##VIDEO ID:wh7f20-KuRc## we're recording thank you good evening it's September 9th 20 2024 and this is a regular meeting of the ammer toown council the open meeting law allows us to continue holding meetings remotely or in a mixed mode Like We Are Tonight what as long as we are able to provide adequate alternative access to the meeting this meeting is accessible in Real Time by Zoom by phone and as a live broadcast on amoris media channel 9 and through their live stream actually in fact there are eight counselors in this room as well as audience given that we have a quorum of the council present I'm calling the September 9th regular Town council meeting to or order at 632 I'll call upon each counselor by the name they have indicated they would like to be addressed at that time please unmute your mic and say present this will indicate that we can hear you and you can hear us please remember to mute your mic after saying present I'll begin with Pat d'angelus present Anna Devin gothier present councelor ET I have no record yet Lyn grimer is present councelor hanii present Bob hegner is absent councelor Lord president Pam Rooney here councel Ryan president Kathy Shane here Andy Steinberg present Jennifer to here Alicia Walker here thank you oh I'm sorry councelor Walker um there is no chat room for this meeting if you have technical issues please let Athena or me new Athena is the clerk of the Town Council if you want to make a comment or ask a question use the raised hand button if technical difficulties arise we'll decide what to do with that at that time including the possibility of having to pause the meeting um Athena will be monitoring our various connections with regard to the order of the agenda we will have a presentation on Valley Green energy as we conclude the announc ments and the discussion regarding the town manager's goals will follow the action items there will be one general public comment period during the meeting can we put the announcements up on the board starting with those upcoming Council meetings we have a council meeting on the 23rd this is a meeting where we focus in part on the master plan this is a requirement of the charter the charter requires that we hold a public forum on the master plan once a year we begin that meeting at 5:30 with a primer on the master plan and then at 6:00 with the actual public form at 6:30 the council will convene its regular meeting I'd also like to mention that on September 28th at 9:00 uh there will be a four towns meeting in in the Regional Middle School uh upcoming Council meetings have shifted around a bit uh uh for instance CRC is meeting tomorrow and on the 24th at 6:30 uh Go finance committee is not meeting until further notice I'm sure they'll meet in October go is meeting on the 26th at 6:30 unless they decide they don't need the meeting and town services and Outreach is probably meeting on September 12th this week at 10:00 there are a couple other quick announcements I just like to call your attention to and we're going to put those announcements up on the screen the first is the downtown emoris design standards these are events that will be taking place on September 13th and 14th and we urge you to pre-register for them you can do that by going to the town website the events themselves will include something that be a walking tour that begins on the North Common which was recently renovated and then two different meetings that will be at the Amis pelum Regional High School Middle um high school high school cafeteria uh thank you uh the next is an open house at the bangs Center and the John muan Health Center that's on Tuesday the 17th at 5:30 to 7:30 all of these by the way are in the packet for the council the bid block party which is a big event where many people from the town gather together uh it is on September 19th from 5: to 9: in the center of town roads are blocked off so please make note of that and then there is a volunteer Fair on Saturday September 21st from 10: to 1 on the ammer toown common with that I would like to introduce Stephanie chiarella our director of sustainability for the town of amest and she is going to provide us with an overview of the Valley Green energy presentation and take questions Stephanie thank you so much councelor grimer and thank you town councilors for allowing me some time on your agenda to um give an overview of this program and answer some of your questions um it's very exciting that this has finally come to fruition and so I'm happy to be able to present the information this evening um I would ask if Athena you could share the slide that I sent you while you're doing that I just want to make sure that councelor can you hear us yes I thank you okay so um the the valy green energy program will be officially launching on November 1st and residents should have received a postcard in the mail alerting them to a letter that was coming it was a two-page letter that was an informational sheet about the program so in that letter it describes the the Valley Green energy program and what the options will be for residents the first time that people will see any kind of change on their eversource bill is going to be on the December bill um the first question that people may ask is why did we choose to pursue becoming a Community Choice aggregation and why did we create Valley Green energy in partnership with the communities of Northampton and pelum the main reason is that choosing our own electricity Supply gives us some control over what we can offer to our residents currently if you are on eversource basic service the utility chooses that basic service the communities have no control over what it is or the amount of green and renewable energy content that is in that electricity Supply this way we were able to choose a supplier that would provide us a A Greener electricity content to our electricity Supply at a reduced rate from currently from eversource's basic rate also it gave us the ability to offer other electricity choices with different content of renewable energy and different pricing in addition we were able to lock in the pricing for two years so this pricing that you see is actually locked in until November of 2026 ever prices fluctuate every six months so every six months there's a change in the pricing now right now the pricing that we offer is uh for the standard green that people are automatically basically enrolled in if you are a basic service customer is below the basic Source the basic service price from eversource we can't guarantee that that will continue throughout the entire program but very likely for the most part it will probably be if not below the eversource price it will probably be very close to the eversource price so we just want people to know that this is stable and consistent pricing that we can offer through this program so eversource um eversource defaults to their energy supplier for basic service so as I mentioned this gives us some options so the options you see below uh are three different options that currently have different content and they different pricing so automatically the Valley Green energy standard green that's at 13.94% into this option you will not have to do anything at all it happens automatically you don't have to contact anyone you don't have to change anything the other two options the valy green energy basic is an option that has only the amount of renewable energy content that is required by law this differs from the Valley Green energy standard green and that the the standard green pricing has 10 % more green energy content renewable energy content than what is currently being offered from the basic service the Valley Green energy 100% green is a bit more expensive and for those people where the pricing isn't so much the issue but they really want to have 100% green content in their electricity Supply this is also an option for either the Valley Green energy basic or the Valley Green energy 100% green you would have to either opt down to the basic or opt up to the Valley Green 100% green option if you do not want to participate in Valley Green energy at all then you have to opt out and I will get back to that um that information in a moment sotha if you could scroll down to the next slide okay so what you will see on your eversource bill is a change in your electricity Supply so there are two major components of your electricity bill one is about the distribution which is what ever source does and will continue to do and will continue to supply for you um the other is your electricity Supply so that's the actual electricity Supply that is what is changing we will now be getting our electricity Supply from first point which will identify in your bill as first point Valley Green energy amh so that is what you will see in your bill so again if you have basic service you don't have to do anything you are automatically opted into this option and they will again be the supplier until November of 2026 I just want to a little bit about the process and how we chose this particular supplier we work with a consultant called Mass power choice they did the work of finding of putting out the RFP for finding electricity Supply and they came up with five potential options for the town and the town towns of um pelum and ammer along with the city of Northampton worked together to choose an option that was that would work for all three communities um no that Northampton actually is a National Grid customer so again there are certain features about this program that we want to opt you know really point out and emphasize and the first is that you don't have to do anything it's really important that people understand you won't get a separate bill or a different bill you don't have to do anything if you're a basic service customer if you are currently an eversource customer and you want to opt out of this program you just need to contact UM G green energy.org and I'll get back to that contact information in a moment other things I want to sort of note is that the um sorry the um anyone has solar I know that this has been a question and a concern for people uh in the community who have solar there will not be any change to your solar if you are a community solar participant you have Community solar you will not this will not affect your bill those rates that you pay or the the payments that you make or the credits that you get or the checks that you receive are based on calculations that have nothing to do with your electricity Supply at all so there will not be any change and in some cases there might even be a benefit to be a Valley Green Energy customer um as well as doing those programs not guaranteed but there may be so um it does not affect that at all so you can be in Valley Green energy and it will not have any impact at all on your solar um credits or your solar payments if you receive those um if your energy goes out if your electricity Supply goes out if we have a power outage again eversource is still your go-to for any kind of distribution concerns so if you lose power if the community loses power we go to eversource you don't do anything differently that does not change if you are someone who has um a low receives a low-income discount or you're on fuel assistance you still get that benefit there's no change to your benefit so that will all stay in place that's all the same so um the only thing that potentially uh would be a change is if someone is on budget billing um it wouldn't apply to your supply charge and you would want to contact UM the customer support on the front of the of this notice you want to contact that number for information about how to address that issue so overall the program we see is beneficial because we can offer our community residents stable supply for two years at a budget a price that we think will help people budget their pricing and habitability for two years it has Greener content and there are more options so that is these are the main reasons why we decided to really pursue um becoming uh a Community Choice aggregation and working with the communities of pelum and Northampton we're able to leverage having more customers that will benefit us in the long run and potentially offer us some opportunities in the future hopefully for some programming but that's down the road so we won't get into that too much um um so that's pretty much the overview I do want to say that because uh this particular presentation is really Geared for questions from the Town Council that that we are having information sessions for community members the first one other than this is tomorrow uh which is Tuesday September 10th that will be held in the bangs Center in the large activity room which is located at 70 boltwood walk and that will be from 1: to 2: p.m. that's in person the next will be this Wednesday September 11th during the ecac meeting they've dedicated 6:30 to 7:30 to be uh an an hour where we can go over the information and hear the similar information and um community members can qu ask questions though we will have an opportunity for question and answer during that session um and then the last session information session that we're officially sponsoring is a three Community session where all three communities will be participating so pum Northampton and ammer it will be via zoom and that will be held on September 26 from 7: to 8:00 pm all of this information is on the town's website there's a new news article and we also have uh postings in the community calendar section of the town's calendar as well um also people are always welcome to contact me if they have any questions and you can stop sharing the screen the and I'll answer any questions that Council may have are there questions from the council GE uh Kathy you have your hand up George did too he just didn't use the little button right I'll get to him don't worry okay so um Stephanie I think you you basically answered my question but I'm going to ask it again um because I think I will get questions um and I'll use our household as an example we um have enough solar panels on our roof that we have a zero energy bill every month and we get a check in addition to that from the smart program so so the P the price that you're getting doesn't really matter to us except that it looks like you're getting a guarantee of more of the electric TriCity will be generated by Green sources so does that mean the major advantage of us joining the program and staying in the program is that our energy Supply will be more green so that's my question that otherwise you know my my zero bill and my zero bill then gets zeroed out where we actually don't use the amount that we generate so I've got this huge credit mounting that's computed on some eversource per kilowatt hour that's some what less so does that continue as we've seen it it continues it does not change that at all it they're they're different how that is all calculated has nothing to do with the amount of electricity that you're using so you will it doesn't change anything you'll still get the same checks you'll still get the same credits that doesn't change so the advantage to any household that's similar that already is getting this would be the energy Supply is coming from a if we come with that standard that that the energy Supply itself more of it's coming from a green source is that correct correct okay thank you you're welcome George so Stephanie the uh the prices for the other options the uh are they locked in for two years or are they variable they are locked in for two years all of the pricing that you see for Valley Green energy is locked in until November 2026 and can I ask you how does one opt up or out or can you get into that now oh actually I apologize Athena I'm sorry can you put that um slide back on that has the telephone number I meant to go back to that I apologize it'll take me just a moment yeah no worries thank you um so there's three ways that people can um contact they can call a telephone number which Athena will show in a moment but I will say out loud is 1844 202 6033 and that's customer support for Valley Green energy people can also go to the Valley Green Energy website which is Valley Green energy all one word.org you can also contact customer support which is support at Valley Green energy all all one word.org so again the information is here on the screen the telephone number and the website is valleygreen energy.org and those are the primary ways that you can have assistance any questions they will answer any questions at all that anybody has even if it's repetitive to what I'm saying and telling you if you want to just make sure you know if you have any doubts so you're concerned and you want to call and talk to someone in the program please feel free to contact uh these folks they're great they'll um answer your questions and have any concerns and if you need assistance with opting into one of these other options they will help talk you through it councelor Hannah yeah two questions one that follows up on what Kathy was asking and then a separate one the separate one is about the opt-in and opt outs and the two-year window um many companies require you to only change at certain points in time um maybe if you changed out of ever Source you have to be there six months or you can't change more than once every other month or you know there's various requirements there um is there a similar requirement that if a a set of time where you have to opt out completely if you don't want this or when you have to opt into 100% green or basic or can you do that at any time within the two-year cycle what type of time frames are you limited to in all of these choices So currently um the opt out option is until um October 2 to um to opt out of these options but anyone can opt out and any time and if anyone want wants to opt back in they can with no penalty um we just can't guarantee the pricing will be exactly the same but they can people can opt out at any time and they can opt in at any time thank you and for the question regarding solar panels Kathy talked about an example where the person of a household has solar panels that cover their entire Year's electricity electricity costs uh many people don't uh many people it covers all of the summer costs but then in the winter they sort of quote draw down that um the credit that was created in the summer and then also not just draw it down because there's charges on the bill but then maybe still have to pay a bill um what price is this if if someone opts into Valley Green standard or Valley Green 100 is that the when say solar generation is 700 Kow but your electricity usage is 800 KW what price is the the supply price that is charged under this for someone that's got that and similar if the generation is 700 kilow and the use is only 600 kilow what price on either end of that do any of these prices pertain to you so again if you're if you currently have solar and your your on your bill your pricing is basically the ever sort basic price then it's going to be standard green you're going to be in the standard green option so theoretically if you were a Valley Green customer and you at some point had to pay your bill you would be paying the Valley Green price not the eversource basic service price so and again we can't guarantee that this price will always be below eversource basic service but at least for the next six months we know it will be but even so that means just just to try and make it clear for someone who has solar that offsets whatever energy usage it is whether that number is a positive number or a negative number the supply number that is charged against that number will be whatever one they opt into here not some other not the eversource basic number correct thanks um sorry I should raise my hand but Stephanie um is it my understanding because when people have Surplus they can donate it uh is there still that option with Valley Green energy yes this doesn't change anything about any any of your solar Arrangements agreements how it's set up it's all the same nothing changes okay are there other questions from the council then I'd like you like to remind people that there are other information sessions and you've been given all of the other information up here as to how to contact Valley Green energy they are the people to answer your questions and there is a slide like that in your packet and on the public site for the town okay thank you very much Stephanie have a good evening thank you all so much okay um we're going to be moving to public comment if you are in the audience and there are 28 attendees in on zoom in the audience that does not mean that there are not a lot more watching on TV or live stream uh and if or if you are in the town room if you're in the town room make sure you have signed up with Athena she is over here if you're in the audience please raise your hand at this time if you would like to make public comment I have five signed in here in the room okay and we have six online I'm going to um we'll we'll go with three minutes but I'm not going to pick up anybody else online or in the room uh after we at this point we're cutting it at um the number we have if um public comments on matters before the council are only about those things within our jurisdiction and I want to stress our jurisdiction does not include the University of Massachusetts okay uh residents are welcomed to express their views for up to three minutes the council will not engage in a dialogue or comment on a matter raised during general public comment public comments are not reflective of the opinions of the Town Council the First Amendment broadly protects individual rights to address the government to speak and to express themselves including their right to say hateful and offensive things I am generally unable to shut those commenters down under the First Amendment to the US Constitution unless their level of speech Falls within an exception articulated by the courts such as fighting words true threats to a particular individual harassment of a particular individual or incitement of imminent Lawless activity if a question exists as to whether a particular speaker is engaging in unprotected speech I must refer to the principles of the freedom of speech with that we're going to begin with you said there was five in the audience I'm going to begin with Mark Gilbert who is on Zoom Mark please enter the room state your name and where you live oh I'm it's Nancy Gilbert I'm using hi nanu hi um good evening and thank you for providing this time for us to speak um I'm Nancy Gilbert and I live in District for I'm the former chair of the amoris Board of Health and I was involved when a proposal to amend um and update the Board of Health regulations for refu collection and recycling which included the huler bylaw that's coming being worked on in town began in 2021 I hope you all had a chance to read my written comments about that history now I'm speaking and I'm going to keep it very brief as an individual in town and I ask you to vote Yes on the upcoming motion to have the manager use the RFP to local haulers so we can have cost information regarding the implementation of the waste hauler proposal although the council is not voting on it this evening I support adoption of the original bylaw proposal that includes a town contract with a hauler with a pay as you throw fee structure and Universal curbside compost pickup I do this because of the impact it can have on climate change air pollution and thus Public Health the national resource Development Council in December of 2023 published a paper on compost as a climate solution this adds support to a proposal and I'm just going to quote a couple things from there and this quote is people often underestimate the impact that reducing food waste can have on climate change project BR project draw down ranks reducing food waste as the number one on the list of most impactful interventions to mitigate climate change composting is one of the ways we can keep food scraps out of landfills helping reduce landfill methane emissions compost can also help the climate by res restoring the soil Health uh end quote in the US food is the most prevalent material in Municipal landfills compromising about 24% of landfill content in this was from 2018 we can extend our Town's commitment to being a green Community by providing our waste by improving our waste and trash practices please vote Yes on the Tso's recommendation to the Town Council and thank you for providing this time for us thank you for joining us Nancy we'll go to the room Athena when you come forward you're going to come forward to the mic make sure the green light is on or the mic is on and make sure you state your name and where you live Terell James it's it's definitely on okay please be seated hi everyone um I'm Terrell James um I'm I am currently a resident from Northampton but I go to UMass ammer as a graduate student um and I was an amers resident um about six years ago um I am here today because I am the uh the co-chair for The Graduate employee organization which is The Graduate worker Union at UMass um we are currently in negotiations uh with the university around our contract um where our workers have been fighting for um relief around housing um I I have been a person who has been working in this community for a long time um I have students who I um have work at marks Meadows and vea and other after school programs here in ammer um I have a lot of love for the city the town of ammer I'm from Springfield Massachusetts originally um and a lot of my work is about is about Community Partnerships um with the university and um in local communities in the area um and so for me what's really important to think about this is that is that University is currently um you know engaged in practices that are causing graduate students and graduate workers to have to take to take and live in places that are not suitable for living um and that they can't afford and I'm actually concerned about that because I also think that it actually puts the burden back on the people of ammer in Northampton Holy Oak Springfield as well um because when when graduate workers move into those towns and those areas it actually inevitably ultimately raises the rent raises prices um and also graduate workers are having to to do things that I think actually are are like in problematic and and actually in violation of like city ordinances I know when I was a graduate worker here I didn't know this at the time but I ended up living in a house that had six other people in it um that was a health violation there was a lot of things wrong with that that place I wouldn't have done that if I knew that that was obviously against the the town ordinance um and if I knew that I had affordable places to live um and so we currently are are you know trying to negotiate with the university to figure out how can we actually have better housing how can we have affordable housing how can um we make sure we're not putting this bird put this burden back on to the town of ammer um and we don't want you know to to cause any harm to any folks in ammer um a lot of our graduate workers live here in ammer um and have L their time in amers some of our graduate workers stay here when they graduate um because they love being in this area um and so for us you know we currently have a petition um where we're talking about um you know having the university pay us a cost of living that will allow us to actually figure out and have better choices for housing um and we can even we're even going to talk a little bit about like how we actually want to see different types of housing being built to support graduate students but that also meet the needs of the town of ammer we know that there's particular concerns about the way certain things have been built in ammer um particularly Fieldstone um and so we want to invite you all to join us in these conversations um I would love to talk to anyone about this stuff and at any time um and uh we really want to see you all sign um our petition as well um so I just want to send that invitation out and thank you all so much for listening to me thank you for joining us excuse me back to zoom Barbara Pearson please enter the room state your name and where you live yes my name do you hear me okay we can good um thank you for having the comment my name is Barbara Pearson and I live on at 11 Page Street in the fourth district 4 and I am here to urge the council to take this crucial first step to make a huge benefit for our town and our planet at the same time please vote Yes on the motion to advise the manager to issue a request for proposals to local haulers on the composting question in my experience the waste reduction vla proposal under consideration is a twofer you have one solution that addresses two problems so the current proposal will provide more services at lower cost we hope and importantly it reduces our waste dramatically and makes a good portion of our waste even useful uh instead of being a problem my family decided not to go with the out of state company are you still there Barbara oh you not hear me you not hear me it says yes but we're getting a lot of static oh really I'm please go ahead my family decided not to go with the out ofate company when we all lost our local haulers a few years ago instead we contracted with a small business small local business that picks up our bucket of compost twice a month at a fraction of the cost of what the new vendor was going to charge the buckets compact themselves while waiting for the pickup so we're getting we're getting rid of more than just the two buckets worth Meanwhile we're amazed at how much just taking those two two buckets of organic recyclable material out of our household trash reduce the amount in our garbage can in general we can now get we now get the town trash bags and bring a full one to the transfer station just a little more often than once a month an added perk is that my compost company brings me an equivalent amount of new compost once a year to enrich my garden and all the money stays local so my family is very grateful to the C the council sponsors the Board of Health the energy and climate action committee and the many townwide groups that have supported this proposal together they've gotten it this far please continue moving it Forward let us get to the starting line in this competitive with competitive bidding so we can get to the Finish Line all the sooner thank thank you for your attention thank you for joining us Barbara uh please the next person Aidan khil hello I think you just turned the mic off oh hello there you go speak into it okay I'm sorry um so my name is Aiden khil um I'm also a graduate student at UMass ammer um and I'm also a member of The Graduate employee organization which is the union um that represents about 2700 graduate students at UMass um the reason I'm here um following up Terrell from earlier um I wanted to provide some of the uh the data uh behind sort of our cost of living campaign that we're that we're running oh I'm sorry uh I'm here to provide some some data um uh to sort of support our cost of living campaign that we've been running as graduate students um so as we as we know um amorist is one of the and I I spoke to a counselor about this over email a few a few days ago um Amis is one of the smallest communities to host a large um public State School um a lot of the public State schools that UMass considers its peers um are actually in larger more sort of Metropolitan urban areas like um recers universities in in New Jersey North Jersey um which has sort of the the infrastructure to support and increase in student um but uh UMass is in the middle of amers and so um when I one of the data points I wanted to collect um uh was basically how quickly have we been building housing and how quickly have we been incre have UMass been increasing enrollment uh it turns out UMass is increasing its enrollment um three and a half times faster than um we're constructing housing units um or rentable housing units I should say um and nobody else is even close uh the closest is is I believe a CU Boulder I have at one roughly 1.1 times um and this has resulted in rent prices sort of exploding in the past um several years uh to put this in perspective um the Department of Housing and Urban Development uh releases what they call the fair market rent um for any sort sort of area metropolitan area uh and for this area for a one-bedroom it's about $100 a month um um's solution to the housing issue was to cons Fieldstone um where a one-bedroom costs about $2,885 a month um which is not only about double the fair market rent it is also over 100% of what I make in a month um on the minimum graduate student stien um and so um to to further the sort of talk of us um struggling for a cost of living adjustment uh um 30 seconds please WP I'm sorry UMass pays us um below what the Department of Housing and Urban Development considers extreme low income which in the state of Massachusetts is about $28,000 we make about 24.5 um or 20 25 um and so I'm just here to um to ask the council if um you know for your support on our petition for a living wage thank you thank you for joining us we'll go back to zoom John Height please enter the room state your name and where you live make sure you unmute yes hi um um Madame chair and through you to the members of the council my name is John height I live in District 2 I'd like to comment briefly on the proposed waste Haller bylaw changes um I've asked some of my friends recently about uh their knowledge of the bylaw and their knowledge of the subject and I can uh report that unanimously they're somewhat confused by the process by what the bylaw will do and by where it stands in the community um although these changes have been around for for several years few people understand the parameters of the the proposed policy I certainly don't and have a lot of questions um the I'm I'm urging that you not do anything that you are unable to extricate yourself from I also hope that you will hire a consultant who will be able to um work on community engagement what do people need to know how do the how are their questions answered um before we go about this um very important um and laudable goal of reducing the amount of solid waste uh and reducing methane as a result through composting um the only um the only answers to the questions that I seem to be from the people who are proposing the bylaw itself their um their guidelines and and their Solutions um are are a state a series of a statement of claims which seem to be to be unverified um and um quite um hopeful at best um the previous speaker who indicated that um this would provide more services at a lower cost we hope um well um as a taxpayer um I'm hoping that we can get a little more information than we hope and so I urge you to do what you can to try to allow the town manager to um hire a consultant to um get some answers to questions on what the real costs and real parameters of The Proposal would be thank you very much for your time thanks for joining us John we'll move back to the audience Mark mury please come on up Hello thank you so much for providing us with this time to speak my name is Mark mury I'm a student at UMass amers I'm also in The Graduate employee organization and I'm a member of our steering committee for context we created a petition that asked for housing Security in our bargaining negotiations which asked for a living wage in accordance with both the MIT living wage calculator and with recommendations for graduate workers from the office of Science and the department of energy we presented this petition to parents students and community members at um on August 28th we collected about 860 signatures and then the next day I had the opportunity to personally deliver this petition to the chancellor Chancellor Javier Rees and he and I were able to have a brief conversation and he mentioned that he could not bargain with me directly or with Gio and that we'd have to go through our the university bargaining team and that any big financial decisions would have to be approved by the Board of Trustees and by the UMass president to which I replied that I think he and I had a shared goal of making the new Mass revolutionary as our motto goes and that our pay as graduate workers right now is substandard when compared to our peer institutions and I told him that we and Gio would be more than happy to go support her demands in front of the Board of Trustees and to the UMass president that was the only point in the conversation where he became uncomfortable and said we shouldn't do that because it would make things complicated which to me was a signal that we should totally do that I invite you all to go and sign our petition show support for our contract campaign for a living wage and I hope that this could be a first step towards building a coalition to demand more responsible housing policy from UMass ammer thank you thank you for joining us uh John you have a name up there as John please enter the room State your full name and where you live and unmute please my name is John brot and uh thank you for providing the opportunity to speak I'm a member of zero am risk former chair of the recycling and refuge management committee almost almost eight years ago our committee submitted a solid waste master plan to the select board outlining measures for limiting and responsibly managing waste in our town The Plan called for diversion of Organics from the waste stream and incentivizing waste reduction with a pay as you throw pricing system these measures had solid support as Dem strated in our community survey prior to submitting the plan and a recent survey has confirmed the popularity of both recycling of Organics and pay as you throw council members don't need to be reminded how important it is to address climate issues in every way available to us and that unnecessary waste is a huge driver of climate change it is simply unacceptable to continue to discard Organics which currently constitute about half of our garbage into our wayte stream instead of burning or burying food waste and other organic matter leading to yet more deadly pollution and carbon emissions we can and should be diverting these materials to become compost for farmers and gardeners to grow our food communities all over the world are taking these important steps it's the way of the future never does a community decide to divert Organics and then change its mind returning to dumping these valuable materials in the garbage many municipalities here in Massachusetts have already instituted pay as you throw pricing systems these towns and cities have typically seen 30 to 40% decreases in their amount of waste immediately after instituting pay you throw again no community that has taken this measure reverts to A system that fails to incentivize waste reduction a lot of people have worked long and hard on this proposal let's honor the work that's been done and get the information that we need for the council to proceed with its deliberations on the holler proposal if we fail to take this step we'll never know what is possible I would like to thank Council sponsors and others who have helped to get the zero waste ammer huler proposal this far also thanks to the Board of Health Energy and climate action committee and the many townwide Civic groups for your support and I would like to thank council members in advance for voting yes on the motion to advise the manager to issue an RFP local haulers to local haulers as a next step in the process to learn what these haulers can offer our town thank you for joining us John back to the audience in the room Seth Fido hello my name is Seth thibo I am a resident of Sunderland Massachusetts but I am also a graduate student at the University of massachusett Amherst and I'm here tonight with several of my friends and colleagues to talk about an issue that is affecting not only me but the greater amrest area um when I moved to Massachusetts in 2018 to start my PhD I moved here and lived and moved to Sunderland where I paid $1,99 a month for a475 S foot one bedroom apartment I do not say um defend that this was the most frugal decision I could have made but it was a choice that I had at the time I was able to afford both my basic necessities and also be able to build up a small amount of savings because of the cost of living in the area being manageable at this time around the covid-19 pandemic was when things started to change far for the worse my rent began to Rocket upwards requiring me to slowly begin dipping into those savings I had stored up for the previous two years uh until eventually they were all gone at that point I had to turn small loans for my bank just to afford to be able to live in this area and to go on government assistance programs uh to buy food and other um Necessities when I finally moved out of that apartment last year to move in with a roommate because I simply could not afford to live there anymore more I looked at it when it went back on the market to see that that 475 ft one-bedroom apartment was on the market for $1,650 a month this is an issue that not only affects me The Graduate students of the University it affects the greater ammer area in a way that is existential as the ability for people to live in this area is critical to this to theep to the ammer the population of this area is dominated by the university which contri which consists of about 23,000 undergraduate students and 6,500 graduate students of these the university will only house 15,000 the remaining 14,000 are forced out into the area to find housing driving up the demand and cost in the area these 14,000 comprise of 10% of the entire population of Hampshire County just a completely unfathomable amount that is required to find housing elsewhere the university itself is doing nothing to alleviate this issue in fact they're taking steps which are making it actively worse the construction of Fieldstone Apartments which they have allowed for a private uh investor to set the prices of set an air has decided that the cost of living in the area should consist of one bedroom apartments being worth over $2,000 a month the university has gone on record saying that this is an affordable option it has become clear to me and my fellow graduate students that not only will the university do nothing but they uh will finish up that they will force this issue on ammer I believe that the university has an obligation to uh make sure that housing is Affordable in this area and it is their Duty and I wish for the council to uh sign our petition in support thank you for joining us back to zoom that's just so you know that's what you hear when your time is up just up until now we haven't heard it um Maria keki please keki please enter the room state your name and where you live thank you Maria kapiki South amorist and I really do not want to hear that music again um I want to talk about two issues one is please vote in favor of the holler RFP we need the information this is a no-brainer it would be unpardonable if the Town Council stopped this at this point the other thing I wanted to talk about is the library building project um the finance committee just had an extraordin disappointing meeting last week when it failed to really learn anything or get any information or talk about what's going on with the finances once again we do not have any information about where the $900,000 that is still owed to the town since the end of January is no explanation the town has apparently not tried to go get this money the historic tax credits the $1.8 million that were rejected twice uh we still have not gotten an explanation of why that was not shared with this body which deliberated and voted in the fall and then deliberated and voted again on uh matter that that that was gerain to in in the spring who knew about this aside from the library director did anybody on the Town Council know about this did anybody on the library trustees and why was that not shared publicly and with these other B in the meantime the quote value engineering uh that was proposed at 2.9 Million has been since cut in half and if you uh so if you take that 1.5 million that they're trying to cut and you add to that the million dollars in uh cost escalation and the $500,000 that's going to be paid to do this value engineering you have essentially a wash we that the there is no reason to expect a bid to come in any less than $7 million over in addition rather than the whole one of the arguments of going back out bid was that there was going to be all this other all this interest that's going to happen to rebid it in six months well there's not there's actually fewer general contractors who were pre-qualified than when this happened 6 months ago so the Town Council has a fiscal responsibility here you need to talk about this you need to intervene please please do your job for fiscal responsibility thank you thank you for joining us we'll go back to the room Vino Conor is the three minute clock available it's right up on the screen um it's it's very small you can see it in the town room window where um it's not visible right here I'll let you know so um if somebody could maybe raise their hand every minute so I can schedule my comments I have three issues I'm going speak to you one about is the energy project the other is about trash and composting the other is about the reparations committee first on the energy project I think the crucial issue um for me as a resident of am is whether this organization whose governance structure has not been was not in the literature I received um my concern would be that this organization can turn into a project that would greenwash environmentally destructive corporate activities such as the project on Sho SP the solar project on shoot SP two minutes um and that's that's my concern and I hope the the council will take that into consideration the second is trash and composting um and speaking as one of the organizers of the amers area attendance Association local mil Hollow local I want to say that um to have a composting pro project that does not have any even any um efforts in the tenant Community I think would be wrong so I think at least three a small mediumsized and large apartment complex needs to be included in this no matter what the landlords say because 50% of the housing units in this town are in apartments third um one minute yeah um with regard to the reparations committee I'll propose the solution this committee should be a committee of the council headed by a member of the council as a way of having the council control the appointments because it is clear to me that the town manager should not be involved in these appointments he has a terrible problem with black women given his failed committee that he attempted to put in place before the new superintendent of schools came in um his his problems with reappointing M Ferrera and and his inability to see to it that his employers employ EMP es carry out the projects um that have have to do with Crest 5 Seconds um with with Crest and um with the uh project and um other and other issues that were under his responsibility he should not be making the appointments to this this should be of the council thank you we'll go back back to the uh to zoom Darcy deont please enter the room state your name and where you live okay hi counselors uh my name is Darcy Dumont and I live in District 3 can you hear me we can okay first um I want to express my excitement at the launch of Valley Green energy um I was one of the founding community members of the multi toown task force um and I'm a board member of local energy Advocates I'm really proud that we now have a joint aggregation with the potential of being a leader in providing locally sourced and Greener energy at competitive prices I'm going to be purchasing the 100% renewable option and I I hope some of you do too and for those of you who have suppliers other than eversource I hope you will consider opting into Valley Green energy um it's another opportunity in ammer to buy local uh I'm speaking today on behalf of zero waste amers the community sponsor of the waste huler bylaw Amendment referred uh to TSO in August of 2022 we thank the Tso and the councelor sponsors for their attention byla and for recommending that the manager take the steps necessary to get hard cost information about the potential elements of The Proposal um uh we have needed that for a while now and I thank the members for pushing the proposal forward CWA asks that you all vote Yes on the motion coming up at today's meeting we're a town committed to waste reduction those residents wanted whose residents want to do the right thing we have a wide support for this proposal and a lot of related survey data and public comments from both a survey of the town in 2023 and a survey in 2017 when the town was presented a solid waste master plan as John root mentioned CWA is glad to help out with more Outreach as we move along thanks for your expected support of the motion to advise the manager to issue an RFP to local haulers and to ascertain cost information with regard to the waste hauler bylaw proposal thanks so much thank you for joining us Darcy we'll go back to the room is there anybody left no uh mateline Charney please enter the room state your name and where you live you will be the last commenter good evening can you hear me we can my name's mateline Charney I live on Cherry Lane in District 2 I'm a leader in mothers outfront Amherst and a board member of common share food co-op coming to our town both organizations have endorsed the elements of the original proposal Universal curbside compost pickup bylaw along with many other groups in Amherst the methane produced by food waste is a the top cause of climate change through the release of methane from landfills emissions from waste to energy trash combustors and the transportation of waste to disposal or recycling facilities uh at least 40% of our trash is food scraps and I once was uh given this visual by an expert that every day in this country we fill the size of the Rose Bowl Stadium with food waste which I found like stomach turning we could do better in our town um so the landfills and incin incinerators where our waste goes are also a major source of land air and water pollution pollution which particularly affect environmental justice communities mothers outfront ammer and the common share food co-op take these threats very seriously in addition using a pay as you throw fee structure has been shown to cause a further dramatic reduction of trash and Darcy has all the data on that that she referred to as you may now Massachusetts is in a crisis over waste disposal facing a severe disposal capacity shortage the massachusett D has a goal of zero waste but it's not keeping up with this goal so every little bit we do can do will help finally as the mother of a teenager I feel this addition of townwide compost pickup shows my kid and other local youth that our town cares about the environment it's not just their hippie parents managing Our Endless household scraps and so we urge the council to eventually adopt a robust version of the BW proposal but tonight the council you don't need to decide whether to adopt the proposal we're just asking to advise the manager to pursue getting cost information that would then guide the decision making of the council we urge you and I urge you to move this very important proposal forward by voting yes thank you thank you for joining us that concludes public comment uh we will uh now move to the consent agenda um the following items were selected because they were considered to be routine and it was reasonable to expect they would pass with no controversy to remove an item from the consent for agenda for discussion later in the meeting please make sure I know that after I read the original motion one time um the request to remove an item does not require a second to move the following items in the printed motions thereunder and approve those items as a single unit 6A adoption of resolution in support of completing the mass Central rail trail 9 A1 and two approval of town manager appointments energy and climate action committee Council on Aging 11a and to C approval of of the following meeting minutes April 8 2024 regular meeting April 29 2024 special meeting august 19 2024 regular meeting are there any items people would like moved I'm seeing no hands I'm seeking a second second Rooney thank you I will begin the vote then with Anna I councelor ET I Lyn grimer is an i councelor hanii i Bob hegner is absent councelor Lord I Cameron yes councelor Ryan hi Kathy Shane yes Andy Steinberg hi Jennifer to yes Elicia Walker I'm sorry councelor Walker ah yes she did tell me that she was going to have to duck out for part of the meeting and Pat deangeles I thank you that passes unanimously with 11 counselors in favor and two absent um I would like now to ask Jennifer to one of the sponsors of the resolution to read the last two paragraphs um now therefore be it resolved that we the ammer Town Council recognizes and stands by more than two decades of Planning by our elected and appointed officials and affirms that completion of the mass Central rail tra Trail is consistent with a safer Greener and more welcoming community and that the completion of the rail trail aligns seamlessly with our Town's vision for a thriving interconnected Community creating an environmentally sound and sustain able multi-purpose Legacy for future generations and be it further resolve that the clerk of the amoris Town Council shall cause a copy of this resolution to be sent to Governor morah Healy state representative Mindy Dom and state Senator Joe cumerford to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation the department of conservation and Recreation and the office of outdoor recreation to the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission and to local media thank you thank you um we're going to move on then to action items and we'll begin with the bylaw 3.33 refu collection and recyclable materials waste toar program and we begin with the town services and out Outreach committee and so Andy You're chair of that but I understand George will be making a presentation so how would you like to proceed um I was I will like ask Vice chair Brian to uh make the presentation thank you so there's some slides up on the screen that will go along with presentation it Tak us about eight minutes TSO this evening um is asking the council to consider making a number of important changes to the way the town of amoris deals with waste slide beginning with its 2012 food related cyberphone band and his 2016 plastic bag ban and I should include the 2015 Solid Waste master plan ammer has proved to be a regional leader in environmentally conscious waste management practices many Massachusetts communities are now focusing on waste disposal as part of their overall response to climate change materials management is also climate action TSO believes it is time for Amis to revise its waste management practices at the heart of our proposal are three elements slide that the town move to a town contracted system that the System Incorporated robust pay you throw P structure and that the new system include curbside compost collection we acknowledge that what we are proposing will initially require the expenditure of town funds and if enacted it will require a change in behavior for some if not many Town residents if the council agrees with TSO that the town should move in this direction we ask the council this evening to vote to request that the town manager issue a request for proposal which should include which would include the key elements mentioned above such a motion if passed would necessitate the hiring of a consultant to assist the town manager developing an RFP the consultant would also assist the committee in crafting a revision of the bylaw as part of the process of developing an RFP Slide the current system under the current system individuals businesses and institutions in town contract on their own with a private hauler to dispose of their trash and recycling allers are licensed by the town's Health Department USA waste is now the Primary Residential curbside trash collection provider in amest in addition to weekly collection of household trash their standard service also includes bi-weekly collection of unlimited recyclables in addition they offer by weekly curbside collection of composting upon request for an additional monthly fee of $115 a month that's $180 a year the compost option is not substantially promoted the cost differential between trash cart sizes provides minimal incentive to reduce waste through separation of recycling and compostables Slide the current system under the current system with the purchase of an annual permit residents who did not wish to individually contract with a waste huler can dispose of trash and recycling at the aner the amoris transfer station household trash is collected through a pay as you throw program using prepaid trash bags and food waste compost collections offered free of charge the transfer station also acceptx accepts Electronics many bulk bulky waste items batteries Mercury items scrap metal and yard waste and some of these items have disposal fees the Department of Public Works provides as well an annual townwide curbside leaf collection and in addition an annual household hazardous waste collection event which is open to all residents not just permit holders slide so what we're proposing is that first the town would negotiate and contract with a waste hauler on behalf of the residents in addition to regular TR collection the hauler would be required to provide collection of unlimited recyclables and compostables the contract would include a robust pay you throw system to incentivize residents to reduce waste going to landfills by Recycling and composting curbside composting would be made available to all residents how that will be best accomplished has yet to be determined the transfer station would remain open but the exact role it will play in the waste management program has yet to be determined the program would be phased in beginning with single family and two to four unit residences and then over 3 years is expanding to all other Residential Properties haulers would be required to provide an annual report de detailing the weight in tons of trash recyclables and compostables collected within the town of ammer and an advantage in awarding a contract would be given to those haulers who would dispose of compost locally slide so why change the system I think the short answer is that we can and we must do better if we are serious about our climate goals we need to improve our waste management practices according to the latest figures from massdep Organics comprise 30% by weight of what goes into our landfills diverting 30% of our waist stream will significantly reduce our Reliance on landfills and incinerators eliminating compostables especially food waste from trash will reduce greenhouse gas emissions which are a byproduct of Organics and landfills and will also help meet one of the town's stated climate action goals processing compost locally will also reduce Transportation related emissions Mass D reports that around 35% of the state's Solid Waste is now disposed of out of state and that by the end of the decade only one landfill will be operating in state improving our waste management practices will help reduce hauling and Disposal cost as well as reducing our carbon footprint the current pricing and service options for trash disposal are not clear a town contracted service would improve transparency and public control over waste practices in town and finally a pay you throw fee structure is considered a best practice in reducing trash it incentivizes people to recycle and compost their Organics the current system does not do that next slide a number of questions however remain that TSO has been unable to answer which we we believe can best be resolved through a carefully crafted RFP a consultant can help us decide what should be included in an RFP and then can proceed to draft that RFP some though not all of the issues include things like how will enforcement be handled who will handle complaints and customer service what additional services will be available such as bulk pickup um and yard waste will there be exemptions and if so what would they be how would the pay or throw fee structure be uh arranged how do we best do Outreach to the community to inform them of what we are considering and to get their input how do we best phase in larger residential complexes including Condominiums and homeowners associations how best to make curbside composting available to all residents and Residences should the bylaw include small businesses what will be the role of the transfer station and finally and perhaps most importantly what will be the cost to the consumer and to the town we need help to get answers to these questions if this proceeds TSO will be reporting back to the Council on a regular basis throughout the process the council will have the final say on what goes into the bylaw TSO will also be looking to initiate a robust process of community outreach both to share with residents what is being planned and to seek their input and to do that we will obviously need your support and participation what we need this evening is your agreement that we are headed in the right direction and your support in seeking the help we need to bring our waste management practices into line with our commitment to climate action and climate Justice slide thank you George um is is there anybody else from TSO who would like to make a comment before we open it for questions okay see none the floor is open for questions and comments Mandy Jo I mean sorry councelor hanii um one of my questions that was not answered and it seemed like TS did not pursue in uh its discussions before it brought this proposal to us is what is the rough cost of the consultant it in its information just said we don't know uh I don't I know we might not know really good what it might be um but are we looking at 5,000 50,000 100,000 I would like to know a rough estimate before we vote um TSO in that report that presentation thank you George councilor Ryan for that um one of its slides talked about what is being proposed but then it talked about the advantages why change and part of it is about serious about climate action gos to improved waste management practices um to significantly reduce Reliance on landfills and incinerators um but the proposal is to start with one two three and four unit properties and never put businesses in yet the emphasis is on food waste in um in the waste system so I'd like some response to that to me seems um that we're leaving the most impactful impactful um people or properties to last instead of first or leaving them out completely um apartment complexes don't don't have a place individual residents don't always have a place to compost single family homes might compost already on their property why are we not looking at starting at um apartment complexes and the places that might not that might affect the most people that don't have an option to really compost right now um what would this proposal do for residences that are also businesses um how would it affect a a um you know a mixed use building in Downtown that has residences and businesses how would it affect ammer College how would it affect Hampshire College that's not clear with um page you know the what is being proposed and then again it talks about a lot of climate doing the right thing I noticed on the um why Chang the current system the cost wasn't mentioned I've believed from the beginning if we really want to do the right thing we need to just change the bylaw um because if we believe compost should be pulled out of the waist stream we should change the bylaw to require compost to be pulled out of the waist stream um and recognize that that might cost more because sometimes doing the right thing for climate costs more so I'd like an idea from other counselors is does changing this system and your willingness to change this system really depend on what the cost estimates come back in and if it might be more expensive than the current system to anyone the transfer station users or the non-transfer station users whether we have the the um desire and necessary ability and stamina to still make that change or are we going to if we get a cost that is more than the transfer station number that but would require us to close the transfer station to users that do it or that is more than the number that people are paying single family homes using curbside compost are paying now it's more than that are we going to be willing to still do it I'm going to continue on with questions and then we have a period for p people from TS to resp point of order can we just confirm that councelor Walker can hear us I'm sorry yes councelor Walker can you hear us yes I can thank you welcome back um Kathy Shane please go ahead um I Echo some of what Mandy just listed as concerns and one of it is it's not clear to me why we're starting with the households that we're starting rather than the bigger users and businesses and um that leads me to my first general question is um will we or Andor the consultant see a draft of the new bylaw that seems to me that the consultant that decision is fairly important um and if it's in or if it's in as an option the biders are going to be looking at the volume of what they're picking up and if the volume is bigger the price tag might be better on a per unit basis um so the other place in Mandy's fairly long list of places that consume and probably generate foodways are our schools um emis College's dorms emis College's Valentine Hall um we we heard from DPW that it was one of the um sources of gunk in our system that was backing up our sewers the amount of stuff so it um we've got some food users but I just I think whatever is in the draft maybe we're going to change it later that to draft an RFP you have to know what we're asking for and so some of these decisions seem to have been made but I'm not sure there as it whether being an option A B or C in it um um are there model towns that we're looking at um and if there are some model towns that we're looking at directing the consultant to them would save them time on drafting an RFP because they started from somewhere um and so seeing how they worded the RFP what what pieces they did and then my last question is um the loop that comes back to us um let's assume we move uh forward on this with our motion for the town manager before we go out um to actually bid will we see the RFP so it will help answer some of my questions are what are we asking somebody to bid on if I know what elements are in the RFP and so some assurance and the Wii might not be the whole Council it might be just TSO that we double check that we haven't just turned it over to a consultant and a town manager um and I have asked in the past um Mandy listed what is what's the cost level that that causes pain or causes Joy one way or the other you know yay it's lower or oh my gosh it's not um Guilford is on the line here I see him and you know there is when you contract for services someone is doing the Contracting and that is town and town staff so there's a town staff element to all of that that I still don't have a clear sense of that you know are we talking about adding one or two people into DPW to manage a contracted trash pickup where right now all these all of us households try to figure out what we're doing um and and so so we just need a rough estimate of that um and what does it cost to manage it in the terrific document we got from MMA they talked about some of the towns as examples um that didn't completely understand what they were getting into and had to go back and rerro right things and some of it was a level of burden on the town staff on who gets complaints who resolves complaints you know who negotiates the prices how often are the prices negotiated is it do we get a two-year pricing on trash pickup from the biders in return for giving them Amorous so all of this is part of the RFP you know if I think I'm writing the RFP I need some instructions on what I'm asking people to bid on and then later it's going to come back into how much do we think this is high on people's list and when we do the administrative overhead of town staff what is it due to pricing and I know we can't answer that now but I just don't want to lose sight of that because it's a real cost um to to think of Staffing this um as we go down the road that's it thank you P Bry thank you uh I appreciate the questions and comments that have been made by the two two folks preceding me um but I also am looking at the timeline and I appreciate the fact that there is a fair amount of time to um adjust and negotiate uh especially with a consultant to try to handle and get and get some answers to those questions before we have to proceed so I do support moving forward with a with a um request for proposal I think I think it's a logical Next Step thank you thank you um before we go to TSO I'm going to step out of my role and exercise my role as a counselor um which I am uh first of all TSO has worked hard on this and as have many many people in this community who have been on our committees both inside town government and outside of town government and it is people who believe very strongly in how what are the many many ways we can help our environment um this is a big job and it's a big change um it will require a number of things including a lot of Citizen education for a couple of reasons I spent some time over the last ever since the timeline became available to actually relook at the timeline and I REO relooked at it with a couple things in mind the people who have raised other questions I thank you for that my timeline would scare you because it would actually include a consultant that's going to do more than just develop an RFP and maybe a bylaw no Committee of a council where all of us have other things in our lives besides our Council job has the time to do all of the things that need to happen to do this kind of changing government in addition to that Outreach was put at the end of The process by which time most of the bylaw will be cooked it should be at the beginning of the process and in order to do that we should be able to say as we began saying tonight these are the key elements and so one of the roles of a consultant would be to identify the key elements and a process by which we go out to the broad community and get their feedback and then finally uh at no place in the timeline did I see the Board of Health mentioned and they in fact promulgate the regulations for the town of ambest when it comes to waste hauling so um I have taken the opportunity to discuss this with both the chair of Tso and uh the Vice chair and um they're perfectly aware that I'm more than willing to share this you know proposed Revis timeline but frankly it's detail that we're not going to do tonight uh I totally support moving forward I just want to make sure that we move forward in a way that we hear from our residents early we Define the program early and we get feedback and answer all of the questions before we write a bylaw and we go out and say how much will you charge us to provide this service uh many of the questions that were put up on the screen are not questions that someone answering an RFP will for uh Services uh will be able to provide for composting trash Etc will be able to provide there questions we need to come up with answers about so I um with that I I'm just going to pause I'm going to recognize Andy and take my hand down okay thank you and I want to thank everybody for their questions I'll do the best I can as efficiently as I can U instead just in the order the questions were asked pretty much the question of the cost of the consultant actually I have to get back to the last comment too um from coun counselor bruber the cost of consultant will obviously depend in part upon what we ask the consultant to do and um the topic that we uh need to talk with the town manager further about as far as what his estimate is um and uh U is my understanding in that uh before any money is allocated for the purpose that his intention is to come back to the council and to share that information because uh he's going to uh need Council approval for um the annual free cash transfer that happens every year and at that point in time um he would need to provide that information to us so we would be asking him to begin the process of putting together the RFP um actually the RFP that precedes the RFP because he he's first going to have to look for a consultant and what the work plan for the consultant will be that's really um the only thing that would happen with the yes vote in the um request tonight um anything else will come back to the council for further action action including um the actual um appr uh money approval and that goes with an explanation that um hopefully will answer some of the questions and by the way I do know well um Town manager bachan is not with us tonight but assistant Town manager Zac is here as well as uh the U superintendent of Public Works moring and either one of them might be adding um to what is otherwise being presented um the question as to why we are starting with are suggesting to start with residences is that the um there are two parts to um our system when it comes down to it everything is done um as uh councilor Ryan indicated by either contract with a hauler or um transfer station the contract with the hauler by far the the most complex contract Arrangement that covers the largest number of properties is the one that serves residences that can be picked up by curbside pickup and um the um decision to start with that group um part partly is because well it's a lot of properties and it's the smallest properties it's it's one that is covers a lot of the town with a single concept of service and um the other things that were mentioned are also very important apartment complexes other kinds of residences that don't um have U curbside pickup uh businesses um the college other other providers um other users of services um those are all important parts of the service but they're multiple um providers that get involved there and uh it was a um question of try where do you start because to do it all at one time is the one thing that we were warned about very much is to not try and do everything at once but to try and do it sequentially so that we do it right as we do each step to it um so that was the thinking behind that um as far as uh the question of the bylaw I you know I sort of go back and forth as to whether what we're really looking for initially is a bylaw or are we looking for U something that is really what council president called key elements what is it that we're looking for of the system to do that we need to have information on in an RFP and uh that initial timeline we put together is going to be need to be modified as we learn more and find out more about the complexity of the process um but in there uh before an RFP was ever was to be issued even in the first rendition of that was holler work plan is uh that we would uh be reaching back to the council and saying this is what we think it it would look like and um make sure that the council is fully involved in the discussion at that stage and before it goes out to um the actual request for proposals and get to that to the uh consultant that would be hired to help um at the beginning of the process so um that um regardless of whether we want to call it um bilar just want to call it the key elements or the factors that we're looking for in a um are in in the proposals that we go into the RFB that is uh something that I think we're very committed to doing in an open process which gets into a question that was raised about the um Outreach and uh we looked at initially at the question of Outreach being when we had sufficient information from the results of the RFP that there would be um information that we could share as we um reached out to the community to explain um what doing I think that one thing that we probably learned from uh comments we've received even of in the last week is that um there is a benefit starting the Outreach earlier and doing the Outreach multiple times uh that we do the I don't uh we we do the Outreach multiple times so that is what we would be um planning to do so I think that um uh regardless of what happens um tonight um assuming uh you know and I hope it is to an indication that yes the ultimate goals are worth pursuing and let's pursue them uh the next thing we need to do is get back to TSO and um spend more time with what we've learned in the comments this evening and uh proceed with to work with the town manager and whatever staff that he designates that we should work with to try and put together the answers to the questions that you've posed tonight uh both to get them back to the council and to begin to use it as a way of um moving forward to getting to the next stage in the process which is to get the information that is necessary to find out what it's going to take to to get this uh program moving so thank you thank you thank you Andy uh Jennifer you are also on Tso and also one of the sponsors and I want to recognize that Alicia Walker was one of the original sponsors of this as well so Jennifer as is Andy as was Andy right thank you Jennifer please proceed uh thank you so I also want to thank George for the uh excellent presentation and I just want to add a couple of things Andy covered any of the you know questions that were that were asked but I in terms of the restaurants and the university um that is something we may want to further address but there's something in Massachusetts called the commercial food material disposal the commercial food material disposal ban and that is already in place and applies to businesses which would include restaurants schools and other institutions so because those entities produce so much waste that's something that is also um regulated at at the state level so it's not something that we're just that's being ignored um and in terms of Staff the time um that you know will we have to add staff will how much of a burden it will be on our on staff to oversee the program there will certainly be staff time involved but part of what we can ask for in an RFP is for the um potential vendors to to include a cost for the vendor to handle customer service and even calls from residents to handle the billing so that's all part of the service that we can contract out you know again of course there'll be staff um liaison to the vendor um but we can contract more or less of the the how the servic is administered to the vendor um as well so those were the uh two point oh and in terms of whether we will I guess in response to the question is this are we so committed to waste reduction that we would even impose a higher cost on the community I mean that's something we absolutely cannot decide now we we have to see um what information we get from the RFP and that's a conversation um further down the line okay George so TSO is committed to keeping this body in the the loop every step of the way but we need help to move forward um we will certainly begin Outreach as soon as we possibly can what I'm looking for tonight is a sense that you all think we're headed in the right direction and so I'm back to that slide what is being proposed there were eight items LIF listed on that slide and the one concern none of the others raised any concern that I recall except item six which had to do with the phasing in and uh the fact that we're starting with residences rather than with larger residential units and councelor Steinberg answered that I it's it we've been advised over and over again don't bite off more than you can chew and start with something that has the best chance of success and he's also pointed out it's also the largest actual number uh so um it seems to me unless I'm not hearing it that you all like uh at least seven if not eight of those core uh elements of what we are working on so um what we're asking you tonight is that what we're saying to you is we cannot proceed without help so uh we need your help and that means we need an RFP and we need uh Consulting thank you uh Guilford um superintendent of Public Works Gilford Morin please go ahead thank you um I think everyone has kind of covered most of the questions that were asked except for what the price range is we're expecting for this consultant to be and we're we're thinking it's in the 50 to one to 50 to $75,000 range to bring a consultant on to do this um it we would use this consultant to put the RFP together and then to if we want to do um Outreach before it goes out or actually do Outreach after we get the numbers back um there are a lot of questions that we can't answer in public Outreach until we actually asked the RFP um we have numbers from other communities um when we did the RFI the numbers that came in showed that that price would be lower um but those numbers some of them are older and other communities were in the process of working out new contracts um so we don't have those we definitely um need to get those numbers before we can answer the because most people's questions is going to be well how much is it going to cost me to save the world um I hate to say it that way but we all think that way how much is it going to cost me um so that's the biggest question people want to hear um and that's what we need the RFP to do are we committed once we do the RFP to agree to work with someone or to enter into a contract with them no we're not if we don't like the proposals we say no we're going to stay with what we have and then if we want to still go and require um we have um compostable collection then we can reg we can regulate it or legislate it the same way the state is doing it with the larger institutions um if am doesn't get around to actually um Banning compost compostables in their waste eventually the state will get to the single family households and say it's banned from your trash too but they are starting with the bigger communities UMass amers College I believe Hampshire College also has to separate their compostable food waste from their trash stream now and it will slowly work its way according to to the state plan work its way down to bigger bigger restaurants smaller restaurants and the plan originally was to go to households as well so that was their top down approach and that's one of the reasons why we chose a bottom up approaches with the single the smaller the smaller households first and then go up um so I think I think that's all the question I think every question's been answered um if I missed one I'm happy to answer some more if you remind me what it is thank you here thank you councelor haniki I'll mention a few more things I have on the question of concerns regarding the slide what is being proposed as councelor Ryan asked for um one of the reasons I didn't mention some of that is I was waiting for a motion on the floor and it sounds like maybe we're not going to get a motion tonight that we might get one in a couple weeks based on this conversation um I was very concerned with the motion in the packet because it didn't outline what is being proposed so I'll make my comment now that I hope whatever motion is putting on be being put on the floor actually has bullet points of goals not referring to a document as what is in the packet on the motion sheet that doesn't really exist or could be interpreted as any number of documents that have existed in the past um as to the slide that uh in was in councelor Ryan's the the presentation that's number six titled what is being proposed um question on number one uh it says contract with a waste hauler on behalf of residents uh waste hauler or haulers would you be able would would this RFP potentially allow a hauler to bid on only the compost side or only the recyclable side um or does the holler have to bid on all three uh given some of the things we've heard and some of the things that some TSO members have told me in conversation it might be wise to allow a huler to bid on just a portion of the goals um the fourth item doesn't made available to all residents that sounds like you wouldn't necessarily require all residents to do so or maybe there's a different way of wording it I just wanted to point out that it really is available to all residents right now um as presented in the conversation and presentation um but that one I don't really have a problem with it's just I'm not quite sure what the goal of that is is it required for all residents or could residents choose to do it so they have to have it available but they don't have to would they have to prove that they're composting on their own property if they choose not to things like that a little bit more clarity as to what that goal is would be helpful uh number five with the transfer first station it remaining open with a role in a waste management program that is yet to be determined leaves open the possibility that those of us those residents who haul trash to the transfer station through the sticker program without a curbside program may or may not be cona to do that again and I don't know where this Council stands I don't know where I stand because I truly believe that if you remove that option for those that are using that option now their costs will go up I don't think you can do it for less than 125 a year even with a townwide contract um hence my question about what are we willing to incur cost-wise for our residents um but for the other roles that the transfer stations plays yard waste many composters take yard waste so it's not clear to me that it would be necessary to keep the transfer station open to provide yard waste that any hauler we contract with might be able to provide yard waste many haulers also have an option to call them for bulk waste disposal pickup so it's not clear to me that we would need to remain the transfer station open for that so I'd like to see number five somehow rewarded to make sure that the RFP could somehow allow a potential contract to include maybe separately is an add-on or however it's worded in rfps provision for current transfer station Services instead of keeping the transfer station open um I think we should ask for that information if we're aiming for this RFP to get us costs I think we should not remove that option completely um thank you for all the answers to number six that is very helpful um those are my other comments on at least the slide that says what is being proposed thank you uh Pat Angeles please speak to the mic I wanted to talk to some of those folks but I'll figure out a way to do it um I sitting here and there's a lot I support about this um but I'm uncomfortable with a couple of things um many things but my biggest concern is like the statement that we're where it's all about climate Justice and it's about economic Justice yet we're talking about a system that will be more costly for most residents and when finally businesses Etc I say that I'll clarify that because it's obviously bothering you uh when we say businesses eventually and and rent renters uh landlords and developers Etc um they're going to put costs of this on their tenants we know that so I'm it's not clear to me that this really addresses economic Justice because people who are using the transfer station this has already been said are paying a whole hell of a lot less than people who are using the waste Haller Services many of us do it I have the ability to pay for a waste haer but I don't use it I take my trash to the U transfer station I recycle I compost on my property and the things that I don't want in my personal compost like meat I send to the um transfer station and so for me you're asking me to take on costs that luckily I can afford but not everybody can afford and I really see this impacting renters we just had a bunch of people here talking about rent and I don't see how this helps them at all so to me I want to know the costs but somehow rather I think it's there there must be some way to do this without paying 50 to 75,000 for consultant when we don't even know what we want U so I I guess I'd like some pulling back a little bit and us really defining what it is we want before we spend that much money I'd rather see it go elsewhere I must admit I can't believe you can't talk to a waste hauler and say these are the things they were thinking about what would it cost you what would you be charging would you use uh would you expect the town to administer there are things that can be found out so that if we do need a consultant it's a very limited action um I just don't I don't know and this it I wish I could just Embrace this I really do but right now I can't I'm going to skip to um councelor ET uh because he has not spoken yet could someone else speak uh everybody else that is the other people are TSO members so I'd like to make sure that oh you're also on TSO is that right oh no so councelor okay so I think I just wanted to say that it's been mentioned a few times but it needs to be emphasized we need to have a more robust I think I think we need to have a more robust public engagement with the process we do have to do the right thing but when there's a cost attached different people can pay different costs and from what I've seen it appears like the engagement with the public is something that has taken a backseat and those who might be affected by some of these changes have not been brought into the proc and perhaps we need to think a little bit more about that thank you Jennifer I'll come back to you and then Andy do you want me to go to Andy first no I thought oh I didn't know if you said you were coming back to me okay so you called on me yeah okay so thank you um so I did want to respond a couple things questions that Pat had brought up so we are going into this hoping and then that we would like to keep the I mean the transfer station will remain open we can say that is a requirement we are not going to go to another we we are trying to get information on cost so what will it cost to keep the transfer station functioning exactly as it is now there is absolutely no um intent or to close the transfer station we're committed to the transfer station being open might there be other changes in how that's used that will be part we will be asking for cost C based on the transfer station staying open as it is now and that'll be all part that is why we need to get that information Apartments now don't use the transfer station so so there is a right so I'm just saying it's not it shouldn't prices should we hope prices will go down other communities that get competitively bid their waste collection where it's competitively bid process and they have it pay as you throw feeu rure the prices we'll see what what comes back but that has been the experience of other municipalities that the prices are less than the current service the way we use it now and apartments are already using part of what's into their you know part of the rent already is for the waste collection services so we would hope that would go down but certainly not increase and that it would be more environmentally responsible and help us meet our climate um action goals so and in terms of we will we can start doing Outreach in the community and zero waste Amherst our community sponsor has been doing it you know for a long time um I know that even in the last Council session uh the councelor Pam and I invited representatives from zero waste Amherst to our district meetings and that's something we can all do and of course we'll do more sort of systematic um Outreach but um we can start that now but what is going to be asked in the community is how much is this going to cost and that's where we get back to where we are now is we can't answer that question which is those are really important questions until we issue the RFP and hear back from vendors and we can say to a vendor you know can you handle the billing can you handle customer service calls and of course they can say yes but we still don't have a price and what what are the so that's we have but they that's not really how it works I mean they they're not you know because it's a competitive process I mean they're going to want to submit a bid that's not public that you can't tell another vendor this vendor offered at this price so they can that um and I and in terms of the cost of the of the consultant I mean we could have a we could ask the town manager if a consultant could be retained just to help with the RFP that would be less costly than doing community outreach we think would want them to do community outreach but in terms of consultant hours the TSO had talked about the consultant more so doing just the RFP we didn't want to ask the consultant to have to come to TSO meetings because the town manager said that could be more costly is to First have the consultant work on the RFP so we could get that information I thought we did have a your last slide was a motion George so maybe we hadn't it hadn't been read yet has not been put on the floor there was is going to be a motion tonight Andy yeah I actually was going to start before I do anything else and make a motion and it is slightly different in wording um not substantially different but I'm going to make the following motion I move to advise the town manager to issue a request for proposals RFP on behalf of proposed changes to General bylaw 3.33 refug Collections and recyclable materials second Rooney okay and um the the change is uh i' I'd like the count town the clerk to of the Town Council to please put that motion up on the screen did you get the uh did you figure where the um change in the wording was U I wanted to be very careful because I think that we well we we know we want to change 3.33 but um I don't want to have any implication that the bylaw that was originally introduced by the sponsors is the mo is the changes and the changes are going to have to be identified through a process that includes the community and then ultimately the council um I think that's one thing that we obviously have come to in the discussion this evening having uh therefore put the motion on there a couple things one is that we did um do a request for information process and in the request for information process which for which we had received a grant for from the um State Department of Environmental Protection um we tried to ascertain um some of the cost information and the respon the um all of the major haulers that would bid on this kind of request for proposals did respond to the RFI and we did learn a lot but um they didn't give specific price information and the best we could do and I U Want to Thank uh the staff at uh our Department of Public Works for um having done this work is to go to the communities who were mentioned in those uh um RFI responses and ask them for their current contracts and so we had a number of contracts from the town so that's where we obtained the information from and U that was in the initial process plus information that we've obtained from uh conferences and other places and what was um very obvious in all of that is in is particularly the MMA conference that a competitive process in bidding um does yield um a better price than um you would get without competitive bidding but there is one thing that I want to remind um Everybody both in this room and in the community about and that is um costs for everything are going up and um when we look at the key factors that are involved in waste hauling which is labor and equipment M and what is called tipping fees which is the expense of actually taking the trashes collected and and um sending it out to um be disposed of now increasingly out of state um all of those things are going up in cost and uh so that regardless of the process that takes place we're sort of dealing with two things at the same time that is going to make it difficult because we have to recognize that um we're we're trying to instill a competitive process but we're also trying to instill a competitive process at a time when uh the cost of providing the service that we're seeking is increasing and the cost of uh trash hauling is going to increase if we do nothing think U because it's it's just the nature of what the business is right now so I think that we do need to sort of understand that and do the best that U we can and U I think with the last comment I to make is um you know I use the transfer station I'm very committed to keeping the transfer station open um I also recognize that there's an unknown factor and um and that is is the number of households that are going to be served in the contract going to reduce bid of the price that is bid on the contract and that's a very difficult balance that we're going to have to try and come to grips with but that's something that we're going to have to work with with our community and in the entire Council but we don't have that information we can't get that information until we start this process moving to the next stage councelor hanii well as I hinted at this is not a motion I can support what are the proposed changes to the general bylaw what would they include what might they include what are we referring to this motion doesn't list any of it it doesn't list anything we've just talked about it doesn't say it would be based on anything we've talked about it's vague and could be interpreted to include anything and I think we owe our constituents more clarity than that uh I'm going to wait to hear from people but I am prepared to make a motion to basically replace it with a different one um but I want to go back to something both Andy and Jennifer just said about these what is being proposed because that's not what's in the motion but that's what people seem to say should be included in the motion um number five the transfer station would remain open but its role in the waste management program has yet to be determined that's what the statement says but it is that statement directly is in direct contradiction to what I've heard two TSO members say tonight which is we are committed to the transfer station saying open and for people who use it for Waste hauling to be able to do so that means that TSO is not leaving open the role in the waste management program of the transfer station maybe it's leaving open a portion of that role but it seems to be members seem to be saying that they are not leave although one member said we would not leave that role open people who have bought the sticker and deposit their household trash and recyclables and compost at the transfer station right now would continue to be able to do so we then heard another TSO member say well we actually want to know whether that's actually feasible and whether people would bid on the system if we did that because maybe that's not enough economies of scale it's left to be open and I don't think we should be promising people that they wouldn't not they would not be be able to do that especially with statements like but its role in the waste management program has yet to be determined that's a conversation I think we should have and if we as a council say well maybe we do need to know costs before we say yes sticker users will be able to keep their sticker or no they will not we shouldn't say yes they will in these meetings um I'll wait to hear from more but I'm still might decide to make a motion to amend um thank you again exercising my right to speak I actually had another motion that I had sent to Athena I just Cent her an update of that because I wanted it to be a whole lot more specific that so that it would include the elements that we discuss tonight and so I would like to share that motion it would be not again a substitute motion um and I ask cathena to put it up you just sent one I just sent you a change slight changes did you get it let me try it again hold on it's very long I tried it again yeah um I've been asked if we could have a recess I think we should while we maybe by then the email arrive it's 8:41 let's assume we're going to reconvene at 8:50 okay um Lyn sorry can I have a point of order it's Alicia I have my camera off sorry because I'm having connectivity issues but isn't there a motion on the floor that was made and SED seconded there is so are we just holding to vote on that motion or are we going to be putting a new motion on the table I'm going to share my substitute motion and then we'll see okay okay thank you okay thanks uh we are on break until 8:50 please turn your cameras off and your mics off did it come through yet yeah cular we've missed you the last cou things things been busy at work I guess injy oh I'm sorry understand seems like you're working in a uh at a place that has a lot of activity going on right now that's part of the activity is it exciting being at placees cing that fast I heard good [Music] SU during your good job you are you ask for r r is cont I think father anything see yeah I mean I you jump you jump the gun on [Music] me one zero yeah you know our own employees would like us to do something about their ages but we can only do with to manager negotiat like they like something about theirs allows us love to see oh I would really love to see I think I I'm going to regret that I just did this I know this is e e e e e e we're going to re be reconvening please so as you come back please put your camera on as you return Please put your camera on but you should leave your mics off okay it's 8:55 um Alicia if you're here um counselor if you're here I mean sorry councel Walker and councelor please turn your videos on so I I know you're here thank you we go uh okay I have uh I don't know what's going on with my email so I have now conferred with the clerk of the Town Council and she's going to put my motion up and I will read it please make it large enough so I can my motion is to advise the town manager to propose a plan that includes the following and that that said plan may include consultant Services one identifying the key features of a waste hauler program two conducting community outreach regarding proposed key features of a waste hauler program three developing a proposed bylaw regulations and an RFP for a waste holler program based upon community and Council feedback for developing and implementing a community education and outreach program for implementation of the program and let me just say this this allows the town manager I I'm sorry I have to seek a second second okay uh this allows the town manager to work with TSO which is where this responsibility still lies and decide gee our staff could do this or staff won't do this but we need the services for this and we need the services for that what I want to make sure is that we don't lose sight of the fact that we still need to define the program and we still need to do the community outreach and then we go out when with an RFP for the actual services and the byw um the motion's been made and seconded there is also another motion on the floor so Jennifer I just want to say the town manager has told us in TSO that he has no bandwidth he or his staff to do this which is why so this won't happen this no it says it to advise him to do that but he can also say I'm going to go out for consultant services for the whole thing and by the way he's pretty much told us he will say that which is why we proposed this not here tonight can't you know he's I could say to advise the town manager to re to let an RFP for the following four services but I didn't want to bind the hand so I guess I can't speak for him but he's come to TSO and that that's how we came to issue this if you would like to amend the motion to just say to advise him to put out an RFP for this be based on what you've had at TSO that's fine I I actually have not had that conversation so okay uh Alicia um I was going to say something very similar to Jennifer that my understanding of the reason why we're taking this route with the proposal is because of the feedback we got from the town manager um and because he has told us that they don't have capacity unless the council is specifically asking for these things to happen um because we tried to move this through the council I think on a different track but it didn't work out for those exact reasons um and so I'm slightly unclear about the policy we're using as it regards to motions on the floor because I thought that when one motion is on the floor you can't speak to another motion and so I'm wondering at this point since we have two motions on the floor can I call the question on the first motion Athena I'm going to defer to you I understood your motion to be uh an amendment by substitution yes so the motion that's in front of the council right now is an amendment by substitution your Amendment on to the motion it's by substitution okay so this is the motion on so there there are not two motions on the floor Thank The Substitute motions on the floor as an amendment to the original motion so the vote would be sorry um so if the vote that is happening would be to substitute this motion for the other motion not to accept this motion yes okay thank you okay but there are there's some suggestions and both you and Jennifer have made suggestions that it should have as I originally actually had it it said to advise the town manager to issue a request for proposals for the following Services maybe we should just return to that um George no Kathy you're next I'm sorry uh since were we seem to be talking off this one I thought you were going to propose something quite different um but in the original one my concern with it is it didn't say the RFP would include the following key features I think to turn all of this over to a consultant to identify the key features when we've been talking about it for 2 years is crazy um George just gave us a slide that had key features in it so um I am uncomfortable of going this route I would be comfortable in having the other motions say uh that would include the following key features or see slide number two with key features um because this turns everything over to a consultant after two years of discussion um I do think I totally agree with what fra said and what you've said and then what several members of the public is we need to start doing community outreach and what I thought we would do with a district one meeting that we're trying to set up is not invite just the advocates in but use the slides that George just had I can amend them to say these are the elements that are under consideration and get feedback on them um and I think people are going to wonder what the cost is which is why I thought we were going out with an RFP to get our best sense of what people would bid so this this doesn't get to an RFP until a really long time um and so the community outreach without any information about the cost impact seems premature other than to find out everybody wants to find out know what the cost would be to them you know do I have to participate can I do this can I do that that and we won't have any answers to it so I am not in favor of this as currently worded I also was not in favor of the other one being broad rather than mentioning and key features would include um because I don't think we should turn everything over to a consultant I'll I'll respond to your questions later and I'm sorry for your misinformation thank you George well I don't think I can support this either but I also want to make the point in response to Kathy that we're not turning this over to a consultant uh this is something that TSO will be involved in uh very much so um so it's not like we're just handing the ball to a consultant and say here craft the bylaw bring it back to us and we're g to then bring it to the council um so uh I prefer the original motion um it doesn't have any specifics um it's but it gives you a sense of a road map that we TSO are going to follow we will be continuing to be in constant contact with the council um it's a process it's going to take time uh it's also going to cost money um this I think items one and two are already things that well item one we've already done that um item two uh as Kathy pointed out and I think she's right we can't really do a lot of community outreach right now because we don't have a lot to tell them you're right probably the first question is going to be how much it's going to cost but they're going to be a lots of other qu is a transfer station going to stay open what's its role going to be um we need to get some answers to those questions we need expert help to do that um I think you have to trust the process you have to trust TSO um and in the end you will have the final say you'll have the final say first of all over the consultant fee because Paul will have to come to you and ask for the money and you'll have the final say over a bylaw which can be amended and adjusted as you see fit but we can't get there uh without uh this moving forward and we need uh your help tonight to do that so I would urge us to keep with the original motion I can't support this councelor hanii um I'm not sure I can support this motion either because it doesn't as counselor Shane said as Kathy said list the key features um but I also couldn't support changing if someone were to do it the to advise the manager to propose a plan to to propose an RFP because my understanding of our prior conversation before this motion was proposed was that we wanted to limit the RFP to certain services and this would really expand it Beyond those services to um not just developing the RFP but doing the community outreach I potenti potentially doing all of these things um and that would be a lot more money um and then number four assumes that the program will be adopted and so it seems premature to put number four in this at all um uh if it fails I'm prepared to propose a motion to amend um by substitution one that would include key features Jennifer um yes I just want to add make two comments that the motion that that and Andy introduced was um voted on unanimously to recommend was recommended by TSO I also I received an email from a a constituent who is knowledgeable about this and it says that Amherst trash services are not paid from the general fund and Tra trash service can't be mandated to all residents it is a fee for service situation and by state law there must be an alternative for residents and that is why we have the transfer station so the transfer station probably can't be closed and when Andy mentioned we'll see how it would be managed that would be with some of its hours that it's open be changed so when we say we're committed to the transfer station being open we also have to offer an that kind of an option to the residents thank you um first of all I build on George this would totally continue to work with TSO second because of what I'm hearing from what TSO has said the town manager has said it would be an RFP my idea would be that it would be a menu RFP whether it includes all four elements or only three that's something the town manager or the council can you know advise him to do my goal is to be a little more specific and Define a process that at least forces us to put those key elements out there and agree to them and for everybody who's sitting here with pricing all these communities are doing this what are they paying this is a matter of finding out what people are paying I don't understand why we need to go to an RFP to find out what other people are paying for the same service it's to me having spent 40 years in the world of Grants and contract you need to Define what you want before you go out to the public with an RFP because otherwise they don't know how to respond and I Guilford I know you disagree with me so gford oh I was just G to say yes I disagree we went out with an RFI we got the information that was available at the time some of that information was dated and communities were re reestablishing and renegotiating contracts so that is a bit old we've had con contractors in the RFI who said we will not do it if this this and this are there if they would not give us the current price they would do it because it was not a proposal to asked for a price we G they gave us current contracts and we have information from current contracts some of which have already expired so if we want current prices to go forward to the community it's we have to go to an RF p and say what are your prices and let's hold firm I have a project now that I'm asking for more money for because we went to the vendors that do this work and they gave us a price two months later the price is now $40,000 more because things have changed so unless we have a process where we can lock them in and say give us a proposal this proposal is good for this many months or in this case will probably be for 18 months before we start um we're not going to have firm prices for people this to talk about so I I really think you need to ask we need to ask for the RFP to do this and we do not have the bandwidth my office does not have the bandwidth to do it if you want to give us the $50,000 to hire someone part-time to do it that would be okay but I think we need to go to a consultant who's done a few of these and has worked and can put them together and and put us in the right direction I'm sorry that was winded and it was kind of loud I apologize thank you okay I'm I'm willing to withdraw the motion let's see what uh councelor hanaki has to say is the person who seconded it willing to withdraw it I was the second and I will withdraw too thank you please take the motion down what would you like on the screen councelor hanii I didn't know I was still recognized sorry um I have emailed it to you Athena not in a great form um but it is based on the what is being proposed slide which I think is number six in that presentation um to help you with the typing um so this is a motion to substitute um well to amend by substitution the following motion to advise the town manager to issue a request for proposals RFP in accordance with the below goals in anticipation of revising General bylaw 3.33 refu collection and recyclable materials one town would negotiate and contract with a waste hauler or haulers on behalf of residents for collection of household trash unlimited recyclables and compostables two the contract would include a robust pay as you throw feature stru fee structure three curbside composting would be made available to all residents four transfer station could remain open but its role in the waste management program has yet to be determined but contract could include and outlined separately as an add-on provision of current transfer station Services five program would be phased in beginning with phased in beginning with single family and two three and four unit properties expanding to all Residential Properties within 3 years six haulers must provide an annual report to the town on the weight in tons of trash recyclables and compostables collected within the town seven an advantage in awarding a contract would be given to haulers who dispose of compost locally second made and seconded yes is there a second a second this thank you the floor is now open for discussion or Mandy Joe would you like to please speak to your motion I'm sorry sure um what you're seeing on the screen the cross outs are changes to what was on the what is proposed Slide the lowercase letters are the additions to what is what would be changed from that slide to make it easier to see what I'm amending from that what is being proposed slide um I believe we should not pass a motion that is not somewhat clear on what we want out of this program which means we have to agree on some of the things we want while also leaving it somewhat open it's one of the reasons I combined the original what is being proposed slide one and two into one to allow for huler or haulers um and some of those other changes were were made for the same reasons but I think we do need to outline some of our goals and that's what this does Anna one of the questions raised earlier that I I think is a really interesting one to ask and I'm not sure how how to ask it in a way that helps us in this process is about soliciting uh responses to an RFP that don't necessarily require all three of the services trash Recycling and composting and I'm curious this was it was mentioned and I'm curious if that's something the council wants to explore of if someone wants to offer just composting and someone else offers trash and recycling is that something that is doable I'm not sure if that's doable through this motion and I just wanted to bring that up if that's something the the council would like to discuss further as an opportunity or as an um it for me it feels possibly beneficial but potentially confusing um but it had been it had been mentioned before and so I wanted to to bring it back around because I don't think that this motion the way it's written would allow for that thank you Kathy I want to thank Mandy for doing this because I thought that's what was missing from the original motion um that we didn't have a list and we got a list tonight um I don't think we need the full rewrite of the bylaw because it's listing elements so I think the the only thing that is missing from this wording I'm assuming that the town manager was saying I need a consultant to help me write this RFP so Mandy we don't have the word a consultant to do the RFP anywhere that we're asking them too so he would have to ask us for that but I think it's smart to list the element ments and as to honors um the RFP could be worded that if you're willing to do some but not all please tell us and give us a price on that so that could be a decision in writing the RFP um it would be an alternative and I don't know whether we would want um one of the things that was remarked to me when I first ran for Council for someone who just moved to Amis on how many they have a little Street how many trucks were going down their street every day because we still had different waist haulers so someone would come on Tuesday someone would come on Wednesday some go to a different house each day um so I don't think we want different trucks rolling down the street one to pick up the recyclables another to pick up the compostables another to pick up the trash so you would rather have it all in a bundle if we're going to be offering that kind of pickup so I wouldn't rewrite this to say suppose you just want to do one piece of it um but I think if we're going to go forward with this and that was what I thought the intent was um going out to see what kind of bids we get we going to have to give the consultant guidelines which is what this does to what is the RFP asking for and then we should look for towns as I said at the beginning towns that are doing all of the following use them as a model for the way of wording this RFP so people know what we're so the biders know what we're talking about um our words not I don't know whether everybody uses what's what's the word in here the pay as you throw the the P ayt you know it's a cute little acronym that gets explained each time but normal people wouldn't know what a PYT is um so just making sure the con the RFP is written clearly um so I prefer this to the original one and I think it gets to what some of what Lynn was to do is putting more specifics into to what we're doing in RFP for so I am I like this change Jennifer yes I like this too um I would just um agree with Kathy if it could say to advise the town manager to retain a consultant to issue an RFP because that's what Paul um communicated to TSO that he would like but with adding those words I'm very comfortable with this so you would like to put in the words to advise the town manager to retain a consultant to develop to develop right the cons RFP and I think they would as who I think as as Kathy um requested that the RFP be shared with TSO or um maybe just the chair of TSO if it can't be made public but um this was councelor hani's motion councelor Hani do you agree with that addition where'd she go I no I'm here I'm thinking um I'm confused by the desire to require this addition when the original motion didn't have this in it at all it did didn't it no it didn't it didn't talk about hire a consultant at all um at least no I don't believe it did um didn't yes it did uh the original motion was to advise the town manager to issue a request for proposals on behalf of proposed changes to General bylaw 3.3 P3 yeah okay I I take back what said because I thought it had the word consultant in it I mean I guess he told TSO he needed a consultant to do it so uh councelor hanii did you have anything else you wanted to add you don't want so I'm I'm not willing to just accept that as a friendly Amendment because it changes what the original one was asking for too but it could be a motion to amend this okay um Jennifer no who was the person that made the motion that suggested that Jennifer I did so I have a question to my fellow TSO um is well or to everybody does this mean the town manager would have to come back to us to ask or would he he would have to come back to ask for the specific funding authorization he does have to do that because this is not in this year's budget I I just don't want to delay the process with having to come and ask for so would that do that if it's not included or would he just know he can come back he can he can come back and ask for the funding authorization he would have to right so he can go to that step without having to come back in between yes he can okay but that does not resolve the issue that the C the town manager and our direct our superintendent of DPW has said they need a consultant to write this RFP right so I guess this is my question would he have would the town manager he knows he needs a consultant so can he just come back to us as he you're saying even if we include the words retain a consultant in this motion he still has to come back for the um expenditure authorization yes for the appropriation so if if we don't have the word retain a consultant here I guess do we have to I mean he will he just know he can retain a consultant who knows I guess yeah that that seems to be what the original motion said Jennifer I I imagined the word consultants in it but I'm reading even the one before it was changed again it never had I think in the last TSO meeting we specifically talked about a consultant and some it did not make it into the motion language that's in the packet so I also put this out to my fellow members of TSO so right now there is no motion on the floor to amend this George so I can I can live with this um I understand the the impulse to perhaps be a bit more specific and have a sense of um you know concretely in black and white what the kind of map is going forward um I have a little issue with for and just the language transfer station could remain open um but its role in the waste management program has yet to be determined but contract could include um I think you'd want to say the contract would include but again Mandy can correct me if I'm misinterpreting her and outline separately as an add-on provision of current transfer station Services I I'm not super happy with the could but I think I can live with it um I it was meant in the way this was written to suggest that we really don't have a clear sense of what the final role will be that's where we need help and we need to do some thinking but um I guess the only change I would suggest if it seems sensible is to change this change the second could to would uh in other words so number four would read transfer station could remain open could remain open okay but it's rolling the waste management program has yet to be determined but contract must or may uh I I think it I would have to say must or should include then then you just change it at the beginning I don't know shall remain open or may you know maybe we can leave it as it is I I don't know what man's thoughts are stinks The Way It Is Well this I'm sorry so what do you suggest wood the second becomes a wood or you want to the transfer station would remain open but it's roll in the Waste Management program will be determined I no has yet to be determined so and its role shall be determined go for it I need I need somebody to come up with the language that you'd like to put in here and then we need to see if the person offering the motion is will accept that I understand so could I speak to that language sorry yes so I absolutely admit that is the worst written sentence of these seven your fault you're working on a week yeah um I I was trying to get to the point of if a contractor during these rfps or should we use the RFP to to determine whether a contractor could provide all of the services the transfer station does and if that is the case then maybe the transfer station does not stay open and I I acknowledge that I did hear Jennifer say we might have to anyway I don't know the law around it um but the woods sort of seemed to me to indicate musts in a sense and so that's why I put the ks in there of trying to leave open you know when when you say the transfer station would remain open but its role is yet to be determined well that role might be nothing but it stays open you know and so could remain open but acknowledge that maybe the contract itself would actually provide all those services so maybe it wouldn't remain open that basically the transfer station status is completely up in the air and we need the RFP to address the options so maybe just transfer station could remain open but it's rolled in the waste management system is yet to be determined period and Trust Tso and Trust the process that that this uh these options would definitely be at the very Forefront rather than trying to work it into it here simply change the would to could to reflect the reality that at this time we just don't know and maybe the state will require it um and that will determine it um maybe but maybe just leave it as could and stop it with a period as yet to be determined would you live with that Mandy um I could live with that as long as we explain that to Paul when this makes it to Paul that the goal is to explore all of those options okay remember a transcript of a meeting is always part of the record for person for interpretation um so we're striking from the word determined off is that correct and the person that's seconded after the word determined in number four ex it's after the word determined keep leave the word determined hang on for a minute no right there is the person that seconded do you agree Anna right yes I do okay thank you uh Andy yeah I'm going to speak very briefly and I'm going to speak is in uh make it clear that I am not speaking as chair of the committee because I can't uh represent the committee on a position that we've never discussed in a meeting or taken a vote on so as an individual um I'm satisfied with the proposal to change uh to amend the motion that I had originally made uh and but I want to leave it to be voted on because um I was trying to heere to the committee in the first one uh the other thing that I wanted to uh just point out is that I appreciate the words waste holler or hollers to give which gives the option that it could go to one or more and just share with you real quickly that I've done a lot of work on researching programs in other communities all over the state and I don't have the exact number in my head but it is around 30 communities that have um compost programs and I have U looked at the website and researched every one of them and uh virtually all of them have a separate um vendor that is picking up the compost from picking up the rest of the trash and that's because um there are specialty companies the one in particular um that unfortunately does not serve Western Massachusetts that does um that as a specialty and so they serve a good number of those communities are communities that are served by Black Earth composting uh now given the fact we're in a different part of the state I don't know if that'll be possible but I think it's worth having that option out there because uh it seems to work elsewhere Pat think we're not reducing the number of trucks that are going to be coming down the street right now on when Wednesdays the first truck comes and picks up all of the garbage the second truck comes later in the day and picks up the recyclables and whether it's an independent composting thing or the same company picking up compost I guarantee that'll be a third truck so saying we're going to reduce the number of trucks on the road is not accurate okay George you still have your hand up I'm I know it's late I know we need to move on I just I'm struggling with number four I'm just from the sense that I mean what I basically be saying is that we will make it clear to Paul when we talk to him that the services currently offered by the uh transfer station um must be included in any um contract with a hauler um and maybe it does make sense for us to include that language so that we're all on the same page tonight um um otherwise you're trusting I think you good reason to trust but nonetheless you're trusting that when we speak to him we will make it clear to him that um in any kind of contract or RFP um if these services that the the transfer station provides um must be included um so we can we can compare apples to apples can I suggest George because this is exactly what I wanted to speak to it seems to me that what we've heard from people is they want the transfer station we've Al heard that maybe there's a state law that says there has to be an alternative so why don't we just say the F the transfer station will remain open Period I think we're just at least I'm not certain what the state law is I know Jennifer and I've heard this and but I just would like to know for sure and I don't think we're not going to determine that tonight that the state actually would require we're going to have to do more research to determine what the state uh will or will not allow um so I think to say something will be the case unless we actually know it's the case um is premature I think we have to leave it the way Mandy has it um for the moment um I think it's either way we can live with it um my concern is just that that Paul be clear and we are clear that um the services which are very valuable to this community that the transfer station offers um especially with bulk waste yard waste Etc um must be included in any RFP to find out what these folks will provide and what they won't um that's my concern but I don't think you can change this to will but then why don't why are we seeing it could remain open why aren't we saying it would remain open again we're making a prediction with the language um to which as Mandy points out we're not really justified in making we just don't know we just don't know I personally hope it will stay open um but we just don't know okay um I have another question that's totally unrelated is there anybody councel hanii did you want to speak to this one yeah so so we don't know Lynn because a contract could say you know what I want the RFP to do is say hey if we asked you to provide could you provide you know bulk pickup on the curbside at the request of certain people you know on a phone call some some haulers do that now and if you did that what would the cost be you know and to see if we had to keep the transfer station open I don't know whether we do or whether if we say we're going to keep it open for say you know sticker people in trash hauling will that stop people from bidding I don't know and so I'm trying to give the the most option that will also through you know it's not the greatest wording but will also give us the most information about what is most feasible and the costs of each of those options um I wanted to respond to councelor D'Angelo's thing about truck reduction it is not a given that it wouldn't reduce trucks because maybe we would contract for bi-weekly trash pickup or bi-weekly recyclable pickup or bi-weekly compost pick up not weekly on all of them and if they all became bi-weekly you would reduce the number of trucks so we can't say one way or the other it's possible it's possible it wouldn't but it all depends on if if you succeed in reducing all of the waste that's thrown you don't need weekly pickup just you just don't um and so I I I think it's inaccurate to say one way or the other that it it might reduce the number of trucks but it might not that so I want to go back to a question that's totally separate Pam did you want to speak to this go please go ahead okay speaking to number four I think the the use of the word could is approp as has been stated we don't actually know what configuration we would end up with and it could be that the that the landfill is I mean the uh the transfer station is needed only for you know those mattresses and those things that you simply can't get rid of any other way but all other services may may change and go to this contractor so I want to use the word could and and not and Def definitely not the word will or shall um I just it just needs to be flexible I hope it stays open but it's not a guarantee right okay so nowhere I want to know if in any of the there is something that suggests we want them to tell us how they will administer the program how they'll do customer service Etc and and I don't I don't know if it's there but it seems to me that one of the questions that was mentioned earlier today is you know who's going to do the billing who's going to do the customer service who's going to do take the phone calls when something's wrong and uh that doesn't appear in these bullets to my knowledge maybe somebody else sees it uh that's one issue the other issue I have and I still have all along in here is this is the first time we as a council who looked at this list tonight just tonight have we taken it to the public no that's my problem counselor hanii so to respond to the billing issue and all um if you the top of this says in accordance with the below goals I'm not sure the council has a goal on billing so I don't think we can set forth the goal within this motion um this isn't meant to be a comprehensive the only things that will be in an RFP is this list of seven this is sort of the goals of the RFP are these seven but obviously you know even the presentation had more things in it it we'll never get comprehensive um and and we we maybe we could add things that say an RFP that the RFP wouldn't even really determine who does the billing in a sense um you know we could figure out wording if you want wording in there maybe the best option to do tonight is to refer this back to TSO uh Pam you have your hand up you took it down George you have your hand up I think as we all know that we are elected to listen and we do but I think we're also elected to lead and sometimes leading means stepping out in front and saying this is the direction we think we should go in and um and that is what this is trying to do and it seems like there's General agreement that this is the direction in which we should go and um we so we can bring the public along with us if you believe in as I do that this is the direction in which you should go not all the details are here as Mandy pointed out there are many that simply can't be here um for a whole host of reasons but this is the broad map um and I think I've heard enough tonight um and this is not been this is not new it's been around for quite some time there are no real big surprises here um and we've gone through this now with a fine tooth home um it may not be perfect but it's pretty damn close to it um I think we need to move forward I think we need to vote this and get to work okay the motion's been made and seconded are there any other comments seeing none uh uh yeah councelor at I I'm going to hold I I'm not saying one way or another yet um I'm sorry my sheet did not print properly so I have to go back so uh councelor haniki hi Bob hegner is absent counselor Lord I Pam Rooney yes councelor Ryan hi Kathy Shane yes Andy Steinberg hi Jennifer to yes councelor Walker yes um Pat Angeles hi Anna gothier hi and alen gmer is an I so it is unanimous with one absent okay uh we are going on I actually have a point of order for for um Athena uh was that a a vote on the motion to amend yes and if so then we need to vote one more time on the actual on the actual motion yes thank you so it was the motion to amend we now need to go to the actual motion which is what's on the screen and we begin to we begin with L grimer isn't I um councelor hanii I Bob hegar's absent councelor Lord hi pamone yes councelor Ryan hi C Kathy Shane yes Andy Steinberg hi Jennifer to yes councelor Walker yes paty Angelus I Anna delin gothier I Council r i it's unanimous okay we are now going on to the nuisance property bylaw 3 .26 this is a first reading this has been with Go I mean I'm sorry it has been both with CRC on a couple of occasions it was done as a complement to the rental registration bylaw and then it has gone to go so I'm going to start by calling on uh Pam Rooney for the CRC report thank you you stole my thunder sorry um I just want to make one correction that the date of the the go voted document should be September 5 it's listed as September 6 but I know you voted on September 5 um so in the packet you were provided with a clean copy and the marked up version that came out of go with our um Town attorney KP law uh input and it was voted uh out of go back to us here um for consideration uh when we when CRC started work on the rental registration bylaw two two plus years ago uh that was intended to help with the health and safety of tenants and and the conditions living conditions primarily in town the second um bylaw that has come out of that effort is an update of the current nuisance bylaw and it is intended to help uh ensure that folks in the neighborhood also are able to continue the enjoyment of their residences so this is sort of health of neighborhoods the first is health of tenants um the content of the document that you um have for cons for consideration and voting next round next meeting um the goal of this nuisance property bi La is not to penalize people but in fact to correct actions that disturb the quiet enjoyment of folks residents the existing bylaw 3.26 uh is titled nuisance house and Nuance house focuses heavily on the control of gatherings and underage drinking activity that was that was the the premise under which it was first constructed this updated and r titled uh bylaw is called nuisance property and IT addresses a broader array of activities that comprise unreasonable interference with the quiet enjoyment of one's home residence um it does not differentiate between a rented or an owner occupied home it clarifies owner and manager responsibilities upon a third violation it provides opportunity for the removal of a nuisance design ation with corrective action and it includes uh activities that are deemed violations of state law like possession and underage drinking violations of local zoning bylaw which might include something like excessive lighting or parking and then General bylaw which is noise Road Road obstruction littering and refug collection so the CRC has worked long and hard on this and I would appreciate your support when it comes to a vote um at the next meeting if there are any questions let us know I'm going to ask uh go to make their report and then go for questions so go was asked to review this for clarity consistency and actionability we first looked at it I believe in April um and at that point we had requested a review from KP law um um the KP law review led to a lot of questions that go felt were beyond the scope of clarity consistency and actionability so we sent it back to CRC to answer those questions um it then came back through KP law with a second review to us um and we reviewed it a second time on September 5th um and we voted it clear consistent and actionable I also want to thank um Chief Ting for joining us at that meeting and uh providing some context from from his perspective uh in the in the public safety World okay thank you uh questions Kathy I'm actually there is no motion on the floor Kathy um yeah I have I have questions um and I guess it's a question slash comment um it's starting with it's $300 fine and it's not clear to me whether it's $300 per incident or it's 300 $100 per person per incident so like if there's a uh cars parked all over the place and there are 15 people and there's trash is it 15 times 300 and then there's a a concept of one strike two strikes and then three strikes within a town so at the third thing it says then it's the organizer the people involved and the owner so it sounds like several people are now respons responsible but I didn't know whether that meant several people are being fined what is happening to those those entities it doesn't it doesn't tell me what about year two um if we really have a nuisance house that seems to be not well controlled and it's a rental and since contracts for rent tends to be one year and then year two it's another problem at what point does their permit get pulled and which it would be a club and it's nowhere in this that the permit for the property actually gets terminated um and I believe there was a discussion about that during CRC I think it's there needs to be something other than you're a nuisance and you've been labeled a nuisance with a big whatever red letter on top of your house it' be a red red n you're you're the N house um the nuisance house um but it's not clear to me after one after two after three what is the increase in penalty clearly the police being called out fire chiefs being called out it's costing the town money each time someone is going out to respond to these incidents so that's my basic like is it per incident is it times the number of people does the penalty get bigger because more people have to pay the penalty and why not include at some point um you lose your rental permit and I I'd be okay if it's year two you know you you've had this problem all during year one but year two you could have a new set of tenants and and make sure they're not behaving as first set the landlord may not be able to control they got bad tenants and most landlords don't want really bad tenants um so year two or year three but I just you know I looked for more of a club in the rental inspection which seems to impose inspections on places where nothing wrong is going wrong with them um and I didn't like that aspect of the bureaucracy here I would like it to be stronger so I don't understand how it works and why it's not stronger after three incidents in one year those are my two Basics you know what is is it 300 times 5 people and then it the fine starts to be get to be really big and then when it gets to be the owner does every is everyone paying in or they all being um given their that you're nuisance so that's my basic I don't understand how it functions and why not when it's a nuisance house after one year or after two years that nothing gets cleared up and it's a rental why not pull the rental permit why is there no bigger consequence I'm through with it and I think it's too weak is and or it's unclear it's vague on what the consequences would be George so I voted to declare this clear consistent actionable but I'm not sure I can support it I'm hoping that the answers to some of my questions including some of Kathy's questions will will convince me otherwise the first thing I'd like to point out to my colleagues is this bylaw applies to all properties in in town whether they owner occupied or leased so that immediately gets my ear to perk up um and because that means that my property for instance could be declared a nuisance property um and I could be subject to all these penalties which really are quite impressive um so the first question I have has to do um with uh section c and uh the the $300 fine if I stand it any violation of C2 is deemed a violation of the bylaw and is subject to a $300 fine is am I reading that correctly so for instance if I don't get this ice off my sidewalk um and I am then uh you know somebody rabidly dict to actually comes by and and and you know you know writes up a ticket that's now a $300 fine as opposed to what I believe at the moment is a $50 fine so I have a question about I mean under the general bylaws most of the items you list are $50 fines there's one that's a $250 fine none of them only D is a $300 fine but if I understand this bylaw and then maybe I just miss not understanding it um any one of those violations now is a $300 fine um and if I don't don't clean the ice off my sidewalk for like 5 days it's actually 300 Time 5 um so I have some cons I mean I just help me understand this is that actually what it's saying or um because that has me obviously concerned um we don't really enforce that particular bylaw very much if at all but it's right on the books and it has a $50 fine is that now a $300 fine um you could also you talk about chunk Vehicles you could talk about a whole host of things maybe your dog barks a lot and finally somebody comes and and you get a ticket for a noisy dog and now it's a $300 fine I just uh I'm concerned about the impact of this um first of all on everybody in town um though I understand the motives perhaps are focused on a particular subset of uh properties in town this bylaw applies to everybody so I have concerns about that and I just need to have them clarified okay um so we've had some questions both councelor hanii and uh Pam Rooney are on CRC which is where this main development lies so I'm going to go to counselor hanii uh my response initially to George is why shouldn't it apply to your house if you're hos an a loud party yeah can you hear me now we can yes okay um my my answer is why shouldn't it apply to your house if you're hosting AOW party week after week after week why shouldn't it be declared a nuisance house why should the rules for you be any different because you own the house on terms of how you act in public act on your property and treat your property than because you rent it so that's my answer to that um to to answer the permit question from Kathy if you're right this this bylaw does not deal with a rental regist a residential rental permit because that's in a different bylaw that other bylaw does say that if your house is currently declared a nuisance property you must be inspected yearly if there would if this Council would want to add additional potential penalties for a house that is defined as a nuisance property or a property that that meets the definition or is declared a nuisance um nuisance property in need of Correction um um that change would need to be done in the residential rental permit bylaw side because it would be a a penalty on the residential rental permit um um violations fines so as Chief Ting regularly said to us in CRC this is a tool this might not be the very first tool any one uses if the ice is not moved off the sidewalk even though that could potentially if it's never moved off and they've talked to you six times and it's six different ice storms later and you've never done it once they may choose instead of to find you under the removal obstruction of sidewalk bylaw they may choose to find you under this bylaw instead but you have to meet the definition of public nuisance and and which is defined in B7 an unreasonable interference with a right common to the general public um such as a condition dangerous to health offensive to community moral standards or that otherwise threatens the general welfare of a neighbor or the town in general and includes but is not limited to these activities so it can include those but it also has to meet the rest of them it's kind of circular but it's it's meant to not be applied on a first instance of you didn't do your obstruction but it's meant if if a a responding officer or the Building Commissioner responds to a complaint and you've got your sidewalk obstructed and a junk vehicle in the yard and vegetation and non hauled waste because the waste in the trash is just collecting they may say you know this collectively is a nuisance property we're going to P put the fine under the nuisance property um someone asked about the fines and whether it's one or all each person could be written a ticket but it's who's written the ticket and each day is a separate violation so they could ball up and it could be each one and it could be each day but it all depends on how the tickets are written pamon I think Mandy covered most of it um I think the the original intent was to be able to say if a property is becoming a nuisance they really shouldn't get the um the opportunity to rent uh and and get income from a property if they're not if they're not managing it well however as it was stated before because this is trying to be Equitable whether it's a rental unit or an owner occupied unit um we can't take away a permit for an owner occupied premises so we we had to we had to uncouple the um the nuisance permit excuse me the designation of a nuisance property specifically with that that dwelling being able to be uh issued a rental registration permit I didn't say that very well anyway it was to be more Equitable um the other the other note is that the chief of police stated several times that this is um offers some flexibility is a tool for for their department and for uh the inspection services and that again as as Mandy stated they're able to pick and choose from different situations and what the penalties would be but we we wanted to be able to provide a corrective action process but which the current bylaw does not have and engaging the owners and or managers um they they are notified today they're notified with the first and second uh violations but in this bylaw they're being actually asked to come to the table and create a corrective action plan which we don't have now and and there are a number of properties in town that could use one thank you Anna all right I got some back of the envelope notes here um for the most part what throws me about this is that and again not entirely but for the most part this is a law saying that it's now against the law to break other laws um which feels just kind of like a head trip or a double gotcha right it's saying it's a violation of this bylaw to break our other laws um and to break Mass General law um to break our zoning bylaws so I think for me where I'm where I'm struggling with this is similar to Georgia's question but kind of a different vein is are you fined for both of them at the same time so if you violate noise and um nuisance is that now $600 um so that's kind of the first bigger picture issue that I have with this is are we just starting to repeat ourselves in spiral um and then I really am having a strong allergic reaction to the phrase offensive to community moral standards um that makes me deeply uncomfortable uh there are plenty of times in our history where Community moral standards have been opposed to groups of people and I know that's not what the intention was here I'm not at all insinuating that was the intention here but I think that that phrasing lends itself to too much vagueness um and so I I'm very uncomfortable with that that word it's in the um section B uh definitions B7 and then lastly um this is kind of a particular but this is called a nuisance property bylaw but this is really I'm questioning why the um the authors of this didn't call it a public nuisance by law because a nuisance property is only defined as a nuisance property if it's violates the public nuisance part of this three times and most of the penalties here are for being a public nuisance not being a nuisance property and so I'm I'm just kind of curious about it might seem like semantics but as I'm reading this this is about public nuisance violations and then it also has the kind of not caveat but the part of it that says three public nuisance violations you're now a nuisance property so the whole thing isn't about nuisance properties and it feels a little confusing to me I feel like it should just be called public nuisance via um those are my comments for now George so going back to my questions I guess the answer to the first question is that the depends on the uh entity that actually tickets you whether they decide to ticket you under the general bylaw or whether they decide to ticket you or find you criminally liable under the um nuisance property bylaw so um you could be find $50 for an obstruction of the public way or it could be find 300 and that's up to the uh uh whoever it is that writes the ticket um again back to the thought that this applies to everybody in town I wonder how many people in town know that now they're all subject to this nuisance property bylaw I would venture to say very few um that at least in theory um what is a $50 fine could become a $300 fine depending on the Judgment of a uh a town official um and that so that that concerns me how much does the public actually know about this um and how much have we made an effort to tell them that this is coming um again it seems to me that what this is really aimed at are a certain subset of properties in town but for whatever reason um it's now applies to everybody um so I'm hoping everybody's aware of it though I doubt that very much um I don't think my constituents are aware of it um there also I mean again go on and on but the uh the $300 fines keep mounting up here um once you have uh been designated a nuisance property you have five days in which to schedule a meeting um if you don't do that there's a three $0000 fine and that continues until you schedule a meeting a practical question is whether these are calendar days or business days or does it matter I would be business days because it's a number less than 10 for counting is understood to be business days yeah by the charter it would be business days okay that's good to know so you have five business days to schedule a meeting and if you don't then then the penalties start acing I'm still thinking of the poor fellow who has his ice on his sidewalk who's away for two weeks he could come back to quite quite a penalty at least in theory um and then there's the correction process and again failure to submit to that um the fines keep mounting and mounting um so this yeah it just seems like a lot uh and I guess it brings me back to my basic question is what is the problem that this is meant to solve is there suddenly an outbreak of nuisance properties throughout ammer that we need this Draconian bylaw to address um or is this reflective of a problem that we face in this town always which is that any given fall or spring there are going to be certain properties that are going to be a nuisance and we have bylaws to deal with that we have processes to deal with that I'm really struggling to see how this is going to make any difference I'm also struggling to see that there is actually a problem that needs to be addressed Beyond The Perennial problem that we have living in a college town so if I can get those help if you can help me with that I can support this but at this point um I really struggle to see um the point of this Jennifer so yes this bylaw is the intent is to address those houses and they're Inc an increasing number throughout town that have multiple violations and that's how they become a nuisance house and the intent is a corrective action and that's and I live I represent a district with many houses that you know would have I I'm thinking of houses that fit this definition of nuisance houses and working with the the owners the inspections department the police department works with the property owner and houses that were nuisance houses are no longer nuisance houses so that's what this is trying to correct and so what okay one loud party does not make you a nuisance house you would receive a warning and hopefully that wouldn't happen again it's when it becomes a chronic issue that would make you a nuisance property so I don't think there any question that there the nuisance properties are an issue in our town and this is a way to deal with them in a constructive way the um Building Commissioner came to many meetings as did the police chief we spent they are not they do not want to issue multiple fines for hundreds of dollars they want to work with those houses that have become a nuisance and helped them not to be a nuisance so I can't imagine any scenario in which someone would be hit with you know multiple hundred fines for ice on the sidewalk and I can tell you that the neighbors they just want they want a corrective action that's that's what they want and and it works and so this is just to try and strengthen that to deal with those problem properties and the again the um building inspections department and the police department are not looking to be Draconian in in any way Pam thank you um a good point was made that uh the building inspector has health and safety codes that they can enforce um the police has obviously can can go to to noise complaints um but this is a reminder that it's not just underage drinking that that disrupts the life of a neighborhood it is it can be other other elements other activities and and um that affect the quality of life of your neighbor so when you have you know underage uh drinking is pretty pretty clear um but when you've got parking on the lawn that obstructs side walks and that after multiple iterations of requesting that those be removed um and you don't get the action each each of those violations there may not be a fine at all it's just that you're you're notified that you're in violation and those notifications and the count starts the clock essentially so that you you um as a property owner are held more accountable even though there's the separation of you know church and state between owner and tenant the tenant rights are obviously very strong but but what we're hearing is that a good manager makes a huge difference in how the tenants operate if it's an owner occupied dwelling there could be again issues with your neighbors that really need to be rectified and and bringing somebody to the table in a constructive way is the intent of of this bylaw and it gives the it gives the authorities um flexibility To Go in different routes to address the problem thank you um I want to go back to George's thing with issue about does it apply to people that are owner occupied and the answer is yes and it also applies to people who for example in my district own an Airbnb that's regularly rented and reg regularly has parties of 200 people and it's owned we can't stop the ownership but we can certainly make it uncomfortable enough with fines that they don't do an Airbnb rental every weekend that ends up in a party of 200 people that's where I come I I like the fact that this is linked to the rental registration I like the fact that it comes back to the owner and because up until now it's kind of been okay here's your fine but we never really come back to the owner to be responsible for the property Andy yeah I was going to say something similar but it put a little historical reflection on it as I sometimes do because uh you know back in the days when I was on a select board member on the uh campus and Community Coalition uh you know the need for a nuisance house bylaw were really originated there because we were recognizing um problems mostly that were alcohol induced at that time um and uh they um was um the police were running into barriers of amount of fine that they end the lack of being able to hold the property owner accountable if there was repeated um visits to the same house and uh or same building so it sort of arose from trying to find a way of addressing that and recognizing that if it is a noise bylaw um situation that's being um dealt with that there was a uh reality that if it was a low enough fine that the tenants of the house may feel that the party is more worthwhile than the fine and that the fine is just a cost of doing of having the party and uh which is uh buying the beer was the cost to having the party and so that that was sort of what started the discussion that led to the original nuisance how by law and I can't believe that those reasons haven't U continued and that's why Chief Ting is um supporting the changes thank you Council Lord thank you first I want to say I haven't read this thoroughly enough and sat with it long enough to fully vet questions or know how I feel completely I want to thank Anna for bringing up some of those points really hit home to me and before you brought up the Airbnb thing I was having this idea about maybe instead of having a law for a law and fines um Crest building so repeat repeat bad behaviors or repeat um um harmful behaviors might come from a lack of empathy a lack of understanding so I was like what if we started to you know build circles really start to educate try to like let you know what the impact my 5-year-old wakes up with anxiety when she hears the drunk people screaming at 2 in the morning I in high school I liveed in townhouse on Meadow Street and every Friday and Saturday in the warm months there would be 800 drunk college people outside my window and um I don't know we just lived with it you know Hobart ho down all that I'm not saying we should do that thing but is there a way without adding more fines and penalties to um try to work with people to increase their their responsibility their collectivity the community Maybe not maybe I'm a dreamer but for the Airbnb thing because if it's a different 200 people each time maybe it's different for when it's used as a business I don't I'm just thinking I need more time but I just wanted to bring a little bit over that in thank you I'm just looking at this and Pat you haven't spoken on this one yet thank you um there's a lot that I support in this bylaw um in the bylaw changes but um George got me thinking about something U and pushed me to look at an incident I heard about just today what we were trying to do is to address both owner occupied and renters what almost everything we're saying has to do with renters but to me it is very important that an owner also of a property who is living there faces the same consequences as a renter that feels important my concern is then what George got me thinking about we have this list of bylaws and we were talking about with with Chief Ting about the flexibility and I think that's a very good thing however if I relate to something that got told to me today a police officer in our town I'm I'm hesitant to I'm trying to figure out how to say this because the person who it involved asked me not to specifically say anything but the person the there was a black man black resident who went up to a police officer because something was happening and the police officer turned it around requested his license asked him questions that were inappropriate for the situation called in to see if he had a record I didn't see that happening with this bylaw but I bet that same cop and I have a lot of respect for our police department and I think they know that and I have a lot of respect for police officers in general because that we were violating this way $300 versus $50 if there's that kind of flexibility it's really hard for me to believe that's potentially possible but after hearing what I heard today and other instances over the years we can't have a bylaw that makes it easy for people to be treated differently so that holds in two ways property owner who lives in the property needs to be treated just like a renter and at the same time how much flexibility can we give a police officer when we don't know how that how that police officer's assumptions will impact her U ticketing or her ability to respond in a human way to another person's agitation or problem Alicia youve not spoken um thank you I think that both or uh councelor Ryan Anna Pat and holla have all voiced some of the concerns I wanted to share I was essentially going to say that I think that the flexibility just allows for the possibility for in like inequitable enforcement um and that it just leaves too much of a chance in my opinion for discrimination of all different sorts in terms of the application of the enforcement um and it makes me really feel uncomfortable and so I do understand the issue that we're trying to address and the important the importance of addressing it and so I'm wondering if there's some other way that we can ensure that people won't be treated differently and won't be handed down different fines just to be punitive um and also just this notion of you know being a I was a young parent so my experience in this town has been very different um as I've moved and lived in different neighborhoods um but one of the things that concerns me when we talk about allowing fines to be associated with noise is that noise doesn't always associate with parties and drunk people I've had plenty of complaints about my kids playing like many I've had the police called on me and so like what would happen if I could be handed down a fine because my kids are chronically too loud even though we already have a bylaw a noise bylaw that indicates between which hours that can be happening and so again like I just I worry about the fine situation I think when we were creating Crest and we talked about um what kinds of calls Crest could be responding to this what like noise complaints was at the top of the line of things that we talked about just in terms of the reports that the cswg particularly got regarding the discrimination in how noise complaints were responded to um and so I I would like to explore like a mediation process or you know if if the goal is changed Behavior I think sometimes it's important to understand that punitive control isn't the only way to incentivize changed Behavior George so I still struggle with this I it's alleged that there's an increasing number of incidents there's no evidence for that none that I'm aware of I I'm happy to have some given to me I'd like to look at it I'd love to have Chief Ting come in here and tell me oh councelor Ryan in fact you know noise complaints and student you know this is this is a real problem and we need a tougher bylaw to address this as you know uh councelor Tob said uh the current system actually does actually work um you uh they you identify these properties you work with police you work with University you work with uh inspections and the problem gets dealt with it'd be nice if they never happened it'd be nice I'm sorry it'd be nice if you didn't have these incidents um but I'm struggling to see what the problem is that this uh very forceful bylaw is trying to address other than that the current bylaws do not address um the only thing I've heard that that catches my attention is you know airbnbs um again I don't know how many of those there are I don't know how many them produce a problem um I don't know if this bylaw is worth u in instituting just for that issue um but I would certainly like to hear from Chief Tang that this is a problem that he's encountering an increasing uh numbers and he needs a more Draconian bylaw to deal with it and maybe he said that and I just missed it um but I I'm not aware of it I'm certainly not aware of any evidence that this is a a problem that's been growing and growing and growing I do think the current process seems to work it's not perfect but there is no perfect solution to this problem we live in a college town with 23 24,000 college students um this is a constant perennial issue um why do you feel that the current bylaws are not adequate Jennifer it's your turn anyway um so what I said is one of the most important parts of this bylaw is it is involving the property owner in helping to resolve the issue and I have seen houses that have been year after year would fit the definition of a nuisance property working with the owner or the manager there are ex it can happen where there's a will there's a way to set stand you know say you can't have more than x you know can't have a party with more than 50 people but I have also seen houses in my district for 20 years the same house has been a nuisance property because the owner has never taken responsibility for kind of lay setting out expectations with the tenants so it can work but it also because it doesn't it isn't mandated we we need this for those houses that year after year no matter who's living there and I you know the the police chief p came to many many many as did the building um Building Commissioner more meetings than we wanted to impose on them and they absolutely felt with being a college town that this was an appropriate these measures were't appropriate and they thought effective way to address those houses and again it's that year after year are problematic P maybe your hand should go down Anna you have your hand up covered the other side of my envelope okay so I think the idea of recognizing folks who are repeatedly doing this uh or who are repeatedly uh breaking some bylaw in some way makes sense and I see the corrective action plan part as something that really does set this apart from the other bylaws that we have um I think for me I I do sorry uh again envelope method um I am uncomfortable with the level of choice in responding I worry that it allows for bias to impact response right um ambiguity breeds bias this is where it comes in and I think what I've heard from folks who have worked on this is that it's it's very likely the police wouldn't impose a fine the first time or wouldn't impose or or things like that then we should write it that way right like then it should say first time is the is no fine second time is is a fine whatever however that works I think we need to be clear with what we would want to see not what we would hope the response would be I don't think that we should allow for ambiguity based on the situation and then I still and I I would really this is more my confusion um I I would love to hear an answer based on my reading and maybe this is something go could have tackled and if it is I'm sorry but based on my reading a violation means creating a public nuisance not being a nuisance property a violation of this bylaw is creating a public nuisance the penalty for violation is a $300 fine so that's not just when something is deemed a nuisance property it's when anything that is deemed a public nuisance in this bylaw is happens so I would like some clarity on if this is double fining for things like a noise violation and then create creating a public nuisance um and if I'm misinterpreting that i' I'd like some clarity because again I'm pulling directly from it uh on on what the violation is and what the penalty is and what the definition of the um the violation is a definition of a public nuisance is um so I'd like to hear how this is or whether this is or is not double finding uh for for those violations councelor Han um to address some of councelor Ryan can you speak a little closer to address some of councelor Ryan's um comments and then to piggyback on what Anna just said um the current nuisance house bylaw cuz that's what it's called right now can create finds for two things Gatherings that include underage drinking um no Gatherings and then underage drinking I think those are the only two things nothing else if you do a noise violation repeatedly week after week after week the only thing the police or in a building inspector enforcement Authority Can Do Is Write a noise violation ticket 300 300 300 300 that's it you could write a hundred of them a year and that's all that can be written and they just pay it and there's no other penalty um the goal here when it was referred to CRC because it was referred for things and CRC looked at and said Gatherings and underage drinking are not the only things that create nuisances and so we were trying to go with what creates a nuisance and what would help uncreate that nuisance if you think about it correct that nuisance and so the current nuisance house bylaw doesn't have a corrective action process in fact if you have a party with underage drinking every week all you get is keep getting a $300 fine after the third one the owner might get the fine too but that's all you get no one ever has to do anything about it if they're happy to pay the fine they just keep paying the fine and keep having their underage drinking and we want to fix the underage drinking say or fix the thing that's doing it and so that's where the corrective act action process and that part of this new rewrite of the bylaw becomes extremely important we're trying to make the owners and the tenants talk to the town and actually have that conversation because right now there is nothing in any of our bylaws that require whoever gets that fine to come and talk to us they can just keep paying it and they can keep doing their thing and paying their fee if that's what they want they don't ever have to talk to anyone or fix anything and so that corrective action process is one of the most important parts of this rewrite um ACC you know Anna asked about the double finding right now at a gathering they can write if they deem it at 11: p.m. or midnight it's a big Gathering it's got underage drinking and well because it's a big Gathering they say there's a noise violation they can write a public a nuisance house and a noise violation violation it's not double even though there's two there they violated two separate bylaws and I see the inclusion of things that might constitute or go into a consideration of what a public new is is different than the bylaw that is set just just a sole violation of of noise on one occasion while in and of itself doesn't in my mind create the public nuisance repeated of those violations if they're there and they've been and they you know they wrote that fine they tried to undo the party and then an hour later the part is still raging on then maybe we've got the public nuisance um or maybe they've tried to correct that junked vehicle in an owner occupied house three months in a row and they've written all those tickets and it's not being corrected then maybe we move to the you know it's reached the stage of a public nuisance um so I don't see it as double finding Chief Ting would be able to Def do it more but I I don't see it that way I see it as sort of a separate thing that includes some of these things we're just setting forth we didn't have to cite bylaws we could have just said you know public nuisances can include things like public Iration and this and this and this in combination or alone but over a course of a period it was really hard to come up with a definition that kind of got to what we were doing but it as as Pam said it's it's sort of ongoing issues at a house there might be a better way that this Council can come up with at the five members of CRC can't um or couldn't but but that's what we're going for that it's not just one instance of public urination but that public urination by three different individuals in accordance with you know in in conjunction with a loud party at 3 in the morning um that also includes parked cars all over the lawn honk and all over the place then maybe we're writing a public nuisance violation too so I hope that helps Pam I think I'm sorry I think she covered that pretty thank you Jennifer yeah I keep forgetting to add when I've spoken before that I would have um I would be supportive of taking out that clause in number seven that's offensive to community moral standards um and then I also just to piggy back on what you said about the airbnbs we really want to involve the prop proper owner in resolving the issue and like the airbnbs there are a number of houses that are owned by outof Town investors who just see it as a business renting out these houses and don't feel they have any responsibility beyond that to the community so we want them to be involved in the corrective action plan as well right George you still have your hand up yes I do uh this is helpful I realize this the like any sponsor of any bylaw you want all 13 or 12 of or whatever it is to just go yay and we just move on but um I'm sorry I can't but this is very helpful and um I know it's probably buried in here um but at least reading it cold as opposed to this kind of back and forth helps me see some of the issues that lie behind this um I still uh think would like to hear from Chief Ting and Rob MOA about their desire for this maybe they can just submit a memo I don't their time is precious U and maybe they've already done this but and maybe I can watch a of CRC but I haven't seen them actually tell me or the council that they really think this is a great idea and help them but I think what I'm hearing is they would probably say some of the things that councelor to and Rooney have said and and and councelor hanii we're we're particularly interested in properties we're particularly interested in getting to the property owner we're particularly interested in properties that where this is a repeated problem and we're trying to create a corrective process um that might address it um so that I'm hearing um and that that helps me with this um I still have some thinking to do and I know we will have one more chance at this um I don't know that I will actually I know I won't be here for that um so that's a problem for me but perhaps not for the sponsors um but uh it would be nice to hear from the two uh authorities that they like this but I appreciate the responses that you've given and it helps me see more clearly why this is the way it is I do find the number of $300 penalties somewhat uh a inspiring in a not a positive way um but that's the way it is I guess um so but thank you Anna would it be appropriate to make a motion to strike specific I was just gonna words I I was GNA point out thank you Anna for asking we should do all of that next week I mean next time we meet okay that we do motions to change the bylaw and I think there's you're you're hearing a lot of support for the issue you pointed oh absolutely I just wasn't sure if it was appropriate to do it now or at the next meeting uh when we come back for second reading the other question I want to ask with if we're going to do second reading on the uh next meeting and Georgie won't be here uh in fact you might want to listen to the times when Chief tang and uh Rob MOA have come to CRC meetings but if is there anybody else in the count Council that would like us to invite one or both of them to the next meeting please speak to your mic I had I heard gey George say that he'd be happy if they just wrote a note to the council or something like that the other thing is it feels to me like we've gotten a lot of information to think about in CRC um with this bylaw and maybe people could send us stuff so we don't have to keep this conversation going on um or where we're not referring it back to CR okay okay I mean this is unless somebody make that sorry sorry sorry sorry it's not a referral back I mean at at this point I'm not hearing that I'm hearing a second reading I'm hearing that we are definitely going to have at least one motion I'm hearing that uh there may be some desire to invite uh both chief chief tang and Rob MOA um because uh TS I mean CRC has had the advantage of meeting with them but the rest of the council has not that's what I'm hearing I I also want to point out something I think this is a wonderful example of what CRC does and what go does because some of the people asking the questions tonight are on go but their responsibility on go is different and they come to the council now is when they ask questions that relate to the actual purpose Etc so um Kathy you have your hand up yeah um the only thing I was going to ask is um you're talking about a second reading two weeks from now on the 23rd and I'm wondering if we could have it instead be on the 7th because I would like um people in my district don't even know this is coming and they probably stopped watching after we discussed uh trash hauler since that was the Hot Topic of the evening and frea and I are trying to set up a district meeting we don't know whether we'll get the room on the 22nd but just to get a little bit more um my my district by the way has lots of these houses um people can point them out and the former Town counselor Sarah Schwarz would talk about what happened to her property by being next to some of these houses in terms of the blow over into her barn and um so forth so it's it's this is of a concern but I want to get a sense from people of that this notion of do they think this is enough is it a corrective action um and just bring this to them so my only question Lynn is do we have to have the second reading and a vote two weeks from now or could we have it on the 7th and you're you know more what you've got scheduled for each of these meetings the reality is October 7th is much more flexible for putting something on it and um George will you be here for the seven remotely I can be here yes okay if you can deal with that so I'm G to suggest that we do bring this back for its second reading we do it on October 7th we see whether or not Chief tang and Rob Morrow could join us and uh that people prepare any motions if they can prior to the meeting and make sure that Athena has them Pam did you have additional comments yes um I would say if people have questions that would be appropriate rather than just rushing forward with with new motions okay yes um so it would be um the CRC will meet and I think I'm I'm looking at Athena but I I think it would be appropriate if questions came to the CRC that we could discuss and answer them uh given the time frame of being pushing it out to October 7 it doesn't mean that it has to be referred back to CRC and I would actually not not want that I don't think it has to be referred back for you to answer question yeah we don't really want that um I I wanted to though come back to the question of of concern about um the the violations um and and the concern by the community that uh an officer might come in and issue a um a permit I mean a nuisance uh violation instead of the the Litany of uh bylaws that are already on our books and and to somehow come come in with a higher penalty then otherwise might be issued um the the Mass general laws as as Mandy said we we could have just not listed them but it made sense to remind people that there are a number of bylaws on the books that affect quality of life and and so we sort of put them in one spot someone says okay what are you know what might con Institute a a nuisance and if it's parking it's it's parking so so somebody the the building inspector comes along and and issues um a fine for parking illegally and this has happened three times in the last week on East Pleasant Street which is in our district and the first time the inspector came along and said please move your cars you're illegally parked just just take care of them properly nothing happened they came back and they actually they actually um ticketed them for a violation on the second we've heard from the neighbor that the cars haven't been adjusted yet and so this this continual iteration of of snubbing their you know their nose in the face of of the bylaw somehow has to get brought to the attention of the owner and um that really was the intent for for making this somewhat more encompassing than just underage drinking and Gathering um so most and as as Inspector excuse me building Building Commissioner moris said if we're going to ticket somebody most most of these items under Mass General law for instance um are are things that are sort of health and safety related and we would we would ticket according to Mass General law we're not going to ticket for nuisance property that's just not necessarily a tool that we would think to reach for when we go to respond to a property so it it's it's trying to link the the quantity of violation um and the iter iterative effect on on being able to control for the for the health and well-being and peaceful enjoyment of a neighborhood those properties so if I could leave it at that I just just for consideration Anna mine was not related to this topic I had a question about the rest of the agenda at the time let me get to that in a moment George did you have any other comment very quickly perhaps the iterative and repeated nature could somehow be worked into this and I will just send that appas suggestion to you at CRC so see what you can do with it I'm going to suggest the following we are going to do the second reading of this on October 7th we will reach if Athena and I will reach out to the Chief and to Rob Morrow the in inspector and ask them if they would be able to join us that night if you have motions you want to make or questions please send them to Athena and me we are not referring this back to G to CRC or to go but the between the two of us we can probably come up with where those questions can best be answered okay is there any other option that people want to talk about with regard to this okay um I've already let me just talk about the agenda I've already that decided that we are not going to discuss Town manager goals tonight okay uh and we will do that but Anna did you want to delay the other one um I was considering delaying the other one because it's 10:45 and we still have committee reports uh but it depends I I also don't want to be the sole person who wants to do that if everyone else wants to discuss it tonight um so I was seeking opinion on that and I forgot what else I was going to say because it's 10:45 at night um oh because I didn't know I couldn't remember what the next agenda totally looked like and if it would fit on there um so meeting in two weeks has a little more on it if we needed to we could actually bring this back to um go and finish the pieces we didn't do I would be comfortable with it being referred back to go um because the version we sent had some formatting issues and things to adjust so I was coming in with a heftier Amendment proposal so if folks are comfortable refering it back to to make those changes at the level um then we could do that I don't think we need an official motion to do that no no sorry this is the yeah sorry sorry okay so item C under actions will not appear on the agenda again until the 7th of of of October yes let me just also say when it comes to us this is an opportunity to discuss what's in the charge okay the second thing is the presentations and discussions on the town manager goals I don't know whether we'll do that on October 7th or on the 23d uh I'll just have to look at the agendas are there any questions about the action items if not we're going to move to committee and liaison reports um and let me just call make sure that you realize we've already done the minutes and uh Dave Zac is still with us is the acting Town manager right now and we will ask him if he has anything he wants to say but let's go to CRC pamon is there anything else you want to add at this point nope okay Elementary School building committee Kathy I've been on mute um we haven't met since the last time I told you we hadn't met we we are due to meet on Friday the 20th of September and the bids are due back the day before in the 19th so that's when we'll have news to report um and so we're just waiting thank you and thank you for providing that date and so that means when we meet on the 23rd you can share that news with us you got it uh finance committee Kathy Bob hegner is not here yeah you have a report in your packet we had two topics that were the discussion of the September 6 meeting one was a update on the Jones Library financing and the other was um some questions we had about the financial status of the Cherry Hill Golf Course so as you'll see in the actual numbers we the information we got on Jones is basically Financial is the same information we have had all along starting back in 2023 three so there's not been a lot of movement um in the financing uh there's still almost a $7 million gap in if the price tag is 46 million in what the trustees need to to raise to finance their share one issue that we explored is the new one that we become aware of because the historic tax credits were turned down there's been a question of whether the two big federal grants the HUD Grant and the neh Grant which also have to have a historic review um are at all in Jeopardy and there's something called section 106 so we ask questions about when is that happening and the specific dates are in your packet um the that review needs to be completed and it's about historic preservation that review needs to be completed before we can contract the town can contract uh with any bidder and we don't know where the bids are going to come in in terms of whether it's going to be on target or not so the timing of the bidding is now linked to when the section 106 review can happen and Pam got some of this information I know via the Jones Library building committee so no Jones Library trustee came um the to our meeting and the person who reported everything to us was the new Finance director and so she basically was on the spot for trying to answer questions that she didn't have answers to and got back to us on some of this timing and that's not insignificant because it's over $2 million of grant money um that to make sure we have that grant money we basically have to go through that review um and iron out that issue because otherwise those grants are potentially at risk I'm not saying they are at risk but the review has to happen and the the federal rules are you can't contract for it you can't sign the bids um until you've done that on the golf course um we we asked for financial information because there had been a report um actually the newspaper about um a deficit they were running and the most recent numbers are good news that the revenues actually exceed expenses the way we count revenues the way we count expenses um and it's they've been doing a good job for the last three or four years on holding expenses down and revenues of increased if you do a different kind of accounting which we don't do for any department and you put fringe benefits in and you do whatever Capital expenditures have come out of other Pockets um the the Surplus disappears you know so it's near to break even or not quite breaking even um but on the straight Revenue versus expenses so I just I I just want to raise that to everyone because when we look at a department when we look at those budgets they don't have uh the rollup for benefits none of the Departments the only place in our budget book that shows it is our Enterprise funds they do show the full what what what is the labor cost of the people work and so there was a proxy for um part uh the golf course employees on benefits and during the meeting the statement was we're not even sure that those numbers are totally accurate cuz some of them are part-timers and they don't get benefits you know we don't cost count it back down to the department level so we spent longer on the golf course because we were getting brand new numbers that none of us had before than we did on Jones because they were numbers we'd seen before and there weren't they weren't being updated in any significant way and that is all in the report our finance director did a great job by the way of getting back to us on some of the timing issues and let me just mention that I the town manager and I are meeting later this week I don't even remember when uh with um the library trust Board of chair of the library trustees and the library director and the topic in fact is both the environmental review and the 106 and uh but every indication is that they will be completed before there would be a contract but I want to make sure that meeting happens before we say that definitely okay and I actually think it has to happen before it doesn't necessar it does and it does have to happen before and the way it's timed it will happen before is what I'm saying okay Jennifer yeah so this um might be obvious but so when the review happens the determination is made so we would I'm assuming that we can't enter into a contract until we the determination has been made as to the outcome of the review that that that's that is my understanding and I think Pam got some clarification of that through an email but it's you know it's this is a uh Virgin Territory on some level because the federal process for this is a little bit murky so we they advised us to hire a consultant and I think we've got someone working with us with the town to make sure we do the review properly um and there's a public comment there's a public involvement and they have all the documentation of what's happened so so Jennifer when that closes is not clear you know there's a Target date for when that determinization is made I have two more questions yes so in terms of retaining a consultant I'm just is so the budget for that is in the 46.1 million I mean that's why I assume so nobody they didn't have manager didn't have to come to us I assume so I also think that Bob parent is doing some of the environmental okay last question when you meet with the library this week could you ask because it's been brought up in public comment a number of times inquire as to the $900,000 that y yeah thank you and report and we'll hear back at the next meeting thank you would you please send that to me in an email as a question I will thank you um Jones Library committee Pam well fnny you should bring that up up there has been no meeting and so when I asked if we please couldn't have a meeting um it is actually going to be scheduled for the 17th of September so a week from tomorrow and and again have asked for a lot of this information there may be some clarification of this section 106 review process and the timing of it and issuing bids going for bids thank you um TSO Andy oh did was there anything else for Jones okay Andy TSO there really nothing that I have to add that wasn't in the written report I want to remind you that the written report has one issue discussed which will be at the next council meeting uh but it was reported in this one and that's uh the proposed uh work to be done on West Street from potline to Long Meadow okay um any liaison reports go I'm sorry I missed go I'm so sorry it's okay uh So based on our based on our discussion tonight go will be meeting on the 26th um we'll be discussing the uh the successor body to the African heritage preparation assembly um given the fake out tonight where everyone read it and was prepped if you have questions and you'd like go to discuss them it would be great if you wanted to send them to me if you want the um exciting moment of of keeping it at Council that's fine too but uh we because we will be discussing it on the 26th please send me any questions that we might be able to handle or any changes you wanted to see that we might discuss um if if you are so inclined and that's in regard to the church correct regard to the charge so J will not be meeting um before our next meeting on the 23rd but we will be discussing this on the 26th thank you did I miss any other committees okay leison reports any see none uh we've done consent agenda uh David do you have anything you'd like to share with us tonight sure thanks Lynn uh given the hour I'll be very brief um you mentioned the block party coming up a week from Thursday we're very excited about that we had some very productive meetings today with the bid leadership with Public Safety DPW Health um inspection services so everything is lining up for a week from Thursday we hope it's going to be a great event uh weather is always the big factor and we're keeping our fingers crossed that we get get weather next week like like expected this week so uh clear temperatures and and sunshine so we're expecting a great event um and um we are getting we will work with the bid on social media posts over the next couple of days you'll see that kind of ramp up so we get the word out both on our website the bids website and with participating agencies um uh Paul should have uh information coming out on the next steps with the VFW process uh you may recall we had that very successful meeting some months ago with the narrow gate they're the architectural firm that we hired to do the conceptual um rendering and conceptual narrative around what could happen on the VFW site we had over 55 people attend that meeting and uh they have uh they are very close to finishing their work and so we will be bringing that that information back to the community uh this will be a zoom meeting that meeting was actually in person uh in the town room I know some of you attended that but this will be a zoom meeting coming in up in the next 3 to five weeks so we'll get you information on that I think Paul will also have some updates um actually there aren't too many updates but we're awaiting updates on the mass Works grant for emity Street and you drive again we submitted that some months ago that was for the roundabout you may recall the proposed roundabout there sidewalk and streetscape improvements so uh again we're we're uh we're hopeful on that Grant we also have a couple of other grants out we did you may recall Paul reported that we did put in a very large design grant for improvements to the puffers pond dam and dke and we're still waiting on that I think that was north of of $500,000 for that work so again um we feel those were excellent both emity Street and the buffers Bond grant were really solid proposals so we're keeping our fingers crossed on those and then lastly um I will save myself an email but while this meeting has been going on Guilford and his staff have been doing um a double duty down on a water main break at AMD and you drive right near the the proposed roundabout so Guilford you might have seen him working his his phone or or computer while while you were discussing um uh topics earlier tonight so there is a water main break down there their DPW crews are out um doing what they do best which is you know uh fixing these problems with our aging infrastructure so uh they're working on that right now so those are the four or five quick updates happy to take any questions on those um and we looking forward to Paul coming back later this week thanks David Kathy you have your hand up yeah Dave uh you you may or may not be able to answer this so just uh uh let Paul know I've asked it again um when you mentioned the Amity roundabout I had asked uh what about the intersections near the Fort River School and Gilford has been working with a consultant and Paul Paul said we do have options and he was going to bring them to the council and I I I realized one has been on the list for a really long time and the school is on but to me it's a huge priority to at least get that in motion and I don't know where that is those options they are ready they are ready to go and and we've been talking with Lynn about that I believe we're gonna preview those on the 23rd but I'll let Lynn fill you in yeah Kathy good good segue uh there isn't a written president's or vice president's report but let me just mention on the future agenda items I already mentioned the master plan primer the public forum and the regular meeting we start at 5:30 that will be uh Chris breast strip's last last public meeting with us uh we will be discussing just hopefully briefly the proposed timeline and process for the town manager's evaluation process I doubt we will do any goal work uh we will not be doing Nuance bylaw that's now on the 7th of October but we will be focusing on a number of public way issues one of them is ums um sign request another is the Fort River and Southeast Street traffic and Road improvements another is potentially something about school safety zones and then separate from that is the potential of having the University Drive overlay proposal that's coming from the planning board come to us okay uh lot of that's one reason why I'm trying to shift some more things to the 7eventh because I already know this agenda is packed the two appointments we know of will be the CPA and the Board of Health and there with uh TSO at this time are there any counselor comments counselor ET I just like to call attention to um one of the comments that we had earlier this evening in public comment I think when we have public comments and we as a council do not respond this the appearance as if a lack of response implies either agreement or at least some acquiescence to what has been said and this particular comment has to do with the town manager I choose not to repeat what was said except to say that when we use these kind of remarks what they do is they M the water in the conversations that we have in town and they reduce the credibility of those who make those statements about six months ago I remember in this very Hall someone making a statement about a counselor being Clarence Thomas and her walker this only one person who could have fit that description and I was unable to respond and no one in the Council made mention of it and I wish that when we hear some of these comments that in some way are unpalatable outlandish whatever you may describe them we can call attention to them without having to deal with the veracity or whatever else might be made regarding those statements thank you for your comments are there any other comments at this time I'm going to make a motion to adjourn and seek a second second thank you um we're going to do a quick roll call I can find the thing here we go uh I'm going to start with myself I counselor hanii hi Bob hegner is absent councelor Lord hi Pam roone yes councelor Ryan hi Kathy Shane yes Andy Steinberg hi Jennifer to yes councelor Walker yes Patty angelist hi Anna Devin gothier I Council r i it's unanimous the meeting is adjourned it is 11:03