to do a study because there's too many steps right what I'm uncomfortable with in the report is saying it needs to first go to TAC because it has been to TAC twice and so I think that that's definitely take that out um the other part I do I mean I would say I understand where you're coming from Alex in terms of changing a department head's budget I I think for me adding an increase to it even if it was 20 just to allow for at least for four more than one study if that's feasible the other part of it is we do know that capital is going to be switched for the next five years and so I don't anticipate extra requests like this being treated rightfully so you know I think that there's going to be even more scrutiny in the future and so I think that for me adding this this year allows it to be considered by TAC in terms of adding it to their priority for for study not not for actual change and I think that's the part is like it might not be a sidewalk what they think they need to study that area um so so yeah that's that's my challenge I do think that the I would ask I would hope that we could you know increase that funding to make it possible for for them to go to TAC and say we know that DPW has study funding we would like for you to use it for Middle Street um and you know I think we didn't know that we even could do that at the beginning of this process so that's helpful but it's yeah the spiral of it is is challenging so I want to let me just jump in because I think what I'm hearing is most people would not support an explicit increase in DPW for this study but there is um if we change the wording that we're recommending a further discussion by DPW and TAC for possible support and prioritization and then we add and we endorse the council and then we add the wording um that there needs it needs to be much clearer on how you get on the list what's prioritized and what has been on the list so we expand the whole paragraph to address the lack of clarity on that sends people in a circle and rather than recommending a specific dollar increase because there actually isn't in the as far as I can see in the budget there isn't room for a dollar increase unless DPW wants to revise its ask and say we have three things we want to study this year so that was my one question it was also a question to Sean because in the past Gufford sometimes does have study money I just don't know I never have known quite where he gets it from that wasn't explicitly asked for I mean it just appears so so he's a good bureaucrat it's great no he's you mean swirling it it's you swirl it away in your left hand drawer your right hand drawer right so so I um Kathy I agree with what you said if we can word it that way that is something that I can go along with I think that's appropriate it's an appropriate response to this particular situation especially the whole thing about um making uh that can't be circular this whole process cannot be circular no citizens of Amherst could should be put in the situation in a situation where they feel like they're getting to run around that should not happen that should not occur and we as uh citizens and you Mandy and Kathy uh and Anna need to make sure that that doesn't happen because that's the most frustrating thing for a citizen to experience is that their government is not being responsive but they're they're they're they're they're taking you on a round trip to nowhere and that shouldn't happen and you three can make can do something about that so Sean I see your hand is up and I also realize that we're approaching we actually just went past the witching hour for you is that correct yeah I was just gonna say um we will definitely take a look at the resident capital request in the off cycle and make some improvements to it for um for next time um and I'll probably work with Kathy to you know get feedback on on those improvements before we go live next year um and I will say goodbye and Kathy I did email it to you so I email it to you and Sonia so you both have the the last version of what we were working on okay so so Sean has to leave so we're segueing so um unless I hear what I heard was consensus we can put it to a vote but changing the wording to soften it not go to tack first um and I'll send a paragraph out once I draft it to everyone but I don't I'm not hearing support on increasing funding to DPW explicit with a mention of this specific study um it we might be able to say you know consideration whether DPW has adequate funding for studies in the future or something I don't know what kind of wording um so Alex you know I know there I want to see whether we can reach closure on this but I'm totally I'm not trying to close down conversation yeah I have to say Jennifer hasn't waited so Jennifer um I'm in favor of what you described Kathy I'm on board with that I have a comment maybe of a slightly different nature and maybe this isn't that important it is splitting hairs but um the way this is worded about improving pedestrian and biker safety and to explore the possibility of increasing walkability through a sidewalk or bike lane it's my understanding that bike lanes and sidewalks are mutually exclusive in terms of who they serve like pedestrians don't belong in a bike lane cyclists don't belong on the sidewalk so I don't think we can address pedestrians and bike lanes with one sorry pedestrians and cyclists with one thing so I don't know if that I don't because I just I don't know if that even matters or if we need to worry about that but just that's my understanding I guess we don't need to reword the proposal right now but if you turned it into a one lane one way street you could accommodate both um so that's that's the issue how can you on a narrow street accommodate people and bikes and cars more safely so I think that is the whole issue what is what do you do on narrow streets where there is no shoulder so Alex um thanks this may be implicit in whatever language we come up with but um I would also love to gain clarity like do sidewalk requests even belong in JCCPC I mean maybe the answer is yes but I feel like all we ever do is go cool and then send them somewhere else and and so if it really belongs here that's fine we need to create a process around it but I would just love for someone somewhere to to provide clarity so that we can then maybe include it in whatever we do in the future and I think that's there's this simple sentence that maybe that we should get together in the summer and address this resident request because what it's been sidewalks and crosswalks are the biggest there's been one exception I guess the Crocker Farm study was the one but but maybe a couple but you know and then each time this comes up you know the crosswalks become they're not on the list or they are on the list or somewhere else is on the list and if if that's not a doorway on the resident proposal at all then people shouldn't be sent through that door so um it just it shouldn't be sure just put it in because it's always going to end up in this so I think we can expand it and I and then one thing that came up not in JCCPC but at the council on a budget participation commission on a should there be a policy to try to take at least one resident proposal a year depending on priority you know do we is this a vehicle for people to to do this and then how would you judge them that's not an issue I want to take up here at all but it is we've opened that door and if no one can ever get through it it feels like it's not really a doorway so Anna I can just answer Alex's question briefly so it's it's not the sidewalk it's that JCCPC cannot say where sidewalks should go so like that's from from what I understood from my stuff about my work on this proposal um it was that it's really supposedly tack that is determining where um and and and JCCPC would be the funding mechanism hypothetically but we can't be making the decision as to which one comes first right so like if you read Guilford's original proposal for study funding he says to move resident requests towards completion like that's his phrasing he doesn't say which requests or anything because he knows we can't prioritize some over like you know like we are not the place deciders which is that's why that was the impetus for my initial change of like I'm not gonna say where I just yeah so anyway thank you does that answer your question kind of yeah it's like a sort of sidewalks but not really so I will rewrite this as I've described send this one paragraph out and I think we reach that we're not going to increase DPW's budget he may have money for this is what I'm saying Anna if this rises to the top it's not necessarily that he doesn't have money and that that's over in the DPW world to work out prioritization does that work for everyone yes okay now I have to figure out maybe Sonia can you share the screen to continue where Sean was because I have to find it in my email to open it up um which I can probably do but because I think the remaining substantive ones I had were all from you Alex where you flagged a couple of no I'm not where you flagged a couple others we recommend um as as sentences as we went through yeah the only the only other one actually kind of mirrors the one where I think people decided was fine um at the top of page five it says however members recommend um that the town manager make it clear to the public when presenting the capital improvement program and the five-year plan that achieving this plan will require some difficult choices again just it's it's saying that we made this as a recommendation we need to discuss it as a recommendation so however people keep it don't keep it doesn't matter to me I mean it doesn't matter to me obviously but no no I think I think it's good if we're recommending it that should have at least have been discussed um so that that was probably language from last year also but it wasn't something we discussed this year so if people again leaving it and or leaving it out I'm I'm comfortable in either direction um did you say it's at the top of page five it's at the top of page five just before jcp the things jcp thoughts on cip presentation so last sentence I must have wrong page numbers um I think that's mine mine's my edited copy as well Jennifer so it could be the bottom of four maybe because I have edits online gotcha yes I see it you know I really some of this is I I naturally put some wording in like that because in the finance committee we cringe when we look at these five-year budgets and I go oh every operating budget has been squeezed so we can afford the capital side of it and then I go oh and the capital budget right now is not completely in balance although I know we will bring it then I think so there's some to me it's there just some choices ahead um because we're not we're not looking at five years worth of perfectly balanced budgets so I don't know what's going on with me and I'm on this laptop that doesn't have all the programs loaded okay so it's all right I think we flag the sentence so people have it um so the so are people comfortable leaving that sentence in I guess as a recommendation yes so then the other issue that was raised Jennifer raised whether we want to call ourselves the committee or we want to call ourselves the jcpc and I am the first to admit that I am never entirely consistent but I've just always gravitated to committee sounding easier out of my mouth than jcpc and I don't care so I can go back your edit Jennifer systematically changed it every time it said the committee you said the jcpc so I am fine if people would like to do that then we had an interesting one farah capitalized five year with a hyphen five year plan because it is a plan Jennifer made it small initial caps and I can do I can do one or the other but I can't do both um and I tend to if there's something called a five-year plan I tend to capitalize it um because it's a document um so that's just my style preference the same way I do the town manager if we're talking about a specific person I always capitalize both of those so um but on committee I'd be half of the time I say we did something and then other times I say the committee did something it could be the committee members and I really don't care but I'm happy to do make a change if people would prefer it Jennifer I I just prefer jcpc because there are so many committees in this town and we reference other committees in this document so just to make it more clear also I have a I have a personal peeve about overcapitalization and if you do say the committee it doesn't need to be capitalized but jcpc does get capitalized because it's an abbreviation so anyway just whatever we pick it should just be consistent so that we work consistently so that people understand what they're reading um and that's for a five-year plan I mean given that it's the name of a plan and the name of a document I agree it should be capitalized it should have a hyphen and five should be spelled out and again that should be consistent so that people know what they're looking at but if for some reason we're talking about a generic a five-year plan that's not referring to the specific document then that doesn't need to be capitalized um I have another non-grammar style question on the original page five in the the recommended capital plan section there's a sentence that says the new school is shown in FY26 although there is uncertainty about this date what does that mean and what is the uncertainty if if the renovation addition were the approved choice Jennifer the school won't open in 26 it gets pushed off it can't because the school is going to be occupied so I can take that out because we're aiming for 26 which will circumscribe our choices we still have renovation addition but I can take that wording out I mean I can take 26 is the goal I think Kathy I think it's because that's the aim for when the borrowing would happen but if there's a little delay as we're seeing in the library at this point we thought the borrowing would be FY23 but it looks like it might be FY24 and so it's a reference to when would the payments actually start on a new school building and it's complete you know we're aiming for them to start in FY26 just like we were aiming for the library to start in FY22 but they might not actually well they start in FY23 for the library because you borrow in FY22 but that remains uncertain depending on when grants come in when you actually need to and all of that so I think that's that's how I read it as the date is the borrowing payments date are uncertain and again I didn't I added those two words because the the wording from last year said FY25 and we're clearly not going to make it in FY25 you know I mean so it's one of these where each piece of this thing is on this tight deadline that things might not happen but I'm happy to just say the goal is you know scheduled for FY26 is accurate okay but if you wanted to reflect some uncertainty but I just I would want to make it clear that the uncertainty is about the borrowing so you could say something like the new school is shown through FY26 although it's there's uncertainty about which fiscal year that borrowing would begin in or something you know what I'm just going to end it with a period after FY26 that's easier rather than writing more words and I'm just I'm going to I'm going to butt in quickly because it addresses this so Jennifer one of the edits that I sent to Kathy was on the first page the third paragraph where it says the draft five-year plan includes significantly larger deficits starting in FY24 is shown in the draft table below I added language that says the larger deficits reflect both potential borrowing and the use of 4.5 million of reserves for the four capital projects three of the four projects are not yet fully developed and the timing actual borrowing and cost of each project will continue to be developed so that yeah so and I thought that was good wording just to say you know there's there's uncertain I mean DPW doesn't even have a place yet you know so I mean these these are in the budget but uncertainty is is an understatement or unique I was I was beginning to develop PTSD in relationship to a dissertation which my committee would argue argue over hyphen hyphens and periods and etc and the question that I would always say is is it a difference that makes a difference and because at some point a decision has to be made it is a different is it a difference that makes it makes a difference if not let's move on well with that I think we've addressed substantive issues I have good copy edits um Jennifer also sent some that barrage sharp eyes missed or alexis did people found some missing words some missing periods some odd punctuation um you know where semicolons were used sometimes but not always um so what I was going to ask is whether people want to say this report substantively is done they're comfortable with it with this one paragraph I will send and then entrust me to take all the copy edits and then we would not have to meet next week but I see your hand is up Alex um so yeah I just want to make two comments that I think that you were planning on incorporating and I just want to make sure that nobody thinks that like nobody thinks that they're substantive changes okay one was um on the first page about the ladder truck and I just changed that language a little bit to say more that we recommend inquiring of a smaller stick ladder truck which typically runs at a lower cost of a million rather than a platform ladder truck at a close cost of 1.5 million could meet the specific needs of Amherst which because we didn't actually talk to the fire department about it so I think it was it was a conversation after they left but I just wanted to be a little softer of we didn't have the conversation so we're suggesting they look at it so I just wanted to soften that a little bit um and then the other piece was on page of mine it's page four where um it the initial language says except for two recommended changes or modifications listed in the introduction of our report that we submit the proposed project request and I changed that because I think we support all of the requests we just have some recommendations so I changed that to say the committee supports the proposed project request and offered two recommendations as noted in the introduction so I just shifted that a little bit I just want to make sure you know people don't consider those substantive that was Kathy's looking at Alexis and thought it was an improvement but I'm glad you raced it because those words are going to appear in this next um so I've got three sets of edits to merge together but in this case it it was an improved clarity I thought on what we were saying um you know the ladder truck issue my understanding is that Paul is going to have a conversation and make a decision whether we need the higher level of ladder truck that's been proposed or whether we could live with the Northampton and clearly that's beyond our skill set to make that decision so it is when he saw it was a five hundred thousand dollar difference he thought it was worth a further a further discussion um so if that so so what I'm going to propose um that we do we can take a formal vote which would be fine with me if I go around the room that we're in support of the report with the revisions as discussed and um if I would make that motion if there's a second motion to if there's a second of that motion and then what I would do is I would do all of these edits send you out the final edited copy in case there's any one more thing but meanwhile Sean can put the tables in so it it becomes a final report so I will make a motion that we take a vote to accept the report with the revisions as discussed including that I will send everyone out a paragraph on the resident proposal so they can see my quickly worded one on what that is um is there a second second um then I'll take a roll call vote um Mandy hi Kathy is a yes Alex hi for all yes Anna I didn't hear you Anna Jennifer yes and Irv it's unanimous I want to thank everyone I mean I actually I want to thank everyone who sent in at first I thought oh no we have edits from everyone but they were you all picked up slightly different things so it was it was useful to get the feedback um and the next step then it will be a final report we submit it directly to the town manager I write a one page ish one and a half page cover to the town council to say we did it and here are the main things they should know about they get a copy of it but the next it goes directly to Paul I mean there's not a midway step on this so I thank everyone I mean this is not for those of you who are first time in this process it's not an easy thing to jump into um the level of numbers when we're looking at five years worth of all these department's proposals going out with your eyes kind of blur over with vehicles um the good news is we weren't giving the initial the way Alex I guess Mandy the first time you were on it where the initial proposals were six million dollars above the amount available and and and and you had no guidelines on what to cut because everything had been rated a priority so that this is this is a this is a much easier process than staring at saying well do we we do three police trucks two dump trucks who so I I think the process is such a healthier process that we're going through with with what the town staff and that's thanks to you Sonia to all the department heads to what Sean is doing that you're really working hard before it ever gets to us to have it the discussions around the margins rather than on what doesn't look like a potential budget at all so I want to thank everyone and I will do my best to get everything accurately into a document and get it back today is Thursday I should be able to do it by Monday um and we do not need to meet next week this is we are adjourned so that the discussion has been a jcpc possible convening in the summer to talk about the resident proposals so we won't send anything out right now and I'll find out one might be good for Sean and whether Paul wanted would want to join um you know what are these supposed to be how should they work can we make any improvements um and we'll wait till the budget is put to rest before we have that yes Anna thank you would that be so if we come up with an idea for it does that go to Paul or is that's not something that needs to go to TSO right just goes so it's not a regent it's how should the resident no I understand does the process change need to just happen through Paul or is it just it doesn't need to go well I'll have to go back Alex was there when this was first but we only open this up um it's it's not ancient history that we open this up so it was a trial to see how it would work and would jcpc make a recommendation does the does it need to go to the council does it need to just go to Paul we were under a town meeting and select board system when we did it and jcpc worked in a different way then so I can find out if we think it should be fixed in some way or changed in some way where does that recommendation go I can find that out I only thought is the outreach component might tap it in a little bit more yeah now Mandy I was just going to say I think it depends on what the recommendations are certain things can just be done because it's an application to jcpc right and so we get to control in some sense what that looks like in a sense other things might have council implications others might have managers so I think it just depends on where we end up so thank you um I think we can adjourn at 6 24 so so you can go have dinner if she hasn't had it and thank you thank thank you for staying with us and thank you everybody and thank you for your comments on when things don't make a difference let's not spend time on it I love that I if I could capture exactly what you said well I'll listen to the tape I like that a lot um so we've we I think we worked very well together and I totally enjoyed the group this year so thank you very much everyone and we are everyone we are adjourned thank you thank you thanks everybody bye


Hi, my name is Armour and I'm a Design Sprint Lead at AJN Smart. In this video, I'm going to show you how to run and sell Design Sprints like a pro. So this video is going to be very helpful to you if you're thinking about doing your first Design Sprint either with your team or as a professional consultant, or if you already do Design Sprints but you want to level up your game and see how you can offer a more valuable package to your clients. If you don't know how the Design Sprint works, we have a ton of videos that you can check out in the card and in the description. So if you have any questions regarding anything about the process, about how it works, how to sell it, how to promote it internally, how to get people on board, just put those questions down in the comments and we'll have a conversation about it. So in this video, I'm going to show you how to take the Design Sprint from a one week process and turn it into a four week package that is a lot more robust and that will increase your chances of having a successful Design Sprint with your team or with your clients. Now the way that we do that is that we took the Design Sprint from a one week process and we turned it into a four week package. Now I hear you saying but Armour, like the great thing about Sprints was that it was a short project, it was one week, no bloat, so aren't you really killing the value of the process by turning it into four weeks? And my answer to that is no. Let's say you took the book, you read it, you found it great and now you went and did your Sprints, right? You can absolutely do that. In fact, that's exactly how we started. So when we first read the book, we were so excited about it. We took this thing called a Sprint and we started selling it to our clients as a project, just one week thing. We worked with them exactly how it was outlined in the book. Week in, week out, each week a different client. But then we started running to some challenges. The first one being is that the Design Sprint as a process was really designed for startups in mind, right? So if you're a startup, you do this process to validate your idea and then you take the learnings from that and you improve on your idea to make something better. But what we found out was that when working especially with bigger companies at the end of the first week of a Sprint, there are usually so many questions like you end up with a lot more questions than you started with that people can really see that as a negative thing. And you can try your best to convince them that we have a lot of learnings and that we have everything we need to move on and improve on this. But a lot of people can't help but feel very negative at the end. And so as a result of that, we took the Sprint and we put something after it called the iteration Sprint. But essentially, we do another Sprint on the same challenge, taking the questions that we ended up with at the end of the first week and we start to, we try to answer them in the second week of the Sprint, right? So by the end of the second week, the result is so much more positive. I really, it's ridiculous. Whereas by the end of the first week, our clients were feeling really down. They felt like the Sprint wasn't successful. By the end of the second week, the prototype would be a lot, would have a lot more positive feedback and everyone would just love it. And if you have any questions about how the iteration Sprint works exactly and what the details are, just put those questions down in the comments and we'll be happy to answer them. Another thing that we notice is that it's really hard for people to commit for the length of a whole week, for example, even with the original just five-day Sprint, it was really hard to sell to our clients and ask them to be with us for five days. So one really important thing that we did is that we shortened the Sprint a little bit and we came up with a Sprint 2.0, which you can find a video on our channel about. So we took the process from five days and condensed it into four days. And even in those four days, we only require like the experts or the clients. So if you're working at a company and you're working with a team, you only need kind of the larger team to be there on Monday and Tuesday. So two days instead of five from the original book. And for the rest of the week, you're just working with a minimal, like you only need three people to be working. You need a Sprint lead who's a facilitator. You need someone to do the prototype and someone to do the user testing with the Sprint lead, so we've really minimized what the team needs to be who runs the Sprint rather than requiring everyone to be in the room. So that's very important as we extend the project forward because I don't want you to think that we're extending the project and requiring everyone to be there for the whole thing. That wouldn't be a realistic thing. And so now we ended up with these two weeks that are working much better than just the one-week Sprint. But we also noticed as we did more and more Sprints that we were working on more complex challenges, challenges that could use a little more prep time for our team since we're working as consultants to come in and understand. And there's only so much that we could understand when we just show up on the Sprint week, working with a client, trying to facilitate the process for them and add our own concepts and ideas to the process. And that's how we came up to the conclusion that we need a little bit of prep work and that's when we added a research week. I don't know, can you see that? So now we have these three weeks, right? So before the Sprint, we have a research week. In that research week, we basically talk to the client so you could do this either if you're selling it as a consultant or if you're doing Sprints internally and you need to get experts in the room. So what we do in this research week is that we talk to everyone who's going to be in the Sprint. First, we give them an introduction about what to expect and what's going to happen so that they don't feel lost when they show up on the first day of the Sprint. And we get as much information from them as possible so that we inform ourselves about the challenge. And that also gives us the advantage of being able to prepare some of the exercises that would normally happen on the first day of the Sprint. Things like preparing the map, preparing the how might we's or challenges, preparing what the Sprint questions might be. So when the client walks in on the first day of the first Sprint week, they find that we've already prepared a lot of stuff on the walls and that really takes the pressure off of them to come up with ideas on the spot because they're not starting from a scary blank whiteboard. There are a lot of their ideas, the stuff that they just told us in conversations when we talked to them and during the research week, they find it already on the walls and they just need to erase this, adjust that, correct that. And so it makes it a lot easier for them. So that's also something that we found very valuable in our work and it gave us the benefit of being more informed about the challenge so that when we're creating solution concepts for our clients, we can create something that is a lot more in depth because we've studied up on what the challenge is. So as you can see now, we have this three week block and you know exactly why each block came and how it improved the quality of the project. It improved the chances of having successful Sprint so we're not adding these for no reason. Again, like it would be silly to just add on more days to a process that had most of its value in its shortness, right? But now you know how these additions and these tweaks will help you have a more successful Sprint and they were not just added for the sake of it, right? And so the last thing that we did is that at the end, especially when working with big corporate clients is that we couldn't just leave them at the end with like the result and the prototype. They needed to take the output of the Sprint and present it internally to their bosses, to maybe a larger team that was going to then take for example, if let's say we designed an app, they were going to take it to the developers who are going to work on the app or things like that. So we needed to really package the results in a way that was easy to share, easy to understand and that's how we came up with what we call the delivery week. We took the delivery week and in that we package all of the outputs from the Sprint so we take the prototypes from week one and the updated prototype from the second week of the Sprint and we put them in a nice package, we highlight them, we say what worked, what didn't work, we answer the Sprint questions and we put all of that in a basically a slide deck that can be presented like immediately taken and presented internally. So for anyone who wasn't in the Sprint, they understand what happened and we also have a set of recommendations for a next step for our client because the great thing about a Sprint is that it's this recipe that's been tested and proven to work that tells you what to do and then as you follow the steps you get good results from it but then you're left with big questions about what comes next and so what we try to do to help our clients and you can do this whether you're doing a Sprint internally or selling it as a consultant is you come up with a set of recommendations for what should be the next steps otherwise you risk having the project go into like just endless discussions and all of the bad things that the Sprint tries to fix in the first place. So hopefully this gives you a good idea of why we do Sprints the way that we do and we've we found that this is the best way that we know of to do design Sprint projects right. Again doing the one week Sprint was great but it presented us with a lot of challenges where the client wasn't feeling great at the end and so we added the iteration Sprint to iron out the details and just make sure that we have a great positive end to the Sprint and to tackle more challenging projects and to onboard the client to the to the process we added the research week which made the process go a lot smoother since like I said we basically drafted a lot of the exercises that would normally happen in the Sprint and that took the pressure off of the experts that are in the room and we also reduced the days that the clients need to be in the room so they're essentially only there for two days on the first week and one day on the second week so although you're selling either internally or as a consultant this four week package you only require the time of the experts or the client to be there for three days three workshop days right that's hugely important if you're going to be successful in promoting Sprints as a way of working because it would be unreasonable to ask people to give up their time for four weeks right so that's also a very important part and lastly I'll I'll mention something about the team so the team that you would need to run a Sprint and those would be one Sprint lead who would be facilitating who would be coordinating everything about the Sprint one designer who would be doing the prototyping on the weeks of the Sprint and one user researcher who would be doing a lot of the research on the research week as well as the user testing in the Sprint weeks and then everyone works together on the final week to package up the results the prototypes the feedback from the user tests and put it all into a format that can be easily shared for your clients or for your company internally I hope you found this video helpful again I'm sure you have a lot of questions about the specifics put all of those down in the comments and I'll be happy to answer them I highly recommend you check out our other videos on the channel we have videos about innovation about general design advice and trends and about specifics of the design Sprint how we did the design Sprint 2.0 all that stuff so make sure to check out these other videos subscribe to the channel and check us out on LinkedIn we're also putting out a lot of content on there thanks so much for watching and see you in the next video yep all right does it show in the camera leave this in this is very professional uh all right very high tech set up here it's a bit it's a bit like provocative but how to do a professional package that you can sell either internally or as a professional consultant I'll do that again that is a lot more coherent best part is like every time I do a video I'll probably use a different title and if people like it's like what do you actually do


So each team, the person who's instructing, that's the person who's holding the paper, has to figure out what their off symbol is going to be and what their on symbol is going to be. I said zero, which means you fill in this box. But if I say one, then you don't fill it out. Okay, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to say the black ones are going to be one and the white ones are going to be two. Okay, ready? Okay, one, one, one, one, two, two, two, two. So in binary, it's kind of like an alphabet with two letters. Like having A and B be your entire alphabet, but you've got a zero and a one. The most common way that you use binary is in an if statement. It's a classic thing from programming. The program runs along and it says if something is true, then do this. Or it's not true and you do something else. What if you want to do something maybe a little more complicated? Like instead of an if statement, you want to work with something like an image or a sound in a computer. Now a computer only knows binary, but an image, it's not binary, it's not ones and zeros. So how do you do that? So here's an example. So we have this beautiful picture. Now a picture is basically a form of information. And all information can be encoded in binary in one way or another. You just have to figure out how to do it. So with this picture, what we're first going to do is this all happens in your imagination mostly, and then you translate your imagination into code. So you imagine that we're going to put a grid over this panda bear. And for each square, we're going to decide whether that square is more black or more white. And then we're going to color it that way accordingly. So now each cell in the grid is either black or white. And then the black squares we say those are zeros, binary digit, and the white squares are ones, the other binary digit. And then at the end you're left with just a bunch of ones and zeros. And that's how you represent this image in binary.