Yeah. Okay. Just give one second so we can see that Amherst media is connected. I like your red shirt, Kathy. Okay. We're all set. Thanks. Good evening. This, we are now beginning our meeting for October 5th, 2020. Governor Baker's March 12th order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law allows us to hold this virtual town meeting. I will call each counselor by name, although I will recognize we're still waiting for a few to be connected. And they should unmute and say they're present in that. We can hear them and they can hear us. Please remember to mute your mic when you go back. Raise hand function. Given that we have a quorum of the council present, I am calling the meeting of the city council at the meeting of the city council. I am calling the meeting at October. 20 meeting of the Amherst town council to order at. Like, Same very, right? I'm not saying it's time to level up. Somebody needs to mute, please. Okay. Thank you. So let's begin. Shallony phone. Not yet. Alyssa Brewer. Present. Patty Angelos. Present. Darcy DeMont. Present. Lynn Griesner is present. Mandy Jo Hanneke. Present. Dorothy Pam. Working on that connection. Evan Ross. Present. George Ryan. Present. Kathy Shane. Present. Steve Schreiber. Present. Andy Steinberg. Present. Sarah Schwartz. Present. And Shalini Balmillan is. Present. Thank you. And so we are going, this meeting is being reported. It is also going to be available afterwards. And it is available by audio, video, and live on Amherst Media. If you would like to connect, you can either connect through this or you could connect by calling in. And if you're calling in and you want to ask a question during public comment, I mean, make a comment during public comment, please use the raised hand function. We have two, we have three very brief announcements. And these are related to, and Serge, are you with us? Don't think so. Thank you for being Dorothy. Thank you. There he goes. We just want to make sure you're aware that there is a COVID hotline and also a website. We want to make sure that you're aware that Community Preservation Act proposals are due on October 12th, which is coming right up. And also that the Emergency Rental Assistance Funding has a round of funds available. And you can apply for those by going to Community Action and you can find that information on the website. So given that, we are going to now go on to the rest of the agenda. And our first area is public comment. And so we're going to take that down, Serge, to later. Thanks. Okay, for public comment at the moment, I only see one hand. Allison, please raise your hand. Okay. We're going to bring you into the room. Please unmute, state your name and where you live. Hi, everyone. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay. I am Allison McDonald. I can see that I'm actually Allison Blylar on your screen, but I say, I am Allison McDonald. I live in Amherst. I am, first I want to thank you all for all the dedication and intense work that you all have been doing all summer long for our community. I'm here this evening to speak about this recent surge in COVID-19 cases in our community and to ask about the actions that town will take to address this and help slow and stop wider community spread of this virus. Our current case count as of this morning on the website on the town website was 78, most of all of which were new since Wednesday of last week. The timing is important since the governor updates the categorization of communities in his color coded map on Wednesdays of each week and communities that are not designated as red zone may advance further in the governor's phase reopening plans as of today. While Amherst was designated yellow last Wednesday, the search that's a squarely in the red suggesting that further business reopening beginning today would be unwise. Indeed, our schools will remain closed to in-person learning for two more weeks due to the local surge in new COVID-19 cases. Given this, I urge you to consider the following. One, consider a halt to further reopening of businesses and services until Amherst is no longer in the red zone for two consecutive weeks. Consider also taking steps beyond what the governor's guidance suggests that can help bring the virus back under control in our community, such as perhaps moving back in the state phasing plan and implementing restrictions on indoor dining and bar service. Two, begin stricter enforcement of our current mask border and mandate. We have a mandate in place for the downtown area that includes stiff penalties for non-compliance, but initially this policy has mostly been about education and the likelihood of any penalties was expected to be small. With local new cases putting us in the red zone, now is the time to begin strict enforcement of that policy. Consider also taking action against gatherings, outdoors and indoors, but exceed the size limits included in the town and state orders. Providing a COVID hotline for the community to call in concerns is great, but if nothing is happening in the moment to break up such gatherings, it's hardly helping limit the spread of the virus. Take action to respond to complaints and break up gatherings when they are happening. These are all actions the town could be taking now to enforce compliance with its own current policies and orders, independent of whatever actions that UMass may be taking with its students. We've done really well until recently with maintaining control to the point that we were about to reopen our schools for face-to-face learning for our most vulnerable and high-needs students. Please consider and prioritize their needs and help us do more to bring this virus back under control in our community. Thank you. Thank you for your comments, Alison. Brian Yellen, please enter the room on mute and state your name and where you live. Hello, my name is Brian Yellen. I live at 13 Norotuck Circle in South Amherst and I just wanted to voice my support for the wage theft by-law. I'm not sure if there's an agenda on it today. I didn't see it on the agenda, so I'm offering comment now. The way the by-law is written, it's easy to comply with for upstanding companies and it makes sense for our town. Thank you, Brian. And Meg Robertson, please unmute, state your name and where you live. Hi, I'm Meg Robertson. I live at 560 Station Road in Amherst, Massachusetts. I'm also calling in tonight in support of the wage theft ordinance and really appreciate you taking it up and considering it in the town. I think that it would do much to strengthen the impact of construction projects, the employment offered by our restaurants in our town if there were assurance about wages being paid as they should be by not only the primary employers but the subcontractors and sometimes the subcontractors of the subcontractors. That seems to be where most of the abuses happen throughout the state of Massachusetts. So just having been in this town now over 11 years, I really think it would make our community much stronger to have this ordinance on the books and I really appreciate all of your time and attention to the issue. Are there any other people with public comment at this time? Just as a matter of information, the wage theft by-law we hope will be on the agenda on October 19th. And I wanna make sure that Dorothy Pam who has now joined us can hear us. So please unmute and confirm that, Dorothy. Yes. Thank you. Okay. We are going to go on to the consent agenda and I've asked that it be put up on the screen because it's a fairly lengthy consent agenda. The following items were selected because they were considered to be routine and it was reasonable to expect they would pass with no controversy. To remove an item from the consent agenda for discussion later in the meeting ask that it be removed when I list the consent agenda items. The request to remove an item from the consent agenda does not require a second. So what you'll do is raise your hand and I'll check all hands before we go. So the motion is to move the following items and the printed motions there under and approve those items as a single unit. The first is to suspend suspension of town council rules of procedure 8.4 for the following agenda items. 8D the rank choice voting commission charge and 8E participatory budgeting commission charge. Waiver of the town council rules of procedure 8.6 for the following agenda item. And that is the item related to, it's actually item 14 and it is the item related to the whole harmless resolution which we'll be dealing with next. And all this does is allow us to act on it tonight. On 9A5 we're still waiving of town council rules of procedure 8.6 for the extension of appointments to the rank choice voting commission and 9A6 extension of appointments for the participatory budgeting commission. 8D is approval of charges for the changes to rank choice voting commission charge. And 8E is approval of charges to participatory budgeting commission charges. Those are both extending their dates. 9A1 to 4 is approval of the town manager appointments to the following boards and committees. Affordable housing trust board of trustees, community preservation act committee, disability access advisory committee LSE commission. 9A5 is approval of extension of terms to rank choice voting commission. 9A6 is approval of extension of terms to support participatory budgeting commission. And 11A to B is approval of minutes, September 15, 2020, joint town council and community resources committee meeting minutes and September 20, 2020, town council meeting minutes. Just let me make sure I can see if there's any raised hands. Yes, Darcy Dermont, please unmute Darcy. I would just like it if you could explain to the viewing public rules of procedure 8.4 and 8.6 because I think it's pretty confusing to people what we're doing right now.  So would you be able to do that, Lynn? I will do that. And if I can, I'll ask for some assistance. Is there a second to the motion? Ryan. Second. George, Ryan is seconded. So let me just explain.  So it's literally means we do not have to have it on the agenda twice. And if we suspend that rule, we can go ahead and act on it tonight. The waiver of town council rules of procedure 8.6 is a waiver that means we are not referring these items to the respective committees. In this case, we would have referred the resolution to GOL and we would have referred the extension of the appointments for rank choice voting and appointments for budgeting to TSL. And because they're pretty routine, both of these committees are already up and running. And basically because of COVID, they need an extension on their timeframe. And they are committees that will be reporting within the next 12 months. In fact, one will report by the end of December, the other by next June. And when they do report, then those committees will be dissolved, okay? Are there any other questions, Councillors? And Darcy, did that hit the... Yeah, no, that hopefully clarified it for... Thank you. Yes, Kathy Shane questions. Yeah, mine is a question. I think this is just a technical question on the participatory budget commission. It's extending it to a particular date and extending all the members on the commission to that date. But it also has the word two years in it. And we are not going to be meeting for two years. Even if we hadn't extended this, we didn't even start until September of 2019. So just when there's a conflict, I certainly don't think we want to meet from two years from starting now. So the date would override the two years in the way it's worded? That's correct. Okay. Are there any other questions at this time? Okay, this requires a roll call vote. And you can surge, you can take the screen down and I'll start with Shelley Balmille. Yes. Elizabeth Brewer. Yes. Happy Angeles. Yes. Darcy DeMond. Yes. Lynn Griesmerzy. Yes. Mandy Jo Hanicky. Yes. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Evan Ross. Yes. George Ryan. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Aye. Andy Steinberg. Yes. Anne Sarah Schwartz. Yes. That consent agenda passes 13-4, none against, none abstentions and no people absent. So we are going to now go on to the resolution.  This resolution is we're the first body that's going to act on it. It is then going to go to the Amherst School Committee, the Amherst Pelham School Committee and the Pelham School Committee. And the resolution is arose because of a proposal that is being discussed at the State House that would eliminate the whole harmless clause in school funding for Chapter 70. And since we developed this very rapidly over the weekend, I want to thank Peter Demling and other people as well. The one we're going to show you on the screen actually has feedback that was received since the original one was posted. And so the first change in this is to split the first paragraph into two and add the word sum. And then also instead of just say basically state aid, it says Chapter 78 because there are other forms of state aid that this does not impact. In the second, what was the second and is now the third whereas, there was basically a suggestion for rewording to make it more clear. I'm going to give you a moment to look at those. Okay, and then if we could go on to scroll down, I believe there's one more change. Yes, this very last bullet under the fourth whereas major, it's just a way in which it's formatted. So it has to be changed formatted correctly. And then was there any, were there any others? I'm just looking at my draft. Yes, at the very end, it is to say losing hold harmless would have a profound negative impact on the quality and equity of our public schools. Hold harmless, aid is essential and equitable, okay? So I hope I captured people's recommended changes. With that, I'm going to make a motion to approve the resolution as amended. Is there a second? Seconds, I agree. Thank you, Andy. Okay, questions, George Ryan. Just a very small one about an advert. This is my GOL personality creeping into the four. And the very first whereas, it says some advocacy groups seeking to implement the act quickly. I guess that's what it means. In other words, these groups want to do this quickly and that's why we need to, why this, we're one of the reasons for this resolution. That is correct. As opposed to just saying that they are proposing to eliminate. That's correct. Which would be my instinct, but okay. This is why we're working, we're doing this instead of referring it to GOL. Mandy Jo Hanneke. Yeah, the second page where you added the hold harmless in all caps, it's now a repeat. So I think just Scrivener wise, cause it's down at the bottom. I don't know how we want to show it, but it's now just repeated. Thank you. I will get rid of it. This is part of doing these things very rapidly. And I apologize for that. Dorothy, questions, comments. I could not rephrase that to explain what it's about to someone. And so I'm going to ask a couple of questions. We have had hold harmless for a long time in our public school. I think that means you don't reduce the amount of funding. Is that correct or not? Sean Nongano is here and he is prepared to explain this. If that would be helpful.  That's a big task. I don't know if I'm going to explain all of it, but so chapter 70 is just a very complicated formula. It always has been. It's very difficult to explain, which is one of the issues. But yeah, we've had hold harmless. It essentially means that if the chapter 70 formula, which has a number of economic variables and enrollment based variables, if the formula would say that we should get less chapter 70 and the whole harmless provision would keep us flat and we would carry that forward. And so the biggest thing for Amherst is that over the last 10 or 15 years, our enrollment has dropped somewhere between 15 and 30%. And so the hold harmless provision has kept us flat while we've seen some of those enrollment drops. And there's been some other changes as well in the formula, but that's one of the bigger ones. So then the next question is why, who wants to change it? It sounds like it was connected to some other good program. I mean, we have this program, we've had it. Who wants to change it? Why do we have to reassert it? So I can't speak to all the motives, but I think this gets back to a little bit about George's question about the quickly. The Student Opportunity Acts calls for a lot of increased investment in the chapter 70 program and in schools. And the plan to implement that program was gonna take many years with sort of small increases each year to fully implement. And I think the group, which is a Boston based group is saying, well, we could implement that Student Opportunity Act more quickly if we got rid of the hold harmless provision that would free up some money and we could implement it faster. So I think that's sort of part of their rationale for why they're proposing it. That's helpful. Okay, thank you. Are there further questions, Dorothy? No, I just needed to know who wanted to change it and why we were considering it because obviously you wanna keep hold harmless. Right, thank you.  Thank you, just a couple of bits associated with this. And because of other reasons, I would have received the report that perhaps not everyone received, even though I'm pretty sure we also got notice from our local senator and our state rep mentioning the specific report that we're referring to in this resolution as some advocacy groups rather than calling them out by name. But if you look at that report, it is just as Sean said, and while one reading that report who's never served on a school committee or been involved in town finance might say, well, yeah, that makes sense. The poorest communities need the most money. Of course, that seems socially just and appropriate, but what it does not take into account is a couple of things. One is that we don't have another way of making up this money. I know it's already been in the press that we're talking about $8 million a year at this particular juncture. We don't have a way of saying, well, that's fine. We'll just ask the taxpayers for more money. That means we would have to make those cuts to our school. So the report implies that all the communities that are getting this hold harmless aid can just make up for it someplace else. And that's just completely false. So that's one reason why we have to reassert this. Another thing I just wanna make sure I mention is as many of you know, I serve on the MMA Fiscal Policy Committee and when the Student Opportunity Act was being discussed before it actually passed, there were definitely people there who said, why am I gonna tell my reps to vote and my centers to vote for this? This isn't gonna help my community. Why am I gonna do it? It's gonna help some other communities not gonna help me, which is of course not the kind of thing we like to imagine our fellow municipal officials would do, but it is the reality. And the way they were able to convince their constituents that it was okay is that they had the hold harmless provision in there. And so you take away hold harmless, the whole thing would never have passed because there are too many communities that cannot, that yes, there are some wealthy communities out there who could probably find a way to make up for some of the money. We aren't one of those communities for sure.  And so if you also read that report a little carefully, it also really dives into the idea of, well, there are these rural schools and they have very little enrollment. So they're just gonna have to deal with that. I'm not sure if they think putting kids on a bus for longer than an hour every day, like they are in some communities already is somehow a good idea. But while the reports imply that they're about social justice and fairness and equity, that's not actually true. And so that's why it's important for us to go ahead and assert this now. The other thing I just wanted to ask about is if we weren't writing this particular document, we were advised by Senator Comerford and by Mindy Dom, our representative that there is this opportunity to write in in response to a survey from DLS, DLS-DOR slash DESI. And that's by October 16th. So are we planning or are the schools planning to write something additional for that October 16th? Are there any particular talking points that the schools are looking forward to us making, you know, doing that in addition to this? Because if there wasn't a survey, right, this would be a letter we would write. There is also a survey. And so obviously we can attach this and send it in as part of the electronic survey. But I'm just wondering as the sun folds, just we have a very short time period here. If there's anything else in addition to this that our schools would appreciate having the municipal side go ahead and comment on the survey. I'm pretty sure Paul and Sean and Mike are already working on something, perhaps in addition to this particular thing. Paul or Sean, you might want to assist me with the answer. I believe the plan is to put this in as our answer. But Sean? Yeah, the plan was to, so we can look at the survey and there's specific fields. We can try to, you know, answer those specifically. But I think the plan was to attach this resolution, which we developed in conjunction with the schools. And there may be more technical arguments that we want to include in that as well. We'll have to see sort of what specific areas they're asking for. Lucy, thank you. Kathy? I just had a question. I have no question on doing this resolution, but how many cities and towns are affected by the loss of Hold Harmless? And if we put out a press release or something, are we one of, you know, name a large group? You know, so it's not just one town being affected. So the way it's written, it's very much logically, it's just Amherst, the way we've written it. But putting out something that says we're among blah, blah, blah of, you know, the account for so many thousands of students, it just seems to me, it makes it stronger that we're not alone. Sean? Go ahead. I looked at it, I think as of FOI 20 and it's something like 62 or 63% of the districts receive Hold Harmless, say, of different magnitudes that varies by community. Boston, I think, is one of those communities, which obviously is very big and has a lot of students and would represent a huge portion of the student population in the state. So it's a large population of the students in the state. My point is just, you know, in another walk of life, I thought about the report and then the press release, and we probably not doing a press release, but if you say 63% of districts and 50,000 students would have a cut if this went through, it just puts it in a much bigger context. It really hurts us and it really hurts a lot of other places. So maybe that's more Mindy and Joe's role, but it's helpful to me to have that kind of information. Andy? Several things that I just wanted to cover that have been talked about because I spent a lot of time working on this to help also with the drafting. First of all, when I remind the council that the Student Opportunity Act was passed by the legislature earlier this year to try and change the formula to largely make it a more equitable formula for districts, we were not a beneficiary of that, but this council and our school committee both passed resolutions in support of the Student Opportunity Act, knowing that because it was the right thing to do. And I think one of the things that we need to be very clear about with everyone is that it is in the resolution that we did support it because it is the right thing to do, but we shouldn't be penalized by its implementation. The second thing is as Sean points out in his memo, the act actually requires that the Department of Revenue Division of Local Services and DESI obtain comments on implementation issues. And so this October deadline that Lissa was referring to is really about comments. And when you look at the DESI website, which I did over the weekend, it is not really a survey as much as it is a mechanism for submitting comments. And so most of it is a comment box and the ability to attach documents to the comment box. So I think that that was the second point that I just really wanted to bring out. And I think the third reality is that this came up so quickly and we had a lot of time constraints because of the schedule of council meetings and school committee meetings that we really had very little bit of time with a large number of people involving school committee and some counselors who were trying to put this together. And there was sort of a desire to meet the deadline to allow action in the council and the school committee this week because it was the last opportunity to do it and to get it in by October 16. So, and there was a desire among some of the drafters to make sure that it was short. The original request was to keep it to a page on the ground so that nobody reads more than a page so that it was a balancing act and of time in varying demands but I thought it would be additional helpful information. So thank you. Andy, thank you for that information and also thank you for all your work on helping to clarify and get this done over the last Friday, over the weekend, et cetera. Are there any other questions from the council? Okay, so the motion has been made and seconded. It is to adopt the resolution as amended and seeing no other questions or hands raised. I'm going to start with Alyssa. Yes. Pat DeAngelis. Yes. Garcy Dumont. Yes. Lynn Griesmer, yes. Mandy Jo Hanakie. Yes. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Evan Ross. Yes. George Ryan. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Yes. Sarah Schwartz. Yes. And Shalini Balmoum. Yes. And we will make sure that the record shows it was a unanimous vote and I will make sure that we forward this amended copy to the other boards that will be reviewing it, okay? We're going to go on to our presentations and discussions. At this point, we're going to go to the COVID-19 update and the town manager is being joined by acting health director, Jen Brown. Thank you. Hi, everybody. There's Jen. Sometimes you look at the screen and you don't see everything. So we have a slightly updated slide deck so I'm not sure if that's up and running yet. Serge, has it ready to go? And I'm posting it online now. Okay, thank you. Ready to go, yep. Good, thank you. So this has been a big couple of weeks for us and I appreciate that's why I really recognize that we're so fortunate as a town to have Jen here working so hard, she's working seven days a week, really knows her numbers and it's very confident and digging into Maven and really appreciate that. So I'm going to go to the next slide. So, oh, this is the slide. Welcome, Jennifer. So this is the snapshot we show every time. So there's a typo on our website that had, the key thing here is the second bullet where it says 75 current cases, that is accurate. There's a typo on our website that said 45, that's what we just corrected and that's why there's an updated slide deck that just went out. All the other numbers are accurate. So 75 current cases. And we're going to talk about how big that number is compared to the last time we presented which was when I think we were talking about eight or nine cases when I talked to you back in September. So next slide. So this, we are a yellow community now that is an uptick for us. We, you know, we, you want to be in either the gray or the green territory, we are yellow. We do not want to be in red, red indicates that you are, you cannot move forward under the governatory opening plan. It also just tells you that you're not doing so well as a community. These colors, these numbers come out every Wednesday. So they will come out on October 7th, next time we see them. So next slide. So this just shows our neighbors and what the map looks like and what's happening in the state. And, you know, there's usually a lot of these things are very incident specific things that are driving the changes. And what this looks at is that the last two weeks and how you're doing. So we are doing, we're in the four to eight cases per 100,000 and we would like to be in the under four cases per 100,000. Next slide. We also like to look at what was happening at it with our institutional partners. The University of Massachusetts, which we'll talk a little bit about, a fair amount tonight, about tonight. They had 121 positive cases cumulatively. Amherst College has four cases cumulatively. This is from the beginning of their testing regimen. Hampshire College has, there's a type of there too. There is zero cases so far. Next slide. So this is the slide we wanna spend some time on. We're gonna look at the bottom graph first and that's the total new cases. And you've all read about the increase in cases due to a cluster. And that you can start to see that tick up where it says on the bottom graph where it says September 24th, this graph shows you the number of cases per day that have been identified by the University. And then you see under October one that giant increase. And those are all cases that have come to light in terms of being tested COVID positive. The chart above it is the number of tests that are performed. So if you look at that same time period, September 24th, you know, the University has been pretty regular. Those five bars when there is Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then there's a drop on Saturday and Sunday, then Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. So there was the testing on the week of September 24th where it was about the same as previous. Then next week, the week where it says October one, a big uptick in testing. And one of the reasons for that is because of this cluster that was identified and got a lot of coverage. Also, the University sent out a email directing students to who looked off campus to come in and get tested. And I think they had almost 3,000 or over 3,000 tests on that Monday after the email went out. So a lot of things about this. So this was very concerning to us as the test. And Jen, we'll talk more about that. And what, Jed, do you want to just talk about the cluster and what has happened with that? Yeah, is there another slider? I can just talk about that. So it started what Anne Becker has reported to me and we've been discussing is that she gave me a call on Friday, September 25th. She said, Jen, we have some cases coming in. So what she reported to us is there is a gathering identified and they're calling it a party. And that was actually September 18th. And what I understand, it was just eight students. And from that, you can see what happened. The waves went out. So here we are two weeks later almost and we have 92 cases, sort of it's gone up and down since then. Or is that correct with that number? Anyhow, you can see how the 80 went on the third. And now cases are becoming to come off. So one thing I can talk about, and you can stop me if this is not the right time. But when we identify a case, one of the things we do is we really look at that case, obviously you do needs assessments, we see how they're doing. But we look back and see where they've been. So we really try to get a history of what perhaps we can find out where they got it from. So if we go backwards, we can identify something, then we can prevent other cases from branching off from that one person. But anyhow, so for us it started, it's been climbing, these cases get entered via laboratory values and they get reported through, Anne uses a system called Red Cap and then it goes into a DPH and it comes to us, comes to Anne and me, something called MAVEN, I think you probably know it and I've talked about it, but the Massachusetts Virtual Epidemiological Network. When cases come off, and we will see cases start coming off, those are done sort of manually I wanna say. Cases go in via laboratory and then manually one by one, we start taking people off. And if this is a good time, I can talk about isolation and when people come off isolation, is that okay? All right. So isolation is that period when you've been infected. So I heard this the other day, the I stands for infected in isolation. And typically we know now, even we have more data after six months, that time is 10 days. So it's 10 days if your symptoms have result, if you don't have a fever taking Tylenol. So it's 10 days after your symptoms have started and if you're asymptomatic, it's 10 days after a positive laboratory. The PCR test will stay positive up to, it's about, is it 90 days? It's three months. So you don't test out, you really end isolation by symptoms. And then just quarantine is when someone has been exposed, there are contact. And I remember seeing photographs of ships out in the harbor being quarantined for 40 days. They keep them out there, they're not allowed in. That's the incubation period for this disease. It's 14 days. So you wanna make sure no one becomes infectious in that time. You go to the next slide. So we wanna talk a little bit what the university is doing. And I do wanna credit the university because they have done a lot of good work in this area. They have set up an asymptomatic testing facility at the Mullen Center, which is really one of the big and good ones, great ones in the country. And just, I think several people have toured through it. It's really terrific. They have a very robust contact tracing. We do wanna talk a little bit about what contact tracing is because that's really important. And that's proving to be very important in this particular cluster in particular. Jen talked about isolation and quarantine, how they're handling that. They, as you know, that they have really focused on education and outreach and trying to educate students and reaching into the different communities, going door to door, in fact. They also asked me to let you know that they also have University Administrative Discipline as required. They have had 195 cases handled in month of September. I do not know the disposition of those cases. I just know that they have brought that many to the Dean of Students. So in one of the reasons that, so I wanna talk a little bit about education and outreach and then I'll turn to Jen to talk a little bit about what content tracing means because contact tracing is very important to understand. So on the education and outreach, they really believe that it's through education. And I think we learned a lot of this from other diseases. It's through education that you change attitudes. And that if you come down punitively on a lot of our students, which is what we're asked. A lot of people are calling us and saying, why aren't you hammering them coming down very hard on students? What the net result of that is that students may become, have become less interested in being tested. If they are not tested, then we won't know if there's a case. We discovered this first case through an asymptomatic test. So that was a good early warning sign for us. And they also fear that people will not participate in contact tracing because if you call up someone and say, were you at that party? They're afraid they're gonna not tell them the truth or not answer the phone because they don't wanna get in trouble for having been at the party. So I think that that's a philosophy that the university has. Other colleges and universities have taken a different philosophy where they have come down really hard on their students. One of the arguments the university makes in terms of keeping students engaged with the university is that if you suspend or expel a student, it doesn't mean that they leave the town. They still live where they're going to live. It's just that there's no more communication with that student. So their philosophy is that you engage the students and try to create more and more of a culture of where people are watching out for each other. Contact tracing is so important. Jen, do you wanna talk about what that is? You do a ton of that I know over the last years. Yeah, so contact tracing is different for each communicable disease. For COVID, we really start with that person and we start going through when their symptoms started and then we go two days prior. So we sit and say, where were you two days ago? Cause we wanna talk to you about who were you in contact with?  Were you sharing kitchen space? Were you in the room? And so you go through all the different scenarios but one thing we really do wanna focus on and we're realizing again, we have the data to support this that it really takes 15 minutes and within six feet of being near that person for that period of time or like a direct hit of a cough or sneeze to transmit this disease. So we'll go through the day, we'll go through the period where they're infectious and then we reach out to those people and once we identify someone we'll call them and we'll just say, hey, you have been exposed. Sometimes they know who the person is if it's small but we really try to protect people and not give names if we don't need to. And I've done the contact tracing with COVID saying, not gonna be able to give you the name but this is somebody that you were, you've been exposed and I just want you to know that. And then there's also really this human side to it. Obviously you're really building relationships with people. I think it was the New Yorker maybe, I can't remember, but there's something about emotional intelligence that you're making a connection with somebody. You're really working with them.  I mean, obviously it's many times but I've called people and I'm like, hey, can I talk to you? And they've said, hey, I need to go, the nurse is coming in. It's like, I didn't realize you were in the hospital but we had this connection, we were able to talk. So there's this real human element to it. Hey, next slide, please. So there's been a lot of confusion about the numbers that show up on the different websites. So I just want to be clear, help everybody understand what the university reports and what the town reports, they're two different things. So what the university reports are cases that they have identified through the university, some of them, but not all of them could live in the town but they could, and they could live in other towns. They may have someone who lives in Sunderland or Leverett or Holyoke or any place like that. So, but they report whatever they discover on their website. The town reports only the cases that are in the town of Amherst and the basic counting mechanism that the state uses is by city or town. So the cases that we report are from Maven and that's what gets put on our website. All cases, both the town and the university are working in Maven, which Jen mentioned is the Massachusetts Virtual Epidemiologic Network which is created by the state. It's used for about a dozen other diseases as well as COVID-19 and so it's been in practice for quite some time. So I just want to take a pause so we can answer questions. But I just wanted to mention that one of the things that when this cluster just grew very, very quickly on us, one of the things that we did was reach out to the State Department of Public Health and said, you guys have dealt with this in other communities, we haven't. Tell us what we should be doing. And we know what we know, but we don't know what we don't know. And so they were very responsive, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Mary Lou Sutter was on the phone with us along with their medical director, the assistant commissioner that deals with cities and towns. And we've had the person who wrote Maven on a call with Jen. They have really dedicated resources to us. And since we had the secretary on the phone with me and Jen, we had the superintendent of schools on the call as well, because this is very important to the schools, what is happening here, and he could convey his concerns and what was happening there. We also brought up other issues that were, that involved the town that we're also working on that we're looking for support from this Department of Health and Human Services. So I think we'll pause there and see what, this is a big issue. And I know that you want some time to talk and you've listened to your constituents as well. Jersey Dumont, has your hand up? Yeah, this is for Jen. I just wanted to clarify what I thought I heard you say about, I think you said that you're finding that people can pick up COVID by being within six feet of each other for a period of 15 minutes. And I'm assuming you mean inside? And if that is what you said, that seems like it really has ramifications for indoor dining and schools. Yeah, so it's six feet, 15 minutes. And that's the number that they give and they don't differentiate between inside or outside. There's a lot of work going into, you know, thinking about different filters and airflow, but really right now the Department of Public Health, these are the numbers I use when I do contact tracing. So when you talk about restaurants, you're talking about groups of people that know each other and they're sitting together. But the tables, it's not even the tables, the next person to person needs to be that distance apart. So that's what they've established. I don't believe, you know, I just think these big clusters that we see are happening in these tight gathering spots. I don't know what the data is about restaurants. With schools, they're taking multiple, and this applies for restaurants as well. It's multiple mitigation strategies and they're layered and they're concurrent. And when you use all these things together, the data, you know, this is what they say that the transmission, you've just lowered the risk. Did that answer your question? Yeah, thank you. Oh, good, you're glad. Thank you. Kathy Shane. Paul, you showed the Amherst numbers and then you showed the UMass numbers. And so I'm wondering how much, I have a couple of different questions. How much of the Amherst numbers are UMass, these UMass clusters? As you know, you did a district one meeting and Tony put up a slide, which at that point had a cumulative UMass. This was September 22nd. They had 18 as of September 22nd. And the slide you just showed has 121. So that's the same surge you show with the bars. So, you know, I just wonder how much is that? And then the second is the fear of people wouldn't come in to get tested or people wouldn't report contact. If part of the disciplinary action is large gatherings without mass, that's less related to testing or not. And why wouldn't, if some of the disciplinary action has gone after repeated large gatherings, if you put an email out to every student on campus, that we mean don't do it and this is what will happen, not with a person's name. It has a pre, to me it has a preventive impact. Maybe it's not a first strike. So I also don't know how many, and this is more would be a UMass question. How much of the clusters? And I think there were two clusters. They found that they weren't completely overlapping. So then they had to, at least that was one report I read. They didn't all come from just one, but maybe it just came from one. But this notion is it mushrooms very quickly. And I believe most of them were living off campus. So we're up in North Amherst, where we have a lot of repeated, we were one of the hotspots on the UMass slide of repeated calls. You know, it's not just one time something's happening and fairly large groups. So I'm just questioning this, not doing something more where the place you're going against the guidelines is large groups close together without masks. Well. Yeah, so I'll let Jen talk about the number of cases that are UMass out of the UMass. I think by far the large majority are in our town, are associated with the university, a very large majority. So in terms of, you know, I hear what you're saying and we hear it listened to a lot of folks about why don't you crack down on the gatherings and we continually talk about that. And you know, when there's noise complaints, we do send officers, they do issue citations. They do educate, even if they don't issue citations, they are educating about social distancing and the sort of expectations of the community. We have talked about activating our COVID ambassadors to be more in real time responding to gatherings. You know, the university and the town work very well together in terms of addressing the households that have repeated parties and there are some and we know where they are and they go to them. And so at a certain point, you know, we may have to look at more onerous procedures on that. But right now we're working through, you know, this cluster has been a real challenge lesson for us and we're trying to figure out what's the next step? Well, how do we prevent it from happening again? So we're in the town side, we're having an active conversations about that. I know, you know, just to follow up because you know, the kind of emails because you're seeing the same emails we're getting and it's a sense this has real consequences for our town. As Allison said, the schools aren't opening because of what's happening. And particularly to me, if it's warned once and then it happens again, you know, at some point you wanna say we were serious, something more would happen and the university has certain things it can do that are much, that are the heavier club than us, we've got money. And I'm being asked, why just noise? Why not if it's a large group without masks, go out and break it up? Cause it's, and if the large group is formed and they're not making noise at four o'clock, they will make noise at eight o'clock but can't we stop them at four o'clock before they get noisy? You know, it's sort of this, I can see the large group and so these are clearly outdoor parties is where a neighbor would be seeing them more. So it's this sense of particularly second time, you know, first time, oh, you just somehow weren't living in the neighbor. You just didn't have the information. Second time you had the information. Yes, I hear you on that. I don't have a good answer for you right now. Well, let's go on to George Ryan. Paul, a number, as I'm sure you know that a lot of people pay attention to on our website is the total number of positive cases at any given time. And on Sunday, getting ready for my district three meeting, it said the number was 80. Earlier today when I checked, the number was 45. And now today you tell us the actual number is 75. It's just, it's really an important number. I just wondering what happened? There's a typo in the website and that's the 45 should have been 75. So that was a mistake on our part. Okay, I understand it. We all, trust me, we all make mistakes. It's just a really important number at least from my perspective. And if you could just communicate to everybody that they really should be careful because it just creates confusion and potential mistrust when people look on that site. And so anyway, that's, I know you knew that, I'm just... I agree with you. Devin, do you have a question? Yeah, I just, I wanted clarification about something that Jen said. There was a statement that the cluster was linked to a gathering of eight students. That's eight students that tested positive in the gathering or eight students total in the gathering? Eight students total in the gathering. That was the original party that night. Okay, so when we've been talking about parties, when we've been talking about, do we wanna set a lower gathering limit of 10 or 20? This cluster started with eight. Low. Okay, I think that's important information for us to consider. Thank you, maybe Joe. That was gonna be one of my questions too, because I was gonna ask about whether we needed to limit gatherings since we are going into phase two of phase three today, because we aren't in the red yet, but that answered my questions that it wouldn't, would be really hard to do that. But I do have another question. My understanding from early on in this was that community spread is defined as not essentially not being able to contact trace people to another positive case and be able to sort of follow the links. And that there's not community spread if you can follow those links because you know then exactly where everyone contracted COVID from. So my question is for all of these 75 cases or particularly the ones related to coming from UMass, but really for all 75 in the town, are we at the point where we're at community spread now and so that the community at large needs to be concerned or are we still able to fully contact trace everyone who's coming in positive? So I spoke to Ann Becker about this and what she has told me is that the cases all but two are from UMass and have been linked to that first group. So it's this one cluster, but it's not defined as just sort of this tight group. It was sort of generations out and that's how Ann described it to me but they've been related, a friend of a friend of a friend. And just to clarify, Ann Becker has sort of Jen's role for the university and is in charge of all the contact tracing for the university. Steve Schreiber. Yeah, actually, Councilor Ross asked my question, which is that's an extraordinary little number. So eight is, I mean, it seems like a completely reasonable number. So that's what's a little bit surprising and it actually kind of shows you how random this can be. So, but then I was just gonna make the comment and I sent the link to my fellow counselors about the New York Times, article about college campuses and of course there was a tale of two campuses in Amherst, one Amherst College, the other one UMass and it ended with a line about the quarantine Amherst College student who lives in a dorm right next to a house or houses full of UMass students and they yelled up from their beer pong game, hey, come on over here. We don't have rules or something like that. So that's, there we are. Alyssa. So I also wanna give UMass credit for realizing that we were right about a number of things. So they originally didn't wanna test off-campus students and Paul talked to them and Council talked to them and people in the community talked to them and they agreed that testing off-campus students was actually a good thing and they really ramped that up and it is in fact a really wonderful model that people can look to across the country and so I'm very proud of UMass for doing that. UMass also didn't have any interest in providing quarantine and isolation space for off-campus students until we in the community said you need to do that. Now I'm sure they had other reasons for doing it because the history is UMass doesn't do anything just because we asked them to do it but that is something that did happen associated with this and so I'm very happy with those changes. I think you're hearing and you are going to continue to hear that we are unhappy with the educational approach because the educational approach is great for telling people why not to bring 12 packs of alcohol into a dorm room when they're going to be undergraduate students there. An educational approach is great for telling people to consider sexually transmitted disease. It's great for talking about not using alcohol and then driving but instead taking Uber or a bus. The decisions that a very tiny number of people the vast majority of people are being responsible. The decisions that a tiny number of people are making are not impacting just them. They are impacting the rest of the community as we've heard tonight. They're impacting our ability to open our schools. Eight students made decisions that are impacting the ability to educate hundreds of school children. So when we hear while it makes sense educationally that these are still relatively young people we're trying to be clear and we certainly don't want them to clam up when it comes to contact tracing. But yet it's like we're living in fear that they won't cooperate with contact tracing. So we're saying, well, we can't be too hard on them because then they might not cooperate. And that's just a really awful feeling for a community member to have. We want to feel like we are all in this together. The vast majority of students are being super responsible. And I totally disagree with my colleague who says eight seems like a reasonable number. No number seems like a reasonable number. People you live with are who you socialize with. If you want to socialize with other people you better be outside more than six feet apart. These kids were not outside more than six feet apart. So eight's not a reasonable number. No gathering is a reasonable number when you're impacting the rest of the community. You're not just making bad choices for you. You're making bad choices for other people. So I don't see how we can continue to say this is okay. Let's also remember that this very tiny number of people some of them might very well work in some of our local businesses. I mean, there's that impact too, right? It's not just they're sitting in their rooms doing remote education. They have other parts of their lives too as I'm sure the contact tracers have determined. And so I understand why our community is frustrated. I don't know why we think it's a good idea to send police to break up a noisy party just so that somebody can get some more sleep next door. But we don't think it's okay to say, you know what? And again, we're not talking about sending police to this because we're talking about not sending police to a lot of things. But we are sending police to a noisy party so that the people next door can get some sleep. We are not sending anyone with the possible exception of now rethinking this a little to talk to people while they're having a party that is clearly going to have impact on people other than themselves. That doesn't make sense to me.  We can't do anything too mean to them or they might not tell us who else they were working with. I just don't know how to express to the community that we can't fix that. It just feels like an impossible task. But again, I do want to be clear. I know the vast majority of people are being really responsible. A handful of people often ruin things for other people. I understand that. But just saying it seems reasonable is not. No social gathering size is a reasonable amount outside of the people you live with. And that's just a fact. And that's going to get worse as the weather gets colder. Are there any other comments or questions at this time? Well, is there any further comments or parts of the presentation? I have more of the presentations. But just this is very helpful for me to hear. Very instructive for us to hear the tenor of the council. So I appreciate people sharing that. As you go, quickly add your hand up. Did you want to? I have a question unrelated to the UMass thing. So if he's got more presentation, I'll ask it at the end. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So our next thing is continuity of operation. I showed this to you previously. We're all in good shape on all fronts. Very minimal impact on our organization so far. So you go to the next slide. So on Thursday, there's a lot of things happening here. But the one thing I want to highlight is on Thursday we're doing, we're re-bringing back the call in show at noon. If you can call in, literally call in on your telephone. We really are directing this one towards seniors. We have the director of senior services and our acting health director who are going to be there. And we've sensed that there's a lot of concern and anxiety among seniors. So we're trying to focus this one for seniors and educate and putting the word out that we'll try to address as many of the comments as possible that seniors bring. Because this has created a lot of anxiety and a lot of tension for seniors, not just for fear of the disease, but also the social isolation. So we want to start to talk about ways and people we can help with people on that front. Next slide. So we talked about the call in number which is monitored seven days a week. The thing that we started doing last weekend was to actually answer the phone live on Friday and Saturday nights when we received the most calls. And we still will respond to them and after the fact as well, but we wanted there to be ambassadors. And there's a police officer who's also able to answer the calls at the same time so we can help address things and listen to people's concerns immediately. And if there's a response available, we do that. I will get more information about that tomorrow. We have our 14 meeting tomorrow morning. So I'll learn more about how that actually worked. But we do know that we received 238 calls, 150 calls, 88 emails since we started the program shows that there is demand for this, that people have concerns. And some are repeats, but a lot of unique calls that we've been receiving. So a lot of work to respond to them, but usually really good questions that people have. So we appreciate people calling and encourage people to continue to call. Next slide. Our ambassadors are out on the streets. They have had 1,170 interactions as they call it. They document any kind of interaction they have. They read down notes on how the interaction went. They've been distributing masks. Many of them are going out to university students. They make house calls on off-campus housing. They go as a group, they carry bags of goodies that they give out to folks including masks and things like that, try to do an educational component. They have been going to different neighborhoods, period on different times, usually Thursday afternoon, Friday afternoon, three to five, and they're gonna make a big push on October 24th, I think, to do a real blanket thing throughout the area. So a really good team being built here by Kat Neumann, who is the lead ambassador. Next slide. So they are working regular shifts. They walk around downtown, they have those yellow shirts on. And here they are at the farmer's market, listening to people, talking to people, explain to people what their job is. A lot of people are coming up to them and just saying, you know, why are you here? You know, they're handing out masks and they see people who are unmasked. And, you know, just when you read some of the anecdotal things, it's really interesting to see the kinds of interactions and a lot of times they're getting really positive feedback from the members of the community and saying, thank you for doing this. It's really important work that you're doing. So it's been a really good program, I think, so far. Next slide. And then this is Winston on the job, sleeping as usual. And next slide. So just have a couple recent updates and then we'll go to any questions. So first, one good piece of news from the university. They agreed this afternoon to provide regular asymptomatic testing for all town of Amherst, first responders and our inspectors. These are the people who are, when a call comes in to the COVID hotline or just a regular complaint and we have to send someone out to visit a house. These are people who are walking out, walking into these houses. For the police and fire, they know the addresses of the people who are COVID positive. So they know when to wear a whole PPE when they go to these houses. But somehow you may not know if someone is infected or not. So we really appreciate that the university has stepped forward and offered this, their marvelous testing facility for our first responders and a press release went out on that this afternoon. The other good piece of good news for us is that we did receive a grant of 129,000 plus from the mass department of transportation to continue to work with our downtown businesses to create streetscapes that will encourage people to utilize the downtown area and properly socially distance. And to put in other, we're working with the bit in the chamber to think other ways that we can help encourage people just to help our businesses survive. One of the things they're talking about is a, you know, sort of a pledge that you pledge to buy a meal a week, take out from the, from, or three meals or whatever from our downtown establishments to help sustain them during the winter.  We're hoping that getting enough people to do something like that will support our local businesses, providing some heat lamps where they can extend their season a little bit longer. We're also thinking as we do these things about the spring, it's not just about this short period of time when we know before too long it's just gonna be too cold outside. But we're also looking at being ready for the spring. So when the weather starts to break we can get people back out and start getting, I think getting people outside as much as possible. We're looking at possibly adjusting some of the traffic or the barriers so that it's much easier for people to pull up in front of a restaurant and pick up their food. So there's a lot of creative thinking going on and this grant will help us in a major way. So I thank the State Department of Transportation for supporting this. So if there are other questions that people have can we take that down?  Thank you so much. Mine is about Halloween. I saw LSSE put out something today about a car parade. Northampton and many other communities are putting out some sort of guidelines for actual trick or treating. Are we looking at putting out guidelines for trick or treating around town and how it can be done safely? Yes, we will have something out this week because I know this week has probably been the first where people started really focusing on their kids costs. Some kids have been focused on their costs and for a long time. There is going to be the car parade for the that LSSE is organizing. And I got something in the email this afternoon. I did not read it yet about an update on where their plans are, but I'll share that out with the council as we think. But I think our goal is to have something out to the community this week. Okay, thank you. Matt DeAngeles. Yes, thank you for the work that you're doing. And I agree that the ambassadors are quite important. What they're doing is important, but many, many weeks ago, a question was asked were any of the ambassadors young people of color? And I'm asking that question again, because after seeing the photos, I don't see any young people of color. And I'm concerned that the town is only hiring, hopefully accidentally only white people. I don't know the answer to that because I don't see them. I just see the appointment is going to, but I will double check on that for you Pat and get back to the council. Thank you very much. Dorothy has her hand up. I'm assuming that regular trigger treating can take place. I mean, I'm thinking about what comes to my house and their groups, small groups. And I know that what many families have done is they've made a pod. And I expect trigger treating would be in the pods that people have made with maybe two families who have been socializing together through this time. I don't see big random groups of kids coming, but I do want to know whether that's considered to be okay or not okay. So I don't have an answer for you Dorothy, but we will put out some guidelines. I mean, if a street said we want to all trick or treat at each other's houses, we're not going to put a cruiser up there until they can't go trick or treating. But we want everybody in the community to say, yeah, this is sort of the guidelines that we're working for, working along. And we'll ask for cooperation for the full community to, if we're not, I don't know why I'm speculating what the answer might be, but we're not doing Halloween this year or we are doing it now. For example, Lincoln Avenue has often closed the street and had a party. So I assume those kinds of things are not going to happen. And parades are not in-person parades. But the way trick or treating has taken place on my, at least on my block has been socially distanced in small groups. Marcy? Pondview Drive has historically been a really big trick or treating area, Orchard Valley generally. And a lot of families actually come from other communities and drop their kids off. And they make the rounds on Pondview Drive. But I did hear from at least one constituent who expressed that she didn't think there should be any trick or treating this year. And I can kind of relate to that. But I don't have to have my light on. I don't have to participate.  But you could leave your light on and put the candy bowl on the porch, stand at your door, your storm door and show excitement and amazement as the children come by. I'm just so concerned about children and the quality of their life. I think it's a serious problem. Hi, Moni. Yeah, I still have a question about the ambassadors. And it seems like they have a lot of interactions, like 1,170 interactions. I'm not sure what is any qualitative data on what is happening in those interactions. And I'm also still not clear what happens when someone makes a call about there being a party when they have concerns, what are the actions being taken at the back end? So two questions there. One, the interactions, they do little synopsis of any real interaction that they have. Many, the majority of those interactions are things that are organized through the university, that they're going out with bags to where students are living and they're giving them bags so that they might go to a house and making six people there. And so that would be six interactions. They can't be linked that way. The ones that they're doing, like the interactions downtown, where they're walking in the mass required zone, those are usually pretty much always very positive interactions. And they're offering masks, they offered a mask to a gentleman in town who typically is on the street a lot. And he said, people always, paper masks, they don't want paper masks, they get wet too quickly for me. So they had cloth masks and they were very grateful to receive a cloth mask. And they were like, oh, that's a good win for us. That was a positive interaction. So it varies, I think the way they count interactions is, if you walked up to the farmer's market that three people walked up, that would be three interactions, right? In terms of what happens right now, we respond back, if there is a call for on the COVID hotline, if it's something about too many cars in the driveway or something, refer that to inspection services. Sometimes it's usually gets funneled into either police or inspection services or health. It depends what the actual complaint is or concern is. Again, I have not had an update on this weekend where we had people answering the phone live. These are usually things that come in overnight, less than message emailed. And you can feel the tension that people have when they're emailing and calling because they are concerned. And we try to get back to them right away to say we've talked to the police. And we do have the weekly meeting that where the university in town goes through every call that came into the police department. They do look at the COVID line as well. And they start strategizing on this house again, let's go and make another visit to that house. Let's start to educate them a little bit, give a little more education to that house. I hope that answers your question. Alyssa? Just have to be a little, just have to interject my Halloween scrooge. And I already had written to Paul about this that just said, let's take the lead. And so I appreciate that he said he's gonna work on getting something out this week. I would hope that whatever that is, since he's been clear that we don't know what it is yet, that it will specify in there that it's clear that many residents who love this holiday every year are not going to participate. And so I appreciate what you said, Darcy, but I won't turn my light on. But many residents will not participate. And so if people are planning to go trick or treating here, they will show up in neighborhoods where things are not all lit up because everybody's gonna be trick or treating. And many people are not going to wanna participate. I also just wanna push back a little bit on the fact that I get that kids need a lot of things. I miss the costume parade, the pumpkin roll, the fun activities carnival. LSSC always does a really nice job with all these things because some neighborhoods have parties, but LSSC has always been there for the kids across the community. But you can't say that trick or treating looks socially distanced because you've never seen socially distanced trick or treating. And we all know what a struggle it is to tell our kids not to put the candy in their mouth before they get home. They're obviously not sanitizing their hands in and out of the communal bowl. Every group has a kid with a runny nose. We all know this. These are reality points. So whatever we decide to do, let's just be clear that we as a community are not embracing, oh, let's just pretend trick or treats great and we can stand at our storm doors and somehow that's all gonna work out. I think it's great if we can specify, hey, there's gonna be a parade. And if you as a community wanna do something special in your community, that's your pod, awesome. But to say that the entire community is just gonna try and pretend it's a normal year. It's not a normal year. Please, Robert. Yeah, so I agree. So I was thinking I'm 63 and I love Halloween. And to my knowledge, there's been a municipal order to cancel Halloween once in my 63 years. And that was during snowtober here in Amherst. I think that was 10 years ago or something like that. And there was a reverse 911 call saying, please don't go out on October 31st. We'll set up something a week later. But this feels like that year. This feels like the year that we should not be encouraging. In fact, we should be discouraging trick or treating for all the reasons stated. So if we're freaking out about eight UMass students, we also need to be freaking out about eight potential vectors going door to door. I mean, I can't think of anything more of a super spreader potential than groups going door to door around Amherst. So I guess I kind of agree with the sentiment that we shouldn't be agnostic about this, that we should take a position that it's simply not a good year for this. And we are on an incredibly busy street, so busy that we've been visited by the ambassadors. But I just, I don't see it. I look forward to October 31st every year.  And I'm heartbroken by that, but I can't contribute. Thanks, Shalini. Yeah, another question that came up is the university that's providing the testing. They are charging the town for it. Is there any, was there any kind of negotiation or where we could, because it is very expensive. So I don't know what that arrangement is, how are we reimbursing them? And second, could we include teachers, are teachers considered first responders? Teachers are not considered first responders. And I know the superintendent has has suggested that to the university and I'm sure they would think about that. I think they recognize first responders are different than teachers. I would really differentiate that. We have funds under the CARES Act to support this activity. It's perfectly in the use of the funds, the funds available and I think this is a very valuable thing to compensate the university for. The university, this is not free to the university. So I wanna recognize that they put a lot of infrastructure in place and if this happened, we would like to take advantage of it. I think it's only responsible on our part to bear the costs of the test. It's actually not that much. That very expensive, they've got a really good deal. From the Broad Institute, because they're such a big, they purchase so many tests from the Broad Institute. And it's just, we could not get that level of service anywhere else. So it's a small price to pay to make sure that our first responders are inspectors. They feel that we care about their health too. And there's a big concern for our inspectors who are being asked to go. We've developed all kinds of systems in place to inspect houses remotely, or via FaceTime or something like that. But there's still times when people have to go out and look at something in person. And it's our responsibility to give them as much protection as we can. Thank you, that's helpful. You're welcome. Just one last Halloween thought. Yes, Alyssa got me with a communal candy bowl. But since on my street, people come as families. I can do as I've done at other holidays. And have little separate bags, little separate paper bags, which they sell in the store with some stuff on the table. I do agree, no communal candy bowls. You really did paint a good picture there, Alyssa. Are there any other comments at this time? Paul, any final comments or Jen? Any final comments? No, I just think that, you know, we're working through this and I appreciate, I really value the comments that you gave us. And if you have thoughts afterwards, please convey them to me, because, you know, we're just trying to make the best decisions we can for the town. And love hearing from our members of the public as we try to use our, we lead with public health. What is in the best public health metric? What's in alignment with the governor and the state? We try to maintain those two things. And that's why the data is so critical to our community. The data is so critical to our decision making. So the lens we always look through is, is this in the best interest of public health? And that's why Jen, who is a public health professional and Julie before her were so valuable because they forced us, I hear all the, you know, concerns of all the neighbors and all those things like that. They are able to focus it on what really matters in public health. And it's been very helpful to focus on that. Thank you, Paul. We are going to take a five minute break. We will reconvene at eight 10 when you come back. Please turn your picture back on. So I know that you're back. Okay, please turn your picture on and we're gonna reconvene. I wanna go back and make sure people can hear us and we can hear you. Pat DeAngelis. Yes. Darcy Montt. Not yet. Rhys Merz, yes. Anakie. Yes. Yes. Yes. Whoa. Dorothy Pam. I think we've lost Dorothy. Athena. We have lost Dorothy Pam. I'll call her. Evan Ross. Here. George Ryan. I'm here. I'm here. Pam is here. Thank you. Cassie Shane. She's here. Steve Schreiber. Here. Dynberg. Here. Gortz. Here. DuMont. Here. Or Bob Falmone. Yes, I'm here. Alyssa. Alyssa Brewer. Can you hear us? Yes, Alyssa Brewer can hear you. Thank you. Okay. We are moving on to the presidential election warrant. Is the warrant that authorizes the election on November 3rd. I'm going to make the motion and look for a second. To authorize the warrant for the presidential election on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2020. The election is open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the following locations. District one, voting precinct one, North Zion Korean Church, Church Hall 1193 North Pleasant Street, District two, precinct two, the high school. District one, voting precinct three, Emmanuel Lutheran Church. District three, voting precinct four, Amherst Regional High School. District four, voting precinct five. Bangs Community Center. District two, voting precinct six, Fort River School. District five, voting precinct seven, Crocker Farm School. District five, voting precinct eight, Munson Memorial Library. District four, voting precinct nine, Wildwood School. And District three, voting precinct 10, Amherst Regional, Pelham Regional High School. Is there a second? Second, DeAnchilis. Thank you, Paul. Okay, any further discussion or questions at this time? Okay, seeing none, we're going to, I'm sorry, go ahead, Shalini. I'll just a quick question, which I had sent to Paul earlier about Crocker Farm. Can I ask, is that the appropriate time to ask about it? Yes, please. So one of the risks in for poll workers said that it was crowded in Crocker Farm. And I heard back from Paul saying that the space is calculated based, they've made the calculations for the space. And I was just hoping that he could elaborate and explain that a little more so we can communicate with people in our district what that means. So yeah, so Jeremiah, our facilities manager has gone to every polling location and we actually had the fortune to be able to see them in action. Some of them have enormous space, so it was not an issue.  We have four, or might be six, there are four stand-up voting locations or polling locations of booths in Crocker Farm. And then there's one for people who are handicapped or want to need to sit down to vote as well. That will limit the number of people who can be in the building, in the precinct at any one time. So one of the things that the Secretary of State's office said to use is if you're limited on space, use time as your ally. So we will have people stand outside. They don't, we don't have to crowd everybody into the same voting space until it's able to be cleared. So we will have people queued up outside so they can come in. We did have a lot of poll workers, and when there was a turnover in poll workers, it seems like there's twice as many people. So that's one thing that the Secretary of State needed to consideration that maybe we don't have the shift change all at once. Maybe there's some staggered shift change. So you don't have like five people there, all changing jobs at the same time. So. Okay, thank you. Well, I would like to also add to the post on our website, men ballots that are going to be mailed out are available and how to track them. Sure, I think it is on our website, but we can make it more prominent. And I tried to put a little bit of that in the town manager report, but it is important for people to know the options for voting and how they can track their ballot. We do not have the material from the Secretary of State's office to be able to mail the ballots out to people who have requested a mail-in ballot at this moment in time, but everything is ready. The clerk's office has all the return, all the envelopes for people who have requested ballots ready to go. They just need this one last thing from the Secretary of State's office. Thank you. Indy, you have a question? Yes, following up on what Sheldon's question was, one thing you didn't mention at Cocker Farms, which is actually my largest concern about that location is it's currently set up as poll watchers. And we don't know that a candidate is going to try and flood the polling places in Amherst to try and sway our voters, but the campaigns themselves frequently just have somebody there for various reasons and multiple campaigns. They do so because they use it as a method of finding out if the votes are turning out that they're expecting to turn out at the election day. So is that going to pose a problem for us? No, every polling location has an area for poll watchers to stand in. We don't have to provide seating for poll watchers, but we do, and you can limit the number of poll watchers. You ask the poll watchers to coordinate themselves. If there's 10 people who show up and you only have room for four, you can tell them you have to coordinate your activities. That's as the Secretary of State's office has a pretty detailed memo on that from about four years ago that we go by. And Jeremiah has taken that into account. I don't think he actually had it taped off last time. I think that's his intention this time is to take off where poll watchers can actually be. Okay, thank you. Dorsey, move your hand up. Okay. Maybe I misheard, but we received our absentee ballots today. Did you? Okay. Then I'm behind the times. So everything's in here. Okay. Okay. Are there other questions from the Council of this one? Okay, seeing none, then I'm going to go ahead and we're going to begin the votes. Dorsey Dumont. Yes. Then Grace Mersey, yes. Mandy Johanna Key. Yes. Rosie Pam. Yes. Evan Ross. Yes. George Ryan. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Hugh Schreiber. Yes. Dan Berg. Yes. Sarah Schwartz. Yes. Melanie Balmille. Yes. Alyssa Brewer. Yes. Pat D'Angeloz. Yes. The votes unanimous to support this motion. We are moving on to zoning bylaw 14 temporary zoning. And this is a little tricky in that we're going to be looking potentially at some recommended changes, but Paul will speak to that. They may not be ready yet, but once they are, what we want to do is create automatic referral. So they go to committees instead of having to come back to the Council and be referred. So that's what the motion will be about. But Paul, why don't you speak to zoning Article 14? So zoning Article 14, if you recall, was something that the Council passed, I think June 16th for 180 days that delegated power to the Building Commissioner to take certain actions. That power expires. So six months later, which would be December 16th, whatever the exact date is. Council President and other Councilors were asking, like, should we extend that? What has happened with that so far? So we're preparing the Building Commissioner preparing a report on how that has been utilized, what has been utilized without the bylaw, which would have been done under the governor's order, what was done within the bylaw. And if there are any changes that the Building Commissioner think would be helpful going forward. And we'll have put that into a memo that will be given to the Council with this vote tonight. It'll automatically get referred and then come back to the Council in time for you to act and act it by December. So if I'm correct, Paul, there could be some changes asked for in the bylaw as well as an extension of the date. Correct. Mandy, show you your hand up. Yeah, I don't have a question. I'm more of as Chair of CRC wanted to let the Council know, but also Paul know the Chair of the Planning Board and I have tentatively scheduled a joint hearing for whatever changes there may be made on this for the required public hearings that are required for November 4th. In order to get them noticed in time, the paper has to know by October 16th because of the two week publication requirement. So I wanted to put that out there for Paul and the group because we'll need it by the end of this week and all to get the right notices for the planning department to, you know, or early next week for the planning department to put the required public notices together. The reason it seems early is because if the hearings are held on the 4th, the first reading for the Council can be on the 9th and that might mean there's a little bit backwards with GOL. The second reading for the Council and a vote can then be on the 16th. We have a meeting on the 9th and the 16th. We then don't meet till December 7th. Once the Council votes, the changes don't take effect for 14 days. The current bylaw is set to expire on December 14th so that December 7th Council meeting is seven days too late to get any changes effective, including an extension before the current bylaw expires. So it might seem a very tight timeline, but that's the reason and I just thought I'd let the Council know that. Thank you, Sandy Jofer. Also going through the process of the rationale of why we're coming to the Council at this point with the motion that I'm ready to read unless there's additional questions, although we can wait for that after the motion. Marcy? I'm pretty unclear about this. This is because we don't think we have enough time to bring it to a full Council meeting or... The present, first of all, the present bylaw expires in mid-December, okay? And in addition to extending the time period, there may also be some changes. However, the people from zoning, licensing, et cetera, have not had time to pull together their complete recommendation, but they will be doing that, we hope no later than the end of this week, the beginning of next. And so the motion tonight is to allow that once those are ready, they will automatically be referred to the planning board, to CRC, and to GOL. And the reason is because we have no meeting on Monday because of the holiday. We have a meeting on the October 19th, then we don't have a meeting again until after the election. And then we have two meetings in November, November 9th and November 16th, and then we don't have another meeting until December 7th. And so in order to meet all of the time frames of having another hearing through planning board and CRC, and all of the notices to have that hearing, as well as then having it come back to the Council to be read twice at two different Council meetings, we needed to backtrack and start moving the timeline along. And when you say that it has to be read twice at Council meetings, are we talking about a total zoning by-law overhaul? No, no, this is just the zoning by-law that was put in place as the temporary measure to help our downtown businesses during COVID. It's all it is is by-law 14. Oh, that's all this is about. Absolutely. The automatic referral, et cetera, et cetera. Oh, I didn't get it. This is not the big zoning by-law reform. We would never do that to you or anybody, okay? Does that make sense now, Darcy? Yeah. Kathy, question. I think the problem is the way the actual wording of the motion is, Lynn. I read it three times to try to figure out what this was. It says the zoning temporary as a title, but it says motion two, it never says motion to refer the temporary zoning article, whatever, in the motion. So it looks like all zoning is zipping in. It's just missing. So if you just read those words, that's what it looks like. It looks like the speed train for everything. Yeah, it's pretty confusing. And not only that, we're going to get it all done by November 9th, which would also be stunning. I understand the issue. So let me try this out. It's not the actual motion, but I would amend it to read, to automatically refer any proposed changes to the temporary zoning by-law 14, or to zoning by-law 14, temporary zoning, recommended by the planning department to the Planning Board and Community Resources Committee for review, joint hearing and recommendation, and to the governance organization and legislation committee for review and recommendation by November 9th. So I will insert what we're referring to, okay? All right, so here is the motion. To automatically refer any proposed changes to zoning by-law 14, dash temporary zoning, recommended by the planning department to the Planning Board and Community Resources Committee for review, joint hearing and recommendation, and to the governance organization and legislation committee for review and recommendation by November 9th. Is there a second? Yeah, in a few seconds. Thank you. Any further discussion or questions? I think those were excellent points to be made. Alyssa. I think that's what happens when I reviewed the motion sheet and once again was waylaid by the title of the motion, not the content of the motion. We have a tendency to do that, to put the content in the title, not in the motion itself. So that was very helpful, the way you reworded it there. So thank you. The other thing I just want to point out is, I mean, it was clear from the material in our packet, I thought, but at any rate is that when you said, when we put this into place and people had some misgivings putting this into place, that we would get feedback about how it had worked. And we've gotten zero in terms of actual substantive feedback up until this point. So it is important that they pull that together and that staff do that amongst all the millions of other things that they're doing so we can show the community that this was a smart thing to do and that's a smart thing to extend it. And I hope that there isn't going to be anything in there that's going to be too startling or surprising to people in the community. I hope they're minor tweaks in addition to the timing because as you point out, we have this very tight timeframe and I don't want to derail what is obviously from the general comments we've been hearing from everyone, a good thing over something complex that gets inserted at the last moment. So I'm assuming it's going to be very minor tweaks and timing and that if it's more than that, that we get the heads up on that sooner rather than later so we can help work that through with our community in addition to the actual public hearing that'll have to be held. So I really appreciate Mandy Joe keeping track of all those deadlines. And all of those items will be advanced to everybody at the time that they are advanced to the planning board in CRC, okay? Darcy. I'm interested in seeing how it has gone in the last 180 days. I was, I may have been the only person who voted against it originally, though there may have been some other people, but I am not generally interested in extending it. And, you know, I will vote to have it referred because I think we need to have a public hearing on it, but I continue to think that I want more resident participation in what we do in our town government, participation by the planning board and the design review board, et cetera, and there isn't any particular reason why we need to change our processes. So anyway, but I will vote for it tonight. Okay. Mandy Joe. It's somewhat related to zoning by law 14, but we at the same time we passed zoning by law 14, we passed a amendment to the town council policy on delegation of public ways or delegating authority on public ways. I forget what the title of policy is. We should, the manager, I asked that the manager look at that to see if any concurrent changes are required for that too. It's not as tight of a timeline because it doesn't require a public hearing because it's a council policy, but it'd be good to do them at the same time. And if there are any, then those would be referred to TSL. Town council policies generally go to GOL. Public way? It's a policy delegating a town council authority. Okay. But no, it would be. It went to public. I think it went to both last time. It went to public way and then to GOL. Paul, comment on any of this? We will get those to you hopefully this week. So everybody will see what being recommended. I don't think there'll be many surprises and I really haven't had a detailed conversation with the building commissioner and planning director about exactly if they had some tweaks, they didn't think it was significant though. Okay. And any comment on the public way issue? No, yeah, I think that's a good point on that. And I'll work on that and I'll look at that and see what, because we did make them concurrent and it makes sense to stay that way. Should we be amending the bylaw to include TSO and on that one as well then? I mean, I'm sorry, amending the motion to include TSO. So the motion is just for the bylaw itself. Yeah. There's a separate, I think you can refer that one if there are changes at October 19th, there'll be plenty of time. Yeah, okay, I agree. All right. So the motion which has been made in second to is to automatically for any proposed changes to zoning bylaw 14 temporary zoning recommended by the planning department to the planning board and community resources committee for review, joint hearing and recommendation and to the governance organization and legislation committee for review and recommendation by November 9th. Any further discussion? And we'll move to a vote and we start with Grishman. It's a yes. Hanakie. Yes. Pam. Yes. Evan Ross. Yes. Berge Ryan. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Yes. Steinberg. Yes. Sarah Schwartz. Yes. Shalini Balmille. Yes. Alyssa Brewer. Yes. Pat DeAngeles. Pat DeAngeles. Yes. Thank you, Darcy Jamont. Yes. Okay, it passes 13-0-0. We're moving on to the second reading of the single-use plastic bag prohibition. And what I've asked is, although you have a very extensive report that was in your previous packet and also in tonight's packet, however, what I've asked is that instead we put the actual motion up on the screen because the motion has now been edited. Serge, you're going to go to the motion sheet. Just a second. I'm making sure I have the right document. Certainly. Got it right here. And you want to go all the way to 8C. And that would be it right there. Okay, so the motion, the way the motion appears, it shows you in strikeout what's been eliminated. It shows you what's been added by using bold and it shows you what's the same by it being just kept as normal. So I'm going to make the motion. I'm not going to read the entire bylaw since you all have copies of it. So the motion is to amend bylaw 3.28 single-use plastic bag prohibition by deleting the language shown in strikethrough and adding language in bold, et cetera. Is there a second? I second it. That was Darcy, thank you. So what I would like to do is then ask if there are questions at this time, but I want to start with George Ryan who followed up with both the Board of Health and the business community. Sure, thank you, Lynn. I reached out for the request to the chamber, the Amherst bid and the Board of Health to see what they could add to the discussion. The results of that are in the report from TOL. I'll just touch on it very briefly. Really, there wasn't much to be learned. The bid and the chamber had no objections to the bylaw. They are not aware of any concerns or difficulties from their members. After five years of the ban, the assumption is that most, if not all, businesses are aware of the restriction. I asked the Board of Health about enforcement matters and apparently there weren't any that they could point to. There was one exemption that was discovered in those five years and that was it. So that's what I learned. Are there any further comments or questions from the council? Evan Ross. So first of all, thank you George for following up since I was one of the people who requested that information. I found your report to be really helpful. You mentioned the Board of Health in five years and you said that they had one deferment, but it didn't say whether that deferment was in the past or currently active. My assumption is it's no longer active. That is correct. Okay, thank you.  I just wanted to clarify that the parts of the, most of the parts that are in bold are not added per se. They were in the original by-law that preceded the ad hoc review committee. So they were in the original by-law back in. So, right. So this was most of what's been done here is just maintaining it in its original version with some changes along the way that happened in the GOL committee. But that was my original intent, just to maintain in large part what was in the original. Okay.  Well, since that came up, I feel compelled to point out that that's why this was such a mess the last time it was presented to us because someone was trying to rewind time. The reality was that we had replaced that by-law. A majority of us voted to replace that by-law. So what is in front of you right now is an accurate representation as it should be, unlike the last one we were provided of what has changed between the by-law we accepted and the by-law we are going to have now. This type of, this is covered in both our rules and in past practice in terms of bold and underlying. I appreciate that the context is that it's returning things much to the way they were before, but the reality is a change was made, the by-law changed, period, end of story, and now it's being changed again. So thank you for that. George Ryan. Yeah, the one I think request that came from my conversations with the bid in the chamber was that there'd be some consideration of the fact that the ban had been suspended and now has been removed again. I don't think enforcement's gonna be a big issue because essentially as far as I can tell, driven by consumer complaint, that there'd be some consideration given to businesses in the first month or two as they go back to finding replacements for the plastic bags that they've been using. And this is all related to COVID. Yeah. Okay. Mandy Jo. Yeah, I don't, I just wanna respond to that and say I don't want us to get bogged down on that because the by-law's in effect right now. Once the governor removed his suspension, we have one on the books, it's still in effect. We've never suspended ours. So that request should go to the Board of Health. What we're doing today isn't going to change the fact that once the governor lifted his order, they had to go back to not using plastic bags because we had one on the books. So if they're seeking any type of non-enforcement, that should go to the Board of Health for a request. All right, any other comments at this time? Motion's been made and seconded. We'll begin the vote. And I will begin with Hanuki. Yes. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Evan Ross. Yes. George Ryan. Yes. Bethany Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Yes. Sarah Schwartz. Yes. Shalini Balmilne. Yes. Elizabeth Brewer. Yes. Pat DeAngelis. Yes. Marcie Dumont. Yes. Free frozen lunch. And then Grace Merce, yes. I'm frozen. Oh, thank you. Did I unfreeze? We are going to move past appointments because we've done all of those. We're going to go to Committee and Liaison Reports. Mandy Jo. Not much to report. I already mentioned that the tentative hearing for if there are any changes to zoning bylaw Article 14 will be November 4th. I think it's tentatively scheduled for 8 p.m. But we'll be working on that over the next week and a half to make sure it's noticed in time and that it gets on the bulletin board and all in time for everything. We had a nice discussion on housing, comprehensive housing policy and on moving forward with zoning bylaw priorities. And we'll continue both of those discussions going forward and I'll keep you updated and probably write a report soon with more detail on both of those.  Do you have a question or a comment? My comment is just, I need to leave the minute meeting early so I don't want you to think that I lost connection. I'm leaving on purpose. Thank you. Kathy, we appreciate that. Before you leave, anything on JCPC? No, JCPC, we just had the one meeting in September and we won't be meeting again until February-ish after a decision to make and how much the town has to spend for the following year. Okay. Andy, Finance Committee. Yes, very briefly. Last time we met, I made reference to the fact that the next meeting will be tomorrow and gave the date. It is still tomorrow that we're meeting at 2 p.m. There is reference in the town managers report to information that has been developed by staff to present to the Finance Committee for consideration regarding the inventory issues, capital issues and the fourth meeting. Quarter and year-end finance report amongst other material. The Finance Committee packet is available on the town website and so that it can be easily found. If you have problems finding it and you're interested then just shoot me a private email and I will send you the link to it to make it easy for you. The Finance Committee has not been using SharePoint because we have members of the committee who are not counselors. Andy, I just want to correct and check. The meeting is at 2.30 tomorrow, not 2 o'clock. No, I believe it is at 2 o'clock because we had a little bit of a mix-up and it was posted for 2 p.m. I think that Athena caught the error and pointed it out to us. So, Athena, do you want to just confirm that it's 2 o'clock tomorrow? Posted for 2 o'clock tomorrow. Thank you, okay. GOL, George. Yeah, just first of all, we meet on Wednesday, this Wednesday the 7th and the hope is that we will complete our review of the two-way staff by-laws and we're also going to be looking at least on the agenda. We have an item concerning exotic animals. I called the wild animal by-law. That's also on the agenda. But hopefully you've had a chance to look at the report. In the last meeting, we struggled with two, I call them procedural issues related to GOL and I described them in great detail, painful detail in the report. And I don't know if we want to get into it now but I'll show you where of them. Also there are two appendices in the report. One of them is the KP law, a review of the ways that by-law and I felt it was important that the counselors have access to it and they read it. So rather than have me discuss it or repeat it all now, since this is not an item that we're really dealing with at the moment, just draw your attention to it and encourage you to read those sections at some point before we return to that discussion. Are there questions of George? Our statements, Pat. Yeah, I just wanted to say that one of the things that the KP law summary says is that the ways that by-laws aspects of them are in conflict with state law. That's quite inaccurate. The other thing I want to bring up is that we had a discussion in GOL about whether or not sponsors should be able to participate in voting or discussion during a committee meeting. And I was wondering whether TSO is considering that as well, particularly since George is on that committee.  I had my hand up, yes, thank you. I'll let somebody else address the TSO issue because that was immediately what I thought of when you guys had that discussion, so I appreciate you including that in your report. But the reason I was raising my hand was because I really appreciate, George, that you included the KP law summary in there. And as I wrote back to you and to Paul, I was exceedingly disappointed with KP law section on tax increment financing. It was a cut and paste job from some other work they did for someone else and didn't relate to our tax increment financing that we've used here in Amherst at all. So hopefully that will be clarified a little bit before that section, which is a admittedly a small section of the wage theft portion is brought back to us so that that doesn't continue to cause confusion when it was a meaningless set of data that didn't have anything to do with what's actually happening in Amherst. Thank you. Are there any comments on whether TSO has also had this question as to whether sponsors who are also counselors, because counselors are the people who sponsor both bylaws as well as memorandums of like we passed tonight. Darcy? Yeah, no, we haven't discussed that per se, but it seems like if it's an issue that is being brought up in multiple council committees, then it's a town council issue. It seems to me like it doesn't fall into the category of what an actual conflict of interest is, but it seems like if it applies, if it's a concern in committees, then we should have a policy for the whole council, right? My, yes. And if we would like, we can put it on an agenda. I will tell you exactly what I said as a member of GOL and that is that a person who is counselor has a right to vote at all times.  That's my personal position. And at this point, GOL did not, we didn't take any votes, but we did not make a decision to restrict voting to only people who were not sponsored either. Dorothy? Well, I totally agree with you. I think to not allow sponsors to vote would result in all kinds of gaming where if you wanted to vote for an issue, you would try to get somebody else to sponsor it, but you would do the work. I mean, it's like all kinds of strange workarounds. I mean, obviously we were elected to make decisions and we have ideas and we have things that we bring forward. And I think that we all have an equal vote. Andy? So, since I was the one who raised the issue at the GOL committee, I wanna explain a little bit more about it, about what my concern was and why I was uncomfortable with it. And it does reflect only on the single committee because all of the comments that have been made that just sponsoring a resolution does not create a conflict of interest under the state statute that defines conflict of interest and sponsor members should be free to vote at the council level. And I frankly don't have any hesitation whatsoever about other committees. GOL, the reason I was uncomfortable about it is and I'll use Plastic Bag as an example because we just talked about it. There was a lot of discussion that went back and forth between Darcy, who's the sponsor of that particular change and had made that request and the committee to try and work through a series of issues. And the committee had a very clear responsibility which is to meet the charge of the committee to see that the bylaw that was being presented for amendment was clear, consistent and actionable. And the sponsor had a very clear role in advocating to make sure that the amendment came out in a way that would satisfy the committee's interest but would also satisfy the sponsor's goal. And that process worked, I thought very well in the example that I just gave. And what was feeling very uncomfortable for me and I think that was a very good example and it's very hard because there are two members of the committee and the council who I really like in respect with greatly who were in this position but they were in sort of a dual role there. And that was the question that I asked the committee to consider. So I actually think that it is a GOL question not a, it is not applicable to TSO or CRC because they really play very different kinds of roles. And it may be that the committee comes to a conclusion that despite what I just described that that's the way it is. And if so, that's what the committee is going to conclude. But I did feel that it was very uncomfortable for me at times because I felt that I was dealing with two members of the committee who were playing two different roles. Alyssa? Yeah, maybe we could somehow put this on a future agenda because as much as I love to put everything to the committees themselves to make decisions about I actually don't think that I can based on the explanations we've heard tonight draw that final line between GOL and everybody else because we have people coming to TSO who are TSO members who are convincing us that not only is this a great idea but it's a great idea for TSO to support it. And I don't know why the clear consistent and actionable is so very, very different. And if GOL decided that it was so different that they didn't want sponsors to be able to take part in discussion or vote on the GOL recommendation that I would want to rewrite GOL's charge as a town council because I don't think any counselors should be put in that position of having to define themselves that way when they're on a committee. I'd suggest that we do exactly what you've suggested and that on a future agenda will be the issue of whether or not sponsors who are members of committees should be voting on those items when they're in committee. And let's just move on to the rest of our agenda. Okay, in fact, TSO, do you have an update? I was not at the last meeting. So I'm gonna in a moment ask Evan if he has anything to add to this, but we did hear about, if you read his report it was very detailed about the appointments that we just approved through our consent agenda. And we've heard once now a presentation about Lincoln Ave that is detailed in his report also. On October 8th, we're going to hear from the sponsors of the face recognition technology bylaw and we're also going to get appointments for CDBG advisory commission, the design review board and the cultural council. This is what we've been promised anyway. That's what we're expecting. We hope to get the community safety committee appointments by the October 22nd committee meeting. And then on November 5th, we're going to look at the other half of the surveillance technology bylaw, which has now been caught in half. We're going to look at the surveillance technology piece of it on November 5th. Evan, do you have anything you wanna add about what happened in the last meeting? Yeah, the council I know had the report to read, but just I guess for the sake of the public who might be watching and interested, the council had referred the Lincoln Avenue parking recommendation from DPW to TSO back in March. Many of us may have forgotten that happened. TSO didn't and in that time, councilors Ryan and Pam were working on a proposal that sought to expand that recommendation beyond the initial one to also include the part of Lincoln and also thanks to our basic geography and also sunset. After a fairly lengthy discussion, TSO has decided to table that proposal for now. We're recommending for or against, we're just recommending that we not take action at this time, not that we don't take action, but not at this time because we're afforded a really unique opportunity right now with the university suspension of most on-campus classes and much of its operations that provide us some relief to Lincoln Avenue parking. And so the feeling is that there is no real pressure to do this immediately. And this opens up an opportunity for TSO to explore residential parking a bit more comprehensively because during the public hearing, we heard from other counselors in other districts who cited parking issues or complaints from residents about parking in their districts. And there were some questioning about why Lincoln Ave and why not some of these other areas. And so this just opens up an opportunity for us to have a larger conversation about residential parking that will allow us to better contextualize whatever decision is made on Lincoln Avenue. And so I wanna make sure that the people who push for the Lincoln Avenue parking changes don't feel that they've been forgotten, don't feel like we're recommending against the proposal. We are just using the time that has been afforded to us by this crisis to have a larger and more comprehensive conversation about parking so that we can make a better and more informed decision both about Lincoln Avenue but also about parking elsewhere in town. Thank you. Are there any questions regarding committee reports? Are there any reports for liaisons? Darcy. The Transportation Advisory Committee had a meeting after a very long break this last Thursday. Is it Thursday? Yes. And they just discussed what they want to do as a committee in the future. And they are actually, I neglected to mention that they are coming to our meeting, the TSO meeting on the eighth. Aaron Hayden, their chair is going to present to us basically on what he sees as the relationship of the TAC to the TSO. The members pretty much agreed in that meeting on Thursday that they assume that they will be just starting up meeting every two weeks again. But they're still discussing. Okay, is there any comment or question at this time? All right, then we're going to, we've already approved the minutes so we're moving on to the town manager's report, Paul. Thank you, Lynn. So a few things. One is I want to give credit to our county clerk for getting a $34,000 grant to help make sure that our poll workers are safe and that we can do make improvements into our polling locations. And you know, we were, and so I just heard in her initiative was really appreciated and she put in the grant, we've got a word on it right away. So it's really, that was really an exciting thing. It was her first grant too. So she's very proud of that, which is really good. Along the same lines this week, she's conducting poll worker trainings. And so these are things that are going on so an opportunity to, after listening to the ward and to actually do the training on the poll workers. We'll be, we are preparing to bring to the council a sort of a revised narrowed down design for the North Common to see if it is something that the council would like to take on as a project. The money has already been appropriated for the most part. When this last came up, this came up with a select board was still in office and the select board said, this is not for us to decide. It's really up for the council to make a decision. And so it's sort of had some time and now under COVID and we understand what our financial situation is. The project that was the way it was designed was too much for what our funding was. So we're looking at narrowing it down but still think it's really important to move forward on. So this will be the first time the council will get to look at it. So that's coming up in the next meeting or one after that, I forget which one it is but we're working on that for the council. I assume you'll want to take some time to think about it. That'd be on your schedule. I want to mention on Craig's Doors is making really good progress on securing places for people to be housed during the winter months starting November 1st. I can't really talk about exactly where they are at this moment in time but we have some really positive developments happening on that they have not inked any deals or anything like that. So that's why I can't really talk about that but I can assure you that if everything works out it'll be a really good solution for the town. And we're also considering day space in the winter I mentioned this before that's something that we're actively pursuing at various locations throughout the town and hope to be able to come up with something that will serve the people who need it the most. Along the same lines we are looking at a number of things that will involve the council of things that might go in the public way. We're again using some cares money to be looking at things that we can do to improve the town both during the COVID pandemic but also longer term. So one of these things are these little stations that are solar powered that provide electrical outlets for folks. So there's so many people who depend on their phones for their to live by. So we'd like to put these near park benches and things like that where people can plug in their phones and get it charged up especially during the pandemic it's much harder to find outlets to charge your phones especially if you don't have a home but if you're just traveling or anything it's important. We're looking at some signage downtown some electronic signage that would help convey what's going on in town for people who aren't on Twitter or whatever or don't come to the town's website and looking at some options with that. We're also looking at restrooms if we can because we know that there's a definite need for restrooms throughout the community. These are all ideas whether we can actually pull them off the big question whether they will be permitted to be funded through the CARES Act or not is another question as well. But those are the types of things that we're working on. Just wanted to give you an update on that. Okay, are there questions and or discussion? Darcy with your hand up. Yeah, I have a question about I have a constituent who applied to be on the community safety committee and she applied through the form. The it's like a community activity form but it's modified for this specifically for this committee. And she said that and she's been very good about like emailing and making sure that everybody knows that she has made an application. Anyway, her form didn't go through and the staff called her and then got information from her just by asking orally asking her the questions over the phone. I just am a little worried about other people who aren't as like if they didn't write an email saying, by the way, this is the cover letter for my application, how will you know who has applied if they're not going through? Well, I don't know what the issue was on that one. I know she did email and say, did you get it? And we didn't. So we have gotten others, it's working for other people. So that's why I had Angela call and say, can you help her get through? If it's not, how can we help her if it's not going through the normal channels? But I mean, we'll test it tomorrow, but we have received other people applying. So if you hear other people, that's not that individual, it might be something a more systemic issue than we need to jump on that. Okay. Thank you. Dorsey, you have your hand up. Yes. Paul, I wanna ask some questions about public restroom. You mentioned possibly at Plum Brook, Kiwanis Park, and I'm trying to figure out where is that? Plum Brook is on Hotline, Kiwanis Park is on Stanley. Okay. So when we were talking about Kendrick Park Playground, we had quite, in many of the meetings, and we talked about the need of a restroom there. It's in the middle, it's like a traffic island with road traffic all around it. So crossing the street with small kids and walking quite the distance to, I think there was a restroom you said at the high school, which probably does not exist now for the public. And the cost was one of the issues. And Kathy sent me a thing on a public restroom which is very successful someplace else, which is self-cleaning, safe and whatever, and it was very, very expensive. Okay. And so I know cost was a big issue. So that now that we have the possibility of using COVID money, I would think that the place to put one of these public restrooms would be at Kendrick Park since this was brought up by many people in the various meetings and forums on that. Because it's to do a good, safe one that's not gonna be a nuisance and a problem is expensive. Is there any possibility, or if you've been thinking about that? Yeah, so we've looked at, we're looking at different locations downtown. There's a need downtown for sure. Locating one downtown that looks nice is really a big challenge. The ones in the parks can look sort of like they're, they can look like a park. You see it at National Park or something they don't, but downtown I think people will really care what a restroom looks like. So finding the right location for it and finding a lot of these things when they come off the shelf, they're not exactly what you want to see. So I think, Steve Schreiber has sent some examples of things that do work, but again, some of these things are very, either innovative and look very, or they're very expensive that way too. Expensive. Yeah. But maybe good. And there are other requirements. You know, you have to have water, you have to have sewer, you have to have all these things available to it. And DJ, do you have your hand up? I just wanted to say, yay on finding ways to use the COVID money that can improve the town for more than just during the COVID. So I like the idea of kiosks. I love the idea of public restrooms. So hopefully we can get approval to do that and it'll work out.  Yeah, Paul, I had been working under the assumption that the council would need to make a decision on the NBLC grant by December, but from your report, it's clearly not the case. Is that something that happened recently and I just missed it? Or is, which is perfectly possible. But my understanding now is that they've pushed the awards off for a year. Well, the awards are until next June. Do I understand it? And Lynn has been closer to this than I am. Let me provide an update. What the NBLC decided to do this year because they were concerned that the new towns that they might offer money to wouldn't be able to take it because of fiscal issues. What they did was they decided to go ahead and give money those towns that had already started their projects but were on the list. And so that is what they've done with their money. So while we were in the queue for this year, meaning FY 21, in fact, we will not be in the queue until next year unless they make a different decision. So the earliest, we'll start hearing in the spring of FY 21 as to what their intentions will be. And the earliest that they would actually make an award that would be official would be July 1st, 2021. So for the moment, this is not something that's going to be on our agenda. No, but I think we will probably see the need to start discussing in the spring.  Yes, do we have a cutoff date for the community's safety committees applications for interview? Well, after tonight we'll be targeting October 22nd, because that's when it's on the agenda. Thank you. Alyssa. I'm sorry, just quickly following up on the restroom issue. So I don't pretend to understand what this particular grant program is looking for in terms of using CARES money for restrooms at Kiwanis or at Plum Brook, but I don't have any understanding of why any rational funding agency would think that was a better choice than something downtown. I realize it would be easier and I realized that a lot of kids and adults play on those fields when we're not having a pandemic, but we have people downtown now who need restrooms that don't have them. And so I would much rather we were spending our limited time and resources on figuring out a way to include a restroom at Kendrick, then in figuring out a way to put a cute little blockhouse with a cute little roof on it at Kiwanis or elsewhere, just because we have CARES money to do that. Again, following up on what Dorothy said and also following up regularly on the need that's been expressed when we talk about the fact that public buildings aren't open for people to be able to use a restroom facility, that seems like a huge win for us to be able to do something downtown. And I also see it as far more important than making progress on the North Common. I realize the money has been set aside. Steve and I are gonna have a huge argument about this when the time comes, because we were both at the same public meetings where a bunch of people said, oh, this could be so cool. And the select board said, you know what, this is not as simple as it looks and we are divided just among a select board and we are not gonna touch this. So yes, we're dumping that over to the town council. And so Steve and I can fight about that for hours when it comes back to the town council. But again, we have limited time. I've waited for the end of times. So I don't wanna talk about North Common. I don't wanna talk about restrooms at Kiwanis or Pot One. I wanna talk about a restroom downtown that will actually help people now and in the future, like the information kiosk, like the chargers will. I just think that's a way better deployment of our resources. It's not an either or situation. We hope to be able to do everything.  Yeah, I just wanna follow up also about making our meetings accessible to people with disabilities. And one conversation we've been having is about trying to get author for transcribing our meetings on Zoom. However, I've spoken with at least three different people with disabilities and they have state shared that that's not a good enough translation mechanism because there's a lot of emotion and everything that a person is able to do, but it's not captured in that. And so maybe that's something we need to have a discussion as a council or just how do we send out the message and communicate to people and accommodate and make that a priority.  If someone wants to participate in real time there isn't a closed caption feature. Although that might, I think that's changing. Zoom keeps improving and improving. And Otter is a third party thing that does real time closed captioning. I have not seen it in action but it's the thing that seems to be being recommended by people. And so we were looking for a technological solution to making our meetings more accessible to people much like TV, Amherst Media, everybody does or whoever with closed captioning. If you were talking about American sign language interpretation, which I think some people are asking for that would require, there would be a significant investment and significant commitment from the town say we want it and you would have to choose which meetings you want. And if you want just to calculate it's about several hundred dollars per meeting to hire someone to come in and do ASL. It's sort of just a budgetary decision. I think it would be a great thing to do. There are people out there who do this especially in Zoom, it makes it super easy because people can often do it from home. You usually have to hire two ASL interpreters because it's very intensive job so you need to trade off and so but we have, when we try to do it, it takes, it's about, it can cost several hundred dollars per meeting.  At Holyoke Community College, they have just started a contract with Caltora and Caltora is you bring your video in through Caltora and they will do machine translating right away. If you say, no, I want to have human captioning, you ask for that and there's a delay, maybe of a day, there's been a lot of this going on so maybe two days at the most. That is something that's out there. So if you could have your tech people look into it and see if that has any possibilities for what you have, what you need. Can I just follow up? Yes, Shalini. Yeah, I spoke with somebody who has functional blindness and she was just saying that there are different ways to communicate and some of them were not involving cost but more in the sense of like the way we write our, when we send out our emails or even the meetings, the way they're posted, if we can just say that we're just acknowledging that maybe like as of now we are putting order to make it accessible but we welcome your feedback or just like sort of letting them know that they're being acknowledged and they're being welcomed or if they're in person, I mean, we don't have in person meetings but she was just saying an example, like if the flyer mentioned, we're so sorry, we were not able to make this place wheelchair accessible then the people at least know that and they don't have to make a call and they don't have but they know that they were thought about in the process. So they're just ways to make people know that we are thinking about them and we are trying to work through this. That's one thing and then the second thing is like as a town comes, I mean, you raise the question that this is something we need to figure out as a town but I didn't hear from the council whether this is something we are gonna discuss as part of an agenda or where and when will it be discussed? Thank you. I put it on my list but Paul, do you wanna have a comment? Just on the first one, yeah. No, I think the points you're making are really important and there's, we do have an ADA transition plan. There's been a consulting firm that's looking at all of our buildings and things that are out there and I know that it's come in as a first draft which I have not really studied it yet. And on the second point, our communications manager is looking at our website and a lot of it is not just functional things on the website, it's how we do things. And this will resonate with Alyssa because we often will put pictures up on the website instead of documents that a machine can read for people. Things like that and we have to retain our staff to be able to do things that make mistakes that I do which is take pictures of a PDF as opposed to having something that can be read by machines and she's identified that as we redo our website or we're trying to make it friendly, not just for ADA purposes but also mobile first because most people access our website through their phones. So those things are all being worked on but I think, and this is something, doing, just taking in consideration when you're redoing your website, make it accessible just like you do with any other building. So that's what we're at best of our intention. Thank you. Darcy, you remember? Yeah, I just wanted to bring up the public comment that was made today that was sent to the town council by Laura Drucker. I have a couple of things to say about it. One is a couple of questions for the time manager. One is, d