Okay, we're recording. Thanks. Good evening. It's May day, May 1st. This is a regular meeting of the town council. The open meeting law has been extended, allowing us to continue to hold meetings remotely without a form of the council physically present at a meeting location, while providing the public with adequate alternative access to the meeting. This meeting is accessible in real time via Zoom, by phone, and as a live broadcast on Amherst Media Channel 9, please note the change in the channel, and also on live stream. I do want to mention that although we do not require counselors to be in the room, we in fact have eight counselors in the room at this time. Given that we have a quorum of the council present, I'm calling the May 1st, 2023 town council meeting to order at 6.33. I will now go through the role, and please indicate that you are here, and we can hear you and you can hear us. Shalini Balmil, I understand, will be absent. Pat DeAngelis? Present. Anadeva and Gothier? Present. Lynn Greasmer is present. Mandy Jo Hanneke? Present. Annika Lopes? OK, I'm waiting for her. Michelle Miller? Also waiting for her. Dorothy Pam? Here. Pam Rooney? Here. Kathy Shane? Here. Andy Steinberg? Present. Jennifer Taub? Present. Alicia Walker? Here. Thank you. Michelle Miller, can you hear us? Present, yes. Thank you, Michelle. OK, and somebody can keep an eye out for Annika. OK, at this point, I just want to mention we have seven people on the Zoom audience and others I'm sure are watching. Andy Steinberg, are you going to call the finance committee meeting to order? I don't think so. OK, there's no chat room for this meeting. If you have technical issues, please let Athena and me know to make a comment and or ask a question. Use the raised hand function. If there's technical problems, we'll decide what to do at the time. There's no change in the order of the agenda as posted. With regard to the announcements, we have a special Town Council meeting with the Community Safety and Social Justice Committee and Human Rights Commission on May 10th at 6.30. And our next regular Town Council meeting is May 15th. There are various committee meetings coming up. And in addition to the ones that are listed for Finance Committee, those meetings will also be posted as committees of the whole. And there in addition to the ones listed, there's also one on May 12th at 1 PM. OK, hold on. We're just going to take a break while we see if we can bring Pat DeAngelo's back in. We have technical difficulties for one counselor. So we thank you for your patience. Pat DeAngelo, can you hear us? Yes, I can. Thank you. Also note that Anika Lopes has joined the meeting. On Sunday, May 7th, we'll be doing the Asian-American Pacific Islander celebration on the Town Common from 1 to 3. In addition to that, we're going to move on. We encourage you to respond to the African Heritage Reparations Assembly Survey. The survey is to close on Monday, the 8th. Next slide. OK, let me just mention a few other things before we go on to that. And that is the polls are open tomorrow for voting on the new elementary school. The polls open from 7 AM to 8 PM. If you have not voted by mail or still have a mail-in ballot, you can take it to your polling place and vote in person or you can drop the ballot off at Town Hall before 8 o'clock tomorrow night. To find your polling place, you go to the Secretary of State's website. Where do I vote in Massachusetts? OK, and finally, we just want to briefly recognize that one of our high school students, Julian Hines, was in fact recognized by the governor as she looked at essays and did an unveiling of her. Right. The governor cited Julian Hines as students whose essay she found particularly interesting and touching. So congratulations, Julian. Unfortunately, he was not able to be with us at this time. Knowing Julian, he's very busy all the time. All right, we're going to move on to general public comment. If you would like to make a public comment and you are in the room, please make sure you sign in with the town clerk. If you would like to make a public comment and you are in the audience, please raise your hand. If you'd like, we'd like you to come forward to make a public comment. Please introduce yourself and tell us where you live. Public comments are combined to three minutes and we do not discuss public comments with you. OK, go ahead. Happy May Day Monday. It's good to see you all here in person. Thank you. A little lonely back here by myself in the audience, but happy to join you on this May Day Monday. I'm Andy Anderson, a resident of District 5 and I'm here to summarize the petition that I sent to you all this morning from almost 60 citizens of our town. In short, we can't depend on the state legislature to pass our home rule legislation for range-choice voting. It must try an alternative approach if you wish to see this enhanced voting system in this November's elections. The legislation was introduced more than two years ago at the beginning of the last session. It only barely got out of committee at the very end of the formal session last July. It then promptly died because in the informal session, it only takes one vote to block it. The excuses we've heard include fallacies such as the statewide referendum fails so the people of Amherst shouldn't have it either. Or excuses such as Amherst and Hampton, Delmont and Concord all have different versions. We can't deal with it. When they've had a standard local option they'll offer to them for years. Clearly depending on them, the second time is a questionable expectation with only two months left time to actually get it addressed. Haven't even had a hearing scheduled, let alone have the voter on committee passed by a legislature and signed by the governor. It's time to reconsider the original intention of the Charter Commission. That is that the council directly implement range-choice voting in Amherst as a bylaw. There's a clear intention of the language in the charter as we detail in our petition. And the office of attorney general then approved the charter before it was approved by the voters. We therefore requested the council contact the attorney general as soon as possible when asked for a specific opinion on this part of the charter. They receive assurance that it would be reasonable to implement range-choice voting without waiting for the legislature. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. We are going to move on to the consent agenda because I see no other hands. All right. And the following items were selected because they were considered to be routine and it was reasonable to expect they would pass with no controversy to remove an item from the consent agenda for discussion later in the meeting ask that it be removed after I go through the list. The request to remove an item from the, I'm sorry. Okay. The request to remove an item from the consent agenda does not require a second. Before I go through the list I just want to remind people that even though there are three items here where we're referring items to the finance committee we will still have presentation on all of those items as we go through the agenda. This merely takes care of the vote for referral which would have happened individually for each of them. So we want to move and move to move the following items and the print and motions they're under and approve those items as a single unit. Eight A, referral of FY 2024 budget to finance committee. Eight B, referral of proposed water and sewer rates to finance committee. Eight C, referral of council order FY24-11 and order approving the acceptance of optional tax exemptions for FY24 to the finance committee. 11 A and B approval of the following meeting minutes, April 24, 2023, special town council meeting minutes, public forum on appropriations outside the budget and April 24, 2023 special town council meeting minutes. Is there any item anybody wants removed? Seeing no hands, I'm looking for a second. Second. Okay. Then we will move to a vote and I will start with Shelly Bult-Milm who is absent. Pat DeAngeles? Aye. Anna Devlin-Gothier? Aye. Lynn Griesmer is an aye. Mandy Johanicki? Aye. Anika Lopes? Aye. Michelle Miller? Aye. Dorothy Pam? Yes. Kathy Shain? Yes. Andy Steinberg? Aye. Jennifer Taub? Yes. Alicia Walker? Yes. It's unanimous with 12 in favor who are present and one councilor absent. We have no resolutions and proclamations and we don't have, we have several presentations but they're all under action items. So without any further ado, I'm going to turn the meeting over to town manager Paul Bachman and finance director Sean Mangano for the presentation of the FY24 budget. Thank you, Lynn. And I'm not sure if Sean or Athena are going to show the PowerPoint that we have. So tonight is our opportunity to present you with the FY24 budget. I want to recognize that we are joined by our comptroller, Holly Drake as well as Sean. Thank you for being here, Holly. So as we emerge from three years of this pandemic, we seek to stabilize the foundation of our operations and reinforce the values and goals that have been the homework of the town's fiscal management for years. Like everyone, our world was tossed upside down during this time. If you just think back, three years ago, we had actually had to pass a one month budget because there was so much uncertainty in what the pandemic was going to bring. Now, three years later, we're presenting you with a stable balanced budget that is returning to normal and even addresses some of the most urgent priorities for the town. Tonight, I present to you the town manager's budget for FY24. It is a balanced budget with expenditures not exceeding revenue projections. This is a no-nonsense discipline budget that accelerates the initiatives begun in prior years. It has few new programs to ensure that we stay within the town's, so that we stay in town within the town's ability to pay. This means most of our mental requests for expanded services and staffing have not been granted. The budget continues our efforts to address the capital needs of the town more aggressively with a special emphasis on the significant need to fix roads and sidewalks. This is an important document. It serves as a policy statement for the town. It's also a financial plan. It's an operations guide and it's a communications tool. The budget provides in-depth insights into how the town allocates the taxpayers' money and we welcome your thoughts in the public's comments as you conduct your review. The budget incorporates increases for salaries, pensions, health insurance, utility costs and similar items. The town's overall financial condition remains strong with a bond rating of double A plus. We have a healthy stabilization account and adequate reserves. We continue to meet our obligations to meet our pension liabilities and OPEB which is other post-employment benefits which is health insurance. We go to the next slide. So first, we start with thank yous because this is a project that takes months to develop and that's the culmination as our presentation to you tonight. As I said, the town has weathered some unprecedented financial challenges over the past three years. Through it all, we remain on sound financial footing due to conservative budgeting and strong fiscal management. The FY24 presents new challenges as we face inflationary pressures that we had not seen in years including increasing wages, rising healthcare costs, higher energy costs and we continue to see supply chain issues. Although she is not in the room, this budget could not have been built without the contributions of Sonia Aldridge, our former comptroller. In fact, the budget is built on the strong foundation of fiscal integrity that has been a hallmark of the town's finances for decades. This budget adheres to those values, values of prudent planning, conservative estimating, meeting financial obligations first and making decisions with an eye towards the future. A large portion of the work on this budget was done by our new comptroller, Holly Drake. Many of you know her, she's no stranger because she's been in the room as the assistant comptroller for years. She is our numbers person and is unafraid to challenge department heads on their budgets and spending. I can attest to that. It's not an easy job but she does it with a straightforward approach appreciated by us all. And our finance director, what can I say? Sean Magano. Sean brings a clarity of purpose to his work for the town. He has transformed the council's goals into numbers so that they have the, so we have the funds available to meet your priorities. You all know how great he is to work with. He brings a calm, steady demeanor and maintains an unflappable adherence to meeting the needs of the town. He is patient, understanding, listens well and digests information quickly. I really treasure our working relationship. Makes it all seem so easy. That's one thing I don't like about him. And we all know it's not. So thank you, Holly and Sean. Next slide. The development of the budget began with the presentation of the financial indicators in November of 2022. There was a public forum at that time as well. The town council established budget policy guidelines in December and this budget meets all of those guidelines. The town council adopted performance goals for the town manager in January of this year. They included climate action, community health and safety, economic vitality, housing affordability, major capital building investments in racial equity and social justice initiatives along with the normal financial management goals that the council has maintained. This budget is aligned with the goals of the town council meets the budget policy guidelines and does so within the limits of the town's resources. We have many needs in town, far more than we could ever fund and our town department submitted requests for additional staffing services and initiatives, many of which would provide even better services to our community. However, given our limited resources and mission to address the priorities established by the council, this budget is primarily a maintenance budget to maintain current staffing levels and services. In short, this is a good smart budget that absorbs the new initiatives the town took on in prior years ensures that the new departments are fully integrated in the town's overall budget. We're able to maintain services as we have in the past but must recognize the pressure that inflation is, inflation and the job market is placing on all of our departments. Next slide. The budget actually includes five major components as you all know. There's the town municipal budget which is mainly what we're gonna talk about tonight. This also includes the elementary school budget, the library budget, the Amherst-Pellum Regional School District budget which you have voted to consider separately and the capital improvement program. I also note that to ensure you have a full view of the town's finances, we reference the community preservation act budget, the CPA budget and the community development block grant CDBG budget. Next slide. In the development of this budget, we adhere to basic budgeting best practices. Current revenues must be sufficient to support current expenditures, budgets must be developed according to the town's financial policies and not be reliant on one-time expenditures. Five-year projections are reviewed and updated as needed. Debt is used for large capital items, not for operating budgets. Adequate reserves are maintained for unexpected costs or downturns in the economy or revenue streams. Sufficient funds are set aside to maintain existing equipment, buildings and infrastructure. Back in November during the financial indicators project, the financial presentation, I said that this was not going to be an easy year, that there were going to be important decisions to be made, that there were going to be compromises and there was going to be disappointment. I said that not everyone was going to get everything they wanted and all of those things are true. This chart shows the allocation of the town's resources to the various entity, the 3%. Next slide. So the highlights of this budget are it includes modest operating increases of 3% for each of the entities. I want to note that the school committee has voted a budget that is $84,000 higher than was requested. I am informing you of this vote, but I'm not proposing to increase the school department budget beyond what the other town entities have allocated. Now I'm going to turn it over to Sean who will go through the sections of the budget by section. Thanks, Paul. So just finishing up this slide. So the proposed budget increases capital spending up to 10.5%. The town has long had a goal of getting to 10% and with escalating costs in the construction industry and so on, we strive to even do a little bit better than that to cover all the projects that are coming up, including the four building projects. As Paul already mentioned, the budget sets aside sufficient funds for our pension obligation and increases our OPEP contribution by $50,000. And it's an overall increase of 3.4% from the FY23 adopted budget. But just note that the baseline for that is includes the supplemental budget that the council approved in the fall, where we added an extra half percent to FY23. So we've organized some of the highlights along the lines of your goals. One infrastructure, so as Paul already mentioned, the roads have been identified as one of the highest priorities in the town. This proposal sets aside about $2.5 million for roads and sidewalks, including chapter 90 funds. When we look back, we can't see a single year investment that was as large. So we believe this is the largest one year investment in roads and sidewalks. And this is following several years of elevated appropriations for roads and sidewalks in addition to a couple of supplemental appropriations for roads and sidewalks. So when we look back at the last five years, including what we're proposing here, it's about $10 million or so that would be put towards this high priority. Next is $40,000 has been added to the Capital Improvement Program for tree planting. Removal and care is mentioned, but this $40,000 specifically for planting. This came from some feedback that we received from the community as well as the Joint Capital Planning Committee and also from our tree and grounds department. There are some different diseases and pests that are gonna force the town to take down some trees in the future. And the borrowing that happened many years ago that provided some funding for tree planting has since been fully utilized. And so these funds being added to the Capital Improvement Program will allow us to plant trees on an annual basis to replace anything that has to be taken down. And then lastly, there's been $230,000 that was submitted as a capital project from the Public Works Department for field maintenance equipment. This is specifically in response to all the conversations that happened around our fields in the past year. And I wanna note that this is specifically for natural grass fields. This equipment is not for turf. This is to take better care and better maintenance of the fields at the high school and the middle school, but can also be used for other recreational fields like Fort River and Plumbrook and Kiwanis. Moving on to climate action, the Capital Improvement Program includes 775,000 to purchase and or lease two new electric school buses, including charging infrastructure. And we anticipate $200,000 of that to be offset with reimbursement from the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act grant that the school district received. So the original Capital Improvement Program included the purchase of the one new school bus with the grant. And through the JCPC process or JCPO planning committee process, there was originally an allocation for $150,000 to invest in our E-Line electric bus that we currently own. But through discussions with school transportation folks and so on, it was determined that it may be best to instead of putting $150,000 into a seven or eight year old E-Line, we should look forward to maybe leasing a new electric school bus because we've had some other issues with the E-Line. So we've had conversations with one company in particular that does this and we feel confident that we can work something out in relation to getting two new electric buses. Next is 225,000 to purchase three hybrid cruisers. The police department has really only purchased hybrids for the past several years. Pretty soon, I suspect more than half of their fleet will be hybrids and it'll go on from there. And so this is the next step in their regular replacement schedule of getting three new cruisers. $200,000 for energy efficiency and sustainability improvements. This was the recurring capital funding that we set aside a few years ago. This is the next year of it. These funds are largely used at the discretion of our sustainability director, Stephanie Ciccarello, and it's used on projects that advance the town towards the goals and the climate action adaptation and resiliency plan. And Joint Capital Planning Committee reviewed a list for the last couple of years of what projects have been completed and I'm sure there will be a list that the sustainability director can provide for what these funds will be used for. And 22,000 is a addition for the sustainability operating budget. So the sustainability director has never had a dedicated operating budget. And so these funds will establish that for the first time and specifically they'll be used to pay the town's valet bike assessment. We pay about $7,000, $8,000 a year and that increases every time we had a new bike station. There's never been a budget for that. So we've always had to scramble to find funds in different places. And then this will also establish funding for memberships and professional development for the sustainability director. Community health and safety. So this budget proposal maintains funding for the 10-person Crest Department. And in addition, it includes $20,000 for overtime and for communication expenses related to the radio system and other technology. It includes $725,000 borrowing authorization to replace Fire Department pumper truck. There was a bubble of expensive equipment that was purchased by the Fire and EMS Department in the late 90s and early 2000s. And all of that is sort of coming due now. We've replaced one pumper truck, we replaced the ladder truck. If this proposal is approved, we believe there's one more truck that will come up in the next five years and then we should be past that bubble. This proposal includes the purchase of a new Fire Department ambulance, but you'll hear more later that we are seeking non-tax revenues to purchase that ambulance. Something that will come back to the council in the near future. It includes $8,000 to, sorry, excuse me. It includes $8,000 to establish the second lead dispatch position in our Dispatch Center Communications Center. So currently we have a department head in charge of the communications center and there's one lead dispatch position, but it doesn't provide 24-7 supervisor coverage with just two supervisor positions. And obviously the Dispatch Center is a 24-7 operation. And so this has been a request from the Dispatch Center for many years. And by creating the second lead dispatch position, it will help ensure that we have 24-7 supervisory coverage. It's not a brand new position. It's essentially promoting an existing position or elevating an existing position to take on a little bit more responsibility and the compensation that goes along with that. And then $25,000 for the public health department to provide administrative support and for the town's mosquito control district assessment. A couple of years ago, the town had a couple choices in relation to mosquito control. Either have statewide spraying or join a mosquito control district and the council voted to join the mosquito control district. And this will finally have the funds to pay the assessment. In regards to the administrative support for the health department, prior health director reduced their FTE. And by reducing that FTE, they freed up some funding to pay for administrative support given COVID and everything that's changed in the world of public health, that's no longer an option. And so these funds will be added to the health or being proposed to be added to the health department so that we can have a full-time health director but also have the administrative support that the department relies upon. Racial equity and social justice, the budget proposal maintains funding for the two-person diversity equity and inclusion office and adds $6,000 to their operating budget to increase funding for training and community engagement. And there's a $5,000 being added to the budget to pilot a childcare reimbursement program for elected officials. This is based on some of the conversations that have happened around councilor compensation and the proposal that came to the finance committee. This is one thing that we can propose now that we can pilot and evaluate the results of. And so if approved, we'll send out more details on this. Housing affordability. So this was already approved by the council. So this is a done deal. But the Community Preservation Act Awards for FY24 included a lot of money for community housing and specifically for two projects, the Ball Lane Project and the Belcher Town and East Street School Project that will create dozens of new affordable units. Again, the budget, the way we can fund projects in town come from lots of different funding sources and that was a significant contribution from the CPA funding that the town has as its disposal. And then wrapping up highlights. So enterprise funds. So you'll see across all the enterprise funds when we get to the finance committee and we do the deep dives of each of the four that all of them are dealing with the inflation that Paul mentioned earlier. Wage increases. We had an 8% increase in our health insurance premiums which impact the enterprise funds just like it impacts our general fund budget. Utilities are going up, specifically electricity is a major cost in enterprise funds, particularly water and sewer, fuel related expenses. There's a lot of that in our sewer fund and our transportation fund. And then there's some new capital and debt that is being taken out in the enterprise funds that we'll go into more detail about. There is one debt authorization request in the enterprise funds and that's specifically to replace pump station number four and there is a somewhat unique large capital request in the solid waste fund to replace the scale at the transfer station that's been in need of replacement for a few months. Paul, do you want me to keep on going? Yeah, you're going great. Okay, FY24 capital improvement program. So we've touched on a lot of things that are already in the capital improvement program but quickly again, it increases the allocation to 10 and a half percent of the levy. It incorporates a plan for the four building project and addresses deferred maintenance of existing infrastructure. There's the historic investment in roads and sidewalks that we've already discussed and we continue to evaluate projects through a lens of impact on climate change. Again, most recently we've incorporated into any replacement of a heating system in any of our buildings that it be not relying on fossil fuels and we're going through that process right now with the police station. The pie chart on the right just shows you how the capital improvement program is divvied up between different departments. The largest being public works highway and again, that's the road and sidewalk contribution. Fires next and it's a little bit larger this year because of the pumper truck proposal and then you have schools and facilities which have some regular ongoing capital needs that are the next largest slices. So Paul talked a little bit about this already. The town is still in a solid financial position. Our reserves a little bit lower because we've appropriated the $5 million for the school project, but still in a good position. We have our double A plus bond rating which our goal is to maintain or improve. This budget proposal maintains core services with a 3% increase to operating budgets and the 10 and a half percent dedicated to capital and we continue to take a forward thinking approach. You'll hear a little bit more about ARPA funds when we get into the actual budget document but we've allocated ARPA funds to support various town council initiatives and goals and we'll be coming back with a plan for how to use the remaining ARPA funds in the near future and we've provided five year operating budget projections and capital or capital improvement program has a five year projection as well. So I'm just gonna quickly go through the five year outlook. This has been a high priority in the past to make sure that the town is on a fiscally sustainable path. Things have improved a little bit this year and so the quick ending is that we're in a fine position and we're not in a great position but we're definitely not in a bad position. So this is the revenue side of it and what you'll see is the different four categories of our revenues, property tax, local receipts, state aid and other financing sources. And I recognize that this is probably too small to see a lot of the detail but some of the things that have changed since last year, I'll just highlight those is that our property taxes have come in better than what we projected last year and that's particularly related to our FY23 new growth. One thing you'll see in our budget document is how much the town has generated a new growth over the last 10 years and how important that is to the health of our budgets. And so in FY23, you may be able to see it. We brought in $948,000 of new growth which beat our benchmark of 650,000. And so when we beat a budget number that has a ripple effect in the out years as it increases our property tax base. So property taxes are looking a little better than they did last year because of that new growth. The other big factor that changed in the five year outlook on the revenue side is state aid. So when we did the last five year outlook it was based on the governor's budget proposal. Again, this would have been last May but you may remember that the final budget that was adopted actually doubled the governor's proposal for unrestricted general government aid. And so when that gets folded in this year it improved our state aid numbers quite a bit on the revenue side. So revenues are looking a little bit better compared to the last time we did this five year outlook. And again, when we get into the finance committee we'll dive into the assumptions around the out years and what's driving those projections. On the expense side, operating budget expenses are a little bit higher from last year. Again, because we did the supplemental budget in the fall. So when we did this five year outlook it would have been before the supplemental budget. So it's that half percent increase things a little bit. And then again, we're proposing a 3% increase for FY24. The capital hasn't changed too much. We were assuming 10 and a half percent and that stayed pretty consistent. In the pension section, that's an area that's actually improved.  And that's because as we near the sort of the tail end of our pension funding schedule, which it's hard to believe. I think many people thought we would never get there but we're in the final third of our pension funding schedule. The annual increases starting to get a little bit lower which is a good thing. You can see if you look at the assessment retirement system under the miscellaneous section still pretty large increases in those out years but lower than they would have otherwise been if we had kept the same rate of increase that we've seen the past few years. So that rate of increase slowing down a little bit is helping our five year projection quite a bit. So bottom line, you can see we have a little bit of a shortfall when you go up to FY28 but over five years and given the conservative nature of the projections. Again, this isn't pretty fine shape overall. One thing just to, if you can see these numbers that will come up later for a different agenda item but it might be a helpful connection is this reserve for abatements and exemptions line later in the meeting, you're gonna hear a quick presentation on the optional tax exemption proposal. And this line right here is where the funding comes to provide those optional tax exemptions. And you want me to bring it home, Paul? All right, sure. I've got some comments. We're good to say what you want. Okay, so looking forward again, there's a couple of different items that we're working to secure non-tax funding to help advance some town goals. So one is the four EMS fire positions that were added through ARPA. That's sort of the big challenge that we've had on the town side is how to incorporate those into the operating budget. While we think we have an avenue that will be coming back to the council shortly where we'll be able to incorporate those four positions into the operating budget and it will be from an outside source. And in addition to that would include a purchase of a new ambulance for FY24 as well. And then from a similar source, also working to get $100,000 annually dedicated to promoting safe and healthy housing and the different initiatives that go along with that. Third, we're reviewing our options to allocate the remaining ARPA funds as I mentioned previously, looking at the capital needs that are coming in the future. We've heard about the cracker farm roof that might need replacement, the middle school roof. There's a lot of large capital projects and looking at our ARPA funds of how we can help relieve some pressure on the capital and operating budgets by using our ARPA funds in a strategic way. Fourth, so while the town-wide view of the five-year outlook looks pretty good, we know that individually within certain operating budgets there can still be major challenges. And we've heard from the schools, specifically that they have some fiscal challenges that they are dealing with that aren't going away in the next couple of years. So the town manager is going to be forming a working group that's going to specifically focus on the school's long-term financial sustainability and look at things like the funding levels and do those need to change in the coming years, cost-saving measures that might help find greater efficiencies at the schools and then facility planning and anything else that might be related to the fiscal challenges the schools are dealing with with a goal of making recommendations back to the town manager by the end of the calendar year. And then the fifth and final bullet here is there will be an economic development task force created in partnership with our institutional partners. We've had a really good run of economic development in town, as I mentioned, with a new growth that's contributed a ton to our tax base that has allowed our budget to be where it is today. And we can't assume that economic growth will continue forever on its own. And so this task force will look at ways to continuing that into the future. Paul, do you want to mention anything else? Yeah, I just wanted to mention on new growth, just so people understand what new growth is, we throw that term around. When you add a deck to your house, that can be assessed, that can raise the value of your home. But also when you see these new buildings going up, especially the big apartment buildings, they all can be taxed for the town and that adds to our tax base. That's what's called new growth and it widens the pool of funds that we have available to us to pay all the commitments that we've taken on. I also mentioned, Sean talked about the pension board. The good news for us is that Sean is now on the pension board, the Hampshire County Retirement System. So he'll keep a close eye on that. So congratulations to Sean for taking on that role. And we also want to mention that, we'll have a better sense of what our to-do list is after tomorrow's vote, depending on which way that goes, we'll dedicate our services and our work in a certain direction. So if it passes its one path, if it doesn't pass, it's another path. All these documents are available on the website, everything that we've talked about tonight and they'll be posted on the bulletin board, but also on the FY24 budget page. It's actually called upcoming budgets if you want to look for it online. So that concludes our presentation. So just as a bringing this around, what happens now is this has been voted to be referred to the finance committee. The finance committee will be meeting starting this Friday. We will meet on Fridays from one till about four and we'll meet on Tuesdays starting at 5.30 till about 7.30, maybe a little later. Those meetings will all be public. They will be posted as committee of the whole meetings so that any counselor can fully participate in the discussion. And they will all have public comment as well. That really goes on for almost the entire month of May because our job is to recommend back to the council that a budget that we've approved. Now there's certain restrictions about what we can and can't do as we go into that budget discussion and we'll be reviewing those as we go forward. I said all of that because the council will have enormous opportunity to weigh in and ask lots and lots of questions. But if there are some questions this evening or comments, I'd like to ask people to raise their hand now. Pat D'Angelo. One quick question, well I have two questions but one quick one is budget books. I'm used to getting it in advance. I'm wondering if we're gonna be getting them. So we have not produced budget books but if the council would like them we can send this document. This is one document on PDF. We can send them out to be printed. Let me know and I'll put you on the list. I'll put you on the list but if anybody else. The other thing is could you say a little bit more about the economic development task force that I'd love some information about? Yeah, so we have talked with our institutional partners about making a commitment to talking more specifically about what this looks like for the town. We haven't framed the whole mission. It's really not about filling storefronts downtown. I think that job is being done pretty successfully. It's about leveraging economic opportunities at the university for the most part. That's what we really wanna focus on. Thank you. Mandy Jo. I'll have plenty of questions at the other meetings but I'm gonna focus on that looking forward slide today. Particularly the long-term school financial sustainability we have a region and a local which complicates things. Will the members of the task force include the other three towns regionally because without their cooperation and input and everything the talks would be less fruitful. Yeah, I think the goal of this group and Sean can address this as well is to get a set of numbers that we can all agree on and sort of identify what the challenges are so we can present them to the decision makers as we start to go through this. Sean has served both as finance director for the town and for the school so he knows this world well. Sean? Yeah. I think right now the goal is to get staff in key positions to take a deep dive into this. It may include working with the town administrators in those towns. We haven't reached out to them yet but at the regional level especially if the conversation goes to funding for the region we would bring in the town administrators from those communities. Kathy? Just a couple of comments I did. I looked forward to FY25, 26 where as always you nicely balance them but one of the ways that happens is the operating budgets are just going up by two and a half percent. So when we're talking about the schools and what we know is coming I think that task force is really vital and I'm just hoping outside of the budget discussion that we're about to have we are having a strategy on how to get the state's participation up on roads, on schools, in key areas because one of the reasons we're in the crunch we're in is the decline, the failure of the state money to keep up with inflation but an absolute decline as a share of the total budgets on all of them. I'm just so people know the on roads that state allocation, I think 2003 is what we heard or it hasn't gone up on adult, 2012. Thanks Pam, you know, it just has been flat so it doesn't buy even a mile of roads anymore, buys less. So just those comments that I would like, you know to be thinking of that when we're doing the budget. And then the last comment is Paul, you very quietly said we're making a big allocation to roads, which I think is important. We've been hearing a lot about it but this actually I think understates it states it right with the FY24 but we put an extra million in this year from freeze cash and I think we should make more of that so the public understands that we really are doing a push forward on roads.  So trying to think of these interactively. So those are my main comments as we look at pieces then the last, I think everyone on the council knows this but it's very helpful if you see parts of this budget that you have questions to formulate those questions get them to Andy so that we can get them out to the department before they come. They come prepared then to talk, they can look downwards.  So now that I have this document I will be getting those in early but I just think it's very helpful. Whichever piece of the budget it is. If I can just mention something Lynn. Please. On the roads just so people know this is putting money in the pipeline. It takes a while to get the roads, get this money out the door, get the engineering done, get the bidding done and get contractors in. So it's not like it's magically having money available but it's important that this happen now so we continue to push money into that pipeline. Lynn, can I also follow up quickly? Please. Kathy, your point about state advocacy is good. Good timing. Right now the state is trying to determine how to allocate the funding from the fair share amendment. And we've seen a couple of proposals that don't do a whole lot or really anything for Amherst. They're not final proposals but I know that's one of the high priorities we have for our local legislators is how do we review that and see if there's opportunities for Amherst to get something from either the transportation side of the funding or the education side of the funding which right now doesn't look to, it's not in the current proposal. Thank you. Are there any other counselors that have comments or questions? Pam Rooney. I had a question about the budget going up by 3% and I think it would be helpful for people to understand including myself. How can it go up 3% if our cap is 2.5% tax levy? Yeah, so the tax levy, the entire tax levy can go up 2.5% per year but we have other non-property tax revenue sources that we collect that can go up more than that. So we have state aid and in particular this year the number that's coming in with a large increase is our local receipts which has 11.5% increase. And the reason that has such a large increase is because we're still getting our budgets back to pre-pandemic levels which this FY24 proposal almost gets us there. So that's how we get to greater than 2.5%. Anything else, Pam? Dorothy. This is about the $40,000 for trees. It was, I think said in words that it was a dedicated line for tree planting. So I think that we had 20,000 that was trees, repairs and whatever and then 20,000 was added to it but it's still not labeled tree planting. It's labeled tree planting, removal, care, whatever. Is that how it really is or just a little more clarification on that? Yeah, so there was originally a $20,000 line item for tree removal and through the joint capital planning process and again hearing feedback from others that line was increased to 60,000 and it was expanded to include tree planting and the $40,000 increase was specifically related to the tree planting. Just to note that I had a pretty long conversation with the tree warden this morning and there's some pretty challenging times coming ahead and Sean referenced them and we will be needing to do a lot of tree planting and a lot of tree removals due to some invasive species who have come into our attacking our trees. So it's gonna be a pretty important couple of years as we've tried to maintain our tree canopy in the town and so but we need to make sure the tree warden has the flexibility to use these funds the way he feels that they are best used. It might be that it's not about planting trees it might be about treating trees so that they survive. So I think that making sure that he has that ability to use the funds as he sees fit is really important. But just a quick follow up, is it 40,000 or is it 60,000? Sean just said 60,000 but in the summary it says 40. It's 60,000 total but the addition to the capital plan was $40,000 it went from 20 to 60. All right, thank you. So it tripled, yeah. Jennifer. Thank you. This might be for another conversation not the budget but with the tree planting budget if trees are removed, do they, is there any kind of policy that they get replanted at least in the general area where they were removed from? So if a tree is removed by the town it depends on it's up to the tree warden to determine if that's a good location. Oftentimes that same location is not available because there are tree roots in a stump there but they do try to make sure there are trees available and he's also trying to take, when he plants trees he's pretty thoughtful about where he places them because having them between the sidewalk and the road sometimes it's not a good location because you shade the road and also you tear up the sidewalk. He's been looking to get permission from property owners to put them on the tree on their edge of their property so we can maintain the tree canopy along roads but there's not a direct one for one, you know, system there. The other thing that he often will do is once he plants a tree in front of someone's house that you really need to maintain the trees weekly for the trees to survive that if you miss a period of time or if there's a drought that that is it creates irreparable harm irreparable harm to the trees. So a lot of times we recruit the property the budding property owners to go and out go out and water them on a weekly basis to make sure that those trees survive. They're big investments that we make into these trees. Okay, are there other comments or questions? You just say, I know getting to this point is not easy. I know you bring forward a message that probably makes some happy and disappoints others and we wanna thank you, Paul and Sean and Holly for powering through that, having done a budget review myself, they're not easy to work with sometimes can. No, they're tough. They wanna know what your rationale is. So with that, we will move on to the next item and the finance committee takes this up on Friday at one o'clock. The next item is the proposed water and sewer rates. And again, we have already voted to refer these to the finance committee and from everything we can tell because there is a required notice period for public comment, this will come back to the council for a vote probably on June 3rd. Okay, Sean, are you doing water and sewer rates? Yep, Paul, do you wanna say anything first or just dive right in? Okay. All right, so the council is the water and sewer commission as well, it's a dual hat you all wear which means you have to approve water and sewer rates each year. So tonight, we're gonna share our proposed rates for FY24, talk about some of the reasons why they're increasing and look at some other communities and what their rates are. And then this topic will be taken up by the finance committee on Friday again where there'll be a deeper dive into the enterprise funds and some of the costs that are more detailed about the costs that are rising and driving the rates. So the proposed rates for FY24, the water rate is proposed to go from $4.75 to $5 per 100 cubic feet, which is a 25 cent increase or roughly 5% in terms of dollars, it's an average increase of $23 per year or about $2 per month. The sewer rate is proposed to go from 5.20 to 5.50 per 100 cubic feet, which is an increase of 30 cents from FY23 or about a 6% increase. And this translates to about $28 per year or $2 and 35 cents per month. The chart on the right shows our rate history, the solid part of that line is our rate history and then the dotted portion of the line is sort of the trajectory of our rates when we projected out five years. So you can see the, and this is all based on consumption of 1 million 100 cubic feet per year. And consumption is a key factor that I'm gonna talk a little bit more about in a second. So you'll see the rates are increasing, they're rising both due to operating costs increases, regular increases related to labor and health insurance, some of the inflationary factors that we discussed. They're also rising because some of the infrastructure projects that have been approved and the rates needing to scale up in order to cover the debt payments for those projects, the most notable being the Centennial Project and the Gravity Belt and the Sewer Fund. So what I'm gonna show you real quick is there's two slides here that are essentially identical except for the second one shows the rate trajectory if we had 1.1 million 100 cubic feet of consumption, 1.1 is where we were say six or seven years ago, pre-pandemic and 1 million is what we're based in our budget on going forward. So we're being more conservative in our projection of consumption going forward. But given all the new development that we've talked about, some of the projects at UMass, I just wanna make sure the council's aware of the impact of consumption that there's potentially upside if that consumption or if that development drives consumption up. So this is what it looks like again with 1 million for consumption and it tops out NFY 28, both rates being around $6, a little bit north of $6 per 100 cubic feet. And if I go to the next one, it's about 50 cents lower. So if we were to increase our consumption by about 10%, the rate that we would need in order to support the cost of these enterprise funds would be in the mid-fives and would be again, about roughly 10% lower than the prior projection. So all that is just to show that consumption is really critical for the enterprise funds. They have largely fixed costs that can't scale up or down very easily. A lot of, especially at the water fund, it's based on the number of treatment facilities that we have. And so again, the consumption is a major factor in addition to the expenses. So I touched on these quickly already, but the main causes for the proposed rate increases, wages and benefits, both water and sewer enterprise funds have a number of staff that work for them. And so health insurance, pension costs, things like that, all of that are paid out of the enterprise fund. So when those go up, the enterprise fund pays for the increase. We've had inflation related to electricity costs, which the water and sewer fund are between the two of them or I think are over half of our town-wide electricity needs. They are major consumers of electricity. And in the sewer fund specifically, one of the largest costs is for sludge removal, which I'll let Guilford go into what that is, but it's very dependent on fuel costs. And when fuel costs rise, our cost for sludge removal rises as well. And so this is a cost that we've seen jump significantly in the past year or two. Flat water consumption levels, again, coming out of the pandemic. So we've had this sort of slow, steady decline of water consumption pre-pandemic that we attributed to just more efficient water fixtures and people being more mindful of using water. Then we had the pandemic where there was a very steep drop-off. And now we've seen it come back up, but it hasn't come back up to pre-pandemic levels. And so again, we're being conservative because we don't know where the new normal level of consumption is gonna be. We don't have enough history and we're not seeing it rise rapidly like we were hoping. And then the fourth bullet here is we are starting to see some debt payments come online for the Northampton Road Project. I'm sure all of you have had to navigate that traffic. That project is nearing completion. And when that part of that project was replacing the water mains underneath the road. And so when that project wraps up, so will the water main replacement piece of it and the annual costs for that project will start. The good news is the project came in quite a bit under budget under the initial estimates for that debt authorization. So that's good news. And then also for the sewer infrastructure projects, the gravity belt, debt payments will start soon. We're still looking for ways to help mitigate the impact of these infrastructure projects on rate payers. We talked about the Centennial Project and how we were able to get in the Clean Water Trust and get a grant and financing for that. That was huge at keeping costs down, especially given how much the cost of that project overall rose from the initial estimates till the final construction costs because we were able to get into that program. The benefits of that program essentially offset all the cost increases that we saw which the project nearly doubled. So we'll be looking for additional grants that can help offset some of these sewer projects. And in addition, we've talked about this for a while, the reuse water program and the sewer and the sewer fund. We're gonna be in FY24 starting to formulate what a fee-based program could look like and that could generate some additional revenues in the sewer fund for potentially as early as FY25. Here's the community comparison. It's in your memo. Again, so I apologize if it's a little small, but what you'll see here in the first lightly shaded yellow row is Amherst current rates, both under Amherst average consumption which is 92, 100 cubic feet and state average which is 120, 100 cubic feet. So we're giving you sort of two looks at this. The second shaded yellow row is the billing under the proposed rates that you just looked at. The shaded green are the other communities that currently have FY24 rates. Otherwise the white rows are based on FY23 rates except for the state average, which is based on FY18 because they haven't updated the report that gives us a good statewide average and special thanks to Amy Rossecki who helps put this all together because every community does water billing a little bit differently. So it's not a super straightforward comparison. But I think, I don't know if everyone's seen it but there's been a lot of articles in the news lately about rising water and sewer costs in neighboring communities for a variety of different reasons and we're no different. We're seeing it here as well. And I'll stop there. Happy to take any questions. And again, Friday we'll do a deep dive into the enterprise funds to talk about rates. Okay, are there questions? Midjo. Just one and it's more of a housekeeping question than anything, which is we just passed our water and sewer regulations which each have an appendix A that lists the rates but the financial order in our packet does not indicate any amendment of that appendix. So don't we need to have that on the financial order? And then what else do we need to do about amending those appendices to match whatever rates we vote? That's a good question. I'm gonna take a closer look at that one. I'll stay in the corner. So I did just speak with Paul and Sean and Lynn. Please speak to the mic. I just spoke with Paul or emailed Paul and Lynn and Andy about this and Sean right before the meeting saying that we need to make sure that we follow the instructions that are in the bylaw about posting notice of the special comment period and so on. So I think when they come back to the council it will be a vote to adopt the council order and amend the regulations. I do have one question, but I'm afraid it might be a Guilford or Amy question and that is, do these rates reflect the two different bylaws we had to pass about a year ago that the state was requiring? I can't even come up with the names. IDD, whatever the wastewater. Wastewater management plans. I'm assuming that they're in there, but we'll check with Guilford and Amy when we have the meeting. Okay, thank you. Are there any other questions with regard to water and sewer? Again, I wanna make sure that the public is aware that we will be posting a public comment period on water and sewer rates. We do not hold a hearing or a public forum on them, but we would love to get your comments at any point in time. And again, we've already voted to refer this. So we'll go on to our final action item and that is the proposed council order FY24-11 in order approving the acceptance of optional tax exemptions for FY20-24. Again, we've already voted referral to the finance committee and it will probably come back to us probably in the beginning of June. But Sean, do you wanna go ahead? Yeah, I feel bad that we didn't take longer on the previous topics because I feel like you're gonna get out earlier than what any of you are used to. So this last one. Don't say that. Sorry, yeah, I should. It's plenty to read. Do not jinx it. So this last one is really sort of a housekeeping. I'll share it quickly. It's really sort of a housekeeping motion that we have to do each year. So the town for quite some time now has authorized an increase of up to 100% for some of its exemptions. And you'll see the table below. This comes from the assessor who will be at the finance committee meeting when this is discussed to speak to it more. But essentially we double the maximum exemption level for these different eligibility reasons. And so the chart here you'll see is the FY23 levels of exemptions that were taken. There's the amount for the base and then there's the amount related to the optional component and then a total. And there is some state reimbursement but it's relatively small relative to the total. And so this exemption amount that you see here, it comes out of that line I mentioned when we were looking at the five year projections, the allowance for abatements and exemptions. That money that we set aside there each year is what covers this. So this is the exemption side of it but it also covers abatements which is we don't know what that's gonna be during the year. So yeah, so this has to be voted each year in order to continue extending this additional tax relief to eligible residents. And so we bring it to you now to make sure it's voted before the end of the fiscal year. We'll go to questions. I'm gonna start with one and that is, do we go to the maximum allowed by the state for each of these? Yeah, so the assessor will get into that more but my understanding is, yes, we offer the maximum that we are allowed to offer. Thank you. Other questions from the council? Pam. Can someone tell me what surviving spouse of whom is it a special category of survivorship? Yeah, so each of these clauses has certain eligibility criteria and there's a form that goes into exactly how you qualify and what makes you eligible. We can set that already posted on our town website. I don't wanna miss classify if the assessor will know exactly what it is but we'll send you the form and the specific description so you can get the legal definition for how you would qualify. Are there any other questions? Again, this has been referred in our consent and so we are going to move on to appointments. There are none committee reports. We just had these a week ago but perhaps there's additional updates. Mandy Jo, CRC. There's one update and one other hint which is we're still working on making our recommendations and working through the process for ZBA and planning board appointments. Please put the word out for applicants to apply on the community action form. Everything was sent to you a while ago and I think just recently again on the links to the bulletin board notices. The new item is at the last meeting the committee passed approved the report on the rental survey engagement that we did on Engage Amherst and all of the no responses to that. I wanna thank Shalini and Elena Nescu to Nescu for working so hard on that report. It is on the webpage, our committee's webpage the CRC webpage right now and it will also be in our next meeting packet for the council. Athena says it's already in the packet if she's already put the packet up. It is a very long report because the appendices are multiple hundreds of pages long which is why it's not been just emailed out to people. It went up on the web pages. So I just wanted to let people know that that's out there now and it looks like Jennifer's got a question or someone's got a question. Jennifer. Yes, I just want to ask for the ZBA and the planning board community activity forms or the applications. Is there a due date people have asked me? So technically the final date people could fill them out and be considered part of the applicant pool is the date that the statements of interest are published seven days in advance of a interview date. So in essence, not until we've set an interview date and then go forward, if there are CAFs that come in between the time we set the interview date and start accepting statements of interests, one of the things Pam and I immediately do is get that information out to them and say, you need to submit this now. But even when we determine a sufficiency of an applicant pool, that does not close the applicant pool. Thank you. Are there other questions? All right. Kathy Elementary School Building Committee. Paul made an earlier statement that a lot of things depend on the outcome of tomorrow. So I would say the elementary school building committee is one of them. If the vote is positive on May 10th, we will be starting to meet every week or multiple weeks. And we've divided the detailed design development details into two key committees, building and site. But there are specific agendas for each and I will share them as soon. We don't have time yet for them, but people are welcome to come. They will be public meetings. But this is starting to get into the site plan as general. So let's say exactly where everything is. At some point, not right away, we'll get into what play equipment and their budgets for these and what's the color scheme inside the school. But the designers have set that up as it's a pretty intense schedule because it's a site and building meeting every week for several weeks. And then we have a sustainability as the third committee that will meet less often but it'll probably start to meet once a month. And there is one of those scheduled. And I will send that out to everyone as soon as I have times. Thank you. Question, Pat. I don't have a question. I just want to thank Kathy for the work that she's been doing on this committee. I think the whole town is grateful to her. Thank you and agree. Any other comments at this time or questions regarding the elementary school building committee? Finance committee, Andy? So finance committee has got a lot of work ahead of it. Thanks to all that we were presented today. And it is our annual assignment because the charter provides that once it's referred to the committee we have 30 days to report back to the council. So we have to adopt a very aggressive schedule. There was a comment made, I believe, by Kathy earlier that members of the committee are going to be working on developing questions that are going to be presented to the department, representatives, department heads in advance and inviting all counselors to submit questions. It's always advantageous to get the questions in advance which is done through Sean and it enables the department head and Sean to do the research necessary if there are research requirements and to be prepared to answer the questions. So the way that we're proceeding is that committee members have indicated that they would volunteer to take on one department and ask people to state their preferences.  And I'm going to tell you a little bit about the schedule quickly, but in any event the plan would be that the assigned person will take responsibility for looking very carefully through that section of the budget book to present questions. But if you have questions, you can also send them to me and to Sean and we'll make sure that they get into the right bucket. So I encourage you to do that. As far as the schedule is concerned, on Friday, we have our first meeting which is at 1 p.m. And it is going to be to have overarching questions about the budget to talk about the capital improvement program, the water sewer rates and the optional tax exemptions. Then just going through the schedule next Tuesday at 5.30 p.m., we're going to be looking at an overview of the budget more specifically as well as schools and library on the 12th at 1 o'clock public safety and community services on the 16th at 5.30 is going to be BPW and the enterprise funds. And then on the 19th is general government and conservation development inspections. And after that we will be getting onto the process of trying to summarize where we're at, develop a final recommendation vote and to develop the report that we're going to be issuing about the whole budget process. There are two other things to be aware of. It's partly just to make sure that you're aware that the charter requires that the finance committee hold a public hearing and it is scheduled on the budget. And that's a very important part of it. The date we have scheduled and I think that Lynn can speak to that too is the 15th of May. And there's also a requirement that there be a public forum that the council can be in a public forum regarding the capital improvement plan and that's scheduled for June 5th. And I think that ever is it as far as what the process is and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact me and we look forward to the process that we've used by having combined council meeting what we have always done and will continue to do as long as I'm chair is to make sure that after the initial presentation by the appropriate department head that I will recognize from all counselors and all members of the finance committee, including our resident members when hands go up, I will call on everybody in the order that hands go. Did I see hands go up so that everybody has an equal chance to participate in asking additional questions that come up after we get the initial presentation. So I look forward to this process and having a robust participation by all. So thank you, Lynn. Thank you. GOL, Pat. We've only met one since my last memo, but we have continued work on the obstruction of public ways by law, or only known as snow and ice removal. We're working on the flag policy and the public dialogue issues that have caught. Thank you. Nika, Jones Library. So the Jones Library Building Committee has not met and will not meet again until June, but the Jones Library Capital Campaign will have a press event with Congressman McGovern and that is Wednesday, May 3rd at noon, and this will be in front of the Jones Library. Rain location is the Woodbury room. Anika, Town Services and Outreach Committee. We have not met since our last meeting. Our next meeting is this Thursday, May 4 at 7 p.m. Okay, thank you. Are there any liaison reports? As I'm reporting on the Recreation Commission, I've learned a lot about pickleball and that there is a definite culture clash between pickleball players and tennis players. There's a temporary pickleball court being set up at Mill River. It is taking one of the two tennis courts there and putting in yellow lines to demarcate the court size. Pickleball courts are smaller, the net is lower. There's also, because it's not a permanent installation, there'll be a portable net that can be brought out so that the pickleball players can get there. There seems to be some concern about fairness to both pickleball players and tennis players, because right now it's first come, first serve. And pickleball players can bring all their own equipment, including nets, so it'll be interesting. It's a temporary situation for who knows how long, because they're looking to create a permanent, at least one permanent site, maybe more. They're looking at the Mill River area. They're looking at Graw Park. The open space near the North Amherst Library, the Cal pasture, I'm not sure exactly. I have an idea where that is. And the Kiwanis land on Stanley Street, which seems to have TPWs more support for that area. It was really interesting to watch the committee meeting. I can't be there because it meets during council times, but it was interesting to watch the tape and I don't know why anybody would play pickleball. But be careful, Pat. Dorothy? I'm really asking you to clarify something. On Wednesday, the 10th of May at 6.30, I have in my calendar that we have a CSSJC and an HRC meeting with the town council. I think it's a public hearing. I'm just wondering if, because it's an unusual time, 6.30 on Wednesday. I'm wondering if you could clarify that. It is not a public hearing. It is a meeting of the three bodies. All of them will post their meeting and the council, like we always do, can either be in the room or on Zoom. And the other committees need to decide how they want to meet. And they'll let me know. The, and the other committees may decide to continue to meet afterwards, but their agendas have to be set by their co-chairs. The purpose of the meeting is to follow up on the November 14th motion of the council where we asked the town manager to provide a report on six or seven items, okay? That report was provided in March and at this point, CSSJC and HRC are in the process. My understanding is they're in the process of drafting their thoughts about that report. And so the meeting itself will include an opportunity for brief presentations about what the written reports say, but there's no sense reading them and then a joint discussion among all three bodies. Does that help? That's very helpful. Thank you very much. Certainly. Just a follow-up on that. So we as a council will not have had the opportunity to discuss Paul and the DEI's report prior to having that joint meeting. That is, yes, that is correct. Okay. We may choose to have additional discussions afterwards, but the purpose of the meeting is as defined in the motion of November 14th. Okay. And there's not a way for us to have a discussion prior to that meeting at this point. It's either this meeting or there's no other meetings of the council scheduled prior to them. Okay. I just want to just note a bit of concern about that. I wish that we would have had the opportunity as a council to discuss the report first, but it is what it is now. But if there's any suggestions in terms of how we might prepare for that meeting so that it's productive and I'm sure that you're doing those things, that would be great. Thank you. Are there any other committee reports? We approved minutes in the consent agenda. Paul, you've provided a written report or there are highlights you'd like to make? There are. So first I want to recognize Jennifer Moisten who received an award at the state house two weeks ago. I think some of the counselors had attended. So thank you for those who went. She was named the 2023 nominee from the third Hampshire district as a black excellence on the Hill honoree. And she was nominated by Repdom. And so she's very pleased and very proud of receiving this. And so she's been achieving so much lately. So just adds to her portfolio of achievements which she continues to work on her degree as well. So a lot of folks have been going through a lot working on their degree.  So congrats for our folks who are doing that. The other things is Friday, May 12th, there will be a cup of Joe with Paul with our finance folks. And this is a good opportunity for people who may not want to comment in a public meeting to talk about the budget, any questions, nuanced or otherwise, I will try to answer them or get information for them. That's pretty informal. We do it at the Banks Community Center. We bring coffee, you bring your questions and comments and it's usually a fair number of people who've been showing up. But it's not structured in any way other than to listen and respond to folks. We're also looking for people to serve on our various boards and committees. We have a lot of vacancies as we always do at this time of year. You'll be getting memos on appointments but also you'll be getting the reappointment memo and then near future. All those will be referred to the TSO Committee for its review as well. On May 11th is the end of the pandemic state of emergency and so everything will go back to our pre-pandemic era. So for instance, these signs on the door about limited capacity, those will come down. Any other functions that are part of our normal operations that refer to the pandemic will be removed. There's still COVID-19 out there. People are still contracting it. The health department will continue to offer testing and vaccines but the sort of formal end is really recognized as May 11th. Along those lines, not along those lines but independent of that, the front steps of town hall are going to be repaired. I've seen people fall down. We've had several people trip on those stairs. It's an odd configuration of stairs and they're wet all the time. So these will be taken away. They'll be, we don't know what's underneath them actually, what's holding them back quite honestly but we have a contractor in who will take them all apart and then reassemble them with a good base. This will take some time. We're hoping that this work will get started in mid-May. In the meantime, the entrance on Main Street which is an ADA accessible entrance is available to everybody. So everybody will have to go in and out that entrance. We have graduations coming up at the end of the month. Hampshire's is on May 20th and UMass and Amherst College is on the same weekend, May 26th to 28th, which is also Memorial Day weekend. So that'll be a very busy weekend. We're trying to make sure that the construction on route nine is not happening during that construction period. And they're hoping to have sort of a coat down so that it's easily drivable. They're making pretty good progress already. The rain has held them up a little bit but that's the goal. The, let's see. Oh, we had a terrific, we talked about the Sustainability Festival, credit to Stephanie Chickarello for pulling that off. That was a really good Saturday. The, I've talked to, we'll have more information about the tree situation in town. It's a, there's some significant information that we're trying to put into a comprehensible form so that you and the public understand what's going, what's facing the tree ward in the coming couple of years. And we have, we're continuing to work on Kellogg Avenue for the paving sidewalks and the road. Pomeroy and West Pomeroy or portions of Pomeroy are gonna be starting, that bid has been awarded. And so that work will be going and there's another group that's, if it's not out in bid already, it's a list of about 10 or 12 streets that will be on the next group that goes out. And that's, and election is tomorrow. So if you haven't voted, as the president said, you still have time to vote tomorrow. Oh, and I just want to comment, I really liked the first come first serve comment that in terms of the pickleball, that was a good response. No pun intended. Are there questions of the town manager? Mandy John. Can you give us an update on the strategic partnership agreement discussions? Yeah, so we hope to have something for you in the next couple of weeks with the strategic partnership with the university. Pam? Yeah, I'd love a status on residential oversight board. Where is that? And then the second is, is there any chance to get a written assessment of the Boltwood garage expansion capacity? It's been talked about for a long time, but I think that I think it should be done by now. Yeah, so last one for the engineer has studied the Boltwood garage. I've heard there's a draft that came into the planning department to review. I have not seen a final draft and when it comes out, it'll be provided to everybody. But that's, I think the engineer has done the work. They've done the calculations. There's some extenuating circumstances in terms of what has come on to the garage and the adjacent properties since the garage was built, but they'll have all the calculations and the availability for you on that. And resident oversight board, the DEI, they are putting it out, it might have gone out today, the RFP for consultant to help them with the resident oversight board. This is a really important board for the town. We, it will take some time to put it together. I really trust that our DEI director is doing this very thoughtfully. She really is eager to have consultant support and I've provided the funds for that through ARPA so we can do this right. This will be the first resident oversight board that's being put into place since the emergence of the post commission. So most of them exist before post. This one will be after post. And just, you know, there will also be collective bargaining issues that we've been notified of by the police union that we will have to engage with as well. Okay, Andy. Yeah. Is there any report on the bike share program? Do we have any indication as to whether we're going to be able to come to a new agreement that will let us have a program this year? Is there any questions that are answerable now about either the number of bicycles in the program compared prior years and cost either to individual subscribers part of the town? Yeah, so as you know, the vegan, which is the company that runs the random bag share program has declared bankruptcy. They say they can't provide the service anymore although they have the technology. I think the town, the communities own the bikes, but we don't have anybody to run it, operate it, move them around, maintain them. The city of Northampton is the lead community on this. They have engaged legal counsel to help guide their conversations with the vegan, for vegan, we are looking at sort of how do we salvage this year? That's our main goal. And then the secondary goal is, is there a future for shared bike service beyond this year? But our first goal is to maintain this year. There isn't a plan in place right now to be able to do that. So that's as much as I know at this moment in time. Andy, did you have anything else? Jennifer? Thanks. Yes, I'm not looking to put something else on your plate, but I just wanted to ask about the buried line coverage and if that was moving along. Yeah, I can follow up on that. Thank you. I'm sorry, I didn't hear the question. I was asking about the buried line coverage. That's for, since we are putting off for a couple of years looking at the sewer lines and water line. Thank you. Dorothy? You're muted, Dorothy. Yeah, something comes on my screen when I try to go to the mute and blocks me. Just wanted to know if there was any update on the community choice electricity aggregation in terms of that application into the DPU. How's that come? So about four weeks ago, I think I provided a pretty detailed summary of that. I would need to check with the sustainability director to see where that there's been a progress since that time. I have not heard of any additional progress than that written report back then. I can check on it for you. Thank you very much. Are there any other questions of the town council, town manager? We're moving on town council comments. My apologies for posting my report as late as I did. And I please make sure that if you follow up questions after tonight, you'll also get in touch with me on that. Are there any questions at this time? And with regard to future agenda items, Andy, I just want to make sure that... Oh, I'm sorry, Michelle. No, this is for future agenda items. So please. Andy, I just want to make sure that we're in agreement that the public form on the capital improvement program and the public hearing on the FY24 budget are both for May 15th. They were separately listed for the different dates that I gave in the consolidated planning document, but that's always subject to change. So that if you're proposing a change to the public forum, let me know. As we had experienced it the last time we had this combination, the public forum of the charter is a responsibility for capital that's council and budget hearings are hearings of the finance committee. Yeah, I will get that straightened out. Thank you. Are there now, there were also a hand up, Michelle, future agenda items. Yeah, I wanted to follow up on Mr. Anderson's letter and public comment tonight about the rank choice voting. And I saw your response Lynn, but just wondering if there is a need for a future agenda item to talk about the possibility of a bylaw or at least to help counselors who were not part of last council to understand better what the legal possibilities are for rank choice voting. Let me put that in as a future agenda item we need to do some additional research before we have that discussion. Perfect. Okay, thank you. Are there any other future agenda items for councilor comments? Seeing none. And the fact that there's no other within 48 hours or an executive session we're gonna beat last week's record. We're going to adjourn at 813 p.m. Thank you.