 committee. Oops, I'll start again. Good morning. Good afternoon, everyone. This is the afternoon meeting of the finance committee meeting. It's 307. Our chair is just joining us now. So I was opening the meeting as vice chair, but I believe Andy has joined us. So Andy, I'm just at the point of making sure everyone can hear and be heard. Okay, well, we'll start by can you hear me? Yes. Andy, our chair is now in full control. I just made it in barely, but thank you. So this is the finance committee meeting of February 7, 2023. This is being held as a, let me go back to my notes. I'm sorry. We need to do this. For senator to chapter 20, the acts of 2021 is extended. This meeting is being conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to attend the meeting, they do so via Zoom or by telephone. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the meeting in real time via technological meetings. And I want to remind everybody, but that this meeting is being recorded. So that I just wanted to give that notice. And I'm going to go through the members and make sure everybody can hear and be heard now that we've got the hopefully technological problems of the day solved. Anna, Devlin got here. Hello, I can hear you. Lynn Grusberg. Present. Bob Hegner. I'm here. Beth Halloway. Present. Bernie Kubiak. I'm present. Kevin Shea. I heard you before. And Alicia Walker. Here. Okay. So we have all members present and accounted for. And I see that we have members of the staff present also. Wilford Moore and Amy Russecki, Sean Mangano, and Athena Keefe, as well as our minute taker, Phil Kaysen. So everybody is here. There's one thing that we'll need to do in a few minutes. But I think that the first agenda that I wanted to do first, actually, maybe Matt, do you want to go ahead and give the disclosure that you were prepared to give? Yeah. Thanks, Andy. Are you okay? So since we're going to start taking up matters relating to the elementary school vote, I wanted to make a disclosure regarding my role as a co-chair for a ballot initiative committee called Vote Yes for Amherst Schools. And because I'm a appointed member of this committee, appointed to the Cultural Council, and then I also have a public employee in Templeton-Philipston in the Regional School District up here, I wound up consulting with both the State Ethics Board as well as the Campaign Finance Board. So it was quite a series of interesting phone calls that I had. And the essence of the council that I was given was to file a disclosure of a Paris of Conflict of Interest with the Town Clerk, which I did about two weeks ago. And then to make this disclosure here that I'm a member of that committee. As an appointed member of these committees, my role is just to kind of assess the facts and make sure that I can perform my duties in the committee objectively and fairly. And I believe that I can participate objectively and support the public interest of the town in the discussion. And then as a public employee, the ballot initiative committee has had to put firewalls in place to prevent any kind of interaction between myself and fundraising in any way. And so we've done those things. We've taken all the action that the council has advised me to do. And so I'm very confident that I can continue to serve public interest in these matters. And should anything come up that appears that I cannot, I will probably refuse myself from those discussions. Dave, thank you, Matt. I appreciate that. And Bill will make sure that it is included in the minutes that you have made this disclosure. And Bill, if you have any questions about the wording that you feel you need advice, you can contact Matt. So having said that, what I'd like to do is proceed into the agenda of the meeting. And we're going to do the public comment after we do the water and sewer and centennial, since we have two staff members present for that. And I know we do have a few members of the public here and I just want to assure them that public comment will be included in the proceedings today at a suitable time as we're discussing this school issue. And so having said that, then I think that we can proceed to talk about the water and sewer regulations in the centennial water funding plan. And we have two people here to help us with the discussion as well as Sean and Paul, who are also very involved in the process. But one of them is Amy Oseki and I want to congratulate you, Amy. Amy was awarded the 2022 Paul Howard Award from the Mass Water Works Association, recognizing her for her knowledge and contributions to the professional brush realism and merit of the profession and give her that special recognition, which is recognition that we know that it's well deserved. But thank you. And with that, I will turn it to whoever is most appropriate to- Andy, I just see that Alyssa's hand is up. I'm not sure- Okay, Alyssa. Alyssa? Your hand is up. We just wanted to know. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, I'm sorry. Sometimes I have issues with my mute and my unmute button. I was just wondering, because on the agenda, the discussion for the debt exclusion override comes first. And so I'm just wondering, we're moving that to the second half of the conversation, because that was something I really wanted to be a part of and I do have to leave at four o'clock. Let me ask you. Amy and Guilford, are you flexible enough to go off and take some other things and come back in one hour? Sure. Give us time to do public comment and do the schools. And then we'll come back. If that's all right with you, then we have those two issues. And that will accommodate Alyssa's problem. Yes, that's fine. That's fine with both of you. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. So you don't have to stay, but we'll look for you to come back in an hour. Okay, so with that, I'm going to reverse the goal, because I wanted to do public comment before we offer public comment before we started the school discussion. If there are any members of the public who wish to make comment about any matter pending before the committee, please raise your hand. And I recognize that we have one person who has raised their hand. And that's Tony Tunningham. So Tony, welcome to the meeting. And please, I'll give a comment and try and hold it two or three minutes if possible, but please go forward. Thank you, Tony Cunningham, Owen Drive. Just wanted to make a couple of comments. One was there's a lot of CPA materials in your packet, but nothing on your agenda about CPA. So I was curious if you were planning on discussing the CPA applications today. And if you were, I had a question about why the Ball Lane $750,000 is listed as in using an undesignated fund balance, but a smaller amount, the CPA amount for the Fort River fields, is listed as a borrowing and why that could that be reversed? And then on your item three about the debt exclusion, now that we have an estimate of the impact on taxes, I see that Scott Merzbach has an article in the paper now, which quotes $500 as the average impact to taxpayers. I wonder if it's the right time, I think it is the right time to start seriously considering the use of reserves for this project. I know Sean Mangano said last night that the DPW fire station and the Jones library projects depend on the use of reserves, but it seems to me that all councillors have at one point or another expressed that the school project is the highest priority for the town. And I think it is very important that it be a success and that reserves at least 10 million, ideally 15, should be earmarked for the school to lower the override. Thank you. Thank you for the comment. Let me answer your one question about the date for the CPA discussion. CPA committee has been invited to make a presentation of the finance committee at our next meeting on February 21st and the presentation of the projects and discussion of the CPA proposal will be, will be on the 21st of February. So, with that duly noted and seeing that there's no other public, nobody else has raised their hand, I've kept an eye out to see if there's anybody else who has and the other questions are duly noted. So, we should then turn to the questions of the override and I'll turn it to Sean. So, Andy, I'll look for guidance on what would be helpful. I can do a condensed version of the presentation last night if that would be helpful. I know some of the, I don't know if all resident members were there, but I think, I know I saw Bob I think last night for sure. So, I could do a condensed run through that if that's helpful or just go to the tax impact slide and do a quick overview of that. Happy to do whatever is useful for the committee's discussion. Let me ask the resident members to raise your hand if you were not able to be at the meeting last night. Okay, two out of three were not there last night. So, I think it would probably be worthwhile doing a very brief review through the presentation because it sets the stage for the discussion. Okay, can you see my screen? Okay. Yes. All right. So, I will skip through some of it. So, just a quick recap of where we are. We have a fully reconciled cost estimate for the project. This will be the last cost estimate we get before the town votes on the project for the council and the voters of town vote on the project. We've already, through different avenues, reduced the cost of the project or at least lowered the cost of the town by about $8 million between cost saving measures that the school building committee has approved in terms of just scaling back some of the pieces of the project or some of the elements of the project going with less expensive options and advocating to the MSBA for higher reimbursement levels which will we estimate that impact to be $3 million or more to the town. In addition to that $8 million, there's another $2 million or so between ever source rebates that we're pursuing related to the geothermal wells, primarily related to the geothermal wells of the project and then the CPA request of $700,000 that the CPA committee has recommended but still needs to be voted on by the council. So, all in all, about $10 million of offsets are sort of right in front of us for this project and the town will consider looking for other ways to reduce it. One of the other major ways we're considering are looking at tax credits through the Inflation Reduction Act that Kathy sent a nice email earlier that they are now available and it's really just a matter of how do we work with the MSBA and this new tax credit program to get that credit into the town and use it to offset the cost of the debt exclusion or offset the borrowing. So, we are preparing for three votes. The council last night had a discussion around the dates of the special election and the language that would go on the debt exclusion or the debt exclusion language that would go on the ballot. That debt exclusion language the council has to vote on and it requires a two-thirds majority vote of the council because it's related to debt. The next vote which is tentatively scheduled for April 3rd is the debt authorization to fund the project. So, this will be for the full cost of the project and this will also require two-thirds majority of the council again because it's related to debt and then the last vote would be the approval of the debt exclusion which would be by the voters in town and that is tentatively scheduled for May 2nd and that's just a simple majority to pass it. This chart shows the project costs that were initially presented to the town council. As I mentioned last night this chart has the bottom line on this has increased slightly as the Friday's elementary school building committee meeting the owner project manager presented a couple items that have increased in cost since the first time they presented this and those items are furnishings equipment and technology and builders insurance while the building is being constructed. So, those couple items have been increased and the overall cost went up by between two and three hundred thousand dollars as a result. So, there will be a new version of this chart that you'll see at some point that's slightly higher but it not those numbers aren't material enough to impact the the exclusion information a little bit. Bless you. Thank you. So, we're proposing to fund this project primarily through a borrowing that would be repaid from additional taxation authorized by the passage of the debt exclusion. As I mentioned before there's a couple additional avenues we're looking at to offset the amount that we'll have to borrow and we're continuing to look for additional ways to reduce the borrowing but we are trying to keep the lens that was established by the town council of trying to move all four building projects to completion and so when we think about ways to offset the amount to be borrowed trying to do it in a way that doesn't then negatively impact another project and the ability of that project to be completed. There's a couple different ways we can structure the debt we can structure it in a level payment option that operates like a mortgage where you pay the same amount through for the life of the debt but you end up paying a little bit more overall costs under this option. The alternative is a level principle where it starts out higher and descends over the the length of the borrowing and this option's a little bit less overall cost but the early years can be more difficult to manage. So, what we're proposing at this point is a level payment because those early years are more manageable and it would we think it would be better for the taxpayers to have a sort of flat consistent amount throughout the life of the debt. This chart shows the cash flow for the project it's an early version that will continue to be updated and modified as the project schedule moves forward and as costs become more concrete the intent of the slide is really just to show that the majority of the costs are expected to start going out the door in 2025 and 2026 when construction picks up and that I use this chart with the financial advisor to map out how much we need to borrow each year and the timing of those borrowings. So, what is a debt exclusion? Debt exclusion is a temporary increase. Can we go back to that funding chart? Yep, go ahead. Actually, there's another question too in terms of how the debt is structured and we'll get into that maybe later as to whether or not it's going to be callable. Could you just walk through this because I frankly found this a little confusing? Yeah, so I'm confused. No, no, no, it's okay. I would I'll be honest the intent of this chart is not to dig into the specific numbers at this point it's really just to give a sense of the flow of the project but what you'll see here the solid blue line is the cumulative cost of the project so it kind of builds every month that there's more expense that builds up so you see that blue line solid blue line growing until it reaches the total cost of the project at the very end 97 million. The bars the gray bar and the blue bar so the gray bars sort of what's budgeted and then the the blue one is sort of what's remaining and since we're not really there yet that's why they sort of equal each other and so really what we're looking at there is just sort of the height of those bars as they go up that's how much we're expecting will go out the door and so for that you're looking at the for the bars you're looking at the axis on the left side for the solid blue line you're looking at the axis on the right side and then yeah I think that's those are the major elements of this chart. Thanks. And did you have a question on the debt structuring now or do you want to wait till later? Let's let's let's take it up later it's a little a sedentary. Okay. So what is a debt exclusion? It's a temporary increase in property taxes that allow the town to levy an excess of proposition two and a half on a temporary basis for the debt service of a particular capital project in this case the the Fort River School so it's a debt service once the debt service is paid off this additional tax levy would go away. It's applied to all taxable properties and the last one that the town successfully implemented was back in 1994 for renovations to the regional high school which we were actually levy and additional taxes related to this as recently as 2016-2017 this was part of the levy. People may not have known I'm sure people didn't even realize it. So we looked at the language so this is the draft language for the ballot question. This is from a template provided by the MSBA it's been reviewed by our bond council our local legal council the Massachusetts School of Building Authority and the Department of Revenue. There were there was feedback last night about is there a way to make this question easier to understand to voters because the way it reads is certainly not the way it's not simple to understand you have to have a lot of education to know which way you want to vote. So we're looking into that but there are limits that the law sets on how the question has to be worded because really the question is whether to exempt the debt or not from proposition two and a half which is just that in itself is sort of a complicated concept to understand. And then this next one is the debt authorization language and what I mentioned last night was that the previous language everyone has approved this language there is a question on some pieces of it because the town is now because Amherst is now a city not technically a town and there's some things that towns can do that cities can't and so our different legal councils and approving bodies are we're working with them right now to find language that will satisfy all of them. Bernard I see your hand go up again or was that a from before? I just actually took it down. Okay so estimated tax impact so we are modeling this right now the impacts that you'll see are modeled on a financing plan that assumes we use temporary financings or short-term financings called bond anticipation notes throughout the construction process and then once the project is done we would do a permanent financing a bond at the end and so the town would have to be make interest payments each year when we do the bond anticipation notes and then once we convert it to a bond we would have to make principal and interest payments. We this plan assumes the level payment debt structure the additional taxation from the debt exclusion would start when we have to make those interest only payments that in 2025 the nice thing about that is it would be a lower amount so it would in 2025 it would go up maybe about halfway and then it would ramp up a little bit each year until it got to 2029 when we start making the principal and interest payments and then it would reach a fixed level from that point forward all the way until 2054 and then it would drop off a little bit and then completely terminate in 2056 so the information that you'll see on the next slide is that maximum level that it reaches in 2054 where it will be for the majority of the debt but there will be a few years before that where it's a lower impact as it kind of ramps up and one thing I mentioned last night I'll mention again is this is a conservative way to model it if interest rates are if during the life of the project early in early in construction if interest rates are really good something happens where interest rates drop off and we could bond earlier because we want to take it walk in borrowing that money at a low interest rate there's things we can do at that time to to to take advantage of that and reduce the cost to taxpayers and so there are options that we will continue to evaluate but some of those things we just won't know until we get there because it's still two or three years off and then the last thing I'll just say is that we the chart you'll see on the next slide it already incorporates the CPA funds in the ever source rebates so it's it's based on a borrowing amount of about 53 million dollars which is the 55 million dollar town share less the roughly two million dollars of other sources listed here so this chart what you'll see at the top is the town of Amherst tax rate which is $20.10 per thousand currently the impact of the debt exclusion based on the assumptions of the financing plan right now is a dollar seven per thousand so for average single family home that's assessed at $446,953 right now in FY 23 the impact of the debt exclusion which is that last line of the middle chart is $478.24 and the chart below that provides different assessed values and then the column all the way through the right gives you the estimated impact debt exclusion impact for those values and the way to figure out your specific value is to take the assessed value of your home whatever it may be divide it by a thousand and then multiply that number by the dollar seven and that will give you the specific the estimated annual impact for for that value property so what can change either better or worse the overall cost of the project until we get the construction bids in and sign a construction contract that's a big variable that could change the numbers that we have now do include a lot a large estimate for construction escalation so we're hoping that that will mitigate any of this the impacts that we're seeing out there in the construction industry but it is an estimate so until we go out for bids we won't have a final cost there and that obviously is the the largest cost of the project the projected interest rate will have a large impact on the annual debt service costs and that's jumped all over the place in recent years or in recent months but mostly up the timing of expending funds will impact how much we have to borrow each individual year the tax base of Amherst has grown a lot in the last six or seven years if we see similar levels of growth in the tax base and not just the home is being worth more but if we actually make improvements and add new facilities and developments and actually grow the number of parcels that pay taxes that can help defray the the individual impact of the debt exclusion and that can happen throughout the life of the debt but so we do we do anticipate that the number that we showed on the prior slide will get a little bit better each year as we go forward as the tax base grows the anticipated reimbursement from the MSBA can change we have a we're working on a maximum amount with them but what they reimburse on is what you actually submit and and making sure that everything is ineligible costs as we submit it and then the last thing is the availability of other funding sources like the tax credits that I mentioned if we are able to get any other funding sources to reduce the amount the town will have to be borrow or the town has to borrow we have to work with the MSBA on this as well they're a they're a key decision maker and whether we can offset our costs completely but we are going to continue to explore other ways to reduce the costs to the town and then I just have one more slide Matt and then be good time for questions so we're obviously reviewing this today and we'll continue to update the financing plan as we go forward sorry Sean I may have missed this and and I apologize and first of all thank you very much this is really well prepared and clean information I may have missed this is that $7 per thousand is that a constant year over year so so it is it's not a constant necessarily year over year it could go down a little bit again as as the tax base grows so that's the number that it is based on the information right now but in terms of how the debt is structured if everything stayed the same it would stay yes if everything stayed the exact same that $7 would stay the same if there were no changes yeah is the proposal and I mean it is something that's hoping for discussion in the committee but staff proposal to the committee is that we elect the option of having level payments over the course of the loan as opposed to funding it with the alternative method that Sean showed earlier yeah and on that Andy I think ultimately the decision of how to structure the debt is the the town treasurer and the town manager but obviously we would take you know if there's strong recommendation from the committee or strong feeling from the committee they would take that into consideration but you don't have to vote on the debt structuring we just wanted to make sure you're aware of the options but it is based on that choice of that option okay I see Bob you have your hand up yeah I just I have a few comments just thoughts some of which are a little scary to me some of which are maybe not so scary but the first thought I have is that looking at centennial and looking at just the cost estimates for the school we've had an increase for the school of almost 10 million dollars over the last what nine months or so so we're not going to go to bid for a while so my guess is that we should plan that this is going to cost more than what we see here on our estimate and you know in terms of thinking about what debt we're going to incur and what the impact on taxpayers is going to be I think we should be thinking along those lines the other kind of scary thought I have is this new school is going to is going to incorporate a lot of new technology we've got a geothermal system we maybe have new materials in my experience these things don't always work the way you think they're going to work and we may have more costs associated with these new technologies than we're anticipating so again I would caution that we we want to maybe have something in our sort of our debt amount to to take account of that on the flip side you know we've heard through various meetings that there may be significant cost savings associated with the new school utility costs will go down and more importantly will consolidate Wildwood and Fort River into one building so we'll have lower personnel costs presumably it's not clear to me and I haven't seen anything in the presentation of what the town intends to use these savings for or how we intend to use these savings and I would recommend that we use whatever savings we can but we see to draw down the deck as quickly as possible so that we're burdening the taxpayers as little as possible I just was looking also at the amount for public art of $250,000 and I think the council should reconsider this I know that there's a language that allows the council to override the whatever is half a 1% amount it just seems like it's a lot for one building so again maybe it's not going to drive things but it would be something to to consider um the other thing um two um quite well one question I have is do we know what the impacts on renters in town will be we have the impacts on homeowners of you know residential people but we I haven't seen anything in the presentation on the impacts of renter on renters so I wonder what what that might be and the other thing I have is really a request um and that is whatever the surtax or whatever we call this amount that are is additional tax because of the debt exclusion but we see that as a separate line item property tax bills so then we can just see it every year or every quarter um and you know if it goes down we can see it's going down um but I think it would be helpful for taxpayers to see that it's not not just blur it throat in with with all the other uh well the general taxes um I think it would be helpful and that was a lot to say I'm sorry but Andy can I respond to some of it yes go ahead um so I think your concerns around cost increases totally valid up we've seen that um with the with the library project we've seen that with centennial as you noted um the one um I guess just one reality is that the cost estimates for the school were done um pretty recently um at at the end of December and in January and I think my hope and you know our expectation is that cost estimators by that time have realized that the industry is going up and I think cost estimators they don't like coming in under right that if anything they want to come in a little bit higher um so we do have a pretty significant contingency within the construction budget already for cost escalation and then we also have a construction cost contingency that belongs to the town as well um but again there's never any guarantees until we get the construction bids in um in terms of the cost savings uh operational cost savings I think that's something we're talking about how to communicate that information um you know the reality is some of that will be decisions made by the elected bodies at that time how to how those funds are used um but I think you're right that we need to to get that out there more um it was information that we had to report to the MSBA so the numbers exist um I think Kathy worked on it with the the schools to get that information to the MSBA so um so that points well taken I think impacts on renters so uh you know if we assume that higher taxes will be passed on to renters which I think generally we do um there that means there will be an impact on on renters um it'll be different than the way it impacts the taxpayers themselves because we don't know if it'll be passed on one to one or how that will work um but any individual um um uh rental property owner again can do the same thing and take the the assessed value of their property multiply it by the the dollar seven or divide by thousand multiply by the dollar seven to evaluate the impact on that property um and then I'll look uh I'll have to talk with our um treasure collector to see if we can put the um the debt exclusion impacts as a separate line on the tax bill I I tried to see what we did last time and it didn't look like we did that but I I totally understand why it would be um just better for people to see exactly what that is um but the one thing I will say is that we clearly cannot lump the debt exclusion in with our regular levy um you know that's the key difference between the debt exclusion and override is that override kind of gets lumped in that's your new base going forward you get two and a half percent on top of that each year where the debt exclusion is completely separate you don't we don't get to increase the tax base or the tax levy by two and a half percent on top of it um it's completely carved out as a separate um piece of the levy no I understand that but again it would be important as a community to communicate to people that we're we're not doing that you know their taxes are going up two and a half percent based on the the amount that's excluding the levy the additional I should go find that out um by the next by the time we meet again on the 28th about this yeah thank you Kathy did you have anything that you wanted to respond uh is you had your hand yeah I just wanted to um I'm just expand a bit on what uh Sean just said Bob um you know the what he said about very recent they were using actual purchase prices from end of 2022 built schools that have been recently built so they weren't trying to go backwards and they have nine percent out for less than a year and a half as a growth and there's another there's five million on top of everything that is a pure contingency contingency they have a design contingency as they get more specific so some of these the actual specking out so there's it as Sean said it doesn't protect against everything but there's a lot of buffer um in what they've done and then the last the only other thing um I thought it was a good point that these are complex systems and we got a question on a both what might go wrong but also we got a maintenance costs of complex systems compared to systems we have now that was a question that came up in the forum and we haven't addressed it so I just wanted to say that goes into your mix my final point just and then turning it back um I there was some uncertainty on whether these how does a municipality get a tax credit and this is all wrapped up in this a new inflation reduction act oddly named but they put direct credits for otherwise tax exempt in in the code and those became live I just got confirmation from our congressperson's office that they're live that if we right now bought a pv system and we paid cash for it we'd get 30 back in a direct credit we don't know how that works but he said these are real and they're unlikely to be taken out of the code so that's another piece when you were saying savings you know where could we earmark them you don't get anything till you've bought the stuff right and they have wording about geothermal and ground source heat pumps I don't know how broad that is but between those those are multiple millions of dollars if if if we can figure out as Sean said we don't normally file taxes as a town and and have a little thing on called credits so these are new so that you don't have to do what some schools were doing is they were going to a private entity that could file for the credits and basically having them put the solar on the roof and give you only partial thing toward your electricity bill so you didn't save as much on utility bills so that was but they got the credit because the school couldn't get the credit so this gives you a different route to own the solar so that's a little complicated but it looks like it's real money it's just that I can't find any place that has taken advantage of it yet because it just it just went on the books in January this year 2023 that's it thank you lisha thank you Andy so I I want to echo a lot of the comments that Bob made I think he touched on a lot of the things that I was going to say and I know it's it's a little bit tricky based off of the conversation we had at council last night in terms of like what I can do in my capacity as a counselor in terms of like advocating versus educating for this project and so I'm not sure if this question even makes sense but I think you'll understand where I'm going with this has there been any outreach to taxpayers more specifically vulnerable taxpayers as to which style might be more helpful for them or is the town just assuming these things um so like what kind of outreach can or has been done for taxpayers who will have to do this because my concern is that the ballot question gives you no idea as to what you're agreeing to and I know we talked about the language and what is legally allowed yesterday but it's still my concern that there will be people who will be like yeah absolutely I want a new school and who don't understand what that means in terms of the implications on the tax payments that they will have to make for the new school because that is very unclear in the ballot question and so what kind of outreach is happening to taxpayers and what kind of systems are we putting in place to support people who may be negatively impacted by the debt exclusion override vote if it were to pass so I'll briefly touch on and turn it over to Paul or Kathy who want to weigh in more about what's coming up but I think last night's presentation was sort of the kickoff to the engagement process that to your point Alicia is to engage taxpayers and get their their thoughts their you know concerns questions so that we can address them over the next couple months yeah and I would just add that again this is last night was the beginning as we develop these things as we get feedback from people we have developed a pretty long list of questions that people have raised and this is a good one to add to that impact on renters impact on other other property owners and have have that information all ready to be shared with the with people um thank you is it okay if I continue um Andy so I think that's great I think for me I don't I don't have a question as to whether or not this will affect renters I'm pretty sure that it will um as a renter myself I can understand that when fees or costs increase to my landlord that increase gets passed on to me that has happened literally to me last month this happens all of the time I expect there to be an impact on renters and so my concern or what I want to know is not whether or not there will be an impact but what the town will do to help offset or alleviate that impact or what the town has been thinking about and so I understand that we're sort of at a launch point right now but my other concern is that like we're asking or considering for this vote to happen in May which is very soon and we've been working on this project for a long time and I think in my opinion we should be further along in what possibilities exist to be able to offset these things for taxpayers and that these things should be known before the May vote which is again very very soon so I'm wondering how quickly we think these things will we will get information on these things I know I've been in brief conversation with Kathy about outreach that we're going to do so I know there's going to be outreach but that outreach has nothing to do with not much to do with the tax portion of it it has more to do with like what is happening with the school building itself and so I think we're missing this really huge piece on the financial impact education um and I think I mean in my opinion because that's a scary piece like we don't want to go out to taxpayers and be like hey look at this and then expect that this is going to be a successful thing and so again I think it's going to be it's like critically important for the town to do the work on the front end rather than waiting to hear from people to figure out what they can offer to people so that we can go out to people and say hey we need this new school we need you to vote on this this is what's going to be in place if you can't do this if you can't afford these things because I fear that people who cannot afford this will not vote yet um and so how can we make sure that there are things in place for those people I think that's a really good point and we can work on that that's an excellent point very very you're muted thanks Ian um as you're thinking about constituencies you have to think about grandparents as we've learned from other votes or at least I've learned from other votes a lot of this debt exclusion for schools really turns on whether or not grandparents are willing to um and see the the impact on their grandkids and or other people's kids and step in for it you can look at votes that have override votes that have happened in other towns and uh in see that those of us who are of age um are a critical factor and I understand everybody's worried about the costs well I was worried about the costs five years ago things have gotten worse um and I commend the work that everybody's done to try and bring the costs down and make this a more reasonable project uh I do appreciate a lot of what Bob said um and Alicia said uh I will say having been through two construction and one school renovation projects I learned the cynic in me is learned not to count any operational savings going anywhere except staying in the budget I'm sorry but that's the way it happens so um I think we need to proceed as if there would be no um no substantial savings I also agree as somebody who fancies himself an artist that the $250,000 public art piece can go uh it's a small amount but it's I think it's an important gesture um I was going to ask Shawn about um at what point do we think we could have some actual numbers tied to level payment versus level principal and if you wanted to show on tax bills that the um the impact of the the override is going down year to year you really need to do the the level principal approach um but I I think again we'd like to like to see some numbers tied to that and the other kind of decision discussion it would be is whether or not the bond's going to be callable um my understanding is if it's callable we may pay a little more in terms of interest but we open up the prospect of of refinancing it um midway we did that with one of those schools in Belcher Town and save some serious money um so by all means please take a look at that with our financial advisors and see how things are going thank you can I quickly follow up Andy yes uh so Bernie when you say numbers related you just want to see what the impact would be if we did the level principal instead of level payment because the numbers that we've shown are based on the level payment um yeah I I did a I don't know this this is a rough number I'll get the debt exclusion uh the our financial advisor to model it with the level principal um but it was about a hundred dollars more um in the early years if we went with the level principal um on the on the average single family home but again I'll get him to do a more sophisticated model and can do a side by side comparison again that decision ultimately will be made by the the treasurer and the town manager at the time we actually go out to borrow um I worry a little bit about creating confusion around um you know which one way we're going to go because ultimately that's not something that um is being decided right now and then I think the other um uh what was your second question Bernadette yeah wasn't it a uh well the the thing about the bond being callable oh yeah yeah thank you um so typically our bonds are callable after 10 years um so I you're 100 right we uh would want to structure this in a way where we could refinance it at some point um in the future especially if the interest rates when we go out to do those are still you know four or five percent um we'll structure in a way that it could be refinanced in the future and so we could take advantage of lower interest rates if they pop up okay thank you okay so I have three post-its um first is Sean can you give me an example you referenced this last night and I apologize I didn't have time to study it before today you referenced some of the differences between what cities can do and what towns can do in terms of the verbiage in the um I believe it was the financial order can you give me an example of what that is yeah so there's it's it's pretty straightforward there's one specific thing and it's the in the wording of the debt authorization the final section says that the um the debt authorization is contingent upon the passage of the debt exclusion and if there's a proposition two and a half manual that's pretty clear that only towns can take do a contingent vote and that cities can't and the rationale behind that was towns you know they have town meetings they only meet twice a year um so there was more uh sort of um flexibility granted to them to take a contingent vote than cities that can meet regularly um so you know there's a little bit of question around how that has been interpreted in the past with other projects which is why there's a conversation back and forth um because it sounds like I'm not 100 sure but it sounds like maybe they've granted that flexibility to cities as well in the past um so that's what we're working out and just making sure that whatever we vote everyone is good with got it okay so the second question I have is about percent for art um and my post just got out of order sorry okay so can we defer um the percent for art and and spread it out differently um and maybe that doesn't really make a difference in terms of how it how it gets applied but I'm thinking Kathy I knew you'd have an answer for me Kathy um and so then the second part of that is the reason being uh and I just pulled it up and I'm trying to dig through um so actually there was a really interesting presentation from our own minute taker uh Bill from the Public Arts Commission back in the day about our percent for art bylaw and it was really interesting to see some of the examples that were cited in that um and what I'm seeing in the bylaw itself is that the the art cannot be something that our designers put in um so it can't be from from Denisco but Bill's presentation also had some really creative examples of things like a bike rack that is art because it looks like a big wooden comb um and so I'm I'm curious if our percent if there's a if there's a Venn diagram where these can meet in the middle right where there's something that it's not done by Denisco it follows the the requirements of the bylaw but um and it satisfies that that 250 or 260 whatever it was for for percent for art and then could be cut out of the sort of the um furnishings or the soft costs as part of the building I'm curious if there's any creativity in finding that middle of the Venn diagram and I think that that's it for now oh yeah and then um valid question about the money saved in energy uh I don't it would be great if it could just be more than offsetting kind of future budget years and go back to the to the um to cut back the the debt amount but I and I don't know how that's possible but just voicing support for that idea thanks Matthew yeah I was just going to speak to the percent for art um Anna I served on that with Bill um Bill was a real lead because he actually knew about these and Bill is our note taker here so but there were two ways the answer is it's separable and it can't just offset the other soft costs it's completely separable so we we have a clause in there that a council discretion doesn't have to be 0.5 it could be something less or could be zero um so that's discretion but the concept of it is yes it could be a creative bike rack we I was talking today this is a net zero energies school it could be a sundial you know something a beautiful sundial so the kids could go it could be a weather vane you know so it could also be um in one of the schools and it was suggested at a forum that if there are things that the kids get involved and then create and it's super cool um you create a big blow up of it and we've got space in the school to hang it so you see when you come in and it doesn't have to be permanent or that could be tiles and they're both so these usually go through some sort of the user population is throwing out ideas you're getting a sense and the only thing that when we wrote the bylaw is if it was going to be an integral part of the building you know a fountain built into the side of the building with a picture of one of the Native Americans you know which we don't have then it had to be thought of in conjunction with the design of the building but they designated some places outside and inside the if we wanted to put something up on a wall we've got tons of outdoor space so we can a we can change the amount and we can do some of this later um when we're further along um and the content of it can be highly variable you know what is it what is the it and over the ball over the map birdhouses built by kids and adults with someone helping them construct you know i'm just thinking of it's an elementary school but in any case probably what we can't have is a lot of bronze statues of animals because that money doesn't go very far for bronze so i just want to say it's very flexible on what it is and but it can't it would not offset any of the the soft costs for the school or the desks and chairs the kids sit in the linoleum that goes on the floor the you know the tech the computers and we're pretty tightly budgeted the school is quite tightly budgeted for um the stuff inside the building that's it on that okay thank you so learn your hand up yes um first of all i this is the kind of discussion that i think we've all been waiting for and uh this group in and the people in our audience have um opened up a lot of interesting things so i want to thank people for that thought uh for all that thought uh i'm gonna for the moment just speak to one thing about percent for art there is presently a mural on the existing port river school my understanding is that the students want to have it moved and that in the architectural design there is a space on the wall of the outside of the school that it could go to um and if it's two hundred fifty thousand dollars we save it's two hundred fifty thousand dollars and we think about what we already have um i'm all for a percent for art but i'm all for saving money uh second of all uh i want to just raise the issue of the date and be very clear that while it feels like it's coming up fast any delay in that date would delay the vote till sometime in the fall because we have to wait until the higher ed institutions come back otherwise we get accused of not being considerate of faculty and staff as well as students so the second of of um may is just about as late as we can possibly go when the students in our higher ed institution and the faculty are still in classes and it's a date we have to work to because if we delay to the fall that means we will not be opening this school in on that september in 2026 because we will have lost our window to get there so one of the things i hope this committee either agrees on today or agrees on before the 27th which is the next town council meeting is to recommend to the council to be very firm about may 2nd uh and the third thing because this came up last night because it's come up again i feel that the only way that we can together have a conversation about the use of reserves is to go back to the financial model and make sure that built into one of our discussions is the financial model to understand the impact of the other building projects the impact of ongoing uh other capital projects that are not necessarily as big or as you know dramatic but they're incredibly necessary like buying new pieces of equipment so forth sidewalks roads etc so i would really strongly urge that in um even if it means scheduling an additional finance committee meeting uh maybe even at night that if we need to revisit that model to educate people about where our money is and what we why we need certain pockets that we do it because otherwise that issue just keeps coming up just spend the money from our reserves without a care for tomorrow so thank you okay um thank you lin i guess there's a couple things that i'll just interject and then go on to uh bob his hand spent up to uh in addition to the point that you just raised uh about the need to look at the model if you're going to seriously think about going to reserves and what the effect is on the other buildings because it is been council policy for some time that we're addressing four building projects um is to whether we then put ourselves in a position of asking for an override for an additional project so the fire station um and the the problem with doing that amongst other things is the cost of an election um we are there i think that we haven't heard a projected number from the clerk um or the finance manager yet but uh cost of the election is on us as far as dates are concerned i want to expand on the remark i made last night when i was giving the committee report where i said we don't have to make a recommendation at today's meeting even though the agenda said that there will be one and that was because when our architect and owner opm put together a chart of dates and what needed to happen on each date to move the process along under their recommended timeline they put the 27th council meeting February 27th as a date to vote the uh that exclusion language and the date of the election and this was at that time to their knowledge going to be the last meeting of the finance committee prior to the 27th because they were not aware that the committee had added an additional date of the 21st so it makes February 21st a hard date and so that's the expansion of my remarks from last night just to clarify that so Bob Higner yeah i just i just wanted to clarify that with regard to public art i wasn't suggesting we eliminated altogether i'm just saying that 250k seemed pretty high for one building that's all okay thank you and kathy i'll go next to this any mine is a quick question that actually follows just on what you said if we wanted to entertain a motion today to recommend may 2nd could we just go ahead and get that off the board that we think that's a good date i'm not talking about the rest of it but just could we take that piece because i think a i'm starting to talk about this project of i've been invited and instead of saying tentative maybe whatever i'd rather say it's may 2nd so could we take a vote to recommend that today that's right i would i would recognize a motion if one was made because um the agenda as posted was based upon the original plan that had been come that had come forward from the opm and the architect and so it's uh the agenda is discussed and recommend action um and what i was meeting last night and didn't say very clearly was that we don't have to take action today uh was what i should have said work clearly well i'm willing to make a motion that the finance committee recommends to the council that we set may 2nd as the date for the debt exclusion vote if that thank you that's kathy moved in lin 2nd and bill i can give you that but it was pretty simple or athena can give it to you um so i got it thank you okay the other thing kathy just because you and i were both on the committee that um did the revisions to the percent for art there is a procedure in the um the the bylaw as we amended it and we adopted and it was adopted by the first council that um establishes the process for the selection of the art and uh so and we can put that on a future agenda because the building would have to be real the project so may 2nd is important so that discussion could follow this um so i just wanted to clarify that um i thought bill is there together yeah bill's hand is up on this one yeah i was just going to say i'm happy to give a brief talk or step out of my role as minute taker on another occasion and talk about percent for art so just let me know okay let's see how we're going today because i don't think we need to address it today but um thank you for my for making that offer um lin let me go back to you actually please go to alisha next and then come back to me i will be glad to do so alisha thank you andy and lin um so i have to leave and i i can't say for the vote unfortunately but i wanted to just say that if i was going to stay for the vote my question would have been to shon and paul if you all think that that is enough time for you to gather data and come up with possible solutions to the questions that i asked earlier so that we could present some of that information to the voters before the may 2nd date and that whether or not you all think that that is possible and that that is going to happen would directly affect the way that i vote on this so can i respond to that i i guess i would need more direction um from the committee and the council what they're looking for so we've the project costs have been reduced by 10 million dollars already um if there's a target that would be something that the finance committee would have to give us um the the result may be that the impacts are the impacts um and we can share ways to existing ways um for those experience in hardships or for seniors with limited income we can share the existing ways that are already um uh out there for people to have some relief from their tax bill um but as it relates to the debt exclusion the impacts may be the impacts again we're looking for other financing sources but some of them won't be definitive before the vote like the tax credits for example we won't have spent the money um in order to guarantee that the tax credits can offset the cost we can share what we think they will be um but we also want or want to be careful about promises and making sure that we can um you know whatever we put out there we feel really confident about so again the the numbers may be the numbers that we've presented our goal i think is to get them down but not let them get worse um that that's sort of what i think elish is also asking for clear explanations of what people are voting on um sort of a fact in terms of the the ballot language no but and i know with the last one you could know i mean you knew what you were voting on um so i'm just yeah but i think i think what elisha's saying is what kind of resources can we bring to the table to support people who are going to have a hard time paying if their rents go up or if their mortgage just go up these impacts won't come forward for about three years so we're really nothing we can do right now to offer that we can look into some opportunities for that but i think the first debt payments won't really hit the books until 2026 john uh 2025 was the first a lower amount um and it would ramp up to 2029 but i think if i'm reading if i'm hearing what elisha's saying is that she's looking for what kind of support can we give to people who are going to struggle when the payments start to hit so yeah and all i'll say is that there's limits as to what the town can do um that's not authorized by law um so that that's the one thing is that you know we do have to operate within the the options that the um current national laws make available to us let's get back to elisha because if we're misunderstanding what she's asking we need to hear it no it's okay so paul was right on the money kathy wasn't off because i know that that is also a piece of it but paul was more directly on what i was asking for um and i know that these aren't going to actually hit like taxpayers bills until three years but we plan things financially in advance all the time this is something significant that we need to be in front of not behind like we need to have ideas for possible solutions for possible assistance before it happens we cannot wait three years until people need help with the payments to then figure out how we will help people with the payment i also again i'm asking this because i think it will directly impact the way some people vote on this issue and so to have some of these answers before we're asking vulnerable people to make this vote because i think there's a serious disconnect from public like town leaders in this town with people who live in poverty in this town like there's a very strong disconnect and i can like sense it very strongly in this meeting right now it's very much bothering me because my family's financial standing that there are people who will not be able to continue to live in this town once this payment hits there are people whose kids will not be able to go to this school because this payment is going to hit and we need to be thinking about them on the front end not on the back end as a last resort um and so with that i have to sign off but thank you all for your time okay thank you all live i i'm sorry at least i had to go um but i do think that the more we can be starting to think creatively about the question she raised is important but that's not why i raised my hand um there are two other related issues to this that the people keep wanting to know and so i'm going to wrap it in the larger question and that is what is it going to cost the town if we don't pass this what is it going to cost the town to keep those two schools operational what is it going to cost the town to do that for the next 25 years because we will clearly have blown our chance with mass school to building authority to ever come forward in any time in in our lifetime because it will be the second time we blew the chance so we need to know what those buildings are going to have to have done to them in order to sustain about 25 more years of use what does it mean in terms of staffing where we might have had some savings otherwise what does it mean in terms of energy and the other question that comes directly with that is this hope and dream that somehow or another the school that we're not going to continue to use is going to be able to be used for some serious long-standing purpose in town when in fact we know that building is in bad shape and so we need to answer the question not only to say to taxpayers you know you may not like this and it may cost you something but the alternative could cost you x we also need to be able to say and this building that everybody looks at and says oh let's use it from this let's use it for that or whatever what's it going to cost to even make it usable for anything and so we need the answers to those questions hey that's saying even raising their hand the anxious to follow up on that the motion on the floor is solely on setting the date for an override election the other piece of the equation which is the what it is the language that we're putting on the ballot what the specific request is is this really a separate matter that we've that is not part of the motion and therefore if it's not done today we can put that off to the 21st but we do have a motion on the floor and I do need to go ahead and take a vote on it if there's no further just hands going up for discussion on the motion on the floor and Andy the only one I want to do is make sure bill uses the word debt exclusion because you've used override twice you're right you're correct and I'm just saying as long as I want the motion to read correctly so we don't have to amend the words that's it thanks okay so the the motion on the floor bill do you have it yeah well you can correct me I have uh Shane moved Greece were seconded that the finance committee recommends that the town council make may second the date for the vote for the school debt exclusion correct okay that is the motion that's on the floor and if there's no other hands going up then I will proceed alphabetically with Anna hi Lynn hi Bob muted do you know you're muted I guess I said I support but I do I do share Alicia's concerns that we need to be prepared to communicate things prior to the second yeah but this this vote is solely setting the date I understand okay Matt support bernie support gaffey yes I'm a yes and lucia's absent which I regret but or where we are so that said is there anything else Sean or Paul or Kathy that you would like us to discuss regarding the school today no I think our goal will be and I guess let me know Andy if this is going to be the 21st of the 28th but our goal will be to try to bring back the answers to the questions that were raised today at whatever the next meeting is that we discussed it so if that's the 21st we'll shoot for that but yeah we can work on the agenda when that's going to be well well the questions that were raised today I think that the request is to get the answers as quickly as possible the timeline that was thrown at us by Margaret and I was discussing recommend action on debt exclusion and voted dead in to vote on the 27th and debt exclusion language and date so if you take what the two of them is our own PM and architect have recommended we've done half of what they ask in making a recommendation for the council for the 27th but we have not made the other half and of course the council is in meeting till the 27th again but we do have to come back on the 21st and have the discussion about the other half of that request which is the language yeah and so there's I mean sorry go ahead Kathy I just say we also need to have CPA on that date because we need a recommendation back on that because Sean's calculation subtracts that out of the numbers he's looking at so we finance needs to make a recommendation to the council on the CPA proposals as well yes so I think that's going to be the major discussion item because the presentation that we just received at the beginning of the meeting from Sean has been added to today's packet I think I sent it to everybody in advance by email and it is in both the SharePoint and in the packet that's available to the public through the web so that you know the language that we will I think is fairly straightforward I think we already had some discussion at the council last night and for the both of you who are not at that portion of the council meeting basically the answer is that the MSBA and statute are very specific about what the language has to be and that I also pointed out that by comparing the 2018 override language to the language here for the same for those very same reasons language is virtually identical so I'm not sure that it's going to be a long discussion but we don't have to do it today we can move on to the two water issues if there's nothing else that people want to raise about the school issue and Sean as far as we're aware the CPA committee is prepared to make a presentation on the 21st yes so we know what the agenda is going to be basically for the 21st so is there anything else on that or can I bring Amy and feel for it back they're here I know that they're here but they they're hiding at the moment hi Amy are you saying I have to wake back up again yes Andy I just had a request for the 21st if the if the community preservation act committee could explain what's how much debt we have and what's debt and what's not debt it's it's not clear to me just looking at this chart as to what it is so I would like to have a better understanding of what it is we're committing to in debt versus actuals you know levies that we've we've raised yeah Sean actually said a little bit about that last night at the meeting but I don't want to go into it again now because we can wait till the 21st but that question was identified last night at the council meeting Jaffee and just a response to Bob Sean can bring the CPA has looked at that out multi-year Bob as well so just the table they already have it would be good for us to see I'm liaison so I've seen it but it's it lays that out really clearly on on how much is out in out years that's debt versus other so I think we need to see the package not just this year's proposals right I agree thanks okay very because I really want to move on but but very quickly the I served on a previous finance committee with Tim Neil and looking at the minority port and frankly if Tim is raising I learned that when Tim raises a question or objection you take it very seriously so I would hope that the comments in that minority report get incorporated into the discussion but they're certainly before us because the committee provided the minority report and it's been both for the council and the committee so then if we go in the order of the agenda we would do water sewer regulations and then Centennial but I want to ask Gilford or Amy if they have a preference to order okay so let me just give a quick description and then Anna can add to it because Anna and I are in the position of being on both committees that have reviewed the regulations and Amy's probably spent more time with the two of us than she would like to have to recognize but it did happen in any event we all I think we were all involved in the discussion the last time it came before finance committee and it came with Sean's memo recommending for reasons that he stated very clearly and I'm not going to attempt to repeat that we delay the one part of the new regulations that changes ownership of both water and sewer between the respective mains and the property lines of the property for two years and there were reasons stated in the memorandum that he presented to us that explained why that recommendation was the appropriate action to take and that's what we voted the vote in the town services and operate in outreach committee was slightly different and it was different in that what it said was that the implementation of that section should be delayed for a two-year period and but that it would go into effect at the conclusion of the two years and so that there are a couple things that we recognized one is that if we don't come back together and it has risk Amy having to go through the steps of providing regulations in two different ways and so we wanted to see if we could bring the two committees together for that reason and the other is to see if there's an ability to bring the two committees together on a single recommendation in any event because then it would ease the presentation at the council meeting so I'm going to pause for a second and see if Anna has anything to add to what I said. Sure so thanks Andy I think really what this came down to was what do we want to open back up in two years right and what TSO came to the conclusion of is that making this change is the right thing to do and we recognize that this may not be the right time but we don't want to have to start this process over again by having the council automatically need to go back through it in two years having a new council need to go back through it even though chances are that they hopefully would approve it in two years what we we wanted it to be an automatic switch in two years however the council can always go back and go through it and we have incredible town staff we have very attentive attentive community members and members of the finance committee who if in two years do not believe that this is a the an okay move for the town to make will bring this forward and and the council can open it up and redo it for for discussion but really what TSO was saying is that we want this to be to go into effect in two years not to be re-debated in two years in less necessary and so that's the kind of the the Clifford's version of it because we do believe that this is morally or ethically the the right move in terms of supporting our community and and not hitting people with undo bills for for repairs the other thing that we talked about was that the cost of insurance was effectively the same as this rate and so that to say well we're not going to do this as the rate increase would be believe seven dollars per per month and so seven or eight each for water and then for sewer which is approximately the same amount as this is estimated to to raise bills and so you know by saying we're going to go with the insurance option instead of making this change for everyone we're really privileging folks who are going to choose to to do that and the folks who may be hit with the bills but you know weren't weren't in on the insurance plan are still going to be hit with those big bills so you know because the cost is the same we felt that this was the most equitable option and we didn't want to have to be forced to rehash it in two years and I'm going to add one piece then and then try and open it up to the rest of the committee for discussion with Amy or Dilford when I add to it first and that was a concern was expressed from the staff level that if are we putting forward a risk that someone could find out that there's a problem with their water or sewer line that would be shifting ownership and it happens during this two-year interim period if the decision is made to make it an automatic change over would it in some encourage people to delay doing the repair and in sort of some follow-up discussions and Amy can respond to this a little bit too that could be addressed by just putting into the regulation that the responsibility for repairs remains with the owner of the line at the time that the problem was discovered or something very similar and that then if the ownership if the two years ticks but the discovery of the problem was clearly or the two-year date it doesn't change so if Amy or Sean want to say anything on that and then if not then I want to open it up to the committee or to see if there's any discussion Lynn is okay and sorry real quick if I respond to your yes so we spoke about this yesterday Amy Paul and I and with Gilford and I think you know what we were trying to find is some middle ground between the two sort of options being considered and so I think the thing that we have been we don't have a perfect solution but we just wanted there to be something you know before the two years where this would if we if the version of the TSO the TSO is approved moves forward we want there to be something before that automatic date where it kicks in where we would at least come back together and review it and to so there's some action has to happen just to make sure that at that time you know there's no surprise costs that have come in into play or consumption as it can you know dropped off more than we thought that so if there's some action that has to happen at that time before we have a sort of this increase in costs kick in automatically well I think Paul yeah I think what's what's important is for the council to recognize that this we are changing what the status quo is the council's making a policy decision to change the status quo in terms of ownership of these service lines when we change that when you make that policy decision there's a cost involved that you're imposing on the ratepayers so as long as we're doing that with open eyes there are going to be cost increases just to people when you make that policy decision and I know we've had a lot of conversations about minimizing impacts on property owners and minimizing you know trying to mitigate the impacts of a debt exclusion or property tax increases but just be I just think we need to be really explicit that this is a policy decision the council is making it's going to cost people money a certain amount of money in their in their water bills every year every every every month whenever we bill um and that's a you know I agree with the policy decision but we should do it with eyes wide open um Lynn hearing that the committee members um yeah I'm going to be honest and say I'm sitting on the fence on this one um and uh part of it is because Sean and Paul came to us with a recommendation because of unknowns and one of those unknowns has since surfaced we're going to be talking about it as soon as we're done with this piece and one of the things that I feel strongly about is that whatever we do we don't tie the hands of future councils we've been legally told we can do that and I understand we do that particularly when you only have two-year terms but I'm I really would like Sean and Paul or Paul and Sean either way or Guilford or Amy to chime in on those unknowns that first led I think she's frozen I think you're frozen Lynn it was a dramatic moment but you're frozen I think I know she was where she was going Paul do you want me to weigh in or do you want to okay um you know the unknowns are still there right I mean not much has changed since we wrote the memo in terms of the unknowns um the big unknowns are infrastructure costs um and consumption rates and which way consumption rates are going um and in the sewer fund that's there's a couple of capital projects as well that um we don't have final costs on either so I think those are the unknowns they still they're still there um and I think to to what Paul was saying is just we just you know we we looked at the trend of the rates as it without this change and as you saw they're going up pretty steeply um because of these infrastructure projects so this is just gonna um it's gonna make it a little bit larger um but if again if that's the policy decision and if the um you know the direction the council wants to move in we just want to make sure everyone knows it now and I think you do right it's um it's it's out there so yeah uh Amy again that maybe this is obvious to everyone but I feel like regardless of which way I mean really what we're talking about does this default to the town doesn't own unless we change you know unless we change something or does the town take over ownership unless we change something and I think regardless of which way we land on it um you know two years from now before that takes place this committee here is going to be looking at the water rates looking at the impact and that's going to kind of force the conversation if the rates go up too much the year that this hits as well as centennial and other things hit um then that might be you know kind of the touch base to make another decision um I don't know I feel like there is kind of baked into this whole system there is a a touch point on what what we know and at that point we're going to have better information on what the cost might be of some of these other things as well as um taking over ownership okay so Lynn said she was on the fence I'm not on the fence um yeah I don't want to do this now um and Amy I completely understand like we could not do this now and we can revisit it and I don't want to do this now because we're taking on a new obligation that imposes costs on rate payers and we know that um we can't tell people right now that we're fixing their potholes um and I would like to know that at least you know what value am I getting for what I'm paying for now without um adding and the centennial these are kind of shocking and I know it was not it was not in your control um but that needs to settle in and I would love it if somewhere in the next couple years and this is I feel like it's a dead conversation but maybe it's because it just didn't make any sense you know Bernie we talked about is there a way of shifting some of the capital infrastructure shots to the really big users and um and that was through the quarterly payment on the diameter of the pipe or whatever whatever it was you know and so we're in this this vicious cycle of if we economize on water our rates go up because the infrastructure and if you mass keeps growing we need all the water we can get um you know so we don't have a choice of not having a water supply so I would rather stay with what we've got and revisit this and Anna I understand that TSO went in a different direction so I'm just trying to be as clear as possible I'm on the other side of this um and uh it's not just the school vote I feel like there's a lot of pieces that that there's that we're in this municipal finance box that property taxes are main piece and unless you know who knows whether some other things start flowing you know the surcharge that went into the state we don't even know what that's going to look like yet maybe there's some relief in the future on other parts of it but we're not offering that to anyone now it's cost people can't avoid so so that's my piece and I realize in a way you're saying it's imposing on everybody so the few that would get hit by this aren't aren't squashed by it when it hits them and that's the whole principle of insurance that's why you want to spread it so Bob looked at a way of spreading it but anyway I'm coming on and don't do this now do the other parts of the rate structure that we need to get on the books so I will stop that's my strong opinion and the way I will be voting if we vote okay Matt thanks Andy um yeah thanks Amy and and um all I I understand the discussion right now is on timing for the vote or timing for the change and and I you know I support the delay if that does come to a vote I think it makes sense there's a lot of information to be gathered um I just want to make sure that I'm understanding so at one point we did talk about uh insurance policies for um rate rate so did we ever I mean have we is there information on that yeah so um I thought we sent it out uh Paul Matt you're talking about policies that uh individual homeowners if it's already gone out then say no more that's that's good I'll double check but if not we'll send it out it um yeah somebody referenced the rates earlier in terms of the cost would be I'll send it out I remember seeing that okay yeah so I'm I'll check that out but I guess the um the point I want to make you know whenever this change goes into effect is that uh you know the $7 month rate increase you know whatever the rate increase is going to look like I think you know and and should be thought of as an insurance you know either you pay private insurance you know and and protect yourself from a fairly significant cost or you you know you pay into the you know the new rate increase and I mean that's kind of how I understood this conversation I think it makes really good sense you know I I find it kind of troubling actually the amount of homeowner liability that goes out to the to the mains so you know I do think it's the right thing to do um I also understand that there's a need to delay the the decision gather more information to make the case work compellingly but I I really you know I'm thankful for all the work that's gone into this and the thought and and I do think that at some point this isn't going to be the right thing to do thanks very yeah just uh quickly I would prefer not to put uh requirement in place now that's going to come into effect in in two years I think this is one of those things that will creep up on you that will cause some problems and right now we have to be very careful about making financial commitments of any kind you know financial pressures are out there I frankly couldn't afford Amherst if I had to move in today so I'm leery about you know putting something on the books is going to pop up in two years and I uh I would prefer that folks just take that up in in the future when there's either new information new technology new revenue sources and I'm also concerned about the water and and want to get on with the the vote on a on treatment plan because water is one of those resources that we just really need to hang on to because it'll become as with climate change it's going to become more and more and more thanks um I was just saying one thing I think that we lost Lynn for the moment I don't know if she's going to be able to get back into the meeting Lynn lost access to the internet so they're trying to get she's trying to get back in but she hasn't been able to okay so we might hear from I might postpone the vote if there's a motion made and gone to get a centennial presentation but um I just wanted to point out that there's a burden going on the rate payers and the question is does it go on a small number of rate payers who happen to have a problem that falls on their lines in the section that we're talking about or do we spread out that burden to all rate payers but it's not a burden the burden is on this on the water and sewer system yeah Anna give your hand up thank you and Andy you're the point you just made is one of the reasons why I feel very strongly about this is that when you think about the folks whose pipes are most likely to get hurt right um it's not the new big developments it's the folks whose houses are old um you know and I think one of the big concerns that I have is um I'm concerned about lead pipes I'm concerned about old infrastructure right and and I'm concerned that people um you know who who are responsible for pipes and and aren't aware of what they're really dealing with um that we're really doing them a disservice by not by not supporting their infrastructure um that's on town property um I think you know I have a lot of questions about the the infrastructure bill and the funding that's coming through especially for lead mitigation lead um lead pipe mitigation and um you know a lot of that is is a lot of specifically that area is administered through state revolving funds which we are familiar with and so I think that it's you know while they may apply for private um private projects in some cases I think having it be a town owned infrastructure allows us to do more when we apply for and receive funding hopefully through state revolving funds to address to address things like lead pipes I also want to clarify one point no one is saying that this would go into effect now none of the proposals put this into effect now every single proposal that's on the table puts it into effect in two years it's just a question of does the entire set of regulations come back up for a vote by the council or is it that this part of the regulation unless acted upon by an outside force meaning a counselor a finance committee member or our town staff knowing that something's wrong then it goes into effect right there is still an opportunity for discussion and debate it's the same timeline it's just a matter of is it an automatic it's on the agenda to discuss that full set of regs or it's an automatic it goes into effect unless that there has been a concern that has been brought up and the likelihood is very strong that that will be true right based on what we've heard I think it's really a matter of saying that we're committing to this unless we realize we can't do it versus we're not ready to commit to doing I'm going to speak editorially we're not commit ready to commit to doing the right thing to support our people in in who's who are responsible for infrastructure they can't control financially you know I think that for me is the question of whether we're saying we're committing to this or unless there's a problem identified or no we're not ready thanks so where we are at is that the finance committee made a recommendation if there is no motion made to change the recommendation that's made in second there's no motion on the floor and we go on to the next agenda item it is on the TSO agenda also for Thursday I don't necessarily expect that you know I can't predict I'm not even you can go into that direction but what I am a little bit concerned about we don't have Lynn to help us with this is the process person for the council is that then something we what we most want is a set of regulations that Amy and both committees have spent a lot of time on and get them enacted and get them done and in order to get them done we have this one little glitch in them and we need to have Lynn as the council president ultimately in that case if there's two different recommendations out of the two committees making a decision as to how to go forward and then she has to I think as as council president make that all as to how to proceed with that and she you know I suppose could get a presentation and and come up with some sort of a process to make a decision on this and then come so that Amy only has to draft one new set of regulations and then come back to a council it is subsequent meeting in fairly short order and conclude this or how she would proceed but I can't speak for her because we've not talked about it I don't know if you have her have had that discussion with her so unless I see a hand I'm going to assume that there is no motion being made and if there's no motion being made then we are where we are and I'm going to go on to this and turn your discussion Andy sorry I'm happy to make a motion even though I predict it won't pass but I'm I'm a little would you just have me say I wasn't here for the first motion being made and I don't know if you're if we need to vote to rescind anything or or if I can just make a new motion that even if it's contradictory I think you can make a new motion that would overturn the previous motion yeah that's what you want to do okay sure so um all right I'm gonna I'll do my best and get corrected here uh so I move that the finance committee recommend the adoption of the updated water and sewer regulations with the ownership change going and trickle down effects going into effect in two years so 2025 okay so we'll look to see if there's a seconder on the motion bill I know you're I just want to get that can you just say that again Anna sure yeah um I was moving for the finance committee to adopt the water and sewer regulations with the ownership changes having an effective date of 2025 thank you can I just for clarity sake we're saying the service line ownership portion of the sewer and water rags having an effective date of 2025 yes thank you service line ownership you got that bill I'm sorry did you say a specific day in 2025 I did not I think we'd want it to be um July 1st July 1 yeah when the new rate's going to open if that's a friendly amendment proposal yeah absolutely thank you chef did you have that bill the service line portion of the regulations going into effect July 1 2025 is there a second well I'm not I don't see a second so I think that the motion therefore is not on the table still under those circumstances um Sean how do you recommend we proceed with the next agenda item centennial water facility so sorry so I think what so for bill that the motion fails for lack of a second and so the existing finance committee recommendation recommendation stands okay to shift gears to centennial yes okay so we can give a quick overview the memo was in the packet and then open it up for questions or discussion Guilford do you want to give the brief overview of the bid process and what sort of what's going on so we've been working on this project for quite a while if you remember we started pre-bid we did pre-bids for our sub filed subbids a while back at the point we did the filed subbids we were actually told we were awarded a state revolving fund grant which was really nice for the town of Amherst and Sean will talk more about that that gives us a loan at the end of 1.5 percent and then gives us a loan forgiveness which is if we approve the new amount is about four million dollars um so that's what we get out of the SRF but when we got the SF loan we had to slow down we had to repackage things we just went out to bid two weeks ago we opened bids um finals um prime contractor bids and um we got the number we got which is 18 roughly 18 million dollars um a little over so that actually brings us to a total project cost around 21 million dollars and three 21 million dollars 300,000 so we rounded that to uh to 21.5 million dollars is what we're requesting right now um it's amazing how you get asked to talk and all your notes get buried somewhere you're trying to find them quickly it doesn't work but that's perfectly what's going on we do have we do have all of our bids in we do have a project price locked in um we're required to have a contingency in that project with the SRF fund so there's a five percent contingency built into the in the 21 million 21 and a half million we do get our SRF loan increase they will cover the entire construction cost and our loan like I said our loan forgiveness does increase it increases about four million dollars so um all we need to do now is appropriate the additional funds and then we can move forward with awarding the contract and hopefully start construction or deconstruction demolition of the existing facility um in april or may so the specific action um being proposed in front of the finance committee is to rescind the previous debt authorization for 18 million dollars and to authorize a new debt authorization for the total project cost which is um what the state revolving fund is requiring in order to move forward um and that is for the 21.5 million and then in the memo at the very end you'll see the estimated um financial impact um of based on the new authorization amount and the new assumptions related to the SRF and what they will um fund you can see the impact that's projected okay I say that Lynn is back I want to um let the minutes show that uh president has returned to the meeting and Lynn can you hear us going to confirm unmute and just confirm yes I can hear you thank you and I'll fill you in if you don't know and what happened with the last item uh later I gave a really good response to your question that you didn't hear um but so uh chaffy but it's okay I'm I'm ready to support the motion uh to rescind and I'm I'm assuming you can put the wording that you just read out for for um bill up on the board I I think it's important to move forward so recommend to the council that we approve rescinding um the previous authorization for 18 million and authorize new purchase for 21.5 and just put the language up so I didn't capture all the words I think that what was in the order uh what was in the memo is a specific order that has been prepared Sean do you want me to share a screen um I can share it okay okay and I'm just going to speak to why I'm I'm ready to move this because it's a question I asked last night um there is money out there and we just don't know what money there is right now um between federal and other and and we because we've got a shovel ready project we are more in a position to be in line to get some additional money for this if it turns out that some of it flows there's federal infrastructure there is state infrastructure so I think moving this um while we've got the bids in hand before the bidders say whoops um I wanted to do a recalculation they Paul last night or Sean or Guilford said these are hard bids they're ready to do the work for this amount of money with the contingency that I think it's important to move forward because the difference between this year and last year is already huge so I I am strongly recommending and I'm making a motion that we recommend the financial order FY 2309A as presented to the full committee to the council. There are two orders that are there and I don't know if so can I bundle them together um parliamentarians can I I'm moving that we recommend that we rescind borrowing authorized but ensured order FY 23136 and we approve a new bothering authorization appropriation and borrowing authorization order FY 2309A can I do that in two parts or do we have to take a vote on each? You know I think it would better do two just because we provide this to our bond council when we get authorization and I think just have a little bit of two so consider that amended I'm first moving on the first one and then I'm ready to make a motion on the second one. So the motion that you're making is to um you're moving to rescind borrowing authorization uh the finance committee recommend to the council authorizes yes the council the council rescind borrowing authorized but unissued in order FY 2313c. Is there a second? Second. Devlin got there. His motion is made in seconds down the floor Bob. Thank you. I just wanted to throw an idea out here and it doesn't have anything to do with either these motions but if there's any chance that we could use some reserves in order to cover the cost of Centennial I think it would be very important to try to minimize the impact on the raise. I know that we keep the enterprise fund separate from the general fund but this is an unusual cost and I don't think it has to be done right now but I mean I think over time if we if there's a way we could reduce the the impact by using reserves I think we should try to do that. Kathy? I believe we've got about three million that we haven't so of ARPA that we haven't so far said I know Paul and Sean probably have plans for it but same question with what you were just asked Bob could that would ARPA can go for capital costs so would this be something it could be used for since it's it's clearly economic development um so can I respond quickly Andy? Yeah so yeah um so it is something we're exploring um as everyone here knows there are lots of initiatives in town and so so we're trying to use those ARPA funds to um not do any any new initiatives but to help us achieve the initiatives that have already been identified out there um so I don't think we there's nothing we can commit to at this point but I'll just say it is something that we've discussed is um specifically with ARPA um potentially trying to find a way to see if we can offset some of the the cost increase um but ultimately we'll bring back a plan to the council um hopefully sometime in the next month or two with more details about um the plan for those funds but just know that it is being discussed and are you aware of any funds in the federal level that are going to be available through the uh recently passed statute on infrastructure that we could seek? So my understanding is that some of those funds that have gone through the state they're flowing through the program that we are already in that they're flowing through these loan programs um the state Revolving Fund program to increase the amount of money that they have um so I haven't spoken with the individual that um Guilford has spoken with but one thing I want to when I um I do want to ask them is is some of the it's part of the reason why they're able to offer more favorable terms to us now because of some of that federal funding um that was approved because before those start we you know we weren't offered this increase until recently. That's correct Massachusetts has decided to take most of their funds for water and wastewater type improvements and push it through the SRF program. Okay so we're back to where we were that there's a motion on the floor that's been made seconded coming to do with rescission of the prior authorization and uh certainly for the discussion on it because if not then there's no reason not to proceed to the above. If I go um alphabetically next in line the start uh is uh Lynn. I'm I'm present and I vote yes. Okay Bob. I support uh Matt. Support. Um Bernie. Support. Okay and um I'm a yes. Alicia is absent and Anna. Yes. So it's uh Kathy's a yes also. Okay Kathy's a yes. I'm sorry. Somehow I'm going alphabetical and get that missed but thank you. So so four to zero one absent and three supporting from voting members and we need to go on to the next um order. So I'll do it again since I couldn't couple them. Um I move that we recommend to the town council appropriation and barring authorization order FY 23-09A. Is there a second? Second. Okay so we have a motion again that is uh made by Anna are made by Kathy and seconded by Anna and uh as was the prior in motion is that the committee recommends to the council adoption of order 23-09A. Any discussion further discussion on it? If not uh go uh continuing on with what we've been doing before then goes to uh Bob Hegner. I support. And Matt Holloway. Support. Bernie Kubiak. Support. Kathy. Yes. Yes. I'm a yes uh Alicia again is absent um Anna. Yes. And Lynn. Aye. So again it's uh say order four to zero one member absent uh for the voting members and three resident members in support. So I think that that includes the action unless there are any other things that um anybody from the committee wants to ask of our two DPW staff uh while they're still here. And if not thank you both. Thank you. Go get this built for us before the cost goes up again. Thank you. Thank you. Good night. Okay so um I think that we um the one thing that I wanted to just uh let you know about the minutes because I we have nothing to do on the minutes today. Um it turned out that we actually have approved all of the minutes for which I had received from um Athena word versions of minutes to review so that when she had five additional dates on the agenda um I was missing the minutes that go went with them so as a consequence I have nothing more to present to you um for today and uh we're essentially caught up with the ones that we have and she was going to check into that but she's um uh it was a identified problem this morning and she did not have time to uh find them right away so it wasn't going to be helpful. So therefore um I have nothing more under the 48 hour rule. I don't know if anyone else does if so raise your hand. We know the date of the next meeting which is um um the 21st of February at the same time we know what the um the agenda items are because we've already talked about them we're going to handle second part of the um that exclusion which is to uh recommend language since we've already taken care of the date part of it and uh we're but mostly it is to um receive um a presentation from the committee from the CPA committee. The way that we have planned and I just wanted to tell you that I really have done a lot of work with the help of Lynn and Sean to um flesh out a um pathway um a chart that actually shows all of the council meetings that deal with the financial issues and all of the committee meetings through um the uh end of June and uh so the next meeting uh before the next meeting I will be putting that in a form that I can present to you and uh I will the other thing to note out of all of what I just said in that um in that chart the way that it is listed is that um the action the recommendations on CPA uh will be dealt with by the council on on March 6th it will be a public forum and uh vote so um on CPA so it's but it's also a possibility to put it on the 20th of March so that needs to be straightened out before we uh include and uh that'll tell us when we need to um actually handle it that's why I haven't provided in writing is just to let one foggy piece in the uh that this is on the council listing for two different dates I don't know how to handle that and so I was looking for guidance later um the other thing that I just wanted to mention that I'll call in Kathy um the CPA uh excuse me the audit um is before the committee at the committee meeting on March 7th so um we always we are the audit committee according to the charge to the committee and so the audit presentation will be on to that date Kathy uh just uh it may be an amend to what you suggested for the next meeting I think it's not just the language but Lynn asked and I think it's important we do it that Sean do a reminder review of the reserve plan for the buildings so just that we we don't leave that question hanging and Alicia asked um with some understanding caveats if there are any potential anything that the town might be able to do long term for renters and so if if Paul, Sean, others are able to list even though we can't promise it anything out there so those were two requests that went with this and I don't know whether they have to both be next time but I think the reserve one does need to be next time um so I just wanted to say I don't think we're just voting on language that we have actually no control over because not only did you go and check what the town did last time I just looked at four other towns today and I looked at the state law we the words are written in stone with the you know the word council or town and the MSBA has to review this and they require that so it's we don't have what goes on the ballot discretion we do have the ability to put an information sheet out you know to so people understand what those words mean but we really so we don't have a lot of discretion on it as a finance committee to say gee I wish it we could add three more sentences to it we can't um so so Lynn I was just trying to expand what are we doing on the 21st because I think we it's important we get that packaged on so the council can move on to it um and I'll stop I totally agree with you Kathy I would be surprised if we could change that language the reality is the signs will say vote yes or vote no and people need to understand what yes means and what no means and that's the way you deal with this awkward language and just so people at least what I saw last time was um there was a primer someone put out how much does this mean for you if you have a house of this value it wasn't put in the ballot it's not that people were unaware um it was out there in q and a's um and some people converted it to four cups of coffee a week depending on where you buy it you know to say it's you know but and anyway there was there there wasn't an effort to say it's a mystery um so but so I just want to make sure we deal with the other things that we should that are larger finance questions and um we're we're trying to get clarity from the msba for if we get something that they will have never seen before a direct payment that's the equivalent of a tax credit to a non-tax crane thing do they offset their share at all or did they just consider that something extra we've gotten some reading on the rebates the ever source rebates they're not going to count that is a gift they have some odd wording on it um on but some of these things like pv it's ineligible they don't pay a dime of that um so that's outside their scope but if we got a reading that yeah that's your money and we're not going to do it we could at least report that back you know so it's real money and I'm trying to get a better sense I know what the solar is so I it's pretty easy to multiply 30 um there there's a little bit it's a it's less if it's a non if it's a municipal bond that's tax-free you know so it's a little bit less what I don't know is geothermal they say that I don't know how much of the system they applied the 32 and so I'm just trying to find out what that is because I have a range um so hopefully we at least have that information it doesn't really affect the wording we put on the ballot at all but it's information I think that's important for people to see um and it's a mind-net zero fact sheet you know how much I've been asked how much extra does the HVAC system cost because we're we're going electric rather than gas so I'm I'm pulling that information together just in a in kind of a Q&A or a memo um so with that said I'm just saying there's some pieces that land I think would help when people are looking at this um that's it right anything else that people have to say anyone else to say if not then I guess um we're adjourned and I appreciate it's been a uh difficult meeting but um I appreciate all of the cooperation of all of you thank you thank you thanks I'll have it tonight