etting this go that's all. Alyssa. Thank you so much Shalini in particular it's great to be able to follow that I also want real change and I think that some of the things we're talking about are symbolic to do and don't actually create real change cutting them from the budget doesn't create real change appointing a committee doesn't create real change doing what Northampton does is not something Alyssa ever wants Amherst to do period end of story they made a bizarre 10 cut based on nothing that now they're struggling to figure out what does that even mean to their reality I of course the items listed in the recent Gazette article of all the things we depend on the police to do as we've been talking about at length already I go down that list and I think don't need a gun don't need a gun don't need a gun but they're the only people we have ready to do those things right now we do need to make a huge shift there's no question that the way we do things in this country and we can start with this community to do it differently but we can't do it differently in six months we cannot in fact redo the entire police department even in time for next year's budget that's the reality but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be working right now to make all of these things happen it's not painless to to remove the items from the budget just as a symbolic thing I don't think that's going to work but at the same time I'm not sitting on this until January I'm not waiting for January for the report I'm expecting that we're going to hear at every town council meeting where we're at and we're going to hear that from staff from whatever staff Paul wants to send to us and we're going to keep hearing it from the community and we're going to hear it from whatever organizations that have already organically arisen to work on this to tell us look you said you were going to do x by x date where are we in august where are we in september we can't say well this will wait till after the election we're at a horrible time with the pandemic with staff trying to work remotely trying to work in person it's such a challenging time but we can't let things wait and so I want everyone who hears us talking about January to understand that we're not talking about not doing anything until January we're talking about doing a ton of things so that we're prepared in january to say okay those two positions we froze do they even need to be police positions do they need to be public health positions what kind of positions do they need to be and we'll know that at least for those two positions perhaps by january but only because we've done a ton of work in the meantime we don't have any details by our professional staff on what cuts would look like on the ground we don't need committees right now what i mean by that is we don't need official town committees i know north hampton is going through this elaborate process and driving themselves crazy how will we find the right people to be on the committees it's going to take weeks how transparent will it be we don't need any of that we've got organically arisen committees that can continue to work with the staff that they're working with right now and when they say to us you know what we could use some of that 80 000 for we want facilitation of this kind of discussion somewhere in the community and we want to be able to pay you know the stipend pay for childcare that sort of thing or we want to use a portion of it for this i want to hear that from them i don't want to sit around and say well let's try and define the perfect committee of those folks i think those folks we're already here and they're already talking to us and we've got great support already from our town manager from our chief of police and from other staff who are like let's do it let's talk about this let's try and figure it out so i want us to go ahead and make sure there's never been any indication that we were going to spend that 80 000 by giving it to the police or giving it to hr i do want to hear from the organically arisen groups who tell us what we should do with that money and i want to hear back from staff every town council meeting how far along we are in this process because if it turns out that say september october it's like well you know we've been really busy and we have good intentions but we didn't actually have any meetings then i'm going to say you know what you're done like you're not taking this seriously but i think people will take it seriously and i think we will continue to bring focus to it and we will actually be able to make real change not just say oh we appointed a committee oh we made a cut and then say oh look we did our jobs we have a lot more to do than that evan i always hate going after elissa um because i agree with everything she just said i just want to first thank andy for the finance committee report um i i was uh unfortunately unable to attend the finance committee meetings last week um first read about the recommendation in the gazette and was very confused about what happened and his report provided a really really clear explanation um and rationale behind the recommendation um which was especially valuable for me as someone who even though we're already a year and a half into this job is still very much a novice when it comes to municipal finance i'm finding myself frustrated uh now with the constraints that are placed on us by state law and also by the charter um because my first reaction was as the council why don't we just move those two fte positions somewhere else um and then someone reminded me that as the council we don't have the authority to do that we can't reallocate funds we can't transfer funds um we can't increase funds we can only uh did reduce or eliminate budget items and that that really limits what we can do here because i think in a perfect world i would be here speaking in favor of transferring the money that would be spent on those two fte somewhere else and so we can start to put into place the vision um of community response that relies less on police for response to mental health to homelessness uh to neighbor disputes noise violations um but we don't have the ability to do that and so my my concern with simply cutting the budget now my concern with simply eliminating those two fte positions is that as others have said is that we lose that money that could once once it is appropriated could be transferred or reallocated and so um i i intend to support the recommendation with the expectation that that and and perhaps it's a false one with the expectation that that money will never actually be used to hire the two fte police officers but that it will be available in the budget so that down the road we could see it reallocated somewhere else to better response but if we just eliminate those positions or cut it's not like i keep hearing defund the police and when i'm asked what that means i hear reduce the police budget and reallocate those funds to uh places that serve the community uh but if we were to cut the budget we'd only be doing that first half we wouldn't actually be freeing money to spend elsewhere and that's actually very frustrating to me um but we have to work within the system uh that we have and so i've been sitting in i spoke to to a couple people about this today with a lot of discomfort over what our options are um and a lot of discomfort with a vote that has the optics of us doing nothing of just appropriating the money as uh originally planned but i think what we need to make clear is one we're under a lot of constraints by state law and by our charter about what we as the council can actually do that if we just cut the budget we lose the money that could be and i hope will be reallocated and transferred to other purposes and that all of these discussions will go somewhere productive and one of the first places i hope we see this um as i know that gol is working on town manager goals for the next year and this is something that i expect will be worked into them this should be a priority goal of the town manager um to work on how we can reimagine policing and amers to be responsive to all of the public comments we've we've received and i echo uh darcy's comments that i've been so thrilled to see um public comments from a more diverse uh racially generationally socioeconomically group of people than we get on on most issues and certainly than we've ever seen on the budget i'm very happy this year our budget uh hearings were dominated by people talking about racial justice as opposed to uh what they were dominated by last year which was sort of the opposite um and so i i i support the recommendation with a lot of discomfort but knowing that or feeling as though it's the best course forward given what we all want to do as a council george you have your hand up i actually think there is some wisdom in the state law that keeps the 13 of us from just uh sort of deciding what we want to do with the budget um so i don't share quite any view on that um i also hope that whatever conversations take place whatever these organically arisen bodies may or may not be that we hear from the men and women who have served this town and continue to serve this town every day in other words you hear from the police department and their experiences because they work directly every day with these communities of need and i hope their voices will be given will be listened to and their experiences will be listened to and respected and also i think we need to hear from the social agencies and the service providers with whom our police department works with again on a daily basis and have been doing for many years we need to hear from them as well um simply a group of concerned citizens no matter how passionate and no matter how uh idealistically driven we also need to hear from the people who actually do this every single day mandy joe you have your hand up thank you um i'm going to echo a lot of what's been said um we heard a lot about many issues over policing um in certain areas of town from the residents um and residents who feel intimidated and harassed when officers drive by in their cars um we've also heard from residents how the police help the neighborhoods address issues of noise and large gatherings and i don't think we can forget what we've heard from the police um that many of the calls they receive are for non-criminal issues mental health medical um but we've also heard from the chief that our department doesn't participate in military surplus programs um that they don't go to large gatherings wearing riot gear um because they have found that that type of response is not helpful to de-escalating situations and that we do not own tasers um i think one thing that hasn't been acknowledged in all of this discussion is the good our police department has done in responding to the community sentiment in the past particularly with regard to student gatherings there was an issue in a Blarney blowout seven eight years ago that got out of hand um that was not what this community wanted to see our police department responding to and how they were responding and they changed they listened and nothing like that has happened again in terms of how our police department has responded and i think we need to acknowledge that um but i think we also need to acknowledge what we've been hearing from the black and brown residents and like what they're experiencing and that it needs addressed um but i'm concerned that any cut to the budget wouldn't actually address those issues cutting a budget especially by the 52 asked without a plan in place doesn't get us where we want to be which is to have a community safety plan that has non police responding to non police matters because we can't reallocate that money because if we cut that money now there is no money to reallocate without going to reserves and if we cut that money now the 52 percent i'm not talking about the two positions we don't have enough officers to respond to crime we don't have anyone to respond to mental health calls we don't have anyone to respond to medical calls if our EMTs are busy we've heard that the police respond to some of that we don't have anyone to respond to noise complaints on a regular basis and without a plan a cut is just a cut um i think we need a plan we need to go forward with the plan we need to find a plan so we have to whether it's a committee whether it's the ones that have come together and formed and are doing the talking we need to figure out the alternatives come up with a plan figure out how to implement that plan fund that plan that might actually incur more money than we can cut from a police budget potentially um and figure out how to do that that takes time but between now and the time it takes to do that i do not believe cutting the police budget is the way to go because it would leave us without anyone to respond to some of these issues that we know we might not want police responding to now but they're not doing an awful job they're doing a good job from what we've heard responding to mental health complaints it might not be what we want as a community in the future but i think we need to support it now um so for that reason for the flexibility i i'm going to vote for the budget as is we need the flexibility to be able to reallocate that money we need people responding to mental health calls now we need people responding to noise complaints and right now the police are all we have we need to work on figuring out who can do it in the future but until then we need to fund the people that are doing it beef shriver you've not spoken yet i'm going to call on you yeah so when i ran for office i um one of my mantras was that i am not the expert in any of this i'm not the expert in policing libraries schools but i'm willing to listen to the experts and we're in a situation right now and i know there's a national crisis that is amplifying what's happened at a local level but i'm this quite frankly is um i don't have enough information yet about really what the issues are uh i think that the testimony that we've heard from the public is you know riveting and important but we really haven't we haven't had that debate and discussion where i'm prepared to make major changes to the budget right now i completely agree that those discussions need to happen that they're they're urgent um for so but one thing for me the issue is scaling so if we had exactly one police officer the assumption that that police officer would have a gun but that police officer would respond to everything from a cat in a tree to you know a bank robbery to they basically respond to everything so as you scale up your public safety i totally agree that some part of that public those public safety officers should not have guns and i don't know if the amherst police public safety department has gotten to that scale where we can have so my wife and i've talked about the fact that in a town that we used to live in a city that we used to live in they had the noise police so noise police that's all they did they literally would go around with a book of tickets and write noise summons for noise complaints they had the water police the water police would do the same thing so amherst isn't i don't know if it's amherst is at a scale of where we are that specialized that we can have you know those sorts of divisions i'm very willing to listen to that conversation i think that we probably possibly are at that breaking point where there are fewer public safety officers within the police department that don't you know that are that are unarmed as previous counselors have talked about i'm totally um i think that this is an extraordinarily important conversation to have i'm not positive what the best way to force the conversation to happen in a relatively short period of time but i'm i'm prepared to vote with the finance committee on basically vote with the finance committee recommendation um i'm going to go ahead and use my opportunity as a counselor to make a few comments first of all um i actually sat at the end of my driveway today waiting for you to come to visit and i'm sorry that you didn't because i had hoped that i would also be able to listen to you and also um talk with you about maybe how to get this kind of thing done and that's what makes this very difficult because it makes it sound so bureaucratic but it it's what government it's how government works and so i have a vision the vision is that amherst has a very very decent place to start from that decent place in fact includes people with a voice many of whom we've heard both for and against cutting the police department people who have a vision of what that money should be used for that there's really no consensus about that vision the most strongest consensus is something to deal with mental health we have a budget process budget process begins now for next year that budget process includes sometime in December January the council establishing guidelines for next year's budget and that budget will then reflect the changes that we want to see and as so many counselors have pointed out those changes will hopefully reflect the conversation of these various groups of people who have been talking about this issue and will reflect the issues we've heard but the problem is and this is where people have been saying this if we take money out of the budget now we will not get that back in addition to we will not get that back is we will not get back the tax base that it builds on every year and so the way to achieve change in this case is to keep the budget i'm all in favor of freezing the two positions if there was a way to do more fine but i want to freeze the two and have the conversations and come forward in such a way that we can begin to make changes as we move through next year and as we move through the end of this year and as we move into next year's budget and that is going to require a conversation that's honest thoughtful respectful among all people in this town and that is my vision earthy i i agree with what lin is said i do support the budget with the freeze of the two positions but i also want to say i really like the sound of what mandy joe said the community safety plan uh that has non-police staff responding to non-police problems and what we're going to be looking at is what the correct balance is all right and we're going to be talking to the experts now i just want to point out there are two kinds of experts there are those who are experts in how you deliver those services and experts in what it feels like to receive those services and then many of the people who've responded to us are experts in what it feels like to either be overpoliced or to feel that they're being overpoliced police cars go by my house all the time but i live on a main road so i always assume they're on their way from one place to another but if i lived in a off of in a cul-de-sac and i found police cars creeping around a lot it would make me feel weird it really would so i do understand what people are saying and i understand the idea of preventive policing but we have to always remember to look at things from two sides at points of view one is from the efficiency of the service deliverer and the other is from the person who is receiving that service so i think we have work to do and i think that we're willing to do it and we will come out with i hope a better balanced community safety plan that will work for all the people of Amherst and i look forward to helping work on it everyone is spoken once uh pat you would like to speak again yes thank you this has been an incredible wrestle for me i am going to take a dramatic leap of faith and believe in this council that we are making a real commitment to doing to changing the way we live in this community and and so i will support the budget as written and i will hold us our feet to the fire because we need that Melanie um yeah i am like i said in favor of accepting the budget as proposed by the finance committee but i would also like us to commit to our next steps in terms of having the conversation about what is our intention as the town council because i'm not completely clear if all of us are on this on the same page whether we're just talking about policing issues or are we really looking at racism in our town and the disparities that BIPOC communities encounter with respect to health education um housing business opportunities youth empowerment and there are all these so i mean where are we as a town as it pertains to all of these issues secondly um who's going to be doing um the work on studying these issues are the town council is going to be involved or just the staff and residents or is it residents and all of us and so that's something we need to agree on and when are we having these conversations so while we accept the budget today can we also agree upon fixing a time and place for when it's not placed that time when we're going to have this conversation i would suggest that we put aside some time on the third of of august to begin that conversation okay and so my job to put it on the agenda i will do so okay that's our next meeting okay we have some public comment i'd like to call on let me just state residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes at the discretion of the president of the council based on the number of people who wish to speak right now i only see two and so three minutes seems fine the council will not engage in a dialogue or comment or a matter raised during general public comment uh curry kouts could you please state your name and where you live hi i'm curry kouts um i live in district two um i feel like you guys know this feel um so i've been listening i have made lots of notes some in my head some not in my head um right now i'm like a little bit confused because at one point that was speaking it almost sound like she part of her speech was um something we wrote um which is like it's fine to cite us but that was kind of weird because since it was published anyway it was weird um i have a little thing written and i will get to it um i did want to talk about um the real fear of um COVID-19 and mostly um the bad choices that UMass has made um and i'm gonna say that as a student there who um doesn't really not as probably as big of a fan of Swami as you all are um thinking yeah anyway it's irresponsible um that they have put you in this position where you thank you me police um yeah um sorry i am still not exactly i wrote a few more notes that i wanted to talk about um i think that um i wanted to know when we did come visit some of you and sorry that we couldn't honestly visit all of you because i think if we had had more conversations i think it would have been a lot nicer um hopefully we can have more conversations in the future and i did really appreciate you guys um like taking this somewhat seriously um i don't know if you if it was much of a choice but um i don't know i think there was some of you who are more strongly for it and others who weren't um but i think you guys have actually really tried to make this more of a democracy um which i don't see in a lot of governments um so it's kind of cool um i am a new i am a student of amherst um so i also do a lot of um organizing around um um PD and their stuff and that in itself is also trying to raise a lot of um knowledge about because we like the way that amherst's run does not help the students and it doesn't help the town um this is umas um yeah and so we have done a lot of work as organizing has you seen um organizing can do a lot and that is happening um maybe even ross knows about it i don't know um i don't know if i said your name wrong um anyway uh i when we said if you i just want to remind you we said if you vote yes um damn i kind of wish i could call him like georelidia uh anyway um at one point we said like if you vote no um we will support you um and i just really want you to know that that is serious um and uh maybe if you can pull off a no in a way that we that you are actually highlighting us um and there are a few people um who i would like to know um pat uh dorthy and kathy um i think all spoke wonderfully and i thank you um i was the one who actually spoke to pat so that was kind of exciting to feel like you knew a little bit of um abolitionist stuff and i think um i do agree with getting rid of weapons um i would like all weapons gone um but i would also like police gone at some point so that is what i am doing a lot of my work on um but yeah i think those are most of my notes on the presentation um there are quite a few more things that are not as nice but um i think i'm gonna work on that a little bit better because nice things i can give out like without thinking about but the things that are critical i want you to actually understand so i'm gonna work on that a little bit more but you will probably see it at some point so thank you thank you uh lydia irons please state your name and where you live hello i'm lydia irons i live in amherst i'm in district four i just want to start off my public comment with a james baldwin quote and that quote is you always told me it takes time it takes my father's time it takes my mother's time it takes my uncle's time my brother's time and my sister's time how much time do you want for progress and i want you all to sit with that quote and i want you to sit in the discomfort that i hope it is causing you because what you are saying about pushing the budget through is you are asking for more time that the people in this community do not have we do not want it we do not want to be spending more time in these discussions the us versus them attitude with the students will escalate because of the covid crisis and calling the cops feels like the only option in this town for many of the white and wealthy residents but you have other options you could fund active bystander training then people can feel empowered to speak directly to the students and as was quoted by the chief of police students who live in quote nuisance houses the way that the amherst police department speaks about the students is alarming at best and disgusting at worst i also want to speak on behalf of all of my fellow residents who have showed up at these meetings time and time again despite having to put their children to bed despite having worked long days in food service that don't talk down to us about how the budget works or about how our town government works we've done our research we've put in our time for free and we have showed up every single time now i want to talk to a couple of you town counselors directly evan you express discomfort with not being able to reallocate money paul bachleman has that power he can reallocate that money in our town budget and guess what he doesn't even live in our town that i find extremely disturbing pat thank you thank you for voting to not fill those positions and to freeze those positions permanently we showed up at your house today and i am feeling really grateful that you stepped up tonight and spoke about how we can start to move towards a better amherst you spoke towards a dramatic leap of faith in voting for this budget i hope your dramatic leap of faith pays off dorothy thank you for trying to empathize with the experience of the people who spoke out in all of these meetings but this is not a both side situation one side has power one side does not and i really want you to think about that as you move forward in your position of power and darcy you said you were glad so many people of color were interested in our town i find that insulting this entire process has been insanely difficult to crack and participate in and it took so much mobilizing and so much bravery shillini thank you for talking about continuing these discussions but i want to point out that you said taking money away is a bandage it's not a bandage it's the first step in confronting the problem of systematic racism thank you for wanting to commit to these next steps but how much talking do you want to do before you make a real move you heard where we were as at it as a town were you not on those calls mandi joe they did not have riot gear on but they had it in their cars ready to go the way they speak about the students should discuss you they have an obvious warrior mentality around our students and that's disturbing you kept saying without a plan a cut is just a cut make the cut then make the plan elissa i'm the only one i think i should have some time elissa you said that the money doesn't change anything i wonder if you've ever been poor taking money from police is not symbolism it's an actionable step what these what are these organically organized committees you speak of are they me are they being paid i also want to talk to george real quick you're not here to represent the police you're here to represent the citizens you sent an email to one of your constituents that said are some neighborhoods and emers being police differently than others are you currently believe that that's so i'm not sure for starters i would want you to find out from the apd and from finding out given that there are only usually four or five officers on duty at any given time it doesn't seem like they're patrolling anybody's neighborhood end quote were you not listening to all of the people who bravely stated their names their addresses to the police wrap up or i will have your mic cut off i don't care if you cut my mic you heard what i had to say thank you bailey please state your full name and where you live hi my name is bailey batty i live in district four um i want to be clear i'm like was not planning to talk today i threw these comments together really quickly and i i don't know why i feel the need to say this but like i am speaking solely on behalf of myself and not on behalf of defund 413 um this is all just i don't know an immediate reaction from my brain um i want to make clear that when i said in my first comment to defund the police and reinvest that money in the community and education um in other ways to dismantle systemic racism the focus was on defunding i felt like it was important to have like a concrete suggestion of where that money should go because frankly as has been said several times in this meeting there's a perception that we're like coming from this without having done our research and that we're not giving you a plan that we're not giving you concrete suggestions that we're just saying defund so that was coming from the expectation that you would think we were uninformed um so beyond that the defunding is the important part um saving that money and being able to reallocate it would be great but i really think it's more important to be preserving the safety of our community members um and and if we lose that money i think it's worth it to to be keeping people safe to be not giving it to an institution that is targeting and hurting our community members um so presenting this not filling the current vacant positions as like a concession um it's not really a compromise it's my understanding that these positions are vacant they haven't been filled so you're not decreasing the number of police on the streets out policing people um it's purely a budget move and i know this is a budget discussion but this is this is not going to change the policing in any way this is not going to decrease the number of cop cars driving by people's houses um and again sort of about the plan idea what we're proposing right now i think there were some some adjectives used to sort of imply that what we're proposing is like crazy and and unthought out and radical um we're really not asking for anything that radical i think there are a lot of radical ideas that we do have but we have not started by throwing them at you we are asking for some initial steps um and to the conversation that this is not going to solve everything it's not going to solve everything that's correct these are initial steps these are small actions that we suggested because we felt they could be taken immediately with this budget we know this budget is not going to fix everything it's it it was never any suggestion that that the suggestion to defund would do that it just is the most concrete thing that can happen literally right now you could do this now um and make it happen anyway that's the end of my notes um thank you thank you we're going to move back to the council at this time there's no other public comment so we are now going to move to the motions and andy i'm going to ask you to start the motions if you would or if you would prefer i will do those i didn't start the motion uh and uh the first motion that the finance committee is offering is as follows the approval of the f y 21 2021 operating budget is made with the explicit understanding with the town manager the two upcoming anticipated vacant positions in the police department's budget not be filled until the town manager in consultation with the town council and residents of amherst has fully explored alternative options of providing services and presented the results to the town council no later than january 31 2021 is there a second okay pat de angeles is uh confirmed i couldn't unmute quick enough but thanks but is there any other discussion at this time then i'm going to move to the boat and i'm beginning with uh yes myself and the answer is yes anarchy yes earthy pan yes evan ross yes george ryan yes uh kathy shane yes deep schreiber yes andy steinberg yes felony ball mill yes uh elissa brewer yes pat de angeles yes and darcy dumont darcy dumont sorry yes that road passes 12 with no no opposition no abstentions and one person absent next motion andy next motion is to adopt appropriation and transfer order f y 21 04 b in order of appropriating the town of amherst f y 2021 operating budget is recommended by the finance committee and shown on pages seven and eight of the document entitled town council finance committee recommendations on fiscal year 2021 budget and additional orders is there a second second i believe that was dorthy yes it was thank you any further discussion all right begin with mandy joe hannity yes earthy pan yes evan ross yes george ryan yes kathy shane yes deep schreiber yes andy steinberg yes felony ball mill yes uh elissa brewer yes pat de angeles yes darcy dumont yes Reese mersey yes votes 12 0 0 and one absent next one andy i'm gonna go back to uh second i can get my sheet up the next one is regarding um the capital projects for the enterprise funds for the water and sooner enterprise funds i believe that there's at least one member of the staff present from that department if there are additional questions the motion is as follows to adopt an appropriation transfer order 21-09 in order of approving and authorizing borrowing to fund capital projects bond authorization is required by is recommended by the finance committee and shown on page nine of the document entitled town council finance committee recommendations on fiscal year 2021 budget and additional orders is there a second second it i'm sorry i do i do want to note that this would require a two-thirds vote because it is bonding authorization this is second okay this does require a two-thirds vote it's a bonding and it is all for either sewer or water um is there are there any questions kathy um it's not a question it's just a comment um for people who are listening and for also for counselors when we voted on the coming years rate increases for water and sewer we were given a five-year budget that showed this these capital and the impact of it so we in effect have seen um and and discussed this which is one of the reason um one of the reasons we can come forward with the appropriations now and anyone who wants to see uh what those spendings are and when they will hit the budget can look back at when we were discussing the rate increases for the coming year are there any other questions or comments being none that i'm going to call the question and we move to Dorothy Pam yes ebb and ross yes george ryan yes kathy shane yes see you schreiber yes andy seinberg yes shall any volume yes elissa brewer elissa brewer elissa can you hear us doesn't look like she hears this you know i don't know what's going on i'll come back for her uh pat de angeles yes darsie demont yes and grease merges yes hannicky is yes okay elissa are you able to connect trying to reconnect because she just disappeared from the list i'm going to give her a moment to reconnect i'm trying we hear you it literally just crashed like normally it says something but it went boom so yes is the answer okay thank you the vote is 1200 and one absent and the last financial one andy you want to make the motion and we'll get a second and then explain it okay um um i moved to adopt appropriation and transfer order f y 21 11 in order of proving the acceptance of optional tax exemptions for fiscal year 2021 is recommended by the finance committee and shown on page 10 of the document entitled town council finance committee recommendations on fiscal year 2021 budget and additional orders is there a second second andy andy joe seconded that andy can you give us just a brief explanation of this one um yes um this is a standard order in the sense that town meeting every year voted on a similar motion as a an article at the town meeting there are provisions in state law for providing tax relief for um certain people um because they are either veterans or spouses of veterans elders or people with um severe sight impairments is defined by the statute and towns can provide additional um tax relief um on an annual vote basis by each town um in order to uh increase the the benefit of the people who qualify um this has been done every year for a number of years um originally by town meeting last year by the council um so we're again back with asking for what's really a standard amount the um information on the amount is uh shown in the finance committee report any questions comments okay seeing none then we'll move to the vote evan ross yes where's ryan yes yes you schreiber yes andy steinberg yes chelony bowman chelony yes elissa brewer yes pat de angeles yes garcy demont yes ring grease mercy yes mandy joe hannacky yes and Dorothy pan yes the vote was 12 to 00 with one absent we are done with the budget and we're going to now unless the council has other thoughts try to plow through the rest of the butt of the meeting yes means we don't come back tomorrow i'm seeing no hands so we're going to move on um the uh first agenda item up is agenda item eight a it is zoning bylaw 11.250 i want to point out that we'll have discussion about this tonight we do not vote until the third of august this is the first reading and it is oh well i'll all change so uh christine gray mullen has joined us she is presently the chair of the planning board and she's going to make a brief presentation about this we also do have a slide and it's in your packet christine hi um hello uh i'll try to keep this very brief i um know you all have okay great so we have the uh proposed change to the bylaw up there this is concerning the site plan review or SPR as it's called you should have gotten a memo from the planning board on the discussions and the votes that we're taking particularly at the joint meeting with the CRC which i think you also got a report from the CRC and you've gotten some other documents i'll speak on the planning board memo report uh both chris bestrup and i worked very hard you try to incorporate all of the pros and cons um and the differing opinions on this for the most part it's very well supported uh we voted five to two in support of this a proposed amendment did come up to add the minimum of four and that also um was a five to two but saying that they did not want that added on so it stands the way it is um i'm excited uh that this is the first non-temporary bylaw to be coming from us to you all and i hope it's the first of many um i don't know i hope a few of you or all of you maybe even uh watched any of the joint meeting as it was the first one on amherst media so that would help you um get a lot of the dialogue and what was discussed the SPR just as a reminder is a site plan review and the key is that it is a review and a lot of people say well why are you even considering this because they're always approved and in a way that is what an SPR is they are always approved because it's a process where the planning board really gets into the design details and tries to foresee and understand what might be negative impacts of this project and then through discussions with the developer or contractor owner or what have you there's a push and pull back and forth to try to better the project as best as it reasonably can for things like traffic parking signs um anything that uh might impact or have a negative impact on the community or the neighborhood and um these are very rigorous for buildings when these applications come to us it that never happens in one night it's two three four five you know it's been up to like seven meetings where this is discussed and then there's finally a vote so it isn't like it just comes to a meeting once and people vote and we really do try to schedule it on a meeting where there's as many members as possible because usually with buildings there's also a special permit that's also involved with it and special permits are still quite rigorous and harder to get approved as they are a super majority and that requires five minimum of five of the seven members voting in approval so with that I hope that gives you a little bit of insight on this and just to remember that it's we're trying to if anything make a make this a little bit less hard for the planning board to always have it scheduled and have members there um because we do want it to pass uh and um I'm sorry so we we just um it's a tool to make the project better not to stop it and that's what you have to remember about this and just one last thing I did a table which I hope you all see of the site plan reviews that came to us last year there were 15 of them and if you look at those 15 only two of them were buildings and both of the buildings were involved with special permit also and so if you look at the other 13 four of them were modifications of these same buildings that had already been approved that when they make little tweaks and changes they have to come back to us so again there's even there's continued dialogue and rigor to try to make it the best project possible and then if you look at the other things just remind you it's everything from athletic fields to sports fields parking lot uh reduce or improvements and it can even go down to something like last year we had um in a subdivision somebody's three season porch that was under site plan review so you only want to make it so rigorous because you can't just think about the buildings it's also about all the others so north hampton does this and east hampton and they're having great success and it never comes down to these tiny little dots of people fear so um thank you for your time and um good luck thank you christine um maybe you have a CRC report yes um thank you uh this report was included in both tonight's packet on the packet from a couple weeks ago um we as christine said we held a joint hearing on june 17th um to accept public comment there was no public comment at that joint hearing the hearing lasted approximately two hours and that was a discussion between the planning board and the CRC on this and as i said without any actual public comment um after discussion christine covered it pretty well in terms of what the discussion was um in terms of the members who were in favor of this change um other towns are doing it um it is a site plan review it is not a special permit um so it is meant to be a little easier to to get passed um and and their concern was that even adding a not less than four would potentially and depending on how many voting members are present at the planning board would make it more difficult than a special permit um and so and one of the other reasons to approach this was because of the charter change and the reduced in planning board size um those that um were against the change were concerned about the optics of potentially only having three members vote um in favor of a site plan review instead of four um because three members four members voting three in favor would represent less than a quorum of the full body even though it would be a majority of the members voting that was the main argument against the the motion as the amendment as it stands the CRC voted four to one to recommend this amendment as it stands the CRC also faced a amendment made by councillor Swartz to add the not less than four in the vote was four to one against adding that in i will do my best since councillor Swartz is not here to indicate um her reasons for voting for the amendment and against this vote um as it says in the CRC report um she believed that the body should respect the opinion of the staff keep consistency in the bylaws and believe that if major concerns with respect to obtaining quorum potentially if there are those which was one of the reasons forth for uh moving this down to allowing just a majority of those present that maybe the process itself is broken and that would require potentially other things beyond just amending this particular bylaw and so i think that that covers my report for now i will be happy to answer any questions about the conversation as it comes up george ryan uh governance organization and legislation committee thank you lin gill met on July 15th um and voted unanimously five zero to declare this amendment to be clear consistent and actionable uh christine um restrip i know you're in the attendee group did you want did you have any comment would you please raise your hand if you do okay none uh is there council discussion i see two hands kathy shane yes i i'm going to speak in favor of what i understand was uh sarah's attempt to amend this um and put the not fewer than four i see you know that is still a majority it's a simple majority of the seven so it it stays with it doesn't go back to the two-thirds wording which would be a much tougher standard um and i i think you've got two kinds of wordings in there that's very concerning so if abstaining voters are not counted in the vote i mean we're we're counting abstains when we vote as a council so we have to have a majority of everyone here we don't just throw the two abstaining people away so you could have all seven people meeting three yeses two against and two abstain and it passes the way this is set up because we don't count the abstainers at all so you get a simple majority of the people who are left and when i raised this concern about abstaining a few weeks ago when this came up one counselor said but that's like throwing your vote away um we've had instances of abstainers tonight and it's it can be not that you're uncertain and you're not ready to vote for or against it that you've got some doubts and i think that should give us pause so i would um when this comes up for a vote i'm going to propose an amendment that says not fewer than four keeping the simple majority wording and striking the language on we don't count abstaining so i want to count everybody in the room as how i get to the majority so if there were five people i would count all five so that i just want to signal um and i when i was reading um the background information and i did i just want to say i did listen to the entire hearing and i would have made a public comment but i didn't think counselors are allowed to make public comments when other counselors are in the room so i stayed silent okay um the only thing i ask is that you submit to me in advance your written um proposed change before the meeting next week i'm third of august i will steve schreiber i'm yeah so i would urge my fellow counselors to vote for this as is so one of the discussions that came up on the planning board is this idea of an overwhelming majority so um we all know what a simple majority is we all know what a quorum is so if you have a body of seven a quorum is four and a majority of the four is three so really we could also be silent on this this particular issue and it would default to that so abstentions do not count they don't count towards the vote so three people abstain they might as well not be in the room so that is correct whoever told you that that would that is correct but i urge you to uh go with to basically to support the will of the planning board who voted for this five to two so that's an overwhelming majority of the planning board that supports this so for me that's decisive that if um there that's decisive that they that they think that this will help them do their work more efficiently it also said at the discussion of this is that if you want to participate you need to show up so if all seven show up an all seven vote then there you get to your four then four votes are required if six people show up then your four votes are there if five people show up then it defaults to three so really if it's an important issue you really hope that your planning board shows up and votes thanks steve uh dorthy pam i'm sorry i skipped over you earlier okay well i very strongly support sarah's wording and um i think that the idea that three people which is 42 percent would decide this is not a good idea we started out by saying hey we mistakenly put it so it was two thirds and we really we really don't need two thirds we just need a bare majority and then the next thing i know the bare majority is cut down and cut down so that um it could be 42 percent of the people there so i really i really don't approve of this at all um i think efficiency is not the only thing to be concerned about when you're talking about the planning board so um i think you should just leave well enough and own and keep the words in i i don't like the phrase of those participating and voting because that limits it so that what you do is you open yourself up for playing games political games and i you know they do these all the time in town after town and i don't really think that we need to increase that in our planning board situation so i urge you to add the words at least four because that would be 57 percent which is just a little bit over the bare majority and meets the um i read through all the reports and the idea was it should be majority is half plus one well 57 percent is as close as you're going to get with a seven member planning board arcy demont yeah i uh would agree with kathy sara and doracy um that that four should be the minimum number and um what really convinced me was that um chris press trip would urge that that there be a minimum of four um and you know this really you know it feels the whole thing feels pretty partisan to me and i i think that chris initially brought it up because of the change in the number of people on the planning board and um but that she she was careful to say that she thought that four should be the number the minimum number um so um i hope that that we we keep that okay we again we're not voting tonight so mandy joe you have your hand up again yeah um i just want to bring up a few other things that were mentioned in the hearing about this minimum of four um one thing that was mentioned is to why three might be okay which could be consideration of adding language of not less than three instead of not less than four was that our until the charter changed the zoning board of appeals was actually a three member body um as that three member body they actually had to vote unanimously three out of three but that meant that special permits under the zoning board of appeals were actually being voted in and approved with three votes um of a body so three one of the arguments made and one of the things mentioned was that three is not an actual unusual uh voting number in this town for um site plan review for that was actually special permits because they don't do site plan review um and site plan review is supposed to be a lesser uh standard and the other thing that was mentioned was the possibility that you know we're all thinking about this is seven with people potentially abstaining but um one thing that was mentioned in these hearings was that at one point this council um had to actually approve the participation of a butters and a butters to a butters that were on the planning board in actual site plan review matters because they were otherwise conflicted out and because of voting requirements in our charter in the bylaws including this one that required two thirds not less than five there were too many a butters and a butters to a butters and some people not and not a full planning board that they didn't actually have enough votes and enough people able to participate to get to that the current requirement five and so we had to approve people participating despite being a butters and so some of the planning board members mentioned when you change planning board members and we have potentially three vacancies coming up that you can't actually do the Mullins rule which is go back and listen to all the hearings because you weren't a member of the planning board at the time some of the hearings started so it's not always a matter of members not being there and missing a meeting sometimes it's that they're conflicted out they might be a butters or they might not actually be able to participate and when that brings a seven member board down to say five suddenly a not less than four uh is an 80 percent margin and which is it would require you know in some sense is well over a supermajority and and so I just wanted to mention some of those other items that were talked about at the hearing. Shalini you've not spoken yet. Yeah I just I think I wanted to draw attention to the UMass a lot not UMass I'm sorry to the hold on hold on I'm finding the website it's the mass.gov and it's the smart grows smart energy toolkit modules that talks about zoning decisions and this is coming from the executive office of energy and environmental affairs and in that they recommend they say that approval of site plans is usually a simple majority vote of the leading of the lead reviewing agency which is the planning board here so I just want to say that we you know if you're moving in that direction this is not a special permitting process that is still in place this is a site plan review which all other towns our neighboring towns are passing with the simple majority and then we should have you know follow the same thing and yeah that's all. Dorothy a brief comment. Okay I'm standing for a simple majority a simple majority would be at least four it was a bit it was a bit of sophistry I think that Mandy Jo was doing showing that because three when three was unanimous for the ZBA then that's way stronger than anything that we need to do so I also believe that if somebody has been unable to attend all of the meetings for a site plan review if they say they have read all the material they're allowed to vote at least that's what I saw at some meetings I attended okay so I think it's not that hard to get at least four I think it's a good idea to do that a simple majority of 57 percent not three which is 42 percent and then the fact that not too many things came up with difficulty of this in the past we may be having many many more things coming before the planning board in the future when we get through this COVID bump okay and I think that we want to be able to to exercise do care.  Yes just have a couple things one on the question of to care I think we have to remember that this is about site plan review not about special permits but the other thing that I wanted to raise that I don't think has really been talked about much and maybe either Mandy or Steve can respond to this a little bit more fully but if we have a vacancy on the planning board at the time that it comes up then putting a minimum of four actually alters the requirement because it may make the amounts greater than a majority and I don't think that that's what we're after doing. Steve go ahead I just wanted to remind people we're not voting tonight Steve. You know we can think of all the scenarios possible so actually one of them is the Amherst college fields which is a real case that actually had to come to us so the Amherst college wanted to do horizontal construction basically resurfacing of their fields at that time the planning board had six people because one person had resigned two more were butters so and the butters really I think it's by state law are supposed to be recused that's different than an abstention they're supposed to be recused so that really only left a planning board of I'm doing four people so they basically could not even hear this particular circumstance because they didn't have enough they didn't have enough people so that's one of the scenarios so so it helps the planning board do its work more efficiently not all site plan reviews are really exciting some site plan reviews are resurfacing the fields there was another site plan review that was resurfacing the tennis courts behind the middle school so again for the critical issues you your planning board members will show up you will have six or seven people there voting so the number four will be the number that they have to use to get the majority so really three is the default if through vacancies or through you know something else that they can't muster seven or six voting people that they have to go with five voting people if one person in who has filed a minority report and I Michael you please come forward state your name where you live and briefly tell us what additionally you have to say beyond the minority report oh yes thank you very much can you are you hear me hearing me because I can't thank you for letting me address you with our concerns during your discussion of the proposed bylaw amendment rather than as a part of the public general comment and I assume you have read our minority report which is included in your packet for this meeting and I will not rehash those arguments I would I would hope that you would look at them again in light of many of the things that have been said tonight already which which I think our argument contradicts or answers but basically site plan review is often although not always concerned with large projects which promise a significant impact on the community and when that is the case we believe that it is best if the town and its residents are in general agreement that the impact of the plan will be beneficial in most respects a consensus is the best way to get to that point but a narrow majority would be would be problematic in my view the planning board of course is not a representative body but anything less than two-thirds of its members voting in the affirmative should be a strong signal that the project in question has serious defects and lacks general community support lacks general community support I do want to emphasize that the current voting system requirements for site plan review work well the system is not broken there is no need to fix it site plan approval has been granted in all cases since the planning board was reduced to seven members there has been no difficulty if you are concerned that the planning board may lack of full membership well you can easily remedy that by your powers of appointment so I urge that you would vote down this amendment or at least take up the amendment that is being offered as a substitute and allow the planning board to continue basically as it has been functioning which has been efficient thank you thank you for your comment Alyssa you have your hand up so it's late and I was not going to speak until there was the insistence on speaking about the minority report of course it's always ideal to hear from everyone who's been part of a conversation but there will not be a future written minority report from the planning board on anything because the planning board writes a report there was obviously miscommunication because of COVID because of not knowing what agenda was going to be on and in fact it did take the planning board a month to write the report after the hearing we obviously saw the CRC report well before that but there is not a thing that is a separate written minority report in the future but I'm always happy to hear just as I was at town meeting from the people who voted in the minority as was the case here I just reflect back to you and I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this and that I don't compute the percentages the same way some of my colleagues do and I'm incredibly offended by the colleague who said that this was a partisan issue this is not a partisan issue this is having looked at the totality of the information looking at what our neighbors are doing looking at the fact that we do in fact often struggle to fill planning board seats including right now then I would say that this is not a problem this is not a problem to do this it's a simple majority for something that people have the right to do but we make the design better by a simple majority of the planning board helping them do that so I will definitely be voting in the affirmative of the original article at our next meeting I'm going to have us move on to the next issue we're that this is on the agenda on the third to vote on we've heard various opinions and it is getting late and we are moving on to the Valley CDC project at 130 junior thampton road the issue is before us because one counselor in particular wanted to make sure that we actually discussed the local option at the time that it came before us I don't think we had all the information we need there is now something in your packet about the local option and chris breast strip is here to answer any additional questions are there questions about the local option chris would you like to come in and give us any additional information yes okay yeah thank you are you so I just wanted to give you a little information about the local option it's really up to the zba to decide whether they want to require a local option or not and what a local option means is that people who either live in town or work for the town or work for a business in the town or have children in the school would be considered to be local residents and the local option um is a mechanism by which the zoning board of appeals requires that the first round of of tenants who come into a building up to 70 of them may be may be considered to qualify for the local option um and you know some cities or in towns would vote for less than 70 so that's also an option but more often than not when we have discussed local option with the zba they've gone for the 70 percent there is a concern when you do this that you may be cutting out some minorities who are protected by the fair housing laws and therefore if you if you have a certain demographic in your town whereby you have a certain percentage of people who live there or work there or have children in the school there and the pool of people who qualifies to be in the local option 70 doesn't include that percentage of people who would be considered under the rubric of the fair of the fair housing market fair housing act um then you can take people from the larger pool of people who are applying to be housed in these units so that would include people who don't necessarily live here but that's kind of a complication that you may not need to think about tonight um so really it's just an opportunity for the first um round of people who live in affordable housing in town to be local people and then after that it's open to anyone who applies so um I think that's kind of a good first pass and if anyone has any questions I'd be happy to answer their questions at the end of this oh yes thank you I have I'm assuming um I guess my first question is where do homeless people fall they don't have an address necessarily and how would that they be affected that's one question the other thing is if we're talking about regional solutions to homelessness uh don't local preference options defeat the regional need for below market housing and the other thing that I want to say is the reason I'm not I will not support this local option is because I've heard it over and over again in meetings about 132 North Hampton Road is that people from outside Amherst will come they will come and what we're talking about when we're when we're when those kinds of things are said and there are many others um including I don't want to see people like that walking up my street then we are hopefully eliminating the very minorities that we need to support in our community so I am opposed to this local option because I think that because of the people who are many of the butters etc who are supporting it are supporting it for the very very very wrong reasons um so but I would like answers to the homeless question and the regional solution question Chris do you have a response on the regional and the homelessness well I do have a response on the homelessness it's um there are various definitions for homeless and some definitions include people who just don't have a house currently but are living with other people that they know relatives etc and it can also include people who may be in fact absolutely homeless but who have an address at the survival center or something like that so I think they can be proven to be local people even if they are homeless as far as the local option it defeats the regional need argument I think that's one side of the coin we have to prove that there's both a local and a regional need in order for this um application to really go through that's one of the parts of the public hearing process that's very important that the applicant and um supporters of the project demonstrate to the zoning board of appeals that there is a local and a regional need and that's because we already have over 10% of our housing as affordable and so we have to support the necessity of having this um this development built in our town even though we're over 10% by stating what our local and regional need is so um you may argue that um the local option would defeat the regional need but I think given the fact that it's just um a first round of tenants who have a priority I don't really think that is a problem in the long run and then in terms of people from outside Amherst who will come I think there's an aspect of this project that not many people understand we we have not yet calculated exactly how many people from Amherst might be moving into this development but we do know from talking to the developer that they need to build a development that has at least 28 units in order for it to be financially feasible for them to get um financial backing from the people that they're looking to get money from they they really can't build a development that's much smaller or possibly even even any smaller than this so um to the extent that they're able they'll they'll fill it with local people if that is what the zoning board of appeals um wants them to do but otherwise they'll fill it with people from the region and that's that's the way affordable housing works so um I think I'll stop there Chris before you stop could you just give us a sense of where the zoning board of appeals is on this project this time how many the zoning board of appeals has um gone beyond the point where they would say we're not going to listen to this public hearing we're not interested in this project there's a point at which I think it's um within 15 days of the opening of the public hearing they have to declare that Amherst uh has um I forget the exact phrase but essentially it is that we have a safe harbor and our safe harbor is the fact that we have over 10 percent of our housing as affordable and yet the zoning board of appeals um agreed to go ahead with the public hearing process that doesn't mean that they're approving this project at this time it just means that they're willing to hear about it and eventually once they come to a vote then they'll decide if they want to approve it or not so I can't really tell you know um I can't I wouldn't say that they're definitely supportive of it but I would say the indication that they've voted for safe harbor and yet are still interested in going through the public hearing indicates that they have open minds I'm frankly more interested in how much longer you think the public hearing will remain open a long time I think it's going to go for probably at least four more sessions um today we talked to the chair of the zba about scheduling those sessions into august and september so it's going to be a while okay thank you alissa thank you for asking that question because that gives us a sense of how quickly we have to decide this um I just want to point out that I agree that it's really frustrating to agree with to agree to support something that people are supporting for the wrong reasons and in our principal view but that doesn't mean that I can't still support them the fact that the state does have the adjustment for demographics I think is incredibly important but I also am not interested great quote I guess I'm not interested in meeting the regional need until we check and see what the amherst need is and when I say amherst need I mean people who are already living here in unsafe conditions living on a couch and employed in amherst I am interested in meeting that need first and that's entirely why I support local preference knowing that the state will require the adjustment to be made if it's not reflective of what's still being called minority residents the other thing I wanted to just ask chris while she was here is in this article this information that we just received today and so we haven't had a lot of time to process it given everything else that's gone on is there are the four items listed that you went over chris and you included all four of them I thought but so please correct me if I'm wrong that the following paragraph explained you don't have to give preferences to all four of these but what you can't do is you can't tighten up any of the four so for example if I wanted to drop the one about having children in our schools and I thought that was really important to me I could suggest that but I would not do as they suggest in the example you know 10 miles or something like that but there is not in fact a requirement that if you do a local option it means all four of these you can actually say it's one two three or four of these is that correct I believe that the zba can decide which of these four categories it wants to include yes it can choose to include all of them and we would normally recommend that they do include all of them us staff we as staff that's correct yeah you have your hand up do I did I know is that for me Dorothy you have your hand up yes okay so this is a question if not enough people with some kind of local tie apply or perhaps more seriously pass the screening test wouldn't the next step then be to cast a wider net I mean this says you try at the beginning to include local people who meet certain criteria have local ties but because I think you know when this was originally quote sold to our town it was used local examples were used such as workers at UMass even adjuncts at Amherst College and people who are homeless or under housed now I know that from talking to somebody else in this business that qualifying people can put themselves forward but there are many criteria they have to meet to be able to actually make it through the process so there's no guarantee that 70 percent of the people with some kind of local tie would even make it to that point but if it's it's it's a theoretical limit possible and this is also the first round which means this is when you first do the movement of the 28 apartments after that I think they will be sponsoring an agency will fill the vacancies as they see fit with the people who have applied so I see I see no problem supporting the local option and I don't see that it is discriminatory to other people people from outside the Amherst area will be included into this project I'm sure I'm going to make the decision that we are not going to vote on this tonight but we don't have to vote on the delay and since we have time to get it there but since we have Chris I'll take a couple more questions and then we need to move on shall I respond to what Miss Pam just said sure I just wanted to make sure that you understood that they cast a very wide net originally and of that net they make two different pools and one is the pool of local people who qualify for one of these local criteria and the other is the larger pool so it's not that they only go after the 70% initially they go after everybody initially good thank you thank you very much Melanie yeah I want to suggest that we do work regionally with this issue because when we spoke with Chief Livingstone in the last finance committee meeting and you talked about how we need to work regionally even though that was in the context of addictions mental health care but we can't be selective that with mental health care we're going to work with you because we need you but this we're not so I think we really do around these issues of homelessness racism addictions mental health that we do the better the more we work together as regionally the better off all of us are. I'm just looking I just had a quick comment looking at the four possible criteria the fourth is children in the school these are units that can only have one person in them so I the only way you could have a child in the school would be you were the parent of a child that the child's not living with you you know so I just you know it's a it's an odd concept but I just want to point that out that you because one of my one of my concerns it's always been is that this is only designed for single people and if someone has a child they have to move out so the fourth criteria is a little bit of an interesting one so the mom who has the kid can't be in this get this affordable housing but maybe this other spouse and that's just assuming the kids with the mother but so what when this gets considered maybe going down Alyssa's pointing out we don't have to do all four we might think about what these criteria are George I think that this will eventually address the regional problem I think it's pretty clear but also considering the amount of money that the town has committed to this project it doesn't seem to me to be at all unreasonable to at least in the first round give a preference to local residents Pat yes I since we are not voting on this I need to leave I have preparation to do for surgery tomorrow so I'm just wanting people to know that's why I'm leaving the meeting thank you good luck thank you all right um we're this will come back on the agenda on the third and by then people have more of an opportunity to study the material we've been given and also decide what other criteria if we're going to put a local option on this we will want to state and then also the other thing we want to think about is what percentage if we in fact are going to do this um having said that I'd like to go on to the town manager evaluation um let me just briefly use the opportunity to just say we're moving along as planned and this is Paul's self-evaluation and Paul do you have any particular comments you would like to make about it at this time um just to say that you know it's a 13 page self-evaluation plus the goals that you have established that should speak for itself um you know it's uh it's been a long journey in the last five months since the goals were set to where we are today um it's a journey that I've engaged with with a lot of really talented people what I've really come to understand with this process and what I've been with the years with the town um that it's the people that you work with and the systems that you have in place and I think this town has really superb systems in place and really excellent people working and it's those two things together that has us in such a stable environment right now during a pandemic both in managing the pandemic and on also managing our budget and that and I relate that to our our major goal which is public health and public safety and I feel we're in very strong positions for those things so um we talk a lot and I talk a lot in the self-evaluation but it really is um I always go back to those fundamentals of having really superb systems that have been built up over years of leadership by the town and also just really strong people in the position so um I don't think I have anything at this hour I don't have anything else to add to that any questions at this time shall we no question but I cannot not comment on the fact how much I and I think all of us appreciate your values and and your commitment and work that you've done so I just had to say that that's all thank you thank you any other comments at this time not to cut Paul short but it's now 11 o'clock um very quickly we're moving on to appointments George uh Ryan we the only appointment we have as a non-voting member of the finance committee yes um you've got the geo report hopefully people had a chance to look at it I think that a couple of keen eyed counselors pointed out that there might be some obvious confusion because there are only three SOIs and three CAFs in your packet that's because after of the interviews and after the vote one of the candidates withdrew so there are only three candidates now at this point but the report actually reflects the discussion and debate when there were actually four and by apologize I should have made that clear in the report so we have three candidates still active and as you can see from report during the deliberation it was actually quite challenging quite difficult because we had four excellent candidates um that all brought a wide variety of skills background etc and kind of wish we could choose all four of them we couldn't so um it took us quite a long time and the report basically spells out for you how it broke down there's a three to two vote um so it was not it was not a it was the majority but just barely um for Bernard Kubiak um and the argument in favor of Mr. Kubiak was essentially one of experience and the report that spells out is rather broad level experience there were two candidates who brought a lot of experience to the position and he had a slight advantage which felt in the by the majority in terms of his experience with other town governments and in town finance in general um and so um he was favored by three of the members of the committee two of the members of the committee um were looking for uh new faces a sort of fresh perspective they felt that there was sufficient uh expertise on the committee uh already and that um they were looking more for a new face and a new perspective and so they um voted not against Mr. Kubiak but they voted rather in preference for that that perspective again back to the majority view I think the general feeling was that we're going into extremely difficult and challenging time and we felt that and I voted with the majority we felt that the Mr. Kubiak brought a great a level of experience and and in dealing with these kinds of issues over the years that would be extremely valuable um and so that was the way it broke out so three to two vote um and with four excellent candidates and no matter what happens uh tonight or whenever we finally vote um in my communication to all of these individuals I will be encouraging them to continue to apply certainly they'll be considered for any future finance vacancies since they hold CAS for three years um and I will alert them to that fact but um they were four very impressive individuals and unfortunately had to choose one and as you can see the vote was uh was close questions Darcy yeah I um I just want to note that um I'm going to vote against these appointments not because I think Bernie Kubiak is not qualified but really as a protest vote because of the fact that there wasn't any transparency around this appointment and this to me this is like a really good example of why we should not have ditched our community activity form process and just as I had predicted if you recall the process recommended by OCA and adopted by GOL involved not only no notice to the public who the of who the applicants were but no notice to us the counselors because the new process doesn't require applicants to file a CAF which we in the past which in the past counselors would have received in addition the so we didn't get any of the CAFs because those three people had all applied last year or Bernie applied back in 2016 um in addition the SOIs provided by the applicants I felt in no way replicated those received by the school committee which I think is what we were going for they were brief and in my in my pardon me in my opinion didn't give the amount of information a CAF could give um and so anyway I believe our application and interview processes shouldn't be different processes determined by our different committees but should be uniform in our rules of procedure because they affect us all and they affect all of our constituents I want to make a comment and I also have a question um I listened I did get the SOIs and I actually found them to have a lot more information than CAFs have had um a lot of people have not been filling out many of the fields in the CAF and I don't get a sense of who they are but so in this instance I I wish they had been longer but the interview process itself pulled out a lot of information um you got a really good sense of the people and I certainly agree with GAOL this was an extremely difficult decision because you had excellent candidates um and you were just choosing two two ways of going so my question is if if um you want to vote or if any of us want to vote for the candidate that got two votes as opposed to three do we have to first vote against the candidate that got the majority and then propose the other or how how what's the mechanics of that and I just want to say the reason I I agreed with the reasoning of the two counselors who were for the other person and it's because um I think finance is a potential route to someone getting interested enough to run for a council seat I do think there's a learning curve but I also personally have found that if you're willing to commit to it it's not like years and years and years and I think it's a breath of fresh air when someone hasn't been through it over and over again because they look at everything with a new eyes I found that with one of our residents now non-voting members he asked questions that haven't occurred to other people and I think we need to keep doing that and we we have a lot of depth on the current finance committee and if you listen to our meetings it ends up a few voices tend to dominate for that reason so I don't think we need to reproduce that so my question is on the mechanics of this if you're not I I wouldn't be voting against the three to two choice here I would be wanting to vote for the person that got two votes and I I don't quite know how to do that this would have to come do a vote the vote would have to fail and then you would have to make your proposal okay thank you um Evan comment yeah so a comment and then a question for GOL so as a comment as you all know I worked with Mr. Kubiak excuse me on the bylaw review committee and on that committee found his deep experience in municipal government to be incredibly incredibly useful and so when I read GOL's majority opinion citing that experience the reason for recommending him I understood it immediately because I saw firsthand how valuable he is as someone and my thought was that his value the the value of his experience was twofold one was that we are in a very difficult time economically and budget financially and that we would really it would be useful to have someone who had that experience um the second thing I thought was that uh finance committee per the charge resident appointments are two years and that if he was appointed for a two-year term we'd have someone who had a lot excuse me a lot of experience um that that's term of service would exceed the term of service of our current counselors and so if we did have a big c change in the next town council election and lost the expertise on the council um we would still have someone on the finance committee who brought a lot of experience but then I was surprised to see that the motion is only recommending his appointment to June 30th 2021 and so my question is why is it only a one-year appointment when finance committee appointments are two years appointments and wouldn't it be smarter to do a two-year appointment so that we have someone whose term exceeds the council so that we have that continuity of institutional knowledge I believe the motion is wrong that is correct the motion is wrong it's a two-year term it should be 2022 well then I retract my question and say that that is a great idea and he's a perfect person to have go between council terms given that we can be guaranteed that someone with a whole lot of experience in municipal finance will be continuing on even if all five current members of the town of the finance committee get booted out in the 2021 elections are there any other comments from counselors let me just say while I voted one way in the finance committee I will be voting for the candidate I never had any doubt about his qualifications um and that is where we are right now Alyssa oh I just wanted to say quickly that when it comes to process that of course the statements of interest were in fact attached to the GL meeting posting just as they used to be for just as the equivalent because we weren't doing it exactly this way with the OCA process so it isn't that the public wasn't informed or that the council wasn't informed it's true that no one spoon fed us the information but we'd all been told for weeks that this was this process was going to take place and so all we did was subscribe to the notice and sure enough there all the statements of interest were and in terms of the length of the statements of interest although even in the short ones we in fact got more information than we used to on the CAS of course the the process is always up to be adapted in terms of just saying you need to cover these three topics in your statement of interest that's not difficult it's just a decision for the committee to make in the future okay if there are no other comments I'm going to ask for a motion George if you would please okay Lynn um promise I don't have a motion sheet in front of me I have it right here so I'll just I'll make the motion you can second to appoint Bernie Kubiak Bernhard Kubiak as a non-voting member of the finance committee per charter section 5.5 effective immediately for a term to expire June 30th 2022 as recommended by the governance organization and legislation committee is there a second I second that thank you Lynn any other comments then we will move to a vote lost track Evan Ross yes George Ryan yes Kathy Shane no see Shriver yes Andy Steinberg yes Shalini Balmille yes Alyssa Brewer yes Patty Angelis is now absent Darcy Dumont no Lynn Griezmer is a yes Mandy Johanna key yes Dorothy Pam I'm staying okay so we have and two three five six seven eight in favor two knows one extension and one absent and it passes so two absent two absent I'm sorry eight in favor okay I'm sorry two absent so eight in favor two against one extension and two absent did I go right that time yes no yes I did okay got it um we are going to move on right now to committee reports and just if you don't really have anything to add at this point and that you have a report file please indicate so CRC Mandy Joe um just that the current report for tonight's meeting that was drafted and submitted for tonight is includes the adopted CRC process for appointments to planning board and ZVA I encourage you to read that if you're curious what the process was that was appointed it includes the process and the deliberation around what changes we made and how we got there um Mandy Joe in the interest of transparency um do you where were you be moving now with the ZVA appointments nowhere was ZVA ZVA is full planning board for planning board tomorrow CRC has a meeting um at that meeting it will be discussing whether the pool is sufficient to move on to adopting selection guidance draft selection guidance is in the packet for tomorrow um if we determine the pool is sufficient we will move to discussing that draft and potentially adopting that draft and then I presume if if that goes well we would also discuss when we might do interviews if all of that happens and one statement of interest might be due on all so we are moving forward but we won't have a decision until tomorrow at the meeting on whether the pool is sufficient and to Andy Steinberg who we owe enormous gratitude for persevering in a 20 day period to get us through a budget so Andy anything else on the finance committee no thank you um GL George anything else nothing to add no okay Kathy JC PC's not met PSO Darcy we're meeting on uh Thursday evening at 6 30 and talking about our our review process okay on the area of liaison reports uh George anything particular on the board of health I had a question I don't want to take up our time now um I have written something up I'd like to submit it maybe I should wait for the next meeting and just submit it then and that would be that that would be fine okay Kathy anything on community preservation no okay any other liaison reports at this time okay we've already done the minutes oh if anything you'd like to highlight for the town manager I apologize for the late hour no it's it's written we've talked a lot about a lot of things so if there are questions I'm here to answer are there any questions of the town manager on the town manager's report I just want to note that he's learning new technology skills so how so he can now link things in his report to things that we would like to find and he's learned this from his daughter truth be told Athena did it this time Athena did it this time and um we appreciate that Paul thank you very much Darcy questions yeah speaking of it I'm just wondering if there's been any progress made on um making the public visible during our meetings um that's really a question to me not to Paul so I'll address that later Dorothy he did mention it that's why I uh right but it's I've really had the conversation with the staff although Paul if you want to speak to it go ahead I that the report was referencing all committees not the council in particular so it's how how we're addressing and supporting all the different committees out there um I do note that we've had multiple meetings that have been zoom bombed that have created crises for people and that's why we are really careful about this so I think it's a bigger conversation with the president Dorothy um I just have a very quick question to Paul I'm assuming that that's a very bad sunburn I hope so puzzling and puzzling I'm I'm following Evan's lead okay well I hope you feel good great George all it looks like the cdbg cares act funding is is presenting a bit of a challenge or maybe that's not the right way to put it but we didn't get all that we were hoping to get um I know you're looking into that is that something you can report back to us at some point as to what the rationale was or what because obviously we're counting on this money when we don't get what we expect that's going to cost us so yeah I'm just worried about that I guess but I know you're worried about it more than I am yeah so we didn't get everything that we asked for we uh we have a meeting on Wednesday to go over what the reduction and what that means and how we will approach that um and I think you know there were a number probably about seem like 10 communities that didn't get everything that they asked for um we were one of the things that they prioritized was regional approaches and we did not have a regional approach we focused on our downtown area and other other services as well so that's what their explanation was everything do you still have your hand up from before okay and George your hand is okay any other questions from the town manager all right moving on uh town council comments so I probably at probably every two weeks I have another round of conversations with IT about trying to figure out how we might make our meetings so that people can come into them and be seen and be heard without subjecting us to Zoom bombing and um I at the after the last one did write up a summary and I realized now I failed to send it to you um and the the bottom line is that it can be done with additional staff sitting here the entire meeting and being prepared to shut people off and so then we calculate that up across all of our meetings and it would probably mean close to an additional staff person in addition to that I've learned that Northampton is actually of thinking of moving in the direction we've moved because of zoom bombing and I think this is a much longer discussion than we have time for tonight it's not for lack of exploring or looking into it or trying but I do think there are some serious trade-offs and some some things we need to consider before we would ever push for anything beyond what we've been able to do Darcy uh yeah just on that it seems like there are situations where um when a person has provided public comment more than once and we are we know the person I don't know why we wouldn't be able to make that person visible I know that's you know that seems like a strange standard but it did occur to me tonight that we we knew all of our public commenters from past experience there was really no reason why we couldn't turn their cameras on but anyway that aside I just uh I didn't have a chance back when the town manager when we were talking about the town manager evaluation I couldn't get it together to get my comments ready in time okay I just have one thing that I I was hoping that the town manager could could give us more information and um about two big a little a which is um you had said that for staff you had published um the importance and priority of the goal that's climate action goals um and to ensure the goals were included in decision-making and I just wondered if you could give us a little more on that by the next meeting or something so that we just could see what you've been doing thank you okay George councilor comments yeah just quickly I I think that it might be helpful this is obviously for you to decide along with the rest of my colleagues but to invite um people like Tony Maroulis and perhaps Bill Laramie and a few other the individuals that will be responsible for the the community over the next few months particularly from UMass community but in general if they could be present for an opportunity for us to talk to them and ask questions and hear a little bit about where they're at I don't know if August 3rd is possible but certainly before the students all begin coming back I would just suggest that as something to consider as an agenda item because it's an excellent one it does raise another question because August August 17th is set aside strictly for the evaluation of the town manager and students start arriving on the 15th so we either put it on August 3rd or we have it as a separate meeting which would have to be August 10th yeah I heard that sigh Kathy let me look at the agenda for August 3rd I know that we jammed we take we threw a lot of things off of this agenda into that one because of this and we will be talking about that on Wednesday and George I totally agree with you um we also will know more after we meet with Chancellor tomorrow and also after Julie meets with the healthcare people okay so we'll look for okay Dorothy is it true that we have no meeting tomorrow night it is true okay great thank you because you plowed through tonight like the troopers you are not sure we had a choice but are there any other comments that people would like to make at this time hearing none thank you everybody for your patience and endurance the meeting is adjourned thank you thank you everybody thank you Lynn thank you Paul night