Hello, today I'm here to review this little beauty and I'm going to talk about the hardware, the software and then a little bit of comments about what being open source actually means. So number one, the hardware. Now, the JinkPad actually comes in four pieces. The first one, which I'm going to talk right away is the pen. How is the pen? I don't really know and that's because it broke day one, which is really sad. I don't know how much of it is my fault. I don't think it took any heat or drop and I've also seen other people pointing out that their pen broke. So I think the pen is a bit fragile. I've used it one time and I found it to be more similar to Apple Pencil rather than Samsung Pen. However, it wasn't quite there in terms of quality. Again, it was just one day and then it went away. The part number two, which I don't have here with me right now is a cover without the keyboard, which is made of pig leather. And that one is really good. And it also has a way to like a little space for the pen that attaches magnetically just like the JinkPad and also a little JinkPad logo, which is very nice to see. I don't know what you should expect out of it, except that it feels nice and it surely does that. There is the other cover, which is this one here. How is it? Super nice in the hand. It's a bit heavy. My girlfriend thinks that it's too heavy, but I think it's just fine. You might disagree with me, so you're warned. It's extremely, extremely well built. However, it also has a couple of flows. I'm going to point out, sorry, the major flows, in my opinion. And those are number one, the fact that on the back, you don't have rubber bands on both sides, which means that the one that hasn't will very easily deteriorate and get scratches. Even if you always use the JinkPad with the keys open, it still scratches while it's closed down. So you need to be extra careful when you're bringing it around. Also, the rubber bands, the existing ones, do come off a bit easily. I managed to get mine back as easily as it came off, but that shouldn't have happened after like a couple of days. Also, maybe the hinge is not very sturdy. You can see the laptop if you touch it goes a bit on and on, but except that, and I do think that those are not major issues. The keyboard is fine. You can actually type pretty fast on it. I managed to get 90 words per minute. And if you're not able to reach that, well, it's because of you. The touchpad is a bit small, but it feels fine. And that honestly wasn't any sort of bottleneck to me when actually using the device. So let's talk about the device. Let me actually take it off. The device feels amazing, like very high quality. You got a glass back, metal on the sides, sorry, and a very nice screen with with small bezels all around. Honestly, you have nothing to complain about the very device, the very tablet. You've got the volume buttons in the right position, a fingerprint reader to actually log in in the right position. However, as we'll talk about that later, the fingerprint reader doesn't actually work. Good camera for what you would expect from a 2000 USD tablet. This is not that price. So the camera is underwhelming. Aliana, what do you think of this tablet? I don't like it. Sorry? I don't like it. I don't like it. Okay. Yes, yes, I'm done. And as far as speed goes, I can't really commentate on that because the Jingpad doesn't come by default with hardware acceleration enabled. And I understand that because doing Linux hardware is not easy, and especially if it's not easily mean lineable. If you can't mean line it easily, it's normal to not have such things. I can understand that. It's not very fast without it, but it's not a deal breaker. The YouTube videos will lag a bit and they hold user interface won't feel snappy. I don't think that's a bottleneck either, in my opinion. As far as RAM goes, storage, I also think those are very much not issues. Of course, you need to know what you're going to do with this. If you think that you'll be able to do any sort of hardware work, like video editing or picture editing with GIMP, if it's a large image, give up. Don't do that. That won't happen, not on this device, but if you're buying this device to, I don't know, take notes, school work, that sort of stuff, which is very much my use case. Those are not issues, but there are others. Let's talk about the software, because as I see it currently, I think all of the issues of the GIMP ad are software related, but as far as the hardware goes, the hardware is amazing, the software isn't. I'm sure you heard many reviews saying, yes, the software is kind of bad, you don't have X, you don't have Y, but they will come later, probably they will get updated and okay, but I do have something to say about that. If you're building a software and you send me a device with an alpha software, that's fine. I can see the effort that you're putting in and when I reviewed the Gingo S first version, I understood that and I actually praised the operating system as it was, because it was actually doing many things right and moving in the right direction and that's fine. However, if you take something that is working, like if you're forking Plasma Mobile, whatever you're forking, something that is working and then you build on top of that to improve it for your device, that's very much fine, but if the end result breaks something that was there before from the project that you forked originally, what are you doing? Like you're moving backwards and make you a very easy example. So keyboard layout. So as you know, the Jingpad has a keyboard and in all devices, you can change the keyboard layout, especially if you're planning on selling that thing internationally. The Jingpad has no such option in the settings, but okay, I can understand that. Like it's not easy to do a full-fledged system setting application. If you look at the KDA Plasma one is gigantic, it would take years to redo it on scratch. So what did I do? I manually changed the keyboard layout from console and it doesn't work. And what's crazier than that is that it actually works, but only on Chrome and Firefox, whereas everything else stays with the default keyboard layout. And that annoys me because not only you're not giving an option to actually change the keyboard layout, but you actually did something like that broke changing the keyboard layout. Because if I go into my terminal and type, I don't know, load case, the VORAC, the VORDRAC as an example, it should work. And it's not just that.  Take the touchpad. Okay, you can take the touchpad and usually if you need to drag a folder from somewhere to somewhere else, you don't just do this on the touchpad, like click, click, usually long click. And then with the other finger, you drag around the folder because maybe the touchpad is not long enough. It's broken. It doesn't work. You cannot actually drag and drop or I don't know, just select text using two fingers. And that's a massive dear breaker. How are you going to select more than like two lines of text with it? If you need to select a paragraph, which is such a basic use case, it's broken. You can't do that. And it baffles me like it was working. It should work on any computer. And you actively do did something that broke it. Or another example, screen rotation. Okay, screen rotation is not supported. Okay, that's fine. I can actually do screen rotation manually through KDA settings. I've done it countless times on my computer, which is a yoga and is also a touch screen, but on the jig, but it doesn't work. And it actually makes it unusable. It took me like hours to get it back working. And that shouldn't happen. Like, okay, another example, I've got plenty screen resolution. Okay, screen resolution is hard. I'll say that right away. It's hard to make all the apps use a scaling factor without any screen artifacts. Okay. However, if you do open any Jinkpad apps that are third by default, okay, they open up with the right scale factor. But if you install any third party app, it will open up with the default one to one scale factor, which is way too small. Of course, there are ways to fix that and do like system flags variables, sorry, to actually change the scaling, the QT scaling. But what are you doing? You are indeed changing the scaling factor, but only for your own apps? How are you even doing that? And why? Like, what's the reason behind it? It sounds like it would be easier to just use the QT scaling factor as it's currently implemented. If you have a tablet and you can install the third party apps on it, you shouldn't rely on the user actually fixing the resolution by themselves. Take global themes. Okay. Jinkpad is based heavily on Kurogami and QML. That's fine because Kurogami is a product of ours, which is KDE. And it supports theming. So that's very nice. Jinkpad allows you to have a light and dark theme, which is nice. But in order to switch from one to another, you need to reboot the device, like shut it down and reboot. Why? Why? Okay, we KDE implemented color schemes and it was working when we gave it to you. And you broke it like applications shouldn't need a system restart for the color scheme to actually take effect. It's so many of these small things that it's not like, okay, we need to work on that. Yes, you do, but they were working. You didn't have to break them in the first place. I think that is the major issue with the Jinkpad. It's not that it doesn't support that or that application. It's not that I don't know the Android system is slow or doesn't function well. I don't care. Those things can be worked on and it's clear that Jinkpad is doing great lips forward in terms of actually fixing those kind of bugs. But and then there is open source. Okay, so if you're claiming your tablet is open source and they are doing so, what I expect is that everything that ships on that device is on some public repository with the correct license. Okay, and Jinkpad kind of does that, but it's the kind of which is the issue because you can't be kind of in source. Well, you can but it won't look very good. Okay, let me explain this. Okay, take the claim that the Jinkpad can run Android applications with their own thing. Okay, that's fine. That's a cool feature. That feature is closed source. It's not open source. If you're selling the tablet as open source, and as a feature you have that it can run Android apps. And the feature to run Android apps is not open source. It's not quite an open source tablets. This kind of open source, it's not open source. Like, if you have a significant part of it, because let me say that actually being able to run Android application is a big deal for this kind of device. If you have such an important aspect of your tablet, closed source, and you're not planning to release the source code in any way, that's not going to look good, especially because they claim that it's their own solution and that it's not wedroid. You can install wedroid on this machine. It will work very well and that's open source. So if you're an open source enthusiast, don't use, don't use Jinkpad Android Thingy. Use wedroid because it works and it's open source. As far as we know, the Jinkpad Android Thingy could be wedroid copy pasted as far as we know. Now, if they open source it, we would know that it isn't. They claim it isn't. It's their own solution. But how do we know that? I guess we could look into like system files and see if there are any differences when installed, but that's not what we should be doing. And if you're asking why am I suspicious that the Jinkpad Android system could be wedroid, okay, I'm not really, I do think that it is a different system. However, Jinkpad doesn't have a record of actually respecting GPL license very well. And let me explain that. As you know, if you fork someone's code and if it's under GPL, you are like, you need to release the source code when you actually ship the device or release your operating system. That's like legally required. Do you remember like Trump? Okay, this video is going to get demonetized. Never mind. Do you remember that guy's social network? It was using MasterDont and because they screwed up and actually accidentally said that it was based on MasterDont, MasterDont went up and said, okay, no, you have to release the source code of this, which they weren't. Jinkpad is based on many KD Plasma or KD products, and they modify them. And in theory, they should release what modification they've made and they do months and months later, which doesn't look good at all because you can't just say like, we are open source and then you check and you discover that they're violating the license and you ask, what's up with that? And they answer, oh, yes, sure, we don't have the time to fix that, but we will eventually like open source everything just give us six months. Okay. Okay. They did. They did. They actually open source the latest version of the Jinkpad, of the JinkOS, but as soon as another version rolls out, how many months are we going to have to wait to have the new modifications on top of what was there before? Now, to be kind of open source, I think is better than not being open source at all. And that's a fair point. And I do understand that they have a limited set of people that can work on these things. And actually making everything open source is not that easy, especially to newcomers to this open source thing is. I think that Jingling, which is the company is working on this and is working on this very actively. I think they're trying to honestly understand what open source is as much as possible because it's easy for new companies to not fully grasp what's going on. Jingling is working on this. Like I saw people trying to understand making good questions and that's very nice. However, I have to tell you that in this moment, they still have to work on this because there are still some issues with how they deal with open source. To recap, hardware, I love it. I love the hardware. I think I would pay that price to have this if it run KD Plasma, which it doesn't. The software, it's okay. I don't want to bash it too much. It's a good start. It annoys me that they broke things that were working, but hopefully as soon as they fix them, well, I'll be happier. But I would be even happier if I could install any operating system on that thing and currently I can't. Is this useful? Should you buy it? If you care about open source, it might be an option. However, if you need a tablet to actually do work, this is not it. If you need a tablet to do work and you need a particularly set of application that only runs on Linux, then okay, this might be your thingy. But keep in mind that you're going to fight with the device to actually get things working.  Good luck with that. If you managed to, please tell me, please. There is an Android image and to install the Android image on the device you need to use Windows. There is or there will be shortly a Ubuntu Touch image and that's very nice to hear. But when I asked the person that actually worked on the Ubuntu Touch device, if that could mean that you can install other desktop environments as flawlessly on this device, that's where was no. So I will do more videos talking about this exact device but switching the software for Android and Ubuntu Touch. Hopefully, hopefully that will make, give me a better impression of the device because I do really love this hardware. But a software isn't there. I think that any reviews about the Jingpad says that the software isn't there yet. Okay, we all agree on that. So let's try something different and I'll keep you updated. Bye. See you at the next review. I'm getting delivered a Pinephone Pro. I don't think I will review it but I will happily use it and talk about you, talk to you about that. What else? It's the little things that you broke and didn't care to fix that because that bothers me. Well, if I forgot everything, well, if I forgot anything, I will add like a voice over over like nice images. So I think the video cuts here.


That was smart play. Here go Cavalier. Nice pass inside. Chance! Goal! Orlanda Russell with the finish and just like that Cavalier hit them on the counter against the runner play it must be said. And Orlanda Russell doubles his tally on the season. Great play from the Antigua National at first. And provided that pass for Russell. It was Jamarra Calvin with the initial run. Great burst from their number seven and played the pass sweetly into the path of Russell who made no mistake. I think Calvin really is the art of this happening here. I spoke earlier that an assist or a goal could make a difference. That was the link of play in the first instance that was put wide by Russell. But Calvin's dummy and that's what he did in the middle of the park. Attempted as if he was going to get onto the end of it with a header. Didn't but knew what he was doing and then the drive-in run.


We have our first graduating class. I'm smiling. We'll be coming forward on September 26. There probably will be in the neighborhood of probably 18 graduates. Our first graduating class for the whole entire project. Their influence and leadership is going to be very, very critical for the world. Their ambassadors back to their own countries. Their ambassadors to entire Interpol system. To express their skill sets, their improvement in their own abilities. How has affected their events that they're responsible for back home. And therefore in the future they really become our future instructors. They enhance the program and sustain the program as we go down the road. And the professional certificate will become the normal in the future within the next 10 years. This certificate might be a requirement for commanders in the future. We hope that's our goal. That they have the qualifications to assure the world that that international event or national event at that particular country is led by a commander who has gone through the Interpol training here.


I'm here with Felix Paul who is the CEO of YFI Group and Felix just gave the closing keynote here at the ID Tech X event and Felix you know for those folks that were not able to attend this event right I would like for you to sort of summarize what are some things you said at the event what are some key points that you want people to know about emerging technologies. Well so you know obviously Wi-Fi and e-ink has been in the space for a very long time we've been watching the space for well over a decade and a half and a lot of the ideas that started this has yet to be realized it's not because the technology is moving slow but a lot of this requires infrastructure and the infrastructure is always slow to take but we think you know a lot of infrastructure are being built and the future where every note has sensors and displays will be coming and we continue to be watching the space very very closely. So within the YFI Group you mentioned e-ink so e-ink is that a lot of success outside of e-leaders more recently what are a couple of applications that you think will have broad industry implications particularly as the ecosystem develops a lot of companies can jump in provide accessory materials and support and services to make those industries happen. So one of the the most relevant to printed electronics and flexible electronics is certainly wearables that is being picked up Sony launched a product with our integrated curve display this this month but you know beyond kind of the consumer electronics electronic shelf label is a big thing we are scheduled to ship perhaps over 30 million of these in the field but 30 million is just proof of concept in the retail world right we believe that eventually every item every skill will require a changeable price tag and this is because if you have capability to do real-time pricing through our FID you will need the capability to do real-time pricing on those real-time inventory and that's the only way to capture those values so we think that is very very big and then beyond that you know you extend this all through the logistic change every single piece of paper every single compound that you see in the manufacturing and logistic should be replaced with a updatable RF updatable display and for power reasons and for readability reasons they should be in my one last question for you is obviously there were over 2500 people that attended the events the last couple of days here today to attend not only the talks but go through the exhibits and so on but there are a lot of people that were not here yeah what is your sort of message to folks particularly those in Taiwan Korea China some of the emerging markets about events like this and other events where you have for technologies being presented emerging what does your message to folks like that well I think it's twofold one is you know particularly in Asia and I think particularly for China there's the possibility to leapfrog in infrastructure and in those cases I think emerging technologies will emerge faster in those markets you look at for example the US credit card market has stayed pretty much the same whereas places like China has leapfrog in terms of payments and in terms of technology those are opportunities where I think Asia may have a stronger opportunity to leapfrog and so they need to be watching these very very closely the other is I think we need to be continuously continuously looking at these emerging technologies even though there may not be a immediate application today understanding technology allow you to think about the technology as it happens in the future in the future and to be able to take advantage of that future you start to build the infrastructure today right and I think that's that's at least how Wi-Fi has been looking at it for the last 20 years wonderful Felix I know you're a busy guy but to greatly appreciate that you're being here and thank you for that inspirational message thank you


Ima singo makawu, you released this song called Baba. It's an amazing song. Kwa zana penda palaipanya na se ma pererenda. Yes, yes. Baikundes. Na kwa mi ya, wandishi. Wandishi, very nice song. I think it's such a powerful song. Adib song. Tell us more about this song. You know first, thank you so much for having me.  Masava, Nix, the president and even the producer and director was sure nashikurusana inekuja apa.  Kuna wakati niluku wam gonjo last year. As you look, okay so, all right. I'm a newbie, so. It's okay, yeah. You gotta walk with me with this. Last year kuna wakati niluku wam gonjo. Na pia makolupita nili poteza babangu. Right. Na wakati niluku wam gonjo kuna wakati nilukuwa.  Right. Alafuza sa, nikanza kujembia ileza buri.  Yes, planted by the water. Yes. So niliuku wakati na sumakikiwa na sumakama uti uliwa pandakandu ya hunto. Na zaku jembia umaneno. Marasa zengina wakati wakashida. Ureza pataile perspective ya kwa life kidogo. Aiko fiti, ama iko blood. Laki nimi wakati sa lileza kwa angaliya. Vituvenya, yesuana ni angaliya. Niko like, eh, kumemimi mungu asia ni ponya already. It's already in me. So it's a song of just declaring what God has already done for me. Vila na nipenda. Mm-hmm. Baba wana na nipepe. Vila na nipenda. Atakati baba angu wa lienda. Vile nema li nibeba. Sikungu wu yango. Ujiya twizimandikuwa na sumao. What we have, it is not of wax. You cannot boast. Right? Ni Gracia mungu. So Baba, it's really a simple song in a declare. Pendo wamungu vila na tupenda na vila na tujali. Yeah. We spoke about emotional being emotionally, even sick. That is emotional sickness. Yeah. If I may quote it like that. Yes.  Mm-hmm. And at what point did you receive your healing? I received my healing. I think, you two time to do the change there. Your attitude. Yes, the thinking, right? Mm-hmm. You two do the change. Aya ikitu kumeki doge miwa nakufed. Bila ni kujua, right? Mm-hmm. Right at the end of the quote, kidogo. Quote. Quote then. All of them. Yes. Yes. The woman who was bleeding for 12 years. Yeah. But I want to say the original language, if only it came up with it repetitively. So sometimes when you have a healing, it happens instantly. It can take time. But when you are sick, you have to do the change. Kwaifu, wakatuhu nili change the perspective ni kanzaku. Mubaba nani penda nani jali. Nili niza kufokasu. Yoga na sabahivi in psychology kufokasu mo. The problem. The problem is in the kwafubu. We can't speak at sure. You focus on the solution solution. Eh, so nili nitu nili kufokasu. The healing that we found through the death and the resurrection of Christ. Eh, manzei ni kanzaku pata. You know ni manza kupona. Asa uti yama ni manza kuru di. Siku wana kula. I remember I called my mom. Manzei ni me deishi. Mami shi cried. Eh, butu tuwa wu kama mekula. Kukulia mepona. Yeah, that is so powerful. But you keep on repeating the same word. Prophesying over your situation. And it changes. It takes time. God of process. Umen leta po mungu. God of process is not an instant God. God of process. But even in that process, there are lessons that you picked. One lesson. One lesson to do in the same. Don't focus on what's not working. Yes. You know taza matu mungu ni amakwe ake. You know enter into banks. Giving wana sema. When you don't give thanks, you end up losing more. Right? So just give thanks. Now just let it go. Acha mungu tuwa dili naio. Ujwa katuengi sika maokizoma bina damu. Tundaka tu control the narrative. Uno wana shi nalili kwa nachalani kipima. Kwa naktari. Sosa po la. Kuna ii statement natsima get out of the way. Una pata you're too involved. Kutu busy. Kupalika zi nuna wana fana ii bindi umosa kuwani. Una sa idea mungu. Mara suju nanda ii wuna shi naka fengu zote. Saza gini vizuri. Too late. God actually is a kamae. Mancheki. She's a kamae. Naja iile mewa. See you see you see. Get out of the way. Get out of the way. Get out of the way. So God can do his thing.


o I would think that it would be something that we would need to at least address, you know for the public This is where we're at with this. This is how many calls we do we can't figure out a way to do it But that there's where it sits for right now, and we'll revisit it another time Thank you. All right I find myself in a mildly awkward state of mind or state of thinking that There might be a guideline we put in here that that Reflects what we've been doing Either by way of encouragement to do it more or by way of recognition Between the park grants and the other grants that we dealt with last year. There's almost a million dollars extra in our budget We don't mention that effort here as being something Encouraged we heard about almost a half a million dollars worth of grants tonight, which are supporting very important programs and That's new revenue that I certainly am glad to be able to consider a Great point. I'm surprised we don't have that somewhere people good with including. Yeah Okay, thank you Anything else on other new revenue Okay, capital like board recognize the perils of inadequate investment in capital improvements and remain committed to trying to incrementally increase the Percentage of the property tax levy allocated to capital over time to achieve a goal of 10 percent per section blah, blah, blah Towns financial policies Sockboard continues to support funding capital investment by means other than the capital budget including through the use of Community Preservation Act funds Community development block grant funds and other grant opportunities through shared purchasing and ownership with other towns or entities and through bonding or borrowing for large Long-term projects as noted in the overall philosophy putting additional revenue toward helping us catch up on the growing backwag of capital Infrastructure needs is one of the ways we support spending beyond which is necessary to maintain service levels We know from the Projection FY 14 projections meeting last Thursday with mr. Pooler that the recommendation is going to be to Allocate 7% of the levy to capital this year. So that's a big improvement. What was what was it this past year 5%? 6.5 so so 7 so we're working our way up there some of that will include as we noted earlier the The bond the authorization for the new road work that we have talked about Other points that we'd like to make about capital Mr. Hayden first of all I want to say that I support this we worked hard on this and you know, we kind of really Well, we worked hard on it to get to that. I just just want to air my observation that 10% 6.5% 5.2% Really is meaningless With regard to the reality That we need to have 2% of the replacement value of our capital Budgeted for every year and that's kind of a minimum rule of thumb number and I have no idea of 10% of our Taxation is anywhere near that higher or lower. I'm gonna stop now Is that what organizations with giant endowments do? That's what organizations that want to keep their plan going do Okay All right noted. I don't know if there's any way to include that now in here Okay, anything else you want to say about capital or we're kind of Pretty thorough miss Bruce. I think that might be where some of us were imagining the word part grant appeared You know under other grant opportunities But I think it is worth pointing out that it was it was yet an additional grant that we went after that now We're used to asking for maybe we'll have continued success Reserves I would suggest that the reserves rather like the introductory paragraph kind of we leave it till the end, you know till The second or third discussion as we sort of see how this develops So are we in agreement with that Mr. Generally, but I there's one important element to it that I don't want to see change and that is the idea that We don't use reserves To fund ongoing Expenses we can use it for startup money to help things going on but the idea that you know you don't You know if you can't identify a source To support an ongoing cost don't take it up reserves because that's that's not sustainable Noted so so I think we won't take make any changes to this now Which is in support of what you're saying, but I think that we'll continue to talk about it to see where we end up Which is a good segue to the CDBG situation. So we are We are slated to lose up to about nine hundred thousand dollars in funding that we currently put towards direct funding to human service agencies to qualifying capital expenses and qualifying administrative expenses the human service agency funding is $200,000 180 of that and then the capital and the Administrative which is to say staff a certain amount of staff salary is attributed to this grant as appropriate and is Potentially going to go away and this gets into your town manager's report item, but they might as well talk about it now So this is something that you've learned about since our last meeting it has been in the paper You have explained it to us, but it hasn't been sort of explained in a public setting So why don't you tell us what the situation is and to give us an update on I know you had conversations with our legislators Last week and what your predictions are for for going forward? In Recent years the town has been just above the minimum qualifications threshold to qualify as a CDBG mini entitlement and that has allowed us access to at one point one million dollars Per year in grant funding the last couple of years nine hundred thousand As part of a statewide update that they do every couple years eligibility criteria using updated census data and other information our relative Score with a number of poverty related indicators Declined and that was true for most of the communities who have Been qualifying under this mini entitlement status. What was unique about Amherst? However, it was that we were the only one of the dozen or so Communities that qualified to have their lower score Result in going from just above the threshold to just below the qualifying threshold So with the help of staff I have submitted a detailed letter To the Department State Department of Housing Community Development. We've asked them to thoroughly review and explain to us the Calculations and criteria used to make sure that from a methodological standpoint that the approach that was taken Is sound And where there are issues particularly in relation to like how some of the scores were rounded Because we we fell below the threshold by a fraction of a point How the score was calculated in some categories was through rounding whether or not that in and of itself caused us to go Just below the threshold We're asking for reconsideration in that case and failing that consideration for what's called transition funding for some Significant portion of our current year allocation for the federal fiscal year that begins next October Which is what this is all about the current year money is not affected But this is for a year from now I did meet With senator Rosenberg representative story Last week we reviewed our appeal materials and status and detail There is additional outreach underway to Department of Housing and Community Development And if and when needed we will have the legislators come in and help support An appeal process right now it's focused at this state and local staff level going through the Methodological issues and seeing where we end up with that and then We're looking at legislative support depending on what we find there So I expect all this to play out over the next 30 to 60 days Given where we are one of the other Rationals for transition funding is that the Announcement of our change in status comes extremely late in the process. We've already actively begun our Development of a plan for the Amherst proposals for next year If we were to no longer be a mini entitlement community, we would be put into the competitive grant category that that encourages you know regional regional approaches and certain things and that would be great if we started that grant Application process many months ago, but as a practical matter given the timing It makes it very difficult to be able to craft a Competitive grant proposal never mind be funded so That's where we are with that and I'll be reporting to you as we go along So best case scenario is that they would reconsider and find in our favor. Yes So second best case is We're not a mini entitlement community, but we're awarded Transition funding and there's precedent both state and local for that back in 2005 2006 the town of Amherst received Transition funding the last time we were deemed no longer eligible. So there is precedent we've had some Preliminary discussions with with the state about that concept and that will be actively explored as well And then the worst case is we go from nine hundred thousand To zero, but we'll know that we should know that Really over the next 30 to 60 days how that plays out and well in advance of our You know finishing our budget planning for the next fiscal year Would you say that the competitive process is is one of our scenarios or or because we've learned so late We're really not it is we're technically eligible, but it would be extraordinarily difficult to submit a Competitive proposal at this late day Okay, so we're basically looking at sort of three proposals and I'm wondering if you might Offer any sort of assessment of the likelihood of any of them I Don't want to venture Because it really is speculation at this point I'm hoping to be Well, I don't know I Don't know but we're gonna try like heck if we were to be in the transitional funding Category do you have any sense of how much that might be? Is has not been unusual in prior iterations of this Here and elsewhere that we are Transition funding is awarded for half or more of the amount but that's a Case-by-case kind of scenario and is that just for one year or multiple years? My understanding is it has been done for more than one year, but I think it's most common for a one-year transition Other questions As the liaison to the block grant advisory committee Yeah, we had a we fortunately were able to get an update on this from mr. Zomac right before we went into the hearing which was really helpful In terms one of the things I just would like us to all be clear on as we move forward And of course we don't want to be labored if it all just turns out great because you know We have all the right conversations with all the right people and they overturn the decision and everything moves along If that isn't the case though This is not only a huge problem for funding our shelter and a huge problem for the individual Agencies that we have funded in the past that we took off of the town budget that we would now of course have to face that issue again As to whether or not we want to reconsider folding something to our budget again something that has no revenue stream associated with it So it would be new expenditures. There is also as you have been bringing up miss O'Keeffe's for many years now The more that we pushed we that we took full advantage of the administrative portion of the grant the More of a position difficult position that puts us in moving forward because it's the same amount as the social services It's not some tiny amount It's a huge amount of money that we're spending that's able to be spent on administration right now Which just because if the tasks went away Doesn't mean that there's a one-to-one dollar correspondence that it's like oh We don't have the funding to administer something we don't have any more Well, actually we're able to use it for a little bit We've leveraged it for a little bit more than that that is what you are supposed to do with it and so We would be face it. We face challenges on multiple fronts It's also especially difficult to look at although it's very hard to think about all the very social service agencies And especially our shelter and how those would fit in they're also the capital investments many of which are quite boring But are things that have needed to be done over the years Unfortunately, we haven't been able to put any substantial amount of money Into low-income housing as we'd hope to although we have put in some associated with Olympia Oaks, etc And you know to face the idea that now the money is going to drop away again when every year We kept waiting for that right project to come along and now to not have the money. It's also funding Because we haven't had that project we have been able to fund a lot of ADA compliant Areas and so that's something that I thought about bringing up associated in the capital area is that as we have renewed focus on our ADA transition plan what with the changes and the personnel who are running that and the DAAC is looking at that again associated with the coordination with the schools, etc is What projects we might be needing to undertake associated with disability compliance that again we could have used this money for We have been using this money for even as we speak on Main Street. We're using this money for And that again would not be there. So it's not like these projects are also separate. They're very Integrated into what we do on a daily basis So it's just bad news all around but I'm trying to be clear on just how widespread the bad news is So I think that it's clear that it's very important to the select board Clear it's very important to the community to be able to continue to fund these things as best we can Now this is obviously almost a million bucks that we don't happen to have in our budget we We did the projections meeting with mr. Poole the other day with the four towns meeting on Thursday we Four boards. I'm sorry. Thank you Projections are for a balanced budget at 3% increases for the town school and libraries 3% is for the town is Bit more than half a million dollars. So on the one hand, you could say oh, well, there's that revenue Well, as I said, the budget's balanced with that and that includes the increase in capital and As the two biggies the increase in capital and the increase in the retirement assessment We're expecting the retirement assessment to Amtrak County to go up seven point five percent. That's two hundred and sixty thousand bucks So so it's not like that money is there What what I feel like we're getting to is Needing you to make a recommendation to us how to proceed not tonight Because I think that I think that this is still all evolving too much The information is new the status as mr. Musanti talked about is is in flux, you know You said 60 to 90 days We're gonna need to be flexible with our guideline because it's the 60 and 90 days goes beyond when our guidelines would be done but I Think I'm speaking for the select board and saying we want we need a way to be able to address this And so the first thing we have to do is to ask you for a recommendation that makes more sense than us saying Why don't you just cut the chairs budget, you know, so there aren't so many chairs and all the offices or something like that That would be foolish. What do you think of that? Yeah, I think that's entirely appropriate and you know the the Timeline laid out in the town government act is that I would offer specific budget recommendations Honor before January 16th. So given this issue as a as a significant issue you can expect Me to be able to articulate Budget recommendations that Acknowledge this issue While also taking this opportunity tonight to reinforce one of the themes That you heard from Sandy and I at the four boards meeting the other night on the projections is we have to maintain our our very strict Fiscal discipline that has served us wet well through, you know, this, you know god-awful recession and the very slow recovery and While we're in a more stable place than we were we still have a ways to go and we just have to You know, that's going to influence the the recommendations that I make So that we don't have this slippery slope Getting it getting into difficulty again like we faced five years ago when you think about how much flux we really are in right now with the presidential election coming up and what that's going to mean to the economy with the the sequestration sequestration issue in Congress and what the what federal issues are going to mean as far as that trickling down to being then state problems then being local problems So really this this is a very messy thing at the moment So so I think that as far as your recommendation goes We'll see how this goes in the next couple of weeks and to see how specific we might be able to get in here But with our guidelines, but it's very possible that this is going to be our big Philosophical statement in the beginning, but we're gonna have to think about what we mean by that It's all very nice to say we want we want we want But you know, then you have to make some hard decisions. Mr. Heaton Yeah, I just want to one other thing that I heard at the board board's meeting was that that 3% That was level services that wasn't you know I was keeping all the cops the firefighters the teachers that we have in the pot hole fillers that we have now Anything less is well less Miss Brewer, I'll get to you Mr. Steinberg also. I don't Heaven forbid I should oversimplify But one of the things we could consider doing to simplify is in the overall philosophy paragraph About halfway down where it says while recognizing the necessity for one Memorial pool and the bid since we can cross those things out now We could simply substitute in Somehow magically dealing with the community development block grant loss if appropriate You know and leave it just at that I think at this point because we you know things will progress beyond once we Turn this in we may not have a final answer by the time we publish this But that right there just like we called out one Memorial and the bid right up front last year to draw attention to them I think that we can do that effectively here and we have plenty of other avenues of ensuring it's a Priority I think that'd be a fine way to update the draft Policies for going forward then we've got a placeholder for it. I think it might be We don't want to take the easy way out here and just you know giving the wish list of all those things We right we've got a we've we've got to sort of take it to some next steps Depending on what the recommendations are going to be as far as you know We're willing to sacrifice what for what you know and that's not a kind of a line item basis That's again. Also. It's sort of a philosophical basis, but you know that can become a reserve question It can be gamma who knows what question, but we have to But so yeah I agree get it in there to show that this is our priority and and use that to be part of our draft goals going forward The magic money tree out back because we've really been watering that That guy in Kenya Mr. Steinberg, did you want to come forward and comment? Andrew Steinberg chair of the finance committee. I'll be really brief, but I did want to just touch base on the fact that Finance committee held continued to meet On Thursday night last week after the meeting of the other boards adjourned and we had a significant discussion of the same issue And I just thought it'd be worth taking a moment to share with you the fact that we had that discussion and And I think that our conclusions were pretty similar to what you've just expressed in your discussion and We did not vote guidelines yet. We took it was really an informational discussion that we had that evening The reality that we all recognize is that the federal grant here that we're talking about Where we would be losing the funding begins October 1 of 13 and runs through September 30 of 14 And we just came from a meeting where we were getting projections on a budget for a year that begins July 1 of 13 and goes through June 30 of 14 so that There's nine months of overlap and the only one quarter of the $900,000 then is available for the year that we are adopting a budget and Of course, this is all very new information to us at the time and we just That evening after when we continued our meeting heard the report that Mr. Musanti gave to all of you this evening I Think that in the end our conclusion had to be that we are going to have to remind everybody When we issue the guidelines that the word preliminary Which we always use in the guidelines Probably is even more strongly stated than it has been in some of the recent years but we do that with Much hesitation because we know that the libraries and the schools are Going forward and developing budgets and we'll be thinking about the terms of three percent and We know that they're going to be really struggling to come up with responsible budgets and meet the Meet that guideline. So this is a very difficult discussion But we don't know what we can do to reflect any change in our guideline at this point because When we have to issue our guidelines in November, we will not have any of the additional information that Mr. Musanti has been talking about with us and with you and So that leaves us in a very uncertain status in the budget development process for the FY 14 budget, but I think that the strength that we all have is that as a community we have budget coordinating group that allows all of us to talk with each other and to think very carefully and Very cooperatively about how we will proceed and That that's a discussion that will be very helpful to have to inform us going forward And the other thing that did come up a little bit in the discussion too was some of the questions about federal sequestration and Some of the other In the questions about what might happen in the year ahead Should there be some kind of budget deal cut in Congress that will eliminate sequestration but result in substantial cuts? Some ways it's easier to predict on the sequestration Because you know what cannot be eligible for sequestration The other is really a larger unknown But we also looked at what mr. Puller's numbers were and we think that he was Very cautious in his projections and his projection about state aid We had no increase in Unrestricted the local government aid and a very small increase for Education Is at least some Confident gives us some confidence that those numbers were suitably cautious under the circumstances and recognizing The uncertainty of where we are so I think that we were a little bit less concerned about that side of it but Obviously are very concerned about this CDBG and made the same request that town manager come to us with a recommendation as to What we might do on all of the realms that we have to work with as more information becomes available So thank you very much Okay, so I will try and capture the things we talked about tonight They will be in new working draft guidelines for next week Those will be in the packet and online as a Friday afternoon At next week's meeting we will take them where they are see if we want to change anything and also hear public comment on them Where they are any any changes that the public would like to see and And see what we do with that and then we'll again take it forward to the next meeting Anything else that we want to include with this before we move on Okay, good. Thank you very much next up Managers report.  So Leaping forward here. Okay Fortuitous I Wanted to talk briefly I Was able to attend the International City Management Association annual conference last week And it was a really useful Professional development opportunity for me Was able to I didn't meet personally, but I met many of The 2,500 or so city in town and county managers in attendance from all over the country Canada and More than a few from overseas. So it was fascinating and that was probably the greatest Benefit of attending a conference like that was the opportunity to network with my colleagues we had a number of areas that were Touched upon on the various workshops regional services Renewable energy and solar a number of leadership related Workshops and probably the most useful Workshop was a workshop on town gown Issues Most of which we are familiar with But we are not alone Which is not you know shouldn't stop the presses, but it's it's They're Same or similar issues being confronted by college towns all over the country. I had the opportunity To meet a number of city and town managers from college communities and Have quite a bit of information from what the ICMA calls a college town consortium That I can be sharing with you and with the staff and there's opportunities for further collaboration about best approaches For example, you know we talked earlier tonight about Inspection related programs and rental regulations There's a lot of information and best practices out there in college towns Including copperbly Sized college towns across the country about how they've addressed these issues and I think that'll be helpful to our work group in the weeks ahead as we Complete work on specific proposals for the spring So that was ICMA In terms of recent upcoming activity we're in the home stretch for Finalizing a draft Special town meeting warrant for the November 19th town meeting You will have a warrant that we believe is ready for your approval consideration approval in your packet at the end of this week for action at your October 22nd meeting and then also in terms of coming attractions the next step in our taxi regulations update is a Couple of meetings with taxi company owners We have one such meeting scheduled for later this week. Our intent is to See what Suggestions they may have for refining the draft that's been circulated and then put us in a position to Finalize recommendations with you for action at your November. I think November 5th Regular meeting of the select board Questions or comments from Sandy. Miss Burke. I'm sorry if you could repeat that last phrase you were saying action at our November 5th Meeting, but we'll be getting something our next meeting Yes, you'll get the current draft an updated version after this week and then The expectation is that you're in a position to vote any changes if you want at your November 5th meeting Which gives us close to two full months to then implement as part of the annual license renewal process and So when you give us the update next time if that could have like a cover memo that had the process of public meetings and input and whatever from the Taxi companies so that we know What kind of feedback was received and what that process was that would be great Any other questions for mr.. Miss Burr one of the items I Mentioned last time and believe it or not actually found my note to that effect was Associated with private security firms and as part of the same healthy neighborhoods aspect So if we could just have an update on that in a future town manager report doesn't even have to be next week We can be finished but just so that we understand What that role is those folks get hired and how they interface other questions or comments All right moving right along member reports BCG updates, so I have this on here again Just as a reminder to us BCG meets. Oh geez We got to get that meeting posted Tomorrow morning. Yeah, we're going to meet on Thursday Yes, that's one of the reasons I left it on the agenda BCG meets hopefully Thursday morning We are going to be talking about our the any feedback from home boards and committees on the recommendation We talked about before visa the the money going to the OPEB trust fund as The allocation for a fall town meeting. That's a warrant article. We talked about it a bit last time as you see if you read the Philosophy paragraph from last time putting any additional revenue towards OPEB or shoring up reserves was exactly what we said last year So to continue to support that is completely consistent with what we had said last year But I want to be able to say kind of officially what select boards feedback is on that as opposed to just generally so Can we support the OPEB recommendation? Miss Stein I think it's a good idea, but I do think we're a little bit uncertain now because of the CDP to problems generated the staff people The shelter those are important issues. So I would like some money to go to The post-employment benefits, but I just don't know whether we're gonna have to Spend a little more this year to get us through the hump We just don't know. There's a big question mark. Okay, so just to be clear. This is for FY 13 this is to balance the FY 13 budget. Okay. I have no problem with that. Okay Miss Burr while still understanding that even though it's the FY 13 money if we put it in OPEB Then we can spend it on health care related expenses, but that's money. That's then not in reserves Toward when that's pulling out potentially in theory pulling money out of FY 14 users So I mean it still does have an impact and so I You know, I assume we'll talk about this at BCG. I am also your uppers BCG You know that I am a little leery about the OPEB Funding at this point, but knowing that we can use it toward current health care expenses If need be thus meaning we could shift some things around I'm less concerned about it. So I'm not planning to fight that Yeah, so to miss Burr's point an issue she raised before is Concerned about OPEB and with the downside potentially being that the money was sort of stuck there And now it's now it's in this OPEB trust fund that you can't appropriate from but the fact is you can always appropriate from that some people Some people actually are funding their OPEB trust fund and working from that for their current To pay their current current health care benefits, right? Some people some communities are funding the pay-as-you-go retiree health care related costs From the OPEB account and so as part of their annual appropriation There's annual appropriation into OPEB plus some additional amount, but the annual appropriation is really a Reallocation of what we're already doing for the pay-as-you-go portion because that's built into our employee benefits budget in general government and then And same thing on the school side and the library side So it is sort of globally part of the money that we have to pay for health care for employees Current and retired no matter what happens with any potential state legislation or something in the future It's so it's always available to us for health care funding So and my understanding was that that eased your concerns about it. We haven't we're not tying that money up in some strange way Okay All right, so we will be discussing this more BCG So I can make the point that there's there's concern that sort of the alternative is obviously to shore up reserves Shoring up reserves for general unknown is never a bad idea to shore it up for potential Known is also not a bad idea so So the main thing that BCG is looking for is that that we are sort of generally supporting either of those things as opposed to new spending in particular So I think that it's clear that that's where we are on that. Okay All right liaison and representative reports want a need to know basis here for this quarter 10 Anyone I get it 10 the Hampshire Council of Governments like board association dinner to honor John Oliver congressman John Oliver and it was very nice he Did remind me afterwards that he will be my congressman right up till January so that things still might get done in Washington You heard all about the community preservation at committee meeting which I did attend and I'm not going to say anything else about that I There are some points from the board of health One is that the motion That will appear at town meeting about getting Polystyrene out of the landfill They came to the League of Women voters who are supporting this and The recycling and refuse committee came before the board of health to Present on this and the board voted unanimously unanimously to support their article For town meeting so I thought you'd want to know that As it turns out in terms of the businesses if I understand the notes only 40% of businesses are actually using these kinds of inflated foam styrene containing Containers for their take-homes There is also going to be a public hearing on October 25th about The town of Amherst public health regulation drinking water supply protection The main concern is to restrict activities in a small area near the Atkins reservoir So that was the board of health The Kanagasaki sister city committee one they want to buy a flag when it is ready And I know we're moving on that They are going to be celebrating next year the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the city sister city relationship with Kanagasaki and Also the 10-year celebration of the sister city kind of libraries and the one last thing is that they plan to Send Halloween decorations and other artifacts to Kanagasaki so they could get some information about One of our holidays. So that's I think all that I was going to report on Might as well go to mr. Wilde on the flag update. What can you tell us about the town flag? Yeah, I mentioned Miss Stein has been working hard and consistently on this and we're kind of in the waiting phase right now So our artist Barry Mosier sent me I guess at the round just before the last select board meeting I think it was the completed wedding raving is that will be the emblems of the book and the sheaves of Chabris to produce Species they may be that will be on the flag And so I just have to hear then he was out of the country for a couple of weeks and just had a new big project Opening at a gallery last Friday. So he just back in touch At that point and just want to confirm with him the colors And then he will put the whole thing back together and I will consult with miss Stein and mr. Sell and make sure we have everything we can the standpoint of the flag company and then go ahead and order Thank you very much Any other liaison reports you'd like to make I think that can't wait I think we talked historical was the the main thing I think with the district here Okay, and again to remind people if they're interested in applying for the Dickinson district Local district commission that they should please do so Mr.. The trivia bees a week from Thursday. We'll have to mention that again next week so everybody can come watch Just be silly for a good cause Two other meetings. I'd like everyone to attend because I know you have all kinds of time on your hands on number the November 1st, which is Thursday 7 o'clock the housing and sheltering committee is having presentation by our consultant on the housing production plan So they've watched the draft has already been produced people are giving feedback And that will be the public presentation of that information And then there'll be additional public presentation after that But that is actually going to be in the annual and house on the fifth floor So Thursday the first watch for that anybody who's expressed curiosity about the housing production plan That's the place to be and the other item is on Saturday the third. Yes two days later at 9 a.m For towns meeting associated with the regional school district planning board to top make sure we are all on the same page as to what We are all talking about associated with regionalization And Culek and Rosenberg for sure are supposed to be there the trading anything Yes, I Believe you volunteered to do this for us because you're just so nice But the Hampshire Council of Governments thing on Thursday with the street easements blah blah blah thing So there's a I'm in a butter to the Eastman roundabout seriously like really I'm in a butter all the way down Any university property? I got it too because I but the university property even though it's okay That seems a little large, but at any rate So we don't have to have a select board meeting of any kind associated with that And you're just gonna represent mr. Hayden will be there also we will have some engineering expertise Okay, let's see chairs report I Given you a document as I do periodically That's just full of various ways that I have been Representing us if you have any problems with it You should know about it and then let me know and I'll try and change What I do going forward so I tried to just kind of summarize any sorts of the types of remarks so that you know what I'm talking about and There you go other things the Next meeting at five o'clock Preceding our select board meeting is our annual coffee hour with UMass representative student leaders I've been sending out about 60 almost 60 invitations this week to the UMass folks So that doesn't count the staff and Mr. Moussanti is taking care of town staff. I mean, I hope it'll be a good turnout It should be another good meeting this is a fourth annual and We'll see how that goes. So that's five o'clock next Monday the 22nd And was there anything else that I was gonna talk about? I don't think so. So let's uh Let's see. Let's do a couple of untimed items so we can get out of here First one is town manager performance goals All right, this is a process. We've been going through since oh so many months It is in our packet so Ralph Karlstrom submitted a document for our consideration regarding the town manager performance goals and That is it's on the web packet. Did everybody get it in their hard copy packet? Okay, so Apologize it the email came from him so a coalition of Amherst neighborhoods. So first before we get into that so We've been talking about this for many many months now at our last meeting You urged me to just go ahead and just accept them as they were so that we could stop having these conversations I wanted to tweak the wording a little bit of the final goal that we discussed that time Which was goal number 10 and also I made the adjustments to goal number three that we had talked about we eliminated part B So we had to incorporate Make 3a make it not be a anymore just be three So I tried to summarize so we were all in agreement with the spirit of the submitted goal about affordability and I just wanted to Take a stab at those words because we do try and be very careful with our words So did anybody have any issues with The wording that was created there So this was the affordability goal So it's and we wanted it to be sort of in the spirit of the green goal that we had done And so what I wrote was the town manager shall help to support the creation of more housing that is safe decent and affordable for Individuals and families at low-income levels. I tried to take a lot of the exact verbiage that had been Suggested to us. I wanted to take away with the original sentence said something was something like to make Amherst more Affordable and well, I think it's easy to mark ways that Amherst is greener I think that more affordable when you consider the fact that our tax rate is you know only going up etc Like the affordability of Amherst in general is actually a bigger thing than we can address but what we are looking to do is to continue to support the creation of Low-income housing So that was my takeaway Miss Stein, I have no problem with what you wrote But if you're going to you give us these to look at I'm gonna find So it's a question of how much you want to keep doing with this and so we'll get it I don't I don't So I I guess I'll put these away thoughts away till next year. Okay, we can always do that Okay, so then that brings us to the other memo that was submitted to us. So the coalition of Amherst neighbors I think I'm messing up that acronym. My apologies. Neighborhoods. Thank you Sent us a Detailed goal about safe and healthy neighborhoods and So as mr. Colstrom noted in the public comment at the beginning it was about Having more specific criteria by which to evaluate the town manager next year And so I I personally I liked the concept of the goal My concern was that I don't actually want us to be doing the goals for like half the year And so for this to come to us now when really we should have Approved these goals a couple of weeks ago already. I kind of didn't want to open up this whole a whole new area To be parsing as carefully as we've parsed everything else When we added the goal last time about affordability Even though that was so late in the process that was not something that had been touched on in the goal So once that was brought up it seemed like an important thing to want to include the part about neighborhoods is actually part of goal number two goal to a Town manager shall continue to strengthen relationships with UMass and the colleges for concrete progress in areas that improve the community's quality of life By and then there are several sub points But the first one is mitigating the impact of a significant student population on neighborhoods on demand for public safety resources on parking and traffic issues and so forth I Recognize and appreciate that the that the submitted goal goes into a lot more detail than that Bang and stuff around I Think that it then Throws out of balance all the other things that we ask the town manager to do by not going into that same amount of detail on all of Those things and also kind of makes very blurry again What we were talking about before about trying to specify the what rather than the how I think that they're great points that are made and things that we should we should hold on to that and think About that as part of our thought process as we're doing the town manager's evaluation that that's kind of raising the kinds of questions that We want to be thinking about And I think very many of them are very clearly addressed by the safe and healthy neighborhoods initiative that we had so much detail on tonight My recommendation is that we not incorporate them into the goals at this point because if we incorporated them into the goal We're going to go through another few weeks of language parsing and by then it's going to be you know December or January and The year is half over and he doesn't have the working goals in front of him So I think that it doesn't add enough to to the goals and the outcome To incorporate these at this point in the process considering our great awareness of them already and the of the issues raised and the fact that it's already Noted as an important area in the goals Mr. Walsh Yeah, and some of these things are already also explicitly stated in the master plan and we've hired code enforcement of officer and so forth So it may be the best thing I mean I understand your reasons for not wanting to Incorporate this wholesale, but maybe that's it can serve at least as an impetus to remind us of the importance that the community attaches to Goal number two and what stands behind it? Absolutely Miss Stein, I think I saw her hand and then mr. You did Okay, the point that you're raising Is expressed as mitigating the impacts of the significant student population on neighborhoods On demand for public safety resources on parking and traffic issues and so forth That's true But it isn't exactly the same wording or the same problem because the problem is really more of the taking over of neighborhoods by business entities and running those properties as essentially boarding houses and so I Almost wondered if we could just take again short and Very very short not all the iterations, but just The first paragraph and take out the first wording and take out to include. I mean he's working on it, but So it would read the town manager shall develop special Recommendate specific recommendations for consideration by the select board to address neighborhood health safety and the quality of life issues and I would be happy with that as an addition without all the subsets But I think it's a different Emphasis than saying UMass Has to mitigate the effects of the students because the problem is bigger than that So tell me one more time the part you would like to I would just take everything out of the first Two lines except the words to include the town manager shall develop specific recommendations for consideration by the select board to address neighborhood health safety and quality of life issues and Just assume that we have the bigger picture But it's more than just the university dealing with the students So that's my thought. I don't know a problem with that. I think that that's very clear What you are doing and I what you'll continue to do shall develop specific recommendations for consideration by the select board to address the neighborhood health safety and quality of life issues and Just stop Okay, so you're saying in addition to or instead of what we have currently I was saying in addition to because it's different than the university dealing with the students Okay, so make that like point B or something or you know, I think it's 11 I think it's a weapon As much as I like the nice around 10 because because who really is about the university relationship, right? And this really isn't it's related, but it's It's not for all the reasons that Miss Stein just stated It isn't just because it's UMass students and UMass needs to do something about it Actually more purely about So I think that it does it does address the Landlord part of it in a way that isn't currently include I think it could be considered included by reference to the various mitigating impacts But but I agree that it does draw into the equation a different It's not just with the university relationship for sure I mean, if you think about all the people that reported tonight on the safe and healthy neighborhoods They're not UMass people. It was a police chief. It was the fire chief. It was the health inspector. It was building inspectors and so on and so That's more inclusive under a point 11 which you don't have to spell out And I don't want to see this again anymore While we're wordsmithing it do we need to have the words by the select board or for consideration by the select board in there I think it's that it's specific recommendations to address. That's fine. I mean, he's talking to us And also the recommendations are to town meeting there to staff there exactly It's not that we have to then say go John, you know We will but it's bigger than that All right. Well, well, I hate to do anything late at night. I'm sorry thought to I don't have a problem with this No, because I've laid out an action plan that you didn't object to and in fact enthusiastically endorsed Whether without any of this in the formal Town manager, you know, we could parse words about whether it's fully captured in set in goal number 2a or not If you think provides clarity by having it be a separate goal, I'm totally fine with that Okay, so it's going to be that sentence without by the select board recommendations for consideration to address It's just not even for consideration Get rid of for consideration recommendations to address. Yeah, that's fine. That's absolutely fine Okay, go number 11 Comes a prime number again press publish. All right, so let's make an official vote then to accept the 11 11 they're growing every year As presented and amended Okay, I move that the select board approve the FY 13 town manager performance goals as amended It's even in there. I knew I was Walking on water All right That's unanimous. Yeah, we're done with the goals. Okay next up. We've got some minutes to approve That we approve the minutes And I just have to find the dates because I couldn't find anything to correct my goodness stop the presses Isn't that amazing? I moved to approve the slipboard minutes of July 16 2012 in October 1st 2012 and cross out as amended unless somebody has something to say I couldn't find anything It's been moved to second and further discussion Unanimous yay minutes have been approved anything else nothing that here did not consider we've already discussed the trivia be we've discussed the coffee hour we've discussed the Meeting at UMass police station tomorrow night, which is optional for all select board members and is posted as a select board meeting and For mr. Hayden makes his motion. Is there anything else that we we're going to be meeting next Monday mirror seven days from now So is there anything else critical that we need to bring up before that time? Then mr. Hayden I'd point out the 10 o'clock is just like 845 Objection then this meeting adjourns at 1001. Thank you very much. See you next week


If you're anything like me, you watch the Super Bowl for a number of reasons, and sometimes none of those are football. Whether you watch for the halftime show, for the commercials, or for the actual game, something I always look forward to every year, even when I don't necessarily care about the game itself. I'm not really a big football fan myself. But the commercials are always entertaining for various reasons, either they're really good or really, really bad. America, how do you watch? Well I did not see all of them this time around. I can definitely tell you that it seems like there was more bad than good. I'm a celery. I'm us pretzels. And it got me thinking, why on earth is it so difficult for companies to make even remotely good commercials? You know what it feels like? It always just feels like somebody on the marketing team of these companies researched a particular culturally relevant topic. In this case, I don't know, watched like seven TikToks and went, okay, so this is the thing that people are saying, okay boomer, with absolutely no subcontext or depth to their understanding of the actual situation or what the jokes actually are or how to actually use them. It's like listening to somebody read a foreign language that they don't speak or understand. They don't know what they're saying.  I felt that way with a number of different commercials this year, but one in particular stood out to me. This is how we must. And I'm going to pick on this commercial, not because it's the only one that was bad or it was somehow the worst, but because it really, for me, capitalized on this point of trying to use culturally relevant things, but just not really succeeding. Yes, I'm talking about the Sabra hummus commercials, of which there were three in a 60-second, 30-second and 15-second variation, but they all were basically the same thing. They're desperately trying to make must a verb. How do you must? Like, I must a cracker. I must celery. I must pretzels. Bananas. How do you must? I don't know. Feels like the type of thing that nobody's going to use ever. See, here's the thing. Phenomena like that, where a word becomes a verb like Xerox. I don't think I've heard anyone say that in years, but it was a thing at one point. But these instances where a brand name or slang term become verbs, they usually don't happen because some marketing company said, we're going to put out a commercial where we jam this down people's throats and hope that tomorrow it just becomes the thing that everyone went, hey, what a great idea. We should all start using this term now. No, it's something that develops over time. In some cases, it does become popularized by brilliant marketing, but that's over a long period of time. It's not like, let's buy, let's spend almost $20 million on this Super Bowl commercial and pay all these influencers and these famous people to be in our commercial because we're sure we include Rick Flair, Boomer Asiason, T-Pain and Charlie D'Amelio. We're hitting all the age brackets there and we're certain that somebody's going to latch on to this and start using it in their regular everyday vocabulary. That's not how any of this works. I feel like sometimes the problem with these commercials is that people are trying to grab so many different things, jam it into one 15 or 30 second spot and hope that their message is going to get across to show how good or connected or culturally aware a company is. They try to hit all the marks. They try to hit nostalgia. They try to hit inclusivity, young viral content, YouTubers. They covered all the bases and unfortunately none really effectively. And sometimes when a company does this, it just, it feels cheap. It feels forced and it just feels like, oh, I know what you're doing. It's not that there are bad ideas necessarily. It's just that you cannot force stuff like this to happen because not only does it not work like that, but the more you try to force it, the more us, the consumer audience is going to be like, no, stop. And if you look at any of the videos on Sabra's own YouTube channel, you can see that people weren't really connecting with it very well. I feel like they collected all of these influencers and famous people and thought that that alone was going to be the selling ticket and not what those people were there to do. Almost like that was an afterthought. They're just like, well, these people will do the selling for us. All we need to do is just give them some words to say or give them five words to say. That'll do the trick, surely. Oh, and the 15-second spot. Okay, Boomer. Did you get it? Did you get the joke? Because his name's Boomer and okay, but the joke, okay, did you get it? Yeah. Yeah, we got it. Just, I'm gonna need a minute. Poor Charlie, no, not poor Charlie D'Amelio. This is the awesome opportunity for her and she would have been dumb not to take it. I don't hold that against her at all, but it doesn't make the commercial any better. In case you've been living under a rock, which these days seems like a halfway decent place to spend some time, Charlie D'Amelio is where I would say she's got to be TikTok's most popular person right now. She's this 15-year-old kid who just blew up posting videos of her dancing. And she gets a ton of hate from, I presume, other 15-year-olds that are just upset that she's the one that blew up and not them. I don't really know. She did what any person should do in her situation, which is take a very opportune situation and run with it. And as I'm making this video, she has over 23 million followers on TikTok. People like to rag on TikTok and I understand that. I mean, just like any platform, you're gonna find a lot of stuff that's garbage, a lot of content that just makes you want to crawl into a hole. But you can't fault somebody for, she didn't expect she was gonna blow up. She just posted videos for fun and then all of a sudden the snowball started rolling. I mean, the same thing on a very, very, very miniature scale happened to me. I posted my stuff on TikTok and that's where everything kind of started for me. So I can't rag on TikTok too much because as much as there is content there that is like difficult to watch, a lot of people are gaining opportunities through this. So here she is, this 15 year old kid and from what I can tell, it seems like she's got a really great support system around her. But she's given this opportunity to be in a Superbowl commercial. You don't say no to that. The boomer, boomer joke just, it's not, it's not funny. It's not funny. There's a way to do that and have it be funny. That's not it. I don't even, I don't even understand what the point was. Like literally the whole point of the bit was that, get it? His name's boomer.  Mus. Sorry. I can't entirely blame these marketing departments because there's so many different levels of approval that all this stuff has to go through. Can you imagine being a company that's about to drop $20 million on the ad buy plus the production of these commercials? Like, you're not just going to let anything fly. I don't blame anybody that was in the commercials. I don't blame Charlie D'Amelio. I don't blame Zach King who's brilliant. And actually that part of the commercial was the only part that I thought was like neat.  Who wouldn't? But man, you'd think. I mean, it would be great if one day we could start making commercials that didn't make you grin so hard, but not this day. Anyways, that's just some thoughts I have watching the Superbowl. It kind of just an excuse to make the sketch at the beginning. Thanks for watching. If you like the video, please consider subscribing. I appreciate it and we'll see you next time.


Part of making art is very much an attitude and a perspective towards ideas and materials. And I think this certain honesty to where you're from comes through. My name is Etienne Zak. I live in Los Angeles, and I'm an artist, I make paintings. I never thought that there would be a possibility to make a living making art. It's hard to navigate the art world. There's a whole business part, there's a whole writing part. It's a very complex world, and so you need to navigate and keep making the work. I think the amazing thing about having gone to Emily Carr is that you have a community there.  I think Emily Carr is a really sort of versatile place where you can really explore if you want to explore, but you can really focus on a medium if you really want to as well. And I think there's a good structure to do whatever you want to do. And there's people there that you can kind of tap into. When you come out, you're so changed by everything that you need to find yourself again. The sort of sediments kind of slowly sort of fall.  Making work is a very hard task when you can't sleep because there's so many ideas coming in and constantly filtering these ideas. So I take notes. The notes contain the real skeleton behind the painting. The painting part is maybe the easier part. It's where the ideas sort of come to rest finally. Paintings I'm making now, to the most basic, they're stacks of paper. There's something written, there's texts on them, and they've been organized in a certain way architecturally, so they become very physical. I'm interested right now in ideas of manufactured history. And that documented history is a redacted history. And so these are sort of simply the ideas I'm dealing with right now. The work I do, it comes from a world of ideas and reading and writing and thinking. So the conceptual part and the thinking part became more and more awakened in me at Emily Carr. It was a great environment to learn and to start thinking about what I was making.