 Good morning, Ken. No, you're all set. OK, I have to read my little blurb. Hang on a minute. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the Mass General Act of 2021, this meeting will be conducted via remote means. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted. But every effort will be made to ensure the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. In the event that we are unable to do so for reasons of economic hardships or despite best efforts, we will post on the Amherst Town Government website at www.amherstma.gov, an audio or video recording transcript, or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible for the meeting. And we go to, I think, the first item is consideration of the minutes. Call to order, actually. Can you see my screen? Yeah, I see it. Can you can can you? Wow. They got bigger? Yeah, I'll do my best. Yeah, that doesn't work. All right, there you go. There you go. Not enough in the. All right, I call it a little bit more. Paul, your screen wider some way. There you go. Can you just stretch your screen out? I count, actually. OK. I call the meeting to order. And gentlemen, have you had a chance to review the minutes of September 9th, 2021? Yes. Yep. So move. We approve them. Second, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. OK. Do we have any members of the public here, David? Not that I'm seeing anywhere. Just the five of us? Just yes. OK. So the meeting is yours, David. All right. Well, basically, we're just going to start out with the usual motor vehicle access abatements. And as you can see, there's two groups there for the week of 823 to 827, 98 to 910. So it's the first one is $3,398.86. And the second one is $6,284. And there's nothing out of the ordinary on the reasons. It's usual reasons for incorrect garageing or people who've traded their vehicles or total cars. Teresa included the paperwork. Have you ever had a chance to look at the paperwork? Yeah. I think if you scroll down, you can see there they are. OK. So let's take the first one. What week is that? That's the 20th, the 24th. That's the 23rd, the 27th of August. I move to approve those motor vehicle abatements. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. OK. And the next one is September 8th. September 10th. OK. And that has a total of $622.84, I believe. Correct. All right. That OK. All those in favor of approving those motor vehicle abatements, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Right. And the general purpose of this meeting is we're going to jump straight into giving an overview of what we're going to be presenting on the fourth to the council. Now I want to say before we go along that the numbers for the tax rate are going to change slightly. We were using estimates so I can get this out to you. And I used $21.32. But we believe it's going to be closer to $21.27. There's going to be a bit less. And I will adjust that before we get to the hearing so they can see it all on the spread on the file. So that's an increase on the rate of how much? That's not an increase. It's a reduction of 55 cents. Oh, OK. Which is actually a good question. And the reason I should I would want to remind them that we have raised values this year on the residential portions. And even at that, the residential market is still far outstripping the assessments based on what we're seeing in 2021. So we'll probably have to raise them again yet again next year. What percentage did they get raised overall? About 8 percent, Ken. That was Ken, right? Yeah, thank you. The reason for it was obviously the market. And the other reason is that I had hoped not to do anything until 2022. But I don't want to see a double digit and raising FY22. If we are 23, if we can avoid it, it's just an awful big jump. So that's one of the things we'll be talking about when we get to the meeting. I won't mention it. It's not on the screen, but we'll mention it. So there's a way of why we did it and why the tax rate has dropped. We didn't do commercial. And the reason for that was we haven't. We haven't had many commercial complaints, but we see a lot more vacancy at the moment in town. So we've got to think that the COVID has had some sort of an impact. So rather than trying to deal with abatements, we're hoping that the fact that we don't change the values and that the tax rate is lower. So therefore, the commercial properties are paying less tax that it'll mitigate any abatements we have for next year. So that's the logic behind it so far. Did we have many abatements this year? We didn't for commercial, did we? No, not for commercial. We only had three or four. Okay. I think we had about 40 for the residential. But really the classification hearing is the same as usual. There's the load-in that you can see from the public hearing. We're asking them for the tax policy options. Then the overview of what's happening, how the assessors' values are determined, which is probably where I'll mention the increase in value. Then we have to have the public hearing and all the usual. This is really the same as last year. And then we're going to talk about what exempts, the way they have to do it every year and the law that we have. Now, we might have a few questions there because I think we've got some new councillors or people who may be councillors will probably be listening in. So we'll explain that a little bit if they ask, okay? What time is this soon? 6.30, Kim. Okay. Then there's the tax classification hearing. I was passed in 1978 on the four classes of property and the definitions for each. I will spend more time with them by the way. Oh, this is all the same from last year. There seems to be some confusion in town. I've noticed already about whether you can tax apartment buildings differently than one family home. So that may come up. Well, yeah, we do tax them differently. We'll talk a little bit about that. Yeah, okay. And then you can just see the breakdown of the distribution of the valuations. And obviously we've got a huge percentage that's residential. So is that a black color? Is that black? Black or brown, I'm not sure. Okay. Well, maybe red. No, it's not red. Oh, no, it's not red. No. Hey, I'm colorblind. Stop picking on me. I've never seen anybody pick black for a pie chart, but that's okay. Any changes in the percentages? No, the residential has gone up slightly because we've raised the value as opposed to the commercial. And we've also had some commercial tear downs this year and conversions. You're talking dollar numbers, right, David? Yes. Yeah, okay. We're gonna have some more lower values on the commercials next year. There's quite a few properties that are due for demolition and most of them are commercials. I have never seen so much demolition going on in the last 30 years, as we're gonna see this year. And the commercials will be replaced either by straightforward apartments or by mixed use. So again, the increase will be on the residential base next year. We just don't have a commercial base, it's that simple. And as a factor of what happens when we split the tax rates, single-tag, everybody gets the same tax rate. If we use the factor less than one, which will be 0.937909, if we use it, it would shift the burden onto the commercials by 50%. And completely the other way, if we raise the more than one, it would then impact the residential more than the commercial. So the chances of doing that are fairly negligible, I would think. And here's the impact of the split tax rate. And that's at a rate of 2046. Sorry, is that what we were using? No, that's not right, hold on. This is what might change. No, we have planned on 2132. If we split the tax rate, it would go to 2046 and 3198. Okay. And that's gonna change because as I said, we're gonna use 2127 instead of 2132. So this will have to be updated right now. Yeah, I think it's gonna change about 1995, but it didn't change it yet this morning. Yeah. And so the residential would see a decrease, an average single family home would decrease at $534. And the commercial industry would see an increase of about 5,600 on the average commercial property. So it's a 10 times the difference, if you will. And then that's just the piece about how many communities have the split rate and don't, and that's why they have the split rate. And all the exemptions we're gonna mention here, the residential exemption, we're not gonna discuss it yet. We will discuss the small commercial, which we don't have enough of. And now at that point, we're gonna go into this presentation by Sean and I of the residential exemption where I expect we're gonna have most of the questions and does anyone disagree with that? So this is the residential exemption study that Sean and I put together. We'll describe what it is, the study process, the data we have and the key points and the next steps. I'm hoping Sean's there, but he's, they just had a baby on Saturday, so I don't know if he's gonna be at the meeting or not. He's kind of want to break. That's what I would think, yeah. A week, I mean a week, that's plenty of time. Can worst of old school. So this is what the residential exemption is and what the council must hold on ordinarily and the maximum they can do and how many communities do it. And that's the study process. Those numbers are the 764 and 376 that are proximate because we've had a few more filtering onsens then, but we haven't changed the number. So I'm just gonna leave that for now. And we'd mentioned that we're working with you guys because in fact, this is about as close as I've ever worked with the Board of Assessors on anything. So it's been really good. And I hope the new assessor is part of this so she can see what we're doing. When these are the community. Do we have to go out and search for Zoom or will we get an invite from Theresa? Oh, no, you're gonna get an invite, I've already got. Thank you. Richard. Yes? I thought you had a question. Well, I was gonna say, I suppose we might anticipate that we're gonna get candidates for the council who may have questions. That's what I'm expecting, yeah. And I suppose they'll be getting an invite as well, I would imagine. I think this list of communities is extremely helpful because it really does give you an idea of sort of geographically and also, if you know the Cape, that also helps to understand that we're really quite distinguishable from the list here. Yeah, yeah. Dave, when you explain and describe the communities, will you also, at the same time, explain why that has an impact on the decision? Yeah, on why, if you have a large commercial base, it would impact how you're gonna decide the exemption. Yeah, we can, yes. That's a little bit more complicated than I wanna get involved in, but that's all right. I'd like questions drive you there, David. You think so? Yeah, it gets really complicated with split rates. A lot of these communities have split rates, and therefore, I mean, I don't know, it's up to you, but I would start digging out a hole because... No, I prefer to respond to questions than I do to put things right there. It gets really complicated. I mean, the thing that we're very familiar, I mean, like a lot of these have high rental properties or a high rental number of rentals. That's where we do fall in line with some of these. Yeah, but as you say, we've absolutely not much in the commercial base. Yeah. I just got done paying a week's rental on the Cape, and I have a sense that a split rate there or a residential exemption there is operates to drive up vacation rentals, which the community is very, very eager to collect, so yeah. Well, that's basically how they came about. People were saying their values driven up by people coming into town who were only living there three or four months of the year. Yeah. And so they spread the tax burden a bit more effectively for them. So on the pie chart, you can see the number of, at the time, the non-owner occupied, as opposed to the owner occupied. And that's a nice pink color this time, yeah. Yeah, that's better than black. How do you know it's pink? How do you know it's pink? Sean told me. Oh. And there's the example we'll have in the 15%. And others at the moment, we have a residential valuation at two points, almost 2.4 billion. The total number of parcels, so the average is that, and that's what 15% of that would be. Who checks the math on these tables? Whoever wants to, I did the math. Okay. So the total amount of the valuation of the exemption would be that, 244. So you subtract that from the residential property value, and it gives you 2.10, whatever. And then that gives you the new tax rate of 23.95 within the residential tax rate. And for this particular study, we were using 21.46, which is what the residential tax rate would have been. So as you can see, it went up $2.49, or almost 10% actually, which is pretty down close. And this is just a breakdown of what would happen to them by the change in the tax bill of $1,000 or more, reduction in these first three lanes, two lanes are in production, and then the increase for all the others over and above that. And we've put down where the break even is. And at that point, I'll explain what the break even is. It's not self-explanatory, sometimes people get confused. And it'll give me a chance to talk about how the, we only use the average value and everybody gets the same exemption. It's not 15% of the assessed valuation. It's 15% of the average value of assessed, as you know. So that should be a good place. I would think that I'll talk to them about that. And then there's just the key points that you're all familiar with. So unless there's a question, I'm not gonna go over those with you. I guess the last bullet, David, I mean, I sort of say this policy will increase the residential tax rate. So what? I mean, so what, I mean, you might think about adding, re-emphasizing, but will not increase total residential tax collected. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yes, we can do that. I don't care what the tax rate is, how much money? You might expand that bullet just to say, but will not increase, because a lot of people will read that and think they'll collect more taxes. It's funny you should say that because I was reading the newspaper this morning and it really sounded like on the blog, there was a blog over there in her Nick Gravy. And it's really almost saying like, if we raise the tax rate, we're raising taxes. And you're quite right, people don't understand. So yeah, we should add something there just to let them know. I mean, but will not increase total residential taxes collected maybe. Yeah, I think that's a good idea. Yeah, Sean, I think I'll see Sean tomorrow so we'll change it then. Okay. Any other questions there? That's a good point. So then there's just the key points. The Sassage Office, for the first year we definitely would need some additional resources just to get everything started right. What would a more robust mechanism look like? Basically, some sort of reporting system so people can let us know each year if our residential owner, occupant or not, some sort of survey each year. I think after the first year it would be limited to properties that sell during the year because we've got all the elders already in place. But if you wanted to, it was you could send them to everybody but it's an awful lot of work. Yeah, that's the hard thing, processing. I mean, most cities that have this have some kind of form that people have to fill out. Yeah. And then somebody's got to process it. So it does take time. And you're talking, it's not just like for like exemptions so people who only have a couple of hundred do the process. You have seven, close to 6,300 you have to deal with. So it's a lot of entry each year. And basically then we're putting it on the council for them to consider what they're hoped to achieve. And one thing I want to stress in there is that they'll have to do it. It's going to come back to them every year and doing it one year and then changing it to the next year. In my opinion, just not up and down. No. And the recommendations for the time manager, unless... Yeah, that last page, David. Yes, sir. I don't know. I was thinking maybe you can just say this verbally but I think it needs to be real. I was thinking maybe adding a bullet but maybe you can just say it verbally. I mean, somebody needs to stress here saying, council, we need a vote by you by December 1st or whatever the date is. Well, I'm starting to hope we get a vote from them by... We're scheduled a follow up for October 18th. Okay, then October 18th. I'm concerned that some council people might read say, if yes, public engagement. They're thinking they can do these public engagement sessions before they need to vote and that's not true. Yeah, I think, yeah, get it after. Yeah, they got a vote by whatever date you want to put down there, but... Yeah, that too is a good point. We'll put that on there. I think I'll put it on the bullet because I would probably forget. Okay, yeah, I put it as the last bullet then council must take a vote by October, whatever. Yeah. So they don't... If yes, that's not really an option this year, the public engagement. It's really, okay, if you want to have public engagement the next year, you should instruct people to do it. Yeah. But you can't do it this year. Well, it would have to be something that they were working on through the whole next calendar year, I would assume. That's right. With a lot of... I mean, that's where I reached it. The assessment office and whoever working on it, we reached the end of the road. You need a broader outreach in the community if you want to do anything more. Yeah, you do. You definitely have to get it out there. Yeah, and that takes a year at least. So, and then we just throw it over to questions and I was gonna just... I wasn't gonna let them or ask, sorry. So I was gonna ask them not to have questions after the first part and do it all at the end here for the classification and everything else. But we can just see what they do. So then you're gonna flip back now to the classification. Yeah, we can. Well, you've got a slide in there that calls for questions at the end of classification, right? They're required by law to hold a vote when? Yearly, in particular time, before we set the tax rate. So it could be any time between now and Christmas, right? Oh, Christ, no, because we have to get the tax bill to end of November. End of November, okay, thank you. Yeah. David, if you don't want questions on classification until the end, then maybe that slides you come out. Yeah. That one. Yeah, yeah, and maybe I'll put something there instead that says, could you hold? We would wait until the end of the presentation for questions. It was a residential exemption presentation for questions. And then we could do it all at one time. Yeah, I think you have to see what the flow is going. I mean, if they're asking a lot of questions about the residential exemption, I think you need to let it flow. Yeah. Because you don't want to have them hold it and come back to that after you go through the rest of this. So would you suggest we do the residential exemption, or the classification questions here and then do the residential exemption separately? Yes. Yeah, I'm thinking about it, that makes sense. Yeah. All right, then we'll just leave that on and that's what we'll do. I mean, it doesn't matter to us really because it's going to be the same questions no matter what happens. Yeah. You want to make sure the slides flow right? You don't want to, because I know how the slides get messed up sometimes. You don't want to be going back and forth. I don't know what, you know, like this. Yeah, you're right. Then we could just do it. I want to put them all right next to each other. Otherwise, it doesn't work well at council. We see it's all true. Yeah, we're not at council. You're on Zoom, so it works better on Zoom. Yeah, I mean, it's all true. Jesus fault. No, not Teresa. Whoever's doing the slide. I got Teresa only did what I asked her. Past years, it's been crazy. Who's been putting up slides. We'll have to try not to do that. So my question is, does the residential exemption usually accompany the split rate, a split rate? Oh, no. No. There's been many communities. Many communities have done the split rate and not done the community residential exemption. Okay. But how about vice versa, a residential exemption without a split rate? It's very 12 out of 15 do have a split rate. Yeah. So the other way, they very likely have a split rate because they have a lot of commercial. So on that list of communities that we saw, there's only three that do it without a split rate. Yeah. Okay. You know, a lot of the kids doesn't have any, doesn't have any commercial base either. Right. David, are you allocated time? I mean, We've got a time certain to start at 6.30 Lee. But the variable there is whether it's after public comment. If it's after public comment and there's something that's hot, you have to wait for the public comment to get done. Yeah. Well, no, Lee, we don't have a designated amount of time. No. Okay. Do you remember how much it is? We don't have one. Okay. Well, hopefully we don't get pushed to the end of the agenda like last year. Remember what, the 9.30? They flipped us. I'm trying to forget that. But we'll see what we can do. Maybe I'll try and talk to Paul as we can talk to Levin so we can get it done right away. I mean, we were first on the agenda. I forget. We were pushed off to the end then. I'm trying to forget. Some council person had a question that we... Yes. She wanted to do it at the end or something. I don't know. So I guess we can't help that if that's what happens. So that's the presentations. I need to go back to the agenda and I shall consider it. I think we're done. I think not. I don't think there's anything else that we have. Well, just the update. I will be in here early tomorrow morning. Kim is stopping in. Kim, Kim McDonnell Muse is a new lady. She's the assessor. Was the assessor on Green Twin? I think whoever was on the panel last time talked to her. Yes, we did. Yeah. And I only... I once saw her and knew who she was, but I can't know from where. But I think she's very personable. And I think after her night talk of it, she's a much better understanding of the runnings of the office. I'm not sure about her experience with commercial, but we'll see. And as I remember, she was relatively new. She was about four years in the job now. So I just wanted to let you know that she will be here tomorrow morning at 30. I'll talk with her and maybe once she starts, we can set up a time when we can all meet in person. Sounds good. Over coffee. You love your bloody coffee. I forget whether we sit. I see Paul and Amherst coffee almost every morning. I forget whether we can actually have a meet without an open meeting law problem. Now, we'll think about that. Maybe we'll post a meeting at the Black Sheep. There you go. No reason why not. Give a Black Sheep still open. Sad about Judy. Yeah, I think she thinks she was ready to retire. Yeah, but you think somebody will take over the restaurant and operate like it is? I hope so. OK, we're still being reported. So let's do we have anything else to talk about? No. OK. So, David, do you think this is your last meeting? No, I'll probably be at the one in October, at least. OK, so our next meeting, did we agree on a date? I think the next meeting is the October 14th, I think. I think we decided on a October 14th. Is that is that going to work for the other two members? I'm what am I doing that day? And that's what I have the 14th. Oh, yeah, I guess that's going to. Yeah, OK. If somehow I don't show, it's because I'm chauffeuring somebody back and forth to Boston. But I think if we meet at 11 on that Thursday, it's a Thursday, right? Yeah. Yeah, I think I'll be OK. But if the other two gentlemen are there, they'll be a quorum. So I'm sure Kim has probably better knowledge of how to use them than I do. She may be the host, but I will be on the meeting. OK. All right. Well, that's great. We look forward to that. And so, David, we thank you for your help. Thank you. And Theresa, thank you for these packages so organized. Oh, you're welcome. Whatever makes your life easier. It's a lot easier. It's really great. We really appreciate it. Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you. And then you adjourn. Eventually, we're going to meet in person, I guess, although maybe not this year. I don't know about that. I think there's some discussion this Monday night at the console. Tonight, actually, I think there's some discussion. I'm not sure. OK. All right. OK. All right. I move to adjourn. Second. All right. All those in favor say aye. David, Theresa, gentlemen, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. OK, I'll see you in a week. Yeah, good night.