 Okay, please go ahead. So I'd like to welcome everybody to the November 28, 2023. I ask meeting meeting and it's about five minutes after 2pm, calling the meeting to order. And first thing that I'd like to do is just to remind everybody that this meeting is being held by zoom. According to current rules of the open meeting law. And members of the public have access to the meeting by zoom. And, but I need to remind everybody that this meeting is being recorded both for video and audio purposes. And so that everyone is on notice that it is a recorded meeting. So I'm going to go through the members of the committee to make sure that everybody can hear and we can hear them. And then we'll proceed with the order of the agenda that's proposed that I want to propose. So. I was on a double and got gay. President. Lynn Griezmer. Present. Bob Higner. Present. Matt Holloway. Present. Bernie Kubi. Present. Kathy Shane. I'm here. I'm. First president and Alicia, I don't believe it's here yet, but we'll keep an eye out for her and. Check that she can hear and be heard at that time. So having said that, what. Want to do. First of all is to. Propose that. Our primary. Discussion today over and with Alicia. We check to make sure that everybody else can participate. We want to make sure that you can hear us. We can hear you. Yes, I can. Thank you, Andy. Okay. Thank you. So we, we have not actually done anything. I was just about to. Start with the proposed agenda, which is. To focus. Primarily and possibly entirely on the library. And. If we can make as much progress and. Totally complete to a recommendation today. That would free us up because we had. Two other big items for our. Friday meeting then, which would be the. Rental registration. And getting on to the discussion of the. Proposed guidelines that we would submit to the council for. Council consideration of the budget guidelines for FY 25. So the way I would propose to do it is. That the most complex document today. For initial consideration. Was the cash flow, the updated cash flow analysis. And I want to thank Lynn for doing a tremendous amount of work. With a number of people and she'll talk about the process, possibly when she does the presentation. But ask her to present it and she will be putting it. I believe on the screen. To illustrate what she did the key points. But. Then open that up for questions in the committee. The second thing that I want to do is Alicia had. Requested a number of documents one. That only became available. About an hour ago. And it is. Is going to be added to the packet. That's something that Athena does. I don't know when, but what did it, what she was asking for was a list of. Debt that has been previously authorized, but has not been issued. That information is now available. And so we'll put that on the screen. And then we'll go ahead and present it. Give it the opportunity to ask for questions. The third thing that I want to do is to go through. The Q and a document that was added to the packet. Either late yesterday or this morning, probably this morning. And contains. The answers to a lot of the questions that were presented. And. So that's going to be the first section of the meeting. The reason that I'm proposing to put public comment after that is. A number of members of the public. And either requested or. From what I looked at the participant list for people who were. Involved in providing information for the list. So I. Wanted to make sure that we had. All of the information that was available out to the committee. So the members of the public could see that information before we do public comment. Because their comments might be. Affected by the information that's presented and discussed. I would then come back to the committee for additional discussion after that. So I'm going to go back to the committee. I'm going to go back to the committee. I'm going to go back to the committee. To do a check on where we are as a committee. In. How this is proceeding. So. If that's an agreeable, I'll pause for a moment. See if anybody has any questions or suggestions about that. And otherwise we'll just proceed in that direction. So seeing no other requests to do anything else. So I'm going to. Do have your hand up. Um, yeah, I'm wondering, is it possible to just keep public comments first? Um, we can keep public comment first, but then the public would not have the opportunity. Be things including the document that you had requested of. Unissued debt and they won't. They won't have the opportunity to hear. Some of our initial discussion. So that would be the reason to push it later. The only reason they come earlier is if you, you know, if somebody is aware of. A member of the public who is not going to be here for the duration of the meeting. So what do you think Alicia. Yeah, that would be my only concern. Um, just because of the timing of this meeting, I know it's like midday on a weekday, and that some people come just for public comment and can't actually stay for the meeting. And while I definitely appreciate what you're saying, Andy, I don't. I don't even think that that would be enough time for them to review any new documents anyhow. For like a substantial change to whatever it is they might want to share with us. Um, so if others are in agreement, I would be in favor of just keeping public comment first. Um, if that's possible. Um, if public comment goes on for a long period of time, we may not have an opportunity to come back for a second public comment that's been informed by the, just by the information presented. Um, So I'm going to, I'm actually, um, ask that you, since we have one hand up, and I don't want to exclude that, um, input. We'll let, uh, we'll see about the, um, people who have, but be aware that we may not come back to public comment. We do public comment now. Tony, uh, Connie, and could you bring Tony into the room since she was the first one to raise your hand? Hi, Tony. Hi, thank you. Yes, I agree. It's a terrible time to ask people to hang on to an unspecified time in the future for public comment. Last week it was an hour and 40 minutes before you held it. And it's the middle of the workday. So, um, if I could make my comments now, I would appreciate it. Um, please, uh, go ahead and offer your comment. Uh, Sorry that you're missing that one piece of information you may have been interested in, but, um, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them in the comments section. And then you can please offer your comment. Thank you. So I saw the new cash flow document in the packet today, which shows the library share being paid much sooner than was shared at your last meeting. It's important to understand how likely this is. And when the library is legally obligated to transfer funds to the town, the new cash flow has a library paying its full share by July, 2026, effectively in a two year window. The three year window has been mentioned with the bulk of the payments coming at the end of the project in June, 2027 or later. Some sources are also contingent on other things such as raising the four million match for the humanities grant and hitting energy targets for the mass save incentive. To my knowledge, this cash flow is not a legally binding document, but rather an illustration of a best case scenario. What is a legally binding document is the amended memorandum of agreement. And my reading is that the library is not obligated to transfer funds to the town manager until a year after a certificate of occupancy is issued in mid to late 2027. Will the council be presented and vote on a revised memorandum of agreement that would require the library to meet this much earlier schedule of payments? What would be the consequences of missing these dates or amounts since presumably it would mean larger loans and higher interest payments? How can you assure taxpayers that this schedule will be followed and the town will not end up paying more than is what my eye in attachment a capital campaign expenses of more than $1 million and Jones interest expenses of $170,000, bringing the total project cost of $47.32 million. Is the town expected to pay this additional $1.2 million? If yes, how is that consistent with the promise of $15.8 million and not a penny more? I can think of many more critical capital needs that the town could use $1.2 million for. Lastly, I haven't seen the impact of the library borrowing on the five year capital plan and what projects and purchases would be deferred because we have to pay substantial debt service for the library, nor have we seen the financial model to understand the impact on capital reserves and on the timeline for the fire station and DPW projects. Related to this is the debt limit and how much debt capacity that authorizing borrowing for the library project would consume until just now that information hadn't been provided. So I had looked up assessed property values and current value for the library. The library has authorized debt in the state's data bank. If my calculations are correct, even after I remove the authorization for the school project, as is allowed per MGL, the council has already authorized 77% of the 146 million debt limit. If I count the school, we are 40% above the debt limit. If this supplemental bond for the library is authorized, it looks to me like we would be at 84% of the debt limit, I assume we would not be able to build a fire station or a DPW for less than 24 million. So please help me understand how we would be able to move forward on either project in the next five years. A recommendation to approve the supplemental bond authorization is stating that the library expansion is more important than the fire station, the DPW and all critical capital needs. There is not evidence that we can afford them all. Thank you. Thank you, Tony. I also see that. Emily Rooney has. A hand up so I wanted. Hello. Hi. Thank you. And I didn't know if this was going to be a joint meeting of the council today or not. So I signed in but. Tony Cunningham just had a really clear, concise array of questions that I would also love to hear answered. I just wanted to focus on three things. The capacity to authorize more debt. The actual debt costs. And I'm again, hoping that some of that information is going to be discussed in this meeting. As I, if I looked at the Unibank spreadsheet and the grand total, the grand totals for each of those years, I assume comes then out of our cash capital. And so that's just want to clarify that. I wanted to note that in fact, we did not want to use our reserves for the school to bring the school debt down. But in fact, if we have to make up the difference between cash capital or the deficit of cash capital because of additional loans, we are in essence using our reserves to. To promote and to carry the Jones costs. The second was just actually, I think. Tony covered it. It was the authorized debt amount. Do we have, do we have any more than 23 or $24 million capacity. With that expanded debt authorization that we're being asked for. And does that in fact cover the cost of a CPW. And the third item, which caught my eye as I was rereading the MOA is that item number four, the page two of three, basically says the project can go forward under the following circumstances. A, if the town council appropriates funds to cover all eligible costs. And B, if the town manager determines at his or her sole discretion that the project is financially feasible. And so I have to ask the question. Does Paul Backelman have the authority to. Proceed with this project, whether the council votes that are not. Thanks. Okay. Are there, is there anybody else who is. In the audience now who is wants to make public comments as we've opened this window. If I don't see any hands going up, then we're going to, we'll go back to where we were previously. Okay. That point will close public comment. Now we can come back to it. We'll see how we go with time today. But I do see that there are other members of the. Council for president said to answer Pam's question on that. It was not posted as a joint meeting this time. So. We can't bring more people into the room than would. As to the quorum. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Lynn. And I'm going to go ahead and turn this over to Lynn. And I'm going to, uh, present the cash flow analysis and she might be able to answer our respond to some of the questions that were. Opposed. So Lynn. Thank you. Um, this is a memo from the town manager. It comes directly out of a meeting that we were able to finally as the member of states included myself, Councillor Cathy Shane and the town manager and the capital campaign co-chairs Kent Farber and Lee Edwards, who was also a member of the library trustees and the Jones library trustee and treasurer Bob Pam and capital campaign staff, Ginny Hamilton. And I wanna just note that all of those people are either in the room or in the audience. And so at some point, if they, I need them to explain something further, I really want them to make sure they raise their hands. We started by going back to the cash flow that you saw on November 7th, 19th, I think it was. And in that cash flow, there was a estimate and it was rough and it was hurried about the campaign cash flow. And we did not have a chance to consult with the trustees on the cash flow at that point. So yesterday, we did have that opportunity. And the first thing that we did was look at this spreadsheet and I've tried to make it as large as I can, okay? And I want to particularly draw attention. The first part of this spreadsheet is the costs, well, it's the project phases and the yellow lines are when building actually starts and that's when you start paying a lot of money, okay? The second is the costs associated with that building and the third is the actual income, okay? And then ultimately this leads into a cash flow which is in the next two pages and that leads into a borrowing schedule. So let me just, I'm not gonna get into the costs because that is part of the construction documents and I'm not the building committee. But as we looked at the costs, one of the things that I think people have not always understood is that we are already sitting with 2.76 million in the town that has come from the Massachusetts Board of Library commissioners. And in addition to that, the library has also paid the town an additional half million dollars. So we are not in a position at this point where we need to borrow anything, okay? So this top line right here shows when MBLC will be paying us what and the cumulative amounts of that. The second line, MBLC 1.7 million shows that there is in fact a sixth payment that will come at the end of the project. In fact, we have reason to believe MBLC may be paying that payment in advance. Those payments keep flowing at all throughout the project on an annual basis. The town of Amherst's commitment is right here followed by the CPA commitment. And then we get into, well, how is the fundraising gone? So they had the historic tax credits right now, the estimate with those using the appropriate discounting from what I understand from Bob Pam is about 1.8 million. Then we have the foundation and corporate and right now that's already started coming in. And so that is that whole line across. This is based, this line and all of the entrances into this line are based on schedules based on already received funds or received commitments. The state grants, it's the same thing. That's based on received commitments. The federal grants, it's the same thing based on received commitments. Some of those, one of those federal grants doesn't require a match. But in fact, all of the money that's up above here it can be used as part of the match. So the match is there. Then we go to actually the capital campaign. And this first line is received or committed. In other words, this represents the money that the library has already received. And so we look at, for instance, in as of June of 2024, they will have received 1.79 million. The next line basically then says, well, what do they then still need to raise? And that allows us to go all the way to the end and see, well, that is the final amount of money. So that the collective set of this money, offsetting the income, is the money that pays for the project. And the one thing that was asked earlier, and that is the campaign expenses, and that is calculated in here, and that is at the expense of the library. That's normal thing for campaign process. So I wanna make sure that before we leave this page, if there are questions, and this is where I would really like Lee and Bob Pam and Ken Farber to potentially be available to weigh in if there are questions. But Andy, I can't see the questions. I can't see raised hands. I do see that Kent has raised his hand, and so has Kathy. You're muted, Andy. I'm sorry, Kathy, go ahead. As Lynn mentioned, I was in the room when this was presented to us. So I asked this question, basically, I guess it was yesterday. So I'll ask it again. I know there's been a good faith effort to say, how soon we can get which money? So what I asked yesterday was, underneath this is Amherst College is paying their million in four separate installments, 250 each of four years in a row. Could that be accelerated? My other question was around the NEH grant, which is Tony just mentioned, there's a matching requirements to secure that full amount, but it sounded like we're pretty near to that match depending on, given the way they count it. So would it be possible to get it sooner? And I'm asking it because when you're completely through Lynn, I want to take a quick look at my rough calculation of our five-year capital budget. And the critical years are 25 and 26, where we were already in a deficit. And in terms of it wasn't completely balanced, and we had dropped spending on roads to 600,000 a year in each of those years. So getting some of this sooner means, what you're gonna show on the next sheet is we have to incur less short-term debt. And it's the short-term debt that will be added to our capital budget. So just to anything that can be accelerated to be received by the town in 2025 or 2026, rather than waiting till the end of those time periods helps. So those are the two I know. I mean, I know with as yet to come campaign funds, you can't necessarily, you can't accelerate them. You can make a best guess on when they're gonna come in, but on anything that could come in sooner. Then my final question is the same thing is if we wanted to lower our interest rate bearing, put the endowment, give us a piece of money knowing they're gonna get paid it back earlier and not a really big, not all of it, a piece of it. So it's those three separate questions on a focus on 2025 and 2026. Andy, I see that, I do see that Kent Farber end up. I'll bring Kent in, please. So it's up to the team, I believe. I'm on it, he's coming in. Kent? Okay, can you hear me? Yes, we can, thank you. I just want to be clear that the line received or committed represents our expectation of cash received from commitments that have been made in writing. So that we feel confident about those as confident as we could possibly be. The amount expected to be raised is the cash that we expect to receive from new commitments. The pacing of those is plausible. We think it's likely, but there's no way to be as certain about that as received or committed cash. And we should also make it clear that in the foundation and corporation line and the state grant and federal grant line, there is cash expectation there from additional grants to be received. We think there are lots of possibilities for additional fundraising there. So we've built some additional amounts in there beyond what has already been committed. Are there other questions on this before we, I mean, Kathy, you asked questions and you did ask them yesterday about acceleration of Amherst College payment. And that was, I think there was an agreement to explore that. The other one was the acceleration of the National Endowment for the Humanities and there was an agreement to explore that. What was not discussed yesterday was the idea of the endowment being used as a way to pay knowing the money would be coming back. And I think that's a down the road discussion, but others may want to hear more about that. Are there any other questions on this? I guess my related question on this would be whether consideration was given to using the balance in our fund, our capital stabilization fund used for funding any parts of this on a short-term basis to avoid having to go out for bans or short-term debt. That was not discussed yesterday. It's something that certainly could be discussed in the Finance Committee. Are there other questions? Yeah, please. Okay, so there was one other thing that came up yesterday and I know nobody in Jones has a chance to explore this, but the school from Eversource got a construction incentive payment, not just a performance incentive payment because we went to ground source. They also have money on the table to go to air source heat pumps. And I don't know whether the library would qualify for them, but it's different than the mass-save incentives that they've penciled in. So that potentially is a source of funds that isn't listed anywhere here that I raised for further exploration. For the school, it's a substantial amount of money. And we went with geothermal, but Eversource would have also paid us if we could hit the EUAI target that was set for schools. But it wasn't continuous on hitting it. It was contingent on Eversource believing we could hit it, the construction incentive. And then there was a separate amount that if we hit it, we would get an additional amount of money. So I thought it was something worth exploring. Yeah, Lisa. Yes, I'm just looking for clarification. Can you all hear me? Yes. Yes. Yes? Yes. Okay, sorry. I'm just looking for clarification. Lynn, you said that the library will pay the fundraising costs, but the original MOA says that the library will deduct the fundraising costs from their share. And so I'm just wondering if that indicates that there will be a change to the MOA? At this point, Paul, you might wanna address this. You've suggested we don't think the MOA needs to be changed at this point, but by the time we get done with the council vote, it may need to be changed. And your point is this 1.5 million, 1.05 million is actually part of what will come out of the library fundraising. But that's money they will spend before they give us any money. So in other words, that money will never come to the town because they will spend it out of their own money before they pay the town. Does that get it part of your question, Alicia? You're still meeting with me. Yeah, no, I believe sort of, but I think I'm just still wondering if that is indicated in the MOA, like does that need to be indicated or does that mean that then the town is responsible for paying it first? I'm just trying to figure out sort of the order of operations here and if that would need to change if we wanted it to happen in a different way. Paul, did you wanna speak to that? Yeah, so the town is not paying any of the capital campaign expenses. That's not something that we've contracted for nor are we doing. It's not really reflected in the MOA and it doesn't need to be. It's good to show it here as a cost because it's a true cost for this project. But the way the MOA is structured is to create what the town is going to put in, what the MBLC is going to put in and the remainder being the library share. And so it's this part of the remainder that is the library share. Alicia, does that answer your question? Yes, and then just one quick follow-up. And so does that indicate when they would be obligated to pay the town? There is a deadline in the MOA that is reflected, I think, on this spreadsheet. If I think the MOA, yeah. I'm sorry, if you don't mind, can you just point it out to me or let me know? Yeah, hold on. The payment to the town comes, I'm trying to, hold on. You put the exact words. It doesn't, I'm sorry, go ahead, Paul. What did you say? I'm just looking for the... It's not reflected here. It's reflected on the next page. This is the cash flow for the library. And then the next page, next two pages will show when that last payment is due. It's due in 2027, is what I understand. It's anticipated to be due then because it's anticipated to be due once occupancy has happened. It's one year from the date in which the certificate of occupancy is issued for the project. So, Alicia, I wanna take a little more moment here and explain this. So, this shows the money as it will be received by the library. It does not show the money as it will pay it to the town. The next sheet shows the money that will pay to the town. So... The next sheet? Yeah, Kathy has her hand up on this, though. Kathy, you're muted now. Yeah, Lynn, it actually, the flow is showing the library here, received or committed in it, but you have to subtract out the 15-8. So if you go down, if you go down to the bottom line, you hit 46 million at one point in terms of the costs, but it is, that's the expectation of, they've closed the gap or they've mortgaged the house. Right. But the reality is in 2027, whether they have raised all of the money or not, they, the library at that point, owes the town the balance of whatever they have to raise. So that's when that comes to. There's another hand up. Alicia, I think your hand's up again. Yeah, sorry, it's just the same question. I'm just wondering because in the fund raising deposit section of the MOA, it says that the library shall deposit with the town treasurer all amounts of the library project donations, as and when the same is received by the library, less any direct and reasonable fundraising costs and expenses. The library project, yeah. So anyways, that's the section that I'm wondering if we're proposing changes to that or if that will stay the same. That will stay the same. What that basically is saying, the library will be raising all of the money that they owe the town, plus the money to run the campaign. And what that paragraph means is states is that they will give us money as they receive it, but they are allowed to keep back whatever amount from that money for to fund the ongoing expense of running the capital campaign. But ultimately, they have to pay us everything they owe us. Even if they still have expenses from the campaign. So think of the library as having to raise everything that they owe us, plus the amount that it takes to run the campaign. So at no point will the town be expected to pay for the costs of running the campaign. Does that make sense, Alicia? Yes, sorry. Please excuse my daughter's singing toy in the background. But I understand what you're saying. My only confusion lies in that that it's not what I understand is being proposed in the MOA. So that's just why I'm asking. So are we saying that we're changing the MOA or are we just saying we're like changing the understanding and the MOA doesn't need to change, but we can change what we're expecting from the trustees without changing the MOA? I don't think there's any change in expectations or the MOA. The MOA says that they will give us the funds that they raise, which they've given us 500,000 so far. And so we count 500,000. They may have had expenses. They have had expenses that go along with that, that they have retained from their fundraising. So they haven't returned every dime that they've collected to us. They've used some of it for their fundraising expenses. So it doesn't, the MOA, their fundraising expenses are fundraising expenses. We don't have a role in that, but they thought it was important to show that as part of this total project cost. And subsequently it is also mentioned in the MOA. Kathy, did you have a hand up about this issue? Yes. Okay, please. Okay, I'll just say it very quickly. I would like you to go to the next page, but I want to reserve the, let's go back to the MOA when we get through this, because I think there's some places it should be tighter, Paul. So you may think it's adequate, but to really put it up on the screen, because at the point we wrote it, the total was lower and the gap lower. So I think we could write it tighter than we wrote it last time, but I don't want to take up how to do that now. I don't want to close that door right now. Yeah, agreed. Okay. Andy, Bob Pam has a hand up in the audience as well. Okay, since I'm not looking, bring Bob in. Are you able to unmute? Okay, I was just hoping to make this a little clearer. Let me see if I can, okay. It did not make any sense to raise money, transfer it to the town and take it back from the town in order to pay a bill. Rather than do that, what we said we would do is that we would send over periodically the amount that was raised less the amount that we needed to cover expenses. And that just meant that there was one less transfer, but it did not change the amount that would be going to the town because the amount that goes to the town is the amount necessary to fill whatever the gap is. That was fairly straightforward. I don't think that requires any changes because it's the most practical way to proceed from here on as well. We will raise money, we will transfer to you everything that is raised less the expenses of doing the raising. And I think that that's fairly clear in terms of what's written there. And I'm not sure if that answers your question, but I hope it does. Alicia, is there anything else on that before I go to the next page? Not right this minute, thank you, Lynn. Okay, we can always come back. Okay, so on the next page, this is really two pages. This is where you look at the cash flow. And the main thing that changed here from the version you saw on the 19th is the 500,000 stayed the same. However, this original estimate here, which was rough and I accept full responsibility for it, is now 2 million, okay, right there. The next one is actually 4 million. And the reason that the library is able to do this is because of the success they have been having with their fundraising. So that by the time we get to 2025, it's another 5 million. This number right here represents the balance they will owe us based on the MOA, which is the balance they were always going to owe us. It does not include the fundraising expenses because they've kept that, but it is the full amount they owe us. And what this represents is that starting in FY 27, when the MOA comes due, regardless of where the fundraising stands with the library, the trustees will have to figure out and make their own decision as to how they will give the town this additional 2.3 million. And I wanna pause here and ask again that Lee Edwards and or Bob talk about the discussions that they've already had to look at their options for that. I don't know if Lee wants to come in or just have Bob explain it. Bob has raised his hand, so let's go with that. Right, well, right. You understand that in fundraising, I can say that it's going to happen on January 31st. I cannot say that it will be 5.000000. It'll be roughly those numbers and whether it is higher or lower is always something that depends upon the success of the fundraising. So, you know, I have provided these numbers because that is our current estimate of where we will be at that time. And so it's not going to end up as 2.372,518. I know that is not real. But all the rest of it is our best estimates of where we're going to be. And it will be during fiscal 26. It'll be during fiscal 25. It'll be during fiscal 24. All of those are where we are going with this. It is what we believe are realistic. So just be clear about it when we talk about projections three years into the future. It is going to always be done in a rounded format because that's the only way to be real in the future. Right, Lee did have her hand up. You'd have to bring her in. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Only to augment what Bob said in relation to what I thought I heard you were asking. We have been in discussion with local lending agencies and they have indicated that at the moment that the library needs to have a conversation about making up the difference between what we've raised, the fundraising committee has raised and what the library owes, they are quite willing to enable us to make that happen. And we have provided fairly detailed information about both our status, the status of the project, our income and expenses. And we've gotten one response which was extraordinarily clear about their willingness to proceed. A second one which was clear about our eligibility to go forward and their thought that this is a realistic possibility, but no one should be asked to make a commitment three years into the future about how much and at what interest rate. Those will always be somewhat hypothetical. What we are doing is trying to make sure that they are as clear as they can be about our finances, about our progress in terms of raising money and who is doing it and the ways that we think it will work. And they are clear about thinking that this is perfectly reasonable and doable from their perspective. There are, as you know, more than one way for money to be raised. If we can do it directly out of our own funds, we would do it that way. If we can do that with a line of credit, we might do it that way. If we did it with a longer term agreement, we would do it that way. It all depends upon what it looks like three years from now. Are there any other questions before I go to the actual bonding? Can I just be clear with for everybody? So what doesn't change on the spreadsheet is the local share borrowing, which is the town share, the $15.7 million. What doesn't change is the MBLC grant, which is 15.565. Those numbers don't change throughout any of these spreadsheets. Those are locked in. Nor does the million from CPA. Or the million from CPA, correct. I'm sorry, that's here. Yeah. So what you also see here, and you're gonna see on the next sheet, is at what point do we start borrowing, okay? This is the point at which we have to start borrowing. And I just wanna point out, because most people say, oh, you're gonna run out today and you're gonna borrow $46 million. No, we're not. We don't have to borrow. The first time we have to borrow is in 2026. And that is because of the cash flow that is provided by the upfront yearly MBLC payments, the money that's coming from CPA, the money that is coming from the contributions of all the different sources. And so you get to the point that we have not incurred any debt until our estimate right now is 2026, okay? The next time we incurred debt, because again, you only borrow as much as you need. You don't borrow more than you need. So the next time you incurred debt is later in 2026, 2526. And then finally down here, ultimately at that point is when you turn it into a long-term borrowing. And that will show in the next sheet, but Bob Hegner has his hand up. Yeah, I just have a question about the CPA funding. Has that been, do we already have that money set aside or do we have to set it aside? That's a borrowing. It's a borrowing. With funds being paid back from CPA funds. That's already been voted by the council. Okay, so we'll do that transfer then, according to the schedule at the end of May of 2020, by the end of May of 2024. Is that correct? Okay. And that's a separate repayment schedule under the CPA fund. Okay. Lee Edwards has her hand up again. No, no, no, I don't. Kathy Shane has her hand up again. So Lynn, comparing these two sheets, one earlier had us borrowing 15.751 on or about May 31st, 2024. You're not showing in this next one any debt on that. So are we not borrowing the FURL 15? So I know you don't have to pay it the year you borrow it, but you're not showing it. So I'm just, I'm asking for the next. Let me go to the next one. Actually up above it says we're borrowing it on May 15th, 2024. So why do we not see any principal or interest in 2025 and 2026 on that borrowing? Okay, you do see it. So now we're on the final page of the cash flow. Okay. This is our, this is the town's money right here. Okay. And then this is the short-term borrowing. And when you look at it. I'm just correcting your saying we're not borrowing anything. We are borrowing on the big one. It's the ban. You're saying we're not doing the bans. We're not doing the short-term till later. That's absolutely correct. So at this point, you'll see, you start paying on the bans in 2026 and your first payment on the other borrowing is, is right here, 2025. Okay. And so when you do all of that together, what you see is that the total borrowing on the bans is $764,770. And the total borrowing on the overall, the big long, which is the town's money is 7.944. The sum total of those two is less than 9 million. And the only reason it's less than 9 million is because of the aggressive, successful nature of the fundraising at the library level. And if they bring money in even faster, these numbers, depending on interest rate, which at this point, we're estimating 4%, could come even lower. Lee, you have your hand up. No, I don't, sorry. So now let's go back up to the top of the cash flow. Okay. This is where we should stop and ask questions about cash flow. By the way, I did not do the cash flow. Our financial advisor did this cash flow with Jennifer Fontaine, LaFontaine working with him. She is the co-financial director at this point. We don't have that sheet, is that correct? Oh, you do. This sheet is attached to this memo. Okay, maybe I, this isn't, Oh, I got it. Okay. It's been in the packets since yesterday. Yeah, no, I just, it was an earlier one. Okay. So are there questions on this sheet? We can always come back to it. Matt, you have your hand up. Yeah, Lynn. So first of all, just my, this is a really, really detailed and clear projection. And so thank you for putting the information together in our hands and for running it through so clearly. Maybe I'm misheard. So on the final page, on page five, you have the 15.7 borrowing dated at 515.24. But I heard you say a moment ago that borrow. Yeah, I misspoke. I did not. It's 20, it's the same day. It's the same day you just misspoke. Okay, all right. Thank you. That's how clear everything has been. That's the only question that's come up for me so far. I spent a lot of the morning looking at this sheet. And it's really nicely put together. So I'm grateful for the work. No, we have a lot to thank both the library people for putting together this first sheet because we could have never gotten to the second set of sheets without this sheet and without the discussion yesterday. Okay. I'm going to take this up. Nope, Alicia, hands up. Sorry, I'm just wondering, does this show when payments are beginning to be made by the library in 2027? Yes. So if you go down here in the cash flow, the last payment for the library, we would hope would be sometime on or about July 31st, 2026. After that, the library has no more payments coming to us. Okay, so... Does that answer your question, Alicia? Yes, thank you. Okay. Andy, do you want to go to the next sheet? Yeah, so should we go ahead and go to the other item we were going to put on the screen, which was one that was just produced on the authorized but unissued debt? Yes, I will get that as soon as... Kathy has her hand up with pause. I just want people to... This is clearly a better picture than a week ago in terms of the short-term borrowing. But Andy, you can tell me when, but I want people to understand what the impact is on our capital, on our capital plan. We have a five-year capital plan. And so all I have is I have an Excel, I took the existing one and I changed the Jones line to be these numbers. And it's... So you can tell me when you want me to show that, but I have that to show. And I can only show it through, it was a five-year plan 24 through 28. So I can't do 29, 30, because we didn't only plan five-year chunks. So we have to pay the interest out of that flow until we get the rest of it back. So you can tell me when. I think what we're gonna do at this moment is Alicia asked a number of questions that had to deal with our debt service. Some of those are addressed in the questions, but more importantly, I wanna see if I can call this sheet up. I have it. And I think, Paul, you're probably, you and Jen, the two that are most able to speak to this one, right? Actually, it'd be Holly, I think. Oh, Holly, I'm sorry. Yeah, so Holly is here as well. So what the question was was, how much debt is on the town's books right now and how much of it have we borrowed and how much of it have we not borrowed? Holly, we heard you. So what this, if you wanna scroll down, Lynn, what it shows is, let me actually stay up there for a second. I just wanna go through the column. So the first column's purpose is what we borrowed it for. The second is when the vote was taken to borrow that money and the third article number is the references, a town meeting article or a council order. The amount authorized is the next column. And then if we issued it, if we retired it, or if we rescinded it, that is that column. And that means it comes off of our books one way or the other. And then the next one is unissued inside the debt limit, which is amounts of money that you can have it inside the debt limit or outside the debt limit. And the state calculates our debt capacity based on whether it's inside the debt limit or outside the debt limit. So, and I'll just go down to the first two to show you. So the initial was peg audio visual equipment. This was something that we had made an agreement with Amherst Media, if they needed money upfront that we agreed to borrow the funds, they didn't need it. So that money is there, but that would be inside the debt limit. The next item was the water lines on Northampton Road. And because it's a water project, that's outside the debt limit because it's one of the reasons and it's how the state calculates it. It's because it's paid off by water funds. It doesn't come out of the general obligation funds. So, and so I highlighted the library expansion project down there and whatever that color is, the 35279700 is what we had originally authorized. And this is where the question is, does the council wanna make that number larger, which is the $46 million? That's the question before the council. And so if you can scroll down to the total. And the big one here is the two big ones are the Centennial Water Treatment Facility, which is 21.5 million, which is on that lower page, Lynn. And you'll see some things that we borrowed, we had debt authorization, then we rescinded the borrowing and borrowed a different amount based on new information. So the number we're working with was Centennial is 21.5 million and that's outside the debt limit. And then the big one is the Fort River School authorization, which is outside the debt limit as well. So inside the debt limit, we have a $46 million authorization, outside the debt limit, we have 118 million. And note that the Fort River School is also excluded from the limits of prop two and a half. And I think this is important, Paul, because earlier somebody I think might have been Tony was using a much different number about where we are with our debt limit. And the reality is of our debt limit that's inside, we are only at this number, the 46. And Holly, is there anything you want to add to this? No, I was also just going to point out that, again, there were some that were authorized and rescinded for different dollar amounts. So where those ones are zeroed out, I think it was the Centennial Water Treatment Plant, the Gravity Belt Thickner. And then to just to also point out here that with both the Fort River School and the Jones Library, again, we have to authorize the full borrowing, but by the time we get around to doing the borrowing, that is going to free up a lot of this money. We're not borrowing a full 92 million on the Fort River School, we're not borrowing the full $46,000 on the library. So those numbers will come down as soon as the permanent borrowings are done and then the balance of those articles to be rescinded, to be zeroed out. And there will be a couple of items, if you can scroll up, Lynn, that will come to the council for rescission. We'll ask the council to rescind the borrowing authorization. For instance, if you look at the, where is it? The very first one, the peg. The 410 and then the 450 for the North Common Parking Lot because there's a new plan for that parking lot. So those two will likely be coming in the spring. And it is possible that the 800,000 were the water lines of North Hampton Road. I believe that project came in under and that that will be, at least a portion of that will be rescinded as well. So come the spring, you'll see those come off our books. And that frees up money. It doesn't free up any money, it's just a borrowing authorization. It frees up borrowing authorization, thank you. So I guess, Indy, we want to see if there's questions on this. Okay. Are there, you know, be any. So Kathy had a request about talking about the five-year plan. Question, of course, is also, which you can talk about too, is how they relate to the borrowing. This is not sure that it does, but I think when I turn it over to you for a couple of minutes. Yeah. So before I put the spreadsheet up, what the five-year capital plan does is when we say 10, we're at 10.5% of the general fund from the year before we're allocating toward capital. When we say, what do we have available to spend in the current year? We have to subtract the debt service from existing debt. So that's principal and interest payments. So that leaves us an amount that's available for anything new, including new borrowing, but it could be to buy a vehicle to repair a building to, and Paul, if I say something wrong, I'm doing, so that gives us, so there's a total flow of funds in and then we have an expenditure budget. So what, if I can show my screen, let me just. Athena, are you still here? Yeah, she can show her screen. Thank you. Okay, so what I did is, this is the five-year plan that's posted on our website right now. And I just showed you, so this is literally, I just copied and pasted the numbers. I didn't have to sell. So this was the revenues coming in from a variety of sources. And then this was the debt line. And what I did is I indented Jones. We'd always put Jones in there. So Jones was in for 1.155, 1 million. And it just think of it all the way out that in this direction, it's a 20-year debt. And there was other debt underneath this. So this wasn't the only debt we had, although we've got DPW coming on out here and we also have some planned, some projected debt. So we were gonna do Crocker Farm Roof. We were gonna do the Crocker Farm HVAC system. We have a whole list of what's underneath these numbers. So this was the amount left over for other projects, other things new that if we hadn't done the debt already. And just I put, this isn't indented. O'Rhodes is in here. We were able in the current year to allocate 1.3 million to Rhodes, but the 25 budget we always thought would be tighter. So we've just put in 600,000. That doesn't count the chapter 90 money, but this was out of our cash capital. So our budget was not balanced in 25 and 26. It's not a lot over, but it was a little bit over with what we said we wanted to do in those years. So what I did then was forget this line. This was the new line as of last week. So this line right here, let me make it whatever, just where I just highlighted it. That's the number that Lynn just gave us for each of these years. So it's in compared to the 1.155, 1.378. The big year is the second year where it was 1.1155 and 1.748. So that is an increase in principal and interest debt service and this year is the biggie 600,000. And all I wanted to do with this is says it leaves less for everything else. So that's just the world we'll be living in. And so we as a town would have to say are there other things we can postpone and move to another year or there are other sources of money to get some of the things in the pipeline such as ARPA money that we know we wanna do these things and let's go ahead and do them. But out of the current capital plan we started with a deficit in these and this is 25 and 26. So this jump up of an increase of about 600,000. And this increase combines the two that Lynn gave us a total in the one thing. So it's that short-term debt, the interest and it's beginning to pay principal interest on the big loan that's starting to hit us in these revised numbers in here. So all I wanted to say is we have to think about that. I'm not saying that determines the decision because it definitely squeezed. So then this net remaining that's vehicles that's building repair that's the work we've been doing to take an old boiler system and replace it with an HVAC system that's electrical that is roads and what we've been allocating a million. So we don't have a lot of wiggle room for another 500,000. Some of this is just pure interest rates. Interest rates are higher now than they were but some of this is the minus total. And that's all I just all of this assumes is the trustees will give us all the money they are obligated to. So we're not on the hook for anymore. And that was why I asked the question earlier of anything that could be accelerated in this time period lowers the interest that we would be paying not on our 15 but on the other amount. That's it. I just wanted to show that picture because another 600,000 is that actually equals the total amount of money we were planning on spending on roads but it has to come from somewhere. That's it. I see Paul and then Bob Higner in that order. Okay, thank you. I think it's well, first off, I wouldn't equate the number to roads because we will not be reducing the roads amount. It will be something else but I think Kathy you're spot on and identifying a problem that we're going to have to work. It's a manageable problem because we have some tools to work on it with. Like you have already suggested some really good ones like accelerating payments. We have our capital stabilization fund which we can always dip into if need be. We have ARPA funds that we can allocate. And then we always, we just did the council just appropriated a million dollars for roads recently out of our free cash because you are recognizing the need for roads and you're accelerating that beyond what is in the capital stabilization plan. It doesn't show, that doesn't show up on our capital improvement program that additional work that we do every year which we've been putting in an additional million dollars on roads. So it's, I think we have to recognize that the council is doing a lot more on roads than shows up in our capital improvement program and we have to do a whole lot more. So I think what I'm really glad that you're putting this on the table because it's going to be a hard discussion where I'm already prepping our department heads about expectations coming year about vehicle expectations for the coming year. You know, and we're all in the investment we need to make in our existing buildings because we can't fall behind on those kinds of investments and in order to stay up with our climate goals especially but also just the buildings need investment as well. But I'm really glad that you're highlighting this because I think the finance committee and JCPC are going to really have to work this hard this year. And so Bob, I can take yours. Tell me when I can stop screen sharing because I was just showing that it's- You can shop from my point of view. No, no, no, actually, actually, could you scroll up a little bit? So you have in row 14 you have the debt exclusion for the school and you're sort of counting that in as part of the capital. But Bob, what I didn't show is I didn't show all the revenue lines. The debt exclusion line is both an expense and a revenue. Okay, yeah, okay. That's in this revenue line. I just thought it would be too confusing and it's similarly CPA money. There's a revenue and an expenditure but it's not a net to us. So the total revenues then is a combination of what we set aside for capital and then as well as these other sources. Yeah, and I should have, I just, I was typing these in and I'm really bad at typing accurately. So that's fine. That's fine. I just needed to understand. Yeah, that's all. Okay. Okay, so another hand up. Alicia has her hand up. Oh, Alicia, you're, now you do. I'm just wondering if Kathy can, is that shareable? I was, thank you so much, Alicia. We decided it came in so late. It will now be added to the packet literally right now. Okay, great. And I think that was really helpful and I'm glad that you did that, Kathy, because I think a lot of my concerns and why I'm looking at this and trying to figure out is how this will impact our ability to do other projects. Like, will it move the date of the fire station and the date of the DPW and when those things can actually be accomplished and will it affect our reserves that we've been saying we're saving for those projects and will it affect our operating budget if money doesn't come in on time from the library and we're, I think somebody said, well, then they're obligated to pay us but if they didn't fundraise enough and they use from the endowment then do we have to pick up for operating costs? And so like those are the things that I want to see. And so I think I just essentially, there's no question here. I just, I would like to see that document and thank you, Kathy, for putting that together. Yeah, you need to send that to Athena to add to the packet. Okay, I just wanted to date it. But, Alicia, the thing you're not seeing, because I just did the five-year plan, is the debt, if the library pays us off as is expected, the debt for DPW doesn't show up until after they've paid it off. So we had this 10-year debt and interest. So it is not in that, DPW doesn't appear in those five years. I went and double-checked this to see what we had online. So we have, we're buying some equipment there. There are a couple of things, two years from now. I mentioned Crocker Farm that were on the list. But I will send you what I will call my messy spreadsheet and I'm just gonna send it to Athena and Athena, you can save it as a PDF because otherwise, it has some formulas. And for those who, anyone who really wants to see the long-term, long-term or annual capital plan that Paul and everyone posts, the last page of it has all our expected debt and interest payments with 10 years of it. I mean, the town has done a really nice job of showing us paying off some debt. And when things come along, we fired ladder truck. There's stuff on it, but I will send it. Athena, would you also add the overall debt thing that Holly just reviewed with us and Paul? Yes. Thank you. So, I guess, do you wanna go on to questions? Yeah, I think we'll go to Q&A and I just will pose one question real quickly Bob, is you have a time limit that we wanna make sure that we get to the questions that are relevant to you out of order? Okay. I'm here to the end. Okay, I'm back to you then. Okay, so let me just do this. So various people, counselors and others from the public have asked a variety of questions, okay? And in the packet, as of about mid-morning today, we had our best ability to respond. I will say that one of the additional things we've already looked at wasn't available, but it responds to the whole issue of what does our present debt look like? And that's, you'll see later on. So what we tried to do here is lay out the question and lay out the response. So the first one was about a cash flow for the first four capital projects. And I wanna put this answer in a couple of different ways. First of all, Kathy has done her own estimate and I think we all agree that we're very grateful for that and thankful. Paul, you have mentioned, I believe that we are working on an update of the model, if you will. But your estimate at this point is, do you have anything to say on that? Yeah, so I had Congress, we've been engaging with Sean McGonough on this because he put the spreadsheet together, which is where I want him with his eyes. And I think we, but I asked him just looking at what the new information we had. And this was his comment was that there is just the time value of money for an additional $10 million that he didn't see is gonna be substantially different. I mean, so yeah, so this is basically his response. And we haven't updated the interest rates on that yet. Right, in addition to that, the question, part of this question was will the project, school project incur any bans during construction? And we assume yes, but you're in the process of doing an update based on the 9.7 million that we just got. And an updated construction cost that we have from the OPM. So our financial advisor, David Eisenthal is pulling that together that will, we have a cash flow projection. It did not call out the bans in particular like we did with the library project. So we've asked him to pull that together that would include the bans, just a spreadsheet much like you have for the library project. Okay, thanks. Class and recent MSBA grant. Paul, just, I know this complicates thing, but we also did some assumptions about reserves in there and Chon's original did or didn't do that. So he should just check, you know, in terms of, he should just check on what Chon's original did. Cause I know Chon's original didn't have us with a large principle on interest happening for a few years, we had some short terms. So you should just check. Okay. And then the next one was please provide an updated cash flow and we've done that. That's the big memo that we just did at the very beginning of the meeting. And then we get into the issue of the basic costs of the repair. And this is where Bob Parent has been particularly active in providing this. And there was a memo already developed. Here's the link to that memo that tells you what we're estimating the basic cost, basic repairs to Chon's would cost. And it is between 19 and 21 million, but that does not include asbestos abatement or meeting the energy codes. And this was a very long and thoughtful response that Bob provided. That's a Bob Parent answer. Yeah. Very detailed. It depends. Okay. So then the next question was what about, what is the recommended not to exceed debt limit? And this is where we just looked at that whole debt limit page that Holly prepared. And the existing big debts, as we mentioned, are the water treatment center and the library. And then this is the citation that it shows that the school debt is excluded. The next question was about the bands. And the question that was questioned here was if we used reserves to cover the bands, does that hurt our bond rating? And Paul, I think I'm gonna turn to you on that one. Now they look at our actual indebtedness. And as Jen and Holly manage our cash flow, they don't really borrow the money if we have enough cash flow unless they absolutely need it. So they don't issue, they do projections with our David Eisenthal. And then if they deem that they need money before, as our cash flow goes through the course of the year, then they will utilize bands. And bands can be secured on pretty, there's some sometimes called state house notes where they're short-term borrowings. You don't need the documentation that you need for a formal borrowing. But we share all this information with the bond rating agencies and they all need in our bond council who looks at everything before we do anything. Then the next question was, given the states given us 10 million new funding, should we consider pulling back the five million from the school project to find other capital projects? And this is a council discussion. It's a discussion, Andy, that the finance committee may want to have. We did pull in five million based on the hope that we will get reimbursement for sustainability efforts. Did you want to speak any further to that, Andy? Only to the point that we talked about at the council level, asking Paul to consider raising five million additional dollars and that five million was really, was covered by the 10 million dollars. And you commented on that in this report of recent council meeting, so that part of that money has already been planned for if you follow that out. Kathy? I just want, this is a longer discussion because I just want to say the great news about the 10 million is it will reduce the taxpayer increase. And I wouldn't want to do anything that changes that message. So that's just, that's because we actually put it out that way and people were thrilled to hear that message. Yeah. But to be clear, we could do it if we wanted to. Right, we could do it if we could. Legally, we could do it. I think whether we should do it and could do it are the two questions we're talking about. Yep, that's all I'm saying. And as if we can, if the federal direct payments come in really fast and we have a way of paying down any indebtedness, this was just a cleaner way of not taking on the debt in the first place and replacing it. But in any case, I just said that it was a statement, a viewpoint. So one of the questions that has come up is about staging and where does the construction company stage from? And I have to say that yesterday in our conversation with the library, Paul, you gave one of the more complete answers on this. So either you or Bob may want to address this one. So I'll kick off and Bob can add more. So staging is an important piece of the construction process, which is, we even had a conversation today with the OPM and designer about where to put a construction trailer. What the town has suggested is, and this will be all reviewed by the planning board. And if it requires use of the public way, then it would be the town council as well. So what our plan is at this moment is to utilize some of the sidewalk in front of the building and some of the parking spaces in front of building as sort of an entry area and construction zone to, they'll need some easements from private property owners, which they're negotiating with right now, including the Historical Society. Immediately behind the library is the CVS owned parking lot. I mean, if the contractor wants to address, go to CVS and talk to them, that's up to that contractor. There is a small portion of our town owned parking lot up by the church that we could use as a lay down area. We wouldn't use all the parking back there clearly. We also have the VFW site, which the town now controls, which is just down the road, which is a pretty large parcel of land that could be used as a lay down site. And what a lay down site is, is when you get material delivered, you don't need it right away. You need to put it somewhere and they just need space for that. And they like it to be on site, but this site is a very tight site and it's not gonna be an option, but they might get a big delivery of bricks or whatever and they could put them down there until they need them. Bob, do you have more you wanna add to that? The only other thing I would add, Paul, is that we expect that the demolition portion of the project will obviously go first. And what that'll do is we'll open up additional onsite space that over time, the contractor will work themselves out of. So in the short term, when the greatest number of materials and things like that will be coming up, they'll be staging likely on site. And then as the need for staging decreases, the availability of onsite staging will also decrease. And Paul, you mentioned yesterday that as we've been doing the Pomeroy intersection, how did we resolve staging there? So the contractor, we agreed to have the contractor stage some of their equipment at Hickory Ridge because we have that big parking lot there. We segmented off a piece of that and the contractor used that. When they did Northampton Road, they used different locations that they obtained from neighboring property owners. And that was up to the contractor to utilize. And this is like to store their large vehicles and stuff. This is not a road project. So you don't have big pavers or anything like that that's involved in this project. You do have other equipment clearly. The next question was talking about the building and what's who's responsible for interior design and accessibility. And Paul, this involves a town department. I think that's Bob, that would be Bob. I'm sorry, go ahead. This is the three steps, Bob. Yeah, my understanding and perhaps maybe even if Sharon wants to jump in on this one is that the item that is referenced here will not exist. The three steps that are referenced, that there'll be ramps. No, there'll be three steps, but they have an elevator that can go up the different, so the different distances, yeah. So basically the answer is that in the inspection services, department has to make sure that the building is fully compliant with the ADA and they can't approve a design. And then the designers all know this. They know they have to comply with ADA. And there are different ways they can comply. They looked at ramps and they looked at keeping the steps and having the elevator move up a few feet, depending on where people want to go. And if you know Town Hall, for instance, our elevator goes down about five feet to the lower level and then comes up to the ground floor and then goes up to the first floor. So it has a, you know, there's five steps to get to the basement of our building, but there's that the main street entrance is about five feet up. So the elevator goes both, hits both floors. And then there was the whole question of parking. Yeah. So this is one that came from, I'm not sure if you wrote this, Bob, or if Chris Brestrup wrote it. I believe Chris wrote this because it comes within the context of the planning board approval. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, so Chris looked at this question and addressed what she, surmised would be the response of the planning board, but it will be a planning board decision. In terms of do you have to, you know, there's usually a minimum number of parking spaces required, but that can be alleviated, especially given that the location of this project is in the center of town. There isn't available space. There's a municipal parking lot across the street and one not far north of the project and that there's ready access to bus and other transportation options. Andy. Yeah, I raised my hand because I had a related question to that. There's also parking requirements in the board of library commissioners regulations that are less than in our zoning regulations. And I'm assuming, but maybe I wanted to confirm it, but that's really between the architect and library and the board of library commissioners as to whether what we've done is satisfactory to their regulation. I don't know the answer to that, Andy. We can look into that. That's a good question though. If that is the state board of library commissioners, I know that they have been looking at this project almost continuously and the architect. They do have regulations and they have a regulation that talks about parking expectations with their projects. So, so the NBLC has received plans all along the way. They require us to give them plans every step of the way. And so they've had access to all the plans of designer. So. I assume that they would raise issues if they had heaven by now. I think that's a good question. Thank you. Thank you. Athena Sharon. Sherry has her hand raised. Could you bring her in? Good. I didn't share this here. She's coming in. Sharon, you should be able to unmute. Hey everybody. Yeah. So when we applied back in. 2016, 2017 as part of the application, they want to make sure that every library applying for these projects is taking parking into consideration because of course, parking spots for every library across the state, but as everybody knows, you know, we're smack dab in the center of downtown Amherst. So, you know, the NBLC takes our project and sees that we cannot fit X number of parking spaces on our property, but what we have instead are town parking spots in the vicinity of. And so just the fact that they gave us the 13.8 million dollar grant application, that's when they accepted our parking plan. Thank you. Back to you. No, Kathy has her hand up. Sharon, I just have a quick question. My memory when I read it is you were. Counting the parking lot in front of town hall, which as you may have observed is disappearing. Is that correct? So what we did when we applied was just showed the NBLC here are all the different parking lots that are available in the town. But it didn't, it didn't come. You know, we weren't accepted or rejected based on on the availability of those parking spots. I mean, and planning department review. This was a question asked at, we did not do anything like this before the school. And it is a council question. But at this point, the planning department has been engaged in many ways. The whole next section is about the stretch code. I think Bob, you probably answered most of this. And it is, it does take effect. And from my understanding is the stretch code has been included in the estimates for the addition and rep and renovation, but it has not been included in the estimates for repair. You're correct. Okay. Thank you. Then the whole next thing is the whole thing about indebtedness. And much of that was answered above and or is answered here. And including a sheet that basically gives some sense of that. Paul or Holly or Jen, did either one of you want to speak to this? Well, I think that the new chart you showed really addressed most of the question, most of the content of these questions. And that's been included in the packet that should be sort of an addendum to this report. Okay. We'll make sure it goes into the final one. And then if the library very project fails, whether it likely demands on town resources for repair of the existing building and what would the timing be for that work and the need for funds. This is a what if question. And it's also a it depends. I answered the question in part. Other people contributed to it. It's up to the library trustees, would they come to the town for money? I can't imagine they wouldn't. And would they ask for as much cost as possible? Yes. I do want to mention that we've already clarified that none of the existing grants and none of the existing donations are for the purpose of repair. They would all go away. The next one is will a council decision to not increase the data authorization effect federal state and charitable support for future town initiatives. And I regret we didn't ask Mindy Dom to join us today because she gives a much more clear answer on this that basically says you'll damage down the road in serious ways. Because, and I use the example here or the example was used here with the MSBA project, where the town did reject the first project and even though I think we are going to end up with a magnificent and beautiful, wonderful energy efficient school. It's costing us almost double what we would have paid before. What had to be done to repair the relationship with mass school building authority was without question. And that took an effort of a lot of people, including our legislators. The bottom line is when you ask people to go out and get money for you and then you turn around and don't accept it. They don't want to do it for you again. Bernie. I think that, yeah, the lesson here is that Amherst represents maybe one half of 1% of the state's population. We need to keep that in mind. Every year the legislature passes debt issues that don't don't get don't get put in place. So each agency each state agency that has grants to offer is bumping up against a long list of applicants and a limited supply of funds. So, especially this is particularly true with with the libraries. So when you turn something down. People are not inclined to go ahead and say, well, you can try again. And it's important that we we maintain this good standing with the state in terms of being able to use the money that were were given whether it's through state aid whether it's a grant, whether it's a special purpose program. Having done having actually given out state money. We'll get that stuff gets looked at. And it gets looked at very hard. You know, so being a reliable partner in this these projects are is a critical importance. I guess I would add to that a couple of things one is that the MVLC process and the MSBA process are very different. And how they proceed. The MSBA process has essentially an annual opportunity to apply to get into the process so that it was the opportunity to turn around after the final decision was made with the first school proposal of the Wildwood site to come back into the application within several years we were able to get in because of some very strong relationships we pushed on on our end. But as Lynn pointed out, the cost ended up being different for other reasons. The, the, the Board of Library Commissioners process. They essentially develop a list and then work off the list for a long period of time so that it can take years before an opportunity comes up to even ask again. And you get all of the quite the things that have been previously pointed out about why it would be difficult. Once the process opens, it's a multi step process to get in and I know this because, you know, when I first became chair of the original finance committee, the one that was a committee of town meeting. It was about when we started the process and it took a long time to ever get to the stage that we're at. We would have to do the investment in repairs that's been previously discussed. So, you know that the whole process is so different, you, you just can't put the two together and I also point to how long it's taken shoots very who's gone through this on the library process and everything that I described, and it comes back with how long it took shoot spirit to get back to where they are now. So, that was my comment. Any comments here. And then we to some extent have addressed this but I want to make sure that if anybody from the library trustees has further comments. This is the issue about the fundraising goal and if it's not met is there a consequence for library operations. The understanding is that the trustees are trying to do everything to make sure that is not the case, and they have a clear understanding that the town is not a source for additional operating money. Above what we percentage wise do for every other branch of government in town. Is there any other comment on that one. And then we discussed the MOU earlier, and there may be some point that the MOU between the town and the needs to be amended but right now. It's a matter of interpretation. I'm sorry these weren't Italian. Okay. I'm going to take this down for the moment. Okay. So I guess the question for us to the committee is whether there are any questions that you want to pursue based upon the information that's just been presented that did not raise previously. Seeing no requests. I feel like we, we did do public comment. I'm going to leave it to the committee. If the committee wants to recommend that we reopen public comment. Make turn it to a committee vote. Because I don't think that it's one that I would then make solely. I see no one from the committee who's suggesting that we return to public comment. Alicia. Well, I'm okay with another public comment. If there are people who want to public comment. But I wasn't sure if we were actually voting on that. Sorry, Andy for the delay. I just get a show of hands from the committee is isn't the formal motion. But if you're opposed to going back to public comment. It would be helpful to at least have some indication otherwise. I will go back and hearing no objections then. Let me get everybody who's in the audience who wishes I know there's two hands up is there anybody else. Then I wanted honor general policy of trying to allow public comment. Try and limit your public comments please to two minutes because we think we need to move along. But when do we start with Tony since she's first in on the list. Tony, go ahead please. Hi, thanks so much for the second opportunity to speak. This has been really helpful. Regarding the model, I was wondering if you can actually share the model itself so that we could use, like put our own inputs in I think that was what was promised a few years ago. We have different estimates for costs of projects different interest rates and so on, and timing so that we can actually play with it ourselves. As far as the authorized debt. Thank you so much Holly for creating that spreadsheet or Jennifer. I just it doesn't jive with what I found on the data bank and I'm not exactly sure why so maybe somebody could help me understand that so the data bank has authorized that at 205 million dollars. And on issued debt at 164 million. So the difference being 40 million issued so I understand that centennial and the other water things are excluded and the school is excluded. But it still doesn't seem to add up to the same numbers as they're on the states websites I'm just curious why that is on the fundraising. Thanks to those that were trying to clarify whether the fundraising the capital campaign expenses are on the library or on the town and my interpretation of the first time away was similar to what Alicia was getting at that the library share, you know was set at 5.6 million and that fundraising costs could be deducted from that before giving the balance to the town which in effect meant the town was paying for the fundraising so if that's not the case that's fantastic. I think that to be more clear in the MOA because I'm obviously interpreted interpreting it wrong then and maybe other people would too, but that's great that the that the 1 million fundraising expenses is in addition to the library share effectively as long as the library is aware that they're raising another million dollars, and then the cash flow. I've been hearing 2027 number of times but the cash flow presented doesn't show any payment from the library in 2027, unless I'm reading it wrong it looks like the last payment from the library is July 2026. So that's, is that in fact what Bob Pam is expecting that everything is paid by July 2026 and nothing in 2027. And if that's not the case then I guess the cash flow should reflect another year of borrowing. Thank you so much. Thank you I don't know if Paul or anybody has anything to say about the memorandum agreement the MOA think that I had interpreted it differently but you go ahead. I, I wasn't going to speak to it I want to make sure that people understand the difference between calendar year and fiscal year fiscal year 2027 is July 31. Hi Maria. Thank you. The really late addition of a really complicated bunch of information really doesn't inspire confidence. There were a lot of things that still haven't been produced and what has been produced really needs to be vetted and digested and I hope that the finance committee and the town councillor spend a lot of time looking at the numbers. I want to comment specifically about what was finally said out loud at this meeting, which is the willingness of the town manager and some town councillors to dip into the capital stabilization fund. When we were talking about the school project, you would have thought that we were literally trying to take bricks from the fire department. The way that you've said, absolutely not you must not touch this capital stabilization fund we have to have that that has to grow if we don't grow this, we're not going to have a fire station. And here we are with inevitable results from the numbers that we're looking at that if you authorize this borrowing. The chances of you going to that capital stabilization fund to cover routine and unexpected capital expenses because you've tied up so much money in debt is extremely high. And the fact that you're not showing that same degree of concern now for the fire station that you did just a few months ago is while not unexpected. Extremely concerning. Thank you. Thank you. So, I know that there are a couple of councillors still in the audience nice and the third questions that they wanted that if they didn't fill our questions were asked, but they would raise their hands so pausing just to point that out and just in case any of them wants to and in the meantime recognize Kathy. Yeah, I, I just printed out memorandum of agreement number one, which was the 2021 one and memorandum supplement memorandum. And I definitely think it needs to be redone because it still has the old numbers in it. You know, so the, the library amount and be able to see us up. So the cover page and then clarity. And the, I haven't really carefully looked at the rest of it Paul but just, just trying to update all the numbers so we're clear what the library share was we were very clear in the first one that the library share was X. And that's what we've been focusing on and once we did CPA and MBO LC. So I think at a minimum, we need to update the numbers in it and then clarifying that that's the amount of money that be given to us. The other, I very much appreciate that the trustees, Bob and others have gone to the banks. So I don't know whether we can write in the assurance that they would take out a loan against the truck, their endowment fund as needed to make us whole by X date, you know the dates here. We said they're putting the endowment up as a security. So it's just, I just, I just think we need to tighten it a little bit because we, we don't own the building. We, we can't have the building be collateral. So, I'm not suggesting specific pieces here but it's still, it still says their obligation on one of it says their obligation is 5 million or the number so it's some combination of the two. That's it. That's the only thing I don't think that affects the way I think about the whole project right now I just think that my ultimate vote on this authorization is also going to rely on a tightly written updated MOA. I wanted to make because it, the original one, I think we all understood they were on the hook for the money if I use the, you know, with an endowment and it really seemed reasonable with an endowment of eight, and a gap of five where they were expecting to get new from historic credits. Now the gap is bigger and nearer to the total endowment and well I think they might be able to raise it I just think we should write it, write it tighter. That that's my, my thoughts on the MOA and maybe I'm looking at the wrong version of it I just printed out 2021 and 2022. So, that's it. So, I guess I have a question for the committee now. We've been talking about this for multiple meetings. Pamela has her hand up as a counselor. I'm sorry. Pam, I did say thank you, Lynn, for keeping an eye on the list. Please bring Pam in. The family want to make sure that your questions have been addressed while we saw the people here. I don't want to be joined as a panelist I just was going to speak. Does it matter. Okay. You're not a panelist you can go ahead Pam. Pam I think you muted yourself. No I came in as a panelist. So, I, I also misunderstood the MOA statement about contributions to the, from the library minus the fees and I think that could be just better English, just say that the, the library will not charge the library. We'll, we'll cover all costs, including their own fundraising fees. It's just not good English. The other question that just did not get answered was going to page two of three. And it was item number four again the town's decision to proceed with the project past the bidding phase may occur under the following circumstances a town council appropriate funds and be the town manager that in, in their sole discretion that the project is financially feasible. I did not hear the answer to is the town manager authorized by this MOA to in fact, authorize the borrowing or to authorize the borrowing to proceed with this project. When do you want to respond to that or do you want. I certainly would look to Paul. My understanding is the town council has to authorize the ability to borrow the town manager then signs the actual borrowing documents. Yeah, it's a two step process. One is the council approved approves the funding. And then the second catches for the town manager determined if the fundraising has been achieved at the level that we think we can move forward on it. But it the first step is for the council to vote if the council doesn't vote. The town manager has no authority to borrow or do anything. Okay, so. Thank you. Alicia. I just wanted to confirm that we're not actually taking a vote on this day just because I do have to leave the meaning. Actually, I was just about to ask that question, which is so that we can clear the deck and get on to our other business at the next meeting, including the meeting for the rental registration and the guidelines for FY 25. Let's see if we have, if there's a, if the committee's comfortable with going ahead with motions. Anybody who would not want to get to motions after the substantial discussion today. Hearing nobody say anything. I will proceed and put some motions on the table. But before I do so, I just want to make one statement on my own behalf. And that is that I think it's not my wife works part time. Really just an afternoon a week for the one of the branch libraries and I have on file with the clerk. I noticed that I have consulted with the state ethics commission about this. And based upon the advice and information, and my own study of the state ethics rules, that there is no conflict. And in my capacity as municipal employee. I am expected to take certain actions and performance my official duties as a circumstance as a reasonable person would conclude that there's no conflict of interest given that her employment is unrelated to what we're discussing and that therefore, I am committed to taking note on motions relating to the capital funding discussion that is underway. And that notice has, has been filed and it's been found for several years. Because of the same issue is on my mind, two years ago, and it's on my mind now. And I have based upon the advice I've received feel comfortable with it. So with that, I'm going to do two motions today. And the first one is actually one that arose out of today's discussion. And this, I think they. And then I'll have a second one, but I moved the finance committee recommends that the town manager seek amendments to the memorandum of agreement. As he deems necessary to assure clarity about the expectations of the parties to the agreement. So any discussion on that particular motion. Yeah, can we just as a friendly a minute. Add, including updating the numbers. You know, updating the obligations. Yeah, that's fine with me. Okay, so. The added language. I'll read the motion again, including where, how do you want to say clarity about them? Just, just to read the whole thing. There was a place I think you should said, including updating the numbers to figure out what, because between the two. Just so I'm clear. The very first one had a specific amount that they were obligated to come up with that was the subtraction of everything else. We don't have that. So that's the number, you know, when all is said and done the end of date. So, including updating the obligations updating the numbers but I mean Paul you've got it in the authorization you have it, you know, minus NBLC minus CPA minus whatever but I just want to make it clear what the obligation is. And that's all I just want to add those words figure out how it goes into your wording. Okay. So I'm going to read it again see if you think it's right, which is I move that the finance committee recommends that the town manager seek amendments to the memorandum of agreement as he deems necessary to assure clarity about the obligations of the parties to the agreement including updating the amount of obligations. And I agree as a seconder to that. That's fine. Thank you. So that is the motion on the is on the floor. So I'm going to just go alphabetically as I normally do. And so. Anna. Lynn. Hi. Bob Higner. I support. Matt. Support. Bernie. For. Kathy. Yes. I mean, yes, Alicia. No. So the motion is. With four counselors in favor. One opposed and three resident members in support. And the motion carries the second motion is. I move that the finance committee recommend. Council approved the motion requested. By the town manager in his November 9. 2023 member random to the council. I request for a supplemental appropriation and bond authorization for Jones library. Second. It is a motion that's been made and seconded. I'm going to just ignore for discussion is there any request for additional discussion. No request for additional discussion. Well, as I do normally go to the next person, which is Lynn. I. Bob. Support. Matt. Support. Bernie. Support. Kathy. Abstain. I'm a yes. Alicia. No. I'm a. So the vote on that is. Three yes. One no. One attention. And three resident members in support. And Andy to the extension want to explain my abstention. I need to see the whole package. So with the MOA, it matters to me how we guard against risk. So I'm not a no. But if you need wording and why did I say abstain? Okay. And of course. The reason I made the first motion first is to. Give the town manager the opportunity to. Negotiate. Modifications to the MOA before bringing this back to the council. Lynn, your hands up. That's exactly what Mike want to clarify. And that is that the town manager would do. Hopefully being able to do that in time for this to come before the council on the 4th of December. Okay. So. I propose that it's now we're 2 hours and 15 minutes. That we. Use our Friday afternoon meeting to discuss the other two issues. Of substance on the agenda. I don't. This committee probably has the energy to want to take on. The next item, which is the rental registration. So I would propose when we. Go to adjourn, but I have nothing that was. New business. Kathy. I did. I just have a quick comment. I sent you this morning. I marked up the draft guidelines, budget guidelines from a year ago. And red lines with comments. So are we still. We're not. I should ask us a question. Are we trying to get a draft. To the December 4th meeting, or have we moved that to a later date? I think we probably moved it to a later date, but I. With your consent. I will. Put that in the packet. Okay. Cause I did. I went all the way through it. Updating numbers. And then when I inserted or deleted, I put a comment on why I had done something. So I. If you put it in as a word document. That people will be able to see the red lining in the comments. I'm fine with sharing it. If you're fine with sharing it. A few things it says, this is Kathy's opinion. So it's. If it was a new thought, you know. And I might actually work on the same thing tomorrow. But I will send them out. And others from the committee are welcome to do so also. Because it'll create. The points for the opportunities for discussion. And. So I will. Do the same thing and invite others. But I will send them out. They will be. When they get posted, when you. Take a document like that with red lines. I think that when you. Save it to PDF, it saves with those changes show. And so if it does, then. It will be visible. Even people who. You know, to the SharePoint package. Because the. Posted packet does not have. The ability to put word documents into it. So that said, I think that. We have nothing more for today and we can adjourn. So I'll declare the meeting adjourned at. When he has to form. Thanks everybody. Thanks.