I'll see you a little later. Thanks, Athena. Good evening. Seeing that we have a quorum and attendance. I'm calling the November 19th, 2020 meeting of the town, service and outreach committee to order. At. 432 ish. Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. I'm going to quickly call on each member of the committee by name to confirm that you can hear me and we can hear you. Alyssa Brewer. Present. Darcy Duman. Present. Dorothy Pan. Present. Evan Ross. Present. George Ryan. Present. Okay. Those assisting the meeting will be monitoring committee member connections. And if necessary, we'll pause the meeting until you're ready. We request that everyone be patient with the process. George is helping with the screen sharing today. So public comment. Does not appear that there's any public here. So. So we will ask again at the end of the meeting. So I propose rearranging the agenda substantially because of the fact that the town manager is not going to get here until 530. And so I am. Proposing. So I'm going to move on to the next item. Since we need him for the discussion of the revisions of the public way policy and to look at his recommended committee appointments. I mean, we don't really need him, but it's nice if we do have him. Also, we had planned to hear from the sponsors of the surveillance technology by a lot tonight. Just in case you need nobody, nobody is. Well, nobody's watching. So I'm going to move on to the next item. So we're on the possibility of the HRC taking on the role of the advisory committee originally written into the Biola proposal, but the HRC is actually discussing it tonight. So it made sense to put off that discussion until. Another meeting or possibly two. So we had three items referred to TSO at the town council meeting on Monday. And the city council meeting. The Sioux Fasse sign proposal referral and the town council public way policy revision proposal both need recommendations from this committee by December 7th. Which means we need to discuss them. Tonight. We have to decide them by either tonight or our next meeting. On December 3rd. needs a recommendation was in 90 days. So because of the time crunch, we've also delayed the brief introduction about a proposal for a town-wide residential parking policy, which Dorothy and George were going to present tonight. So we're going to put the delay that until a later meeting. So I hope everybody is good with all of this. So what I'm proposing is that we do the suffocings first and the public way policy revision proposal after the town manager gets back and that if we have extra time before he gets here, that we look at our work plan and look at our minutes, et cetera, et cetera, and get them done on this hour. And then we'll have time for the public way policy when he gets here. And if we have time, the appointments. And if we don't have time for the appointments, we can do them at the next meeting because it will still be before the December 7th town council meeting. And we will have the flexibility to go over if we have to at our next meeting, but we don't have the flexibility at this meeting to go over time. That is because we have our town council public forum on the budget at 6.30. So here, I'm taking up a lot of time just by talking. So does that sound reasonable? Good. So I asked for feedback. So we're going to start with the suffocings. I asked for feedback from all counselors on the sign proposal for tonight's meeting and receive feedback from the finance committee and from just one counselor. I asked for a later deadline to submit the counselor comments on the public way policy, but I figure we can just get our comments and questions in tonight. And that will give us time to look at their comments on December 3rd. That's my proposal. So we have staff here, Brianna. Sunred is here tonight to talk about the suffoc sign issue. We have in our packet the answers that she provided that the finance committee submitted, which is in the packet. And so I was going to suggest that, Brianna, you give just a brief summary again for purposes of anybody watching this meeting in the future so that they know what we're talking about. And then my thought was that we could go over the any remaining financial questions. Well, actually, I thought first we should look since we do have a review process that we haven't mentioned in a really long time, that we should just go through the questions in our review process just to make sure we've covered everything. Talk about the financial questions and then take questions from you about the financial issues, and then take questions about any other area like placement, aesthetics, whatever. Okay, so Brianna, could you give us a brief summary? And we do have the slide deck if you want to show any of those again, any of those slides. Thank you, Councillor Dumont. I'm happy to do that. I do have the slides pulled up on my screen as well. So if it's easier, I'm happy to share my screen and do the overview. And then we can take it to the next step that you guys want to. And I don't think we probably need to go through the whole thing that we did on Monday. Just, you know, brief, brief overview. Why don't I pop up the picture of the signs rendered in Amherst, and I'll just use that as a jumping off point to talk about the other elements if that makes sense. If in the one moment to share my screen, and then I can launch into that. Is everyone able to see my screen, which should be... Let's get back to the page here. This is a rendering, a simple rendering of a potential look for the signs. Can everyone see that? Yep, okay. So what we're looking at right now are the proposed SUFA, Solar Powered Communication and Information signs. We are proposing three of them coming to the downtown Amherst area as a pilot project. The purpose of the sign you'll see on the left-hand side is an e-ink screen that can provide timely information updates and emergency communications to people passing by in the downtown area visiting the town, living in the town, or whatever their purpose might be. We will have information such as transit, weather, events, or any emergency communications that we need to share out as part of that front display on the left. On the right-hand side you see a sample mock-up of what the back of the sign would look like, borrowing from our Wayfinding Designs and Style Guide that is currently being worked on for signs coming online in the spring of 2021. The other element of the project are solar power charging cores, which I will also bring up a picture of. Right here you see this red contraption with a solar panel on the top. The other portion of the project is to install three solar power charging stations in the downtown area as well at key locations of key high-traffic areas or transit areas in order to allow community members and members of the public to charge their devices while they're visiting our town. This is especially poignant right now with public buildings being closed for the most part, in large part. Whereas some community members might have used the library to access power sources or to access the internet, they'd be able to charge their devices in three spots throughout the downtown area. We are proposing this project with a shorter timeline and turn around the normal because it is a CARES eligible project. It will be funded by through CARES funds for the first year and then because it's a pilot project we will reevaluate the success of the signs as we close that pilot year. I'm going to stop sharing my screen and hopefully respond to any questions at this point or prompts for the next asset that you'd like to see. Yeah, I would just like to run through the the questions that we usually ask at our preliminary presentation just to make sure that we have them covered and just to make sure no counselors want any further answers about those before we get and then I would just hope that George could pull up the financial questions and answers after that. But the questions that we ask in our preliminary presentation normally are who are the sponsors, how and when the measure came to the committee, how the measure relates specifically to the committee charge, the purpose of TSR review, the projected timeline for review, what information knowledge and background information the sponsors have provided including input from relevant town staff, input from town stakeholders, relevant town policies, plans, goals or regulations that are pertinent and best practices in other communities. So I would just ask if there is anything there that the other counselors are feel like we need to dig into or whether we're okay to just go forward with the financial questions and let me see I can't see your hands. Dorothy? I had originally raised it for some another point but your questions did prompt this to mind. We're told this is a woman-owned Massachusetts-based company but some of my thoughts particularly after reading through today's answers began to really think about data, who has the data, who controls the data and what are they going to do with it. And it's not the town of Amherst. We've been told no we will not control the data so if the phone I mean I totally agree phone chargers yes but part of my brain is saying if we need them and we want them we should pay for them ourselves as a town of Amherst and then we could control we would say we're not selling your data we're not sucking out your phones we're not doing any of those things because I think we will all agree we need public charging stations but I'm not sure about some of the other aspects because it's really great to get something free and to be told you don't have to really do much work with it but then the question is okay why do they want it it's like Facebook it's free but it isn't and it's using our data and doing all kinds of things so that's really my question is how did this come to us and I can see why CARES Act would pay for charging stations but I don't see how CARES Act really relates to way finding signs I find that frivolous so my really question is how did this come to us and more about the company and what they plan to do with the data um I can't believe they're not going to do something with it may I may I respond yes please okay so there is no data that's collected um yeah I'll start with the charging stations there's there's no data or data collected um as part of the charging stations we will own them outright as part of this procurement and this this contract so whether or not we decide to keep the signs um will not impact the fact that we will own the charging cores outright and and I think you might when we get to the financial questions that's mentioned a few times as far as the signs being justified for CARES Act basically the way finding element is a bonus because it's the back of the information screen so that's kind of a bonus for us and the it's we're flexible in terms of what we can have on the back of that we could have public health information rather than a way finding sign but it was justified through CARES funding for the signs because it is another way for us to provide timely informational and communications emergency updates um particularly to populations who might be digitally unbanked um in our community um those those who don't have access to internet and or devices in other fashions um so that is the the key component of why it would be CARES eligible um because we would be using it to um update on COVID-19 updates for the town um provide any updated mask mandates or any other emerging um information that we need to share with the public so it adds another another avenue or another channel in our kind of communications toolkit right and there is there is no um data that or data that's collected from the sign um it so there's nothing that's retained no personally identifying information no cameras um so i i hope that that answers your questions but i'm happy to dive in deeper to a certain element of that if you'd like well just thinking of a couple of movies and books um which came to my mind just this afternoon but um one of them is the was it really true sad love story by gary steingart um who as you walk by adds that are perfectly suited to you because you've got your phone in your pocket and they know who you are because of your phone um are just for you going by or another movie which i'm sure evan knows much better than i do um it's where it's probably that daemon but he's running away and he's like in the subway and there's ad scenes but they're really it's all surveillance and of course surveillance is on my mind because we're dealing with a surveillance bylaw so um that kind of possible uses are things that kind of flashed through my mind you've answered some questions i like the idea that the town would totally own the charging stations because i trust the town okay i mean that's something i do maybe elissa would say i shouldn't but i do but i'm not sure some other company somewhere with a profit motive which could be bought and sold you know wonderful lady could be running the company she starts to make money some you know venture capitalist takes it and it becomes a tool yeah our total surveillance okay that's it for me today probably thank you thank you for your questions counselor pin part part of dorothy's question was um where where the proposal came from and did it um how did how did how did it originate it originated through myself the town manager paul balkamon and superintendent of public works um gilford mooring when we were looking for other ways especially upon the initial closing of buildings um and identifying ways in which we could support um especially community members who were relying on our buildings and our spaces to get access to information and to get access to power especially as we got closer to thinking about bringing a a shelter for the season into the the downtown space it became more apparent that we needed to find some sort of tool to especially aligning with that location having access to power having improved access to information okay thank you um uh other does anyone else have questions related to the review process anything that we need to know about other towns best practices or other stakeholders that need to weigh in or anything along those lines you know okay so why don't we look at the the questions the the um finance committee questions and reanna's answers if you could pull them up george okay i'm going to try to share my screen oh i i also i also have them up if it's any easier i'd be happy to share them but just let me know well um let me just why don't you be honest since you are more familiar with this technology and you've got it right there um why don't you go ahead okay put in the interest of putting this done quickly sure thing just one moment you have to go i will try but go ahead all right are you all able to see my screen yes make it bigger that's great thank you okay so um i don't know i mean we just got these today right um so i i think it might make sense to for you briana to just briefly go through your answers um unless anyone has objection to that um uh whose hand is that evans i i had a question that was just related to the finances um okay um can't ask because i think that it relates to uh question four so i can either ask it now i can why don't we why don't we wait um so go ahead briana okay do you would you like me to repeat the questions as part of this process sure okay so the first question um finance director the finance director told us that the first year cost would be charged to carersack funds and it is approximately 25 000 dollars how much of that is for the informational signs and how much is for the charging stations so the cost for the charging stations that we do in fact get to keep is six thousand dollars for the three charging station cores um and then we will own those outright and then 19 000 for the three sufa signs for the for the first uh year license agreement okay evan do you have a question about that no okay uh any anyone else have a question about that um okay number two is there any risk that if the town signs a contract with the vendor that it will not be covered by the carers act so the spending has been pre-approved by the state after the finance director submitted the request in narrative earlier as part of the uh the approval process in order to even spend the carers funding so before we even get to a project we um that might be carers funded we we go through the portal on the state's website to see if it would be eligible for reimbursement and this one was um approved okay thank you any other questions about that all right um three who will market the advertisements and bear the risk that there will be fewer buyers than expected sufa the company um that will be providing us the signs and the charging stations handles all marketing and advertising and they make an effort to work with the local business community by reaching out directly and hosting general information sessions so that the local businesses and amers will understand how to use the platform and optimize it for their business so if it typically also works with local chambers of commerce as well and super bears all risk if there are fewer buyers than expected okay questions about that so i think maybe this is where my question might be useful for me um so and this also relates to the next question i'm having a little trouble understanding how the advertising system um and the revenue part of it works and i guess the reason is on the one hand the answers in this document explain that they will sell advertising space on these and they have to make twenty five hundred dollars a year in advertising space the presentation that we received said that one of the benefits is it will offer free advertising to local businesses and so i'm i'm there's a disconnect there that my mind is having trouble with how is this an opportunity to offer free advertising for local businesses while at the same time ensuring that they make at least twenty five hundred dollars a year and sign in advertising sure great question counselor ross thank you so the it's not normal that they're going to be offering the free advertising but due to covet nineteen they are now they are currently offering that as a free service to local businesses as a um you know added tool or incentive um to assist once things change and i guess as part of the presentation it was hard because we don't have a finite date when that will cut over um but right now because of covet nineteen and the implications with the local economy they are offering that for free um and my understanding is until that situation changes which i would love to say is a certain date but i don't know when that is um and i would imagine that would be based upon when things in in the economy change and when covet nineteen is not you know at the same level that it is right now can i can i follow up go ahead even so and this does get into the next question so i probably should have just waited but since we're on it um so you know later you say if they assess based on advertising revenue from the first year that they generate twenty five hundred in advertising i i guess i'm how would they assess that they're going to be able to do that if they're doing the advertising for free and then i guess the second question is when it if and when it does shift over to something where it's they're not doing the free thing and it's all paid advertising is there's do they still prioritize local or because it's a much bigger company is it essentially could be ads for you know Acura or whatever no thank you for that question and that it's definitely worth clarifying so um right now i believe with this pilot project year every month that's not that they're not charging for these ads to be utilized would not count in that assessment um so with if within that year let's say three months we're back online and charging with the advertising and trying to meet that quota um that it would be prorated um as far as prioritizing of local ads versus um other ads i do not have that an answer to that but i can find out rather quickly by reaching back out to our contact in the company with that specific question um elissa yeah that's my same question so i think that's really important to be able to answer i mean we have an amherst area chamber of commerce now first of all not all are downtown or amherst businesses actually belong to the chamber so that's part of the issue but then part of the challenge i should say but then there are also plenty of businesses that are outside of amherst town lines that are members of the chamber and so i'm going to mention two restaurants which would probably not appreciate being equivalent in people's minds but or that run them but i actually partake of both of them so i think it's fair one is wendy's which is in hadley and one is johnny's which is an amherst so if i'm looking for advertising revenue as sufa surely i'm going to places like wendy's to get them to advertise but you know ken johnny's ken momo can other local businesses now during this free period right there can be a period of outreach where the chamber can help us say yes maybe even non-chamber members um we can work this out for amherst but as it moves forward how are do we ensure that they aren't just all ads for businesses that might not even be in hadley that might be just generic larger businesses i'm i'm a little uneasy about that i'm just taking notes here so that i can make sure i ask your questions back accurately with with sufa are there other questions about this dorsey yes it's about the advertisements um part of this is based on my reactions to advertisements that are on my free media i have have a macy's charge i like macy's but for some reason on my email they are posting some really gross ads it's just of uh women in underwear which in previous times even some circles would be considered semi-pornographic but this is macy's you know a really family store so i'm quite puzzled by it and they'll say oh that's just you know an okay ad we would not have any say in these ads and yet they'd be on our streets so that that bothers me a little bit since i don't find good taste going on on the internet that i use and i use very conservative internet um do you have any response to that brian uh to to the level of control of advertising of the advertising um i again will i have that on my list to to to reach out i know that we don't directly control it i have a little bit of information about how um i think it was in response to maybe counselor brewers question about it being accessible and cost to smaller businesses um so i was able to get a little bit of information about that but i can i can broaden the request for information and get a little bit more detail to include to that scope i also have a question about the cost briana and that is um how how much would it cost for for what period of time for say tastings wanted to advertise or some local restaurant what is it for you know x amount for one week or how does that work so they have um the information that i received that obviously outside of the period where that's now being offered as a free service but when it does get back to a paid service it's um something that is an 99 a month which um and it could be seasonal so a business who really wants to advertise only in the summer could sign up to just do that for those three months and put a pause on advertising on the sign and then maybe if they wanted to pick up back for the holidays they could come back online during the months of november and december for example for the monthly fee so how does that work are they just are they just they're rolling throughout the day so they're different there are a whole lot of different ads in a day yeah so there would be and i'm just going to since my screen is up and showing just to remind you of the the portion of the screen that would host different ads would be and i hope you can see this the bottom left hand piece of the screen bottom left hand so okay right kind of where this square is okay and i and i will and i will also say you know i will get back with sufa for those questions but also it is in many communities and i can certainly ask specific questions to some of those host communities for example brookline has 24 of them and just to see what their experience since they've been online for a little longer i can ask their specific experience about the ads just to maybe alleviate some of the concerns or answer some of the questions a little bit better okay elissa do you have another question sorry the brook the the other community is is thank you very much for offering that briana that you'll reach out that was going to be my other question um and dorothy yes um we're still in four it says the cost of operating for one sign is two thousand five hundred which they would pay if the advertising revenue was working but if we if it wasn't sufficient for them and we decided to keep it i'm trying to figure out what would that be for how would it cost two thousand five hundred dollars a year to maintain the sign so it's to maintain the sign um you know as part of the part of the project is they there's weekly maintenance um it would cover any of the costs for redoing the design on the custom front and back vinyl that you saw in the picture that i showed with the the wayfinding elements also the the technology itself we we get access to a dashboard a cloud-based dashboard where staff or myself and in town would be able to kind of push out notifications and change the the look and view of the screen so all of those all of those costs would be um um you know part of what we would we end up paying as an operating cost should add revenue be insufficient so you're saying it's really taking up tech time which might involve some extra employee or might take some of the time off of other things but um it's not really not too much of it is for physical stuff it's mostly keeping up the um the ads the look the design the web yeah i'd say it was a combination of both the physical maintenance of the sign and the maintenance of the um the information that's um being sent to the sign thank you has everybody had an opportunity to read the answer to uh number four yes um okay are those remaining hands still relevant um okay so number five um i think we also covered how much of town staff will be required and has that cost been quantified um would you like me to read the response counselor do monitor go ahead okay um so the town staff time commitments in this case the communications manager or myself uh we anticipate to be minimal the communications manager will have access to an online cloud based dashboard to push out periodic updates to the message screen similar to the town's other existing information channels other information on the display such as transit times town social media weather and clock time etc will be pulled from existing sources or feeds and populated automatically onto the signs in real time the physical maintenance of the signs is completed by sufa on a weekly schedule or as needed and is included in the cost how frequently will you change the um the the periodic updates as as frequently as um as is needed or deemed appropriate in terms of you know an emerging um information or if there's an important council meeting um similar to how we utilize our existing channels and um right now it would be a kind of an add-on to the existing options or buffet of options that we have available to us to push out notifications so um as as as frequent um as needed but i i would imagine for example if we had a big issue like a new emergency order we might leave that up for a little bit um until the next timely update was needed but so so to answer more succinctly as as frequently or as um as little to as frequently as we needed to okay um any other questions about that um so that number six is about ongoing costs such as insurance um you want to read that riana absolutely so there are no ongoing costs to the town sufa takes full responsibility for the install maintenance and repair if needed of all hardware so there will be not there will not be any additional costs incurred to the town after the the first payment is made and um do you how what's the longest time that any town that has adopted this how what's the longest time that they have had sufa signs i know that many communities have recently added some so i think the longest is probably two or three years at this point um so it's anywhere from you know many communities are now trying to get them online obviously because of in response to COVID-19 so there's new communities coming online more rapidly but some communities like boston and malden have had them um for over a year or two in some cases so we don't have any idea about you know what might be the problems in five years after um so uh alissa i'm sorry maybe i'll hold off until we're done with this list because i just want to go back i want to belabor advertising uh types a little bit more but let i didn't mean to interrupt him so let's just see if there are any other questions about the financial aspect or anything related to these questions before we go over um mandy joe's question which is about placement um any other questions about financial stuff actually it is financial oh ahead let's um this separate one um i don't feel like we answered the question in six about insurance and so if someone's injured because they decided to climb the sign because you know that's never happened in amherst um then that's not any more our problem than like if they climb on a bench right i mean what protection level do we have in there so i i'd have to pull up the contract which was reviewed several times um by kp law and i believe the liability um in that case is also belongs to sufa but i could i could pull up the specific language um i just don't have it at hand at the moment that's totally fine if you could forward it so we could share it with the town council that would be perfect i will put that on my list definitely thank you okay so um if there aren't any other questions about financial issues we have this one question from mandy joe about the placement southeast corner versus northwest corner of for one of the sufa signs um would you like me to read the answer and that's fine we can we can just read it um uh if you counselors have questions about either that or any other placement questions um elissa no okay um evan yeah i guess um this is since we're talking placement probably um actually but the charging stations um and i guess i'm curious um one of them it so so i can i can make sense of all of them i think right ones out of bust up ones essentially in front of the shelter and ones in front of the library and so these all make sense um but i guess i i guess i i wondered one if that's why they are where they are and you may have said that monday night but you presented at like three in the morning and so i don't really remember um um and then two i actually really liked the idea of having one out of a high traffic bus stop and that sort of made sense because people are sort of already sitting there waiting for the bus and so i was wondering if there was a thought about um for the other two you know maybe in front of the library is not the best place and maybe it should be at um the the bus stop like by spring street which serves like the 31 or something like that um since i don't think a lot of people are often sitting in front of the library at that location at those benches but they often they always are at bus stops right and it would also sort of pair with the new shelters thank you councillor ross yes i i i agree and i and i we they were chosen for those reasons as you mentioned so the the saint bridges um is a high traffic bus stop it has good sun which we could accommodate the solar in the space to put the solar charging core there um and for similar reasons here outside of what was once barts and proximity to the uu church um and and these these locations aren't fixed so you know upon that feedback we could certainly if the sun is right and the the the site is correct then we could you know instead of having something outside the jones it could be something that is moved either before the initial install or based off of feedback afterwards because i'll just say that it's a it's a quick four bolt installation so we can move these and i i don't want to offer up the services of public works you know carte blanche but they um gilford mooring as well as as the company have walked the sites and um you know agreed that viewing them for the what minimal site prep work was needed and um proximity to some of those high traffic locations as well as being optimized for sun so um we could have that moved down to be close to one of the other transit centers with ease dorothy all right i'm looking at the bus stop picture and the last couple of pages there's one without the bus stop shelter and without the kiosk and it has a power box a waste basket two signs that say bus stop a blue plastic maybe newspaper container a white plastic maybe newspaper a real estate container and a bench and i admit they all look kind of messy and isolated and it does look better after the bus stop the next picture is put there but then they've added the information kiosk and i have to tell you that aesthetically thinking about the green the common what we're spending to put into it that is a really messy site and i'm just thinking can we make charging stations as part of our bus stop shelters um can we eliminate some of these those plastic boxes there because it's it's getting to be just all kinds of little chatskies in a row and each is needed in perhaps in one way or the other but adding the information kiosk and and this spring street one does not have the solar charging station there um is is not good so i'm just thinking is there a way to this is the offer that's been presented to the town i know it's attractive and i know it seems free because of being able to use cares money but if one we're planning on an information kiosk and solar charging stations is that how you would do it or would you try to you know integrate them into bus stops which is a good place to do it i mean i agree with you know if given the proper planning and someday that they should they would be well suited to be integrated into the bus shelters and i know it's not my project so i i don't know the specifics um with the the new bus shelters that are coming online i don't think that that is an option um which is why we've been trying to pair some of this technology to to go um in in conjunction with some of those existing um or or infrastructure that's coming online um i'm not sure if there was another question in there that i should respond to but i i agree with you yeah it relates to evans statement about in front of the jones and i i don't know whether uh he was thinking this way but some people might not want that in front of the jones just be for aesthetic reasons and say no let's just have the front of the building looking nice in the lawn um and what other structures the library has to put up in terms of tents or tables and chairs not adding more things there um and i thought a bus stop is a good place to put these utilitarian things particularly since it has the bus stop times you know that's if i use the bus that's the thing i would want to know i want to know when is the bus coming um and i think in in um and i don't know if this is possible but in manhattan they even have real-time information about transit on some of these automatic signs which will tell you 20 minute delay or you know bus out of service whatever it is i don't know that would be part of it or whether it's just a schedule that shows up if you push a button uh no it's real-time transit data that we would get from um pv pvta um that we would that we would connect with the signs that's really valuable stuff and and i will just say just in general um with with the locations we're not um these aren't entirely set in stone these are what we propose so we're welcome to feedback like you've offered um just to speak to the jones um library for just a moment of why we selected that site um to kind of go in conjunction with their outdoor services that they've offered and and speaking with the library director um how that facility was used by so many to to charge a device or to access information so we were trying to maybe align with some of those um needs there but that being said the cores and the signs um are not entirely set in stone in terms of where we place them i would think you'd want to put a charging station there but it was just a question of you know all these little things in a row i would just um add unless we have other people with comments um i actually really uh appreciate the placement of the of the chargers because um i you know i've been thinking thinking about this in bed last night um and i uh at some point just had a revelation about how much our our local homeless population is going to love these things um and uh the guests at the wednesday morning breakfast at the unitarian church plus you know they now craig's doors is now there um uh my experience uh is that that we have a highly you know a lot of people who would really appreciate the both the signs and the chargers um and these are great places for that particular uh group of people in front of the uusa in front of the library um and at the bus stop so um i would say they would be less likely to be at the other bus stops than at the places where they're currently located the only thing i might suggest is the sign that's on the southeast corner of the spring street parking lot might i know that it's right at the bus stop there so there'd be people there hanging out and they would be reading it but it on the across the parking lot on the northwest corner of that parking lot is a massive amount of of foot traffic from everybody who parks there and everybody who walks um down the sidewalk there plus all the people from the bus a lot of the people from the bus stop would cross there but anyway i just feel like it would catch more traffic on the other corner but that is i'm not an authority and some other people may have studied the foot traffic um so but i really really appreciate the thought that's gone into this and the fact that it emanated from concern about that population that's very cool even though it's the advertising part of it is slightly annoying um so alissa so circling back to the advertising part of it and i'm really sorry if you went over this with us on monday briana and i just spaced it out but since we went ahead and had you read all these other things to us i suppose it won't be a surprise if you have to repeat something um is in terms of that advertising content what limitations can we place on that to make it really clear because for example you know soup is in other cities right and plenty of cities meet the threshold for advertising for alcohol and marijuana we do not we do not meet that threshold because of the 21 and populate under 21 population here so that's why even if we had billboards you wouldn't see billboards for alcohol and marijuana inside the town limits of amherst so but i'm sure they can do that elsewhere and i'm not talking about a restaurant that serves cocktails i'm talking about the lovely sign that you see as you get off across the bridge and come into hadley and some years it's a lovely thing from the camp the campus coalition against high-risk drinking and other times it's have a bud light um as you're welcome to hadley so i realize it's a much smaller portion of the sign than a billboard but is there a way that we're do we have any specifications that we're putting into this as to making it clear to them you know so that it isn't that i walk by it one day when i'm actually able to walk around outside again and see that they're doing the what's required to be over 21 and then i have to say well they're breaking the rules and then they have to fix it as opposed to being upfront about some of these things thank you for your questions and comments counselor um yes so that is i think part of the thing that i need to go back to sufa with and my my list to to drill down into the the ads the prioritization the local versus larger business and now i have that specifically on my list to to get some um details on and in the car our contract with them is not signed at at all obviously yet so we do have opportunity if we do identify something that's not already something that is restricted or available to be restricted that we can make sure that we write that into the the contract that we sign so it sounds oh it sounds to me like um we are leaning toward um hearing more from Brianna at our next meeting rather than deciding tonight is that what i'm hearing from people alissa that's not what you're hearing from me i'm totally content to get those answers provided to town council without having to come back through us i don't think that we had any additional value at this point i think we've dove we dove into a whole bunch of questions here just like you solicited from the town council and i don't think having Brianna tell it to us and then have us telling it to the town council separately is at all necessary at this point i think she just provides the information we can write our report and say we'll still be getting information on x y z and then forward it when it's available um okay so uh do you have a suggestion about what our if we were sending back a report and recommendation based on what we have already what we would be recommending okay i'd recommend approval recommend approval conditioned on no because i mean it's not conditioned on a certain answer right it's not conditioned on she comes back with an answer that says a plus b equals c it's conditioned it would be conditioned on she gets us more information and so if we don't get more information then we say at the town council meeting hey we asked her for more information she didn't provide it so our recommendation no longer stands but if anybody else wants to try fine tune that i'm fine with that too ebb and you have a thought yeah i was going to say what elissa said largely that um you know my biggest concerns with this are about um the advertising after that initial period ends um and the possibility that we can provide a great advertising free advertising service uh service for our struggling local businesses for a period of time and then the possibility that then defaults to just national ads that are and maybe the cost is inaccessible however um this is a pilot and so if that happens and we don't like it we just don't do it again and so the fact that it this is something we're trying out for a year and if we don't like it we don't have to continue with it means that i'm actually i'm willing to move forward with this even even in the absence of the answers from briana because um it's it's a test run and and we'll learn more as we go and then when the pilot's over we have another conversation of is this something we want to keep doing and we'll have more information then so yeah i would support recommending approval dorsey um i'm moving in that direction but i would um i really appreciate elissa's reminding us of something that i probably knew but don't know if i knew it uh about why that we should not have advertisements for alcohol or marijuana on there because of our underage large population um so my suggestion is that when it's presented to the town council again that briana mentioned that and that she also mentioned the answer to the question when we said how did this come to us that this project was initiated by town staff in order to meet town needs as opposed to somebody coming us to say hey i got this great new thing for you because i think that helps make a stronger case um i'm willing to do a pilot case to see how it goes and i think we would all kind of be watching it carefully yeah um george i'm going to endorse this as well um i think that um we've heard enough i don't see any merit in it coming back to us again and the council can given the answers that will be presented and any other discussion that can make up its mind i think there is a little bit of time pressure here as well i believe this has to be maybe briana can address this but my foggy memory from monday night is that um um this is something that we would try to move on fairly quickly unless there was some serious problem i don't see a serious problem and i'd be happy to address what councillor ryan just alluded to there there is a deadline for us to um use the funds and that's the the end of december of this year and um just to reiterate i appreciate what councillor ross reminding that we do have this as a pilot project we're very much seeing this as a trial um and even within that year if we see anything that we do not like that can't be resolved we as part of our license agreement it can be um canceled at any point at at the request of the town and um our council um our kp law council made sure that that was written into the contract so that we are able to if something goes awry we do not have to wait for the entire year in order to be done um with with the signs um and i will also just say one more thing about the timing is that we are hoping to get the cores um online this season the charging station cores online this season just because we find feel that there is a um a more um distinct need to get those online sooner and the signs we are planning to um bring online in the spring time so that gives us extra time to address any um siting locations um potential site work that needs to be done and also design on the on the signs are these um additional comments elissa okay i was i was basically going to ask if it was at all possible for the signs to go up for the holiday shopping season but it sounds like that would be unreasonable so we certainly could get them um up and online um and it would just be that we'd have to move quickly to decide and um get consensus on the the design element of that okay um it sounds like we are all in favor um so uh is there someone who would like to fashion emotion other than me i well we could just say uh we recommend the town council approve the um does it have an official name the sufa sign sufa sign and a core charger proposal the one-year pilot program sufa solar information and communication signs project sounds good um i'll second if you're making that motion i'll second it uh any further discussion all right um roll call vote we will not start with elissa good i don't know where we are about that but i don't want to start with elissa she'll complain about it um okay so uh all right dorthy yes evan yes george yes elissa yes arcy yes okay passes unanimously and um so that um we'll be able to go back it'll be in our report and come up at the town council meeting on the 7th so and we don't have to deal with it anymore um thank you very much priona for all your good work on that thank you all for your time and i hope you have a good evening thanks again thank you elissa before she goes before she goes priona i'll bet priona was going to do this anyway because the way she was so responsive to our questions previously but um we can send in our report and she can send in her information as she gets it just to the full town council and that'd be great because then they'll be better prepared for december 7th absolutely i will do that that would be good to send the report to the whole town council um all right so um the town manager is supposed to be here right now um but i'm sure he'll get here shortly maybe we could just very briefly oh why don't we just pull up the um the public way policy so we can look at it um hopefully he'll get here this is the one that he revised to just extend right just section four it's a yeah he revised the original proposal so that the only part that's underlined is section four parts of section four um so that's great all we need to look at is section four can you make it bigger george by any there we go is that any better you want it bigger bigger is better okay uh see what i can do there we go i can do it even more can everybody see that that's huge on my screen but i can do it more if you need it oh wow yeah um are you with us mercy okay so um maybe let's just leave that for us to look at and talk for a minute while we're waiting for for call about our upcoming meeting and what we think might be on the work plan at the next meeting i was assuming that we would do with a public way policy if we don't i suppose it's possible that we'll vote on it tonight um are we waiting for paul for this because otherwise i was going to make a motion that we recommend this to the town council using the language that was on our motion sheet for monday the the section four yep okay do we want to discuss it first we can discuss it after the motion if someone seconds it but um i don't feel any need for discussion so if a motion has been made i'm happy to second it i do have just a very simple question that i you know but i'd be happy to do it after the motion that's been made yes i made the motion but i don't have the language in front of me because i want it to match as close as we can to what it said on monday night's um town council motion sheet which i'm sure i can find here but is not at my fingertips the second but we all know what i'm talking about yep so maybe while i look for that george can ask his question yeah i think i just need um and it's probably obvious to everyone but me but why this needs to be placed in here um and just you know just right just the explanation for um this is obviously something that's going to go away at some point um and we seem to be doing fine without it so um but maybe we're not so maybe there's a good reason why we need to put it in um or maybe it's just we're just covering our you know what so um anyone have any idea why this is necessary i guess it's a simple question that's why we were waiting for the midtown manager yeah i figured it was a question for paul but maybe somebody has insight into this um it may simply be uh dotting eyes and crossing t's or there may be andy joe said we needed to do it you remember that conversation she said we needed to have the two of them together all right so that may be the answer um uh it uh well that's true she had something about was it three whatever it is one of these items that's mentioned notwithstanding the above limitations and sections da da da da one of these sections i believe is problematic or at least might have some excuse me i'm starting which is why he fixed it to just be this okay so i thought it had to do with sections one of these items of cross referencing um right he took out 3d okay he took out his reference to 3d because i because i was for one said i don't like 3d but let's go ahead and do this part hold down a little bit george so we can see the whole thing uh you want it to make it smaller no scroll down down sure yep i can do that section four then what is here oh section four is is unfortunately two pages at least in my document so um here's the top let's see if i can move it up a bit and then move this over oh okay sorry are you is your question why are we why do we need this yeah it's a dumb question but i just need an answer you know why do we need this Evan why do we need this it's just okay so you said you said that we've been operating fine without it but we haven't been operating without it we our current public ways policy has a section four that basically says for the town manager to make decisions about public ways under our policy we delegate that authority to him because otherwise our policy would require a lot of the things that he's been doing to have come to the council because you'll remember from gel we said anything that's a reservation in the public ways past 14 days needs council approval so all those tables all that would have needed council approval so we added section four to our public ways policy to allow him to do that without coming to the council that i understand but as it's written right now right it says um that it expires it's not to extend past 180 days past the effective date of bylaw article of zoning bylaw article 14 so we tied the expiration of this section not to the end of article 14 but from the effective date which means it extended this section if we don't fix it would expire in a couple weeks from now because it expires 180 days so then this section would disappear and yet article 14 will live on until december 2021 right thank you so that that is this part after the end of the term right after right it switches it from the termination of this switching from that and then the other part was technically our delegation only applied to those things under article 14 but a lot of the things he was doing a response to cover the governor's order and we actually technically didn't cover that so these two things fix those two deficiencies in the policy we have now thank you thank you all right so um i i needed those answers too so i'm glad that you had them evan um um so any other questions yes i do okay i have lots of papers on the public way that and i i i just well i look at it if it's a is it if it has anything to do with extending restaurants being able to use things i understand that um but if it's the second one that's longer on page three which has uh for 3d in it which is underlined which i think things that are underlined are supposed to be changed dorthy and we just made the point that 3d has been removed from this so if you look closely under a it's 2a 2b 3b m3c so 3d is not there so it was taken out by paul precisely for the reason that you've raised elissa has raised and i probably would raise so it's not there okay so i think i'm i think when i put some papers together i'm missing a page because i have recommended i've got yesterday's email dorthy this is just from yesterday it's like practically hot off the press today and i was i'm meeting at my dining room table because with two meetings back to back i have papers everywhere just trying to be ready for the perfectly understandable as elissa pointed out we just got this literally right so so what what they're talking about a is article 14 is what's up which is the letting letting the businesses use the streets right and i don't have anything to say about that at all um but b expedite the approval process for more common requests um but we're only talking about section four tonight right yeah right i'm scrolling around okay what is section four then it's on the screen yeah we're gonna look at the remaining sections at probably the night our next week so this section four is only about restaurants and things in the street right sidewalk cafes drinks okay i have no problem with any of that then if that's what it's about because because some of the other stuff i looked at it quickly and i thought that then i said then tso will have absolutely nothing to say about the public way anymore um right which is why we asked him to take it out you're exactly right dorthy okay so i'm fine now thank you all right um any other questions or comments um okay so well let's have a roll call vote then um evan yes george yes listen yes mercy yes dorothy yes okay it's unanimous um um and our our motion can just reference the november 18th memo he sent us emily did do you did you get that kind of do you want to just repeat the um i understand i do i understand november 18th memo i got right that that's excellent so the november 18th memo um it's probably best to name the policy again so it's the town council policy regarding the control and regulation of the public ways and he sent us a memo on the 18th telling showing us which things were underlying that was a revision since monday and so i think if we reference his memo and we reference the actual policy that's being changed then we should be covered okay and sorry who made that motion i did elissa all right all right got it thank you so i i just want to add how important minutes are and um emily i find some of this very confusing and you really should just shout out when you don't know what we're talking about because we're not going to know what we talked about in a week afterwards if it's not in the minutes correctly i mean we know what we're talking about but the rest of the world may be confused yes we always know what we're talking about that is correct okay so um uh that will also go into our report uh for the december 7th meeting um and if you if you have a question about that emily just send me an email and i'll help you with that motion that wording um okay thank you so um i guess we can move on to the appointments we'll do them without paul um let's start with um the cdbg advisory committee there's just one appointment to that um actually uh usually we do count on him to explain things maybe we'll have to pull up that memo um because i don't have that information in front of me um that i i'm just going to say i read the memos and all i can say is that amherst has the greatest opportunity to draw on completely trained professional people to work for nothing probably you know there are very few towns outside of it they were excellent um um candidates and you know i just had no questions about any of them so um okay well let's um um let's just look at the cdbg advisory committee um we have one person recommended um rica clement um and oh here we go good um so we can just read that profile that's good any any um comments or questions or concerns uh evan so i would have said this to the town manager if he was here because i'm always trying to provide feedback on these memos but i found it really useful that we were told um that she has been attending meetings of the committee um that's something that i think that um we shouldn't have as a requirement but we should be encouraging of if you want to get appointed to a committee start going to the meetings see what it's like see understand what the responsibilities are and the fact that she has been doing that is encouraging and the fact that he told us she's been doing that um is also i think a really good thing so maybe that will make its way back to the town manager at some point yeah uh alissa yeah i can't emphasize that you know if having been doing appointments for many many years prior to town council the number of people who applied for something based on the name of it rather than knowing when the meetings were or knowing what they were actually doing was rather shocking to me um seems obvious to us as town counselors but not so much to the public and so i do think that meant like evan said it's not a requirement but we've touched on it associated with our interview questions too like how familiar are you actually with the work of this body and i do think that is definitely something he should he should not he doesn't have to mention the negative like they've never been to a meeting and don't know anything about it but he does it should definitely be mentioned that they have been attending and we should be encouraging people to attend meetings especially now right it's actually more accessible to a lot more people because they don't have to drive anywhere to do it yeah okay um so i um unless there are other comments uh i move to recommend the town council approve uh following person recommended by the town manager to serve on the cdbg advisory committee for a one-year term expiring june 30th 2021 rica clement second i can second that okay any other comments um i just had a question about the composition is that where it is yeah um and this is i apologize for taking up our time but it says members may serve another town multiple member bodies but cdbg advisory committee membership is not to exceed one individual per other multiple member body and maybe that's obvious to all of you but i read that i still read that i'm not quite sure what it means yeah i know i know thank you i thought elissa might know elissa what does that mean you wrote that elissa did you write that i bet you um i wrote it a long time ago and actually somebody else helped write it a long time ago um and i can tell you exactly what that's about what does it mean we we at one point had a number of people all wonderful people right not criticism of the people at all but we actually at one point had two or three members of the block grant advisory committee were all serving on housing committees and so while it makes sense to have connections and it makes sense for cpac to have representation just like it makes sense for black grant to have representation it felt it helped it felt to applicants like it was too heavily weighted but because nobody had said there was a rule then that was who was volunteering at that particular moment was a bunch of people from housing commit housing related committees that we had at that time and so again no disrespect to the wonderful service that they provided when they were on block grant and of course they looked at everybody evenly but it felt bad to some of the applicants and so we decided that we better go ahead and and write that into the charge and that was quite a few years ago so if that what that means essentially if i understand it is that um an individual member can be a member of another multiple member body that's permitted but yes you can't have more than one that belongs to the same multiple member body is that the idea right and so you shouldn't appoint two members of the trust right for example to this all right i don't know if there's a way to say that clear but now i know i understand it so i understand what you're saying i do i'm not sure i say clear either or i would have fixed it i'm glad you're exactly so fine thank you god was i apologize but i was a question i had otherwise that was it so okay um i think we're ready to vote um george uh yes listen i'm already yes arcy yes dorothy yes seven yes okay that was unanimous so now we have five recommendations to the personnel board and i am going to miss paul for this part because i really wanted him to um talk about tony butterfield um because tony butterfield has been on the personnel board since 2006 um and for some reason he received a three-year term uh where other people got to or won and so i don't understand that that does not seem to fit our policy i had i had a similar question i just would point out darcy that he does address that in some detail i believe he does in this section under summary of process so what he says here if i'm mr butterfield has been a member of the personnel board since 2006 and then he goes i don't need to read it you all have read it i assume but you can read it again um so he makes a very strong case for butterfield and tries to i this is i assume what he would say to you if you were present you may not find that answer satisfactory but this is i take his answer to that question which yeah i didn't answer the question of why he wouldn't just appoint him for one year yeah i guess you got i this doesn't answer that i guess um because it doesn't make sense to me someone that has been on there that long would get appointed for three years right and i get the i guess also he's the reason he says new human hr director but after a year that would you know the person would no longer be new so that's i think a fair question to ask him why three years instead of one i suspect it's because he may in fact run the committee and do it very very well and that the town feels that it's very good job and and that's what i suspect so he might basically be able to serve as long as he wants to right basically so as long as at least as long as polish down manager and butterfield wants to be on this body um paul will keep reporting right but we have the other town policy presents problems but um yeah you think they'll ever be a circumstance where we do not approve something that comes before well i would think if the process isn't followed and that's something i noticed about this and i would have asked him if he were present um is that unlike all the other appointments i think he's ever made he had kind of advisory committee formed but if i read this correctly and please correct me if i'm missing something it looks like he did this on his own there's no there's no uh you know what's the committee that is basically helps him with the appointments none of that is mentioned um he seems to have made this decision um without consulting anyone else which is perfectly free of doing but um is not his usual process so that one thing i noticed that that's what i always look for first of all does he follow the usual process where he brings in other people and there's an interview team and they talk to each other and then paul makes his decision here it seems like that did not happen maybe there's a reason for that i don't know um but i don't see it here i don't see any process statement um or the summary of the process is basically just uh just describing the people that are on the board and then his reason for keeping butterfield so does anyone else have a concern about that because um i mean uh we could conceivably send that one appointment back to him with our with our questions and then deal with it at our next meeting um so that he can explain those things i i feel he's given more explanation here than he does other places and he's saying i really rely on this person so i know tony butterfield slightly i know his wife and i know he's a very unassuming quiet person so i suspect he's somebody who just offers quiet judgment which paul has found has been extremely useful because i mean he i've never seen him write this stuff for anybody else so i think he's telling us i really feel i need this person and what more could he say beyond that um other thoughts i don't know i'm lost yes uh listen so be sure and tell paul that i stuck up for him this week given how much trouble i normally give him so um building one other people have said actually he did follow his usual process george all right but i'll tell you why because he doesn't interview reappointments these are all reappointments yeah and so right well that's not our process but that's his process he doesn't interview reappointments so so for that's the one he didn't follow the process the other thing that i want to point out is um i don't like one-off type situations either where i say hope but this committee is so special but one it actually is because of its relationship with town employees it's like really different than all of our other committees and the way paul described that people trust mr butterfield but i think is really huge but also let me point you can keep getting sent back by the board of library trustees year after year after year if that's what they choose to do right so that longevity can exist charlie sherpa can keep getting chosen by town employees to be there year after year after year so i have a little bit of a hard time saying no to the town manager even though tony betterfield served in this role so long to say yeah i know those other bodies can choose to keep sending people back but you can't and so i would really like to hear from him at some point that he's working on recruiting new people so that we don't eventually see a personnel board that everybody served 20 years like there's never a change right um which is not to say i want anybody to resign please don't hear it that way um so i i share the concern and i absolutely do think darcy in response to your earlier question would we ever say now absolutely we can say no we had and we absolutely could do that i just don't think this is the case and i don't think pushing him to do a one-year appointment given the explanation he's provided given the conditions of two people being able to be sent back by their committees year after year given how complex dealing with personnel is right now with the covid situation i'm thinking it's not a great time for a change um i guess i'm the only one that feels that that this needs more explanation um so maybe what i would propose is that we just separate that out so that i can vote against it and you we can we can vote for all the other ones together um what evan you want you want to have us vote on four people together and then vote on one name individually yeah i don't i don't personally feel comfortable with that i think that is embarrassing by singling somebody out i understand your reasons darcy i do and their process i understand that a great emotional like that um it will be hurtful and we've we've never done that with any with any batch of appointments even in oca i mean you free darcy to vote against it and then in your report explain why you voted against that and you could certainly speak to that at teleconsole but i agree that that separating out an individual seems certainly something we've never done and it does seem to be potentially hurtful or at least somewhat you know insulting especially for someone who's served as long as this well it doesn't matter how long you've served so if you haven't i think if you have an objection to a particular member in the group you can vote against uh right you know recommending these appointments and then explain why but right but i absolutely anyone can ask to separate out a motion into its parts but we can then refuse to pass that motion right now so if you want to do that you could make that motion and then i think we'll probably defeat it but you're perfectly free to do that no you don't have to i have the right person who's who proposes to separate out the parts of emotion and do it without without emotion we have the right to do that i guess there's a question as to whether or not there are separate parts here and if you're going to do that then i think you should be separating all the people out i i don't understand that's fine we could do that we could separate out all the people if you think that oh there's paul oh my goodness maybe he can solve maybe we can solve this problem well i don't know i don't see how i can solve it because i think that i still want to do it but paul yes i'm sorry i'm late welcome um i'm stuck up for you paul i want to that be on the record so did i and jorith he did too uh so we're we're in the middle of the the personal board appointments and have been discussing tony butterfield and how long he's been on the board and so and we looked saw we discussed the profile and you know his long years of experience etc etc and um elissa gave all the arguments why he's it's a good idea to keep him and so we would like to hear from you though yeah so i haven't very often brought someone who has i don't i don't abide by the two term limit i know the select board had that but that's not necessarily but i do think that it's a wise thing to have turnover so i start from that it's unusual if there's someone who is in a situation where i believe they bring such a skill set but also for me i think i tried to say this in my memo it's very hard for me to have people i can talk to about senior staff with other senior staff mr butterfield brings that ability to me to say when i have when i'm struggling with something with a management issue other than other managers or confidence outside the town he has a wide range of experience both through the management field and knowing the town in a really strong way that i can sit down with him and i did it this summer actually and said here's here's some things i'm thinking through and what's um and here's what's happening what advice do you have and i find his advice to always be very sage um and um and since this is a committee that is advisory to the town manager um and is a conduit for non-union employees to communicate to have a third party that they can communicate with when they're not unionized i felt like it's important for me to have that person available and is more important than than the sort of theory of turnover at this point in time for me um and also the second point being that since our new hr director is relatively new um to the town uh and he provided really good guidance to our previous hr director um that it was important that's that's another factor that played into my thinking on this so the second question was um why not a one-year term since he's been there since 2006 um well so so the two that get one-year term so the the charter calls for the terms to be staggered the two that are our one-year terms now are ones that get appointed sort of get appointed every year you know they're the ones that are recommended either by employees or by the library trustees so that's always going to be a one-year term and then to make sure and then um for rebecca woodland and kevin porter this would extend out their second terms according to how when they started their service um so um yeah i could have said one year term or two years or two but i chose three years yeah because i think that his his contributions are very valuable to me um evan yeah it is also because i really hope we can get to consensus on this you want to note that this isn't um necessarily um i don't want to say this is usual because we usually do see more turnover in a lot of these other bodies but it's also not unusual i was thinking back to some of the appointments we did on oca um and i was thinking about i think it was rosemary kaufler who has served the council on aging since 2005 i think so even longer than um the candidate here and who oca unanimously recommended the town council approve a three-year term for um i believe we also dealt with a mit perhaps i think it was um water supply protection which was another one that oftentimes is hard to get recruits who has someone serving on it from the early 2000s and we recommended um approval so we have had situations before where there's been someone who has served for a very long time um but has been seen as a real asset and you know darcy you voted for rosemary in that instance because we were told that that was a person who was really an asset to that committee and that it was a committee that doesn't have people clamoring to get onto it and so to me this is just another example of of that uh dorothy well if i understand it correctly the two other members um are appointed by other bodies and i guess they they are approved by the advisory committee but they're appointed by other bodies and it's always a one-year term at a time so this way all even though he's served a long time is a way of maintaining or at least assuring continuity because you don't control or we don't control the other nominees they're sending board controls that and the fact that there's often consistency um with some of them doesn't mean that that's what will happen so i i have no problem with having this a long-serving person have a three-year term under these conditions yeah um i have a problem with it and i don't i i uh i find it strange that the committee thinks that i should not be able to uh vote against one of the people recommended um this is what we're here for right so but if if there's a problem with um i mean it's fine with me to to vote on them all separately so that there's nothing odd about it pam or dorothy uh elissa i move to approve a three-year term for tony butterfield and for rebecca woodland a two-year term for catherine porter and a one-year term for christopher hoffman and charles sherpa as listed on the town managers memo i'll second that we talked about this in terms of how we thought it would make various individuals feel i totally understand your concern darcy i don't consider it to rise to the level of not approving the person's appointment i get that you would much prefer a one-year appointment for that and the reality is we're going i want us to vote on this as a group like we do for everything else rather than calling a particular situation out when it is literally over a process question if it was over the fact that an individual was a problem as an individual which could certainly face us at some point then i would understand separating it out but there's been no problem expressed with the individual simply with the length of term and so i find just don't find it would be appropriate to vote them separately which is why i made the motion i did okay well i move to separate them out um or i don't move i don't have a rule that allows for that darcy that's not in our town council rules and you cannot just invoke robert's rules when it's convenient that's not in our rules as a town council well do you know anything about that i don't i would have to look it up i right it's not in our rules that doesn't mean that robert's rules can be invoked at the expense of what our town council rules say okay well i already expressed earlier that i wanted to separate it out so um i find it really strange that you would just go ahead and make the motion when i've said that i wanted to separate them out because i and we said we didn't want to separate it out we all said that except you it only takes one person one person but robert's rules is not compelling here you don't get to play that card why not why because that's not what we worked under we work under our town council rules okay let's think about just because you think you can do something it doesn't mean it's a good idea to do something i you know so i i just want to put that in well i i find it very strange that that this committee is somehow not allowing me to vote the way i want to on on something you know you vote the whole package down can't i don't know if we wish the motion was to to accept the term the recommendation for terms for three people and you vote yes or no and you can vote no just to put a little bit of precedent there was an instance on oakah with public shay tree committee where darcy you objected to only one of the people who are being put forward and so i believe in that case you abstained from the whole package but even in then your your issue is with one person we didn't separate the people out you just abstained on the package and then explained in we explained in the report what where your abstention came from and so i i think that that's what we're trying to get to is you can explain why you vote the way you do in the report but even when we've had an issue with one individual we've never separated out appointments either on this committee or on oakah and so it seems like that's for a reason and and it seems better to do what you did last time with public shay tree committee do you all right is your hand up elissa yeah i just want to talk about the practical aspect of the vote i get that you're very frustrated with me and i and i understand and i accept that at the same time the reality is when we vote we vote by majority the majority recommendation is going to go to the town council there is not going to be a full page of explanation about one vote that doesn't like this term there will be an explanation but there will also be an explanation that the rest of us thought it was okay it won't just say nothing about what the rest of us said and so when it gets to the town council level there will again be a majority vote that is likely to make the appointments so i'm not sure that we need to fight about how we did the vote as long as you get to explain your very valid concern about one-year term for a holdover versus a three-year term okay i guess i guess i'm just um uh i don't know how to respond to the fact that that somehow rather the committee thinks i shouldn't be able to vote the way i want to so um and it i don't think that it that we need to have a practice of all of us doing the same thing each time voting for the whole group together we don't have to do that um so um but but you know i it's not worth arguing about this much so why don't we go ahead with Alyssa's motion and um you know i am going to file some kind of complaint about it with Lynn because i don't think that you should have done this um and um so just is there any other discussion about it is that a hand that you want is that your hand still relevant Alyssa it would perhaps not be as helpful as i might want to be to say Lynn's not the boss of me but um that is your obviously your prerogative um okay so um Alyssa this is a roll call vote and we're back at the beginning of the alphabet thank you for always um rotating that i appreciate it yes my vote is yes okay and my vote is no Dorothy yes um Evan yes George yes okay all right so what time do we have is it is it time yet so we got 10 minutes um all right so um they will be forwarded so that they go to in the report to the December 7th council meeting um we should probably talk for a minute about our agenda um for the next meeting um which i'm assuming is going to be uh part two of the public way policy talk more about that because we have to get it back by January 25th and probably uh the second day of surveillance technology by law because they will have their answers by then and um Paul is has promised to get the staff feedback by next week to them um so those would be the two big items um um i don't i would hope that we could start to the north common on December 17th maybe would that work for you Paul yes we're prepared for that um and uh do you have thoughts Dorothy and George about when you want to go forward with your parking issue well we're waiting on go for it says they're working on it and i don't see any point in rushing him on that so he has to come back to George and me and then we have to talk about it with him so um i'm not sure we're ready for the next meeting but George what do you think we could take 10 minutes of the committee's time and give them a sense not right now but at a future meeting soon and just give them a sense of what we're doing to get immediate feedback if you all put up your hands and say no no stop doing that um that would be useful but so it'd be perhaps at the next meeting if there's time and i don't think we'd need much and we might also have something back from Guilford by that point so we could be more specific but we could explain um what we're trying to accomplish in a succinct way and get some feedback from you as to whether you think we should that's a good idea or whether they should stop or whatever but we wouldn't be a formal at length you know report we'd just be an update um that could be useful but which is what we would have done tonight um but we don't have go for its reports so waiting another two weeks and if if there's no time we can still wait but it'll be an update yeah it's sometimes hard to tell how much these topics are going to how much time they're going to take well this would be 10 minutes and if we spot more 10 minutes and 30 seconds you could just mute me um or just cut us off but it's your decision but i mean time would be up to you yeah i think that we could probably if you would be ready for it at our next meeting just in case we have the time that would be good because we may have it at our next meeting um and yeah how fast we can decide things we can get back in two ways if it turns out we don't have much time we would present it and you could you could send feedback you know which we would then have written out for to start the next meeting um i mean we could be very flexible because we are not time dated on this one and we as we saw at our last town council meeting all of a sudden it was just raining from heaven topics for TSO so we do not control our agenda that much so we can be very adjustable right and um paul uh could you tell us other issues that are coming down the pike um the other one is the um illegal discharge stormwater bylaw that the council needs to approve by june 30th 2021 so we want to introduce that to the council um i forget which we've chosen a meeting in december one of the two meetings in december and then that will most likely we think we'll get depends on what the council decides we'll most likely get referred to TSO and that'll be a sort of more of a technical complex uh conversation i think and it's sometimes required by the state for us to approve and and there's a couple of other water and sewer bylaws coming yes after the first of the year yeah um okay so um do we want to really evan can i just ask a question regarding north common um i i guess i'm i'm thinking and what so the big the big question right now is before um c pack and there's a request do we know when c pack will have a recommendation on that paul i think they're voting tonight actually so we'll have the c pack recommendation by the time we talk about the north common if they act if they decide to act tonight yes okay thank you okay um why why don't we um i think that's if you look at the work plan fyi all of these things are listed on there um and that can give you an idea of of um what we just said i think i do have to revise it a little bit um uh so shall we approve our minutes we have our our our december 12th and our december 5th um and um emily if you notice the december 5th minutes were were more extensive i think at dorothy's request um you meet you mean november i mean yeah november that's all right november november 5 and november 12 yes so november um so um do we have any discussion or issues with them i have no okay so i think i will do them both together then i we approve the uh november 5th and november 12th uh 2020 minutes i can second that motion all right um i say yes dorothy yes levin yes george yes elissa staying okay so they are approved um and fyi i don't know if you've looked at sharepoint lately but um um i spent a lot of time getting everything organized on there and there's a lot of all of the all of the minutes all the reports all the town manager appointments if you look in any of those folders they're all everything is there um and so i'm trying to get it on our webpage uh so that so that you know we have it available for everybody but it's um it's all and i even have the years and the dates in the right order that took a long time to reorganize but it's all there many many thanks darcy many many thanks yeah yeah this being a chair of a committee a lot of time at the computer yeah um i'm so glad you brought that up darcy because i was actually going to thank you for that because i was like wow a resources folder that actually is useful so we i hadn't quite felt like i'd accomplish that in some of my previous work on the council but but of course i want something more and what i want more is if you look at not in sharepoint it's beautiful is if you look at the gol webpage and i know this just because i was just working on a proclamation is on the side they have all their things about like how they do their reviews and frequently asked questions on what's a proclamation what's a citation all that kind of stuff it's right there on the side of their gol webpage and since we have a process right that other people need to know about it would be great if we could put the current version of that which is thankfully in our resources folder if we could put that on ours too on the tso page on the side right now our tso page on the side is is kind of limited but gol has taken full advantage of that and i think we could too because we we're going to have people coming to us and we could have it right there for them i think that's a good idea i'd like to have our videos linked there too which i think either gol or crc has so yeah i did start the conversation with Athena about getting all that stuff up there so but i'll add the the review process that would be good all right i think we're done on to the next meeting um uh and it's time right yeah um okay so i declare us adjourned at six twenty six see you in four minutes okay great bye