Thank you very much. Welcome to the September 10, 2012 select board meeting. We'll be starting with public comment. We hardly ever have anybody here for public comments, so if you don't get a chance to speak tonight, then please come back to another meeting because usually we're very lonely during the first 15 minutes of the meeting. Could I get a show of hands on how many folks want to speak during public comment? About seven. Okay, so I'm going to start with issues that are not on the agenda. So some folks I think are here for shelter issues. Some folks are here for flag issues. Are there other issues that I didn't just name? Mr. Vickery, what's your different issue that's not on the agenda? Okay, very good. Okay, Mr. Blaustein. If everyone could be as brief as possible so we can fit as many comments in as possible before 6.45. Thank you. Please identify yourself with the mic. Jeff Blaustein from Precinct Six. I wasn't planning to speak tonight, but I've been watching the reaction to the select board's decision about flying the additional flags downtown. I also looked at the clip of the interview of one of the residents on Fox News and I saw the caption, Massachusetts town won't fly American flag on 9-11. Well, there may not have been anything intentionally misleading in what was said, the captions were. The town of Amherst, like many of its residents, flies the flag proudly every day of the year in numerous locations. It flies its flags at half staff on 9-11 as on other days of morning. And it has an annual solemn ceremony to mark September 11th. I want to state as boldly as I can this is not a disagreement about respect for the flag or our country, rather it's a disagreement about how different people want to mark the tragedy of 9-11. I was disgusted and saddened by the way our town has been misrepresented and I'm saddened that there are people who seem to be okay with this misrepresentation. Ms. O'Keefe has done an excellent job of attempting to set the record straight. I'm here to praise her diplomacy in dealing with this. I'm here to speak for many in the community who I believe share my views on flying flags. I saw on Fox News that Mr. Kelly has heard from nobody who disagrees with him. Why don't those people who disagree speak up? I think it's fair to say the people are scared of repercussions. Really unfair mean-spirited comments have been directed at Ms. O'Keefe, the select board in our town, in large part because of misinformation about the policy of the select board and about what the people of Amherst believe. While there may be a few individuals in Amherst and I would guess in every town in the Commonwealth who believe that the flag stands for something different than the rest of us, I'm comfortable stating that most of our residents have great respect for the flag. People mourn loss of life in different ways. Some people do it alone. Some do it in groups. Others obviously find comfort in doing it very publicly. In some religions and cultures it's appropriate to send flowers to mourners and others that's a faux pas. To some a wake is a time for party, a celebration of a person's life, and for others wakes a solemn time to mourn the loss. Who has the right to dictate to the rest of the community the appropriate way for us to mourn, the appropriate way for each of us to remember. To me the display of flags on light poles and flag waving is four celebratory occasions for happy times like the fourth of July in flag day. In contrast to me a flag at half staff is a sign of communal mourning. Others have made clear they have a different view. That's fine but I urge them to respect the opinion of others. I would not decorate light poles on some of the holidays that the town does. A flag at half staff says it all to me. The vocal individuals should not interpret the views of people who disagree with them as meaning they don't care. It simply may mean they choose to mourn in a different way than they do. That should be the end of the story. Sadly it's not. Isn't it time to just accept that reasonable people can agree to disagree? Isn't it time to remember that the flag symbolizes our freedom including our freedom to mourn loss of life in the way each of us sees as appropriate? I sincerely hope that nothing I have said will be misrepresented or taken out of context to claim that I don't respect the flag or our country nor mourn the loss of census life of 9-11. Thank you. Thank you very much. Other folks who would like to speak? I'll get Mr. Kelly. Larry Kelly, South Pleasant Street. We've got to be quick here. We're trying to fit in as many as possible. Sorry. That was my moment of silence. So I'd like to ask the select board to allow the flags to fly tomorrow. I know we discussed this on August 27th two weeks ago but there are two new pieces of information that I think are very vital to this and if they had come up on August 27th it may have changed your mind although you didn't actually take a vote on August 27th and you never closed the public hearing. So as far as I'm concerned you can act on this tonight and not be in violation of open meeting law. Exhibit A probably in response to your lack of vote or lack of taking a vote on two weeks ago the firefighters union issued a public statement strongly supporting that the flags fly and no one has more of a right to talk about flags and death in mourning than firefighters who lost 343 that day and 60 law enforcement personnel and 14 EMTs. Item two I would submit is in response to the Fox News report and I had nothing to do with the graphics and I listened to it, didn't watch it, but listened to it about an hour ago and the word patriotism never escaped my lips. I never questioned John's patriotism. I never questioned Madam Chair's patriotism. I never questioned the town's patriotism whatsoever but in response to that you remember the bulletin and Gazette both did front page stories about Amherst getting the Fox News treatment and interestingly enough the Amherst bulletin put up on their Facebook page and all around it are the articles that they wrote that are correct. The front page articles in the Gazette get it right obviously. They have your statements. They have everyone's statements. We know what the facts are. They're there and they're on their Facebook page and they took a poll. They're running the poll. It's still open right now and the interesting thing about the Facebook poll is there's no anonymous posters. When you do a thumbs up on Facebook it shows who you are. You can't do anything anonymously. When you vote yes or no to something it shows is Larry Kelly voted yes to this, not some anon who you have no idea who that nitwit is. It's like real people taking a vote and I just want to read the results. I checked them about a half hour ago. Yes, fly the flags every single year. 165 votes. Why the hell is this even a question? 21 votes. Yes, every year five votes. Yes, they were innocent men and women and children murdered by terrorists. 27 yes votes. We should fly them every day eight votes. Yes, exclamation point three votes. Select boards compromise every five years is adequate. Two votes no one vote. So if you do the math it's 229 yes to two the compromise that the select board favors every five years and as I said right next to it somewhere on that Facebook page is the front page article laying out all the facts and I think also the Amherst Bulletin editorial which basically calls me an extremist and strongly favors your once every five years stance. So on their very own web page they're getting beat 115 to one in a poll. Yeah obviously not scientific but I looked at some of those names some of those people I know yes but a lot of them are from Amherst you know so you have two people that support you you have twice 115 times as many who don't support you. Thank you very much I gotta move on one last thing okay just segueing from there the other thing I wanted to ask is let's settle this let's get this over with let's not let this last two weeks of acrimony just be put aside and then pick it up again a year from now let's get this thing over with once and for all you can put on the ballot an advisory question simple majority vote put it on the ballot this spring and three years ago when you made the compromise deal the first compromise Jerry Weiss's compromise the once every three year which to this day I think is dumb compromise one of you tried to get me to make a deal to say okay if you pass this compromise Larry will you go away will you stop coming to us every single year and I told you that night no I wouldn't and I did come back the very next year but here I am here tonight and I'm telling you right here now I will make that deal with you if you put it on the ballot for this spring and the people of this town vote that down if they agree with you that they should fly never or once every five years I will stop I will stop thank you very much let the people decide thank you thank you mr vickery and please identify yourself of the mic Peter vickery 71 cherry Lane Amherst thank you select board and Mr. Time Manager as you know June earlier this year US Geological Survey published a report that suggested that there may be natural gas deposits under western and central Massachusetts recovering them at this point is probably economically unfeasible but at the pace of development of hydraulic fracturing it may not be the two distant future before it does become economically feasible to attempt to recover natural gas from under western and central Massachusetts the most likely method of doing that is hydraulic fracturing which is a devastating process for air and water common sense would suggest this is a matter for federal regulation in fact there's a loophole in the relevant federal statutes the safe drinking water act the clean air act and assorted environmental statutes so it's a matter for the states and Massachusetts so far has not taken steps to regulate hydraulic fracturing or natural gas extraction at all the statewide level so we could do and I suggest we do do and what some other communities in different states have been having success doing which is regulating at the local level at the municipal level some communities in New York and Pennsylvania and further afield have taken steps to regulate hydraulic fracturing within the borders of their town and those have withstood for the most part judicial challenge in court so I'm thankful for a charitable key suggestion that the first port of call for this would be the water supply protection committee that they should take first look at this and then I hope we can have a broader discussion about how the town ordinances can be amended to protect the community and communities surrounding us and society at large from the deleterious effects of hydraulic fracturing so thank you for taking this step and look forward to watching it as it progresses thank you very much thank you for coming in all right I'm going to try and call in two more people here um let's see mr bloom I'm going to start with mr woman if you could possibly make your statement shorter than was written I'm Steve bloom precinct 10 uh 259 Lincoln uh dear select board members I'm here at the request of the planning board which has appealed to the public to communicate to the select board the extreme urgency of the current housing prices engulfing Amherst according to the minutes of the Amherst planning board zoning subcommittee meeting of july 18 2012 at a recent UMass master plan meeting the university expressed its satisfaction with its current mix of on campus and off campus student housing and announced its intention to greatly quote end quote expand its student population this decoration poses an enormous problem for the town of Amherst who the university is now expecting to absorb its overflow with limited capacity to do so if the select board had allowed professor Carlstrom to make his presentation tonight they would have learned the purchases of single family homes by LLCs is accelerating at a deeply alarming rate current economic conditions and a rapidly growing demand for student housing housing because of the university's lack of it has encouraged absentee landlords and speculators to fill the gap by purchasing distressed and undervalued properties and renting them to unsupervised students many of them living on their own for the first time and contrary to prevailing opinion this is not a localized problem just afflicting a historic rg neighborhoods although the situation is soon approaching tipping point in the rg neighborhoods most near the university the townwide with vulnerable properties being purchased and converted into student rentals everywhere absentee landlords can find a public records indicate recent sales to LLCs on shumway street and an echo hill town governments apparent willingness to safeguard the rights of those absentee landlords and speculators some of them not even residents of our community to reap exorbitant monetary awards and their properties to the detriment of the quality of life of those full-time residents who must live in close proximity to them is mystifying already great harm has been done law abiding tax paying families have been driven from long cherished homes to the community's great loss 20 some years ago the town voted a moratorium against subdivisions on public safety grounds after 45 student arrests in one weekend just two weekends ago and the entire fleet of ambulances now being put on standby every weekend to deal with expected incidents of alcohol poisoning i submit there is an immediate and pressing threat to the town's public safety posed by the rapid spread of unregulated sales of single family residents to LLCs i therefore propose another moratorium this time putting a temporary spot stop to the purchases of single family homes by LLCs on such grounds be put into effect until the planning department formulates a permitting system for ll rental properties presented to town meeting among other things this permitting system should include provisions that after a number of clearly defined infractions which includes no noise as well as nuisance call not just arrest a negligent landlord's permit to rent can be revoked for a set amount of time or be refused for renewal the university should be informed of these infractions as well and contact the parents of those cited such a system should include parking permits fines and fees to finance it similar systems already in place in other college towns can be used as templates article one of the zoning bylaw states that the zoning bylaws are quote for the purpose of promoting the health safety convenience and general welfare of the inhabitants of the town of amherst it doesn't mention any obligation to abet the exploitation of students welcome as they are passing through and certainly not to serve as absentee landlords and speculators looking for a quick easy book town's governance primary duties to protect the rights and well-being of all of its full-time citizens even those in easily sacrificed areas please don't let inertia and the powers that be degrade to spoil and ultimately destroyed amherst amherst unique birthright once it's gone for good and this place this very special yet very fragile place becomes just like any place else respectful thank you thank you very much the gentleman in purple and if you could please identify yourself i just read in the papers about the select board concerning the uh the uh getting getting money for the uh for the housing of homeless people and what i want to say is um uh this has been going on for quite some time and seemed like people that's in charge it seemed like it's the stone wages like i'm saying um i take care a lot of homeless people for years in my apartment and and it seems that people seem to think that homeless people are uh people are different uh are bad or gonna cause trouble but right now people that got uh professional jobs are like a check away from being homeless and i can tell you right now i have someone who is a very professional computer uh a person as a very had a very good job making a hundred thousand a year and uh right now i'm helping him out and and and what i've been saying is and what i'm trying to tell you guys is if you look on the street and you see the guys with the signs it's going to be multiplying year after year and after a while you ain't going to be safe in your own neighborhood so i'm i'm saying to the people that's in power but you guys should wake up and see you know smell the coffee and do something about this plus if you would just take time to just build uh four or five a low-income a low-income housing it would kind of like solve the problem right away so uh i'm not just looking to just get a shelter because i don't like shelters anyway because you take care of people at night and throw them out in the morning it's like we do cattle we feed chickens and cows and we eat them of course we don't eat people but you take care of people at night and say what a good job you're doing that seven o'clock in the morning you throw them out and they got nowhere to go don't you don't know it's don't want to keep them i mean the don't know us used to keep them but i try to get them to come to my house i put posters up they don't want people to come to my place so the landlords don't want to come to my place but i try to help people out but what i'm saying is uh this is going to multiply and get worse and i just can't figure out we could send uh you see this spaceship we stand the mars and we could do all that and we can't we can't just get it together how come thank you very much thank you very much thank you for coming in okay i need to move on from public comment um just to be clear um the select board doesn't take action on anything that's discussed in public comment because none of this stuff is on the agenda um to clarify one point from mr kelly earlier there was no public hearing on the previous discussion so it's not a question of not being open uh or closed at this point um there will be public comment on various issues that will happen later in the evening so if folks are here for those things and and want to talk and want to speak to those then then they certainly can but just so everyone is clear miss stein i would like to make one announcement about the flag i requested from the governor's office that flags and municipalities be lowered to half staff and owner of 9 11 and i received word tonight that they would be thank you okay uh all right so our first item then is the 945 item and the intention to lay out townways olympia drive an authority way we have mr zomek here to speak to us about this for folks who are watching at home uh this information about this and all other subject is available on the website and the select board's web packet mr zomek welcome thank you very much i will try to be very brief tonight i know the board has a very full agenda uh i believe you received the uh memo from the town manager last week in your packet i think uh the information provided for you by syrin everett from coveman and page was very clear uh tonight's action is really asking the board uh to state their intention to lay out olympia drive and authority way as townways this is the first step in the process we'll be working with town staff and town council and hap the developers the selected developers of the 42 units of affordable housing there over the weeks between now and town meeting to get all of those steps in place so i think syrin everett's memo laid it out quite nicely for you thank you it was a very detailed memo uh and much appreciated um if we could just step back a second and speak a little bit to why so this is we're doing the the olympia oaks housing project there currently the university owns this this land and those public ways if you could just talk about why this transfer needs to happen what difference it makes sure uh those roadways for uh a long long time have been owned by the commonwealth through the university uh you know that since the late 80s the town has been attempting to develop affordable housing at the far end of olympia drive that project is happening we have a development partner hap who has secured significant financing for both the housing development for 42 units as well as funds to upgrade the roadway the road is in relatively poor condition does not meet current even though it's not a town road presently it doesn't meet town standards so we're in a good position where the grant funding that has been obtained by hap for the affordable housing development includes monies to bring the road up to town standards so there's a really a dual process underway we have through state law a local process to accept a townway and this is step one of that process the select board voting a notice of intent will then go to the planning board and then hopefully to town meeting in november meanwhile because it's state on land there's a process through the umass trustees and ultimately the state legislature to turn that land over to the town and so our town meeting vote to accept the streets would be contingent upon having those actions come to fruition at the state level so ultimately we end up with a a sorely needed 42 unit affordable housing project and improved public roads up to the town standards thank you um typically when we accept public ways at town meeting it's because the road has come up to the town's standards how does this work in relation to that we're still working on the actual wording and in terms of the timeline for the road construction but dave might have more yeah as the memo lays out there's the process with the planning board and then the 45 day period um and of course the warrant will be generated in that time time frame as well so we're currently working with hap uh and their and their funding sources uh as well as as the town manager indicated the the university to put together all the pieces post town meeting acceptance of the of the public way so we've got to have all the assurances in place that haps funding is is there and solid uh and and move forward from there um so again i think most of this would happen this fall and then um uh we would look for construction sometime in uh late spring 2013 thank you questions or comments from select board from mr zamaq and mr edin yes so just just in a nutshell if if the work isn't complete by next spring then we can say oh nope sorry we stop now there are still some details to be worked out as the memo indicated we have four months um after the vote at town meeting uh to make sure all of those pieces are in place so um we would hope that we would not have to do this process again but there is a remote possibility that that could happen um so in the meantime the town manager and i working with town council will move all those pieces together and and move the uh with you mass on the legislation so it seems like a great thing i i have to say thank you other questions or comments from select board anyone else questions or comments on this olympia drive issue okay miss stein would you like to make the motion i move that the select board vote its intention to lay out olympia drive an authority way as townways as shown on a plan entitled roadway acceptance plan olympia drive an authority way amherst m a dated august 23rd 2012 prepared by duce and associates incorporated and that the select board followed the layout petition and plan to the planning board for its comments and recommendations pursuant to general laws chapter 41 sections 81 g and 81 i i i am not sure if that's an h or two y's i meant to look it up but i ran out of time it's 81 i okay lyc yes 81 i second further discussion so i'll just note that this is um this is this process is sort of a technicality but one that we clearly have to go through to make everything be correct um so folks will be hearing a lot more about this at the various stages that it goes through down the line most particularly town meeting all right further discussion all in favor say hi hi hi and that is unanimous thank you very much so then i'll work with the town manager's office and we'll get the appropriate memo to the planning board they tentatively have this on their agenda for october 3rd okay terrific so we have things to sign in there tonight related to this i think yes okay so you don't need those at this moment you can get them tomorrow or whatever okay thank you very much thank you for the information and thank you for coming in okay next up we have 655 is uh back to school update initiatives and issues so back when i was planning to do this i didn't realize all the other things that were going to consume me over the last two weeks um so i don't have quite the memo for you that i would have liked to have provided tonight but i did want to give kind of a background so people understand what's going on um in relation to uh off-campus behavior issues and various umass uh things just to kind of give some context for for what the year is going to look like so um i still mean to turn this into a more formal form that i can give out to all of you because i think it's an important reference to have um so just as sort of a way of introduction to uh to what's going on with the university's efforts and the town's efforts uh per off-campus stuff um first of all i wanted to give a little bit of background so people understand the context in which we're having these discussions uh a lot of things changed starting in the winter of 2011 and at that time the municipal strategies subcommittee of the campus and community coalition started advocating to the administration at the university to make the code of student conduct apply to off-campus behavior as well as on-campus behavior um that had been fairly ambiguous before uh it is now quite unambiguous that change was accepted there were wording changes there were policy changes and that became official in the spring of 2011 so last school year was the first school year that we've had with the with that being in full operation uh in the fall of 2011 uh that was the first year with that very explicit message there was also new personnel in the dean of students office uh the dean herself dean of students and kugelai as well as what i believe was a new position at that time which was an associate dean for off-campus and graduate students so that was devoting new personnel entirely to uh to these issues um that was also fall of 2011 was the first year of the expanded new student orientation and this is an orientation program that happens during the fall uh rather during the summer as well as in the fall and the fall component had starting last year them bringing uh first year students onto campus several days early so they could have all kinds of activities to acclimate them to the university and educate them about what it meant to be a UMass student both on campus and off campus lots of messaging happens at those as far as laws and policies and expectations and consequences and the convocation that happens during that event includes all of the students taking a pledge together about what it means to be um good student citizens uh of the campus and the larger community and that includes a pinning ceremony et cetera um so this has now been two incoming freshman classes with this new class this year that's two classes who have been through that whole new student orientation change over and kind of the new messaging and the new activities that are associated with that so uh so it will take two more years until the full student body has essentially gone through that process um and also in the fall of 2011 they created for the first time an off-campus student center and this is a way of staying in touch with off-campus students to try and keep them feeling very connected to the university but it's also a very important channel of communication to them about policies expectations et cetera also starting in the fall of 2011 and this was really in direct response to the town of Amherst and in particular the Amherst police department um they've created a new mass night out and so these are activities on campus they're now happening the first friday of every month and this was as i said in response to feedback from the town in particular the officers in the Amherst police department were hearing from students that when they were interacting with them in in off-campus situations that there just wasn't anything happening on campus like they had to be off-campus looking for other options because uh because there weren't other options um so that was created last year so now we're in our our second year of that we've had a full year of that and that has really been expanded um so that brings us to fall of 2012 uh the uh this year the the new student orientation that i talked about was combined with transfer student orientation so there's a significant number of students who transfer to the university massachusetts every year those folks were previously kind of not not being part of all the same messaging as new students so that has been combined for this year that off-campus student center that they created last year is now not just an administrative office but it is a expanded renovated hugely expanded and concept essentially a lounge in the in the student union that that is really a place for for those folks to connect really be a resource for each other there's a whole social networking component to it there's a lot going on there they also in the fall of 2012 the university has created these off-campus student life coordinator positions and this is brand new they've hired five students to be living in the neighborhoods to help the uh other students that off-campus students kind of learn what it is to be off-campus citizens and and help them navigate that those positions are still really kind of developing as far as as what they're going to do and whether they're also going to be a resource to the neighbors themselves or whether there's more of a resource to the students but but that is a really interesting and wonderful development that the university is doing and in part modeling it after what has been very successful in other college communities so I wanted to talk about all of those things because I think that there's an awful lot of attention that goes into these efforts myself Mr. Musanti the police department all kinds of members of town staff trying to deal with these issues in many different ways dealing with the university in many different ways and I don't think we do a good enough job putting this information out there to folks so this is kind of mostly the university-centered part of it there have been all kinds of other efforts on the town's behalf the police department is particularly effective and thorough in really going door to door in the high student rental neighborhoods being very clear with the students what the expectations are what the laws are etc and so those efforts have really expanded next year we're looking to have our police department actually be part of the new student orientation so that the chief for his designate could help to welcome those students to campus and and to the community and let them know what expectations are so this is this is kind of as far as I got before I ran out of time on my memo but this is the kind of thing that I want to be doing a better job of presenting to folks the other thing that I wanted to talk about very quickly in relation to this is how the discipline process works every single dealing that the Amherst police department has with with a student off campus that results in a ticket or an arrest or something like that is reported to the dean of students office the dean of students follows up on every single report that they get they do an investigation and reports can come not just from the dean of students office they could come from neighbors they could come from anybody who is dealing specifically with with students in a problem situation what the dean of students office needs of course is specifics they don't respond to like oh this house is really noisy or whatever but if you give them specifics and and if it generates either a report on your half or by the police department then that all gets followed up on so every every student that deals with that is touched if you will by the dean of students office and they have their own processes for what happens the first step of of course is is educational a lot of times the students just don't recognize that what they did had negative impacts on folks and so they do different things to try and educate them about that the worst the infraction then obviously the worst the sanction and there has been a real uptick in the suspensions and expulsions that are happening at the university what the university is trying to do now is find a way to quantify those disciplinary numbers and report those to folks because again that has been something that is effective in deterring bad behavior by the students and it's such a critical thing for the community to know about follow-up so they are working on how to do that right now they've been working on that for since last year and and I expect you're going to start hearing more about that this year so all of that being said we know that we've also had sort of a tough start to the semester some of that is to be expected and some of it is disappointing considering all of the efforts that we have going on here but I want folks to know what a serious priority this is on behalf of the town as well as the university and that the steps that are being taken to address it are often fairly invisible some of that invisibility is just because like we can't how do we talk about everything here at a select board meeting and if we're not talking about it here then where are we talking about it but we need to find other ways to talk about it another part of the invisibility is there are privacy issues of course surrounding students just as there are surrounding anybody so the university is not able to be specific about you know Joe Schmoe got in trouble for whatever and here's how he was punished that is simply information that's protected by federal law but the university is very aware that the that the community is looking for needs to know what kind of follow-up is happening so I wanted to give just sort of a general introduction to that stuff right now and and we'll be talking a lot more about it as as we do every week and as the weeks go by what I usually do is I talk about these things during the member reports under my my liaison report for campus and community coalition often that's too late in the evening so I'm kind of doing my report in shorthand and we're all kind of falling asleep and we're trying to get out of here I'm going to try and do this especially to present it in in writing so that it becomes a resource document and then it maybe happens earlier in the evening also we talked last time about Mr. Musanti is going to be giving regular updates on the safe and healthy neighborhoods initiative the stuff that's specifically happening within town hall to be dealing with these things so this is all part of better educating the community about stuff that's going on would you like to say anything about the issues we've had so far this semester sure and thanks that was an excellent excellent summary and as you said there's many components to addressing some of the issues that arise from our our thriving as a college town and you mentioned education and communication and but also enforcement and so with the start of the fall semester you know we had a an uptick in activity that in many respects is not unusual a little more disappointing this year because of the the other initiatives that have been made for example we had 46 summons arrests over the weekend uh we had an uptick in in ambulance related calls we did have increased staffing which we do strategically during the academic year uh Thursday Friday Saturday evenings and that's most appropriate as we try to put our public safety dollars to the most effective use uh there's still a lot of efforts going on we did have get some feedback from officers for example in the philip street neighborhood near the university that there were housemates on the front porch in many respects uh Friday evening for example telling the many passers by that there was no uh no party going on and people went on their way we have noticed at the beginning of this semester there seemed to be more uh more uh pedestrians out there in the evening hours and so that's part of our ongoing dialogue with neighbors and with college officials and public safety personnel to uh better understand that and really fulfill uh an enforcement role but also at the same time knowing that a large part of our our public safety effort is in the form of prevention so we're working at it it's hard but we're we're committed to it thank you very much and i'll just add one thing before i take comment if anyone would like to comment um a lot of the efforts have been directed at the kids who live off campus um what we've found is that we have to make sure that we're also directing these efforts to the kids who live on campus but are going off campus for their uh their activities um so there has been a real increase in how we're getting this information to residents life on campus and there's going to be essentially kind of its own targeted campaign to the to the residents life staff about these these issues of of being respectful and quiet when you're going through the neighborhoods thinking about the fact that these are you know families who who live in these houses people have to get up in the morning kids who have to go to school uh etc so um there's there's there's more of this that's happening than i can be talking about in specifics uh in this short amount of time but i just wanted to to give folks some context for for how very much is happening and let you know that we're always trying to improve it's always about trying to see how we how we um can do this better and it really is challenging when you think of the fact that 25 percent of the student body turns over every year so uh so it's always new lessons to new people um so uh questions or comments on any of this from the select board miss broer a couple of things first of all our heart felt thanks for the amount of time that an effort that you've put into this you've added on at least another part-time's jobs worth of time on this that wasn't being spent by previous select boards on a regular basis certainly not during the time i was paying attention and before i just joined the board so um i appreciate all the extra effort associated with that and i have to say that also because i'm going to ask a couple questions but um but also just it's an amazing effort and i really appreciate the fact that the university is working so closely with you and with town staff so that it's not just they're telling us what they're doing but that they're actually working together and interacting i think in a much more effective way than it's been done in a long time along those lines one of the things i think that because of the turnover and the slight changes in the way they're approaching things that i think they haven't been very effective at explaining and maybe they could do a little bit better job so that you could continue to explain it to people is um for one is i appreciate very much what you said about attempting to quantify the uh expulsions and suspensions to really we people want to hear that yes people have been said you can't do this anymore you just have to leave and obviously there are the policies of concerns so i think you know if you could just remind them how much we appreciate that because when we hear about a process that talks about you know each of these is followed up well what were they doing five years ago what were they doing ten years ago tell us that ten years ago you know what we didn't do anything with it because we didn't know what to do i mean i think there's an acknowledgement piece there that hasn't happened on the university's part because obviously no one wants to look uncomfortable but there has to have been a change in the way that it's being approached and i think that they should feel proud of the fact that they've decided to reconsider in light of all things um that they are now taking things differently not that they didn't take them seriously but they seem to be following through in a different way also along those lines is although i totally appreciate and i'm very excited to see the information about the off-campus student center the fact that it's a lot they had one of those they called it something else for decades it was a commuter resources office you could go in you could find out where your housing was you could join an oil co-op you could find out about part-time jobs i mean it was it was a it was a drop in place again when they say oh we have this new off-campus students it's well what was that thing that you had for years and years and why is this better you know this is even more it's not just a bunch of notebooks and a couple people talking about landlord tenant law which was the other thing they did um but it's even better and it's even more useful to students so i think if they would take a little bit of their own history and explain to people why now is different i think that would help people a lot and the comment for the town manager associated with the pedestrians one of the other things i think we're starting to hear more and more and hopefully we'll also be addressed by somewhat by our taxi regulations changing in january is that i'm hearing more and more from people who get stressed out not only about the number of crowds of students walking but the taxis that are building up in various parts of town they don't it's like suddenly we didn't have taxis before how did kids get there before we don't quite know how this works but it seems to be adding to the impact some neighborhoods are feeling associated with that so that's something to take into account obviously as we discuss the taxis but also i don't know quite what to do with it but if there's if there's something in some parts of town where we might need more of a drop-off area or a pickup area or something it's um it's starting to cause some stress now if it turns out we only have three taxi companies left after we change our regulations and i guess it won't be an issue as much but it could potentially still be out there we appreciate people driving together yet at the same time it's a concern thank you very much as i first i've heard about the taxi issues in that way so i appreciate that very much and to your other point about there really has been just so much change in the administration at the last couple of years at at very high levels and in many different offices and you know like anything the university is a very large bureaucracy and it has a long and storied past and and this really is representing a cultural shift within the university and it's interesting when we talk with folks from the dean of students office about accountability you know they're they're holding a kid accountable and they suddenly get all these phone calls from you know parents uh all kinds of alumni saying oh come on now you know this we did stuff like this when i was there you know legislators lawyers of course everybody calls their lawyer for anything today um so and and interestingly even sometimes professors because really this isn't it takes time to change the the culture and the expectations on campus and uh so uh so it's it's been really fascinating um so keep the feedback coming um anybody else from uh first of the select board want to comment or question anything about this okay anyone from the public want to comment about this okay excellent thank you very much and uh you'll be hearing more about that next up new business licenses we have a food truck al saeed fab del gliel for halal food please come forward i apologize for how poorly i must have pronounced your name so if you could say it better that would be great that was much better um so you are right you could sit um so you are going to have a food truck doing business as halal foods and we have your application information um so where are you planning on operating and he was right here at the street right here but i forget the name of the street north pleasant street yeah main street and is this a new business for you or just new and emerson you know i i was i used to i used to do it in new york and i work there like almost like eight year and i have one of my cousin he used to be in the college over here and he told him about it and he you know tell me if you want to do it like a little lunch car over here and i come and see the area and i said you know i can like to do like a new business over here very good um so we know from past food truck licenses which suddenly we're having more of we had like never done this before in the last year we've had several um that we really don't have a lot of jurisdiction over these um they when you have the um the state license that's required you basically get a license from the town saying yes okay um but there's there's really almost nothing we can do to limit it so uh so just so folks know that does anyone have any questions for this gentleman about his new food truck miss stein and then mr waltz um i don't see the hours of operation on this um motion so i was wondering it's possible that's something we can't regulate but we'll see so do you know your hours of operation it was i think it was from 11 to 11 11 11 because it is on some motions and not on others on these clear okay that was normal thing so we can add 11 to 11 for this one and mr waltz just a comment that it's nice to see this because in recent years we've seen more and more halal food in regular grocery stores so it's nice to see it in the food truck too to serve the growing muslim population welcome that oh thank you thank you any other questions or comments on this the steiners like to make the motion i move that the select board approve a lunch cart license for lcd f abdel glale i'm sorry that's all right i'm doing business as halal food to operate from 11 am to 11 pm within the public way on the corners of north pleasant in amity street and keloch avenue and north pleasant street pending issuance until any slash all outstanding town department regulations have been satisfied second further discussion on favor say hi hi hi hi that's unanimous thank you very much congratulations good luck and we will look forward to trying your food all right next up then we have another food truck license matthew rathburn for happy hour hot welcome thank you thanks for having me and so let's see i already said your name is matthew rathburn which i'm assuming i've pronounced correctly you did that was much easier and so tell us about your hot dog business it's a mobile food cart i built it myself it's about four feet by five feet long i included pictures in the application i'm not sure if it made its way to you i don't think we got it's just basically a little food cart a little bit bigger than this double the width it's got an umbrella with some lights around it and it's just basic hot dogs soda water and potato chips is like that and so this is one that you use on the sidewalk as opposed to on the street yes it's on a trailer but it's very small so i can push it around myself it's very light and it could fit on the sidewalk it could fit in a parking space you know whatever's easiest but it's very mobile and it's very small okay so you understand you can't be blocking the sidewalk in the public way and um there could be times that if you're outside directly outside of a restaurant they could ask you to move along to somewhere um so it's it's uh it's really about not blocking the sidewalk part in particular okay okay um so we do have a little bit more regulation over these because it is a sidewalk thing so do people have other issues with where he is on the sidewalk miss stein not so much where it is on the sidewalk but i was wondering how you keep the food cold oh there's the um i don't did you get the picture no okay so what it is is it's got the grill where you steam in everything and then there's a cooler inside the cart there's a few coolers inside of it okay and that's kept cool by ice because you can't plug it in it's it's a battery no it's a very thick cooler and there's packs that go inside it and the packs can keep things cool for up to two weeks okay and i only need it for one night per shot so yeah it usually works out miss burr um although we clearly don't know as much as we might know about lunch cart licenses which has nothing to do with our lovely applicants we have this evening i think it is clear that there's a town of amherst health permit associated with that so although satisfying our curiosity is always something we enjoy doing um clearly the board of health must have thought that the cooling was acceptable or they would not have done their part of this so that's why we vote on these basically with this new language you know that all the other regulations that are like real regulations like board of health regulations whereas our regulations seem to be zero associated with this we don't seem to be able to control the hours and obviously the sidewalk part of it would must be up to the police to you know keep a free flow of traffic kind of thing right it's the health department not the board of health because as lee is on the board of health i guarantee you never discuss the town of amherst health permit you're right okay sorry all right i must say i'd never seen these other questions or comments from select board all right anyone all right nistine would like to be i move that the select board approve a lunch cart license for matthew platform doing business as happy hour hot dogs within the public way in front of 54 north pleasant street amherst m a from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. pending issuance until any slash all outstanding town department regulations have been satisfied second for the discussion all in favor say aye aye that's unanimous mr bird did you vote yeah yes she voted unanimously um question she would just ask the town manager to add this to miss russell's long list of many regulations she's trying to sort out for us just to have if we have a what are we doing here i mean if we just say yes because everybody else said yes that's fine but if we actually do get to control the hours or we do get to control a particular intersection that'd be fine to know but in the meantime it's like whatever i think i think we have one of those from the past that i should have asked to have included just even to but if there's like a checklist of like you can control this thing but you can't control these 12 things so don't even bother talking about those 12 aspects that'd be great but we know that all of our people that are town staff have done all the stuff they need to do so all right it's been moved second and voted we're all set you're all set congratulations good luck thank you very much for coming in all right do we have someone here from jay gumbels no one from jay gumbels for the common viturals license okay so we had thought that these folks were going to come in but common viturals licenses like a lot of these they don't necessarily have to come in we try and bring everybody in who's a new business in particular well a so we can ask them questions but also so that they have an opportunity to kind of introduce themselves to the public but what we had found with common viturals for a long time was that the places were opening before they had come to us for that license so because it's more important to us that they are appropriately licensed than that they come in because we're never going to reject a common viturals license once it's recommended to us for approval um then typically we just deal with these even if the folks aren't here so that way they don't open without the license so i will note that jay gumbels is located where uh the amish creperie was most recently on north pleasant street um and uh and they look to be opening very soon um so that's all i know about them questions or comments that i won't be able to answer okay miss dine was like to make the motion i move that the select board approve a common viturals license for pilot investment LLC doing business as jay gumbels at 19 north pleasant street amherst m a with hours of operation 11 a.m to 10 p.m monday through saturday and 11 a.m to 3 p.m sundays client sir war um manager until any slash all outstanding town department regulations have been satisfied second for the discussion i just want to just note that in all of these cases and amongst all of the other food vendors in town the health department will be visiting them and we'll let us know if there's a problem absolutely that's true uh mr mcsandy i would just suggest you add the words after uh the manager's name uh pending issuance thank you i knew something i like that much but until i was like wait manager until outstanding yeah that cut the piece did quite work out okay mr okay can we do that for all all of the i'll say that they all do except for that one just didn't quite make it in for this one see how it says pending issuance until okay so it's that same phrase got it the um i just wanted to mention quickly that it it is a franchise then you can look it up online if you want to find out what it is before they get here i think they've already put venues up but um no it's out there all right uh i've lost track that was for the discussion we haven't voted yet right right we didn't vote okay because we added those words okay all in favor say hi hi hi that's unanimous thank you all right how's our timing thank you for catching on 726 all right good um so our 725 item then as we have a number of town manager evaluation performance goal things to deal with um the first one is relation to the evaluation um from this year following the last meeting's discussion of uh mr misanti's performance evaluation we went into executive session and we agreed on three changes to his contract which have all been announced and been in the paper uh he is going to have the term of his contract changed from what we called a rolling three-year contract we're rolling five-year contract uh he is going to get a one and a half percent salary increase and we are changing the cap on his long-term disability insurance so that it can adjust with periodic rate increases and that's just a reimbursement that he gets from the town for whatever amount he needs to pay on that um so we need to vote on those in open session in order to make all of those official so anybody have any questions about what we're doing or what we agreed to you any questions from anyone about this all right astine would you like to make those motions i believe that the select board approved the draft forms and process for the town actually is that the one no it isn't sorry no i don't know is we don't have a vote on the contract we don't vote on the contract i think we do have an open session absolutely so i'll just make up a vote yeah i'm pretty sure we need to vote in yeah well in session so anyway so i move that the select board approved the new town manager's contract with a rolling five-year plan and the one and a half percent increase in salary and the change to the disability and the change to the insurance reimbursement second further discussion miss burr and just to remind the public again that all those documents as you've said now a thousand times are online and we this is uh you know a continuation of a discussion from executive session it is and so all that good stuff that's in the evaluation supports why we're doing this so correct it's all out there on the website yes those who tune in on a weekly basis who really need a new hobby or as my husband would say a better cable package um they've been following this for a long time and and know all those documents okay uh that's been moved in second we vote i'm sorry my mind is wondering okay all in favor say hi hi hi and that was unanimous thank you next we have review the evaluation process for future improvement so this is something that we try and do every year after we finish up our very long uh and uh iterative process we look back and see okay how do we do it better next time and we try and do it well and everything is kind of fresh in our minds so i open the floor to the slack board to comment on anything about the evaluation process that they would like to see us improve for this year miss burr so one of the things that we touched on during our last discussion in open session associated with the process is whether or not um just to make the the next chair isn't as brilliantly creative as you are about figuring out what we actually meant when we said various things in various parts of the box we should probably come to some shared agreement if you don't mind me stealing your box for a moment as to whether or not when something has subheadings within a box if you're supposed to rate each one of the items separately or if there is a rating per box because when you're trying to convert it into something else it makes it a little trickier to do so do we need to break things into finer pieces or we can we vote within them because if nothing else i don't really care how we do it but i would never have considered that we should do them separately within a box that just did not occur to me it was like one box one vote other people clearly didn't feel that way so just so that we all know when we're filling out the form what we all should be doing that would be awesome okay so uh so folks who are following along know what we're talking about this is specifically to the select board's evaluation form itself and how we interpret the um when we do our goals some of the goals are our multi part part a b c d some of us give a single answer for those multi parts and some of us break it into the uh a grade per a b c and d thank you that was much clearer miss stein i'm one of the people who breaks it into parts because to me each part is somewhat different and um if the way it's done with with points a b c and d makes it seem like i should answer point one a and one b and one c and one d and not do it communally and i don't mind doing it that way um if it creates problems for you when you're trying to summarize across the board then i can change my procedures not a problem for me whatsoever no i'm happy to to find a way to interpret what folks have done um do other folks have strong feelings about this one way the other mr. hidden strong i don't know but feelings indeed the um the same quandary we all had it um and i believe i went both ways in my in my evaluation some of them i read separately um as much as a rhetorical device um you know you use the tools that you have at hand to try to get the point across it yes this is something we really like and we want more of it and oh here's a little thing and maybe we want a little different tack on that so it's it's i'm afraid it's a very human process no matter how many boxes and how small those boxes get jeez other thoughts about this particular issue um so i'll note that um as i've said before the uh the the form is a very inexact instrument that that tries to catch a wide net and really just um capture as much reaction from all of us as possible and then it's it's about interpreting that so on the one hand i wouldn't tend to get too um concerned about any little detail of it at the same time uh it wouldn't hurt for us to all try doing it that way next year and well if we don't like it we can go back or something so can we can we give it a shot we can agree to try to to do all all the parts of it next year and i'll just note that down for something that we would then i would remind us of when we do this again next summer which will be here before we know it mr. hidden i just want to uh draw our attention and and and be reminded of why there are big boxes and little boxes we do have the goals that we spend a lot of time with and that's what's important in all of this you know whether it's four boxes or two or you put one check or seven um the the i think the part that that we could be most um happy with is you know those those half a dozen um specifically and general goals that we've set for the town manager something um you know i i'm feeling that um you know the big boxes with those goals in them which are broken out in various aspects are the thing that you know the town manager can sink his teeth into they're the things that we're looking for nuances here and there but this is what we're looking for so okay all right so we're good agreeing that we'll try and do that next year and i'll note that down okay anything else about the instrument as we call it the form process so i'll note that one of the things we talked about is the staff feedbacks um so this year we sent out 230 something staff uh feedback forms we got back 30 of them um and so then we wonder of course how representative that is and and what we should make of that information um one of the things we had talked about last year uh before we did the 2011 evaluation was to ask the staff afterwards what we could do to try and improve the feedback what would make the form more useful to them and increase the likelihood of their of their returning it um unfortunately mr musanti uh had a little accident right about that time and suddenly that was not the most important or relevant thing to be doing and seemed like a strange environment to be uh to be going through that process so we just skipped it and waited till this year um so we could do that this year the other thing that i was thinking is um we have mentioned how uh we have the new human resources director now and maybe before we send out any kind of questionnaire to the staff maybe i sit down with her kind of go through all of the pieces that we have get her reactions to them see what she thinks the strengths and weaknesses are of our process uh and then bring those thoughts to to the select board and see if there's something actionable from there so rather than just going ahead and sending out something to staff right now if that was her recommendation then she could help shape you know what that would be and whatever how does that sound mr hayden that sounds that sounds uh what what i would would want to expect i did just sort of want to uh mention uh the thought that one of the issues that comes up with any kind of questionnaire survey is whether or not the questions are appropriate to the population and um i don't know uh i don't i don't have a suggestion for this just an understanding that um we expect a different um interaction between the town manager and different populations of people who who work here um you know for some it's a daily interaction some it's a weekly some it's it's it's a little more superficial you know um and i'm hoping that we can that we can tease that out with our new deb okay uh the thoughts on that mr stein i was just going to say i sort of kept track of the 15 questions and the first five most people were able to make a comment without checking unable to judge and also nine and after that six seven eight and 10 through 15 seems like those were questions that a certain group of staff at least felt unable to judge and i think deb's input on this will be extremely helpful um you know they they may be perfectly good questions for a subset and we may just have to accept the fact that a certain number will say they can't judge because they don't have that particular interaction or whatever right and so yeah it'll be interesting to get her feedback is is part of the problem that we're we're asking people to rate as opposed to maybe if they were all open-ended you know and we're looking for sort of sentence answers maybe that would be better or maybe that'd be worse because nobody wants to do that who knows so um i think getting her perspective would be good before we kind of make a big change there miss purr i agree and i and i very much want these pieces of information to be provided to her when we're asking for that perspective so um you know what erin was saying about the differences what about the specific questions that diana just brought up and of course my brilliant idea which is um something more along the lines of and again just to put into the hopper sort of thing what's the town manager doing particularly well what's something the town manager could do better just those two you know that's sort of the opposite of what we've been doing and so somewhere between all these places we may be able to come up with something and i also think that we should feel open to different groups depending on how people might self-define um could have different types of questionnaires as well there isn't like you know the robin and the blackbird questionnaires but it's like there could be differences depending on if his department heads maybe should be asked a slightly different set of questions and then we know it was all from department heads and that'd be fine or if people that you know that see him less for example just because that's their day to day jobs maybe something that's more open-ended you know what's not what are they what's the worst or best something that's done particularly well something that could be done better and it may turn out to not even be a town manager task which is also something we do occasionally see referenced in our written comments it's not clear to me that sometimes people know what the town manager's role is and so he's criticized for something that really isn't under his control anyway so um we should be open to possibilities and the idea that it's kind of an ongoing pilot you know that it's not done like you say it's always in flux and that we're always just trying to do better not to like this is the questionnaire we will use for the next 10 years okay so I will talk with Mr. Sellon and I don't know when it won't be for the next meeting but before too long I'll bring you back some great results from that Mr. Hayden just to follow up on on the comment a recollection I wanted to recall that the the sentences that we got on those questionnaires were amongst most helpful piece of information certainly the most complete it's um it's a little bit of a problem and I also sort of remember that it's a bit of a problem because not everybody communicates with the pen and pencil in the that's not for some that's not their most effective way to communicate and I don't know how to address and get to the other ones as well checkboxes are good for some people one to one is best for others right thank you all right other thoughts on this all right anything else then about the process this year I thought the timing and everything of it went pretty well speaking of timing I mentioned to the audience that some stuff got changed on our agenda and not all the timing changes carried through so the town managers report will is probably not going to start on time at 745 I had been planning it for 755 but that didn't make it all the way through but we will get to it just as soon as we get to it so I apologize and thank you for your patience um okay so then I'll work on that part for the for the staff part and we will unless we have other thoughts on this now we'll save those for when we preview the process before we do it next year this bro just on one other aspect of our process I think we're in great shape in the direction on that and once again thank you madam chairperson for having that conversation so that we don't have to um is in regards to the other out the other outreach that we do to committee chairs and um town meeting members which gets almost no response and I at this point figure oh well I I think it's good that we do it I still think it's good that we go ahead and do that outreach I'm not sure it's really gaining us much but I think it's just another way of alerting the world to the fact that we're doing it so although it's disappointing we don't get more feedback that way it's probably uh no news is good news situation at least I'll feel free to interpret it that way and um so I wouldn't I I guess my point is that's part of our process and I'm not concerned about that part of our process I'm willing to just let it ride yeah I think that that's going pretty well and and folks should know that of course we're interested in feedback all the time you know so when we when we send out that reminder about um about feedback specifically during that time period that's to make sure they get it into us if they want to it doesn't mean that they couldn't have commented to us at any time previously during the year so uh so it's just kind of a reminder for anybody who wants to participate okay anything else on this then before we move on to goals okay so then the next part of this is the fy 13 town manager performance goals so we have been talking about um all summer long when we were having these discussions we were having the um the goal discussion kind of in parallel with whatever step of the evaluation process that we were in because they are so kind of tightly aligned um so we have at this point gone through several discussions of town manager performance goals and um and a couple things have happened one is that we decided to carry over all of the goals from last year unchanged as of the last conversation about it we did not choose to add any new goals to this as of the last conversation about it since that time we did our big discussion about the evaluation specifics and we found that on some of the goals we realized that we need to be more clear we need to have better shared expectations of what we're looking for from some of these goals before we can possibly hold the town manager accountable for them so we thought we were doing that all along but it turns out we weren't it was very obvious in how we all responded to that stuff so um so thoughts related to that different um starting with that that last point different clarity that is needed from the existing goals that we learned via the evaluation process miss brewer well i know that um on item at least my last set of notes on this on item nine we were talking about the recommended staffing plan which was not entirely clear on what our expectations were there in terms of is it is it just more information in the big budget book and the answer was actually no that's not what we're looking for um it was my understanding that it was more of a framework that is looking at what our fire department should look like given our current circumstances and what best practices are not just our goals within the next year our five years it it just doesn't feel like quite the same document and i'm not sure i have a better way of describing that but um it's perhaps yeah it's not the same as what the extra words are in the big budget but all right so when i brought up this goal last year um my sense of it was that this would be a document that is sort of analogous to the open space and recreation plan you know something that you actually can work with and plan from that is also analogous to the facilities report that would talk about especially in the context of having gone through such dramatic cuts in the last several years to deal with the budget crisis um what in today in today's needs and circumstances what is the right size of the staff for these various departments and that it mentions in the goal that that would in part be in consultation with those staff you know so did you did your staff lose um an administrative assistant and a professional during the stature and is that working or it's not working do you are you still short an administrative assistant so that's something we should plan for obviously the bigger ones that we talk about our police and fire what what does that look like in a perfect world um so that when we do our budget priority guidelines and so that when town meeting is dealing with the budget we're talking about new staff positions in some kind of a context and that we all have kind of a plan to refer to that we can say okay the uh you know the fire department is short by optimally x number of people so when a when a new staffing opportunity comes up you would see that you're you're kind of trying to fill in the fill in the gaps there um I I don't know if it can happen in the document or if it happens more depending on the circumstances that those would somehow be prioritized against each other so not just within a department that you know you need two people or you know you're fine or whatever but all right if this department is is short two people and this one is short one person where where do those fall in relation to each other so it's basically to to get a sense of the staffing needs going forward so these things don't just kind of grow organically and by accident but with some purpose and so that we have the opportunity to take advantage of you know various funding opportunities that come along or whatever that all these conversations are happening in a context so I would see this being very much a document a document that would be department by department with maybe a kind of an overall sense that probably will change over time maybe that overall part or maybe even the details within the department would be kind of constantly updated depending on the circumstance also like the kind of the jcpc five-year capital plan um you know at this the your because everything is just a snapshot in time so with this snapshot in time here's what we think the staffing needs are but of course that's going to change with every you know month and year that we don't fill them so then we'll go to mr we see but it is that does that sound like something that we want and is reasonable or am I just pushing this and we think this is a stupid idea and we can forget about it mr. Hayden no I I think it's it's it's a it's a valuable tool to to try to to create um I believe I may have given mr. Mazzani the highest marks in this category because we already have at the end of the beginning of this information in the budget if you actually read the narrative that comes with every department it there was often a paragraph about staffing needs and the demands you know sort of how many you know how much is getting done or not getting done depending on who is there that's sort of somewhere near the fte line so I mean it's not something that is not being attended to now it is being attended to it is being thought about just sort of what what you were looking for which was a little different again the clarity that was a little different than I was looking for was was sort of this the consolidation of it and um I I think we can agree that having consolidated is valuable is useful I'm not exactly sure what I would expect that to look like though because unlike a a capital plan or a um a description of you know what buildings we have and what state they're in the demands are changing all the time job descriptions are changing sort of what the department has to handle is changing I mean we're gonna we're gonna find an example of that I think in a planning board recommendation for the budget here down the road a little piece for instance so I just want to sort of give a little bit of leeway to figure out what it looks like rather than a sort of a seven-part document with five subsections right right so I think that I think that we could sort of see how this works you know if it if it doesn't work and and again I'll ask you what you think of it in just a second but um you know if you start from this concept of giving it a plan and giving it some context something that we can plan for and track and and prioritize as a community you know so that that's how you have a that's how you have a discussion about okay we we need x number of more police officers how does that compare to things you can have that kind of discussion that way um but it's also possible that it doesn't of course fit all neatly into a bunch of boxes like we would like it to I'm sitting here and thinking about the process and what actually happens and I'm wondering if if we could have two chances for John to respond one in which he does a draft in which we could say well we think you could spell out goal nine a little better so that we get closer to what it is we're aiming for um a draft of what a draft of his response to our goals we get he does a report for us as part of the evaluation process but that's it I mean he doesn't get a do over and what I'm suggesting is it might get us closer to what we're after if it came in two weeks earlier and we had a chance to say we'd like a little more flesh on these bones oh I see so you're saying about his self-evaluation yes I'm trying to get okay what he evaluates closer to our goals I mean it's a very good evaluation I think you know mostly he touches on the points but I think it's you know I gave him the highest marks for the people that got hired but the plan wasn't there you see what I'm saying and I'd like a chance for him to be able to for John to be able to say well this is this is the plan okay so that's kind of a timing and process right on our end at near the end of the process so hopefully because I think what I'm saying basically I don't have any problem with the goals what I want to make sure is that we get the optimal answers that we're looking for okay I think I I think I know what you're saying and I also think that by being more clear now so we're kind of spelling out now what we think that this should look like and then plus we have the progress reports as we go along and that was a little bit abbreviated last year because he was I also had the weirdest years um but uh but yes okay so I understand what you're saying miss burr yeah because I for a minute I was thinking maybe we needed to build in another step but maybe not yet um into the that's more of the evaluation process itself that maybe we need to build in that extra time but maybe by being able to not have any weird interruptions in our year we can also spend a little more time on the quarterly reports and be able to say at that point you know I'm not really sure we're all talking about the same thing here um because that can that could be hard to tell sometimes from the quarterly reports because of course it's a work in progress the other part of it I wanted to mention is that I know it always feels like we're just asking for more more more more more I would I would say that probably um based on not having read it again before I got here but in the big budget book that information does not need to be repeated in both places and so we're I think we could say that were this to happen this year that we're going to have such a document that we don't need to keep I personally do not find extreme value in the loads of text of the of the way we do the budget book now I've encouraged us for years to take some of that out because a lot of it just feels like rehashing cutting and pasting long-term goals that we're not actually getting to etc and I I see this is a more living breathing document than that once a year put it in a book and there it sits and if somebody wants to go and look at it fine so I would encourage that you know if we can find a way that you know we always talk about what do we want as opposed to figure out all the methods to get there but if there's something that needs to fall by the wayside that can fall you know that can be less important to me because that's not important to me what's important to me is trying to get to this type of report that we're looking at me sandy so you've heard us talk about this goal now for a while um so what do you what are your reactions to the concept and how you think it might be practically fulfilled uh yeah and I think the key word for all of us to keep in mind is practicality so that I'm spending the vast majority of my time on attempting to fulfill the goals in perhaps less time self reporting or draft self reporting or putting together a preliminary draft of the draft of the self reporting um having said all that the discussion is extremely helpful um and I think this notion that some of the long term objectives for the departmental units that were articulated in the budget book there was more information this last budget go around in there about staffing needs than there had been I think in the last several years um and I would agree with Mr. Hayden and that really is kind of a starting point but doesn't doesn't I think get to what the board was looking at because it's part of a much larger package of things some of which are personnel related and many of which are not um so this notion of periodically uh not necessarily every year but periodically having some kind of distilled uh articulation by the manager of staffing needs and priorities for the coming period would be helpful so I see the budget stuff as a starting point and um it's not an insignificant project to take it to the that next uh that next phase but I think I think I'm hearing clearly that's what that that's what you're looking for and that would be helpful as we consider grants and everything else uh going forward about staffing needs I think it will be really important really helpful for town meeting to have a sense of we're doing all of this why right you know it it gives more information about um trying to to meet the the future goals of whatever direction we're trying to go in so um I think I think it will be helpful so um so we so we've got this clarity on the concept do the words need to change or are the words good enough now that we've had this conversation so I'll kind of summarize that part in the in the list the post meeting list saying that we agree that this is a document or never and not uh not just information from the budget report okay um miss greenie had your hand raised is it about this particular goal number nine the goal in general okay I'm not going to call on you yet for that then but I will call on you eventually okay um so then other issues with the goals one of them that we talked about was also needing clarification was the part about on 3b about actively engaging the community to gather information about strengths and weaknesses of municipal service delivery and again I so are are we are we saying to him just in general that we hope you're being very diligent about municipal service delivery or are we saying take steps we want to know a b and c the kinds of things that that you your staff that that town government has done to uh to get information from the public about service delivery and so you can tell by how I'm asking this that I think it's the latter but uh but uh but this isn't the goals according to Stephanie so it has to be what we're jointly looking for Miss Stein I presume that the many emails that Mr. Rossanti gets from citizens talking about the strengths and weaknesses of the municipal system are are the way he gathers information about it I don't know that there's a process beyond that but I think that's fine it doesn't bother me as long as people know his email address and and write to him um I think that's acceptable I'm not sure what else we're looking for I mean we've had in previous select board in previous select boards there was a system set up which didn't seem to work because the answers didn't go out and wasn't clear exactly sometimes to whom the particular complaint was going or the particular issue so I think the current system is fine I don't think it needs to be formalized beyond that so I'm happy with it so so you would say basically we don't need 3b and this could just be 3a essentially reformatted well I suppose we could always you know critique his response or you know I mean that gives you an opening um but yeah we give you an opening to say whether he is answering responsibly etc etc um but I don't think you need a formal a more formal process okay so I'm saying so uh the the example we always use for this was the suggestion box were we looking for more than a suggestion box I feel the email is the modern-day suggestion box okay so I guess so my reaction to that is that that is that is passive you're waiting for people to reply as opposed to actively seeking their response and and you know so either one is fine it's just a question of being clear which one we're looking for um on the side first then Mr. Wells yeah I think there's more clarity would be useful there uh I think there's also some danger of confusing the questions are we looking at the delivery of services and the citizen satisfaction or are we looking at Mr. Muzanti's response I don't those are totally separate questions and I think we're talking about the former there is some danger though of trying to have to invent a new system to accomplish that because I would think that the emails are not very useful because you get crank emails from people who are irritated about something or you get the occasional deleted email but he said it's passive it's not representative and it's basically of analytical value zero so I don't know I would like to have better feedback on how the town delivers services but I would be a little bit hesitant to try to invent a new system on the spot and put the burden on the town manager so I'm not quite sure how to get from here to there but I think it is that we do need a more quantifiable data driven assessment of performance but it's not that it's the town's performance we're talking about here in the sense that the town manager is overseeing not his performance in responding okay Mr. I I I'm finding myself about having to resist drifting towards figuring out the MCAS is going to be for the town manager that there are there are real problems as we know with high stakes kind of tests you know circle you know fill in the box and everything else that's just that's sort of a general comment specifically or or another general comment about this in particular is that right now there are two systems in place we've talked about one of them for for gauging this and that is you know this this you know government to the max I mean all of our emails are out there we get dozens of emails on on issues that people think are important everything from the pothole in front of my house to you know general policy that the town might might engage in that's one major component in sort of gauging the public's interaction with the municipal government the other one is a little bit more subtle but is in place and is I think I feel fairly effective and that is the series of reports that we already do get about the miles of asphalt that are installed every year you know how how many overtime hours there were in this department or that department how much snow was removed how much debris after a storm you know miles of pipe speed to response to a water main break this is all stuff that we already do get and certainly plays a role in my consideration for where I put my checkbox and the limb cast score on 3a or 3b okay so I think that that was actually pretty clarifying and I would like for us to think about a little bit more at least I would like to think about it a little bit more so I think Mr. Wilde really kind of made the point that Mr. Hayden's comments then elaborated on that the question is are we talking about the quality of municipal service delivery which is kind of the stuff that Mr. Hayden is speaking to or are we talking about the quality of collecting feedback on that delivery and so that um I would like to chew on that a bit more so so I think it's the collecting feedback part but but maybe we're putting too fine a point on this so um I would like to think about that one more and come back and with it Ms. Burr. Well while we're thinking about that I one thing we could consider is breaking a and b into two separate questions and maybe changing b and then it's just a different question to begin with but because there to me as and re-glancing over what was here in the town manager's self-evaluation is that 3a was accomplished in terms of providing us information engaged the community and provided information about town successes and challenges and sought support for initiatives I think the things he talked about a self-evaluation did all those things they didn't the community was not engaged to gather information about strengths and weaknesses of municipal it wasn't that's just a simple fact so I don't want to suggest your box I don't want a survey but um I think the thing I'm trying to get at and maybe this will help us figure out the phrasing of it is I'm trying to get at things like and I'm trying really hard to avoid criticizing any individual department but we'll do so because it's such a simple one um potholes street signs um I want a street sign on my street my street sign disappeared I wish we had a yield sign I wish we had this there is no transparent system for how that information is gathered and how that information is dispersed and whether or not it takes us four weeks to respond to something we never respond to something or it takes us a day and a half and then boom the new signs up I think that's the kind of thing that bugs people just like you know little things parking potholes the street sign that they asked for two months ago that they never heard back on and so that's the kind of municipal service delivery that I'm thinking of it would also incorporate which we don't seem to have a problem with but um if people had problems with when they went to the front when they went to either the town clerk's office or they went to one of the other desks where people are helped and if they felt like they consistently didn't get helped that would be the kind of thing we would want to know um and and know that it was being addressed in terms of engaging the community to find out what what could we be doing better to make this work I think we already do a bunch of those things we keep offering you know electronic billing that's even better and so we're ahead of we're way ahead of most of our complaints but there are some certain areas where it's not clear that things don't kind of go into a black hole rather than into a hopper that's all very well organized and that last system we had that wasn't a suggestion box but was another type of work order type thing just was way too cumbersome and way too difficult to deal with we need something that's not extra work for people but that they can report back as some things should be finite you should be able to say I can respond to this kind of request in x amount of time and look we got better um kind of thing is more what I'm looking for and you know in the in the private sector there's a sense a lot of companies saying you know how can we serve you better you know what are we doing wrong how do we do this better and and I'm not sure how to incorporate that concept into this all right we're gonna we're gonna not get totally sidetracked on this and and keep thinking about that were there any other of the goals that from our evaluation process we realized needed clarification of course we know we have talked about the human resources goal so I think that one's pending so we're gonna have a human resources assessment okay so we can just feel like that's that's what we meant now and we're good with that right so you're tell us what you think we're going to get from that just so that we we agree I mean it as a concept you're going to get a literally a human resources function audit right self audit by my new director with my input excellent who's gone to every single department and collected their information so we're going to get something very specific about that so we don't have to change any wording yay all right anything else on these for now just a moment miss greeny so are we also good with not adding any other new ones for right now okay so we're gonna we're not going to prove them yet we're going to come back next time this has been sort of a crazy a couple of weeks I haven't gotten to think too much about this so we'll think I'll think and whoever else wants to think about number three a little bit more and what else we want to do with that and then maybe we'll be ready to prove them at that time okay now miss greeny who's been waiting very patiently if you could come forward may I approach you to deliver the letter that I wrote just before the meeting so I don't think you have a chance to thank you good evening my name is wayling greeny and I am the chair of the housing for all citizens group and also a town meeting member from precinct 10 um in reading the packet about your process this evening I understand how from the memo dated august 27th that seems that tonight you are deliberating on what performance goals that you would like to include in 2000 FY 2013 so with that in mind today I would like to present on behalf of the housing for all citizen groups to you of our two additional items that we would like to ask you to consider to be added to the performance goals for FY 2013 so here is the letter dear select board as the chair of the housing for all citizen groups I'm here tonight to ask that you consider including the following in the FY 2013 time manager performance goals what you had in the draft in the draft that you were discussing left out two very important aspects of issues that impact many of our residents in the town of emerson these two points one we believe in the performance goals that the time manager should shall help emersed become a more affordable community with more housing being created that is safe decent and affordable he will initiate an advocate for new housing efforts and programs he will work with the UMass to lessen the negative affordability impact of the plant additional 3 000 student enrollment on emers housing and rental markets that's our first performance goal that we like to ask you to consider the second we like to ask you to consider is the town manager shall prioritize the housing shortage of residents and ensure that safe decent and affordable enhanced single room occupancy units are built to meet the needs of the 16 residents who have been identified by the town as being chronically homeless in emersed he will initiate an advocate for CVBG funds the allocated for the ESRO construction purpose he will commit to building four units per year in the next four years to house the 16 chronically homeless residents by including by include these two goals you demonstrate that you also represent the interests of the nearly 5 000 residents including almost 400 families who according to the most recent 2010 us census survey are living below the poverty line in our town those 16 individuals who have been identified by the town are Mo, Joe, Rob, Max, Chris, Ralph, Mary, Tracy, Raven, Ray, Randall, Dan, Carol, Harold, Nora, Chris, Jay, Christie, Christina, Tessara all these residents they have been around the town and you see them often on the town streets on the town common they show that the ineffective use of public dollars through the additional service requirement on the public safety system or the shelter system or the healthcare system be better to use those dollars spend on those systems for building ESRO units for them this way we'll alleviate the human suffering but also we have better public policy use our public dollars more wisely so with these two additions I would like to ask you to consider adding them to the future next year's town manager's performance goals thank you thank you very much does anybody else have any comment on the performance goals any additions or subtractions okay all right so we're not going to finalize these tonight anyway because we're still thinking about these I think that we should think of these and as we go forward also I'd like to commend Miss Greeny these are worded very well and it seems like it came directly out of our it's very much in the style and wording of our goals so good job so as far as the as the specifics of them let's uh let's think about them and we'll talk about these next time I apologize that this process is kind of stretching on a little bit longer but um it's important to have it be right rather than have it get rushed and so particularly we learned about the clarity issues from last year so all right so we're gonna we're gonna think about these we're gonna think about the other things we've talked about is there anything else that anybody wants to add to our FY 13 goals discussion for consideration such that we might be able to approve these at our next meeting improve whatever we have at that point okay okay good this was a good discussion thank you very much all right uh next up we are nice and late for I apologize the town manager's report Mr. Mecanti okay uh thank you um before I give you a shelter up today I wanted to very quickly uh remind folks in the community you may have seen over the weekend on the town website and in the newspaper stories about West Nile virus and eastern equine encephalitis uh rising concern in the state of Massachusetts the entire state is on an advisory uh as moderate higher level uh and urging residents to continue to take precautions against mosquito bites there are some communities including Amherst that have been designated as a at a high risk level and we and state health officials are urging residents uh to really take practical precautionary steps to minimize their exposure to West Nile virus mosquito bites etc so all the basics uh wearing protective clothing particularly after dark uh bug repellent fixing your screen windows all those kind of basic common sense things that are spelled out in the advisories that have come out of the state department of public health as well as the Amherst health department uh you can access those on the home page of the town uh website uh just urge the community to pay attention to that we'll be getting updates from the state uh over the next several days our next one is scheduled for Wednesday health director Julie Fetterman is front and center on that working with the rest of us to keep the community up to speed on that thank you okay next I want to provide an update on winter sheltering uh in the upcoming season uh we are and I'll ask Amherst media if you could try to adjust the uh the volume on the speakers within this room again uh I think the level was better before but it might need to be adjusted now so they're working on it see there you have to keep talking so that they can gauge it so that is that better okay thank you thank you for pointing that out because without the feedback then we don't know okay uh so I want to provide an update uh we're poised to begin a third winter season of active town involvement and partnership in order to provide funding for an overnight emergency shelter uh from November 1st through the end of April at the first Baptist Church on North Pleasant Street there's been a wonderful partnership that has developed over the past couple of years between the town uh the first Baptist Church and Pastor Moselle uh many community volunteers and beginning last winter and and poised to have their second year providing the on-site services at the shelter itself uh Craig's Doors uh who are also partnering with all of those people uh plus uh a uh growing relationship with a community non-profit interfaith housing so that's all very good very good uh three winters ago there was no shelter now we have a capacity for 16 beds um a couple of other updates um you know that when the shelter was created uh at the first Baptist Church because that's a non-conforming use for a a place of public assembly uh there were building code issues that needed to be addressed uh to make portions of the of the church space uh uh adequate for shell and safe for providing a shelter overnight shelter there were sprinkling system and other egress issues that were addressed uh very aggressively and successfully uh one of the requirements that was needed was to get a variance on building code and life safety issues from the board of building regulations in Boston and that variance was granted uh uh three uh two years ago now uh but just for a three-year period um as we headed into this winter season uh uh staff and I met with the shelter operator and uh there was consensus with my blessing for the uh uh shelter to pursue an updated variance because that was time limited uh and uh that required a denial locally uh by the building department which was a planned denial kind of a weird process uh that went down to uh Boston and uh a couple weeks back now uh the state board uh on a on a split vote on a two to one basis uh granted the variance uh which was a very positive development uh because that gives us uh flexibility uh over the next three years uh in terms of uh the footprint uh to be considered for the shelter itself uh and potentially occupancy uh limits although they made no ruling about occupancy limits they were talking about safe use of the space so that's a positive thing because it gives us some flexibility in our local local decision making the uh operating standards for the shelter will be determined and through a contractual uh basis with the town and it's really through our block grant community development block grant contract uh with them that spells out certain uh conditions um so really beginning in in after the last uh winter season and into the summer and now into the early fall uh staff and I have met multiple times uh with uh our shelter providers and representatives from interfaith housing uh staff have identified uh a number of of issues uh uh that needed attention uh including uh and our building commissioner Mr. Mora really continuing to express concerns uh about overall life safety issues uh in the building that the shelters operated uh and things like that I know that he uh was scheduled to go on a site visit today and I'm awaiting a report back from him on that and that's a very positive step his his onsite familiarity uh in addition to his predecessors and that was an open issue uh the last time I met with the shelter group so I know that that that was occurring today in our health department uh again the concerns have been about besides just the various placement of of cots etc and uh demarcations between the sections for men and women for example there's also uh concerns expressed about uh the relative lack of daytime services how the populations needs are are served during the day when the shelter is not open uh and the ongoing need that's been reinforced uh repeatedly uh by our partners in the region and in state government uh that it needs that whatever we're doing on shelter issues in Amherst needs to be part of a regional uh solution uh needs to be coordinated uh very closely uh that remains a an ongoing challenge it's hard for the town it's hard for the provider uh we're committed to trying to work in partnership to further those relationships and uh um well we've had a lot of progress on the services provided at the shelter the last couple of years that one quite frankly remains uh uh not where we need it to be and uh that's a very important one could you just clarify uh which point needs additional attention the better coordination with our regional partners uh the the approach on uh addressing homelessness how it relates to housing issues uh creating housing uh how the uh emergency shelter providers are working with professional human service support agencies to work with individuals uh that they serve how that can be best coordinated uh on the police side uh you know we made a very conscious decision a few years back to open a shelter uh very needy population uh law enforcement plays a role we've had a very successful uh collaboration between the shelter provider and the Amherst police including nightly visits from one of our officers and I think that's been proven to be helpful uh for all concerned um and just uh uh concern about calls for service uh outside of shelter hours so those are the main ones um having said all that uh our staff have worked closely with the shelter operators they've done a very good job in terms of providing us uh data on those being served and their in their uh backgrounds and needs uh and those they're not able to serve as best as they can identify there are many more people for example uh on on most evenings uh who are able to come for uh to get warm early on before the shelter opens or uh be fed a meal but because of the capacity limits are not uh not able to be housed overnight um so uh so the the uh the accumulation of all those things I have to tell you quite frankly and I've said this to the shelter providers and it's not something they want to hear I have some serious concerns about in year two of our relationship with the current provider despite some of the progress we've made last year I'm having some serious reservations about whether it makes sense to substantially expand our capacity when those coordination issues with the other human service professionals uh need to be need to be strengthened and what are the community impacts that uh we need to think through I have not made any final decisions on that my intention is to finalize that finalize that in the coming days I'm very much interested in in the board feedback on this and uh but we are looking forward to another very very uh successful uh winter and I'll stop there okay first we'll take questions and comments from the select board miss brun and then miss stein one of the things that's been that's been um very different about this process this time around is that when when there was a big change coming when there was the change from the warming shelter to becoming an overnight shelter the select board was rather heavily involved because there were lots of community comments and questions associated with the various rules um if the select board had not become advocating and involved we would not have the shelter that we have now because at first some of our people that are our wonderful town employees didn't want to do the things that the select board wanted to do and we were able to work together and come to a to an agreement as to what we could do it's been a little confusing this time around that there has been press about the fact that the shelter wants to expand and we've heard almost nothing about that at the select board level so one of the things I had asked the town manager to mention this evening but he probably thought was too boring for everyone was what the process was because although of course it is the town manager's job to receive recommendations from the community development block grant advisory community because that's where the money is coming from as to the way that the contract should work and they have been that body has been involved with the shelter since it became a shelter it's it's also that you know the select board is the place where people expect to be able to give this information and we've been getting lobbied associated with this and hearing things from the newspaper as to how this should work at the same time because we haven't really been in the loop from so it's like on the one hand appropriately the shelter hasn't been coming to the select board saying do something for us because they've been working with the town manager but now that they're not getting the answer they want it feels like they're coming to us and we don't know what's going on so I appreciate what you've shared with us and what you've shared with us individually but for the community to understand that this has not like been this big discussion with all with this board too it's been associated with the way the contract works and that is what's considered normal one of the things that I am having a really hard time understanding though from the standpoint of the way the newspaper coverage has been put out and the way it's been headlined in comparison to the paper that we've seen is that it's not been at all clear to me that when we have a shelter that very wonderfully offers meals and a place to get warm to far larger than our capacity to keep people that we could possibly tease out the numbers between people who fully expected to show up at a shelter and get to sleep there that night versus people who know that it's a place that they can come and get warm and get a meal which is a great thing and maybe they'll get a chance to sleep there that night it feels totally unreasonable to say that because 25 extra people or five extra people came for a meal and we couldn't house them that night that that means that we are under capacity by five or 25 I feel that that is just not the way to collect data and so I'm very confused by how one determines what should one do about capacity even given given all we've talked about regionally and given what the clear limitations are of the space I mean we might want to stuff more people in there but there is a limit as to how many people we can stuff in there no matter what our intentions are so how do I I'm very concerned about the idea that we're being told suddenly who we're way over capacity and that doesn't feel to me like that's a fact that we can work with so how do you work with that and work with the west like the whole western mass regional thing well first I mean the select board to your long-term credit has identified few years back emergency sheltering as a priority of the community and on that basis you know as I've taken on this job it's been a priority within the funding for the block grant to fund it it's taking nearly half of our social service dollars that are allocated from the federal block grant being devoted to the emergency overnight shelter there's also ongoing discussions about creating a permanent site which by its nature is a difficult process but one that is absolutely needed because no one has ever considered the current site however wonderful and cooperative it's been as being a long-term solution we're also looking at other affordable housing options for the community and to that end with town meeting and with some cdbg monies we're pursuing a housing production plan which will identify and attempt to articulate priorities for creating single room occupancy and other other types of housing so we have a blueprint to go by you're right that the shelter contract because that main policy decision I think there's there's broad consensus there's no argument about whether we're having a shelter the question is how many beds and what's what can be done safely and responsibly in the space that we have and what's an appropriate breakdown with needs out there between men and women being served I mean those are the issues that are at play and what I'm trying to do which isn't always popular is have the decisions that we make as a town be based using our best collective judgment with our heads as well as our hearts our hearts are in this thing but we're also trying to make uh make decisions really uh uh try and take a real sober look at what's what's possible in year two with this group thank you miss stein um I heard about the expansion and then learned that about the possible expansion and then learned that um the town seemed to be pulling back from being willing to go in that direction so as John knows I showed up at the last meeting between the town staff and Craig's doors and listened for an hour and I made a suggestion at the end which I would strongly urge the select board to consider tonight um I'm as far as I know the only one on in around this table that actually has visited the shelter and seen it in operation and I've also seen the space that they would use to expand and I am convinced absolutely convinced that they can add four people in a new room which would be a room that's not used for um betting any people at this point um in addition they're going to do this at no cost to the town no extra dollars are being asked for they're willing to raise the money um the room would have uh solid walls and would be for women as opposed to the way it has been run even though that's been successful which would be which was separating the men from the women by means of curtains uh they are willing to find the funding to hire an extra staff person to provide extra supervision even though they would only be adding um a third more or in my recommendation 20 percent more so I am totally behind this expansion and I um did make a suggestion for compromise that to me makes sense and that would be to add four people this year and see how that goes check the spacing and you know see if there are more problems I don't see why there would be I have to tell you right now having watched the way this operation runs which is extraordinarily smooth um and the night that I was there there were five extra people that's a one one uh one night out of 184 nights but the data that I got from them shows that um one to four are turned away 80 nights and five to eight are turned away 66 nights and nine to 13 are turned away on eight nights so I have no doubt that those um data points vary somewhat depending on the weather because if you know it's going to be a really cold night you really would like to be somewhere where it's warm and out of the elements or even if it's just raining but the fact of life is the people are out there it's empty if we just sign proclamations for hunger as we will do later um this is an opportunity for people to get two meals a bed and to be off the streets and I think adding four under the circumstances Craig Stores has suggested is entirely appropriate thank you on this side Mr. Hayden and then Mr. Walton yeah just um yeah and I agree completely I mean clearly there's a need for for um places for for these folks um I have a different concern though um that and I'm I'm I appreciate um Mr. Mazzanti mentioning it but I want to bring it out a little bit um part of the um our lack of ability to keep up with the demand has to do with um our policies not being well synchronized with others and this is causing um as I understand it people to be displaced from their communities to come here and and that's that's a bit troubling because um to me because part of what we heard last year in this discussion is the importance of of the community that these people are in to you know for them to stay there to be supported by it if they have to travel here because of a of a of a of an asynchronic in the in the policies only to be turned away they've lost two things they've lost their community and they've lost uh um the opportunity to be in this wonderful facility um so thank you for bringing that up thank you mr. Wilde thank you I mean at first I just wanted to commend the town manager for his efforts because we know how hard he works from this and the negotiating with Boston and so forth so there's no question that's the commitment to addressing the problem and obviously it's a serious problem and whenever one hears that people are in need or especially that women are turned away and unsafe uh one wants to agree immediately so i'm very sympathetic to miss stein's argument in favor of doing this at the same time just to underscore what miss Brewer said this is all kind of coming to us out of nowhere we don't have the context for this i mean aside from the generosity of the shelter we can't you know on the one hand we're talked about we're told about human need on their hand we're told about safety code issues and and capacity we can't judge that off the cuff here at a at a meeting without adequate preparation so i feel a little bit caught in that we're we're forced to to to listen to a plea for need and can't perhaps act uh wisely and responsibly i guess i'd like to know more about what the safety issues actually are i had the impression that miss miss Brewer is much more on top of this than i am i had the impression we were told before that people would not be coming here from other communities that this was a more of a local uh clientele we were addressing and situations change obviously uh obviously also the real solution is a permanent larger shelter at some point but to get getting from here to there is not going to happen overnight so i guess part of the question is what happens uh if we cannot if there is a demonstrated need that we cannot meet for safety or other reasons what happens to those people and how would we start to begin thinking about a larger or more long term or permanent solution we'll leave it at that for now thank you do you want to respond uh sure and uh that's really the crux of the challenge uh and uh by its nature it's really really difficult there's been some exploration of uh preliminary explanation by both the town and by the corrects doors group for a permanent location or looking at other needs in the housing spectrum particularly single room occupancy housing the safety issues uh again it's not lack of desire to want to add you know when you see the documented numbers about need but having it be done safely and in a coordinated way we have expressions from the craigs doors group i know in good faith to redouble efforts in terms of strengthening coordination with social service and counseling and those kinds of things that's great um um you know what i expressed at our most recent meeting was a desire to see that in practice for a season and and and see that type of progress because that's that's out of all the issues that have been raised that's that's the most serious one and we want to be partners in helping to make that happen okay i'm uh i'll call miss brewer and then i'll call on some members of the public i'm gonna ask the town manager to elaborate on that last statement associated with the the socials and to make sure i'm just clear on what we're talking about um i know that one of the things we've always talked about is the fact that it's all well and good to have a shelter but then what do you do with people during the day and you brought that up as being one of the concerns that the health department specifically had as well and i believe you just stated that now too so are what are what we are we talking about the whole western mass effort and the current shelter operators as a service provider within that environment as being responsible for would it be is it fair to characterize in saying making sure we're serving the people that we have now during the day to the best of our ability before we expand capacity or maybe you could just be a little more concrete with me because i feel like i'm missing the point i think that's it because when the support network for those counseling and then daytime services are not adequately in place or consistently coordinated that then creates burdens on the on the surrounding community um so the the hesitation is the pace of expansion until that foundation is more solidly in place i'm sorry i'm sorry you're gonna have to wait until you're called on thank you okay so i'm gonna ask mr weiss who had sent us some information if you'd like to offer a comment at this time identify yourself for the folks at home who might have forgotten your handsome face so these last couple years how soon they forget i am jerry weiss and i was a former member of the select board when the shelter operation began and i'm now a board member of craig's doors who is the current shelter operator we operated the shelter last winner and are poised to operate it again this winter so i appreciate the chance to speak um first of all i want to agree with um with you mr musanti that it's it has been a wonderful collaboration between the town craig's doors and the first baptist church and before craig's doors other agencies um i think it's just been a great effort and i especially want to praise the first baptist church um i think i sent you a letter do you all get a copy of the letter from reverend mozell the pastor of that church who of course is um advocating for this expansion um as well as praising the work that we've done so the church elders are are totally in favor of this we actually have a church elder here tonight um also have other board members here tonight and we have mr newton the director executive director of craig's doors and rebecca wilder the shelter operator is also here to answer questions um i want to try to take some of your points um try to go slowly and go over them um regarding the building commissioner i was not at the site visit today he did make a site visit and uh jerry gates who is uh um a member of the first baptist church as well as a board member of craig's doors was with mr morrow during the site visit um i think he could speak more about it my understanding is that mr morrow did not have any specific we had one specific safety concern that could be fixed fairly quickly it was it was around what kind of handles are on the doors um so as far as i know no new safety concerns came up the state did not also did not have any concerns with our plans to use a separate room i just want to state that currently men and women are staying at the shelter and they're divided by a divider in a big room um and uh the town some town officials have from the beginning expressed concern about that we our hope was to move to a separate room um which is near the front well near the front door of the shelter the exit um that can house that could hold eight according to the the rules of how far apart the beds have to be and we would have a dedicated staff member in that room um which was a kind of a requirement i remember of the fire chief that there'd be you know an awake person all night in case of an emergency so we agreed to that um as far as i know we've addressed all the safety concerns so i would like to hear more about just what is left besides the the door handle um regarding the lack of day services in amherst that's true we do have the survival center and um some i don't know what percent of our guests go to the survival center after breakfast but i know some do um some go and then leave for the day some hang around probably and we all know that some of the homeless people um do stay in town during the day but we don't have hard figures on how many more are there because of the shelter than were there before the shelter um i understand a concern is that if we allow eight more people to stay every night there'll be more people in amherst during the daytime it's possible um maybe one we look at the percents of people there were 161 separate individuals staying at the shelter last winter um and um you know i don't know how many are actually in amherst 20 interestingly 24 have registered as resident residents of amherst of that 161 37 register as residents of north hampton and by and large they all go back to north hampton in the daytime so i'm not i'm not we obviously do not agree um with um miss vetterman and john on on this issue of day services being a vital issue because um at the end of the day literally um these people will either be sleeping in our shelter or will be out on the street um day services seems to be almost a red herring for that issue because that is the end of the day no matter what the temperature no matter what the precipitation we're either going to house those eight extra night or they're going to be on the street there's no way around that that simple fact um um i've heard some issues around um calls for services in the daytime coordination with our partners um i'm sure there's there's probably been some calls for services there's no doubt um and an additional eight might in there might be more calls for services but how many would it be a backbreaker for the police and fire uh emergency services hard to imagine that eight more would would cause that a backbreaking amount um i wanted later i'm hoping miss wilder can speak to um miss brewer your question about how do we know how many of the guests actually want a bed we do know that and i let i'll let her speak to that um if they eat and they stay and they say they want a bed we assume they want a bed but she has more numbers on that um i think very few actually come just for a meal it's cold out there and they don't want to leave after a meal go out in the winter it's just not that fun um what else did i want to say this this issue of coordination um people coming from other towns people come from other towns because there there's a shelter if a shelter was built in sunderland people would go to sunderland if it was built in belch town they'd go to belcher town there's no guards at the border saying i'm sorry you can't come into amherst they're gonna come because there are homeless people out there hundreds of them um as you know we we turned away uh over 800 during the course of the 181 days that's an accumulative number eight one night six one night four one night you add those up and you come up with over 800 people that couldn't be housed um eight a night you can do the math potentially over a thousand beds bed nights would it would result um i'm also would like i'm glad to hear uh john that you you said that you haven't made your decision yet i'm kind of feeling like that there is a housing and sheltering committee in town who haven't spoken about this my understanding is they didn't know anything about it they are meeting on september 20th um it seems like select board and you would might want to hear from them to see what their thoughts are on the matter i mean isn't that why we have this one of the reasons we have this new committee the housing and sheltering committee um in case you wanted any other statistics we ended up housing 2871 people over the course of the winter and as i said it turned away over 800 there is a fear that if we house those eight extra a night um that an equal number will will come and we'll end up turning away the same number so it's a valid hypothesis or theory but we don't have the data to support that and i would love for us to find that out and have those have eight people more a night have a warm bed while we figure that out if that's true um i don't think the homeless should be penalized because other towns don't have enough capacity to to house people amherst has now joined the regional effort for years we didn't now we have um i think it's wonderful but i had sort of there's this feeling of we're going to that because the other towns aren't stepping up to the plate um that we shouldn't do what we can do we have the the the staff we have the skills we have the space to house eight people a night more than we are it's just going to be really sad if we can't do that i mean at the end of the day that's all i can say is this is this is going to be extremely painful to be turning those people away at 10 11 o'clock at night let's see if i had anything else i needed to say i just wanted to reiterate that um we're asking for the expansion so that we can have eight dedicated beds for women 76 women were turned away last winter um that that dedicated room would completely take care of that problem i would suspect there'd be very few women turned away if we had that capacity and so to clarify your expected capacity then