 Okay, go ahead, pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 this meeting will be conducted by remote means members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so by zoom or by telephone or via Www dot Amherst m a dot gov. No in person attendance of members of the public will be permitted but every effort was made to ensure that the public and adequately access to proceedings in real time by technological means. I call this meeting to order. Alrighty, and the town is recording this meeting so if anyone else is recording at this time please notify me now. We have any people in the gallery. We do not. So hearing none. We're just going to do a quick roll call. So I see, obviously I'm here. Richard. Here. Lee. Yeah, and Ken. Yeah. All right. Excellent. So there is nobody that I can see attending at the moment so we will skip by public comment, and I will share my screen. What about minutes. Oh, yes. Sorry, come down. Nope, I'm just moving too fast. Do I have yes I have them let me share my screen so you can have them up there. What are they? Okay. All right, can everybody see that. Yes. Okay, if I make them smaller is that too small. No. Okay, gentlemen, have you had a chance to review these. Yes. Yes. All right. I moved to approve the minutes of October 13 2022. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. All right. Excellent. Then moving along. You will see our first of a few excise abatements. This is for week. October 10th through the 12th. There are five abatements for calendar year 2022 in the amount of $148 and two cents. All right. I moved to approve that. Say that again. There are five abatements for the calendar year of 2022 in the week of October. Well, in the two days of October 11th and 12th. In the amount of $148 and two cents. I didn't hear the 48. Okay. Oh, okay. All right. I'm going to approve that set of abatements. Second. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Next year you will see October 19th through the 31st. There are 12 abatements all for 2022. And the amount of $857 and 75 cents. Do you remember what the code OS means? Oh, yes. Just curious. I can, if you can bear with me for a moment, I can tell you, I think. Out of state. Yes. Out of state. That's exactly what it is. Meaning that the individual moved out of state. Yes. Okay. These codes are still fairly new to me because I don't often do the abatements. It's usually Theresa and Steven. So I apologize for not knowing that off the top of my head. I move your, your, your going to give us a standard operating book though, right? Kim with all this stuff. I would like to actually give you something, you know, a calendar. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So on and so we're actually a calendar is something that's going to be on the agenda for next week. We have prepared. A sort of what's going on in what months calendar. So we can talk more about that later, but. Okay. I mean, be helpful. Things we use a lot like these codes and then the exemptions. Have a one pager that we could look at ourselves. Yes. Okay. Did we, I'm sorry. Did we get this? I moved to approve the, this set of abatements. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay. And that was it for abatements. Was that an unusually small number of abatements for. It was this time of year. Generally. There's not a whole lot of excise happening because. It's the end of the calendar year. People have gotten their bills already. There's not a whole lot of abatements. There's not a whole lot of abatements. So many people have already done the abatements. These are probably like end of the year. I see that the dates on these are all. October. So chances are these plates were canceled. With the exception of. Maybe this one here. This one here and this one here. My thought is many of these were probably canceled towards the end of the year. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Anyway, so. And those could be the same case. Those larger ones could be the same case. They're just, you know, a larger excise tax bill. But I would say. In the next meeting, there probably won't be very many again, because if you cancel your plates in December, you don't get a refund anyway. Because excise is by the month rather than the day. So I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't have a little of amount during this time of the year. So. Okay. Moving on is a. Lean. For chapter 61 a. This is on three parcels on map. 26 a. Lots. 42. 43. And one 44. The property addresses are for 16 Bay Road. So the new owner is Plum Brook Farm LLC. So basically all we're doing here is just transferring the lean to the new ownership. Also, I have for you. Their application, which just explains exactly what they're going to be doing on this parcel, which I think is pretty in line with what's been happening. So as you can. When I looked at the property card on this, I was confused because the. It didn't appear. The last owners did go into chapter. Because they had, they had large assessments on the property. They. So one of the pieces of land, this, as you see here, this one. Is 61 acres of land. So that could be why you're seeing a pretty. Significant assessment. There's also on 416 Bay Road. There is a house involved with that. With that. Assessment. So only you can see here, it's a total of one acres. And they're only going to be farming. 0.65 of that. So the rest will be for their driveway. Their yard and their house. I think. In the past, this middle street parcel. Was included in the 416 Bay Road. This is a new. A new parcel. So I think that's, that's part of. Possibly what you're seeing there as well. Are these new owners or is this just a name change? These are new owners. Okay. There's a farm stand there too. Right. Yes. So when you, when something like this comes through, I assume you. Update the property card completely. Yeah. So. It takes a little bit of time to get them updated because they're applying a fiscal year ahead. So this is for fiscal year 2024. This particular property split. Has already happened for the fiscal year 23. And I just came across it the other day. I think the map was not updated, but that has since been updated. But the, you know, I'll go, I'll be going back in 24 to actually update these particular acreage counts. For what they're doing. And by that, I mean, for example, I'll just pick on this one because it's easy. The Christmas trees. It looks like they're doing one acre of Christmas trees. So on the landline on the record card, you will see one acre. And the code for Christmas trees. I guess I just, for another example, again, on the orchards, vineyards, blueberry and cropland, it looks like they're doing apples, pears, peaches, blueberries. I think that's what that says. And grapes. Not quite sure what that says. So. Oh, is that it? So it could be, it could be strawberries, could be blueberries, could be a number of things. So I'll be updating that particular landline, the 5.5 15 acres to match orchards. So all this, all this land that's except now goes into chapter. You just get a valuation from the state then and we go with that. Right. Yep. So it's not exempt. It's just at a discounted rate because it's being farmed. But the state, basically what they do is they give us figures to update our, our cost tables for these particular. Types of, of. Use codes, land use codes. And so we do that every year. So that. Sometimes. The, the value of it may decrease if they're like, if for some reason we have a lot of issue growing hay here for some, you know, something is causing the hay to be a problem. The state may recognize that on, you know, whatever side of the Connecticut river you're on that, and that's happening. Your values may go down, whereas on the other side, they're having no problems and their value is going to go up. So, you know, they have a formula that they figure out how to increase or decrease the values of each land use code, depending on what's happening with the farmers each year. But what I recall is that what the state gives you is a nominal figure for assessment. Yeah. So they'll say like. It goes from like a hundred thousand to 5,000. Yes. Yeah. Drop. Yes. Yeah. So when you're farming your land, you get a pretty significant discount on your, on your land. So just moving, moving on to the backside of the application. It looks like the farmer is the owner. So, they have signed this saying that they're going to do so. This is the rights and acknowledgement. So this just explains what they have to do to continue to stay in chapter. It talks about the application process. It talks about the lean and how the taxes work. If they were to. Remove a portion of the land from chapter for any reason, there's the, the penalty tax. Depending on what they're doing with it. If they're, if they're keeping it in their family and they're looking to build a home for, you know, a child, a parent, you know, so on, so for themselves. Then they would not be assessed to that rollback tax. It talks about the appeal process. And so this person has just signed saying that they agree with that. Well, when, when this sale happened this year to the town, what's the process of the town looking at to buy the property? So in a perfect world, the, the, the current owner would notify the town and let them know that their intentions are to sell the property. In this case, I think. They would have said, you know, we, we intend to sell the property to someone who is going to continue to do so. I think they would have said, you know, we, we intend to sell the property to someone who is going to continue farming. Okay. In the case of I, you know, I don't know, I'm just looking to sell the property. They would let us know. And then that would start the 120 day. Time frame for the town to decide whether or not this is something that they are interested in purchasing. If they are interested in purchasing it, they would let them know that they are interested in purchasing it. An appraisal would be done. And the town would be able to use the market value. To, to purchase the property at. So whatever they. Is the assessor's office the one they contact? Yes. Sometimes they may send it to the town manager's office, but. You know, it eventually would, would get to me. And there's multiple departments that would be involved in deciding whether or not this particular parcel that. Is something that the town would want. We would go through the town manager's office, the planning department, the building department, the DPW. Conservation, so on and so forth. Because, you know, if there's. For example, if this was the majority of it was wetlands, and then there was also a sewer, like a very complicated sewer line that ran through the middle of the parcel, the town might be interested in that because. They want to preserve the wetlands as well as be able to maintain and access very easily the sewer line. That's a total extreme. But just an example of why the town might want a piece of property. Sometimes if there's like, you know, if there's a parcel of budding, for example, the. The water, the town water. Of the Ekins reservoir. You know, the town may say, okay, we're interested in this parcel just to preserve the space around the reservoir. You know, there could be many reasons why the town might be interested. So I'm just trying to clarify. So they contact the cessers office. Or they send it to the town manager and he sends on to the cessers office. Yeah. Then does the cesser office send back letters saying the town is not interested in exercising. Yeah, so I haven't, I haven't actually had to do that here. Yet this parcel. I don't recall if this was, if we were notified with this, I think this was a long time process. So I, it could have happened before I got here. I'm not quite sure. But anyway. What I understand happens is everybody that would need to be notified in the town departments would be notified. We'd have that 120 days. If we decide beforehand, we can obviously, you know, let them know beforehand. If we don't decide by the 120 days, we either need to notify them and say, you know, we need a couple of extra days because X, Y and Z. Could you grant that extension, which they have the right to say no, and then we lose our rights to, to purchase. But what I understand happens is there's a letter that comes from the town manager's office that I then get a copy of and mail out to the owner saying that the town. Does not want to exercise their first rate of refusal at the time. So did the prior notice occur with this transaction? I'm not aware. I don't know. And generally, I think when a parcel is. When we get notification and they're saying we are selling this to another farmer who's going to continue farming, the town immediately steps away because they want to keep the land farming anyway. But again, you know, this is the first time that. I shouldn't say this is the first one, but this is one of a few that I have come into the middle of. So I don't know how the beginning of the project. This started before you took, took off. I believe it did. I think there's been a lot of conversation with this parcel for since I started. So I think this was something that happened before I, I stepped on. You know, again with, with future parcels. You know, like I said, I don't know if I'm going to, if I'm going to, if I'm going to, if I'm going to, if I'm going to, if I'm going to, if I'm going to, if I'm going to immediately notify the departments that need to be involved. I often, if I hear about it in the middle of the sale, if something is already occurred, I, I generally. Ask for a letter from the previous, you know, from the person who's selling it as well as the person who is purchasing it. Saying they intend to continue farming. Even if, you know, we've lost our rights because they've already gone too far in the process. That's where I'm concerned we lost our rights because we failed. So it's not always the time, we, I mean, we don't always know when a parcel is going to be sold. Sometimes it's put out on the, the open air market, which we can then potentially see it. But we also, if it's a private sale, you know, if it's a farmer to a farmer, a neighbor to a neighbor, it's something we may not always know about. So unfortunately it's an often. Occurring situation in across the state, I think, and it could be even farther than that way. People just don't. So the compliance doesn't kick in until somebody hires a lawyer. Right. And even then I think someone, you know, some of the attorneys don't. Either don't know to notify us or don't notify. I would think this would cloud the title though. You know, actually I'm thinking now that we're talking about this and the attorneys, I don't think there was an attorney from Boston involved with this. And I did get. I think it was to the point where it was too far. In the process of the first rate of refusal, but the intention was to continue farming. And I think I did get. I'm more concerned when they're selling it to a developer to do something else. Exactly. And we let the ball fall because we didn't know about it. Right. And it's one of those sort of gray hard spots that, you know, if we don't know about it, we can't do anything about it. I mean, we could hold up. We could hold up a transaction, I suppose. What if it was going to a developer for commercial? I wouldn't have noticed the burden of notice. I believe either falls on the buyer or the seller. It's really supposed to be the seller. Yeah. Because they're supposed to notify us before they put it on the open air market. I don't know. I don't know. Which. People don't know that too. So. Is there any penalty if they. You know. Didn't notify. So the only thing is the rollback tax. So the, the sellers would have the five year rollback tax on the parcel, but otherwise no. And just confirm that you've been notified or. If you haven't been notified, then what's, what can we do to improve it? So something that I did in Greenfield was I was a big stickler on this because I mean, it's right in your rights and acknowledgments. It's, you know, the whole process is explained, should be explained to you when you enroll in chapter. I personally like to give a lot of information to anyone who is in rolling for the first time. It's in the contract. You just showed us, isn't it? It is. And so. So I really was a stickler on this. And, and things started to actually happen more often with attorneys in Greenfield. And I would hear people say, boy, you're, you're a stickler on this. I had no idea that this was happening. So it's sort of educating the attorneys in the area as well, that they must do this in order to have a smooth process because we could hold up a sale. Yeah. I mean, you have a lien that you have to release. That's right too. And so along with, along with the process, the previous owner should be paying to release that lien so that the new owner can pay to record a new lien. So this is, this is recorded at the registry of D that shows up in a title search. Exactly. So, um, what, what could happen is we do not release the tax lien because the town is not responsible to pay to release the lien. And so when, for example, with a developer buying a piece of property that was being farmed and they need the lien to be released, the only way we would do it is if they pay for it. Yeah. And they give us the option to buy it if we want to buy it. I don't know if we can go that far at that point, but I want to get the city attorney if something came up like that. Yeah. And again, I think, you know, that would probably happen because I think there's, you know, probably frustration with that happening too. So, but there is, it's a tough, it's a tough spot for us to be in when, when we don't get notified. But I think, you know, my intention when stuff like this happens is to make sure that the attorneys know that they need to do this. Cause oftentimes parcels that are in chapter don't sell a lot because they stay in the family or they, you know, something like that happens. And so, you know, attorney, newer attorneys may not know about it. It's easily forgotten because it's not something that occurs on every sale. So, you know, there's a lot of places where it can fall to a dead, to a dead spot. The reason I'm sensitive on this Kim is the fact that the 150 acres right across from where I live was in chapter and came out chapter to put 700 student housing units. Yes. And they did notify that. I mean, it was such a big thing. The town was notified. They could buy it if they wanted to, but it was out of sight. All right. I just want to remind you this is a public meeting. Yep. Okay. All right. Okay. So in the case, in the case like this where it's going from farming to farming though, you said the tendency of the town is to stay out of the transaction. Yeah. Yes. I mean, occasionally if, you know, with an extreme situation, I don't even think this occurred is here at all, but just an extreme situation would be this parcel happens to house like a watershed, you know, and the town has the, the uneasement on it. Then the town might be interested in at least purchasing that portion of the, of the land, which would be done as well. But that's like a totally extreme situation where it's going from farming to farming and the town is interested. But yes, the town generally speaking, I think from what I have gone through in Greenfield as well as heard from other communities, the town generally won't be interested if it's farming to farming. Okay. So, but this is a, but we're talking about something right now that is actually not in front of us here. This is a transfer of the lean from one owner to the next, right? Yep. So the property has sold. So that it was to, it was a 416 Bay Road and 495 Middle Street. That's right on the corner. Yeah. And so what they did was they split the law. The 416 Bay Road was split because they, what they would like to do is to keep the house that's on the lot currently. And then they'd like to build their own home and the house that's there, from what I understand, they like to use it for the farm help. So eventually they may want to take out some maybe more, maybe the whole thing, maybe nothing more of for Middle Street lot. The last one here listed the map 26A lot 144. But it's also very up in the air right now as to what they're going to do. They may just continue to use the house. So they may be taking, they may be taking part of the property out of chapter lands and putting another part of it into it, right? Yeah. The current house may go into chapter lands, right? Because it's being used for farming purposes, right? Nope. The house would not be able to be included. A residence, no matter how it's used, cannot be included in chapter. Okay. All right. Yeah. Yeah. So if they take anything out, it would be that one, that 0.93 acres. And even at that, they could still potentially be farming a portion of it because the house is still, it's still going to be at least 1.13 acres, as well as the 1.13. 1.13. So I guess I just want to be clear about this. We belabor this already. The town's opportunity to buy. Did that arise, even though this is essentially a transfer of chapter land as opposed to taking it out of town. It's not a transfer. It's not a transfer. It's a whole new transaction. My understanding. Yeah. You're both right. Yeah. I think that's what I'm talking about. I think it's often times a sale is referred to as a transfer. So yes, this, those parcels were sold from small ones, farm to plum book from farm. The town. I think there was a little confusion with the first right of refusal, but hearing that the parcel was going from farm from being farmed by small ones to being farmed by Plum Brook. The town wasn't interested anyway. I'm, I'm recalling, we did get a letter from. I believe it was Plum Brook farm. Stating their intentions were to continue farming. Clarify one thing we're releasing the current lean that. The old owner had and putting on a new lane, correct. This one is just the new lean for the new owner. So with, with the release of leans. We're actually talking about a process of how we can do this very cleanly because the town ends up having to pay for leans being released if we don't do it in a timely manner, because we then can't find the previous owner. So more to come on that process, but currently this is just too. Too. Too. Too. Record a new lean for the new owner. In their name. Okay. No, I move we approve this. Second. All those in favor, please say. Hi. Hi. Okay. Wonderful. So I'm going to stop sharing my screen. So, um, next on our agenda is just, um, Oh, in regards to that, we need, uh, each of you to come in and sign that lean. So we can send that off to the registry updates. Does not suffice anymore. Is that, or the chair does not suffice. Um, for certain things. Yes. So when doing the chapter. Um, what are they called? The renewal. Um, What are they called the renewal of 61 plan? Yes. Then it would just be the chair in the case of this particular lean. Uh, all of your names were on it as members of the board. So we would need all of you to sign. Um, so next on our agenda is the assessor update. I don't have a whole lot to tell you, but I can say, um, as you probably have seen, I think classification went pretty well. Um, we have set a single, they have voted to set a single tax rate, no residential exemption, no small commercial exemption and no open space exemption. Um, so I think that that went well. I think. I saw Lee on my TV screen. So Leah, thank you for providing your grovy toss along with Kim's to this whole proceeding. Thank you very much. Good job. Yeah. So how was Europe? Europe is, um, unmasked. Okay. So, um, I think there will be some more potential conversations about the residential exemption, but at the moment, um, they're voting to not do it this fiscal year, which I think is, is, or they voted to do it, not, not this fiscal year. Um, but I think that's a good vote because we wouldn't have time to be able to get this in place before the tax bill. So we would have to, um, delay that and ask for a preliminary third quarter, um, and then hope that we can get everything done in place for our fourth quarter. And if we can't, then, you know, that's a whole very difficult issue. So, um, please to say that they did vote to not do it for this fiscal year. However, there's a possibility that there could be more conversation on that in the future years. I'm going to assume that you're okay with the interjections from the finance director. Absolutely. Yep. In the middle of the meetings, I, I was a little, I was a little unsure as to. It had a sort of a man's learning field to it. I actually asked him to jump in if there was something that I was missing, especially with the residential exemption because the study was done before I was here where I was a member of, of the town. So I, you know, I said, if, if there's anything that you feel needs to be, um, spoken to, please, you know, interrupt in and do that. Um, so along the, it sounds like the residential exemption is for the, for the length of the time that all three of us are serving and you are employed, it's going to be like a little mosquito. That's sort of in our ears all the time that we have to address. Is that, is that sort of how this goes? I possibly, you know, it all depends. I don't know what's to come in the future, but if they decide that they want to vote it in for next year, a conversation needs to be had at a much earlier date than now. I just get the sense that we wouldn't, we wouldn't even have this to address if there wasn't something called Cape Cod. Yeah. I think that the training session helped. To, to, to inform folks so that they had most of their questions answered before the. Yeah. Session. Yes. Yeah. And generally, that's something that you do every year. I was just going to say generally, that's not something that we do, um, but, you know, happy to, to do that if that's helpful to people. So. So can I just observe that I get a sense that there is still a lingering, um, confusion on the council about commercial versus residential. It's a difficult, um, There are people on the council who think that, um, that large apartment complexes are somehow commercial and they're not their residential. So there. Yeah. And it's, I can totally understand the thought process on that because you, you know, you see this large residential complex. Which someone is using as their livelihood. You know, that's someone's business. Um, and so why can't it be addressed that way? But at the same time, um, You know, it, it is a residence and the state classifies a residence as a residence regardless of if it's a large apartment building or a single family home. In other words, something called state law and we can't do anything about that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but I understand, you know, I totally understand that. That frustration and the thought process because it would make sense to me both ways, you know, so, so, um, So along the lines of classification, um, I do want to let you know that we should be able to run our very first test file. Hopefully today that's the plan. But if it doesn't happen today, um, Probably the week after Thanksgiving, I, I feel like we're in really good shape to get our tax bills situated and out either, you know, early or at least on time. What is the test file? So what we'll do is we will use the test program in our billing system. So we have, we have what's called test train and live. Um, and so we use either test or train and we go and we take our actual tax file and put it into the billing system and do the whole process, make sure it works. Um, all the way down to the last step, we don't print them because, um, We don't want to waste all that paper, but we get everything in there, make sure everything is working properly and that there's no hiccups anywhere. We do that usually a couple of times. And then once we are comfortable with saying, okay, we're ready to go into the live program. What are you looking for? What are you looking for? So what we, what happens, uh, occasionally is there's a, there's a break in a bridge somewhere inside of this, the billing system and something doesn't work properly. So, um, for example, something that has happened to me in the past was, um, um, exemptions were not being applied to the tax bill. Uh, so we had to try to figure out what was going on, why that wasn't working. Um, something else that has happened in the past to me was the LA for that we print out of vision, which is telling us how many parcels we have and the total value of single families, the total value of two families, the total value of two families, the total value of two families, the total value of two families, the total value of three families, the total value of three families, the total value of four families. And so so on and so forth. Doesn't match from vision to. Unis. And in that case, something is not being read correctly somewhere along the lines. And could be that somebody isn't getting a tax bill. Period. Or somebody's getting way over taxed. Or, you know, could be a number of things. So we just want to make sure that. um you know that that people's bills aren't spitting out with funky digits uh you know who knows numeric number you know i mean we who knows there could be a number of things but just looking to make sure that the whole process matches where it needs to match there's no funky um so there is a matter error yeah oh yes okay do you um do you have a ballpark idea of how many tax bills are so uh get exemptions i i theresa might know that you're talking the personal exemptions i'm sorry are you talking the personal exemptions yes yeah off the top of my head i don't um i know that it it to me it feels a lot less than other communities especially with the veterans um but that just could be that a people who are getting these who who could be eligible for these properties don't own a property they they rent and or um maybe we just don't have as many veterans for example as a community like greenfield um we do have quite a bit of senior exemptions um those feel like they might be more in line with other communities that i have been aware of um but that really varies per community because it really depends on who you have in your community so are you feeling satisfied right now that we've disseminated the town has disseminated information effectively enough about the exemptions i do i think you know i always would say there's always room for improvement on that because there's somebody out there somewhere that had no idea um i do feel like there could be better outreach with to the veterans um but but i also you know it could be just lack of knowledge on my part of how many veterans we actually have here in amherst that own property and are eligible to be able to um get this exemption because you could be a veteran own property but not eligible because you don't have at least a 10 percent um disability that's due to your service um so you know it could be a number of things that that are happening and and it could be just my lack of knowledge for only being here for a year and not knowing that yet um but i do feel like we've done a pretty good talk to the veterans association here and now we have so um so one of the things actually i wanted to to mention to you guys is that on the 8th of december which i had talked about before i'm going to be at the senior center at 11 o'clock doing a presentation on our exemptions um so so you know i will be presenting these the veterans exemptions as well and what people can get if that's something that you know they would qualify for so hopefully that word spreads um i'm actually hopeful to work a little closer with the veterans office and see if there's other things that we can do you know maybe there's other events that i can attend that would um give me the opportunity to to present this information again to them um but i think you might be able to send an email to the veterans group and just say you're having this december 8th and any veterans interest you come over to the senior center yes yep um and and oftentimes you know a veteran may be a senior as well and may be getting a senior exemption instead um because you know they didn't know about the veterans exemption it could be at the same amount of money um it could be more in some cases for the for the senior exemption versus the veterans exemption so um so you're so you are in contact with the veterans yes yep and i hope to be um more in contact with their office um about the the tax work off as well i think that we could certainly get that out there much more than we do now um so it's something that that i've been working with the senior center on as well as hopefully soon more so with the veterans office so that's a result of your outreach to the senior center uh it's a result of that as well as um myself payroll um hr and the senior center all having new people so everybody kind of just wanted to you know touch base meet figure out what's going on how we do this what's the normal process what's the new you know are there is there a different way to do it so we've been actually meeting quite often um about that generally i think um especially with the work off program um all of those people that i just mentioned plus or minus a few um meet anyway to figure out you know the the the income guidelines for the senior work off we figure out how many slots we have available so on and so forth and just get on the same page with that um and i really like to do a presentation each year at the senior center and or anywhere else to talk about our personal exemptions just to get that out there to people if they need that help that that option is there so i'm happy to do that more often bravo could you share could you share with us the presentation when you have it put together um so basically all i'm going to be doing is i'm going to be bringing a copy of the veterans exemption paperwork the blind paperwork the senior application paperwork and i just sort of will go through the whole process of um you know how what the qualifications are for each one um explain more it's more verbal with handouts oh yeah yep um i will be explaining to them um you know how the process works so when you get the exemption where does it get applied how does it work um i've been thinking about trying to put together some sort of display um and i actually think that something that i might do is bring with me a calendar um a full year calendar that i don't know if you know what i'm talking about but they have it's like january february march and then below that april may and june july august so on and so forth and that's really helpful for people to visualize when we're talking about due dates fiscal years and um tax due dates as well because when you have that type of a calendar you can highlight the middle section of that calendar is when your tax bills are due so it's all you know it just makes it easier so i think that might be something that i'm looking to bring but if you have if you if any of you have any suggestions of some other visuals that you think might be helpful please let me know because i'd be happy to do that too because talking at people is is a lot especially when it's a lot of information so i think just a good size poster to leave in the senior center would be helpful throughout the year well it keeps it in front of them and you know because a lot of different people go in and out of that yeah yeah so something that we could put together maybe just sort of giving um you know some sort of pictures on there so it's not just words but giving that option for the senior exemptions yeah due due dates are important yeah yeah and the due dates there you just see people wear the you know well act and explore more you yes on both sides i think due dates are important because well first of all you want to let them know that you know there's a due date to fill out this application there's a timeframe for that but you also want them to know that the due dates for their final tax bills is when they're going to see this exemption if they're approved for it no so i always just throw in the other two as well just because we're talking about two of the four quarters we might as well remind them about the others as well so do you have a target date for when uh tax bills are going to go out this year i don't yet um just because we haven't run a test file yet and we haven't actually officially gotten our tax rate approved by the state yet um which i don't think it'll be a problem to get that done on time everything has been submitted to them so it's just a matter of them getting it back to us i have a big recollection of getting my tax bill on new year's eve last year so they have to be mailed by law by december 31st by closes the post office so um at the very very latest that would be the date that they would go out i think generally um um it sounds as though amherst likes to send them between christmas and new year's that way it's not i i used to joke in greenfield that i'm sending out my christmas cards because if they ever went early then they would arrive by christmas so um you know i think it depends i don't expect them to be going out on december 31st i do expect them to be going out before that so i guess an answer to your question would be hopefully the week before uh between christmas and new years so what's the proposed tax rate uh 20 and 10 cents per thousand it's down a little bit it is yes yeah well we're talking about exemptions when do you update the dollar amounts every fiscal year the so the state sends us something usually sometime at the end of may beginning of june to be able to update our figures and then we do that math calculation to do that every year that updates the income levels and everything yes what about the amount of money we give people does that get updated every year no that's something i don't know how often that gets updated um i know at one point well before i started in the assessing world um for example the senior exemption used to be 750 dollars which um in some communities that's still the exemption um but other towns have adopted to give the thousand dollar exemption and then in amherst we have also taken the extra adoption to give the your first year for example would be the thousand dollars and can increase up to two thousand dollars so we have another local option that we have adopted here in amherst that other communities have not necessarily done so our our exemptions are maxed out under state law yes okay so we can increase the thousand even though inflation's gone out of sight no no and you know hearing that that happens if inflation does continue to stay you know way high they the state may come out with something new but as for now i think this thousand dollars in government world is a most is a fairly recent update so i can't really imagine that that one would be coming anytime soon but again you know with things the way they are you never know it's talk to our local or state representatives that's who drive it yeah okay yeah they want the same across the state then they wouldn't want one town ever anything more than yes and no because like i said some towns still some of the smaller towns especially in the hill towns still have the 750 dollar exemption instead of the thousand and other towns have adopted the thousand dollars i think a lot of the larger communities have done the thousand and then again on top of that amherst has adopted to be able to extend that thousand uh to up to 2000 if you are applying year after year and receiving the same exemption okay great that's helpful yeah so um so the other thing that i had to mention in the assessor update is just that we're still working on the chapter properties we had sort of touched on that um a little bit when we were talking about that one particular lean where uh the updating of the land lines will be happening into the fiscal year 2024 because i can't touch anything for 23 um right now and those applications were being applied for for fiscal year 24 so just a reminder again um what i'm what i'm talking about is if someone's doing x amount of acres of Christmas trees i'm going to go into vision and say you know five acres Christmas trees four acres hey so on and so forth so that they are taxed appropriately based on what it is that they're actually farming on their land so are they helpful on giving you feedback on what they're doing absolutely yep yep without those applications i have no idea what each farmer is doing on their field um and even with visits on each and every farm i may still not know because a i can't tell what something is because some many crops look the same um but also like a hayfield may have just been hayed and the the field has been picked up maybe it happens to have a fence around it and i think it's a pasture but it's really a hayfield so it's i really need those applications to be filled out in order to know accurately what's happening on each parcel so it's my sense from some private conversations we've had that given your youth and energy you are tightening up on certain principle assessor procedures and functions isn't that true um yeah i would say clarifying clarifying excuse me that's fine yeah i mean it could be loosening too it really could be you get more accurate i nothing wrong with anybody's way of doing it oftentimes when a new assessor comes into a community things are just done differently um i can say that it's happening in greenfield i actually just listened to the council meeting the other day and i can see just a difference in the presentation alone so it's not that anything is done right or wrong um it's just a different personality a different set of eyes and you know that may cause for some tightening up over here but some loosening up over here a totally different way to do things over here so so yes i guess that would be the answer hi i might ask you before kim but i i question if you have a piece of land that's 30 acres with no house or anything uh it's not chapter anything it's just you know land do you still put a one house site on there and value it for a house if it has the proper frontage so if for example you have say i have a frontage on a road yep so if you have the proper frontage on a road there would be a building lot size depending on the neighborhood that you're in okay and the part of town that you're in um 30 000 square feet is often um used 20 000 uh not square feet i'm sorry 30 30 i don't know what i'm trying to say assessment no i'm trying to say frontage feet so 100 feet frontage for example is your your building lot and it may be that you can have a 30 000 square foot building lot at that 100 at that 100 frontage square foot um so it you know it depends on in amherst it depends on where you are there's different requirements per different parts of town um some towns keep it all the same okay that one acre is valued for a lot more than the rest of the land around and again it could be one acre it could be less so so commonly i've seen 30 000 square feet which is just shy of an acre okay um but in some communities and some areas of this town yes it would be one acre uh of a building lot um if that piece of property had no frontage then no that would just be considered excess land and there would be no building lot assessed there however if that lot has like what's called a flag lot so it looks like a flag pole and then there's the big thick lot at the back that could be assessed as a potentially buildable lot so um it with special permitting that flagpole so to speak could be their driveway and then they could have plenty of space to build their house out out on the the actual main part of the land um so in that case uh it would depend on if as a potentially buildable lot you generally will get that assessment for a building lot um but if you can prove that it's not a buildable lot then we can change it um to just excess land so okay well with that being said i don't have anything else to talk about for the assessor's update um so the next thing on the agenda is just to to um pick a meeting date for our next meeting well it sounds like um the second Thursday you're going to be busy in the morning that's the eight yes um i have nothing so far scheduled on the 15th that'll be fine we want to do that okay and yeah i already have a schedule on the 15th that's fine oh you've got it marked in already yeah okay i think we had mentioned maybe at one point a bunch of meetings going forward and we're still okay within 9 30 time frame absolutely okay wonderful okay so then our next scheduled meeting will be December 15th at 9 30 a.m um and you have no more you have no further appearances in front of the council coming up is that correct correct um i will also inquire about a possible in-person meeting um to see more information about that i know we started to do um hybrid uh but i'm at fault for that because i keep forgetting to tell the the it department that i need that room and i need help getting that set up so apologies for that but i will mention um i will inquire about what what we should be doing um now that i now that i'm now that i've had covid in the last few days i'm good you're safe for 90 days or whatever it is it might go with whatever is simpler for you okay yeah i gross i don't need a hybrid meeting if it's more work for you i can i just say either we should all we should meet all in person or all zoom i just it seems like the hybrid aspect is extra although i i suppose if we meet in person do we have to make ourselves available uh for a for somebody to come in on zoom is that yeah oh no oh god let's just stay all zoom until we decide to all meet in person well it looks like i think zoom is here to stay isn't it yeah probably at some point um it will be where like most people are in a room and then we have a zoom recording happening so that those who can't attend have that ability to um but i think do you think that's become easy to do or not yeah very easy especially with a small committee like ours um or a board i should say it's very simple we we meet in the we meet in the downstairs conference room with a with a with a with some sort of a box so we would probably meet upstairs in the town room where we had done a couple of times just because the zoom is all set up up there and the computer is all ready to go and the camera and everything like that so um that's probably where it would be all right so other other committees have had a previously set up for hybrid right yeah yeah actually our town council does that right now so yeah they do so okay so with that being said um we we do have a small executive session to talk about excise one excise abatement request and a couple of uh personal exemptions um and strictly for those per for that purpose right yes and the intention is to not come back to a public meeting after we discuss those two items okay i move to go into executive session for the limited purposes you've just stated second almost in favor please say aye hi okay so i'm gonna stop recording again before i do i just want to mention again our next scheduled meeting is going to be december 15th at 9 30 am i'm going to go ahead and stop recording to go into executive session with no intentions of coming back out um and we will discuss one excise abatement request and personal exemption requests i'm going to go ahead and stop recording now thank you