I'd like to call the meeting of the select board to order at 6 o 3 p.m. On Monday October 22nd And I'll let the school committee do the same Thank you and seeing a presence of the quorum call the meeting of the Amherst school committee to order at 6 o 3 p.m So to start with we usually do opening remarks announcements and agenda review So we'll do that a little bit just to kind of go through the evening the select board agendas Got a few timed items this evening. So first off at 6 o'clock, which is now We'll start with the UMass Donahue Institute report We'll get into that in just a moment After that we'll do public comment and then we have a scheduled hearing for property tax classification at 645 at 7 o'clock We have a alcohol liquor license hearing that's scheduled and at 715 We have a second alcohol license hearing scheduled and then we have other items on our agenda To carry out the staff this evening as well I will make an announcement at this point I am an employee of the schools and since the first item on our agenda is related to the schools. I will yield The running of the meeting to the vice chair for this month, which is Ms. Brewer and so if you'd like I'll just Pass that to you at this moment Great so maybe we can do that after we get through the Donahue section We can circle back because we have some additional materials that the select boards just received tonight that we didn't have in our Packets, which would explain why those of you who follow along at home wouldn't have had them in the electronic packet either Although they're quite possibly there now. We didn't have them to look at until we walked in tonight So I will go ahead and turn this over since the select board had no involvement in this study To the town manager to set the stage for this report Thank You madam chair. So tonight we are having a report from the Donahue Institute that this report was funded by UMass as a part of the strategic partnership agreement between the University and the town of Amherst that was signed in 2015 I believe 15 gosh seems like not that long ago but and part of that was to do an analysis of students living in University-owned housing they contracted with the Donahue Institute to do the study So tonight you have in your packet a report There was a glitch in how we uploaded it. So there's a page that was sort of missing one of the charts I think that's been corrected now So the entire report and the and hard copies of that page are in your folder for tonight so tonight we will hear from Rod Motamati and Michael McNally from the Donahue Institute They'll they have a slideshow so if you can't see the slides you might want to reposition yourselves and they have about a 15-minute presentation and then we have some time for some questions and answers from the school committee and the select board All right, thank you Thank you for giving us a time to Talk to you about the study that we've done. I'd like to start Briefly and I know some of the group folks in the room are familiar with the Donahue Institute and some of the folks aren't so I'd like to give you a brief description of who we are and what we do We are under the president's office. We're not affiliated with any of the campuses our Role in the system is to essentially be the civic outreach and sort of think tank arm of the university And to provide a mechanism for the the expertise that exists within university to to go out into the world and and provide Assistance and knowledge where we can we are not obligated to do projects on behalf of or for the university Nor within the state in fact We are currently doing quite a few projects outside of outside of Massachusetts and even some outside of the country So our funding is entirely from our grants and contracts. I know that is a question that While some of you might not ask I will put it out there for you We are not funded. We don't have a line item in the state budget We are not funded by Marty Meehan or any of the campus chancellors. We are funded entirely from our Grants and contracts many of them competitively won So the easiest way to think about who the Donahue Institute is or what the Donahue Institute is is Essentially a nonprofit consulting company that happens to be under the umbrella of the university That's the way that I understood it best in the first few months that I work there And hopefully that'll help you understand who we are and what our relationship with the university is Mike and I come from the economic and public policy research group. We were a team about 14 or 15 Spread across state. Most of us are actually in Hadley And our name is pretty self descriptive of the work kind of work that we do So we were brought on to this Projects in order to provide some background and some information on The cost of educating children in the town of Amherst And the relationship of those costs to the revenue sources So what what is how much does it cost to fund the education of a child? How much money is spent on a child and what are the property tax revenues and other sources of funds that help? pay for those pay for those things our role was not to provide a Recommendation or a number our role was to provide some information that the town and the university can use for upcoming Conversations among themselves about how to address this issue So if you have questions on on what we recommended the answer is we don't have a recommendation But merely are providing information As you can understand what prompted the study was that there are children living on a tax-exempt UMass Housing and so we'll delve into a little bit of information about who these children are how many of them are there? And then get into some costs and property tax questions So the group in this room should be pretty familiar with this information But here essentially is some information about the sources of revenue for the town The obvious component of that is property tax. That's the single biggest component of the town's revenue As you all may know the money goes into a communal pot or pool of money That it has then drawn from to fund the town's priorities There isn't a direct One dollar-for-dollar allocation or or anything like that it goes into a pool and then comes out And it comes out to fund these broad categories So the operating budget is the the vastment of by far the biggest single expense for the town and in that The schools is about half so that right-hand column Those are all shares of the total expenditure of the second to last line So 50.4 percent of total expenditures go to the schools and within that There's the town specific share so absent chapter 70 state aid and so on And if you want to provide some equivalency to help you think about it the total Education expenditures were equivalent to about 68 percent of the property tax revenues That's gives you an idea of the magnitude of each compared to each other The geographies we're concerned with are here So we have two overlapping school districts We have the the town of Amherst school district, which is the elementary schools And then we have the the regional school district that includes the middle school in the high school as we'll get into Most of the children that we're talking about are in the Amherst elementary schools And so they're they're in that Amherst district, but there are a few Children that would be in the middle and high school. So we did pull cost and expenditure scenarios for both The Amherst district and the Amherst Pellum district So who are we talking about in the past school year? There were 52 children living on UMass tax-exempt housing living in UMass tax-exempt housing Most of those the vast majority of them were in the elementary schools as I said before 83 percent And then of the children the vast majority of them lived in the north village apartments So we're using the north village apartments as a proxy For essentially all of the the students given that nearly all of them live there what we're also focusing on is The costs and expenditures on educating the children Within the school system We didn't focus on the cost of transporting the children to and from schools because they are on an existing bus line And so we didn't anticipate Meaningful incremental costs for having to move these children to and from the schools So for a little bit more context and and history Here we have a graph showing the per pupil cost to the town of educating a child and the Property tax revenue per parcel. So I'd like to just define a term that we use throughout the presentation Forgot to change this one slide this should say cost actually per property tax and school cost Where we use cost in our presentation and in the report it refers to what the town is actually spending The town's portion of student expenditures So there is expenditures that the total amount of dollars that are spent on the edge on educating a child regardless of the Source of that money and that's what we're calling expenditures And then we have cost which is the portion of expenditures that the town bears So the red line there is the cost to the town the per pupil cost of educating the children Not necessarily the amount of money that is spent on each child So it's basically expenditures less chapter 78 essentially So as you can see the cost of edging the cost of educating a child in the Amherst This is the weighted average also of the town in the regional school district has been going up somewhat steadily Property tax revenue has been relatively average property tax per parcel has been relatively flat since the recession and Is roughly about half? The town's cost So turning our attention to the North Village Apartments Rather than looking at the average parcel. Let's look at this this specific property. So if you were to Consider the property to be a regular taxable property rather than its current tax exempt form We work with the town's assessor to figure out what the hypothetical assess value of the property would be And we got what you see here on the slide the property itself would be about $235,000 assess value if you divide that over the units that are in there works out to be about $1,240 per unit so that would be the household equivalent Of the people who live of the families that live within that within that apartment complex The total assessment the $235,000 in its entirety would not cover the cost of the 52 children who live there Whether you're looking at the expenditure number or the cost number It's at least less than half So if it's less than half of the cost and it's way less than half of the expenditure given that expenditure number is higher One other thing I wanted to point out is that Commercial residential properties like this the way they're assessed It's pretty well laid out here. It's in this income and expense approach So the the assess value of the property ends up depending a lot on what the rents are That determines what that the town typically assesses So using a lot of the information we put out there in front of you the this idea of per child per student Expenditures per pupil cost and these various property tax scenarios We've put together a menu of sort of five options that lay out To some extent kind of a bracketed List that the town and the university can use for their discussions What we have presented in what we have in the slides is a numbers based on 10 year averages What you have in the report are both the 10 year averages and using the latest fiscal year data The reason we chose to focus on the averages for the purposes of this presentation is That what we thought would be most important to talk about Were the the relationship and the relative magnitude between the various options, which is a bit more stable using an average The various cost components of education they inflate over time differently the number of students in any given year Differs and so your per pupil number is gonna move up and down Chapter 70 aid is not consistent from year to year and so given all of these fluctuations We did a 10 year average and that's the focus of presentation again So that the magnitude among the various options that we're showing I think will be most illustrative But again, we have all of this stuff here Using the last fiscal year in the report. So it's in there if you want to look at it and we can answer questions about it if you have those So the first option is the per pupil expenditure plus English as a English language learner expenses the students at that live in North Village are in most ways Basically identical to the larger Student population except on this one measure of English language learners Many of them are the children of international graduate students English is not many of their form It's not the first language for many of them. So they had tend to be a higher Propensity for them to be English language learners. So we took the per pupil expenditure which in of itself actually includes English language learning among it and added actually a little bit extra to Put in what we think is probably the high Number for what the per pupil expenditure will be we've also put it in there to highlight the difference between it and the next option which is just the actual average per pupil expenditure without A little bit of double counting frankly for the ELL and you'll find that the cost is basically about $200 a difference. So the the incremental cost of of the additional ELL for the students is not terribly high So if we go to option Three So this is the expenditures minus chapter 78. So this is what we're calling cost So this is the actual cost of the town of educating a child And this is roughly about twenty five hundred dollars less Than the expenditure scenario. So option two compared to option three is roughly about twenty five hundred dollars less. I Should point out. I didn't point out earlier that we have adjusted all of these to account for Amherst costs of educating Amherst children. So for the elementary schools, we've removed the school choice children And in the the regional schools, we have accounted for the fact that many of the students don't live in Amherst They're from Pelham and Leverton shoots very so this is actually Amherst's cost of educating Amherst children Which partly explains why the the secondary schools the middle middle and high schools are so much lower But it's also that they just happen to be lower. They're structurally a bit different So if we change our view from money out to money in Here's a an overview or review rather of the property tax numbers that we already talked about Again, the average property tax per parcel in Amherst is about six thousand dollars average over these ten years That includes both residential and commercial parcels And again the average per unit property tax on the north village apartments if they were taxable Is about twelve hundred forty dollars which you see there in front of you We have all of this summed up in one table to make this a bit easier to compare So the first three again, we have expenditure plus ELL regular expenditure and then the cost to the town So then we have the property tax per parcel and just for help you sort of illustrate this a little bit more If you take 68% of that which is the average share of property tax to the go to education You actually get about four thousand dollars. So the average parcel in Amherst is paying about four thousand dollars toward education in in Amherst and Then you have twelve hundred dollars for the units And then again the 68% share of that is eight hundred and forty one dollars So that's the end of the the slides that we have to present and I hopefully didn't take up too much time And we can take questions now. I Went through that quite quick on purpose. So hopefully Thank you. Yes, we did ask you to stay to 15 minutes I'm sure you would have been happy to speak longer about all the work One of the things I want to point out even though we are short on time is that you are somewhat walking into a fraught situation In that we've had a strategic partnership agreement with UMass for a long time And we wanted this dealt with many years ago And so there have been a lot of changes in personnel different people signed that first strategic partnership agreement a school closed Since that street for digital one and so there may be some pent up angst when you hear some of our questions Because some of us have been around that long and others will just have new questions Another point I want to make is that your slides don't have a lot to do with the presentation that we received several of them are Substantially different that one for example that I think is particularly helpful is not in our report And so and another one was misprinted. So we didn't see it before tonight So we're having a little trouble following some of the numbers along So if someone asks you about a specific number it may be because they didn't have it in front of them And it's a somewhat different format and I know there's so many different ways to present the info that and we have some slides But we don't have all of them. So that's part of it I'm gonna turn to my colleagues for a couple of questions in just a moment But while I have the mic I'm gonna go ahead and just ask a couple of factual questions Just to make sure we're super clear because I know the strategic partnership agreement asked for K to 12 So even though we have preschool and Amherst, it's not universal preschool. We don't have a slot for everybody It's they don't pay for it But we didn't ask for that we asked for K through 12 and so I just want to clarify since you pulled so many Tables directly from desi that table one mentions pre-k None of the others do and I'm assuming just based on the way They normally separate things at desi that in fact pre-k is not included in any of the other tables in terms of enrollment by race and Ethnicity and first language, etc. Yeah, but none and and that's not mentioned since you have one table that has pre-k in it And yet we're talking about K through 12 It would just be helpful to know for certain that none of these and I'm not saying you have to know that answer right off The top of your head, but that would be incredibly useful to know because then you know the old apples oranges Concept and I appreciate that you mentioned that choice was removed and Pelham lover and shoots very very removed One of the things we also don't see here to make sure that maybe this is something you have in an appendix Just like you have some additional slides is we're not seeing any grade breakdowns for these actual students We've been talking about 52 students has been the ballpark number We've talked about since the first day we had this conversation in 2007 So we still don't know as a group based on the report if that number shifted like they're more elementary than there used to be and your 7 to 12 because we don't have any of that data here none of that is shown So that's something that maybe is available somewhere else associated with that that people may have questions about but maybe you don't have The ability to answer at this point. It's also mentioned on page 10 of our report, which may or may not be what your report says 90% of UMass families with children live in the north village apartments And that was a really interesting thing you worked with with our assessor mr. Burgess But of course, that's not where all of them live and it's not mentioned where else they live I know some live in dorms. I don't know where else they live It would be useful again as an appendix to know where else they're coming from and how those percentages play out So that I think is the rest of my technical questions. So in terms of Fellow members of the select board and members of the school committee questions You have that either could be answered tonight or maybe on a follow-up Yes, please miss Spitzer Yeah Make sure she has a mic, so I'm sorry for grating the assessment process for the north village apartments So you mentioned that it's based on the it's commercial property attacks So did you use the actual rates that UMass charges for those students to rent that housing? Or did you use what they would be if they were commercial units? and I'm assuming that UMass subsidizes those units somewhat from the grad students and How far off are they from what we would get if they were Commercial yeah, so we used the going rent of what they're currently charging is my understanding of for the number that we've used Yes, I think they would be they probably have higher market rents But I think it's also With their specific with with the market that they're dealing with I don't know if they would bear much higher rents So given that they're dealing with international mostly international or graduate students broadly I don't know how much higher of a rent that particular market would bear if they were open to anybody Then yes, I'm sure they could fill them with higher rents. So there is I Don't know where you want to come down on that. I just was curious. It was your curiosity. Thank you So to follow up on that to make sure I'm clear We're looking at table seven and it has a rent figure of 1.8. And so that's based on what they're actually Paying now as rent or what they might conceivably be paying under somewhat different conditions if North Village was taxable Which I think was your first question. Yeah, that's what they're paying now. Okay, so that is literally what they're paying now Aside from the market issues. We just talked about. Thank you Other questions. Yes, please and so don't us. So thank you very much for presenting this information tonight I just want to echo chair vice-chair Brewer's comments about the difference in the tables, which are head-scratchingly Annoying I don't understand why we have such different information But one of the things that I also wanted to ask was specifically about The question about the students residing on campus are more than twice as likely to be English language learners And so I'm curious. Did you actually interview these students? How do we know that that is where the extra cost would go? You know, it's just unclear from the the presentation of the of the information about where that information came from That we did not interview the students minor sayings that information came from schools for what we know, so Dr. Morris you would Agree with us. Yeah, that was one of the data requests that the Donahue Institute Institute asked us for We shared that breakdown with the folks doing the research Okay, and just a follow-up question to that because the number of 52 students has been going around Is this a number that came from the schools or is this a number that came from the Donahue Institute? That came from us. Okay in terms of our enrollment data, so we wouldn't share that level of data with Folks who weren't working for the district in terms of addresses and names and things like that So we gathered that data and shared that with the Donahue Institute. Thank you I'm curious as to what the table differences are that everyone keeps referring to we don't have that one Yes, you have this one minus two rows. So this yeah, but we still don't have it Yes, so that's what I'm referring to and yes some others are combined in different formatting, but yes, okay It's not just a matter of semantics. No, no, I want to make sure we're not You have the information that you should have we don't we don't have share of north village tax for education That line doesn't appear in any of our charts. No, I agree. I'm not disagree. Thank you Others Of course you do Well, thank you for doing the work and giving us some base information A couple questions and then a couple of comments It did anyone along the way during draft development of this or during their report anyone outside of the Donahue Institute At the university and administration get a chance to review this prior to its release Everyone in on the project had a chance to review it prior to sleep in the town and the university The town and the okay, so it was reviewed outside of the Donahue Institute Because I think we had seen and things have changed so Well, I think it's it's helpful. I'm just say I'm I'm disappointed because we've waited about two years to get this study and a lot of this I think Could have been done Just with assessor data and school data and so I'm not exactly sure What value is really being added after all of all of this weight One of the things I think is missing in in well One of the things I think is missing when you say well none of the houses in town on average assessment pay for students There's a life cycle that happens in a lot of residences where you have your children They cost the community money because your taxes don't pay the full freight And then you stay in that house after the children are no longer in the schools And you're paying the taxes that help underwrite the next group of children. So It seemed like this report kept saying well, none of the houses, you know on average pay and in fact North Village, which we now find out you use the UMass rents wouldn't even come close, but actually it would be more than zero It just seemed like this was kind of sanitized to favor a particular viewpoint When this has been a sore point for the community for quite a while, and I think justifiably Let's say about 52 students every year There isn't a life cycle consideration as there is in a lot of the homes or even some of the apartments It talks about in the conclusion how You know, it's really a You know Now I'm forgetting that part but I I think That it doesn't acknowledge that the quality of the public education in Amherst is one of the recruitment and attraction factors for junior faculty adjuncts in others and that the university has a real interest in helping us Maintain the strength of Amherst public schools and that that's a shared benefit. So we can we can look at well $1,200 that's like hardly anything why bother, but I think Beyond the calculation we have to have a shared understanding of the value for all of us the town and the institution of the public education and I just feel like That was that voice was kind of kind of missing so With that, I'll be quiet for a while and let some of my colleagues join in Mr. Steinberg If you wanted to go further into that because what I'm going to ask is somewhat different topic and this may be in part a question for Dr. Morrison, Mr. Rangano too, but There's been discussion about the cost of the ELL program and You know the numbers that were being presented up on the screen at the moment. It looks like a very small expense and I think that those of us who are not regularly involved with the schools don't really know what is Involved in an ELL program how much staff time on per student is there and Why you know, I guess I'm surprised by the number I'm looking at Mr. Morris so I Think three things one is that you know, I'd have to look at the quantum. I mean I've read the report I think there's an economy a scale feature that comes up with our English learners Which is kind of the term that we're starting to use for that, which is that There's absolutely time the state guides us on how much time there is based on the level The English proficiency level the student has But our ELL population has grown to the point where it's you know up Beyond 15% of our student body so an additional ELL student It's not that there's one English ELL teacher working with one English learner They're working in small groups and so the cost somewhat gets mitigated by that That factor so I think that's some of when you look at our ELL costs in general There are a lot more than what one might predict here, but there's some economy a scale that plays into why per student There's not a huge impact on that. I don't know if I'm being as articulate as I'd like to be on that question I've been missing on it. Mr. Mangano might be able to help me with it Well, I was gonna respond with a clarifying question is the increment for ELL the total ELL cost divided by ELL students Or is it total ELL cost divided by all students? Okay Total ELL cost divided by the total number of students in the district as they are all part They're all responsible for a share of the ELL cost even if they don't use it and That's how you get to per pupil cost So I think that's why it looks probably smaller than you might expect us because you're dividing the ELL cost by You know 2,500 students as opposed to 200 students for what is the direct cost for those students? Yes, please mr. Nakajima. So you said initially that the per pupil expenditure on the on the Wherever it would be if you're not including ELL already included ELL right because it's included in total. Yeah, but then you're seeing you just added that fraction of the pre-pupil expenditure from the prior number and added it on to get the cost For those students of of pupil expenditure plus ELL. Yeah, so there's some double counting in the top row But I mean forgive me for asking is the value of that because it seems to me that if you were actually trying to ascertain What the impact of having a high proportion of ELL students on the budget? What you'd want to be doing is something more akin to what mr. Mangano just suggested of looking at the the proportion of ELL students in North Village or in University Housing Relative to the total number of ELL students in town and then look at that proportion relative to the budget for ELL, right? Because then you'd actually be assigning The the actual cost of ELL relative to the large proportion of ELL students there I mean just adding the marginal increment per student onto the overall But that doesn't tell you anything I'm pardoning for being and I'm sending harsh I don't mean to be no that but to me that that's not a particularly informative or illustrative number under those circumstances And actually why have the micro the other thing is I it would actually be to me building off of what miss Spitzer said earlier And miss Kruger. I actually think it would be useful or illustrative to know what the property tax income would be For the average prevailing rents for Apartment complexes of like size in the town because since the I mean it seems to me to be Slightly circular logic since everybody knows that North Village apartment is subsidized rental apartments for students Then by definition the amount of property tax that could even potentially be generated of income-restricted housing is going to be Low if you're if you're looking and I'm and I'm not saying that's untrue I'm just saying if you're going to look to understand well, let me try to understand and get a sense of what the property tax revenue would Look like I'm just sort of like a baseline scenario in which clearly the average of 6,000 It just tells you you know what our property taxes are in general like per parcel if you start segmenting that you'd get you know different kinds of housing by size in Valuation in one of those categories would clearly be rental income of You know housing that's otherwise generally rented by students and lower income households Even if they're not per se low income housing and I just think that'd be useful as a comparison Particularly if we're going to be illustrative of discussions within the town and the university I can add a little bit of background to that the while I don't know exactly what the market rents would be I can tell you that they would have to more than double from what they are now to To for the assessment to begin to cover the cost of the children that are at the property So again, I don't know what their gap is but they would have to it They'd have to more than double the assessment would have to get up to the seven seven hundred thousand six six seven hundred thousand dollar range For it to start covering the the children's cost so I don't again, I don't know how far they off are from what the market rent is versus subsidized rent, but the The rent average rent increase would have to be significant for that That gap to close Would you like to follow up? Yeah, I know I'd happy to I mean I I understand that and I think that's actually where Actually back when I was at the Donnie Institute over ten years ago. I wrote on a wrote a paper on the impact of mixed-income housing on municipal financial budgets and Talked extensively about this life cycle approach to analyzing the the the cost and benefits of housing that Miss Krueger commented on something I for one I wholeheartedly endorsed the notion that if you have Housing that's cycling through, you know, we used to have a household that's living there for 30 years 25 years But kids transit through the system at one point that you should measure out the overall impact in that overall Time frame, but then beyond that every and this is more akin To I think a point you make in the paper your current report is that Housing is stratified anyway And so the idea that you're gonna have some housing that's a million dollar home And it's gonna generate X amount of property tax and you have another unit that's worth $300,000 in it, you know has a different number that it generates is Intuitive and obvious, but it's still important because for example in this case if if you have 230,000 plus dollars being thrown off by North Village under that model of where it's generating income tax and property tax Excuse me, if you if you double it it's still not remotely covering the cost of Tuition but it's still double the money which would be useful And so if you're getting into conversations between the town and the university Knowing what different comparison points are is is just useful for that because you're benchmarking you can benchmark yourself against Obviously all luxury housing and that would be unrealistic You could benchmark yourself against a hundred percent low-income or even very low-income housing or you could benchmark yourself against against a comparison of what the the the market rate housing would look like For that segment of the population, right? And it would be higher it wouldn't be enough But it would be higher and it'd be useful information regardless of a recommendation to be useful information to have Now I'm done. Thank you I appreciate that but I knew you'd be able to tie that together And I would just note too that the units that are shown on our page 10 It's there 190 units at North Village that means there's not even one child per half the unit So it isn't just that people with children live there and then another family with the child and then another family with the child So the life cycle is is different than just assuming that every one of those units is gonna have children in it or not Other questions. I realize we're running we for those in the audience We are running up against our 645 property tax classification hearing But we are also as you heard pent up to me and to talk about this particular issue So I just want to make sure while we have the consultants with us If there are any other questions that can be asked directly of them now that might be followed up later By Dr. Morrison, Mr. Backelman Mr. Steinberg Just getting back without getting into ELL in particular but if there are other types of expenditures related to a group of students in this case we've identified the group of students that Have Particular cost factors in particular educational needs attached to that group it's always helpful to know that and So if there's information that can be provided to the community About that in order to inform the future discussions with The university that is going to flow from this. I think that would be very helpful Others yes, Mr. Morris. It's responding to that. That was the the ELL demographic information was the Only demographic variable that was significantly different from the general population So if we look at some other ones that one might think of they align very closely And that's why one of the reasons that we shared that particular piece of Information as opposed to for instance special education costs other things where it aligned very similarly with the general population of students we have Okay, thank you And then I'll just leave it at that Sort of this goes back to I think what Has already been said by Mr. Nakajima, but the Actual cost for ELL As would be reflected for A particular student is opposed to defrate over the entire population of the school system Those are is a different number and it would be useful to have both others Great, and I yep good place miss spitzer I guess this is a question for for dr. Morris But I'm thinking about the student population and how it might be different from our general population And I think in one way having been a grad student myself is that you often only spend Maybe a couple years in in the district, and then you move on when your parents found a new job So does that in any way increase the burden on the school districts having students come in and out? over time Yeah, so that's you know the transiency piece is definitely higher there There's other neighborhoods in Amherst that also have higher than average transiency rates It's hard to quantify. It's hard for me to think about quantifying that cost and I think the whole you know Without getting in my full thoughts because I'm conscious of time. I think it gets really difficult to Think about the the real cost of transiency There's a whole lot of factors that go into that that aren't just about where you live or what your parents are doing at a given time And so you're absolutely correct that it's a more transient population in terms of the years in the district But we had a hard time thinking about how to quantify The cost of that now it could be that the quantification could be just the transiency rate Right that could be a good way to do it and not have to put a dollars and cents next to it And that might you know, I think respond to your comment and question But you know, it just it gets into awkward business for us to do that because there's other things associated with transiency that we were pretty Cautious about how we talk about when we're talking about children and families As a perfect segue on page Seven of our report there's a description about how these students are more likely to be high need because they're more likely to Need English language instruction more likely to be defined as low income There's explanation of the fact that graduate poor graduate students are not the same as Poor third generation section 8 poverty. They're simply not the same They get lumped together because those are the kinds of categories we have but what I am wondering about is the use of the term in You know small letters versus the use of the term in table 3 Where it's first language not English English language learner students with disabilities Economically disadvantaged and stuck second last as high needs. Maybe you could tell us how desi's currently Defining that since it feels like those other other categories already covered that. So what does that mean? Sure, so can I see if I gather your question correctly to walk through the categories on table 3 and what desi's meaning of I guess I just need to understand what high needs is versus everything else because high needs is talked about quite a bit in The text on the top of page 7. Sure. High needs is a conglomerate of the other categories It's just that simple. Yeah, I think the only one that I'm not sure of is first language not English I don't think that contributes, but it's something that I will absolutely email both boards just to be Crystal clear on thank you. That's helpful. Mr. Demling and so we know what we're talking about Mr. Demling And so there is a desi defined definition distinction between first language not English English learners first language on English is Your first language is not English But I do not need additional assistance to perform regular classroom work as opposed to English language learners who do need and require Assistance, it's a hot button topic of distinction when it comes to charter schools who try to conflate both of those Those arguments and high needs actually I think is either economically disadvantaged or ELL or ELL within the last two years I think special education is also included in that but I'll send the definitions just so everyone has the clear language That would be helpful since it's used quite frequently throughout page 7 One other thing I want to make sure we point out is at the bottom in page 7 where it talks about property taxes and state aid It says in that same period chapter 70 state aid covered approximately 17 percent of the cost of educating children in Amherst Beyond chapter 70 the Commonwealth has agreed to certain pilot payments in the town to offset some costs related to UMass The agreement that covers these payments is between the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the town of Amherst Let me be perfectly clear And I wish your language had been that there is no agreement there an agreement Implies that there's an ability to negotiate There is a state number that is told to us as you will get this amount and you will get this amount if in fact The legislature appropriates it it's not an agreement what we have between us and the university is a strategic partnership agreement Which covers other things like fire and the contribution that's partly recognizing this school situation But I would like to make it really perfectly clear that pilot payment agreements between us and the Commonwealth have nothing to do with an agreement They are simply what the state imposes on us And we have the only thing we're ever allowed to do is to go to the legislature and try and get them to change it So please don't refer to it as an agreement because it's not one. It's what we get Other comments while the Don Hume Institute is still here Otherwise we can assume that people will send follow-up questions to mr. Buckleman and dr. Morris those of you in the audience I'm sorry if you had questions, but please do send your questions on to dr. Morris and to mr. Buckleman, and we will see if we do get additional appendix or in Definition information we will get that added to one of our future packets So with that I'll turn it back to the chair Thank You miss Brewer. I think at this point School committee is going to continue their meeting but not in this location So we'll take a short recess while we rearrange some chairs and microphones. Let the school committee go to their Other part of their meeting in a different location. So the school committee if I can get a motion to recess Can I second all those in favor? Thank you. We are recessed until seven o'clock at the Library of the Amherst regional high school. Thank you Okay, I believe we're all back now So I just would like to ask is there anyone in the audience that is here for public comment Not related to an item on our agenda this evening So I want to give you guys an opportunity if you're here for public comment on a matter not related to the agenda Now is the time to let me know that and if not not seeing any hands and so Given that there is not then what we take up next is our public hearing and so I believe we need to Begin by opening our public hearing which I believe I have to read the Notice So the Amherst elect board will hold a public hearing on Monday, October 22nd 2018 at 645 p.m Town Room Amherst Town Hall for the purpose of determining this current year's tax allocation between the five classes of taxable property residential open space commercial industrial and personal property And so with that I will open our public hearing officially at 657 p.m. And mr. Burgess I believe you have a memo to us and then if you'd be so kind as to kind of take us through What you need to tell us? Certainly I'd like to first point out that I'm joined tonight by mr. Marce the chair of the board of Assessors Mr. Hartreeves a member of the board of Assessors mr. Heinz couldn't make it tonight, but he is aware of what's going on As you said tonight, you're here for what we call a classification hearing And that is to establish the tax rate for the various classes of property that we have and as you pointed out again That's residential commercial open space Personal property and industrial What we're looking at at the moment is and I'm afraid the number in this book that you have is slightly in error We had said the tax rate of $21.81 it will be $21.80 We had a rounding problem in the DOR system, but we got that sorted out So with that that is what would a flat rate would be for the whole town One type rate and that's what I'm hers has always had since time immemorial The other item is that we have chapter 200 which is open space discounts Which we can't apply and we do not do that. We do not have open space Most of our open space is classified on the chapter land and the rest of it is such a low Value it's already doesn't need any more reductions The select board is allowed to vote to shift the tax rates by up to 50% that is moved that's 50% of the Value on the commercial properties and raise the tax rate from that by 50% This would lower the value on the tax rate on the residential properties at 50% we'll be looking at a tax rate of $32.71 for commercial properties and a rate of $20 and 47 cents for residential The residential average single family property value this year is 353,700 and a slight increase from last year, which was 353,000 The average tax bill if we go with the twenty one dollars nearly one cents Will be seven thousand seven hundred and fourteen dollars If we lowered it it would be seven thousand two hundred and forty dollars or about four hundred seventy four dollars less at the same time The commercial property evaluation is four hundred and eighty four thousand dollars this year on average Which is roughly the same as it was last year and the tax That tax that that would generate on a single rate of twenty one eighty one or twenty one eighty with ten thousand five hundred fifty six dollars But if we shift the burden the tax would become fifteen thousand eight hundred thirty two dollars Or fifty two hundred dollars more on the commercial properties as well to cost for us to save The four hundred dollars in the residential property Pays three shoes you a bit more outline of this and how it's worked You can see with the average single family value home wasn't a FY 18 What the taxes were what the commercial Commercial taxes were The same properties this year now go up slightly seven thousand seven hundred fourteen or seven four six two from the previous year And ten thousand five fifty six over ten thousand two forty four the previous year for commercial The tax rate difference will be a slight difference of sixty six cents and on sixty seven and it will generate $252 more on a residential property of sort three point three eight percent And three hundred and twelve dollars more on a commercial property of three point oh six percent and The bottom line just lays out what I already Spoke to you about the difference in the valuation, but 50% increase in commercial would be As opposed to a 50% reduction on the tax rate for the current residential I already addressed the discount for open space. We don't have to worry about that Now the other items are the residential exemption and the small commercial exemption We can grant a residential exemption which is calculated by taking the average residential property value or the property The average residential property value I'm taking sixty twenty percent of that Value and that is the amount of dollars we could take off any owner Occupied single family or all their family houses. They're occupied and That is the money you could take off and that is would be about $40,000 or eight hundred dollars What happens then is that the tax rate on the residential property would change and will go from twenty one eighty one to twenty five dollars and thirty-one cents per thousand Only in the residential property class. There would be no change in the commercial industrial or personal That would mean that any property that is not owner occupied would not get the exemption and they would pay at the higher tax rate of twenty five dollars and thirty-one cents That is all the apartment complexes and any other non occupied properties also property over a value of about the average of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars Would see a negative impact even if they got the forty thousand dollar reduction Because at that point there's a break even point and it goes up. It is not a twenty percent reduction in your taxes It's a twenty percent of the average value So it's a dollar amount that comes off everyone's in the same amount not just based on your own assessment we have never adopted that in Amherst and The Board of Assessors would not recommend that this year The commercial exemption works in the same way The building must have commercial building must have several business within a commercial building and Evaluation of less than a million dollars We do not have any properties that really qualify that are owner occupied for less than a million dollars for several businesses on them most of them are One five landlords and businesses will end the property. So it doesn't go forward so That is what we are recommending we were recommending a single tax rate with no exemptions for any classes of properties for FY 19 Thank you As the board have questions for The assessor Spru I was just gonna say thank you for explaining that again. You get practice doing that every single year Because it's the same recommendation and so thank you because I appreciate how you've explained to us in the past and that you covered here Why we don't do these things which sound good on the surface until you dig into the numbers and you look at the other types of Communities that are doing it with second homes, etc. It makes sense there just unfortunately doesn't make sense here So thank you for those explanations Other questions or comments? Mr. Center Think that it's the one thing I keep looking at every year and I've been just Maybe this is here to ask the question since it may be my last opportunity Are there other communities that are close to ours either geographically or close to us in Other factors economic factors and types of property that have a different Shift on the CIP Not that I know of the larger communities Boston and the properties out to the eastern part of the state as well as Springfield have a high Have a high base of commercial property Our property is only 10% of the commercial level. So it doesn't give us very much to shift For a hard shift on the commercial impacts our residential badly at our very little Because we are 90% residential So a lot of those communities also employ the residential exemption and the two of them together Basically makes life a lot easier for the residential people so it's the Nature of the property in the community and unless we had a significant shift it would not Work out in a reasonable fashion for the reasons you previously stated. Yeah, it's one of the Common misconception that people have that the apartment complexes are commercial. They are not under Massachusetts law They are residential properties. So we cannot consider them as our commercial or in the commercial base Yes, and as you point out in the report mixed use buildings or Just that excuse building Yes, but like for example, if we take the ones in the middle of town one East pleasant and 57 Triangle 80% residential 20% commercial That's purely by floors the area of the building. So it's we're still seeing more Residential than we are commercial. Thank you Are there further questions or comments? If not, then I would take a motion to close the public hearing Public oh, yes a public part of the right. It is a public with a P And a capital P at that hearing. Is there anyone from the community? It would like to ask a question or or provide comment relative to Setting of our tax rate. I'm not seeing anyone So given that now I would entertain a motion to close the public hearing So moved. Is there a second? Is there further discussion hearing none all those in favor, please say aye. All right, so our public hearing is closed at 708 and so at this point if someone would like to make a motion relative to setting our tax rate I move to adopt the minimum residential factor of one equal tax rate for all classes of properties for fiscal year 2019 and that no open space discount be granted The motion and a second is there further discussion? Yes I know we don't normally include it in the motion But if we could make sure that the minutes do reflect the 2181 figure so that Anyone either is the correct figure exactly the rounded Yes, that would be helpful I found that otherwise it's like it potentially doesn't even make the minutes because it's in the handout, but right Yeah, there are a couple other motions relative to this, but but none of them need to this would be the only one that might reference that so So just if our minutes could reflect it even absolutely changing the motion So we have that one on the table. Would you have a motion on the table? Is there further discussion? Hearing none all those in favor, please say aye All right Post so that's unanimous, and if we could continue with the other two I could do this little series I moved to not adopt the residential exemption for fiscal year 2019 Motion in a second is there further discussion Hearing none all those in favor, please say aye. Hi Third and final in this series. I moved to not adopt a small commercial exemption for fiscal year 2019 Motion in a second is there further discussion Hearing none all those in favor, please say aye And that's unanimous as well mr. Burgess and the board thank you very much for your work and your presentation this evening And thank you mr. Buckleman has one form for you to sign and we'll send that in the morning And we should have a tax rate by the end of the week, which is probably the earliest we've had in 30 years Thank you Thank you very much So next on our agenda is our 7 p.m. Public hearing For an all-alcohol liquor license change of manager owner fresh side 39 Pleasant Street young John Lou manager owner and so We also do we need to We probably should okay, so I will Make sure I have the right one in front of me here Yes, I do so I have a public hearing notice in accordance with the provisions of chapter 138 section 12 of the Massachusetts General Laws the emmerselect board will hold a public hearing on October 22nd 2018 in the town room of the town hall four-bolt wood Avenue emmerse mass beginning at 7 p.m. To act on the application of fresh side incorporated doing business as fresh slide 39 South Pleasant Street for a change of manager and new officer slash director for the above described business to young Lu hopefully I'm saying your name properly Yes, miss. Yeah, I think I just wanted to mention is like with several items tonight. We have new information and are on the table This has we have a single sheet that says it's part of fresh slides application. So it's an updated page Right. Thank you for reminding us of that While we're talking shuffle our papers here with many papers So and so I actually should note the time which is 7-eleven for the opening of the hearing and so Would you like to tell us a little bit about? Your circumstance please Yeah It's that the race one is a nothing change nothing much change as everything's going to be the same Okay, yeah, I speak for you. So it's just a technical change in yes in the manager of The of the establishment correct does the board have questions for For the applicant You are the new manager Being listed yes, and have you been working at the restaurant previously? Yes and Were you involved with me Operation of the liquor license that exists previous to this Were you working on as you have previously worked at fresh side? Were you working in the sale in the administration of liquor? I Guess the one thing that just want to emphasis maybe an inquiry to do you What is your methodology of checking on the age of people who are seeking to purchase alcohol for a for the young people will always check the IDs and Do you have any equipment to use scanners or? Electronic equipment or is this based upon visual Examination of the document they give you No, we don't have anything to for a skin ID But we'll always check the IDs Do you require new staff to go to any training specifically on the rules and procedures for administering an alcohol license We train we train us all our stuff with a legal legally so We train you yourself or we train or we try all the order we are seven Sevens they With our legal sales, they all know about their check IDs with the young people I Guess the last question along this line dude. Does anybody on staff have tipped certification or anything similar to that? No tip certification is it's just a training program that's provided Hasn't dude does anyone I just Do you have tipped certification you're training yourself? I guess the one thing that I would Urge you to do and it's not my vote is not going to be dependent upon how you answer this I won't put it in the form of a question, but It is very important in this community with the number of young people here That we'd hear closely to The enforcement of all state laws including state laws regarding not serving people who are Under the age of 21 and Not serving anybody who's Obviously intoxicated One of the things that is available to assist in that is training that is provided privately One another is the Ability to have equipment to help you scan licenses to double-check that they are not bogus licenses, but they're in fact valid But the third is just to make sure that you have adequate Training programs in supervision of systems because this is for us an important system and so I Just want to emphasize that We take this very seriously We have had some problems with some other establishments never I'm not aware of any complaints involving our side, but We have had other complaints and other violations that we have found and this is a matter of great concern To this board and to our community, so I wanted to mention that. Thank you Are there other questions or or comments from the board? It's really not a question. It's not really for the applicant as such, but I think listening to Mr. Steinberg and you know, these are He's restating issues that we've talked about many times We don't have our own local alcohol policy I don't actually know technically if we're we to have one it could require tips training This establishment's been here quite a while. We don't require tips training. I don't know if we could It's possible. I'd recommend it when we when we get around to having that more local set of regulations It's not going to happen with this board because we've run out of time to do that But I think it's a really good point But given that there haven't been complaints that I know of or violations that I know of and that this is a Existing establishment that's been there for quite a while seemingly without problems I would I would support the application but as we go forward as a community. I'd like to see where we can Actually have Reasonable requirements for that kind of training and certification Thank you, that was much of what I was going to say one of the things that isn't entirely clear to me because there are slightly Different rules associated with applications for transfers of license as opposed to application for a new license but we don't have a note in here from staff saying that the police chief has spoken with the applicant and Is that not required for a transfer or is it just not in the packet because I Assumed the change of manager would also involve the conversation that either the police chief or one of his designees has with New owners as well and we have that nice little sheet that gets signed off on but we don't have one for this particular application Not sure if they have interviewed with the police chief or not. I just don't know the answer that so in that case I would suggest that We'd have that we have that happen because it doesn't make sense to me that it wouldn't matter just because it doesn't the Establishments great, but in this case the manager has worked there, which is terrific Sometimes it might be a change of manager who's never worked there in which case It would be a really not great idea to not have had the chief for his designee speak with them And so I think that would be helpful on it to follow up on what miss Krueger said We could there are communities that require tips training It's a little unclear as to whether or not ABCC is willing to actually Enforce that back up the local licensing commission for doing that and they're looking at some potential changes at ABCC anyway But yes, we ask all those questions because we know that someday we'd like to have it a little more clearly regulated But I do appreciate the fact that this applicant has worked in this particular facility And we are assuming after we know for sure that the chief has talked with them that in fact We would have been told if there had been any violations there because we certainly haven't had any reported to us It's Krueger. We can slightly change the wording of our motion to make it conditional on that approval I would think so When we get to that in a moment, but I I think I think so That way we could grant it tonight conditional on right Or there are other comments or questions from the board if not since it is a public hearing I'll see if anyone in the audience has questions or comments that they would like to make relative to this change of Change to the liquor license and Seeing none, then I would entertain a motion to close the public hearing for this particular license So moved zero second So Is it for the discussion if not hearing none all those in favor for closing the hearing say aye All right, and we're closing hearing at 721 and so Screw her if you'd like to offer a motion Oh, you haven't I mean I'm not in writing. Let me like I That Just tag it on the end. I am going to I moved to approve a change of management and Transfer of all alcohol license from Freshside 39 South Pleasant Street Monday through Saturday 11 a.m. To 11 p.m. And Sunday noon to 11 p.m. From Kent shoe to Yongee Lou manager Conditioned on the Positive recommendation of the chief of police Is there further discussion this brewer we just clarify if the motion refers to manager slash owner because that's the name of a path that it takes or because Remind us of it actually both the owner and the manager are changing or just the manager both It's a transfer of the license. Okay, then I I'd like to say I want to be a manager and owner good I got to that and I was like what do I do now And between those two And to modify what I read to what's written what we just corrected the conditioned on the Positive recommendation of the chief As well Is there further discussion? Hearing none all those in favor, please say aye Mr. Wall yes Opposed so that's unanimous. Thank you very much. Thank you guys So next we have our 715 public hearing and I will read the public hearing notice on that one as well Almost catching up Public hearing notice in accordance with the provisions of chapter 138 section 12 of the Massachusetts General Laws The Amherst Select Board will hold a public hearing on October 22nd 2018 in the town room of town of the town hall for Boltwood Avenue Amherst mass beginning at 7 15 p.m. To act on the application for a new all Alcohol liquor license from VMS pizza one doing business as Porta LLC Richard Inuziata, I'm hoping I said that right Manager on the premises of 51 East Pleasant Street Amherst mass 01002 which consists of one floor 7900 square feet one entrance five exits and so with that I will I will open the hearing at 723 but then I have a question 723 Brewer you had a question. Yes, so the hearings open and so that's great We had I had asked some questions about the fact that we had blank pages in the application that we received over the weekend They were simply not filled out at all and now I see in our yellow packet tonight that we have a whole nother packet So I don't know what's changed and if it's just those particular items So I suggest we take a minute to figure that out based on what we had on Friday versus what we have now And I don't shovel some paper Brought into this today, so I may not be as up to speed as I usually am either We will work our way through it right we'll get our paperwork in order Old and new It's for great television Watching Street Sort through different things We have a stapled piece and then a menu, I believe and One copy to the next If you don't mind me saying informally mr. Slaughter I can see that the things I circled on page three that we're just missing answers now have I'm not sure That's a good start and It's on page four as well. So it looks like three and four were definitely replaced Now let's see about Chair yes, so I believe the handwritten Comments are what's different. Okay on those pages. Yes pages pages three and four we saw for sure and then on Page five is still not completed. There's the information is completely blank. Yeah, we'll address that and the additional information Don't like would it be correct? Mr. Bachman. It looks like the two last loose pages We had from our packet on Friday are not repeated in the information We got tonight So we don't want to just wholesale throw out what you had before there's a little bit Extrace we may replace the main packet but but these the exhibit a and exhibit be Okay, the memos may not be in the Well, right Thank you, we're from the building new commissioner and the chief of police We shuffled so just a note on is a new packet it says received September 20th But that was the original receipt date and so he took the original receipt date made changes to it Okay, and submitted that to us this afternoon. Is the board ready? I think I think we're ready. We've shuffled our paper. Good. So if you'd like to Take us through the application, please sure. My name is Christie Bodine I'm an attorney here in town representing the applicant Richa Nunziata, I was brought into this late. So I didn't file the application I'm as familiar with it as I can be at this point But I did get some background information from him in terms of his experience with liquor licensing and managing restaurants and so For so this is sort of the resurrection of what used to be Bertucci's He's also got a special permit application in with the ZBA and we understand that that's got to be approved before he can Really get going on this but we wanted to get the liquor license in process So that hopefully those things will dovetail and he'll be able to open as soon as he can I Guess I would just put to the board as I usually do Do you have any specific questions about the application any information that needs to be clarified or added to? This brewer so obviously we've been concerned that three pages were blank and so are almost entirely blank So now we have additional information We did not previously have information about previous interest in an alcohol of averages license or current interest Yeah, and we now have financial disclosure information. Yeah, of course. We had a whole set of Lease agreement before but we didn't have the financial information listed and then we still don't have any employment Information so we have no idea if the applicant has ever run a restaurant particularly one with a liquor license before which implies Not since it says no on the previous page Now since it now says no on the previous page that he has no current interest in an alcohol beverages license It or no previously held interest in Massachusetts, but we have no employment information So we have no reason to believe he has any such experience until I guess you're gonna tell us. Yes So he currently owns Michael Vincent Pizza in Pure Village New Jersey It doesn't have a liquor license. It's just a restaurant, but it's another pizza place He has worked in the past at a place called Spankerelli's Pizza and bar in Westchester County, New York He was the manager there for a year that did have a full liquor license So he has that much experience under his belt and quite a few years ago He worked in his brother's restaurant in Manhattan as a manager and had liquor experience then He's planning to get tip certification and he's he will have all of his employees get tip certification He's going to be the manager At the inception of the restaurant, but he's planning to hire a professional manager Once he gets up and running and have somebody that's got really substantially more experience in the in the field To help him out. He's actually also been Chad O'Rourke He's kind of taken him under his wing and has been doing some consulting and helping him figure out the the management plan And the things that he's gonna need Chad Chad owns The spoke he also owns seven O's in Sunderland and he owns the tavern bar in South Dufres, which it's got a got a lot of liquor experience And he's helping helping rich with with getting up to speed on all of that What else do I know about him I Can tell you some stuff about the plants for the venue. I don't know that's more of a zoning board thing But if you'd like to hear about He's planning to have a full menu He's Like to run it pretty much as a family, you know a family style restaurant. He may have recorded music He's the restaurant that he's got now has a similar concept It's a big open space with a lot of you know high wooden tables and and and sort of lots of group gatherings and Really casual place the name of the place port is which means door in Italian He's actually using old doors for a lot of decor in the restaurant's kind of a neat concept And there's a very popular dessert item in a restaurant near his in New Jersey called a pieable Flyable, but he's planning to serve here It's it's dragon fruit and a kai berry pudding with fresh fruit and some toppings on and I guess it's really a big Nutella, it's a big hit down there. So The restaurant he has in New Jersey Also used to be an old car dealership. So he liked that idea He's he's been to Amherst before and kind of fell in love with the town and really wanted to open a business here He's also and I think we're gonna probably have to give you some detail on this he's planning to have some outside service So we may need to alter the description of premises to include the The description of the outside patios in the seating there What more do you want to know I? Would ask if you if you could because he hasn't provided the employment history that you could possibly if you could vote this conditional on his supplementing his His ten-year work history To the application mr. Samberg first of all, thank you for Bringing up the question about the outside seating because I was gonna be one of my questions Yeah, so you've anticipated that and Certainly more information about that. Yeah, it would be helpful and I Think that you probably know what my questions always tend to be he's planning. He's also planning I forgot to mention this and head you off, but he's also Planning on investing in one of the high-tech ID scanning machines and making sure that everybody's really trained in In that trying to avoid that issue from the get-go. So Thank you for the for voluntary writing that additional information So I'm sure it's the auto I gather that You're not planning to move here permanently that you intend to maintain your principal residence and maintain your Administration of the in management of the restaurant that you currently have in New Jersey Well right now. I'm going to be renting a place for a year and I'm not sure how long I'm gonna stay We might be open in a couple other locations in Massachusetts, but I'll be in this area for at least maybe five six months, but I Really love this area and I might stay I'm open to it. I really am Obviously, all of us love the area and so anybody who wants to say we welcome it would welcome to the community I think that you've probably Through the prior hearing in the beginning of the discussion here in just observations This is a different community a little bit because of the fact that the university and two colleges are here and The the average age of the population is therefore affected by the fact that we have a large number of students here, so Because of just that reality and because we are very involved with the University of Massachusetts in a group called the Campus and Community Coalition to address problem drinking this is a matter of continuing concern and Therefore I Guess the question next question is have you had any direct experience in working in the community in a restaurant in the community that has a large student population or Unusually young aged population In New Jersey where I'm at now there's a lot of colleges close, but Be honest nothing like this. I mean this there's tremendous amount of college kids And Chad's been helping me a lot Show me on you know the ins and outs and with the security and he's very very tough on Security and I've been watching I stood up like one one o'clock in the morning one night and watching how security works and I Think I understand it pretty good now and With that machine and hiring the right security and really be Vigilant on that that that's something that I'll be very aware of and Be tough on that As you may have been advised by your attorney We do count on management to set a tone set of management structure and Appreciate the fact that you've gone to a neighboring facility was that where there's somebody who has had that experience and We Really rely on the man it from just from experience that we have observed that management systems and the Implementation of the management systems the training that goes with it are all Important pieces and so we very much encourage it because we've had a few problems in the past not too many But when they've been problems, they have been real problems. We don't want to see it happen again So I'll leave it at that for this point look my other my colleagues take over Other questions Miss Krueger So it's more for our discussion so I can wait if other people have questions. It's not for the applicant Other questions, Miss Brewer. I do and Some of it. Yeah, some of it is processed so I can maybe say more for us But but directly asking the applicant although it feels awkward to do so I don't understand why you didn't provide your employment history because our police chief is supposed to have himself or a designee Evaluate each applicant and I don't see how he could do that when we didn't have an employment history for you So I wonder if you could speak to that as to what's happening. I think I Misunderstood the question because I've been my own boss For the last 25 years, so I haven't had any employment Because you've been self-employed. Yes, in your own boss. Okay This background is in he's done residential construction. He's owned and trained race horses He was licensed it's licensed to tracks in Massachusetts main in New York Which actually speaks to his integrity because you can't just get those licenses if you're if you're not a worthy person So he does he has a fairly broad business been a lot of background in managing businesses and being self-employed so I Think he and he's running a restaurant now. So I think that He he knows that the liquor experience isn't as deep as you might like But I think that that he can Work on that and he's and he's certainly got people to help them and training courses available that he can take I Was a Connecticut builders license as well, so I'm certainly sympathetic And my my thinking I want to try this out on the board is if we could continue the hearing until next week because We have the background and I do trust what you're saying that you have that and it was a misunderstanding But to get a complete application I'm concerned that we we didn't have a chance to have information about the outdoor Dining which we've taken very seriously on other for other applications And we're in a part of town that we know is vibrant and growing and I expect a lot of activity and users and to make sure that we can see how you're going to keep people In that area or not wandering through Given that I you know the ID check and the alcohol the other thing is just knowing that The attorney has just gotten to this I would expect a more complete and kind of Full description and application and it would seem like a week would be enough time So it's not because I don't think we would be inclined to do this And it doesn't seem like that big a hardship to wait that long to get that stuff figured out Mr. Wald Could we ask for a clarification from the police chief? I mean I'm a little you know because we tend to put a lot of faith in these things We don't do well You know we don't do with the homework ourselves all over again And we trust that when someone is signed off the application is complete and proper and so if applications get approved without Information it's essential and that raises questions about the process Police chief sign-offs his background conducted That's our concern Yes, so I This is it says background conducted and he recommends so right but the form was incomplete So I did speak with the police chief today, and they do a thorough background check And they don't just rely on the application They do a number of different searches on the individual's background using utilizing the social security number But I can have him describe the process that they use that might be helpful and give the board some comfort So you understand that it's not just you know checking doing a Google search or something like that They assign a detective to every application and they didn't do that Yes, miss wall if I could just clarify I wasn't make it all comment upon the the importance of the license for the individual or his character It was just about the process why what we how we how you how he gets to his letter right when you form doesn't have all the information Right right we couldn't understand how he got from point A to point B if the information wasn't provided in addition to the other Information that we know they do that's beyond as you say a Google search, which probably all of us did individually the other thing I would like to be clear about is if And I like the idea of continuing in terms of providing the employment history information just as the other pages were Were replaced and the information about outside dining if it's going to be exactly identical because you know We already have the floor plan That might well be the way they start identical to what she's but it doesn't say it on the application anywhere So as you indicated that needs to be fixed and rather than saying conditional on these 15 things that what's really only three I would prefer to see it come back to us. I thought there were only two Outside areas his work history. What's the third thing? The third thing is actually something I want to talk to the board about which is associated with change of manager I think it's particularly relevant in this particular case because we have had in other Licenses we've had licensees who did not understand they needed to report change of manager under ABC C law and under our law and Particularly because this manager is going to obviously be going through a transition because you can only run so many restaurants full-time in two Different states at the exact same moment in time So I would just like to be sure with some sort of narrative that it's clear That that happens because unfortunately the way it usually happens is somebody just finds out somebody doesn't work here anymore, and then that's awkward for everybody or when the Renewal comes in it comes in with a completely different manager's name on it And so I just want to be clear that because there's been confusion about what this application needed to have on it because Ms. Bowman was not associated with it the whole time that perhaps some clarification that of Understanding that since it's either clear that the person's going to have to move here permanently or hire a different manager that it's known Rather than I didn't know how to fill out this part of the form It's we know that a manager has to be Reported to us and has to go through another process just like the hearing that was just before hours I explained that to him when we met tonight. He knows that if he's changed as a manager He's gonna have to go through another review process. It's been room as we probably saw tonight Good that's helpful. Yeah Other questions or comments from the board I will I think that what I'm hearing from the board Is that we'd like to continue the hearing? But what I first like to do since we do have people here Is there anyone from the public that wanted to offer comment or suggestions since they are here tonight? And this hearing is open at the moment So I want to give that opportunity to the public to offer offer comment And so no one's volunteering that I can see so I think that You need to take a formal motion So we should probably you know take a motion to continue hearing to next Monday, which would be the 29th and Probably best of Designated time specific. Do we have anything scheduled? I think advertised We have the once it's advertised if you continue it you don't have to re-advertise I want to tell you what time And for the public 715 we have state street at 715 So we could do this at 7 645 I'm I'm open to a suggestion via motion many you do 645 Would someone like to offer a motion to that effect to continue the hearing I'm able to continue the public hearing until Monday October 29th 2018 at 645 p.m. So we have a motion in a second Is there for the discussion? I think the only thing I would add at this point is that this is not a necessarily a negative Thing we just want to sort of tidy up the little you know t-crossing an eye dotting that needs to happen here It's really we want to make sure we've got our our Our house in order here a little bit So I think that's really what it is But we do meet next Monday night Mr. Steinberg and there is one additional piece and that is that as we engage in a change of government Which you've seen behind this because of constructing a council table for election of the new council It's gonna be much larger than this group There will be a separate liquor commission that will be License commission that will handle liquor licenses that will Take over this responsibility. I think that we're very intent right now on Setting examples In sort of to inform that process going forward, which is really an internal thing And so I appreciate the attention that my colleagues have put to all of that and I'll save other comments When we talk about the common Vic license So we have a motion is there further discussion yes should we just double-checked what the minutes say in terms of the To I believe just two things we say we want to have for next time You know that we won't come up with more questions just for fun next week But specifically we got to keep you guessing a little bit is know it we need some information about the outside dining So we have the drawing, but we just need it to be clear We'll take that because he's already got the CBA application and so we'll just go into that mind that for that And then the employment history section Those are two primary pieces we're gonna and we'd like to have yes yet and just add to that Anything that might not be in the CBA in the application there that would help show about particular Issues that might have been identified in solutions that have been identified that would have to do with the issue that we've previously Discussed about enforcement of law because I know that the management plan requirement with a special permit like this is pretty exhaustive and pretty Pretty granular so that should that should answer your questions and concerns They're gonna require a copy of the menu and what hours he's gonna be open and how he's gonna dispose of trash and all manner How is he's gonna control the crowds how he's gonna control outside trash? So there's a lot of a lot more detail in that application that we can pull over and bring in to provide you guys with some more Yeah, and of course we're a little bit concerned about Any possibility of passing alcohol between people you legitimately purchased and people in friends who are walking by things like that And just attention to those details. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, very good And the only other thing is you'd like a memo from me on the police chief's process for investigating people Thank you, so is there further discussion Hearing none all those in favor, please say aye aye Those and so that's unanimous that we're going to continue to hearing to next Monday night at 645 Okay, thank you very much for your time and patience and we'll try to tidy this up I think we should yes, so if you've got a moment here. We'll go ahead and do it. Oh Yeah, yeah, hang on. Hang on rich your common victual or your restaurant license. They need to Much less This is a much. Yeah, this is much less So we have in our licenses public way a meter parking reservation a new common victual license for VMS pizza doing business as Porta LLC 51 East Pleasant Street Richard and Nunziata manager. Hopefully I'm gonna get this right so Like to tell us a little bit about that application If I could mr. Slaughter because not all we talked about the dragon fruit dessert earlier Which was great, but this does in fact because we got this tonight. This does give you a moment to talk It's your chance for a commercial on television about about your menu exactly So feel free to tell us a little bit about your offerings in Well that that menu is a sample of Is not going to be the same one with the same prices. It's a different market. So the prices are going to be less over here We got some other different items we're going to put on there The chef from our New Jersey locations moving out here and Yes, some Things he's putting on the menu that that aren't there. There's not going to be that many items maybe six or seven entrees five appetizers and Only all different brick oven pizza That's pretty much it Are there questions or? Comments from the board relative to The comment make sure a license I'm going to make the motion in a second to Approve it, but I just want to say so we can get to the positive side we're very excited about the fact that you're bringing this restaurant to the community and we think that it You know as I look at it I can't say we I said to say I as I looked at the menu and what the plan is and what I can find to think that it's a Nice addition to where we are now after having lost we lost previously and so We're really looking forward to here coming with this restaurant to our community and I'm going to wish you great success with it and but along the way I'm going to make a motion to approve a new kind of digital license BMS pizza one doing business as Porta LLC 51 East Pleasant Street Richard and then Zada manager So if the motion is saying yes, unfortunately the motion is missing the hours of operation which are listed on the application And are always included in the motion through 11 a.m. To 1 a.m. We've got 11 a.m. To 1 a.m. 7 days a week It's not your fault. It's so it's so it should be 11 p.m. To 1 a.m. The following the following seven days per week I'll take that noting that Ms. Brewer Actually, he wanted to have be able to serve food until one of the Pieces in the special permit application is to be able to serve food until 2 a.m. On some nights because he'd like he wants to discuss would like to have a pizza window Some work just pizza just pizza So the application says one I don't have a problem with two from the standpoint that no matter what hours we approve for the common Vic the ZBA Still gets final decision, right? And so the ZBA can say are you crazy? He's closing at 10 And you know, we approved it, but that's fine. It doesn't hurt anything We approved the longer hours is my understanding of how the process works I mean, that makes sense. We could do that unless it was gonna unduly influence the ZBA. Well, you know, they approved my common Vexel to so but but otherwise if we only do it to one if to haul the person back in here And I don't have a strong feeling and so I think your idea Ms. Brewer makes sense I was just gonna make it. It was a little disappointing when I found this is just a sample and I was like wow vegan sausage on that pizza Extra points for that and there were some things that we don't have in town that I'm hoping that you'll keep some of those offerings Different than then we have a lot of pizza joints, but I thought that was a Won't go into my food comments anymore, but I was So if I I have it correctly on our motion that we have in addition to the the motion Which has 11 a.m. Till 2 a.m. The following day seven days a week as part of that motion In the revised application. Oh, well, that's a different one, right? Is there further? question or comment Hearing none all those in favor, please say aye. All right, and that's unanimous. So thank you again. Thank you So I think I think we have some other people visiting us mr. Bachman pointed out another new common victory license, which again will be Really brief and it's it's listing so we've a new common victory license for Malek Schwarma Incorporated is are those folks here? So if you want to come to the front doing business as Malek Schwarma Mediterranean cafe 11 East Pleasant Street money to Sunday 11 a.m. 1130 p.m. Aliana Davous Manager owner the common Vic is in our folder tonight. It wasn't in our packet the that could very well be the case Yes, I believe that's correct So yes, there it is So if you'd like to tell us a little bit about your your business and and what you're seeking to do and Tell the community about what you're offering and We'll go from there. Okay. Hi everyone, and my name is Aliana Davous I am my resident of turn of embers for 24 years and I Own a barbershop for 10 years now I opened my restaurant to 2015 for two years and I Supposed to renew the license, but things changed. My son was the manager and He took a year off to help out with the business, but now it's time to go back to school so My business is Mediterranean cafe, it's a very Lebanese authentic food healthy I Have a menu salads show arm is Homo's Baba Ganoush for desserts. I get the back lover and That's for it. I'm falafel Great. Thank you. Are there questions for the from the board for the applicant? It doesn't necessarily have to be a question, but more of a an understanding of process So knowing that we had previously done this perhaps with a different manager's name as she mentioned May have existed on previous application But if this have they been in continuous? Well, maybe it is a question Have they been in continuous up? Have you been in continuous operation because if you have then you've been operating without a common Vic at some point And I'm just trying to ensure that that's just not something we overlook in the future So if the doors have been opened continuously since the first day you opened then This would have been a renewal with a different name on it Not a change of manager like we have with the alcohol license So I'm just trying to be clear on that just for future reference I didn't really understand exactly your question So you have a common vitrular license that's in place every single year And so you've got one I believe originally in 16 maybe and then it was renewed and I understand that the manager's changed But I guess I'm not understanding why we're getting an application for a new common Vic rather than a renewal Why this doesn't fall into our renewal process. It's because I closed the business for a few months. That's why I'm Thank you And I missed you guys so that's why I'm Good that's what we were just trying to understand That's why it's new at this point. Okay, yeah, okay, that makes it clear As well. Are there other questions or comments? If not, I would entertain a motion relative to this License back page just before the eight anyone On the backside number just before the eight G. Okay, I moved to Approve a new kind of digital a license for Malik Shawarma Incorporated doing business as Malik Shawarma Mediterranean Cafe 11 East Pleasant Street Monday to Sunday 11 a.m. To 11 30 p.m. Correct Eliana Boz and a droner. Yes, is there a second? Okay, so we have motion in a second Is there for the discussion? Hearing none all those in favor, please say aye. Hi, and that passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Thank you Glad you're open again So next on our agenda will we'll move back to our Action and discussion items and the first item under that is the North Common renovations Main Street parking lot And we're going to get a bit of a design presentation from mr. Domek and his breastrub And so it takes to that please with the jurors permission I can begin please do As miss breastrub gets started I just had a few introductory remarks and then I'll turn it back over to her Thank you very much for the opportunity to continue our conversation about the North Common Tonight we are not seeking a vote, but rather further input from the select board We fully anticipate that we will be bringing this before the council in the coming months But tonight we're looking for your your input on this iterative process as we have moved from Early plans to a plan that we think has many of the elements that we can bring before the council We just received a new plan today We had hoped to have that plan last week in time for your packet, but working with consultants out of Boston That was just not possible. Miss breastrub will go through the new plan with you today. You have the plan on your Tables in front of you, and I believe there were copies in the back for those people in the audience As you know and the folks who are with us tonight and those on TV We've been talking about plans for redoing the North Common for close to 10 years now With a more specific focus just in the last five years Just a little bit on process. We first held our first public forum on the North Common in 2013 we then held a second forum in 2014 and then another in 15 so 13 14 and 15 we submitted three park grants unfortunately, they were not funded by the state and then in 2016 we brought the project before town meeting and were approved for a first phase of funding We then looked at the at the at the project and really said it didn't make a lot of sense to not consider the parking area Which historically was part of the common and made into parking as part of the project so in 2018 town meeting approved another phase of funding to get us to close to a million dollars in CPAC funding as well as transportation fund funding in 2018 The current year we've held two forums that were well attended and these forums were hosted by a working group that is made up of members specifically two members of the historical Commission two members of the LSSE Commission and then staff from DPW planning LSSE And I have attended many of those meetings as has Mr. Backelman The LSSE Commission and the Historical Commission were represented because the funding for CPAC really came through recommendations from those two bodies the working group Has focused with our designer Weston and Samson Based on lots of public input from dozens and dozens of people I would suggest that we've probably had overall well over 200 people involved in this process And our focus has been to come up with a compromise plan And that's what we want to talk to you about tonight the compromise plan I think has a number of elements number one. It celebrates the history of the site This is as you know, not a park It's a common and commons are very different than parks like Sweetser Park and Kendrick Park it The plan focuses on the utility of the space both formal the need for formal and informal gatherings It is a multi-purpose space that is used from the lighting of the merry maple to peace vigils To tag sales and the list goes on and on and on We want to activate the space. We want to create seating for people in eight nine months of the year We want to include art and we want to include Interactive elements to the park. We've heard from many families That they need more things for the fair their families to do downtown So we want to incorporate art and we want to incorporate art that also has an interactive element to it So we've heard from the public about those two important design features we want to celebrate the trees that are healthy and Perhaps move on from those trees that are either invasive or do not have a very long lifespan We've worked very closely with Alan snow our tree warden and Alan Alan has attended many of those meetings We've heard from many people and many groups on parking I'm sure we may hear from others tonight, and we've tried to incorporate again a compromise position on parking Recognizing how important parking is for the vibrancy of our downtown and then finally we really wanted to focus on simply the importance of this site has the Absolute center of our downtown and that we've heard from businesses. We've heard from business leaders We've heard from citizens That we want a center of our town that we're proud of That people can feel safe being on during the day at night and that is Accessible to all I think we won't go into tonight because I think we've covered that in some detail in many of the public meetings But we have a town common that is very old very tired as tremendous erosion problems is not accessible and is not Well lit and I think many people don't feel safe on the common at night because it's not well lit So all of those elements we've tried to incorporate in a reasonable compromise plan That is not Not the Ferrari of plans. We recognize that funding is limited It is a plan that we think is Fundable and we would ask you to for your input tonight and I'll turn it over to Chris Good evening. I'm Chris Brestrup planning director and I'm very happy to be able to show you this what we call the preferred plan It's been a long time coming and I hope that you appreciate The elements in the plan and think that it's a good plan So as Dave said we had a working group that was working very hard since last Spring to put this plan together and we've been working with Weston and Samson design studio landscape architects and engineers This is a picture or a plan an aerial view of the town common the north part of the town common The Main Street parking lot is here and the green portion of the common here Spring Street parking lot down below and here we are in town hall over to the right Grace church is right here on the corner of spring Street and boltwood Avenue Bank of America Bank building is here and Hastings and all those stores that we love so much including the fresh side restaurant Along South Pleasant Street. So that's sort of the context that we have Last time we met with you which was on September 5th. We showed you three schematic plans These three schematic plans had been shown to the public on August 28th So the first we really I guess the way I could describe them is there was a plan with no parking We took the parking out of the north common a plan with all of the parking that is currently there and a compromise plan which is Related to the one. We're going to show you tonight. So this first plan is the plan with no parking It provides a circulation pattern. That's quite different from what we have now The circulation pattern would go through the town hall parking lot come back down boltwood Boltwood Avenue. There would be no Vehicular connection between Main Street and Boltwood Avenue there would be a promenade up to town hall and Swooping pathways throughout the north common many people liked this plan They felt it returned the north common to its former glory And didn't include parking just like it didn't include parking a long time ago But as we know parking is a big issue here in town. So Here we are with schematic plan number two Which we also showed you on September 5th and this includes pretty much the whole parking lot that's there now But it would pave it with a different type of material so that it wouldn't be all asphalt It would raise it up here in front of town hall and Regraid the parking lot so that it wouldn't be so much on a slope We could accommodate the handicap parking spaces better Etc. It has a central gathering space and then these graceful walkways through the through the common but it did seem to be not that different from what we have right now and Did seem to be so focused on parking. So the third plan Which is the compromise plan has about 19 parking spaces here in a place that is Also paved with something different from the usual asphalt It's again raised up at the point where boltwood Avenue comes in from Main Street so that there's a continuous plane to walk on from the Entry to town hall up to the end of the parking lot it could be approached by a nice little promenade and Some graceful walkways through the middle of the of the North Common with a sitting space in the middle and handicapped access around the side So this parking this plan is is as a as I said a compromise plan and it loses about I think 13 parking spaces overall This is what that plan would look like on the ground So since September 5th since we met with you Town staff has met with various groups to present these three concepts We met with the disability access advisory committee and we met with the design review board both with the promise of going back to them Once we had a preferred plan that was that had some degree of consensus around it We also met with the downtown parking working group and at their request We met with members of Grace Episcopal Church and pastor Sinon who had particular concerns about parking and access to the church Along with that we received written comments from members of the community which we have in our files And we'd be happy to share them with you and finally town staff met one final time with the North Common and Main Street Parking lot working group and we reviewed all the comments and input that we got and then sent those on to Western and Samson and had a couple of good phone calls with them to guide them towards the creation of a preferred plan so Since there had been so many questions about Parking and what exists there now we decided to put together a plan showing what in fact is there So again here. We have Town Hall Grace Church Bank of America building South Pleasant and Maine in the parking lot itself You can currently park 34 cars But this parking lot is not properly designed. It doesn't need a DA or Architectural access board requirements Which have to do with handicapped accessibility and if it were to be redesigned by the DPW It would actually have only 29 parking spaces We've been told that by the town engineer and they've already been studying the parking lot there Then we have an additional four parking spaces here in front of Town Hall Five parking spaces in front of Grace Church and five parking spaces along South Pleasant Street Behind Town Hall, we have 18 parking spaces all together one of which is handicapped parking and two of which are Electric charging stations. So that that's the the existing picture that we have here around Around Town Hall in terms of parking and that's how we got to our parking calculations Here is the preferred plan what we consider the preferred plan So there are many elements of the previous plans that you can see We have a generous area of parking here that has about 19 parking spaces in it And it would be paved with something that looks much better than asphalt It could be used for various events such as merry maple lighting Memorial gathering veterans day Flag raising and all types of community events like that We we maintain access a long bolt would have in this plan We're showing access from the north to the south one-way access That's not necessarily cast in stone. So that's something that could be reconsidered and We're showing Seven parking spaces here along South Pleasant Street instead of five We're showing as parking space here in front of Town Hall And and we're retaining the five that are in front of Grace Church This plan is very graceful. It really does a great job of Inviting people in at this northwest corner with an expanded plaza area Graceful steps and if someone doesn't want to go down the steps that person can come around the corner and Enter onto this very lovely graceful pathway here the graceful pathway leads to a central gathering area Which can accommodate quite a number of people in either movable chairs and tables or chairs and tables that are Permanently affixed to the ground. We could also have game tables and then there's a suggestion here that we could have a an interactive public art Piece over here so children could potentially climb on public public art We've seen examples of that both at the dr. Seuss Museum in Springfield and also there are numerous examples around New York City of bronze sculptures that are in place But can be used as climbing structures There the pathway leads from the northwest corner to the southeast corner and really does meet this intersection here Very gracefully and the other pathway if you're coming from Town Hall Towards Hastings or collective copies over here is also is handicapped accessible One thing we did Include is there are stairs here in order to make the grade work But there is an accessible path to the side here, which actually works very well Let me think of there. There are Several trees that are preserved. I think there are eight eight of the existing trees that are preserved and Several new trees large shade trees that are planted as well as some small Flowering trees over here in a grove under under which one could sit Yes, one more thing is the potential for Lovely little smaller sitting areas along the pathway. So we have one here one here and then there's one up by The parking lot plaza itself, which would incorporate the WCTU fountain and in order to Kind of control grating and drain control drainage through grading We have a terrace that's been created here and a wall that kind of holds up this area and allows this whole Area to be graded better than it does now So then so that's what we would like to present as the preferred plan We're maintained. I guess I should mention too that we're maintaining the bus stop here The bike share station is there and the bus stop shelter is there and then moving on to the schedule The blue area are all the things that we've already accomplished So we've met a couple of times with the public both in May and in August We've met several times with the designer and the designer has done a survey of the property and a thorough analysis Here we are in this red section here October 22nd We're meeting with the select board to review the preferred concept plan. What we're hoping is that we will Be able to meet with town council Early in the year. We're being optimistic here and meeting with them in January But we are we're hoping that that's true to discuss the preferred plan discuss the project budget Talk to them about bonding because we know we're gonna have to borrow some money to do this and outline the future project timeline And then if that all goes well, we can meet with the council again in February to to obtain final approval We know they're gonna have to have some time to become familiar with the plan and some time to think about it Then permitting whatever permitting is necessary would happen in late February Final bid plans and specifications could be ready by some time in mid to late March And then we would have bidding in April and We're hoping to award a contract to the contractor sometime in late April if that all goes well We could start construction mid to late May and what that would allow us is about five months of Construction time between then and November 1st or even possibly Thanksgiving Sometimes we don't stop construction until Thanksgiving, but with this scenario here We're hoping that we would be able to complete the project by by next fall So I'd be happy to entertain any questions that you may have Mr. Steinberg I'm gonna save questions having to do with parking until later And just hit one other topic right now The way it is drawn is somebody would come in from the corner Bank of America intersection if you will and Then going to town hall start on the sidewalk that puts them in the middle of a parking lot then and Not necessarily You could go the park the sidewalk that goes from this place here to town hall is Remaining the sidewalk that goes along the south side of Main Street is still going to be there So that is there's a sidewalk there and there's also a walkway here that would lead to the parking lot So there are two ways of getting to town hall It makes a still a Very inviting path to put you right in the middle of a parking lot to go to the other side As that appearance to it and it's a very wide sidewalk Which is part of why that does that and I was just wondering If there's any thought given to Whether that's a negative in any event under the plan drawn Well, I think that this space is We're hoping that the space will be used for something other than parking at many times of the year and perhaps if it's Well-designed as well-designed as it is it will be used for other things And when it is used as a plaza, I think it's going to be very Useful to have a pathway that goes from that corner right into the space Mr. Wall Seems to be the evening for disappointment since we had this nice conversation about the down who study of the Schools and taxes several of us had asked and I got I got the greatest respect for mr. Zomek and miss breast strip and have enjoyed working over the years But several of us asked for much more detail explanation how you got here And it's kind of frustrating to come here and get this thing on our desk with no background We repeatedly talked at previous meetings like how did we get from plan a to plan B and so forth There was nothing in the pack and nothing to study and so we're looking at this thing called The advance I guess is that it seems to be kind of a pre-ordained conclusion because we were faced with the first Proposal which was basically stupid and awful and the second which was utopian and this was you know Everything was was logically going to lead to this compromise plan Which has a number of strengths, but also a number of weaknesses And I guess I would like to know more how it became the preferred plan with it Just the default because the other two were totally unacceptable What was the consultation that took place for the other bodies along the way what alternatives were suggested? Did you consider anything bolder as far as parking configurations on the streets? I don't I've got the end product and as in the case of the liquor license. I'm not sure how we got from here to there So we did study a lot of different scenarios We did study parking around the edges diagonal parking diagonal parking along South Pleasant Street diagonal parking along Bolt would have it all seemed to be very contrived and did end up cutting into the North Common and you know it seemed to take more away from the North Common than it added The we heard from a lot of different people and there were so many different points of view. It was really kind of Revealing to me that there were so many different points of view very strongly Stated people saying no we don't want any parking at all in the town common other people stating Very strongly that we could not lose one parking space. It would just be very devastating for downtown and so Trying to come up with a plan that would serve the most number of people with the most utility we the North parking working group Along with town staff Really tried to you know put as many elements Together as possible to come up with the best plan that we could and and the compromise plan is the best plan if we had Gone with the plan with no parking at all that would have really been very difficult for many people to accept and I think you may hear from members of the public tonight about that particular subject we got a letter from Amherst cinema saying really try not to lose any parking spaces we got we had a meeting with and and Letter from Grace Church really try not to lose any parking spaces. So You know, this is this is the best. I believe it's the best for now We may choose in the future if we ever get a parking garage to eliminate that parking in the northeast corner and Direct everybody to the parking garage and make this a green space, but for right now. This seems to be the the most useful We also heard from people that they didn't want a performance space in the middle of this North common that the performance space was going to be provided by a band shell that will be built by the By the bid in the southern portion of the common and so what we're envisioning here is a Quiet sitting space. You can go there and you can play you can play games. You can watch your children play on the interactive sculpture But there won't be a performance space there Nor would they there be a large lawn because we heard from people that you have a large lawn just to the south in the south Parking or south common area and so you don't need a large lawn area here. I Think we went through many iterations as far as pathways going across the common from one direction to another and We think that this arrangement of pathways. It doesn't cut through the middle of the space It provides handicapped accessibility It gets people where they want to go in the most graceful manner possible and it provides a lot of Sitting opportunities along the way either on sitting walls on benches or in these little crescent shaped nooks So I think there really was a lot of of thought that went into this and I hope that's evident But that's very helpful and and well prepared eloquent the thing is it's obviously all in your head We want that in writing though, you know, why couldn't we have had that in advance? So we had some logic as much easier to judge if we know we thought about this and shows that and all that So I get it takes work, but I thought it was clear from our previous meetings. We expected a written statement just So I guess there's something for everyone to be disappointed about and some things we like I Was one of the people who sort of put a stake in the ground and said no no net loss of parking which I knew was unrealistic saying it but wanting to emphasize how Important preserving parking in this location was for a number of reasons But I'm not so I'm not going to get into the parking thing right now, but my kind of Bandwagon, I've been on is having a place where children can do something active This isn't a playground and it's not a park But I'm disappointed that there's two places where it says public art feature and one's called interactive So a sculpture you can climb on is kind of what I meant, but not nearly so something That's really a children's space to climb and be active. It might you could maybe call it art But I already see right near there. It says public art feature fine But then there's another one and it's kind of kind of make do is maybe you can climb on it And I'm not sure that meets the You know from one to ten year old it might work for some kids So of course, we don't know what it is But I'd like to see that see more identified as a children's active play area if it looks like art great So trying to go over my list Yes, we did definitely discuss of having a written memo and I really appreciate the verbal reports that are given tonight And sometimes we ask for things and sometimes staff simply doesn't provide them And so that's a conversation that is frustrating to have I do really appreciate that this was reproduced in such a large format That's been incredibly helpful, even though we had to quick study it tonight as you went through it rather than Know having the chance to really look dig into it over the weekend, although it hasn't changed hugely from last time I really appreciate the relabeling of the shaded plaza grove So thank you for not using the landscape architecture and engineering terms that people sometimes use That are not as helpful to the general public including ourselves one thing you may have mentioned and I may have missed while I was shuffling papers around is The Mary Maple So are we did you mention it? Yeah, is this one of this one of those let's not talk about it because we're cutting it down And and so I think we need to make that suit just you need to give people time to adjust to that concept rather than to I will offer a little bit on that topic because At one of our early meetings a while ago The tree warden did did mention that the maple itself is showing its age and that it's you know Life is nearing its end so In some ways we have been prepared for that as far as the the current maple that we use for the Mary Maple That wasn't he didn't make a statement that it's got to go or it's gonna go tomorrow But he did he did indicate that the that the current Health of the tree is is a little In jeopardy in some respects and so it's it's lifespan is fairly short at this point, but that's My understanding of that and maybe mr. So Michael is pressed up can offer a little more on that if you would So I think what we were trying to do with this plan was create something for the long term We're thinking 50 to a hundred year horizon We know that the the North Common really hasn't been touched since the mid 60s when those Surroundings for the the trees were built And so you know is it going to be another 50 years before we're able to do anything else out here? so in that case to consider a tree that's in decline as Something to really design around wasn't you know didn't seem to go along with that long horizon that we were looking for I'm hoping you plan a new maple, but I don't at all disagree with that What I do disagree with is the approach that doesn't say and by the way the merry maple is coming down because that's one of the main features People look to and in fact the designers thought it would be clever to show us a picture of the merry maple celebration taking place in the dark But yet the merry maple itself wouldn't have been there anymore just really not that helpful from Weston and Samson so Yes, we have seen this in various iterations at forums and at this meeting It's not the end of the world We just need to be clear that it's happening rather than people being surprised by it later And I totally understand the fifty to a hundred year look that we're talking about But just as we didn't like the plan that sent people behind Town Hall to park in front of the church But it wasn't mentioned until an audience member pointed it out We just like to be super clear moving forward on what things stay and what things go for very reasonable reasons We just need to understand it another question I had is associated with the Christian Temperance Union fountain We've struggled with that over the years Is it now a piece of dead public art or is it actually going to be a fountain or do we have thoughts as to that? I think what we would do is restore it and currently in this plan It is sort of a focal point for this little crescent here I would love I would like to make the comment that there will be a lot of changes made to whatever plan is Recommended or talked about tonight. We have to go through Design development and construction drawings in order to get this actually built So this is an idea of what in general we would like to see but as they were fine as the consultants refine this Drawing in this plan here. They're going to be doing grading and figuring out Drainage and where lighting is going to go and so Everything that you see on this plan is probably not going to be exactly Reproduced in the construction drawings around the ground Which really gives us a good warm feeling about why we're saying go ahead with that plan But yet we understand what you're saying that obviously many things could change and also, you know Once you actually are looking at each individual piece part. We understand things don't always work out the same as planned A couple of other items is we received another letter today at least An email today about parking that we should make sure that we continue to add those to our packet So that the record reflects those because someday we're not going to be talking about this anymore And it would be unfortunate if that just slipped through the cracks since it didn't get printed for our desk tonight It should get uploaded and then one of the things that's come up and in several different discussions and not Perhaps been discussed in death and then doesn't have to be tonight, but just to give us a sense of Conversion We've talked before about the fact that and you spoke very specifically tonight that maybe the northeast corner We would eventually decide because there's other parking that we're able to let go of it. So What does that involve in a you could say in the most broad in the most broad strokes, you know We obviously have that nice little pathway that goes down to it And it could also currently well once it's built be reserved as a perp as a thing Just like we reserve Spring Street as a thing right now and not have cars on it But what people aren't wanting to hear is they aren't wanting to hear that we would tear it up and put grass in but Given what we know about how to transform spaces now versus 30 years ago What's kind of the thought process behind that? It's a great question. So and the the design team with Weston and Samson has thought a little bit about this although it's beyond the scope of Weston and Samson's contract, but in the short term if You know in the next five to ten years Other parking becomes available in town in other locations That space could simply be activated as a large plaza. We could add more trees We could add sitting spaces It could be reserved for various events or some people from the public and You know within the working group There's been discussion of how could we green it up permanently and the movement hasn't really been in that direction I think most of the feedback we got was keep it as a large plaza Activate it break it up a little it will be a different treatment on the ground a different color It will be raised But it could be a wonderful seating area. I wonder a wonderful gathering area for Families for visitors for eating for working right outside of town hall. So I think that would be the the preferred Next use of that space if it was no longer needed for the parking that we proposed to retain I If I could add one other Comment because it was one that the select board asked us to look at We have been very active Throughout this process looking at how we could capture other parking to offset What is potentially lost if one of these plans if this plan moves forward as Ms. Brestrup noted we did pick up if this plan moves forward. We did pick up two spaces on South Pleasant Street Because we no longer have the turning lane the right turning lane into the existing parking lot The town is as we speak creating five new Parking spots on Spring Street that I think the board is well aware of and we continue to look at the adjoining streets and the adjacent streets And we have looked at them with DPW with the town engineers with the planning staff As you can imagine the parking working group and other groups have looked It is not that easy to Find more parking within two three blocks of town hall We also have looked at parallel parking along and one-way options along bolt would Not to say any of those are completely out of out of the picture, but each action There is a reaction and talking to our public safety Folks talking to Guilford mooring our superintendent public works There were no easy answers for instance going from two-sided parallel parking to say one-sided nose-in Parking so not to say we have eliminated all those But we have tried to turn over as many stones as we can looking for more spaces to offset It's a little hard for me to read, but I believe it is minus 11 at this point so Other comments, I think one thing I want to make very clear to people speaking of parking since we've we've broach that topic is that If we make no change to the comment itself and just rework the parking lot Which we were planning on doing? anyway To meet appropriate ADA standards. We're going to lose five spaces there regardless So there's going to be a net loss of five off the vet So the 11 that stated tonight on our memo is actually based on that being sort of already off the top as it were So the parking lot will not be as big as it as it is now as far as number of spaces But it will be more compliant. You know one of the issues I've noticed and I'm guilty of this myself is as the way it's currently designed if you pull your vehicle far enough forward Your front bumper goes into the sidewalk which makes it no longer passable by someone in a wheelchair and I'm guilty of that. I pull up till the tires touch That sort of thing and so when you start to redesign the lot to to appropriately sort of limit the vehicles and how they They interact with the sidewalks and that sort of thing We're going to lose some spaces there So I think we need to be aware of that right off the top and then it's a conversation about from that point sort of what else Will or can we be willing to give up if we if we choose to limit the parking there? This curve. Well, I think I think it is a challenge finding other parking But we should be finding it regardless of whether we alter this or not We need to squeeze out as many spaces down I'm part of wanting to keep parking here is that people really Want to be able to run in and do an errand whether it's at one of the restaurants or town hall The proximity of this lot is different than where we might pick up Something to blocks away so that part of preserving was for that access You know, we was reminded when we talked about the two electric charging stations in the back lot That those are prime parking spaces. We this is you know, maybe Not exactly tied to this but we could consider moving those electric charging stations to the two blocks away And not right behind town hall because people are there to sit to be charged including You know, it's good for town vehicles and in the charging We wanted to promote that as part of our sustainability plan, but a lot of times they're empty So There's a there's a bunch of tweaking in the way we do parking management That could also make a difference and as I've mentioned before where town staff can park both behind the building and In this front lot with the parking placards or people who are in and out Maybe rethink t