 Amherst media, are you ready? Seeing that we have a quorum of the full town council, I call the meeting of the committee of the whole or the town council to order at 2 o'clock and in just a moment I'm going to have them introduce themselves. We don't need to introduce ourselves we're going to have our name tags and I'm going to call it since this is also a meeting of the finance committee and principally meeting of the finance committee I'm calling the finance committee to order at the same time we do have a quorum of both present so so I'd like to welcome everybody and thank you for thank everybody for being here on the finance committee agenda which is also the agenda therefore the committee of the whole consists of the following items community preservation act proposal capital plan budget updates if any we always put that in there and I don't anticipate that there will be any public comment minutes of previous meetings and matters not anticipated the way that we're going to structure the meeting is that we're going to begin with community preservation act proposal and then do capital plan I think that those are the two principal things for today I don't think that there's going to be time that needs to be allocated for either initially I'm going to keep an eye on it and see if we can do the community preservation act proposal in one hour though if we may have to go over a few minutes we'll see how that goes as far as public comment what I'm going to do is divided into actually three sections of public comment so at some point during the discussion of the community preservation act proposal we will do public comments solely on that matter when we do discuss the capital plan again I will call for public comment at some point appropriate point and it will be public comments regarding the capital plan and then the third section is if there are public comments about other matters that are not related to those two topics they will be welcome but we will handle that as the third section of public comment so I just wanted to clarify that aspect of it and the community preservation act proposal was presented to the entire council and to the finance committee and is available on the town website through the page on budget matters and I don't know if Sonya has a couple of copies available or not but if anybody doesn't have one there might be a few copies available in paper so with that I'm going to ask Nate Bonnington and Anthony Delaney from staff to come forward to make the presentation I think that there's a one other matter that I just want to make to say at the beginning of the meeting so that nobody has any undo expectations the finance committee will not be voting today on any of the matters that we're hearing about this is a meeting in which we are receiving information in order to inform us about the community preservation act and capital proposals but the finance committee may seek additional information and take before it makes a decision at a future meeting that let me just ask the president if she has any other thing that she wants to say is an introductory matter thank you if not then I'll turn it over to Nate and I guess that you have a different another member of the committee sitting with you now thanks I'm Nate Bonnington I'm chair of the CPA joined by Jim Oldham who's a vice chair and want to thank you for reviewing our proposals taking a look at them we had proposals originally that well exceeded our budget so we had to make some pretty tough calls but we were I think a pretty pretty vigilant in looking at the degree to which these proposals served the broad swath of our population and were financially responsible so let me just go if you'd like I can go through them one by one and see if you if you have questions would that be helpful yes well what might be helpful is in order to group them so we don't break it up too much but for example if you're gonna do open space first I will look to the council not just members of the finance committee but to the council for questions that they may have okay so we have a couple of proposals for open space and recreation is folded into open space we the first one we had was a proposal that was originally a $50,000 proposal we awarded $10,000 and this was for the conservation land improvements and rehabilitation we are able by the structure of this CPA to provide maintenance to CPA funded properties so we the town was interested in restoring bridges trails we have a lot of infrastructure problems on CPA funded townland on all townland we did not have a full $50,000 to award to this but the town was comfortable with it with a $10,000 award to start repairing some of the infrastructure in our CPA funded properties so that was a $10,000 fund for these improvements some of the land purchases that we had this year one was the Zala property this is a hundred and eighty eight thousand dollar award and do we yeah there we go so this is at the intersection of Sunderland road and one sixteen there are already two protected parcels you can see in the green in the north and the south these are some as a stream as you can see running through the entirety of the property this is a lot of really interesting wetlands we've had moose in this territory it's a really important habitat to the west is what in the Hadley parcel is I think the largest agricultural preserved are restricted land in Hadley so if you look at the entirety of this piece Amherst and Hadley this is a sizable piece of property that the place in the middle you can see that's in the grid is a way to allow for trail access from the north and the south and to make this a whole piece of property there is on the sort of east side of this some room for possible community garden there's a small barn that you can see that's the original family barn the family house of this property was taken down when route 116 was constructed many years ago it's about 25 acres Hickory Ridge this is as you know is the old Hickory Ridge golf course this is a pretty remarkable piece of land it sits between two of the most heavily populated densely populated parts of the town as you can see north and south of there there will be two that the plan is for CPA to purchase to be part of the purchase of this land and it will be to purchase land that is largely in the streambed and in other areas that are not really developable the area on the borders West Pomeroy where the parking lot and the clubhouses and a little bit west of the clubhouse will be purchased with capital funds meaning that that land can be used for repurposing the clubhouse for potentially affordable housing it will not have the same conservation restrictions as the parcel that's purchased with CPA funds in the sort of northwest corner and north central parcel there'll be two I think 12 acre solar sites we're excited about this property because partly because it has pretty spectacular views of the Holyoke range partly because it sits between two very densely populated parts of town and it also because it was a golf course it has an existing infrastructure that will make it almost instantly pretty handicapped friendly with the paths and the bridges and that is a $200,000 CPA investment the Keith Haskins properties another pretty interesting piece of land this is in the area around Cushman Brook that is I guess northeast of the bridge that goes over the river there just above Cushman you can see in the the dark green areas are existing protected areas a shootsbury is protected a big piece of their property in Cushman Brook up you can see up there in the upper right-hand corner the middle of this map where there's the green grid is the land that we're proposed that we're helping to fund purchase this land most of it slopes into Cushman Brook so this is a pretty delicate environment leading right into the Brook you can see two sort of access parcels that hit market Hill Road these are for possible roads or driveways into this piece of property and when when this is completed if this purchase happens we'll have almost a full two-mile riverbed of protected land in Cushman Brook from Leverett Road all the way up well into shootsbury and that is a 238,000 dollar investment we have a couple of recreation proposals one is for the improvements to the grove park playground and water park we've had a couple of years of CPA investments in this and it went a little over budget there was a grant that didn't come through so we've been kind of going back and forth with the town trying to make this happen because this is probably the least improved park in town serves a pretty important population in town and we really wanted to make this investment to make the town's first spray park into improve some of the other facilities to improve the playground and to make it fully accessible this $110,000 is really is money that may be coming back to us this is really a contingency fund to make sure we don't have to come back for more funds so depending on how the bids and the construction goes there's a very good chance that some of this money may come back to us but we just want to make sure we don't run into another situation where yet again we have to come back and find more money and finally in recreation the mill river recreation area $25,000 reward is to begin to come up with a plan for really I guess you could call the completion of the improvements done to mill river we had a proposal a year ago to redo the basketball court there which is in the most heavily used basketball court for adults in town it's in terrible condition and it really needs to be replaced but a couple of things occurred one is that the the playground at mill river is not accessible to the handicapped and it's in a terrible location in relation to the baseball fields there are pop ups that you know go 40 feet in the air and land on the playground and that's just not really sustainable with very young children playing in the playground so the thinking is that we would to some extent go back to the drawing board and come up with a plan to move the playground to reposition the basketball court potentially to improve the pavilion so that this park really works as a whole and gets the playground in a safer area moves and improves and expands the basketball court to an area that's just north of the swimming pavilion and adding a half or quarter court half court I guess with a lower basket for young kids that's a $25,000 proposal so those are our open space and recreation proposals thank you so I guess I'll turn to the council as a whole and if there are any questions about any of the open space recreation proposals a lot a few minutes for Kathy hi I'm Kathy hi I have questions on a couple and also just an understanding how CPA money works on the Sal's up property up off 116 actually drove up there today because I live in far north air mercy said oh trails didn't know about those because they they enter right off 116 so sort of a question of how much that's used and if we add this piece of land is the vision is it will be more usable in terms of recreation so that's one question and then in the proposal it said it could potentially be used for community community pots of farmland you know local land and you know I think of in New York City big apartment buildings that don't have any land or housing complexes is the vision maybe you know someone would get their own piece of land so sort of sort of the use value of the purchase is the big question then it had one note that on 116 a piece is potentially developable you know that you could have property there right if if something like that happened would it be subdivided off and it would become a house or something so it's it's a question just about that piece yeah I believe that there's room in there for three houses roughly three houses it does begin to get a little wetter as you move to the I guess the west I don't know David hello Dave Zomek assistant manager director of conservation and development I'll see if I can go through those questions so what's really key about first off about this parcel is that it's identified in the open space and recreation plan as a priority everything west the land west of route 116 historically has been thought of as as a high priority for agricultural preservation as well as habitat preservation and as Nate said this is right between two already preserved pieces of land there are we do everything by appraisal so this appraised out the the value that you see before you is the appraised value based on two to three house lots those would be difficult to develop but possible to develop it all would be based on a curb cut and and it's an odd place to have a house if you went out there we're trying to develop I'm working with Stephanie Ciccarello our sustainability coordinator director to develop opportunities for people to garden in different ways in all parts of town and we don't have one in North Amherst so this would be a very logical place to put community gardens sharing gardens anything like that so that was the proposal was there another question I might have missed in there I didn't have another question on that property a couple others so maybe someone else to come in let's see if there's anything else on the Zala property before we go on to anything else just so did you have one Mandy I guess I just have a statement for the finance committee since I'm not on it when you guys start deliberating you know if if it's possible it seems like this is very low developable two to three house lots that might not affect the rest of it so I'd ask that you consider the cost of not buying it and the you know like just all of that pro cons on that sense as you're looking at the the recommendation for the purchase of the land versus it remaining in private hands that might get developed to houses we need housing in this town but wouldn't necessarily destroy the environment around that Mr. Zellnick you've any response on that or so I guess my response would be that going back to everything west of 116 has been a priority for preservation so although so every piece of land that we propose enamors to preserve we also take a look at the opportunity for limited development from a planning standpoint putting two or three isolated houses across the street at this very dangerous intersection in the middle of nowhere with no water no sewer doesn't really make good planning sense so there's a lot that goes into our decision to say we should maybe look at this this this whole parcel and not just part of it as Nate also indicated it doesn't show on this map but this is part of a much larger preservation effort in Hadley so in order to make the deal in Hadley happen we Amherst has offered to participate with Hadley and the Kestrel Trust so the parcel actually extends three times as large in Hadley Nate or who's ever controlling that can show there's about a hundred and ninety acres total in the whole project so yeah it's all of that land I recall 25 years ago sitting in Mr. Zalla's Tony Zalla's living room trying to convince him to preserve this land he has since passed away and his brother Ray is now in charge of the property so we're now dealing with another generation of Zalla and he's willing to put roughly 200 acres of land in preservation if the numbers make sense and we are participating with Kestrel. Okay we're gonna keep it moving but yes Andy. Just one last question on this I'm sorry I forgot to ask this beforehand in the CPA questions and answers document you guys asked a question about funding and whether it could be delayed a year and I think the answer was that if this was in FY 21 you might be able to work with the Kestrel Trust so that the property might still be able to be acquired but in a CPA funding for say next year instead of this coming fiscal year and is that still possible and is that something that you guys considered as you were considering funding here versus all of the other priorities this year. Jim. Thank you. We did talk about that and asked about that that was something we considered in the end the committee as a whole was persuaded we had a very unusual situation of three very high priority projects in the end they all rose to enough level there that there's funding available for it and didn't make there wasn't a compelling reason to delay it and from what we understood from staff was although in a worst-case scenario that was a potential backup option that would have put stress on the whole project. Yes I was wondering how do you assess the value of the land for example the Hickory Ridge land which is wetlands and it cannot be developed so how do you arrive at the $200,000 figure for that. Well I believe it was from the appraisal is that right? Yes. So every every it's a great question every property that a municipality proposes to buy for whatever purpose affordable housing gas station for intersection or open space has to have at least one sometimes two or even three third-party appraisals so all of these properties that we're proposing to purchase some or all of have been appraised by a third-party expert appraiser and that's where we arrive at at the value so whether it's the Zala property the Kitsaskins or Hickory Ridge all of them have been appraised what I want to make clear and not to mix projects but right now we're only asking for $200,000 of CPA money for Hickory Ridge that is not the appraised value of Hickory Ridge the appraised value of Hickory Ridge is many times that but we're only asking for $200,000 in CPA dollars this is on Zala the appraised value of that 23 acres. Anything else? Okay because yeah we don't we want to go on and hear the presentations then. Oh you had yes. I just I have questions on a couple of their pieces of property before we move to the next group. On Kitsaskins no doubt this is a good thing to buy so it's not questioning that. It's similar to a question we were just asking about how you come up with a value I saw in the Q&A that there was no attempt to negotiate a lower price and I see that there's a grant coming in to do that so question is could you could there be an attempt to negotiate a lower price so that that's put as I I mean that just flagged my attention on no we haven't tried yet because it's actually a pretty big purchase when the grant comes in for the person who's selling. Yeah so another another great question so I don't recall the specifics of the Q&A that we responded to but suffice it to say that every time the town negotiates with any land owner there's always a conversation about a praised value and could there be a bargain sale so the answer and I'm not sure the specifics of that document that was prepared probably many months ago we have asked the owner if they would take a lower price and the answer has been no so we always do that we're always looking for the best bargain and that then translates into can we get grant funding to offset or replace any local funds so in this case we were able to get a $400,000 state grant to help with that purchase and again one comment about all three and I've been doing this a long time I do truly believe that our land acquisition program is actually gearing down it's not gearing up we happen to by luck simply by luck come to a point where three stellar properties that have been on the list for years all came together at the same time this has not happened in my career I don't expect it really frankly with the town to ever happen again so it's just unusual that you have these three opportunities I don't think we will ever see this the planets align like this again so they're all wonderful if we didn't have Hickory Ridge and we were just looking at the other two you'd say these are spectacular but there's been a lot of focus on Hickory Ridge but the other two are equally stunning properties with wetlands with riverfront with river protection with wonderful other attributes yes okay just the last property again no no doubt about oh did Mandy have one on this piece too yeah so this one actually goes to this piece in some sense and also the trails but I'm gonna combine them so I don't have to do it and you know in your presentation you said trail maintenance trail creation bridge maintenance can be paid for by CPA and this project the Keith Haskins land you didn't indicate that you would build any trails yet one of the purposes for purchasing this is that it connects already created open space so is there a future plan to create trails since I I think one of the purposes of acquiring land like this is to have it accessible to the public and without trails it's not really accessible and would those if there is a plan in the future would that plan go back to the CPA for the maintenance portion since CPA funds can be paid for by that and that goes to my question about just trial maintenance in general is there by the CPA committee some sort of plan in the future to regularly fund maintenance of CP maintenance of trails on CPA purchased land so that that money can maintain be maintained in CPA given the town goal of moving capital that can be paid for by CPA to CPA versus out of the capital budget hope that was understandable can answer that I'll answer the last part first we're fully aware that in addition to the possibility of the trail system in a newly purchased piece of land that many properties in town open space properties with trails and bridges are in really rough shape and I think in a in a different year when we maybe did not have three major interesting really compelling properties to think about purchasing we very well may have funded the full fifty thousand dollar request and I think part of the discussion that we had in the committee with with mr. Zomek was that we would like the town to come back to us so that we can really start making the proper investments in these properties okay my last question is actually related to what Mandy just said now I'm turned to Hickory Ridge which is a terrific piece of property to buy if CPA money is used for this piece and some other purchase gets the piece that you said would be more part of it would be developed so it wasn't conservation if the other piece had trails that connected to the piece you bought so how literal is it that you CPA money purchased this acre but other money purchased another and I'm thinking of Mill River where you can come back in and be rethinking it can you would you be able to come back in and think of the whole area if more of it was public can I I just also there was a part of Mandy's your question that wasn't answered on Keith Haskins I just quickly on that so we didn't come right out in the grand proposals and in the CPAC proposals to say we want trails in part because we knew we had two other properties that have trails already semi-established and I'm a little cautious these days about adding new trails we have over 80 miles of trails already in town and as you said in your other part of your question we need money to to maintain those trails so the towns town staff through me we would like to come back every year to try to see back to try to get money to enhance and and improve the trails so down the line somewhere Keith Haskins will likely have trails and bridges but at this point in the net if we are successful in acquiring it it wouldn't be a high priority for us at this time but in the future it could likely connect to Haskins Meadow across the way and answer to the question about Hickory Ridge so what I've been saying all along throughout the process public and in various meetings with CPAC and others is that if we are successful in moving forward with this acquisition we would have some we would create some sort of collective master plan for the site that would include looking very carefully at what lands would be protected what lands would be for solar where trails could be and what other uses the land might offer the town it could be and we would look at affordable housing options we would look at private options of potentially selling off part of the property for some use it might support a restaurant like it does today or a brewery or any number of uses where the current clubhouse is it has a wonderful parking lot we would want to retain all or most of that parking lot for multiple uses including public access so as part of this process we will be coming to if this moves forward we will be coming to the town council with a conceptual map showing those areas that may be retained for development or other uses by the town or another entity in the future with those areas identified that will be preserved on the map as well and of course the solar is about 23 acres of the hundred and fifty so that map will be forthcoming next week to the to the council through the process I hope that answers that question just want to add what one small observation related to what was just said that that of course because the differential values the wetlands being much less valuable than the then the developer portion even though 200,000 is only a fairly small fraction of the total purchase price it would be the land ratio would be very different so so the bulk of the land that the town purchased probably would be conservation okay so anything else on open space conservation recreation pardon I want to ask some more questions about Gough Park I was trying an experiment and I asked somebody I didn't know what was their major complaint about Amherst and this very first person who did not mention a pothole or a sidewalk was upset about Gough Park and I said oh why we're doing some wonderful new things there but I had no details and when I looked at the picture I couldn't really tell what was going to be where what you're doing I so I think it's important that you tell us the good things that are going to be happening at Gough Park so thank you for the comment and again perhaps we can improve our outreach on this some there is a lot of information on the web about the project because it's been underway for a couple of years but I'm excited to say that we are under construction right now with a wonderful project there that includes a spray park as well as a playground and pavilion kind of a new entry way to that area so contractors are on site people can go down and and take a look now it's all fenced off for safety of course but the goal would be over the next couple of months to complete that project and have a grand opening sometime this summer our hope is July but we will have a more firm date as that moves forward but it's a very exciting project that has been supported by the LSEC Commission of course the CCPA has been very supportive of the project throughout and formerly the select board and town meeting so we feel very good about the project it's going to serve South Amherst but we think it's going to be a real regional attraction for people in Amherst and and it'll be a great a great amenity there at the same time we're also improving the sidewalks and creating a multi-purpose path on East Hadley Road which will help to provide safe access for people who live on East Hadley Road who can just bike walk or come with a stroller or rollerblade or whatnot from East Hadley Road over to Grove Park in the summer so look for more improvements there in an announcement about a ribbon cutting in the in the coming weeks and months yeah please I just want to add to the grove park because I found it very exciting that what the vision of the town is to take the programs to the different communities and the grove park is going to be used for one of the sites where youth programs will be held right there rather than expecting people to come to bank center and so forth so we need to move on to the next section I just there's one thing I meant to say earlier and I want to make it clear now so that nobody misunderstands the charge to the finance committee is to advise the council on all financial matters I have decided that I am not going to get into the business of parsing out whether a question is financial or not for the purposes of today's meeting whether a financial consider is something as a financial consideration or not in our recommendations we may discuss at a later time I am not going to attempt to parse questions today so I just for sake of the council I wanted to make that clear so going back then to the plan is it your which you want to go to historic preservation please okay the first item that we have for historical preservation is a preservation plan update this is a twenty five thousand dollar CPA grant the mass historical council recommends that local historical commissions every five years undertake a preservation plan and this is to sort of look at inventory to take public comment to identify maybe new areas that have come up for possible preservation project so that local historical societies can be continually up to date in what they may want to focus on for CPA proposals and other things we haven't done one in 13 years so the feeling was that we were really overdue for the historical commission to be able to fund a preservation plan update and this would be basically to fund a consultant to help sort of get us up to speed with what our current needs are the West Cemetery headstone restoration project which is a fifty thousand dollar proposal this is a really interesting one and is part of a longer term restoration project in the West Cemetery the plan is to is to bring in an outfit that specializes in gravestone restoration and to take about 50 or 60 of the most badly damaged headstones in West Cemetery that date from kind of post civil war stones and to you know reset to replace broken headstones to clean headstones so that the we don't lose more infrastructure that we have in that cemetery and this is a particularly interesting part of the of the cemetery with some notable figures from our history and African-American families in some of the early Irish Catholic families and in Amherst so as you know this has been going on for a couple of years this is another leg of this preservation plan for this really important historical resource in town North Amherst Community Farm this is a thirty thousand dollar grant from CPA so last year CPA awarded a grant to the North Amherst Community Farm to repair the exterior of their house on North Pleasant Street and that they've been doing a complete rehabilitation of this beautiful building that had really been in disrepair until the work began they they actually through some really good fiscal management spent significantly less money than we had awarded them in exterior restoration so they returned that money to us and I think I don't know what ended up to be at last I heard it was between 13 and 16 thousand dollars that they had left I'm not sure exactly what came back in but they requested a CPA grant to instead of replacing the windows with modern windows to restore the original windows and this was to again to maintain to sort of historical integrity to this building which they has been a priority for them so so that's what we're doing with this and this is gonna this building is pretty close to completion as I understand it just two points to add on that they did they just actually had an open house the other day some of you might have been there so showing it off its view it is beautiful inside it's been remodeled to serve the farm well while preserving these historic features I just want to point out that their request for the windows was was more than we were able to approve because the money hadn't they hadn't yet reported back the final money so so there may be an additional 16,000 request coming so the last historical preservation item is a data migration for Jones library so this is a pretty important proposal this is to take about 5,000 records that are in digital images that are currently stored in Excel and to really bring them up into something a little more publicly accessible both the scholars and to interested citizens and to put them into a collective access which is an open source state of the art collections management system and this will be on the Jones database so this really makes it on their server so this will make it much more easy much simpler to access both what artifacts that we possess and again make it available to scholars make it available to anyone doing research or inquiring into what we have and that is a little over $22,000 proposal so those are our historical preservation projects so me pause to see if there any questions from the council about historic preservation proposals I actually just have a comment on the farmhouse because I thought what was interesting with that support is in a way it's an employment project as well as a historic it's housing farmers and training and providing them a place to live so you created housing to enable a farm to farm in a particular way so it has a nice mix that cuts across farmland and conservation so I don't know how many opportunities there are like that but it was it was so creative when you took the tour and so who was going to be living there yeah on the library data migration is that the total cost of this data transfer or is this the first payment for an ongoing process I believe it's a total cost that's how I understand seeing nothing else I I know we have also request for $10,000 for administrative expenses and funds for repayment of prior debt on CPA projects who were funded with previously approved debt those are standard parts of each CPA proposal every year and I don't think that we really need to have a presentation of those again unless there's any questions from the counselors have but those are standard items but if there's agreement that would allow us to go on and talk about the community housing proposals and turn it back to you okay so the first proposal we have is a $200,000 grant to municipal affordable housing trust the original request was I believe for 400,000 this is there's two parts of this one is a $40,000 request to fund a consultant we funded this last year as well to sort of work with the trust to plan and oversee development projects this is someone that became very very highly recommended to the town and we really felt that given the commitment that the town has to affordable housing that this was really money well spent to bring in someone with this level of expertise and planning for affordable housing the remainder of this proposal is to some extent in anticipation of the East Street School project and to allow flexibility for the trust to have funds to be able to expeditiously sort of plan for sort of pre construction costs and the rehabilitation of the East Street School it's possible some of this money won't get spent this year but we wanted to give them the flexibility to have this for this which will be another very exciting and important affordable housing project that's coming down the road Amherst Community Connections this is a program that we've been funding and one way or another for a couple of years this is working through Amherst Community Connections this is a hundred and little over a hundred and sixteen thousand dollar grant to support a rental subsidy program this is for people in town who are among our most vulnerable people when it comes to housing insecurity these are four hundred dollar monthly vouchers six of them per year lasting for three years this is to help people transitioning largely helping people transition out of homelessness into a more stable housing situation with other support systems not funded by CPA to help them with employment and really move out of homelessness into a more self-sustaining lifestyle and then finally is I don't want to speak for the whole committee but I think this was a proposal that there was almost sort of uniform excitement about immediately among the CPA committee this is Valley CDC's proposal to create a studio apartment housing project near the Amherst College football field this is to they purchased the house and it's to put an addition onto this house that would that would in combination with the house have 28 single resident occupancy studio apartments for among our most vulnerable citizens in town these would be people who again transitioning out of homelessness low income folks disabled people retired people who are working with Department of Mental Health State Department of Mental Health Services to give them stable safe housing in a location that's close to town this is a five hundred thousand dollar CPA grant that is part of Valley CDC's total cost note that councilor Schreiber has just joined us I have one question I'm gonna ask them and turn it over to other members of the council to ask questions about housing proposals then on the Amherst community connections you mentioned that there have been two they have been prior proposals last year it was called the housing stabilization program and in FY 17 housing stability program is it essentially the same program and if so have the was has there been an evaluation process for looking at the success of those programs that informed your thinking as you made your recommendation so there's this is a slightly different program from the program that's been funded in the past the the program the past was really focused on bringing people out of homelessness that this is is a subsidy program really focused at people maybe you know with us who have housing but the housing is or has become insecure so perhaps they've lost a job or have had an illness or or the rents faced rental rent increase so the first part of the question is not quite the same program though it's built on many of the same much that many of the same components in terms of using a subsidy in terms of providing those surround support services that has as Nate made clear are not funded by CPA but from other other resources and although we CPA committee isn't in a position to actually carry out evaluations ourselves but we did ask for and receive reports from the program and they were able to show they had one of the big successes with the previous with the other programs which are still ongoing the what one of them is still ongoing is that although in that program they the the potential was for for a subsidy to be used by a single beneficiary for for for a couple of years in fact they were able to transition them in a number of cases they were getting permanent I'm liking on the term but cut work they worked with Amherst housing authority to get other types of bring other types of of housing support into Amherst and then the support the CPA money that they were using could then transfer on to a second beneficiary and that their beneficiary so that so they had pretty good reports in that way and and were and as I say we're we're bringing in other resources in in conjunction with the CPA money so the committee felt that this particular you know while we're looking you know a lot of committee members feel strongly that it's important to be addressing affordable housing with with solutions that are ongoing such as the Valley CDC project or the East Street project but in the interim we're also very aware that that there are many individuals and you know who are at risk right now and who needs support right now so the goal was to to do some of both thank you so I'm opening up to other members of the council and questions about any of the historic preservation our house is not his housing request thank you community housing request and so Mandy I've got a couple but I'm gonna stay on this one since that's where we are the I want to describe it as overhead but the management fee if I did my math correctly is approximately 13 ish percent of the whole request $55 a month for each $400 a month subsidy approximately 13% I think is that a typical management fee seen in this type of program I have no reference so that's why I'm asking whether that's typical high low and if you don't know did you did you ask I'm just trying to get a reference here on that portion of the proposal we may be able to answer that if it's okay you need you need to hold the button on the microphone while you speak and thank you thank you very much identify yourself my name is wayling greeny and I'm the executive director and founder of emmer's community connections thank you for this question regarding the management fee yes we have had two funding so far very graciously want to acknowledge the CPA the support for the housing first and in each housing first we charge $50 and $55 depending on when the ground was written and the management fee of $55 is typical industry standard for us to work with the landlord to do the helping the tenant to pay for the rent and every month we do have to reach out to the tenants to help collect their fees and to be provided so therefore this is typical to $55 that we have been doing for the past three years I was just gonna stay on the same project if I understand correctly these subsidies and help go to housing that wouldn't be classified otherwise within our affordable group do are there inspections of the properties and management and I'm asking this in terms of is that part of the management fear the overhead because actually a few people who have received some of this help have talked about landlords not always maintaining it so in terms of if it's part of our housing stock and we're not counting it as affordable how do we do oversight so is there additional resources town inspectors coming in making sure we're buying people into decent housing not where the landlord can take advantage because they're getting a subsidy so you can charge a higher rent if I could reply yes so when we for example in our housing first housing that we have worked with the town and at their requirement that we have to work with landlord who can produce a permit to state that they have done the self-certification past the town's requirement every year so we only rent from landlords who could produce such a certificate before we are willing to sign the lease and so far we have done this with all the reputable real estate rental agencies again I'm open to any questions from any council councilor about any community housing proposal I have sorry I feel like I'm taking up a lot of time but I wanted to move to the East Street school one the 200,000 my reading of the proposal I think you mentioned this was that it's not necessarily directly for assisting in the developing of East Street school that it would go into the AMHT trust fund the housing trust fund for use for any affordable housing project but right now they're hoping to be able to use it for the East Street school project but it would be available for any project so I guess my question is if it ends up being used for East Street would CPA you know if we start funding that trust fund does then a developer for say the East Street school project also have the ability to come back to CPA and request CPA funds specifically or is the goal to have all of the developers go directly to the housing trust to be requesting the funds from the housing trust specifically if that's I know the proposal talked about multiple hundreds of thousands every year into the trust fund that they'd like to see so I guess it's more of a forward-thinking question of is this a way to have the housing trust manage the developer requests for funds in town and CPA just grant that money across or might a developer start getting funds from both CPA funds that have been given to the housing trust and also CPA funds that have not been granted to the housing trust it's an interesting question I don't think that's something that we I think the expectation is we're going to come back to this in one form or another probably next year I would just add that I mean there's two parts to that question I think and so one is definitely an ongoing discussion between CPA and the housing trust on about the management of these funds and one and part of that discussion is they have they're developing a plan and a strategy and are more focused on housing and and have professional guidance so they have a lot of strengths to bring to housing at the same time their their choice of focus is more narrow than than the full suite of housing that CPA might fund so the question over time that will be figured out over time I think by by successive committees is going to be how much money gets transferred in advance to be held by them versus you know how they might come and request funds to the second half the question I I would suspect that for a project like East Street if it's being managed by the housing trust fund I wouldn't think that CPA would look to them to ask for funds I would assume that we wouldn't expect the developer to be coming to us with separate requests that we would want them they might make a request with the developer but that that's a personal assumption. Chalney, Sony did you have the supplemental? Yeah I just want to clarify for everybody that the Amherst Municipal Housing Trust is a town trust so the money that gets transferred over is still in the town treasury it's just in a different fund it's still through it still has to go through all the approvals and all the follow all the rules that the town does it doesn't just go to another entity. Firstly I just want to this is for the CDC project I want to acknowledge the work that CDC has done to address each and every concern that we've been getting and some very legit concerns but just want to thank them for a very detailed response to that and one thing the response might be there but I'm not clear is why is the cost per unit looking much higher than the norm in town for you know per area of construction if I could get more information about that. I believe there's someone here from Valley CDC. Yeah, why don't we get there's a microphone that Delaney has. And please identify yourself. Thank you. Is it on? My name is Laura Baker I'm the real estate project manager for Valley CDC and I think it's a question of framing this price within the price of developing affordable housing in general so we're looking at a per unit total development cost under 200,000 which is extremely rare in Massachusetts. I don't think we've ever I don't think we've done one before so typically we're looking at around 350,000 per unit for developing affordable housing in the Boston area they're getting up into well into 400,000 per unit the state discourages people coming in over 500,000 per unit but they have funded them. So I think the bigger question is why is it so expensive to develop affordable housing and some of it is regulatory some of it is the goals that we're trying to meet for energy efficiency for handicapped accessibility. You know compliance with environmental requirements many lawyers looking at everything so affordable housing as a as a type of housing I think can be more expensive than private development this particular project that's coming forward and we'd be happy to provide comparative data is very inexpensive relative to other types of projects for affordable housing. Pat I just wanted to add to what you please use your microphones I'm sorry my finger is on it. I just want to add that one of the times that you were presenting you talked about and this got confirmed by other people about the cost of putting in individual bathrooms in each of these units there yeah and bathroom plumbing etc is extremely expensive so that contributes as well. The square foot cost of construction for this type of housing a studio apartments would inevitably be higher than for multi bedroom dwellings bedrooms are relatively cheap to build kitchens and bathrooms are very expensive to build this property also we're hoping to equip with an elevator which is a you know a more high-cost item cost of property in Amherst is expensive so all of those things kind of get rolled into the total development cost of the project. Yes a question about what is included in the units are they air conditioned or is the building air conditioned and I asked you yesterday about wireless and I assume people have TV or cable. So what is included in the individual units is essentially an open room with a kitchenette and a private bathroom in each unit air conditioning we would expect to have central air conditioning in this building and so each unit would have its own thermostat with a probably floor and a ceiling both for heat and for air conditioning in the summer in the rent we include heat hot water and electric plug-in electric we don't typically include phone and cable and wi-fi although since Dorothy had suggested it to us we will take a look at that as well because she made the point that wi-fi in particular can be really expensive and has you know we all know it's become kind of more of a stable stable utility for people these days but the basic things to live and inhabit the unit are all included. Kathy. I want to go back to the East Street School proposal building on what Mandy was asking I looked at the Q&A and it looked like one of the reasons you went down from 400,000 to 200,000 because right now it's not quite clear exactly when it'll be needed and it's because you still have an RFP building pieces so my question was if we look at the whole package later could this potentially be postponed to be funded at and during the next fiscal year or is there an impact of delay of this amount of money and this I was getting it back partly just from the Q&A it looked like there was some flexibility on whether it's FY 20 or earlier in FY 21. I think there is that flexibility. Okay. And then on Valley CDC can I just continue so the way the budget works when I you nicely present all the numbers and show that it adds to more money than you have to allocate in cash and then this one is scheduled to be debt financed and I don't exactly understand how the debt financing works so do you have basically the intention of doing the 500k when the whole thing gets ready to go so when they actually need the money so the state needs it and are we holding it in escrow is it money does it make a difference if we said we want it to be cash rather than debt finance so it's a it's a question of you've gone over budget to put that in but it works because you're going to DB debt financing I just want to understand that better. Would you like to have Ms. Aldridge respond? Can you? I can talk about the borrowing and the mechanisms of that but whether the money has to go up front for the package to work or not usually we we pay these as a reimbursement where we get documentation showing that we're reimbursing maybe Dave Zomek or Nate could talk about the Nate Malloy could talk about the housing mechanism sorry Nate. Ms. Malloy. Thanks the the question I mean I guess so the idea is that the 500,000 you know the CPA committee expects that future CPA funds would then be allocated to pay this debt service so you know not you know so they're over their budget now right so they have a certain cap now and then the authorization is to borrow the money so the town would set aside a repayment period of 10 years and then all future CPA funds would go to pay off that debt service Valley CDC would need that you know the commitment when their project starts and as Sonya said it's a the town you know would secure the funding through grant agreements and the deed restriction and then we reimburse the expense we can structure it a few different ways with Valley but really it's I think for the CPA it's you know money that would be used in future years to you know CPA funds to pay back the project is that verify it? I think so because I was just looking at the the optimist the optimistic timeline you know and when it if everything went well you got the grant to build and when construction you don't need that money till two years from now so I was wondering if there's interest bond what I think of debt as you go out and you've got interest payments so you're saying we're we're not really spending any money right till two years from now correct okay and I don't think we would under the circumstances it's described borrow the money until actually need to use the money so we're not incurring interest costs during the period that the money is not in use but if this were voted by the council and it would require two-thirds vote of the council because it's a bonding authorization vote it would then stand as a bond authorization it's not the issuance of a bond right when once you authorize the debt on this we would not borrow any money until the project started and they wanted to start spending the money and we would just borrow what we need for that fiscal year end if it goes over two fiscal years we would not permanently borrow until the whole project was done so our our interest doesn't accrue the minute you start you authorize the debt it wouldn't happen until we actually borrowed funds can I I'm sorry to stay on this but suppose we decided we do it in cash so the drawdown two years worth of 250 each um then it wouldn't be debt but you would still be doing this you know we're going to pay and it would start and so do we have that flexibility that we can either do it as data we could do it as uh in a different way we have that flexibility in any of our projects but I'm not sure about the flexibility of the of the project right so that relates to each particular one okay so that relates to their funding showing a match for the state you know I'm just trying to understand yeah and well just keep in mind that we you can't appropriate more money than than is there and so you you couldn't do it as cash without subtracting something else out of our recommendation that's why I was asking about which things might be able to be postponed and do we need to put anything in this year I'm just literally trying to look at the cash flow side of it yeah Andy so I have two questions on the valley cdc project one relates to the borrowing but the other one relates to the budget that was presented by valley cdc in the sources of funding one was listed as mr cpa slash trust and another one about five lines down after the housing innovation fund just said housing trust fund and we have a housing municipal affordable housing trust fund is that the housing trust fund from Amherst or is it a different trust fund so that's my question on the budget as to borrowing um and she's shaking her head so I'm assuming it's not an Amherst the Amherst housing trust fund okay the borrowing I noticed that our current borrowing for cpa in terms of debt service is at four hundred and twenty thousand dollars of our approximately one million dollars that comes in every year from from tax money um so that's 42 percent right now is already pre allocated um if does cpa committee have a target for pre-allocation of debt service like how much don't you want to pre-allocate is there a top percentage is there a low percentage what's your goal there and what would um borrowing a half a million dollars due to that in the future given that only one project is being retired this year the the historic preservation project of the town hall um and only one is being retired next year the rest are for most of them are four or more years out from retirement there's only one that's in year eight of ten most other ones have a bunch more years left so what would this do to that and how would that limit the ability to fund new projects in future years well any bonding inhibits our ability to do further projects in the future because it's that much less money we're going to have to spend um and and I you know Sonya could maybe tell you the specific impact of borrowing $500,000 um I think a general a committee is pretty conservative about bonding um for just the reasons that it gives us less flexibility and years to come and I think this year was interesting in the sense that we we again I don't want to speak for the committee as a whole but I think in general these were unusually compelling projects this year um and we did reject the number of projects um but I I didn't know if Sonya have a if you have a sense of the direct impact on on the borrowing on our well that would depend on whether we're borrowing for 10 years or five years or 20 years but um something like this we'd probably do over 10 years so it'd be 50,000 plus interest and interest rates we usually project with is about between four and five percent or being told right now yes thanks I just want to respond quickly so on the debt service there for instance um you know the Hawthorne property is in year nine of 10 and that was for um half a million so you can see that you know that's 52,000 a year rolling green is 1.25 million and that's what it is on year five of 10 and then you know the write down will be less as you get closer to the to retirement and so you know it it does vary based on you know how much initial borrowing is in and then the write down period so it just gives you a sense for what it was for two housing projects. Mr. Jim did you have anything? That was part of what I was going to say but so again while there'd be while there'd be one year where the debt service would be a bit higher than this year if we don't borrow over the next two years the following year will be a bit lower because because of those um projects that you noted are going off this year next. Yes I'd actually like for my purposes and the purposes of other people to understand the next steps in this project and what is needed from the town council and then what would the valley CDC be doing as they move forward. Spaker. I'll try to summarize so we are at the phase of the project where we essentially have schematic level designs appropriate for starting to share with people starting to take comment from people um we are just beginning that conversation and we did have a meeting with some of the immediate neighbors in the butters we anticipate having a larger community meeting as well I see that the town has just put up a web page which is wonderful to kind of be a repository of information about the project. We would need to go to one of the state subsidizing agencies to get what's called a project eligibility letter essentially they take a look at the project to see if it meets fundamental criteria for subsidy they do a site visit they write to the town for comment and then if they give you one the project eligibility letter it is one of the threshold criteria for applying for a comprehensive zoning permit which is a type of state level zoning that is only used for affordable housing it is the type of permit we anticipate using for this project so we need to have site control and that letter from the state in hand to be able to submit the zoning board of appeals for zoning approval it's called a comprehensive permit because the ZBA is the kind of middle of the spokes of the wheel so to say with gathering input so they gather they notify butters they gather neighborhood in a butter input and then they coordinate with all the other local boards so you know fire police planning board anybody who might have something to say about the project they kind of hold all of that information they hold public hearings typically it's a series of public hearings that take place they ask the developer questions we answer those questions it's an iterative process they can request us to make changes in the project we can say we'd love to we can't here's why it's it's typically something about the project evolves during the course of that permitting process if we come out the other end with a permit then we take that permit we have to have one in order to apply for state resources when we apply for state resources they not only want to see that approved permit they want to see all other funds committed so when you look at the budget for this project which is right now a budget right we're speculating about what sources will get by the time we go in for the state and the state funds the bulk of the project we have to show a letter which is what we're requesting now from cpc that says yes we will if you are able to raise all the other money that you need and get the permit and you are ready to construct this project we will commit this five hundred thousand dollars so some of the urgency for us is being ready to do that when we go in for the project eligibility letter the state looks to us and says we're going to evaluate whether your project is viable part of viability is a financial analysis if we're saying yeah we're going to have some local money in it but we don't have any way to back that up it becomes a question in the mind of the state so it helps us compete it helps us show viability at the state level the competition for state level affordable housing dollars is fierce people sometimes apply year after year to get those funds so this is this is a long term process if there are delays at any point in the process it makes it an even longer process and so that was one of the things I was trying to communicate to the town is that you know we do have an extended public process before us and we want to try to control those things that we can control in terms of being making timely progress during the project if the state funds the project then we usually have about a six month period of finalizing documents and closing on the financing a construction on a project like this would probably be 12 to 14 months we would be doing about six months before construction completion we would do it be doing marketing for the project typically there's a lottery to select tenants you usually have many many more applications for tenants than you have spaces and then when it's all built and people are selected according to that lottery people move in the zba and the town have the right to request a local preference be applied to the project the state decides that one town needs to submit evidence that they have local demand which I don't think will be a problem in this case and the town can request up to 70 percent of the units be local preference which means people are the living now in Amherst or working now in Amherst that's one of the definitions of local preference okay just looking around to not come back to you okay there was one other I had on my notes if it moves forward to actually opening up if there was a need for a crosswalk if there was a need to move a bus stop if you know so they're related but not the housing project are there plans that the town would be able to do that does valley CDC work to to supplement and you know questions about the support services located in the project itself if you determined you needed more than what you've got in the current budget do you have resources you would draw you know it's so it's you don't know yet until it's up and running about what's the total price tag really exactly okay so yeah I think again as part of the zoning hearing they will look at traffic safety parking all of those kinds of considerations if they identified an infrastructure need that the project would create I think there would be a negotiated discussion about how that happens we understand plans are already underway for improvements with crossing on on this section of Northampton road so I don't anticipate that particular item coming up as a question in terms of supportive services we hope to apply to the state for some rental subsidies for the tenants that are coming that are defined as homeless we can at the same time ask for some supportive services dollars that are ongoing that would come to the project every year we also when we looked at the operating budget we are committing to dedicate some of the revenue the rental income also for services we have executed I think five memorandums of understanding with local social service providers that they agree that they would serve if and when tenants live in this building they would provide services those agencies all have their own complex funding pattern we don't have in our forecast coming year after year to the town to ask for service dollars we are anticipating using this state source as well as the revenue from the project to fund ongoing operations it is our goal to not to be self reliant in that way and not becoming to the town every year nor wondering if the town is going to have resources every year it would be a risky position for us as well so we want to have it all kind of captured within the operating budget for the property Dorothy I remember you have several categories of tenant and I wondered how firmly those are tied to specific rooms for example if the higher paying ones whose money is integral to your budget plan if the number of people for those dries up because they decide the space is too small or they got something better do they stay at that up to that income level or can can you rearrange your categories well one thing I would add is that this there are ceilings identified for different income tiers of tenants doesn't mean you couldn't take someone who has a lower income you just can't take someone who has a higher income as long as they can afford a reasonable amount of their income to pay for rent typically the state does not mind lenders don't mind if you move to lower income tiers mostly people are putting money into projects like this trying to gain affordability and housing so usually if you go that way you don't you have to get approval we'd have to get approval from the town as well because you guys would have a deed restriction on this property identifying whatever those tiers are that your zoning board of appeals approves in a zoning permit it's a permanent restriction 99 years runs with the property so yeah there could in theory be a negotiated process with the town and other lenders to change them I don't I don't foresee that I think part of having these different you know having different tiers at at relatively small numbers of units means we're going to have an oversupply of folks at all those different income tiers we'll have a long wait list I don't think we'll be compelled because of lack of market demand to change those income tiers and I have a brief follow-up when you mention lottery and pre-screening do you pre-screen before somebody goes into the lottery or do they win the lottery and then see if they meet the pre-screening some of both so there is usually an application that kind of opens the gate for someone to be in the lottery that does include things like reference checks verification of income once you're in the lottery and you're at the top there are additional verifications that would go on to make sure that you are an eligible tenant for a unit so it happens at both ends shall we so all the projects that I've looked at yours seem to be doing really amazing work in the communities and I was still wondering if looking back at what you've done so far what improvements would you recommend in for our town and so what can we do as a town to make sure that this is a successful project for all the tenants and the neighbors it's a great question so a couple of lessons learned that we're bringing forward one is scale so the smaller the development the harder it is to make the budget work over time and you know we all see operating costs escalating costs of fuel costs of taxes all those things so the scale of the property is a response to that experience we want to have enough money to make capital repairs in the future we want to have enough money to have services on site none of our other comparable properties have on site staff and we're proposing that in this project and partly it's because we're able to because it's a little bit larger we just think it's a humane thing to do it is not a response to any bad behavior on current tenants it's really a quality of life issue for tenants so that's one lesson learned I think the diversity of incomes in this property I don't know if it's a lesson learned it was more a response to the the comments that we got early planning this project from the town the town said you know we really need a solution to all the people who are homeless in our town but we don't want to congregate and segregate those people and so most of the units in this property are not for homeless tenants they're for basically working wage earners and so and that's different than in our other properties we have a higher concentration of low-income and high-need people in our other SRO and studio apartment buildings I think it's a positive step I think we agree that it's a better social environment environment for people to have that diversity it also impacts scale because if you want to house a meaningful number of homeless people but you don't want them to be in the majority it also means you need to be at a certain size to do that so those are a number of I think lessons learned yeah and supportive services you know the importance of we already have memorandums of understanding with service agencies so we're not waiting I mean we're starting really out of the gate saying who's in the community that we could tap to rely upon to support people if and when we build this and I think that's a trend statewide that there's a realization that it's not enough always for people who are homeless to simply have a roof over their heads they we need to take proactive steps to make sure they can maintain that tendency over time and we've had a really good success rate doing that with formerly homeless tenants okay I'm going to look one more around to see if there are any counselors with questions because if not then I'm going to see if there's public comment requested yes did I hear you suggest that you have another meeting already scheduled our plan to schedule with the community um yeah we when we've always intended to have a broader community meeting um and we're I think we're trying to get a date at the bank center toward the end of June to do that for anyone who might be interested in the in the project so seeing nothing more no more hands coming up from the council you did say that we would have a period of public comment and questions and this is on the entire community preservation act proposal it's not on a specific proposal can I get a hands just so I know how many people are asked going to be asking to speak and we can divide the time okay no no they can be comments on any of the proposals or the entire it is I just want to know how many people are going to be looking to speak roughly so what do you think two minutes so I think that we there's a number that are have raised their hands what we'll do is set it at a two-minute requested limit for public comments and I don't know if they're about proposals of course we might I know that mr. buddington has to leave and if they do thank you your vice chair I hope we'll be able to stay in if there's any follow-up questions that you need to respond to mr. buddington has to go see we have can I have somebody who would be willing to move the microphone around can you do that mr. like okay I think let's get hands again I guess right over here with yes wow what an honor so my name is Johanna Newman I live in Stanley street in district two and I am here I volunteer with Amherst forward I also volunteer with the Fort River Watershed Association and I just want to say I'm really excited about all of these CPA projects and much like the CPA committee voted unanimously I hope that the council also advances these projects I have three points that I was hoping to make the first is I really think this slate of projects is impressive and aligns with the values of our community the ability to expand affordable housing and leverage our state assets to help secure more money from the state is really exciting and I think the plan put forward yeah as alignment with our values of making our town a place where everybody who works here can live here and you know it will basically 750 thousand dollars of our funds unleashes close to four million dollars of other assets and that seems really great to me on the conservation projects I think we are really facing kind of a once in a lifetime opportunity on some of these properties and you know for me access to these lands is great but that's something we can do down the road once we actually own the properties and you know the fact that these are all in areas with streams and wetlands you know it's just incredibly exciting um so that's my first point is I just think these projects align with our values my second point is just about the roles and the division of responsibilities I've been really pleased with how the conversation here has really focused on the financial aspects you know in many ways the question before you is not the details of the projects we have committees that have done great work on that but it's really can the town afford this and is it fiscally responsible and so I'm really pleased to see the conversation you know dominated by those questions and you know issues beyond the affordability and kind of the money pieces really belong you know at the CDC or at the ZBA in particular with regard to the housing project and then lastly I just want to stress the urgency and the opportunity around authorizing these funds so you know delaying them could have detrimental impacts construction costs for housing grow and lack of local support could actually send signals up the pipeline that Amherst isn't committed to these projects and those you know resources that we're hoping to leverage would go elsewhere so thank you again for your time for your service the opportunity to comment and I urge you to vote yes for the CPA projects thank you next hi excuse me hi my name is Dave Huber and I live at 104 Dana street which is it's basically a hundred yards from where the Valley CDC project would go in and I just want to start off by saying that my neighbors and I are we're not sort of saying not on our backyard we're instead we're saying we have problems with this this version of the proposal given and specifically the issues we see is given how residential the area is it seems this is too large a project and so I mean in terms of the you know the the costs the question isn't whether or not the town can afford it but whether you know how important is this priority given you know the benefits we get from it versus the costs and so our neighbors we started to investigate you know what will be the costs of this and one thing we identified we contacted Amherst college and the question posed to them was what would happen if they're starting if there were their issues with the project you know interact negative interactions between Amherst college students and the residents and they said what they would do is they would shut down the athletic fields to public access and so currently the public that we we basically have a very large public park at a disposal right there and many members of the community use that on a daily basis walking dogs and kids playing there and that would basically be basically be shut down to us if this happens if this occurs and you might say well why do I think there are going to be any sort of negative interactions well so one of my neighbors just actually within the last day I was able to obtain the police records from Northampton on the Valley CDC projects so we could see you know what what actually happens and and so this is the dispatch records for the for the specific addresses of the five the five properties the SRO properties in Northampton and I went through this last night I built up a spreadsheet over the years there's been 2,669 dispatch calls to those five properties now of course you have to you have to take in consideration how long that you know over what time period and how many people are in each of those units and so if you if you crunch through the numbers on that it basically amounts to 2.3 dispatch calls for each resident each year of the of the SROs and so for comparison I want you to consider how often do you personally call 911 about something so it seems it's a much higher sort of rate of calls than you and so we can we can crunch the numbers on this and say you know there if there's 28 residents that's going to amount to 65 dispatch calls per year at this location or more than one a week and I I mean I could you can look at these I have the logs right here actually and you can kind of go through them and see what all the calls are about and a lot of them are medical emergencies including overdoses that's by far the largest category then there's a lot of fire alarm calls but there are also a fair amount of disturbances and noise complaints and there's a lot of theft and vandalism in the calls as well and so the issues we see is you know given the size of this project it's going to it's going to severely impact the neighborhood both in terms of access to a public park and in terms of these you know ongoing noise and emergency vehicles and possibly increased worry about theft and vandalism thank you behind you could you just pass the microphone or something right behind you that you set the your spreadsheet you're saying 2.3 calls for 200 thousand could you please identify yourself hi i'm susan digrav i'm with the affordable housing coalition i live in amherst i live at rolling green actually and i i like the diversity over at rolling green yeah oh this is it okay i just wanted to know how many you said you said how many years okay that would be important right i understand your concerns um i i heard i guess it was tuesday and we had our meeting i heard that there were a number of residents you know nearby neighbors who'd come to the meeting on tuesday which was i don't think it was supposed to be about this subject so those of us in the coalition didn't know we weren't there but i certainly think i find it a little bit offensive all due respect to this gentleman he has a right to his point of view that homeless people are necessarily criminals and drug users um i'm right now a public school teacher i'm probably going to move out of amherst because i can't afford rolling green i'm paying market rate but i can tell you that my neighbors are wonderful people they're very diverse there's about 40 subsidized units there and it creates a lot of pride in people to have been living in a nice place and i personally think it's really important to have families there and they they ride their bikes around and they're just like everybody else they have little cookouts and so forth um i also before becoming a public school teacher i teach foreign language i was a lawyer for 25 years done in springfield and i had a number of clients who were able to get a little key and go into studio apartment and believe me they wouldn't have done anything to disturb that because it was such a huge life changing event for them and yes they had had their problems but it didn't mean they were planning to go out and victimize other people or disturb the public park where people are walking their dogs um i think this is this is very disturbing you know sort of i read the letter the seven page letter and i just that the the neighbors had put out and i i just thought wow this is the neighbors and the entity is going to have to come together and have a meeting because there's a lot of fears and things that i think could be you know worked out but i i really um i know we only have two minutes i had written down one other thing i wanted to say which was um um i gotta find my my paper here sorry um you know for the gentleman to say how important is this priority i think it's very important i i know a lot of people who are on the verge of homelessness here because of the the rents and like i said i probably will be moving out myself it's just too expensive um even though i'm a teacher you public school teacher i'm not rich by any means so that's my two cents thank you hi um i'm amanda robertson uh i'm sort of a neighbor to this project i'm relatively close and i just wanted to comment on the last comment there are different types of affordable housing projects i think to compare this one to rolling green is a false equivalency um i'm not sure s ro's are very tricky type of affordable project housing project to maintain manage i think that the community's overall concern is not a not in my backyard type of mentality which i personally find very offensive it is more the scope of this project the support services provided to the residents who are a vulnerable and at risk group of individuals and to sort of sugarcoat it and pretend not pretend but to sort of gloss over that as though that's not an issue i think the um statistic from the northampton police department on other s ro's and what we do know about the co-morbidity of mental health issues addiction and homes populations it's a reality and for the community to not to be sort of antagonized for sort of saying wait we'd like to know some more information about this before we proceed i think is naive i think that it's lumping all affordable housing initiatives into one sort of they're all different and this is very different than what they have run before in terms of scope and what amherst has so i would just like to point that out in terms of saying that we don't want affordable housing it's specific questions with regards to this plan not affordable housing overall in the town excuse me before you pass the mic over would you please state your name and your address amanda robertson 39 northampton road thank you my name is hallie hughes i live at 30 orchard street i'm not opposed to this project what has been really frustrating i think is being labeled as a knot in my backyard and also we have repeatedly reached out to valley cdc to meet we actually had a meeting two community members had a meeting scheduled with valley cdc this wednesday and they abruptly canceled what's been really hard for me and i'm actually also an attorney i worked in pro weight and family court represented kids for a long time and i know the diverse population we have i did my honors clinic in housing court in springfield so i actually kind of know stuff about this what's been frustrating is the lack of notice we've had about some of these things so we got a letter dated april 10th about this that just vaguely said that there'd be community meaning about affordable housing there was no information about the scope of the project i wasn't even going to go i'm in a butter until somebody else reached out to me said just so you know this is about a 28 to 32 sro resident we thought it was just like a couple like a two or three family house that was going to be built or even something like the east street development which is multi units you know you have some studios you have some other things anyway the lack of notice has been really upsetting to me and then i was informed this morning that valley cdc has a whole rebuttal to the concerns we shared at the meeting on april 24th that no one has shared with the people who are at the meeting something valley cdc collected our email addresses at the meeting they've created this document addressing our concerns and haven't shared it with us they've canceled meetings and you're a good organization i'm not saying you do bad things but i'm going to ask the town finance committee to delay funding because i think there are some real important concerns that should be shared among the community and the stakeholders before they get the funds because essentially as we heard earlier getting the funds is kind of a blanket approval from the town and after they have the approval the town council doesn't have as much input into the project sorry i think i went over oh should be on okay a barbograb and wilbur 126 north hampton road right next door to the planned project that place was the carriage house for our house so it's interesting that historic preservation was presented and our house built in 1880 and built by a faculty member a dean at amherst college and the carriage house but interesting enough also their son drowned at hickory ridge at one of those lakes there when he was swimming so it's kind of interesting that both those types but that aside i agree that the plan should be delayed the university amherst college there is a resource here that perhaps they could invest in having somebody do some more research on sros and the sustainability not only of them but the actual impact on the clients or tenants or the people that live there one comment you made about families i agree family situations and diversity is excellent having single perhaps and maybe you guys know what percentage is of gender what percentage of race that you're sort of anticipating will fill that but if it my sense is it'll be both mostly male it just doesn't seem like it's the type of place that would facilitate diversity and family atmosphere and that kind of thing that's my two cents hi carol lewis 21 ward street um i strongly support the studio apartment project um it it for one thing it seems to me from what i know which is not everything about all of the documents amherst has created about what it's trying to do this is exactly what it's trying to do this is exactly the kind of a kind of housing that we don't have at all anywhere in amherst and this seems like a way to put it somewhere where yes it's across the street from something of a neighborhood but there are already a lot of homes or residents of some sort some including dormitories with lots of people in them in that neighborhood already and from my own experience i would like to say that living at it and this is an amherst goal is to create housing that is mixed income because because otherwise we just perpetuate ghettos as someone pointed out the other day that the discrepancy or the difference between the median income of renters in amherst and homeowners in amherst for instance is huge bigger than almost anywhere else in massachusetts i believe and so having places where people with different life experiences and incomes can be in the same place at the same time is important and and educational when i lived in pomeroy lane co-op there was mixed income mixed ability all those things were in that project and what i i learned so much about living in community and connections i made there are with me today and we need more opportunities like that in amherst and this can be one of them um and i guess there have been statements now about why it would make sense to delay this but i don't i think that it there's an urgency in having the town commit to the project now so that it can go forward enough to even figure out what's going to happen next much can be decided at the at the zva about the details of it that's i understand that's what the usual process is um i don't know the other thing for just for as my understanding about how the financial impact is this building will actually so increase the value of the building that's there now that there will be a positive uh revenue to the town from real estate taxes and there's not any particular reason that i'm aware of to think that other expenses the maintenance as as a valley cdc as explained will be taken care of by them there's not some ongoing cost that the town is going to have to pay so besides providing for all kinds of people and i guess another thing i want to say is that the majority of these places are for people who are working who live who want who either do and can't stay or who want to be able to live in amherst when they're here working and doing the jobs that we need them to do when they want a place to live um so i don't i i strongly urge the finance committee to recommend this project promptly um and the town council to promptly vote on it thank you thank you uh kate sim 77 dana street i'd like to speak to urge the town counselors to delay the project until there's a chance for meaningful input by the neighborhood's most affected by the project to quote the 2016 town of amherst housing production plan sorry to sound like a broken record but a lot of people i think at this meeting weren't at the previous meeting the town of amherst housing production plan states it will be important to continue to be sensitive to community concerns and to provide opportunities for residents to not only obtain accurate information on housing issues whether they relate to zoning or new development but have genuine opportunities for input the concern of neighbors is largely about process that neighbors didn't hear details of the project until valley cdc's presentation on the 24th uh which was after the five hundred thousand dollars in cpa funding was recommended to cpaq um and in order to have it seems like this is the moment for genuine opportunities for input and for a productive dialogue where we could work together to figure out some really great solutions to meet some of the town's goals and to have this this be you know a really good project moving forward and so i think my question is to the to the council and to valley cdc you know are are you open to alternatives such as family oriented affordable housing such as a smaller size for the project such as a parcel swap with amherst college for a different piece of land along 116 or a long route nine amherst college owns tremendous amounts of land along both along that corridor well along both of those quarters along the 116 quarter and along the route nine quarter down to college street um and perhaps some of those parcels would not pose the conflict with open space that that this project could could risk um so i ask for delay because it seems like this is the moment for that meaningful input and productive conversation to occur and um the councilor uh christmeyer sorry i don't know how to pronounce your last name um mentioned that she was working on a forum for that type of productive input and so it would be helpful to hear an update from the council as well as to hear from valley cdc what types of alternatives are they open to thank you christ hold on we have another person back here hello john page i am a resident of amherst currently at 96 north prospect street but i will actually be moving in district three but moving in district two very soon i had some information about financials but that doesn't seem to be where the conversation is going so i will highlight a few things this project has been discussed in public meetings for approximately 16 to 18 months it will be for another three years so in terms of public process i hope that we take that timeline into account additionally this is just the beginning of a long process this is just the start and the question before the council is not who will these people be in fact we've already mentioned their sex what their family dynamic might be also how they might be paying for it whether it's about your you know section eight whether it's va departmental health all of those things are criteria that we can't even discuss in the context of this project the real question before us today is the financial impact so we should really be focusing on that and then there will be opportunities in the future valley is required to hold certain meetings and they will and that will be opportunity issues of size and shape and physical logistics of the project that is an issue for the zoning board of appeals several months down the line from now too if we pass this phase so there are many opportunities for public input this is just the beginning and there already has been a lot and i guess i'm thankful for that i do want to respond uh not to specifically the request but following our financial um finance committee hearing i guess it was on tuesday evening uh the town manager and i have discussed the up follow-up meeting and actually this is the first time i had an opportunity to reach out to the valley cdc people and look for a mutually agreeable date for both them and people who advocate and people who are concerned and people from the town who bring a lot of knowledge and try to figure out the correct form in which we can have that conversation but it is still on the books i don't know how much time i have left but in terms of research i think it's worth noting that there's a few experts in this community that have already waged in in terms of the amherst survival center craig's doors homeless shelter the interfaith housing corporation the amherst housing authority the amherst municipal affording affordable housing trust have written about this project have thought about this project so if we're looking for research and information perhaps we should look towards those people who are both experts and in our community so is there anyone anyone else who had their hands up or chris i must confess i didn't raise my hand in the beginning but i would like to speak for a few moments now i'm chris breastrupt planning director for the town of amherst and i just wanted to share some thoughts and support of this project this project has been around for quite a while in fact it first came to light probably in the early part of 2017 there's been a long-standing need for housing for low income people and for homeless people in amherst we've recognized that for years craig's doors opened its doors about seven years ago and this year alone they housed 172 individuals in july of 2016 the town held a forum in this room and there were over a hundred people here many people sitting on the floor and standing in the back to hear about issues related to homelessness in amherst it was brought to the attention of the town by many entities including churches and others who serve homeless people but also even the business improvement district was concerned about the issue so people came together and talked about how to address the issue of homelessness and low-income housing the town has been successful over the years in providing and encouraging housing for low-income people we've had olympia oaks up in north amherst with 42 units and butternut farms down in south amherst with 28 units and i could go on non-to-list projects that the town has been supportive of to support low-income people and their housing needs the master plan also contains many statements with regard to our goals and objectives for housing for low-income people among which are encouraged the development of economic economically diverse neighborhoods partner with local community development corporations non-profit organizations and other groups to expand affordable housing in amherst improve housing and services for people in the area who are homeless and increase the amount of housing available to people of very low incomes and we really have very few housing opportunities for people of very low incomes the location is a good one it's on a busy connector road and within walking distance of bus stops the project is within walking distance of downtown amherst as well as the the shopping areas on university drive there are going to be pedestrian and bicycle improvements made to this stretch of north hampton road route nine which will make it easier for people to walk up and down the street and also to bicycle the project makes sense in terms of infill our master plan states that we try to develop in areas that are already developed and to preserve as much as possible the wonderful open space that we have around us and there's a history to this project valley cdc has been talking to amherst about this type of project for several years valley cdc went through an extensive research project where they looked at properties throughout town and for various reasons because of cost location or suitability they decided against those other properties a few years ago valley cdc discussed a possible north hampton road location not a specific location but just mentioned the fact that north hampton road would be a good location and they discussed this with the amherst homeless systems group and the amherst municipal housing trust amherst has already given support to this project in the form of $50,000 for assessments and feasibility studies to identify sites and in january valley cdc came to the zoning subcommittee and presented their supportive housing model to the zoning subcommittee and explained that there were issues with our zoning bylaw that might prevent them from doing what they had hoped to do which was to provide supportive housing for individuals in the spring of 2017 amherst annual town meeting voted overwhelmingly in favor of a zoning amendment that will would allow an apartment building to be built with only one size units and that would be this type of building with only studio apartments in addition the master plan i wanted to bring this up this is a sort of an addition to my statement here but the master plan encourages development in areas that are already developed but it also encourages development for for people for well this is in response to something that was said by somebody else it encourages housing for all kinds of people including families and individuals and in this case we are being faced with a project that would provide housing for individuals in another case namely east street school that would provide housing for families so we have two opportunities here for different types of individuals so i urge you to support this project i think it's a good project it really meets a lot of the goals and objectives of amherst master plan and many of the things that we've been talking about for years about helping to house homeless and low-income people okay thank you i think i have to get to the end of public comment because it's already the amount of time that's gone on but if you can say something in one minute then i'll let you conclude public comment thank you thank you for letting me cap this up my name is amy gilbert loinez i live at 14 orchard street just two houses away from the proposed residents and i just wanted to say i appreciate that there's been a lot of discussion over the last few years on this project i think that the fact that we as the neighbors to this new residents didn't really know the details until the april 24th meeting and since then i've just been trying to do research and understand the impact on our neighborhood although it has been a discussion and town meeting did it did approve the zoning change to make it this kind of housing possible i think we deserve time to understand its impact on our neighborhood and that's not a minor thing you know we we live right there it's it's going to affect us and we want to be comfortable with the idea and understand as many facts as possible before going forward and so we we ask for a delay in the vote thank you okay so let me see i'm going to turn back to the council and just want to see if there any follow-up last comments on this because we do have other items we have to consider i just but i do want to just also see a couple things about the next processes so everybody understands the charter requires that the finance committee provide a report to the council by june 3rd on the proposed budget the proposed budget actually includes the operating budget and the capital budget it does not encompass the community preservation act a proposal which is actually separate from the budget it will be a separate vote so our next meeting on may 28th we may discuss this some the the cpa proposal some but our focus will need to be on the report that we are required by the charter to provide to the council by june 3rd i mentioned capital that's going to be the other part of this we'll take a break in a couple minutes and then after the break we're going to spend a little bit of time to get any questions from the councilors present about the capital plan that's proposed for the next year because that's a part of next week's discussion and the report that needs to be delivered on june 3rd beyond that the council the committee will make have a meeting and make recommendations regarding the financial considerations for the cpa proposals and get that also to the council in an expeditious manner other two other meetings that i'll mention and i'm going to turn it to the president to see if she has anything she wants to add to what i'm just saying is that the council itself is required to have a forum to discuss the capital budget which has been put noticed and posted for june 10 and i believe that the council anticipates consideration on all budget matters on june 17 whether it can postpone any or chooses to postpone any portion of any of the cpac proposal is a matter that would ultimately be a council decision initially made by the president um so let me just mention as we've been looking at the budget at process and our scheduled in june on june 3rd uh we will focus predominantly on the general operating budget the schools and the library we then have the opportunity one week later for the the forum on capital that mr steinberg mentioned and so we want to make sure that we have both the finance committee's recommendation and that forum in our vision if you will and so then on the 17th of june is when we will focus as a council on capital projects as um the um as andy mentioned the issue of we will need to take up those cpa projects and any other projects that have impact on allocation of funds for this year and setting the tax rate uh but if we delay a project we can do that but take it up within a month or less even less if that so that's generally the schedule for the council we do have to by law have a budget in place by june 30th so that we can continue to operate thank you so yes pat i just have a question about what would the date of the meeting be um to discuss the cpec we have not said that i'm hoping to communicate with the cdc people and also uh our voting on it would probably not be until the 17th as a council yes as a council feels so um then i think it probably appropriate um that we'll take a five-minute break at this point and then reconvene at which point we are going to be discussing the um joint capital planning committee recommendations and uh which will be the principal additional part of the agenda for today excuse me but we're going to reconvene our meeting okay um reconvening the meeting and i'm uh now i ask mr mangano to uh make the initial presentation that he's prepared on the capital plan proposal uh which was also one of the items that was uh sent to the um council with the budget package hello everyone so i was telling sonia that this is very similar to school committee which when i get ready to give my presentation everybody in the room leaves um it's it's not unusual for me so don't feel bad i'm i'm used to this um so before i get into the presentation i want to know that the council's still here yes i appreciate that in fact there's more of you um yes thank you sonia so i wanted to thank um all the department heads who spent a lot of time preparing their requests for the jcpc a lot goes into uh putting packets of information for every project and all the back um backup detail that goes into that um i also want to thank the members of jcpc for all the time that they spent and in particular i wanted to thank sonia and anthony because they put a lot of logistical hours in to make it all work and getting things posted online and um putting all the spreadsheets together and making everything work so in front of you it sounds like you've got had this email too as well but you'll have the report of the joint capital planning committee thank you mr. sinebrough for putting that together it does a good job of capturing the history of the joint capital planning committee um describing the issues that we dealt with throughout this process and it gives a sort of short synopsis of every recommended project so i'm going to touch on some of the highlights of those things um go over the summary of the projects that were recommended and touch on the themes and then eventually turn it over to you for questions and feedback so joint capital planning committee uh in amherst was founded or created in 1992 i think it's really one of like the strategic advantages that amherst has is that we have this really good cross collaboration between departments in amherst where you have different boards and committees coming together to review all the capital needs together this committee reviews all the capital requests that come in from the various town departments um i'll have a list of them in a second and basically prioritizes the the needs of the town um compares that to the funding that's available and ultimately makes a recommendation to the town manager this year um as you'll probably have some questions on we had a unique challenge of sort of a shortened process because of the the change in the form of government um working through some pickups that came up along the way but we also have a plan to sort of get some feedback and and try to take active steps to improve the process for next year so as i said the the general process is that each department submits a request packet to jcpc for any projects for the upcoming year that they want to be considered the capital planning committee has a hearing with each of those departments and and the committee the department head makes the case for all their projects um you can see the different departments around the circle i think that covers just about all of them sorry if i missed anybody um but basically you know there's these packets that the committee gets and has all the backup information jcpc will ask a lot of questions to basically analyze the validity of the requests um see if it needs to be done this year if it could be pushed off um is it uh really the best option to go forward um and they get that that feedback from the department head and then ultimately jcpc looks at all the projects together and develops a priority uh list based on the available funding uh jcpc also hears from two other entities during the process besides department heads um they get feedback during the process from the town manager because even though they make a recommendation to the town manager it's good for them to hear sort of what he's looking for so that they don't recommend something that's completely out of whack with sort of his principles for this this budget cycle um and there's also a citizen request process so i think it's two years old um but and it has this is one of the hiccups that we have to work out but there is a mechanism for citizens to submit requests to jcpc and then to come make their case directly to jcpc for why that request should be funded um and so the the nice thing this year is actually two of those citizen requests are built in um to the recommendation and i'll touch on those when we get to the the project listing so um they hear all the requests jcpc and then starts looking at the available funding along the way um the major sources of funds that jcpc has to um consider is the 9.5 of the tax levy that's the sort of discretionary portion of the the capital planning committee's funds that we've been trying to grow every year i think probably several years ago it was about five or six percent and it's we've grown it i think half a percent every year um over the past several years uh in addition there are chapter 90 funds which come from the state and are specifically for road work um there are grants that come up at times um private donations and things of that nature um so that's on the revenue side on the expense side uh we start with the existing and projected general uh general fund debt from the prior year so sort of like the discussion with cpa um there's a amount of funds that have already been committed by projects that were approved in prior years and so we take our total available funding and we have to start by reducing that by the debt that's already obligated for projects um that have been approved already and then whatever's left over is available to approve the current year's requests um and as you can see in the scale this is symbolic that typically the requests always outweigh the available funds and so some prioritization is needed all the projects that are recommended by jcpc have a funding source identified so the smaller projects are typically in that orange box or the small to medium-sized projects what we call cash capital so that just means we pay for it all at once it's not a multi-year payment plan if there's another another funding source like a grant or a private donations again it'll be paid all at once but it'll be paid from a different source and then larger projects typically we borrow for um and again just like the cpa presentation um it's not a drain on that year's resources for capital but eventually the debt schedule impacts the future year's resources for capital so we do have to monitor how many projects are being approved for borrowing um to make sure that we're not taken away too much funding from future years um project considerations so when department had submit their requests you know they're asked to identify what is the the driving force behind those requests and some of these you know have higher priorities than others so the the major factors that we look for are is it a request based on safety um something that could be a uh a risk to the community or to the residents um asset maintenance and improvement are we preserving an asset that's starting to deteriorate and could become a more costly item uh is it legally required there's various laws that change and sometimes require an investment um a good example of that is with schools and really with any building that has um the certain type of refrigerant that has been basically discontinued so we're not going to be able to get that refrigerant anymore um we're going to have to buy upgrade our chiller systems in the future um to take a different refrigerant uh infrastructure improvement like road sidewalks productivity improvement um new copiers machinery that might make uh somebody in the DPW's job um more productive and newly identified needs something that we didn't know about before and then relationship to long-term planning objectives so I think there's a master plan that has several objectives in it and some of the requests relate to those objectives so that whole process comes together um and we have several meetings and ultimately this is the final product these are the the projects broken down into three buckets that is are the standard buckets that the JCPC um uses and I'm not going to go through all of them but I'll highlight some of the themes um so on this list just for uh orientation so if it has a light gray shading that means it's been uh proposed through a borrowing if it has that bluish color it means there's another uh funding source available yellow is the chapter 90 money from the state and like that light blue which sort of looks gray um is a grant so the housing production plan is the only one that falls into that bucket and then everything else is proposed to be cash capital so things that would be purchased outright um going forward I would say there's probably three themes or there's probably other ones but these are the themes that I take away from this um roads and sidewalks was a theme from the beginning that we knew about we've heard a lot from the community from the town manager that we really need to maintain that investment in roads and sidewalks and you'll see over on the right under facilities that the road repairs is at a million I think that's either the same as last year or maybe a little bit higher than last year and then the sidewalks start up to 200,000 it says around town but should say sidewalks I don't know why it says around town um but that's sidewalks around town um so roads was definitely a major theme um the schools I know you've all heard a lot about the schools the schools spent a lot of time thinking about their requests because of you know obviously the possibility of a new building in the future and how do we request funds to keep our buildings safe and and you know a good climate for our students and staff but also we don't want to sink any costs if we're going to have a new building sometime in the next five to ten years um so you can see there's a lot of requests there for the schools to to help um basically do that um and then the third thing I would say is this plan also sort of inches the sort of the larger capital planning around new buildings forward so there's in the gray and the bottom of the building section there's there's um further development of three building projects so there's money for schematic design for public works facility schematic design work for the fire department um potential funding for a feasibility study for the new elementary school if we get into the MSBA um and even below that I'll point out the preliminary feasibility for the cracker farm study that's one of the citizen requests that was approved there was a good case made for studying could cracker farm be expanded in the future to house more students um and what that would cost and so that was approved for this year or not approved sorry recommended uh this is part of this plan so those are three themes um and maybe I'll stop them now and see if there's any questions on projects that have been recommended for FY 20. Let me just mention from the council the three people on JCPC are Mandy Joe and myself and Andy who chaired JCPC and then I want to recognize the fact that I think Kathy would that was at every one of our meetings as well. Yes Kathy was the ad hoc man. So and she regularly did her public comment and questions and then in addition to that there's two people from the schools and two people from the library and those are the people that met Thursdays I guess for I don't know six seven eight weeks whatever yeah we're not done I think we just scheduled another meeting right so yeah we do have one more meeting scheduled for June 6 and the purpose of that meeting is we want to revisit the entire process and make recommendations for how we envision um the process moving forward this as with everything that the council has done was a transition year we did the best we could to get through the first year and we want to take time to assess how we did and what we do differently yes I now have this chart on my computer where I can read it and I'm looking at there's on my computer it's two different grays one is borrowing and the other is grants but I think it's supposed to be two different colors yeah and my computer one was a bluer than how it appears the only one that's a grant is the housing production plan all the other ones are grays are borrowings are borrowing are borrowing yep the only one that's a grant on up here is the housing production plan that's kind of bluish yeah okay thank you okay so again people are thinking all these projects again we heard presentations on just about every one of these I believe and they were vetted by jcpc pretty extensively lots of meetings and time spent on all these um and I you know my experiences with Mike's first year really being deeply involved with jcpc but a lot of good questions really challenging department heads to make the case for why these projects are important I guess I'd like I want additional thing that I'd point out is that if you look at the actual jcpc report that was provided to members of the council um a little bit more information is provided on each of these beginning on page seven and but again we're we're focusing on the f y 20 recommended projects yes Kathy okay um I have a question on our process on f y 20 um compared to the 10 years um sheet so when we are considering the budget that we did the other night um and looking at the operating budget in the pieces and then we're doing this will we be just considering this part of the capital budget because some of my questions are potentially more related to thinking longer term like those of you who look to f y 21 f y 20 looks great but f y 21 has a six million dollar deficit as does every year after so it's an interesting plan if we want to call it a plan and part of that I think we're good decisions for f y 20 where we went up on roads and we went up on sidewalks but we pushed things into f y 21 to do that that are and then we're starting to get the big buildings so it's are we just you know so we're just for purposes of what we're going to be making a recommendation on finance and then the council is going to be voting on is just f y 20 correct that is correct okay so then my my second question um is it's the interaction with cpa so we're showing cpa as a source because they're in our debt when we sit so they they send the money over to this budget accounting as a source and so some of that debt service that we have down in the other line is an exact match right so I okay so then my last question on understand this if we allocate in this year or if we allocated in last year and it didn't all get spent so say the school's got a certain amount to do repairs on the building and you looked at June 30th um do they still hold on to the money is the accounting system that that money is still sitting there yeah so if the if it's not spent but the need remains then the funds stay there and they can be spent in future years if if they're not spent and the need goes away they get closed out and it goes back I think into a unused article money that basically eventually gets reappropriated through this process which is for example so like the protective gear correct me if I'm wrong Sonya the protective gear other funding source is a reappropriation of articles that have been closed out so do we go back and look so you know things like when we were hearing the school group is leaking if in earlier years if I look back there were patches for the roof it could still happen this you know there's some things that are ongoing that some repairs could be made that aren't all in the FY 20 yeah Sonya yells at me once in a while to look at old articles and close them out if they're not going to be spent so Sonya Sonya was pretty good at staying on top of people that if they're old old articles she are they going to be spent soon and if not to let them know that they can be closed out yes I'm looking at the borrowing and I'm seeing right here was one point but practically 1.5 million is that how does that stand with what you've done in the past so I can't speak so much to the past but most of these borrowings are fluid I would say so for example the fiber optic inet that one's not going to be next year correct that we think that's 21 was there an offset in the funding for that some from something we have $450,000 from the Comcast contract that we entered into last year that will be used to pay debt service on this right so so my point with that one is so that's shown up here because we have to put the full amount for the debt authorization purpose eventually but there's a when we actually start paying that debt there may be another funding source that covers it and then the only other debt items on here are the the new building projects which in terms of how a comparison priors I'm not quite sure I don't think it's I think there's always some level of borrowing in each cycle and our debt we know is sort of winding down so as a town we don't have a lot of debt right now we may in the future but we know it's winding down so these amounts are related to those building projects that we're planning for and the amounts that are in the full we updated the amounts that are in the full 10-year plan to in terms of the new building projects to be consistent with our most recent estimates basically so so that's part of that estimate and and when we approve the budget those for example in the DPW fire station and the new school we will only do that borrowing if we're going to go forward with those projects for example if we find land for DPW then that's the schematic design that allows us also to go forward on fire and the school actually will sit there until December when we find out whether or not we get the MSBA school thing yeah and correct me if I'm wrong Sonia all the gray ones won't none of that borrowing will actually happen until it comes back to the town council to be authorized so they'll come back to you at some point right we won't be asking you to vote on those borrowings in this cycle it will be off cycle when we're we have more firm numbers on some of these that's one of the benefits of the new form of government is that we can bring it to you throughout the year so I just wanted to clarify why they're on here then or at least the three the three building ones the JCPC felt it important to start putting that potential borrowing into something we as a council could see even though it might not be voted on immediately just for planning purposes but it would be out of FY it would be done during FY 20 so it needs to be encompassed and envisioned as part of the FY 20 but uh capital budget yeah Evan I think this is a question for more for the committee um so it my read and I'm trying to remember because the capital plan was one of the shorter budget documents so I read it first so it's been a while um there were a number of citizen requests that were put in uh one you mentioned was the cracker farm study there was another I think the sidewalk which I don't see but I assume it's built into one of these DPW things um how did y'all go about choosing which resident request you fund and then the other part that was really interesting to me and I'd love to hear a little bit more about is that the cost is suggested by the proponents is that correct and is that how does that work yeah um actually it's a good question because this is something that's evolving um a couple years ago um JCPC decided that it would be important and valuable to allow citizens to say hey we think that this ought to be done we had no I JCPC at the time had no idea whether it was going to come in with uh need new playground or need new or need something done to a particular street or whatever but that there needed to be some mechanism that not all capital requests would come through town departments um and since then JCPC for the last two years has been trying to improve the process and make it so that it is very um real and therefore meaningful um in the first year nothing was funded and there was no real process uh the um question of estimating amounts would um because when DPW decides that they would like to propose some new piece of equipment they can attach a cost to it um so that part of the request form had what do you anticipate the cost to be um of course but we're beginning to realize is that there needs to be some ability to help citizens to come to a translation of the cost on that and that so it's part of that learning process and trying to um make this a real process and make it meaningful the fact that we actually are to the point where um some of them are being funded I think is um movement in the direction that was considered um and I think that obviously if at some point the council says oh wait a minute this doesn't make sense we'd like to hear that too but JCPC is trying to do that that was sort of its decision that it wanted to make make it a more open process than just town staff also each of the people that proposed these came and made a presentation to JCPC and then there was a formal or informal process by which what they were proposing there was a check back with the department that it was mostly associated with so for example the feasibility for Crocker Farm directly relates to the whole school building plan and that you know so it was like turning to the schools and saying boy is this a reasonable thing and you know there's a part of them that says yeah if we move forward it's reasonable yeah and on the the Crocker Farm one just because I remember this conversation they proposed it at 40 there was a conversation actually with one of I think the architects that are working on the other the river feasibility study who gave sort of preliminary I want to say a quote but they gave sort of a ballpark figure there's actually lower than the 40 we decided to keep it at the 40 because the scope of what this is is still a little still developing so we thought to be safe probably leave it at the higher number than what the architects said it could be because there wasn't a huge difference between the two and one additional request was for the Northamers Library and that is very much still in the mix it was placed there's an amount that was placed into a future year for Northamers Library so that it is by no means forgotten and our suggestion from JCPC that hour who was that the petitioner the person who had made the request who also was talking about trying to get citizen donations would work with the town manager and try and perfect the process by working having the petitioner work with the manager and in addition a lot of the requests that we get are that we got this year and I understand last year are for road projects and so one of the things that we one of the things we have to express to the requesters is that we don't decide what roads get done there's a different committee that does that so a lot of times at least two or three of the projects I think we just we deferred or we diverted to the the transportation advisory council committee and so again that's one of the parts of the process that we have to maybe upfront explain that we can't really make that decision of what roads are being done that's there's a different body that does that and just on the other one what you see Evan on East Pleasant Street sidewalk last year it was a citizen request and meanwhile TAC had been setting priorities and it came out to be a top priority for both DPW and TAC on the next on the list so it's listed here but the actual dollar amount came from DPW that said to even think of a sidewalk we have to do a survey first so the amount is came from them on what a survey would cost so the citizens just came and said sidewalk and sidewalks we can't do a sidewalk for $50,000 I mean it was all that's in there is getting ready so it was an interesting process too because they were delighted to see it in you know but it wasn't their number that went into the budget okay looking around if there's other questions yeah shall me just a clarifying question on the citizen resident capital request so is it it's okay if they don't know all the data like this stuff over there seems very technical yeah well some I mean I won't speak for the committee what I perceive is that some of the job of the JCPC is to determine how much information is known and if there's enough there for the proposal to be it will recommend it then they do if it seems like it still needs a lot of development then at least this year and this is part of improving the process the citizen's piece was at the end of the process so there's not a lot of time if the if the proposal doesn't come sort of fully vetted and fully developed to go back and rework it so I think that's part of whether it gets recommended is how well developed the the proposal is and again that might be something that in the future we look at to maybe doing it earlier in the process yeah and I guess the other thing is that the form that was provided was the same form that was used by staff from departments and from the schools and library only they have the expertise is noted so that one of the observations that we've made after just beginning to experiment with it is that the form itself may not be the correct form to use for citizen requests but this is a learning process we have to sort of go back to a couple of years ago it didn't exist at all so we're moving in a direction hopefully in the direction everybody thinks it's the right one yeah Dorothy I have a couple of questions on equipment furniture all schools $20,000 that doesn't sound like that could be enough at all and also copiers we spend so much time in my house just dealing with our three copiers to make sure that one of them is always working are these kind of lowball figures here so the furniture so it's not to replace all the furniture in the schools what we try to do is request sort of a standing amount to address the needs that arise during that year so you're right at 20,000 it's not enough to replace a ton of furniture but it's used to prioritize the needs at the schools and the copier let me see the copiers are you probably so what's the number for the copier $11,000 yeah yeah so that's roughly the the cost of one new copier so we've got a an Amherst we've got I think about eight copiers Fort River and Wildwood have three each and Crocker Farm has two just how it worked out over time and so we've got a replacement schedule and so it just happens that this year there's only one that is reaching that age where it needs to be replaced and so that's one copier and when I think about furniture though I think about the seats in the middle school who that really need to be replaced the desks no the auditorium chairs you gotta go see it you gotta go check it out has it been done yes oh wow that's great and do remember that the middle school is part of the region not a part of the town so that this is actually a regional project in that one but you're right it doesn't go incredibly far but that's I think the idea to request a small amount of furniture every year has only been only started a few years ago so the 20,000 I think is actually an uptick in terms of how much we're requesting for desks and things like that so you're like going for a few minutes to the long-term plan I have questions on it and I've raised some of them before but to have a long-term plan and I'm even thinking a two-year plan forget a 10-year plan that the second year looks like our second year so I'm just wondering as we present it how we go out and talk about it and then there's some interactives and these are nuances that I can send notes on but an example is library where library in the next year in the following year has a automatic book sorter and RFID so $200,000 but if they got the grant for the building that would be included in it and when they came in they said if they don't get the grant for the building they won't buy it so I'm wondering why we still are carrying it on the books you know so there's some things like why is it there if it one way it's in another budget and staying on library the the grant proposal if it comes through was supposed to be 15.9 million for the town share with another six from fundraising and you've got 21 pegged in here with the other six in so that's a quite you know so each of these are questions on a it doesn't look a lot better when you remove these but trying to think of where have we put a number in that's higher than it needs be to fine-tune it and I'll go to the North Amherst library is another example both the librarian said and then the petitioner that if it got the big size of the library it wasn't feasible because they can't go up on their operating budget so it's the smaller version that would go in and if it was matched with citizen money it would be still smaller so in many of the others we only do the most likely cost to the town so trying to think of where when we go in out years we can do something it's like a grant matched fund the permanent bridge for station road was supposed to be grant funded where it would be half of this on our budget and it's showing up as a million so I'm just looking for ways of getting the next four two three and four and five years down to what we know we've got a problem but getting out some of the things where we're overestimating the magnitude of the problem so and let me just say the last thing when I did the math even if we take the big buildings completely out we're three and a half million deficit so if it even it isn't new debt because we're building we're three and a half in the hole so just trying to and I know that's hard with the town manager saying what's next year look like when we're not you know two years out but having some decisions made so that's my question of what we want to show the whole town on June 10th okay so I'll start by saying I think one silver lining in how much how bad it looks in terms of the out years is that there are a number of projects in particular at the schools that if the new building goes forward those projects would come out I believe there's a roof there's roofs in there there's some some windows that we want to keep on the capital plan so that everyone's aware that those are needs but if the school happens then and it happens depending on when it happens some of those costs will be avoided so some of this deficit I think will just be reduced if some of these new building projects actually happen in addition I think we generally try to be conservative in terms of the numbers that go on here so I agree around the estimates in many cases there could be potentially lower but we do try to be conservative because if anything we want when we get to that current year we'd rather the numbers come down instead of going the other way so I'm not saying that explains everything that you identified but in general that's sort of the way we lean and I think the last thing I'll say is and I have to do this as well which is I think we need to refocus when we do the department head request a lot of times that you know 90% of the time is spent on the coming year requests and maybe 10% of the time is spent tweaking the out years and I think for the next cycle we maybe need to remind department heads to really and including myself in the school is to really focus on the out years because we're going to have difficult decisions to make in the future and trying to fine-tune the the out years on this plan which it's very challenging right to go out you know more than really more than two or three years but to do our best to fine-tune that is going to be important so there's no I'll just go through this quickly does everyone feel oriented toward how this document works or do you want to quick okay so in general the way this works really quickly sources are at the top those are the revenue sources that we're projecting going forward the capital spending is all the projects that have been proposed in out years in that middle section and then those two gray lines at the bottom show the the deficits basically between the requests and what's available at two different levels if we allocate 9.5 percent of the tax levy towards capital that's the the top the one that looks worse this the the first FY 21 is 6.7 million deficit and if we allocate 10 percent of the tax levy which is sort of the plan is to keep creeping that up five half a percent every year it gets a little bit better because there's more funding available for capital so this is the summary sheet this is sort of the highlights of looking out and I and I'll refer to Sonya but this looks bad but I think it generally has always again the requests are always greater than the the sources and that's why we have this process to try to to match up what we have available and what we can actually spend and then this is just broken the the actual projects are all listed here it's broken down into those three buckets equipment buildings and facilities and then within each of those buckets it's broken down into different functional areas town hall town clerk police fire schools and so on so if you're interested in what's you know plan for the out years this is where you can look and you can also see in here if something's been moved from one year to the next it's color coded by fiscal year so if if you see something red that's in the green column under FY 21 like this for example it means it was originally requested for FY 20 but through the capital planning process it was pushed off a year or deferred a year so you can get a sense of a little bit just by looking at this how the conversations have gone at the committee level and the color coding around funding sources also is in this document so if it's gray it's proposed to be a borrowing yellow proposed to be chapter 90 funds if there's other funding sources that's also highlighted here and again part of our process for next year and we welcome your input is reviewing this document as well and this workbook and whether this is the right level of information if there's other information this doesn't provide if this is you know confusing we're really looking for feedback on the process but also this tool and in terms of doesn't meet the the needs for information that you all have yes if you've already answered this I'll get an answer later but on the chart before FY 21 and 22 have debt exclusion in there did you talk about that I can yep so so some of these things are just assumptions right now for planning purposes are basically the information sort of our most recent estimates so this is the new building section this is a good example of one of the areas where we're trying to decide whether new buildings belong here or not because it it sort of skews the the numbers when you have these new buildings in here or maybe that should be a separate section but so these are all the building projects we discussed right now the school we have highlighted as a possible debt exclusion in the library we have highlighted as a possible debt exclusion I think miss Shane mentioned earlier about Jones library so we went back and forth and how to display this originally it had 21 million in there I brought it back down to 15.9 for what was projected to be the town share but then came back to that I think eventually the town's got to authorize the full amount which includes the extra six million which would be reduced by fundraising so that's a number that we have to discuss going forward and the six million tile is a possible debt exclusion but if the fundraising hits its goal that portion would come off I think fundraising and the historic tax credits are part of that number just so people understand I mean that's when you go back on the very first page there's a really big jump in proposed debt so the proposed debt that we are paying for out of the flow is on that line right the debt exclusion is being paid by an increase to taxpayers right so it otherwise it would look a lot worse right yeah the the orange ones are not factored into the projected debt the the other ones are so and I guess you know I mean there's some general comments that were offered about the nature and the construct of the 10-year plan just to first of all to remind everyone that the charter actually only requires that there be a five-year projections the JCPC had been in the last couple of years moving it to 10 years and we basically concluded that that's still consistent with the charter to go to the longer period the it's a thought document it is to help us visualize what we see from the JCPC side as all of the needs and how they might be spaced but it's always been understood that the numbers are pretty vague at that point they really haven't been refined and the the decision and the priorities is going to vary as we get closer and time and really see where the highest needs are but that it's helpful to get it all out there so that we at least have some concept of what the needs are and how they might be spaced the critical decisions always come when it gets around to the year and at hand and we actually at JCPC level having to make recommendations for the year itself the expenditures are going for or bonding to get them into a specific place but there is a little bit of that pushing out that has always happened and there was actually I can recall back to a time where there was the the last column was something like a future without even putting a date in and it was just a way of making sure that things got listed but we when we moved to 10 years we could do away with that so I guess at this point see if there are other questions about the whole JCPC report if not when we come back as a finance committee we will need to make our final recommendation as to whether we are recommending as the manager requests the specific expenditures for FY20 and then that that will become a part of budget recommendation to the council so anything else and I don't any public comment on the capital plan there's not public left but I know I said not much public left but there is yes it's all available under the the whole JCPC report is available with the budget other budget documents so I think the council probably can adjourn in the finance committee I don't think we have any minutes to take care of we don't because you didn't come get my minutes back to me yet but do and Shalini's got a direct there there's two sets of minutes and then there's one question I have to tell you three and Dorothy we have three sets of minutes but to my knowledge I have only one of them do I hear a motion to adjourn the town council second and Mandy Joe is a second all those in favor I I'm sorry I'm supposed to also ask you to say I opposed Stain declared as unanimous sure it's unanimous and we're the finance committee is probably going to be following in about 60 seconds because I don't think that Sonya that there's any budget updates at this point there's no no news from Beacon Hill that caused us to change anything cherry sheets remain the same so with that I think I know the business and I assume there's a motion to adjourn the finance committee I'm a move okay all in favor the finance committee it's unanimous so we are the finance committee is also adjourned