 This program is brought to you by Cable Franchise Vs and generous donations from viewers like you. Good evening and welcome back to Byline. This is a public affairs show produced right here at Amherst Media. And it's with the programming assistance of the Amherst League of Women Voters, which helped us launch this show last year. And it's our purpose to help you understand the transition that's going on between our old form of town government and we bring in guests who are doing work in the government or with the government. And so today's guest is going to be our chair of the CPA Community Preservation Act Committee, Nate Buddington. And Nate, you've been in town for how long? Just about 10 years. 10 years. And what brought you here? Well, my wife and I had moved to Western Massachusetts from suburban Los Angeles in 2000. She got a job at Williams College. We lived in Williamstown for about nine years and my wife got a job at Amherst College. So we moved to Amherst in about 2009, I believe. Great. I had lived here very briefly in the 80s for one year. What were you doing then? I was bartending at Delano's. Great. It's a long story. You came all the way here to bartender at Delano's. And one of my great disappointments of moving back to Amherst was the first thing I did was I went to Delanovers to get a Delanover, which was the specialty, and it was closed. It was crushed. Wow. But Williams to Amherst. Right. So there's a little bit of a rivalry there. Do you feel any tug? I don't. You know, I mean, I didn't go to either one. I've worked at both her two wonderful institutions and so, yeah, the rivalry doesn't mean much to me personally. Great. And so you got involved in some stuff here in town that... Yeah, my first taste, in Williamstown I was on the Conservation Commission and that got me kind of a taste of volunteer work for town government. And when I came here, I got involved in Amherst Baseball, which was the organization that sort of took over the Little League upon Stan Zonik's retirement. And Stan wanted... Giant of the community. At the giant of the community, at one point he pulled me aside and he said, you've got to get on the LSSC Commission. So I applied and got on the LSSC Commission, and that was really my first taste of volunteer work for town government. And it was really rewarding. I really enjoyed it. Great. So you did some conservation work out in Williams, and of course the CPA has an awful lot to do with conservation. Sure. So you sort of gravitated there, but there was some stuff that went on in between that caught your attention in relation to CPA. What was that history? Well, when the core of us that had taken over the Amherst Baseball, Youth Baseball, one of the things that was pretty clear was that the condition of the fields at Mill River especially was dire. And I wrote a CPA grant for about $127,000 to do a complete refurbishment of both fields. That proposal was accepted by the CPA committee and town meeting. And we did some pretty significant work on those fields. So that was really my first exposure to CPA. So they gave you $127,000, but the project cost more than that. We had to go back after I left that position with Amherst Baseball and then was on CPA as a member. Amherst Baseball came into another proposal because they had run short. And I recused myself from that particular proposal, but they received another about $40,000 to $50,000. And now the project is almost complete. So my first exposure to CPA was writing a successful CPA grant. Great. Now, I'm sure a lot of people have heard of CPA, read stuff in the newspaper. But not everybody knows the background and what this is really all about. So can we sort of do a little bit of history where it came from, what its purpose is? Well, you may know more than I do, but let me throw out what I know. I did have the opportunity to vote on it, but you're the guest. Right. Okay. It's an interesting history, really. And I think in the 80s amidst the kind of economic boom, I think a lot of communities in Massachusetts were seeing sort of real threats to maintaining this sense of community that they had had for a long time. Cost of housing, historic buildings being under threat from development. And Nantucket at this time had started a kind of a land trust of kind of a land bank to preserve land in Nantucket. And if you've ever been in Nantucket, you know that they're under tremendous pressure for development. So this was kind of an interesting model that I think some other towns looked at. And I think there were a couple of iterations of attempts to replicate the Nantucket land bank. But eventually those series of steps, the legislature, which you're probably involved in this, created the Community Preservation Act, which sort of built this mechanism for towns to fund the kind of things that helped to preserve community character. The ability for people who grew up in a town to stay in that town as adults. The ability to preserve historic resources to create a strong recreation infrastructure for children and adults. And to preserve open space that once you lose, you never get a pack. And so a lot of people think of it only as, and especially at the beginning, to preserve open space. And goodness knows, Amherst had plenty of conservation and land preservation work going on. In fact, we were one of the leading communities in the Agricultural Preservation Restriction Program. This whole region was, and Amherst among it, and lots of open space and forest and lands preserved. But that's what people focused on, it was all about the land. But it, in fact, was a much broader concept, which you beautifully described, because it's about preserving community, not just preserving space. Exactly. And so you could take historic structures, historic landscapes, housing, what else? Well, the recreation piece, which I don't think was originally part of CPA, but was added later as a subset of the open space category. Very good. And so how does a community get to participate in the program? So there's a couple of ways. We have an application process, which really begins in the fall. And we have an online application form, which any organization can use to apply for a CPA grant. The town will utilize this, often from the Conservation Office will propose open space land preservation projects. Occasionally the town will be involved with historical preservation projects, but usually it comes from the Historic Commission or from a private entity. Same with recreation, the baseball project didn't come from the town, it came from Amherst Baseball. And affordable housing, which is probably the most complex part of CPA because it involves all sorts of different issues that the other categories don't have to consider, often come from local nonprofits that are involved in the preservation of housing. So anybody can apply versus this online form. We ask people to submit a budget, to submit a plan for completion. We do have a bias, I think, toward proposals that come in with a match. But you don't have to have a match? No, you don't have to. But it's certainly nice when someone comes in and says we've already raised $50,000. Not all of it. Right. It's nice to be the completing part of the project rather than the original part of the grant project. So what will happen is we will ask the appropriate committee, meaning Historical Commission, LSSC, Housing Trust, or the Conservation Commission, to vet each project depending on their category that they're in. Got it. So then we will meet as a committee, we'll have the proposal, we'll have hopefully the endorsement of that appropriate committee. The originator of the proposal gets to come in and present. We have an open hearing where individual citizens come in and can speak in favor of a proposal or in opposition to a proposal. In any given year, we have roughly $800,000 to $1,002,000, at least in the time I've been on the committee, to disperse. So we do a critical evaluation of these proposals. We accept many, we turn down a few, and depending on whether we have the money to fund all of them, we try to find anything. And they can come back with a revised proposal if they don't succeed the first time around? Sure. You mean come back a subsequent year? In the next round. Certainly. Yeah. And is one round a year, one round of grants a year? Well, that's interesting. You know, when we had town meeting, we had to work around town meeting somewhat limited calendar. So we had one session. Theoretically, we can reconvene if we need to because town council is an ongoing process. We did have this year an expedited proposal from the town to fund a playground on Kendrick Park. And there was incredible time pressure because there was a grant that depended on approval of this project by January 1. And that was a state grant? That was a state grant. So we had to rush through that process for us to vet it, the committee, for it to go to town council and finance. We might not have been able to do that in the town meeting format because of the calendar, but we were able to be flexible enough to do that. And when you say to go to town meeting or finance committee, do you have the final say at the CPA as to what will be funded or are you making recommendations to another body? We make recommendations that are vetted by finance committee and then are approved or not approved by town council. That's where it ends at town council. Very good. And you touched on the fact that you do hold public meetings so that people could come in and talk about the grants that they're proposing, but also community can react. Right, we want to hear from the community. That's very important in our town charter. Civic engagement and transparency are two of the pillars upon which this new charter is built. And so it's good to hear how your committee participates in that way. Right, and we're very interested in transparency as well. And I will say that one of the things that we keep in mind in reviewing proposals is do these proposals serve a sort of wide swath of the population. Now some by their very nature are going to be somewhat more limited, but it's nice to get a sense that many different stakeholders in town will benefit from a particular proposal. And if not each proposal, some of the proposals, and if not this year, then maybe proposals next year, because this is an ongoing program. It's not a one-time event. Correct, correct. So let's explain to the viewers where the money comes from. You said there's about 800,000 to a million a year in a typical year. Right. So that means there's some variation. Where does the money come from and why does it vary from 800 to a million? Right, so when the CPA was started, I think in 2000, the state allowed towns to have a 1.5% levy on property tax valuations after the first $100,000. Or I think towns had the option of whether they wanted to utilize that, taking the first $100,000 off the map. And Amherst did. And number of years later, the state gave the towns the option of upping that to 3%, which Amherst did, by vote. By vote, yes. And so the first decision was by vote of the town. Right. Was that a referendum or a town meeting? I believe that was a referendum. So that the people were basically voting to tax themselves. Right, and it was a close vote from what I understand. And the first time around, it was 1.5%. Correct. A number of years later, the town voted to up it to 3% when allowed to do so. Which was another close vote. Okay. Right. But we voted to tax ourselves. Right. And to invest our own money in our own community for projects of value to the community as a whole. Correct. And at the beginning of the CPA history, there was a trust fund for CPA that came from document fees in the registry of deeds. All that money was put into the state trust fund, which was then used to match often dollar-for-dollar monies that were raised from the tax levies from the individual towns. As more and more towns started creating their own CPAs, that dollar-for-dollar match became unsustainable because the fees from the registry of deeds were not meeting that. So there was a number of attempts by the legislature to find new funding to, if not create a dollar-dollar for a match, make it a good B-fee match for towns. So we get money from the match and from our own funds. Great. And are all communities eligible for the money or are all communities eligible for the program, but only certain communities can actually get the money? Well, I think there's sort of three rounds of, I'm not sure if this is exactly what you're asking, but the first round of match goes to 80% of the monies that the Commonwealth has is distributed to all the towns that have at least 1.5% certain tax. So if the town doesn't tax themselves, they're not going to get any of that money. Correct. So you vote to put yourself into the program and when you do, you're eligible for the match. Right. And if you voted to go to the 3%, you get further consideration in round two of the disbursement of the Commonwealth funds. So the more you tax yourself, the more the state's going to give you? Correct. And in that second round, there is some, I think, preference for towns with lower valuations. So, which means that they would have less money available to spend and so they need a little bit more money from the state in order to get meaningful projects done. That's right. And so if you're spending $800,000 to a million, that's including both the state and the local number. And so at this point, it's $300,000 to $400,000, maybe $5,000 from the town and $300,000 to $500,000 from the state. I think the match in the last couple of years has been, I don't have these figures right off the top of my head, but it's been around 13% to 17%. Okay, so that was... That's a little less. That was less. Yes. And that was during the low period, but it's climbing back up again. It's climbing back up. Yes. The state's been very supportive in terms of beefing up those ways. At the very beginning, as you said, there were a few communities, so the communities that we're in got big matches. Right. More communities, same size pool, the amount that you can give a community goes down. Right. So now they've changed it again by adding more state money, so it's starting to climb back up. Exactly. But it's more our money than their money. At this point, yes. At this point, and it's been that way for a while. Right. But we're getting the benefit of the money that we're paying in our property tax bill here. And on the state level, their money is actually coming from the sale of property. Right. And ours is coming from the ongoing taxation of our homes and businesses, et cetera. Right. So investing. So can you give us some examples of some recent grants that you funded? And sort of maybe you've got one in each category, or maybe something pops out that was an unusual grant you did in this year or last year that really highlights something that was really special that could get done that would otherwise not have gotten done. Right. Well, I think one particularly interesting one in open space that we had last year was the purchase of the Hickory Ridge Golf Course. There were a number of different funding sources, but the request for CPA was for $200,000. And because it's CPA dollars, that money can only go toward land that's going to be protected. The Hickory Ridge Golf Course is kind of an amazing resource. It's a beautiful piece of property. It's been maintained with trails and bridges. The Fort River flows right through the middle of it. The Fort River, I think, is the largest undamned tributary into the Connecticut. So this is a significant waterway. Yeah. And the views of the Holy Oak Ranger are quite spectacular. It also sits between two of some of the most densely populated parts of town. The apartments off East Hadley Road and the sort of 60s era community just below just south of Hickory Ridge. So there's a huge population base to be able to take advantage of this, what will be a park, in essence. It's kind of a complicated arrangement. There's multiple funding. There's parts of the property that will not have a conservation restriction that will be purchased, like where the clubhouse is. That could be used for future affordable housing projects. So there's some really intriguing possibilities with this land. But in terms of sort of a park with handicapped access, you've got all these paved trails and bridges, which will need a little bit of work. But the course will be able to grow up into a more natural state. But I think it's going to be a pretty impressive project that will serve important parts of the community. Other examples of interesting projects? Well, I think one of the really interesting affordable housing projects is one that came up last year, which is the proposal by Valley CDC to construct by the Amherst College football stadium 28 single room occupancy housing facilities within a sort of a dorm like structure. And they've done this in Northampton quite successfully. That will serve a particularly vulnerable population. Single people, handicapped veterans, people recovering from working there out of homelessness, people who are recovering from addiction issues, a handful of people under the supervision of state mental health services. These are people who sometimes get lost in the affordable housing conversation because they're not low income families necessarily. They're individual people struggling with just finding a place to be, struggling with loneliness, struggling with physical handicap, with a number of different issues. And their housing needs are fairly simple, but they're very hard to find in any community. I think this is a really targeted project that's going to serve a very large number of people. It's controversial in town. How much did you guys put in? I think we put in tens of thousands of hundreds. Yeah, 500,000, which will bond over 10 years. We can bond projects. So you can bond projects and use proceeds from these taxes, these tax revenues to pay over time. So that allows you to multiply your effort and take on bigger projects. Right. And those bonding costs come out of each year's distribution, so we want to be conservative about it. Sure. But it gives us an opportunity to fund some really, what I would say, community altering projects like the Valley CDC project. What percentage do you think overall of the projects that you fund are generated through and or by the government, meaning town government, or versus through community-based organizations that are not part of the government? Right. Well, certainly in affordable housing, it's mostly community-based organizations. Open space, mostly the town. I think recreation is a mix. And probably historical preservation is a mix as well. Very good. If you look over 10 years, or probably since the entire history of the CPA and Amherst, we've spent much more money on affordable housing than, say, recreation, probably close to twice as much. Historical preservation in open space somewhere floating in the middle. So this program, as I recall, was started between 20 and 25 years ago. Amherst was one of the first communities that joined. And therefore it's a pretty mature, if you will, organizational enterprise here in town. That said, so it's well-used, well-known, well-respected. It doesn't mean there might not be some things that you'd like to see improved as a member of that committee or a chair of that committee. So in the final few minutes that we have, do you have some things that are on your mind that you think need to be changed in terms of how the program has run or the kinds of things that are being invested in or in any directions you'd like to highlight? Yeah, I think one of the, this is probably particular to Amherst, I think one of the frustrations is that to fund any kind of maintenance on open space, land preservation projects, those projects have to have originated from a CPA proposal. So land that had been protected prior to CPA, we cannot fund any kind of improvements. And I spent a lot of time on Amherst trails so I know the quality of the bridges and the trails themselves and there's some rough edges to our public land infrastructure and it will be nice to be able to support some of those improvements. I think procedurally within the committee I think we'd like to be a little bit better at monitoring the progress of proposals. Sometimes we sort of find out three years out that money really hasn't been getting spent the way it should have. Not that they're spending it on things they weren't telling us about, it's more projects getting bogged down in bureaucracy or inertia. So we would like to be a little more on top of that and we're actually in active discussions right now as a committee to come up with a better reporting system for that. Great and so if somebody is listening to this show and says I have a great idea, what do they do first? Well I think on the town website under CPA there is a document called the plan which we are revising. For final touches hopefully we'll be done tonight at our meeting. That really outlines how CPA works, how a project would be considered, whether it fits into the definition of a legitimate proposal. That's a really good first step. Anybody can certainly contact me. I believe my contact information is on the website. And how about town staff? Is there a staff person who works with the CPA? Anthony Delaney works very closely with us. Anthony's given us extraordinary support. If everybody else in town hall works as hard as he does, we're in really good shape. And do you list on the site all of your pending grant applications so people can review them and see what's in them then decide if they want to weigh in on those? Absolutely. And do you have an archive going back a number of years so people can see the types of projects and programs you've funded? Those things are true and they're right on the website. And if somebody needs technical assistance, never wrote a grant proposal before, they could give you a call and you might give them some guidance. They could call Anthony at town hall and he could provide some guidance. So people shouldn't be shy about getting started because once you get started the ball can roll. Well and the application itself is fairly simple and straightforward but people can always reach out to us if they're filling out the form and have a question. Great. Well thank you for your good work on the committee and thank the committee members as well for laboring in the vineyards here to help us preserve things that are important in our community. Thank you for joining us and we hope you'll join us again on another show. Thank you and thanks again. Thank you Stan.