 I'll call the meeting to order. Now I'll call the meeting to order. This is the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust meeting, Thursday, September 8th, and it's around 7 p.m. So we have a quorum, and so we will begin. We will start with first reviewing the minutes. So does anyone have any comments, edits, corrections? But before we do that, let me just thank Allegra for doing the minutes from last time, and George will be doing the minutes this time. Just going to look. Allegra's smiling. I'm going to look to see if anybody has their hand up. It looks like everyone is OK with the minutes. Yep. OK, everyone's nodding their heads. So we accept the minutes. Thank you. And thank you, George, for taking the minutes this evening. So we're now going to move to our next item on the agenda, which is a presentation by Valley CDC regarding Ball Lane, the Ball Lane Project. So Carol, do you want to introduce? I believe I just let Jessica come in and introduce Jessica to come into the room. And I noticed that Laura Baker is there also. Should I bring her in? Jessica, is she part of your thing? I know that she's going to be staying on for the entire meeting. I need to jump after I'm done. So if you'd like to bring her on in case she has anything to add, that's perfectly fine. But I think she's mostly staying quiet during the presentation. OK, well then, Laura, if you want to come in, raise your hand and we'll bring you in. OK, it's all yours, Jessica. OK, great. Let me share my screen. I do have a quick PowerPoint presentation to walk through our upcoming development that we are hoping to do at Ball Lane in North Amherst. So let me just share my screen and get that pulled up. And then we can walk through everything. OK, can everybody see? I'm going to try to make it full screen mode. There we go. Can everybody see that? Yes. Yes, perfect. Great. OK, so this is a development that we are working on on Ball Lane in North Amherst. This is a site that we have recently acquired. In fact, I saw in the Gazette this morning that we were now listed in the deeds for the property transfer when they do that weekly summary every week in the Gazette. So we are officially owners of this property, this eight acre property. And I'd like to walk you through our concept, what we're thinking here. This is going to be an affordable home ownership project with 30 homes. So I'd like to walk through and get feedback from the trust and see what you think of what we're scheming up here. So I know many of you know who we are, but for those who do not, Valley CDC is a nonprofit. We're based out of Northampton office, formed in 1988. And our purpose is to serve low and moderate income community members in Hampshire County, although we're starting to reach out more beyond Hampshire County with some of our programs. So we have three core programs at Valley. We do affordable housing development, first time home buyer assistance, and small business assistance. Since 1988, Valley has developed or partnered in development of 294 apartments and homes. All of these are 100% affordable. And in the development world, we're considered to be a small to medium size developer. Our projects range from 8 to 55 apartments. And many of you know of our active project that we have going right now in Amherst at East Gables. The team that's going to be working at the Bali Community Homes project is Valley is going to be serving as developer. We've hired Austin Design. Tom Chalmers is our architect. They're based out of Greenfield Mass. Our site designer is Peter Flinker from Dodson and Flinker based out of Florence Mass. And our civil engineer team is SVE Associates out of Chester, Vermont. So that is encompassing the development team. You will see Tom and Peter at community meetings with me. We are a team showcasing the proposed development. So you might often see them with me. As for the site, let's dive into a little bit to the location. This is the North Amherst area. We have an existing co-housing development here. This is the site outlined in yellow. We're fortunate to have two PVTA stops adjacent to the site. We're located near the Amherst Survival Center, the Mill District Development, which is a mixed use development with affordable units. Also near lots of open space, Puffer's Pond, Mill River Recreation Area, all connected to the south of the property. We're within 1.2 miles of the UMass Amherst campus on Route 33. And we are located in what's called a Qualified Census Track. And this is important because being located in the QCT opens up to possible funding sources. Jumping into the site itself, it's an 8.33 acre site. Previously developed industrial and agricultural site. The open fields here were formerly farmed. And then back here, there was a trucking company. So there are three buildings now that have been demolished and are now just concrete slabs. We have an existing house that remains on the property with an active tenant. We have site access from two different locations, Pulp Hill Road here, and then we have Route 63 here. Public water and sewer is available via Ball Lane, which is located right here. We have some wetlands delineations that have been conducted. And we know we've got wetlands back here on this back corner. And there's also an old country drainage ditch, which has now been delineated as wetlands. And that's right here in this kind of front portion. The photo is a little misleading that it's showing the buildings, but these buildings have been demolished and are now just concrete slabs. And it has a nice rolling topography. It's a beautiful site, and it runs from this back corner down here. So this is where the water has been collecting and draining too, so the land is heading in that direction. Just a couple of quick photos. So this photo here is standing at the back of the riparian area and looking out. This is Pulp Hill Road right here. So it's a beautiful site. This picture is taken right at the intersection of Route 63 in Pulp Hill Road, so this is looking back towards the riparian area and those back wetlands area. And then here, closer to Ball Lane, is where we've had some previously disturbed land. This is the existing house. And this is the concrete slabs from the previous trucking company. So our design concept at this point is really trying to talk development where development has already occurred on the site and trying to leave the frontage as much as feasible with this development. So focusing the homes back in this area, possibly here, accessing our utilities off of Ball Lane. We're looking at 30 mixed income duplex homes. So we're looking at 15 structures, duplexes, 30 homes, mostly a mix of two bedroom and three bedroom. Right now we are proposing 20 deed restricted as affordable homes and 10 would be sold at the market rate. We're looking at the co-housing development that's up the road as kind of a model of how this could be designed, looking at having homes clustered around common open spaces, having common parking areas, and really trying to preserve this frontage and this view from Route 63 as much as possible. In terms of buildings design, we're looking at a smaller footprint. We were using the term cottage style, although I think the architecture may or may not end up looking like cottages, but really trying to keep a smaller home. So ranging anywhere from 900 square feet to the largest of a three bedroom being 1,300 square feet, we're really trying to utilize passive solar in the design of the buildings. We have a beautifully open site that faces south and gets lots of sunlight. So really looking to see how we can design these homes to be a passive solar so that they're really taking advantage of the winter sun to heat the homes in the winter. But designing in such a way that the sun is shaded from entering the home in the heat of the summer. Also looking at how we can incorporate interior and exterior storage space into these buildings as well to provide that amenity for the future homeowners. And again, as I noted, big open site, lots of sun, trying to find a way to make sure that these structures also have photovoltaics. Not only because they're kind of the right thing to do in terms of climate change, but also it helps the homeowners with operating costs moving ahead. So thinking about that as well. You know and I know that the market is cuckoo bananas out there. But I just wanted to throw up some numbers in terms of what the housing market trends are. As of yesterday, I pulled these numbers. This is a year-to-year comparison from September 2019 through August 2022. This is from realtor.com. You'll see that the listing prices and the sales prices continue to creep up. We have almost a 40% increase from August 22 to September 2021. That is huge. The price per square foot is also escalating astronomically. You see this big jump up looking at about $253 per square foot in the sales of homes. And these are not even new homes. This could be a mix of new homes and homes that have aged. So just to give you a sense of what the numbers are saying in terms of the market. So what we're looking here for the restricted homes, the affordable homes is we'd be available. Right now we're thinking 10 homes would be available to households at 80% income and then another 10 for 100% income. And as you all know that HUD has very specific income and eligibility for these income restricted percentages based on the household size. So this is as of April 2022. These are updated annually. So we may see these numbers change over the course. And we likely will see these numbers change over the course of the time that it takes us to take this project from concept to actual construction. And by the time we sell these homes. But as of now, this is the point of the income eligibility by household size. So a family of 4, 80% income would be about $75,000 income. 100% income for a family of 4 would be 94,000. And as I noted, these are going to be smaller footprint homes. Two bedrooms ranging from probably around 900 square feet to 1,100 square feet. And looking at sales prices of about 170 to about 240 at this point in time. Now, any of these things could change based on construction pricing, based on the marketability. But again, point in time right now, these are the numbers that we're looking at for the sales. And for the three bedroom looking at a range of about 1,200 square feet to 1,300 square feet with sales prices ranging anywhere from 200 to 270,000. And we will be getting a market study here within the next, I'd say, four to six months to sort of validate some of these numbers for us. And like any affordable housing project, we have there's challenges in the budgets. As you know, the construction costs are crazy right now. You know this with the Jones Library and what's happening in your community. It's very high construction costs, very unpredictable. Right now we have been vetting other contractors and GCs to try to get a sense of what an estimated square footage cost would be for the construction of these new homes. We're hearing anywhere between 325 to 350 per square foot for just the building construction. That does not include the cost of the PV installation or the cost to do the site work. So with these higher construction costs that are so variable and so unpredictable, the higher costs therefore result in a larger gap for the restricted units. There's only so much subsidy that we can get from the sources that we're looking to. So as construction prices increase, increase that gap also continues to increase in terms of how much we're able to subsidize for those units. Also with the higher cost of construction means that there's gonna be a higher market rate price point. So we have not yet pinpoint what those market rate units may end up having to be sold for because of the just the unknown certainties with construction costs. The other thing that we're looking at in today's housing market and what's becoming a challenge is the climbing interest rates and how this is going to impact the buying power of the income eligible households that would be eligible for the 80% or the 100% AMI homes. So those interest rates, I went and looked at the Freddie Mac numbers this morning. So the fixed rate mortgage for August is 5.22. In January, it was 3.45. So as that number continues to increase, that's gonna make it that much more difficult or how much more money somebody is gonna need to put in in order to be able to afford one of these homes. The subsidy projects that are the subsidy sources that we're looking at are requiring our 3% down payment requiring closing costs. So that's additional money that the buyer will have to bring to the table. We're seeing right now in our modeling that in order to keep the housing costs below 30% of the household income for the buyer, they are going to need a fairly substantial debt free either soft second or first time home buyer payment to associate that. And when I say debt free, this is something that Donna Cabana our homeowner expert at Valley has talked to me about is that if somebody has to end up paying back a first time home buyer payment, the debt to income ratio doesn't change for them and it makes it that much more difficult. So really having something that's a grant or gift to them that helps them bring down that mortgage payment is really ultimately what we'd be needing I think for these home buyers. So one of the programs that we are looking at to subsidize the development costs is the Commonwealth Builder Program. This is a program that's through mass housing. So this is a fairly new program. It's been around for a couple of years. Since 2008, there really has not been any subsidies available for affordable home ownership programs. It's mostly been for rental programs. So this is a new initiative. It's really only available in those communities that have a qualified census tract or a gateway city. The whole purpose of the program is to really assist changing the dynamic in terms of racial wealth gap and helping homeowners that have been typically left out of the housing market be able to purchase homes. So it's shifting the dynamic of black homeowners being able to be higher in the market and also taking advantage of that equity that the rest of us have able to take advantage of. I know that most of my equity in my home, for me is in my house. And so this is a program that's allowing a greater diversity of home ownership. So they do have some requirements for the affordable homes. It has to be a first time home buyer. It has to be somebody who's not home to home in the prior three years unless they're displaced or a homemaker or a single parent or they've been an owner of a mobile home. So those are kind of the exceptions to the rule but have not owned a home in the prior three years. They need to have assets that are less than $100,000 and they have to be able to qualify for mortgage. They have to be able to provide at least a 3% down payment or be approved for a down payment assistance program. They have to be able to pay closing costs and they have to complete home ownership counseling by the time of purchase, which works well for Valley because we offer home ownership counseling. It's part of our programming. So something naturally that Valley can just step in and assist with for home buyers. Now the Commonwealth Builders Program also has preferences for the home buyers for the affordable homes. So these would be households living in the qualified census tract. These would be low income households or households that qualify for certain federal programs. And this has been blended with, there was a shift in the guidelines for Commonwealth Builder about six months ago where there was an infusion of ARPA money that is coming into the program. And with the infusion of ARPA money, these are the new home buyer preferences specifically with a certain federal program. So if there's a family that gets free and reduced lunch or is a SNAP beneficiary, that also qualifies for a preference for the home buyers under the Commonwealth Builders Programs. And Valley is taking this very seriously and we intend to market pretty heavily to make sure that we're trying to capture as many home buyers that need these preferences for the Commonwealth Builder Program. Just to give you a sense of the qualified census tracts in Western Mass. So here is the North Amherst QCT. The areas in purple are the other QCTs in the area. These again are going to be areas that we're going to be as we develop a marketing plan for these units, looking to see how we can reach out to potential home buyers that are also located in these areas. Just a couple of other items to note. We are required to meet the fair housing requirements so that the homes will have to go through a lottery process and there will be a wait list similar to a rental project. So that is something that we need to abide by. We have to do a marketing plan and a fair housing plan as part of it. In terms of the affordable home restriction terms, the Commonwealth Builders Program has a limit of 30 years from the initial sale for the restriction for the deed restriction on the home. And really again, to sort of address the racial gap, the racial wealth gap, the program is really designed to try to keep homes within the family. And so the restrictions are varied between years one and 15 and 16 and 30. There is a provision to allow a buy-right transfer to an immediate family during the restriction term if that family member stays in the home. So typically if a house goes up, if a deed restricted home goes up for sale, it's the first buyer in or the first one who puts an offer that's able to purchase that home. During this provision with this program, we have that buy-right transfer to an immediate family member. And as I noted, those restrainer restrictions are varied between year one and 15 versus 16 to 30, depending on how much equity they can get. It's fairly restricted one through 15 and it becomes very unrestricted year 16 through 30. These homes will also have a subject to a right of first refusal that's held by the town. So as a unit is sold, if the town decides to act on that right of first refusal, they can reset the 30 years if they choose to. There's other provisions that the town can do under that right of first refusal. And we're looking that this will be a condo association or homeowners association. We will sell the units. This will not be an ongoing operational project for Valley. We will sell to the homeowners and then the homeowners we could assist on setting up a condo association to help make sure that they've got their footing and they're moving in the right direction. But eventually Valley will be stepping away and the property will be managed by a condo association or homeowner association. So here is our timeline and sort of next steps of where we are. So we purchased the property in August. We'll be spending the next several months on site and building design and community engagement. We are going to be at the district one neighborhood association barbecue on this Sunday. We will have tables. We will have our first kind of concept drawings out for comments and feedback. So we hope that people would be willing to come and take a glimpse of what we've come up with so far. And we really are looking for feedback on different ways to access the site, different ways that the homes can be cited on the site. So we hope that you're able to attend if you are. We do intend to submit a CPA application in September. It's my hope that the trust might be willing to write a letter of support that we could submit with that CPA application if at all possible. And then looking at 2023, we'd be heading into permitting. We'd be looking for additional local funding requests, looking for other public subsidy requests. If all goes according to plan and we're able to get all of our financing in place, we would start the finance closing in 2024, starting construction and having all of the units built and sold by 2026. So like anything in affordable housing world, things take time, nothing is quick and easy. It's kind of the slow slog, but we are ready and we're very excited about this project. So that's it. I am happy to take any questions from any of the members. I can stop sharing so that we can look at each other's faces and happy to hear what you have to say. I think, I don't know that we need to do anything formal here if somebody has a question that you hear enough silence to speak in then please ask it. Hey, Nate, welcome. Well, I was, I'm probably a dumb question. I have lots of dumb questions. It seemed to me that the one of the funding things that you were thinking of said that or the, yeah, the thing that I can't remember the name of, but it said 40% AMI. People had to be low income of 40%. So how does that match whatever you're doing? Yeah, so those are the ARPA guidelines. So those are, those three provisions are pulled specifically out of what qualifies as what's called as a disproportionately, I can't remember the exact term under the ARPA language, but those are the three provisions. So yes, in terms of those poverty amounts, folks that fall into that category are not gonna be likely to be able to purchase a home. They're not gonna have the funding. But I think what it's important to understand under those ARPA guidelines is those that are, currently located in a qualifying census tract too, and then those households that take advantage of any of those federal benefits. So any family that's getting SNAP, any family that's, you know, free or reduced lunch, anything that was on that list, Pell Grants, if these are federal funds that your family has received or your household has received, you would be considered a preferred home buyer under the Commonwealth Builders Program. Okay. Paul has his hand up. So two quick questions. One is, are you able to provide any preference for Amherst residents? And secondly, I know there's a lot of concern about this being a 21E site, meaning that the trucking company's hazardous waste, do you have a budget for that? Have you done any assessment of that? Yes, so yep. So we did a phase one and a phase two. So the phase one looks at all of the records. We determined where there was potential for contamination on the site. And then we did some limited subsurface investigations. We had OTO environmental consultants out, they dug a bunch of holes, they collected soil samples, they took them back to the lab. Everything came up clean. So, you know, we wouldn't be probably sitting here if the site was contaminated quite frankly. So we have done our due diligence in terms of the environmental contamination aspect of it and have reports showing us that the site as far as we know and the places that they dug are clean. And where they dug is where we presume to have the most potential for environmental contamination. In terms of Amherst preference. So in terms of Amherst preference, I mean, North Amherst is a qualified census tract. So yes, I think that, you know, we can be pulling from folks in that neighborhood if there is interest for homeowners. I also, you know, if there's families that you are aware of there that are receiving any of those federal benefits, again, you know, we are marketing to those individuals. In terms of the local preference, I think it's a tricky question. I think there's, it is fair housing and we do have to do a marketing plan. So we are going to be reaching out to all of those other communities in those other areas that may have households that want to live in this great community of Amherst, wants to take it, you know, wants to send their kids to the great Amherst schools. And we want to make sure that people have the ability to do that and are able to be supplied. We have to go through a lottery process. So, you know, it's kind of a luck of the draw. Yeah, so I would get, I would just say that in our, in your marketing plan you should consider, when you have talked about sort of the continuation of a family continuing to own the house because you want that continuity of community, that there are a lot of people who live in Amherst who rent in Amherst, cannot afford to purchase in Amherst. We love to purchase in Amherst. And I guess my question is how do we, I hear you saying that we're not under the law. We can't prioritize local or can be. Because this is your project you purchased it and you're using state federal funds to build it. Well, I mean, so I guess the question is, is there a way to give priority to residents of Amherst somehow in this kind of when you do your marketing plan? So let me, let me think about this. And so this is not funded by DHCD. This is going to be funded to the Commonwealth builders. Now, whether they have a local preference system like DHCD does for their rental units, I'm not aware of. I will, I will say that Valley is having some very serious conversations internally and especially on our board level in terms of the, of local preference in general and sort of the systematic resists continuity of local preference. And so the board is really trying to think this through right now. And I don't feel like I can give you an absolute answer until the board has sort of gone through their policy process in terms of how they want to deal with local preference moving forward. We understand communities want to provide housing for the people that live there. And I absolutely think anybody who wants to live in one of these homes and lives in Amherst and is qualifies under the income qualifications and also meets any of those preferences under the Commonwealth Builder Program should absolutely apply for a unit and they should put their name into the lottery process. Now, whether we're going to have a local preference pool I'm not sure we haven't landed on that yet. So I would just say is from my perspective but I ask that you do because I think there are a lot I do know families who live in Amherst who would like to stay in Amherst and have kids in Amherst would like to start to build one there well through this but can't afford it and might wind up and it'd be ridiculous to have them move to a neighboring community and have someone move here. I mean, when they already are vested in our community with their children in the school system. So I don't know how you do that. I think it's a challenge and I understand that how you're struggling with the values at play in here. But from our perspective or from my perspective as town manager but I think many people in the town you know the town often steps up and works on affordable housing and contributes a lot towards affordable housing and this investment is really to help sustain and stabilize our community. So people who grow up here who finally can't afford to live here then get pushed out. We would rather have those people who grew up here who wanna be able to afford to live here to be able to live here too. So I see John who's in the attendees wants to ask a question. So if anybody wants somebody objects, I'm gonna. Oh, can I ask a question too? Oh yeah, I'm sorry, sorry. That's okay. I guess my question was with the lottery process because I heard you talking a little bit about the idea of closing the wealth gap. I mean the racial wealth gap. So I guess with the lottery process what is done to ensure that some black homeowners are in the mixes, they're like a point preference system. And if that is the case what would get more points or is that not how it works? So I can explain how it works in our rental properties and we still need to sort of figure out how would work under the home ownership model whether it's the same model or whether there's variations. But under the rental model we have there is a preference pools. And so people are placed into pools and in fact at East Gables there is also a local preference pool. But I will note that on the local preference pool what they do is they make sure from a racial standpoint that the racial makeup of the local preference pool matches the regional racial makeup of the region. And so they will bring people into that local preference pool to make sure that the numbers balance out. And there is, so we do have sort of a weighted system I guess is the way to explain it, it's not weighted it's just that there's preference pools and there's numbers pulled from various pools. So we could look at using that same model that we use in our rental properties but we haven't landed on it yet if it makes sense under the home ownership. Risha? So two questions, maybe I'll start with the dumber one which is I missed what the benefit of the Commonwealth Builder program is what does it do for the home buyers? So what it does is it's a subsidy that's provided to the developer to offset the cost so it allows us to sell the unit at a lower cost than what it costs to build it. Okay. And then I'm just interested you, your first slide said that you're 100% affordable and this will be not 100% affordable it'll be marked why is it different or? So why are we not doing 100% affordable? I think because of the numbers quite frankly we need some of those marker rate units to offset the cost of the subsidized units. The construction costs are so high that we do need we need to be able to do it to offset it. We wouldn't be able to receive enough subsidy otherwise to make the project financially viable. Thanks. Okay. Thank you. Very excited about this project. I actually live in North Amherst and I've been looking at that piece of property and hoping that we could develop it into affordable housing. So wonderful initiative. But I do have a question that's a little bit like Paul's question which is, I think you asked him how you should do marketing. I wanna know how is it you're gonna do marketing to families here in Amherst to make sure that they know that this is available to them. And I also think we should think about those who work in Amherst. So the teachers, the police, first responders, people who work at UMass Amherst College, people who would love to be able to live here but can't. So I think the marketing is really, really critical to ensure accessibility here by people who live and want to live, actually commit themselves to working in Amherst and really wanna live here. But definitely families who have their kids in school here and really wanna stay here. I think that is critical that we provide support for them. Yes, we have typically very robust marketing plans with any of our projects. We look to identify all of the newspapers, all of the radio stations. We have sample ads that we put together. We figure out how many community meetings we're gonna hold ahead of advance. We really do have quite a robust marketing process that happens with any of the units because there's so few and far between. I also think word of mouth is probably one of the best ways to get to let people know. So as part of any of these projects, we'd be letting you know, we'd be letting anybody in the municipal government know, they can get the word out. We always rely heavily on planning department to let people know what is happening. So again, I think between our marketing plan and hopefully words of mouth, I think these units are gonna go fast. I really do. Alicia. I mean, Ashley. I'm sorry. Yes, that's what I mean. That's okay. That's okay. Well, so I understand this is home ownership, but, and this is more for like the whole board. And maybe it is in there that I didn't read the real details, but is there a way to compare like per unit cost so that we know going forward with rentals and with people that own places, how much is each unit costing like us so that we are kind of getting our most bang for the buck. We're like, we're offering the most to a family for what we're spending. And I kind of get the feeling that ownership is probably, it's a different track, but I just want to be able to house the most people the most efficiently. And I just don't, I don't know personally how to gauge that, you know? So I'm just trying to understand your question. So understanding what it costs per unit to build, is that your question? And then understanding how the town money, how much it offsets or how much that it plays into what it costs to build a home. Is that the question? Yeah. So that me, who is not really familiar with these numbers can kind of start knowing what is an ownership and rentals are different, obviously. So I just want to know like a way to compare so that in general, all the different projects, we are knowing what we're getting for each unit and if we're serving my family the best way possible. Not just for this project, but for any project because it's hard to conceptualize. I'm kind of new to these things. And I wonder if there's a way to compare and contrast what a person is getting a person or a family for each unit and what we're getting, you know? Not just financially, but if we're getting our most out of things, does that make any sense? I think I understand where you're going for. I think it's more of a larger concept of what you're looking for from the board members in terms of getting an understanding. I will tell you right now that with the construction costs the way they are, these units are now penciling out at about $500,000 per unit to build. So, you know, construction pricing really plays a huge factor on how much bang for your buck you're getting. You know, a couple of years ago before the pandemic, construction costs were probably, we would estimate around $200 per square foot. Now we're looking at 325 to 350 per square foot. So that's just to give you some context over from a, like it just a square foot, how much it costs to build. And that's kind of like all in, you know, roof, building, mechanical systems, the whole thing, that's what it takes to cost. And that number changes over time, depending on where construction is at. It really can vary and it's varied a lot in the past year. It's just gone bananas and it's been really hard. Thank you. You're welcome. Paul, do you have another question or something? I do. So first, I think, you know, on Ashley's, I think we're gonna, Ashley's point, we're gonna have a really good comparables with Belcher Town Road because it's a rental. This is home ownership to build on what Allegra said. This is a unique opportunity for wealth building. And I would really ask you to be very transparent with us about what your criteria are and that you review that with us so that we're alert to what you're, you know, what CDs, what you're bringing into the mix in terms of decision making is, I think the demand for home ownership is really high. That's why I'm really concerned about the idea that, you know, Amherst, there are just, there's so many families in Amherst who would like to really put their stakes down in Amherst who have already invested their children into our school system and stuff. And so I wanna make sure that we do that. And then the third thing I'd ask if Nate can make sure that your presentation can go into our packet that goes online that our packets get updated online as well. Cause I think that this is a really good presentation and we appreciate that. Ashley, is your hand, do you have something else with your hand just still up? Okay, John, do you still wanna say something? Sure. Are you talking? You muted yourself, I think. Okay. And now I'm having mine. There you are. Oh, cause on my screen it says I'm muted now, but that's okay if you can hear me. That's the goal. We can hear you. I had a couple of things to say. In terms of the cost of the trust per unit, Nate did some analysis some years ago and they vary remarkably. And he might wanna say a little bit more about that, but like for rental developments we're generally historically looking at $30,000 to $40,000 per unit, but for home ownership, like Amherst Community Land Trust, we can be putting in over $300,000 per unit because there's no leverage for those projects or very little. They really depend substantially on the housing trust or CPA money for financing those projects. So there's just tremendous variability and a lot of it depends on the financing available. So it's hard to compare honestly from one project to another. Okay. Other thing I wanted to say, which is to kind of reinforce what certainly what Paul said is that the low income population of Amherst has a significant number of non-whites in it. It's not entirely white by any means. So when you do have local preference, there really is an opportunity to bring in people who are different race and ethnic backgrounds. Part of that is because in addition to the housing developments that we have that serve students, there are also housing developments that serve families that are low income. So if you focus your recruitment on those, there really is an opportunity to bring in black, Hispanic, people or households into this process. I think it's potentially significant numbers. Thanks, John, that's helpful. Um, Nate. Hi, thanks, everyone. I'm Nate Maloya planner with the town. Is this still going to be permitted as a comprehensive permit, Jessica? Or, you know, we haven't talked in a while, but is that the route? Yeah, that's still the route that we're thinking. Yeah. All right, yeah, I was thinking that after this, you know, I just emailed about the CPA the other day, but I think it'd be great if staff met with, you know, you and your team to talk about this project. That'd be great, yeah. You know, we've also been talking about, you know, what offsite improvements are necessary for this. So what has to happen with utilities, you know, ball lane, sidewalks, other things like that, offsite amenities. So, yeah, and just with the local preference. I actually think that with home ownership, you still, we still can have a local preference for, you know, the first initial lottery for the ownership units. I understand that it is something that sometimes is counterintuitive to have one, right? So something that the housing authority says it can be exclusionary because, you know, depending on how, what's covered, it's gone back and forth. You know, I understand that, but I do think hearing everyone that, you know, I think that through permitting, we typically say to the extent possible, you know, we still have to justify it to the funders and everyone and in the marketing plan. But if we can justify a local preference, then typically the ZBA says to do that, right? So, you know, we'd work with you and we'd say what, you know, what's there. So, you know, hearing that tonight, I feel like I think that's something that, you know, I, you know, we work to try to satisfy, you know, and I understand what you're saying in terms to have the racial side, you know, the percentages of the demographics have to match the pool. And if they don't, we brought in that local preference and that's fine. But I agree. I think there's probably a number of households in Amherst that could be renting or, you know, that would qualify that we could, you know, we could really help out local families. So yeah, no, I think this is really exciting. I mean, you know, look forward to it. It's interesting when you have the qualified census tracks that there are really not many in Western Mass. For some reason, you know, Amherst, like when we applied, I thought every community had an opportunity. I guess it's just the way it worked out. There aren't many. So it's just strange to me that, you know, it's great you can reach out to Greenfield and then, you know, there's some south of us, but then it's like North Adams to Athol or to Worcester. And to me, that seems, you know, more than just this region. That's a pretty far area to reach out to in terms of marketing. Not that it's a bad thing, but it's like, wow, that's really big. I feel like we'd have enough need without having to go 50 miles in either direction. But I would like to move on before too long if we can. I'm sure this will not be the last time we talk about this, but Allegra, you got your hand up. I guess this was just kind of more of a trust question and an ARPA question in terms of when all the money has to be spent and if some of the money put aside for affordable housing initiatives might be put into a pool for like down payment assistance, if that is a possibility or if that would not be within the timeframe that the money has to be spent or if that money has already been allocated in some way that I am not yet aware of. I don't know if the timing works. That's a great idea though. That would be an interesting use of the funds actually. It's a great idea. We'd have to look at how the timing makes it. We do have a limit on when we can spend the ARPA funds. Thank you. Thanks for the suggestion. If we're good on this, for at least for now, for the moment, I'm sure people will have lots of ideas after we stop talking and we'll have lots more chances. I'm sure you can reach out to Jessica whenever anybody feels like it. And yeah. Feel free to shoot me an email if you have any follow up questions. And like I said, we'll be at the Dona Barbecue on Sunday. So we will have our first iterations of site plans and we're hoping lots of people will give us feedback and comments. So just helps us refine when we sort of can finally hear back from the neighbors. So feel free. All right, great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Can I just tell you, is there a way to share the site plans with us? I think what we'd like to do is just at least get through the first iteration of community feedback from this past this upcoming weekend and then we'll do some refinements and then we'll come back to you with whatever gets refined. We've got like, we have a lot of different variations going on right now. We had about 20 on the wall the other day. So I'd like to sort of nary them down a little bit. I don't think I want to present 22. And then we'll definitely come back. Absolutely. Come back and start sharing those with you. Thank you. Okay. So then I'm gonna, I think I will ask Jonathan to probably leave and I will invite, where did she go? Michelle in so that we can and turn the whole thing over to Erica to talk about our planning for forum. Great. And John too, maybe. And John Shear, I think. Aren't you there? You're in both places at once somehow. Yep. And I just want to remind people that Dona means district one neighborhood association because I didn't know what that was even though I'm in district one myself but I got it from Kathy Schoen who is one of the town council leaders of this. Okay. So we're now going to talk about the forum that's coming up this Tuesday. So hopefully everybody has that on their calendar and hopefully everyone will be able to attend. It's going to be on Zoom. And Nate has shared the link with Michelle for her wonderful flyer. It's going to be called the new affordable housing development for families. It's at 630 and we may go till 830 depending on how much Q&A there is. We're co-sponsoring it along with wayfinders with the League of Women Voters. So thank you, John, for reaching out to them. And it's great that they are co-sponsoring this with us. We are looking for a trust member to help us with the question and answer piece of this. So if someone can just think about it while I go just very quickly through what Carol and I are going to present on, we're going to present on our mission. We're going to talk about our achievements and our accomplishments. We're going to talk about our own new projects and next steps. And then as Risha recommended, we're actually going to end our first section which is the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust Section with an ask of the attendees. Then we're going to hand it over to wayfinders. So Michelle, would you like to talk about what wayfinders is going to do? Sure, thank you. And thank you for inviting me this evening. The beginning, Keith Ferry, our president will give just an overview of who wayfinders is and the programs that we offer. And then property management is going to come in and talk about the existing properties that we manage and the benefits that we offer those tenants. And then Diane Smith will speak quickly about our proposal, what we propose to the town. And then our architects are going to come in and speak about the initial concept which is still concept. And I want to stress that, still concept. And John, I think you have reached out to some community members that I believe will speak to the support of the project first before we open up to Q&A. Yeah, mute John. There you go. I actually reached out to about 30 organizations, including a few individuals, but mostly organizations to publicize the event. And my guess is we'll probably have at least 50 to 60 people there based on past events that we've sponsored over Zoom. So I think that's all good. Yes, and I have reached out to other people to see if they could speak about the need for the project. And that would include the Jewish community of Amherst which is in the neighborhood, so to speak. Someone for the Amherst Housing Authority and also one other organization that I'm not. Oh, I know, Family Outreach of Amherst. I think Francine Rodriguez will be attending and she can also speak to the need. So I haven't asked a lot of people to speak to the need because it's gonna be towards the end of the program when we have that opportunity. But I thought if we had a few people doing that, that would be good. And I guess Michelle was gonna take a shot at getting somebody potentially from Olympia Oaks to a tenant potentially to talk about their experiences. And we do have a tenant. I don't know if the tenant is from Olympia Oaks or from Butternut Farm, but it's from one of our developments who is willing to speak about her experience living in one of our complexes. Thank you, Michelle. And then we're gonna open up for questions. So it's gonna be hard for us to monitor and also watch the questions. So we're asking for one of our trust members to help us with this. We're gonna use the question and answer function which you can see at the bottom here. We're also gonna ask people if they come up with questions afterwards that they can submit questions afterwards as well, if they wanna be on our mailing list to send us their email. But we really would like to have a trust member helping us just watch what questions come up. So we wanna make sure that people are heard and that they're able to ask questions. Carol? I'm just gonna say that more emphatically. We need someone to volunteer. And the task will be watching the Q&A and the chat if it's there. And I'm kind of emceeing the Q&A. And so at some point, people will be able to ask questions directly but also at some point I'll say whoever it is, Joe Schmo. So what have you seen in the questions? Is there something that we should be answering that people have said? And so the task is to look at that stuff as it comes in and just see if there's something there that we are already paying attention to. And it would be really helpful to have someone volunteer to do that. We have a question about this as well. And if we, at the beginning, if we can ask the participants to address it either to Wayfinders or to the trust or to even the architects, it'll make it easier for whoever's going to be responsible for saying, oh, we've got a question here for Wayfinders or we've got a question here for the architect. And- But how would I, that's, we could talk, we would sort this out later, but it seems to me that I won't know that they sent you a question by any means. So if I'm trying to emcee it, I won't know that, oh, Wayfinders got a question. Oh, the architect, how am I going to know that? I could say, hey, does Wayfinders or the architect have a question to answer? I could do that, I guess. That would probably work. Could be in the Q and A, Carol. In the Q and A, they can type in. I have a question. They're asking. I can see all the questions. Okay. All right, Nate's got his hands up, or hand up. Nate. Thanks. Yeah, my yellow hand up. The, yeah, so, you know, I think the Q and A, what's nice about that is, you know, the IT department recommended it because you can answer, and it's nested within the question. But, you know, the Q and A will be visible to everyone and it will be recorded. So I mean, I guess, you know, I'm always hesitant to try to answer every question that's being asked because then it gets into the back and forth. So I think it's, you know, I think just the presentation and then, you know, hearing people is really important, not necessarily answering them that evening. And so this is just the first of many hearings. I was just looking at the Valley CDC's Northampton Road project. And I think there was like seven ZBA hearings for the comprehensive permit. And there's, you know, like 300 pages of public comment that was submitted. So, you know, I don't, I think we, you know, this is just the first, you know, kind of public meeting of this. But like I said, we will set up a webpage and a form on our, the town's webpage where some people can submit comments, whether they type it in or, you know, email, already, you know, typed in letter or something. But I just wanted to say that I don't, I'm not expecting every question or comment to be responded to. I just think it's going to be a great way to catalog it all using that Q and A function. And then, you know, we can always respond after the fact with a, you know, a different document or something. But I'm hoping that's the, you know, I just want to say that I, Carol, when you say you expect someone to monitor it, I hope we don't think someone is going to be answering every question that's being asked. No, no, I do not. I wasn't, that's why it came across as what I was suggesting and I didn't do a very good job of saying what I was trying to say. No, I know that. I mean, I think we would like to say, if there's a website, then it would be really great to be able to tell people how to get to that or whatever the thing that you just said, that it's on the website, you can make comments here. That would be a great thing to be able to tell people. We can, I don't, we can put that some, I don't know how we put that actually, but if there's a chat, we could, it's not ready yet. Put it in a chat. We'll just say that it's coming, right? We put it, usually we put it under the planning department or as EVA and we just set up a, you know, product webpage. Okay, well, we, okay, we could say, well, if you join, if you get on our mailing list, we'll send you the link when we have it. Become a friend of the trust and you'll learn more. You can be a friend, be our friend and we'll let you know, yeah. Okay, so I wasn't thinking that we were going to answer every question while we're going through it, but that if people had questions that somebody thought this would be a good one to answer now and somebody was watching that, then we could try to have that one answered. But if it's just too complicated, that's okay, whatever. Well, go with, I don't know. Well, Nate, let me ask you this specifically. Will we have the Q&A and a chat open or only a Q&A open? I did it right now that both are, but my preference would be to close, I can disable the chat because if we're doing the Q&A and I just want to have one of those functions available. And I'm always, the meeting will be reported. Like I said, all the questions and answers will be reported, even transcripted, save that way. So I can always honor them as well. I plan to be there and helping out with those in peace. Well, we were, it feels important to know that it's because we were sort of thinking at least that in part of what we were saying, we're going to invite people if they were interested in more to be able to give us their email so we could add them to our mailing list. And we were going to suggest they put that in the chat. So if there's no chat, we won't do that, but it'll be helpful to know whether there is or there isn't. We could ask them to put it in a Q&A thing, I guess. Yeah, I mean, so yeah, I mean, right now the way that I've set the Q&A up in the chat is that it's visible to everyone and anytime someone types in, it's visible to everyone. That way there's no risk of open meeting law violation. And so it's really, there's no difference between Q&A and chat. What happens sometimes is people can set up chat so that it's private between panelists or between one person and someone else. And so, we don't do that just so we don't risk violating open meeting law. So the way it works, whether it's chat or Q&A, it's the same functionality at this point. So if they want to submit their email address as a question or if they want to, to me it's just a kind of, just semantics right now, not really, we're not using it like a, I really don't want to have private chats or private question to answer. So basically it's open to everyone. Okay, so what I heard is is we're going to disable the chat, use the Q&A and as part of the welcome and housekeeping, we'll let people know that one, this is recorded. Two, that we're going to eventually have a website. Three, that we're going to take down and document all questions. We may not be able to answer them all today, but we will be able to answer them and it'll probably be on the website. Please put in your email address if you want to be on our mailing list and then you'll definitely get to the information about the website, but this will be one of many other forums that we'll have. And Ashley, you have a, your hand up. And just that this is not the last chance that we will probably have more forums and even ideally something in person so that we can do this. It's a lot, I just think it's a lot easier. I'm not very confident in my own technical skills. That's why I'm not volunteering. But in real life, you just have a microphone and you go to the person that has a question and I'm all down for that. And hopefully that will happen soon, the next time. Thank you Ashley, Risha. I am not volunteering because I will not be there. You guys chose the date I couldn't come, but the, I wanted to suggest that we can ask a question of if you would like your, to be on the mailing list. Sorry, I'm being asked a question by my child off camera. I'd like to be on the mailing list, put your email here because if I understand the way a question and answer works, then it'll track to that question. And so if we put that as a question, as a prompt, maybe that's a easier way to handle it. I have also volunteered, I think, maybe I didn't do so, but to help manage getting all the mailing lists together. And so if that's something that's useful after the fact, I've gotten a few, I sent things to the Amherst parents mailing list. The school will post it on Friday and their mail are, I haven't heard back from the Fort River, but maybe there's nothing specific from Fort River principle other than the mailing list. And then big brothers, big sisters is also sharing it with their group. And so I've gotten a few requests already from people who want to be on the mailing list, but can't make the meeting. So I'm happy to sort of collate all of that. Excellent. If you want to pull my way. Thank you. And I think we did agree that we would have one in person later. So, and even thinking maybe working with the school to set something up. So, all right. Any other comments, questions, suggestions? All right, well, I'm very, very excited and absolutely want to thank John for all his input, Legger, sorry, Risha, for the wonderful graphics that you did. So we're not showing the slides, so you're going to come and see them. Michelle, thank you for the piece that you're going to be presenting. It's going to be really, I think a very engaging meeting. I think people are very interested in this. And I think it will be a good setup for having an in-person meeting in the future. Risha? I just, whatever happened to the sort of door-to-door or geographic announcements of it? Is that something that still needs to be done? We build flyers to every single 300 foot radius from both and we went out today on foot and we posted in downtown stores and bulletin boards in downtown and brought some to town hall. They were really happy to see them in town hall. So yeah, we were out on foot today. Great, thank you. Yeah, and both of our apartment complexes, both Olympia, Oaks, Scatum and Butternut and they're in English and in Spanish. Thank you. Well, at our next meeting, we'll report back how well it went. So thank you very much. And I will turn it over to Carol. Okay, so I guess what I'm gonna start out by saying is how many people were able to have a chance to read that the draft CPA proposal that went out with the agenda? Yeah, so actually, Michelle, do you still wanna be here? Can you make yourself go away or am I supposed to do it? Okay, I think you're gonna go away now. And John, do you wanna be here? Do you wanna go back to the other place, the other place to be in attendee again, but you're muted again? If I can contribute to the discussion of what to do with CPA-C, maybe I should stick around. That sounds good, since you're the only one who's done it before and we're here, we are trying to do it without you. So if people have read it, I mean, I can bring it up on the screen and we can try to look at it, but it's like pages long and I'm not sure if that is a valuable thing to try to do. I'm open to suggestions here. My thought is I took whatever suggestions I got so far from the two readers who read it, incorporated them in what I sent to you the other day. And what I would like to do is do a similar process once more with any other suggestions anyone has and then submit it. It has to be submitted before we have another meeting. So this is kind of our chance to talk about it. And I guess I can say that I leaned heavily on what John had submitted before. I kind of started from that and updated things and it's lengthy, it has to all fit into there. I hope they don't have any character limits on what you can clump into their application. They didn't say they did. So, and John said he didn't have any trouble with that when they had the same kind of system last year. So I'm hoping that that will work again. And I can bring it up or maybe if Nate is here, I have it ready to bring up actually so I don't mind sharing it but I'm not sure how beneficial that will be. So if anybody has any thoughts, please help me out here. Erica, I see your hand up. Yeah, I think you did a excellent job. And again, kudos to John who sort of gave us the frame for this. There's some areas that we still need to fill out and some of them are based on today's presentation some way finders for Tuesday and some post form. The only thing I can think of is, is what I think Allegra had raised about the possibility of sitting aside funds or needing funds to help with down payments or with closing costs. I mean, I don't know if we can do that if that's in our area but after the presentation with Ball Lane I think we should think about the possibility of families that may not have the funding to actually put down a down payment or closing costs. So it's something to consider that if we can heighten that as part of our intent. I think I hopefully the intent has been left broad enough so it doesn't leave that out but it seems like saying that specifically I'm not sure that seems like it costs it's a lot of money usually per household to do that but maybe that's fine, that could be fine. I just, I kind of, I'm kind of feeling leery of bringing that thing up specifically but I might, but tell me I'm wrong. John. The only thing I don't know if that's an allowable use of CPA funds. I would certainly check on that before we committed to doing it because there are limitations to what we can do with CPA funds and the origin of these funds will be CPA. I mean, the biggest thing that we're asking for which I asked for in prior years is half a million dollars to go into the trust account. And basically you're saying to CPAC just trust us we'll find a good use of that for any of a number of projects. And so I'm pretty sure, well, I read it that Carol listed projects like the Boil Lane project like the strong street project, other potential projects, Hickory Ridge for getting one. But anyway, in order to justify it without saying we're definitely gonna spend money in this or that project the draft says here are the potential things and basically trust us to figure out which one we would spend it on. Last year we asked for half a million dollars and I think that's what CPAC recommended to town council and the town council approved that. Someone can tell me if I got that wrong but that would mean that as of early July we would have had another half a million dollars added to the housing trust account within the town coffers. And so this would be another half a million dollars and we're starting to amount to real money if we get this. There's been a change in leadership and CPAC so I don't know whether we'll be as successful as we were last year, but I think there's a good chance CPAC has been more and more favorable each succeeding year to giving money to the housing trust. Part of it is reviewing this application but part of it is that either Carol or Eric or both will have to make an oral presentation and respond to questions which I think are also important to what they ultimately decide to do. Allegra. I was just thinking under population served because I know with the whole RFP that we put out for Belcher Town Road we did have a discussion around including BIPOC communities and how are we going to be fair racially to promote housing for BIPOC populations? So I don't know if that's again, something we would wanna just briefly mention under population served, especially in lieu of in light of tonight's discussion as well related to the racial wealth gap and home ownership that's been identified. So that would be perhaps my only suggestion is to somehow mention. That's a good suggestion. Yeah, I bet there's a way to do that. My brain isn't coming up with it right now but I think there is a way to do it. Well, if your brain suddenly comes up with it. Let me know. All right. Ashley. And I feel very bad about not knowing this but is this a thing you can only ask for once or once per year? How often can we ask for these funds? Once a year. Okay. The CPA process happens once a year. So we have one, we don't. So once a year we get a chance to put in this kind of an application. And curiously, as they just say, we are now applying for funds that we will get in 2024. Okay. So we're like, I don't know how anybody who has to apply to the CPA and have a specific project in mind, possibly even does that. How do you know now what you're gonna do in 2024? I guess we just heard from Ball Lane that they don't gonna do it until 2024. Anyway, I'm sorry, I'm interrupting. That's okay, that's okay. I just wanted to say that this November, we're gonna be voting on taxing people that make more than $1 million and extra 4%. And so I don't know if that will pass obviously or when that goes into effect but we should ask for a lot of money. I mean, we should ask for more than we think we need. And then if we can only do this once per year, it's gonna be another until August 2023. And maybe that law will go into effect and we'll have lots more money. I don't know that we'll get it if the law goes into effect, but actually this is a lot of money compared to the number of, I'm not sure how much their allocation is this year but they always get more requests than they can fill. And I believe that ours is amongst some of the larger ones although I think so we are asking in the scheme that we're asking it in, I believe that we are asking for a pretty good chunk of money, Nate. Yeah, so actually just the process is that the funds are for next fiscal year, the CPA committee now has the application process and September 30th. And then the CPA committee reviews them and makes recommendations on funding to town council and the council votes in February, March or sometime during the budget process. But the funds really don't become available until next July, but they're trying to get the process early enough so that it aligns with the town's budget cycle. So we know what's being recommended as the budget cycle is being discussed. So yeah, I mean, I think half a million is fine. Last year, John, I was going to correct you. I think the trust was awarded 250. In part, I think because the trust usually asks for more than, I don't want to say it needs, but we asked for half a million, we asked for 750, but because it's not for a specific project, we often will reduce it if there's a project that comes forward, right? Just as Carol said, I think last year there was three times the amount requested as was available from the CPA. So the committee had to make some decisions and not recommend projects or reduce project awards. And I don't know what value will come in. It sounds like they're going to come in this fall. The staff was thinking that wayfinders might come in or we might make a request for that project knowing that they're going through permitting and they would probably need funding before July 1st, next year. So I think the trust can put it in a proposal and then it's just going to be, this is the step in the door. The CPA committee often comes back twice with questions, additional questions for applicants. You have to attend a public hearing, maybe two to answer questions over the next two months. And so unless we think we're missing something, I feel like the proposal is broad enough and says what we needed to be submitted. And then if we need to respond to questions by the CPA committee, we can do that again as a trust in October, November. Just a piece of the timing that I heard from the CPA committee was the time in which we have to answer questions is like we get the questions on October 3rd. It's like a week or two or something. Anyway, it's not very long. The timeframe, they give you the questions and then you have not very long to answer them. So I don't know what that means because we probably don't have a meeting in there. So we'll, John. I think you're right. So I was going to go to their webpage, the CPA committee. So I think what they do now is they, CPA committee members individually send questions to staff. They don't meet as a committee and then staff compiles the questions and sends them out to applicants without necessarily the committee looking at the questions. Cause that's the only way they can do it with such a short timeframe. So yeah, let's see, John and Dan Erica. I think I want to point out that whatever we asked for is not all that we get. Because again, if another organization applies for funds for community housing and CPAC awards them funds, then that counts toward community housing. The other thing I want to point out is that every year we get, so to speak, other money because past projects have been mortgaged or bonded. And so there are annual payments of those bonds that are made out of CPA funds. So for example, funds that went to Rolling Green, I don't know, maybe 14 or 15 years ago are still being paid off. So there's money that comes out of CPA funds for that. And that's really community housing. In the current year, there's probably going to be money that is going to go to payoff funds that went to Valley Community Development for the East Gables project. So the point is that whatever we ask for, whether we get it all or some significant chunk of it, there are also other funds. And so at the end of the day, if we get as much as a half a million dollars going to community housing out of CPA, I think we're doing extraordinarily well. Erica, did you have your hand up? I had my hand up, but that's sort of the question that I had and I think John just answered it because we are putting in, for example, Ball Lane. So Valley Community Development is also putting in for Ball Lane. And so how do they look at our request versus the fact that they're probably going to provide funding to Valley Community Development. Valley is asking us to also submit a letter of support for them. So is there, should we be having a different strategy in terms of how we present this in terms of, yes, you may be funding the others, but this is an opportunity for us to look to see where their priorities are and where there might be some gaps or where there may be gaps that they had not thought of and for us to be able to have that funding available to make sure those projects are successful. So I'm just wondering if we have to write it a little bit differently so they're not seeing, hey, the trust is getting money, but so are all these other projects that the trust is naming in the CPA proposal. I don't think that's a problem. I think that the sources have been like East Gables. We needed to be there at the time with the last $100,000 because it wasn't in the CPA funding timing. So the fact that we had money was very important in having that project be able to go forward. So I don't think that the way that it's, I don't think that will be a problem, but I mean, I think it's been that way before anyway, that the requests have come from us because of the various things that we might support and the kinds of support that we do are often different than the kinds of support that Valley CDC or Wayfinders is doing. They're the developer and they're doing the development and we're doing maybe redevelopment or there needs to be, I think CPA counts as that too, but some things that shows to a bigger funder the support that's in the community. Ashley. Does this also encompass things, money that we could give in addition to Craig's Door that if they need more money, and I don't know if they're asking for more money, but I just was curious. I mean, that seems like a pretty great need. Like, I mean, permanent Craig's Door housing. John. Basically, when we work to support the development of affordable housing, we are working to create apartments or projects that would be available to people who are guests of Craig's Doors. So we're already doing that. Craig's Doors itself has not really, although this was an ambition early on in the life of the organization, but they've not really been an organization that is honestly competent to develop affordable housing. So they depend upon other developers who in turn depend upon us to fill gaps and needs for the funding to support affordable housing projects. So Ashley, you can think of what we're doing as supporting the guests at Craig Doors for example, the studio apartments that are going up on Northampton Road, will some of them will be specifically available to formerly homeless individuals. And those could be people who are current guests or future guests of Craig's Doors. So that's how we cover that. We can't give money directly to Craig's Doors because that's not an allowable use of CPA funds. And most of our funds are CPA funds. I mean, we do have a little bit of money that isn't, but most of it is, so. I thought Craig's Doors was seeking a more permanent type building. I thought that was what they would like to have. They are, but again, that would be a shelter. And we can't use CPA funds to build a shelter. On the other hand, if they build a combined building which has been discussed, which includes a shelter plus studio apartments on top, then our funds could be used to support the studio apartments that would be part of the building, but not the shelter itself. Oh, okay. Well, I'm in favor of that because I think that that's a, that would be a very good use of our funds first. I just want to, and I think it was what Erica said. The way it reads, and I am sure this has always been the way that it happens and it works very well this way and there's no need to recreate anything, but it very much reads right now, like here, give us the money B and then we'll give it out throughout the year because you don't give out money other than this one time and we do. It just, it doesn't feel like we're doing anything that they wouldn't already do. It feels like we're pass through. And I'm sure it works, although you said there's new leadership, so maybe we need to be thoughtful of that, but it would be nice to think of what we're doing that's different or unique beyond just the support that the other projects are already getting or could get directly from superior. What you said is accurate, Risha, but again, I think Carol referred to this, Valley Community Development, because of increasing construction costs about six months ago, asked us for, I think it was $100,000 to fill a gap in construction costs that none of their existing funding sources could cover. They had asked DHCD, the Department of Housing Community Development for additional funds, but in order to get that from DHCD, they needed to show some additional local support. So for our voting to give them that $100,000, which was off the CPAC cycle, we were able to plug that gap and help them to get additional DHCD funds. So that's what we can do. We can plug gaps that occur that they can't set up to anticipate or the organizations that asked them for money don't anticipate. We don't have a huge amount of money, so it's not surprising that organizations would go to them instead of the best line. So we use our money to fill in where we can. We're not, I mean, we are on purpose, not the developer of anything. So in a way we are just somebody in the middle trying to push everybody that's anywhere in the direction of doing more affordable housing. And some of the ways that we can push are with the money that we manage to have. Even it's a little bit, so we do a lot with the little bits. And the other way we end up pushing, which also happened with East Gables, was showing up at some of the events where there's resistance and speaking about the importance of affordable housing. So we really are, we are like a pastor. We just, I think that's true. Okay, I'm not criticizing what we do. I'm trying to point out that it reads like why. Why wouldn't they just give this money directly to Ball Street or Lane and directly to these other projects? So it might be nice to have an overarching frame of we can be there when you can't and we can do this stuff when you can't. It can be there when you can't, all right. I think our funds are also used, for example, to do small contracts to evaluate property. For example, Nate now needs a smaller number of funds to write contracts to evaluate the strong street property. And we couldn't do that through CPA. Again, because it has to be timely, it's when he needs the money to make that next step. You don't have to make the case to me. I'm just trying to make the case to everyone. Okay, I hear you think that the way that we've written it, it doesn't make as good a case as we could make. Now, this should be a better way of saying it and then we would make a better case. And maybe it doesn't matter because they know what we do and they want to give us the money anyway, but if there has been a change in leadership and it might not be the same, we might need to make a strong. And I understood from Nate last time that the money might be even more hotly competitive this year and so we might need to make a stronger case. Yeah, and I agree because Carol, if you and I go and they ask us these questions, we're already prepped to give them the answers, how unique we are and we can step in when their gaps unforeseen and we can make sure that these affordable housing projects are successful because we're here all year working with the town as well as collaborating with all these organizations. And we also ask very specific questions in terms of what's the benefit to Amherst families to the priority populations that we're looking at. So I think these are great questions, thank you. I just wanted to ask if I know at the bottom it says there's like something to insert about like what is the trust? Do you think that that would perhaps help mitigate some of that uncertainty or help make the case for what we do that's not already in the document? I don't think it would answer Reisha's concern although it would say it would start with what our mission is and what we've been doing is. In the past, I have attached a two-page document called what is the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust? So it's fairly succinct. God only knows if they read it. And there is a lot of turnover. So that if it's a nine member, I can't remember if the number is nine, but it's something like that. There are probably two or three new people each year, partly by natural turnover, partly because people resign and move on. And so you're always gonna have a few new people. And so you'd really do need to educate people. And a lot of it can only be done orally when you're facing the group and reminding them of who you are, you can't count on them reading. Yeah, I did sort of update very minorly that thing that John attached and could attach it again, but it was the same, it would, yeah. Yeah, I just wanna say quickly, Rish, I like your comment. I just, yeah, when the trust first started, that was a selling point, right? That we could quote be more nimble than the CPA, but I don't wanna have it be something that, it's a point of animosity, perhaps say, between the CPA and the trust because really we're working toward the same goals, John said, right? And even if the trust doesn't get all the money that's requested, there's funding going to other housing projects, right? It's a win-win. And so maybe reframing that in terms of, we're an ally with the CPA committee and here's how what we do. And so as opposed to, we're more nimble. That's just not, it's already been said. And so let's just try another approach. So yeah, I don't, yeah. I think it's time that we can do that. We have successes under our belt now, right? The trust has co-sponsored things. We've held forums, like John said, we do a lot of site development. We get products moving. And so I think there's other things to build on and in the proposal, then we can dole out money faster than the CPA committee. I mean, I think it's still a point to make that we're a year-round organization. Erica said it really nicely a minute ago, so. There's another advantage we have over other applicants. And again, I tried to make this point in the past. The money that we ask for them from them is extraordinarily leveraged. So if we ask them for a dollar, something like nine times that, say for a rental project will come from the Department of Housing, Community Development. There's nothing else that CPA seed funds that has that kind of leverage. Most of the requests they have are for projects that are 100% funded by CPA dollars. So when we ask for money, we're using it because or we're asking for it because we need it in order to be able to leverage the larger dollars. And so that's an important difference between us and all the other organizations. And to pick up on what Risha said earlier, that does need to be said and people need to be reminded of that. So I have something like four or five things here that I feel like I should try and get in the thing before I go to anywhere else, besides the fill-in things from the information that's missing. But I have, can we get something about BIPOC population served? It's got to read sort of like a pass-through. Can we say some of the things that we do that are not just being a pass-through? And I just heard a couple of them, which is our money is highly leveraged and we are a collaborator with them kind of allowing what the CPA does to be more expansive. And on all the things about time that we've already said we can do it when it needs to be done. So if it is acceptable to you all, I will go back and try and work on what is already there and get some of this sense into it and maybe even in the process leave out some of the many, many details about things that happened in the past. I don't know, but anyway, I don't know. I know what I would do if I didn't have to worry about open meeting laws, but since I do have to meeting, worry about them, I'm not sure how to do this. I would like to do this, make a draft and then let everybody look at it again. And somebody, Paul or Nate, tell me, can I do that? Can I take a draft and send it to people? And if the only person anybody talks back to is me, is that okay? And then if that's okay, do I have all of your agreement that I can then submit it? It's got to be submitted before we have another meeting, unless we want to have another special meeting first. That was a lot of questions all at once, sorry. I mean, it really depends on how comfortable the trust is. If they don't want to, if members don't necessarily need to see it again, then there's been a good discussion tonight and we can have Erica and Carol make the revisions. And it becomes a document that just the trust will get forwarded and we can look at it at the next meeting. Typically we'd ask members to send comments to staff and then I would coordinate that with the chair. So if there are additional comments, send them to me individually, not don't copy the whole trust to send me an email and then I can coordinate with Carol and Erica. So that's the way I'd recommend doing it. But I, you know, so I hope you can. Can I just, I hear you, can I? So we have, you know, it's the eighth. I was gonna say we could give everyone like a week to submit comments to me. And if by like next Wednesday, I don't hear, then, you know, you can take, you know, I'll let you know. And then we just, you know, we'll have two weeks to work on it and submit it. So, I mean, is that fair that everyone has another few days to provide comments? Just so I understand open meeting law or something better. What makes it better about everybody sending it to you and then you talking to me then everybody sending it to me? How is that, I just don't understand, that's all. Right, well it takes the, it removes any possibility of somehow having a serial conversation where you then communicate with another member and somehow three members of the trust have had an email conversation about a topic that really is gonna be voted on. Whereas if you send it to me and I send it to you, then there's really no communication directly between trust members, it's going through staff. And so it breaks that kind of communication link. Okay. Well, then would people be agreeable to doing what Nate just suggested? If you have any additional comments, get them to Nate in a week and then Nate will get that to me and then I will write what we submit. Sounds good. Is that, can I see it either a comment or a thumbs or something? And Carol, you and I could review it. There are only two of us and we're co-chairs. Right. I just wanna say, you're not gonna create the perfect document. What? So keep that in mind. I mean, my history with this is I would look at the questions from each year and the questions from the prior year and try to make sure that I had answered them in the draft that I submitted. And inevitably two or three of the questions that have been asked in the prior year that I thought were answered in the document came up again. So don't perseverate, do your best. And... Thank you. Respond to what you asked, what's before you when they start to ask questions. Okay. Thank you all. We have a process. All right. Updates and discussions on Nate, do you have an update on Strong Street property evaluation? Yeah, we have a scientist and a botanist are going under contract and they're gonna be going out on site in the next week or two. And then there's some rare species that are, the sites considered priority habitat. So they're gonna go out and actually field survey the site and then we can work with the state to determine where there can be development. So, if their results are good, then the site can more of the site could be developed than what it looks like now. And if it's not, then we make a decision, but this is kind of where we have to go. So it's pretty exciting. Thank you. Thank you. Why don't we go to see first, I'm gonna ask all the Nate questions. East Street, Belt and Town Road and moving of the house. That's you too, Nate. Yeah, we have someone's under contract to look at the old farm road properties the town owns. There's three properties. So we're doing some wetlands assessment and some just some site assessment there. That's under contract too. That'll get going probably later this month. Other than that, for moving the house, we haven't, we talk with wayfinders, but if this site doesn't work out, then we have to consider where else to move it. It's just, it's an opportunity, but it is a cost and it's like, it's a little project. All of a sudden you have to, if the site is good, then we have to have someone move it and then someone fix it and then, yeah, but. Thank you. And if you wanna know more about the East Street, Delta Town Road come to the September 13th forum. Hickory Ridge? Yeah, I mean, other than it's, there's a lot happening with it to get things settled, but in terms of a public process to determine what could happen with some of the developable land that hasn't progressed. The town's applied for some funding to improve the trails. The solar, I don't know if you saw there's an article saying that the solar company had some extended, it's time for their permit to get that going. There are some delays in materials and equipment, but the town's still planning on having a process to determine how to use the, whatever it is, say five or 10 acres. Okay. Thanks, and I know Laura is here, but my understanding is, is that East Gables is moving along well and that Laura is gonna let us know when we can actually have a tour. If there's anything else, Laura, put your hand up if you wanna, is there any other update? Okay, not seeing that. David Zamek is not here, but maybe Nate, do you have any update on the permanent shelter? He had let us know that that is something that the town is looking towards. And Carol has been in touch with him, but he's not been able to come and provide any update to us, so. Yeah, I know that the town's still looking, there's still some sites. So I think David said in November, October, we hope to have some more information, but we're still trying to assess sites and look at them. I will say that we had Tim from Craig's Doors, right? And they, I don't wanna say changing their model, but maybe a little bit, but they still have two or three sites that I hope to use for sheltering this season. And still try to serve quite a few number of guests more than they had, even just like two years ago. So it's fine when I saw permanent shelter on the agenda, I keep thinking what Craig's Doors is doing, not the other component. So just for Craig's Doors, it sounds like there will be operational this season and they applied for funding from the state. So we haven't, I haven't heard what's happened there, but there will be a shelter this season. Right. So I know I went through all of these very quickly. Are there any questions regarding these different projects or any comments before we move on? Okay, not seeing any hands. I'm gonna press up. Oh, there's a paragraph. So this is perhaps to discuss what a volunteer was needed for for this upcoming forum. I'm looking at the Q and A and it looks like Laura Baker put in, is the trust able willing to take a vote on providing a letter of support for Valley's Ball Lane project? Thank you, Lager. That was a demonstration perhaps of what's needed from a volunteer on Tuesday. Absolutely. That's exactly what we're looking for. And I just don't know if I'm gonna be there right at 630. So I don't know if I could commit to volunteering for the entire event, but I could certainly help once I'm able to get there. Thank you very much. I don't think that will have a lot of need for something until later anyway, because if people put information in like, like emails early, there's nothing except there is and so we have it. And the answer to, can we take, do we, I don't know, are we interested in, do we wanna write a letter in support of Ball Lane in support of Valley's application to the... CPA. CPA for their Ball Lane project. We... Is it a precedent? Have we done these things in the past? I think so. Yeah. I mean, typically we'd try to come before, be an agenda item. We had a presentation by Valley, not necessarily a vote on their record, with the support of their CPA proposal. It could come after, it doesn't have to, I know they might want it with their CPA submittal, but it could be that the trust votes on it in October and provides a letter at that time. Typically the trust would review or look at other, most of the housing proposals, and sometimes that happens after they're submitted and then the trust can, submits a general letter to the CPA committee. So, I don't know if it's a little, I don't know if we'd wanna make a, take a vote tonight or not. John, do you have any comment? I've been going through before. Describing is what we've done in the past. We get copies of all the CPA proposals. We put that on the agenda. Those copies are shared, and then we can decide what comments we want to make on those proposals and even what priorities we would recommend for funding to CPAC. Okay, so we might do that in October or something. When does this come to the count council in January or February, but the CPA makes it for recommendations before that, I suppose, or at least by then? Yeah, they should make their recommendations in December. All right, so we have probably, if we do something in October or November to review the CPA stuff when it's available, it might not be available by our October meeting because they will have only just hardly got it by then. I'm guessing. Anyway, all right, we will try to put that. So Laura, I guess that's the answer to your question that we will do it later. So Nate, are you able to get copies for us for when they're available and then let Carol and I know that they're available that we can distribute them to the trust members? Yeah, I think this online submittal, I'm hoping that I can request staff to send them out pretty quickly after and we can get them to the trust for the October meeting. Okay, thank you. Yeah, because that gives us, yeah, I mean, well, yeah, it gives us a week at least to read the proposals. So look at them. Okay, well, we have not very much time left and so there are two things, one of which I don't even, anyway, the one thing that I am going to say is that the town council will be accepting a proposal or looking at a proposal, I believe for its first reading on Monday created by Anna Devlin-Gouthier and Mandy Jo for an Amherst property tax, what is it called? I can't remember the name of it now. Special Act. Say again. It's a special act. A special act, anyway, we'll be asking for a special act so that Amherst will be able to charge a fee on real estate transfers, a real estate transfer tax or fees and they don't only use the word tax probably. And I just got from them, I got something about this this afternoon. I don't think we have time to really look at it right now but they wanted us to know that they were proposing it. My suggestion is that we will get the information to everybody so that we can actually have a conversation about it at our October meeting. But also I see that Anna is in our, would like to say something. So speak. Thanks, Carol. I can give just a two-second quick overview. Thank you so much. So Mandy Jo Hanneke and I have been working on a special act, yes, not the word tax, the word fee is appreciated. And basically what this would allow us to do is as a town impose a 2% fee on real estate transactions and we are limiting those two, we set a lot of exemptions. Let me back up. The special act allows us to regulate that fee by bylaw. It's a little confusing, but the bylaw that we would then craft essentially would say that the only way that this fee is imposed is on owner-occupied homes that are on the amount over 200% of the average assessed price. So it's sort of Amherst's version of a wealth tax, but it's slightly less. And then also on non-owner-occupied homes, that would be a 2% on the full amount. So if my math is right and I did check it by two folks in town hall, so they didn't tell me I was totally wrong, this would have gained about 1.4 million in 2021. So it's not insignificant. What we would like to do with that fund, with that money is we'd like to set up a established clear amount that would go to the housing trust every year. We've set it currently at 250 based on, we looked at past CPA awards. We'd like 250 to go to the housing trust every year. The rest would be split between a to be created capital stabilization fund as you know inflation is kind of hurting us a little bit with all our capital projects. And so creating and funding a capital stabilization fund is really important at this point. And then we would decide which percentage goes to what, but it would be split between that capital stabilization fund and the general fund. So the goal with this is to do a couple of different things. The goal is to create a more permanent steady support for the housing trust. So I was served on CPA for many years. It was really interesting to hear your conversation earlier. And one of the things that's tough is that I know you have to go to CPA and ask and it gets cut down a little bit every year usually because of other requests. And so creating a steady, you know that there's going to be 250,000 every year coming to you sounded very appealing to me in terms of kind of that permanent protection unless for some reason literally nothing sells in this town which I don't see as being likely. And then also because we are really noticing the impacts of inflation on our capital and general operating budget to support those as well which then support and create infrastructure that benefits the folks who are able to go into those affordable units or affordable homes. I'll speak personally just and candidly with y'all when I first wrote this, I was hoping that it would go specifically towards down payment assistance grants because this is a fee on home ownership. It felt most appropriate for the funding to then support affordable home ownership opportunities. However, that is your decision. What you do with the funds would be up to the trust. So what I'm looking for, one, I wanted to give you a heads up. This is coming up for council on Monday. I apologize for the late notice. We finished it yesterday. So it was not me holding back from you. It was us just working down to the deadline. And this comes before council on Monday. It will go through many, many iterations. Council has to pass it. And then it goes to the legislature who then has to pass it. So this is, we're talking the long game here but at some point if you ever want to dig into it more having your support through a letter or through an official vote of support would be greatly appreciated. And if you choose not to support it, that's fine too but also wanted to kind of offer myself up to answer any questions that you might have going down the road. And I think I'll stop there because I know you're close on time and Carol, thank you for letting me talk and Erica, I appreciate it. Sure, I think my thought is that if we have questions we'd like to wait till next time when we had a chance to actually look at it and then we might be very interested in having questions. John, you have a comment or something? Yeah, I actually, this legislation has been before the legislature for at least the last two, maybe three years that would allow communities to do this on a statewide basis. And there also have been town by town requests like the one that Anna is proposing. And I wonder if any of those has passed the legislature. They have. So several home rules and other communities have passed. Joe's bill, the one you're talking about I'm forgetting the exact number but Senate bill, oh, six, five, eight, something with a six, a five and an eight. That has not passed yet. We've spoken with Joe about this bill. This is in support of her bill. This is not at all contradictory nor is it harming the passage of her bill. On the one hand, it'd be great for us to move ours through first because it's slightly different and addresses some of the unique needs of Amherst as a community. Specifically the need that we have to or what we're noticing about single family homes being purchased by folks turning them into rental units. So it addresses that, which is not necessarily specifically unique but is more specific to Amherst than other communities. So Senator Comerford is supportive of this and is excited about it. There's no competition with her bill in that sense. Other communities have passed this. We've based ours on the special acts of about eight different communities that have passed this across the state, including Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, Cambridge, Somerville, I'm blanking on the rest but that's four for you. And so yes, it can be done. It has been done. We are hoping to get it done. Thank you, Anna. You're welcome. If you have any questions, I'm happy to put my email in the chat and I'll mark your next meeting and happy to join if you'd like me to. Okay. Anything else? There wasn't a request from Chapa to have a sign-on to an amicus thing that I just do not think we have time to talk about. And I don't think we would be in time if we tried to do it anyway because they wanted it by today and now it's nine o'clock tonight. So I think I'm gonna skip it but I will tell you that there is emails about it somewhere you can look at what they were talking about. Basically, they're hoping to convince the Supreme Court that their provision for 40B projects that says that if someone brings a lawsuit against them, they may be asked to have a, to put up an amount of money first, that that should also apply to 40B projects. That's what it's about. And if you want to find out more about it, I'm sure you can or we can for, or I will put it was from Chapa. So anybody who gets the stuff from Chapa can see it. If you can't find it and wanna see it, let me know and I'll get it for you. Is there any, are there any other public comments? Are there any other comments of any kind? There's two announcements that I can think of. One is the potluck, which you've already been told about several times on September 11th at Mill River Recreation Area when there will be perhaps more information about Ball Lane. There was also, I sent the email that I was asked to forward to everyone about the open house at Amherst Community Connections tomorrow from one to three, which they are celebrating money that they got to do housing stuff. They feel like we are good collaborators with them and we're all invited to attend if we would like to. And I think if anyone are, the forum is on 913. Our next meeting is Thursday, October 13th at seven o'clock again via Zoom. And I think, does anyone have, so the future agenda items that I know of are reviewing CPA proposals and looking again at the proposal that we just heard about from Anna and our whatever other usual things that we kind of repeatedly look at. Any other questions, any comments? Let me just quickly ask George, Ryan who's been taking notes diligently as an attendee. If you have any comments or questions, George please raise your hand. If you're good, thank you very much. I don't see anything. So does anyone have any final statements that they wanna make or shall we adjourn? Paul, or that was just a wave. That was a wave, that was a goodbye. That was let me go to bed. All right, thank you everybody very much. The meeting is adjourned at whatever time it is, eight, nine or two. Nine or two, thank you very much. Thank you everyone. Thank you.