So I'll call the meeting of the select board of February 5th, 2018, to order at 6.34 p.m. We'll start with opening remarks, announcement, agenda review. First question I'm going to ask is who amongst the guests that we have here are here for public comment not related to an agenda item? Is anyone here for public comment other than agenda related items? If they're agenda related items, we'll call on you when those things come up. Is there any changes to the agenda that the select board need to make or any comments? I will mention just as a FYI, I did leave something for you on the desk tonight. I also sent an electronic copy moments before I left the office, which was on my way here. It'll hopefully get loaded to the electronic packet, which we'll discuss a little bit later. So, barring any other news announcements? Just a quick question, so thank you for reminding us that you gave us this. What's different about the Black History Month proclamation versus the one that was in our packet? On the second page, they're in the packet or in your hard copy packet, not the electronic packet. It said the words flag raising celebration. And begin with a flag raising ceremony in the bottom line. And the flag raising already has occurred, so we delete the word flag raising from it. The advocate has asked that we put the flag up on February 1st versus waiting until your board meeting and things like that to raise the flag. So, we'll move into our agenda for the evening. And I think we'll go into our action discussion items. And the first thing on our agenda is the 2018 CDBG recommendations review of those items. And so, Mr. Malloy, if you join us and kind of walk us through what you have for us. Sure. Thanks, Nate Malloy. I'm a planner with the town, a staff liaison to the CDBG advisory committee. In your packet there is a memo from the committee and the cover memos or cover pages for the proposals. The town received two non-social service activity proposals and seven social service. You know, in the memo I'll back up a little bit. You know, the town found out in the fall of this past year that it was a mini entitlement again and could apply for up to 825,000. And it's not a given necessarily. So, you know, the process started a little later than usual. Some of the minis now only get about 675. But we've had a good track record. So we're fortunate there. The committee held a public hearing in December to help formalize the community development strategy. The strategy helps determine priorities for funding and target areas. So as a mini entitlement, we need to target our activities to certain areas in town. And so we have a few target areas where a lot of activity has taken place. You know, we can't be townwide, unfortunately. And then, you know, it also identifies priorities for social services. And then we, you know, we put a request for proposals out. We had a little over five weeks. They were due January 24th. The committee met last week and made recommendations. And then there's tonight's meeting and there's a hearing on Thursday, February 8th. It's a requirement of DHCD that the public provides comments on what activities are going to be included in a town's application. And so for the non-social service, we can begin with those, you know, the town recommended funding East Hadley Road. It's a continuation of a multi-use path from 116. The funding allows all the way to the town line, but at least hopefully to Whipple Tree Lane. So it'll hit all the entrance and exits off of, you know, East Hadley Road. The town received funding just this year in 2017. So the project has, you know, this, it would be phase two. Phase one is what the town just received. It's about 350,000. And this would continue it and hopefully finish it. And I'll give credit to public works. They've done more work in engineering design to bring this along so hopefully it can happen within budget. The second request for a non-social service activity was to update the transition plan. The Disability Access Advisory Committee submitted this proposal a few years ago and they resubmitted it. We worked with, we asked a few different consultants what would be needed. This estimate was, the original request was for 60,000. The Block Grant Committee recommends 40,000. They think that, you know, with this request, the plan can be updated. It may put a little bit more work on staff to do it. But they felt that it was something that they'd like to at least get the East Hadley Road project done and recommended most of its budget. And then the 40,000 for East Hadley Road. For social services, you know, the town likes to fund a maximum of five agencies at 20% of the grant application or grant amount. It doesn't need to fund that. It could fund one or none. You know, that social services don't have to be necessarily a part of the application that, you know, the Block Grant Committee realizes there's a strong support for that and the community needs strong need for it. So the seven proposals were, you know, pretty strong that there's review criteria that the committee uses to review all the proposals. So they come up with kind of a rank score based on, you know, different comparative criteria. So the, you know, the need, the impact, feasibility, budget information, agency information. And then they, you know, they, that becomes a basis for discussion on how they determine, you know, what five get funded. And so, you know, there are more proposals than could be funded and there was more funds asked that could be funded. So, you know, when the committee made its five recommendations, it was still over the budget.  You know, if you fund five agencies, equitably it's about 35,000 to reach the one, the 165 maximum. This year, you know, even at when the committee recommended the five agencies were still over 40,000 over budget.  You know, what makes sense in terms of reducing someone's, someone's ask?  They looked at the impact. I think it's a difficult thing because some agencies who may have, you know, greater capacity, you know, it looks like they could handle, you know, reduction in funding, but maybe they can't.   Does it refine the needs and have, and fund fewer proposals? Because if agencies are requesting more money, is that something that's really necessary to have an impact?  You know, in years past, some of the agencies have made small requests, you know, 15 to 20,000. It doesn't seem like that's the case any longer. Most of them are requesting, you know, 20 to 30,000 or more. So, you know, the committee recommended funding five agencies out of the seven. The, some of them have been, you know, received funding in numerous years. You know, the five that they did recommend were the Survival Center, the Food Pantry, Amherst Community Connections for a one-stop resource center. It's a new, it's the first time this agency has been recommended for funding. There's Family Outreach of Amherst and their Family Outreach has been funded in the past. It would be for a new program. They're looking at doing a community housing support program to prevent homelessness and counseling and casework management around families and individuals who are at risk of losing their housing. There's the Literacy Project in Center for New Americans that provide adult education and job readiness training. And the committee felt that these five recommendations, you know, really meet basic human needs in the community.  And, you know, so I think, you know, I think they really spent a lot of time discussing how they could then, you know, make the requests equitable in terms of the funding amount. And they felt that, you know, they did reduce three of the requests to try to keep within budget. And they felt that, you know, that the agencies that had funding reduction could manage, you know, at some point it has to be considered whether or not the amount of, you know, reduction, for instance, if someone's asking for $50,000 and you reduce it to $30 or $25, if that's, does that eliminate a position or does it actually make the program almost infeasible if it reduces it so much? So, you know, that was part of the consideration. How do you, how do you make those decisions? And so, you know, the recommendations before you are something that they felt comfortable with that the programs could still move forward. There's still be, you know, positive impact in the community. Any questions for Mr. Muller? So in terms of insight as to the committee's process, thank you. That was a really helpful overview and, you know, disclaimer. I've been to their meetings in the past, but not for quite a while now. So thank you for that update on how that worked. And I am curious about the fact that Amherst Community Connections has applied for funding several times in the past for a variety of programs. And what was it that, given all the competing priorities, as you indicated, and given that we are not funding an agency that we have typically funded in terms of big brothers, big sisters, could you characterize what, what about Amherst Community Connections application this year convinced the committee that this was the year to move forward with that? Sure. And I think that, you know, Amherst Community Connections, they've improved their applications from year to year, so they've taken the comments and, you know, constructive criticism and they really improved their proposal. They also had, you know, letters of support from different agencies and organizations vouching for the, you know, the impact that would happen with their One Stop Resource Center. It was also something that the committee discussed. You know, there isn't, there's not a lot of services in town that help this population in terms of making referrals or casework and management, you know, it may happen at different agencies.  And so it's something that it hasn't been funded before. And the committee thought it would, you know, it provides something that isn't happening right now and that it does meet a basic human need. So I think, you know, given the, the refinement of the proposal in years past and the letters of support and the impact, they recommended it for funding. Thank you. That's good. I have two questions and they're kind of different. I know in past years, I've heard discussions about whether an agency could come back multiple years. And I know we funded agencies multiple years, but not maybe for the same activity or maybe different. And I wanted you to just update us on what the current rules or thinking was on that. Sure. So I think if, you know, the committee looked back, if you look back at the last five years of social service funding, there's probably only about seven agencies that have received funding in the past five years and, you know, probably most of the time it's the same four out of five every year that receive funding.  And the committee's discussed whether or not, you know, so many consecutive years does an agency receive reduced funding or no funding.  And so there's about a dozen many entitlement programs. There's, you know, communities in the state. And so they've already predetermined that there's a need in the community. And so the committee discusses it every year. And like last year, they determined that they wouldn't, you know, penalize an application if it's been funded in consecutive years. They would look at it based on the proposal this year and, you know, past performance if that was, you know, if there was things to report on. You know, they, again, they said next year they would have the same discussion. Do they start to reduce funding, you know, based on how many years, you know, if there's consecutive years of funding. But, you know, their thought is that if an agency can document need in the community, we're not necessarily, you know, funding away our need.  Or the food pantry is on a great job and we don't need that anymore. But, you know, in Amherst that, you know, we, the agencies provide information on the need and the community members feel that there's still a need there. So they wouldn't, you know, reduce the funding after so many years. Thank you. Just my question is about evaluation criteria, reporting criteria. So when you add a new agency, what, how do you guarantee that they're performing or that they have adequately qualified staff delivering the services and, you know, basically fulfilling the terms of the contract that are able to fulfill that contract? Right. So staff will meet with the agency and have a start-up site visit and we'll go over contract requirements. And then, you know, if it's a new agency, we typically have, you know, there's conditions in the contract that there's monitoring.  And then there's a quarterly report that has summary activity information and budget information so that, you know, at least every quarter you'd have some, you know, a complete summary of how they're going with their budget and meeting the scope of services. The block grant committee also holds a public hearing in April or May so that, you know, this funding will become available more than likely in October of this year with activity starting around October or November. So the committee usually holds a hearing in April or May about six months after contracts are up and running to determine if, you know, if the project is meeting expectations and goals and if funding will be spent down. So that's another opportunity to hear from the, you know, the programs and a chance to either reevaluate or reallocate funding if something's not meeting the goal. So, you know, I think there's going to be, there'll be staff oversight, there's strict contract conditions. DHCD has a standard contract and then there's, you know, this public hearing process.  So there is oversight. You know, I think the committee and its evaluation looks at staff capacity, you know, board representation, agency information to determine if it can carry out the proposed activity. So, you know, the block grant advisory committee and staff feel that the ones that are recommended can implement the programs that they applied for. Any questions? Mr. Sember? Is there any administrative overhead built into the grants? Right. So there, you know, there's DHCD caps, the administration amount at 15%.  And then, you know, each agency, say for social service, there is, you know, and part of their budget request, there is percentage of indirect costs and overhead. So that's not factored in. So, you know, there's a 15% admin administration cap on the grant.  So, you know, DHCD expects probably in capital projects there could be anywhere from 10% to 20% contingency built into a budget. But, you know, I think that, you know, so I'm not sure exactly if you were looking at it in terms of the overall. I'm looking at it in terms of each agency and that is being proposed for funding and whether the, there's a criteria that's being uniformly applied to all of the five proposed grantees. Right, so we ask for a detailed budget, you know, a breakdown of the budget of how it's prepared in terms of cost allocation and, you know, CDBG and non-CDBG, you know, funds if that's part of the program. So, you know, most of the budgets do show, you know, a line item budget and if what percentage is overhead and what, you know, if there's any match in terms of volunteer labor or time or, you know, what makes up the whole program. So we asked to see a whole budget in terms of a program, you know, with a 12- to 18-month implementation window and then where, you know, how the block grant piece fits into that.  And there is, you know, but like I said, there is overhead and indirect costs built into most of these. So we'll fund a program, but part of that is, you know, we may subsidize their rent, utilities, or other things. It has to be incidental to the, you know, the program at hand. Other questions for Mr. Mulan? One thing I know has come up over the years and so if you could just remind me of how it works again, if you haven't already and I wasn't, didn't hear it carefully, is Amherst Residence versus Non-Amherst Residence and we would never want to be in a versus situation, right, of course, and we understand that most, if not all of these programs have a regional basis and DHCD is obviously fine with that. But what I'm wondering about is if that played into the conversations this year and also why it's not called out on the application form specifically is something that people need to document on. I realize that you all got much larger packets than this, which are all available online, which you do a wonderful job with the website, having all that available. But in terms of the summary document, it seems like one of the things that we talk about a lot in town is different types of community service funding, some of which is directly funded through taxes and other which is done through programs like this, but to make it clear that we are not just serving Amherst Residence and I'm not saying it's a bad thing at all, but apparently it's not a problem for DHCD so I'm wondering if the committee has considered adding it to the base cover sheet as identifiable information. Further in the packet it does, you know, a requirement that a majority of the beneficiaries are Amherst Residence so it asks that 51% or more be Amherst Residence. So most of the programs do document that. There's self-decoration forms or there's other intake forms that document that they're serving a majority Amherst Residence. I think most of the programs do serve participants outside of Amherst so if they are the regional impact, if they serve more than just Amherst community, that's not a disqualification. Again, a block grant, the major objective is that a majority of the participants are low on moderate income. From DHCD's perspective, it's both a focus on Amherst and that at least a majority of the benefits of a program are low mod. So if every agency here meets that national objective pretty easily without, you know, DHCD doesn't really question that when we apply. Any other questions? If not, then is there anyone in the audience that wanted to offer comment? So please come to the microphone, identify yourself and... Hello everybody. I'm Mindy Dom. I'm the executive director of the Amherst Survival Center and I'm here just to share some comments and concerns about the recommendations that you've just heard about. But I'd like to also respond to some of the questions as they relate to the Amherst Survival Center application, particularly around Amherst versus non-Amherst residents. Since we are an organization that's based in Amherst, we do have a regional impact, but we have one program in the center where we can clearly identify the residential addresses of our guests and our participants and it's the food pantry. And that's actually one of the reasons why we apply for community development block grant funding for the food pantry because we can clearly document that we're serving Amherst residents. It's the only program that we require proof of residence, as well as other information from individuals and they do make self declaration that they meet the community development block grant guidelines. So I just wanted to clarify that in our application, I know that we're viewed as a regional organization, but the particular program that we apply for, we can document that it's clearly the Amherst portion of the pantry. I think it's about 51 or 52% of the participants in that program are residents of Amherst and we actually apply for a portion of the Amherst portion of the food pantry, so if that makes sense. So that food pantry serves people who live in 13 towns, but Amherst is the largest one. I just wanted to express some concern about the cut that we have in this recommendation. I understand the decision making and the challenge around a limited amount of money going to a variety of social services. The Amherst Survival Center is not only grateful that the town always makes social service funding available through this program, which we know is not necessarily a requirement, but we've also received very generous allocations. So generous that in fact this year we decided to up our request to keep pace with the allocations that we've received in the prior years. Last year we were able to receive $55,000 for the pantry. That went for a continuation of some very specific programs as well as an expanded allocation in people's monthly distribution. And this year we applied for $65,000, trying to keep pace with what we saw was sort of interest on the part of the town to continue to raise it. Instead we were recommended a 40,000, which is a 27.5% cut from what we got last year. So it's not just I don't really look at what the cut is from the ask, I'm really looking year to year. And it's a not level funding in terms of last year. This is a concern because we're looking, this is FY19 funds and we're looking into the future into a year when we're expecting and when people are talking about potential significant threats to federal food and nutrition programs. Increasing the burden of food security on people who live in Amherst and across the country. And so to face a cut of that magnitude in a year when we're thinking we're actually going to see increased need is concern. So I just wanted to come and express that concern. And we have loved working with the town on the pantry. We think we've performed pretty well in all the ways that the grant is expecting us to, not only in the application itself but in the monitoring, the delivery of service and the fact that having the town sort of be a partner in several pieces of the pantry has given us sort of encouragement to take on additional programs at no expense into this grant but that serve Amherst residents including a mobile food program at South Point Apartments on a monthly basis. So I'm here to answer questions if you'd like or... I don't think we have any, thank you though. Anyone else have a comment relative to this? Audia Pasemani, Amherst resident and board member at Big Brothers Big Sisters, and I do have a little bit of a script but to go off script a little bit to talk about same as Mindy had just mentioned that we too serve regionally but this program that we applied for through CDBG funding would be specifically for Amherst matches. So it was to support 25 matches in Amherst and new matches and 75 existing. So we're talking about 100 children at risk low income families that would be at loss, at a loss. So I would like to comment on the preliminary recommendations of the CDBG advisory committee in 2018. We know this is a difficult decision. So many committee, community needs and limited funding. We've received generous funding in the past. We asked for the same amount we did last year. We did not increase it. So here as a board member, I'm here to express my concern about the identified priority of youth development and the decision here not to recommend proposals focusing on that priority area that we serve. I mean that is our focus youth mentoring. I know that the CDBG advisory committee focused on benefiting low to extremely low income residents and know for 90% of Amherst children served by our organization come from households that are very, very low. So as I mentioned, and I know that the committee decided to prioritize basic human needs. Big brothers, big sisters addresses those needs as well. But from the side of prevention, children served are 46% less likely to use drugs, 52% less likely to stay up school and more are likely to graduate high school and attend college. They grow to be leaders in the community. These are kids that who are not otherwise seen and they are seen and heard with a match. All these things contribute toward interrupting cycles of poverty and housing and food insecurity. CHD big brothers, big sisters of Hampshire County has served children in Amherst through mentor matches for more than 40 years and has previously received critical town funding allowing our program to focus services in Amherst through a partnership with the public schools. And so with our application as he was discussed that we did have a letter from the superintendent and as well to a comment on just that, that big brothers, big sisters is one of the most valued partners and that partnership would be at risk. 60% of the children served by our organization are from Amherst alone.  And 40% of the children on the countywide wait list are from Amherst and more children are continually referred each month. So the loss of town funding is truly detrimental to the partnership that could cause major disruption to mentoring service in Amherst. It would cause staff disruptions and so forth. So it has a huge impact on our organization and our ability to do the work. We know we do best. But I just want to thank you for your time hearing my concerns and I hope you will take this into consideration as funding decisions are finalized. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else? There is. We can't do it this way. You got to come up to the mic and ask the question or just step aside and ask her the question just separately if you would. That's... So are there any other questions, comments, concerns, things we want to ask? So again because I haven't been going to their meetings and I've been very pleased we've been able to appoint some new appointees as other people have had to step off and I know they've had some difficulty getting quorum after having so many long time serving members step down and I really hate it when people redo my work and so I'm trying not to do that right now but one of the things I'm having a hard time with is without going in and reading all the applications online which I don't really feel obligated to do I'm having a hard time understanding the comparison figures that are shown on these cover sheets because we have some cover sheets that say 2300 people are being served well obviously is that regards to this particular ask or by the agency in general and so I understand that we are not going to have a price per person and I understand that it's going to vary a lot because in some cases you're trying to give somebody rent and begin first and last month's rent for example which would be a much larger investment per person versus part of a staff person who does additional something else so I realize it's really hard to compare apples to apples but what I'm saying is it's really hard for us to do anything other than say sure you did a lot of work we respect your work that's great but at that point I'm not sure why we're bothering having this discussion because I can't make comparisons based on the information available here that are easy for me to justify to the community what I'm concerned about is we're going to get to town meeting and we're going to hear from supporters of big brothers big sisters and say you have funded them irregularly not every year I'm well aware of that issue over the years and they're benefiting Amherst kids so we're adding money into the budget for them and that could easily happen and so I'm not saying the block grant advisory committee has to come up with a magic answer that will prevent that from happening but I'm trying to understand and perhaps it's more of a heads up for town meeting that the community development block grant advisory committee may want to be prepared if that conversation arises at town meeting as to why they made the choices they did for this money because this money can only go certain places we totally understand that and then what other money might magically be found in the budget which we know is going to not be a great budget year so it's just difficult when people are trying to put very impassioned speeches forward about really important projects that benefit people really greatly so I guess I see it a little bit differently than Miss Brewer and if I were a board member or a director of an agency that could get funded or it was cut I would do exactly what the people who came tonight would do it's your job to advocate for your program and to me these are a little bit like Sophie's choice these are all things we want to do and so for the advisory committee to make sense there's only going to be five they're picking a set of criteria or priorities and I am understanding from what we heard from Mr. Malloy that they're adhering to that we're advisory to the town manager so we might have questions or we might have suggestions that the manager follow up and pursue certain lines of questioning or dig deeper I in no way think that we should read the applications I don't think it's our job I don't feel like it's my job to second guess the advisory committee although okay we're here to hear this and it gets it in the public arena but I think these are really difficult choices in anyone who receives any agency that receives block grant money does so understanding one that each year it's different there's different funding and criteria maybe different members and also some years we don't get funded so you're sort of it's great when you have that money but always knowing that may need to be replaced because things we just said so I'm very sympathetic to the needs are greater really valid needs are greater than what we're offering to fund but I am inclined to support the recommendations with maybe you know some of the questions that we raised could be could be followed up by Mr. Bachman but I think this is just a really hard job to pick okay is there further comment from the members sure just come to the mic so we can pick it up on the broadcast this is actually part of my concern in terms of the Amherst survival center application because those 2300 people that are identified on the cover sheet those are individuals who would be fed as a result of the pantry allocation as proposed in the application so I just want to be clear what that number meant since she expressed some concern that apples to apples and oranges which happens to be a very you know interesting when you're dealing with the pantry so there you go so at this point do we we do have a you know motion on our the members felt like moving it or we could hold off if we wanted to craft some questions for the manager to get back to us with or I think that I'm not inclined to hold up the motion if we have questions that came out of the discussion tonight and we think that the subjects that we would urge the manager to give consideration to in making the final decision on this because it is his decision not ours I think that would be helpful information to provide I think that they flow out of the ones that come to me flow out of the discussion but as Ms. Brewer stated great appreciation for a committee that has put a lot of time and thought into this and if the criteria were developed through a hearing process and then applied and I think that's a really critical piece and it seems that that they are that is what indeed what happened and the only question that I might urge that is if a similar program was funded in the prior year and the amount that is recommended in the new year is significantly diminished as was suggested by one speaker I would hope that that at least be thought about but I think that's as far as I would go otherwise I would be inclined to go with the motion on the sheet. Did you want to make that motion? Make the motion and move the select board and endorse the CDBG advisory committee's prioritized recommendations to the town manager for the 2018 community development block grant that would add subject to his consideration of items discussed at this meeting. Is there a second? Second. Is there further discussion? So I'm going to vote for this but I would hope and I would ask that the select board support me in asking the town manager to pass along some questions to the CDBG advisory committee not to answer necessarily even in advance of this particular application being submitted but in terms of the process moving forward because now that I've been further away from it now more of these are occurring to me because I haven't gone to all the hearings and I haven't gone to read all the things in detail to the community why this one and not that one which is really the block grant advisory committee's job not mine but none the less. So one would be I really Mr. Molloy's memo as always is very helpful in terms of showing the admin amount about 15% for the entire program which is how we pay part of his salary but in terms of the other limitations just to maybe add a line or two about that I mean the committee knows that but again for the public's benefit in terms of understanding what that was as Mr. Steinberg had outlined and Mr. Molloy responded to and in terms of population served again I'm sure it's in the detailed applications because it always has been but like who's being served now and how many more people would be served or nobody's being served now because this is brand new but we think it would serve 35 people some of the applications are quite clear on that and others are not it's not at all clear to me for example that Amherst community applications is actually serving 300 people now and would be serving 300 people then that doesn't really add up somehow but I'm sure the application made sense to the block grant advisory committee it's just it's harder for me to understand moving forward and how the dollar cuts impact could be added to just like a couple sentences maybe to the cover memo last next year so I know that we have talked in great length that block grant advisory committee we've talked about that you know do you just say everybody takes a 5% cut to bring it down to the amount or do you say and I know Mr. Molloy has reached out to the different agencies and said what will happen if I change it from this number to this number will that decimate the program you know what there's always a tipping point where you can't do the program properly anymore it's not always well you'll serve 75 people instead of 100 people it can actually make a really big difference when you make this cover memo I think would be incredibly helpful you know it isn't going to make people happy I'm not pretending that that is going to be the solution but to understand that yes the program will still work but fewer people will be served or no we'll actually have to do the program a different way or we'll only do it three days a week instead of one something like that would just give people context for these are really hard decisions that the block grant advisory committee is having to make and to understand that this is not in just money that you just throw money at a problem at town meeting and hope it all sorts itself out this was really hard for them to come up with these decisions and so just trying to throw some extra money at a warrant or at the general operating budget when we get to it is not a good way to manage things because you do have to go through this kind of elaborate process to figure out the competing priorities as we have described every time at town meeting the extra money has been offered and town meeting almost always agrees to do it and then we almost always have a really difficult time figuring out the appropriate way to program it given we have this other process. I think in going forward in the write up it might be important to make it clear that if an agency was funded prior and not recommended this year that's not a reflection on bad performance it's a reflection on shifting priorities of the committee that this year it's clear that they didn't pick use services because those are the two that didn't get funded for whatever reason I'm not going to second guess why but that they picked kind of the basic services food shelter I would lead with that was what was the criteria this year in the fact that you know a well supported well run agency was a full amount wasn't funded that doesn't mean that they weren't doing a good job or what they do isn't vital but to make it really clear that this was about trying to prioritize limited resources for more need than we could fund and not reflect in any way badly you know as a net as a criticism of the agencies that either didn't get funded this year or that last is it further discussion hearing none all those in favor please say aye aye so that's unanimous thank you Mr. Molloy thank you all for coming and we'll move on to the next time on our agenda although I think we should maybe skip down to our public way section 7 licenses public way and weird parking reservation so we have a couple road closures one of which is something someone here is potentially going to want to speak to a little bit so I think just a courtesy of someone who's visiting us tonight under section 7 of our agenda is a road closure relative to Hartford half marathon and so I didn't know if you wanted to introduce us a little bit for us and road closures and do we do the Hartford one let's do the Hartford one first and then we'll work our way so as you recall last year on Veterans Day the Hartford half marathon was held in Amherst and it was successful for them and they came back and wanted to have the half marathon again this year in 2018 they're looking at November 4th and the important distinction is that this is a professional company that comes in and runs road races last year 190 people participated in the 5K race which was held on Saturday 652 people ran in the half marathon on Sunday nearly 94% of the survey responded said that they were at least somewhat likely to participate again the traffic impact was pretty minimal I was at the fire station and they were through the center of town within about four minutes of the start and the downtown had minimal impact then people as they go along the race they get strung out a little bit the Amherst Survival Center received a cash donation of $3,480 which is equal and also 434 pounds of non-perishable food so one of the questions that we talked about last time that came to you was were they donating enough money given that the marathon was taking place on public roads and utilizing public roads for a business a non-profit business to conduct its operations and when we did some calculations they donated about 6.89% of their entry fees to the Survival Center that didn't seem like a whole lot to me and I think to other members but as we looked into it a little bit more it became their goal is to donate more money over time that this was the first year and they thought that if it got established more and more people would participate more and more funds would be raised and there are different ways of increasing revenue both through sponsorships as it becomes a more popular race and through other means such as having a specially designated Amherst Survival Center team that gets special shirts and then a larger percentage of those funds can go things like that and just for the record they selected the non-profit the town had nothing to do with it it was part of their goal to make their contribution to why they should you should give them the opportunity to reserve the roads so this year they've come back and they are interested in building this race they say that they did not make money on the race even with all the participation they want to increase the number of participants and to that end they've created a three state marathon one in locations one in Rhode Island one in Simsbury Connecticut and one in Amherst and they are encouraging people to sign up for all three half marathons and I think they sort of see half marathons as sort of a sweet spot for the business or for people interested in running marathons are a major commitment and it's a long time to recover and to be able to run miles is pretty good so given that one of the things that we would like to work with them on is where they start and end the race right now we were comfortable last year because they started and ended the race at UMass and that had minimal impact on the town and that was our concern last year and the chair spoke gives a kickoff to them at the road one of the things we're contemplating and talking with the police department about is would it help businesses if we started and ended the race in the center of town or someplace near the center of town so that usually when people come to run the race they don't run by themselves they have someone to support people or a partner who's with them and then they're hanging around for an hour and a half or else after you run the race you might want to stop and get something to eat or something like that so we're thinking maybe we can generate some business on a slow Sunday morning in the center of town so that's one of the things we're thinking about a lot of logistical issues of parking and all the things that we want to address but currently it's still located beginning and ending at UMass we'd like to engage in some conversations about trying to utilize this and leverage the number of people who come into town to generate more business for our businesses we did we received no complaints about about the race last year there were some we learned a lot from it there was an after race debrief with our police department and others and we now have some new plans on how they would you know what lanes of the road they would they would travel on there's music at a couple locations and that seemed to go well so I would recommend to you that you authorize the road closures or rolling road closures that would be required for this subject to bring back a more detailed plan as we get closer to November so I have a quick question for you on this you're talking about changing the start location of the race I think one of the reasons they like starting near the Hanks malls because there's the grassy you know quadrangle as it were they could set up a variety of pieces of their operations so they could get people in and out and around and about and so I didn't know if you had any conversations with UMass about that part of it and or hasn't I gotten to that point yet to have a conversation with the folks at UMass and what they're thinking was or their feeling about that sort of thing well UMass was supportive of last year and they're supportive of it again we've had general conversations and they understand the value they were doing it more as a favor I think they would see the value we've had just very general conversations with them and they're not saying oh no we want to hold it here they're open to whatever we think is best for the town other questions yeah I guess I have a couple one is if we change locations do we know how many cars had to be parked during the course of the event either by runners or family and do we know that or we would plan to start to stop that we can accommodate within the reason that number of people if there were close to 700 runners there would probably be a equivalent number of cars so that's a lot of cars so that's one of the things that while we may want to be able to start it and end it in town it might not be a possibility more likely it would have to begin and end at the high school and then if we went that route doesn't make any sense for us to do that since it's not that close to the town so we might abandon that option but it's something we wanted to talk about and I gather that you've talked with the police department about the route as you mentioned the lanes in the street closures being listed when I spoke with Kepin Gunderson about it immediately after the race we were debriefing what she and I thought was the biggest problem area and she was suggesting the additional street closure in that area in the Krishman area might be considered I noticed it's not added to the list but I assume that that's what the department asked for later that it can come back that we want to just give the certainty of the date and the commitment to participate to the foundation. Exactly and I think they learned a lot about running on the right side of the road and then having to cross the road and meet and things like that and maybe if they were running on the other side of the road there would be no conflict they wouldn't have as many crossing the roads conflicts with drivers so I think those are things that they would be recommending once they get the nod from you that you're open to it basically Ms. Guru did you have a question? Any other questions? Did you want to comment about it? Since you're here in terms of comments so I just want to express our gratitude at the Amherst Survival Center for being designated the non-profit to receive the benefits of this race. Some of you may remember that the Amherst Survival Center did try to conduct its own race for several years called the Cider Donut Run and through that experience we learned how incredibly challenging and labor intensive running a race and in fact when I came on as executive director one of the decisions we made after the first year was maybe we should suspend the Cider Donut Run because it really seemed to burn out volunteers we didn't really have the capacity to do that kind of race so we're thrilled that there is someone who can do it and they're benefiting us and one of the things that has come up in our conversations with the Hartford Marathon Foundation that you may be interested in is their real interest I think to increase the donation to us and from our point also to increase participation in a food drive that day so I'm hopeful that that will happen and so I want to thank you also for that effort but also our gratitude for being named you know just sort of the beneficiary of this manna from heaven so notice all the food analogies though thank you so any other comments or questions from the manager do we want to take up the motion for this one it's right at the very bottom of the motion sheet I move to approve the closure of the southbound lane of north pleasant street from Massachusetts 72 Triangle street the southbound lane of east pleasant street from Triangle north pleasant street the southbound lane of north pleasant street from east pleasant to south pleasant street and the southbound lane of south pleasant street from main street to Snell street from approximately 8 a.m. to 840 a.m. for the Hartford Marathon Foundations 2018 Amherst Half Marathon Road Race to be held on Sunday November 4, 2018 with the condition that a minimum of 15 police officers funded by the foundation are available along the route as deemed necessary by the police and fire chiefs and further that the Amherst Survival Center will serve as the official charity with a monetary donation from each paid entry into the half marathon to have a motion to second is there further comment hearing none all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Thank you and I just wanted to thank the town manager for following up on the concerns of previous meetings. Thank you. Since we're doing road races, why don't we do the other one while we're... So the other one is a race that's been going on. This is a sugar loaf mountain athletic club road race that begins it begins at the middle school and ends at the Wildwood school so this one was flagged and this has been going on for I think 30 years I think I was told I don't think it's ever come to you but since they are requesting an actual road closure we felt that any road closure had to come to you and so that's why it's before you and so the road closure they're talking about is on Strong Street from the hours of 11 to 1115 and then 12 to 130 and so that's an impact on the neighborhood there's not a lot of road closures and so that's why I think it should be aired publicly with you so thank you I agree we all know that or maybe not everyone out in the public knows that the Amherst police do have the authority to do road closures when they find them necessary and that's why occasionally when there's some crazy big event you might notice things that are posted that you had no idea that they were like that but it's for safety reasons I don't think that should ever be done for a race that we know about and so there's no emergency there that organization is obviously happening and even if we've always done it that way I really appreciate you bringing it to us as an official thing because it shouldn't be treated differently and along those lines I have a lot of problems with the motion as written and so I'm wondering if I'll just bring those up and then we'll wait for somebody else to craft a solution and that will be it's not being done at the request of chief of police Scott Livingstone it's no different than any other application it's not his personal road race well maybe it is maybe that's why he didn't need to ask for it but as far as I can tell it's not so I appreciate the thought that was behind that but yet at the same time it doesn't appear that it's in a different place and it's in a different physical location but not in a different concept than the other so we can remove that and I thought it was quite important that the previous motion indicated that the police officers were going to be funded by the foundation these police officers they're not even mentioned in this motion and they do need to be mentioned in this motion they're specifically mentioned in the request and they do need to be paid for by the foundation or we need to hear about it differently because if they're just doing it out of their budget I don't know why that would be so just copying that language about the number five instead of 15 and that it's being funded by the organization the question I have is you mentioned the impact on the neighborhood has anyone reached out to the neighborhood in any way either road race sponsors themselves are pleased to assess that impact because a full road closure even though it's a partial closure so it's probably one lane local traffic is still allowed it'll be a modest impact but not zero I don't think they have an advance but it's coming up so we would have to do that sooner than later okay technical question it's close from 11 to 1115 and then 12 to 130 I'm guessing maybe that's when they set up the cones or saw horses or whatever they do and then they open it and then they the runners come like it's just weird like why wouldn't it be 11 to 130 or I don't get it I don't realize the amount of time for the road closure so is it set up and then running yes I think everybody starts at about the same pace they just when they finish it takes a lot longer the intimes for people to walk no I get that but it's like they run out and set it up but it's not really closed yet and they don't make any donation no it's a non-profit and this is in contrast to this is done by volunteers they raise funds for their organization this way I wonder I wonder if this suggests the popular place for road races that think about some universal policies like you fund the off-duty officers or you would ever or what's the difference between a non-profit and a non-profit so it's just something to think about because we're going to the more we do this the more inconsistencies Taylor the motion I think that the motion would then be according to what this brewer had brought up moved to approve partial closure of Strong Street for all through traffic except local traffic on Sunday September 25 28 February 25 2018 from 11 to 11 15 a.m. and from 12 to 12 30 p.m. for the Sugarloaf Mountain Athletic Club subject let's see with the condition that a minimum of five police officers funded by the Mountain Club are available along the route as deemed necessary by the police and fire chiefs right because then if they say they only need three fine they do it with three or they do ten whatever and you said 12 to 130 p.m. right yes I didn't change the time okay is there a second second all right is there further discussion hearing none all those in favor please say hi hi that's unanimous all right take care of those call items and so we'll go back to section four of our agenda and the next item there is the pvta pros hearings on fair and service changes so in your packet were a couple of things actually a fairly extensive chunk of material and then again tonight we had one other piece that I brought in a couple of pages that will be added to our electronic packet hopefully tomorrow so the material that I gave you was a much broader set of proposals than what actually will come forward for public hearing so let me start with what I handed out this evening which was proposed fair increases this has a less obvious impact in Amherst I think because we have a lot of students and adults associated with the university that are not subject to fairs but nonetheless a couple of bits of background here first off the fairs have not changed at pvta since 2007 so it's been more than a decade since the fairs have changed they considered it in 2012 and then decided not to alter to the fair structure on the first page of this which has got a little 31 at the lower corner in your printed copy I did not put page 32 because it was blank but it is a part of the materials to be in the packet one other piece of information I'll share with you is at the very bottom of the fair listing there as fair type and it says $25 a mile and under the existing it shows a $5 number there actually they do not currently charge anything for that and I'll explain that in more detail later but that's a proposed charge for fairs that they're suggesting independent of other changes but right now they do not charge for that the other thing I'll point out is that the proposal that will actually come before the public for comment is proposal number which is a 25% increase in fairs which will take a standard adult basic fair which is currently $1.25 and raise that to $1.60 they tend not to want to work in pennies which is part of why they pick numbers of that sort now down at the bottom of the chart you'll see maximum revenue increased and it shows $905,000 and a likely loss in ridership of $454,000 PBTA has found that in past changes to fairs that the predictions that are used, the metrics that are used the industry standards that are used to create those two calculations don't tend to hold up very well so they don't have a super strong idea of what will truly be the numbers that come out of a change in fair that will happen and what the change in ridership will be their national trends downward in ridership regardless of fairs that's true this year as well at PBTA so it's hard to know exactly what the ridership loss will be as a result of increasing the cost and for that matter one of the things is you raise fairs and then you lose riders and so that reduces the amount of revenue you might generate the other thing is as you look at this chart you see a number of fair types so if you just get on and pay the fair it's about a quarter right now so many times the cases people buy the most popular one that they buy is the one day pass which is about five or six down from the top and what that allows you to do is essentially ride the bus as many times as you like on that day but the price is set basically for a trip around trip essentially it's kind of how they're pricing that there are lots of other options here but I'll mention on the paratransit beyond three quarters of a mile by federal law paratransit or ADA trips that are done which are typically done with specialized vehicles and vans and that sort of thing are only required to get you to within three quarters of a mile of a fixed route ride so the federal I don't know they picked this out of the hat they had some metric that they involved with various conference committees I'm sure but basically if that paratransit ride gets you within three quarters of a mile of a bus stop they can essentially let you out and currently we as PVTA actually will take people to their destination so we don't sort of apply any sort of fee for that additional sort of carriage to some place beyond what is required expressly by the federal regulations and so they're thinking well we need as an organization we need to recoup a little bit of that cost because those riders and those rides are very very expensive it's not a large number of them but they do tend to have a pretty profound impact in some respects so that's part of why the suggestion of having some sort of of fair there in case when people ride further than that required amount of a fair increase and again you'll turn to the next two pages here were a couple of different models that were put together of ways to more regularly revisit the idea of a fair increase so it's a less jarring sort of circumstance we've talked about this ourselves amongst our own fees and parking rates and things like that and so if you look at these the group that's going to be potentially discussed at the public hearings is on the page labeled 33 which says a 25% increase in fiscal year 2019 then a 5% per year increase implemented every three years and part of the reason why they do it every three years is so they're not raising fees every single year but also to get sort of round numbers that work when you are stuffing quarters into boxes and that sort of thing and so what you see is it's the increase is shown for fiscal year 19 and the next one is in 2022 and so the overall increase ends up being about a 16% as opposed to 15 which would be 3 years 5% each and likewise but then when you get to 2025 and it works out to be out of 14% again that's some of the sort of rounding thing to work with nickels and dimes instead of pennies but that's the proposed structure again that's a plan again in 2022 would have to go to public hearing again to have those conversations with the public and determine it and they may determine that their rates may need more increase may not need an increase at that point but this is just to sort of chart out a trajectory and to show the Massachusetts Department of Transportation that they're taking that notion of revenue generation seriously and they've got a plan of attack in four years for accommodating increasing expenses against their budget so that's the two things on fair increases in proposal will be discussed at the public hearings in the other sort of larger packet which has the head of PBTA, FY 2019 service reduction scenarios the good news is you don't have to read all of this you can skip to scenario 5 because scenario 5 which is determined or is named reduced off peak service and restructure low performing roots and services is the one that was recommended for public hearing what the staff at PBTA did was they looked at a series of the first four scenarios to start with got some feedback from the roots committee and the paratransit committee about those kinds of changes and seeking some advice about how they might approach trying to identify reductions in service that would function well and so scenario 5 which is I think on page 12 12 it's on page 12 describes the rationale that was applied there's a table in there table 14 that talks about the strategies and then on 13 is actual sort of here's the nuts and bolts of all the roots and one thing I will tell you is that the root numbers are not perfectly defined in here because root 1 is actually G1 which is down the Springfield area but our roots are like 30 is one of our roots 31 33 34 38 39 43 43 is the one that runs one of the runs that runs back and forth north Hampton I believe 4 and 45 may also be I had a list and I don't have it with me but nonetheless there's a lot of relative to the the roots in this area a large number are stopping the runs a little earlier in the evening in a couple of cases running what's currently a Sunday schedule on Saturdays as well which is fewer runs longer time between runs making all the holidays run on a Sunday service schedule whereas now only a couple of them do things of that nature and so the descriptions are in here as to what the suggestions are and then the third piece is the public outreach plan and so they currently scheduled two meetings in Amherst Tuesday March 6th from noon to 2 p.m. on the UMass campus I don't know I did see a press release I have not read it closely to see if they found a building on UMass campus but as soon as I get a chance to look at that we'll publish that on our website but the 6th of March is when they're coming to Amherst and then on the 7th of March so on the 6th of March it's noon to 2 at UMass 7th of March just across the street at the Bang Center from 4 to 5 30 and they will do a public hearing what they did last time is they have a little bit of an introductory thing they sort of frame what changes are being proposed which particularly getting into some of the things related to the Amherst area and then people have an opportunity to step up and speak to those changes they also take phone calls, emails letters sort of any method of communication with PVTA is allowed and encouraged and they compile all of that information and use it to help sort through the difficult choices that are there if you were to tally up the changes that are in that scenario 5 they actually tally to a little bit more than the total amount that they expect to be short the current projected shortfall for fiscal 19 is about $3.1 million and that's based on advice that the governor would fund the regional transit system from the state and about the same level as he did last year which was at the level that it was originally funded and I want to say fiscal 15 but I swear to that I have to look it up so that's sort of the broad arch of what's coming I wanted to make sure that you guys saw this early and that the public could see it in our packet and also that they knew about those dates coming up in March they're trying to hit dates when elementary and secondary schools are not on their break and that colleges and universities are not on their break and so they're trying to hit a window of time where people that are in either of those sets of communities have an ability to get to a hearing and offer public comment they said there was a press release Friday afternoon so we're looking forward to town staff for inclusion on our website which may have a little bit more detail as far as who the hearings are they're doing several in Springfield with Hampton's got a couple on March 1st and being chicken pee they may have a process by which people could suggest a public hearing in their own community we had two already scheduled so I think we've got an opportunity to go ahead to things just I think it would be good to have these materials that were in our packet sent specifically to the transportation advisory committee or at least the chair for dissemination because they are charged with and very interested in public transportation I think they made comments on one of the other proposed changes so that was just to make sure in our own outreach that we were able to have a public comment on it and then they may have other things they want to do just you know maybe this is the night for it after we talked about social services we're trying to do as much as possible with not enough resource and a worry is not probably new information for you Mr. Slaughter but just when we look at the numbers on the other hand when we cut weekend holiday those times we can really be having a negative impact on workers on the lower income service workers who were trying to get here and back or from here there and back for jobs so it's always a delicate balance between you know serving students clearly a big need in our system five colleges helps fund that but I also worry that when we hear this all the time like summer schedule when we skinny down the routes that we're having maybe even more detrimental impact on workers even though my few were numbers so that's my concern I think that's absolutely correct and that's one of the things that I think keeps the folks at P.V.T. up at night is quite frankly because they recognize that in the P.V.T.A. we sort of a northern tier and a southern tier and the southern tier is Springfield, Chickpea, Hoyo you know when you look at the demographics of the population that rides though their services it's heavily tilted toward the lower socioeconomic status individuals in our communities and they really rely on this service to get to work to be able to have jobs more so than say in P.V.T.A. where it's convenient enough that all spectrums of the economics all people in the economic spectrum will take the P.V.T.A. because of the convenience factor that has and the service it provides in our area and I think this is true in some of the other regional transit authorities but especially for us the number of folks that use it to commute to work and it is their only means to get there to a grocery store to get to the doctor is pretty significant and so it is an area that really is disquieting to the staff as well as the members of the advisory board as we have these conversations are really unpleasant in that regard and I think they try to really look at ridership and when do people ride on any given route to try to nuance it as best they can the buses run less just fewer people are going to ride them because they can't fit into the schedules that are left and it leaves some people without an opportunity to take advantage of them I was particularly struck Mr. Slaughter by Appendix 1 and the Amherst routes and percentage of low income that are demonstrated on their own routes It is a striking number there in Appendix I was noticing that myself and some of the students are often of very limited means and some people think they are dependent upon their parents but there is a fair number of students that are independent of their parents or are graduate students that are fully independent of their parents not even partially independent of their parents and we have working poor that ride the bus to get to work and there are people in Northampton that are working poor that ride the bus to get to Amherst to work and so it is reflected here to some extent one of the things that is required because the PVTA receives federal money is what is called a Title VI analysis and Title VI analysis is about not having disproportionate impacts on vulnerable populations and so when they make changes and they recognize a certain level of disproportionate impact they have to take mitigation factors and so there is a process and that is part of the process that will go through and that is some of the process that went through last summer when they went through the changes of service that we had as well they are not perfect but they do help ease people and help them transition to the new service levels but they are not in a lot of ways as adequate as what the service was but they do have to do that analysis and take that into consideration as they make the choices and recommendations and suggestions to the advisory board for vote oh the other thing timeline wise that I will tell you is that so these meetings are happening in March we will the advisory board is going to have a we have already scheduled an extra meeting in April which we would normally do to I think make the decision based on the feedback so that the changes to the budget can be factored and figured out in a timely way so that we can implement the changes it fits in with the whole cycle of when the budget has to be approved and when the drivers have to do their work relative to actually bid the routes so drivers with seniority have a whole process by which they actually choose the routes and the working hours that they want and that happens over the summertime so we have to there's a really long lead time on changes a lot of times and so trying to be a little more ahead of things relative to last year's changes last year's changes were more focused on things that weren't working well for the PVTA and so in some ways it was an opportunity to sort of trim some fat some service that wasn't really performing very well I mean that's not to say it didn't impact people in a very negative way this is going to be a more painful year as far as cuts are concerned you know and I thought about this recently with regard to some messaging we may want to make to our legislators is that you know this is a direct service to people in our communities that are most vulnerable and so when we think about ways which our state budget has a profound direct impact on people funding the RTA system at a reasonable level is really critical to having a significant impact on giving people opportunity to have success we fully support you writing that letter thank you Mr. Semper and thank you for going to Springfield because this is really going above and beyond I get angry when I have to drive to Holyoke once every six months for something so thank you for going ahead and dealing with this as well and taking that time out of your work day a couple of things following up with Ms. Krueger said about Transportation Advisory Committee getting this whole packet plus that press release and then also disability Access Advisory Committee would also be worth sending it directly to them then separately as we have been over the last couple of times that we've done these so this won't be news to anybody but to put it on the town website in terms of a news flash a news and announcements item, the news flash to subscribers and on the actual calendar for both the sixth and the seventh and I mean we can do all of that ourselves depending on you know the we that could be staff or the we that could be volunteers but whatever and then that information can since it doesn't necessarily have to link to our packet it could go to the PBTA website but to have it out there for people so that as people are scheduling things for March they're like oh yeah there's a PBTA meeting over at UMass and one at the bank center we shouldn't conflict with that that would be really helpful to have those things there and then completely as a side note which is the thank you for doing this so that none of the rest of us have to one of the things that I never understood so I'll just throw it out there again is this whole idea of buying date limited passes and bus passes are inconvenient enough to purchase now in Amherst and the idea that I have to predict that I'm going to make an investment in a seven day pass versus the old fashioned Charlie card where I put the money on and it's on there until I need it again I would really appreciate it if you would share with I can't believe this is convenient for anyone and the idea that I am fronting a thirty one day pass for a kid or a friend or an agency for an individual when maybe there's one week out of those three weeks they don't need to go and it just does not make sense to me to not have a deposit card I've got good news oh thank you I'm so happy to hear that so they have a essentially a version of a Charlie card a sort of you know a card that can be filled with a certain amount of money basically and then you use it as you need to as you need it they've been trying to bring online for a little while it's had a few hiccups in the way but I believe the rollout is going to start I think in March actually to be perfectly honest with you so it should be fairly soon it will start to see that you know I think that the idea behind the seven day pass the thirty one day pass is clearly targeting folks that are commuting to work and they have schedules that makes a lot of sense for them but I think the idea behind these smart cards which is what they, I believe that's what they call the smart cards is that you can basically buy one and then if you're an irregular writer because your schedule is not locked in you have the ability to use that over time so it is something that is coming and it's been in the works for a while but it is on the horizon and probably sooner than later but it's astounding the complications associated with setting up a system like that it really is part of it's about being able to actually issue a card that will work and finding places to lend them and etc etc etc just to follow up for one it's a very different situation here than a full-time worker obviously we do have full-time workers for taking these buses that cost money as opposed to the free buses but they're also irregular workers so they're teenagers working part-time or going over to Northampton to work it's A to Z science and learning for example and they're there for a few hours and to have them to say you have to keep rebuying seven-day passes when they work twice a week maybe doesn't make a lot of sense but you as a parent are able to put some money into it or as I said an agency or somebody else is able to load a card for someone that just seems incredibly valuable so I'm really glad they're pursuing that Mr. Walton we're on the subject and where would they plan to lend these cards because if you can't get the place by the card it's not going to be very convenient so originally I think we're hoping to have them in places like Big Y but I think that that fell through they had some outreach to some communities to see if the town halls would be able to do that it gets a little tricky with handling the money for it so I think that complicates that a little bit there's going to be kind of a soft roll out there's going to be obviously the new Union Station that's open in Springfield it's going to obviously have a kiosk and walk up and feed your money and like a big vending machine kind of thing your chickpea holy oak those are going to be the places that have it first I think for us it's going to be a little more difficult and I think there's still some questions to be answered exactly about where those things are and when they'll happen and how we'll handle that the senior centers might do it but then they have to handle money and keep track of it I mean they sell the 70 passes and 31 passes and that sort of stuff now and it still has its own complications and difficulties but it is one of the hurdles that slowed the whole thing down I think a little bit is how do we get this functional for enough people to make it worthwhile separate from you know we got to change our boxes on the buses the swipe and all that jazz so that is one of the concerns and but I can certainly if we did a brief exploration probably a year ago just to ask about doing it here in town hall I think it was a little complicated I'm not recalling right off hand for us to do it at that point but maybe something we want to revisit or do something in concert with with Northampton to say well if you put one in we'll put one in that way people that are doing that commute back and forth can know that they've got a way to buy one on either end if they get stuck and they need to recharge their card or whatever it might be a mutual conversation with Northampton to make that work really well for us and for them as well thank you so I think as far as there's nothing to vote on as president I just want to kind of paint the picture for folks, let it put the word out that the 6th and 7th of March are going to be days when hearings are going to be in town more stuff will come on our website and like I say the material it's in packets a lot more than what really is going to be subject for discussion at those hearings because the advisory board did narrow the scope a little bit so moving to our next item which is litigation updates so Mr. Bachman do you want to take us through that? I think it's annually you get a litigation update from a town council in writing and this is dated January 31st it's a document that summarizes the active cases that the town is involved with both includes normal litigation and then also labor issues that we're dealing with so if you have any questions a lot of them have been resolved as you can see they'll say cases closed a lot of times there are challenges to zoning board of appeals decisions that we basically monitor that someone else defends because the property interest in that case usually is a group that's defending it any questions? we can ask offline if you prefer thank you and thank you for making sure this got pulled together I know we've been told by other people that this is an unusual thing we do but we thought it was responsive to our community they'd be aware of these issues so thank you alright that's our litigation update next step skip around all evening why do we do our resolution and proclamation so we have a proclamation which we were discussing a little bit earlier about what was slightly different in the physical copy that was brought to us tonight just to introduce that last year and for several years we've done Amherst Black History Month proclamation and so someone would like to read the proclamation or should we just take action on it under the presumption that we were going to vote for this we do have a copy of sign there's a motion actually there is a motion and then also I think the other thing to mention is just the along with this is that there will be a ceremony on Saturday the 10th at what time? it's brief because it's always and so we always appreciate that staff goes ahead and shovels the steps for us and we try and we usually are able to have someone like Ms. Radway give up their Saturday to come in and open the door so we can let people into the lobby but yet kind of say don't go down the hall just stay right here in the lobby that'll be great and Ms. Radway also updated this document that a former member of the Human Rights Commission a college student at the time had originally designed for us and she's been updating this for us each year there's usually also a written program which I have utterly refused to participate in updating this year so I'm assuming that someone is either going to do that or we won't necessarily need one but I appreciate that Ms. Radway has always stuck with this event even when the Human Rights Commission is willing to do the groundwork to get it up and gone and Ms. Pupple always brings us the updated Black History Month proclamation and asks us for any updates so this is really a staff-driven event and so I really appreciate them taking on the additional responsibility for this when we don't have volunteers who are able to take it on and I also appreciate that we went ahead and raised the flag this year without waiting because to me I suddenly see a flag we've never seen before out front and wonder how that happened but we've been doing this for several years now in a row and to go ahead and get it up as early as possible when it works for our staff I think is a wonderful thing to go ahead and do so thank you I think DPW did it and it's already the shortest month of the year so we didn't want to wait 10 days before we raised it Do you prefer the motion or the full proclamation or an excerpt from the proclamation I'm really open to any of the above I think it would be nice to read the full proclamation but we could take pieces of it if people don't want to read that long You're feeling the urge to read it? I'm certainly happy to read it if we'd like to So I'll do that So reading the proclamation says Amherst Black History Month proclamation February 2018 whereas 1976 Americans of all walks of life have come together during the month of February to honor the too often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history whereas these accomplishments are the more remarkable for having been one at the cost of great struggle and sacrificed by men and women who came to these shores and chains and by their descendants whereas the authors of these messages of history include Phyllis Wheatley, the first African American to publish a book of poetry Crispus Attakas, the first casually of the American Revolution Edward Jones of Amherst College the second African American to earn a college degree Edmonia Lewis the first professional African American sculptor who learned her craft in Boston the members of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry the first and most famous unit of African American Union soldiers raised in Civil War Jan Matzel Linger inventor who revolutionized the shoe manufacturing industry WB Du Bois pioneering scholar and civil rights activist Edward Brooke the first African American senator elected by popular vote Deval Patrick the second elected African American governor in the nation whereas captive Africans and free people of color were already part of the Amherst story in the colonial era whereas the African American residents of Amherst have fought for our collective defense and freedom from the Revolution and Civil War to the present whereas the African American community some of whose distinguished figures are depicted on the history mural in West Cemetery will be when it gets redone continues to contribute to the rich diversity and general welfare of both the town of Amherst and the Commonwealth whereas to its honor in Massachusetts participated in the slave trade since 1638 but to its honor in 1783 became the first state in the new nation to abolish slavery as inconsistent with our own conduct and constitution thereby demonstrating our determination to live up to our historical ideals as we strive to build a better common future whereas as former president Barack Obama proclaimed every American can draw strength from the story of hard one progress which not only defines our African American experience but also lies the heart of our nation as a whole now therefore we the select board of the town of Amherst do hereby proclaim February 2018 as Black History Month and urge all residents to mark this occasion and to participate fittingly in its observance beginning with this ceremony to be held in front of Town Hall on February 10th, 2018 Thank you So if someone would like to make the motion Sure I will so first, we'll be temporarily ahead of this so then we will continue to recognize and proclaim February 2018 as Black History Month and urge all residents to mark this occasion and to participate in its observance beginning with the ceremony to be held in front of Town Hall on February 10th, 2018 And the second is therefore the discussion hearing none all those in favor please say aye. Why don't we take a short recess and stretch of their legs? Amherst books, that's why they have those crazy hours. It's 7 a.m. or something like that, 6 a.m. every morning. These are the five arcs, which is the Baptist church that you met at Amherstones. That was the bus stop before. For Peter Pan tickets. We have a further small number of outlets. It would be the best way to describe it. There's supposed to check. There's supposed to be a show and an ID. A university ID, we get along. We'll go back to the bus. I think in this off season there, we're not sure about checking. The staff that ride, they're regular. They ride it, sort of the standard commuting time of the 90's. First time I got on the bus, I was on the campus shuttle. I was in grade 34 and then turned into 35. I only lived just on the street. I usually just walked. I was like, I'll take the bus. I didn't know the bus was very well, so I got on the bus that would go by. But it went the wrong way. I got on the wrong half of the way. So I went the wrong way around and was like, I gotta walk. I gotta wait to either ride it all the way to the other thing. So I just got off and walked. I was like, I'm just too meritistic. It was like 25 years ago. We should probably make it a note to have one that announced we made it. We always do it to make it clear. One of the things that's a little bit tricky about it is because the plan words don't write something. No, you're probably on mine. That's what I'm going to bring up. We're out of recess, which we're not out of recess yet. But not the second. I mean, later when you find a space for it. Beautiful resolution. Good sign. Hey, are you skipping our February 12th meeting, Mr. Bachman? I did.  I'm a way. I was looking at that. I was like, what happened? I just kind of changed the fit as well. It's all good. I was like, uh-huh, he's just going. You're so what as to whatever you want. Thank you for the reasons. You're welcome. Since we're all back, we'll return to our meeting. So next up we have committee boards appointments and reappointments. And so there's a series of motions there. I can do these or the person from this committee who sat on the interviews if they prefer. Do you want me to do it? Okay. So let's make sure this is. I move to appoint Nat Larson and Keith Nesbit to the community development block grant, CDBG advisory committee through June 30th, 2020. Is there a second? Okay. Any further discussion? Just to say, I'm really pleased that we have some members of our community have stepped up to serve on this committee. They're in the, as we heard earlier tonight in the, in the main part of the committee's work. And there may be another one coming forward, which would be a full complement then for that committee, which is like really happy dance time. So yeah, good. And if I could just follow up by saying, and one of the reasons we were able to work with these people is because it wasn't just, they just happened to run across it on our amazing town website. It was that personal connection thing. We always talk about that. We've talked about that no matter who's assigned to committee appointments and usually the person's way too busy to do actual recruiting. But one person talks to one person who then talks to other people and that's how these happened. It's that personal connection. So we really appreciate all the different personal connections that people made to help make these applications happen. The other thing, I know that we called him Nat in his interview, but just to be sure that if he wants to have his full name listed on things like, like he listed on his application. Maybe staff could check in when they send out the letter. If it says something like that. Some people like it to be one or the other thing. It'll still work. I'm sure it will still. The important thing is, is that he will come. He in fact has already attended a meeting. He said so that's good. So we're really happy that both of them are joining us and we appreciate them coming in for interviews as well. Is there any further discussion on that? Hearing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Opposed to where you're going to answer. I moved to appoint Sarah Essinger as an at-large member to the Community Preservation Act Committee through June 30th, 2020. Your second. Is there further discussion? All right. Hearing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? So that's unanimous as well. The last one. Incorrect. Is that a manager? It's the Human Rights Commission. Let's just amend the motion. Just a cut and paste issue. Let's appoint him to the committee he wants to be part of. Oh, well, that would be... Okay. So... It's a commission, just not... It's not the Conservation Commission. We just spin the wheel. I'll just start with C today. Yes. Maybe we can have like the wild card application. Exactly right. Sign up and see what you get. Okay. I moved to appoint Tristan Whelan to the Human Rights Commission through June 30th, 2019. Is there further discussion? I will just mention that aside from as Mr. Wilde points out, not all the C committees always get done on the same night, is that Mr. Whelan is currently a high school student, and that's one of the reasons his term is short, because we want to see how that works out for him when he goes off to college. But it has been long tradition, although not officially written into the charge that high school and or college students serve on this commission. We don't have a separate youth commission, and we found that this is a place where youth have often found that it's a valuable experience for them, as well as for the community. So we appreciate him seeing if this will work in his schedule. Fantastic. Further discussion? You're none. All those in favor, please say hi. Hi. Hi. And just a comment in general. There have been a lot of appointments coming through, and that's great, and I'm really thrilled tonight. It's great. I don't know any of these, I didn't know any of the people, but for their name. So it's pretty exciting. But it's also just to thank all of our staff and the people who have community chairs and others, Mr. Bachman, who have, and Ms. Pupple in particular, who have had to schedule all of this, which is a kind of a juggling match at best, to get all the people who sit in the interviews and lined up at the same date and time, or somebody gets the flu and the whole thing gets scrapped and you start all over. So behind these motions are actually a lot of legwork for people and a lot of thoughtful participation. And sometimes people come in and they're really great people. They didn't get picked because of the mix we were looking for on a committee, and we thank them for their interest too. Thank you. So I think next we'll do the consent calendar. I do have one change on this. And I want to double check the actual application I looked at earlier. The actual application for the, in the consent calendar under motion, lower case I for the Fine Arts Center Lobby says April 12, 2018 from 8 to 12 p.m. And the application says 8 p.m. to 12 p.m., unless they're going to the next day or they're finishing before they start or something of that. I assume that's an a.m. I was going to do the same thing 12 p.m. that's been my proposal. Now the actual application says 12 p.m. but I presume that's a little scripted area there because everything else is sort of a p.m. to p.m. It's like 1 to 4 or 3 to 5 or something like that. So that was the one amendment I would make but I would certainly take a motion for that consent calendar unless someone wants to move them separately. I moved to approve the items listed on the consent calendar for the February 20, February 5, 2018 agenda as amended. Is there a second? All right. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor please say aye. Aye. That's unanimous. All right. So that's the sort of nuts and bolts things we have to do. Now we're into our reports and comments section which is going to start with the manager's report. Thank you, Mr. Chair. First up, let's talk about the weather. The weather has gotten better although the extremely cold weather with the freezing has really done a number on our roads and especially the crosswalks and that's a real problem. We're trying to keep up with it but as it rains it makes the material just pour out and having driven around the state it's not a unique problem to the town of Amherst but it's in every community but it does speak to the need for us to invest in our roads. We anticipate pretty significant storms on Wednesday. We will be calling a snow emergency on Wednesday so that you don't park overnight on Wednesday night. At this point we're looking at probably depending on how the weather looks in terms of our staffing will probably be if we have to do cleanup it would probably be Friday night just given how we try to manage our staff if they're out all night plowing some removed snow the next night but we try to get it done before the weekend. Just to clarify, so the snow emergency would be Wednesday night into Thursday morning? Correct. And then again on Friday night and Saturday morning? Potentially, yeah. Potentially on the Saturday morning. So I just want to give a heads up. We continue to watch the weather forecast for Monday or two days away come Wednesday morning. If there's a snow emergency that night we pledge to make the call by noon so that everybody knows they have plenty of time to get in the car before midnight. I'm going to kick, going to kick in. The coffee with town manager will, I'm going to change that date to the February 19th for a number of reasons just conflicts on a couple of items. Again having picked out the location or the department head but I'll update you next week. The, one of the things that's been really uplifting to me are these employee meetings that I've been having. So once or twice a month a group of employees comes in, five employees randomly selected. Somebody picks up my mushroom who does but it's someone from Fire Police, DPW, library, town hall, LSSE, banks, wherever it is. And we just sort of talk for an hour and it's been fantastic. Just, and the biggest thing is the connection and respect they have for each other and you'll often hear some employees like if there's a police officer in a firefighter there they'll say, oh well what you do is so important you're saving lives and they almost automatically respond say if it's DPW like one officer said I couldn't do my job if you weren't here because I don't have a, you know, I can't cut down trees with something like, and it was all these fantastic things and you know someone to the library, well we might feed, we might take care of them this way but you're the ones feeding their minds and so they're really reinforcing each other's jobs and it's really a very powerful thing and almost all the time the employees didn't know each other so it's, and they feel a little bit better walking out so it's one hour and it's been, I really appreciate the step-radway suggestion and I think it was. So I appreciate that. I'll just jump through and then if you can ask me anything that you want to ask. There was a many hour bid retreat on Friday where they brought a speaker in who talked about the importance of downtowns and how to, the elements of a successful downtown so I want to share this with you. He sort of does this like as a TED talk type thing so these are the 20 ingredients to a successful downtown. It's something that they really glommed on to and are inspired to do something with and there wasn't really a whole lot of post presentation talk but these are the things that when he has studied thousands of downtowns and looked at the 400 that are most successful there are certain things that they've identified as being important and one of those things for instance is to have a focus on something that really characterizes what do you say about your downtown to people when they first conceptualize it. So it was very interesting. I think the bid board and our economic development director was there as well. I found it really intriguing and inspiring and he encouraged them to go for the big thing and one of the things that he was really focused on was a plaza someplace where people knew to gather and I think that there's a lot of focus on the work that we intend to do at the North Common and the Main Street parking lot and they started saying do we need a parking lot there which like astounded me and that's the most popular parking place in town but in terms of what creates a downtown is not a parking lot on your most important corner possibly but something else that's happening there. So big issue and so that's the bid was pretty inspired by this and I think they're looking a little bit long term they do have a renewal up in the fall but they have some ideas for what they want to go forward with. I'll come back to the social services memo at the end I guess. On the IT department working very closely with them as I mentioned before we have a three month plan a six month plan and then we go out from there so one of the things that keeps coming up and came up but the finance committee when IT presented its budget was the downtown Wi-Fi and so the goal on that is to turn it off and until we can get it up and running so it's responsible so people can make it work so that's a high priority for them and the other thing is the community bathroom is the lock system there is a mechanical lock isn't really working well that we want to get electronic locks in that because it helps us manage that space because sometimes people get in and then they spend the night and things like that's not a good thing. Where's the community bathroom? Community fields bathroom sorry. It's our group bathroom sorry. I should fix that yeah good point. Number ten on the list here you know. I know I know. So that's a community field. Yes I'm sorry. Over there next to the high school. Yes yes that was my bad. Tonight Chief Livingstone was meeting with the school department to talk about the recommendation for polling places in the schools they looked at each of the schools and the polling locations in each of them generally felt there were some modifications most of the schools were able to handle the polling without much disruption Crocker Farm School was the one that was a challenge and their recommendation something to think about at least was to have a police officer there during polling hours that's an expense it's something that we wouldn't have a regular officer do and it's because we can't have someone who's going to be there and then be pulled away so that's one of the things that we will have to be looking at in terms of making that area safer than it is now so but the other ones they felt with the doors being able to be closed and access limited they felt it was fine especially since the board relocated the Fort River School polling location to the gym a couple other public safety things the fire department continued to monitor the payroll they've really incurred there's a lot of paternity leaves and they're trying to so they're trying to fill the gaps in terms of making sure there's enough staffing with overtime and but the chief has been doing a really good good really paying a good attention to it and we're monitoring their payroll on a regular basis and he's taken steps to make sure that he stays within his budget and the same thing is true for the police department as you know the grant the burn what to call the burn grant for $93,000 I think which we normally would have received by now the latest information is the chief does not anticipate that we will actually receive it this is for a neighborhood liaison officer that we typically hire through this grant it doesn't mean that we won't keep the employee on our payroll but it does mean they will have to cut back in other areas in his budget so that he doesn't go over budget it's a position and grant that he had counted on in the past there's been no explicit communication to the town about this but advice to him from people elsewhere in the state it has been don't count on it basically but there isn't anything coming to us saying because you are a sanctuary community you are not going to get this grant it's just not the money is not being released it's kind of this passive thing and maybe there's a different reason but that's the only reason that we can anticipate I mentioned last time about the Hadley request for proposal for ambulance services and that we went over there and met with their ambulance study committee and two members of their select board and talked about the services that we are rightly proud to offer them also mentioned that I think the service that we provide to them is worth more than what the town of Hadley has been paying us so they would dispute that as you would expect but I think they had gone out to market and I think this is something we will be talking about with them in a continued way damages I previously reported about two cruisers in separate incidents that had been damaged then on January 28th we had two ambulances that had been damaged that's just minor damage they are both in service but just sort of cosmetic damage but they backed into each one backed into the other one at Kulita Consent Hospital so those things will be fixed we have forwarded these things to our insurance company of course Oh, Cherry Hill the Winterfest went off Saturday night with the Lumiere's on the town common and I wasn't there but I heard really positive things about it the kids really liked it it looked really fantastic I'm not sure if any of you were able to get down there but that was an exciting thing and Winterfest continues through this entire week until February 10th when we will I'm hoping some of you will be judges for the chili the great chili taste they're listed as celebrity judges maybe you don't want to identify yourselves but I think Ms. Brewer and I are celebrity judges we'll reflect forward they're willing to take us without all five of us if we haven't been fired so nobody else could do it and then also the beauty and the beast they had a remarkable run at Belgrade Auditorium the community theater was I think pretty much every show was sold out which is a really remarkable feat for them Town of Cullum I previously had talked about they were looking for a backup service for a treasure collector where that stands as they have hired a treasure collector they who started and will provide just educational support for whatever this person needs Claire's been very good about offering that up to the Town of Cullum just as a good neighbor type of thing the Sandy Center is moving forward one of the things there is they ran into some issues that were not known to them not known to us in terms of electrical the capacity of the of the panels some of the panels were not labeled appropriately so they relied on the label that was there when they got into it they realized there's not the same so they incurred some additional costs we're in some discussions about who should bear that cost and since we don't have an appropriation I think the answer is pretty clear but we're helping we're working with them to help them get to an opening date I've not seen an actual date but I think they're looking to finish in March and I'm trying to get you maybe a tour of it before a select board meeting sometime it really is coming together they've got the dental equipment and it's going to be a real huge addition to the town to have this they've done a really nice job on the design and the construction the let's see Medical Marijuana one of the Happy Valley it has the you issued a letter of non-opposition to Happy Valley at the rafter site there is a new company that's interested in taking over that site from Happy Valley we're in some conversations with them about whether the board would issue a fifth letter of non-opposition or if Happy Valley would like to we would like Happy Valley to relinquish their letter of non-opposition there has to do so until the transaction has transpired so we're in this little dance with two companies in the town where it's my reading of the board is that you weren't interested in issuing a fifth letter of non-opposition so we don't want to have five hanging out there for whatever reason but if I'm reading that wrong you should let me know but we can talk about that the what else the the North Amherst Library four proposals from Designs were received they were meeting today they received the proposals last week the committee that's looking at the proposals I think they met today I did not hear the results of that health insurance for the town is one of the big issues we will talk a lot more about this next week we had a we've been meeting really regularly with our small group we met today for just over two hours we have another meeting on Wednesday with the entire insurance advisory committee unless that gets snowed out then we will have to move that to another day we're on a very tight time frame we pretty much have to make a decision on what we're doing by the end of February it's tied into negotiations with the school and the school's contract that inhibits what we all think we need to do and so that we know their schedule for their negotiations where they think they're going to be so there's been a small group that's been working on this pretty successfully I think and we had very good meeting today the key pieces that we have to decide if we want to stay self-insured or if we're going to go fully insured right now we offered Harvard Pilgrim and we offered Blue Cross we're going to have two carriers or one carrier and then our plan design which is the benefits that employees receive has no deductibles and first dollar coverage so that's something that doesn't match up well with all the other employers private and public in the area so as a result a lot of people are choosing our plan for the spouse that has the option they choose our plan and we just think we need to have our plan look similar to other plans we don't want to be the default insurer for everybody same as we were mentioned about petition articles under town meeting we received four petitions and I can't tell you if they've actually been certified and I'll get copies of these two so one is and I'm not going to read these it's a resolution calling for the United States to pull back from the brink and prevent nuclear war one is a zoning to amend the zoning map by changing RO outline residential to RLD low density residential in all areas of town neither served by public water nor sewer a third one which is to change section 15.10 of the zoning bylaws and I think this is to increase inclusionary zoning I haven't read it carefully so the fourth one is an odd construction but it's to support an amendment to the town noise bylaw to include firing range gunfire signing this petition supports limiting firing range gunfired between 9 and 6 30 p.m. and between April 1st through November 1st and so this is the firing range on the whole range so that one's going to have to be reviewed I think but something that will come to your attention in multiple ways I think people in that area so those are four that were the zoning slash money articles that came in and we will see if they have the required signatures the and personnel Maureen Pollock was hired as an associate planner and she previously had served for five years as the assistant planner and conservation agent for the City of Greenfield and she's a degree in regional planning from UMass and a really good addition for the planning department we're really pleased to have her and Bruce Cleveland started as a building maintenance filling the position that had someone had retired and has been working at the Bang Center and Bruce is an Amherst resident with 40 years of experience in the residential maintenance field at two apartment complexes in the region he has extensive experience in HVAC, electrical and plumbing and we really think he'll be he'll be flashing our maintenance team in a really nice way Adam Metzger started at the Western Massachusetts Police Academy as Amherst's newest patrol officer recruit on February 5th he's a Northampton native he's a member of the United States National Guard is close to completing his bachelor's degree in criminal justice let's see so coming up for the select board meeting is next week will be sort of conservation and development we will be talking about so Mr. Zomac will be here to November 12th next week and we're going to put as many of the sort of assistant town manager issues like update on Groff Park, update on North Common there's a number of other things that are going to come before he meant to change it so anything that you have for him, if you wanted on the agenda we have agenda setting tomorrow we're scheduled for that and then two weeks or three weeks from today, February 26th is when we will be bringing back the agricultural it'll be a sort of the DPW night so we'll be bringing back agricultural water use we'll be looking at the presentation on our road management program and pretty much anything we can think of for DPW so we can make use of their time here and try to sort of organize ourselves that way that would be that night we're hoping that would be tax that night for crosswalks according to your memory so those are the big things coming up and any questions that you may have could you answer totally minor question but you mentioned the polling places is there a standard policy on police at polling places could I recall having seen them sometimes so they're constables at the polling places and this what their suggestion would be an actual police officer as opposed to a constable who is someone who gets a lunch break and things like that and so far we haven't been doing that we have not, some communities do do it though they have a police officer at every polling location so following up on that I do have a couple of other following up on that one it's probably clear from comments I made last time we discussed this but I really appreciate that the police are working with the school committee on this rather than it just kind of being concerns that get raised and we didn't really move forward with them and so that's been really helpful and they're probably talking about it even as we speak because it's on their agenda tonight but one of the things I want to make super clear based on previous notes that have been opinions that have been expressed in our community about having police in schools that this is going to be a decision that's owned by the school committee and the superintendent even though of course it's your staffing so from that standpoint obviously you can say no because you're the town manager but what I'm saying is if you have an opinion about this out there in the world, share that with the school committee not with the select board because that's where the decision needs to be made that's who needs to be sensitive to the needs of the community within the school as well as the public that votes at the school because of concerns that have been expressed in the past this may very well be a great compromise but the school needs this because of that particular physical structure but I hope that it's clear that they will be taking the lead on that, not us trying to avoid public comment on an issue that's really not ours it's their building so they have to decide how they want us to help manage that you're right for the questions I have a couple for you go ahead so one thing just back to public safety a couple questions there you're talking about monitoring the grant from the U.S. Attorney General's office I presume there are other communities in the Commonwealth that are under a similar struggle as far as the grant is this something that the States Attorney General is looking into as far as putting pressure in other words if the grant's been awarded and then they're not sending the cash that's it's a bit of a weird space to be in but sometimes we have to sue the government for the money is what I'm getting at it seems like an odd thing to do but it's just something that I don't think it's an entitlement so I don't think we would have grounds for it it's a discretionary grant it's money that goes to the state and then from the state gets allocated out probably like we have to do a CDBG the state has to do with theirs to the federal government we have to then once we decide what we want to do a CDBG we submit it to the state and they say okay that looks good to us it's one that where the money hasn't been released it was explicitly not released in the city of Lawrence for the same type of grant but no other community that I know has had that happen to them just to can we just follow up on that we've talked about this a little bit before but just is there a way to at least pursue this maybe starting with our delegation and ask them to look into it and then depending on that result we'll be going further up like Paul. You're talking about the state or federal delegation what do you think? Well if it's flowing through the state maybe that's the first if there is something that our wonderful Attorney General might want to help us with but we don't have enough information but I think start the process. Just to follow on in public safety something across my mind when you're talking about Joe's on January 28th there's no time of day I've brought this up before given that we work 24 hour shifts and they start at 7am that's 19 and a half hours into a shift theoretically. Do we think fatigue was a factor? It begs a broader question for me generally around accidents that aren't caused by other drivers but our own do they tend to fall at certain times of day certain parts of those long shifts that sort of thing has been considered looked at thought about I know that you're doing some follow up conversations with building on the firefighter study that you had and that talks about how to staff and this gets into those they're independent in some ways and very dependent in other ways and so I'm just curious if you have any thoughts about that or in knowledge I mean it's less about this particular circumstance but just thinking about the notion of when you're 20 hours into a shift are you as sharp as you were in hour 2? Yeah. I don't think that was the circumstance I know this wasn't the circumstance in this situation the chief reports I was basically a distraction to the driver who was slowly backing up and someone distracted him and that's why it's just an accident that it happened. I think that and I have specifically that question and he said fatigue was not an issue in this case I have the same concerns you have about 24 hour shifts but that's something that we went to a long time ago and that's a contractual issue so moving away from that is probably not going to happen very easily we're in negotiations with the fire union right now but we're not talking about that in particular but we are talking about the recommendations from the study which was a daytime surge shift that happens during the day which is when our busiest times are to have additional firefighters on duty just during the day not 24 hour shift because it gets kind of quiet between 2 and 6 in the morning so why do we need so that's not my argument but it's a good conversation we're having with them about a number of issues different issues and this is all plays into this is a recommendation from the you know from the from the study so thank you that's the only things I had do other members have questions I did have a couple one is associated with the letter for what was happy valley yeah somebody else so we were dreading this happening I think it's fair to say and that when we got to numbers 3 and 4 of those letters we realized wow we really don't have any guidance here we're just trying to make this up as we go along and then of course after we did number 4 with some level of discomfort then we did recreational also known as adult use came into play and changed the playing field completely not just sure we could all predict that something was going to happen but to say that suddenly the things we'd given out for medical we're now going to apply to recreational which was not something any of us intended when we we may have decided the same thing but it wasn't part of the conversation so awkward because now it's the same site so that's not different still meets with zoning we've set up it's not like we've changed zoning since then to prevent it from being there yet at the same time hmm and I think part of I mean I would say very much for myself that I think part of the reason we were willing to go forward with the letters as we were was because we didn't really have a reason not to so we don't like to say no to business opportunities and we also all firmly I think quite firmly we're in support of medical marijuana happening years ago we've been waiting for it to happen and once it certainly feels to me like since recreational became available that medicals been dragging at speed since then and not putting in the money because they're waiting to see what happens with recreational so that's really unfortunate because we all wanted medical to be available for pain relief to people so given all that frustration trying not to take that out on this applicant I can also see that they're going to show up on the 26 and we have no way to be prepared for doing either thing for saying yes or no I don't see that we've learned anything since the last time we did it that will help us make a good decision unless the only thing we're basing this decision on is that it's the same site so I mean that would be a way to do it but other than that I just don't know how we would decide yes or no and again we are interested in pain relief and we are interested in economic development and we do support what the voters wanted to do but voters didn't necessarily realize they were changing all the medicals that had non-opposition or letters of support into recreational so what I fear is them coming in and me being cranky like this and it's not their fault I mean they're just buying a property and maybe going to be providing a service but I don't know what kind of process we're supposed to follow to figure this out well I think they at least have the right to come in and talk to us we're not I mean that's what they're asking for to be on the agenda then we have to hear them out and I wouldn't presuppose what we're going to say because we haven't heard from them and I think it's okay for them to come in just because they're on the agenda does not presuppose any outcome can I just follow up on that first of all one we don't have to let them be on the agenda but we're doing if we are going to let them be on the agenda I think it's offensive to only let them be on the agenda just to say well we just said you wanted to be on it so we'll let you be on it like we have to be prepared to do something or not I think in terms of giving to give them an expectation like thanks for coming to talk to us we're not prepared to talk about this or we are prepared to talk about it I think it would be unfair for us to say well we're just letting you come talk but we may not do anything that's what I'm trying to get to is what will we do to prepare for that meeting I just want to say that a little uncomfortable with this discussion because it's not a posted agenda item unless you make a determination as the chair that it should be on the discussion because it was not anticipated by you 48 hours in advance well in in some respects that's the case I I think what I would suggest is that we keep talking about it about whether to have it as an agenda item as opposed to which you know for the 26th I'm okay with that conversation because I want the feedback about whether not you want this on the agenda or not on the agenda and what concerns you have about having it on the agenda when we get into what actions we might take on on that agenda item that's a more uncomfortable place for me but I think as far as just the conversation about the agenda item you know sort of setting our own expectations around it a little bit whether to have it on the agenda not on the agenda or we could you know we may also decide to I mean fortunately it's not next Monday so we have a little bit of time both from a courtesy standpoint to the folks that are seeking that but as well as for ourselves to think about this so I would in the short term at least offer people the suggestion that they should think about this as an agenda item and sort of funnel that to me directly so it's not an open meeting law sort of thing where we're all sort of having conversations not in an open meeting but I do take your point about the fact that it's not really on the agenda so therefore it's difficult to discuss it I mean like I said my suggestion would be that we each consider it a little bit and get feedback to me about it soon so that as we set agenda we have some sense of I get a sense from each of you individually about that and and to your point about sort of what does it mean by having it on the agenda sort of what action would we or would we not take what expectations are we setting around that I think we all I mean I personally think about that a little bit myself but yes thank you I appreciate it because one of the quickest ways to make my hair stand on end is to say we're going to put on the agenda because they ask for who we used to do that 10 years ago it was a horrible idea just because we would just sit there and listen to people talk and then we'd say okay now what do we do I mean it was mortifying and so I'm saying that if we choose to do this on a night that already looks pretty busy with DPW stuff and all the other transportation stuff you guys have already set up to be thoughtful about and whether that I mean I'm fine with saying you that's the date you think is the right date that then to say then next time we talk next Monday we should talk this is I think beyond the normal agenda setting process in terms of people having to necessarily feed it to you by a certain date or whatever but to be able to say on the 12th what we're looking for and we may not all be satisfied with what happens on the 26th in terms of process even much less outcome but we could then talk about unless somebody has an objection to that night because of all the other things we're doing that night I don't have an objection to that night what I have an objection to is it just going through the standard non-unusual situation agenda setting process where we don't know what we're actually going to be doing on the 26th in terms of how we'll frame it and so if we could talk about that briefly next week as opposed to the agenda item like how do we talk about letters of opposition and non-opposition and support as opposed to how do we talk about Happy Valley turning into something else that would be totally fine with me. I'm a little confused and I'm not going to talk about it so it's an open meeting but I'd be more comfortable next time we talk about whether we want to know the agenda or not because I think I'm a little confused maybe I'm not quite in the same way but coming up with a decision about how we want to deal with something that might be on our agenda before it comes seems sort of like pre-deliberating on something that we haven't even heard from yet I am willing to trust the agenda-setting team and the manager to decide if this is right for there's a reason why this should come now whether it's not and I might have implied just because they asked I get it a lot of people want to be on our agenda but if people have been in communication with that applicant I mean they have to go through us so there's a reason to ask this not just an idle I'd like to be on a select board agenda but I'm as ripe for that I would leave to the agenda-setting team and the manager I'm having trouble pre-determining how we're going to approach it before we actually hear what we're being asked to do we know exactly what we're being asked to do we were already told what we'll be asked to do we'll be asked to give them a letter of support I'm asking us to talk about next week post-agenda how we're going to talk about that issue this time around because we haven't done it for a while and we've learned not very much but about a whole lot of other things but not much about that structure why can't we talk about that when the applicant is here because they don't need I don't believe we should discuss with the applicant how we develop a policy on how to deal with the applicant's concern I find that ridiculous I think that that is offensive to the applicant and it's offensive to me we need to come when we get a question I mean it would have been nice maybe if we'd guessed this two years ago that it might come up again but we haven't had to deal with it we've been lucky and so how are we going to talk about it because we weren't happy the last time we did one of these and so some of us maybe were happy I just don't see how we're united let's put it that way I just don't see how we can come up with a policy about something I just I I'm just I don't get it so the way I'm seeing it is two different conversations one's about sort of what do we in a broad general sense how do we approach this topic when asked for a letter when asked for regardless of whom and regardless of where in town obviously within it's appropriate of course but I mean there's that question that I'm hearing you sort of articulate you'd like to discuss a little bit next week as opposed to when an actual sort of request comes and now we have to sort of essentially apply that sort of rationale to the situation so I'm thinking as far as just I would welcome the conversation about sort of how we approach these a little bit because I felt we got caught a little flat footed in the past partly because we originally thought there'd only be one allowed in town and then that got changed suddenly we were kind of not ready for a a deluge as it were of medical marijuana so I think some thinking about the rationale behind what our criteria are whether it becomes formal policy or not but just broadly sort of what makes us comfortable or uncomfortable about any any request for this sort of letter would be a useful conversation it may continue on the night that they're here because we may not come to a perfect sort of perfectly buttoned up idea of what we want to do but I think that it'll be helpful I think to do that I think a little bit on next Monday night perhaps I appreciate that but we're not talking about the specific asked by that group I see that is on the 26th I think it's about yeah I think separating those into two would be best I think it's 26 might be it we should talk about that the applicant had asked for February so I didn't think we had time to put it on but the 26th is going to be a heavy meeting so might not be the best yeah so they may get and you'll know more about that when we meet on the 12th right okay well thank you all for that we've kind of been dealing with it by not dealing with it we don't have to deal with it I think it's dangerous if people into it like if the manager says well I think the board doesn't want to do this or we won't have that may end up being true but I think unless we have that conversation there's a spectrum of feeling and opinion so it's really hard if you project on they're not going to like this or they're going to like that so I appreciate that that's why I want to have the pre-meeting so to speak about it and that's why this is so fun the pre-argument the structural hypothetical argument that's right I actually have another item associated with the town managers report so that is I would think it would be entirely appropriate despite it not being on our agenda for us to go ahead to the effect that if those zoning petitions are certified in terms of signatures that they're passed along to the planning board because technically there's that thing under mass general law that we have to send it to them and why wait until next Monday that seems really silly I mean we're going to give it to them anyway so as soon as it's certified by the town clerk that that's just like gone so we have done that in the past irregularly I moved to do that so yeah that shows that to the effect that once zoning petitions once certified should be forwarded to the planning board under whatever section of mass general law that is because it's out of our hands but officially it's supposed to be passed over to them by us so we have a motion in a second is there any further discussion on that hearing none all those in favor please say aye alright alright are there other questions for the manager regarding his report just he didn't mention it orally but it says that you're going to Mr. Backelman you're going to be a keynote speaker at the Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education Annual Municipal Conference on March 7th so I wanted to call that out because that's quite an honor and then you said I'm not sure what I'm t