I'm just going to, well, hold on just a moment. See if I can get back to the share. Okay, I'm going to go ahead without the agenda and just we'll go with it. So go ahead and start. You're good to go. Hey, well, thank you, everybody. I'm going to call the council meeting of not not counseling, the finance committee of the council to order at 234 p.m. And it is July 9, 2020. And I'd like to welcome everybody present governor's order. This meeting. Can be conducted. And is being conducted as a remote meeting. And the open meeting log exception. Applies and with that, I'm going to go through. Of just making sure. I'm having very bad reception. Is it just me? Are other people having problems? It does seem like your audio is a little bit. Laggy at moment. Okay. If it continues to be a problem, let me know, but then I'm going to have to move to an under condition part of the house and rejoin the meeting and let Kathy. As vice chair. Continue the meeting for a brief period of time. Okay. Are you doing better? Yes. That's right. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Let's make sure that we can get through the. Members of the committee to just confirm your presence and confirm that you can. Here and be heard. So Dorothy Pam. Dorothy. Let us know you can be heard. I'm the visual I get. It looks like she's frozen. Yeah. Yeah. I'm getting. Dorothy on me, please. Confirm your can be heard. Dorothy Pam. Well, let's come back to Dorothy Kathy. I know you, you've already signaled because. You've spoken to us. Here. The Lynn. Here. And. Pat Daniels. Here. And the other two committee members is Sharon Pavanelli. Here. I'm just Bob. Here. Hey, Dorothy Pam. Can you hear us? So I'm going to declare that we have a majority of the council members which constitutes a quorum. Present so that we can begin the meeting. And. Maybe Athena can see if she can identify the problems. And if there's management that needs to take place in the meantime, Lynn will help out with that. But. Unless I hear objections. We do have a quorum present and a big agenda. So that I'd like to go forward. And I. Sean, do you, did you have any. Direction as to with what order you would like to do it as community services first or. Yeah, so, so we're going to start with Julie with the health department. And then we'll move to. Mary Beth with the senior center. And then to bar for. And then we'll move on to the health department. And then we'll move on to the health department. And then we'll move on to the health department. Also see Cherry Hill in the pool. And then Paul, if Paul hops on, we can do social services and veteran services at the end. Okay. And then. Cause the other things to where we were going to do is. Conservation and development. And I saw Chris and Dave. Yeah, they're going to go after, um, after we finished community services, then we would transition to, um, And then we'll, we have people coming for general government at the end as well. We've got, um, Our finance team, the town clerk and some other. Okay. We still don't have Dorothy. No. I feel badly about Bob's trying to help her. Yeah, Dorothy was the lead was the person who was going to be the lead. Um, For the community services presentation. So I hope that you can get on. Um, The, uh, But we. I think just go ahead and start nonetheless. Dorothy. Yes. Okay. I don't know if it's me or you, but I'm looking for better reception. So I'm. Moving around. You're doing better. Okay. This is fine right now. Okay. Yeah, I can hear that. Okay. Um, because you are, um, Calling you first as we go through the various departments. If you had questions. Um, and we were going to start with a, um, with public health and, um, Public health was part of, um, Community services and, uh, is on page 92. Um, So, um, I'm going to go ahead and start with the, um, The, um, Budget book and for any members of the public who are watching. Who are not aware of it. The, um, Entire. Um, Proposed budget. Is available on the town website. Um, going when you go under government budget. Um, And it's a complete budget presentation and, uh, It is available to you and as references to pages are in there. They, um, Can be found through looking at that document. So, um, With that. Um, We'll, um, Go ahead and see. If there's an initial presentation from Julie, do you have anything you want to report to us to start or fall to anything you want to do to introduce public health. Well, I just want to look, you know, we have a lot on the agenda for today. So we'll, I've told our department heads to. Be very minimal in what their initial presentation is. So, um, More lead with what your questions are. I mean, we could spend the entire day with Julie. Uh, but, uh, I think we've got a lot of other people doing here available too. Okay. Uh, Julie, did you have any, um, Yeah, I have two things. Paul, I know you've just hopped on. So I don't know if you heard Sean's introduction of the agenda. So, um, he was just mentioning that social services would go way at the end. And I was just wondering, I believe that's what comes under my budget. So can I do, um, my public health and then a brief discussion because I believe social services is just resident assistance. Correct. Yeah. If you're going to cover that Julie, um, that's fine. Awesome. Thank you, Sean. It's just, I've got a weird time thing going on. Okay. So yes, um, I'm going to be really brief here. Um, I'm excited because when I look through the accomplishments, the challenges, um, I see that, um, it's quite up to date, um, because this was written a little bit back here, but, um, things are, um, really accurate here. So I could take you through it all, which is what we usually do. I'm not sure if you really want me to do that. Um, so here's what I'll do unless, and you can just stop me if you don't want it. So you can see in the accomplishments, um, we're talking about tobacco, tobacco regulations, marijuana, um, homeless services with Craig's doors, and then COVID-19 with our higher ed partners. Um, so, um, that is all accurate. That's everything that we've been working on. Um, obviously the marijuana work stopped, um, sometime in the early fall. Um, when we get down to challenges, um, all those challenges are, um, completely accurate. Again, lack of resources for those experiencing mental illness and substance use disorder. I think as we're looking at what's happening nationally around policing and the discussions we've had from our police department who do an absolutely phenomenal job. Um, I think that I would echo what they said in their presentation that we have certainly seen, um, over the past X number of years, more and more issues around folks experiencing difficulty with mental illness specifically. Um, need for day services for those experiencing homelessness is a regional issue. Um, when I put it in here as a challenge, I don't put it in just as Amherst challenge, but as a regional challenge. Um, the need for substance use use prevention education. Um, and then as we see, um, planning for the town veterinarian and the public health director to retire. Um, those, uh, are certainly things that are, as you all know, I'm retiring September 1st. Um, the town is well into their search for a new health director. Um, and, um, we do have to have on our minds the idea of what will change around animal control. Um, and then, um, the continuity continuity of policy leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic. I don't see that so much as a challenge anymore because we've created this incredibly great core team within the town. Um, I will, of course, be one of the people exiting that team, but we'll bring someone on. Um, so long range of objectives, um, improving the public's health is still just as important as it was as we see the threats to public health. Um, improving health services for underserved and high risk populations. Again, with this, this umbrella of COVID, that's over everything that still is an incredibly important issue. Um, and if we look at the third one to improve access to healthy food and fitness, well, we're certainly focused on access to healthy food. Um, because that is, has always been, and is now of course, um, a growing problem here and really around the country. Um, if we look at the FY 20 objectives, um, I love that my first one is accomplished, which is updating the current board of health regulations. Uh, the board has been working on this for two years. And, um, I was hoping by this day we'd be done, but I believe tonight might be the night or else, um, are meeting in August when those tobacco regulations will actually be finalized. They really pretty much mirror what's happened at the state level around vaping and all of that. Um, but because of COVID-19 that had been, um, kind of, uh, delayed for a little bit, but we, that is being accomplished. Um, once again, the recreational marijuana is kind of completed at this point. We had a really robust process around that. Um, and the last one is again has been kind of put on hold, which is working with the schools, et cetera, around marijuana and the effects on the developing brain. Um, again, COVID has kind of, um, changed what we're focusing on right now. If I look at the FY 21 objectives, those have, um, the first two have completely changed. So as we're looking at, um, school kids coming back and we're looking about the capacity within our, within our health department and the improved capacities at the schools, they hired a full-time nurse manager, um, last January, which has been providential. Um, she has worked closely with the health department. Um, we will no longer be offering immunizations, um, because, uh, we're just not going to be able to do that. As we see, um, the anticipation in a spike and the need for focusing on COVID-19. So worked closely with her and she is preparing ahead of time for that. We see that around the state and around the country, that kids are or have been behind in their immunizations. Um, so she'll be working locally to make sure that pediatric practices are really working to get people a medical home and then also to get kids up to date with immunizations. Um, and then the other one, um, it really probably isn't an FY 21 objective for us to be working on marijuana vaping and tobacco use because, um, we're just not going to have the bandwidth for that. And there are some regional entities who are working on that. Um, service levels. I mean, maybe I'll just leave it to you to ask questions about that. Um, and the other thing I'm going to possibly flip back to is if you look at the beginning, the health director is at 0.8 hours and the public health nurses at 0.8 hours. Um, actually those two positions right now are full time, but they're being partially funded through, um, right now some public health funding that came through initially, um, from the feds to the states. Um, and then once that funding is used up, we'll be able to use some of the cares funding funding to, um, pay for the increased hours for those two positions. So I'm thinking I'll leave it at that before we get to, um, the social services and see what questions you have. I will start with one because it follows up immediately. And what you just reported on at the end of your presentation, then I'm going to turn it. After that over to Dorothy Pam to see if she has any initial questions to ask. Um, just so that, uh, everybody knows that the committee this year assigned various members to, um, sort of over. Become our expert on one section and to help us write the report on one section and Dorothy is, uh, working on the community services sections, but getting to the staffing question. Um, I would, what you just noted, of course, was available on the chart on page, um, 8092, but then when I was trying to get it to the staffing, um, on page 94, um, to make sure that I understood, uh, how, what had happened with it in relation to those and what the plans are going forward. Are we keeping both of those positions now at full-time? Is that the plan? Yes. You are absolutely going to need those two positions at full-time. Um, I would say at least for a year or two as we're looking at this pandemic. And you know, Andy, I'm so sorry. I also realized the other thing that's not included here and I, I should have checked beforehand why is that we also have a very long time. Um, we have a full-time position now. It's 12 hours a week, which is a program assistant. Um, so that person is, um, assisting the health director and the public health nurse with whatever it is we need responding to the public research. Um, and then doing administrative tasks. And I'm not quite sure why that's in there. I'm sure that Paul and Sonia do. Um, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I started in February. Um, in the old fiscal year. Um, my apologies that I did not see that that was not accounted for. So that's, uh, what was the position? It's a program assistant and it's 12 hours a week. It's an unbenefited position. It, um, It's not included. So I'm not sure why that's in there. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure why. I'm not sure. But there's. No one is waiting. Sonia's waving. So yeah. I can answer that. It's because we, we couldn't budget for her in 21, because we're paying out of COVID. So that's why it's not included. Okay. So it's also part of the COVID funds. Okay. I wasn't sure about that. No supplanting. Yep. of 21 year, Sonia? As of right now, it can be funded from the CARES Act money until the end of December, unless the eligibility changes for CARES money. We also think that with the change in health director we'll probably have room in the budget to accommodate that the rest of the fiscal year. Okay. And I do wanna advocate for the fact that that department really needs that. You know that we went from being a large department to a very small department. There was a moment where we transferred the administrative assistant over to inspection services. That was a full-time position. I had hoped that we would then have a half-time position and somehow that got lost in the sauce, shall we say. So even before COVID, we were desperately needing some kind of assistance. This was actually talked about for months before the pandemic and it just was sort of providential that we had it in place just as the pandemic was hitting. So this is a very busy department and you know, there's, well, anyway. I just wanna make sure there's clear clarity. Sean mentioned about the COVID money and how that works. We can't just suddenly start paying people out of COVID money that are normally on our payroll. COVID money is allowed to be for new things. And so this is how we're sort of adjusting things to make it justify it under COVID. And so that's, there's just, you know, Sean's becoming really good at sort of figuring these out. So when we submit the information to the state and the federal government, they reimburse us for the costs. And during FY20, originally what had happened when we got this position was that because I was working part-time, but that had been decided after the start of the FY20 year, I went to more part-time in October, then we were able to, the original thought during FY20 was we were moving money around and taking from my salary basically to pay this 12-hour position. Now I'm remembering. And then the pandemic came along and we actually immediately got some funding. I think maybe Sonya, the PVTC money was in, PVPC was in maybe March, and it was actually a check that was like hand delivered. It was like, spend it on public health. So we were then able to start spending from that pot of money. Right, but I also want to point out that it still wasn't budgeted in FY20. It was just that things that allowed us to grant on. Correct. It was not budgeted. Right, right. No, but I'm just going back and realizing that because I was saying it happened, the decision was made before the pandemic and that was because we could take it out of what had been my larger salary. That's all. Okay, thank you. I'll try and make sure that that gets included in the report that we submit to the council since it was not, it requires sort of an amendment to the budget presentation that they have. Dorothy, did you have any initial questions? Otherwise I'll ask Kathy to start since she is her hand up. But Dorothy. I do have some questions and it's about vaccinations. Both the old vaccinations and two, the new one that we don't have yet, the COVID vaccination. So my first question is, well, I'm gonna go backwards. When we do have a vaccine, will the health department of Amherst play a role in getting people vaccinated or will there be some other agency that's doing it? So that's question one. Yes, thank you, Dorothy. I can only imagine that local health departments around along with community health centers, doctors' offices and hospitals will all be involved in that effort. I think that local health departments, including our own, bring a lot of expertise into how to do that because of all the many, many years when we were the main providers of flu vaccines, which I'm sure you remember, back in the day we would do large clinics, well, they don't seem so large now, but with like close to 600 elders for flu vaccine. So yeah, I absolutely think that we will be part of that. What that will look like is... So my problem is, first of all, with regular childhood vaccines, we know that there's a movement which has been encouraging some people to be against them and that can feed into people being against a COVID vaccine as well. So when I had kids, I had a Department of Health card for each child and every vaccination was on that card and I had a copy and the public health department had a copy. I'm getting an idea now that it's not quite that simple and I think number one is the town thing. We want to have all the school children vaccinated. We want to have all the people, children and seniors vaccinated for flu vaccines because Dr. Fauci is saying that that can be something that might help keep people from getting so sick with the flu. So this is a lot of stuff. And I just liked an idea of how is this being coordinated in Amherst and what the role of the health department is it gonna be in it? Yes, yes, you asked a very good question and Dorothy, can I ask you, when you're raising your kids in Massachusetts at that time or elsewhere? No, in the New York City area. Okay, because I think this is crucial. So Massachusetts along with one or two other states is very different from most of the country. Most of the country has large county health departments with many, many staff, physicians. They do all kinds of well child visits. They do immunizations. When I was in North Carolina, in fact, my kids got immunized at the local health department. So in Massachusetts, what we have is 351 little boards of health and then in larger towns, we actually have health departments. Amherst is one of the very few health departments in Massachusetts that offers immunizations. And we started that partnership with the school back in the late 90s when Amherst was identified along with a couple other communities as having low immunization rates. And at the time they thought it because everybody was crunchy granola and didn't want to vaccinate. That's the language that was used. And what happened was they took a look at it and they saw that wasn't what it was, that we did not have that many people who took the exemption. So what happened at the time is Kaiser Permanente stepped up. They had pediatric providers at that time. And they, in conjunction with us, we were sort of the link between the schools and Kaiser created an immunization clinic for kids who, the other thing that was happening at that time is hepatitis B vaccines had just come on. And Amherst was one of the few towns that didn't have like a happy effort to get those kids immunized. So that was one of the first things I was tasked with as a public health nurse. So we worked with Kaiser around that and then she was only a year or two later that Kaiser left. So the health department at that time took on having this small immunization clinic to work with the schools, because what we identified is there were kids who didn't have a medical home and couldn't afford their vaccines. Now, of course, over the years, various things have happened, right? We've seen huge improvements in access to health insurance, access to mass health. Right, right, right. So that's sort of the history there. Where we are now is the past couple of years, we've been working closely with the schools and also with the new community health center that had opened the Musanti Center to try and do more linkages that way, because what we really want is for kids to have a medical home, not just a vaccine. So what happened, as you all know, is last, gee, it's only last fall, the Musanti Health Center lost its two healthcare providers. So I don't know where they're at right at this moment, but they were close to hiring providers the last time I talked with them. So once again, the Musanti Health Center will hopefully be up and thriving and there will be able to be these linkages between the schools and the health center and other area providers, because that's really the direction we were moving in. So does that answer your question? You're saying that if we do get a vaccine, it'll most likely be organized through the Musanti Center, which is not run by the Amherst Board of Health but by some other entity. Well, I was talking more about childhood vaccines. When we do get the vaccine for Corona, it is gonna take every single entity we've got, local public health, state public health, healthcare providers, they're very worried about this around the country. I think in Massachusetts, we have a really good track record around immunizing. And as I say, I do think local boards of health have a great expertise in that. I can imagine regional efforts, for instance, we have a regional public health emergency preparedness coalition. I can imagine us rallying with them, also using volunteer nurses and others from what is called the Medical Reserve Corps so it's gonna take a huge community-wide effort. And so it would be way beyond the capacity of our little health department anyway, but we will be a partner in all of that, absolutely. So my last question is, if Paul wanted to say, in the town of Amherst, so many people are up to date on their childhood immunizations, so many people have had their flu vaccine, so many people have had the COVID-19 vaccine, how would he get those numbers? If everybody's working on it from their own perspectives? That's a great question, Dorothy. Over the past few years, another thing that Massachusetts is really a leader in is something called the MIIS. It's the Massachusetts Immunization Registry. So this online program, every single vaccine that either our public health nurse gives or doctor gives, all goes into this system. So all that data is held at the state. The other thing that happens for school kids is that the state does surveys. So they're selecting all that information for various grades, it's always available on the state website. Okay, thank you very much. You're welcome. Kathy. I wanted, one of the questions I had, Julie, actually, you brought up indirectly on the Musanti Health Center. I was looking for a couple of things on, to what extent we interact with it and use it as supplemental services. Particularly, I saw you saying we have a challenge on mental health issues and on medical home issues and we had this clinic. The second piece of it is I'm assuming the center pays us rent and I wasn't quite sure where I would find that in the budget book. And if it's a source of revenue for the town, so it was a question of where do I even see that we've got this health center? To what extent does it interact with kids? Does it have a mental health, community mental health worker? I'm used to seeing the federal community mental health centers that are different than the community health centers that very much focus on behavioral health. So that was a general question on, is that a resource we use or are schools use even though it's paid by a federal clinic or insurance? And now you've just said we've lost two healthcare providers. So I guess, do we think it has a rosy future or is it a shaky future? Great questions, Kathy. So I'm gonna say that at the end, Paul and Sonja will talk about where does the revenue sit in the budget? Cause that's not my area of expertise. So when we talk about mental health, as in the planning stages for the Musanti Health Center, mental health was something that was talked about a lot as was dental health as two huge needs in this area and in Massachusetts in general. Initially the health center was gonna start just with medical and what they decided to do was go with medical and dental because the need was so huge. And then what they wanted to do was to make sure they were partnering with other mental health provider entities in Amherst. So in Amherst, we have ServiceNet, which has a therapist, but not prescribers. And we also have CSO, which is Community Support Options. Community Support Options operates on University Drive at a place called The Bridge. So their residency here has been more like eight or nine years. They do have therapists there and they do have the possibility as to service of linkage to prescribers that are located in Northampton. So when we talk about mental health services, one of the biggest needs is prescriber. So that's how they started out. So they've been open about 18 months, about 11 or 12 months into it. They actually got grant funding to offer bilingual therapy, which was also a specific need that was identified in the community. Because of the physical space of the health center, they actually didn't have a space in there to do it. So it's been a challenge and actually the town has worked with them, letting them use some space in the bank center and then they found other places. So some therapy was happening. But again, when I talk about the mental health needs in the community, so many of them revolve around folks who don't have access to medication, go off their medication, need support in staying on medication. Medical home. So yes, one of the big things that we were so excited about was to be linking all our social services, service agencies and our schools with the Musanti Health Center so that a lot of our families who are on mass health could have medical homes. I won't go into some of the complexities around what mass health requires, but so they opened and then after about 10 months or something, ironically, they lost two of their providers for different reasons and they've been really struggling to get providers because it's hard to get primary care providers. It's hard to get them in Western Mass. It's hard to get them to work at community health centers. So when you ask if it has a rosy future, I hope so. And I don't know completely where we're at at this moment, frankly. Yeah, no, I know I'm taking you off of town services, but I just thought it's sitting in a publicly-owned building that we're opening up. Yeah. We did, we partnered with them. We did a lot of talking about the immunization clinic and how there could possibly be, so this overlap there, right? Because they immunized, we were immunizing. We're seeing low-income families and kids who don't have access to care and how that would all be able to merge together so they had this true medical home. And frankly, it just, it got, devolved because of a lack of staffing, which we really hope is going to come back online. Yeah, I can get more on this later, but thank you that answered my question. You're gonna talk about the social services next because I did have a question. I'm gonna go through all this and talk about that. Let me keep us moving on. Lynn has a handle. I'm gonna help. Lynn has a hand up, Andy. Yeah, that's what I said, Lynn. This is a financial question. And it's really not even a question, Julie. I have to just say to the town manager, I hope that as we look at COVID, we look at ways in which we can add resources and staff to this area over the next two years. I think it's gonna be critical. And I think what we've seen is that Amherst is not only called upon within the town and regionally, but we actually have become a resource for a lot of people. So as we look at the opportunities with COVID, please look for that opportunity. Okay, Sean. I just wanted to highlight this. People may already be aware, but the region got a public health grant last year, which is a $100,000 grant for three years, and then it drops down a little bit. And that grant covers Amherst, and it's focused on children, but that's another resource that hopefully can help as we go forward. And when you say the region. The regional school district. Yeah, I just wanted to make sure. I did want to, while we're on to you and Sonya for a second, I will point out to everybody, including people watching who attend these publicly. Again, the budget is available online on the town website under government budget. And if you go to that section, you can find the manager's post budget. We're discussing community services at page 91. Kathy, you asked a question about the receipts from the rental and rental and other receipts is actually near the beginning of the budget book under local receipts pages six to seven. So either Sonya or Sean can direct us to where the rental is found. We're gonna be later talking about conservation and development of page 79. And I wanted to remind everybody that as you look at LSSE, which we will in a few minutes, there's also appendix C on page 175. And that has a lot of statistics about LSSE programs. So Sean or Sonya, can you answer Kathy's other question about the rent? Yeah, Sonya, you can go ahead. Okay, so on the rental receipts, that's part of local receipts. And we budget about 130,000 in total for rental fees. And I believe that the Santa Hill Center is around 25,000 a year of that. But it is not a budget and an accounting for. And I'll just add, Sonya, I think we did drop it in the FY21 budget, our rental revenues, in anticipation of some of these things. That's right. We adjusted it by a quarter of the year, I believe. Yeah, so we factored in some reduction in rental revenue because of this. That's on the rental line, Sean, that there's a big drop there. I can see it. Yeah, exactly. There's a bunch of other rental revenues as well. So we have a detail sheet that shows the different ones. All of those revenues, correct me if I'm wrong, are just part of the general revenue for the town that are available and included in the amounts to be appropriated as because we're really ultimately voting to see appropriation and the receipts as part of the revenue that is then available for appropriation. It's not earmarked for a specific purpose. So the additional questions I had about public health. One is, this may be a question that I'll re-ask. I should more appropriately re-ask later in the afternoon when we talk about inspections under conservation development. But are they doing the restaurant inspections or is your department doing the restaurant inspections? So all the inspectors are located in inspection services. We've got Susan Malone, Ed Smith, and then John Thompson, who is a code enforcement. He's half health, half building. And Ed now is also becoming partially trained in being a building inspector. And certainly Rob will speak to this later, but they do the inspections, yep. And do you have a role in overseeing the restaurant and other direct health related part of the inspection? Correct. So how it works is that those inspectors are agents of the Board of Health. I'm also an agent of the Board of Health. I'm also kind of the lead liaison to the Board of Health. So their authority to do those things comes through the Board of Health. And how we've worked this is that when they have difficult issues, whether it's with a restaurant, whether it's with housing, then those things are brought to my attention and I work with the inspectors on them. So if we have a restaurant that's really not coming into compliance and has a lot of problems, then I work with the inspectors. Sometimes doing inspections, helping them prep for Board of Health meetings, helping them to write orders and to make decisions. But they are supervised by the building commissioner in their day-to-day work. Okay, I can re-ask the question. Obviously, there have been a lot of changes this year in the way restaurants are operating, when they are operating and taking over new spaces and doing things very differently. And so I don't know if you have any comments on that, but I generally, I think that also, do you foresee any particular problems coming ahead that we should be aware of as COVID moves into its next stages? So I'll take the first part. So I think that we have a really fantastic group of inspectors and Rob Mora also has been terrific in helping with all these different things, as have other staff and inspection services in terms of all these changes about how food establishments are working. Myself and the inspectors are on two one-hour phone calls a week where every time we move into a different phase or the governor writes a new order, we have the expertise of various folks at the state level. So all of us are receiving that same information at the same time. We're able to ask questions. It's an incredibly great resource. And I feel as I hear how other towns are managing and struggling, I'm really struck by what an incredibly good job Amherst is doing, really under Rob's leadership in inspection services with these three inspectors who are just great and other inspectors have been helping too with various aspects of all these changes and how food establishments operate. And I think that I also feel that the bid and Chamber of Commerce have been really helpful with it and that our business owners pretty much one in all are really stepping up to the plate to understand how to do things safely. And it's really been a great collaborative effort here as I hear about in other communities where there's a lot of adversarial things happening between departments and between the community and the town. I really, I feel like we're doing a great job here. The second part of your question, you're saying what things do I anticipate about COVID? Are you talking about just in terms of our businesses or just in general? Just in general, I think that it's just for really on budget whether COVID is gonna change the demands in the department that you proceed for 21 and whether there are things that, what you're envisioning and whether we have the resources to do what we need to do. Yeah, thank you for that question. I think that, yeah, what I anticipate is what we are going to see all across Massachusetts, which is there will be a lot of young people coming back to town. They're already arriving and we so care about them and we so welcome them. And yet our young people are the ones who are really most at risk of getting sick and then inadvertently spreading this disease because developmentally we're asking a lot of them to change behaviors that are just really part of the core of who they are. And so I anticipate there will be a lot more cases of disease. So we'll be doing a lot more contact tracing, quarantining, isolating in partnership with our higher ed. And when I think about the implications for our department, I think that, I'm glad that we have that COVID money because what we may wanna do is hire some extra public health nursing. I think at this point we're also incredibly lucky because there aren't many public health nurses with backgrounds in Massachusetts and in many other states too, but we have an excellent public health nurse. And so again, what we're doing is kind of redefining what her role is in the department and what she really needs to be focused on. So for now and in the future, we both feel pretty good about that. We've also got the CTC at the state level, but if I anticipated more needs in the budget specifically for our department, they would go there. I do think that this will affect our other departments too, especially EMS and police because we will see more folks probably needing transport becoming ill. Yeah, I'm not sure. Does that answer your question? Yes, it does. So Dorothy, I see your hand up. I do wanna move on because we have to keep an eye on time and get us into the community services questions that Kathy had started to ask, but Dorothy, did you have a last thing on this, on the direct public health that you need to get answered? Yeah, I had a question about people in the middle, whether they're being serviced. There's things for children in schools and seniors and veterans and homeless people, but what health benefits are available to low income people between the ages of 18 and 55? I believe my question about the Well Baby Clinic has been answered, we don't have one. So I just, and I guess some of those people are gonna be served in dealing with COVID-19, but just a question about that. Yeah, I'm thinking maybe you mean, like who interacts with that population because we have senior services, we have the schools. I think that you make a good point in that folks over the age of 18 are young adults, like 18 to 30 who aren't involved in higher ed are often a population that maybe don't have health insurance, don't seek health care. We certainly saw a change in that with Obamacare when kids with families who had health insurance could get health insurance up to age 26. I can say that over the years that's made a huge difference. So while we don't specifically do outreach to folks, another thing that used to come out of our department, but then was coming out of the Missanti Health Center was linking people to health insurance. So we saw people of all ages using that service. Right now that's been suspended at the Missanti Health Center, but that I believe will come back. It still continues at Cooley Dickinson Hospital because one of the biggest things people need often is help navigating how you get health insurance. So they're actually called health insurance navigators. So the Missanti Center had one full-time one really for Amherst that will come back. So I hope that answers your question there a little bit. Thank you. I think you said you had wanted to ask about community services. No, it's when we, I think Julie was gonna say a word about social services. It was a drop and then it said it ran into legal issues. And I was curious about what those are. So that's in reference to the resident assistance program. So the resident assistance program was a line item in the budget of $20,000 a year that the health department kind of inherited from the planning department a couple of years ago. So this had been voted in at town meeting, I wanna say 11 years ago, maybe a little more. And so this line item was specifically to help folks who were about to get their utilities turned off and so were in utility arrears and then folks who were getting eviction letters because they were in rental arrears. The other group that it helped was if there were homeless folks who found housing and needed help with funding for those move-in costs or folks who were able to find housing somewhere like with a family member, we would be able to pay for like a Greyhound bus to get folks to that family member. Those homeless specific needs for the homeless were much less frequent than meeting those needs were much less frequent than the other needs. So what happened was a couple of years ago, the auditors were taking a look at that and they pointed out to the accounting department that it looked like maybe this wasn't legal that the anti-aid amendment, I think I got that right, Sonia, said that this wasn't really legal. Well, not we. The money folks have looked at this along with Paul who's very knowledgeable in this and essentially we shouldn't have been doing that because we're not supposed to do that. There's another layer to this which is that I also felt that it was kind of problematic that this is also not something that we had expertise in. So to the best of my ability and my staff, we tried to function as social workers trying to make these very difficult decisions coming up with policy, some of which had already been created but then sort of tweaking it so we could figure out how do you do this in a way that's equitable? How do you make sure the requests are legitimate? It's been a very difficult thing to oversee. And so I talked with Paul at length over time about, well, how could we somehow transition this to another social agency? The problem is it's a very small amount of money. So whenever you talk about doing that, it really would be eaten by overhead. So I don't know if Paul or Sonia wanna jump in here. This has been- I've been, because I've done a lot of work over the years in trying to understand the anti-aid amendment and it is a complex legal question, but I had several memorandums and Pat had asked this question of me directly in an email and I put together several responses for Pat and what I sent to Pat after today's meeting I'll share with the rest of the committee because it provides the explanation of the anti-aid amendment without us having to spend a lot of time on it here. That's fine, I didn't need time. So as long as I just was trying to understand what it had been and why it's gone and I will read what you've sent. Okay, yes, Pat was just ahead of you on it. I don't know if you have anything to say, Pat, but if not, I think we should go on. I just have a question, not on the anti-aid amendment. So I can wait, but I'm interested in understanding we're talking about $80,000 for social justice and racial work here in Amherst and where is that going in the budget? What it says is it be placed in the appropriate budget and when are we gonna talk about it? Paul, do you wanna respond on that? Yeah, so when to talk about it, it's once we get moved forward, I think after the budget, what I want to do is make sure there's a call out and that we have that money set aside. Sony has put that aside in a control account so it's there, but it doesn't show up in anybody's line item. I didn't want it to show up in the police or community services because I don't think it was really my place or I think it's a community effort about how we wanna allocate those funds. And I think it's a broader conversation about listening to people where that money should be go. Can I just say that there are people who said they would be attending and who wanna have impact in that. So in those decisions and how it's gonna be administered, et cetera. And I will forward some of that information to you. And for people who are in the public, we will be doing public comment later in the meeting. We'll see when the time works to do it, but I will recognize public comment, welcome public comment at a later point in the meeting. Sean, did you have something? Yeah, it's probably worth noting while we're talking about rental assistance that the Affordable Housing Trust is setting up that program. I think it's 200 or $250,000 of rental assistance related to COVID-19 stuff. And that part of that money is being offset by the CARES money. We got approval to use the CARES money to cover 200,000 of it. Hey, thank you. I see one hand up from George Ryan, counselor. And they asked George to speak to his question and then maybe we need to move on to the senior services budget, George. Actually, just to request, Andy, if it's possible, could you share that anti-aid memo that you mentioned earlier with a member who's not with the counselor, who's not a member of the committee? I would like to see that if possible. Maybe all the counselors would, but just a request. Okay, I will duly note it, thank you. So if there's nothing else, Julie, I'm personally very sorry that you're retiring and I'm very happy for you that you're able to do other things that you've been dreaming of doing. You've just been wonderful to work with over a long period of time and I wish you all and we'll miss you. Thank you, Andy. It's very bittersweet, gotta say. And now we can turn to somebody who's relatively new to town, Mary Dott. Any introductory comments about the senior services budget? How you need to unmute your mic, if you're gonna... Can you hear me now? Yeah. Yes, we can. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you so much. So thank you. And I would like to begin actually with a thank you to all of you and thank you for the wisdom and the providence of earmarking some capital funds for the senior center, which we were able to operationalize this past spring. I think we closed on a Friday and Monday, Paul emailed me to say we're gonna aggressively go forward with that schedule for remodeling the senior center. And though I have a fake background behind me, if anybody wants to have a virtual tour, Rob Mora has done a brilliant job under the most trying circumstances of really reinventing this place. So though our footprint is small, what we have here is now ADA compliant and fortuitously all of those changes that he made are gonna help us to facilitate when we can have people back in here providing more space, there's less clutter and really making social distancing more possible. So I just wanna thank you because at particularly the timing of that at the same time that the whole world was going around and saying that older adults really didn't matter and the value of their lives was diminished in terms of prioritizing access to medical care and life-saving measures. The investment by the town to say you matter and we value, I thought was a wonderful statement of values. And I think it was very meaningful to many seniors when they learned about this going on. So I just wanna thank you for that investment and the way that it spoke to the value and how you value the community of older adults. So with that said, it is interesting to read this. It feels like this was such a long time ago in terms of accomplishments and even challenges. And I think I would revise this in part if it was written today. But in terms of accomplishments, the one that I think would highlight the shift of my position is that when I was hired by Paul, he had a vision of it becoming the senior services director rather than a senior center. And he really has urged me to go beyond just providing programming at one location and look more globally in a macro way at what the needs were within our senior community. One that came to light very quickly when I arrived here was that our seniors though, they would be eligible for home health aids or home care workers, we were not able to access it. And that was an anomaly that was just germane to Amherst. So somebody would be referred to Highland Valley Elder Services, they would be deemed eligible to have somebody come in and provide medical care and or household help. And for anywhere from six months to 12 months, they would not be able to receive those services. So really leaving people in our community in a significant lurch. So I reached out to Highland Valley Elder Services, I worked with an attorney there and we were able to sort of identify some of the barriers to accessing that kind of worker and that employment. And we were able to recruit a provider who located, oh, it's motion censored here. We were able to recruit a home health aid provider that they subcontract with, they located here in Amherst and then COVID came. So they have not fully staffed up to measure, but that's just one example of how, I think the definition of this job and the expansiveness of looking at senior services makes a difference for the community as opposed to just running programs within one location. So I think that that was a great accomplishment for our community and hopefully for our residents to be able to receive those services. Structurally when I arrived in the way that the senior center functioned, there was a lot of room for improvement around information management, volunteer orientation. When we think of the staff though, the organizational chart at the top lists six individuals, I really think of that plus 179 because I have 179 volunteers who help us to execute what we need to do and making sure that everybody understands the values, the mission and how we should make people feel welcome and included was a new task for the senior center. So we did make some headway. We started an orientation of various subcategories of volunteers coming together with themes, missions, important values that we wanted to exude and primarily focused around compassion and welcoming. We also within my own staff, we participated along with Julie and a few other town employees with implicit bias training that was conducted through the Chamber of Commerce, which was very helpful as a lead for our community and also having them model it consistently for our 179 volunteers. And then the third accomplishment that I would highlight for you is the grant funding. From the time that I've been here, I've been able to obtain $40,000 in grants and within the senior world, I think that there are, there tend to be small amounts but any grant that I can pursue, I have gone headlong and they have covered a wide range of opportunities for our seniors, everything from our support groups that we are now providing virtually for bereavement and caregivers to various programming around resilience which we've been able to capitalize and turn into a long-term program that Highland Valley is now going to grant fund and continue that. So I've collaborated and partnered with University of Massachusetts, their psychological services. And what they participated in is a six-week program called, it was called Live Your Best Life. And it was primarily focused on resilience and looking at six different domains of resilience, everything from spirituality to mental health to your physical health and movement. And through that collaboration, the seniors really enjoyed one particular presenter, Dr. Bruna Martins-Klein. And so she now runs a twice monthly group that is just beginning around resilience and mental health. So those are the accomplishments that I would highlight for you. In terms of challenges, I think under challenges, I would just, I would primarily list COVID. I mean, as you are well aware, whether we reopen to the public and when that occurs, I think is a discussion underway. I think much like the rest of the town, we are relying on the science and taking a cautious long view towards that. I will tell you that within the temperature of the community that I speak with every day, there is not a large outcry for us to open hastily or prematurely. I think there's a concern about what the fall will bring. I participated and served on the State Committee for the Massachusetts Council on Aging where we crafted guidelines for reopening for all senior centers. And it covered a variety of topics from transportation to programming to offsite programs and what those considerations should be. And I can just speak to that within the senior center proper here. Our footprint is large and that will, I think certainly limit us and also in terms of use of the bank center and what that may or may not allow. So at this time, I always try to disabuse people of the notion that we are closed because we have never closed. I've been here every single day since March 12th when we no longer allow the public in but we provided services throughout. And a unique feature that I think that I would want to share with you is that in many ways the closing of the center has allowed us to augment services. I'll give you two examples quickly is when we are looking at service levels for congregate meals. So we typically would have six to 12 people come out meal. It's free and it's open to everybody. When we close down, we were able to shift to a grab and go meal. So it's basically a hot meal that, but it's served cold and people could reheat at home. And I now have anywhere between 25 to 44 people accessing that program. So we've been able to actually feed and provide nutritional support to more people by not having the center be open. And then likewise with some of our classes. Again, we are limited by the footprint of a classroom which for some of our exercise classes which is really an important part both of mental health and also physical health. Those classes will be limited in size anywhere between 12 to 18 people. Now my online exercise classes, I have 50 people attending. So in some ways the closing due to COVID has actually allowed us to access and serve some additional people. And the way that I've been able to lean into that is I have to say it's been for me that the best part of this experience with the center close is I have been out in the community consistently whether it's delivering meals, whether it's delivering boxes of food, whether it has been delivering masks. And it's given me much greater contact with various communities across just about every corner of Amherst. And I think that that will hopefully be able to be something that we can build on in terms of relationship and trust and being able to more broadly serve a more diverse community. When we look at the challenges, I think that the two that I would highlight would be the transportation program. So as you may well know, or perhaps not, we do have a bus that sits unused. So it's a 22 passenger bus. The dilemma with providing that bus and having it operationalized is first there was no funding for it. And second of all, because it is a 22 passenger, it goes beyond a regular license being able to drive that vehicle. So you need a CDL license. And so we have not been able to secure, or I have not been able to, I should say, within this last 10, 11 months, a stream of revenue or a grant yet that will fund that van being able to be run on a consistent basis. So I know previously it had been in place but it was not, when I arrived, it hadn't been functioning. And I see, I'm driving Lynn with her hand up. Yeah, I actually have several people who have questions and we probably shouldn't be able to do that. Great. But I glad you reported on the bus. I had forgotten that we have it and this is good to know. And I start with you and then Pat and then Dorothy. Great. Andy, given the importance of these various services, what I have to absolutely recognize is we've tried, we've put too much into one meeting. And so I'm going to really suggest that we not even try to do general government today so we don't tie up everybody for that. And the government that was on today, general government, it was next week. The other one that was gonna be was conservation and development, which includes inspections and that's the other piece that we have today, which is why I need to get us moving a little bit on time. Okay, all right. Andy, can I just chime in? General government was scheduled for today. It was. Today's meeting not busy because we moved community services back. Originally it was gonna be general government and conservation development. And we have a number of people that joined on for general government. So we just, if we're gonna move it, we should let them know so they can sign off. Why don't you confer with Sonia for a couple of minutes and then get back and make a recommendation as to what you think we should do. And signal to me as soon as you have an answer. We have an answer. So I think we should let the department heads who are in general government leave and reschedule them for Tuesday. And if you wanna cover general government, Sonia and Sean and I can be here and answer most of the questions that would normally be asked at that moment. Okay, that's fine. And but if there's anybody who can join us on when we reschedule, that's good too. Yeah, and remember we moved community services here because of public safety. We had wanted to have an entire meeting for public safety and that's why we moved community services. And then that's why this meeting got jammed up. So we'll move general government to next week. And Andy and Athena and I are going to meet tomorrow probably around 11 to just see if we need to schedule additional finance committee meetings. Okay. Okay, so I'm going to questions. I had said Pat Northam and Kathy's raised her hand. So let's go in that order, Pat. Quick question. First, Mary Beth, I wanna thank you for your work. I really appreciate it. I've been a volunteer for the last several years at the Survival Center and I do know that there are several many homeless people who qualify for elder services. And I'm trying to understand in general whether our homeless population, our homeless residents participate in the grab and go meals and whether or not since you are in the building is there any way to open a room at the senior center to be a cooling spot during this incredibly intense weather? Yeah, I'll go from the top of the question on down. So I would let you know that within the Banks Community Center property, we frequently have individuals who are experiencing homeless who are also seniors. So our grab and go lunch is available for any individual aged 60 and above and that's it. All I need is a name and then any kind of address within Amherst and we frequently do feed and also provide meals to individuals who are homeless who fall within our service requirements. And I will say I also meet with Kevin on Union on Wednesdays. I go up to the Unitarian Church in the morning, they do the breakfast there still and we go back and forth. We talk about in individual cases and case management things that I could maybe bring to the table or things that he can bring to the table. So we have that collaborative conversation. I can't say that that necessarily happens with the Survival Center as much. I think that it's part due to their distance that they are not in closer proximity. And I think that people tend to get the head there are just headed for a different direction than those who live here in the downtown area or who frequent that downtown area. And I would also say that the Survival Center has greater barriers to confidentiality and what they can share. So even the programs that we have participated with them around delivering food have been challenging to execute on our end because they won't share client information without a release and that release process can get challenging. But so the answer is yes as to anybody who as long as you're age 60 come on by. The second part of the question in terms of the building being used or accessed I would defer to Paul because I don't have the executive authority to determine the opening or not of the buildings. I had made an inquiry. I think about a month ago just of my own staff about does Amherst have a cooling center? And I don't believe that we do have sites that are cooling centers. So I think that that would be something that I would look to the town to give me direction on. But I'm happy to do whatever would be appropriate. Thank you. Paul, can you respond to that? Absolutely, sure. So we again, we talked about it actually this morning with our core team and again taking our lead with Julie Fetterman who feels like bringing people into a building is not what she recommends at this point in time. So we are creating an environment where we have cooling fans and an environment with bathrooms and other electricity and shelter that would be temporary shelter, IEA tent in a location that would help people get out of the heat which we know is coming. So that's where we are at this moment in time. Okay, Dorothy, I said you would be next. Yes, so Mary Beth, I think you're doing a great job. A number of years ago, I was a director of a senior center for several years. And what I know is the most important thing is not the meals, is not the exercise, is not the transportation, but it's the socialization. Overmeals or activities that, you know, just talking. So I wanna ask about whether you're interfacing with Amherst neighbors. I began getting emails from them and out of curiosity, I signed up and did a three meeting session with them. And just on the basis of that, you may know a lot more about it than I do. I think that it was provided in a very incredibly needed service because it was managed conversations with timing, spacing, breathtaking, but people had a chance to talk with each other on a set topic. And many of the people that were on the ones I were could not socialize had, you know, some immune problem were absolutely stuck in their houses for, well, forever it seems at this point. So I just wanted to ask you, are you using that program and cooperating with them? Cause I think it's something like that is essential. Yes. So I communicate with them as recently as this morning, but we're trying to do is to construct and it is on my service plan. I think it's the very last bullet on page 100 is how it appears for me is really coming up with a continuum of services. So much like the health department, we are a small and mighty staff and we know that we can't meet all senior needs alone. And so we need to have these, you know, community partners who can fill in the gaps. And we have a Liz Welch and I have been in discussion around programming. What am I doing? What is she doing? So for instance, I'm doing a program coming up around healthcare proxies cause that is my expertise. She's going to take that conversation and deepen it with, you know, palliative care and the conversations that proceed around end of life and conversation that's called the conversation project, et cetera. So we are trying to map out similar programming and I guess, you know, leaning into both of our strengths. So what are we good at and what are the conversations that they can hold? So yes, and we are in frequent conversations. She sends us volunteers, drivers, people who can assist us. So we go back and forth. And likewise, individuals who contact us who are looking for additional opportunities. I always suggest and we provide them the information about Amherst neighbors, which at this time is free but may not be the case, you know, a year or so down the line. And, you know, I always make it clear that for now there is no, there's no free but she does anticipate that that will happen. But one thing that I would know about that is that in many ways, and we are doing the same thing with programming online is that the technological divide is significant for senior citizens. And so I am loathsome to put all my eggs in a Zoom basket because it isn't equal and it doesn't serve everybody. And even if somebody can phone in, it can be a very disparate experience for somebody as people are able to see each other or there's a screen share and somebody can't see it. So I will say that one of my more of my FY21 objectives which wasn't able to make it onto here because it's post COVID is really looking at technological grants and I have been pursuing that quite aggressively in the last several weeks trying to find a fund. I would love to find some way to get 50 to 60 laptops or even tablets for a couple of hundred dollars and be able to provide them to community members because just as we spoke about the importance of technology for students, the same thing older adults' lives are shifting dramatically to online and will be for the foreseeable future. And that includes healthcare, that includes connecting to their families. We do have two individuals who volunteer and provide assistance for technology to seniors. I've had an individual and she was 95 years old and she was zooming into meetings and connecting with her family and her great-grandchildren and then her iPad went out. And just hearing about what that experience was to not have that, I think really highlights to me. And we still have members of our community. I know that Amherst often thinks itself as a very well-educated community. And I would add, we serve people who are illiterate that we have to read their mail to them and we have to help them pay their bills. We serve individuals who still write in letters seeking service because they don't even have a phone. So the disparity of access to technology for seniors, which is critical to their mental health, their spiritual health and their physical health is really an important problem for me to resolve and to find some way, whether it's a research grant or otherwise. So I hope that answers you. It does and I just hoping, I mean other topics, when you're talking about your resiliency seminar, the Amherst neighbors conversation that we had were very positive, although I am interested in the two topics you mentioned. But they were also about, what are you learning about yourself? What talents in yourself have helped you get through this? So that was kind of like positive conversations. So I think that it's a great goal. I think it's really, really needed. I have friends who are in that tech, who have no technology, brilliant people who are absolutely shut into their homes right now. So seriously, anyway that I can help to help make that happen to get technology into the hands of people and to teach them how to use it. It's just so essential. So thank you for thinking that way. Thank you. Okay, I'm gonna move it on to Kathy because we're really getting behind on time. Okay, so I'll be really quick because I was gonna build on Amherst neighbors, but Mary Beth hearing what you're looking for on, I'm going to go out and help look for what kinds of entities. I know a lot of foundations that do focus on seniors and the connection with seniors and mental health and seniors and staying connected. And for people that don't know Amherst neighbors, I mean, they are in the Zoom world now because they have to be in the Zoom world, but the notion was being in people's homes and connecting people. So I was just wondering on some of the other services, I see the SHINE program gets a lot of, it actually gets more visits than people. So it looks to me like you get repeat people coming back. And so have you been able to convert those? And I'm partially asking because I am a person who knows Medicare really well and the number of friends as they've turned 65 that I've helped figure out what do I do now? So I can see that people would be coming in. Have those been converted so people can still have that hands on help? Absolutely. I have one social worker who at this point in time is nearly working full time doing SHINE counseling. She just recertified yesterday. Her adaptive capacity to do that same work online, the day that we closed, we had anticipated that has been seamless. And she, like I said, she probably is working nearly full time when I reviewed it with her yesterday about how many hours she's spending doing SHINE counseling. The one thing I would note about that is what we are seeing is increasingly high numbers of individuals who are 65 who are deciding to suddenly retire and not return to the workforce. So that's why there is a heightened need around that. I think that COVID has prompted people to reset their thoughts about retirement and when they're retiring. So yes, we are providing that. Also, our SHINE counselors who are volunteers are doing it part-time on a limited basis virtually, but we have not found it to be problematic to continue that in that way, that service that way. Thank you. Anything else that's any other hands at this point? If members of the committee have additional questions as we have been doing, we will submit them as follows by email. But, Mary Beth, thank you very much. It's been very informative and very helpful. Thank you. Do we need a brief break or should we go on to, can we go on to community service, to LSSC first so the bar bills can, bar branch, you go ahead. Okay, I'll go ahead. Well, first of all, thank you very much for having me here today. And I'm going to, I agree with Mary Beth, you know, it seems very long time ago that we wrote these challenges up and our accomplishments, but I think I first have to commend my staff in the way that they have kind of risen to the occasion, evolved how they have volunteered to help with other departments. And really it's looking, they've looked at the bigger picture, not just our department moving forward and just keeping in the ways that they are keeping our youth engaged and our adults as well. We aren't able to offer obviously as many programs as we had in the past, but certainly what we are offering are very well received and very well attended. So we do have, for instance, we have the tennis, we have a small tennis program, a track program, golf lessons for children. We have for adults, we're doing yoga and she gone. And then we are continuing and then expanding our outreach program, which I think is incredibly necessary during this time. So we're doing a camp in a bag program where we'll be going out to the different housing areas in town as well as Groff Park and Puffer's Pond to deliver those programs to youth, which is, I think, again, very, very much needed. That said, we have just completed our strategic planning process and should have the draft report in hand by Friday tomorrow. So that's exciting. So that is definitely a major accomplishment and we will have now a roadmap going forward with our goals and objectives as to what we want to accomplish over the next three to five years. So that is happening. Let's see. I think, again, in terms of other accomplishments, talked about the housing area, it was a strategic plan. Groff Park, thank you to everyone who came out to the Reverend Coving ceremony and I'm so happy to see that project moving forward. And that was, again, a town-wide effort that is just gonna be, that is just gonna be an incredible resource to the community and to especially the children of South Amherst in particular. So I think I'll stop there because I do have three areas to report on. I will say finally, though, that they're in the staff organizational chart. There is a change there, too, should be aware of. We have eliminated this year for FY 21. It was a full-time, equivalent program director position and that position oversaw the after-school program, day camps and the aquatics program. So that position's been eliminated and I will be assuming those responsibilities going forward. So I'll stop there and open up for questions and then I'll move into pools and to Cherry Hill. That's okay. Okay, any questions about the general LSE budget holding then pools and Cherry Hill aside? Kathy. Yeah, Barb, this last point where you're gonna expand your scope so you will do this other person's job. I could certainly see if we look into FY 21 where a lot of the activities have been muted in terms of the number of camps we're running. Is this a long-term plan that in, and I'm equally worried about the budget for FY 22. So I'm not urging you to say I need another person a year from now, but is it feasible for you to be doing it if we succeed in opening up a more robust after-school program, day camps? Can you be doing both functions? That's my question. I think it's sustainable for this year again because of the, we have been very cognizant and up to date with all the different regulations that have come down and they have limited the size and the scope of the number of participants that we can have in these programs. So they're gonna be smaller going forward. We don't know as of yet what the after-school program will look like. It is a licensure year, but luckily we've been working hard on that ahead of time and gotten kind of ahead of the curve, if you will, in terms of meeting most of the requirements that are necessary to get that licensure license for the after-school program through the Early Education and Child Care Department of the State. So yeah, no, it's going to be a challenge, but we'll do it. I mean, I think, you know, I'm hoping that things will look different in FY 22 and that we'll be able to fill that position. Thank you. Pat? Just a quick question. I know that you provide subsidies for families for many of the activities and events and the pool, et cetera. I'm interested in finding out what impact would have making those programs free and available to any resident without cost or how can we reduce the cost to make sure that people who need help to accessing these programs get it? I know that we have a certain number of support that goes to social service agencies, but I wonder how we can increase that, I guess. Yeah. Or if we can. Yeah, all of the outreach programs there's no charge for. So that is funded by that line item, if you will. The other thing is we have been really doing quite a bit of outreach with the Survival Center, for instance, to provide them with free passes to the swimming pool, which they have ample supply of and whenever they need it, we help them there. So the pool's memberships and so forth, we've been encouraging families to use that fund, to use the fee subsidy money so that they can participate at the pool and in all of our recreation programs. But we are trying to do as much, especially the things that we are doing online. There hasn't been a charge at all and we have quite a robust online presence. We have our own YouTube channel now where we provide activities. So all of that is there and it's an incredible resource for the community. Thank you very much. Other questions about LSSC general before we move on to pools and Cherry Hill? We don't give a long answer, please on this, but the cancellation of the 4th of July event which was unfortunate but necessary, had we incurred expenses for that that we then were unable to recover? How is that? No, the fireworks company Atlas Pyrotechnics, they were very generous. They basically took our deposit and moved it to the next year. So we incurred no expenses at all. Anything else? Otherwise we'll go into swimming. We can do, trying to do swimming in Cherry Hill sort of together as our two special funded programs and get questions on both. But if you want to introduce us to on both of those. Sure, I can tell you what's, maybe it would be helpful to tell you what is happening at the swimming pools right now. So we do have our lifeguards on duty. We're offering lap swimming as well as open swim for families. And that they both have been pretty popular. You know, where weather hasn't been cooperating the way we like it because we've had a lot of thunderstorms especially the first week we opened. But when the weather is warm like today we've had some good crowds and it seems to be going very smoothly. And again, we have all the protocols in place that have been set forth through phase two opening of the swimming pools. So we are following those to the letter and we're getting very good cooperation from the patrons and community. So we appreciate that. Let's see. So the only, of course we're not, we are unable to offer swim lessons which you know, it is unfortunate but that is out of our control. So hopefully by next year we'll have that up and running again.  We did have to shut down those exactly in March. So that was the end of those. We don't yet know what the, how the schools, how that is going to look yet. We haven't heard if we'll be allowed in to provide lap swimming or open swim. And right now in the, in the guidelines that's a phase four swim lessons are quite out there. So because of the close contact with the children. So any introductory statement about the golf course? If not, I have three counselors with their hands up. So I'll, I'll let you know. Introductory. Yes, golf course is up and run was one of the first ironically recreational areas to open and in terms of providing programming opportunities for the community, well received. We have been extremely busy. So good participation rates, people seem very pleased. Again, all the protocols have been put in place as mandated by the state and it seems to be running very smoothly, effectively and people are enjoying that asset. So that's the latest and greatest on the golf course. So the order that I saw hands go off was Kathy Patton and Dorothy. So Kathy. I think my questions are mainly on the golf course. So have, when I look at service levels, we get the budget book just gets through FY 29, but we didn't see FY 20. Did we get an increase in the number of either people who use it on a day basis or season passes when Hickory Ridge closed it, when other golf courses closed down, that was a general question. And it may be too soon to say, how are we doing for FY 21? And then I just had a, I went to the back to try to see where the revenue is for the golf course, but I didn't see it. So I'm sure I just missed the line. So I just was, you've done a really nice job of FY 21 of figuring out a way to operate it for 22% fewer dollars. So I didn't know how we're doing on revenues versus expenses. That's the second question. And then the third is, in the goals for the golf course, said, trying to think of creative ways to use it year round and use it for multi purposes, not just for golf. There was a very quick proposal that didn't go anywhere from a resident to look at the clubhouse. And you know, because you came in with him on, could the clubhouse be winterized? Could the pro shop be removed? And think of it as an after hours place that you could eat, have music in the winter, come in and have cocoa. And when I describe that to people, people love the idea in terms of more frequent use in the winter. So that's sort of thinking year round what ideas are in the work. And then the final question is on where Pat was going on subsidies. Do we do anything? I don't think of golf as a long-term sport for people who don't have money because golf courses are expensive, but it's a great outdoor activity and it's the reason the courses opened up early because you can socially distance. So groups like the Boys and Girls Club, getting kids out to whack a ball around if you had free kids golf clubs, if we could find some resource that just donated the clubs for little kids to just go out as good hand-eye coordination. So trying to think of innovative ways of reaching out to kids and making it either completely free or so cheap that families would say for a dollar I can do this. So those were three year round revenues or four, I probably had four points on golf. Well, I also heard staffing. So let me explain to you why we are staffing, our budget for staffing is so much lower. Right now we're using our full-time personnel, the benefit of personnel to Staff Cherry Hill. So that's why we're using, we have a small amount of part-time seasonals. We have our mechanic, there may be another groundskeeper that'll come on in a month or so just to help out when things start to get crazy in our growing season. And then to cover, we'll have in the clubhouse folks to cover where people are sick. So I'll utilize people, for instance, who work at the pools and so forth. So that's why that is so much lower. And so that's quite a savings. As far as the FY20 revenues and expenses, it was looking very good before we entered the spring season and COVID. I will say though that we don't have all the final numbers and Sonya, we just, it's not quite done. We just finished the fiscal year. So we don't have everything together, but we'd be able to provide you with a report. But we did the best we could under the circumstances. We were limited by the numbers of people we could have play at a time. We had to have 15 minutes between each foresend, which is not, normally we do somewhere around eight minutes. So it was a different structure. We had to completely, we were a no tee time facility before that. So we had to completely reinvent ourselves and figure out how to provide tee times through a program in square. So it's a, it has been a monumental undertaking to kind of reinvent ourselves up there. Let's see, the creative uses of the course we are always looking into. Certainly the clubhouse is could be more versatile, but it does have its limitations in that it is, was built as more of a three season facility, not a four season. It's very, very poorly insulated. And we have plans this year in our objectives to really look at that facility, bring a group of community members and experts together to see what we can do in terms of, looking at alternative uses of the course. And certainly that the clubhouse is part of that discussion. As far as fee subsidies, let me tell you what we do. We are involved in a USGA program, the United States Golf Association program called Sticks for Kids, where any child or parent can come in and request a set of golf clubs for their children for free. They're available for free, we lend them out and there is no charge. And we also do have the camp and we are actively recruiting right now to in different areas where children normally wouldn't have a golf experience to fill that camp. So we're doing our best, but we could be doing more and we're working on it. But right now we're pretty, how to say this, we're pretty thin in terms of staffing because we've got people, as I said before, my full-time staff working up Upper Spawn, I've got people working shifts at Cherry Hill in the clubhouse. So we're doing the best we can with what we have and certainly the long range goal would be to provide those Cathy. But yeah, thank you for your question. That's good. Thank you. Did I answer it all? Yeah, and I see you up there a lot, Barb. So some of the full-time staff are you, yeah. Dorothy. Okay, I thought it was Pat next. All right, Pat, this matters. Okay, it would be good because I'm hopping or Cathy's helped me bridge back to subsidies. And I understand there's a difference between regular courses and the outreach courses. And after people aren't quarantined, if that ever happens, will there be subsidized classes for kids? And in terms of the golf course, the sticks for kids sounds wonderful, but are there then fees or classes that those kids or summer camps around golf that the kids can't attend if they don't have the money? Yes, they would need to apply for the fee subsidies, the parents, as they normally would. Yes, but they can get up to 100% fee subsidies for those. And is there a limit to the number of families that could get that? Well, currently due to COVID, right now the limits to the camps are 10, so 10 participants. So we'll see that change as we move further into the next few years, a couple of years, hopefully less than that. Thank you for everything you're doing. I appreciate that. I have spent a number of years at the pools with grandchildren swimming lessons in the water and out of the water. And my experience there is probably the most integrated experience in the town of Amherst. So I think that you're doing a great outreach. And I think there's discounts advertised in the booklet that comes out for spring and fall when we're in regular life anyway for everybody. So I have a small question and I hate, I'm sure I have no what the answer is, but is the waiting pool open? Cause I love the waiting pool at Mill River. I used to spend some really happy times there, but have you been able to staff that? Yes, yes, it's open. Absolutely, very popular. Our numbers, we have to, we can only operate at 40% capacity, but that still allows us up to 70 people in the Mill River facility. So that's actually a pretty large number. Good. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Anything else for Barbara and either of these two programs? I'm not gonna add it. I think, Lynn, do you have any questions? Yeah, who does veteran services? I was gonna ask that next, but I wanted to get through. Thank you. Barb, I do have some questions about where we are with the golf course and whether, how we're seeing it financially, whether we are making it work now on a basis or whether there's tax subsidy going into it. But I think that what I'm gonna do is send those kinds of questions through Sean and let Sean try and respond to them separately and then report back to the committee as opposed to doing it today. And partly as a matter of efficiency and partly as a matter of giving some time to put together the response. But we've, as a town, had various conversations over time as to what the cost is to administer the golf program and the degree to which the town needs to subsidize it. And it's just something that I think that the committee needs to pay attention to. I don't know if you have anything you wanna say on the subject right now, but if not, I'm gonna leave it to conversation. I'll start with Sean and then you have to follow through. No, that would make sense to me. I would think also we just need to get the final numbers together at this point. So we'll have a better picture to provide you. Okay, Kathy? Yeah, I just, I understand this has been an ongoing issue and it's why I partly asked of did people start using it in the fall? I understand the spring is just completely a different world. But I think we think of the golf course as different than we think of the pools. We don't expect the pools to cover their expenses. So we might just wanna get, I was trying to just look at what are the revenues we get for something and what are the expenses? And then Pat's question, I think is relevant on if we want people to get out of doors and be using services, what ways can we make them affordable and accessible? So I'm just gonna add to your questions, Andy. When you send them in if I, you can show me what you're doing. So I don't send my questions into Sean and have them have to answer two people. Okay, thank you. And I wasn't trying to suggest whether subsidy is something that's sublime just wouldn't understand where we are. Yeah, I was on the same page. Just wondering how, how are we, how are we doing? We have the next conversation at an appropriate time. But this is about the 21 budget. Are there any other questions? If not, Barb, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Lou asks the question, is there anybody here to speak to veterans? Sean? So we can speak to it a little bit because there was a change here and we can go through and highlight that change.  Oh, sure. Yes, Liz? You're muted, Liz. We do have veterans programs here in the assessor's office. It depends on what type of veterans information you need. Yeah, Liz, do you want to hang on for a little bit longer in case there's questions on the, the exemption? I'm here if there's any senior program or tax-related programs that you need me for. Okay, perfect. Thanks, Liz. Liz is our assessor if you haven't met her yet. So I'll just go quickly through the change. So there is a line for veterans benefits which are for cash benefits that we reduced this year. It's on the page 100 where it says veterans benefits. You'll see it's reduced 53,392. So that's a line that we looked at history and we adjusted this number to align with what's actually been paid out in the past. And as you'll know in a few places in the budget book, the town managers made a commitment that we'll honor any requests for benefits that come in. But this was one area where we could align the budget with what's actually been spent in the past. And that's really the only significant change in the veterans benefits section. So the only question that I had on veterans benefits and then I'll see that, I see the joint because your hand up and I just keep it moving. Do we know the number of people who are currently employed on the staff of the central Hampshire Veterans District and whether they assign specific staff to work with Amherst and our veterans or is it spread over in larger group? I'll, Sonya may be able to weigh in on this a little bit more, but we do have a individual that regularly visits Amherst. Okay. I'm not sure how many staff they are, but it's the same staff for all the towns that are in the regional area. So we deal with Rebecca Twining, who's the minister there and Steve Connors is our veterans agent. And we have one, is he voluntary, I believe, over at the bank here? So Steve Connors is the Veterans Director. He serves the central, we'll go over the name is that we're part of a group with a number of towns, 13 towns, I think, and based in Northampton, he oversees that entire operation. We also have an office in the bank center for the veteran services and there's a staff person who comes there, I think three or four days a week or has been up until COVID, who's there to support veterans needs in the bank center on a regular basis. Okay, thank you. Dorothy? Okay. I had questions which I submitted on veteran services and that it wasn't clear to me who in the town of Amherst dispensed any of these services. And it just, I guess what the question I had was, okay. I said there was a 15% decrease in the budget, but it still leaves the line higher than other previous budgets. So that was question one. There's no staff expense listed. So if nobody from our town is being paid to do it, is somebody else doing it who is not part of their official duties? It just was very confusing to me. I gather, so I figured, well, most of the money listed must be our dues that we give to this larger regional veterans group. Yeah. That's all I could do. Let me give a quick explanation for history and maybe I can then move this along very fast that way. Originally veteran services were provided by a veterans agent for the town of Amherst. And we found that to be very inefficient back when I was on the old finance committee. And so that we got together as provided by state statute with number of other towns under the leadership of then mayor of North Hampton, Claire Higgins and created the central district, central Hampshire district as a more efficient way to provide services. And which was why I was asking whether there was somebody who was regularly coming to Amherst and whether there was a regular office hour piece to it, which was the understanding in setting up the central district. But John Musanti, Stephanie O'Keefe who at that time was chair of the select board and I represented Amherst in those meetings. And that's the history of how it was created. And I think that it has been a very effective system for what I, and of course, the veteran services that are provided that are listed is really a question of monetary assistance that is provided according to state law. And there is a portion that has to be reversed by the town that this state statute portion. And those are required on an eligibility basis. And so it's just a question of making sure we have adequate staff to do the outreach to veterans to make sure that they are served. And once they are identified and they're determined to be eligible then they're in the system to receive benefits. The variation depends upon usually it's John Kikbrek who's the amount of money that is needed because at times, who's eligible does cycle over time. And that's I think basically it. I don't know if Sean or Paul or Sonya can add what I said. So the office of staff on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from eight to four, the office of North Hampton staff five days a week, normal business hours. Who staffs at NAMRS? We have a, there's a staff member from the region that comes over and staffs it, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, all staffing is done out of the central district and that way they can all be under common supervision of Steve Connors who's really an expert in the entire subject. And it's not only more cost effective but I think provides better service than the old system. Anything else on veteran services and questions? So at that point, I think we're ready to move on to conservation inspections. People want to take a say two or three minute break. If not, I'm the- I think Dorothy nodded her head. She didn't do a verbal. Why don't we do it but let's be- I could wait, I took my break but I figured other people must be human. So it'd be a good, I think you should just have a break and not ask us. Two hours in. Okay, so let's make it as brief as we can since we're going then again. Yeah, let's stretch, you're right, stretch it. I think we'll stand up. So let me see if everybody's back or if we have a quorum back. So let me check on, do a quorum. Check on this, Dorothy Pam, are you here? Yes, I am. Okay, Pat, Angela's. Yes. And Lynn. Yes. And Kathy. Yes. Okay, and so all members from the counselor here and we had two others who were here, Bob Hegner, are you back? Yep. And Sharon Pavanelli, they're in base, they'll be on break but I don't want to take much, any extra time because I think we have most of the committee back and so are we going to lead with Dave Zomak or is how do we want to- Yeah. Have a great evening. Okay, Dave, Livia. And I'll try to be brief here. I think we all recognize the lateness of the hour but pleased to be with you this afternoon to talk about the Functional Area Conservation and Development and just as a recap, it does include a broad range of departments. We have planning, zoning, conservation, inspection services under inspection services. Of course, some years ago, we moved the health inspectors under Mr. Mora and more recently, we moved the facilities coordination and supervision for facilities under inspection services as well. So it's a broad functional area. It affords us the opportunity to work on a wide range of projects and initiatives throughout town. Very proud of our efforts in particular to bring permitting for the most part all under one roof, under one shop. There is still a collaborative work we do with the fire department and DPW, but for the most part, we've tried to create kind of a one-stop shop for developers, for homeowners, for people looking to do licensing, et cetera. And I think it's shown great benefits and we've gotten very good feedback on that. I think a recent example of that, certainly working with our boards and committees was our collective effort to get restaurants up and running in this new COVID environment. And again, in very short order, working with various boards and committees and of course the town council through some of the zoning efforts to really respond to this unprecedented pandemic. Our work depends on collaboration. As I've said, we work very closely with DPW, LSSC, the schools, the fire department, the bid in the chamber. Joined today, of course, by Rob Mora, our building commissioner and assistant director of our functional area. Jeremiah LaPlante is new and we welcomed Jeremiah a few months ago. He is our facilities and maintenance manager and we'll hear from him in a few minutes. And of course, Christine Brestrup, our planning director. And we're fortunate, all of us, to be supported by some really talented and experienced staff. I think what you'll hear today about the functional area when we talk about our FY21 goals, you'll hear about efforts to make our community greener, more sustainable, safer and healthier in many ways to improve the condition of our town buildings as a critical piece. And one of the reasons we brought Jeremiah on and he'll talk more about that in detail. Part of our efforts in this functional area are to secure grants. And we do a good job of it over the years that I've been here. We brought in millions of dollars for the town, for playgrounds, parks, infrastructure and a lot of that is done collaboratively with other departments. Our projects like Groff Park, Dog Parks, Kendrick Park, downtown and Village Center work, often there is a connection to conservation and development. We do a lot of work and our efforts are focused with the planning board, the zoning board of appeals. More recently, of course, with the CRC and some of the council committees. And I think the focus over the next couple of years and frankly in the next few months is gonna be on zoning. We know that we need to make major changes to our zoning and we're geared up and we're prepared to work with the CRC, the planning board, zoning board and of course the council on zoning. So without going into more detail at least in my intro I'd like to turn it over to Rob. I think we'll go with inspection services and then Jeremiah for facilities, Chris with planning and then I'll just try to do a quick bookend at the end to talk about conservation and sustainability. So I'll turn it over to Rob. Okay, Rob, hi. Hi, thank you, good afternoon. I'm gonna start by just mentioning a couple of recent projects or work that inspection services has been involved in. North Square project reached completion on the residential units. It's 130 residential units out on Coles Road. It's 22,000 square feet of commercial space which is still vacant but the outside of the building and the grounds, the site are complete, ready to be built out for those commercial spaces. If you're traveling route nine and 408 Northampton Road, you'd notice Aspen Heights is well into construction. The building is up, the roof is constructed now and they are beginning to work on the interior of that building. We, as a reminder, are now supporting all of the licensing that used to be handled by the Select Board and Town Manager's Office in the past. Alcohol licenses are the main focus of that work through the Board of License Commissioners. We offer the staff support to the board. Some of the recent work that the board had completed over the past 12 months included the Alcohol Food Service Regulations and BYOB. They are continuing around their normal licensing, processing and more recently with outdoor dining which has been very active as you know. In the recent weeks, they are continuing to work on other items such as addressing short-term rental regulations, updates to our residential rental regulations, private club and other areas. Moving ahead to more current information, following the last several months of really significant low-permit activity for building electrical and plumbing, June seems to be more in line with what we've seen consistent with other years. So that's a good sign as we move into the summer. David mentioned a little bit about the reorganization of the Facilities Department. That included the new Facilities Maintenance Manager Jeremiah LaPlante who you'll hear from shortly. But that happened, Jeremiah joined us back in April of this year. Talking about some of the things we're really looking forward to is our new permitting program. We've talked about this I think probably for several years now in these meetings and others about streamlining, creating efficiency and online capability. So we're really happy about being there finally and we are any day ready to launch the new permitting program which will be first to issue license renewals for the residential rental properties and then hopefully very soon after move into building electrical plumbing, fire permits and code enforcement. It sounds like this is a effort led by the IT department working with the vendor and a lot of staff in the various departments to develop and build these programs. It looks like all of that what I just mentioned will be up and running this fall which is really exciting. I think David also mentioned this. I just wanted to note out of interest the outdoor dining applications that have been processed over the last several weeks resulted in 15 establishments that are doing table service outdoors. And we have a couple of three locations that are offering tables just for take out customers. I'll stop there for questions. Well, thank you. I really appreciate all you've been doing to get the outdoor activity for restaurants going and you've really answered my one question which was what we thought was happening in the inspection activities as we begin FY 21. Since FY 20 is now behind us and you kind of answered the returning to a more normal stance. Are there other questions from the committee? Bob and then Lynn. Yeah, I had a question on the inspection services on page 88, the residential rental permitting program. It looks like there's been a decline from FY 16 to FY 19 and a large decline between 18 and 19. Is that like an annual permitting process? Is it a one time permitting process? Do you explain that a little bit? Sure, this is an annual permit. The numbers have declined since the program started back in 2014. What we're really hopeful with this new permitting program is to be able to get, have the ability to better track these permits. So one thing that we're not able to do efficiently is to follow up and really see why a property didn't renew their permit unless we're responding to a complaint. We really haven't been able to look at the permits from that level. Otherwise there is a little bit of a fluctuation in the numbers year to year because the renewal is on July 1st. So depending on which fiscal year they apply in, if they're late, so the numbers could shift a little bit, but you're absolutely right, there is a significant drop and we're hoping to find out why in the coming year or years as we can better track these. Okay, thanks. Actually, that was one of my questions and I really urge that you do that. My concern would be that people are still renting, they're just not filing the forms. The other piece that is, and we'll be looking forward to, and that is what you've learned from this terrific permitting process that you've been doing. The department has really stepped the plate and it makes a difference in terms of just how the town looks, but I assume that we will have learned some things and maybe even figure out more ways to make permitting faster and still be very, very thorough in town. So it's a word of encouragement and thanks. Kathy. Staying on the permitting. When you permit, if do you have a computerized system that would allow you to know, you just permit it a place that has three bedrooms and two bathrooms or two bedrooms and one bathroom or I could go on with the possible variants on it and associated with that, do you, I know it's a self-inspection system on how many people can the landlord put into that space rented out. One of the things I observed when I was knocking on doors running for council is that my voter registration list for a place that had two bedrooms, one bathroom had eight names on it. So it seemed based on the number of cars and the number of names, there were probably more in that house than we thought. So a combination of what do you have that you know when you permit on the space and have we ever, to what extent do we go back and say, you've actually put a lot more people in that house than we think you're permitted for. So what's the flip side? Is it only that a neighbor calls? Is it only initiated in some way? So it's the two sides of what do we know? And then what would trigger a go look at it? That's it. Yeah, so currently our permitting system is very limited. Although it is electronic, the amount of information we get at the time of application is minimal. For example, we'll know the number of units on a property that's associated with a permit. Our new system that we're about to launch, we're asking a few more questions and the number of bedrooms is something that we're looking to capture and be able to report on. And we have with this new program, the ability to really ask for anything we think is valuable information. And I think we'll continue to do that and look for what is the appropriate information we look for. We are designed and have been from the very beginning to be a department that's ready for complaint response. We do not do proactive enforcement patrolling of neighborhoods to look for signs or evidence of violations, particularly with the number of occupants in a building. So we will respond to complaints, we'll investigate and take whatever action is needed to bring the property into compliance. But really it is the owner or the landlord or the property manager's responsibility to certify during the application process that they're in compliance with our requirements with the regulations and to distribute the appropriate documents with that information to all of their tenants. Bethany, you follow up or? No, my follow up is more some questions about what would an alternative system look like, but you answered my questions on what now exists. Thank you. Anything else from other members of the committee? I don't have any myself because I actually asked under public health about the restaurant inspections and got an answer on that. So I don't think we're going to need to go back there. If I don't see anything else, appreciate it, Rob, and thank you for the good work you're doing on getting our restaurants back and up and going. So where do you want to go next? Do we go to facilities or? We can. So that's Rob and Jeremiah? Yeah, we were going to go to facilities next and then Connie. Okay, so everybody knows facilities actually in the budget book under general government on page 42. So that if you're looking for where we are, and with that, Jeremiah, I welcome aboard and a few of the introductory comments as you went to the committee. Well, I appreciate you having me and allowing me to speak on the facilities side of the town government. I think Dave and Rob both sort of established this organizational structure. I do have a few maintenance assistance and maintenance technicians that I oversee their work. And we are working on just keeping those environments within the buildings clean and safe, as was stated, and being sure that we're maintaining the equipment as best as our ability. I'm trying to expand on some of the different preventive work that has been done and trying to push that forward with a more robust preventive maintenance program. And this is looking at all of the towns. I think part of this downswing in business has allowed me to really dive into each one of the different facilities, look at the equipment, sort of assess the equipment, its condition, the age, and try to take some of the historical information and hopefully establish a better idea of sort of a predictive maintenance moving forward so we can establish our capital improvements. I know that we have experienced some catastrophic and some minor failures, but I'm hoping to, with this new program, eliminate those catastrophic failures and we can prepare for those well in advance so we don't get those 200 and 300 and $400,000 hits. And that's, I'm using technology that we already have working with Sean and IT. I'm hoping to establish a work order system so it will be automated that anyone on our outlook system will have access to. So it helps with tasks, task management and scheduling. It could be as big as equipment maintenance to as little as miscellaneous work that comes in. And this will help with just looking at trends, budgets, payroll and like I said, capital improvements. Some of the big capital work that we're looking at right now is the police station roof design and repair. We're hoping to have that taken care of but also looking at whether or not we can put solar on it. Will the infrastructure support that? And as Dave mentioned earlier, a lot of our work is for these green communities and trying to reduce our carbon footprint and less reliance on these fossil fuels. So having that secondary piece to that infrastructure will be extremely helpful. Another project that we're looking at is redoing the front steps of town hall. Rob spearheaded the front doors and having those done and they do look great now. It really has changed the face of the front of the building. And we're hoping to get those stairs pulled out and reset. So they are more compliance because if you've walked up a number of those steps are varying heights. So it makes it challenging for a lot of people. Another area is heating and cooling in some of these older buildings. Munson has very old antiquated heating systems as well as North Amherst School working with Stephanie in some of the green communities and seeing what sort of funding and grants are out there that can help us modernize these heating systems. It is fossil fuel guzzling old furnaces over there. So we wanna, we're looking at heat pumps, air source and air to air and air to water. So in the next couple of weeks I'll be meeting with some mechanical companies and trying to get that going because it would be nice to have some of that stuff established before this next heating season. We also have lighting upgrades that we're just waiting on. So we're waiting on some confirmation for the grant funding from green communities. Once we have that confirmation we'll be able to get that project started. And it's retrofitting lighting to LED in town hall, Munson library and the Amherst PD. So sort of low hanging fruit but it will really help us move in in several directions. One, it helps us reduce our expenses and two, it aligns us with our ultimate mission. And then I have a number of little small projects that I'm working on to sort of expand on what Mary Beth has done for the bank center just kind of looking on the outside. There's a courtyard that's really underutilized. And I think if we do something with that courtyard she will be able to move some of that programming out there. Right now that courtyard isn't accessible from the interior or really the exterior if you aren't able to ambulate up and down steps. So we wanna take care of that. And there's also the set of stairs that go along the backside of banks down to Musanti that are in disrepair. And I've brought someone out and waiting on some pricing for that. So I'd be happy to have that corrected. Well, thank you. There's a lot that you brought up that really have to do with kind of capital needs. And so I think that Kathy if she needs to can speak to it. Kathy Shane is the chair of our capital planning committee. And I know that when we meet again in the fall as the joint capital planning committee we will wanna get a better assessment of our buildings and where we will need to go. And that's the appropriate point where we really need to delve into kind of the list of one of the conditions of the building and what needs to be done to bring them up. I'm just trying to get your attention. Lynn and then Kathy both Kathy's hand is up and Lynn. Yeah, I think Kathy and I are probably gonna go to the same place. And that is first of all, welcome. Second of all, we look forward to that list as we look at our buildings and try to keep the ones that we're not planning to replace in max, get them back up to maximum usage and repair and understanding what that will mean for us from a capital standpoint. I noticed that the book talked a lot about the reorganization and perhaps David you or someone or Rob or someone needs to just explain what you did to reorganize maintenance and then bring Jeremiah in. Well, I can take that. So we previously had a shared maintenance position Ron Bahanowitz with the school department and then when that changed we were still seeking a shared position for overall building maintenance and we collaborated with the library director for their maintenance person and we did that successfully. And that was sort of, on these situations we try to work with each other because it's a high skill, hard to fill position typically because there's a lot of mechanical knowledge needed and management of staff and things like that. Last year we decided that we were going to seek a different arrangement and library went back to their traditional setting and we went out and sought a higher level building maintenance system. We removed one position and that person is no longer with the town and replaced them with Jeremiah at a higher level and able to oversee all of our staff and the staff maintains the town hall, APD, Munson library, North Amherst building bank in the banks community center. So there's daily maintenance issues there and then there's also the sort of larger capital sort of small capital projects not the big capital projects but the small things like fixing a roof or HVAC things like that. And we had a backlog of those things because we had gone through a couple of years of trying different things once Ron left and so that's where we're putting our effort right now. So I guess my follow on question that is I'm assuming when we look at the inventory of our assets that some of this will be brought into not only yes, we have this building but yes, this is the condition of this building and what needs to be done. Yeah, yes, exactly. Thank you. Kathy. Yes, we were on the same page land. So I will continue rather than repeat. One of the things we did not get in the spring, actually it was in May because of the change in all the budgeting process with was a chance to look at inventory either whether it was automobile vehicle and inventory of buildings. And so there's this one or two sentences in our charter that says the town council might want to think about what they want in an inventory like that. So when Linda said the state of the building, what are we using it for? You know, I'm thinking of things like we've got the Hitchcock Center and my understanding is it's just sitting there empty right now, but it's a plan of what are we planning on doing with it? So would that be helpful for a couple of us to at least put together a bulleted list or would it be helpful for you to share such a list with us where we'd say, yeah, that looks like about what we think it would be so we don't get something and ask you to redo it. So that's the first question. And then just the second one, Paul, is the list that Jeremiah just gave us, some of them I think are on the small and don't need to come to join capital. Some were on the delayed list like the front steps of town hall and a question was raised during JCPC since it's a historic building, could that be a community preservation act money? So it's, I don't want to get a lot involved in this, but those are the kinds of questions on which, which are already covered because we've had funding from the past and now we're going to spend it. So the two, the two pieces. So the first piece Sean is really working on this. It's really working on this, that's his project and what we have looked at is the inventory includes age, condition, maintenance and repair history remaining useful life and other features. And so that's what we're starting with. If the council, I mean, we can't go through every individual counselor's desires. If the council says we want to add other things in this list, the council should make that decision what it wants to add to that list. But we're working at the charter, what the charter requires. So, when the council says we'd like this other things that's up to the council to make that decision. Yeah, in terms of, I think having Sean here and Jeremiah here and Rob more involved in the capital is going to give us a much better handle on what our capital needs are small and large for our existing build structure. And that's been our focus in terms of what are we going to have to invest in our existing buildings? And that will help the council decide do we want to keep them or not? Is this something we want to get rid of or not? I just want to let you know, I had a couple of district one people who follow this when they saw Jeremiah had been hired. They said, hooray.  So did we. I had expectations. So anything additional that people want to ask Jeremiah now knowing we're going to come back to it but with a different committee? Seeing none. I don't know if I want to actually ask one question. We have one member of the public who's been very patient. And if you were looking to do, to make any public comment, it would be helpful if you'd raise your hand so that I would know that. And if not, I'll know that too. So for member of the public who's here, if there's a desire to make public comment to the committee, please raise your hand so I'm aware of it. And having said that, I'll turn it back to Dave so that we can move on to the next piece, I think. Sure. Well, I think we're going to roll right. You're muted Dave. Chris, do you want to jump right in on planning? Sure. Hi. How are you? How's everybody today? I'm Chris Brestrup, planning director and I wanted to share some things with you about the planning department. So we have a staff of five people which includes three planners and an administrative assistant and myself. And we also share a position with inspection services which is the permit administrator. We were recently fortunate enough to fill a position that has been vacant for a whole year. We've hired a planner. We had a planner who left last June, I guess it was. Anyway, our new planner is really a dynamic person. He's very talented in many ways. He's a good writer. He's got great graphic skills and he's now working on grant applications for us. And in his first month of full-time work, he managed to get us a grant, a $10,000 grant. So I'll tell you about that later. But I think that was a pretty good thing to do in his first few weeks of working. So the planning department supports 10 or more of the boards and committees in town. And those include Planning Board, Zoning Board of Appeals, the Design Review Board, the Historical Commission and the Local Historic District Commission. And there are probably at least six or seven more that we support, which means we go to meetings, we have to follow all their paperwork and really help them out to understand what they're doing. In terms of our accomplishments, I'm just gonna highlight a few. One of our main activities is permitting. So as I said, we help the permitting boards and committees to do their work. So among the projects that we've recently permitted is 462 Main Street. It's Nancy Hamel's old office building down by the railroad tracks. And recently it was purchased by John Roblesky. And he's going to construct a new mixed use building there which will include 24 apartments and a small office space. So I think that'll be a really nice addition to that end of town. You can probably see some of the work starting. He's cut some trees down there. We also have Amir McChese, Southeast Court Apartments which came to the town council recently because of some work that Mr. McChese wants to do within the town right of way. So that's another 57 apartments and three retail spaces in East Amherst Village Center. Two more projects that I wanted to highlight are Amherst Media is finally coming before the planning board with a building that's been being designed over the course of the past year. It's been the subject of seven public hearing sessions with the local historic district commission. The commission eventually granted a certificate of appropriateness for the building. And now it's before the planning board and it looks like a good solution to this site and this project. Valley CDC is the other project that I'm gonna mention which is currently before the zoning board of appeals as a comprehensive permit. It's a 28 unit affordable studio apartment project. It's meant to serve moderate income, low income and homeless individuals with housing. It's received grant money from the town in the form of CDBG funds and CPAC money. And that is currently going through the zoning board of appeals process. They've had two public hearings on it so far and Marine Pollock is spearheading that effort. Other accomplishments that don't have anything to do with permitting are, as I said before, Ben Breger, our new planner, managed to work with the bid and get a Solomon Foundation grant for $10,000 which is reflected in some of the new site furnishings that you see downtown. Those beautiful red sort of sienna colored umbrellas and other features, planters, et cetera were able to be purchased by that money. And that was a really good accomplishment. We're also applying for a Mass DOT grant, Mass Department of Transportation. I think we're going, we ended up with a list that's about $270,000 worth of material. Again, to support safe travels, safe walking, safe bicycling and driving as well as downtown outdoor dining. So that grant application will go in either later today or tomorrow morning. We're very excited about that. And again, that's something that Ben's been working on. Among the other projects that we have going on, many of you came to the Graf Park opening yesterday, the opening of the playground. And that's a project that's been in the works for a long time. Planning department had a lot to do with that both in terms of getting the grant money to have the project go forward then reviewing it with the planning board. And then Nate Malloy just has worked very hard over the last year to get that in the ground and finally constructed. And here we are, and we're very excited about that. We also have the Amherst Dog Park, which will be under construction later this summer. And that was also a grant funded project. And we worked with the DPW on that. Kendrick Park Playground, which is something that went through the planning department, planning board and design review board. It's also the result of grants that were gotten from the park grant program with the state and some CPAC money. So we have a beautiful design that we worked with LSSE and the DPW on. And we're hoping that that will go out to bid later this month and be in under construction in the fall. Recently, we received a housing choice designation. It's our second housing choice designation in the last few years. And that's a designation by the state for cities and towns that are leaders in creating new housing and including affordable housing. So we're very pleased with that. And that designation opens the door for us to apply for other types of grants. Right now we have a grant to create a sidewalk along East Pleasant Street. I'm not sure exactly if it's been built yet or not, but I think we got about $190,000 because of our housing choice designation for that project. We're also working on an Americans with Disabilities Act transition plan. And Jeremiah is gonna be helping us with that. We have consultants flying in next week to begin to analyze town buildings and properties for handicapped accessibility. And they'll be producing a plan to show us how we can make our facilities more handicapped accessible. We have an MOD Mass Office of Disabilities grant for about $44,000 that we're going to use to build crosswalks and handicapped ramps in the downtown area to make that more accessible. And what else? Oh, in addition, I just wanted to mention that we applied for and administer over $800,000 in CDBG grant money every year. And that pays for social services and construction projects. And the current construction project is a multi-use path along East Hadley Road. So in addition to these grants and projects, we've also been hoping to work with the town council to build the commissioner and the planning board on updating and revising our zoning bylaw. We have begun to update our master plan, but I think that there's more interest currently in working on zoning. So the master plan may take a kind of secondary place to working on zoning. Oh, I did want to mention that we hope we're in the final stages of our flood insurance rate map project. We did go through an appeal process. We actually had an appeal. So now we have to go through another 90-day appeal period and then we're into the compliance period, but we're hoping that within a few months we will be coming to town council with some maps and some zoning text to have town council adopt. And I just wanted to talk a little bit about the challenges that we had mentioned in our budget. And one of the challenges is maintaining communication with residents. Residents are very eager to find out about the projects that we're working on, particularly the permitting projects, but also the Kendrick Park and Graf Park, et cetera. So we're trying really hard to reach out to community members, both online and in other formats to explain what we're doing and to put as much information as we can online. And we always welcome people to call us. And even in this COVID-19 situation, we have been communicating very much with residents about projects that are going through our office. So let's see, I just wanted to make one more comment which had to do with a question that came in from Sean. And I think it might have been sent in by one of the council members and it had to do with marijuana establishments. And the question was, how many marijuana establishments do we currently have in Amherst? And I think the secondary part of that was what was the income from the past year for those establishments. And so we do have one marijuana establishment that's currently operating up on Meadow Street. It's called RISE and it is a medical and adult use marijuana establishment. In other words, it sells medical marijuana as well as adult use marijuana. We have three other establishments that are working on getting themselves going. They've received their permits, but they just have to do the work to get their buildings open. And then we have a cultivation facility that is trying to be established on route nine. It's in back of the winery. And there's one other possible retail establishment on College Street. So that's the story on marijuana. And according to Sonya's office, we've received a total of $206,000 in the past year for from that type of business. So I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have about the planning department and what we do. And thanks for listening. Well, thank you. So let me see if there are any questions, Lynn. I wanna make sure I keep my questions to those things that are financial, but it's very hard. There's a whole part of me that has other questions. But one of the ones that is somewhat financial is that we seem to be seeing more and more of the applications to be for mixed use. And it's my understanding that that allows people to then not have to do low income or affordable housing. Am I correct on that? May I answer that? Yes. So mixed use buildings are buildings that are allowed by site plan review in most of the business districts. Site plan review does not require that affordable housing is a component. Special permits are the sort of gateway to requiring affordable units. We do have a number of projects in town that are by special permit, including the project that someone mentioned earlier, 408 North Hampton Road, the Espen Heights project. I think that's gonna have 11 affordable units. So it's not as if we're not building affordable units, but you are correct that the mixed use buildings, generally speaking, do not require affordable units as part of their component. Although I must say that Barry Roberts on University Drive, even though his building is a mixed use building, he was required to provide four affordable units there because he did need to get a special permit for a dimensional modification that was not exempt from the requirement for affordable units. So I just wanna keep pursuing this because I guess it's a concern for me that we keep building these additional facilities, apartments, et cetera. But, and I know we're well above the average of the limit that we need for affordable housing, and yet it still is a need in Amherst. And so that's not as much of a financial question. It's really more of a planning department question. And many of my other questions are much more around the priority on zoning and those kinds of things, which I totally embrace as you kno