t it's important for all of us to sort of think about things that we say. And when we're talking about having people of color talk to white people about racism, racism isn't very friendly. And so I'm not saying that, I'm just saying that when you say I wanna keep it friendly, I feel like it's in some ways saying to people of color, make sure you stay in your lane. So I know that's not what Dorothy was saying, but I'm just saying that we need to be careful about how we phrase things. That's right. Right on. Are there other comments? Put my hand up, I thought I did. So the hand up function is not working? Okay. Kathy. It's working. No, it is working. I just couldn't make the participant thing go up because I've got everybody's face on the screen. So I couldn't find it. I was a listener and one of the things, one of the exchanges I thought to build on Sarah's point was the barriers people face when they want to register a concern. And the person who was leading the discussion listed a whole bunch of different ways that you might feel uncomfortable or including a language barrier, but also a fear of authority. And the response was, we've never heard such a fantastic list. That was really important for you to list that out. And then the other was the types of training on how do we work on things in different ways that the trainers we find are former police officers. And we've reached out at different times to UMass or Amherst College for suggestions of other people because we're totally open to thinking about different types of modules. So it was a very open discussion of welcoming ideas, welcoming suggestions, welcoming concrete things rather than, and the concrete list of barriers was stunning that was given and everyone was not in their head now, yes. And then you think of personal stories. So I thought it was a healthy beginning. It was clearly just a beginning. Narci? Yeah, I attended and I really appreciate the fact that Shalini and Gazit Haya organized it. I, Gazit Haya is actually doing outreach for the Energy and Climate Action Committee through the Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Grant. And she has brought that same kind of energy to ACAC in the outreach that we're doing there, bringing community leaders into our task groups that are people of color that she has brought in and she's doing individual one-on-one consciousness raising with members of the committee and leading a caucus of the people of color community leaders that are gonna be in our task groups. So it's a whole new world of making the white members more aware of just what's happening, you know, how thinking is changing. George? I, what struck me in listening to this, I listened to it on the later, was how increasingly we are asking the police to deal with issues for which they really aren't trained and probably could never be trained, but they are in a sense, the ones who are the first responders. I'm thinking particularly of issues around homelessness and mental health. So I hope that whatever conversation goes forward that people from that community, those in the mental health community, those who work with the homeless will be involved that this won't be focused simply on the issue of race as important as that is. Because what I heard, at least what I heard from this discussion was a real willingness on the part of the police department to engage in dialogue with the community and also request for help and a sense that in many cases they find themselves tasked with things that really they're not suited for. And yet they're the ones who have to deal with it. So I guess what I'm saying is I hope this, I did definitely heard a willingness for a lot more discussion and I'm glad to hear it's gonna go forward. I hope that this will also include members of the mental health community and those who work with the homeless as part of this discussion. Cause I heard, I thought very clearly that police department would like some assistance there. Okay, so Evan, I'm gonna take your question and I'm gonna ask that we shape, we shape the conversation a certain way, but go ahead Evan. So actually George sort of beat me too, but I just wanted to say that the thing that I left at the forefront of my mind when I left that conversation was what they said about how increasingly their calls are responding to non-criminal calls, especially things around mental health and homelessness. And I don't wanna read too much into tone or try to interpret him, but it seemed like something that the chief was uncomfortable with that that wasn't something that they had originally envisioned their role as being and was an area where he was certainly open to perhaps re-imagining their role. And then I saw as I'm sure many of you did the announcement from the mayor of San Francisco yesterday that they would be replacing police officers with trained professionals who would be unarmed to respond to non-criminal complaints around mental health, homelessness, neighbor disputes. And I hope that becomes a part of the discussion going forward is who responds. And also a big piece of this that I'm gonna be pretty vocal about is when does a response require the responder to have a firearm? Because I think that's gonna be a big piece of this. When we are responding to noise complaints, when we were responding to traffic violations, does whoever's responding need a firearm on their hip? And so who's responding, what their training is and are they carrying, I think need to be important parts of the conversation. So what I want the council to answer at this point is, let me shape the question. There's responsibility that the town manager has to make sure that our police department and other first responders, because this also happens frankly with ambulance people, it could even happen with somebody from DPEW when somebody doesn't like how they snowplowed. And I'm not being facetious. I mean, we get complaints about that all the time. So there's the responsibility of the town manager, but the real question before the council is, what do we want our role to be? And one of the suggestions that was thrown out was the idea of having a council meeting that would be more like a public forum, if you will. Another suggestion would be that there'd be some kind of task force formed or some kind of civilian review audit. And there, any number of these things, for instance, particularly a task force might be something that's jointly done between the council and the town manager as a committee that we jointly appoint people to and have a jointly agreed to charge or whatever the case may be. But it's not a one-sided thing. It's not either the council is gonna do this or the staff are gonna do this. It's something that we have to do in a way that we're doing this together. Out of it may come some policies or budgets, things that we want to see changed, but we're not at that point yet. So my question is, what is our next step?  Okay, okay. So the thing I've been thinking about is the question that has been brought up at a number of times, which is when we asked the, or when I was a silent observer, when the chief was asked about going on mental health calls or whatever, he said he went with a trained member at EMT. So my first question is, does the police officer need to go at all? Because some towns are saying, okay, let's take, remove some responsibilities from the police department and put them on more social service-trained people. But then I thought, well, okay, but the police have a coverage thing and they're available in a way that many other people aren't available.  So this question, which is really one that we can have some input in, but it's also one that is really experts in policing and mental health need to be giving guidance on. And Paul probably has some thoughts on this. Is there a way to restructure some of the responsibilities of what the police do with people who would be adequately trained and available to come when needed? I mean, I read the police broader every week. It's interesting and quite amusing reading.  They're going out for somebody who's yelling at somebody in the sidewalk. Somebody was piling leaves in the street for some reason. People are having an argument in their house. Most of the stuff that they do, the result is they told them to go on their way. So they are keeping order of some sort. Maybe some of those cases they didn't need to go on. Half the time they say that something was reported in a neighborhood and it turned out just to be two people walking home or that in fact the suspicious person wasn't suspicious. So isn't that really the use for our police? Is there a way of rescheduling, reorganizing first responders that would be better suited? I mean, I agree, Levin, no one with a gun should be going on all kinds of issues. If half, I mean, almost all recent murders that have taken place that are in the news right now are places where there was no need of anyone with a gun. You know, why do you need a gun to go tell a man, wake up and move your car or something? Not that I accuse our police of behaving that way, but Paul, are you doing some rethinking of how to structure the policemen's job or is someone doing it? Paul, I'd like to hear from you, but I really want this group to get to the issue of... What we're gonna do. Yep. We can't solve these problems sitting here tonight. We can all raise our thoughts, but what is our next step? Kathy. I just wanted, Lynn, you said, is it a task for what's a place to start? When we were looking at what some towns had put into their ability of their counselors to do, one thing was something called a dialogue where it wasn't the council making a decision, but it was bringing in people. And Evans just mentioned San Francisco is going a route of trying to change the composition of a police force and things. So we could start with something as simple as a dialogue where people are bringing in ideas and it's around table. It's not decision making. And then figure out if we actually want, need a task force or something because I think we need buy-in, we need some thoughtful ideas, we need some, everybody is rethinking this, right? We're in a C community. This question of when do you need a trained police officer who has a certain kind of training and when do you need a different kind of person? Should one of them be in a pair with somebody else so that you don't know what the event... Right, right. We can't answer those questions, but we could begin to have a discussion with some information and then say we want then the town manager and the police to come back with a recommendation of what we might think of doing, because you can't turn on a dime either. I mean, we have some 50 FTEs working in our police department, which includes overtime. I mean, we have to be thinking, what do we want a year from now? What do we want where we can make changes? So dialogue might be a place to start if we didn't want to make a formal task force, but task force usually are supposed to go out, do some studying and come back with a report. So that gives you a more of a timeline of gathering information when the people who are starting it don't have a lot of information themselves. Darcy? I think that's a really good idea to have a community dialogue. My only worry would be that it would somehow undercut the organizers, the community organizers and leaders who might wanna do something on their own. But I think we could probably do both. I just would wanna respect their wanting to have some kind of leadership role in organizing what happens. Next. Shalini? Yes. I think I really wanna emphasize that we really need to listen, listen, listen right now and create opportunities for people to be heard. And I just heard from Gazitaya too and she also mentioned that there is such a desire to be heard right now. And I imagine that anything you can do to create opportunities to listen will be appreciated. And of course, when we are creating these opportunities we're gonna be working with the organizers initially and seeing how we can come together and work on that. The other thing I just wanna do also say was it feels like through these listening opportunities we can also identify what's already in place. And then part of our work as counselors is to communicate that because most people don't know what we're doing right, so let's share that with the community. And then I'm thinking in terms of short term and long term actions. And so there are some out of these listening sessions we may be able to identify some actions we can take right away. You know, like some things that are out there like the eight can't wait or just kind of see like what are some good best practices that we can put in place right away but then also have a task force to look at things in a more systemic way and bring longer term and that's gonna take a longer time, I think. Pat? A building a little bit on a couple of different things. One of the most important things I think we can do and I learned this from the DPW community outreach that we started was going to speak to people directly for our community. And I know virtually that's a little tricky right now but I think that there are ways that could figure out how to do that as members of the council to move out. But I think that, and so I do really want to see us develop some kind of task force that I'm not sure I like that comfortable with those words but the piece for me is as a white person my starting point has to be the ways in which systemic racism has impacted my life in the sense of the reactions I have to people of color, the fears I have about people of color, the limitations I place on people of color until each one of us on the council begins to do that individually, but not gonna get anywhere or we'll get somewhere that won't be very far. It really seems to me that one of the things that this council would benefit from and I don't know how to make it happen in terms of the open meeting law but we need to get together and in our dialogue between ourselves about these issues as well as asking the community to participate in a dialogue. Otherwise we're just collecting stories and that's not enough. So I want to find a way for us to be in a facilitated situation where we're talking about systemic racism and I don't know. Is there anything else, Pat?  Yes, thank you to try and not repeat things other people said. So collecting stories is surely very valuable but definitely not enough and having been just to part of that meeting I'm eager for us to continue to express that we as a town council want to hear more from what different parts of the community want us to do. So absolutely, the people who organized that meeting, definitely, but also to hear from HRC who are they hearing from and to hear from other groups that we've heard from in the past but are maybe not hearing from right now because there obviously is no monolith group that is responsible. So what can we do to be responsible to reach out and say, tell us more things about what you would like us to do. I know that feels soft in comparison to doing something like setting up a task force but I really think the last thing we need right now is a task force that doesn't have a clear goal and there might be a task force that is having a conversation about the different types of policing we were just talking about but that's a future thing. So I wonder if what we could also look to is have the town manager come back with some suggestions. Obviously, he's been talking with staff. He's been talking with APD and I know that Mel Rose is, for example, doing a thing where they were supposedly and the report should come out soon where they were looking with in town hall at the procedures and policies and public interactions they had and saying, what could we do to promote racial equality and equity? I am sure that our employees have some great ideas. They've all been to various kinds of trainings. They've all had various interactions with the public. I'll bet they have plenty of pent up ideas.  And so I would love to hear more from people who are doing the work and people who are experiencing the experiences to tell us what they want from us. So it's clear that we, but that we want to do something because it's kind of shocking, I'm sure, just like the rest of you, even though we're not seeing our friends because of the pandemic, when we do touch people, people are saying, what are you guys doing? And it's like, well, I don't know, what are we doing? And so being able to not just say, I really appreciate that this got added to the agenda because we need to do something, but I think we sometimes jump right to, oh, well, let's have some speaker come in. Oh, well, let's have this task force. I want to find a way to continue to reach out in the relationships that Shalini and Pat have already been building that we're able to make that meeting to say, what do you think we should be doing? What would be helpful to our community? Because we are in this wonderful place where we have town councils never dealt with this as a town council. Oh, you have your hand up and it's long overdue to let you talk. I know I hate to prolong this, but I think the energy from the council is palpable, so I appreciate everybody's engagement. I look at this, I think this is a unique opportunity and unique time for us. And I think that the council plays a really critical role because people, I feel, are looking, they need a venue to speak. And they want to speak truth to power. You and I are power. You know, we may think we're all part of the community, but you are the biggest power in the town of Amherst right now. People need that place to be able to speak to you and to our police chiefs and leadership that way. I think we are a way, I think we're in a unique position. It's a conversation we've had multiple times every day. We're in a unique position because we have enlightened leadership with our police department, progressive policies that we're very proud of, but the real experience of people is different from how we say how great we're what doing. So I think we need to hear more, we need to do what Pat said, we have to educate ourselves and take that responsibility as well. But when I think about what does the council do, you have a unique role in that you are, you can convene people. And if you say we're going to be someplace to listen, people will come. And I think there were 50 people on a moment's notice showing up at something that one counselor and an organizer put together and it was spectacular and important. So that's where I think, I think all those other things down the road, like, you know, we're looking at Eugene, Oregon, that they have a different kind of model as well because the university town, there's lots of different places out there who are doing things differently. So I think all those conversations, but I think that first thing where we are in space right now is that people need to say what they feel and they experience. One of the thoughts has been that we would hold some kind of council listening. I don't know what he was saying, dialogue, but listening. And I mean, I just have to use the parallel that we went through this with 132 North Hampton Road. I was, you know, lining up a facilitator and so forth. And then the citizen said, no, that's not what they wanted. They wanted to just, you know, come and talk and present and so forth. So the really is, the issue is what do we want to do? What format and what time? Dorothy. I have an idea of one thing we could do. We could go to a black church in town. I don't remember the name of the one that, I guess it's Jackie Wallace, but I went to a number of events there and just ask them if they want to have a meeting and we would come to listen, as Paul says. Well, none of us are going anywhere at this point because we're still, I know, but you know what? I'm getting, on this topic, I'm getting ready to say, let's do it with social distance. I really, I mean, I really feel people have to see you and they have to feel heard. And it's awfully hard to do that on a Zoom. I agree. Mandy Jeff. If our goal is to listen, I bring back the charter commission. We just called them listening sessions. They were a meeting of the charter commission. They were held whether or not a full quorum was present and the agenda most of the time was, frankly, to listen. There was almost never an actual presentation made by anyone on the commission. There was an opening statement by the chair who said, we're here to listen. And then we sat there for however long it was until people were done talking. If we had a quorum, we had minutes. If we didn't have a quorum, we still took minutes. We just didn't call the meeting to order. Because we weren't going to be transacting any business. We didn't actually have to technically have, even if we had a quorum, the town attorney had said, we didn't technically have to call it as a meeting, but we chose to, to make sure it had that import that Paul was talking about. So maybe we don't have to find a specific thing in our rules or a specific thing in the charter. Maybe we can just say, we're having a listening session. We could call it a public forum under the charter or we could call it a working dialogue or whatever. Or we could just say, it's a listening session. And my concern with putting it on the 22nd and maybe I'm too concerned about this is that it's too soon to ensure that everyone knows it's happening and to get schedules cleared to come. And so I would definitely want to listen to, you know, Gazikaya and the doctors, Shavas to see if they believe that that is sufficient to notice to, for people to come and talk. And if not, would July 6th be better? But I don't want to schedule something to a time period where people believe we rushed it and they don't have the ability to be able to get free to attend. What I'm hearing is the suggestion that we reconnoiter back with the people that Shalini and Pat were meeting with. We try to select a date for listening and that is appropriately far enough down the road that people get notice and can clear their calendars, but not so far that we're, you know, just pushing this off.  I just would recommend that any meeting would be a format that was similar to, well, actually no, not similar to the meeting that was already had, but an open public meeting where all attendees are visible on the screen because that would be much more welcoming and people-friendly and egalitarian for that type of meeting, I think we just have to have it wide open. Would we do registration? I think you could do registration, but just, you know, allowing everybody in so that they're all in the room. Got that, yeah. Pat. Basically, I was going to say something similar to that. I've been in several, recently several seminars dialogues where there have been over 250 people, all visible, and but the people running the meeting are controlling what's to move it on. And I think it's, it would be quickly more persistent. Oh, and I also wanted to just highlight that there is an HRC meeting this Thursday on 18 June at 6 p.m. that if counselors want to attend that. So there are other avenues that we could be attending also. So in order for us to continue on with our agenda, which we still have some things to do, I'm going to suggest that I will get back with Pat and Shalini. We will talk with the people that originally pulled this last meeting together, see if we can find a time and a date and the council will use its power to convene, but in this case, it's power to listen, okay? All right, Dorothy. I would suggest two dates and council members do not feel, should not be made to feel they have to all go to both of them. But when there's two dates, you're going to get maybe different people and it could be good. I like that. Okay, all right. Can we move on? All right, we're on to the town council, town manager appointments. I'm going to ask, this actually went to TSO. So, at this point, Dorothy, let's pick back up with you. Are we talking about the list of reappointments? Yes, the ones that you did two weeks ago, it's the Agriculture Commission, et cetera. Okay, so yes, we have a list of a number of different appointments to boards and committees that were done. They're reappointments that were to expire on June 30th. So, We'll put that memo up. Oh, I just lost mine. There we go. So, yeah, this, we had little discussion about it. We voted unanimously for the appointments for the recommendation of the town council to approve them. And I would be glad to read the motion if we're ready. So, it is a motion to approve the following town manager reappointments under Charter Section 211B, for terms expiring on June 30th, 2023, to the Agricultural Commission, Masoud Halshini and David Mitrowski, to the Affordable Housing Trust, Sidonia Ferrera, to the Board of Assessors, Richard Morse, to the Council on Aging, Gregory Baskoam and Tim Neal, to the Design Review Board, Erica Zecos, to the Historical Commission, Janet Markhart and Hedy Startup, to Leisure Services and Supplemental Education Commission, Yusef Fidel, to the Munson Memorial Building Trustees, Claudia O'Brien, to the Public Art Commission, William Cazen, to the Water Supply Protection Committee, Christina Keonfrey and Jack Jemsik, and for terms expiring on June 30th, 2021, to the Residence Advisory Committee, Kisha Dennis, Constance Krueger and James Pistre. Is there a second? Mindy Jo, you have your hand up, but is it to make a second? It is not to make a second. Is there a second? This is the end of y'all, this is the end of y'all second. Okay, now Mindy Jo. It's late, I was gonna ask to split out the Historical Commission. Instead of splitting it out, I'm just going to state my statements now so that we can just take one vote because it's late, my vote will be an abstain from the whole set. So the Historical Commission has money, much more power than some of us may think it does or may realize it does. It has the power to institute a demolition delay for 12 months on a property if it determines that that property is a significant structure and that this demolition of that structure would be a detriment to the historical or architectural assets in town. And that sounds all well and good until you actually read the bylaw. And in reading the bylaw, I realized that nearly any structure, no matter how old or how young, could be deemed a significant structure because of how the bylaw is written. A structure that is five years old that is placed on a main highway can be deemed to have geographic significance because it is a landmark or a visual landmark in the neighborhood. The wording might not be exactly that way, but I am concerned about the makeup of the committee as a whole and some of the votes the committee as a whole has made. I am concerned about the bylaw itself and I thank the town manager for suggesting a meeting and I had a productive meeting with a number of staff members today about the bylaw itself, about potential revisions to it. But I am concerned in some of the meetings I watched and some of the minutes I've read that some members may be using the bylaw improperly in that because you can, as I told staff today, essentially drive a truck through it and deem nearly anything significant structure that if you don't like that I fear that some members of the commission have been coloring their desire to institute a demo delay or not by what might go up there and what the proposal to go up there is and why the demolition is occurring. So I'm using my time here as we have to deal with appointments and approval of appointments to not agree with the historical commission appointments, not to make it about any one person on the historical commission, but I think the commission as a whole might be broken partly because of the bylaw itself, but partly because of training. There are no definitions in the bylaw and anyone can interpret them any way they are. And because of that, I'm using this to bring that to the attention of the manager and to the members of our council to see if there's something we can do because instituting a demolition delay can really serve the purpose of harming economic development in town. And so if we're going to leave the bylaw the way it is, I think we need to look much more closely at who the appointments are to see whether those appointees espouse the same desires that we do in a way that we look at planning borders, the ZBA as Alyssa Brewer said earlier today about certain appointments when we were talking about a letter to the ZBA. So that's it. I will, instead of asking to separate out historical commission, I will abstain from all of the votes because of that, but I wanted to bring that to the attention of everyone and particularly the town manager. Thanks, Kathy. I wouldn't have thought of this at all, Mandy, if you hadn't just mentioned demolition delay, but I don't know about the composition of the committee per se or their training, but in district one, I know of at least one family and this was not an issue about postponing development, but for whatever reason, a barn that was falling apart hit this delay and because of it, they couldn't insure the property. No one would write insurance. And if a child walked into this barn, they were at risk of having something fall on them. So there is also, I think, a training or a need thinking about the consequences for property owner of using this. So it sounds to me, I don't know exactly anything about the people, but it sounds to me, we need to revisit what this clause should mean, could mean and how it gets interpreted because this was, it costs them a lot of money because what they wanted to do is tear it down because it was unsafe and it wasn't that old. You know, this was a, as someone said, well anything that is earlier than 1960 is historical or whatever it was, but boy, this is a eyesore, not an emblem, but so I think you brought a different issue to our attention. So thank you for it. Are there any other comments at this time? Chaloney. Yeah, I also want to acknowledge Mandy Jo's work in bringing this to our attention. And does this mean we can remove this particular word? Are we going ahead with leaving the historical commission appointments today? One of the options is to separate out this historical appointment separately. Mandy Jo, I believe that was initially your intent. That was in my initial plan, but instead I am not going to request that instead I'm just going to abstain from the entire vote. Is there any other? Okay. So the motion's been made and seconded. Pat, please get your hand up. I was just going to say, I would like to, I have not, thank you Mandy Jo for, I would like to remove the historical commission appointment, commission appointments and move ahead with the other recommendations. So I'm going to treat this as a consent agenda. And that is that if one counselor asks to separate out one of the committees, we will do so and proceed with the others as the motion has been read. I am asking we remove the historical commission appointments. So we're going to separate them off from this at this time. Okay. Darcy. It doesn't seem like, I mean, these are two separate appointments to the historical commission. It seems like only whoever is being objected to should be, I mean, why should we prevent the other person from being appointed? I, I, that, that's a good point. We can also move this off to another meeting and find out when we have more time. So we just take that committee, people continue to serve and we'll bring it back on a future near agenda. So that we don't have to try to resolve that issue tonight. That's what I'm suggesting. George. Well, the initial sponsor withdrew and I also feel that we're, it's somehow singling out to individuals where the issue seems to be more with the bylaw and its vagueness and issues of, of lack of definition and clarity. It seems the issue is more with the bylaw than it is with the individuals who are tasked with carrying it out. I share Mandy's concern of how I feel at times this might have been misused or even abused. But I think singling out these individuals seems inappropriate unless someone has some concrete argument they want to make that these individuals have been egregious and not fulfilling their responsibilities. Otherwise, I think we should let this just go as it is and instead pursue the larger and I think more important question of the bylaw itself and whether it really says what we wanted to say. Okay, so I'm going to just state the following. We've already had one council who is asked to separate out a committee. We can actually delay the vote on that committee to a future meeting but proceed with the rest of these votes without getting into individuals or the bylaw and bring the bylaw back as a separate discussion and bring the committee back as a separate discussion. So the issue of it being separated out has already happened. We can bring that back to a vote tonight for that commission or not. Steve? Yeah, so, well, first I object to breaking out that particular group. I think we should vote for this as a block. The historical commission is a political body. They're not working with science. They're working with basically the information that they have before them. And so I am certainly aware of controversial decisions that they've made, but they're doing their job. They're doing due diligence. We may not like that. I don't think, but I've never seen anything egregious that any member of the historical commission has done, including the incumbents. So I would object to not taking this vote tonight. Melissa? I'm sorry, was that me? Yes. I understand the sentiment behind splitting it out. I appreciate what Mandy Jo did to save us time. And now of course we're not saving time anymore is that I agree with everything George said and understanding as Lynn also stated that these people are gonna keep serving anyway. So if we're trying to punish them, which is literally the only way to read that, then that's what we do. If you're going to pull them out and then vote on them separately and then that way have several abstentions because you're wanting, that's fine, but it doesn't make any sense to postpone them to another night, whether it's a big postponement nuclear option or not because they're going to continue serving whether you do anything or not. So I would not do, I would not separate them out or if you have separated them out already and can't take that back, then I would go ahead and vote on them tonight as well. The total may just be different. The way we treated this was consent agenda. If one counselor asked that it be separated out, we do so, we did that. So we are back to the original slate that is here minus the historic commission, historical commission. Dorothy? I agree that it would be not very unfortunate to single out this committee or any members of it. And I know that at least one of them is very new. I have been paying attention to these demolition delays for a number of years because I didn't know what they meant. It's a clearly it's been established practice in this commission. So I think that the issue is the charge of the commission and looking at that, which many people have mentioned. So I would support voting the whole slate or none, but the idea of stripping out one committee is very punitive and I think very misguided. This thing of demolition delay with different barns and whatever it's been going on for 10 years, at least since I've been here, I've been paying attention to it. So I didn't know what it was. So I thought it was interesting. So I would say we should vote the slate in and then deal very seriously with the commission's bylaw. Here's the dilemma you've placed me in. One counselor has asked to separate out and as on a consent agenda, it then gets separated out and is not debatable nor does it need a second. We can still vote on it tonight, but it would be voted separately. I withdraw that idea. So we're back to the full slate. Complete slate, all right? We're back to the original motion. Is there any other discussion? All right. The motion is the complete slate as you see it on the screen and we begin with Kathy Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Yes. Sarah Schwartz. Hi. Sarah. Yes. Thank you. Yep. Shalini Balmell. Yes. Alyssa Brewer. Yes. Hattie Angeles. Yes. Garcy Dumont. Yes. Lynn Griezmer is an abstain. Mandy Johanicki. Abstain. Garthy Pam. Yes. Evan Ross. Yes. George Ryan. Yes. Votes 11-4, none against and two abstentions and it passes. Okay, we now have to move to the elementary school building committee. I sent out an email, many people responded. I sent you a, in your, I'm finding my own memo. In your packet was a memo and it listed eight counselors. Okay. We need to get to the point that we have recommended two counselors. I'm going to make your lives easy. I'm taking my name off the list. It's not because I wouldn't like to do that. This it's not because I don't feel I'm qualified. It's just that I enjoy being president of the council and can't take this on right now too. And there's many other qualified people. Hattie Angeles, do you have your hand? Yes. I'd like to remove myself. I was hoping that my educational background would be valuable to the committee, but I have a feeling that people more versed in finance would be helpful on it. So I'm going to withdraw my name. Are there any other people whose name I missed when I came up with the list? Are there any other people who would like to add their name to the list? Lane, can you just have him scroll to the name list so we can see it right now? That's, thank you. That's the charge. We're actually moving to the memo, which is dated June 14th, 2020. Yes, that one. And move down to the list, please. Here we go. Thank you. So the list has been narrowed to six. They are Alyssa Brewer, Darcy DeMont, Mandy Jo Hanneke, Kathy Shane, Steve Schreiber, and Andy Steinberg. The way the charge reads, there should be one person from finance and then one person from the council at large. That does not exclude that that person can also be from finance. It just means that one of the people has to be from finance. So I'm going to suggest the following process. We're going to have, first of all, discuss the desired qualities for this choosing this person, what we are looking for, what we think is important to have represented what was supposed to happen with the select school committee, but really didn't, given that eight people were vying for it, this may be easier to accomplish. So that was just a side comment. Then you're going to make statements. The six of you, and then we're going to have a poll where, or who you think should be on from finance, and then we're going to have a second one after that, where we basically say, who else would you like to vote for? And when we go down, we just do state the names, okay? So what are some of the characteristics people feel should be included in counselors we select for this purpose? I will start out by saying, first of all, I think finance is important. I think procurement is important. I think that being able to listen to different voices and represent them back to the council is important. Dorothy? Thank you. At some meeting recently, there was a clear statement, which I cannot reproduce, that said the school committee feasibility, this committee, building committee, will not be working on this, it'll be working on that. And that statement, I'd love to have it repeated exactly what, so before we talk about qualities, that we know what is doing and what it's not doing. This committee does not work on the program. The school committee is in charge of deciding the program. This committee is about the building that will fit the program that the school committee decides. Essence, that was the state. Paul, do you have a better way you'd like to state that? Kathy? In addition to what you listed, Lynn, I think listening and working well with people is going to be critical from different points of view. My understanding of this is both, we've got to be willing to get up early in the morning to get to the meetings. But there's a volume of work to this that will be ranging from trying to understand all the nuances of the options that are being discussed to when it gets nearer to some initial decisions being made, being willing to look at complex documents, read them, think about them and ask questions. So it's both finance skills, but stick toitiveness around a lot of work. So it's got to be eyes wide open that this is not going to be a quick read on some of this before you get to the meeting. Other characteristics, Steve Schreiber. Okay, so unmute. So I think probably one of the most important qualities is to not, for the committee members to themselves, not be the experts, but basically be able to listen to experts, listen to the community, synthesize those, to know what they don't know and to basically humility to not know everything, but to understand what they don't know, to be invested in the public schools through your own actions, I think is important. Okay. Medija. I think we need someone who's well-versed in finance because, but what I mean by that is someone who questions and is willing to question expenditures and keeps the building itself in mind as to how much things might cost and starts asking those questions, whether that's digging into the guidelines about how big rooms should be and stuff like that and sizes and stuff like that, but is willing to ask all those questions and push back at some answers because our job as a council is going to figure out how to fund it when it finally comes to us. And so we need people in there who are always cognizant of what that cost is going to be and brings that regularly to the table and doesn't ignore costs until the very end. You know, this is a five to seven year team and we already know it's gonna be a lot of work from day one. I think it's gonna be really hard for people to jump in and out. And while we as counselors may not know at all how long we're going to serve on the council or whether we're going to run, I do, unfortunately, I don't think it can be answered now, but I do think consistency of the counselors is going to be important. How we answer that now, I'm not sure, but I don't think we as a council want people trading out every year because that harms the council's knowledge of the committee's progress going forward if every year someone has to re-figure out and get back up to speed about everything that's gone on the year before, or two years or five years. So I think that's important too, yeah. It does seem to me, however, that in order to remain on the committee after the next election, you have to be on the council or we have to re-look at the requirements because the possibility that somebody's going to serve for all seven years is slim to none. So, all right, any other comments? Shalini? I just have a question. How important is institutional memory for this work? I think people can be prepared to speak to that in their comments if they feel it's important. Okay, all right. Oh, and I don't know, this is a little, it's late and whatever, but this is on my mind, so I'm just going to say it, that we've been working great as a council, but I think there's a certain perception in the residents, few residents anyway, the emails that we're getting about the earlier, whatever it's called, and so it might be, I'm just putting it out there that might be good to vote for councillors who were from different perspectives. I don't even know if I'm making sense, but I'm hoping you understand what I'm saying. Are there any other comments? Okay, then I did ask that you be prepared to make a state no more than two minutes, why you think you should be elected by the council to this position, and we're just going to go straight down the list. Councillor Brewer. So as you noticed when you read the charge, the SBC doesn't do the educational program, because the school committee does that, they're elected to do that. What is the importance of institutional memory that of course is a good question? I was on the school committee for five years, so I have a really good sense of what's the school committee's job and what is the school building committee's job, I was on the select board, when the select board in fact took a leadership role associated with the last school building project. One of the things that I think is critically important here is that we have the two town councillors, one I think should definitely, as I agree with the charge that says it should be from the finance committee, I do not believe that both need very strong finance from the standpoint of being on the finance committee. I think it's important to bring another perspective in the second councillor, and I believe that I do that, in that I have had those experiences and I have seen what happened during the last process. And I think one of the things that fell apart during the last process, which I will point out, only failed at the town meeting vote, it did pass through a tax override, is that there was not enough communication to the community about what the school building committee was doing versus what the school committee was doing, it was very unclear to people. And so people felt really left behind, people who were huge supporters of the schools from the League of Women Voters to the PGOs, just didn't feel like they knew what was going on throughout the process. And so that's what I bring to this is the focus on ensuring that everybody, whether it's the town council or anyone else in the community knows what's going on. And we have a tendency when we have committees that are heavily staff-based, which this has to be because of the technical skills that are required associated with evaluating all the work of the vendors, is that we need the dedication to ensure that the information will get sent out to the public in a whole bunch of different ways and not at the last minute, meaning like every month, like every meeting, like every newsletter. So people know exactly where we're at. And I think that's incredibly helpful. I also wanna point out that both of my kids went to Mark's Meadow and so I am very understanding of financial constraints and we closed that school for a financial constraint. And I think it's important that we have a counselor who has had kids in the school and has those connections to the different parent groups as well as the wider community groups. So I skipped my written speech because I was trying to address some of the things people brought up. Thank you. Arcee, you're next. Okay, so I'm really interested in this position and I think that the person who gets it should really be familiar with the Fort River School building plan and the Wildwood plan and the Crocker Farm plan and the grade six study. Both of my kids went through the Amherst public schools. They went to Crocker Farm, the middle school and both graduated from the high school. We moved here because of the school, the school systems. So I have worked the first year I was here. I substituted and so I got a chance to actually work in all the different Amherst public schools. So I have an idea about the floor plans and actually all the different schools in the region I worked at. Then I got a job in Holyoke and I actually found a school that had a worse floor plan than our Fort River and Wildwood floor plans, which was actually a circle. I worked on the inner row of the circle that were all rooms that were pie shaped that had no circulation. So I taught elementary school for 20 years. Eight of those were teaching art and 12 teaching in the classroom. And as an art teacher, I taught a class for autistic students and one for multiply disabled children. As a classroom teacher, I of course participated in IEPs for kids that were receiving special ed services and in Holyoke, I was working at downtown schools, all three of the schools that I worked at were downtown schools and they, 90% of the student population were from families that were below the poverty line and a majority were of Puerto Rican ancestry and many of those, of course, spoke Spanish. So also I worked with the zero energy task force while they were preparing to get our building bylaw passed. That was a great experience. And I think that is about it. Lots of experience in education. Mandy, go, Hannity. Thank you.  So I believe on this council, the most recent experience, navigating elementary schools, classrooms and all of that as a parent. That experience I will admit is not at the Amherst public schools, it is at the Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School. But that gives me a unique perspective that is very new to this area on space needs as it relates to dual language programs because I've seen it for seven years now. And that is something that I believe any new building will have to deal with. And there are not many examples in this area dealing with the unique needs of a dual language program as it relates to a building. So I think I bring that experience and perspective and all. I also, as you guys, I don't think I have to say this with you all. You've seen of the last 18 months that I do my research that I listen to people, I listen to people of various perspectives and I am not unwilling to, I'm not shy about asking questions regarding the choices that are being made that would impact the town's ability to pay or the cost of the building that I believe it's very important to keep that front and center as we're looking at a new building. And since the school building committee will be dealing with decisions that directly relate and go to the costs, the ultimate projected cost of the building. I think it's important to have that upfront. And I am one that will always keep that there. And I do work well with all opinions and I'm willing to always listen to all opinions. And I do think a committee is better suited when we as members bring an open mind to anyone contacting the committee members about their thoughts. Thanks. Kathy Shane. I'm a trained economist and have worked most of my life on finance issues, albeit more focused on in the healthcare world, but I had a number of years where I worked with a labor union where I was a research and policy person, which meant that any budget that needed to be looked at, I was the one who looked at it. It was a nice, for me, it was something I just loved doing and trying to think through complex problems as where the school will be with multiple issues on which site should it be and is the sixth grade moving up or not? How can it be configured in a way that it will make it feel small and intimate, but be the larger school as we're envisioning it to be is something I would love to be working on. Cause I like the complexity. I like to read complicated documents, but also to listen. One of the labor union experiences I had was always being in a potential controversy where two sides. And my role was to bring everybody together by finding where there was enough commonality, but also to listen to nuances. But I think what Mandy said at the beginning on what qualities is those of you who have been with me on the finance committee or recently JCPC, I like to ask tough questions and I would like to be able to be in a position to ask for more information that we need to make decisions about how expensive does this building need to be? But also if we spend a large amount of money are we getting extremely high value for the design so that we can be proud and the town can be proud and celebrate a building when we bring it home as something that will bring lasting benefits to the kids who are in it, to the people who are teaching in it. And then last, I think not least is I like to work hard and I'm willing to put in the extra hours and I am particularly a morning person. So I was thrilled with 7.30 in the morning starting time. So I work best when I'm fresh in the morning and then can go back and read. So I don't think I'll say anymore. You know, the training I had as an economist didn't completely prepare me for the world of federal state and local tough decisions, but it meant that we always were dealing with complexity and trying to think through issues. And then the public finance side had to deal with documents all the time. So it's one of the reasons I ran for the council actually, that's it. Steve Schreiber. So when Lynn was, when the president Greece mayor was leading us through the exercise of what we thought the ideal qualities are, it's really hard to answer that because we don't know who else will be on the team. So it's like asking what the ideal qualities of a baseball team are when you only have two players named. So I feel very strongly that there needs to be an architect on this building committee. And I'm the only person on the council that has that experience. And furthermore, I'm the only person on the council that worked for the architect that did the Fort River School feasibility study. And then furthermore, I'm the only person on the council whose students designed the Fort River School as a student project last semester. But I say that kind of tongue in cheek, but obviously my experiences as an architect will give me the ability to really help me work with the committee to ask, hopefully to ask the right questions. I certainly don't know a lot, but I know how to, I know what I don't know. And I know how to find out things that I don't know, but I also know how to help the other members of the school committee and my fellow counselors who are not on the school committee, I'm sorry, the building committee to basically lead them through the discussion on things like site selection, the development of the building program, the architectural characteristics of this. The, my daughter, we have one child, my daughter, she's an alumna of Wildwood and also the Amherst Regional Middle School and also the Amherst Regional High School. We live halfway between Fort River and Wildwood. I love 7.30 in the morning, I'll work hard for you. And I look forward to this opportunity if you grant it to me. Annie Steinberg. Okay, I'll be very brief, but start out with something that Steve had mentioned in his too, which is that I had two children who went to Fort River School when it was a fairly new school and went through the entire Amherst School system then, gave me the unique experience of observing what was then a fairly new Fort River School and seeing how problematic it was in the design to the mistakes that had been made in choosing what was built and how it was built and where it was built given the time that it was going on. I think that we need to be very vigilant and learn from our past experience and do it right this time. I was very involved in, as a member of the select board in the prior process, but I was not on the school building committee. I did speak at town meeting on behalf of the select board in support of the proposal every time it came up, when it came up before the town meeting. And so I became fairly involved with the project then. My observation about the prior project was that there were problems and we do have to be very vigilant that the school building committee is not the school committee and decisions about where sixth grade goes are not school building committee's decisions. They are the school committee's decisions but that there has to be a way to have a dialogue between the two committees because of the consequences and the ability to pay for the decisions that are made and to recognize that in that last round that some of the community dissatisfaction was in the educational plan and part of it was in the building and that they really do go together so that there has to be a good dialogue with a respectful dialogue and a respect of each other's appropriate selected roles. Just a couple other things is that the fact that I've had all of this institutional memory was something that we talked about and the last one is that I do think the energy factors in the building are important, as mentioned by one other counselor, Councillor Jamal, I was in the group that worked together between people who were representing the town manager and people who were the original advocates of the first net zero energy to derive the net zero energy by-law as then it was ultimately passed and it's now in place and if given the opportunity, I hope that this becomes the first building where we really can achieve the goals of that particular by-law and prove that it works. So I guess that's all I can say, thank you. Okay, now we know why you're all in the council. So we're going to do a roll call vote and when your name is called, first round of roll call is going to be to vote for someone who represents the finance committee. At this point, the only two counselors on the slate that represent the finance committee are Councillor Shane and Councillor Steinberg. So in the first round, that's what you will be voting for, one or the other. And I begin with Steve Schreiber. Councillor Shane. And Steinberg. I'm going to look at Steinberg. Schwartz. Steinberg. Balmille. Kathy Shane. Steinberg. DeAngelis. Shane. Dumont. Kathy Shane. Riesmer is abstaining. Hanneke. Shane. Pam. Shane. Russ. And I. Ryan. And Steinberg. And Shane. I guess I'm going to do what Andy did all abstain. Well, so at this point I have six votes for Shane and four votes for Steinberg. And three abstentions. We can do the round.  Oh my God. I think that at this point that we've had a vote, I congratulate Councillor Shane. We're sure well. And that's going to be a very hard process. And I asked to withdraw them because I do think that it should not be to be able from the finance committee. Okay. All right. Then I will move to the next one, which includes Councillor, Lisa Brewer, Darcy Dumont, Mandy Jo Hanneke, and Steve Schreiber. Lynn. Yes. I would like to withdraw. Okay. So it includes Brewer, Hanneke, and Schreiber. And we begin with Steinberg. Schreiber. Schwartz. All male. Schreiber. Brewer. Angus. Brewer. Dumont. Schreiber. Reismer. Is abstaining. Hanneke. I'm going to vote for myself. Hanneke. Ham. Schreiber. Ross. Shane. Schreiber. Did I already call on Steinberg? Yes, I did. Okay. You didn't call Steve. I'm sorry. I don't think you called me. I'm sorry. Yeah, Schreiber. I'll abstain. Okay. So in this case, Schreiber has seven votes, which is a majority and Brewer has three. So, I would like to make a motion that we appoint to the elementary school building authority Councillor Shane and Councillor Schreiber. Is there a second? Yes. I think we need a way of, we need a way of 8.6. Oh, I'm sorry. Thank you. All right. And let me move to the way of council rules procedure, rule 8.6 for councilor appointments to the elementary school building committee. Is there a, that's a motion. Is there a second? I don't know what it means. Second. Yes. This means we can do this tonight.  The motion's been made and seconded. Is there any further discussion? Okay. Then we start with Schwarz. I abstain. This is to waive the rule. Oh, sorry. Yes. All for it. Thank you. Okay. Shallonee Ball Moon. Yes. Brewer. Yes. DeAngelis. Yes. Lamont. Yes. Griezmer. Yes. Anakie. Yes. Pam. Yes. Ross. Yes. Ryan. Yes. Shane. Yes. Schreiber. Yes. Steinberg. Yes. Okay. So that allows us to then move forward and in this case, the motion that I would like to make is that we appoint counselors. Lynn. Yes. We have to recommend the town manager appoint. Thank you. I would like to recommend that the town manager appoint Councillor Shane and Councillor Schreiber to this elementary school building committee. Is there a second? Second. Okay.  What?  And shouldn't we specify that one's from the finance committee? I'm sorry, you're right. I couldn't see the motion. Thank you. All right, this is my motion to recommend the town manager appoint under Charter Section 3.3C, counselors, Matthew Shane from the finance committee and Councillor Steve Schreiber to the elementary school building committee. Is there a second? Second. Thank you.  Yeah, I felt a little uncomfortable with this. And so I'm going to abstain, but I'm also someone who believes you should explain when you're abstaining. So I want to just state very briefly, this whole thing feels weird to me because the town manager is the appointing authority and he is the one who is responsible for taking a holistic view of the committee, looking at everyone else who's on it, the residents and putting together what he thinks is the most effective committee. We did a little roll call of who we think should be on it. And I think that he has that information. I think he's heard the statements from everyone, but I actually don't feel comfortable recommending to the town manager who he should appoint. And I think that if he disagrees with either of the two people who got majority votes, he should feel free to appoint someone else. So I am going to abstain, which is nothing against either of the two people, but I want to just make that clear. Okay. Any further discussion at this time? All right, then we're going to start with, shall we, Balmille? Yes. Elissa Brewer. Yes. Pat DeAngels. Yes. Darcy Dumont. Yes. Reese Mersey, yes. Hanna Key. Yes. Pam. Yes. Evan Ross. Stain. Ryan. Yes. Shane. Yes. Treiber. Yes. Steinberg. Yes. And Schwartz. Stain. So it passes 11 for none against and two abstentions. Okay, we're moving on to the town council appointments. And this is where I'm going to call on Evan, because it's regarding the planning board. Yes. I'll keep this brief because you have the report. Oka met to discuss planning board appointments. We had been laying the groundwork to deal with the three expiring terms on the report. Oka felt that the pool was insufficient at this time to move forward with appointments. And so decided that we were not in a position to actually move forward to interviews and make a recommendation for appointment. Technically, if we do nothing, members can continue to serve beyond their term, but we felt that it would provide the body and us a little more feeling of security. If we extended the terms throughout the summer, we've confirmed with all three members that they're willing to serve at least for a little bit longer after their term. Makes part of the 30th, even if some of them are not seeking reappointment. And so this buys the council and now the CRC some time to recruit and to do some active recruitment so that we can do a longer term appointment to the planning board sometime this summer. Okay, so any questions at this time? Okay, so the motion is go ahead, Evan, if you would please. The motion is to extend. So I moved to extend the appointments of planning board members, Michael Burtwistle, Christine Gray-Mullen and David Levenstein from June 30th, 2020 to August 31st, 2020. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. Any further discussion? Okay, then I'm gonna do a roll call vote, Brewer. Yes. DeAngeles. Yes. DuMont. Yes. Rees-Mers, yes, Hanakie. Yes. Pam. Ross. Yes. Ryan. George. Yes. Shane. Yes. Shriver. Yes. Steinberg. Yes. Fort. Yes. Vaughn Mellon. Yes. Okay, and that is unanimous. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Oka. This was your last task that you needed to do. Your first chair was Sarah and succeeded then by Evan. And I wanna thank the entire committee. You blazed trails, you took your hard knocks. You dealt with the issue of process and then passed it on to other committees. And I really wanna just thank you all for serving on this committee, your continued service up until this very point when now the appointment of the planning board becomes the responsibility of CRC. Okay, so thank you. We're going to move on to committee reports. Very quickly. Mandy Jo, is there any other report? I just wanna use the opportunity to announce that this Wednesday, there is a public hearing joint with the planning board at 630 on the zoning bylaw amendment for zoning bylaw 11.250 voting qualms as it relates to site plan review. Thank you. Andy finance. There's no real additional report beyond what is already in the written report. Just wanna remind everybody to check the dates on when we have hearings on various departments and if they're hearings that you're interested in, you should be sure to block them out on your schedule. Those are actually not official hearings. So they're just meeting for the. No, they are, you are correct. They are meetings with department heads to hear from them about their particular sections of the department budget. Right, but it's an opportune time for counselors to learn more in depth about each of the issues related to the budget. George, GOL. Just point out to my colleagues that we have come up with a process for making recommendations to the town council for finance appointments and that's in the packet. We are very much indebted to OCA and we followed their process fairly closely but with one difference regarding interviews but that's in the packet for people to consult if they have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them but at this hour, I'm hoping they don't. I'm sorry, Kathy. JCBC. We have nothing new to report. You got our report, which was very long that you could read it. We have nothing new in the future. Outreach, OCA, anything else, Evan? Yeah, I know it's late but since this is the last OCA committee report, I wrote this in the report but I did wanna say it publicly that I owe a deep amount of gratitude to all the members of OCA. This committee has worked for 17, 18 months and I put in the report some of our accomplishments because I wanna make sure that I recognize the members for the work that we put in because it's really been an incredible amount of work and some of it has been difficult and grueling and sometimes so painful and a lot of it has been around process and I said this to the committee in our last meeting that process isn't often the sexy stuff that makes headlines that people get excited about and so often I felt like we didn't get necessarily our due for the hard work, not from y'all but more broadly and so I wanna thank them because they worked really hard and I especially wanna thank Sarah because she was a really great chair during what were definitely the most difficult months as we were getting our footing and dealing with getting that first complicated process set up and spending week at literally every week in meetings and sitting on the phone with a town attorney and it's stuff I never wanna do again but I wanna thank everyone for putting in the time and it was really a pleasure and my only sadness at this point is that we weren't able to spend our final meeting together in person or able to go get a drink after it so thank you to honestly to all members of OCA for all of your work because it was a tremendous amount of work and this entire council owes this committee a debt of gratitude. We have produced for you a 30 page document outlining our process and all of the different steps it was put in your packet today. I wanted to get it to you earlier but Adobe Acrobat was fighting me on it. I don't expect you read it for today. I don't expect that many of you will read it ever but it is there as your gift from OCA on how this council can bring together can bring forward recommendations for appointments to multiple member bodies appointed by the council balancing privacy, transparency and working within the incredibly annoying but important constraints of open meeting law. So thank you. And I would like to ask Athena to strike from the record that they don't start drinking at 11 30 in the morning. Darcy Dumont, you are doing town services? Yes, I don't have anything to report other than that we had another group of free appointments today and the school building, the basic appointments to the school building committee which are coming to the next town council meeting. And we started at our review process but I also did want to say that I did that modification that GOL made to the interview process that allows people to each of the members to ask interview questions and to ask follow up questions. We did the approval of minutes on the consent agenda. Town managers report Paul. You have my written report. If you have any questions, I'm here to answer them. Are there questions of Paul? Yes, Mandy Jo. I apologize, I have a lot of questions. And I know it's late. So I'm gonna run through them all. You don't have to answer them all tonight. Some of them are just basics. But the library, I watched the library meeting, gosh, Thursday, Friday. I don't even remember when it was when they came out reopening. And one of the things the library director said was that you were saying that the buildings wouldn't open to the public until like September. And I am very concerned about the library not being able to open and stating that right now, not being able to open until September to the public. I know in phase one, which was four weeks ago, they could have been allowed to open curbside were four weeks out from that first being able to and they're still not doing curbside rentals or loans. Phase two started a week ago and that was allowed under that for libraries, circulation desk pickup, inside desk pickup. I don't know what phase three will bring for a library but phase two started a week ago, phase three might start two weeks from now and we still don't have curbside pickup at our library. But curbside pickup in library books are not in what I see as the most dire need for libraries at this point. We've set it from the time these buildings closed. We don't have public bathrooms with the buildings closed. We don't have now at summer a cooling station with these buildings closed. We don't have for our most neediest internet access and computer access. None of that can be transferred to an outside curbside pickup. And so I would really urge us to think about which buildings need to be opened sooner rather than later for things to serve our needy residents and cooling. And this goes to one of my other ones, homeless. It's not just the homeless that need an indoor cooling space. It's our elderly that don't have air conditioning in their buildings when we hit 90 degrees four days in a row this week or whatever it's calling for. We don't have a place to send people to get out of the heat right now. And I think we need to start prioritizing that and a library is a fantastic place to do that. So that's my point on library and homeless. I was curious when meters will start to begin to be enforced again as we are, you know, we know it has a significant strain on the budget and as things start opening, the demand for parking will increase. And the economist in me says when demand goes up, you know, supply will go down and then you need to start charging to even those out. So I was curious when the thinking on charging will be. Elections, you mentioned in your report that location options are being considered. I'm curious what some of them are. And I'm wondering if outside in a parking lot is an option for September, even if we have to do tents to allow for social distancing and all. And then playgrounds. Yay, can I say yay that they are open? My daughter and I went to one this weekend in Mill River and it was fantastic to allow her to actually play on a playground. It was easy to social distance in general. But I was wondering about the school playgrounds because when I drove by Crocker the other day, I think the snow fencing was still up around the playground and without the school playgrounds and with Groff Park closed, there is pretty much one playground in town. And that will make it harder as school gets out to social distance. So I wanna wonder about how we can get more playgrounds open if the school ones aren't open. And I wanted to mention that the closed sign was still on the bench at Mill River, potentially creating confusion. It might be better if we create a new sign that indicates some rules and expectations about the use of the playground, including mask wearing and all. And then it sounds strange, but when Groff opens, are we gonna have a ribbon cutting? Because I think it would be really good to have one even if they're socially distanced. So sorry for the long number of questions. That's it. Lynn, I can run through those if you'd like. Ribbon cutting, yes, we've been talking out to go to the reverse order. Ribbon cutting, yes, we've been talking about that, how to do that successfully. We don't wanna draw a crowd. We're one of our tensions that we have is that we don't wanna create things that draw people together, but on the same token, we're establishing places where people can come into town and eat because we wanna support the businesses. So if there's a balance to be had, we choose, we will do it. There'll be some kind of ribbon cutting of some sort, but it might be very small number of people and it might be some televised or something like that. Signs on the bench, we can get that fixed. Thanks for pointing that out. School, when we open the playgrounds, we're in communication with the schools, they have chosen not to unlock their playgrounds, but I can check back with them if they've thought anything differently about that. Elections, we're thinking a lot about that. We've looked at, we're looking at outside tents, because these are, we're talking with the schools right now, we'll probably have one, right, we're thinking about one location that has a minimal impact on the schools and not because the schools are gonna be open because they are scheduled not to be open on the two days, but for the sort of the cleaning of the building afterwards and things like that. We have some options, the town clerk is leading the team that has the fire chief, the DPW superintendent and the facilities manager working with the school district. We also have talked about closing a road down and just taking over a road for permit for voting on that day and also encouraging people to vote in advance if at all possible. So lots of different options available. They have to come to you at some point. Charging for parking, we sort of have a metric in our minds of about July one, evaluate that again, depending on, you know, paying attention to the number of parking spaces that are in demand, knowing that we're gonna be taking away parking spaces as we start to move restaurants onto the streets. So monitoring that, right now we're utilizing our parking enforcement officers at different utilizing other things. So we will reprogram them back into town. And so there's some other things about that. Opening the library, opening buildings to the public is a pretty, is a challenging thing. Very few places are open to the public and making sure that we have protocols in place are the, is the real key. And just even opening this building that where I am now the town hall and where it looks like you're virtually there is just for our employees has been a big challenge because we have to maintain, we have to maintain the names of everybody who come in. They, we have multiple sanitized stations as you walk into the building. So when we start to open to the public, that's a bit of different things. The cooling centers, we've talked about that. We'll look at different options for that as well. Recognizing the need for that at the same time and don't have ready solutions to announce right now, but it is something that our team has been talking about for a bit now. And there are different options for that as well. It's not just the library, there are other options that we can put together for that. So, but on our list. Yes, Alyssa. I was just gonna reiterate again because I always like to say it that I really appreciate how hard you're working to try and figure out how to keep staff safe, right? Keep staff safe first and then bring in the public. One thing I just wanted to check in on is given the different phasing when offices were first open in theory, it was for 25% capacity, but it sounds like in the report that you're bringing everybody back. So how, how do we thread that needle? Is it now just everybody's allowed to go back to work as long as you put the plexiglass in or what's our approach to that? So we have installed plexiglass, but we've also distanced people utilizing meeting room space to put people in. So we are social distancing people where the 25% capacity is in a, you know, we're working on that as sort of the metric, but there's also, you can have someone in an office next to someone in another office, they're not considered in the 25%. There's still people who are working remotely. If they can do that successfully, that's, we leave that to the department, but we have had our team, which is the HR director, the facilities manager and the assistant town manager sort of going through department by department, person by person as to who is eligible to come back and who isn't. So we've accommodated as many as we possibly can at this point, but not everybody can be accommodated in the building. Dorothy, please unmute, Dorothy. Dorothy, you need to unmute. I'm working on it. Okay. A comment to the question. I think the library starts curbside pickup this Thursday. And I know that seems to be a little delayed, but I think that they're starting it. So then my question is, why is Graf Park, we were told it would open in May. I know we've had COVID, but construction was allowed to go on. And then I heard yesterday there was gonna be a water slide, which I wasn't aware of. I have gone by and peeked in through the locked gates, and I see a lot of really interesting looking things in there. So when is it opening and is there really a water slide? There's no water slide. We don't have a date for it to be open. There are a lot of punch list items that our contractor is working on. And some of the things that our DPW is gonna have to do to get it open. The end is in sight, but before we can remove the fencing and open it up, we have a meeting out there tomorrow morning at 7.30 a.m. to sort of go through what the punch list items are and review that with the superintendent public works and the assistant town manager. I look forward to it. Yeah, it looks awesome, I have to say. I've seen a picture of it. Any other questions at this point? Okay. Then on the town councilor comments, I basically will be doing follow-up from this agenda and setting the agenda for the following week. We have a bunch of financials, things coming up on the 29th and also then on the 13th and the 20th of July. But given the hour, I'm not gonna go into any more than that. I will be letting you know as we get the agenda set. Future agenda items, questions, comments, okay. And then any other councilor comments, okay. We dealt with topics not reasonably anticipated by dealing with the policing discussion earlier. There's no executive session and so I call the meeting adjourned. Thank you.