ent process period okay andy steinberg yes um i guess that i wanted to understand what the proposal was regarding the bullet at the top of page three that begins the need for additional market rate housing was the proposal to take out the first sentence only or the entire bullet the proposal was to take out the entire bullet okay then i want to just point out that i would suggest not taking out the last two sentences because they they deal with a different subject matter the first has to do with reference to the housing market study and market rate housing and that this is not housing that fits into that category the second two sentences have to do with the location of this um its consistency with the master plan and its proximity to public transportation retail services in the library if they are different subject matter um i think the objection to the first sentence made sense but i would suggest not removing the rest of the bullet um mandy joe you were the one that's fine with me i think i was really focusing on the first sentence and didn't catch the other two are there any other changes to the letter okay so we come to the very first sentence and the first sentence says that we would voted today would people i i really need to get a sense of the council whether or not you want to vote today in support of this project or you want me to modify this and just send the letter can you tell me what the alternative wording would be would it be the council authorized you to send a letter or what does it say i mean it would be very similar to the letter that's attached which is the letter that we sent to the um the letter we sent to chd and it says thank you for the opportunity to provide comments on the application for project eligibility blah blah blah the project is seeking a comprehensive permit some of the words have become basically a statement of what we're why we're sending the letter it's on the second it's the attached letter to the other one sure um i think it's later yes keep going keep going right here so it would be more like that openings uh sentence and then i blended it in does that answer your question kathy it does answer my question because somehow it feels very odd for me to vote on a letter um as you know as a statement um it's a clear way for me to to me just to say why we're sending this um okay although i guess we're not thanking zba for the opportunity to provide public comment but whatever whatever that is garthy you have your hand up i want to say that i am very disappointed at the idea of taking out the request for a local option when you put forward something which is a good and something which is needed the people in the area in the town say maybe that could be me now this is not going to be where the people are going to be judged as by need it's a lottery people will be vetted to be included in this lottery but it's not going to be ranked by this is the most needy we got to put this one they have to get through some kind of basic screening and they get put in the lottery when you do local option all the names in the bag are not people who either live or work or have been sheltered in amherst there's a that's there only i think maybe there's 70 percent of the people in the bag but still then or their names are drawn out of a bag or else there are two bags i i did read the description and it is in detail but i don't have it i just know that when they do housing like this say in new york city where so many people have been waiting for affordable housing being somebody who who lives in the town has been gone on the list or whatever it it matters so i just feel that you know i theoretical principles are great but i i i'm a town council member for amherst and i'm thinking of there aren't even that many apartments and they talked about so many people who actually work in in the universities or in the town or in businesses or whatever and can't afford to live here and then they're going to find out that it can be anybody i i just feel it would be intensely disappointing to people who might have been looking forward to this and supporting it darthi i'm going to suggest that we put inside the issue of local option if we decide as a council that we want to have a further discussion about it when we can find out what that really means and how it's really done that we might add an addendum to this letter at a later date but to try to resolve that without the advice of people who understand local option i think would be a useless circuitous discussion tonight so i i i agree with you okay haven so so now that i think i'm understanding your question about whether we want to say that we voted because there's what are we actually voting on and kathy brought that up um i don't like how the dhcd letter actually started now that i'm looking at it because i always think that you need to lead with what your message is in case they only read the first sentence so i'm suggesting you know maybe we just say uh the amherstown council recommends approval of open with that and then we're voting to authorize you to send this letter so we're de facto voting to recommend but it's it's not separating i think it's good so the first sentence would be the amherstown council recommends approval of that's my suggestion yes kathy shane i very much like the idea of bringing the local option back for discussion item um lin no not doing it tonight um because i heard a lot about this so i just i don't want to extend the but not just some time in the next distant future but if you can squeeze it in um while this process is going on okay is there any other comment so let me we can't we're not going to add local option tonight no we aren't we are not adding it tonight we will bring it back at a near and future agenda could we go back to the very beginning of the very letter and let me just one more time state where we have made the changes okay the first change is the first sentence will read the amherstown council recommends approval of okay the next is to remove the line in red which is around the local option the other changes that people have made are all the way on the bottom of the second page and in that case the second sentence will read the town council submitted a letter to dhcd demonstrating support of the development after an extensive public comment process period and will eliminate all of the other words around that including but making a number of requests for improvement and this letter was written and process and during the 30 day comment period all of that will be eliminated and then on the next page under the second what would be the second bullet in that paragraph we're eliminating the first sentence only and then we are leaving in this increased housing production and its location blah blah blah okay are there any other changes requested at this time okay then i would like to make a motion first of all we need to um consent consent covered suspending the rules lin i'm sorry the consent already suspended the rule thank you uh so then we need to authorize um president greysmer always sends a little strange um to sign the letter of support to the zoning board of appeals uh recommended permit zoning zba f y 2020 30 dash 39 belly mainly development corporation 132 north hampton road is there a second second okay then we're going to go to a roll call vote and we begin with evan ross yes yes george ryan yes patrick shane abstain steve schreiber no andy steinberg does sarah schwartz yes shallony balm noam yes elissa bruer yes pat de angeles yes darcy domont no lin greysmer's a yes mandy johannity yes and darcy pam yes so the vote is is ten in favor two against and one abstention thank you i will share the final letter with you in your packet um so we are going to go on to a memo that we began discussing last week and this is the memo regarding what to do with public permanent public way requests and we did have some conversation and i just want to reintroduce that the memos has two different suggestions and then it suggests that it be sent off to tso for discussion and eventually then to go well depending on what tso comes up with so the and the issue as i presented last time is that we've been inconsistent with how we handle permanent requests in the public way and that has led to sometimes people showing um coming to council meeting expecting to give a presentation and then finding out after they do it there they also have to do it again for tso so before this we move to recommend to move to refer this what other things would people like to say at this point i'm not seeing that anybody wants to add anything further to what we've already said and so um um this is there's a motion and it's to refer president greece merse 535 3120 memo options for council review of long term permanent changes public way to the town services and outreach committee and to the governance organization and legislative committee for court and recommendation to the town council in 90 days is there a second second ryan thank you george any further discussion and we'll do a real call vote we begin with george ryan yes yes kathy shane yes biefer schreiber yes andy steinberg yes garish wartz yes gallanty ball mill yes elissa blower yes patty angeles yes darsie gemont yes lynn greece merse yes and mandy johannicky yes berthie pam yes ebb and ross yes it's referred with the 12 with a 13 00 vote okay we're moving on to appointments let me just get myself reassembled lynn yes is there what is the time frame is that 90 days or what 90 okay your schedule had us going back to presentations thank you so it's been my night um so in i sent out about two weeks ago a timeline for the town manager's evaluation i have since taken that timeline and revised it uh based on comments i received actually from only two counselors but they were substantial and useful and the one question that did get raised is at this point as a council we are scheduled not to meet on july 20th 27th 3rd and 10th that makes this a jam but we've done it in the past and so as we look at this schedule we need to keep that in mind elissa broer have your hand up i'm so sorry i was hoping to catch you before so for all of us who've been here since 5 30 could we plan on a recess pretty soon yes five minute break okay let's just do that now thank you we'll reconvene in five minutes that is at 845 just take yourself on the video and then i'll know your back right we're going to continue with uh presentation and discussion town manager evaluation calendar and just reminder the process so uh mandy joe you have your hand up yes thank you um the schedule for finance and all of our budget stuff includes a finance committee hearing the required budget hearing on the full year budget on monday july 13th um and it also then has a vote on the budget in the full town council on july 20th um that is a schedule that we adopt or at least i believe the finance committee adopted even though i know our original year long schedule did not have a meeting on the 20th given i think it was moved from the 13th to the 20th given the um covid issues and all and the need for pushing the budget into july so if the finance committee is not holding their budget hearing until july 13th we absolutely must have a council meeting either july 20th or july 27th because we have to vote that budget by july 31st or july 30th um i think is what it was in the motion we passed today and so i would i would recommend i think we also need a couple of you know there's so much built up and pandemic and things take longer um i would recommend we move the items on july 13th to july 20th um and on the 13th hold the budget hearing and we vote the budget on july 20th as all of the including all the rest of the stuff that in this memo was listed on july 13th but i also recommend we hold a meeting on july 3rd for regular business so that the july 17th meeting can be less than regular business um i'm not sure how reading stuff and the distribution will work electronically um i'm not sure because we used to get it all in paper at once um so i'm you know arrangements haven't been worked out but it will probably take longer for people to read if it's sitting on a computer than in a paper form with running back and forth and all so it could take longer than we had before and so so i would advocate adding a meeting on august 3rd for regular business in august 17th and then my only other concern on all of this was that the schedule right now has the draft manager goals being delivered on july 13th or with my proposal july 20th but not being discussed until august 17th um that is a really long time in my opinion to have the goals out there without them actually being talked about by the council um so if we're not going to discuss them till august 17th maybe we could just have them delivered as part of the packet for the august 17th meeting 48 hours in advance or something so that they're not out there for a full month without us being able to talk about them so i mean dry one understand you're suggesting we we meet as a council on july 13th for the purpose of the hearing of the budget well that's the finance committee budget hearing schedule right now and i think it's normally called as a council meeting but i would recommend that's all that happens that day okay and then uh but on monday july 20th which we had also need to have to adopt the budget uh we would move everything that was listed for the 13th to the 20th yes then i'd need to make an adjustment on the 16th but i can do that and that we also then meet on august 3rd is that what i heard yeah for regular business so that we can remove regular business from august 17th okay and that we uh and that the goals uh might be distributed on the 3rd but discussed on the 17th or distributed in time for the packet for the 17th yeah i would like to see a closer time frame between when the goals are out in the public and when we actually get to discuss them okay are there other suggestions darcy i was on the the previous goals ad hoc committee and um i think that um it worked very well and i'm just i i'm missing whether we had a discussion about how how we should do it this time around and it seems to me like both the evaluation and the goals should be um it makes more sense to do them with an ad hoc committee um so i'm interested in knowing what other people on the council think of that i i don't have any problems with this time frame i know that if we appointed an ad hoc committee that would throw it off a little bit um but i personally think it makes sense to make sure that we are as objective as we can be um and um not putting it all on on our president who you know has needs to be interacting with the town manager on a daily basis it's a little you know it feels like it's a little we could put a little more distance in there by having an ad hoc committee look at um the evaluation and the goals and like i said the goals committee worked together really well i thought we you know were very efficient in and getting the goals together although very late of course um so just wondering what other people think about the possibility of having an ad hoc committee do this rather than putting it all on lin no suggestions been made are there other comments believe that what we did last time was we brought the goals to the council and then when it was apparent there were a lot more discussion needed we formed the ad hoc committee for the goals um and people want to have an ad hoc committee for the goals we can but we need to get started a lot sooner and we need to get it done a lot faster elissa so time passes and we see what worked well and i understood what darcy was in favor of doing the same thing we did last year um i still don't understand why and and that something i don't understand hasn't changed over the past year which is that i don't understand why an existing tent an existing standing committee doesn't have this as part of their responsibility because existing committees are not going away during this time period so again it's one more workload for a group of people to work on something and um i appreciate what lin said about you know previously it was drafted then i said okay here's a committee that can take a look at what was drafted and figure that out um i would be a big proponent this year of doing things as easily as what works for people as possible because our workload has been literally insane and so to ask people to have a whole another set of committee meetings that might go on for several weeks i think is asking a lot i also think that we have some pent up desire to change some of the evaluation process right we talked about that last year but yet we can't do that this year because we simply don't have the bandwidth to do it this year so i'm in favor of whatever seems simplest and then work on a start earlier next year even though who knows what our pandemic situation will be in the spring next year are there other comments at this time Dorothy yeah i'm remembering the process now i was on that committee and i remember as we sat as a full-time council reading all the little steps i thought we should just have those steps as things we think about but we shouldn't answer yes no whatever for each one of them and the the process could be so much simpler i mean i think we we did a good job of laying out all the things we can think of we might want to add a few more but the the nitty gritty of of going over each one was i think redundant really redundant um but within categories we could discuss them in our discussion we could bring up the different items that are in that category but not necessarily have to you put an evaluation of all of them additional comments all right so what yes kathy yeah i had separately um earlier today said linda note i just want to build on what dorythe was referencing to we we talked about having a much simpler evaluation form format that would have the big category with some kind of rating easy and then a common thing that you could make say why you thought all of this but not having to go over every line so it would be short we wouldn't go through everything we put um and and make it easier and then have some space toward the end of it that would give you give you more free reign to talk about any issues that had come up and other things we don't have such a form i would be perfectly willing to to draft it and make it short and sweet if we if that would be helpful because i wasn't sure with this process as proposed if we get the performance goals as we set them up i i wasn't sure what we were supposed to do if we right now if we got the performance goals as we set them up and then my memory is we tried to keep it to three pages and it kept being four pages five pages are we supposed to write something on every line so i think we just need some guidance that's really simple that's not very rigid on on what would be what should we do so is it just yeah so that's just the major a major area right so let me just mention that um kathy i think you were on also on that committee and we discussed changing the form which i have not messed with yet uh so that people could do individual comments under each but they and they could and they could do an overall rating for each of the broad six or seven categories and a broad set of comments so that they would not be put in a situation we all found ourselves in last year which was my god when was this uh so it's like i totally agree with our that that was a that was a discussion of the goals committee last year uh this past fall and into the end of december uh and i think that that guidance is still absolutely true um i want to i want to separate these we're having two conversations one is about the evaluation yes another one is about setting the goals it was for the setting the goals that we had the committee in terms of formats for the evaluation i will be more than happy to um take comments and come up with a format that is much much more user friendly um and be glad to do that sarah you have your hand up so i just wanted to bring up that it is a job evaluation and however you look at it it's it's it's to help guide paul because you don't know if you're doing a good job or if you're hitting the marks that the people who are hiring you want you to hit unless they're actually written out so i would rather that we weren't vague that we were more specific and i'm okay with however we decide to try to do this with ease this year but we're gonna who knows how many of us are going to be gone after another year and not quite a half and i would like to actually maybe take up what elissa said and maybe we do give this entire like evaluation process how we're going to do it and also think about how we all set goals for paul together and start that now with a committee so that we actually leave something permanent for the next council that comes in that's it so you're suggesting a committee that tackles this or we just give it like elissa said maybe it's part of a committee's charge and i'm not saying for sure let's do this but it seems like if we already have committees formed then it might make sense for one committee to just start working on it obviously the whole town council would have to you know then look at something and reflect on it it's all of our decisions but at least we'd have the when the because look how fast this year went right and we're all still now looking at this whole situation saying oh yeah i remember how hard that was last year so i just think that maybe even if we you know wrote it into one committee they could just start working on it now and maybe we just set a timeline but that's me spitballing this late darsie yeah i just wanted to remind people that originally uh the evaluation was in the in okah and then then it was removed so um and all the different appointment functions got farmed out to different committees and so i mean it's possible that part of it could be in one committee and part of it you know the evaluation could be in one committee and the goals could be in another committee and once we have a format of how we're doing it generally it you know year after year it won't be as hard you know we won't be reinventing the wheel um and um yeah i would be for doing that this year but i don't know what kind of support i have for that elissa just super briefly so part of why it was so hard this year of course as it was different for all of you who weren't previously on the select board right so for andy and i the idea of the evaluation wasn't that complicated although andy's never been a big fan of the form we used the form we used isn't the form we used meaning the select board used this clunky old table slash excel spreadsheet but it meant you could flip back and forth between it the google doc the google form was a disaster that was part of the problem and so we have not only the how do we rate things and are we kind of grouping it in a general sense or are we going point by point by point or is our problem with the execution of the form we used that had never been done that way before and there was a reason for that and it didn't work well for us so part of what the that's part of what has to be dealt with too and so and that was not discussed with the council at all as to whether or not we think that that execution of the actual filling it out would work so i don't have an easy answer which is why i'd like to see a group work on it longer term to kind of figure out and then talk about all the town um employee evaluation right we've always talked about how that doesn't work out quite the way we planned for it either but to do anything this year i'm willing to cut corners so to speak in terms of making it go faster but i think we have to recognize that we have a number of different issues here and it's not just the form itself it's evaluation goals have to be translated into the form you can't just have a set of goals and then have the form say something else and you can't have the form be that weirdo google doc that we had last year so we learned from that but we need to make it easier for ourselves to fill out and that made it much much harder for me to fill out um it i think was actually a survey but i will look into other ways of doing the survey um yes uh george i like the idea of using existing bodies um if the council wants to have someone's look over both the look over both elements of the evaluation and the goals um we can simply refer it to a body or two two separate bodies that are already exist um if that will help i agree with the idea of trying to make it as simple as possible it sounds like we do want someone or someone's to look at it um and give some sort of input back to the council um before we move forward we could leave that with lin um that's certainly an option the other it seems to me is simply to refer one or both of these to a specific body and asking them to get back um as obviously quickly the only thing that we're now faced with is that and i know this is an unusual summer but some people are still planning to either stay at home vacations or whatever is we try to do the staff and the committee chairs and the committees and the public starting this coming week the form for the council is not that fast so i just want to point out that one of the reasons why this comes up at this point is because of always wanting to do it earlier in the summer if you will uh dorthy i like george's idea um of having a committee do it but i'd be a lot happier if it was go l than tso he has so much they have to do right now and we're still figuring out how we're doing it so i i don't think we could probably handle this responsibility at this time otherwise an ad hoc committee okay um i'm i'm open whatever you want to do sarah so yeah i i for some reason i guess i just blocked out oka in general after last week but so it did belong in that charge so maybe we do want to think about where it would fit in the current standing committees because i would think that this is something that any town council would want to have a committee either refining or at least making sure that forms and everything were going out on a timeline so i guess maybe we think about where it makes the most sense and and do it i don't know if we want to add something else on because it's still more like separate time for all of us and as somebody who's on a committee and is a liaison and is now an ecac you know i'd rather have it in a committee even if it was my own than another subcommittee or a subcommittee oh and i just want to say too that the goals you can't really separate them that's what elissa said and i think it's true i don't think you could separate those two out i i would probably want to have one committee be working on both i think it would make more sense so george are you willing to put this under the 48 hour rule and gll george give your hand up sorry um yes i would be willing to put it under the 48 hour rule but um my colleagues and gl may wish to speak on this as well but um if there is a committee that the council wants it to send this to it would seem to me speaking personally that gl would probably be that committee but um others may have other thoughts are there other thoughts mendic joe yes i would want clarity on what the committee is supposed to do are we drafting goals or are we not drafting goals are we um um coming up with the evaluation form or not like i i'm i'm at this point i think the referral if the referral is fine in that sense but i would want definite clarity on what if it's goes to gl or tso or wherever it's going what that committee is supposed to do and when they're supposed to return a product it's an outstanding set of questions dorothy i think the answers have been given in this discussion start with the work that was done with the goals committee take that take the form elissa's right you've got to work the goals must match the form start with that and look at it and then go over some of the different alternatives we discussed and see how to refine it i would say starting from scratch would be really silly in a waste of time um we've got the you've got the raw material and then the tricky part uh is that somebody has to technically figure out how we're going to you know how the form works um but i would just say part of what we've got is in common sense okay because i could i suggest that this be referred to gl who will provide guidance um on the evaluation process including the development of the counselor's feedback form and develop a set of goals to be brought to the council for the proposed goals to be brought to the council and so basically what i'm suggesting is that the gl will um work on using this calendar and i actually i'm going to not i'm going to suggest we not do very much to change anything with regard in collecting community input um and staff input and that we focus on the counselor evaluation and the actual form and that the uh and that they also work on the goals darsie i i actually think the most important piece is the the um the the letter combining all of the counselor comments and so if that could be done in some kind of group process and gl um i think that would be good and you know if it ends up that everything just gets farmed out to you anyway lin because you're on gl you know i i'm you know my the goal is to you know have more voices involved um and to have it done in a group process so um i would say make sure that that is included these you know there's a number of things that just are going to be done by the town staff anyway right all these things in the first week anything that we don't ask them to do right but i can't see the bottom of this could could you scroll down possibly so that we can see the bottom maybe joe you have your hand up i would not support um assigning the compilation of the letter to a group because once you do that um as as darsie sort of indicated it would be done in a group so it would be done in open meeting but that means that all of the evaluations must come out before that open meeting and we generally don't send those evaluations out until on this schedule it would be the 17th distributed exactly at five so once you say the letter is going to be compiled in gl the newspaper and everyone has every councilor's evaluation prior to that gl meeting when that letter starts being drafted and that would be required to be well early um wherever that is probably before tuesday august fourth um in order to be done at one or two gl meetings or more um so i would not support sending the actual compilation of the letter to a committee kathy one of the things mandy asked for which i think is right she asked for being as explicit as possible what they're supposed to do and i'm just looking at this um it includes a draft of the f by 21 goals by x date we've got some very specific short pieces so i agree with what mandy just said i don't think a group right of composite letters a good idea um but it's it's already uh we have to get something out to the council all of us that we respond to in some way that's task number one and it needs to have uh a due date on it so it can go out to all of us and then the other big task is an initial draft of what are the goals for the coming year so that we don't hand over performance goals for 12 month period with only five months left in the year i mean we're we're trying to catch up so there are some there there's some explicit dates here that if we send it to jol there's a fair amount of work that needs to be done two different pieces with with with dates set on them or anything okay i i think that i have two different points first we have to use common sense i'm remembering now what lin did last year that's not it's it's ridiculous we cannot keep piling on work on top of people we are working too hard as it is and uh the time is short so i think that you have to say this is what we did here's the papers and documents how can we simplify this within the time because we don't have unlimited time and our schedule seems to be throwing things really on top of each other the other part that we're not talking about and that was the part that was poorly done last time was the getting comments from the community and from the staff and there's you know we don't quite know why but we just really didn't get many comments that's something that perhaps tso could look into because outreach is part of their title i'll try to think about if are there any things that aren't too complex any ways of increasing participation in the non-council members is part of the evaluation because that was just very very skimpy last time but for the for us it's got to be simpler than it was last time it cannot be some burden that has people staying up and not sleeping for two weeks it's just we're getting crazy so i'm just urging us to simplify mercy yeah i guess i i would just say since i i personally think the most important piece is the um the cover memo is that i think that there would be a way to deal with the problems um the open meeting law problems by either you know assigning it to two people to to write the draft and and executive committee yes no there is no such thing no any once you have more than one counselor you've got a meeting not it's a one-time deal right that's not true not if it's not an official subcommittee it would be an official subcommittee because you just said that well it's not a non-official subcommittee there's no such thing no such thing alissa any further comments so i just want i mean beyond the fact that i will fight anyone who says that we did uh we did anything poorly we didn't do anything poorly we didn't get a great response rate that doesn't mean that there was anything wrong with our process in terms of the actual forms for example but they need to be looked at and they need to be looked at by a committee that has time to do this more than oh my god we have to send them out next week which is literally with position work so they're good enough to go out this week in terms of the email that goes out to the committee chairs it's good enough to put out the staff evaluation we wish we would have done it differently this year but guess what we didn't so we're going to send the same form out which was fine and at least as comparable to last year and unfortunately probably won't get a lot of response and we need to be clear on who's doing the goals which is going to go to a committee the format does not need to come back to the town council to be reviewed it certainly didn't last year and ended up with the mess that I didn't like but the form is just the goals turned into something and given the short period of time we have we don't need to believe that the goals need to be drafted by somebody that's a committee the form needs to be created by somebody that will just be the form because it's the form that's based on the goals that already exist it's not new and then we need to have the future conversation which maybe gol can also have about oh well when you consider the email that has to go out this piece this piece this piece this is who should work on it over the course of the next year and just make it simple for ourselves now all right i'd like to make a motion i move that the evaluation and the the evaluation be referred to gol for the purpose of guiding the process through this year including the development of a format that is counselor friendly for our responses and to draft the goals to be brought back to the council um on in time for our meeting on august 17th is there a second second there any further discussion sorry to be a pain can i just ask that the motion be reread Athena can you reread the motion sure that the evaluation be referred to gol for the purpose of guiding the process for the year including the development of a format that is counselor friendly and draft goals to be brought to the council in time for the august 17th meeting the motion's been made been seconded any further comment then i'm so confused i don't get it darcy you have your hand up uh yeah i just wanted to make a quick comment that i felt like the um the goals the ad hoc goals committee that existed um for f y 20 was successful because it combined a number of people that had different interests and expertise um sholony was on it and had her interest in economic development and i was on it and i had interest in sustainability and so on anyway um i obviously whatever gol does is going to come back to the full committee for for comments i just you know want to make sure that the committee takes into consideration all those different interest areas i just got lost one on the dates because i'm sorry i know athena just read it and i totally got lost so i get the fact that it's fine if we don't have draft goals until the middle of august it's fine if we don't do goals until november it's not ideal but it's fine what we need is we need a form we can't get a form on august 17 we're supposed to have completed it before august 17 really lost about where we are on just elissa we already have for this year well right so why are we talking about a form we're talking about a form for this year which is not going to be the same as the form last year so therefore it is not existing yet because the thing we had that was the user friendly part but like we have to fill it out so we have to get it before august 17 we're not waiting till august 17 to fill it out and the motion is that go well we'll guide that process and look at and make sure we have a friendly form but when are we filling out the form that like when are we right so we don't have the okay somebody want to tell me the date again that they're going to get us a form by because it's not going to be august it's in your calendar then why did we specify a date for the goals but not a date for the form we can update to the form um let's see i'm just trying to find the date for the form counselor evaluation form would be sent out by july 8 according to the calendar and the counselors have to fill it out by august 4th right so somebody's got to create it right and we'll have it in our hands by august 8 by july it the calendar initially says that the email is sent to the town counselors with individual counselor evaluation form is somewhere between june 16th and june 29th the initial one i'm just trying to see when go l's supposed to have the form done by i guess i don't care if they don't care so it's fine maybe even three times for the discussion darcy oh no i meant to lower my hand there's a motion may be seconded is there any further discussion darah okay so i'm sorry i just want to make sure so i know that we're trying to make sure that we take care of this year but i also wanted to just make sure that we are putting this in if it's going to be go well that it's going to become part of their charge so that we're not put in this situation again next year that somebody's slowly working on making doing the deadlines and getting things ready starting now for next year that's just that we're thinking about doing that because i that's i think more important to me that's not part of this motion but it does sound to me like you go well needs to look at its charge and bring it back to the council okay thanks all right motion's been made in seconded any for the discussions okay then um we're going to begin with shane yes yes driver yes signberg yes warts yes fawn melm yes brewer yes the angeles yes umant yes grease mercy yes hannity yes ham yes and ross yes and ryan yes zero zero on the referral all right we're moving on to zoning bylaw amendment process mandy joe do we need to do this now or do we want to mix up you do not need to do it tonight okay we'll move it to the 22nd 29th and then the next thing is um this is a discussion regarding policing and um i've asked paul shallony and pat several of us were including in the audience at the recent discussion with the police chief's staff the town manager and residents but shallony and pat were actually in the uh panelist group as was paul so um shallony and pat shallony is going to share our reflection okay sure so um i just want to start off by saying i i personally found it very hopeful to see the the honesty that and discussions that we had the commitment uh shared by the chief of police by a town manager um to continue to listen and to do better so i don't know i mean there were nine of us counselors there so i don't know in how much detail i want to go paul has already shared a video that people can see if they want to listen into the dialogue because i think it was a really good first conversation to be had there were 50 residents there were nine counselors the chief of police captain thing was there and and maybe i can just highlight some of the things that we learned just you know a couple of really good points that emerged uh like for example the first thing we though that um that the chief of police shared was about the extensive role they're playing and handling many more situations than they used to and so you know there was uh an agreement that maybe we can look at our budgets and how we can align our local budgets to address some of these needs um the other thing that was really interesting is that none of the even though there are a lot of trainings and implicit bias that everyone goes through and that was really great that we have a lot of policies in place for de-escalation the use of force but um there is no training that provides a history of policing and even the chief of police uh was interested in having more training from non-police staff so there were a lot of like really good ideas that came up like that or needs that were expressed and shared so like i said that was just the first of the meetings uh Ghazid Khaya Kousi who initiated this um meeting along with Dr. Shabazz and Dr. Shabazz um these uh they sent a little feedback i mean just after the meeting so um they kind of reflected that this is the first and they'd like to continue this conversation they specifically requested for having a town hall to give opportunity for the 59 attendees to share the concern so that's one of the things that Lynn Pat and I sort of did a little debrief afterwards and we came up with some ideas including having a facilitated meeting with the residents and the chief of police and our town staff and we talked about maybe having a task force that with the with the diverse group of people including some residents town staff and town counselors to look at the systemic issues because this goes beyond policing issues this is uh looking at you know all our domain maybe using this as an opportunity to look at the different sectors in our community that where racism and inequities exist like the schools uh the development areas or housing i mean so these are really like it's an opportunity to study all of these different issues to look at the data in hand but also listen into the lived experiences of people and so as of now what we are what we are proposing is um maybe having a special town council meeting to discuss this on maybe June 22nd or July 6th and uh really would like to hear from everyone else right now what ideas you might have and if Pat wants to add on something to that well a couple of the other things that came up and one of them was some kind of citizens review today which um you know there is no civilian oversight of our department and I did not get a feeling that that the department would be resistant to that um which was a really good thing to hear um and so I just want to add that but I'd love to hear from other people who were virtually there that's what I meant didn't do there's no conversation raise your hand if you'd like to speak I lost the raising the hand thing oh okay all right I can't find the I want to click participants it doesn't come up now um yes I want to second what Pat said um the chief made it very very clear that uh he his department did not have opposition to uh some kind of civilian review and I was thinking of it as kind of like it like an audit I mean just looking at seeing have there been uses of force have there been any discipline problems are there areas that um you know they think that they want to improve on uh I felt it could be done in a friendly manner because I don't think doing it in an unfriendly manner is going to get us very far but I wanted to add another thing that I think would be useful um when I lived in sunny side we had the 108th police precinct community meeting every month and we went to it and the police would open it kind of like town council with what things they were looking at what problems that were in the community sometimes warning us of local frauds or whatever and then residents could just stand up and ask their question or make a statement and um it was a very friendly productive and it was part of of what you did in that neighborhood and I felt it kept a good climate and it kept things from building up and boiling up I also think that I think Pat alluded to this um that in terms of really reaching out the community maybe some of these meetings should travel and go to different parts of the community of the town because um you after a while you get used to who comes to town hall you know and it's it's not that big a group of people um but to have a good I mean it seemed to me that the chief and uh captain Ting were making it very clear they valued and wanted um open and free conversation with the people of Amherst and did not feel um in opposition and welcomed the idea of working together with the community in a little more detail so I thought it was a very positive meeting Tara so I know that Pat talks a lot about coded language and I think that it's important for all of us to sort of think about things that we say and when we're talking about having people of color talk to white people about racism racism isn't very friendly and so I'm not saying that I'm just saying that when you say I want to keep it friendly it's I feel like it's in some ways saying to people of color make sure you stay in your lane so I know that's not what Dorothy was saying but I'm just saying that we need to be careful about how we phrase things that's right right on are there other comments so the hand up function is not working Kathy it's working no it is working I just couldn't make the participant thing go up because I've got everybody's face on the screen so I couldn't find it um I just I was a listener and one of the things I wanted to exchange is I thought um was to build on Sarah's point was uh the barriers people face when they want to register a concern and a person who was uh leading the discussion listed a whole bunch of different ways that you might feel uncomfortable or including a language barrier but also a fear of authority and the response was we've never heard such a fantastic list that was really important for you to list that out and then the other was the types of training on how do we um work on things in different ways that the trainers we find are former police officers um we would and and we reached out at different times to UMass or Amherst College for suggestions of other people because we're totally open to thinking about different types of modules so it was a very it was a very open discussion of welcoming ideas welcoming suggestions welcoming concrete things rather than and the concrete list of barriers was stunning that was given and everyone was nodding their head no yes um and then you think of personal stories so I thought it was a healthy beginning it was clearly just a beginning Narci yeah I I attended and I I really appreciate the fact that Shalini and Ghazid Haya um uh organized it I Ghazid Haya is actually um doing outreach for the energy and climate action committee through the municipal vulnerability preparedness grant and she has brought that same kind of energy to ACAC in in the outreach that we're doing there bringing community leaders into our task groups that are people of color that um she has brought in and she's doing individual um one-on-one consciousness raising with members of the committee and leading a caucus of the of the people of color community leaders that are going to be in our task group so it's a whole it's a whole new world of um making the white members more aware of of um of just what's happening you know how how how thinking is changing George I uh what struck me in listening to this I listened to it on the uh later um was how increasingly we are asking the police to deal with issues for which they really aren't trained and probably could never be trained but they are in a sense the ones who are the first responders I'm thinking particularly of issues around homelessness and mental health so I hope that whatever conversation goes forward that people from that community um those in the mental health community those who work with the homeless um will be involved that this won't be focused simply on the issue of race as important as that is because what I heard at least what I heard from this discussion was a real willingness on the part of the police department to engage in dialogue with the community and also request for help um in a sense that in that in many cases they find themselves uh tasked with things that really they're not um suited for and yet they they're the ones who have to deal with it so I guess what I'm saying is I hope this I did definitely heard a willingness for for a lot more discussion and I'm I'm glad to hear it's going to go forward I hope that um this will also include members of the mental health community and those who work with the homeless as part of this discussion because I heard I thought very clearly that police department would would like some assistance there okay so Evan I'm going to take your question then I'm going to ask if we shape we shape the conversation a certain way but go ahead Evan so so actually George sort of beat me too but I just wanted to say that um the thing that I left um at the forefront of my mind when I left that conversation was what they said about how increasingly their calls are responding to uh non-criminal calls especially things around mental health and homelessness um and and I don't want to read too much into tone or try to interpret him but it it seemed like something that the chief was uncomfortable with that that wasn't something that they had envisioned originally envisioned their role as being and was an area where he was certainly open to perhaps reimagining their role and then I saw as I'm sure many of you did the announcement from the mayor of San Francisco yesterday that they would be replacing police officers with trained professionals who would be unarmed to respond to non-criminal um complaints around mental health homelessness uh neighborhood disputes uh and and I hope that becomes a part of the discussion going forward is who responds and also um a big piece of this that I'm going to be pretty vocal about is when does a response require the responder to have a firearm um because I think that's going to be a big piece of this when we are responding to noise complaints when we are responding to traffic violations does whoever's responding need a firearm on their hip and so who's responding what their training is and are they carrying I think need to be important parts of the conversation so what I want the council to answer at this point is all right let me shape the question there's responsibility that the town manager has to make sure that our police um department and other first responders because this also happens frankly with ambulance people it could even happen with somebody from DPW when somebody doesn't like how they snow plowed um and I'm not being facetious I mean we get complaints about that all the time so there's the responsibility of the town manager but the real question before the council is what do we want our role to be and one of the suggestions that was thrown out was the idea of having a council meeting that would be more like a public forum if you will another suggestion would be that there be some kind of task force formed or some kind of um civilian review audit and there you know any number of these things for instance particularly a task force might be something that's jointly done between the council and the town manager as a committee that we jointly appoint people to and have a jointly agreed to charge or whatever the case may be but it's not a one-sided thing it's not either the council is going to do this or the staff are going to do this it's something that we have to do in a way that we're doing this together out of it may come some policies or budgets things that we want to see change but we're not at that point yet so my question is what is our next step Dorothy you have your hand up okay so the thing I've been thinking about is the question that has been brought up at a number of times which is um when we when we asked the or when I was I was a silent observer when the chief was asked about going on mental health calls or whatever he said he went with a trained member at EMT so my first question is does the police officer need to go at all um and I because I sometimes are saying okay let's take the remove some responsibilities from the police department and put them on more social service trained people but then I thought well okay but the police have us coverage such thing and they're available in a way that that many other people aren't available I mean they're available they have 24 hour job schedules so this question which is really one that we can have some input in but it's also one that is really experts in policing and mental health need to be giving guidance on and I'm Paul probably has some thoughts on this is is there a way to restructure some of the responsibilities of what the police do with people who would be adequately trained and available to come when needed I mean I read the police broader uh every week it's um interesting and quite amusing reading um and you know some people from some other big cities would say oh wow you have such little problems but their problems are people they're going out for somebody who's yelling at somebody in the sidewalk somebody somebody was piling leaves in the street for some reason um people are having an argument in their house uh most of the stuff that they do the the result is they told them to go on their way all right so they are keeping order of some sort um maybe some of those cases they didn't need to go on um half the time they say that they were something was reported in a neighborhood and it turned out just to be two people walking home or that in fact the suspicious person wasn't suspicious all right so isn't that really the use for our police is there a way of rescheduling reorganizing uh first responders that would be better suited I mean I I agree Levin no one with a gun should be going on all kinds of issues if I have I mean almost the all the recent uh murders that have taken place that are in the news right now are places where there was no need of anyone with a gun you know why do you need a gun to go tell a man wake up and move your car or something um not that I accuse our police of behaving that way but Paul are you are you doing some rethinking of how to structure the policemen's job or is someone doing it Paul I I'd like to hear from you but I really want this group to get to the issue of what we're going to do yeah we can't solve these problems sitting here tonight we can all raise our thoughts but what is our next step Kathy I just wanted Lynn you you said is it a task for what's a place to start um when we were looking at what some towns had put into their ability of their counselors to do one thing was something called a dialogue where it wasn't the council making a decision but it was bringing in bringing in people and Evans just mentioned San Francisco is going a route of trying to change the composition of a police force and think so we could start with something as simple as a dialogue where people are bringing in ideas and it's a roundtable it's not decision making and then figure out if we actually want need a task force or something because I think we need we need buy-in we need some thoughtful ideas we need some everybody is rethinking this right we're we're we're in a community you know this question of um when do you need a trained police officer who has a certain kind of training and when do you need a different kind of person should one of them be in a pair with somebody else you know so that you don't know what the event right we can't we can't answer those questions but we could begin to have a discussion with some information and then um say uh we we want then the town manager and the police to come back with a recommendation of what what we might think of doing you know because you can't turn on a dime either I mean we have some 50 FTEs working in our police department which includes overtime you know I mean we have to be thinking what do we want a year from now what do we want where we can make changes so dialogue might be a place to start if we didn't want to make a formal task force but task force usually are supposed to go out do some studying and come back with a report so that gives you a more of a timeline of getting in gathering information when the people who are starting it don't have a lot of information themselves Darcy I think that's a really good idea to have a community dialogue my only worry would be that it would somehow undercut the um the organizers the community organizers and leaders who might want to do something on their own um but I think we could probably do both I I I just would want to respect their wanting to have some kind of leadership role in organizing what happens next Shalini yes I think I really want to emphasize that we really need to listen listen listen right now and create opportunities for for people to be heard and I just heard from Gazikaya too and she also mentioned that there is such a desire to be heard right now and I imagine that anything you can do to create opportunities to listen will be appreciated and of course when we are creating these opportunities we're going to be working with the organizers initially and seeing how we can come together and work on that um the other thing I just wanted to also say was it feels like through these listening opportunities we can also identify what's already in place and then part of our work as counselors is to communicate that because most people don't know what you know what's what we're doing right so let's share that with the community and then I'm thinking in terms of short term and long term actions and so there are some out of these listening sessions we may be able to identify some actions we can take right away you know like some things that are out there like the eight-con weight or just kind of see like what are some good best practices that we can put in place right away but then also have a task force to look at things in a more systemic way and bring longer term and that's going to take a longer time I think Pat um a building a little bit on a couple of different things one of the most important things I think we can do and I learned this from the DPW community outreach that we started was going to speak and speak to people directly from the community and virtually that's a little tricky right now but I think that there are ways that could figure out how to do that as members of the council to move out but I think that and so I do really want to see us develop some kind of task force I'm not sure I like that comfortable with those words but the piece for me is as a white person my starting point has to be the ways in which systemic racism has impacted my life in the sense of the reactions I have to people of color the fears I have about people of color the limitations I place on people of color until each one of us on the council begins to do that individually but I'm not going to get anywhere or we'll get somewhere that won't be very far it really seems to me that one of the things that this council would benefit from and I don't know how to make it happen in terms of meeting law but we need to get together and we're in and in a dialogue between ourselves about these issues as well as asking the community to participate in a dialogue otherwise we're just collecting stories and that's not enough um so I want to end with us to be in a facilitated situation where we're talking about systemic racism what was that anything else Pat not right now no okay Alyssa you have your hand up yes thank you to try and not repeat things other people said um so collecting stories is surely very valuable but definitely not enough and having been just to part of that meeting I'm eager for us to continue to express that we as a town council want to hear more from what different parts of the community want us to do so absolutely the people who organized that meeting definitely but also to hear from HRC who are they hearing from and to hear from other groups that we've heard from in the past but are maybe not hearing from right now because there obviously is no monolith group that is responsible so what can we do to be responsible to reach out and say tell us more things about what you would like us to do I would like us to I know that feels soft in comparison to doing something like setting up a task force but I really think the last thing we need right now is a task force that doesn't have a clear goal and there might be a task force that is having a conversation about the different types of policing we were just talking about but that's a future thing so I wonder if what we could also look to is have the town manager come back with some suggestions obviously he's been talking with staff he's been talking with APD and I know that Mel Rose is for example doing a thing where you know they were supposedly and their report should come out soon where they were looking within town hall at the procedures and policies and public interactions they had and saying what could we do to promote racial equality and equity I am sure that our employees have some great ideas they've all been to various kinds of trainings they've all had various interactions with the public I'll bet they have plenty of pent up ideas it's just this crazy pandemic time and so I would love to hear more from people who are doing the work and people who are experiencing the experiences to tell us what they want from us so it's clear that we but that we want to do something because it's kind of shocking I'm sure just like the rest of you even though we're not seeing our friends because of the pandemic when we do touch people people are saying what are you guys doing and it's like well I don't know what are we doing and so being able to not just say well we're I really appreciate that this got added to the agenda because we need to do something but I think we sometimes jump right to oh well let's have some speaker come in oh well let's have this task force I want to find a way to like continue to reach out and the relationships that shallony and pat have already been building that we're able to make that meeting to say what do you think we should be doing what would be helpful to our community because we are in this wonderful place where we have town councils never dealt with this as a town council well you have your hand up and it's long long overdue to let you talk I know I hate to prolong this but I think you guys I mean the energy from the council is palpable so I appreciate everybody's engagement I look at this I mean I think this is a unique opportunity and unique time for us and I think that the council plays a really critical role because people I feel are looking they need a venue to speak and they want to speak truth to power you and I are power you know we may not we may think we're oh we're part of the community but you are the biggest power in the town of Amherst right now people need that place to be able to speak to you and to our police chiefs and leadership that way I think we are a way I think we're in a unique position it's a conversation we've had multiple times every day we're in a unique position because we have enlightened leadership with our police department progressive policies that we're very proud of but the real experience of people is different from how we say how great we're what doing so I think we need to hear more we need to do what Pat said we have to educate ourselves and take that responsibility as well but when I think about what does the council do you have a unique role in that you are you can convene people and if you say we're going to be someplace to listen people will come and I think there were 50 people at a moment's notice showing up at something that one counselor and an organizer put together and it was spectacular and important so that's that's where I think I think all those other things down the road like you know we're looking at Eugene Oregon that they're they have a different kind of model as well because the university town there's lots of different places out there who are doing things differently so I think all those conversations but I think that first thing where we are in space right now is that people need to say what they what they feel and they experience so is one of the thoughts has been that we would hold some kind of council listening I don't even want to say dialogue but listening and I mean we I just have to use the parallel that we went through this with 132 Northampton Road I was you know lining up a facilitator and so forth and then the citizen said no that's not what they wanted they wanted to just you know come and talk and present and so forth so the really is the issue is what do we want to do what format and what time Dorothy I have an idea of one thing we could do we could go to a black church in town I don't remember the name of the one that I said Jackie Wallace but I went to a number of events there and just ask them if they want to have a meeting and we would come to listen as Paul says well none of us are going anywhere at this point because we're still I know but you know what I'm getting on this topic I'm getting ready to say let's do it with social distance I really I mean I I really feel people have to see you and they have to feel heard and it's awfully hard to do that on a zoom I agree Mandy job our goal is to listen I bring back the charter commission we just called them listening sessions they were a meeting of the charter commission they were held whether or not a full a quorum was present and the agenda most of the time was frankly to listen there was almost never an actual presentation made by anyone on the commission there was an opening statement by the chair who said we're here to listen and then we sat there for however long it was until people were done talking if we had a quorum we had minutes if we didn't have a quorum we still took minutes we just didn't call the meeting to order you know because we weren't going to be transacting any business we didn't actually have to technically have even if we had a quorum our the town attorney had said we didn't technically have to call it as a meeting but we chose to to make sure it had that import that Paul was talking about so maybe we don't have to find a specific thing in our rules or a specific thing in the charter maybe we can just say we're having a listening session we could call it a public forum under the charter or we could call it a working dialogue or whatever or we could just say it's a listening session and my my concern with putting it on the 22nd and and maybe I'm too concerned about this is that it's too soon to ensure that everyone knows it's happening and to get schedules cleared to come and so I would definitely want to listen to you know Kazikaya and the doctors Shavas to see if they believe that that is sufficient notice to for people to come and talk and if not would July 6th be better but I I don't want to schedule something to a time period where people believe we rushed it and they don't have the ability to be able to get free to attend so what I'm hearing is the suggestion that we uh reconnoiter back with the people that Shalini and Pat were meeting with we try to select a date for listening and um that's that is appropriately far enough down the road that people get noticing and clear their calendars but not so far that we're you know just pushing this off that Darcy Darcy you have your hand up um I I just would recommend that that any meeting would be um a format that was similar to well actually no not similar to the meeting that was already had um but an open public meeting where all attendees are visible on the screen because that would be much more welcoming and people friendly and egalitarian um for that type of meeting I think we just have to have it wide open would we do registration I think you could do registration um but just you know allowing everybody in so that they're all in the room got that yeah Pat basically I was going to say something similar to that I've been in several uh recently several seminars uh dialogues where there have been over 250 people all visible um and but the people running the meeting are controlling when someone is to meet them um and I think it's it would be quickly for for us to speak. So and I also wanted to just highlight that there is an HRC uh meeting this Thursday on 8th uh 18 June at 6 p.m um that if counselors want to attend that so there are other avenues that we could be attending also. So in order for us to continue on with our agenda which we still have some things to do I'm going to suggest that I will get back with Pat and Shalini we will talk with the people that originally pulled this last meeting together see if we can find a time and a date and the council will use its power to convene but in this case it's power to listen okay all right Dorothy I would suggest two dates and council members do not feel should not be made to feel they have to all go to both of them but when there's two dates you're going to get maybe different people and it would be could be good I like that okay all right um can we move on all right we're on to the um town councilor town manager appointments but uh I'm going to ask uh this actually went to TSO so um at this point uh Darcy let's pick back up with you um are we talking about the list of reappointments yes the ones that you did two weeks ago it's the agriculture commission etc okay so yes we have a we have a list of a number of different appointments to boards and committees that were done um the reappointments that were to expire on June 30th so um put that memo up oh I just lost mine there we go so um yeah there this we had little discussion about it um we voted unanimously for the appointments at for the recommendation of the town council to approve them and I would be glad to read the motion if we're ready um so it is a motion to approve the following town manager reappointments under charter section 211b for terms expiring on June 30th 2023 the to the agricultural commission Masoud and David Matrowsky to the affordable housing trust Sidonia Ferrara to the board of assessors Richard Morse to the council on aging Gregory Bascom and Tim Neal to the design review board Erica Zikos to the historical commission Janet Mark Hart and Hedy Startup to leisure services and supplemental education commission Yusef Vidal to the Munson Memorial building trustees Claudia O'Brien to the public art commission William Cason to the water supply protection committee Christina Keon free and Jack Jemsik and for terms terms expiring on June 30th 2021 uh to the resident residents advisory committee Keisha Dennis Constance Krueger and James Pestray is there a second Mindy Joe you have your hand up but is it to make a second it is not to make a second is there a second this is Andy I'll second okay now Mindy Joe it's late I was going to ask to split out the historical commission instead of splitting it out I'm just going to state my statements now so that we can just take one vote because it's late my vote will be an abstain from the whole set so the historical commission has money much more power than some of us may think it does or may realize it does it has the power to institute a demolition delay for 12 months on a property if it determines that that property is a significant structure and that this demolition of that structure would be a detriment to the historical or architectural assets in town and that sounds all well and good until you actually read the bylaw and in reading the bylaw I realized that nearly any structure no matter how old or how young could be deemed a significant structure because of how the bylaw is written a structure that is five years old that is placed on a main highway can be deemed to have geographic significance because it is a landmark or a visual landmark in the neighborhood the wording might not be exactly that way but but I am concerned about the makeup of the committee as a whole and some of the votes the committee as a whole has made I am concerned about the bylaw itself and I thank the town manager for suggesting a meeting and I had a productive meeting with a number of staff members today about the bylaw itself about potential revisions to it but I am concerned in some of the meetings I watched and some of the minutes I've read that some members may be using the bylaw improperly in that because you can as I told staff today essentially drive a truck through it and deem nearly anything significant structure and that if you don't like that I fear that some members of the commission have been coloring their desire to institute a demo delay or not by what might go up there and what the proposal to go up there is and why the demolition is occurring and so I'm using my time here as we have to deal with appointments and approval of appointments to not agree with the historical commission appointments not to make it about any one person on the historical commission but I think the commission as a whole might be broken partly because of the bylaw itself but partly because of training there are no definitions in the bylaw and anyone can interpret them any way they are and because of that I'm using this to bring that to the attention of the manager and to the members of our council to see if there is something we can do because instituting a demolition delay can really serve the purpose of harming economic development in town and so if we're going to leave the bylaw the way it is I think we need to look much more closely at who the appointments are to see whether those appointees espouse the same desires that we do in a way that we look at planning border ZBA as as Alyssa Brewer said earlier today about certain appointments when we were talking about the letter to the ZBA so that's it I will instead of asking to separate out historical commission I will abstain from all of the votes because of that but I wanted to bring that to the attention of everyone and particularly the town manager Kathy I wouldn't have thought of this at all Mandy if you hadn't just mentioned demolition delay but I I don't know about the composition of the committee per se or their training but in district one I know of at least one family and this was not an issue about postponing development but for whatever reason a barn that was falling apart hit this delay and because of it they couldn't they insured the property no one would write insurance and if a child walked into this barn there were at risk of having something fall on them so there is also I think a training or a need thinking about the consequences for property owner of using this so it sounds to me I don't know exactly anything about the people but it sounds to me we need to revisit what what this clause should mean could mean and how it gets interpreted because this was it cost them a lot of money because what they wanted to do is tear tear it down because it was unsafe and it wasn't that old you know this this was a as someone said well anything that is earlier than 1960 is historical or whatever it was but boy this this is a eyesore not an emblem but so I think you you brought a different issue to our attention so thank you for it are there any other comments at this time shallowness yeah I also want to acknowledge Mandy Joe's work in bringing this to our attention and does this mean we can remove this particular word are we going ahead with leaving the historical commission appointment today one of the options is to separate out this historical appointment separately Mandy Joe I believe that was your initially your intent that was in my initial plan but instead I am not going to request that instead I'm just going to abstain from the entire boat is there any other so the motion's been made and seconded Pat please get your hand up I was just gonna say I would like to um I have not um thank you Mandy Joe for I would like to remove the historical commission appointment commission appointments and move ahead with the other recommendations so I'm going to treat this as a consent agenda and that is that if one counselor asks to separate out one of the committees we will do so and proceed with the others as the motion has been read I am asking we remove the historical commission appointments so we're going to separate them off from this at this time okay Darcy it doesn't seem like I mean these are two separate appointments to the historical commission it seems like only whoever is being objected to should be I mean why should we prevent the other person from being appointed I that that point we can also move this off to another meeting and find out and when we have more time so we just take that committee people continue to serve and we'll bring it back on a future near agenda so that we don't have to try to resolve that issue tonight that's what I'm suggesting uh George well the initial sponsor withdrew um and I also feel that we're it's somehow singling out to individuals where the issue seems to be more with the bylaw and its vagueness and issues of lack of definition and clarity it seems the issue is more with the bylaw than it is with the individuals who are tasked with carrying it out I share Mandy's concern of how I feel at times this might have been misused or even abused but I think singling out these individuals seems inappropriate unless someone has some concrete argument they want to make that these individuals have been egregious and not fulfilling their responsibilities otherwise I think we should let this just go as it is and instead pursue the larger and I think more important question of the bylaw itself and whether it really says what we wanted to say okay so I'm going to just state the following we've already had one council who is asked to separate out a committee we can actually delay the vote on that committee to a future meeting but proceed with the rest of these votes without getting into individuals or the bylaw and bring that bring the bylaw back as a separate discussion and bring the committee back as a separate discussion so the issue of it being separated out has already happened we can bring that back to a vote tonight for the that commission or not Steve yeah so well first I object to breaking out that particular group I think we should vote for this as a block the the historical commission is a political body they're not working with science they're working with basically the information that they have before them and so I I am certainly aware of controversial decisions that they've made but they're doing their job they're doing due diligence we may not like that I don't think I but I've never seen anything egregious that any member of the historical commission has done including the incumbents so I would object to not taking this vote tonight I'm sorry was that me yes um I understand the sentiment behind splitting it out I appreciate what Mandy Joe did to save us time and now of course we're not saving time anymore is that I agree with everything George said and understanding as Lynn also stated that these people are going to keep serving anyway so if we're trying to punish them which is literally the only way to read that then that's what we do if you're going to pull them out and then vote on them separately and then that way I have several abstentions because that's fine but it doesn't make any sense to postpone them to another night whether it's a big postponement nuclear option or not because they're going to continue serving whether you do anything or not so I would not do I would not separate them out or if you have separated them out already and can't take that back then I would go ahead and vote on them tonight as well as the vote total may just be different the way we treated this was consent agenda if one counselor asked to be separated out we do so we did that so we are back to the original slate that is here minus the historic commission historical commission Dorothy I agree that it would be not very unfortunate to set to single out this committee or any members of it and I know that at least one of them is very new I have been paying attention to these demolition delays for a number of years because I didn't know what they meant it's a clearly it's been established practice in this commission so I think that the issue is the charge of the commission and looking at that which many people have mentioned so I would support voting the whole slate or none but the idea of stripping out one committee is very punitive and I think very misguided this this thing of demolition delay with different barns and whatever it's been going on for 10 years at least since I've been here I've been paying attention to it so I didn't know what it was so so I thought it was interesting so I would say we should vote the slate in and then deal very seriously with the commission's bylaw here's the dilemma you've placed me in one counselor has asked to separate out and as on a consent agenda it then gets separated out and is not debatable more than a second we can still vote on it tonight but it would be voted separately that I withdraw that idea so we're back to the full slate all right we're back to the original motion is there any other discussion all right the motion is the complete slate as you see it on the screen and we begin with Kathy Shane yes Steve Schreiber yes Andy Steinberg yes Sarah Schwartz Sarah yes thank you yep Shalini Balmain yes Alyssa Brewer yes Pat D'Angeloz yes Garcy Dumont yes Moon Griezmer isn't abstain Mandy Jo Hanneke abstain Barthi Pam yes Evan Ross yes George Ryan yes votes 11 for not against and to abstentions and it passes okay we now have to move to the elementary school building committee I sent out an email many people responded I sent you a I in your I'm finding my own memo in your packet was a memo and it listed eight counselors okay we need to get to the point that we have recommended two counselors I'm going to make your lives easy I'm taking my name off the list it's not because I wouldn't like to do that this it's not because I don't feel unqualified it's just that I enjoy being president of the council and can't take this on right now too and there's many other qualified people Pat D'Angeloz do you have your hand yes I do I'd like to remove myself I was hoping that my educational background would be valuable to the committee but I have a feeling that people more versed in finance would be helpful on it so I'm going to withdraw my name are there any other people whose name I missed when I came up with the list are there any other people who would like to add their name to this Lynn can you just have him scroll to the name list so we can see it right now it's um thank you that's the charge we're actually moving to the memo which is dated June 14th 2020 yes that one and move down to the list please here we go thank you so the list has been narrowed to six um they are Alyssa Brewer Darcy Demont Mandy Jo Hanneke Kathy Shane Steve Schreiber and Andy Steinberg the way the charge reads there should be one person from finance and then one person at from the council at large that does not exclude that that person can also be from finance it just means that one of the people has to be from finance so I'm going to suggest the following process um we're going to have first of all discuss the desired qualities for this choosing this person what we are looking for uh what do we think is important uh to have represented what was supposed to happen with the select school committee but really didn't uh given that eight people were vying for this may be easier to accomplish so that was just a side comment then you're going to make statements the six of you and then we're going to have a poll where um or who you think should be on from finance and then we're going to have a second one after that where we basically say who else would you like to vote for and when we go down we just do state the names okay so what are what are some of the characteristics people feel should be included in counselors we select for this purpose I will start out by saying I first of all I think finance is important I think procurement is important I think that um being able to listen to different voices and represent them back to the council is important Dorothy can't hear you Dorothy thank you at some meeting recently there was a clear statement which I cannot reproduce that said the school committee feasibility this committee building committee will not be working on this it'll be working on that and that statement I'd love to have it repeated exactly what so before we talk about qualities that we know what is doing and what it's not doing this this committee does not work on the program the school committee is in charge of deciding the program this committee is about the building that will fit the program that the school committee size in essence that was the state all do you have a better way you'd like to state that Matthew um in addition to what you listed Lynn I I think listening and working well with people is is going to be critical from different points of view um my understanding of this is both you've got to be willing to get up early in the morning to get to the meetings um but it's uh there's a volume of work to this um that will be ranging from trying under to understand all the nuances of the options that are being discussed uh to when it gets nearer to some initial decisions being made being willing to look at um complex documents read them think about them and ask questions so it's both finance skills but uh stick toitiveness around um a lot of work so it's got to be eyes wide open that this is not i'm going to be a quick read on some of this before you get to the meeting okay other characteristics do you shrivel okay so unmute so i think probably the most and one of the most important qualities is to not for the committee members to themselves not be the experts but basically be able to listen to experts listen to the community synthesize those to know what they don't know and to basically humility to not know everything but to understand what they what they don't know to be invested in the public schools um through your own actions i think is important okay mandy jeff i think we need someone who's well versed in finance um because but but what i mean by that is someone who questions and is willing to question expenditures and keeps this the building itself in mind as to how much things might cost and starts asking those questions um whether that's digging into the guidelines about how big room should be and stuff like that and sizes and stuff like that but but is is willing to ask all those questions and push back at some answers because our job is a council is going to figure out how to fund it um when it finally comes to us and so we need people in there who are always cognizant of what that cost is going to be and brings that regularly to the table and doesn't ignore costs until the very end um i you know this is a five to seven year team and we already know it's going to be a lot of work from day one i think it's going to be really hard for people to jump in and out um and while we as counselors may not know at all how long we're going to serve on the council or whether we're going to run um i i do it unfortunately i don't think it can be answered now but i do think consistency of the counselors is going to be important um how we answer that now i'm not sure but we i don't think we as a council want people trading out every year and because that harms the council's knowledge of the committee's progress going forward if every year someone has to re figure out and get back up to speed about everything that's gone on the year before or two years or five years um so i think that's important too yeah it does seem to me however that in order to remain on the committee after the next election you have to be on the council or we have to relook at the requirements because the possibility that somebody's going to serve for all seven years is slim to none um so all right any other comments shallony i just have a question uh how important is institutional memory for this work i think count i think uh people can be prepared to speak to that in their comments if they feel it's important okay all right oh and i don't know this this is a little it's late and whatever but this is on my mind so i'm just going to say it that i you know we've been working great as a council but i think there's a certain um perception in the residents few residents anyway the emails that we're getting about um the earlier uh whatever it's called and so it might be i'm just putting it out there that might be good to uh have vote for counselors who were from different perspectives i don't even know if i'm making sense but i'm hoping you understand what i'm saying are there any other comments okay then i did ask to be prepared to make state no more than two minutes why do you think you should be elected by the council to this position and we're just going to go straight down the list councilor brewer so as you notice when you read the charge the sbc doesn't do the educational program because the school committee does that they're elected to do that what is the importance of institutional memory that of course is a good question i was on the school committee for five years so i have a really good sense of what's school committee's job and what is the school building committee's job i was on the select board when the select board in fact took a leadership role associated with the last school building project one of the things that i think is critically important here is that we have the two town counselors one i think should definitely as and i agree with the charge that says it should be from the finance committee i do not believe that both need very strong finance from the standpoint of being on the finance committee i think it's important to bring another perspective in the second counselor and i believe that i do that in that i have had those experiences and i have seen what happened during the last process and i think one of the things that fell apart during the last process which i will point out only failed at the town meeting vote it did pass through the through a tax override is that there was not enough communication to the community about what the school building committee was doing versus what the school committee was doing it was very unclear to people and so people felt really left behind people who were huge supporters of the schools from the league of women voters to the pgo's just didn't feel like they knew what was going on throughout the process and so that's what i bring to this is the focus on ensuring that everybody whether it's the town council or anyone else in the community knows what's going on and we have a tendency when we have committees that are heavily staff based which this has to be because of the technical skills that are required associated with evaluating all the work of the vendors is that we need the dedication to ensure that the information will get sent out to the public in a whole bunch of different ways and not at the last minute meaning like every month like every meeting like every newsletter so people know exactly where we're at and i think that's incredibly helpful i also want to point out that both of my kids went to marx meadow and so i am very understanding of financial constraints and close that school for a financial constraint and i think it's important that we have a counselor who has had kids in the school and has those connections to the different parent groups as well as the wider community groups so i skipped my written speech because i was trying to address some of the things people brought up thank you rc you're next okay um so uh i'm really interested in this position and i i think that the person who gets it should really um you know be familiar with the fort river school uh building plan and the wildwood plan and the crocker farm plan and the grade six um study um both of my kids went through the amherst public schools they went to crocker farm the middle school and both graduated from the high school um we moved here because of the school uh the school systems um so i have worked uh the first year i was here i substituted and so i got a chance to actually work in all the different amherst public schools so i have an idea about the floor plans and um and actually all the different schools in the region i worked at then i got a job in holy oak and i actually found a found a school that had a worse floor plan than out than our fort river and wildwood floor plans uh which was actually a circle i i worked on the uh the inner row of the circle that were all rooms that were pie shaped that had no uh no circulation and um so um i taught elementary school for 20 years eight of those were teaching art and 12 teaching in the classroom um and um as an art teacher i taught a class for autistic students and one for multiply disabled children um as a classroom teacher i of course participated in IEPs for um kids that were receiving special ed services and um in holy oak um i was working at downtown schools all three of the schools that i worked at were downtown schools and they 90 percent of the student population were um from families that were below the poverty line and a majority were of Puerto Rican ancestry and many of those of course spoke Spanish so um also i worked with the uh the zero energy task force while they were preparing to get our building bylaw passed uh that was a great experience and um i think that is about it um lots of experience in education Mandy gohanity thank you um so i'm gonna start with that i have a child who's finishing up sixth grade so i believe on this council the most recent experience navigating elementary schools classrooms and all of that as a parent um that experience i will admit is not at the Amherst public schools it is at the pioneer valley chinese immersion charter school um but that gives me a unique perspective that is very new to this area on space needs as it relates to dual language programs because i've seen it for seven years now um and that is something that i believe any new building will have to deal with and there are not many examples in this um area dealing with the unique needs of a dual language program as it relates to a building um so i think i bring that experience and perspective and all um i also as you guys i don't think i have to say this with you all um you've seen of the last 18 months that i do my research that i listen to people i listen to people of various perspectives and i am not unwilling to i'm not shy about asking questions regarding the choices that are being made that would impact the town's ability to pay or the cost of the building um that i believe it's very important to keep that front and center as we're looking at a new building and since the school building committee will be dealing with decisions that directly relate and go to the costs the ultimate projected cost of the building um i think it's important to have that up front and i am one that will always keep that there um and and i do work well with all opinions and i'm willing to always listen to all opinions and i do think a committee is better suited when we as members bring an open mind to anyone contacting the committee members about their thoughts thanks Kathy Shane um i'm a i'm a trained economist and uh have worked most of my life on finance issues albeit more focused on in the healthcare world but i had a number of years where i worked with a labor union where i was a research and policy person which meant that any budget that needed to be looked at i was the one who looked at it um it was a nice uh for me it was something i just loved doing and trying to think through complex problems as where the school will be with multiple issues on which site should it be and is the sixth grade moving up or not how can it be configured in a way that it will make it feel small and intimate but but be the larger school as we're envisioning it to be is something i would love to be working on um because i'd like the complexity i like to read complicated documents but also to listen um one of the labor union experiences i had was always being um in a potential controversy controversy were two sides and my role was to bring everybody together by finding um where there was enough commonality but also to listen to nuances but i i think what Mandy said at the beginning on what qualities is um those of you who have been with me on the finance committee or recently jcpc i like to ask tough questions and i would like to be able to be in a position to ask for more information that we need to make decisions about how expensive does this building need to be but also if we spend a large amount of money are we getting extremely high value for the design so that we can be proud and the town can be proud and celebrate a building when we bring it home as something that will bring lasting benefits to the kids who are in it to the people who are teaching units and then last i think not least is i like to work hard um and i'm willing to do put in the extra hours and i am particularly a morning person so i was thrilled with 7 30 in the morning starting time so um i work best when i'm fresh in the morning and then can go back and read so i don't think i'll say anymore um you know the training i had as an economist didn't completely prepare me for the world of federal state and local tough decisions but it meant that we always were dealing with complexity and trying to think through issues and then the public finance side had to deal with documents all the time so it's one of the reasons i ran for the council actually and that's it Steve Schreiber so when lin was when the president greece mayor was leading us us through the exercise of what we thought the ideal qualities are it's really hard to answer that because we don't know who who else will be on the team so it's like asking what the ideal qualities of a baseball team are when you only have two players named so i feel very strongly that there needs to be an architect on this building committee and i'm the only person on the council that has that experience and furthermore i'm the only person on the council that worked for the architect that did the floor river school feasibility study but then furthermore i'm the only person on the council whose students designed the floor river school as a student project last semester but i say that kind of tongue-in-cheek but obviously my experiences as an architect will give me the ability to or really help me work with the committee to ask hopefully to ask the right questions i certainly don't know a lot but i know how to i know what i don't know and i know how to find out things that i don't know but i also know how to help the other members of the school committee and my fellow counselors who are not on the school committee i'm sorry the building committee to um basically lead them through the discussion on things like site selection the development of the building program the um the architectural characteristics of this the my daughter we have one child of my daughter she's a alumna of wildwood and also the Amherst regional middle school and also the Amherst regional high school we live halfway between fort river and wildwood i love 7 30 in the morning i'll work hard for you and i i look look forward to this opportunity if you grant it to me annie steinberg okay i'll be very brief but uh start out with something that steve had mentioned in his too which is that i had two children who went to port river school when it was a fairly new school and went through the entire Amherst school system then gave me the unique experience of observing what was then a fairly new fort river school and seeing how problematic it was in the design of the mistakes that had been made in choosing what was built and how it was built and where it was built given the time that was going on i think that we need to be very vigilant and learn from our past experience and do it right this time i was very involved in as a member of the select board in the prior process but i was not on the school building committee i did speak at town meeting on behalf of the select board in support of the proposal every time it came up when it came up before the town meeting and so i became fairly involved with the project then my observation about the prior project was that there were problems and we do have to be very vigilant that the school building committee is not the school committee and decisions about where sixth grade goes are not school building committee's decisions they are the school committee's decisions but that there has to be a way to have a dialogue between the two committees because of the consequence consequences and the ability to pay for the decisions that are made and to recognize that in that last round that some of the community dissatisfaction was in the educational plan and part of it was in the building and that they really do go together so that there has to be a good dialogue but a respectful dialogue and respect of each other's appropriate elected or selected roles just a couple other things is that the fact that i've had all of this institutional memory was something we talked about and the last one is that i do think the energy factors in the building are important as mentioned by one other counselor councilor demont i was in the group that worked together between people who were representing the town manager and people who were original advocates of the first net zero energy to derive the net zero energy bylaw as then it was ultimately passed and is now in place and if given the opportunity i hope that this becomes the first building where we really can achieve goals of that particular bylaw and prove that it works so i guess that's i can say thank you hey now we know why you're all in the council so we're going to do a roll call vote and when your name is called the first round of roll call is going to be to vote for someone who represents the finance committee at this point the only two councillors on the slate that represent the finance committee are councillor shane and councillor steinberg so in the first round that's what you will be voting for one or the other and i begin with uh steve schreiber councillor shane and steinberg we're going to extend short steinberg all-milk Kathy shane steinberg de angeles shane gemant Kathy shane respir is abstaining uh hannity shane ham gain ross Brian steinberg and shane i guess i'm going to do what andy did all abstain so at this point i have six votes for uh shane and four votes for steinberg and three abstentions we can do the round andy your hand is up um i think that at this point that we've had a vote i congratulate uh chastler shane we're sure well and that's going to be a very hard process and i asked to withdraw then because i do think that it should not be two people from the finance committee okay all right um then i will move to the next one which includes councillor uh lissa brewer darcy demont mandy joe hannity and steve schreiber lin yes um i would like to withdraw okay so it includes brewer hannity and schreiber and we begin with steinberg um schreiber shorts all-milk schreiber uh brewer de angeles brewer demont respir is abstaining uh hannity i'm gonna vote for myself hannity ham schreiber ross chane schreiber did i already call on steinberg and yes i did okay you didn't call steve i'm sorry i don't think you called me i'm sorry um yeah schreiber i'll abstain okay so in this case schreiber has seven votes which is a majority uh and brewer has three so um i would like to make a motion that we do these elementary school building authority councillor schane and councillor schreiber is there a second yes i think we need a way of we need a way of 8.6 8.6 oh i'm sorry thank you all right um and let me move to the way of council rules procedure rule 8.6 for councilor appointments to the elementary school building committee is there that's a motion is there a second i don't know what it means second yes this means we can do this tonight we don't have to bring it back a second time it's been made and seconded is there any further discussion okay then um we start with schwarz stein this is to waive the rule i'm sorry yes all for it thank you shallony ball moon yes brewer yes de angeles yes yes damont yes reesmer yes anarchy yeah ham yes bros ryan yes schane yes schreiber yes einberg yes okay so we that allows us to then move forward and in this case the motion that i would like to make is that we appoint councillors when yes we have to recommend the town manager a point oh thank you i would like to recommend that the town manager a point councillor schane and councillor schreiber to this elementary school building committee is there a second second okay wait wait wait wait oh you just mean we had a motion and shouldn't we specify that ones ones from the finance committee i'm sorry you're right i would i couldn't see the motion thank you all right this is my motion to recommend the town manager a point under charter section 3.3c councillors um that'd be schane from the finance committee and councillor steve schreiber to the elementary school building committee is there a second second thank you evin you have your hand up yeah i i felt a little uncomfortable with this um and so i'm going to abstain but i'm also someone who believes you should explain when you're abstaining so i want to just state very briefly this whole thing feels weird to me because the town manager is the appointing authority and he is the one who is responsible for taking a holistic view of the committee looking at everyone else who's on it the residents and putting together what he thinks is the most effective committee um we we did a little roll call of who we think should be on it um and i think that he has that information i think he's heard the statements from everyone um but i actually don't feel comfortable recommending to the town manager who he should appoint um and i think that if he disagrees with either of the two people who got majority votes he should feel free to appoint someone else so i am going to abstain which is nothing against either of the two people um but i want to just make that clear okay any further discussion at this time all right then we're going to start with shall we ball melm elissa broor yes pat d angeles yes darsie du mont yes reese mercy yes hanna key yes ham yes uh evan ross stein ryan yes chain yes driver yes sineberg yes and schwarz stein so it passes 11 for none against and two abstentions okay we're moving on to the town council appointments and this is where i'm going to call on evan because it's regarding the planning board yes um i'll keep this brief because you have the report uh oka met to discuss planning board appointments we had been laying the ground work to deal with the three expiring terms uh on the report oka felt that the pool was insufficient at this time to move forward with appointments um and so decided that we were not in a position to actually move forward to interviews and make a recommendation for appointment uh technically if we do nothing members can continue to serve beyond their term but we felt that it would provide um the the body and us a little more feeling of security um if we extended the terms throughout the summer we've confirmed with um all three members that they're willing to serve at least for a little bit longer after their term um expiring 30th even if uh some of them are not seeking reappointment uh and so this buys the council and now the crc sometime to recruit and to do some active recruitment so that we can uh do a longer term appointment to the planning board uh sometime this summer okay so uh any questions at this time okay so the motion is uh go ahead evan if you would please um the motion is to so i moved to extend the appointments of planning board members michael burt whistle christine gray mullen and david levin seen from june 30th 2020 to august 31st 2020 is there a second second thank you any further discussion okay then i'm going to do a roll call vote brewer yes the angeles yes damont recenters yes hannity yes ma'am bros yes ryan george yes shane yes schreiber yes dindard yes warts yes bameon yes okay and that is unanimous i would like to take this opportunity to thank opa this was your last task that you needed to do your first chair with sarah and succeeded then by evan and i want to thank the entire committee um you blaze trails you took your heart knocks um you dealt with the issue of process and then passed it on to other committees and i really want to just thank you all for serving on this committee your continued service up until this very point when now the appointment of the planning board becomes the responsibility of of crc okay so thank you um we're going to move on to um committee reports very quickly mandy joe is there any other report i just want to use the opportunity to announce that this wednesday there is a public hearing joint with the planning board at 6 30 on the zoning bylaw amendment for zoning bylaw 11.250 voting quantums as it relates to cycline review thank you andy finance there's no real additional report beyond what is already in the written report just want to remind everybody to check the dates on when we have hearings on various departments and if they're uh hearings that you're interested in you should be sure to black them out on your schedule those are actually not official hearings so they're just meetings with the they're they are you are correct they're meetings with department heads to hear from them about their particular sections of the department uh budget right but it's an opportune time for counselors to learn more in depth about each of the issues related to the budget george gl just point out to my colleagues that we have come up with a process for making recommendations to the town council for finance appointments and that's in the packet we are very much indebted to okah and we follow their processes fairly closely but with one difference regarding interviews but that's in the packet for people to consult if they have any questions we happy to answer them but at this hour i'm hoping they don't i'm sorry kathy jcpc we have nothing new to report you you got our report which was very long that you could read it and we hope to do in the future um outreach okah anything else haven't yeah i i know it's late but since this is the last okah committee report uh i wrote this in the report but i did want to say it publicly that i owe a deep amount of gratitude to all the members of okah this committee has worked for 17 18 months and i put in the report some of our accomplishments um because i want to make sure that i recognize the members for the work that we put in um because it's really been an incredible amount of work and some of it has been difficult and grueling and sometimes so painful um and a lot of it has been around process and i said this to the committee in our last meeting that processes and often the the sexy stuff that makes headlines that people get excited about um and so often i felt like we didn't get necessarily our due for the hard work not not from y'all but more broadly um and so uh think i want to thank them because they worked really hard and i especially want to thank sarah um because she she was a really great chair during what were definitely the most difficult months as we were getting our footing and and dealing with um getting that first complicated process set up and spending week at literally every week in meetings and sitting on the phone with a town attorney and it's stuff i never want to do again um but i want to thank everyone for putting in the time and it was really a pleasure um and my only sadness at this point is that we weren't able to spend our final meeting together uh in person um or able to go get a drink after it so um i think thank you to to honestly to all members of oca um for all of your work because it was a tremendous amount of work and this entire council owes this committee um a debt of gratitude we have produced for you a 30 page document outlining our process and all of the different steps it was put in your packet today i wanted to get it to you earlier but adobe acrobat was fighting me on it um i don't expect you read it for today i don't expect that many of you will read it ever um but it is there as your gift from oca um on how its council can bring together can bring forward recommendations for appointments to multiple member bodies appointed by the council balancing privacy transparency and working within the incredibly annoying but important constraints of open meeting so thank you and i would like to ask kathina to strike from the record that they don't start drinking at 11 30 in the morning uh darcy duMont you have a you are doing town services uh yes um i don't have anything to report other than that we had another group of free appointments today and the school building the basic appointments to the school building committee which are coming to the next town council meeting and we started at our review process but i also did want to say that i that i did that modification that gol made to the interview process that allows people to each of the members to ask interview questions and to ask follow-up questions we did the approval of minutes on the consent agenda town managers report paul you have my written report if you have any questions i'm here to answer them are there questions of paul yes mandy joe apologize i have a lot of questions um so and i know it's late so i'm going to run through them all you don't have to answer them all tonight um um some of them are just basics um but the library i watched the library meeting gosh thursday friday i don't even remember when it was when i was about reopening um and one of the things the library director said was that you were saying that the buildings wouldn't open to the public until like september um and i am very concerned about the library not being able to open and stating that right now not being able to open till september to the public um i know in phase one which was four weeks ago they could have been allowed to open curbside um were four weeks out from that first being able to and they're still not doing curbside rentals or loans phase two started a week ago and that was allowed for under that for libraries circulation desk pickup inside desk pickup i don't know what phase three will bring for a library but phase two started a week ago phase three might start two weeks from now and we still don't have curbside pickup at our library um but curbside pickup in library books are not what i see is the most dire need for libraries um at this point we've set it from the time these buildings closed we don't have public bathrooms with the buildings closed we don't have now it's summer a cooling station with these buildings closed we don't have for our most neediest internet access and computer access none of that can be transferred to an outside curbside pickup and so i would really urge us to think about which buildings need to be opened sooner rather than later for things to serve um our needy residents and cooling and this goes to one of my other ones homeless it's not just the homeless that need an indoor cooling space it's our elderly that don't have air conditioning in their buildings when we hit 90 degrees four days in a row this week or whatever it's calling for we don't have a place to send people to get out of the heat right now and i think we need to start prioritizing that and a library is a fantastic place to do that um so that's my point on library and homeless uh i was curious when meters will start to begin to be enforced again um as we are you know we know it has a significant strain on the budget and as things start opening the demand for parking will increase and the economist in me says when demand goes up um you know supply will go down and then you need to start charging to even those out so i was curious when the thinking on charging will be um elections uh you mentioned in your report that location options are being considered i'm curious what some of them are and i'm wondering if outside in a parking lot is an option for september um even if we have to do tents to allow for social distancing and all and then playgrounds um yay i can i say yay that they are open my daughter and i went to one this weekend in mill river and it was fantastic to allow her to actually play on a playground um it was easy to social distance in general um but i was wondering about the school playgrounds because when i drove by procker the other day i think the snow fencing was still up around the playground and without the school playgrounds and with broth park closed there is pretty much one playground in town and that will make it harder as school gets out to social distance so i i want to wonder about how we can get more playgrounds open if the school ones aren't open and i wanted to mention that the closed sign was still on the bench at mill river potentially creating confusion it might be better if we create a new sign that indicates some rules and expectations about the use of the playground including mask wearing and all and and then it sounds strange but when grof opens are we going to have a ribbon cutting because i think it would be really good to have fun even if they're socially distanced so sorry for the long a number of questions thanks like it then i can run through those if you'd like ribbon cutting yes we've been talking about to go to the reverse order ribbon cutting yes we've been talking about that uh how to do that successfully we don't want to draw a crowd we're you know one of our intentions that we have is that we don't want to create things that draw people together but on the same on the same token we um we also are trying to we're establishing places where people can come into town and eat because we want to support the businesses so if there's a balance to be had we we choose we will do it there'll be some kind of ribbon cutting of some sort but it might be very small number of people and it might be some televised or something like that uh signs on the bench we can get that fixed thanks for pointing that out uh school um we when we open the playgrounds we're in communication with the schools they have chosen not to unlock their their playgrounds but i can check back with them if they've thought anything differently about that elections we're thinking a lot about that we've looked at we're looking at outside tents these are we're talking with the schools right now we'll probably have one right what we're thinking about one location um that has a minimal impact on the schools and not because the schools are going to be open because they are scheduled not to be open on the two days but for the sort of the cleaning of the building afterwards and things like that so we have some options that the town clerk is leading the team that has the fire chief the dpw superintendent and the facilities manager working with the school district um we also have talked about closing a road down and just taking taking over a road for for permit for um voting on that day and also encouraging people to vote in advance if at all possible so lots of different options available they have to come to you at some point um charging for parking uh we we sort of have a metric in our minds of about july 1 evaluate that again depending on you know paying attention to the number of parking spaces that are in demand knowing that we're going to be taking away parking spaces as we start to move uh restaurants onto the streets um so monitoring that um right now we're utilizing our parking enforcement officers at different utilizing other things so we would reprogram them back uh into town um and uh so there's some other things about that um opening the the library um opening buildings to the public is a it's a pretty um it's a challenging thing very few places are open to the public and making sure that we have protocols in place are the is the real key um and just even opening this building that where I am now the town hall and where it looks like you're virtually there um is is it just for our employees has been a big challenge because we have to maintain every we have to maintain the names of everybody who come in they we have multiple sanitized stations as you walk into the building um so when we start to open to the public that's a bit different things the cooling centers we've talked about that looking at different options for that as well recognizing the need for that at the same time um and don't have ready solutions to announce right now but it is something that our team has been talking about for a bit now um and there are different um options for that as well it's not just the library there are other options that we can put together for that so but on our list yes Alyssa I was just going to reiterate again because I always like to say it that I really appreciate how hard you're working to try and figure out how to keep staff safe right keep staff safe first and then bring in the public one thing I just wanted to check in on is given the different phasing when offices were first open in theory it was for 25 capacity but it sounds like in the report that you're bringing everybody back so how how do we thread that needle is it now just everybody's allowed to go back to work as long as you put plexiglass in or what's our approach to that so we have installed plexiglass but we've also distanced people utilizing meeting room space to put people in so we are social distancing people um we're uh the 25 capacity is is in a you know we're working on that as a sort of the metric but there's also you can have someone in a office next to someone in another office they're not considered in the 25 percent there's still people who are working remotely um if they can do that successfully that's that's we leave that to the department but we have had our team which is the HR director the facilities manager and the assistant town manager sort of going through department by department person by person as to who is eligible to come back and who isn't so we've accommodated as many as we possibly can at this point but not everybody can be accommodated in the building please unmute Dorothy Dorothy you need to unmute working okay a comment to the question I think the library starts curbside pick up this Thursday and I know that seems to be a little too late but I think that they're starting it then my question is why is graph park we were told it would open in in May I know we've had COVID but construction was allowed to go on and then I heard yesterday it was going to be a water slide which I wasn't aware of I have gone by and peeked in through the locked gates and I see a lot of really interesting looking things in there so when is it opening and is there really a water slide there's no water slide we don't have a date for it to be open there are a lot of punch list items that our contractor is working on and some of the things that our DPW is going to have to do to get it open the end is in sight but is there before we can remove the fencing and open it up we have a meeting out there tomorrow morning at 7 30 a.m. to sort of go through what the punch list items are and review that with its superintendent public works any assistant town manager I look forward to it yeah it looks awesome I have to say I've seen a picture of it any other questions at this point okay then um on the town councilor comments um I basically will be doing follow-up from this agenda and setting the agenda for the following week we have a bunch of financials things coming up on the 29th and also then on the 13th and the 20th of July but given the hour I'm not going to go into any more than that I will be letting you know as we get the agenda set um future agenda items questions comments okay and then any other councilor comments okay we dealt with topics not reasonably anticipated by dealing with the policing discussion earlier there's no executive session and so I call the meeting adjourned thank you