Yeah, get on here. Second It's exciting. We're going to have a new Yeah. Yeah. I think she's going to be good. She has a lot of experience.
Yes. working with um elderly students. Yeah. We last month we ran long. Yes. Well, last month we uh That's right. Yeah. Yeah. You were back.
Yes. with survey. Yeah. Yeah. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hi, Dennis. How are you? Good. Glad to see you. Nice to see you, too.
Are you back? I I I will hope to make that uh Atkins meeting. Oh, good. Please do. And you invited the town council, you said. Yeah. Well, all town council candidates.
So, anybody who will be on the ballot has been has been invited. Okay. And it's just a straightforward invitation. If they want to show up, great. If they don't want to show up, it's okay. But hey, whatever. Whatever works. And that goes 10 to 12 or so.
Yeah. Uh, actually, it's like 10 to 11, but it starts at 10. Yeah, it's about an hour. A little over an hour. Yeah. Street coffee free world famous apple cider donuts. Hello.
Hi. Hi. Yes. Yeah, of course I am. John's on the big screen and rumor has it Fred blew out. Seattle.
Oh, there you all are. Okay. Hello. Can you see us? Yes, I can see you. Oh, it's just the angle of the angle. If you look up top, you can see what the the actual picture. Stand up.
Grab a couple chairs. Jump on a little bit. Anita, is that you? Yes. Hello. You're attending the meeting today. I
am true. That might be helpful. Messing around. Yeah, I'm thinking that we chatted one time. Well, in the world. Yes. Yes. Did you work for health promotion?
Yes. There we go. Everybody somehow related to your Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Are you still there? No, I haven't. Okay. has moved to Hemisphere.
Okay. Yeah. Rockwell. Yeah. Oh, not to be confused with Rockwell. Great job, Lucas, with the positioning. I can see everyone really well now. So, It's good.
Good. He just stepped up for a second. Oh, okay. But it looks like we're missing Dawn. Sort of the main reason to have this Zoom was for him, right? Yes. He has not joined us yet. And uh Sarah is on her way and I know two
members are sick and I believe Fred is out of town. Oh. So, we're going to be sweating making our quorum. Quorum. So, you need Dawn and Sarah.
Yes. Yes. Okay. Trish isn't around. She is very sick. She's sick. Oh, no. Yeah. Oh, dear. I was wondering because Jean,
I saw that you reached out to Sam Gifin about the press release because I had put Trish and Sam in touch some time ago, but it sounds like she's down for the count. Yeah. Yeah. I tried to check in with her last week and usually she's very responsive and I wasn't hearing anything
and then I finally got a message this week that she's had a fever. She sounded awful. Then she called me and just was hacking away and just very congested. That's the worst. Yuck.
So yeah. So I wasn't sure where she was at with um Sam, so I just reached out and I'm glad efficient. I will be back to her tonight. I just wanted to have this meeting first to wrap up a few loose
ends and yeah and hopefully get that going. Okay. Your front door is locked. Oh my. Thank you. So just the front door as opposed to the side door.
I can check I did not go all the way down but that one is zoom in a lot. Um, so before others come, hopefully we you will get to quorum, but I just wanted to let folks know that I am only going to join for a short time. I have
our board of health meeting at 5 and I have a little bit of prep I need to do for that. So, um, I just wanted to Oh, here's Jennifer. Uh I just wanted to have a chance to you know sort of wish you all well as I move back to my regular permanent job um effective
officially Monday. So this is my last meeting with you. Yes. And I just want to thank you Kiko for all your work and your assistance and helping keep thing keep keep us and and senior services running smoothly. I
know it was very challenging with lots going on and being pulled in multiple directions, but um you were a pleasure to work with um and we we're very grateful for all the time and energy you put into the COA and we will miss
working with you, but we know you're not far so that we can call upon you should questions arise. you know, looking forward to working with Lisa, but obviously for historical purposes, um, whatnot, you may.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm just down the hall. I'm going to be spending quite a bit of time with Lisa in the first couple weeks just to sort of pass on to her. I have a whole list of things for her to think about and and I'll be very available to her as she's getting onboarded. It's somebody was commenting to me the other day that sometimes we
don't do the best job um orienting department heads because we sort of feel like oh you know they're seasoned professionals they can find their way and yes we can but it's also nice to have someone spend a little time with you and tell you how things work in the town. So um I hope to be able to do that for her. So and I'm also happy to be
available to anybody for any questions, concerns, if I can assist in any way definitely keep me in mind. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Of course. Oh, and I also wanted to tell you that the public health department is sponsoring just one vaccine clinic at
the bangs this fall. So, if you're paying attention to the news, you know, it's not a pretty picture for vaccines in our country right now. For anybody who believes in vaccines and wants to get them and believes in science, not a pretty picture. So, we are struggling um because of what's happening to get
access to COVID vaccine for people. Um the clinic that we are organizing in October is just for seniors. That's how we're marketing it because we can only give COVID vaccine to people over 65. We are offering flu and we can give flu to
people under 65. So people who think of themselves as seniors but aren't 65 can come and get a flu shot, but as of now because of what's happening, insurance is not covering COVID shots for people under 65. So we can't offer them. It might change. I hope that it does. But
right now, this is where we this is where we are. This is what we're working with. So, and we're getting tons of calls like the slots are filling up and it's still six weeks away. So, there's a lot of demand and it's just a really tough time in terms of the supply to
meet that demand. Well, it's wonderful that you can at least post one. Yeah. And we're doing it in collaboration with the Northampton Department of Health and Human Services. they have more resources than we do and they've always been a great partner for these kinds of things. So, couldn't do
it without them. But it's still just we're all losing our minds right now in public health. It's really hard time. Um, I'm wondering if it would be kosher to ask Guilford to speak even
though we technically haven't officially started the meeting just out of I try to be very respectful of people's time and I know this is fast time for all of you town employees. So, thank you all for hanging with us. But um
is that would that I think you're not taking a vote. No, we're not voting. We're going to give I think you can let I think we can let Guilford speak his piece and head home. Yes. Thank you for coming, Gilford. Not done. I apologize. We don't have the
full-blown council, but such is life here. So So what do you want to know? Well, we've been we started this tradition like a year ago inviting department heads in to kind of do a show
and tell. What do you do in particular challenges you have? Any areas of particular impact with with seniors and um as you probably know you're a popular guy. Your name comes up a lot. So um we
thought we would invite you to be our next okay know department. So public works is um actually outside the school departments. We're the largest department in the town. We have
65 employees. Sometimes have more than that with interns and other employees who bring on special projects. Um we're larger than the standing fire department. We're larger than the um police department. Um we have seven
divisions in the department. We have an administration division which does all our payroll, bill paying, HR stuff and also our engineering department in so in the whole public works department there's actually three
licensed engineers. Um, we have a landscape architect, trained landscape architect. He's not licensed as one. Um, he's the one who actually designed the North Common Park. That was his design. Um,
we can uh we can do just about any design we need to or any any work we need to we can do in a house. We do contracts some more specialty stuff out because some of the specialty stuff you talk to us you'll realize that last time I did it was in college um or 30 years
ago and it's it's easier to get somebody does it all the time. Um we designed the Conroy roundabout that was in house design. That was kind of fun. Um so the engineering division is actually five people. There's a town engineer, an
assistant town engineer. There's two inspectors, and there's an environmental scientist. Our environmental scientist handles all of our permitting stuff on the DPW side, and then pitches in does some other things. Um, and that's the administrative side. We have a water
division which consists of a distribution system and a treatment system. Um our treatment system consists of three water treatment plants and five wells. So we have five wells. Four of them do
not need any type of treatment. One does need treatment. It's iron and meanganese treatment. That's one of our treatment plants is an iron manganese treatment plant. We affectionately call it baby carriage. It's down in the large swamp where they
used to harvest reads to make pram. So it's called baby carriage. The other plant is called Centennial. It's up in Pum. It's being totally rebuilt right now. It's pretty much offline. This is Dawn.
Hi Don. Can you hear me? I didn't know you the last couple days. So I forgot to follow up with you about how to get in touch with. Okay. Anyway, all right. Don, check your email and just send you
an email with a link to the Zoom. Okay, so Don, we're going to continue. Guilford Moing is here. He's the director of DPW and he's just been um telling us about his department. Okay, cool. Sorry, Bill.
This is multimedia. Yes, some of the treatments. So, we have Centennial, which is just being redone. We'll probably have a ribbon cutting sometime October, November time period. It's a really nice plant. It's it's really nice. Really, really
nice. The other plant is the Atkins treatment plant. The Atkins treatment plant in the north side of town and takes water from the Atkins reservoir and treats it. Centennial takes water from Pebble. We have three reservoirs in Pu take water from. We're a pretty complicated water system. We're not a
usual the usual water system. Most people just have wells or most people have surface water. We have a company in both and we have multiples of both. So we're a little bit more complicated. Um we have a distribution system which is people who handle the water pipes that
get the water from the treatment system to your house. Um the biggest issue we have right now on the water side is um people really don't like the fact they own their water service. Their water service is the pipe from the house to the main. And in some communities it's
the house to the property line. We go all the way from the house to the main. The main can be on the other side of the road. So it's a bit different. A lot of seniors um don't appreciate that when they have a problem. They've been here longer. Their
house services are usually older and they have a a bigger financial burden to fix a water leak than most people do. That's something that that's a common senior problem in the water side. Leaks is a big issue we find with some
of the seniors. Um they just don't um have the hearing. I guess the easiest way to say is the hearing capacity. You don't notice things as much as you used to. People can have a running toilet, a dripping faucet, not pay attention to it, and then three months you have a
pretty large bill. And your water bill, your water bill also sets your sewer rate. So they go together. You have a high water bill, you're going to have high sewer bill. Those are kind of issues we have in the water sewer side with seniors. Um we
have a wastewater department. There's two parts to the wastewater department. There's the pipe. The conveyance system which takes from your house to the wastewater plant. And there's the wastewater treatment plant. Wastewater treatment plant is older. It's 50 years
old. So I guess maybe it qualify actually 50 years old. It qualifies as a maybe a historic structure. Um but it's been there a while. Um it tells so many old jokes to Sydney.
I'm getting there fast. Um, so, uh, the treatment plant has some issues. Um, there's going to be a lot of work that's going to have to be done in the treatment plant over the next 10 years. Um, that'll drive the water rates up higher. I mean, the sewer rates up higher, not the water rates. Um, that's
just something that's going to happen. We we look for new customers all the time because we want to share the load. Um, so we are pushing to add customers. That just makes it easier. Um what do you mean by add customs like residents?
So we actually serve the town of Hammers column a little bit of le and a little bit of Beluretown and a little bit of Hadley. Belchure town just gets water. The other
communities get sewer as well. Actually Hadley only gets sewer not water. Um we have u projects in the works to actually work more with Hadley and providing water to both communities. Um we also have a project working with Hadley which
was in the paper recently which we're looking at how to take some of their sewage and treat it in our plan. So we have new customers coming in. Okay. So that's kind of what we try to make a little extra money. Um so that's what we
do. So water, sewer, those are the big bigger division. Two of the bigger divisions. The next big division is highway. The highway division is the ones who grow potholes, um plow snow, um do the roadside mowing and so forth. Uh
that's what they do. They also do some of the smaller projects around town and some of uh some repair work. Um we're having a hard time filling those positions in highway right now. Um overall in by the end of this month
we'll have six vacancies in the department which is almost 10%. And we're having a hard time recruiting and a hard time hiring people and we're losing people at a pretty constant rate through higher paying jobs in other communities.
Um so that's a that's a general DPW problem. um highway department's biggest issues that we run into with seniors is um the town bylaw says that everyone's
responsible for applying or clearing their sidewalk. A lot of seniors have a hard time clearing their sidewalk and we push a lot of snow on top of the sidewalks, but it still says it's the property owner responsibility. Uh we have a we have one route we do in
town which um we probably shouldn't be doing. Um, so that's a little issue we have with in the senior community side with that. Um, also the other issue is just property maintenance. Some people let their properties grow up too much. They don't take care
of them as much as they used to and there's a lot of road that hangs into the sidewalk and into the road and those can be issues with some of the older people. Um, this is recorded, isn't it? All right, I'll tell you that story
then. May I ask a question is that sorry ask you to hold um so that's highway division. Um the next next division is the tree and grounds division. That's pretty much a large it's only eight
people in that division. There's usually there's 12 people in most the other divisions I just talked about. Um tree and grounds they take care of the common. They mow the common. They maintain the trees. They maintain the athletic fields. They line fields for
recreation department. They also line them for the school department and the regional school department. Um there's a a little bit of overlap a little bit with that division because we do stuff that also is done by the
mainten facility maintenance in the town by conservation by school department. But we try to just do our kind of the properties commons um fields and a couple of our DPWs. And then we maintain all the street
trees. Does everybody know what a street tree is? A street tree is a tree that's in the public way and it's over two and a half inches in diameter. Is protected by state law and cannot be cut down without the tree warden blessing the removal.
That's one of shave tree. We we have the tree warden in our department and he goes around handles those things too. That's out snow. Um the other that's four division that's five divisions. The other two are the transfer station. The transfer
station it used to be a landfill where you can bring all your stuff. Um transfer station you bring your normal stuff. You can't bring everything. We don't take hazardous materials there except on a special day. Um, we've pushed back on some some waste because
it's just expensive to get rid of, but your trash, your recycling, your brush, leaves, that stuff you can bring to the transfer station. Um, it does cost, you have to pay a entrance fee and then you have to pay for your waste. Some waste
is free. Most waste is a charge for it. Um, we do run into issues with seniors who create a small amount of trash and they want to pay a lower fee to get into the facility, but we charge the same fee for everybody.
Um, most of the seniors because they do create a smaller amount, they actually come out very well on the overall cost of waste disposal because it's about $600 a year for one of the haulers that pick
up your trash curbside. So, we're still it's probably less than half that if you go to the transfer station. So, it's a bargain for and if you have a small amount of trash, it's a bargain. Um the last division we have it
is is um Oh man, seven. What am I up to? I know. I get boss. Five, six. There's actually eight of us. Um keeping that one. Uh we have vehicle maintenance. We have three mechanics. They maintain all
the equipment in the DPW. We did we used to do a little more maintenance outside of DPW. We don't do that anymore. Um, but they've handled all the equipment. About 60 pieces of equipment. Just some counting the mowers and
everything else. We're a little closer to 90. So that's the vehicle maintenance. Uh, then we have the electrical division. That's my eighth one. See? Yeah. Electrical division maintains the street lights, maintains the traffic
lights. and then does electrical issue electrical repair and electrical stuff for the PPW. Sometimes we get pulled to facilities. Sometimes we get pulled to um the schools. We haven't got pulled to the schools in a long time, but we have
two electricians and usually we have two in the summer we have not the summer in the school year we have two interns. They come from Dean Tech in Holio. Really good kids. they really enjoy coming. Uh it's actually it's kind of
fun to have them. Um but uh so there's sometimes in the school year there's four of us here pretty much side and that's what we do. That's everything we do. So really there's four divisions that support the DPW. There's four divisions that actually interact with
the public and provide services to the public. That's basically us in a nutshell. Okay. Does anybody have any question? Yeah. Have you got a question? Oh yes.
You mentioned about the um owners, you know, dur winter, right? Are responsible for cleaning those the snow off of the sidewalk. And how about we of course, you know, amorism has a
lot of landlords. And then on main street most of them are students who reside there. Then who will be responsible for removing this? No, the students are all up to the landlords.
So it's up to however the lease whatever the lease is for the property is how it's responsible. Some landlords provide snow removal and snowplow. Other landlords say no, you're responsible. So it depends totally on what the landlord wants to do and what the tenants are
willing to the tenant doesn't want to deal with all know they should go rent someplace else. So I see how you know um I wondered if you could talk a little bit more about the rotaries and what's
coming up and um the safety. Have you gotten feedback from seniors or the town residents and what that might be? Um, so we have how many do we have now?
One, two, three, four, a little, five. Um, so we have five roundabouts in town. We did some little ones in Heatherstone and probably they're going to get taken out. Um, and the biggest ones, the new ones coming is going to be the Emmy
Street, University Drive. Um, they actually work very well. Um, we don't do two lane roundabouts. We keep ours single lanes. Um, there's a two-lane roundabout in Northampton. That gets lots of discussion. Uh,
I always get humped. Most people um, the general consensus we get is that they work well. Um, some people have a hard time negotiating through. And um some people will say why just avoid it is why I do. Um so but
they do work well. Traffic moves well. The accidents in them have dropped drastically. Um before we did the intersection at Palmer, there was a t-bone inter t-bone accident and we were out there doing the final surveying before the act before we put it in. There was a huge t-bone accident where
someone didn't stop and the other person just it was good. Wasn't good. Right. What's a tone? Uh Oh. Oh, okay. So, yeah. So, anyway, good.
But, uh, those are all dropping now. Most the most accidents we get are rear injurers where someone stops because they're unsure or someone pulls out in front of someone and they stop so the people behind them hit them. Um, we've had a few sidewipes where a car pulls in
when they're not supposed to, but those are even those are very minor. Those are even lower lower speeds, lower damage, definitely lower injuries. So they're working better much better than
So and question about street lights. Who makes the decision about because we've done different things. I've lived in town for a while and I want to say neighborhoods used to be brighter and then I don't know if it was select board. I don't know who makes the
decision, but then we were a lot of lights were turned off or not maintained or I don't know what whatever, but I'm going to say like in my neighborhood there's a light there's one light kind of per if you're on a culdeac at the at the end and then
but there used to be other lights. So is that is that I decide? Yeah. No. No. Okay. So there um maybe in the 80s there was what what was called proposition two and a half passed
in the state level and that's where they put the rule in place where your budget cannot go up or your your t general tax levy can't be increased more than two and a half%. Yeah minus new growth and stuff but you can only increase two and a half%. uh when
that came through um they actually went through and turned off the lost street lights and that was the biggest loss of street lights was during that time period. Um since then they came up with a a SL board back in the SLboard came up with a
policy and said we're going to have a street light at every intersection and at the end of every culdeac and there's a curve whether it's a vertical curve or horizontal curve it's going to be a light. Um, and then we're going to light up downtown. And that's what they
said. That's the policy. And that's pretty much how it's been, except when we do a street project downtown, we add lights because we're improving lighting downtown. Um, but that's kind of the policies we've stayed at. Um, if you wish to have a new street light, you
need to request it from the from the town council. Now, what about traffic lights? The one I noticed that's gone to Flashing is the one that's where university kind of bolts up against campus
that's gone flashing like where you would if you're coming down university from Route 9 towards campus and then if you need to turn left there to get on to 116 at certain times of day you can't see and it's impossible but it's it's been flashing
the last few times I've gone through that intersection at street no university at the bottom No. Or is it not called University there? When you come down there, you come down University, you go past the Rotary from
Route 9. You go past the Rotary that would take you up and you're in campus. You were that takes you up to Fairing and then you keep going down and and road Tes and if you turn you turn right, you turn quick left to go to Mullen or you turn left to get on to 16 off of
Mass Avenue or whatever. Not our light. Yeah, that one's like it flashes straight and I think it also flashes if you're coming down from campus. Take a left. Very confusing. Well, and you can't at certain times a day if there's a lot of traffic, you can't make the left turn because you can't see the because there's too many
cars pile lining up to turn left to go down by Mullen Center and you can't see if there's anybody coming. I But if it's not yours, like thanks to someone. I know which one it is. No, but it's dangerous. It is. We've talked to the university about it and we've disagreed with how
they did set it up, but they set it up they wanted to and they're defending it the way they want to. Um, so but yeah, we do not do anything at UMass. If you're on campus at UMass, the only street we maintain is North Pleasant Street, which goes through campus. All the other streets on campus
are UMass streets. They're technically actually not laid out as streets. So, um, they don't really have that designation. Um, we don't do the streets in Ammerst College
except college street we do and the main streets but we don't do the inside campus and we don't do inside um amateur colleg's campus either and then we the big apartment complexes we don't do anything in those as well what about the speaking that reminded me
street wise you don't do anything yes when but when you turn to get on to um 116 to go north off of where we were. That intersection I was talking about. Like if you came over there and you turn left, I can't remember the name of that
street, you got people coming off and there's big signs that say do not enter and they're not tipped at all. So every time, because I don't do this very often, every time I try to go on, there's a sign in my face that says do not enter. But I am on the right side.
The do not enter is for the other side. But because of the way that those signs are, those need to be They need to be twisted a little bit. So, I'm a human factors person. That's my Those are They're just They make I'm just saying those you do have control
over. Do you know what I mean? I do not. All because they're state. That's a state road. And that's also in Hadley. Yes, that's already Hadley on. Interesting. I did not realize that the town line runs through the Mullen
Center actually. Oh, and through Big Y. Yeah, campus the I apologies. That's okay. Two and they're both at Mcgherk Stadium is in Hatley and so when you're at Mcgherk Stadium and
there's that big green spot between your North University Drive and the stadium, Town Line is kind of in the middle of that green spot. So if you anything on that side is paddling anything on this side hammers but what you're talking about that's an estate road estate issue
so heard something that I know does always are y and rotating and I'm just wondering obviously you know you're short staffed
and you don't get enough money but So, what what can we do to help help you do better because it's a rough road out there. Well, there are there are some rough
roads and some are actually pretty good. So, but the rough we have some good ones, but we have a lot of rough ones. We have a lot and most of the rough ones are in anybody's neighborhood. So, when you're sitting at your house or walking up and down your street, you probably you're on one of the rougher roads in town. So that's when you probably pay more attention. Um the biggest thing is
is there's got to be more money put towards roads. I mean we have a right now we just had the the roads rescan but we don't have the information back. But before this that scan the scan told us we needed $40 million to catch up. So if
we wanted to catch up in five years, we needed to spend five divided into 40 million dollars a year and we don't even come close. So are there any creative solutions that
I mean one thing we one thing we've talked about doing and it'll never apply is we just need to stop putting so much uh salt down on the roads during the winter. We just need to let the roads stay covered in snow. Let them melt the way they want to melt. Um
that save money. It would. Um the biggest the biggest enemy of a road is freeze and thaw. So you get water on a road or in a road and it freezes, it expands and that pops the asphalt and then makes
the crack bigger. And then you get more water in it freezes and expands more. And that's what causes the issue of potholes. Um, so by us putting salt and winter chemicals down heavily on our
roads that are already cracked, we're lowering the temperature of the water so it stays liquid longer. It has a chance to infiltrate farther into the road and then when it gets cold finally and freezes, it can pop more. So, we've
talked about maybe it's time to go away from all salt, go back to the old way of doing it, which is sand, but no one's going to agree to that. Um, so we spent all winter destroying everything we do during the summer and spent all summer fixing everything we did in the winter. And
that's kind of, if you look at it, that's kind of a pattern we're in right now because we haven't haven't put enough money into make roads and keep them smoother and keep them sealed more into cracks out. That's kind of that's kind of that's kind of what we're doing.
We're planning ourselves. We just need more money so we can get ahead of ourselves. Keep the roads smoother and so forth. Cobblestones. Why don't you talk about how people can report potholes if they find them in
their community? Oh yeah. If you want to report a pothole, you just call a state. There's two there's three ways to report a pothole. One is you just send an email to DPW. It's public works at ammerity.gov. Uh you send an email. Someone checks
that. There's three people who check that every day and they put them in. Uh second way is you can call and you don't have to talk to a person. You can call at night or you can call whenever and leave a message on the machine. The machine is checked every morning and they get turned into a poll request. Uh
if you talk to a person, you can just tell them what you need to do and they'll put it in too. Um just be nice. Third way is there's a thing called see click fix. It's an app on your phone. You put on your phone and you can do it. You see pothole. You can take a picture
of the pothole. You can send it to us and it goes into a system and we use that as our way of doing it. So, that's the easiest way. We're working on we're working on a button to push on the front page of the website where you can push it and report it that way, too. That
will be an easy way, but I don't think they've got that fixed yet. So, there's a way to report them. I've seen um potholes on the sidewalk and in the street, and it looks like people pour gravel, like loose stones in it, and that seems to help you not fall
in. Uh so, what do you do? Do you think there are topical solutions or Well, in the winter we use we use um sometimes we use cold mix which looks like black gravel. We put that in there.
Um but almost any patching we do unless it's done in the spring and summer when it's warmer outside, it looks a little rough. So, usually that's just asphalt that we put into the hole and we roll and try to mix smooth. Um it it helps
but um We we don't put gravel in the holes. It's just asphalt. It's either cold patch or it's hot next asphalt that we've made ourselves or purchased. Don, I just wanted to check in. Do you have any questions for Guilford?
No, but I'm enjoying her. Oh, good. Glad we can provide some entertainment. Anyone have any other questions? Because I'm mindful of time. I wondered if you're going to will they entertain any other roaries um center of town like
Ammerst College or Amity Uptown. Um, do you think that that could work or people see that in your Well, our when people ask us questions about intersection problems in the Mercy, we're almost always we almost
always choose the Rotary as our roundabout as our first option and then we let people talk out of it. Um, but um, generally in Ammeris a roundabout works very well. Um the traffic in Ammerst is
um very cyclic. Like during the summer there's just no traffic. So a roundabout works great. Um during most of the school year it works well too except for when you have a vacation and everyone's leave at the same time or you have move in and everybody's moving in at the same time.
Um so there's there's times where they get overwhelmed but there's other times they work fine. Yeah. But those any gross solution would be overwhelmed at the same time. Correct. So it just Yes. Do you know when the Rotary at Amity and University is going to be constructed?
Hopefully we start before the end of the month. Excuse me. When? The end of the month. We we opened bids last week or last week we opened bids. Baltazar is
going to be the the contractor and hopefully the contract will be signed this week or first of next week and then we'll start start moving in and getting things going and Baltazar is the company that's doing the Route 9 work. Yes, we see them all over.
I really have concerns about roaries because people some don't understand you have e signs almost like I don't mean stop signs but you signs okay so you take turns you
know say you're coming out coming from triangle street and the other driver is coming from from town okay they think that they have the right away they they I see that you sign and then worse than
that during run hours. Okay. And some drivers think that oh the first one is going it's like a a a trail of trains I'm going to follow. So they don't yield.
And the one on the tribal street it's like playing chicken you know. And I feel strongly that people have to be drivers have to be educated about rotaries. What does that mean? roaries,
you know, it's not like a fast and you know people surf, you know, slow, you know, I don't know, five miles, 20, 10 miles, you know, in the rotary the circle and once you are in
the circle, you have to away, you know, you are in the circle. Okay. And I'm just have great concerns, you know. Good night to Northampton. That too rotaries are scary
because we're not never the traffic never stops. So that's beyond us and so we're gonna but I think you rais a good point in that there's a lot of people that don't know the protocols in a roundabout. And I will just add to aside from the
drivers, you throw in cyclists and pedestrians which is which we have discussed in this community this committee. So that those the new one coming in at university we just talked about will you have pedestrian walkways like you do in
Pomeroy so that yes with lights because that's my biggest concern is especially that one's going to be quite busy especially if they're going to put a fivetory building there will students in it who are going to be coming to campus at where rafter used to be.
Yes. There's no there's no no parking there, but there's very little park to that five story building. I didn't but what you're talking about is something we're seeing outside of just roundabouts. We're seeing a signalized
intersections where people are in the straight lane and they just want to go left and there's nobody in the straight lane so they get person in a straight line turn left across everybody. We're seeing behavior throughout the country, uh, driver behavior, which is
me first, don't inconvenience me. I need to go. You guys can wait. We're seeing people who are passing bicyclist and they're coming in oncoming traffic and they say, "Well, no, you have to yield. I have to go around the bicyclist." It's like, no, you have to yield to the
bicyclist, not me yield to you in your my lane. We're seeing all types of behavior. Speeding. Speeding is speeding is at an all-time high right now. Um it's just this maybe they need auditors to catch people
breaking. Unfortunately, what we're going to end up doing is we're going to have photo enforcement. We're heading towards photo enforcement. So, photo enforcement of stop stop signs, traffic lights, speeding, that's just
going to happen. And we need education because they know. Yeah. Sorry folks, I'm going to wrap this because we have kept Guilford and we have a whole agenda. So, is there anything else?
I I just would like to get a comment. I think that using signals will give you know the other driver oh you're making me taking the first exit or second act exit you know right signal
or left signal I really I think that helps well in a roundabout you're supposed to use your signal in a roundabout supposed to signal when when you go in you well when you go in you're supposed to if you're going to make the first exit you signal you're going to make the first exit if you're
making the second or third Or fourth, you have your signal the other way because you're going around the roundabout. You're not exit. And then when you get ready to exit that roundabout, you're supposed to turn your signal on. Yeah. Before you exit the roundabout. I would just tell you nobody does that.
Nobody knows that. I think I was just going to say as a town since we've gone to these roundabouts, I think we need to do a lot more education because we we're not accustomed to them. So they don't know the rules of the road.
We can do a lot of but we just won't Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, we may have Thank you so muchelcome informative. Yes. All right. So I am now gonna call the
COA meeting to order that we have Sorry I was late. Yeah. Okay. And we're just gonna take attendance here. Dennis, are you here? Don, are you here? Yes, I am. Sarah, yes. Evette,
yeah. We are missing everyone else. All right. Um, Anita, you're from the public. Do you have anything that you wanted to say? Anita, what's your last name? Oh,
long Chan Randall. Chan. C H A N. Brand C H A N Yeah. Dash Yes. R A N D A L L Chen Brand. Anita. Yes.
Thank you very much. So, this is an opportunity if you had something you wanted to say public comment. And if you don't, that's totally fine. But um about about anything you were just here more to just observe.
Yeah. I I'm here just to observe you know I'm just curious okay about you know the count how aging you know okay very good all right so we already had our guest speaker
um and if anybody has any thoughts with regards to next month otherwise I'll just reach out to some other town have any um senior center updates looks like it's you Lucas it is me Um, updates are short and
sweet. New director's house Monday. We already talking about the block party later. Um, newsletters out. Feel free to take a look. Okay. And vans running and all the programs are
Yeah, there's no no changes in anything. Uh, we got some maintenance done a couple of the vans. One yesterday maintenance on getting maintenance tomorrow. Keeping them in good shape. Any update on the building? What I hear is November, but there has
not been any sort of definitive order uh past. Okay. All right. Anybody want? Well, do you have an opinion or a position about how uh November and the
building being renovated will affect the the customers or people coming in the flow? Um, move to release. I think see how much of how they're going to do it, how they're going to stage it. Is it going to be work on parts of the building at times and work their way through? Are they going to do more all at once? I
think it's going to really the details are where you're going to you'll finally get a head. Okay. And obviously folks will be working on a plan, right, to make sure that people are safe if there's work being done. So some
things I would expect some things will need to be relocated sometime and you'll put that in the newsletter maybe depending on what it comes out or be communicated in. We will we will communicate it in whatever channels we have.
Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, I think the other piece is there's a new director coming and she may have ideas and other ways that she likes to share information. So, you know, be open
to that. Okay. Um, the senior survey launch plan. So, I'm curious. We folks worked hard, mainly Sarah and Lucas, in terms of making all the taking feedback and making tweaks and then we
sent the link out and hopefully you all got a chance to complete it. I did twice earlier and then this morning. Uh, I wanted to see if the link took me there and it looked a little different. It went so nicely.
Yeah. I'm just wondering, Lucas, did hopefully numbers shot up a little bit. Think I got a couple more maybe? Yeah, I think I'm still in the low maybe like 10 to 12 range right now. Oh, the most important. It's working.
It is working. The data looks good on the back end. It's populating itself well. It's not asking the questions to people who say no. The branching is working. I have lots of I have lots of zero answer ones. The branching seems to be working. Yeah, it looks good on the back end. That's what this needed to. So, even if
we don't have That's what this So, we should be able to go. All right. Don't see any reason why not. Yeah. And I'm sold that I was able to save my responses, but I couldn't open it anywhere else. I mean, I was on my
phone, but I would like to know what I said, you know. Yeah, you can say your responses. I think you would you would have to be in a browser where you could go back to it. Actually, I didn't know where they would go. It made me use Outlook from UMass
Outlook and it's there. I use the only thing I really didn't talk about it is that you got two blocks of really fine lines, single lines, and if you missed any of them, then the whole thing stopped.
When did you do it? Couple of days ago. Just a tad of noise. You know how I can do that? My first choosing.
Oh, no. You can't do that. That's against comfortable. We will make that. Yes. I just put like table [Music] and I just do a light gray interest.
So I was telling before you all a different idea and maybe I discussed it. I feel okay. Maybe I discussed it with you Sarah about instead of doing a big you
know Manila size mailing to 80 or 85 um folks. If instead we do a postcard to everybody that says, you know, we want you to take this
survey with the link and if that's problematic for you, we're happy to provide a printed one. Just contact us. Um because I think we all know people who are 80, 85, 90 who want print and
others who are very comfortable. I was 75 year olds that would rather print versus 87 year olds that are good online. Right. You and I talked about that and I think that's the most cost effective solution because it's going to get expensive
because there's a lot of pages to have it printed at the size it's printed and I think it's just going to be a waste to send it even at 85 and over. I think a postcard, we need your help. Please do this. We'll happily send you one. Yeah,
if you send us, you know, contact us, either call or email, whatever the rate I thought you were going to say, we'll happily send someone over to help you. No, we're not that not that.
All right. So, we're all agree. We're going to do the post. And so, we do a second pass or, you know, try to encourage we Well, let's just do the first pass. Okay, let's take it one step at a time. But I think we can also try to reach
out. I thought there was I brought this from last time that that subgroup had come up with a really nice list of publicity that you know said you know hey this is coming out watch your mail or in at the library here's a QR code
that you can just scan from the post and here at the senior center you can have some printed ones available at the senior center if there are other list serves that we know about Ammerst neighbors I mean there's other Yeah. Yeah. Got a whole list of things I
was wondering. So, we need to do the So, let's just back up a sec. Our soft launch is the block. What does that mean? So, we're going to start um inviting people to complete the
survey. We're going to do I'm going to call them chops. I don't know what you call them these days. I feel like that's a dated term. You're looking at me funny. No, I know what was the QR. No, a chop used to be a small piece of paper. Oh. Oh,
I think like four say four quarters on one size, this small, right? And so I was envisioning we would print up with the QR code and the website in, you know, whatever
language and we would print a gazillion and those of us at the block party are going to be working the crowd. Okay, they're cheap. It's right. So that we would do the chop. Another piece you could and why don't
you whatever the postcard words are going to be, put it on the top. So that and so if you'd rather if you you know if you'd rather do this in print form you can call us but here's the you know here's the online form and so you could
basically have the what you're going to have on the postcard but on on top then you don't have to redesign it twice. And do we figure that seniors will know step one you you know you open your
camera you hover and it takes you there. If they don't, I'm guessing that they'll call the senior center and ask for a print version or they'll Well, give them the give them print the link. Can you get there? Isn't there somewhere where you can get the shorter links?
I've I can't I've never done it, but I know I can do it literally the in forms it offers me both the full length and the short link. So, you can put So, you could put the short URL that could be typed in. Yeah. Or the the scan code. So, that would be more familiar.
As a matter of fact, I was really kind of having a little daydream that we would for a URL we could do uh friends asc.org/servey. Yeah. And then from that would be the page
with the actual link to the survey itself. Yeah. I mean I don't Yeah, we can certainly take the short link and put it on fence.c.orgservey. /servey and that can have a link that clicks. There's as many ways to direct people to it as possible is ne never a
bad thing by we going to do that that needs to be vetted many times to make sure that it's working right before we put it on. Sure. Absolutely. Well, Don is uh listening in and uh you got that Don?
Yep. Just give us the information and we'll take care of it. Yes. No, but but the last thing we want to happen is to work this hard and give people that link and it doesn't work and have there be something brave. That that's my only concern and I'm
Yeah, things might happen. The thing that I'm concerned about is how long the actual link would be. You know, I am too. I think there but the one that you just sent in the email reminding us was pretty short. Yeah, that's the shortened
version for Microsoft. Yeah, I like the idea of having it be real words and having it be easier to use, I like the idea in principle, I'm just as someone who's done surveys and sent a bunch out and not remembered
to do something just right, had the I had a site crash once pre this was pre like Survey Monkey and Qual forms and any of that. It was I built one and it crashed and I didn't I spent a ton of money and time and didn't get any data.
So I'm really sensitive to Okay. Yeah. Absolutely. We need making sure that all available the technology that we're really really embarrassing. Yeah. Well, and I mean and then tell their friends and then nobody's going to do it because I I tried it and it didn't even
go there. Yeah. So, an outgoing message from the senior center that says we're aware of this and you know we expect too late. The minute you go to a survey and click on it, it doesn't work. That person's not survey.
You got to get it right. Has to be easy. It has to be quick. It has to be correct. I get uh from Eversource I get emails, oh there's something happening. Uh we're tracking it. But you're lying. But you're locked in the power. You're not going to say, "Oh, forget it. I don't want power anymore." You can say, "Oh, forget it. I not going
to do this survey." But it's a dialogue. So anyway, we want to get it. I don't like to. You're definitely going to stress test everything because Yeah. I wasn't I didn't I felt really bad and I didn't have time to give you a heads up when I sent the email like don't do this. Okay. I knew I knew we'd been worked on that.
I was like don't you know what I But that was that was to us. Yes. So nothing's perfect. Well, we're going to work really hard to make sure that we've tested and got our ducks up. Um, so I need some help, ducklings. I am
not a designer. So when we talk about flyers and postcards, I I don't have any software. I don't So I need help. Do we need help in what?
Designing the card and also designing the the chop. Is that Yeah, I mean basically I think that's a smart idea. We need that everything printed or at least the chop we need to have printed by the uh by the block party.
Yeah, that's really good. I mean I think we can we have a little play in terms of when we do a mailing because we've got other research in terms of the cost. So this will knock on wood should be a lot cheaper than what the money will do.
Yeah, don't bet on it. That's okay. I know. The the the way bulk mail works is really quirky and it is that it's basically 22 cents a piece virtually regardless of anything else.
It's it's a piece whether it's a big piece or a little piece. Even Even if it was a heavy vanilla envelope, it Well, I was projecting that was going to be a $163. That was a Yeah, nice. But we the only the only way to really
really know it for sure is to put it in front of a postal someone some postal authority and go, okay, how much for that? How many times,000? I do realize that, but I looked at the first class postage and then I factored in an additional ounce. Maybe I should
have done too. In any case, 22 cents is a heck of a lot cheaper than a bill 60. It makes sense though if you think about it. Otherwise, why would anyone get a bulk mail? You're locking yourself in at a rate based on volume, not on the actual individual,
which is precisely why we just renewed our So, how much does it cost to bulk mail the the newsletter? the the the newsletter when it was actually being mailed, we were basically spending about 3,500 bucks per mail. How many were you?
Um about well, to be really honest about it, I don't exactly know, but I think we were pushing about at a real high. I think we were pushing at about 4,000. So, you were at almost a dollar 75 cent or so.
Yeah. But there's there's something wrong in in that equation. I don't know what it is at this moment because I know that printing cost too or was that just Oh, maybe that was it. Maybe that was it because Yeah, because I I know that I
sat down I had a meeting with the the guy who refused to identify himself from the postal authority who uh from the post office who was so supposedly in charge of bulk though he didn't really have the title
and you know and so he basically said to me he says 22 cents and I But regardless of size or weight or whatever, it goes 22 cents. And I just thought I was just going to
pass out. I just couldn't believe what he was telling me. So maybe there's something wrong or something. Yeah. But that's what the guy who would not name himself. Yeah. Jean, how do you feel about sticker versions of the QR code?
Like a peel off. Waterproof sticker version from New York. Stick it to what? Stick it. You just take it as a sticker. Uhhuh. Cheap too cheap. Just a relatively like a thousand for like 100 bucks. So that's cool.
Are you thinking to have those printed to hand out at the block party? Is that what potentially? Can you design it? It's a QR code. Just a QR code, a round circle. Put little bit of text below it. I can look into it a little bit. I was I just
happened to run across them earlier when I was looking for something else. Yeah, that's different. It might inspire people. Yeah, I mean that I look at the cost because I I mean a chop effectively I'm thinking you're going to
get at least six on a page. Yeah. Right. So, six black and white photocop I mean or black and white photocopy six on a page versus the co I mean I I I'm it's I think it's a neat idea but if we're looking at cost I don't know if you're
going to get down to that level because I mean how many are you thinking is a boatload to print postcards no chops for the Oh I I honestly hadn't gotten that. So, I
mean, let's say we did 300. That's only 50 sheets of paper, right? Did I do my math right? It's 6 time 5 is 300. So, 50 sheets of paper and somebody needs to stamp the paper cutter and chop them. That's That's exactly it. Do we have a Do we have a printer or a copy machine?
And do we have a a Yeah. Yeah, we do have those things. I'm not sure the paper cutter. Paper cutter. You have a paper cutter? We may have one. I I don't use it for I used it once. Okay. I can I have done this before. I can do it
again. I mean, sounds good. Sorry. A chop is virtually free. Yeah. As far as that's and I totally get it. I'm only saying that because I'd rather have our money spent for the mailing. Sure. Yep. Yep. So,
or the sticker of something else for the senior That's the senior center kind of advert. That would be cool. But for the for this particular thing, I would stick with the no cost. Yep. And so you want the chop to have the QR code and
the URL URL. And do you want it to say senior services survey or something? 2025. has to I would do something like this header with the QR code and a little word over here on this side of it
that says if you'd prefer a paper survey please call or email I mean I think you could you could put that on the card but I'm not so sure you'd have enough room for a job I would did that take less than five minutes to complete
what the survey no we were looking at we said 10 to 15 because you were saying the average is around 12. Yeah, you were fast. Somebody took seven. I don't know who that was. What? Someone took 70 something else.
I very honestly are. And if you wanted to be kid, you know, you could say even at the top you say, "Do you have do you have 15 minutes to help the senior senior services?" I you could put a question like that up at the top and then put this kind of stuff. But I would have the logo. I'd have the name of the
survey. So, so I just don't know if I signed at the block party. When is the block party? So, can be at the block party to help these out?
I'm going to be photographing. Okay, you can go. I'm trying. Awesome. The whole time or do you want to pick an hour or No, I could be there. Okay. Okay. Awesome. You're already there. You going Sarah?
Are you going to have a booth or a table? A table. Okay. So, I think we probably need a poster on the stick maybe. Well, I think something bigger to talk about the survey. Yeah, I think so.
I think we need to brand this kind of so people can 2025 senior survey booth. And so I have another thought that I just want to share before I lose it out of my little brain. When we print,
do you think we should code the surveys? For example, if we leave a stack of printed surveys at the library, should we code so we know where they came from? How does she mean?
No, we care. I mean, why do I I'm I'm not saying no. And you could code them as simple as having the first page be blue, like a light blue in one place and yellow at another and pink at another. I mean, you could do it that way. So, cuz we don't want to write anything on them because that's going to make people
suspicious that there's some super secret devil code on it that they don't want. That's I like the idea. Yeah. Only because I think it helps us tell us if we need to refill. It could tell us if we need to refill. It also give us some That's also another
way to collect information about where we're hitting the most people. Yes. Because we get a huge amount back from one place. It tells us that spot is our house. Exact. So, and then like do the do the um the senior communities on c around town do they have like centers where
they could also have a stack of them like a I think so like the arbors or the um yeah I've got to follow up with people kind I think some of them do I don't know if all of them do but but I guess if we coded that's what I
would do I would just do like the front the first page be a pastel color you want to make sure that they're pastels. The darker colors, you don't have the contrast, so you can't read it. Yeah. But, you know, there's there's pink and blue and yellow and orangey color, the
light green. Looks like a 1970s baby shower basically where they have envelopes that you would folded and put it in and a drop box. How could they turn it? I think you have a dropbox at the senior side.
Or maybe there could be if there I wouldn't put a dropbox at the library, I guess, or unless they said you could, but these these senior communities where there's larger populations of them, I would ask that might not be a bad thing to have a box there if somebody can, you
know, pick them up. Okay. What do we want to use for a dead? [Music] I need a deadline for the press release. Yeah. I If we're going to start in September,
just I can you be as vague as the goal is to have the data collected by the end of the year. The end of the year. Well, or whatever you want. By end of October. Sure. I think even longer than the end of October. If you want to get if you want to get hundreds if not thousands of
responses, we have to we have to send an initial mailing which is soft launches we're at the block party. Hard launch is off beginning of October which is when we're sending things out and we need to give them at least a couple months to complete it. And we also need to use that time in there to send reminders and
followups because people need to do a survey. You might need to prompt people six times. They might just see it six times before they go, "Oh, I do actually have time." We actually decided I have it in writing. We had decided that we were gonna close November 30th and December as a backup.
Yeah. Say the end of November. Sure. No, that's two months. But I wouldn't use the word deadline. I What I would say in a press release is the goal is to have the data collected
by the end of November. Yeah. And so I wouldn't use that because the deadline word means that people will put it off. And we could even just say, but we're hoping people complete it as soon as they get their not the notice in the mail or something. So, you know, like
get her done. Yeah. Yeah. Because we don't want people to get to December 1st and go, "Oh, I missed the deadline." Yeah. I'll throw this away now. I completed it a week ago, but I just didn't bring it yet. Yeah. I also don't know that I would put a deadline on the any of that stuff.
Just, you know, please do this as soon as you can. Hand the chop to somebody. Yeah. Okay. Because this is a different kind of survey than the one that you would, you know, like when I did them for work and stuff, we had to have deadlines because
that was how you, you know, but we only gave them two or three weeks. But this, I think, is going to be rolling. So I think those are the words I would use in the press release. Does that make sense? It does. It does. So for timing wise,
we're talking about two weeks the block party with the chop shop. Soft watch with chops. Flyers. If we can get one designed, we
can put up around town. I guess April or the block party or No, I do those for October 1st. Okay. I think we it makes our life easier if we don't have to do anything but the shop for September 18 and then everything else like as long as the
survey is live and we can hand people a QR code, we are good to go for the block. Are you still going to do the signals? Totally. No, I think we're the chop makes more sense. your point about the cost is so the postcard we would shoot to do the mailing the beginning of October
I think we get and that's when we want to have flyers up around town we want the postcards ready to go so they get there sometime that week the second the first full week of October by then everybody's in their full groove things have calmed down
so this has been something to do I think it's I think it's good timing and just and I think probably on there you just you know please please please help us please get you know help us as soon as you can I I I don't
when do you think we should reach out to I'm just thinking like Phyllis everybody reads Phyllis's column should we do it party or should we wait until the mailing is I would do the mailing I would give let make sure that we'll all get ours and
then I would try to get in Phyllis's newspaper a week or two after that. Okay. So, the middle of October. Yeah. So, like like hopefully she should get hers the first week and then write about it the second some. Yeah. Yeah. So, you might give her a heads up. Yes.
Or the third week because that's the teaser like that. Yeah. Everybody should have one. So if she gets hers, say they go out, she gets hers by the week of the 6th, give them the week of the 13th. But then on that the Thursday, like that Thursday
the 23rd, I think it should be in her because the 30th is Thanksgiving, so that doesn't that it's too late. But the 16th wouldn't hurt either. But the 16th or the 30th would be or the 16th or the 23rd would be a good time for a column.
Okay. But presumably there'd be some others in there too, right? I mean, you've got there were TV stations and 413 and all that kind of stuff. Right. Right. And I guess that's
I would question when we I would try to do as much of that the week of the 13th as we can because the postcards would be up. Okay. So, we don't really want anything this month. No, because I think if you
you need to see an article that talks about a survey and then realize you have it in your mail pile on your counter. If you see that article and you go, "Where's mine?" Most people aren't going to call us and say, "Hey, I didn't get my postcard. Can
you send me one?" Most people are going to go, "Oh, well, and move on." Yeah. So, the thing is, maybe the maybe you try to spread it out. Maybe some of them you get in on the sixth, the week of the sixth. Some you get in the week of the 13th. I don't think it would hurt to hit him many times depending on where all we're going and then have Phyllis
kind of be the cleanup act towards the end. Oh yeah. That hey, you haven't done this yet. And maybe she can even have the QR code in her alert. That's called That's called
buying an QR code. That's a good idea. But she can we can put some we can ask about call this senior center put the link on the senior center website. Yeah, we put that up there. So she can say the Facebook
you can put up. Yeah, we need to where wherever. But there's a pointer to where there's a link which will also have Oh, it's the date before. I was going to say too. Oh,
we shop for the 18th. The shop for the 18th. You'll be at the 18th. I will. I will be at the 18th. I'll be there the entire time. As will I. All right. I have lots of fun merch coming in.
Great. So maybe when we get um I guess I'll I can't design a flyer, but I could I'll try to do a poster board. I feel like we need something big. Don't
you think about a table? A sign. Copy those. A signs and they'll print the sides for you. It might be an expense up front. An A frame. Yeah, like an actual full on like standing that we could put something on both sides that would potentially draw people.
You know, I think that's a great idea because then we could use it if we had to set up shop at Atkins or Stop and Shop or the library or the farmers market to get people Yeah. to complete the survey.
Here comes the friends who care. You already gave me a card. I'll get it. This investment, is it a good investment to do it strictly for this questionnaire
or should it just be learn let's learn how you can help senior services or learn about senior services and what they can do for you and what you can do for them and then you don't just use it this fall. It you could be used at other it could be used next year.
Yeah. I was even going to go more generic. Ammer senior services done big sign then you can add you know you can stick on arrows put a little bubble survey do or you know the sign itself is going to
attract people and then you explain to them why why you're sitting there. Yeah. So, but that's what I'm saying. But make the ser make this if you're gonna invest in that you can reuse over your services cameras colors the color
the logo and then and then yeah you could slap an 8 and 1 half by 11 on QR code put on there. So what's the deadline? Absolutely. Uh where are you going to get that done?
Where? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Coffee. Wow. And so you'll do that. I just wonder uh today is that uh September meeting and then it's the the uh blood part is already
going to have happened before we meet again. So how could we help you? Um well you're helping me with clarifying. We sort of sorted out the chop and the postcard which be the same.
We're going to do an A-frame. Um I still am looking for some talented designer to do a liar that we could post up around um town. Yeah, I was looking I think at the
survey, not the minutes, and there was some mention of somebody who would work uh to create um any of the publicity on it or related to the manager is going to
help us with the press release and whatnot. Um, where is that person? She works in town hall. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. Could they help?
Well, I don't think she's a designer. I think she's a writer and a PR person. Ask you the design for sure. Go for it. Hi. So, somebody that I think is talented in
designing is Julia. Oh, I can ask. Sounds her little newsletters are very Yeah, she's very creative. Colorful and creative and welllaid out. I'm assuming she's doing all of that.
That's why I don't know where the magic is behind the curtain. It's not me. Well, I didn't think it was you, but I'm going to say she must have some software and that's we we all have access to it. I can I can work with her on potentially creating something. We don't And yeah, I mean, if
and I don't mean to overstep and give her work, but it seems reasonable based on the goals of the survey and how it's supposed to help the department. We have canvas. We have canvas. Right.
And I will I I I'll try over the next few days to see if I can't just get I get a template of what the chop postcard might look like with some blanks, holes for you to put the QR code or and I'll shoot that to you. We can work on it. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. I'll copy Jean so you know what. Okay. All right. Nice coming. Nice meeting you all. Nice meeting you, too. Thank you. Um, okay. Any We obviously will continue to
talk about this survey all fall totally obviously. Um, done. Um, given it's almost 5:30, approval of the August minutes. Everybody get a chance
to review them. Anybody have any questions or corrections? That was a little typo. But where it was a type of room, I would humbly request Credence's first
names. Okay. Yeah. You want me to sort of like informalize the whole thing to that extent? I'm not um That was the only part I was going to ask questions. Okay. Who the heck is this?
Okay. All right. Robert. All right. Pending Evette's. Yeah. Is there a motion to approve the August minute? Second. Second. All in favor?
Excellent. August minutes have been approved. Okay. Our next COA meeting is Thursday, October 2nd at 4. Um, back at Bangs. I
um we'll be here again. No, I believe you go back upstairs. 101. The goal is for you to be in 101. There was just a couple days that were booked pre-existing. Okay. But it was empty.
I I think it gets it literally I think they go in there like five o'clock. It was one of those ones where you look at the calendar like ah I did grab copies of the new newsletter. If you haven't yet picked one up, I have them here. And I would just um be
um remiss as your chair if I didn't just nudge you. Please, next month, can people get here on time so we can make quorum at the start? And I know I'm speaking to the converted here. We got to reach out to our colleagues.
Jennifer, we can see Jennifer now. I don't know why. Yeah. Hi, Jennifer. How you doing? She just turned on her camera. I know. I was on and then I'm sort of supposed to be in the audience, but I've been listening the whole time. There's a meeting. And we do need one more member. I'm
continuing to try to recruit and I invite all of you to do the same. If you know of anybody, it would it would really be wonderful. Sign up that data. That's it. She's on. Yeah. What were you saying?
We are missing. We're down one person. Oh, yeah. I've Okay. And with this one application into town hall, but we can't interview unless we have at least two. So, I'm trying to get Okay. At least one other person.
I found the typo. It's the uh Miss Han asked Mr. Shil back how many. It says now many. It's like one, two, three, fourth paragraph. You see
is there a motion to adjourn? I motion to do that. All right. All in favor? Okay. Excellent. Thank you, Don. Will you will you be joining us in person come
October? I believe so. Something happened with my sister. So, yep. Okay. Wonderful. And we will miss you for the block party. Yeah. I'm sorry. Okay. Okay. Looking forward to it. Yes. Well, we will look forward to
seeing your lovely face at some point in the notsodistant future. About to get a lovely face. Thank you. And Jennifer, are you back on or you are at the aison for the Yes, this is a great time. No other meetings. Doesn't conflict with any
committee meetings. So, this is great and um I'm looking forward to going to the uh meet and greet at Atkins Farm on the 26th. I think that's Friends of Ammer Senior Center. Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. Awesome. Excellent. Okay. Thank you all.
I'm gonna end the Zoom call and so thank you. Will you be in touch with us via email regarding the block party, where to show up to or