[Music] okay we're recording please go ahead console okay good evening it is [Music]
the open meeting law allowed us to at 11 that's fine 11 people um 11 counselors in the room um I'll call up since we have given that we have a quum of the council present I'm calling in the February 4th special Town council
meeting to order at 6:02 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 I still got an echo okay uh Pat dangeles president hna delin
goth president councelor ET is not here yet yet he's um Lyn Grier's present councelor Han present Bob hegner present councelor Lord pres Pam Roney here councelor Ryan here Kathy Shane here Andy steinford presid Jennifer to here councelor Walker not here yet okay uh this there is no chat room for this
meeting I'm sorry just a very small point of order my microphone is always on so I'm wondering whether I should just turn it off you can turn it off turn it off and on by unplugging it I assume no no just the but turn it off just push green button yeah there you go yeah they go um if you have technical issues please let Athena and me know and we'll decide what to do uh at that time during this evening there will be no General Public comment uh I remind you with two
announcements one is on Saturday at 9:00 uh February 8th uh we have a four towns meeting at the amist Regional Middle School library and on Monday February 10th uh at 6:30 we have a public forum on Appropriations outside budget followed by a regular Town council meeting actually The Forum will be part of the regular Town council meeting we'll just pause for it okay um uh with that I'm turning it over totha I'm done
with my official role tonight except to adjourn us okay thanks Lynn thanks everyone I think we're gonna get right into it so I'm going to share the document that I sent out which shows I I know this came a little bit late today but this document shows everything that was ranked high
and when I put these into categories I put things in high if they if there were seven or more counselors who ranked them high I put things into tilt High when there were most counselors ranked them high but it was less than seven so maybe five and then the other rankings were scattered elsewhere I'm sorry Anna prioritization I've been trying um and so on and we also have of there were no consensus on deleted
items I've included where the priorities were for these items that there was not a consensus so you can see where the priorities fell and then we have these measures that were excluded from the prioritization list so I think we're going to start with high I'm going to not do a lot of talking tonight so we can start the discussion when folks are start ready to start um talking about
these if you need a moment to look at the comments from the town manager on the right side and obviously he's here and he can speak to those so we'll start with hi the floor is open
just looking for discussion on whether to include exclude these um we won't look at language yet we can do that once we get down to um a list Anna you had your hand up you might tell me to wait till we get down to the list my question was about whether the
high indication was on the original or alternative language um and I think I'm trying to switch between the two documents I apologize um but if we were going to get to that later just tell me we'll get to that later sure so I didn't break the original and alternative language um items into separate things so for this one develop a plan for critical spacing programing um there were five counselors who preferred the original and four who preferred the alternative
language for this uh maintain a list of prioritized future Road and sidewalk repairs there were six who preferred the original and four the alternative and this last one regarding Pilots six or maybe seven depending on how I interpret one of the comments or who preferred original and six alternative um I think it would be more fruitful to um save the the conversation about the exact wording of these until we have a list so that you're not talking about wording for any
action items that might eventually be called um but if there's a desire to do that now George councilor Ryan so a couple questions for Paul um item number four of the high List complete streets tier two um Paul's comment is questionable capacity in 2025 um the logic behind this at least as I understood it this proposal was that this would provide the town opportunity to access money for
sidewalks and Roads um I assume that's something Paul would very much like staff would like is that something that it can happen in 2025 it could happen in 2026 um so that's the first question um yes it could happen in 2026 I think the the issue with this one is the um if we're going under these this type of design sometimes what we are proposing that meets the intent of
complete streets doesn't meet the requirements of complete streets so are typically we may not have the width of a the proper sidewalk or the bike paths or something like bike um Lanes or something like that so the the question was um if we went down this road would it really be um beneficial to the town or not because we have such limited Road funds to utilize so the sense is that it just may not be worth of trouble
yes okay and that and that the complete streets put requirements on roads is that right yeah that one yes yeah um councelor haniki was next and then I I see you have your hand up to Cy I'll stick with this one for now I have questions on some other ones but is the comment about capacity and all of the strain on future budgets related to the tier three construction application part of this one or the tier 2 prioritization
plan or both because there's kind of two separate items in here yeah I think what uh we're sensing is the dpw's uh capacity is pretty strained right now to take on new initiatives um councelor Shane you're next yeah it's still on this same topic um my understanding was the second part the three brought could bring a big chunk of money in the first is the plan
and the plan is where what you're thinking is Staff resources to come up with the plan yeah so the requirements by the state are much more um complex if we put out the road to bid it's we do our own design we send it out to the contractors they bid on it the state requires a much detailed more higher level of detail on the road on the um design application and the level of detail on the actual um on the on the actual um plans are
submitted to the state for their approval it just extends the process for moving project Pro uh projects forward so it's just we understand that it accesses more funds uh potentially um but the terms in terms of um the amount of work it takes to get there is just a lot more Hoops to jump through to meet the state's requirements so the the um Town Engineers aren't really wild about moving this direction they'd rather they're more focused on using the money that they have available to design the
roads get them out the door and get them working on Paving so can I just ask because um my subp part of this which people didn't want to combine was the plan for biking and walking because I understood that to be part of this F first pH first application so if we instead made that the priority that we want biking and walk you know we want we want to start saying where are we going to have sidewalks where are we going to have bikes um not necessarily the whole
complete streets is that less confining because I I I made them a combined and we kept them separate because I thought that would have to be done for this first round application but I would be fine with substituting it so the the question to me was do we have capacity to take these projects on and what I'm saying is that it's a challenge for it would a challenge for our existing engineering department to
take on the level of detail for these things or to initiate a whole you know the bik and ped plan is overdue to be updated but if that's a priority of the council we would seek separate funding to support that it wouldn't come from our existing staff councelor T um so just a couple of questions picking up on that um is this something that we might since so DPW staff is tapped out and
this is not a good time to put this as a an action item might it be for a future year or is it really not worth the effort I think there's some resistance to the sort of um the the level of detail that's required to apply for these types of grants in terms of the in um for almost Any Grant but some of them are are worth it for us I think to go into that level
of detail but in terms of creating engineered plans um I don't know all the terminology but they you know they they expect like all the roads to be surveyed before they get submitted and we don't do that you know we we we put in repair this road to this level of detail blah blah blah um and we send it out to a contractor versus surveying the whole Road it just cost more upfront to be prepared to submit an application that's going to be competitive don't need to discuss this every year it sounds like yeah well I think it's fair to bring it
up and you know if as things change at the DPW with the engineering department um depending on where they are Staffing wise there might be capacity in the future the goal is good I'm not nobody's arguing with that I think they are sort of seeing the additional re requirements that the state puts on to move in this direction to be more of a challenge oh excuse me I was just going to recognize that that councelor Walker has joined us councelor
Walker can you hear us yeah yes I can thank you okay thank you we're just talking about these high priority items if you have comments please um councelor Shane you have your hand up but I think that was a leftover um councelor Devin goth here please go ahead so I'm a little confused because and I'm trying to figure out where my misunder understanding is lying I'm looking at the application forms and I'm
looking at kind of the questions that they're asking and these seem like good questions that we should or almost always are asking such as you know is it improving is is it within a quarter mile of a senior destination is it within a school and so I'm struggling to see where there are requirements and and I truly am seeking to be pointed to them where there are requirements that uh are beyond what we often are already asking more than just a yes and a no um you
know so number of modes served number of countermeasures whether the project fulfills a network Gap uh if it's loaded in a high crash location or not whether it serves in an EJ environmental justice population um I I think what I'm struggling with is if not now when um for this type of work so this is we talk about needing to shift our approach to you know not just repaving roads the
exact same way they've existed but actually seeking to increase bike lanes and increase walkability and uh I think this type of program can help to incentivize that work that we keep saying we want to do and then keep getting you know uh we we keep being unable to do because of cost and so I'm I'm I'd like to learn more about the uh the challenges of the application process Because unless I'm reading the wrong thing it's not and obviously I'm not an engineer so
I'm not understanding part of this I'm sure but these questions don't seem uh I don't know they don't seem impossible but maybe a misunderstanding so I'd like to get some clarity on what specifically is adding challenge to this which specific parts of the application because to me this feels like the the shift that we need in order to start changing the way that we do our roads and sidewalks so we look into what what the actual tier 2 prioritization plan
looks like I I have not looked at it personally so um I'm not sure what's in involved with that um so and I can bring that back to you um but but part of the answer is that it would require additional work from DPW staff to take this up so um I think that's important to keep in mind when we're looking at this holistically in terms of our capacity and resources
absolutely I know that this would go to DPW to to do uh counselor can you just turn your mic on for a second say here I just want to recognize that you've joined us you're here just so we can hear you I'm here councelor Ryan
so wastewater treatment plant um at least my reason for putting this as high priority as a sense of urgency um Paul acknowledges it's a high resource commitment um and that funds are going to be requested will be in the budget coming um does he share the sense or am I mistaken in the sense that it's urgent and that it's something that we'll be working hard on in the next year or should I maybe chill a bit no I think this should be a High um priority um
it's going to be a high ticket item but we will be bringing you you a request for appropriation in the in the capital project budget right I have two further but I I'll wait for someone El you have other hands up so I'll wait councelor d'angeles thank you I want to go back to the complete Street because what I was hearing was the capacity of DPW to take it on was not
there uh and I think that we need to respect that the other thing is it in terms of costs we couldn't it seems to me that this is something that needs to be let go of and we need to fund the roads and sidewalks um that needs to be a high priority I think that we're reaching too far uh in terms of Finance uh we have DPW coming up we have fire
and I do not see why this has to be taken on in this year at all so I just want to add that to the conversation and I have other things as well but councelor hanii um I think I agree with councelor d'angelus on her comments regarding complete streets that maybe we should concentrate I mean it sounds like at most we would get a half million dollars
if we completed everything and got everything in but that it would take significant resources to get there and might even cost us more than that and if that's the case um it doesn't make sense to put this in um I have a couple more questions the first one is you wrote you have a comment on uh with the one about creating housing opportunities of working with the three institutions of education that you have them written into strategic Partnerships in
2025 um are there strategic Partnerships we don't know of that they're written into or is it only um masses that you're referring to and then I have a question about a different one we have one strategic parnership that's been signed so that's the one you're referring to yeah okay um and then the last one on this list the work with our legislators to explore the possibility of revising State legislation um thank you aena for sending me some of the information I got so I have a question
about this one on total rankings um 74 high but could you tell the council what the medium and lower cuz this was one that I was it it looked like it might have a little more variation than ranking as a high priority indicates
um it'll take me a moment to find that as she finds that also the comments on that one concern me um about half wanted the original and half wanted the alternative and those are two completely different options um so I think we need
more discussion on whether this one would get included in in the goals at all because it's seems to be very split in very different ways and you'll hear that when Athena finds it so I think we had seven High three medium three low zero delete I didn't split out the original language
and the alternative language it was just and you saw that when you ranked it was just a ranking for um for the item uh councelor hanii did you want to say more about that I mean I guess it's it's another one where I'm not sure either one is clear enough for an action item that would get us where we want and given the high variability and the high of the rankings even though seven said High I think they were all saying High to different things um three
said low three said medium um and even everyone who picked an original or an alternative it was like half original half alternative so I think that's one where maybe we would think about deleting it or completely rewarding it for a wording that is stronger and clearer on the action I just want to point out that the council the intent of the meeting tonight was to come to a consensus about
the draft goals and then you would have some time before you vote on the final set of goals on Monday but there's nothing prohibiting motions to add or remove or change the language that's in here so if um if there's a counselor who feels that it's time to make a decision on one of these I encourage you to make a motion can I ask a question about that are we needing to motion everything to stay in or everything to stay out or
only those we want removed or this is the list that you have and so I would say make a motion to remove it this is the draft that go recommended these it so all of them are still on it if we have no motions all 49 stay on tonight okay unless there's you know I'm I'm happy if if the group is happy to hear consensus that you're ready to remove something I think that hopefully when we
get to the the deletes and some of the the other items that seem a little bit more obvious there will be consensus but if a counselor also is ready to make a motion to make a change in language or remove something then um the floor is open for that counselor grimer president gar tonight it's counselor um so I'd like to go back and agree to the point that was made about the complete streets tier 2 and tier three but I do wonder
and in fact I'm even prepared to make a motion um do wonder whether or not while we are looking at maintaining a list of prioritize future roads and sidewalk repairs and new sidewalks that it can be done with an eye of preparing for the tier 2 and tier three application so that we actually build up to that even though in this year we would not try to do tier 2 or tier three that would be
the nature of my motion uh I have other another comment but if people would like to pause with that I'll be glad to are you making a motion I will I move to I move to delete from this year the creation and submit a complete streets tier 2 prioritization plan and tier three construction application to mass do however while doing a list of
prioritized future roads and sidewalk repairs and new sidewalks that we keep in mind preparing the kind of data that we need to eventually apply for tier two and tier three Shane seconds councelor delin goth why not split this into two why not
focus you we got to start making forward motion on the climate action goals and the uh uh accessibility ideals that we have for our sidewalks and our roads and we need to start pushing that a bit more than we are um I would ask the sponsors to consider keeping well I lost the language but keeping thank you just the complete and submit complete streets tier 2 prioritization plan that's the way that
if I'm reading the application form correctly it's 15 potential projects uh that you would plan to move forward under a that would qualify hypothetically for a complete streets Grant um this is a funding opportunity but this is also for once thinking long term and not short we know that it's going to require any at any point this is going to require a push and I don't anticipate us being flush with time in any of our departments I would rather think about how to reduce other
obligations elsewhere and push forward on the things that allow us to bring in money to make our roads and sidewalks and other projects more accessible to folks with disabilities more a for uh more accessible to kids wanting to get walked to school this is what enables us to be able to move forward with that so I would rather think about how to hire temporary support to to do this I would rather think about how to make this happen than merely cutting it when uh we
don't I don't feel we even have the specifics on which parts of this are impossible we talk about needing a prioritization plan for roads and sidewalks why not just focus on the prioritization plan for our projects broadly um in addition to that so I'm unclear on why this is I I can agree with breaking it down to one instead of both even though I still think we should do both but I do not I do not agree with striking it completely and I think that's a
mistake uh president grimer you have your hand up I think that's left over councelor haniki no or so yeah yeah I'm Athena added in I guess the motion includes adding that language you just added to the maintain in um but I'm confused and unsure of how simply maintaining a list of Road and sidewalk repairs keeps in mind preparing data for com a
future application because that's not really preparing any sort of data at all so I don't quite understand how those two halves of this motion relate to each other or what you'd even do with the proposed added language would you do and prepare data the word and have two actions they
don't relate to each other is my thinking I don't understand how keeping a list of what's going to be repaired with the money we've you know allocated relates to Preparing data for a future application I I need someone to explain how those relate to each other because I don't understand how they do councelor gzar I I made the assumption that you wanted to add that to this other goal
was that correct I did and I'll be glad to speak to why I think it is there might be words I think they're related and that is part of our uh practice on an regular basis is to do an inventory of our streets and the condition of our streets it seems to me that that's also part of getting ready for the complete streets tier two and then going on to three so if maybe it's a change in wording but it does seem to me that if we're looking at how are we
going to continue to prioritize our future Road and sidewalk repairs and new sidewalks that we would do it in mind keeping in mind and how we collect the data and how we are preparing to apply for tier two and tier three that's all okay um I'm going to call on Andy and then Jennifer because I haven't heard from them yet uh councelor Steinberg yeah was uh curious It's My I received one
communication about this in particular from the chair of Transportation advisory committee and I was wondering whether anybody who's been attending uh as Le asan or otherwise uh Tac meetings whether they've had any discussion about this issue and whether we should be Consulting them before making a final decision can anyone speak to
that I can speak to it in Broad terms um and you can cut me off if it's not appropriate but my thought is that this is something that could work through TSO that both these items both the creation of a list and this the the complexities of a tier two and tier three process could simply be referred to TSO it would still be something that we'll be working on in the coming years here but it's technically off of Paul's plate but it's certainly not off of our radar um trying
to W Smith this and get it right is I don't think it's going to work this evening and it seems that the the wisest thing would be to send it to TSO where we'll continue to consult with Tac and work with uh with Guilford and Paul and try and get some clarity on this and then come back with a perhaps a coherent proposal to the council a later date uh councelor toab um I don't want to put words in the uh mouth of the chair of um
of the transportation advisory committee but I just went back through an email because I recalled getting an email from Tracy zafian supporting this item as a town manager goal again I just glanced at it but so in response to Andy's question um I don't know if Tac actually if if that came if she was riding her capacity as a resident or a chair of the transportation advisor committee but I agree with Anna I don't I think if we
put it off I don't know that it's ever going to be the right year to do it so I think I also support the suggestion of breaking it into two of doing maybe tier one this year and tier three next year but I think this is something we have to do and it's one of those things it's never going to be a good time to do it but but I would like to see us um start start it and make a commitment to go forward with tier two and three councelor Dev MC goth
here it wasn't me I swear uh I'd like to know specifically what items on the prioritization list provided by mass doot for tier 2 the the document that they send to prioritize your projects aren't currently being addressed by DPW when they are prioritizing or talking about their projects generally so there's not a detailed you know um detailed maps it's basic or anything like that you know
it's asking for this list of your your top prioritized projects name description Source location uh Google Maps link what modes it's serving what type of project it is and then your assessment is is it in a high crash area is it an environmental justice Community is it a safe roots to school is it a safe roots for seniors does this project improve conditions for people with disabilities and it does it include state-owned roads what is the estimated project range cost what is the funding requested from mot
what other funding sources and amount if applicable and then how long is it going to take to me these feel like questions we should be asking for every project that we're doing regardless and so I I'm struggling to see how this particular part of it is going to be an extreme burden and if so I'm questioning what what information we're asking right now about our projects and as we prioritize them the phrase keeping in mind doesn't help us in mov towards the tier 2 prioritization um I ideally in my mind
we're already using some sort of prioritization process for all of our projects and if anything we should flip it right we should be creating the tier 2 application prioritization document keeping in mind the priority list of roads and sidewalks um because that actually addresses more of the questions that we end up asking I think sending this to TSO is just going to kick it back to to Guilford and Jason because it's not something think TSO can answer um in terms of the what the upcoming projects are and all of that so I really
would like to understand a why the complete streets tier 2 prioritization plan specifically is uh a which part of it is a heavy lift uh and it and differs from our current process when we look at the projects that we need to do did you have anything you want to say about that right now yeah I don't have the level of detail that you're asking for right now but I can certainly we can have that conversation I think what the
the question was is will this this is basically an added burden to the DPW that they um with all the questions are being asked as opposed to just putting out a road that needs to be paved uh that would be added burden on them but it's but it sorry but this is about the prioritization part of that not like a road needs to be paved let's pave it it's saying these are the projects that we know we're looking at in the coming year is that not something that we currently
have so yes and that's what we'll be presenting to TSO once TSO gets up and running we talk about the roads that are up for um for construction repaving every year um and that gets presented to the council during our presentation when we make it so so and Beyond just the roads and sidewalks I'm talking broader DPW projects so because this goes Beyond just roads and sidewalks right like this is other projects including that they want to do and so they're not answering
I have to pull up the last time that we got that prioritized list but we're not they're not answering the these questions on it and so what you're saying is that the added burden would be responding to the questions on here that we don't already ask by law we have to make every project Ada accessible um and you know um that there's just not requ we're not allowed to design a a road that's not accessible that doesn't meet the Ada requ requirements so I understand that that is a different question than improving conditions
necessarily um but and then the other things aren't necessarily on that tally list if I'm remembering right so safe roots to schools safe roots for seniors um environmental justice Community those are not on the the list okay councilor Ryan so we currently have a motion in front of us it's been seconded to uh reward this is that correct or is it deletion somebody remind me it's up on the screen in Red so it's deleting this fourth item and
then adding language to that item down towards the bottom right and my thought is if we keep it the way it is if we we defeat the motion and this stays in the goals document as a high priority that um this will come to TSO and a conversation will take place and answers to some of these questions can be gotten um so I guess I would feel like I would like to keep it as it is and I would not vote for this motion if my understanding is that the
process will be will take time but it is something that TSO can certainly look into it seems to be something that a number of counselors would like us to pursue including me um Paul can't answer all these questions tonight nor should he be expected to but we can get answers but if we adopt this motion that's on the floor at the moment I think I'm not sure what's going to happen so I prefer to keep this as it is and um let the process through TSO work its way okay councelor hanii I call the
question no there weren't any any other hands up so can we um is everyone okay just voting rather than voting twice uh coun so we'll skip the the vote on the calling the question it looks like the discussion is done councelor unless councelor okay I just wanted clarification so a
yes vote would be make the change and a no vote would be keep it as it is that's correct okay okay so we'll now this vote is on the changes that are on the screen in red councelor d'angeles I councelor Devin gothier no councelor ET councelor griesmer I councelor hanii no councelor
hegner no councelor Lord nay is that a nay nay no no thank you councelor Rooney uh no councelor Ryan no councelor Shane no councelor Steinberg no councelor to no councelor Walker no okay so that's defeated we're going
to take this out okay councelor hanii I move I'm gonna be making a motions tonight apologize um I moveed to delete the phrase quote and a tier three Construction application to Mast doot end quote from that one there a
second second Ry uh councilor Ryan my hand is down your hand is up I know but it's down actually okay depends in which reality you're in is there any
discussion starting with councelor Devin gothier yes oh councelor did you have a comment before I was wondering if um councelor haniki could speak to why she wanted to make that delion um given the discussion and what the manager has said it appears that it's the tier three application that might be much more problematic and heavy lifting than the tier 2 and we want to
keep moving on tier we want to keep moving and so I'm trying to remove the the bigger roadblock to it okay de go here yes at yes Grier I haniki I hegner yes Lord I Rooney yes Ryan I Shane yes Steinberg
yes toab yes Walker yes d'angeles I okay that passes uh councelor d'angeles yep go ahead yeah I'm trying uh the Tilt high for the senior senator Ada accessible let's stay on this page I just want to make sure that we're done with this page before we go to tilt high is that okay
all right um it sounds like there's consensus on the rest of this list can I ask a clarifying question no okay okay I had a question for councelor haniki you said uh the and and I know we voted it already but to clarify should we keep the words to mass do in the goal because we would still be creating and committing the tier two I don't know if we have to revote on all of that it feels like it's a
clarification thank you uh councelor d'angelus you have your hand up still you good okay councelor gmar uh I actually there's two more on this side um I want to ask the town manager whether it is realistic to pursue a partnership agreement with Hampshire College given the leadership change that's coming up not that I don't think it's a good
goal yes because um I think the existing the current president might want to get this out of the way great I have another question okay and that is that on the very last one regarding pilot based on a conversation we've had in the past it seems to me that the issue of State own owned land is a much higher priority and more realistic than the
nonprofit um higher end institutions and so in some way I would like to um adapt or Mo make a motion about the language here that it stay focused on the pilots on state-owned land and just end it with that is that what you're proposing yes but keeps the language
right second L go there so that gets that chooses the first one over the alternative yes to yes and yes Lynn is what's on the screen correct yes it is okay thank you is there anything else you wanted to say to your motion uh yes I would like to speak it was there was a second yeah I seconded it thank you um we have had numerous
conversations about this several people attended a uh MMA session where um one of the state bodies is proposing something that actually would harm ammer based on how they're assessing lands this is not the time to walk away from the is issue of state-owned land and Pilots it's the time to dive in thank you councelor hanii um not on this I have more motions okay we have a motion on the on
the floor now so I'm going to move on your councelor Ryan so I guess I'm asking this to my colleagues and maybe they can just help me see more clearly what we're asking Paul to do he is saying that he has these conversations they're ongoing are we basically saying we want you to I mean it sounds like we're saying Focus specifically on this state owned land um in your conversations with state legislators that's the first question I guess the answer is obviously yes um I also wonder what our role is um why
are we throwing this or are we throwing this just on Paul's plate shouldn't we also individually or collectively be speaking to our state legislators about this issue and advocating we should so um this is not in lie of what we're doing but we're simply saying to Paul this is something we collectively think is important and we'd like you to focus on it in the coming year united front yes yes okay thank you councelor
tub um I would still like to see conversations with Amis college does that mean I agree that having it be a goal not including the in you that this could be a goal on its own to be advocating for um payments in Le of taxes for state owned land but I would still want maybe it's just another goal have conversations continue with ammer college so I think that that would be
addressed under the Strategic partnership agreement with ammer college the the one right above that it's not exactly a pilot yeah but it would be sort of compensation councelor Rooney that helps me a little bit yes um but I think of the I think of the net value of for instance all of the facilities that UMass all of the facilities that CIS college and there is there is such a value even to those facilities that are
uh if you even if you uh extract all the facilities that are very much teaching teaching related um all of the revenue generating ones all of the um the auxiliary Services there is a huge value that that we can't tap um as a you know as a town and so I'm trying to figure out as Jennifer just said um why can't
we just include the high and higher education uh institutions to include it if possible councelor Devin goth so to okay it is me I need to make this chord longer I'm sorry um but I'll do it in a second um what you're talking about changes the intention or those are two different things right so state-owned Land versus private higher education
institutions are two different things I think we are much more likely to see movement on Shifting the um Shifting the formula for for pilot payments on state-owned land and pursuing strategic Partnerships uh separately as two as the two separate goals addressing those two issues then we are to work with our legislators to pursue pilots from non profits because that's what that would look like if we were trying to say pilots from ammer and Hampshire college
or just ammer College I think this is much more realistic I do see this in terms of what is going on Paul's plate from this as prioritizing if uh data is requested or you know continually advocating it should be in coming up in every single meeting with our state legislators uh I do see that there is work for the council to do in this such as passing resolutions or having a um um G to say the wrong term the one where we all sit down and just talk about an issue I don't remember the term as it's
thank you work session um I didn't want to say the wrong one uh on the report that Athena sent out from the state auditor's office I see that there are things for both the town manager and the council to do on this I think it would be a mistake to take out the teeth of this being about uh revising the state legislation uh about payments and L of taxes is involving state owned land State the the amount of state owned land we have uh is is immense but it doesn't
the the formula does not take into account the use of that land so uh I don't know any other state-owned lands in Massachusetts that have 30,000 visitors a day for most of the year right so we need to be pushing for this formula change as well as those partnership agreements but they're with two different bodies and they are trying to achieve two very different things so I I strongly support this uh this change
um councelor Rooney did you speak on this already okay councelor ete the language is work with uh legislators to explore the possibility of revising States legislation I'm wondering what would at the end of the year what success would look like how could we actually creade
this uh councelor Shane I don't think you've spoken on this one yet please go ahead so I'll speak to what Rea just asked if we got more money we would know we got more money we just saw what we're getting now and it's zero increase you know so there's a dollar amount that we know each year so this is actually one of the most measurable things we have as a goal but I just want to say a quick word about the nonprofit side you know
our big others there's a huge anti- that Coalition based in Boston called Mass General Beth Israel and name all the other big facilities so there is a pilot group and I've attended multiple meetings of it that proposes to take 25% of the value and and tax it because a lot of there's a lot of interest in other places plac but you run against a very powerful group that has the legislates here and it just never goes
anywhere so I'd be happy because I attend these other meetings to let people come so as individual counselors we can be part of the larger group it's just I think Focus here has a better chance of yielding something uh councelor hegar we haven't heard from you please go ahead yeah I just wanted to respond to councelor e um I think that this requires the legislators to
act on something which is beyond the town manager's ability to do so all all the town manager can do is is is ask really um and I think that you could maybe we could strengthen this a little bit but I I think the idea of just advocating for this is what we are what we should be asking for uh I think we've heard from everybody I
just want to remind you all that we've been here on this page for almost an hour and we have we have quite a bit to go so I'm going to ask everyone to keep their comments short and I'll um I'll try and remind you of that as well Mandy is your hand still up okay not on this okay councelor grimore call the question
the question is the way it appears on the screen this right here we're moving this part uh councelor ET this is a it's to call the question this is to a vote to end the discussion so a yes ends the discussion and moves us to the uh vote on removing this language on the
screen so calling the question isn't the vote it's simply to end the discussion the the vote to call the question ends the discussion and we move immediately to a vote on this so is your vote Yes to end the discussion yes thank you grimer yes haniki yes hegner yes Lord yes Rooney yes Ryan Yes Shane yes yes Steinberg yes H yes
Walker yes d'angeles I Devin gothier I that's unanimous we're going straight to the vote to remove this language grimer yes haniki I hegner I Lord I Rooney yes Ryan I Shane yes Steinberg yes hob yes Walker yes d'angeles i d gothier i
at I wonderful uh councelor hanii I move to split the maintain a list of priority prioritized future Road and sidewalk repairs and the alternative into two separate action items and keep both of them that's a motion to basically keep
them both not have one as an alternative because right now it's listed as an alternative got it I second that just put the word and in no it's two separate two separate actions okay councelor d'angelus this is
conversation on this particular change right here okay that's where we are so I'm looking for discussion uh coun Rooney yeah um I'm I'm not going to support separating this out and and having a separate one I would not support the second item and that is that we're asking for list of priority roads and sidewalks and there will be conversation at TSO I would hope on the
process and how it's done that can be reported to to the council um I don't really feel that we have the need to talk about tell to tell the town manager how to prioritize I think we can question the list that comes to us that is a way of that is a way of challenging it um but but frankly to create a whole new item that just says and you must talk with us about how to do it how to
set that priority um I think we've already given quite a bit of instruction on uh let's aim toward a tier 2 complete Street plan and all that entails that will certainly hopefully inform the priority list of side sidewalks and streets so I would I would not support this action to separate and create a new item you T um I would agree because I actually wondered I didn't bring it up when it came up last time if this is something that in TSO we're discussing what
responsibilities and scope of work a proposed um transportation and parking traffic and uh commission might have and this might go there councilor I'm wondering since we split one item into two which exactly is the Hy priority because if we don't know then should we be discussing
it councelor D here I would support actually remove it I'm not making a motion on top of AEM motion I'm just noting I would support removing fully that uh Second part the alternative language or that new one um because I feel that actually to be honest this kind of could go away if we are truly going with that complete streets tier 2 prioritization plan and
if our road and sidewalk repairs fall under that uh that would cover both of these things in my mind okay councelor hanii so I did this because the comments indicated that both had support um I would actually vote to delete the maintain a list of prioritized future roads and sidewalks and keep the conversation frankly um
because I think we need the conversation I think a lot of the prioritization um everything that when residents come to us they say why isn't mine prioritized and I think we as a council have some sort of responsibility to indicate to the manager in sidewalks are we prioritizing creating new or are we
prioritizing repairing sidewalks where are we prioritizing creating new right now we haven't had those conversations when we prioritize doing roads you've kind of had that conversation in TSO but the council has not had that conversation um and given complete streets and all and the cost that might go along with that I think there needs to be a conversation in the Council of when you do do a road are we doing just a complete repair of what's there and a resurfacing of what's
there or do we want to add sidewalks to it do we want to add bike Lanes to it where are our priorities on spending that money and we haven't had those conversations and I think those are the conversations we need to be having more than just bring us a list of what you want so that's why I I would rather keep what was the alternative but I thought the best thing to do was split them so that we didn't fight which one should be kept and which one shouldn't be councilor
Ryan I have to agree with Mandy that um if you just have a list a thousand one people are going to ask why and why am I here and why right that's so we have to have some sense of what the the logic is behind it you could argue as I think councilor Rooney was suggesting if I remember correctly that this is something that will happen at TSO um and it might but I think both are important we want a list and we also want a sense of what the logic is behind
it so separating them out makes both points I think that both end up in TSO um if you just have the the first one um and all all Paul is being asked to do is generate a list um they already have a list I'm sure they they could present a list probably tomorrow okay um councelor Walker you had your hand up and down so I'm just noticing that your hand isn't up anymore please put it back up if you have a comment councelor grimer I have no problem with splitting
these because basically one's asking for a conversation with the council the other one is making sure the public knows what the list says what I what does strike me however is the phrase on how to prioritize future roads Etc so in other words we're going to tell them how to prioritize I find that a little strange councelor I'm having trouble uh finding the right
time to do this until we because we're not quite ready to present to the council the discussion about the transportation and parking commission and transportation and parking commission may take over this responsibility decision the discussion in the council could be we don't want to have a transportation and parking commission there's a lot of process
around something that's already out there and has involved a lot of work um that is within a couple of months probably of being before the council and I I just uh wonder why we're spending time on making this decision now councelor Walker sorry I was having some connectivity issues um but I seconded
this motion uh for much of what Mandy Joe said but I think the key piece for me is uh the transparency and I think that this is an item that comes up in almost every constituent conversation that I have and I know that the roads and sidewalks are very important to our residents and they want to know what's happening and so while I think it's great that we have um a public list that they can read and that's updated
annually I think we're going to get questions more often than annually and I think it would be helpful for us to have a conversation at the council level because that's where people who are wanting to hear these updates will most likely be tuning in um so again that's why I am supporting this okay I don't see any addition hands so we're going to move to the vote councilor
grimore I hanaki I hegner I Lord I the vote here is to divide these two goals that are on the screen shown in red uh count it's to split them into two separate goals yes uh councelor Rooney no uh Ryan hi Shane yes
Steinberg yes tab yes Walker yes d'angelus i d gothier i i it passes 12 to1 C to probably realize I was Voting um so we're not now going to vote are we going to vote on each one we just voted to
split them in half we didn't now there are two on the list instead of one we didn't vote on to approve okay there wasn't a there wasn't a deletion here it was just dividing it into a new one councelor hanii um one more because we have to get rid of the alternative somehow um so I move to delete the alter alternative from the develop a plan for addressing critical space and program needs at the senior center well and the words including an
if they're still there so then's at senior center second it's deleting deleting this language that's in red right here so is this just Wordsmith like do we have to vote on the is that all we're doing there was an alternative that devel dangling word no the dangling word
is just there but there was an alternative that said remove develop so that's the it's a decision to yeah to choose the original or the alternative councelor Hy do you want to speak to your motion I think we need the plan with the money before we do anything and so if the money it makes sense to start with
the plan and the money not address them which requires you have construction contracts and all too councelor grimer should this more correctly say at the bang Center no just it's in the bang Center is are
we only doing the senior center it's not got it thank thank you I'm still councilor d'angeles did you have another comment okay is there any further discussion okay so the vote is to remove including an and the alternative I think we are to Hanah
keep I hegar yes Lord yes Rooney yes Ryan Yes Shane yes Steinberg yes to yes Walker yes d'angeles yes Dev gothier I ET I Grismer I that's unanimous is there any further discussion or
motions on this page being none I'm going to move to the next
one floor is open for discussion on motions councelor doin goth here yeah the third one on this list clarify to the public what departments manage which services and where and how complaints or requests for help regarding those Services should be made uh I know I would lose this because it tilted high but I would strike to remove this I I think that this is really vague um and I think that it's not
necessarily the most helpful of of goals but on the other hand I'm fine keeping it in here because I think it could be met very easily with a simple flowchart so if we want an easy win we can keep it in um but I I just wanted to put it out there I don't uh don't love this one I don't think it's necessarily as helpful as it could be is that OT to remove no uh um I'm going to move to remove that
one that she was just talking about so clarify remove move to delete the clarify the to the public this whole thing that whole thing the whole action item may I speak to it yes um while it tilted High I believe that it had a lot more variability than a tilt High indicates um I think there were a lot more people that ranked at low medium or even delete um even if there were a few that tilted it to High um so
I I think there are more important ones on here than one that had a lot of variability as to how it was ranked okay councelor Ryan I agree I believe this should be deleted okay councelor Walker um I'm not necessarily opposed to deleting this but I do think and I'm sorry I don't know exactly where we fell on the website um management and like the changing of the website but I think that this would be a lovely thing to see
on our website I don't know if it needs to be a whole goal though councelor Rooney I actually voted this High um because I myself have difficulty finding things finding information and it seemed I did not expect it would be a major investment so I was simply looking at clarification of how to find you know um if you're looking for dog licenses it's
I think it's fairly easy to find that but but finding a report or something like that it's just pretty tough to Wade through um all the sources of information you almost have to really really know what department does it what you know what uh element you're looking for in order to find it so I felt that in terms of communicating with the public being able to find information is probably the most
important thing to take the burden off staff if you will so um rather than just deny it um I think it would be it's just something that I think we all need to be able to um support it might be helpful if um you speak to the a little bit because other towns in our discussion you had said that other towns do this one call to town hall but that would be require some resources to set up
something like that and this and the 311 would be an even higher dedication of resources yes so when we thought like the the the perfect solution on this is what they call 311 which is a like a 911 system where you call someone answers they answer whatever call you have no matter what as long as it's not emergency um those several cities have introduced that it's a high resource need and that's I think that's the ideal solution I don't think we're talking about that here um what I'm hearing is people U saying the search function for
the um website isn't as good I tend you know I think there's some if you can give me sort more guidance on what those things are that we can address that um the search function on our website isn't great um but in terms of um you know using Google usually actually is much more accurate um so I I think if it's um we try to have in our website we will be making improvements in it this year because we're entitled to but it's not it's not going to be an overhaul of the entire website this
year and that'll come up when we get to the Tilt medium the website improvements that's where that is yeah I was going to say maybe this ties into the me the the website thing okay councelor Shane I'm I'm fine with deleting this and my my one thought Paul is we could send you notes on for example people don't know to where to find see click complain kind of think they don't know to find where to find it they don't know do I who do I go to if my sidewalks a mess so it's certain if if we sort of
had somewhere what do you do if and so it's more of a website function and then the counselors could get a little cheat sheet when someone asks us to I think that's a good idea or if you wanted to give us the things that you're hearing we can you know if we get enough of them we we put it on more prominently in our website things like that councelor I think for me I thought it was going to be um a layup because I
wasn't thinking of a phone call I was simply thinking of slight improvements that could be made to the website so I I think I ranked this high and actually wanted um website improvements deleted um because I think this covers it more than the website okay Council Ryan I hear and I agree with the concerns I certainly get a fair number of constituents who are frustrated at times
and what I do try to do and I'm sure my colleagues do too is to try to help people figure it out I think it's Town services and Outreach so again this is something that I think Town's TSO can take up and explore and come back to the council and and work with Paul and staff um on particular ways particular fixes if possible so I think we should delete it but I think it's something TSO should take up okay councelor top I think a lot of it could be covered when we get to what like I would be
comfortable taking this off if and then I would make a higher priority the website example we were doing District newsletter and I just um went on the website and did a search for Winterfest 2025 and I could not get to it than that okay thank you I don't see any other hand so we're moving to a vote and it's to remove what's in red and struck through here um uh councelor hegner sorry can we just add and move to
website conversation it's there it'll be it'll be in tilt medium we're getting to that um you want me to put a note point of order but that note is just for us it's not part of the motion is that correct we are not voting thank
you councelor hegner I'm sorry can clarify what we're voting on to remove this language that's in red remove it all together Lord I Rooney uh yes Ryan hi Shane yes steinber yes to yes Walker yes
d'angeles I Davin gothier I ET me grimer hi haniki hi that's 12 to one and passes okay looking for discussion and motions George Ryan so item two Senior Center um transportation program that runs 5 days a week this is something I personally feel the strong about um it's
something I've heard a lot about from Council on Aging and Friends of the senior center but Paul's comment is there's no budget capacity um and I feeling is well we GNA have to just work on that so I'm just assuming we're going to leave it in is that assumption correct it's there until until you take it out cancel Han haniki
um I got a motion I'm not sure whether to move to delete both of them or just everything but the alternative on the senior center one um so I'm gonna start with moving to delete that box except for the well so moving to delete the phrase senior center Ada accessible Transportation program that runs five days a week and then
alternative but keep the rest of it got it is there a second so this is what's left increase senior accessible Transportation offerings is there a second second Rooney looking for discussion there were a bunch of hands before so yes please pied to your motion so I struggled with whether to delete the whole thing or leave the increased senior accessible Transportation offerings
um I respect the manager's budget capacity comments uh five days a week comments we if we are keeping that in before we move on tonight I if this vote is voted down I want to hear from the counselors as to what um reality of resources they would want in order to fund a 5day a week thing that we can't just leave it to him he needs guidance from us and I just
don't get the feeling the council is willing to reallocate a huge number of resources to this um but increasing senior accessible Transportation offerings may be possible without a budget allocation potentially and I don't know whether it is which is why I struggled with whether we should delete the whole thing or not um but I thought I'd just start with the first half okay looking for succinct comments
councelor definitely go there that I'm immediately right at you I I see it um Paul you noted that uh unless we reallocate resources or secure grants could you say a little bit about the um availability of grants that might is that a feasible thing to expect that we might be able to achieve a grant I'm sorry I'm trying even if it's not for five days so so we have been utilizing grants already um and so that's that's pretty much how it's been operating in terms in terms of
donation of the vehicle including that um so and unless there's a new source of Revenue or else we reprioritize you know we're really our finance director here because um we are really tight on money and there are no new initiatives coming in fact it's the opposite so that's why I just want the council be highly cognizant that it's a zero some G game here councelor Shane I I I think I'm okay with what
Mandy's done to tone it down a bit but I'm worried this is micromanaging and the second piece is I went to this fabulous program called morning morning movements for the kids that happens at 7 and it was mentioned that there are a whole bunch that want to come but there's no van to get them there CU there's no driver to drive the van so we're short on money for were both van drivers and they said there are Vans and I think with seniors they're Vans there's just no one to drive them so it's it is a problem and I don't think
we should be adding anything to the budget it's where Mandy just said unless we have a place we're going to cut and we we're looking at uh we just heard today that the health insurance increase is nearly 20% it's not the 13 that we' originally thought of so we just saw a lot of fly out the door of our budget there's just not room to add something so I'm all for getting a grant for something but that doesn't sustain it so I would
remove to remove it all together or to leave it in this try to increase it wording coun grimer I think there's V various ways to make this happen I so therefore I support the alternative language that we're putting in even though the world alternative is not there uh and I think it's through collaboration thank you de goth here sorry um Paul with the
availability of is is the pvta senior bus still in operation because that runs Monday through Friday 8:30 to 4: and is available for anyone 60 years up is that not still running I was just looking on the website for what else was out there I'm not sure which one there is a bus that goes from um from ammer to Greenfield that the pvta has funded maybe it's something this says door Todo Transit so pvt that would just be the
normal pvta service it's it does three days a week it door to door so it wouldn't be the normal because it wouldn't be a bus stop three days a week is that what you Saida one second depending what the if it's the you're if that's a pvta service it's not a service the town provides I understand I'm just trying to figure out if it's still happening cuz if we're duplicating Services because the pvta website says dial ride hours are Monday through Saturday 8:00 a.m. till 900 p.m. the Senior Center website says Monday
through Friday 8: AM to 4 pm I'm I'm just trying to figure out what's currently there and maybe that's a bigger question but I'm I'm just unclear so Ada Vans um for pbta is standard um in all communities they are required to do um you know a call for a ride um if for for door-to-door service for um accessible van coverage it is difficult I know from working in other communities
to to get those rides and time them but there is a requirement and PVA pbta does provide that my understanding that is that the council and aging has also received a van um a donated van from the pbta that they are operating three days a week because that's what they have Staffing for and and trying to um augment the Ada accessible van for this the senior groups thank
you Council griesar I wonder if a friendly Amendment would be explore options for increasing senior accessible Transportation offerings so that if we keep going at it but we and we don't eliminate it but we don't feel like we have to trade off for dollar that would be fine with me uh councelor p uh Rooney you were the
second of the motion it was to add explore options for in are you okay with that friendly Amendment okay is there any further discussion okay we're to Lord so it's to the motion here that you're voting is to remove this language that struck through and to add this language that's underlined Lord hi Rooney yes Ryan hi Shane yes Steinberg yes to yes
Walker yes d'angeles I Devin gothier I ate I grimer I haniki I hegner yes that's unanimous thank you uh councelor Steinberg gra your hand up okay councelor Shane I'm moving on to another topic yeah let's go okay so the um when I
rated these I moved the the very one last one on the page present a schematic design I moved it up to be part of the committee work of DPW and fire um I understand it's the building committee work that's the comment here but what attracted me to this wording is a timeline for getting a schematic designed so we could go out to Bid And if anything I'd rather keep this that you have to form a committee to do this but you could form a committee and have
them talk for two or three years you know in not an Amorous no oh e even in the school building committee because we had to go through five stages before we got to schematic design so so I so what I liked about this is that we were saying we want actually to get moving on this and and get it designed so we could do at least this one so um everyone wants to keep splitting these to smaller parts so I'd rather have this before
form the committee and present a schematic design then leave them delete this and leave just a committee so that that's just it's a word smithing like move it up to be part of the committee is what I wanted to do so so my motion would be whatever it's number six number six on the page before is to you know it says form a committee form a building committee and then it would be and present a schematic
design so just move that all up so the idea the committee itself has uh a mission second d'angeles so your motion is both to add these words and to remove that goal from the second page is that right not leave it as a separate one so move it into the other one so so take this out and then add the language move EXA move that language exactly to up to
that exact yeah so it read as a and pres committee does its work and we get a design so we see an outcome from the work is there a second discussion on this motion councilor Devin goth here best practice and goal setting everything needs to be specific everything should be one action as much as possible when we combine action items we make mushier expectations we make it harder to have
clarity as a body as to whether or not it was achieved because if it's partially achieved we end up with a mix right in down the middle when we average out whether or not it was achieved we do not reduce the amount of work as you said both of these need to occur or one needs to occur for the other to occur so they both will occur but to combine them dilutes the D dilutes our ability as a council to declare whether something is complete or not and it doesn't change
anything about the amount of work I think this is pointless I think this is unnecessary wordsmithing and I would urge this body to resist combining specific action items okay go worked really hard hang on go worked very hard to differentiate these out to make sure that each action item was its own goal it was its own action item for this reason okay councelor I'd like to begin by saying that uh word smithing is getting a bad
rap okay but onto other things I wonder about if this is feasible within a year from what I see thank
you form appoint building committee and present a schematic design I think I would like to know if that's something that is feasible within one year are there is there any other discussion before vote on this and people understand I want all the wording of that schematic design right I don't me want you to copy the whole thing and
it's for one of the buildings it's all the way to the end and see why that whole piece is moving up you want this whole I just want to make clear that's what I was suggesting you want this whole thing in there y because it's I don't expect fire also and I said I'm putting a focus on DPW and if anything I would keep just that one Onna because that's the important
one okay uh we are to Rooney yes Ryan hi Shane yes Steinberg yes Tom yes Walker yes d'angelus I delin gothier nope ate no Grier hi hanii no hegner yes Lord
No 9 to4 it passes back down here we are one left in this tilt High category is there any discussion
motion councelor grimore I'm looking for clarification the uh very top one on tilt high was then broken in to include um three additional bylaws bests and two others and I'm trying to figure out
how that voting came out because if we leave this General one in it still opens the door for more bylaws this year I'm not opposed to more bylaws I'm just is feasible this year um the prioritization from counselors came out low for best two-stroke engines and fossil fuels in new construction did you want to say something to
this no Ju Just yes um so what what I was saying if what I would look at this in terms of if you're saying proposed Focus action you know Focus bylaws these are the bylaws that are in the in the queue that we're working on and that's what would will take the year I think to get these these three moving through and then the um the required Adu changes as well would be queued up after
this is there any further discussion or motions on this page Council Rooney well it seems like if if what um Paul says then then solar bylaw best ways taller are meeting this goal and we're working on them so we don't I so good we'll we'll get to the Finish Line faster on this
one C grimer so my question is should it say including in the list the bylaws that in fact we are working on Paul you had said that you don't need it to say the bylaws that are in process that we are currently supporting is that correct right so I think if you've already moved something forward or if it's coming through the council we're going to still work on those just trying to look
that so these three are you looking for these three yeah they're on your low page are we moving on uh councelor deangeles they're in the uh pipeline we're working on them that staff is working on them now so I don't think they need to be listed and any counselor can introduce anything during the year whether and then it gets referred to
committee or not okay councelor Tom my only question about not including what we're in process of working on is if if and when they're accomplished shouldn't you get credit for that so so it'll be on our valuation okay because she'll say that's what you accomplished this year so okay if we can accomplish them this year the delay belongs to the might still be here talking about
goals if staff accomplishes that they should get credit okay no further discussion on this page uh councelor grimer yes best has never been referred it's it's it's under development it's being developed by
staff it'll be proposed so solar bylaw is in CRC and when when uh staff has capacity after solar is done then they'll bring best forward when there's capacity after best is done then they'll bring the changes to the Adu that are required by law forward thank you um yes this may be premature but can you we
need to talk about Adu being delayed that long when Adu went into effect two days ago like if we're literally talking about ad you won't touch until Bess is done da Dave's over here like we're not sequencing that way we're just yeah okay ad is coming first ad is coming first
okay okay I don't hear any other discussion on this page so we're gonna move on Kathy councelor Shane okay I on on the very first one update the capital inventory um we had actually a fairly long discussion of the capital inventory when we were putting it together at jcpc on what was doable with existing information and not an enormous amount of staff
work much of what is added here is not just not feasible in 2025 it's really difficult so we came up with some kind of s they're simpler this is a gas machine this is a hybrid this is an electric it's very old and it's not so very old how much does how much heat does the building use you know some things that were measurable so I think just keeping up with the capital
inventory that we've got we had a hard time updating it last year just on staff time I wouldn't add more to the capital inventory so I had it as a delete not just see not because I don't like the capital inventory but I thought you don't want to have too many things in a capital inventory that you can't get information on and you can't keep Curren thank you councilor Devin gothier for many years we had a goal in here that was transition the municipal Fleet and
buildings away from the use of fossil fuels what we talked about in go was that that on the face of it is not doable in a year at all and we don't actually know what it would take to do that and where we should be pushing first which leaves jcpc and I was off in this person asking for every vehicle could we make this electric could we make this electric could we make this electric we need to understand as a council and we need to
know that the town has considered what the priorities are for transition and what the criteria are for transition so for example with police cars what we can't just switch over to you know whatever electric car comes off the lot we need to make sure that the car fits the standards for police vehicles as set by whoever sets those standards so where we after conversation with the town manager landed was that instead of saying switch the fleet over and switch the buildings over and all of that it's
to actually identify what are the criteria for doing so and what are the priorities what are the ones we need to do first um so that was my first comment in terms of why this is not the same thing that we're already doing and it's not the same thing that we've had in past goals I would like to make a motion to insert the words for the 20 26 Capital inventory after the parenes the Clos parenthesis a so comma for the 2026
Capital inventory to make this more doable uh per Paul's comment because I think we're stuck in a a pattern of goals coming at a weird time when then Capital inventories get done so I'd rather give it more time um but we have to get it in a we can't say we'll put it in the goals next year because we'll run into the same problem so are you updating the inventory or are you updating priorities it's the inventory I'm worried about it would it wouldn't update the inventory it would kind of go
along with the inventory it would not update the actual inventory itself it would well I mean it could I don't know what format Paul would put it in but it would be an additional item to talk about what the criteria and priorities for that transition are can can we ask a clarifying question yes can we clarify that 2026 you mean FY I mean I mean FY 27 Paul's comment of not feasible before the 2025 deadline I should have said 2026 deadline but yes FY 27 thank
you just a clarification question could you insert that after right before Capital sure would that if that makes you happier no just a thought and I will second the motion did you wanted to put it here instead George I it's up to the the motion proposed I just thought it might be simpler but I second the motion George is right it does make it simpler if I could yes please just just
a note in the climate leader designation um application it does require accept uh adopting a vehicle policy which we have done uh which I'm not sure if it's gone out to you or not but I can share that with you in the schools have done the same thing and it and it talks about prioritizing when possible um electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles thank you I think this and and I appreciate that I think the difference here is kind of clarifying what the criteria are and
priorities are uh councelor hanii is there any more discussion on this one before we seem to have a sidebar um speak I don't see any hands so we ready to a vote councelor Ryan hi hi councelor Shane are we voting on The rewarding you're voting on adding FY
27 uh I abstain councelor Steinberg I councelor tab yes councelor Walker yes councelor d'angelus I councelor Devin gothier I councelor at I councelor gmer I councelor haniki I councelor hegner yes councelor
Lord hi councelor Rooney yes okay it's unanimous with one exstension uh councelor hanii please go ahead so this medium section is missing one so I'm going to I guess move to add the following action item work with the council to identify and propose revision to policies bylaws and regulations to dismantle discrimination
I'm sorry that should have been there is there a
second is there a second I second um councelor hanii did you want to speak to that I think it should be in the action items and I know it was just accidentally left off with all the stuff but this is how we add them so I had to the motion to do it okay any further discussion
Shane ccor Shane I I'm not sure wasn't that one we already rated rated as medium but was left off of this particular document it oh it was missing yes yes just from this document it's in the spreadsheet we got so what so what you're doing is adding back something that was medium that got omitted that got omitted
so that's what we're doing here not voting on this one in particular okay then I guess yes Steinberg yes Tom yes Walker yes d'angeles yes Devin gothier I at I Grier I haniki I hegner I Lord I Rooney yes Ryan I unanimous looking for other discussion
and motions on this page councelor hanii I move to delete the alternative um create a plan for and establish a resident oversight board consistent with the council's November 14 2022 vote is there a second second is that GAR thank you uh councelor hanck will you speak to your motion um I'm still very concerned I actually
voted to delete both of these I will be perfectly honest with you because I'm extremely concerned of the ability to do this legally given the existence of the post commission at the state level um and so but I understand there are a lot of counselors that want something in here and it is in process but I cannot support establishing something when we haven't even seen what it might look like how it might operate or any of that
um given not just my concerns about stepping on state laws with the post commission but also with just how it would even work at all um so that's why I'm seeking to accept or keep the one that is a plan only oh yeah so just on on the alternative uh I can't establish the resident oversight board it's a council action so I don't think this could be a goal that I could
achieve councelor Rooney I think that answered my question councelor Shane I I didn't see I thought we'd see in the comment column Paul that this has a budgetary impact I mean we've never really talked about the Staffing requirement but my understanding when I looked at them it has a budgetary impact so I'm kind of okay with proposing a plan but I want to know what it's going to cost councelor Walker this isn't neutral
thank you um so I understand that um Paul says that this is a council action but I do also know that there is a current um Advisory board set up and so I don't know how that falls in here here but I know that one of my comments on this was that that board's meetings be public so that there could be some transparency and so that we could know what was going on and what kind of decisions were being made um because I
do agree with Mandy Joe and that we don't even know what is being proposed here um and I would like to be a little bit more in the know and I'm not sure how those coincide considering uh Paul's comment but I know that I think he that's in his purview the the um Advisory Board and so I'm wondering if that can be addressed just to clarify my comment was that in order for there to be a resident oversight board I can't do it independently I can present a um a plan
to the council and then the council ultimately has to create it so what my point was is I can't and unilaterally create a um resident oversight board that's a council action okay so it's just the second portion of the proposed alternative yeah okay any further discussion on this uh councelor steinber you're
next how do you vote Yes T yes Walker I'm so sorry what are we voting you're voting to delete what's in red right here the alternative and keep what's in Black okay yes d'angela I delin gothier ET I grimer I haniki hi hegner I Lord I
Rooney yes Ryan I Shane yes it's unanimous councilor Ryan I have a motion uh the third item on the sheet I would like to propose the following language provide training regarding racial equity to the Town Council so strike rights and other options and strike employees and members of the
public a second so I'm happy to speak to that if you wish is is this correct what you're looking at now uh should read provide training regarding racial Equity to the Town Council are you taking out rights on other options well I'm not quite sure what other options means maybe someone can clarify that for me basically what I'm asking by this motion is that we have something that's been long overdue which is
Council training in racial Equity but I'm happy to change the wording if someone thinks it would be better but um I think as the comment makes clear this is continuing and um what I don't think we have as maybe we have't I missed it but I don't know that we as a body of actually asked Paul to um specifically provide this to us so rather than talking about employees or members of the public I thought it would be appropriate that we ask that this
training be provided to the council in the coming year I'm sorry I didn't hear did you want to delete rights and other options or leave that that is what I have proposed unless someone thinks the wording should be yes the answer is yes is there a second thank you uh so discussion on this change uh councelor d'angeles yes I'd like to keep in rights and other options because one of the things that's true about racial Equity is that right now we have
a federal government that's talking about deporting people who are undocumented in immigrants deporting students who protest and so I think when we look at racial Equity we need to include immigration or IM people who are okay immigrants legal or um illegal immigrants in our nation in our city or in our town so I would like to understand uh better some of the options
that I have um in terms of of addressing uh ice or whoever okay you councelor Ryan are you taking that as a friendly Amendment okay this is very coherent sorry uh no it's fine it's just that this issue is in my mind is related to the issue of racial Equity I certainly agree that we have a concern today about immigration
and um but that's a whole another it seems to be another issue entirely so um I'd like to keep the focus where it is okay councelor Rooney uh and I would like to make a friendly amendment to re to return employees and members of the public to the list um it does include the word Town Council so we are included if we get training then then that uh action item can be checked off but I don't want to discontinue the training of employees
and reaching out to members of the public specifically through um um what's the the group The the Dei group so I would I would I would push back gently and say we we want to continue to to provide training to those other elements as well not just Town Council you were asking for a friendly Amendment George and again I would based on Paul's comment and what I know is
happening it's ongoing for employees and uh members of the public um human rights commission's been very active as well but what has not happened is we have not been involved and that's not anybody's fault I'm not pointing a finger of blame but again I would like to keep the focus on uh racial equity and the Town Council okay councelor d'angeles I see your hand but I'm gonna call on councelor and to before councelor please go ahead perhaps I missed something I was
wondering what the difference between the friendly amendment is and what the stat school would be at least on the oh there haven't been friendly amendments right now George's motion is to delete this and this in this here here Elite what's in red there have been no friendly amendments councelor tab yeah I think this gets to you know
uh picking up on what uh Pam said that you know currently the Human Rights Commission and de the Dei staff have been doing you know these terrific workshops um on racial healing so that's providing this Focus to the public so I guess it's just being clear that will continue it's like the bylaws that are already in process so by if we adopt this it doesn't mean that we're going to stop doing what is currently happening yeah I think we would
interpret this not as don't do these things I think I interpret this said in terms of adding the public I think that's how it's being delivered to the public so trainings to the public and the employees will continue whether you pass this or not is there any other discussion okay councelor tab you're up
next is that a no you're first so yes Walker I'm so sorry we are voting on removing the pieces in red that's correct no councelor d'angelus to provide it would be to
provide training to the Town Council with with the understanding that the training for employees and members of the public would be ongoing yes so you're an i Devin gothier I ET I Grier I haniki I hegner I Lord nay Rooney n n Ryan I Shane abstain Steinberg yes okay three six we
have nine nine3 with one exstension so it passes it's 7:56 so um I'm thinking if we can wrap this page up and then we'll take a break and then get back to the rest councelor hanii I move to delete the alternative identify financially support and coordinate programming for Youth Empowerment while determining opportunities for a Youth Empowerment
Center do you want to speak to your motion okay get self-explanatory that's fine uh councelor Rooney yeah I think let's talk about the alternative a minute so it says um financially support and coordinate programming while determining opportunities it means that let's keep going on these things while you actually
um talk about opportunities for the Youth Empowerment Center the the main um article of the original article says Identify promote and coordinate to determine I don't know that you need to be running program in order to determine the level of need so I thought that the word while determining made more sense and also adding the the phrase financially
support uh I think Kathy Shane had mentioned the move the morning movement program they need financial support in order to uh continue their work let's not just talk about it let's actually direct money to it okay councelor atte I'm in favor of the alternative okay I prefer the language of the
alternative uh councelor Walker um I also prefer the language of the alternative um I just I don't think we need to determine the need I think we have to look for what opportunities exist H Lord I third supporting the alternative I think the financial support is an important important component that is not in the original thank you councelor Ryan we've just heard about the budget and the uh bad news about health
insurance and so again I guess the question as it was earlier with the senior um Center is where is the money coming from councilor dein gothier I think I see the the words determine need as being the same as finding opportunity I think determining what the need is is is looking for those opportunities um and I am extremely concerned with the raising financially support as part of a goal in the town
managers uh in the alternative language excuse me councelor Tom um I I I think we can spend a lot of time determining the need I mean there is a need for um for programming for Youth and I think if we have to just like with the senior center and with the morning movement maybe money has to be and we'll just look at where money has to be taken from but to me this would be a priority and I think that we until we have a a brick and mortar Center we need
to be providing programming and I think it's pretty clear there's a need I would support the alternative ccor hanii um to me determining a level of need for a building and a dedicated building is different than determining opportunities for a dedicated building um Youth Empowerment Center would be a building not just a subset of a recreation department and frankly we don't have the money for a building I'm just going to
come out and say it we don't have the money um not if we want to build a DPW not if we want to build a fire station we don't have the money and then we don't really have the money for whatever level of financial support is looking at that that to me is oper financial support not Capital financial support if you're looking to support programming like morning movement that's they have a bus it's the operating side so if people
want the alternative I want to hear what you're cutting what you're willing to cut at this point um including on the capital side to find a Youth Empowerment Center that's not to say there isn't a need for programming but but that's different than a building I support the original councelor Rooney uh the financial support is a direct nod to the arpa
funds and there is I think if I'm not mistaken the program support that does come from the town now um has tapped into arpa this is to identify and and um what's the what's the Congressional term earmark uh some of that shpa as it goes back into the pot this is where it I would like to see it go and I agree we're a long way from a a bricks and mortar so while we're talking about that
let's make sure that the programming itself continues I support the alternative thank you councelor um to did you want to say something first should hello there you okay yeah um so I just
wanted to say that morning movement is currently supported through arpa grant funding that that is ending at the end of this uh school year and I know that um Ry is working hard to find alternative funding sources um and and is uh fully dedicated to working on um continuing that program um because it's something that he believes in um as do many of us here right so um the other
thing is that currently the way that the ARA money was structured it's being operated by the school so we will have to take that back in order to continue supporting it and um I just want to say that because December 31st has come and gone and contract with the school goes through the end of the school year and then ends there you can't be there's no more arpa money available after uh you know may when when the school gets out
like it's we've we've reached that deadline and there is no contract in place after that for that particular funding source we have to find Alternatives councelor Rooney I think I already called on you councelor toab so um doesn't morning movement come through the department of recreation I believe that the correct me if I'm wrong I'm new to
this one um so it started with the Department of recreation but in order to continue the ARA funding with it um they had always done that with some with partnership with other departments including the school department I believe that um a few other Town departments assist in the support of the you know Staffing of that um they transferred the operations to the school department um so that we could do a
contract for our profunds that was sort of how we um close the loop on the contract so Ray and the recreation department are still very involved and more immun it but technically it operates out of this pool at this until the end of the year when so next year in the next year's budget it could come through the department of our department of recreation it could but there is no there is no funding you know for it and
that's why Rey is working on how to make that work but but um we have a we have a few months to figure it out but but the unforunate part is that our funding is what I did want to say is I I see this as a way to provide programming KN until we had until if and when we might have a youth center realizing that
that's we have other capital projects that will come before that but we need to provide the programming in the interim councelor Walker um yeah I think considering all of those things it makes me feel even more strongly in favor of the alternative language um and that I think the morning movement was being used as an example and isn't and in my opinion shouldn't be the only Youth Empowerment programming um and so it also makes me wonder about the
$500,000 that was set aside from arpa for the feasibility study um and whether that feasibility study is happening or whether that is what we were thinking would be applicable to this specific goal um but I would love to see that 500,000 if it's not already used be shifted from a feasibility stud to the financially supporting and coordinating the program programming for the Youth Empowerment while determining opportunities for Youth Empowerment
Center Melissa did you want to add something so again 500,000 because of the December 31st deadline is now like there's no more arpa money available to contract or to spend like it's it's unless unless it was under contract as of December 31st arpa money is not a no longer
available um as for the 500,000 that was originally allocated you know um we I know that um a study was done um that study was um okay it was tapered uh you know it was altered um to fit the needs of the community go to fit to needs of the committee or the the group of the
internal group that was working on it and there was a portion of the original study done to identify other programming in the community um and there is a map available listing those um those activities that are a ailable for for that were deemed accessible for youth listen so so we want we will be presenting to the
council the sort of update on the arpa funding where where it was allocated what's been done so far um and then what's available um for future appropriation because the money that when Melissa says the money went away it didn't go away it was um it'll will fall to free cash so it'll be money that's available for appropriation so that'll be a decision point for the council at that point in time councilor d'angeles I just I just
want to clarify a couple of things uh the morning movement program was developed by kids who were coming to the school um make it short you should say that to some of the other folks I will okay so but that's critical because that empowered those kids the other thing is we keep talking about more earning movement the r there was rise programming there has been other programming for middle and high school students also what is critical is
promoting and coordinating and funding whenever we can the actual programming the building is less important thank you councelor Rooney yes so I just heard what I think I wanted to hear and that is we we took back arpa we put it in our free cash that's what we're targeting here just to be very clear myself and those others who have
spoken support um utilizing some of that money be creative and figuring out how to do it but these are the kinds of programs that we think are important to support councilor Lord yeah and connecting with um what Paul and Pam said I understood that we didn't there was uncertain about the the change in leadership at the government level that it might be clawed back and that's why we folded it into free cash and um so I understood that that would still be available the remainder for our youth
programming thank you councelor Shan I just want to say I strong strongly support it as proposed I I think we have made great strides in coordinating and promoting voting and Innovative programs and that's what we need to continue thank you I'm not seeing any other hands so we'll move to a vote councelor Walker you're first up this
time and so this vote would be to delete the alternative here no councelor d'angeles I councelor Devin gothier I ete no gimer I haniki hi hegar no Lord nay Rooney no
Ryan Shane yes Steinberg no to no six six to seven so that fails it sounds to me that the council has determined that they prefer the alternative I take that as consensus without a vote are there objections to
that councelor grimer no with no objections I'll take a recess for 10 minutes and come back at 821 thank
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it'll be on the agenda for Monday so we'll have a we'll have a moment to clean it up and then you'll see it Monday and it should be what we're hoping for is by the end of the night word ready to vote on
Monday councelor Walker are you back with us yes I am thank you Athena thank you
shout out to Angela for feeding us okay we're moving on to our next page here tilt medium councelor before we move on I was wondering since de clearly isn't an appetite financially or otherwise
for a brick and mod Empowerment Center I was wondering if we could take that out so I'd like to make a motion [Music] to identify financially support and coordinate programming for youth's empowerment is this is this what you're suggesting to remove this part that I've struck yes okay is there a second
second okay looking for discussion on this change C our Walker um well I do recognize that there would be a financial component to a brick-and mortar Center that's not necessarily what this is getting to in my opinion because we're keeping the identify and
financially support portion which is the financial aspect of it but the part that's being proposed here to be taken out in red is determining opportunities for a Youth Empowerment Center and I think that that's significantly important because it doesn't require us to spend spend any money it actually just requires us to look into opportunities um and again that can result in we don't have any there's nothing we can find but I think it's something really important for us to be looking into whether or not we have the
financial ability to build or purchase or what have you a Center thank you councelor Grier excuse me this brings me to what what I was going to say earlier Youth Empowerment happens in every amazing location that youth gather to do anything so when my son who has a
disability was on the High School tennis team he wasn't at a center but it was most empowering and so no matter what we do we will never build a center large enough to empower all of the youth in our community a programming is another thing and that's where we need to put our money there any other comments moving to a vote councelor D
I'm sorry councelor hanii I will be short even exploring costs money because it costs time of Staff who are already overworked so I will support removing this okay councelor d'angelus here first I Davin gothier I at I gmer I hanii I hegner I Lord nay
Rooney no Ryan I Shane yes Steinberg yes to no Walker No 9 to4 the passes are we ready to move on to tilt medium
okay looking for discussion motions C hanik so we're starting to get into the ones where we should be moving to delete a lot I'm just going to say that um um we're starting to get where we should be moving to delete these because we're trying to narrow down the action items to a reasonable amount for the manager to focus on and now we're in the tilting
medium possibly because they had more lows than medium well about the same lows and mediums or maybe there were some highs in there I don't know um but given some of the comments here um I am going to move to delete the first well I'm going to move to delete we'll just do one at a time the update
the amoris bicycle and pedestrian Network plan with a goal of council adoption in 2025 second sorry councelor hanii would you like to speak to that um it's based on the manager comments okay um looking for discussion on this motion definely goth here I'd like to ask the town manager what makes this
unlikely in 2025 and what would make it more likely in future years please to update the uh bike and ped plan we would have to put put together committee we'd have to have someone sta the committee and then we'd have to do the actual we either have to get Grant or get funding to actually do the work of updating it so we are in the process of doing the housing production plan uh update right now and I on the Housing Trust I see the amount of time and effort we have a staff person who's
really dedicated to this we don't have a person for that um that being said we do know that this is up for um review um and it should be none but I just don't think we can accomplish it in this fiscal year is there sorry if I can have a follow up calendar year sorry is there a timeline of which of these kind of plans for lack of a better term so housing production bicycle anded all of those kind of what should happen where so that we might be
able to stagger them intelligently in the future I don't have a schedule like that but it makes sense I mean the the charter requires certain updates on master plan things like that um but on the other plans um if I can pull something like that together actually that' be a good thing for us to do councilor ran I'll be sorry to see this one go um I understand that it makes these demands on staff but this has been going on for
a number of years now and it looks like it's going to stay that way for a long time so if it does go which looks like it might I will just U see what I can do myself and find out what uh can be done outside of Staff time to try and make this move forward it's something that should be done it should have been done a couple of years ago it's and it looks like it's going to be delayed yet more um so I guess I just say I'm disappointed councilor Shane uh Paul you
said you have to form a committee and I never understand we have a committee called Tac and it seems like they do work on these things and then it uh goes into a file cabinet rather than becomes an action plan so why is this not something that could be assigned to attack is my first question you know and get the right people on tack if there are a couple vacancies or um and if we said 2026 you know my issue is um I'll
go back to one where George and I were opposite sides of this but we widened a path up by me um when the opposite the widen one sidewalk where the other side is almost unwalkable and needs to be repaired um and so I I just don't understand if we're really looking at walking and biking why we don't take a more holistic look um at roads um rather than just say we used to have a plan and this is what we're going to do so that's
I just I'm not understanding why we don't already have a committee that could be assigned this um and talk about what's possible sure so there's a proposal before the council to eliminate Tac so until the council decides if it wants to keep teac or not I don't think we should be signing new things to Tac I mean you could say we want to keep teac that's a different I'm not sure where the council is on that at this point in time and second and secondly I think you know what the the goal is to update the bike and ped plan this calendar year and
it won't happen in 11 months I can guarantee this is not an accomplishable goal unless we really sear 2025 if I finish if I may finish unless we dedicate enormous amount of staff time and funding to accomplish it councelor D goth here given the amount of time that other plans and thinking about the um Recreation and open space plan all like these are very in-depth plans I can
absolutely see how this wouldn't be doable in a calendar year could we and I'm I'm not proposing an alternate motion at this time because the motion's been made and seconded but um in your mind is there a way to adjust this to reflect that we know it's a multi probably a multi-year process and uh if this motion should fail to delete it instead propose alternative language to talk about beginning the process what once there is an appropriate committee to assign it to or commission to assign
it to would that be in your mind more feasible versus saying update it this year would it say like I mean it's it's a fluffy language so I don't even like saying it but begin the process of updating or create a timeline for updating or something like that would that be more feasible given the time and Staffing that we have yeah a timeline would certainly be achievable um but I think that it's it's a serious consideration I think that's what I took away from your previous comment is to what are the timelines for these various
plans okay is there any other discussion on this motion counc can I ask can I ask for clarification um was was that an amendment um being proposed osed from Anna no it was not there's a motion on the table that I'm not trying to amend right now I was just asking what would be possible should this motion fail okay um councelor dlin gothier
you're actually up first for the vote no at no Grier yes haniki I hegner yes Lord nay Rooney no Ryan no Shane no Steinberg no to no Walker no
d'angel no it's three to 10 that motion fails dein gothier um i' like I'd like to throw something on the floor and then I'd like to make an amendment sorry you'd like to I'm sorry uh I'd like to sorry I was dropping things propose an amendment okay uh I would like to remove the word
update and write in the words create a timeline for up updating [Laughter] does that make sense and then did you want to take out these words at the end with the goal of council adoption yes I do thank you is there a second
Rooney is there a discussion okay let's vote at I gmer I heniki I hegner I Lord I Rooney yes Ryan I Shane yes Steinberg yes to yes Walker yes d'angelus I Devon gothier I that's
unanimous okay floor's open C are hanak um I move to delete um website improvements Ryan second discussion oh do you want to speak to your motion yeah um this is so
vague that I don't know what we're even going after with the phrase website improvements is it a full redo is it just the minor improvements that are done every year what what is it and we unless it gets more specific I don't think it belongs here but even if it does I just don't think it's a high priority compared to other things I mean we're here to figure out
what the highest priorities for our manager and staff to spend time on and this is not one of them councelor Rooney I would hate to disagree but I'm going to disagree um we've had several conversations even tonight that finding information um pointing you know we have who who manages what where do you find their information there are several uh action items that are essentially related to this um I don't think we need
to be so specific to say you know we think the we think the image of the town hall is too large on the main page so there's no room for information I don't want to go to that level of detail I would say I I like having a direct to get to work on the website and make it more user friendly and make it easier to find information so keeping it in here keeps it on the radar um that would be my goal thank
you councelor Ryan so language to that effect would be helpful um as it's written it is I have no idea what this means I mean any website Improvement uh even the smallest one maybe correcting an error or fixing a broken link Paul would have achieved the goal um so it's it it's impossible to evaluate him it's not clear in what it's saying um I suppose we could Wordsmith it and and uh Pam has already um suggested maybe some
wording that I could at least begin to understand what's being asked but as it stands it's it's doesn't it's impossible to understand what it's asking or to evaluate it and again I would suggest that while it's a legitimate concern bring it to TSO we do Outreach we can work on it well it sounds like we should leave it in so we can easy win councelor tab so if it gets referred to TSO and then we come back to the council and refer
it is that what you're saying then then the council would would have to be next year's Town manager goal I mean I think improving and maybe that's something that's already will be done that the communications director I don't know if she always worked on the website but I think improving the search function just so you can put in keywords and find it I I I find that challenging so we buy a package um called Civic plus and some of the
limitations are in that package there's nothing you can do about it um and I and the search function is pretty miserable from my experience as well um many cities and towns use Civic plus and so um you're in when we pay a lot of money for use of Civic plus but then um you're allowed certain updates and some of them are just cosmetic like changing the imagery and things like that or changing the tiles and how they're aligned um if you want to do a major re
it's it's a really big undertaking it's just it's not just a Communications uh manager but it's also the IT department that would be involved with this so in our preliminary conversations um about this with the communications manager and it we had talked about making some of those cosmetic Chang because there was money in the budget for fy2 for website improvements um but a a evaluation of Civic plus and if we wanted to look at other options for our website that would
be evaluated in FY 26 with a potential request for Capital and FY 27 so it's a for a major overhaul of our website and potential change from Civic plus to something else we would evaluate those options in the coming year and then propose something afterwards um but uh s can't Sam isn't here to speak to her work but she is continually working on the website and making improvements to the website she hears feedback from folks about how things are found and where people look for things she's able
to um drill down and to see what what are the most common Search terms and try and make the things that are most commonly searched for more visible on the website so you don't have to search it's just you in a more logical place so that's an ongoing effort by our Communications manager we can do with the current system Civic plus uh councelor hegner yeah some of this has already been um discussed I think
your explanation of what's going on I I had suggested an alternative wording to improve uh keyword search engine for town website to fa to facilitate searches for critical documents but I sounds like you're already doing that yeah so I'm I'm I'm fine with removing this okay there's no other I don't see any other hands so councelor you are first for the
vote and it's to delete website improvements I Gore I haniki I hegner I Lord I Rooney no Ryan hi Shane yes Steinberg yes Tom yes because we have to delete something Walker yes Angeles I dein gothier I it's 12 to one thank you floor is open
councelor toab like we almost need a universal disclaimer is when we vote no it's not because we don't think it's important but we have to we can't do everything we know that's my public statement councelor Ryan so I would uh item three the alternative language to review zoning bylaws as they affect businesses that are possible in different districts in town I move to
delete I'd like to delete that language or I yeah just delete the alternative make it go away uh councelor Shane is your hand up for discussion on this would I'd like to speak to it if I may but I don't think so it was my motion go ahead George at this hour I can't tell anymore
um I actually would like to delete the whole darn thing um so maybe that's where I'll end up but at least the first sentence I understand and Paul's comments in the comments section makes it clear that this is something that broadly speaking will be coming to us um through the planning department so one could make the case that what we're saying to Paul and staff is that we are uh concerned would like him to spend time and and effort on zoning bylaws to
increase in support economic development in town um and he's telling us here that that is something that he expects will come to us from the planning department later in this year 2025 um it's still very Broad in general and lack specificity but um the second the alternative language I don't even understand so um unless someone would like to delete the whole thing and has an argument for that um at the mo moment I'm just willing to leave their language stand with Paul's comment um but I'd
like to keep the original language councelor Shane is your hand up for this item yes um and what I'd also Athena you might have said it to us at the beginning of the night or in one of the emails tilt Medium as opposed to medium does that mean four people liked it it means that the most the highest number of people rated it medium but it was less than seven but it was so there
was six or fewer six or fewer rated medium not high so I'm wondering why we're focusing on all these tilt mediums but I would say to get rid of this Al together I'm I'm counting up and we're at 16 already that we've kept on the list and I'm trying to keep the number small enough that we can look at it so I don't mind George's change but I had it on I
don't think we need it so I don't know how I vote on it with a first vote to remove the alternative language then vote again to get rid of it all together so for this particular action item it was three ranked it high prioritized it high five medium three low and two delete so five was the highest number so it went in tilt medium does that make sense and I think in some cases people said delete on some of the Tilt mediums right yes in in all the tilts they were
they were scattered but the five as medium was the highest so that's where I put it councelor d'angeles i' like shut up I would like to I would like to propose an alternative or a change to the and and move that we delete the whole thing is that a friendly Amendment thank you couldn't think councilor Ryan it's not very friendly um I think again my case here is that this is we are sending a message
to Paul which I'm sure he that we'll get um anyway is that we do want to support what planning department is going to be doing in the coming year we think or hope namely focus on economic development so keeping it in makes that point it allows us to evaluate him at the end of the year um and he said that it's something he's going to do anyway so taking it out completely seems uh counterproductive at least in my initial thinking so I appreciate the offer but i' like to have a vote on keeping the
language as it is um with the argument that it sends Paul a message and gives us something to then evaluate him on at the end of the year okay is there any further discussion councelor grimer how do you vote I haniki I hegner I Lord I Rooney yes Ryan I Shane yes Steinberg yes po yes Walker yes d'angeles I dein gothier I I that's
unanimous floor is open counil R so perhaps with some help for my colleagues I would like to make a motion about all the remaining items that are
marked low or tilt low or tilt delete and I would like to move that they all be deleted with um the following exceptions [Laughter] can I reest that we just start with the lows one page at a time why don't you let I'm making a motion which I believe I'm entitled to make my reasoning is that in some cases
well can you tell me what your motion is first said exceptions I was about to issue articulate the exceptions to my general motion when I was interrupted by my colleagues which I believe is a violation of the rules of procedure among other things um am I not that is correct is it thank you um so I was going to uh list a couple of specific items that are either ongoing um or the manager has said can
be done or are in development with staff there aren't many of them in fact according to my account there are three of them and what I was going to suggest is that all these items be deleted with the exception of the [Music] B with the except of the o e OED Mass downtown initiative and with the exception of incorporate actually um no that was it uh the first one was uh the
beess which is I'd like to keep that in I guess what I'm saying is I'd like to keep that in because it's in development with staff and I assume there's reasonable support but maybe I'm wrong I'd like to keep the eoe in for the same reason it's ongoing um and I think that's it so it's just with those two exceptions my motion is to delete everything else second pretty
impressive so discussion I mean again you've heard me um I think all of these we're trying to heroically cut this down as much as possible and my argument for the keeping the three in or the two excuse me in is that they are in process and um are doable uh councelor hanii
so I still got to go through and clearly read all of these um but be we didn't put back in solar we didn't put back in Wast taller I don't understand why we would keep best of just the way it's even worded right now of best we made a decision not to list any of the bylaws in the one above and now you're saying let's list this one in particular but not the other two that have already been referred and stuff so that makes no
sense to me um I think that would be a request for a friendly amendment to not include the best in this exception Council raner uh just clarification so it is in development with thata so it's it's going to come to us it's part of solar and it's okay fine all right so I'm happy to to accept your friendly Amendment councelor grimer are
you okay with that that's with best Lyn you were the second are you okay with that I need to clarify are you saying that best will be included in the Solar bylaw it has a piece of it in it um because it needs to and and then well you two should speak to this no it's potential it can be a whole freestanding one but it also needs to be part of Soul the staff has already worked on a freestanding one that we're going to begin looking at in CRC and um
but we're assuming that we're going to get the solar bylaw passed first and so there are elements like very critical elements about best in solar bylaw but those would be S included in a final best and souped and with some additional so there will be a separate best by in addition to a yes you so is that all right with you
councilor G gmer if this is a friendly amendment to remove best as well um no okay so that that remains um councelor hanii was that all or did you have a comment I guess then I'm making a motion on the motion to remove V from the motion which means because the motion if I understand it was move to delete all low tilt low or tilt delete except best and E OED D
and so I'm moving to remove the word best and from that motion okay is there a second second hegner okay so now the conversation discussion on adding essentially this to the list of removals the list to be
deleted um so George has proposed to delete you know um everything on these three pages except V and Eed Mandy has amended that motion to include best among all of the deletions so first you would vote to add bests to the list of deletions and then you vote to delete all of those things does that make
sense okay there are hands up if if you had your hand up for something else please take it down uh delin gothier I wanted to confirm something did we officially decide that the measures that are referred to committee required by law and in progress will not be a part of the goals did we take a vote on that those are not deleted and those were not proposed to be deleted right so those are we haven't addressed those yet in there so to me it doesn't make sense then to delete one even because it's
ongoing if we haven't discussed whether or not the other ongoing projects will be deleted and I know that that's a catch 22 but that's we're in it um so I I worry about deleting something because we say it's going to happen anyway um when we haven't decided if that's what we're going to do for all of the other things that are already happening and then I think I need to wait for my second question yeah we're just looking at best right now y councelor
Steinberg yeah I think that the thing that I wonder about all the time with best is that many things uh the the standard practi is that the council refers to a commit committee the development of something solar bylaw we did not ever vote to ask a committee to uh do a battery storage energy storage
bylaw and so it was sort of a decision of a committee to take it on as opposed to a decision of the council so I just I first of all want to note that this is the first time we've ever had a discussion of any any sort in the council about whether that is something that is a priority that um it is just sort of was assumed by a committee to make it a priority um so so it's a part of it I'm
bothered by the process that we got into um and I think that this is a valuable discussion because it is the opportunity to actually decide whether we as a council think that the committee ought to be even working on the subject uh and having said that U I think that at this point I would probably be inclined to say yes but I
would like to hear discussion Dave did you want to add anything so so I I just wanted to note that um this this is a staff initiative not a council initiative that and I if if if you want to make it a council initiative as well that's fine but you know zoning biolog can come to the council in many different from many different sources one of the sources is staff and I believe this is came out of
discussions in a committee but it's being developed by staff so it doesn't we don't require the council to say yes you can work on something we can do that on our own professional initiatives so I think that's what and the um this is caught up the only thing that's different about this one is that the Council had previously approved the solar bylaw and the waste Hara by bylaw or request earlier um but this could come this will come to you one way or the other Athena if I could yes please so yeah
just can everyone hear me yes not sure this mic is on so everything Paul said so I think what I'd like to say is when we started the solar bylaw some time ago battery energy storage was discussed in previous committees that then brought that to the council and eventually to the referral to the CRC in those years that have passed as we've been working on these issues battery
energy storage has become the norm in these projects so I think the feedback we got from the CRC and the community was it's critically important to work on B as soon as we are done the the uh the uh the solar bylaw and the solar bylaw does have elements referring to best so they it make perfect sense one to follow the other and I think that's kind of where
we are and as Paul said staff could could bring this best to the council at some point in the coming months I hope that was clear uh George I think you've already spoken on this one have you did you already speak on can't speak again well I would just go to Lynn first that's fine because she hasn't councelor grimer I believe just as we actually wed
two other bylaws when we did rental registration and the other one which is um nuisance property nuisance bylaw these two go hand in hand and being in District 2 uh where this is one of the biggest issues going on I cannot see anything but supporting it thank you uh councelor hanii have you spoken on this um sort of not really I mean I made a
motion that we're talking about um so I've got a it's tough I think the town needs a battery energy store bylaw more than it needs a solar energy bylaw um yet this language because this was pulled out of that other action item I'm not even sure what where it would go if it would just be a standalone just say best versus
like add it in so I have trouble thinking about it on its own because it wasn't really ever on its own except when we had to rank these um but my other bigger concern with this and the solar energy one and I know one has been referred and the other one has not really been referred but is included in the solar energy at least there was a section in there for CRC to discuss is there's a new state law and I
worry in prioritizing both solar and B before the regulations on the state law are out that we are going to spend a lot of Staff time doing something that then will'll need completely redone um staff spent some time with Adu modifications before the regulations came out and then the regulations came out and much of the modifications that staff and the planning board had spoken on and spent time on need to be thrown
out because they violate and are in conflict with the regulations that were adopted I don't want us to spend a lot of Staff time on something that will then need completely redone again in six or seven months because of the regulations that come out whatever those regulations look like so I struggle with when in the year the time is being spent on this which is why I'm more for deleting them both because I don't want
to spend the time before those regulations are out so maybe I need to hear from staff about when the time will be spent on these because your time's valuable and I don't want to see what happened with Adu happening again you want to speak on that Dave
is we will spend time on this well let me back up we are in the process of hiring a new planning director we have some some uh newer staff on board so our our plates are quite full right now and until we uh bring on until Paul uh appoints a new planning director and bring that person on and acclimate them and and whatnot uh we are operating at less than you know 100% um
but I'm optimistic about that process and and that will move forward um I think to some degree how much staff time we spend on on a couple of these like additional time on the solar bylaw like on adus will depend on the CRC and the council because we are responsive to you we staff the aison to CRC and to the council as needed so to some degree the
staff requirement or the staff uh resources are dependent on how quickly with staff support you all can move through these um we just finished uh or wrapped up one recently that will be recommended to the council and so I think next is solar bylaw and and to councelor hani's comments about Adu I think that is a high priority as well I can't really speak with
any detail to what may happen at the state level and that that work I do know that the best draft is in Fairly good shape and kudos to Chris prr and Stephanie chiarella so I I think it's more kind of waiting there for the right time to bring to CRC and and we can have those discussions about the state uh process and when it makes sense so that's the best answer I
can give tonight I think councilor Ryan so just so I don't lose track of where we're at um Mandy's amendment is to add but right best to the list of action items that are to be deleted correct and um given what I'm hearing um I'm going to support that I'm going to vote Yes on that um this is in development as we just heard um it's
referenced in a number of places in our document um the language as it stands is is would have to be word Smith um and uh so I think we should add this one so that yes okay Council renie can I amend an amendment um I was going to suggest that the battery storage go to the back page which is ongoing measures and that so
yes it would be cut from this list of low priorities but I'm going to support it as being important and ongoing and add it to the back page um I don't think there was an intention for things to be left in this list the way it is because the original list from go was organized by um areas goal areas so they'll be put back into the goal areas before the council votes
them on Monday so it's not going to stay in this does that make sense [Laughter] okay uh Kathy Shane councelor shanon I totally disagree with Mandy's
rationale why it shouldn't be there which was we shouldn't act until the state acts because the state is going to act we the town of armmer have already been a model for a few things like co-housing where the state changed the way things happen States the state looks at what municipalities have done so being in the lead and then having to come back and tweak it if anything all the towns that moved on adus is why the state even moved more on them but what what I don't completely understand is um
if it's already in the works and it's part of what we would call climate action why it's not just subsumed under that original climate so I don't see that it has to be separate but if it needs to have lyed asked couldn't we put including D D D D to just have the words sit somewhere otherwise we won't even capture the words if we can't do what pamet asked so back to ly's including the list where best was on the list so
so George also picked out the other one to keep on the list and if we keep it on the list we need to spell out eoe so any normal person in town might know what we're talking about okay um any other comments councelor Tom could we decide to keep that list I mean it nothing says
it can't be there if we keep what list of ongoing this back page where we've listed it's not it's not in the list of things to be deleted that George proposed right you're saying it's not really part of what our goals the format of the goals that we vote on at the council meeting next Monday back into that format yeah they will be they'll be incorporated back into the format that go I thought you were saying it was okay un unless we have unless that's part of the discussion tonight and the council decides to delete or edit those any
other comments on Bess councelor haniki you're first I the vote is to add best to the list to be deleted hegner I Lord I Rooney no Brian I Shane I'm sorry just can you tell me what am I voting if I vote Yes what happens if you vote Yes then the group
that George proposed to be deleted best will be included in that group it's included in the deletion no Steinberg no to no Walker no d'angeles no Devin gothier no ET yes ree
no five to8 that motion fails so that is not included so the motion that's on the floor at this point is George's proposal councelor Ryan's proposal to delete the low tilt low and tilt delete items is there any further discussion On th that motion dein goth it's to delete everything but those two things that's correct correct okay uh me yeah okay um under tilt low
was incorporate anti-racism and anti-discrimination training into onboarding processes and this was something that the town manager indicated could be done in 2025 I would um figure out how to I'll figure out how to make a motion on motion on emotion on emotion in a second but um given that the town manager identified this as something that could be done given that uh we have in the past really been trying to focus our efforts around
anti-discrimination uh and anti-racism training to be specific this was something this arose out of Prior goals that were you know inure and anti-racist culture and then we drilled down into how do we do that and it was you know one way to try to get at that is by offering trainings and then we thought about how to Target that and make it a bit more specific uh and that's how we landed on the onboarding processes so I would like to sorry uh I'd like to make a motion to remove incorporate
anti-racism and anti-discrimination training into onboarding processes from the list of proposed deletions second and I've said enough about it so I'm done speaking to my motion uh comments on that motion to remove this one from the list of deletions p is your comment on this councelor d'angeles please go
ahead I would definitely like to keep this um and uh it becomes a um a simple thing to add to onboarding process and um it's critical that it that the Town Council look at itself as our own about racial Equity issues it's important that new employees do that and I think that
there's enough set up with employees Etc already that it could be easily incorporated into an onboarding process Council Ran So when I made my initial motion I actually was going to include this and then I didn't and that suggests my own sort of back and forth which is my problem um I was struck by two things one is positive that Paul thinks this can be done um it does seem appropriate but the other Factor was of course it was tilt low so it seemed like it was
not rated that highly by a good number of my colleagues so maybe the way to settle that is simply to go ahead and have a vote um and uh at this point I would probably actually vote to um remove move it uh not yes from the list of delions council d'angeles you raised your hand yes I'd like to add because I was looking at it just at anti-racism I looked at I'm a
lesbian I'm a Target now um because of who's in power in the federal government um I have been treated badly as a lesbian when it's been known and I've been treated well and it those kinds of anti-discrimination things are critical for onboarding uh we have uh trans people here we have all kinds of people in our community including homeless people that need to be respected and that so I think this is a critically
important onboarding process and we should be keeping this goal okay councelor Walker um I just want to agree with Pat that I think that this is critically important thank you seeing no further comments we're going to move to a vote councelor hegner I Lord I Rooney yes Ryan I
Shane yes Steinberg yes toob yes Walker yes d'angeles I delin gothier I at I gmer I paniki I it's unanimous so now the motion that's on the floor is George's motion minus E O D and incorporate anti-racism and anti- discretion training and battery battery
be those three okay what I originally had at the begin with Is there further discussion councelor ete so related to develop a plan to increase access to Medical Care and immunizations notes say ongoing at Health Department mosan Center my question is what exactly is ongoing is it that there's a plan that's
ongoing or is it that there is already access to Medical Care and immunizations and so there doesn't need to be anything to increase so I think I said something to you to the council today about the Immunization Clinics and uh that are happening tomorrow by by the department by the Board of Health or public health department and by the missan center so they regularly put go offer they do
offer um immunizations and vaccines to to to people and when you know we also have a store of vaccines for students who might have uh come into town so you know on short notice and need vaccines in order to get into be a lot to enter the school so we also assist with that which we've done fairly recently as well and anyone can walk into the musanti center councelor
Shane I feel like I'm just a counter here but we're at 22 which is a nice number if we could no with the three we just added Y is there any further discussion no okay so the motion is to delete everything from tilt low delete and low shown and red strike through councelor Lord how do I broney I
Ryan I Shane yes Steinberg yes to yes Walker yes d'angeles I dein gothier I at I Grier I hanii hi and hegner I that's unanimous okay
um so George I see your hand up so are we moving on to no consensus unless there's discussion about changing the language here which I was just trying to think about yeah with best the
language is not appropriate so I would just add support the development of the battery energy storage bylaw yes that would sounds good that would be fine any objections
okay councelor Ryan your hand is up if we're ready to go on to the no consensus items go ah my motion would be I'd like to make a motion motion would be to delete these uh one two 3 four five items since well I'll get to the argument but I'd like to make that motion delete all yes okay is there a second second discussion George did you want to speak to motion if I may briefly um as
you can see here we do have the actual counts and you can see that these have not come even close to any sort of consistency and any sort of high rating and rather than spending hours debating some of these are you know I personally think number two is something I would very much like to see happen um and I'm deeply disappointed that this Council year after year runs away from it um but it's clear that the uh well seems pretty clear that the votes aren't there and
that seems to be true for all the other items as well so no matter how you may feel about them individually and as I said the item two is one I care a lot about I don't see that we're going to accomplish anything tonight um and I would suggest that we delete them all and that I and others who care about some of these just have more work to do in the coming year ccor hanii I will not vote for this motion um there is one in particular that is on
here well first of all we just added three low and lean tilt low to the goals and we've got some here that have five high priority votes on here five high priority they have five low but five high priority that's more than any of the three we just kept in the goals um if we delete all of these the goals have no housing goals at all I believe every single one of us on
this Council have said they support increasing affordable and attainable housing in town and yet we would not have a single goal for the manager that focused on increasing housing affordability housing attainability housing accessibility in this town in a situation and a climate where the entire
state is aiming to increase housing um it would be a travesty if this Council does not adopt for or the manager as an action item at least something related to increasing housing attainability or affordability or accessibility in this town that might not mean it's one of these exactly as
written but we need to do something or it's going to be a travesty I'd have to uh councelor no no they didn't remove that one councelor Devin gothier uh I'm sorry councelor Hani that wasn't a motion was it okay councelor Devin cier please go ahead respectfully I second to everything councelor hanii
just said we shouldn't mass delete things that we're spread this far out on um I want us to vote each one I think a low isn't a no uh some of us ran out of cookies and we should all have to put up and vote we need to explain where we are and uh explain why if we are voting to delete this from a priority so no I will not support this motion okay I just want to point out that a no vote will allow the council to to discuss each of these so if there is
discussion on each of these I think the the conversation here is delete them all and if there's a no vote then you'll discuss them I understand that's why I'm saying I will not support the motion to delete all them I'm making that because I see a lot of hands up uh councelor Shane uh early in whenever we finally whenever we got the moving from Concepts to specifics on actions from go I said that we have things on this
list that we don't agree on as a council and making them a manager goal when we haven't had a long discussion and reached agreement on them doesn't make any sense to me and that's what I see in this list and Mandy's now saying maybe we can find some wording somewhere that we could all agree on that's the longer discussion I want to have this is not the time to do this um it's just not the time I mean if
if we want a long discussion in our rules we've set up the ability to have a working session like what would we agree on um people didn't like it last year and I would agree with it we had some things that the men couldn't deliver on housing um more year round residents how can we deliver on that we had one here firsttime home buyers if we had money it would be great but if there was something we could all agree on then I could see making it a goal but we can't
make it a goal if we don't agree and Mandy when I when you say there's some highs on here but there people that would delete the whole thing we have disagreement on the council about these specific ific items so I think it was appropriate to say for now these should be tabled we might want one of in one of our March meetings or end of February meetings schedule a two-hour meeting on what we think is doable that we might agree on but this is not the way to do
it writing a quick goal with a few words on it so I would stand with delete this list of where we just didn't have consensus because deletes are strong no they're not just reward a little bit because everyone had the ability to reward okay councilor R I'm going to call on others before I come back to you uh counc dangeles yes I U will not support um keep re deleting these all what I
would like to propose is a change in language that might make it ex this uh um proposed uh these proposed changes be out having some really TI FL what I'd like to do is take out propos keep proposed revisions to the zoning bylaws that would reduce the cost of developing permitting and building affordable and attainable housing in par on Parcels in ammer and I say that
because one of the crucial things at the housing Forum that just happened was Laura Bakers ammer has the worst and most expensive in terms of cost costs which include time and everything a process of doing all of the of Permitting and everything else we could um become a for we could have 40 R overlays and that would affect affordable housing and we can have
attainable housing okay we have to deal with the motion that's on the floor before we amend something that's on the list to be deleted so please hang on to that language we'll come back thank you um councilor gar there is a actually one other um I housing item it's in the already in process it's the Adu bylaw just to make a point in addition to that what's missing from here is University Drive overlay and all of the other housing projects we've already invested in and
they're in the process so I just want to not suggest that we don't have a commitment to housing that doesn't mean I wouldn't put one of these back in I just want to make sure we understand there's a lot of housing stuff going on in emerest thank you councelor Rooney oh she beat me to it but there were several other ones one was the establishment of the year round shelter and working with UMass to identif UMass amorist and Hampshire to develop
Economic Development and housing creation opportunities so um I think we have we have expressed our interest in housing councelor Tom I was also going to mention the Adu bylaw which means uh accessory dwelling units can be built by right no permitting process minimal permit permitting process required on every lot in town um and I agree with uh councelor Shane that if
we I think these you know particularly housing and some of the other items require an in-depth conversation that we're not going to have I don't think at this hour and and it's so I would um I would be pleased to have another Retreat on some of these items but I do think that as um ham said that and Lynn that housing is certainly included among the
goals councelor Steinberg I think that uh my concern throughout this process has been that we have too many goals so we were considering ing for the town manager and his staff to make this a realistic document and what we've been doing is working very hard and very effectively as a group to pair down the list to at least make it so that it has a semblance
of reality to what might actually be accomplished I uh hesitate at this point to get into the lengthy discussion of these items and uh just by uh feeling bad that we didn't do something to suddenly balloon the list back up to a point where it's clearly become being questionable as to
whether it's workable councelor Ryan so again I think that um if you look at the numbers and we have the numbers here for these five items on these issues we are a deeply divided body and we're not going to resolve this tonight and the fact that we delete them does not mean we don't care about housing we don't care about some of the other issues but we have a lot of work to do as a council I'd also point out
that in Paul's comments he also tells us that the planning department in addition will first be working on best and Adu change requirements and then zoning bylaws that will address housing and economic development so I look forward to what the new planning director and the planning department brings to us in the coming year related to housing um so I would urge you to support uh the motion and uh for those who care deeply as I do about some of these issues uh
resolve to work hard in the coming year with planning department especially with housing and with our colleagues to see if we can find Common Ground councilor this is is a procedural question but are we going to be voting for the goals on mass or will we end up voting for them individually so the goal for the evening
is to Come Away with a list of the Town manager action items that I'll put back into the format that go had with the goal areas and then the council could vote on that as the town manager goals on Monday uh councelor Devin cier so disagreement doesn't equal don't do I
have a strong resistance to deleting these on mass without discussion of each one given the spread of priority I will also remind this Council that this is and this sounds un fuzzy and not fun but we are not seeking consensus we are seeking majority the Democracy does not equal consensus uh secondly to some of the points so I would like to vote each of these
individually and discuss them each individually second asking the town manager to propose something gives us something to discuss as a council otherwise we're stuck in this Catch 22 where a counselor might bring it forward but then we get stuck in well it hasn't been you know vetted fully through town staff and so we get stuck in our own mess again if we want to do the work we need
something to discuss proposing revisions is not passing revisions we are the ones who would pass the revisions asking the town manager and his staff to propose revisions gives us something to have those work working sessions on gives us something to gives us actually something to debate and discuss instead of ideas that we aren't talking where we aren't talking concrete details I think all of these things yes that might be adding too much but when we go through and vote
each one we can actually decide if we're redistributing some cookies where would we put them for those who tuned into this meeting and not the last meeting the cookies thing is relevant to a prior conversation but just a reminder we're not trying consensus is great consensus is wonderful wonderful thing I don't think we've had consensus on more than half of these votes so we should be voting on each of these
individually councelor Shane I don't think you've spoken on this one I I was just saying there is a motion on the floor and it was second could we vote on the motion which was the motion to delete all of them are you calling the question I call the question I have a point of order yep I was going to make a motion to divide is that in order at any time or is it lost because of the question being called it's lost
okay okay uh councilor Shane made a motion to end debate we're going to go to a vote I don't remember where we are so we're going to start with councelor hanii no p I vote to end debate Lord I Rooney yes Ryan Shane yes Steinberg yes tab yes Walker yes d'angeles no delin gothier
no at yes gmer I okay the motion passes three 10 to three so we're going to the vote to delete everything that's in red this page councelor Lord nay Rooney yes
Ryan Yes Shane yes Steinberg yes Tom yes Walker no d'angelus no Devin gothier no ET no grimer I paniki no pgar I two three four five six seven the motion motion passes
76 76 oh I'm sorry councelor haniki please go ahead I move to add an action item of propos revisions to zoning bylaws and regulations that shorten the time and
lower the costs of Permitting new housing construction second let me find a place for this okay I'm just GNA put it here um I'm sorry I have to ask you to
repeat that I moved to add an action item of propose revisions to zoning bylaws and regulations that shorten the time and lower the costs of permitting new housing construction did I get
that is that accurate okay is there a second I seconded it thank you point of order yeah um I did not think that this was the evening to be adding new items and I understand this is not really a new one it's it's pulled from something that just got defeated um are we in a position to be doing
this um there's not a rule that said we couldn't there's not a rule that said a counselor couldn't so someone you know if you disagree you can raise an objection and and there can be a vote if the um motion's out of order I'm informally chairing this so um I would ask Glenn to weigh in if a motion is out of order I do not believe
this is out of order okay councelor hanii did you want to speak to your motion yes there was deep division on what type of housing action item should be included in the manager goals people have pointed to the Adu item that is measure that is down below well that's required by state law mainly because if we do nothing we can't enforce what we have in our bylaws because the state overd what we have in
our bylaws that's not us doing anything that's the state forcing us to do something um this attempt I believe it's closely worded from what councelor d'angelus talked about a couple minutes ago um is an attempt to find a way forward on more specific zoning or housing action items for the manager last year when we were talking about goals
and we had our Retreat and everything that went on and then there was an evening of discussing housing and some of the various goals I don't know how you phrased it Lynn as president but there's like an evening where we discussed various goals um housing came up there were conflicting ones and no one had any comment and what did we see not much happen we need specifics if we want to address the housing crisis we need something to tell the
manager to do otherwise it's just words it's not action and there are deep divisions on this Council but as counselor Devon goth I said division is not delete we need to talk about it and what I've seen in the past five years on housing is a desire to avoid talking about our deep divisions related to
changes in housing and getting more housing in this town to address the housing crisis all we seem to do is avoid avoid avoid because the discussions are tough even tonight when we're in a retreat we're being people are saying people are saying don't talk it's not the time to talk well if a retreat isn't the time to talk when is the time to talk we need an action item for the
manager to address housing I'm hopeful that this one is one that a majority of this Council can get behind councelor Walker um I'm sorry I know there's a motion on the table but Athena I don't think you explicitly stated whether or not the last motion passed or failed I apologize the motion did pass 76 okay thank you you're welcome did you
have another comment um not necessarily I do support this addition and um I just wanted to know whether or not the last motion passor okay thank you councelor Shane we're starters one of the reasons we don't have a long conversation as we get shouted at when we start to have a long conversation um so I do think we need one but I really object to a process
where we just voted to delete and then someone comes back with new wording Pat tried to reword as well we could do that for all the lows I I just don't we need to reach close me on these goals we've been told and let me just talk about the permitting cost it's it's the length of time not necessarily other pieces so some of the regulations are state regulations on
climate control so there's long discussion on whether whether charging stations need to go in or not and we adopted something that had charging stations in that took the duplexes through a longer process the homeowner firsttime buyer a longer process and they might otherwise have been there was a discussion in that group not because of the regulations but because of a um who was going to be
priority in the pool was it people who lived in Amis what was the definition of priority coming out so I've watched when time stayed longer so what you heard about some of the big housing things is not the it was the delay in getting to construction you talk about the school the delay in getting to instruction happened in the bidding process I really don't think now is the time to prod
produce a global one but I do think we have um we ran into Health Inspectors up with a bunch of businesses with the Health Inspectors small items were adding to costs unnecessarily and the town manager actually the the building inspector acted on it to turn them back so I think there are some things that we do inspections that drive up the cost of doing business and of building so I I do object it's what Pam
said can we just come back and reword and start keep adding this this we're not having a full discussion of what we think is going wrong the the last thing I want to say is everywhere in the country all around us all of the surrounding towns the construction costs the steel cost we saw Barry Roberts reduce what he planned on doing because the price of steel went up that's where the costs are coming from those are huge costs when one unit is
now $500,000 $600,000 uh for good designs um in the smaller projects the super big ones can bring down the cost of each unit so I think we're fooling oursel that we have some magic that will get the cost of new housing so I'm hoping we can reuse and do some other I I just think we're living in a different kind of world unless we're talking about building on every square inch of unbuildable of
unbuildable land so I I just don't understand the process that we all said delete and now we're coming back with a new version I don't understand that Council Ryan um I I wanted to also quote Laura Baker from the housing um seminar the other last week or so and she did say that Amis permitting process is no worse than
other communities and so I don't think we are I'm not I can't support that aspect of it councelor to um yes I certainly support um you know having um having being able to build more to to six or any units for our you know Workforce and our year- round population but I do not believe it is
not our permitting process that is keeping housing from being built amest has added thousands of units you know hundreds and thousands of bedrooms in the past 10 or more years with our current permitting process but Market forces are such that all of those permits all just about all privately financed building in amorist is housing for students because the owners can charge by the bedroom for four students who share the
rent and it's priced so high that our yearr round non-student population simply can't afford it so we have added a lot of housing it's just not for the people that that really that that need the housing at a price they can afford and to me to weaken the permitting process is you know uh affordable housing under the guise of deregulation and I District 4 has the
two general residence precincts in town and we have we are already zon for multif family housing we have Apartments we have tow houses we have duplexes triplexes and part of the permitting process is that AB buters are notified and that doesn't keep that doesn't keep housing from being built but any permitting that would allow more by right so that the residents in the neighborhood don't have
any input or even an opportunity to speak I mean the residents on on Stanley Street you know they you know had concerns about the pickle ball courts about the DPW building there I mean if you live in a neighborhood where you never get an abutters notice because there is is no building there it is easy to say you want to deregulate and weaken the permitting process but that is not what is keeping housing from being built for the people who need it is because
they have to go before the planning board or the zoning board of appeals so I can't support the part of this that is looking to weaken permitting that is not responsible that is that is not why we don't have the housing for a yearound population at a price they can afford okay councelor d'angeles yes I will use my mic um this the overlay this for the University Drive overlay District rose up from
staff uh other um revisions to zoning have risen up from the planning board or the planning department if we look at our m plan there is all kinds of housing that we could build in ammer but we ignore the master plan we're not talking about weakening permitting we're talking about making it a smoother process and if you talk to Laura baper and do a full quote and I don't have it with me you
would understand that that's very limited what you're sharing we need to have housing and revisions to zoning in our goals for the town manager because they become the goals for the planning department and the planning board and to to pretend I pretend that you support housing as long as it's not where I don't want it to be is is ridiculous the other thing is no
one has ever said anything about eliminating a Butter's notices why would well maybe you have I don't think you ever said that because zoning revisions were all about weakening the permitting process it had nothing to do with not notifying a Butters and by w point of order please pardon me I was calling a point of order to ask people to please stop interrupting I still didn't hear Pat you
have the floor please go on it's it so putting out things that aren't there to make sure that your position gets um cemented into the hearts of people in Amor makes me sad there's never ever ever been talk about not notifying a there's never been any talk about eliminating their position or not hearing from other
people the only the only reason 132 Northampton Road went made it was because the town organized and pushed past the people in District three and District Four who were opposing that oh no that's true and that's you can quote John Hornick so on that but you know I'm angry because I've been fighting for housing in this town for f
for five years six years and we have nothing going yes we have some developments but you fight everything that comes up it's sad councelor Ryan this is clearly not the best time to do this but I guess there I would appreciate not being interrupted thank you um but we are
doing it you are correct um if councelor hany could just help me at been pwing through this paper that has writing all over it now this particular wording is somewhere in our document and I just can't find it or or you just created it this is new in other words what we're seeing this evening is something new to us this wording this language is that correct may I can you question it is in
the Excel spreadsheet under the no consensus tab under column B the fourth row sixth row where one commenter in response response to the survey there's no consensus thank you indicated potential additional language thank you that's important to me because actually support this I think it's pretty lwh hanging fruit actually um and
so actually I'm going to vote for it um if we ever get to that point this evening um I agree that that housing is something that is contentious in this body and it's but this is basically saying something fairly clear and direct and asking to get uh input from the planning department which is also going to be looking at other aspects of housing I like the specificity I appreciate being reminded that it's already in the document it's not something that we've
not seen before um so um I'm going to actually vote to support it councelor top yeah I just um do take umbrage I do not block housing again I represent a district that has we are zoned for housing on the smallest slots we are zoned for multif family housing we are the most diverse District in housing stock in amorist so
I do not live on a quiet Dead End Street where you know nobody is actually looking to build so I and I chose to live where I live because I wanted to live you know near town in a neighborhood where the houses were you know close together where there was density but what the the um housing you know proposed zoning amendments that that you and councelor hanaki sponsored last year and
when councelor hanii presented them to the planning board and the council and the CRC she very much talked about having as much and I've we've spoken about this to see as much by right to take what in my neighborhood would go because we have a lot of multifam development that's always permitted and built that the residents and support but they like to have the opportunity to when it goes before the
Zoning Board of appeal to ask if you know the driveways might be able to be on a different street um some these projects always built with the support of the community and to and so I take seriously that when affordable housing it well when H is disguised as or I feel that as much that the goal is as much to have by right and
deregulation as it is to build housing so my what I am concerned with here is the emphasis weakening the permitting process it doesn't just say we would like to support and have zoning revisions so we can have multif family units all over town not just in the general residence districts but it's saying that we want the permitting we we want to uh weaken the permitting process that's that's how I read this and to um
to to not welcome the input the neighborhoods where this housing would be developed just gonna give us 30 seconds
I see two counselors hands up um and it's counselors that we've heard from before are there comments that you feel are really important that you make before this comes to a vote councelor
d'angel I'm sorry councelor haniki a lot of that comment was indirectly focused on me even though it was not naming me um when you talk about dead end streets and everything we do get AB Butters notices in fact I had one within the last year because there was a plan in front of this
CBA and I showed up and I spoke in favor of it and urged them to allow the plan I was the only person who showed up in speak in favor my husband and myself actually kind of made two comments because he was taking kids during the hearing time everyone else spoke against the plan not coming outright and saying it one asked a question about a completely unrelated
property that wasn't even up for hearing another one asked about construction timing and stuff like that completely unrelated to the actual special permit that was on issue it is known that time is money and time adds costs and this action item proposal is seeking to shorten the time that it takes to get to
building from the time someone proposes to build seeking to lower a cost if you don't lower lower costs you don't have affordable or attainable housing I'm also tired of people seeming to imply that if you don't live in downtown you don't have the same stake in our town and our housing as if you do live in downtown
every single resident of this town cares about the entire town every single resident cares about the entire town and ensuring that our entire town works for everyone not just a small minority of folks that includes trying to ensure that those that cannot afford to
live in our town now can do so because we've built housing that they can afford to live in have a housing action item that tries to reduce the costs of building does not mean we're saying no to input although the studies are out there that show the more input time the more times you offer input by a Butters and other residents
in town the higher the costs of the development um does not say it would weaken a permitting opportunity because frankly that just assumes that our planning board when dealing with site plan review has a weaker review than our zba when dealing with special permit doesn't necessarily mean actually I just dispute that concept completely that our planning
board is a weaker regulatory body than our zba um our planning board does a fantastic job when they're looking at site plan reviews they look at different things than the zba it doesn't mean it's weaker we need housing goals that are specific or more specific than they've been the last five years and six
years of this Council because the what we've had isn't producing changes that we as the council have adopted goals um things in our rules of procedure and just our own statements that say we want more housing but when we keep them vague we don't get it we need
specificity Council Town um one of the goals that I guess the first year I was on the council that I said was and um the response was that it was really too vague was what could we do to build housing and adopt policies that would help to sustain and expand our yearr round population so if we
asked if if this item was here and we were you know said we wanted it to be a goal to how could we build more two to six family units I would be very supportive of that if we specified that it would be geared to our um non-student households because otherwise again if just left to Market forces alone what I have seen is all the two to
six unit um housing that will be built will be priced for students because that's where how developers and llc's and investors make the most money so if we can have ask the staff to develop um policies that would make it so we could build more of this kind more housing two to six units as has been specified here for our yearound population I could support
that with our current permitting system as well Council Ry call a question um I don't see any other hands up so I think we can move to a vote without a vote on ending debate if that's okay it's fine okay so the the vote right now is adding this language that's shown and read this
last box councelor Rooney no councelor Ryan Yes councelor Shane no councelor Steinberg yes councelor Tom no councelor Walker yes councelor d'angelus hi Devin gothier I at yes Grier I haniki I
hegner yes Lord I it's 10 to three the motion passes okay Anna has a I'm sorry councelor dein goth here go ahead it's it's okay first names are
fine I am incredibly disappointed in this council's decision to bypass the opportunity to give each of these action items due process going down the list if we consider low and delete Nos and medium and high priorities yeses we would have had votes on this list of 76 five in favor 58 58 7676 if like me people ran out of cookies and put low on things that were good but maybe not critical and we
consider low and medium and high as yes it would have been 121 103 103 130 121 I'm not saying that that is a perfect example of how things shake out and what we would have voted but I'm noting how people ranked these I'm a little unclear on how the first item fourth item and fifth item were not put into the leans medium uh list and I'm disappointed that they were not given the courtesy of discussion in an effort I believe to be efficient this Council has instead
launched itself into a very fun Quagmire we have been working on our review of Public Safety protocols since a vote this Council took in 2020 22 and we just deleted it from the goals this year this is something that a majority of this Council seven people said was a high or medium priority for them I was going to propose amendments to it by by replacing the action items with Paul's suggestions and now I will make those as
motions as full additions because of the rash and cowardly decisions of this Council in voting these as a slate I'm still shocked by that proposal and vote and I move move to add in the following action items you can just copy and paste it from Paul's list if you'd like organize a review of Public Safety protocols for responding to and handling Public Safety calls involving all residents including minors in order to recommend changes to those protocols if appropriate and work with the ammer
police department to review and update if appropriate selected policies of the APD this review shall be included but not limited to use of force policy consent searches and lowlevel and pretextual stops I second
that on this motion councelor Tob I guess I have a point of order yep I did not raise this issue with the previous motion because the language was already in the document and now it seems like we're getting into D dangerous territory where counselors are rewarding
things that have already been voted on and asking for yet another vote we voted to delete those five items and I have just a question of of someone to judge whether this motion is an order if you simply take the language and tweak it and then have another vote um Can somebody clarify whether this is in order uh because we can spend all night taking each one of these items and speaking the language and forcing votes after we just voted to delete them so
there seems to be a problem here at least to me can someone help me see that it's not a problem I can certainly be overruled but I don't believe that because we vote voted this as a group it does not allow an individual counselor to bring back one of those individual items now if the council disagrees with me you can vote to disagree with me I would like to put that to a vote of the council there's a motion to overrule the
ruling of the chair yes a is there a second second may I speak to it sure it just seems to be basically gaming the system at this point um because people didn't get what they wanted now they're going to revise the language some of things I anyway I just it doesn't seem
appropriate um and so I hope that my colleagues will vote to overruled president on this particular matter um just taking something that we'd already already voted to delete and rearranging the language bringing in some new things seems to be counter to the spirit of what we decided are there any other comments on the motion to overrule there are hands up if you're not making a comment on this motion please take it down
councilor Rooney thank you I I appreciate that comment um I I'll Echo the same thing um I was going to say there were there were a number of items that I for instance had high on that ended up in the you know in another category because there weren't enough people that thought like me on it uh but I am not offering to resurrect
them from the depth of you know the no vote in fact we are trying to list yeah you know CH but didn't we just I mean I think a precedent was set this we just revoted an item so I don't think it's fair now to say when the next you know someone another counselor wants to do
the same thing that that that's not allowed we've already set the presedent and I don't want to beat a dead horse but maybe I'll wait until the council meeting on Monday because what we just as long as we're changing language I would just want to add to the vote we just had if we could you know ask the staff when they're proposing um zoning changes so we can build more to two to six family units which I totally support
that it be with an eye towards the in intended for our yearout population so that we are in fact providing housing for the people we talking about the the motion to overrule the chair's ruling um did you have any other comments on that but I I mean I'm not looking to go through each item now either but I think the precedent been set okay councilor Devin goth here I would argue by not taking separate votes to vote things as a slate
and then vote them down as a slate uh the decision or the motion to deny the opportunity to have discussion on these items was already gaming the system councelor ET um likewise I think we swerved once we at some point decided to vote um on mass for um some of these goals okay councilor
Shane I believe I believe George made a motion to overrule the town president I'd like to be able to vote on that we we have been given this list and what I'm also hearing the subcommittee that gave us a very long list is now trying to put items on with new rewarding we had opportunities to reward over the last weekend and this is we need to be more efficient as the
Town Council we just need to be more efficient so I would like to vote on the motion to overrule the president's ruling on this councilor Walker um yeah I just want to add that I I think we did just a very similar if not the same thing with Mandy Joe's motion just a moment ago so I'm I'm just a little bit confused about the disagreement here so the motion on the floor is to overrule the chair's ruling that this
motion to add is in order so a vote Yes would overrule the chair's ruling that this motion is in order it would remove the motion from the floor are there any questions about what you're voting yes go ahead would it remove what we just voted on no there was no there was no challenge to that are there any other questions about
the the motion that you're voting right now yes I'm sorry Athena can you please repeat which yes is to overrule the president's ruling the there was a point of order that the motion that Council Devin gothier made was out of order um president grimer said that it's not out of order and there was a challenge to that ruling so now you're
voting to overturn the ruling that it's not out of order yes no I understand that but I'm trying to figure out so a yes does what like what is the difference between yes and no then a yes overrules the president's ruling that this is not out of order and it removes this from the floor it removes um Anna's motion from the floor a yes vote okay thank you you're welcome are there any other questions or
comments councelor Ryan hi councelor Shane yes councelor Steinberg yes councelor Tom no councelor Walker no councelor d'angeles no councelor Devin gothier no councelor no councelor Grier no councelor hanii no
councelor hegner no councelor Lord no councelor Rooney yes that motion fails 4 to n the motion on the floor is to add this as an action item is there discussion councelor grimer I'd like to ask the town manager
how much of this has been going on where do we stand with this this is something that has been out there for about two years review of Public Safety protocols so I know the um Police Department as part of and uh with conclusion of their accreditation process um have reviewed all their policies uh I don't have this specific update for you on these
specific policies on the use of force consent searches or low level and pretextual stops is there other discussion okay seeing none I actually do have one of them oh yep please go ahead um it it's it doesn't need to be part of
this motion but I would like to encourage the town manager to bring forth some kind of report that tells us what if any changes have been made thank you no further discussion think we are H councelor Shane how do you vote councelor
Shane to to add this we're voting are we voting all those paragraphs back in or the original wording this here what you're it's not the original wording it's just what Athena has highlighted all that wording was in the explanation of it in the Box it was in Paul's comment on the vote from 20122 I'm voting no
okay Steinberg no tab uh yes Walker yes d'angelus I Devin gothier I ET no Grier I
anaki hi hegner I Lord I Rooney yes Ryan that passes 9 to4 point of order yes why does some things end up in the high bucket and some things end up in the medium or
low medium bucket like you just put that you just put that one plopped it into medium the other one was plopped into high to it was totally arbitrary I just needed a place to add a box and I found a place to add a box when this comes back to the Council on Monday I'll reorganize them back into the format that go had so they're in their goal areas there's no more ranking priorities there's no
subfuse is there any other discussion um I guess I have a question about the last page okay that has measure and status because we haven't talked about that part at all okay so I guess one of my questions is what does the first three look like in an action item are they literally just
going to say waste holler bylaw or solar bylaw or residential rental since they were pulled out it yeah it and a lot of language was lost what what's the intended language for those those three and the master plan because the master plan actually had some language that was also removed when it went into this chart I I'll put the the language for the master plan back um this would be continue to support development continue to support development and continue
implementation I can put that in wouldn't it just go back to the um
language that we had in the previous part of a much longer okay action councilor Ryan [Music] please use your mic what reads address critical infrastructure needs for water and sewer etc etc that's get gets added to the Wastewater is that correct or where does that show up yes as it was added to the waste
water it was separated from that waste water so it would go added added back in added back in y okay Council Ryan did you have any other comments no do not ccor to how many goals do we have do we
35 35 did we have a goal for the goals no sorry can I respond to that from Go's discussions um a go sure so we did not set a set number because every goal is a different size and so to set an no honestly because we we can look at how
many we set last year uh we could look at that but it's really not comparable because they're written differently these are broken out more so we could expect them expect there to be more because in the past we had numbers but then like five action items in each number so there isn't a target number maybe in the future we can get to one but given the different sizes and given that these all Impact different departments uh in different ways like different weights we can't necessarily I think maybe this is my
opinion and Jo didn't vote on this statement but I don't think that we can fairely set a responsibly set a number to Target may this is what we're going to do councel CH there were other hands up so let me okay are we going to try and narrow them down tonight or is that for Monday um we've gone through all of them we're on this page unless there are motions to remove other ones then we're getting
to the end here councelor hanii so I move to delete um the address critical infrastructure needs for water and sewer to comply with state and federal laws is there a
second I will second I want to hear the argument you want to speak to your motion yeah so way back four hours ago um we added a assess the current conditions of the wastewater treatment plan and present a plan that will address these issues including a funding plan for improvements and repairs the language I just moved to delete was originally listed as an alternative to that language I don't quite understand why it
was listed as required by law other than it has this thing at the end that says to comply with state and federal laws but um I I feel like it's not needed and given what we adopted or what we've kept in from earlier in this meeting that what we kept in way up in the high priority is more specific to what we are aiming for
than this one yes there's is there discussion on this um councelor is your comment about this one not at all okay any discussion on this councelor Shane no I I just didn't hear when I count them up I get 24 so I just didn't hear what you said you get as a number I got but I was kind quick Pat heard you say 35 so there's a big difference between 24 and count together I mean I
could imagine I miscounted maybe it's 25 but I only get 24 I numbered 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35
I got 35 what got 35 yeah I'm I put a number next to each one and I don't get anywhere near that so I'm just not sure yeah including the these ones so oh you you mean this this last page they all get added in yeah those are those are still goals last page of measures get added they get added in they're all they were all separate goals on the document so they would become
separate we're still pretty far apart but that's okay um I'm I just numbered them as went along like we took DPW and collaps it into one so I made it only one but anyway uh we'll see the cleaned up sheet when we see it Monday night I mean I have my marked up one so I will show you clean and marked up and cleaned up some more uh did you have any comments on Mandy's motion on Mandy's motion
which is to delete this yes uh councelor Shane did you have any other comments on this no uh councelor hegner um the the earlier um action item referred to the
Wastewater Plant specifically this includes the Water Systems which I think we have state laws now that will fect the water systems and I think we should keep this because water systems are not included in wastewater treatment councelor ET not on this uh councelor Devin gothier I would like to once again remind this Council that the number of goals is arbitrary we need to look at
the amount of work uh required by the goals some goals require a lot more than others so I would encourage people to detach from the idea of a specific number um and for example combining two action items into one may drop the number but doesn't change the amount of work whatsoever uh so on this topic my question is if it has to get done anyway if Paul will spend time doing it anyway why would we not put it in the goals and give him credit for doing it when we do
his evaluation so this you know this goals document is there's no reason to cut out things in my mind that are going to take time and effort and I'm not trying to open a can of worms I'm just talking about this one right now in my mind it doesn't make sense to remove something that Paul and his staff will have to spend time on and then we don't even get to credit them for it during his evaluation if they're going to do it anyway um I'd also like to note last year's goals there were 67 so if you are
attached to number 78 I just counted my Tally well it's impossible because they're all broken into paragraphs and not number lines but some between 67 and 78 uh goals so if we're talking numbers we've done a significant amount of cutting and I'm really proud of us for that but again please detach the idea of a specific number in your brain fer haniki so I
appreciate the comments um however one of the things we did was delete a lot of the already required by law hold on wait wait wait wait wait we already deleted a lot of that because it needs to be done and we included a lot of that as assumed to be done within the if you remember our original chart we had a goal area we had an objective and then we have action items and a lot of those already
required by laws are covered within the objectives and this one would be covered within the objective of infrastructure Management in a sense uh um and my understanding of action items was things that we really want to see that aren't necessarily required by law they're required there there are goals beyond the normal day-to-day stuff because that's under the objective so I
I would say if the sole reason we're keeping it in is because it's quote required by law well we've already deleted a ton and we'll be back up to eight or we could be back up to eight and we don't want to be back up to 80 so the things easiest to delete are the ones that have to be done because they're required by law if we're doing them within the normal course of timing councelor Ryan so m is back just to councilor H's motion and if it does succeed what the
language would look like um and it's just late I guess um your motion was to delete it is that correct to delete it and Bob's point was that that might not actually cover some of the things we wanted to cover so maybe my question is for Bob um Thinking Out Loud how this would you have it as a separate item um as a separate action
item or would you somehow Bo it back into the the uh the Wastewater item because it isn't that way right now so I guess I I'm trying to understand what we're going to do with this thing if we don't delete it where does it go well the Wastewater issues are different than systems issues so a separate separate separate action item then drinking water system is old too
and has problems and we we may need there will be regulations and laws that will change that will affect drinking water so I I think we we can focus this on drinking water if you want and storm water if you want but um you know but I think M's argument what I'm hearing is that since it's required by law unless there's a particularly special reason for us to bring it to Paul's attention we can assume that he
and his staff will take care of it maybe your argument is that this is something you feel Rises to that level of importance and needs to be added as a separate item I I mean we could go through all these again to see if we're worried about whether it's required by law or not I don't think it's worth our doing that at this laid out so that's why I want it I agree with deleting it so fine delete I that's all right it's just um
yeah Okay C grimer I think we should just leave this in as we left in and all the rest of these I could have argued that there were some in the earlier things that should have been in this list this is a minimal list of things that are required um I'm ready to make a motion to adjourn well that's fine there's a motion on the floor councelor hanii of that hand is before a motion so
I get before motion to adjourn because I oh you did just change it up there the plan stuff was not changed so I wanted to make sure it was getting there but that's not part of the motion that's on the floor so I need my hand up I told what was in the original go could you make that a bit bigger please actually it's on my screen I'm sorry I can look at it thank you yeah that's true I carry it thank you thank you um did you have a comment councelor I
mean not much more than I already said I think a lot of these could be deleted it if if there's the comment but he'll spend time well he's going to spend a ton of time on the budget but we didn't even talk about the budget in these goals I mean just because there's time there doesn't mean we need to add them into these action items I think a lot of these measure ones could be deleted not just the one I proposed okay it sounds like you're ready to
vote Council so the motion is to delete address critical infrastructure needs counselor Shane you know I'm going to abstain because I don't understand why we're having a long discussion about this so I'm just abstaining councelor Steinberg oh councelor
Tom yes um no councelor Walker I'm also abstaining uh councelor d'angelus no councelor Devin gothier no councelor no councelor grimer no councelor haniki yes councelor hegner no councelor Lord
no councelor Rooney no councelor Brian yes that's two yes nine no to abstain a motion fails councelor hanii is your hand up for some a new yeah um there have been some side conversations going on during this
meeting um one of which was just commented that I heard the president say don't go there um when I talked about potentially making other motion we spent a lot of time on the high priority ones that everyone was going to keep in and then we get to these where we need some discussion and all this Council does is say oh we don't have time we don't have time it's late we shouldn't discuss or don't go there because I want to end this meeting I think it's a
shame and service to the manager that we tried to rush through the more difficult parts of this conversation because it's been a long meeting um I will refrain from making the motions tonight with in respect to the fact that
it's a long meeting but please know that come Monday I'm going to bring up these conversations again because they're important conversations to have we had a long conversation last week on the Jones library and whether this is the right goal to even have in there but I know given some of the things that have been said in the last half hour that if I move to amend this or delete this one all I'm going to get is size and of frustration because it's already been a
long meeting we're not done we need to take the time to have these conversations and we should just admit that instead of making comments such as don't go there from the person who's leading our Council I'm sorry it's it that was my fault Mandy it was not the president's fault councelor on a on a related note I was thinking if during the regular council meeting we
could treat whatever comes out of tonight's event as something like the consent agenda so excuse me so that we'll have an opportunity to pull out um a few items whatever anyone wants and have further discussion on those items just because I think there's something about voting these items in mass given that we
didn't discuss all of those items councelor Rooney yeah I think uh what's going through my head is that these last items are ongoing required by law and I think the conversation really I'm I'm trying to keep the conversation at a 10,000 foot level let's just let's just incorporate these let's not let's not Wade through
these so carefully and um you know at some point you just have to say I think these are basically okay they're required by law let's just leave them in and move on and not spend a lot more time on it that's that was what triggered my conversation over here in the corner councelor Walker um I'm also just wanting to Circle back to F's comments because I think that that's a good point we did a lot of work tonight um and while there
was a lot of discussion we did to come to consensus on some things and so do we have any type of agreement or precedent that those things will continue to be in agreement on Monday or will we have to rehash all of these conversations again at our council meeting um and I think that's an important thing to talk about and I did just want to address Mandy Joe's comments just because this this retreat was listed to be from 6:00 to 10: and I do have class at 9:00 a.m. so
I do want to go to bed but I do think it's really important for us to hear each other out cuz we don't agree on all of these things and so I I think more conversation is required I don't know if right now is the right time um but I did just want to you know appreciate Mandy Joe for her thoughts I'm I'm tired and I do want to end this meeting though councelor Shane okay in terms of rushing I'm counting up the hours I we spent two hours on climate the first time we did
Lynn convened us again we spent another two hours then we spent uh four or five hours I spent eight hours in between reading multiple vers verions writing comments um this is an enor an enormous amount and careful comments on why some things don't rise to the level of counselor goals going back down to micromanaging I think this is by far the most inefficient goal setting time I've
been through and I thought the first year was not a good one so so and we do have a rule if you can't come back unless there's new information to revisit a vote we already took we we did that on a couple more major pieces so I don't think we should start uh reneging on that because we must have some other things that we have to get done that's just my view that it's not a rush and the second time I came in I
didn't understand Lynn we weren't about eliminating we were just supposed to talk about them and understand what they were I had comments on everything all written up and we never got to it so there's got to be a better way of using our time and if we take a long time writing comments and everyone reads them that's in effect a kind of discussion that's happening behind the scenes but I don't think everybody reads all the comments that people have been putting in so I just object very much to the idea that we were rushed if we were
rushed it's because we didn't read really carefully before we came and we didn't read 4 days ago and we didn't read the first time so I think um homework sometimes is painful as well so I will come back I don't I didn't feel rushed I felt like we were rehashing some things thank you ly I think I'll hand things back to
you and see if there's a motion to adjourn I saw move is there a second second second yep Steinberg yes T yes Walker yes d'angeles I Devin gothier I
at I gismer I heniki I hegner I Lord I yes Ryan I Shane yes we're adjourned at 10:39