 One second to do so. All right, we are now being recorded. Welcome, everybody, to the Kappa Joe Town Budget Edition this Friday morning in November. So today, like previous days, we're going to talk about topics related to the budget, answer your questions. You can also ask questions that aren't related to the budget, whatever is on your mind. To do so, you can raise your hand in Zoom. If you're on the phone, that's star six. So we will get started by introducing everybody. You probably already know, but Sean, why don't you go ahead and say hello to everybody first? I'm Sean Mangano, the director of finance for the town. That was quick. Yeah. And I'm happy to be here today. And I'm Paul Backelman. I'm the town manager. And I'm happy to be here today, too. Everybody's happy. And Brianna Stundard, communications manager and CPO community participation officer for the town. So why don't can one of you give a little bit of a recap to where we are with the budget right now, just like a little orientation to the folks in the room about current status? You want me to do that one, Paul? Sure. So we have developed our baseline projection of revenues for the FY23 fiscal year. We'd always do a very early projection. And it will evolve over the next several months. And we have presented that projection along with other financial trend information to the council, the school committee, and the library board of trustees. We did that on Monday at what we call our financial indicators meeting. And then we also on Monday held a budget forum, which had a good amount of input from the community. But I think there was at least eight or nine comments, maybe more. And so we hold that budget forum pretty early in the year because we want to receive feedback on the budget process on the front end before we start looking at programming and really working on the budget. We want to get that feedback so it can be built in. And so that budget forum was held. And now, and then that night, the council refers the development of the council's budget guidelines for the town manager. And they refer that to the finance committee. And so the finance committee met on Tuesday to start discussing budget guidelines. And the budget guidelines are really important. It's an annual document that the council prepares with the help of the finance committee. And it lays out the parameters for which the town manager and staff develop the budget. Kind of sets out the expectations of the council. And so the finance committee had a good discussion on Tuesday. It seems like every year there's more and more challenging topics to fold into the budget guidelines, at least the last few years since I've been here. And so there's a lot for the finance committee to kind of grapple with and to figure out how to put into the budget guidelines. Because they don't really want to say, do everything. That's not the intent of the budget guidelines. It's to acknowledge that we have limited resources and that there's a lot of needs as well. And what's a responsible way to develop a budget moving forward? So the finance committee will be meeting again on this coming Tuesday to continue the budget guidelines discussion. And then they will eventually make a recommendation to the council. And then the council will discuss it. And hopefully the council will approve budget guidelines sometime in December. And again, that's really for the manager and staff. That's really sort of the, here you go, go develop the budget. Because then we know what the expectations of the council are. So yeah, I'll just jump in here on a couple of things. And we should let Sean and I will talk forever until people start raising their hands. So if you have questions or comments, do that. Someone mentioned a few things. One is that our budget process, where we start with financial indicators, have the elected leaders establish the guidelines, that was developed years before either Sean or I were here. But it's become a standard for the state that our previous Sandy Pooler and John Musanti were really ground breakers in doing this process. And that's really become the standard around the state for well-managed communities. So it starts with sharing information and then moves to asking the elected officials to set priorities. And that's what the guidelines are. The forum, when we started, when we switched to the council forum of government, we had the budget forum in the spring. And then we realized after that first year talking with the council president that that was too late. We had already pretty much made a lot of the decisions on the budget by April or whenever we had the budget forum, so we moved it to the very beginning of the process so we could hear from people as to what are their priorities as the council was considering the priorities. And I think the point that Sean made was really important in that it's not a to-do list of everything we want. It's the hard grappling with the challenges of having limited resources and establishing the priorities for the community and where you want those limited resources to go. And that is a policy matter that we want the council to make those decisions. And I think that we have a very strong, robust system in place. And then it's every year we have to make those hard decisions. So I do see that we have a hand in the crowd. And I also want to take a chance to say that you can type your questions into the Q&A if you'd prefer. And I can read them as well. I see a lot of hands. First is number ending 364. But I'm pretty sure this might be Phyllis. So come on into the room and introduce yourself. Right. Sorry, I'm beating Ken Rosenthal today. Phyllis Lara, South Amherst. Who is on the finance committee? And can we contact them by email or phoning them to say what we would prefer to have in the budget? So the members of the finance committee, there's five counselors who are on the committee. And then there are three resident members of the council. So it's Councillor Steinberg, Councillor Griezmer, Council President Griezmer, Councillor Pam, Councillor DeAngeles, and Councillor, who's the fifth one I'm forgetting. There is one more counselor. There's five. What about the Japanese music on free? Well, I'm thinking of that. I will name the three residents, which is Bernie Kubiak, Bob Hegner, and a new member Matt Holloway. And who is that fifth one? I, Councillor Shane. Councillor Shane. How can I thank Councillor Shane? Thank you, Jeff Lee for putting that in the chat. I'm on like three committees with Councillor Shane. So those are the counselors. Council President or the finance committee chair, sorry, is Andy Steinberg. And so, yeah, you're certainly welcome to email either your counselor for your district or Andy Steinberg and his role as chair of the finance committee. Thank you. Happy Thanksgiving. You too. Thank you, Phyllis. All right, so we've got a couple other hands. I'm going to go to, I believe this is League of Women Voters, Amherst, RJC. But please unmute and introduce yourself. Yes, this is Martha Hanner on behalf of the. We lost you, Martha. Yes, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. So we would like to emphasize the importance of considering the recommendations of the CSWG and the larger issues of safety and crests and so on as one sort of total package. We hope you'll give it a high priority in the budget, but we believe it's important to look at a long range plan, just the way you do for capital projects and other things that we have to really seriously ask, how can we flesh out crests, make it become an important part of the overall safety, support the other communities. And we believe it's very important to include all the aspects in this overall plan, and that would include potentially then a youth center, also potentially reparations. But it's important to include that all as one and not do something like, say, reparations outside of the budget process and to ensure that, say, the marijuana money and other things are all included in this overall plan so that we hope you will give priority to this and envision what's going to be the ongoing effort on the larger scale. So thank you. Yeah, I mean, I'll just speak to that really briefly. I think the projection, the FY22 budget included some initial investments in the recommendations from the CSWG. The FY23 budget builds upon those investments quite a bit. I think the total sum of the requests is such that it has to be phased in over several years. But I think the FY23, what we're looking to add for FY23 is substantial in terms of a 10-person crest department, a two-person DEI department. And then we are also looking to our American Rescue Plan Act funds to explore the youth center. So I think we are making progress on a lot of the recommendations to our budget while at the same time realizing that there are other departments that still need a certain level of funding to maintain services. And that level of funding increases each year. So it is a challenge. That's probably the biggest challenge this year is how do we integrate these new programs while maintaining services that other services at the community values as well. Yes, I just think it's important to show that the town is taking seriously the overall commitment. And so that's where a multi-year plan would sort of help people to see that, yes, this is something that will be ongoing. So thank you. Thank you, Martha. I have a quick clarification here that came in from Council President Griezmer regarding the financial guidelines. This is simultaneous with the Council setting the goals for the town manager when the new town council is seated, they will review both of these documents. So just to clarify and point there. That's a really important point, yeah. I think so the financial, the budget goals, financial guidelines are what we use when we start to develop our budget. The goals for the town manager are things that the town council establishes in terms of here's what we want the town manager and all the departments to accomplish this year. And it's really important for the council to take those, to vote on those as soon as they can because we're working right now in getting our budget developed. That starts in the November-December time range so we can't wait till a council is fully seated. But I know that this is the first time we're doing a transition, the new councillors will be able to review both of those documents and then amend them as they see fit. All right, I see a couple more hands. I see Ken if you would like to come into the room and introduce yourself. Good morning, thank you. I'm Ken Rosenthal, I live on Sunset Avenue. And I am happy to yield the opening comment to Phyllis Learer today. My question is about not about expenditures for the town but revenue. Hadley has just decided to split its tax rate between residential and business. I know that's something that we do not want to do in Amherst. But I wanted to ask you about how you decide on the basis for taxation. For a resident like me who owns his own house, the assessor makes an estimate of the value of my house based upon mostly comparable sales. For businesses, I think the assessor has to do something different and I think it has to do with capitalizing revenue or capitalizing profits. I don't know which and maybe you'll tell me. But that isn't my question. My question is, what do you do about a hybrid of business that is renting residential houses like mine by an absentee landlord who will own multiple houses and whose business is not a residential rather, whose business is the rental of such houses? How do you decide what the value of that real estate is or how do you decide what the value of the business is so that you can tax that business properly? I'm not sure I'm explaining it well, but I'm trying to understand whether there is a different standard for absentee landlords whose sole business is owning houses like mine but renting them out completely to others. Thank you. I think a cup of Joe with the assessor is on the horizon. I think that would be a good, especially since we have a new assessor, that would probably be a good one to come up in the future. You're right about your first two points about how residential homes are assessed and businesses. There's three different options for assessing certain types of properties. And so for commercial, one of the things they look at is revenues and expenses with some of our multi-use buildings where there's rental apartments on the top and commercial on the bottom. They do split those types of buildings and will split the commercial portion out from the residential portion. But I do think probably to get the most complete and helpful answer, we should have the assessor come back maybe in the next few weeks and weigh in on how all that's done. Yeah, I mean, it's a really good question, Ken, because you have your house and you live in it and you get taxed one way. Suppose your next door neighbor is owned by that house is owned by a corporation that rents it out as a business. Are those two properties appraised or assessed the same way? And my instinct is that they are. Although, again, that'd be a more detailed answer from the assessor on that. They do do a sort of an income assessment for commercial properties in terms of value of those buildings. I'll be glad to talk to the assessor about it and another couple of Joe, because I think that's something that's important for Amber since we are so concerned about how the neighborhoods are surviving the pressure for houses to be sold to absentee landlords who will then run them as a business rather than as a residence for permanent, long time residents. The distinction I think I'm making is between people like me who intend to be here for a long time and people who live in rental houses, mostly students, who are going to be here for one, two, three, or four years. It's a very different kind of a residence. And it really isn't the same kind of residence that we think of when we think of neighborhood residential. Thank you. Yeah, so one more point on that, Ken. So one of the things that Town Council has asked us to do is to look at a residential exemption, which would allow people who own and live in their own homes to pay lower taxes. It doesn't create any new revenue or take any revenue away from the town. It just shifts it to other parcels. And it's basically, it's also skews to the lower value properties as well that they get the bigger benefit. And that's something that some communities do, not a whole lot. But it's something that the council has asked us to investigate. And they've talked about the last couple of years. And I think, you know, come the fall, their expatting is a little more detailed on what that looks like. Thank you. All right, thank you, Ken. I had a question that came in via email from Ian. That was kind of related to what we were just talking about a little bit. So I'm going to read it now. And hopefully we can provide a little bit of answer. So this is from Ian, who's wondering which Amherst neighborhoods seem to be the fastest growing in terms of population in new housing. And again, maybe not these panelists here who would have that answer, but do you get any sense? Yeah, I mean, we can track pretty much it's where the new houses are being developed. And it's really the biggest developments happening in Amherst at this point in time are in apartment buildings. So there's a new apartment building being built on one University Drive South. There's one that just opened up on University Drive near the Hangar. There's one that's about to open up on Main Street near the railroad tracks. So it's these relatively, I mean, modest-sized multi-unit rentals. And that's where we're getting the most people. There aren't a lot of single-family homes being built. There are some, but not a whole lot. And in terms of population, we actually have good data at this point from the 2020 census. I'm not sure how good it is, but we have new data that I will send to Ian to kind of break that down by precinct, at least. That's a great idea. Yeah. So I will send that. Thank you. And we can compare that from prior years, too. Yes, exactly. Yeah. I see Jeff's hand. Jeff, if you would unmute and introduce yourself. Thanks. This is Jeff Lee. I live in South Amherst. And my question's quite similar to Ken's. But I read that in Hadley, with their recent property evaluation, their residential property values went up, but their commercial property values went down. I was just curious if that pattern has been seen in Amherst. Yeah, so we had a similar trend as Hadley, where we know residential properties are going up because there's been a lot of sales. And as we've all kind of observed, sale prices are sort of skyrocketing or worth several months ago. Whereas commercial, there hasn't been a lot of turnover in commercial properties. And we've had some closures downtown with some storefronts still up for rent. So there hasn't been that same growth in terms of the cost for commercial. So it's not so much that our commercial is dropped, where it's more around where it's sort of stagnated while residential has grown significantly. Thanks, Sean. Thank you, Jeff. So I see Jennifer's hand, if you would like to unmute and introduce yourself, please. OK. Hello. My name is Jennifer Taub. I was just, I think, responding to the question about how much Amherst has grown. And I kind of honed in on this from the Districting Advisory Board who was working with the census. I was just sort of, it was interesting, as I'm from District 3 and Precinct 10. And most of the growth happened here. So from 2010 to 2020, Amherst population increased by 1,444. And 1,300 of that, the DAB, was in Precinct 10 and was attributed to the two new dorms at the Honors College. So aside from that, the population grew by 144. And I don't know that we know how much of that is students and how much is year-round residents. But it's not so much a question, but just something I would like to think about, you know, address maybe what the new incoming council, how they might be able to address this. But it's just how we may be build more homes for families, even if it's starter homes. Because so much of the new development has been in the multi-unit apartments. So I'm just throwing it out there. I don't know what we can do. But I'd love to explore that. Well, first off, congratulations on your election, Councilor Locke-Towb. Thank you. Looking forward to working with you. Yeah, so what drives home prices is land values. And so to, and when I first started here, the huge emphasis was on developing long-term solutions for the homeless population. And lately at the Affordable Housing Trust meetings, the emphasis has kind of shifted towards creating more home ownership opportunities for people, mainly watching what has happened with the school population starting to drop, that we're losing families who would like to live in Amherst but can't afford it. So the trust has been looking at what are ways that we can do to create family housing. Because we all know that families help stabilize the community. And it's really important for the entire community. The way you use, you know, the market is the market. The way you can subsidize the market is by subsidizing land values, because construction is construction, basically. Maybe you can have some modest changes in the types of construction you have. So to that end, you know, the trust is looking at, again, finding town-owned land or other land that we can purchase with town funds that then we can flip to a developer who would develop the kind of housing that we're looking for. OK, thank you. All right, great. Thank you. So I just want to remind folks or anyone who's newly joined, you can raise your hand to ask a question or you can type it into the Q&A chat. And I will read it. I do not see any hands at the moment. I do see, let's see, Council President Lynn Griezmer is in attendance. I'm going to just mention if she does want to say anything about the budget to feel free to raise her hand, and we will bring her into the room. But no pressure. Oops, there it goes. Never misses an opportunity. Yes, a little bit of pressure. Welcome, Lynn. Hi, first of all, good morning and thanks for those of you that are coming to the Cup of Joe. Many of you are regulars and I appreciate that. This is really going to be an interesting budgeting process for FY23. And being a member of the Finance Committee for the last three years, having the benefit of learning a lot about municipal finance from Andy Steinberg from Sean and from Paul has been a blessing for those of us on the Finance Committee. We have some major drivers on this budget coming up. And I think we can do whatever we can do to try to satisfy all of them. But they will continue to be major drivers as I think Martha Hammer said earlier. It's we're going to need to look at what our priorities are and over the long term. And I just value and continue to ask that people stay in touch with us and let us know what you're thinking. Thank you. Bye. Thank you, Lynn. All right, I see. I'm going to say this right this time. Anna Devlin-Gothier, if you would unmute and introduce yourself, please. You did so well. Well done. Good morning, everyone. First, I want to apologize. I was a little bit late. And so if this question was already asked, you can just tell me that. And I will go back and watch the recording. So to Lynn's last point, could you tell us a little bit more about the best way for folks to give feedback on the budget process or the budgets so far when we're thinking about priorities, when we're thinking about what is getting funded? Often, I think not only how to give that input, but also what it makes sense to give input about, right? So what is it that folks can really, how can folks contribute in the most meaningful way to this process? From Paul, Brianna, Sean, all of your perspectives, that would be great. That was a great question. I'll let Sean start. Sure. So in terms of ways to give input, there's going to be several opportunities. One thing we did last year that I think we'll do this year, and it was helpful as we used the Engage Amherst page around the budget process and allow people to either ask questions about the budget or voice their what they want to see in the budget. And that will then contain all of our budget documents or links to our budget documents as well. So it can be sort of a one-stop place to read about the budget and share input. I think once the budget guidelines, I think getting input now to the Finance Committee is a good idea. I think that was raised earlier. While they're developing these budget guidelines and before the council votes the budget guidelines, getting that feedback to your counselor is really important because once they're voted, again, we sort of start moving forward with those guidelines, but they're still being shaped right now. So now is a good time to reach out to your counselor and let them know what you think is important. And if you want to know sort of what they're discussing, I would recommend going to the meeting on Tuesday or watching the meeting from last Tuesday, this past Tuesday. You'll get a sense of what are the key topics that they're discussing that'll help you consider what's most important to you. Yeah, so that conversation is happening at the Finance Committee and that's where the first draft of the budget guidelines will be developed and that will be a pretty strong controlling document. So last Tuesday's meeting and then the next few Tuesdays, the Finance Committee will ultimately make a recommendation to the entire town council in December and then the town council will consider it over a couple of meetings and then ultimately vote on that. So you're right, this is the time right now to weigh in on what your priorities are. Yep. Perfect, thank you. And there will also be multiple meetings throughout the winter and the spring where there'll be opportunities to share and put. The other big opportunity that's on the sort of other side of after the budget is presented is there's a public, I'll get it wrong whether it's a forum or a hearing but I'll never get that one right. But there's a public opportunity after the budget is presented for the public to weigh in specifically on the budget and share their thoughts with the town manager and the council. And while we're talking about this just real quick, and I know Anna knows this because she was on the meeting last night, a couple big budget things that are going on right now are the Community Preservation Act is reviewing Community Preservation Act proposals. There's a lot this year, which is good but I think that was one of the goals of the CPA Committee last year was to get more interest and more community proposals and they definitely have that this year. It's more challenging because now the requests exceed the amount of money we have available but ultimately that's probably a healthy thing for CPA long-term. So the CPA Committee started reviewing or started really deliberating on what proposals they wanna recommend to the council last night. And then the other thing that's today so if anybody has any last second requests they can get them in. The resident capital request deadline is today and that's been open for the past month or so and this is an opportunity for people in the public who may maybe have a capital project idea that is allowable for the town to submit those ideas and those will go to the town manager who will consider them when he develops his capital plan. And so that's on the town's website under the Joint Capital Planning Committee. I think it was on the homepage yesterday I'm not sure if it's still on today but it's a form that you can submit your ideas and your project idea. Can I ask a follow up on... Oh, sorry, Brianna, can I ask a follow up about that form, Sean? So when you think about forms like this is this something that it helps to have more folks submitting the same thing? Or is this really truly a... So if I have folks in my district who are advocating for a specific project would it support the project more to have everybody submit the exact same phrasing in multiple times? Or is that not helpful? And we should just submit once. Paul is shaking his head and I feel like he doesn't wanna get ten of these. I think if there's more than one person supporting it I think you're allowed to attach documents to this request. So one thing you could attach is like a signature sheet or something that lists all the people who are supportive of this project. I think that would just show that there's more than one person that's specifically asking for this project. And then you don't have to worry about submitting ten of them. Okay, I will repeat. So Ana, the reason I was shaking my head is that we basically, it'll be one item like if it's to buy a new car for the town manager I know everybody would sign on to that. There would be one item. And if you had ten of those identical things it's still just one item. But I think as a good point Sean made is that it does help, it might be useful to see there is broader support for whatever the proposal is. Thank you guys. That's really helpful. I'm done asking questions, Adriana. Thank you. Those are great questions. I am really glad that you asked them. Thank you, Ana. So let's see. I have a couple of clarifying points that came in. Another one from Council President Griezmer reminding people that there's a new feature to submit public comment online to the town council. It's a web form. It's really easy. It's linked right at the top of their page, their web page, amrstma.gov slash town council. You can always email them to all the counselors at town council at amrstma.gov as well as emailing your individual counselor. So that's just a quick tip. And then another question that's come in from, I believe it was Martha. To follow up on the housing discussion, is there a program for renting with option to buy? Could such a program be initiated? So we don't have a program like that. The town doesn't actually own housing. It tends to have land that it then conducts a request for proposals and gives to a developer who then builds the housing and then rents it out. Or usually typically they rent it out because their goal is to have sustained ownership. Now, sustained housing. There are like the community land trust and habitat. I think they actually sell their homes to income eligible people. So usually it's a partnership or we help promote some of the local agencies who are offering these opportunities. Yeah, we support them along the way too. I think the land trust, they come into the CPA periodically for additional funds for their housing too. And I believe there is an opportunity right now through the community land trust for affordable home ownership opportunity. I'll mention it since we're on the topic. I think the deadline's coming up but that is also on our homepage. And the deadline for applications is until November 30th. So if you know anybody who might be interested in that I can get the information and application to you. Feel free to email us at info at amherstime.gov and it's on our homepage. And Brianna, housing has seemed to be a high value of the discussion this morning. So I'll just say that in the American Rescue Plan Act proposal that we put forward, we've allocated a million dollars for the development of more affordable housing. And there's nothing specific around what that looks like. So that could be a lot of the programs that people have talked about today. We've also put a million dollars in to support solutions for homelessness and transitional housing. And then in the CPA committee right now the committee I was just talking about, there's a $500,000 proposal for transitional housing support. And then there was a $500,000 proposal for the affordable housing trust. So there are lots of resources tentatively going towards developing more housing or providing more housing support in town. And I think that's momentum that's gonna continue to grow as we go forward. No, good points. Thank you, Sean. All right, I'm gonna ask people again if they want to contribute a question or just the thought that might have come up feel free to raise your hand or use the Q&A. I don't see any at the moment. What else do we have for them, Paula? Yeah, I've got, yeah. So since we had one of these, we've had an election. We have new counselors who've been elected. There is one seat that is going to be recounted next Tuesday. That's one of the district three, no, whatever seats I've got the district numbers for. And, but there will be, you know, five or six new counselors coming in. If the initial tallies are accurate and affirmed come Tuesday, there will be 12 of the 13 counselors will be women, which is I've been asking the Mass Municipal Association to see if that's a record and it might be for councils. So we have a lot of new people coming in which is really exciting. And, you know, also there was a pretty strong confirmation of the library project. And so that is now moving forward. We have a certified vote as determined by the town clerk. And we've submitted our first request for funds from the Mass Board of Library Commissioners. So that project is launched. Additionally, for our school building project, we have our, we have picked a designer, Dinesco design group. And that has through the Mass School Building Authority. We have three seats on that committee. We selected this architecture architect to start the design of the building. And that includes choosing a site. You know, where do we want this new elementary school to go? And most likely it's either going to be at Wildwood or Fort River. And then we'll start to get into design. The web, we are hoping the website, and Brown is working on this with our owners project manager for that project will be up and running possibly before Thanksgiving if everything comes together. So we're excited about all these projects moving forward. Oh, I see a hand from Ken. So Ken, come on back in and unmute yourself. Thank you. I'm Ken Rosenthal, Sunset Avenue. I have a process question all since you just brought up the subject of the election and the new council, either for you or for a council president. The process now is that the election is held in November and the new councilors are not sworn in until January. That seems to be a copy of the federal process, which may have made sense when it was necessary to have a time to adjust and get ready for a new administration. But in this town, it's more mischievous than it is helpful because it means that there is a two month period when it's possible for a lame duck council to act in ways that might be contrary to what the voters were expressing when they elected new councillors. Now, when I say elected new councillors, as I understand it, if the president Talley holds six of the councillors who are gonna be serving in January are gonna be new and different from the councillors who are serving right now. So here's my question. What do we have to do if we want as a town to make the change so that after the next election, the council doesn't meet until the new councillors are sworn in or put another way around, can we swear in the new councillors in November rather than January? What's the process by which we either change the charter or change the rules to make that possible? Yeah, so when the new council takes office is enshrined in the town charter, which was voted on by the people. And it's an alignment with what most cities do in the Commonwealth. If there's an interim mayor, for instance, they may take office sooner, but in almost everybody, almost every other city in town, every other city, the swearing in happens and typically in January, it could be the first day in January, the first Monday in January, something like that. And so that's pretty much the standard. And there's a lot of reasons for that possibly, like we still do not know what the resolution is of the district foreseed is because that seat has been challenged and that will take time to process through. If you want to change that, you would need to change the charter and there's a process, the charter gets reviewed every 10 years. And so once the, and I think there's also an initiative position because it petition process you can possibly utilize. All right, great question, Ken, thank you. I see no hands, no questions in the chat. Last chance everybody to ask your question, does it need to be budget related or housing related? Could be anything. I'll take a quick chance to remind everybody about our asymptomatic free testing program available for pickup both at the Jones library and at the bang center with dropping off outside of the main bang center door. It's been really smooth. I do it every week. And we have ongoing continuing vaccine clinics for boosters. Massachusetts just made it, everybody in 18 and over eligible for boosters now. So we are having that every Thursday from three to 6 p.m. at the bang center. And you can sign up online for an appointment. But not next Thursday. But not next Thursday, not on Thanksgiving. We wouldn't do that to you. Anna asked, will there be increasing dates for vaccinations now that the age limit has been dropped? So not at this time, supply has been a little tough to get a hold on for the pediatric doses. So what our public health team has done is to support clinics at the schools and for other ages or for children looking to get vaccinated, I also recommend calling the pediatrics office as well as retail pharmacy. So I don't think there'll be any increase to the recurring clinics at this time. I know that our public health director is gonna be reevaluating that after the Thanksgiving holiday. But people can access vaccine through CVS Walmart, different locations as well. I think we've put a lot of effort into making sure our children have access to vaccine. And we've done clinics at the various schools which have been very successful. And I think there's another clinic on Tuesday from at the schools have arranged with Bay State health coming up with their van. So there'll be lots of opportunities for people to get the vaccine. And just all mentioned, since we're on the topic that the public health team is also doing smaller tailored clinics to specific audiences, vulnerable populations that aren't generally open to the public, but they are doing those clinics in addition to the weekly public clinics on Thursdays. That's a good point. So they're very busy over there. And again, so no questions in the queue here. So, Brianna, I can, I guess, should I just talk about something that I think is interesting? Yeah, please. What about your soccer team? Well, I'm not gonna, we've got a big game coming up on Saturday, but no, it's the one thing, I don't know if everybody's aware of, but it's I think a really positive thing that should be celebrated is the solar development and the landfill is moving forward and should be hopefully up and running sometime next year. As Paul knows, this is a process that started I think like 12 years ago or something to put solar on our landfill. And the landfills has cleared space. So there was no cutting down of anything to put that array up there. And so it's space that, we weren't really gonna generate anything on. And now we'll be getting pilot payment. We'll get some rental revenue from it. And we're gonna be generating, we'll be getting net metering credits, which is a reduction in our electric bill. We'll be getting that for about half of the town's energy consumption. And that's how, based on the size of the array, it's roughly half of the town's consumption. So that's a good example of trying to generate some more revenues for the town and a space that was previously sort of unusable. And that should be up and running next year and will be a really positive thing for everybody. It really has been- We're gonna need a big ribbon for that ribbon cutting. Yeah. It has been a really long time because the town decided to do it. It arranged to get awarded the contract to a company. Then that went out of business. And they'd go to a different company and then it went through permitting a million things along the way. There's a lot of details to this as well, but it's really is exciting. I mean, you know, it's a long project when you see it in the Gazette, 10 years ago today, the town awarded the contract for the solar development. So, yeah, but it just took a credit to Stephanie Ciccarello, who really has pushed this along every step of the way. There's just been the number of legal terms and Sean came in at the end to sort of really wrap it up and sum it up. And so really appreciate your work on that too, Sean. But that is exciting. That's really going to happen. And they can actually do construction during the winter, which we're thrilled by because it's on the cap of the landfill. So they don't have to get underneath the earth too far. All right. So I'm not seeing any other hands or questions. Here's your last chance. I will ask both maybe Paul and Sean, if there's anything that they wanted to say or share that they didn't get asked yet. Now is your chance. Paul, I'll let you start. Okay. So yes. So, you know, we will be working, you know, we will be working, you know, next week is Thanksgiving, but the council will be meeting weekly pretty much until December 20th or something like that. And then there'll be a break for the holidays. We're looking, the new council takes their seat on January 3rd is prescribed in the charter. That's when they will be sworn to office. And at their meeting, you know, their first meeting, there's a number of things that they will do. And what that looks like is really the town council president and clerk of the council were really working hard to sort of figure out exactly how we've never done this before. We say that a lot in this with this new form of government, but we've never done it before. So we're figuring those things out. But that's an exciting time to welcome the new counselors and trying to help the new counselors get up and running as quickly as possible and helping to orient them so they can be ready to start working on day one. And I'll just quickly say that, you know, we really strive to be accessible for the public. We wanna answer your questions. If you have any budget related questions or other questions, or you just wanna know how things work, we encourage you to reach out to us. You can email a town manager or myself, you know, if it's appropriate based on the question, but we don't want anybody to have a question and not know how to get the answer. We try to put more information in the budget document this year, but we know there's just things that are really technical about municipal government. It's a confusing financial system, you know, many parts of it are. So if you have any questions about anything, you can always reach out to us. All right, that's great. I don't see anybody with anything else. So I wanna thank both Paul and Sean, as well as all of you for joining us so early on a Friday, this recording will be up shortly in case you wanna reference back or share with a friend or neighbor. So thank you all. Thank you, Brianna. Thank you, thanks for giving it to everybody.