Okay, seeing that we have a quorum of the Town Council, members present, I call the meeting of the Town Council to order at 6.30. While we originally had one Councilor requesting to attend via remote participation because of the snow in Boston, she is with us tonight instead. So we will not have remote participation. I'm going to go over a few announcements and then describe some changes in the order of our agenda. First of all, the statement of interest to the Municipal School Building Authority, many of you have been participating in the listening sessions. There have been four. I will say that Councilor attendance at those listening sessions has been outstanding. And I want to thank you all for the efforts you've made to be there. There are two more, one on Wednesday, March 6th from 4 to 6th at Crocker Farm Elementary School and Wednesday, March 6th, 7 to 9 at Amherst Regional High School. We also then invite any and all of you to join us for the public forum on the proposed town budget, which is on Thursday, March 7th at 6.30 at Amherst Regional Middle School. And before we go on to the next item, I just want to mention it's been a very busy weekend at Amherst. We had excellent support from our police and fire departments, as well as those of cooperating towns in the Massachusetts State Police. They all made a significant contribution to the coordinated response, ensuring the safety of all of our residents during the celebratory events of our students. But at the same time, we recognize the rapid and thorough response of our DPW and especially the water department to the unexpected loss of water resulting in the loss of water pressure. The water is safe to drink, but we continue to ask you to be conservative in your use while we wait the changes that have to be made in the repairs. Mr. Bachmann has requested that I recognize him so that he can introduce the members of the Resident Advisory Committee. Thank you, President Grishmore. We have two of our three members of the Residence Advisory Committee who are here tonight, that I wanted to ask them to come up so you can see them. And there are two familiar faces and one new face. Unfortunately, our third person isn't able to be here tonight because she's working. Sometimes people have different work hours. So the person who isn't here, unfortunately, is Keisha Dennis. And Ms. Dennis came here as a student and then stayed and continued living in town and has had children, has been working in the town, has not been involved in town government before. And unlike our two experienced people here, but has had a lot of experience with nonprofits. Also, we have Connie Krueger, who everybody knows, who is a former member of the Select Board, extensive experience in town government, including an employee, then is a member of the town meeting, Select Board, Board of Assessors, Planning Board, Downtown Parking and Working Group, and she was the governor's appointee to the Amherst Housing Authority. And Jim Pistrang, who is the, everybody knows our former town administrator, he's also served in multiple capacities in town government, including as a town meeting member, town manager search committee, the dog park task force, the town meeting electronic voting committee and the Puffers Pond 2020 committee. And I really appreciate all three of these people for stepping up, being willing to participate and serve on the residence advisory committee. As you know, the residence advisory committee doesn't have a lot of form to it in the charter. So I'm really going to be depending on these people to help develop what this committee's role is and what they, and how best the town manager in the future and current can use the residence advisory committee to help ensure that the best people and the most diverse group of people are appointed during the appointment process. So I thank you for taking them out of order. One of our members has an important thing to take care of, so. Okay. Would either of you like to make a comment? You know, like it's, it's good to be here. You know, it's Hi everybody. Jim and I were just saying in the back room, it's our first council meeting. So I'm really pleased to be here and I'm honored to be invited to be part of the residence advisory committee. It's a little free form as many things are as we're inventing, but hoping that my experience and thoughts and whatever knowledge of the community can be helpful to the manager and to the town. And I'm looking forward to seeing how it unfolds. Okay. I'll say something too. Thanks to the town manager for pointing me. I'm looking forward to working with him and looking forward to the other committee members. And I'm committed to reaching out and getting a diverse selection of our town and inclusionary selection of our town involved in the town. So this is a great platform to be working to do that. We want to thank both of you and our, your missing member and look forward to seeing how you figure it out. Okay. So you may have noticed the agenda has had some revisions and I'm just going to ask both the audience, the people at home and especially the counselors to just hang with me because we had no fewer than nine of 11 items change today at different points. So it's been a little bit of a who's on first. So first of all, we're going to take proclamations and commemorations, commemorations out of order and do those first since there are a number of people in the audience who are here for that purpose. Then we will follow with public comment. And after that you may have noticed that we were planning tonight to have the town meeting advisory committee present their proposal and they have asked for a delay in that we have agreed to that delay to a future meeting yet to be determined. But I do want to mention that it already posted for the purposes of this meeting were various items and the council did have access to the proposal provided by TMAC but it was not posted publicly. We will do so and make sure that TMAC has plenty of time in advance of when we will be hearing that, talking with them. And then finally we are going to do one other flip and this one Margaret even you don't know about and that is at the request of Doug Slaughter we're actually going to take the board of licensed commissioners first and then transportation. Okay so their first item under proclamations and commemorations is the Tibetan Day proclamation and with the with those of you that are speaking please come forward. Please identify yourself and then proceed to tell us about your proclamation. Thank you. Good evening and thank you for this opportunity. This is the first time as members of the regional Tibetan Association we are coming before the town council and so we want to congratulate you and wish you the best. This is the first time I think with the new form of government so we're here to request the continuation of the proclamation on Tibet. My name is Thandup Seringh. I'm the president of the Regional Tibetan Association and my name is Neema Dalma. I am the vice president of the Regional Tibetan Association of Massachusetts and I am Sotrim Kunsang and I am the secretary of the Tibetan Association of Massachusetts. So on March 10th 2019 Tibetans throughout the world will gather to commemorate the 68th anniversary of the Tibetan national uprising against the brutal occupation of Tibet and to pay tribute to more than one million Tibetans who have died in their struggle for freedom of Tibet. The Regional Tibetan Association of Massachusetts Amherst will hold a flag raising ceremony and a walk for Tibet from Amherst to Northampton to mark this important anniversary. 60 years ago on this fateful day when the Tibetan people for the first time learned about the Chinese army's plan to abduct his Holiness the Dalai Lama over 100,000 Tibetans surrounded his summer palace to prevent his Holiness the Dalai Lama's abduction. Tension began to build up and on March 17th his 1959 his Holiness the Dalai Lama fled Tibet and sought refuge in India. When the Chinese army learned about his escape a full-scale attack on the capital city took place shelling the summer palace. So during the invasion over 1.2 million Tibetans lost their life and 98 percent of Buddhist monasteries which were the centers of Tibetan culture and learning was systematically destroyed. This year also marks the 11th anniversary of the 2008 series of large-scale peaceful protest campaign throughout Tibet which were ruthlessly suppressed by Chinese forces. According to the U.S. Department of State the government of People's Republic of China is engaged in the severe repression of Tibet's unique religious culture and linguistic heritage and is engaged in gross violation of human rights in Tibet including extrajudicial detention, disappearances and torture. According to the 2018 Freedom House report Tibet is the second least free country in the world next only to Syria. To all freedom loving people in the world we ask you to stand on the side of the history. Lend your voice to end genocide in Tibet and support the Tibetan people's movement for the right to live in their own country free of oppression and discrimination. To peacefully resolve the issue of Tibet and to bring about stability and coexistence between the Tibetan and Chinese people based on the equality and mutual cooperation his Holiness the Dalai Lama proposed the middle way approach which was adopted democratically by the Central Tibetan administration and the Tibetan people. On behalf of the members of the Regional Tibetan Association of Massachusetts I would like to invite members of the Town Council to join us either for the flag-raising ceremony in Amherst or the walk from Amherst to Northampton. Thank you and I yield my time to Nimadoma. Now I would like to highlight on the successful passage of the reciprocal access to Tibet Act passed into law last year on December 19th. This bill was introduced and sponsored by our congressman Jim McAvon. This really sends a direct message to the Chinese officials of the unfair and discriminatory policies against all Americans diplomats, journalists and Tibetan Americans especially traveling to Tibet but have no equal access. Whereas the Chinese citizens who come to the United States they travel across throughout the country freely without any restrictions. So we are looking forward to your continued support in making sure now this bill that has come into law is being implemented and holding China accountable for its actions. Thank you. I just want to do my thank you note. On behalf of the Regional Tibetan Association of Massachusetts I would like to extend my gratitude to the members of the Town Council for giving us the opportunity to come to this meeting today. I also want to thank you for the favorable consideration to declare and observe Tibet Day on March 10 in solidarity of Tibetans all over the world including a flag raising ceremony here. I also want to thank the Town for other arrangements including the sound systems to be used on that day. Thank you again. Does the council have any questions at this time? If not I'd like to hear a motion to adopt the Tibet Day 2019 proclamation. I'm sorry. Oh I'm sorry. Alyssa I didn't see your hand. Thank you. It's a quite minor and luckily since only one person signs now on our behalf we don't have to worry about perfecting it before we all sign it but it just it has walked for Tibet bolded and there's no reason for that so if we could just fix that before you sign it that's helpful and I for those fellow Town counselors that are unfamiliar with this we have been doing this for several years at the select board level and we appreciate people bringing this forward as part of our Tibetan community so thank you. We also really appreciated the wonderful ceremony you had to honor Jim McGovern for his work on your behalf. That was very nice. Thank you. All right any other comments? All right do I hear a motion to adopt the Tibet Day 2019 proclamation as presented? Pat is the motion and the second? Dorothy? Yes second. Any further comment? All those in favor please raise your right hand or left hand. It doesn't matter. Okay I think that was unanimous. I'm an abstain. Oh I'm sorry. We have one abstention. Were there any noes? Okay thank you. Thank you for being here and for counselors who would like to join me the ceremony is at 10 o'clock on the steps of Town Hall this coming Sunday and as we did in a previous event I would ask that you join me where each of us read a piece of the proclamation. Okay the next is the resolution in support of changing the Massachusetts state flag and seal. Who is here to speak on behalf of that? Please come forward. Please please sit down identify yourself and speak to the motion or speak to the resolution. My name is Elaine Kenseth. I've lived in Amherst for 73 years since I was four. I would urge the town council to join other towns in western Massachusetts in support of changing the Massachusetts and state flag and seal. I never paid attention to the flag and I never paid attention to the seal but it's it has been sponsored. The resolution has been come up in the state legislature for many many years by Byron Rushing who is not in the legislature anymore. But we have to thank Joe Comerford our state senator for raising this resolution in the state senate and also let's see Lindsay Sabasa from North Hampton who is the who's leading this in the house. So western mass is well represented. I believe that Hadley also supported this resolution. What's to me outrageous as I learned about this the seal and the flag is that the motto for our our state is by the sword we seek peace. I think that a lot of things that have happened in Massachusetts would we would deserve to have a better motto than something like that because we have many other kinds of initiatives that are not by the sword that we seek peace otherwise and we deserve to be represented well by what's on our state seal and flag. The Native person is not representative of the Wampanoag tribes or the New England tribes from Chippewa which is further west from here and the sword over the head of a native person is itself to me quite outrageous. It's a reproduction of the mile-standish sword and it's just the whole picture. I think we deserve better and as I'm taking that from my heart I'm not a politician. I advocate for a lot of things in town. We work mostly with refugees and with other peoples who are marginalized and I just think we can do better and I know Hadley has voted and I think Orange last year voted for this resolution and it'll be really wonderful if the state legislature of the state senate could hear from the people of this this town and the towns around to make a major change. Thank you. Thank you. Are there questions or comments from the council? Mandy Joe. I just had a housekeeping. The last be it further resolved has a spelling error so if that could just be corrected assuming this passes you know before it's signed. In result. Any other comments or questions? Yes, Alyssa. So resolutions are and proclamations are always super interesting because of my experience of course I'm comfortable with the ones I've done before so I'm comfortable with Black History Month I'm comfortable with Tibet Day etc but we've often run into ones where we personally may feel very strongly about a particular issue but we don't feel like we've necessarily heard about it from a number of people in our community and so it's a little unclear sometimes whether it's necessary to have it be a town council action just as we usually we used to discuss at the town meeting level it wasn't necessarily to be a town meeting action versus a nice to do versus encouraging hundreds of our friends and neighbors to write their own separate letters into the legislature because sometimes the legislature has said you know what they really want is a stack of emails or a stack of letters from individuals rather than from a council so I'd like to hear from my fellow counselors if we just feel strongly enough about this as individuals which I certainly am am not disagreeing with anything that's been said here or if we think it's necessary to do this appropriate to do this as a council. Comments or questions Aunt Pat? I feel strongly that we need to do this. I feel that white America has to take responsibility for what we've done and how we've created this country and I think we need to really take honest and deep looks at ourselves and this is one way of doing that that's saying it is no longer acceptable to use images of genocide and as our flag. Other comments? Dorsey? I would agree with Pat that this is this is definitely an appropriate thing for the town council to make a statement on and we saw in our packet that there are a number of other local communities that have done the same thing our our state rep and our state senator have supported this bill and it seems like fantastic thing very positive thing for the town council to do at this time. Other questions or comments? George? Serving 12 years on town meeting these sorts of resolutions and that were presented were always the challenge for me because often I was being basically asked for my own personal opinion and no one in my well actually one person in my district has actually spoken to me about this and that's because I announced it at the district meeting and asked people if they had any opinion there were 70 people present this one person came up and spoke to me briefly. I'm uncomfortable voting for something like this because I haven't heard from my constituents and I suppose I'm supposed to represent them so I'm going to abstain I'm not going to vote against it. The sentiment I have some sympathy for some of the history here that's in the where as is I have a lot of issues with but the basic sentiment I agree with but as an individual I have my own views but as a counselor I feel like I'm supposed to represent my constituents and I haven't heard from them really at all so in this case I'm going to abstain. Other comments? I know. Other comments from council? Question? Yes Dorothy. This resolution says that if it's passed that a committee of Massachusetts legislators will sit down with some native people native leaders from Massachusetts and design a new flag does that flag then come back to us to okay? I don't know that we have an answer to that question certainly. Thank you very much my name is David DeMold I'm from Montague where I've served on town meeting now since 2006 and to answer the counselor's question through the chair the resolution would support the passage of the bills that are in the House and Senate sponsored by Joe Comaferd in the Senate and Lindsay Sabadosa in the House if those bills pass a special commission would be established to include five legislative tours, five we call them native leaders because they certainly will be leaders who will be representing the various native nations of the Commonwealth certainly some of which are state recognized some of which are federally recognized and some of them like the Massachusetts tribe themselves whose name we have appropriated are neither federal nor state recognized nations yet they are very much among the the people who now live in the Commonwealth and they would also we hope have a seat on that commission which would be chaired by the commissioner on Indian affairs and which would include no less than three statewide arts organization representatives a representative of the state historic commission a representative of the secretary of state who holds the seal and two unaffiliated individuals who would be chosen by the governor it will be the special commission's task to come up with the new design but it will change if the the current flag which it might be illustrative if the council would allow just to take a look at the flag which is just to your immediate left madam chair to see what exactly the image is we're talking about but that image will change if the if the two bill if the bill passes and what we are asking the council to do tonight as in Northampton on Thursday and Greenfield is about to schedule a hearing as well is to support that effort as your senator and representative have already done so the design work would be left to the special commission the heavy lifting will be left to the legislature but it is I think every town's right to say this particular flag which sits on our stage furl and which sits on the stage of every elementary school and high school in the commonwealth where our third graders study the state flags and images in third grade as part of the core curriculum thereby receiving this image of violence between the white hand holding the sword above the head of the native man okay that's not necessarily something that we wish to continue perpetrating on our very very young children it's not just harmful to native children it's harmful to all children to absorb these images of white supremacy it is really only massachusetts and mississippi where this debate continues mississippi with the stars and bars massachusetts with the colonial broadsword over the native man so we hear your concerns that you haven't heard from your constituents and we would welcome speaking for myself and i'm not a member of your your town i'm not a resident of your town but those of us who are working on this statewide effort would welcome a public hearing if you wish to go to that route where we could invite all your residents of all backgrounds to come make comment and perhaps to take a look at the flag for the first time it is stamped on the front cover of every voter guide that goes out for every referendum every election it is stamped on the side doors and of every state patrol car and it is on every piece of stationary so it's subtle in some ways you might not recognize it at first but if you take a look at it it's nakedly clear what it represents and i did the research in the state archives and the special collections room and i can stand by every comment in the whereas clauses i can give you the documentation for it thank you are there other comments by the council then i think at this point we i would entertain a motion to adopt the resolution in support of changing the commonwealth flag and seal of massachusetts as presented is there a person making that motion dorothy a second shallony any further conversation okay all those in favor raise your hand opposed abstained okay thank you very much we're going to move on to the resolution in support of first congregational church of amherst in amherst united church of christ continuing to serve as a temporary shelter and i'm calling on reverend vicki kemper good evening it is an honor to sit before you all before the first time and with me here i there are two other church members and church officers my name is ralph falkingham i'm one of the church trustees okay so as most of you know i think lucio pettis has been in sanctuary at first church amherst since october 2017 you may not realize that since before that time before lucio actually came and took residence in the church we have been in consultation with town officials the building commissioner the fire chief the health department even the police chief to make sure that we were going through the proper procedures and providing a safe space for mr pettis to be in our church and the way the state building codes work we have also had to go before the state building code appeals board we did that for the first time last january they granted us a nine month variance as a temporary shelter when we went back to them last july they told us that we were no longer a temporary shelter that we were a permanent shelter and therefore we would have to make significant renovations to our building to meet code that is required for permanent shelter and so we have responded to them and will be going before the board again this thursday we are requesting a continuation of the original variance they gave us for another nine months because we have no intention of becoming a permanent shelter for mr pettis his home is in springfield with his family and as soon as he is able to safely return to them he will do that and it is very important to us to continue to be safe and to meet any building code and health inspections that are required of us but we would prefer not to spend seventy five thousand dollars to qualify as a permanent shelter that we don't want to be and that's the long and short of it okay any other comments from the other people okay questions or comments from the council shall we so are there any concerns for the coming nine months or so to safeguard this person's safety or health or does anything need to be done to you know to maintain the conditions that are being required so when we originally went before the state building code appeals board and were supported by town officials of amherst in our request for a variance we were granted that variance and so we understood that to mean that they understood that we had provided safe conditions for mr pettis to live there temporarily and now those conditions have not changed and yet because there's a higher bar for temporary shelters they're wanting us to make significant renovations for example providing a private bathroom with a handicapped accessible shower providing some tearing down some walls and providing further fire prevention protection and again the the actual safety of the residents of the the room he's living in has not changed at all it's just their classification of the shelter are there other questions yes bandy joe what was the variance that you were granted and are continuing to seek uh we're we requested a variance to operate as a temporary shelter and that's the variance we're continuing to seek we're seeking it for nine additional months this is what we requested last July and we're denied that request and we're given until a couple of weeks a few weeks ago to submit plans to meet their requirements as a permanent shelter we are also arguing before the board that we believe that our provision of sanctuary to mr pettis is part of our constitutionally protected freedom of religion because it is part of our religious mission elissa so i wonder if we through you um when we could ask the town manager if staff has in fact expressed any concerns about continuing to do this because as far as we've been presented we it's only been one individual just as it had been originally i understand the state likes to turn temporary and permanent but this is not as i as i have been familiar with it in the past and is also with our our seasonal shelter is that always has to get variances of various kinds too and we are not attempting to provide shelter for numerous people at numerous stages of sanctuary we are just trying to do one thing again but i know it says here a conditional on the approval of the town of amherst authorities but i just wanted to check in to see if there'd been any concerns expressed mr bachmann thank you so when this first came up the building commissioner actually went to boston and testified in favor of this um from the town's point of view this is not health or safety issue they the church has accommodated every request that the town has made from the health department from the building department and from the fire chief in fact the fire chief and the building commissioner and i have all written letters to the appeals board recommending that they continue with the existing situation instead of changing the situation so but it really is up to them i believe that we're prepared to support it as much as we can because from the town's inspectors point of view it all the health and life and safety things are in in compliance thank you evan this excuse me this isn't a question so much as just a comment for the council and to better contextualize this debate but i do believe that our representative who is in the room tonight has sponsored legislation to the massachusetts legislature to ensure that people who are seeking sanctuary and houses of worship will remain to be seen as state as temporary residents with regard to building code so perhaps this will be the last time that we have to do something like this representative dom would you like to speak to that please stand i didn't want to put you on the spot well if you didn't i was going to good evening everybody this is my first time in the room with the renovations and i'm very excited to see you and i'm really so pleased to be here to be able to listen to what's happening in this discussion and to support the first church i have introduced legislation that would in fact as councilmember ross says view people who are in houses of worship sinking sanctuary to avoid deportation as temporary residents for the purposes of the building code this is not only to protect the church in our community and lucio sanctuary in our community but if um if allowed to be viewed as permanent residents and then to have the subsequent extremely high prohibitive expense that might be incurred it could be viewed as also a disincentive to other houses of worship to provide sanctuary and so i was moved to do this um in speaking with the church and also because of this statewide implication for this quite frankly i think residents of sanctuary should be viewed as temporary just as the occupant of the white house should be viewed as temporary i don't speak for the church in that thank you mendy are there are there questions or comments yes andy just a few things one is that when the select board approved the sanctuary provisions that we had enacted after town meeting action i spoke very personally and strongly about why amherst needs to take a strong stance and as i've told reverend kemper before i've been particularly proud of having a church in our community that is put itself into this wholeheartedly as it has um the only reservation that i would have at all is that i'm a little bit wary of having the council urge um the executive action on some types of subjects but i think that this one is very appropriate i think that the resolution is well worded and uh so i will be pleased to vote yes pat um i want to say that the sanctuary at first church is supported by hundreds of people people of faith atheists agnostics it is um gay straight uh we're we're there because it me it's important to us to protect the people in our community and i think you're doing an incredible job thank you other other comments or questions okay then do i hear a motion to adopt the resolution in support of the first congregational church in amherst united church of christ request to maintain a temporary shelter as presented so andy so moved second pat any further questions all those in favor it's unanimous thank you very much for your good work very much all right we're going to move to general public comment at this time may i see a show of hands of people who would like to speak excuse me about an issue that is not on the agenda later and specifically agenda five a or the transportation update mr kuzner is this on thank you madam president as i communicated to the president of the council earlier there were a couple of items in addition to the item she just mentioned that i wanted to bring to your attention although my comments may or may not be related to that depending on what happens under that item i mean here at this part of the meeting to ask this legislature to act on a number of items that are effectively executive items but that were brought to the executive by the previous legislature known as town meeting and interestingly enough our local newspaper in an editorial this past week addressed one of them i was surprised to see that but one of the items that i believe is still an outstanding item is the appropriation of a modest amount of funds towards human services and i imagine many of you read the bulletin and i hope you've seen that and i know that there are people who had worked with me on the select board years ago on this issue and also worked for decades on the on town meeting to ensure that some funding for human services remains part of the town's budget so whether or not this legislature passes resolutions on items that are asking the executive to carry out the acts of previous legislatures i i seriously hope it will and in that matter and also matters that will come up further tonight i'm just going to make one other comment but given that the time is short i think i'll just hold it and look forward to talking with you a little bit later thank you thank you okay we're moving on to presentations and discussion mr. Bachmann you are going to introduce the board of licensed commissioners sure thank you so as you recall the board of licensed commissioners was appointed and confirmed by the council a few weeks ago and they have met a couple times they've been busy at work and i think there are three four of us here four of them here today and i'd like to just want you to make sure that you know who they are if they would like to come up and sort of introduce themselves please come forward Doug Slaughter Mary Ann Walker Paul Massacre Gaston de las Reyes and i understand you've met a couple times mr. Bachmann for their comment yeah so so i would like them to thank them for coming in they got off to a quick start they elected mr. Slaughter to serve as their chair and i think it was important for them to this is a commission that was created by the charter and to take over a lot of the responsibilities that had previously been held by the select board and they have been busy looking at the tasks in front of them doing some actual approving of one-day liquor licenses and getting to know each other in fact so their comments from the members of the commission Doug i have a few things i don't know if any of my colleagues do or not um just to reiterate yes we've met a couple of times we've we've uh at present decided on the second and fourth monday's at two o'clock is our meeting time we found that interfered least or less with holidays than first and third uh but uh so we've we've got a regular meeting time to date we've we've dealt with short-term liquor licenses but that's also the first form we've been reviewing there's some ideas you know you you get into these and look at the forms again for the first time for some of these folks not so much for me but but uh there are some things about them that you they beg a lot of questions and some of which is just climbing learning curve on what is allowed or not allowed by state law but also some of the intentions behind what what is on our particular forms for example there's a recommendation for use of paper cups actually requirement for use of paper cups uh and not bottles and cans so puts plastic in a bit of a no man's land so some of those kinds of things we are sort of rediscovering and looking back at policy if it exists certainly getting familiar with and reviewing appropriate state law but there are other areas besides just liquor that we want to take an interest in and a view of there's some new things in front of the legislature relative to short-term stay facilities i guess is one way to phrase it you know an airbnb type of facilities and what is allowable by us there's some existing state law around sunday alcohol service that we may look into a little bit and what we'll probably do on some of those types of things will be to review those in particular see what we think measures well or doesn't from the lens of the board of license commissioner right at memo to you guys to to take under consideration because oftentimes it would require action by the by the council so there's a few of those kind of things we're going to start fortunately we're not in the renewal season that happens later in the year so we have the opportunity to sort of deal with those things that are most immediate to us which are the short-term licenses and then we'll work our way through other licenses and and review the forms that we have the intention behind them and and make sure that we create a clear and coherent picture for both the applicants and for the public at large and and try to preserve and protect the the safety and and use by both public at large and give our businesses a clearer you know opportunity to perform what service they want to perform other members sure hi it's a pleasure to join a new commission with a fresh mandate right away we got two licenses that needed attending to and so in some ways we got writing to work and i look forward to having the chance as a commission and also with feedback from the town council to think about the policy questions that go into the engagement between people in town requesting licenses and when and when they shouldn't be approved and other ways that we can enhance the business and community environment in amherst okay i just wanted to say it's been an exciting couple of meetings i've been learning a lot it's also been great to work with the the fellow commission members and with mr bachelman i also wanted to acknowledge the staff rob mara the bushing building commissioner and jennifer moisten and steven mccarthy it's been excellent we've received excellent support from them thank you i'll just add to what's been said by saying it's been interesting work our first few meetings i'm not trying to call them exciting i think that will happen dispensaries or renewals or new licenses come up there will be plenty of excitement for other questions from the council andy yeah i guess uh this won't surprise mr slaughter and i bring up the topic but one of the things that happened with the select board when it was the licensing body was that through two of our members being part of the campus and community coalition to address problems of high-risk drinking which is a cooperative arrangement between us in the university it sensitized two of the five to a serious problem and gave us a linkage to the people of the university who've been working very hard on that subject and i don't know if you've given any consideration to whether you want to or think it appropriate to have a linkage to the campus and community coalition but i just did want to sort of acknowledge the importance that i felt we had to that linkage in sensitization that it gave to us i may um it's ironic to bring this up because literally last week at our after a meeting i was the manager swung by to see how the meeting went and and it had crossed my mind the day before exactly that whether or not a member of the license commission should or shouldn't potentially serve as as a liaison to the campus and community coalition i've not yet brought that up to my colleagues and we'll probably put it on this week's agenda but nonetheless i think that it's important that one or maybe more of the counselors also serve in that role but i think it would be beneficial to have someone from our our commission on that because we do deal in the more pretty day-to-day functional sort of aspects and and there are things we can put in and communicate to those who seek licenses or that sort of thing that can be helpful to the to the whole process i think so it has crossed our mind and hopefully we'll be able to participate okay other questions towards you will you this commission is i can't tell if this is okay will this commission deal with marijuana licenses well perhaps i think that's one of those topics that we have to bring up you know as to whether we should have a local license for marijuana but that should look like that would then probably come back to you guys in the form of a memo it's like here's what we think we've thought about this a lot that is definitely you know an area that we'll definitely have to take up in some form or another and then make a recommendation to the council as to what what we think would be a good idea for the town to do you know the sort of quick back the envelope would be yeah i think it's a smart idea but there's a lot of things that have to be considered so that's a personal opinion by the way other questions yes so i'm as new as you guys are so forgive me if this is an obvious question but is there a what is there a process on the website for people to just go and know you know they're starting a business like these are the licenses that this is the process we need to follow i would say there is to some extent i think we'll probably rework that pretty considerably over the next uh few months because that'll be part of what we do because it's shifting because before it was oh you applied a select board for this or that or the so as those things change and reshape relative to our function and relative to those things that go directly to the manager or whatever we'll we'll sort those out and obviously keep the website up to date as we as we work through that so i think that that's a long wind way of saying yes elissa speaking as a former license commissioner who has a lot of opinions about how the license commission worked and how it didn't and how it should work in the future which i really appreciate doug being willing to still take my calls associated with that um and so now you're on spot now you really have to or i'll squeal to them that you haven't so one of the things that is going to be interesting as this unfolds is that you notice how carefully he phrased we would discuss it a lot and send you a memo but it may or may not be something we actually get to decide about as a town council so there are some things we may get to decide about and i would argue that most things we will not and so it may be something that of a particular areas of particular interest to you to follow what they're doing on their webpages and when it comes to for example one of the things that i fought really hard for during the whole marijuana legislation situation was to have the possibility of a local licensing process it's completely separate from what happens with inspections in cba i didn't know what it would look like but i wanted to make sure we would have the option so we have the option legally we just don't know what it looks like but it will be up to them it will not be up to this body and i really appreciated something that was said earlier by the license commission associated and in fact phrased better than i'm going to about the one of the things that the select board did as the elected at large body is we tried to balance safety and economic development and in fact the abcc makes it really hard to say no to anybody i mean even if you think i don't know if these people know what they're doing it's actually pretty hard to say no they're you can actually get rejected for saying no by the abcc you cannot for example say that liquor store would be too close to that liquor store it would hurt the liquor store that we've all loved going to for 30 years so you can't have that that's not a good enough excuse for the abcc so sometimes it may seem like their hands are tied and that's because they are but we also appreciated that for example being very transparent as shallony pointed out when one of the few policies we did have written down was one and license did become available because somebody gave theirs up is to have a very transparent process so that everybody knew that one had been given up rather than it was first come first served kind of situation so i really appreciate that they'll be able to focus on that in a way that was separate from the select board being able to do that and so it's lucky that the town council doesn't have to do these things but at the same time they're not elected to talk about economic development and safety they're appointed to talk about that so we'll be sending some of our constituents off to them to talk to them about those issues because they won't necessarily be coming to us or we'll be referring questions to them so thank you very much for all you're doing to try and figure this out moving forward other comments or questions yes Doug i just want to add one other thing and and this gets into the sort of mechanics of the process there are certain things that require a public hearing capital P capital H and like i noted earlier we're currently scheduling ourselves for the second and fourth mondays at two o'clock in the afternoon that's not necessarily the optimum time for public input so it's entirely likely when we go to a public hearing circumstance we may pick a different time if we take up particularly i don't want to say controversial necessarily but issues of high public interest will probably you know likely try to be fairly transparent about that and try to have meetings that are opportunities for the public to come and talk to us in in regard to to those topics and express their opinions so we can get the full gathering of of ideas from people at different times and days so we'll try to be cognizant of that if we're not getting that done i certainly hope to hear from any of the counselors that feel like they're not seeing that kind of participatory process because we do want to give everybody a chance especially there's a lot of complex and and high interest things that we as a as a license board need to to take under our our purview and and to to review both because we're new and also because there are new things that are coming out through state law so we have to both of those sort of coming forward to us and so we want to do that in a way that allows community to kind of express their opinion and and get a good sense of the community and shape our policies and and bring things to you as necessary and give you the the opportunity to make good decisions great we want to thank you all for joining us in this adventure of creating new bodies with new jobs and we look forward to hearing from you in the future thank you thank you Doug you're just going to remain thank you one of the other responsibilities that Doug has continued on behalf of us at the town of Amherst is that of transportation continuing to represent us with the pvta and so forth and so we've asked him to talk about the issue of transportation and particularly from his perspective both regionally and within the town Doug thank you um excuse me so begin i'll i'll paint a little bit of the picture relative to pvta just to sort of give you a sense of how it functions primarily around how it acquires the money that it gets in order to do the work that it does for us and then how we fit within that structure so the pvta is a regional transit authority what's the that's the ta part of pvta separate from the mbta which is its own entity separate from the regional ones uh it is the largest of the of the regional transit authority second largest is the one in Worcester the pvta receives money but from the federal government the state government and from the local communities that participate within its its area of operation and because of all of those funding sources there are constraints placed on it about how it does some of its business so for example when you take federal money and you make changes to the things that you offer you have to do uh if you make significant changes to things you have to make uh you have to have a public hearing process relative to major impacts uh disproportionate impact and disparate impact the the way to think of those two is one is about a race ethnicity question one more about an economic question um and so if you have you know changes to routes that are significant uh or proposed changes to routes that are significant you're required to have a public hearing process to go through that uh and and receive feedback from the community relative to those changes um additionally um a large chunk of of revenue for the for the pvta comes from the state and in particular there's a there's a line on him in the budget the governor's budget um and then subsequent you know he sort of sets the bar in in january when he proposes he in this case because we have a male governor but uh when the governor sets the budget that's that starts the conversation um the difficulty of the last couple years relative to the governor's budget and therefore the conversations that happened all through the spring and summer uh is that he uh the proposed funding for regional transit authorities was decided less than what had been promised in a piece of legislation from let's say fiscal 2014 uh so in that either 14 or 15 there was a large transportation bill it it changed the funding to a more forward funding in other words uh they were going to appropriate money to be used in the fiscal year um which was a good thing um but it also um that legislation promised a certain regular increase to funding for the regional transit authorities uh and so the regional transit authorities went out and added service went through a hearing process to say well what what service do we need what's what's going to work for us they went through a whole process to do that addition of service uh they went negotiate new contracts most of them have you know contracts like we have in the town of about a three or four year period of time uh they negotiated those contracts with their drivers for certain pay increases in their schedule of of salaries and for the first two years uh the governor uh met the recommendations of that legislation and in the last two years he is not he's held ahead he's held that number steady now last year um through the work of the legislature uh they appropriated an additional chunk of money but it was contingent upon signing an agreement with them with mass out with the department transportation um and so it was contingent money fortunately for the pvta they were able to secure a fair number of funds from that and so the reductions in service relative to that uh level funding from the previous fiscal year were much much much less than than had been uh anticipated and so uh i was disappointed to find out when the when the governor released the budget this year that he basically level funded again which as we find out when we talk about schools and we talk about other things if you level fund it's essentially a cut because there are increases built in um cost of fuel is different labor costs are different etc all that being said one of the other complications that the pvt runs into as it puts its budget together is that by law we're required to have a balanced budget voted and approved by july one and as we know the legislature isn't always done with the budget by july one uh so that puts them in a bind but the other piece of the puzzle is that if if that budget is projected to have shortfall and therefore there's a reduction in service that needs to occur that that uh gets into the process of evaluating whether there's a disproportionate or disparate impact uh on the ridership there's a public hearing process that happens those things take a fair amount of time because once you have those hearings then you're required to then go back and uh essentially employ mitigating strategies and that's part of the reform of the federal monies to do that and so from the standpoint of you need a budget voted for july one you have to have a hearing process that is then fully you know and they need to go to all the communities so that hearing process alone takes three or four weeks to do uh it feedback process that information potentially make alterations to budget and then the advisory board which i've been sitting on the last several years has to then has to vote that budget have to approve the changes to the routes and the service not always fixed route we always think about that but there's ADA ridership and all that so it's a fairly complex process in a fairly long lead time so the other thing that sort of plays into this is when you want to change service particularly fixed route service the uh the decisions have to be made fairly early in order for the process with the drivers to to uh to be uh let me say this um back up and say this differently um the drivers by virtue of their contract based on seniority get to pick their routes that process happens so the changes happen for us in our area the northern half of the thing those changes happen basically at the end of august beginning of september the routes get picked by drivers end of july so you have to have the routes decided by kind of the middle of july or earlier partly so that they can print the schedules that go with you know the online part's easy but the printing of actual schedules has to happen the drivers have to bid their routes so if i'm a driver with a lot of seniority i get to pick my favorite routes somebody with less seniority doesn't pick their favorite routes so there's these huge series of timelines that have to be met relative to budget changes and that's the struggle of PBTA has been under over the last couple of years by virtue of funding that's been either not proposed or in a contingent sort of modality which is where it is this year as well um so that's part of the difficulty you run into and anytime we propose locally to do something to change the route some of those same sorts of pieces about desperate impact disproportionate impact factor in as well um one of the concerns uh you know town meeting i want to say last spring had appropriated an additional $53,000 in anticipation of trying to support the routes in that regard one of the difficulties and we we spoke at length to the to the to the administrator of uh of PBTA about sort of what possibilities are there um and so one of the things and i'm gonna try to find my actual email here um but one of the things that they that they wrote and i'll just quote from an email that she wrote is the anxiety is two fold concern from the passengers perspective and apprehension for the political ramifications created by increasing services on some routes and not others is is one piece and so um we don't want to create what what she terms as as false hope and and that is in other words to put service in place and then to take it back uh a few months later is is very deleterious to the to the uh building a trust with your ridership um so it makes it very very difficult and so we have to be very conscientious of that if we offer to support additional routes um so in years past we've we have done that we have we've outright uh funded routes as a town um so it's possible to do that um the in that circumstance we had a contract with the PBTA to offer that route and so at the time and the former government we had it's still true today the town manager was able to enter into a contract and therefore guarantee a service just like any other like a labor contract or anything else and so while that commits the town to a certain spending uh it's it's uh it is a negotiated contract and so it's a known amount and and so that is an option relative to one of the things we can do relative to providing additional support for route service in in town however if we don't do that in other words if we just want to offer additional funding to PBTA to support routes um those the trepidation on their part is often around well will there be continuing funding in subsequent years as a council you can only vote a given budget and this is part of how the PBTs and Vine begin with because the legislature passed you know essentially a resolution four years ago that said this would be the increase to to funding subsequent legislatures cannot be bound by that so there's no guarantee you will get that so that's the same concern that PBTA would have relative to us taking on any additional support to them is um can you or will you and what guarantees can you provide relative to that additional sources of funds so if we were to enter into a contract for a specific service that's a different circumstance than if we are trying to augment existing routes and so that's that's you know so things needless to say for all of those words things get complicated quickly is the short story um and it's not that we don't want to support uh you know transportation in our community we're very very strong supporters of it um I saw a recent proposal um to augment some routes in in and around the campus um the couple of things the 30 and the 31 were mentioned in particular um the questions that I would raise not to say I like or dislike it I haven't looked at it close enough to answer that question or to offer any suggestion relative to that but some of the questions are I don't fall in I don't think it falls into a category of creating a problem relative to the the title six analysis which is the disparate and disproportionate uh impact I don't think it crosses those thresholds however um I do think we want to look at in the whole of transportation uh because that funding's coming from our transportation enterprise fund in our whole of looking at the whole of transportation is this money well spent in other words how many what's the ridership of that particular component of that particular set of routes um my understanding anecdotally from from having conversations with the folks at UMass a few months ago so this may not be as true today I've not had a recent conversation with with them the reduction in service on the those 30 and 31 routes were not ones they had heard a lot about relative to some others that may have changed in the meantime I don't want to characterize it as something other than what I you know what I knew um so I think that the the idea that was put forward around 30 and 31 is an interesting one I think it's worth looking into but I do think we should take it in context of how does this uh fit into our whole transportation program in other words would our chunk of money be better spent for another bike rack of of a short term bike rental would that be a better higher leverage use of those dollars or not things those just things to consider um I will be the PVTA meets later this month I'll be reaching out to the folks at PVTA about ridership numbers on those particular routes just to get you guys some more information about those particular suggestions um and then we can you know sort of have that more in-depth conversation about is that the best way to leverage the money is that going to have the most impact that we want uh is that something that we want to uh you know look at a more contractual arrangement which guarantees support for it um and if that can be done I don't even know uh at this point um there's one other point I wanted to make now let's see if I can remember what it was um now I'm not remembering so we'll just pause and see let's pause and see if we have questions sure Pat yes I'm um wondering if the 31 bus uh goes to the survival center I believe is that accurate and if it does bike share is not gonna help with that route so um because it's costly uh for some people and so I'm curious so I will answer that question in just a moment because I'm actually gonna look up the pvta bus site because I don't recall right off the top of my head I want to say it might um that's bus 33 33 goes there I think 31 is just 31 um actually 31 goes all the way to cliffside if you if you fund it all the way I mean and it's full addition but I don't know if there's a stop I'm not seeing the actual um stop on sunroof whether or not it stops I think it might um are there other questions yes ebb and so I'm just trying to wrap my head around all of this um you mentioned uh federal state and local funding uh but the five colleges also contribute correct that's part of the that's part of the local fun part of the local how I'm sure this is more technical than you can discuss right now but is there some how is their contribution calculated very generally yeah I'll I'll actually paint and I wanted to do that maybe that was the other point I was going to make about sort of the local assessment sort of look for chart so if you were to go and look at the department of local services they have the you know estimates of the cherry sheet you shouldn't look at our estimated cherry sheet for transportation because it is incorrect they took our exact number from last year and doubled it so I think they either got information incorrectly from uh pvta or someone at the dls just didn't type it in right because if you look at any other communities within uh the the pvta area their assessments are flat so what happens is is our assessment that we pay um uh two pvta is is is held on the cherry sheet and essentially what it is is that the cherry sheet holds revenue and and assessments of things we owe that the state just sort of takes care of before they actually send us a check of money so that assessment however when you look at that for us is the entirety of what happens within our community once that happens we will be assessed that full amount and our full assessment for transportation relative to the you know pvta uh is over a million dollars the amount we as a town pay is far far less because we have arrangements and agreements with both five colleges saying can the university not the transit service part of the university but the actual university itself that uh lays out how that gets divvied up it's basically driven by whether a route is wholly theirs meaning the universities or uh or the five colleges or if it's a shared route and uh there's estimates made about ridership and then it's divvied up that way our actual assessment in total before before it gets sliced that way our assessment in total is based upon uh the number of miles driven within our community and so when pvta works through its numbers the amount that it assesses all the municipalities combined can only go up by two and a half percent that is fixed by state law chapter 168 if i remember correctly so that goes up two and a half percent but then they take that number and then they slice it based on how many miles are driven in your community so in communities that have say a construction project one year that increases the mileage that a particular route that's very busy their assessment can go up quite a bit in a year like that because their mileage went way up so that can happen to us but in general our assessment will go up about two and a half percent because the mileage doesn't change a lot there are variances relative to construction and that sort of thing when i know Hadley's changed pretty significantly when the bridge on let's say 47 was not able to take the bus that changed their assessment pretty considerably because the the routes were changed considerably around that but the long story short is that our assessed amount that you would see currently shows two million dollars in something which is absolutely not correct if you were to go to the DLS website but our assessment is then sliced between us and UMass and five colleges and we actually pay a fairly modest percentage of that of course i can't remember what we paid last year but it's a few hundred thousand dollars a couple hundred thousand maybe for our piece out of the million something like that so fairly modest amount but you know it's a pretty modest amount for the amount of service we as a community get shall any so one of the things that i had heard during my camp in in South Amherst was the bus routes getting dropped out during summertime so i was wondering if that happens throughout town or is it or you know certain routes that get knocked out and then what is the criteria for deciding which routes get dropped out and i think i heard you say you're going to work on it but i don't know if right now there's a process to determine or criteria to determine which routes so the so they typically i mean in a university town as we all know summer rolls around we're a lot smaller than we are during this time of year and as a result of that the ridership is less and so that they they have traditionally and always had decidedly reduced schedules during those time periods now there's certain routes that don't run at all during school vacations and summer and that's something because there just aren't riders to ride them and some of those routes are funded by there are some routes that are wholly funded by five colleges and university in in total for most routes there is a reduction service over the course of summer and it's it you know the the pvta regularly looks at their ridership and and looks at whether or not they need to adjust routes relative to ridership sometimes that's driven by funding questions so when we over the last couple of years when when the pvta is going had to go through the process of reviewing their routes and and that's worth saying how they were choosing to make cuts was to impact the fewest number of riders as possible but also you know those that fall on vacation times for schools tend to be priority targets because they carry so few riders it's not to say it's not incredibly difficult for those who do need those you know they certainly you know and and you get less of that in say the southern tier which is your chickapee holy of springfield area they get a lot less of that changes to the schedule during you know sort of summer and and spring break and that's really there are a few routes though that go to like west will stay in springfield technical community college that have some altered schedules in the summer time but they do look at that they have an operations person that's looking at those kinds of things all the time but that's part of you know part of what came out of the last couple years of the state budget was a task force on which the pvta administrator served along with about a dozen other folks to look at you know what are the right performance measures how do those regional transit authorities do their work and decide which routes and how they go about doing their business now pvta being as as large as it is has always done that kind of analysis some of the smaller ones unique to franklin county or berkshire or some of those that are much much smaller you know they don't have the resources but they also you know may not have the time you know that resource as well as a financial resource to do some of that kind of analysis and so so that's some of the push i think from from sort of the i think and i'm presuming this but my guess is from the governor's point of view is that we need to take a different approach to this as a whole which is part of why they formed a task force let's look at transportation in a much different way it's been a bit you know from an advisory board standpoint it's been a bit draconian but at the same time i understand the the need to go in and do that kind of analysis and what's the smart way to spend our money on transportation there are a few things that have come out of the task force relative to and this was a point that our the pvta administrator made is that one of the critical pieces that came out of the task force materials that they they put forward was to a change in mindset between uh an infrastructure related to vehicles and more about moving people so getting away from sort of a car you know truck viewpoint of the infrastructure in the transportation system to one of a more holistic one that involves potentially even walking but certainly rail bicycle public transportation private transportation all of those things so so that little shift is is it is an important one now whether it'll have a material effect as far as budgeting is concerned i don't know yet um the other thing i want to mention was that tomorrow and unfortunately i will not be able to go there is going to be a a luncheon with legislators and regional transit authority uh advisory board members and administrators tomorrow in boston where they're going to talk about the current budget situation so i think it's an opportunity for those regional transit authorities to talk about the sort of pain that they will suffer as a result of not getting supported or what their concerns are about uh you know having money tied with you know having strings attached as it were which is kind of how it's been the last year or two relative to oh you can get an additional three million dollars or what you know x million number of dollars but you have to perform this this this and this uh you know they can express those concerns the difficult the pvta itself has as far as the staff of pvta they cannot lobby the legislature that's not allowed um advisory board members can and obviously we can um i'm is still here or i would say hopefully she's going to the meeting tomorrow i cannot make it last year but i think that it is critical for for communities outside of the sort of 495 outside the mbta sort of service area to try to collectively impress upon those that are inside that area that it's it's a valuable investment to to support regional transit authorities Dorothy you had a question just to suggest that the way to evaluate a bus route is not by seeing how many people it affects because if you keep cutting it then people don't even use it in the first place and it just is in a death spiral which i think it is um is there any group that is connecting doing a survey of jobs that might for example the buses that are cut off at nine o'clock in the summer so if you had a job and you were using them to get home you have to quit the job if you can't find a ride is there any group that is doing an economic analysis of employees who have jobs that get out at certain times and then check the pool of people that might actually have those jobs to see if there were a stable bus service that they would use it so i would i would have to say that um i maybe oversimplified the you know ridership is a factor it's not the only factor that they look at when it we're doing those analysis for example um last year one of the suggested changes to bus routes was the when the last bus went in and around the Holyoke Mall at Ingleside and the conversation some of the feedback that they got through the public hearing process from from the management of the of the mall was to say we have people who cannot get home and so we'll have to close the mall an hour earlier if you have the bus stop an hour earlier and so there those kinds of factors you know they don't always know that at the beginning of the process and that's part of why there is a public hearing process so they can see and hear about those kinds of things because there's subtleties um you know and and certainly advisory board members have talked in uh to the and expressed opinion to the to the uh to the operations people have you reached out to some of the larger employers in like the Springfield area do you want to sponsor a bus um because you have a number of people who ride to get to work um certainly uh you know that with the with the MGM casino being open they actually just bought some loop a thing they call the loop a service uh in the in around the downtown Springfield area to get people to their casino but it has the ancillary effect of getting the workers to the to the casino or other places in downtown so so as economic impacts are important ones that are are evaluated there's sometimes tricky to do a evaluate but that's certainly the public hearing process helps with that because people become sick I can't get to work people make decisions about where to live based on a reliability of service and I think that's one of the things that's been difficult for me as advisory board member as you know the the uh the current administration in in the state house uh in the governor's mansion has has had strong pushes for things that are in the economic development realm and the housing realm and I think the third latest tool is the transportation realm and I think that's potentially why they're they're looking at it the way they are but I think that's that's the third piece of people can't get to and from work um it doesn't matter if the jobs exist or not they can't they can't get there Kathy do you have a question uh yeah I I was going to build it to go on what Dorothy was asking about the specific bus routes we're talking about so my understanding is it's the issues are evening hours and then also summer hours and I don't have any ability to say how many people might be affected but I know when I was campaigning several people mentioned they could no longer get to work in the morning and they weren't using their car you know it was a single car family so it was now uh more car dependent so I think one of the things Amherst has been looking at is uh sort of sustainability in terms of less reliance on cars if possible so there's a larger issue with these bus routes of if we could sustain service more people would ride them and be less car dependent so I don't you've said ride share versus buses I guess I'd like to think of them together because you know you don't necessarily get on a bike at seven in the morning when you're coming home at eight o'clock at night and ride a bike you know so it's like it's it's doing this so what I don't know is what would be the cost to us say we wanted to commit uh agree on you don't want to reopen a route or reopen hours if next year it's going to be cut so if we said we could do this this year next year and you know we'd look at what those budgets are the way we do some other capital spending would that's how much would it take to secure keeping some of these routes open and is there a way of assessing is that worth it so there is there are ways to assess that um and they have staffed that uh you know there there's the cost to just run the routes and in in some ways the the local UMass transit service which is independent but not wholly independent of the university but it is independent a provider of service to the pvta can give some estimates of what some of those things cost there are some additional costs from an administrative standpoint the the ability to ask the questions and say well you know what's the ridership like what's the cost associated with this that's worth saying that is you know part of what their operations people do um the struggle they're in at the moment is that they're looking for a new person in that role so that limits their ability to do it's not that they don't want to or can't they kind of can't because they don't have a person in place yet i don't believe i've not heard an announcement relative to that so they've they've uh they've had a little turnover in that role and responsibility um but certainly that looking at those those factors and and sort of you know what's the ridership like um ours uh and you know and and again through feedback from the from the public hearing process over the last couple of years they know uh as people have come forward and said hey this this impacts me financially because i can't get to my work or you know uh we're going to have to explore other options options relative to this um that has been recorded duly noted you know and and factored in as best they can when they think about strategies of mitigation and and uh analysis and and what's interesting to see you know sort of from a purely abstract point of view is what is initially proposed over the last two years they've had to make a considerable number of cuts and so what's initially proposed versus what ends up being the actual things that happen um and there's a pretty significant difference between those two pieces by virtue of the fact that they get feedback from the public at large and they want to hear from people the the hard part for the folks at PVTA is their hands are a bit tied so they come to the meeting and get not yelled at but people are less than happy with them uh and it's really not their fault it's just a it's an artifact of of the fact that that the money doesn't exist and so they're then having to make the best of a bunch of bad choices and they're trying to find out what the least unpleasant ones are for all involved and and uh you know the the the uh problems those kinds of reductions in service cause are real for people um you know if you've uh bought a home rented an apartment now you have a lease you've gotten a job uh whatever those kinds of things are um there are real and significant impacts when the bus service no longer serves you in a way that it did made it possible uh so it's the they are cognizant of and and trying to be appreciative of those kinds of things and and certainly trying to keep track of of various impacts as they look at those things and we we could get an estimate on if we if we were willing to say we're do a sequential year they could give us us an estimate yeah i mean i was looking back before the meeting tonight i was looking a little bit at some of the changes that were originally posed proposed last spring most of which didn't but uh you know the one of the metrics was number of bus tricks trips affected and so i was looking at um actually on the 3031 the sort of it was nights and weekends sort of late night and weekend and it was like 9 000 trips you think wow that's a lot of riders no it's not 9 000 people you know but when you look at say the same route where there was a reduction between 35 minutes between buses and an hour between buses that impacted like 150 000 trips so the it's sometimes hard to understand the numbers but i think we can get those kind of numbers and i think that's valuable very very valuable piece of information as we as we look at what are some options how i we want to uh support this in a way that's different and distinct from our just base assessment are there any other yes also so appreciating all of my former colleagues work on this over the years but even prior to when he was on the select board it's i don't want to depress anybody but it's nowhere near that simple we've tried having this conversation before where we said okay we know of four people who absolutely can't get to work so what would it cost to run that bus for those four people because that's really important to us that we run it like an extra hour or we run it longer into the summer or however we do that and it's been nearly impossible to get those numbers no matter who's staffing what from pvta in the past so it's really hard for them to take it down to that granular level so i don't deny that it would be marvelous idea but it the reason it hasn't been done is because we haven't been able to get it done before even with all the discussion each year about potential cuts well what would it cost well then what would happen it seems like you ought to just be able to get kind of a per writer thing and say well that'll cost us this much to do this and it'll cost us that much to do that but it never seems to be quite that simple so that's why it hasn't ever been brought to us that way so maybe as that group as the various groups keep working on how do we pull this apart is there a better way to do that so that amers could say yes we want to invest x amount more into buses and we just haven't been able to figure out a way to give that money to make that work right and i i think that assessing those numbers is a little more available than it has been in the past i think they have had to do it for one thing more often and i think therefore they've invested in some software tools to do that a little more often than they've had to in the past so i think that's changed a little bit so it's a little bit easier at the same time it's one of those things where you know you sort of change something here and it changes these other four things it's a bit of a guess it's you know it's very broad and round number so you know it it's sometimes you want to keep in mind that it's one of those things you want to keep monitoring after the fact because it it will change the dynamics of people's circumstances and and and choices people make about which bus to ride change significantly depending on availability but you know reliability is a really key piece for people especially around the economic aspect it's also you know even for students I mean if you talk to people at five colleges you know they're like we need to be able to get people we don't want we don't want the bus to stop seven times between you know UMass and Smith because somebody can't get on the bus get to a class and get back in time although if there's too many stops they end up missing too many it impacts their schedule in a way they can't even take the class at another college in the five colleges because the time involved in the transportation is just too great so they they like those express routes and they fund them but you know any changes to those have those kind of alternate effects on on on ridership and availability of you yes Andy I guess I need to just comment on a couple things for the benefit of my fellow counselors we fund our contribution to PVTA from the Transportation Enterprise Fund the source of funds from the Transportation Enterprise Fund is the parking revenue from all of the different aspects of parking revenue and so I have a couple of just additional observations without wanting to draw a conclusion because this is really for information one is that yes when I was campaigning as we all were for election last November I heard a lot about transportation buses but also heard a lot about parking system transportation and what we invest in trying to improve our transportation comes out of the Enterprise Fund also and that's a budgetary decision that I think that we need to be making with some care which is all I said I'm not drawing a conclusion I'm only pointing out the dilemma because the only alternative is to say well let's take it out of general taxation and put it into the general budget but we all know how tightly budgeted the general budget is and as I unfortunately use far too often we get into the question of what new to do from the general budget and I have to say something along the lines that I think one of our consultants said to us too which is which police officer position are you going to eliminate in order to do that I mean it's really that closely budgeted the other thing I wanted to share with you on the Transportation Enterprise Fund is that last year the select board voted to not recommend the amendment to add $3,000 to the Transportation Enterprise Fund expense in order to extend bus service during the summer months and the reason was that it was coming out of free cash in the Transportation Enterprise Fund which was $91,000 so it was committing more than half of the Enterprise Fund's free cash on a one-year basis. Town meeting of course made the decision that it made and had the right to do but these are complicated issues and I think that I really appreciate the discussion that we've been having because I think we need to keep having these discussions in order to understand the problem and address it appropriately as to what is the best transportation system for the town how is it supported how and what are its priorities and what means the most to our constituents. Are there other questions from the council? We did agree that there would be public comment at this are there people that would like to make public comment at this time Rob?  Madam Chair I enjoyed hearing from my colleague and friend Mr. Slaughter it was at length in your email to me you granted me two minutes to be honest there's no way I could address all the points that I agree with many of the things that Doug said in two minutes so give me some guidance because I'm not going to take two hours or however long we just heard but I would like to have enough time to summarize some thoughts about this because I appreciate some guidance before I get started. We really restrict public comment to one to three minutes I'll give you three. Okay well do my best first of all three weeks ago I came here and I grateful for the time you provided then I'm glad that you asked Doug to come in. The PVTA I think he's referring to the person the PVTA who resigned last year who was a UMass graduate and who worked with Glenn Barrington as a driver years ago and it was quite competent. I think UMass transit has all its staff intact and is doing a good job with that. The reason I'm back is because a few days ago I shared with you a very specific proposal which I think should have been taken up back on May 15th 2018 I did present it back then it wasn't addressed and here we are on March 4th 2019 trying to do at least the minimum to restore one of a pair of core routes within Amherst that serve not only the university they do pass through the university but which serve two communities which are home to many people who live in affordable or even deeply affordable housing these are the routes 30 and 31 they also go north to Puffton Village which is semi-affordable for many people and I'm going to tell you how many people use those routes the proposal is to just maintain the level of service that we had last summer the evening service last summer okay this summer those routes would lose their last trips of the day and because of a slight complication with Route 31 which normally goes up to Sunderland I've worked with the UMass transit director Glenn Barrington to make sure that there's a route engineer that can stay entirely within the town of Amherst so that there's no concern about expanding towns funds whatever their source I think they rightly do come from parking revenue parking fines and fees during July and August and also June they're typically between 30 and 40 thousand trips taken on those routes during those months and a more meaningful number is the passengers per service hour and what's interesting is that on those routes even in the summer that between 40 and 50 passengers per service hour on each of those routes that means that we're talking about 40 to 50 people that are going to be impacted potentially by having the last bus of the day cut regardless of Councilor Pam's good comment that people may lose their ability to get home from work in the evening and there are many people who work at restaurants and other places until after 9 p.m. these buses are going to stop running by 9 p.m. the proposal that was before you as a potential proposal and I think it needs to be addressed as quickly as possible if we're going to not have people surprised come may 10th or so which is when this reduced service comes into effect the proposal was simply to essentially create a additional trip at the end of the day on route 30 to belcher town road not going into belcher town as the old summer trip went but just that far and then to return to puffed in village not go on to sunderland and then do the last run of the day to east hadley road area and glenn barrington who is a very knowledgeable person i think the most knowledgeable person in the entire pvta provider ship system it's a he's the umass transit director not only quickly worked out a potential schedule for that particular restoration of service but also gave a quick estimate and it's a fraction of the 53,000 that had been appropriated by our legislature last spring in which the executive had the full authority to make use of during the last 10 and a half months and unfortunately nothing has happened yet that's only one of many things that could could be done or could have been done to restore just the minimum amount of service so as someone who has some experience on transit planning i've brought this before you and uh i'm happy to share with those you want to analyze these fairly detailed passenger accounts that i did get just before coming here about five p.m this afternoon and again i'm urging since i heard mr slaughter say this i'm grateful to that that this is a restoration that would not require doesn't expect it requiring uh a full title six analysis full set of hearings it's restoration of service that existed before as i shared with you in an earlier message and which i think is the first step in keeping the year-round residents of the town able to use transit to get to and from whatever they're doing work school etc i i made some notes but i'm not going to even address them but i'm just going to say that i i really think this is something we need to act on now if we don't it's a it's an extreme disservice to a significant part of our population and i've basically brought this to you i'd hope that in a future meeting in the near near future the two steps that i recommended to you which again seem to make sense to mr slaughter at least be debated and considered i'd love to be part of that discussion thank you thank you for your comment is there any further comment on this particular item at this time okay dug yes turn on the microphone um uh if i hadn't made clear i'm fully happy to look into the proposed suggestions that mr kester's made i'm interested in those for sure and certainly we'll reach out to pvta relative to what it would take uh for us to potentially at that service and and sort of think about those more complicated factors of contract and year after year and that's what i'll ask those questions as well um in addition to just the simple sort of this summer question so i'll ask all of those kinds of things and try to get some answers back to you as soon as i can thank you we appreciate that um i'm going to suggest we take a five minute break okay um i just want to mention again that at the request of the people who have proposed uh the town meeting advisory committee we have moved we will be moving this item to another evening they were not able to um have the people they needed here for that discussion um the next item on our agenda six b is the community resource committee charge and let me just um preface this by saying i want to make sure we have a robust conversation about the charge itself at the end of that we will need however to refer this to the governance organization and legislative committee just as a matter of practice and then but it that is not around the substance as it is around format so um there are six people who have been working hard on this um committee charge and i am going to just uh let them decide uh who's going to speak to the charge well steve was going to read the charge okay steve yeah i just want to preface it briefly uh that was the charge the wording of the the wording of the charge had one omission uh that was first put up on our site uh it's correct now if somebody doesn't have the correct version i have copies of it here um and so you may margaret it was provided in our packets tonight correctly yes so i think i'm going to start on this so please do it was a pleasure to work with the group of six so at our first meeting we decided that we'd have six co-chairs and actually each person kind of rotated taking leadership at the second meeting we elected dorthy as our as our the those co-chairs that were there elected dorthy as our as our um first among equals co-chair so she's going to give the actual report so um i will read the actual charge so um started at the beginning we made a decision that dorthy will explain in the report to propose the name community resources committee sustaining committee of the council appointing authority as a town council president we recommend five counselors one year appointments and the uh so that's also said in the composition the quorum is three counselors the purpose is to advise the council on matters related to the economic vitality and quality of life and amorous in furtherance of this purpose the committee shall focus on the following areas among others planning zoning land use and the master plan community and economic development including art and culture housing mix housing affordability and neighborhoods the charge the action of the committee shall include a review and make recommendations to the council on matters refer to the committee regarding proposed or potential changes to planning zoning or land use policies proposed policies related to the public ways and public resources proposed policies regarding housing and homelessness policies regarding the relationship between the town and the amherst institutions of higher education proposed updates to the master plan proposed measures to support the local economy of amherst then be collaborate and or coordinate with other town committees or departments as appropriate and then see upon request by the council the committee may study and consider other changes affecting community resources sustainability and economic development the committee may offer policy and other recommendations within its purview for council discussion and consideration okay and then dorsey i guess you're next um do you want me to read the report now you don't need to read it is there any other specific highlights however well specific highlights are that we made the name change because we felt that there needed to be a multi-member town committee on economic development which would have non-counselors at least a certain number of them who are experts in various aspects of the business and economic development of the town that this committee would consider economic development where it intersected with housing residences and the quality of life and also in the concept interest in arts and culture some of that in fact also relates to economic development but the concept was that if the quality of life in the town was very positive that this would be a place where people would want to start businesses and to have businesses and in fact it would increase the economic vitality of the town another thing that we discussed was particularly after town manager discussed public ways which is a very complex subject and I think he has a motion on that today that we would this committee was not seeking to in any way take over any of those functions which the town does it has a very complex and involve many departments but if there were changes in policy or things that needed to be considered from that point of view the committee would be interested in doing that the focus on housing is very important housing of all kinds including affordable housing and things in a proper mix so this is a place where housing neighborhoods economic development arts and culture public ways and town resources would come together with and then we would also pay some attention to but not be in charge of just be respond to the whole question of updating the bylaws the zoning bylaw and the master plan that would be done I assume by larger committees but that we would be one of the committees that looked at and thought about those things in terms of the rest of the charge of the committee so there are four other members of this committee kathy shallony george and pat do any of you at this time have any comments that you'd like to add just just a quick statement um we we actually looked across a bunch of towns to see what are other towns doing and this is not an uncommon way of grouping um a jurist sometimes called a jurisdiction rather than purpose but it's a way for the whole council to say this requires more discussion we're referring it to a committee um and so we were looking at the scope in other towns for some guidance on how they defined it so we we were trying to make it clear that this would still be the council making a decision this requires more decision and referring it rather than it's coming from below it's a service function to the council and so these ideas for changes might come from outside the council the planning board might be sending us something but it would be a way that the more intense discussion could be focused and i just want to build on what dorothy said this last minute change to community resources committee was because if there were a committee of the town called economic development we thought it'd be really confusing to have a committee of the council with the same name so we just picked a broader name to avoid future confusion okay any other comments from members of the committee shelony yeah i just want to emphasize what kathy just said about the economic development committee um for the town um in making sure that down the road that there is such a committee because that was my main interested interest in this community resource no what is it community resource whatever committee is how do we revitalize our economy within the context of ensuring the quality of services within the our commitment to our environment to the people and equity so it seems like this is a broader committee that that's going to look at the different aspects without focusing on just economic and the idea was to then have a committee of the town to um then focus on economic development pat or george any comments okay all right let's open this up for general discussion of the council yes i had two questions the one the one that i realized before i got here was in item c where it says upon request by the council i'm really not trying to reword smith this because i know you guys worked really hard to get it to this point i'm just trying to make sure i'm clear so there are two sentences in c and am i supposed to perceive those as having an and or is there actually a d that says without referral the committee may offer policy and other recommendations because i'm trying to understand everything up until then is upon request of the council when it's been referred by the council but then that one sentence says may offer policy and i presume that's in response to a referral by the council but i would just want to be sure that we're on the same page okay is there anybody in the group that wants to respond to that didn't you write that let's see steve you get to respond that's an excellent point and they need to take it under a take it under advisement um because we we did discuss mainly that we saw the operation as being referral that the council would be referring ideas to the to the committee but we also left open the possibility that the reverse happens that the committee can't say we think it's important that we study blank but in both cases the council would be consulted but we wanted to leave open this opportunity that this committee itself it wouldn't completely be reactive that it could be proposing you know proposing things within this charge things within this mission yes if i could then follow up i would not object to that then being split into c and d i just don't want it to stay within c if that's if that's the factual situation and then the other quick question i had was based on something i may have misunderstood that was being stated by another counselor when i walked in is the planning board would not be sending anything straight to this committee right the planning board or would they wouldn't the planning board be sending things to the council and then we'd be referring or what's the thought behind that that's yes kathy the thought was it comes to the full council and then to the extent it's needs a lot more conversation or it's a 13 person conversation i mean i think that's a decision that gets made at the council level okay other questions clarifications yes india so i i had a question about a everything but the fourth bullet point has the word proposed in front of it and so i was curious whether there was a specific decision to not put proposed in front of the policies regarding the relationship between the town and amherst institution of higher education or was it accidentally left out i'm just curious why that one's missing proposed i believed it was accidentally left out i think it was actually somewhere between accidental and mindful oh i stand corrected i wasn't at the second meeting i think we got tired of using the word proposed well so i'm just gonna ask a question if we put the word proposed in there does that mean we can't consider and discuss things that exist right now the status quo you could say proposed and or revisions to existing policies okay she's not looking i'm can i yes i wonder if that proposed or potential or proposed i mean that argument could be made for almost every bullet point in a not to be a wordsmith either but if we're looking at wanting this committee to look not only at things brought to it but potentially current policies we might want to look at a rewording of all of those or somehow get the proposed and current somewhere in there maybe in the statement before the bullet points or something okay i agree all right Darcy i have made this proposal before but i just wanted to repeat my suggestion my earlier suggestion that we add the concept of sustainability in the perp and just to reference the the master plan uh it says sustainability is a primary integrating goal of the amorce community and this master plan a broadly accepted definition of sustainability appears in our common future a report commissioned by the united nations sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs and then it says the goal of sustainability underlies each of the key directions for amorce master plan so i believe that um the town is going to be going through a process over the next few years you know through our climate committee and in other ways of really starting to wrap our heads around integrating sustainability into every single thing we do and so this committee in particular uh really needs to have that in the purpose so if we could just even just take one of those sentences from the master plan and just put it in there a phrase i have a suggestion which i would be glad to put forward as an amendment to the motion to adopt this i don't know are we adopting this tonight um no not necessarily we'll decide that okay i'll just suggest that um that we could in the sentence um purpose to advise the council on matters related to the economic vitality and quality of life in amherst and the goal of sustainability comma a primary integrating goal of the amorce community and of the town master plan which is pretty much exactly what the master plan says so that would just be having it pertain to all of these issues around amorce resources would you complete would you read back to me and the goal of sustainability comma a primary integrating goal of the amorce community and of the town master plan which is just a just i had to change some tenses in there a little bit to fit into the sentence but it's the same wording as in the master plan margaret do you have that right okay so we've kind of skipped around so far the one suggestion has been made in the purpose and it's after the word words life in amherst and the goal of sustainability a primary integrating goal of the town of the amorce community and of the town master plan of the amorce community i guess we could just say and sustainability which is a primary integrating goal of the amorce community rather than repeating goal twice okay margaret did you get that quality of life in amherst and sustainability comma which is a primary integrating goal of the amorce community and of the town master plan pat one i agree that we need to bring back the word sustainability because we're talking about sustainable economic development blah blah blah but i'm also feeling like the thing that darcy just proposed is could be simply stated if we if the purpose was using the master plan as a larger frame of reference to advise the council on matters of and i think that would be easier because the master plan has within it all the areas that this committee would be looking at and and this committee would be able to be working um in collaboration with a lot of the other committees in town to really understand the impact more holistically so i think we need to simplify this um and and add sustainability but not in the frame that you suggested it dorthy i will recommend darcy's words because the master plan um is it one of the things that we're going to be examining it's an updating so i think that you put the emphasis you put on it pat it might end up making it a bit of a straight jacket but darcy's words make it clear that the goals of the master plan not necessarily the every specific thing in it but the overall goals are something that should be emphasized including sustainability yes i feel like when we're using the master plan as a larger frame we're talking about the goals of the master plan so i don't feel like it's a straight jacket because we've all acknowledged that the master plan has to be updated we have to find a way to really collaborate on definitions so we all mean the same thing when it's written down and we're not interpreting it in different ways i think it becomes critically important that there be a way to look at something that the planning board has decided and and to see whether it fits with the master plan another aspect of this committee really is to look at things more holistically and see the impact in other areas and that's the other reason to use the frame of the master plan other other comments yandy so a little different because i'm not on sustainability but i am on the master plan master plan has very specific reference in our charter as to what the roles are of this body and other bodies in regard to the master plan so i would suggest that if we refer this to another committee or or if we decide this as a group consider something in that bullet instead of proposed updates to the master plan this proposed actions regarding the master plan in accordance with Charter section 9.8 okay other comments elissa two quick ones and i'm sorry if i missed you discussing this earlier under charge where it says action shall i would think that would be may in this case because we're not expecting that you necessarily have to report back on every one of these like in the next 20 days specifically we're charged actions of the committee shall it should be actions of the committee may okay and i'm assuming that you will add proposed in front of that fourth bullet point or some other word out of the thesaurus um the other question i had again sorry if you covered this is under composition i don't know why you would list the quorum there's no reason to list a quorum unless it's something different than simple unless suddenly governance has decided we have to list quorum in every single charge that i'll just i that was originally in there when we still had non-voting residents on it so at the club we just didn't get it out to say yeah okay thank you other comments george one of the things that we worked hard on was to come up with a very clear and simple statement of the purpose of this body and i personally find this statement to be good as it stands um we're concerned with matters related to the economic fatality and quality of life of amherst so i would prefer to keep it as it is i'm sorry i did not hear that last i would prefer to keep it as it is okay are there other observations and comments so we have two options here as i see it we have a couple options we could try to wordsmith this here tonight which i think is tough we could refer this back to the ad hoc committee to take our suggestions and come back again and um to me in many ways that seems like the best option at this point and we could suggest that not only do we refer it back to them but upon their work on that it would either come back to the council or it would go directly to the gol yes mr bachelman did you have some i was looking for your help here you know i just i just bought into one of evan's decision trees i mean we could go this way or that way okay yes kathy i just have a quick comment on netlin i think what i heard um with except for two places of a substantive issue they were very good suggestions on the way to make the wording clear you know splitting there wasn't any disagreement on that so there's a adding a clause or not adding a clause to the purpose right um and then changing the wording on andy's unactions but so i'm just questioning whether you want to send it back to a committee or figure out george's is it good except for this jinkering i don't really care i mean we can spend another couple hours discussing it but we actually discussed these issues in the committee um me and either way i'm just saying that i think there's one more substantive thing here most of the others are eliz is separating it into two sentences changing a word from shall to may you know right that's just i mean yes uh mandy john so in the past the council has had a policy i know we're new but the last couple charges that have come through here have been referred to go well for one final look for clarity consistency and action ability that um review has not taken place with this charge yet and so i as chair of the gol committee i would hesitate to act on this charge tonight without it going through the gol per our previous policies of sending these off for that final review there was no intention to not do that the question is whether or not we want to try to make substantive changes or we feel it's ready with the discussion here to just go to gol and i believe that what kathy has pointed out is the two substantive changes are really the one about whether or not sustainability gets added into the first area under purpose and the second one is it may not be a substantive and he was i think suggesting it's proposed actions regarding to the master plan in section just a cross reference to so instead of the oh i think that was a rewording of that bullet yeah that's that's a clarity issue as far as i can see yes out evan so it seems like there are some very minor changes that that need to be made right um before this goes to gol um but i think one of the options you laid out and i want to speak in favor of that option would be for us to uh essentially vote to refer this back to the ad hoc committee to make those final charges um but with the understanding that the ad hoc committee can then forward it directly to gol without it having to come back to the council um granted the next if the next gol meeting where it could be discussed would be march 27th i believe so there is a council no we're not going to discuss it wednesday yeah once it's on the agenda for wednesday if it's here right but if it still has to go back to the ad hoc committee they have to post a meeting um so likely not so there is a council meeting in between now and the time that we would likely pull it up but i don't think it needs to be brought back to the council to go to gol if if we can make a motion that just says once the ad hoc committee is done just send it directly to gol steve so i can speak for all the other members of the ad hoc committee but i think to a certain degree we thought that we've done our job and that we put the ball in play and now it's up to town council to figure out what how it wants to dispose of this so i would sorry fellow fellow ad hoc fellow and fellow ad hoc committee members but i would urge us not to refer it back to the ad hoc committee but to take it to one of the either take a vote on this tonight or to take it to one of the standing committees up to one of the it needs to gol or to vote on it tonight it needs to go to gol but i would urge us not to to um our job was to put the ball in play which we've done all right dorothy i want to second george's comment we were making had many other sentences and they were all good and meaningful and he was a strong voice for a simple clear charge and we all got rid of some of our favorite things and i think there's something to be said for that and i'm kind of curious to know about the rest of the council's opinion on that and in reference to sustainability it is mentioned in c and to consider other issues affecting community resources sustainability and economic development so it is there it's not in the same place of primacy that you're recommending but i there's a lot to be said for a very clear simple understandable charge further comment indy joe so i'll i'll take up dorothy's recommendation and respond i liked the general um succinctness of what the six of you came up with um so i would second george's thinking on the purpose statement show me i just have a clarifying question for the town council so i think putting sustainability in the two different places has a very different meaning the first one as darsie recommended was saying that this is kind of the framework and starting to shift our culture towards making integrating uh all our decisions with or at least intentionally investigating what would be the most sustainable option within this decision and then putting it in c is that we will consider sustainability initiatives or issues so i think as a town council we want to maybe decide you know how important and where does this issue stand okay so i we're not adopting the entire charge tonight i want to be very clear but if there is a sentiment that we want to vote on this issue of that first sentence and adding then let me have a motion to that and then we'll take it to a vote so dorothy you want to put it in a formal motion darsie i'm sorry darsie sorry i apologize oh okay i move that we add after the words um quality of life in amherst the following words and sustainability which is a primary integrating goal of the amherst community and of the town master plan is there a second a listen is a second any further conversation all of those in favor of adding that phrase let's read it again so the full sentence would read the full sentence would read to advise the council on matters relating to the economic vitality and quality of life in amherst and sustainability which is a primary integrating goal of the amherst community and of the town master plan okay it's been motions been made and seconded any further conversation all those in favor of adding that phrase please raise your hand and when we say we're in favor could we it's i mean just the two i mean the favor means that we are going to add that phrase what i mean is can we just tweak it to make sense but i mean is the it is i want to include it in that but it just should not read awkward it feels it's a little awkward right now but i would like to include that in the all right all those in favor yes so are we doing what shallony said that if we're approving this in principle to be edited yes that's fine then when it goes to the committee if they the gl committee they can tweak it for understanding okay all those in favor one two okay opposed wait wait wait all yeah okay raise my hand all those in favor of adding this phrase at the end of that sentence all those opposed abstain what did we have pat the vote was six six in favor six opposed one abstention so that motion fails okay any other comments yes evin so my understanding is what we're doing right now is finalizing the charge to go to gol correct no we're finalizing the we all we did was deal with the one issue that had more substance to it it's now going to gol we're going to have a motion for that and once it comes back from gol we will have a motion to adopt the charge so two other things that came up in our discussion was one the idea for proposed being in front of policies and two was the other one of splitting c into two different things c and d i would i would argue that those are substantive and should be handled before it goes to gol all right there was any disagreement on that i mean we could just quickly do those okay changes and send it back to you with those word changes in it yeah okay so let's deal with the one that's under a referring to this fourth bullet that has to deal with policies do i hear a motion yes mandy joe i moved to in the fourth bullet point of a add the word proposed policies second discussion is there a second okay it's it's been made and seconded by evin yes discussion been in her previous speaking on this topic mandy joe said proposed and current perhaps to be added to all of them okay to all of the bullets okay do i mandy joe so it was your motion someone else had suggested that i don't have a problem with that i had suggested maybe figuring out a better wording but that can be done in gol okay so proposed and current proposed was the motion and seconded yes if we're gonna write proposed and current why even have either of those there's no third option might as well just open each bullet changes to planning and zoning policies related policies regarding all right i think i think we're getting into okay i this is one reason why i did not feel this was a substantive change i felt this is something that gol can deal with okay so we're gonna withdraw the motion yes thank you there was a fourth fourth one our third one which was to separate c and c and d may i hear the motion george and seconded by pat any further conversation on that all those in favor opposed no great this and now i have would like to hear a motion to refer this oh i'm sorry under proposed updates to the master plan andy would you please read the motion the way you'd like it proposed actions regarding the master plan in accordance with charter section nine point eight that's a motion is there a second i'm sorry second pat any further conversation so it would say proposed andy do you want to read that again again it's it's on the bullet right now that reads first proposed updates yes it's under a and it's where it's proposed updates to the master plan and changing to proposed actions regarding the master plan in accordance with charter section nine point eight okay it's been motion's been made in seconded any further conversation all those in favor opposed no it's a unanimous are there any other any other changes that we see that we need to vote on okay then i'd like to have a motion to refer this to the to refer the charge of the committee on community resources community resources committee excuse me to the governance organization and legislative committee as presented or as amended i move that we do that okay is there a second kathy any further conversation all those in favor it's a the motion is to refer the charge of the committee on community resources to the governance organization and the legislative committee as we have amended it okay okay all those in favor all right that's unanimous um motion was made seconded now has the ad hoc committee approved all year minutes person who didn't respond yet so i'll have to but you have five people who have yes okay then you don't you have approved minutes okay okay okay it's unanimous those the committee has approved its minutes and okay uh you's looking at me a little strangely question margaret my understanding is that the committee needs to actually vote to approve elissa i don't know why that's true we don't have rules that say we have to vote to approve minutes minutes can be approved any number of ways under mass law and so since we haven't set rules that say that you can assign one person to do it you can say it's by consensus you can vote to do it but obviously if you're going to vote to do it you have to post a meeting to do it so i'm don't see we don't have that rule can i ask for a vote of that committee in this meeting clarification they're not posted they are not posted okay i'm going to suggest that at the next time that the council meets that that group post a meeting will call that meeting you can vote on your minutes and then we'll vote to dissolve we did vote the four of us who met on the first set of minutes on the first set but the second set and the second set all four people approved them of the four who were there oh so if you needed a majority vote so they approved the minutes at the meeting yeah okay then in that case um i would like a motion to dissolve the community and economic development committee ad hoc second motion's been made seconded all those in favor thank you excellent um can i make a very brief comment yes i just want to say i really enjoyed this and i think that the council can do something quickly when we put our mind to it and we did it i think we did a good job thank you thank you all six of you all co-chairs okay and the council all right we're moving on to the calendar for the reacheral school budget and i'm going to call on andy to introduce this topic okay it's it's hard to do this without just touching on the whole report of the finance committee there are really four documents that you have that i'll touch touch in some way on this one being the finance committee report that stated february 27 one is a memo that i sent to you march that's dated march first the calendar which you received today which sets forth dates and then of course the draft motions which encompass proposed language to deal with all of the recommendations of the committee just to touch on the report really quickly because it's i'm going to really do mostly about the school budget is that we have been working as indicated in part two on the questions of the capital projects and the schools in particular and we're hoping that there will be a report on the 12th of the month if not the succeeding meeting from Sean Mangano responding to questions that are outlined there but the major issue that we're confronting is something that i've brought to the attention of the committee several times before so i'm not going to go into it in great detail because it's also explained in both of those memorandums that you have that if we don't consider the budget separately we will for the regional schools the other three towns will have acted on the budget and if they adopted the budget they will be adopting a budget that's bounding on Amherst without any action out of the council and so that we think that it is important to exercise the discretion that's allowed us in the charter to separately consider the regional school budget from the rest of the budget so that we can take up the budget as a council at a time that's more commenced or with the town meetings of the other three towns so that is the first and probably the most important action for tonight then there are two other subsidiary actions that are proposed that flow from it one is to have the have have a referral automatic in other words vote now in advance of getting the referral of the budget from the regional school committee to the council and just have a motion today or in our next meeting that upon receipt it is automatically referred to the finance committee so that the finance committee can start to work on it because it doesn't have a whole lot of time to go through the process of conducting the hearing that is required and have the consideration that has to be there and then the third which is a separate action which i can talk about it later after we've addressed the other points if you or now as the president wishes which is to schedule an additional finance committee meeting for town council excuse me town council meeting for the 29th of april i believe is the date in order to consider the budget as opposed to considering it on the 22nd okay are there any questions specifically about these issues okay then i am going yes i'm sorry mendi joe my only one is i didn't see this calendar to have a vote on the um i always forget what it's called the regional assessment thank you the assessment portion is that going to be done at the same time we do the regional budget or the the regular budget or is it something that comes up whenever it's ready from the region andy uh the way that the process works is that the regional school committee will recommend a budget that includes an assessment method for the year and it is a single recommendation and of course it's structured so that it goes to all four communities at the same time since the other three communities are acting on it as part of their town meeting um it is frequent that it is split into two or um i um articles and uh but it is uh based upon one submission um the finance committee's interpretation is is that it's all a part of the same budget action and whether the council ultimately is dealing with it as one motion or two is a matter to be that can be determined later yes evan so i just want to make sure i'm clear on everything that's being proposed so the uh the first motion makes sense the second motion um is basically to say that once the regional school committee approves the budget it will automatically go to finance committee not having to wait for referral at our march 18th meeting that's correct and the uh the third one the the rationale behind that is that uh the uh finance committee doesn't believe it would have enough time between march 12th and april 22nd to actually bring a recommendation to the council by the april 22nd meeting andy you want to speak to that i will speak to it and then i'll ask other members of the committee to speak to it too because i feel um a little bit awkward about this particular point and the um i will be away on the 22nd my ability to participate remotely in that meeting is questionable because of the circumstances of my absence and so the question that was before the finance committee was whether it was comfortable um having the regional budget considered here at the council in my absence i am perfectly fine with that decision the committee um made a determination that their recommendation was otherwise and um that's where it is and which one of the four of us would like to echo that one Kathy the let me just say that the rest of the finance committee feels that given andy's knowledge of the regional school budget and the process of assessment uh is critical for the councils to understand this as they take their vote we want him to be here Evan so i understand that um so and then the reasoning behind not just trying to take it up at the may 6th meeting which would still be before one of the four towns brings it up is that if it's not done in that meeting then we have the flex so april 29th allows us the flexibility to push it back that is correct understanding right okay anything else any other questions about the timeline or so i'm going to begin the motions all right um i'm going to make a motion that in accordance with section 5.5 c of the amherst home rule charter i moved separately consider an act on the amherst pelham regional school district budget due to the agreement with the three other towns in the regional school district and that in compliance with section 5.5 a and 5.5 b of the amherst home rule charter adopts the schedule as outlined in the memo from the finance committee chair andy steinberg dated march 1st 2019 regarding the prose schedule for regional school district budget is there a second mandy joe is the second for the discussion on that all those in favor oops roll call no that's not the one that needs the roll call this one is loud without a roll call am i correct second one is noted to require a roll call i'm looking to you mandy joe because of the charter hello it won't hurt to do a roll let's do roll call okay the town clerk will read the names councilor ball mill councillor brewer yes councillor de angeles yes councillor dumond yes councillor greesmer yes councillor hannacky yes councillor pamm yes councillor ross yes councillor ryan yes councillor shane yes councillor schreiber yes councillor steinberg yes councillor swartz yes it's unanimous okay second motion i move in court in accordance with section 5.5 a of the amherst home rule charter i move to refer the budget recommended by the regional school district for fiscal year 2020 to the council's finance committee upon receipt by the town council is there a second pat was a second roll is there any further conversation okay then roll call vo