as well as Westfield mess. We have an over there in the plaza. Both along the same concept, you know, people are able to come in and try out the games before they buy them. And then, you know, pretty much you recycle all your old games. You bring them in, let somebody else get use of them, give you good trade and credit towards your next game. So. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Brewer. I suppose my two teenage boys would be mad if I didn't say, when do you plan to open? We plan on opening ASAP. We're still waiting on a building permit right now. But you're close. God willing, you know, fingers crossed the next month or so. Any other questions? Mr. Hayden. Just one comment. Good deal. Thank you. All right, I hear that. Thank you. Other questions or comments? Ms. Stein, would you like to make a motion? I move that the select board approve the application of Gameplay USA LLC for a license to operate a secondhand sales business at 181A University Drive Amherst MA, Jacob Hanouche Polanar. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Thank you very much for coming in. Thank you for your patience in getting postponed from our. No, I actually worked on my benefit. Thank you. Tremendous. Thank you. Good luck. Right, we got just a couple more minutes. Let us do a couple of untimed items. Taxi driver licenses. I move that the select board approve a new 2013 taxi slash chauffeur license for Zachary John Glourishis on behalf of Celebrity Cab Company. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. I move that the select board approve a new taxi 2013 taxi slash chauffeur license, license, cross out the S, for John Nicole on behalf of God A Gove Taxi Company. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. And those are all our taxi licenses. How about the, right before the minutes we have an interesting liquor license change. Folks will remember that we voted the special license for Cherry Hill for Winterfest back on January 7th and we had voted that for Saturday, but because of the storm, the Winterfest got postponed until Sunday. Checking with town council on how best to handle this. We were advised that the, Ms. Musanti and I conferred and decided that the select board certainly would have approved it if it had been for Sunday. So the best way to proceed was for the town manager to give permission and for us to then formally grant our permission retroactively. So that's what this is about to make official to change the amendment of that license. I move that the select board approve a 48 hour extension of the special wine and malt license authorized for the town of Amherst doing business as Jerry Hill Golf Club Saturday, February 9th, 2013 from 1 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. in the parking lot area of the Cherry Hill Golf Course for Winterfest 2013, Barbara Biltz Manager through Monday, February 11th, 2013. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. I do this at the end of the meeting, at the end of the month following the end of the quarter each time, but of course this was postponed from a couple of weeks ago when we also had weather in January. So tonight we have Ms. Aldrich here, the Comptroller here to walk us through our FY13 second quarter budget update. And per usual we all received the memo in our packets and this is online for folks following along at home. So welcome. Thank you. I'm stepping in for Mr. Poehler tonight. Lucky me. We're 50% through the year and as the report shows there's really nothing unusual or right on target. On the revenue side, we've collected 52.1% today and the items are highlighted here. I'll read a few of them. Departmental recreation is 93.3% the reason that's so high is their administrative reimbursement has been transferred over to the general fund that usually happens in the first half of the year. Investment income is at 24.8% and that's through November and some of that is timing issues and the low interest rates that we're getting right now in the market. Miscellaneous non-recurring, this includes budgeted offset receipts for the cherry sheet, the gift we get from Amherst College and transfers that typically occurred during the second half of the year. So that's why that's low right now. Motor vehicle excise, most of this comes, is collected in February so that'll show up in a third quarter. Other excise, it reflects the hotel motel tax, 198.22 is for the hotel motel that we collected so far and meals excise of 206.360 and this is through November of 2012. The hotel motel revenue is 52% above the same, above the same period last year. I'm assuming that's due to the Lord Jeffrey opening. Pilot, the bulk of these come in as a transfer from the enterprise funds. The remaining will typically be collected in June. There's a small balance still remaining there. Property tax and state aid are right on target at 50%. On the expenditure side, the report reflects a 61.9% of budget expenditures but that's due to having encumbrances in there. Doesn't mean that we've actually spent by subtracting the encumbrances out of that total. We're at 48.6%. And the variances from the 50% is due to contracts on the IT department, we're at 68.7% expended and that's because most of their agreements and everything are already encumbered. Legal services includes payments through November. In the general fund, expenditures today are at 28,157 but there's 12,000 also that was allocated for the retainer to the enterprise funds. So you would have to add that to that. Foyee benefits, we're at 65.2% but that includes the amount paid out to the Hampshire County Retirement for Assessment. Miscellaneous and insurance right now, it shows 106% expended. That's because we normally pay the bill out of the town general fund and then we allocate the cost later on in the year as our policy comes in and we break it all out. So that's really not a real 106% right there. Our enterprise funds seem to be on track both on the revenue and the expense side. And that's about all the excitement I have on this report. Thank you very much. So this report is always so clear and really appreciated. So it sounds like there aren't any departmental expenses, budget areas that you have concern about at this point in the year. Not at this point, no. Anybody have any questions or comments from the soldier? Mr. Musanti, any thoughts or comments? No, I think we're right on track and our two biggest revenue sources, property tax and state aid are coming in as expected and we're on track again to have another very strong year on property tax, more over 98%. And we're very thrilled to see the state aid coming in as budgeted by the legislature and the enterprises. You think that we're over the hump for that as far as the nine C cuts that they were talking about and whether that would go to the legislature? Well, the legislature is debating a supplemental budget and the $9 million that the governor had proposed for a reduction statewide to unrestricted general government aid was not included in the legislature's list of cuts. We take that as a very positive sign that hasn't totally played out yet, but I think that was about a $70,000 potential cut we were looking at. I think that would go away and if that plays out the way we think it's going to. Other questions or comments? Mr. Hayden? I know that this was going together in anticipation of a meeting that didn't happen because of the snow storm and then subsequent snow storm. Noticing that our snow and ice here are 64% expendable. It seems like we're in very good shape even given the extraordinary effort that we all appreciate this weekend. Right, and some of that is in conferences for salt too so it's even a little bit better. Other questions are coming. Thank you once again for coming in and for keeping us so updated on this. Okay, 656. So we got a couple more minutes to do some untimed items. We might as well start up the top here. What have we got? How about these various liquor licenses? All kinds of special licenses. It's time. I move that the select board approves special wine and more licenses for consistent sales at events to be held by the University of Massachusetts on the following dates, times, and UMass Amherst premises as listed. Jivie Bardwell-Clark, top of the campus, incorporated. February 26th, 2013, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Fine Arts Center. March 5th, 2013, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Valker Auditorium. March 7th, 2013, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Valker Auditorium. March 14th, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Whoops, March 14th, 2013, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Fine Arts Center. April 6th, 2013, 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Valker Auditorium. April 11th, 2013, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Fine Arts Center. April 12th, 2013, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Fine Arts Center. April 27th, 2013, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Fine Arts Center. I could just keep on breathing, I guess, since there's separate motions. So anyway, there we are. There's a different types of license. Second. All right, further discussion. Mr. Hayden. Bravely read, thank you. Indeed. Ms. Burr. I appreciate that these were combined and the reason these were all in one group is those are wine and malt and then the other groups all alcohol. So I appreciate that we're trying to move toward more of a consensus calendar. So that's really great. Thank you. Further comment? Oh, in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. I move that the select board approve special alcohol licenses for receptions and or dinners to be held at the University of Massachusetts on the following dates, times, and UMass Amherst premises as listed. Judy Bardwell Clerk, top of the campus, incorporated. February 15th, 2013, 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. central heating plant. February 26th, 2013, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. DuVoist Library, 26th floor. April 6th, 2013, 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. DuVoist Library. Second. Further discussion, Ms. Burr. For whatever reason, I don't think it's likely to be important, but since they marked the 26th floor on one of the library ones, the other one says the Learning Center on the lower level has been added on in handwriting to that particular application. And it's obviously not our fault that UMass spelled DuVoist Library wrong themselves when they sent it over to us. But, you know, we do what we can. Further discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Shall I go on? Sure. I move that the Select Board approve special wine and malt license for a cash bar to be held at Keith Campus Center Amherst College from 9 a.m. to 1 a.m. Thursday, February 21st. Charles Thompson, Director of Dining Services. Second. Further discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. I move that the Select Board approve special all alcohol license for the common school for a dance party fundraiser to be held at the Amherst College Alumni House from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. March 23rd, 2013. Dana K. Dish, Outreach Coordinator. Second. Further discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Okay, so we've done all those special liquor licenses. So it's seven o'clock. Mr. Moussanti, are you expecting Mr. Bowman to come in for this item? I thought she was, but in the interest of time I'm happy to run through the recommendations. Are you sure? Okay. Very well, so this is a review of the Senior Center's Parking Permit Program. This is something that we had dealt with about a year and a half ago, if I'm not mistaken. And this was done as a pilot program. And the goal was to increase the participation in senior center events. Folks at the senior center had found that parking had posed an issue for participation. And so they wanted to do this program whereby qualifying folks could for $25 get an annual permit that would allow them to park in certain places in the garage and then by annual in apartments. And at that time, the idea was that we would review it after a year and a half or whatever it was and consider their recommendations, see how it went. And that's where we are now. So again, we have a memo in our packet about this and that is online for folks at home. And Mr. Moussanti, you can tell us whatever we should know about this. And that's a great introduction and primary purpose of implementing this pilot program for senior citizen parking was to encourage more of them to participate in senior center programming. And we have a status report from senior center director Nancy Bagano and Jack Wollensack from the Council on Aging. And the short answer to that question is yes, participation has increased. And I think it's fair to conclude that the parking program and the discounted parking program has contributed to that. And in your packet attached to my memo, recommending that we continue with this program is some data. For calendar year 2011, which was a partial year we started in July, there were 106 senior citizen parking stickers sold. In 2012, we had up to 145 stickers. And then at the bottom half of that report using their system for tracking how frequently people came and participated in their programs. The vast majority of the participants either were continued to be frequent users of which there were 32 of that group, meaning they came more than 50 times. So they were regular visitors. There were another 21 seniors who came about the same number of times over the same period. They were moderate to heavy users of senior programs. And then I think most influential in my, influencing my recommendation to continue this program is that there were 63 seniors identified who were participating in both 2010 prior to the implementation of this program. And then in 2012, there were 63 who came to the senior center more often. And we think at least in part influenced by the more convenient and less costly parking. There were a small minority of sticker holders who 25 that showed a decrease in the number of visits. And there are other kind of unique circumstances depending on the person's situation in life with health and other things. So I think on that basis, I think it's very much worth continuing and I would encourage the board to continue. Thank you. Ms. Stein. The only thing I'd like to add to that is that they do have a very accurate system of recording who comes for what reason. It's a scan device just like you use for other functions. So they have a pretty accurate recording. Thank you. Ms. Brewer. I was actually gonna ask about that just that the senior center swipe card tracking system that's referenced in here was not something I just happened to be familiar with. And so this is something that they've been doing for some time period because they were able to make comparisons that is totally separate from the parking permit. But it's something they're just encouraging all seniors who use the programs to use so that for this very reason, just like we used to have little check sheets of when people were coming in now. So we have another yet advanced system of doing things. That we're not having to just do paper tallies anymore. So I'm impressed. Yeah, that's great. And as Ms. Stein said, it is very accurate because you sign in both as a volunteer or as a participant and you're saying specifically what you're doing. So they're really getting data on their particular programs. It's not just who came to the senior center today. It's who came to the senior center and did this class or had this meal or whatever. So it really is very good system. Did you have any feedback at all from the parking management folks? Since now we've got this pay, the machine system, they're supposed to be able to look and say, okay, space 158 is not paid for or whatever. And now they go up and they're about to write a ticket and they say, oh, actually that's got a senior parking permit or whatever. Yeah, that's gone well. The way they do that is they load the license plate numbers of the sticker holders. So it's, if they see a car in a space that where the parking machine isn't registered as paid, when they enter the license number, it's already entered as somebody under this program. So that's a flag to the enforcement not to write a ticket. That has gone very well. Good. Yeah. Other questions or comments? Ms. Burr. I just want to compliment us for thinking to do that as well because speaking as someone who holds a UMass permit, you have to register your vehicles with your permit and then they still give you a ticket if they can't find your permit, meaning even if they don't see it, because they won't look it up by license number. So we have made that connection. Well, that's our handheld. They have those too. Ticket writing things have that little mobile database with them. So it's at their fingertips. Haven't made that connection yet. Making that decision. We are so cutting edge. Mr. Aiden. Another service to regionalize between us and UMass maybe. There's the thought. The program, the description of the program that we got, I couldn't put my finger on the last version. I assume that this is basically unchanged. Yes. And that's in part because it's working and it doesn't need a tweak or anything yet. Exactly. Thank you. So the only recommendation is basically to continue as it is. It's all set. Okay. Any other questions or comments about that? All right. Thank you very much. So Leslie, do we have a vote specifically to continue it? Okay. Ms. Stein. I move that the select board approve the continuation of the senior citizen sticker parking program as recommended by the council on aging and endorsed by the parking task force as originally presented to the select board at its June 13th, 2011 meeting. Second. Any discussion? Famer say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. That is unanimous. Okay. Let's see. Now we're way early. Let's see what we do for seven minutes. So we got on our untimed list. Mr. Hayden, any update for us on the Mount Tom letter? Yes. I've got good news and bad news. Just to recall, we were asked by the Sierra Club to join them in a petition of the state to require Mount Tom to get an updated license. The license lapsed in 2007, I believe, their air quality permit, which allows them to burn coal and pollute our valley. And that had lapsed and they'd been operating sort of by some means or other. Well, they did get their license. They have actually, and that's the good news, is that they did in fact get their license and that they are now part of, licenses now include very strict requirements on MACD, maximum achievable containment technology, containment of pollutions. The bad news is that because they were operating before MACD came into place, the only thing they required to do is to monitor continuously what effluent they're putting out. And they only need to meet the old restrictions on the level of mercury and sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide and nitrous oxides and particulates. No, I'm sorry, particulates are regulated. So our job is done on that, although there are still folks out there who are advocating to close it all together for obvious reasons. So. So we were looking to send a letter that was going to say something and so. And that thing has happened. We were asked to send a letter to demand that the power plant get a license or be given a license or go through the process of getting a license and not being able to get the license to be closed down. Well, they got the license. So you're saying that no letter is needed on this issue? No letter is needed. Okay, wasn't there also a question from the Sierra Club folks about asking that they be held to the more modern day regulations? Is there, is it possible to retroactively change that situation? It's an interesting part of the rule. They can, the state can require a power plant to be held to the stricter requirements if they consider work that's been done there as a major renovation. And it's always tricky as to how do you define major? And so far, Mount Thomas been able to duck that. I don't know that they will always be able to, but that is the thing that needs to be kept an eye on. And as well as doing things like supporting, reducing our energy consumption so we don't need as much powerful amount, Tom, by say building a solar field on our old landfill. So do we need to close the loop on this in some way? Get back to Sierra Club or something to? I actually hadn't gotten that far to think about it, but I will present to you that closing that I imagine is appropriate. Okay, anyone have questions or comments from Mr. Hayden about this? No, Tom. All right, thank you. You're rather late for public comment. I was at 6.45, unless you were here for a specific, or actually 6.30, what am I saying? 6.30 to 6.45. Let me just take a look at the thing here. Set us a note. Yep. It's always at 6.30. You just never know. Okay, I was just looking at the agenda to see if we could fit them in, but they just left up. They just got up and left, but, oh well. Okay, I'm just gonna populate. Okay, so at 7.12, we are 7.15 item. I could quickly do an appointment. Yes, please. I move that the select board approve the appointment of Rebecca Fricka to the Agricultural Commission for a great term to begin February 12th, 2013 through June 30th, 2015. Second. Further discussion. So let me note that we are trying very hard to follow the new regs of making sure that our appointments are on our agendas 48 hours ahead of time, but this one came in just the other day and so we're considering this with Town Council approval to be one of the things that the Chair wouldn't have anticipated 48 hours before the meeting. So we did update the agenda accordingly. This is an appointment that I know Ms. Stein feels very strongly about because she has been long involved in the Agricultural Commission's quorum issues so they haven't had enough members on there. And of the members that they have, they are having a very difficult time getting sufficient attendance to, because farmers have particular schedules and busy lives, to meet quorum to have a meeting. And so we were just speaking the other day and Ms. Stein is going to be following up with the Agricultural Commission to see if she can get them to meet to consider whether or not to ask Town meeting to reduce their quorum requirement to four from five, but it's even difficult to do that if they can't get a quorum at the meeting. All these things considered made it seem like this was certainly in the category of things that we would want to deal with in a most timely manner. And as people have not been previously knocking down our door to serve on the Agricultural Commission, we did not think that this would be a problem. So Ms. Stein. And Ms. Bricker will bring a good opportunity for economic benefit to the Agricultural Commission. She is liaison to Representative Ellen Story. She is not liaison, she is what assistant. District aid. District aid, thank you. I'm the liaison. But under those circumstances, she actually brings expertise and aid beyond the quorum issues. I really want to make that clear. And that's even specified in the charge that economic opportunities are to be considered when making appointments to the Agricultural Commission. So she serves in many good ways to the commission. I was just speaking to why it wasn't previously on our agenda and why we're not putting it off for two more weeks. I want people to understand how that will be. Yes, oh, she'll be tremendous. So she has taken a real lead on the agricultural issues with Ms. Representative Story. And this is an area that Ms. Klossner-Weiss also focused a lot on. So I think that will be a tremendous addition to the Agricultural Commission. All right, it's been moved and seconded in further discussion. Is there additional further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That is unanimous. Okay, now it's 7.15 discussion on our vacancy of library trustees. So in our packets, we have information about the vacancy on the library trustees, which we were made aware of in January. The library trustees have requested that we not bother to fill that vacancy as the election is coming up quite soon. And the chair of library trustees submitted a letter to that effect to us. And Ms. Brewer wanted to talk a little bit more about that and how it relates to past and future precedent. So Ms. Brewer, what would you like to, how would you like to? What I would like to do is since you came up with this lovely select board process for filling elected board vacancies that's currently dated January 19th of 2012 because we were doing this a lot both with library trustees and then also with school committee a couple of times it was reminding us all how it worked. The question is like before we get to this point in the process, that is my question. So what I had asked that we check with Cobleman and Page and obviously with the storm and yada, yada, yada it's been a little bit complicated. But what I wanted to know if since Cobleman and Page put out numerous memos to their municipalities saying, oh, if when you do this on liquor licenses do X, Y, or Z. I wondered if they had anything about this section of mass general law for filling vacancies because our town government act only talks about vacancies in town meeting and in select board. And it's very clear about what to do about those. It just doesn't say anything at all about the other things. And mass general law, which we have looked to in the past, chapter 41 section 11 as beautifully quoted on this process talks about filling a vacancy that is on the select board or in town meeting. And it talks about, for example, in this case the library trustees telling us that they would like to fill that there is a vacancy and that they'd like to jointly fill that vacancy with us. What my question is, is what again, and it seems like we just have this conversation on another level, what shall means? Because there is easily on the one hand, one could say, well, if the library trustees or the school committee or the regent, the Amherst Street Development Authority being the three bodies that we've done this with that would possibly be eligible for this. If they're not concerned about their vacancy being filled then so what? So we don't have to worry about it. There, that's one viewpoint. Another viewpoint would be that we would always in the interest of having as many people involved in all government processes as possible wanna fill vacancies. When we look at MGL chapter 41 section 11 it talks about that the original committee with the vacancy shall tell the select men within 30 days and if they don't, the select men shall fill the vacancy even if they aren't told about it within 30 days. We obviously do not really wanna be in a position as a select board to say, huh, well you don't wanna fill your vacancy but we do anyway so we're gonna do it without you. That's not a helped latitude either. So what I'm trying to get across is that what we, I feel like we need a little clearer guidance on for ourselves at least and obviously a future select board can choose differently as to what shall means in these cases if we really are compelled to do any of this. We got an email opinion from Brian Riley that is on our desk tonight which is obviously not really time for everyone to think it through. I'm just kind of obsessing about this particular issue and in one section he talks, he talks a good bit about how we might use our own 90 day provision in our town government act as a possible guideline and so that's helpful and so that is good to know that that's something we might consider looking at but he also does state that it, that it's ultimately a discretionary call associated with special elections but he also states that if the board with the vacancy does tell us about it then we shall do something about it. So I feel like we're in kind of a circular situation that I'm trying to avoid any assumption on the part of the public or on the part of other boards that depending on the whim of the board that has the vacancy or the whim of the select board at any given moment that we would choose whether or not to fill the vacancy. I think that we can come up with a little bit more structure that gives us, still protects our right to do the filling of the vacancy but does not make it appear that we are doing it for perhaps biased reasons for one committee or another. I think it's perfectly reasonable that one committee or another might feel a need to have a vacancy filled sooner rather than later depending on how often they typically meet what their workload is, et cetera. So I think we should theoretically be able to take those things into account. What I'm just having a hard time with is the recommendation from town council again, very informal that on the one hand shall mean something and on the other hand it doesn't. So I just, I asked that the town manager would follow up on that after tonight's meeting basically is what my theory is on that because that's where I am in thinking this process through. Okay, so I actually thought we had settled this last year and this recent town council opinion only reiterates and expands on the opinion that I had last year and probably the year before because for a while we were dealing with this a lot and so I was dealing with town council about all kinds of nuances of the law and the town council has said very clearly, clearly it seems to me anyway that there's no obligation to fill a vacancy, that chapter 41 section 11 gives you the mechanism to fill a vacancy if you want it filled and then we have the select board policy for how that happens, but that it does not require a vacancy be filled. So I had thought that last year we settled this with the sense that when the school committee vacancy happened and those folks came to us and it was a timeframe not unlike this and that the sense was even though that might seem like a very short amount of time and not worth filling what would really be strange is to go against the recommendation of the committee with the vacancy. So we have the town council opinion that says it's completely discretionary and then we have what has been our practice of we'd go along with the body that is making the recommendation. I would think it would actually get into a much bigger can of worms for the select board to have the select board which is basically equal to all of these other boards in our jurisdiction school committee, library trustees, regional development authority, redevelopment authority for us to make a decision about their policy as opposed to being an instrument to trying to help them fulfill their policy I think would be, I think that's a much more complicated road for us to go down. So that would be my perspective on it. Let me let Ms. Brewer respond and then Ms. Stein. Only because, and I'm sorry Ms. Stein only because of the confusion that I think came up out of this new email which I understand what you're saying we don't necessarily agree on the point but I understand the process as you're outlining it and in which case your decision tree is based on whether or not the board with the vacancy wants to do it. Whereas at the end of the first paragraph of this email dated February 7th that we received today chapter 41 section 11 does provide that if the board with the vacancy gives notice to the select board the select board shall hold the joint meeting and vote to fill the vacancy until the next annual election. That would seem to support what you said except that the rest of MGL chapter 41 section 11 says if there's a vacancy the remaining members shall give written notice thereof to the select board and it says if the select board doesn't get told the select board shall fill it. So I'm just trying to say we can't pick which shall. If that sentence hadn't shown up in this email I would live with it. That sentence is what? Okay. Ms. Stein changes. I was circling the same sentence for the same reasons. I think it's confusing. So we seem to be the only ones who are confused by this because every time we go to town council they say you don't have to do it. Except they just said we did. Right. But they also said, I mean the thing says through and through that you don't have to do it. I'm not sure why they would. I took that sentence to mean having given you notice of a vacancy such that you wanna fill it. You can't possibly put them in the mind of no matter what they do or don't do the select board is gonna fill it because it says if they don't give us notice then we shall fill it. And if they do give us notice then we shall fill it. So that suggests like we're always gonna fill it when they're telling us no this is a mechanism if they want it filled. So Mr. Hayden and then Ms. Stein. I'm going to agree with that interpretation and offer one observation about, I read this chapter 11 trying to imagine that I could actually get a sense of what this memo was going to say when we finally saw it. And I agree it does say shall. That we shall be notified and we shall do this. But it very interestingly it is completely silent about when. And that ambiguity and when could be like the next general election as far as the rules that I read are concerned in a way this memo as I'm reading it quickly now seems to reinforce that. The recommendation is that we have a timeline for doing this kind of thing. That's our own, not a state mandated or even a state modeled timeline, it's our timeline. And we can use it if we'd like. So I often dislike ambiguity in rules but I think here it's quite useful at allowing us to implement the requests of individual boards. I also wanted to note that we're not talking about all 52 boards and committees. When we're talking about those ones that are elected you mentioned in the ARA, the trustees, the school committee. I imagine even the will executor to see is an elected position after all. It has to have more than one position. It actually says in chapter 41 it says in town wide office. So in some towns that would be a town clerk which it references specifically so probably would be. I am comfortable with waiting whatever it is 60 some odd more days and letting the people fill that seat as they think best. I don't agree with that interpretation Naren because it says the slip or shall hold the joint meeting. It doesn't say has the option of either filling it through a joint meeting or through an election whichever comes at an appropriate time. I think that sentence needs parsing by the lawyer. We have gotten notice in the form of a letter from the chair of the library trustees and they have informed us there is a vacancy and I wanna know how to parse that sentence in terms of that notice. Now if they meant something else by notice where shall has got a looser interpretation than I think it does under the law. That's another story but I'd like them to parse that sentence. Mr. Musanti can we get further explanation from the lawyer on that sentence? I'm happy to ask for some follow up clarification on that one sentence but the overall feedback that is I think clearly enunciated everywhere else in that opinion except for that sentence is it's a discretionary call on the part of the select board whether to fill the vacancy and using criteria such as proximity to the next regularly scheduled election and the cost of conducting. If there was a special election required the cost of conducting those are all typical criteria. Let me just remind us that there actually is a ton of discretion that's involved in all of this and sometimes you seek clarification and you seek rules of thumb at your own peril because then that takes away your discretionary element which is actually really important. We'll recall that there was the select board vacancy which Mr. Hayden was elected in 2008. That was a we had to by law we had to hold the special election but like everything to do with timing kind of went out the window because we had the whole question of whether or not the students were back and in time to register to vote and blah blah blah so then that one was complicated. Another one that was complicated that led to lots of rounds and rounds with the town clerk and the town council was this last year two years ago that all runs together was the library vacancy that happened too late to go on to the ballot but it was just too late. So it was basically at exactly the same time too and then the decision was to hold that joint election fill the vacancy after the election because doing it before the election was just gonna hamstring everything. So there's all kinds of decisions involved. It's not a hard and fast well you absolutely wouldn't want a position to be empty for X amount of time not to exceed or whatever. There's a lot of sort of situational decisions that do come into this. Ms. Burr-Henry. They're bearing all that in mind. What we currently have does not address this sufficiently in terms of our process because our process outlines here's the MGL that says shout shout shout shout what we really want to it sounds like what we want to add is a statement here. Town council has told us as you told me in email several times Town council has told us that shall does not have to be mandated and that we do not have to follow this. This outlines a procedure if we choose to follow it this is what we're gonna base our process on but just because it says we have to what I don't want to have happen is I don't want us to not fill it and then have someone come and wave this in our face and say MGL says you're supposed to do this and we say well you know we didn't really feel like it. I mean we as long as we have a statement that says we you know town council has said that although it says shout we don't have to do it. I also want to know that you know this sentence is gets thrown out because otherwise all the shouts have to go together and the other issue being that we have now two years in a row had a chair of a committee gone to our lovely local newspaper saying that vacancy will not be filled period. There has not been a vote on the individual vote on the individual board in either case as to whether or not they were gonna fill the vacancy. It was purely a decision of the chair perhaps based on informal conversations and there was no discussion with the select board. If the select board is going to maintain its ability to say that it's conceivable that under some circumstance we may want to fill this vacancy even if the board with the vacancy doesn't want to do it we don't want to cut that off either. Okay so the chairs of these committees could not be held responsible for that. They're acting on the guidance that I'm giving them based on town council's guidance to me which has been if you guys want to fill this you can. So my understanding is that the trustees were polled they thought now we don't want to do it and so but it's not that there was no bypassing of process on their end if there was an error in the process then it was on my end. So I apologize for that because I thought that we had literally solved this last year when we said our policy is to go along with the recommendation of the committee with the vacancy but that is clearly not our mutual understanding. I don't think we need to beat the stood up. So you want more lawyer interpretation of this. I really just wanted to say you know what I was just kind of giving you an example as opposed to I meant shall and then we just add in two sentences here that say we've been advised on numerous occasions by town council, government and page that we are not compelled by the shalls to do this and our policy is to not do it unless the requesting committee. Okay. Very good. And then that's- Mr. Higgins do you want a final comment on this? Just a very brief sort of a step back. I as I was considering all of this I agree that it's important to do it right and to understand what our obligations are and what we're obliged when we said we can do this job to do but there is an underlying principle here which I want to keep in front of us and that is that part of our job relative to all of the committees all 56 of them is to do what we can to make sure they can do their work effectively and in this case the question of whether or not to fill a spot might ask the question do they need it to fill? We were told last year in one case that they really did need somebody for six weeks to help them to work through a budget. And so that I mean that's the question that I would ask first, you know will you be effective without this person? Will you be able to make quorum? Will you be able to do your work? Will you have the resources on your committee that that committee's intended to have? Thank you. All right, we'll get more information and report back. Okay, next up, community development block grant recommendations for 2013 and we have vast amounts of information in our packets about this vast amount of information in the web packet for folks who are following along at home. Mr. Museum? Sure and it's good just to move on to community development block grant a much simpler process problem solving exercise than filling vacancies on committees. So as Stephanie said, you've got a detailed packet of information. We are on the eve of our application deadline of February 15th to apply for community development block grant funding for the federal fiscal year that begins October one. And I've got a set of recommendations. I have some recommendations I am sharing with you want to get your feedback before I submit by the 15th. Also when you're, so you have my recommendations they are largely similar to our CDBG advisory committee who work for many months to vet different proposals and come up with a prioritized list. It's very similar, but not exactly the same. And there's some reasons for that that I'll explain. And then there's a bunch of background information about each particular project either that's being recommended for funding and those and the descriptions of all of those who applied who not being recommended for funding. So this is set of recommendations as you know as being developed in the context of a shifting set of rules governing our status for this federal block grant which is intended to serve low and moderate primarily low and moderate income of people in our community. Both for social services and non-social services activities. We have been for the past several years what's called a mini entitlement status community which entitled us to a fixed amount of block grant funding each year that has been between 900,000 and one million over the last two years have been at the 900,000 level. We were notified in late 2012 that as the state does every couple of years when they review the eligibility socio demographic information we went from on the cusp of qualifying as we have been the last couple of years to slightly below the measurement and poverty measures used by the state for us to be eligible for mini entitlement status. So what does that mean? That means our guaranteed money is no longer guaranteed and it means that we would, to get money would need to submit for grant funding through a competitive process and competitive is the key word. It's not guaranteed. It's you compete with other communities and you submit what you think are worthy projects and you're into a pool and competing with them. I met with staff and with representatives from the Department of Housing and Community Development urging reconsideration of our status. While we were not able to convince them that our mini entitlement status should be reconsidered for this funding year, they did give us very positive indications that we would very likely receive at least 50% of what we had received in the prior year. So that means 450,000 instead of 900,000 and we were strongly encouraged to apply for as much as 900,000 through the competitive process. So it's on that basis that these recommendations were developed and reviewed. The CDBG Advisory Committee met and had public hearings and heard testimony from each of the applicants. Came up with a prioritized set of recommendations that are attached. What I wanna do is walk through the first couple pages which are my recommendations. I'm recommending, as is the advisory committee, a total of 800,000 for five non-social service activities and up to five social services activities. So starting with the non-social services which is primarily capital or program related but primarily capital, prioritized recommended projects. The top rated request was for new sidewalks to be installed on Southeast Street, essentially from the corner of College Street, Route 9, to the main entrance of Colonial Village Apartments, serving primarily low and moderate income people. That's a high pedestrian area, there's no sidewalk there presently. Meets a, certainly meets a community need in that area in one of our census blocks and is eligible. That was top rated. Second is modernization of up to 55 apartment units at the Inwell and Apartments, Housing Authority, Controlled Property. These are 40 year old kitchen, countertop facilities that are on a very long list of capital replacement. Spacing the Housing Authority and with their limited direct funding from the feds, there was no prospect of that being funded anytime soon. Their request total is about 250,000. I've broken that down into two allocations. As one as a second ranked at 165,000, that coupled with the sidewalk project would get us to a total of 270,000 in non-social service. That's the 60% share of the, what we think is the worst case grant funding of a total of 450. So that's why I broke down the Housing Authority project into two allocations, because we may only get Athelof, and I wanted to at least do part of that project. My third rated ranked project is flooring at the North Amherst School, which is where the Head Start program is located up in North Amherst. That's another long standing need. We've done invested CDBG monies in the exterior of that building. This is a critical need on the interior to fix the flooring serving primarily that program. My fourth ranked project is the remaining 90,000 for the kitchen units at annual apartments. Fifth on this list is a first time home buyer. It's a continuation of that program. That's both administrative overhead and some direct down payment assistance for four to five prospective homeowners through the Valley CDC, which is a good track record in the Valley of running programs like that. So that's non-social services. And so that entire list of five totals, 480,000, which would be a 60% share of an $800,000 grant if we were to get the maximum amount I'm applying for. On the social services, this gets a little trickier, we had nine applications for funding. The CDBG committee and I, they were recommending to me, I'm recommending to you that five of the nine we apply for funding for. The top ranked request that I strongly share is the Craig's Doors Association running our emergency homeless shelter at the First Baptist Church. Their current year funding from the CDBG fund amount is $90,500. In a worst case scenario, if our grant funding is reduced by 50% and we get a $450,000 grant, our social service funding would total 90,000. That would be the entire amount. CDBG advisory committee explored spreading that money around amongst, you know, five agencies and in the case of the shelter would reduce their funding in half, which would absent any other private support would really dramatically affect their ability to offer anywhere close to what they're able to do now in terms of the number of weeks that they're open. My recommendation in a worst case scenario is that for grant funding, is that we take the entire 90,000 and fund what I consider the highest priority item, which is the shelter. I'm also recommending though, that we pursue a total of 800,000 in grants through the competitive process. In that scenario, there are a handful of additional social services activities that we could fund. They include in priority order, 15,000 for flexible emergency funds, which really is a basic needs pot of money for first month, last month for rental assistance to get someone into a stable housing arrangement, perhaps even from homelessness. Fuel assistance, these kind of basic things and these cases, handful of cases come up every year and this would create and continue a program to having a source of funds to meet those critical needs that are temporary but badly needed. Next, big brothers, big sisters, very successful program in Hampshire County with their office at the Bank Center, 25,000 for that purpose to help support their mentoring program. 20,000 is recommended from a total of 30,000 requested family outreach of Amherst. It's really case worker services to some very needy families in our community and they presented a very compelling proposal to be considered. And then last but certainly not least, $10,000 to help support the Amherst Survival Center's food pantry program in the coming year. So that's my summary of recommendations. There's other requests for funding. You know from your prior deliberations on block grant that we are limited to funding a maximum of five social service programs in any one year. So we even know there are several of the others that might be worthy of funding. We're not able to accommodate all of them through the block grant both because of the limitation on the amount of money and our limitation on the number of agencies we can fund. Thank you very much. So thank you for that explanation and thank you for all of the great materials that describe each of the projects that we're applying for funding, the ones that are recommended and are not recommended for the application and also for the memo to the Community Development Advisory Committee for the memo describing the public process, which I thought was very useful and valuable. So thank you. Questions or comments? Ms. Brewer. Well, Alyssa has a bazillion of them because she loves going to their meetings. One is a simple comment, which is that the money for the Ann Whalen units is so critically important if you've seen some of the photographs of the cabinets that are falling off the walls. I mean, they do the best to try and keep them wedged up there and everything, but there's been no maintenance and you wouldn't do that in your own house. 30 years, no maintenance with different tenants in and out and they just get almost no dollars for maintenance. So I'm really pleased and hope that we'll be able to do this because it's kind of crazy. Even GFCI, whatever they're called, those aren't there because they haven't done a major renovation and we're talking about only disabled people in water and electricity. Just not a good situation. So I'm very pleased that they were able to come up with that proposal. In your spreadsheet under town manager recommendations, you wanna replace the total of 225 with 480 as you spoke it to us. Because that was just way too good to be true that it would only be 220. I know that there was plenty of conversation about what they should do if they needed to recommend only a reduced budget and you might recall that I believe I mentioned at one point that when we knew that the social services budget might be reduced, that the committee went back out to the different agencies and said, well, if you had to put in an alternate figure, what might it look like? Just so they would get a sense. Do we just take X percentage off of everything or how do we do it? And so they really struggled with that. One of the things and there was, I brought up the exact idea, well, you could just fund the shelter and go home and be done with it. But there was also, obviously, as you can see, what they eventually ended up with was the idea of breaking things down further and having more agencies funded that way. One of the reasons they did do that in their defense is that the shelter, the Craig's Doors said, well, okay, then I guess we'll only operate for three months. Which everyone sat there with their mouths open thinking this doesn't make a lot of sense to us. So, but because Craig's Doors put that figure in, they felt like maybe they could work with it. So that's kind of the back story to what happened there. I know that one of the conversations that was taking place in a meeting when you go one, two, three, four, five, six items down on the original requested activities, the first line that doesn't have any funding as you go across the green and blue, the rental assistance for intermediate living. I wonder if you happen to know, Mr. Towne Manager, because I don't know the answer, there was going to be the consideration even though Community Preservation Act applications were due long ago, because of modifications to the Community Preservation Act, there was the thought that the real money might possibly be applied for that money, that program might possibly try and apply for CPA funds. So, you know, we're always trying to think is there some other way that things could be done? And I know that was something they were gonna try and pursue because although I mean deadlines are deadlines, but if a program is available in theory based on the new modifications, so I'll just leave that out there as that's what they were attempting to do with that. And my other question is in regards to the flexible emergency funds from the town, the second item on the list, we only requested $7,500, so why have we doubled that to 15? When I met with staff subsequent to that, it was, and we were looking at the monies together that the flexible emergency funds, it was a clear belief that that was a higher priority than the real money and that could easily justify, especially if the other one wasn't being funded at all, that getting a good baseline of around 15,000 would be a more adequate figure to go with. I know there's been a request made through the CPA process for the real money that remains to be seen, whether that'll be recommended both because of the timing of it and the amount with that, but even with that scenario, the flexible emergency funds were considered a higher priority in 15,000, especially in looking in comparison with some of the other requests made a lot of sense. And could in theory then it sounds like the overlap to what would have qualified for if someone wanted, if someone needed assistance under the rail program, we have no funds in the rail program, but in theory that need might be able to be that by the flexible emergency fund. Okay. Other questions or comments? Mr. Aden. A little bit sort of beyond the topic of CPDG. So the remaining projects here are eligible, I guess the question, are the remaining projects here eligible for other grants that we now have to do extra work to try to compete for funding for? Will will certainly continue to be on the lookout for other grant possibilities and each one has its own domain of what other grants might be out there. I'm not aware of any specifically now, but you would certainly be on the lookout and alert them. Okay, thank you. I'm having trouble adding these up, John. So if you have $480,000 in the non-social service activities and you add that to $160,000 with the social service activities, that to me it comes out to $640,000. What am I doing wrong? No, what's not included, that's right. That's correct. What's not included on this chart is the 20% share that's for admin administrative support. Okay, all right. And then if I add up. So these are not to exceed limits for these two categories. Okay, if I add up $270,000 and $90,000, I get $360,000, that's a lot for admin if it's the difference between $360,000 and $40,000. Or $50,000. Yeah, the admin share is the same as the social services share. Yes, that last name. It's a fixed percentage. Okay. No matter how much these are. Okay, so the goal of this is to give feedback whether we support or don't support the recommendations as presented. So be sure that that's what we leave this conversation with, Ms. Brewer. Well, my other piece of feedback is that if they hadn't put in that CPA request that you would help them do that. So that would be good because I know it's past the deadline. The other is the question.  If you've been able to have any discussion about a concern that we had before when we were shifting over from other types of funding to block grant funding and back again in terms of supplanting funds. In terms of we fund these things now under one scenario or another scenario just depends on what money we get. We do some potentially some town meeting backfill as well as part of the proposed budget. Does that concept of supplanting funds come into this at all in terms of thinking, oh well maybe we should only fund, this is the way we should fund this one and this is the way we should fund this one so that if this goes wrong we'll still be able to take care of it over here. I mean there's so many moving pieces that I know that that's been a concern in the past and I'm just not sure how it plays into this conversation. What I was recommending for town meeting support would be replacing what was funded by block grant with local dollars. So I suppose two years from now if it's a happy day and we're reapplying for some higher amount, we would look at the supplanting issue if and when that would be a much happier problem at the time and transition too. But that would be, thank you because that would be the other part of that. It's two years from now. Right, right. Anyone else comments or questions? Okay, so I'm not hearing any concern whatsoever about the recommendations as presented so this looks like support to me. People nodding, yes. Do we specifically have a motion expressing support for this or you just want our, no I think in the past the minutes have, there isn't that consensus, the minutes just reflect that there's consensus. I think that the committee and yourself and staff have done a very good job of trying to put together the best recommendation in these very complicated circumstances. So we always have much more need than we have dollars and now we have the complicated situation of our status with this going forward. So considering all of those factors I think that this is a very solid, very supportable recommendation and I appreciate all the work that went into it. Ms. Trayden. A longer term question. The issue of supplanting CDBG is not allowed to replace funding that might be from us some other source as we, is there the potential and maybe there's not an answer for tonight but is there a potential that if we pick up some of these other programs on non-CDBG funding that we can never shift them back because in effect that is a replacement. I think that was a list of those. You just asked it in a more straight forward fashion. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. You know and. I'm slow. That would require our colleagues in Washington taking a different philosophical approach to what's the role of the federal government in helping low and moderate income people in this country because the funding has been going the other way. No, just add that. And that I think it definitely does not take anything off the table because we already dealt with this when we switched to the CDBG funding originally. We got around legally of course and with good counsel the question of some planting so we were able to continue to fund the agencies that we had been funding previously just funding different programs within the agencies so that it was not technically supplanting the funding. Ms. Burr. Yes, exactly. And I creatively and appropriately doing that so that it isn't what I was trying to, what I was trying to say and didn't say effectively is that we aren't going to two years from now if it's a happy day and we are back in many entitlements scientists we aren't going to turn to any particular and say, oh, sorry, not going to happen. We will find ways to work like we have before. Okay, we have reviewed, we have given feedback, we have supported, we are moving on. It is time for the FY14 budget discussion. So we have not actually met. We haven't had a normal meeting, a regular meeting since before the town manager's budget recommendation was presented to us on January 16th so we would have had one meeting since then and that one was postponed. So at this point we're getting kind of our full public update on the state situation, the governor's recommended budget that has come out since then, as well as any questions that we have prepared for the, from the FY14 town manager's budget recommendation but also this is an ongoing discussion that will happen every agenda up until town meeting but that's kind of where we are. So I'm going to start with Mr. Musanti to give us an update on the state situation. Sure, and because it has been a while, the biggest thing since our last budget discussion at one of these meetings, which was January 7th is that the governor has filed his budget proposal which happened on January 23rd and the gist of that is it's very close to what we were projecting. So that's the good news. The bad news is it's pretty close to level funded including education aid, very small increase. There are some new proposed tax funded expenditures subject to approval of the funding source that would fund a new program called annual formula local aid into a program that would generate about a little over I think 200 and something thousand for the town. That's very much contingent on the tax package being favorably considered and that would be monies that could be used for unrestricted local purposes including schools and municipal services. We didn't assume that revenue in my budget proposal or in the projections for the guidelines. So that's very much will be debated in the legislature between now and June. So we'll kind of see as we get closer to town meeting with any of it or all of it in our recommendation. My thinking at this point is don't count your chickens. So that's probably the key one. The only thing I'll say is on my unfunded list for next year I had special election costs which is really a current year now that we know. Well, no, there's a special election potentially November that we would need to fund but we were looking at a potential current year expense for the special elections in April and June for the U.S. Senate. The state auditor consistent with the auditors ruling a few years ago on the last time we had a special Senate election. It's considered an unfunded state mandate and auditor bump has sent a letter in the last few days to the governor and legislative leaders urging them to consider supplemental appropriation in advance of those two election dates. So we think that would help Amherst buy roughly 25,000 which is the cumulative cost of running two election days in April and June. And so we'll be watching that, that may save us from a finance committee reserve fund transfer or a special appropriation at the annual town meeting to cover those current year costs. So the governor's budget is something we talked a lot about when we were at MMA the governor made a presentation to us and we heard from other various folks in his administration about his proposals has anything changed? So it just so folks are very aware. So the governor has put forth an extremely ambitious proposal for raising all kinds of new taxes and it of course remains to be seen how the legislature will receive those and consider them. So we are looking at specifically kind of how the transportation and education parts of it would impact Amherst locally and if we find that these are just as positive as they seem to be then we're probably going to be putting forth kind of a big lobbying effort. You know, it will really be incumbent on us to educate the community about what this stuff means because these proposals are only going to pass the legislature if the legislators are getting heavy feedback, positive feedback and pressure from their constituents about raising their taxes. They don't want to raise the taxes on people who don't want their taxes raised. People need to recognize that if these are great benefits are great services that we value as Amherst and the rest of the communities in Massachusetts then we're going to need to be advocating for those. So we're still kind of in an informational stage at this point, but have you heard anything? Is there any sort of grapevine information that has changed at all in the last couple of weeks since we were at MMA about kind of the political reception? But just amplifying particularly on the transportation. You know, the governor's proposal is really a 10 year plan to address at long last, you know, 30 years of unmet infrastructure investments and you know from our many discussions in Amherst, we have a $16 million road repair backlog. That list is well over a billion dollars statewide per year in need. The governor's proposal would create up to a billion dollars extra a year in monies for infrastructure and regional transit. So rail, East West and North South, regional transit authorities, PBTA, chronic underfunding would go to a much more secure funding model and the way that the state's second largest transit authority, the PBTA, is treated in that formula is very positive because it recognizes very rightly, I think that it should be, that the money we get should be based on how many people are actually servicing every day and that's what it takes into account. But then for roads, we'd be looking prospectively at a 50% increase in what's called our chapter 90 allocation. We get about 800,000 a year presently from the Commonwealth that we've used for road repaving. That would go to about a million two per year over the next 10 years. That's an extra 400,000 a year, so that's an extra 4 million over the next 10 years. So besides being a much more appropriate amount to meet a real need, that predictability of knowing what the amount would be would have put us in a much better position to plan and possibly even be able to borrow against some portion of that anticipated funding and be able to do the work really in the next two years instead of having to go piecemeal at a higher price tag over the next seven to 10 years. So that is very much alive. The legislature and the legislative leadership and the governor are committed to having a very thorough dialogue on that with active consideration of legislation over the next really three or four months. So we're very hopeful on that. That would be huge and we have our no shortage of roads needed and so I think this notion of lobbying and saying here's what the positive effect would be in Amherst, Massachusetts would be an entirely appropriate thing for the board to consider and I'm working on such an outline for you. Because we're looking for assurances.  But this plan is actually very carefully considered by the governor and his administration by really targeting projects across the entire state as well as as the time manager said about increasing the chapter 90 money. So this is not just an East Coast benefit. This would be an incredibly valuable, incredibly important statewide, but we are looking for some assurances on that and we are looking for more specifics in particular on the education piece of all of this because that's the other kind of big bucket of money he's talking about. Questions or comments about the governor's part of this? Okay, Mr. Hayden, are you thinking about a question or comment here? Not about that. Okay, then moving on to Mr. Miesanti's FY14 budget proposal. Mr. Hayden. I do have a question. I've got to actually, I'm beginning to develop quite a number of questions as I go through this and so two things I want to say is I'm going to email them to you like we did last year so that you can have a chance to answer them thoughtfully. I also appreciate the mission statements and the goals and the major components. The way this is broken down again is very, very helpful. So, but the question that I would put out on the table tonight is I don't know if it's an alarming number or not, but it's different in two places as well that our growth compared to the 10-year average is down either 88 or 90% depending on which page you happen to be reading. Do we have a sense of how that is even though within that 10-year growth is a big chunk of years where there was negative growth? You're talking about tax-based growth? I'm talking about the, yeah, tax-based. Well, it's clearly over the last four or five years building permanent activity was down substantially. It's picked up a little bit over the past 12 months and the permanent activity is up as we, people are anticipating projects for the spring. So that is up the activity of housing and other proposals beginning to percolate its way through the planning board process is starting to pick up as well. Hasn't caused me to adjust upward. Our new growth estimate is slightly higher than it was a year ago, but it's still below the 10-year average. So that's why it changes because some pieces of this are a little bit earlier than others, that's why the numbers are different. Right. Thank you. Other questions or comments about FY14 budget? Okay, I'll say what I say every year when we talk about this. Partially, it's a giant document so we're going through it slowly. Partially, it, because we're in sort of a treading water mode as opposed to we were for so many years in cutting mode, there aren't all that many questions asked because it's not like there's new spending proposals in here. This is, the budget is all about trying to maintain what we're doing as effectively as possible, so. And I will repeat that all of that budget information is online, not in the select board packet but on the budget page, the FY14 budget page of the town website. Do check that out. Okay, so then if there's nothing else about either state or the current FY14 budget proposal, then we will do the vote on the FY14 water and sewer rate recommendations. At our January 7th meeting, as has been our practice the last couple of years, we talked about the new water and sewer rates that are baked into the FY14 budget recommendation by the town manager. Those are part of the enterprise funds and it's, those are the funds that are needed to maintain the budget at that level. We went through the recommendation at the January 7th meeting and we meant to vote on it in our second meeting in January, which of course was postponed, which is why we're fitting two meetings worth of stuff into this meeting. So the proposal is that the water rate remain the same at $3.40 per 100 cubic feet and that the sewer rate increase by 10 cents from $3.45 to $3.55 per 100 cubic feet. And these rates would be effective as of July 1st of this year. Anyone have any questions or comments about those proposed rates? Did anyone have any feedback from any constituents during that time? That's kind of partially, we put it out there early in January so people know so that it was reported in the paper so that they can hear about it in comment. Okay, Ms. Stein, would you like to make the motion? I move that the select board acting as the Water and Sewer Commission as prescribed by the Amherst Town Government Act maintain the current water rate at $3.40 per 100 cubic feet and increase the sewer rate from $3.45 per 100 cubic foot to $3.55 per 100 cubic foot. Effective July 1st, 2013. And do we really say foot and not beat? Yes. Okay. And I read it right. Second, grammatical. Further discussion. Famer say aye. Second. Aye. That is unanimous. Okay, those are the water and sewer rates. Let's see, next up, annual litigation update. Okay, this is something we do the first meeting in February, more or less. Every year we get a report from Town Council about litigation status and costs for the previous calendar year. These are also in our select board packet. Every year they give it to us. It says confidential, not a public document and we say, no, it is a public document. We want it to be public. And they say, yeah, we just have to put that on our document anyway. So anyway, there you go. So. Yes. So that is in our packet. And Mr. Meese, I don't know if you want to review it or select board members just want to ask any questions. You're just being able to answer any questions you may have. And so this is the same type of report that we've distributed the past several years now. And same format, et cetera. And the, I guess a primary thing to say about this report is that it's shorter. That's not for a lack of wanting to disclose a summary, but there's fewer active cases. So that's why it's a three-page document. Questions or comments about the document? Ms. Brewer. Yeah, why is it that we have to say it's not a public document when it is? Because it's coming from them. It's not us. So it's the attorney wrote that on it. Correct, they have. But we treated it as a public document. That's why we put it in our packet. Right, we say, just so you understand, we fully intend to make this a public document. They're like, oh yeah, yeah, we know, but we have to put that on everything. They know. Last February's report has the same header. Right, right. But, you know, it's just worth reminding people that it's not secret information. It's not our public document, it's their public document. Okay, so questions or comments about the guts of the report, if you will? I think this is a very interesting report. And I think that, I mean, it really is public information. And I think that it's important to really just make transparent and put out there. What are the cases that the town is involved in? You know, who's suing the town? Who's the town suing and how much does it cost? Because these are the kinds of things that actually can get seriously out of hand in some towns as far as litigation costs. And if nobody knows about them, then that's an issue. So I always appreciate it. And even though you just kind of skim through it and say, oh yeah, okay. Anyway, so that's on the website for everyone to look at. Are we done? Good, we've reviewed the annual litigation report. Moving right along, review annual meeting town deadlines and information. Okay, so again, this was something we were going to talk about at our last meeting, but we didn't have a last meeting. So one of these deadlines has since passed. Let me find my correct document here. Zoning petitions at 12 noon on the 6th. Correct, that one has passed. So we do have one zoning petition that did come in. The next deadline is for miscellaneous petitions. And basically all other articles is on noon of March 11th. So that's coming up in a couple of weeks. We should also note as part of town meeting discussion that we did get feedback from TMCC about our post town meeting stuff that we sent to them. And we'll need to have a bigger discussion about some of the issues they brought up to us at some point. But one of the things that they told us is that their feedback was, of the feedback they got, it was majority positive on the seven o'clock start time. So just so that everybody knows what to plan on considering we got majority positive support for that. And TMCCs, I believe their implied recommendation if it was not an explicit recommendation was to continue with the seven o'clock start time. So for folks planning purposes is the select board an agreement that we want to continue to start the town meeting sessions for the spring at seven o'clock as we had experimented with for the fall. Mr. Hayden. Yes, and not only because we've heard positive things from the TMCC, but because, well, we started at seven o'clock. I mean, town meeting members voted by arriving then and not some other time. Okay. Thank you. All right, so without objection, then we will plan to start at seven o'clock. Other things, Mr. Muti? Yeah, we did have one suggested motion referring the zoning by law petition article. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so we did get as noted one zoning petition and it is in mass general law that when we get petition zoning articles we're actually supposed to vote to refer them to the planning board as opposed to just sort of like sending it through interoffice mail to the planning board which is kind of what I thought we did. Sometimes we do this, sometimes we don't, but Ms. Roussel wants us to be very strictly adhering here so we're going to vote to make sure that we have specifically referred them to the planning board, Ms. Stein. I move that the select board refer the zoning article received by petition February 5th, 2013 which proposes to amend the official zoning map with a change in the zoning designation on assessors parcel, on assessors parcel 1-4B-250 and 14B-251 from general residents, Perenn's RG and Perenn's to neighborhood business, Perenn's B-in Perenn's to the Amherst Planning Board for review, public hearing and recommendation. Second. Or the discussion, Ms. Burr. I just want to thank Ms. Roussel for that because I didn't talk to her about it but I'm pretty sure there's a shall and some language there sometimes. Yeah, thanks for that. I shall tell her. I'll further the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous, unanimously referred. Okay. I should have thought to bring but I did not. The town meeting dates that TMCC has set for their events already and I gotta say it's really nice to have all of this stuff so early so that you can get them into your calendar. These dates are all on the town website so I apologize that I did not bring them and have them off the top of my head. I don't know if anybody knows, Ms. Stein, the warrant review and the bus tour would be great if you have those. Well, the warrant review is April 23rd in the town room at seven o'clock and the bus tour is April 28th from two to four. That's great. So by our setting our dates early and getting our ducks in a row that lets other folks get their ducks in a row and get their dates set also so everyone can plan on that. So that is terrific. Other town meeting stuff, I would note that Melissa Perot who was one of the group who brought the nuisance house petition changes last year wanted to make a couple of other changes to that bylaw and she and I met about it and the changes all seem to be in line with the things that the select board was speaking to and supporting last year in our discussions about that whole article. So I'm still kind of finalizing things with her but I believe that if this all falls within the scope of what the select board is looking for from the nuisance house bylaw also that I'm proposing that we put that out there as a select board article as opposed to it needing to be petitioned. If Ms. Perot is looking for stricter changes then what we would be supporting and then it would be to her benefit to put it in as a petition because she wouldn't be able to expand beyond the scope of what we put in but so we're having good conversations about this and I think that we're all gonna be supporting and it basically revolves around one is removing the distinction of the, and this is the town manager and police chief, myself have long talked about this being kind of a weakness of nuisance house as written, taking out the provision of the calendar starting new. It's supposed to be three violations within a 12 month period but that starts a new with new tenants. So basically you're always starting a new. So then it's not really a nuisance house at all, that's about a nuisance kid but the kid has always gone so it's supposed to be a protection to the neighborhoods for the property so that would have it be three violations within the 12 month period regardless of who the tenants were. And also to kind of soften to change the part that we had some concerns about as they were making their amendments last time, it became very clear about the whole thing about response costs and how they were being assessed at the first and second act, that that was already in the bylaw even though they were looking to kind of strengthen the third time. So we're looking to strike the first two times for response costs, have it be assessed on the third time only to the property owner, not to the students who by definition through the discussion we're having would not necessarily be their third violation. But so the response costs would accrue to the third potentially, that's what we're talking about right now. So the property owner would be responsible for three times worth of response costs, you just wouldn't have to pay them until you got to the third one. So you wouldn't pay them at first and second, they would just sort of be out there as a concern for the third. So I hope to have that language all fixed up for us, some agreement on that for our next meeting because beyond that, it might be too late, I think it would be too late. Maybe we have one other meeting before the petition deadline, but just so folks know. So does anybody have any concerns about proceeding as I suggested? No, okay, anything else? Anybody wants to note specifically about town meeting plans coming preparations? Okay, then moving along. MMA conference report. Well, that seems like a long time ago now. So three of us, Ms. Brewer, Ms. Stein and I, as well as Mr. Musanti and Mr. Poole and Ms. Radway were at the annual Massachusetts Municipal Association conference and annual meeting in Boston a couple of weeks ago. This was the 25th and 26th of January, I believe was the dates. And we attended a number of seminars. They were, I think they were uniformly valuable. Mr. Musanti and Mr. Poole are both were part of panels presenting to municipal officials from other places. None of us attended their seminars. We already know their stuff, but it was a terrific conference once again. We encourage the gentleman on the side of the table to attend sometime. It's really very good. Do people want to talk specifically or generally about any of their seminars or experiences? Ms. Stein. I thought it was actually the best one that I've been to. I felt I gained a lot more information and insights into how whether towns functions and some things that were valuable. One of the points that was made was that people used to move where the housing was cheaper and there's been more of a trend recently to move where the transportation is better. And I thought that was an interesting insight and a good reason for putting more money into transportation. The other one was just a case study of how the mayor of Gloucester was able to get the community behind putting up a windmill and the very thoughtful way in which he enlisted the support of the community, how they had a wind map of Gloucester and were able to choose several possible locations and come up with the one the community was most happy with. And then having a signing the blade party to celebrate before the windmill went up. I mean, the whole way it was presented and the support of the community was so nice. And they had MIMBY mayor in my backyard and as a measure of the support for this. So that was just one example of, I did go to, or one of the panelists in that particular session was about anaerobic digestion, but they were not much further along than we were. I was kind of hoping to get some insights there. And I was shocked to discover there are actually a couple of communities in the state that don't bother with OPEB. They have no post-retirement benefits for their workers. I thought that was pretty shabby, but so there were tidbits like that are floating around in my mind, but I really did think it was an excellent series of talks. Right, Ms. Brewer? Yeah, the OPEB, they ran these special, for those of you who've listened to our coverage in past years, I'm sure you'll recognize that, yes they did things differently in their program this year and we both ended up going to the particular OPEB discussion which was largely an open discussion, although it was directed strongly by the people in the front of the room. And it was interesting to hear the different perspectives people had on the OPEB amount because obviously I have brought up my feelings about this on numerous occasions and the idea that of course reform is in order in terms of giving us some tools that we can work with and that has just come up in the newspaper again recently that the legislature's working on that. But there definitely is this push-pull between what people believe public employees, whether it be at a town level or at the university or the colleges should have in terms of pay and benefits and what they believe the private sector has. And of course there's huge variation within the private sector and as a town manager, a town administrator and a town close to ours pointed out, are we looking to be the lowest common denominator here?  And we were like, well no, that's not what we're trying to do. Trying to, you know, the responsibility, the taxpayer responsibility to the employee. And so it was a significant amount of venting but not a lot of progress because we need tools to be able to make progress but people talked about their liabilities being the same as their annual budget. So just outrageous numbers that nobody can fathom putting together without some appropriate tools. Of course I went to the open meeting law update because I have such friends there. Actually I have really gracious people who are in the division of open government dealing with open meeting law. Same people for the last few years which is also really nice to see. And they struggle with a resource issue as well in that one they simply don't have enough attorneys to answer even Amherst questions, much less everybody's questions. On a regular basis they always have, it must be very frustrating to go to work there. They have a very large back load, that workload that they just can't, you know, people say, well I turned in a complaint three months ago, why haven't you done something about it? And it takes a while to work through all these issues which is why of course they put part of it back on the individual communities. If somebody complains, the community has to respond first. That helps get some of the investigation done before it gets to them. They were very careful not to indicate that the legislature should or should not do anything, but they also made it clear that there were constraints based in the legislation itself that the legislators gave us the last time they revised open meeting law that are perhaps impractical and difficult to deal with that will have to be changed legislatively. I mean, they've been given this box to work in and they can only deal with that box to a large degree. And so there may be another lobbying opportunity available in that area. The MMA representative to the division of open governments, blah blah blah, advisory commission is very interested in these issues for us and definitely we seem to be on the same page with that individual. Also, we talked a little bit about the simple fact that if you ever go to the mass.gov website, you'll notice that if you try and send links to pages, it's nearly impossible because most of them just come back as mass.gov, AGO and everything in the attorney general's office has the same URL, which is what makes it difficult for them to set up a feed so that they could tell us like our wonderful town website does, every time something changes, basically. We put out a newsflash, a meeting's changed, there's new opportunities available, boom, boom, boom. You can subscribe to all these different things. You can't even do a simple RSS feed because of the way the whole Commonwealth website is set up. So they're still working on that. They do hear us when I say, you know, it doesn't mean a lot to me if you ask for comments and you only get to because thousands of us didn't know about the particular opportunity. So they get the frustration and they're doing the best they can. So that was good. And interestingly, perhaps just because it was in the news with the election costs, the special election costs, I went to meet another group of people from a very tiny portion of our Commonwealth government within Suzanne Bum's audit area about unfunded mandates and found out, just, we call a lot of things unfunded mandates but what actually are unfunded mandates and that they can actually try and pursue. And that's wicked complicated but kind of interesting too in a geeky sort of government sort of way. So in terms of, you can request that they look at a thing and they can tell you, well, yes, no, or whatever. This does not fall under undefunded mandate or, oh yes, thank you for writing to us because now we can go ahead and examine this. Leverett was part of an action on that. For example, associated with landfill maybe where DEP was trying to push some things off on towns and the town said, wait a minute, we don't have any money to deal with this. And that group was able to say, do all this analysis and say, yep, you're right. You don't have the money to do that. And so then there had to be legislative action. So we do have these little places that are available to us but it just takes a long time. Thank you. I went to seminars on housing as part of economic development and that had a lot of the same messages that Ness Steins did about the transit elements of it but it was interesting that you talk about economic development and you're really thinking about the businesses that you're trying to attract or whatever but an awful lot of that is the quality of life that can be provided and that includes housing. So transit oriented was a big part of that as well as I thought it was interesting that it kind of kept hammering home the message that we keep hearing locally that the trend is all about downsizing that empty nesters want to move to smaller places and young professionals and college graduates want to move to smaller places kind of the great big family homes on a one and a half acre lot or whatever. That's not where the growth is. The growth is about smaller places, walkable amenities, all the stuff that we've been talking a lot about in Amherst and trying to make strides towards so it was really interesting to hear it being talked about in an economic development sense so all of those things really do complement each other. I also went to one on emergency preparedness and that was fascinating both because it is and also in the wake of the storm this weekend both from Amherst's perspective and the Cape where I have a lot of family they really got hammered out there and some of the folks on this panel were Cape folks so this was obviously before the storm but talking about their preparedness situation so I was able to say, oh geez, you know how'd that work out? Oh, not so good. But it really is incredibly gratifying to see how far along Amherst is. I mean, just things that seem so natural to us because they are natural, we've been planning for them, talking about them for years, things like an emergency operations center and having actual protocols and having different staff who are assigned different roles. You know, we're just so far along in the continuum of preparedness that was very gratifying and also I have to say because certainly it was emphasized this weekend also that when you think about emergencies people think about public safety folks first to sort of the first responders, the first line in emergencies but these folks, everybody in this panel said time and time again that the real hero in most emergency preparedness stuff is the DPW. You know, whatever your disaster situation is, DPW is enabling whatever the access is they're actually providing the access, they're backing up or doing whatever emergency responders need or in this case the electric companies need and everything so it was really nice to hear such a great shout out to public works folks and certainly timely and appreciated at a time like this. Also Mr. Musanti and I attended when you folks were at the OPEB when we went to the transportation, one with the secretary of transportation and we've already talked mostly about those details but I would agree it was a terrific conference even though you're sort of, you're looking at the descriptions of everything and you're going meh, I don't know, at least maybe it's not so good this year but then you come out of it like wow, that was the best seminar I ever went to so yeah, it was good stuff. Mr. Musanti, anything you'd like to add to? Yeah, we won't belabor the transportation one but that was excellent and I've always found this conference to be most valuable just the opportunity formally and informally to network with colleagues all over the state, many of whom are facing similar or been there, done that so that's always very, very helpful. The workshop that I participated on was a sustainable water management initiative which is responding to potentially the next generation of water use regulations from the DEP so that was useful. Another thing from this conference, the town received an award for having one of the better websites in the state for municipality and we received an honorable mention award for a mid-sized community category and we're very, very proud of that. There are some on the staff, we think we were robbed but we're very grateful for the recognition and the proof is the amount of cyber traffic, foot traffic, whatever you wanna call it, on the web we're over 1500 unique visitors a day and that number is up about 25% over last year and was up a similar percentage from the year before so there's more and more including paperless billing which we're unveiling without use of any paper in the water and sewer billing and so we're just getting going on this and we're proud of the website but paperless billing is kind of a next logical extension of that. All right, any questions or comments on MMA and stuff? Good, the dates are already set for next year, it's always the same weekend so whatever that is, the January 25th-ish weekend that Friday and Saturday, so market calendars. Okay, town managers report. Town managers report. Yeah, I have a bunch of things to punch through but first I wanna start with Winter Storm Nemo, so named by the Weather Channel but it does make it a concise way to reference which event. Our finance director was very happy not to have this storm named after him which is what the recent hurricane is named. One is enough. So I wanted to kind of do a quick recap Stephanie mentioned emergency planning and emergency operations center and one of the reasons I think went pretty well here in town, all things considered given the magnitude of the storm and a lot of that goes into pre-event planning which didn't start on Thursday but it's kind of a cumulative impact of the work that goes in and we had about 21 and a half inches I think is the official count when all is said and done starting midday Friday through midday Saturday. We were very fortunate especially in comparison to areas south of here and southeastern mass in particular. We had no reported power outages in town which was in part a reflection of the time of year certainly but the tree trimming work that's been done by the utility and some of the weeding out of the dead or dying trees over the last couple of years. By Saturday morning all of our main roads were cleared and we were well on our way of clearing all of our secondary roads and by about one o'clock on Saturday all of our secondary roads had had a second pass with the plows to make them passable and many of them are narrower than normal but that's because we've had, this is more of a Berkshire snow storm from my perspective, just the volume of snow. We had very few overnight calls and that's in part a reflection of the public really heeding the calls leading up to the storm and then during the storm from the governor and us locally to shelter in place please not to go out and not to travel and that really became true on Friday. The traffic was relatively light. Schools were closed, town offices we closed midday, Amherst and Hampshire colleges closed or excuse me, Hampshire was closed for the day. Amherst and UMass closed midday on Friday. Traffic was very light. And so that went well. We extended an on-street parking ban which is typically an overnight ban. We extended it to noon time on Saturday that was very helpful and people were good at heating that that helped the DPW clean in a more efficient and faster way on Saturday but other aspects of this storm really since the last severe cold spell a couple weeks ago been working with staff to look at our protocols for emergency shelter and what we might do in the inevitable next weather emergency in relation to temporary overflow and we developed a revised some revisions to the temporary occupancy permit that allowed them to go up to a maximum of 34 guests from there allowed 22 guests. We met with them last Thursday, Friday and the shelter through Craig's doors with this temporary permit. They opened up early on Friday afternoon at about three o'clock and stayed open continuously until Sunday morning at eight and at any one time had as many as 24 guests under their care 16 men and eight women and so that was tremendous collaboration with the town and the great work of the Craig's doors group and the cooperation of the First Baptist Church pastor and community there to make that happen. So I wanted to specifically mention that we had relatively few emergency calls again a credit to the community for sheltering in place primarily. We did receive a good cooperation from the university. The university made a decision to keep their university health center services center open all night on Friday night through I think eight or eight 30 Saturday morning as a result of that that allowed our ambulance crews to transport four young people for care to the university health services building on campus as an alternative to attempting to transport all the way over to Cooley Dickinson in Northampton round trip that would in this weather take at least twice as long at risk to the vehicle and occupants and so being more readily available during the height of this weather emergency. So I wanted to give a special public thank you to the university for doing that. That was extremely important and helpful. And then just thanking the town crews for TPW Fire Police Facilities Health Dispatch Assistant Town Manager Zomak IT all played an important role in managing through this event.  Firefighter Bob Flaherty and his wife Carrie welcomed their first child baby girl Friday night at the height of the snowstorm. Shannon Elliott Flaherty joined us Friday night and mother and child are doing well. That'll be that was Friday night at Cooley Dick. That'll be a birth date and that will be in family lore I'm sure forever. So. Her nickname will be Nemo little girl. So that's a winter storm update. Let's see election calendar. You know we have the special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat with Senator Kerry being appointed Secretary of State. We have a primary scheduled for April 30th a general election scheduled for June 25th or a town election I'm sorry is April 9th. The Senate special election primary is April 30th. The question was posed. Might it be wise for the town to consider merging the town election with the special Senate election. And so we actively explored that I've met with the town clerk who is our primary administrator for elections. And the gist of it is if the timing was better that would be a great concept because of all the logical savings of time and convenience and money for combining the two. But the problem is one of timing in that the special Senate primary is only six days preceding the start of town meeting and we elect one third of our town meeting members every year at the town election. In a normal year the best practice is to ideally have as many as 30 days because if there's vacancies or write in candidates sometimes there's a tie, there's notifications that go on to write in candidates about their willingness to serve, et cetera. And so six days simply is not enough time from the special election to be able to start a town meeting on the scheduled date of May 6th. A minimally acceptable time period from any election is about 15 days. So in order to do this if we were to merge the two that would require town meeting to be delayed to the week before Memorial Day from just even starting town meeting. And I think given the kind of dynamics of town meeting and the preferences of the membership as best I can decipher them, I think preference would be not to delay the start of town meeting as late as that. So recommendation is to proceed as scheduled with the town election on the 9th to have those people all seated in time for annual town meeting and proceed as scheduled. I'm hoping that like we were able to get three years ago that we'll get a supplemental state appropriation to cover the majority of our costs for having to hold the special on the 30th. Questions or comments about that, Ms. Brewer? So I think it's appropriate when we have the conversation about the inconvenience and the difficulty of doing this because it is absolutely true having to fill in the spaces with write-ins which we will definitely have this year if we have any indication given that papers are due next week and we have less than half of the seats have even had one person sign up for them. Also I think the other important part of the component and I hope I won't surprise you with this question is the cost savings because I think that that is something that we wanna feel comfortable with saying, yes, this would be difficult, and this would not be great in terms of delaying to near Memorial Day, I totally agree with that. In terms of dollar figures, just to have some sense of the scale, what's the current figure we'd be looking at? It's somewhere around 12 or 13,000 per election day. So with both a primary and a final in June, it's about 25,000. Right, but what I'm asking is if we were to delay the town election, even though of course we still have to print our own ballots associated with that, people would have to do two ballots which is a whole nother level of complication. We would not therefore have to hold the April 9th election which normally costs us, we're saying. 12 to 13,000. Okay, so just so that people understand that that's the trade off and that may be a perfectly reasonable trade off but there are actual dollars attached to the decision. So thank you. Other questions or comments about keeping versus moving the election? So I completely agree that it needs to stay where it is that our town meeting system is so, we were just talking about the deadlines and everything and everything is kind of set and ready and that backs everything up to months before that happens. So to start messing with those dates I think would be real pain in the neck and the fact that we might potentially get reimbursed for the special elections makes it that much better. The, Mr. Bicini pointed out to me when we were having this conversation the other day that I hadn't even realized that had we not had a contest we might not have had a primary election if you'd only had one candidate from each party so we wouldn't have had the April 30th one anyway. And so I wonder at what point, like imagine if we had changed the date and then it turns out there's only one, or you change the date and you say, well we'll change it if we get another candidate or something so just, I don't know, the whole thing was kind of a mess. So I think all factors lead to confirming that we had our date first. But if the vacancy, for example, in Washington had been filled in February instead of now, so that the election was happening now that would be a different, it just didn't work out. If the appointment had been made a month or two earlier the timing would have just worked for April 9th even. People will be very used to voting by the end of June three times. Yes, they have a lot of practices. Lots of practice, right? Ms. Steinberg. Sadly, what it means is fewer people voting invariably and that's what can you do? It's the way it is, but it's too bad because we have some slow percentages sometimes this week. That's true. Ms. Burr. And yes, exactly following up on that. When I had asked the question originally and asked about the cost and the deadlines, I was obviously aware of all the deadlines we already have. Sometimes to the person on the street saying $12,000 versus it's really inconvenient for a lot of people doesn't really make the impact, except what I actually think about more beyond all those deadlines is our town meeting system is such that we have to meet minimally, I would guess, six times on a really, really good year. And those are tough to schedule around Memorial Day. And so it is what it is. If we were a town that only met for one Saturday than having an election, it would be simpler. But it's not just because it's complicated because we made it complicated, it's complicated because it is the system we have. Yep. All right, anything else on this issue? I'm moving right along. All right. Safe and Healthy Neighborhoods Update. Going through issue by issue, all these simple ones. Simple. The Safe and Healthy Neighborhoods Working Group is just that. It's an 18-person group there in the midst of trying to translate the objectives that they've spent multiple hours putting on paper or reaffirming and are now into the nitty gritty of translating those objectives into how best to achieve them and what regulatory and other systems make sense in the form of recommendations to me and possibly the town meeting to achieve that. They've been meeting very regularly and weekly in recent weeks, including their next meeting tomorrow. And they're really gonna be focusing on rental regulations. There is a beginnings of a working draft that is by no means recommended. It is very much just that, a working draft. For example, questions like whether there's a permit that would be required for rental property is a question that has not yet been fully fleshed out by the work group. But it's very much up for discussion. What sort of inspection protocol might there be and when and how frequently? There is an emerging consensus on a system being primarily complaint driven. So all of those things are being translated into an attempt to be translated into a specific recommendations to me. I'm planning to go to tomorrow's meeting and I'm looking forward to hearing the dialogue on these issues. They're very much still working to get recommendations to me really on or around March 1st. Very ambitious deadline as always. But they're hard at work at it. I'll just add a little bit to that. So it's gonna be on or around March 1st because our second public forum is going to be March 5th that was originally going to be February 19th but that's February vacation week and so that's not a good time to hold a public meeting, a public forum, nevermind a meeting. So we're not actually gonna meet that week at all. So we're going to have another meeting on the 26th. I think that's what the date is in February and then have the public forum where we hope we're really pretty much done on March 5th but we'll see what it looks like between now and then. In your packets is the document that was presented at the first public forum which was January 22nd. We had a pretty good turnout for that. That is a status of where we were at that point. It gives kind of an outline of those statuses and it also has the subsequent pages, what we call our why, what and how lists. We've been very careful trying to determine to really make sure that this very diverse group of stakeholders is on the same page for exactly what problems we're trying to solve and how we're looking for regulations to address them so that we don't either leave anything out of the equation and you get to the end of this and say, oh geez, we haven't even solved this particular problem nor do we want to over-regulate something and address things that are not a shared concern. So it has been a very deliberative group, a very thoughtful group as I said, many, many different voices. We are taking public comment at each meeting which has given us some good insights also and it's a great group of people trying, very hard to do very difficult work and a very ambitious timeframe. So that's where we are. Join us Tuesdays, three to five right here, Ms. Brewer. Since I'm far too lazy to come to your meetings on Tuesdays, I'm going to ask if you have and if you could just let us know later. One of the things I really liked that I saw on the what list is that number six, the owner-manager understands and provides to tenants the town's property management regulations and by-laws regarding trash, recycling management, upholstered furniture, snow shoveling and other to be supplied by the town. I would ask, and this may seem, I would ask that when we do that, we don't copy pages out of the by-law and hand them to people. We make very clear and concise the rule is you will do X or as my husband would say, spend a night in the box or you will do X or this will happen. This will happen or this will happen. I think we have to be super concise. I think we've gotten super better at that with the handouts that the police department already does associated with CAG registration and those things. I think we've probably learned a lot from that, but that was actually one of my questions coming into this is how much stuff could we require property managers to pass out just like they have to hand out lead, paint things and agriculture. This is a farming community thing in some circumstances that surely there would be things that we could compel them to pass out that people, because people would otherwise have absolutely no idea. And if they're buried like so much of lease information and six point type, if there's a way that we can say, this is the information we're giving you, we want it to be provided this way as opposed to do something like this. The onus is completely on the town to supply that. And what it is is a big opportunity because this is trying to, we're trying to protect every interest here. We're trying to protect the town so that folks know what the expectations are. We're trying to protect the tenants so that they're not getting in trouble for breaking rules that they didn't even know about. We're trying to protect the property manager by again kind of everybody establishing, okay, we all know and agree that these are the expectations, these are the regulations that need to be followed. And it's also a big opportunity to be basically starting a dialogue with tenants, something that the town hasn't really had so much before with the student tenants. The town is sort of this other outside entity to this process, but here's a big opportunity to say, you know what, we're part of this relationship with you. You're a resident of the town and that brings various rights and responsibilities. But it's a really valuable opportunity to be addressing a lot of needs under the rubric of the regulations. So like I said, it is ambitious, but yes, your point is well taken. And that was partially why the property managers kind of went along with that. They're like, okay, so you're not saying that we need to, like no, I was saying, okay, if this is important to us and it is, then we need to give that to you, you know, however many copies or whatever, but it's our responsibility to come up with what those messages are for you to be giving to your tenants and you need to swear that you are. So, absolutely, and then the small follow up to that is that since you're bringing stuff forward to town meeting eventually, one of the things that is a little side note that might be worth addressing is we still have in our current bylaw that we have to pass out landlord tenant books and we don't do that anymore. So we should probably take that out. We haven't done it in a long time. Let's see what we can do with that. Okay, anything else on safe and healthy? Moving along. Staff recognitions, you know, I mentioned the website which is a really reflection on all the departments, but IT in particular. Alan Snow, our director of Parks and Grounds and Tree Warden was recognized by his peers at a January meeting of the Massachusetts Tree Warden and Foresters Association. He was named Tree Warden of the Year. That's a reflection on his leadership role as a model, really. Town is actively participating in Arbor Day, Tree City, USA, and we have for 25 years now. Certainly demonstrated leadership in the project Plant 2000 Street Trees in or near the public way over the next three years. Alan has worked up the implementation plan, including a very well thought out tree stewardship program. And there's a whole education component and there's Amherst Neighborhood Tree Stewards, otherwise known as ants. I mean, there's all kinds of projects that are out there and it's great to see Alan recognized by his peers as a leader and that's gonna pay dividends in this town for generations when these trees take root, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's great to see, well-deserved, I mentioned paperless billing, so I won't talk about that. I did wanna mention rolling green fire. It's been a while now since we met and we're gonna talk about it at the last meeting, but you talk about public works being on the front lines of a lot of emergency issues. They were in a role at that fire in terms of a scene support. As the area fire departments were dumping huge amounts of water on that structure fire, DPW was there trying to keep the fire ground from being a skating rink in the early morning cold and they were very much in a support role and the team was working seamlessly with fire and police and both our fire and police did an excellent job and we had great support from the Red Cross with tenants and the rolling green management group and it's happy to report that all of those displaced have found housing either at rolling green or elsewhere in town and tragic fire. And so I just wanted to recognize supervisory training for town employees. Our new HR director, Deb Redway, been working with counterparts at UMass and with her colleagues in the Mass Municipal Personnel Association. There's an upcoming basic supervisory training program at six or eight sessions long. It's going to be happening in Amherst at the Jones Library. There are 25 slots for a statewide program and in this particular round of training, Amherst will have 15 of those slots, a number of public works, foreman, some other mid-level management personnel in many town departments and so that's a great collaboration to our state association with UMass. There's also going to be some on-campus leadership development trainings going on. I know we have another three or four people signed up for a course beginning in the spring. So I think there's a lot more to come in that area but it's a great initiative. One of the basic kind of findings of what we need to do more and better job at is professional development work and staff training and supervisory practices in particular. So I wanted to recognize Deb Redway for that work. Let's see, what else? PBTA update, we've talked about the governor's transportation proposals and how it would help regional transit but I'm active on the PBTA advisory board. We're in the midst of our own budget cycle at the PBTA and we'll be getting some more detailed options from the PBTA staff at our March meeting. Really the focus is on the funding side right now in the legislature so we want that to play out a little bit more. You know that last summer we were contemplating fare hikes to forestall service cuts because of lack of funding. There was a one-time funding fix passed by the legislature last June that gets us through this year but it was clear at the time that was a one-year one-time fix and that gap was worth about a million bucks a year ago and our gap without that money in place this year is somewhere around a million so that's the situation we find ourselves in and we're very hopeful that we'll get some positive action on the transportation financing proposal in the legislature that would allow us to preserve service and forestall fair hikes that are a burden to many of the writers. Last thing I would mention in terms of upcoming activity, February is Black History Month and our Human Rights Commission has a couple of projects that they're working on that I wanted to highlight. It's really with arts programs to highlight black history working with local artist Toby Barnes. There's going to be a window painting project in storefronts with artists and it'll be helping to educate and promote significant moments in black history and so you'll see that in the downtown area and the Human Rights Commission folks and the artists are working with LSEC and the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Improvement District to put that on so that'll be a very visible project in the coming weeks. Questions or comments on anything from Mr. Missanti? All right, you're all set? Okay, BCG and JCPC updates, which I combined as one line just to try and save some room on this agenda. The BCG update, we've pretty much covered everything already, you've got the summary points in your packet from our January 31st meeting. The biggest part of our meeting was talking about all the elements of the budget, governor's budget as we have already gone over here. I would emphasize for folks that all of the FY14 budget proposals are done and available online. So this is for town meeting members and just interested community members. You can find the town, school and library proposed budgets all online and if you look at the summary points, the addresses are available but basically it's everybody's website slash budget. So for AmherstMA.gov slash budget, arps.org slash budget, JonesLibrary.org slash budget. So those are out there. This is pretty amazing to have them all be in the same stage at this early point. There's been really tremendous coordination by the committees and the administrators for a town, school and library to make that happen. So we're in a very good place for that. And I think that's all about BCG stuff. Miss Brewer or Mr. Missanti, you wanna add anything to BCG? Okay, JCPC folks, it's time. We've had two meetings since the last select board meeting. At the first one, we discussed using 7% of the tax levy for funding, which would give us $1.2 million in tax dollars to spend on capital projects for FY14. That still leaves a gap of 275,000 between the requests and the 1.2 million. And people should realize we actually spend about 10.6 million on capital projects, but those include monies from the ambulance fund from Chapter 90 from debt service and from borrowing. So in the second meeting was with the police department, they have two requests. This is a four-vehicle year. Usually it's three vehicles, one year, three vehicles, the next, three vehicles, the next, and the fourth year, it's four. So this is a four-vehicle year. And they're also requesting two sets of audio and video recording to equip two more police cruisers and then they will all have the capability of recording what happens when they stop a vehicle on the road. And that's where we are. Anything to add, Jim? All right, it's a very nice, tight schedule. Everything is nicely laid out, so we get done by in the next couple months while in advance of town meeting. I mean, again, as Mr. Hayden was saying too, the budget is nice to organize now and color-coded, better overviews, so it's really easy to have a discussion. And it's better every year. And those are Thursday mornings, 9.30 in this room. Very good. Sometimes maybe in this meeting room downstairs, but lately here, for the most part. And we have some spaces where we're not meeting, so people should check the calendar. Okay, thank you. Questions or comments for anyone about JCPC? All right, next up, liaison representative reports. Mr. Hayden. I have a couple of quick as I can. The Recycling and Refuse Management Committee are really closing in on their draft of the recommendations for the landfills are full. It's also, right now they're trying to untangle sort of the issues with the transfer stations or separate them from the issues of dealing with the refuse. Public Transportation and Bicycle Committee are working on, they're doing research on different types of shelters that they might actually come forward and recommend for use around town. As I mentioned last time, there was a request by the Jones to get one. The question is, what and where will it look like and be? Also, they're working on, and they're doing a lot of research on bikeways as well so they can have helpful input on the Pine Street design revisions, whether they're trying to tease apart the benefits of a multi-purpose path versus painted bicycle lanes. One promotes all kinds of bicyclers to use it and the other one promotes commuters. So, if the balance of two needs there. And that's also going to blend into a discussion that they're having on recommendations for the design of the sidewalk that is being proposed for East Pleasant Street. There's a new sidewalk going in there that the Public Works Committee will be recommending when it's their turn to make these recommendations. And so they'd like to make sure that bicycles are being considered in that proposal. Also, there are three students from Amherst College who'll be working with the Public Shade Tree Committee to work on drafting and implementing a bylaw. That project is pretty nascent still but I just got an email today from them. So we can begin to actually got it Friday. I just found it this morning. So we can begin to pull that together. Also, speaking of students, I have one student's helping sort of with the drafting of the Recycling Refuge and Management Committees for stuff. So, a little help there. Great. Questions or comments for Mr. Hayden? All right, next, Ms. Stein. Okay, Community Preservation Act Committee has met twice since our last meeting. The first of those two were historic preservation presentations which include washing Emily Dickinson's dress in an appropriate way and preserving other artifacts of the historical society and cataloging. The Tiffany window needs restoration in town which is in the Unitarian Church. Amherst Media wants to preserve the historic recordings of our town and the Jones Library roof and the atrium needs repairing. The North Common Project falls under that review and you pretty much know what that's about. The second set of meetings were about open space, recreation and affordable housing. We talked about a large amount of money going to the Amwayland Apartments, but that allowed them to reduce the request to the Community Preservation Act Committee. They're still 25 units that they're applying to the CPA to have them fixed. Habitat would like 40,000 in reserve in case they could build on the Hawthorne property. OSSE, the community field needs a consultant for rehabilitation of that large expanse and it's definitely needs an update. That's something that I think Mr. Musanti has wanted for a while. Mill River needs a shade structure. There is the South Amherst Conservation Association is trying desperately hard to get the money together to purchase the rock farm. They've got a request in for 50 to 100,000. The bank apparently bought that property for half a million, so they're really struggling to try to figure out how they could come up with an offer to the bank to get it. And conservation would like 156,000 for 13 acres of the Brinell property, which is something you've heard about before. They wanna buy it out, right? Because they didn't get funded for it last year. I don't even know how much that all adds up to, except it's an extraordinary amount and there is only $440,000 or slightly less to spend in CPA funds. So when the idea of coming in with a late request to add to what I went through just now seems not gonna work in my book. Yeah, it's just a few dollars. Anyway, in addition to that, the Board of Health is working on a review of the tobacco sales and the permits. There might have to be a second public hearing on wood smoke regulations. They met the day before the storm. So they were talking about the emergency preparations. They are applying for a grant actually to get a staff person or a part-time staff person to would focus on emergency preparations. And I think, oh, and they mentioned the medical marijuana issue and the state is gonna need something more than 120 days to come up with regulations or for this new initiative or ballot measured that past. Lastly, I wanna say something about the flag. The flag has been ordered and we are in the process of working on the design with them. They sent us a preliminary artist mock-up, which Jim and I looked at and the colors were not right. They insist that they've matched them to this PMS chart, color chart, which everybody uses. And Jim and I sat side-by-side and matched to the PMS chart and they don't match each other. So I wrote to them before the storm and having heard back and said, I will go to Chikopi and we can sit down together with our printout of the flag and their printout of the flag because their background is red and ours is closer to room and the greens are different. And rather than have this, it's a lot of money. And if we are gonna buy the flags, we want them to be what we send to them and not a different set of colors. So that's that. Anything to add on the flag, Mr. Walden? He has been ordered. I mean, we're a lot further along than we used to be. We know what we're doing. That's funny. Well, thank you both for all your efforts on that. Any questions or comments from Mr. Stein? All right, next up. Mr. Walden. To pick up on a couple of things we mentioned already, Mr. Hayden mentioned Pine Street and I gather that may be a larger conversation because it may bring in archeological historical questions too. So, I mean, there's some suggestion. We might need a little more public process to discuss those kind of changes, change to that magnitude. And North Common, Miss Stein referred to, of course, while all of you were at the MMA, Mr. Hayden and I had the pleasure of going to the North Common public forum which was reasonably well attended. It wasn't packed, but it wasn't too sparse.  I think the consensus that emerged really was that everyone values it as a space where people get together for all sorts of different purposes. You know, it's as a prime public space. North Common, just for the viewing audience too, means the piece of common at the north end of the common here outside Town Hall, not North Amherst Common.  So how do you combine large amounts of foot traffic and other activity with preserving that environmental character and historic character? One of the suggestions there was that we hold a formal design competition rather than going through, I mean, there's some correction of misconceptions. So it's not an either or of a high power design competition versus putting out to bid and buying something cheap off the shelf. Or our bid process is fairly complex and robust. But still, there was a suggestion that it might be a good way to not only get a better design but really call attention to the town as a destination and to the kind of resources that we have. So, you know, bottom line is it was a good conversation, lots of enthusiasm. Not, you know, different people were there too, not just the usual people who come to meetings. So a good variety of perspectives and lots of interest.