So I'm calling the Finance Committee meeting of July 14, 2020, orders at 1.40pm. And meeting being held electronically by remote participation pursuant to the governor's order that allows meetings to be held during this period of time because of the state of emergency with joint participation. It's an exception to the standard open meeting law. I am, because we're meeting by joint participation, I'm going to ask each member of the Finance Committee to indicate that they have heard me and we can confirm that that can be heard when they say present. At that point, I am going to ask the council to order because there's also a form of council members and she will have to confirm for the council members that they can also be heard. So I have done that statement to begin with. Kathy Shane. Yes, I'm here and can hear you. Bob Hegner. I'm here. Lynn Grusner. Here. Pat Tangelis. Here. Ruthie Pam. Present. Mary Lou Tomlin. Here. Sharon Pavanelli. Here. I think that I have all of the members of the Finance Committee that have confirmed that they can participate fully in the meeting. So the meeting is called order and. Lynn, would you like to call the council to order? Seeing as we have a form of the council at the Finance Committee meeting on July 14th. I'm calling the council to order at 142. I would like to check with the additional council members that they can hear me and we can hear them. George Ryan. I'm present. Mani Johannaki. Present. Darcy Dumont. Yes. I believe that was it. Thank you. Okay, so. For a moment, put the agenda on the. Screen if I'm able to do so and. Fortunately, I'm running into problems, so I'm going to go back and. Not try and share and if Lynn's able to do so, she will put it on the screen briefly. But there are several segments to the meeting. We have presentations from several departments about their budgets. We are going to start with the. If you look at, thank you, Lynn, if you look at the. Agenda item three fiscal 21 budget other matters has determined. We decided that we would ask the police chief to come back because we have provided several questions for the budget. For the police chief and do we want to get to them? Then we have presentations on. The general budget and that sections of the budget, which we need to. Consider. In order to complete our budget review process. After that, those presentations. We will open it up for period of public comment of allowing public to comment from one to three minutes. And then we will also want to talk about the budget review and recommendation process that is underway.  But it is not. Not in order, but since it's all been posted, I think that's appropriate. And that's how we are going to proceed with the meeting. So Lynn, I think we can go back from to a regular. The moment and I thank you to flipping stone for. Being at the meeting today and I. I see that you have. At least one other two other officers to the captains who were with us also to answer questions. They come from the committee and the council. But I wanted to first start by. I don't know anything that you can comment on the three questions that you had sent to you about. Mostly staffing and patrolling. So thanks you. Thanks, Mr Steinberg and thanks to the finance committee for having us back. And again, I don't, I don't know what timeframe you wanted us to withhold or hold to Andy. I don't know how long when did don't be afraid to interject or tell us to move along, but we'll try to stick to those three specific questions. That you had originally sent to me. One regard. And what our staffing. It's broken down and who how it looks on day to day operations. And I'm going to talk a little bit about the organizations that we partner with those consist of and then I'll follow up with vacancies and what our expectations are throughout the F by 21. Process pertains to manpower and maybe some other things there and if you have questions that'll be great. So the captain Ting and he can talk about some staffing issues. Good afternoon, everyone. I just want to talk a little bit about basically our operations and the structure of the Amherst police department relative to staffing. No, there's a lot of misconceptions in terms of, you know, what our roles are for the different police departments that we have within the town of Amherst and I just want to explain some of those roles. So the jurisdictional boundaries for the different police agencies and Amherst in the differences. So for the Amherst police. Our jurisdictional boundaries include all public ways and private ways are open invitees within the town of Amherst. The University of Massachusetts is their police departments as state entity. So any state property belonging to UMass Amherst or neighboring towns would fall within their authority and also extends to contiguous streets that cross through the campus such as North Pleasant Street. The Amherst college police department is a private entity. So any property in Amherst as privately owned by Amherst college would be patrolled by them and Hampshire college no longer has a sworn police force. They are now patrolled by a security team that only patrols Hampshire college property. So just to give you a little bit of an overview of what the differences between each of the police departments. The Amherst police has 48 budgeted sworn officers. The Amherst police officers must attend a full time municipal police academy or equivalent consisting of the current platform of 26 weeks of instruction and funding for that agency comes from the town of Amherst. University police department they have 62 budgeted sworn police officers and all UMass officers must attend also a full time municipal level police academy or equivalent consisting of the current platform of 26 weeks. So funding for that agency comes from the state. The difference there is they cannot enforce Amherst town bylaws, and they don't control. They do not patrol town streets and properties. The Amherst college police department they have 13 budgeted sworn officers. So all Amherst college police officers must attend a 14 weeks special state police academy or campus. So this academy would not meet the acceptable requirements for a municipal police department. They do not possess chapter 90 authority, which means they don't have the authority to pull cars over and issue Massachusetts civil motor vehicle citations. So any major felonies such as sexual assaults or death investigations or anything. Any major incidents are investigated by the Amherst police department so that's an agreement that we have with their agency. They just don't have the resources for it. And they also cannot enforce Amherst town bylaws. Amherst college, again, they don't have a police department. So anything of any significance is falls upon our responsibility to handle. So we do go there when we're called, but we don't actively patrol their campus. So our current staffing levels again 48 full time sworn police officers who currently have one vacancy so we just had three recruit officers that just graduated on Friday their first day was yesterday so they are now in their field training process which consists of three months of field training and one year of probationary status. So the current staffing for us is we have one chief of police two captains one administrative one operational for lieutenants three of them are patrol lieutenants and one is a detective lieutenant. And we currently have seven sergeants, seven of them are on patrol. When I say patrol I mean uniform division and one detective sergeant. In terms of patrol officers we have 28 patrol officers and five detectives. Normally we have six, but one was just promoted and move to the patrol ranks. And we also have two canines. So just to give you a description what our shifts look like. We have three traditional shifts, which is eight to four, 8am to 4pm, 4pm to midnight and midnight to eight. And usually when we have additional staffing sometimes we have a swing shift, which is 7pm to 3am. Our minimum essential personnel on the streets essentially is one sergeant and three patrol officers and one station officer so you have a total of five officers. In total the university police department for example they have one supervisor three patrol officers also one station officer. Amherst College police on a regular basis they only have one supervisor and one patrol officer for their campus. So we have a system in place that's called no time off weekends. And that's specifically catered towards the academic months for the university. So during the academic months or certain weekends that we determine to be we call them NTOs. So regular NTO weekend begins on Thursday from four o'clock p.m. and ends on Sunday at 8am. So our NTOs are regulated through collective bargaining agreements between the town and the patrolmen supervisors unions. And what that is is we've had that for the past 25 years or so. Ever since I've been here and over those years the academic months sprinkled with holidays and long weekends have produced high level of activity trends. And we're able to forecast engage the activity from these past weekends. We're examined by analyzing past statistics event plans weather forecasts and after action reports. So there's no time off weekends are measured to ensure that our staffing levels are acceptable to handle all of those activities. So during NTOs the department will not honor any vacation requests. We don't honor any compensatory time or personal time off. However, if there's a hardship.   So, you know we utilize no NTOs to make sure that we have enough staffing every single weekend and our weekends are certainly really busy during the academic year. That we consistently plan for in the fall or student move in. Certainly those first two weeks are extremely busy with college kids not having many classes to go to or, or that many obligations so it's kind of like Party Central for the first two weeks so it's really busy. And that follows us into the Halloween weekend. And during the fostering we have UMass tailgating and football games and homecoming weekends and town common events and events from the Amherst High School. And certainly when there's large celebratory gatherings, whenever there's a championship from one of our major sports, there's usually some kind of event at the university that we have to assist with. Sometimes some of the big events that we plan for are the Blarney blowout, the UMass spring concert weekend, UMass and Amherst College graduations student move out town common events and again Amherst High School events. So our staffing level during NTOs, you know, I mentioned what we have for minimums, but usually during NTOs, we will have probably about six to eight officers at a maximum. So usually we have one supervisor and one OIC and OIC is an officer in charge, and that's the rank of a lieutenant for each shift. And generally, again, between six to eight patrol officers that we make sure are are filled during our NTOs. However, the weekends when it's not during the academic months, we just maintain our minimum shift. So just to explain what we have is discretionary holdovers. So even with our best efforts to try and estimate activity, it's oftentimes very unpredictable on a weekend and weekly basis. So additionally, when there are major incidents that occur, usually each call will consist of at least two officer response. So when we're at our minimum, if there's two major incidents that are happening at one time, you know, our whole shift is depleted really quickly. So a lot of times we'll have to call in backup resources or ask for our mutual aid partners to help out. So common reasons for those holdovers are busy weekend nights, major incidents such as homicides, unattended deaths, assaults, disturbances, large motor vehicle crashes and house fires, or again multiple incidents in the same time period. Any calls with safety concerns always require two officer response. And of course, with any major incident, you know, we will require a detective bureau response, potentially an administrative staff response or responses from outside agencies such as the district attorney's office or the state police. So there is another question in terms of what type of organizations that that we commonly work with. So the, the most common agency that we work with is the Amherst fire department. Since the police department shifts of officers who are considered as first responders, we're already out there patrolling the streets. So it only makes sense that we get to special any medical or fire calls, along with the Amherst fire department. So we are often the first to arrive on scene to assess the situation, report the findings and request resources. And after determining which agency should be the primary lead depending on the nature of the call. Either the Amherst fire department or the Amherst police department will then move to their train roles given the circumstances. So the agencies that we work with regularly are. And Gabe, can I interject and let Ronnie jump in on the specifics, the clinical support in those agencies. Absolutely. Thank you. You want to mention that, or do you want me to continue over that? It runs still on. Can you hear me? Can you hear me now? Yep. Okay, great. I'm sorry about that. I having some technical difficulties on my end. Okay, very much for that. I know there were some questions, follow up questions about some of the various organizations that we work with. We do work with a lot of different municipal organizations, state level organizations, court level organizations, but I, I strike from reading the email that the chief had sent me that we wanted to concentrate more on some of the service oriented type things. So I'll touch on those and we can always expand further if we need to. As Gabe had just said that we obviously work with our brothers and sisters up at the fire department. And we do respond to a lot of a lot of calls for service with them. And it is really not so much to do their job but really to be the eyes and ears and maybe assess it very quickly to determine if there's a dangerous situation there to determine what type of resources we might need. We can give some notification back to the commanding officers back in the fire department and let them know what we're seeing so they can assess and determine what their response level is going to be. Whether it be a traffic accident, structure fire, medical emergency, something of that nature. As it relates to mental health response. There were some questions the other day or the other evening about exactly how our relationship with CSO works. So I just would cover that briefly again. We employ the CIT model here which is, which is based on the on the Memphis model there are very, there's various forms of a CIT that are employed by various, you know, different police departments across the country. We being a smaller agency the Memphis model seems to work for us. The way that works is, we train 100% of our people here a mental health first aid. There's a requirement by the Department of Mental Health to do that. And then subsequent to that we train all of our supervisors and about 25% of our staff on the CIT and or the what BHN or behavioral health network has identified as a 40 hour training session. Again, I, there was a lot of a lot of discussion that was made the other night about my statement that we don't try to be clinicians and that in fact is the truth we are we're not clinicians and that's not what our responses is about. Our response really is, is about crisis stabilization. We respond for family support reasons to determine whether or not there's some type of safety issues that are there, and really just work towards crisis stabilization till we can get some assistance. We work very closely with CSO clinical support options, which is in North Hampton based in North Hampton, which they in turn have a working relationship with the Department of Mental Health. Of course, the Hampton County version of that is behavioral health network and again the two of them work hand in hand and in fact our T TAC is based at BHN and that's where we we get all of our training from and get our officers trained up and current. We've also trained our dispatchers up for call response. And that call response looks a lot different in our call taking responsibilities look a lot different than they did even a couple of years ago. When a CIT officers response, it makes the calls a lot more complex than they used to be our departmental directive and our orders here are directed to our sergeants to allow the CIT officers to remain on the scene for a protracted period of time if necessary. Again, we're not looking at solving the problem we're just looking at harm reduction and stabilizing that person till we get somebody of a higher level of training that come and assist them. Another thing that I wanted to note about CIT and our response that I probably did not cover the other night was the reasons why we respond to calls like that. Really, we could carve it down to about three different reasons why respond to whether it be a mental health or mental illness response or somebody who may be suffering from some type of some type of medical problems relates to overdosing. We either respond because there's an underlying crime that's been reported to the police department, but more frequently we respond because of self report either some that the person calls and is looking for assistance, or a family member calls. So typically when we respond down to a call like that, we really don't know what we're going into. Or the other side of that it's a call that we've been to more frequently and the officer is recognized or perhaps the patient would ask in for a specific officer because they've developed some type of some type of rapport with them over the years or months or weeks or whatnot. Coupled with that we deal with the Hampshire Hope in Northampton. They are the ones who have assisted us in outlining what our DAR program is our drug addiction response team. Again, that is a harm reduction model. We are not responding to those calls for service to try and solve people's problems were really there to try and make certain that people get to where they need to be whether it need to be a hospital to recovery coach to some other type of service that might be available to them. We do you will note that and I know the captain had talked about it earlier about some of our calls for service you're going to note that we do a lot of selfish initiated calls in these areas. We do follow up it's part of our it's part of our protocol it's part of the model that we follow it's part of what our training entails. And it's part of what dmh and Hampshire Hope have required from us as part of our grant funding. So typically what we'll do is we'll contact somebody who has been who's been in contact with us in the past to find out if there are other resources that we can put them in touch with are there other support options that are available for us are there other safety protocols. Lots of times there's some things that are tied in with these calls that go beyond just what maybe what their behavioral health or the mental health or the substance disorders. Have first indicated there might be some safety concerns sometimes there's some financial issues sometimes they need to clear up warrants things along those lines. Lastly I just wanted to touch on as it relates to both both both these types of calls. The program that we belong to is a title to jail diversion program. The VP was designed so that we don't arrest people for some of these underlying minor crimes or if we're able to divert these crimes to get people to where they need to be short of arresting them. That's what we do. I don't have specific numbers here where I could provide those of calls if we looked at going back some eight nine years ago to calls that we typically respond to low level calls like disturbances and things of that nature, where the person may have been charged with a crime or they're now taken to the House of Corrections, they're now taken to the ED, they're taken to CSO, they're brought to detox, they're hooked up with somebody that could possibly help them, even if they're not in crisis, but get some things in order so that they possibly could be in a better spot the following day. And I see that as a witness from our agency. Clinically we also deal with the courts. We deal with service net we deal with safe passages on the domestic violence level. We deal with the Center for Women and Children there are rape crisis center here in town. We have partnered with them for the last number of years. As the chief had mentioned the other night during our presentation. We actually have a person who's in bed here in our in our agency this civilian advocate is housed here in our in our department. She is highly trained, very well educated in is a private and not a public entity in other words, the things that she deals with are in terms of sharing information is very limited.  She assists those people in being hooked up with various different organizations like now quit victim witness advocacy, Office of Elder Affairs, safe passages, service net, etc, etc, to try to again we're looking at harm reduction we're looking at stabilization of the family unit we're trying to prevent difficult situations down the road and we're looking at safety planning. She is, she's an integral part of who we are as an agency, and a lot of that is grant funded. It comes out of a program that we've partnered with the Department of Justice for the last couple of years and we are just, we are currently waiting to see whether that grant will be refunded in the future. Back to you Gabe, I'm sorry to interrupt. Actually, I'd like to interrupt. Oh, I'm sorry, please. Andy, would it make sense for Julie to weigh in now from the different perspective on this because Ron had brought up that topic and it was a concern of the Council about the interagency interaction. Really, do you have anything you want to offer? You're muted Julie. Yes, thank you for asking me. I have several things I want to talk about but I'll talk specifically about some of the things Ron was just talking about. Julie, just to introduce, we need to introduce you to any members of the public who are watching who don't know who you are. Julie Fetterman is the director of the public health department in town, so thank you Julie I'm sorry to interrupt you. Thank you Andy. And Paul should I talk about various things I was going to speak about or just this issue. Paul. Up to you. Okay. But time is short so you need to be brief on this I think. Okay, so I'm going to jump in here and try and be short but one of the things. So, first of all, just talk about what some of the things that that Ron was talking about. So I have worked for the town since 1995 as public health nurse then assistant director and the director for the past 10 years. And so one of the things I've had the privilege of doing is working with our police department. Because one of the things that we've tried to do for a very long time out of the health department is the concept of bringing health into all matters of the town. And so the police department along with other departments were great about really embracing that concept. So that in 2014 I think it was Amherst and four other towns joined together to get grant funding to help create a coalition to address the opioid epidemic which became the hope coalition. And initially served on that executive committee and then it seemed to make a lot more sense to have someone from the police department and so they stepped up to the plate, and from almost the beginning have been deeply embedded into the hope coalition. So when Ron is talking about the dart team that was created and the efforts of the police department over overdoses I kind of wanted to flesh that out for you. So you've got someone who ods and police officers have been trained how to administer NARC and in case they're first on the scene right because a lot of times police are first on the scene. They don't as they're as Ron saying we don't know what's going to happen so maybe an ambulance hasn't been called. So they have the capability of administering Narcan, which prevents a death. They then have developed a team officers who will go back the next day or whatever is appropriate to where that person lives and check on that person. It's a warm knock. How you doing, because we all know that when get you get someone has just been given Narcan and is waking up it's not really the time to talk about hey what's the next step in reducing perhaps your the concept of having the next overdose. So I just really applaud the fact that our police department really stepped up to want to be part of this. It was a new role for police departments and I think it's a perfect example of what our police department is willing to do. We can talk about another way in which we collaborate and that's with our homeless systems meeting. So again, we've had a Craig's doors in our town now for want to say nine years. They run a shelter. We also have other entities in town who serve our homeless population as outreach workers. We decided that it, it made sense to bring folks together to kind of convene stoke stakeholders, people who work with homeless folks and then town officials to meet once a month and talk about what's coming up in the community what's coming up at the shelter among our homeless folks and the police have really been integral in that. And Captain Ting has been part of that. And before him Jen Gunderson, they're at the table the communication is happening it's going back and forth from those serving the homeless to the police and from the police back to them. I've just been so impressed in the ways we've been able to work together like that. This may be my only other opportunity to speak one of the reasons I've really wanted to speak was because public health public and public safety are crucial during this pandemic. I really urge you to respond to issues that are being brought up as opposed to react. We need our police department. I also want you to know that I am passionate about injustice and its impact on people's health are the Amherst health departments had a long history of understanding and seeking to address racial disparities in health access and also addressing biases. Personally I've sought out training and education around racism and my role as a white American and a government official. Most recently I was chosen to participate in a statewide training program with the town managers full support. I've committed to bring the concepts of cultural humility to our town governance. Most recently to our hiring practices, along with the town managers support. I'm now endeavoring to bring the concept of white fragility forward to town leaders that we can all engage in this process that's ongoing as a speaker said last night. It's not about one single training. And the reason I'm giving you that background about myself is that's who I am and when as a professional as an M also as a resident of Amherst. When I'm working with the police department, the fire department town hall. This is the lens I bring to it. So I care passionately about what's happening to people of color around this country in Massachusetts. But I also know that we have a police department that is above par and who are really committed to serving this community and open to what comes next. And so I just wanted to share that with you. And thank you for giving me the time to speak. Thank you Julie. Do you have anything else? Just your last question, Andy was specific to where we stand as far as vacancies and potential vacancies in FY 21. So I think Captain Ting mentioned that we do currently have one vacancy now. We have a second vacancy as early as July 24. So, basically in a week, and we have another vacancy that will be happening on September 1. Those are all vacancies that we know of. FY 21 we have two officers, two more officers who would qualify for retirement as well. So, three definites, potentially more and that's just for retirement purposes. So officers leave for other agencies. Most recently we had one leave for the mass state police and we had one leave for the Rhode Island state police. So those occur not as frequently, but so that's kind of where we are in a staffing level perspective. I think that covers the three questions you wanted, Andy, and if there was additional information. I don't but the next thing I'm going to do is open it up to questions from members of the finance committee and members of the council and we'll recognize hands as they come from counselors and members of the finance committee. And just so that other counselors who hadn't seen the questions. I mean it's fairly obvious what we were looking for was sort of that question that's always the budget question. I don't know how much we're spending. What what does it. What does it essentially provide for the community, what we're spending those for the question. And that's really the focus of the discussion today and I appreciate very much responses that we have received from chief Livingstone and from Captain young captain tank. Kathy I do your hand up and since I said and I would that would be the next segment. Hey, thank you very much for responding and also for responding to other questions. We send the set that I don't think has been answered yet that aren't budget related. But I just wanted to follow up on the vacancy question to make sure I understood when you said one now one in a few weeks and then another one. Those are vacancies where you don't have it currently identified a trainee that you're bringing in. If you're genuine, you would be starting a process to hire people. I know you, we often want the training costs, and so someone is in pipeline is not maybe the right part, but you know, on their way. If you're genuine, you haven't started figuring out what you're going to do with those.  Right, so we had started Kathy we had started the recruitment process probably last January we try to get a head start on anticipated vacancies because it takes close to a year. From the time we start interviewing to the time an Academy is finished before that person is actually working. So, you know, it's not unusual for us to have one or two vacancies because we're at the liberty or at the state police run. You know, the one in Western Mass only runs twice a year so if you miss out on that. It's another six to eight months before you can get an officer into that Academy so you know where there's a lot of planning that's involved psychological exams interviews and all that stuff so the process to hire just one officer is about a year long process. Can I just follow up on it. In terms of meeting standards for police departments on who you can hire and one of the two, if you're sending out a team of two is does the state regs allow you to have someone that didn't come through the state. You know, it's not the Academy but came through a different route, you know, behavioral health route a crisis management route the kind of person that you've got right now grant funded. Is there a part of the police force in a team of two where the other person's an officer. I think I kind of know where you're going with they wouldn't have obviously wouldn't have any police powers. They could act as an advocate. It's a little touchy only because it's the captain young mentioned when we get sent to a call. That's a mental health type call we don't always know it's that so there is a level of safety. I don't know how easy it would be just to have them riding along in a cruiser and respond to that type of call. Certainly if somebody was available to us to respond at some point within that call that would be beneficial. It's one of the it's one of the issues we're facing with entities like CSO service net. One of the reasons the police department is kind of responsible for all of these responses is because we're there 24 seven and they're not. We just had an incident yesterday where we had a mom come to us in the lobby of the police station because she couldn't get hold of anyone at CSO and she needed immediate existence with us with a son. So those are the types of issues that even we have as an agency trying to get the coordination with our partners at CSO and service net and that sort of thing. I think it's somewhere we'd like to be but it's going to be a long process. Thank you. Yeah, so maybe I'll do a follow up question on turning it to a second to domestic violence. I know you have often said knife in from my own experience as a former legal aid attorney to officers going to a domestic violence call. Would it be advisable in your estimation on a domestic violence call to bring along somebody from a domestic violence organization, including the one you currently work with or is that something that happens later in the process. Yeah, absolutely not. Domestic violence calls are one of the more dangerous calls of police officers respond to it. There were just two officers murdered at a domestic violence calling Southern Texas two days ago. No, I certainly have an advocate available. I mean the process we have in place right now works great. The advocate is here. 20 or 24 hours a week. She does all of the follow up with the victims and that sort of thing, but for their actual response, typical she would get involved when we bring the, if there's an arrest made, we would start the process there. If there's no arrest made if the suspect has fled the scene and we bring the victim back to the police station, she would be involved at the police station but not at the residents. Okay, thank you. There are several other counselors who've asked to be recognized. I just should note that when I was in legal aid. We, there were two times when we most frequently were working with police officers. One was before we were ever involved when the initial response came in. And the other was if there was a violation of restraining orders and violations of restraining orders at that point we were representing victim frequently, but police officer interventions and those can be also from what I observed in my legal aid days and equally precarious time for police response. Yeah, and that's kind of why the state changed the law so that when police officers respond to domestic violence type calls. The preferred response by law by statute with our district attorney's office is, is an arrest. So the days of just going to do a domestic violence call and keeping peace are kind of long gone. The preferred response is an arrest. I'm going to recognize other members of the council for a few minutes and then I see that. Chief Nelson also has something that he'd like to say so I will bring Chief Nelson from the fire department along in a few minutes but Mandy and the key you have your Thank you. I apologize if I missed the answer to this, but you know we've been talking about the grant funding that came in 2015 or so for combating combating domestic violence and sexual violence and stalking. It seemed that in the budget book that that paid for a detective or some sort of personnel. When is that grant supposed to end and if it ends what's happening to that position that's been paid for is that is that folded into the budget right now is it not is that position going away can you talk a little bit more about that and like I said I missed the answer to this earlier. No Ashley Mandy Joe there your timing on that question is perfect because that grant is in the process. Well I'll let Ron explain if you still Ron are you still here. I am searching. So that we are in the final months of that grant. It expires at the end of the federal fiscal year so the September 30. We reapplied back in in in January for continuation of the grant, which would be based on a 36 month model. Typically we hear back about that somewhere in August or early September right before the federal fiscal year begins the next step federal fiscal year. I'm waiting on my hands to see whether or not it will come back but if it does. It will extend it for either 48 or I scratch that for 24 to 36 months depending on what their ward is. So if we don't receive the funding for that grant we expect we're going to see receive the funding at least to cover the cost of the officer. If we don't, that's going to be a discussion we're going to need to have with the town manager and the finance committee. I'm guessing. Thank you. Anything else. Wendy. If not. I'm not. Okay, Lynn. And then I was going to ask Chief Nelson to get anything. And then Dorothy Pam in that order. So Lynn. Yes. One of the questions that has been out there is what are initiated calls in the little bit of, you know, response on that. What I've determined is that not all but some are follow up calls. And I wonder if there is a way, you know, for example, we have one neighborhood that has often has a fair amount of weekend partying happens to be in my district. And the officer Laramie who is working with the university on issues like that will often then go by the house on the day after. Maybe the Monday after the party and talk with the people. Right. And I'm wondering if there's a way to do to classify that and if you can give us a sense of the initiated calls, how many are really follow up calls where you're checking back. Right. So thanks for that question, Lynn. And, you know, I watched last night's council meeting and of all the comments that I heard that was the theme of the conversation was really kind of disheartening because it's the implication was that we're going and targeting specific neighborhoods and nothing to be further from the truth. It is actual officer responsible follow ups, and it's geared by calls. So for instance on Phillip Street and maybe I should let Gabe answer this as well but you know there's a lot of follow up on Phillip Street and there's a lot of follow up at the shelter when it's open. And that sort of thing Gabe. Are you are you still there. Oh, well, Gabe, we want to jump in on that. Yeah, I'm here. I know that there, there's a lot of questions relative to the areas that we commonly police and why. The structure of our of our operations is that we follow sector based problem oriented community policing model. So we stress productivity, which kind of initiates officer initiated activity so we stress that to prevent problems before they happen to make sure we do a proper job following up with our investigations in efforts to further that prevention. So the steps that we make are to target the source of the problems and not based on ethnicity race, sex or class. So our officer initiated activity is really predicated on the problems identified in every neighborhood in Amherst. So how do we find out about those problems. We learn about the problems when people call in for help, or for for service really. So how often is initiation is a responsive measure or follow up for that effort of problem solving. So, for example, if you were to take a look at some statistics I know that there was some questions in terms of how often do we patrol North Pleasant Street or the apartment complexes comparatively to more affluent neighborhoods so if you were to take a look at statistics. For example, if you were to take a look at wildflower in Amherst Woods. In 2019, for example, there were two total calls from residents off of that street alone. One call was for an animal complaint one call was for a medical medical call. We often get complaints of speeders and traffic issues there so we have a total five officer initiated calls in that street alone. So really what I'm trying to articulate here is that, you know, our officer initiated activity is predicated on, you know, what type of issues are in that neighborhood so if I was to give you another example. Another example, colonial village is is an area that we commonly respond to in 2019. There was a total of 80 calls. And if you were to take a look at the makeup of those calls 3333 medical assists 14 while being checks 13 domestics 13 medical mental hospitals, nine suspicious activity, eight noise complaints for disturbances, and then a variety of other calls. So our total officer initiated calls there were 80 calls there. So our officers that went there to initiate the, it consists of 60 security checks 19 follow ups and one warrant service so again, what I'm trying to articulate and illustrate here is that you know, we're not targeting any particular neighborhood. The purpose of targeting people, you know, our sole response is to target the problems at hand. And so, you know, our initiative responses are again predicated on what the issues are and the calls for service. I hope that answers your question. I think it's particularly helpful when you give examples without finger pointing or anything else. So I particularly appreciated the colonial village, but I want to go back and say, you refer to that as 80 calls was that any calls you received and then you initiated follow up. Let me take a look at my stats here. Yes, we received 80 calls in total. I'm just trying to look at my computer system here. And then there were roughly 80 initiated responses officer initiated responses. So and then, then we got the sense from the various people last night who came forth to talk to the council. They felt that there was just more police presence in places like colonial village apartment complexes. And so, in addition to the calls that you originally responded to and the follow up, would you say that police cars are therefore going into that neighborhood in general to be a presence or are that there is for the calls and the follow up. I would say both ma'am. For instance, there was a couple months ago there was a there's an incident where there was a UMass student she's an international student she was of Asian descent. And there was some BBs that were shot through her window as long as as well as she had a couple of roommates there. And so therefore we were trying to investigate that to determine if that was a targeted crime or if that was of some other type of nature. So therefore, we did conduct a lot of follow up. We also had a lot of police officers present in that area. For several reasons, a as a deterrent and B to try and figure out who the perpetrators were. And through our investigation, we did figure it out, and it came to a resolution. But we did spend a lot of time there just for that one incident alone. So it's kind of both, you know, certainly for presence for deterrence, and as well as a follow up to the incident itself. So if you were to multiply that by how many calls and different problems that we have in that specific area, you know, we're going to have quite a better response. So somebody who lives there. They're going to see a presence from the police there, but we're there for a specific reason. I urge that you find a way to classify follow up calls. So that they're not seen only as initiated because we initiate them you're actually following up on a previous call. And they are actually classified within our database. And those are statistics that can be produced. Okay. Thank you for that further explanation. You're very welcome. Okay, so what I was going to do, Chief Nelson. Did you have something that you wanted to offer to the finance committee? Yes, I do. There I go. Oh, you're here in person. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Good afternoon. I'm sorry, really, because just, you know, the railing that's been going on specifically against the Amherst police police. All the laws talk about the defunding the police and that type of thing. I think those folks need to take the time to understand what our police department does for the community. They take the time to find out what they do and how they do it in my mind. You know, stuff that the country is going through right now. It's not the police. It's policing. And there's a subtle difference there. And I really believe that policing needs to change. But, you know, the other pieces is that, you know, the Amherst police police, they're part of a team. They're part of a public safety team that works well together. I came from another room. We worked well with the police there, but nothing like it is here. I was taken aback by how close to fire. And it's in a team that's working for the community. And I guess, you know, again, to those folks that are, that are coming, coming, coming out specifically against the Amherst police department, I asked, you know, what, what has our police department done wrong? And compare, compare, compare some of what's going on. NAD, NAD, NASH, NASH, NASH nationally. Nothing, nothing. They do it right. They, their, their operation is something that should be in, in the, in the way that they do a great, great, great job. I mean, sure. Can there, can, can things, can be improved? Sure. Of course, in every, in every order or organization can, and, and, and the Amherst PD is not the Minnesota, Minnesota police, Minneapolis police department, it's not the Atlanta police department. They don't, that's not how they are. And one of the, one of the things that Chief Lewis said, I think last, last week that they haven't just discharged a weapon in 42 years.  You know, they, they're, they're legal, legal, legal, they're, you make main ways, ways to, yes, yes, yes, escalate. I think if you remember a few, few years ago, one, one, one of their officers was confronted by a gentleman with a weapon that could have harmed, harmed him or himself. In my, in my, in my mind, he would have had every just, just, just occasion to use his weapon, his weapon, his weapon. But he, he didn't, he found a way around, he found a way to, yes, escalate and not hurt anyone. You know, the APD is not a threat threat to this community. They're watching up for you, they're watching up to your families, they're watching up with those you care about. And you know what, they're watching up for my, my, my people, so my, my jobs and make sure that my, my, my folks are safe. And part of that is our community relationship with the APD. They're, they're, they're with, with us at most, most, most, most call via those five, five car call, car ag, ag, ag action, mental health, health, health, health, which can be absolutely dangerous. And it's a good feel, feeling our folks happen to know that when they're going into an interstitial situation that could be kind of tend to tend to, tend to sustain interest. APD is right there with us watching out for us so we can do our, our, our, our jobs. These are good people. These are folks that care about this. These are folks that stretch, stretch themselves to the degree, take care of the period. That's, that's, that's, that's, they're, they're all. You know, I've been in the fire, fire service for 38 years now about, about, about, about that 38 or 39, nine years, year, year, years down. So, so, so for part of my life, I've been fired from fire. But before that, I was a black man. And once I'm through here, I'm still going to be a black man.  But there's, I'll tell you, there's not a day that goes by where, you know, in my time, in my entire life, there hasn't been a day that's gone gone by where someone has not reminded me that I'm different based on race.  I mean, I've lived all over this country because of my dad's career. And one cons kind of one constant has been those, you know, racist, big attitude or actions. And that's from the general public. And it's been from some, some police aid, aid, aid to see as well. I mean, I've, I've, I still, I still get stops every now, now, now, now and then when I'm in my private private car. I still get fall, fall, fall all around in the department, department, department, department, department still, you know, they still see all that stuff. You know, you don't see that from a PD. You just don't. They're good people. They know what they know what's right. They do it. It's a good police. They do it right. You know, I think that there are some, some groups that are around, I would doubt or as I said, they're railing against against a PD. And in my mind, they're, they're, they have solutions solutions solutions that are looking for a problem. And it's a PD is not the problem. And knee jerk reactions to serious, serious, serious issues are not is not the way to go. It needs to be fought, fought, fought, fought. It needs to be read re, re, re, re. And again, I mean, I do, I just don't want to say that, you know, these good politically, say, defund funding or those types of draconian measures are not the way to go. We need to support them. We need support for what they're trying to do. They're initiatives because they're good for this. They're watching out for this. They're watching out for all. And I said earlier today, I'll be damned if I'm going to stand by and allow some folks to try to tear down a group of really great individuals. So thank you that that's all I have. Well, Chief Nelson, thank you very much. I appreciate your contribution, both as your experiences, our fire chief and your personal experience and personal comments. So thank you very much. I have a couple of counselors now I'm going to recognize and then we'll take stock of where we are. I want to remind attendees that last night was time for public hearing and we really valued hearing from the community and we'll value hearing from public comment later in the agenda. But this was now the committee has to begin to do its thinking. And this is kind of a first step and very important step to take up this first step after the hearing. So with that, I'm going to ask Dorothy Pam, who's been very patient. Thank you, Dorothy, for being patient. Well, it's really hard to speak after that eloquent remarks of Chief Nelson, but I have a couple of comments here. Accepting the fact, and I totally do believe this, that the Amherst Police Department, the answers that we've received at many, many meetings are not doing the things which have brought up the uproar through the country in terms of weapons, in terms of physical force. I'm thinking that there might be some small thing they could do at this time. Restructure some of the follow up calls that now they said they work with people from the other agencies, but using common sense and in consultation with people, some of those calls need not be made with a police officer. And could some of those follow up calls be made by one of the public health professionals with whom that they're working? And perhaps we would, you know, be able to hire another one. Because so much of this has to do with the feeling of being policed. And it sounds like some of these calls, they have to make them, they're required to make them, they're legally required. It is good for the people that the calls are made. I understand that that's really important. But we, I don't think we can just ignore the fact that the feeling of being policed is real, even if there's actually a very good reason for everything that the police department is doing. We also have to acknowledge that if there are more people in an area, such as larger housing developments, there are going to be more police calls. When you mentioned the case from Wildwood Lane, there aren't very many people down there, okay? But some places it's going to, there's going to be more police presence because there are more people and people have different problems. But I want to go back to the call that was the ones that Captain Ting was mentioning, because I got confused in the terminology with the colonial village. The word officer initiated responses, it sounded to me like the 80 calls were not made by the police department deciding I'll go visit these people, but that people called in for something. So I think that maybe, maybe I was confused with the terms, but some, all those various things, which are just the things that happen with people sounded to me that probably somebody called the police department to come. And then if an officer decides to do or has to do follow-up, then that might be an officer initiated response. So I think Lynn was a little confused with some of the terminology there too. So I would really like to have some clarification on which calls were initiated by the public calling in saying, I've got a problem. I need some help. Or which, in fact, were initiated by the police department on their own, which means nobody called. Yeah, understood, Dorothy. And thanks for that. So I'll ask Captain Ting to respond as well. But so the point of his original explanation was almost all of either officer follow-up or officer initiated calls are the result of a call for police services. The day before, a week before or a month before it can be any combination of both. So for instance, Bill Laramie, I think everybody's familiar with Bill, you know, he may do a follow-up on a noise disturbance, but what he's been doing up at Grant Wood Drive, there's been a lot of officer initiated things. So we can certainly try and find a better explanation for characterizing those calls for sure, because I don't want there to be confusion, but with the community-based policing model that we used, officers are expected to do both. So there are times when it's going to be a officer initiated call, when it might be a long-term type of thing he's working on, or it might be something as Bill stopping by the very next morning for a loud noise response that the officers went to, and he wants to speak to these kids when they're sober and say, hey, look, your behavior is unacceptable. That would be follow-up. So that's probably something we're going to need to work on, as an agency, about clarifying this or does with those types of calls. But I think the important thing is, is we don't just randomly drive around neighborhoods looking for people to pastor. It's the results of calls that we've responded to. Okay, thank you very much. You're welcome. Somebody had their hand up and then took it down again. So I'm assuming that that was a purposeful decision. And I don't see any more hands from the council. So I'm going to take just a moment to see if anybody else from the council would like to say anything. And if not, I don't know, Mr. Bachmann, did you have any concluding comments before we move? Thank the police officer. Can you move on to the next agenda section? Yeah, just a few things. Andy, so I just want to make sure that people who are on this call are recognized. So we've listened to them. The chief and his staff were on the meeting last night and listened to the full public hearing. And I think we understand that people are coming at this from a place of real concern and anger at what's happening at a national level. I think that the way I've thought about this is it's how Chief Nelson said it's how we do policing. And I think that's something we want to engage in that conversation. I think that that's something that we are very interested in it. And I think there's a second piece of it, which is sort of systemic change. And I think that's something that we're also interested in looking at. But there are two different things. And I think that we have to focus on both of them at the same time. I think we can talk philosophically about how change happens. But ultimately, as a town council and town manager, we're responsible for the public health and public safety of our community. And that's why I put in a budget that I think meets the needs of the community. And I would encourage the council to move forward with that budget, because I think cutting the budget of the public health or public safety departments at this moment in time during the middle of a pandemic would just be a big mistake. So again, that doesn't mean that the folks who have been communicating very with great passion and very, very articulate concerns haven't been heard. It means that we have to have that conversation. But it just and it moves in a different way. Okay. Thank you. So I'm looking one last time to see if there's anybody else from the council or the committee who wishes to speak. Darcy, hi. Please don't mute and join us. Darcy. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you, Darcy. Hi. Hi. Sorry. I just wanted to make a comment that it would be it looks like there are 12 people that want to make public comments and that this is a this is an area where we are saying that we really want to listen to and hear people. So I guess I'm just I would just suggest that we allow people to speak for three minutes instead of two because because we want to hear what they have to say, knowing full well that most people aren't going to have three minutes worth of comment. So I'm just strongly suggesting that we allow people to speak and be heard. Thank you for the comment. Sean Mangano, you know who is here from the general government section that was expecting to make presentations on the general government section of the budget, which was what the meeting was originally posted to be. So how many people are here from general government right now? I think we have six or seven maybe eight people here for the general government section. Thank you. I think that the problem that we have and I'll look to other members of the committee to jump in if they have any contribution on this so that it isn't solely my decision on this. We originally had this scheduled as the meeting to hear about the general government department sections of the budget and we started an hour earlier in order to have the police be able to respond to questions that we had posed to the police department and those questions were posed prior to last night's hearing. So I think that we're sort of have to decide on how we want to balance our time and respect our employees who want to be able to answer questions about their portions to the budget. Are there other members of the finance committee who want to contribute to what they think we should do here? So no one's stepping forward. I think that we have two choices. Thank you, Andy. I definitely want to thank the members of the police department who are here for the work that you do. I would like to hear some public comment, but only if people who spoke last night are not there are people on that list who haven't spoken and I don't know whether we could sort through them or not, but I would be willing and I'd be willing to listen to some of those comments, but I'm not sure how you sort them. But I think if people have spoken last night that we know what they're going to say today and I don't mean that disrespectfully at all. Any other comments, Mandy? I know I'm not on finance, but I do think out of respect for our town staff who are sitting in a meeting and not able to do their work until we get to them and ask them their questions, we should, given that the agenda had public comment on last, respect their time and at least maybe even if all of that conversation can't be completed, maybe at least the presentation portion of general government and any direct questions to staff can be so that they can get on with their day and get their jobs done. Okay, that's kind of my inclination too. And so speaking to members of the public, we certainly do plan to have public comment. And if you need other, if there are other things that you need to do and you don't want to hear about the general government sections of the budget, why don't we, you certainly can leave the meeting and come back on. It will be probably about 45 minutes or so before, at least 45 and probably not more than 60. So I'd say if you leave the meeting, please come back in 45 minutes so that we can, when we get to public comment, we can do so. But I think I will follow through and turn it back to Mr. Mangana who's going to indicate to us the order in which we're going to go through the general government sections and make any key or the town manager might make introductory comments about the general government section. And for everybody's reminder, the budget is available in full on the town website under the government tab and then budgets. And then you'll find the town manager's budget in the what's called the post COVID section. Sean? I think we were just going to go right through the general government section except for the facilities because you heard that at the previous meeting. So that would be Mr. Backelman first and then finance and then we'll just keep going through the list. And the department heads that are here will speak to each section. Okay. So the general government section of the budget begins, I believe, around page 20 roughly. That's certainly where the, our 19 is where the town manager section and the town council section is before. So why don't I start with the town manager. Thank you. Thank you, Andy. So the town manager budget shows an increase of 21.5%. That's an increase mainly because of a reallocation of two positions. One is the position of clerk of the council who is 75% under the town council's budget and 25% under the town manager's budget. That position hadn't been budgeted to before previously. So that's now plugged into the budget. The other is the reallocation of the communications officer position, which had previously been in the IT department budget, and it's more appropriately in the town manager's budget for 75% of the time, 25% of time still in town managers in the IT department. We've removed in terms of expenses, we removed travel from the operating budget because there are no, there are not going to be conferences and we're not going to be going to conferences this year. I don't think so. That's the summary of our budget. Okay, Glyn. Thanks. I will note that we did not remove it under town council. However, I think we can assume that we are going to be seeing a change in that, in that there will probably not be a physical Mass Municipal Association meeting this year. And we may also have counselors that just choose not to go. And so we may find that as we get closer to January, the line of operating expenses, which I believe includes MMA, will not be as great. It still includes things like minute takers for council meetings. So I don't want to say that it would be completely gone. Did you have anything else you wanted to ask about the first two sections of the budget? Are you talking to me, Andy? Yes. I submitted a list of about 25 questions and they have since been answered in a document that Sean and others have prepared. I'm perfectly satisfied with those and to the extent that they need to be discussed. That's great. And you can see the questions that I asked, because this is the section that I have to write up. So I have kind of stated my case of questions and people should go ahead with their presentations. Yeah, Andy, I'll just add that the questions on general government are posted on the finance committee page in the packet section for today's meeting. So if anybody wants to go and look at those questions and the responses that were provided, they're available there. Okay. And for anybody who can't find that, it actually is very easy to find, just go to the town website, government, the town council section, and under the town council section is committees and then the finance committee, under finance committee, you'll find packets in the packet for today's meeting. So that's all the questions and the answers have been posted there and are available to anybody who seeks to go look for them. I also want to say thank you for all the time that it took to answer those questions. And Paul, I know you jumped in on the human resources side to let us know what training looks like and so forth. I think it did help elaborate on the budget document. And Sean, I look forward to how we can look at ways to tweak the budget in the future. Okay. Looking at the hands up, Kathy, do you have questions either about the town council or town manager section? I have a question that is cross cutting. So it starts, I'm just looking at the pages. I had a question about why something was done in the budget book on legal services. So I can bring it up later just to ask for the rationale. And so it was removed as a line item and put within another group. So we'll lose the trend. So that was, you know, I'm assuming it's a town manager decision because you control the legal budget. So I'm not sure where it got grouped before, but it's gotten grouped now that it's no longer a line item. And then I had just a cross cutting one so we can come back to it. If we want internal staff, so the app that work for you or in general government to do studies where there's data available. So we had a fire EMS staffing question on the old staffing report updating it. Parking fees, parking policies, different design of North Commons. Is there a team that's in your office and other general government offices that can come together and do something on staff time? So those are my two questions that didn't seem to fit specific to other categories. Okay, Paul. Sure. So Sonia will address the legal question, I believe. So on the second one, yes, I am your staff person. So when you have a question, that's my job under the charter. And that's, I mean, I devote a lot of time to helping you find the answers that you want. And so I ask you to fund, I've asked why we've always funneled things through the town manager's office because my responsibility is the staff who are hired under the town. And if there are questions and things that the council wants to ask and wants to pursue, those are things that we will assemble the appropriate people. That's our job to serve you like that. Okay. Sonia, did you want to address the legal thing? Yeah, that was just our attempt to kind of streamline the budget book a little. We had like two or three pages dedicated to legal that really said nothing. So we just put it under general services right along with the audit and property and casualty insurance and stuff. But I see your point, and I think in next year's budget we can just create another line in the general services budget that shows you what's expanded in history. Okay, because it was just, we lose the trend if it just. I understand that now. Thank you for bringing it up. Yeah. Just purely that. At first I thought we didn't need any legal services next year until the other budget. We were trying to be efficient, but realized it took away the detail that's important for everybody to see. So we will fix that next year. Okay. Thank you. Anything else before we go on to finance? Sean, I guess you might be on for that. Great. Thank you. So I'm going to speak on behalf of a few different units. The overall finance department is comprised of accounting, treasury, collection, and assessing. And all of those department heads are here today. We have Cheryl Boucher, Jen LaFountain, Liz Duffy, and someone that not many people know, Sonya Aldrich, our comptroller. And so they're available to answer any questions, but I'm going to do a brief overview of the budget. And I just talked about some of the projects and goals that we're working on this year. Before I get into that too much, I did want to acknowledge all the staff that I just mentioned and also some of the staff that they supervised. They all worked pretty much straight through the pandemic. When people were staying at home, they came in to really keep up the operations running here at town. And they did a great job keeping things going. And they continue to, with their staff, help support different areas of the town. We have some employees, whether it's parking or the front counter, who their jobs have changed because there's, that work is no longer really going on. And so they've shifted to help other areas of the town, like Puffer's Pond or Cherry Hill. And staff have been super flexible and we really appreciate their ability to adapt and go with the flow on things. In terms of things that we're working on, so Lynn alluded to this a little bit, one of our goals for this year is to update the budget document. And we want to get your input on things that you'd like to see and ways we can make it more useful to everybody. And all these goals I'm going to mention, they're all team goals. They're things that either cross departments within finance or they cross departments within the town as a whole. So we're going to review our finance policies. So the document on the website was last put together in 2012, which was pre-charter change. So we're going to look at those finance policies, make sure they're up to date, see if we want to add anything to them. And obviously we'll share that all with you. We're going to update our OPEB funding plan, which Mr. Hector made sure that I explain what OPEB is, so other post-employment benefits, which is essentially health insurance obligations for retirees. There's been a couple changes to the funding plan. One, our obligation every year valued by an actuary. And there were some changes that were pretty significant last year. And also the contribution that we made in this year's budget we reduced in half. So it's going to be important to look at that funding plan, come up with a strategy for the next five to 10 years, and also take a long view as to how much longer till we fund it. We are looking to streamline our benefits process. We've collaborated between HR and payroll for many years. It's worked out fine, but there's ways we can improve that. And so that's one area we'll be looking to make some improvements. We're going to continue to expand online payments. We did a lot during the pandemic and put a lot of things online, but there's even more we can do, especially with the new software that's in the planning department around permitting and rental registration. There's a lot more we can move online and make it even easier for people to pay bills or purchase services from the town. We're going to do a comprehensive review of fees. There's some fees in town that haven't been looked at, or maybe they have been looked at, but they just haven't changed in a long time. So we're going to review all the fees. There's hundreds of fees. Much more than on the school side. When I looked at it, I got a little nervous. At schools, we had like 12 fees. And we're going to look at those. We're going to compare it to our neighbors and come back. We'll move some recommendations around where fees look like if they're at the right level. We're going to, obviously, one of the big things for the town is to continue to support the capital improvement program. And there's some data that's requested per the charter and also working with the council. We want to put together a complete packet of information every year for all of you. And so that's going to be a major goal this year is to get that all together. And a couple, two more. Sustainability has been a huge initiative of the town. We want to, and the finance teams really helped support that initiative, come up, brainstorm, identify potential funding strategies that we can. Maybe they're not good ones, maybe they're bad ones, but we want to stir up different ideas that the town council and finance committee and others can consider and help us move closer to that goal. And then the last one is the one we want to update our website and make it much more user friendly, keep the information as accurate as possible and as up to date as possible and make it easier to access information. And so the last thing I'll just point out is the finance budget is going down 8.2%. That's because a couple of the budget reductions in this year's budget were in finance. There was a half-time budget analyst position that was reduced and there was a half-time position in the assessor's office that supports the assessor that was reduced. And so it's going to definitely put more stress on the department. We are confident that we can work collaboratively within our own teams to cover the everything that needs to be covered. But it will require us to collaborate even more than we have in the past and we're up for that challenge. And that is it. I'm happy to answer any questions and we also have all the specific department heads here that can answer questions as well. Thank you. The one question I have, did you indicate that you're looking at the financial policies themselves and whether there are any revisions? So there's a on the finance page, there's been policies that were posted. I think they were created by Sandy Pooler in conjunction with Sonya and other department heads. I'm sure Sherry and Jen helped work on it. It includes the investment policy. It's where the guidelines around reserve levels comes from. And so that policy manual is dated 2012 and it's something we want to make sure is still up to date. See if there's any references to town meeting or anything like that. And also see if there's anything else we think should be in there. Okay. The reason I bring that that's the financial financial policies and objectives, I believe it's and being a member of the finance committee that developed those. The history of that was was actually developed by the original by the old finance committee, which was a committee of the town meeting. And it was designated as a role of the finance committee. And it was done while John Musanti was finance director was the original development though it was amended when Mr. Pooler was the finance director. I think that it is now a policy that belongs to the council. And so we will have to get a decision as to how the council will handle it. But I assume the council will work through the finance committee to make recommendations on proposed changes and then the changes would probably have to go to the council. Okay. Yeah, that's something we will definitely work with the proper channels on. Yeah, Lynn, I don't know if you have anything to add to that or No, I frankly thank you for that history as well. I frankly didn't know that. But my question financial policies is if they have any implications for things the council needs to do or approve or look at. I don't think there'll be implications for bylaws. But we have asked other committees who have alluded to our other departments who have alluded to doing things that might lead to changes in bylaws to give us plenty of heads up on that. The other along with this though I in the same manner I don't know honestly what the council's relationship or responsibility is with regard to setting fees. But even if we don't have to prove them, I'm sure you would like to know about the changes. And the only other comment is it's a very, very, very ambitious set of goals. Yeah, they're all projects. I'm not saying they're all be done necessarily, but we have a really talented team here and we want to make progress on all of them. I appreciate them. I just if you have a few on goings in the budget book next year, that's okay by me. Okay. Okay. So we're calling some members to the committee and the council Bob Hegner. Hey, thanks. I have three questions on page 23. The last long range of objective is to establish property values of all you mass real estate. And I'm wondering why the town is involved with that and whether we're getting reimbursed for our effort. And then I have two parking. What is that on page 25? The parking ticket collection rate is significantly lower than like property tax collection rate. And is that due to out of state cars and things like that people basically just ignoring the ticket. And then I noticed also in 18 and 19 parking permits that were issued increased about 10, 12% per year. And I'm wondering if that trend is continuing and at what point that becomes a and we start running out of spaces. So thanks. So why don't we start with your first question and I'll turn it over to Liz to talk about the UMass properties and how that's going. Good afternoon. Thanks for having me today. Basically what we're looking at is just as a rule, look at the properties that we receive pilot back from to make sure that we haven't overlooked any, any options to increase our pilot. And, you know, it hasn't really been fully looked at from an appraisal standpoint. I do apologize for the phone. I have no idea how to silence it. But anyway, I think you get the point. Obviously, you know, the state has a formula. And right now we are not getting as much from the UMass pilot as our neighboring town. And I did look into it further. And the formula doesn't seem to make sense, but we have to have a good case to actually question it. But if there's any other questions, I'm here to answer it. No, thanks. That's very helpful. And Bob, we'll get back to you on the parking questions. We're going to dig into those a little more. The first question was why is our collection rate lower right for parking tickets and lower than what we get for property taxes? Well, can you restate your second question again? It was about the parking permits issued by the town. If you look on page 25, the number goes up about 10 or 12 percent from 17 to 18 and from 18 and 19 each year. And it's just a question of whether that's a trend and whether that's going to put pressure on downtown parking. Okay. Yeah, we'll dig into those numbers a little bit and we'll get you, we'll send it out to the whole group. Sure. Thank you. Okay. I think that Mandy was next. Bob actually asked one of my questions with the review of the property values for UMass. I think you answered this with that though. We get pilots from the state under a state formula, as you said, if we increase the valuations, if redoing these review of property values increases those valuations, will the state reimbursement automatically increase because of how the state figures is out? And then would we also have an additional ability to negotiate that separate one under the strategic partnership agreement? So I was just trying to figure out how the review of those valuations might affect revenue coming into town for state owned land through the state appropriation, not strategic partnership. And then the other one was, I noticed we're still issuing payroll checks in paper and many employers have moved to requiring EFTs for payroll and I was wondering why we haven't done that yet because I presume that would save money. So I'll answer the second one really quickly, Liz, and then if you want to just talk a little bit about how that formula for UMass properties is put together. As a counting background, we definitely want to move towards all direct deposits. It does make things easier, less time stuffing checks, you don't have to worry about checks getting lost, all those types of things. We haven't yet made it a requirement, but it is something that we can consider and I just know that a lot of times there are some people that make an argument why they don't want that going directly to their bank account. They like a physical check each week. Yeah, but we are seeing more and more move towards direct deposits and we always try to encourage it whenever new people come on. Holly, correct me if I'm wrong here, Holly, but I think all new employees are automatically put on direct deposit. It's basically the people that have art that were here before. You're muted, Holly. Yes, that is correct. There was some bargaining unit, bargaining agreement changes that require all new employees to have direct deposit, but there are some older employees who have been around for many years who are grandfathered and are still getting paper checks, as well as part-time hourly people. We encourage, we highly encourage them to get direct deposit, but there are a few who are still taking paper checks. You can do anything else if not. Do you want to weigh in on that UMass question real quickly? Yeah, I'd be glad to. Basically, the way that the formula works doesn't, seems a bit archaic. I think in the time that they develop this formula, perhaps it made sense at the time, but it's time to have it revisited. Yeah, and if I can just jump in on that, this is just to give us ammunition and knowledge so we can take it to the state to say you need to revisit the formula. Right now, Hadley gets more money than the town of Amherst has and it's based on sheer acreage the way we understand it's not based on any improvement to the buildings. It doesn't address the impact on the community on what is on that acreage, it just looks at the acreage. So that's something we should be lobbying our state rep and senators and all for as we get that information? When we're ready, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I just wanted to follow up on this because it had come up. So I want to ask, do we also already have the valuation of Amherst College? Because one of the things that has been helpful in some communities, Paul, when you talked about negotiations, there have been proposals that I'll suppose we looked at only 20% of the value. What would the payment be? The Northampton mayor used that with Smith College to get their contribution rate up. Burlington used it with the University of Vermont to get their so it was an ability to have a valuation of how many millions and what is being paid compared to property and UMass has always been, there was no number to even look at it. So I think it's, you know, if we can get money because of the formulas fixed, whatever imbalance it is, but it's been a, you know, what does UMass Lowell pay? What does UMass, whatever, we haven't had that base. And it requires doing this kind of valuation. So I'm thrilled to see this as an effort. So it's not just someone making a guesstimate. Thank you. Dorothy. Okay.  The parking permits increased, at least most people think, because of the building of two new downtown apartment buildings, which did not include sufficient parking. And so some people were not happy with the fact that out of cars without a state licenses were taking the space in front of their house all the time. But the main thing I would say that we as the finance committee would think about is the fees that are getting paid are very, very low. It's almost like a benefit you're giving somebody. I mean, was it 25 a year or something? So if you're going to sell the plots on neighborhood streets to people to park on, I think the town should at least make some money. And that's just a quick follow-up. That's one of the reasons why we're going to look at all of our fees this year. And again, we'll compare what Northampton does and what other cities do on that front. Okay. Good. Anything else? Yeah, because the only other thing that I had thought about, and I don't want to give into a very long thing on this because we want to do today, but Liz, you're also the one who's responsible for looking at our new growth estimates. And our new growth, of course, figures into what our property and you were looking at the projection for next year is almost a 50% cut, which I assume is to which you're looking at for activity for next year due to what's happened with the economy because of COVID. Do you have any sense at this point going out whether that's lower level as something we should be assuming into the future for the next couple of years? It's hard to say. Most folks that I am talking to in the know are on a wait-and-see kind of situation. The drivers for this community are obviously the colleges and the actions that colleges take have a direct impact on your financial for all of your feeding businesses. So unfortunately, it is a kind of wait-and-see kind of situation to see what your colleges are going to do and how it's going to impact your financials. Because basically what I'm hearing from the commercial population is you have a number of people that are saying, hey, let's read it out. We're going to renegotiate my rent or I can't make my rent. I'm going to fold up shop. I can't make it through this time. But you also have a good contingency of people that have been looking for that opportunity to get in on the Amherst market. So we've got a lot of things playing rolling. We'll really have a wait-and-see. We have two buildings that the town council has spent a lot of time looking at. One on southeast street and the other one on I guess it's university drive extension south. Are those doomed into the 21 additions to new growth? Yes. Yes, those will be new growth for 21, I believe. And we have some new growth for 20. Because remember, we do do with the percentage complete as of June. So we have some of those buildings that are partially finished, including 26 Spring Street. Is it 408 North Hampton Road? The Aspen Heights? We have quite a few new improvements that have been going up around the community. Not to mention, since folks have been home, they're putting a lot of decks, pools, additions, and so forth on their existing homes. And as far as the resale on your homes has not really moved too much, you've seen some people that said, oh, you know, this is too uncertain. I'm going to wait. I'm going to take my property off the market and wait, which reduced the inventory even more than it was already reduced. So the supply and demand here is still fairly good. But I think it's our commercial industrial properties that really have more of a wait and see. And not so much in the industrial, but obviously in the apartments that fall under our, believe it or not, our residential, even though there are multiple units, they fall under our residential category, which is new for me, because usually we would consider those commercial over four units. But in the state of Massachusetts, it's considered residential. Okay, thank you very much. It's helpful. Kathy, and then we'll move on to human rights and human resources. Just a quick follow-up on Andy's. I asked this last year, but I just wanted to try to understand it better. Up by us, I'm in North Amherst. We have a huge complex that was already new growth, but it's been opening. If all of the commercial part of it, all the square footage remains empty. Does that change your calculation on what the tax rate is on it? Or does it not change until they lower the rent? It's sitting there waiting for somebody to say, I want to be in there, but so far it's empty. And I think one of the big buildings that's just about to open up isn't full either. So what happens if people misjudge the market and they open and the apartments aren't full? If the rents start coming down, does that change what we tax them at? It is based on a lot of factors. When a building is incomplete, we tend to lean more towards the cost approach. When it becomes occupied, fully occupied, or what we call a stabilized rent situation, then we lean more towards the income approach to value. But saying that you do have to have a certain amount of logic going into it when considering the value and the vacancy, especially on environmental impact, that would just be ignorant for me to dissuade that from the calculation. However, it's kind of on the same situation with your own home. You may have had four kids grow when you had a large family there, but you still have three bedrooms in your home, but you don't have four kids occupying those three bedrooms. There's still value in the home as a three bedroom home, just as there is still value in our apartment complex that may have more than 20% vacancy or 30% vacancy. So there is, it's a weighing, it's kind of too complicated to give you in a short conversation, but I'd be glad to give you something more in-depth if you want to reach out. Okay, I will, I'll follow up. Thank you. Absolutely, I'd be glad to. Annie, can I say something? Yes. I wanted to acknowledge Holly Bowser, who's here. I wanted everyone to know that she plays a huge role in our budget. Hi, Holly. She took on a whole lot of, she took on the budget, the halftime budget position that we just eliminated. She took on most of those duties and without her, I would not have survived the last four years. So, and I love her purple hair. Thanks, Holly. Holly, thank you for all you do and thank you for saving Sonia's sanity. I don't know if she did that, but she helped a lot. No, she did. She definitely did. I thank you very much, Sonia. I think some days they make her more insane, but there are also days that I do save it. So, should we turn on to human rights and human resources? So, Paul, I don't know if you want to say a few things for this section. We obviously have a vacancy there. Sure. So, this is a basic budget. It calls for a human rights director, human resources director and human resources manager. We have placed the human rights position in this position, but when we are prepared to take funds to allocate it for human rights complaints to a outside person, if we need to do that at this point in time, right now for human rights, Jen Moisten is coordinating the human rights commission's work. I'm doing a tremendous job at that, honestly. And that's the 0.5 percent, the 0.5 position that you see in there. That's Jen Moisten's position. Great questions. Lynn. Yeah. Paul, would you just explain what you just said? I'll try to say it again in English. So, we have a human resources. The human resources and human rights, they're both HR. They get confusing for people. So, I'm going to talk about one first. The human resources position is the director of human resources. There's a human resources manager.  In addition, at one point in time, the human resources director was placed in that position when Deb Bradway had that position and took on those additional duties of human rights director. There weren't a lot of demands on that other than supporting the human rights commission. And with Evelyn's departure, Jen Moisten, with actually Evelyn's support, has taken on more of a responsibility for the human rights piece and has really actually brought that to a whole new level, I think, than anybody had anticipated. So, providing a lot of direction actually to the human rights commission and taking a real leadership role with that group. Thank you. And do you have any sense as to how long the position might be vacant for human resources director? So, human resources we have advertised. We have, I haven't checked lately, we had last time I looked, we had 26 applications, some very good ones. We are setting up a team to do the interviews, review the applications to the interviews and hopefully get that done as soon as we can. We have two major recruiting efforts going on right now, human resources director and health director. They're on a parallel path. And unfortunately, they were both working very much in the COVID-19 and with the human resources director working on policies and practices for our own staff. Have we been hampered in our COVID-19 responses with all of this? Well, obviously, the position is needed. We had a reopening committee. We had a committee that was set up that included people from IT and human resources and planning and Treasurer's Office, Collector's Office who are all participating. So, there is support there. But in terms of the day-to-day management, it's we're a little bit hampered, but our human resources manager has been here for a while. And so, she's been stepping up and she's the acting human resources director right now. And it's not a candidate for the position. Dorothy, a question? I just wanted to make an obvious comment that it's really too bad and I understand it was really beyond our control that the human rights, human resources, and health are, first of all, such small departments in the first place. I mean, these are areas which I believe the people have been saying they feel they should be increased. And I just want to make the statement that I hope in next year's budget, we have more resources devoted to this area. That's it. Thank you. But as we all know, getting more resources is a challenge with all the different areas where we wouldn't put new resources, but that's a discussion to come. But thank you. There's nothing else we should turn on to employee benefits to keep this moving. Yeah, I can speak to this one briefly. So, this is primarily health insurance, but also has some of the other insurances. Sonya, feel free to correct me if I misstate anything. So, most of you know this, but we are now with Maya. We're no longer self-insured. So, we know what our premium is for the year. We have a projected decrease in health insurance, which is a combination of rates coming in lower than expected and also our enrollment. But this is also where we added funds to fill some gaps in our insurance coverage where we were self-insured. One of the ads that was highlighted during the presentation last night, that that's this section here where that can be found. And I think if there's any questions between Sonya, Paul and I, we can answer them. Are there any questions? Bob? Yeah, I had two questions. The first one is there's a note on page 31 that says Amherst manages the health and life insurance plans for all employees of the regional schools, the elementary schools, and the town of Pelham. And I'm wondering for the regional schools in Pelham, is there some sort of cost sharing with the other towns? And then the amounts shown for health insurance, etc., on page 32, is that only the Amherst share or is that the total amount including all of these employees that, you know, of the regional schools, etc.? Yeah, so I'll take a first crack at it, Sonya, and then if you want to fill it out. So in terms of the health insurance plans, so the schools do process their own health insurance and they do all their own balancing and everything. Really, I think that mostly relates to the checks get sent to the town and they eventually all get sent to get other to Maya. The town does provide a little support in terms of reconciling if there's any issues, but most of that happens at the school level. And then to the next page, that would be just the town share, it wouldn't be the combination. So that would just be the cost to the town of health insurance and other insurance accounts. Okay, thanks. Yeah, and I just want to, on page 31 in that comment, it also means our IAC, we work with the IAC to manage all of our plans and stuff. So we do it for all of the entities since we were all self insured together. So one question on this way it's worded says towns of town of Pelham. Are we just doing the school employees of the town of Pelham? Are we also providing insurance to other employees of the town of Pelham? The town of Pelham is also included the regional schools actually do the payroll for the town of Pelham because it's so small. And the number of employees with health insurance is very, very few. So those include. So these but the assistance still comes from the region. Okay, Lynn, then Kathy. So Lynn. Partially a question I asked and I don't think I asked this thoroughly. And that is what were we self insured on before? Health insurance. No. So, Paul, do you want to weigh in on this one a little bit around workers' compensation insurance and injured on duty? Yeah. So we had been to health insurance, which is a major sign. That's the last three years of work we had done to go to a fully insured program there. And then we have workers' compensation and injured on duty, which is basically workers' compensation for police and firefighters and call firefighters who are injured on duty. And that was a giant liability that we had because if someone gets injured on duty, we would have to fund that. So purchasing insurance. I'm a big believer in burnt buying insurance to limit our liability. So that was the biggest vulnerability I felt we had at this moment in time, especially when you enter into a down economy. You start to pay attention to that. So that was one of the coverages that we obtained. Okay. And that's just a whole different question that's actually not related necessarily to this section. And that is, in terms of our buildings and equipment, are we self insured or do we carry insurance? We have insurance for that. Thank you. Kathy? Bob focused on page 32 on the costs. Is that just Amherst? Is the head count on page 31, everybody? So when I look at how many people have family or how many, or is that just, so that's my question. Holly or Sonia, do you know if that includes region and Pellum employees or is that just Amherst's town and elementary? I think it's just him. I believe looking at those numbers that it would be everybody. Yeah, it would include all entities. Okay. I'll double check with Theresa. It's not a big issue, but it just lets you see how many people are out there with Medicare SUP and that's also linking it to OPEB on things we're paying for. So I just think it's useful. Yeah. Kathy, I'll just say that you'll see in those numbers is when you see from FY17 to FY18, there was a pretty significant drop or realignment. I'm pretty sure that's when we switched to Maya. We did a full re-enrollment and we saw the numbers change quite a bit. And do you, I guess on family versus individual, I don't actually like these policies, but they save the town money. Do you encourage someone to not take family if their spouse has coverage so that you have a person where the kids and the spouse go or is it completely up to the employee? Some employers give an incentive to opt into the other employer. People call it other people's money is another way of thinking about it. We don't verbally encourage them, but there is an opt-out program where employees, if they want, if they have health insurance with us and they leave to go to a spouse's plan, there's incentive, a financial incentive they get every year for that. And that was actually one of the things when we did the full re-enrollment with Maya. We saw many people take that incentive and it saved quite a bit of money for the town, or at least for the schools, I don't know what the town, but I know that year we saw the school save a lot of money because of that opt-out program. Okay. You know, the one place I saw work in reverse for the local public schools is Dartmouth University at one point had such a bad plan that all the Dartmouth employees tried to get on the local school system.  Yeah, I just want to state that the numbers in the book is for the entire membership. Okay. All of them. The last bill was like 1532, right, only memberships. Okay. Thank you. Sean Hannon is here for information technology. I'm Sean Hannon, the IT director. I'll run through my stuff pretty quickly, I think. So nothing too new or exciting in our budget. We have personnel changes. We have the communication manager, as Paul mentioned, was moved. Three-fourths of her was moved from IT to the town manager's budget just to reflect the nature of that position, the communication manager. Some of the big accomplishments for the year. We did a lot of cybersecurity training through a state grant that we received. We started the implementation of our new application, our new permit and license application software. It basically takes pretty much every license permit application that's received across multiple departments, a lot in conservation and development, but also down to the town clerk's office, the fire department, DPW, all those departments that'll support that. We implemented a new application tracking software along with the Human Rights Department, Human Resources Department, and they and IT received a state innovation award for that. Probably the biggest thing that was really boring to most users, but exciting to us as we performed a major server migration upgrade that we went from about six-year-old infrastructure to really fast new servers, all flash storage, which basically means instead of a lot of spinning parts in them, they're all solid state. Really, the big benefit to that is there are some things that happen within GIS that are literally a hundred times faster. That's pretty exciting. It also uses a lot less energy. That was pretty exciting. The stuff that we have coming up that we started working on for the upcoming current fiscal year, continuing the application software. The next big thing is the rental permit applications running that through the new system that will save a lot of time and effort in the conservation development department. We've got new fiber being installed under the previous Comcast contract we had. We were receiving service over the fiber INET that's going away this calendar year. So we have signed a contract to have new fiber installed. That's been ordered and it's going to be on its way to us and they're going to put that up on the polls. It's pretty exciting. We have a new GIS-based map so they did a flyover. It's the imagery that you see in the GIS system as well as the topographical information that's used across lunch departments that happens every 10 years. That's been updated, being updated. A major upgrade to our Munis financial system, moving that onto new virtual servers, upgrading that. And then Wi-Fi upgrades to start with indoor Wi-Fi upgrades. Everybody trying to do Zoom calls now in the Wi-Fi. People moving around in buildings to find Wi-Fi where it works and it's not terrible. So we're doing that indoor Wi-Fi within town buildings and then address the outdoor Wi-Fi after that. That's what I've got. Yes, three people with questions. Dorothy Lynn and Kathy. So Dorothy. Okay so this is Deshaun. After you get everything done in the town and everything is automated and upgraded, just so you don't feel there's nothing to do, lay a marker for I think a future movement that I've been on my mind which is I think maybe the town of Amherst is going to need to provide Wi-Fi to the apartment complex and that could be a major social justice movement thing. I'm just thinking about how if you can't connect then you can't really participate in any of this. So we need a gift from the gods for that I know but I'm just saying that might be something in the future. Yeah. Lynn. Actually my statement or question was very much along Dorothy's and if this last if this pandemic has taught us anything and that is that we do need to make Wi-Fi much more accessible to certain areas of town. I know when we first did the whole decision this replacing the Comcast iNet we looked at that and said no we don't want to become a provider but as we move through issues related to social justice access to learning and just general public access I think we may need to revisit that and look for money to support it. Great. Yeah. Being former select board member who is on the negotiating team for the Comcast and Amherst media contracts I think that we were just trying to figure out since Comcast was insisting that they were no longer going to provide the iNet that we needed to do something and we were just trying to figure out how we could pay for a fairly expensive operation to replace what we were not going to get in the next through the entire term of the next contract and Sean and Paul were also part of that negotiating team and Doug Slaughter so I think they can add anything that they might have to add to it but anyway I'll leave it at that. Kathy? I think we're building all on the same piece the iNet when you do the downtown area how far does it extend to and a question I have on how easy it is to add some pieces for example if and when so let's say when we build a new elementary school could it extend can it extend as far as Wildwood or Fort River can we do direct linkages or is that way beyond I know it's way beyond downtown the way you've defined it so this notion of if you start someone can you build pieces and then the other piece is on the social justice side I'm sure energetic town people who are constantly looking for grants have looked to see whether there are any under that label out there and I have no idea whether the Gates Foundation is doing any funding of this but they have the kind of money that if they decided linking low-income communities when people and as people probably know Bill Gates gave a TED talk early on in pandemics before there was one but he's been very active on these issues I just have no idea and it would have to be a very deep pocket big foundation and the Gates Foundation is one of them that has focused in the past on fiber optics computer systems without promising that we will only buy Microsoft for the rest of our lives but you know so I just you know just this notion of can we link up at least the people who otherwise wouldn't be linked or that makes sense because there are public buildings so so I can jump in on a little bit of that so the school department when they went virtual did have an inventory of all the students and what their internet capacity was they provided hotspots they tried to work with Comcast to a certain extent and Verizon they both came out with programs but they're all each one of them was a little bit funky in one way or another either you had to have credit in which a lot of folks didn't have or things like that they just had these sort of hoops that some folks just couldn't get through and so but we did the district did buy a whole bunch of hotspots that people could activate to access so no one was left there their intention was that no one would be inhibited from connecting to school because of lack of internet access but I think what you guys are talking about is a little more a larger scale approach which would make in essence the town become more of a competitor to Comcast and for that that's a significant investment that would require a revenue source and whether we want to get into that field we've talked about not getting to into that field previously and then declined doing it because it's not something that we do we're not in that business but it's certainly something we can explore again so okay and it's just I know some of the small communities in Vermont have banded together to do fiber optics as a group because no one for the same reason that and they have a central manager and but it it took a team organizing to go town to town to town to town to to do a critical mass before they could then do anything so I realize it's a much bigger project but just trying to think of where we could build on at least some pieces we've started it was a major effort of both shootsberry and labyrinth that set up their own systems and this was something that took years and years of their work to get it going as far as the other quest parts of it the connectivity to elementary schools is already part of the current dinette correction yeah so the fiber install that we have going up will connect 23 sites which include all the schools and actually includes grove park now and mill river great as well so quickly you know wi-fi is great for a relatively small coverage area so if you want to cover a parking lot if you want to cover the parking lot behind town hall you want to cover a relatively small area like that it's great it does not travel through trees and most buildings very well so when you start looking at apartment buildings in order to provide coverage there you really you really need to get inside the building to provide adequate adequate coverage it's not to say that it can't be done but we have we have some wi-fi on the banks roof and it covers it covers part of an wailin but only one side of an wailin and so it kind of comes a problem because we don't cover the other side of an wailin with that wi-fi from from the banks on a roof and I guess the other thing I would point out to one of the questions of setting up our own system we had the discussion once before Sean about the difficulty of negotiating with the owners of the poles that we're trying to get our lines put up on would be not willing to give us the kind same rate that they're willing to give us as a town for a town on limited system if we were also selling services and competition to them correct yeah so we're going we're going on the poles in the municipal communication space which is space that the select board got basically back going back to when there were telegraph wires for fire alarms it's been the the town has had the right to be up there that part of the pole for a century forever and we can do that because we're using it for municipal use if we were to start offering paid service over that then we would we would have to go back to the pole owners and we would have to get a license a pole attachment license to be up there so it's not to say that can't be done but it's that part's involved and then the other part I believe on the financial side essentially we'd have to create a municipal light plant which is essentially a advanced enterprise fund and that's a multi-year process so and again not to say that it can't be done it's it's uh it's not quick or simple the technical part's easy but so there's nothing else then I think we should get on to Chavina and thanks I'm clerk's in elections but Sean thank you very much thank you so welcome when you can can you unmute hello thank you it was a little bit of a delay on unmuting the mic how are how is everyone good hello thank you for having me so I'm here just to discuss our budget so both the town clerk and our election budget and so the town clerk a lot has been going on on both the town clerk and the election side when we initially began preparing the budget in the beginning of the year we had a lot of objectives and goals and thanks to covid some of those we've been able to and so those are things that I wanted to highlight first I'd like to start by saying that I have an amazing staff who has been resilient during the shutdown they've been here we've been in office throughout the shutdown we began working a staggered shift so they would come in for half days and I would work opposite of Sulauget with our assistant town clerk so that we would have management coverage all day so we were here every day so that business would be as usual as they click and so that there would be no laps in services provided to the community we were able to process all of our dog licenses on time we were able to still practice all of the registrations we were still able to practice vital records and part of the reason we had to be in office is because to practice vital records and for both registration those are state systems that we don't have access to remotely and so we were able to still be done and so it allowed us an opportunity to focus on some of those vital aspects of the town's job while we were in shutdown we were able to make progress we partnered with it and with our treasure and we were able to roll out online e-payment that went in effect on July 1st so now we are able to accept dog license renewals in vital records online and so that's a great accomplishment it was something that I remember I originally had interviewed for the town clerk position in 2018 and Jen LaFountain was on the recruitment team then and that was a question that she asked me so Jen I remember that question she asked me do you all do online dog licenses in the municipality that I came from and so I told her I said if you if I'm offered the position we'll make it happen so we made it happen in 2020 and so that's a great accomplishment that I am proud of now some things that are changing without jumping ahead is in our election side as maybe many of you know or you don't know there's been an extensive amount of legislation that was put forth during the spring in response to covid I was fortunate enough to work alongside state web dome and senator cumberford to go over the legislation offer feedback and give some insight on what I felt would be beneficial or detrimental to the town clerk's department in regards to election and so the bills went into conference committee on the last week of June and made it to the governor on last weekend so the bill was signed on last monday so we have a lot of work to do in a short amount of time and so I've been in conversation Paul and I have been in conversation as well as Sean and I regarding how we're going to move forward to respond with elections in this season and in this climate okay questions mandy and start with you and then mary lou thank you I have two questions they're both related not to elections and one is dog licenses um our enforcement of dog licenses sits in the police department I'm curious why the issuance of them sits in the town clerk's office instead of sort of at the public safety office why is there that split between who enforces them and who issues them um and then the other one was on page the 37 of the budget book for the town clerk's office where you list your service levels um the interest law compliance service levels in fyi 18 for 75 and in fyi 19 for 584 and I just wanted to uh I why is it so high um is that something that actually enforcing it or what what happened so to answer your first question so dog licenses by mgl are are a responsibility of the town clerk so that's why and so we have um the police enforce it um for late and because sometimes you know you need a little extra muscle to get five dollars um and as far as the um the increase on the conflict of interest um all municipal employees state and municipal employees have to do the conflict of interest every other year and so for the town um it looks like it was in um 2019 so the town does it in odd number years so no one only new employees would have done it in 2018 versus in 2019 so in 2019 everyone had to go through conflict of interest training and so we retain those records so once you go through it's an online training and you get your certificate you have to submit it to the town clerk okay thank you you're welcome hey uh mary lou okay this is an election question um with university and colleges um some of them doing all online classes some the combination we know in a presidential election year that many of these students vote locally register locally is there any plan or thought about about that happening here in amherst and how you'd handle that and I I do know a little bit about the um plan that the legislature set up but I guess how how are we dealing how are we going to deal with that because it's clear that all these students will not be back as they have been in the past during a presidential election year so um it is something that I have thought of it's something that I started planning back in May um and so one of the things that I'm advocating for all of our college students as well as anyone who would be in an at-risk population I'm advocating vote by mail um because for a number of reasons for safety number one also um the part of the change in the legislation is the state is going to pick up the postage bill for us being able to mail out the request form so the secretary of state um as of july 1st is going to mail out a 2020 vote by mail um application to request the ballot to every registered voter statewide and it's going to be posted paid so that all you they have to do all voters have to complete it and mail it back it'll come to us directly so to be um addressed to the town hall we will um process it and so when we receive their ballot I mean excuse me when we receive their application and we receive the ballot we'll mail it to them and the postage is going to be paid on that as well and so that's an incentive because you hear a lot of times that it costs sometimes depending on the weight of the ballot it can cost anywhere from a dollar to a dollar fifty to um mail the ballot out and to receive it back and so that's the one of the plans that I have um in place some others are forthcoming that I don't want to talk about right at this moment um out of respect um and it'll be on your agenda for next week's meeting okay well thank you follow up andy yes um how are we going to know that these students haven't applied not only in their campus residents but in their local home how is that going to be checked so that we can avoid um people voting twice so in the state of massachusetts our voter registration information system is a statewide system that prohibits duplication so when someone registers to vote in one community if they're registered already in another community it'll take them off the roll in the community where they are oh thank you you're welcome hey lind yeah I actually want to just re-emphasize something that she being said and that is she is on the agenda on monday the 20th to talk about the upcoming election and her plans and so uh for issues that are not budget related we can take them up then thank you okay anything else not Dorothy I'll wait for I'll wait for monday okay sounds fair enough anything else for many members of the committee great louise hands us down um so anything else I thank you very much for the presentation and welcome to you know it's really been great to have you and now that you're now you're a veteran of amor so thank you so much it's been my pleasure it's been great working with you and looking forward to continuing to work with you yeah so um I think that we're at the end for general government yeah except for one section and that is um the uh facilities maintenance and I guess my question to either Sean do we have anybody uh maybe Sean do we have anyone here for that section so I thought we did that one quickly last week when um Jeremiah and Rob were here I think we did that one quickly so the only thing we have left is debt service uh yeah general services okay yeah after facilities right there's okay the general services look and then um what I was going to suggest so that we can get to public comment is that we put that sir just continue debt service into the next meeting um I had sent the uh the grid that showed the things that we needed to get through today that were highlighting yellow and on that um the retirement assessment in the regional and the uh OPEB is on there but we had already talked about that and voted that in the um one month budget but we have to rescind the one month budget in order to put this one in place so I didn't know if he wanted to bring that up again so I highlighted that but there's debt service and there was also the optional tax exemption that we have to accept every year yeah as well and I sent all that information in my email to everybody I'm just keeping an eye on the on the clock and um recognizing that we uh put in an extra meeting this week and uh so that we um could if there was any last pieces that we could put over for tomorrow um who may actually have more time and be able to um hear from any members of the public who um are still seeking recognition this would be quick those several different topics but anything on general services let's cover that for sure I can run through that one real quick Sonya and if you want to chime in for that area has our our um liability insurance our professional insurance property insurance um some other general again it's it is general services so it's things that cover a lot of departments like postage and um telephones the audit equipment maintenance the big increase you see there the 32.9 percent that's what we talked about earlier where we moved legal um from its own section into this section um I think that accounts for just about uh the majority of that increase right Sonya yeah um and so yeah this is sort of a you know operational section of the budget there's not a lot of goals here in the legal services isn't that if I recall I don't have it right in front of me it's not an increase from the prior year it's just moved from it from its own section right yes okay uh Kathy could you yeah I just had a quick question on on page 45 the vehicles insured is that number vehicles that are just part of general government you know on um whose vehicles are those is what I or those all the vehicle I mean is that vehicles uh fire engine and every vehicle we have in town that's just that's all of them and that'll be actually part of the capital improvement program as well that's one area where we pull our vehicle information is from what's insured um it may um Holly or Sonya may know it may also include some things that aren't necessarily what you would consider a vehicle as well um some equipment that has to be insured okay that was that was my question so so when Guilford told us that he has 110 he's about half of all the vehicles schools have 20 or 30 of the police and fire that are in that number so it includes all of them okay thank you okay um Dorothy just a real quick one since they're all here I want to say that this budget book is absolutely a miracle um a regular person can read it and understand it and I have no idea how much work it took to make this book but I really really appreciate it so thank you to you all thank thank Holly and Sonya Holly's hair was not purple at the beginning of this process and and by the end of the budget book there you go gray okay uh well thank you to all of you too for the book so um you had brought up several topics Sonya and uh is there really a reason why we can't just hold it for tomorrow at this point um are you good that's fine I mean debt service is pretty simple it is our debt service and we kind of see that all the time so I don't know if there's a lot of questions on our debt service it's going down until we start building these buildings right no I think the question that the one question I had had Lynn asked the other day on it looked like you had you must have refinanced because the interest rates went down on some of the things compared to last year's budget book and I think you said you had done that we don't refinance but we have a lot of of bands out there right now bond anticipation notes so that changes every year and sometimes we don't have an interest rate when we're putting the budget book together sometimes we do so when we're estimating it we we ask our financial advisor and he tells us four or five percent because we don't know where we're going from here so that'll fluctuate once they're permanently bonded if we permanently bond all of them which we probably won't then it becomes a permanent number but we don't refinance very often unless there's unless there's going to be savings to a lower um interest rate which hasn't really been the case for a lot of years because interest rates have been so low okay thank you okay uh Dorothy did you have something about service Dorothy you're muted no I I hadn't taken my hand down I'm fine thank you all right the other subjects you were going to uh you bring an optional text I think those are pieces you put into the packet yes it was three um it was the attachment three and 3.1 three is the actual order and 3.1 was a memo from our assessor Liz um explaining what our exemptions were for last year why don't we hold that for tomorrow and um does is everybody in the uh since there was some confusion earlier um make sure that if you haven't looked into the packet for today's meeting that you do so and look at those documents before we have the discussion because uh some people had missed the question and the answers because they didn't realize that they were in the posted packet and I will send out a note after the meeting explaining that and where to find the packet if you haven't been able to find it um or unless you want to cover it because it looks like Liz is still here I'm here to answer the questions on a local option exemption that she's discussing if we need to okay um actually let me see if I do have it available to um show on the screen or um oops I just uh I think I accidentally ran into a problem do you have it available or shall I look for it um I have one that has a question mark with a base for the FYI but I don't know if we ever found the solution but I can share this document but I have it in front of me I believe it's the one that I submitted to you Sonia who should I email it to I have it in front of me but I have the one with the question mark for the base on the fiscal year for the base who has control to share Son um are you looking for the approval order that has the local exemption I can bring that on the screen it would be personal exemptions fiscal year 2020 the reimbursement would be in fiscal 21 these are local additional exemptions I can share the one I have basically it's the same now it's good to see you mailed you three and three point one you're but you said you just emailed it to me Sonia let me pull it let me see you and Paul is it um it's co number three yeah yeah I can pull that up let me let me share the first one and then tell me if that's it and then the second one is three point one um is there a place in particular we're supposed to be looking at for the shared up there it is okay thank you I've been the share earner not the sharing that's the council order yeah the next it's the next one Sean three well next one in yeah exactly in terms of documents there was a next document that's labeled three point one FY let me get that one that's the one it's the only word document in that email is this is it up on the screen right now nope the word document are you guys aren't seeing it on the screen no we're seeing your email let me let me try it again switch screen Sean maybe do you see it now there you go yep yep that's basically what I'm looking at okay so basically what you're looking at there is um the optional exemptions allowed by MGL to add an additional exemption to the existing exemptions they mandate by the state and the town of Amherst has an option for additional surviving uh spouse of veteran and and disabled and uh surviving parents of a of a son or daughter killed in action or a spouse uh surviving spouse of a of um a husband or wife killed in action legally blind and senior um and the senior regulations are pretty in-depth so I won't go into them too much but those are available if anybody's interested I hope to get out to some of our local organizations to uh expand on these exemptions that are offered offered only in the town of Amherst um from these local options um to our local organizations for seniors and veterans basically we're looking at a local option exemption of 108 971 am I correct Sonya sorry the the local options in total are 108 971 in three sounds and then the state will reimburse us 33,338 of that amount and the rest is supported by the community so our local option portion um you know we add an additional 39,000 almost 40,000 dollars see if I can explain it correctly just to make it for people who are unfamiliar with the process the base exemption amount is required um the optional piece is a local option that we can add to the amount um town meeting over the years has always adopted the local option so that we can provide the benefits to the largest extent permissible um even though it does reduce our taxation by that amount it's a valid um it has always been deemed to be a valid expenditure and but it has to be voted annually and I think if I stated it correctly Sonya yeah so um I think that we we basically are going to be asked again to do this and um this has um this is the assessor's role his value um made the estimates of the value that of the local exemption that we would have to vote on to continue to offer them to um the veterans legally blind and seniors who are eligible questions uh have to go back to the participant list and see if there are any questions and uh Lynn um I assume this is not the same as the program where seniors can work to up to a certain amount to have their taxes reduced no that is not inclu