I don't think it's a controversial statement to say that the social network is a great movie, nor would it be a stretch to put in a league with the best movies made so far this century. The only negative thing that I've read about this movie is that it won't hold up, its success relies on the success of Facebook. But that's wrong. This movie will outlive Facebook. That's because it's not a movie about social media. I mean, the movie, you know, is hopefully about bigger things than technology. It's about relationships, individuals, friendships, and what these mean in the digital age. It just uses the creation of Facebook as a backdrop to further explore these ideas. I suppose I could be glib and say you could make the same movie about the invention of a really good toaster. Today I'd like to break down the social network and dive into the character of Marcus Eckerberg. Look at what he hopes to achieve, why he wants to achieve it, and the means that he goes to in order to do this. The easy answer can be found within the opening scene, in fact, in the third line. Here's my question. How do you distinguish yourself in a population of people who all got 1600 under SATs? This one question drives the entire movie. Every scene, every conversation, and every line of dialogue is obsessed with Marcus' attempts to distinguish himself. And what the toll that obsession takes on those around him. But this scene does a lot more than just tell us about the central conflict. More important than that is this scene establishes who Mark is. And that is, he's not a good person. It was the first time I was writing about an anti-hero. And Mark spends the first hour and 55 minutes of the movie being an anti-hero. Less than a minute into the movie, Erica unintentionally insults Mark. She holds him to a standard that he cannot match. On the other hand, I do like guys in real group. Even after saying, I was kidding. he still retorts. To real group? No, are you like, whatever, delusional? After Erica mentions his inferiority, he responds by bringing up his strengths. Yes, I got nothing wrong with the test. And this can be found throughout the entire movie. Whenever somebody attacks Mark, he'll either insult them back or say something to strengthen his perception of himself. You have part of my attention. You have the minimal amount. Returning to the opening scene, up to the point where Mark is insulted, he was rude to Erica in that he really didn't listen to what she was saying.  I could recruit her into a $25 PC. After that moment, however, he begins to insult her. Why do you keep saying I don't want this guy?   But that's not why Mark does it. His goal isn't to be rude. His goal is to put himself ahead of others. His means of doing so is through putting others down. And throughout the entire movie, it isn't good enough for Mark to succeed. He needs others to fail. He can't succeed with the Winklevoss twins. He needs to win despite the Winklevoss twins. With that in mind, the film doesn't paint him in an entirely negative light either. During this scene, when he is creating face mash, his actions are wrong.  However, through editing, while we were watching Mark hacking, we were also watching the same woman he is objectifying, objectify themselves. And we watched them being treated literally as cattle being shipped around and lined up. This shows us that Mark is no worse than the people around him. That the environment that he is a part of is what shaped him. The film is structured in a way that helps us understand different characters. Given the intrinsic conflict between the different plaintiffs and Mark's accounts of what happened, we can never be sure of what is real. The movie continually reminds you that you are listening to a series of unreliable narrators. The very first words out of Mark's mouth when we cut to the deposition room. That's not what happened. The film structure helps to complement this. We cut back and forth in between the two depositions in the events that affected depositions. This helps to strengthen the relationship between Mark and Eduardo. Just minutes after meeting Eduardo, we jump ahead a few years and watch the legal battle play out. This really helps to establish the relationship. It's an easy and believable way to show off exposition. We hear the lawyers announce, your best friend is suing you for $600 million. And they may have called each other best friends, but that isn't actually what we were seeing. After watching the movie, it stuck out to me that we never once really learned who Eduardo is. He's had a successful past. He's clearly very smart and has a respect for Mark, but beyond that, we don't know anything about him. Not once do he and Mark have a real conversation where they talk about anything substantial. In fact, 100% of their conversations are either facilitated by lawyers or begin with Mark asking. I need you. I'm here for you. No, I need the algorithm used during chess players. We're gonna need a little startup cash to rent the servers and get it online. I need a dedicated Linux box running Apache with a MySQL backend. It's gonna cost a little more money. Mark never really cared for or about Eduardo. He just saw him as a means of completing his goal. The film hints that there is more to his character, but we never actually see it. Normally, I love it when movies have a well-developed cast of supporting characters when we understand the motives not only of our protagonists, but also of everybody around them. In this movie, we only get to know one character. There are general archetypes that other characters fit into. The Winklevoss twins, for example, are hard-working, dedicated, and don't like to lose. But those are general traits found within billions of people around the world. Nothing specific to them. The only character who has any real development is Mark. I wouldn't call it development, but it is worth noting that Sean Parker ends up revealing his true nature to the audience. For the majority of his time on screen, he appears to be cool, calm, calculating, and determined. During this, he is all talk, and once he is faced with any real problem, his act starts to melt away. That's not mine. Eduardo was able to see through this from the start. A psychiatrist would say that he was paranoid. But Mark wasn't. He believed everything that Sean had to say and incorporated most of it into the company. And I think that understanding why leads us to understand who Mark really is. The reason that all these characters are so underdeveloped is that we're seeing the story unfold from Mark's point of view. He isn't a sociable person. He's just so wrapped up in trying to stand out and trying to make Facebook the best that it can be that he never pays attention to those around him. This changes in the last five minutes of the movie. For the first time in the movie, he reaches out to someone else, not worrying about himself, just trying to take part in the social network. At this point, Mark really begins to change. Final five minutes of the movie being a tragic hero, which means that he has paid a price and experiences remorse. When he reaches out to Erica, it's the first human thing that he does in the entire movie. He is making himself vulnerable in order to try and become happy. In the background, baby, you're a rich man by the Beatles plays. A song that isn't about financial wealth instead about emotional richness. Either that or LSD, but I think in this case, it's about emotional richness. And going off of what Sorkin just said, the last arc of a tragic character is redemption. And the last scene in the movie is where Mark is trying to redeem himself to move past his childish ways and to start living a fulfilling life. Hey everyone, I hope you enjoyed. Man, that last scene is perfect. I know most people call the first one the best in the movie, but those last three minutes can definitely give it a run for its money. No dialogue, just Mark refreshing the page. Cinematic perfection. Anyway, I'd love to know what you think of this movie, so please drop a comment and get your thoughts out there. I also wanted to put a big thank you at the end of the video. We just crossed 40,000 subscribers, which is absolutely insane. I don't say it often enough, but when I do, I really do mean it. So thank you so much. If you've enjoyed this video, be sure to hit that subscribe button. I put a link to my last video on Baby Driver and my playlist to discussions of David Fincher films if you're interested. Thanks for watching and I will see you next week.


Here. Hybrid and Corbin saying. Ha ha ha ha!  We set up a PO box, not too long ago. Yeah, it's true. And because people asked us because they wanted to send us stuff and I don't want to give out my home address, so we got a PO box. But people have kindly sent us budget stuff. And I don't know if this video is going to be published all at once or if we're going to, well, every now and then when we get more in, we're going to put it all together or what I'm going to do with it. But in case some of these have baked goods or something. Yeah, something that can spoil. I don't want to wait until I have enough for a 10 minute video. Especially if it has sweets. We want to eat them now. Exactly. But that's what this is going to be. We're just going to be opening some stuff if you want to send. Sorry about that. But the Twilight Zone. Yeah, so we're just going to be opening some stuff. And if you want to send us stuff, our PO box is down below. Not asking you to send us anything. It's just for the people that felt inclined. Felt inclined to do so. But the first thing we were seeing we got was Big Bull that a lot of you have seen. We opened that a while ago. So we're very excited because this isn't anywhere on the internet really. Right, it's hard. We can't find it. So I'm hoping this actually has English subtitles. I'm assuming it would. But we'll see. We shall see. They usually do. Most DVDs and Blu-rays have. By the time you see this, it's very possible we were already watching and reviewed it. Yes. Ooh. The envelope. It's an um, it really, oh, hermetically sealed. Wow. I need my envelope opener that I got. My letter opener I have at home. It's from YouTube Reactions. Ooh, it's from YouTube. Wow. Wow, that's a packet. Are we getting sued? Is it? You can see the elbow coming off of it. You have opened letters before, right? What is this? Somebody's, this is somebody's comment.  This is like, or their story. This is like a huge Instagram message on paper. Wow. With photos and everything. This is about, does it have a name? It's about Shahrukh Khan and his blue eyes robot thing. Is it anonymous? Wow. What? What the? Skin color references. So we'll read all this. The need for vitamin D. Oh my goodness. This is like someone did a full research paper. Yeah. With highlights. Wow. Wow. Geez. So yeah, we'll read that, not right now on screen, because that looks good and thick. Wait, it's from my dad. No, I'm just kidding. This one, it says it's from ZZ Group. So I don't know if it's. Oh darn it, I was hoping it was going to be ZZ Top. Like a company? Because we've had companies send us stuff before. It's true. Games? Yeah. Ooh, there's fuzzy soft stuff. I love this. Thank you so much. Somebody sent us Indian mangoes. Oh. Oh, that's so sweet. Ooh, oh, this is ready. Cut these bad boys open. Hold on. I think we will. Right now. But I don't. It's so perfect. Wow. That is so cost. Obviously, this is like the most popular fruit in India. And they say the mangoes here are nothing like mangoes in India. This is just. That's awesome. Like there's a whole box just like. It's a whole box of mangoes. Wow.   Wow. And love you. And this is unbelievable. Thank you. That's awesome. I was not expecting that at all. And they look so good. I can't wait to eat them. Have you done a little? Yeah, I have. I think it's like an avocado. When it's slightly little. You want it to have some mush, but not mushy. It needs to be a little bit firm, but soft, kind of like my brain. This one. You need a letter opener. It's for. Cut your hand open. Rick and Corbin. Thanks. And it doesn't say. It's clearly it was shot from Amazon. Or Whole Foods, because it's got the Whole Foods tape too. Oh, I love it. Yay. Bollywood films. Oh. The songs and the stars. That's freaking awesome. And the forward is by Big B. Wow. It looks like a book of world records. It's a coffee table book, man. Hey. This is awesome. Wow. So it gives like a whole history. Oh, wow. The beginning. Oh, my stars. This is glorious. Heroines in Times of Taboo. This is going to be fun to read. Wow. All the, look. Devdas. Devdas. So does it go over each film? I'm sure it does. I'm sure there's like a page for each. And then the pioneering studios. Oh, man. This is so freaking awesome. Wow. SRK. Rithic. Yeah. And there's Rithic with SRK. Lagann. Wow. They say we need to watch. Yeah, I understand. There's a lot we need to watch. It's four hours long. Yeah, we love her. We do. Yeah, that's right. That's what she was in. I just had a revelation. Wow. That's awesome. She was in Pink Panther 2. I know what you're talking about. She was the beautiful lady opposite Steve Martin in Pink Panther 2. Oh, yeah. She's an actress that we just saw in the movie that we just watched and just did the review for. Gersnatch. Sure, it's called Gazar. I'm sure SRK is like 10 pages. Big B's got 25. Wow. Thank you so much. Whoever sent that, please let us know. Yeah, it doesn't give a name. Oh, hold on. Hi, Rick and Corbin Singh. Love your channel and here's some love. Hope you enjoy the book and also get to learn something new. From Jay Debsen, who goes by Jay in Princeton, New Jersey. Wow. Thank you, Jay. That is awesome. So incredibly sweet. That is so cool. Wow. Beautiful. Yeah, I didn't even know this. Absolutely gorgeous. That's awesome. Thank you so much. I'll be over here a lot reading that.  I'll be out here with a cup of chai. And we just received a new package. Candy Ramp Amongo. Like we said, I'm going to keep adding to this until we kind of have a bunch. Candy Ramp Amongo. And then I'll upload the video at some point. When it feels like it. But yeah, this doesn't say who it's from, but they bought it on Amazon. I hope it's not a carcinogen. Oh. Who's that? This is a legend. In fact, someone was just telling me about this. The cinema? The cinema of Satyajit Ray. This is like, he's one of the best known and famous, like important contributors to Indian cinema. Did he only see a director or what is he? The producer and director of the film, and film creator. So like an Irrita or a, you know, like going on a list of directors. I think, because I know that name. I've heard, I've seen comments from people when we've done older things about the legend of this person. In fact, on the back, it says he's one of India's best known filmmakers. His importance in the international world of cinema has long been recognized. Well, who's it from? Who'd say? Kamal, Kamal? Yeah, Kamal. Give us an Instagram. Hi, Corbin and Rick, hope with this book you will be introduced to a polymath, polymath? Polymath? Yeah, polymath. Yeah, to a polymath, a multiple gifted person. Okay, and one of the greatest Indian movie directors. What did he direct? A lot of like legendary older films. Well, thank you so much. So cool. Thank you so much. I will look forward to reading that. Really doesn't, we don't take this for granted. No, we don't. You have to go out of your way to select this and invest some money and send it to us. So thank you very, very much. So, so much. Really sweet, Kamal. Very kind, if you want to. We will read this. Hey, we're back again. Hi, how are you? Glad to see you. Me too. It's funny, we keep doing these and then like the next day we get another package. I know, we're starting to get a lot of packages. So that's really kind of you. Is there a note in there too? Huh? I don't know, I even heard that. Me too. It's called parched. Parched, a bright jewel of a film. I'm trying to see if anybody's in it. Burning source of inspiration. No one's in it, it's a film of no one. There's some leads and some important ones. It's important to us. Our queue is getting bigger and bigger. Oh, I, on Instagram every single week, especially now people sending us DVDs. I can't imagine, because I only have 12,000 on Instagram compared to other people who only have 12,000. In the arid landscape of Rajasthan, okay. Four women navigate their way through personal and cultural difficulties. One of them plays an important role. Do we recognize her from under under her? Yes. Yeah, we do know her. That's, and, and Sakra Gams, right? Isn't that Sakra Gams? Yeah, and it's directed by Lena. Oh, yes. We don't know her. But thank you so much. Thank you. That's awesome. Thank you very much. We'll have to send you to us, I'm sorry we don't know.  Is there a card? Is there a hey? How are you? It's from... Ah, yes. No, this is just a receipt. Wait a minute. And several leads and important roles. It's just everywhere, man. Well, thank you all so much for sending us everything you have. Yeah, send us everything you have. All your furniture. Send us everything you have. All your food. Even your children. Nah, keep your kids. Especially your mangoes. Mango. Yeah. But we want your mangoes. Thank you all. That sounds really wrong, but it's true. Thank you all so much. We don't take this for granted. This is ridiculously sweet.  Hey, thank you. It says that the buyer was Alicia Bhatt. Any relationship to Alia? It's probably her pseudonym. This is probably from Alia Bhatt. Thank you. Thank you.  You know, I can't.


All right, Amherst media, we're ready to go. Good evening. Tonight is our forum on the budget. Looking forward to 2021. It is November 19. And based on Governor Baker's orders of March 12. We are allowed to meet virtually. I'm going to call on each counselor by name. And please unmute and confirm that you are here. And then please make sure you mute again. So I'm going to start with Alyssa Brewer. Let's have a brewer. Let me start with Shalini Balmill. Yeah. Alyssa Brewer present. Good morning.  App pista ab som Darcy do Mont on. Using Latin. Mal in Greece moves here. Mandy Joe, Anneke present. Dorothy, Pam resident. Evan Ross Here. humano fission. P monkey Shane. Andy Steinberg. Present. And Sarah Schwartz. Present. Given that we have a quorum of the council present. I'm calling the meeting to order at 632. We are going to begin with a brief presentation. And then there'll be plenty of opportunity. For people to make public comment. Limited in time to three minutes. I also want to point out that we continue to have closed captioning. And if you're on zoom, you can do, you can go to that and you can press on closed captioning. And it will show everything that we are saying. Once in a while, there are spelling errors. So just be aware of that. With that, I'm going to turn. Yes. Isn't it posted also as a finance committee meeting. Please go. Yes. Yes. Yeah. It is posted as finance committee meeting. I need to call that meeting to order too. And you've actually already confirmed the attendance of. The council members of the committee. And I think Bob Hagner is the other person who's present. So. Bob, if you could confirm your presence then. I'm here. We're good. Okay, great. I'm going to go ahead and Shawn. Donno is going to make a brief presentation. And then we will move on. To public comment. Okay. Paul, are we going to go through this the same way we did on Monday night? Okay. So I'll start. So this is the bud, the public forum on the budget. This is a requirement of the town charter. When we first started this, we did it later in the budget process, but in consultation with the town council, we determined that was better to do the public forum on the budget. Early before the budget is actually proposed. So this is the opportunity for the public to weigh in and advance of the preparation of the budget. And so in the way public forums work is that there's a presentation, but at least 50% of the time must be devoted to listening to the public's comments. Next slide. So what we will present tonight is a look at the. Financial conditions of the town. We will identify the economic impacts of COVID-19. We'll talk about the need for capital investment because one of the ways we balanced the FY 21 budget was by. Deflating the amount of contributions we made to capital. We also want to recognize the impact on taxpayers for any kind of tax increase. I think we want to recognize that we did a terrific job in the council deserves a lot of credit for actually approving and implementing the FY 21 budget. Credit goes to our comptroller Sonia Aldridge and finance director son, Sean mangano and for making all this come. Come to a reality. There's some communities that still have not adopted their FY 21 budgets. And the state is still not adopted. It's FY 21 budget. So we've been working in a really time of uncertainty. I'm not going to go through every one of these points. I'm not going to go through every one of these points. But we'll talk to you about how we believe that our strong fiscal management has put the town in a position to be able to move forward on some important initiatives and projects. And it's really based on strong working relationships with the other elected officials, specifically the board of library trustees and the school committee and their leadership, their staff leadership there. Our approach historically through the town has been to take very good steps along the way to make sure that we have the revenues, adequate revenues to support any, any initiatives that we get took on. So next slide. So Paul, I'll walk through this one. So real quick before I dive into this and some of the details and I'll make this bigger. I do want to just point out that you can get more information on our budget by going to the town's website. And if you click on the government tab and there's a little budget icon that will pop up, you click the budget icon. And then you can find out more information on the FY 21 budget. There's also a place for FY 22's budget now. And so you'll see more information on the FY 22 calendar, a longer version of this presentation with more data and more more slides on some financial information for the town. And also on that same page is a feedback button that you can click to submit budget feedback. So if there's anything that you remember after tonight and you want to submit it formally, that's one way you could do it is to click that submit budget feedback button and there's a little form. And all that comes to the town manager and myself. So this is the revenue side of our budget. It's broken into four categories, property tax, local receipts, state aid and other financing sources. The largest portion of our revenues comes from property taxes. And the two components that really change each year are the allowable increase, which is always two and a half percent. And our new growth and new growth generally comes from new developments, new construction that's going on in town. But it also comes from things as simple as home renovations and improvements that increase the value of a home. And so the variable really that's important to look at this year is the new growth number, which is a little bit up from FY 21, but lower than where we generally see it. And we adjusted that down a little bit because of the pandemic. In the local receipt section, I won't go through every line, but I'll point out a couple. So hotel, motel and meals excise, that's one that is driven by our local economy. When you go out to a restaurant or stay in a hotel, that's where we get that revenue from. And so we cut that way back for FY 21 because there was so much uncertainty. And we're projecting that to start to climb back and FY 22. The columns here, if you want to get a sense of where things were, you can look at that FY 20 actual. And FY 20 actual is a good idea of where we were, even though the last couple months of FY 20 were impacted by the pandemic. So that even FY 20 might be down a little bit. Another area I'll just point out pilot, you'll see a 13% reduction in our payment and lieu of taxes category. I don't want people to think that's a loss of revenue. We had a 40 year pilot agreement with a. Entity that expired this past year. And so now that entity is paying regular property taxes. And so that went up into new growth. Departmental revenue, you'll see a really large increase. That's because we reduced revenues for our leisure services programming or Amherst recreation. I'm not sure if they've officially made the switch, but we reduced those programming revenues quite a bit for FY 21, because at the time we didn't know what type of services would be able to be delivered. They've been able to do some things. And we believe going into next, when this starts next July, they'll start getting back on track. Special assessments. That's where our, the money we get from the colleges and universities for the PVTA. We pay a portion and UMass pays a portion and the other colleges pay a portion. And then the last one I'll point out here is in miscellaneous. That's where we have our UMass occupancy fees. From their hotel. There's an agreement where they pay us an occupancy fees. That hotel has been closed. So far this year. And it appears it's going to be closed for the rest of the year. So, but we are projecting that going into FY 22, we would see that open back up and start to collect some revenue. Going into the next section, which is state aid. There's so much uncertainty around state aid that we have kept this level for now. There's a few areas that we're definitely going to find out more information in the near future. But we wanted to go slow with state aid. And so we've kept that level. We do know that the state did. Promise us level funding on our revenues. For FY 21. However, there always could be mid-year. Reductions to state aid. And we do know that the state did promise us level funding on our revenues. And we do know that the state did promise us level funding on our revenues. And we do know that there are. Reductions to state aid. That we still need to be cautious of. And then other financing sources. The two biggest ones there are ambulance fund and our enterprise fund reimbursements. So the ambulance fund generates revenue when our ambulances go out and they bill insurances. And the insurance might comes back in. And help support our EMS staffing and some other areas. And most recently, we were able to do that. We were able to do that. We were able to do that. We were able to do that on Monday. I think Monday night. So, and then the other area is enterprise funds. So we have enough for enterprise funds, water, sewer, solid waste and transportation. And all of those pain, indirect charge to the general fund to represent the services that the general government provides to those enterprise funds. And that revenue comes in here. So all in all, we're projecting that our revenues are going to be the same. We're projecting that our revenues are going to be the same. Which is good, but it's still, if you look at FY 20, we're still not back to FY 20 levels for revenues. On the expense side, this, we break our operating budgets down into four departments, the town elementary schools, the Amherst Pellum regional school district and the library. And so we decided because of all the uncertainty around the pandemic to start this year with level funding. This would be the second year of level funding. And so we're actually, we're also doing a little bit of a critical on operating budgets. You'll see for the schools, they actually have a small reduction. That's because we, there's been a longstanding agreement with the elementary schools to adjust their, their budget each year by changes in charter and choice tuition. And it's a little bit of a lag.  And some of the years they come in lower. And this just happens to the year where the adjustment works against them. Mr. Backelman mentioned earlier is that there's a high focus on capital this year and you can see an FY21 that we really reduce capital significantly from FY20 and so we need to get it back up and what we're proposing is 8% of the levy for FY22. We've looked at the projects, we've looked at what was deferred and we think if we get to 8%, we can make a lot of headway in catching up on the things that we pushed off and another positive development in capital that I'll just point out is you'll see a pretty large reduction in our debt service current. That's a long-standing debt obligation for roads that was is going to be completely paid off this year and so that money can then be repurposed for other capital. In miscellaneous, the important area there is our pension assessment, that's for all four departments up above, that generally grows 7% to 8% a year and then down below and unappropriated uses so that's where our reserve for abatement and exemptions which is we usually use a placeholder of 1% of whatever the the tax levy is and that's been pretty reliable in the past. State assessments, that's the other side of our state aid so we get money coming in from state aid every year, there's also a number of charges. The two largest charges in our state assessments category is charter tuition and the PVTA assessment. So again we're keeping state aid level for now, we're also keeping the assessments level and we'll adjust those as we get more information. So right now we've got a small surplus but we know there's a lot that's going to change over the next month or two that will update this and have more information in the future. The next couple of slides are really to share information about the pandemic so this one in particular focuses on the revenues that support our budget that were most affected by the pandemic. So the first one is our transportation which is for our enterprise fund that gets its revenues from parking in town primarily and that's the one that we're most worried about because parking really dropped off over the summer and it's slowly picked back up but it's still well below where normal levels are and so that one will be watching very closely. The other ones are licenses and permits, meals, tax, hotel, motel and UMass occupancy and if I didn't mention before this is a comparison of actual revenues in FY20 to actual first quarter revenues in FY20 to first quarter revenues in FY21. So it's really comparing apples to apples over the same time period. We did budget reductions for FY21. We anticipated that there would be drop-offs in these revenues and so other than transportation there all these reductions are in line with what we budgeted. Transportation is really the big unknown because we're not sure when that's going to come all the way back and then likewise another area we're watching closely is our water consumption. So we have a water enterprise fund and a sewer enterprise fund when there are fewer people in town in particular college students and staff the water consumption drops off quite a bit and normally reductions in water consumption is not a bad thing but our enterprise funds derive their revenue from consumption and so when there's a steep drop like there was when the university and the colleges sent all the students home the enterprise fund has to deal with that drop in revenue and so you can see in July there was a pretty big difference between what type of consumption there was last year in FY20 for the first quarter and our consumption for FY21. August it actually balanced out a little bit and then in September we're seeing the gaps start to grow again. So we're watching this very closely as well. There's a little bit of a lag in these numbers because some people are billed quarterly and some people are billed monthly so we might can see that gap continue to grow a little bit but if more students come back and things start to come back a little bit in town for the second half of the fiscal year we would expect to see these gaps close a little bit but we also budgeted for these reductions as well and with that I will turn it back to Paul. Thank you Sean. So I want to note that we do have very strong ratings from the standard and poor's bond rating which is important indicator of the the town's financial strength. They look at our operations. They look at the reserves. They look at the broader and economic situation as well and that we have purposely under you know for many years the town has been building up its reserves in order to take on these the major capital projects that you're aware of. Next slide. So the again I think I don't want to read us say everything that Sean just addressed. This sort of summarizes all the things that we had said previously. We have tried to maintain a budget that gives us adaptability so we can respond to situations especially in a COVID world. We don't know what's going to happen after January 1. Right now we've been buffeting the winds with our funds from the CARES Act after January 1 that those funds are not there. We don't know what's going to happen. I was just on a call today with the Lieutenant Governor and Senior Department of Revenue officials. They're not even speculating on what will happen and even any decision they think will be retroactive so it's not going to help us with the funds that we have right now. So keep going yeah. This is a quick snapshot of the needs of all three entities. Library schools in town as you can see we're all struggling with facility needs. We're all struggling with state aid. We're all struggling with COVID-19 and each one of us has slightly different issues. There's an article in the Boston Globe today I think about declining revenues or declining school enrollments throughout the state and how the state has to start to grapple with that. And they seem to be a little bit redundant so moving forward we're hoping to take some strong steps in the near future on the large capital projects. We think that it's wise to we've built up these reserves for a reason that we've been fortunate in being able to hold on to them so far but we will be suggesting ways to use them to offset the impact of the large capital projects on taxpayers. And one of the things that we're always careful of is any new initiative. We want to make sure that there's a proven ongoing revenue source to support any new initiatives which has always been one of the big challenges for any community when you have so many needs and have so many initiatives that you want to take on. If you don't have the revenues to support it your it's a recipe for disaster. The we believe that our business fundamentals downtown should be reliable. They should snap back quicker than many other communities because we do have a strong economic base with the university and two colleges.  So Paul I'll walk through the calendar real quick. So this is actually we've got a few more things accomplished since last time because this was from the financial indicators report. So you can put a check. The resident capital request deadline also went by so you can check that one off as well. And tonight we're here at the FY22 budget public forum. So the next big things that come out related to the budget are the budget guidelines and the finance committee has begun discussing those guidelines and they'll use the information that they hear tonight to further develop those guidelines as we go and eventually the town council will develop will adopt them hopefully sometime in December is where we're targeting right now. Other items just to note the the CPAC has a meeting going on right now. They are also discussing their recommendations that will eventually come to the council. There's a we have a BCG meeting which is a budget coordinating group tentatively scheduled for February. We'll see if we need that. And then I guess the last thing I'll finish with is our capital planning process really kicks into high gear when the joint capital planning committee starts which we're tentatively scheduled to start in February. And that's a committee that reviews the capital improvement program and makes recommendations to the town manager. And then there's a number of meetings with the finance committee and the town council and the spring and later on in the spring. And with that we will turn it over for any comments. Thank you. I think you can go ahead and take the screen down. Thanks. I appreciate that. We are now entering into the public forum period. Based on the charter the public forum will be open for at least as long as 22 minutes which is the time that we have already taken. So I see one hand up and it's Lydia Irons. And would you please bring Lydia into the room where she can speak for us? Hello all. Can you hear me? We can. Thank you Lydia. State your name and where you live. My name is Lydia Irons. I live on Jeffrey Lane and I've been a resident in Amherst for 11 years. I'm also a nursing student at UMass. I have two small children that I want to grow up in an equitable and just community. So I'm asking you as you look at the upcoming budget to prioritize the needs of the BIPOC residents of Amherst that will lead for a better town for all of us. Tomorrow I will be getting up at 4 a.m. and doing a 12-hour clinical shift in a hospital where there are more and more COVID cases every day. In my clinical rounds I've also been placed at the UMass testing site and I was actually thinking of all of you when I was there last. As I tested hundreds of students for coronavirus an Amherst town police officer came through the testing site with the puppy that the APD now has as a comfort dog. I thought about the nearly two hours of public comment that you heard from your constituents imploring you to cut the APD budget and the presentations that were made about how above par our police officers are and how they need all the money that they get from us. I was reminded of that and of all of you as I watched the officer with the puppy stand at the doors of the testing site having students that I had just tested for coronavirus crowd around and pat the dog. I thought about how much money the town of Amherst proposed to spend per resident in the FY21 budget cycle $136 per resident to police but only $3.77 per resident on public health. I also heard in this presentation that we just bought a new ambulance and according to Paul Buckleman's October 19th report ambulance and emergency calls continue to be low this fall with calls coming in at less than half of what they normally are and if you're choosing between cutting funds from public health housing or other social services or the police please cut the police's budget. Even if we are going forward with level funding model for the whole town rearrange the departmental funds to address the systemic racism in our town we need our budget to support our residents in this unimaginably difficult time and we need to get comfort from our town in solid and secure public health services not from a puppy. Thank you. Lydia thank you for your comments thank you for your work as an emergence as a nurse and also UMass center Zoe Crabtree please enter the room state your name and where you live. Just a moment please. Hi can you hear me now? We can thank you. Awesome thank you Athena for getting me on here. My name is Zoe Crabtree and I live in district five. I attended the financial indicator presentation last week and just listened to the shortened version of it now and I heard the presenters paint a picture of our finances as relatively stable. You saw last weeks that we're trending positively over the past 10 years and ultimately okay despite the hit that COVID-19 has put in tax revenue and local receipts. I heard them try and make an argument that we should hold steady and keep doing things as we've always done them and if you're wondering how we've done things you also just heard from Lydia that this year's budget includes approximately $136 per resident to the police department and just under $4 per resident to the Department of Public Health. What I didn't hear in the presentation last week or this evening was an assessment of how the town's financial systems contribute to systemic racism or any serious discussion of how we could change that. With the exception of Darcy's comment last week about how the council should consider ways to shift the town's budget priorities to address climate change and potential potential alternatives to policing it felt as if everything was business as usual as if systemic racism didn't exist and before you start thinking well it was the financial indicator presentation not really the place to be discussing racism I want to remind everyone that the town's financial decisions have huge consequences for our community along lines of race and class. Pretending those consequences don't exist doesn't make them go away and we can't address systemic racism as if it were a separate issue that isn't relevant in core governmental processes it's baked in. So in order to ensure that Amherst is the equitable just community that we all want to live in I'm asking you to prioritize the needs of BIPOC Amherst residents and community members in the upcoming budget. I'd like you to reconsider the proposal from the racial equity task force of Amherst that requests funds for a BIPOC residents council youth programming a cultural center and hiring a chief diversity and equity officer and I'd like to remind the council that this summer you voted to freeze two police officer positions through the end of January while the town manager writes a report on alternatives to policing what are you going to do to those positions in January if his report says we should move forward with alternatives because if you do nothing those funds become available to the police department again and you'll all have done nothing of any consequence to make our town safer for BIPOC community members if you want to actually do something make sure the budget guidelines for FY 22 instruct the town manager to prioritize the needs of BIPOC community members make the guidelines say that the town should fund a BIPOC residents council and chief diversity and equity officer make the guidelines say that the town should fund youth programming for youth of color and a cultural center and make the guidelines say that the town should direct funding away from the police department and towards community programs that keep everyone safe healthy and housed thank you go we thank you for your comments Allegra you'll enter the room and state your name and where you live hi can you hear me yes we can my name is Allegra Clark and I live in district two I moved back to the area of Amherst two years ago after having a child and wanting to get out of the city of Boston I myself am a graduate of Amherst regional high school and I wanted my children to have access to a quality public education and I remembered an Amherst that had a progressive spirit but I think Amherst can do better and Amherst should do better in order to ensure that Amherst is the equitable just community that I moved back to live in I'm asking that you prioritize the needs of BIPOC Amherst residents in the upcoming budget if you're choosing between cutting funds from social services or the police cut the police budget even if we go forward with level funding we need to rearrange departmental funds to address the systemic racism in our town I know that police are not the main thing that keeps this community safe especially during a pandemic when access to affordable housing sanitation nutritious food and healthcare are paramount we heard from Mr. Backelman in October that ambulance and emergency calls are low this fall with calls coming in about half of where they are normally in contrast I viewed a social media post by the Amherst survival center back in May reporting that they were serving 50 percent more lunches daily than they had been pre-covid this shows us that police isn't where we need to prioritize our funding meeting the basic needs of our residents is instead again during the FY 21 budget cycle the town of Amherst proposed to spend $136 per resident on the police but only $3.77 per resident on public health this doesn't reflect the needs of the community and this certainly isn't wise spending on the middle of a pandemic please consider the proposal from the racial equity task force of Amherst that requests funds for BIPOC residents council youth programming a cultural center and hiring a chief diversity and equity officer thank you like we're thank you for your comments I'm going to go ahead and call on a soldier or take over this to Monty first before I come back to repeat thank you the soldier and where you did good evening 21 year resident of Amherst district five thank you can you hear me yes okay um I just wanted to support the work of D fund 413 I'm very specifically given example of where funds could be reallocated we have a volunteer that some of you know I'm not authorized to share their name publicly but we have people who are full-time workers full-time parents who volunteer untold hours in order to help low-income essential worker residents fill out the paperwork that they need to fill out in order to avoid eviction and to access services for their U.S. citizen children and that's an example here if we had even part-time funding for a social worker hopefully bilingual bicultural who could support that work we would be able to actually save a lot of money in the long run because some of the paperwork and some of the work that could be provided by a bilingual bi-cultural social worker would support family stability and help Amherst public school students receive additional supports and additional programming that they are in fact entitled to and often simply parents need help navigating and so a small investment can actually have multiplier effects for a lot of families a lot of children and result in savings to the district in many many aspects of both health and wellness and academics for children who are more engaged fed more nutritionally and who have access to other supports in health and mental health so there are many needs some of these are very specific and we've shared with you in the past and so we certainly know where the funding could go and we know that it could have a long-term impact in the economic and social health of the city thank you for your time thank you for your comments as soldier my Maida hello yes state your name where you live my name is Maida Ives and I've been working at Amherst College for five years and I live in district five and I'm just right um wanted to uh farm and uplift the past three comments I just heard I am new to the budget process but I really agree that in order to ensure Amherst is equitable just community that I also want to live in I'm asking you to prioritize the needs of our BIPOC Amherst residents and consider the proposals from the racial equity task force of Amherst requesting funds for BIPOC residents council youth programming a cultural center and hiring a chief diversity and equity officer and even this year for going forward with a level funding model for the whole town please rearrange departmental funds to address systemic racism in the town and if if you choose between cutting funds for social services or the police cut the police budget just echoing the sentiments I just heard I have a very dear friend who's a 10-year-old child who would benefit wonderfully from youth programming in a cultural center and I'd like to see the town uh do what's best for him and his peers thank you very much thank you for your comments um Zoe you have your hand up again would you like to enter the room and speak again hi yes I actually would I don't I didn't have my hand up on purpose but I do have something um that needs to be shared um I have a uh an anonymous testimony that was shared with me that I would like to read if that's all right yes um so this testimony says I live in Amherst in the district represented by Stephen Treiber and Evan Ross my demand as a resident of this town for four years and an employee of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst is the following we need to cut APB budget by at least 50% immediately the APD does not keep people safe police disproportionately target black brown and indigenous people and disabled people putting them at risk while also draining resources from other critically important areas I have black and brown family members co-workers and students I teach who do not feel safe and who experienced heightened levels of stress as a result of having to change their daily routines to avoid encounters with a police force which casually carries lethal weapons the amount of funding APD received in proportion to public health education and social services is absurd for example as I hope you hear many times tonight for each resident in Amherst the town spends 136 dollars on the police and a miniscule 3.3 dollars and 77 cents on public health and five dollars and 99 cents on the senior center this is even more absurd stubborn and dangerous when we consider that the town council refuses to even budge on these numbers in the midst of a pandemic disproportionately impacting black, Latinx, indigenous, disabled and elderly people as someone who has received their degree in public health I understand there are downstream and upstream approaches to treating a disease upstream approaches address fundamental problems such as property homelessness and poor infrastructure downstream approaches address issues such as quality of treatment once someone has already gotten sick funding more police does neither of these rather it adds fuel to the fire policing further compounds racism and ableism which public experts refer to as quote fundamental causes of health disparities by increasing the likelihood of injury death or arrest and at the least at the very least increasing stress levels which have been documented as a major cause of health disparities it does all this while draining resources for services that can address the upstream and downstream resources of the pandemic to reiterate cut APD by at least 50 percent and take a big step towards ensuring this can be a safe and healthy town for all residents as it now stands you are all failing and if you continue to be reckless and do not budge on this I'll look forward to organizing with labor unions and other political coalitions in the town to help swiftly put you all out of office thank you thank you for sharing the comments with us are there any other people that would like to make public comment I do want to thank Amherst media for also showing us the names of people who are attending on zoom we know that there are other people out there that are attending just by watching this on Amherst media any other public comment at this time yes Dr. Shabazz please enter the room state your name and where you live hello hello yes I live in South Amherst my name is Dr. Demetria Shabazz and thank you for having this hearing on the budget mainly to reiterate what folks have already said however one of the things that we found in our recent people's assembly is that young people and old that's across ages we want a place in which folks can gather we need a public meeting space a community center that folks would feel comfortable they could have some power over in terms of usage for community and cultural events this is something that since the summer we have been discussing we have been asking for it is part of the racial equity task force and I believe that cutting the the police budget in order to accommodate not only a cultural space but a ways in which we can safely have interventions in terms of mental health and any other type of wellness checks that should be our town's priorities the youth and taking care of folks in need in a way that is non-threatening so again when we're looking at priorities the youth and taking care of folks in terms of wellness checks and mental health should be our priorities thank you thank you for your comments Dr. Shabazz are there any other comments at this time yes Jose Lugo please enter the room and state your name all right thank you so yes I'm also speaking in favor of cutting the budget we have a community here that can take care of certain aspects of our own needs I'm speaking primarily of the underrepresented groups marginalized groups who we have worked try to work in with city council and other organizations and it doesn't seem that it's systemically easy to address our needs and so it would benefit our community to have that those funds from the police department shifted to community organization so that we can go around some of the systemic obstacles that we know exist and take care of ourselves by involving all of us and perhaps we can involve members of the town council as well who might be interested in expanding their understanding of this group of people who are affected by some of the systemic racism that we've been experiencing over the last centuries thank you Jose before you leave would you just remind us where you live and I want to make sure I pronounced your name correctly Lugo Jose Lugo yeah and I live I believe it's in precinct two the south end of Denver of Denver speaking in my old home of Amherst thank you we appreciate that are there any other comments at this time looking for final comments Andy would you like to go ahead and adjourn the finance committee yes I uh adjourned finance committee at whatever time it is now seven fifteen thank you um and before I adjourn the council just have a safe and respectful of distance and mask thanksgiving uh and be well I the council meeting is adjourned thank you


So when I started with Osteon, there was only a few women here today, not by any means of trying anything new or different, but we are 48% female staff here in manufacturing. And a lot of that is hands-on manufacturing work. And I've noticed over the past 10 years, there are more and more women getting into manufacturing. And I think that that's really, really important to keep that momentum going. Osteon Medical is a medical device manufacturer based in Mulgrave in Victoria. We predominantly build for a patient a facial prosthetic, mostly in the dental space. Manufacturing locally is of the most strategic importance, I think, for our nation and for our state. The more we can manufacture here, the stronger the success of this region will be for years to come. And most international companies look to Australian. They love Australian product, so we just need to develop some really cool technology, have faith in ourselves, have the support networks to help work out what to do to navigate IP and licensing and regulatory compliance and all work together to try and really just bring back that sort of manufacturing here locally and grow the industry. That's probably my biggest passion, just bring manufacturing back into the region.


One of the issues in Southeast Asia particularly is vulnerability to natural disasters. There was a tsunami in Ache, of course. What we saw was that people would start selling these things because they needed the money. These are the essential written records for understanding the political history, but also social history, economic history, the history of ideas, about what their past was actually like. It's really challenging for a region like Southeast Asia where it's hot and humid to preserve this material which easily becomes brittle and they perish away. So learning about how to preserve them, this is something I think is very important. In Ghana, in Accra, we go and we see collections of documents just covered with cockroaches and even mice and rats. If we don't manage to preserve, to digitize this material, it will be lost forever. EAP offers the kind of financial resources. The ground is really helpful for libraries and cultural institutions to preserve, to conserve and to digitize material in the way they should be done.  My own project is digitizing archives around architecture and building permits and urban history in Accra. And we've been contacted by different people who saw the news story about this grant because it sort of went viral on Ghana social media telling us, oh we have this collection of images and it's suffering water damage. We go and we see collections of documents that are covered with heaps of dust over 50 years, 60 years. Even as I was handling some of the material documents were disintegrated in my hands in front of my very eyes and then the first day going to the archive to get some of this material was just the most amazing thing. When we digitized our first images and scanned them and uploaded them on the computer there's also this overwhelming relief that now it can't disappear. Well I was approached by a historian and I really could not believe that there was such opportunity because these are the collections of cloistered nuns. That means that otherwise you would not be able to approach them for the very rules that they follow. These are materials that document the life of these women not only their views about religion let's say or a life of prayer and devotion but at least what interests me is about their daily life. In order to learn about the life of many people that otherwise we would not have any kind of document that could tell us that they ever were in this world. So in that respect the opportunities that EAP has offered have been really excellent to have access to funds to rescue or even to save some collections that otherwise would have been lost. Usually research projects that are from institutions in the West are mostly extractive. They go and get their data and then it goes outside the country and people in the country don't really know anything that has been done. The EAP material is completely different because it is material that still belongs to the people who own it and I think it gives a different kind of perspective. Decolonizing the archives is a very important aspect of any digitization program. So in that sense EAP is exemplary in the kind of work it does it has offered a model it makes rare archival resources available to global audiences. For the many underprivileged students and scholars from the global south EAP is a scholarship heaven that they or we can access without any specific restrictions. The EAP is helping to make open access a much better norm in academia and then your narrative will emerge into time. Kind of amount of contextual information that you get with the EAP material so where it comes from, who owned it, whether it was read the kind of books that they found in company with I mean down to really simple things like a lot of the EAP material has annotations and marginalia and finger marks and so you can tell how much something was read, how much something was used so we can build up a much better picture of the reading culture, the management culture, the whole. The EAP projects are a step ahead in promoting and making accessible the voices of written tradition. The EAP is helping to reorient the writing of the understudied cultures especially in western academia. There's an increasing effort in many parts of the world to understand cultural history in a linear way in a very nationalist model whereas the availability of this kind of material makes it much more porous across regions and shows the shared histories of different regions for example India, Pakistan and Bangladesh which used to be one region one geographical entity. As a historian I am interested in people that are anonymous and so women are very much underrepresented in the historical records and so to have access to this material is very important and that is what interests me as a historian Why do they continue believing, praying, hoping or why would a woman decide to spend the rest of her life in a convent completely disconnected from their own family or the rest of the world if their life in the convent can be sometimes held but I think that is precisely this type of question because we as human beings carry these contradictions these secrets sometimes they have no other choice so I think for a historian that's an interesting thing to investigate We are taught that architecture started almost with Europeans in the country and indeed throughout my training in architecture school beyond things like the pyramids in Egypt it was almost as if there was no architectural history in my country I was very interested in why buildings from where I was from were not necessarily called architecture but buildings from outside Africa were seen as more deserving so this is the really great thing about the EAP program Through this archive I'm seeing indigenous architects and showing that they were conversants with drawing techniques and design techniques and very much contributing to global architecture in a way that in architecture school I had no idea about One fact that really stuck out to us while digitizing is just how many women were the ones submitting applications especially in the earlier days to build their own homes so this can also be read as a history of the place of women or the status of women in Accra and to think of the other archives that also tells similar stories that we've been told the wrong way or histories we've lost it would be really sad to lose all that rich history just because we cannot preserve or digitize them in time