 the trust members and so now let's see if we have some attendees more big than me Lucas welcome whoever it is who's in the attendees room if you can hear me I don't even know I think you can I am going to wait until we get some get the trust members here hey how come I can't promote I'm making I'm not a host I'll make you a co-host I'll make you the full host when I go okay well then so okay so I can promote to panelist Allegra who's one of us I think I did that is she coming in looks like yep okay hello Allegra good evening how are you I'm I'm okay trying to be okay trying to do this about Erica and without date I'm a little more stressed than usual but other than that so let's see so Erica's out of town today is that right or she's yeah she's on an amazing vacation so I'm sure she's having a good time I'm glad for that yeah and Laura Baker and May Lucas are in the attendee room but I think we need some more trust members in order to get started I have only heard from I mean I know Erica isn't going to be here and I heard from Paul that he's not going to be here but I'm Reese is going to be here because he's going to present something I believe so and I haven't heard anyone else say that they wouldn't be here so hopefully for the trust how many members are there uh one two three four five six there's eight but two of them won't be here so Robin here's here's Risha and here's Rob okay so we have a couple more people hello Risha and Rob let's see we should have uh I expect we will have oh I'm here aren't I Ashley and Grover yeah we need we need five for quorum so we need to have a quorum we need at least one of Grover or Ashley I'm pretty sure Grover is planning to be here we talked the other day and Mindy Dom is now hello Mindy thank you for being here Risha I've made you a co-host so you can um so you can share your screen later by by the way I'm a I'm just a Amherst staff member I'm just helping getting the meeting set up because they couldn't be here awesome thank you hey Rob who else do we need oh we need also George hopefully George he said he was coming didn't he I think George Ryan I had a hard time with the link in the email I had to get in through a different mechanism so it could be that other people faced the same thing okay well that did you have trouble Rob I was a little stymied at first because it says um if you're the host go ahead and start it then in tiny little letters at the bottom says if you're not the host click here I didn't see that hold up aha well that's might have been what happened to me I tried to get in a little early and I I said if you're if you're the host put in a bunch of stuff that I didn't have but then I got a hold of Steve but maybe people are having problems I don't know we'd be expecting tonight well at least we should see Grover Wellman Brown and Ashley Jensen Eldridge those are the trust members that I expect and I'm Ashley always comes she hasn't said she wasn't coming I expect she'll come and I talked to Grover last night anyway there's Grover all right there's Grover and George Ryan I'm glad to see you here because he will be our notetaker thank you so much George we don't he likes to stay where he is in the as an attendee but he's our notetaker welcome Grover hi apologies I had a zoom snafu but here now did you have trouble getting into this meeting it's more like zoom had just like logged me out and sent me on a little maze back in oh okay what this other people had trouble getting into so I'm just wondering if that's an issue tonight for whatever reason that's what happened to me too so it sounds like the same thing okay well you guys did better than I did I got I got like this doesn't work right to get a hold of Steve um well I guess that we could we have a we have one two three we have five so we can go ahead and start we have a quorum we'll just keep our eyes out if somebody sees Ashley and I don't or after Steven as long as Steven's here he can he can watch for her but um I think we should go ahead and get started because it's 705 so I'm going to call the meeting to order at 705 welcome everyone and let's see what we can do here we have a note taker who is in the attendees George and we have hopefully all looked at the minutes from last time that were robs I think we'll get the meetings mixed up uh so if everyone has had a chance to look at the minutes is there any are there any comments any changes anybody wants to see anything that needs to happen to the minutes before we accept them I'm seeing no nothing or other uh are the minutes acceptable as presented we could just do I am seeing thumbs up from all five of us in the room I'm going to consider as if that means that the minutes are approved and um the next thing on our agenda is delightfully uh presentation from Risha who will Risha I'll let you talk about what's going on for you but um also I believe you can now share your screen is that look true can you I can do my screen uh okay when you say share things that are going on with me is that a secret code are you or should I just start my presentation well I wondered if you wanted to talk about your tenure here and your new so earlier this week I was appointed to the board of health for Amherst um I am the health person so that makes a lot more sense I had um taken a conversation that we had as the trust to heart um a few months ago where it was talked about needing representation from people with more lived experience and I come at this purely from an interest standpoint I have people in my life who need a affordable housing but I don't have the lived experience and so this will be my last meeting I am going to transfer over to the board of health um and I am going to attempt to join your strategic planning as a community member because I'm interested um but uh I am I'm sad to to go and I'm excited to give this presentation as well which has nothing to do with me leaving um thank you very much okay so let me figure out how to do this can you see my presentation yes great um so I just want to get my notes out okay I am going to talk fast I am going to skim over things that you're going to want to look at longer um and I'm going to ask that you hold your questions till the end so that there is actually time for questions and we don't get sidetracked and then bigger picture questions don't get asked um especially for those of you who um did not get this ahead of time I don't know if anybody did um the I did send it ahead of time to but I don't know how that works um I assume this would be posted on the the town website with our meeting minutes and all of that and so if there are slides that you'd like to look at longer with data on them those are the ones I'm thinking of specifically you can spend more time there or just reach out and I'm happy to email it to you so um I've been stewing on this for quite a while in February uh two pieces of data came out almost at the same time and they sort of sparked thoughts in my head the first was this uh mhp data town data set if people aren't familiar with it there's a lot there uh it's really interesting um and the thing that sparked for me was the uh the age demographics and obviously we are a college town this is very well represented in that left graph we have mostly college age people in our town but um I played with the data set a bit on the graph on the right and um the percentage change aren't huge I mean if you look at the the axis there it's only about one percent um at the highest level but our growth is all coming from seniors um and everyone I have spoken to says that a this is a countrywide trend and b it is moving exponentially um that this is really going to go up the other piece of data that came out in February of this year was this age and dementia friendly amherst senior survey as we were calling it and um the things that struck me from this were how important is it for you to be able to stay in your own home uh 83 percent said very or extremely so a vast majority of people want to age in home um a lot of people skipped the next question around needing services but those who did needed some pretty basic services yard work lighthouse work those kinds of things and then this is the worst graph I will walk you through it um and this is where seniors live now in amherst the type of residents and where they see themselves in five years or where they'd like to live in five years and I have ordered it from the bottom to the top as the largest positive changes so where people are hoping to move to most is into senior independent community like the largest growth area followed by locations that are accessible to stores etc followed by assisted living apartments come to townhouses accessory apartments group home and co-housing and where are they moving from is this big thing at the top which is single family homes so people who are in single family homes now are hoping to downsize and live in a variety of other settings that have to do with smaller houses more community based housing um and things specifically for seniors as the text says on the left this is directly from this study however we don't have those units um and so while people would like to move into those they may end up having to stay in larger units than they would like to be in what exists for them to move into uh we've got public and private senior specific options um and this is just senior specific I know we have lots of other options in town so we have about um uh 114 public that's not about we have exactly 114 public and 738 private units uh of which those of that 738 423 are independent living the others are much more specific care kind of giving units um and you can see here that for the uh 114 there's two nearly three thousand people waiting um for those units so vast under ability to serve this group I should say I forgot to say earlier the town census says that there are 5200 people in Amherst over the age of 60 um and so for that we have approximately you know 800 specific senior units in town that is not to say every senior should be in a senior unit um but that is what is available uh I was pleasantly surprised in um in the report from this working group on age and dementia friendly Amherst and it's a draft I'm grateful for being shared the draft but the draft goal free is to provide support and assist with alternative housing models to enable Amherst residents to safely age in place and I highlight three actions that jumped out to me um explore alternative living arrangements provide assistance in education in finding different housing options such as home sharing for accessory dwellings um and consider pursuing a program such as Nestor Lee which screens students to rent rooms from older adults I'll talk about Nestor Lee in a second so what this all did in my mind is about eight years ago I went to an exhibit at the National Building Museum in Washington DC on housing the creative housing solutions that were popping up around the country um and house sharing or home sharing was one of those that really caught my attention and it feels like there's potential here at Amherst for it to uh be a win-win for the problems that that we are seeing so I wanted to just jump in there um oh before I do that I did meet with Hailey Bolton at the Amherst Senior Center this Monday um she verified and helped fill in some of the nature I had all those units um correct and she said for sure this you know what I just shared with you reflects what she's hearing and what they're seeing uh she did want to emphasize two points one is the importance of community and connectedness and she shared these two data points on how um loneliness or isolation can have devastating health effects so 50 percent increase in the risk of dementia um 26 percent risk of early death um so really stark statistics and then what she's really hearing and again it was reflected on this survey is that people who are trying to age at home are struggling with high property taxes burdens of keeping up their house and their kids are far away and often their partners uh or potentially for some their partners are deceased and so they are living alone in age and alone so uh home sharing what home sharing is um it's essentially in many cases they someone who owns a home who has extra space will rent out a room to someone else that's pretty basic um what makes homes sharing unique in many ways is that they often reduce the rent in exchange for very specific contracted support um this is never nursing or medical care or personal assistance this is stuff like shoveling the driveway mowing the lawn cleaning the bathrooms doing grocery shopping or taking people grocery shopping so you know housework and for that you get either a free or reduced rent um and the rise in these I'll talk about in a second um but um most home share programs in the US actually do focus on matching younger renters or you know home sharers with uh older adults who own their home I think that's just based on types of people who typically own homes um but I think it would be very specific and appropriate for Amherst demographics there are non-profit and for-profit versions of these the two big for-profit ones are Silver Nest and Nestor Lee which was called out in that earlier report um I'm going to highlight home share Vermont in the next slide it is just representative of all of these non-profits around the country that do this um they're all pretty similar but they whether they're for-profit or non-profit they provide background checks contracts uh safe ways to meet they often provide the liability insurance etc um and the benefits of this is you know if you do have a situation like Amherst does in my mind uh where you've got a lot of unused parts of houses around town and a lot of people who would really like to be living in those houses um it can be a better use of all that space uh without having to build new things so it's a much quicker solution than building a whole new complex help senior stay in their homes provides lower costs for renters and reduces isolation on both sides the Vermont example um so the state of Vermont provided about 140,000 general fund dollars every year to this group and it was matched by federal funds of 184,000 a year and they estimated that this allowed individuals to save over a million dollars every year um in housing costs the you can see from this little picture the average age of the person who owned the home was 75 and the average age of the renter was 50 which is not that young might be very different in our demographic area the they helped 257 people with this amount of money they created nearly 200 home shares people stayed an average of a year and paid an average rent of a shocking 262 this is slightly old data but uh not sure how that worked uh maybe Vermont's just a very different place so um just to close on that I should also share this is something I have personal experience with I grew up in Amherst in a single family low income home and my mom rented out a room for free to graduate students so that I would have child care while she was working after school and so it worked really well for us I think it's part of why it clicked for me is that I have very positive memories of it the other thing that seemed like an interesting alternative solution is co-housing this is something you guys might be more familiar with because there are co-housing um places in Amherst it is intentional community is what they like to call it um so your basic I the reason this came up for me is I stayed in a friends co-housing community in Tacoma Park Washington for two weeks this summer and so I got to experience what it looked like firsthand and how it worked and so you have a bunch of privately owned units that then share responsibility with very clear contractual elements and bylaws about how they collaborate on taking care of everything and then building their community so you know the place I stayed in had a gym and a workshop and a tv room and there was weekly happy hours and they watched Rachel Maddow together and the kids had a dance party on Friday nights um and there was a really nice mix of seniors young families middle-aged people very intentional in that way there are about 300 that either exist or are starting in the U.S. of these communities the two in Amherst are Cherry Hill which has 32 units and Pine Street which has 11 if you look at the Cherry Hill numbers there you'll see 15 non-member residents there's usually very strict bylaws on the percentage that can be rented out most are owner-occupied um if you look at the two pictures of our Amherst co-housing you'll notice that there's their detached homes and I put the picture of the one I stayed in into Tacoma Park because it is not it looks a lot more like the kinds of housing we're looking at at the Southeast Street School Belcher Town Road it's a single building around a courtyard and I think that it certainly it's a much better use of space if that's a concern there are senior specific co-housing I didn't really look into them because I think part of the benefit is really the mixed intergenerational aspect of it but this community Oak Creek community had listed out these as the benefits you can see for seniors specifically you can see that most of them are about social and community but there are bits about appropriate size of housing so you know less space that you need to take care of less things you need to fix there's more shared responsibility in that and that is also related to the cost savings and I pulled out that their estimate is that it's about half of what typical senior housing costs I think that's it um so the the sort of so what why I thought it was interesting for the affordable housing trust is you know it is certainly something like in the Vermont case that we could be supporting financially if such a thing existed if we want it to exist we could be actively bringing it in the senior center does that age and dementia working group does have it on their list of things that they'd like to bring in so it could be a sort of a joint project with them on spurring either a nonprofit or a for-profit group to get involved in airmarst co-housing does require building usually and so that's a much that's a longer term solution but something that maybe we can um keep in our back pocket as we're thinking about how to design these things the the one that I stayed in was 75 percent affordable housing by bylaw and that's so you can design it to be affordable co-housing um and sort of the oldest member was in her late 80s in a wheelchair um and living independently in that community very happily um and so yeah I'll open it up to questions or I definitely rushed thank you very much first of all I'm sure there are questions but that was really great we should thank you so much for doing that the great way to go out uh it looks like Ashley had the question for starters well I was I mean it's a bit of a question but then also one way of not starting from scratch is starting with an apartment complex it's like if you know Amherst has a lot of land and a lot of empty buildings those can be apartment complexes that are turned into co-housing you know whether we build or buy a a building that turns into an apartment or is an apartment or is an old hotel anything could be a co-housing is what I'm saying we don't have to like start you know from nothing is that would you say that's true Risha I mean I'm not a builder right but I think yes the the structure it tends to be very intentional because obviously you do want those shared spaces but I imagine that you know a lot of the places that are being looked at the old school and south Amherst etc you know there's always potential for someone who's good at that stuff I think it's I talked to the people who started the one in Tacoma Park and it's about a two-year process to form the community the the building isn't the hardest part it's figuring out the bylaws and how you're going to do that and where you get the funding and the developer usually leads you through the process and so I don't I don't know much about the building side I guess is my answer but I guess I was just saying without building it's totally possible even if we don't build anything we just take over another apartment or an empty like a school could be apartments we don't even have to build is what I'm saying it could be cheaper than building it could be it could be something could be adapted to be that instead of built from scratch certainly I just wanted to add that the one other sort of at least quasi co-housing thing that exists in Amherst's Pomeroy Lane which was built as a cooperative as a as a co on a co-housing housing model so there's a common house and various common things and it has a lot of kinds of affordabilities and diversities built into the structure of it because it was a tax credit deal the way they got the money to do it then for a while it was kind of only quasi a co-housing but it had its own board it had its own it had its own um uh kind of governance structure and I believe now that the initial tax credit time is is finished it still functions that way but in order to get the ongoing order needed it had to continue to have some kind of a management company in there couldn't completely be doing everything on its own but it it's a great I lived there for a while um it's a great model there's income diversity there's uh racial diversity um ability diversity kind of built in to to the model it's a good thing yeah I think I was really struck that there's there's a whole continuum right like every condo has some level of shared space and right um and so what what brings you to that point I don't know what qualifies you at that end versus just shared but I believe what I've seen is a continuum uh other questions or comments I guess um I'm kind of struck by the idea of the home sharing model I really think that could be something useful for especially the student population who have been having a hard time finding places to live in Amherst and maybe clashing a little bit with the neighborhood when a bunch of them are just in a house together um but I also am just kind of struck by like our population maybe some of the people who are you know elder homeowners might have like couldn't you build great connections with like oh hey this is a retired professor who's renting out a room and like let's build this bridge and now we have students that are studying what you used to teach like I feel like that could be a very wise way to build bridges um in the community so I I like that idea a lot um if there were homes willing to host in that sense um and again if they're getting a little bit of income and a little bit of housework help and that's part of the deal and it's all screened and everything it seems like that would really be a positive experience for everyone I had what I had a question about the uh Vermont Risha do you know anything about what was the source of their federal funding and said they got federal and stands kind of state and federal matching funding for a bunch of years let's just be yeah I don't know more than that that was all I could find um I'd be happy to you know reach out and try to get more connection and how you know if there was something that we wanted to really pursue on it but um yeah okay pretty old data too right 2016 so would be interesting to hear what's happened but I feel like again to to Allegra's point I mean the hardest bit to me seems to be finding people who trust the system enough to bring in people that that they feel good about and sort of starting it once you hear that your neighbors did it that it feels like it can sort of take off um and I think the only way to know about those issues is to talk to the communities who did it and started it and how they got that rolling I don't know yeah thank you thank you and rob it looked like you wanted to say something yeah I guess I had a similar question on the other side um what exactly is the for-profit model who who pays I mean who is the contractee and what services does does the contract or provide you know yeah I mean I assume you take a cut from both sides it's possible you take it from just one side so that either there's a finder's fee or there's a I get 10% of the agreed upon market rate I don't even know because you might not be paying any rent right you might have decided that you know the space is worth having you take you know do the house cleaning every full time so there you know there's probably fees maybe to sign up or to list and then the services they provide they're pretty clear about which is that they um they provide the contracts they help with the negotiations they allow ways for people to find the matches and set up those initial meetings that don't involve strangers coming into your house to you know scope it out to rob it later I don't know um so it's more it's really on the safety and liability side that they're um is there a role for oh sorry no say it again is there a role for the municipality in in this arrangement like like what would it mean for amherst to bring in necessarily or whatever it's a good question I I I think probably to make a business case that it's worth their while um more than anything else yeah thanks um ashley well so it sounds like this could just be a click on the amherst town website and we it it wouldn't it doesn't involve building anything it's like getting older people to rent out their rooms could be like a little box on the amherst town website and it's like anybody could do this you know individually but a company could come in and like help people do it and and all they need is a little bit of advertisement it's not like a I mean we could invest in them but it's like the the homeowner is making the money in general if they're paying a little we could just kind of recommend people use this service it's a service more or less right that part where you just rent like older people rent out rooms I think the yeah I don't think it's a very expensive thing to run I mean I'm not sure what the 300 000 that vermont used per year went to I assume there's a website with all the listings on both sides in a sort of an algorithm to match people who are looking to do this with that and and but I suspect the vast majority of the cost is liability insurance well okay so I'm just there just seems to be so many like great ideas some only need like a little help on the website and some need to be built and it just it's like what's the mechanism we have to get all these things going tiny houses and co-housing we need to do these things you know they're all great let's do them you know like well I mean I'm gonna give grover a chance to talk but I would just say maybe the first step in this one would be to find somebody who would be willing to do some to talk to the people in vermont who've done this and ask them more questions of the kinds of questions we're now asking each other none of whom know the answer but if there's somebody who wants to take that on that would be that would be great and grover yeah thanks for this presentation risha and it sounds to me like well the home matching program is both interesting to me and gives me pause there it's it's socially complicated right and so uh I think I imagine it would be most successful in what it sounds like vermont is doing which is like there's an aspect of community education and advertising that would need to happen because for people to change their ideas of like how they're living or what they're doing with their homes for example or who rents out homes like we need some repetition right and some storytelling of success stories and things like that and then also a facilitator like like we're talking about a company or a non-profit to match people but also um but also I imagine there's yeah some of these like technical assistance needed to like develop it as a model of rental in our town of like yeah like liability insurance like what is it to be a person who's living in your home and you're trading labor in part for rent right there's it it can get it feels complicated a little bit um to have like live in in care so I'm just naming that as it sounds like a great idea and also I think that yeah it it would involve some intentionality or I'm thinking if we if we join other entities in the town to do a push of like affordable housing education or like housing solutions education like the student problem and the senior phenomenon right like this as you're saying ties them together so it seems like an interesting opportunity and also that there might be other pieces of our town or our community that would be helpful in facilitating it forward um and also it made me think of this as thus it also made me think that the both the co-housing and the home sharing model are good examples of things to think of when we're thinking about zoning law in the future and zoning policies which isn't exactly our purview but we are able to like have conversations and opinions and you know there's a way in which co-sharing a home I think could have a little more clarity if uh if it was easy to subdivide a home in the like rural outlying places into a duplex for example so then for covid reasons or other things right then there's some clarity of space even if the person renting out the other side is also caring for our homes so I just want to note that and like put a marker in it as we're moving forward I should say I reached out um before this meeting to just check if there was any sort of town policies that zoning you know that was in contradiction and uh neither of us could think of any except that depending on which part of town you're in would determine how many units you could build for instance um the the house sharing you know you can do that without telling anybody um there there is no you know yeah the house sharing that's true but I think that um I think that more people would opt into it if they knew that if things were not going great they could have a door and a separation and a kitchen that you know like that everybody is not actually sharing the same kitchen and bathroom and and such right like I I imagine there would be more adoption if it was easier to subdivide our homes in simple construction ways like a quick and I think that's what the accessory dwelling stuff is supposed to cover but again this you're we're getting into the areas that I feel very not confident about my knowledge well that's okay thank you everyone for some good ideas unless there's something really burning that somebody wants to say I would like to move on to our next topic which is a report on how we're doing the strategic planning process um does that sound okay moving on so Grover would you like to start us off sure so Erica and Carol and I have had a couple of meetings and conversations and just as a reminder the goal is for us to have a series of hopefully proposed in-person conversations as a trust to talk about what our individual priorities and goals are and then from that determine our collective priorities and goals and update our strategic priorities as a trust and we got a suggestion to look into support from the Massachusetts housing partnership where they have a staff member whose expertise is on supporting housing trusts and her name is Shelly Goring sorry Shelly if I am not getting your name correct and she does technical assistance for housing trust and conveniently they have an application for support basically for support for towns to do specific projects like the one that we are talking about and so Carol and I Carol sent a few questions to get some more finalized information about that but we would like to submit the very quick application saying that we would like technical assistance support in facilitating these meetings and compiling all the information and conversation and then putting it into our future goals and that application is due pretty quickly on October 2nd but the good news is that we would know back it says the second week of October so we would know pretty quickly whether we got the the you know if our application was taken up by Massachusetts housing partnership and then it would move forward along our goal timelines basically Carol anything to add uh not so much I talked to the person she just Shelly Goring on the phone the other night and she seemed like she had just quick off the top of her head some suggestions that seemed like oh yeah to me like how many goals you have don't you want to have something that's measurable and manageable and so you can tell what you're doing and not have so many goals that it's practically the same as not having anything at all that's my words the last little part the first part was her um but uh I I it made me think that I would like to do this application which I had kind of thought the directions in it say that it's supposed to be kind of a project that you're ready to work on but but I'm so I thought that meant a housing project but she said no it means our our job is to support affordable housing trusts being effective being the most effective and best that they can be and so if you are trying to engage in a process to get clear on what you're actually trying to do that's the kind of project that we would like to support so I believe that we have a reason to be hopeful the application is isn't too particular it's a couple of pages in it I I don't know anyway it seems since we have to be writing the community preservation act proposal right now and then this thing is kind of like a shorter version of the same thing maybe I don't know so uh anyway I would like to have I would like to see us be able to do this and so we kind of have some discussion but we're hoping that you all will vote us the authority or whatever it's called to go forward and submit this application Ashley yeah I'm I'm totally in favor of it because we have no mechanism at the moment to be effective like there's no way that I can see that the town of Amherst is accountable for this all these ideas and utilizing them like we need to figure out how to actually get the town to do things and so we need all the help we can get of course let's get experts how does how do affordable housing trusts get their town to do like several very effective multi-leveled affordable housing projects that literally help them out the mass amount of people that we need to help we need all the help we can get even trying to figure out how to do that for sure uh we do like to turn that into a motion so that we can go forward with this let's just vote uh so Rob writing the letter writing the letter the motion is to write the letter and get all the help we can to actually get affordable housing in Amherst ASAP come on can we just call it the application since that's what they're calling it to write the application write the application yes can we vote on that if Rob had his hand up and then I think so if there's any discussion is there a second second somebody said second I didn't see Allegra okay and then Rob did you want to say something or am I yeah I was wondering if you could contrast or compare um this this opportunity to the one you were talking about last last month um the the Piney Valley Planning Commission um you know like is it the same or I'm not sure uh Grover do you want to say something or do you want me to I can I think the the so the one we were talking about last time is a person that Erica has worked with before that would be capable and probably very skilled at facilitating us in a conversation and and also capable of translating our conversation into some written final products that we could use the differences is that this person is an expert in affordable housing trusts in massachusetts and also that there's an application for it to be us to have her services for free and not use any of our funds to pay for it so it seems like a win-win to us thanks any other comments or questions George Ryan has his hand up uh let's see George let's allow him to talk at least go George I just wanted to present a motion language and make sure that it reflects what you are doing um other than simply submit an application which is not a motion um so let me just read this and then you can correct me or we can get straight to instruct co-chairs to submit an application to the mass housing partnership for technical assistance and preparing its strategic plan is that what you want yes I would just change co-chairs to the members of the strategic planning committee because it's the co-chairs and grover this is the committee so the members of the strategic plan sorry what is that again strategic planning committee group or something yeah strategic okay planning group thank you okay is that their language is what you like then yes good thank you sounds good uh second that can we vote we are going to now vote but we're gonna i'm gonna ask each person for their vote in the whatever order your pictures are on my screen starting with Allegra yes Carol yes Risha yes Rob yes Grover yes Ashley yes uh the motion has carried six to six to zero so um we will move on to we may move on to the legislative update that John always presents except that I heard from John just before the meeting that he's sick and he's not gonna be here I believe everyone has received his recommendation and so I guess the question is without him to lead us through this and tell us why everything that he's suggesting is so important but hopefully we've read it do we have can we there a conversation here are the people want us to step in on some of these things or at least write a letter in support of them which is what we've done in the past comments conversation Ashley I just I guess I don't understand why we even think about these things it seems like the legislator legislature and moraheeley is so beyond us I mean in terms of like they are like you know not just because they have bigger jobs but also they're kind of like more progressive and smarter and they're doing things statewide that is very pro affordable housing amherst is like 10 years behind them so or you know not just years but like a lot of progress behind them it seems like all those things are good and we should just you know I would authorize carol america to write any letter they want in support of legislator that is pro affordable housing because literally the state is like doing stuff that is beyond us we have to catch up we're not like they're not we're not helping them that much we and it's taking our time um I guess I just want to make one comment to that that I have heard repeatedly from our our representatives in in town in state government how much it's helpful to them to have people write things in support it gives them some place to stand when they're talking about whatever they're talking about to everybody else so uh it feels to me like it's kind of yeah it doesn't do a lot but it doesn't but it's not very hard to do either exactly so so I will shut up and see who else wants to say something who else has something to say please grover um I hear you actually and I like part of me agrees with you is like yeah let's just like yes yes yes yes yes yes and I think there's some value in us all six of us like looking at the document and being like oh okay yeah that's a piece of it okay that will help if this were to be passed that will have this and this is some money oh I didn't realize that we were like not being reimbursed for public lands which take up the vast majority of our beautiful slightly rural right like you know the things like that I think that it is valuable for public education for the you know 10 people listening in um to like understand how state policy can help us move our agenda forward and also I agree this is the last I'm going to talk on it because I have no objections and I think every time it comes up if we did it quickly because we all support it it will be good but we don't need the explanation we don't we I just think we're taking up time with like John explaining things he can send us emails and we could say yes we all want it and then we could do it in like 30 seconds we don't know let's see let's see what we can do about this one is there any I don't even know if the people who are attendees know what we're talking about one thing is the mass ID access bill and the other is an act to reform payments in lieu of taxes for state-owned land which the argument is western massachusetts had just not been getting a fair share of that and there's a bill up that would hopefully try to fix that somewhat and that's obviously it seems if more money comes into the town and there's more money for all kinds of things that the town wants to do including affordable housing so that's what we're talking about and I just if there's anybody else who wants to say anything please Allegra speak um so I agree with Ashley and I agree with grover I think that obviously all of the things that john sends to us I trust john he's done this for a long time I think he has his pulse his finger on the pulse of affordable housing statewide but I also think so I yes like I agree we should give the chairs permission to do things in between meetings that would be in line with things that we have already discussed or things that we know would further affordable housing but I do think grover's point is important in that it can serve as like a public education piece in terms of okay these are some of the bills that we haven't even really thought of but these are coming up and this is a piece that we hadn't considered about how to you know get more funding into this town so I guess my one question was like you know the town council meeting has their packets that they post before the meeting do we have our packets posted online I know we get the documents but is our we sorry I wish I wish or we don't even have I hope we hire a town planner soon we don't even have on our website page anything that's up to date if you go to look at something on our website page you will find things from a bazillion years ago and not much of anything else at least that's been my experience so I think we should I mean the town council has a sole special place where they can post things and get things and mess around with things and we don't so there is a place where it could be there's a place where agendas and minutes are supposed to be and eventually get to be but I'm not sure that unless the things are attached to the minutes which George and Rob when they've done the minutes have been trying to attach the things that are relevant that's the way that it gets available to somebody in the public that I'm aware of if someone knows something different than me any place anybody anywhere please raise your hand and speak but that's my understanding so could we have could I just start a motion that says we take no more than five minutes for legislative agenda you read it it will be posted eventually when someone gets around to it and then we go we move on we vote and we move on because it is taking our time and the legislation is like 10 light years ahead of us like we have it's not which would you accept a friendly amendment is it something kind of like what the town council does we could have what we would call kind of our consent agenda that's what they call it and so we could have it at the beginning of the meeting or somewhere in the meeting we could say we will act on these legislative things is that okay and if there's no dissent if there's nothing to be said then that's done but it gives people the opportunity to say something if they have something to say which I don't want to I don't want to cross that out so but I don't want all those things explained ever again I just want to read them I like I really I don't want to take up the time I want to do that consent you know collective consent vote and move on right and so the only time there will be conversation about it is if there isn't consent then there has to be some amount of conversation but that hasn't that really I don't know every once in a while somebody's had a question but so that's that's so this is a motion I believe let's see if we can make it into a motion uh for George or maybe George has an idea of how to make it into a motion Grover I okay I have a I have a concern which is that I didn't realize what what Allegra brought up which is that these things that we're voting on aren't visible to the public so if we don't talk about them the public doesn't know what we're voting on until afterwards so that gives me some pause so that means that that means that like because you know basically our little trust has very little it has no web space it hasn't we should we should have a worker maybe an affordable housing you know worker in the town of Amherst would like get some of this stuff done like we have no education you know peace because we're not doing the education piece we're not doing a lot of these things it's not like there's a lot of things not getting done but we are wasting time on all these legislative things which are not kind of like not our business because they're going to filter down to us in like two three years and probably we're all for them and I don't want to take 15 minutes or 20 minutes ever again to like explain each one that isn't like even they're not even kind of like housing things necessarily it's just it's it's a waste of our time um I'm I'm Allegra so I guess I'm wondering because like on our agenda I'm just gonna look at it again but I'm pretty sure it just says legislative updates but perhaps if we could change the way the agenda is written a little bit to include at least the names of the bills that are being discussed then that would that would educate a person to say okay I'm going to go look up this particular bill and they can do their own research I mean it is nice to have john's little like blips about it um but again I think unless there's a mechanism for us to have a packet published beforehand so that people who are viewing the meeting get the link and can see the packet right there it seems like a happy medium could be to at least include you know what let me I just want to say one thing that maybe not be clear all of us get when the agenda goes out all the materials go out with it the other thing that happens is that we have an email list that's has uh I don't know somewhere near a hundred people I'm wondering if all the people who are attendees are on that list and I might ask them to raise their hands if they are or something that would be nice if you don't mind doing that folks and then take your hand down so we can count but that list also gets all of the materials that we get so I send out something it says here's one the meeting gonna be here's an agenda here is here are the materials sometimes if something goes out late or something I don't like it's such a long list I don't like sending more than once to that whole list so like Risha's piece didn't go to everybody because I got it later and so I just forwarded it to us and I didn't go to everyone else but at least at least one two three three I know Laura Baker's on that list she's not probably anyway I think some of the people who are attended who are attendees are are on that list and so it isn't that no one sees it but it could be seen more broadly I'm sure yeah thank you all for participating in my hand raising activity so can we can we do that motion that like you know making the agenda more you know like more explaining more in the agenda is great can we use five minutes or less to have a collective consent we vote on it and if there's no if there's no dissent we just vote and if there is some dissent someone says something and we just I don't even need to hear the names of the bills I'm sure they're great so then we vote and then we were done because this is taking our time away from stuff in Amherst that the legislator is going legislation is like 10 light years ahead of us they're they're doing more stuff than we are doing we're doing this though um so is there a is there somebody who can make this into a motion that George can write down it sounds like we have two separate motions okay first motion is for us to expand our legislative updates agenda section to have subheaders with the legislative bill numbers that we will be voting to support collectively yeah collectively yeah and so that's one motion I second that one motion okay well I have one concern which is if Nate were here I think he would say he is he we give him this draft agenda Erica and I and then he is always determined to make it fit on a page with a heading and a blah blah blah because that's how it's supposed to be or something or other so I don't know I think he would he would say so long as I can fit it somewhere and George is probably what what George I'm not sure you really need a motion for this I think you're simply instructing the chairs to follow a certain procedure as long as it gets in the minutes and the chairs understand what you're asking them to do it's not some kind of formal statement or action it's just you know in the future would you please do x so I think as long as you're clear on what you're asking and the chair is clear on what she's being asked to do um yeah I don't think you need a motion that's my humble opinion but the second yeah maybe that needs to be a motion is that we don't spend time hearing about each legislative thing and it takes our time like we just figure that you can read it and on the agenda and then we vote unless there's a dissent and then we talk to that one person who has some kind of dissent otherwise we just immediately vote and it takes two minutes it seems to me maybe if that could also be instructions to the chairs as a way to handle something that is correct please please for the legislative updates that we have make sure we have the information in advance and see if there is any dissent and if there isn't move on if there's something if somebody wants to get it perfect is that is that understood if there's no dissent we don't hear about each one we just vote not just dissent if you if someone has a question about it I mean just because we get materials doesn't mean we understand them I'm saying that we don't need to understand them I'm for all those laws well I think it's okay for people to have but we have to let people have questions if they have questions I that's the only way it works for me because if people have some people don't need to know maybe some other people want to know and so that both of those things have to be possible I think perfect if someone has a question we answer it otherwise we vote anybody need to uh anybody need to say anything else I'm just curious if we could put it right after the um minute approvals and then it will just be one practice in the next to say next do we have the board's approval for the chairs to write in support of the statewide legislation first we'll pause and ask if anyone has any questions and then we vote perfect look how quick that was yeah it might be um I think that the legislative stuff will be tend to be bigger sometimes than other times in the year because of what's going on in the legislature but yes it can be it can be call the order minutes legislative hu ha if there is any and if are there questions comments or are we in agreement and then we go on that's fine I think George have you got the sense of that and it will be in the minutes as sort of instructions to the chairs he's laughing George you can hear me laughing yes I will do I will do my best and I will consult with the chair um on the language I think you need to move on but I will make sure the language gets cleared cleared up okay thank you um okay then I think we are moving on at exactly the moments of Dave arrived for the timing to uh town updates where as we were just talking about we're hoping to hear whatever there is to hear about the housing planner and um whatever else it is that Dave is going to report on hopefully in maybe about 15 ish minutes so we have time for the other things on the agenda go Dave thanks Carol um I don't think I'll need 15 minutes I don't have too many updates tonight my apologies I I was actually at the CPA meeting earlier this evening um and also the board of health meeting so uh kind of a big night for meetings here in Amherst I think there's six or seven meetings tonight um uh in terms of the housing planner we have a number of applicants for the position uh I did discuss with Carol and Erica a week or 10 days ago um having one of them sit in on those interviews and uh I think they will be scheduled in the next two weeks so we just need to coordinate with Carol or Erica who will be sitting in on those and we'll get them scheduled so we're kind of optimistic about that as most of you know it is a very you know nationwide challenging uh applicant uh challenging hiring climate so we'll keep our fingers crossed that we have some folks who um we already know they have some experience and they're interested in Amherst and hopefully they'll bring uh something to to our team so that's exciting so I think interviews will be in the next two weeks and and Carol I don't see Erica here maybe she's not here tonight um she won't be back until September 22nd she's on vacation in Peru oh wonderful that sounds like all of the trip so maybe if you are available Carol it can you you can be that person that'd be wonderful um there really aren't any new updates on the vfw I saw that on your agenda we are still proceeding with um the hazardous materials um uh inventory has been done I believe the survey is done and um we then would would take a look at this fall schedule probably in November early December for some sort of community um community visionings meeting which you know I would hope the trust would you know cosponsor with us or co-organize with us uh you know the town and the trust pulling that group together so that would include any community members other boards and committees um nonprofits of course uh folks like from Craig's Doors I've already talked to Tim McCarthy about it uh the executive director and he's uh on board 100 percent so those are the quick updates I I noticed that data there was a data um um item on your agenda and honestly I I didn't know Nate couldn't be here until late this afternoon and I wondered what that data request was um I I I know that Nate's worked on some updated um affordable housing numbers for you but I just wondered could could somebody tell me specifically what you were looking for there I believe he sent us an updated um SHR list because the town has asked to have some things added to it so he sent that and what the other thing we were wondering about was how the work that we started a while ago that tries to take this SHI thing and say so how many of these units really are affordable so we have an actual affordable count um as well as the count that we know is the one that the state uses to compare us to everyone else and that we should if we're comparing us to anyone else we need that number but in order to know how much affordable housing we really have we need the other number we wondered if there was an update on how that project was coming it was I think George actually and Nate and Ashley at some point were working on it and I got as far as not quite getting it to match the new SHI numbers earlier today but I haven't finished because I didn't get it to match I mean didn't get it so that the number some of the thing some of the places we know the the SHI says 130 but there's 20 of them that are affordable and we want that information we want more too we want to know how many how many units are how big and how all that kind of stuff but if the start is at least how many units are on the SHI thing which is subsidized housing inventory and how many of those units are actually affordable those two columns we were close to having a while ago build out of it to get further where I don't know where that is so we were asking for an update on that project which I yeah Nate's not here and so I understand that you don't know Dave and we'll we'll ask the same question again probably next time and see how we can do Nate did send the revised or updated supported housing subsidized housing inventory to us I know Ashley wants to jump in here but just if I could squeeze in the SHI yeah so I know Nate's working on this the SHI really doesn't change all that frequently so that's not something that changes weekly or monthly or anything like that but I do know that he was working on kind of that delta that difference between what's on the SHI and what are the you know for instance rolling green we have X number of units at rolling green only Y number of units are truly affordable what is that delta between although we get to count all I think there's a hundred units at at rolling green how many of those are actually actually affordable permanently affordable I don't know I mean it is quite a huge project to probably get into what size the units are and think of that sort so I I'm going to be a little cautious about promising that level of detail I I don't know as that's a huge priority for us right now I think that's a long I think that's a long term a long term goal the short term goal is those two columns here's what the SHI says and so it's the same list and you can see that number but next to it is here's the actual number of affordable units and we were close to that you were close a while ago and the new SHI that he said has different does have some more things included in it than the one where I had got them to match so anyway it's a work in progress Nate's not here but that's the thing that's what we were talking about anyways Dave so and so I I'm getting this over time the town is not recording the number of units that are 30% AMI and less 50% AMI and less tax credit units you have all these projects and there's no spreadsheet or excel sheet that has exactly how many affordable units each place has and in what category as you go on because it would be better in a general sort of way to do it as you're going like why not with each project that is permitted it has to be permitted for like 12 units of 30% AMI or under 12 units of 50% you're not even capturing that I get it as I as I as I can tell because then you would know exactly because you'd put it in the excel spreadsheet as each place gets permitted and also maybe the permitting you know stuff doesn't even have that like you'd have to go back and look at maybe like physical records because you're not keeping any kind of electronic oh we have five 30% AMI and then it's like if you're not capturing that stuff isn't there a massachusetts law that you have to have 10% affordable housing how would you ever know if you can't if we don't know the numbers how do you know you're you know like compliant to massachusetts law massachusetts law uses the numbers in the shi report that's what they use and that isn't really affordable units but that's the law the law 10% is based on the numbers in that report that's why that's there but a reasonable request seems to me to be as we go forward please record this information about new projects as they occur we could do this with east gables that's just coming online it would be easy to start a spreadsheet started there go forward with it and as time allows we can fill it in backwards for the things that are already there but there's not any reason I agree with you Ashley for not right now doing it to the things that are coming online we can do it now starting with what we've got and what we know is this making sense to you Dave yeah I wish Nate were here because he really is the expert on our data as well and and I know it's it's it's a little too hard we should have more of this data readily available I did just want to remind Ashley I think you reference 10% as the law there is no law there's no law in massachusetts that a community has to have 10% affordable housing many communities don't in fact I don't know if it's the majority don't Amher certainly is following the law and the requirements of DHCD to record you know DHCD accepts all of our projects and that's how the shi changes so we have been above 10% for my guess is the last 20 years is that our goal no for many communities just getting to 10% is their goal and they but many that 10% is the shi number so it's actually probably one tenth of that because you're better than that but yeah it's much much better than one tenth and I think Nate is very close to that data set so let me you know let me let me and Carol you and Carol and Eric and I meet between meetings so we'll see if we can have that data set for you guys to look at and and then distribute before your october meeting because I think we're pretty close on that okay not just to reiterate the shi number is wildly inflated affordable housing it does not reflect actual affordable housing what you will report on by october our meeting is the actual number right yeah it will tie to the shi number in my opinion so we know so we know we're looking at apples and apples and not some other that's not hard to take that list and have the other list right next to it so you know what you're looking at hi I do want to clarify Ashley and push back a little wildly wildly inflated we're using we're using what the state asks us to report on and that's what we do so this is the state's equation it is not amherst equation it is an accepted statewide equation so that's what we present to the to the to the state yes rolling green is a great example I worked on trying to work with beacon communities to try to purchase for over 30 million dollars um rolling green apartment we were going to lose all of the affordable units in rolling green apartments if we didn't help beacon communities buy that property and they preserve those I'm going to say 40 some odd units I don't I don't remember the numbers off the top of my head you're going to find out exactly how many units by next october there's no we will we will not the affordable you know I would like to I would like to stop this right now unless somebody has something new and different to say about it because we're seeing the same things over and over and Nate is the person we need Nate here to be here to actually get further and the only other thing I would like to do is say that Laura Baker has her hand raised and I would like to see if she would like to say something oh I have to let her talk then don't I haha okay sorry hi can you hear me yes hi um I'm very keenly interested in this question it's my pet peeve that when towns permit 40 be all the units get counted on the shi even the market rate units I feel like it's a it's a people don't understand that's happening at any rate when we were trying to permit east gables I did work with Christine Brestrup to do a quick back of the envelope look at which of the units on the shi were truly restricted affordable units below 80 percent AMI and we were around at that point in time around I think it was 8.3 percent so it's definitely below 10 percent and I just think that it's an important thing to educate the community about it just gets bandied about a lot we're over 10 percent but you know really knowing how many of those are truly affordable I just think is an important point so encourage you to to forge on with that but I think it's not it's not one percent Ashley it was it was you know it was up around eight percent so it's it's it's somewhere in the middle but there's definitely ground to be covered to get to 10 percent of truly affordable units in Amherst but when someone from thanks Laura but when someone from the town says they know they have 10 percent that's not true they don't know because they don't know the actual number and it could be eight percent and it could be six percent and it could be 10 percent but they don't know and they're not keeping track well we're we're working on that we're working on that um we're not working at all they have to do it it is being worked on actually behind the scenes and not quite so far behind the scenes and so yeah uh Laura do you need your hand up anymore can I no thank you I'm gonna figure out how to take it down thank you okay um somebody else has something to say with name I won't pronounce correctly so I'm gonna let you speak and please start by saying your name hi sorry can you hear me just yes okay um hi um my name is Hyro um I am a student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a member of the Democratic State Committee um so I'm one of the students who's been organizing around on campus housing uh within the past semester um and what I and many others have noticed is that UMass practices are screwing over students and normal residents of Amherst housing on campus is really expensive and even if we apply we if we get refused on campus housing it is usually too late to move off campus and a lot of people drop out because of this um and most of that is also because of off-campus costs we also um you know as I'm sure you're already aware a lot of landlords are acting very predatory towards students buying up properties specifically to rent to us and they're exploiting our lack of options it's a really bad sign for everyone especially non-student residents so we're organizing here on campus and I know there's a lot of resentment towards students over housing issues because of what the UMass administration decides to do um and as one of the students organizing around housing I want to repair our relationship with the town because these problems affect all of us and I hope moving forward we will be able to work with the trust uh because we believe that at least some of the housing prices can be mitigated by putting pressure on UMass to stop making things worse with their policies around housing and are also around enrollment uh we'll be more effective organizing within Amherst if we stand together so I hope you all as members of the trust will consider working with students thank you very much thank you for your presence and your comments and uh let me see if George has something that he wants to say about the minutes I just need the person's name spelled please um and their identification they had an institutional or group identification if she could just repeat that oh that's well the can you see the name George now it's on the screen it's on the screen thank you that's yeah and their their pronouns are also in yeah so they don't see that thank you that's disappeared from the screen I'm afraid I'll track it down thank you Grover um well I know we're not at the time for public comment um generally minutes but I just wanted to thank Cairo's for for coming and just say that I I'm glad that to know that they're student organizing and I look forward to working with you here here um Ashley I would like also to thank Cairo and to say that I concur with all of those things and that um I thought I caught like a tiny part of Richa's saying that half the town is students and we talked a lot about seniors and we have like a lot of senior representation and particularly the town council has a lot of senior representation we have no student representation in this group or any committee that I can see and the town council definitely doesn't have any students they have no representation in their government and so that's a real problem because we don't hear from them and affordable housing has a lot to do with half the population of Amherst that has no representation and seniors have a lot thank you so I would like to move on if we can um is there anything else anyone needs oops Richa I'm raising my hand in person because I can't figure out how to do it electronically um no I just wanted to ask if there's sort of a follow-up like how how can is there a next step that we can work together um is there a way to you know do we want to invite her back them back to a meeting of the particular agenda item is there a you know it just feels like yes absolutely I'm so glad you came I've been hoping to to tie in with some of the work that's being done on campus with your group um and how do we do that can we invite them to speak would you like to do that at one of our meetings you're still there right yeah yes I am still here um yes we are very open to um continuing to work with you guys there are actually several students here on this call um and there's a lot of people other people here on campus we have a fair-sized coalition who's been working on housing you know taking direct action protests and the like so yes we would love to stay in touch and bring more students onto the trust meetings so what is an appropriate thing can you will you send me an email with some contact information if I write this minute give you my email absolutely yes my email is curious carol all like one word at gmail.com great thank you I will send you just in case uh you weren't here at the very beginning there will be an opening on the trust if a student wants to apply for that that's right if any of you there's a there's a form you have to fill out on the website if you have trouble figuring out how to do it you can put that in the email and I'll help you figure it out thank you great all right um I think maybe we're ready to move on the next thing was going to be an updated financial report which mostly Nate would do but I can say this much from looking at it and from what Nate gave us everyone got this right oops what did I just do in my screen I lost everyone there we are uh the financial report that Nate had everyone has looked at right and so it has the 300 says there's 375 thousand dollars that we committed to ball lane and I went back to look it's 75 thousand dollars that we also have committed over three years for the housing planner so that number I'm not and I'm not quite sure where these things come out of I don't know Dave knows better I need I didn't hear back from Nate my guess is hopefully the 75 thousand dollars can come out of those two lane lines where there's 68 and 55 doesn't have to come out of development but that means that we have something like 474 left and I thought it might be useful to just know this where we are financially before we do the next thing on the agenda which I believe is Dave has a request from the town for funding for stuff related to the VFW is that correct Dave yes I may have forgotten that that was on your agenda tonight you can wait we don't mind why don't we why don't we wait till next meeting and I'll put something okay either I okay you have a request for a few thousand dollars to help us with the VFW project it turns out that we cannot work we cannot use ARPA funds for a lot of the kind of due diligence and and maintaining that site over time so it's a it'll be a request in October for a few thousand dollars to carry that property until we we know what we're doing with it so we'll come back to you in October okay and okay I think that leads us let's see to the CPA community preservation act proposal that is due on the 30th I have started to try to work on it I kind of I did it last year I did it last year by copying and pasting a lot of stuff from John and also doing other things with it I'm doing a similar thing taking mine from last year and adding a bunch of things things that we have done this year things that seem to make sense trying to put together something again and that was the other reason for looking at where what money we have is that I'm not exactly quite sure what is an appropriate amount of money to ask for this time I have no idea what other housing activities are going to be proposals I mean last time we knew we knew Ball Lane was going we knew Belcher Town Road was going we knew a lot about what the other housing things were I don't at least I don't have that knowledge at the moment so when you take away the things that we have already promised we've got like about four hundred and seventy five thousand dollars but I would like to ask for more and the grounds are things like what Dave is just talking about who can do that who can do some of the pre-development work at Strong Street it's all the same kinds of things they're all in the proposal before I guess what I would like from the trust at the moment is two things one is a kind of instruction to go ahead and do this proposal and get it in by the 30th and the other is if there's a couple of people who would be willing to help me with the draft I'll draft it but I'd love to have some people who would look at it think about it make it better than I do it manage to do it by myself so if there are some people who would be willing to to uh look at it after I have after I've worked on it some I would be grateful and please set it yes Ashley is that in CPA like just in the basic application can we put the things that we like would like to see new projects a tiny home project a co-housing project things that we you know we don't I'm not saying we know the detail that saying that these are things that we would like to be getting money for so that when we even start on like actually doing these projects we have some money whether it's tiny houses or co-housing or you know senior living whatever it is well that's part of the point is that we have the money for whatever it is we will we have never been and I don't think suddenly are going to be the major developer of anything we have never positioned ourselves that way and I don't think we're going to start to now because because we couldn't I don't think we have the capacity or the funding anything that we've done is our money is heavily leveraged we put in whatever $375,000 into Laura's Baker's project or it's not anyway the Valley project at Ball Lane and that's like I don't know maybe it's 10% maybe it's not even I don't know I don't have the numbers off the top of my head but it's a very small part of a huge pie and it leverages that rest of that pie because our piece the people who are doing the actual heavy lifting of the development can say see the town is supporting us they're supporting us financially the town is here in this project and that gives them leverage for the big state funders like whatever it's called DHCD or something department of whatever that is so I well I'm going to see how how it is to get some of those things in there without trying to say that we're going to do them because that's I don't think that's the point right we're just we're hiring developers so if we hire developers for something we can hire a developer for a tiny home house we can hire a developer for co-housing we're just finding different developers let's write it so there's a lot of money to hire lots of developers I don't even know that we are going to be the people who hire the developers it's going to be the town I don't know who's going to hire the developers who hired in the case of like some of the things that Valley has done they've just decided to do this with the help of the town and the support of the town and the support of the trust and we have not we have not we're not I don't I don't think this is a good conversation to have right now really but if you would like if you want to if you want to look at what I'm doing and see if you can figure out how to get in some of the things that you're talking about or help me figuring out how to how to get them in that in a way that I think will uh enhance our our application um that's fine that's great yeah I don't even know if it has to be part of the application because even Laura Baker's there we could ask developers to you know for proposals for the things that they want to do and then you know read them and see if we can include them uh I did can we talk about this some other time I mean that's not that we can't include part of the point of the money that we get is that we can get money that does not have to be for a specific development and it doesn't have to be because that leaves us in a position where we can do things like perhaps provide the money that Dave is about to ask us for uh be able to provide to East Gables the money that they needed quickly and more than they thought they did because everything costs more and they needed it now and they couldn't wait for the next CPA application process we can do things with the money that we get that can't be done by other entities but it but we don't have right now things that we can say here's all the things we're going to develop because we we don't and we aren't going to find a developer to do that between now and September 30th and I'm going to try to have someone besides me and Ashley have this conversation by asking Allegra um so I guess my memory of previous CPA proposals has been not necessarily what we would use it for it might be like unrestricted funds for housing development as you know as they come about but I think it's helpful to outline some of the things we have spent money on in the past year especially since we did just give a big amount of money um you know a larger sum than we had originally thought and a large sum in comparison to you know our regular budget but I think that also shows like hey we asked you for X what did we get last year 250,000 225 I think yeah hey you know we actually used more than that on one particular project so like give us more give us half the money give us all the money um but you know I think I think having the list of like these are the things that we've been able to help fund with your assistance in the past year is helpful um but yeah I think I think all of Ashley's suggestions for what we could be doing are great but I think leaving it as unrestricted with you know we've had a lot of discussions about different ways to build out affordable housing in Amherst could be a way of blanketing it um and I'd be happy to take a look at it after you thank you very much I will take you up on that. Marisha yeah I was just gonna say that maybe the fact that we don't know what's in the queue is a reason to ask for more because it means that the the requests are going to come in out of this cycle um it feels like we're just at a time when a bunch of stuff has happened and we're at a pause and then stuff will happen again and it might be a reason to actually have more um money when when people need it down the road so so ask for ask for more than rather than less well last year we really did know what who else was asking and there were a lot and so it actually might be that there aren't as many because these projects started with the funds last year or they may have additional expenses that they're going to ask for more for but it just feels like if given that you know difference in what we know it might make sense for us to be able to help people outside of a normal CPA cycle. Good good point thank you um anybody else have anything they want to add and uh do I have at least thumbs up on getting this in by the 30th with whatever help I can okay all right then I believe we are down to some bunch of announcements and any other public comment so let me first see if there's any other public comment is there anyone who hasn't spoken who out there who wants to say something uh if you think of something while I'm making announcements feel free to continue with by raising your hand and we'll we'll get to you um there is a mass housing partnership training Thursday the 21st that's next Thursday I think and it's it's specifically about um affordable housing trusts so there's part of it that's how do you set them up how do you figure out their missions there's like three different sections and if anybody can go to it I believe it would be a great opportunity to figure out more about how the the the entities that we are one of work and what we can do and such things as that um there's a chapa regional housing meeting on Thursday October 5th there is drum roll the east gable's open house um 1 p.m. friday on 9 22 rsvp is needed by is that tomorrow I think rsvp is needed by 9 15 that's tomorrow so some of us went and saw it while it was kind of only half dressed I would say and uh we promised Laura at least some of us did that we would come back when when it could be presented in all its full glory anyway I hope people will go be kind of just fun to be able to see the completed something that we had a hand in making happen um there's also another mhp seeing on october 17th uh in sunderland it's from 5 30 to 6 30 it is there was a nate sent around a flyer about it and it's a combination of a walk through something and then a round table for people who are trust members or setting up trust to kind of talk about how do you get things done um I don't have anything that I didn't anticipate within 48 hours I don't I think that that's kind of that's kind of it we might actually be done a tiny bit early which would be fine with me does anyone have anything else that they want to say like risha I just wanted to ask if anyone was going to be able to go to that housing 101 training um I I would not go but if if no one else can go I might go just and then come to the strategic planning meeting because it feels like a really useful base so just checking if anyone else can go are there people who are planning I'm planning to go to part of it I don't know if I can do the whole day but I'm planning to go to part of it is anyone else planning to go to any of it I'm just raise your hand if that's the possibility um ashley um well I wanted to mention that you know the the thing we had at the banks cultural center I thought was going to have a follow-up meeting where we were going to create a report and I had never heard about that again is there any report being made and I thought we were going to meet in person to do that and then I never I assume it was not scheduled or or someone didn't tell me you weren't left out of anything I don't as far as it got is Erica wrote up a lot of notes I think she sent them around to everyone in some form at some point and we have not gotten further than that that's where we are and then as far as I know so but but that's a good thing too I will put it on this list of things for future possible future oh I should have read that no I will after we see whatever everybody else wants to say some possible future of things but I also I thought that we even had another in-person meeting that did some like you know psycho education about affordable housing possibilities like we've had in my time like you know two and a half years or so one in-person meeting that has any you know any educational component and it's actually in the charter to do education with the community and it's happened once in like you know three years if not 10 there was a there was talk at the beginning of having another of having another in-person thing it hasn't happened yet that's so that's what I know so so how many I'm putting it on this list of things that needs to be followed up about I agree we should figure out we kind of did in test and expect to do things that we have not yet done about it and so I put it on this list of things that need to be followed up about and could we follow up with how many educational anything the trust has done in the last 10 years like should we have we have that somewhere there are there have been things that we have done in the last couple of years even as well as however many years some of them are in the last oldest some of them will be in the new community preservation act application and some of them are in the one that we did last year there have always been some in everyone I think are they're listed there so and you can go on the community preservation act website and read our proposal from last year and anyone else's proposal from last year if you so choose Grover I'm going back to the question about is anyone attending the training I wanted a little clarification about your question before I answered it because I cannot I'm planning on attending the Massachusetts housing partnership training on affordable housing trusts but I can't attend it in real time I'm going to view the recordings afterwards so I've signed up for it very good all right yeah that's attending it as far as I'm concerned that counts uh anybody else have any other comments I will read this list of things uh possible future agenda items one of them is a presentation from Craig's doors which they would like to do again I think they might come to the October meeting our next meeting is Thursday October 12th via zoom again and strategic planning is moving forward and now we have perhaps also a time when we will hear from the UMass students who are organizing about housing at UMass that's another future agenda item as well as following up on the bangs activity or just or just the educational piece that is that should be a part of our jobs that I I know has happened once in the time I've been here and perhaps there was something that says it should happen at some interval I mean maybe there's nothing and so you just do it whenever you want but I think that I think that maybe we should figure out how often do we need to offer an educational piece to this and then do that that sounds like something we might decide when we're doing our strategic planning is an important thing right now it's it's generic it's just education as part of our mission um any any anything else anybody wants to say about something that has to do with the trust well then uh thank you all for your attendance and attention and and we even get to leave 12 minutes early so enjoy your wonderful 12 minutes that we just saved for everybody thank you all thanks to everybody and have a good night thank you everyone