For recording, please go ahead. Thank you. Good evening. It's January 22nd, 2024. This is a regular meeting of the town council. The open meeting law allows us to continue holding meetings remotely without a quorum of the council physically present at the meeting location, while providing adequate alternative access to the meeting. This meeting is accessible in real time by Zoom, by phone and as a live broadcast on Amherst Media, Channel 9, and live stream. There are presently in the town council chambers, eight councillors. In addition to that, I will call upon each councillor by name. I'm calling the meeting to order at 631. I will call on each councillor by name. Please unmute at that time and make sure that we can hear you and you can hear us. Pat D'Angelo. Present. Anna Devlin-Gothier. Present. Ette is not present at this point. Lynn Griesmer is present. Councillor Hannake. Present. Bob Hegner is not present. He's on the way by phone. He is, I'm sorry? He's going to join in just a few minutes by phone. Thank you. Councillor Lord. Present. Pam Rooney. Here. Councillor Ryan. Present. Councillor Shane. I'm Cathy Shane. I'm here. Andy Steinberg. Present. Jennifer Taub. Present. Councillor Walker is absent. There is no chat room for this meeting. If you have technical issues, please let Athena and me know and we will decide what to do at that time. And I will pause the meeting as needed if other councillors join. Immediately after the announcements, we will move to a joint meeting with the remaining members of the Housing Authority who are able to join us this evening. There will be a public comment period during that time specific to the questions to be asked during the interviews of candidates. This is scheduled for February 5th, 2024. There will be a general public comment period at this meeting immediately following the joint meeting with the Housing Authority. The announcements are on the board. I hope. And you'll see that we have first meetings of several of our committees coming up. Finance committee is tomorrow at 2. Governance organization legislation is Thursday at 7.30. TSO is on February 1st at 10 o'clock. And we have several events coming up that you can find on the town calendar. There is no hearing. And so at this point, I'm calling upon vice president on a Devlin, got here who will manage the portion of the meeting related to the Housing Authority vacancies. Thank you. So our in your packets is a memo regarding the vacancies for the Amherst housing authority. And as a reminder, we are obligated to fill the vacant role. Roles, excuse me, on the housing authority. Hold on one second. Yeah, I believe the audience has there was. Yeah, public comment. Okay. I just want to bring him in. And then you need to. Okay. Um, Bob, can you hear us in order? Press star six to unmute Athena. Do you want to give Bob the again? How does he unmute press star six to unmute. Bob press star six to unmute. Can you hear us? Yeah, I tried. Hello. Can you hear me? We can. Thank you. Okay, great.  Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Okay. Um, and the only person from the housing authority that is here at this time is Mark Barrett. And you want to make sure. Yeah. So, Mark, if you could unmute just so we can confirm you can hear us. Yes, I can. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So what we're going to do is we're going to talk through the interview questions. Thank you to folks who sent those to me. I've compiled them and tried to summarize them into six questions that I believe encompass what folks had asked in there or what folks are we're getting at in the questions that they sent in. We'll talk about the election process. We'll have a public comment period specific to this agenda item. So, if you have public comment specifically about the Amherst housing authority vacancies. Um, and then we will stop at that point for, for today, once we finalize those questions. Any questions about the process that we're going to go through in this meeting? And then did I miss anything? I want to ask that we bring Pam Rogers in, please. Thank you. So, as a reminder, folks, the Amherst housing authority and Pam, can you hear us? And can we hear you? You're muted, but I can see you. Hi, thanks for letting me in. Hi, Roger. Welcome. So, just as a recap for folks who might be new to this, the Amherst housing authority's mission is to preserve and expand decent, safe and affordable housing for low and moderate income households, elders, persons with disabilities support programs and offer services and resources that promote economic self-sufficiency and improve community quality of life tenant empowerment and responsibility. Y'all, this is a long mission statement. Maintain quality of service delivery and ensure equal opportunity in housing and operate programs. Oh, my God. And deliver services that maximize financial and human resources while maintaining fiscal responsibility. You do a lot. So, when there is a vacancy in that on that board, the council, similar to what we did with the school committee in the last, um, last term, we are required to appoint members to this committee. So, as many of us went through that process before, uh, as a reminder, we will develop questions and approve those questions today. Candidates for this position will know the questions in advance because they are part of this public document. What I'd like to do is turn to the memo that was in your packet and discuss at this point, the questions. We're going to go in order of the. Oh, I'm sorry, I had it echo from you for a second, but I think we're good now in the, um, in the groupings that I created. So, the 1st area was general questions and the questions that I came up with here are that I've developed from the input received our number 1. Why do you want to join the housing authority and what experience do you have with the AHA? And what are your goals if chosen to serve on the board? Are there any questions or concerns with those proposed questions has written. Pam. Hi, thanks. These are very good questions. It seems like there are a lot of them. And I wonder if it were, in fact, just the 5 primary questions that get asked. If someone is handed this piece of paper with sort of the auxiliary questions, some questions, they will not be. So, I wanted to include the other questions as a reflection of what was kind of what my thought process was so people could see what was sent in. The only questions being proposed of the candidates are the questions that are involved. There are 6 of them. That's great. Yeah. So the 1st 2. Any other any other questions, Pam? Pam Rooney. Excuse me. Sorry. Okay. If there are no concerns with those 2, I'm going to assume we are good on those and move. To work process questions. So question 3. How do you plan to establish a relationship with the chief executive and hold them accessible to the board's goals? I recognize there should be an apostrophe there. I think I'm in a version that is missing it. What do you believe are the current strengths and weaknesses of the AHA? How will you build upon the strengths and adjust the weaknesses? And then thinking in general about the housing situation in town, what thoughts do you have about how affordable housing might be increased? Are there any questions or concerns about these 3 next? Yes, counselor Lord. Thank you. I'm wondering. And in regards to the affordable housing, if there's a way to navigate or, you know, you really, I don't know that we can ask this question. But I think it's important to also include or bring in people who have lived experience navigating the nuances of, you know, a voucher or rent or circumstances. That might be trickier to navigate. So I don't know. I know legally you can't say, oh, have you ever had a voucher? Have you ever lived in low income housing? But are there, is there a way to say, like, what is your experience in regards to navigating different systems of housing that, you know, part of our constituents might be. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah, I should have sent it to you earlier, but it just came to me. So, yeah, just something like that. That's okay. No need to apologize. I am going to formulate my answer briefly, but Pam Rogers might have a better answer than I do. So, Pam, would you like to go ahead first? That is actually built into the regulations, the current regulations on the composition of the board. Every local housing authority needs to have a resident board member and the Amherst housing authority does have a resident board member. And then when you get into bigger boards where the cities where there's seven, you would have a board member who has state housing and then also federal. But currently we do have a resident board member to fulfill exactly what you're asking. So that was a great question. Thank you so much. And I think counselor Lord, I also attempted to offer a space for people to, if they wanted to disclose that experience in the next section with that question there. So hopefully that's, that's covered any other concern than thank you any other concerns or questions about the three questions about work process. All right, y'all are smooth sailing today. I'm sure this is going to continue for the entire rest of the meeting. Last section is relevant experience. And this is a bit of a meaty one, but bear with me. So the final question is what relevant experience do you bring to this role, including prior leadership experience work into construction property management or housing administration or other public sector work. Please provide specific examples as well as what you will bring from them into this experience. So I think counselor Lord, I'm not sure if you want to add some sort of language in here that gets a little bit more specifically as that being an option that we would encourage people to talk about if they choose to. I think as Aaron Rogers was saying it doesn't fit as necessarily a requirement for this role, but we could possibly add some language to clarify that if they'd like to speak to it this could be a place. Councilor Haneke. Counselor. Counselor Lord has thoughts. Okay. They may go first. Nope. They are pointing at you. There's a lot of specific call outs here on the including section that potentially seems limiting to what experience we're looking for. When you call out specific things you almost say, well, that's where we're focused with our experience. And so I think I'd rather see what relevant experience to you bring to this role.  Any comments in response to Councilor Haneke's suggestion. Kathy. I agree with Mandy on the, the long list. So I like the idea of shortening it and that you could do this could include any experience with public housing.  So, you know, or subsidize public housing to get it. If anything, but I don't mind it staying general because your very first question asks about any experience with housing authority. You know, so you think of the first question and the last question. If the person is thinking it's like what other experience. So the only I see Pam's hand is up the only other thing is I think the serving on any kind of committee is a useful experience to know about so that might be instead of my one might be including any experience working on committees is I would use one big generic one rather than a long list. Thank you. Athena, could I ask you to put the memo up on the, on the screen so people can have it while you're doing that. I want to make sure that you can hear us and we can hear you. I can hear you. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Athena. Pam Rooney. Thank you. I guess I agree with Mandy and Kathy, but at some place in your advertisement for the openings that you might say experience such as and be able to include this as well as Kathy's idea of, you know, your experience of public housing or your work and other committees in town. Just because sometimes you have to sort of plant the seed that oh maybe I'm qualified maybe I could bring something to this role without losing that but you know it doesn't have to be in the question per se. All right, I'm going to go to Councilor Ryan and then I've got a proposed possible solution. Just a thought that you might want to keep the last bit asking for specific examples. Good. Other than that, I think shortening it is probably a wise move. Thank you. Athena, could you go to the second page please? So my thought here is we could shift it to being what relevant experience do bring to this role? Question mark. Please provide specific examples as well as what you will bring from them to this experience. This might include but is not limited to prior leadership or committee experience, work in construction, property management or housing administration or other public sector work. Kathy already does not like it. Okay. Well, you know what, D'Angelo? All right. Comments on this option. I saw some head shakes but I will need actual comments and suggestions to change it would be great. If you want me to just take out the full back end of that and we could just leave it as the other option is what relevant experience do bring to this role? Please provide specific examples as well as what you will bring from them into this experience. Those kind of got three options here. I'm going to go to Pat who hasn't spoken yet. George, your hand is still up. I don't know if that means you have another question. Thank you. Microphone. What relevant, that's why I wanted to change my name. What relevant experience do you bring to this role? Period. And then what's important to me is what are you going to bring from this? What are you bringing from your experience? And how will you use it? That feels, everything else feels totally unnecessary. Okay. Thank you. Kathy, is that along the lines of what you were going to say as well? Yes. You were starting to bring in all the other words and I don't think we need to. I don't know who's going to apply but hopefully they'll stretch. So the only, the idea that specific examples, that's like a prompt. So maybe in the statement of interest, we can say, you know, please include any specific examples. You know, we can prompt them in their state, in the statement of interest or as Pam suggested in the description of who we're interested in and then hope that they bring in those experiences. I'd love to hear what people think is their experience here. Yeah. Okay. So final option for number seven, we're landing on what relevant experience do you bring to this role? Please provide specific examples as well as what you bring from them into the, into this experience. Pat, did you have another comment? Michael, what have you learned from them? Okay. Not what instead of what you will bring from them. So please provide specific examples as well as what you learned from them that you bring to this experience that you will bring to this experience. Does that sound good? That's what I said as well as what you learned from them that you bring. But I think the impartive about bringing it to the other experience is important. No. Okay. All right. So we've got six questions here. I will send a final draft of these to Athena. And the next part of the process is that we will have an additional joint meeting with the Amherst Housing Authority on Lynn. I'm trying to figure out why we have six questions. I thought a lot of these changes were to number five. No, they were to number six. So question one, why do you want to join the housing authority? Question two, what are your goals? Question three, how do you plan to establish a relationship? Question four, current strengths and weaknesses? Question five, thoughts about affordable housing? Question six, relevant experience? That's just not what the memo says. Yeah. Yeah. The memo had five bolded questions. Where was the memo? Sorry. Your memo just has five. Okay. Sorry. This was to five. I have my glasses on. Sorry. My Google Docs got mixed up. So your second one is what are the goals? What are your goals have chosen to serve? So that's listed as one C in the memo. Apologies, y'all. Right. So scratch that one that is encompassed in why do you want and what experiences do you have? Yep. So it's five. Thank you. All right. Any other questions other than my inability to use numbers? Okay. Pat has her hand. Pat. And Pam Rooney does. Go ahead, Pam. Thank you. So in the ZBA and planning board discussions and interviews, we often add the question at the end, is there anything else that you would like to share with us? And it offers the opportunity for somebody to recap or rephrase after hearing other people talk and they go, oh yeah, I could add something else. So just having that that quick follow up is not a bad idea. Great. So ending the with question six being, is there anything else you'd like to add that you have not previously had the opportunity to share? Okay. Just to clarify, so basically what you're suggesting, which makes sense to me is that after they've gone through the five questions, then we go back one last time giving people a chance. I believe that is the intention. Pat, your hand is up, but that's okay. It is down. Thank you. That makes two of us, Pat. You're fine. All right. So next steps are that we will have a meeting on February 5th. Do we need to vote to formally accept these questions? You can't remember. No, okay. All right. So these will be the questions that are shared with the candidates at that meeting. We should be able to get through the interviews with the candidates and then we will vote to appoint new members of the housing authority. It's going to be a great time. Any further questions on the process or anything else related to this? Otherwise, I'm going to turn the meeting back over to Lynn and thank our members of the Amherst housing authority for joining us very, very much. And we'll see you February 5th. Thank you. We appreciate your help. Thank you. Are there any people who have public comment with regard to the questions? I see none. So at this point, Mark, thank you for joining us and we'll see you on the 5th. And Pam Rogers, thank you for joining us and you're welcome to join us on the 5th as well. Okay. Thank you. I do know that Dave Williams and Jim Lynn Hand. They do have it on their calendars. Okay. We will now go to general public comment. There is only this period for general public comment. If you are physically in the audience in the town room and want to make general public comment, please make sure you have signed in with Athena over here. If you are in the audience on zoom and you would like to make public comment, please raise your hand at this time. There is one person on zoom that would like to make public comment. And how many do you have Athena? We have six. Okay. Let's start with those people in the room and then we'll go to the one on zoom and then come back to the room. Okay. Andrew Brace, please.  Hi, my name is Andrew Brace. I am a resident of South Amherst, but I'm here today representing the DPW Association. Yeah, basically want to, I guess I have two goals. One is to just shed some light to the public of the situation at the building. Recently we had over two inches of rain. The roof continues to leak new leaks appear every day. Recently it leaked through two floors into the highway department's break room where people eat lunch. So I'm just kind of trying to bring that to public attention. And the second goal is basically to try and just get some more status updates on what the plan is, what's going on. We haven't had any official updates. So that's why I'm here today and thank you for your time and thank you for your service to the town. Thank you for coming. I did fail to say that residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes. The council will not engage in a dialogue and comment on a matter raised during public comment. Public comments are not reflective of the opinions of the town council. So we're now going to go to Liam Rue. Please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Go ahead, Liam. Oh, hi. Sorry, sir. I am Liam Rue. I am a resident of Amherst. Well, like downtown Amherst 502 Main Street. I'm also a student of UMass Amherst. So I just wanted to speak today about supporting an amendment, well, like modifying a making amendment to the resolution for supporting the cherish act. So let me begin. Thank you for letting me speak. The cherish act is an amazing chance for Massachusetts to make its higher education system more accessible and equitable for all of its citizens. It would not only increase state funding requirements and invest in expanded student resources, but crucially it proposes covering whatever amount of tuition students cannot pay. While this is certainly better than the system we have at the moment, it is not enough. Without a doubt, the cherish act would be tremendous for the most underprivileged students. However, it would disproportionately punish middle class students who cannot afford the entire tuition bill, but who would still have to pay thousands of dollars every semester. This is why we ask that you include in this resolution for supporting the cherish act. Support for Natalie Higgins debt free future act, which would make all public colleges in Massachusetts tuition free for in state residents. The debt free future act would tackle the root problem of college on affordability tuition is exorbitantly expensive. It didn't have to become so bad though. As recently as the 1980s and 1990s, in state tuition at UMass Amherst was only a few thousand dollars adjusted for inflation. Countries like Norway, Denmark and Sweden, all of which have similar population sizes as Massachusetts, yet even smaller economies and less wealth all have tuition free college. This all goes to show that tuition free public college is not some socialist pipe dream. It is well within reach. Plus, making our public colleges tuition free for in state students would benefit the entire state's economy. Money students waste on paying off student debt could be much better spent buying a car, a home mortgage, a retirement fund or other purchases that grow our economy. Life is expensive enough and we don't need exorbitant college tuition making it even harder. This is why I urge you to amend the resolution in the GOL committee to include Natalie Higgins debt free future act. Thank you for your time. Thank you for joining us. Back to the town room. Cairo Serna, please come up and state your name and address before you make your comment and correct me if my pronunciation of your name is incorrect. You got it. Hello. My name is Cairo Serna. I live at 160 Clark Hill Road here in Amherst. I'm a student at UMass Amherst and a member of the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee. I'm here today to ask you to file an amendment to include support for a debt free future in the resolution supporting the chairs act. Both policies are vital to the financial capacity and welfare of students across Massachusetts. But particularly in Amherst, half of our town's population is students. And if Amherst town government isn't going to advocate for its constituents, then who will? Students are and will continue to be a huge and underrepresented group here. From past conversations I've had with Amherst town officials, particularly in the affordable housing trust, we all know how bad the housing crisis is getting. And we all know how significant a role the high costs of higher ed play in driving that. But using the debt free future act, we could alleviate the financial burden of higher ed on students. And this will also relieve pressure within the housing crisis for all residents in Amherst. Allowing students to better afford more housing options will prevent students from flooding the housing market here in Amherst. And it will prevent them from falling victim to predatory housing practices by both the university and landlords here in town. These benefits are not just going to be limited to students. They will extend to all of Amherst's residents, especially permanent residents who are also suffering from this housing crisis and are also feeling the effects of the university's housing practices. For these reasons, I strongly urge you to include support for a debt free future and to advocate for all of your constituents. Thank you for your time. Thank you for joining us. Henry Morgan, please come up and say your name and your comment. Hello, I'm Henry Morgan. I live in North Hampton, and I am a Hampton College student. I'm also the executive director of the public higher education network of Massachusetts, which is a student advocacy group focused on trying to create accessible debt free, high quality public higher education for everyone in the state of Massachusetts. And I'm here to echo the concerns of Liam Rue and Cai Rosserna in asking everybody here and everyone on the GOL committee to file an amendment to the resolution on a higher education for all to include the debt free future act. Now, I think the cherish act does some really, really extraordinary things for higher education this session now. It creates investment, it limits the amount of student debt that people will have to take on, and it creates access in the long term. But what it doesn't do is it doesn't make higher education completely accessible for everyone. And that's why Natalie Higgins has filed the debt free future act, which creates a model of accessibility for everyone in the state of Massachusetts. And so I ask each of you guys who are serving on the GOL committee and each of you guys who will vote on the resolution when it goes to the council to support an amendment to the resolution that includes the debt free future act. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Mikayla White, please come up and state your name and address before you make your comment and correct me if I mispronounced your name. I'm Mikayla White. I'm a student at UMass. I live at 915 North Pleasant Street in Amherst just over there. And I'm going to be speaking today on my fellow peers and what they're voting to pass. I'm also on the board of communications for female. As I said before, I am a senior at UMass and I'm fascinated by the powers of public administration and political science. I've had dreams, expectations and anxieties of college for almost four years now as I'm leading into my graduation on May. Now, graduation should be something that everyone is excited about. However, I'm terrified. I have so much student debt that I have no idea what to do with and I should not have to work three jobs to afford my bachelor's degree in legal studies.   I was watching Judge Judy when I was a little girl with my mom. I would argue back and forth and pretend to be like in a little mock trial. And it got me to the point where I actually hold a leadership position on the university's mock trial team and I'm really proud of that. However, all of you are in a position where you can make change. You can pass this resolution and include the DFF Act and you can make my struggles easier. You can make my peers be able to afford their education and you can help the young minds of Amherst. And you're not just helping the young minds of Amherst. You're helping the country. I'm trying to think if there's anything else I should say, but other than that, yeah, that's pretty much it. Thank you for joining us. Ella Prabhakov. Good evening, counselors. My name is Ella Prabhakar. I am a student at UMass Amherst. A student senator there and also an organizer with Phenom. I have had the pleasure of working with Counselor Etta and Counselor Walker in totally different capacities, one with the UMass Amherst Engineering Department and the other in trying to introduce this idea of including the Deaf ReFuture Act in the resolution that is going to be presented to the GOL committee in support of higher ed for all. I would like to echo the concerns of my peers and stress the importance of the Deaf ReFuture Act as a transformational approach to higher education in the state. Free tuition and more accessible public higher education is vital not only to Amherst where many of the residents here are either employed or educated by UMass and the surrounding towns where many community colleges are, but also for the state which desperately needs the investment into our economy and huge strides towards economic justice and equality. The tuition burden is a hardship on myself and my family. It causes me to stress about money and to try and fit in a job substitute teaching at Hampshire College through around my engineering schedule. And it is within the power of this committee to pass a resolution that would urge the state to pass not only the Charish Act which is vital for increasing funding towards public higher education and paying staff more and paying for the maintenance issues that we encounter on a daily basis on our campus, but also the Deaf ReFuture Act which would make tuition and fees free for all Massachusetts residents. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for joining us. Vincent O'Connor. Vincent O'Connor, 175 Summer Street. This is part three of my three part proposal begun at the Council's January 8th meeting to increase our municipal revenue by five to seven million dollars annually. Part one involved the proposal for a joint committee of this council and the school committee to negotiate an agreement by Amherst College to provide an unrestricted 750,000 to one million dollars annually to both the elementary and the regional school districts. In part and only in part as compensation for the college's mid-1990s decision to remove its former fraternities from the then town's property tax rolls. The decision which created an about to be 40 year municipal structural budget deficit. Part two in its most realistic formulation was a proposal that a committee of the council and the manager of finance director negotiated an agreement with UMass that would involve working together with our legislators to create a special chapter 90 state facility impact fund that would compensate this and other similarly impact Massachusetts communities for in our case the thousands of vehicles that pay UMass parking fees use our streets and roads but pay their Massachusetts vehicle excise tax elsewhere if at all. Part three is the simplest proposal and the one I'm reaching tonight because it is acting because acting on it is entirely within the council's control. Our state and federal representatives all support universal single payer Medicare for all legislation. However this city has failed to do the one thing that could lend effective support to their efforts and motivate city residents to mobilize and mass in support of Medicare for all at the Commonwealth level. What is required is that a committee of the council work with a few of the many qualified experts who live and work in town plus school in town staff to produce a written report consisting solely of a credible cost estimate plus or minus 10% of the savings to our property taxpayers of a transition to a universal single payer health care system for Massachusetts. Others the Commonwealth and individual families will of course also benefit from separate savings the Commonwealth is taking as many steps as it can toward making health care services universal for Massachusetts residents. The city needs to do its part to arm our legislators and motivate our residents to work to achieve the better health care system and individual family and property taxpayer savings achievable by a Massachusetts Medicare for all legislation. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Is that complete concludes public comment. Thank you. Yes, that's all. We're going to move to the consent agenda and before I read the consent motion. I want to be very explicit. If you plan to vote no on the consent agenda because there is one item you do not agree with. You should ask that that item be removed once I make the motion. That means that therefore a consent agenda would be a unanimous vote. Okay. Following items were selected because they were considered to be routine and it was reasonable to expect they would pass with no controversy. I've already explained when once I read the motion please ask to remove an item if you would like it to be taken off of the consent agenda because you want more discussion or you want to vote differently than the consent. The request to remove an item from the consent agenda does not require a second. So I'm going to give a little bit of explanation here and there because of new counselors but here we go to move the following items and printed motions there under and approve those items as a single unit. Waiver of town council rules of procedure rule 8.6 for agenda items 6 a 6 B 9 a 1 and 9 a 2. The reason we're doing this is because no committee has reviewed these prior to them coming to the council. So therefore we have to waive the requirement that a committee has reviewed these. They are in fact 6 a is the adoption of the black history month proclamation 6 B is the adoption of the spring festival lunar new year celebration proclamation 9 a 1 is approval of the town manager appointments to the elementary school building committee. 9 a 2 is approval of the town manager appointments to the Jones library building committee. Those are all covered under that first waiver. 11 a is adoption of the January 8 2026 town council meeting minutes. Please raise your hand if there is an item you would like removed from the consent agenda. Seeing none. I'm going to move to a vote. We need a second. I'll say I'm sorry. Thank you. I do need a second. Mandy Joe. Thank you. I'll say starting with Pat D'Angelo's eye on a Devlin got your eye at a I Lynn Griezmer is an eye counselor Hanna key I Bob Hegner. Can you unmute and declare your vote. Star six to unmute Bob. Star six to unmute. He may be distracted. I'll come back. Councilor Lord. I Pam Rooney. Yes, Councilor Ryan. Kathy Shane. Yes. I'm going to go back one more time and see whether or not counselor. I mean Bob. I'm sorry. Yeah, Bob Hegner is can hear us and can vote. I know that he is trying to do two things at once and I think he may be a little distracted. Okay. So I'm going to go ahead and Have him. I don't try market abstain or just absent absent. Thank you. So it's 11 in favor and to absent. Okay. With that, I have asked Councilor Lord to read the last paragraph of the Black History Month. Proclamation. This would be that time. Yes. You're like, that's why I'm saying it. Let me just find it in my email. I apologize here. Thank you. Now, therefore we the town council of the town of Amherst do hereby proclaim the month of February in the year 2024 as Black History Month and urge all residents to mark this occasion and to participate fittingly in its observation. Observance. Now, therefore we the town council of the town of Amherst do hereby proclaim the month of February in the year 2024 as Black History Month and urge all residents to mark this occasion and to participate fittingly in its observation. Now, therefore we the town council of the town of Amherst do hereby proclaim the month of February in the year 2024 as Black History Month and urge all residents to mark this occasion and to participate fittingly in its observation. Thank you. And the Spring Festival Lunar New Year Proclamation, Councilor Haneke. Thank you. This is, as Lynn said, the Spring Festival Lunar New Year Celebration Proclamation. Now, therefore we the town council of the town of town of Amherst do hereby proclaim February 10th, 2024 as the beginning of the Spring Festival and urge all residents to join the 15 day celebration of the year of the year. The Spring Festival Lunar New Year Proclamation on February 17th with the celebration being 1030 am to 1pm at the Amherst Regional Middle School so that families may celebrate on New Year's, even New Year's Day. Thank you. We're going on to the second part of presentations and discussions. This is the town manager policy goals. We did the first three on the eighth and tonight we're doing climate action housing affordability and economic vitality. So, Anna, you have climate action. I do and my computer is being really slow. Give me one moment. Sorry. It's loading the goals. So, when we come to the climate action goals to give a bit of context, these are really created through the work of the climate action and adaptation resiliency plan and in collaboration with the climate action resilience energy and climate action committee. Excuse me. I worked, I was there liaison two years ago and worked with them closely to come up with some goals that they felt were the priority areas for the carp from the carp plan. And really we're, we're trying to continue down that pathway that plan laid out a really clear set of objectives. And when we were able to zoom out a bit with this year's goals last year's goals we got really kind of into the weeds this year's goals we zoomed out a bit. So we talked about using a climate lens when making budgeting, construction repair, hiring and operational decisions. This looks like, are we always choosing the option that is going to fit our sustainability goals?  We are working the second goal complete the joint powers entity formation and implement implementation of the CCA upon approval. This is work with other communities on a, on a, my gosh, Paul help me out here on the, the community choice aggregation brain left my body focusing on how do we make sure that we are partnering with our communities and this one is been a long time in progress, but we're continuing to make, make progress on it. The third is supporting the development of climate action focused bylaws. So there were several bylaws brought forward in the past term that are in progress stills, for example, waste hauler. And we know that we have our solar bylaw on the horizon as well. So we've got several bylaws that are really in the climate action arena and we want to make sure that the town manager is supporting those as they move through. Number four was, was a critical one. There are currently a lot of different funding opportunities for sustainability initiatives and putting this goal in was our way of saying that we expect Amherst to be taking full opportunity of those of that available funding through things like the inflation reduction act, etc, etc. And then lastly, to kind of cover all of the bases, the, the carp provided that roadmap through fiscal year 25, and we're getting close to fiscal year 25, aren't we? So we've got plenty to do and there's specific actions that are outlined in that plan and instead of going through and listing them individually, we are setting a goal for the town manager to take action on those items. Happy to take any questions. Thank you. Are there questions or comments on this particular goal? Mandy Joe. It's, it's more of a comment about item number three, as it relates as we go on to housing affordability and, and staff time basically, which is item number three, when those bylaws are zoning bylaws. The support, the development of climate focused climate action focused bylaws come from or require staff time from the planning department as well as in the next conversation when we get to housing affordability after economic development. Those do too. And so I think when we're thinking about maybe at the retreat, if we're looking at staff time and, and how to prioritize that it's not always going to be easily easy conversations within each policy goal, because some of those goals in terms of staff time overlap. Fine. I should raise my hand. I also want to mention that there was a hearing today on the community, community choice aggregated aggregation. Yeah, no, I know that one. Thank you. And both Stephanie, Chickarella and Mindy Dom testified. Is there anything else Paul regarding that? No, I mean, the public hearing for all the projects took total 17 minutes, I think. Right. Very efficient. Efficient or perhaps pro forma. Are there any other questions or comments with regard to this goal and the sub goals? Just one more thing I wanted to say is that one of the things about climate action work is that it really does umbrella over many, many other goal areas and so while this may seem to some folks light please know that this is that climate lens goal means that everything else is always going to be considering it as we move through every other goal as well. And we might also note that 10 of us who counselors who attended MMA Massachusetts municipal association meeting this past week that they have actually said that this is a year they will be focusing on climate action and legislation with regard to climate action. Kathy. But you just said it's not to say anything specific about this goal but Mandy's comment about it overlapping. There are opportunities as pointed out here to bring in federal and state money when we invest. So it's a different kind of capital decision for us, because we have to put the money out first then we get money back. The staff is now looking at the extent to which we can get that back so I know Paul's well aware of this is just keeping staff focused in a way that the net yield is highest for us will be something that we also need to be thinking of when we're doing an investment. It's a different kind of investment if you buy solar panels when you get 30 as much as 30% of the money back. So it's a it changes the equation on some of this and Mandy, you know, overlaps with affordable housing that to the extent over in another arm, we're doing energy efficiency and affordable housing units. There's potential money for it. So this is a goal that overlaps a lot of our other goals. There's a double equity lens of where low income people live that they cannot always afford to make their homes more energy efficient or their apartments. So, so I think it's a, it's overworking in many ways. Okay, thank you very much. Any other further comments on the climate action goal. Okay, then we're going to move on to housing affordability counselor Hanneke. Yeah, so a little bit of history is this as we were doing town town manager goals one of the things about this policy goal is it comes about in some sense from the council having passed in the first in its first term a comprehensive housing policy that housing policy had five major goals. Those were to promote greater pathways to home ownership and integrated communities through increased supply of a diversity of housing types to increase supply and a variety of affordable housing and market rate rental housing to create update and secure and environmentally healthy housing to address climate action, address climate sustainability and resiliency of the housing stock, the location and construction and to align and leverage more municipal fund funding and other resources to support affordable housing. Those were the goals of our comprehensive housing policy. So when it when this goal starts with to increase and ensure it as set forth in the comprehensive housing policy that's what it is the six sub goals that we have here attempt to address a number of the housing policy goals, sub goals to and five generally relate to the first housing policy goal about home ownership and diversity of housing types. And sub goals three and four generally relate to the second comprehensive housing policy goal of increasing supply and variety of affordable and market market rate rental housing and increase and sub goals one and six relate generally to housing policy conferences housing policy goal number five, which is to align and leverage municipal funding. And you'll notice that I didn't mention three of the housing policy, two of the housing policy goals, housing policy goals, three and four which is regarding safe and secure and healthy housing and climate sustainability and that's because the safe and secure housing is that policy goal is generally covered by the rental registration policy goal in the town manager's goals. And the climate sustainability and resiliency as we just discussed is generally covered within the climate action town manager policy goals so they're not generally set forth within the housing affordability goals. Many of the year this year's goals, particularly goals two, three, four and five those sub goals all start with proposed measures, which means that given staff time, we might in the future need to as a council and have a robust discussion and potential vote on our priorities within these town manager goals so that the town manager has an idea of where he should focus his staff time because there's a lot of time that goes into proposing measures. But I also wanted to say the reason we have so many proposed measures is because in years past the town council has seen that a lot of the staff focus and the managers focus has been on supporting projects that have been proposed. And the council wanted to ensure that there was a twin focus of not just supporting projects that outside agencies are proposing but that we are also focused on creating the opportunities for those projects to be proposed through modifying our zoning bylaws or proposing other policies and stuff like that and so that's one of the reasons we as a council in this last town manager goal document went to propose measures to make it clear we needed to focus on both sides of the issue. Okay. George you have your hand up for questions or comments. I think probably more comment and perhaps it would be something best suited for the retreat. I heard what Mandy said about the need for us to perhaps as a council define clear set of priorities if possible, because this seems like one of those maps that could take you anywhere. And I think we need to give the town manager a better sense of what more concretely we'd like him to be focusing on. There's the language is just too vague too broad and I hope we can as a council perhaps sharpen some of this and give Paul better sense of what we would like him to do over the next year related to housing. Because what I see here, if I were Paul I really wouldn't know what exactly I'm supposed to do. And maybe that's not fair and perhaps we could talk about this at the retreat anyway I'd like the retreat to be a place where we housing and our priorities for housing would be discussed. Thank you, Kathy. I'm going to echo what George said because one of my comments on the skulls is just an emmerced home. This is a date one problem. It's no problem. And now I can add on. I'm actually in Australia where they're now, they no longer talk about monthly rent. They talk about weekly rent at over $600 a week. So this is an international and so there's some limits within the town of emmerced and what we can do so I think this notion of, of focus on this on where we can get the most out of our scarce resources. The compounding problem as we've raised several times in the council is that UMass's provision of dorm space on campus doesn't match the growth, even if they do house a lot of students compared to other universities. We're in a very small town so that puts pressure on a market where when I campaigned the first year. There used to be lots of new professors in town, living in the house that now I was knocking on the door it was a student house, you know that those starter homes had just disappeared because of the need to have students and that's a specific pressure that the town of emmerced has. And so I just think in the retreat as George said I think it's not to spread our staff to thin but to focus on things that we think are doable that would yield the most is is a wise approach. Jennifer. Yeah, I also think so like let's take number two under housing affordability. You could almost have sub bullets under that I mean I don't think these are all separate tasks that we're asking staff to address so as we propose measures to increase the diversity of housing stock available to all residents. Be mindful of that those measures address and increase the availability of attainable rental housing to residents and that they also, you know have the overarching goal of stabilizing housing for long term residents. So I see them being very much interrelated that as you know in in proposing measures under number two, it should include addressing what we're just what we're targeting under 34 and five as well. George. Okay, are there any other comments. Again, the town manager is working with the staff on the goals that we have given him, and they are going to come back with information that will help inform, if you will, our choices. I also need to inform you that we put out several dates as you know for the retreat and we already know that none of them work. So we are going to have to start over again. So I was saving that for later on but I figured I might as well say it now. Okay, so I took on the economic development or economic vitality one and in doing so wanted to go back and I looked at the past two or three years. So the first one which is a well lead in sentences to ensure the present and future economic health and well being of the town. First one is to work closely with local institutions and business entities to promote diverse neighborhoods affordable housing, new growth in downtown and village centers. This was included in fact in 2023 goals and prior to that but for this year we split it into two sub goals. The first is the one I just read and then number two is the other part of it. I will say that this goal is specifically consistent with the match master plan and I believe it's consistent with the count comprehensive housing policy. The other part of that goal that is was split was to review and revise town regulations to reduce barriers to operating a business in Amherst. This is a long standing issue with the goal of addressing Amherst reputation for being a hard place to start a business. And that continues to be a goal that we the council has made note of over a period of time and there have been several efforts made we continue to watch and listen for additional efforts. The third is proposed revisions to zoning bylaws to increase and support economic development throughout the town. This was also included in 2023. And it one of the most recent examples of this bylaw although it actually goes back to 2021 was the zoning bylaw article 12 definitions in article three use regulations section 3.325 mixed use buildings. And we've seen the result of that where buildings are being built with a commercial level on the lowest floor and then apartments above. The fourth one was added this year and its review and revise policies to support increased year round population in town. This was added with the recognition that with the growing number of rentals we're particularly rentals by bedroom. We are losing housing options for our year round residents excluding them from the ability to live in town. And with that I'm going to ask if there's any questions or comments. Anna. I hope I think I had a bit of a reality check when I was reading these in light of the incoming vacancy in the business improvement district because I do think that we've leaned heavily on our bid and our chamber in the lack of our own economic development director for a number of years. I hope that the number two here review and revise town regulations to reduce barriers to operating business. I hope that that's not simply an internal review and I would like to see that include some sort of outreach with with surveying or some sort of outreach to local businesses in order to get feedback on it. I think what I'm stuck on is ideally this would be the job of an economic development director and because we don't have one we're asking you to do it. And I know that it's not realistic to say we should hire an economic development director right now. So I feel a bit torn in terms of I still want that to happen. I still think it's really important and I recognize that this is not something that normally would be in the purview of the town manager. So I'm happy to hear, you know, if you have thoughts on how this might be delegated in some way without adding to already heaping full plates. But I do think that that is a priority in terms of the economic vitality here is to get feedback from our local businesses. Did you want to come on Paul? Sure, I think with met all of these. It's going to be an issue of staff capacity and clearly we don't have an economic development director. We do not have funds for an economic development director. We made it policy choice several years ago to go to hire a director instead of an economic development director. That was a good choice. There will be a vacancy in the business improvement district executive director who did carry a heavy load in terms of managing the downtown area in particular. But I think, you know, we will be reviewing all these goals of the council with our staff in terms of what we can actually accomplish. And I want to establish a real reality check with the council on what and what we can accomplish and when. So there's some things that we won't be able to accomplish before July 1. There's some things that we will have, you know, we know we'll have more capacity in the second half of the calendar year. So you'll have a little bit more predictability. And if there are things that are going to be hard to accomplish, I want to be clear about that with you as well early on. Because, you know, many when you look at these, you know that many of them fall on inspection services and in the planning department. And they have major, they have several major, you know, hundreds of millions of dollar projects coming into their offices right now through Amherst college and the library and the school. And a lot of other like three different major apartment projects are being proposed. So I think all those things taken into, they have to respond to those applications, which makes it, it's going to stretch them. And we know from last year with rental registration how long any of these major initiatives take. They take a lot of time and effort by the council, by the public and by staff. So I just think we have to, that's why I think I'm really looking forward to the retreat. It's the retreat is going to be very, very important because I think you will be sort of grappling with where is your highest priority on these things. And, you know, some of them, you know, like the business temperature type survey that could be something that we contract out to do. We do have funds under the strategic partnership agreement with the university to look at some of these things. So that's the thing that we can contract with or engage graduate students or something like that to do. That would be great. Thank you. Thank you. George, I'm sorry, Councillor Ryan. Whatever. This is, I hate to end on a downer, but this one is a downer for me. It seems to me that, that this goal, economic vitality is what drives all the others. If we don't have a flourishing and economically vital town, we can't accomplish our climate action goals. We can't accomplish our housing affordability goals. We can't accomplish our major capital investments, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So once again, this gets, this is a can that gets kicked down the road. And so that's frustrating to me. I guess we'll have a, hopefully have a frank discussion during the retreat, but this is one that I feel needs a lot of attention. We just lost the big director by default. She became the kind of economic development person for the town. So that position is simply vacant. I think there's a lot of thinking we need to do. We're looking at a tax increase in the next couple of years related to the school that's going to hit everybody really hard. We've all agreed as a town to do this and that's great. But how are we going to pay for it? So I would like us to give a lot more attention to economic vitality. And again, I guess it's something we can talk about at the retreat. But I just hate the sound of that can Kathy. I was glad Paul brought up there are other ways of getting feedback than just on a staff back, because I think what I would add to the word on regulations. It's regulations and either and practices or and processes, you know, that it's a way we implement things. So, so, so George, you know, on the economic vitality, the last sentence year round population, if you watch what happens up in North Amherst. When UMass is in session, the coffee shop has people in it. When UMass is not in session, the coffee shop doesn't have, and we've got businesses that have said, how do I run a six month restaurant or seven month I have 12 months of rent. You know, so there's this there's this interaction of where we were continually around 40,000 people but the mix of who those 40 has changed dramatically in the 40 years my family has been here. So, so it's just it's a it's a reality check when we talk about this at during the counter retreat because it's also a downtown business it's a small business phenomenon with Amazon with internet with malls and Hadley beat us to the starting line with malls, but partly because they've got this long stretch of route nine, and our route nine stretches Amherst College or big piece of it so I just think we need to think of what we can do, which, which is a big piece of you've heard from the public saying the state can be a big help here where we have gaps on road repair. We have a lot of people driving on our roads, who don't help contribute to paying for our roads. So just trying to think of that use of town services that because we have tax exempt properties doesn't filter into revenues for the town is a big piece of why we're in a, we're in a special place on some of this. So I had a question about how we would measure if the town manager is successful in promoting diverse neighborhoods. What exactly are diverse neighborhoods. That's an excellent question. And anybody who would like to venture into answering it is welcome to raise their hand. Mind you, you're going to take a stab at it. I'll take a stab at part of it. And, and when, and I'm going to take a stab at it through the lens of the comprehensive housing policy. When CRC back in the first term was discussing the comprehensive housing policy. And when it talks about in that policy diverse neighborhoods as it relates to housing. What that means is diverse in terms of the type of housing. So not just all single family homes or not just all apartment buildings, some mix of housing within a neighborhood, but also a mix. So a mix of type of housing but also a mix of the income levels that are in any particular neighborhoods. So not just all high income, not just all low income, but, but really a diverse set of incomes, a diverse set of peoples, a diverse set of types of housing. So if I extrapolated that to business, you could think of it as a dessert of diverse type of of housing plus business uses retail commercial office, all of that at at various levels. Okay. I think in that case, with the language as it is, I thought it would be better under number four, which is housing affordability. If we are speaking about diversity that includes business. Perhaps we could have something that would make it more accurate. If I may say so. Okay. If there are any other questions or comments, then we're doing very well. I hope we continue to do very well. I don't want to curse it. It is 745. We're going to take a 10 minute break. We're going to come back at 755 and go right on to the action items, the only one of which is the rules of procedure.  Thank you. When you come back, turn your video back on. This is your one minute warning. As you return, please put your video back on. Thank you. Pat, you're getting ready. I don't think you wanted to announce that. That's okay. Okay. That's a you need your camera on. Andy, you need your camera on. Okay, so we have before us tonight. Rule 4.6 rule five, all of it and rule six, all of it. Pat is going to continue to provide us with brief overviews of the discussion that took place. 4.6 is actually carried over from last time. And so the motion on the floor is to adopt amendments to the town council rules of procedure. Rule 4.6 with addition shown in red or green text and deletion shown in red or green strike through text on page nine to 10 on the mode of the motion sheet. Would you like to show that on the screen? I was wondering if we could get into five and six and come back to 4.6. Sure, because it just seems like the. That's fine. Pat, well, let's just start with five. And let me just start by putting the motion on the floor. It's to adopt amendments to count town town council rules or procedure. I'm going to split this into motion to rule five and then six. To adopt amendments to town town council rules or procedures rule five with addition shown in red or green text and deletion shown in red. Our green strike through text on pages 11. Through 14. On the motion sheet. Okay. Second. Thank you. The changes to find. I'm not sure what's happening. The changes to public participation and rule six public. Conduct. Really have been impacted by a decision by the supreme judicial court about a Southboro. Massachusetts issue that arose when a select board member. Stopped a woman from speaking. At a public meeting. And they. The supreme judicial court claimed that. Were supported the resident who claimed the select board unconstitutionally silenced her. And they found that the town civility code. Was an unconstitutional restriction of a resident speech. And this next piece is important and drove a lot of the changes that we made. The ruling also stated that while time place and manner restrictions for public comments are allowed. South boroughs public comment policy was over broad and vague. And so subject to manipulation on its face that it was not salve salve job bull. The court found that the resident had the right to express her views vehemently critically and personally to the government officials involved. And that we had. Advice through from KP law on making these revisions. And it's just really important. That we look at this and one of the things that's happened recently we created a flag policy before we needed one. And it worked. In terms of us being able to turn away. Would be flying things that would make Amherst uncomfortable. This in essence when we're looking at the language changes et cetera that we've made. It is again to protect the town. And to foster dialogue. That supports communication between residents and the council. And really helps us build some kind of collaborative. Community. So I'd like to go right to rule five. And you can see highlighted in red. The change. The first thing I'll say though is the charter section 2.6 blah blah in blue. Anywhere where we did not have charter sections listed they have been listed and they're in blue. So those are part of the amendments as well. And the basically we went from regular meeting to changing the title to public comment at meetings. And we added an additional sentence special meetings of the town council may provide a period of public comment. But are not required to do that. Now that is special meetings. Okay. Then we went if you go to 5.1 a you can see what we've removed. And we clarified that a little bit more so that it now reads public comments shall be on matters within the jurisdiction of the council. Be made in a peaceable manner and comply with the First Amendment of the United States. The one word that the Supreme Judicial Court and KP law told us over and over again we cannot use is civility. So the KP law came up with peaceable and that seems like a reasonable request. And then if we go to 5.1 B. We've added the word individual. The length of individual public comment up to three minutes and then as you go down to the bottom of B. You can see that we're allowing it depending on the number of people who wish to speak. We could have dropped we used to drop it to one minute. Now we're keeping it at two minutes. And let me see. And then another thing that had come up over time in public comment sessions was we started to get people yielding their time. And they began yielding their time to the same person which gave that person more opportunity to speak than others. So we began to address that in 5.1 C. That is one comment per person and the yielding of a comment time shall not be permitted. Then we went to the length of public comment periods and we have we have decided to set aside a maximum of 120 minutes. I had trouble with this initially. Some of us had proposed a reduction of public comment time to 35 minutes. We brought that to the council. It was quite controversial. And so I think that 120 minutes is an overreaction to that. But it doesn't mean but once it does we have a right as a council to end it after two hours. But we can go back to it if we wish. So that was the reason for that change. Let me see. In 5.1 E3 we took out non residents as well as residents and replace that with individuals. We care about what the public has to say. And if they're we sometimes give priority to people who are residents of Anna Hammers if there is a long enough list. We welcome all comments. And then F 5.1 E we changed to 5.1 F as we went down. So those markings I that's a silly one for me to have put in. Let me see. And the 5.1 H should should be 5.1. We've added written public comments received by the council via the online public comment form shall be uploaded to the council website by noon on the date. And we also adjusted in addition to the general public comment period near the beginning of a council meeting. We can allow additional comment periods. Let me see. Public hearing is in public hearings 5.2. We changed we added at by my majority vote to the second sentence at the end of line three in the beginning of line four. And then if we go to 5.7 down to simply we changed open meeting that open meeting requests as well as the relevant charter sections being added. We added the address for people to be able to send us public comment, which is the town council at Hammers mass dot go that was added. And those are the changes to rule five. So I guess I would love to hear any comments on those or any other input that people want to have about five. Okay. The motion has been made and seconded Pam Rooney. Thank you. I was I really appreciated all the changes that GOL initiated here and and the adoption of sort of the. Seems more equitable in terms of both calling things calling people individuals rather than residents I think that just makes it a broader broader more applicable approach. I did have I did have some thoughts about the yielding of time to someone else. I was channeling Jim Pistrang who would from time to time allow yielding of the floor to perhaps a resident from somewhere else or someone who had some authority or expertise on a particular topic to take you know take their slot. I think in this setting though it's it's pretty informal or not informal it's pretty intimate meaning you know we're face to face with these folks. So it's certainly not hard for someone to raise their own hand and ask for their own time. But I was just curious why you as a group decided that yielding itself just wasn't going to be allowed because it seems like there may be some opportunity maybe a limited yielding but not altogether done away with. Is that it gives unfair advantage to the person being yielded to if they've already spoken. And that was what we were experiencing. I don't know if there are other people on the committee Jennifer. Andy Joe myself Jennifer and Michelle where the committee members Jennifer. Yeah we did discuss whether we might allow one yielding you know and that's something we could discuss now. So it's just you know that I think that we were there had been an experience where someone had been yielded to multiple times. And so we to be equitable again we thought we should have a rule about that is up and not have it just be up to the presiding officer is a few lets one meeting somebody can yield three times and then the next meeting only allow it twice. But we could discuss whether we would want to give everyone one chance to yield. Mandy Joe do you have your hand up as a committee member. Yeah. Okay. Yeah so to expand on the equitableness it seemed unfair that if someone planned on this they could find if they had by family members that could attend or five friends that could attend and someone else only had one. Someone could engineer a way to make a public comment for 15 or 20 minutes themselves when someone else might only have the opportunity to do three under the rules and that didn't seem fair especially when we have no limit on the public comment box online or the emails they can be as long as anyone wants and so it thinking about how does someone potentially plan for that and if someone really wanted to plan for it, it could, it could get almost unreasonable to an extent. And so to make it equitable for all those that don't necessarily know our rules per se to those that do it felt at least to me that one no yielding was the fairest way to treat all people who came here to make a public comment. My apologies for not addressing you as counselor Hanna key as a member of GOL I would also say that we did not discuss the special situation that you're discussed that you mentioned happened in town meeting. I think what would happen here is that if it was an expert testifying with regard to a specific item on the agenda we would already add them to the agenda and otherwise they can register like anybody else. Okay, any further question on that one. Okay, George. Oh Kathy, you had a question on the issue of yielding. Yeah, I think. I think people are. You said yielding of comment time to a person who has already spoken shall not be permitted. So it's, it's bringing. So, so we're getting at that somehow. One person gets this long. It's just a shielding of comment time so I don't know whether that helps. I read it as meaning that, but it doesn't say that. But you could yield. If you don't say if you say what you said, somebody could yield their time to somebody else and then that person could say, oh and by the way I've also registered so now they're speaking for six minutes. So, yielding in general, takes care of not doing that.  Another three is what is this, you know, or I, I use a 10 seconds of it and give you two. Okay, I would read it. This way. Okay, thanks. Yep. Yeah, and it does very purposefully say that everyone has one chance to speak. Yeah. Okay. Are there any comment further comments on this wave your hand if you have your hand up. Yes, counselor Lord. Yes, I just really quickly wanted to say I appreciate the word civil and such references being removed from this document. Historically that word has been used as a tool of dehumanization and weaponized in the genocide of the socialist land and impacted historically in present day. People that are so with sociocultural locations that are other or marginalized, because it's one of those objective who defines it and who is impacted by it so I appreciate that our law firm is leading the way in saying we got to take that out of it. Thank you. Thank you, George. I do appreciate what jail has done here trying to balance the desire of the council to do its work, but also with I think a very important right of people to come and address their elected leaders. And so I think this strikes a good balance. I have a quick question about five one a. And I'm just wondering, just convince me and it probably only take a minute but convince me that it shouldn't just stop after within the jurisdiction of the council period. Convince me. I'm not I imagine if I'm a presiding officer, how the second two items, I would enforce them. And especially the third one, comply with the First Amendment. I just not maybe it just needs to be clarified for me. That's a KP law. Well, that's great for them. But I just think the first state just public comments should be on matters within the jurisdiction of the council. So somebody starts talking about Bill Belichick and what a great coach he is the presiding officer could say that's out of order end of discussion. But in terms of me determining what's peaceable or anything else or comply with the First Amendment in the United States. I'm not a lawyer. I wouldn't have the slightest idea what to do with the third one. And the second one, I have deep sympathy, but I don't, you know, I think we also have some discussion later about conduct where that might play a role here. So I just just have somebody help me understand why those two causes are necessary at five one a. And maybe Joe, did you want to comment? Yeah, you do. I'm sorry, Councilor Hanna key. Do you want to comment? Unless, unless Pat would like to go first. So two things. When GOL was discussing, we had had civility in there and some other things about public comment and, and, you know, similar things to the Southboro case. The, what is the Southboro case. The Southboro case is the one that Pat described earlier about the, the first, the Supreme Judicial Court coming in with, you could restrict to time place manner and peaceable was one of the words they use so I'll get back to peaceable. But in the first amendment, we were thinking about things like your, the first amendment allows or has some restrictions on what can be said in regulated think about yelling fire in a room when there's not a fire. So, one of the reasons GOL put that in there was there are some restrictions that we are allowed to have under the first amendment in our public comment. And so we wanted to make sure that was included in our rules. Very few, but a few. Peaceable as I said the Supreme Judicial Court used the word in a peaceable manner that's allowed under our state constitution to regulate public comment periods in peaceable manners. Unfortunately, in using that word, it appears that the SJC, the Supreme Judicial Court never defined what peaceable is, but we put it in there, because it is allowed to be able to stop public comment. If it becomes unpeaceable. And so we, we, we. You know, and so if we're allowed to regulate peaceable, GOL felt it should be in the rules because the rules are what govern how we run public comment and we were trying to gather what we can regulate I will. When we get to rule six, I'll explain the difference or Pat will explain the difference between this public comment at meetings in rule 5.1 and audience conduct at meetings in 6.2. They are actually two different parts of meetings and regulating different parts of meetings. Right now, rule five, 5.1 is talking only about what happens during the public comment period. I also want to say that this is in response to a case in Southboro, Massachusetts, not for public comment here at Amherst, but we've had to modify what our rules say to fit in with that, that kind of ruling, because we were asking for civility. The other thing that's critically important in this is a consistent applying of the rules. And we have seen over time inconsistencies. And so we are trying not just with the public but for ourselves for any chair of any committee or the council to really be consistent in terms of how rules are applied. And I think that's pretty important actually. Do you have more George? George? I'm not persuaded, but that's all right. I may be the only one, and that's fine. Maybe when we get down to 6.2, I'll see the difference, but it seems like it's covered in 6.2. And here, I'm probably the presiding officer. Yeah, I probably have some sense of what's not peaceable, but I still don't know what comply with the First Amendment of the United States meets. Unless somebody wants to hand me a booklet that I'll have handy, I just don't see what the point is here. I think it could just be public comment shall be on matters within the jurisdiction of the council. I'd like to hear some other folks because maybe I'm alone in here and that's fine. I would just shut up, which is not a bad thing. But if I'm the only voice that is then we'll just let it go. Andy, did you have a comment? Actually, my comment was on a different subject, but I think that the Southboro case was structured around the First Amendment. And as a consequence, it is an underlying principle that is behind that decision and free speech is essentially what it's about. So it is somewhat open, but the First Amendment is a very broad open question that allows people to challenge governmental actions that influence upon free speech. I think that we can't get ahead of courts either federal or state. And that's why we're where we are. I'll say about their comment until we're on to pass this one.  I do. Thank you. In terms of what George just mentioned, the topic number letter a is the content of public comment. And so actually the phrase be made in a peaceful manner is not content. It is more how it's delivered. And perhaps that should go to the code of conduct section because like I just said, it's actually not the content. I'm going to suggest however the first the complying with the First Amendment, I think is content that falls within that jurisdiction. I'm going to suggest that unless we're ready to make a motion on this one, we hold off any further until we go to six and then we'll come back to this. We can just leave five on the table.  I think I just want to, you know, go back to what Pat said, I think peaceable speaks to in the content of your speech. You can't threaten bodily harm. I'm going to also comment that I totally understand that legal advice is something that one can take or not take. Unless I thoroughly and completely object to legal advice given to me, I take it. Because those are the lawyers that are going to have to defend us. And I agree 100%, but I also feel like I need to understand what the advice is given. And so here I'm still kind of a little baffled as to what it is. But Andy makes a good point that perhaps it is there simply to reaffirm our commitment to the First Amendment and the First Amendment freedoms. And with that clarification, I think that that helps me. I still have an issue with peaceable, but we'll come back to it later. Okay.  Yes, the reason my hand was up was to talk for a second about 5.1. So the thing that can get the right section on the screen that I'm talking about. And what I'm particularly concerned about is that we missed on an issue that has to do with how public comment and meetings have changed. Since we first adopted our rules of procedure, and that is we now have meetings that are both zoom in in person. And so the register of persons wishing to comment process is actually two different processes that run simultaneously. And we have established a process for doing that is that is working pretty well using current electronic technology we use zoom raise hand you might not want to use that exact terminology. But it seems to me that we need to do something that actually recognizes within the recognition piece that there are two different ways that we are recognizing people. And there are two different ways that, depending upon how they're seeking recognition, whether in person, or by participation, virtually, that we are putting them on lists. And we need to make sure that we are addressing both of them. And I thought about this also from the perspective that we have a problem that comes in zoom that we say, this is the end. If you don't raise your hand now, we are not assuring you that we will recognize you later. But it seems it seems harder to enforce that because people don't have to physically get up and do something go to Athena and sign up they just raise their hand and that's happening. We're frequently in meetings and putting the chair for the president in an awkward position. So, I think that it would be a mistake to try and draft a change to this rule. Here on the floor of town meeting or to council or other excuse me that town meeting council, but it would be maybe advisable to ask to come back and consider whether that kind of a change might be appropriate. Athena what Pat would like to know what you think about the issue of people adding their names after about the fact that we collect names in two different ways. One is if you're in the room, they come up and sign up with you. The other is that I ask or the presiding officer asks people to raise their hand if they're on zoom. We've considered both of those methods on the register. So I don't see that there's been an issue about it in the past. Except that this says prior to the start of the meeting. We just haven't enforced it that way. It's it's available prior to the start of the meeting. It's not saying that it's not available after the meeting begins. Oh, maybe available. Okay. Okay. So you're suggesting that Athena that by my by the presiding officer asking. Please raise your hand. They are in fact now on the record as requesting to be part of public comment. On zoom on zoom. Yeah. Yeah, that we've been considering the list of folks that their hand up on zoom as being on the register. It's kind of how we've been treating it. And I don't think that we've run into problems that way. Sometimes people raise their hand and then put it down, but folks do the same thing here in the town room. We've heard, you know, I've called on someone and they've changed their mind and not want to just speak and I don't see an issue. Okay.  Hardly. I guess that I still feel like we have created the awkwardness that comes up. In public comment. Excuse me, we have a kind of something that happens when. People are on zoom that does not happen. In the room and that is people continuing to raise hands as public comment goes on so that you've said. We will recognize. The length of the list and then the list keeps growing. And it's a different practice and just that it takes place in zoom and takes place in the room. And I don't think we've really had a discussion about that. But as I said, I'm not going to propose anything on this one. So I will lower my hand. Jennifer, our Kathy, did you have a comment on this one? I just think Andy's right. I mean, this, this wording conveys a register. You know, to say in practice, we don't do it that way. We're, we're, we're wordsmithing throughout these, the out these rules to try to be clear. So, I'm not sure the exact wording but shall recognize individual, it's even register first hour. The first is the clerk, the clerk's not going to have someone registering by June. So I think saying may recognize individuals who have indicated a willingness to speak on zoom or who have registered with a preference given to residents you don't. We don't even do a preference given to residents you're not. You're not saying I'm sorry you're not a resident out to go. I don't mind not solving it tonight, but we're wordsmithing other places to make it clear that there's some process in which you indicate you would like to speak and registering by raising your hand is very different than registering with the clerk. Jennifer. So when it goes back to GOL, I don't know if there's a way to address. What's also awkward on zoom is that people in the audience, they can't they don't know that other hands are raised or how many. So I'm just thinking if you join the meeting a little late and you, you raise your hand that you don't know that it's the hands are already down. Yeah. That's why I said maybe we can't fix it now, but this has come up and it's a very different problem. Yeah, I was going to say I'm really young. I always get uncomfortable when we cut off and the public comment after a certain name because people don't know where they are on the list. And I think that, you know, this does seem to slightly address it if we're doing the fast math of how many people it takes to get to 100. I guess it's not that fast of math, but y'all saw my numbers earlier. So I think if we do the math of how long it takes to get to however many minutes we established in here, we can sort of do it that way, but I really do struggle with the ability or the inability of zoom to see where people stand. And if someone happens to join a little bit later, getting cut out of public comment for me feels feels a bit rough. So I think anything we can do to mitigate mitigate that I would love to see. I appreciate this conversation having been the person that's had to cut off people and make them add. I'm going to suggest that we try not to mess with this in this meeting, we pass it the way it is, and that GOL at in it in during this year take another look at it. Okay, may I ask a question. May I ask a question please. So the way the amendments to this rule are written now is that the public comment period has up to 120 minutes. And it says individuals not on the register which we consider either signing up here in person or raising their hand on zoom may be recognized if time allows. So we haven't reached 120 minutes then people may be recognized is I'm trying to understand what the what the problem is that we're looking to solve. I, I think what people are trying to, I, I think it's more complicated and I think it requires more discussion in GOL, I do, I appreciate your saying what are we trying to solve. I will tell you what I'm trying to solve. And that is 10 people are in the audience 10 people are in on zoom. We now have 20 people and I say okay I'm going to restrict people to two minutes, and then 10 more people raise their hands. And we're still within whatever eight. There's a point at which we're trying to create a opportunity for public comment, yet preserve the time of the council to have their meeting. It's a complicated issue. But at this point, I don't think there's much we can do to this sitting here tonight. Okay. Is there any other comment on that. Are people ready to vote on five or do you want to put it on the table and come back. After we look at six. I'm going to go ahead with a vote. Okay. Yes. What would you like to say well I when I when I hear this discussion, my concern about 120 minutes two hours of public comment begins to feel excessive unless there were some major event going on and then we would probably hold a special meeting. I really feel like if we're going to be holding to 120 minutes then then anybody who can speak during the first two hours of public comment I have a right to speak. And you know I kind of put away that kind of uncomfortableness but it's back when I hear this discussion. I don't see that there has been a problem with the clerk keeping a physical register in the room and keeping track of the people who have raised their hand on zoom. It's been working very easily and simply I can only really remember one time and I could be wrong about that where that you had to say Lynn. I am not going if you don't raise your hand now. And you set a limit and you stuck to it. But but I can only remember one time so again I'm starting to feel like we're making things more complicated than we have to do. OK. Are there any other comments on this. George. So it sounds like GOL is going to revisit this and and may come to the conclusion that that Pat has come to an Athena suggesting that it's really working fine. We don't need to do anything but it will go to GOL and they'll have that discussion. Yes. I just wanted to clarify my own mind and I apologize to everyone else but my concern about the earlier language. My understanding is peace peaceable is that the right word is there because essentially if someone threatens bodily harm then that's what that means. OK. And the second issue has to do with free speech and Andy's point is it's there because it's acknowledging our commitment to that principle. And it's somewhat abstract and but that's important. So if I understand it correctly and it sounds like people are nodding that I do then I can certainly support this. OK. Thank you George. Are there any other comments. OK. So the motion the way I read it is as follows to adopt amendments to Town Council rules rule rule rules of procedure rule five with the addition shown in red or green text and deletion shown in red or green strike through text on pages 11 to 14 of the motion sheet. That motion was made and seconded. I'm moving to a vote on a Devlin got here. Aye. That's a. Aye. Lynn Griezmer is an aye. Councillor Hanna. Aye. Bob Hagner. I don't know. Can you hear me. Yes we can. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Aye. Thank you. Councillor Lord. Lord. Aye. I didn't hear you. Councillor Lord. Oh. Sorry about that. I said Lord. Aye. Aye. Thank you. Pam Maroney. Yes. Councillor Ryan. Aye. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Aye. Jennifer Todd. Yes. Councillor Walker is absent. And Pat Dantzels. Aye. It's unanimous with 12 Councillors voting in favor and one absent. I move on to the next motion which is to adopt amendments to the town council rules of procedure rule six with additions shown in red or green text and deletions shown in red or green strike through text on pages. 15 to 17. I'm sorry 15 to 18. Is there a second. Second. Thank you. Okay. Pat, did you want to. Yes. Please. I do want to say while that's happening we had a resident come to the GOL meeting to talk about code of conduct. And she made several really strong suggestions. You'll notice as we go through there's a whole section on councilor comments that is now at the very top of the code of conduct. And that's what she was saying. She was saying that the public and everyone else and what she was saying is the council is the example that we set how people engage with each other. So she felt very strongly that we should be first in terms of code of conduct. And also that it includes any speaker that's invited into the council. So that was why in 6.1 you see that change. You also see at the very beginning. A new statement. And the statement about cell phones and other devices. Actually appeared later. In the original rule 6. So. Did you want to add anything in general about this? I did just raise my hand to do that. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Raise their hand. No, when you're ready. Go ahead. Um, so. So originally, well, the current rule has 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3 and 6.1 were general rules. Um, 6.2. Um, was public civility and engagement. It was called and 6.3 was counselor conduct. Um, and as, um, Pat stated. 6.1 and 6.3 were very similar. And so they actually just got combined into 6.1 in a sense. Um, and it applies to essentially everyone. If you think of zoom as having an audience and panelists, you can apply to anyone in the panelists section. Now, if we're not in zoom, it would apply to anyone that is invited to speak an expert. Um, our manager, our clerk, any of the town staff that's here to make a presentation or someone else. Um, because that is not an open. Public comment period. We are allowed to regulate things like civility. Of the participants. So 6.1 you'll see has some civility regulations in it, but it's because we're not in that. Public comment. Public commenting part. Um, so I wanted to make that clear. 6.2 where it had public civility engagement is really where we had some issues with that south borough decision. Talking about civility and all. Um, what GOL tried to do in 6.2 is say. 6.2 is talking about the audience during our meeting, but has nothing to do with someone coming up to make a public comment. We're talking about people who are sitting. If we're in a room in the audience. Um, or in the audience section of zoom. And the behavior during sort of the non. It's hard to say non public, non public participation section of the meeting, you know, and so can they have signs? Can they make noise? What, what are we doing there? Um, and so that's what 6.2 is attempting to do. We tried to remove from that rule anything related to public comments. So you'll see. Or any rules related to public comment. So you'll see in 6.2 be that parent parenthetical that says for the public comment rules, go to rule 5. Because that's where you'll find if you're going to make a public comment, what the rules related to public comment are, but this is basically trying to say, if you're sitting in an audience, here's things you can do. Here's things you can't do. You cannot disrupt a meeting. If you're disrupting a meeting. The presiding officer has the right to call a recess to get the meeting back under control, things like that. So I think that explains those two. Yeah. So that's why you see 6.3 completely deleted. Most of that was moved up to 6.1. Thank you. Yeah, please. No, no. Many just just explained why we can still allow it. Because it's our participation. As we relate to one another, not the public during a public comment period, we can say I'm, I must be like, I must be polite to you. Okay. So the floor is open for questions and comments on this section. Andy.  Okay, Andy. Okay. I need to switch to my, I guess my one comment was about. Six point I'm making sure that I have the numbers right on this. Six point one app. Participants shall hold shall not hold private conversations during council meetings. I am wondering whether I should make a offering amendment that would say add or communicate with other counselors. That would be very specific to the public by text, phone, email, or other means. So you're making this as an amendment. I am offering it as an amendment so that it can open it up for discussion and that would be very specific. So the words would be during council meetings. Private conversations. I'll not hold private conversations after conversations or communicate with other counselors or the public by text, phone, email, or other means. I second that. And the reason is that I think that if we are trying to not hold private conversations where I'm sitting next to pass, and I can consult with her and get her input on whether or not to take a position or how to vote or get lobbied on something, that if the goal is that each of us once at a meeting are following a process of listening to the discussion that is taking place at the meeting and the public comment has been offered through appropriate means prior to the discussion taking place at the meeting, including during the public comment period at the beginning, that we ought to not view communications then taking place by means other than my leaning over to Pat and whispering to her, but also using going to George with the text and texting George and say, this is crazy. Do you think I should do this? I mean, it really is the same thing. And that's why I offered the amendment. Okay. The beginning of rule 6.1 f states participants shall not hold private conversations. Participants includes other staff members that might have been voted or included in this meeting includes our town manager includes our clerk. When you add the phrase that Andy just suggested we add. That means that staff member that is a participant in our meeting has no ability during the portions of the meeting that they are not truly a participant in but are here waiting for us to get to their item may not catch up on their email. May not use the time what I would call wisely while they're waiting for us for an hour and a half to get to agenda item 4 that there are eight C or whatever. Private conversations in my mind include the text that Andy just referenced that might go to counselor Ryan. That's a private conversation that they're having. So maybe this could be better worded for what we're trying to get at but I don't think prohibiting all communications with other counselors or the public by text phone email or other means by all participants in a meeting when many participants are even though they're technically a participant for the whole meeting really are only there for a portion of a meeting. I think that's a little too far to and beyond what the rule is aiming to get at which is that I should not be texting counselor Ryan or leaning over and having a five minute conversation with counselor Ryan that's off Mike. Could we try the following participants while actively engaged in a meeting comma shall not hold private conversations etc etc. You'd like me to say it again. Yeah participants well actively engaged in an agenda item in a discussion shall not hold private conversations or communicate with counselors or the public by text phone or other means during council meetings. I have my hand up. Yeah. Oh I'm sorry. Go ahead please. Yeah. I think I would agree. We're reaching a little far here. I read that number F as part of how to have a smooth meeting without major interruption and fracas and I think I don't like my phone being on. I don't use it but I understand that there are opportunities where something you have to communicate with your loved one who's you know you forgot to do something at home. So I just I think this is in in light of you know keep it quiet. It should not be something that disturbs the flow of the meeting and I think that we really could just leave it at that. I don't think we need to further define it. Anna. I agree. I think that I think leaving it as not holding private conversations. I also believe that there are elements in open meeting law that address this exact issue that we have all signed in agreement with regarding use of cell phones and other devices to communicate with one another during public meetings and I'll have to revisit that and I don't know if Mandy is pulling it up right now to check me but okay sometimes you do that. I do think that having private conversations is a multimodal phrase and does not simply apply to spoken conversation. I'd also note that this in effect because participants I believe the way you explained it includes members of the public would limit the hours in which the council can receive public comment and I'm not comfortable with that because if we are specifying that they cannot engage with us if participants cannot engage via email during a meeting and we say that participants includes the public aren't we then saying that we're limiting public comment so I'm uncomfortable with that implication and I know that might be a weird rabbit hole that I went down with my logic but I think that the initial phrasing gets at the respectful element of this and the idea that we're a public body that shouldn't be deliberating privately during meetings. Kathy. Kathy. Yeah, I have no idea how to change this so maybe it stays here but the issue is the broad participants if we don't want counselors chit chatting with each other and exchanging it the word could be counselors you know if we've got 20 people in the room who are not in the conversation we're not going to tell them they can't silently be communicating we're not going to go confiscate cell phones so it's it's written to avoid the disruption it's written to you know for counselors who are on zoom we have no idea if someone is texting them emailing them to say vote the following way raise the following question we would hope not but we would certainly not want to have that be happening while we're actively in a meeting. So it's it's this broad wording is supposed to be broad wording and zoom opens up whole other box of worms in terms of whose voice are you hearing. So you're suggesting Kathy that the word participants would be changed to counselors. Yeah. Yeah so I think what was worried about is counselors. You know so but we've written it very broadly which means everyone who's there including a speaker who's just spoken to us who's now in the back talking with a staff member or something that we're going to see that they're texting and we if we if we write in this cell phone we see they're doing so that's we've written it very broadly understand why because the words above it are how we talk to each other and how we conduct each other so I'll stop there. Okay thank you. Jennifer. Actually I need to go back to Andy and then I'll go back to Jennifer. Sorry. I was thinking it was more fair to let Jennifer go since she's spoken yet. Oh. But Jennifer go ahead. I'm sorry I thought you had. I was just going to say I agree with Anna and Kathy that I think or if we want to change it to counselors shall not hold private conversations. But otherwise it's sounding a little big brotherish to me. Andy. Yeah I think first I'll go with Jennifer just said I agree that by having made a decision to try and mix it all together into one grouping that this is one where we have created a problem for ourselves. I do think that Kathy has raised point that I was really concerned about that I have had the suspicion that counselors in the course of a conversation had lobbied by somebody from outside but it could also happen within the council and have raised points offered amendments that were suggested not from their own analysis or by cause of a previous conversation or communication. It was communication that was taking place during the course of the meeting. That was really what was provoking my suggestion and so I certainly would want to go back to counselors but I also want to make it clear that that's what I was concerned about and recognize that there is an enforceability issue. It's even difficult to monitor as to whether there's anything to enforce when somebody is participating by Zoom because you really have been pretty well hired at then. So are you withdrawing your amendment, Andy? Yeah I was trying to decide. The cleanest thing would be to withdraw it and change and make a different amendment. Yeah I mean I would withdraw it but then reoffered with the word counselors at the beginning would be the way that we did it. You're going to withdraw. George do you agree to withdraw the amendment? I agree to withdraw. Okay Andy. And then I would move the same provision but changing also in addition to what I had proposed before changing it to counselors. So what do you want? How do you want it to read? Counselors shall not hold private conversations during council meetings. Period. I mean basically that means you shouldn't be talking privately. You shouldn't be on text. You shouldn't be on email. You shouldn't be or any other means. Or do you want to spell it out? I think I spell it. I'm sorry. Yeah I would probably use the same language that was in there before to make it clear that we are meeting communications with other counselors or the public by text or email or any other means. So I would. So the amendment is and we're looking for a second counselors shall not hold private conversations or communicate with other counselors by text communicate with other counselors or the public by text phone or by other means during council meetings. Period. That's the motion right? Yes. I have text, phone, email or other means. Text, phone, email or other means. Okay. And so now I'm looking for a second. I would second. Okay. Is there any further conversation? Anna. Yeah I just it still feels just so weirdly commanding and someone said the word big brothery and I agree with it. I still think not holding private conversations during council meetings is good. I also think the challenge with that I do have with this is that the enforce someone mentioned the enforceability for folks who are in person versus remote. I struggle. I think that setting it as a broad expectation that we agree to is a cleaner message and I don't support the amendment. George. Obviously I do support it. I think that it's simply reminding us all that when we are officially and when we are engaged in the business that we do on behalf of the public we have a special responsibility and part of that is not to engage inside conversations while we're conducting the public's business. So I like Andy specifying it and I realize that in some sense it's unenforceable at least on Zoom. It really is an appeal to the conscience that we all follow these guidelines and people may ignore it and we may be unable to enforce it. I mean for instance here I sometimes pull my phone up to check my calendar or sometimes even to check a Celtic score but I don't use it but how do you know right I could be talking to but generally speaking it's perhaps easier here but certainly on Zoom people can do what they wish. This is simply reminding them that this is not appropriate and they should not do it. Andy did you want to speak to your motion further before I go on to Pam Rooney and Pat? No. Okay. Pam Rooney. I would agree with Anna and what she just said it's I think it F now says we shall not hold or counselors shall not hold private conversations during council meetings. I think it covers all of the above bases and I think it's actually you know to our own code of ethics that we do stay focused on a meeting that's our job and I really don't want to get dictated to how in the hell to do it. Pat. Yes I've been I want to remind us that we're talking about only saying counselors but 6.1 is counselors, invited speakers, presenters and panelists during meetings. And so I think just saying counselors and I think that any panelists or presenter or anyone who's here shouldn't be holding private conversations I think it's fine without an amendment. So you're saying you would just leave it as participants and that covers counselors.  Right now there's an amendment on the floor that reads as follows. Counselors shall not hold private conversations or communicate with other counselors or the public by text, phone, email or by other means during council meetings. That motion has been made and seconded. We're going to bring it to a vote as soon as I find a place to record a vote. Okay. Okay. Ete. No. Lynn Griezmer is a no. Counselor Haneke. No. Bob Hegner. No. I'm live now. No. Thank you. Counselor Lord. No. Pam Rooney. No. Counselor Ryan. Aye. Kathy Shane. No. Andy Steinberg. Yes. Jennifer Todd. No. Pat DeAngels. No. Anna Delingotha. No. Okay. The motion fails. We are back to the original statement which says participants shall not hold private conversations during council meetings. Are there any other comments or questions about this section of the section six point of a code of rule six code of conduct. Yes. Ete. I was wondering if there's any mechanism for a kind of warning because what I see is that I think for six one a if disruptive conductor cause the presiding officer may call the recess. Is there anything before the recess or adjournment? I will speak just personally. I would try a warning but it does not state that it says if it's bad enough you could go to adjourn or call a recess. But I can't remember a time that we've actually ended a meeting. We may have called a recess once and there was a warning before that though. It's a good question and a good practice.  I answered my own question. It was a private conversation with myself. I hope that's okay. I did text myself but either way. Did you have your comment? I think the discussion that has been brought up especially with the fact that we have put a live and a virtual side. I was interested in the idea that there are some things that are not and not by those on Zoom and so something like a warning would be able to educate those who aren't here physically. It does say the presiding officer may call a recess. I suppose what you're suggesting is you would add may voice a warning comma call a recess comma or adjourn the meeting. I wasn't sure I was making a suggestion as much as pointing out that you would like to make sure that a warning is offered before you pull the plug. Yes perhaps. I think that's very appropriate. Are there other comments on rule 6? Seeing none I'm going to bring it to a vote and in this case we are voting for it without a vote. And so we're going to start with Lynn Griesper. I'm an aye. Councillor Haneke. Aye. Bob Hegner. Aye. Councillor Lord. Aye. Pam Maroney. Yes. Councillor Ryan. Aye. Anna Devlin-Gothier. Aye. And Ette.  Is that how you want to be called? Second thoughts, yes. I intended to send an email. Thank you. I will try to add that to your name. Councillor Ette. Are you an aye? Aye. It is unanimous with 12 people to speak to this. I don't have a lot to say. It is about the consent agenda. We were going to continue the discussion regarding an amendment proposed by Councillor Steinberg regarding items requiring a higher boat quantum. And we are going to continue the discussion regarding an amendment proposed by Councillor Steinberg regarding a higher boat quantum. And so that's my presentation. I'll have a comment to make in a minute. But I think Andy. Sorry. I took a moment. I was just trying to get to my notes on this. I've had a good conversation with Athena after the last meeting. And I think there's a recognition that this is really not likely to ever happen and something we really hope will never happen. Because if somebody's intending to vote no on an issue that is one of the provisions in the consent agenda that they're just going to vote, they're going to ask to have it removed and they're being encouraged. Our rule actually encourages them to remove it. And so that we're talking about something that is extremely unlikely to happen and we're trying very hard to encourage people to remove the item that concerns them so that it will never happen. But having said that, then you still get to the question that we have the committee proposing to add the language that if the passage is insufficient to meet the requirements of rule 9.4 for any item on the consent agenda, that item will have been deemed to have been approved and be voted separately and it struck me that then we put ourselves in that position that I was concerned about last time. And I think that which is that we are not I'm trying to find the problem is I have to find my own language on this that I It's on the screen. It seemed to me that we're that doesn't get it what is the best approach and I have given language we have a provision later in the rules that spells out what the requirements are for each of the provisions that is being included in the consent agenda and that what we really are after saying is that if the vote be insufficient to reach the threshold for any item in the consent agenda that that consent agenda item will be deemed to have not passed and can be voted on separately. So we're essentially removing it from the consent agenda the item that was creating the problem but not actually saying that the whole consent agenda fails. Lynn may I comment? Please. I disagree with that application of the rules. I think that if there were a failing vote on the consent agenda then the consent agenda fails. One item couldn't fail and others pass but that just doesn't make logical sense to me. Going back to the beginning why I raised this issue with GOL in the first place was because I put in a quantum of vote for every item on the motion sheet and I need a quantum of vote for the consent agenda and it made sense to me to make it the highest quantum of vote of any of the items on the consent agenda so that just made logical sense to me at the time. I think it's important to prevent items that need a higher vote quantum that the council would need to be very specific about either which items or whether it's a majority of councilors present in voting or standard majority seven votes that would be prevented or only allowed but having some things pass and some things fail within one vote of the consent agenda doesn't make sense to me. I agree with that but I don't right now we aren't really dealing with a motion. I just want to be clear there's no motion on the table and there's no second. I do not feel this is necessary. There is a motion to adopt on the floor. There is a motion to adopt amendments to town council rules or procedure rule 4.6 with additions shown in red through text on pages 9 to 10 of the motion sheet. There's no amendment on the table. Okay. I don't feel that amendment is necessary and for the following reasons first of all if you noted tonight I said if you plan to vote no on the consent agenda because there is one or more items that you do not agree with you should ask that that item be removed and we preface all consent agendas with that then any questionable item gets removed. The second is if there are quantum votes required and we feel that it is best therefore to have it separate and not on the consent agenda I think that we need to allow the clerk of the council and the presiding officer to have the wisdom to do that so that no time for example if you need nine votes and it's required that you need nine votes but you're only going to have eight counselors at a meeting therefore you can still have the meeting you wouldn't even frankly couldn't even put it on the agenda because you're not going to have enough votes on that agenda so I think it's not necessary that's my bottom line. Pam Rooney. Thank you. Two questions one is could consent agenda items be only those requiring majority vote that's the first question and then second can you can someone give two or three examples of of items that require more than a majority vote that typically show up on a consent agenda. There have been times when in a second reading on a bylaw where it seems to be of no controversy and changes have been made or not made or whatever we have actually put it on the consent agenda and it has passed with at least a unanimous vote of those present. I can only remember one council meeting where we had maybe ten people that's the lowest I can remember. So I can answer that just tonight we passed a consent agenda that required nine votes all appointments we make or that we approve from the manager of require nine votes. Thank you. The council did vote on some amendments to the rules last time. I know I'm sorry this amendment that GOL proposed it is only to include routine of a routine nature so I think by virtue of that change you wouldn't put bylaw changes or zoning changes on a consent agenda but in the past we have. Okay. Anna. Did you have anything for the comment? Okay. So I'm trying to this is making my head swim and generally I feel like I've got a pretty good grasp on things. Is there a reason why we can't change the last sentence of this of four point six if you scroll down a little bit from should to must and consent agenda vote is unanimous. I mean is there a reason why like we say we should but is there a reason why we can't just say must and just avoid this whole conversation and I think this is getting to I think Athena my question is do you need the vote quantum in the rules? Like do you need that part in the rules? Do I need a vote quantum? You needed to add the vote quantum for item. On the motion sheet I would include the vote quantum for each of the motions on the motion sheets the rules don't require that. Right. But I think if the council were to change an item from the consent agenda must be removed if the council wants to vote against the specific item what if they didn't and they voted no. Then I think the vote needs to be removed. I don't know I'm trying to think because this feels again like we're getting so deeply into the weeds unnecessarily that there's I don't know I'm getting challenged by this item. Kathy? I'm muted. I think I was getting at my concern about much ado about this because the first sentence says routine. So my concern has been that once or twice not very often we've put a big item on the consent agenda because it's non-controversial but it's still it just gets wished through and the public doesn't even know we've passed it. So if we get better about the same routine but if we if we are really changing a major bylaw or putting in place my example Pam is the vote it was a big change for the town. It wasn't controversial within the council but many people didn't even know we passed it so I think it's we all need to be watching what goes on the consent agenda and it's Lynn's judgment but we could easily say I want to remove this and since you don't have to give a reason why you just want to have the next discussion on the following change change is a big one. I like the word the notion of routine nature and later it's not necessarily non-controversial in town that one has been somewhat not necessarily on the council so Andy's concern that there might be two or three people who might not want something people should just remove it so I don't think this needs to be changed but I also don't think Athena's language needs to be added so I would have been happy with just the way we used to do it but I don't think her adding it hurts because it might lead Lynn or whoever's overseeing the meeting to say geez we only have eight people this one requires nine votes we can't put it on the agenda just paying attention to votes rule of procedure change even if we think most of our rules are kind of routine they're wordsmithing but our own rules so I wouldn't change this wording the way Andy's proposing at all so if someone screws up and I wouldn't require and on a requiring unanimity someone might want to abstain for reasons like I wasn't at the meetings when this was discussed I haven't read the minutes I don't know what I'm voting on so hopefully there wouldn't be so many extensions that we couldn't go through when we first started as a council we had a lot of extensions on minutes because people hadn't read them they felt they couldn't prove minutes they hadn't read thank you Pam Rooney thank you I am not sure why it's so critical that consent agenda has to be unanimously I don't think it matters as long as it meets the the vote count needed to pass the items on it I just wouldn't get too hung up on it Councillor Hannake so I think the current proposal to make sure we know what the vote quantum for passage is is wise and because we generally vote consent agendas that each individual item has different quantms because our charter has a whole lot of different quantms for different things and so do our rules we've created rules of procedure that require different quantms too I think it's very wise to say when we're combining all of these into one this is the one you're going to have to meet and because people can abstain from a consent agenda it's never know whether you're going to get there or not and so knowing what you have to meet and what that is I think is wise also for when our clerk might need to prove that something passed with the right quantum they can point to the rules they can point to all sorts of things and say this one did because otherwise it would not have passed and it would have been voted on later in the meeting I know it's not a proposed amendment right now but I don't think the language that Andy has talked about is wise mainly for the reasons our clerk said it doesn't seem logical to me to have a motion where portions where depending on how the vote goes portions pass and others don't that's very confusing a motion either passes or fails not half passes so if that motion to amend is made I could not support it Andy yes I was going to just for the sake of completing my prior statements since I found what I was drafted but I'm not going to offer what it said was if the vote for passages is sufficient to meet the requirements of rule 9 for any item on the consent agenda then that item shall have been deemed to not have been approved and maybe voted upon separately having clarified what the exact language I drafted after the last meeting was based upon the conversation tonight and Athena's points regarding the situation I think that it is the better choice not to offer an amendment and I will not do so okay the motion that's on the floor is to adopt amendments to the town council rules of procedure 4.6 with additions shown in red or green text and deletions shown in red or green strike-throughs text on page 9 to 10 of the motion sheet that motion was made at the last meeting it was seconded is the motion on the floor we're going to move to a vote on the second we are starting with councilor hannacky aye bob haggner aye councilor lord aye ham rooney yes councilor ryan aye kathy shane anna devlin gother aye councillor etay aye it is unanimous with 12 councillors voting in favor and one absent we are going to move on to let me find the right sheet sorry the appointments we're taking care of the only committee that has met thus far is CRC ham rooney was elected chair jennifer tov was elected vice chair do you have any report at this time you took half of the report congratulations to both of you of that the agenda for january 30 is to move forward on zba appointments and also to allow further discussion on the proposed rental registration bylaw regulations and fee structure to alert all councillors that I will send out the current zba interview questions which we have used for the past two years and would appreciate any input or changes recommendations by the end of the week on friday thank you okay none of the other committees have met they begin meeting tomorrow and we'll look forward to reports at our February 5th meeting we've already approved the minutes there is no written town managers report but paul is there anything you would like to say at this time sure I sent you an email about adding additional support for our finance team in the name of sandy pooler who will be coming back to the town he is now retired from being town manager of the town of arlington on an occasional base regular basis but part time basis to support the town council the town manager the finance team on a number of issues including capital planning the four capital projects you know financial projections and things like that and capital in general so we're really excited about having him come in we're still working on a signed contract which we expect to have in the next day or two so he'll be coming in tomorrow and so that's if you haven't met sandy you will have the opportunity to do that and people who have worked with him before know him as one of the most experienced and intelligent finance officers in the state municipal government he had been the town's finance director for five years from 2011 to 2016 so I also want to thank the members of the town council who were able to attend the mass municipal association annual meeting it's a big commitment of your time and I recognize that and I hope that the public recognizes that you've given multiple days of your week this week to dedicate to educating yourself about municipal affairs connecting with other local officials and just being preparing yourself to serve the town better it's I think the public doesn't often recognize the amount of time that you all put in and this is an important thing that you did and it's also I found it valuable the staff who attended were found it very valuable and I hope you did as well and the third thing and you'll hear more about this but I just want to sort of start letting you know about the amount of work that's going to be done during the spring as we begin construction at the east at the port river school southeast street is going to become pretty challenging there's going to be 800 truckloads of dirt taken out and brought in there's going to be realignment of the traffic patterns at the Fort River school and so we're working on some finalizing all the plans which we will then share out and do a lot of education for the parents the guardians the staff the general public people who commute to UMass to help alert people to that there are going to be challenges in terms of traveling through that section of the town of Amherst so that's it for me Kathy I forgot to ask if there was a school building committee report I can give that but I have two questions of Paul if I can ask them please go ahead so the first is well it's wonderful news about Sandy pooler and so it's linked to my first question which is JCPC usually starts meeting around the first week in February and I can understand what we are likely not to meet right that first week but just getting that schedule because we in the past have had to finish a report by the end of March you know so in terms of that sort of that window of time so it was a question on maybe once Sandy's on board we can alert people because we don't have a time slot either and my if I respond to that yeah so we have you know Athena's been on our finance team as well so we're working on that schedule for the for the JCP and we'll be looking forward to it I'll be polling for JCPC and BCG meeting dates very soon thank you you had another question my other question is extremely local the North Amherst library looks like it is could basically is almost ready to open it stores so I just have a question of do we have a I know we've had a discussion of a celebration for later in the spring so a lot of people could be there and out of doors but do you have a maybe time when it's going to be open I'm getting asked this by people who use the library yeah we're we're targeting the first week of February as the opening of the library not the community room and but and then you're right in the spring when the weather's better we'll have a grand event okay so the community room well I can talk to you later about the community room I know one of the issues is there's no place to sit except the floor correct and and we do have a willing group of donors by the way to help buy chairs once we know how to do that you know give the council some money so quick report on on the school already given the big news is like it's in motion but they are before they had the first round of planning board hearings and they're in a continued round with conservation commission with a set of conditions that have already been written and agreed on with one remaining issue that allows that first dirt coming in dirt coming out and they're going before the ZBA so because of the choice of where the school is going it's been before virtually all the because it was design review board also it's been before everyone and it needs permits from there's a whole list of permits we need we as a committee will be meeting February 12th and starting to look at what playground equipment might be on the list that committee is starting to work and there's design refinement on the school itself but we are really at the point where the architects are doing the final drawing so that it can be bid out in the late spring January July for the building and the larger piece so so it is it's becoming very real thank you Andy you have your hand up I assume to ask a question of the town manager I do and the question to the town manager gets back to the point that he was making about being conscious of the effect on the traffic going to the university in the morning but actually all day anybody driving that section of northeast street that goes past the current side of Port River School my concern is that I don't want to do anything that will encourage people to use residential streets as cut-throughs between Route 9 and Main Street to avoid the East Street problem and I'm somewhat fearful that that could happen because both Harkness Road and going through Echo Hill Area those provide back routes that those of us who've lived for a long time know about and I don't want to see that happen because I don't think those streets can bear the traffic that might come about has thought been given to that problem and what might be done if it needs to be addressed as I said this is a very early alert to the council we are working on all the different options for that with working with the police, fire, DPW school department so all those things will be taken into consideration thank you Bob Hector I also have a question for