We're going to call this meeting to order. It is now 6 31. Okay. Welcome. Seeing that we have quorum of town councillors present, we are officially calling the meeting to order. This meeting is being broadcast live and recorded by Amherst media. So copies of the agenda are projected on the wall in both the screens and are posted in advance of the meeting. If you are interested in speaking during the meeting, please sign the sheet at the back of the room. Do we remember a sheet? Yes. There's no sheet there. Okay. We'll put one there. Not to worry. We like to collect your names because that way we know exactly what the name is. We will not have public comment, however, until toward the end of the meeting. So let me begin with announcements. First of all, are there any councillors with announcements? Okay. Then I have two. First of all, as many of you are aware, we have postponed our vote on the temporary station road bridge until February 6. And at that time, as required by the charter, Section 5.6, supplementary budgets, other appropriations, we will hold a public form called by the town council. Immediately following the public form, the council will vote on two motions that have been recommended unanimously by the town council's finance committee at their meeting on January 22, 2019. I apologize for the delay, but we're also trying to meet by the letter of the law. We're going to move into the, I just realized something didn't print. Okay. Let me also mention, later on this evening, approximately 8.30, we are going to go into executive session. At which point, Jesus, sorry. Off. Everybody else? Checking? Thank you. And we will convene in the small room in the back of this room. We anticipate that the executive session will last no longer than 15 to 30 minutes. And if we have not completed our regular agenda at that time, don't laugh. We will convene immediately following the executive session back in this room. If we have by chance completed it, we will not reconvene following the executive session. So our first order of business is actually two resolutions. The first is actually presented by Anastasia. Yes. I guess this one stays on. Good evening. Thank you all and to the town manager for granting time for me to speak with you tonight about the fund our future campaign. I would like to ask that you support it by joining the dozens of communities around the Commonwealth that have already passed local resolutions, signed petitions and shown their support in other ways for this important initiative. In your packets, you will have seen a copy of the resolution passed by the Amherst School Committee in December of 2018. The resolution was passed following years of advocacy by our school committee and our superintendent, Dr. Morris and others, to raise awareness among our state elected leaders about the negative impact that an outdated state foundation budget formula has on our schools. I'm here tonight asking that you consider passing a similar resolution from the Amherst town council as soon as you can. The resolution reform act of 1993 established a constitutional right to provide a high quality education to every student within the Commonwealth regardless of wealth, income, educational background or zip code. The rationale for this was that a high quality education is a shared responsibility among all of us to ensure that our children grow to become active participants in our democracy and productive members of our economy. The nuts and bolts way that the legislature ensured a high quality public education for every child was by using a complex formula nicknamed the foundation budget to calculate how much each district would be required to spend on their public schools loosely based on the size and makeup of a district's financial well-being and school enrollment. The state would then ensure that every district has sufficient resources to meet its foundation budget spending level using a funding formula titled Chapter 70. Unfortunately, the foundation budget has not been updated since 1993. And while education costs continue to increase because let's face it, most things in life don't usually get cheaper with every passing year, the foundation budget has remained more or less unchanged. The districts, school committees and advocates across the state have been adamantly asking the Commonwealth for years to update the foundation budget. So to study the problem, the legislature voted to form the foundation budget review commission in 2015. The foundation budget review commission chaired by state senator Sonia Chang Diaz and state representative Alice Paish published its report in late 2015. The commission found that the state is currently underfunding our combined districts approximately $1 billion a year. From the report, I'm just going to read this to you. Commission also undertook its task recognizing that the department of elementary and secondary education, DESI, has in recent years consistent with both the original Education Reform Act and subsequent amendments to the law, including the Achievement Gap Act of 2010 been ramping up efforts to hold districts and schools accountable for results and to ensure that every effort is being made to identify, reduce, and eliminate remaining achievement gaps. It was a special moral and fiscal focus of the commissions then to make sure that the schools and districts most likely to be held accountable for bringing high need students to proficiency also had sufficient resources to meet those standards and educate their high needs populations to the same standards as other students by reviewing the adequacy and efficacy of the ELL and low income rates in the formula. The commission's report highlighted the huge disparities that exist among communities. Districts of about the same size can expect to face very different costs depending on their demographics. Amherst is considered one of the state's wealthier districts yet we have a high need student population so it costs more to ensure that each of our students has a high quality education. If the foundation budget were to be revised and updated Amherst district could receive approximately $264,000 a year depending on the model that is implemented and approximately $358,000 for the region. But while any added amount owed and paid to our districts would help our public schools and relieve pressure off our towns finances there are some communities owed much, much more. It is grossly unacceptable that our state allows this inequality to continue any longer by passing a resolution and supporting the fund our future campaign. The Amherst town council is taking an important step towards letting the state know that revising the foundation budget this year will bring much needed relief to all of our public schools in all of our communities. This is an important time when state legislators are poised to prioritize public education funding and so the time for this kind of leadership and advocacy is now. Thank you for your attention. And the resolution is in your folders and was shared with you online. And do I hear a motion to accept? And that was Pat and a second. Dorothy, thank you. Any further discussion? Yes, Amanda Joe. Just a quick question to our school chair over here. Where did you send it to once it was adopted? So who should we be forwarding this to if we adopt it? Well, so there is a fund our future campaign. And there is an email address that we can send it to and it makes sure that the resolution that is passed is then publicly accessible on their website. But you can send it to us and we can take care of it from there. Thank you. Other questions? Hearing none, call the question. All those in favor? It is unanimous. Thank you so much. We are prepared to sign it this evening. Great. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to exercise our ability to bring in one other resolution that we did not have 48 hours in advance. And that is a resolution particularly about Black History Month. I've asked Dorothy Pam to read that resolution for us. It was given to us by the local ACLU. Whereas since the bicentennial year of 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 won at the cost of great struggle and sacrifice by men and women who came to these shores in chains and by their descendants. Whereas the authors of these accomplishments in Massachusetts history include Phyllis Wheatley, the first African American to publish a book of poetry, Crispus Attucks, the first casualty of the American Revolution, Edward Jones of Amherst College, the second African American to earn a college degree, Ed Monia Lewis, the first professional African American sculptor to learn to craft in Boston, the members of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the first and most famous unit of African American Union soldiers raised in the Civil War, Jan Metzeliger, inventor who had revolutionized the shoe manufacturing industry, W.E.B. 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 first African American residents of Amherst have fought in our collective defense and freedom from the Revolution and Civil Wars to the present, whereas the African American community, some of whose distinguished figures are depicted on the history mural in West Cemetery, continues to contribute to the rich diversity and general welfare of both the town of Amherst and the Commonwealth, whereas to its shame, 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 the 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-won progress which not only defines the African American experience, but also lies at the heart of our nation as a whole. Now, therefore, we the town council of the town of Amherst do hereby proclaim February 2019 as Black History Month and urge all residents to mark this occasion and to participate fittingly in its observance, beginning with a flag-raising ceremony to be held in front of Town Hall on February 3rd, 2019, voted on this 28th day of January 2019. Do I hear a motion to adopt this proclamation? Dorsey? And second? Which one? Anyway, Pat, any further discussion or questions? Yes, Alyssa? Thank you. And so the select board did this every year, and so I'm very pleased that it came back to us this year. The only question I had is we sometimes have some confusion over what day of the week it is. It was typically the second Saturday. Is it really this coming Sunday? Are we certain of that? Just to be sure, because sometimes day-to-day things don't work the way we expect. We will check on that and change the date accordingly if necessary. Okay, yes. Thank you. There is an advertisement out for it that was put out by Kathleen Anderson and the Human Rights Commission, and it's Sunday the 3rd. Okay. All right. But do you have the time on that? I think it's 1 to 2, but don't hold me to that. I think it's 1.30, but we'll double-check on it. Okay, thank you very much. Okay. Is there any other further questions on this one? Yes. One of these days, I will learn to do this. I feel very strongly to support this resolution as we all do, but I really want to speak to some of the people here, particularly from our schools, about the need for Black History Month to be 10 months long, to be, we should know our history. We should know the values that this country was actually built on, and if we examine those values, we're going to have to take a pretty critical look at ourselves because we can set a date that we ended slavery, but we never really ended slavery in this country. I won't go on about which amendments still allow slavery, but I really encourage our schools to be doing this all year long, and our community. Okay. Any other comment? Okay. Hearing none, call the question. All those in favor? And it is unanimous. Thank you. We do not have any scheduled hearings tonight, so we are going to proceed with our presentation, and we have a very important presentation by the Amherst public schools. It's regarding the process of the application to the Massachusetts School Building Authority for a new elementary school. And we have both Mike Morris with us as Superintendent of Schools and Anastasia Ordinez as the Amherst School Committee Chair, and they will be making the presentation. However, before, and there will be no public comment, but I do want to recognize one other person in the room, and that is Jean Fay, President of the Amherst Pelham Teachers Association. And draw to your attention the letter that is in your packet and all of the many, many signatures supporting that letter. Okay. So with all of that, I'm going to turn it over to Mike and Anastasia. Thank you for having us. It's an honor to be here. Be back again a couple weeks ago that we were talking more generally about the schools and I'm really pleased to be back to do a condensed version of what was shared at the school committee about two weeks ago. And this on the same topic which is how do we achieve consensus and how do we have apply for a grant that will support us to improve the learning conditions for our student and the work conditions for our staff. And have buildings that makes our community proud about what we provide for our students. So I'm going to try to condense for school committee. I think this was like 35 minutes. So we're going to try to do about 15. I apologize if the pacing feels quick, but there's, you know, talking to the chair, there'll be plenty of time for discussion and questions afterwards. So kind of more generally, we have a significant need, which I'll talk about in a moment to replace or renovate two of our three Amherst elementary schools. And for me, you know, I always think of problems as opportunities. And I think there really is an opportunity for a community to come together and support this process. Certainly there's a challenge. I'll get to a proposal and we'll talk about the process moving forward, which I know will be of high interest to the counselors tonight. So the problem. So there are many problems. I'm going to summarize this in three sort of buckets. So one is building conditions. So the MSBA, which is the Massachusetts School Building Authority, they estimate the lifespan of school buildings to be 50 years. And Wildwood's at 48. Fort River's not far behind. And you might say, well, homes in this community have lasted for hundreds of years. Homes generally don't have hundreds of students and staff walking through it 180 days a year. And so the wear and tear on our elementary schools has been significant, even separate from the other problems which we have. Our systems are starting to fail. So I was at Fort River on Thursday. I counted 18 leaks in the roof that day that it was raining. And our other schools also had similar problems. All these systems that are original to the building are really struggling and it's having a significant impact on our ability to do what our task is, which is to educate the students of Amherst. We have significant safety challenges as well. For instance, the front entry is about 90 feet from where the main office is. You would never be able to build a school building that way now. Well, we do have a video system that checks for who's coming in. Anyone who gets in our building can have access to students well before they ever come close to the office. That's one example of some of the safety challenges. Again, I'm happy to go on if there's questions about some of the others. And then certainly there's educational challenges. Both buildings were built with an open classroom design, which means that you can hear ambient noise from other classrooms, excuse me, because the walls don't go all the way up to the ceiling. They're not permanent walls. And there's an incredible number of accessibility issues. We recently, last week, had a firm come in and do an accessibility audit on our district and all the schools. And while there are 33 areas of non-compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, at Fort River there are 29 areas. And some of these have easier fixes than others. So we have significant issues in both buildings. Again, I'll avoid belaboring the point because I think this has been discussed. I'm happy to answer questions about it. But I do feel like there's an urgent need to be doing something. And I'll talk about that something in a second to improve the conditions for our students and our staff. So this survey is, sorry, this is a little not centered. But the survey was, it's now five years old, but there was a statewide survey given to all educators, all teachers in Massachusetts. And the statement was had many, many categories or many prompts. And the one with the physical environment of our classrooms in the school supports teaching and learning. Across the Commonwealth, 83% of teachers agreed with that statement. Crocker Farm, 93% of teachers agreed with that statement. At Wilderness Fort River was under a quarter of each site. So our educators, to the point that the chair made earlier and Ms. Faye's letter indicates, are telling us that our current situation is not working for themselves to be educating our wonderful students as well as they should be educated. So I know one of the questions I get quite often is, you know, can't you just, you know, do fixes around the edges and see if you can improve the situation. And the reality is we can to a certain extent. So on the left side, you can see this slide is indicating some of the concerns that can be addressed with significant capital funding, but short term. They don't need a building project. So the roof issue, which I talked about, you know, each of the roofs will be over $2 million for Wilderness Fort River. But that money could be spent and we can't have new roofs on those buildings. The exterior doors are, many of them are original to the building and they just don't open. So from a safety situation, it's a major factor. We're replacing about a third of those this year in the capital budget and we propose replacing the last two thirds next year. Univents or HVAC systems, we can make improvements. We had a major issue this year with our HVAC system failing at Wildwood for the first two weeks of the year. If you remember the weather in late August, it was unbearable in air condition settings, let alone non-air condition settings. There was just no cool air coming out at Wildwood. These systems are failing on us. They can be improved. ADA access, we know some of those can be approved and the cooling I spoke about. However, there's significant numbers of issues that short term capital funding can't solve. There's open classroom design, the fact that there are multiple classrooms that walls that have to interact with one or other. Not by choice, but based on the lack of acoustic privacy. The classroom size, so the recent or the current Fort River feasibility study, the architects did a nice job looking at not just the classroom size that it looks like on a grid, but how much is usable? Because of the quad design, the open classroom design, significant parts of the classroom have to be used as hallway spaces. In the back quad, you have to have a space for all the students to get to the bathroom because that's the only bathroom. If you're in the front quad, you have to have a hallway for students to get to the back quad to get to the rooms. And they found most of our classrooms were about 650 square feet. The average MSBA, what they would recommend is 950 square feet. So they're incredibly undersized in a usable way. Right now we're spending lots of money on inefficient energy use, which is bad for the environment. It's also bad for taxpayers in terms of the money we spend. That can't change that quickly. The safety of the main entry I spoke about, the ADA access, some of it, the open classroom design doesn't allow for full use of the bathrooms for students, no matter what we did, unless we really changed that. And that we have many classrooms without natural light. And while that may sound like a perk to some, there's actually a significant amount of research that talks about the benefits of natural light on all people, but particularly young students in their learning. These are problems that can't be solved with short-term capital money. They really need an MSBA project. We want to be conscious that we are going to be good stewards of the incredible generosity of the Amherst taxpayers. We have heard from the town manager and other town officials that MSBA funding is needed for us to take on any project. We can't just take on a school project without some grant funding, which covers roughly half the cost. I want to be really clear that there's many other capital needs in the town. And the last thing that we want to do, I want to speak for us, is to pit project against project. You know, so I've been saying this at school coming in. This isn't just for the town council. Everywhere I go is at a school this afternoon. I do not talk to teachers. I don't want schools to be pitted against these other projects in town. We are aware that there are significant needs in other town departments. We work closely with those other town departments and we want to work, continue to have a good working relationship with them. If we think about two sequential projects, in other words, doing one school than another, MSBA has told me that the average school project right now is taking five to seven years. So if you play that out times two, in the best case scenario, getting in, finishing a project, getting in again, that's a lot of years, but it also ends up being a lot of money. So escalation right now is roughly 4%. Every year that goes up well above inflation. So that second project is 20% to 30% higher in the best of scenarios, which is millions and millions of dollars. We also, as I said, have an inefficient energy use that we'd like to get better both for the climate and climate justice, but also for the bottom line of what we're paying. And it would cost more. So one of the things with the net zero bylaw is that, you know, we know that geothermal wells, for instance, is something that we will have to look into in any project. That's a big ticket cost. It's a seven-digit cost. And doing two of those, right, there's some economy of scale that makes huge implications for cost. Well, that's to be said, I feel the urgency that we do something as soon as possible, and I wanted to be cost-effective for the community within the constraints that we have. We also have significant capital costs that we've talked about multiple times at the school committee. Some of those need to happen now, and some of those could be deferred if we knew we had a project or replace both buildings in the next couple years. So just a little bit of history. So from 2007 to 2012, the district applied multiple statements of interest. That's basically applying to the MSBA for grant funding for Fort River and Wildwood, and none were accepted over that six years, actually, spam. 2013, the MSBA accepted the statement of interest for Wildwood. We then were in a building project that never received all the local approvals to proceed to construction. And last year, we applied for statements of interest for both Fort River and Wildwood. That was signed off on by the school committee and then the select board. And neither statement of interest was accepted. So being the concerned superintendent, I am for why we weren't accepted. I've had multiple phone calls with the MSBA, and they've been very clear that for us, we need to have consensus. They need to have consensus from us, and they're asking us for a little more than they would usually ask for most communities in the statement of interest. Most statements of interest, and these are all online and publicly available, are very dry documents unless you're an engineer or a designer or something like that. What they're asking for us is to come together around at least a framework of how we might approach things, what we want and what we don't want as a community. They don't expect us nor want us to have all the details worked out. That's what the MSBA process is for. That's what the feasibility process is there for. But they don't want us coming in with no idea what we wanted. We've been in this as a community for many years now, and they want to know that the community has come together. And let me speak a little more closely about consensus. What they're looking for is either unanimous or darn near close unanimous votes of the school committee and the town council on a statement of interest that includes more information than usual, as I was saying. It includes kind of roughly how many students are going to attend a school and are we replacing both schools or are we replacing just one school? I'll get into a little more detail on those specifics in a little bit, but the town council plays a very central role in showing consensus for the community. You're responsive to your constituents. So as part of that, the MSBA wants to know that you're hearing support and then feel comfortable voting, given that support in the community, voting affirmatively to move forward the statement of interest. To put even a finer point on it, I said, well, what if we can't get there, right? And the response was, well, maybe you ought to wait till 2020. Very bluntly. So MSBA is wonderful at being blunt and clear. And so that was the feedback I got. Sorry, I'm talking quickly because of time. I'm not looking at Mr. Doniz, which is a mistake. So the opportunity for me. So the timeline is that we need to be accepted. We need to, excuse me, we need to apply. By April 12th, 2019. And I'll get into timeline again at the end. So again, they need to be formally, statements of interest need to be formally voted by this body, as well as the school committee and signed off on by the chair of the school committee, the superintendent and the town manager. So this is what we shouldn't be talking about. Certainly the community can say whatever they like, but we shouldn't be talking about in terms of having decisions made, whether new construction or an addition renovation project is preferred, right? People have lots of opinions on that. It's wonderful. And that would be part of the feasibility process. The defined site that'd be the right one for the school. Again, that's required part of the process. Who the architect should be. Or detailed building specifications or a complete educational plan. Those are things that a group that would have a member of the town council, a building committee that would have a member of the town council, would have chair of the school committee, superintendent, staff members, community members on, with an architect and owner project manager. Those are the decisions that that group would then be working on. So we'll set feedback from the community. MSBA is not requiring us, nor would they want us to make decisions on those topics so soon, because they're really going to be informed by the work of a feasibility, a building committee. However, they are looking at us to have a vision of what we want and perhaps clearly what we don't want. So you could see that there's four points that I'm suggesting would be in a vision statement. The first being high quality learning environment for all students. No surprise there. Second is provides reasonably, reasonably maintainable buildings. What do I mean by that? Right now we are adding staff to our buildings to take care of either custodial or maintainers to our schools, not because our square footage is so great. It's because our buildings actually require them. They are so difficult to maintain. There's so many things that go wrong so frequently that our ability to do any proactive planning work is quite limited. And so our schools right now are an example of not maintainable buildings, even not even describing the challenges that teachers and students are facing, just the amount of money that we are putting into maintaining buildings and the human side of that, it's significant. And we want to have systems that our staff can manage and work with. The third is a point that I've raised shared in public multiple times even before this proposal came out, which is I guess a hope for commitment that our community would address both buildings before our current kindergarten students leave sixth grade. I think it's the quickest, most reasonable timeline that we could have. I'd love it to be tomorrow. That's not a realistic scenario. But I think about waiting, think about the young kids and what is our commitment to them? Another way that someone in the community shared this with me is could we commit that our children born in 2019 never know what an open classroom is? It depends on how old your kids are, whether that's relevant or grandkids, but I think it addresses some of the same elements. And, you know, again, to restate a point earlier, we want to be fiscally responsible. None of this is going to be inexpensive. I'm not pretending that it is going to be easy, but there's more expensive and less expensive ways to do this and we want to be conscious that there are other competing demands in town. You all already are starting to hear them, I am sure. So the five agreements, and this is again what I'm looking, you know, proposed to the school committee for trying to take to the community and see if we can build consensus about. So the first is that one MSPA project takes care of both buildings. The second is it's a warm child-centered building, right? So that sounds perhaps cliche, but I've been in a number of buildings of the last five years in other communities for a whole host of reasons. And some buildings you walk in and you could feel like I am a child in here. I shared an example at the school committee meeting I won't go into as much depth of the school in Connecticut I visited. And the first thing I felt like I was eight feet tall because the building was so centered around the age and literally the size of young students. It was kind of like this huge tree, faux tree in the front when you walked in and you forgot that you were inside the building with the light coming in. There was no, it was all natural materials. There was no plastics in the hallways and there was no rumb brands or vangos. It was all student artwork dotted all around the building. So I think this community really values that. They want that community feel. Our schools really don't have that now, frankly. And we'd want to make sure that we did that. The third point would be that approximately 600 students. I want to be clear and this is a foreshadowing to the next slide but our current schools if you combine Fort River and Wildwood right now would be about 745 students. This is going to involve some other shifts. But one of the pieces of feedback we've ever heard loud and clear from the community is that there's some concern that 700, 750 students was too large even if you made it into two co-located schools. So we're trying to be responsive to that feedback. I also want to say we've received feedback from many folks who say both schools have to be taken care of right now. So I know we're engaging in this feedback soliciting process but we've received many, many emails on this topic long before this PowerPoint was put together. The fourth point would be K6 schools. So that was a point of contention for many in the community around grade configuration. And I want to say publicly it's not me espousing a viewpoint that one is better than the other about the prior project. It's a practical reality that we need to build consensus and try to take some of the most contentious parts of the prior project and find a third path. There's people who really felt like the prior project was the perfect project. There's people who felt the opposite. I don't believe I can convince either side that they were right or wrong and that's not my goal. It's can we find a different way to think about this and work through this. This is a little more than the MSPA was asking for in terms of including all of these pieces. But I feel like even if the MSPA isn't requiring it, we need to have it to build consensus here. So I'd like to go above and beyond a little what they were asking for because I think our local to build a consensus locally we're going to have to. And the last one is that community surveys will be completed during the feasibility process prior to binding decisions. At that point we'll have architects, we'll have owner project managers, we'll have a tremendous amount more information to both inform the community and gather their feedback on exactly how we want to do this, both on the building design and also some things on the next slide. So to my prior point about building consensus, for 600 students is a familiar number to us. In the late 90s both Wildwood and Fort River were both over 600 students. When I got to Fort River in 2001 and starting my career as a teacher, we were well over 550. These are familiar numbers, we know this works well on the site, we know we can do that. I am sensitive and I've spoken before about, you know, 400 to 500 is kind of a nice skies there's some evidence about that in a school. The reality is we have a dual language program coming in that by its definition will have to be a subset program because the students stay within those two classes throughout. So we think about cohort size which matters a tremendous amount to me. In other words, how many classes per grade level would there be? You know, there's roughly looking at three to four on the English side and then two on the dual language side in this model. That's three to four is what we have now at Wildwood. It's not a change for our current model. Also these models of schools roughly this size that have dual language programs in them are very familiar. I've visited one in Harrisonburg, Virginia. I think yours shows it. Arlington, Virginia, Madison, Wisconsin, some of our partner districts and our minority student achievement network. Their dual language programs are strands within larger schools in a similar size to here. This is a familiar process, a familiar size and something that I feel like we can do very well. How do you get to 600? So there's a number of different ways we could think about moving sixth grade to the middle school. There's a study ongoing. Our first public meeting was last week on that topic. Built in addition at Crocker Farm. Look at the seven through 12 consolidation that's also being studied right now. And then hence one elementary school can move to the middle school. If regionalization with Pelham occurs that could have some implications. All that's to say there's a number of ways we could get to 600 students. We're not going to figure those out by the time that statement of interest is submitted. Nor should we. That should be part of this process. The feasibility process that kicks off if we get the grant. I also want to note that the social equity benefits that are so important to many in our community also can have benefits in this model. Reducing to two enrollment zones would decrease the number of students with special needs who are currently bussed outside their neighborhood school zone. And also we could look at East Hadley Road which has a very divided enrollment zoning. If you look at our map we have little islands of students who attend multiple schools to achieve socioeconomic balance. And we could do that a lot better with two zones as opposed to three. So again what I'm bringing to the community is can we support one project, one building taking care of both of our schools, approximately 600 students, K5 or K6. And how we'll ask for it, I'll do a little bit and then I'll turn to Mr. Donez who will add more. So we've already started listening sessions for staff at the first one at Wildwood this afternoon. The other two schools will be this week in the larger community which Mr. Donez will talk about. There's an Amherst media segment that's a condensed version similar to the timing of this I hope, 15 minutes. I can't watch the clock. But the Amherst media wants 15 minutes and that's out on social media. We're looking for eventually feedback requested electronically to all to increase the access. I reached to our parent guardian organizations in my weekly update. But I'll turn to Mr. Donez to describe this in a little more detail. Thank you Dr. Morris. So we had heard from our committee a couple of weeks ago when we had met an interest in bringing in a neutral facilitator to help us with our listening sessions which seemed like a pretty good idea given a lot of the concerns in the community from having people who are party to either one side or the other in the previous project. And so we are currently in the process of signing a contract with a facilitator who has done this kind of work before with other communities both around Massachusetts and Connecticut. He is not from this community and is somebody who came with a lot of very good references for facilitating but also for mediating which we thought was an added bonus and really the goal of these sessions so Dr. Morris had outlined for the school committee a total of nine sessions so three of them really would be for educator staff in the district in the district excuse me and then six others for three for parents and caregivers and three for the community at large and since then we've actually thought about having it be more of sort of six sessions more broad that of course aimed to bring in parents and caregivers because we think that they are going to have a very strong opinion about what's happening in the schools and also have a lot of important feedback to bring in about their experience and their students' experience in the schools and we want to hear that but also provide an opportunity for the wider community to engage around this topic so a lot of voters who would have taken a position on the previous project to hear them out and to also hear what they have to say and so we're hoping to be scheduling those sessions we're in the process right now of working with this facilitator to schedule those so we don't have exact dates yet for that but are hoping to do that sometime during the weeks of February 26th through March 8th or so because we want to make sure that we are cognizant of both our schedule at the Amherst School Committee for making decisions providing enough time for the community to promote these sessions and to get the word out once they're scheduled and then also provide enough time for this facilitator to prepare a final report which is something that's going to be coming back to the community that includes a lot of the feedback that will have been heard during these sessions and as Dr. Morris mentioned also we are I'm sorry he actually just videotaped a segment which we then are going to be packaging in the form of an email that would be going out to all the different networks in the district so utilizing PGOs utilizing people's personal networks pushing out the email with a link to this video segment as well as a PDF of the presentation that is being shared tonight and a feedback form we don't want to call it a survey because we're not looking for quantitative data but really what we're looking for is an opportunity for people to be able to express their opinions and their thoughts on this process and on this proposal if they can't make it in person to these listening sessions it's really just kind of a not so gentle nudge to encourage people to have their voices heard and to share their thinking with us so all of that information will be collected and shared back with the community and as Dr. Morris mentioned before we've had a lot of conversations around consensus and what consensus means and we're not looking for unanimity this is not about everyone has to agree on every single little detail of this proposal this is really an opportunity I think for all of us to be leaders in this and to be able to say yes to something and I know that I don't need to say this to this town council because all of you have shown that leadership and even getting elected to this body but I think that this is an opportunity for educators for parents, for caregivers and for all concerned voters to be able to express that leadership and be able to say yes to something and be able to move towards a proposal that helps us get our kids in schools within the next five years or six years as Dr. Morris said so I'll close up just quickly so we'll assume positive results and after the MSBA lets us know actually it comes back to you to the town council because there's a funding part they fund most of the feasibility study as I mentioned there'll be a town council that's a required member of any building committee that moves forward and that group would look at all the options so I put on some options on the prior slides of how to get to 600 students and there may be more out that we gather I don't have the market on ways to do that and so we'll solicit more and then make decisions I'm going to skip over that piece because I think it may come up in the discussion and I'm concerned about the time lastly just in terms of a proposed voting schedule so school committee will discuss this a bunch more times these are approximate dates and looking to vote on March 11 because the school committee in our discussions wants to make sure that town council has enough time to deliberate on the topic before they take a vote so we tried to backwards design this of when we needed to submit it giving it reasonable amount of time for both this body as well as the school committee we don't actually hear from the MSBA until about seven months later just to put it out there eight months later so December 11th of 2019 is when the MSBA Board votes on which districts which have submitted a statement of interest are accepted into the core program and then again with my optimistic mindset then the fund really starts so I think to summarize it's trying to build consensus to apply for a grant this is not the end all be all on exactly what the building is going to look like it's going to be new right all those other things and I think one of the challenges that we're that I'm facing in discussing this publicly and I imagine you may face as well in your roles is how to describe the grain size of what we're looking for we're not looking for all the fine fine details or you know I get a question to staff the staff staff member asked me today well what about you know is that you know and I said I don't know and I think I feel very comfortable saying I don't know because even if I had an opinion it's actually not the time for it time for it is when we're in a feasibility study with a diverse group of stakeholders form it as a building committee with an architect and owner project manager studying all options it's can we get there that's the big question right now so with that I'll close and see if you have questions or comments we'll move to questions in a moment but I do want to mention two things first of all this is a very appropriate if you will kick off of capital and capital projects that the council is beginning with next month we will actually start looking across all of those capital needs as a council and also the second thing is that last week following up on my very immediate suggestion that the town council would like to help in any way Paul Valkerman and I sat down with Mike and Anastasia and we actually came to a tentative agreement that we would work with the schools by using our opportunity to convene district meetings that we are required to do anyway and that many of us have been wanting to do and having the schools be part of those district meetings and then we come to the issue that but we don't want to be the ones answering the questions because we are not the educators in this case so what we are trying to do is during that two week period of intense listening is to set up three of those meetings we would have to combine two districts in one and two districts in another and schedule them in such a way that after about an hour and a half to two hours of a facilitated conversation by a professional facilitator not by the town council but them gaining input from the audience from the attendees then afterwards town councillors may decide to go ahead and do like another hour of their own district meetings as well we are hoping to nail down a schedule and work with each of you I sent you a description of some of those ideas earlier today and with that though I think it's important to open this up to questions I will tell you that this is my second time listening to what the MSBA process is it's not an easy solution it's not an easy process but please let's open it up to questions we are not taking a vote this evening nor are we doing public comment we will do public comment on this when it comes to the council meeting questions I'm sorry thank you so much for the presentation those of us that attended the MMA meeting could not actually see your initial one because we were out of town and so I really appreciate you taking the time to come here to give us a shortened version of it the five agreements slide I know right before that you made a point of saying the MSBA is not looking for things like educational plan and some of those other things and I look at the five agreements and I see K5 K6 which was something I know that in the last process was a discussion and a decision made per an educational plan decision so I'd like you to speak more to not necessarily why that's on there but how that doesn't contradict what the MSBA is looking for at this time so kind of as a disclaimer I've had multiple conversations the MSBA even what I put out publicly because I'm conscious that they're a state agency and they want to if they're telling me things I want to make sure that they're comfortable so that when I say them in public that they're happy that I'm saying them in public and so I think in our particular situation I express the MSBA and the representative I speak with frequently is that I do think without this in writing and a statement of interest I think my belief is it will be hard to gain consensus in the community this is an issue that people feel really passionately about you know and one way or the other right it's not that there's only one side of this when there certainly is not and so when I express this to the MSBA their understanding having worked with us prior that we may provide more information than they're requesting there's also relatively small scale implications architecturally whereas some of the things on the earlier slide like new construction versus ad reno not to pick on that one but there's like that's a construction decision that's a little different than what's more clearly an educational decision so they also appreciated the fact that it's not saying one or the other that there's actually still some flex in this for what we needed to talk about so it's we're making one of two decisions but it's narrowing the scope of the grade span it's not actually saying it's exactly K-6 and so they were comfortable with that Pat your mic with the change to K-5 would there be more opportunity for preschools preschool students in both of the schools it's a great question one of the things we're exploring right now I'm trying to think of this as getting off the scope so I'll say succinctly that that's unclear that depends that would be a design decision and a community decision whether to do that and we're actively in this there's a small presentation on this at the last school committee meeting looking at perhaps partnering with community action which is the head start in our community because there's a dire need for preschool seats and there's a number of ways you can do that and so we're exploring all avenues I want to follow up on Mandy's question about K-5 through K-6 as I was canvassing one of the issues was are we going to keep the grades together and a few people have looked at this slide as saying is that firm is that no matter what you know whether it's K-5 or whether K-6 so that's a question then the second question and you've answered it on the next slide on how will you get to K-6 there are a lot of questions and positive and negative reactions on the idea of sixth grade moving so that seems to be a an issue that people are going to care about for me as a representative to know which direction are we going even if it's not firm and the seventh and eighth moving up and having a whole building available so I'm asking probably three questions in one are there costs involved in that can you just move seventh and eighth into the high school and then suddenly there's a whole building available so the first is is the K-5 K-6 a solid yes we're going to do that whether it's five or six we're going to do that and then are you leaning in a particular direction on how to get to the 600 and if so which the seventh eighth is that feasible should that be taken off sure so on the case I don't know if you were so I would imagine that these agreements as written you know at least my proposal would be that these are actually in the statement of interest so not like I pledge them but I'm not going to write them down you know the district's responsibilities to produce the statement of interest the elected officials is to approve or not approve it and so these this is what I'm suggesting we would actually have written down committed in the statement of interest that's the first question the second question in terms of leaning I have thoughts on that but actually what I'll say is that my thoughts aren't I'm aware that of my role but I think like all of these things we would need more information you know so I I think it's worth saying that we should explore all of those I think all are you know viable and then that's the piece that I feel like when we're in the feasibility process really hearing from the community about which is the best path forward you know in terms of the ways to get to 600 to the last question in terms of seven through eight to the high school we actually so that project just started that was funded by the regional school district and we'd our first public meeting on last Thursday and would need to build an addition at the high school to make that work whereas for sixth grade to go to the middle school our initial scheme this is not a finished product showed some potential to not need building in addition to make that work just the difference between sending 150 students to one school versus over 400 to another school you know it really taxes the available space of high school those aren't finished but those are the initial drafts and those are public documents so I feel you have to share that you know will be any other additional questions people have I'm happy to share kind of what's now public documents that have been shared about you know some initial sketches on that Andy yes next course could you tell us to say just a little bit about how the Fort River feasibility work it's into the large this project that we're discussing tonight sure so it's not complete but close to complete so I think there's a number of things that we've gotten as takeaways from the Fort River feasibility project one is we know tremendously more about the site of Fort River we knew a lot about the site of Wildwood because of the prior project and so that's been useful incredibly useful information if we do move forward some of that initial work to understand the site at both you know both locations that work is completed and we'll have a better sense of that the second part second thing I think we've gotten is that as we've explored the net zero this has been sort of the trial run of what net zero would look like in a school building and so we have lots of discussion and information about what that looks like what the cost would be and different ways to achieve a net zero the net zero bylaw that town meeting passed last year so there's other outcomes I could talk about but in terms of major implications on a future project those are two that I feel like are critically important and if I can just add regarding the Fort River feasibility study so you know as you know town meeting had approved a feasibility study a couple of years ago to as Dr. Morris mentioned get more information about the Fort River site because the previous project only dealt with the Wildwood site and so there was a lot of you know questions and really you know I think just people wondering sort of what could be feasible on the Fort River site there was some conjecture that had made its way around because we didn't have that information so this is an opportunity for us to learn more about that site and be able to understand you know if we were to proceed with a project and that's a big if because there was no project actually currently in the works if we were to proceed with a project that would actually then provide at least basic information about the you know the land itself the building itself a lot just answer a lot of open questions that we had from previous but it's beyond that it's not directly tied to this proposal in any way and I think there's been some confusion in the community about that yes Dorothy in the proposed 600 students school if there's 20 students per class is that the idea that's 30 classes which if it's a K through 5 that's 6 grades so that would be 5 classes per grade and I was not to share how the dual language worked in that so the dual language piece would would cover 2 of those 5 classes per 2 sections per grade level and that would leave 3 sections to be sections that are taught exclusively in English Shalini so one of the concerns I heard during the campaign was people complaining that they did not hear about the meetings and so for this there's something we can do differently this time to ensure that everyone who is interested and affected can participate and one of the suggestions that has recently come up in our district meetings was to have focus groups in the different communities where people are rather than expecting everyone to show up at our district meetings but to organize meetings where people are I can start so I think that's a great suggestion we've done that before we've gone to the different communities where transportation is more of a challenge and I think there's some success there I think not every place has a central location so if it rains that can be problematic not every I think I'll leave it at that but I think it's a good suggestion I do think some advantages we have right now is there's a lot of community interest on this and I think people are paying close attention both in terms of press coverage I think the more that counselors and school committee members don't want to task people but the more that you can be sharing some of these pieces with your networks we now have a nice system in my opinion of a nice network now of people who can share with their constituents get feedback and that's really when we think about what the chairs stated before about making them district meetings to weave this into existing infrastructure emerging infrastructure I should say about how do we communicate and I think that has high potential to have more people part of the process earlier on we certainly with the school committee and the district have been sharing this widely whether it's superintendent newsletter or social media accounts and we've already gotten lots and lots of feedback from a great number of people and it's still not enough we're not getting to everyone and so that's our effort is how do we expand that circle and we'll need a lot of support from elected officials like yourselves and just to add to that I think my earlier comment about the email that we want to blast out and combine that with the video segment and the feedback form is an opportunity to reach several thousand people here in town simultaneously so I think that combined with earned media press and our social media as Dr. Morris mentioned and all of our circles both the town council and the school committee I think we can pretty easily reach most folks who can be reached around something like this probably not everyone but you know a large percentage Dorsey I just wondered if it would be possible to send a mail to every household that way you would be able to reach everyone it feels a little bit like the process that's set up is if we're just relying on people's networks it's not you know would be nice to be able to say that we contacted everyone the thing that I have to think about and I'm hesitant to say because I'd have to check is whether we can use public funds because there's a potential vote based on it as a district so that's something I can absolutely look into I just don't know the answer it's not to say that's not a good suggestion but I know that there are rules around elections and while this isn't a public election it's still coming to votes of both the committee and so I will look into that it's a really good idea to think about and figure out the logistics and the legality of it Kathy I just want to follow up on it I don't know the issues but if it was a flyer that was glossy and showed here are some choices that we've looked at and here are some reasons why pluses and minuses and here's a reason why we got to this it's less one idea it gives people more sense of what else is potentially on the table or has been talked about rather than this is the only thing so I just we're going to be getting questions anyway and so this 6th grade moving does it have to be 600 how slow or fast could we get a second school if we did too small those kinds of questions so I'm just trying to address things that you know people will be asking in bullet like things not dictionaries sir so I just want to follow up on that idea I'm not really sure how we would reach every single resident like a direct mailing seems like it makes sense if it's legally viable because I want to make sure that when we talk about consensus and we're saying that it means that the school committee unanimously says yes and town council unanimously says yes I want to dispel sort of maybe an idea that would come from that that here's our idea we're going to give you a listening session so that you can listen to us talk about it we're saying we want feedback but this is really the plan and what it consensus means to us is that school board says yes town meeting says yes and we are still like you said it's up to us to listen to everyone that's in our district so I'm just going to put that right out there because it probably seems obvious yeah I think that the challenge that we have is that we don't have a lot of time and so we are trying to find again this is a consensus for an application not for an actual final project if the MSBA were to accept this application in December there would still be a very long process involved to actually come up with a project that would involve by necessity the community's input and feedback over the course of a couple of years and I think what we learned from the last project is that people feel very strongly about any project that's going to come up for very good reasons and so I can't imagine under any circumstances that if we were accepted by the MSBA that our application was accepted that we would not be able to solicit feedback at that point for an actual project and get the input that people want to give and so right now what we're trying to get to is a place where people feel comfortable enough with some general parameters we're not looking for any specific details around any project we want just to put down some general parameters can our community actually get behind some concepts which is what Dr. Morris has put forth and then we'll figure out the details later during a feasibility process and one of the things that our committee has talked about quite extensively is this concept of a survey and what that means but it's also about making sure that we're setting up appropriate listening sessions and that we're doing that at the appropriate time when we actually have a project in place and we know that we're moving forward with something because then at that point we have more or less both the MSBA standing behind us with a commitment for money for a project which we don't have right now and we also have a timeline under which we will be working to be able to get that input and feedback from the community so that we can move forward and begin construction on something so we are still a very long ways away from that so really what we're hoping for here is just can our community get behind these parameters do we feel that this is more or less reflective of our values as a community and if we can say yes to that then we can make a commitment that we're going to get as much information and hear as many folks as possible to move forward with a project but there's a lot of steps still involved before that. Let me provide a perspective on this that it's possible that nobody in this town council has actually been here in any leadership position when Amherst built a building because the last building we built was the police station and so what I think is ahead of us as we look at both this project and any other project is understanding the building process and the fact that you start with us but may seem like a lot of money but in fact a smaller budget that actually allows you to plan and that's allows you to come up with okay what are you handing over to the designers to actually design and then they move that and now we're talking big bucks now we're talking the millions of dollars to build the school all this application does is get us we hope several hundred dollars that we as a council would then add some additional money to that allows the town to go forward in a thoughtful planning process to actually come up with the plan for the school and then once you do that then you can actually go to your building design and that's when the MSBA we hope comes forward with many millions of dollars and we have to decide how to raise the additional million millions of dollars so it's a it's not a once and done and not all the answers are known they're known as you go through the process this was one of my painful learning experiences on DPW Fire so just to understand that this is just that first step it's to get the plan to plan yes George I just want to be very clear and perhaps speaking more to my colleagues than to anyone else but my understanding is that we're being basically at these listening sessions and these gatherings that we would be involved in we're being asked to basically support these five principles you don't expect this to change so these are listening sessions but essentially we are making the argument for this proposal and that's our goal is that the understanding of my colleagues I'm not saying we're ready to make that decision as a body yet we haven't but what we're being asked I think is to go forward and in a sense be sales people or representatives for this proposal and it's listening yes but we're trying to convince people of something we're not just starting from scratch but convinced through listening and convinced through understanding and some of that understanding is what's most important as we then go on to the next phase yes Alyssa so if I could phrase this a less gentle way it is this plan there is not going to be a color flyer that says well if we did two schools separately it would work like this that's not on the table that's not going to get a majority that's not going to get a consensus what's on the table is and I appreciate what's been said about we're going out on a listening session but are you really listening I mean you got one plan I don't see three plans here I got one plan blah blah blah what does it matter what I said but it does from the standpoint that is this going to be workable there are sacrifices no matter what we choose to do this is not a perfect solution just like two schools is in fact not a perfect solution and even if it was we can't afford it period end of story there is not going to be two new renovated schools if there are people on this body who disagree with that who believe that there can be two new buildings I'm sorry you're wrong we don't have that money we will never have that money so the choice that you're making if you say this isn't something I can get behind is piecemeal renovation to limp along until magic falls out of the sky because literally this is the choice we are facing and so I appreciate that we do need to figure out though how to talk about this effectively because we are not trying to sell people on something we're trying to say we understand this plan may have some shortcomings that you have concerns we have concerns I'm a little edgy about those 138 students that we're just hoping happen to move away at some convenient time so we don't have to deal with that especially given the sizes we have had at Fort River and Wildwood during times when Amherst schools were incredibly well thought of talk to older town meeting members their kids had a fabulous experience in the schools much larger schools much larger classes many more choices than we've been able to offer for a long time now so things were really good back then particularly when the new building was newer but still difficult to work around so I think we just I mean maybe we need to discuss this more as a group before we go out and start having these conversations because if there are people here who say well you know I really have a lot of constituents who want there to be two buildings and so I can't support this then we need to we can't go in with mixed messages let me also add to that that as we move into next month and we look at the total set of capital projects and some of the projections and even the finance committee started looking at old projections the reality hits the road real fast in terms of both what can we as a town afford and what can we expect our taxpayers to bear so thank you yes so I just wanted to say that if it's any consolation I guess to this body we have been getting a tremendous number of emails and messages that have been sent to us from all sides of this the previous project including from leaders on all sides and I think that the at least the early responses to this proposal have actually been quite positive which has made all of us I think I can probably say that optimistic on our school committee because we weren't quite frankly that optimistic before we weren't sure if we could get to a point of consensus and so I think what Dr. Morris has proposed sounds you know somewhat doable for folks and again we're not going to work on all the details that's not our calling now with this application but the fact that we have a lot of folks from various positions around the previous project saying to us this feels like something that we can actually endorse and get behind makes me feel good Kathy I just take off a little bit on what you just said Alissa you know if it is a fact and we have cost estimates that say one with a full costing because one big school is going to have some traffic reconfiguration if we had to add to Crocker if we moved some kids to Crocker and had to build it would have some cost so an honest best guess or ballpark versus one and then another where one and then another small schools would be a lot more expensive I think we can't just assert that is a lot more expensive it would just be good to have a fact sheet on it that people could look at it and say let's look at these two just as a behind because it's otherwise people are going to say are you sure you know have you really looked at the larger set of costs with a full you know the timeline is longer so I think it's just a helpful thing rather than asserting that we can't afford to we can't afford one letting people see it yes so I'll share my cognitive dissonance with that thought respectfully is that anytime you put a cost estimate out that assumes certain decisions have been made and our community is savvy enough to know for instance the Fort River Feasibility study right which is looking at there's an enormous range between five or six different options right now top of my head I think it's like $12 million you know ranging from like 60 to 40 right and so the numbers are huge and so that's the concern is that you put out numbers A people remember it you said this was only going to cost X and we decided we want to make it net zero the most net zero building possible and the community says we agree with that and there's a cost to it so that's my caution I think the things we know are that buildings short of like a great depression buildings will get more expensive right there's a long I mean all these are things that if you shoot me an email I'm happy to respond to the MSBA has a graph really nice on their website of cost escalation over time since the beginning of the MSBA right so it's not like my word or you know Mr. Dona's word you can actually see how projects get more expensive over time you can see that that's actually the escalation has escalated over the last two years and it's not you can look they have actually little icons where you can click on the project and find out more information so every project in the MSBA queue over time you can see how it gets more expensive we can send a link to send a link I'm trying to capture all the things so I think that's the challenge of quantifying it is then I'm making decisions that are building committees decision and I feel really uncomfortable doing that because once I put a number out I've made I'm like oh well someone's gonna say well that's an ad reno and I'm like so I think that's I desire the same thing as you I just think the process to get there we will regret a few years from now the other piece that is often not considered when people start talking about one building versus two is the operational costs which is every year every budget and that's people and costs of building so I hope we keep that in mind too as we have this conversation further comments questions shall I could we get a timeline maybe it might be helpful for everyone on board to see when at what point who can get involved like what at what point the town council is playing a role at what point the residents have a voice and then also following up on George Ryan's comment there George Ryan George comment I wonder if you want to rephrase the session from being called listening session to something else since it seems it's more about giving people information session which is giving people information and I guess it's just to clarify what the goal is it's to share the process where we are why we're doing what we're doing and maybe listening as well to some degree so the timeline piece we certainly can share about the points of intersection between the town council and the process we talked about that a little bit we just have to write it down I think in the listening session Mr. Danez may have other thoughts I think the challenge is it is authentically a listening session if we don't get to consensus if what we hear in the listening session is people really wanting one of two things that's not being proposed that really matters in the school committee and probably yourselves will have to really reconsider our next steps I don't want to presuppose that there's going to be consensus I agree with Mr. Danez I've received positive emails and support from people who either agreed with some of the districts work in the past project and not but I don't want to make an assumption that that's going to be the case and the goal is really to present some ideas have folks work on it and really think like what about this what about that and to both hear the feedback and also generate ideas that are if we're fortunate enough to get into a feasibility project I don't know if you agree with that I think I would just add that this is also something that we talked about at school committee level the stark reality is that if the community is not ready for consensus we can't move forward the state agency has been very clear with us that we must be able to show that we're ready to move forward with at least again those parameters or some sort of general guidelines so if the community is saying we're not ready because we're all over the place then we're sort of dead in the water at that point so that's what we're hoping we can avoid and that's why we want to listen we want to hear what people have to say if there really is that kind of contention still at this point we need to understand why that is and try to figure out how we can move forward in all of this but what none of us really want I don't think any and we can't afford it our community absolutely cannot afford it our kids and the educators and staff in those building every single day cannot afford to be put into that position year in and year out and as Dr. Morris said these buildings are not getting any younger they are just continuing to show the signs of wear and tear and this is not an overstatement I mean for anyone who's been in those buildings for the past couple of decades you understand how bad these buildings are getting and they're not going to get any better and so we cannot afford to go through the same level of divisiveness and contention that we had before we actually do need to come together as community and at least embrace the opportunity that we have here to move forward with an application and I hope we can get there Dorothy? I just want to say I appreciate the way that you're going about this and I have a positive feeling that we may have a way forward so thank you. Yes, Sandy? I just want to conclude with going back to your very last slide in your deck the goal that we need right now is to get consensus between the school committee and this council about submitting a proposal this year a statement of interest to the MSBA and the end date for that of the date it must be submitted April 12th is a non commodity so as we're talking about all these processes we have to remember that it all has to fit within the schedule that's here. Yes, Sarah? This is going to sound contentious after we just said everything but I really do want to say that I appreciate all of the work that we all do need to pull together I think that's all of us want that I just want to just make it a point just I was an English major so this is just a language thing I do think that we still need to listen even if it's like some things come out about well here's this plan but this is what we want to do going forward I as a representative of a district in no way want to say this is what we've decided and we're selling it to you so although I totally agree we need to put this out there we need to get behind something altogether I just wanted to say that some of that language I don't feel comfortable just leaving that hanging out there Okay, other questions? Yes, Pat? I think the facilitator is going to be really needed and I'm delighted that you've thought of it I think it's a wonderful idea Oh yeah Alyssa? I wonder if in preparation for those plans one of the many many things that you will no doubt be producing is really something I have been feeling unable to answer enthusiastically about what we learned from Fort River and I did hear all the words that were spoken but it was a lot of money and people need to feel comfortable that that money was spent wisely we will continue to spend money wisely on what that actually got us because a lot of what's been out there in the community has not been particularly easy to digest for the people who aren't part of the everyday and haven't been attending those meetings Other comments? Thank you very much Thank you I know this is just the beginning of this discussion but it's been a very informative beginning Thank you Thank you for your partnership A five minute bathroom break I wanted to go into executive session at 8.30 I wanted to do executive session at 8.30 What's the topic of the executive? Where are we? Of course Okay, I think we're ready We're done Just an update It's just an update Where is that on? Well We kind of said it would be at 8.30 but my guess is we can probably do the council rules of procedure Go ahead Yeah Okay Yeah Okay Okay Okay Okay Okay Okay Okay Okay We are going to reconvene if you will please We're going to actually begin We're going to begin our discussion actually of the action item number two the energy and climate resilience committee We're going to do that after the executive session Okay So give you a moment to make sure you're all pulled up your documents, etc All right So we are going into the energy and climate resilience committee I know that there's actually a proposed rename We will not be doing public comment during this period since we did that the last time Although I understand that many of you in the audience are quite interested in this We first discussed this item on January 7th At that time it was referred to the governance organization and legislation committee following two meetings actually three meetings of that committee where the discussion focused on form content and organization with respect to clarity, consistency and actionability The sponsors of the committee charge submitted another version which is the one that will be proposed this evening We will begin this section of the agenda with report and legislation committee and then move to the motion So Mandy Jo Thank you I wrote a memo on behalf of the committee that indicated our two meetings our third one was actually this evening at 6 p.m. because our prior meeting had not seen the final version of the charge Yes we were referred to this charge was referred to the committee to look at as Lynn said the form content and organization with respect to clarity, consistency and actionability the committee was not tasked with considering any substantive changes or any desired substantive changes from anyone We were strictly looking at technical matters So you will notice and as I speak tonight that a recommendation here is not a recommendation on any substantive matters in the charge but a recommendation on the technical matters of it It is one of the reasons the committee itself is not making the motion tonight because we were not tasked with substantive matters So we at tonight's meeting the governance organization legislation committee by a unanimous vote found that the energy climate energy and climate resilience committee charge that has proposed a renaming we're using both for consistency sake for searching in later documents to the energy and climate action committee charge as presented by the sponsors and I believe that what they will be presented tonight but as presented in our packet is actionable and at the same time the governance organization legislation committee makes no recommendation on that charge with respect to the clarity and consistency at this time the committee itself has made no recommendation because in our two and a half I will say technically three meetings we did not have enough time to come up with guidelines that we would like to see with charges for clarity and consistency with regard to form and content and all of that and so we didn't feel as a committee we could make any recommendations to that because we don't have anything to base it off of, a recommendation off of so that's the reason there is no recommendation there at this point I would say that's the extent of our report I will might ask to be recognized later on depending on what type of discussion we are having for any other potential guidelines or recommendations that the committee has so I'd ask that you recognize the sponsors. Darcy and Evan as the sponsors. I just want to introduce representative from the Amherst Regional High School Environmental Action Club Saho Lee who came with some others who had to leave already and they have left a statement that some of you have in front of you not everybody has picked up from the club so thank you Saho so I'm going to just go over some of the main changes that were made since we met last there were a number of counselors that made suggestions and we incorporated a lot of those suggestions into the new revised version of the charge so I'm going to move through them from the least to the most important ones in my opinion and then I will get to the motion I'm going to be talking about five main changes first of all you heard that the name of the committee was changed from the Energy and Climate Resilience Committee to the Energy and Climate Action Committee because there was a little bit of confusion about the word resilience and action covers both mitigation which means greenhouse gas pollution and climate adaptation which means climate adaptation secondly we eliminated the institutional sector from the list of town sectors covered by the committee charge and that was because the institutional sector is really possible to include in the goal section of the charge since UMass has climate goals mandated by the state and its own climate action plan seemed too confusing and though we do want to take advantage of UMass expertise it wouldn't be advantageous to have representatives of the university in both colleges because that would take up three of the seven resident slots number three we added waste reduction to the list of possible projects that could be taken up by this committee it's a natural topic to include though it does contribute very little to the town's greenhouse gas emissions if you don't count the contribution of consumption in general number four the deals with the composition the composition of the committee diversity is encouraged in the new committee charge as suggested by counselors at the last meeting though I may note that the charter already does that this committee is intended to be a working committee with a membership that has a high level of experience and expertise in climate action it's expected to hit the ground running without need for educating membership this is the important point that with regard to experience and expertise the charter is determinative section 3.3c states in making appointments the town manager shall seek to appoint individuals with relevant expertise or experience the town manager shall establish policies and practices to actively encourage a diverse pool of applicants for multiple member bodies so in fact the town manager is required to look for people with experience and expertise in the relevant area the required areas of experience are related the areas that are listed in the charge the suggested areas are related to the sectors where we have the most greenhouse gas emissions in town buildings, transportation and energy with our three colleges the Institute of Related Departments the Hitchcock Center and several zero energy buildings Amherst has many many qualified people and quite a few who are clamoring to be on this committee including people from all sectors of the economy experienced people will be discouraged from joining if they think this is a discussing committee rather than a working committee okay so in number 5 the 90 day goal setting requirement is now in the order so it was in the charge now it's in the order the short-term goal setting was moved to the order as a result of the action of the governance committee that committee did not want to set the precedent of having both long and short-term goals in one committee charge retention of the energy and climate action committee's goal setting requirements for climate action that have now been publicly aired will signify that Amherst is serious about taking action about reducing emissions we have a 90 day timeline because the climate crisis is unprecedented the gravest challenge ever faced by humanity it would be hard to find a comparable situation that presents such an emergency I hope the insertion of a short timeline for this committee to produce goals will be a source of pride to future generations that we acted with urgency municipalities states and countries all over the world have already set goals as Rudy Perkins said and is extremely well-searched letter to the council and Rudy is right here with its long tradition of intellectual and cultural leadership in our state and its strong base of educated forward thinking and inventive citizenry which has a responsibility and the capability to play a pivotal role in overcoming the crisis the goal setting required in the committee charge was changed so that it's not policymaking or prescriptive as some councillors had suggested we do because we already have as a town resolved to source our energy from 100% renewable energy and within that 100% renewable electricity the addition of other greenhouse gas quote will give the committee the flexibility to come up with other alternate goals such as that of carbon neutrality it's possible that the committee will decide that they don't want to go 100% renewable energy and they would rather go with carbon neutrality so this would allow that flexibility the compact of mayor's framework which our town has been working with through our sustainability coordinator is based on towns going through a process to set goals for carbon neutrality there are pros and cons to each and the committee would have the flexibility to look at that and come up with new goals I realize this is a lot we need to set clear dates and firm targets for greenhouse gas reductions step by step plan to reach those targets in order to meet the challenge of the climate crisis as noted in our last meeting the intergovernmental panel on climate change recently concluded that substantial reductions would need to be made in the next 12 years to avoid the worst impacts of climate change in short to avoid extreme climate impacts in our world and our community we don't have much time again Rudy a quoting Rudy in terms of interim goals there are a number of towns who have come up with 100% renewable electricity by 2030 so there is growing consensus around climate goals of something like 100% renewable electricity by 2030 and 100% net zero in all sectors by 2050 these goals are achievable if this work is launched immediately it will be the hardest but can tolerate no further delay our town, our children and their children are counting on your leadership in this crucial task so that was just to tell you what changes we made now to the motion unless Evan would like to say something I'll keep what I say short so this document started as a collaboration between Councillor Dumont and myself and at that point represented the vision of two councillors on January 7th we invited our colleagues on the council and the public to offer their input and their vision and over the past two weeks we have worked to incorporate the comments we've received into this new charge Darcy gave a very specific list of the changes we've made overall I would say that changes were made to try to make this not the vision of two councillors or the council itself but the vision of the community that will be tasked with implementing this charge we work to work in greater flexibility and adaptability in the charge and hopefully greater inclusivity and engagement of the public so I look forward to hearing from my colleagues how we did at incorporating their vision so that when if this passes hopefully tonight what we have is a charge that has come a long way from just the vision of two councillors and is instead a vision that represents the entire council and the public that we're here to serve thank you climate change is a global emergency the 2008 Massachusetts Act acknowledged the urgency of climate change and setting climate statewide goals for greenhouse gas emissions reductions the 2018 United Nations international panel on climate change special report underlined the impacts of global warming of 1.5 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels and urged strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change the 2018 national climate assessment provided in-depth look detailing the multiple ways climate change is already affecting and will increasingly affect the lives of Americans to each area of the United States and the 2018 resolution to create a house select committee on the Green New Deal addresses the threat of climate change by setting forth an aggressive plan to move the United States to renewable energy economy within 10 years however even in action at the state and federal level on bold climate proposals highlights a need for local action Amherst has a history of recognizing the challenge presented by climate change and meeting it with action I am going to leave out that part because we went over it last time yet Amherst has a long way to go to achieve ambitious climate action goals it needs to be taking bold action on climate and establishing itself as a municipal energy and climate leader I move therefore that the town council order the establishment of a standing committee Charter Section 2.5 called the town of Amherst Energy and Climate Action Committee to guide the town in meeting its climate mitigation and resilience goals and order that the Energy and Climate Action Committee within 90 days of its first meeting submit to the town council an initial recommended target dates benchmarks and or inner annual targets to achieve the climate action goals adopted in Article 16 passed by the fall 2017 special town meeting and other emissions reductions goals recommended by the Energy and Climate Action Committee that the town council act by voting to adopt the recommendation submitted with or without amendments is a receipt from the Energy and Climate Action Committee Pat, I'm taking lessons from you there's a motion do we have a second Sarah has seconded it and we're now open for discussion what we're discussing at this point is the motion but that motion also involves the charge Mandy Jo I guess I have a clarification and then a request the motion seems to have two things two actions so I guess my request is could we split those up for discussion purposes and then the second one is the motion is ordering the establishment of a standing committee but doesn't discuss the charge at all should the motion really be to adopt the charge of the ECAC committee instead of order the establishment that's more of a procedural question since it doesn't really even mention the charge at all just says we're going to establish one but doesn't say how so the first of the two motions one was to order the establishment and I believe you're suggesting a friendly amendment in this case and that is to adopt the charge okay question on that one it was a question as to whether the motion to order the establishment of a standing committee called this actually adopts the charge that is in front of us or just says we are establishing a committee but we haven't decided beyond guiding the meeting that of what its content would be Andy staying just on the procedure for the moment they're both they're two complex documents that have a lot in them each of which may have discussion and it could be significant discussion it therefore seems to me that going through a motion that has just been placed before us to establish the committee and let us talk about the aspects of that motion and whether there are any amendments we want to make to it and then vote on that before getting into the charge and treating the charge as a separate document allows us to focus on each document without confusing the two and then the third item which is actually the reporting order the energy and climate action committee is yet a third discussion well my opinion is that that's part of the motion and that's one of the reasons why it might be advisable to take the motion separate from the charge to the committee Kathy? I just want to second that idea because I think about them so separately so rather than linking them here the charge then goes into a lot more detail and we're being asked to look at pieces of it but I'd like to they read to me differently which would you like to do first? the charge or the motion to create? I would think the motion the motion? Okay so then we're going to go with the first of the two items and I want to ask the change of that for someone to read the change of that Mandy Joe you had a change you were suggesting I was just suggesting a procedural thing I think we just decided that what Darcy just read is not the adoption of the charge that's in front of us but just the adoption of establishing a committee and then saying that within the first 90 days of its meeting once we establish it that the initial recommendations are there and then there would I presume be a second motion after this one is passed to adopt the charge okay I would like this first motion to read them there's no change right? okay so the motion on the table is to order the establishment of a standing committee Charter section 2.5 called the town of Amherst Energy and Climate Action Committee to guide the town in meeting its climate mitigation and resilience goals we're going to discuss that first doesn't it also include the order that the energy and climate action both both sections okay I thought I heard that somebody wanted to separate the motions I wanted to separate the discussion of the charge document itself from the okay thank you alright so then the second part of the motion is to order the energy and climate action committee within 90 days of its first meeting to submit to the town council for adoption initial recommendation recommended target dates benchmarks and or annual inter annual targets to achieve the climate action goals adopted in article 16 passed by the fall 2010 special town meeting and other emissions reduction goals recommended by the ECAC and that the town council act by voting to adopt the recommendations submitted with or without amendments within 90 days of receipt for the ECAC discussion Alyssa I want to do a really boring thing and then you can all talk about the substantive parts I would really prefer that we take out the reference to 2.5 2.5 is general powers it's got nothing to do with creating standing committees and I think that when you put 2.5 immediately after standing committee it makes it seem like ooh that's related to something we have general powers general powers are great but I don't think we're going to want to quote them in every single thing that we do and so I would as much as I love citations when they're specific this is such a blanket one to me it makes it seem like it means more than it does and reflecting back to something Mandy Joseph said earlier about the governance committee because we don't have as you saw when you looked at the many documents that the select board provided you that we do not have any template on what a charge document should look like we have some ideas of the best of those but we don't have one one of the problems with that is we also don't know what to call things in terms of types of committees and I'm a little leery of calling this a standing committee because the only place the word standing and reference to committee appears in the charter is in regards to committees of the town council that are standing standing or ad hoc so just so as not to create further confusion I understand that we don't yet have a word so maybe you know governance can come up with a good word when we get to the charge itself but that word is also in this motion and so taking the word standing out which I know would make the charge more awkward because then it would have a blank space but at the point in the whatever is not ad hoc is what we're looking for but I'm very specifically saying this is not a standing committee of the town council it is a permanent committee it's an ongoing committee if you want to use a word like that fine otherwise I say it can be just like 2.5 it can be lifted out of this motion without damaging this motion and in fact decreasing future confusion. I'd like to stay on that particular topic is there any objection moving the are eliminating the reference to the charter committee. Okay. All right then the next question is eliminating the word standing it's just to create a committee. You got to say something besides shake your head. I think that's a good idea and and in trying to parse through what we call things I notice the memo we had with a legal opinion on the difference between a committee of the council. They called that a committee of the council. So in a simple way we've got a bunch of them in town that aren't committees of the council. So that may be too many words but if it's a committee of the town it's not a committee of the council you know I mean just something simple. So eliminating the word standing is there any further discussion on that yes. I'm fine with that but also just want to say that the governance committee has been a little bit different. I think that the committee did come up with a solution that perhaps would be more appropriate to discuss in the charge about what we call committees and how we differentiate between them and charges. So I think that in that context the standing might not be problematic but it might be premature for that discussion since we're not on the charge yet but I also don't think we lose anything by eliminating the reference to the charter. Is there any other discussion on this of the whole motion. Let's start with Andy. So I'm going to return to an issue that Darcy actually did respond to and one that I raised when we discussed this the first time but to preface that before I get into it I want to thank Darcy Evan and the others who have worked on this. This is a critical issue confronting not just Amherst but everybody but we do need to do our share we need to do our share appropriately and I'm appreciative that we're moving forward as we are. However I am concerned was concerned before and still concerned about the need to make sure that our community is with us and that they understand what they we're suggesting what the committee is developing and have a chance to really participate and ask questions. We've had several emails that went to the entire council I don't quote any of them directly they're probably all going to be in packet eventually if they're not yet but there was several that expressed various levels of concern about the impact on various parts of the community whether it be the business community the cost to homeowners the cost to the agriculture community of adopting goals and I want to make sure that we have a process that is able to fully engage anybody who has concerns within the discussion and feels that they have had an opportunity to be heard and have their questions answered if we run ahead of too many people in our community that we've done some significant damage to ultimately the goal that we're trying to achieve in establishing this committee at all and for those reasons my proposal in the last order would be to remove the sections that refer to specific deadlines because I think that the committee itself can create its own deadlines and will have its own sense of urgency and doesn't need the council to put the urgency before it I think it will have it will know the urgency I would therefore in the first sentence of the second thing called an order to suggest you're moving the words within 90 days of the first of its first meeting and then at the end eliminate everything after the ECAC so it's almost so removing the words and the town council act by voting to adopt the recommendations submitted with or without amendments within 90 days of receipt from the ECAC and I really firmly believe that those changes will not weaken this creation of this committee and in fact will strengthen the committee by making sure that the community has the opportunity to be involved and feel that they were involved and not feel that we are working under some kind of an artificial pressure that we've put on ourselves are you making that in terms of emotion I will make that as a motion yes is there a second George we're now discussing the amendment to the motion the amendment is to remove in the second order the words within 90 days of its first meeting and to remove at the very last of the statement the words and that the town council act by voting to adopt the recommendations submitted with or without amendments within 90 days of receipt from the ECAC discussion Garcy just to give you a little context the original version of this motion was actually had the goals in it the first time around we were contemplating the possibility of just putting the goals out there to the town council but 100% 100% renewable energy by 2050 100% renewable electricity by 2030 and through our process of thinking this out and wanting to make sure that we did give people more time we put it we revised it to its current language and as you heard me already say once the process of coming up with goals is not going to be that difficult and I some of you have probably seen in the council packet that I shared a spreadsheet of comparing goals of other Massachusetts communities straight forward simple process and if you notice in the column with goals and the column with interim goals they're all very similar what these different towns have come up with so my point is doesn't take that long to do and it would be possible to have a public process within that 90 days just like the school committee is going to have a pretty big public process in the next 90 days so we could also have a public process that involves forum or listening sessions or whatever additional comments George my concern is not with the goals for say it's really with the time and it may turn out that in 90 days this will happen but I have concerns that we're putting pressure on this body that hasn't even been created to get something done right away and I think everyone is aware of the urgency I certainly am aware of it but I want to give this committee the chance to make up its own mind and to present its findings when it's ready and I also understand the desire for urgency so I'm caught between these two and I want to share Andy's sense that taking this out does not at all weaken this very excellent document but actually can strengthen it but it does obviously take a little bit of the sense of urgency away but I think that it would be wise to take it out and let this committee do its work and trust it additional comments I want to acknowledge the work that Darcy and Evan and all the people have put into this and also acknowledge that this is a great start for us as a town council to be working on this it's such an important issue and it's something that we all believe in so I just wanted to put that out there and also I just want to put it out there that I feel like it's your baby Darcy's baby and Evan's baby and any suggestions we make is seen as a judgment of a baby and so it's not meant to be taken in that way but I'm hoping that any suggestions we make because we really feel this is important and we want to see it achievable and implemented so that all being said in terms of goals I think the overall goals like you said have already been set by other communities and I'm wondering if their goals that might be specific to our community like what are our specific vulnerabilities whether it's related to flooding or you know what are specific areas of goal setting that we need to assess for our town, where do we stand with that, what are our vulnerabilities what are our goals and intermediate goals going to be and whether that's going to take some time as well. I'm sorry I believe Kathy you had your hand okay I'm I don't know whether 90 is the right number but having been on working committees it is really useful to have we have to get something done by ex-date it means that the meetings are less prolonged people don't feel like we're just having a chat session and putting the same onus on the council that when this comes back we'll take a look at it faster rather than slower so I think a number as I said I don't know whether 90 is the right one and I'm just going where does 90 get us to does it get us to May, does it get us to June and if we want this in place because this isn't taking action this is just figuring out what our stretch goals are so if we want to get something in place in 2019 taking six months to get there is a big chunk of time so I'm just arguing for putting some kind of target there we're not going to put people in jail I don't think if it turns out that they didn't fail they got it back to us ex-days later but I've worked on a couple places where we just didn't think we could get it done and it turned out we did get it done because we had that time and I believe you had your hand up so first I just want to build off of Shalini's comment that whatever you say I don't feel like you're judging my baby and I I hope that you all give feedback and are critical because we need that especially as a new legislator one thing I just wanted to throw out there and this isn't arguing for or against the amendment so to some extent through the process of revision that we've engaged in we have made a lot of the language both in the charge and in the motion less specific and so we're looking for initial goals recommended target dates and or we do provide a lot of flexibility and so the committee could come back and say whatever they want and that could be several goals that could be one goal that could be an absolute goal that could be an aspirational goal I think there is an effort to build in flexibility so that even though that 90 day period is constraining it doesn't necessarily mean that they have to return this specific goal in 90 days if the committee feels as though they can only really agree on the process of getting one aspirational goal by the end of 90 days and that's what they can confidently return to the council so flexibility I think is key here I do think that it depends on how we envision these goals should be set so on the one hand we do have this document that was provided to us that sort of lays out the goals from other committees other communities and if we're just going to say well they did it so we're going to do it we can do that tomorrow if we want to have a more in-depth discussion of a goal that sort of involves you know, greater planning that takes a little bit more time and so there is a lot to think about here and so planting that seed into this discussion to think about how we conceptualize that 90 day timeline and how we conceptualize what we expect from these goals Steve I was just going to speak in favor of the order as written with the 90 days because I think it is helpful for possible committee members to know what the urgency is so I am in favor of the order as written additional comment main did you so this is one of the ones I've struggled with in what to do about this timeline for reasons that Andy Kathy and Evan have just put forward of 90 days is really short but what is the purpose of these goals if you know what when they're presented to us and recommended to us as a council what information are we going to want this committee to present to us is it going to be as Evan said well every other community has taken these because the I M I P C C has made these those so yeah or are we going to one information that says we believe as a committee you as a town and we as a town can actually meet these that goes back to something George was saying I think two weeks ago are these aspirational or all these are these goals actually as a as a council when we adopt them are we going are we going to believe we can truly meet them and it I think I'm not sure where we are and which one that would be if it's we're going to want all the information to be able to tell the council when they're presented to us as goals that this committee believes we as a town can meet them during those time frames I think that takes probably night longer than 90 days because you need to figure out what this town is capable of if there's aspirational I agree directly with Evan we could do that tomorrow and just say sure we've already done it with some other things this town has already done it in the past as stated in the preamble so I I'm struggling with that I think it depends on what we what information we expect to come back from this committee and what we expect to do with it so I'm hesitant to put 90 days if we actually want a goal that we believe will have information that says we as a town can meet that goal whatever that recommendation is because I'm not sure that can actually be done in 90 days specific to this town additional comments Mark Darcy I hear you Mandy Joe I I think that the reason that these goals can be made fairly quickly is because there's a multitude of unknown variables involved and so to some extent it is aspirational because we can't know we can't know certain things we can't know what the political will is going to be of the state or federal government to act on helping us out there's just many many we can't know how the renewable portfolio standard is going to increase we won't know a lot of things so it does have to be to a large extent aspirational when the when the committee comes back with goals so that's why it's able to do it more quickly and just to answer Shawnee about her concern about goals about our town vulnerability that is a different area and we do have a separate section of the charge that deals with long term goals around resilience this short term goal is only about mitigation green house gas reduction and it's very narrow when this committee comes back to the council I will want to ask questions like who did you consult with how many people from the community have you worked with and I want evidence that this is something that the community has now developed greater understanding about because like many of you I have received the same emails and many of them support and I do too climate action in very very serious ways but there are concerns about cost to businesses cost to individuals etc so I'm going to want to know how these goals were vetted with the community in a way that the community isn't going to be sitting in this room screaming at us because we just did something that they had no input on yes I think that the committee will have a lot of help in being able to do that from for example Stephanie Chikarola because she's been working on this for over a year working with the New England Municipal Sustainability Network and all the other communities that are doing the same type of thing working toward carbon neutrality and trying to do it in a way where each community doesn't have to reinvent the wheel so that they can confer with each other and figure these things out so it's true that there are different things about our community but I have faith that with all the work that she's done over the last year that she will be able to help a lot by all of her contacts and all of the information that she's gathered other comments so the question on the table is an amendment that would remove from the second statement the words within 90 days of its first meeting and also remove within its latter part of the statement the words and the town council acting act by voting to adopt the recommendations submitted with or without amendments within 90 days of receipt from the ECAC ready to call the question? so the motion is to amend the motion it's an amendment to the motion that's what we're voting on is there any other discussion before we go forward call the question, I think a roll call vote probably would be appropriate Councillor Balmille Councillor Brouwer could we make sure we're really clear on what the amendment is to remove the 90 days in both sections yes it is yes Councillor D'Angelo no Councillor Dumont no Councillor Grismur Councillor Hanakie Councillor Pam abstain Councillor Ross no Councillor Ryan yes Councillor Shane no Councillor Schreiber no Councillor Steinberg yes Councillor Swartz no the vote is 3 yes 8 no so we are back to the original motion which includes the 90 day deadlines is there further discussion on the motion so we're discussing both parts both parts of the original motion we're not discussing the charge at the original motion yes, Dorsey okay I am perhaps confused the question of who can belong to the committee is that what we that's in the charge we're not to the charge yet this is just the motion to create such a committee just clarification we took out the word standing and we took out the reference to the charter those are the only changes to the motion and those were seen as friendly changes any other questions on the motion okay yes Evan so one of the things we've heard from people and one of the things that Andy and our president brought up was you know wanting to hear from the community and what did people say how was their stakeholder input in this so one thing I think it would be useful for us as a council to discuss is given that there are I know we're not on the charge yet but given that there are parts of the charge that do require community engagement which would be 6C if you have the charge in front of you but that engagement not include goal setting do we as a council feel as though the order as written would sufficiently include stakeholder engagement and public participation so that when these goals do come to the council and our president does ask the committee who did you talk to how did you get to hear that they will have that information I'm putting this out as a question not as a motion excellent question Kathy as I understand what Evan just said I think if we want to have that type of backup it should be within the charge you know that we can find the sentence we need that says you know and she'll come back with evidence with arguments that they've done with the community that that's a description of how this group is going to act it's not what they're trying to get to so I think this can stand and then we can move to the charge other comments let's take a vote and move the motion before you is the one previously presented eliminating the word standing and eliminating the reference to the charter and nothing else has changed is there anybody feels I need to read the motion okay would you like to do an all those in favor all those in favor it is unanimous no I'm sorry I'm sorry all those in favor all those opposed abstain thank you for that Andy okay we are now going to move to the discussion of the charge there is we need a motion to put the charge on the table I'm sorry no I'm asking for one I still move Dorothy moves that we adopt the charge to the energy and climate action committee right and second okay Pat second discussion yes I would like to ask that once a topic of discussion is brought forward we stick to that topic and then go on to others okay yes Steve so I'll start pretty near the top and this has to do with the composition of this committee so I have no problem with you know nine and two counselors but I do have concerns about the specificity of the qualifications or the expected experiences of the other seven the seven residents so it's highly unusual maybe unprecedented for Amherst committees to be all so if you can for example the planning board is in all planners design review boards not all designers and it's highly unusual to have the experiences be so specific as this so I'm not ready to make a motion for an amendment quite yet but I just wanted to raise that as a concern that I think it should be much more general along the lines of something like it should consist of nine voting members one of two of whom should be a member of the town council and the remainder shall represent a cross-section of organizations institutions businesses in interest in the town so that that's not a motion but that would be something that I think we should consider Dorothy I concur with that I think it's very important that we have buy-in understanding by a broad sector of the population I do understand the frustration that some people feel when they that's been stated in some letters of bringing people up to date but I fear technocracies I really do want a broader representation including people representing different aspects of the community but of course we would want a lot of people who are experts in various parts. Yes, Mandy Jo. So I'm ready to make a motion. All right. So I move to remove everything after residents in the seven residents line so that that line reads seven residents and I'll speak to that after it's seconded. It's emotions been made by Mandy Jo it's been seconded by Steve for the discussion. I share Steven with the committee's concerns. I know this was something that was mentioned by a number of counselors at our last meeting about the specificity of the membership of the residents as Darcy noted today actually the charter itself requires the town manager to seek expertise for specific committees anyway that is relevant to what that committee would be doing. I don't think we need to set forth what it needs to be in the charge. It can be done on a moving basis because right now the expertise might need to be in people who have experience with goal setting for reducing greenhouse gases but in three years once we've set those goals that expertise needs to move potentially to resiliency planning and adaptation planning and people who have expertise in residents who have expertise in that wide variety of sectors and to pass a charge that constrains the expertise indefinitely I don't think is wise and I do recognize that you can always amend a charge but if we're intending to pass a charge for a standing committee we shouldn't pass one knowing that in a year or two it would need amended. I think we should look towards the long term in what our charges should look like and should contain. There's no comment. Alyssa. The discussion we've had about this so far and what was just added about the constraining indefinitely which is also a nice issue to be thinking about as we move forward. I appreciate that there are at least two different ways of viewing this and one is you populate it with experts and then you demand that they go out and talk with the community that's what section six is about that's what several other conversations have been about. Another way to approach it is you have that community on it to begin with. I have to say that having that's having discussed this a lot I actually was leaning toward going with the experts because we have had many many many experiences in Amherst of ooh let's put someone with this incredibly creative way of looking at life on the planning board that doesn't have any interest in zoning and that's great but it doesn't get the work of planning board and it doesn't mean the planning board shouldn't be listening to people when they come to their meetings but there's something to be said as we have seen basically the letters fell out two ways one is make sure you include all these different perspectives all of which are incredibly important on the committee versus have the expertise on the committee to be able to bring plans forward and I think we make a mistake to say that doesn't matter and it's absolutely not unprecedented I will say we have very specifically created actually it isn't we have very specifically created charges that said there will be someone with this level of expertise that level of expertise etc on committees but they've been more like working groups and so that's part of what we're looking at here too and so while as much as I'm big on setting precedent and looking at structure I think that it depends on what you expect this group to bring back because if you expect this group to bring back something fairly quickly I think the expertise of all the members up front who are then also find the skills to reach out to various parts of the community that's one thing if you're expecting them to talk about making a master plan for over 10 years then feel free to put everyone you want on the committee Steve Kathy was actually next I just want to build on this comment because I think you can't have it both ways if you want to have in 90 days people coming back with something and you can push people hard on what's the evidence, what did you think through, how would we get that then you have people who already have a lot of experience and have been bringing a field to this several commissions that are more medically oriented and it was really important if we wanted to do achievable quality metrics for the U.S. health care system that the people on it said you can't measure that we don't have any science behind that we do have some science beyond this and because consumers all of us who want safe medical care had a vision of things that could be done that the science wouldn't allow us so I think being specific on the range of expertise that we're looking for is important I'm not going to say that this is exactly the right list but I think it's important rather than saying and it does say experience so it could be someone has been doing this for a while and implementing it in a town and working with a co-housing unit to get it to be a systems thinker it doesn't necessarily mean a technocrat in terms of just the science field Steve. I have no problem with some expertise so obviously expertise is essential for this and I do think there's a huge difference between a working group and a standing committee so a standing committee is going to be here forever and as you were saying the goal posts are going to be changing so the committee of the town as I see it is almost meant to be not exactly disinterested they have to be obviously engaged not skeptics of the subject but I don't think they have to be experts and we have lots and lots of citizens that are very interested in this can't connect the dots but are by no means experts especially in the categories listed so one of the quandaries I have is that this is the list this is a list that first of all there's more than seven expertises there so that would be the roster right there in those expertises but I think that there are large groups that are not there like the planning community like planners and people that are thinking to me the list is really slanted towards the STEM fields and I think we need to think beyond the STEM fields we should be on this committee so I'm citing the research of certain researchers in climate change and Beth Sabin in particular from climate interactive she's a PhD from MIT I don't know so in looking at actually I looked at her TED talk and she sent it to me and kind of shared her experience in that TED talk which was that United Nations they were presenting their cutting edge analytical tools and they presented all the data to all the countries that this is how urgent and important this issue is and they found to the disappointment none of the countries were willing to be on board and so she struggled with that that we have the data and what do we need to do to convince people to change and what she discovered was that there are a lot of urgent current issues that people have or countries have or towns have in which kind of are seen as in conflict and so where she ended up in her research was in coming up with multi-solving strategies which requires that the investment we're making in solving climate change should also include the other areas that are being affected or we're also improving other things so we're improving health as well or improving how it's impacting the quality of life and so the point of that along with the other research that I read in combination suggests that the more we're looking at this in connection with the other issues in town with the other stakeholders in town we are more likely to get the buy-in we're more likely to move forward and to have really realistic and and have strategies that will be implemented that will have the buy-in so I am very much in favor of having definitely some experts and maybe we can define the number of that that we definitely need four experts in this area but I do feel especially in the third aspect of this is listening to people during the campaign as well there were doctors, there were start-ups and there were parents of schools who were concerned whether we'll have the building with the net zero people were concerned about what are the implications of these policies on you know just their lives so if you look at equity, we look at social justice we look at business and our economy, we look at the environment I think we need to look at all three of these issues in a way and we can't just focus on one narrow looking at climate change and isolation I'm imagining someone who cares deeply about this issue and when they read this they realize they need not apply because they just don't fit these seven categories and I agree that expertise is needed but we also need buy-in and I'm concerned that people who want to be involved and actually could bring a lot to the table are excluded just by the very limited nature of this language if we could somehow make it a little less rigid I think we will get a better pool. Darcy the if you look at section five of the charge that is the section where we added Shalini's holistic and intersectionality language to try to reach out to all the different sectors to make sure that we do that outreach and that we are connecting with all the different institutions with the organizations with the staff with everything the climate justice community and that doesn't mean that they have to be on the committee and I think that I need to point out again that if you look at the charter 3.3 C it actually requires that the people on the committee have expertise and experience I did not know that until a few days ago Sarah so just as a perspective of looking at this I think you definitely have to look at what do you want this committee to come back with so one of the things that I have heard a lot about I think consistency is something I am looking at as we go forward with how we are thinking when we are thinking about schools I think one of the things I am hearing is school committee those people are the experts they bring something forward and then we sort of work on it from there so if you are looking at a committee that is going to get you very real goals fairly quickly to present to you and then you are going from there with it I can see one of the things we first sa