 All right, I'll set the chair notes. The time is 6.02. I call this meeting of the Amazonian Board of Appeals to order my name is Steve judge as ZBA chair. I want to welcome everyone to this meeting will begin with the roll call of the ZBA members and panel for this application. Steve judge is present. Mr Craig Meadows. Present. Mr. Errol Henry. Here. Mr. Phillip White. Present. Ms. Hilda Greenbaum. Here. The quorum is present. Also attending the public hearing tonight is. Christine Brescher prime director for the town. Rob was what chill out planner for the town. We also have our Carol and Mary our town attorney. And we'll introduce the applicants. People are presented the applicants. Later on today. In the hearing. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 extended by chapter 2 of the acts of 2023. This meeting will be conducted via remote means members of the public who wish to observe the meeting may do so via zoom or by telephone. No in person attendance of members of the public will be permitted. But every effort will be made to ensure that the public can be adequately. Accessing the proceedings in real time via technological means. The zoning board of appeals is a quasi judicial body that operates under the authority of chapter 48 of the general laws of the Commonwealth. For the purpose of promoting the health safety convenience and general welfare of the inhabitants of the town of Amherst. In accordance with the provisions of Massachusetts general laws chapter 48. Art and article 10 special permit granting authority of the Amherst zoning bylaw. This public meeting has been duly advertised and notice thereof has been posted and mailed to parties of interest. All hearings and meetings are open to the public and are recorded by town staff. And maybe viewed via the town of Amherst YouTube channel and the ZBA wedge webpage. The procedure is as follows. The commissioner presents the application to the board during the hearing after which the board will ask questions for clarification or to gather additional information. After the board has completed its questions, the board will seek public input. The public speaks with the permission of the chair. If a member of the public wishes to speak, they should so indicate by using the raised town function on their screen or by pressing star nine on their phone. Bear with the assistance of the staff will call upon people wishing to speak. When you are recognized, provide your name and address to the board for the record. All questions and comments must be addressed to the board. The board will normally hold public hearings where information about the project and input from the public is gathered. Followed by public meetings for each the public meeting portion is when the board deliberates and is generally not an opportunity for public comment. The board feels it has enough information and time will decide upon the applications tonight. Each petition heard by the board is distinct and evaluated on its own merits. And the board is not ruled by precedent. Tonight's agenda. Public hearing on ZBA FY 2024-03 Valley Community Development Corporation. Requests for a comprehensive permit under Massachusetts general laws chapter 40 be to construct 30 owner occupied affordable residential units located in 15 duplex structures parking areas with 58 spaces. Common areas and other site improvements on a 9.047 acre site. With requested waivers from the zoning bylaws, general bylaws, subdivision regulations, sewer water connection approvals at 2040 ball lane, map five a parcel 56 RN neighborhood residents and our LD low density residential zoning districts, as well as fc farmland conservation conservation overlay districts. This hearing is continued from 12, 7 2023. Following that will have general public comment on any matters not before the board tonight. And other business not anticipated within the last 48 hours. So the first order of business tonight is continued consideration of ZBA 2024-03. Are there any disclosures by members of the board. We have two submissions that I'm aware of Rob. They're both letters that I that were addressed to me as well as to the staff for submission to the members. The first is from counselor Pam Rooney. And the second is from miss Janice McGowan, who's a member of the planning planning board, both were supportive of the application. Are there any other submissions that we need to note. There were a decent amounts submitted for the meeting. So you had a bunch of documents submitted from Valley. You have the three deed writers, you have the master deed documents for the whole property, and then you have the bylaws for the con the medium association. And then I believe. Yeah, some other. And there are other documents sent from last time to including a comment a public comments. Some updated site plans and then details that were acquired from the board during the site plan. Sorry. Yep. Discussion. And that's all I can think of at the moment, Mr. Chair. We had the answers to some of our questions that were from Miss Allen. That's correct. Yep. As well, I believe she incorporated comments from the playing board into that document as well. Am I correct on that? Jessica. Yeah, I sense that I think prior to the meeting on the 7th. So, so it was submitted in advance. Well, in advance of this meeting. Yeah. Okay. All right. The first order of business is to hear from applicants. We have today's topics include property management, income restrictions, the financials. The applicant selection process and local preference. I think we probably can run a run those in that order. And Miss Allen. Can you introduce the other people that are with you? Sure. And then they can give their name and address. Sure. So we have Miss Kathleen Evans. She is a representative of the Commonwealth builders program through mass housing. So she will be able to speak directly on the income restrictions. As well as the applicant selection process, we could probably tag team on that a little bit. And then also we have attorney Rebecca Teeble, who wrote the master deed condo doc and the bylaws for the condo association. So that's specifically for property management. And so that is with who is joining me tonight here. Great. So if we want to start with property management, I'm just going to turn it over to attorney Teeble, and she can walk to the condo docs. Great. Just give us your address, Miss Teeble. Sure. Thank you. I'm report and zooming in from dirty Wallace Pillsbury and Murphy's office in Northampton. Thank you. Thank you. And thanks for the opportunity to present tonight. As Jess mentioned, my role was to prepare the master deed and bylaws. And I will try not to get too bogged down in the weeds because, you know, we can also read the documents or if you have specific questions, I can get to those. Excuse me. First, I just wanted to give start at a higher level to talk about a condominium ownership just for those who might not be intimately familiar, because some people are more familiar with just regular home ownership. And ownership of a condominium unit is a hybrid form of interest in real estate. And so when you have the owner of a unit, they are entitled to both exclusive ownership and possession of their particular unit, which is defined in the condominium documents. And then they have an undivided interest as a tenant in common with all the other unit owners in the common areas of the condominium. And that is their proportionate percentage interest and really that's important because that breaks down to what are their responsibilities for expenses when it comes to the common area charges. The association of unit owners does not itself own the condominium that is just the governing body. So with that in mind, what we often have as an overarching governing documents for a condominium you've got multiple sources governing a condominium, you've got mass law mgl chapter 183 a you've got the master deed. You've got the bylaws. Sometimes that might be a declaration of trust here it's bylaws, you may have rules and regulations. And here, we will also have some other outside controlling documents including the comprehensive permit and any of those other permits that will control this property. That will be permitted. And we also have the documents that Kathleen will be speaking about later the deed writers which are applicable to the individual units themselves. So, with the master deed, what that's doing is describing the land on which the buildings are located. It describes the building. The buildings themselves and the common areas and facilities sometimes we just call that the common elements. We also describe the proportionate interest of each unit in the common elements here. With these units with each unit, they're they're not wildly different from one another we basically go from how we determine that proportionate interest is based on square footage of the unit. And the variation is from think 995 is the smallest to maybe 1273 is the largest and so when we get to break down of costs, each individual unit owners costs as a relate to the common charges. The range isn't very big. It goes from 2.95% to 3.78%. So, less than a one percentage difference between the lowest and the highest unit owner. The master deed will also talk about the purposes for which the units may be used here. We're already restricted by the Commonwealth builders program in that the units have to be used as the owner's primary residents and used and occupied as the owner's primary residents. And the master deed will also in this case specifically reference and incorporate any conditions of the comprehensive permit. Depending on what that comprehensive permit looks like. We want to incorporate specific conditions themselves into the master deed, but regardless, one thing we'll do and it was incorporated in this draft document is a specific reference to that comprehensive permit when it is recorded and the book and page reference so whoever buys into this condominium unit knows that it's going to be subject to these other requirements and knows where to find those. How the unit owners will manage and regulate the condominium that is going to be found in the bylaws and the bylaws set out the responsibility for maintenance repair replacement of common elements and how they collect common area charges. Here, the, the program, the Commonwealth builders program that is governing this will requires a property manager to be engaged by the condominium association and so that is built into the condominium documents that a property manager has to be engaged. It also the bylaws will also talk about how an annual budget is set and how common charges are collected. Separately and we did not submit this but condo associations also commonly have rules and regulations. The rules and regulations typically cover behavioral items that you want to be more flexible you want more flexibility and how those are addressed. So, for example, we'll probably have rules and regulations, which are adopted by whoever the board of managers as and I'll talk about the board of managers in a minute. But if with the parking with the parking lots for instance, if the board of managers decides that okay how we going to manage controlling that only unit owners park here and their guests and invitees. The rules and regulations might have a system in place for handing giving out stickers or placards or something like that. And that's not, you want that to be more flexible, and you want that to be able to be adjusted in a document that then doesn't have to be voted upon by every unit owner, and it doesn't also need to be amended amending the bylaws and the master deed because that's just a more difficult process both in terms of the vote that's needed but also the recording requirements recording in the registry of deeds. So, with that one thing we had thought about and I want to make this request here for consideration is that because the my understanding at least is that the master deed and the bylaws will be part of the comprehensive permit approval that we carve out perhaps a condition for the comprehensive permit that states that changes in the rules and regulations do not need to come before the board. So for example, if a change in the master deed, or bylaws need to come before the board. We don't want every rule and regulation to have to come before the board to the extent that they're not something that's controlled by the comprehensive permit. So let's put that out there. As I said before I don't want to go over the condo documents in detail, unless you want me to, but there were two concerns of the board that I heard over the course of these meetings that I think are addressed by the condominium documents, and then I just want to touch upon here. So, here, what you have sometimes when you have a condominium, and you've I'm sure you've seen this, there is a large degree of control that the developer has, and, and they're very much marketing to a particular type of demographic or person and lifestyle. So here, that is not what valleys goal is or, or motivation. Instead, Valley is aligned with the Commonwealth builders programs goals of increasing home ownership opportunities for minority households and shrinking that race based home ownership gap in Massachusetts So, because of that goal that being a primary goal and not, we want to create a condominium that has, you know, these types of pools and everyone has to have their home look like this and X, Y and Z. We've respond, we kind of impose fewer lifestyle restrictions than you otherwise might see in some other condominiums. So we really strike the balance of setting these homeowners up in a way where they can be successful to live with one another, but also not instituting so many controls in the master deed and bylaws that the people who actually end up living there can't have a say after Valley CDC is no longer involved. Rebecca, if I may, can you give an example of the fewer restrictions that's in the bylaws. Sure. So one thing you might see in bylaws is, you may never hang your laundry outside. And we just didn't want to have that much control over how people use their yards in this case. Another thing that is true in this case is in the site plan you might recall they had the you have each unit owner has an area outside of their unit that might be significantly larger than you might otherwise see in some other condominium unit owners associate condominiums. So, for example, a condominium might a condominium unit owner in other cases might just be have a deck that they're allowed to have exclusive use and access over. And here, the unit owners have that entire yard and walkway and porch and patio and the little outdoor shed area. I don't want to call it a shed but you know the outdoor storage area. So in that case they have a lot more that is it technically it's part of the common elements and it's owned by everyone in the common in the condominium in the condominium, but only that owner of the particular unit has the right to use that area. And we didn't impose Mr. Henry like I said before, a lot of restrictions on how that area can be used. So, you haven't lived in a condo association property for a number of years. I wouldn't oppose to those restrictions that are that are removed, because it's your, you're good, you're going to have a community where there's going to be all these families and what may work for Paul may not work for Peter. And if there isn't that uniformed guideline, then you may have some kind of disharmony. So, I appreciate understand the rationale behind it. But I think those kind of restrictions, I don't think will hinder and join me at the property. I think you may actually be a little beneficial. I know this is no income qualified properties, but I might suspect that, you know, after a number of years people don't want to feel like it's a certain way or the property has run down because certain people do certain different things or things that things of that nature. So I think having something that maintain the quality of the community as when they got it might be a little bit beneficial to everyone. Yes, I think I hear what you're saying and I don't want to imply that there are no standards in the condominium documents. So, you know, unit owners are required to keep their areas with the neat and clean appearance. You're not allowed to install permanent structures on your lawns and things like that. But what we didn't put in were things like you can't hang up laundry you can't have any a towel hanging over your porch railing. And, and so I think you know if there are specific items that you or the board would recommend be in here we can certainly entertain putting them in. Thank you. So I had a question about, I don't remember which condominium document it was I just wrote down condo doc but it was page 10 of one of those condominium documents that restricted the use of the unit to a residential use and I wondered. Does that relate to someone who wants to have an office in his home that is like a home occupation which our zoning by law allows there are certain types of home occupation that the zoning by law allows for someone who's a resident of that unit that would require a special permit that just can be, you know, someone can be there and do that kind of work. It's not exactly a residential use but it's part of the residents it's an accessory use. So how does that fit in with these condo docs. That would be helpful for me to understand. So, right now I would say it's probably not permitted, but I would want to communicate with Commonwealth builders about any restrictions also that might be imposed on the individual unit deed writers to find out more. But we can certainly permit a home office use. Well, I think the, I think, Ms. Brestrup is pointing out that there are specific kinds of things that are allowed under our zoning bylaws in homes. And it's, it's everything from like seamstress work to someone's office work and other kinds of things. And I had the same question when I read through these as well. And I think one way we could do it is reference what's permitted under under town bylaws and not have because I wouldn't want to. I wouldn't want to preclude the opportunity to have some income in the house for the residents of this condo. Mr. White. I can speak a little bit to this as I used to be licensed insurance insurance agent in Massachusetts and wrote master policies for condos as well as individual. Policies most of your nationwide carriers are not going to want to ensure in the master policy or an individual policies. Anything that has any sort of occupier business in it. I have had countless clients get dropped specifically for that reason. When the insurance company stopped by to just possibly do a site visit. So that would at least be from my past experience, something that might be related to that. Well, that's something we should really discuss and get more information on because people are doing so much work in their homes now out of their homes. That's a that could be tremendously could affect awful lot of awful lot of homeowners and renters. If that's the policy of insurance companies. Well, generally that applies to not working from home. But having a business based out of your home. Yeah, because it would be two key distinctions. I see. So a. He doing work work on the computer from home is one thing but having a business. Yeah, if I'm just off the top of my head, there would be a key difference between me being and I'm not anymore. But being a licensed insurance agent having my business address where I primarily do business but doing work at home. And if I had a, I don't know soap making business or something that I operated out of my primary residence, the insurance carrier would see that as two completely different things. It would allow the one and absolutely be a verse to the other. So that's something we should explore. And maybe Carolyn can help us with that. Yeah. Great. Good point. Right. And, and just to tie that together. Thanks, Mr. White. I was not aware of that, but one thing that unit owners are prohibited from doing and this is common in condo docs. Is they're not allowed to undertake and do any activities that would cause an issue with the master insurance policy, you know, cause it to be significantly increased or potentially canceled or terminated. So I'll just get back to the, the two things that I kept hearing at these meetings and one issue that was raised a couple times was the keeping the HOA fees low. And I just wanted to talk briefly about how that's addressed by these condominium documents at an initial level and it's not in the condo docs, but the site design helps address this with, you know, lower cost landscaping needs and. And the building design helps address it with more efficient appliances and things like that. And the other way the overall HOA fees will be kept lower is that the condo association, if, if they think it'll be efficient, can enter into certain master contracts that could then be available to unit owners who want to take part in that which may offer some savings, but then the other and probably the, the most significant way is we had talked about before the fact that you have all of the common elements but then you have these exclusive use common elements, which are under the overview of that particular unit owner who is using them. And so, for example, and so the condo association as a whole will not be responsible for the regular upkeep and maintenance of those outdoor lawn areas, for example. So if you have a unit owner who wants to mow their lawn twice a month and own a lawn mower, they can do that. And a unit owner who wants to mow once a summer, especially with these low mow lawns. They can do that and you don't have the condo association as a whole determining, we're going to mow this often and whether you want that or not you're going to be charged. So that's one way to keep the HOA fees low. Another concern that I heard in some of these meetings was the fact that you do have first time home buyers in these units, and there was a concern about how they will be able to be homeowners and responsible for the condominium association. And so what we did in the bylaws was kind of extend that transition period. So oftentimes what you see with a developer or a, or a sponsor in a condominium is they retain control until the project is like almost completely or completely done and the unit owners don't have the right to bring on a manager until that point. And what happens there is you don't get that overlap of the managers who are in charge of the condo association while it's being built with the managers who then take over when it's finally built and fully sold. And what we wanted to do was create more of an overlap with that so that you can build opportunities for some of that institutional knowledge and experience to be gained by the unit owners who become managers and so what we did was initially you have the board of managers. These are three, three persons who are appointed by Valley as the sponsor or the developer. And during the time that the project is being built Valley will have those three managers be in charge. But then once you have units start to sell at the time, point in time where 50% of the units 50% of the condominium, because technically we're talking about the proportionate interest. When 50% are sold, then Valley will take off one manager and those unit owners who are there will have the opportunity and right to appoint a unit owner as a manager. And so there'll be some overlap period. And then when 80% of the units are sold, those, the unit owners will have the opportunity to appoint a second member and then when 100% are sold. Valley will phase out and the unit owners will have three members. Now, the other thing we did was that with those three managers that were all appointed by the unit owners. The one that was first appointed when 50% of the units were sold. That person serves for an additional one year beyond the HOA's first annual meeting. The second appointed manager serves for two years and so that allows for staggered. To term off in a staggered way. And they're also not prohibited from continuing to serve if they are elected reelected on the other thing that just mentioned, that's not in the condo docs, but I think is germane to, you know, setting these unit owners up for success is that they would be given materials and items like an orientation binder or some kind of binder information that instructs them on items that will be, you know, appliance upkeep and things like that. And then finally, the fact that they'll have a property manager will certainly be helpful because a property manager will be someone experienced with other condominium associations in terms of guiding them as to what they may need for insurance for normal property management upkeep entering into contracts for the common elements and items like that. So, Steve, can I ask a question that I see Mr. Henry has his hand up as well. I looked through the condo. I guess it was the rules and regs. And I didn't see if the condo association itself can increase the board number of board members, or are they locked in at three for the entire term of the forever. Would we not allow the condo association to design the their board of managers with as many people as they would wish. Um, yeah, sure. So, I there's no right now it's it's locked in at three and and I talked about this with Valley. There there's certainly no hard and set rule. I think as this board knows and probably experiences after a certain point you don't want too many board members because then you won't get a quorum or things like that. But I, you know, it's certainly feasible to put in there that there would be a range of four of numbers of board members or managers, you know, three to five is probably workable and that could be voted upon. Each year. Um, you know, it could get a little tricky with the how the terms are staggered with respect to that, but it's certainly feasible. If there may be experience, I mean, Valley may have experience finding that three is just a magic number. And if that's the case, I'm open to that. I just wondered if there was three is the magic is a perfect number. Yeah, I don't think it's perfect. You know, it's about 10% of the units you don't want to overburden unit owners. But, but there's certainly opportunity for putting in a range and if you didn't put in a range and you just put the three in, then they would have to amend the bylaws in order to increase that number. Mr Henry. I think this green bomb has had her had it for quite some time. Oh, you know, Miss green bomb your hand is in the in your yellow lamp. And it's really I'm so I don't need to know you I just it's so hard for me to see it I didn't notice it. Okay, thank you, Mr. Henry. I don't need it on. I just wanted to say that I read the documents and they're above my grade level to say the least. I just wanted to ask Ms Maury, if she would have anything to say about what might not be in those documents that should be that we wouldn't recognize. Thank you, Mr green bomb. I had an opportunity to review everything that's been submitted at least so far. And there are obviously a lot of blanks that need to be filled in, because as this, this process goes forward. There's certainly going to be some more details that have to be filled in, and there might even be some cross referencing of, you know, some conditions and things like that, depending upon what the board decides to do say today like for example with, with the chair of changing or having the built in flexibility so we could have more than three members on the board of managers. I know perhaps we'll see some amended documents that automatically builds in a range for the manager so that they don't have to go through the process of amending the bylaws. But right now everything I've seen is is fairly standard and I don't have any concerns but obviously, when the comprehensive permit is nearly finalized. We'd want to see all of these documents again, and make sure that everything is consistent. And not nothing major left out from what you can say. No. That's good to know. Thank you. Thank you, Mr Chair. So going back to the cost savings initiative. So I have concerns. I think you cited mowing as an example. You know, this is a condo, John Smith chooses to mow his yard once a year, and everybody else does it every other week. It's in one, it's an eyesore. And two, I think people will have some issues with that. And while I think why I appreciate, you know, the costs. The process that went, went behind this, I am not sure that it's overly worth it to maintain the aesthetic of the property and have people feel like, you know, in a unified community. The other thing is, I didn't see any initial. What that would look like. And I say that because in terms of maintaining the outdoor or the outside of the buildings. I see that there's an assessment made at a certain time if there's not sufficient funds in the account to maintain the exterior of these buildings. How is that assessment going to be determined, and has there been any alternatives looked at in that sense. I'm saying that because, again, without knowing what the monthly dues are. I would think with low income, we may want to think of a creative way to potentially generate some savings to say, you know, we know that after certain time, you're going to have to do some maintenance on the exterior. I mean, there are fixed CDs that have good interest rates. You know, is there anything in the by-laws that says potentially put some money into a high interest yield savings account, things of that. So, simplify my question. Is there any potential HOA dues and has there been any alternatives looked at instead of the unit assessment for exterior repair? So, we did, I haven't updated it in a while, but we did do a draft HOA condo fee monthly fees because we needed to provide that to Commonwealth builders so that help them determine what the sales prices. It very much has a huge impact on what the sale prices can be because what we need to do is we need to make sure that any of these home buyers are not spending more than 30% of their monthly household income on housing costs. And that includes whatever the inch. I mean, Kathleen's going to get into this, but it includes, you know, what the interest rate of the mortgages, their PMI, all of those things are taken into consideration. Hence why we're trying to keep the condo fees as low as possible. So, at my initial budgeting, we were looking at trying to keep them under $300 a month. That is my goal. Whether I'm going to be able to do that or not, we will make those final determinations when mass housing sets the final sale pricing come in the time of marketing of the homes. I can't predict what the costs are going to be two years from now to hire a landscaper. I can get an estimate now, but things may change. Gas prices might go all over the place. Who knows what two years might be. So, you know, again, the goal is really to try to keep these under $300 a month for condo fees because it really does impact somebody's household income. They cannot be spending more than 30%. The second question having to do with the long term aspects of. So, again, the materials that we're selecting have a very long lifespan. So the siting can last up to 50 years and I address this in the, in the response to planning board questions. So, if you look at that document, I talk about some of the lifespan of the roof and the siting. We don't anticipate anybody having to do anything to the roof or at least the siting for 30 years in terms of major improvements. So, that's a long time from now to, to collect money to hold on to that money to come up with a financial plan and how are they going to address that because my sense is that when it needs to be done. Everybody's is going to need to be done it probably around the same time and there's going to have to be a phased approach on how that works. And so, you know, 30 years is a long time to plan for that. And at that point, most of these deed writers potentially could be over in 30 years. Um, potentially also most of those mortgage payments could be paid off. So somebody's financial flexibility 30 years from now might be very different when there needs to be major renovations. But we have picked materials that are very long lasting the hearty side and can last up to 50 years and adds a 30 year warranty. So. Thank you. Um, and then I guess the other question that you had, Mr Henry is, is there anything in the bylaws that require maintenance or we kind of pointing to maintenance or upkeep of the, of the exclusive use areas where you, you're concerned about people who didn't maintain their lawn. I am because the question is there anything in the bylaws that would address that. I think it should be uniformed. I think, um, you know, missed about a little bit too, you know, as a, as a means of cutting costs, maybe not have uniformed lawn care. I think it should be uniformed. I do understand that it may come out of cost. But I do think there might be some appreciation from the community if it is uniformed. Thanks Jess. I don't know if you were going to say anything. I think the, I think there could be a, I think there's a middle ground, right? You know, if you had the condo association be responsible for all of the lawns, then you have to worry about things like, okay, they're mowing today and kids toys all have to be off the lawn and picked up and you know, you want homeowners to kind of maybe be more in control of that schedule. But I certainly think that we can add something in the condominium documents that is it requires or states a strict or standard of what the what the appearance is. I also wonder if this is something that could be addressed in rules and regulations is more of a behavioral than something that's put into the bylaws or master deed that doesn't have enough flexibility. So if the community decides that this is not something that is for them, they have the ability to change that or if they decide to want to make it stricter. They have the ability to do that rather than having us decide for the community I'd rather see it be more coming from the ground up and the community members deciding how they want their community to look. They may decide. I mean there's this beautiful meadow there. So it has a very natural parents. I don't know if having manicured lawns even fits in with that site design quite honestly in terms of how it's being presented from the road. So again, I almost feel like it maybe it's the community members and having in the rules and regulations allows that flexibility to occur. But we're not going to if I just may say we're not going to decide those rules and rights here. I don't think in the ZBA we might see them but we want the condo association to be able to decide on rules and rights. So maybe the right thing to do is to empower the condo association through the bylaws empower the condo association through its rules and regulations to promote to promulgate appearance and regular regulations for the members. I mean that would be something that'd be a way to do it and then they have the ability to do that and we're leading it up to the condo association to make those decisions I don't know if that addresses your problem or not Mr Henry but it might be one way without being overly prescriptive on the It does. And I think that's what I was alluding to because I imagine. And so all the units are sold valleys and responsible for the maintenance of the grounds. Yes. And just sort of just to make you aware we're also in front of the conservation commission on this project and they're very much pushing for a lot of pollinator species and keeping manicured lawns is not one way to promote pollination. So again you know I just want to make sure that the board is communicating with the conservation commission or that you're in line with what they're asking and understanding that you know some of these things may be in a little bit of conflict and we will find that middle ground but that is very important to the concom in terms of having vegetation and having a lot of pollinator species and having the ability for flowers and that sort of thing. So. Mr. Thank you Mr Chairman. This might be a quick question but I was looking through the master deed and the bylaws I was just curious about repairs and alterations and modifications to inside of the units I mean it's pretty much a given that anything outside or comment areas has to be approved by the HOA and vote upon such to pay on the size of it but could you elaborate a little bit on what each owner is allowed to do within the units like are they allowed to replace any appliances like they replace a water here if they wanted to without having to get any sort of approval are they allowed to do any structural modifications could you just elaborate on that a little bit please. Yeah, so they're they're not they're permitted to do improvements to their particular unit but not to the extent that they change the the common elements or to the extent that any of their changes would affect or impact the structure of the unit. And I cat Kathleen and I also had talked separately about how this. How these capital improvements might be impacted or governed by the deed writers and we're waiting for a little feedback I think from some other parties on that. So, what if someone 10 years later. When the bureaucracy wins a lottery and says they want to change their kitchen. Can they do that. Okay, so just now this just now the structure. So if I read it correctly, you're kind of looking at the bottom of the beans for the ceilings and the inside the inside edges of the studs for vertical that's really you can do anything inside there that doesn't affect the rest of the community. Correct. So you couldn't put in you couldn't put in a new mini split, because that goes through the wall and is outside, but you could put in your refrigerator or you could remodel your remodel your kitchen I think. Right. Okay, so if they want to do the main split right or if they need something that had to be drilled to the outside say like a plumbing van or something, would they have to get approval from the HOA. Yes. Okay. Great. Are there other questions? Did you pretty much cover the things you wanted to miss Thebo. Yes, I did. So I had a couple of questions. And I think they're, I know we're going to be talking about other subject matter so we're going to if you want if anything that I raise is going to be discussed later just let me know what we can do it at that time. So when reading through this, I noticed a term that I didn't know. I didn't see him before I didn't know what it was. Who is the citizen housing and planning association. Do you want me to take that one? You can talk about chop up. Okay, so chop is a nonprofit entity that does advocacy and also compliance in the housing space they sort of where many hats in the housing space for a long time under the 40 B program compliance and long term monitoring of the affordability and resale process with a little bit of scattershot and varied highly from community to community. There are several approving agencies under the 40 B program and so in an effort to really streamline and bring things into conformance. Mass housing but at an RFP for someone to monitor compliance for all of the 40 B projects under our purview. And then to that contract to that RFP the monitoring of all of the projects under the Commonwealth builder program. Chapa was the winning respondent to that. They have a deep expertise in this space and have seen projects restricted under 40 B across the state. I will tell you five years ago we did a project to look at the very indeed riders across the state there are 19 different forms of riders. The fact of those different riders meant that if you were a home buyer who bought the same exact home with the same exact price and went to sell it to 20 years later. The retail price that you were allowed varied by as much as $200,000. So this is this is part of a larger effort to bring fairness and conformity to this type of housing. And we're fortunate just in that we're in the 40 B space and in the Commonwealth builder space that we could have Commonwealth builder aligned that contract. So your role is in this. I didn't know it was you so that's not. It's I'm actually so I should introduce myself. I'm Kathleen. I'm Kathy and I'm from the college school of math housing, math housing, the math housing is one of the approving and to do is for the program. Chapa is a separate organization from and we contract to Chapa to do the compliance monitoring. And by your eligibility and lottery oversight for the Commonwealth builder program as well as for the 40 B program. responsibility runs for how long? Just for the setup or for the entirety of the project? The entirety of the project. Yep. So anytime a buyer, a homeowner at the project wanted to sell their unit, the income eligibility of the new buyer would be verified by CHAPA. The sale price would be verified by CHAPA. They really will sort of step in and monitor all of those component parts. So CHAPA is the monitoring agent. Throughout this document, that's the term that's used later on throughout the document. Yep. Anytime you see monitoring agent in any of the documentation, it does refer to CHAPA. It's a generic term in those documents because in the side of the city of Boston, the city of Boston has an entity that does the monitoring there. Of course. Of course. Boston would have their own. And you just need to give us your address. I didn't ask that earlier. Oh, yes, absolutely. My address is 255 Powder House Boulevard in Somerville, Massachusetts. Great. Another question I had is on page eight of the affordable housing deed restriction. It talks about the public option holder. So I'm assuming that that is where the town takes back the unit for whatever reason. The town can bid and does it have the right of first refusal? Or can they match the price and then they win? How does that work? And then what happens with that unit? Great question. So I'm assuming that we're talking about Rider B. We have sort of two riders, one that governs years one through 15 and one that governs years 16 through 30. And the public option holder is named in Rider, is particularly relevant in Rider B. So it does refer to the public funders, which are you and us as Mass Housing. And so the intent of the program, we've left it sort of to cover both you and us so that we, you know, not knowing who's going to be in our seats in 20 years that there's sort of a collective of folks who are going to be paying attention to this unit going out for sale. Our intent at Mass Housing, and this will be, you know, laid out is that we will defer our option to you, to the locality. And that in that option where the locality wants to exercise that right of first refusal, essentially a homeowner would say, I would like to sell my property. And they would alert the municipality and Chaffa. At that time, there would be an appraisal of the property. So what is the appraised price? And the municipality would have the option to say, we would like to purchase it. And then you can actually resell it to another income-qualified buyer. You can reset the affordability. You can do capital improvements and then reset the affordability. At that time, really what happens to the unit at that time, if you exercise the right of first refusal, is at your discretion, the discretion of the city. The city. Okay. You know, I think that I think it's going to be really helpful because I have other questions about just disposition or conveyance of the units. So it's probably would make sense that when we get that we should, you should run through that for us, both the 15 years and the post, the first 15 and the second 15. Okay. Because I'm not as familiar with it as I'd like to be. And you might avoid some of the questions that I would have, if you can do. Kathleen, can we just also clarify that there's a difference between the 100% AMI and the 80% AMI? And there's different, a different de-writer. I first want to let Miss Greenbaugh ask her question. Sure. Yes. Go ahead. Yeah. I've been sort of worrying and pondering for a couple of weeks now, how these units will be evaluated in terms of the real estate tax, still obviously be the tax on the land that the condo association will probably pay. But that's the minimal part. The big part, there's no arms line sales here. And I don't know when you say people won't pay any more than 30% of their income for the house or the expenses of carrying that, whatever. Do they all pay the same price for the unit, regardless of what the monthly income is? Or there is no arms line sale? How are you going to, if everybody's paying a different amount based on what their resources are, how are they going to be taxed by the town for the real estate? There's no, you can't charge by what costs to build them because building them is outrageous. And there's no income. So it would have, how can we find a way when there's no criterion? So I think that the two big questions that the board is evaluating, and Jessica did let me know that this was sort of the crux of it, or two goals. One is about the how the prices are set, both at the initial sale and upon resale. And then the next question is really about at the time of resale, either in the first 15 years or in the year 16 to 30, how that actually works mechanically. So if it makes sense to just tackle those two things chronologically, I'll start with the price setting and the marketing and then talk about the resale. Does that work? That works. I think that would get to Ms. Greenbaum's question. I think it will, too. It'll also refresh our memory how the resale is structured in this project. Yeah. Well, this is the initial sale. I'm just going to have to make taxes right away. But before you get to the initial sale, yeah. So just to Jessica's point, there are two types of units that are being contemplated at that development. A number of them, I believe are still 10, will be 80% restricted to households earning no more than 80% of the area median income. And those units will be restricted under what's called the universal deed rider. And that's a requirement of the 40B program. So that puts a 30-year restriction on the unit and the resale price. And so that's one lane and one equity building tool. And the other units will be restricted at 100% of AMI. So eligible buyers can make no more than 100% of the area median income. And those units will be governed by the Commonwealth Builder Deed Rider, which is split into this A and B this year as 1 through 15 and near 16 through 30. The prices in all of the units are set in accordance with a tool that is published annually by the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities. That tool sets the maximum price for any unit. And that tool assumes, as Jessica mentioned, that households, it makes certain assumptions to go through this price-setting exercise. Those assumptions are things like the household size is estimated and calculated as the number of bedrooms plus one. So a two-bedroom household or two-bedroom unit assumes a three-person household in the AMI schedule. It assumes that the home buyer is getting a 30-year mortgage. It assumes that they're paying the full tax burden with no residential exemption, even though we know that some buyers will get the residential exemption. It assumes condo fees as calculated and rejected by the developer. And then it assumes things like the weekly Freddie Mac weekly survey. So Freddie Mac every week puts out a survey that says, like, this is the average interest rate in the market. And it assumes that we add 25 basis points on to that. So if the Freddie Mac weekly survey says seven, we calculate it at 725. And then we assume today's AMIs, that today's area median incomes. And so we run all those figures to say, what is the maximum price that a hypothetical home buyer with that makeup could pay and be paying no more than 30% of their income? And that is the maximum price that Valley CDC can charge for a unit. In actuality, we know that that two-bedroom unit might be sold to a four-person household. And that a mortgage underwriter might say, we're comfortable with them paying 35% of income towards them. And that they might get a lower interest rate in the market. I'm sorry, the other piece that it factors that it considers a 5% down payment. We know a lot of the buyers of these units will actually only put one or 2% down because they'll have so much down payment assistance that they won't actually have to make as big of a down payment out of their own pocket. So those are all tools that help buyers actually be able to stretch. That means that like a household that actually makes 70% of AMI might be able to achieve this 80% of AMI price tag because of all the tools that we say like Valley CDC and other developers can't touch those tools. Those are just for the buyers to help them stretch. So all of those tools are put in as safeguards against exactly what Ms. Greenbaum is saying to make sure that we don't think that like buyers can get to that price but then the burden of actually owning that home is too great. We're planning for that. Any questions about the price setting? I know, my question is how does the town evaluate an equitable tax for the real estate tax when every people's investment in the houses are all different and they have different financial resources so the same size house of 1200 square feet say for a three-bedroom would they all carry the same tax burden regardless of what the person paid it for? Should that be addressed in these documents or is that up to the town to figure out? You know, I'm going to turn that up. That's a question I think for the town and not for Ms. Evans. Not for me but I'm going to put Chris Brestrup on this on the spot on this one because I think that the town has to decide how they'll assess the property value of these and I don't know if you're going to answer yet. It's my understanding that the deed restriction is actually taken into consideration with setting that tax value. But you should definitely check with your assessor's office and get a clear answer on how they assess other homes that may have deed restrictions on them. Well, they would be based on market. Omslane markets where there's no incentive on either side to charge more or less. You don't have Omslane sales here on which to base them and you don't want to base them on other two-bedroom condos in town because of restrictions, etc. I just don't know whether how to determine that fairly would be from the percentage of ownership they have or I don't know whether that's something that we need to be concerned with. No, I mean I don't want to be concerned with taxes, Ms. Greenbaum. I think we have enough to do with this but I don't mean to make light of what you're raising. It's a good point but on the other hand we also know what the sale price of these homes can be based upon a 5% increase based upon some percentage of capital improvements based upon the real trophy. You can look at what the price of these homes can sell for, max price can sell for because it's laid out in the formula for resale, I think. I would say that mass housing also takes a conservative approach because they want to make sure that people have that ability to stretch. Their calculations are actually very conservative in terms of what a house should be sold for. When we did our own in-house, we actually had numbers that were higher and mass housing said no. We had a 3% down payment, they added a 5% down payment. Things make a difference and every time the interest rates jump, the numbers change. We have these point in time and you'll see this actually in the budget. So when in the budget you see what we're receiving for sales revenue, that's a number that's based off of calculations from several months ago when the interest rates were at a certain rate. That number will fluctuate and change over the course of the next 2 years and we won't even really know what our resale amount will be coming into the construction budget until we get to the marketing piece. So let's do this. Let's add staff to a touch base with the assessor and get us an answer for the next meeting as to how they would go about assessing the value of the similarly situated homes in this kind of a development. Does that work for you Ms. Greenbaum? Yeah, I would like to hear what the assessor has to say because great differences in what people would be paying for the same amenities, same massage units, etc. And they're not going to be like anybody else in town. So what I'd imagine is that they will pay as the Sanjuli lower tax burden than what we're assuming in our modeling and then our price setting. And you know this is as it's just described the prices that we are setting in restriction are quite conservative which means that there will be a broader applicant pool for all of these units and we'll cast those prices at the time that we commit our funds and then we'll also recast them when Valley CDC is ready to actually begin the marketing phase. And just to follow up on my public option holder question, I noted that it says that in the affordable housing restriction deed rider it looks like the public option holder doesn't isn't required to have to comply with the owner occupancy requirements of the of the unit. So if the town or you or the mass housing does purchase it, they can rent it out, they can lease it out to somebody. It doesn't have to be a home ownership. Is that right? That is that is my understanding. My also understanding is that most municipalities are not in the business of acting as landlords and that you would be very properly incentivized to resell the unit. But it's a possibility right now that they could if they determined that the need was for rental housing, the town could purchase it and rent the unit out. As long as the town retains ownership of the unit, you couldn't sell it to Valley CDC and say please go operate this as a rental unit. Right. I just wondered why that. Okay, good. All right. Are there other questions? So you were going to go through the two different riders. Yeah. So the first, the 80% of AMI units are subject to the 30 year D driver. So those will be restricted to that formula resale price that Mr. Judge just outlined that is, you know, the price that a buyer at the restricted AMI level could afford based on then current calculations, the original purchase price plus the capital improvement and appreciation or with the market will bear. So the lowest of those three numbers would be the price that prevails under the rider, the 100% of AMI units for the first 15 years that are governed by those same rules. And then after year 15, we would look at what is the maximum resale price in year 15. So let's say these units sell for a unit sells for $200,000 at the initial sale. And in year 15, it's able to be resold for $275,000. And we would write down that 275 year 15, that's the maximum price. And they actually, you know, five years later go to resell the unit and now they can sell it not for 275, but for 375. And they know that they have an appraisal that says it's resaleable for 375. They come to the Amherst government and say, we'd like to that, you know, the housing planners, we'd like to resell this unit. Do you want to exercise your option? Amherst could buy the unit for 375. But the delta between that year 15 number of 275 and the year 20 number of 375 gets split 50-50 between the home buyer, the homeowner and Amherst. So you're buying the unit and you can go to resell it, but you also have $50,000 to use against writing down the future of affordability against deferred capital needs. This is meant to align this type of ownership housing with the way that we operate and capitalize rental housing, which sort of assumes that after a certain period there are expected youthful life of certain systems may have worn out. We really want to take a close look at what is happening in the properties so that the, you know, the public oversight is coming and saying this house actually does need a new roof. It does need a new kitchen and we want to resell it. Other municipalities are also, I've also told us like we don't want income restricted housing. We want as much market rate housing as we can get. The second year 15 hits, this is going to be on restricted housing. Other municipalities have said we're going to exercise that right at first refusal every single time and we'll probably try to buy down the affordability as much as we can possibly afford every time. So maybe those 100% units will eventually become 80% units. It's meant to say that you who know your town best get to recast where that unit fits at that time. So that 50% split only occurs if you or the town purchases it? It's there no matter what. Oh, what's that? So if they sell market rate at $375,000, they only... If you say we're not going to exercise our option, go ahead and sell it on the market. They sell it for $375,000. They would still owe that $50,000 of market-based appreciation to Amherst. And the Amherst would be required to use out for housing-related purposes. So you might say, you know, people are starting to sell their homes. Maybe we want to exercise our right on every other one. Maybe we don't want to exercise our right at all because market-based housing is the appropriate thing for bullying at that time. But we have this other project over here that we really want to put money into. So we're going to take the portion that came to us and use it as a capital source in this other project. So this is the limited equity aspect of the resale? We got it. Yep, exactly. So can I just ask for clarification, Kathleen, because it references public funders. So does that mean mass housing is not part of that split? It goes fully back to the municipality? So we are technically always the part of the public funder that are named everywhere. Our intention in every case, and we've clarified this on her side, is that wherever the municipality is willing to step into the full role of the public funders, we will defer to them. We don't want to take ourselves off of that in the instance that the public funders are unwilling or unable to sort of come to the table. Then we would still have the ability to do that on behalf of the public sector. Okay. Thanks for the clarification. I appreciate it. That's a good question. So I think we kind of gone, we migrated beyond property management, but I don't want to leave that area without if people have questions about property management itself. We're kind of into, we're starting to talk a little bit about income restrictions. I think you've gone through the 80 and 100%. The only question I would have is for a family of four, what's 80% in Amherst today and what's 100% of median income in Amherst today for a family of four? Just to give us a sense of who the market is. I'm going to look that up. Well, I just make one point about the property management conversation, which is that I would encourage Valley CDC annual to really engage with the folks to whom you want to sell these units and think about their feedback and what makes the most sense for them about how they want to, you know, what is this value proposition to them? That's what we're asking developers to really consider first and foremost. I'm looking at the AMIs. Luckily, we're all in the A's. So a family of four, making 80% of AMI, is making $79,700 today. And at 100% of AMI, it's $93,700. So 79 for 80 and 93 for 40. Yep. So when you look at those two bedroom units at 80% of AMI, we're basing that on an income of $71,750 today. Okay. I did have a question concerning the income restrictions. Another way of conveying this property is to family members. Right? And then some special provisions apply when you convey this to family members. So the question I have is, do the family members, when it's being conveyed to a family member, and I guess it would be different 80 and 100%, the first 15 and the second 15, you got four different possibilities. But when you convey it to a family member, do they have to comply with the income restrictions? And is the price set the way it is for everybody else? Or how does that work? A family member could own and occupy the unit regardless of their income. So again, this is meant to be a supply-side response to the racial ownership, to the racial wealth gap. This is meant to build intergenerational wealth. And we don't believe that Baltimore homeowners' children should be penalized for making too much money in that space. So they would not be required to be income eligible. The rider would not go away though. If they received the home, if they received the transfer of the home in year eight, and then they went to sell in year 12, they would still be required to sell to an income eligible buyer. But if they were at 100%? If they were at 100% of AMI, they would still be required to sell to the home of a new buyer at 100% of AMI. But if it's in year 17 or year 20, and you're at 100%, you go and market price in the town could buy. We got it. Yep. The town would still have the right to first refuse all. Exactly. So the mechanics for resale would still be the same. It's just that if they wanted to own and occupy the home, they can do that regardless of their income. All right, Mr. Henry. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So does the town, if they exercise the right of first refusal and purchase one of these properties, are there any restrictions on the town now that they have to maintain this property as low income and send it back to low income person? Absolutely not. That's why the right of first refusal goes to the town so that they can make the choice. Also, I think that's because we're running a statewide program. And as I mentioned, the realities and the needs are very different in different communities. In towns like Riviera, Chelsea, Boston, we're buying affordability. These are homes that would have been developed regardless of whether we subsidized to them. They just wouldn't be affordable. In towns like Holyo, Springfield, Worcester, a lot of times we're subsidizing production. These are our housing units that cost $400,000 to build and the market will only bear a price tag of $185,000. So you do have a situation where if you're conveying to a family member the house, the original owner leaves, conveys it to a family member who has to purchase it at the adjusted fixed price, correct? They're conveying it to a family member. I mean, they're transferring the deed. They're not selling the home. They're just transferring. The original owner leaves, transfers it to another family member, dad or kids, whatever. It doesn't make any difference. That second occupant does not have to meet the income requirements that everybody else in that unit, in that development does. Correct. Okay. And is that required by, is that formula required by the state? Is that something that we're deciding that, is that a policy of Valley CDC? Is that a policy of the program? That's a policy of the mass housing program. That's mass housing. So if we choose to, we cannot change that. If you wanted to ask it to appeal that part and explain to us the case for it, we can absolutely consider it. As I mentioned, this is meant to be an intergenerational wealth-building program. And so we don't want to see, you know, descendants or, you know, the children of low income first time home buyers be penalized for earning too much money. Yeah. No, I understand. And I think one of the attractive things is that it allows, because of the limited equity aspect, it allows lower income people to be able to build some equity and pass it on. That's one of the benefits of this program. Just trying to figure out what is the equity of the program. Also, not the financial equity, but the legal equity of the program of having non-low income people in these homes that were, you know, subsidized by the state and by us living next to people who are low income. And I'm just trying to figure, I just have to work through that. I'm not suggesting that we should do it. I'm just trying to figure it out. There's a number of rental developments that have market rate units and units all in the same and everybody gets along. That's true. That's true. That's not the question. The question is sort of equity of having highly subsidized units occupied by people who could afford market rate. And maybe that's the price we pay for trying to increase home ownership equity throughout the community. And that just might be the price we pay, but we have to think that's true. I need to think that's true. That's all. I'm looking at that. Ms. Greenbaum. Yeah, I'm getting more confused by the minute. So I'm not going to get really into worrying about it, but I'm, you just said that there is no deed transfer when the son moves in and grandma dies, so grandma goes to a nursing home, whatever. His name is not on the deed. That's the original on the name. It is a deed transfer. Yeah, it's just not a sale. It's a transfer. So it's a great transfer for dollars and something like that. So no, okay. I wasn't clear what you were saying. No difference from somebody who does the same thing with the market rate unit that doesn't need to go through a program like this. They have the same ability to do, to transfer to a family member for a one dollar. Okay. That's what I want. It's leveling the playing field a little bit. Yeah, but he does. Own the property at that point. Correct. Are there other questions from members of the board? So I, I'll keep asking questions. I spent a lot of time reading all these documents in there. They are confusing. I'm, I wonder about students and how, how we use students getting into this housing. Now it's probably not going to happen. I think, but the post, is there a possibility that parents could give the kids $90,000, give like college students $90,000. So they would be able to afford some kind of a down payment, pay the mortgage during the time that the kid has very no income. And an asset that we're trying to build to increase the home ownership for those in our community who haven't been able to do that over time gets used up by students in the, and that's a uniquely Amherstian problem with 35 students, 35,000 students in the area and a lot of parents who purchase or rent places for their kids. So is there, I don't, I would not want to have this resource used for student housing and how can we, how has that dealt with in this, in this program? So that's not something that we have given a lot of consideration to. I think your point that it's a unique problem is correct. It, you know, it's, it's rare air. But I would say that the, the way that you think about the lottery at initial sale and who's in the lottery, also the way that you work with Valley on the marketing element is really important. And also with Trappa on resale. I mean, if there are particular considerations that you feel the need to even to documents, we're, we're happy to discuss those things. I will say that the, the, one of the biggest components of this program is the extent to which it puts the development team on the hook for making sure that there is a broad array of potential buyers who understand this opportunity that they're prepared for it. And they're in the lottery. I'll tell you anecdotally, I have two projects that are selling in greater Boston right now that had a lottery of 40, 30 and 40 units that had over 400 people enter the lottery. And based on the work that the developer did with community groups, while they were building their projects, one development is fully sold out in Roxbury, nearly a hundred percent of the homeowners are Black women who are the heads of household and 95% of them are from Roxbury, Dorchester, and Madapia. So deep ties to the community where the development is. And that is just a result of the work that that developer did with their community partners. So don't market to students is what I would say too. Yeah. But I mean, is there anyway? There are a huge percentage of the population here. So it's not unlike it's not unlikely that they would either be aware or want to take or avail themselves of the opportunity. Anyway, that's something we need to think about, I think as a as a board. But there's no restriction from mass housing on us directing this away from students if that is the choice. Is there? I don't think that there would be. Yeah, it's it's different than say a rental deal where we're using low income housing tax credits, which has a very specific prohibition renting to students. It's it's tied to those development projects. And it's tied to the financing. I'd like to have a deeper conversation with mass housing about how how we potentially could address it in the affirmative fair housing marketing plan. I'm not sure how we do that. But I think it's it's worth noting. I will note that we are already having internal conversations and have I have a staff member here who's already putting together a pretty robust list of black owned businesses, people who are within the real estate development world that we can connect with. And we do intend over the next year to start holding some financial literacy classes as a way to a start educating people about how they can get their credit score in line, what it takes to be a first time home buyer, things that they need to financially prepare for so that they are ready to go when we are market actively marketing the units are not thinking about these things too late. Also thinking about how those financial literacy workshops can also be used for marketing for this development specifically. So how can that be it's sort of a two fold. And so my colleague, she's putting together a very robust list of places, not just in Amherst, but also around the region, places that have deep ties to the community that we can we can be working with. And we have a single family division at mass housing and to any extent that are like helpful and identifying the financing vehicles for those homeowners. That's another piece is to make sure that the people who are buying these homes have access to the most favorable products. Yep. Mr. Henry, you had your hand up and I went on and on your hand got tired, I'm sure. No, that's okay. So I think going back to students potentially being part of the lottery. When I read the local preference guidelines, there were certain requirements that as much as the students may live in Amherst, they may not qualify, because there are certain restrictions. For one, I don't think many of them have local driver's license that say Amherst, pay staff from Amherst bank statements. But it did mention school enrollment forms. So I had concerns about that as well. That's Mr. Judge raised. Yeah. I don't have the answer yet. I just want to explore it and see if there is any a way that we can look at it. And I know you'll think about this, but just to be aware of the unintended consequences, or if you have someone who's a long term resident and employee in Amherst and has decided to go back to school, and this is an amazing opportunity for that person's family, right? You don't want to just incentivize or disadvantage. You don't want to do that. That's what's complicated about this. At the same time, I don't want three kids from Hadley, whose parents buy this place, and then somehow, and then they just use the kids, they set up a mechanism for the kid to look like he's purchased. That's what I'm worried about. We see that happen all the time here. You may have solved that problem already, but that's the concern we have, and I want to explore that more. Other questions? Do we want to move on to financials then? Ms. Brestrup? Would you consider having a five minute break? Yeah. Oh yeah, right at 7.30. That's great. Let's do five minutes. Thank you. All right. We'll return at 7.37. We can also see you much better too. So that works well. Thank you. I had another one, but that was too yellow. I shut it off. Oh, it works. Ms. Brestrup, thanks for the suggestion on the break. Appreciate it. So unless there's any other questions on income restrictions and property management, let's move to financials. Okay. I'd like maybe a little bit more clarification from the ZBA on exactly what they'd like to discuss regarding financials, just given the 40 B rules and regulations regarding... Mostly, I just wanted to go over the pro pharma, and I pretty much, I think I understand it. Okay, sure. So I'll just basically, in some way, I think just kind of hit the key points. So we have considerable funds coming from mass housing, Commonwealth Builders program. There's kind of three pots. These pots are a little bit new. They've revised their guidelines in July, I believe. Is that right, Kathleen? So we have the Commonwealth Builder formula funds, which is a subsidy that provides $250,000 per home. There is the Market Anticipation Contingency Funds, which really sort of addresses what we were discussing earlier about where the market's going to go within a couple years, where the interest rates are going to be, if the interest rates are at 13 percent, how is that going to impact the project? So that's a contingency fund. And then they also provide site condition assistance funds up to $2 million, and that can be used for any number of site work, including soils remediation, anything, utilities, the stormwater construction, so there's some money available to do site work. That's all coming through mass housing. We've received two commitments from the Town of Amherst. We have $750,000 from the CPA and $375,000 from the trust fund. We intend to sell the existing house, which is part of why the ANR is a waiver that we'll be discussing at a future meeting. We'd like to carve off that existing home that currently has a tenant in it, and sell that off and use the proceeds to be used towards the project. There's the sale revenue of the affordable units, which we discussed earlier in terms of that number is a little bit in flux until we sort of know what the market sales number will finally be. We're looking to build, as we've discussed earlier, with the building and architectural plans that we're looking for massive incentive payments, so those energy incentive payments are in the pro forma. We have about $850,000 that we are looking at various grants, foundation, and possible fundraising to complement the project, and then Valley at this time is putting in half of its overhead in fee, so we're putting in a deferred developer fee and putting that into the project. Under the 40V regulations, we have the ability, and Commonwealth Builder, we have the ability to receive up to 20% of the total construction cost or the total development cost as overhead and fee overhead, basically paying for all of our time that we've spent over the past several years to get these projects in place. I don't get paid from anything except for overhead fees and Valley's other funds, so we supplement that, and then the fee is the other portion, and we're putting that back into the project. That's our total sources. We have an acquisition of $850,000. Our construction is estimated at this time. We are out in the process of doing cost estimating right now with our architectural team, so we should be having some more solid numbers to be working off of shortly. Then soft costs, there's a number of soft costs that we need to utilize as part of any affordable housing project, and so those are all listed here under the soft costs. We have a total of about $16 million in soft costs and hard costs, and then we have our other development costs of the overhead and fee, half of that what we're putting back into the project. That's the big picture on the pro forma. Yep, thank you. I guess the value of this for me, Ms. Allen, is that this really speaks to how expensive it is to create housing in a current environment. It's phenomenal to me. We've got every possible advantage here. We've got a great developer, a very good developer with a good history in this town, a limited profit developer that's going to give back half its fee that it could charge. We've got the economies of scale. You have 30 units, you're not building one. You've got the economies where everybody is close together and so you're not running sewer lines for every single long sewer lines. You've got reasonable price for property. That's 30 units for $850,000. That's a steal. Everything is going right, it's cheap. You're looking at $600,000, on average, you put this all together, you're looking at $660,000 per unit subtract the average $200,000 cost. You've got a subsidized product of about $450,000 per unit to get affordable housing. It's mind-boggling to me. I look at that and we've got $10 million of state and federal programs roughly. We've got a sale of units of $6 million. That's the next biggest source of revenue. We've got this town putting in a million wonners a little bit more. You are contributing $1.6 million by forgiving part 10% or half of your fee and we've got a million in grants that you're pursuing an energy cost. It boggles the mind that it costs this much for a 1,200-square-foot house. That's the price to build housing in today's markets. It's the only way we can provide affordable housing is through this kind of subsidy. It's incredible. I'll note that even in places and maybe Kathleen can even speak to what the pricing and what it costs to build out in the eastern part of the state, but we see rental projects that are a million dollars a unit. That's in a rental multifamily. That's not a single standing structure. The cost of construction is whack-a-doodle right now. It continues to increase. We continue to see increases every time we put a project out to bid. We are just floored by the numbers that are coming in. My hope is that these numbers actually kind of hold and that that construction number when I do get cost estimates isn't blown out of the water. We'll figure it out. That's what we do. We shake all the trees that we can find and we get all of the fruits. I mean we're very good at raising money and getting money. We write grants all the time. Any affordable housing project, whether it's rental or homeownership, has anywhere between 10 and 12 sources at a minimum in order to make these projects happen. Yes, it's expensive and I know that the per unit cost seems extraordinary, but that is the cost to build at this time. This is why we actually backed away from doing market rate. We had initially scoped this project to have five units of just market rate and we found that we could not sell the houses. The market was not good enough in Amherst to cover the cost of construction for those market rate houses and we flipped and did an entirely affordable project. The numbers have not been working in our favor for a long time on this project and we keep pivoting and fluctuating with the market. We'll find the money. I'm totally confident on that. It's just a matter of finding the right sources and the right entities to provide funds to the project. Three sets of hands are up. I think Mr. Henry was first. Mr. Meadows was second and this green bomb was third. So Mr. Henry. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So my question is still one of my concerns has always been the requirements that an applicant must be able to get a standard mortgage or whatever the term is. I'm sorry. Can you walk us through how for people to listen in how you actually help get a person qualified for one of these mortgages is what goes into that education? What goes into that plan and that conversation? Sure. I mean, I'm sure Kathleen can speak to this too, but we have a very robust first-time homebuyer and financial literacy program here run by Donna Cabana. She's been doing that work for decades and is a real expert on finding the right units, finding the right products, finding the right down payment assistance programs. A lot of the communities that we work in, including Amherst, has down payment assistance funds that a homeowner can take advantage of. The problem is right now that the price of housing is so high that even using all these different tools that are available, plus the interest rates, the way that they are right now is making it incredibly difficult for anybody to find a home and to purchase a home, at even at the market rate. So I know that Alexis Breitnicher, our executive director, is on the call. I don't know if she wants to jump in and add it to anything because she probably knows more of the details in the weeds of what Donna does every day rather than I do, but I hear Donna, who is very frustrated at trying to find homes for people within their financial capacity. So really in order to qualify for that mortgage that you asked, Mr. Henry, is really making sure that somebody's credit score is as high as it possibly can get, that they've paid down their debt, that they have money in the bank, that they can use as a down payment. Credit score is all about how much debt that you are eligible to be able to juggle in your income level. So if you have a ton of credit card debt and not a very high income, your credit score isn't going to register very high. So understanding the importance of a credit score, and this is a lot of what we're talking about internally in terms of this financial literacy piece that we want to roll out over the next year, is getting people to understand how important it is to have a really high credit score to get one of these conforming mortgages or to get a mortgage that is at the conforming rates right now, because that is going to be the key to success. Kathleen, do you want to add anything to that or? No, the only things I would add, I think that's an awesome summary of all the work that's going to be going on on the home buyer education and financial preparedness side, the whole time that value is building the project. But the reason that the conforming mortgage standard is there is we don't want people getting into predatory loan products with adjustable rates or things like that. So if they have to be able to qualify for that conforming mortgage, we know that most home buyers at this project are going to get subsidized interest rates. They're going to get different pots of down payment assistance. We see folks layering two and three different levels of down payment assistance to be able to start to afford. Earlier last year, Mass Housing and the Mass Housing Partnership administer the Mass Dreams program, which was a $50,000 grant to first time home buyers. This money flew out of the building. What we're seeing is that even for folks who have all these tools, there's nothing for them to buy, which is why a project like this is so important. They just know how many home buyers are ready and they're prepared, they've done the credit repair, they've done the home buyer education, and they can't find something within their price point. Miss Allen, you mentioned that your executive director may want to speak and I see that her hand is up. Great. Miss... Ron, would you... Yeah, I can do that right now, Mr. Chair. Just give me one second. He's getting too much love from his puppy. I know. He's trying to steal your attention right now. All right. But I still need you to bring Miss Brightniker into the panel and she has something to add on this point. He got me. If you can read me the address for the record. Sure. And I don't know why my video is not on, but nobody needs to see me, so it's fine. So I'm Alexis Brightniker and I'm executive director of Valley. I live at 33 Potash Hill in coming to Massachusetts. And I want to echo what Jess said and just caveat what Kathleen just said about the master's program. So it's only for Gateway cities of which Amherst is not. So that actually doesn't apply to us, noted, which it did. But a lot of the folks that come through our first time home buyer program, one that takes years for them to be able to actually buy a home, two having a subsidy program, like the one that we currently have through the CPA program in Amherst is incredibly important for folks to be able to buy their first time home. And three, one of the things we're seeing to echo what Kathleen just said is a lot of our first time home buyers are trying to be able to buy a home using predatory mortgages. So we're starting to see crazy like three and one arm, six and one arm, like stuff that sort of predated the financial crash is starting to come up again. And we are like with all of our patients steering home buyers away from those types of mortgages, because we know how challenging they are, particularly with folks that have a challenge financial past. So having a conventional mortgage as a requirement for folks to be able to take part in this program is really important for people to be able to then pay their mortgages and stay in the homes. So I see that an understanding that folks might think it is a barrier to people potentially. And the ultimate goal is to just like we do with our renters, we want to set people up for success. So if folks are going to be moving into homes, we want to be able to make sure that they are able to pay their mortgage. So Jess alluded to this and may have already specifically noted it, but we are already starting to work with home buyers who know about this program. So in some cases, folks need a three or four or five year lead in time to be able to be ready to buy. So we have folks who know about this who have already started working with Donna about financial education and getting their ducks in a row essentially to be able to buy. So that's it. Just want to echo and support what everybody else already said. And let me just add on that a little bit is we have a website on Belly's website. We've got a whole page dedicated to this project. And we have frequently asked questions, handouts that people can use if they're interested in this project. It kind of sets some of the home buyer requirements and some of the preferences and in big bold letters at the bottom says please contact Valley to get your to start doing some financial counseling to be prepared for this. So we've handed that out at the numerous community meetings that we've already held for this project. So just wanted to note that for anybody on this call or anybody who's listening who knows somebody who may be interested that there's information on our website available for people to start looking at. And then two, just want to remind the ZBA that you have a reparations committee that has already filed a report saying that first time home buyer assistance is one of the potential uses of funds. And so this project perfectly matches with the work that the reparations committee is already discussing and talking about in terms of down payment assistance. So there's another pot of money that home buyers potentially could access if the town is in the place where they're ready to give that money out in two years. And so that's sort of the side note is it's great that it's in the report, but there would need to be a process in place in a couple years for people to be able to take advantage of it. And this is the perfect opportunity for that project and that work of the reparations. This project and the reparations to sort of partner and work together. So I just wanted to make that note as well. Mr. Meadows. Oh, you're muted. Thank you. I noticed in the list that you don't have the investment tax credits listed in your sources of income. Yes, I've heard you in the past on the past two meetings regarding this. However, because we are not staying in the deal as a nonprofit, we cannot receive the tax credits because we're selling the homes. And so I need to sort of dig into that. I have, I've looked at it a little bit, but it's more complicated than just if we were doing a rental project and putting on solar and being able to take those tax credits directly to us from the federal government. You can sell them. You can sell them. You can sell the investment tax credits. As a nonprofit, you can sell them to a buyer. But we're not going to be the entity that would ever receive. You are initially, you are initially. Okay, I'll look into it. I'll look into it. That could just be, if nothing else, it could help reduce the cost or it could also help to capitalize the condo fund, the management fund, nothing else. You begin to capitalize the management fee and reduce the monthly fees. There's a lot of good that could be done if you could sell those. Yep. And I'll note that the pro forma that was submitted in September, this again is a point in time that this pro forma evolves and changes over the next couple years, depending on what's coming in and how things. So this really is a point in time. This isn't like the final budget just to be clear on that. You just need an accountant who knows what he's doing is regards the investment tax credit. What they did in the legislation is just, it's huge. It is really wide ranging. So take a look at it because that's, it could be real money. Ms. Greenbaum. This is more curiosity. What is the role of the broker and the brokerage fee in the budget? So we need to hire somebody to sell the homes. That's our initial, so that's a placeholder right now. Valley doesn't believe that we might have the capacity to do that. We still need to have those internal conversations in terms of whether we have the capacity to do the sales ourselves. But it's a lot of work to sell a house to somebody. There's a lot of emotion. There's a lot going on for them. And we're not sure we've got the capacity in house to do it. So that is, that is a brokerage fee that we would end up paying a real estate agent to sell the homes on our behalf to show the house. You don't think they sell themselves just because they're somebody still needs to look at them and walk them. And would you buy a house site unseen? I mean, somebody's got to be there to let them in on a Saturday to, to, to look at the house. I mean, any homebuyer should have that ability to do that. Unless you have like open houses and they all came at once. Well, I think the part of the question is in terms of the construction and the phasing of the sales of the homes. So not everything is going to be done at exactly the same time is my, is, is how I'm interpreting and thinking this is how it's going to play out. But until we really have a general contractor that we can discuss. But as the condo docs show in terms of this phased approach, it's a phased sale. So we would be selling any valley was doing it ourselves, we wouldn't have the ability to sell 30 homes all in one month. That's just crazy. So, you know, it would have to be like a couple of homes per month and phasing them in. And so, you know, that's why we have a brokerage fee on here. We would also ask you to keep that. I mean, the just the management also of the all the different sources of financing and home buyers are using and helping like individual home buyers to navigate all those things, which have experiment terms. And it's a lot to guide folks through. So a best practice from our side, we'd ask you to keep that fee. You're anticipating that's a 3% brokerage fee. You might be able to get a discount. I don't know. But I do want to say that I'm I just want to, how deep in the weeds is it? Are we allowed to go under the 40 B process on the pro former? I mean, I just, I appreciate the board's questions and comments. But to some extent, really, we're not questioning any of the conditions that have been set. I don't think there's going to be a financial impact. And so I just want to be very careful about that a little bit. And maybe attorney Murray can speak to that a little bit because I want to make sure that we're staying within the line of the law a little bit. That's all. You know, I appreciate your concern. I think the board needs wants to know that this is going to work. We want to look at the numbers. We spent all of 10 minutes looking at the numbers and we've had four meetings. I don't think that's a lot. I really, this has been incredibly cooperative the whole way through. I think spending a little bit of time looking at the numbers is perfectly appropriate. And if we get to a place where we're nitpicking or micromanaging and you think that's too much, you should let us know. But I'm not going to stop our board members from asking these kind of questions right now. Okay. Okay. I'm a screen bomb. Did you have other questions? My only thing is I'm getting emails from people who would like to talk if you would like to take people who want to talk on this specific subject. Well, but we'll do that after the board members have their questions. And then we'll go to public comment like we always do. Okay. Yep, we will do that. We'll keep time for public comment. We just we do want to go through the application selection process at local preference. It's eight o'clock. And if we don't get that done, we'll still leave a half hour, we'll leave a half hour time for public comment at 830. So let's go through the application selection process. You've talked about it a lot already. You talked about the work you do to help about outreach to try to create a pool of people that would that might benefit from this. You talked about how you help with financial literacy and establishing the credit rating and what you need to do to go to the that's all part of that's getting them into the pool. How do you use, how do you select people once you have them in the pool that gone through your program, which I think we understand that. So there's a lottery process we would put together in a affirmative fair housing marketing plan that would get approved by math housing. So we would need to figure out how that lottery process works, how that selection process works, who's the pools and how the pools are weighted. So everything's done by a lottery, but after an applicant is selected, if they are on the wait list, then it's placed in order of the wait list. And then that wait list is maintained according to the documents by the public funders. So I'm not sure if that's math housing or if it's the town of Amherst, given our earlier conversation. So maybe Kathleen, you can. It's going to be CHAPA on behalf of math housing and on behalf of the commonwealth folder program and the 40B program. And I just want to, you know, mention that there's a little bit of nuance between the way that the 40B units, the 80% of AMI units will be sold versus the way that the 100% of AMI units will be sold. And with the commonwealth filter program, I actually don't do the pooling concept of like a local preference sort of safeguards this school that only goes to people with a local preference. There's just sort of three, to our mind, there's sort of three main criteria that help to order folks in the lottery for preference. The first is that the household is at least that, you know, big enough for the unit. So for a two bedroom unit, it would be households that are at least three people will be prioritized. And that's sort of the first criteria. The second is whether a household is, and this is a defining term, a disproportionately impacted household. So that is a household who's a resident or works in one of the disproportionately impacted communities or a qualified census tract. So those are the 29, the 26 gateway cities, Brigham, and Birmingham, Randolph, Boston, and QCTs throughout the rest of the commonwealth. And then the next preference criteria would be the local preference. So in order of things, it would be appropriately sized households who qualify as a disproportionately impacted household. There's they can qualify either as a resident of one of those communities, or as someone who qualifies for a certain number of social safety net programs. So if there was a section eight voucher holder, for instance, and then if they're a resident of or work in Amherst, that would be the first criteria, the first group, you know, the first sort of type, we call them. So that would be the first type. The second type would be appropriately sized households who meet the DIH criteria or not residents of Amherst. Then the next criteria, the next tier would be appropriately sized households who are not disproportionately impacted households, but who are residents of Amherst and sort of down through this decision trade. That's if local preferences voted by the board, correct, Kathleen? If local preference applies, that's the way that it would be. That's the way that it would roll through the priority order in the lottery. Yep. Those are the three that would be typically easy. And so with those in the first tier of those criteria, you have appropriately sized and first disproportionately affected, for lack of a better description, and local preference and local residents. Are those all equally? So they would have to meet all of them. It's like a binary yes-no, right? So we're going to meet all three of those criteria and it's not just a residency of Amherst. I know it's residency writ large. It's working here. Yep, you got it. I just use that as a shorthand. Okay. And then, so then the last part is how do you qualify them? What are the pieces that go into qualifying them financially for the product? So where can they get, you'll go out and help them get down payment assistance, correct? And there's, in addition to what we're talking about here, there's a program at the city, I think, that has down payment assistance. There's a possibility, the reparation fund being used for down payment assistance. Correct. Other place, other financial assistance that can go to that person who wishes to, who meets the criteria and has sufficient income and credit to be able to afford the house if he or she gets other kind of assistance. Are there other financial assistance programs beyond that you spoke of? There's some through the state. I'm not as familiar with them because this is not what I do on a day-to-day. Donna Cabana really is our in-house expert on it. So I know that she, again, shakes as many trees as possible to get people in the best financial place moving forward. She knows of every place to find money to help a home buyer. I mean, honestly, in every program. She's got relationships with banks. She really is tied in deeply to the housing buyer market. So I can bring her to a future meeting if you're interested in that kind of information, but really people will find the products to help them. It's not just the down payment assistance. I would add there's a lot of subsidized first mortgage programs that are geared towards first time home buyers, particularly with moderate incomes. So Mass Housing has a bunch of products that we use at partner banks throughout the state, many in your region. The Massachusetts Housing Partnership has a one mortgage program. So there are a lot of programs that are run with local banks. You know, we've actually seen some banks where they're doing their construction financing and they're looking at ways to offer advantageous rates to write down the rates for the home buyers who are purchasing their homes. So all of these things are going to make these units more affordable. And then to your question about eligibility, so the mortgage lender will be screening applicants for income eligibility to make sure that they're, you know, within bounds of the 100% of AMI. Or the mortgage lender will be looking at their ability to afford the market, trade their credits for their household income, all the things that would happen to a market rate buyer that it wrinkle here is that CHAPO will be screening the income level to make sure that they're within bounds of that AMI restriction. You do the pre-screen and the mortgage lender will do the financial decision. CHAPO will do that on our behalf. Yep, and they'll sign off on the qualifications and income eligibility of every purchaser. And I think what Valley would like to do, similar to what we've done in other projects, specifically East Gables, is to really keep that the paperwork pretty limited for that first lottery so that somebody doesn't have to provide, you know, pages and pages of income verification documents that that happens after you've been selected through the lottery process. We don't want to burden people with, you know, undue paperwork if they're not even going to be eligible to get a unit. So I think we try to do something similar where we've got some, you know, basic information to be able to ensure that people are at least eligible, but at the same time we don't want to overburden them with paperwork. So we're going to have to figure out what that sweet spot is and then let the CHAPO and others do their due diligence to really get people certified. Mr. Henry, you had your hand up. I did, Mr. Chair. I think I've said this before and I do want to reiterate again, because while I do appreciate that there's so many programs and incentives for first-time homebuyers, I am very concerned that the targeted population may not qualify for any of these incentives. And I say that because as much as a person can do with credit counseling, when you have a mother of two making $50,000 and they have three or four credit card debts, to bring that credit score up to her bank even to consider for a mortgage, that is a very difficult task. There's, you know, $50,000 after taxes is not a lot. There's no, there's not an extra income to say, I'm trying to get a house, I need to sacrifice. They already sacrificed and so while I understand and appreciate that there's all these programs with down payments and all those things, none of those things matter if these people will not qualify on the offset. And I think that is a very reasonable concern and I just want everyone to hear it. Because again, if this is meant to help BIPOC people, I think an arbitrary credit score should not be something that is relied upon. I appreciate that the bank has invested interest, they want to make sure that they get return on their investments, they want to be paid. And you know, if a person goes through credit counseling and can demonstrate that, you know, they've made, quite frankly, jump through all the hoops that they are hoops to get qualified, I think there should be some consideration other than, you know, okay, well, you did all these things other than a credit score. And I say that because of high conversations of people who have tried to improve their situation. But if their income doesn't support it, and it's not like they can go out and get a different job that's going to pay them, you know, a higher income so they can qualify, it is a very real and valid concern that I think should be taken into consideration. Ms. Greenbaugh. I apologize for talking too much, but I'm getting more and more confused. And some of the people are hard to understand. Did somebody take a copy of a transcript that they might be able to send to us? In other words, I didn't look to see if it's available to me now, but is this the thing of the transcript of this meeting? There's not a transcript, but there's be a recording that's available in a couple of days. No. Oh, okay. So that, that wouldn't, nothing that I can read. I don't know. There's no, there's no printed transcript of the meeting. Okay. Because some, some things that I watched do have that. So I asked. So my, my second question is you're going to go out and make known various ways that these apartments are, these units are available for sale. So, so it will go presumably to legal ads because I see them in the newspaper. And then so somebody comes to you. I mean, what happens? What's the process of all this verbiage in terms of action? They come into you and they say they're interested and they fill a form and it puts them in a hat. Does it put them in one hat or how, how do you decide which preferences and how do they get, if they got three or four hats that fit in, how do you decide which one to put it in? And then in other words, try to make concrete for an idiot like me to understand how this works. Essentially, you know, you pretty much have it figured out that it is, you know, somebody's assigned a number. The number goes into an envelope or a hat. You pull out numbers, you, you keep a list and then you notify people that yes, you've made it or you're on the wait list. So in, in depending on how the priorities are set, you know, the first and highest priority would get drawn first than the second priority. So, you know, this is, that's how it's typically done in rental. It's been a long time since Valley has done a home buyer. So I, again, this is why we have mass housing that reviews our affirmative fair housing marketing plan to make sure that we're doing the lottery process correct and meeting what needs to be done. So I mean, how do you, how do you decide on these hats and you do one hat and then you go to the second hat? You do exactly. So we would say, let's start with our two bedroom 100% of AMI units. And let's start with everybody who qualifies as like a tier one applicant for that. And that means they have at least three people. They are disproportionately impacted households and they are residents of Amherst and we'll put all those people, the numbers for all of those people in a hat and we'll pick out as many two bedroom 100% of AMI units we have, we have and we'll do those in order and then we'll pick all the rest of the hat and the numbers out and we'll put them in order and then we'll go to the first person and say, okay, now let's do all of the paperwork collection. So essentially, can I ask you a question? If it's a BIPOC person who lives in Amherst or works in Amherst, etc. Can they get put in the first half without voting for local preference? So we have to still abide by fair housing laws. So we cannot, we cannot classify BIPOC as one of the categories because we still... Yeah, that's a fair housing violation to do preferences based on race or ethnicity. I will say there are some really interesting things going on. We have a project in Boston that is in a neighborhood that was cleared in preparation. It's now part of the Southwest corridor park and part of an urban renewal effort. And so there's actually a preference in that lottery for individuals or descendants of individuals who are displaced through urban renewal. Because I looked it up and I saw neighborhoods that look like they were composed in the new units of the people who already lived there. In other words, Amherst people have the same chance of getting in as somebody from Rodsbury. No. Is that what you're saying? In your current... So currently it would say the first fact is everyone who is appropriately sized and who qualifies as a disproportionately impacted household. The only thing you layer on an Amherst preference is if you decide to layer on an Amherst preference. So in order... This is why I need this all written down. But Ms. Greenbaum, in order for there to be a local preference, we have to instruct that there be a, we have to condition that there be a local preference. Yeah, that's my confusion of what... First of all, Kathleen is very difficult for me to understand. There's some kind of a reverberation. I don't know if other people are having a problem, but even the caption isn't getting it. So what is the first category about the diss of whatever was housed? So in the first category, the first tier is the right family size for the unit. Disproportionally affected community. That's already... That's what's there now. That's what's there now. And then we could, if the board votes, add a local preference to that. That's how that would create the first tier. And that would be the first hat that the people would go into. And then they'd draw numbers out of that hat and they'd work with them to see if they'd be in the, would qualify. Is that correct that I state that correctly? Okay. Does that answer your question, Ms. Greenbaum? More or less. We'll discuss it more if we're going to come back to local preference. Okay. Or is this the discussion on local preference? I think we've just, I think we've gotten into it, but there may be, if anybody has anything else on application selection process, we can go to that, but then we can go back to local preference. Let's make sure that if people have questions about application selection process, we deal with that now. Ms. Brescht, do you have your hands up? I wanted to offer Ms. Greenbaum an opportunity, if she wanted to take advantage of it, to have a meeting with me and Rob Wachilla and Nate Malloy and talk through some of these questions, because I think Nate really understands these systems very well, and he may be able to help all of us to understand it. And it would be, we could just do it with you, Hilda, on the phone, or you could come in and talk to us. It wouldn't be any kind of violation of open meeting law, because we are staff people, we're not part of the Zoning Board of Appeals. I'm just offering that, if that would be helpful. I think that if I need it, and I've done this many times, as you well know, that other people may be more in the dark than I am, and more confused. So I think that conversation might be useful for the whole board to hear. It doesn't do me any good to read or tell me if they still don't know, you know. It's possible that the 15 or 20 minutes can be part of one of these meetings, and not waste the professional time. Mr. Judge. Well, we can talk about that, but we're kind of going through it right now, but we can, we will have additional meetings, and on those meetings we'll be talking about waivers and conditions. And if we wish to impose a local preference condition on this application, I think at that time we could have a discussion about it as well. That sounds good. Yep, I like that. All right. But I would, you know, I often get advice and get help from the staff, and I find that is really a good resource, and I would encourage all of us, all of our members to do that. That's what I think, but they can do it to all of us at once, at a food from meeting. I think that would be more productive of everybody's time. Okay. All right. Let's move to local, let's move to local preference. I'm gonna just remove myself for a second. Dr. Ravid? All right, so I guess we can start the discussion on local preference while Steve's away. I mean, it kind of started going into it a little bit, but I don't know if board members had other questions besides Hilda that they wanted to bring up regarding local preference, I guess for maybe like what we're allowed to condition, or would you rather wait until we have the discussion on waivers and conditions? I can tell you what my issue is, and some people may be very offended, but Amherst, Hadley and Northampton have over the 10% and we keep building more and more affordable housing in town, and there are neighbors around us that aren't in South Hadley and Ludlow specifically don't want any more apartments, and meanwhile, without local preference, we've been building a lot of it, have a lot on the line to build, and our people who work here and live here their lifetimes don't have a place to live. And I feel that, you know, my tax money should substitute people who live in my town before people who live in other towns that aren't meeting their goals of affordable housing. That's my issue. And well, I don't want to go any further because that's a big enough issue. I don't want to create a ghetto in North Amherst. You know, I like to see a mixed use development because it bothers me ethically and morally. So, you know, we passed Fair Housing laws, which you're referring to, but I don't want to go that way, but I mean, it bothers me that the biggest one that our neighbors aren't building affordable housing and that we are taking their responsibility while we have people who need places to live. And we have people in the preferred communities that are paying over $1,600, $2,000 a rent now and certainly could afford the mortgage of what the rent is costing them, but they can't find a place to live in town. And they live here and they work here and they were born, some of them were born here. That's my issue. And I don't know how that fits into all these hats. And I don't want to be thought of as a racist for saying that because that's not what I need. And I've shut everybody up. But it's a very, for me, that's very important, but our people have a really good chance of being able to live in these buildings. And I can't really see people coming from the East Coast where their jobs are and their families are and they'll support networks are to come and live in Amherst. That's two hours away from their family and their jobs. So I don't know how this is going to work out, which is why I keep asking all these stupid questions that sort of beat around the bush. Steve, I muted you while you were gone. So you have to read on me yourself. My apologies. All right. I may be muted, but I heard you, Hilda. I was I was able to hear your comments. Mr. Henry, I see your hand is up. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I do took offense to the I don't want to be able to get a comment. I thought it was very offensive. I'm sorry. I didn't know I was to say it. Yeah, it's but I mean, I don't want us to go back to 1950 1960s with the red lining where the Jews were all kicked out of Dorchester and Roxbury to go to the suburbs because of rules for banks and insurance companies were making. I don't want it bothers me. I mean, Jessica says they can't advertise it that way, but it seems to me the question the question about local preference is that you're concerned about. Is there a are there a lot of people in Amherst that could benefit from this housing? And is this a diverse community in Amherst that could benefit from the local preference? And I think the answer is yes, I think that there is with with local preference, even with local preference, we can have a very diverse population of people who would benefit and could qualify, especially with the assistance credit counseling, everything else that's and it's going to take a while for these things to be built. I think we can have I think you can create, even with local preference, a population that will have that will represent the community and it'll have a large number of BIPOC people in it and it'll have low income white people in it. I think it'll be diverse population. That's the goal, I think, and I don't think local preference precludes that. I don't I would like the I like would like it to be marketed for maybe give BIPOC a preference, but not exclusive. If that's what Jessica had in mind, I don't know. Mr. Henry, you had I like it to be integrated. I don't want it to be all BIPOC. And and a lot of the things that Joseph has said over these weeks is that local preference would make it non would would not make it diverse. It would make it too Anglo, too white. And and I'm hearing different things and different things that come to us now since the first meeting we had when she said, I hope you don't apply for local preference. And that's been bothering me ever since because I like it to be about a nice integrated community rather than people being said, this is the reservation where you have to live. I mean, all I can think of is Indian reservations. And I don't want that up here. And I don't know how to say it without sounding like I'm a terrible racist because I'm trying not to be I'm trying to be very inclusive and I don't know the language to use. And I can say it because I'm old and anybody can say whatever they want about me doesn't bother me. I don't want to come off as setting this up as an reservation. And that sounds terrible, but I don't know how else to say what I'm thinking. Yeah. Well, you know, let's let's continue on here. And maybe somebody else has a comment as well if they wish to make on local preference or has a question about how local preference would apply. We can delve into that. So if I if I may go back to my comment, you know, in the memo from Miss Allen and Valley Community Development, I thought she made a very good argument against the local preference because from day one, the fundamental goal was to increase home ownership for black, indigenous and people of color, households to shrink the race-based home ownership gap. So I thought I was understood that that was the intent of this project. So to hear Miss Greenbaum's position, it's very disconcerting one. But it does make a very good point that Amherst is a majority white community. And I don't think 30 houses going to BIPOC people is going to change that. But more than half of our school population is non-white. They don't live here. The public schools? So if you're talking, okay, if you're talking about ethnic schools, I don't want to have a debate away from what we're here for. But again, on the Afchans, I say something offensive. I won't say anything else. So I understand residents in the area has been defined by living in the area, working in the area, living either in the specific census track or working in the area, living in the general area, having your children go to school in the area. Those are all, those are three factors that qualify you for residency. Is there something else? Is there another? That's the law under the Chapter 40B program. That's how it's defined specifically in the 40B law and guidelines. Those three factors. That's local preference. That's what is in 40B. Mr. Meadows. I simply want to say that I think I heard Ms. Evans clearly when she said what local preference was included and how it was in the first priority. And I am in favor of local preference. There are many people who live in town, work in town, live in the area. And I think that that's the first priority. Is amongst that first priority? It was explained to us, simply said. And I'm also very much in favor of this development. Other comments? Mr. Wachila. I was going to ask Mr. Chair, is this the last topic we're discussing before we open it up to public comment? Yep. This is it. All right, that was my only question. We're getting to 8.30, so I want to make sure that we have a half hour for public comments. And Ms. Bresch, your hand is up. Yeah, it's been suggested that the board might consider a lower level of local preference for other projects that we've done recently. We've asked for 70% of local preference for the first lease or the first we don't have any purchases so far. But anyway, you might consider something less than 70%, something like 50%, which is sort of a compromise to, you know, to allow local preference, but not to weight that so heavily. And I suggest that that's a reasonable compromise, so you might consider that. I think that was one of the points that Ms. Allen made in her memo. Thank you. If I could just note that the local preference will come after the DIH preference, and we're not planning on the 100% of AMI units that are governed only by Commonwealth Builder. We're not planning on doing cooling in the way where it's sort of 70% of the units are dedicated to that local preference or a lower percentage. The plan is not to do pooling. What? No, there's, it was pooling in the, I thought I saw that pooling was specifically stated in the management plan. So I may have provided misinformation, not understanding. So let me, I just want to clarify that for the, this would only be applicable to the 80% AMI units. It would not be applicable to the 100% AMI because those are actually ruled under the Commonwealth Builders. So the local preference would only be applicable to 10 of the, not even if it was 70% of local preference, it would be available to seven of the homes. And there's no local preference for the hunt. There's no, you can add the local preference, but it won't be done in the way where it's like the first, you know, 70% of units are, that's the overriding preference criteria. It was layered behind the disproportionately income or the disproportionately impacted households preference. So for instance, if there was a Amherst resident that lived in either one of the qualified census tracts, they would meet the disproportionately impacted household definition. Correct. Oh, okay. That's what was going on. And there's a lot, and that's two of the big, that's a large part of the town, correct? Yes, it is. I think it's a third of the population and a third of the town, if I remember correctly. Is already in a designated census tract. Yep. And I did pull the census tract numbers for the population demographic information for those two census tracts. And I will tell you for the North Amherst census tract, which is census tract 8203. 8% of the population identifies as black. 4% identifies as Hispanic. And we have 9% that identify as Asian and then the other percentages are very nominal. And then for census tract 8205, which is just south of the North Amherst one, 1% of the population identifies as black in that census tract, and 12% identify as Hispanic. So just to give you some population percentage numbers for those two qualified census tracts in relation to the discussion that we're having, I just wanted to provide that for data purposes. I don't know if that's helpful or not, but. Formation. Mr. Wachilla. I would just ask Jessica, could you send us an update management plan with that corrected language before the next meeting? Just so we have everything accurate on that. We'll do. Thank you. So I want to go to I do want to go to public comment if I can. And I can, I will go to public comment now. It's 837. I want to give the people who have been attending. And you wish to speak the chance to do so. The public speaks at the discretion of the chair. What I'd like you to do is state your name and your address for the record. Keep your comments to about 3 minutes. And Rob, I gave my phone out of the office. It's not in the office. We keep tabs on the 3 minute timer. And I think the first, the first hand I see is from counselor Kathy Shane. Yep. And I'll promote Kathy Shane right now. And I just want to remind people that you can choose to participate in public comp by either using the raise hand function or pressing star 9 if we're using the telephone to join the meeting today. So I'll let Kathy talk. Hi. Am I here and you can hear me? Yep. Go ahead, counselor Shane. Thank you. I'm, I am Kathy Shane. I am a counselor, but I'm a resident of the district actually just a few blocks up for where this will be built. So I'm also a North Amherst resident and I'm speaking as a resident. I'm also speaking as an economist who knows some of the data sources people have been using. So I just want to make a couple of comments. Our schools are a majority minority and I'm talking about the primary school at the elementary school with 11% black and I just pulled them and I'd be glad to send them. And this is from Desi. This is a real as opposed to the US census. It's a complete sample. It's not a random sample. So we are 11% black, 24% Hispanic, 12% Asian in our elementary school. And one of the things you see up in the North Amherst, the census track Jessica has been doing, which qualifies as low income is a huge number of UMass college students. So they pull our income down, which helps us with designation as low income, but doesn't necessarily give us permanent. We have a high proportion of low income living in South Amherst in large rental projects, many of whom are minority. And I think they would qualify for this. So if it's liver work in Amherst, I think we have people living a half hour an hour away that are commuting in. They are our paraprofessionals. They work in our libraries. They work at UMass in custodial services and they work in the service sector fixing our toenails, cutting our hair. So we have a fair number and most of them are minorities. So I think local preference with liver work would in fact draw a fair number of minority broadly defined. So I think an interaction between what Jessica sent me, the various kinds of qualified federal programs that people can qualify for that would indicate there are also low income. Some of those don't apply anymore because we have free lunch programs and people don't have to apply for free lunch anymore. But for the adult programs, they may or may not because the asset limits are so restricted for the 50-year-olds or the 60-year-olds. You might not see them on a program because they just can't have any money and that's not who you're targeting. So I just want to say that I think local preference would work to draw in the kinds of people with this interaction that's been described. Secondly, I'm sure I know, I think Valley CDC is a fabulous organization and we have all been really supportive of this particular project. I'm not sure how much you've been able to investigate the new Federal Investment Reduction Act. It's called IRA, which is an unfortunate acronym because we all think of it as our savings accounts, but they've opened up the possibility of nonprofits getting direct credits. It no longer has to, what Mr. Meadows was saying is have to sell your credit. You can actually get a credit for putting in solar and home owners. So I think that's one of the things our elementary school is counting on for our solar and it's 30% so it's real money and none of us have seen this working through, but it's giving a spurt throughout the country to nonprofits and public sector being able to invest in energy-saving entities. So I think there is real hope there and those were just the two comments I wanted to make and I actually forwarded something to you, Jessica, on this which was around housing. What's in the Federal Act? Because some of this came online in 2023, so it's not like people have been drawing on it for a long period of time, but knowing how smart all of you are, I'm sure you are looking into it. So it's an effort to make the subsidized housing sector being energy efficient, not just subsidized housing. So those are the two main things I wanted to say and the other thing in terms of marketing and letting people know we have historic black churches in Amherst dating back centuries and going in and doing a presentation would be really important because they have a membership that they would reach out to and telling people to come in really early because we had a young woman living with us for a long time and we had to teach her how to budget herself so she could get a credit rating and just please don't buy coffee every time you go out, save it for a splurge so that she would get a good credit rating because you need them to have a credit rating and call it for a bank. So trying to get people in early with some basic coaching aside from managing and I'm sure you know all of this but I think and then the last thing as a counselor I would be happy to help as would my co-counselor and several other people in Amherst in doing outreach. So if we had material from you all we could go out and say this is coming here's who to contact here's where you could get more information so we can also be emissary so you don't have to wait for a passive we can go out and that's it those were my comments. Thank you Miss Shane. Are there other members of the public who wish to speak? If so please use the raise hand function on your screen. Well it looks like Mr. Chair about 90% of people in attendance are probably people from the project team. I see that now. I don't think any of them have their hands raised and I don't think any of them wish to provide comment. I guess we can give them another few seconds. I think you're right I don't see any other if somebody wishes to speak they can maybe raise their hand later. Let's move back to the if there's our process is that the applicant has a chance to respond to any public comment if they wish they don't have to and we can you can respond or we can go to further questions from the board and we can go on to other items on that agenda for tonight unless people wish to speak some more about local preference or anything that we brought up this this evening. I will just respond that as I noted earlier and I believe I emailed this to the counselor and our back and forth is that we do have that frequently asked question flyer which is up now so that is a very preliminary look at what it takes to be eligible and again highlighting to people that they should contact Valley and get some one-on-one client services to start getting prepped and ready for that so anybody is welcome to take that and share it with anybody that you'd like. Okay Ms. Greenbaugh. I would just like to clarify what I was asking before we went to public comment and that's if people live in one of the two census tracts in Amherst and get put in the first lottery does that count towards the percentage like Chris mentioned maybe 50% would they count towards the local preference or not could we get the 50% in addition to that or that's part of the 50% you know what I'm asking not sure I'm not I'm not clear I'm not clear what you're asking I'm asking the first category is people who live in the qualified census tract if any of them come from Amherst does that those people count as part of the local preference or is that in addition so the highest right yeah go ahead those census tracts are in Amherst so those qualified census tracts are in Amherst yes but it's only two it doesn't include East Hadley Road for instance so East Hadley Road would be part of the 50% and any who live in the two qualifying districts would not count or they would count as local they could also meet other other standards of the disproportionately impacted household so if they qualify for certain federal benefits even if they live in another outside the census tracts that would put them as a DIH household and within that first category of Commonwealth builders preferences so you can meet all three requirements correct you know first here you could meet all three you could be a historically disadvantaged community you can be living in the census tract and you could be a resident you could all you could be all three but you wouldn't get if we vote for if I'm wrong please just a second hill there am I wrong Miss Emma well it's the it's the um we can't again because of fair housing do any of the qualifications on race and ethnicity so it really is there is the historically disadvantaged criteria which is not race-based which is yes disproportionately impacted households I think you when I was saying the same thing just using different terminology correct I'm not accurate I'm sorry you know what I mean there's three levels very confusing I got it you can meet all three one person could fit all three can they not they could meet they could live in Amherst they could meet the qualifications for a disproportionately impacted household they could yes they could meet I don't know what the third one would be but it's the size it's the size so the size all right census tract yes there you go the size I think now are both ways of getting that DIH preference so you could have somebody that is the appropriately sized household who lives in Springfield but works in Amherst and they would meet all three and they would be in that first tier but does that if we vote for I'm still trying to figure this out if we vote for local preference whatever percent say 50 percent would the people that are already chosen count against that 50 percent so the polling concept that was introduced is not something that would apply here where it's sort of you count against that 50 percent or that 70 percent is and I apologize for the communication that I'm a hundred percent sure it's on our side um but that we won't be doing the pooling concept here so it's not about how much do you want to apply a local preference it's about whether you want to apply a local preference so I guess in that in that example I just gave if you had two appropriately sized households I think we need to have those talk with the because I'm totally confused all right so here's here let's not spend any more time trying to figure this out it's getting on nine o'clock we've got some other questions to ask what would be helpful is to um you know I think we ought to I think you should the applicant should work with the staff and the I will talk with with Chris and with Rob and try to outline what would be helpful to describe for us the local how local preference worked and how the various um tiers work under both the 80 percent and the 100 percent because they're evidently different so that would be helpful to have for our next meeting and that's on going to be in January so you'll have some time but I will get to with the staff and they can work directly with you to get information to all of us for the next meeting does that make sense does that work for everybody on the board craig and and Mr Henry and they just ask they just ask one quick question before we move away from local preference but first before I just want to make sure that that is going to meet your we won't move off I just want to make sure that that's going to meet your information needs for the next meeting yes it will okay good what's your Mr Meadows has his hands up first I want to go to him and then I'll come back to you okay I'm sorry to be it be the same drum I'm just trying to be helpful but the solar for the town also this the the solar has up to 70 percent of the cost as a in the IRS it is the last 10 percent is probably almost impossible to get but the rest of it getting up to 60 percent is relatively easy if you have the right contractor and the right solar installer with all us made product it's a fairly big nut that you can get thank you Mr Henry did I hear correctly that arguably maybe only six of these units would fall into that local preference bucket I think we need to I think we need to re-circle and I need to circle back with mass housing and make sure that I'm interpreting this correctly because even I'm getting confused so so let's I think part of it is give us an opportunity to connect you know next week is a holiday week and I'm not sure how much availability we will have it may be something that comes in sort of closer to the actual meeting date so you may not have it a week in advance we will do the best we can to get it to as soon as possible but I think the holiday week does complicate things a little bit so it would be helpful though to have some information from the town on exactly what you're looking for for information so that I can respond appropriately all right so you but you were right Mr Henry there was a that one point we were talking about only seven seventy percent seventy percent of the eighty percent here we've got to take some why it's confusing right seventy percent of the eighty percent of median income bucket would be seven homes that would where local preference would apply that was stated that I don't know if that's right or wrong okay thank you seventy percent of eighty percent and all right so Rob and Chris we'll try to get together maybe we can talk tomorrow about this early are you in this restaurant can I reach you tomorrow I'm not in tomorrow but Rob what she'll is in so all right can I come in listen can I come in listen when you go no you know I'm just going to talk no you and I cannot be on the same call with Rob nope open meeting law violation so I can't two or five two or five is too many okay yeah two of any number is too many yeah see just call me before call me anytime before noon tomorrow I'll pick up and we can talk very briefly if you want I keep going back to three dot night lyrics here okay all right so we've got a task is there anything else that people wish to discuss tonight on this application before we move to general public comment on any matter not for us tonight okay next up mr. Wachilla we almost had it what do we got I was gonna I was gonna remind the chair that we do have an item for discussion regarding the meeting schedule for the zba we don't have that until we get after public comment on any matter not for the board tonight right my apologies that's new business all right so we'll look over here to the attendees is anybody want to talk in anything except what we were talking about tonight I don't see us I don't see a soul raising their hand the next order of businesses matters not before the not considered in the last 48 hours and that is the schedule so take it away cool let me screen share real quick all right so just going off of the schedule we had for last year's meetings this is what we're looking at the time being I try to avoiding a lot of the major holidays including the Jewish holidays with the exception of Hanukkah because the date range for Hanukkah was is basically like a week and a half but this we're looking at the only thing it's different from last year's that the last meeting in December the board agreed to make tentative because of the fact that you know it's close to the holidays and if we don't have a permit scheduled for that specific date why even bother having the meeting to begin with and then of course in November you know we only have one meeting because the Thanksgiving holiday that's how it was this past year that's how it's going to be next year so you know I leave it open to board members so they have any suggestions or everybody's fine with this schedule as is we can go ahead and move forward voting upon proving it and then I can post it on the town website and just to heads up the the mean dates are on the far left and then everything else to the right is application deadlines for special permits and other permits and then you have the deadlines for the legal ad and then for the butters notices so for your information I will not be able to attend the June 27th the July 11th meeting okay thank you and then we have a meeting next week right before we go to that take a look at the schedule get to Rob if there if you have planned vacations or you know you can't be at some of these meetings let him know so we can then create panels that will be in attendance at each of these meetings we can give and we can give Mr. Meadow some more work as acting chair good movie loves we can even we can spread that responsibility around too if people wish to be chair a January 25th you cannot be January 25th okay that's correct thank you everyone yep all right now and if you have to consult your schedule let Rob know as soon or rather later so he can post this for next year then let's go to the remainder of this year Rob we have a meeting next week I understand that's going to be quick it's a simple issue whether it's quick or not but it's a simple issue correct yeah so basically the meeting next week I will not be there Chris brushups I actually be running the meeting or staffing on my behalf it's for a modification to an existing comprehensive permit for the North Square project North Amherst Coles Road so basically they have a commercial space in one of their buildings that they are trying to change the tenant for and condition 80 of that permit state so they have to come back to the board to modify the permit in order to do that so not only are they changing their tenant but they are trying to get rid of that condition or reward it in a way where they don't have to do that anymore so it's very minor that's the only thing that's going to be on the agenda and then the week after that January 4th we have this meeting again except we're going to go through conditions and waivers with the applicant and then we possibly might have another meeting scheduled we probably will after that sometime in early February because Steve you're going to be gone for most of January in Patagonia I'm very jealous and then after that we have do you want to keep going to the other means in January Steve or maybe we can do that next time yeah next time I think okay sounds good and listen so we have yeah that's that's it and I'm not going to be in Patagonia for the whole month but just for that okay actually bridges two of your two of our meetings so I'll miss it well have a good time okay I will all right any other questions comments if not well first off thank you everybody for the year of work you put in Rob and Chris we really appreciate it you do quite a job for us and we really we couldn't do it without you to the applicant thank you so much for your work Carolyn thank you for helping us out in this this application but I also really want to thank the board members we put in a lot of times and we've been doing a lot this last a couple of months with weekly meetings so thank you so much and I wish you all a merry Christmas and happy holidays and for those of you that are going to be here next week I'll see you before the new year if not happy new year as well it was a cheer thank you Rob and Chris thank you and everybody else don't we need to adjourn yes we do I just want to give everybody a chance to wish each other merry Christmas and happy holidays miss Murray want to say something yeah you're raising your hand miss Murray yeah so I just wanted to make sure that we do continue this hearing to January 4th oh yeah we have to do that we've got a motion that's coming on all right so two motions we have to consider the first is to continue the zba let me just hit the right number zba fy 2024-03 to be continued to January 4th at 6 p.m do I have such a motion and a second so I moved second it's moved and seconded any discussion if not the vote occurs on the motion chair votes aye mr meadows hi this green bone hi mr henry hi mr white hi Wilson carries the meeting on this subject on the valley development corporation application is continued to the fourth of january the next order of business is a motion to adjourn um do I have such a motion so moved do I have a second second this motion is moved and seconded it is not debatable um the vote occurs on the motion chair votes aye mr meadows hi is green bomb aye mr henry hi mr white hi vote is five zero motion is approved